Cope. There is no positive correlation for misfits and genius or success, we just tell ourselves there is because it's a comfortable story to tell to losers.
I'm not saying losers are destined to do well. I'm saying a disproportionate amount of people who make a real difference used to be losers.
most life metrics.
Specifically according to your source*, high-school athletes are more likely to be employed, more likely to have a degree (American universities give athletic scholarships, so...), and more likely to take part in physical sports (again, they're athletes!). I was talking of rather higher ambitions.
Some jocks are very successful
Cameron Howard Winklevoss (born August 21, 1981) is an American cryptocurrency investor, former Olympic rower, and cofounder of Winklevoss Capital Management and Gemini cryptocurrency exchange ... In 2004, the Winklevoss twins sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he stole their ConnectU idea to create the social networking site Facebook. In addition to ConnectU, Winklevoss also co-founded the social media website Guest of a Guest with Rachelle Hruska.
Again, bro getting rich by betting on crypto is frankly the least impressive way of being 'very successful' that I can imagine. He doesn't seem to have done anything actually worth doing in his life, excepting sports if you're into that, just slid naturally into the kind of role that popular studly men do well in. I know lots of these people in the City - they're high confidence and high charisma but they don't actually create anything or achieve anything.
at 14 he got bullied by some older kids
That's not the way I heard it. He did it because his father suggested it. (I will look this up when I can). He was also not very good with people compared to his more popular siblings, and definitely not a 'natural leader' at that age or really for some time.
I'm not advocating for boys organizing the whole of society, I'm advocating for boys (and girls) being allowed to organize themselves in a limited setting.
I meant creating a good society for children, but also you seem to be advocating that the 'natural leaders' of boys and girls should be put in charge of society when they grow up.
*The actual source gives:
Educational
• any postsecondary education after high school for academic credit (i.e., college, university, or vocational, technical, or trade school) by 2000 (8 years after scheduled high school graduation);
• attainment of a bachelor’s degree or higher by 2000;
Labor Market • employment in 2000;
• full-time employment in 2000;
• income in 1999;
Health
• cigarette use in 2000;
• alcohol use in 2000;
• binge drinking in 2000;
• participation in physical fitness activities in 2000;
• participation in group or team sports and recreation in 2000.
Corvos
16hr ago
Then I will reluctantly admit that contra BAP, I do not want to live in a society of barbarian warlords.
Personally, I am unconvinced that school bullies and the first XI football team are in fact the best and brightest of us. I see no evidence that this is so. If anything, the children who do well in later life seem to be the misfits who had to learn because nobody else was there to lean on. Even in earlier times, much British and American greatness (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt) came from aristocrats who were educated at home and did not go to school.
I accept that there is some modern propaganda also pointing that way, but it didn't come from nothing. That's not to say that the optimal level of bullying and hurtful comments is 0%, but leaving boys to self-organise society does not produce good society.
Corvos
17hr ago
Boys [...] naturally choose the best and most noble of them as leader
You and I remember school very differently. And this isn't just a gotcha, huge numbers of famous, successful people had terrible experiences with boys at school. It used to be taken for granted that allowing children to self-organise their societies produced character, but then many people found that instead it produced spoiled, self-satisfied bullies and their hangers-on.
Corvos
2d ago
How much of the money is going to the creators? I assumed it was an elsevier situation where the creators make it for free and then tje publisher makes all the money.
Corvos
3d ago
Nobody reads documentation. If it were simple enough for my aged parents to understand, they would find it too insulting to read.
They don’t want to learn how to understand computers, they want not to have to. Thus, AI.
Corvos
3d ago
I'm not sure how true that is. Lots of men love spending money on games, gadgets, hobbies, etc. and I certainly like going around the relevant stores for fun.
Corvos
5d ago
If your proposition is that we factory-farm the fairer sex such that every man is free to go through a hundred a year, I think Margaret Atwood wrote a book about that...
Ultimately, the sex ratio is what it is. Chicken consumption is not zero-sum in the same way.
Corvos
5d ago
That, plus he drilled a lot of unusual combat and utility spells for the Triwizard Tournament in the previous book.
Fair enough, if you’re interested in a ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ conversation. I’m most interested in sensory and mobility stuff - giving more senses and mobility seems to be basically a pure win with very little social upheaval required.
On the practical level, the strong tendency towards bloat means that any such measure would need to be catering to a very strong need that I regard as legitimate and hasn’t been solved any other way, but that’s another conversation.
The cynical rejoinder is that free money is never free. Firstly it ends up taking a huge amount of time and effort and bureaucracy to collect the money, organise its distribution, and police its usage.
But that's only the start. Soon activists will begin to protest that rich people who can pay for their own cosmetic surgery get 20k of taxpayer money, while trans people who will commit suicide without high-quality gender-affirming care get the same amount. The prices for these operations will change as the cosmetic surgeons soak up the extra funds available. It will end up in the same place as UK national insurance - means-tested to hell and back, too small to satisfy the people who want/need it and far too expensive for the people who pay for it and will never receive it.
Rather, we could just say 'No. Your morphology is your own affair. If it matters to you so much, save up and spend your own money on it'. I'm not sure how in practice your pitch appeals to those who are net taxpayers and think that transness is an unfortunate delusion.
Corvos
6d ago
To be fair, Frodo inherits the ring at 33 years old and goes on his quest at 50.
I wouldn't have thought so. Fascism, certain varieties of Christianity, transhumanism, neoliberal technocracy... In practice, a lot of right wingers square the circle by claiming that any ruling ideology (any ideology that has authoritarian tendencies and a vision for a 'better' society) is Marxist by fiat but I don't find that convincing, in part because I don't see a mutual throughline and in part because the differences seem large enough to be meaningful (as opposed to People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front). I think 'the King should make things better' is just built into humanity at a base level.
Corvos
8d ago
you will find that bringing up the personal lives of X-ists is often going to blow up in your face; X-ists are X-ist for a reason and that reason frequently is "their personal lives legitimately behave as X-ism predicts"
Very neatly put, I might borrow that. I’m sorry to hear your early life was so awful.
Corvos
8d ago
I have no real Roma tic experience but it sounds like perhaps she has an image of her future that involves her living essentially where she is now, and that even the core of an ‘urban-ish enclave’ doesn’t fit with that.
It could also be that she finds this difficult to convey and is trying to spare your feelings given your existing terror of moving and the potential incompatibility of her current intended life plan with your needs and budget, thus avoiding causing you harm and upset in the short term whilst potentially causing you upset in the long term (a common failure of very kind people).
It sounds like you care for each other, so I can only wish you good luck talking.
Corvos
8d ago
I would agree except to say that the government has considerable influence on it, but the BBC will fight this influence with every tool if the government is right-wing and accede easily of left-wing (though maybe not as left as Corbyn).
Corvos
9d ago
Much respect for working hard in a difficult situation, and good luck for tomorrow.
One word of caution: be careful relying on your therapist’s judgment about external individuals. By the nature of the interaction she gets the evidence you select for her and is predisposed to see things your way, so remember to account for that.
At the end of the day, Alec was a traitor. He smiled at his colleagues every day while secretly he plotted to undermine everything they were working to protect. I find it hard to think of such a man as a hero.
Furthermore, the story is at the very least more complex than he tells it. What responsibility did the British owe to the Cossacks? They had fought for the enemy (Nazi Germany) against an ally. Giving them to Stalin was inglorious in a perfect world, sure, but it’s silly to treat it as a betrayal.
Corvos
9d ago
Sure, that’s always been there too. There have always been lots of bachelors and playboys, especially amongst the upper classes. The working-class boys at the university were much more of the ‘get as much clunge as possible’ mindset which ironically probably put them in a better position to date and marry later on.
So many who wanted to play around. But also a good number who didn’t. For myself in my ideal life plan I wanted to meet a nice girl at university, move in together a year later, spend a couple of years getting to n ie each other and then marry and have children around say 26 years old.
Of course, if I had been popular with the ladies perhaps I would have got a big head and started fucking around. No way to say.
Building things, inventing things, writing things. Some athletes, I'm sure, but I doubt many were at the top of the pecking order at school.
Fair enough.
Sarcasm aside, you're correct. I view Fortune 500 CEOs as being glorified babysitters, often barely competent. They're not idiots, often they're quite bright, but they're golden retrievers: they get those kinds of positions by being the right kind of chap who everyone likes, and they try to stay on the horse and not to fuck it up too badly before they leave. Say what you like about Yudowsky - and I do - at least he has ideas. Lots of my most charismatic schoolfriends went into Goldman Sachs and consultancy and the like, it's such a waste.
Sorry, I'm up too late and a bit bleary, but this just doesn't match on to my experience of life at all. Being good at this stuff (except football) makes you a loser. There is nothing that schoolboys (and often pre-1980 or so the men that they grew up to become) like to sneer at more than some swot earnestly making an effort to be good at things. Good for you if your life experience was different, but read say CS Lewis about his time at school for a counterpoint.
EDIT: I'm probably being a little belligerent. It's not even that I disagree with you completely, it's just the stunning levels of naivete and smugness in that story from Herodotus (on which my own schooling was at least partially based) irritate me. Oh, you didn't kiss the boot when the big kid told you to, and then he had his mates beat you up? Clearly you aren't high-agency and are doomed to a life of sad mediocrity while we reorder our society into bronze age Persia. Let the kids treat each other however they like, all things are for the best in this the best of all possible worlds...
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