Aapje58
1yr ago
Europeans and other supporters of protection of origin (like India) like to pretend this isn't true but it is
That's a pretty silly way to put it. People also use product names like 'googling stuff' for other search engines, yet the US still allows Google to trademark their name and then bans other companies from slapping Google on their search engines. That's not some sort of denial about how people use language. Legislators simply don't allow language use to dictate things like trademarks and in the EU, product names.
Aapje58
1yr ago
The FBI guy at Twitter specifically told them that the laptop was misinformation. You have to be pretty naive to think that he didn't ask the FBI.
Aapje58
1yr ago
The problem is that when the models fail, they just shrug and continue on their way. Also, just like in a lot of 'scientific' fields, core premises that are assumed to be correct, have actually been disproved. Yet this is simply ignored.
You should read Debunking Economics by Steve Keen for a good criticism of neoclassical economics.
Aapje58
1yr ago
Your definition just rationalizes away success, where if someone gets objectively better outcomes, but their expectations are higher, they somehow aren't doing better because the gap between expectations and outcomes is similar.
Aapje58
1yr ago
Because the 10% exists at all means an 11% can exist, and therefore a 12%, and so on.
So because I can turn my neck and some people can turn their necks more than others, I could turn my neck 270 degrees like an owl and be fine?
Aapje58
1yr ago
Why would men try to sleep with a class of people they find so unattractive?
Men don't sleep with a class of people though, but with individual women.
And I don't see why you'd need to respect the intellect or such of a person to be able to engage in an activity that is fun regardless of how smart the other person is, whether that is tennis or sex. I also think that the entire argument is in bad faith, as plenty of women have complaints about their partner and talk about them in disrespectful ways. So why is this presented as something that men do?
It seems more like a feminist post-hoc justification than a fair argument. Men are upset at how women behave in dating -> can't actually be any truth to the complaint as then women wouldn't be wonderful -> if we claim that complaining is evidence of misogyny, then every complaint can be dismissed.
However, this argument completely falls apart when you notice that many women complain about men and male dating strategies. By the same logic, these women should then fail at dating and their arguments should be dismissed as evidence of them being man-hating.
Aapje58
1yr ago
Karl was already subtly working an agenda with his historic pieces, that were often about convincing leftists that guns benefited black people. His view of history was often a bit dubious/one-sided as well.
Aapje58
1yr ago
He discusses how unusual Americans are in assuming there is one “correct” English and a bunch of incorrect, slang-riddled bastards.
As a Dutch person, I don't see this as American at all. Regional slang/languages are generally regarded as such by anyone outside those regions (and seemingly, plenty within).
Aapje58
1yr ago
Second, I am not a fan of calling people "obsessed" because they argue a position for more than one post.
I wasn't responding to the frequency, but to the way you approach the issue.
For me, mate selection is a rather complex challenge where people with different demands, different (sub)cultures, different skills, etc have to match up. This provides all kinds of challenges and any solution is going to have downsides and upsides. Simply pointing to a thing that is not optimal in some ways, without even recognizing that the very same behavior that produces a disadvantage also brings advantages, is in my view merely a demand for Utopia, which I see as very harmful, as well as not being helpful at all.
It is very far from a holistic view where you actually try to build a workable system and weigh advantages and disadvantages, compared to the alternatives.
For example, when you said that: "I don't think [women] should just be expected to put up with creepy come-ons without protest," I see no recognition at all that a protest may in fact be the wrong solution (at least for certain types of alleged creepiness). Why?
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The perception of what is creepy may be unreasonable. For example, some people seem to believe that this perception is heavily correlated with attractiveness, rather than just behavior, which if true, can be argued to be extremely discriminatory.
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The perception of creepiness may vary so much between people (and possible even for the same person, depending on their mood or such) that saying it to a man may not be a helpful lesson to that person. And if a generic complaint is made, like in the elevator story, yielding to it may just mean that other women don't get come-ons that they desire. Either form of complaint may simply divide men into those who respond in a Pavlovian way (ignore the complaints, because doing so work often enough) and those who simply stop approaching women altogether (as there is no way not to offend some women, unless one stops approaching women altogether). The net effect may be negative for women, especially if the more neurotic men are less likely to be harmful, which is likely. It may even empower bad actors when women have less choice due to men checking out and have to lower their standards.
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Accepting this may reinforce the current narcissistic and individualist culture where people demand that their own desires are met, which can be argued to have many downsides, including a lack of clarity of what both men and women should do and accept to make mate selection work out reasonably well.
Those are just a few examples of challenges that you could have addressed, but instead you merely state your opinion that you believe that a downside is unreasonable, without even arguing why you consider it unreasonable. As such, it is about as informative as 'I like fish.'
This is an obvious straw man, and equally obviously, not what I want either.
It is not at all obvious what you want, because your statements are so shallow. You argue that "it is pretty creepy to ask a woman you're alone in an elevator with late at night to "come back to your room for coffee" unless you have been given prior signals that she might be receptive to such a proposition." However, this is just your personal opinion on the matter. Do you believe that this should be the societal norm? Is it the societal norm? How do you even know to what extent the guy perceived prior signals?
There are scientific studies that argue that people are often very bad at both sending and perceiving subtle signals. Something you never address. You just assume. Perhaps she smiled at him and then put her hand through her hair, in the same way that some women do to signal. However, this time it was not intentional, but how could he know?
Do you want to standardize the signals or make them very explicit? If we do not, then shouldn't women accept that men will quite often misjudge?
What I see you do is merely empathizing with an individual woman, without seeing the larger picture, in so many different ways.
I even embrace the implied hypocrisy of saying that I don’t care if other people want to have bad things in their neighborhoods, it’s really up to them whether they accept or refuse those things.
That's not hypocritical at all. The hypocrisy exists only when you demand that other people accept things in their neighborhood, but not in your own.
Note that it's also not hypocritical to demand that certain things be kept away from all neighborhoods. For example, demanding that heavy industry or other things that cause serious nuisance be kept separate from housing is completely reasonable, if that separation is reasonably possible.
Aapje58
1yr ago
Amadan,
I think that you are a bit obsessed by the question of fairness to the individual, where each side has to suffer equally.
This ignores issues like how inconsistent standards of different women cause an environment where there are no consistent rules for men to obey and they as a result will unavoidably face abuse, unless they abstain from making advances completely.
I'm much more in favor of a society where men and women find a reasonable common ground that they adhere to, even if it is not to the liking of each individual, rather than the false promise that everyone can have their own standards be met and people being taught that abuse is warranted if men do not magically know which standards a specific woman demands of them (where that standard may not even be consistent for that specific woman and certainly not for women as a whole).
Aapje58
1yr ago
It seems likely to me that the slaves embedded the learnings into their culture that hard work and investment into education is rather pointless, while Jews adopted the survival strategy of high-value autonomous jobs like doctors and musicians. Basically, before modern licensing you could just pack up and leave when doing those jobs, if things got spicy. And the better a doctor/musician/etc you are, the better the chance you get spared. Even in the extermination camps, top-tier musicians were often spared and got better treatment.
None of this requires (epi)genetics, but can simply have become embedded in the culture (although culture can obviously impact mate selection, like the stereotype of Jewish parents demanding that their daughters come home with a doctor).
Aapje58
1yr ago
I wouldn't even call it "mind-killing", because of the impressive mental gymnastics required to avoid ever even considering the idea that there could be meaningful group differences. The bizarre hypotheses, type errors, or misdirections that my friends and colleagues come up with when I ask if there is even in principle a possible difference in group averages is constant source of surprising creativity in my life.
On the contrary, I would say that the extent of these gymnastics is strong evidence of mind-killing. After all, they already know what the cause is, they simply need to get there, whatever convoluted reasoning it takes.
The fact that the NYT article even mentions the possibility (to immediately dismiss it) already puts it in the top tier of clear thinking on the issue in my experience.
Yet the question is whether it is genuinely considered, or just 'our enemies would say it, so we have to address it.' Given the poor reasoning to dismiss it, I would argue the latter.
Aapje58
1yr ago
I would urge Finland not to back down on the free speech issue. This puts some pressure on Turkey.
Or just wait out the elections. Erdogan has a habit of seeking conflict with other nations in the run-up to elections.
Aapje58
1yr ago
but for Trump it was quiet until the FBI got publicly involved
And the FBI has lied to courts to get warrants against Trump's people. And the FBI has lied to Twitter to get them to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
So I'm not just going to believe that the FBI acted impartially and professionally here.
Aapje58
1yr ago
I just think that they’re too lazy of horrified to think through to the conclusions of the policies that they support.
Or dumb, or very biased (like having a strong bias for perfection, resulting in them rejecting any solutions where they can see the flaws, which naturally selects for solutions that they cannot understand, since perfection is impossible).
Or a combination of factors, of course.
Aapje58
1yr ago
They didn't exactly learn from it if they died. However, I think that it is a bit silly to challenge a metaphor in detail. A metaphor clarifies something by finding something sufficiently similar, but that can be understood more easily, yet it is not equal. Challenging it for not being equal inherently rejects metaphors as a valid tool of discourse.
And yet men have bad experiences while approaching women all the time & have to learn how to not be perceived as awkward, pathetic, or desperate. Frankly, I think that the attitude that most women seem to have where they only want to do the things that are fairly easy and that feel good, at the expense of men who then have to pick up that slack, is exactly the kind of attitude that needs to change to fix things without having to curtail women.
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