I mostly agree regarding female benders
In the UK 'bender' means something quite specific. It makes this thread a lot more fun and also a little difficult to read with a straight face :)
The UK is defined by WW2 (and to a much lesser extent by WW1). Mythologically, we Said No to a European dictator. We stayed the course even when it looked absolutely hopeless, and then with the help of our allies we won and Europe was saved. (As with Napoleon).
Everyone pre-WW2 who argued for a realist foreign policy re: Hitler got egg on their faces. Neville Chamberlain signed an agreement and declared "peace in our time" and was hideously embarrassed when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia almost immediately; Lord Halifax argued for a negotiated surrender which would have lost us a war we were actually capable of winning.
Politically, you can't debate this history without being thought to be secretly on the Nazi side. So anything that looks like giving a European imperialist what he wants will be called appeasement and is an absolute no-no. Even believing what a foreign imperialist says about what he wants makes you a fool.
More intelligent Brits are aware that Ukraine is very unlikely to win but will couch their support in terms of 'Let's help the Ukranians give the Russians a bloody nose. If they can't win then let's at least make sure they take Russia with them'.
Corvos
12hr ago
In the UK? Good on them. I'm no fan of Labour but I'm quite happy to recognise when they're doing the right thing, and tbf even Two-Tier Kier seems to have looked in his crystal ball and seen that the current strategy leads nowhere good.
Corvos
16hr ago
The ideal progressive policing is that:
- Predicated on the axiom that the cause of crime being bad external circumstances...
- ...police prevent the most serious crimes, as gently and respectfully as possible, being mindful of the fact that it's ultimately not the criminal's fault they're like this...
- ...long enough for activists and technocrats to alleviate the unfortunate circumstances that turn people to crime.
Corvos
19hr ago
At the risk of being partisan, it does seem like there's a difference between the President (the highest authority) taking work home with him, and a department head setting up a secret unauthorised server apparently explicitly for the purpose of doing things without oversight. I would say that what Biden and Trump did was broadly on the same level, with Clinton being much more egregious than either.
Corvos
1d ago
It's one of those horrible ironies that you get into the job because you love animals and then you have to keep killing them.
And what, pray tell, might those be? Unless it's something utterly esoteric, or so rarefied as to constitute such a tiny number of people that statistical analysis becomes impossible, I posit that you'll find more athletes than you expect among their number.
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.
From his autobiography:
Fair enough.
Science says so as well: Studies show huge percentages of Fortune 500 CEOs were college athletes, though maybe that's too boring for you again, and the really smart kids are outcasts who do super important stuff like write groundbreaking Harry Potter fanfics or something.
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.
Kids will recognize a great mathematician if his skill helps him win at cards, or a great prankster who makes everyone laugh, or a great singer if they're trying to form a band. All aspects of human endeavor naturally lend charisma to their practitioners.
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...
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
2d 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
2d 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
4d 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
4d 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
5d 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
6d 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
6d 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
7d 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
10d 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.
This certainly wasn't how it was for me. I grew up in a mostly male environment, and I had at least some of these moments with other boys because that's who was around. In general it took a long time to be sure of exactly who and what I wanted, and it certainly happened post-puberty.
More options
Context Copy link