NullHypothesis's profile

NullHypothesis 10mo ago

There is an argument to be made that many of the scientific achievements and breakthroughs were low-hanging fruits that were inevitable to be discovered. It's just that the Enlightenment took place in Europe and thus most of the low-hanging fruits of scientific knowledge were thus discovered and produced in western nations. (Not to disparage the works of these great scientists and inventors, but if someone is making the argument of why another population is not producing great works, well there is a reason for how these great works were created, and as @you-get-an-upvote make's in a comment down stream "here aren't any Feynmans in the 21st century." Scott Alexander made a similar argument last year on why there aren't any more Einsteins which I largely agree with his reasoning here.

Whatever your thoughts on modern technology may be, many tech companies that provide entertainment or convenience to us today were founded or cofounded by Asian Americans. YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Yahoo, Snapchat, Nvidia and many more exist thanks to the vision and hardwork of Asians. Maybe these tech companies are the low-hanging groups of the Internet era, but that just illustrates my point further.

I will acknowledge BAP's argument is specifically mostly about Chinese people and not Asians in general... but I doubt that's a distinction that matters in enrollment into Universities. Racial breakdown in admissions only goes to the level of Asian, after all, and many Chinese surnames are the same/similar to surnames from other countries near China. The only way to know for sure is if they are a foreign student enrolling directly from China, but foreign students are always a small percentage of people admitted and foreign students are usually not eligible for many scholarships/financial aid, meaning they pay the full tuition. So the universities are making money off foreign Asian students through tuition. Regarding donations "in 2022, more than 80 percent of the donations came from 1 percent of the donors", so it really shouldn't matter whether the other 99% of people that attended these universities donated. Besides, given the clear anti-Asian bias against admissions in a university such as Harvard, I imagine that would have an impact on an Asian's decision to donate to Harvard.

Also, I don't buy his argument that discrimination against Asian Americans leads to dropping the idea of meritocracy. If I'm straw-manning his argument here then please let me know, but he's essentially saying

For many/various reasons, Universities discriminate against Asians.
Because Universities are already discriminating against, Asians, they got rid of meritocracy for whites because they are already discriminating against Asians.

There are better explanations that better explain the affirmative actions of Universities, such as social justice, equity, cultural Marxism, etc and I don't think the fact that Asians were being discriminated against played a big role in the creation and propagation of these ideas. At best a minor justiciation but I seriously doubt anyone in university admission made a train of thought the way BAP did for his hypothetical University admissison officer.

I can't believe it. So much of BAP's argument is built on shoddy premises, the only one that I can't rebut or hasn't been addressed by someone else already is his observations regarding the behavior of Asians when he was going to school since those are his observations and I didn't attend the school he went to, so maybe what he observed is true, but that's just a minor piece of the overall argument.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

I wonder how many people who say that believe that and how many just say that because they don't want to get canceled?

For those who don't believe IQ holds any meaning, I bet if you told them that they were smart, or a certain group was smart, they'd lap that up with no problem. But be more precise in your language and suddenly it's a problem (because it can reveal inconvenient truths, such as IQ averages across populations).

These same people will then push EQ as a valid concept even though it's nowhere close in terms of being defined as an actual statistically and scientifically valid concept like IQ. Or will say something like "High IQ people have low EQ."

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

Was it just some dumb profit divided by headcount calculation?

It's precisely this because many leftists think the worker is entitled to most if not all the profits generated from their labor.

Okay, to be more fair, I think some people actually did some more in-depth analysis or had a more nuanced take. For an extremely naive example, they hire a software engineer at $200,000 to make some optimization on their servers that cuts costs of those servers by 10%, and if the company was spending $20 million on servers that's $2,000,000 saved. That example is probably not close to reality though, and I think people were thinking of software engineers in those FAANG companies, in which the software product is the driver of profits.

But it becomes extremely difficult to properly attribute what percentage of a single person's work is responsible for the success/profits of a product, especially when you have tens or hundreds of people working on it. And it's not just the software, there are also other aspects of business such as sales and marketing. Think of how many Google products fail due to shoddy marketing, or how many Google Engineers leave to start their own products/companies and fail (because while they might be technically talented, they lack people management ability for a CEO role or lack the sales/marketing ability to drive consumers to their product).

If it was so easy to generate millions in profit, why don't they A) Start their own business or B) successfully negotiate a higher salary? You could say this was their attempt to create some kind of public awareness/narrative to give a higher chance of them succeeding in option. I also think part of this mentality is driven by hatred for the rich, which is hilarious because as you pointed out, those software engineers are rich, earning the top 1% of income in the United States. But if there is someone richer, I guess you can go hate the richer guy first. Being a millionaire is okay now as long as there are billionaires to hate on.

There's also another perspective to consider. Most software engineers may be costing FAANG money, not generating profit for FAANG. They simply pay those software engineers a high enough salary that they are happy to work at those companies and don't leave to create competing products or go work for their competitors. That's why it was so easy for these companies to let go of people when profits went down because they weren't that valuable to the company. Think of how many "A Day in the Life of a Software Engineer" videos used to come out a few years ago and they showed very little of how much work they do and more on how many free smoothies they can get at the snack bar. (One could argue this is marketing to make the life at the company look better, or it was only focused on the positive aspects of the company). And some people claimed to work only 10 hours a week while being paid mid-high 6 figure salaries, and even more people that were working 2 remote software engineering jobs at the same time. These people are likely not working on the critical products/features that would be the main revenue drivers for the company.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

Cross-country comparisons are always shaky, but it is at the very least clear that it's not as simple as "60s liberalism line go down."

That's probably correct because like most things in life, reality is complex and there are likely many factors that go into play. I do think the sexual revolution did play a role but if I had to make a guess I would probably put its impact at explaining maybe at most 10-25% of the total causes that have an impact on the drop of happiness of women in the United States.

Those seem like pretty small effects. But there should be more research done on this.

Yes, it would be good to have more research on this, but I doubt there would be many studies that try to explicitly study this. Usually, anything that can produce results that can be used as a counterpoint against a leftist viewpoint of the world doesn't get produced often out of academia, because it's usually the humanities/social studies/psychology departments producing research/studies on these kinds of topics, and those departments are heavily biased towards democrats/marxists/socialists. It could also be the actually skilled people in academia are putting their efforts into researching other topics.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

I think it's just people generalizing their localized experiences and you're probably right that there are no research/studies/analyses that show that literally 20% of all men are sleeping with 80% of women.

That 20/80 ratio or the sentiment around is probably more grounded in reality if you localize to something like online dating (which is only has a small subset of the population) or perhaps specific dating scenes.

For example, if you look at Tinder, "it was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.". Of course, Tinder is not representative of men and women in general, or even dating apps in general but it is one of the most popular ones out there. There is also a similar analysis on Hinge which found that "the bottom 50% of men combined, which represents 1/3 of the total Hinge users, only receive 1% of the total likes." I also remember reading similar discrepancies in data from OK Cupid but I can't find the exact article right now. So at least in the world of online dating, there are big winners and losers amongst men.

There are some studies on the human genome that suggest that throughout human history, more women reproduced than men. I've heard some ratios around before like 80% of women and 40% of men, or twice as many women as men, but I skimmed through the study and I couldn't find the actual author make those specific number claims, only that "these results are most consistent with a higher female effective population size." So some evidence more women reproduced than men, but in terms of the ratio it's hard to say. There's this other study saying 8000 years ago 17 women reproduced to every 1 man, but that's 8000 years ago when civilization did not even begin to develop.

If you look at more modern data, though, roughly 80% of both men and women reproduce. Monogamy has become the norm and as a result, it's not surprising roughly equal numbers of men and women are reproducing. It is only data up to 2010 though and data strictly on reproduction and not on dating/sex, so maybe the tides are changing. I feel like the idea of polygamy/cuckoldry have entered the mainstream consciousness more in recent years, and there is also the idea of women setting for men they didn't want when they were younger as they become older and have fewer options.

Also, something to consider, it's likely that the people you'd want to date/marry are already out of the dating market (because they can easily find a partner). In other words, the people you come across often who are single/available are likely heavily skewed towards the type of people that are not desired in a relationship. So if you're actively dating and trying to find someone, on average the people you meet are worse than the average person because all the suitable partners are not part of the potential partner population anymore. This can lead to an incorrect conclusion about the population as a whole.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

This is correct, but I do not think BurdensomeCount's thinks redistributive welfare state and gini index are interchangeable (I don't). This is my main objection.

Fair enough. But see my point on the correlation between welfare spending and Gini below.

There are lots of countries with large percent of GDP in wellfare system having very high Gini index regardless.

I have organized and sorted the data for you in my previous post, can you pick out a few countries (other than the US) that are high on the list and has a large percentage of GDP in welfare system?

I've also tried to add some stats on welfare spending, there isn't much, so I put togther a new table below using what sources I could find. Newly added data in new columns is from here: https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/social-spending.htm

If the country is missing that means there was no data on the percentage of GDP spent on public spending.

The correlation between Gini and % spending is -0.61, the correlation between % spending and GDP per capita is 0.36. Again, the same caveats as the previous analysis, except this time we also don't have much data on the highest gini coefficient countries so any analysis here shouldn't be used for any serious argument, but we now see a medium/strong negative correlation between public spending and gini coefficient. I mean is that such a surprise? If you don't like the use of gini coefficient then look at the correlation between GDP per capita and welfare spending and you see a small positive correlation. You could correctly point out that correlation != causation and the more likely explanation is that richer countries distribute after getting their wealth (to do a more appropriate analysis on this we would have to look at changes in GDP per capita over time) but my point is that welfare distribution is not a major factor in economic growth/development and there are more likely answers.

adding individual bell curves with averages far apart does not look like bell curve.

The populations are likely weighed heavily in one race or the other, not like those populations have equal distributions, and again this reveals very little about the tail end of the IQ distributions which is more important when we consider your argument on large gaps in ability leading to higher wealth gaps. Do any of the countries below have significant amounts of populations with differing means of IQ to properly explain the inequality outcome? I'm not saying your argument has no value, if we were looking at specific countries such as the United States there's definitely some merit, but as a general trend across all the countries, I don't think IQ gaps are the main or primary explanation for the higher Gini coefficient in these countries.

List of countries with high Gini index: Namibia Zambia Central African Republic Eswatini Colombia Mozambique Botswana Belize Angola Saint Lucia Zimbabwe

but this is by weighting each country equally regardless of population Looks like taking only countries with >100M, correlation gets positive.

That is such an arbitrary cutoff that conveniently cuts off all the high gini coefficient countries, don't do this.

Entity	Year for Gini/GDP Data	Gini Coefficient	GDP Per Capita	Population	% of GDP on Social Programs	Year for % of GDP Data
Colombia	2020	0.54173976	$13,387.70	50930656	2.342	2021
Costa Rica	2020	0.49250317	$19,824.35	5123107	0.963	2020
Mexico	2020	0.4539873	$18,327.99	125998296	0.52	2020
Chile	2020	0.4492094	$23,017.69	19300318	3.732	2021
Turkey	2019	0.41909108	$28,150.06	83481688	0.218	2020
United States	2019	0.41535568	$62,478.25	334319680	22.7	2021
Israel	2018	0.38577175	$39,936.77	8456487	18.343	2021
Lithuania	2019	0.35253152	$37,184.45	2849083	19.839	2022
Italy	2018	0.35222572	$42,045.92	59877432	30.059	2022
United Kingdom	2017	0.3514883	$46,372.39	66064808	22.1	2021
Latvia	2019	0.3448954	$31,038.68	1916552	19.695	2022
Australia	2018	0.34333763	$49,052.82	24979228	5.128	2019
Spain	2019	0.34305838	$40,760.31	47131372	28.086	2022
Luxembourg	2019	0.34241262	$114,542.50	619981	21.872	2022
Canada	2017	0.33308205	$48,317.18	36554344	7.426	2020
Switzerland	2018	0.3314105	$70,558.56	8514431	17.038	2022
Greece	2019	0.33104455	$29,721.59	10574026	24.115	2022
Japan	2013	0.3285473	$39,569.64	127678920	0.352	2020
Portugal	2019	0.32762748	$34,945.66	10289921	24.639	2022
France	2018	0.32380688	$45,245.96	64277812	31.633	2022
Germany	2018	0.31698412	$53,431.40	82896696	26.722	2022
South Korea	2016	0.31404856	$39,814.66	51309984	14.843	2022
Estonia	2019	0.30767542	$36,153.43	1327039	17.187	2022
Ireland	2018	0.30602926	$83,340.39	4834506	12.779	2022
Poland	2019	0.30239472	$33,159.75	38493600	22.706	2022
Austria	2019	0.30211553	$55,806.44	8879939	29.356	2022
Hungary	2019	0.29950473	$32,649.14	9771799	17.194	2022
Sweden	2019	0.29305574	$52,850.57	10267922	23.671	2022
Netherlands	2019	0.29248333	$56,784.04	17363260	17.565	2022
Norway	2019	0.27742285	$64,385.01	5348285	20.676	2022
Finland	2019	0.27737328	$48,583.43	5521539	29.02	2022
Denmark	2019	0.27723646	$56,813.97	5795879	26.164	2022
Belgium	2019	0.27219802	$51,977.18	11510569	28.965	2022
Iceland	2017	0.2613158	$55,638.49	343641	20.778	2022
Czechia	2019	0.25262198	$40,989.73	10536876	22.012	2022
Slovenia	2019	0.24384232	$39,034.23	2112905	22.839	2022
Slovakia	2019	0.23232324	$31,973.46	5453932	19.057	2022

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

It does help with clarity, so thanks!

I imagine a web developer would be better suited for providing suggestions on how to improve the formatting, I think a softer color on the borders and/or some padding/spacing on the cells might help, but I'm no designer or web developer.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

I thought that educational attainment especially on the college/university level was correlated with the decline in ferility levels?

Seems like women in Saudi Arabia are getting a good chunk of the bachelor's and master's degrees: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1195186/saudi-arabia-share-female-graduates-by-degree/

As for what percentage of the drop in fertility levels can be attributed to education that's difficult to answer. There is this study and it might have numbers in there but it costs money to access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00324728.2022.2130965

I imagine if a woman is pursuing a university education she is also more likely to pursue a career, giving less time/effort/motivation for wanting children. There is also just simply less economic incentive to get married and have children if you can provide for yourself. Also raising children is hard work, and pursuing a career is hard work, can't imagine having to do both. It's the plight of young women today, especially given the short time window to have children.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

The few times I put a table in my post the formatting just seems bad, I know we can add custom CSS but I don't know how many people use that feature and I'd like my data to be easily viewable for anyone reading my comments and I don't want to have to put data in an external source and link to that. Is there a better way I can format the table in my post?

Example of post with table: https://www.themotte.org/post/812/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/176383?context=8#context You can see the Year and Gini Coefficient columns hug each other.

Another post with table: https://www.themotte.org/post/759/smallscale-question-sunday-for-november-12/160264?context=8#context Ideally I'd like a bigger gap between Total Amount and Per Capita column

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

Why isn't female happiness declining in Europe, where all of these same factors are in operation? The 'paradox of declining female happiness' is sometimes said to exist in Europe as well, but this is misleading, because while in the US female self-reported happiness has been declining in absolute terms, in Europe it has been declining only relative to men. Both sexes report becoming happier over the past several decades, which doesn't seem like a problem to me.

People in Europe work significantly less than people in America, so I assume women in America also work more than women in Europe. I will admit I'm speaking from a very American-centric perspective but the cultures in Europe and America are very different even if both are Western nations. It's very difficult to compare statistics across countries as it's difficult to account for the hundreds of other factors that could play a role. An analysis on a single country is easier because fewer of these factors have variance to consider (but should still be considered for an actual, statistically valid analysis). I don't know if the factors in consideration are the same and to the same degree between the European countries and the United States.

I'll check later to see if if I can find any graphs/stats but if I recall correctly it's mostly older middle-aged single women who are committing suicide the most among females in the United States. It's usually at that stage in life where if a woman has been unable to secure a partner and a family all she has to show for it is a career which as I explained in my post is not really fulfilling for many women, at least to the degree that it may be fulfilling for men.

Fixed. It's a graph.

Thanks!

It's been difficult to find similar studies of impact of single parent households in the European countries, most are based on US data, but this study has some statistics on European countries. An important caveat the study points out: "because single parents in the United States differ from their European counterparts on a variety of social and economic characteristics (Gornick and Jäntti, 2011), it is difficult to generalize from Europe to the American context." When possible, they did acknowledge/try to account "for a variety of demographic and economic variables" so, on a statistic on childhood accidents from single mother to non-single mother homes they did find that there was no statistical significance once they accounted for other factors. I tried to put below some examples below where they did not call this out:

Consistent with these observations, studies have shown that youth from single-parent households have an elevated risk of being homicide victims in Sweden (Weitoft et al., 2003) and the United States (Winpisinger et al., 1991).
Studies have shown that children living with single parents are especially likely to think about or attempt suicide in New Zealand (Donald et al., 2006; Fergusson et al., 2000) and the Netherlands (Kienhorst et al., 1990). A large-scale longitudinal study in Sweden found that youth (boys as well as girls) living with single parents were more likely to commit suicide than were youth living with two parents (Weitoft et al., 2003). Similarly, a study from Denmark found a link between parental divorce and completed suicide among children and youth age 10—21 (Agerbo et al., 2002). Whether a similar link between single-parent households and youth suicide exists in the United States is unknown.

The question is whether the lack of a father is what is responsible for these poor outcomes, or whether it's down to confounding. The lack of poor outcomes among the children of widows suggests the latter. Of course it's not 100% positive proof, it's possible that the children of non-widowed single mothers would do fine with a father, but do poorly without one, even though the children of widows seem to do alright either way. But I don't see a better way to test this question short of highly unethical experimentation.

I'd like to point out while the paper does say "In contrast, children from widowed singlemother homes are not significantly different than those from two-biological-parent families on any of these dimensions, with the exception of having slightly lower odds of completing high school." they used a p-value of 0.001 which is extremely robust. If their criteria was a p-value of 0.05 as is standard in academic literature it's possible the other dimensions for widowed mothers would also be considered significantly different based on the criteria as defined in the study. Look at the chart and you'll see widowed mothers have -0.19 on 9th grade completion and -0.13 on college completion relative to two-biological parents households. Widowed mothers like I pointed out earlier are a very small percentage of the population so the sample size of widowed women may also have been small enough to make it difficult to achieve the desired p-value of 0.001.

Overall I think pre-modern society was worse for women than modern society is for men.

In some metrics yes, in others worse, It's quite hard to pinpoint anything in regards to an overall evaluation but I think most people would be in agreement that modern life is better for any demographic solely due to technological advancements. Is it possible to have a society with a culture from the past with newer technology? Hard to say, considering social media and the internet have such as huge influence on modern culture.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

I was writing a more detailed response and I lost my comment so I'm going to summarize my main points without diving too much into detail. Lesson learned I guess to draft longer posts outside of the website...

Straightforwardly, yes. American self-reported happiness rates have been on a fairly steady decline since the 70s. With regards to women in particular, there is a phenomenon referred to as the ‘paradox of declining female happiness’, the observation that even as women have attained greater legal rights and generally been raised in status relative to men, their self-reported happiness has declined. This is often used by social conservatives to argue that women were happier as wives and mothers and that forcing them out of their ‘natural’ roles and into competition with men was a mistake.

I did talk about a possible explanation for the 'paradox of declining female happiness' but to summarize my point was that "feminism took a slice of the male population, a slice that is highly irregular, and told women that they should all be just like these highly competitive conscientious men." I don't think its any surprise that having to work a career is not fulfilling for many women. There are also many other explanations I considered "such as social media, the use of drugs and anti-depressants, the sexual liberation of women, dating and casual sex, marriage and divorce, and the decline of religion". The topic of sexual liberation of women is being discussed here so great opportunity to expand on that topic.

What about the dreaded epidemic of single motherhood? Well, as noted above, multiple European countries have single-parenthood rates (and as in the US, the vast majority being single mothers) equivalent or greater than those of the US, without the associated social dysfunction.

Can you fix the link here? Seems to go to an ancient reddit post about a hat.

There’s not as much research as one would like, but from what I have found, the children of widowed mothers do not tend to differ much on outcomes from the children of biological, two-parent households, so “growing up without a father” doesn’t seem to be that important net of other factors.

And widowed single mothers are only a small percentage of mothers, Wikipedia says 1.7%. The other categories of mothers we still see significant outcome differences. From your same source (on page 5 of the document):

Controlling for other factors (race, gender, mother’s education, year, and age), children from single-mother homes produced by parental divorce are significantly less likely than those from two-biological-parent families to complete high school, attend college (given high school completion), or graduate from college (given college entry). They hold occupations that are, on average, significantly lower in status, and they have a significantly lower level of general psychological well-being (or feeling of happiness).

In contrast, children from widowed singlemother homes are not significantly different than those from two-biological-parent families on any of these dimensions, with the exception of having slightly lower odds of completing high school. Interestingly, stepfamily formation seems to offset advantages and disadvantages associated with the experience of a parent’s death vis a` vis divorce. Respondents from both kinds of stepfamilies tend to do significantly less well, on average, on all of these dimensions

There is some additional data to consider regarding the impact fatherless homes have. Source is a right-biased group but they have kindly provided sources for their stats.

70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from single-parent homes
It has been reported that fatherless children are anywhere from 3 to 20 times more likely to be incarcerated than children raised in dual-parent households
Some data suggests 72 percent of adolescent murderers and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates come from fatherless homes

There is additional research suggesting young boys fare significantly better raised with single fathers compared to single mothers. According to Dr. Warren Farrel in his book "Father and Child Reunion," "even when the father and mother had equal income, the children who were with their father full time - boys and girls - did better than those with their moms full time... a study from the Journal of Social Issues found that boys who lived with their fathers after divorce were friendlier, had a higher degree of self-esteem, were more mature, and more independent. Boys who lived only with their moms grew up to be more demanding and tended to develop coercive relationships with their mothers. At least for young boys, they do need a father (or male) figure in their lives. Obviously having both parents is even better.

What about the supposedly meteor-tier impact on the ‘sexual marketplace’? This is honestly worthy of its own post, but the short answer. Is, no, the idea that the upper 20% (or 10% or 5% or 1% depending on how blackpilled your interlocutor is) of Chads hoarding all the woman while ordinary guys starve is very thinly supported on the ground.

The blog post here is actually quite thorough and worthy of a read. It's probably the best source you've found as a counterpoint to the blackpill/doompill narrative. I will point out the data being used by the author has also been addressed by professor Nicholas Wolfinger and he says "we shouldn’t declare the sex recession over based on just a single year of data—especially a single year that relied on new survey methods—and a fairly small sub-sample of 229 respondents." Still an interesting point of discussion to consider and brings some attention to some more recent statistics/trends that I previously was not aware of.

As for the “divorce rape” the manosphere has spent the last fifteen years insisting is endemic under our gynocracy, only 10% of divorces actually result in any actual alimony paid.

I previously addressed this point when you brought up it up last time. Definitely an important statistic to consider that isn't brought up but it doesn't address the division of assets (which financially hurts men) and as greyenlightenment's response to your post points out there are other factors to consider other than alimony.

This is all besides the fact that I don't think it's POSSIBLE to retvrn because I think the massive social changes of the past two centuries are down less to the Frankfurt School indoctrinating everyone with Cultural Marxism and more to the seismic shifts in the actual underlying material basis of society, which could not be undone short of some kind of totalitarian anti-technological world dictatorship (which of course would have to make significant use of modern technology to impose itself) enforcing the law of Ted Kaczynski upon the earth, but that is another story and I am tired of writing.

I agree, I don't think it's ever possible to turn back. But I also think it's important to acknowledge the issue. I'm not sure what the fix could be, but it does seem like many people push back against the blackpill/doomerpill narrative and then deny it outright. Perhaps and likely they are exaggerating their claims but there is also an element of truth to their narrative. You can't even attempt to solve a problem if its existence gets denied.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

This is very, very false equivalence. Wealth gaps are product of both policies and qualities of population. If you add low IQ permanent underclass to a country, keeping its economic policies same, then GDP per capita does down and Gini up. If everyone has same ability, then very intense competition doesn't create major difference in wealth. It's competition, not wealth gaps per se, creates economic growth.

I'm not claiming this, this was my summary of BurdensomeCount's argument. If it's an uncharitable summary of his view then fair enough but he literally said "Today the USA is much richer than other peer countries in Europe etc. because it has and has had for a long time significantly lower taxes and a much weaker redistributive welfare state compared to places like Sweden and the UK." A distribution of resources would lower the wealth gap.

Also, I don't see any reason to believe the bell curve of IQ distribution has significant differences between countries. The only statistics I've ever seen was on median/average IQs by country/race, not on the IQ distributions in each country. If you have any studies on this I'd be interested in seeing it, as I could not find anything. Regardless, there are literally 0 countries in the world where everyone has the same or similar amounts of ability. I don't see any reason to believe that Ukraine, Belarus, or Armenia is quite homogenous in regards to IQ. If you look at any IQ bell curve charts on race, you'll see that there is a common bell curve pattern. The best example of one bell curve being thinner or flatter on the tails is in regards to gender (women being more clustered around the mean) but even that gender difference still has gaps between the smartest and dumbest. You're claiming the bell curve of IQ in a place like Ukraine is extremely tight around the median but I see no evidence for it.

I dont see strong correlation of what you claim on 2d plot: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gini-coefficient-vs-gdp-per-capita-pip Very low GINI index doesn't help Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia grow economically. It's just a reflection that these countries are quite homogenous regarding IQ.

That's a logarithmic scale on the X-axis, most of the countries with a high Gini coefficient are quite poor. You can see the richer countries are clustered to the bottom right with the United States being the exception. I'll admit I didn't do a great analysis writing from my bed late at night and only spot-checked the map chart in my link, which showed that the countries with the largest Gini coefficients were mostly in Africa/South America which are poorer 2nd/3rd world countries. I took the data from your link and organized it by the most recent data for each country sorted by highest to lowest Gini coefficients (which you can see in the table below) and you can see the years vary, so doing any actual statistically valid analysis on this is quite difficult. A quick correlation on this data shows -0.36 which admittedly is a weak correlation, but this is by weighting each country equally regardless of population, and this is a univariate analysis which is not a good analysis for something as complex as this topic. As I pointed out earlier the dates aren't even the same, ranging from 1992 to 2021.

Anyway, I'm not making any claims in terms of the impact inequality has on economic growth as a whole, I'm providing some counter-evidence to BurdensomeCount's claim, which is that the lack of a redistributive welfare state leads to economic prosperity. I doubt any of the top 20 (or even top 50 except the United States) in the table below have a strong welfare system, yet these countries are not economic powerhouses. My rebuttal of BurdensomeCount's argument does not mean I believe a low Gini coefficient leads to economic growth. It should be clear from my points further down in my previous post that I believe there are other factors other than inequality that better explain economic growth and development.

In retrospect using the Gini coefficient alone is not a good analysis as it doesn't reveal much about welfare, and you'd want to look at changes in GDP per capita over time, but at this point to properly do a statistical analysis is a lot of effort for what is a rebuttal of an argument which in of itself doesn't even have statistical backing. I still think my general point here stands, which is that BurdensomeCount's argument is wrong.

Also obesity and number of HIV+ people in US continues to grow. Probably obesity is not harmful and even good for economic growth.

What are you trying to say here? My point is that wealth redistribution is not a major factor in the economic growth of the United States compared to Europe and I'm not sure what your statement here either refutes or adds to the discussion.

If you actually believe obesity is good for economic growth then I'm genuinely curious as to why you think so.

Edit: Reworded my last point to be less antagonistic, I just assumed you were being sarcastic but I realized I don't know if that's true.

Table of Gini Coefficient Data

Entity	Year	Gini Coefficient	GDP Per Capita	Population
South Africa	2014	0.6302607	$13,993.27	54,729,556.00
Namibia	2015	0.5906661	$10,813.23	2,282,709.00
Zambia	2015	0.5713606	$3,365.38	16,248,231.00
Central African Republic	2008	0.56236607	$1,038.34	4,467,237.00
Eswatini	2016	0.54579794	$8,113.24	1,142,529.00
Colombia	2020	0.54173976	$13,387.70	50,930,656.00
Mozambique	2014	0.5399668	$1,228.66	26,038,704.00
Botswana	2015	0.5332503	$13,682.70	2,305,177.00
Belize	1999	0.53262764	$7,954.45	232,750.00
Angola	2018	0.5127211	$6,878.59	31,273,538.00
Saint Lucia	2016	0.5123331	$14,810.64	176,429.00
Zimbabwe	2019	0.5025645	$2,203.40	15,354,606.00
Panama	2019	0.49838337	$31,543.61	4,232,538.00
Costa Rica	2020	0.49250317	$19,824.35	5,123,107.00
Congo	2011	0.4893867	$4,925.38	4,584,223.00
Brazil	2020	0.4888038	$14,021.96	213,196,304.00
Guatemala	2014	0.48278588	$7,939.37	15,713,744.00
Honduras	2019	0.48168167	$5,613.66	9,958,832.00
Burkina Faso	2018	0.47347128	$2,051.22	20,392,730.00
Ecuador	2020	0.47311273	$10,356.98	17,588,596.00
Cameroon	2014	0.46640873	$3,530.28	22,299,590.00
Nicaragua	2014	0.46156293	$5,385.50	6,208,680.00
Jamaica	2004	0.45457473	$10,110.54	2,664,027.00
Mexico	2020	0.4539873	$18,327.99	125,998,296.00
Comoros	2014	0.45334595	$3,183.16	714,617.00
Guyana	1998	0.4511814	$7,556.18	756,705.00
Chile	2020	0.4492094	$23,017.69	19,300,318.00
Lesotho	2017	0.44879702	$2,571.69	2,170,622.00
Peru	2020	0.43794137	$11,176.92	33,304,768.00
Rwanda	2016	0.43710047	$1,907.68	11,930,902.00
Bolivia	2020	0.4361533	$7,679.93	11,936,169.00
Ghana	2016	0.4352088	$4,662.01	29,554,298.00
Paraguay	2020	0.43481943	$13,317.32	6,618,700.00
Uganda	2019	0.42705452	$2,250.02	42,949,076.00
Madagascar	2012	0.4264818	$1,497.01	22,966,242.00
Cape Verde	2015	0.42381087	$5,955.61	552,169.00
Togo	2018	0.42352226	$2,020.97	8,046,680.00
Democratic Republic of Congo	2012	0.42099708	$900.98	70,997,872.00
Turkey	2019	0.41909108	$28,150.06	83,481,688.00
Papua New Guinea	2009	0.41850787	$3,072.63	7,358,887.00
Djibouti	2017	0.4158799	$4,451.68	1,040,242.00
United States	2019	0.41535568	$62,478.25	334,319,680.00
Haiti	2012	0.41103774	$3,015.86	10,108,541.00
Malaysia	2015	0.410664	$24,151.26	31,068,834.00
Iran	2019	0.4093597	$14,084.35	86,564,208.00
Turkmenistan	1998	0.40806928	$3,833.54	4,431,523.00
Kenya	2015	0.40775773	$4,163.93	46,851,496.00
Sao Tome and Principe	2017	0.40749592	$3,934.89	208,050.00
Tanzania	2018	0.4049123	$2,510.97	58,090,444.00
Trinidad and Tobago	1992	0.4027297	$10,923.51	1,285,506.00
Bulgaria	2019	0.40271384	$23,270.23	7,052,536.00
Uruguay	2020	0.40152144	$21,828.64	3,429,087.00
Micronesia (country)	2013	0.40057632	$3,381.95	108,616.00
Dominican Republic	2020	0.3964123	$16,768.43	10,999,668.00
Morocco	2013	0.39548507	$6,352.43	33,803,528.00
Sri Lanka	2016	0.39345774	$12,904.85	21,425,494.00
Tuvalu	2010	0.39139032	$3,334.61	10,570.00
Laos	2018	0.38802433	$7,546.33	7,105,008.00
El Salvador	2019	0.38778764	$9,021.43	6,280,222.00
Samoa	2013	0.3873181	$5,659.85	199,952.00
Burundi	2013	0.3862482	$824.61	10,149,583.00
Israel	2018	0.38577175	$39,936.77	8,456,487.00
Malawi	2019	0.38543174	$1,517.70	18,867,340.00
China	2019	0.38168344	$15,977.76	1,421,864,064.00
Senegal	2018	0.38122472	$3,368.86	15,574,910.00
Gabon	2017	0.38024372	$14,478.13	2,140,225.00
Indonesia	2021	0.3791565	$11,858.15	273,753,184.00
Philippines	2018	0.37811705	$8,365.73	108,568,832.00
Benin	2018	0.378086	$3,040.17	11,940,688.00
Tonga	2015	0.3758744	$5,644.54	106,140.00
Chad	2018	0.37499154	$1,563.54	15,604,213.00
Bhutan	2017	0.3744141	$10,986.89	756,130.00
Niger	2018	0.37281045	$1,193.27	22,577,060.00
Cote d'Ivoire	2018	0.37183565	$4,949.61	25,493,990.00
Solomon Islands	2012	0.37054926	$2,526.15	567,771.00
Somalia	2017	0.36822405	$1,059.14	14,864,224.00
Montenegro	2018	0.36811927	$20,690.29	631,459.00
Mauritius	2017	0.36761206	$22,148.63	1,294,743.00
Mali	2018	0.3613692	$2,185.58	19,934,304.00
Russia	2020	0.3602981	$26,583.80	145,617,328.00
Gambia	2015	0.35918832	$1,905.82	2,253,137.00
India	2019	0.35733858	$6,608.62	1,383,112,064.00
Vietnam	2018	0.35715547	$9,636.01	94,914,328.00
Sierra Leone	2018	0.35690176	$1,610.16	7,861,287.00
Marshall Islands	2019	0.35482943	$5,647.07	44,750.00
Uzbekistan	2003	0.35268798	$3,229.85	25,905,912.00
Liberia	2016	0.3526546	$1,525.46	4,706,106.00
Lithuania	2019	0.35253152	$37,184.45	2,849,083.00
Italy	2018	0.35222572	$42,045.92	59,877,432.00
United Kingdom	2017	0.3514883	$46,372.39	66,064,808.00
Nigeria	2018	0.35127744	$5,089.78	198,387,616.00
Ethiopia	2015	0.34993124	$1,750.67	102,471,896.00
Thailand	2020	0.34985816	$16,848.58	71,475,664.00
Romania	2019	0.348042	$30,006.34	19,524,212.00
Nauru	2012	0.34766182	$7,851.38	10,464.00
Guinea-Bissau	2018	0.34765232	$1,851.89	1,924,954.00
Latvia	2019	0.3448954	$31,038.68	1,916,552.00
Georgia	2020	0.34465188	$13,966.33	3,765,912.00
Australia	2018	0.34333763	$49,052.82	24,979,228.00
Spain	2019	0.34305838	$40,760.31	47,131,372.00
Sudan	2014	0.34243196	$4,776.62	37,003,248.00
Luxembourg	2019	0.34241262	$114,542.50	619,981.00
Tajikistan	2015	0.33995718	$2,959.99	8,524,066.00
Palestine	2016	0.3369004	$6,438.93	4,593,855.00
Jordan	2010	0.3365573	$11,866.88	6,931,263.00
Canada	2017	0.33308205	$48,317.18	36,554,344.00
Switzerland	2018	0.3314105	$70,558.56	8,514,431.00
Greece	2019	0.33104455	$29,721.59	10,574,026.00
Bosnia and Herzegovina	2011	0.33030185	$10,934.09	3,743,143.00
North Macedonia	2018	0.329607	$16,148.46	2,113,497.00
Japan	2013	0.3285473	$39,569.64	127,678,920.00
Nepal	2010	0.32840586	$2,682.70	27,161,572.00
Tunisia	2015	0.32815883	$10,749.49	11,557,779.00
Portugal	2019	0.32762748	$34,945.66	10,289,921.00
Mongolia	2018	0.3274099	$12,052.29	3,163,994.00
Mauritania	2014	0.3261935	$5,020.14	3,843,181.00
United Arab Emirates	2013	0.3251042	$62,354.82	8,751,853.00
Bangladesh	2016	0.32385272	$4,589.09	159,784,576.00
France	2018	0.32380688	$45,245.96	64,277,812.00
Vanuatu	2019	0.32317576	$3,070.35	304,414.00
Seychelles	2018	0.3212532	$28,740.55	103,120.00
Lebanon	2011	0.3183245	$19,216.97	5,045,061.00
Germany	2018	0.31698412	$53,431.40	82,896,696.00
Egypt	2017	0.31533954	$10,435.92	101,789,384.00
South Korea	2016	0.31404856	$39,814.66	51,309,984.00
Cyprus	2019	0.31224227	$41,746.92	1,228,840.00
Malta	2019	0.3104208	$45,433.92	503,646.00
Albania	2019	0.30771738	$13,655.67	2,873,883.00
Estonia	2019	0.30767542	$36,153.43	1,327,039.00
Fiji	2019	0.30706868	$13,241.35	918,472.00
Myanmar	2017	0.3069687	$4,312.95	52,288,344.00
Ireland	2018	0.30602926	$83,340.39	4,834,506.00
Poland	2019	0.30239472	$33,159.75	38,493,600.00
Austria	2019	0.30211553	$55,806.44	8,879,939.00
Hungary	2019	0.29950473	$32,649.14	9,771,799.00
Guinea	2018	0.29591954	$2,471.72	12,554,871.00
Pakistan	2018	0.29589266	$5,113.43	219,731,488.00
Iraq	2012	0.29541856	$9,251.98	33,864,452.00
Sweden	2019	0.29305574	$52,850.57	10,267,922.00
Maldives	2019	0.2928509	$20,574.40	504,518.00
Netherlands	2019	0.29248333	$56,784.04	17,363,260.00
Kosovo	2017	0.29012942	$10,436.17	1,731,670.00
Kyrgyzstan	2020	0.28989273	$4,726.20	6,424,880.00
Serbia	2019	0.28953245	$18,310.08	7,401,056.00
Croatia	2019	0.2890909	$29,352.79	4,129,749.00
East Timor	2014	0.28652927	$3,197.50	1,184,842.00
Kiribati	2019	0.27832702	$1,990.52	124,252.00
Kazakhstan	2018	0.27792874	$25,544.35	18,538,100.00
Norway	2019	0.27742285	$64,385.01	5,348,285.00
Finland	2019	0.27737328	$48,583.43	5,521,539.00
Denmark	2019	0.27723646	$56,813.97	5,795,879.00
Algeria	2011	0.27615732	$11,113.97	36,543,548.00
Belgium	2019	0.27219802	$51,977.18	11,510,569.00
Azerbaijan	2005	0.26554906	$7,106.60	8,656,243.00
Iceland	2017	0.2613158	$55,638.49	343,641.00
Moldova	2019	0.26016647	$13,030.18	3,109,496.00
Ukraine	2020	0.25627363	$12,407.79	43,909,664.00
Czechia	2019	0.25262198	$40,989.73	10,536,876.00
Armenia	2020	0.25171742	$13,357.70	2,805,610.00
Slovenia	2019	0.24384232	$39,034.23	2,112,905.00
Belarus	2020	0.24383356	$19,225.57	9,633,745.00
Slovakia	2019	0.23232324	$31,973.46	5,453,932.00

/images/17044029569390996.webp

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

I'm not sure I buy this line of thinking.

The argument is that less distribution of resources (aka high wealth gaps) leads to a more productive society, yet if you look at the countries with the greatest gini coefficients there's a large overlap/correlation with the poorest countries and the countries with the largest wealth gaps.

There is also an argument to be made that slavery actually hampered the economic growth of the South. It may have made a few individuals very wealthy, but the reliance on slave labor in agricultural production led to a slower growth in industry and the development of cities. There is also a dispute that farms with slaves outproduced cotton relative to if those regions did not have slaves. So the economic condition of the South may have been better off if there was no slavery (and thus much less blacks).

Also, the USA's economic strength relative to Europe was already well ahead by the late 1800s, fueled by America's abundant natural resources, the development of railroads, increases in population and industry, and the development of new patents and technologies. Two world wars devastated Europe while the United States was left largely alone, putting the USA in a prime position to become even more dominant on the world stage.

Many modern technologies such as computers and nuclear power were developed/accelerated during the United State's rivalry with the Soviet Union. The space arms race during the late 1950s accelerated the growth of Silicon Valley. When the Soviet Union got an early lead in the space race with Sputnik, President Eisenhower created both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA would fund nearly 70% of computer technology research in the US in the early 1960s. NASA had huge demands for integrated circuits, which led to the explosion and growth of Silicon Valley. ARPANET was also developed as a way to mitigate the threats of Nuclear war by allowing a nationwide communications network, which would eventually lead to the creation of the Internet. In other words, the technologies that enabled the United States to greatly surpass its European counterparts were developed and created in response to the Soviet Union and had nothing to do with the fact that there were some black people in the United States.

In terms of attitudes against redistribution hampered by the existence of a black population, what was stopping them from making a system of welfare just for whites? The more likely answer is that America's culture of individualism played a bigger role in slowing the growth of the welfare state relative to their European counterparts rather than racist attitudes against specific groups of people. I'd also like to point out that the richest cities and states in the United States also tend to have the greatest amount of welfare. Yes, you could argue that they would be even richer without the welfare, or that the welfare came after economic growth, but GDP per capita continues to grow in the US even with the vast expansion of welfare programs, while Europe has seen a stagnation since the early 2008s.

Here are some more likely explanations for the growing wealth differences between Europe and the United States. Americans also work more hours on average compared to Europeans (US: 1811 hours, France: 1511 hours, Germany 1341 hours per year). Furthermore, Americans are more entrepreneurial compared to Europeans. Here is a Gallup poll showing the difference in attitudes. A greater percentage of Americans start their own businesses, and an even greater proportion of Americans build billion dollar businesses compared to Europeans.

Maybe attitudes on race might play a factor, but it's insignificant compared to other factors.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

Is there any evidence the EROEI is negative? I've looked at a few sources and the numbers vary wildly, but they've all been positive for nuclear.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-measure-true-cost-fossil-fuels/ - this one has Nuclear as one of the lowest.

https://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf - this study shows the opposite with Nuclear as one of the highest.

Regardless, both have a positive number for nuclear.

In general, my surface-level research has shown wildly varying levels of claims.

Wikipedia claims there was a 2019 study by the economic thinktank DIW Berlin showing no nuclear plants were profitable, but the source is some guy's blog, and his blog doesn't have a source to the article he claimed he saw it in. There then is a source to a counterclaim study that goes nowhere...

This source here says only 1/3 of US power plants are unprofitable

But on the other hand, there is this report from 2021 and 2022 indicating that at least in the northeastern part of the united states Nuclear energy was making profit in recent years.

I've even seen articles claiming renewable energy like solar and wind is cheaper and more profitable than nuclear energy, but I don't know if the profit/cost values used in the comparisons were calculated using the same methodology. Like if they're factoring in subsidies for nuclear but not for solar for example.

It's pretty clear each source is calculating costs and profits differently. All I've been able to gather from my short research is that like most hot topics, there are different groups with different biases in calculating and claiming things to support their agenda, and that it is extremely difficult for a person to be able to discern the truth without investing a lot of effort into looking into the actual methodologies and processes behind the calculation and sources of data. Perhaps I'll take a deeper look at another time.

On a somewhat related note, one thing to keep in mind about nuclear energy is that it is incredibly space efficient compared to other renewable energy sources such as wind/solar/hydro energy. There is only so much land use we can dedicate to wind/solar so as long humans continue to demand energy usage I think there is no choice but to eventually go to more nuclear energy, unless new more efficient forms of energy generation are discovered.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

I didn't downvote you but here is my guess:

41 to 33 is closer to 1.24. This also means the non-South's share is lower, so the South is 41% more likely to serve, not 20%. (I just plugged (41/33)/((100-41)/(100-33)) into a calculator, I may have calculated incorrectly so someone correct me if I'm wrong). The disparity between north/south may be greater or lower since this is specifically non-south states, not north states. There is a chart in this article here that shows by state breakdown using 2018 data: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military. You can see the ratios go from 0.3 (Washington DC) to 1.5 (South Carolina).

Regarding what constitutes a "warrior class" that's a semantics argument, so people are in disagreement with you that you need a 200% difference to qualify the existence of a warrior class. You could cherry-pick specific states (e.g. Washington DC to South Carolina) and get a 400% difference in the ratio, though, but the 41% is probably close to the actual number.

It's also important to consider the culture and attitude surrounding the military, and not just who serves in the military. The military is more red-tribe-aligned than blue-tribe-aligned. I don't think it's unreasonable to see how people from a state like New York think about the military (disinterest to disdain) to people from Texas (generally supportive). Your average Southerner may not have been in the military, but they sure as hell are more likely to support it than your average Northerner. If there ever was a draft for a conflict I believe it's reasonable to assume Southerners will be more likely to support their country while the Northern people are likely to protest it. For example, if we look at protests during the Vietnam War, a disproportionate amount of protests came from northeastern states relative to their population, enrollment rates, and deaths from war. There are some other things to consider, such as why people join the military (is it pride for the country? Or because the military provides an opportunity for the economically disadvantaged?), or how long people serve, or how many people choose to stay in the reserve forces after active duty.

Essentially, I think the data point you brought up was simply inadequate to convince people that the South does not constitute more of the "warrior class" compared to the North. Furthermore, even if you were able to provide more facts/statistics, whether or not the South constitutes a "warrior class" is not relevant to the core argument of @RandomRanger's comment, which is regarding people's attitudes toward the military.

That being said, I personally would not downvote your post, as I think it adds an interesting point of discussion to consider, but people will vote however they want. I have seen similar sentiment recently regarding voting patterns here. I can't remember who but I saw someone with a flair that essentially said to comment if downvoting and nobody else put a reason why. It would be nice to get a response from someone who actually downvoted but the most likely explanation is they just didn't agree with what you said, and I suspect my points above would not be that different for why they didn't agree with what you said.

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Context

NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

My point was that the 10% alimony stat doesn't address the asset portion, so to properly dispute the overall claim you'd need some additional statistics regarding the division of assets. As I pointed out earlier, legally speaking alimony is a separate concept from the division of assets, so just because only 10% of divorces have alimony doesn't mean only 10% of divorces hurt men financially. There's also the part regarding parent rights over children that hasn't been addressed.

Depending on who you talk to even a 10% chance might be too high. Considering 50% percent of marriages end in divorce and 10% of those have alimony, that's a 5% chance that you'll have to pay alimony if you decide to get married. That's a bad roll on a D20. If you know 100 married men men that's 50 of them that will divorce and 5 of them that will pay alimony.

but I think divorce doesn't take that much wealth from most Americans, because most Americans don't have that much wealth in the first place

I don't think that's the correct approach to addressing the costs that divorce has on men. If you had a decent amount of wealth accumulated during the time of marriage, is it not true that those assets are likely to be split evenly? Whether or not it should and if the partner that contributed less should have rights to half of that is another conversation, but from the perspective of the man he's losing half of all the money he's earned while the woman gets money she didn't earn.

People who are married are probably on the wealthier end, and divorce starts to happen once people hit their 30s/40s so by that point your average divorcing couple likely do have some assets where losing half of it would hurt. It's not the poor that are getting married, it's middle and upper-class people.

I think in general people should strive to build their wealth, and that people should get married, so a legal structure and culture that disincentivizes marriage (such as the costs of divorce) is not something I condone.

assets acquired before the marriage can stay with the original owner.

Pardon my lack of knowledge but this usually results in a costly legal battle without the use of a prenuptial agreement right?

So I think the specific manosphere claim that women 'divorce rape' men for their own benefit isn't true,

I agree with you, most women probably aren't actively seeking to fuck over men, but it also isn't as uncommon as the counterclaim. But most older men have either gone through the experience of a bitter divorce themselves or know someone who has. It probably isn't as big of a problem as the manosphere paints it, but the opposite is not true either. The problem is real and exists. Also, let's not lose focus here, I was specifically talking about @To_Mandalay's counter to the statement "This particularly increases the costs for men through the mechanism of family courts (as divorce usually means he loses his assets, income, and children)." and not "Divorce Rape". A good point was brought up regarding income (although child support and changes in taxes were not addressed), but nothing regarding the other two.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

Just realized from your quote I was missing the word "from" so I fixed my sentence.

I'm not disputing the claim women get poorer after divorce, I'm pointing out that the counter to the claim that "divorce usually means he loses his assets, income, and children only addresses the income portion. The 10% alimony stat is a pretty eye-opening stat to the common manosphere narrative if you never paid attention to the facts which I acknowledge.

It can both be simultaneously true that men lose their assets and women end up poorer after divorce, since from the perspective of both parties they no longer have the shared pool of resources. An extremely simple example: Bob and Jane had $100,000 in a joint bank account, but after divorce, both only have $50,000, so both end up being poorer than before.

With women not having access to their previous partner's income unless they find another source, yes they will end up poorer over the long term compared to if they didn't divorce. Divorce in general is financially costly. So women typically lose out on the future income, while men lose out on the years of previously accumulated wealth.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

You haven't actually done what I suggested.

What percentage of people that voted do you think did with that as their primary motivation to do so? 0.1%, 1%, 5%, 20%, 50%? You can even give a number range, like 1 - 20%. If you can't do this then you're speaking with no conviction in your thought.

You might be thinking why does this matter? Well, it matters because it reveals your motivation for making that statement. If you think 50% of voters did so with racism as their main priority, it tells me that your view of the world is flawed and I should view any argument/statement you make with more scrutiny. If you think it's 0.1% of the voters, then why did you even bring up the point? It's so miniscule that it's irrelevant. You failed to provide any other reason for why people might be against the opposition candidate other than the race factor so it's reasonable to assume that you think racism is a significant enough contributing factor.

When you're providing an explanation for something but that explanation is like the 8th or 9th in the list of reasons that matter and you provide no other reasons, and nobody else has provided the more likely reasons, well it seems to imply you have some kind of agenda or you want to push some kind of perspective. It's poisoning the well, and it's not conducive to a productive conversation. There probably is something interesting and insightful in the point you brought up, after all I've seen some amazing conversations here based on disagreements but the resulting comment chain so far has not been enlightening on anything of substance other than the nature of your character at this moment in time.

The charitable view is that you just some off-hand remark you made without giving it much thought, but the fact that you continue to argue rather than saying it was just some careless wording on your part seems to suggest something else. I get that it's human nature to get defensive, especially when you get piled on like this, but it's not doing you any favors here.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

To add some context, over half the games on Steam (which is a higher bar of entry than all games) never made more than $5,000. If you exclude AAA and AA games, that number drops to $4,000.

There have been plenty of game developers who say that if you account for time spent versus profits, for most of them it's significantly lower than minimum wage. You'd have to be turning out large volumes extremely shitty games with very little time invested to grift game development and at that point you might as well grift something else that could make you more money and doesn't flood the already saturated video game market with more crap.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

If he is that physically repulsive (which I don't believe, most people can look better than average simply by putting in effort because most people don't put in effort) he could just have plastic surgery. Women use makeup all the time to look better, I don't see why men can't use similar measures if all else fails.

I never got a response though, probably because he was banned soon after but I'm 90% sure he just downvoted without responding. It's as if his looks aren't the root of his problem.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

I would guess that most of the people complaining are more concerned about who he was running against. And for some of those people, more specifically the race of that person.

The resulting comment chains to your statement is yet another example of the problems caused by using words such as "most" and "some" because those words are vague and can be interpreted in so many ways.

At this point, I say you should put a percentage estimate with your confidence on that estimate (e.g. I am 90% confident 5% of Romney voters voted for him because they didn't like Obama being black) and this should reveal what you really think about the matter. And if your estimate is reasonable it should take some heat off your back.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

Not sure if it would change your mind, but I find seeing the gameplay in video footage instead of a screenshot can change how you perceive the graphics, as motion and animation have a huge impact on perception. If you ever pause a video the image never seems "right" and often you get people in strange facial poses/expressions. Or if you ever pause an animation when a character is making a big movement you get some really funky-looking images.

I play Starcraft and I prefer the visuals of Starcraft Broodwar to Starcraft II. The interesting thing about Brood War is that the units pop out to me whether it is on video or a screenshot, but Starcraft II looks much worse as an image than when I view it in a video. So something similar could be happening to BG3.

You can see a similar in Age of Empires series;

Age of Empires 2: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/813780/ss_e2fc6cfd934c8150cf751955d44deb688ab3c7d0.1920x1080.jpg?t=1702497119

Age of Empires 4: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1466860/ss_48195285a60c6208f8bd722f74c556b9a224f4b0.1920x1080.jpg?t=1702338967

The units in Age of Empires 2 just seem to pop out more to me.

I am in general agreement with you that things look worse in 3d, but I'm speaking strictly from an RTS gameplay experience where your ability to process visual information in a short amount of time is crucial. For a game like BG3 where the gameplay is turn-based and people are probably playing to immerse themselves in the story, I don't think the 3d art detracts from the gameplay or experience.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

It doesn't actually mean that. The manosphere loves these horror stories but alimony is awarded only in a minority of divorce cases, about 10%. Women tend to wind up significantly poorer after divorce, not richer.

That's a sobering white pill if I've ever seen one, but it only partly addresses the income portion.

There is still the loss of assets, as the division of assets is different from alimony. For example, South Carolina considers equitable distribution as a separate concept from alimony. As men tend to be the partners with a higher income, they will have contributed to a greater portion of the assets in a marriage, and thus lose out more in terms of the assets.

Child support, while not alimony, is also something that the man has to contribute, and it's no secret knowledge that men get the short end of the stick when it comes to rights over their children.

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

Couple of reasons to read a book still:

Learn how other people build arguments to reach the conclusion you already are convicted of. It can help you with additional arguments that can help bolster your defense of that idea, or if the argument is poor you now know in advance how others might want to dismantle your conclusion.
Someone else put the effort into compiling a bunch of sources that can count as evidence, statistics, stories, etc that can be a good reference point, especially if you don't have those yourself already.
The style of the writing itself is interesting/entertaining enough to warrant reading.

Pinker's books are quite lengthy though, so it'll take a month to get through his books via audio if you do like 1-2 hours a day. That being said, you could just look at the chapter titles and skip to the parts that might be of interest to you. You might miss some of the context/previously established ideas but the nice thing about nonfiction work is that you don't have to read the whole thing in its entirety.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has some interesting ideas in his books (The Black Swan, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game were three I listened to). He comes off a bit arrogant to me but I think his books leave some interesting ideas to ponder on. Funnily enough, Pinker and Taleb also have some beef:

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NullHypothesis 10mo ago

We see that the social expectation of cooperation is not always the best result for everyone in a group.

I don't know much about League of Legends, but do solo queue people get pitted against pre-assembled groups of 5? I imagine the group that has experience playing together would be more receptive to cooperative play because they know exactly what those pings mean, whereas in solo queue that ping could mean anything from just providing information "hey enemy is here" to " hey jungler you need to come and gank now". Cooperation means you take the other player's input into account, not to just blindly follow another person's orders.

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