Stellula
8d ago
Medicine faces the same problem that computer programming has, I think: it’s a prestige job, with a high salary, and has therefore attracted strivers.
Strivers are great at taking tests, going to meetings, taking photos, networking, self promotion, speaking, etc. and are sometimes okay at the underlying skill, but to them the underlying skill is an afterthought.
I think this is why I’m frustrated at doctor pay. I want the type of autists that are obsessed with being good doctors, and I’m happy to pay them $1M+ a year (what some of the doctors I’m friends with make), but I want to filter out the strivers. How do we do this?
Interestingly, this is similar to the problem Google has faced WRT search. They defined how they measured a good page, and then everybody just adhered to that. The actual underlying quality went to near-zero, and they just overfit to the test.
Stellula
9d ago
I’m a Hindu
Do Hindus even believe in the concept of forgiveness at all? Isn’t your whole thing that souls get reincarnated forever and get a better or worse deal based on how evil they were in a previous life?
Christians believe that if you are genuinely repentant that you are forgiven. In fact perhaps the only unforgivable sin is believing that you couldn’t be forgiven.
lacks the capacity for religious belief.
If you simply edit your /etc/hosts file you can add the following lines:
127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com
127.0.0.1 old.reddit.com
127.0.0.1 reddit.com
And the problem will likely go away after a short time.
Okay but joking aside, what do you mean by this? You don't have the capacity for religious belief? Do you believe that you are the most powerful creature in the universe? Surely not.
Now try finding that meaning when you're a 43-year-old unemployed man who's never managed to go on a date
Your purpose is to fix this. Are you sure there's nothing else you could be doing to improve your standing with regards to these problems? Truly nothing?
Stellula
9d ago
Can I just tell you something about marriage that I heard, and has had a massive positive effect on it?
Something the Catholics get right is that young men are told, basically: you have two options for a job as a man. 1) You can be a priest (a spiritual father), or 2) you can be a husband and a father. Both of these are really difficult, at times you're going to hate them and at times you're going to feel like you fucked up.
But your job is to do them well. You chose the "be a husband and a father" route, and you have to look at this as your life's calling. Your wife, due to her background, will present you with some things that are going to be extremely difficult to endure, but you have to. Your marriage is your "burn the ships" moment, you do not have a choice.
There's an idea that life is suffering, and the only way to endure that suffering is to find a meaning to makes it worthwhile. Your marriage is that meaning.
Your wife, and by extension your family, is your life's work. Be good at it.
His family is apparently very wealthy, so the types of frustrations over copays, or waiting for insurance out-of-pockets to reset, seem unlikely.
I think this is a fake.
Stellula
16d ago
who is going to tell you about drug interactions
The same people who do now: pharmacists.
Drug development
Keep developing. Somehow every other industry seems to be developing new and interesting things without needing a protection cartel to allow them to do so.
Surgeries
This is what insurance should be for.
Stellula
16d ago
No, a “public option” is not the solution. The solution is deregulation. Medical treatments that were perfected 40 years ago should be basically free, and administered (if that’s even necessary) by a low wage technician.
A “public option” is just a shift of control from private companies to the government.
Stellula
16d ago
Like it or not the world does think about the goings on of Americans and how Americans interact with the world.
Reddit, twitter, this site, etc. are all extremely American-centric. I think if you asked an average European to give their opinion on American healthcare companies it would be a negative one.
Stellula
17d ago
What’s so telling is that in multiple group chats and other social media places this is the explanation people came to immediately.
Probably says something about how the world thinks about the health insurance companies.
Stellula
17d ago
Culture war going hot: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html
A gunman has killed the CEO of United Healthcare this morning, and has disappeared into the city. I’m somewhat surprised this isn’t more common, especially given the nature of healthcare company’s profit motives. I could imagine “we denied your wife’s medical claim and are sorry for her death. Also your bill is past due and we are sending you to collections. Thank you understanding.” might be a story that exists in a lot of people.
Expect to see more private security, more private flights, more underground parking and armored cars and so forth for a while.
This was clearly an assassination.
Stellula
18d ago
It seems likely that the pardon would actually be filed at some point in the future, and cover the dates listed. What you were seeing was the press release, which was released just before the end of the period he was covering for the pardon.
Stellula
23d ago
I think it’s just the preferences of the employees at these companies. They see themselves as taste makers.
It’s also a reflection of changing tastes. Just like a rockstar of the 80s was considered “legit” if they did cocaine and heroin and had a ton of promiscuous sex, a hip hoppist of the 90s was considered legit if they dealt drugs or killed somebody, whatever the equivalent of the 2020s is somebody who is a part of one of these groups.
If you’re trying to listen to the music for the aesthetics of the music, you’re just old. The music is just a superposition of the identify of the creators and the people who listen to it. It’s almost irrelevant what it actually sounds like.
Stellula
25d ago
My experience is of course the opposite.
I see way more discussion about "real" topics like engineering. Twitter used to be mostly pop culture and culture war nonsense. Not it seems a lot more like real human beings having actual, real discussions (well...not really discussions. I still think that twitter/X are the wrong format for conversation).
Stellula
29d ago
Has McBride done that?
No, but what he has done (until recently) was insisted on coming into the women's restroom, which is really strange behavior.
Any guy who is making a big deal about wanting to go into the women's restroom, or the women's locker-room, to the point where the speaker of the house has to address it, and women have to come out and fight to stop it is acting inappropriately.
Stellula
29d ago
Are you arguing that he had a mastectomy or is post-menopausal?
And in those cases, yes I agree with you that there is a sexual attraction component to it. This seems like an example that supports my point, not detracts from it.
Let's take your example to a similar place: suppose a woman got large fake breasts implanted, and then insisted on wearing revealing clothing to a children's birthday party, or insisted on brushing them up against married men at her workplace. Would you agree that this was inappropriate?
If somebody wants to wear...whatever they want, in their own private home, then by all means they should and nobody should interfere with them. Even if they want to wear just about whatever they want out in public, that's fine too (to an extent).
The problem here is that there are women who are clearly requesting not to be involved in the bathroom part of the fantasy, and there are people want to force them to. That's not okay.
Stellula
29d ago
Look I'm not trying to get into an argument about some guy's fake tits here, and I don't really care to keep googling photos of it. If you think that estrogen makes somebody look like that then I guess we just disagree.
... weirdly ... this seems relevant for your point.
Why would this seem "weirdly" relevant to my point?
Stellula
29d ago
I believe this is the article I was trying to find. I found it by appending "themotte" to my query, since it was discussed here quite a bit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/transgender-children-gender-dysphoria.html
Stellula
29d ago
Has McBride done or said anything to convince you her presentation is sexualized?
Why does he wear fake breasts? Is he planning on nursing a baby with these fake breasts? Signaling his (non-existent) fertility with these fake breasts? Or is it perhaps that male sexual fixation on female breasts informs the things that he does as a part of what appears to be a crossdressing fetish?
This is about as reasonable as asking why we tolerate bondage fetishists in the police force.
Police handcuffs serve a practical function that assists the public generally. Do Sarah's fake breasts serve a similar practical function? (No).
Stellula
29d ago
The problem this creates it that any tomboyish looking woman is now a target for harassment.
Why do trans people need to use the bathroom they don’t belong in so badly? We literally have them sex segregated to protect women. Why do these men need to be in the enclosed, single exit room with women?
The grace here should be going both ways: I’ll call you the name you are asking me to, but you need to realize that your fetish is your own fetish, and shouldn’t be imposed on women who are simply trying to exist. Just let them have the bathroom FFS.
Stellula
30d ago
Why is this such an issue?
Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.
Stellula
30d ago
For the purpose of this post I will use the following terms in the following ways:
Woman = Biological woman. Man = Biological man
Well it seems like we are on episode >9000 "transgender bathrooms".
There is currently a man named Sarah McBride who has been elected to congress. This person (a man), who wishes to be seen as female, has caused another member of congress named Nancy Mace (a woman) to start whining and complaining on various social media videos and news interviews about her (Nancy's) concern that Sarah will try to use the female bathrooms, lockerrooms, etc. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms/lockerrooms are for women, and men's restrooms lockerrooms are for men. There are a number of non-gender specific bathrooms around the house grounds that are open to anybody who doesn't want to abide by this.
Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?" In a reasonable society I think the answer to this question should be: no, obviously.
Everybody seems intent on being dishonest towards each other when talking about this, so here is what I think is a reasonable answer to "why does anybody care? Just let everybody pee in peace!".
Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.
To put some additonal context here: I think that the tide is turning pretty sharply on gender ideology within the democratic party (at least for anybody mildly near the center). I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss. You also have the UK making it illegal to trans your kids, as well as a recent, prominent NYT article that was critical of transing your children (unfortunately the google index seems very intent on not showing me links to the article, but has plenty of links to people talking about it.
What you are describing sounds quite a bit worse, though, doesn't it? Maybe "I don't care about becoming high class through becoming a doctor because I'm already high class so it doesn't matter"? Hmm.
Basically I don't want these jobs to be prestigious, I want to filter for the people who are interested in the work, and look at the class-effects as secondary.
More options
Context Copy link