SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
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User ID: 225
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I don't find that a very compelling argument, I must say. Murdering people to take their stuff is equally bad no matter who is murdering whom.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
If with a snap of my fingers, I got all the technical know how and a steday source of money, some progress on my startup stuff, I would instantly be happy so just ssris wont fix this.
Seconding @TheDag on this. It's very common for people to say "if only I had X I would be happy", get the thing, and then find out that they still aren't happy. Happiness really is a function of mindset more than external circumstances.
One thing you can try to work on to increase happiness is to try practicing gratitude. Focus as much as you can on the good side of things rather than the bad, and consciously make an effort to be grateful for those good things. At first it will be hard and require a conscious effort, but with practice it will get easier as your mind forms the habit. And eventually, it will help with your overall happiness as you are able to appreciate your current life situation more, no matter what it is.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I am not that young though, 24-25 is not young
This is a matter of perspective. I said the exact same thing about myself when I was 25, but looking back now (I'm 39) that age seems very young to me. I realize why you say this (I said it myself, lol), but try to reframe your perspective if you can.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
Because people are very good at trying to get others to follow norms, but terrible at following the norms themselves. It's kind of like how it's easy to plan a healthy diet for someone else, but hard to eat that way yourself. It's also worth pointing out that there are plenty of adults who do act the way we teach kids how to act. It's a subset (however large) of bad actors who are ruining things for everyone.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
From a Christian perspective, what matters is repentance and not when it comes. If you truly repent of your sins, even on your deathbed, that's good enough because Jesus paid the price and he forgives you. Notice that wiggle room with the word "truly", though. Christians aren't idiots either, and we know that someone's repentance might not actually be sincere. But that also isn't something we are capable of (nor have the standing for) judging. God has to sort that one out.
From there, it gets more complicated depending on your tradition. From a Catholic perspective (and even some Protestants, e.g. CS Lewis), most people will go through purgatory. This isn't something we know much about, more something that we deduce from two points in the Bible. First, "nothing unclean will enter [heaven]" (Revelation 21:27), and second, "There is no righteous person, not even one" (Romans 3:10 but the sentiment appears many places). So, if nobody is pure, nothing impure can enter heaven, and if we are somehow to be in heaven anyway, that implies some kind of purification that happens. We also have reason to believe that this process is painful, as some people "will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15). There are more verses but that's the gist of it.
So, from this perspective the answer to your dilemma about satiated sinners is that those people will not suffer damnation, but there will be consequences for them. They will have to go through the (likely painful) process of being purified from those things before they can enter heaven. Thus it's better to avoid sin (as much as you can), so that you won't need as much purification before you can enter heaven. To use a medical analogy (always a good source of metaphors for sin), the satiated sinner is like someone who has abused the hell out of his body, and then decides to get back into shape. It's totally possible, but it'll be harder and more painful than if he had taken care of his health in the first place.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
The husband couch is one of those things that most malls/stores have for a reason. They know, lol.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
My wife is constantly leaving her shit in the bed when she goes to sleep, because she refuses to admit that she's tired and will fall asleep in approximately five minutes. So when I go to bed (an hour or two later than her), I take her phone and glasses and set them on the nightstand so they don't get lost.
She also has a fear of the cupboards being left open, because "a spider might get in". So she really gets upset if I leave the cupboards open by mistake, and I had to learn to make sure they are always closed when I go in them for something. That one isn't as bad because I really should close the cupboards anyway even if it has nothing to do with spiders.
But so it goes. Nobody is perfect, and I love her so I do these things even if I sigh and shake my head a bit sometimes. I am sure she does similar things for me, although I'm not brave/foolish enough to ask what exactly my annoying habits are.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
Though It does makes me realise how different I am to the average man
I don't think you actually are. Most men that I've ever known are like what you described. When we go shopping it's like a beautiful surgical strike: get in, get the thing, get out in 10 minutes flat. When I see men just milling about the mall it's almost always because they're there with a woman.
Honestly, men are just plain better at shopping than women. Even when just browsing around, we get shit done. When I was a teenager I went to the mall of America with a (male) friend and two girls. In the 2-3 hours we were there, my friend and I checked out every single store we wanted to see, got some ice cream, and even rode the little roller coaster they had. Meanwhile the girls had covered 1/3 of the mall or so. And it's like that every time I've compared the shopping habits of men and women.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I didn't say OP should do that. I just think that one should bear it in mind, so that they are prepared for potential consequences. Knowledge is power, and all that.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
If you do this, just be aware that it'll almost certainly come out because children have no filter at all. A 5 year old is very likely to go "Dad says you're mentally ill!" at some inappropriate time.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I'm going to give you the opposite of what you asked for: in my opinion LLMs are not actually very useful. They're a neat toy, but given that you cannot actually trust them to get the right answer they slow you down rather than speed you up. They're 99% hype, not substance.
Nah, it pretty much avoids the shonen power curve as seen in Dragon Ball. The main character starts out reasonably close to the top of his game.
What? The whole arc of the show is for Aang to learn to wield all four elements so that he can have the power he needs to fight the Fire Nation. Not to mention that
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I'll fight you. Avatar is just OK. It has moments of genuine greatness, but most episodes are pretty mediocre and the show as a whole drags on way too long. It isn't even innovative in that it can appeal to both kids and adults, because other shows did that first (Batman: TAS comes to mind as explicitly being made trying to appeal to both audiences).
I'll never say Avatar is a bad show, because it absolutely isn't. But it's vastly overrated by its fans. I watched it all, it got a solid "meh" from me and I have no real desire to watch it again.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
Yes. Then one should take his arguments against affirmative action, which are cogent and well argued, seriously and realize that affirmative action is bad.
This argument doesn't follow. Even if one assumes that Thomas is a brilliant jurist, and we take his arguments seriously, that does not mean we will necessarily agree with his arguments. Brilliant people can be wrong too.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
The second is that because these subjects are useless and worthless, nobody who is smart really chooses to do them. If you’re a smart individual looking to study something, you’d go toward things that actually matter.
This is just the reverse of the phenomenon @RenOS mentioned. STEM people think STEM is the best thing and people studying other fields are wasting their potential (at best) or never had it. It's just as valid, which is to say it isn't valid at all. Some of my smartest school mates were humanities majors, they aren't just less capable people studying something easy.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
Second this. I didn't believe I had a soda problem for a long time, because I truly believed I could stop any time I wanted to. It was only once I actually tried to give it up for the first time that I realized "oh shit I actually can't quit".
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I deserve being looked down on for those poor choices...
Yes! But also no. I think that the thing which people consistently get wrong (in both directions) about obesity is whether or not it should be shameful. IMO the correct answer is "yes, but not any more than we shame all the other vices".
We all have some vice or other that we struggle to overcome. Every single person on this earth is flawed and has to fight past those flaws on a regular basis. I try to give grace to my raging alcoholic brother in law because I know that fundamentally, I'm not that much different than he is - I just have a different vice (like you, I also struggle with my eating habits greatly). But I also don't excuse him (or myself) for our poor choices either.
So, you have to strike a balance between the two extremes here, or it's not just. There's a Bible verse I'm fond of which says "all have sinned, and all have fallen short of the glory of God". I like it because it reminds me of two equally important things. First, I'm flawed, and second, everyone is just as flawed as me. So while I need to work to get better, I also shouldn't feel like I'm uniquely bad. Which is why I agree that you deserve to be looked down upon in the sense that you have serious flaws, you also don't in the sense that others have flaws just as serious in other areas.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I kind of went back and forth on whether I should reply to this because it got weirdly personal at the end. No, this isn't about me and I'm not sure why you think that's my objection. And I knew from the beginning that you're happily married, so this is quite academic for you. But eh... if you can't discuss entirely pointless topics with no practical value then what is this forum even for, am I right?
So when I said your heuristic is basically that a man has to intuit whether you like him or not, I was basing it on your original statement way upthread:
If batting your eyes and saying, "You know, I like spending time with you," doesn't work, then... [g]uy isn't going to know the first thing about building a good life together.
Even assuming you don't literally mean that such a man wouldn't know anything about how to build a good life together, this is still a very strong statement. And I suspect that the reason we disagree on the implications of your condition is because we have very different views of what your hypothetical action of batting eyelashes and saying "I like spending time with you" communicates to a man. In short: that communicates almost nothing.
The reason why this doesn't communicate much to a man is because most of the meaning is being carried by the batting of eyelashes. Women quite often say "I like spending time with you" (or similar) to platonic friends they have no interest in, after all. But I think that @2D3D hit the nail on the head when he described how men simply do not communicate with subtle body language cues like that. The odds are very good that a lot of men won't even see the batting of eyelashes, much less realize it means "whoa this girl likes me". We communicate 90% with words, 9% with tone of voice, and 1% with very unmistakable body language that basically translates to "I'm happy/sad/angry". We simply do not do subtlety (in fact, subtle reading between the lines like that actively annoys most men I have known). Basically the only reason that any man would ever pick up on the romantic interest your hypothetical statement was trying to communicate is because someone (maybe an older man, maybe another woman) sat him down and explained "look, this is just how women communicate and they are the ones who have all the power in this dynamic, so you have to try your best to look for tiny signs and figure out what they mean even if it seems silly to you".
So, for most men (at least as far as their natural communication style goes) your hypothetical test basically doesn't tell them anything that a platonic friend wouldn't have told them. And I think that is the really big difference in our viewpoints that is causing us to disagree. I get the sense that from your perspective, you described a clear unmistakable sign of interest that a woman might show. But trust me when I say from a man's perspective, trying to read that intent is like trying to read tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. It doesn't come naturally, makes no sense to us even if we know to try to do it, and is pretty much the most difficult thing you can ask of us.
By comparison, the good qualities you're assuming a man won't have if he can't pass that test (i.e. "building a good life together")? Those are easy. We understand things like providing for a family, stepping up to take care of business, and making sure your wife is treated like the precious gift she is. They are driven into us very deeply (partly by nature, partly by seeing the example of good men around us). Even the scoundrels who take advantage of women understand these things way more easily than they do the sort of subtle communication you're talking about (they just don't do them, even though they understand them just fine).
And that, ultimately, is why I pushed back on your heuristic that I quoted above. From the perspective of a man, you're basically saying "If he can't do [really difficult thing that doesn't come at all naturally], he's going to have no idea about [really easy to understand thing which actually does come somewhat naturally]". It's just not at all accurate to what men are actually like, in my opinion.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
Again, your heuristic is ruling out men like you describe even though you think it isn't. Being someone who takes initiative to fix things has pretty much nothing to do with whether one can Intuit "hey that girl likes you".
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
It worked for me.
Well, I met my wife online and she initiated contact. So that means waiting for women to ask you out is a winning strategy, right? ;)
My point wasn't that it's impossible to find a good man following your heuristic. My point was that a) many people ruled out by your heuristic are in fact good men, and b) your heuristic is more likely to rule in bad men. You're right that you can compensate for point B in other ways. And point A doesn't mean all good men are ruled out. But it's still a very flawed heuristic even if you can succeed while following it.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
She needs a man who will actually support her, and that is generally a man who seeks her out.
This is not true at all. There are a lot of men who are good men and are going to support their woman, but aren't mind readers who can magically tell that a woman's statement of friendship was actually meant to be taken as a statement of romantic desire. If anything, choosing men who read into things is going to select against getting decent men, because jerks are more likely to not care about the woman's intent and just go for it.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
I agree that it's bad to put women on a pedestal. But that doesn't mean that the extreme cynicism of PUA thought is the right answer either. The key is to not put women on a pedestal while still treating them with respect and not turning it into some game.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
Those are both really stupid ideas, and I lose a lot of respect for anyone who actually holds people to them. In particular, pressuring women into not asking men out is just making things worse for every man out there. Women already have a tendency to not say what they mean and give cryptic hints at things, much to the chagrin of men everywhere. Encouraging them to double down on it is the last thing we should be doing.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1mo ago
No. No it is not.
A bunch of people get together in a parking lot and have candy in the trunks of their cars, and the kids go from car to car to get candy. I think it's kinda lame personally, but I can imagine kids enjoying the sheer efficiency of getting candy in that way.
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