toxdox
1yr ago
I wouldn't necessarily in general, but at least for the accounts that I see, where they promote themselves as professionals in some domain (not necessarily tech), there does seem to be a pretty strong correlation between skill, creativity, credentials or output and their following counts. Then again, that is hard to say for sure, since it is not a random sample.
toxdox
1yr ago
Lately on twitter, I’ve been seeing accounts of quite attractive young women, who are network engineers or security specialist or similar. Most of them have somewhat high following counts in the +20k. There are a bunch of similarities between them. They often have pronounce in the bio and sell some sort of book or course on how to do, what they do. Looking at the technical content they put out, it seems like incredibly basic stuff, such as running a password cracker like Hydra or running WireShark. All their Github profiles are more or less empty with no contributions to speak of. They seem to do little or no code at all, but they all appear to have employment in tech companies of various sorts.
I have only ever had one course in security, so I don’t know much about the field, but it was almost exclusively writing exploits in Assembly and some C. We were only allowed to use some basic tools to hexdump a binary and such. I do realize that in the real world you would use all sorts of tools available to you, but still, I would expect somewhat heavier technical skills displayed.
So I’m sort of confused. What do they actually do in their jobs? They don’t seem to have skills that I thought were required for that type of work. Are they just DEI hires? Why do they have so many followers? Is it just tech guys simping over women? Is the algorithm pushing them for some reason? I basically never see any such men (or maybe it is just my stupid ass only noticing the attractive women).
Does someone here work in the field, who can enlighten me?
Some examples of the most prominent:
https://twitter.com/TracketPacer
https://twitter.com/notshenetworks
toxdox
1yr ago
What do you mean by hoarding books? Do you by as many as you can or do you select certain ones you believe will become hard or impossible to find in the future? Also why don't you trust electronic media? Wouldn't it be better to just buy hard drives and then download everything you can come by via torrents, libgen e.t.c. and figure out some sort of backup plan?
toxdox
1yr ago
There’s no real paradoxical fact here. I reject the premise that women find greying very attractive, especially young women. It’s more the case that women, even young women sometimes, can find men quite attractive in spite of greying.
I might be overestimating how attractive women find it. It is mostly based on the response I have received, even from women in their early to mid twenties.
traps along with deltoids are androgenic signals, dominance traits that girls love.
They could love some dominance traits and not others. I think women generally select for a partner that has the visual cues signaling a capacity for violence, but simultaneously isn't overly aggressive. Some traits might signal too much aggression.
men lacking in traps can look kind of weird
Counterpoint: Large traps creates the illusion of narrower shoulders, women put a lot more emphasis on broad shoulders, so the larger traps makes the body seem less attractive overall.
it’s important to note that it was conducted using just survey questions, with a stylized drawing of a man to identify muscles
Good point. They do call it a preliminary study calling for more research.
Good hair is a strong signal of sexual fitness, and baldness is selected against even if it's a largely benign condition.
But the question is why, though? I could be wrong, I don't think there is any evidence for bald men to have poorer health or being generally less capable compared to their unbald counterparts.
I don't think women like fully grey hair, but salt and pepper in an otherwise attractive man is mildly attractive. I don't think a young man can simply dye his hair grey and get anything out of it. Nor do I think that a middle aged man will significantly benefit from it either unless he's already hot.
I think you are right, that fully grey is probably not very attractive. And it might be the case that greying will make an already attractive man more attractive, but do nothing for a less attractive man.
This is not the case, and no end of studies have shown that younger doctors in their 30s-40s are better clinicians than their older counterparts who are ossified in their ways and not as abreast of new updates.
I think this will be true for almost any field, but in the case of clinicians, the confidence a patient has in their doctor is probably hard to account for, but could have a nonnegligible effect. Placebo and all that.
but if I do grey early-ish I won't really complain
I got my first grey hairs at age 20. I thought I would be fully grey before 30 and felt quite down over it for a while. I'm now in my early thirties and haven't gone fully grey, and since I'm blonde it hasn't been very noticeable. It is now at a point where people see it and comment on it, but considering I have multiple friends of the same age, who are balding, I feel lucky, that I have a full head of hair. And comments from women have been compliments, which is what prompted me to wonder about this.
Edit:
I am wrong. There does seem to be evidence that vertex balding is associated with higher risk of CHD and prostate cancer.
Something I’ve been pondering lately, is the seemingly paradoxical fact that women tend to find balding men quite unattractive while simultaneously finding greying very attractive.
Both are associated with aging and both are largely genetic, I believe, although balding more so, which might be part of the explanation.
The best I’ve been able to come up with, is that balding, since it is associated (and probably caused by) high levels of DHT, it can be an indicator of aggressiveness to the point where it is detrimental to the woman. Not that every balding man is aggressive, but I don’t think it is a coincidence, that some men will shave their head to seem more tough.
Women generally like other traits associated with higher levels of testosterone, but only up to a certain point, e.g. a study (which I can no longer seem to locate) found that especially large traps are found to be less attractive. These along with the deltoids have more androgen receptors, which makes them more susceptible to growth when testosterone is high.
These muscle groups are also good indicators of steroid use. The almost spherical shoulders some bodybuilders have are not achieved by hard work alone.
On the other hand, greying can happen from stress. I don’t think the exact mechanism is known, but I have a theory, that it is caused by the body’s ability to absorb micro nutrients being diminished during stress and the hair follicles not receiving enough of especially zinc and copper (pure speculation on my part). A man with greying hair has endured and survived stressful situations and his ability to do so is attractive.
It just seems strange, that two things that are somewhat closely related are perceived so differently. Also strange how the pattern with which they present are opposite with balding happening on top of the head and greying on the sides.
Edit: I belive this was the study I was thinking of:
Men’s Bodily Attractiveness: Muscles as Fitness Indicators. Notice the womens very low size preference of the trapezius in figure 1.
toxdox
1yr ago
I've seen this claimed on twitter, but no proof. There is however a short video of a black man who pushes a woman into (not in front of) a train at a station, but I don't think it's Neely. I have a feeling that people saw this and just ran with it.
toxdox
1yr ago
marriage changes how both vote.
Do you have any sources for this? I don't doubt it is true, but I would expect the changes for husbands to be much smaller.
toxdox
1yr ago
“Learn to code” has been the go to response to people laid off due to automation or other technological advances. What is going to be the equivalent if developers more or less become redundant with the rapid advances in LLMs? Learn to craft?
toxdox
1yr ago
What I thought was unrealistic about Ex Machina when I saw it was that a guy was working on it on his own in the middle of the woods.
You are not alone with this opinion, Yoshua Bengio basically says the same. I don't really think it is fair point of criticism. To me, it is sort of like saying an action movie is unrealistic because of a car chase with guns and explosions, since cars don't blow up like that real life. True, but kind of missing the point. Nathan is the representation of the scientific/tech community. Had they included a team of researchers working with him, the tone of the film would have been very different. It is supposed to have a creeping feeling of isolation from the outside world. The windowless rooms and hallways of the bunker as well as the sweeping but desolate vistas, when they are outside, enforces that. Caleb can't tell friend from foe and is becoming increasingly paranoid to the point where he starts to question his own humanity. This wouldn't work well if there were other people around for him to interact with. It is, after all, not really a film about how the AI was created, but how it interacts with humans and whether it is malicious or not.
An interesting sci-fi movie about AI I saw recently in light of the alignment debate was Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Never heard of this, but it looks interesting. I'll have to check it out.
toxdox
1yr ago
I saw this posted over at /r/slatestarcodex, but it is so wild that it would be a shame to miss it, so I am posting it here. It is a quick read, but the rundown is this:
A 15-year-old girl is involved in a stabbing at a bar, which also involves a boyfriend and ex-boyfriend. What exactly happened is unclear. She has an abdominal stab wound and surgery is performed. She recovers well and is discharged.
Nine months later she is admitted to the hospital again presenting with abdominal pain. It is determined that she is pregnant, but upon further inspection they find that she has vaginal aplasia and can not give regular birth. A caesarean section is performed and a healthy boy is delivered.
But how did she become pregnant in the first place without a functioning vagina? She, of course, was aware of her condition and had been experimenting with other sexual activities. It turns out that shortly before being stabbed by the jealous ex boyfriend, she had practiced fellatio on her new boyfriend. The stabbing apparently allowed the spermatozoa access to the reproductive organs and lead to successful conception.
Absolutely crazy. If it were a movie the audience would have deemed it too implausible for suspension of disbelief. I also love how they casually threw this line in
The young mother, her family, and the likely father adapted themselves rapidly to the new situation and some cattle changed hands to prove that there were no hard feelings.
I didn't mean to imply that the judge isn't real. I do think he is an actual person in the gang and possibly the worst of them all. I'm just not sure everything can be ascribed to him. It is not easy to reconcile and maybe even impossible on a second reading.
toxdox
1yr ago
I've never heard of Earth, but I'm gonna give them a listen.
I was actually thinking more of what happens after the judge and the man meets in the end. You can see my reply to Southkraut.
I am also kind of lost on the epilogue, but I think you are right that it is intentionally ambiguous.
toxdox
1yr ago
Don't get me wrong, I like the album as well. I've been fond of Ben Nichols vocals ever since I heard the credits song to Take Shelter.
I pretty much agree with your take, except I don't think the man is at the end of his violent trajectory when he meets the judge in the bar.
I read the last chapter again, and what I was thinking of specifically was what went down in the outhouse after they meet and the dancing bear is killed. It is very vague, and some interpretations I've seen believes the Judge literally eats the Man and others that he just kills him. I don't really like either. I perceive the Judge as someone who the members of the gang places their guilt of their terrible deeds upon. The judge is the personification of the cruelty that every man is capable of. When the Man sees the Judge at the bar, it says
"He wore a round hat with a narrow brim and he was among every kind of man, herder and bullwhacker and drover and freighter and miner and hunter and soldier and pedlar and gambler and driver and drunkard and thief and he was among the dregs of the earth in beggary a thousand years and he was among the scapegrace scions of eastern dynasties and in all that motley assemblage he sat by them and yet alone as if he were some other sort of man entire and he seemed little changed or none in all these years."
You are right, that the Kid is born for violence and has been running from his violent tendencies personified as the judge.
After the bear is killed it says that some of the patrons are looking for the little girl who was crying over the dead bear as she is nowhere to be found. I take that as when the man enters the outhouse where the naked judge is waiting for him, he is consumed by the judge metaphorically speaking and kills the little girl in there.
The Kid is not a reliable narrator. There are multiple accounts of children ending up dead and it is strongly implied that the judge abuses and kills them, but my interpretation is that it is the kid who does it, but he absolves himself by letting the judge be responsible.
I don't know if it makes much sense and it might change when I read it again some day as most of the book is not very clear in my memory.
toxdox
1yr ago
I read it about four years ago. It is fantastic. I liked it much better than The Road. It is also the hardest book I've ever read, but I'm not a native English speaker, so that might be why.
Ben Nichols made an album inspired by it, but I feel like it completely misses the mark. I listened to the soundtrack for The Revenant a lot while reading it. It just captures the feeling of dread and despair so well.
If you have any thoughts on the ending, I would love to hear them. I've read a few interpretations online, but they are not really in line with my own understanding and I didn't find them very convincing either.
toxdox
2yr ago
I'm inclined to try and contact her and ask her to upload the actual raw data from the google form. Calling this raw is a bit of a stretch.
toxdox
2yr ago
After taking a closer look, this seems to be the case. More than 90% use a condom.
toxdox
2yr ago
Yeah, I totally missed that. I still don't get why the 1428.597195 value is in the estimated monthly column. There shouldn't be any missing data in that column, right?
toxdox
2yr ago
I hadn't really looked at the data much, but you are absolutely right. Something is not right. I found what must be the survey responses here. I had assumed that the condom question was answered on a scale such as "never", "sometimes", "often", "always", but that appears to not be the case.
Aella mentions this is a computed column but I'm having trouble figuring out how.
As far as I can see it is computed by multiplying columns
-
"On average, how many appointments do you have a month?"
-
"In general, the most common length of time you tend to get booked for is ___ hours"
-
"Hourly (ADJ)"
This matches the values in "Estimated Monthly" that aren't "1428.597195". I have no idea how hourly rate has been adjusted, though.
First I thought the weird non-integer values were some sort of corruption, but the correlation in sheet3 for BMI and estimated monthly matches the column with the "1428.597195" values, but when I do it with the newly computed estimated monthly values I get no correlation (-0.077). Very strange.
toxdox
2yr ago
I wouldn't scoff at that merely because of their occupation, escorts aren't street workers and may well be above average in intelligence
Yeah, it was sort of an attempt at humor. Looking at the data, it appears that more than half have a bachelor degree or higher. I don't know how much that that can be trusted, though, since it appears that of those who hold a PhD, half has obtained it before the age of 21. Quite impressive. Furthermore, 9 has obtained a graduate degree before age 23. I hope she has at least removed the most obvious lizardman answers.
toxdox
2yr ago
I see what you are saying. She doesn't seem like a troll to me, but I'm not very familiar with her, so I might be wrong. In any case the survey is shedding light on an understudied area, and while it might be obviously true that lower BMI makes escorts more money, it isn't obvious how much more.
The references in Outlive lists it as being from the book "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War" by Gordon. You can find it on libgen. It appears to be an updated version of a study from the seventies by John and Sonja McKinlay. Maybe it is this study?
Is Outlive worth reading? I haven't gotten around to it, but I heard Attia say he didn't want himself be part of the book, but the publisher more or less forced him to. I'm a bit fed up with pop science books, but I would probably read this one at some point, if the personal anecdotes aren't egregious and platitudes about the importance of the subject matter are kept to a minimum.
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