faceh
36m ago
If they're considered mature enough to sign contracts, they should be considered mature to have to follow through on them.
And therein lies the problem. If they're not mature enough to follow through on them (as the facts in evidence show), why are we assuming they were mature enough to understand them at the time they signed them?
Females in particular might have a hard time grasping compound interest.
And yes, bankruptcy is an answer in many cases... but the practical point there is that banks won't lend to people who are likely to declare bankruptcy.
So that becomes the de-facto maturity test, whether a bank considers you credit-worthy.
faceh
1hr ago
So who should be held liable when an emotionally immature 18-19 year old signs a contract and then has a breakdown when they're unable to complete their end of it.
Haha but you see the issue there.
Bill Belichick isn't married.
Leo DiCaprio doesn't marry his girlfriends.
Nor does Toby Maguire.
Likewise, consider the rise of Sugar Dating as an informal institution.
This is my point. It actually relieves the pressure to marry these women since they lose any real leverage they might have had.
They're getting to have the cake that is off-limits to normal guys, and eat it too by having no legal or social commitment obligations imposed.
Yes, which is why I somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggest the ant-glove test as an option for figuring out if somebody has control of their emotional state.
A decent test of emotional maturity is putting someone in an objectively painful/uncomfortable situation, and require them to 'suck it up' and not break down in tears or flee. Sound familiar? Its all just testing emotional regulation, the ability to react proportionally/not overreact, and to endure discomfort to achieve later rewards.
We also have the marshmallow test, which could be adapted to something that would tempt adults too.
"I'm giving you a $100 bill to put in your wallet. If you can bring me back that exact same $100 bill in one week, you will get a second one." I expect low-impulse-control individuals will spend that sucker inside a day or two.
faceh
3hr ago
Same difference, ultimately.
The singular best green flag I can see in any woman, if she passes the other basic filters, is NOT being utterly addicted to screentime. And specifically, not having instagram, tiktok, dating apps, or certain other apps that do little but feed mental distress. If they have a loop of checking their phone ever 30 seconds, or being stuck on it for long periods, or are addicted to posting every detail of their lives/choreographing things for maximum appeal, I tend to write off any further interest in them as a partner.
I've had the displeasure of watching behavior shifts in real time of young, 18-24 year old women who were generally pleasant to be around, and through a combination of the corrupting influence of algorithmic feeds AND the massive influx of digital attention any attractive woman gets if she posts herself online, basically becomes entitled, narcissistic, and usually fairly dismissive of her IRL relationships in favor of cultivating the online following.
I, personally, have spoken to a depressed, anxious young woman who knows she is mentally unwell, and knows to some degree that the apps are driving her down a bad path, and I had literally said "hand me your phone and I'll delete every one of those apps off of it for you" and she balked and did that Gen Z stare thing, said 'no thanks' and then walked away to do something else.
faceh
3hr ago
Yeah.
I think there's an oversupply of lonely youngish people with decent-paying jobs who enjoy living vicariously through a streamer they identify with/find sexually attractive. Parasocial behavior is a bit under-studied I think.
faceh
3hr ago
I suspect that the current age-gap discourse actually serves to benefit powerful/wealthy older men, as they become the only ones with enough clout to ignore the social shaming... and the only ones with enough appeal to convince a woman to ignore the social shaming. Acquiring a hot young girlfriend thus becomes even more of a flex and proof of their own status.
And of course it encourages them to keep it on the downlow, and this also suits the guy because she won't be pushing him as hard to make them 'official' or 'public' and gives her less leverage to push for a marriage.
And finally, by making it taboo, it actually becomes more appealing for a certain kind of woman to seek it out.
Bill Belichick is simply not bound by by same standards as your average guy. And because he isn't bound by them and can't be influenced by shaming, the shamesters won't target him, they'll go after the class of males they think they CAN influence, who were less likely to be able to attract a young lady anyway.
So as with many other things, the main effect of such social rules is to restrict behaviors of the middle group of men who are cowed by status games and shame.
And of course the bottom class of dude who is so outside the normal status hierarchy that it doesn't effect him will go after younger ladies regardless.
The trouble is that it's just so hard to find a woman in the West who is (1) not obese; (2) not a single mom; and (3) not into woke progressive nonsense. Sadly I am not 6'2" with a chiseled jawline, so I have to compromise.
This really is the issue.
In many cases there's not a huge, noticeable 'maturity' difference between a 21 year old woman and a 28 year old woman. One will just have a lot more 'baggage' than the other.
There's definitely an experience difference... but rarely does a woman take those experiences and learn good lessons and improve from them, i.e. mature. Oftentimes it just spirals as she justifies further bad decisions as a mere incremental step from what she previously did. So if the choice is between a 21-22 year old or a 28-29 year old, you're signing up to deal with an emotionally unstable partner with a naive idea about how the world works either way.
But the latter is also going to be bitter and have higher expectations and be more judgmental, and the former is more likely to be pleasant, inquisitive, and eager to experience new things. The light hasn't been snuffed out yet.
I had the very dark thought recently, that it would be very helpful if we could develop amnestic drugs of some kind that a late 20's woman could take that would 'reset' her memories and mental states back to its youthful state. Literally have her forget all the previous mates, all the hookups, all the horrible breakups and emotional trauma and debauched decisions she's made over the past decade.
If she's otherwise physically attractive and now has the attitude of a 20-year-old, she's suddenly much more appealing as a mate. Unless she has a kid, can't easily remedy that issue.
faceh
4hr ago
But the socialization about what is expected of those age groups changes much faster than law.
Especially in the age of social media.
One factor that I'm seeing with the rise of streamer culture, a lot of the streamers (i.e. the role models many of these kids are glued to) are getting into their 30's and are still 'stuck' in a loop of playing video games all day, going out and partying and drinking, using light drugs (or hard ones), and obsessing about social drama amongst their cliques.
And they make good money doing this so there's no clear reason they should stop.
A handful of them make good eventually, but those who get families and responsibilities... tend to drop out of streaming.
So kids are getting socialized by role models that don't even know them, in social groups that only exist online, and whose norms are basically that of a particularly low-class high school, and that are incentivized towards anti-social activities, more often than not.
I don't blame the streaming sites for this per se, but I don't think our core social structures were prepared for the rise of this alternative culture that scales internationally.
If we should have universal age of adulthood, that tracts onto everything (alcohol, crime, sex) where would it be? Currently, all of these have different ages (21 is for alcohol if you are in the US). What do you guys think?
My position is that we have the technology to directly test for capacity to engage in the behaviors in question. So the legal proscription on, e.g. alcohol consumption, sexual relations, gambling, taking out loans, etc. the 'incapacity' we impose on minors can be lifted on a case-by-case basis rather than an arbitrary birthday fiat.
There's additional mechanisms I'd attach to this, but it makes good sense to me. Some sixteen year olds are probably mature enough to handle parenthood. Many twenty-four year olds are probably not quite mature enough to grasp why buying lotto tickets it not a sound financial decision. And capacity for one of those doesn't inherently imply capacity at the other. Rain Man probably understands odds/statistics enough to let him gamble, but maybe doesn't get how sex works.
The age at which they are competent to do these things is unlikely to be the exact same, based on their brain development, life experiences, and emotional maturity.
And I like the idea that if there is an 'objective' testing process in place to gain 'adulthood' privileges... then this gives kids incentive to study and prepare for these tests... meaning they actually work at grasping the topics and mentally engaging with them, rather than just expecting to gain them with passage of time.
This is not dissimilar from requiring teens to pass a driver's test before being permitted on the roads (inadequate as that may ultimately be).
I think this is an interesting view into the CEO of one of the most important companies.
Is it one of the most important companies? I honestly don't know, it certainly gets enough press for it recently.
No, seriously, I don't know what exactly they do, certainly not how I mostly know what SpaceX, Google, Meta, Apple, and the rest do. Probably in large part because unlike most of those previous companies, they don't have any real consumer-facing presence, no products that 'regular' people integrate into their lives. Even looking at their history its like they took a bit of tech used in Paypal for fraud detection and adapted it to analyze, effectively, any given database you might plug in? And it kinda stuck around in a stealthy startup phase for like 10 years, then started getting various DoD/Government contracts, and then finally IPO'd in 2020, so seems like it took a long time to find footing, and during that time the founders kept tight control of it and kept adding funding to it even while it wasn't clear what the company would do.
I am not in fact critiquing them on this basis, I'm just saying it is opaque to me why this company is important in the same way that Boeing, Eli Lilly, or even Amazon is important. If they disappeared tomorrow, how would i most obviously notice their absence?
And if detection of fraud is a core feature, I'm definitely confused as to why all the various fraud schemes in Minnesota, California, New York, and elsewhere just went undetected for so long, or at least unremarked and prosecuted.
Again, not a critique of the company, maybe a critique of how gov't actors have been using it, but certainly me wondering the value being provided here.
And since as far as I can tell they do make some sort of platform that allows use of AI analysis, but they do NOT build their own AI models... what would make them more important than one of the frontier AI labs, or the Chip manufacturers, or any given major player in the energy sector?
As for the the manifesto, I guess I'd ask for it to put out something more 'actionable' to really offer a opinion on it. I think I see what it is gesturing at, but the actual, positive vision for what the world should look like hasn't been laid out here.
This seems to be the most concrete point:
- National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
It also does that annoying thing by pointing out that U.S. "adversaries" will keep trying to undermine U.S. interests. Great. But what does the actual threat model look like? There's an easy list of countries that are 'adversaries,' and none of them are able to launch a land invasion. None of them can (currently) threaten U.S. energy independence, or disrupt citizens' lives much without exposing themselves to much worse reprisal.
Realistically the U.S. is going to bring itself down through self-inflicted wounds before any of its adversaries can mount an effective attack that actually cripples the country. And this seems to be part of the thrust of the manifesto but what does it say we do? Are we rejiggering the constitution to function in this new era, or just ignoring it where convenient, and where, precisely, do they want the ultimate balance of power to end up, with regard to sovereignty over the territories that compose the U.S.?
faceh
1d ago
I've debated this myself at length and I don't think there's a good publicly agreeable definition of the term.
But I'd use a working definition of "a situation which creates or encounters an edge-case in constitutional interpretation that demands either you ignore some clear constitutional rule, or adhere to the rule in a way that causes some serious harm to the country or its institutions."
I'd argue that the 'crisis' implicated in such a case would be that we end up with enough individual states adopting and insisting upon differing interpretations that it reduces the willingness to accept the entire instrument.
The most central example I could imagine is congress issuing a rule that, for instance, forcibly conscripted residents of only certain states for military service, and explicitly exempted others, maybe arguing that certain states were more critical for manufacturing or technical knowledge whilst others had higher populations and thus could bear the losses easier. And a divided Supreme Court upholds this in a 5-4 decision, and the President carries it out with aplomb.
This would be pretty 'crisis-like' because the Constitution does grant the authority to "raise armies" but doesn't explicitly lay out the limits on that power... and if given coalition of states could use their legislative heft to pass such a law over the objection of the 'victim' states, that would probably trigger some rebellious murmers and resistance. But if there was an active war that demanded conscription, rebellious states are also posing a national security risk.
Yeah, the overlap of military powers and state sovereignty are probably the areas most ripe for crisis territory.
Thus, I would absolutely argue that the Civil War was the original Constitutional Crisis, with the fundamental conflict being the fact that slavery was acknowledged... but not condoned in the original instrument, but also it would be impossible to remove it without the cooperation of a large contingency of states that were pro-slavery. And that there was no explicit right of secession outlined in there.
faceh
4d ago
I spin them up every so often just to make sure the data is still easily recoverable.
But most of these are old HDDs with pitiful capacities. I built my first computer in the early 2000's.
My current to-do is getting things transferred to my own on-site server, AND an off-site backup.
faceh
4d ago
Jews are permitted far more leeway to organize specifically around advancing their own interests than males are, incidentally.
faceh
4d ago
Its funny, I think it was mostly just a hoarding instinct at the time, but now that we see that its trivial to train up AIs on people's writings and other outputs, I am saving as much of my own writing as I can specifically so my presence in the post-singularity can have the highest fidelity possible.
I've still got almost ALL of the digital footprint I created from my youth. Old school assignments, chat logs, saved game files, a little softcore porn, scans of old physical photographs, its all on physical hard drives I still have in my possession.
The question now is whether I should add those to an internet facing storage unit. so that the superintelligence can more easily vacuum them up.
faceh
4d ago
Yes, but I'm suggesting they would do exactly that, SPECIFICALLY with the intent of de-sentienting them, because "consciousness is suboptimal."
faceh
4d ago
Well, a certain class of men who are charming and sociopathic enough to exploit the opening it presented.
This seems like an overly complicated rationalization.
Whatever the basis for it, if men are claiming a positive view of women by and large, this runs against any strict definition of 'misogyny.' As I alluded to, viewing women as more likeable and having more positive emotions towards them is common enough that it has a specific term in psychology that doesn't mince words: the "women are wonderful" effect.
And on top of that, there are precisely ZERO ways in which Western society has become more patriarchal over the last 50 years. Many ways it has advanced women's interests.
So how exactly have women correctly assessed mens' true feelings and intent, when the actual consistent trend over decades is men standing by and even actively supporting the social ascension of females across the board. This needs an even more elaborate explanation for why men, in spite of hating women, have used their social authority to give them every thing they've requested and have not backtracked on it once.
Their belief is arising from somewhere, and you're basically saying that they're Making it up in their heads based on attempted mindreading.
Meanwhile we can see many womens' negative feelings towards men demonstrated constantly in their easily observed behavior.
Its literally backwards logic:
"Men, despite their actual statements and their observed behavior, are secretly all hateful towards women and actually dislike them very much. No I have no direct evidence of this but we can reach this conclusion by reasoning from certain premises... which I also have no evidence for."
And of course, if men really were these dangerous, secretly malevolent actors who were obscuring their true beliefs, how in the hell do you feel comfortable constantly antagonizing this group.
faceh
4d ago
God knows what the Laotian guy's doing, though.
This is my point. There's a bottom somewhere, unless everyone is going around stealing everyone else's women.
This is not me saying I owe the Malaysian, Chinese, Laotian, or Filipino men anything. "Stealing" women from competing tribes is about the most natural process we can imagine.
But as usual, I'm an advocate for facing and solving the actual problem head-on.
faceh
4d ago
I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but I'm a pampered tech worker who works in a climate controlled office.
My hatred runs a bit deeper because I'm aware of what we could be achieving if we weren't wasting billions, arguably trillions per year on programs that aren't just wasteful, but often actively detrimental.
The lackadaisical attitude to the waste allows it to continue.
But the point rings true. Nobody in America is really expected to shoulder serious burdens on behalf of the whole.
Although it gets to a question that came up recently. which subset of people are actually doing the critical work that allows the rest of us to coast, relatively speaking?
faceh
4d ago
He's done a lot of useful research and distills insights down to pithy sayings that even normies can comprehend.
Him being black is surely a factor, but his observational abilities are extremely keen by any reasonable measure.
faceh
4d ago
I'm reactionary enough to suggest that an average male shouldn't have to leave the country of his birth to have a prospect of finding a wife. That's a major social failure.
And now you've just exported the externality. What of the poor males in the countries where the women are being plucked from? Now they've got to compete with wealthy foreigners and THEY can't passport bro it up.
And it all leaves the fundamental, core problem. Men have no stake in the continued maintenance of their future if they don't expect to be able to form a family. Why would they throw in their lot with their home country at that point? What's their buy-in?
And of course, all the single cat ladies will continue to cast votes in their country too.
However, if we were to implement an immigration program specifically to allow scads of young, nubile, single women to attain citizenship if they marry and pop out some kids, I think the incentives overall would get aligned REAL QUICK.
Of course, it appears that a huge excess portion of the ACTUAL immigrants we get are young males.
faceh
4d ago
Yeah, which is indicating that there needs to be some policing of that subset of men too.
But the logic of the sexual revolution is that women get to choose whomever they want, so ipso facto restricting the access of those top tier men to the wider female population is verboten as it directly restricts female's 'choice'.
Like imagine a rule that, say, banned professional athletes from hooking up with random girls they see on Instagram in their hotel room while they're in town for a game. I'd go ahead and guess that the women would howl harder about this restriction than the athletes would.
It gives me no happiness to report it, but my generalized experience with women is that by age 26, their personalities aren't ever improving from what they've displayed up until then.
This is not to say a single woman automatically becomes unmarriageable after that point! If their personality is good, its probably going to stay that way too.
But that age appears to be when the traumas and bad decisions will pile high enough that they can't be suppressed so long.
The Hail Mary of having her pop out a kid and see if that unlocks the nurturing part of her brain has many risks.
Its such a cruel/weird trick of nature that the age of 18-25 is when men should be doing their best to gain life experience and toughen themselves up... whereas women should be doing their best to avoid getting debauched and should be protecting their general positive life outlook as long as possible.
And under current social paradigms, we basically encourage the opposite arrangement.
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