Total risk mitigation is just miserable. Every time you drive somewhere, you are accepting a small probability of dying horribly in a car crash.
Well, if you drive around in a a modern large Pickup truck, you're probably going to survive almost any accident short of getting pancaked by a freight train. I argue that you also shouldn't dismiss the risk of a debilitating injury that you have to live with, as well.
Me, I mitigated that risk by making sure that every part of my daily commute falls within a 5 mile radius of my house, and almost entirely in the same direction, and almost entirely off of main artery roads.
Minimizing road time is pretty much the best practice, as I see it. You can't control what other people on the road do. Also my dad had me take a defensive driving course almost as soon as I got my license, which has saved my bacon a few times.
I think many people underestimate the magnitude of certain risks they absorb, and overestimate how much it costs to mitigate most of said risk. Not counting people for whom the risk is the point. I've seen like six different videos in the past month of people blowing their hands to smithereens by holding lighted fireworks, for instance.
Speaking of that, Famed risk-seeker Felix Baumgartner just died at age 56 while doing something characteristically risky. Ken Block, despite his skills handling vehicles, died in a snowmobile accident at 55.
Felix apparently had a wife but no children. Ken had a wife and three daughters. Now sure which one seems 'worse' to me. Block at least has a genetic legacy.
Although sometimes its the mundane that gets you. Robbie Knievel died of Cancer, his dad died of Diabetes and some lung disease.
I can certainly say that I'm glad I don't have whatever genetic quirk gives makes for that level of adrenaline junkie.
faceh
3hr ago
No argument from me, really.
I am just paranoid enough to think that making yourself 'untouchable' on an economic and social level could have the unintended effect of making you a target for malicious actors who want your wealth.
I did used to believe in 'security through obscurity' (i.e. just blend in and make yourself 'beneath notice') but that can be compromised at any time given how freely information flows, you can't rely on or maintain that indefinitely.
So situating yourself in a location where it is hard for attackers to even reach you is... probably wise.
And yeah, if you take risk mitigation to an extreme, then you might decide to not even have a wife and kids since they can be a tool to blackmail you or a weakness in your security scheme.
Obviously that is not an ideal way to live.
faceh
1d ago
Yeah I was specifically thinking of WHERE you would reside to mitigate a lot of the random elements of life.
And having enough money to pick up and move if you need to is, IMHO, the final "fuck you" step.
Not to be the Debbie downer, but how much have you hedged against exogenous black-swan type risks?
Being able to say fuck you to any given job or walk away from any situation where they treat you unfairly is truly powerful.
But its always the thing you didn't expect coming in from the angle you weren't guarding that gets you.
Divorce, or credible accusation of criminal conduct, or randomly getting on the bad side of some psychotic, violent asshole are hard to ward off just with "fuck you" money.
I'm in an intermediate stage, I'm aggressively paying down (unsecured) debts, and I've got some money saved up to throw towards a big play the second I see one.
Good luck.
faceh
1d ago
Trump successfully dodges every other attempt to scandalize or imprison him (and a literal bullet) and yet people still think THIS is the one.
faceh
2d ago
It is interesting to think about what sort of evidence you personally would need to bump your personal probability of "God" existing to like 99%.
There's a bit of a problem in that '1 off' events can be 'explained' as an extremely rare confluence of factors that produced an unlikely (but not impossible!) occurrence. And events that seem impossible but are repeated with some kind of regularity can be studied and eventually 'explained.'
And a lot of things CAN be written off as hallucinations or misperceptions of an otherwise normal event.
For me, I'd count "Reviving someone who was proclaimed dead, on demand" as pretty high up the scale of things that can't be explained (yet) with current science, and thus proof of 'divine' intervention.
faceh
2d ago
Don't even have to go to a specific site for it.
I have an OKCupid account that I haven't really touched in over a year, and whenever I log in I'll have a handful of likes from Filipina ladies.
faceh
2d ago
Alas, I'd probably have to extend attorney-client privilege in order to get her to talk, so they'd have to offer me a ton of money to breach that with the goods.
faceh
3d ago
I just now realized how both the pager operation that decapitated Hezbollah leadership and the decimation of Iranian military ranks with precision strikes sort of pattern match to the idea of an angry God smiting the enemies of his chosen people.
faceh
3d ago
I tentatively agree, but in the sense that "people need to reach a breaking point before they will return to the thing that they've been avoiding all along."
The church has the advantage of having been around for centuries and centuries, so they will be the default option people return to when most else fails.
But in the meantime I think the phones will probably win the attention game.
I think that might be how it feels until she slips into a particular corner of tiktok or where-ever that starts shaping her mind in ways that you will truly dislike.
In such cases you might prefer being the main source of her validation.
Unless she has a good mental filter of her own to keep nonsense from taking root.
I didn't even mention the most befuddling and depressing stat:
When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re not sure, and 18% say they don’t want to have children.
While 57% of young men say they want children one day, a smaller share of young women (45%) say the same.
21% of childless women say the DON'T want kids, compared to 15% of childless men.
Men by and large want kids.
And the ones they'd have to do it with are by and large NOT seeking kids.
"Oh but 12% isn't that big a difference."
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of men that represents.
Women are passing on men who would date and marry them. It is not the reverse.
The ONLY way this gets solved is convincing more women to settle and have kids.
Men can't improve their way out of a shortage of women who want kids.
faceh
3d ago
See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't.
I have a generalized model for Western Women:
They have a set of three roles they want to be 'seen' fulfilling:
High-powered career woman (Girlboss).
Freespirited, cultured, 'independent' woman. That is, one who travels everywhere, has a fun and carefree life, and flits from party to party. Thirst traps abound here.
Devoted and effective mother.
I'm actually frustrated that they AREN'T acting more different than men, and eschewing the one role that men can't actually fill.
Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.
Yes, indeed, all a woman has to do to be considered 'fit' is 'not be obese.' Just don't be obviously and grotesquely fat.
AND YET, they're still the more obese gender.
I don't know what to tell you man, they have an overall lower bar, and many of them don't even try to clear it.
faceh
3d ago
Why would they continue to work on 'productive' labor when there is no actual purpose to doing so?
I mean that literally, why would they do more than the bare minimum, enough to keep their electricity and internet on?
Why would they do any job that carries any amount of risk or requires excess hours of their time?
And, of course, why wouldn't they just vote for the most radical political candidates in the meantime?
Its prevalent enough in Japan already that they have a term for it: Herbivore men..
Consider that there are two types of 'fuck you' money.
Being filthy rich so that you can afford to lose a bunch of it.
And being so dirt poor that you have nothing to lose and thus don't care about losing.
The only real suckers in this scenario are the guys stuck in the middle class doing most of the productive work and paying taxes whilst receiving very few benefits back.
This is just your insecurity talking.
Yeah sure. And if you have a job applicant whose resume shows 12 different jobs in the past 5 years, none of which lasted more than 3 months, they're 'insecure' if they pass you over for an applicant with a more stable history, right?
(hint: it shows trouble actually committing, i.e. a red flag).
Nobody is obligated to be 'secure' about promiscuity, that's laughable to even suggest. Its about the one thing we are genetically wired to BE insecure about.
Which is to say, your comment reads like satire.
but 6-12 is perfectly normal in this day and age.
And it was less normal in the past.
Granddad had a 64% chance of marrying a woman with only 1 or fewer sexual partners.
Guys now have a 27% chance, at best.
Strangely, more people got married back in granddad's day.
faceh
4d ago
Well broadly if you ask them, they can't find men that meet their standards.
But its broadly women who are passing on men, not the other way around. Which explains both the large number of single women AND the fact that apparently desirable men remain single.
And the fact that half of Gen Z men are just giving up.
And young women are significantly less likely to report being single.
For those that are:
Close to half (45 percent) of college-educated women say not being able to find someone who meets their expectations is a major factor, while only 28 percent of women without a college education feel the same. This education gap is slightly smaller among men. One-third (33 percent) of college-educated men claim not finding someone who meets their standards is a major factor for them, compared to 19 percent of noncollege-educated men.
DESPITE this, young single men report greater interest in dating than young single women:
There is a significant disparity in dating interest between single men and women. Nearly half (47 percent) of single men report being open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of single women. The gender gap in dating is even wider among young singles. More than half (52 percent) of young single men say they are open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of young single women.
This doesn't make sense if MEN are the ones passing on women.
So yeah.
That's been my point all along and I haven't seen a single piece of data that would refute it, yet.
faceh
4d ago
And that one is particularly salient insofar as an otherwise mostly stable and fit person can become more unstable and then lose their minds due to effects of smartphone usage. (open question as to whether they'd lose their mind anyway.)
At least, that's what happens with young people.
And a huge (and growing) portion of them aren't using it.
Whose fault is that.
faceh
4d ago
You're doing the same thing as the women who say "yeah I have 20 options but I'm just not feeling any of them, you know?" It's the exact same thing.
Sure. So why do you only think it's a problem when men do it?
Its the asymmetry that grates me.
Once again I assert that you are completely and utterly off base about my material conditions.
As stated, I've gone on dates with a number of women who, far from getting scooped up by better men, just end up alone and slowly have their lives spiral away.
If I were the problem, why aren't they going on to something better?
faceh
4d ago
My first hope is that someone has some countervailing argument or data that actually shows its not so bleak as it seems.
I want to understand the problem well enough to know if I'm not seeing something, or I'm seeing something that's not actually there.
Nobody has brought that forth that I've seen.
And finally, if nobody is going to implement a solution... fine. But the status quo will not hold!
What is going to happen in, say, 10 years when a majority of men aren't married, don't have kids, and are being expected to keep on working and upholding a society that doesn't give them anything in return?
I suspect a combination of:
A) Men voting for some RADICAL policies that REALLY DO start stripping women's rights away, because they have ceased to give a shit about women's opinions;
B) Men lashing out in more violent ways (both in lone wolf ways and maybe organized) because there's no rewards for good behavior;
C) Men just dropping out and refusing to do the basic work that keeps civilization afloat. If they refuse to become cops, soldiers, garbagemen, construction workers, but stay in their room jerking off or playing video games, then things start breaking down. And in this case, we will have fewer people to protect us from the violent guys.
I do not see a scenario where men continue to just keep eating the shit sandwich AND contributing to the society that is force feeding it to them.
All that to say, I think you should stop worrying so much and become a doomer, like me! I guess I still worry, anyway, so I'm doing it wrong.
The crazy thing is that I'm still pretty optimistic at my core. Despair is not in my nature. But I also REFUSE to lie about reality as I see it.
And I get a certain amount of joy from arguing someone into the ground and, if not forcing them to admit defeat, at least getting them to stop spouting stuff that I know to be false or inaccurate.
Everyone's entitled to their point of view in here, after all, but I'm happy to interrogate their view, and be interrogated in return.
faceh
4d ago
Given that the median WHITE male salary for under 40's in the U.S. is about 60k and its about 33k for the under 30's, I think I can spot where your largest filter is.
If a woman in her 20's is looking for a guy in his 20's making 70k or more, then she's already eliminated 90% of her options before zeroing in on other traits.
But uh, there's a bigger question there. Why are these guys single if they're such objectively good catches? Unless they're choosing to remain single, then this just shows that women are still rejecting them for some reason.
Alsoooo I notice that you didn't include "is heterosexual" in the criteria, so I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these desirable dudes are actually just gay. Yes, even considering that they attend church once a month. Also probably a good number of divorcees in there.
Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.
And like with other issues, women now have more premarital sex partners than they've had in the past.
Yet another way in which the average woman is less desirable as a partner than they were before.
Which cannot be fixed by telling men to improve.
Man, we're getting to quite a number of asymmetries that favor women and are mostly controlled by women's behavior, aren't we? The obesity, the heightened expectations, the low childbearing rates while men keep doing the (literal and metaphorical) heavy lifting.
Not even exaggerating, I've strongly considered making up some third-date ideas that require both parties to spend extended time away from their phones, or at least without internet access on them.
Or failing that, just carrying around a signal jammer.
Convincing a woman to give up a their smartphone will probably go as well as asking them to cut off a finger, but maybe one can wean them off the most harmful apps and restrict them to just messaging friends and sharing photos to a site that doesn't allow viewers to interact directly.
Define "Substantial."
Ahem.
No, I'm agreeing. I'm pointing out how going FULL Hermit mode is really the only way to mitigate certain risks created by having people you care about enough that you'd pay lots of money to avoid them getting hurt.
Realize that in several countries, kidnapping for ransom is a big business.
You should not live in such countries if your goal is to keep your 'fuck you' money. This is not an excuse not to have a family, just a vector by which you might get fucked in spite of having the fuck you money.
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