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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2472 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 12, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Yesterday an adult woman was so distressed by my presence walking my dog at a park that she cringed and hid her face from me as we walked past each other. I had not looked at her or acknowledged her in any way. This is in a large major city park near-but-not-in a rough neighborhood where there are much scarier things than a bald bearded white guy in a Hawaiian shirt walking a dog at 1 pm. How the fuck does she get through her day?

The week before, I was leaving a bar on a Wednesday night, a woman was walking some distance ahead of me, and turned of her own accord down the same street I was parked on. 11 pm, safe sleepy neighborhood. I pulled out my key fob to flash the lights of my car. When I reached my car, she sprinted to the other side of the street and gave me a resentful, terrified look. Apparently, I am not allowed to walk to my parked car.

I keep being advised (by women) to meet women at "festivals" and parks and how cute my dog is and how I must get so many girls thanks to him (I don't). It seems irresponsible of them to encourage harassment.

I know I shouldn't take incidents like this so seriously, it just stirs up a lot of old pain.

I keep being advised (by women) to meet women at "festivals" and parks and how cute my dog is and how I must get so many girls thanks to him (I don't).

Perhaps the takeaway here is to not take advice from women seriously, especially about dating and courtship, since dating and courtship are just things that magically happen to them like acts of God.

But yeah, no need to worry about the comfort and feelings of a random woman, for chances are she doesn’t give the slightest of fucks about yours. Maybe you can even amuse yourself by leaning into it, staring them down or walking faster toward them when you sense them reacting cuntily to your presense. Growth mindet!

Who? Whom?, as always. It’s not like they have a principled stance on Bayesian reactions to strangers. If you admit you put up a higher guard when walking past a black man than you do an East Asian man, the vast majority of women who complain about feeling unsafe around men in public will shriek that you’re racist.

Now I’m jokingly concerned that I can’t recall a time scaring a woman by my passing presence in public. Have I been too non-threatening-looking all this time, a la the now deleted “Guy who likes you, but you're not quite attracted to him starterpack: Somewhat cute, non-threatening appearance”?

The woman in your example above is vomiting her emotional baggage onto random strangers and can be dismissed like other people who do the same.

I think more empathic guys will pick up on the anxiety of women in public spaces like the above. I used to feel guilty or ashamed when women would react that way when I was younger as if I did something wrong to cause them to be afraid (by neutrally just existing in a public space). Then I did some work and now I see it completely as the women's problem. I'm not responsible for their emotional response to completely predictable behaviour (eg that if women go to a public space they will encounter other people going about their business). I don't go out of my way as much as I used to to avoid close proximity to women in public spaces (although I do occasionally cross the street at night or the like to not follow women on deserted streets, but this is out of kindness rather than guilt.)

Try to look deeper into this issue so you don't feel any emotional pain when women act like the above (easier said then done I know). Give yourself permission not to change your behaviour to suit crazy strangers.

I have a hard time viewing these people as crazy strangers, since they've apparently been citizens in good standing, and anyone else I talk about this with gives me the "You just don't understand the threats that women face every day, hypervigilance, something-something patriarchy" speech, so I don't talk about it.

I'm also confused as to the cringing thing; wouldn't that piss off a threatening man and invite further harassment? In my case, it just crushed me emotionally. I'm apparently so unpleasant as to need warding-off, but not scary enough to avoid provoking. So scary that women sprint away, not scary enough that they don't try to get me to pay for their food or bilk me for attention.

Yeah, the responses to this kind of issue are really one sided. Female attitudes around this issue (at a societal level) will not change in your lifetime, so all you can do is change how you react to it.

I want to try dating again and am unsure of how to proceed. Looking for advice.

  1. I am a gay man. Most salient information, I'm 32, white, average build and height, generally people seem to find me attractive enough

  2. I live in a medium size town not close to any cities. I am currently on a two year visa in this country, New Zealand, not particularly attached to where I am (could easily move to a metro area).

  3. I'm interested in a relationship but not in casual sex. I have very little sexual experience or relationship experience. I find this to be a problem because I end up being quite shy about sex.

Online dating is presumably the way, but do people still use Tinder (which is what I've used in the past). And the other question is whether I should try to push myself into having casual sex. I don't like it but I wonder if I need to get over my reluctance.

I'm straight, but my understanding is that the gay community in Australia/NZ revolves around the larger cities. In Australia this is Sydney and to a lesser extent Melbourne (particularly inner city). If you want access to a larger dating pool (particularly to find guys that want a relationship rather than casual sex) you might want to consider moving. I've heard from friends that Grindr is a bit of a casual dating cesspool, so you might want to try out Bumble or Hinge.

FYI gay public expressions of affection can lead to harassment in country towns in the region, but cities seem to be more tolerant. I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know.

I’m a straight male, but I have gay male friends/acquaintances. I feel like being direct and honest is a great communication style when I interact with gay male friends/acquaintances. I’m open-minded and non-judgmental, which seems to make people at ease about being authentic and honest around me.

I get the impression that gay men are much more upfront and direct about their intentions and desires when flirting/dating. This communication style avoids misunderstanding, and it signals maturity and self-confidence.

Other possibilities to consider besides online dating include:

  • Letting certain friends know you are single and looking so that they can connect you with potential matches.
  • Going places that have an overlap of hobbies you enjoy + potential men you’re interested in dating.

This discussion only partly overlaps, and @TracingWoodgrains’s real world experience is more relevant than mine, but it may still be worth reading.

I generally don’t recommend pushing yourself into casual sex you don’t want. Yes, you’ll get swamped with ‘dtf’ comments on most dating sites, and there’s a more emphasis on sex early in relations with online dating, but it is absolutely possible to focus on people looking for real relationships and get some genuine interest. You’ll have to handle some rejection, but so do the dtf-spammers.

In the US, I’d point to interest organizations (both explicitly gay, like various Pride orgs, or where there’s just a bunch of people who happen to be gay and out), but I don’t know enough about Kiwi culture to say whether norms are the same there.

Getting more comfortable about sex, both in terms of shyness and in terms of physical comfort, can be valuable. Most people will have some patience for shy folk, and some love the idea of bedding a blushing ‘virgin’, but there’s a lot of ways discomfort with or with talking about stuff can backfire, even with partners who want to take things slow. Nothing’s going to swap for the frisson with a partner, but if you’re used to never ever mentioning anything about your sexuality or interests, there are a lot of spheres where it’s ’normal enough’ that it’ll at least get past the feeling that mentioning top, switch, or bottom is going to have the earth open up under you.

Straight male here but I've never once had a good experience trying to push myself into sex I didn't want, FWIW

A friend's having a kid, and is skeptical about vaccines. I'm believe she's doing her own research, but have no idea how reliable whatever sources she's looking at are.

Do any of you happen to know of anyone who goes through which childhood vaccines are best, weighing concerns people raise against likelihood and severity of disease? My immediate searches just bring up either government sites or similar, and extreme skeptics, which is not helpful.

It might be worth letting your friend know it doesn't have to be vax or not. I found the early childhood vaccines to be a slam dunk in terms of risk vs illness, but I wasn't thrilled with the schedule. We did one vaccine at a time. It meant more doc visits, but that wasn't a problem for me and the ped. was fine with spacing them out.

I felt like it was a case of comparing extreme and unlikely scenarios. Complications of the vaccines vs chance of getting the thing if not vaccinated. For cases where there is some kind of herd immunity the individual calculus vs the government calculus are obviously going to be different.

Mostly I'd suggest worrying less until you actually encounter something. Its hard to tell a new parent that. Encourage them to have more kids after the first one. By the third one they should be less concerned.

Someone needs to hire Scott to write "20 childhood illnesses The Jews don't want your child protected from." He's pretty good at those, and there's a legitimate hippie-bashing angle you could take to avoid turning people off.

It's unfortunate that 99% of public health writers can't help sneering at their audience.

Jews will not infect us

So I've found myself at a bit of an impasse in life, and I'm hoping the wisdom of The Motte can provide some guidance because this touches several topics that are frequently brought up around here.

I've been pretty happily married a bit over a decade. My wife and I are both in our mid 30s. We have a child who was a bit of a surprise (hormonal birth control is not one hundred percent effective, even when taken as directed) who was born a couple years after we got married. We're both gainfully employed and make good money.

I really enjoy being a dad, and really would like to have another. But as they say, it takes two to tango, and my wife is very uninterested. In part, this may be because the birth of the one was somewhat traumatic (involving an unplanned cesarean and some other complications), and we've been told that any others would be higher risk. She also dealt with a lot more trauma, as the kids would say, growing up. But also it would mean a few years of pretty heavy restrictions on our usual activities, and our families aren't as spry as they were a decade ago in terms of helping out.

This year, she's decided to go off (a different form of) hormonal birth control, which I think is reasonable, and has effectively demanded that either I get a vasectomy or she gets a tubal ligation. Of the two, the vasectomy is a much more minor (and more reversible, although not hugely so) procedure, and I have one scheduled sooner than I would like.

But I'm having second thoughts. I really enjoy doing things with my son, and the siren call that maybe I could get a second chance at it all (even the diapers!) is hard to ignore. Maybe this is a bit of an early mid-life crisis. It doesn't help that my (older) siblings haven't had any of their own and that prospect doesn't seem imminently likely. But I also really love my wife and son, and think he deserves a two-parent household: divorce, especially in a otherwise-good case like this, isn't the mark of a good dad, nor does it even guarantee "success" given the state of the dating world in 2024.

So I've been feeling pretty melancholy recently, between unsuccessfully trying to change minds, or wondering how I'll feel about it afterwards. Will I be able to get over the sadness of what might have been? Open to advice or words of wisdom.

Going under the knife, is never good. There are reports of prolonged chronic pain after vasectomy, both in the literature and on reddit.

https://old.reddit.com/r/postvasectomypain/

Now of course, any surgery can have bad side-effets. Which is why going under the knife should be last resort. Use condoms.

Appreciate I’m a solitary datapoint but my vasectomy has been fine. Healed up nice and quickly and no discomfort or visible scar.

Condoms aren’t much fun, so very liberating not having to worry about them anymore.

Or maybe in this situation an IUD is indicated? It depends on why OP's wife wants to go off hormonal birth control. But it's probably less invasive than either surgical option, mostly reversible, long-term as a solution, and generally has high reported satisfaction. Or is that the different form of hormonal birth control OP was referring to? If that's the case does that also rule out non-hormonal IUDs?

Freeze your sperm.

I think it is very normal (and obviously understandable) for some women to be scared of pregnancy again after a tough time with the first child. Are you sure she can’t be convinced? My dad convinced my mom to have a third child and she still brings it up as one of the best things he’s done.

Could you ask them how he did it?

Surrogacy would solve problems related to giving birth, but would add additional complications, and it's also expensive. Still, maybe worth thinking about.

It's worth pointing out that "expensive" is quite an understatement. When my wife and I looked into it a few years back, the IVF treatments and surrogacy all would've been almost $100,000. And at least for us, it was largely not covered by insurance. Even for a couple who is reasonably well off (as we are), that's a shitload of money and out of our reach.

I agree that $100k is expensive compared to other things in daily life, but... even if you're earning $30k/year, three years worth of wages for a second kid seems in the range of reasonable? It seems like less than what you would spend on a kid over a lifetime, for some people it adds a huge amount of meaning to life, etc.

As an aside, it's not distributed over 20 years, which does make it much more difficult. I wonder if you're a stable couple, whether a bank would give you a loan for this, or whether IVF clinics have payment plans? Even if not, this seems like the kind of thing some people could ask friends and family to borrow to do.

Like, in general $100k is a lot, but it seems like it can correspond to the strength of desire and will to have a kid.

That said, I'm viewing this from an odd, detached angle as a pretty young guy, so I'm probably missing a lot of the complexity a couple faces when making that decision for real; sorry.

100k to avoid pregnancy is a steal. That is cheaper than a porsche.

If she feels that way and isn't open to being convinced otherwise, she should get sterilized, not you. You're obviously not happy about the situation or about going to get snipped, and the "if only" melancholy is only going to compound after you get snipped. If you haven't already, make sure you communicate your feelings clearly with her but don't go get a procedure done you don't really want for her sake.

Does your wife have any nearby siblings with children, or who seem likely to have children in the future? One of the factors that influenced us to have a second kid was that our first would have been the only grandchild on both sides, so having a second both provided a playmate (in time) and a reason for the first kid to NOT believe herself the center of the universe. If there are first cousins near at hand, that's less of a concern.

Yes on her side, not on my side. The cousins are a lot of fun, but I wish there were more of them.

I feel like you should be able to broach this subject with your life partner. If you can't then it wasn't good enough anyway.

Is there no possibility of convincing your wife to have a planned cesarean?

After you have had one c-section you basically have to go that route for future pregnancies (otherwise you risk rupture of the scar tissue during labor). She's also probably a geriatric pregnancy at this point, which has its own issues.

That's not true any longer, our first was caesarian and my wife was able to successfully have our second two without the need. VBAC was a very positive experience for her and she was in her mid 30s for #2 and #3.

Depends on how the c-section went previously. VBAC is definitely possible. I don’t know how it goes in the states, so he should consult a local doctor and read up on which hospitals will do it.

Despite what internet discourse would have you believe, 'mid-30s' is not a geriatric pregnancy.

The mother being over 35 at due date is literally the definition of geriatric pregnancy.

There's no magical cliff that fertility falls off, but even in the early 30s there is a measurable effect.

Technically correct, ok -- but in the sense of significant risk of complications it's really nbd at OP's wife's age.

It probably depends a lot on what her specific complications and risks are. There seem to have been some improvements in screening and premature birth care especially somewhat recently, maybe enough to offset the being slightly older side of things (depending on what the problem was).

For various reasons, that was the only option that was on the table to start with.

Does anyone have tips for dealing with feelings of anxiety/hopelessness?

I feel like my mental health is being negatively impacted by things outside of my control and that these things are going to get worse in the near the future.

  • Social media is doing a lot of damage to people’s mental health, attention spans, and ability to connect with people outside their bubbles. Over time social media continues to become more addicting and gets better at identifying people’s emotional buttons and how to push them. This results in anxiety, anger, conspiratorial thinking/paranoia, and other mental health problems. The people in power have no incentive to address any of these problems because they get money/power from the status quo.
  • Economic policies have exacerbated wealth inequality. If you don’t already have substantial wealth then it seems nearly impossible to build much wealth through selling your labor. Asset ownership seems to be a much more viable path toward wealth generation but young people that didn’t inherit wealth are at a huge disadvantage in this system.
  • AI is going to make it harder for people without wealth to build wealth because it devalues their labor.
  • The shift to online dating has made it harder for many heterosexual people to find meaningful long-term relationships because it selects for superficial traits. There are fewer places where it is acceptable to flirt in-person which makes it harder for men to attract women by demonstrating character/virtue over time. Additionally, the high ratio of men to women on dating apps makes many men feel invisible and many women feel overwhelmed.
  • Politicians are not addressing these problems in any meaningful way and are actively making things worse by distracting us with bullshit.

I attempt not to read too many news and other such things. It's probably not healthy to learn about so many problems which are outside of your control. I believe they might also distract you from your own personal life, and from your immediate surroundings, over which you do have some influence.

People who aren't chronically online seems to have it better, and you don't seem to be feeling unwell because you feel these problems personally, but because you hear that they exist and may affect you in the future.

I'd say focus on yourself, your family and friends, and spend your time on what matters instead of hedonic distractions. So that you do not spend effort on things which tire you out while causing zero positive changes in your personal life (I believe this might train your brain to think that effort is futile)

Not to tell you how to feel, but I really don't believe that the source of your anxiety or bad-feel is world events or trends. They may be what your brain is coming up with to explain your mood, but that's because it's easier to blame a Thing rather than a Lack. If you had needy kids, a needy wife, a great career, millions of fans, an amazing social life it would sound totally insane to be worrying about Peak Oil or Arian heresy or whatever is going to damn us.

Agreed. Ponder (Stibbons? great reference) what are you doing to reduce your own interactions with social media and cell phone addictions? Where are you going to get to know new people in person, to date or connect meaningfully with?

It sounds like you also have some anxiety about money. What things about wealth are really bothering you?

I used to play Magic: the Gathering and there is a card called Ponder, so that was part of the inspiration for my name.

With social media and cell phones I remind myself that most information is just a variant of something I already know. I’m trying to restrict my media diet to only things that are new/novel information + improve my life in some way. I’m getting better at not scrolling through things because it is very rare to find anything worth my time anymore. My biggest weakness is wanting to stay up to date on economic conditions (like the housing market, because that does impact my plans to buy a home).

For meeting people to date I do well at getting attention at the bar, which I only go to a few times a month. I have a rule to always exchange contact info and wait at least a day so we are both sober. Usually, getting the attention at the bar is enough satisfaction for me and then I don’t feel like putting effort into arranging a date. I have a very low sex drive. I’m fine being single and dating feels like too much effort unless I meet a really low-maintenance woman.

The other places I connect with people are men’s circle and book club, but I don’t meet potential dates there.

With money I think it is a feeling of injustice mixed with anxiety. The economic system feels unfair/random. It gives too much advantage to those with inherited wealth, social manipulators, and unethical people. Working hard provides no guarantees of wealth and often people will take advantage of your work ethic to get you to work for less money than you are worth. The economic system encourages all parties to view each other as disposable/replaceable objects to be discarded when something better comes along.

I also believe that I have undiagnosed autism and it caused setbacks in my career, which led to missing out on a lot of passive wealth gains in the last 4-5 years.

I also think part of why the issues in my OP bother me so much is because I have nostalgia for the past (around the 90s). I felt like the world made more sense. I had a lot of untapped potential and hope for the future. These issues are kind of variances between that time and today.

I don't know how helpful what I'm about to write will be, but I do write it in an attempt to be helpful and I'm not trying to be an ass.

Stop thinking about it. I know, that is really shitty advice, but let me expand on it.

When I was growing up in the 80s the prospect that we would all be annihilated by a nuclear strike was very real. It was spoken of by newscasters, it was the main plot line of many t TV shows and films , it was the subtext in many others.

And do you know how my generation dealt with that? We just didn't think about it. At all. We did not hold that fear in out minds, regardless of perhaps how much the popular media wanted us to do so. "In Europe and America there's a growing feeling of hysteeeria." sang Sting, But all we talked about was the way he pronounced hysteria.

There was a large white structure in the middle of nowhere out in the bumfuck area of the county north of mine, like way out in the Styx. I found it because I had a convertible and used to go on inordinately long drives. My friend and I convinced ourselves this was a missile silo, making us both inhabitants of a town at the center of liftoff and probably a target of a blast. And then we got a pizza and ate it in an unused parking lot.

I don't think we truly believed it was a silo. Or maybe we did. I know we didn't care that much. It didn't matter. If it was, it was, and if the bombs fell, they would fall. But it's always been like that. At least we weren't living through the 30s and 40s. I mean it could have been far, far worse.

What I'm saying is that I am not saying the issues you reasonably bring up are not reasonable. (Edit : Wha? I can't believe I wrote that sentence.) I won't try to argue you out of believing them. I will suggest that diverting yourself into the people and world around you (not in this Mottespace, but around you in what I still call the real world) may be helpful.

As usual my train has arrived and I have to book it to get to my next one. Sorry. If this is helpful, great. If not, I hope you work through this ennui, this, well, pondering.

Couple of minor responses:

social media has a lot of upsides and there could always be a counter cultural push back against the all encompassing sides of it.

Inequality growing is a contested issue and I don't know how strongly to feel about it. I live in a low CoL city in Canada and I have lots of friends with highschool or less who own homes and have families. I think the extremes make it to our attentions. That said, housing prices are controversially a big problem right now but it can be solved, and there's lots of mainstream attention pushing that direction.

AI may not devalue certain kinds of labour in the short/medium term. And there's always a chance of it ushering in so much productivity that material needs are much more abundant and cheap. It's cheaper and easier than ever to purchase low-risk index funds and at least get a piece of the productivity pie.

Online dating sucks but again, you only really hear the horror stories. I used it for the first time after a divorce and met a long term partner within 2 weeks. I did not optimize for the system, I was 100% honest and straightforward in my profile and got a minor number of matches but they seemed to be higher quality for me.

Politicians have always done this. It's easier to find out what's going on and discuss it meaningfully than it used to be. I'm cynical about this one though so I say focus on local politics and things you can actually affect.

I recommend a couple of things.

First, make sure that you moderate both social media and news sources. Don’t marinate in those things as they tend to skew toward the negative or making you feel less than other people. Both things in large doses are bad for you. I think following the news is fine, just limit it to an hour or less a day, and from a fairly neutral perspective (I use AP most of the time). Do the same with social media, limit your exposure to an hour or less a day.

Second, make sure you have a creative hobby that you enjoy. I’m a duffer of a fiction writer. But I find that doing that gets me away from the consumption cycle of social media and news and gaming. It’s quite cathartic in a lot of ways to tell a story the way you wish things were rather than how they really are.

Third, take up a sport or activity that involves moving your body. Do yoga, play soccer or baseball or go hiking. I find active hobbies are great for clearing your mind of negativity, plus you get a lot of health benefits including better sleep.

Fourth, get real life friends and prioritize spending real life time with them.

Do you read a lot of news or social media? Try cutting all that out for a while.

The Reddit algorithms get me to waste more time than I would like. Intuitively, I know they are feeding me variants of the same things and that it is all a waste of time. I need to do better at not opening the app. I don’t use Snap/Instagram/TikTok at all.

I feel a little bit of conflict about cutting all news and social media out though because I like to stay connected and informed. I want to be able to keep up with IRL conversations (which often involve online trends and news) and know about trends that can impact the stock market.

I suggested it because I feel like your anxieties come from reading the news and feeling like you have a duty to be informed and concerned about what you read. Your worries aren't about personal problems. If you weren't reading external sources, would you notice these issues in your day to day life?

Worrying about these things is net negative. It makes you feel bad and doesn't actually change anything. You are not obliged to stress about the state of the world.

If you weren't reading external sources, would you notice these issues in your day to day life?

Mostly yes because I initially noticed something IRL that caused me to dig for explanatory data. The triggers are things like:

  • Wanting to buy a house, so I dig to understand the market conditions.
  • Not having success on dating apps, so I dig to understand why and if this is a common problem for other men.
  • People around me talking about things they encountered on the internet and me digging to understand why I was so out of the loop.

However, once I have the information that I need I don’t stop digging. At that point it becomes unhealthy and causes anxiety. I agree that I need to reduce the time I spend reading news/social media, and I need to be more intentional about filtering the information to get just the small amount I need.

Try uninstalling the app to make it less palatable. Forcing yourself to use the normal interface on your phone will definitely slow and annoy you.

If you don’t already have substantial wealth then it seems nearly impossible to build much wealth through selling your labor.

What leads you to believe this and when do you perceive it as starting? I finished a postdoc a decade ago and had pretty close to zero net worth at the time, but I'm doing great now. I've seen a decent number of friends go from near zero or negative net worth at the time to quite wealthy since. All of us that have done well do have some sort of specialized skill but saying that making money is greatly helped by having a specialized skill is very different from claiming that labor can't build wealth.

In 2019 the us median numbers were around:

  • Salary for a new graduate: 51k
  • Rent payment: 1,100
  • House price: 258k

In 2023 the us median numbers were around:

  • Salary for a new graduate: 56k
  • Rent payment: 1,400
  • House price: 420k

Since 1/1/20 the S&P 500 has increased by at least 67%. If someone owned a house before March 2022 they were able to lock in a 30-year mortgage rate around 3% (vs. around 7% today). People with wealth had huge gains in the last 4 years and those gains will continue to generate more passive wealth in the future.

A new grad isn’t going to be able to save/invest much. Meanwhile, the people with extraordinary returns in the last 4 years are generating tons of passive wealth because they locked in a low mortgage expense and have more money to invest/save. They are also earning passive income faster now because they have a larger asset base.

When inflation is normal for long periods of time and mortgage rates are similar between new/existing homeowners this wealth disparity effect is much less of a problem.

For a new grad starting around $0 (or in debt) to build substantial wealth they need to be on a path to earn much more than the median salary and/or make sacrifices to greatly lower expenses (like living with their parents for a few years after college).

The economic situation seems to be a lot more grim for GenZ. I don't know if its reflecting in the youth unemployment numbers in the US, but the future points more towards a East Asian/ European like labor market. Not the end of the world, but certainly not what it used to be.

Definitely a global issue, finding employment as a college grad seems to be an increasingly omnipresent issue.

Anecdotal but I can't ignore the noise, something is definitely off even if the numbers haven't caught up yet.

Maybe that's right, maybe it's not, but if it's a signal that's sufficiently weak that it's hard to detect in the data, the advice for any given individual should be to get their shit together rather than moping about systemic decline that makes it impossible for them to profit from labor. Get a degree in petroleum engineering or accounting or chemistry or literally anything else that has a plausible practical use and get to work. Even if there is a broader problem, being a Debbie Downer and giving up before even getting started is a poor approach to life. Being a Debbie Downer in the context of the American economy circa the present isn't just a poor approach, it's comically ridiculous if one takes even a slightly zoomed out look at history.

Yeah, even if it were indisputably true that the US economy is in decline, it's declining from the highest heights in human history. Even if Gen Z ends up being a bit worse off than Millennials, they're still better off than the vast majority of people who have ever lived.

Gen Z is more likely to own a home than millennials at their age.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/gen-z-ahead-of-millennials-and-their-parents-in-owning-their-own-homes/

Is this actually true, though? Millennials felt the same way 15 years ago, that's what all the Occupy and "I am the 99%" stuff was about. People understandably feel poor when they're starting their careers. They often have a bunch of debt and relatively little income. But that situation generally corrects itself over the course of a person's working life. Life is a struggle but this stuff is not insurmountable.

Things are, simply, not that bad in the US. Unemployment is close to the lowest it's ever been. Real (i.e. inflation adjusted) wages are close to the highest they've ever been. Cost disease has hit certain sectors like housing and healthcare, but there are still plenty of places where housing is affordable, and young people generally don't need a ton of healthcare. I'm not claiming everything is perfect or couldn't be improved, but I can't see how economic doomerism is warranted under the circumstances.

There appears to be a consensus between Millennials and late X-ers that, say, for the average fresh college graduate looking for a job, or for a college student looking for a summer job, the job market was better in 2001 than in 2011, and was better in 2011 than it is now. Also, the overall sentiment of doomerism, anomie and stagnation was much less palpable in society even back in 2011.

AI is going to make it harder for people without wealth to build wealth because it devalues their labor.

What do Mottizens think of the CIRS research aka the hypothesis that fungus and mold in poorly built buildings causes a lot of chronic pain, depression, and other issues?

https://www.vc4hw.com/chronic-inflammatory-response-syndrome-cirs.html

I listened to podcast of Jordan Peterson interviewing some doctors about it a few months back (https://youtube.com/watch?v=F2RnK23AWUE)

It seemed pretty far fetched, and also just not very useful (like most of Peterson's health stuff -- I like him in general, but his whole family has super weird health issues and opinions). The conclusion seemed to be something like that people with chronic health issues should do some kind of complicated alternative healthcare regime, and also move into a completely new house or something.

Yeah this is where I heard it to. And yeah not very actionable sadly.

If the question is simply whether these factors exist and are harmful in certain contexts, then I don't think anyone can deny that. However, I think anyone claiming that they are responsible for an increase in depression or chronic health conditions over time is incorrect, as homes have gotten substantially cleaner and better ventilated over the past century in most countries and the general shittiness everyone seems to feel these days has alternative psychological and sociological explanations that others have outlined downthread.

Shit Life Syndrome is real. People live poverty stricken, directionless, crime-ridden lives fueled by crap food, alcohol and drugs, with little positive social interaction. This causes psychic pain, which turn becomes mental health problems and psychosomatic pain. People with shit lives are probably very commonly found living in poorly built buildings infested with mold and fungus.

I'm half convinced that the vast majority of pain that doesn't have an apparent cause is psychosomatic.

I was about to comment the same thing. With that, having lived in a really shitty apartment (I underestimated how bad it would be; the difference was between "crappy, but manageable" and "total shithole".), it was profoundly depressing in a way that's hard to explain.

The building was old, and in a swampy area, so the inside air was permanently humid irrespective of AC use. There was plenty of mold, but I don't think that was the particular issue. My problem was that it was impossible to clean/keep clean for any length of time due to old floors, counters, etc. Pest control was nonexistent/ineffective aggravated by an especially nasty next door neighbor, so the place was overrun by roaches, mice, and ants. The neighbors were loud, and sound insulation nonexistent. My upstairs neighbors would do laundry in the bathtub and spill water all over the place, leading to water leaks in my unit and eventually the ceiling collapsing in the bathroom. Rent was cheap, but I spent tons of money in bars just trying to stay away from home, and it was poorly insulated so power bills during winter were insane while I still froze. It felt like living in a slum. I didn't develop chronic pain but became badly depressed.

I wound up moving elsewhere and paying the remainder of the lease just to spare myself the misery of living there.

Yeah I’m actually more on the psychosomatic pain train myself. It’s a sort of terrifying prospect when you consider just how wrong our understanding of pain is.

I only really see this possibly as a trigger for developing self sustaining chronic conditions given that people don't seem to get better by moving.

I doubt this has much general explanatory power or delivers much if any insight into possible treatments.

It seems to me that numerous things could plausibly be the cause of the same, or sufficiently similar, conditions through different pathways. Perhaps some get autoimmune issues/nervous system dysregulation through exposure to fairly normal levels of environmental contaminants while others get it through ordinary virus infections, who knows and who really cares? It doesn't seem like very useful information, since the underlying cause no longer seems to matter or was that bad in the first case.

Perhaps some tiny group has really awful mold problems and that really is the entire cause and solution. If you have a mold problem you should fix that regardless but i wouldn't hold out hope for some major improvement in your chronic issues.

For pretty much any chronic disease that kind of looks like just being a lie-about, I would be more inclined to believe it if someone could show me an afflicted individual that doesn't seem like they were deeply neurotic, quite fat, or just generally frail prior to getting the putative disease.

Not strictly responsive to this thread, but I know a former hotshot superintendent and iirc sub-2:50 marathoner, generally regarded as an exceptionally hard son of a bitch within the relevant communities, who was pretty much an invalid for a couple years and out of the game for a decade or so due to chronic Lyme. Certainly moved the needle for my own risk assessment there.

Well I'd be happy to talk to you about it, given that I've suffered from this sort of thing for a while and don't see myself as having any of those traits. Of course I may be wrong.

That being said, you really think over 25% of the U.S. population has those characteristics? And even if they did, why would this still not be a problem?

Much more than 25% of the US population is obese, yes.

I mostly just don't look for alternate explanations for people's poor health when I can look at them and easily observe that their poor health is a product of eating too much and moving around too little. I've never met someone that was a cross-country runner or hobby cyclist or Crossfit enthusiast or powerlifter or mixed-martial artist that informs me that they got laid up after they moved into the wrong building. I'm sure there are genuine sufferers of idiosyncratic illnesses of autoimmunity, post-viral syndromes, and fungal infections, but as sweeping explanations for the poor health of Americans, I think these add little to the story. I wouldn't dismiss an individual, stuff happens, but I am pretty skeptical of these oddball diseases having more explanatory power.

Personally I think it's bunk. Even in this link there is a link to a consultant who will presumably provide some monetized advice / relief to the afflicted. Show me the multiple studies supporting this hypothesis and I'll consider it.

Whenever these kind of vague "syndromes" involving many complex systems are quantified as X thing caused by Y, my bullshit meter goes off.

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