site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3153 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 11, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Anybody more plugged into Truth Social have any insight into what will happen to it if Trump is back on Xitter? DJT stock has declined somewhat, but not all that far really, since getting pumped up. As of May, ADU numbers were down over the prior months. The common sense read from a lot of people is that the only thing keeping Truth Social remotely relevant is that Trump posts there, but if he starts posting on X, as he did today, then what competitive advantage does Truth Social have? Does it have an independent userbase at all if Trump gives his blessing back to Xitter?

How much should I care about being-opaque-to-casual-inspection level "opsec", given that I don't really care about actually being unidentifiable?

So I have this username on TheMotte. I have another that I use elsewhere. The other one is extremely easy to connect to my real life identity, to the point that I treat it like posting under my real name. I don't have the sort of spicy opinions that would make me a serious target for cancellation, but there's some stuff I've posted here that would probably have some social repercussions if people IRL knew that I'd written it. This is largely why I picked a fresh username here in the first place.

I'm under no illusions that it's impossible to get [dovetailing] -> [real identity] with some sleuthing. (I'm curious how hard it is, but there's no way it's even close to impossible.) What I'm a bit more concerned about is getting from a casual search of [real identity] to [dovetailing]. This has led me to divide up my posts across various places, and not cross-post links here to things I've written elsewhere, or share the same writing in multiple places. However, it strikes me that this may be an incorrect amount of paranoia -- not nearly enough to hinder the [dovetailing] -> [real identity] pathway for a serious inquirer, but more than makes sense if all I care about is someone I know personally, or a (potential) employer, casually searching my real name or my other username and getting my posts here.

So... what do you all think?

I have decided to assume that anything I say could be connected to my real identity if someone was sufficiently motivated. The result of this is not that I hide spicy opinions, but that I try to only say things that I'm willing to stand by. My life is structured in a way that I think I'm not really cancellable, or at least not for just one malicious actor.

Part of this is just that I kind of doubt I'm competent enough to do opsec that's worth a damn anyway.

Yeah, I don't say anything online that I wouldn't be willing to own. But I've been (slightly) concerned with two possible scenarios:

  1. I'm applying for a job in the future, employer searches [my other username], turns up that I've been willing to state non-current-year-PC opinions about homosexuality/trans/abortion/etc., and that acts as a marginal push away from them actually hiring me. (Argument that this shouldn't matter: I'm not likely to be desperate and if an employer can't tolerate that, then I probably don't want to work for them anyway.)
  2. I share something I wrote under [my other username] with some people I know in real life (mostly social conservatives), they decide to google [my other username] and find some personal or 'icky' stuff I've written about here, like about my past personal experiences with autogynephilia and related things, or my book review of Men Trapped in Men's Bodies, or something like that, and then there is social weirdness because they now think I'm a pervert or something. (Argument that this shouldn't matter: how likely are people to search like that anyway? As long as I don't literally link to my writing at TheMotte from something I post under [my other username], how likely are they to turn up the stuff here even if they do google me? And for that matter how likely is someone seeing what I've written likely to make things weird? I have no idea about any of these.)

I'm applying for a job in the future, employer searches [my other username]

How would employers know any of your usernames in the first place?

How much should I care about being-opaque-to-casual-inspection level "opsec", given that I don't really care about actually being unidentifiable?

In 2024, you should always care about opsec.

Why in particular do you think so? What are the risks that caring about personal opsec mitigates, how big are they, and how significant is the mitigation?

The risk I'm most concerned with is a phishing campaign against me, personally, specifically. Their end goal would be identity theft and causing financial damage.

Those tailor-made campaigns are much, much easier if you have a large online presence. And if done well, they are extremely difficult to defend against.

A related topic that I often think about:

By a quirk of fate, I share the name, both first and last, of a famous professional athlete. I wonder how much opsec that gives me, if any. Imagine someone called "Thomas Brady" - I'm sure there are hundreds of them. But if you Googled "Thomas Brady, Atlanta, Georgia," would you just get all the times Tom Brady did something in Atlanta?

So I've benefited from this. I have a relatively common name, and also a significant amount of discoverability on search engines using the correct search terms, but the ways most people search they instead catch one of the several people with wikipedia entries who have the same name.

I've had dates report this to me (women doing the usual stalking to figure out if someone is a creep), so I suspect you may be protected in the same way.

I think it's good general opsec to change handles over the medium to long term (6 months to 2+years depending on your risk tolerance). It's not just about posting spicy opinions, but the fact that the internet is forever and you don't know what advances in technology (AI scraping), the social landscape (authoritarians getting into power), and even your personal views and desire for privacy changing in the future. Swapping handles and being reasonably careful about dropping too much identifying information is just a good practice to get into and well worth the 5% of the time you'd like to share something but can't because it might let people/AI connect the dots.

My handle here is too similar to one I used on another forum, but I've since used a tool to overwrite past comments to cover my tracks. Even so I also wonder if I'm not being paranoid enough.

Anyone here with a good chili crisp recipe? I really like the flavor of fly by jing's Sichuan crisp, but I'd have to to take out a mortgage to afford it.

The one from Serious Eats seems good: https://www.seriouseats.com/homemade-spicy-chili-crisp

This one from the Mala Market also goes into quite a bit of detail, plus they sell ingredients for it: https://blog.themalamarket.com/aromatic-sichuan-chili-oil-xiangla-hongyou/

Yeah, the SE one is on my list to try. The mala market one doesn't have added msg which is a little sus I think. But it's worth trying too.

I'll probably sub out the rapeseed oil because while I don't buy the seed oil catastrophism, that stuff is probably actually bad for you.

I can't think of how to phrase this, but: does anyone know of a good source or place where I can read about the black American lower class? In terms of their daily lives, aspirations for the future, hobbies, etc. I don't know where to find anything that's not a hagiography from the left, or Sailer-style noticing. It seems like, apart from social media, it is the least-represented, least-analyzed group online.

I know that for such topics as the fentanyl crisis, there was a big genre of think-pieces in which journalists went among the white lower class and asked them, "Why do you do what you do? How do you think this happened?" and so on. I'm not aware of anything similar where black people, who are not middle-class aspirants or celebrities etc., are asked, "What's going on? Why do you like this and not that? How do you feel about Policy X? What do you think AI is gonna do to the economy, or to your own job prospects?" and so on.

I get some exposure to this by talking to my next door neighbor, but he, specifically, always steers the conversation towards trying to buy my spare car; and I'm not ready to sell it yet, so I just go inside lol.

"Why do you do what you do? How do you think this happened?"

Are you familiar with Tommy G on Youtube? He does videos like that with all kinds of people, almost always lower class. Here he's with the Somali gangs in Minneapolis.

Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America by John McWhorter was pretty controversial when it was released twenty years ago. McWhorter is a Columbia linguist and is himself black. Glenn Loury's Anatomy of Racial Inequality also bears mentioning.

Neither of these are brother-on-the-street accounts, but I'd say are closer to such than what you'd find by Thomas Sowell.

I'd argue Baldwin's The Fire Next Time is now dated, but it's worth reading if only because Baldwin was such a compelling writer and that book is widely revered/reviled. In a similar (i.e. dated) vein, although it's been 30 years since I read it, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was Maya Angelou's best (in my view only really good) work. It's really worth reading, though I don't understand the hype around anything else she ever wrote.

I like Coleman Hughes but it's sometimes like reading the perspective of a white guy who grew up black, and in that sense I suspect removed from a more typical experience.

I grew up in the deep south where black folks were a large part of my youth, and then lived in Africa three years where I was the only white dude for 200km. Still half my life has been in Japan, where I'm again a minority but there aren't a lot of black people, so I feel pretty out of touch in how the racial climate particularly in the US has changed. It certainly seems worse than it used to be but who knows from this distance.

Probably you'd want to look at the writing of black conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, particularly autobiographies. Anything by someone left would be filled with blaming white people, and anything by someone white would probably be of limited trustworthiness since it'd be more speculation than true experience.

Sowell’s autobiography also has a cool story about him beating up a mugger on the subway.

Although this is not exactly what you're looking for as it's neither text nor particularly rigorous, I can warmly recommend Peter Santenello. He does vlog-style videos where he goes into communities and tries to get into conversations with people. While he does obviously have a certain viewpoint that shines through, it's very far from the sort of highly-online politics you're alluding to and he mostly lets the people he is interviewing do the talking. Relevant to your specific request, he has done videos on black neighbourhoods in LA (e.g. 1, 2), New York, Chicago as well as on the Black Belt or Gary.

If you like his content, I also highly recommend watching his videos on the NYC Hasidic Jews and the Amish, those are probably his two best series.

This is a really good question. I would also be interested in reading things like this, where people actually talked to black people and describe their own views on things, instead of imputing to them whatever's politically convenient.

I remember reading a while back that a credit card company's terms and conditions allowed them to steal their clients' money for political reasons. I think it was Mastercard and $2,000, but I can't find anything on it now. Anyone know what this was?

Are you thinking of the walked-back policy of PayPal fining clients $2,500 for engaging in 'misinformation'?

Yes, thank you. I didn't realize it was never actually in effect.

not really a question but i was reading this article about thorns on plants: https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/plants/thorns-prickles-roses-plants/ they just couldn't make it through without including: “We also respectfully acknowledge that some of the species studied here are available to us only through many centuries of Indigenous stewardship and non-Western cultivation histories,” says Saterlee. like so what

I saw something today from a museum’s instagram page: “landscape painting is inherently violently because it depicts scenes of colonial possession…” these people just suck. The breakdancing Olympian from Australia is symbolic of this: they suck at what they do, they can’t compete, but in their hubris they need to find superiority somehow. And they do it through ideology and tearing down others — especially the paternal ideal that they can’t live up to

Being low effort, not really a question, and basically just pointing and wrinkling your nose, I almost didn't approve this post. In the future, please try to at least start a discussion, don't just post "Hey, look at this culture war stupidity."

sorry you're right.

Am I going insane? Long time ago I watched some video on youtube about recreating coca cola. Now I can't find the same video although I did rewatched some that were in my history (not talking about the 3 well known recipes, you tube is full with them). What was mentioned (and showed briefly on screen) was that there was a whole forum/community dedicated to reverse engineering merchandise 7x and notes which of the formulations were closest. And it was not open cola.

What is interesting is that I can't find that community - not even a hint that it existed, or that such thing doesn't exit. google is just blank staring at me and sends me official coca cola siter, news sites or reddit. So I may have invented it in my imagination. On the other hand this is such a perfect nerdy hobby that I am fairly sure it should exist. And I have problems with Google lately - more and more I feel that they shape the internet, not just index it - I can't find quotes that I know exist - and I have found them couple of years before. I can't find the full text of jokes which punchlines I know by heart. There is a lot of stuff that is was there in the wild years of the internet that should be somewhere. And yet it is not. We are either losing knowledge at a great pace or the search engines are blackening parts of the internet.

Glenn and friends did 1886 Coca-Cola https://youtube.com/watch?v=IWYuPE8rkeE?si=_isIdZmEwA8Vtx0w

Long time ago I watched some video on youtube about recreating coca cola. Now I can't find the same video although I did rewatched some that were in my history (not talking about the 3 well known recipes, you tube is full with them).

When a YouTube account gets banned for some reason, all of its videos are burned. YouTube is also pretty free with the banhammer. As such, there's a substantial chance any particular old video on YouTube has been burned.

I saw a long 15-20 minute video of some police officer doing an in-depth analysis (before a few dozen journalists) of why Obama's birth certificate was wrong or copied from someone else's, back in 2016. He showed various anomalies with the handwriting and so on. It seemed perfectly persuasive to me but I'm no forensics expert, how could I tell if that was real or not?

It's totally gone now, there's no way to find it beneath the chorus of 'debunked misinformation'.

Are you thinking of this press conference by Joe Arpaio?

That must be it. For some reason I remember it being different but it was 8 years ago. In retrospect it was foolish to look for it on youtube of all websites.

I have direct links to several YT videos that I can no longer find via search, even by typing the exact title of the video. Many of them aren’t even political, like Yundi Li’s performance of Beethoven sonatas.

I think it’s mostly because search today doesn’t even bother to do a search, it just spits back to you whatever slop Google feels like feeding you.

It’s sorta like how the thermostat in the office isn’t connected to anything; it’s just there to give the employees some illusion of control.

EDIT: in case anyone wants to try, here’s the Yundi Li performance I’m talking about. Nothing I type in search will bring up that video in the results.

A few tips for making searching the internet more legible. The first is Yandex, the big Russian search engine. They've none of the political biases that Google bakes into their results, nor the ad revenue driven mission. Do keep in mind that some of the stuff Google blocks, and Yandex doesn't, are honest to god scammers and criminals, so always be cautious with results on Yandex.

Additionally, in situations like described above where you know the exact name of something in a Google search, after performing the initial search on Google, click on the Tools link on the top, then the down arrow besides All Results, then click Verbatim. While this isn't a perfect fix, it does seem to filter out some of the worst changes to Google search of the last decade.

The first is Yandex, the big Russian search engine. They've none of the political biases that Google bakes into their results

I am going to bet they have different political biases, with small if any overlap with Google biases.

Which, for the purposes of the modal resident of the West, means they're basically neutral.

Well, if you are interested in say situation in Ukraine or Russia then I would not assume that Yandex is without any bias.

That video has been blocked in my country (the USA) on copyright grounds. I wonder if that’s why Google deindexed it.

Who knows. YT shows me content I can’t watch all the time—I’ll click on result and get “you can’t watch this bc copyright.” Well then why did you fn recommend it to me, YT?

Anyway, I have other examples that I’m pretty sure have no relation to copyright. I think their system is just so laden with schizophrenic, contradictory rules that it ceases to function entirely for all but the daily slop from Approved Producers.

clicking on your link, i get: This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds (i'm in the usa)

I've been thinking recently about the stickiness of reputations among brands, and about whether it's something that companies really have the power to shift or not.

Here's the specific example in my mind. You know how, if you browse the Internet for many years, you'll see certain apparently-organic consensus points occur again and again? Reddit is especially known for this, but it happens elsewhere too. Well, in all my years online, the one I've seen the most often, in the most places, is:

A. Cars are mentioned. B. "Get a Toyota or Honda. Those are the best cars."

The corollary of this line of thinking is: "(Not-Toyota/Not-Honda) is junk." I've probably seen this statement about every manufacturer, but it's most commonly applied to the cars of the former Fiat-Chrysler group, including Fiat itself and Dodge. Ford, GM, and Nissan also get it a lot.

I've driven many Toyotas and Hondas. They are indeed very good cars. I have nothing to say against them. However - based on modern manufacturing technology, on any given metric, how much better are they likely to be than the equivalent car by Subaru? Or even Chevrolet or Dodge? What's the base rate of mechanical failure across these marques? Does anyone know? More to the point - is anyone looking? I would imagine they are not at all, based on typical shopper behavior. I think they mostly go by reputation.

What I find interesting is that in some cases, reputations created long ago stick around forever; and in some cases they don't. For example with Dodge, I'm specifically aware of a big problem they had with a 2.7 L V6 in the '90s which had big sludging problems and hence an elevated rate of engine failure. Prior to that, as I understand it, their main reputation was making fairly staid, uninteresting, but fine commuter cars like the Plymouth Sundance, Dodge Aries and so on. They also made a nice line of minivans. Anyway - at least since the 2.7 L V6 problem, I feel like, subjectively, people no longer trust them; and may never trust them again. Say that Consumer Reports announced that a hypothetical 2025 Dodge Journey was the best in its segment for reliability and features. Would you even consider looking at one?

Conversely, some companies like Audi (the sudden unintended acceleration debacle) and Subaru (head gasket failures) seem to have mostly shaken off their negative reputations; at least, I don't see them taking serious stick online over those things, and the products sell as well as anything else.

Is this just locked in now? Even if Toyota and Honda just made 50th-percentile-reliable cars from now on, would anyone ever notice? If the best car you could possibly get at a given price point was actually a Volkswagen or a Volvo, and remained that way for a decade, how long would it take for sales figures to change? How long would it take for me to stop seeing "get a Toyota or Honda" in every /r/personalfinance thread about cars?

N.B. I'm not car shopping right now. In the past, if I talk about this topic online, people will genuinely reply, "Just get a Toyota or Honda, man," as if that's what I were asking about. I'm not getting anything any time soon. My current car is fine.

I had a similar thought and looked at a new dodge due to its appealing price compared to other vehicles in its segment. I was shocked at the plainly apparent inferior quality, down to the door handles being super bendy and shitty feeling. So in a sense it confirmed that Dodge/Chrysler products are still shit.

On the other hand I have recently rented two different Kias and my partner owns one as well. I have consistently been pleasantly surprised at how good the quality is on those cars, from the physical product to the software and electronics. So in my mind, Kias have definitely redeemed themselves.

I think a big factor is that people just don’t encounter all that many cars regularly enough to get a sense for their quality and longevity.

I’ve owned a number of different brands of cars and the best for me was an old mid-90s Chevy half ton. Reliable as hell and cheap to fix when something wears out. The worst was my Audi, which was actually my favorite by far up until it grenaded in the middle of the desert and left me in a pretty sticky situation. That experience has put me off from the brand basically forever.

Even after 65 years, Edsel still has the connotation of "lemon".

If you get the Consumer Reports online data, that's going to get you the closest to a real, reliable, useful dataset for most cars. CR is very good and very objective, though they have some limitations (they rarely test multiple engine configurations, and they make certain assumptions about consumers' needs). Data in general shows that cars have become vastly more reliable on a problem/mile basis

That said, I think the problem with brand reputation is that reliability means different things to different people. Here's a lightly fictionalized version of my experience with car brands, representative anecdotes:

Chevy: Things break all the time, but they're easy to fix, the parts are cheap, and any mechanic can do it. The belt on my Avalanche went, I picked up a new one for $80 at NAPA down the road, a buddy of mine who is handy put it on in his garage for free in exchange for hunting privileges on some land we own. Will keep on like this, with every small part being replaced, for another 200,000 miles.

Toyota: Nothing ever really breaks. It runs forever, beyond wear items. I have a 2005 Camry, nothing has ever been needed on it but a battery, tires, and the speaker covers on the back shattered in the sun. Random interior parts are beat, but who cares.

BMW/MB/Audi: Runs absolutely beautifully, better than anything else, until it suddenly breaks a little after it is out of warranty. No one will be able to tell you what's wrong with it, at the dealership or elsewhere. When they get some idea what widget that lunches the engine might be, the parts are $3,000 and they have to be special ordered from a single Bavarian trappist monastery, where they only make them in the Spring. Fixing that widget might or might not actually fix the car, hard to say.

I'm not so much standing by this as truly representative data, it's just my anecdotal experience. My point is that reliability can mean different things. For a handy guy who doesn't mind doing a bit of work, he'll say the Chevy just runs and runs; while for a woman who has everything done at the dealership it will seem like a hassle. For a rich insurance salesman who leases every four years, he won't care that his BMW will break down at 6 years/80,000 miles because by then it will be two years since he owned it, as far as he's concerned the car was great, even if it broke down he took it to the dealership and they gave him a brand new loaner so it was no skin off his back. So the anecdotes on the topic won't be consistent from actual people, you have to consider a hundred different factors, then discount them by context and probability.

IMO people will keep saying "Get a Honda/Toyota" as long as 15-20 year old Corollas and Civics (and Camrys/Accords) are still superior to their competition, and IMO they mostly still are (With that, IMO some Ford and GM models are underrated.). Reputations will remain stickier as the average car continues to get older, and the average vehicle in the US is nearly 13 years old (and the average car is 14 years old!).

With that, for Chrysler it wasn't just the 2.7 V6, but the Neons that blew headgaskets, 4 speed auto transmissions made out of paper mache throughout the 90s and early 2000s, LH and cloud cars that just fell apart in a hurry, and pickup trucks that, Cummins diesels aside, are the worst of the big three (They're nice, but they fall apart fast and have relatively poor resale value.). The 300s/Challengers/Chargers are reliable as far as I'm aware, but guzzle gas so they aren't really economical and are police magnets in certain areas.

Subaru IMO is unique enough (AWD in all their cars) that their customers are willing to tolerate issues like the EJ's headgaskets that other brands couldn't get away with. VW/Audi IMO have improved a lot since the crap they were churning out in the early 2000s, and German car buyers are less sensitive about long-term reliability since they are the most likely to lease their vehicles instead of buying them.

As someone who drives a checks notes 17yo Corolla, I endorse this statement. They haven’t added anything meaningful to its market niche since the aux cable became standard. There are improvements in fuel economy, but most everything else is the same. Some UX has gotten worse with touchscreens and peanut-butter-lid knobs!

Backup cameras, prox sensors, etc. are a different story, but they haven’t yet percolated to this price point. I think.

Eventually, I’ll need a replacement, and I’ll buy in a higher niche. Hopefully self-driving has gotten much better by that point.

What's the base rate of mechanical failure across these marques? Does anyone know?

This site claims to have analyzed millions of used-car auctions to determine long-term mechanical reliability. Its overall "manufacturer quality index" looks like this:

  • 90–89: Lexus, Toyota
  • 79–67: Hummer, Porsche, Scion, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Infiniti
  • 57–32: Remainder (57 is the average)
  • 19: Suzuki
  • 12: Smart
  • 0: Mini

Oddly enough, I'm Facebook friends with the guy who operates that site. I think it's a great effort, but it's still less valuable, to me, than knowing the actual rates. It's like your likelihood of being murdered in Dallas vs. in Des Moines: if it's a difference from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 55,000, how does that weigh against, say, the value you would've gotten from that extra cupholder?

These are imaginary numbers, but hopefully you see what I'm saying.

Why don't any Christian groups try forming communities similar to the Hasidic communities of places like Kiryas Joel? Or have some done so, and I'm just not aware of it?

(When I've asked this question to a few people IRL, I basically got two answers, both of which — in different ways — boil down to "because we're not Jewish.")

Do the Amish not count?

They do, they’re called cults. And that’s what Hasidim basically are as well.

Would something like the Bruderhof count for you? They're not fully Amish, but they do form little Christian communities or villages in the middle of a larger society.

Jews have a long tradition of both urban and communal living, even in mildly or intermittently hostile environments. Setting up NY. "public housing" with built-in yeshivas that are advertised only in Hebrew is childs play for them.

Christians who lived in villages around a church don't actually have any way to exclude people from their territory (let alone drive out non-members), so only actual cults can set up shop in the first place.

English speaking Christians also can't take advantage of "minority-serving" government programs to route around anti-discrimination law, by getting funding specifically directed to their community in a way that excludes outsiders.

The closest you'll get is Arizona retirement communities. And those rely on liquidated boomer house money that young families don't have access to.

They do periodically, and most fail within a generation with little fanfare. American history is littered with failed utopian commune experiments from the Shakers to the Mormons to the Manson family.

Throughout history most Jewish attempts at this have also failed within a generation. The Books of Jacob explores this in the context of the 19th century.

They do. That's what most of the initial American colonists were doing.

More recent ones that spring immediately to mind are L'Abrie (friend stayed there, founded by Francis Schaeffer), a bunch of Mormon towns, some Amish areas, and the community around St Innocent Academy in Kodiak.

As to why it isn't all that common anymore, some possibilities:

  1. people are suspicious of cults, because they've often found to be covering up negative behavior,
  2. the modern economy rewards living in larger cities
  3. modern cities forbid red lining practices, so it's mostly not legal to intentionally build a religious suburb that feels like a village. People also like ethnic neighborhoods, which modern cities also discourage. Much ink has been spilled over that.

Some mennonites do.

The effectiveness of Kiryas Joel is in its extreme shunning of outsiders, its top-down centralized hierarchy which works extrajudicially, and its extreme ingroup-centrism. No one would want to move in Kiryas Joel because as a gentile you will not have access to any of their communal wealth: the library is in Yiddish and Hebrew, the parties are religion-centered, the schools are all private, the security is private. No one will talk to you. The Hasidic members all know not to “let the world in” and this is enforced through shunning. It was maybe in Lakewood or Kiryas Joel, I forgot which, where a rival teacher set up shot and then had his house burned down. The person who attempted to kill him this way got a sweetheart thanks to Hasidic lobbying. That’s a totally extrajudicial way of enforcing communal norms. And the schools enforce ingroup centrism and hierarchy through the texts and stories. And of course there is tax corruption and the wealthy members subsidize the lives of the poor members.

For Christians to imitate this requires a lot just to get going

Who says they aren't already?

They're certainly not anywhere on the scale of Kiryas Joel (population 41,857).

Can someone get me what this AAQC said? https://www.themotte.org/comment/123289?context=3#context

If I recall correctly it was a fascinating look at what neurodivergent people look at on a good looking house versus what neurotypicals look at, and how it related to brutalism. But it got deleted which is total bullshit. I wish the "this AAQC got deleted, sry" crap got left on reddit where it belonged.

Seven million people visit the Parthenon every year. People like looking at it. If you told them the fluted columns were a stylistic holdover from earlier building techniques, they would not say, "Wow, that's pathetic and unoriginal and ruins the whole thing for me." They'd say, "Oh, how interesting!" They do not care if the building is "a copy of a copy of a copy" with minor variations, any more than they disdain their children for being copies of copies of copies with minor variations.

Hundreds of thousands of people wander through New Orleans' Garden District every year. They love this shit. They take pictures from the sidewalk. They're still inspired to write semi-erotic vampire fiction set behind doors like this.

I'm increasingly convinced that beauty is local and specific. The forms we find loveliest are recognizably from somewhere. A climate-controlled box of concrete, glass, and steel can plop down anywhere.

New Orleans' architectural vernacular evolved under certain environmental constraints, like 76% humidity on an alluvial floodplain. It evolved under the quirks of particular governments, like long narrow lots measured in arpents rather than feet. Its ornamentation draws from recognizable traditions - "cargo cult ornamentation," as you say. (The gingerbread on the shotguns resulted from the sudden availability of machined rather than handmade spindles and corbels. Shotguns were working class housing, and their residents were excited to have a little fancy-fancy.) Roofs had to shed rainwater like a boss. Prior to widespread AC, high ceilings were necessary for airflow, and shaded courtyards or galleries were desirable for livable space out in the breeze.

The most classic designs - shotguns, Creole cottages, and double gallery townhouses - are fairly straightforward. They are symmetrical rectangles plus some decorative trim. And yet, they are shockingly easy to mess up. Cheap, widely available blueprints tend to use modern dimensions, with lower ceilings and shorter doors and windows. These adapted dimensions reduce building costs, but the proportions look subtly wrong. Bad proportions can have practical consequences. On one street in Irish Channel, an old double gallery was recently renovated to stick on a parapet and Greek Revival it up. The parapet is too big for the house, which not only looks goofy, it may have created a corner for rainwater to gather, work its way in, and eventually compromise the roof.

At least they tried! In contrast, here are designs by the world's most prestigious architects, intended as an homage to the local shotgun house. Here's your inspired "positive vision of the future." If any element were out of proportion, who the fuck would know?

Worse by far, these minimalist houses, specially designed to be eco-conscious and energy efficient, flubbed the waterproofing. They started to decay within a decade and triggered a massive lawsuit.

I don't want or need a "positive vision of the future" for my clothing. Sure, let's take advantage of new technologies in material and construction - but even that can go too far, can't it? One mulberry silk nightgown feels better on my skin than all my slick synthetics. No, in my clothing I want time-tested designs that would be perfectly familiar in many historical eras, with decorative elements in the idiom of my people. A woman's belt is a holdover from the time before stretchy fabric, when it was the easiest way to hold up a skirt or define the waist. A modern woman wearing one over her dress is not an uninspired rube aping the conventions of her ancestors. She's pulling her outfit together.

High fashion might be "innovative" or whatever, but it is also frequently ugly and alienating. It doesn't flatter women of average proportions, who need tailoring and structure to best show their shape. Yet somehow, every time I shop for a dress, the market offers me a sack with sleeves.

Every time I've shopped for real estate in this beautiful European city established in the 12th century, the market offers me a fucking concrete box.

So, uh, why was it removed? Did the author ask to be vaporized?

Raggedy_anthem went off the mod team and either set their account private or deleted it about three months back, “personal reasons”

Dang, that wasn't it. I'm sorry for my outburst.

Maybe search has the post I was thinking of. It was really fascinating and I regret that my friends missed it.

Is this the post you're looking for? https://www.themotte.org/post/963/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/205067?context=8#context

It is! Yay! Thank you very much.

So, what are you reading?

I’m still on This Star of England, and picking up Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread.

Currently going through Will Durant's The Study of Philosophy, in which he explores and explains the ideas of great philosophers from Plato through to the 20th century. If I stick with it and read it all the way, I can gain exposure to the ideas of thinkers like Spinoza and Spencer, who never came up in philosophy intro classes in college. In general it's of course not as intensive as reading the primary sources, but I think it can give me an idea of which ones interest me the most to pursue later.

Still reading The Devil's Chessboard. It's mostly a tour through all of the dirty deeds that the CIA did and/or was accused of doing during the Dulles regime during the Cold War.

It's interesting, but it's sufficiently preachy that I feel a little dubious about it's takes on many of these events. I wonder what other takes are out there on these events, if they were really as bad or as unjustified as portrayed.

I perceive a good amount of what I see as two-facedness about the Cold War. During it, it was claimed that the Soviet Union was impossible to beat, we had to learn to live with them, many were quite justifiably worried about the influence they wielded around the world and took broad measures to counter them. Then suddenly they just collapsed one day. After that, magically, everybody always knew they were a house of cards, all the stuff we did to counter them was totally unnecessary and unjustified, and we're a bunch of big stupid jerks for doing it.

I think the truth is more like, yes they absolutely were a grave threat to liberty around the world. We were correct to counter them at every turn. Maybe not every single thing we did in service of that goal contributed to their downfall, but a lot of it did, and there was no way to know for sure at the time what would and what wouldn't. In the grand scheme of things, it was all justified and it did in fact work, and the world is a better place without their regime, even if the process of getting there wasn't the prettiest thing around.

Read the second Locke Lamora book, Red Seas under Red Skies. Lot of fun. I really get the feeling this was the author's tabletop RPG setting or something, because he loves dropping in these...icebergs. Plot details are rarely filled by something tidy; instead, he'll add a new detail that implies a whole adventure of its own.

Made for incredible whiplash to read Authority, Jeff Vandermeer's sequel to Annihilation. That's much more economical in prose and plot. You're not in the setting, you're in the characters' heads as they deal with that setting. And what a mess, a beautiful, anti-rational mess, it is! This is a book which managed to convincingly portray the old Lovecraftian trope of knowledge which would drive someone to suicide. I have to highly recommend the first one.

Just restarting Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul. It's good.

Finished the books I was reading about Augustus and the Peloponnesian War. Now I'm reading The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham (he co-wrote The Expanse). Finished the first part and was pleasantly surprised. Enjoying it quite a bit.

I had a bunch of unexpected time to read recently, and finally finished Hyperion. It's pretty long, but I thought the prose was really well-written. I found each of the tales to be pretty interesting. If I had to pick a favorite, the Scholar's tale was pretty poignant as a parent. I was expecting a bit more of a, well, conclusion to the primary story line, but I wasn't unsatisfied. Not sure if I'll pick up its sequel: my general experience has been that sequels (in both movies and books) tend to not be quite as great about world building, and I have a long list of classic books to read already.

Then I started and got about halfway through The Diamond Age, after reading Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash a while back. Interesting concepts in The Diamond Age, and I see why it's so frequently referenced.

Agreed the sequels are not worth your time. I found Hyperion to be excellent and the sequels quite mediocre, surprisingly so.

Is it still worth reading? I've read the first book, but heard elsewhere also that the sequel isn't very good.

Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are only two novels because publishers forced it. They're essentially one rather than a book and its sequel. That being said I didn't like Fall nearly as much.

I'm very interested in the idea of common knowledge. It's been talked a lot about by the Scotts here and here

The crucial concept here is common knowledge. We call a fact “common knowledge” if, not only does everyone know it, but everyone knows everyone knows it, and everyone knows everyone knows everyone knows it, and so on.

I sort of understand this but I want to understand it better. Can someone explain this to me? Why is something not common knowledge if everyone knows that everyone knows it? What is the difference between that and the next level (everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows it)? I want to get a more intuitive grasp of that.

The concept often comes up in the context of dictatorships, so that's the context I'll use to illustrate it.

Alice, Bob and Carol live in the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime. Alice hates Stalin and wishes him dead. But Alice has never read a column or editorial which was even mildly critical of Stalin (Stalin controls Pravda), and also knows that everyone who criticises Stalin in any capacity immediately vanishes to the gulag, never to be heard from again. For fear of this happening to her, Alice never criticises Stalin in front of Bob and Carol. Unbeknownst to Alice, Bob and Carol also hate Stalin, but have performed exactly the same risk calculus and decided never to publicly criticise Stalin. Hence conversations between Alice, Bob and Carol consist of three people loudly, conspicuously praising Stalin and successfully deceiving the others that they sincerely admire Stalin and think he's the bee's knees - but all three of them hate him and erroneously believe that they're the only one of the three to think so.

There's a sophomoric theory of how dictatorships come to an end: "people admired Stalin, but then a critical mass of people turned against him and the public rose up to overthrow him". The toy example above illustrates why this theory is wrong: a critical mass of people hating the dictator is necessary but not sufficient to effect an overthrow of the dictatorship. It's perfectly possible for a simple or supermajority of the population to hate the dictator, but for the dictator to remain in power if enough of the people who hate him erroneously believe that their opinion is a minority or fringe opinion. It's not enough for Alice, Bob etc. to hate Stalin: Alice must also know that Bob hates Stalin, and Bob likewise - Stalin must be widely despised, and it must be common knowledge that Stalin is widely despised.

Alice, Bob and Carol live in the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime. Alice hates Stalin and wishes him dead. But Alice has never read a column or editorial which was even mildly critical of Stalin (Stalin controls Pravda), and also knows that everyone who criticises Stalin in any capacity immediately vanishes to the gulag, never to be heard from again. For fear of this happening to her, Alice never criticises Stalin in front of Bob and Carol. Unbeknownst to Alice, Bob and Carol also hate Stalin, but have performed exactly the same risk calculus and decided never to publicly criticise Stalin. Hence conversations between Alice, Bob and Carol consist of three people loudly, conspicuously praising Stalin and successfully deceiving the others that they sincerely admire Stalin and think he's the bee's knees - but all three of them hate him and erroneously believe that they're the only one of the three to think so.

This much makes sense to me, but beyond this it gets tough for me. This sounds like "everyone knows Stalin sucks, but everyone doesn't know that everyone knows Stalin sucks". But let's say everyone did know that everyone knows Stalin sucks. Why is that not common knowledge already? Why is it important that everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows that Stalin sucks?

I think the answer is roughly the same as that to my favorite riddle: https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html

So I'm a few days late, but I'm struggling with the riddle. I can't get it to work out in my head.

I know the answer is that all n blue-eyed people leave on the nth ferry. I understand why that works for low values of n, and how it builds on itself, as each blue-eyed person expects the (n-1) scenario to play out, and then when it doesn't they realize they have blue eyes.

But at some point, everyone can see multiple blue-eyed people. And everyone can see that everyone else can see multiple blue-eyed people. At that point I can't see how the Guru has provided anyone with any new information or any new common knowledge. Nor has the empty outbound ferry on Day 1. So I don't understand how all the blue-eyed people know to leave on Day 100.

The note provides the inductive base case.

(blue, brown, note falls from the sky saying someone has blue eyes)

(1, 0, False): No information on their eyes. They never leave.

(1, 0, True): No one else could possibly have blue eyes. They leave on day 1.

(1, 1, False): Same as (1, 0, False). No one leaves.

(1, n, False): Same as (1, n-1, False). No on leaves.

(2, 0, True): On day 1, each reasons that if they are brown in (1, 1, True), the other person will leave. The other person doesn't leave. They each leave on day 2.

(n, 0, True): On day n-1, each reasons that if they are brown in (n-1, 0, True), the other n-1 people will leave on day n-1. This doesn't happen. All n people leave on day n.

(2, 0, False): On day 1, each reasons that whether they are blue or brown in (1, 1, False), the other person will never leave. The other person does not leave. This gives no information. No one ever leaves.

Etc

To throw another explanation into the arena: Alice, Bob and Carol currently hate Stalin but each thinks they are alone, so they don't rebel. If Alice found a credible note saying "Bob hates Stalin. Carol hates Stalin." Then she has learned a little, but her options don't increase all that much.

  • She can't try to convince Bob to form a rebellion. Since Bob hasn't gotten a note, he will just assume Alice is an agent trying to catch Bob doing something bad. (Haven't dictatorial regimes employed snitches? Sounds familiar right?)
  • She can't really tell Bob: "I know you hate Stalin." Like before, Bob will assume she is an agent. After all, Bob thinks he's the only one opposing Stalin! (Don't governments deploy sting operations to catch detractors? Glowies etc.)
  • She could try to be honest and vulnerable with Bob and say "I hate Stalin." This is actually risky. I can't search for it now and probably couldn't find it - a blog post about how these scenarios, and expectations, affect friendships. Since the social norm is to report your friends who hate Stalin, then Alice's admission is like saying: "Report me." Bob can maybe reason that Alice expects to be safe telling her friend Bob this. Or in other words, Alice has accused Bob of hating Stalin. This would freak Bob the fuck out. I know I would freak out if one of my friends said they were into ISIS or some kind of terrorist group.

Anyways, the above bullet points are just Alice's thought process. In reality, Bob also got a note saying "Alice hates Stalin. Carol hates Stalin." And Carol also got a similar note. The problem, hopefully you see, is that the notes are secret.

Why is it important that everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows that Stalin sucks?

Because without that, Alice, Bob and Carol are individually carrying out a risk calculus under the assumption that each of them is the only one who hates Stalin. If you hate Stalin and everybody else loves him, the expected payoff for publicly criticising him is that you are shipped off to the gulag. Thus everyone in the society is incentivised not to criticise Stalin, and he remains in power.

But when it becomes common knowledge, the payoff matrix changes: if I hate Stalin and I know that everybody else does too, the expected payoff for publicly criticising him is that it creates a chain reaction culminating in Stalin being forced out. Common knowledge that Stalin is widely despised is the only thing that can incentivise a self-interested agent in the system (an agent concerned with self-preservation) to act to change the system from within.

The scenario I'm describing above is a pretty quintessential Moloch trap. From outside the system, it's obvious that it's in Alice, Bob and Carol's best interest to rise up and overthrow Stalin. From within the system, none of them have any good reason to believe that attempting to overthrow Stalin would end in any other way than being immediately shipped off to the gulag or executed; hence, they all keep their heads down and the system endures.

L1: Everyone knows Stalin sucks. But they don't know that everyone knows this, so they don't think a rebellion could succeed.

L2: Everyone knows that everyone knows Stalin sucks. But they don't know that everyone knows this, so for all they know everyone else is on L1 and doesn't think a rebellion could succeed, so people expect other people to steer clear of a rebellion due to erroneously not thinking it could succeed, causing it to fail.

L3: Everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows Stalin sucks. But they don't know that everyone knows that, so for all they know everyone else is on L2 and expects rebellions to fail, so people expect other people to steer clear of a rebellion due to erroneously thinking that others will steer clear of it due to erroneously not thinking it could succeed, causing it to fail.

Etcetera.

On the other hand, L∞: A trusted newspaper says that everyone agrees Stalin sucks. Now there's no even hypothetical-within-a-hypothetical possibility that somebody might think a rebellion has no chance.

Well typically in most dictatorships there is a cohort of between ten and seventy percent of the population that genuinely do support the regime for ideological or materialistic reasons. And those people are usually the ones holding the guns. Stalin is actually kind of an outlier in the ratio of sheer fear to genuine support. Also, you don’t have to be a genuine hardline supporter of the regime to rat somebody else out to save yourself.

My Grandpa used to chew tobacco in secret. Officially, this was not okay behavior. He wanted to do it, Grandma disapproved, so he "wasn't allowed to". Partly because it was bad for his health, partly because it's gross. So, not wanting to cause trouble, he pretended to quit, and then went off and did it in secret.

Obviously, Grandpa knows that grandpa chews tobacco. Let's call this level 1 knowledge. Knowledge of the object level fact itself.

He thought he was being sneaky about it, but he wasn't all that sneaky. Grandma found enough evidence to figure it out, so she has level 1 knowledge about him chewing. But since he obviously knows he chews, Grandma knows that he knows, so she has level 2 knowledge: knowledge that Grandpa has level 1 knowledge.

But she doesn't confront Grandpa. Because if she does they might have a fight, or he might decide that now the cat's out of the bag he might as well do it openly in front of people, which is gross. So she says nothing. Everyone knows that Grandpa chews, it is shared knowledge. But it's not common knowledge, because Grandpa doesn't know that she knows.

The lack of common knowledge is meaningful because it allows people to credibly pretend and act like they don't know even when they do.

Now, this didn't happen in real life (I think), but suppose that Grandpa is snooping around and happens to see a text (or more likely overhear a conversation, they're old after all), where Grandma was telling someone about this situation. He's like, "oh crap, I've been discovered. But Grandma chose not to confront me because she doesn't approve but also doesn't want to start a fight. If I want to I could just address this openly, admit what I've been doing, and then either stop or else have the fight and force my way to doing it openly. But I'm reasonably happy the way things have been going, and also I don't want to admit that I've been snooping, so I'll just keep chewing in secret and pretend I don't know that they know." Grandpa now has level 3 knowledge. Everyone knows that Grandpa chews, everyone knows that everyone knows, it's a bit of an "open secret", but not everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows, because nobody knows about Grandpa's snooping, so everyone else thinks that Grandpa is still oblivious to their knowledge, when he's not. This is meaningfully different from the previous scenario, where Grandpa actually thought he was being sneaky about the chewing, and is meaningfully different from common knowledge where it's all out in the open and nobody thinks they know more than someone else.

You can continue this pattern any finite number of steps upward, maybe Grandma planned for Grandpa to overhear her, and maybe Grandpa then discovers that it was a ruse, and so on and so on, but it becomes increasingly convoluted to understand or explain, and also there's little practical difference between level 19 knowledge and level 24 knowledge other than who happens to be on top at the moment, but they still differ from common knowledge, in that any large but finite number of steps creates an open secret that everyone knows but doesn't talk about, while the infinite recursion of common knowledge makes it just not a secret at all and it's harder for people to pretend it's a secret when it's obviously not.

The easier illustrative example of this is from poker. Poker pros talk about this all the time.

Level 1: I know what's in my hand.

Level 2: I know what's in my opponent's hand.

Level 3: I know what my opponent thinks is in my hand.

Level 4: I know what my opponent thinks I think is in his hand.

Level 5: I know what my opponent thinks I think he thinks is in my hand.

Etc.

Many poker players never advance beyond level 2. Even pros have trouble getting beyond 5.

Normally people cite this when it comes to these types of recursive logic.

Say you and I are the only two people on Earth.

Level 1: I know the sun rises in the East. You know the sun rises in the East. However, you might erroneously think I believe the sun rises in the West.

Level 2: I know the sun rises in the East. You know the sun rises in the East. I know you know the sun rises in the East. You know I know the sun rises in the East. However, you might erroneously think I believe you think the sun rises in the West.

I personally would consider it common knowledge at this point. But I can imagine a situation where, for example, you tell me to watch for the sunrise, and you have to clarify that you mean the East, because you think my understanding of you is that you believe the sun rises in the West. This wouldn’t happen at Level 3.

Level 3: I know the sun rises in the East. You know the sun rises in the East. I know you know the sun rises in the East. You know I know the sun rises in the East. I know you know that I know the sun rises in the East. You know that I know that you know the sun rises in the East.

How much useful/well-curated information is on Discord servers that isn’t available or as accessible on websites and social media?

The phenomenon of information that should be hosted on a wiki or forum ending up locked behind a groomercord discord login wall is frequently complained about on rdrama, of all places. They even have a rule (inconsistently enforced) against mentioning personal use of discord in order to prevent the site from turning into nothing but discord in-jokes. I've observed it countless times myself mostly in the sphere of video game mods, where you have to join a discord to view any documentation or instructions related to a mod.

This is stupid and a downgrade in standard of living compared to the information being on the (googleable) public internet. Alas, as the internet becomes more normiefied, it seems the median internet user is more inclined towards consuming information in a conversation format rather than article format (see also popularity of ChatGPT). So this will probably just get worse.

I'll just second @netstack. Far too much information lives on Discord. Especially on video games, of course, but also regarding many kinds of digital technology. I hate it.

It is a website, and has social media ambitions.

But it has a lot of hobby information that isn't kept elsewhere with any consistency. There are mods like STALKER GAMMA which keep all their installation instructions, troubleshooting, etc. on Discord. Sometimes it's a substitute for matchmaking, too, which isn't exactly information, but still pulls more people into the orbit.

Even non-hobby stuff that would have been a forum has a chance to end up on Discord. Conflict Observer comes to mind.

matchmaking

What, like setting people up on dates? Is this a common use case for Discord?

No, I was referring to gamers.

No like

Hey guys looking for one more player for XYZ game

where do you order vitamin D supplements from?

Buy in pharmacy? Supply for year costs less than 1h of work, there is no gain in getting cheaper one.

No no I'm worried about purity and such. I've read a lot of supplement companies are terrible with quality.

Coming from https://www.themotte.org/post/1118/a-call-to-be-more-american I like the irony.

(I wonder is vitamin D quality better in EU... Either way D is so cheap that adultering is less likely, I think)

I am trying out the 2000 IU fruit flavored chewables from Aldi.

They sell 4000 IU (per spray) oral spray in Whole Foods here, it’s pretty cheap per use, easier than swallowing a pill and seems to work well, the evidence shows it’s as effective as capsules.

Motte loves to talk about the things women (even relatively smart introspective women) don’t get about men psychology and dating.

Well, what are some things even the most insightful men don’t get about female psychology and dating?

If there was information women are willing to share, then most likely it would already be public and be written by some female journalist. Topic-obsessed men would have read it ten times over.

There is an oft-repeated fact that conservatives pass the ideological turing test more than liberals do (because of the media landscape, and what is polite to say in public)... I would like to assume that men pass the sexual turing test more than women do (because of the media landscape, and what is polite to say in public)

There is, admittedly, a big reason why these are disanalagous. Women are probably hard wired to know how men think. Or rather, female hard wired behavior is behavior as if she knows how men think. Consider: better emotional intelligence/theory of mind/pressure to navigate physically stronger hostiles, etc.

Not sure how much this counts as insightful in the way you meant it, but FWIW my take on all of this is that human courtship really isn't as complicated as people make out. Because most people are keenly interested in anything that improves their romantic prospects there's an incentive to come up with complicated analysis that can be sold as useful advice (much like stock-picking) but very little of it adds much explanatory power (again, like stock picking).

Like, an alien species discovering humanity for the first time would not find it difficult to come up with a model of human courtship that explains ~90% of observable dating behaviour.

I'm not really sure what you're going for here. Men seem to think all kinds of things about women, some of which is true of many women, and much of which is likely true of some women.

Women want to be loved for the sake of being loved, not necessarily about getting anything in particular out of it.

This looks kind of like trolling for redpill/blackpill hot takes.

I think a lot of redpill stuff is very broadly true, but the problem is that it's too easy for embittered people to turn generalizations into universal truths. "Women are all hypergamous monkey-branching sluts who only want 6/6/6s and secretly want to be owned." If you really believe the worst things that folks like Vox Day and Better Bachelor and Dread Jim say about women, it's hard to believe you are actually capable of loving them except in the way you might love a dog (and honestly, I think those guys respect their dogs more than they respect women).

There are no big secret truths that the "most insightful men" don't get about female psychology and dating. If you're very insightful, you already know them (though some may be impolitic to admit). Women actually aren't inscrutable alien beings. Men and women both protect their psyches with lots of pretending and game-playing, but those who are smart and insightful and honest with themselves are able to recognize it for what it is.

There are things that many people don't want to acknowledge (for example, that men and women both tend to be more comfortable in traditional gender roles, and your feminist girlfriend probably wants you to act like a man even if she pretends she doesn't believe in non-toxic masculinity). But if you are already in or familiar with the redpill/manosphere, I don't think there are undiscovered truths to blow anyone's mind.

hypergamous monkey-branching sluts who only want 6/6/6s

With Bidenflation, it's more like 7/7/7 now.

I'm joking of course, couldn't resist. But, as with all jokes, there's silent syllables of truth here.

I had an idea for an effort most called "CGTOWs - Chad's Going Their Own Way." If you aren't familiar with the MGTOW term this is based off, I encourage a quickly Google. It isn't hard to grok the concept.

Mostly through some outsized and, frankly, random, career success, I move in circles utterly inundated with 6/6/6s - and then (not quite literal) 7/7/7s etc. I am consistently surprised by the amount of single by choice Men wandering around. I don't mean "why get married when I can live the sweet bachelor life forever." I mean "I budget zero time and devote zero effort to dating." Some are full on celebate.

The anecdotal reasons are all over the place. Everything from bizarrely starry-eyed "Mrs. Right will find me one day!" dreamy-ness all the way to onyx-blackpilled "she devils, the lot of them!" jeremiads. I don't quite have a Grand Unified Theory for this (which is why the effortpost is still unwritten) but one of the vague themes I was able to get my arms around was the fact that it seems the modal upwardly mobile woman seems to have a preoccupation for very compelling vibes over hard, but boring, quantifiable qualities.

To be a little brief and trite, these professional dater women are interested in a Man who has a story-arc compelling personal mission in life. Future politician, helps out the orphans, just got back from "being on the ground" in Gaza or something. The literal Chad who's 6'3" and is a founding partner in a local accounting firm (and pulling down north of $400,000) doesn't rate. He takes care of himself and knows how to flirt and socialize, he isn't going to cheat, he wants to have kids and pay a lot of attention to them. But he's ... wait for it ... boring.

And this was what was at the core of the PUA stuff. In a nutshell, it's advice was "go out and talk to people but don't do boring small talk. Also, sometimes insult girls for some reason."

There are comments on the influence of social media here, how women becoming economically independent might shift their relative prioritization of un-boringness, or maybe even a negative view of Football 'n Beer on the weekend bro culture.

The cause is up for debate, but the effect is real - the real life ChadYes.jpeg isn't chadding it up. The 21st century playboy is a walking Gen-Z face tattoo listening to his phone on speaker in public.

I'm an example single-by-choice bachelor (exactly as boring and without compelling vibes as you'd expect for a Motteposter).

The reason it makes sense to spend time and budget on lifting, hobbies, whatever is that there is guaranteed return on those things. If you are doing them wrong or struggling, and you ask people what you're doing wrong, people are helpful and they don't call you entitled for expecting to e.g. get gains because you work out. If you spend money on a hobby, it is normal to expect to have fun.

My (and maybe others?) learned helplessness with dating is that there is no return on investment. The average advice you find is probably anti advice. The idea that dating is like a hobby or like lifting, that you put in as much as you get out, is frankly contradicted by the zeitgeist.

"Bee urself" and "she'll find you" are cope: you're right. But we have to say it. If we admit otherwise, like you do, then we are admitting: people are entitled to dating success if they put in time and effort. You can't have it both ways.

And saying people are entitled to dating success would prescribe all sorts of patriarchy.

Agree throughout.

How would you respond to questions like "Are you worried about ending up alone?" or, on the other extreme, "Bro, don't you, like, wanna f*ck?"

If you're curious, those questions come across to me like, "Are you worried about dying?" or, "Don't you want to live longer?"

(To speak plainly and literally, the short answer is "yes" and the long answer is "yes, and?")

This is broadly what I was expecting and something I agree with. I appreciate the direct response. There is no copium here.

Quite familiar with MGTOW. Honestly I think most of them are just seething and coping.

PUAs are interesting. I read a few PUA books (not because I was trying to get into the scene, but because I was curious about what they actually say). They've discovered a lot of "redpill" truths which they make effective use of, but they also use what are basically some very basic psychological tricks that are just as effective in selling cars or negotiating a raise as they are in scoring dates, but they think they've stumbled onto some secret key to unlock the female psyche. The other thing that struck me was that at least for most PUAs, their stories seem to rarely end in happy long-term relationships, but an initial euphoria as they get laid a lot, and then increasing, pathetic desperation as they keep seeking the thrill of the chase but realize that the women are all the same and the techniques to get them into bed are not the same as the techniques to build real relationships.

Conversely, was very amusing how often you would find women saying "Oh, those lines are so obvious, this stuff would never work on me..." Guess who she ends up going home with?

their stories seem to rarely end in happy long-term relationships, but an initial euphoria as they get laid a lot, and then increasing, pathetic desperation as they keep seeking the thrill of the chase but realize that the women are all the same and the techniques to get them into bed are not the same as the techniques to build real relationships.

This is the "end where you started" truth of the old school PUA lifestyle. Neil Strauss, the journalist who wrote The Game detailed this (more or less) on his own blog.

The guys who really do it and make pick up their focus in life have a high incidence of bad outcomes; mental breakdowns, alcoholism and drug addiction, and, most often, a sincere feeling of existential dread. It's just another branch of the pure hedonism failure mode.

The epilogues tell the tale. One, a guy named Roosh, went hardcore Orthodox Christian. Another, I forget the names now, has had a second act career as a non-anonymous blogger / YouTube warning of the dangers of pickup and recommending pretty basic bro-self-improvement advice (lift, get a good job, try to start a stable family). I think a lot of the more minor figures got on board that MAGA train in a big way.

I can't say that I ever got into or around that world, but it strikes me, as an observer, as very similar to the world of money obsession. I have seen up close how people - who have made getting money into their reason for existence - actually react when they get rich.

There is one common and established career path to brute force your way to getting wealthy - Investment Banking. It is quite guaranteed, but with no skill other than being able to work 100 hours weeks for a few years and absolutely zero concern for anything besides the career, you can grind your way to at least a few million dollars of net worth by the time you're 35 or 40. Most fall off before then because they (correctly) see it isn't worth it. The really smart ones are out quick to doing something else that is always (a) more fulfilling and (b) often somehow equal or greater in compensation. But the ones who stick around, easily half have a full blown existential crisis when they "walk away" with their "fat stacks."

It's not as simple as "oh, they realized money doesn't buy happiness." It's that this goal they had designed for themselves was not only ephemeral once achieved, but the cost of achieving it was the sacrifice of anything and everything else that may have actually led to happiness; deep friendships, finding a spouse, hell even a fun hobby. I'd actually compare it on purpose to being an adult illiterate - it must be terrifying to be without what seems like a basic and necessary skillset at what feels like a relative advanced age. A lot of these guys (and it's always men) have forgotten so completely how to form non-transactional relationships that they either become half-recluse / half-autistic cocaine party animal or literally go through a period of re-socialization not unlike someone "coming home" from prison.

I can see how hardcore PUA dudes would be similar. Every interaction with a woman becomes an win/loss situation. I can't imagine the ones going out three or four times a week to practice the PUA stuff have otherwise normal hobbies with a stable friend group. Spouse? Forget it. Hobbies? PUA. Career? PUA. And then, when they figure out that another random roll in the hay with an Appleby's Waitress no longer interests them, it's not the waking up alone that does them in, be realizing that the paid the cost for howevermany years ... just to wake up alone.

Opportunity cost and compound interest - they're a real bitch.

If you worked in finance, you'd know that.

Women want their past, present and future to all be secure. If you can do that, then everything else is gravy. End Scene.

That's certainly a good view for most women to take, but many don't. Many do want irresponsible adventure and indulgent self-actualization and whatever the hell it is that social media has made them want, consequences be damned (or studiously ignored/denied, more likely).

The women who have the foresight to strive for long-term security...are doing fine, as far as I can see. And so do the men they end up with. Stable, reasonable individuals of both sexes abound, as they always have. But they're not universal, and possibly proportionally fewer than they used to.

Were that simply the case, they would just get paired up with average hard-working provider betas early, stay committed to them and elicit commitment from them. But the information we have doesn't really bear this out.

Well, what are some things even the most insightful men don’t get about female psychology and dating?

you need to target lower than "even the most insightful", this is a null set.

Yeah. If there were some big secret women were intentionally keeping from men, surely they wouldn't share it here.

This is probably not the answer you want, but I've simply stopped putting people into binary gender buckets when it comes to dating and relationships. I think the more that you affirm your partner's values and ambitions and hopes and dreams, and in turn openly share yours, the more intimate and meaningful your relationship will be.

Dating and relationships over the years have confirmed for me that—not only do binary gender buckets work well—they are pervasive and persistent across time, space, and cultures, and contain tremendous predictive and prescriptive power.

How's does that work exactly? Are you gay or bisexual?

I'm struggling to envision what genderless dating looks like, at least between a man and a woman. I'm not talking about hopes and dreams or whatever, I mean that mundane stuff. Like do you ask him/her out? Do you go in for the kiss?

I am a cis male, asexual. My partner is a cis female, also asexual.

If you'll forgive the assumption, the asexual nature of y'all's relationship probably means that your approach and opinion is correct for the two of you.

I think sexual couples have to cut through some more bullshit to get to that point.

I think sexual couples have to cut through some more bullshit to get to that point.

Yes, if the relationship is based mainly on exclusive access to sex (for men) or exclusive access to stability in exchange for sex (for women) and involves the requisite prostitution-exclusivity arrangement for it (most people call this a "marriage"), then it's going to be qualitatively different than one where both participants are aware they're interested in something else. Ironically enough, this happens because sexual relationships are the room temperature, but unless you're aware of what that room temperature even is you're (only figuratively) fucked.

I will admit that I don't fully understand those [sexual] relationships, but I have also noticed that for marginal people, or for normal people in marginal conditions, this default orientation actually works pretty well. It does generate some underlying resentment on people who are conflicted about wanting this, or who might be ace-curious but fundamentally can't handle it, and probably explains why certain kinds of men would rather hang out at the bars than with their wives. If the relationship runs on sex-for-security, that's all it's ever going to be; I am constantly amazed at the number of people who don't actually like their wives/husbands but put up with them for this reason. When these sorts of people say they love each other I am, to a point, baffled that when they say this they aren't lying. "Lie back and think of England" only makes sense under these relationship conditions, and the traditionalist-progressive (feminist) agreement that having to have sex with men is bad is trivially derived from this too.

If you're in it for other reasons, it's... well, it's not really a sex-based relationship then, is it? This is the "marrying for love" side of this, which I guess technically asexuality qualifies as; more concerned about someone you don't need [which then becomes someone you don't want] to protect your psyche from- the "building a life together" sort of thing to which sex is... mostly a nice-to-have accessory rather than the foundation on which the relationship is based. Not that it isn't very important, of course; this is pretty far from the bare-metal "need sex/security to live" but it obviously isn't divorced from it (which is why "asexual" is really not that great a word, since people assume it applies to 'well obviously they don't feel sexual attraction or want to have sex', which is not quite what that means anyway, or it's a woman falsely claiming to be this as an excuse to pre-emptively stress-test [men say 'shit-test', but perhaps it should be considered neutral since it's obviously in the statistically-mean woman's best interests to do this] how stable the man she's dismissing is; they also use 'enby' like this too).

The problem with the model asexual union is that that's basically just how gay unions work (to the point that, just like every other 'got the wrong brain/software by mistake', I think grouping them together is more valid than anyone really wants to admit... which is probably why they're grouped together in the first place anyway), with failure modes more common to those relationships (so you can get one partner exercising destructive levels of openness in this kind of partnership and the other partner not meaningfully able to push back on it, which is how I hear Dan Savage's union is going at the moment). So you're not exempt from problems, you just get different ones (though it's not like marriages can't take on these characteristics anyway).

The other problem with asexual relationships, which nobody talks about, is that just like all non-traditional relationships they're best kept protected or private because their Pride in those worldviews (and I'll argue the sexual revolution was caused by asexual Pride, but in fairness technology had just made it possible at that time) has a corrosive effect on the normies, since they'll just take the tools the [gender-]space aliens left lying around and use them as weapons and in other similar ways in which they were not intended to be used, like the demolition of physical male intimacy because "haha that means ur gay". There was a point made that, for traditional relationships, the junior partner coming to resent being the junior partner in a relationship destroys it, and I think a lot of the ace stuff when it enters the ears of those people prompts that resentment, and because the relationship was built on nothing else it is destroyed. Senior partners can be made to resent their own position, too, which is [though by no means the only reason] why when they know they can just say "honey, I'm a woman now, deal with it" and make a massive mess some of them are indeed choosing that option.

All that to say that yeah, I do agree that a lot of the dating advice that comes from asexuals is not applicable to sexuals, it's very hard to tell which is which, that knowing not to take asexual advice when you're not asexual is very much an asset (which is partially why women freaked out about PUAs, because even if that wasn't a weapon some asexual left laying on the ground it very much had the character of one that was, and was unique in that it's the only one of the sort in the last 40 years that men could actually use against women).

That is correct, and I agree.

[Edit: moved to a sibling thread]

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats