site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work.

There are traps involved in the hard work ethic, you can justify a lot of pain for very little gain. I'm not bitter about it because I did learn some useful skills and it was good for my character, but a friend of mine who milked the welfare system for years while picking up multiple marketable skills has at last catapulted far beyond me in earning power (his work ethic was impressive in its own sense of course). It really does seem like 'learn a marketable skill by whatever means' is the path to success, hard work doesn't really pay off in shitty jobs where there are very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).

Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.

Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.

You only have to win once if you're looking for a wife!

pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility

What does this mean?

My friend runs a language exchange and while it's a great place to meet women and overcome awkwardness, he's got lots of stories about a particular type of guy who has a combination of awkardness and lack of humility that eventually leads to their banning from the group (and sometimes making threats to my friend afterward). The ego comes into play when they realise no one likes them and they try to save face by saying stuff like (real examples) "I'm a doctor/I'm a lawyer and I'll sue/I get laid all the time anyway (with prostitutes)".

Being awkard is fine, being persistent in overcoming it is good, refusing to take well-intentioned feedback from guys who are clearly more socially adept can be a bad move.

My interpretation of this was that it was a case of the man bitterly going on a misogynistic rant about women who don't appreciate his greatness and thus leading to being subject to social ostracization and/or bullying. I've seen this kind of thing happen from time to time in my online circles.

very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).

Honestly that's something I've increasingly noticed as I reach my late twenties and look at my friends.

Majority of whom have somewhat capped out in the first 3-4 rungs of their career where it's worker-centric & essentially an automatic promotion every couple years for just being technically proficient, and now it's way more of a patience/politics game to ascend managerial rungs. I managed to sidestep a lot of that via being super aggressive with company-switching + using some startups to get to a position of early seniority, but increasingly noticing my compatriots stalling out.

Although I think you are correct, I think your argument and anyone else making that argument is missing the point.

Successfully getting a woman has always been a numbers game, true. Our fathers might have had to try 50 times, we might have to try 100 times. This discrepancy is what needs to be dissected and analyzed. The man who would have given up at 57 tries would be shit out of luck nowadays. Individually sure, just try more, do everything more, divert more of your time and attention to becoming sexually attractive, yeah whatever. On a societal level it's a lot harder than that. At one point let that be 50,100,150,200 average trails, things become unsustainable because it just becomes too hard for the excess time, resources and loss of surplus/Dead weight loss (Effort post on this coming soon) to not leak into other domains of life/society. Least of all, if you were declared king, would you really want a plurality of your populace live lives of quite suffering? (I know, I know, male suffering doesn't count).

we might have to try 100 times

Far easier to do it at industrial scale these days, though. I managed to go on first dates with 50 different women last year in a mid-sized metro, all from the strength of polite conversation on an app. I'm fairly sure the vast majority of my forefathers wouldn't have met 50 'viable' women (Not that the majority of that 50 turned out to be viable after a first date) in a lifetime of living in a small agrarian village.

What % of those 50 were viable?

Of those who weren't, what were the common reasons?

I'd say 3 or 4 where I had instantaneous 'I would marry this woman' vibes, probably 15ish where I was like down for a second date. Still ticking with some of those.

I started from a pretty low place in terms of attractiveness so a lot of the early ones were just dealing with some combination of obesity, weak English skills (very multicultural society) or lack of a real lifepath which spaced them.

Jesus, I thought I was a man slut for dating (on average) a new woman every month before covid. Why did you hook up new dates when you found women you would marry? Pursue one of them! You might be married by now if you had slowed down a bit, they probably sensed you were playing the field!

First 30 or so were during a rapid weightloss/self-improvement phase and it was more about getting through dating anxiety through exposure therapy. Very few actual leads in there.

Still going with one or two of the strong vibe ones, but online dating people are super flaky.

Aha, well in that case well done! Very well done, I hope you are proud of yourself.

But this honestly just implies GREATER COMPETITION.

If it's easier to do it, more people are going to try and thus the red-queen-race effect is that everyone is putting in more effort, and yet is less likely to stand out.

It's not the kind of industrial scale that is producing more viable matches/relationships, it is apparently just forcing everyone to make more attempts for comparatively fewer results.

Now, if the apps were better at sorting people towards those they are likely to click with rather than trying to addict people to the dopamine hit of "maybe this next person is THE ONE" swiping, it'd be different. but maximizing throughput is not the same as improving everyone's odds.

True, and it's multi-faceted.

The girls I met who I was super-enthused about probably saw me as being towards the lower end of their prospects (assuming that attractiveness is the same for everybody), thereby creating a mismatch.

Like if I'm a Male 6/10 who's getting normally distributed dates at an average of say a Female 4.5/10 (since inherent gender gap), I'm gonna look like a great prospect to my 3/10's who I'm not gonna want and I'm gonna see the fellow occasional 6/10 as a great lead but not get the same enthusiasm in return since their dating range will have some 8/10's.

Makes me wonder if the solution is to ban apps which rely on self selection and mass exposure to all other users.

And get the guys who design the trading engines for major stock exchanges to set up apps that are solely designed to match people of similar 'market value' and completely exclude users from even seeing others' profiles where the mismatch/price spread is too great, so people are only getting matched with those who are similarly 'priced' and thus actually willing to 'trade' for a dating relationship with that person.

This is a function that matchmakers perform, but that's usually expensive and doesn't scale as well.

I think the issue is the intergender mismatch and the casual sex thing that stops direct alignment.

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