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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2674 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 3, 2023

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.

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I'm lost. I thought the IDF was telling civilians in the northern Gaza to move south so they could bomb outposts in the north, but apparently people who fled south are getting killed in air strikes too. How often are civilians supposed to move? Do they always get advanced warning?

This doesn't look like you're inviting discussion or asking questions, but trying to collect links for the express purpose of culture warring. "Please provide me with examples of my outgroup doing boo things" isn't really what the Motte is for. If you want to collect your own links of your outgroup doing boo things and then use them to make your argument, fine. If you are are genuinely trying to find out how common this behavior is, that would be okay, I guess. But we'd rather the Motte not become the place for crowdsourcing your CW bullets.

Understood, I'll delete the post.

I don’t have any good evidence on hand, but I’m interested in reading the final result!

May I request somebody to create an effort-post on the CW thread for this conflict between the pan-African Python community and the West's LGBT groups? Would like to see TheMotte's analysis. I believe there's something to be said for neocolonialism in this incident.

I believe there's something to be said for neocolonialism in this incident.

Agreed in theory, but I don't see a practical way to seize control and crush the backwards locals to allow for colonial rule. Maybe we could give the African Python devs some Maxim guns when they get off the plane at SFO?

Anyone know a deep study or write-up on trustworthy faces and their characteristics? Or have any thoughts on this topic generally?

My intuition is that trustworthy faces usually have larger eyes and also less tense eyes. For some reason people who tense their eyes widely come off as less trustworthy to me. I think they are also more expressive and “reactive” generally. Think of the actors Paul Rudd or Timothee Chalamet (just for common facial references). These faces seem deeply trustworthy to me in a way that I don’t find in a John Krasinski. I don’t think attractiveness is biasing me here, as I would also find Steve Buscemi and Michael Cera trustworthy.

I wonder if trustworthiness is correlated to inability to lie well. And perhaps also to “emotional response reactivity” — if your face reacts to information stimuli immediately it becomes difficult to lie. Something that gives me an uncanny feeling is watching Eastern Europeans communicate without expressiveness. Cultural differences blah blah blah aside, how can you possibly gauge if someone is trustworthy if everyone holds an expression-less face? And yeah this is abused by sociopaths who cultivate charisma and expression on purpose, but I think these people are easy to spot due to facial tension and pauses after stimuli.

If there’s a way to measure trustworthy faces with high accuracy then we should probably be putting these people in all of our important leadership and security positions.

Being honest is a lot less mentally taxing than being a liar. Maybe there's something about the amount of tension in someone's face? Or it could be something as simple as people with bigger eyes seem more honest because they remind us of innocent babies? Human preference for neoteny is pretty well attested to in other contexts. I notice men with "honest faces" tend to be fat, non-threatening guys with large, expressive eyes and a wide smile.

I looked at the photographs of the people you mentioned, expecting to see an Eastwood/Biden-like permasquint on Krasinski, but I guess I have no idea what you mean, being an expressionless Eastern European.

Think of the actors Paul Rudd or Timothee Chalamet (just for common facial references). These faces seem deeply trustworthy to me in a way that I don’t find in a John Krasinski. I don’t think attractiveness is biasing me here, as I would also find Steve Buscemi and Michael Cera trustworthy.

If I didn't know who Michael Cera was, I wouldn't leave my girlfriend alone with him, as I'd think he'd try to fuck her and she'd get creeped out and upset. I wouldn't leave her alone with Timothee Chalamet, as I'd think he'd try to fuck her - and succeed.

Krasinski looks more trustworthy to me than either. Agreed on Rudd and Buscemi though.

Regarding your policy prescription at the end, I could easily see this backfiring if trustworthiness is also correlated with weakness or a people-pleaser disposition. It might be necessary to put scheming sociopaths in power and hope that your polity can direct their tendencies outwards—otherwise, if you just rely on honest and trustworthy leaders, the other guys’ sociopaths could just steamroll you.

@ZorbaTHut, I think the Markdown Machine broke.

Using a single is causing text to be struck through.

For example-

0 and 1 are not probabilities, 0 and ~1 are

(if this doesn't work, I'll link to the last comment where it broke for me)

The markdown parser honestly sort of sucks :/ We've had "improve it" on the list for a while, but it's a long list.

I think what happened is the single tilde matches with the tilde before the 0, but instead of strikethroughing the whole block it only goes to the end of the line

Attempt to ~falsify hypothesis

test test

test test

test ~ test

Screenshot of raw text before processing

/images/1701662740941279.webp

How it actually renders

/images/17016627781798427.webp

I usually describe myself as a classical liberal with libertarian tendencies.

Is that uh, the same as being neoliberal?

Doing my due diligence (looking at the Wikipedia article), I lean against "austerity", at least in most contexts that aren't Greece, I'm agnostic on privatization of everything, and while I think less regulation is directionally good, I have no idea how far they take it.

My impression is that "neoliberal" is a phrase invoked to describe people and not one they usually chose themselves, not that that's a particular deal breaker. If the shoe fits, albeit with some pinching, I'll wear it.

The only group of people who described themselves as neoliberal offline were a group of left-wing foreign policy wonks centred around The New Republic who thought that Reagan was right and the left was wrong about the Soviet Union. This has nothing to do with the modern meaning.

At some point neoliberal became a hostile term used by opponents to describe the pro-free-market movement that grew up around the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics, the Mont Pelerin society, various British libertarian thinktanks etc. and would inform the Thatcher/Reagan/Pinochet governments. Because people are not careful about the precise meaning of insults, it gradually became a snarl used by lefties to mean "Someone with economic policy views to my right who I dislike" in the same way that "fascist" now means "Someone with social policy views to my right who I dislike."

As far as I am aware, and Wikipedia agrees, nobody called themselves "neoliberal" during the early 21st century period when the term entered the popular consciousness in a big way.

/r/neoliberal is an ironic reclamatory use of the term by a bunch of internet autists. A few very online public intellectuals, notably Matthew Yglesias, have joined in, but in general namefags with prestigious platforms avoid the term and call themselves things like "classical liberals", "liberaltarians", "state capacity libertarians", or outside the US just "liberals". The politics of /r/neoliberal are basically pro-establishment and pro-globohomo, but less cucked about it than pro-establishment politicians. If I had a short way of summing up /r/neoliberal's politics, it would be "Globohomo is 90% correct on social issues*. On economic issues, explicit tax-and-spend redistribution is better than left-wing regulation." For various sizes of the redistributive state, this is consistent with everything from Thatcherism to Blairism to Swedish Social Democracy - and the /r/neoliberal crowd understand this, and find all of the above sympathetic. The big areas where the consensus on the sub differs from Blair/Clinton/Macron centrist mush in practice is that they want to abolish stupid-but-popular regulations like NIMBY zoning and that they tend to favour simple-but-probably-effective policies like LVT-funded UBI over policies which are heavily wonkified to produce no sympathetic losers or unpopular winners.

It is worth noting that the platform of "Free product and labour markets, competent government, regulation for health/safety/environment issues but not to promote economic fairness, appropriate redistribution designed to minimise distortions." is not novel - from a non-American perspective it is just the same old liberal tradition going back to Adam Smith (the British and Continental European traditions did support the New Deal/Keynesian economic model when it was the current thing, but they never made it part of their identity the way the American liberal tradition did). It is American libertarianism that is weird - every society that was super-Dunbar scale and rich enough to afford it has had coercively funded poor relief, government roads etc.

* And the culture on /r/neoliberal would so own being described as globohomo

I've always understood neolibs and neocons as being ready and willing to expand their ideas abroad. As in, "other countries should adopt free markets and free elections for their own good or else"

There's a post-ironic reclamation of the term over in /r/neoliberal which is similarly more on the 'state-capacity libertarianism' train (see tyler cowen) than austerity, though besides the austerity associations SEP has a fairly even-handed take. The sub's sidebar scratches the surface of the many attempts to navigate all the polysemy and pull out something coherent (see, e.g. genesis of a political swearword) but ideology would only be half of the coin. The other half would be the culture, particularly the internet-situated culture of it all which shares some genealogical roots with 2000s EA/rationalism/atheism/dev/techno-optimist blog culture but largely inflected via yimby/urbanism and the economics profession (the sub is a political shit-posty spinoff of /r/badeconomics). This differentiates them from the standard run-of-the-mill SSC readers by drawing much more from economists, particularly Acemoglu and Robinson in Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor (though SSC's anti-ancap faq remains seminal). There's a Fukuyamist thread running through there as well, that marks their foreign policy apart from the more isolationist tendencies typical to libertarianism.

For another angle, Liam Bright also identified the sub, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as a synecdoche for one of a few different trends in anglo-american analytic philosophy here.

Someone once asked me to cross-post a popular essay I wrote on the SSC sub (and here) to /r/neoliberal, which I suppose is evidence of something I guess! It also got like 10 upvotes there, which is an entirely different kind of evidence but maybe more that nobody read it haha.

The faster-paced discursive soul of the sub is in the daily discussion threads: https://neoliber.al/dt

Last I checked NL's daily discussion threads were actually by an order of magnitude the most active on all of reddit. The ping groups for special interests are part of that.

If your post wasn't posted to a ping group it'd be easy for it to get lost.

Perusing /r/neoliberal tells me it's not a fit for me, though I might use it as a slur. Though it seems many willingly apply it to themselves.

Is anyone else a successful person living like a NEET/incel? I was a nerdy kid growing up. Went to a technical university with few parties and studied Math. Realized that lectures were pretty boring and that there were better ones on youtube, so spent several years in a small apartment in front of a computer. To break the monotony, I made sure to exercise daily and got in great shape. I ended up working at a major tech company and did pretty well but had terrible work life balance. After inheriting a historic apartment in the downtown of a major city, I moved there even though I had no friends there. Three years later I have a good job, I am tall and in great shape and I live for almost free with views of a cathedral.

Yet my life is not really different from that of a NEET. I wake up at 9, sit in front of the computer for most of the day except for exercise and shopping. I have a limited social life and haven't had a girlfriend in years. My life wouldn't be that different if I was living in my parent's basement and gaming instead of working. The only tangible difference would be that I could order fewer cool things online, and I wouldn't have to answer emails.

I can't decide if I am a winning high status male or an incel loser, I seem to be at both ends of the spectrum at once.

I feel you and @f3zinker

I'm single and work remote. But I was actually NEET for a long time and my current situation feels so much better. While NEET I was so embarrassed I would dread meeting people in case they asked what I did for a living, which made the social isolation much worse. Every week as a NEET is a week down the drain. Now my bank account grows at the end of each month, my YoE grows, and I'll eventually get promoted without doing anything in particular.

This year I have made new friends. The more friends you have, the easier it is to meet people. It's an exponential relationship. But an exponential stays pretty flat for a while before it takes off, so you have to bear through the flat stage. I think you just have to pick something and just keep turning up. I go to tech meetups. I've got to know the regulars. There was a nerdy music gig a while ago, I asked a couple of them if they were interested and we went together. It was a success. There's another gig coming up and now more people are interested. At this stage it feels like I've got a growing group of people I know, with shared interests, that I can do certain social things with. At the very least, I know when I go a monthly meet up, I will see some friendly familiar faces and we can catch up. It did take about a year to get here.

I don't meet many women like this, it's true. But it does feel nice to have a semblance of a social life. I have pictures of me doing things for the dating apps, I have things to talk about on dates, and am slowing becoming a more interesting and datable person.

I didn't wind up in STEM, but otherwise, yeah.

You’re not high status, for starters. You’re a tech worker. Scrub that misconception from your mind, lest you become yet another tech twink bemoaning your lack of pussy despite how amazing you think you are.

The rest of your post makes me lean “loser,” because I don’t find any of your boasts particularly impressive. If anything, they’re a little sad. One of your crowning achievements is that you were given something nice by someone else, for example.

So yeah, you seem like another dime a dozen loser with a shitty tech job. You achieved the bare minimum a man should achieve: becoming self-sufficient.

This is not helpful and unnecessarily personal. You seem to have spun up a new account for no other reason than to shit on someone. Normally I'd give you a warning or a temp ban, but since you're obviously not a new user, just someone creating an alt to be an asshole, begone.

This is not helpful and unnecessarily personal.

Unnecessarily personal questions invite unnecessarily personal answers. But since you would like to enforce an absurd standard, I will refer to this tech worker as an “it” to satisfy your preference.

Whether or not my response was helpful to it is irrelevant. It did not ask for help. It asked for feedback. And judging by the rest of the feedback it got, I am the only person that isn’t a mediocre tech worker or pussy starved nerd willing to offer it feedback. Some would argue that makes my feedback more helpful than talking to a mirror. Either way, I don’t care if I helped it or not. Judging by the fact that it reported my post, it didn’t actually want honest answers, only commiseration. Which means it posted in bad faith. I expect you to moderate its post in short order for this rules violation.

You seem to have spun up a new account for no other reason than to shit on someone.

I do not keep a “main” account here or anywhere on the internet. I create new accounts every week or so anywhere that requires its participants to self-identify. I am not interested in building relationships with things on the internet. That’s some more impersonal language for you, moderator.

If it were up to me, this website would be anonymous and arguments made here would rest on their own merits, not some contrived and undeserved token of respect afforded to recognizable “community” members. But I didn’t make your website, moderator, so I must work around its design flaws.

But since you would like to enforce an absurd standard, I will refer to this tech worker as an “it” to satisfy your preference.

This is the standard we hold all posters to. Do not personally insult people. That would include calling someone "it."

Since you've declared your account is a throwaway created with bad intent, bye.

Yes to some extent. I landed a high paying job out of college.

I go to work at 9am and leave at 9 or 10 pm. I interact with coworkers but I doubt that counts. Most of my waking hours are spent staring at a screen, writing code, some days I don't even speak to my coworkers.

I usually meet up with a friend or two on the weekends.

But I haven't gone on a date or even met/spoke to a new woman since 2021. Working in tech, having friends who are also in tech certainly isn't helping. I'm having an extremely difficult time meeting women at all, I just don't cross paths with any in my day to day life. And I'm convinced it will be this way forever unless I do something extremely drastic like change careers or enroll in a master's program or something, or move to a new country and do a hard reset on my social life. Given I am 26, this practically makes me severely low status.

But I haven't gone on a date or even met/spoke to a new woman since 2021

Go to dance lessons. You'll be holding a different woman by the back everytime the teacher says "change partners".

I'm aware. However I absolutely detest partner dancing and I don't know if it's even worth doing something that you hate just to meet women. Isn't it part of the lore that women will smell you only being there for women anyways?

It's generally worth trying imo. You can dislike a hobby initially but it grows on you with time, and dancing is actually a prime candidate for this. I also didn't really like (the thought of) dancing when I was a teen, but where I'm from it's social suicide to not take dancing classes so I joined everyone else. If you're (sufficiently) honest to others and say something along the lines of "yes dancing makes me a bit awkward, but I want to get out of my comfort zone and try something new" then they'll understand. Just don't go for bald-faced lying a la "dancing is amazing I totally love it", that's what puts (most) women off. Ideally you have a platonic female friend as a standard dance partner, and it goes without saying that you make extra sure to be very well-kempt. If you don't have any platonic female friends, afaik in some places it's relatively easy online to find a dance partner beforehand. Dancing is still often skewed quite feminine, and many women feel extremely self-conscious about turning up without a partner and then not being asked out. Needless to say, these women also are very often looking to date.

It's also a great kind of desensitisation training to make you less awkward around body contact with women, which is extremely useful for the neet-adjacent and will greatly help you with general dating. Nothing is more off-putting for women than a guy who struggles to even touch them, and vice-versa dancing is a great precursor to sex. So even if you go bar-diving or online-dating and subsequently meet in a bar, it'll probably help you.

Finally, if you want to do it for dating, you should try to look especially for dancing in informal settings. For example, in my city a bar had a "salsa night". But for those you should have some experience beforehand, and you will usually not automatically get partnered with a women, so it's extra important to bring someone with you.

where I'm from it's social suicide to not take dancing classes

Austria?

Almost. I can't really tell you more for opsec reasons, but it's a conservative rural catholic community.

Isn't it part of the lore that women will smell you only being there for women anyways

Please don't do this. It's not just the women who will smell you out, the men can easily tell too who's there to learn and who just thought this was a quick way to find women, it's disruptive to the whole class. Also ideally you should be treating the 70 year old grandma there in the same way as you would treat the super hot 23 year old you like the looks of, you are there to learn after all and physical contact with women is just a side effect. Grandma is probably a better dancer too with all her years of experience (at least that's what I've found).

My grandma and >40 year old rizz is impeccable, not worried about that :^)

I believe that men who only go to pull do give off a vibe, yes. Putting in the effort to git gud stops you from giving off this vibe. I also believed that I wouldn't enjoy partner dancing, but it's brought me a lot of fun and pretty much all of my relationships over the years.

My day job has me scurrying around a hospital, so at least I'm out of the house, and I have somehow, against all reason to the contrary, accrued friends and a girlfriend who drag me places.

In the absence of the above, I think I'd likely be a shut-in playing video games, certainly that's what I like to do with my spare time, and I'm not really one for spontaneous socializing.

I haven't had a girlfriend in years, but I have low sex-drive. I believe I'm on the autism spectrum and being around people for extended periods of time is emotionally draining to me. I would describe my life as content. Objectively, I have decent career. I'm in situations where I could find a girlfriend if I wanted to, but it doesn't seem worth the effort unless I were to encounter a woman who was very unique and idiosyncratic in ways that complimented my neurodivergence.

There are definitely ways to live a fulfilling life without a romantic partner, but it often requires finding meaning and connection from other sources. I think your limited social life may be a source of dissatisfaction in your life. I am able to get many of my social needs met through a close friend, social events where we talk about deeper topics, and some spiritual exploration.

You might consider asking yourself questions along the lines of:

  • Does the way I'm living provide a meaningful life to me?
  • Do I feel a sense of connection to others and/or the world?

If you are experience dissatisfaction in areas like those then that would probably indicate that on some level you want more out of life and need to make changes. The changes may be unrelated to your relationship status.

You say your life isn’t so different to a NEET except in that you have a good job and money, but in the same way your life isn’t that much different to a successful normal person except in that you have no close social relationships; it’s not clear the latter comparison is less accurate than the former (and in fact I’d say it’s more so).

The ‘NEET problem’ is less about loneliness or friendlessness (there’s nothing in NEET to describe lack of friends, plenty of /r9k/cels have friends) and more about the fact that most people ought to be in education, employment or training if before retirement age. I know plenty of rich NEETs and while most are depressed they’re not burdens on society in the same way and they don’t face the risk of being poor forever the way non-rich NEETs do.

Whether you’re a high status male or an incel depends on whether or not you’re involuntarily celibate, I guess. By your description I’d say the answer is no.

Let's see. I assume the average NEET is someone who dropped out of / graduated from high school / college but didn't find a job for whatever reason. Also assuming that NEETs are a minority, most of your former classmates, who probably form most of the social circle you had, moved away and/or found jobs if you're a NEET, so even if they want to keep hanging out with you, they'll have far fewer opportunities for it, especially if they enter long-term relationships, which you're unlikely to do. They'll enter new social circles which don't include you. Also you'll obviously lack the social circle that usually comes with starting work at a company. So I'd say that it's mostly about friendlessness and loneliness.

Vertical mice: yes or no? Should I be aware of something if I am thinking of buying one?

Yes, I have an MX Vertical and have used it for ~5 years. I no longer have any wrist pain (well, except for when I get carried away scrolling my phone). No downsides that I'm aware of, and it's occasionally a good convo starter in the office.

Look in to split keyboards as well.

Normally I see those as a solution to specific ergonomic problem, is there a reason you're thinking of getting one?

Personally, my strategy to avoid RSI is to use a trackball when working at home, mouse at the office.

My right wrist hurts when I try to bend it beyond 90 degrees forwards or backwards, while my left one doesn't.

I just tried that and I'm pretty sure the average human wrist isn't meant to bend more than that. It's about the limit of my flexibility, if not outright painful unless I force it.

No, it's not meant to bend more than that unless your joints are hypermobile, but it's not supposed to hurt when you try. I am not talking about BJJ joint locks, just yoga-level mild force. When I do this to my left hand, I think, "yes, this is a nice stretch". When I do this to my right one, I think, "ow, this is not good"

Yes. I started having wrist pain about 5 years ago in my right wrist, to the point where it was seriously impacting my work. I did some research and bought a cheap vertical mouse, and my pain went went away in about a week and never came back. Best $25 I ever spent.

If you have larger hands, make sure to get a larger mouse, though. They vary a lot in size and I find smaller ones not nearly as comfortable.

Thanks. I have little bitch hands, to quote Nick Shabazz, so I will be looking for a smaller mouse.

Nah. Unless you're a fps gamer your focus should be on the keyboard. And even before that, your skills.

Do you know your way around the terminal?

Do you know keyboard shortcuts?

Are those shortcuts consistent among your browser, editor and terminal?

Do you have a window manager?

I don't think FPS gamers are the target audience of vertical mice. My wrist started to hurt and my LMB started misclicking, so I am looking for a new ergonomic mouse.

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Hurewitz' The Struggle for Palestine. It's old but influential, and looks like it has a good reputation.

Also inching through von Braun's Project Mars - A Technical Tale, after the fictional Wernher's superb and subsequently disastrous hearing in For All Mankind.

Reading Little Women and wow its fantastic. Highly recommend it.

Hume's Enquiries concerning Human Understanding to brush up on a book I've had a lot of second-hand exposure to but never actually read, and Costin Alamariu's Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy.

I found A Peace to End All Peace to be a very entertaining account of British incompetence surrounding World War One in the Ottoman Empire.

What do we know about the effectiveness of donating money to political parties and campaigns?

What I'm getting at is - I often hear about "Candidate X is out-fundraising Candidate Y 2 to 1," or something like that. But how relevant is that to political outcomes? It occurs to me that I can't see the direction of the causal arrow here. Couldn't it just mean that Candidate X is already more popular, and therefore raises more money? What is that money used for?

If I want Candidate X to win, does it follow that I should donate money to that candidate or to their party? If I wanted the Democratic Party to win in my area - should I donate money to them? Does it matter at all? I just can't quite see the relationship of my donating money to achieving my desired political outcomes.

Couldn't it just mean that Candidate X is already more popular, and therefore raises more money?

My understanding of the political science consensus is basically that: funds raised is just another way to measure popularity like polling numbers (with the obvious skew of people with more money and more willing to give it to candidates getting weighted heavier); the actual things the money is spent on doesn't seem to make a huge impact on election results.

As the other commenters mention, this might not be true in narrow situations like early on in a primary to a non-well-known candidate.

You're going to get the most bang for your buck donating to very local candidates very early. A little cash, even a few hundred dollars, to a county executive campaign in the primary can make life a lot easier. A boat load of cash to a Senate candidate in the general won't make any difference.

Scott’s written about it more than once!

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/19/plutocracy-isnt-about-money/

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/

My conclusion is that spending on campaigns is pretty inefficient. There’s got to be a breakpoint somewhere, such that minimum wage laborers can’t expect to survive running for President. Once you cross that threshold, though, additional money isn’t worth too much.

Spending on lobbying might do better, or maybe it’s just perceived as better, but still won’t cause any landslide changes. Elites spend more on politics than proles, probably because of diminishing marginal value—politics is a bit of a luxury cause. But they don’t outspend to the level you’d expect if they could outright buy legislation.

I could have put this in Wellness Wednesday, but I'll phrase this as a question:

When am I allowed to mace a hobo?

The story: I'm working at a food stand at a winter market festival downtown for a month. It's over $25/hr after the copious tips, and short 6-hour shifts, but my ulterior motive is about getting an In with the bar running it, and just to network amongst the Hospitality Folk.

But, this means I'm taking the CTA for a change, and thus keep seeing things that can't be unseen. The other day, there's a ranting man on the opposite platform, wandering up and down it, shouting nonsense. Not old, bent, or decrepit, cheap clothes that are still in one piece. I'm waiting for my train, and see him eventually fixate on a woman and start leaning in to her and gabbling. She stands there frozen and ignores him as he shuffles around her like a giant annoying pigeon. There's a bunch of back-and-forth of this guy wandering away, coming back, going down the stairs, then back up, then looming over her and gabbling at her. I'm staring the whole time with what must have been a thunderous expression, the woman meets my gaze a few times and mouths something once. Both of them are black, incidentally; she looks like a nurse or something adjacent: South-Side Respectable. I'm trying very very hard to control my temper and not escalate the situation, actual physical harm in these situations is pretty rare, this is just emotionally harrowing for the poor woman.

He wanders away a bit and she makes a move for the stairs, I see him start to follow, and I've finally had e-fucking-nough. I go down the stairs and meet her sheltering by the turnstyles. He sees me and stops on the stairs, starts going up and down them, in that attempt to be nonchalant that the mentally ill always fail at. My train is a minute away, she's crying, I say it's okay, and shout to the attendant "Hey, there's a ranty hobo that isn't leaving this woman alone. She needs help."

With my train arriving and my shift starting soon, I go back up to my platform, get on the train, and see though the window that same woman, standing on the platform, crying, while the hobo stands behind her gabbling. She's got her own train to catch. This is what I'm left with as my train leaves the station.

After, of course, I realize the optimal move would have been to being her up to my platform, get on my train til the next hobo-free platform, then continue on her way. My presence alone would probably have dissuaded him. But I didn't want to be late, I didn't want to escalate the situation, and I didn't want to be tempted to beat up a brain-rotted hobo.

Cut to work.

Background: One of my fellow döner-kabob-slingers is a early-30s woman that I was initially a bit taken with; she introduced herself to me as recently-divorced, asked me if I had a partner or not, and just generally paid way more attention to me than I'm accustomed to (which felt good, because it doesn't happen much, which made me sad. But also made me uncomfortable, because of the unfamiliarity of it, which also made me sad.) There's a bit more incidental physical contact from her than necessary. She's skinny and wide-faced and granola-y, we talk about nature and wildlife stuff; she's involved with urban ecology project planning and...equity. Dang. Also, I later overhear her talking about Polyamory or some shit (Polyamory as practiced by women is just laundered Friendzoning/Cucking, Polyamory as practiced my men is just laundered Playa-ing. She wants to fuck around but needs a buzzword for it). So my interest is...reduced. The woman who mutilated my heart in 2019 was also a recently-separated devorcé, fool me once and all that.

Anyways, I arrive at work all bent out of shape and want to talk about it. So I ask my not-crush, as someone who's lived in Chicago for a while, and as a woman, if stuff like that ever happens to her and what bystanders can do to help without making the situation worse. I narrarate the story pretty much as I do here. (I leave out the part about them both being black, it isn't relevant). I'm genuinely looking for advice, but I also want to untangle my feelings, and, yeah, I want to convey to her that I'm the sort of person that struggles to not White Knight.

The first thing she says?

"I think you're trivializing that poor man's mental illness by calling him a gabbling hobo."

The walls go up inside me. She's Orthodox Woke. "Yes, I should have been more technical: Bum, Gabbling Stalker Variant, Able-Bodied."

"You don't understand, access to mental health services has been reduced because Republicans-

"I'll go tell that woman to not cry, then, it's Ronald Reagan's fault for kicking him out of his mental hospital."

So that's the story of how I stopped being attracted to someone.

Just to quickly double-check, I ran this story past a close female friend who moved here from Nebraska, and an apolitical Chicago native bartender, and both had different flavors of "What the actual fuck?" Reactions. She was speechless, he laughed.

Because of stuff that's happened to me, I carry a can of mace on my keys. But I notice my hand going for it in situations like this, where I'm almost looking for an excuse to use it, and I'm worried I'm eventually going to spray a particularly-annoying panhandler in the face.

There are two questions here:

1: When are you allowed to mace a hobo? If you're a straight white male in Chicago, probably never. The system sees you as the enemy. You've let on that you are straight and male. If you're white, you're out of luck. If you're black, you get some slack, but not that much if straight, male, and middle-class.

2: When should you mace a hobo? South Side Respectable Nurse is one of us. Only he physically attacks her, and you are capable of defending her, you are morally obligated to do so. "Capable" is doing a lot of work here - bums get in fights all the time, they're plenty quick, and they usually have a weapon. Even your average fit young male is in no condition to fight a bum. If it's two on one (South Side Respectable might not take the initiative, but if you swing she will swing too), and you have a can of mace, you just might have even odds.

I'd try to interpose and steer her away into a separate car, but fighting a bum is a no-win situation that is to be avoided. If the fight cannot be avoided you will probably be seriously injured and face legal consequences, but if it must be done, it must be done.

As to your attraction: South Side Respectable sounds like a much better date than your coworker, to be honest. Your coworker just dunked on you. She doesn't actually care about the homeless guy. You just served her up a risk-free softball that allowed her to pretend to demonstrate that she is more empathetic and intersectional than you, the straight male punching bag of her society.

In reality, if she was in the CTA she would be clinging to the nearest able-bodied straight white male.

Should you see a hobo harassing a wokist, you should remember they're not one of us. You should slink into the background, root for the hobo, and enjoy your kebab.

It saddens me to know that my younger sister would have had exactly the same reaction as your not-crush.

Had I found myself in your situation, I wouldn't have maced him except in literal self-defence. In my experience in similar situations, it's usually sufficient to interpose yourself between the crazy homeless guy and his target, make yourself look as big and imposing as possible, and loudly tell him to get lost. (Context: I'm a 6-foot broad-shouldered guy. I acknowledge this approach may not have the same effect if you aren't as big as the junkie.) Even the most addled junkie will usually take the hint and leave. I imagine your employer would understand you being a few minutes' late for work, especially if you spin it as you protecting a lone Woman of Colour from the predations of etc.

"I think you're trivializing that poor man's mental illness by calling him a gabbling hobo."

This is her first response? I have my doubts she would have the same attitude if she was in the woman on the platform's position.

I despise sanctimony like this. Having a mental illness is not cart blanche to harass, stalk or assault others. She's infantilizing the guy completely and trying to displace the culpability onto 'republicans' of all things. I've seen guy's like that move away instinctively when confronted by an intimidating presence, so her treating him like a force of nature without any agency is pretty disgusting. Bigotry of low expectations and all that.

When am I allowed to mace a hobo?

If that is a question that you really want to know the answer to then ask a police officer that is stationed in area. They are the ones that enforce the rules/laws so they should be able to give you an idea of how this would play out and may give you some tips on how to do it in a way that would cause the least amount of trouble for you. They probably dislike dealing with the hobos so they might be incentivized to give you useful advice in dealing with the situation. The caveat being that an individual police officer may not speak for the whole department.

I think a more relevant question is:

  • When should you mace a hobo?

The answer to that question is probably close to never, unless you are personally in danger and can't deescalate the situation in some other way.

Hobos have a lot less to lose than you. A sad reality, as you are probably aware, is that many times the person who cares the least about the consequences of their actions often has a power advantage in the situation. Gabbling hobos usually fall into at least one of 2 general buckets:

  • Oblivious to some relevant parts of reality and therefore dangerous because their behavior is unpredictable
  • Know that they can get away with their behavior because other people don't want to deal with the potential social/legal consequences of trying to stop them.

Furthermore, this question has an ethical component:

  • Why should you intervene to help other people if it is not your job and has no benefit to you?

My personal view on this is something like this: If society encourages/rewards me for helping people, and there is no risk of consequences to me, then I will often be happy to help other people. To a limit of course: I'm not being paid to do it and therefore much of my time needs to be spent pursuing my own economic interests. There are many benefits to society (and therefore me as participant in said society) if people help each other out, and doing good deeds can often be its own reward.

However, in your story so mention your coworker's attitude to this situation was to worry about that "that poor man's mental illness" instead of encouraging you to help the woman. Ideally, society's response to standing up to hobos that are harassing people would be something like this:

  • The people in the area appreciate and cheer when someone stands up to the hobo.
  • If you tell the story of standing up to a hobo the response is near 100% that you are good person who did a good deed.
  • The authorities have a clear policy that it is ok to mace hobos if they are harassing someone and the authorities will not take any action against you.
  • People that justifiably mace hobos never face legal consequences.

If those conditions are not all met then my default response would be that I'm only responsible and obligated to solve problems that personally impact me. If there is a problem in society where those conditions are not met then other people need to change their norms and attitudes to incentivize me to help them.

If society wants to tolerate anti-social behaviors in an attempt to be more compassionate towards people suffering mental health issues then that is fine. Just don't expect people to be good Samaritans when that "tolerance" creates social stigma against intervening in situations where someone with mental health issues is causing problems for others.

I'll find other situations and environments where my help is appreciated and respected.

To start, if that was my mother/sister/girlfriend/whatever, I probably would've started something with a willingness to use violence if he doesn't back down. Yes, it's a bad idea to try to intimidate/reason with a crazy person. But some things are important, damnit. But I don't think it would be legally justified to mace him, if you were charged for it(and that seems like an if) then "but he was making someone/me uncomfortable" doesn't cut it. You generally need an imminent danger, and I think in Illinois/Chicago you also need to have attempted to get away from him.

Well, the scenario that involved mace I imagined playing out was me getting between them and telling him to go away, then him either getting physical or saying something technically threatening, then me macing him, then using more physical force on the debuffed target if necessary. Which I still wasn't happy with.

That’s probably illegal, although check your location’s self defense laws, but I don’t understand why it would be morally wrong.

When am I allowed to mace a hobo?

I don't have much to say in regards to the story and when you morally/culturally would be allowed to, but make sure you're aware of when you'd be legally allowed to if nothing else. Some places would charge you with something if you use mace against a person even in self-defense.

Anyone got got recommendations for podcasts/Youtube channels focused on history or philosophy? I listen at work where my hands are kept busy so anything longform or a good playlist of shorter stuff would be good to minimise having to pull my phone out.

MartyrMade. The Israel/Palestine series is particularly topically relevant presently, but I think the Jim Jones series is his best work. Darryl Cooper comes off as a very different guy on his podcast than the bombastic Twitter personality, so if you're put off by having encountered him in social media format, don't be - he's even-handed and tries to treat everyone in each conflict as agentic human beings worth your empathy.

Age of Napoleon is a favorite of mine that hasn't been mentioned yet. He's a little over 100 episodes in and has just gotten to the height of the Empire.

Podcasts I've enjoyed in rough order of when I remember listening to them:

  • History of Rome
  • Revolutions
  • History of Byzantium
  • When Diplomacy Fails (shout out to their Thirty Years War megaseries)
  • A Japanese history podcast I can't remember/find, but it seems like other good podcasts about the Sengoku Jidai have come out since then
  • The Hellenistic Age
  • The History of Egypt Podcast
  • The Timur Podcast
  • Reconquista (have not tried the main History of the Crusades podcast, but Reconquista is good)
  • The Cost of Glory (newish, but imo the best current history podcast)
  • Russians With Attitude's history podcasts
  • The Bailey

Kings and Generals and Historia Civilis are good for youtube channels. Johannes Niederhauser is pretty active on YouTube iirc, but I don't know how much guys like him, Michael Millerman, etc. do real stuff rather than teasers for their courses.

Hardcore History is very entertaining but isn't the most accurate podcast out there. I still enjoy it but would consider it a more intro to history stuff.

Revolutions by Mike Duncan is probably my favourite overall history podcast, very polished, has different seasons of content covering different revolutions, accurate and not particularly biased delivery.

The History of Rome, also by Mike Duncan, is also quite good but was his first podcast and not as polished. But if you love Rome, it's a good one.

The History of the Byzantine Empire is a solid spiritual successor to the History of Rome.

End of Civilizations posts infrequently but they're often quite interesting and very well produced.

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is probably the best podcast about philosophy. Episodes are twenty minutes long, but with a little effort you should be able to create a playlist.

Maybe a cringe question but is there a place on the Internet that's like whitepills for nerds?

Like /r/wholesomememes is way too normie (and often even openly political, like "my side of this issue won, yay wholesomeness")

And I don't know what /r/whitepill, /r/whitepills/, and /r/thewhitepill were supposed to be but they're all private lmao

Basically just want a place where people worried about some form of doom (whether from WW3, internal takeover of USA, AI, what have you) share well reasoned arguments against doom and why WAGMI

Because my mind is so so biased toward doom, I think it would be healthy to spend a little time in such a place.

This is quite late, but I'd recommend a few posts from Noah Smith's substack

He has ones I find myself going back to when I need some optimism like Techno-optimism for 2023 and https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/climate-optimism-of-the-will. He's an economics blogger at heart so the majority of what he writes is about the economy, but even that can be quite positive when compared to a lot of the negativity surrounding cost of living.

Mike Solana has a newsletter also called The White Pill which is a roundup of positive tech/innovation news

I watch youtube videos about yachts, nature and people building cool houses when I feel like that.

/r/neoliberal is pretty pro-status quo and very pro-Biden. I don't know if the politics would be a turn off for you, but if you just want news stories about how Biden's doing a great job and that the economy is doing much better than lots of people think, it'd be a pretty good sub I think.

Yeah honestly the politics that turns me off is the aggressive stuff, I may actually enjoy a bunch of people who think the adults are in charge and there's no major foreseeable reason to worry. Thanks for the tip

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