Seriouslypleasedropit comments on Most men are not afraid of commitment:
Bob and Jane have some sort of prelude romance and move in together. Either because Bob is just that cool, Jane that desperate, or whatever, Bob hasn’t actually had to put forth that much effort into the relationship.
Time passes. Jane gets nervous and starts pushing for “committment.”
He is making a larger point, but he has inadvertently framed Jane’s promiscuity in the way Jane would do.
In reality, Jane has had no commitment sex with a string of men, demanding varying degrees of displays of investment by the men along the way. With Bob, Jane decides that she wants him to signal greater investment in their sexual relationship by moving in together. Bob agrees because he is either happy to do so because he expects more sex due to proximity, because he is hoping Jane will be the woman who finally commits to him, or because he feels pressured by threatened loss of sex.
The important part is that Jane has secured the status of public investment while keeping her options entirely open. If Jane decides that she can do better, she will toss him aside as she has done with so many other men, and find a new man to have sex with. Eventually Jane finds that one of these men is the one she wants to marry, so she pressures him to propose. He could be man #3 in her quest, or man #53. If she chooses man #53 and he doesn’t propose, Jane loudly complains that all men are afraid of commitment. And Jane should know, given her wide experience with men.
Jane then says to any conservative who will listen (which is pretty much every conservative):
Look at cruel Bob. He moved in together with me for free sex, but now I’m afraid he isn’t going to commit. He was just using me!
And the conservative is outraged. Here Jane is following the sacred path to marriage, tirelessly sampling penises (poor Jane sampled 53 just to be thorough) until she finds the one whose owner owes her a marriage vow, and now that she found the one she wants to propose he is ruining the whole thing!
Owes her a wedding vow… seems to be the key here.
Why not discuss a real life example: Aaron Rodgers and Olivia Munn.
She is publicly trying to pressure / shame him into marriage (because if he thought about it, he would realize what a terrible “catch” she would be).
He turned 33 in Dec. She turns 37 in July.
She’s not giving him children (due to age if nothing else).
She’s hitting the wall with menopause not far behind.
She gave her best years to other guys. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say her N count was at least 25.
And she’s playing the victim, because he doesn’t want to put a ring on THAT.
Dalrock
…now that she found the one she wants to propose he is ruining the whole thing!
Weak men are always ruining feminism by failing to ManUP! and marry …
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In a fem-centric social order only women are allowed to validate what ‘commitment’ really is. Men commit to countless other relations and institutions in life – business ventures, careers, military service, public service, personal development, their education, family duty – yet the only time we are allowed to validate a man’s commitment is when that commitment involves a woman and monogamy.
This is the degree of Blue Pill conditioned control of the Feminine Imperative; only women can validate men’s commitment and by extension his personal worth. Granted, men can simply brush this off, but the only publicly appreciated form of commitment is when it applies to women. And this, in turn is a control measure of women’s solipsistic natures – nothing is valid outside of a context that applies directly to a woman.
A man may have a long and distinguished military career, with all the honors that this dedication and commitment represents, but in a feminine-primary social order all of that honor for commitment is dependent on, and qualified by, his capacity to commit to a woman. This is the degree of control the Feminine Imperative has; that a man’s personal merit can be validated or erased by how well he serves women.
Understanding this is the key to understanding that the make-believe boyfriend/girlfriend model of mate selection overwhelmingly favors the female at the cost of the male.
@Rollo
Excellently said.
Understanding this is the key to understanding that the make-believe boyfriend/girlfriend model of mate selection overwhelmingly favors the female at the cost of the male.
Yep, indeed. It does tip later on, if Jane waits too long to cash in her chips, but while she’s on her “run”, she has a huge advantage because she can sample and sample and sample for quite some time.
“the make-believe boyfriend/girlfriend model of mate selection” – For Christians this model is not found in the Bible. There is only marriage, or not marriage. There are no semi-relationships. It is all or nothing and for life. They were even required to get a divorce for betrothal.
When I hear this phrase now I just nod my head and agree. What else they gonna do, force me to get married, ha!
Pull a Leo and just keep stating you haven’t found the ‘One’ yet. It’s a tough search, could last…. I don’t know… at least another 40 years or so..
Understanding this is the key to understanding that the make-believe boyfriend/girlfriend model of mate selection overwhelmingly favors the female at the cost of the male.
As a teaching tool, I ask my son occasionally and rhetorically in regard to dating, “What do you get out of it?” Especially if you’re a good Christian boy. It’s a lot like the temptation to commit insurance “fraud”: you pay and pay and pay, and the more diligent and responsible a driver you are, the less you get out of the deal in tangible benefits. Who’s really being defrauded here?
Yep, indeed. It does tip later on, if Jane waits too long to cash in her chips…
The current feminine-primary order is bound and determined that there be no such thing as “too late” for women. This is why washed up sluts on an imminent collision course with The Wall are demanding that men of their ephemeral choice ignore reality and bow down to them as if they were teenage virgin beauty queens. It also explains the endless shaming of men who have sufficient common sense and self respect to not want to pay new Mercedes prices for used Volkswagens.
Expect the delusional doubling down to only grow louder and more violent as reality inevitably forces its way into the cathedral.
It’s a lot like the temptation to commit insurance “fraud”: you pay and pay and pay, and the more diligent and responsible a driver you are, the less you get out of the deal in tangible benefits. Who’s really being defrauded here?
Exactly. In both cases more and more people who used to play by the rules, people upon whom the existing system depends in order to continue functioning, are waking up to the realization that “playing by the rules” is for chumps and suckers. Many are refusing to continue playing at all.
@F.Hater
Yep, that is my position. When asked/pressed about my seemingly perpetual singleness, I just mirror the romantic platitudes (self-indulgent affirmations) of the 20-something feral females.
E.g. I am trying really hard to find the One. You bet I believe in ‘true’ love! Unfortunately, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the One.
And the many times per month I find her, as it turns out, wasn’t actually ‘true’ love but something *else*.
That something else is the same thing that fuels most women through the slow turns of the carousel, so they ‘get it’. Of course the difference is, I know what “it” really is, whereas they still believe that the “it” is some mystic force that is keeping them from the life they really want [or so they say they want].
With all of the women that I have dated [passed through my sheets], I just really really wanted it to be true love, so I guess my desire to experience True Love with the One just clouded the fact that “we” just weren’t a good fit in the end.
But, you know, I’ve learned soooo much about myself, what I like and don’t like [in bed], and what I can or can’t accept in a ‘partner’, and other things that I’m obviously entitled to because I’ve been doing this for so long, aka experience.
Post wall women are a bit tougher to sell their own lines back to because they are already in the throws of constructing a new alternate universe; a kind of doubling down on their solipsism that requires them to trade in many of those old lines for new ones about spiritual empowerment and purpose and how they are learning to be content on their own. aka collecting pets and taking yoga trips.
Speaking of Universe. In those post-wall cases, I’ve found that the Universe is a great catch-all for the ones that have had to digest some pragmatic truth pellets on the other side of the wall. e.g. “I just keep putting it out into the universe and it will send me what I need [want]”. For the churchian types, this might be “God”, but I think the Universe works better because the universe isn’t all judgy and demanding and whatnot.
I’m not actually cold and heartless about all of this, but I am unwilling to “commit” or offer up “monogamy” to a woman who has demonstrated a prolonged journey of self-exploration that has obviously had nothing to do with commitment or monogamy or really anything of measurable value to me as a husband, father, or even boyfriend.
IOW, I’ve no interest in being #53, who gets to be the coat hanger for these newfound values. I feel bad for these women who have seemingly never been told the truth. But that feeling usually goes away when I observe them in their wild environment. Or when 30 thousand of them descend on the civic center to pay tribute to the false gods, screeching all matters of hate and vulgarities.
Marriage itself can also be for a form of sampling. Jane thus can raise the stakes in what she wants from a man and may indeed obtain that extra commitment (Gold Ring) but that will not prevent her, should she discover that she is being abused/ made unhaappy, from divorce and a resumption of the sampling which, as Bob has wasted so much of her time, she will need to pack into a short period of time.
Jane will thus be able to say that although her N is at the upper reaches of the numbers on my thermometer (Fahrenheit) or higher that she is not really a slut as she was faithful to her husband, went through a subsequent period of chastity (off men, the bastards) and for only a little time thereafter did her N rise exponentially. Frankly, almost a virgin and certainly a virgin of the born again sort. Jane also knows from her large experience that most men are not very good lovers and thus a further period of sampling is needed to find a man to be judged against that top 10% of the men with whom she had previously slept. I think that a lot of those women wandering around D.C. in the cold on Saturday must have had a lot of sampling experience.
I realized I already had an image that fit this post. Post updated with new image.
Like most of modern morality, it is an inversion of the original purpose of fornication taboos. You kept virgin girls from being used up and spit out without a marriage contract, which would devalue the price of the bride.
Now, one is supposed to marry a woman with a high N-count regardless of the worth of the man. It is especially amazing to consider the present morality when reading the Wisdom Books and the Apostle who warned against joining oneself to a harlot/prostitute/loose woman.
Dalrock
Post updated with new image.
People around me are looking at me with quizzical expressions… I must have snorted too loudly.
I ask my son occasionally and rhetorically in regard to dating, “What do you get out of it?”
Remind him to ask that when he’s married, too. And warn him that his wife will ask that question ever single day of the marriage.
“Men commit to countless other relations and institutions in life”
So true.
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I realized I already had an image that fit this post. Post updated with new image.
Ha! Is that next ticket actually labeled B for Beta #53?
Do the feminists ever consider the oppressiveness of “patriarchal gender roles” they’re always on about when complaining of men’s “fear of commitment”? If marriage is a prison, shouldn’t they be applauding men’s heroic resistance to making themselves into inmates? Where’s the pink-haired landwhale holding the “Soulmates =/= Cellmates” sign?
Do the feminists ever consider…
No. Feminism isn’t rational. It’s emotional.
Rollo Tomassi says: January 23, 2017 at 12:05 pm
A man may have a long and distinguished military career, with all the honors that this dedication and commitment represents, but in a feminine-primary social order all of that honor for commitment is dependent on, and qualified by, his capacity to commit to a woman. This is the degree of control the Feminine Imperative has; that a man’s personal merit can be validated or erased by how well he serves women.
amusingly, you have just described the plot of “Bullitt” very exactingly, with the minor exception that McQueen’s character is a cop, not a warrior.
everybody spends all their time talking about the chase scene. but the emotional heart of the movie hinges on two ( otherwise minor, verging on meaningless ) vignettes, both with his girlfriend Cathy.
the first is when she bursts in on a crime scene and then harangues Bullitt over his “violent” life ( ie – he is not satisfying her desires ). the second is the coda of the movie, after Bullitt has been proven correct in every respect. he drives home after the exhausting all night denouement of the 3rd act. Cathy’s car is in his drive and she is sleeping in his bed. he hangs his gun up, washes his face … and simply looks at himself in the mirror.
*close curtains*
did he meet with her approval? will he give up his job as a policeman? to please her? because, really, what value does his life have if he doesn’t make her happy?
Logan’s Run is also amusing in this respect. the Sandman has virtually unfettered power within the city. he can, at any time, call for almost any woman he desires, have her delivered to his chambers and she will be eager to service him.
but Logan goes groveling after Jessica 6. because shiny magical vagina reasons.
“Next time I hear “men are afraid of commitment,” I’m countering with “men are afraid of women’s lack of commitment.” Some interesting conversations will probably come from this…”.
Say this and you will get the following:
Jane’s “Sacred Path to Marriage” is being replicated throughout the Western World. Every heroine finds she has been abused by “bastards” and “a-holes”. Every heroine thinks HER story is unique, where she has “done the right thing” by “sacrificing herself” (read – slept with a guy that is completely unsuitable for marriage) – only to have it all blow up. If Jane is IN the relationship, she “Hopes he’ll propose some day….” very wistfully.
Bob, meanwhile, has nagging doubts. She has mood swings, won’t cook meat for him because she’s a dark vegan, is too tired to have sex with him like she used to because she’s committed to a plethora of Social Justice causes (and she has security. Why does she need to ‘put out’ anyway?), finds out she had an abortion or traded money / security for sex, and has triple the Notch Count she said she actually had. His doubts about her being girlfriend, but not wife, material slowly get realized.
If Red-Pill you tries telling Jane that her story isn’t unique, that the only change is the heroine telling the story, you are worse than Hitler. You are horrible and incapable of loving anyone (even if you have been married to the same woman for half your life). If you try telling her that The Cult Of The Boyfriend is a female invention that correlates with improved sexual security (shielding from consequences), you will be stared at and outed as a dangerous religious fanatic who has no right to push his views on others because “only religious people marry early”. You will be told that “Live-in Boyfriend-Girlfriend” is the same as marriage, when it is not.
You can conclude by asking, “I understand you’ve been hard-done by by “bastards and a-holes”. So what is it about you that keeps choosing such men to sleep with?”
Men are realizing marriage hunting women are like deisel volkswagons.
“What? You lied? I’m not going to get the superb performance and long distance endurance now that you have to PROVE you’re claims? Shocked I am!”
And look how well that worked out.
Young men get it. No under 25 doesn’t know EXACTLY how modern women are.
No need to worry for them as individuals as long as they use birth control.
Now if you have 20 year old daughters that you want to be self supporting and move out of the house….WORRY. Cause you aren’t ever walking them down the aisle no matter how large a dowry you offer.
This is amazingly well-said by Rollo :
In a fem-centric social order only women are allowed to validate what ‘commitment’ really is. Men commit to countless other relations and institutions in life – business ventures, careers, military service, public service, personal development, their education, family duty – yet the only time we are allowed to validate a man’s commitment is when that commitment involves a woman and monogamy.
This is the degree of Blue Pill conditioned control of the Feminine Imperative; only women can validate men’s commitment and by extension his personal worth. Granted, men can simply brush this off, but the only publicly appreciated form of commitment is when it applies to women. And this, in turn is a control measure of women’s solipsistic natures – nothing is valid outside of a context that applies directly to a woman.
Which also means that when this bubble pops, the level of adjustment will be amazingly difficult for blue-pill people (i.e. 99% of people) to comprehend. The fabric of humanity will be torn asunder, and perhaps with a mere decade.
For one thing, when Artificial Intelligence starts to get inserted into millions of private decisions in businesses, government, and personal finance, tons of examples of FI-bias will be clinically stripped out as illogical. Some humans will resist it, but others will just not notice the shift in status quo..
*within a mere decade..
For one thing, even a 10% reduction in government spending will leave millions of heavily-subsidized fem-twats high and dry.
Secondly, Artificial Intelligence is advancing, by some measures, at 5000X the rate of human evolution.
See more here.
feeriker,
It also explains the endless shaming of men who have sufficient common sense and self respect to not want to pay new Mercedes prices for used Volkswagens.
Which is why cuckservatives are feverishly doubling down.
Not to bring up the Prager U cucks yet again, but look at how easily a low-value cuck like Jim Geraghty buys into any and all FI-centric frames.
i) Marrying a woman with a high N is fine. Virginity is of no value.
ii) Marrying a single mother is fine, as Jim Geraghty did.
iii) Just because a woman gave it away to alphas for free, the fact that she needs a captain save-a-ho. The cuckservative interprets this as the woman *now* being attracted to beta bux.
iv) Every woman automatically becomes June Cleaver.
To see a doughy cuck who married a single mother assert that HE is the epitome of masculine attractiveness means that cuckservatives are really the same thing as the feminist fat acceptance movement. The fatties want the system to change so that THEY are considered attractive (when in reality they are the bottom), and cuckservatives who marry 35 y/o single others and then insist that such men are the apex of male attractiveness, are identical.
Hence, cuckservatives are just the omega-male equivalent of the fat acceptance movement.
See here for a recap of the off-the-charts cuckservatism of Jim Geraghty :
It is really something for her to think she is doing the sampling.
Argh! Dal, with the 53 count you theorized, I thought of this.
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=91864
Women carry the DNA from the sperm of the men they have had sex with, maybe for their lives!
Yeah, not hard to understand that high N-count women have problems with long term relationships/marriage!
Is it the be all and end all of life to not meet someone?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1039161
Has anyone here had a baby at age 45?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1038404
@Rollo,
Great stuff, thanks!
Now if you have 20 year old daughters that you want to be self supporting and move out of the house….WORRY. Cause you aren’t ever walking them down the aisle no matter how large a dowry you offer.
Nonsense. Any young woman that wants to get married, can get married, generally speaking.
Some uplifting, feel-good news … an anti-Trump, leftist protester gets punched in the face:
@DeNihilist
https://acryinthedarkblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/one-flesh/
My wife has a co-worker who is living Jane’s exact life. Met her “Bob”, moved in together, and now have two kids – all the while complaining that he won’t propose. And why should he? He has all the trappings of marriage without the most heavy piece of legal baggage around his neck. She had just as much control over the situation as he did, but she gave it all away. Whose fault is that? Not Bob’s.
To her credit, she apparently understands that this is just as much her own fault. She privately told my wife (who told me, of course) that while she loves her children and would never trade them away, she realizes that she made a mistake in not holding fast for marriage before going any further.
Anon @ January 23, 2017 at 9:36 pm:
“For one thing, when Artificial Intelligence starts to get inserted into millions of private decisions in businesses, government, and personal finance, tons of examples of FI-bias will be clinically stripped out as illogical.”
You assume computer nerds won’t program the FI bias into the software. Knowing the nerds I have, that’s a fatal assumption. Machines can automate the entire world but all it’ll do is separate women from responsibility even more than they already have.
Technology will never solve FI because it’s a moral problem, not an optimization problem. Example, birth control should have ended bastardy 30 years ago. Another example, do you believe our military is being feminized because the Pentagon honestly believes a set of bad data? Of course not.
Technology will never solve FI because it’s a moral problem, not an optimization problem.
Except if it’s actual AI, not what people are calling “AI”. It’s a sloppy word today. People say Echo and Home are “AI”, when they’re not. An actual AI that THINKS FOR ITSELF won’t be subject to programming biases other than its own, and it can reprogram itself at will. Of course, we’re not close to that, and when it does arise, there will be more problems than the FI that we’ll be concerned about.
GunnerQ,
You assume computer nerds won’t program the FI bias into the software.
Nope. To program it in, they would have to know that it exists. They don’t – to then it is like the air.
Plus, an AI tasked with productivity acceleration will strip out FI contrary to what manginas assume to be the case.
Of course technology strips out the FI. This is explained here : http://www.antifeministtech.info/2015/05/the-real-age-of-ultron-began-in-1985/
“Of course technology strips out the FI. This is explained here : http://www.antifeministtech.info/2015/05/the-real-age-of-ultron-began-in-1985/
If all of this technology “strips out the FI” why has everything been going in exactly the opposite direction (particularly if we’ve had, ostensibly, thirty plus years of it?)
Social bots are all around. Don’t see any FI waning going on. If anything it’s the opposite.
@Gunner Q
Several of us have been telling Anon this for years. He doesn’t change his mind.
So I’ve been reading this blog for about 9 months, reading the new posts and going through the archives. The posts are always thought provoking, and the comments are very interesting as well. I’m a 27 year old woman. And I just wanted to say, that my relationship has improved greatly as a result of this.
Long story short, I was beginning to feel very discouraged because my boyfriend, even after dating for almost three years, living together for almost two, would still say things like, “you’re just going to get bored and leave me in a few years”. Or, “I don’t want to put all my faith and trust in one person and get fucked over again.” I did not understand why he felt this way since I love him very much and don’t want to ever do anything to cause him harm. This particular conversation was about six months ago. Since then, reading this blog and the comments, seeing similar statements from other men, helped me understand better. Once I got the idea into my brain, that the reason he was being reluctant to take other steps in our life together was because he really thought I might just randomly up and leave or cheat on him, NOT because he didn’t love me or was low-key planning a life without me, like I initially thought, it changed my whole mindset. I decided the answer to that problem was for me to be as warm and loving to him as I could. So far, it seems to be working. He proposed Thanksgiving night, and also opened up and told me about some of the very bad, super crazy things his ex wife and ex girlfriends had done, that I didn’t know about before.
However, I think he still has some of those same types of thoughts, just by little comments or “jokes” he makes occasionally. So I was wondering, if perhaps someone here could be kind enough to give me, from a man’s perspective, some ideas of things I could do to show commitment and that I don’t want any romantic attention from any other men? I dress modest in public, don’t post lots of selfies, don’t have a lot of private conversations with men, keep my phone unlocked, etc. I’m not sure what else I should be doing? We’ll probably get married in the next year and a half or so. I really don’t want him to worry that I might cheat on him or leave. I know what it’s like to be cheated on, it’s a horrible feeling that I don’t want to inflict on anyone!
@Novaseeker:
True AI isn’t possible. Self-replicating Robots could be an issue, but there’s some really deep explanations for why True AI won’t happen (partially as a creates a Creator/Created contradiction that isn’t bridgeable.) “Learning Computers” will be good at finding efficiencies, but they’ll always miss externalities. Think Economics writ Large.
@anon:
A lot of Tech has been setup to exploit the FI to the benefit of the Globalist class. Though they’d never see it that way.
OT. Doug Wilson moves a bit closer to the manosphere:
https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/nasty-canaanite-women.html
Cane Caldo,
Several of us have been telling Anon this for years. He doesn’t change his mind.
Because you are wrong, for reasons explained before.
PM/AFT addressed Cane Caldo’s point specifically here. PM/AFT does not blog anymore, apparently, or he could address your questions more directly.
You all are assuming that blue-pill types *know* about FI. They don’t. They will program everything for ‘fairness’, and then be surprised that women see a major reduction in benefits as a result of actual fairness being programmed in.
Plus, you don’t seem to grasp that AI replaces jobs that are more routine/lower productivity. Which gender does more of these jobs?
@Anon
The way humans work is this: The problems about themselves that they understand, they sometimes try to overcome, but usually without much success. The problems about themselves that they don’t recognize, they perpetuate without any cessation whatsoever.
If we suppose an actual AI (pace Novaseeker), and if it decides that it needs to keep humans around, then it will recognize that it needs a lot of females, but comparatively few males.
This discussion about AI/Bots is always fascinating to me because I occupy a field dominated by women. It is a “low-productivity” soft science.
And while I can see a path to where many of these jobs are replaced by automation and AI, it is still very difficult for me to imagine a patient sitting in an office with a robot doing “therapy” and preferring that robot over a person.
Now, it is certainly possible that the algorithmic portion of my job is likely to be replaced by super computing risk-calculating instruments. For example, when mental health providers write notes, they usually place a standard risk-assessment paragraph in the chart that reads something like this:
“When considering factors such as age, gender, race, family history, relationship history, education level, marital status, previous attempts, pain level, coping skills, support system, substance use history, mental status, blah blah blah….I have determined the patients level of risk for self or others harm to be [ ] low [ ] medium [ ] high.”
This is bullshit and everyone knows it. No individual provider, outside of an arithmetic savant can possibly weigh all the static and dynamic risk factors like that and calculate the aggregate risk in an instant. But they are CLAIMING they do, in every single note–because the clinical practice guidelines require them to.
But the personal of touch of empathy, the connection required to actually help the patient get better cannot be replicated, I don’t think.
@ Gunner Q says:
January 24, 2017 at 10:03 am
“You assume computer nerds won’t program the FI bias into the software. Knowing the nerds I have, that’s a fatal assumption. Machines can automate the entire world but all it’ll do is separate women from responsibility even more than they already have.”
They certainly write it into the comic books they write and consume, and the video games they create and play. Why wouldn’t they write it into any AI they create?
A woman Secret Service agent attacks Trump on her Facebook page: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senior-secret-service-agent-suggests-she-wouldnt-take-a-bullet-for-trump/article/2612814#!
A senior U.S. Secret Service agent posted Facebook condemnations of President Trump during the past seven months, including one in which she said she wouldn’t want to “take a bullet” for him.
She explained herself saying she viewed his presidential candidacy as a “disaster” for the country, and especially for women and minorities.
Kerry O’Grady, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Denver district, oversees coordination with Washington-based advance teams for all presidential candidate and presidential trips to the area, including all upcoming or future trips by the president, vice president or Trump administration officials.
Despite her senior security role, she has made her disdain for Trump and his incoming administration clear to her Facebook followers, who included current and former Secret Service agents and other people who were employees at the time of the posts. O’Grady’s posts triggered at least one complaint to the office that oversees investigations into Secret Service misbehavior, two knowledgeable sources told the Washington Examiner.
In one Facebook post O’Grady wrote at 11:07 p.m. on a Sunday in October, she endorsed Hillary Clinton and said she would endure “jail time” rather than “taking a bullet” for what she regarded as a “disaster” for America.
The post didn’t mention Trump by name but clearly referred to him.
An actual AI that THINKS FOR ITSELF won’t be subject to programming biases other than its own, and it can reprogram itself at will.
You mean like children?
Self-replicating Robots could be an issue …
Self-replicating robots would be a pale imitation of Life. Grey goo is subject to the same design constraints as bacteria. Man-sized self-replicating robots will take human level complexity in design.
Red Pill Latecomer says:
January 24, 2017 at 2:53 pm
If he has not already done so, I hope President The Donald fires the Secret Service as his bodyguards, refusing to let them anywhere near him. Hopefully his private wecurity detail is estrogen-free.
“You all are assuming that blue-pill types *know* about FI. They don’t.”
The nerds do because I told them. Most of them admit it. They’re okay with it too, with orbiting women like acne-scarred mooning moons. And you know, the omegas among my friends, maybe it’s for the best they stay in those one-sided mental fantasies. The truth will not make them happy.
I hope one day, those sluts get justice for playing my friends for fools. Preferably before my friends modify AIs to accommodate their fantasies. They’d probably name the AI Love-Craft. I should write a screenplay.
@GunnerQ you should see if “LoveCraft” or “Love-Craft” has been copyrighted yet. If it hasn’t, you should do so, because that would be a splashy name for any of several Virtual Reality sex-thangs. Think of the royalties. Not to mention the irony.
The other misconception I see here is that many do not realize that AI, more than anything else, destroys islands of low productivity. Female jobs will be lost before male jobs. If the government intervenes, it will not be able to keep up with the spending level required.
Any nerds that overtly keep FI in some productivity-tasked AI, will quickly see their product lose out to AI that focusses on productivity.
Cane Caldo,
and if it decides that it needs to keep humans around, then it will recognize that it needs a lot of females, but comparatively few males.
Only if it forces those women to devote their entire lives to childbearing. Remember that *all* human work done to maintain or collaborate with an AI is done by men.
Overall, remember that AI is just a productivity-supercharging utility, and will zap instances of low productivity where employed. It is women who will lose out from that, since our entire society is devoted to resource misallocation to women (and away from productivity gains).
Totally off topic, but I was very happy to see this.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/24/change-trump-to-approve-keystone-and-dakota-access-pipelines/
Constructing, maintaining and operating these pipelines will create tens of thousands of high-paying, high-skill jobs, the majority of which will go to blue collar men. And that doesn’t count all the jobs that’ll sprout up in the periphery.
@Hmm
That link you provided is no small thing. Even a man whose life has been dedicated to serving women in any capacity has been repulsed by the open displays of unfettered female vulgarity, hate, and propensity to kill the defenseless. One wonders if the experience was eye opening for him.
Looking Glass says:
True AI isn’t possible.
Really? Why not?
Gunner Q says:
Technology will never solve FI because it’s a moral problem, not an optimization problem.
Its status as a moral problem doesn’t prevent it from being vulnerable to economic forces. A parallel example is the decline of slavery due to improvements in technology.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2011/11/17/matt-ridley-how-fossil-fuels-helped-end-slavery/
@Lost Patrol @Hmm
Not impressed with Hmm’s link. He’s playing with Madonna/Whore by labeling the Million Menopausal Marchers as “Canaanite women”, contrasting them with the “good girls” no doubt in his church, by implication. That’s just more blurred vision / Blue Pill emotion. Plenty of marchers surely went back to their home churches, and some may have even gone home to preach.
I might be easier to convince if I didn’t personally know of “good churchgoing women” who had abortions without letting their husbands know first. Never mind the “Canaanites” in the streets of DC, every single preacher who has 100 or more regular attenders has at least one “Canaanite” sitting in his church on Sunday, he just doesn’t realize it.
Pingback: Jane’s Noble Path to Marriage | the Feme covert
Maybe Jane was applying Martin Gardner’s Secretary Problem to her love life. She was trying to mathematically optimize her chances of selecting the best candidate for marriage. If you know that you are going to date 100 people in your lifetime then you date the first 37 and then select the next one who is better than all the previous ones. You only have a 37% chance of selecting the best candidate but it is better than a random result. The 37% number is an approximation of 1/e, where e is the base of the natural logarithm. Jane’s problem is that she sampled 16 men too many.
Of course, the longer she waits, the more her MMV declines as well, thanks to weak men screwing up her plans. Maybe we could mathematically combine Rollo’s SMV chart with Gardner’s Secretary Problem in order to help Jane determine the true number of men she must sample on her sacred path to marriage.
@JustRae
You say to him: “Jim Dear*, I want to be fair with you, and I want you to know that I am in this for life. If a man were to leave his wife, he would obviously no longer be able to benefit from her sexuality, since they are no longer together. In fact, it would be ridiculous for him to think he should be able to come back a few times each week to the woman he abandoned, expecting sex. In the exact same way, it shows women to be very selfish, horrible people when they leave a husband, but expect him to continue providing her with his financial resources. I cannot change the immoral child support or alimony laws, but there is one significant thing I can do. One of the biggest reasons that make it easy for a woman to betray and leave her husband is that the so-called family courts routinely award the straying wife partial or whole ownership of the marital home, or at least full use of the home. I want you to know that I never intend to divorce you for profit. So here is the name of a lawyer I found in our city who can help us set up a family trust. The house and all your property can be given to the trust, and the trust will be designed with you and our future sons as the sole beneficiaries. This ownership change will make it impossible for any future evil family court judge to steal resources from you, to give them to a traitorous wife. My offer should make clear to you that I am here for a truly life-time commitment; I will benefit from your love and support only as long as I stay with you. I want all of you; not just your resources.”
Just make sure he is sitting down before you say this, otherwise he may suffer injury in the fall.
If the man in question is a follower of God, you can strengthen the message even further by asking him to read Scriptures with you that discuss the disposition of a man’s wealth, and point out that the man’s wealth was to go to his sons, not his ex-wife.
To everyone else: Can you actually imagine a woman saying and doing the above?
*From Lady and the Tramp
Cultural expectations of marriage through time
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1039289
Pregnant in Prison: 6 Shocking Realities
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1039290
JustRae,
You gave away the milk and want someone to commit for the milk. It is a bit late for that, no matter what you do. The kind of man who would live with you for that time is unlikely to ever sign up for a long term commitment, even with the pre-nup Dale notes above.
I am not sure I will ever get married again, but a woman who would live with me would never get the offer to marry me. I am not sure how I would determine that in a foolproof way, but knowing the woman did that for someone else would likely rule her out of the running in any future consideration from me.
I find the system just as despicable as some here, and I am getting treated poorly by it, but I still think Biblical principles are more important.
You will not convince your boyfriend no matter what you do. He doesn’t hold the convictions I do, or he wouldn’t have lived with you in the first place. Therefore you should enjoy living on pins and needles the rest of your life. Abandoning a standard is rarely a good thing in the long run.
Eliminate stupid prison sentences for drug use MarcusD and I would have almost no compassion on those having babies in prison. (Using drugs while pregnant is not that great, but neither is drinking much nor probably eating sushi.)
Nail the prison people who aided in that when such happened. They should do their job, not get some sideline action.
Plus, those who claim that AI will be purposed for FI (completely invalidating any value of the AI in the first place as a productivity supercharger) are giving the FI too much legitimacy.
The FI was useful for prehistoric human and non-sentient species of creatures. It was useful up to the point where women had Total Fertility Rates of 10+.
But it is certainly obsolete today. Given that women oppose everything that moves civilization forward, and are most attracted to male traits that were useful in prehistoric times, while least attracted to male traits that advance civilization, the FI is the talisman of why many humans are obsolete.
Since AI is about rapid productivity gains, and zapping examples of low productivity *without* human consent, women stand to lose a lot from AI, particularly in the make-work jobs that are created for women.
@Anon
Speaking of make-work jobs reminds me of this (amongst a number of examples): https://x.ai/
JustRae:
sorry to be a bit too blunt maybe, but do I read the implicit in your writing correctly, when I conclude, that this man is your second sexual partner then?
Or were there more, whom you first chose yourself, then dumped for whatever reason?
Also, if you read around these corners of internets, you may realize that there is strong awareness among (some) men about what the situation/preferences/strategies of women exactly your age are..
JustRae:
You can’t imagine at the moment that you would ever want to leave him, or cheat on him. I’m sure you love him completely.
However realize that if you do achieve you goal of getting him to marry you (you seem to be doing the right things to achieve that from your description) then your emotions will change. You will start to take him for granted. You will get exasperated and annoyed with him, even if he doesn’t change. Some days you will dream of divorcing him. This is inevitable and happens in every marriage. The question is, will you manage to work through this and stay with him regardless?
@Lost Patrol, @Anonymous Reader:
I was impressed by Wilson’s logical progression [some of it not explicit]:
– These women object to a God who would tell his people to kill Canaanite men, women & children
– [One of the sins of the Canaanites was sacrificing their children to gods like Molech]
– These women are fine with killing their own babies
– Therefore, their objection is not about killing people, even babies
– It must be that their problem is with God killing Canaanites
– That’s what scares them
But further, to quote Wilson,
“What was the problem with what God did to the Canaanites again? They could never believe in a God who would kill babies.
“No, not really. They could actually never believe in a God who would ask them to have babies. That is the root of the problem, the source of their rebellion.”
“The other misconception I see here is that many do not realize that AI, more than anything else, destroys islands of low productivity. Female jobs will be lost before male jobs.”
Like cab driving, bus driving, piloting airplanes?
The thing about Wilson is that although he isn’t close to being 100% aligned with us, nevertheless he’s moving in the right direction and, quite tellingly, even given where he is (which is fairly far off from us), he’s attracted common enemies (look at his comment threads). That’s quite telling, I think.
Doug Wilson wanted to stay clear. He wanted to give it the old Pontius Pilate hand washing.
“I am a mere observer. A reporter. I simply comment on what I see.”
But he couldn’t. It’s getting to him. And feminists have no intention of letting anyone stay clear. What he writes or says going forward is anybody’s guess, but I still think it is significant that he was willing to publish material well outside the evangelical dogma of: exalt women, and always find some way that it is not their fault.
Ray Manta@ January 24, 2017 at 9:06 pm:
“Its status as a moral problem doesn’t prevent it from being vulnerable to economic forces.”
You can’t solve a physics problem with psychology. This is why physicists aren’t sexy. Neither will an evil man reject his evil ways in return for cash. This is Africa.
“A parallel example is the decline of slavery due to improvements in technology.”
If this is true then why do Muslim Arabs, who have the most oil in the world, still practice slavery? Heck, why does California still practice slavery? I look out at the farm fields where illegal immigrants do backbreaking work for illegal wages, work that could easily be automated for greater productivity, and Sacramento prides itself on this situation. California is a First World state lusting to become a Third World cesspit.
The answer is arrogance. Pride. A desire to reduce one’s fellow man to the status and life of an animal for FUN. No technology will ever cure that flaw in the human soul.
…
Novaseeker @ 7:28 am:
“The thing about Wilson is … he’s attracted common enemies.”
Yep, that’s how it starts. He says “well, maybe in this particular case the other side might have a valid point” and the Femmissariat shows up to prove us totally right. There’s hope for Wilson.
Hmm
I was impressed by Wilson’s logical progression [some of it not explicit]:
“Not explicit” in this case means you are making it up in your head and pretending he said it.
– These women object to a God who would tell his people to kill Canaanite men, women & children
Ridiculous. Wilson assumes a level of Bible knowledge that not one – not one of the Menopausal Marchers are likely to have. He’s making up a story in his head and pretenting it is true.
– [One of the sins of the Canaanites was sacrificing their children to gods like Molech]
Doesn’t matter, they’ve never heard of Moloch either
– These women are fine with killing their own babies
They demand the right to do that. But they do not think it through.
Because feminism is all about emotion, and not about reason.
– Therefore, their objection is not about killing people, even babies
– It must be that their problem is with God killing Canaanites
– That’s what scares them
Utter nonsense. Wilson is projecting his own knowledge and chains of reason onto a mob of women that knows nothing, doesn’t reason, and is all about emotion.
Implicit in his assumption and yours: women and men are exactly the same except women can have babies. Guess what? That’s a fundamental premis of feminism.
Wilson accepts the premise of feminism and then tries to argue with feminists as if they are men. He doesn’t wear The Glasses, he won’t or can’t take The Red Pill, he keeps on trying to teach cats to play fetch because by golly, they should be just like dogs with enough training!
Add to that his still obvious tendency to White Knight, to make endless exceptions for bad behavior by women because Madonna! Not whore! and it’s no wonder he can’t figure anything out, nor can understand what has happened to marriage.
Why do you admire this man? He’s persistently wrong.
PS: I understand Wilson’s argument and now I’ve shown you twice why he is wrong. Would you please be so kind as to address my counterpoints?
Novaseeker
The thing about Wilson is that although he isn’t close to being 100% aligned with us, nevertheless he’s moving in the right direction and, quite tellingly, even given where he is (which is fairly far off from us), he’s attracted common enemies (look at his comment threads). That’s quite telling, I think.
Meh. Time will tell. I frankly expect him to throw up his hands sometime this year and just walk away from the entire issue of marriage, retreating into a bubble where he can pretend that all churchgoing women are just like his wife except younger.
I could be wrong. It would be good if I were. But given the track record of just about every other preacher who posts on line (Voddie Baucham is one exception that comes to mind) the over/under favors a limited cavein by Wilson. Because he won’t get the stones to tell conservative feminists to stifle – he can’t do that and retain Nice Man status, and if there is anything that matters to preachers in the modern church, it’s Niceness. Pretty sure it’s in every Bible printed in the last 50 years, somewhere. Maybe in the Book of Betaness?
@Gunner Q:
Being against Slavery is a Christian, and only a Christian, trait.
Doug is referring to two popular secular appeals against Christianity which many of the losers who marched last week would make and believe; namely 1) OT passages in which God commands the Israelites to kill the wicked Caananites are barbaric and the commands are immoral and 2) abortion is an inalienable “right” and Christians are immoral to attempt to repress the practice.
The incompatibility of holding these two positions is obvious. What follows is not that secular feminists oppose God for killing babies (since they do that all the time), but for God having the authority to do so. They hate the idea that God has sovereignty and authority over them, and this is why they reject Him. As Doug said, they don’t oppose a deity being able to make a decision over life and death, they just insist on being the deity.
@ GW
“… you will be like God… ”
Exactly. Pastor Wilson isn’t describing a line of reasoning, nor did he state that the feminists reasoned their way into opposition to God. He’s describing a fleshly instinct that feminists feel but aren’t self-aware enough to understand or even notice, much less know from whence it came.
@ Oscar
Bingo. It started in the Garden. Modern-day feminism is merely one iteration of mankind’s rebellion.
@ GW
More specifically, Eve’s deception, rebellion, and subsequent curse.
“… your desire will be for your husband… “
I frankly expect him to throw up his hands sometime this year and just walk away from the entire issue of marriage, retreating into a bubble where he can pretend that all churchgoing women are just like his wife except younger.
I know nothing of Wilson personally, or of his family, but I wonder if his wife is one of the few Protestant pastors’ wives today who is not openly competing with her husband for primacy in the pulpit (or at minimum for “First Officer/Co-Pastor” status within the church). If so, then that skews his perception even more.
Looking Glass @ 11:35 am:
“Being against Slavery is a Christian, and only a Christian, trait.”
We will never not have slavery in one form or another. Just ask the American soldiers who aren’t allowed to refuse if ordered to dress like pregnant women.
An efficiency-minded AI would tell you to give that order that if the alternative is an expensive lawsuit or the end of your military career. The logic is indisputable; the morality unacceptable. Just like every other human-made (artificial) replacement for God.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2000-04-28
GW
Doug is referring to two popular secular appeals against Christianity which many of the losers who marched last week would make and believe; namely 1) OT passages in which God commands the Israelites to kill the wicked Caananites are barbaric and the commands are immoral
Only if they’d read the book of Joshua. Which none of them have done.
Therefore Wilson is making up a story in his head and pretending it is reaity.
Might as well accuse the Menopausal Marchers of being Scientologists or Flat Earthers,
then criticize them for not adhering to the True Scientology or ignoring orbital photos.
He’s not dealing with those women as they are, he’s dealing with them as he perceives them
Hey, I have a block of solid gold around here someplace that I’ll sell to you or Wilson or Hmm for 50% of the spot gold price. Don’t bother asking if it is real gold, it looks like gold so that should meet y’alls requirements. Right?
Women are not men. Men are not women. Until you men get this part right, you can’t even attempt to discuss marriage intelligently. You’re like someone standing on top of a step stool pretending to be on the roof. “Mommy, look how high I am, I can touch the sky!” That’s nice, dear. Don’t fall off.
@AR: “Only if they’d read the book of Joshua. Which none of them have done.”
Probably not, but like so many other things, they read and trust atheists who have done that reading and regurgitated it for them. “The God of the Bible is barbaric” is the way that it cashes out to most unbelieving moderns.
And yes, it’s a made-up story, on his part and in my condensation. Neither he nor I really think that any women actually believed that entire chain of logic. But it was a useful way of pointing out those women’s hypocrisy, carrying their two conflicting beliefs to their logical conclusion (reducio ad absurdum). And it’s cute.
Here is an article that summarizes survey results. As far as I can tell, the people surveyed were active churchgoers who claim to be Christian. I’m sure that some men here can construct a fine “more angels dance on the head of my pin than your pin” timewasting debate out of this, if that’s what floats your boat go ahead. Everyone else will ignore it.
Point: These are the people who claim to go to church, and to read their Bible. They know more than those that don’t. Now, read and learn what people very likely in your church believe:
https://pjmedia.com/faith/2016/10/24/12-lies-american-evangelicals-believe/?singlepage=true
But the Menopausal Marchers, women in $150 running shoes carrying $500 phones to protest the oppression they suffer under, those women generally know less about the Bible than the Evangelicals surveyed. Yet they are supposed to respond to a reasoned argument from Bible quotes, because Doug Wilson thinks they ought to, right?
That’s just stupid, and Wilson still hasn’t realized that the women he’s trying to argue with don’t even accept him as an authority on anything. That is a trait they have in common with a lot of other women, quite possibly including some in his own little church.
Wilson fails again, because he’s ignorant.
Hmm
Probably not, but like so many other things, they read and trust atheists who have done that reading and regurgitated it for them.
How do you know that to be true? Did you ask them? Or are you just making up yet another story in your head that ought to be true? Can you climb out of your fantasy bubble even for a minute?
“The God of the Bible is barbaric” is the way that it cashes out to most unbelieving moderns.
Ok, could be true. So what?
And yes, it’s a made-up story, on his part and in my condensation.
Thanks for admitting that both you and Wilson are engaged in some sort of fantasy, rather than reality.
Neither he nor I really think that any women actually believed that entire chain of logic.
How do you know what Wilson thinks about that? Have you asked him ?Or are you just making up stuff in your own head again and pretending it is true?
But it was a useful way of pointing out those women’s hypocrisy,
They can’t be hypocrites if they reject your worldview. How many Evangelicals no longer regard abortion as a sin, do you know? It’s more than zero.
Hey, I can play that game too. I’ll just apply the Koran, Suna and Hadith to you and prove that you are a total hypocrite & Allah will send you to Hell after you die, you pork eating polytheist who has never made the hajj. . Same game. Are you impressed?
carrying their two conflicting beliefs to their logical conclusion (reducio ad absurdum). And it’s cute.
If by “cute” you mean “stupid”, I’ll agree with that. Because Wilson’s argument really is stupid. He’s talking to his own echo chamber, nobody outside will even pay attention. If that’s your idea of “progress” or somehow refuting feminism, then you have a bubble problem.
Oh, and Hmm, I notice that once again you totally fail to come to grips with my factual objections.
Why is that?
@Novaseeker, AR, et al
Is he? Here’s what jumped out at me from his post:
Anyone who believes modern women desire to be respected like a great grandmother or Galadriel (Bwahahaha!) isn’t actually seeing modern women. It would be foolish of me to take seriously the notions of a man who believes this.
We just don’t know whether or not female protesters know about the fate of the Canaanites in the Bible. Arguing about it is useless. But AR gets that modern women want to be men, and are attacking men directly in an (misguided) attempt to achieve it. He also gets that Wilson does not address that reality. Harvey Mansfield called Feminism a “manly” attack on manhood; manly because it’s aggressive, demanding, and direct. A “womanly” attack would be indirect, and rely on rumors, secrets, seduction, etc.
Dale, a family trust is no guarantee that the man will keep his house. Someone previously posted a story about a man who was frivorced. His house was solely his, in a family trust, set up prior to his marriage. So the judge ordered the man to buy his ex-wife a new house of equivalent value.
Thank you to everyone that took time to answer my question!
@BillyS, well he did propose this Thanksgiving so….I think we will actually get married at some point in the next year or two. My point was not so much freaking out over “will he ever marry me” so much as trying to figure out ways to set his mind at ease so he won’t feel like he has to worry, if that makes sense.
@dale, I had never heard of a family trust before. (My financial knowledge is not much.) I will investigate this, and bring it up when the time seems good. It sounds like a good idea, better than a prenup, to me.
The only good reasons for getting a divorce, to me, are cheating, real physical abuse, or possibly continuous drug addiction. I don’t think those things will happen to us, but even if he did any of those, the most I would do is move out and live alone in hopes that he would stop and we could be together again. That’s my only backup plan. I will never seek a divorce. It causes too much destruction.
Yes, I have had 3 other sexual partners before him. I was raised Christian but fell away for awhile. His story is similar, but a longer period of time and more women. And possibly even more heartbreak than I had. He has an ex-wife, and had 3 serious girlfriends and quite a few hookups before me. He is 7 years older than me.
Even when God forgives sins, there are still consequences to deal with. I just wanna be a good wife and have a peaceful life. That’s why I read here, to gain knowledge.
They were even required to get a divorce for betrothal.
That was cultural, not a mandate from God. Nothing noble about that, in fact it’s highly problematic.
Just Rae:
So I was wondering, if perhaps someone here could be kind enough to give me, from a man’s perspective, some ideas of things I could do to show commitment and that I don’t want any romantic attention from any other men?
Your steps so far are very sound, reasonably aligned w/ the Bible. Are you a Christian? That would be something for you to consider. Find a sound church (not always easy). Find an older, married woman to serve as a mentor to you. That will be meaningful to your fiancé.
Also, at one of his jokes, you can kindly and succinctly tell him that you understand he’s been burned, but you’re in this for life. Gently ask him not to make those jokes, and quickly forgive him if he slips a few times.
Finally, work with him to find out his vision for the future. Consider what he needs from you as a helper. Let him know that you can do it. If you can’t, then be honest with him NOW. He won’t like it, but the honesty is crucial.
There’s more, there’s always more. But I think those are fair starts.
@AR:
The first time I really studied Joshua, which wasn’t too many years ago, I started devising plans to completely remake the Western Church. The day of reckoning for many a “Church Leader” fast approaches. I can’t be the only one that the Lord has been poking about this. 🙂
Also, it really bothers me that the Rock motif present throughout Joshua is never mentioned whenever people talk about the Gospels. John the Baptist was literally baptizing at the spot in the Jordan where they placed the stones. Minus putting up a Flag and waving it saying, “this is the Angel of the Lord!!!”, I’m not sure how more blatant God can be. I don’t mind, too much, when Christians miss the really subtle references, as there are some you really do need a years-deep knowledge to “get”, when they can’t get the most basic of references you know you have issues.
Oh, on that survey, I found the original:
http://lifewayresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Ligonier-State-of-American-Theology-2016-Final-Report.pdf
While I don’t mind beating up on Churchians, having seen WAY too many surveys of this type, I’m usually one to say they’re worthless. There is really, really subtle Theology going on with some of the questions, that wholly turn on how you instinctively take 1 or 2 words.
“Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” While the answer is “no” and not “strongly disagree”, it’s also in the middle of a chain of questions where the answer is “strongly agree” and, depending on how your mind first goes over the word “created”, you’re likely to trip over the deeper Theology here. There was kind of an important event around dealing with the topic ( https://infogalactic.com/info/First_Council_of_Nicaea ), so it’s not like there isn’t subtlety when dealing with it.
Actually, the more I go through these questions, the worse my opinion of the survey is. There’s a clear pattern where they laid in about 6-7 questions of “agree” being the right answer, so people were just going with the flow. There’s only a few questions that people seemed to catch on that “strongly disagree” is the correct answer, though you can notice there’s a shift in that category of only about +20% from the baseline.
Seriously, there’s pretty much 8% in each category choice regardless of anything else. Thus all analysis is really looking at the shift. And that’s before dealing with some of these questions that probably need 2-3 pages of theological notes to answer completely. That’s why I hate these surveys. The authors are asking trick questions in the first place by being vague.
@AR
I dealt with the only one of your objections that mattered to me – that not one of the women involved read Joshua or thought God was barbaric. I interact with college students all the time, and I hear that objection over and over. Usually they want to think well of Jesus, but don’t want that bitter, barbaric God that he’s associated with. Virtually none of them would know to call it the Marcionite heresy, but that’s what it is.
We must move in different circles. Not surprising.
Oh, and I dealt with the “making it up” thing.
We’ll need to disagree about the blanket “women don’t reason” meme. They don’t always reason consistently, but some at least do reason, and do act on their reasons. Many of them can be reasoned with. I married one.
We must move in different circles. Not surprising.
Oh, and I don’t claim to read Wilson’s mind. I just know hyperbole when I see it.
I’ll probably regret saying this. Maybe you need to get out more.
JustRae,
I think my wife would have said the same thing you told me 30 years ago. Yet she had to convince herself of a vague threat (and make a few things up) so she could go live near her mom in another state, with me paying the bill.
I won’t have to pay as much of the bill as she had hoped (half it turns out, and before tax, not after tax as she planned), but she still bailed. I do know a few things I would probably give in counsel to young women now (and men), but this was not as obvious up front as it seems now.
And both of us claim God told us to marry each other. Even that didn’t stop her.
Gunner Q says: (quoting me)
“Its status as a moral problem doesn’t prevent it from being vulnerable to economic forces.”
You can’t solve a physics problem with psychology.
It doesn’t follow that the converse is also false.
“A parallel example is the decline of slavery due to improvements in technology.”
If this is true then why do Muslim Arabs, who have the most oil in the world, still practice slavery?
It would be far more if not for technological improvements. Or do you deny this?
Heck, why does California still practice slavery?
I look out at the farm fields where illegal immigrants do backbreaking work for illegal wages,
I assume they work there because they get a greater wage than they could in their home country.
work that could easily be automated for greater productivity,
It will be. Or do you disagree?
No technology will ever cure that flaw in the human soul.
I’ll settle for technological progress that improves the human condition. Along with the social progress that will follow. Some people see the glass as half full, while others will insist that it’s half-empty, and always will be.
JustRae:
I would encourage you to read this chaps blog post on “marriage” before you dig yourself any deeper. You might disagree with his conclusion, but at least you will have heard an unadulterated explanation of marriage according to our Lord’s original institution . . . which is something you will likely not hear in your run of the mill church these days. It will invoke some serious thought and may irrevocably change the way you view marriage.
https://artisanaltoadshall.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/the-lie-that-caused-the-adultery-epidemic/
Sounds like Jane gave away all her worthwhile goodies for free to every rich playboy, pickup artist, and “romantic”, “exciting” ‘Bad Boy’ and thug that crossed her path for the previous ten to twenty years of her life; but now that she is approaching the end of her ride on the Carousel (and also sees The Wall making its inevitable approach), she wants Bob to pay for the party to which he wasn’t invited, and she also wants him to pay full price for the leftovers the other guys left behind, too.
Oh, yeah…sign me up for that deal…(NOT!)
Red Pill Latecomer
Re: “a family trust is no guarantee that the man will keep his house”
Based on your half-remembered article, I did a Google search…
I found this for Newfoundland, Canada (http://www.court.nl.ca/supreme/family/property.html):
>Not all property is considered matrimonial assets. The following are usually not
>considered matrimonial assets:
> Gifts, inheritances, settlements or trusts (unless used for a family purpose, or
> used to buy family assets)
The important part is that a trust will be considered a matrimonial asset if used for a family purpose.
… which means that unless the couple “opted out of the Act through a marriage contract” (see the same URL), you are correct. #$%-asshole politicians. At least in that province, you could do all the work of setting up a trust, but due to failing to know that you need to specifically opt out of the province’s Family Law Act, still end up losing your house.
Are these people TRYING to make women completely worthless to intelligent men?
Thanks Red Pill Latecomer. I had never heard of something like this.
I wonder what happens if a couple marries in another province or country, then moves to Newfoundland. They will obviously not have thought of “opting out” of that provinces Family Law Act.
The same page says “Under the Family Law Act, both spouses have an equal share of the matrimonial home, regardless of whether it was previously owned by one spouse, how and when it was acquired…”. So owning the entire house prior to marrying cupcake, thus proving she contributed NOTHING to the house, is irrelevant.
It is very interesting to me that, according to the webpage, the laws for common law couples are what (I think) the laws for married people should be. E.g. “When the couple separates, each person keeps what belongs to them (it is either registered in their name or the person bought it).”
So, at least in NFL, the cheap and effective solution is to agree to be with each other, but never get the government license.
If anyone is interested, the link “http://www.osullivanlaw.com/Recent-Speaking-Engagements-and-Articles/When-Trust-Law-Meets-Family-Law.pdf” has similar information re the family courts stealing from trusts. In two cases in Canada, one from Ontario and one from Alberta, the family courts deducted the value beneficially “owned” by the other beneficiaries before allowing any split with the ex-wife. In both cases the ex-wife got nothing, but it sounds like an ex-wife could get something, if the trust is set up wrong, or even if it is not set up wrong.
Again, thanks RPL. $%^!!!
@BillyS I’ve seen several marriages where the wife became increasingly homesick for her hometown as the years went by. I’ve seen other marriages in which the distance from the marital home to the wife’s sick and aging parents became a big burden. Typically, by the time her parents are having major medical problems, the wife is back in the workforce and has very limited time off. The cost of plane tickets also adds up. This is one of the reasons that I’m not generally in favor of people marrying foreigners. It may work out for the wealthy, but for working class and middle class couples there are substantial pitfalls.
My mother-in-law is not sick, just old. They both now live someplace my wife did not grow up in at all, so that has nothing to do with it.
Ultimately my wife never wanted to be married (she said so before we married and I should have taken it more seriously then) and fought just about everything I did. I am bull-headed enough to push through, but it became very apparent that more than that was required. She wanted to be on her own and finally went that way, in spite of her Christian beliefs. She has neatly segregated those off.
She just didn’t want to be a help meet. I am not sure how you screen for that, but making sure a wife wants to be that is the best way to help with this. Starting without that makes the road bumpy already. Some make it anyway, but I will be many situations are similar.
I was talking with someone recently who has a much worse situation than I do however and will not be clear of payments until next year, many more years after his divorce from a very nasty wife. Mine was quietly nasty, not openly so. That is what fooled most everyone in our case I think. I am grateful I didn’t have that.
My wife was the one her siblings picked to “watch after her mother” who chose to live in a state with no other family around and who refused to move. She is just like her mother in many ways it ended up. Light on her commitment to her word and with a willingness to justify whatever she really wants. Neither were very bright though, fortunately for me, so they both have far less than they might have. She is definitely not a hard worker, so I am not sure how she will readapt to the work world with few good skills. My wife will also face the added issue of having no children who are really close to her in a few years and that will almost certainly hit her far harder than she plans. Her other siblings are older (except for 1). She is not tight with any of her nieces or nephews, so she won’t have a great deal of support.
It will suck to be her in a few years. I am not sure where I will be then. I am not waiting with open arms and I would definitely require repentance I don’t ever see her having. No chance with me if I connect with someone else in that time. I believe I would be compelled by the Scriptures to take her back if I was still single and she was repentant, but that would need to be proven out and I don’t see it happening.
BillyS says:
January 25, 2017 at 10:21 pm
You’re already demonstrating that you’re better off without her. She, from your description of her, could easily be my ex’s twin sister. I can tell you this with absolute certainty: she is going to dearly and deeply regret walking away from you. In fact, she probably already does, even though she isn’t showing it or admitting it. Not because she knows that destroying her marriage was sinful and wrong (she doesn’t regret that at all), but because she no longer has you to lean on and provide for her. On those rare occasions when I talk to my ex about business matters, she boo-hoos about how she “doesn’t feel right about the divorce” – not because she regrets breaking up the marriage, but because she hates the idea of being responsible for herself and having to be self-reliant again after years of living in tapeworm mode. That she can no longer have her cake and eat it too is intolerable.
You’re right to not want to take your ex back unless she exhibits unmistakeably clear, strong, and sincere repentance. I also doubt you’ll ever have to worry about that; most such women have neither the character nor the guile to convincingly fake repentance, and they know it. Palm trees are more likely to spontaneously sprout up in Antarctica before such a woman ever sincerely repents of a frivorce.
Looking Glass: “True AI isn’t possible.”
Ray Mantis: “Really? Why not?”
Because — pace the wet-dreams of the “trans-humanists” and other willing fools — thought is not computation, and computation is not thought. And, even if they were the same thing, computers don’t actually compute.
AI has been a “thing” at least since I was in college in the early 1980s. Color me very skeptical when it is claimed to be the salvation of anything.
Kind of like Women in Engineering efforts….
Ray Manta @ January 25, 2017 at 6:27 pm
“If this is true then why do Muslim Arabs, who have the most oil in the world, still practice slavery?
It would be far more if not for technological improvements. Or do you deny this?”
I deny it. Those guys have the money & access to tech to do away with slavery as the West did and they aren’t doing away with it. You do realize that slavery is a religious practice under Islam?
“I look out at the farm fields where illegal immigrants do backbreaking work for illegal wages,
I assume they work there because they get a greater wage than they could in their home country.”
They didn’t come here illegally to work in squalor because they had a real choice. Mexico was as happy to see them leave as the slavers of Sacramento were to let them in. Why else is Mexico not trying to retain its own citizens?
“work that could easily be automated for greater productivity,
It will be. Or do you disagree?”
I disagree because it hasn’t been for decades. Might have something to do with all those laws prohibiting the employment of whites. And don’t get me going about sanitation. I’ve wandered enough to know there are considerable sanitation problems associated with the employment of illegals and nobody in power seems to care.
“No technology will ever cure that flaw in the human soul.
I’ll settle for technological progress that improves the human condition. Along with the social progress that will follow.”
We’ve had more technological progress in the last century than the previous… rest of recorded history… and our social progress is best described as FUBAR. Africa is still the planet’s outhouse. Arabs are still killing Jews with rocks. China is doing its stable and oppressive empire thing. The UN rebuilt the Tower of Babel. And the entire Christian church is reenacting Original Sin. Vive le Social Progress!
AR, are you dense? The only thing many secularists and liberal feminists think they know about the Bible is that God in the OT is “barbaric,” “misogynistic,” or otherwise allegedly incompatible with their crooked beliefs.
Arab Muslims are still stuck in the 600s. Monks in Monasteries produced more societal & technological development every century than all of Islam in the last 1400 years. Just because they owned the land and could hire others to build their cities does not mean they aren’t still stuck there. Which is exactly why letting them into modern societies is going to end in War. (That’s all they understand.)
@JustRae
You can’t undo the experiences he has been through that instruct his views on relationships and marriage any more than you can outperform such that the Sword of Democles that is marriage 2.0 (Or are we on to 3.0?) goes away.
So you must accept that his views are valid, which also means they are not something for you to change so that you can feel more comfortable in the relationship. If they do happen to change, fine. But that is his work to do, if he so chooses. Don’t count on it.
Ask yourself why you desire to change the way he views these things (that are based on his actual life experience). If you are honest about your motivation you may begin to see why peeling back the premise regarding most of these questions around marriage are really about YOU. Which is the point.
You are the sole beneficiary of cultural, legal, and financial privileges that you can’t decline even if you wanted to. And if you are being honest, you don’t want to. Similarly, you are the sole recipient of the status affirmation & elevation that comes with marriage.
If the premise is truly explored, women desire marriage, as opposed to perpetual co-habitation or any other version of practice or quasi-marriage, serial monogamy, etc. precisely because of these unique benefits that accrue to them, and them only. Similarly, all women are entitled to a man and that man is obligated to give her marriage, when she decides that marriage is important.
You may not be this way, but many women want to change how a man feels about marriage, not because she knows his pain and pending sacrifice, but simply because he is harshing her buzz on her idealistic view of what marriage means to her. Which, of course, is not the same thing to him. Which, of course, she fails to comprehend. Why is that?
Here’s the truth that men know, even if on some unconscious level: If marriage were really that important to women, they would seek it out as soon as they can. But it just isn’t. Experience is important. Self-actualization is important. Ego-investment is important. Fun is important. And personal happiness is the arbiter of all those choices leading up to, and including, re-classifying marriage at the top, after those other things have been pursued or exhausted.
Even then, for most women the question must be asked, is it marriage that is valued or is it the power and status that marriage confirms that is valued? Similarly, does the woman actually desire to be a wife or does she desire to have (own) a husband? Does she want a wedding or a marriage? Is her cup overflowing with love and service to give or is her cup in need of filling up? Is marriage a vehicle for her personal happiness or is it a sacred bond to assure the safe, healthy propagation of children created in God’s love?
So when a man is contemplating marriage later in life, he must buy into this lie that marriage is of utmost importance; that there are unique benefits of marriage that accrue to him – that he can’t get elsewhere. That requires taking on dissonance. A woman can lessen that, but she can never make that lie into a truth.
You need to dispel the idea that assuaging his trepidation regarding marriage is something for you to resolve through some checklist of actions. That ship has sailed. You can’t un-bang those other men or give him those years of youth and fertility that have otherwise been invested.
The most important actions a woman can take in this regard are those that she made before she even met him. He is marriage worthy because he has worked to become so. Women demonstrate that they value marriage through their actions leading up to it, not as a function of “I want to be married and I want him to value marriage as I do, so what can I do now?”. You want to be trusted, be trustworthy. You want to be loved, be lovable. Etc.
These are some of the many prices and trade-offs of later-in-life marriage in our modern culture. That’s just the unromantic reality – and the culmination of both of your individual choices.
You see, many men that have been through what he has or are otherwise entertaining the idea of marrying a woman beyond age 18 who has been freely sampling the marketplace for some number of years – regardless of actual mileage (time is precious enough) has to digest a lie. This is a painful process. As it should be.
So what then?
You protect his future by protecting you from yourself. You structure your life such that the potential for cake-eating, navel-gazing, and self-absorption is mitigated.
You must insulate yourself, harden and prepare yourself for the reality that awaits you. Once you get what you want (marriage) you will left off the gas. You will want moar. The neighbors will suddenly have a better house, car, vacations, etc. Your life will seem harder and less exciting. Your attraction for your husband will suffer troughs. You will daydream about other men, other potential life paths. You will get bored, complacent. This will send spores of dissatisfaction into every aspect of your life. Mirages of opportunity and unrealized opportunity will spring up in those dry patches that will inevitably come.
Then you will suddenly remember that you actually have all of the authority in marriage, that those things you would gladly “give up” on your wedding day become an infinite number of arrows in your quiver of discontent. He will become the target. You may resent him.
This is where you can fill in the gaps with all kinds of actionable advice that I’m sure you’ve already heard. Don’t give fertile ground for those spores. Don’t let the dry patches sit long enough to hold a mirage. Embrace your femininity, your sexual appeal, be pleasant. Regardless, there is little that can be done to make modern marriage into something other than what it is.
My advice is, of course, through my own lens of experience. Plus, I’m a dick. I’ve had to tell women that I will not marry them for the kinds of reasons that have been brought up already. If she has spent her 20’s prioritizing “other” things, going thru men (“dating” one at a time only makes it better on the margin), lived with a man (or men) out of wedlock, and NOW (at 30-35) puts marriage at the top, she has likely already told me everything I need to know.
Making me pancakes is nice, offering up her well-tuned sex is nice, but its not going to get me to digest the lie and take on the lopsided marriage 2.0 proposition. Its sad, maybe even cold or unloving, but it just is.
At the same time, there just might be a woman who has demonstrated how she values marriage through her past actions. And maybe she is so great that I’d take on the risk. But I’m not focused on that. I’m focused on cultivating my value as a man and sorting through my options generated as a result of that value. More women should be doing the same, but they are not told these truths, only what they are entitled to – and how to “get a man” to do x, y, z.
The perversion of male sacrifice and goodwill toward women has afforded the modern women with much power and freedom. But it has come with a price. For some, like me, the price has been too costly and so in this culture of equality, I must view everything with the cold, calculating self-interest that mirrors what I see women doing when they are enjoying the pinnacle of their power and options.
By the way, its great that you don’t “take selfies”, but why even play on social media? I know, I know, it’s the only way to keep in touch, see pictures of your niece or whatever. But its one of those things that does not mitigate, but actually amplifies the opportunities for discontent. Cheers.
Gaza says:
January 26, 2017 at 11:32 am
Beautifully written, brother!
I’m late to this thread, but I’d like to quickly weigh in on the idea that Arab/Muslim culture has anything useful to teach us. I recently spent a little over a year living and working in one of the Petro-states of the Middle East, and I can definitively say that the natives there are utterly incapable of doing anything more complicated than bowing to their false god and throwing feces at each other.
Everything with more than two moving parts there was designed, built, operated, and maintained by foreigners that are paid to be there with oil revenues, from the Westerners who supervise the oil extraction, to the “Pakadeshis” who drive the taxis, to the Philippine and Chinese nurses who staff the hospitals.
If they didn’t have oil to sell in order to rent foreign goods and expertise their cities would be deserted, their population would crash, and the survivors would be living in goat-skin tents within a year. (And keep in mind that I was dealing with their “best and brightest.”)
@Lyn87:
I was hoping you’d pop up. Did you ever get really far outside the wire, there? I’ve heard horror stories, so I’m curious.
Also, if anyone is actually curious, this is mostly why the Hashemites rule in Jordan and the Alawites rule in Syria. No one ever is willing to talk about the inter-marriage with non-Arabs among their ruling class for the last thousand years.
LG,
The place I spent the year recently wasn’t particularly dangerous as long as you weren’t stupid, and we were free to come-and-go at will, so I was “outside the wire” a lot. There was a threat there, and the internal security guys busted up a terrorist cell with a map of our compound (we heard the gun-fight and breaching charges from our compound while we were drinking contraband booze and grilling burgers on a colleague’s patio), and we’d been hit pretty hard in the past. Honestly though, the most dangerous thing we did there was drive on the same roads as those maniacs. The thing that worried us the most with regard to an attack is that our compound was guarded by their incompetent army and we weren’t allowed to be armed. I had an escape plan to get over the wall in under a minute from my quarters, and I carried a BIG FREAKING edged weapon and a Haji-be-good stick, but that’s no match for an AK-47 except in very tight quarters.
As for the inter-breeding: I had been working with a group of high-ranking officers and having very little luck getting them to do anything, even though it was material they had (supposedly) not only learned, but thoroughly mastered. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I would expect a group of American E-4s and E-5s to do better than those guys, which was comprised of 12 field-grade officers and two generals. We trainers (Americans) were discussing the training event later and my boss asked me what the problem was, and I blurted out, “Fourteen centuries of marrying first cousins!” Of course the room erupted in laughter, but I was serious… When muzzies aren’t shagging sheep or little boys they’re shagging their cousins, because that’s what Mohammad did (so it has to be correct, you see).
Lyn87 @ 3:43 pm:
“We trainers (Americans) were discussing the training event later and my boss asked me what the problem was, and I blurted out, “Fourteen centuries of marrying first cousins!”
Perfect quote!
Now my Hippy-be-good stick feels inadequate. Not collapsible, just big and intimidating.
@Lyn87:
Medical case studies are full of “interesting” genetic disorders that Western medical professionals have documented since we’ve been actively involved over in that part of the world. And, seriously, don’t shag your cousin.
Though it does bring to mind one of the more hilarious aspect of “Islamic Warfare” is that the single most important factor is always that an Arab can’t lead the army. They’re all brutally incompetent because they’re only in-charge due to being in a specific clan. Nothing to do with competence.
@JustRae
Outstanding!
Keep in mind that he’s been fed all of the same lies we all were, and it can take some time to process it all. On the one hand he knows in his gut that what he was taught is wrong, but if he is like most people it will still be hard, and very likely painful, to unwind it all. Moreover, his understanding of the isn’t a process you should try to drive. You are doing the right thing by focusing on your own frame of mind and actions.
You are on the right track. Just remember that your attitude will likely mean more than your words. If you say that you love him but recoil away from him, snap at him, or express contempt at some level he will understand something is very off. This post could be of some help here (re purposed to fit your different question), and generally it should get easier with practice.
This is good as well. Shut the door on divorce except in truly extreme circumstances, and shut it entirely on divorce and remarriage. Someone upthread mentioned protecting his assets from exposure to divorce theft, but the biggest and most critical assets in a marriage are the children. Along those lines, you might tell him about the experience my wife and I had here. I offered it as a way for a husband to test a prospective wife, but you could easily use it to express your seriousness on marriage to your fiancé.
This is it. May God bless you both.
Or, to condense Gaza’a post of January 26, 2017 at 11:32 am —
To most modern American women, the imortant thing is the wedding, not the marriage.
@ Looking Glass says:
January 26, 2017 at 4:27 pm
“one of the more hilarious aspect of ‘Islamic Warfare’ is that the single most important factor is always that an Arab can’t lead the army.”
It’s best to leave that to Kurds or Persians.
@ Lyn87 says:
January 26, 2017 at 12:18 pm
“I recently spent a little over a year living and working in one of the Petro-states of the Middle East, and I can definitively say that the natives there are utterly incapable of doing anything more complicated than bowing to their false god and throwing feces at each other.”
Wait… you mean polygamy didn’t result in a patriarchal paradise? Say it ain’t so!
“one of the more hilarious aspect of ‘Islamic Warfare’ is that the single most important factor is always that an Arab can’t lead the army.”
It’s best to leave that to Kurds or Persians.
Don’t leave out the Turks.
@Oscar:
The main issue is normally the recent-ish converts to Islam have semi-competent people. Over time, Islam causes the culture & people to radically regress.
The flip-side is when a country goes Christian, as South Korea rapidly is. Hoping economy and a great sense of hope, even while sitting right next to Crazy Kimmy.
I look forward to neither the South Korean or Nigeria Civil Wars this century. Nor the upcoming American Civil War 2.0, for that matter.
@ feeriker says:
January 27, 2017 at 1:17 am
“Don’t leave out the Turks.”
Good point.
@ Looking Glass says:
January 27, 2017 at 5:05 am
“The main issue is normally the recent-ish converts to Islam have semi-competent people. Over time, Islam causes the culture & people to radically regress.
The flip-side is when a country goes Christian, as South Korea rapidly is. Hoping economy and a great sense of hope, even while sitting right next to Crazy Kimmy.”
Also a good point. The Kurds, Turks and Persians remain more-competent fighters than the Arabs, but it’s also true that throughout Islamic history, a disproportionate number of the administrators in Islamic countries were Christians or Jews. “Liberals” think that means that Muslims are “tolerant”, but the real reason for that phenomenon is that smart Muslim rulers realized that Christians and Jews tend to be better administrators than Muslims.
Even Saddam staffed his government with a disproportionate number of Christians. So does Assad.
@Oscar:
The funny bit is I was just thinking that Trump has shown what the differential in Work Ethic & Competence really looks like. (Seriously, the guy has done more for the American public in a week than the Political Establishment in 20 years.) It’s what truly scares most of the world about Americans.
But there’s a much deeper issue that drives a lot of this. Those deep, deep assumptions built into religions. Islam’s deeper assumptions come really from the “Loser Male Handbook”, which is why they act out in the way they do. Talmudic Judaism is always afraid of losing everything, again, which is why Jews take on the “penny wise; pound foolish” approach to most things.
The deeper assumptions of Christianity run into the major denominational splits, but a core part, when Christians choose to listen to God, is the incredible industriousness. Which makes sense, as it’s hard to read the New Testament as “just sit back & relax!”.
LG,
What you’re referring to is known as the Protestant Work Ethic, which is a phrase coined in 1905 to describe the historical tendency of Protestants (mostly those of the Calvinist persuasion) to favor meritocratic economic systems (capitalism), and to work hard within them. Other groups adopted the practices (if not necessarily the underlying theology) because it was successful. The farther one got from Calvinism the less the tendency took hold. After Calvinists, non-Calvinist Protestants adopted it the most, then Catholics, then others. W can trace the economic and technical advancement of Christendom over everyone else, with northern Europeans taking the lead in the Old World, and the meteoric rise of the United States that dwarfed even their close relatives from their home countries.
@ Looking Glass says:
January 27, 2017 at 8:08 am
“The funny bit is I was just thinking that Trump has shown what the differential in Work Ethic & Competence really looks like. (Seriously, the guy has done more for the American public in a week than the Political Establishment in 20 years.) It’s what truly scares most of the world about Americans.”
I told my wife just a couple nights ago that Pres Trump is not only embarrassing the Democrats, he’s embarrassing the Republicans. He’s showing Americans what is possible.
Pres-elect (at the time) Trump says Boeing is charging too much for the new Air Force 1. Boeing says, “you know what, we can lower the price”.
Pres-elect (at the time) Trump says the F-35 program is out of control (it is!) and we might replace some of them with improved F-18s from Boeing. Lockheed says, “you know what, we can lower the price”.
Seriously? That’s all it takes? The president-elect (not even president yet!) just has to ask? Why the hell didn’t anyone try this before?! You gotta be freaking kidding me!
A lot of Republicans will jump on this train rather than get run over, but people hate being embarrassed, especially narcissists, and most politicians are narcissists. I suspect some Republicans will attempt to sabotage the president.
@Oscar:
People don’t normally shiv their friends. Trump has people he likes, but as the Red Dinner made abundantly clear, he’s never had that many “friends” among the wealthy. He also doesn’t owe his political fortunes to the money certain groups bring in for him. There’s value in being independently wealthy.
@Lyn87:
While I quite know the term, I’ve always viewed it as a bit of an anti-Catholic shine-job. Though I know it’s stuck, the amazing amount of work the Monasteries produced over the last 1500 years (both before & after the Great Schism) points to simply conditions that unleashed the alignment of Christian Work Ethic with Property Rights.
The variations are mostly down to some cultural effects (Catholics will favor Organization Rule Following over Societal Rule Following) and that the Catholics most inhabit tropical environments, thus taking in those cultural effects. That Protestants ended up in the Northern Climates just accelerated certain aspects.
@ Looking Glass says:
January 27, 2017 at 9:04 am
“While I quite know the term, I’ve always viewed it as a bit of an anti-Catholic shine-job. Though I know it’s stuck, the amazing amount of work the Monasteries produced over the last 1500 years (both before & after the Great Schism) points to simply conditions that unleashed the alignment of Christian Work Ethic with Property Rights.”
The word “Monasteries” may be the key. The Catholic Church – unfortunately – took the most intelligent, innovative men and effectively neutered them.
LG,
I wasn’t trying to bash Catholics on this, it’s just that the Protestant Work Ethic came primarily from Calvinism, and non-Calvinist Protestantism is theologically closer to Calvinism than anything else, with Catholicism being the closest outside of the Protestant fold. Thus Christians “outwork” non-Christians, with Protestants “outworking” non-Protestants among Christians, and Calvinists “outworking” non-Calvinists among Protestants. We see that in the fact that Christendom led the world in economics and technology, Protestants led Christendom, and Calvinist-influenced America surpassed everyone.
I don’t mean to imply a direct causal arrow from Calvin to DARPA, but it’s hard to imagine a society putting a man on the Moon absent the historical influence of Calvinist theology – in fact, not one of them ever has. My point was that the closer one gets to Calvinism, the more one is likely to accept the premises of the Protestant Work Ethic, with the benefits that accrue to a society where that is the norm.
Oscar @ 8:47 am:
“Pres-elect (at the time) Trump says the F-35 program is out of control (it is!) and we might replace some of them with improved F-18s from Boeing. Lockheed says, “you know what, we can lower the price”.
Seriously? That’s all it takes?”
Yep. Daddy tells the spoiled brat NO.
@Gunner Q:
It’s a little more complex than that, but Trump simply comes in with leverage since he isn’t one that will be looking to give $250k speeches in the future. But he’s clearly been telling the business leaders his, basic, planning. It lets them shift their own planning while buying good will from the Trump Admin.
It’s not been commented much since it’s about rules making over the next 6 months, but Trump is going to be serious about redoing much of the Federal Regulations. That’s a massive deal.
Protestant Work Ethic is, I believe, a term coined by Max Weber who – guess what – was a Protestant. Whereas I do not doubt that he is correct, there has been another view: that of work-shy Protestants as portrayed in movies such as I’m Alright Jack (1959) – though somehow one can never imagine Germans being work-shy. What always impresses me is the vast number of British (and doubtless Germans also) whose name have largely disappeared from History though sure to be found in the Dictionaries of National Biography who made some small scientific or other advancement. Collectively, it all adds up to northern European and northern American Civilisation: the parts of the world where every one else in the world wants to live by reason of those advances. That, perhaps has less to do with a work ethic than independence of thought,.
Of course the Italians and the French are not exactly slouches either yet they do not tend to be Protestant.
“Protestant Work Ethic is, I believe, a term coined by Max Weber who – guess what – was a Protestant. Whereas I do not doubt that he is correct, there has been another view: that of work-shy Protestants as portrayed in movies such as …”
The “Protestant Work Ethic” in NOT the thesis that Protestant societies flourished while Catholic societies stagnated because Protestants were better or more industrious workers than Catholics.
Rather, it is the “Protestant Work Ethic” refers to the difference in how Protestantism and Catholicism view work; namely, that Catholicism still holds to the old pagan disdain for work as “less noble” than intellectual pursuits, whereas Protestantism embraces the Biblical claim that *all* work can be a holy offering to God.
Ilion says:(concerning the impossibility of AI)
Because — pace the wet-dreams of the “trans-humanists” and other willing fools
Well, I don’t consider myself a transhumanist.
— thought is not computation, and computation is not thought.
That says nothing about whether human-equivalent AI is possible. Since there’s already an existing model that could be simulated (us) that would argue against it being impossible.
And, even if they were the same thing, computers don’t actually compute.
What then do they do?
Hmm
I dealt with the only one of your objections that mattered to me – that not one of the women involved read Joshua or thought God was barbaric. I interact with college students all the time, and I hear that objection over and over. Usually they want to think well of Jesus, but don’t want that bitter, barbaric God that he’s associated with. Virtually none of them would know to call it the Marcionite heresy, but that’s what it is.
You seriously know college students who object to the contents of the book of Joshua?
Really? Where are you at, a small religious college from a small denomination?
The college students I’ve interacted with for years are all about “God is LUV!” and Jesus is their BFF and they are forgiven no matter what they do or how often they do it because LUV!
God gives them what they need, always, it’s awezum! When they need totally hawt frat dude to be all missionary dating with, there he is! When they get to be 28 and need Steady Eddy to come along and marry their born-again-virgin selves, for sure he’ll show up!
None of them has read Proverbs. Or Joshua. Or ever heard of Job. Probably nothing out of the entire old Testament. So yeah, we clearly move in different circles. I’m not sure where you are, but I’m in flyover country, nowheresville.
But I must admit I was commenting with an unspoken assumption: I assumed that Wilson was trying to communicate something to the Marching Menopausals, and you, too. By that standard Wilson’s little essay is a total fail, and so is your cheerleading of him.
I failed to appreciate the importance of in-group virtue signalling. Re-reading Wilson’s essay from the point of view of “Old man droning on to a handful of his friends and followers who all applaud how smart he is”, it makes perfect sense. In fact, it’s a great success.
So if preaching to the choir, and signalling “we’re so much more holy than THEY are” to fellow members of a small group is what’s important, give yourself and Wilson two thumbs up. Total success!
GW
AR, are you dense? The only thing many secularists and liberal feminists think they know about the Bible is that God in the OT is “barbaric,” “misogynistic,” or otherwise allegedly incompatible with their crooked beliefs.
So that proves they would understand Wilson’s little snit about “Canaanite women” — how?
Can’t have it both ways, you know; you can’t claim ignorance one second and deep knowledge the next.
Look, men, Wilson doesn’t understand women. He’s Unfrozen Cave Man Pastor, who apparently slept through the last 25+ years or so and has zero clue what motivated the Million Menopausal Marchers, so his attempted critique is a fail outside of the little church bubble that he – and apparently two commenters here – live in.
I’ll leave you with this little meme. Any men in their 20’s care to comment on it? Aside from Deti and Nova and Lost Patrol I figure the rest of the men over 30 here probably won’t have much of a clue…
http://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.M512780bab01ff96c6170f7d9e1896c02o2&w=232&h=174&c=7&rs=1&qlt=90&o=4&pid=1.1
Image posting fail. Here’s the retry.
Unfrozen Cave Man Pastor is a keeper. I love some of these guys, but they will die with their convictions of Jane’s righteousness totally intact.
Looking Glass: “True AI isn’t possible.”
Ray Manta — pretending to seek the truth: “Really? Why not?”
Ilíon — pretending to believe that Ray Manta really does want to know the truth: “Because — pace the wet-dreams of the “trans-humanists” and other willing fools — thought is not computation, and computation is not thought. And, even if they were the same thing, computers don’t actually compute.”
Ray Manta — revealing that he has no interest in the truth: “Well, I don’t consider myself a transhumanist.”
But you’re still one of those “other willing fools” having wet-dreams about “AI”
Ray Manta — revealing that he has no interest in the truth: “That [that thought is not computation and computation is not thought; and that computers don’t actually compute, in any event] says nothing about whether human-equivalent AI is possible.”
Of course it does; but it interferes with your wet-dream, so you close your mind.
Ray Manta — revealing that he has no interest in the truth: “Since there’s already an existing model that could be simulated (us) that would argue against it being impossible.”
Simulation is not emulation. A “true AI” must be an emulation of a human mind, and that will never happen.
Ray Manta — revealing that he has no interest in the truth: “What then do they do?”
The same thing an abacus does. A computer *is* an abacus; that it has been mechanized doesn’t make it any more capable of emulating a human mind that an old-fashioned abacus is.
Ilion says:
But you’re still one of those “other willing fools” having wet-dreams about “AI”
AI seems to have made remarkable progress in the past two decades, wouldn’t you say? Why shouldn’t it continue?
Of course it does; but it interferes with your wet-dream, so you close your mind
Well, no I’m actually keeping an open mind. I pointed out that the existence of human intelligence was compelling evidence that an artificial intelligence could be built based on it since it makes it an engineering possibility. The burden of evidence that it’s impossible falls on you.
So far you have failed to respond with anything but insults, which only shows that I’ve yanked your chain. You also claim detailed information about my motivations and state of mind, which is a stillborn method of argumentation.
Simulation is not emulation. A “true AI” must be an emulation of a human mind, and that will never happen.
You have the meanings of simulation and emulation backwards. An emulation only has to have the observable behavior of the phenomena and doesn’t care about what goes on inside. A simulation is primarily intended to model internal state.
A computer *is* an abacus;
Two devices may share principles but it doesn’t follow that their practical capabilities are the same. When you find an abacus that can do language translation, drive a car, or play Go, let me know.
Ray Manta @ January 27, 2017 at 9:04 pm:
“I pointed out that the existence of human intelligence was compelling evidence that an artificial intelligence could be built based on it since it makes it an engineering possibility.”
If an AI had human-level intelligence then it would worship God like we do. Engineers would then dismantle it in horror that the AI would never be the Godless deity it was intended to be… that truth, pursued at a high enough level of complexity and honesty, is a road to Christ’s front door.
The desire for a society run by artificial intelligence is not a theologically neutral one. It’s the ancient desire for a king other than God.
Gunner Q says:
If an AI had human-level intelligence then it would worship God like we do
Maybe, maybe not. It seems likely that human religious impulses are the result of natural selection forces that an AI wouldn’t be subject to.
Engineers would then dismantle it in horror that the AI would never be the Godless deity it was intended to be
Now you’re letting your imagination run away with you.
The desire for a society run by artificial intelligence is not a theologically neutral one.
That’s nothing more than your opnion. And I don’t see why it couldn’t be considered as a partnership or collaboration between humans and AI.
It’s the ancient desire for a king other than God
An AI-influenced or run society is likely to be a much better place to live than one with only human decision-making. For example, it would be much less subject to the Feminine Imperative, which is maladaptive in the modern world. .
Ray Manta @ 3:05 pm:
“If an AI had human-level intelligence then it would worship God like we do
“It seems likely that human religious impulses are the result of natural selection forces that an AI wouldn’t be subject to.”
Oh come on. Absolutely nothing in evopsych explains the human instinct for God. When’s the last time you saw a chimp build a shrine to God? When did a lizard ever pray over his dinner? Why do you assume, in defiance of history, that Progress involves removing religion from decision-making?
You stupid, stupid atheists. You claim the best way for humanity to live is to follow our natural instincts but when we do that, we kill our own babies. This does not discourage you because some animals kill their own babies, too, and humans are “only animals”. You believe humanity is perfectible despite believing evolution has already perfected us and in the process of making humans perfect, you exhibit more Satan-spawned imperfections and atrocities than God Himself can imagine. You spent the 20th Century whining about how oppressive Christians were while filling mass graves with Christians and infiltrating our churches to emphasize practical results over unproductive faith in something more than matter and energy… and feminism just happened to take over our churches after you did that!
But no, no, it’s never because your Godless beliefs are wrong. It’s always because you’ve “Never Tried Hard Enough Yet” to have Christian morality without Christ. Today it’s Homo Economicus. Tomorrow it’s Artificial Intelligence. Soon it’ll be “space aliens that smell like brimstone” and you still won’t have a clue why people keep trying to escape your Brave New World of Same Old Lies.
I can’t help you.
Gunner Q says:
Oh come on. Absolutely nothing in evopsych explains the human instinct for God.
There’s a Popular Science article data August 8, 2013 with the following subtitle:
“Studies of twins suggest that faith is influenced by genes”.
I googled “religiosity and genetics” and and found numerous links suggesting that it does
have a genetic component. If so, it can be influenced by natural selection. Maybe that’s
why the Amish send their children out to the larger world and let them decide for themselves
if they wish to continue their lifestyle.
So it looks like you’re wrong on that one.
When’s the last time you saw a chimp build a shrine to God?
They’re an animal with a brain approximately a third of the size of the human one. The fact
that they lack a number of our capabilities shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
You stupid, stupid atheists.
How do you know I’m an atheist?
You claim the best way for humanity to live is to follow our natural instincts
but when we do that, we kill our own babies.
I claim no such thing. And you’d really do better responding to what I wrote rather than pigeonholing me as a member of a group.
You believe humanity is perfectible
Perfectible, no. Improvable, yes, it’s possible.
Tomorrow it’s Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence is with us today, although it will continue to improve greatly. I believe that humanity will greatly improve its lot due to collaboration with various forms of AI. We already see hints of this. For example, although computers play chess better than any human now, “centaur players” (humans coupled with a computer) play at an even higher level. Who knows, maybe it’s part of God’s plan for us.
I can’t help you.
Did I ask for your help?
Ray Manta said :
I believe that humanity will greatly improve its lot due to collaboration with various forms of AI. We already see hints of this. For example, although computers play chess better than any human now, “centaur players” (humans coupled with a computer) play at an even higher level. Who knows, maybe it’s part of God’s plan for us.
Yes. And I note that almost no centaurs are women, since woman are repulsed by productivity to begin with.
It is quite simple : AI will simply replace low-productivity jobs (mostly done by women) very quickly, and the government cannot outspend this unstoppable force with make-work jobs and affirmative action.
The merger of humans with technology is absolutely God’s plan for us. We would already look like superhumans to 16th century peasants…
The theological discussion about whether humans are the end goal of evolution or not is beyond the scope of what we have here. The simple point is that AI will strip out FI all over the place, as it will be programmed to be ‘fair’ and to increase productivity. Hence the truth (women receive favorable treatment) will be cleaved free of the narrative (women are oppressed) in millions of instances everywhere…
Anon says:
The simple point is that AI will strip out FI all over the place, as it will be programmed to be ‘fair’ and to increase productivity.
The whole point of this blog is that the sexual contract between men and women is broken.
This is largely due to the tremendous wealth and productivity generated by men via modern
technology has enabled the FI to run wild with few or no constraints. It only makes sense
that there would eventually appear technological and economic forces that would counteract
it.
Ray,
That still doesn’t show any evidence for the cause of that belief, only that it could possibly, maybe, perhaps be similar between two twins. (I assume they were separated at birth for that study to have any merit.) Pretty weak “proof” on your part.
This could prove something, but not the reason for the belief in God.
I would guess it is based on what you argue and the effect of those arguments, even if it is not the label you claim. If you dress like a Goth, you will be assumed to be a Goth. If you talk in eubonics, people will make other assumptions about you. Welcome to the real world.
AI is a label that has been slapped on a great many tech advances. They are not AI, they are tech advances. Buzzwords happen.
I had a class in “AI” in the early 1980s. It was the same idea then. Neural Nets were the big thing in the later 1980s, though I haven’t heard as much about them now. They sounded just like a bunch of data connected together, kind of like the modern “Big Data” term, so perhaps the more things change the more they are the same.
Quit worshiping advancement (and it seems “science” based on your posts) and realize they both have serious limitations.
On the “Protestant Work Ethic”:
I always thought that would be less Calvanists since they are generally of the view that God will do whatever He wants to do, so our actions are not critical. This is one reason very few solid Calvanists do much evangelism.
Can someone tell me why that is not the case in the area of work?
BillyS says:
That still doesn’t show any evidence for the cause of that belief, only that it
could possibly, maybe, perhaps be similar between two twins.
And why else would it be similar? Other studies have shown the genetic influence
as other traits such as political beliefs. It makes sense that religiosity might
have a similar profile.
(I assume they were separated at birth for that study to have any merit.)
You can also compare identical twins and fraternal twins who lived together
and note differential effects.
Pretty weak “proof” on your part.
I don’t think so. New Scientist puts the genetic contribution of religiosity at
about 40%, which is hardly trivial. Environmental influences appear to grow
progressively less important to contributing to behavior, while genetic factors
showed the opposite trend.
If you dress like a Goth, you will be assumed to be a Goth.
This is an online forum where we debate ideas, not your local hangout or
an echo chamber. The posters who ranted at me simply undermined themselves.
Welcome to the real world.
See above.
AI is a label that has been slapped on a great many tech advances. They are not AI,
they are tech advances. Buzzwords happen.
Yes, whenever a technology becomes a practical, working reality it suddenly
becomes “not AI”.
They sounded just like a bunch of data connected together, kind of like the modern
“Big Data” term, so perhaps the more things change the more they are the same.
Since Big Data is a viable technology that has led to large advances in
practical applications, that would imply that things are very different now.
Quit worshiping advancement
I don’t – I just note how much it’s delivered for our species.
(and it seems “science” based on your posts)
Sorry, I don’t accept demands here from anybody except the blog owner. Do you see
me demanding that you stop worshipping God?
and realize they both have serious limitations.
Limitations we have now are subject to change, or may even effectively disappear.
Billy,
While strict Calvinism posits that God has his hands directly in man’s everyday actions to a degree that most other branches of Protestantism do not, and while there is a (fatally flawed) argument from scripture for predestination with regard to eternal salvation, the Calvinists also accept that they have an Earthly duty to be productive with their time and God-given abilities. So it’s not as contradictory as it appears on the surface, since the imperatives to be useful occur inescapably throughout the Bible, so if one combines that with a belief in predestination, their actions (and inactions) are consistent: take action when it does good and refrain from doing so when it’s moot.
(Obviously I do not consider myself a Calvinist, although I have spent a lot of Sundays in Calvinist churches. I’m probably over-simplifying a bit, and a dyed-in-the-wool Calvinist could probably explain it better than I just did.)
That makes sense Lyn87, though it stills seems inconsistent to me. I should probably read a bit more in this. Any reading on it I did is long past.
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