You might also want to read Scott Aaronson's excellent analysis on an adjacent but related topic: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3766
On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
81–90 of 1001 posts
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve seen this thrown around by Jordan Peterson and his fans but I’ve never met anyone, regardless of how crazy their ideology was, advocate for equality of outcomes outside of basic necessities. I’m convinced it’s a strawman.
Haven't had a refresher on it since high school, so I might be totally out of the loop, but isn't equality of outcome the point of marxism?
No, not really in any sense.
You might say that marxism is for more equal outcomes than we have under today's system, but that's true of lots of things that aren't marxist (any form of progressive taxation to fund social programs, for example).
But even that's sort of an oversimplification and doesn't do either marxism or "equality of outcomes" justice.
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#83> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something. This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy…
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Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have a point, but in this case the author of the article says: > I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for relationships came with what I feel were comparably overgrown feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be hap…
> So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was unhappy until he met his wife. Some people feel the existential dread before it is realized. This is shared by both sexes and sometimes expressed at absurdly young ages without prompting.
Yes, that's absolutely correct. In my case at least I remember occasionally waking up when I was very young in hysterics because of general existential dread related to death.
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve seen this thrown around by Jordan Peterson and his fans but I’ve never met anyone, regardless of how crazy their ideology was, advocate for equality of outcomes outside of basic necessities. I’m convinced it’s a strawman.
Haven't had a refresher on it since high school, so I might be totally out of the loop, but isn't equality of outcome the point of marxism?
No, it's not. Marx was critical of the capitalist mode of production. Marxism is a lens of looking at economics and sociology.
Communism and socialism, which are considered different in modern writing but were the same in Marx's time, are something Marx believes are an inevitable outcome of capitalism.
Marxism suggests that when the workers own the companies, then benefits are distributed to the workers who own/operate the company. Profit doesn't get centered in individuals, it gets spread across the workers of a company.
Folks like Lenin/Stalin took this idea further and created an authoritarian regime out of the ideas, and create what we commonly think of as 'communism' in the states.
Edit: Parent comment asked a question about Marxism, I'm getting downvoted for explaining some high level concepts of Marxism? Do folks want me to dive deeper into the dialectical models Marx discussed? Lol
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#86[deleted]
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#87I think we need to legalize both polygamy and sex work. 1) Given the dating dynamics of 80% of women wanting only 20% of the men , clearly society is depriving these women of their desired relationships. 2) If the 80% of men cannot have a relationship, and we agree sex is a basic need, and we don't have sex robots yet, then sex work fulfills a valuable role. https://web.archive.org/web/20091121080804/http://blog.okcu…
This is kind of ignoring that people get and look for different things in sex work than they do in regular relationships. There's no indication that 20% actually would prefer to be sex workers to get more men.
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. I don't have the all data off hand (see some citations below) but I believe they say married men live longer, commit less crimes and are happier. So yes in some sense, can you be happy if you are not married however, is it almost certainly harder. I assume you would find similar data for not having a romantic parter. You, a human, are…
The correlations are clear but causality less so. What if it’s not marriage that makes men happier, less prone to crime, and longer-lived - rather it is that women select for partners who are happier, less prone to crime, and healthier?
It's weird to try and explain this from a sterile alien-studying-humans perspective, but since that's the HN theme I'll do my best. Marriage and having dependents carries with it a lot of economic cost. By revealed choice theory, that implies it has significant benefits, or else nobody would ever do it.
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#89> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something. This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy…
>This is basically a red flag for any relationship. No it isn't. My grandparents, who were married for 60 years had this mentality. My wife's grandparents, who were married for a similar amount of time, also shared this mentality. My wife's parents still share this mentality (and are obviously completely devoted to one another, which you will notice if you spend about 5 seconds with them). My parents divorced, which…
Both this post and the OP strike me as "if it works, it's great, but if it doesn't, it's bad". Different things work for different people, and generalizing too much leads to suggestions that aren't useful for any particular individual situation.
Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
#90> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something. This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy…
What a banal comment. You understand precisely nothing and you start proclaiming solutions that make no sense and then you even have the gal to psychoanalyze the health of the author's relationship. A perfect example of the attitude of some that refuse to even try to empathize with others. Your problem is that you just have no ability to comprehend a situation that is not very similar to your life. So for you, anyone…
Agreed- not only is it overly judgmental and presumptuous, it’s also a nitpick of a single passage from an entire article. It’s not off-topic, but it really swerves discussion into a tangent.