Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#401

Post by ReactiveJelly »

photochemsyn wrote: post #53

I wonder if social media technology is as much at fault as the neoliberal program of exporting well-paid manufacturing jobs overseas and replacing them with low-paid service jobs (with the difference going into the pockets of the shareholders) is. If children are being raised on TikTok, okay, the average video length on TikTok is a couple minutes. Advertisements are now 5-15 seconds. This is not conducive to 'long at…

I've heard the causation goes the other way for ADHD.

TV and TikTok don't cause ADHD. They're products that arise to exploit people's attention, and they work excellently on people with poor executive function. TV doesn't cause ADHD, ADHD causes TV.

You can probably train attention span, and there are ways to cope with ADHD (I cope pretty well, and I have only mild symptoms), but it's measurable and it's genetic.

I guess you and I would agree on the conclusion - Treat social media like any other addictive drug: Regulate it, don't let kids get hooked on it, maybe even discourage adults from abusing it.

I think a lot of it comes down to, video and human faces exploit something deep in your brain. Maybe Hacker News just feels high-brow to me because there aren't image macros and constant ":O" clickbait thumbnails like some other sites.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#402

Post by astrange »

api wrote: post #250
mandmandam wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't mysterious. The people sucking money out of the wage pool are the 1% class, not women. 20 trillion in debt for illegal and stupid wars probably didn't help either, though it does tie in once again with the 1% class.

> 20 trillion in debt for illegal and stupid wars That's really the elephant in the living room. Perhaps as a society we are poorer because we set fire to trillions in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. For the HN crowd here's a metric: the average seed round is like $2M these days, so Iraq at roughly $3 trillion would be enough to fund 1.5 million startup companies.

Increasing the national debt doesn’t decrease private savings, it increases them. The nation is not a household.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#403

Post by scarmig »

azhu wrote: post #399
scarmig wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Taking personal responsibility" is always an option, and it's usually the best option in terms of maximizing personal wellbeing. At the same time, it's important to recognize the social forces that constrain different groups and limit the power that personal agency can exert over outcomes. The masculine gender role is extremely narrow, and if you deviate much from it, society will punish you: so-called "personal res…

> The masculine gender role is extremely narrow, and if you deviate much from it, society will punish you. > As a man seeking a female partner, if I want to be a homemaker who teaches belly dance part time, I'm going to be in for a really hard time, no matter how much personal agency I embrace. If you say so, it will be so. If you write this code, you should not be surprised when running it achieves the programmed re…

I'm a highly emotionally-available, bellydancing bi guy who's dated both men and women, so I have a reasonable comparison point. Men are far, far more open-minded about the gender roles their partners inhabit than women are. It's not even close.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#404

Post by dan-robertson »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #393
ytwombly wrote: post #150

US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood. You can point to the declin…

And pointing to the decline of religion isn't very helpful for us atheists. I can't really buy into a religion I don't believe in for the sake of making society better. I'd rather try to make society better directly, I don't want to do a "noble lie". I'll gesture vaguely at "the suburbs". Low trust and alienation describes my childhood in a place where you needed a car to do anything and even when my parents let me w…

Aren’t there secular clubs that can have a large social element like rotary clubs or book clubs or even some sports like golf for example?

I guess you could also try joining a church where it’s basically acceptable to be an atheist like the Unitarian Universalist church although that would maybe be too spiritual.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#405

Post by astrange »

jessaustin wrote: post #266
robertlagrant wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people sucking money out of the wage pool are the 1% class, not women What does that mean?

The wealthy determine how the rest of us in USA are governed. Inevitably, they decide that they will get more and we will get less. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

That study is false.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#406

Post by diordiderot »

scarmig wrote: post #350
urthor wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge body of education research about this, this has been the case for of years. There's even data from the pre-1900s, especially in the primary school years. Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education. It all boils down to: Girls are more likely to do their damn homework when the teacher tells them. Therefore they out-perform in fo…

Teachers also give boys lower grades and girls higher grades when their gender is evident; anonymous grading greatly reduces the gender gap in primary and secondary school.

Do you have a link to a study etc? V interested

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#407

Post by azhu »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #387
azhu wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you bro. I've felt that same way and I have empathy. You have solid points and a valid perspective. You could also really use an attitude adjustment. We're here as a society because of mishandled social responsibility. Women have only started to take up their own personal care because they can't rely on established conventions any more. We as individuals likely have not done much, if anything, to contribute to…

This is either pitch perfect parody or a truly wild lack of self-awareness. I actually need the /s tag here. Because replying with the precise tropes of toxic masculinity as a solution to… the problems caused by toxic masculinity, whew.

It appears that you're defining masculinity in and of itself as toxic. Masculine and feminine function as yin and yang, as dualistic complements. The masculine is simply structure, force, or closure. The feminine is flow, softness, and openness. Each human moves with a balance of both.

What's toxic is when the masculine is out of balance with the feminine. When structure, force, and closure crowd things out because there is not enough flow, softness, and openness. Simply making a decision and acting on it is not in and of itself toxic. It's the inability to adjust later that is toxic.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#408

Post by ReactiveJelly »

Animats wrote: post #370

Some people say a man is made outta mud A poor man's made outta muscle and blood Muscle and blood and skin and bones A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong "Sixteen Tons", Tennessee Ernie Ford There are few Real Men jobs like that any more.

How can civilization cope with the fact that those jobs might never come back?

A cognitive surplus [1] can be dumped into projects like Wikipedia, but where does the physical surplus go? Supposing we are omnipotent deities who want to make people happy and free and avoid unrest.

Encourage people to build henges and pyramids for the hell of it?

We can't pay them to do that without a global welfare system... Russia would just race us to the bottom.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Surplus

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#409

Post by ukie »

ytwombly wrote: post #150

US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood. You can point to the declin…

No post body was provided.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#410

Post by azhu »

scarmig wrote: post #403
azhu wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The masculine gender role is extremely narrow, and if you deviate much from it, society will punish you. > As a man seeking a female partner, if I want to be a homemaker who teaches belly dance part time, I'm going to be in for a really hard time, no matter how much personal agency I embrace. If you say so, it will be so. If you write this code, you should not be surprised when running it achieves the programmed re…

I'm a highly emotionally-available, bellydancing bi guy who's dated both men and women, so I have a reasonable comparison point. Men are far, far more open-minded about the gender roles their partners inhabit than women are. It's not even close.

If that's your experience then that's your experience. Mine is different. I validate your experience, and see it as true. I do the same for my own.
Post reply on HN