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

Dating, education, and sex ratios

robkhenderson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 446 posts

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#411

Post by stcroixx »

chongli wrote: post #48
maxsilver wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conversation ends due to their inflammatory pronouncements. Where are you? In the US, most of us still have these conversations about gender, relationships, and life dynamics all the time. (If anything, this is arguably 70%+ of everything we talk about, among friends and acquaintances in the community). > although despite assurances of maturity and openness conversation ends due to their inflammatory pronouncements…

What’s the average age of people in your social group? I’m guessing over 35. It’s a very different story if you try talking to people in their 20’s or younger.

I’m in my 40’s and I don’t know anyone at all around my age who talks about gender at all, let alone often. Many in my generation grew up with the view that those are just a bunch of stereotypes which are not helpful and should be ignored.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#412

Post by rngname22 »

sho_hn wrote: post #73
rngname22 wrote: post #64

Conversations about high income as a factor in attracting women often seem to neglect to mention that it's not enough to have a high income if you don't use it to signal wealth or to provide luxury experiences to women. Telling women you want to put your high income to work in enabling you to retire early but live a modest life and use that freedom to pursue creative pursuits doesn't have the same effect as taking th…

This doesn't match my experience at all. In my experience, in most adult heterosexual long-term relationships it's usually the female partner who is insisting on long-term planning, financial planning, avoiding frivolous purchases, etc. and are happy if men don't start conflicts over this. Your exaggerated example basically screams "husband material".

Hmm, I live in NYC and am early 30s but can only speak to my experiences here, I haven't found that earning a tech salary was impressive to anyone but I can say there are certainly a lot of women who earn high salaries who expect men they date to also spend as much as them on frequent international travel, eating out for $30-50 a head several times a week, expect to live in luxury apartments in Manhattan, etc.

Whereas if I wasn't willing to do that and put my money into the bank and just live in Brooklyn and don't travel super often, my high income holds no appeal.

Note that I do not think either high income or high spending are requisites to date successfully as a straight guy in NYC though. Just noting my observations on how those two factors do play in.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#413

Post by Manuel_D »

politician wrote: post #406
Manuel_D wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not asserting that there's any correct number of children people shoot have - quite the opposite I'm respecting the choices people are currently making. I don't see any issue with that choice, I'd be indifferent if the population were expanding. I can turn and flip this same question on its head. Why not 95% or 90% as much as whatever you think is the stable population mark. Why not 50% or 20%? This is not eugeni…

Since you raised concerns about the climate, I'm going to assume you agree with the concept that when people exploit the environment (e.g. nickel mines) it takes a long time for the environment to recover (thousands or millions of years). The environment is a resource for humanity since we need it to survive and it has a particular regeneration rate. Similarly, humans need the production of humanity to survive, let's…

So Japanese, South Koreans, and Italians are living in the Handmaid's Tale? They're being "literally farmed"? SK has a birth rate of 0.8, less than half the replacement rate. The rate of "defectors" is well above to 20% unsustainable figure you claim. You're making some very wild statements about something plenty of developed countries are already experiencing.

Back here in reality, humans have not needed significant labor to survive since the industrial revolution. Shrinking populations put strain on economies as there's less labor force participation, and it stresses financial systems as pensions and social security systems have to cope with fewer workers supporting more retirees. But it's not an apocalypse, automation eases labor strains and more taxes to fund retirement programs. Again, shrinking populations is something countries are already experiencing and it's not destroying countries.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#414

Post by rngname22 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #74
rngname22 wrote: post #64

Conversations about high income as a factor in attracting women often seem to neglect to mention that it's not enough to have a high income if you don't use it to signal wealth or to provide luxury experiences to women. Telling women you want to put your high income to work in enabling you to retire early but live a modest life and use that freedom to pursue creative pursuits doesn't have the same effect as taking th…

Not my experience. Maybe you're just talking to the wrong people? I find it easy enough to find people who aren't interested in materialism/rat race culture but are interested in ambitious, educated people.

My comment was poorly written, I don't mean to imply those things are required to date successfully or everyone cares about them, just that those who I've met who did seem to be attracted to wealth weren't attracted to wealth just the spending of wealth on status, signaling, or giving them experiences.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#415

Post by steine65 »

ArcticLandfall wrote: post #323
antisthenes wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also women with impossible standards (e.g. 6'+, $200k+/yearly, loves dogs, wants (or doesn't) kids, is single, from a good family, won't cheat, owns his own house, blue eyes, etc.) refusing to lower them in search of a partner well into their 30s, then wondering "where all the good men are".

Bo Burnham's "Lower your expectations" is a hilarious comedy song covering this exact point. For both men and women.

It was good, thanks! https://youtu.be/llGvsgN17CQ

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#416

Post by dantheman »

sangnoir wrote: post #176
queuebert wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professors are on average much more progressive and liberal than the average person and have a high amount of comfort and consequent belief privilege, so no I wouldn't say they're regular people. (Source: I'm a professor.)

IIRC, there is a strong correlation with higher education (rather than the job itself) - it's just that most professors have PhDs.

It's not so much level of education but lack of real world experience. PhDs in industry or outside of the Academy are very different.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#417

Post by cultofmetatron »

testacct22 wrote: post #396
cultofmetatron wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll probably be downvoted to hell for this but here goes... The state of the current education system is outright hostility towards boys. feminists (specifically third wave) long ago, infiltrated k-12 and shove their ideology down little boys throats at every level. any overt show of masculinity is treated as toxic. I don't think a lot of this pride stuff being pushed by the mainstream media right now is about accep…

> Since there are few male teachers, the boys without a strong father figure at home never get taught how to channel their masculine energy in a healthy way I'll give an alternative perspective: people who talk this way try to shame men into traditional "masculine" roles I'm not just talking about hetero vs queer either. More like, pressuring men to "care about" the marriage -> kids -> nuclear family life track. Or p…

that goes both ways. For sure I know exactly what you're talking about. I see this a lot in deeply religious movements. That said, its not particularly helpful to go from "you must participate in daily prayer" to "you must participate in pride." They key here is Tolerence. you don't have to like it or partificpate in it, you just have to accept that what other people do is fine as long as its not harming anybody. Sadly, neither the extreme right or the extreme left seem to get this.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#418

Post by dahwolf »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #403
sneed_chucker wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In modern western culture, women as a group are indeed above criticism. If you were to make the same sorts of broad generalizations and value judgements that are made towards men as a group every day in major news outlets and universities against women, it would be derided as misogyny. Any sort of statement about women as a group that could be perceived as negative must be predicted on the assertion that the potentia…

Broad generalizations about any group, especially those that are obviously incorrect, deserve criticism. Half of the human population is not a monolith, lamenting that "women" all feel the same way about something just makes everyone else think you've never talked to many. Tons of comments here are basically "women only care about using your money" which is just obviously untrue in the aggregate but does reveal that…

It is consistently reported to be an almost flawless pattern: women do not date/marry down whilst men do. And they continue to show this behavior unchanged even when they have plenty of resources on their own.

Hence, for women wealth is a primary and non-negotiable selector and they do pretty much behave as a monolith in this matter.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#419

Post by medvezhenok »

kwere wrote: post #377
dahwolf wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added bonus of selecting for the 0.01% of men: if you're extraordinarily lucky to secure him, you have a new problem: the man has options.

Thats one thing I don't understand about hypergamy (dating app data proves it), why would a woman be in a situation in which she is easily the second, third wheel or worse

I think it's a direct representation of how unequal the power in society is.

Being the 10th wife of a price is better than being the first wife of a commoner somewhere like Saudi Arabia (as an example - can pick any society with high power inequality) in terms of the chances of reproductive success of your offspring.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#420

Post by dahwolf »

oh_sigh wrote: post #408
dahwolf wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They aren’t looking for “status” they are looking for someone who is emotionally intelligent." False. A lowly educated low earner male that is emotionally intelligent will not get selected. Every dating/marriage statistic confirms that women refuse to marry down. So they want both status/wealth and emotional intelligence.

A male friend of mine is 5'3" tall, no college education, and sells pottery for a living - and didn't make much money doing it, based on his apartment. He's also hilarious and kind. Anyway, he met and married a 5'10", attractive woman who is a principal at a PE firm and semi-professionally competes in salsa dancing competitions.

Happy for them, this should happen more. But an exception does not negate the broad pattern.
Post reply on HN