Why are self-proclaimed rationalists so infatuated with evolutionary
psychology? Why do they even care so much about trying to prove that
innate differences exist between sexes or races?
It’s like they’re starting from this desired truth and trying to work
backwards to prove it so they can have an excuse to be dicks to people.
Like, what’s the end goal? To prove these innate differences exist and,
therefore, show that concepts such as race/sex discrimination are simply
natural byproducts of evolution?
Is their takeaway, then, that because these societal problems are
evolutionary and ‘all natural’, they shouldn’t be addressed? What a
presupposition…especially given that supposed ‘evolutionary problems’
are inseparable from the man-made actions that caused them.
And why do they cloak themselves in rationality when they so often
resort to generalizations, logical fallacies, and reductive metaphors
and analogies? They’re an ‘evidence-based’ movement sometimes, sure, but
they often misuse, mischaracterize, or draw bullshit inferences from the
evidence. They craft these meandering walls of text full of mental
gymnastics and quilt works of stitched-together ‘sources’ that are just
blogs of other members of the rationalist community doing the same
mental gymnastics.
Because an overly simplistic explanation for behavior helps with dehumanization and othering. The same thing is at work with bitter misanthropes on image boards coming up with the concept of "NPCs". Everyone's a mindless sheeple and I'm the only bright one in the rough. Women do a certain thing because it's in their evolved nature, it's not that I'm intellectually and emotionally lazy for not trying to understand why I'm the one with the problem rather than half the human population.
If people are actually a sophisticated product of indoctrination, class, alienation, trauma, dogma, material conditions etc. it's way less easy to be right about your negative feelings towards them as a monolithic group.
They are a group that revolves entirely around privileging rationality as the highest human virtue.
This naturally results in the belief that 'the smarter you are, the better you are'.
And this naturally leads to insecurity. What if you're part of an internet group that worships intelligence and intelligent people, but don't have any of the typical life achievements associated with intelligence? How do you square that with your belief that intelligence is the only virtue that matters? If you aren't that obviously smart, but intelligence is all that matters, then how much do you matter?
Simple; find some way to believe that you are INNATELY more intelligent than most of humanity, so that you don't need to worry about things like actual achievement or success or impact on the world. Instead you just say "I'm a guy so I'm just naturally smarter than all women" or "I'm white so I'm just naturally smarter than all the colored people" and voila; suddenly you get all the emotional benefits of feeling like you're some sort of Mega Mind without having to actually do anything.
Eugenics of all kinds usually boils down to mediocre people trying to make themselves feel better by claiming they were just born better.
To justify their position within the modern global hierarchy and explain why they have while others have not, and explain the modern deficit between the global north or south as not being the product of historical forces like colonialism, but of genetics, that it is natural that the global north would have prevailed due to superior evolution or whatever.
[eigensneer #5: "one weird trick to understand human behavior"](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/j1zpdk/nsfw_towards_an_eigenbasis_of_the_sneer_space/)
Rationalists are biased against social explanations of social phenomena because deep down, they're not that interested in people.
because they feel like chronically underachieving failures (because they are), so they do this to feel better about themselves
white supremacists: people with nothing to feel good about except being white
Frontiers In is a predatory publisher, and every Frontiers-published paper should be looked askance at. (They routinely get removed from Wikipedia, for example.)
The end goal is clout. Most of these people are either under the spell of people who bullshit for a living, or are people who bullshit for a living. Think of TPO - now banned even from TheMotte - who makes his living faking it as a racist middle-aged economist from Lichtenstein whilst working actually as a young and again fake researcher with the notorious pariah Emil Kirkegaard out of his actual home of the American mid-west.
I can’t remember if I’m supposed to disclose that but I’m pretty sure I got an out from the friends who discovered it. I very much doubt it’ll change any minds. These are people that are so used to being lied to they think it’s virtuous.
It's a subset of [universal Darwinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism), which is a one stop shop to act as a replacement for all social science and humanities. Jaron Lanier describes it [here](https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-one-half-a-manifesto) in section 4. So, yeah, basically one weird trick.
Their silicon valley/tech environment is filled with progressive capitalists whose only real objection to gaping wealth inequality is that it may have been the result of sexism/racism/ect. So the rationalists have correctly surmised that all they have to do is convince people that "actually, what looks like oppression is simply just Natural Market Outcomes" and these progressive capitalists will lose the argument.
The crudest material analysis in this case is the correct one: The reason they don't want wealth redistribution is that they know, with their six-digit salaries (see: SSC surveys), that they will be the ones redistributed from.
Ironically enough, not getting banned on TheMotte is just a matter of virtue signaling - posting about all your emotional conjecture and bigotry with the language of a detached statistician and 19th century British anthropologist.
Hell, as long as you don't have a posting history on SneerClub you could probably defend communism on TheMotte and not get banned as long as you worded it right.
>Hell, as long as you don't have a posting history on SneerClub you could probably defend communism on TheMotte and not get banned as long as you worded it right.
If by "worded it right" you mean never mention Marx or any actual details. But maybe you should try it out.
if by "worded it right" you mean deep-throated a dusty old bookshelf of boring D-grade philosophy books and regurgitated them back up, while also spitting out an incomprehensible mix of made-up buzzwords.
they really do just throw anything at the wall and act like that makes the spaghetti perfectly al dente, don't they?
Evopsych = the battered tin kit bumping around in the center console, full of oxy, uppers, and some shit you picked up in '15 that the dude *swore* was salvia, that a veteran driver can unlock, rifle through, and sample from without taking their eyes off the road.
I’ve had this idea for a post knocking around my head, that I just
can’t quite transform from “frustrated ranting” to “actually an effort
post”. Maybe there is no way to pull it off.
But there is just something profoundly wrong with
women. Every woman around me is out of their fucking minds. My wife. My
female friends. My male friend’s wives. Everyone’s mothers. Everyone’s
sisters. Everyone’s female friends. It’s incomprehensible. They, one and
all, act like they are hanging on by a ragged thread. They put on a
pleasant face in public, then go back home and swiftly revert to their
natural state which appears to be neuroticism cranked up to 11, 24/7,
all the time always. With mental faculties as blown out as one would
expect with a thoroughly stress saturated brain.
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole.
If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”
>I keep tossing around this notion that maybe it was extremely unfortunate that the same vessel that has to give birth, care for young, and is weaker to boot, was cursed with sentience.
"vessel" wtf
I honestly feel deeply sad for any woman who has had to come in any sort of contact with this person, let alone his mother, and his wife(!). I have to wonder, does she have any idea of how he feels. Or is she completely unaware of it? As for his female friends(?), I don't even understand how someone who seems to be so confused and upset because of women, would ever want to be friends with one. Or for that matter, get married to one. I have genuinely no idea how he manages to behave normally around women (assuming he does)
I think all the women around him are very familiar with the ['missing stair'](https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) concept.
This person has been on reddit for over a decade, and [he always was this way](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1o5eo0/older_married_men_how_much_did_your_wife_turn_out/ccoztmo/) it looks like. (Also a gamer of course)
E: [Yikes](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMen/comments/7snrb6/men_who_lost_sexual_desire_for_their_partner_then/dt6gdcu/?context=3)
E2: [Double Yikes!](https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/2z8q4j/light_i_facebook_stalk_my_ex_just_to_see_how_fat/)
It's hard to tell whether this person developed this worldview by being stuck in abusive relationships, or because his shit attitude and behaviour simply brought out the worst in partners.
That's if he's not completely exaggerating his partners' bad behaviour because he's an asshole and can never be wrong.
Regardless, what a trash worldview.
Wow! Thanks for that link. I've experienced an example of that myself, and it's really shit. I do think the post linked in the article is kind of unfair, because the reason people didn't do anything about that person was that he was really high up (also he's *very* famous in the field, he even has a wikipedia aritcle), and I think everyone was scared that if they tried to do something, or bring up his behaviour, it would just end up ruining their own careers/lives, without actually affecting him in anyway
Yeah I only know the concept, havn't read the blog post that spawned it. It is just a useful tool to point out a certain type of behaviour/position.
Not every broken thing that people deal with is easy to fix. (And you could even use the concept in a different way, somebody who is bad at dealing with deadlines in an organization and people also just deal with his behavior (and sometimes forget to mention this to new people) is also a sort of missing stair, not every case where you work around somebodies 'special requirements' means that it is bad. It just is bad that it happens with abusive people. (And sometimes these abusive people are argumentative, or physically abusive, high up in power etc, not verybody can have the energy/power/etc to get rid of somebody like that (say if it for example is a family member, or your partner)).
E: the concept is useful, because it allow groups of people to recognize when it is happening together and do something about it. Share the load etc.
Whenever I start to think about how far women have come in terms of being considered mental equals to men, I see comments like this. How is it 2021 and there are still idiots who think this way? How do you grow up, get fucking married, and still think of women as a monolithic group?
I thought it was a "trans=nazi propaganda" argument (which is basically holocaust denial, considering how the nazis treated trans people) from reading your comment, a common thing among brazen transphobes, but looking at it, it is from an outright neo-nazi account that is using a "(((their))) lies will eventually fall" quote from Goebbels, so even more brazenly terrible than I expected.
And of course the goebbels guy is quote-tweeted by a guy going on about how women (and by extension "woke people") literally have no sense of reality and how the internet is training men to think like them.
I genuinely have no idea what this person is trying to say. He’s
acting like the behaviour he’s describing is something only women do,
but it’s so obviously not. I mean, anyway who’s heard a insecure man
bragging will have seen exactly this thing: ” absolutely brazen reality
denial … with denial of things which took place seconds ago, in front of
witnesses even.” It’s almost like these people feel the need to bring up
the topic of sex difference or whatever they call it, no matter what the
discussion is about. The funny thing is that’s exactly what they say (or
used to say) about feminists, anti-racists, etc., that we “bring up
sex/race/‘politics’ all the time”.
> you have peer reviewed science? well they have facts and logic. check *and* mate.
Honestly, this is the perfect summary of why r/TheMotte is a trashfire- the userbase consistently values an aesthetic of seeming intelligent over scientific evidence and critical thinking, because the former can be used to lend support to anything they want and never requires them to evaluate their own preconceptions and beliefs.
Is there, like, a prize for “world’s worst take” that I’m not aware
of? Because at a certain point, I feel like that’s the only explanation
for why people keep posting this kind of nonsense.
I have more respect for red pillers than this guy, at least they don't feel the need to hide their hatred of women behind dozens of paragraphs of """Rational Analysis"""
It is possible the redpill is younger than sexist rationalism, fun fact the hbomberguys skullguy used to post on lesswrong. (Sorry if you arent online enough for this sentence to make sense).
E: for reference, google searches for the red pill/redpill started to go up in late 2013 (very noisy data due to the matrix term, which is a thing the far right loves, inside terms which are impossible to google for (the term 'google' is initself one for example (it is just used for racism btw, super obvious from context))). While sscs anti-heartiste FAQ (a neo-nazi redpill pua person) was written in aug 2014.
Of course, the 'manosphere' predates this usage of the term redpill which was started in 2009 or something. (esp as the term redpill is a nebulous term, it can mean 'the media doesn't have your best interests at heart', 'women drool, men rule (why wont they fuck me?)', or even 'hitler was right'.
People of the sort that are being targeted (say, me again) could
write a ton of really annoying but hard-to-deconstruct sneerclub-baiting
Moldbuggian sophistry if offered such a road to pardon, so that’s a bad
idea. Indeed, you’d do better demanding a rule-abiding effortpost or
good link in a time limit, but that’s selling indulgences.
Could be worse. Communication between sexes being unnecessary, nature
could have provided us with helpmates incapable of speech, or only
screeches whose meaning is restricted to their own kind and children.
Instead the noises they make sound familiar, and I get to pretend I
understand them.
Perfectly reasonable and rational discourse. Doesn’t sound at all
deranged.
Of course it makes sense to think of men as the primary
representatives of humanity, whom nature bounteously provides with women
for their aid and comfort.
“what’s the explanation that best fits the facts, that i have
discovered a psychological truth about half of humanity that has escaped
science for millenia, or that i just truly, frantically loathe women?
obviously the former” - the big brained the_motter
If even people with handles like VOC_Cartographer start calling you
out for posting nonsense, you must surely know you’re being ridiculous.
Right? Right?
My best friend and indeed ex-girlfriend is a woman diagnosed with
BPD, a history of neurotic behaviour, which she handles very well
now
And this reply is fucking mental:
But there is just something profoundly wrong with women. Every woman
around me is out of their fucking minds. My wife. My female friends. My
male friend’s wives. Everyone’s mothers. Everyone’s sisters. Everyone’s
female friends. It’s incomprehensible. They, one and all, act like they
are hanging on by a ragged thread. They put on a pleasant face in
public, then go back home and swiftly revert to their natural state
which appears to be neuroticism cranked up to 11, 24/7, all the time
always. With mental faculties as blown out as one would expect with a
thoroughly stress saturated brain.
>Every woman *around me* is out of their fucking minds.
Emphasis mine. This has to be a big part of it. If someone you knew started talking the way they are talking in that thread, day in and day out, can you honestly say you wouldn't say/do something that they would perceive as being "out of your mind?"
Yes, and I’ve been in that position: doing that sort of shit. The difference is I’m capable of checking myself and realising I’m in the wrong. The way these people are clearly so isolated from their own actions is the root of the problem, no?
Why are self-proclaimed rationalists so infatuated with evolutionary psychology? Why do they even care so much about trying to prove that innate differences exist between sexes or races?
It’s like they’re starting from this desired truth and trying to work backwards to prove it so they can have an excuse to be dicks to people. Like, what’s the end goal? To prove these innate differences exist and, therefore, show that concepts such as race/sex discrimination are simply natural byproducts of evolution?
Is their takeaway, then, that because these societal problems are evolutionary and ‘all natural’, they shouldn’t be addressed? What a presupposition…especially given that supposed ‘evolutionary problems’ are inseparable from the man-made actions that caused them.
And why do they cloak themselves in rationality when they so often resort to generalizations, logical fallacies, and reductive metaphors and analogies? They’re an ‘evidence-based’ movement sometimes, sure, but they often misuse, mischaracterize, or draw bullshit inferences from the evidence. They craft these meandering walls of text full of mental gymnastics and quilt works of stitched-together ‘sources’ that are just blogs of other members of the rationalist community doing the same mental gymnastics.
Nah, disparaging entire groups of people without any evidence never gets you banned on themotte if your post is long enough. e: well good news everyone, i was wrong, it isnt about length, it is about effort put in proving ‘bitches be crazy’ (and the award for the weirdest ban message goes to…)
…
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”
[deleted]
I genuinely have no idea what this person is trying to say. He’s acting like the behaviour he’s describing is something only women do, but it’s so obviously not. I mean, anyway who’s heard a insecure man bragging will have seen exactly this thing: ” absolutely brazen reality denial … with denial of things which took place seconds ago, in front of witnesses even.” It’s almost like these people feel the need to bring up the topic of sex difference or whatever they call it, no matter what the discussion is about. The funny thing is that’s exactly what they say (or used to say) about feminists, anti-racists, etc., that we “bring up sex/race/‘politics’ all the time”.
response:
our valiant crusading OP:
So they’re claiming women have less reliable memories than men do, but what science I’ve found shows the opposite pretty consistently.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20190612/Women-have-better-memories-of-events-than-men.aspx
Is there, like, a prize for “world’s worst take” that I’m not aware of? Because at a certain point, I feel like that’s the only explanation for why people keep posting this kind of nonsense.
everybody’s talking about what the best collab in history might be, but themotte’s collab with theredpill has got to be the worst
damn he’s onto our game
Perfectly reasonable and rational discourse. Doesn’t sound at all deranged.
Of course it makes sense to think of men as the primary representatives of humanity, whom nature bounteously provides with women for their aid and comfort.
“what’s the explanation that best fits the facts, that i have discovered a psychological truth about half of humanity that has escaped science for millenia, or that i just truly, frantically loathe women? obviously the former” - the big brained the_motter
If even people with handles like VOC_Cartographer start calling you out for posting nonsense, you must surely know you’re being ridiculous. Right? Right?
My best friend and indeed ex-girlfriend is a woman diagnosed with BPD, a history of neurotic behaviour, which she handles very well now
And this reply is fucking mental:
Motters can’t just do a misogyny, they have to do an elaborated misogyny “grounded” in evopsych nonsense.
Funny that I see this on the same day I see this.
Wow, the mottald going tankie to own the femoids was something I was legitimately not expecting. A for novelty, F for cultural genocide denial.