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Pondering the hard questions, such as: why do women have intelligence? (https://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/1580980406345605120)
87

Concerning number of people in the replies to the parent saying “it’s there even though it’s not needed, like male nipples”

Especically considering how evolution could even result in a completely dimorphic pairing like that. What, we are going to have thoughtless blob creatures that spawn our children and have to keep them protected? What does that even look like? There is almost no difference in the brain of the sexes when looked at by volume, and the mating selection for women to have smaller brains (bodies) is somewhat complicated but there's a lot of research about it (everything from preference to lower resource utilization). The one thing we can see is the structure of the BNST in male brains which is unlikely alone to account for these differences.
It also doesnt make sense to put the brains in men, better to keep the men as pretty stupid semen providers. A pattern often repeated in nature. e: And this is also just a dumb strategy in a K type species. (which doesn't mean it cannot evolve of course, as evolution doesn't do strategies like it is playing a video game)
Right, this could easily work both ways, so the framing of "why woman need brain" isn't as dispassionate as they want to make it look. It's almost like they're starting from some kind of prejudice, or... dare I say... bigotry?
Certainly it is just bigotry, with sprinklings of weird fetishism to taste.
Here in the exact science of evopsych, we just take it as a given that intelligence is meant for men.
It can work the other way in the more alienish species like anglerfish, but no species I'm aware of has smart males and breeding stump females.
Yep, noticed that too. Of course, Miller calls a wordier version of it [„part of the answer“](https://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/1580982260911599616).
Reminder that psychology and medicine are largely responsible for the replication crisis in science. Take every fucking thing they say with a grain of salt.
Makes sense. You occasionally get a whacko who's like "I've discovered a planet that passes by the earth every 10,000 years and destroys civilizations like Atlantis! I swear I've seen it through my telescope! If you can't see it you aren't believing hard enough!" but for the most part the profit incentive just isn't there.
I blame Larry Niven

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It has layers, all of which are bad.

Lol, “Primal Poly.” I can’t imagine what his angle is. And what’s this, he’s written a book on relationships.

[He’s](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/rljksh/geoffrey_miller_at_it_again/) [a](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/qgtnqs/professor_primal_poly_shares_one_simple_dating_tip/) [regular](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/mvjftn/is_this_the_best_telling_on_yourself_a_little_too/) [around](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/nun4rd/big_brain_miller_if_you_really_care_teach/) [here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/q3psvc/primalpoly_wants_your_opinion_on_permission_to/)
Lmao jesus christ. I got as far as "a" here
[We have such sights to show you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv5rJUFP2Tw)
I'll always remember him as the dude who tweeted that fat people don't have the willpower to complete a PhD.
Fat people have the calorie reserves to survive living on a grad student stipend; if anything they're better adapted
I'm skinny and lazy as shit, explain that!
I think there might be a SLIGHT positive correlation between thinness and willpower or conscientiousness. Pulling things out my ass maybe r squared is like 0.1 or something.

This is the stuff that drives women out of these communities, and these guys cannot understand why they are so skewed towards men.

Never mind that the women have to take care of the children and themselves while the males are away doing all the work. This entire idea doesn’t exist in nature at all, except for the males of some species that are reduced to sperm providing near parasites.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/science/anglerfish-immune-rejection.html

These guys always strike me as the same men that think that male lions of kings of the pack, meanwhile the female lions do all the work, and the male’s purpose is to protect the cubs from being killed by other male lions.

Well humans are virtually the only species whose offspring are utterly incapacitated for years. Other ape babies are running around after 6 weeks. Human babies require something like 10x that amount of time. The human brain is just so freaking big it doesnt even finish developing in the womb and will not mature for decades. Any selection pressure for "muh dumb zombie stepford wife" is just honestly hard to conceive. You are talking biological differences though. Male lions will kill lionesses that refuse to mate with them and that highlights another reason for sexually dimorphic mammels. A balance vetween sheer mating selection force and the ability to force the genes to exist.
A lioness pride can pretty easily chase off a male they don't like, though. It's weird when you think about it that the entire male half of the lion species isn't really contributing to reproduction beyond sperm and competition among themselves. You'd think there would be a marginal reproductive return to a male lion who can contribute more to his offspring's rearing that would lead to that disparity evolving away, but I guess they're in some stable minimum. Maybe the fact that all the lionesses mate with the same, highest-quality lion and he contributes nothing but sperm and defense of the cubs from other lions makes it worth it by making the lioness pride "reproductively socialistic" and moving most of the costly competition to the males?
They do also protect the pack from other threats, like hyenas and african wild dogs.
All that matters is genes passing down. Male lions kill cubs because the females won't mate for 18 months if they have cubs but will mate immediately if their progeny is killed. There's very weak selection pressure for a male lion that *doesn't* kill cubs. You also have strong selection for males that can protect cubs (or more broadly, keep the cohesion of the pride together in 22 month intervals in spite of regular incursions from competing males).
But you would think there would be a selection pressure for a male lion who not only protects his cubs, but also provides more assistance in feeding them. Looking it up, it looks like the males do help with some of the pride's hunting, but it's still a massive amount of energy they're devoting solely to inter-male competition. You'd think there would be a huge selection pressure at the margin to evolve a male cooperative mode for two loser males to cooperate and share a pride; if most male lions end up as non-reproducing losers, it seems like genes that subvert that would be enormously adaptive, but the wasteful winner-take-all dynamic seems to be stable and self-reinforcing.
There probably is but it is not as strong as wiping out competitive genes. Take infanticde. There could be selection for caring for weak progeny and they may have novel mutations that are long term good but the selection against that is enormous. At some point in our prehistory we had an ancestor who may have had very little to offer in the way of biological interest. He (or she!) figured out how to *make* fire. Perhaps they saw a branch of a tree that rubbed against another and it left charcoal remnants. Or they saw smoke from one of those branches. Or while making a tool they saw smoke while trying to make a sharp edge. That insight was selected for and it appears it only happened once and is probably very rare in the universe. But we made it.
Ow btw, it should be noted that not all species of anglerfish even do this male sperm sack thing. [This species can detach after mating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpback_anglerfish#Reproduction) (just wanted to share a random fish fact).
**Humpback anglerfish** [Reproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpback_anglerfish#Reproduction) >Searching for a mate for M. johnsonii is difficult because they live solitarily and far apart from each other in the deep sea. Males have highly developed sensory organs that allow them to trace the scent of a female as it is minimally disrupted in the still waters of the deep sea. Unlike in other species of anglerfish, males of M. johnsonii are non-parasitic. This means that M. johnsonii males only temporarily attach onto the larger M. johnsonii female using a unique denticular apparatus before releasing their sperm. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
well, that is a pretty good analogue to the role of kings/aristocrats/chiefs throughout history-peasants do the work, kings protect them from being killed by other kings. If lions could agree among themselves to leave each other in peace then they wouldn't need to waste resources on the zero-sum game of trying to have the biggest male, but they can't

Hey Aella: Simpsons did it.

New around here and sort of unfamiliar with everyone’s character and ‘lore’, but I’m confused.

Is Aella doing a schtick and being facetious with her question (suggesting that she thinks the question is inherently biased and sexist?) and everyone is outing themselves as having the same prejudiced question (and therefore beliefs)?

Or is her question coming from a genuine place of internalized oppression?

Or maybe it’s just a genuine inquiry on all their parts? And that Miller would concede that all of the arguments presented here about the inverse being just as good a question/point if someone brought it to his attention? (Never read his book so idk maybe not?)

I see that everyone here thinks (or appears to think) that the latter is more than likely not their intention… how do you know? Sorry, I’m very bad at reading between the lines and usually just take everyone as being genuine, upfront, and sincere with their intentions, even if what they’re inquiring is biased… if they’re being honest and open, perhaps they’re searching for a perspective shift?

This is a sub mocking lesswrong Rationalists (who are rational in the same way that hot dogs are made out of dog meat) see also https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong. PrimalP is more of a side character, but also a prime type that the Rationalists love to interact with. While they pretend to be looking for the truth in unbiased ways for some reason they always talk crypto sexists/fascists/racists/reactionaries etc. That one of the big names in the scene pretended to be a progressive with concerns while being a crypto conservative/neoreactionairy (look up that term on rationalwiki as wel if you dont know it) doesnt help. It is basically a group that lures you in by being nice free thinkers who then end up free thinking a lot of race/iq/antismetic shit. (Im downplaying the sexism here, but the fact that there used to be quite a bit of open pua types in the community should tell you enough about that).
>one of the big names in the scene pretended to be a progressive with concerns while being a crypto conservative/neoreactionairy Who do you mean? Scott Alexander? (I’m only a casual sneerer, too.)
Got it in one. His friends called him a conservative, and the email leaks showed how much he is into NRx stuff (and explained my lingering question why he always was so silent on black people stuff).
Thank you for the explanation and references. Forgive my naivety (I’m here on this sub because I am sus of the community since it often seems they say one thing but do another…). I just don’t understand the motivation of constantly speaking in a plausibly deniable way. Why not just be upfront with what they believe and are arguing for and their intentions? Career protection perhaps? And if so just keep the controversial things that you’re hinting at in your private discourse, since speaking that way suggests you are aware that what you’re saying is problematic. This is what makes me sort of hold out and think maybe *just maybe* at least some of them are speaking in good faith. And while it’s prejudiced in one or more ways, and gross nevertheless, perhaps with more contrarians speaking to them they would change their mind. I trust the word of the SneerClub though. I would not take offense to sneering at my naivety lol. That’s why I’m here, I’m a babe in the woods I need a guiding light.
Psychological speculation: In order to hold up their self-esteem, Rationalists really need to believe that they arrived at their opinions through sheer rationality and that emotion plays no part in it. Thatʼs why their bigotry looks different from the garden variety. (E. g. instead of plain racism, itʼs always scientific racism based on their fetishization of IQ.) Sociological speculation: Rationalists come from a different place than ordinary, MAGA-type bigots. Theyʼre usually a part of the liberal (i. e. not believing in „traditional values“), urban, well-educated milieu or grew up in it. This puts certain taboos on opinions that sound too backwards and conservative, and most Rationalists want to stay at least a little respectable (to tech companies). Also, they probably think themselves far superior to MAGAs and if they happen to agree with them on something, they have to put a „rational“ twist on it — this is where it ties back into the psychology thing. Iʼm neither a psychologist nor a sociologist though, so take it with a grain of salt. Oh, and Iʼm not downvoting you either.
You don't need sociological speculation to know where they (generally) come from. The core of the Rationalist clique are in San Francisco, many of them in tech jobs. Given Yudkowsky's AI risk crusade, it makes sense that it would have clustered there. The whole SSC "gray tribe" schtick (see the "Outgroup" essay) is a specific statement about being enmeshed within an urbane progressive environment while feeling separate from and superior to it.
Yes, thatʼs where I got the idea from. The somewhat speculative part is taking that environment as an explanation for the plausible deniability u/ohhigoodbye_ noticed. But maybe SSC addressed that somewhere too.
This actually makes a lot of sense and sounds \[at least somewhat\] closer to the truth, thank you for the insight!
I don't know why they don't speak only about it, fear of some sort of cancel culture stuff. Some of the spinoff type people (not sure where they really came from btw) like zerohplovecraft (A twitter account who thought lovecraft wasn't racist enough) are more openly shit, but they hide behind account anonymity. Or perhaps to give some of their friends/readers plausible deniability for liking the racist/sexist tinted stuff. Pretending you are [actually hated by the neo-nazis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFh08JEKDYk) is a thing racists love to do after all. (e: do note, im not calling Scott a neo-nazi here, just being a racist re IQ does not a neo-nazi make) And nah, I don't sneer at people being naive, or well, only at myself for liking ssc in the past (guess posting here, and informing people is sort of the penance of the sins of the past, yes, hop in bois, we are making sneerclub a religion ;) ). (no idea why you are getting downvotes btw,isn't me)
> (guess posting here, and informing people is sort of the penance of the sins of the past, yes, hop in bois, we are making sneerclub a religion ;) ) Lmao, I laughed coffee into my face reading this, thank you for that. ​ >(no idea why you are getting downvotes btw,isn't me) Meh, it's all good, no hard feelings.
Iʼm not all too engaged with it either, but I can give you my thoughts: Itʼs less about reading between the lines and more about having known these characters for a long time. If you dig around in their Twitter accounts (I suggest you donʼt), youʼll lose your belief that they might be arguing in good faith pretty quickly. Elsewhere in this thread I collected a few other sneerclub posts on Miller: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/y53w2p/comment/ishms53/ With Aella though, itʼs hard to tell to what degree she actually believes in this stuff and to what degree sheʼs pandering to rationalists who find it hot when a woman shares their misogyny. Itʼs pretty certain sheʼs at least aware of the latter.
Gotcha. Yea, I guess now I’m just more confused why someone would consciously make themselves a mascot for rhetoric that is demeaning to the self… to each their own, I suppose. Although I don’t see how that is at all helpful to the whole, I mean if that’s their ‘thing’/kink, what’s the purpose of making it public? I’m pretty sure they must have a discord or something where she can appeal to their caricaturization/prejudices. That’s what makes me think they’re being genuinely inquisitive albeit irrational (due to obvious bias and groupthink (despite their group label asserting the opposite))
Hereʼs how Aella starts the „About“ section on her website: >During a truth or dare game, someone asked me what my most proud accomplishment was, and I cited Reddit’s #1 Gonewild Post Of All Time, which is weird because I put a fraction of the skill and effort into that than I have into other things, which means I just feel pride when lots of people like me. (She underlines her point by forgetting to mention that the post is currently not even in the top 100 anymore.) Posts solely about Aella are even more or less banned here because itʼs so clear sheʼs craving internet attention.
>Posts solely about Aella are even more or less banned here because itʼs so clear sheʼs craving internet attention. Well, I'm glad to hear that because imho Aella appears to me more like a textbook example of the manifestation of internalized oppression (which is not a good look on the bubble she inhabits), so I don't think she's particularly sneer-worthy since it's basically like she's living out the symptom of a greater issue. So why add insult to injury? Not that she (or anyone for that matter) is beyond reproach, but just that that doesn't really solve anything. Whether or not anyone agrees with my assessment is moot. Even if posts about her are more or less banned here just because "well, we don't want to feed the troll because that only makes the troll more loud and annoying", I can accept that too. Which is why I have been pretty much wondering if all of the counters presented here were presented to Miller on twitter, would that be a more appropriate approach? I mean at worst he could just respond and overtly state his sexist beliefs (even though they are already pretty conspicuous). I do see that at least 5 people responded within the same vein as here, but it's full on attack mode against him (or anecdotal) so I can't imagine why he'd want to even respond unless he feels like arguing (in the emotional sense). But yea, I think everyone that responded to me has given me sufficient evidence as to why that's probably not worth anyone's time or sanity.
Just tbc, I don't believe my assessment because she used to be a sex worker or continues to exude sexuality. I'm proud of her unapologetic expression of sexuality. Her polls and insights leave much to be desired (but that’s aside the point). If I had to guess, it's probably because of this fact (and probably just by being a woman, unfortunately) in a male dominated, misogynistic environment that is the cause of aforementioned assessment. I mean when some of the more supportive voices for her are "something, something, 'stan a girlboss' ", that's a pretty good indicator (amongst many other indicators) of what it might be like in the bubble. Positive discrimination is still discrimination, it sucks and is gross. Sorry (?) if this was overkill, but I just really needed to say my piece. I can’t really gauge what the disagreement is with anything I’ve said since all I’m getting are downvotes and no actual feedback. I know this is a jokey joke subreddit and everyone just wants to sneer. But idk any other place online that is critical (and public) of this community.
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>this is one example of a millennia old tradition of a few women getting theirs at the expense of all the others. Hmm... I guess I figured she was attempting to enter a different phase in her life and the rats were essentially 'keeping her in her place' because of her past. I read her say somewhere on her blog, or maybe Twitter, (but I can't find it) where she said something to the effect of "I finally broke into the community I wanted to be in" (paraphrasing). The impression left on me was that she wanted to be a data scientist (I think?) or get into the Rationalist community because of their \[alleged\] intellectual prioritization and their interest in AI. But with this recent tweet from EY that was sneered at here, I interpreted this as oppression made public since it sounded like he basically said "Hey dollface, I don't pay you to try to have the brains, just sit here on this special seat called my lap and look purdy." And so when her response was basically to pump out a bunch of hot babe tweets and then \*this\* tweet here saying "hard grr math" and basically making herself out to be a bimbo, I perceived that as internalizing that oppression. Proud because of my above interpretation (which sounds like you all might think is so far off and laughable). So I thought, well, despite the degradation, she is doing a sort of exposé on these turds (which would be commendable). As you mentioned, she’s reflecting their desires. All of her polls and her behavior is telling of the community she inhabits. She’s definitely not a moral infant, I hope I made that clear that I don’t think she is at all irreproachable. But I didn’t consider this cynical light, ~~and now I am definitely reevaluating my perspective~~… Regardless, they don’t seem too hospitable to women. Considering your explanation of things, I'm very curious to understand why any woman would at all want to affiliate with these goons. Edit: I should say my perspective has shifted. Once you see it you can't unsee it. Thank you for the insight! I should also mention that I have never watched her porn or have seen her on OnlyFans. I've only followed her on Twitter (and muted her shortly thereafter) and read a few of her blog posts. So perhaps I was missing a few key details/observations and believed the words she said as not pandering to the crowd and serving a persona she created but as honesty. I won't commit to any one opinion, but I'm definitely skewed towards your analysis now.
if reddit wanted to keep my content they should have behaved better
I think the divergence we may have is how much weight should there be placed on her intention. What she’s doing is clear. But if she was actually trying to have some social mobility and be viewed in a different way but everyone basically couldn’t see past ‘sexual-female’ then she experienced oppression. And so her response basically comes from more of a place of “well fine then, I’ll get mine (attention, money) and publicly pander to your desires and let you all make fools of yourselves.” In this scenario I think internalized oppression is a good characterization. But if she came into this whole sphere with the idea of how easy it’d be to act like the sort-of-smart, hot babe to get money from these guys, end of story, then I fail to see how she experienced the oppression, or how it would impact her in such a way to manifest as internalized oppression. It’s in this scenario that she is also doing actual harm towards other women by knowingly feeding into harmful beliefs about women. So, it’s like the difference between someone electrocuting your balls because that’s happened in the past and now they only see you as person-to-take-ball-shocks vs someone electrocuting your balls because you signed a contract to be on Jackass so that you can purposefully receive that sort of pain to cater to the viewers schadenfreude. The only failure of my example is that person-to-take-ball-shocks is not an actual prevalent minority schema such as woman or sexual-woman. The fact that their environment appears oppressive to women is also apparent regardless of Aella’s public encounters, but her interactions make it obvious and noteworthy. Again, I don’t really drop my initial assessment, but considering that maybe the whole narrative I believed could’ve just been her building up a persona to get them to like her is now lodged in my brain and changes how much I consider internalized oppression to be the focal point with her… I mean it doesn’t rule it out though at all because of course we’re both just judging what is made public. So yea, I’m skewed towards a cynical skepticism, but don’t rule my interpretation out.
if reddit wanted to keep my content they should have behaved better
Well, imo, the thing about misogyny on an individual scale (or any prejudice really) has to be a symptom of some other mental health issue, whether it be trauma or a personality disorder or something else. I don’t have any proof or very good argument for that atm but that just seems sensible. It’s an extremely warped way of thinking that seems too often to stem from something personal that the person needs to deal with. I could see NPD with Yud, although I’m not qualified to make any diagnoses. And thank you for the book recommend, I’m ashamed I haven’t read that thus far in life. Going to put a request in at my library for it (they don’t have it in their collection and it’s $123.97 for paperback on Amazon Dx )
Forms of oppression exist because they are of material benefit to the oppressors. You don't have to be crazy to hate women, even if you are a woman, you just have to get something out of it. I'm sure there are people here who could tell you more about conflict theories from an academic perspective, but at the end of the day bigotry is the hat theft wears. https://b-ok.cc/book/3622270/f83096 (Dworkin is unaccountably out of print, you have to get them from internet archives.)
I wouldn’t go so far as to say people with mental health issues are ‘crazy’. And on second thought, I disagree with my hasty claim. I don’t think it’s at all useful to view Yud or any of the sneer-worthy folk in a pathological light (except for maybe very, very specific inquiries) lest anyone begin to believe a mental health or neurological difference is to blame and therefore the person is exempt from scrutiny. I don’t think anyone here would fall for that trap, but yea, I suppose speculating diagnoses is just not really helpful. And tyty for the link I’ll check it out! :)
> then I fail to see how she experienced the oppression I strongly disagree, a community that only allows women (or at least, this woman) to fulfill a sex-object role still oppresses women who are content with that role. At the very least she is not able to experiment in other roles to be confident that this is what she wants, and she is deprived of the value that other women in other roles in the community would have provided.
Right, so either way: internalized oppression.

Gives you a good benchmark of how seriously you should take the alignment problem

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So acausalrobotgod why do you want to destroy humanity? Acausalrobotgod shows the tweets. Ah fair, need help?
[relevant SMBC](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ai-10)

how horrific

What in the actual f?