1012
on the male loneliness epidemic
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
Show transcript
Screenshot of a Tumblr post by nongunktional:
when i first heard about the male loneliness epidemic i was like oh yeah close camaraderie and bonding between men is often discouraged in favor of competition or, if not discouraged, at least filtered through a lens of individualism that precludes deep connections. and then i learned what people meant by it (men arent getting laid) to which i say skill issue
to all the men out there not getting laid: try less hard to get laid and try more hard to be an enjoyable and relaxing presence
The problem is, maybe you are right that Sapolsky hasn't looked into them but I've looked into them and their definition of free will is not meaningfully different from a theoretical conscious yet programmed robot's "will".
It also shouldn't disagree arguably with the more important issues of justice and meritocracy. Its just shifting the definition of 'free will' to just be 'autonomy'.
If those are the same thing, sure whatever that definition of "free will" is true but then robots also have free will, and we treat a programmed autonomous robot very differently compared to a human.
They're religious and I don't engage in religion, spirituality, supernaturalism, or theology. Absolute waste of time.
Maybe Sapolsky knew they were wastes of time and skipped them. You don't have to read the bible to know christianity is a waste of time. I don't need to read libertarian ideology to know the same about their ideas.
Free will hasn't been meaningfully defined to differentiate itself from "Autonomy" by compatibilists. Their definition as a result is worthless. Libertarians basically believe in magic.
If anything, he's offering a steelman.
My "core beliefs" are basically my axioms. And axioms are more like ideological goals or ways of thinking. Changing those certainly can happen, it used to be the case for me that my moral axioms placed "truth" above basically everything but now its below harm reduction for instance.
If someone's core belief is more of a specific "factual statement", then sure. One should be willing to change one's beliefs with new evidence. And really it shouldn't even be a core belief in the first place.
What I believe is true: 1) I engage with empiricism or scientific consensus. 2) If something is outside of empiricism or scientific consensus I fall to Occam's Razor. 3) If something can't be engaged with either of those things, I simply assume I cannot know right now and have to wait for empiricism or scientific consensus and that it isn't worth fabricating a comforting fairy tale to explain it.
The "abstract thinking" all happens essentially at 0) My way of figuring out what is true stems from rationality and rational thinking structures. Abstract thinking never follows the other steps.
Given that its earnest, I appreciate the concern. That said, if I hadn't avoided them I'm pretty sure I would have unironically risked suicidal ideation. There wasn't a safe way for me to engage at the time but to minimize. The only reason I'm able to talk about it now is that it was a long time ago and I'm kind of dead inside anyway at this point.
There have been people I've seen that I also felt similar to, but they've not been people I had to regularly see.
It can be both. Its in fact many things, religious and cultural norms play a major role as well.
Absolutely, but they simply aren't at the same rates and getting consent for sex from a heterosexual/bisexual man is rarely a problem for the average heterosexual/bisexual woman.
Its doing something, but its not "Doing something to her." Its more like doing something to myself.
OK, let me break this down because there needs to be fewer people who do this.
I added my anecdote for context as supporting contribution to my argument to demonstrate an idea or probable reality. I wasn't interested in actively changing the subject to me personally as the focus. Especially since that can often just result in discussing my character instead of engaging with the main argument, which is basically what you did.
If you wanted to attack the relevance/factuality/meaningfulness of the anecdote itself that is fair game. However, you then took your chance to decide largely to attack my character. This was ultimately me being good faith and willing to open up for the sake of a more meaningful discussion and you turned it into a dunk and a personal criticism.
This did not hurt my feelings but it annoyed me because its escaping from my actual points and meant suddenly I needed to defend my character, something I really don't even care that much about on here as this is specifically the account I use to misanthropically complain about the state of the world during slow times at work. In order to maintain the legitimacy of my argument I ended up having to waste time defending myself. It just bogged down the conversation.
Lol, I think you are massively conflating influence with literal programming. I don't think you would find anyone credible to agree that robots have "will"
Also, "theoretical conscious" is doing a lot of lifting in this argument.
You mean a "theoretically conscious" robot would theoretically have free will, since this has not happened, and some would argue it cannot happen, we have no idea how we would treat them.
What? I mean there are theological libertarian takes, but a libertarian take on free will is not innately religious. They just believe that predeterminism is logically incompatible with freewill.
Lol, you obviously haven't read their ideas if you think it's theological in nature. You can decide you don't want to engage with the body of work, but you can't then critique it. If you don't know what you are critiquing, then any argument you make is going to be a strawman.
I'm mean it depends on the compatibilist..... Some do make arguments that differenciate the two. However, most do not because you are utilzing language in engineering to combat a philosophical principal.
Some utilize autonomy as a synonym for free will, some say free will is just a stronger for of autonomy, some describe the difference as a matter of agency. For example, a slave has free will, but is being controlled by another so lack autonomy.
Again, you are attacking a strawman with this argument.
Again.... I really don't know how you are interpreting this?
What? You do know what a strawman argument is right?
Axioms are self evident, if your beliefs were actual axioms we'd all believe in them.....
I mean, definitely a step forward.....but I'd still challenge you to practice some skepticism about these "axioms" of yours.
So what are your core beliefs based on if not empiricism?
So how do we handle subjectivity?
Occam's razor is only meant to adjudicate between two competing theories that are equally supported by evidence that have already passed theoretically scrutiny.
I fail to see how you can make a claim against the existence of free will with that thought process.
So your rationality isn't influenced by observation and your observation never influences your rationality?
Again..... I would highly advise you to talk to a professional about this. Your avoidance of health professionals and tbh your entire belief system seem highly irrational and dangerous to your own health.
Could that not be influenced by the sexist expectations set upon women by a patriarchal society?
You can do both at the same time.
Again..... We are debating. You can't expect to introduce an argument and have me not offer a rebuttal to that argument. If you are wanting to avoid shifting the argument towards your personal behavior, I advise not to add personal anecdotes that support your claim.
Your behaviour was relevant to the argument, so I criticized your behavior. If you decide that your actions reflect the nature of your character then that is a personal insight.
That's just it though, there is no reason to assume that there is something intrinsically special about the human brain that allows it to exclusively be conscious. The brain is just a computer made of flesh, one that merely at the moment can't be programmed directly. If we replicated it artificially and it was able to be fully programmed the obvious implications is that there also is nothing special about our own brains in terms of "will" because we'd have a replica that we'd be able to directly control and program. It'd just mean our programming came about from evolutionary forces.
"Predeterminism" is a red herring. I don't believe in predeterminism either. I don't think the future is already written.
"You can decide not to read the bible and hundreds of years of theological theory, but you can't then critique it."
If 500 years ago, someone wrote a complicated theory that stated that everything was made of bananas and then over the course of the past 500 years people debated the specifics filling up tomes of books on the nonsense I wouldn't be required to read it all to not be fully in the right to completely dismiss it as gibberish and to openly insist that others also not waste their mental energy on it.
I find libertarian ideas around free will to be nonsense at a fundamental level. Reading the specifics would go no where. I'd need to be convinced that the core idea had some merit to begin with. As far as I can see, they have zero.
There are multiple definitions of axiom. I'm referring to personal ideological axioms. "A self-evident principle or one that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument; a postulate. "
Empiricism itself is not a factual statement, its a system of thinking. Empiricism is indeed a core belief of mine.
You'll need to be more specific. What do you mean "handle"? Do you mean the issue that you can't truly "know" anything?
I guess? I not sure how this contradicts my usage of it? Also why arbitrarily two? If you are discussing something where every theory has zero evidence for it then you'd be able to select the most simple out of a list of theories of any size. They'd all have zero evidence. Its not like you'd be forced to only consider two of them.
Because free will itself is a fairy tale. But it got stopped one step further. There being free will is more complicated than there simply being no free will.
The rational abstraction is systematized. Its not so much that it's not a potential that observation could never influence my rational thinking, but that if an observation does then that has potential impacts on all of my rational thinking systems. This is pretty unlikely, we're talking a major and profound table flip. It would need to be demonstrated that the very way my rational system of thinking is inferior at obtaining truth compared to another new way.
That said, as they are, the only abstract thinking that would follow is more like a procedural set of steps that I've already come to follow to process new evidence.
So rationality "applies" to evidence, but like a pre-written function.
Oh it definitely is. It however isn't the only influence, patriarchy is only one component of cultural conservativism. There is also religion and capitalism.
Plus, lets be honest here women just are less horny because of the nature of hormones. Just ask someone on any kind of HRT. We probably evolved that way to create a competitive pressure on men. Natural is brutal and amoral, and men are thrown into a metaphorical gladiatorial arena by it. The one that comes out on top gets to have kids (and have a fulfilling sex life), and from my perspective this is pretty awful. I'm not a fan of nature. I want every individual, men and women (and otherwise), to have fulfilling sex lives.
I don't believe I made a claim that there is, just that our current technology is nowhere close to having a computer actually achieve consciousness.
Again..... I don't think you really have enough knowledge about human physiology to make that claim, and it completely ignores the mind body problem. The misconception that there is some kind of separation of the brain from the body is a product of how we first began to learn about the brain. The more we learn about cognitive science the more we learn just how inseparable the mind is from the body. You can physically alter the composition of the brain by physically changing the body and vice versa. A brain is not a computer, at most you could potentially claim that a computer is made as a simulacrum of a brain.
If my grandma had balls she'd be my grandpa...... That's quite the big "if" to hang your argument on. Secondly, I believe you're conflating programming with learning.
I didn't claim you do..... That argument is just what libertarian believe.
First of all, there's a big difference between philosophical theories which are put forth with rational arguments using logic and rhetoric, and a religious tome. Claiming otherwise is not academically honest.
Secondly, your analogy is lacking. Of course you wouldn't have to research 500 years of banana ect... That's unless your rebuttal was based on the claims already put forth by the banana theory.
The original affirmation is claiming that there is something called "free will", they go on to describe what this encompasses. Your negation is that there is no such thing as free will. However, what your rebuttal refers to as free will is not the same idea the affirmation is actually making claims about.
So you are ignoring the actual argument, and claiming it to be ridiculous without knowing what they are talking about.
Again, you haven't stated your interpretation of what libertarians actually believe.....other than falsely claiming that it's inherently religious.
How is that rational in any way? You are making determinations and then forcing ways arguments to fit.
This does not align with your other statements, it seems you are utilizing circular logic.
I mean you don't account for it at all in your process.
Because the theory wasn't made to applied across a large swath of knowledge, nor is it supposed to be the only argument utilized. It's just a rational argument claiming that if the theories are equal in all ways, the simpler is more likely to be true.
Zero empirical evidence does not make the arguments equal. Occam's razor is itself a rational argument..... One of the theories may itself contain more rationality than the other. This is the problem with only relying on empiricism.
How does this incorporate empiricism, where knowledge is gained through observation alone? Your "ration system of thinking" seems to be irrational in nature. Maybe we have a miscommunication but your claims about how you think seem to be incongruent with your claims about determinism.
That seems to be a highly irrational process....
Both of those systems are patriarchal.
And we're back to blaming women for men not being able to control themselves....
I think we're done here. We keep circling the same arguments, which makes sense considering what you've told me about your thought process.
If I knew you, I would be highly concerned for your well-being. At this point I just wish you the best, and hope you consider seeing someone about your mental health. Take care.