Just letting you know I'm leaving work from home now meaning I wont have access to this account. If you respond I'll respond Monday morning.

Despite the seeming hostility and intense disagreement here I don't hold anything against you. I look forward to reading what you have to say. I genuinely enjoy the discourse.

Man I got a lot of them.

1. Free will isn't real.
2. I'm kind of OK with AI replacing our jobs under capitalism, even if things get bumpy because I think because its unsustainable for various reasons and it'll eventually cause economic collapse and we might live in a better society afterward.
3. Nuanced "soft" Anti-natalism
4. Currency is fine. The left was wrong about Crypto.
5. He might not always be right but Vaush is funny and its OK to watch his streams.
6. We should all fuck each other more and monogamy is retarded.
7. Oh also its OK to call things and people "retarded"
8. Virtue doesn't matter only consequences.
9. Bisexuality is secretly more common than hetero & homosexuality.
10. Religion and spirituality should be illegal.
11. Autistic people should rule the world.
12. That Trump won a second time reflects a fundamentally disgusting moral weakness in most of humanity that I will never emotionally recover from.
13. Linux is good but most of Linux users ideology about GUI is awful.

If you are trying to string me along/troll me, you are doing a good job.

And if free will does not exist does your opinion on the matter have any effect on the predetermined outcome? Most forms of determinism believe that people’s happiness and well being are predetermined and our opinions about their feelings has no effect on how they feel. I’m wondering if you actually understand the philosophical concept of determinism?

Do you think people who don't believe in free will shouldn't express their ideas or beliefs in order to be consistent with a lack of belief in free will?

Pure determinism isn't my stated belief. I said I don't believe in free will. You are adding to what I said again, pulling stuff out of thin air.

Here is the core question I have to ask you, given that you seem to believe in free will: What exactly is our will free from?

Random chance doesn't mean free will either. I don't believe in some meta-physical super natural aspect of our will either but even if there was, that still wouldn't mean we have free will either.

Pre-determination isn't the issue: its the nature of choice and how its a completely meaningless illusion. The main impact on morality it would have is in terms of justice and how society functions, but also it essentially means on a interpersonal level that you forgive yourself and others because no one chooses to be born. No one chooses to be who they are, we don't choose our parents, our bodies, our brains. We are shunted into existence and expected to perform life and to take responsibility for it, even when we never choose it to begin with.

It’s an alternative explanation detailing why there are less women on dating apps.

Do you actually think that's the reason? I'm pretty sure its because men have to try a lot harder. Meaning if they want to maximize their chances they need to go on dating apps even when they know they're financially predatory and awful.

So sex… Just like the original post claimed. This is about sex.

Its not only that, but that's a major component. Yeah.

You seem to lack healthy coping skills when you don’t get what you feel you’re entitled too. You seem to reaching out for someone or something to blame for this lack of coping skills.

I never said that I thought I was entitled to that woman. If I thought I was entitled to her I would have kept asking her out or insisting on her dating me.

You also seem to adopt an attitude of morose self deprecation as a defense against any form of criticism. Attempting to redirect the criticism by utilizing guilt as a redirection, aka the pity fallacy or sometime pityfishing.

Here is the thing: I fundamentally disagree with criticism of individuals this way. I think things need to be solved systematically or technologically. Not with psychoanalysis or "pulling ourselves by our boot straps" or whatever. So yeah, when you argue with me and you decide to angle it based on me individually and my individual faults and personal defects and I'm just a bad person, I just fundamentally disagree on the very basis of your engagement with the topic.

I don't need your pity to know I'm right or wrong about something. I want you to argue against my points. I want you to challenge my ideas. I'm not particularly interested in talking about me other than as example/anecdote for my own arguments (which is why I brought up the personal example). If I have "unhealthy opinions" I want to know specifically what they are and then I can either realize I'm objectively wrong or I can retort with some argument. I don't care if call me a bad person is my point. You clearly don't share my moral ideology anyway why would I?

That said, I am an open book: I personally am indeed incredibly depressed (which relates to the self depreciation) but not because of lack of sex. I mean I was depressed in the past because of that when I was still figuring things out maybe but now its because Trump won a second time and that's kind of permeated and filtered how I see people in general. And I mean, also my life sucks and I legitimately resent having been born but none of that is relevant to the current topic of male loneliness in of itself.

You know you chose to avoid them… You have no idea if they knew or not, I don’t imagine reading social cue is probably a specialty of yours.

I mean, sure. I couldn't know for certain. I tried my best to just function at work when I needed to with her. This is an important question: What else could I have materially done? Its not like I could just delete the emotions and just pretend I was fine to chit chat with her at the water cooler or something. If anything I was doing her a favor.

And true, being autistic tends to make me pretty weak at reading people probably on average but I'm probably a bit better than the average autistic person. I'm a very extroverted autistic person. Despite the nihilism and politically induced misanthropy.

You don’t sense that might be problematic? Avoidance is not a healthy coping skill. Avoiding emotions is pretty different than confronting them.

Healthy in what way? For me? I don't think purposefully exposing myself to someone who rejected me who I badly wanted to be with romantically would have been good for me and my heavily obsessive and ruminating autistic brain.

Avoidance was a lesser evil. I have experience enough to know that.

Neither is being in pain because someone is attractive. There are attractive people everywhere, are you in constant crippling emotional pain? Or did that pain really come from being denied something you secretly feel you are entitled to?

There is not that many people that I am that intensely attracted to everywhere no. There is a difference between very attractive and "I want to die when I see them" level of physical attraction.

That said, its frequent enough that I've fallen into a few emotional holes through life, yes. Sometimes its not been avoidable. There are a few stories.

Empathy doesn’t equate to pity. Again you are pityfishing.

I'm not pityfishing what do I even have to gain from your pity? We will never ever meet. I don't care about your opinion of me. I am not important. Neither are you. I care that I am correct that men are fucked by romantic loneliness right now and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is not a viable solution.

By bringing up our relatively happiness what I was doing was making a point: She is almost certainly fine. She is not a baby. She is an adult woman who had her own life going on. Me keeping things strictly bare minimum and professional was perfectly reasonable. And if it did hurt her feelings, I'm sorry I guess? What do you want from me?

I don’t really think I do, it would negatively effect my work. Plus, even if I did, there’s a matter of scale. I’m not running away or avoiding people based on their looks.

Are you a psychologist or something?

I think they're primarily authentic rather than trolling/pretending, its just that they have twitter/bluesky disease where they think the best way to engage is by vapidly dunking.

Not if the trait itself was a valid criticism. All pedophiles are bad…is that a bad generality to you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_Pedophiles

Acting on it is bad obviously.

Thing is, I also don't believe in good/evil or free will. As a result I categorically reject virtue ethics anyway so IDK how meaningful discussing this further can be.

They were specifically talking about people with the idea of a male loneliness epidemic. An ideology that is utilized to radicalize young men by right winged influencers.

The male loneliness epidemic isn't strictly a "rightwing ideology". Incel/redpill is rightwing ideology.

There is also a female loneliness epidemic. Though its fairly different in nature.

If it wasn’t about sex then they would just focus on building healthy relationships with friends.

I never said that sex wasn't an important component of the issue.

If they are making a conscious decision to not pursue sex then why are they upset?

You aren't this dumb. You know exactly why they'd still be upset. They would be making the conscious decision because they are trying to seek a sliver of personal peace after a period of failure or simply because of disillusionment with heterosexual dating. Its not like they'd be making that decision and feel content that they're going to live without a sexual or romantic partner. They're trying to avoid the pain of the process of seeking it, they'd still want a partner.

Have you never seen someone so attractive to you that it physically HURT? I have. Literal physical chronic pain. And once I established they lacked any mutual romantic interest in me I avoided them like the plague and tried to forget they existed as best as possible, which was hard because I worked in the same building. Thank fuck I don't work there anymore.

I mask a lot better when I'm not depressed. (I'm horribly depressed.)

That said I still mask as second nature pretty well as I consistently get the "I wouldn't have guessed you were autistic." response from people a lot. I generally love socializing and I'm pretty good at it from experience and the topic of "people" being an on and off special interest.

It was an example of it conceptually it wasn't meant to be a serious generality obviously.

Also generalities are bad. If people started saying that people with specific traits that you specifically share were always bad people in some way, it would bother you.

Further, you can be bothered even if you are emotionally secure about yourself. Its not always even "taking it personally" because sometimes people have empathy for people who are like them but aren't them and dislike seeing them thrown under the bus.

I myself am not really a guy who is bad with women anymore (I'm not rolling in pussy but I can get around) but I used to be painfully bad about it and I know I wasn't some awful person worthy of scorn and disdain because of that. I wasn't some loser sociopath for wanting sex with women when I wasn't getting any.

And neither are lonely sad sexless guys. I don't like them being mocked because I've been there and I know that it doesn't help to be mocked for a "skill issue" anyway. Mocking them sends them further into a self loathing or hateful spiral. Telling them to be better people implies they are bad people for not having sex or having a girlfriend.

Its like telling fat people they're fat: it doesn't actually help. It usually makes them give up.

That said... them saying they're done with dating doesn't mean they're bad people either. Just like women don't owe them sex, these men also don't owe women their time and effort. Its perfectly morally fine to be done with dating women forever. It wont be pleasant for the guys who try TBH, but its morally fine.

Now, are some of these guys pieces of shit? Sure, but that doesn't relate to their sexlessness. Absolute pieces of trash have sex with hotties and it doesn't suddenly make them good people either.

If someone said "lemmy users with the word 'empire' in their name are unworthy of love and need to get gud at dating." I think you might take their words a little personal even if the post wasn't literally directly targeted at you.

I don't think the guys listening to Rogan and Peterson are browsing Lemmy. At least not yet.

Your advice is essentially making the assumption that lonely men on Lemmy who can't get laid (and want to) are just vapid sex crazed "alpha male" rightwing 4channer psychos. That's not who is on here.

Also your advice isn't advice its chastisement/tut-tutting for a lack of virtue on individual men. This isn't a problem solvable on the individual level. A majority of these men could follow your advice and will still likely end up living miserable romantically lonely unsatisfying lives.

My distaste for Apple products largely stems from their lack of video games. And price tags. And interface. And their users (except CGP Grey, I forgive him).

While I agree sex on its own is not enough, I partially disagree that its not important. I do legitimately think a lot of this anxiety among currently non-sex having men would be significantly reduced if prostitution was commonly available, legal, not stigmatized (for either party), and safe.

As it stands it is none of those things, at least in most places.

I don't know who the bad guy is here because closing the source a while back makes me distrust this dev yet also I 100% believe Linux users (or at least the power users) are almost certainly insufferable in ways that would drive a reasonable dev out of development for Linux.