Response to Roosh – Objections to Lifestyle Design

-By Caleb Jones

A short while ago, Roosh made a blog post titled Why It’s Folly To Design Your Own “Lifestyle.” When I saw that title, I perked right up. Lifestyle design is what I do, what I write about, and what I help other men with. Lifestyle design is what I did, and doing it has made me literally the happiest man I know. Lifestyle design is what I continue to do, and will continue to for the rest of my life. I consider it a key component of not only happiness, but of life.

I’ll double down on this. Lifestyle design is not only supremely important, but it’s more important now than it has ever been in all of modern history. Decades ago, when the average American man of average intelligence, skill, and income was able to get an average job and be able to support a stay-at-home wife, a house, two cars, and several kids, lifestyle design wasn’t nearly as important. He never got divorced and worked at the same company his entire life. He paid extremely low taxes, the purchasing power of his dollars were very strong, and the economy was (usually) good.

Today, absolutely none of that is true. Your government has destroyed your currency, thus rendering a nice lifestyle on an average income impossible, and is taxing the shit out of you, while creating false economic bubbles that price a three-bedroom house out of the range of most Americans (and don’t even get me started on the Europeans, where a detached house isn’t even an option for most higher-income Europe dwellers).  For people getting married in the Western world nowadays, lifetime risk of divorce is now well north of 70%, and growing. That means if you’re dumb enough to get legally married, you’re in for a divorce a few years down the road, and will be single all over again. Only now it will be with government holding a gun to your head for child support and/or alimony payments. Lifetime employment is also now a thing of the past, just like lifetime marriage, and the odds of you working at the same job, or even at the same company in five years are pretty low.

If a guy like Tim Ferriss tried to put out a book like the Four Hour Workweek back in 1952, or if I put out the Unchained Man at around the same time, no one would have bought them, because virtually no one needed them. Today, the average guy needs lifestyle design if he wants to live a life of long-term happiness. Otherwise, if he follows the standard system, he’s fucked.

You and I could argue about which lifestyle design is “best” or is appropriate for certain types of people, but lifestyle design is not only important, but required (unless you want to be the typical societally programmed drone).

Roosh says:

In my mid 20’s I bought the idea that I could create my own lifestyle from scratch, not based on consultations from wise men or guidance from church and family, but from my own desires. After years of work, I successfully created a lifestyle that satisfied the desires I had in that particular stage of my life, but once those desires changed, I was stuck with a lifestyle that no longer served me, and unsure of what to do next.

Guess what? That happened to me as well. You did it regarding pickup and women, and I did it regarding money and business. By my late 20s, I accomplished everything I wanted and was suddenly aimless and didn’t know what to do.

That was because I made the same mistake you made, Roosh. I didn’t have a Mission. I had desires and goals, but I didn’t have a Mission that encompassed the whole of my life. As I describe in my book, your Mission is not a goal. It’s not something you achieve and then you’re done. It’s something that lasts for the rest of your life, or at least the next 20 years (though the rest of your life is better).

I established my Mission over ten years ago, and guess what? I’m still chugging along, excited to work on it, despite the fact I’ve already accomplished most of my life goals.

If you all have are goals, then yeah, if you’re lucky you’ll hit them all and then look around, confused as to what to do next. But if you have a Mission, you’ll never have that problem, since a Mission can’t be “accomplished.”

A second thing you failed to do, and I failed to do, was to design a life that had the capacity for long-term happiness. Instead, we focused on short or medium-term happiness. As I have discussed many times at this blog, a lifestyle designed around banging as many chicks as possible is not a lifestyle conducive to long-term happiness. That kind of life will make a guy in his 20s or 30s very happy for about 5-10 years or so, and then he’s going to be depressed and desultory.

I made the same mistake in my 20s, albeit in a different area. I based my lifestyle around running a typical brick and mortar business full of overhead and employees, and a traditional monogamous legal marriage. Dumb! Monogamous marriage doesn’t work any more in the Western world, and the traditional business these days is simply a source of long work weeks and never-ending stress. My lifestyle was societally acceptable but not conducive to long-term happiness at all.

Like your banging chicks lifestyle, my lifestyle was designed for medium-term happiness at best. For a few years, I was very happy with that lifestyle. After a few more years, I was unhappy. I chose wrongly, just like you did.

It’s not that lifestyle design is bad. It’s that both you and I chose the wrong designs. If we had focused on lifestyle design for long-term happiness in our 20s, we would have never had a problem.

The need to develop a lifestyle comes from not liking where you are, who you are, or what you have, combined with a belief that the grass is greener.

Correct. If you’re not happy, you need to design a new life so you can be happy, and happy long-term.

And by the way, you’re right to imply that the grass often isn’t greener. I’ve discussed that before as well, and lots of men in our reading audience make that mistake. But, sometimes the grass really is greener.

When I was monogamously married and having mediocre sex with a jaded, overweight woman three times a month (at best!), I thought the grass would be greener if I wasn’t legally married or monogamous anymore. And guess what? I was right. Today, I have sex around three times week with beautiful, happy women with perfect or near-perfect bodies. The grass was objectively greener.

When I was working 70-80 hour weeks as a typical business owner, I fantasized about the greener grass of a business with near-zero overhead, with no employees, that I could operate from anywhere in the world, and that wouldn’t require long hours to maintain.

And guess what? I was right. Today, I work half those hours working on projects that excite me and I actually make more money. The grass was objectively greener.

Sometimes the grass isn’t greener, but sometimes it is. It depends on how rational and objective you’re being.

The actual design of your lifestyle is therefore mainly guided by the emotional or egocentric part of you that has desires and aches for something else. Already, I’m sure you can see the folly of designing a lifestyle based on desire, which is transient and can never be fully sated. Many men such as myself used their desires to design a grand lifestyle that included slaying pussy, making money, and traveling the world, which was nice for a time, until inevitably you arrive at a road block where you’re forced to ask, “Is this it?” You reach your goals but lose momentum, feel empty again, and start desiring new things.

Correct! Because you were not focused on long-term happiness and you didn’t have a Mission. You just had goals.

Lifestyle design has become so popular among both men and women because meaning and purpose have been removed from their lives, particularly god, family, and tribe.

I agree that’s one reason, but the larger reason is what I stated above; that the standard life men now live, in terms of money, lifestyle, etc, sucks ass.

For example, for the past two years, I’ve been completely stuck on where I should live, and no analysis I’ve done has given me the correct answer. This is because there is nothing in my genetics that was designed for me to process so much information in designing my life and choosing the best city in the entire world to live in

I’m in the process of doing that same analysis myself. Trust me, I’m going to come up with an answer. And if I end up being wrong, no problem, I’ll just move again. I have the ability to do this because of…wait for it…lifestyle design.

You’re set up to fail the second you believe that a certain lifestyle will make you happy, because you don’t have the genetic wiring or ability to determine which lifestyle is best based out of the billions of combinations available, and even if you did, you’d likely adapt to it and see diminishing value over time.

Incorrect. When looking at a lifestyle, we don’t have billions of options. We have several that can be categorized and quantified to a reasonably accurate degree. For example, there are nine options for men as they age in terms of their woman life. Not billions. Nine. You’re smart enough to pick the best option for yourself out of nine, even if it takes a few years to think about it. The same could be said for where to live, what kind of income you’d like, what kind of business you want, and your physical fitness. You’ve got perhaps 5-20 reasonable and realistic options of each, not “billions.”

and even if you did, you’d likely adapt to it and see diminishing value over time.

That’s true to a degree, but if you create a lifestyle based on long-term happiness, you’ll have the flexibility to modify things as you progress and age.
I doubt my current sex life will look the same when I’m 80 years old (though its possible!). I know my income and businesses will look different too. That’s okay. I’m allowed to adjust (not radically change, but adjust) and so can you.

I certainly feel more wise from my lifestyle journey, and can now sell more books and get more blog hits from all that I’ve learned, but I don’t feel like a “better” or “happier” person.

Yes, because you chose wrongly in your 20s. Now you need to design a new life that will cover you from your current age to well into your 70s and beyond. Something sustainable and conducive to long-term happiness and flexibility.

And I’ll give you a hint as to what that lifestyle can’t include: being a player all the time or a forever monogamous marriage. Neither of those are sustainable models in the modern era. Neither of those are going to make a man long-term happy. The answer, as is so often the case, is somewhere in the middle.

Good talk, Roosh.

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88 Comments
  • BlindIo
    Posted at 05:38 am, 25th April 2016

    Mainly agreed. Where we (seem to) disagree is on what makes for a good lifestyle.

    You ragged a bit on heartiste in the earlier post. Which is fair given your perspective. You are correct about personal happiness for men with a certain personality type. But that still leaves the remaining 90% and he is right about how humans biologically work and cause and effect on populations as a whole.

    From my perspective, it’s not either-or. I’m looking for something that combines the two, something that can bring personal happiness for most men while at the same time working as a functional culture on a national level.

    Note that I say men, and not people. I want everyone to be as happy as possible within the physical confines we live in, but women are followers and will adapt to whatever men choose so men is the focus. And ultimately men focusing on themselves is what makes women happy.

  • Jay
    Posted at 06:06 am, 25th April 2016

    Interesting, can you provide a source for 70% divorce risk?

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 06:47 am, 25th April 2016

    I want everyone to be as happy as possible within the physical confines we live in, but women are followers and will adapt to whatever men choose so men is the focus.

    BlindIo maybe you’re saying this sincerely, but it won’t work. Any time one of the sexes is fully in charge of how both sexes manage themselves, it will try, if only a little and regardless of people with good intentions, to impose its sexual agenda on the other sex. There is virtually no species on earth where the male and female sexual agendas fully coincide, and there is always a war of the sexes; if we are concerned about fairness, our only option is to equalize powers. Obvious example: in a country like Sweden, no one can deny that some women actually want a fair deal for men (just like you are supposedly a man who wants everyone to be happy including women), but because women in general have more power than men in Sweden, the country is slowly turning into an anti-man totalitarian state. What makes things worse is that there are evolutionary tendencies for ever more effective self-deception in our species, to allow individuals with condemnable goals to still feel like the good guys when furthering them: that’s why I know for a fact that some muslim imams sincerely think that something as horrible as female circumcision is “good for the girl”. I also know that some of the worst feminists genuinely think that they are “helping men”, just like you might think that you are doing what’s right for women by suggesting they just follow men. To me, the only solution is to strive for equal rights. No patriarchy, and no matriarchy either. Unless one flat-out admits that he is not concerned about happiness for all.

  • BlindIo
    Posted at 07:14 am, 25th April 2016

    It worked for millions of years. It will work again, if we decide to do it. All we have to do is acknowledge that we are tribal animals with a certain biological makeup. The rest will follow from there.

    Fairness is a modern social construct. It is social programming and social programming is bullshit. It is something women came up with in order to shame men into refusing our biological nature – and Sweden is the result.

    Boys and girls are different. One difference is that men look out for women. Women, on the other hand, do everything they can to bring men down and pit us against eachother. This is simply biological wiring that worked in tribal societies but no longer does in the modern world. And that’s why we can’t allow women to have any real power in a functional society.

  • wolfofgeorgestreet
    Posted at 07:28 am, 25th April 2016

    I love alot of Roosh’s articles, especially from the past. There’s still been plenty I disagree with but lately, however, he’s become quite strange and I’m disagreeing with more and more. At one point he even said he wanted to be a martyr, I predict that in 5-10 years time he’ll probably be claiming that he’s Jesus.

    It’s bizarre.

    Furthermore both Roosh and the vast majority of his followers, while usually dead on when it comes to women/game, are obsessed with the Disney, virgin wife, monogamous marriage fantasy. Open marriages or open relationships? Forget about it, we’re all just cucks, apparently.

    Some of them even believe it’s possible (or was possible) to build a harem of faithful virgin wives. When has that ever been possible for anyone but kings/dictators/warlords? Essentially the very, very top of the status/alpha pyramid that are only able to maintain it by force.

    Most of them are not accepting of the sort of lifestyles we lead. In fact, there are very few people in this world that are accepting of wealthy, successful, alpha men, that have OLTR’s/OM’s. Very, very, very few, even in the places you’d expect to find them, and even with the people you’d most expect to be accepting of them (friends, family etc.).

    I recall my mother always said when I was younger that she’d be perfectly accepting if I turned out to be gay. Well as it turns out, I’m heterosexual, but when she found out I was in an open relationship, I was the most evil, deceitful man in the world and she couldn’t accept it. For the sake of my now wife it was easier to just lie to her and tell her we had become monogamous. Gay, no problem, polyamorous unacceptable!

    It’s sad. Designing a great lifestyle might be a happy existence, but it’s sometimes a lonely one.

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 08:11 am, 25th April 2016

    It worked for millions of years.

    It depends on what you mean by “worked”. It worked the same way a cancer cell “works”: it worked well at furthering itself. But I see that you came back on your statement that you want everyone to be happy within possible: when I pointed out that giving power to men only will inevitably fulfill one sexual agenda over the other, you suddenly reverted to just wanting the natural state, not “happiness for all”. You’re gonna have to specify whether you want 1° optimal happiness for all within possible, 2° the natural state, because of some mystic reason that makes nature “wise” or whatever (and it’s not. nature designs whatever allows reproduction, and uses short bouts of happiness as a reward system to keep animals on the right track to successful reproduction, that’s all), 3° the natural state, because you believe that it can’t get any better, and that we can’t “hack” our nature and fool it into giving us more consistent happiness, which is what BD’s previous article is all about when you think of it.

    Besides, you’re wrong about the natural state. There was a ferocious power struggle between men and women, before agriculture (which was more or less the starting point for male dominance in the strong sense). I won’t get into the details, but neither men nor women got things 100% their way back then (and neither do they in today’s stone age cultures – there are still a few), on average. If I put you back into a stone age tribe and gave you the “average” luck of a man of that time, believe me, you’ll be in a sorry state, even just in the sexual department.

    Fairness is not a social construct at all, unless one acknowledges the rather acrobatic detour that “society invented the concept of fairness, but society itself is a zoological phenomenon, and many non-human animals have proved to know about fairness too”. “functional society” in what sense, BlindIo ? There is no point in human history in which men didn’t have to compromise in order to keep getting sex from women, and this is even more accurate in the time of prehistoric tribes than it was in antiquity and the middle ages, where men more or less got the upper hand (for the good that it did them. most were miserable). A tribe must hunt, gather, make clothes and tools, migrate, etc, and men won’t just “make” women do what chores they need them to do and then fuck them when they wanted: women too had a sexual agenda they were wired to further and defend, and they would gang up together, resist, and possibly try to turn the tables.

    The natural state and our biological wiring can give you information about what our body is going to demand of us, but it won’t tell you directly how to be happy, because in that natural state, most people were not happy. The way I see it, BD’s relationship model is very likely to be close to midway between women’s and men’s sexual agendas, and believe me, this is much, much better than the deal the average beta gets, and is much more conducive to long-term happiness. Both women and men give up on their desire to prevent sex partners from sleeping around (and some other stuff), which is kinda bad, kinda annoying, but once you weigh everything else you realize you’re far better off. It doesn’t mean it’s the only model that works – and it’s been previously stated that lower sex drive men can try serial monogamy and be fine with it. You on the other hand are just persisting on the premise that men build stuff and women tear stuff down and need to be “kept in line” for society to work properly, whatever working properly means. Women who are fully liberated in a society where men too are free – not a matriarchy – are still going to pull shit that pisses men off, just like men will be pulling shit that pisses them off, but you’re just as wrong about them disrupting peace or prosperity as you are wrong about patriarchy being the magical solution that will make everyone happy.

    @wolfofgeorgestreet: Roosh makes me want to puke. I liked him much more in the early years, some of his stories (the five-part article about Anna for example) were very interesting. His more recent ideas about how monogamy and dedicating yourself to god will save your soul are truly nauseating.

  • Ersatzer
    Posted at 08:35 am, 25th April 2016

    One nitpick, BD: US taxpayers who file jointly with a spouse pay significantly less taxes now than they would have during the period you referred to, during which “an average American man of average intelligence, skill, and income was able to get an average job and be able to support a stay-at-home wife, a house, two cars, and several kids.”

    To clarify: Your description fits the period between WW2 and Vietnam. As such, I assumed that’s the time period you meant when you said, “Decades ago.”

  • CrabRangoon
    Posted at 08:45 am, 25th April 2016

    Roosh is just pulling the typical 180 of player types.  You see it all the time with guys like him, hence why the player lifestyle is not sustainable(as is forever monogamy).  Neil Strauss and Tucker Max did the same thing recently, completely forgoing their previous message and getting Oneitis for their special snowflakes.   As much as we may harp on how bad Disney monogamy is around here, it’s as important to see how bad the PUA/player way is as well.  And believe me guys like Roosh, Strauss, Max, etc… will end up breaking their monogamy promises down the road.  These guys are clearly high sex drive and won’t be satisfied with the same aging woman.

    I’m also getting fed up with some of these manosphere guys and their “let’s get back to the golden age of the 50’s” and virgin bride crap.  Those days are gone and aren’t coming back in our lifetime so we must adapt and adjust to find long term happiness in life.  Waxing nostalgic does not improve your station in life, it just makes you depressed I imagine.

  • BlindIo
    Posted at 08:46 am, 25th April 2016

    The only meaning with life, so far as there is any, is survival and procreation. And for those purposes, having men in charge and women as followers worked, and still works. We have seen in the past few generations what happens when women are put in charge. Time to end the experiment.

  • maldek
    Posted at 08:47 am, 25th April 2016

    Today I feel funny so I would like to address the term “traditional marriage”.

    What is a tradition? Something that goes back a long time. Certainly a few hundred years at least.

    Now lets look at a time say 400 years ago. Did we have marriages back then?

    Yes we did. But there was a very sharp difference to today.

    The wife was not equal with her husband. She was his property.
    If the wife fucked an other man, both the wife and the man (but mostly the wife) had to face very serious consequences. Up to and including her life ending there.
    If the man had enough money to afford a mistress or two this was perfectly acceptable. Even if his wife knew it there was no reason to leave the husband or show him less respect. This was about the time william shakespeare lived back in england. He was “traditional married” to a woman 8 years older than him – he never left her but to believe he didnt have sex with other women is, considering his works, not very likely.

    So considering the above I do believe that traditional marriage is a wonderful thing, has been working for hundreds of years (somewhat) and could work today. Except in the west, where goverments do their very best to make this next to impossible. This is by design. What is sold today as marriage is something that has not existed even 40 years ago and is nothing more than an artificial socialengineering experiement that will fail just like communism failed – spectacular with tons of fall out.

    Of course it does not work.

  • Stephen
    Posted at 09:04 am, 25th April 2016

    “It worked for millions of years. It will work again.”
    Since homo sapiens is only 200,000 years old, patriarchy did not last for millions of years! Also, patriarchies from before the 1916-1969 period and non-western civilizations didn’t look like the Mariage 1.0 of the 1950s. Earlier/foreign patriarchies included polygamy, legal prostitution, concubinage, and morganatic marriage. Depending on the society and the time period, a man could legally beat and in some places kill a “disobedient” wife (“shamed” fathers could also kill daughters in some places/times). Also, there were plenty of more primative tribal societies that were promiscuous and didn’t really practice patriarchy at all. Early mankind was very likely not mongamous in any modern sense. Since patriarchies were often very different with very different rules very from place and time, it is rather misleading to pretend like the same system continued for a substantial time. The hard monogamy of the 1950s only really lasted from the criminalization of prostitution in the 1910s to the No Fault Divorce Revolution first signed into law by Ronald Reagan in California in1969.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 09:13 am, 25th April 2016

    You ragged a bit on heartiste in the earlier post. Which is fair given your perspective. You are correct about personal happiness for men with a certain personality type. But that still leaves the remaining 90% and he is right about how humans biologically work and cause and effect on populations as a whole.

    My system is far more conducive to human biology than the long-term monogamy suggested by Heartiste or Roosh.

    Interesting, can you provide a source for 70% divorce risk?

    Yup:

    https://alphamale20.com/2014/07/13/divorce-statistics/

    https://alphamale20.com/2015/03/22/the-lack-of-realism-of-reducing-the-odds-of-divorce/

    It worked for millions of years.

    Depends on what you’re talking about. People, men and women both, have been cheating like lying assholes for as long as monogamy has existed. It’s never fully “worked.”

    Furthermore both Roosh and the vast majority of his followers, while usually dead on when it comes to women/game, are obsessed with the Disney, virgin wife, monogamous marriage fantasy. Open marriages or open relationships? Forget about it, we’re all just cucks, apparently.

    Yup. That describes most of the current and former PUA community.

    One nitpick, BD: US taxpayers who file jointly with a spouse pay significantly less taxes now than they would have during the period you referred to, during which “an average American man of average intelligence, skill, and income was able to get an average job and be able to support a stay-at-home wife, a house, two cars, and several kids.”

    To clarify: Your description fits the period between WW2 and Vietnam. As such, I assumed that’s the time period you meant when you said, “Decades ago.”

    Incorrect. In terms of federal tax rate they pay less, but in terms of total taxes paid they pay much, much more. “People paid more taxes decades ago” is false Societal Programming. Read this.

    And believe me guys like Roosh, Strauss, Max, etc… will end up breaking their monogamy promises down the road.  These guys are clearly high sex drive and won’t be satisfied with the same aging woman

    Correct; most of those guys already have. Doesn’t matter. They’ll keep pursuing Guy Disney anyway.

    So far the only current or ex bigtime PUA guru I’ve seen attempt nonmonogamy is Adam Lyons (and even he already tried it and got divorced). All the other PUA or ex-PUA guys are monogamists. It’s insane.

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 09:16 am, 25th April 2016

    @BlindIo: then you’re admitting that you’re not concerned about happiness for anyone, just about a vague is-ought deduction based on how nature (basically the most painful state of being we know of, for any creature) has been going on so far. It’s ironic you invoke the biological wiring that we got from natural selection, given that natural selection is essentially death – selective death and selective non-reproduction. Plus of course the way you’re stretching things into just two opposite alernatives, “men in charge or women in charge”. It’s all I wanted from this exchange. Of course I’d have been happier if my points from previous comments had been better understood, but I won’t press further unless you do. Although I’ll remember this as a funny case where for once, I who usually find myself defending biology against pro-sociology folks, found myself in the opposite situation today.

  • Ersatzer
    Posted at 09:52 am, 25th April 2016

    Incorrect. In terms of federal tax rate they pay less, but in terms of total taxes paid they pay much, much more. “People paid more taxes decades ago” is false Societal Programming. Read this.

    Your post refers to someone making an average income. The linked article details the situation for high-earners (uses an example of a couple who makes $250,000/year, which is 5x the current average US household income). That’s a completely different kettle of fish.

    Also, I should have clarified that I’m not factoring in state taxes, as there’s too much variance state-to-state, and even more variance between the 50s and now in terms of how much taxes states impose.

  • Jay
    Posted at 10:12 am, 25th April 2016

    Re divorce rates – could you be more specific, I can’t find anything about 70% even in your articles (and I looked at the 15 or so sources in your article on divorce statistics).

    You mentioned 64% divorce rate for big cities in your article, but again no source next to that and I looked at the 15 sources listed but did not find one that supports it.

  • Kurt
    Posted at 10:21 am, 25th April 2016

     

    Interesting, can you provide a source for 70% divorce risk?

    Yup:

    https://alphamale20.com/2014/07/13/divorce-statistics/

    https://alphamale20.com/2015/03/22/the-lack-of-realism-of-reducing-the-odds-of-divorce/

    Looking through those, many of which are just articles referring to studies instead of the data itself (tsk tsk), I can find no “70% divorce risk”. In fact one of the sources that has the closest approximation, the Number, Timing and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 2009  gives a table (Table 4) that shows that roughly  75% of first marriages make it to the 10th anniversary, and 50% -60% to the 40th anniversary (USA data).

    So I am curious: how did you come up with the 70% divorce risk number? If you are in fact extrapolating from other people’s statistics that is a very tricky thing to do correctly. You’ll have to show and defend your work if you want credibility there.

    For the record I’m no marriage proponent. Not in the least. I do feel however that you should get your facts on this rock solid. If you want to have any impact beyond preaching to the choir you need to get this right, else you will be dismissed as another blogger with “creative facts” fabricated to serve an agenda.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 10:50 am, 25th April 2016

     The linked article details the situation for high-earners (uses an example of a couple who makes $250,000/year

    Keep reading. It then describes a couple making $25,000 back in the 1950s for comparison.

    Also, I should have clarified that I’m not factoring in state taxes, as there’s too much variance state-to-state, and even more variance between the 50s and now in terms of how much taxes states impose.

    Whenever I talk about “taxes,” I always refer to total taxes paid from all sources. Quoting a single source of tax burden (like federal tax rate) is meaningless when people also pay payroll taxes, state income tax, city/municipal taxes, sales taxes, hidden VAT and excise taxes, passed through corporate taxes, etc, etc.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 10:57 am, 25th April 2016

    Kurt and Jay – I’ve been through this discussion a thousand times on here, and I’ll repeat what I’ve said a thousand times:

    – The only thing most researchers track is divorce rate, which is a ratio of marriage vs divorces in a given year. This is an exceedingly and misleadingly low number that doesn’t actually give you any idea of divorce risk for the typical person getting married over the course of the entire marriage. If you need any numbers beyond this, you have to estimate and combine all of the sources and come up with aggregate numbers. I have been very clear about the fact I’ve done this and have stated it scores of times over the last many years.

    – There are no “specific” “rock-solid” numbers on lifetime divorce risk, because A) researchers rarely bother to calculate it, and when they do their numbers are always very out of date (more on this in a minute) and B) there is no data on where people who get married today, in 2016, end up, since the future hasn’t happened yet. All you can do is A) look what people who got married 40 years ago did, and B) look at the trend of increasing or decreasing divorce among all age ranges for people who actually get married. From these various sources you can get a good estimate, but it’s only an estimate. Based on the numbers I see from all links I referenced above, plus here, plus other articles and studies I’ve read that I don’t have links handy for, it’s very obvious to me that your risk of ever, at any point in your lifetime (which is many decades), getting divorced if you get married in 2016 or after is over 70%.

    If you want “specific, rock-solid” numbers, I can’t give them to you beyond what I linked to above, and neither can anyone else.

    I completely agree estimating is tricky. I agree it may not be 100% accurate. But it makes no sense to me to say “Well folks, we’re screwed here, we have absolutely no idea what your lifetime divorce risk is” when we have so much data to draw upon. I think it’s better to say, “based on all of this data, a good estimate is X, though it’s only an estimate that could be off.”

    – Many other people have shown me that same table you linked to (and many other similar tables) and I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. When you see 40-60% of people who made it to their 40th anniversary (for example), you’re looking at people who got married 40 years ago when the divorce rate was far lower than it is now and when the marriage culture was much different.

    My blog posts are not aimed at people who got married back in 1976. No sweethearts, my blog posts are talking to people who are considering getting married now, in 2016, or in the future, when the divorce rates, divorce risk, and culture are far worse for marriage than they’ve ever been and continue to worsen.

    Even old people are not immune; one of the links I showed in those linked articles are that the divorce rate among people over 50 has quadrupled since 1990. So if you can show that 65% (or whatever) of people who got married in the 1990s haven’t gotten divorced yet, it doesn’t mean anything.

    I could go on and on, and I’ve already had this discussion so many times, and I’m not interested in repeating myself yet again. Feel free to search around on the comments on later posts to see more discussion. If you seriously think that I’m pulling all these numbers out of my ass and I have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s fine, you’re welcome to that belief, and you’re welcome to shout to the rooftops that I’m making up numbers.  I’ll say it again: If you live in the Western world (US, Canada, Europe, Australia, etc) your risk of getting divorced sometime in your life if you choose to get married in 2016 or later is around 70%, and that number is climbing, which means your lifetime risk is higher than the actual number it is today.

  • Tony
    Posted at 11:38 am, 25th April 2016

    That $25k number was $25k in 1950, which adjusted for inflation is $250k today. SO they’re still comparing high income to high income.

  • Duke
    Posted at 11:49 am, 25th April 2016

    Not to refute your points, which I’m obviously not, but most people don’t care about the divorce rate. Most people are very much aware that marriage and monogamy don’t work, but according to the people I’ve talked to “you must still aspire to this ideal.”

    So even if the divorce rate stays the same or worsens, you will have no shortage of people still trying to make it “work.” It kind of makes me sick to say this but people for quite a while now consider getting married and divorced several times better than never having been married at all.

    It is for this reason that being in my late thirties, I will not hesitate to say that I’m divorced rather than say I’m a never married.

  • RT
    Posted at 11:52 am, 25th April 2016

    Great article and agree with the need for mission vs just goals.

    Re divorce stats: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is-over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html?smid=tw-share&abt=0002&abg=0&_r=1

    Divorce rates have been going down, not up :”The divorce rate peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s and has been declining for the three decades since.”

    “If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist”

    Either way, even if the divorce rate turns out 33%, it’s still stupid to not consider it and plan/protect for that

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 12:00 pm, 25th April 2016

    That $25k number was $25k in 1950, which adjusted for inflation is $250k today. SO they’re still comparing high income to high income.

    I don’t have any links handy, but here’s one I do have:

    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/raw-data-do-you-pay-higher-taxes-you-did-50-years-ago

    The typical American middle class family paid less overall taxes in the 50s and 60s than they do now. If you want to think otherwise, you’re welcome to do so.

    ”The divorce rate peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s and has been declining for the three decades since.”

    I’ve addressed this a thousand times before as well. The overall divorce rate is going down because less people are getting married. The divorce rate among people who are actually getting married is rising. Sharply.

    Once again, the divorce rate doesn’t show the entire picture. You can’t just glance at a single article and make assumptions. You need to dig deeper into the numbers. Read the two links I gave the gentlemen above; I explain it all there.

  • hey hey
    Posted at 12:02 pm, 25th April 2016

    Do people still find it difficult to comprehend that the divorce rate is higher than 50% and it grows by the day? Just look around you people.  Take couples that got married 10 years ago from your social circle. Or 7 years ago., or 5. Then draw your own conclusions.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 12:09 pm, 25th April 2016

    Most people are very much aware that marriage and monogamy don’t work, but according to the people I’ve talked to “you must still aspire to this ideal.”

    Correct. It’s Societal Programming. And it’s sad.

    Do people still find it difficult to comprehend that the divorce rate is higher than 50% and it grows by the day? Just look around you people. Take couples that got married 10 years ago from your social circle. Or 7 years ago., or 5. Then draw your own conclusions.

    We’re just dealing with nitpickers here. They know what’s up.

    most people don’t care about the divorce rate

    Nitpickers do.

    This is my bottom line and my final comment in this thread about the statistical risk of divorce.

    If you’re a nitpicker who disagrees with me on these percentages, you have one of three opinions:

    A. The lifetime divorce risk is a completely unknowable number therefore Blackdragon shouldn’t ever talk about it.

    B. Blackdragon’s numbers regarding divorce risk are just his own estimate based on the sources he’s linked to and he’s off at least a little.

    C. Blackdragon’s numbers regarding divorce risk are way off and not even close. He can’t be trusted on this issue at all because he’s bad at math and/or he’s strongly skewing the numbers to fit his agenda.

    If your opinion is B, that’s fine since our disagreement isn’t worth arguing about. If your opinion is A or C, we’ll have to agree do disagree, since I’ve already said all I can on this topic over the last several years.

  • Kurt
    Posted at 12:36 pm, 25th April 2016

    BD,

    Thank you for taking time to reply to my question RE divorce statistics. Additional comments below:

    – The only thing most researchers track is divorce rate, which is a ratio of marriage vs divorces in a given year. This is an exceedingly and misleadingly low number that doesn’t actually give you any idea of divorce risk for the typical person getting married over the course of the entire marriage.

    Agreed, rendering most of the data useless or of very little value in figuring out how likely it is to get divorced once married.

    – There are no “specific” “rock-solid” numbers on lifetime divorce risk, because A) researchers rarely bother to calculate it, and when they do their numbers are always very out of date (more on this in a minute) and B) there is no data on where people who get married today, in 2016, end up, since the future hasn’t happened yet. All you can do is A) look what people who got married 40 years ago did, and B) look at the trend of increasing or decreasing divorce among all age ranges for people who actually get married.

    Again, I completely agree. That is why one of the few useful links you had was to the table I mentioned. It has actual data on what has happened to actual marriages.

    Based on the numbers I see from all links I referenced above, plus here, plus other articles and studies I’ve read that I don’t have links handy for, it’s very obvious to me that your risk of ever, at any point in your lifetime (which is many decades), getting divorced if you get married in 2016 or after is over 70%.

    Obvious to me too. In fact I would argue that outside of some specific demographics (those with strong cultural pressures keeping marriages together e.g.  orthodox branches of various religions or closed communities such as Quakers) it’s damn near 100% at this point. But I can’t point to anything other than trends and the shifting cultural landscape to back me up.

    The point of all my typing is that unless you aren’t interested in getting your message to reach someone skeptical of your views you need to use an argument that doesn’t give the appearance of playing fast and loose with the truth.

    If you want “specific, rock-solid” numbers, I can’t give them to you beyond what I linked to above, and neither can anyone else.

    I completely agree estimating is tricky. I agree it may not be 100% accurate. But it makes no sense to me to say “Well folks, we’re screwed here, we have absolutely no idea what your lifetime divorce risk is” when we have so much data to draw upon.

    This is where you start to lose me. So, you can’t give good numbers on a supposed ‘risk rate’ so instead of pointing to the good data that exists and discussing it in a similar fashion to what we’re doing now (but more concise, obv.) you decide to just come up with your own Blackdragon Divorce Risk Index™ and say

    For people getting married in the Western world nowadays, lifetime risk of divorce is now well north of 70%, and growing.

    instead of just acknowledging the complexity of the issue and perhaps linking to a more well-reasoned discussion of the matter that you have worked out without having to pin a number on it. I don’t accept the dichotomy you assume here that you either say you have no idea or you come up with some number that gives the impression of scientific rigor and authority. The in-between is fine, and more intellectually honest.

    Basically the response you just posted is more along the lines of what you have to have for people who question you on this. Your previous response of just saying ‘yup it’s backed by statistics! link : link’ doesn’t really cut it IMO.

    If you seriously think that I’m pulling all these numbers out of my ass and I have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s fine, you’re welcome to that belief, and you’re welcome to shout to the rooftops that I’m making up numbers.

    Well, for the 70% number, you pretty much are doing that, although as I’ve said if I were to pull the same number out of my ass it would be even bigger 🙂

    You’ll look a lot better and be more believable if you don’t sacrifice intellectual rigor to gain some easy soundbites. I don’t doubt that you have researched the numbers, trends and research on this issue and thought about it deeply, but I am concerned that you are presenting your views in a way that diminishes your position to doubters instead of strengthening it.

     

     

  • Ben
    Posted at 12:55 pm, 25th April 2016

    Most of my friends/contacts who’ve gotten married in the last decade haven’t gotten divorced (yet, anyway), though most of them are still popping out kids, or are only within a few years of popping out their most recent kid; couples stay together longer when they’re procreating than they otherwise might (even if there’s infidelity or dysfunction happening all the while). I’m curious to see how many of those couples are still together in 5-10 years.

    On the other hand, a friend of mine’s wife recently served him with divorce papers after only six months of marriage. Go TMM!

  • Ed. Shire
    Posted at 01:20 pm, 25th April 2016

    maldek says:

    “The wife was not equal with her husband. She was his property.”

    Women are now able to be independent mostly because of the technological progress. In the past, work was physically demanding and hard, women chose the best option they had at that time. I find stupid to blame men for this.

  • Al
    Posted at 02:35 pm, 25th April 2016

    At the end of the day, precise figures may prove elusive. But, who cares? Marriage is folly. Maybe you have to get married to really understand that 🙂 and therein lies the problem. Until you have been screwed by the system (which is your fault) it is difficult perhaps to believe that it can all go so horribly wrong.

    Anyone reading this blog, read the archive. All of it. It will help you make better lifestyle choices.

  • Duke
    Posted at 03:00 pm, 25th April 2016

    At the end of the day, precise figures may prove elusive. But, who cares? Marriage is folly. Maybe you have to get married to really understand that 🙂 and therein lies the problem. Until you have been screwed by the system (which is your fault) it is difficult perhaps to believe that it can all go so horribly wrong.

    LOl. The guys over at mgtow.com always say that you don’t need to step in shit to know what stepping in shit feels like. I think most men do however.

  • billyboy
    Posted at 04:42 pm, 25th April 2016

    Blind io, sad to say you are totally wrong. The purpose of life is most certainly not survival and procreation. Anymore than it’s a Rock’s purpose to be hard or the water’s purpose to be wet. That’s called the naturalistic fallacy. That which is, should be.

    You look around and see that the vast majority of modern organisms generally try to avoid pain, survive, and fuck. But that’s happenstance. Survivorship bias. The organisms that didn’t want to fuck, or were adept at dying, are no longer here. Of course current living things are adept at living. Just like many things that currently exist are adept at continuing to exist. Like the sun. It will exist until it doesn’t, just like us. It’s purpose is not necessarily existence. That doesn’t follow. Again, the naturalistic fallacy.

    Like many men, searching for meaning, you’ve twisted a description of what is, evolutionary biology, into a prescriptive philosophy. It doesn’t logically follow.

  • Elkay Mann
    Posted at 05:16 pm, 25th April 2016

    Seems to me Roosh needs some philosophy in his life, REAL philosophy (not theoric bullshity philosophy). Aimimg for life of material achievements leads to a dead-end. You need to aim “higher” if you want any kind of persisting and real happiness. Things break or rot. If you want to be permanently fulfilled, you have to pursue what lasts, what trascends, like knowledge, self growth, etc.

  • Elkay Mann
    Posted at 05:40 pm, 25th April 2016

    @Kurt: What’s the point of arguing in favor of lasting marriages if happy monogamists are an insignificant minority? Monogamy ONLY works if you manage to stay married until one of the spouses die *AND* both are happy for the entire duration of the marriage. Otherwise, it isn’t working. How many cases like this are out there?

    What would be a lot more useful than divorce rates are separation rates, with or without divorce. Divorce is just a consequence of separations, and means nothing today since a lot of people doesn’t even get married anymore.

  • kaminsky
    Posted at 08:16 pm, 25th April 2016

    Roosh contributed a lot but he’s definitely flaking. I’ve seen the same pattern a few times now from online PUAs and hometown guys who were basically offline PUA’s before it became a thing. To me the pattern is this;

    They are hung up on quantity, not quality. ‘Notch’ count mentality which I’ve never understood. A mediocre woman for your notch count is just you being lost in a solipsistic world of proving something to yourself or chasing off an uncomfortable truth about yourself.
    They tended to fashion, always playing with their hairstyles more fervently than 95% of women. Not dressing well in the classic sense, but making very self-conscious statements and watching style trends like hawks.
    They were girlish. They knew when to play “I’m a girl just like you game” and it worked, at least in the nineties. Non-athletic, lispy art-fag game.
    They finally settled down’ with masculine, super-cardio, dominant women. And not sexy, feminine supremacy women either. These were real growlers.
    They got depressed after getting married (Uh-oh. No more constant barrage of women to stave off that aforementioned uncomfortable truth about themselves).
    Their zfg approach worked well because they truly didn’t give a fuck about women. Why? Because they don’t really like women that much. It’s ironic but the guys who like women the most start off in the deepest hole, as it were.

     

    With about 5-7 of my own acquaintances, a pair of very effeminate and ‘dynamic’ high profile pickup artists currently online and now Roosh. Maybe Tucker Max (I don’t know him that much).  That’s coming up on about ten guys who fit this profile pretty closely and I think they have massive issues with their own sexuality. Imagine them pumping away on an endless series of sixes, like “See? I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I’m not gay. See?” This set of guys is remarkably similar or I wouldn’t have tried to tie it all together like this.

    Who in the hell cares about a notch count? Yeah, I’ve had my sloppy, throwaway sessions with sixes and it means nothing at all. I don’t cherish that or even care. I don’t care enough to regret it but slobbering away on a six is meaningless. It happens, but it’s nothing to pursue. Certainly you don’t next a nine to go out and ‘slay’ another 165 pounder. But this set of guys seems to do or has done exactly that.

    I only remember real babes who floored me with their naked bodies. There haven’t been a lot but a decent enough set to know that when you really are attracted to a beautiful woman, you have no urge to go out notch a lesser woman.  A hundred B-cup sixes don’t mean a thing. That’s why a lot of pickup is really weird to me. Any ‘notch’ count mentality is a pretty serious red flag. If you land a real attractive woman, you stay with her for however long. You don’t cast her aside and go out to prove yourself (again) with yet another chubby, drunken 5.5.  Why would you do that? Unless staying with the 9 (and realizing you don’t like her that much, hmmm…) starts to unveil that truth a little bit. So get back out there for another six and chase off the truth. Serial PUA’s are half-gay. Yeah, most guys have to learn pickup but the relentless chasers are driven by something wholly separate from actually liking women. When they are finally forced to confront who they really are either via marriage or aging, they get hit with depression.

     

  • kaminsky
    Posted at 08:21 pm, 25th April 2016

    Whatever number for the divorce rate that a guy wants to believe, go for it.  But ask yourself this;

    You know that hometown buddy who is actually STILL MARRIED? How surprised are you by that? That’s your answer right there. It hardly needs an elusive number.  

    For the divorce rate deniers here, then go out and succeed in that wonderful institution then. Go spend five full decades with a woman who only could give you a true boner (we all know what I’m talking about) for about one, maybe two of those years, followed by 48 years of needing to crank up your wood with the neighbor’s sunbathing daughter or a trip to the mall with the fat teens and their tits halfway out. Hurry! Get that ‘transfer boner’ in your wife before it goes away. Great institution there. Good stuff.

  • Parade
    Posted at 11:58 pm, 25th April 2016

    Avoiding the divorce discussion completely…

    I don’t get it. Why would anyone be against lifestyle design? Sure, you might say “I want to be working into my 80’s as a manager/CEO with lots of reports because I love being the boss”. Great. You set out to accomplish those goals, you meet them, and maybe you decide that lifestyle isn’t for you…so you design a different one. Maybe the next one includes a goal you can never reach, maybe not, but it’s still a lifestyle you thought about and went about achieving.

    What’s the alternative? Randomly wait around and see what happens? “Oh, guess I got a raise, yay” “oops, slipped, fell, landed on a chick, better get married”. “Damn, I really hate how I can’t get any chicks, better play more video games and get fat in my basement”? None of those sound like rational responses to “I have this desire”. I don’t see how anyone can argue against lifestyle design of the “Here’s what I want, I’m going to go do it” sort. I do see how they can argue against particular lifestyles, but in general? I just don’t get it.

  • The Machine
    Posted at 12:21 am, 26th April 2016

    Let’s put this divorce rate stuff to rest using some data, forecasting, and math.

    Not only is BD right on the divorce rate. His estimate is probably conservative. I was curious enough to know for myself since I saw the comments on here so having had a lot of experience finding data where others can’t, I found some data that explains. The data is from the CDC and is 20 years old unfortunately. If you can find better data, I can get you a better answer.

    First, take a look at the CDC’s calculation (from real surveys) here. I screen-shotted it so that you don’t have to go through the full report: The screen shot is here http://imgur.com/kiiDbQr

    As you can see, back in 1995 the divorce probability (true divorce rate) by the age of 15 (in marriage years), let’s say, for Whites, is at around 40% – and that was 20 years ago. Once again, 20 years ago!

    I then used a simple linear forecast regression (just based on the slope of the curve) – really simple math to forecast what it would be going forward. I think my assumptions of it being linear are quite strong based on the shape of the curve. Here are the raw numbers of the forecast, once again as a screenshot image: Divorce rate forecasthttp://imgur.com/5uf6jby

    Assuming a linear forecast for a 1995 US marriage culture which I believe to be more conservative than today’s, if the curve holds a linear growth, then if you were married in 1995 you stand a 98.5% chance of being divorced from that first marriage at year 20 of your marriage. If you’re not, count yourself lucky – you are special. Sorry I can’t test for significance without raw data which I don’t have.

    But what this shows, is at minimum, that the rate of divorce is MUCH MUCH higher than the divorce rate given by the formula:

    divorce per given year / marriages by given year

    ..which says nothing about the actual lifetime divorce rates..

    I actually think the curves gets shallower past year 20 – that is if you make it to 20 years, the rate goes down significantly, but even if I’m off by an enormous 100% (which I’m not – I’m a modeler by trade), it also means that you stand a 98.5% chance of being divorced from your first marriage within 40 years.

    Let’s unpack that too, since my projects also require that I consider what my data means when I’m wrong, not just when I’m right.

    It means that since most women and men stand a 90% chance of being married by age 30 (this is also in the CDC report), and stand a 98.5% of being divorced within 40 years after that (assuming I’m way way off), then by age 70 (which could also be defined as “lifetime” if you wanted – if you take into account life expectancy), then you stand a 98.5% x 90% probability of lifetime divorce, which is equal to 88.7% chance.

    That’s right even if I’m WRONG completely, by a 100% error margin, my lifetime divorce rate calculation is STILL HIGHER than BD’s 70%.

    Before I get ragged on: My assumptions are reasonable, my method is standard, and my math is solid – nothing innovative here.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 03:34 am, 26th April 2016

    Avoiding the divorce discussion completely…

    Thank you!

    Why would a bunch of aspiring red pillers on a red pill blog talk about what should be completely irrelevant to their red pill lives – marriage and divorce? Unless………….this effects you because you guys want to get married someday, in which case, I understand you even less!

    Let me put this in perspective: The lower the divorce rate, the scarier and more undesirable marriage is! If the divorce rate were 0%, marriage would be the scariest and most evil institution in the world. It would be a true prison for life from which there would be no escape! In India, the divorce rate is like 3% because it’s so socially unacceptable. Imagine the pure hell marriage would be if the divorce rate were low instead of high!

    As it stands now, marriage is just relationship insurance for the woman. If it doesn’t work out, she gets paid. That’s reason enough to avoid it, but holy shit, if divorce were illegal, or if the divorce rate were 0%, the seduction community’s anti-marriage arguments would be even stronger, not weaker!

    That’s why I find this discussion strange!

     

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 03:55 am, 26th April 2016

    Why would anyone be against lifestyle design?

    @Parade: Roosh has become opposed to personal freedom. Early on, he believed that women shouldn’t be free because freedom “corrupts them”, but more recently he has come to the conclusion that men shouldn’t be free either. He takes his life experience as an example: how he wasted years in college, then, “because he had the choice”, wasted yet more years chasing pussy “instead of looking for a wifable girl”, and how the carousel made him unable (through habit) to stay long with one woman even when he could see that she was good enough. Roosh thinks that neither men nor women should be free because according to him it leads to bad choices, and that people need a religion to be moral, and perhaps a spouse they didn’t choose freely, etc. Here’s how I see it: he thought he was better than everyone else when he was collecting notches, and now that he realizes he sucks at personal freedom, he can’t accept that some men have gotten good at it: if he failed, then everyone would fail and no one should be free or design his own lifestyle.

  • joelsuf
    Posted at 05:55 am, 26th April 2016

    “Damn, I really hate how I can’t get any chicks, better play more video games and get fat in my basement”?

    You would be SHOCKED to see how many boys are “choosing” this. Look at Japan, all of the cringeworthiest stuff to EVER come out is from there.

    As it stands now, marriage is just relationship insurance for the woman.

    Yup. But back in the middle ages, it was relationship insurance for the man, which is why tradcons still pressure chicks to be trophy virgin wives. Also your view on divorce is legit. I mean if it were illegal, you would have to do something more illegal to get out of the marriage. Something like…murder! Or you poison their drink or something. If anyone thinks this DIDN’T happen back in the day by both sexes then wow, get out from under that rock you’ve been living under lol.

    Also to BD, I Roosh was talking about the amount of chicks that are possible to get with when he said billions of options. But its still an exaggeration.

    he thought he was better than everyone else when he was collecting notches, and now that he realizes he sucks at personal freedom, he can’t accept that some men have gotten good at it: if he failed, then everyone would fail and no one should be free or design his own lifestyle.

    That’s Roosh alright. No better than SJWs who want to control the world through their Gynocracy. He just wants everyone to feel just as shitty as him, how noble.

     

  • Vitriol
    Posted at 06:16 am, 26th April 2016

    @kaminsky

    Serial PUA’s are half-gay. Yeah, most guys have to learn pickup but the relentless chasers are driven by something wholly separate from actually liking women.

    After doing the PUA thing myself for a couple of years, I realized it isn’t a good option for guys who are actually serious about having sex with women. The guys who get very into it seem to be extreme versions of “thrill of the chase” guys who are really looking for some kind of attention or validation–they’re primarily making themselves into entertainers and clowns, the actual act of sex with a woman is an afterthought. Talking to a girl about her loser boyfriend and nursing degree or playing dress up with fuzzy hats and glitter to troll a nightclub for hours on end doesn’t sound like the type of thing a horny guy wants to invest a significant amount of time into. A lot of these guys honestly believe men with significant income and status who surround themselves with girls that are basically high-end whores are really the “betas” (this would include lots of high sex drive musicians, athletes, actors, etc.), but men who do cold approaches in shopping mall food courts for five hours on the weekend on the off chance they might get laid are the real winners because they do it through “pure game” or some other bullshit.

    @Jack Outside the Box

    Why would a bunch of aspiring red pillers on a red pill blog talk about what should be completely irrelevant to their red pill lives – marriage and divorce?

    I could care less whether someone who gets married in 2016 will end up having a 30% or 70% chance of getting divorced. The bottom line is that, from a purely qualitative perspective, marriage sucks for men. A man will get bored of having sex with only one woman for years on end, it’s a huge financial burden with little upside, it’s a lifetime commitment to constant bitching, nagging, compromising and arguing, and the legal consequences of a divorce can totally destroy a man’s life. Any man still willing to do that in today’s world is putting on a blindfold and walking off the edge of a cliff, especially when marriage and monogamy are no longer prerequisites to sex.

  • donnie demarco
    Posted at 11:22 am, 26th April 2016

    “I accomplished my goals, but I’m still not happy”.

    That’s why having a mission is so important.  Merely setting goals for yourself isn’t enough, because the satisfaction you get from accomplishing your goals is temporary.  Having a mission provides a frame for your goals, gives them relevance, and leads you to discover new goals when old goals have been accomplished.

    How old is Roosh?  I’ve enjoyed much of his content in the past, but when I read these isolate quotes of his he comes off like the typical 28-29 year old man.

  • Tony
    Posted at 05:06 pm, 26th April 2016

    @Kaminsky

    Spot on. What kind of guy would rather have sex with 100 fat chicks than have sex with Kate Upton 100 times? A high notch count means nothing if he’s not getting laid with hot chicks.

     

    @The Machine

    I’d like to see how you came up with those numbers. I don’t think linear regression is correct, you’d expect the probability distribution of divorce after x-years to be roughly normal, and therefore the cumulative function would be logistic. To believe in a linear model would be to assume for every year that you’re married, the chances of you divorcing that year are always increasing. According to your model 90% of people are divorced after 18 years, and 95% are divorced after 19 years, which means of those who were married 18 years 50% got divorced in their 19th year! That’s clearly absurd.

    However, with a normal/logistic model, it matches reality much more closely. Your chances of getting divorce increase every year until you reach the peak (probably somewhere between 3 and 7 years), then each year after that your odds of divorcing that year go down. As Caleb has described so often, the marriage begins to wear on you after a couple years, so those who are predisposed to divorce will get divorce when it reaches that maximal-suckitude point. However, those who make it past that point are the ones who are determine to remain married no matter how bad it gets (or those rare few who have genuinely good marriages), so once you reach 10-15 years the cumulative starts to level off as those two groups have accepted their fate.

    This matches somewhat closely to the first graph you provide. the slope is steepest between 5-10 years, indicating the highest probability of divorce, then levels off a little. Unfortunately it only goes to 15 years, but to my eye it looks like it would level off at about 50% for non-Hispanic whites. So I’d say the real divorce rate for those married in 1995 is 50%.

    The next question is what is the divorce rate for somebody married today. I don’t think anybody truly knows, but if you took data like you provided for more years, you could likely get a pretty good equation for the general shape of divorce rates, with one constant that depends on the year. You could then look at that one variable and see how it trended from year to year and get a pretty good idea if it’s going up or down.

  • The Machine
    Posted at 06:14 pm, 26th April 2016

    @Tony

    Great analysis – you clearly Wikipediad the crap out of this.

    There is no evidence of leveling off from the data released by the CDC. A linear forecast is a stronger assumption based on the data. The rate picks up (is steeper) in the last period of the curve when compared to the 5-10 year duration period – it doesn’t slow down.

    Nothing says this is going to be a normally distributed data-set as of right now – only a hunch. Like I said, provide me with better data and I’ll provide better analysis, but even so, let’s assume it’s normal and once again go back to the math, not conjecture and “I think” or “it matches reality” (what reality? – no one has any data and common sense is a goner on this topic since there are so many different opinions!).

    But, yes, anyway, let’s play:

    Assuming a normal distribution….based on your high-school level conjecture you’re pretty much assuming that the normal distribution would begin to level off right at the edge of that curve (even though you don’t see it) which would make your assumption that the distribution would have a mean (mu) roughly of 15 years.

    Ok. Let’s take your proposed mean, and use it with the data we already have (from the CDC) to calculate the standard deviation of the rate itself. This amounts to 23.5.

    In plain English, that means that the cumulative rate at the 15 year mark is (once again, let’s say for Whites only) is 40 plus or minus 23.5, so between the range of (16.5%, 63.5%) with a 95% confidence interval of 12.5%.

    So then we ask this question at what duration do 90% of couples get divorced (remember this is by YOUR assumption dude). Well the handy people at the local statistics store kindly left us behind that 3 sigma means 89% of the population would be divorced if you assume a normal distribution. (Check Chebyshev’s inequality here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev%27s_inequality)

    Now, my new good friend Tony the Tigger! roaaar!!! What is 3 sigma from my calculations above?

    Yes! you got it: it’s 3 x 23.5 = 70.5 years. That means that 89% of all marriages will end in divorces within 70.5 years, but that’s not fun, right? I mean life expectancy is like 80 years old, which means that 89% of all marriages would end of divorce when most people are like a hundred years old, so let’s aim for something smaller.

    Yes. Ok. Let’s look at 2 Sigma which our friends tell us is set at 75%, and once again Tony the Tigger – what is 2 sigma for our data set?

    2 x 23.5 = 47 years. YEAAHHHH!! Woot Woot!

    Just like my original calculations, assuming 90% of people get married by age 30, then the chances of life time divorce (assume lifetime is 30+47 = 77 years, which is in line with life expectancy values) is 75%.

    So by YOUR assumptions which I consider to be inexperienced and misled, the lifetime divorce rate is STILL, AT MINIMUM, equal to BD’s claim.

    One final note: Wikipedia, no matter how thorough,  does not equal 4 degrees including 3 graduate level in which 1 is terminal, and years of experience in analysis!

    I bow to you and take my leave.

    The condescending tone is provided for entertainment value only. I’m trying to make people laugh because we got heavy into the math, but I respect your analysis Tony.

     

  • Tony
    Posted at 08:08 pm, 26th April 2016

    @The Machine

    Good thing you put that at the end before I whipped out my own very expensive pieces of paper at you 🙂

    I don’t believe it’s perfectly normal, but that it’s normal-like, so doing that precise of a cumulative is going to give you incorrect results. However, I will admit that you are right, I did underestimate just how long marriages last, so it could very well go above 50%.

    Unfortunately we don’t have access to the numbers themselves, only the CDC’s summary, so we can only do so much, however we can still see that the rate of divorce does indeed slow down (although, the data’s imperfect so we can’t really firmly conclude anything other than the lifetime divorce rate is at least 40%). From year 0 to 5, there’s a 20% the marriage will end, from year 5 to 10 13% (from the table, 33%-20%), and from 10-15 10%.

    Taking a step back, my eye-balling was wrong because they fucked up the units on the x-axis. Bastards. The inflection point is below 5, not above like I said before.

    Anyway, 43% of marriages end in divorce by the 15-year mark, and 20% at the 5-year, which means nearly half of those who get divorced in the first 15 years are already divorced by year 5. No matter how you slice it, it’s slowing down.

    (Now I’m just starting to ramble, I think it’s time for bed…) You know, I’m thinking it might be like radioactive material, that there’s a certain half life. I’ll work out the equations tomorrow, but the half-life of marriage would be roughly 20-years by these numbers. So 50% are divorced in 20 years, 75% divorced in 40, 87.5% in 60, etc. That would get us close to Caleb’s number. This probably isn’t right, but it’s interesting.

    I’d still like you to answer my criticisms of doing it linearly. I just don’t think it makes sense for the chance of getting divorced in a particular year to increase.

  • Nathan
    Posted at 09:01 pm, 26th April 2016

    The actual design of your lifestyle is therefore mainly guided by the emotional or egocentric part of you that has desires and aches for something else. Already, I’m sure you can see the folly of designing a lifestyle based on desire, which is transient and can never be fully sated. Many men such as myself used their desires to design a grand lifestyle that included slaying pussy, making money, and traveling the world, which was nice for a time, until inevitably you arrive at a road block where you’re forced to ask, “Is this it?” You reach your goals but lose momentum, feel empty again, and start desiring new things.

    Actually I think his problem is; designing his life based on emotions and what he thinks everyone thinks is ideal (ego) fucking X number of women Z times a week.

    Design is about Logic, and thinking about what makes himself happy.

    Any divorce rate above 50% is a bad gamble.

  • Captain
    Posted at 05:42 am, 27th April 2016

    The vast majority of the friends I grew up with are still married after 10-15 years. With one exception, they all seem somewhere between slightly dissatisfied and happy. They all look and act way older than me. A lot of them show some serious wear and tear.

    My marriage sucked and needed to end. However for the most part I was happier then than with the ups and downs of the player lifestyle. I’ve started to get into an open relationship and it seems to be a very happy medium for me.

  • Captain
    Posted at 05:52 am, 27th April 2016

    Roosh and his followers have helped a lot of guys including me with their game and lifestyle. Unfortunately there is also a lot of extremism over there. Its gotten a little depressing lately.

    There’s a thread on the forum about the best countries for finding a wife. Some of the guys have figured out some places where the woman are indeed conservative and traditional yet they complain that these woman are boring and take too long to put out.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 10:10 am, 27th April 2016

    There’s a thread on the forum about the best countries for finding a wife. Some of the guys have figured out some places where the woman are indeed conservative and traditional yet they complain that these woman are boring and take too long to put out.

    Yep. I’ve pointed out that disparity several times before. Madonna/whore at it’s finest. It’s the price you pay for being a right-wing man. Your value systems aren’t internally consistent. Thus you’ll never be happy.

    (Though to be fair, most manosphere men don’t really want to be happy.)

  • Duke
    Posted at 01:28 pm, 27th April 2016

    Yep. I’ve pointed out that disparity several times before. Madonna/whore at it’s finest. It’s the price you pay for being a right-wing man. Your value systems aren’t internally consistent. Thus you’ll never be happy.

    (Though to be fair, most manosphere men don’t really want to be happy.)

    You could pretty much sum this up for all men. Men are programmed to serve women. But this is apparently not enough, they need to have a woman that is “marriage material.” Men don’t know how to be happy being single, and they won’t share their wife with anyone is the bottom line. The result is: not ever being happy, just like most women.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 03:27 pm, 27th April 2016

    @Joelsuf:

    Yup. But back in the middle ages, it was relationship insurance for the man, which is why tradcons still pressure chicks to be trophy virgin wives.

    My point of view is this: Even if marriage were relationship insurance for the man; even if it were the most pro-male institution in the world; or even if it were the most equitable institution for both sexes, I’d still be against it and work to abolish it!

    The intrinsic nature of marriage disgusts me. Not only is it a government “love permit,” which no free country should have, but it’s all about external validation and the approval of your sex life by “the community.” I picture a wedding where the man and the woman make promises to each other that they can’t possibly keep for a lifetime in front of an audience – witnesses who approve and give their blessing. The one performing the wedding even asks if anyone in the crowd “objects.” It’s insulting to me on an inherent level.

    As if I need the community’s pat on the back or official blessing saying “we approve of this union.” You can take your approval and shove it up your ass! What do I need your approval for? It’s such a low self esteem ritual, primarily for attention whores and sheep dependent on social status and external validation.

    So all these divorce statistics are irrelevant to me. Men on red pill sites are arguing against marriage by pointing out what a bad deal it is for men and how men get screwed, when they should be pointing out that even if it were a great deal for both men and women and the fairest contract in the world, it would still be an insulting piece of garbage that belongs to the infancy of our species.

    And yes, like you said, lifetime monogamy and faithfulness – a retarded and pathetic goal – would probably require virginity until marriage, thus increasing the motivation of alpha 1 tradcons to slut shame our girlfriends, our fuck buddies, our mothers, our daughters, and our sisters and spew their despicable hate speech just so they can role play “horny Taliban leader and the lonely humble wench” for the rest of their lives! It’s sickening!

    Also your view on divorce is legit. I mean if it were illegal, you would have to do something more illegal to get out of the marriage. Something like…murder! Or you poison their drink or something. If anyone thinks this DIDN’T happen back in the day by both sexes then wow, get out from under that rock you’ve been living under lol.

    King Henry the VIII asked the Catholic Church for a divorce. The Pope said no, so King Henry said he’d murder her by cutting off her head. The Pope responded, “That’s fine. It’s just divorce that’s unacceptable.” So he ended up murdering like three or four of his wives. He then got tired of doing it, so he expelled the Catholic Church from England and replaced it with the Anglican Church with him as its infallible leader of course. His first decree – divorce is now legal.

    The Anglican Church is still the official state church of England to this day which every British citizen is required to pay taxes towards. In America, the Episcopalians are a splinter group from the Anglicans and the Methodists split from the Episcopalians. All this splitting is inevitable when you set up a society on the family values of Henry the VIII (credit: Christopher Hitchens).

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 03:56 pm, 27th April 2016

    @Vitriol:

    I could care less whether someone who gets married in 2016 will end up having a 30% or 70% chance of getting divorced. The bottom line is that, from a purely qualitative perspective, marriage sucks for men. A man will get bored of having sex with only one woman for years on end, it’s a huge financial burden with little upside, it’s a lifetime commitment to constant bitching, nagging, compromising and arguing, and the legal consequences of a divorce can totally destroy a man’s life. Any man still willing to do that in today’s world is putting on a blindfold and walking off the edge of a cliff, especially when marriage and monogamy are no longer prerequisites to sex.

    My thoughts exactly. Which is why the subject of marriage shouldn’t be this heatedly debated by men who will never get married anyway. It’s as if this obsolete subject, which no alpha 2.0 will ever indulge in, matters to some of the men here for some reason.

    And let me repeat, even if marriage were a fair contract for both parties, abolishing it would still be an essential mark of progress for a species going from external validation to internal validation – from low self esteem to high.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 03:59 pm, 27th April 2016

    @Duke:

    You could pretty much sum this up for all men.

    Not me.

    Men are programmed to serve women.

    Not me.

    But this is apparently not enough, they need to have a woman that is “marriage material.”

    Not me.

    Men don’t know how to be happy being single, and they won’t share their wife with anyone is the bottom line.

    I share my girlfriend with other men all the time.

    The result is: not ever being happy, just like most women.

    This doesn’t apply to alpha 2.0s, so you putting “all” men in the same boat is untrue.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 04:13 pm, 27th April 2016

    There’s a thread on the forum about the best countries for finding a wife. Some of the guys have figured out some places where the woman are indeed conservative and traditional yet they complain that these woman are boring and take too long to put out.

    I hate Roosh! I hate him with every fiber of my being!

    If only he’d come out of the closet as the Muslim that he is, join a terrorist group, and blow himself up so that allah can hook him up with some heaven virgin pussy, I’d hate him slightly less. But he missed his calling as a sexually frustrated suicide bomber so instead of sticking with his fellow Muslims, he has invaded the red pill community and has slyly tried to turn a group of sex positive men into a community of slut shamers, pre-arranged marriage enthusiasts, and “stone her for adultery” sympathizers who whine that women, for some reason, don’t want to fuck them!

    It’s the deception that gets my blood boiling the most. You want to be a slut shaming Muslim? Fine, join a Mosque, pray five times a day until you get back problems, and shout your nonsense from the highest rooftops while babbling “Allahu Akbar.” But for fuck sake, don’t join a community of sexually enlightened men, pretend to be one of them, and then slowly psychologically influence them towards Saudi Arabian family values without them even realizing it, like the frog in the boiling pot!

    It’s times like these that I wish I’d believe in hell, because seeing Roosh roast for all eternity would give me exquisite pleasure! Same with Heartiste!

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 04:52 pm, 27th April 2016

    @Jack outside the Box: I enjoy most of your comments, but since this has now happened a few times I’ll have to disagree with you one one point. Why do you seem to keep talking about “abolishing stuff” (especially as a libertarian)? You said it once, with much passion and anger I think, about sperm donors or something similar, and you’re saying it now about the institution of marriage. I dislike marriage and sexual monogamy and will probably never get married, but I don’t talk about “abolishing stuff if I had the power” just because it disgusts me or because it harms willing adults or because humanity is supposed to have grown past that or because people do it for attention and validation.

    Banning stuff out of disgust is what leftists do. I remember someone speaking of how, though he was perfectly fine with homosexuality being legal, he admitted to be personally disgusted at the idea of two men having sex (which is entirely normal for a straight guy). His statement was met with a ton of hate and indignation, and to me the clear reason why is that leftists project the way they think onto others: “I would certainly ban anything I found gross or anything my feelings can’t handle, therefore if you say gay sex disgusts you you certainly want to abolish it”.

    If some people are still in a primitive stage of the elevation of the human mind and want to attention whore, make bad choices, lock themselves up in a stupid institution, etc, it should be their right. Similarly, if people want to donate sperm and if sterile people who have wanted kids all their life are willing to raise a child that is not theirs, they should be allowed to. It may seem gross or even inhuman to you, but honestly one could make the case that bringing any child into the world is “inhuman”, before we get to the issue of biological parenthood. The very reason why you see kids saying “doesn’t matter, you’re still my only parents” upon learning they are adopted is that the gene-based child-to-parent attachment relies on situational cues, like “who raised me”, not on a DNA test, to determine whether a son loves his “father”, or whether a father loves his “son”. (just like a bird learns who his siblings are and behaves around them as such from “who was with me in the nest”) (because in prehistoric times it was much more likely that whoever raised you was really strongly related to you, so we never evolved to instinctively stop loving someone altogether just upon learning they’re not family: genes don’t have a good plan B for information verbally transmitted, a bit like women hold you much more to how you act than to your words – the concept of “congruency” in relationship frames).

    Secondary point: whenever you find yourself to be different from what men are said to be “wired to do” or “wired to want”, you (seem to, from this and other articles’ comments) automatically conclude that it must be an irrelevant social construct and have nothing to do with biology. This is incorrect. What we’re wired for comes in a spectrum, and its effects vary wildly between people. (I’m all for being relatively free from those things, but I thought the nuance mattered)

  • Duke
    Posted at 05:00 pm, 27th April 2016

    This doesn’t apply to alpha 2.0s, so you putting “all” men in the same boat is untrue.

    Yea, you’re right, I was exaggerating. It seems that way though. You, wolf and BD are the only guys that are open about it that I know of in the manosphere. There’s probably a lot more closeted poly men, because they tend to get shunned right away. Over at RVF they call them cucks and have even banned a few guys who started threads about polyamory. Anyway, you’re hilarious. You would probably be a cool guy to have beer with and talk about this crap.

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 05:14 pm, 27th April 2016

    Anyway, you’re hilarious. You would probably be a cool guy to have beer with and talk about this crap.

    I second that LOL. Even if Jack ends up disagreeing with the objections I just wrote, I have to say ALL his comments are a treat for me and often instructive, and I’ll be preparing metaphorical popcorn in case he does reply.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 10:13 pm, 27th April 2016

    There’s probably a lot more closeted poly men, because they tend to get shunned right away.

    Correct.

    And the result of this? Guys all over the PUA community and manosphere whining “No one does this!” or “No one does this and has kids!” When in fact there are millions of men doing this, while having kids.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 03:14 am, 28th April 2016

    @Gil Galad:

    Why do you seem to keep talking about “abolishing stuff” (especially as a libertarian)?

    Because that’s what us libertarians do – abolish government programs, such as marriage.

    If us libertarians were in charge, we would likely abolish roughly 96 percent of current government programs, including, but not limited to, marriage, civil unions, government-recognized domestic partnerships, alimony, palimony, common law marriage, welfare, food stamps, the IRS, public schooling, public housing, and so forth!

    Abolishing government programs is what we do, after all! How is that anti-libertarian?

    You said it once, with much passion and anger I think, about sperm donors or something similar,

    Yes, I’m only a libertarian as it pertains to adults interacting with other adults. My libertarianism ends, however, when children begin. If I were in charge, I would definitely criminalize sperm banks, sperm donations, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research, homosexual adoption, abortion (passed the 14th day of pregnancy), cloning, genetic engineering, the private patenting of human genes, and anything else which fucks with children, conceives, or gives birth to, them via unnatural means, or attempts to influence the human genome in an unnatural or artificial way!

    Natural evolution has a billion year head start on us and trying to fuck with it is beyond reckless; and shaping the human DNA to our liking, or creating artificial ways to have babies or shape them is something I view with genuine horror!

    And I would also keep incest criminal because it leads to retarded babies, or as Charlie Sheen said, “Kids born with no teeth who only play the banjo and suck apple sauce through a straw.”     

    But yeah, as it pertains to adults interacting with other adults, I am indeed a libertarian.

    and you’re saying it now about the institution of marriage.

    Because, as a libertarian, I believe that this government institution (marriage) shouldn’t exist, just like most government institutions shouldn’t exist. Again, how is that not libertarian?

    I dislike marriage and sexual monogamy and will probably never get married, but I don’t talk about “abolishing stuff if I had the power” just because it disgusts me or because it harms willing adults or because humanity is supposed to have grown past that or because people do it for attention and validation.

    So you’re okay with the government, through the IRS, subsidizing people’s sex lives in the form of tax breaks to people who have sex a certain way, or organize their sexual relationships a certain way? That’s not very libertarian of you!

    You’re actually okay with the genetic asexual paying more in taxes than the heterosexual or homosexual, just because of the way he was born (since as an asexual, he’ll never get married, and therefore, won’t receive a tax break)?

    I believe such discrimination is unconstitutional. As such, the existence of marriage is unconstitutional, as it puts the government in your sex life and in your bedroom.

    I fail to see any contradiction between libertarian principles and the abolition of marriage as a government sexual welfare program! In fact, I don’t think I could call myself a libertarian if I didn’t demand the abolition of the legal existence of marriage!

    Banning stuff out of disgust is what leftists do.

    Um…….dude………..in case you haven’t noticed, leftists wish to expand government programs, including sexual welfare (marriage) to include the homosexual, and eventually, the bigamist and polygamist. Whereas libertarians want to put most government programs on the chopping block, including marriage!

    I remember someone speaking of how, though he was perfectly fine with homosexuality being legal, he admitted to be personally disgusted at the idea of two men having sex (which is entirely normal for a straight guy). His statement was met with a ton of hate and indignation, and to me the clear reason why is that leftists project the way they think onto others: “I would certainly ban anything I found gross or anything my feelings can’t handle, therefore if you say gay sex disgusts you you certainly want to abolish it”.

    For the record, I too am physically disgusted (to the point of activating my gag reflex) at seeing two men kissing or engaging in homosexual behavior. But, as a libertarian, I believe they have the human right to engage in literally any consensual homosexual behavior they wish, just like I have the human right to look away. The problem I have with the alphabet community (besides their desire to raise kids) is that they are trying to take away my human right to look away, as you have illustrated by pointing out leftist shaming tactics.

    If some people are still in a primitive stage of the elevation of the human mind and want to attention whore, make bad choices, lock themselves up in a stupid institution, etc, it should be their right.

    On one condition – KEEP THE GOVERNMENT AND MY TAX DOLLARS OUT OF IT!!!!!!

    Translation: Abolish the government program called marriage!

    To make it less confusing for you, how about I just say we need to privatize marriage? Is that better? Then again, if we’d privatize marriage, I’d fail to see the distinction between marriage and a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. Boyfriends and girlfriends can enter into whatever private contract they want. If their church, or private fraternity, wants to call that “marriage,” then whatever! But the larger society, outside their particular cult, would just call it a boyfriend/girlfriend arrangement!

    Similarly, if people want to donate sperm and if sterile people who have wanted kids all their life are willing to raise a child that is not theirs, they should be allowed to.

    I agree with you about infertile couples adopting children which the biological parents do not want. I’m not against adoption in the objective sense. I disagree with you about creating children via artificial means. But that’s a long discussion I’d rather not get into. Suffice it to say that I believe humanity has a duty to preserve the natural process of life creation.

    Be it noted that many libertarians aren’t in agreement when it comes to issues surrounding children! Or animals. Or plants. We’re only united as it pertains to adults interacting with other adults.

    It may seem gross or even inhuman to you, but honestly one could make the case that bringing any child into the world is “inhuman”, before we get to the issue of biological parenthood.

    Such a belief, if popular, would lead to the extinction of the species!

    Secondary point: whenever you find yourself to be different from what men are said to be “wired to do” or “wired to want”, you (seem to, from this and other articles’ comments) automatically conclude that it must be an irrelevant social construct and have nothing to do with biology. This is incorrect. What we’re wired for comes in a spectrum, and its effects vary wildly between people. (I’m all for being relatively free from those things, but I thought the nuance mattered)

    I agree with this to an extent. Here, I was just objecting to Duke claiming that all men have the M/W complex. I also believe, however, that BD’s strategy for overcoming, or at least minimizing, your Obsolete Biological Wiring, is sound. And if you’re on this blog, or a similar sex-positive space, of course you will be encouraged to abandon your slut shaming and tradcon ways, or go somewhere else.

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 07:50 am, 28th April 2016

    To make it less confusing for you, how about I just say we need to privatize marriage?

    Yes, that answers all the rest, so I concede the point. NB: I’m not an american, I’m a weird outlier from an otherwise ideologically fucked up 3rd world country, so I’m not familiar with the US constitution.

    I would definitely criminalize sperm banks, sperm donations, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research, homosexual adoption, abortion (passed the 14th day of pregnancy), cloning, genetic engineering, the private patenting of human genes, and anything else which fucks with children, conceives, or gives birth to, them via unnatural means, or attempts to influence the human genome in an unnatural or artificial way! Natural evolution has a billion year head start on us and trying to fuck with it is beyond reckless; and shaping the human DNA to our liking, or creating artificial ways to have babies or shape them is something I view with genuine horror! […] Suffice it to say that I believe humanity has a duty to preserve the natural process of life creation. […] I disagree with you about creating children via artificial means. But that’s a long discussion I’d rather not get into.

    Yes, perhaps it isn’t a good idea to drift into a discussion about these things, I know it’d get very long. So instead of specifically addressing the examples you gave, I’ll try to stay more general:
    The way I see it, whenever someone attempts to justify banning something related to bioengineering by appealing to concepts like “fiddling what nature designed”, what’s really happening is that he’s experiencing a disgust for which he can give no specific cause (because it’s a natural response, like not wanting to have sex with a turtle: it is as it is and we can’t start justifying that with rational reasons why that would be bad or have bad consequences). It’s the same when we desperately look for facts that would “explain” why incest is terrible: the truth is both you and I are disgusted by the idea, but you inverted the causality: you would say “incest should be banned because it results in handicapped children” (cough cough contraception), while the true link is “whoever was not disgusted of incest in our prehistory tended to do it and thus have disadvantaged children who could not pass on the lack of disgust through reproduction, so we evolved to have societies that usually have taboos against incest.” There is always a hypothetical scenario where incest causes no demonstrable harm, yet the argument cannot remove our visceral disgust. Therefore, I cannot honestly declare myself against its legalization, even though I hate that.

    Nature with its billion year head start (big deal) has designed an insane number of truly horrible things. Apart from the examples any zoologist could give, how about the simple fact of death ? It designed us with an instinct to try to avoid death and to fear it, which is useful, but it did not see fit to remove that instinct towards the end of our lifespan, thus creating the inescapable fear of nonbeing. I’m tempted to quote Samuel Jackson in the Avengers “oh yes, you have made me very desperate” (desperate for genome improvement and life extension, to continue the paraphrase). If evolution, which couldn’t care less about pain, sickness, fear, etc, designs us with not only a shitload of shortcomings but also with the instinct to be aware of them and dislike them, then fuck yeah we have the right to “defile” its work, distort it, and make it more to our liking. When it was technologically impossible, we took the philosopher’s route (buddhism, stoicism, and so forth), which is fine, but it created an entire culture of “acceptance of the biological status quo” and sacralization of it, making those who wish to change things look like the evil mad scientists. Which is rididulous because the first time one of our ancestors grabbed a tool, in a sense we had already become “unnatural” (when you use a hammer, your brain sees it as part of your arm, so you’re basically a cyborg), it’s just that the “distorsion of nature” was external and not yet in the genome.

    “It may seem gross or even inhuman to you, but honestly one could make the case that bringing any child into the world is “inhuman”, before we get to the issue of biological parenthood.”: “Such a belief, if popular, would lead to the extinction of the species!”

    When I said “it may seem inhuman”, I wasn’t referring to rest of the sentence, but to the previous one about sperm donors, because I believe you once said that donating sperm was inhuman because it allowed the conception of children who would later suffer depression, existential problems, etc. And I pointed out that just being born – or being born an orphan ! – was already likely to cause those things, before we address being born to sperm donation, and I contest the idea that the despair one might experience from this is all that much superior to the despair that already existing existential issues we all face sometimes lead dus to: so it’s not enough to criminalize sperm donation.

    On a totally unrelated note, your “sexually frustrated suicide bomber” absolutely made my day. You should comment more often about Roosh and Heartiste.

  • Duke
    Posted at 02:04 pm, 28th April 2016

    BD, I have a question: I’m thinking this mindset and lifestyle disparity between you and Roosh has more to do with previous life choices that now have an impact on your present situations.

    For example Roosh discovered Game when he was twenty one and hadn’t married. You discovered it I’m assuming in you mid-thirties after you were married and had had kids as well as were possibly already divorced.

    So he did not get to (1) become disenchanted with marriage as you were,  and (2) more importantly he never sated his need for producing offspring. In this aspect you have the advantage over him, and ultimately this will more than likely determine that you will be happy for the rest of his life and he more than likely won’t. What do you think?

  • Kryptokate
    Posted at 02:47 pm, 28th April 2016

    Although I’ll remember this as a funny case where for once, I who usually find myself defending biology against pro-sociology folks, found myself in the opposite situation today.

    @ Gil   Reading your comments is very bizarre because I’m getting the weird feeling I could’ve written them myself. Which is not a sensation I am used to experiencing.

    I’m in agreement with your philosophy that everything is nature, we are animals, and slaves to our genes that are so intent on using our bodies. And that nature is a brutal, perverse, cruel wench that only provides occasional glimmers of joy and beauty amongst what is often a horror show. Therefore, it is human’s most noble and highest purpose to hack and improve upon nature, including our own. Though the second highest and most noble human capacity is humor, which suffices when we can’t hack our way around nature the slavemaster. I’m not going to derail the topic but suffice to say I don’t get JOTB’s objection to human interference with reproduction either.

    Most of humanity’s interference with nature improves it. At least, when we’re trying to improve it, and not just make a buck. If anything, while we’re talking about “missions”, I would say that my personal mission is to struggle against and defy nature. I know nature will win in the end unless we figure out renewable bodies or transferring consciousness before I die, but you can bet I will be hacking it and struggling to overcome it every step of the way.

    Roosh’s piece is a load of crap. Sure, you can’t be in a state of non-stop ecstasy and on a constant emotional high because of the hedonic treadmill, so pursuing only immediate physical pleasures is dumb because all you’ll do is wear down your ability to experience pleasure without massive stimulation. I’m very careful about measuring out my pleasure doses and keeping my pleasure receptors responsive. But the grass is DEFINITELY greener in many situations than others. My life has been much better at certain times than others, depending on circumstances. And getting rid of things that actively make you unhappy — such as a job you hate or a family situation you hate or whatever it is — goes a long, long way towards increasing happiness. The mere fact that I no longer have interact with clients most days in the actual office but can do most of it over the phone or email — a change from 6 or 7 years ago — has vastly increased my personal happiness just with that one little change.

    Anyway, I have never seen any evidence in any of Roosh’s writing, either in years past or now, that indicates that he is capable of being anything other than miserable. Some people simply have disagreeable, uneasy, negative temperaments and I’d say Roosh is one of them. Show me one article he’s ever written that has any sense of joy or happiness…the closest he gets is gleeful contempt or schadenfreude. Compare the actual enjoyment and sense of ease and autonomy that radiates from BD’s posts to Roosh’s resentful, seethingly angry, uneasy, self-hating negativity and the difference couldn’t be more stark.

    I would love to know if most of the trad-con manosphere guys who long for strong patriarchy actually knows what it looks like in practice. Have they been to Afghanistan? Or perhaps they don’t want to go there, but they could easily travel to the Utah/Arizona border and visit the hardcore fundamentalist polygamist communities there….I drove through once and holy shit!!! It’s like a movie set of pod people…you have never seen a less joyful, more miserable, more cattle-like group of people in your life. The women literally won’t speak out loud in public or raise their eyes from the floor, they only whisper terrifiedly to each other. The adults look like they’ve never laughed at a joke or smiled in their life. They all have faces of fear, paranoia, suspicion, and just deep put-upon misery. Oh and the chicks are walking around in their little house on the prairie outfits and hairstyles and are UGLY. That’s what total male authority and patriarchy looks like. The guys I’ve known who served in Afghanistan tell very similar stories about what it’s like over there. And oh yeah, I forgot about the hordes of filthy, inbred, illiterate children running around everywhere. Because yes, as Blindio said, it’s great for reproduction…polygamist patriarchs have tons of kids. But it’s a total quantity over quality situation and they invest nothing into their hordes of children who are just skinny and dirty and inbred and have no education and grow up to repeat the same wonderful and uplifting lifestyle. The manosphere guys who romanticize this way of life would mostly run screaming within a day or two if they actually had to live that kind of lifestyle.

     

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 04:23 pm, 28th April 2016

    @Kryptokate: believe it or not, I was actually looking for a way of contacting you because when I read some of what you wrote, eg in BD’s Confessions of a Serial Monogamist, I COULD NOT BELIEVE what I was reading: we’re intellectual twins LOL. In my experience, explaining human behavior from an evolutionary perspective is NOT the kind of thing that most women like to hear. I am currently in France (read: omnipresent socialism, feminism and PC) and boy do they hate this kind of stuff.

    I also read reactions to your “confessions” on reddit: mostly angry and misguided idiots who just can’t handle hearing a harsh truth. I am one of the very few guys in my broad social circle who even remotely believe or understand some basic evopsych, but a woman who does, you’re a unicorn. The closest I’ve seen to some of your comments was a girl online who posted “my hormones told me to take a selfie”.

    One of my core beliefs has always been that you can’t improve society or relationships before you get your facts right. And one of the facts that need to sink in before you start planning on how to be happy is that you’re a member of an animal species. Like, really. This fact is the last on the list of today’s elites, so even those with good intentions are pushing completely fucked up narratives down people’s throats, and the result is unhappiness for all.
    In the past I thought I should write a book about this (maybe in french, because my english still needs improvement), but even good books have a rather low impact in my opinion. But when I saw your comments I had an Aha! moment: if people regularly read blogs where women routinely describe their sex life, love life, professional life with frequent evolutionary references, the information might just slip past the ideological filters of most people. If I smugly tell an angry feminist that beauty is not so subjective and there’s nothing wrong with men preferring young, pretty women, and that it’s biology, not the patriarchy, that causes that (try writing that on Jezebel. It’ll be deleted.), he/she is just gonna get pissed off. But if regular people looking for dating advice slowly become accustomed to reading articles spiced up here and there with evolutionary explanations, this “diluted” method might just spread into the minds of the masses, and make lots and lots of problems much more solvable.I actually went to the GWG blog to see if you could be contacted there, because if you could do some writing of this type (and I suspect you like to), the effect on many people may well not be negligible. It’d be like BD who’s trying to reach out to the fraction of the male population who may embrace the Alpha 2.0 way: you could be the one who reaches out (though subtly and indirectly) to people who haven’t sustained too much brain damage from sociological, constructivist, Blank Slateist crap, and who can actually learn to make smart decisions about their lives based on an evolutionarily informed observation of their own thoughts and actions and those of the people they deal with.

    Anyway, I thought I really had to make the suggestion, you do the thinking. I can’t help picturing a Diary of a serial monogamist blog, or something like that. Just in case you want to talk more about this,   ggalad@outlook.fr   , I must admit that finding likeminded people is refreshing: they hardly exist in my home country and as for here in France, don’t get me started. It’s basically Sweden, or well on its way.

    As for Roosh, you’re right, perhaps the most important difference between him and BD is: when women do stuff that BD doesn’t like, he laughs it off and makes a hilarious blog post about it (my ribs still hurt from reading the new one about restaurants); when women do stuff that Roosh doesn’t like, he gets pissed and looks for ways to make them make him happy, the way he wants to. No wonder he came to the conclusion that the “logical” solution was to go tradcon and put them in a cage.

  • Kryptokate
    Posted at 05:33 pm, 28th April 2016

    @ Gil  Well I’ve always said that Louis CK is my psychological twin. 😉  But it is very weird reading something from someone else that sounds like exactly what I would have or could have written. I’m shocked that English isn’t your first language, it’s not detectable in your writing.

    Trust me, people don’t like these things where I live either! Hell, I live around a bunch of religious people who don’t even necessarily believe in evolution! But you’re right that you can ease people into these ideas if you do it more subtly rather than by direct argument.  Arguing just puts people into mental “fight” mode. You need to give people an incentive for listening …a way to preserve their ego or some hope that they’ll learn something that improves their outcomes or *something* other than just “you’re wrong and I’m right.” I’ll shoot you an email.

    BTW, on the other topic of divorce, besides all the measurement problems discussed above, there’s also the fact that tons of people no longer live as married but don’t actually get divorced. My older sister is in her 40s and she and her husband have not lived together in over 5 years and do NOT live as a couple anymore. But they haven’t gotten divorced because they don’t want to bother with the process. I think they’re waiting til their kid turns 18 so they don’t have to have court-ordered child support or any of that stuff. That isn’t that uncommon. Actually I know a lot of couples who are separated and will not get back together but haven’t actually gotten divorced.

    Then you have all the people who do still live together and present themselves socially as a married couple, but no longer have sex or any relationship with each other. But they have too many shared assets to divorce and the estate planning gets too complicated once you have grandkids in the picture, plus it requires splitting 401k or pensions, etc. I’m quite sure that the reason that the divorce rate is so low among the more educated and affluent is not because they have more successful marriages but because they don’t want to split their assets because it would cause one or both to fall out of the upper class. Better for them to stay married but just live disconnected lives and have affairs.

    None of these people are accounted for in the actual rates.

    Also, one thing that I think is important is to look at WHO gets divorced. At least among the people I know, it’s the people who are more sexually desirable and have higher SMV. Both men and women. Like if I look at my grad school class, where most of us were married at the time, now everyone who’s divorced were all the best looking among that group. I think that’s a major indicator. There are some really, really hot divorced people in their 30s and 40s…much better looking, as a class, than the married people. I think that’s a very significant indicator about the future of the institution. Because it shows what people with the most options end up doing, which others end up imitating.

    I also think that getting divorced is nowadays almost thought of as a major life experience that people are sort of missing out on if they don’t at least try being married and getting divorced at least once. I agree that people who are 40+ who have never been married are seen as sort of odd but a divorced guy at 40 is seen as completely normal.

     

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 06:43 pm, 28th April 2016

    BD, I have a question: I’m thinking this mindset and lifestyle disparity between you and Roosh has more to do with previous life choices that now have an impact on your present situations.

    For example Roosh discovered Game when he was twenty one and hadn’t married. You discovered it I’m assuming in you mid-thirties after you were married and had had kids as well as were possibly already divorced.

    So he did not get to (1) become disenchanted with marriage as you were,  and (2) more importantly he never sated his need for producing offspring. In this aspect you have the advantage over him, and ultimately this will more than likely determine that you will be happy for the rest of his life and he more than likely won’t. What do you think?

    Not sure what you mean by me having an advantage over him. If you mean that I’ve already had my kids and gotten that stupid procreation SP and OBW out of my system by doing so, then yes, I have an advantage over him. But that’s easy for me to say now, since my kids are now grown and gone; the time, effort, sacrifice, and most of the money involved in raising them is over with.

    If you mean that Roosh will as some point succumb to his SP and OBW and thus have kids and be less happy, then you’re correct; that’s what he will do eventually. His irrational right-wing SP demands it of him.

    However, as I’ve been screaming to the rooftops for almost a decade, legal marriage nor sexual monogamy is required to raise happy children. The only thing that’s required is co-habitation.

    When I say this, most childless men in the PUA community and manosphere cover their ears and do a lalalalalalala. They flat out don’t want to hear it. Their SP brainwashing is so powerful that they are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you want to have kids you must get legally married and promise monogamy for at least 20 years or else the world will spin off its axis.

    So the problem isn’t having kids. The problem is the overhead men uselessly insist upon when they choose to have kids.

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 07:04 pm, 28th April 2016

    When I say this, most childless men in the PUA community and manosphere cover their ears and do a lalalalalalala.

    BD, this reminds me of Dennett’s quote: “I have learned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often fall on deaf ears. I am myself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous and unanswerable but that are often not so much rebutted or even dismissed as simply ignored. I am not complaining about injustice—we all must ignore arguments, and no doubt we all ignore arguments that history will tell us we should have taken seriously. Rather, I want to play a more direct role in changing what is ignorable by whom.” He was referring to the same subject Kryptokate and I were just talking about, but the wording might as well apply to the manosphere’s refusal to acknowledge nonmonogamy as a viable route.

  • Anon.
    Posted at 04:35 am, 29th April 2016

    In this day and age, why would one want to change what is ignorable by whom, while one can instead just get in touch with those who don’t ignore reasonable things?

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 05:05 am, 29th April 2016

    @Anon.: I’ll give you that it is at its core irrational, but still human. Even the free man naturally resents that ideas opposed to his are the dominant ones, and has a desire to deny them full hegemony. One might also argue that when we exceed a certain threshold of what is ignorable by those in power, it leads to increasingly inhuman laws. But then again, leaving the country remains an option, so you still have a point.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 07:03 am, 29th April 2016

    @Gil Galad:

    I’m not an american, I’m a weird outlier from an otherwise ideologically fucked up 3rd world country,

    I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope it’s not a Muslim country {chill down spine}

    so I’m not familiar with the US constitution.

    The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution multiple times as saying that it is Unconstitutional for the government to discriminate against anyone based on sexual preference or the way they structure their sex life or relationship life. But that’s exactly what the government does by allowing marriage to exist as a government program. The government is discriminating against asexuals and everyone else for choosing to structure their sex life in a certain way by denying them tax breaks, unless they structure their sex lives in a different way (get married).

    This violates the 9th Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Abolishing marriage as a government program would solve the Constitutional violations.

    Yes, perhaps it isn’t a good idea to drift into a discussion about these things, I know it’d get very long.

    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, here comes the long discussion in…………..3………………..2………………..1…………0

    The way I see it, whenever someone attempts to justify banning something related to bioengineering by appealing to concepts like “fiddling what nature designed”, what’s really happening is that he’s experiencing a disgust for which he can give no specific cause (because it’s a natural response, like not wanting to have sex with a turtle: it is as it is and we can’t start justifying that with rational reasons why that would be bad or have bad consequences).

    Setting aside the tremendous amount of condescension in the above and the breathtaking level of obtuseness, let me just say that it is literally not believable to me that you would actually assert that something like genetic engineering, for example, or the private patenting of the human genome, would never produce any bad consequences which a rationalist might be against! Are you fucking serious???

    Further, were you also asserting that you want to legalize animal rape with your turtle comment because I supposedly can’t provide any rational reasons why raping animals is wrong? Dude, is the water healthy in your part of the world?

    It’s the same when we desperately look for facts that would “explain” why incest is terrible:

    Desperately?

    the truth is both you and I are disgusted by the idea, but you inverted the causality: you would say “incest should be banned because it results in handicapped children” (cough cough contraception),

    If a person is brain damaged enough to want to commit incest, they surely aren’t responsible enough to be trusted with contraception. I’ll tell you what: I’ll agree to the legalizing of incest if full and permanent sterilization becomes a legal requirement – full vasectomy for the man and a full hysterectomy for the woman. Better?

    while the true link is “whoever was not disgusted of incest in our prehistory tended to do it and thus have disadvantaged children who could not pass on the lack of disgust through reproduction, so we evolved to have societies that usually have taboos against incest.”

    Sounds rational to me!

    There is always a hypothetical scenario where incest causes no demonstrable harm, yet the argument cannot remove our visceral disgust. Therefore, I cannot honestly declare myself against its legalization, even though I hate that.

    You’re acting like the typical condescending leftist. But at least you’re on firmer ground with the incest topic than when you imply that there can be no rational justification for criminalizing the creation of a race of genetically engineered super soldiers. Um, yeah…..what could go wrong?

    Nature with its billion year head start (big deal)

    Now you’re talking like a god, which is super scary. The universe laughs at such hubris and tends to, in one way or another, crush people like you, while you’re in the middle of shaking your tiny fist at the universal order of things.

    has designed an insane number of truly horrible things. Apart from the examples any zoologist could give, how about the simple fact of death ? It designed us with an instinct to try to avoid death and to fear it, which is useful, but it did not see fit to remove that instinct towards the end of our lifespan, thus creating the inescapable fear of nonbeing.

    The Earth could not sustain all the people if we’d live forever. So…….now you want to be immortal? Dude, this is megalomaniacal thinking on your part!

    I’m tempted to quote Samuel Jackson in the Avengers “oh yes, you have made me very desperate” (desperate for genome improvement and life extension, to continue the paraphrase).

    My libertarianism works like this: Humans should have total freedom on subjects that are NOT greater than ourselves. But we’re not gods and things like the human genome is something that is definitely greater than we are. Putting our incompetent human hands on our DNA and manipulating it, merging it with technology (trans-humanism), and fucking with that which we understand little more than a monkey trying to contemplate the universe, is reckless psychopathy!

    I may be an atheist because I don’t believe in any divine personification, but there is something to be said for humility in the face of a universe which sees us as smaller than the tiniest virus. You disrespecting evolution, disrespecting nature, and disrespecting a universe – which may well have an ultimate destiny for its creatures – is like an ant trying to bulldoze a house. It’s cute, but that’s all it is – cute and futile!

    If evolution, which couldn’t care less about pain, sickness, fear, etc, designs us with not only a shitload of shortcomings but also with the instinct to be aware of them and dislike them, then fuck yeah we have the right to “defile” its work, distort it, and make it more to our liking.

    This is sociopathic thinking. Again, you’re talking like a god when that which you are trying to manipulate and distort is way bigger, wiser, and stronger than you! This god complex has the potential to perpetrate our own extinction at worst. Such arrogance on your part is deeply disturbing. Of course it’s futile in the end to act like a god (and as an atheist, I find it especially chilling), but the question is how much will evolution retaliate against humanity before we get over this trans-humanist god complex that you seem to have.

    When it was technologically impossible, we took the philosopher’s route (buddhism, stoicism, and so forth), which is fine, but it created an entire culture of “acceptance of the biological status quo” and sacralization of it, making those who wish to change things look like the evil mad scientists.

    That’s exactly what they are.

    Which is rididulous because the first time one of our ancestors grabbed a tool, in a sense we had already become “unnatural” (when you use a hammer, your brain sees it as part of your arm, so you’re basically a cyborg), it’s just that the “distorsion of nature” was external and not yet in the genome.

    Oh fucking please! I have neither the time nor the inclination to launch into a full dissertation on the difference between adding to nature vs. contradicting it. Modern technology benignly adds to that which already exists for the purpose of increasing our convenience. But it does not contradict natural essentialism, or the essence of who we are!

    Breast implants = benign addition.

    Asking a scientist to genetically graft a third arm onto your body = malignant tampering with nature

    Birth control = benign addition.

    Changing your genetic sex at the chromosomal level = malignant tampering with nature

    When I said “it may seem inhuman”, I wasn’t referring to rest of the sentence, but to the previous one about sperm donors, because I believe you once said that donating sperm was inhuman because it allowed the conception of children who would later suffer depression, existential problems, etc. And I pointed out that just being born – or being born an orphan ! – was already likely to cause those things,

    But there is an obvious difference between tolerating victims of innocent circumstances vs. artificially fucking with the circumstances in order to deliberately produce those unhappy results!

    before we address being born to sperm donation, and I contest the idea that the despair one might experience from this is all that much superior to the despair that already existing existential issues we all face sometimes lead dus to: so it’s not enough to criminalize sperm donation.

    So you want to create more existential issues by taking the place of the universe as a human god?

    On a totally unrelated note, your “sexually frustrated suicide bomber” absolutely made my day. You should comment more often about Roosh and Heartiste.

    Roosh (with a bomb strapped to his chest): Allah, please take me to that nightclub in heaven where I can have 72 virgin prudes who always put out for me. Alalalalalalala……..BOOM!

    News reporter: We now go to Mount Rushmore where Muslim terrorist and failed pick up artist, Roosh Valizadeh, strapped a bomb to his chest and blew himself up today while standing on George Washington’s head, thus taking out the entire monument. In a suicide statement found at his mother’s house, he wrote that he chose that specific location devoid of any innocent bystanders because he didn’t want to actually kill or hurt anyone else, but thought that this symbolic gesture would be enough for Allah to quote – “hook me up with some hot virgin sluts in heaven” – end quote. Clearly, this was a very disturbed individual. Ben?

     

     

        

  • Anon.
    Posted at 07:45 am, 29th April 2016

    <Thing X> = benign addition.

    <Thing Y> = malignant tampering with nature

    Is playing judge any better than playing God?

    The current population of Earth is of such magnitude that it can only be sustained by unnatural means, like nitrogen-based fertilizers. Permit this “abomination” to exist or perform a decimation?

    You seem to care too much about mankind. In any case, much more than the mankind itself does.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 08:34 am, 29th April 2016

    Is playing judge any better than playing God?

    Yes! Much, much better! Playing judge is an absolute necessity, unless you endorse a hyper-feminine hippie lifestyle!

    By contrast, playing god is the mark of a sociopath!

    The current population of Earth is of such magnitude that it can only be sustained by unnatural means, like nitrogen-based fertilizers.

    Complete masochistic leftist horseshit! The entire human population of the planet can fit into the state of Texas! There are alternative sources of energy (including free energy) that could serve humanity and feed up 120 billion people for the next 50,000 years (google Malthusians vs. Cornucopians)! The problem is that these sources would bankrupt many businesspeople if they were made known.

    Every piece of bullshit that you have heard about dwindling resources, the global warming myth, and overpopulation is wrong. It is all about white guilt, masochism, and suicidal (and genocidal) tendencies of the regressive left! It’s pure myth!

    We have no overpopulation problem. If anything, our planet is grossly underpopulated!

    There is a leftist death cult that is pushing these myths for various reasons, including carbon taxes and the UN suspension of national sovereignty. But that’s too big of a topic to argue here.

    Permit this “abomination” to exist or perform a decimation?

    Even if I were to accept the masochistic myths of the regressive left, I’d say that anything that can save human life is, by definition, a benign addition, because it is preserving that which already exists instead of contradicting it. So no, it wouldn’t be an “abomination.” I would permit it.

    But yeah, none of these environmental myths are true.

     

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 09:56 am, 29th April 2016

    @Jack Outside the Box:

    he’s experiencing a disgust for which he can give no specific cause

    / would never produce any bad consequences which a rationalist might be against

    See, you proved my point by immediately misunderstanding me: you switched cause and consequence. I was challenging you to provide the immediate, specific cause of your disgust at the idea of bioengineering, and you automatically replied with a consequence. I am asking you for a moment of introspection where you admit that it is not an elaborate thought like “how unethical it would be to fiddle with nature/ to mix the biological with the artificial” etc that caused your first reaction of disgust – and if there is a first reaction that wasn’t based on such a thought, then the thought was at least partly a rationalization. We are programmed to have a negative reaction to certain sentences/ideas, such as “to have sex with a gorilla”, “half human half machine”, “mutant”, etc (as if we weren’t all mutants vis-à-vis our ancestors). Can you give an “ethical” reason why you experience sexual desire ? Of course not: it is something that your body does. Neither can you give an ethical reason why the thought of two men having sex triggers your gag reflex.
    There is a difference between stating why something disgusts you and why it’s wrong. There are things that are both disgusting and wrong (we can argue that zoophilia is an example. Partly because the problem of animal consent probably can’t be solved, whereas problems created by other “disgusting” issues may be manageable), and there are things that aren’t. I am stating that the disgust you experience at the thought of bioengineering is not caused by your pondering the possible nefarious consequences of it: you visualize stuff, and it looks horrible, then come the logical arguments. That’s what I meant by not being able to provide a reason, and retrospectively, I don’t think I was being condescending (because I wasn’t claiming that you were “unable” to provide a reason that is out there: I was claiming there is none, so I was in no way presuming of your ability !).
    You accepted my evolutionary explanation of the taboo against incest, so by now it should be clear why I’m putting incest among the things that are digusting first, and then potentially wrong, maybe, with discussion. Again, I challenge you to deny that your disgust of incest is primarily caused by the thought of handicapped children (“consequence”), rather than a visceral (“cause”) reaction to the concept of siblings’ sex. Same with bioengineering: it is no coincidence that the concept of “monster” (neither man, nor animal) is omnipresent in humans.

    […] criminalizing the creation of a race of genetically engineered super soldiers. Um, yeah…..what could go wrong?

    Same pattern. I think you’re more put off by the very idea of “enhanced” humans than you are by the possible consequences – which are entirely open for discussion for me, I never said I ignored them and I share your practical worries – but I share them the same way I would be worried about the invention of fire: obviously fire is extremely dangerous and its use could go wrong. To me, the difference is that the stakes are higher, not that fire is “benign improvement” but other things are “malignant”. Do you realize there are already some medical treatments that patients struck with ills like Alzheimer and so forth are legitimately using, and that couldn’t have been invented without some “tampering with nature” (modifying a virus for example) ?

    The universe laughs at such hubris and tends to, in one way or another, crush people like you […] things like the human genome is something that is definitely greater than we are […] a universe which sees us as smaller than the tiniest virus […] way bigger, wiser, and stronger than you […] how much will evolution retaliate against humanity…

    You can’t possibly claim a high ground when you accuse me of a god complex when you make yourself guilty of personifying the universe/evolution and considering it as certain enough to be sufficient ground for both promising doom AND banning any attempts to interfere in what “they” have been doing. I did expect that you would eventually show some kind of mystical belief, but I didn’t expect it to be of that magnitude, and more importantly I didn’t expect you to appear so certain.
    Here’s a though experiment: suppose that somehow, just ONE human figured out a way to genetically modify himself, and also that somehow, you KNOW that this will have no consequences on others. Would you still try to prevent him ? In which case you will have proved that your main argument is with the concept of enhancement, not with the possible consequences. And I would be back to contesting your libertarianism, because out of sheer disgust, you’d be interfering with what another entity is doing to/with itself. What good is your libertarianism if it suddenly collapses when “what is greater than us” is involved ? This is disturbingly reminiscent of religious taboos. Furthermore, what if right now, on another planet, some Wongle is “upgrading” himself; are you of the opinion that this is wrong and that if we had the means, we should try to stop him ? Why is it that Man to you is necessarily some kind of culmination – not unicellulars, not fishes, not the first mammals, not the first primate, not fire-making homo erectus, but us. All those previous beings were “upgraded” (by a process we currently have no reason to believe was guided in any way, as numerous computer simulations have shown that mutations + natural selection indeed can give rise to complexity and variety !), but we, the last one, obviously and certainly shouldn’t, and god forbid that we try to do it ourselves instead of letting nature do it. Do you know how nature makes new species ? Death. Selective death, and survival of those that weren’t as fucked up. Damn right I’m contesting the wisdom of such process – and it isn’t even out of bitterness or throwing my fist at the gods (If you knew me you’d see I’m much less bitter than I may sound here): what guarantee do we have that a nature that needs such cruel means has any other, better plans ?

    total freedom on subjects that are NOT greater than ourselves

    You decided what’s greater (what does “great” mean ?) and what’s not. I could defend the idea that as soon as human consciousness arose, we already touched the heavens, so to speak, by inventing worlds that are not here, and therefore, that the human mind is way, way more important than the current physical form that supports it. But even without this argument, the question stands.

    our incompetent human hands / fucking with that which we understand little more than a monkey trying to contemplate the universe /etc

    You assume that our hands are and will always be incompetent, it is a decision on your part, a final judgement that they won’t and that’s it. At least that’s how it looks like. You assume that we don’t and won’t understand. You assume and assume. You adopt a christian-like division between man and the heavens, and thus create an unbreakable, metaphysical wall (that you decided was unbreakable) between us and “the universe”, in the light of which it seems to make sense that of course our hands are incompetent and we’re being arrogant, how could a microbe understand a man ? (note that I never claimed those technologies would require unlocking all secrets of creation)

    How do we know that the universe will laugh at our hubris, or get angry, or play the guitar, or watch with indifference ? How do we know that this universe you’re personifying has characteristics sufficiently similar to a human mind for the concept of anger and punishment to be even relevant for it ? I myself am not 100% atheist, but for an atheist/nonreligious person, you seem to repeat the exact same patterns of not just believers, but super-traditional believers: “don’t do this, how do you know there isn’t a god who will get pissed off and punish you ? I’m telling you, this will totally backfire.”

    It is a viable attitude to refuse to make mutually exclusive, watertight categorizations of what “type” of improvement of the human condition is benign or malignant. I’m not saying it’s the right attitude, but the very reason I initiated this discussion with you is that you don’t seem content with expressing disagreement: you talk about banning these things. To me, this is similar to when a feminist is not content with saying that “being a submissive for a woman is wrong” and wants to make it impossible for dominant/submissive relationships to exist if the dominant is a man. Except that the stakes of your infringement on my liberty are much, much higher in our example.

    The Earth could not sustain all the people if we’d live forever.

    You’re underestimating our future ability to create solutions to this kind of problem. (oh, I have many other responses to this, but that’s the summary)

    So…….now you want to be immortal?(1) Dude, this is megalomaniacal thinking on your part!(2)

    1° No, not exactly. But I experience my natural lifespan (each one of us knows with damn near certitude that in the natural state, he’s not gona live beyond 122 – oh no, wait, women top at 122, men at 116), which was presented to me as a given for which my opinion is irrelevant, as worse than a rape: the very definition of coercion, at its paroxysm. I keep my hopes down because I think that the most popular futurists are probably too optimistic and allow seductive graphs to psyche them a bit too much, but I don’t rule out the possibility of life extension. It is borderline tautological and meaningless to assert that “everyone can have the life of their dreams within the natural lifespan”, because then it would have been possible to say it for a lifespan of 2 days or 2 millenia. If I can be given 30 more healthy years, you bet your ass I’ll take them. Keep in mind that I have absolutely no desire to “impose” that on anyone: I claim the right for the possibility to make a choice, if the technology becomes available. But you would deny me that right by banning the relevant research, if you had the power.
    2° I contest the relevance of the concept of megalomania. If i want more cake, I’m just some dude; if I want more money, I’m a dude who’s maybe a bit greedy; but if I want more healthy years or maybe a genetic or nanotech upgrade to read good books faster, have more memory, live in a VR that simulates Middle Earth, or whatever, then suddenly what I want enters the realm of the sacred, and I’m a megalomaniac. We have a fundamental disagreement and I continue to prefer my premises over yours.

    NB: and if this is so bad, what stops the universe/deity from preventing it ? Problem solved !

    Even if I were to overlook ALL the rest, I think where you are the most mistaken is in your dealing with that paragraph of mine:

    It designed us with an instinct to try to avoid death and to fear it, which is useful, but it did not see fit to remove that instinct towards the end of our lifespan […] If evolution, which couldn’t care less about pain, sickness, fear, etc, designs us with not only a shitload of shortcomings but also with the instinct to be aware of them and dislike them, then fuck yeah we have the right to […]

    Imagine for a second that what you and I are calling “nature”, “evolution”, “the universe”, etc, was something else. A person, or a being that is nowhere suggested to be divine or whatever. As a man who loves freedom, you would undoubtedly hate that being for doing what I describe above (I can’t believe I am practically using the arguments I would use in a debate with a traditional christian or muslim).
    Heck, you did say I had a god complex, right ? Suppose I somehow acquired that kind of power and that I was responsible for all this, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to bring down the sadistic tyrant that I am (or at least despise me, because an individualist might not advocate action but rather redesign his life to be unaffected by the tyrant, and let others attempt what revolt they wish to attempt) ? By assuming (over and above your personification of the universe which I already disagree with with) that the entity that has the power necessarily has the wisdom, you reveal yourself to be someone who swaps organized religion for yet another, extremely similar religion.

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 10:34 am, 29th April 2016

    I’d say that anything that can save human life is, by definition, a benign addition, because it is preserving that which already exists instead of contradicting it.

    Jack Outside the Box: this is in no way an addition that I consider necessary, because I believe I’ve made my case in the last comment, but you’re giving me a reason to press further: if anything that can save human life is by definition benign, then healthy life extension, by definition, is benign !
    If you reject this, you’re basically telling me that for you, a 90-year-old man who is being slowly killed by prostate cancer “because he has gotten too old, his body can no longer effectively prevent anarchistic cell division” – that this man is not a human that deserves to have his life saved !
    Unless you revert to the nonsense of essentializing the “normal” human lifespan, thereby making any man over 116 “not a human anymore”, and that “therefore this dying man is not a life we should save”. Somehow, if we’re beyond a certain age that is “proper” for humans, all we can ask for is maybe assisted suicide or whatever, but not life.

  • Stephen
    Posted at 01:56 pm, 29th April 2016

    I agree with Gil Gilad on his very powerful arguments in favor of having the choice to practice genetic engineering and life extension or not when such technologies becomes available. In my personal life, I have known several women who had unusually poor fertility for young women and were very likely going to remain naturally childless if it were not for in vitro fertilization. Today, these women both have healthy and wonderful children that more then likely would not have existed had this technology not come to pass.

  • Anon.
    Posted at 03:03 pm, 29th April 2016

    Jack, despite having learned much valuable information from you recently, these latest posts of yours I find to be almost completely irrational.

    Firstly, your apparent goals are contradictory. In one post you declare adherence to principles of nature the only right way, in another you would approve anything that saves human life—even when it’s nature that’s threatening it. And it constantly does.

    Secondly, is it at all rational to attempt to save mankind from whatever, given that it doesn’t want you to do that? If you somehow impose your will upon it via restrictions, you’ll likely infringe on freedoms much and save lives little. If you implant ideas via social hacks, like Christianity, like communism, then even if the ideas were benign, the inherent division in them will be abused by someone, like crusades, like Afghanistan.

    No, BD’s way is the way to go. One’s own happiness is the utmost goal, and if others don’t accept generously given advice to achieve the same for themselves, it’s their problem.

  • joelsuf
    Posted at 07:22 pm, 29th April 2016

    News reporter: We now go to Mount Rushmore where Muslim terrorist and failed pick up artist, Roosh Valizadeh, strapped a bomb to his chest and blew himself up today while standing on George Washington’s head, thus taking out the entire monument. In a suicide statement found at his mother’s house, he wrote that he chose that specific location devoid of any innocent bystanders because he didn’t want to actually kill or hurt anyone else, but thought that this symbolic gesture would be enough for Allah to quote – “hook me up with some hot virgin sluts in heaven” – end quote. Clearly, this was a very disturbed individual. Ben?

    I am VERY tempted to copy this and troll Manosphere boards with it lol. And even better, I’ll go on SJW boards and swap out Roosh and PUAism for Anita Sarkeesian and feminism, just to show these weird fringe groups what they look like to normal people lol. Jack, you are the man!

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 03:40 pm, 30th April 2016

    @Anon:

    Jack, despite having learned much valuable information from you recently, these latest posts of yours I find to be almost completely irrational.

    Then maybe we should stick to women and sex. I’m not the one who wanted to have this big philosophical debate.

    Firstly, your apparent goals are contradictory.

    No, they’re not.

    In one post you declare adherence to principles of nature the only right way, in another you would approve anything that saves human life—even when it’s nature that’s threatening it. And it constantly does.

    Oh Jesus Christ, do I really have to clarify that “I approve anything to save a human life” really means “I approve anything to save a human life without sacrificing the NATURAL condition of that life?”

    Curing a disease simply restores the person back to their natural state before they even contracted said disease. THAT’S FINE! Helping a person breathe with technology simply restores them back to the state they were in when their own lungs still worked. THAT’S FINE!

    Restoring people to their NATURAL healthy state with science, technology, and medicine = PERFECTLY FINE!

    Extending the human lifespan to 1,000 years = NOT FINE! It’s unnatural and sociopathic!

    If you somehow impose your will upon it via restrictions, you’ll likely infringe on freedoms much and save lives little. If you implant ideas via social hacks, like Christianity, like communism, then even if the ideas were benign, the inherent division in them will be abused by someone, like crusades, like Afghanistan.

    There is so much wrong with the above that I don’t even know where to start. Let’s just agree to disagree.

     

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 04:42 pm, 30th April 2016

    @Gil Galad:

    if anything that can save human life is by definition benign, then healthy life extension, by definition, is benign !

    No. Restoring natural health with technology, science, and medicine = benign.

    “Improving” upon nature by turning you into an enhanced cyborg = malignant.

    If a man gets his hands blown off on a battlefield, giving him artificial robotic hands is fine. Why? Because those robot hands are restoring his natural condition of having hands before he was caught in the explosion.

    BUT, if those robotic hands can do things that my natural hands can’t, like extending themselves all the way to the kitchen from the living room without him having to leave the couch, that’s not fine. You are creating a superior race that even healthy people who didn’t get their hands blown off will have no choice but to compete with, thus eventually resulting in all of humanity literally losing its humanity and becoming a robotic freak show. The consequences would be disastrous and humanity would ultimately be lost, and that includes me and my children.

    If you reject this, you’re basically telling me that for you, a 90-year-old man who is being slowly killed by prostate cancer “because he has gotten too old, his body can no longer effectively prevent anarchistic cell division” – that this man is not a human that deserves to have his life saved !

    Bullshit! Cancer can and should be cured no matter how old the cancer patient is. Even if he is 103 years old. By curing his cancer, you are restoring him back to the natural state he was in before he got the cancer. But you’re not turning him into a member of a superior race whose superiority over normal people is due to enhanced technology. That’s the difference!

    Restoring healthy nature by eliminating viruses, bacteria, and bodily disorders like cancer, or other auto-immune deficiencies is fine.

    Changing healthy nature by “enhancing it” is not.

    What you are in favor of would (1) literally destroy humanity, or (2) put us under a technological dictatorship in which the “natural people” would be the lowest and most powerless cast, or (3) put us under a technological dictatorship while the cyborgs are themselves enslaved and controlled by an elite minority of natural people who have the remote control to turn off your robotic legs, turn off your machine eyes, and so forth with the push of a button as if they have the power of gods!

    And you have the nerve to contest my libertarianism? Under your vision, libertarianism would be a joke referenced only by late night comedians. So would freedom!

    Unless you revert to the nonsense of essentializing the “normal” human lifespan, thereby making any man over 116 “not a human anymore”,

    If he became 116 through natural means and excellent medical care, exercise, and proper diet, that’s fine. Whatever nature allows!

    and that “therefore this dying man is not a life we should save”.

    Of course we can save him if “saving him” is defined as restoring him to his natural healthy self. But if you’re talking about extending his lifespan to 500 with trans-humanism, then no.

    Somehow, if we’re beyond a certain age that is “proper” for humans, all we can ask for is maybe assisted suicide or whatever, but not life.

    But there is no fixed age that’s proper for humans to die, except the age that you would die if it weren’t for genetic engineering and trans-humanist horror shows! That’s the only test.

    If a person is dying of a disease or whatever and restoring them to their natural healthy state meant that they would still be alive, then fine.

    If giving someone an artificial heart is simply restoring them to the same condition they were in with their natural heart, that’s fine.

    Just don’t fuck with nature. Restore nature. Restore NATURAL health, even with technology, like nano-tech. Cure Alzheimer’s disease with robotic nano-technology, thus restoring natural health and brain function! FINE! But don’t change the essential functions of the human body into something that nature has never done! That’s all.

    More later.

     

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 08:29 pm, 30th April 2016

    @Jack OTB: I’ll wait for what you’ll add later so that my eventual response is unified.

    @Blackdragon: you published an article about the stuff Jack and I are debating (“How sex will be like in the future” I think), so I’m assuming you’re not opposed to those future technologies. Do you think their arrival can be flat-out prevented, rather than just delayed, in the West ? If Jack is so passionately against it, many people much harder to reason with will also be against it.

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 04:57 am, 1st May 2016

    @Jack: I thought this would only take a few hours but if a response to one main comment and another I already deemed secondary takes you two parts on two separate days, this debate is becoming too protracted for my taste, as I fail to see what essential point has not been stated and repeated. Moreover, on a first attempt I realized that dissecting everything maddeningly wrong (even with brevity) about your last comment was taking 6+ pages on Word, and given that it is not a comment that suggests you’re going to address my other points with any more rationality later, I doubt the usefulness of posting such a long comment (unless we officially make this a long-term debate and do it by email instead of here). So I’ll give you a (relatively) briefer version, which may well be my final statement unless your next comment is unexpectedly different from the dogma I’ve been seeing so far.

    All along, my arguments have been about exposing and questioning your (often untold and maybe even unconscious) premises, and your arguments have been about 1° appealing to a cosmic authority not everyone would acknowledge and that all the world’s leading rationalists would laugh at (thus explaining why I’ve been poking at your libertarianism and finding your way of thinking closer to totalitarism), 2° drawing my attention to the many risks associated with technology; risks I acknowledge along with the necessity to take precautions; precautions that have been taken every time in history there was a technological breakthrough that improved the human condition; breakthroughs you insist on considering “natural so far, but not the new ones to come” (the fallacy of retrospective coronation) while if you had lived in earlier times you would have considered vaccines as child abuse and the rocket Saturn V as monstrous hubris against the heavenly spheres.

    You have a huge problem of reification of abstract concepts (and the reverse, as well) and a terrible lack of awareness of the concept of continuity. You fail to realize that there is no “human genome” in the fixed, unmutating, essentialist sense, there is no “work of nature” as in something that is established today and won’t turn tomorrow, through mutation, into exactly what you’d call a freak show and fear technology might bring, or wasn’t something totally different and “tampered with” (but by nature, not man, and nature gets away with doing all the horrors for you, doesn’t it ? Very reminiscent of the monotheistic god, huh ?)

    Believe me, I’ve written and pc-saved a detailed response to your more prosaic objections such as

    a superior race that even healthy people who didn’t get their hands blown off will have no choice but to compete with, thus eventually resulting in all of humanity literally losing its humanity and becoming a robotic freak show. The consequences would be disastrous and humanity would ultimately be lost, and that includes me and my children.

    and

    What you are in favor of would (1) literally destroy humanity, or (2) put us under a technological dictatorship in which the “natural people” would be the lowest and most powerless cast, or (3) put us under a technological dictatorship while the cyborgs are themselves enslaved and controlled by an elite minority of natural people who have the remote control to turn off your robotic legs, turn off your machine eyes, and so forth with the push of a button

    But I’ve repeatedly been giving you unfair exits by writing, more than once, secondary arguments that can be bickered with, and adding, at least twice, something along the lines of “But even without this argument, the rest, which is more importants, stands”: unsurprisingly, you took the exit and committed to discussing those arguments instead of addressing my main criticisms.
    Therefore I refuse to keep playing ball on the more practical problems linked to technology (unless, again, we expand this debate with an email exchange) because in spite of your worries regarding them, 1° you don’t need my brain to come up with the answers and solutions by yourself, 2° I insist that your main concern is about the concept and how viscerally disgusting it is, and the dangers come second. I repeat that your way of handling this subject is fundamentally totalitarian and anti-freedom: it isn’t just that you’re concerned about the hazards of technology: you refuse that the world might become like this without your special permission, even if you were given full guarantees that the changes would not harm you or those you love. Your reaction is of the type “I don’t care if they protect me against my weird neighbor, I think the new house he’s building is super-creepy and I want that to stop.” Again, reminiscent of religious/tradcon attitudes and of the worst branches of feminism.

    On the second (more important, in my opinion) aspect of the debate – the one linked to premises rather than practical risks – , your comments have been little more than a statement, not a logical defense, of your belief system. Such and such authority is sacred and must not be insulted. Such and such addition is benign and the other is malignant. You are basically laying out your sharia law to me, instead of justifying it. And unsurprisingly, when I point out inconsistencies, you do what all challenged defenders of a sacred text do: you add ad hoc interpretations. Your responses about Alzheimer and the 90-year old dying of cancer (to say nothing of your HORRIBLE and revealing statement “whatever nature allows” (I mean, you did ponder everything that nature allows, right ?)) are an example. Again, believe me I can play ball for a very long time and add compounded replies and thought experiments (cross that: I have already, I’ve written them on Word, possibly for my own navel-gazing self-entertainment) showing your inconsistencies. But this is no surprise because anyone who’s essentializing/reifying too much (1) is bound to litter his reasoning with bumps that a ten-year old can be made aware of with a little mind game.

    (1): I must insist on this, because by God this is your main problem. I didn’t intend to use the following pun because I don’t like sarcasm and believe me I respect you (then again, since I took it gleefully when you called me a sociopath, I expect you’ll do me the same favor), but to a degree that has been continuously dismaying me, you are hopelessly inside the box.
    You are unaware of how local your position in time and in the “ideosphere” really is. You legislate and legislate and legislate about what’s adding to nature and what’s not, unaware of the relativity of these concepts: do you have any idea what your way of thinking would have produced if you had lived in 1950, 1850, 1500 AD ? At each of those epochs, something that is today taken for granted was considered “the realm of the heavens”, and it was blasphemy against whatever authority to try to “improve” the human condition in that respect. Since children are one of your hot buttons, I bet that were you born just 50-70 years earlier there is no way in hell you would have accepted vaccines that have today saved millions of children from illnesses – because a vaccine is tampering with nature: you’re fucking up with the innocent child’s immunity and reprogramming it. (Please, please don’t come up with another ad hoc explanation of why this is after all acceptable but bioengineeering is not. I’ll explode.)
    Two: after essentializing history and ideas, essentializing the natural state. You’re calling the search for life extension or immortality a perversion of nature/flirting with the gods, but I’ll let you know that there are species – granted, they are not mammals or even vertebrates – that are essentially ageless/immortal. We could have been one of those species. If we were, and then we became aware of a new mutation that was about to make us mortal, would you oppose research to neutralize the mutation so that we may remain “naturally ageless” ? Or would you revert to it’s-god’s-will fatalism ? (Hint: no answer to this question, even one that eludes yes/no dualities, leaves your system intact. You want me to explain why ? Well I did say that the “unabridged” version of my response was 6+ pages long.) Same with the thought experiment of a new mutation occurring today that gave people those extendable arms, longer life or more powerful brains you’re afraid of: apparently if nature, not man, does it to us, it is no longer horrible, even if the freak show is the exact same.
    Three: essentializing what aging is and isn’t, and what a “naturally healthy body” is (as if there was no borderline criminal irony in calling the body of a 100-year old “healthy” just because he doesn’t have a terminal illness – these people are so fragile that virtually any illness is terminal to them. Jack, aging is the disease, is the unacceptable abuse) is, that we must “revert the ill person back to, but no more, no enhancement”. This one would take longer to fully explain, along with the detailed nature of your mistake about aging, but you can also google it independently.
    Four: essentializing the nature of the material substratum necessary to save what you call humanity. Before you’re aware of having a body at all, you’re first and foremost aware of your mind processes and sensory inputs. We might be freaky-looking things plugged to a matrix that constructs this world for us, yet I don’t see you demanding an investigation of whether this is true: you are content with the fact that it feels genuine, which is understandable, and I agree with you. Four centuries ago we were told that what we are is saved in the “pineal gland” inside the head (Descartes); sixty years ago we were told that the real hard drive is a big moecule called the DNA. And the DNA has been changing constantly and will continue to do so. What may and may not be metaphysical (or non-physical) is consciousness, your first-person experience, but there is nothing metaphysical about the material blueprint (the genes in our DNA): it’s a chain of atoms that makes pre-coded proteins, for chrissake. Once again, you are artificially creating, out of the two words “human genome”, a gigantic Box that would cause the wrath of the gods if touched. You fail to see that changing some pairs of bases so that such and such aspect of embryogenesis leads to better elimination of damage (= slower aging, less cancer and Alzheimer) or a stronger memory to remember lost relatives, etc, is more important than sacralizing a list of molecule segments, and more conducive to preserving the wonderful thing that is the human mind – more important than the fixedness of its hardware.
    Five: essentializing and stubborn, baseless personification of what “nature” is. Allow me a diggression. Do you know about the Turing test ? You talk to something nonbiological that is programmed to fool you into thinking that it is human, and if you are fooled the entity “passes the test”. As there have been concerns that we would take way too long to build a computer that can do that, Michael Shermer responded approximately like this: “Things like the sky, rocks, trees, the sun, and even fantasized invisible entities have, throughout human history, consistently passed the Turing test, in the form of religions and imaginary friends.” In other words, even things that aren’t even primed to fool us succeed. Because we’re biologically wired to attribute a soul to virtually anything. In a time of more intellectual people, it is only expected that this urge in you is translated into making something less prosaic than rocks or totems – the Universe – pass the Turing test, and be seen as a conscious, reacting, planning, retaliating entity ! We have a need to do this. We have a need to see associations other than cause and consequence (karma, cosmic retribution, etc) in what happens to us. I am urging you to resist this need, because it is contaminating your common sense. Surrender to it when reading or writing fiction (I love this), but not when discussing ethics.

    I have failed to undermine your unshakable (and baseless) faith in the wisdom of nature. If the billions of living things that have been experiencing agony every day for the past billion years don’t convince you, I am dealing with faith, not reason, therefore it is no longer my responsibility to convince you. It’s like when believers say their god is merciful and when an earthquake kills their family they say it’s a test of faith: the doctrine can do no wrong. It didn’t occur to you that a mechanism (in our case, nature), that creates both horror and beauty does not give us the arbitrary permission to only look at the beauty and deduce that it is benevolent, or conscious at all. It is more reasonable to assume the opposite, and even if we don’t, your problem is your certitude (based on nothing ! nothing !) that the opposite is false, and your entitlement to the right of legally imposing the consequences of that certitude on others.
    I am of the opinion that the problems associated with bioengineering are solvable and will be solved, barring the historical accident we have never been protected from. I have explained why the choice for individuals to use them or not – and therefore the allowance of the relevant research – was more important than the supposed sacredness of our current material form (which I do not necessarily advocate radically changing; I’d already be happy to have a normal body just for a longer time); why you would almost certainly not be satisfied with even the most absolute guarantees of protection against such developments because you’ll still be driven by your urge to ban what you subjectively consider “ugly, period.”; why there are literally thousands of reasons you badly need to reconsider your unconditional trust in nature/the universe. Barring something unexpectedly rational/new (and not repetitive or one more mere statement of your premises, or an ad hoc exegesis of them), or the expression of your interest in more discussion by email (I wrote my address in a previous comment), we are done here.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 11:01 am, 1st May 2016

    @Blackdragon: you published an article about the stuff Jack and I are debating (“How sex will be like in the future” I think), so I’m assuming you’re not opposed to those future technologies. Do you think their arrival can be flat-out prevented, rather than just delayed, in the West ?

    No. It cannot be prevented. Technology will advance, always, period.

    Delayed, sure. Prevented, no.

  • Duke
    Posted at 04:52 pm, 1st May 2016

    I don’t know if this has much to with the topic of lifestyle or whatever (if it’s off topic I could email you), but I’ve always had curiosity about something that isn’t quite talked about in the maonoshpere, mostly because this is probably more of a woman topic. I’ve read about it at some gender neutral forums and heard about it happening in real a life a more than a few times.

    There’s these guys out there that essentially lead a women on for years never intending to marry them but seemingly having them on the hook. The topic is big enough that one dude actually wrote a book about it, I can’t remember what the book’s title was though.

    Are these guys alpha? It seems a little sociopathic to lead a woman on for that long, and at the same time it seems even more strange that these women would not push for commitment earlier either. I’m also not sure if they are monogamous, but am assuming not because they would get oneitis eventually and accept the woman’s terms.

    Could it be that these are tales of women dating alpha 2.0s who adhere to your mltr model, but from the woman’s perspective? I think I read the longest a woman went before LSNFTEing you was eighteen months. If these guys aren’t 2.0’s who are dating mltrs than it would seem as if they have a certain knack for either picking the right woman or instilling some kind dread game into the woman that has them afraid to scare the guy away.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 02:59 pm, 2nd May 2016

    @Gil Galad: Oh. My. God! You really are Kryptokate’s twin! The concept of brevity is more foreign to you than the M31 galaxy! I struggle with brevity too sometimes, but JESUS TAP DANCING CHRIST ON A POGO STICK!!!!!!!!

    A threesome with the two of you would be enjoyable, but it’s a violation of my personal code to fuck a woman who openly admits to faking orgasms and actively encourages other women to do so. So then it would be just you and me, and that’s just gay, so fuck it!

    Seriously though, the two of you really should hook up!

    @Jack: I thought this would only take a few hours but if a response to one main comment and another I already deemed secondary takes you two parts on two separate days, this debate is becoming too protracted for my taste,

    You must forgive me for having a sex life! Right now, I have a girlfriend and two fuck buddies on the side, not counting my girlfriend’s friends whom we have group sex with. Plus, I have a demanding job.

    You’ll understand if the above is a much higher priority than you. If you can’t accept that, maybe we should start annoying other people!

    I doubt the usefulness of posting such a long comment

    Did you forget to delete this sentence after you were done posting? Or do you usually obliviously say shit like this and then contradict yourself in the next breath?

    I’ll give you a (relatively) briefer version,

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Again, believe me I can play ball for a very long time and add compounded replies and thought experiments (cross that: I have already, I’ve written them on Word, possibly for my own navel-gazing self-entertainment)

    In that case, I must ask this:

    Serious question: Do you get laid? If so, how many women do you have on your rotation right now?

    My girlfriend just rang my doorbell. She’s one hour early, so I can’t post the response I wanted about your points, so I’ll do it tonight or tomorrow. It will be my final word on the subject.

    No, but seriously, do you have sex?

     

  • Gil Galad
    Posted at 04:52 pm, 2nd May 2016

    @Jack:  I don’t know what you may have seen as some kind of attack in my comment to react like this. I wasn’t trying to create a piss-off contest. Bear in mind that I don’t live in the US so the different hour may have misled you about what local time of day/night I’m posting. I also have chronically fucked up sleep patterns, and I’m preparing a mémoire (few courses, mostly work at home), so I don’t have a fixed daily schedule.

    I’m a fast writer so the even longer comment (no, I didn’t contradict myself or forget to delete the sentence) that I intended to post really didn’t take me much time, especially that the inconsistencies I was pointing out are something I’m very used to.  When I post a long-winded comment, it means I intellectually respect the person I’m debating, to the point that I consider it worth my time to take a serious shot at changing their mind. You don’t seem to reciprocate, so maybe I shouldn’t have.

  • joelsuf
    Posted at 07:33 pm, 2nd May 2016

    You must forgive me for having a sex life! Right now, I have a girlfriend and two fuck buddies on the side, not counting my girlfriend’s friends whom we have group sex with. Plus, I have a demanding job.

    Jack, I love ya man, but e-statting is never cool. If you posted these kinda claims on the misc or even on some of BD’s PUA boards you would have an order 66 done on you real fast. Just saying man.

  • ysg
    Posted at 07:40 pm, 2nd May 2016

    Yup on the taxes. I own a house, married and a kid, the man will suck you dry (and I haven’t gotten about the extra expenditures that you go through.)

    I do have one question. How did you start your location independent business? I am interested in that. I’m tired of working for others and wouldn’t mind cracking open a laptop once in a while on yhe beach.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 12:15 am, 3rd May 2016

    How did you start your location independent business? I am interested in that. I’m tired of working for others and wouldn’t mind cracking open a laptop once in a while on the beach.

    Get my book. I answer that exact question in great detail.

    And I will be writing more on this topic soon. It’s highly requested topic.

  • Jack Outside the Box
    Posted at 02:17 am, 3rd May 2016

    @Joelsuf:

    Jack, I love ya man, but e-statting is never cool.

    What’s e-statting?

     

    If you posted these kinda claims on the misc

    What’s misc?

    or even on some of BD’s PUA boards you would have an order 66 done on you real fast.

    What’s “an order 66?”

    Please speak English.

    And what’s wrong with “these kinds of claims?”

  • Niteride Mick
    Posted at 10:03 pm, 10th July 2017

    I guess if your a mad rooter you shag anything that stands still for a minute or too So why start whining about all the fat or chubby girls you shaged There must of been.something there when you did the deed or where you pissed as a fart all the time Some 6 or 7 are mad roots Some 9 or 10 are dud roots buts that’s life !!! Cheers

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