beccasanchez

... and I was making the observation that if a beard is the sign of an adult, then women can't be adults.

Are you sure you feel like an adult, or are you talking about feeling like a man?

This isn't a meaningless distinction, and it also doesn't need to be offensive. Alas, it seems if I want to have public philosophical discussions I should go back to 300 BC.

I have a philosophy degree. I don't feel discouraged, I feel embarrassed that my software colleagues are so thin-skinned and pedestrian.

What you're calling "bizarre" is some entry level philosophy of gender, bro.

He achieved all those things before his illness though.

He had financial independence, status, and a career before he became paralysed.

This means he could pay for his own nursing, and that's exactly why people see him as an adult.

Here's the thing: what people are calling "adult" is nothing other than the traditional definition of "man"

A "man" is a person who is independent, powerful, free, makes his own decisions, pays his own way, has others depend on him, etc.

What's interesting is that you have clearly indicated that, despite being female, you feel like a man! Meanwhile there are many males who do not.

I think it's a very interesting discussion. Too bad my bringing up the housewife/paraplegic angle got me 18 downvotes and counting.

I was actually laughing out loud because I thought the image of him not feeling like an adult because of his patchy beard was very comical.

You (and other posters) are the ones being all touchy. I've got 14 downvotes for pointing out the paraplegic/housewife angle.

HN is not too friendly toward basic philosophical inquiries!

So quadriplegics and other people with insoluble medical issues that make their lives dependent on others can never grow up?

tl;dr paraplegics and others who can't survive without the care of others are eternal children

So stay at home house wives can never be adults?

This is hilarious. But do you realize you're implying that women can't be adults?

The discussion sounds a lot like 'when do you become a man' than it does 'when do you become an adult.'

For instance, most women throughout history were financially dependent on their husband. They would not make independent decisions. They were not solely responsible.

Did that mean they weren't adults?

The 20-30% of women who still become stay at home moms... they can't grow a beard... they are dependent on their husband or parents for money...

FreeBSD is going to eventually adopt a systemd-like approach. So people who switch for this reason will be betrayed down the line.

You aren't expecting much from the government. Who has more resources and power than the government? If Zuck had that much power I'm sure he would do a lot more than just give free internet.

And yet gravity is still going strong...

Make an ally out of gravity and you can use its strength for something half-decent instead of all-bad.

I think this land grab by Facebook is half-decent instead of all-bad. Facebook is treating the poor better than the Indian government has, at least. Neither institution really gives a fuck about them.

Even though it's obviously a land grab... no one other than massive corporations is capable or willing to provide this. I don't like it either, but that's how corporatocracy works. Might as well fight against gravity.

the answer to your questions:

yes, yes, and yes.

but there is one more factor:

Asians have way higher IQs than whites.

That riot in no way threatened the existence of the state, or the privileges of the elite.

Your example proves my point. There is nothing to fear from the poor. They are completely checked and have no access to power whatsoever.

In all of history, the elite have never been more secure. They've never had anything close to the level of surveillance and policing as today. The police today are literally thousands of times more effective at their job than the time of the French Revolution.

No one with a clue is worried about anything "abrupt". Rebellion is literally impossible.

Why should the people in power ever institute this? It would ruin all of them.

None of those things make people happy.

Childcare, healthcare, education, shelter, world travel, free time, organic food.

Keep your trinkets and baubles.

But so many of the terrorists were well educated. They don't suffer lack of money or education, they suffer from a lack of meaning in their lives.

Bill Gates is actually very concerned with reducing population growth.

I think you have an OK point and the more intelligent rich people like Elon Musk are the ones furthering your agenda. Bill and Zuck were always too conventional to think big like this. Their conventionality was part of their success--they are both too uncreative to come up with something new but instead they know how to steal the ideas of others and make a more competitive business out of them.

These people you're describing are no different than the old aristocracy. Aristocrats have always attempted to live a comfortable, quiet life of idle pleasures. A Rockefeller or Ford figure that works really hard is the exception--and they are a very American invention who were raised with the protestant work ethic.

The best recipe for monogamy is clear:

* Keep rape illegal

* Reduce male economic inequality

* Reduce female personal wealth

Since rape would still be illegal, female desire would still be the agent that determines reproduction and mating. But since females have no personal property, they would have to acquire resources by accessing a male's resources. Since males are all roughly equal, she will prefer to find a male who does not provide resources to other females.

Voila! Monogamy.

Rape is illegal. Since males can't force females to procreate, female choice is the deciding agent in determining who mates with who. Females choose mates based on their genetic fitness and their ability to provide resources. Genetic fitness is determined by all of: a male's ability to acquire resources (wealth), his looks (square jaw), talents (guitar player), personality (funny), social status (fame/popularity).

If a female no longer requires resource provision because she is earning enough money, she will prioritize genetic fitness in her mate selection, and so will be MORE willing to engage in a polygamous arrangement because polygamy can get her access to a greater diversity and quality of genetic material. Monogamy is only necessary for the female if it will provide her with resources or protection. Monogamy is not necessary for her to get access to sperm--sperm is cheap. She doesn't worry about money and can instead get the best genetic material without the best resources.

Therefore, female wealth drives polygamy.

But male economic inequality also drives polygamy.

Both factors increase polygamy. The only way to reverse these pressures would be to legalize rape and return to a state of nature. This would dethrone female agency as the factor that determines who will reproduce with who, and would elevate male violence to the deciding factor.

It has nothing to do with gender equality. It has to do with economic inequality between males.

Economic inequality between males means more and more women are competing for a smaller supply of wealthy males.

Increased demand for top males leads to gender inequality as more and more women compete for a smaller pool of rich men, reducing the bargaining power of every individual woman and increasing the bargaining power of the few males who are marriage material.

Increased demand for top males leads to polygamy and other polygamous arrangements such as mistresses.

By "access" are you just referring to prostitution?

Being too lazy to research it seems like a poor way to form your opinions.

The RAVEN IQ test [1] cannot possibly be gender or race biased, and this is the gold standard that is used to compare people across languages and cultures.

[1]: https://www.raventest.net/

"Calling BS" does not seem very substantive and it doesn't feel very civil either. I don't see who made you the authority here.

There are too many examples to list, but the citation I gave contains dozens and dozens[1]. For instance, it turns out that North Asians really are better at math than people of European ancestry. Ashkenazi Jews really are better at learning languages and have larger vocabularies and superior grammatical understanding and usage. Cultural psychologists have tabulated voluminous data on all the ethnic stereotypes throughout the world--hundreds of stereotypes that different Asians have of each other for instance--and again and again they are found to be more true than not.

The big mistake would be to then have prejudice--to prejudge an individual on the basis of their group affiliation. While it's a scientific fact that North Asians (Korea, China, Japan) are better at math than other populations, there are plenty of people in those groups that are worse than the global average. So it would be a mistake to assume that just because someone you meet is North Asian they are better than average at math.

[1]: Heine, Steven J., Cultural Psychology. 3rd edition. W.W. Norton, 2016. ISBN: 9780393263985.

The only catch is that when attributes of the stereotyped population change over time, the stereotype can lag behind the change for awhile, but the stereotypes eventually catch up to fit the new situation. All cultures stereotype and all cultures are quite good at it. Stereotypes are a pragmatic and democratic form of knowledge-making that all human cultures use[1].

This bullet proof research came out of various well-funded attempts to debunk stereotypes during the last 30 years. You know that science is working when sincere and hopeful attempts to debunk common knowledge end up confirming it very strongly!

[1]:Heine, Steven J., Cultural Psychology. 3rd edition. W.W. Norton, 2016. ISBN: 9780393263985.

Modern statistics and statistically modelling are actually just confirming the validity of the majority of widely held stereotypes.

As statistics in the academy become more common and advanced, more and more old stereotypes are just confirmed to be accurate. This is considered a crisis right now in social psychology, for instance, because there are almost no stereotypes that research has debunked. Again and again, research confirms stereotypes, and shows that humans in the aggregate are very good at creating accurate inferences.

Stereotypes create injustice when they lead to prejudice--failing to give an individual a chance because they belong to a stereotyped group--but prejudice is wrong because outliers deserve a chance, not because stereotypes are incorrect.

How can liberalism persist in the face of so much science that dismantles its most sacred beliefs?

Silicon Valley didn't invent capitalism.

Silicon Valley didn't push America to abandon space exploration.

Silicon Valley didn't lobby for austerity, for Reaganomics, for the Iraq war, or any of that other bad stuff.

So why are they going after SV? Because SV doesn't retaliate. SV is a soft target and professional complainers prefer soft targets.