Not reading thread. Bored. Does being female increase value here because of scarcity alone?

Excuse me for asking, but did you vote?

Possibly. Being that it could be argued that madnak and I are currently growing mental vaginas just through having this conversation, the logical extension is that you would be a third wheel.

On the other hand, your knack for cutting to the chase and berating me is appreciated. If you are bored enough to make fun of my ideas and arguments, shoot away!

swchwinggg-over my dullwittedness-almost. Ignoring the rest, addressing interesting part: you and madnak with pussies (location, irrelevant) (isn't pussie, so much friendlier than vagina? Everytime I hear vagina, I think it should be followed by REX, and sealed royally, albeit without intimacy. But you certainly use it within an interesting context...Always loved that idea, the ability to switch sexes at will.


perfect place for retaliatority, wanna ****, but too sleepy, laterbabe.

female

Vagina Rex. Pussy Galore would be the opposite maybe?

I am mentally gay, cause I'll blow your mind. - Bo Burnham

Yeah, well you haven't quite figured out whether me saying "wanna ****" was making fun of me or you.

I expect that means a yes?

This post has officially answered itself.

Obviously a little to much work for me recently.

Motivation is motivation. Sex just happens to be simple, direct and easy to understand.

You mean the fantasy-type reader. You spelled "weak men read books in which the weak men are actually strong."

This is variable. Women who read for fantasy read about things in which their weaknesses become strengths.

This is only men and women who imagine a different world for themselves.

Regardless, they who you speak of are engaging in largely the same behaviors and needs and only the details are different.

Physical conflict is easier for you to understand, so you find it more "pure."

In football (and other men's versions of social status games), we do the same. The game is enjoyable in and of itself.

That is because the studies and theories are incomplete. Women and men want the same things on the larger scale.

Where you say what men want a good and attractive mate, I find the same to be true of women.

It is almost always in your best interest. For madnak, specifically. Finding new friends is hard work.

I think in the case of you, we will find that alliances are particularly helpful. The alliance itself is pragmatic.

Silly. Everyone can hurt you if they want to.

Better to be with people who don't want to.

Yes. If their strengths complimented mine.

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Where would the road paved with bad intentions lead?

The risk is looking too hard and finding imagined mean people.

Granted, risks must be weighed.

Name a scarce resource in either of our lives.

[qote]Some can. But this is learning to subvert human nature. Individual victories don't make the battle any less futile on a large scale. This is how we're wired, it's even how selection works in general. Those who rise above it are outliers, and probably not especially fit.[/quote]

And you leave me hanging in other arguments in this forum that require absolute well-being as an assumption? Bad friend, you are.

And being an outlier is risky business. Without outliers we would have been an evolutionary dead end.

Regression to the mean happens all the time. In this case, there must be some variable that I am unsure of, since my son is more of an outlier than me. Given a million trials, I am sure we would find that statistics are not bothered by his presence.

"Tends to" is not universal. I wonder what your "fundamental part of life" means. I am sure I have broken that fundamental, and still have the same friends.

Two. In some people, only one.

Men and women have very different motivations.

No, I mean "readers." The divide is pretty universal. (Unless you're saying readers in general are fantasy-type readers) And I have no idea what "weak men are actually strong" means.

Again, weird.

You can speculate about the motivations women and men have for reading, but the fact is women and men buy different books.

This even extends to authors - Hemingway wrote "For Whom the Bell Tolls," Austen wrote "Pride and Prejudice." Even male writers with ostensibly feminine subject matter have distinctly different tone, focus, and perspective than the really feminine works.

This is the majority of men and women, respectively. Saying the motivation is "imagining a different world for themselves" is laughable imo, but regardless of the motivation it applies to pretty much everyone.

You're saying going shopping and football are "engaging in largely the same behaviors and needs?" You have to back up statements this outlandish.

Physical conflict is physical. It's not social, even if the rewards are social.

Football is a game of physical domination, not a game of social domination. And football is one of the more social sports out there. Looking good, wearing the right clothes, knowing the right people, being self-confident, being witty, and noticing the relationships around you simply do not help you win a football game. Power, speed, endurance, and coordination are what help you win a football game.

The fact that social status can be gained as a result of playing football doesn't make football a social status game. Men are generally not motivated by those.

I should just take your word for it, huh?

But the evidence shows that mate preference and mating strategy in men and women differ in many important respects.

It's almost always in everyone's best interest, at least among the middle class in industrialized nations. That's why you see this behavior so much in industrialized nations. Not a point of evidence that it's not dog-eat-dog.

I don't think alliances help me half as much as they help others.

Whether they want to hurt me is a much less accurate predictor of whether they will hurt me than whether they have incentive to hurt me. If it's not in their best interest to hurt me, I can reliably predict that they won't do so. If it is in their best interest to hurt me, the fact that they like to think of themselves as "nice people" won't stop them from eating me alive.

The best feature is simple pragmatism - they are least likely to erroneously believe that hurting me is in their best interest.

That's a bit vague.

The same place, in relatively rational people.

What I'm saying is if I imagine a mean person, where the reality is a nice person who tends to do harm inadvertently, I will still tend to take the correct actions in response. It's not much of a risk.

Mates. Dominance/influence. Money (property in general). Access to information. Access to expertise and equipment.

But the most fundamental for humans (and each one matters tremendously) are time, attention, social status, and control of natural resources.

I'm not getting the reference. Link?

Outliers are necessary, but that doesn't mean they persist (or that they're efficient/adaptive).

Which is why he's irrelevant to our evolutionary future.

You experienced the conflict in your own life. So you didn't break the fundamental principle that competition for mates generates conflict.

It's a universal throughout all species that reproduce sexually - it's not universal in all individuals of all species, but that doesn't make it any less a necessary ingredient of life as we know it.

I mean, how many fundamental sources of conflict are enough to justify the prediction that conflict will continue to arise?

?!? Eating, sleeping, belonging, ****ing. Universal motivations.

Almost all male audience books are the geek-becomes-the-hero-and- presumably-gets-laid-by-the-hot-chick story.

And all fiction is fantasy. Not called that by genre obviously.

They are doing the same thing with a different tone of voice. The differences are inconsequential and small.

I was imagining it as a social activity. Men do things together to strengthen friendships. Women do things together to strengthen friendships.

What the actual activity is is unimportant.

The fact that social status can be gained as a result of playing football doesn't make football a social status game. Men are generally not motivated by those.[/quote]

Ummm. Just a guess, but you didn't play team sports, right? It is massively social.

It would make this exercise a lot easier, so yes.

Of course. If I used the same strategy as a women, my fiancee would be a fiance.

Still, people tend to find a mate. The 9s tend to get with the 9s, and the 3s get with the 3s.

Men lift weights, and women to cardio. Same thing.

I don't believe this for a minute. Unless you are a closeted door mat. And I don't see that as being particularly likely.

Faulty logic. Someone who wants to hurt you will find a way. I imagine you wear your heart on your sleeve in real life only slightly less than you do here.

Someone who has your best interests at heart will only push until you say "ow."

No it isn't. I have weaknesses. Someone who has something to offer that I don't is a perfect business partner. The best business partners have opposite strengths and weaknesses.

Ah, so live on a mountain by yourself is the best course of action.

Of course, it is best to avoid having bull-in-a-china-shop friends, but most kind people seldom cause much damage.

Mates are effectively infinitely available.

Dominance/influence is just a tool.

Money has little to do with social conflict. Get a job. Get an education if you want a particular one (see your thoughts on engineers).

Access to information is pretty darn cheap. Get a library card.

Access to expertise is obtained by being nice. It is particularly difficult to get experts to shut up. All you have to do is express interest and they will practically hand you solutions.

Access to equipment involves nothing social at all. Get money. If in college, take correct courses.

Time: You can trade it for money or just enjoy whatever is happening as it passes. You can't obtain more of it.

Attention: I assume you mean people caring in your general direction (to put it into the most awkward way possible). It is the one resource that is infinitely renewable.

Social status: You would be better off to avoid that sort of game. It is the one game that you win most effectively by not playing.

Natural resourses: Pretty important on average. Not at all where we live.

Durr.

Me and you don't have an evolutionary future. Neither does he. We will die.

You are confusing why-we-are-the-way-we-are with how-it-is-to-be-what-we-are.

I don't **** to reproduce. I **** because I like to ****.

If you mean between people, I would say 2 is sufficient.

Depends though. Sometimes 3 people in a room get along just fine.

"**** as many women as possible" isn't the same motivation as "attract the attention of a high-status man." If you bring it down to the lowest possible level, you could say that all organisms tend to be motivated by optimizing their fitness, but that's just a tautology and exceptions exist regardless.

How on earth do you figure? Male audience books are more likely to be "a bunch of badasses kill each other until everybody is dead at the end."

You're trying to say the differences between Hemingway and Austen are "inconsequential and small?" Think you could find a single literature professor anywhere who would agree with you?

They don't do these things just "to strengthen friendships." They do it for entertainment, to show off (ie to climb up the dominance ladder and push others down it), to gather information, to reinforce norms, and to practice vital skills, among other things.

If they did do it just to strengthen friendships, that would make the actual activity the most important thing about it. I don't know if I'm able to call it the most important thing in reality, but it's one of the more relevant factors.

Success isn't determined by social skills. (Well, not unless someone is socially inept or an ******* to the point it hurts the team - refusing to pass and so on - still, some of those guys have made it high into professional leagues, so physical qualities are more important for success).

[quote]It would make this exercise a lot easier, so yes.

Of course. If I used the same strategy as a women, my fiancee would be a fiance.

This sounds good, except it's not actually true. Mating strategies in humans are impossibly complex, we make chimps look easy to understand. Some things are universal across most cultures, though - in a majority of cultures high-status men have many mates, while low-status men have none. When not enforced, strict monogamy doesn't tend to happen - serial monogamy or polygamy dominate. In some cases (and for some outliers) even promiscuity.

Women tend to end up with highest-status man possible, and men tend to end up with the most attractive women possible. Women are fundamentally bisexual, not especially into a man's naked body, they like provider-types at certain times of the month and alpha male or bad boy types at other times of the month (and frequently cheat with those alpha males or bad boy types).

Promiscuous behavior in women tends to involve frequent encounter with high-status men (and virtually no encounters with low-status men), and tends to have an adverse impact on health. Promiscuous behavior in men tends to involve frequent encounters with whatever women are available (with a strong preference toward good-looking women, but with nothing like the standards seen in the opposite sex), and tends to have a tremendously positive impact on health.

It's hard to generalize beyond that, but within a particular subgroup (say, Americans) there are further differences, often extreme. (I'm sure many other differences are universal, you'd probably get Clark and Hatfield results in any culture, but either cross-cultural studies haven't been done or anthropological data doesn't exist).

Not remotely. Men are much more responsive to physical attractiveness than women, women are much more responsive to status than men. Women don't even care that much about muscle mass.

The situations are radically different, and so are the motivators. Men and women don't think about fitness in the same way, they don't respond to fitness in the same way, and their preferences are drastically different.

Just because men lift objects off the ground, and ants also lift objects off the ground, doesn't imply that men and ants have similar motivations. Superficially similar behavior doesn't imply similar underlying motivations.

I'm more self-sufficient than most, my goals are less conducive to alliances, and I tend to derive lesser benefits from alliances while suffering greater costs.

I've been hurt many times in my life, often very severely. But I've never been seriously hurt by anybody who wanted to hurt me. People who are looking for victims ignore anybody who doesn't look like a mark. They assiduously avoid anybody with an ability to retaliate.

People who think they're "helping" you are the ones who will really destroy you. They're the ones who need defending against.

Playing to your strengths is usually better strategy than shoring up your weaknesses. Life's too short. Complementary relationships are overrated.

Naivete is never a strength, especially not in sales.

Most kind people are a constant drain on those around them, and a constant poison to society.

Not even close. The median lifetime sex partners for a man is 7. Many men (including a significant portion of the worldwide NEET epidemic, and the vast majority of the involuntarily celibate) can't find any mates.

Regardless, not all mates are equal.

Only in the sense that food is just fuel.

Money has little to do with social conflict? Are you serious? So, uh, socioeconomic status has no correlation with any sociological factors?

Money has to do with everything. Money is correlated with intelligence, looks, happiness, and almost everything else regarded as positive. There are strong indications that causation works both ways. I recently posted this image on OOT:



That's from the OkCupid database, and OkC isn't known for its concentration of gold diggers - it is the only dating site honest enough to reveal its statistics, sadly enough.

But like most of your errors here, this one could be dispelled with much greater rigor than I'm giving it. Many studies have been done on this type of thing. Christ, half of sociology ends up being about how money affects everything (this is part of why economics and sociology are considered sister sciences).

I can't find any secrets with a library card. Who slept with whom, what stocks are about to go up in value, who has the best drug hookup, what kind of skeletons does the councilman have in his closet, this stuff is more powerful than anything else that can be acquired.

Money is social. But this is beside the point. Many people suffering from severe health care problems, even here in the US, can't even afford basic medications, much less expensive scanning, surgical procedures, dialysis, and so on.

A problem that is universally fatal for a poor person with no connections and no status is a minor annoyance for someone who is owed favors by all the very best doctors.

Which makes time, along with all the rest, a scarce resource. And arguably that has a greater impact than anything else on what makes this world such a violent and brutal place.

I mean focus and mental energy. Everyone has only so much. Life is largely a series of decisions about how to invest attention and focus.

I know this is false. I'm already winning. I'm an upper middle class white person in the United States of America. I'm broke - completely broke right now, $10 in my bank account. But in terms of socioeconomic status (which is a form of social status), I am in probably the 97th or 98th percentile.

And does it matter? Oh yes. I can look at, say, the world median - and see how much better off I am. Even within my own communities, I can see what happens to those at the bottom of the status hierarchy. Suicide, lifelong isolation, inability to socially engage without falling apart - it's horrifying. And I can look at those near the top - surrounded by young women, calling the shots within their social circles, treating life as something to just have fun with - and envy them.

Social status is everything.

That's because we were born with silver spoons in our mouths. If you think that the suffering of those in other places has nothing to do with us, though, you're not paying attention. Sometimes it's pretty simple - the economic situation in the Middle East has a tremendous impact on life in the US. Sometimes it's more complicated - apartheid in South Africa created waves that subtly impacted the whole world. But it's always there.

By "our" I meant our species.

And you like to **** because liking to **** was selected over not liking to ****. And liking to **** was selected over not liking to **** because liking to **** conferred a relative advantage in terms of fitness.

Therefore, you **** because of a fitness advantage. Transitivity applies. X because Y, Y because Z, implies X because Z.

The point is that mate competition is a necessary outcome of sexual reproduction. There can't be sexual reproduction without mate competition (well, given a number of other assumptions, all of which apply to the world we actually live in).

In fact, if some members of a species fail to optimize mate selection (ie select the optimal mating strategy with respect to overall fitness), then any other members of that species that do optimize mate selection will experience strong selective pressure in their favor.

This is a situation in which cutthroat competition arises as a direct result of certain parameter sets.

3 people living together? 3 people trapped in a cave with only enough food for one of them?

It doesn't matter, that's all contrived. I don't think you'll find one example of a person who has consistently avoided conflict throughout their lives. But even if some Gandhi/Dalai Llama type has done so, that doesn't mean we aren't hardwired to be at one another's throats. Outliers can defeat hardwiring for a number of reasons, but they will remain outliers for a number of reasons.

Humanity is incapable, at a basic level, of ever directly bringing about any scenario in which humans are able to live in peace.

So, you went after the unpopular (low-status) girls when younger?

I think you are seeing age-dependent cultural silliness. Once they hit 30 (or so, depending on how well-indoctrinated they are), things change. I imagine that you are seeing the effects that culture (good girls don't even kiss on the first date, apparently) has.

And the protagonist is always someone that readers can identify with. It is always weak-ass geeky smart dude overcomes all odds and finally gets some respect (while making things generally explode).

Those who are busy doing well in life don't have time for reading. No protagonists exist for them, because it would sell maybe 3 books. All bought on accident.

Didn't say that at all.

Exactly the same as guys. And neither are not conscious of what they are doing.

Yes. Same as for guys.

You can find women who make a career of buying nice clothes as well.

[quote]It would make this exercise a lot easier, so yes.

Of course. If I used the same strategy as a women, my fiancee would be a fiance.

And the low-status girl ends up getting laid by who? Attraction is attraction. The girl who can't figure out how to impress the men sleeps alone. The boy who can't figure out how to impress the women sleeps alone.

Men have it infinitely easier. We just need to get rich. Much easier than becoming un-ugly.

In either case, the healthy and physically attractive win by default.

Highest status is equivalent to attractive. A low status woman is unattractive. A low status man is unattractive.

And men are visually based on average. Women are equally visually based, but find it culturally unacceptable to state it. Both are sensory.

As far as the study of women's cheating habits go, I think that the reason why we have not found any male-related similar behavioral changes is because we haven't really looked for what makes a man more or less likely to cheat.

Obviously, both sexes cheat at similar rates.

If you mean that pregnancy is unhealthy, I can only agree on a certain level.

Promiscuous behavior in women (at their peak time of the month) is nearly purely visual. They do not do a social status analysis. They become more like men during this particular time of the month.

Women care about relative proportions. Same as men.

And I am sure that you realize that women respond just as strongly physically to attractive men. The only studies that show otherwise are weak surveys.

Furthermore, men's failed strategy at being bigger and stronger is exactly the same as women's failed strategy at being boney.

That is just because men use bad strategy that doesn't work and women use bad strategy that doesn't work.

It does work in a way, but not in the way each sex thinks it works for the other.

Alliances done well are not particularly effortful.

Hmmm. I doubt you are physically threatening compared to average. Without alliances, I doubt any ability to cause particularly meaningful social status harm.

I think you are confusing people who would control, rather than people who would help.

Most helpful people offer help, and when the help is refused, wander off. The problem is, those that wander off are no longer available. You end up left with those who would control.

Playing to your strengths is huge. Finding partners who have different strengths is better than working on your own weaknesses.

Social naivete is part and parcel of other strengths. If I can sell, I don't need another salesman. Probably need an engineer though.

?!?

That is because people do it wrong. Quantity of mates is effectively infinitely available, if that is a goal.

No. Only in the sense that rice is a food. Rice is a secondary preference.

We were discussing the individual. Poor graduate students get more ass than any other group of people.

We don't use data from OK Cupid.

Not worth the effort.

Money can be traded for goods.

Social status (as far as you have discussed so far) won't buy you a heart transplant.

Completely wrong. You got a head start in life by being upper middle class and born in the USA? How the **** have you ****ed up enough to only have $10?

Well, then. You should do something about that instead of wallowing. As helpful advice, I suggest that you should try to have $11 in your bank account as soon as possible.

More might be necessary. I believe a study was done that you get diminishing returns once you make $75k per year.

So, money is everything AND money is everything.

I think that it is sufficient to know that being mean and heartless is bad for your mental well-being. I want to believe I am decent. Therefore I shouldn't do things that would make me have to do mental gymnastics to maintain that belief. Better to actually be nice than to have to work hard to maintain my self-worth.

Why I am the way I am is completely unimportant in terms of what I should do tomorrow.

I'll always go after the unpopular girls, but that's beside the point. Most men go after physical attractiveness and have few qualms about status. It just so happens that virtually all forms of status correlate with physical attractiveness, so high-status girls in every sense are often (but not always) those most desired.

Once they hit 30, their prime reproductive years are gone. That's when "plan B" sets in. That's also when the number of available single men becomes higher than the number of available single women. Significant shifts in the market result in significant shifts in behavior (exactly what we expect within a highly competitive environment).

The first five male-oriented authors I came up with off the top of my head are Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Wolfe, Cormac McCarthy, and Tom Clancy. Palahniuk definitely fits the bill here, care to tell me how the others do?

We can use some other way to identify authors - Amazon's bestseller lists maybe? Looking at it, outside the fantasy genre (which is niche and very geeky, not at all masculine) it seems like very few male-oriented books match.

Even in fantasy it's not always the case. Conan the Barbarian is very popular, and he is in no way a "weak-ass geeky smart dude."

If you don't have time for reading, you're probably not doing well in life. I'd bet studies of well-being agree with me. I'd also bet that being well-read is correlated with wealth and other measures of success.

Plenty are not conscious of what they're doing. Regardless, you're moving away from the point again. Men accomplish these goals through physical and intellectual/analytic efforts. Women accomplish them through social/verbal efforts.

Yes, buying nice clothes is a social skill. Men make a living with their physical skills, women make a living with their social skills, that's exactly my point. Different wiring.

Clark and Hatfield again. Low-status women get laid by the high-status men, if they happen to be physically attractive. Women who are not physically attractive still get laid easily. There is no woman on earth who can't get a dick in her.

Not true. White trash women who are physically attractive tend to get with high status men. The fact that women "marry up" much more frequently than men is well-established.

Both are sensory. Women use their senses to look for status cues, like tailored clothing, good posture, and an expensive wristwatch. Men use their senses to look for fertility cues like shapely hips, supple breasts, and a youthful face.

The fact that the information is gathered through the sense doesn't change the fact it's different information.

The female changes are a function of menstruation and ovulation. Have you even glanced at the abstracts? How would men exhibit similar behavioral changes when they don't menstruate or ovulate?

Not always for similar reasons.

I mean that when controlling for pregnancy, promiscuous women are more likely to suffer negative health effects. Men it's the other way around.

They do a social status analysis. A woman will rate a man in a sharp suit as highly attractive, but will rate the same man as unattractive if he's wearing a grungy t-shirt and cheap jeans. Men don't change how attractive their ratings of women are much on the basis of clothing and other status symbols.

Not to anything like the same extent.

I'm sorry? Repeated studies show that women show no response to a naked guy. Straight women show greater response to a naked woman than to a naked man. The numerous studies establishing this (and the general fact of radical differences in arousal patterns among men and women) are primarily based on plethysmography and other measures of blood flow to the genitals.

Next post may take awhile because it's sounding like you haven't even had a basic introduction to the research on arousal, attraction, and gender. I'll have to start citing studies. Meredith Chivers at a minimum is pretty much required reading in any class on human sexuality.

It's very similar, yeah.

This is also true.

For some of us, alliances are always effortful. This may be called "introversion," or there may be more to it than that.

I think I'm physically and socially more menacing. But it's not especially relevant.

Sounds like no true scotsman to me.

People have self-serving reasons for everything they do. In the most benign cases, empathy and warm fuzzy feelings are the only self-serving reasons. The most benign cases are quite rare, of course.

Control is another potential reason why someone might want to help. But there are others. Social rewards are a big one, reinforced sense of personal identity, eliminating uncomfortable stimuli (unhappy people are no fun to be around - helping them or shunning them will be the favored strategy depending on which is costlier), immediate rewards (guys helping women in hopes of sex - maybe this is why women get so much more assistance than men), creating a sense of debt or gratitude that can pay off in the future, there are others.

We can't separate "helpful" people out based on their (presumed) motivations, nor can we simply say that they were only really helpful if they ended up doing some good.

When I say equal partners, I mean that the naive guy has carte blanche power/access, and equal influence over sales decisions. Maybe I should have asked "would you let an extremely naive and gullible person make all of your financial decisions for you?"

"Kind" people are great at ruining things for everyone because they value their personal belief that they are doing the right thing. Whether they are preventing a developing country from being self-sufficient by giving aid irresponsibly, snitching on those around them for minor transgressions, throwing useless and often destructive advice at people who never asked for any, or wasting time and effort on Hallmark gift baskets that never change anything, they are at best ineffective. But usually they expend considerable resources on their misguided efforts.

People who really do good in the world tend to be no-nonsense types, ranging from the down-to-earth to the cynical to the long-suffering. Well, many have a sense of humor about it, but it's often a black sense of humor. People who've been down in the trenches helping those who need it impress me as being tough as nails, with very little smarmy "kindness" or empty sentimentality.

For those who "do it right." Those who have a strategy that takes advantage of market inefficiencies, or those who have something to offer in the market in the first place. And they can achieve roughly the top end of mate quantity that is practically possible - say 10,000 lifetime sex partners - which is a long way from infinite. But constraints like time become the limiting factors when the market is approached in the right way.

An investor can also acquire an awful lot of gold if they "do it right." That doesn't suggest that gold isn't a scarce resource.

Quality mates are scarce, regardless.

Dominance is not.

Money isn't everything, by a long shot. People in a high position in society can do quite well even with little money (though those people often have considerable income potential or at least the likely prospect of future income potential).

And successful musicians get way, way more ass than poor grad students. Rock stars are at the top of the ladder for sure.

Just a very striking result from an entire population (as opposed to a sample). Of course, the research indicates similar things, but we don't have in-depth access to all the information about dating outside of these sites.

For some people this is their livelihood.

Money and social status are fungible to some degree. Money tends to be better for heart transplants. Having the right connections doesn't hurt, though - especially if there's a waitlist.

Is this sarcastic? Do I really need to explain why being upper-middle class in the US is a huge head start?

Eh, I have most of what money could get me. My teeth are really bad though, dental work would be nice. This is a pretty laughable first-world problem, though, and it's hard for me to feel a sense of urgency.

Social status isn't the same as money. It's probably more important, because it's easier to buy money with social status than the other way around.

Weren't you the one saying broke grad students get lots of ass?

I'd rather win a highly respectable position, credential, or bit of celebrity than a million dollar lottery any day.

Sounds like being mean and heartless, while believing that you are decent is the optimal strategy. Since being mean and heartless looks very similar to being decent (especially in the eyes of society), this doesn't necessitate mental gymnastics.

What you should do tomorrow is of no value in predicting what people in general will do tomorrow.

Ahh. We have been arguing at cross purposes.

I meant "kind" as you have described it as helpful.

Those who are just a puddle of emotion are useless.

I was never great at reading people growing up. I thought those who presented themselves outwardly as kind, were kind, and those who didn't, weren't.

I was wrong, and now I'm suspicious of those who present themselves as kind.

On the other hand, I was too oblivious, so some of the less ostentatious indicators of kindness slipped my notice. I never tried to puzzle out the motivations people had, because I didn't have the social skills to do it. So now I'm in the habit of gauging how trustworthy someone is by their actions, and more or less ignoring whether they're kind/mean/etc "deep down."

But yeah, people who are/were better at figuring out who is really kind, distinguishing that from who only appears to be kind, could easily define kindness differently.

In other words nothing's changed?

Brilliant! Although "Peasant Pussy Galore" might have been a better opposite, it lacked the proper noun, and Bond reference, which essentially screams "peasant" all by it's lonesome. Funny how the words reveal the mind behind them. I couldn't resist bumping the thread with a reply.

An even greater masterpiece (especially in context)! How do you come up with this stuff?! (and a new source of giggles in Bo Burnham!)

Well...perhaps I should have considered your words more carefully, considering the speaker. I MAY owe you an apology, but can't find the "feminism" thread to doublecheck my interpretation. (Ignorance can be annoying) and either way, I prefer the brilliant banter to solitary sulking. Can we declare piece?

I'm suffering from technology failure, (a temporary interuption) but this shall soon be remedied.

With only 2% of SMPers being female, I stand by my original assertion--women suck--(at least 98% of them!) ~ but you blow ~ with finess.

As you damn well know.

What percentage of people who voted on percentage of women who visit two plus two thread, who do not wish to define are women?

I thought the opinions on this page were well done.

Nah...mostly half baked.

Most didn't even make it into the oven at all.

You don't. I made a joke about myself that was offensive if misunderstood. My fault as the writer if I don't make the joke clear to the intended audience.

Half baked is clearly preferrable to well done, at least in a good steak, but I will admit a few were a bit raw. Peace. No harm, no foul. Just bad jokes.

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/i...l.pbio.1001081

so we are all autistic?

Pretty much.