MMX2010

This is going to sound (to some) like trolling, but it's not. In the excellent book, Why Everyone (Else) Is A Hypocrite, the author (an accomplished psychologist who has also studied evolutionary biology) expresses surprise whenever people react with disbelief that something has shaped their brains. Just looking at a toaster, he argues, shapes your brain because if it didn't, you wouldn't be able to see the toaster. A brain scan of Einstein revealed highly enlarged areas associated with his left hand. For some "mysterious reason", the amount of brain power devoted to controlling his left hand was both more massive and more finely detailed than that of the average person. Was this a new class of psychiatric disorder, or is Einstein's awareness of his left hand the new normal, thereby forcing everyone else to be characterized as abnormal? No. It turns out that he played the violin for years. When you finger a violin, you use your left hand. So my question is, "Given that every thought impacts the brain, and given that: (1) brain scans of transgender individuals show certain thought patterns that are identical to those of same-gender identifying individuals, and (2) that transgender individuals themselves admit to spending quite a bit of brain power focusing on these questions, then how is it possible to distinguish "A causes B" from "B causes A"?" (For example, in another excellent book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, its author makes an excellent case that having more psychotherapists in an area is correlated with a stronger cultural belief in specific disorders like Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD. But he says it's impossible to distinguish whether the belief in those conditions came before or came after the influx of psychotherapists into that area. And he also makes a strong case that, were there no psychotherapists in America, you wouldn't believe in the existence of Depression; you'd just feel sad.)

Ancap: You either cannot read me accurately, or you don't understand the difference between an implication and a statement. When you assert, (and don't pull the, "I didn't say that in those exact words!" crap) that "MMX2010 wants to save women from themselves." - and when I say, "I have not, and have never thought that way." - I have direct access to my brain, and you don't. Thus, when I say, "I have not, and have never, desired to save women from themselves." - it is up to you to either 100% believe me or not. But to say that I've directly asserted that "I want to save women from themselves." is dishonest on your part, because you refuse to accept that I don't think that way.

Stefan and I talked about this last night, and he agreed with you that certain PUA tactics were lies, but I didn't give him this counter-example. So the problem is that the media has spent (no joke) billions of dollars painting single men going out alone as creepy, thereby placing poisoning the well of your interaction with her before you've even said a word. His solution is to "just be honest", and your solution is "don't commit fraud" - and you both assert that "honesty is the best policy" and "virtuous women won't find your going out alone to be creepy at all". My counter-argument, which could very well be passive-aggressive is, "Are you kidding me? You're living in a culture which poisoned the interaction by massive anti-male propaganda, and you want to turn a dishonest pick-up line into a massive indication of poor character on your part? You're living in a world that has played dirty against you from the time you were born, and you want to be noble, true, and good? Why not allay a woman's fears by using the fraudulent pick-up line and then play it straight from there?"

Two things here: (1) There's an excellent essay by Alice Miller which details the difference between therapists and friends, and the essay's purpose is to warn people that therapists are paid to give you certain perspectives, while friends aren't being paid at all. So holding your friends to the same standards as your therapist is, in itself, a highly manipulative perspective. (2) Whether GuzzyBone is entering into this thread with an agenda or not, he has made a simple argument that has many parts, but this one sticks out to me, "Because the surgical result of surgery is not really a vagina, then Alice Amell is being delusional when she says, 'During surgery the penis is shaped into a vagina.'" Objectively speaking, is this argument true or false? (And, for the record, I don't see how it could be false.)

It went very well. Stefan, MMD, and I were very pleased with it.

We can hope for them to do so, but we can't expect them to do so without guidance. I am glad that women have never been freer, but they've also never been less-guided. I'm relating the story from memory, but this is how it went. The Roosh Forum member I'm quoting is between forty and fifty, is extremely well-built, is into philosophy (no seriously: he reads classical philosophers like Aristotle), and is a very accomplished musician. He had spotted this girl through an online dating site, and she was much younger than him...so say, twenties. He has also bedded a ton of women, say 100+ (probably more, many of them in their 20s) And during this online discussion, (before they had agreed to meet), she began by linking him to her music. It's amateurish and not very beautiful, but, hey, she's in her twenties, right? She asks to be linked to his music, he refuses, she begs some more, he refuses, she begs again, he links her. And his music is mature, rich, and awesome. He's thinking, "If I display my superior musical ability, then she'll instantly want to be with me and learn from me, because she's interested in music and will recognize my superior musical ability." Great evolutionary-based argument, right? But instead, she says nothing. The conversation ends. And he never hears from her again. And he can't help but conclude that it was because his music was so awesome. Rather than recognize his alphaness and attach herself to him, she recognized his alphaness and was disgusted by him. He concludes that this happens because of feminism, girl power, media, and cultural Marxism - which have created a generation of women who don't want to be upstaged by superior men. They all believe that "they'll become famous one day, but it hasn't happened yet" - and they feel instant revulsion towards anyone who is better than them, especially a male. -------------------- I haven't read this article, but I trust Roosh and the article's title. Let me know if you found it helpful. http://www.rooshv.com/the-theory-of-evolution-does-not-apply-to-modern-human-beings

It happens for two reasons: (1) Women, especially younger, prettier women, inevitably respond more positively to callous aloofness than to readily-presented emotional empathy - (especially in the first stages of dating). (2) There are so many socially-constructed myths against the efficacy and nature of PUA that anyone who succeeds at PUA becomes callous and assholish towards society-as-a-whole. The second part is particularly damaging. Imagine discovering that your mother, your father, and your siblings were conspiring to defraud you. That's what it feels like to discover that PUA works. (And the description itself is not hyperbole.)

How is it a "fallacy" to tell you exactly what happens when I use negs on a woman in a conversation that also featured deep, philosophical conversation? The shortest answer is, "Game is whatever a man wants it to be. Whatever intentions a man had before studying Game will be made manifest. So the most crucial thing to do, before studying Game, is to ask yourself what your ultimate intentions are." For me, I've only three intentions: (1) To bring joy to every interaction I have with women, regardless of whether I get sex or not. (2) To take the study of Game seriously, much like the way an engineering major studies engineering. (3) To be an honest and devoted representative of Game itself. It is inevitable that any man who succeeds with Game will become more callous and more assholish, so the trick is to limit the degree which these behaviors define you as a man.

In a word: no. It's not that women have gotten stupid, it's that these women are simultaneously very young and at the height of their sexual market value and they have no social / cultural wisdom with which to draw upon. If young women had cultural wisdom - (which, by definition, can only be acquired through interacting with virtuous, philosophically rigorous, empathetic men) - they could make much better hypergamous choices. Also, if more men embraced hypergamy and conducted themselves accordingly, there'd "magically" be a much larger pool of wonderful men to choose from. In one sentence, "Women are smart; culture is dumb, and women-as-a-whole aren't smart enough to overpower a dumb culture." From the Roosh V Forum: "Why would this passive, self-loathing type want to be in a relationship with a successful, interesting, happy man? Being the partner of a high value man would create expectations for her of having to raise her value to meet his: of working out; of dieting; of increased public-visibility; of needing to be socially-charming; of triggering that particular Millennial trait of craving positive attention whilst being threatened by the possibility of the potential negative attention that being noticed might bring; of living a more intense life with greater responsibility; and of the intimidating possibility of being taken outside her comfort zone and routine with the unpredictable passions of those who embrace living."

I explained this to a teenage boy as such. Him: I get it. You just have to be yourself in the most confident manner possible. Me: No, you don't get it. First you have to be what she wants, and then you have to be yourself. Now, you can mindfuck yourself by asking, "Which version of me is the Real Me? Is it the person I've been for a long time before I discovered PUA, or is it the new person I've become as a result of PUA?" But that's mindfuckery, because you're trying to anticipate her feelings by going into your own head. Question, "Who does she think you are?" Answer, "She thinks you are who you're presenting yourself as, so if you're presenting yourself according to what PUA says, then in her mind that's who you really are." He instantly smiled and understood. Hopefully, you will, too. *grins* Again, I'll just point out the "penguins example", wherein men wouldn't dare imagine themselves as penguins, and then predict the sexual responses of female penguins. But, lo and behold, PatrickC is imagining himself as a woman and then predicting how women will respond. Patrick, you're basically saying that just one neg, in a series of deep philosophical questions about her character, will erase all of the knowledge and emotional connection created by asking those deep philosophical questions. Or you're asserting (or implying) (or expecting) that no man can skillfully combine negging with philosophical discussion. Neither of those are true. Nor are they true for myself, Omegahero, and many PUAs I know. While I'll grant that the majority of PUAs are not interested in deep philosophical questions, I won't accept your characterization of PUA as de facto incompatible with deep philosophical discussions. What happens when I combine negging with deep philosophical discussions? That's easy. She gets mad at the negs, but becomes emotionally closer whenever I discuss deep philosophy.

Agree with you here. I'm old enough to remember the social progression of transgender over the last two decades. When I was in high school, gender was not nuanced at all. Today, gender is highly nuanced.

You'd better be careful with that argument. Once you say, "A person's DNA is their DNA" I can counter-argue, "Yeah, you're right about that: XX is one thing and XY is another thing entirely."

Not putting words in your mouth, Patrick. Just saying A causes B. Once you say, "Game is mean't to lower a woman's natural defences from fucking fewer men.", you inevitably make people assume that you believe that women are irrational creatures who need masculine male leadership to save them from their hypergamous desires. Basically, Game is (mostly) bad because hypergamy is (entirely) bad. If you didn't believe that hypergamy is bad, you wouldn't frame Game as a way of getting past a woman's defenses. I'll connect your post with thebeardslastcall's post, because they share the same error. If Omegahero had asked, "What are the social, physical, and emotional behaviors by which female penguins determine which male penguins are suitable reproductive partners?", no man here would say, "Well, when I imagine myself as a penguin, these are the traits that I would like, so it must be true that female penguins like these traits." Instead, you wouldn't imagine yourself as a penguin, because you're not a penguin. Then you'd dispassionately observe female penguins, and make an educated guess." But in this thread, Omegahero asks whether PUA is manipulation, and thebeardslastcall's tactic was to imagine himself as a woman, and assert (or imply) (or expect) women to agree with him. And you, AncapFTW, are imagining yourself to be me and asserting (or implying) (or expecting) that I must want men to save women from themselves". In your case, all I can do is say that you're wrong. No further discussion required.

When you Frame it that way, you cannot help but Frame women as irrational, stupid creatures who need dispassionate masculine asexual guidance to lead them into more intelligent decisions. But the most liberating thing about PUA is that it teaches men (and women) through direct personal experience that women aren't like that. They don't need the Beta Male's constant hovering and shaming in order to make them make better decisions. And they don't need the Beta Male's hovering because their every hypergamous desire is beautiful and just.

You're right about this, but you're presenting "silent, Buddhist, non-attachment" as if it were the only proper emotional response to the situation. But what about righteous anger? What about exhorting people to do better, think harder, do more? On the Roosh Forum, it's guaranteed that certain posts have more likes than others. But every triple-digit liked post is communicated with a passion, intelligence, coherence, and life-altering wisdom that is lacking in FDR. And when the deficiencies between our forum and their forum are pointed out, I get downvoted. Are you sincerely presenting, "Well, you shouldn't worry about that. And if you don't like it, you can leave." - as the best possible emotional reaction I can have? ----------------------- Wow, Joel. That's the only possible reason? Literally the only possible reason? Or is it just one of many reasons? Wow, Joel. Here's an uncomfortable question. If the smartest man in the world told you a deep truth in the most passive aggressive, sarcastic manner, would you have the emotional self-control to ignore the passive-aggression and accept the truth? OR would you avoid embracing that truth, thereby sentencing you to a longer period of suffering and heartache, because he was passive-aggressive? Here's another one: Does too much introspection and therapy, combined with isolation from interacting with real-world individuals, cause some people to overrate their emotional responses and become uncompromising? And here's a final pair: Is it possible to divide the entire FDR community into two roughly-defined groups: (1) FDR members who have friends in real life and have jobs that "force them" to pleasantly interact with many types of people - particularly those who aren't open-minded to FDR AND (2) FDR members who have few, if any, friends in real life and have jobs which isolate them from others? Once these two groups are created, is it true that those different groups will have vastly different degrees of ability to emotionally compromise, to empathize with the other person, and to change their own behaviors on behalf of other people? Right. Don't fight, just surrender. "Let" the "immature community" be as immature as it wants to be. Don't ask the host of the show whether he-himself has noticed these trends. Don't propose a series of reforms to the host, himself, in order to strengthen the community. Above all else, don't use sarcasm or passive-aggressiveness when communicating frustration with this community, because passive-aggressiveness is the most serious "thought crime" anyone can commit. I cannot disagree with you more strongly, Joel. And I cannot reconcile how someone who is passionate enough to intervene in child abuse situations can simultaneously advise, "Surrender because you can't control other people..." as the ultimate solution here. You know what fighting is and why we're supposed to do it, but you don't fight? Madness.

This happens very often, so don't think I'm singling you out. But I call this "Accuse, then Play Defense." As in, "First you accuse PUAs of being dishonest, manipulative, and immoral. Then, you wait for them to scramble to defend themselves - (which they can never adequately do, because you haven't studied PUA nor implemented it as Roosh describes) - or you wait for them to refuse to defend themselves - at which point you say, "AHA! Dishonest manipulators cannot prove their innocence!" I'm not going to play along this time. Instead, I'll just study PUA some more, knowing that I can do what is required without resorting to heinous moral violations and dishonesty.

Right, but the key to good satire is to express a universally held opinion that, for whatever reason, is escaping common sense. To me, you've failed to do that, because you've cannot universalize your assessments. For example, "The question to me then becomes, If the rating system is useless, then why get upset when you received a downvote? The reason it is upsetting when you see a downvote is because you accept the importance of ratings. When you get upset with a rating, you accept that, whether you like it or not, people are more likely to listen to you or read your posts if your ratings are high. People are less likely to read your posts if it is very low." Notice how you only present one reason that people are feeling upset? Notice how, by presenting only one reason, you're attempting to universalize your emotional response? I get upset whenever I see a downvote, because I know that certain individuals have been following me for months and downvoting me five times a day no matter what I say. And I get upset because I'm also a part of the Roosh Forum which: (1) doesn't allow its members to do that, and (2) even if it did allow its members to do that - contains members who would never do that because they have too much respect for the Forum. I can count many people who have said, "Downvoting shouldn't hide people's posts. Downvoting shouldn't be used for personal animosity, because if it is, then the entire community itself runs the risk of ostracizing unpopular opinions." Off the top of my head, the usernames: wdiaz, labmath2, BaylorPRSer, Frosty, Gazbone, and J. D. Stembal are among these members. But no one directly addressed their arguments! At best, Kevin Beal said, "I say we downvote assholes!" - which is a laughingly subjective argument that has no place on a philosophy forum which is supposed to be devoted to objective truth. (And, as predicted, no one said, "Wow, 2010, you're right. Assholes is totally a subjective word." They just ignored the argument...) So here I sit, getting downvoted repeatedly - but never lashing out, never using insulting language, never complaining to the mods, refining my arguments so that I can call-in to Stefan and apply them to my life. And everyone else either just idly watches or actively participates in the downvoting? (Thanks to those who upvote me five times a day to counteract what's happening. I don't know the names of everyone who does this, but I thank you all anyway.) What kind of community is this, where such a thing can "just happen"? And why is it that a community of men whose only shared interest is banging hot girls can outperform this one in both community-building and the self-improvement of its members?

It is rare for someone who opposes my viewpoints to accurately summarize my viewpoints. And, not only that, but with dispassionate language devoid of passive aggression and accusatory assumptions. Bravo. My only disagreement with you is over the blue-colored words. Because transgender has been hijacked by Marxist, social-justice warriors, Postmodernists, and so on, every transgender person is trying to control me. The very moment Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair magazine came out, a group of Twitter "mobsters" tried to get Mike Huckabee fired because he made a transgender joke six months ago. From here, I can turn your argument around by asking, "Do you support the use of force against me, particularly if I refuse to call Alice Amell 'she' instead of 'he'?" And I don't know how you can answer that without appearing either hypocritical or ignorant - (ignorant for under-estimating the dedication with which Postmodernists and Marxists are using transgender-support because it's just another weapon against White, heterosexual families). Your personal experiences here are very-well stated, but your political acumen is lacking. To me, all transgender people are part of the movement to control the "employ-ability" of everyone by monitoring their opinions of transgender people until proven otherwise. In another thread, I pointed out that a ten year old boy who doesn't identify as transgender was being forced to wear tutus and respond to "Danielle", because his parents wanted to teach him a lesson in "gender enlightenment". These results are the inevitable fall-out of using moralistic language to control the majority of people's natural revulsion to transgender individuals. And no large number of transgender people say, "We don't need anti-discrimination laws. We don't need mandatory pro-transgender education for children as young as five. We understand that not nearly every parent wants their children educated to be pro-transgender, and, you know what, we support that." Instead, transgender people either actively support such laws or look the other way and say, "But I'm not like that!" when these laws and events are happening. You did a good job of figuring out my perspective, so try to figure this one out: every transgender person I've encountered over the internet tries to heavily control the emotional reactions of others. And the easiest (if not only) way they do this is by claiming to be abused and waiting for others to dogpile on the accused. I have some empathy for the fact that you feel abused, and some sadness over the fact that you've been through this your entire life. But it is not my job to respond to your accusations of abuse. I will, however, say that I've always tried to remain emotionally calm at all times, to the point where I view emotional outbursts - such as "I'm being abused over the internet!" - with extreme suspicion and doubt. NOT doubt over whether you were abused, BUT doubt over whether you'll ever be truly happy because you haven't learned the essential life lesson that you can't control the emotions of others. You can't negotiate desire. You can't make someone like you, nor accept you. You can't do it with kindness or violence, complaining or stoic wishful thinking, anger nor happiness, joy nor depression. People will just accept you, or not - and there's nothing you can do about that.

Agreed. It would also be tragic if Alice Amell's obvious annoyance at my posts caused her to leave the thread and not respond to you.

Have only barely browsed this thread, but is there any way to differentiate between religions that absolutely don't get involved with the state, (such as most Buddhist sects, Amish in America), and those that are highly associated with the state, (such as Islam and some sects of Christianity)? My sense is that the state-rejecting ones are much more peaceful. But that's only my sense and I'm looking for something more concrete. ------------------ Edited to add: To the OP, the most interesting man in the world for you right now is Roosh. He's a pick-up artist who has seemingly converted to Christianity and is slowly but surely outlining his reasons for doing so.

It doesn't matter whether you call it evil. You call the oppression/discrimination of transgender people evil, too, right? So, how many hours have you spent advocating for no transgender oppression/discrimination? And how many hours have you spent advocating for no forcing male children to wear tutus and be called female names? If those numbers are imbalanced, especially because the second number is zero, then you don't have any empathy for these children. Simple as that.

Vox Day phrased it as follows, "Give a man a platform to speak, and he will speak. Remove the platform, and he will build his own." The ostracism and downvoting I've receive have motivated me to participate in tomorrow's call-in show. I hope I can sway Stefan's opinions, and thereby improve Stefan's message - but I'm also fearful that, if Stefan agrees with me, many of his listeners will leave.

From the Roosh Forum, about the early days of Reddit. Person One: "Reddit is one of the worst site designs ever created, and the sooner it dies the better. For a start, it's hard to decode what is and isn't important information from the clunky layout, and the actual mechanics of the site encourage homogeneity of ideas: posts with lots of "upvotes" appear higher up than posts with lots of "downvotes" by default, punishing deviation from the dominant ideas and beliefs of whatever subreddit you're currently in. Coupled with the fact that there are persistent user identities, the desire for ones ideas not to be rendered invisible by mass-downvoting, and the similar desire to be a respected "member" of the "community" create a network of incentives which are thoroughly anti-intellectual; where the best-loved (and therefore most visible) members of each subreddit are those who are capable of most creatively expressing orthodox thoughts..." Person Two: "I generally agree with this analysis, but it's worth noting it wasn't always like this. Reddit started as a small community of mostly tech-oriented guys. There was a lot of quality on the site. For awhile Reddit worked (or seemed to) when its audience was limited and things like iPhones had not made internet browsing on your phone the primary pasttime of 20somethings. Back in the day when these things were starting up, there was this notion that if you entrusted people with the basic power to make decisions for themselves, that the results would be good. This is really sort of a core idea to Democracy and Capitalism, so it's not really a shock that people who grew up wanted to bring this core idea to the internet. After all, we finally could make a perfectly agnostic democratic voting system. Then all the quality stuff would rise to the top, right? That's what I thought at the time. Turns out, we were wrong. The voting system breaks once you reach a critical mass of uneducated, low-effort voters. It's been an educational experience for a lot of us, and hopefully some meaningful lessons can be drawn from the bad examples these sites set for creating better social systems." -------------------- The lack of effort is what you're complaining against. It takes oh-so-little effort for people to put me on ignore, and then actually ignore me - but they can't even do that. It takes oh-so-little effort for people to say, "Yes, you had a point there." - but they can't even do that. It takes oh-so-little effort for people to say, "Yes, the language I used in this post was maximially designed to express emotional frustration. Perhaps, emotionally-neutral or emotionless-language would have been better." Now, I would greatly question the value of my posts if I didn't have so many people whom I routinely Skype with telling me, "You're right. You're doing fine. Keep going." ----------------- But as for "posting elsewhere", you could do that. My favorite forum is Roosh's, but you may not be interested in learning Pick-Up Artistry. Yet why not fight the good fight here? Why not continue to point out your disappointment with this forum, and then post in ways that set counter-examples? I do the best I can to make that happen, despite the hundreds of downvotes.

No, my entire argument is, "Let's witness how the transwomen and pro-transgender individuals respond to news that a ten year old male was forced to wear tutus and be called 'Danielle' by his parents." AncapFTW's response was no empathy, an accusation that I was trolling, and a complete misrepresentation of my argument. Alice Amell's response was no empathy, an accusation that I would never support a transgender individual, and (twice!) mis-quoting my perspective. Nathan Diehl's response was no empathy, no acknowledgement, and possibly a downvote. Rainbow Jamz's response was no empathy, no acknowledgement, and possibly a downvote. ----------------- The Roosh Forum is also having an extended discussion over Caitlyn Jenner, and one of the most well-liked posts is this: Paul McHugh is quite possibly the only M.D. in the West to publicly oppose sex-change procedures, and he believes that adult males who wish to surgically alter themselves to appear anatomically female fall into two main groups: (1) "conflicted and guilt-ridden homosexual men" (2) "heterosexual (and some bisexual) males who found intense sexual arousal in cross-dressing as females" McHugh, had several other impressions: First, "they were little changed in their psychological condition. They had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled". Second, they expressed little interest in and seemed indifferent to babies or children (typically female interests).Third, they came off as caricatures of the opposite sex. Your (collective) emotional responses are my argument, and your (collective) inability to understand this strengthens my argument.

Sweet. Thanks for your satire. It allowed me to explain my grievances with the forum, which can be expressed with one simple question, "Where is FDR's version of The Lizard of Oz?" Joel, did you browse through that thread? And, if so, what did you think?