themortalgod

So I found myself in a discussion with a female friend and we were discussing when she should have kids. My position is very similar to Stefs in that have kids when you are younger as it is healthier and doesn't waste a ton of resources building a career you are just going to throw away and while young you have the highest odds of a healthy baby. Logically I was able to more or less persuade her that the "woman can have it all" thing is a big myth (her initial plan was she was going to have kids in her 40s while also having a high level management position) but she is resiliently stuck on the idea that all she has to do is freeze her eggs when shes like 27 or 28 and then she can wait until shes in her 40s to actually have the children. I struggled to argue against this, though it strikes me as a poor choice. I googled around for arguments against it in terms of health risks but most articles on the subject I could find were merely citing that "insufficient study has been done on it to date to really draw any conclusions" so I'm left without really any evidence based arguments against it other than its a complete waste of money. (It will end up costing her $20-$30k at minimum) And that if anything happens to those eggs or they don't work out she is just screwed. Neither seem to be issues she is concerned about. The topic more or less has me interested as it is a tougher one to debate than the one Stef often is discussing about getting pregnant with 40 year old eggs having mega risks. Thoughts? Feelings?

Different bodies are different. `

To be fair a big part of this is also the massive devaluation of labor brought on by technological advancement. Not to argue against the point that many millennials are a bit on the immature side but back in the 1940s a 40-60 hour of general labour per week job required no education, very little intelligence, and only a willingness to consistently work and often was enough to support a large family with a stay at home mother and own a home. Not the case anymore. The way I see it is kids today sort of break down into 4 groups: 1. Useless education -> Most of the immature live at home graduates fall into this category. They made a foolish "follow your heart" choice in college and now have a Poli Sci, Gender Studies, Fine Art, Humanities, Psych, etc etc degree that has no value whatsoever so are stuck at home because the value of their labour is minimum wage (or less) but they have 5-6 digits of debt. Moving away from home is effectively impossible for these kids. 2. Useful education -> This represents the more mature graduates who have studied some sort of economically useful vocation (most likely STEM) and who are working their way through unpaid or low paid internships before being able to secure a reasonable paying job. (Remember, in the 40s, unpaid and low paid internships weren't really a thing, companies invested a livable income in new hires as they expected most of them to stay at the company for life so it was worth the investment) They also have 5-6 digits of debt. They are stuck at home temporarily but have a trajectory of self sustenance assuming they prove to be competent and employable in their field. 3. Useless no education -> This represents mostly low IQ individuals who also have virtually no work ethic and are not willing to do what it takes to succeed in higher paying labour jobs. These are the full time burger flippers who fortunately have no educational debt but often have credit card debt, they are stuck at home because their labour is worth less than cost of living and they really are taking no initiative to change that. 4. Useful no education -> This represents either low IQ individuals with amazing work ethic or higher IQ individuals who avoid post secondary. They tend to be the people who choose careers in higher paying trades. They don't live at home because they were earning a livable income by 18 or 19 and were well on their way to a comfortable income in their early 20s. In the 40s, there were very few 2s relative to 1s and most of the 3s could find a decent living on assembly lines or other similar labour jobs. But millennials who place themselves on track 2 or 3 now are facing only a future of low income so they often end up staying at home far longer than one would expect. The problem with something like this is that it would ultimately lead to those in power manipulating IQ test methodology in order to increase their support in the voting pool.

I experienced the same when I was younger. Though it had the unfortunate side effect of always feeling hungry. Personally I find I am healthiest on a mostly plant based diet with no starchy carbs (remember plants ARE carbs but no one is ever going to argue that eating salad is bad. Its that extra glucose molecule in starchy carbs that is the enemy.) I reached the best BMI of my life when on that sort of diet but it meant a grumbling, hungry, stomach 24 hours per day. Which kinda sucks. So I think, personally, that striking a balance is key.

Bluntly, I have to ask, why not? You clearly are working for an organization that fundamentally disagrees with the base of your own moral beliefs. If companies start to lose good employees because of this crap then they may start to re-evaluate supporting it. In the free market you vote with you choice and actions. By choosing to stay you are choosing to vote in support of this sort of activism. I'd also point out that staying at a company like this one poses a direct risk to you. If they support this sort of thing it is likely that even a cursory accusation of "harassment" from a female employee about you (whether it is legitimate or not) would be met with little expected burden of proof and a heavy handed consequence for you that could have harsh ripple effects throughout your career and life.

Ha, seems about right. I've always felt being a non religious right winger leads to a pretty lonesome life haha.

Personally, I'd prefer it to just be open to whoever wants to take the initiative. The idea that "men" should be forced to patiently wait while the women select who they want is insane to me. I didn't install it for giggles and its pretty obvious that the local crowd on bumble is much much bigger so it does seem to be wear the Vancouver ladies are.

Further interesting information. haha I have more fun analyzing the patterns in these apps than the actual dating. After asking around it seems most women in Vancouver now prefer "Bumble" to all the other social media apps because it blocks men from taking the lead. They much prefer being presented with a buffet of men and choosing based on their desires with no ability for the men to take initiative. Their business model appears to be giving men the ability to show up on women's "buffet" for longer. That kinds says a lot about the culture hahah. (And is kinda insane to me, there is no way I'd be interesting in just putting my face up and "waiting" for someone to pick me and hoping they are good match. That sounds like online dating for omega males to me. )

hahah, which kinda shows how "bad" Vancouver is if Seattle looks so much better In comparison.

So been continually trying out this online dating thing over the last couple weeks and have made some interesting observations in addition to the ones above: - Seattle is close enough to Vancouver that the "system" doesn't allow me to filter out them as results. Which is really unfortunate as I have zero interest in a long distance relationship. (and I'd consider crossing a national border and a 3h long distance even if the dating site doesn't). Because Seattle results are mixed in though, I've noticed some really interesting things. 1. There is at least a 20:1 ratio of profiles from Seattle as there are profiles from Vancouver even though both cities are about the same size. This suggests that the Vancouver sampling is actually really limited relative to the population as a whole which might explain my initial observations above. 2. The Seattle results represent a much more diverse pool of profiles. Women ranging from a 1 to 10, conservative to liberal. Varying viewpoints, etc. It feels like a representation of the population. Meanwhile the Vancouver profiles skew very heavily towards the liberal and unattractive end of the spectrum. Other than fake scam accounts there are almost no profiles that would be above a 6 or 7 and certainly no 9s or 10s. Tons of blue hair though. Which makes me wonder if there is something about the culture in this city specifically that makes it less likely for women to use online dating which would explain why my previous experience had pointed to such a rough experience. ​Which has me quite curious as to what about the local cultures that contribute to such a stark difference between the two. Any ideas? I've never been to Seattle so really can't comment on it.

lol how is it self serving? I never assumed god was unable to be aware of all those beings. Presuming a god's ability to simultaneously be aware of all beings in the universe there is a big difference between knowing of them and caring what they do. Why would it rationally care? Eternal salvation of the immortal soul? (That is determined by the deity) If it believes the eternal salvation of the immortal soul is so important (and should be so closely tied to worship of it) why not directly communicate that belief? Unless you believe there is a greater god that determines eternal salvation that we have no awareness of and it is the duty of "our" god to influence us in order to meet the requirement of this unknown greater god? But thats a whole different argument and also one with obvious logical flaws to it. Furthermore, why give beings free will if you intended to punish them for using it? Especially considering that you never intend to communicate what actions are good and what actions are bad? (Outside of religious texts which a human really has no way of knowing if it reflects the beliefs of the deity or are just some work of fiction by other humans) Faith, in essence, should be a sign of respect for the will of your deity, unfortunately, respect must be earned and said deity has never actually done anything that can measurably be used as a basis of respect. In a simple sense, within the context of most religions the god gave humans the ability to be skeptical but never considered giving them any mechanism to dispel that skepticism in regards to itself? Religion serves as a control mechanism. An all powerful deity doesn't need such an indirect control mechanism if it has the power to grant or remove free will and impose direct control if it so chooses. It could trivially make any adjustments it wants explicitly rather than using a vague implicit text. The use of religion as a control mechanism seems more like it benefits mortal individuals who want the power to influence free will but can only do so through manipulation of belief. Of course, there is also the possibility that the god is cruel rather than loving. Sort of goes against the teachings of Christian belief but if you were to imagine god with a similar disposition to a child torturing an insect for pleasure everything would make a lot more sense. Though still be just as impossible to objectively prove based on the evidence we are aware of.

This reminds me a lot of the Oracle's position in The Matrix. She explains to Neo that he isn't there to make the choice, he has already made it. Rather, he experiences the events of his life to understand why the choice was made. Its a strange position that sort of projects free will as being determinist while still being free. I always felt it was sort of a paradoxical house of cards from a logical point of view. Back on the more specific topic, I believe that if we were able to "see" the future in any way, shape, or form that we would inevitably change it and thus our vision of the future could never actually be accurate. Its similar to the Observer-expectancy effect, which creates cognitive bias that will alter our reaction to future events even if we already know what is going to happen and are making an active choice to do our best not to change the course of events. To see the future is to change the future, which means we never actually saw the future but, rather, only a possibility that became impossible the moment we observed it.

Like with the worship of a fictional entity, nothing outside of the realms of your own mind. The benefit or harm of said worship is a construct of the mind, not a benefit of the object. Just like with a theoretical god in the cosmos. Our worship has no bearing on its existence, thus it wouldn't care about our worship. We worship for us, not for it. However, in the case of religion humans worship because they believe the deity demands worship. Its a paradox. If the deity is so massive and powerful that it is worth worshipping it likely doesn't care enough about us to want to be worshipped.

Always felt this graph was was pretty telling to show a distinct trend. Moreover though, I remember seeing stats one time that showed based on polls a pretty large number of muslims supported radical action even if they did not take part in it themselves. Not all but much higher than 1%. I think the number was closer to 12 or 13% on average across all muslims (though much higher in certain places as the stats in your link show) said that radical action was sometimes justified and over 50% believe that Sharia law should be enforced in all countries.

If that is/was the case then it is arbitrary and a construct rather than a being, in which case worship it would be no different than worshiping any other inanimate object.

tbh, my position is that there is no rational reason why a god of infinite power and wisdom would care even remotely about the individual worship of mortal humans who's lifespan is no more than a blink in its perception. It makes no sense. Our lives are so infinitely trivial within the context of being like that that our collective existence likely wouldn't even be within the scope of its awareness. If a divine being actually did exist (which all observable evidence points to be being incredibly unlikely but impossible to objectively prove) that the fact that it chooses to take no part in our lives whatsoever in any observable way shape or form suggests that my position is accurate. It doesn't care. It creates trillions of galaxies, with trillions of planets, and on one planet that houses trillions of beings, billions of which are humans that being cares about what each and every one of them does in their relatively insignificantly short life but does not care enough to actually communicate its desire directly so all of them are stuck in this permanent state of confusion about its intentions? My theory is that either god doesn't exist or doesn't care and that religion is entirely a human construct that has nothing to do with a divine will.

Ha, I've set the search to search out several hundred km in all directions

Ha, I suspect you are right about the wrong pond thing. I'm wondering, though if its the wrong pond in that I'm trying online dating or its the wrong pond in that I live in the wrong city. I have been joining social groups as well. (Mostly around outdoor activities such as climbing and hiking, its super uber liberal leaning as well though. ). I have attended some more right wing events (Red Pill screening for example) They tend to be sausage fests though. It is curious though, dating life aside, I can't imagine that its actually true that in this city (or ones like it) that liberalism is quite literally 99%+ that seems insane to me. That number must be skewed somehow.

Yes, it will, that is until it doesn't. Professional salesmen average between 7 and 8 points of contact with a given prospect before they actually make a sale. Most people think you should try to make the sale once, if you fail, move on. Instead its about continually putting yourself in the mind of the customer. Naturally don't harass them but you develop a rapport over the course of months or even years where you check back in every once in a while. Professional salesmen work this like crazy and plan their strategies around it. Unfortunately, it takes a ton of time and effort. Its a little tougher with dating, but I'd assume that for anyone below the top 5% of men they will experience more rejection unless they get lucky and find a really good match right away. And playing the long game with trying to get a date is much less practical. Unfortunately my success in this arena is just as bad so I can't pretend to offer any real wisdom here. I think self doubt is a huge factor though. Women are so good at picking up on subtle hints of self doubt and they often reject based on that alone.

So, at the recommendation of some folk on this forum I've been tinkering with online dating and so far had very little success. One thing I noticed, though, is that the frequency of women who write "feminist" in their profiles is really high which certainly compounds the issue. Today, though, I discovered an advanced search feature on the site which allowed me to search based on the answer to questions so I decided, out of curiosity to filter based on political identity. When I filter to include women (21-30) that identify as "liberal/left wing" I am met with thousands of profiles found. If I filter for women who identify as "centrist/other" only 42 results are returned. Finally, if I filter based on conservative/right wing only 2 results are returned. This was quite interesting to me as I know that it isn't likely that 99.9% of women are Liberal. Which got me to thinking about trying to make sense of these results, off hand I have a few potential theories, but am not able to test them so was wondering what everyone else thinks or if I'm missing something: 1. I live in a very Liberal city (Vancouver), thus an extreme split might actually be real. 2. Conservative and moderate women are not drawn to online dating 3. Conservative and moderate women are listing themselves as Liberal when they are not as they believe showing their true beliefs are too dangerous even in an anonymous setting 4. There is something wrong with the search algorithm that the site is using. Thoughts, feelings, suggestions? This, naturally, comes from a personal desire to date but it also has me quite curious and interested. I expected leftists to be the majority, but certainly not over 99%.

I totally here you in regards to an aversion to selling. For the longest time I actively chased a career in photography for the simple reason that I loved photography and actually was (am) quite good at it. Unfortunately, the closer and closer I got to becoming pro the more and more I realized that a career in photography is all about sales and marketing and actually very little about actually doing photography. I eventually just called it quits. I love photography, I hate selling and I was investing immensely towards a career as a salesman that got to use his camera from time to time. As a hobby I'm able to shoot more and always want I want. I'm able to keep it fun. (I also already had a stable career that was far more lucrative in the web app field anyway) For you, I'd suggest that if you don't like selling look for jobs at digital agencies. Il be blunt with you that the money in selling small brochure style websites is on a big decline and will eventually dry up completely. There are too many services like square space now that actually are really good. Web designers aren't needed for simple little websites anymore. The money is in specializing and developing web development skills that can't be automated so easily. Those skills often come into strongest use when working for larger companies either as a contractor or salaried employee. (Or, if you have entrepreneurial spirit in developing something that has its own business value). Another option that might be worth exploring if you are really good at web design but hate selling and want to work for yourself is to build website themes that sell on marketplaces such as theme forest. You need to be damn good though, the people making good money in those marketplaces are creating world class templates, everyone else likely struggles to make a living and I imagine most fail to but hey, no salesmanship needed. As for the friends thing, the best thing I could ever do for my social life was give up social media. I still use Facebook chat but I disabled my news feed and removed all the social apps from my phone (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc). I found that social media not only dominates so much time that it can end up crippling your life but it also gives a false impression that you have a ton of friends when in reality you just have a ton of acquaintances. Since removing social media from my life I've been able to focus on, foster, and grow the friendships that matter to me while being able to completely forget all the false friends who only make an effort when they need something from me.

When I was young the Redwall books were pretty high in my wheel house. So were Animorphs. Shade's Children was pretty good too. The Giver is a fantastic read as well as it paints a pretty powerful picture of what an SJW driven dystopian future may look like. Conan Doyle is also a great option for some of the older kids. (Holmes, Lost World, etc). Boxcar Children isn't bad, I don't remember much about it though but it was pretty adventurous and resourceful if memory serves. The Narnia books are another great option. Lloyd Alexander also has some pretty strong fantasy aimed at younger audiences. Castle in the Attic was good too. Indian in the cupboard is another great series for younger readers. Princes Bride is timeless. Treasure Island is also great. I'd also say The Hobbit is a good one. (Though LOTR and Silmarillion are prob a bit much for most young kids) Also when I was young my parents bought me a collection of books that were abridged versions of many of the great classics shortened and simplified to appeal to a younger audience. These are them, they did an amazing job of making me interested in literature as I grew older: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=classic+starts Calvin and Hobbes, though comics, are also fantastic for any boy I think. They really push hard to cement the value of imagination in a really fun way.

I'v always felt the must have been born in the US requirement for presidency was always pretty ridiculous to begin with so I more or less have never paid much heed to Obama's birth certificate drama. Obama was a bad president because he had poor ideas and terrible policies, not because he may or may not have been born in the United States. Personally I think that the requirement should be more something such as having American Citizenship and have spent a very significant amount of time living in the US. (Such as 20+ years)

I think a big factor that many people aren't aware of in regards to the Hollywood pay gap is that there are a LOT more female actresses than male actors. I used to do headshot photography so often frequented acting events to meet new clients, for every budding new male actor there was at least 10 budding new female actresses. Economics 101, when you have 10x the supply of one resource compared to the other but demand is roughly the same there most certainly will be a price disparity.

Personally I feel the conflict of interest presented by a government controlled social media mechanism would probably be worse and more harmful to freedom of speech than privately controlled ones. That said, I fear the social media space is starting to look to much like a monopoly controlled by a few players and thus abuse of the market is enabled to take place In my opinion Facebook was engaging in pretty heavy anti-competitive practices when it bought IG and also was looking to buy Snapchat. With the decline of Twitter that means FB is quickly control of far too much of the mainstream social media market. This coupled with how nearly impossible it is for new competitors to gain ground in the space. (When was the last time a social media really took off that was new? Google has tried so hard to make G+ go and its just a flop. The problem with social media is that its value isn't necessarily tied to the innovation of the product but rather where everyone is. Unless you come up with something that somehow grows mega huge, mega fast, there really is no new competition.) Thus I feel the solution lies somewhere in action designed to protect the free market rather than one that cedes power to government oversight.