The difference is Saudi Arabia is always evil and the US is only frequently evil. Always when a Republican is president but also occasionally when a Democrat is president.

So… do you find extermination of these people is a more tolerable course of action than getting to know them?

False dichotomy. I never said I’d start the fire. I said if they died I’d feel nothing, not that I want to go out and start killing them.

The “rural swathes of MAGA chuds” (keep drinking the 1%s rural vs urban division of the middle and lower classes why don’t you) are a large enough group/voting bloc that they cannot simply be ignored.

I fucking live in the rural areas myself and I’m surrounded by mostly contemptible people. I’m not “drinking” anything.

And I can ignore them because there is nothing realistic that I can do about them with out suffering the absolutely massive waste of my finite time alive interacting with them trying to “turn” a small percentage of them less evil.

But you’re right it doesn’t have to be me. Could I go that route? Sure, but there isn’t much in the way of ROI and I don’t owe these people shit. I also can’t endorse anyone else do so in my stead though either. I don’t think I could with a straight face tell people to waste their own time if I can’t justify myself doing it.

You can resign yourself to try and just outlive them. You could just keep trying to outvote them every time, forever. Sad, but tolerable and entirely understandable, attitude.

I mean, technically rural areas are going to slowly and naturally disintegrate economically. Which is good, but its not going to happen fast enough to meaningfully fix the problem in a time frame that matters to me. As for “outvoting”, dude I’m really blackpilled on political engagement after Trump won a second time I don’t even want to talk about voting anymore. I think we’re all getting what we deserve. A very loud part of my mind is extremely vindictive and wants almost all of US voters to suffer even if it includes me at this point. In so far as is possible: we deserve it.

Or we could all start making concentrated efforts to start treating people with god awful views as people where some amount of them might be able to be changed. Not as subhuman mosters (the term “chud” is pretty disgusting when you get down to it), as unredeemable fools, as non-entities (wouldn’t care if they dropped dead), or at best as roadbumps to be driven over on the path towards the future.

I’m not even concerned with the world’s future. We lost. I’m just trying to salvage whats left of my life after wasting so much of my time, mind, and body on politics. The only reason I’m still engaging with it on Lemmy still is because I’m at work with nothing else to do. The only reason I still engage with it elsewhere is algorithmic influence. I’m outside of this actively trying to escape politics as much as feasibly possible. I’m putting effort into me and my loved ones now to survive and thrive in the upcoming slow grind collapse. That’s it.

Willingly and intentionally saying “but those people are so backwards that I could never work with them” is just a disgustingly elitist concept.

bonus ramble

You know, when I was younger growing up in mostly rural areas, I thought I was a worthless fucking idiot weirdo. I thought all my peers around me had their shit together and understood the world better than me. My peers noticed this and early life for me was fairly awful as a result. Redneck dipshit bullies that TBH I probably would smile at their death if I had learned of now-a-days but back then I thought I deserved it. I thought I was a loser and I just needed to keep my head down. I thought everyone else around me was more competent and put together. I believed this so firmly that I barely engaged with employment early on in my life as I thought the only way for me would be faking my abilities. I ended up barely getting a college degree which I also thought was a fluke. Hoping that just having the degree would “trick” an employer into hiring me for some decent paying but easy office job. Every interview I was a shaking insecure mess and I was stuck for a long time in that state we call “NEET”.

Then I finally got a job and I finally started working and realized that holy shit: the people around me are actually moronic. I excelled in my job. Constant remarks from people in disbelief at my performance reviews. I literally had a performance evaluator tell me they had never seen anyone manipulate the UI the way that I did in the 7 years they worked there. At first I felt a blip of pride. Yet later I felt nothing but utter and total horror at this revelation. Not smug satisfaction. Not relief that I was actually smarter than I thought. Pride drained away. Just horror remained. Terror. Shock. Despair. And now bitter anger that I had wasted so much time thinking I was an idiot but that actually I was surrounded by people so stupid they barely managed to do the bare minimum of their jobs, but kept them because they were the bosses nephew or a good christian or vapidly likable or some similar shit. No one fucking tries.

I tell that story because the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump felt like that moment of horror in my life but a million times over. I had spent an absurd amount of time and energy on politics for about 15-20 years because I thought that people were capable of getting better because we lived in an age of abundant information. I joined organizations, I canvassed for Harris, I engaged with my rightwing family members and annoyed my boss and co-workers (risking my job). I hoped people were getting smarter about their own self interest and would start voting in ways that reflect that and but we needed to just dodge a second Trump term. I now feel like I’ve wasted my life on this. Time and effort I could have spent fortifying my own personal situation because most people are so painfully self destructive and stupid they act as a vortex and will drag you down into them if you let them. And I have been doing that. I’m done doing that.

These people do not deserve another ounce of my respect or time. I’ve spent too much of my life humbling myself and they almost never returned the favor. FUCK THEM. I’m getting out if it fucking kills me, and it will. No one is going to make it, but I’m going to make sure that on my ride towards the grave I enjoy my remaining chunk of life as much as feasibly possible and giving up on trying to help people who would never do the same for me.

So no, I hope rural communities crumble and everyone is forced to move into cities. People become sociopaths or religious idiots living out so spread out. Let it rot.

The state doesn’t “let itself wither,” it erases its foundations as a tool to reconcile class distinctions.

Why would it erase something that gives those within it power? If the reason it exists is to reconcile class distinctions, it will not bother to erase class distinctions and will in fact work to make sure the justification of its existence is maintained. People with power do not willingly permit the reasons for their power to “naturally dissolve”. If they must, they will manufacture a crisis to justify their continued power.

I’m not much of a fan of Engels, as I noticed of what I’ve read of him that his works or works involving him tend towards subtly implying (or even explicitly stating) top down structures and authoritarianism is initially necessary to achieve communism in the ways he frames his analysis. Something that Marx seemed generally more mixed or neutral on when he wrote independently of Engels depending on how late in his writings you look.

I’m aware of what you meant. Administration isn’t a class, and is not based on domination of the means of production through ownership, but is merely a necessary part of the production process. Further, the proletariat wouldn’t exist either, proletarians are specifically wage laborers that sell their labor to capitalists, what we are discussing is classless society.

Regardless, having access to the controls that gives one power over economic value and the ability to exploit that power, even if its not through ownership its still under their control. For example, someone who runs a non-profit organization but uses all the grant money to build a clubhouse for them and their friends rather than something broadly socially beneficial is exploiting the people who actually generated the value for the grant money in the first place, even if the clubhouse is not the administrator’s by deed.

I work for a non-profit. I know a lot of decisions above me get made because its more beneficial for leadership or even employees rather than the greater community.

Why is a class based society bad? Why is it harmful? My personal answer is that it just results in a generally worse world for people through taking away control over their own lives as they end up largely dictated by capitalists. If the system you aim to replace classes with reproduces many of those same kinds of consequences for the average person but just changes who’s in charge then its not really what I would describe as a meaningfully better world. Its the same shit but with a different color palette.

I’m not convinced a state with its own self interest would ever permit its power to “wither”. That doesn’t mean a state can’t be used for good, or that states are intrinsically evil, but a state given some ideological revolutionary foundation, monopoly on violence, and a “ends justify the means” attitude towards achieving utopia and an indifference towards individuals under its power is going to commit some atrocities and historically has.

I wasn’t saying administrators would become capitalists in the strictest definition, but in the fact that they’d become a class distinct from the rest of the proletariat. You’d still have a state enforced hierarchical structure that has its own interests. It just wont be structured around facilitating various corporations and their profits. You can argue that’s an improvement over capitalism, but to suggest the state will naturally wither away in such a system is naive at best and a manipulative lie at worst.

As for the withering of the state, Marx came up with the concept. Engels merely came up with the phrase.

Where did Marx originally describe the idea?

It doesn’t mean the total erasure of administration abd management.

Except they become the new capitalists. They would develop an interest in maintaining their position as administrators and as administrators would have the means even if it conflicts with everyone else’s interests. They’d become the new upper class.

Also, I’m surprised you didn’t point out that the “withering of the state” was Friedrich Engels’ idea technically. Not Marx.

I can’t tell you how much heat I’ve taken for suggesting that (at best) ignoring all the fuckers that voted for Trump and not trying to find any way to build relationships so you can turn them is a losing strategy.

Look I hate tankies, accelerationists, and purity testing among progressives, but generally speaking the great rural swaths of MAGA chuds are as much of a waste of time as tankies are. They’re either completely deluded or sociopathically self-interested. There isn’t any moral standing to demanding I go out and have a beer with my racist MAGA neighbor. Nor would that even be a tolerable course of action for me, he could literally die in a fire I’d feel nothing.

Look, I get your rage but people do not owe their lives to the cause of good to merely not be seen as a “problem”. They just don’t.

What exactly would they have to do to no longer been seen as your enemy? And why exactly do you think they would decide to change their ways when you decide that is what they are for merely existing and not throwing themselves against the fascists to be gutted? They’re just going to double down and say ‘fuck you’. And they would be right to if I am completely honest.

Executive dysfunction is also an autism thing. Brain no likely changing topics, starting work on a responsibility that isn’t my current obsession is very difficult.

Lol, I think you are massively conflating influence with literal programming. I don’t think you would find anyone credible to agree that robots have “will”

Also, “theoretical conscious” is doing a lot of lifting in this argument.

You mean a “theoretically conscious” robot would theoretically have free will, since this has not happened, and some would argue it cannot happen, we have no idea how we would treat them.

That’s just it though, there is no reason to assume that there is something intrinsically special about the human brain that allows it to exclusively be conscious. The brain is just a computer made of flesh, one that merely at the moment can’t be programmed directly. If we replicated it artificially and it was able to be fully programmed the obvious implications is that there also is nothing special about our own brains in terms of “will” because we’d have a replica that we’d be able to directly control and program. It’d just mean our programming came about from evolutionary forces.

What? I mean there are theological libertarian takes, but a libertarian take on free will is not innately religious. They just believe that predeterminism is logically incompatible with freewill.

“Predeterminism” is a red herring. I don’t believe in predeterminism either. I don’t think the future is already written.

You can decide you don’t want to engage with the body of work, but you can’t then critique it.

Again… I really don’t know how you are interpreting this [libertarianism]?

“You can decide not to read the bible and hundreds of years of theological theory, but you can’t then critique it.”

If 500 years ago, someone wrote a complicated theory that stated that everything was made of bananas and then over the course of the past 500 years people debated the specifics filling up tomes of books on the nonsense I wouldn’t be required to read it all to not be fully in the right to completely dismiss it as gibberish and to openly insist that others also not waste their mental energy on it.

I find libertarian ideas around free will to be nonsense at a fundamental level. Reading the specifics would go no where. I’d need to be convinced that the core idea had some merit to begin with. As far as I can see, they have zero.

Axioms are self evident, if your beliefs were actual axioms we’d all believe in them… I mean, definitely a step forward…but I’d still challenge you to practice some skepticism about these “axioms” of yours.

There are multiple definitions of axiom. I’m referring to personal ideological axioms. "A self-evident principle or one that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument; a postulate. "

So what are your core beliefs based on if not empiricism?

Empiricism itself is not a factual statement, its a system of thinking. Empiricism is indeed a core belief of mine.

So how do we handle subjectivity?

You’ll need to be more specific. What do you mean “handle”? Do you mean the issue that you can’t truly “know” anything?

Occam’s razor is only meant to adjudicate between two competing theories that are equally supported by evidence that have already passed theoretically scrutiny.

I guess? I not sure how this contradicts my usage of it? Also why arbitrarily two? If you are discussing something where every theory has zero evidence for it then you’d be able to select the most simple out of a list of theories of any size. They’d all have zero evidence. Its not like you’d be forced to only consider two of them.

I fail to see how you can make a claim against the existence of free will with that thought process. [That I can’t fabricate a fairy tale]

Because free will itself is a fairy tale. But it got stopped one step further. There being free will is more complicated than there simply being no free will.

So your rationality isn’t influenced by observation and your observation never influences your rationality?

The rational abstraction is systematized. Its not so much that it’s not a potential that observation could never influence my rational thinking, but that if an observation does then that has potential impacts on all of my rational thinking systems. This is pretty unlikely, we’re talking a major and profound table flip. It would need to be demonstrated that the very way my rational system of thinking is inferior at obtaining truth compared to another new way.

That said, as they are, the only abstract thinking that would follow is more like a procedural set of steps that I’ve already come to follow to process new evidence.

So rationality “applies” to evidence, but like a pre-written function.

Could that not be influenced by the sexist expectations set upon women by a patriarchal society?

Oh it definitely is. It however isn’t the only influence, patriarchy is only one component of cultural conservativism. There is also religion and capitalism.

Plus, lets be honest here women just are less horny because of the nature of hormones. Just ask someone on any kind of HRT. We probably evolved that way to create a competitive pressure on men. Natural is brutal and amoral, and men are thrown into a metaphorical gladiatorial arena by it. The one that comes out on top gets to have kids (and have a fulfilling sex life), and from my perspective this is pretty awful. I’m not a fan of nature. I want every individual, men and women (and otherwise), to have fulfilling sex lives.

For the compatibilists

The problem is, maybe you are right that Sapolsky hasn’t looked into them but I’ve looked into them and their definition of free will is not meaningfully different from a theoretical conscious yet programmed robot’s “will”.

It also shouldn’t disagree arguably with the more important issues of justice and meritocracy. Its just shifting the definition of ‘free will’ to just be ‘autonomy’.

If those are the same thing, sure whatever that definition of “free will” is true but then robots also have free will, and we treat a programmed autonomous robot very differently compared to a human.

For the libertarians

They’re religious and I don’t engage in religion, spirituality, supernaturalism, or theology. Absolute waste of time.

The problem with Sapolsky is that he doesn’t engage with the mountains of literature that have already been written about this exact subject

Read what some of the most famous minds throughout history have to say about it before enacting upon your theory with practice that may be harmful to yourself or the people around you.

Maybe Sapolsky knew they were wastes of time and skipped them. You don’t have to read the bible to know christianity is a waste of time. I don’t need to read libertarian ideology to know the same about their ideas.

instead supplements his own definition of free will that no one is utilizing, so ultimately he is engaging with a strawman.

Free will hasn’t been meaningfully defined to differentiate itself from “Autonomy” by compatibilists. Their definition as a result is worthless. Libertarians basically believe in magic.

If anything, he’s offering a steelman.

Whatever your core beliefs are, having them be inflexible when challenged with new information or perspective is not rational.

My “core beliefs” are basically my axioms. And axioms are more like ideological goals or ways of thinking. Changing those certainly can happen, it used to be the case for me that my moral axioms placed “truth” above basically everything but now its below harm reduction for instance.

If someone’s core belief is more of a specific “factual statement”, then sure. One should be willing to change one’s beliefs with new evidence. And really it shouldn’t even be a core belief in the first place.

yes but [Empiricism’s] obviously limited by the subjectivity of the observer. Have you ever read any Hegel? If we utilized empirical thought alone then we wouldn’t be able to process any abstract thought. Empiricism is what I was talking about with the phenomenon that is observable and repeatable. If your claim is that “shared truth” is theory that can be put forward through the scientific method… Okay, but that invalidates a vast sum of what it means to be human, including most rational and abstract thought. Arguments against empiricism are famously as old as Socrates.

What I believe is true: 1) I engage with empiricism or scientific consensus. 2) If something is outside of empiricism or scientific consensus I fall to Occam’s Razor. 3) If something can’t be engaged with either of those things, I simply assume I cannot know right now and have to wait for empiricism or scientific consensus and that it isn’t worth fabricating a comforting fairy tale to explain it.

The “abstract thinking” all happens essentially at 0) My way of figuring out what is true stems from rationality and rational thinking structures. Abstract thinking never follows the other steps.

Healthy for you my dude… Learning how to manage scenarios like we discussed in a healthy way is all about self improvement. I don’t imagine you like feeling depressed or feeling like you are in pain when you see a particular person who didn’t wrong you.

Given that its earnest, I appreciate the concern. That said, if I hadn’t avoided them I’m pretty sure I would have unironically risked suicidal ideation. There wasn’t a safe way for me to engage at the time but to minimize. The only reason I’m able to talk about it now is that it was a long time ago and I’m kind of dead inside anyway at this point.

There have been people I’ve seen that I also felt similar to, but they’ve not been people I had to regularly see.

From the sounds of it then this isn’t a male problem, but a class problem… My point is that painting it as a male problem as most like to do, can lead to a misdirection this anger towards parties whom do not deserve it, namely women and leftist in general. We’ve seen a massive rise in mysoginy and young men being attracted to the alt right because of this misdirection of blame.

It can be both. Its in fact many things, religious and cultural norms play a major role as well.

Again, women also like sex and are restricted from it for the same reasons.

Absolutely, but they simply aren’t at the same rates and getting consent for sex from a heterosexual/bisexual man is rarely a problem for the average heterosexual/bisexual woman.

I would say actively avoiding someone is doing something.

Its doing something, but its not “Doing something to her.” Its more like doing something to myself.

Which we are doing. Adding in personal perspective is important to determine how a person feels and acts within a society, which is why you added your anecdotal experience in the first place. I think it’s a bit of a double standard to then expect not to address your anecdotes.

OK, let me break this down because there needs to be fewer people who do this.

I added my anecdote for context as supporting contribution to my argument to demonstrate an idea or probable reality. I wasn’t interested in actively changing the subject to me personally as the focus. Especially since that can often just result in discussing my character instead of engaging with the main argument, which is basically what you did.

If you wanted to attack the relevance/factuality/meaningfulness of the anecdote itself that is fair game. However, you then took your chance to decide largely to attack my character. This was ultimately me being good faith and willing to open up for the sake of a more meaningful discussion and you turned it into a dunk and a personal criticism.

This did not hurt my feelings but it annoyed me because its escaping from my actual points and meant suddenly I needed to defend my character, something I really don’t even care that much about on here as this is specifically the account I use to misanthropically complain about the state of the world during slow times at work. In order to maintain the legitimacy of my argument I ended up having to waste time defending myself. It just bogged down the conversation.

I do think you have some pretty flawed beliefs when it comes to your philosophical perspective and would be interested what exactly influenced them.

The first time I came to the conclusion that there is no free will was when I was neutrally discussing it on the internet and someone asked “What is your will free from?” I was already leaning against it at that point but wasn’t sure. That framing immediately cemented my belief.

There is also Robert Sapolsky. Who has recently been promoting what is essentially the exact same belief I’ve had for about 5-6 years now. He’s a much smarter person than I and maybe could explain my perspective better.

Mental health professionals aren’t supposed to help you lie to yourself, they are supposed to help you understand your own perspective and help you come up with ways to navigate the world in a healthy way.

Healthy for me? Or healthy for society? Healthy by the metrics of me enjoying my best possible life or healthy by the metric of expected normal human behavior?

What one person defines as healthy is not always the same as another.

The generalization he was speaking about were about claiming the male loneliness epidemic was just about trying to get laid.

Well, its not only about that. That’s a major component but there are other issues.

That said the framing of it as “only” sex seems to belittle the importance of having sex as a form of existential fulfillment. I’m someone who thinks we all should have more of it with more people. Which the reason I engage in one night stands.

A bit of a tangent but I also identify as polyamorous. Though still looking for a polycule with some deeper relationships, I don’t live in a particularly progressive area though so I don’t expect to get one unless I can escape this conservative rural hell hole I currently live in. I almost got a girlfriend here a little while back but she insisted on monogamy so we ended up just as friends. Though admittedly possibly a strained friendship, since she seems annoyed that I insisted on polyamory years ago.

there is no such thing as “truth of reality”.

This is a fundamental disagreement I think. Do you not believe in empiricism?

If men are being fucked over to more significant degree than who is doing it? Pretty much every social structure is dominated by men. So are we claiming that men are responsible for fucking over men?

Anyone with power to effect the way society is structured. So yes this would include men. But generally the men complaining aren’t powerful men with the needed influence over society and culture to fix the problem on their own.

By specifying it as male loneliness, you are alluding to a problem needing to be solved. When people look for the source of the problem and suggest it may be men, people yell victim blaming. So who does that leave?

Then why dictate it [lack of sex] as a “male loneliness” problem?

Because generally if you ask men if they’d like some sex with someone that they’re even only slightly attracted to, they are pretty likely say yes. I know because I’m bi. Guys are extremely easy (at least bi and gay ones), even the hot ones.

Most average individual men are very willing to “solve” the problem but whether they can solve it is largely dictated by gatekeepers. And those gatekeepers aren’t always women deciding to forego sex with them on a broad scale. Sometimes its just societal rules and expectations. Sometimes its law restricting sex work. Sometimes its cultural influence (religion, fictional media, social media) and capitalist enterprise: Like dating apps which are specifically engineered to keep paying customers romantically and sexually unsatisfied so they’ll keep using the app. Its also the dynamics of the economy but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Sounds like you could use that excuse anytime an action you do hurts someone?

Maybe if you interpret it in a very specific way. If I did or said something to her that was specifically rude or harmful that isn’t really “excusable” obviously.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about me taking active steps to minimize our interaction. I do not owe other people my time or energy outside of previous agreements.

You can’t exactly talk to society…

But we can talk about society.

Lol, that’s a bit of a pedantic tool to evaluate of determinism. However in simple terms free of the concept of predetermination.

“predeterminism” is as you acknowledge a concept and that’s not what the question is asking. What is your will free from that has a real effect on what your decisions actually end up being? Are your decisions somehow made outside of the dictation of physics?

I don’t have the ability to choose between different courses of actions, or have the agency to control my own actions to fulfill a personal sense of morality?

Your brain is dictated by physical reality. Your sense of control is an illusion. This doesn’t mean we should curl up in a ball and wait to die. The future is unknown to us, trying to make it a better future is a natural goal to seek.

However, “no free will” also means that “punishment” and “reward” are both fundamentally amoral tools to achieve ends and not intrinsically justified. Meritocracy has no intrinsic moral value.

An example of what I mean here: If there was a method of rendering a serial killer harmless without causing them any pain or death that would be the more moral decision than punishing them for killing people.

Your point has shifted goal post so hard that it has nothing to do with the original prompt. We are now in the territory of you not believing in people being held responsible for their own actions… You already dropped the entire original argument. Which was based on the post claiming it’s not about sex. You’ve already admitted nits mostly about sex.

The comment you were responding to was talking about how they thought Lemmy hated them because of the generalities contained within OP’s screenshot post and I responded to that. I have never established that whether the loneliness epidemic among men was “about getting laid”. I would say its not exclusively about that, but that sex is a major component, as well as any physical intimacy in general.

We’ve branched out our conversation and in ways that largely was more dependent on what you and I have and have not refuted/argued with each other. This is a meandering conversation at this point but at the very least we are moving close to core philosophical disagreements. That’s fine by me because its at least meaningfully possible for some kind of ideological reconciliation as far as I can tell. But maybe not, maybe our perspectives are fundamentally at odds and we may run into a brick wall.

I mean… Maybe your fundamental beliefs are not condusive to maintaining your mental health. I would highly suggest you choose to talk to a mental health professional about it, which is statistically proven to help.

Lying to myself for the sake of my own mental health is both something I pragmatically and ideologically reject. Truth of reality is maybe not a core axiom of mine but its pretty damn close and might as well be one. But also I just think “changing my beliefs” (lying to myself) is unsustainable anyway and wouldn’t work or if it did would result in potentially more catastrophic results long term.

Your beliefs seem to have painted your mental health into a corner with no room for improvement. At some point everyone needs to take some level of personal responsibility in their lives, and sometimes that personal responsibility comes in the form of accepting you have negative attributes that you need to address in a healthy way.

I need to clarify something: My life is not good but I do try to make it better. Again, I don’t think a lack of free will means I shouldn’t try to make things better. I just don’t ascribe my “trying” as some sort of magical will essence outside of physical reality. The end resulting actions I take are the result of neurons in my brain firing a certain way.

Furthering my point: Human beings do have some level of autonomy, but so do robots (literally “automatons”). Human’s have agency (the ability for their actions to effect the world outside of them) but again, so do robots. But robots do not have free will either right?

You don’t have to delete emotions, you process them. Evaluate why you are actually feeling that way, and if that is a reasonable way to to feel in the given circumstances. Why were you upset? Does it make sense to feel upset just because someone is attractive, does that happen to you every time you see someone attractive? Once you figure out the reason you are feeling those emotions they are easier to manage and control. Emotions don’t just happen to you, they are how you respond to stimuli, meaning you have control over them.

I did understand them. Like I said, I ruminated. I thought about them probably more than necessary.

Both my wife and I are autistic, it’s not a valid reason to shirk personal responsibility.

I never said that it was. My perspective on responsibility stems more from a core belief that free will doesn’t exist.

In fact, unfortunately it means you have more responsibility to evaluate your own emotions and behavior to make sure you don’t hurt people’s feelings. It’s a lot of work, but it is completely manageable. As an older autistic person I can basically guarantee your coworker noticed your behavior.

I already try to do that. If she knew and that upset her, then that’s unfortunate but I did not owe her anything beyond professionalism and politeness. And you know what, she never made it clear that I had bothered her by my avoidance. I’m pretty sure she just figured I was busy.

I’m guessing it’s a reflexive avoidance behaviour you utilize to most criticism you experience.

If I was avoiding critique, we’d be not having this conversation. TBH, I find talking about me, maybe not boring, but besides the point.

Fucked by who? It seems the major impediment isn’t something society can really change for you. Pulling yourself up by the boot straps is an analogy meant to represent something impossible, no one is asking you to do that. I just recommend learning to get back on your feet after being knocked down for whatever reason.

I was talking about “men” in general. Not myself. Men are fucked by the current state of things when it comes to loneliness and intimacy, I don’t assign meaningful blame to any one individual or group and blame isn’t needed, solutions are. Hell, I think women aren’t really benefiting either.

Your focus on me is misguided. My love life atm is possibly worse than average, but its definitely better than the men complaining for their own sake given that I have sex here and there. At least one night stands. Not gotten a more stable relationship in a very long time though.

My arguments have to do with the overall amount of sex that’s being had. And its significantly less across the board at a society wide level (well in many countries). I think that’s bad and should be fixed. Sex is fun, we should all have more of it.

So is it okay to hurt people if the damage is not permanent?

If she was hurt, she was hurt by her own emotions. I can’t control how other people react to my decisions.

I work in healthcare, specifically with a lot of patients who have physical and mental disabilities.

That explains your focus on me as an individual I suppose. You are used to thinking that way.

Just letting you know I’m leaving work from home now meaning I wont have access to this account. If you respond I’ll respond Monday morning.

Despite the seeming hostility and intense disagreement here I don’t hold anything against you. I look forward to reading what you have to say. I genuinely enjoy the discourse.

Man I got a lot of them.

1. Free will isn’t real.
2. I’m kind of OK with AI replacing our jobs under capitalism, even if things get bumpy because I think because its unsustainable for various reasons and it’ll eventually cause economic collapse and we might live in a better society afterward.
3. Nuanced “soft” Anti-natalism
4. Currency is fine. The left was wrong about Crypto.
5. He might not always be right but Vaush is funny and its OK to watch his streams.
6. We should all fuck each other more and monogamy is retarded.
7. Oh also its OK to call things and people “retarded”
8. Virtue doesn’t matter only consequences.
9. Bisexuality is secretly more common than hetero & homosexuality.
10. Religion and spirituality should be illegal.
11. Autistic people should rule the world.
12. That Trump won a second time reflects a fundamentally disgusting moral weakness in most of humanity that I will never emotionally recover from.
13. Linux is good but most of Linux users ideology about GUI is awful.

If you are trying to string me along/troll me, you are doing a good job.

And if free will does not exist does your opinion on the matter have any effect on the predetermined outcome? Most forms of determinism believe that people’s happiness and well being are predetermined and our opinions about their feelings has no effect on how they feel. I’m wondering if you actually understand the philosophical concept of determinism?

Do you think people who don’t believe in free will shouldn’t express their ideas or beliefs in order to be consistent with a lack of belief in free will?

Pure determinism isn’t my stated belief. I said I don’t believe in free will. You are adding to what I said again, pulling stuff out of thin air.

Here is the core question I have to ask you, given that you seem to believe in free will: What exactly is our will free from?

Random chance doesn’t mean free will either. I don’t believe in some meta-physical super natural aspect of our will either but even if there was, that still wouldn’t mean we have free will either.

Pre-determination isn’t the issue: its the nature of choice and how its a completely meaningless illusion. The main impact on morality it would have is in terms of justice and how society functions, but also it essentially means on a interpersonal level that you forgive yourself and others because no one chooses to be born. No one chooses to be who they are, we don’t choose our parents, our bodies, our brains. We are shunted into existence and expected to perform life and to take responsibility for it, even when we never choose it to begin with.

It’s an alternative explanation detailing why there are less women on dating apps.

Do you actually think that’s the reason? I’m pretty sure its because men have to try a lot harder. Meaning if they want to maximize their chances they need to go on dating apps even when they know they’re financially predatory and awful.

So sex… Just like the original post claimed. This is about sex.

Its not only that, but that’s a major component. Yeah.

You seem to lack healthy coping skills when you don’t get what you feel you’re entitled too. You seem to reaching out for someone or something to blame for this lack of coping skills.

I never said that I thought I was entitled to that woman. If I thought I was entitled to her I would have kept asking her out or insisting on her dating me.

You also seem to adopt an attitude of morose self deprecation as a defense against any form of criticism. Attempting to redirect the criticism by utilizing guilt as a redirection, aka the pity fallacy or sometime pityfishing.

Here is the thing: I fundamentally disagree with criticism of individuals this way. I think things need to be solved systematically or technologically. Not with psychoanalysis or “pulling ourselves by our boot straps” or whatever. So yeah, when you argue with me and you decide to angle it based on me individually and my individual faults and personal defects and I’m just a bad person, I just fundamentally disagree on the very basis of your engagement with the topic.

I don’t need your pity to know I’m right or wrong about something. I want you to argue against my points. I want you to challenge my ideas. I’m not particularly interested in talking about me other than as example/anecdote for my own arguments (which is why I brought up the personal example). If I have “unhealthy opinions” I want to know specifically what they are and then I can either realize I’m objectively wrong or I can retort with some argument. I don’t care if call me a bad person is my point. You clearly don’t share my moral ideology anyway why would I?

That said, I am an open book: I personally am indeed incredibly depressed (which relates to the self depreciation) but not because of lack of sex. I mean I was depressed in the past because of that when I was still figuring things out maybe but now its because Trump won a second time and that’s kind of permeated and filtered how I see people in general. And I mean, also my life sucks and I legitimately resent having been born but none of that is relevant to the current topic of male loneliness in of itself.

You know you chose to avoid them… You have no idea if they knew or not, I don’t imagine reading social cue is probably a specialty of yours.

I mean, sure. I couldn’t know for certain. I tried my best to just function at work when I needed to with her. This is an important question: What else could I have materially done? Its not like I could just delete the emotions and just pretend I was fine to chit chat with her at the water cooler or something. If anything I was doing her a favor.

And true, being autistic tends to make me pretty weak at reading people probably on average but I’m probably a bit better than the average autistic person. I’m a very extroverted autistic person. Despite the nihilism and politically induced misanthropy.

You don’t sense that might be problematic? Avoidance is not a healthy coping skill. Avoiding emotions is pretty different than confronting them.

Healthy in what way? For me? I don’t think purposefully exposing myself to someone who rejected me who I badly wanted to be with romantically would have been good for me and my heavily obsessive and ruminating autistic brain.

Avoidance was a lesser evil. I have experience enough to know that.

Neither is being in pain because someone is attractive. There are attractive people everywhere, are you in constant crippling emotional pain? Or did that pain really come from being denied something you secretly feel you are entitled to?

There is not that many people that I am that intensely attracted to everywhere no. There is a difference between very attractive and “I want to die when I see them” level of physical attraction.

That said, its frequent enough that I’ve fallen into a few emotional holes through life, yes. Sometimes its not been avoidable. There are a few stories.

Empathy doesn’t equate to pity. Again you are pityfishing.

I’m not pityfishing what do I even have to gain from your pity? We will never ever meet. I don’t care about your opinion of me. I am not important. Neither are you. I care that I am correct that men are fucked by romantic loneliness right now and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is not a viable solution.

By bringing up our relatively happiness what I was doing was making a point: She is almost certainly fine. She is not a baby. She is an adult woman who had her own life going on. Me keeping things strictly bare minimum and professional was perfectly reasonable. And if it did hurt her feelings, I’m sorry I guess? What do you want from me?

I don’t really think I do, it would negatively effect my work. Plus, even if I did, there’s a matter of scale. I’m not running away or avoiding people based on their looks.

Are you a psychologist or something?

If you don’t believe in free will then what is the point of disputing or chastising any claim? Why would consequences even matter if they are already pre-determined by circumstance or a higher power?

Because suffering, pleasure, and conscious beings are at stake? I’m confused about what you think of the moral implications of not believing in free will actually is. It sounds like you place all meaning on choice/will or something. I don’t do that. I care about people’s happiness and well being, not their will (at least not intrinsically).

Maybe that’s because women are better at communication and thus are more likely not seek emotional support from friends instead of seeking codependency with a partner.

“better at” is this some sort of team sports competition? Yeah, some groups of people are better at certain things. Is there a reason you hang on that point in particular? I hear this point a lot and I don’t know if when I hear it they’re saying it as some kind of dunk on men or they’re making some kind of constructive contribution/suggestion without explicitly saying it. So you’ll need to clarify.

What is the actual difference between romantic loneliness and loneliness…kinda just sounds like you’re defining it as sex plus codependency.

I mean, when it comes to sex and relation with romance, its about physical touch, associating physical release with another human being, another person’s pleasure becoming your own. etc.

“Codependency”? If you are entirely cynical perhaps. The term is interdependence. When you romantically bond with someone deeply, you generally become deeply dependent on them and they become dependent on you. And yeah, sex is going to bond you way way stronger to a person.

Eh… Based on our previous conversation you appear to be harboring some unhealthy opinions.

You’ll need to be a little more specific. I already know I’m mentally unwell.

It’s not just embarrassing… It’s admitting to immaturity and an inability to process your emotions, and then treating someone poorly because of it. So what, you didn’t get something you wanted, that’s life. There’s no reason then to lash out at your coworker by avoiding them, just because they had the audacity to be attractive.

I did not treat them poorly. They had no idea I was avoiding them. I was polite and professional when I had to interact.

I did not lash out. I was avoiding psychological pain. That’s it. I did not hold anything against them individually. Seeing them made me cripplingly and dysfunctionally sad, but they did not know that. Shit if they had seen how sad they made me they’d probably assume I was being emotionally manipulative. There would be no benefit to them interacting with that, I had no desire to make them feel guilty and I had no desire to feel cripplingly sad if it could be avoided.

I think that’s a pretty mature and reasonable way to handle things. I’m not sure exactly what your alternative would have been.

You were avoiding confronting your emotional immaturity.

I think I confronted my emotions and decided the best way to handle them was to avoid making them worse and focus on other things and other people as best as I could. How is that immature?

I have empathy… it’s just for your coworker, who did nothing wrong and was treated differently just because she didn’t reciprocate your feelings.

Yeah I’m aware you’re real sad for them. I promise you they’re almost certainly happier today than I am. I would bet money. And she was never ever even aware of my internal feelings, other than at one point I asked her out and she politely rejected me.

You don’t have to be her work friend, just don’t treat her differently than everyone else because she’s an attractive woman.

You treat people differently based on their appearance all the time. Everyone does. You are probably just less conscious about it.

I think they’re primarily authentic rather than trolling/pretending, its just that they have twitter/bluesky disease where they think the best way to engage is by vapidly dunking.

I mean if that was true you wouldn’t have an issue with the original claim.

What? The original claim? That pedophiles are bad? Not believing in free will technically nullifies any moral evaluation of the virtues of any group. The only thing that would matter is consequences.

So what you are saying is that people are lonely.

Yes, but the nature of that loneliness is different when it comes to romantic loneliness within the heterosexual sphere. Just look at how many more men are on dating apps vs women.

And lashing out at other to seek a sliver of personal peace after making a personal choice is socially acceptable behavior that shouldn’t be criticized?

Lashing out? I think you are inserting something into the conversation that I never defended. Maybe mixing up responses.

Jesus Christ… No reason to call yourself out this hard. Are you in middle school or something?

I never understood this obsession with anon people “telling on themselves”. Its called setting aside ego and engaging in good faith. We don’t know each other, there is no reason for me to restrict what I say here about myself. I’ll tell you any embarrassing thing about myself because why would I care? There are no stakes other than the discourse. Which you don’t seem like you have a good authentic desire to engage with.

TBH I’m also pretty dead inside so I probably wouldn’t care if we were in person either but still why are you so obsessed with status on a random internet thread?

What if they believed that you were painfully ugly, and avoided you because of it, treated you differently just because of your appearance… Do you even understand what I’m getting at here?

I think you are potentially projecting additional details here and that by avoiding her I was hurting her feelings or something. She almost certainly had no idea I was avoiding her. I wasn’t making a big show of it.

I had no ill will towards her I just was avoiding an infohazard.

I don’t have a sliver of empathy for your “chronic pain”. Some random woman was attractive, and didn’t reciprocate your romantic interests and you chronically avoided them, a co-worker…

Its completely unsurprising to me that you lack empathy and it was an error of mine in assuming you were maybe capable of it considering your other responses. My mistake I guess.

Its not like I owed her my consistent presence outside of professional necessity which was fortunately rare. Its not some kind of injustice that I dare not be her work friend.

That is part of it for people who desperately need external validation, but if it was the only element no one would bother with prostitutes, VR porn, and sex dolls at all. Heck, if that was enough more men probably would be content to just be “friend zoned” because friendship is very validating.

In reality though its existential and experiential. Its men wanting to experience something extremely pleasurable and contentment bringing (and consistently) before they take their final dirtnap. Its fear of missing out on a major life experience of being in a sexual relationship for key parts of their lives (20’s and 30’s). Every day they’re single they experience the fear of their youthful years slipping away and missing out on some of the most fulfilling and fun activities a human can participate in.