I’m trying to understand exactly what squicks you, and I’m not doing a very good job… the Revolution in Night of Power was pretty peaceful as revolutions go.
Blueberry
Karma: 2,571
I love what I have read. I’ve only read a few of his novels though. Which one has that plot turn and what’s the plot turn?
Hmm?
Actually, Draco muses on the history of House Malfoy at some chapter I can’t find right now, and how they’re always the second-in-command to greatest leaders. Saying Draco would never agree to service is probably disregarding important and relevant information.
I was more looking for an excuse to get Harry and Draco married. ;)
But no, I think Draco is way too proud to swear subservience to Harry.
Namely, that you place such a high value on dominant roles for males and submissive roles for females that your perception is skewed. I’m curious if you think there might be some accuracy in that.
I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking. Those have historically been the usual gender roles. I obviously don’t think that everyone follows them or that everyone should follow them, because I’m not an idiot.
I’m not sure what you’re saying. Do you mean our culture doesn’t do a very good job teaching men to be attractive?
“perception of sexual capabilities” has nothing to do with actual skills in bed, and everything to do with how (sexually and non-physically) attractive someone is.
Why would it be “obvious”? Even completely ignoring these questions still leads to useful insight for the majority of cases in practice.
It was the first thought I had. The association in my mind went something like
girl with lots of partners ---> girl is sexually awesome ---> female partners and group sex ---> if someone thinks having multiple partners is bad, is that bad?
Saying “I like girls who [have the characteristic X]” sounds as if you like such girls for non-serious, shorter-term relationships in which you have the upper hand
No, I meant long term.
To answer your question, we’d need to get into a discussion of the motivational mechanisms of the behaviors you mention, but that is certain to lead to even more controversial questions, which I’d really prefer not to get into.
(Still, you should watch for traits that indicate propensity for troublesome behaviors that can get you into unpleasant situations, or even serious problems, even in the context of such a relationship. What’s indicated by sheer partner count in this regard, independent of the mechanism I described earlier, is another can of worms I’d rather not open.)
and “if he knows how to be attractive enough” is a can-opener assumption in this context.
I am incredibly curious about your thoughts in these matters. You hint lots of things but don’t spell them out. I disagree with your assertions that LW’s gotten worse and is a bad place for these discussions, and I get that you don’t want to post them publicly on LW, but can you PM me? I promise to keep them private if you’d like.
As for the specifics and straight talk, there are plenty of blogs and forums where such things can be discussed ad infinitum.
The ones I’ve seen either a) take weird conservative positions, b) are filled with bitterness and hatred towards women, c) deteriorate into madonna/whore complexes, slut-shaming, and name calling, without much intelligent discussion or reasoning, or d) seem sane to me, but agree with my viewpoint on things.
Besides, I want to know what you think. You’re sane, reasonable, intelligent, and have a viewpoint that’s very different from mine, but seems like it might have a lot to offer. Please PM me. You’re giving me half of thoughts that I haven’t seen anywhere else, and can’t find on fora elsewhere, and I want the other half!
On the other hand, if you’re aiming for a committed relationship, a woman’s high number of previous partners (which in fact doesn’t even have to be extremely high) definitely makes the deck stacked against you. This follows from the basic statistics of the situation,
I don’t see how this stacks the deck.
It’s received wisdom that women are much more discerning than men, and that this is inherent and unchangeable and totally biological.
There is biology behind it, but it’s probably changeable by culture as well.
Except, no. Women’s reluctance to accept that kind of proposition is less about being inherently wired for romance and more about perceiving unknown men as dangerous
You’ve misrepresented that study.
You’re correct in pointing out some of the flaws of the Clark and Hatfield study, but the empirical observation that women are more selective on average has a lot more support than that. Looking at your link:
Women were much less likely than men to accept the coffeeshop proposition from a random person.
If the man is Brad Pitt or Johnny Deppp, women are just as likely to accept a coffeeshop proposition as men are from a random person or a celebrity
Men are more likely than women to accept a proposition from their best opposite-sex friend even though perception of danger was equal.
When you account for what the researchers euphemistically refer to as “perceptions of sexual capabilities,” women are just as likely to accept a proposition from their best friend.
In other words, women are more selective about casual sex partners, and more selective about who they think has “sexual capabilities.” My guess is that “sexual capabilities” here is a proxy for sexual attraction. That is, if you’re attracted to someone, you think they have more “sexual capabilities.” So yes, women are more selective about sexual attraction.
Which makes complete sense in terms of both evolved, unconscious assessment of risk and parental investment (women are the ones who get pregnant) as well as conscious assessment of what they should do based on culture and beliefs about sex. The latter is probably changeable with the culture.
Again, forgetting all the rationality training—there were moments at mini-camp when everyone was hanging out and I would literally have trouble deciding where to stand in a room because every conversation going around me was so ridiculously interesting that I couldn’t stand choosing where to place myself. I felt like a wealth of knowledge was being spilt around me, and if I didn’t scramble to consume as much as possible I’d miss some lifechanging insight and regret it forever. It was so beautiful it hurt.
Wow. That’s like the opposite of most parties.
Sent via paypal.
Someone make more bets with me so I can come out ahead ;)
Yes, that book. By big reveal, do you mean gung gur vagehqref ner gvzr geniryref? Please elaborate.
It’s not porn, but did you see Yvain’s drawing?
Oooh yes. Upvoted for awesomeness.
I agree that ranking the weights from 1 to N is idiotic because it doesn’t respect the relative importance of each characteristic. However, changing the ratings from 101-110 for every scale will just add a constant to each option’s value:
Option A, strength 103, mass 106, total score 2(103) + 106 = 312
Option B, strength 105, mass 103, total score 2(105) + 103 = 313
(I changed ‘weight to ‘mass’ to avoid confusion with the other meaning of ‘weight’)
Using something approximating a real-valued ranking (rank from 1-10) instead of rank indicies reduces the problem to mere nonlinearity.
I assume you mean using values for the weights that correspond to importance, which isn’t necessarily 1-10. For instance, if strength is 100 times more important than mass, we’d need to have weights of 100 and 1.
You’re right that this assumes that the final quality is a linear function of the component attributes: we could have a situation where strength becomes less important when mass passes a certain threshold, for instance. But using a linear approximation is often a good first step at the very least.
So the pseudo-quantities in your example are strength ratings on a 1-10 scale?
I actually think that’s acceptable, assuming the ratings on the scale are equally spaced, and the weights correspond to the spacing. For instance, space strengths out from 1 to 10 evenly, space weights out from 1 to 10 evenly (where 10 is the best, i.e., lightest), where each interval corresponds to roughly the same level of improvement in the prototype. Then assign weights to go along with how important an improvement is along one axis compared to the other. For instance, if improving strength one point on the scale is twice as valuable as improving weight, we can give strength a weight of 2, and computations like:
Option A, strength 3, weight 6, total score 2(3) + 6 = 12
Option B, strength 5, weight 3, total score 2(5) + 3 = 13
make sense.
You do not use “math” on uncalibrated pseudo-quantities; that just tricks you into overriding your intuition for something with no correct basis.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by pseudo-quantities.
strength might be most important (10), then cost (9) then wieght (8) and so on.
So the problem is that these attributes were given rankings from 10 down to 1, rather than their weights that corresponded to their actual importance?
Thanks for your gracious apology. :)
This sounds great. A couple questions:
Why do you ask for my LW username? Will I be judged for poorly thought out comments or misfired jokes?
What is the difference between the 3 day and the week long? How do I decide?
I’m not certain if we can yet predict which side he’ll choose now.
I’m hoping it’s the side with a bunch of cute Slytherin girls in his dungeon...
There are ways of making that point without saying it sounds like a “Christian brainwashing retreat.”
They do stock market stuff in Primer?