nerdspeak

Were they horny, greedy, and caught up in their egos? Yes of course. But society was going in this direction anyway. Look at hip-hop culture and reality TV from the early 2000s. Pickup was a surface symptom of broader cultural and economic changes in rich countries that started in the 80s.

Extroverts can learn some techniques and become good in a few months. Introverts take a lot longer and usually drop out before getting good, because it takes so much energy and they’re fighting their nature. Owen is really complicated and neurodivergent so I wouldn’t base your dating strategy off of modeling him. I wouldn’t follow any of his strategic advice either, although his tactical advice is okay.

About five years. Anyone can build their skills to be worth $100-$150 per hour. I could have done it in two years but was a bit timid. By welfare states, I mean places like the Netherlands, Canada, and Germany, with free healthcare, generous unemployment insurance, free job retraining and education.

I solved this by just doing work that’s fun for me. As basically a freelancer so I don’t have a boss pushing me around, and I control my hours. What I do now is not as fun as being a graduate student / lecturer (the job I left to try to get rich), but it’s still fun enough to do 10-20 hours per week. A savings buffer of 6-12 months is good in case you get sick or need to pivot. I also have invested enough in a retirement account so that by the time I’m 70 I’ll have $800k or so if the economy keeps growing. I’ll keep contributing, but there’s also social security, medicaid, etc. Obsessing beyond that just isn’t worth it. You could be dead in a couple years, or the government could seize your assets, or this whole thing could just be a dream. Another approach if you’re too neurotic for what I just described, is to immigrate permanently to a welfare state. This takes planning but is surprisingly easy.

The problem with this approach is you’ll probably fail to get free quickly. Making lots of money is really hard even if you have initial success. And after grinding after money for years, you’re not the same person afterwards. In my first shot, I dropped out of a low-paid passion job to sell out, and become a millionaire in 3 years of grinding. But then I lost it all, and took years to recover. Now I figured out how to work 10 hours per week in a lucrative thing and spend my remaining 40 good hours on passion projects, but I would have been better off just sticking to the low-paid passion job in the first place. Putting off doing what you like to make money first is like saving sex for your old age. Some people just like making money for it’s own sake and that works for them, but if you’ve got something you like that fulfills a need, you’re better off sticking to that even if it only makes a lower-middle-class income. I would go back to my lower-middle-class passion job if I could but I’m no longer competitive in that career track, so I have to settle for being an amateur crank.

Bribery is necessary to simply survive in Ukraine. To get any public service, including healthcare and university exam results, requires bribes. You could argue it’s just cultural difference though, as it’s done in a very systematic and organized way.

I took yopo in a shamanic context. Basically a combination of the two. Screamed for an hour straight. Definitely felt a lot more relaxed after. Would recommend.

Unless you have tons of time on your hands or are unusually gregarious, pickup is not a great way to meet women...it's basically a marketing scam, and I say that as someone who has gotten pretty "good" results with pickup, to the point where I got paid to teach it. It feels good to get success through it for the first year or two because it's hard and dynamic. But I switched entirely to online and social circle when I am single, and that is true of most of my former instructor-level friends as well. It is just not a good use of time relative to other ways. Caveat -- I still chat to women giving me the eye already, but that is not "pickup" the way the industry used to teach it.

Her gender argument is not about denying any biological basis to gender, that is the straw man version. The argument is that its expression is performative, as in, you learn to perform your gender role in a given cultural context by imitating others and through positive/negative reinforcement. So, male gender expression in 14th century Mongolia is obviously going to be pretty different from in Manhattan or Hollywood in 2024. And, as people see other gender performances over time, roles will evolve. So, a straight-laced guy with a crew-cut in the 1960s starts to see hippies with long hair getting more attention and sex, so he starts to grow out his hair etc. It's not really that controversial an argument, in fact it's pretty obvious.

I studied with several of her former PhD students and drank the kool-aid hard for a while. But, it’s mostly junk. Her book on Hegel isn’t bad.

Netenyahu is prolonging the war for domestic political reasons, and is completely indifferent to civilian casualties. That said, what’s happening is war, not genocide. Calling it genocide is to inflate the term beyond any real meaning.

Truck driver, heavy equipment operator have pretty short courses. I think Indeed is best search engine for blue-collar but I'm not sure. Welding and HVAC take longer but pay more.

Unless you have a specialized skill, the easiest way to make a lot of money is to do things people don't want to do. You can make low six figures in a lot of blue-collar jobs that only require a 1-2 month vocational course. If you prefer white-collar, a lot of really boring state and city government jobs pay quite well after you get past the first few years.

I think you should probably start meditating and maybe make some friends

Most pickup "advice" is designed to make men feel insecure so they'll pay for coaching and information products, and stay in the product cycle once they do. This is true of most self-help niches tbh, including professional psychotherapy.

I have experimented with poly and didn't find it worked too well for me. The relationships I had were kind of thin, and all came crashing down during a major crisis (Russian invasion lol) when multiple partners wanted support from me at the same time. I couldn't be there for all of them equally. You might say, that's a unique event, but I know a lot of boomer New Left types among whom poly was very popular in the 70s, including a psychotherapist (not mine) who is pretty self-aware. They all concluded that it doesn't work very well. That doesn't mean that it is ethically problematic, just that it isn't very satisfying long term. A big part of the needs romantic relationships fill in contemporary Western society are basic survival needs that would have historically been met by the extended family or tribe. By that I don't mean housing or food, but the sense that someone would be there for you in an emergency, if you got sick, etc. Polyamorous relationships seem like they might meet that need even better -- I am romantically bonded with multiple people, so if one doesn't come through I have a back-up! But it doesn't really work that way. Summary of their points. The female orgasm releases a lot of oxytocin, so if a woman is orgasming with multiple partners, she will feel conflicted about which partners' needs to prioritize. This can cause a lot of problems and jealousy even without any sort of acute crises, especially because, in general, women into poly will have an easier time finding partners than men. Both because women are more selective, and because fewer women are open to poly. Men don't release much oxytocin from physical intimacy -- it's more through emotional and verbal intimacy. However, men don't really have much of an incentive to pursue verbal intimacy in poly relationships. This intimacy is built largely through verbal and emotional conflcit, and instead of working through these issues with their partners and building intimacy, if the option to go see another woman is there, most men will just withdraw and start spending time with another woman...until conflict starts with that woman too. So, the relationships end up being kind of superficial for the men, because they have no incentive to stick it through. The ones that stuck with alternative lifestyles said the swingers' lifestyle is actually a lot better for relationships than poly, because both partners are getting the dopamine and excitement together.

In my own experience, whenever I run out of money or feel like I'm in physical danger, I slide back down that spiral pretty quickly.

Agreed with this but I think he needs help figuring out what he wants. OP, what do you find enjoyable? That’s a good signal.

@MajedI wouldn't worry about value stuff really because it's hard to change in the short term, although dressing better helps. Besides that, if you just want a gf whose status is similar to yours then it's not necessary to increase it -- there are a lot of women with similar value to you, and it’s about finding one you click with at an acceptable cost of your time and effort. Of the women with similar value and age, you'll still only be the "type" of something like 20% of them. And, many will have boyfriends and not be open to you. So, randomly approaching women will mean getting repeatedly rejected, just based on the numbers. This is why approaching random people is basically a numbers game (like cold outreach in sales). Let's actually go with the sales analogy for a bit, because it is less emotionally loaded. In sales, you make a list of qualified prospects -- companies that can both afford and benefit from your service -- and try to book meetings. But, 95% of the people you contact will brush you off because they already have an existing provider. Of the 5% of people who don’t have a provider, some will brush you off because they're in a bad mood, don't like the sound of your voice, etc. This is why cold-calling is brutal and the best salespeople hire underlings to do it, rely on marketing to generate leads, focus on going to industry events where companies go to meet new vendors, build a network of referrals, or at least use software to measure "intent." They don’t just open the phone book and dial for dollars. Ok, so let's go back to your situation. If you find the repeated rejection exhausting, you can make it a bit less of a grind. Pre-qualify your prospects. If you continue with cold approach, try to pre-qualify the women you approach for interest and availability. So, do far fewer approaches, like 3-5 per day, but on women who indicate some interest in you or at least high availability. This is what I did when I was single because the spam approach was way too exhausting for me. Some ways of doing it (none are foolproof, just increase the odds): Eye contact If she meets your eye contact for more than 3/4 of a second or so, she is likely single and will be receptive to a conversation. Slow movement, wandering around during the day The girl is probably bored and will be receptive to at least talking for a few minutes If she does not have her phone out as a shield, then she is probably hoping someone talks to her on some level Hanging around in your proximity in a bar situation Use a marketing channel -- like a dating app -- to screen for women who are looking for guys and who at least like your photos and what you say in your profile Lower the price of your offer, i.e., approach less physically attractive girls Just like in business, you should only lower your price after experimenting a bit with the other options though.

I disagree, because risk of armageddon goes up exponentially with each additional actor who gets nukes. Long-term this poses greater threat. You could say, an individual state shouldn’t care about that because it still helps their chances of survival. But it doesn’t actually, long term. Let’s say Poland builds nukes to deter Russia. Smart right? Except, then Sweden, Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine will build them too, to counter Poland. That world is a lot more dangerous than the imperfect NATO deterrent.

Mearsheimer has an academic position but he's considered to be a kind of crazy laughing-stock. To give one anecdote, in the 90s he went around telling European countries to start nuclear weapons programs to counter the threat of a reunified Germany.

Most people who claim to be interested in philosophy are not interested in academic philosophy in the sense that it exists today. That said, I would keep doing it as long as it's enjoyable for you. If you're like me, when your engagement with intellectual pursuits starts to threaten your basic needs, it will become less enjoyable and you'll be motivated to go do things in the world.