The regulars over on the Men’s Rights Subreddit are currently getting amused and/or outraged by the existence of a book titled “Girl, Get That Child Support,” a guide to help single mothers track down deadbeat dads and get the child support they are owed. A few of them were apparently so overstimulated by the book’s title, and a reference to “Baby Mamas” in the subtitle, that this little conversation ensued:
Note the upvotes and the (scarcity of) downvotes. And the complete lack of anyone saying “hey, you’re being racist assholes.”
The Men’s Rights Movement, the “most significant civil rights movement of the 3rd millennium.”
LBT: I knwo, I know, but I’ve got the “someone is wrong on the internet” syndrome. And all these question seems so obvious to me, that I need to share them. And at the same, I guess they might not be so obvious to everybody, and I would hate for someone to see her link, watch it and stop their thinking process to “good points, that sound legit”. Even more because she’s supposed to be on “our side” (ie against MRA) so an absence of answer might be read as an agreement.
(WHY IS WORD PRESS MESSSING WITH MY COMMENT BOX!!!!§§§§§!!!!)
And anyway, with this kind of trollish behaviour, it’s always funny to push it to see how far it will go. I don’t think you’ve forget how fast she went from the pretty innocuous “I’m a libertarian” to “I’m sorry for them, but I support a system that will fuck over poor people”. Or we would have never know about the epic libertarian fantasy of “house of entertainement” of Meller, or his creepy fetish of dolls, if he hadn’t been ppushed for it over and over.
(I HATE WORD PRESS, I WILL SEE IT DIE IN A FIRE, I WILL BURN THE HELL OUT OF IT, I WILL SKIN IT, I WILL MAKE IT INTO SHOES. OR A POTATO.)
Yeah, the comment box thing is really annoying.
Oh, good, so that’s not just me. I was worried my computer had gone insane.
pecunium: “3: What happens if you throw an adult mouse from the top of the Eiffel Tower?” I will be very angry at you. Why would you do that, monster!
Polliwog: That’s a great ‘common sense’ example: life almost never offer you the choice between less and more money with no changing factor, so the real question is how much every factor counts, may it be money, looks, passions, number of hours of a jobs, life conditions,…
No. It does this grow and shrink thing. If I need to edit a comment, I have to edit it outside the box, because at some point it decides to collapse again.
Then it will randomly decide to take away the, Post Comment, button, or that it wasn’t done reloading the page and erase everything you were working on.
Fuckers.
Kyrie: Read the answer. 🙂
Also, if I’m a desperately poor beautiful woman (or a moderately poor one who highly values an opulent standard of living), I bet my choices will factor in wealth very differently than if I’m an independently wealthy beautiful woman (or a moderately well-off one who highly values romantic connection).
I do not think this is genetics.
How/Why are you folks still arguing with Ruby? It’s obvious she just MAKES STATEMENTS and MAKES MORE STATEMENTS without any mind to the people talking to her.
At this point, I’m suspicious that Ruby is an EvoPysch spambot.
@Ruby: here’s an example of scholarship on gender differences in choosing a mate:
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/emir.kamenica/documents/genderDifferences.pdf
Notice, please, the differences: it is not a YOUTUBE video.
Very few academics in any discipline report the results of their scholarship in the medium of a video. This could change in future, but for now, let’s just use the working theory of: if it’s on YOUTUBE, it ain’t scholarship.
The article is housed on an edu site (.edu is the standard URL indicator for American universities–not community colleges, universities, where research is done). So another working theory: if you are looking for scholarship on anything, you might do well to limit your search to .edu sites (though I admit the American-centric nature of it). There was ways to search university sites in other countries (I learned the UK code but cannot recall it), This theory assumes that you are not privileged enough to work at a university and have access to the scholarly databases which cost a shitload and are being challenged these days on open access issues (in the US, i.e. government funded research should be available to more than professional academics).
The title has a colon. While not universal, the presence of a colon in a long-assed title often indicates academic discourse. Also: LONG TITLE! USING WORDS LIKE “MATE SELECTION” AND “EVIDENCE.” See, evidence is really important. Rlly rlly rlly rlly rlly required.
If you look at the pdf (and most such academic articles made available on the internet are in a downloadable pdf which preserves the formatting from the original publication in hard copy for ease of citation), you’ll see that there are…..dum dum dum DUM….ENDNOTES. Always a good sign (ditto footnotes, or any other system of attribution). Scholarship don’t count for shit if it ain’t got that attribution showing where the work fits into the current and sometimes historical dialogue.
Abstract: there’s a summary at the top which I blockquoted above. Academic scholarship often, though not universally, has an abstract provided (sometimes by the authors, sometimes by editors, sometimes, in the databases, by academic workers for hire). This one was probably done by the authors.
And while there is no universal claim, we do see that the study does consider that there is a preference in THESE WOMEN IN THIS STUDY NO OTHER WOMEN for men from affluent neighborhoods, but PREFERENCE is not the same as EVERY WOMAN CHOOSES INVESTMENT MAMMOTH BANKER. And other studies of different populations or of people at different stages (this was ONE speed-dating study) may well show different outcomes! It’s NOT universal.
OK, here’s the test: it counts for 35% of your total grade.
1. List three ways in which a reader can identify this article as a piece of academic scholarship.
2. Then write a 500 word essay explaining how this article is different from the YOUTUBE video linked above.
Neatness counts!
THe group: there is a weird comment box shrinkage and growage going on. WordPress ain’t impressing me.
Red_locker: well, in my case, at breakfast this morning and lunch this afternoon, I was feeling like smacking a troll around, and it was fun with Ruby.
And really, here, what we seem to do is respond to trolls as part of our mockery because surely we have lots of data that shows they don’t listen/respond/engage (and some become very vile and get put on moderation).
So it seems to be part of our IDIOM!
And that makes for really fun reading much of the time.
Ithiliana, I think I love you.
ithiliana:
1: The title. The presence of checkable information. Authors with names.
2: DATA (repeat 500 times)
Red Locker: Practice? It’s not as if Ruby is being differnt in subtantive behavior from Meller, or FF, or any of or regular idjits.
She is starting to be as repetitive in style as NWO. I didn’t notice that this is the second time she’s tried to foist this video off as, “science” (because the first time the link was to munged link), so I gave her more credit than she deserves; as this nonsense has been shot down before.
But it led to some other interesting reading, and keeps my mind off my troubles.
I’d think that Doug Kenrick, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University and Dr. Elisabeth Oberzaucher, Senior Scientist, Department of Anthropology at the Unversity of Vienna would know what they’re talking about. They’re scientists. They came to their conclusions through the scientific method. Some of you just hate the results and will dismiss anything they say.
Youtube. Really. And youtube ‘science reporting’ (A euphemism even in well respected journalistic publications). Oh, I get it, you don’t take your cues from Rudyard Kipling, you take your cues from Albert Camus. Well, kudos, he’s a lot more fun.
Oh, finally, a fucking scientist, although you didn’t have the decency to actually cite a study.
Yeah, I guess you’re right, Precunium and Ithiliana. :p
“I’d think that Doug Kenrick, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University and Dr. Elisabeth Oberzaucher, Senior Scientist, Department of Anthropology at the Unversity of Vienna would know what they’re talking about. They’re scientists. They came to their conclusions through the scientific method. Some of you just hate the results and will dismiss anything they say.”
You know, people have been saying their rebuttals for a long time time, so we don’t just “hate the results”.
Oh, did you read Ithiliana’s big response to you? If not, time to get crackin’.
Ruby: No. Let me repeat that. No. I don’t hate the results.
But I don’t know the source from which they are making those statements. I also don’t know what questions were asked to get those statements. I don’t know what may have been left out of those statements to get the portions I heard.
TV isn’t science. Science is observation. Science is experiment.
It’s not as if the people here are unfamiliar with science. We’ve cited studies. We’ve discussed methodology. Some of us have taken part in “SCIENCE”. At levels from subjects, to helping design studies, to peer-reviewing papers (I’ve not done the latter). I live with someone who delivers a couple of papers a year, on internet design and function. He does science.
I read papers. I’ve written papers that attacked things like some of the folly in Freakonomics. I’m not great at math. But I know what I know.
And what I know is that a 3 minute, 7 second clip from “Discovery” isn’t “Science”. It’s not even close.
Why? Because in that 3 minutes, (and seven seconds) four different arguments were proposed, and zero data was presented. No protocols were described. No control groups mentioned. No limiting of confounding variables accounted for.
If I, not a trained anthropologist, nor psychologist (ok, that’s not true… I am trained in a discipline of psychology, having to do with the asking of questions) can see the gaping flaws in the “real world testing” they did, that means it’s not rigorus.
It’s soda-pop. It’s sensationalism. It’s rubbish.
Ruby: To make it plain: You have not presented us with results.
You have shown us a third party interpretation of something.
That third party has an agenda. To make money by entertaining people.
Give me studies. Give me data. Give me a testable hypothesis. Give me a single question (or an explanation of how the questions are so inter-related as to be inseperable).
That, or shut up.
Because you aren’t making new arguments. You are standing in the middle of the room like a two-year old and yelling, “IS TOOO!” more loudly; every time, in the hope that someone will agree.
And it ain’t gonna happen. Facts, or it didn’t happen.
Ruby – The important part of science isn’t the names. It’s the research.
Scientists aren’t hired to be Smart People Who Know Things; they’re hired to be thorough people who investigate and document things. Without evidence of how that investigation was done, fancy credentials mean nothing.
For example, a lot of the research purported to be about women was actually about female animals. Without knowing what species the research was on, much less what was actually tested for and observed, we can’t judge their results.
Okay, as expected some of their stuff is paywalled, but some of it is not. I have to dash, but let’s start with this.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3204576/
They make their claims from less than 300 artists. That’s a pathetically small sample size even without trying to draw conclusions based on gender (Which narrows down sample sizes to 85 and 151) They measured mating success based on Western Society’s conceptions of mating success, not the, you know, rather more concrete number of fucking children (Hint to the lackwit: If you want to judge what’s adaptable to evolutionary fitness, you do not count anything but actual number of kids. This only sounds analagous to the amount of sex you’ve had if you are a lackwit.). They rely entirely on self reporting, which is less than ideal (Especially if you have, you know, a concrete way to study ‘mating success’ from an evolutionary standpoint).
Rutee – I’d argue that number of grandkids is a better measure of fitness than kids. Someone who fathers (or mothers) a zillion kids but does nothing to aid their survival and growth isn’t necessarily all that fit in a K-selected species.
But measuring success in terms of money or “status”… yeah, evolution doesn’t work that way.
I think Patrick Warburton did a great job on the voice of Kronk from the Emporer’s New Groove. Kronk was the henchman for the main villian Yzma, voiced by Earth Kitt. I don’t know how much voice actors get paid, but some of them want to do it so much they will work for less money. Seinfeld even produced A Bee Movie because he wanted to be a voice in an animated film. It’s a sign that one has reached A list level in the movie business.
BTW, my wordpress reply box is also acting up. It’s very annoying.
@ Ruby, I don’t doubt the Donald’s money has something to do with him marrying young, conventionally attractive women. The problem is that people look at those types of gold digger relationships, and then judge all straight women as being gold diggers. There are also men that seek out rich women and refer to themselves as “kept men” on those crappy VH1 specials. That doesn’t mean all men are like that, either. There’s no need to generalize about an entire gender based on the actions of a few.
Rutee: One of the other supporting papers in the one you found is S. Kanazawa
Teaching may be hazardous to your marriage
Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 21, Issue 3, Pages 185-190
Satoshi Kanazawa, Mary C. Still
But even in that paper, they admit the prime thesis (that men are being proactively “display oriented”) isn’t proven.
Support for this has been found in studies that demonstrated that male output for creative products, such as artwork, books, and scientific discoveries, was approximately 10 times that of females (Miller, 1999; Kanazawa, 2000). Nevertheless, strong cultural and social expectations of gender roles and stereotypes may play an important part in these behaviors.
Ruby, the bolded parts =Not genetic.
As Rutee commented, the measure of genetic fitness is successful offspring.
In their work on Daphne Major Rosemary Grant, and her husband Peter, had a finch who was supercially successful. Evey year, for 13 years he got at least one mate. He was a good father, all of his eggs hathed, all of his chicks fledged.
None of them ever had any offspring. He was an, apparent, success. But evolutionarily whatever it was that attracted the female finches to him (he was a good provider, as finches go in the providing game) it didn’t lead to his line continuing.
That’s science. The Grant’s didn’t just take a look at him getting the action, and the eggs hatching and say, “this is a successful strategy.” They kept looking, and tested the theory, against the data.
You aren’t doing that. You are grabbing sound bites that you like; which have no supporting evidence, and discounting the evidence which challenges your theory.
No one has said, “no, this is absolutely not involved in any woman’s decisions.” No one has said, “it’s impossible!”
We’ve said you can’t make the data you’ve presented support the case you’ve claimed.
Not hate. Not even anger; at the claims (at you? I am sure there is some. You are being wilfully obtuse, and intentionally insulting about it).
Just a demand that you, like anyone else, show your work.
“IT’S SCIENCE!!!!” isn’t an argument. It’s a claim.
They’re scientists. They came to their conclusions through the scientific method.
Ah. Argumentum ad verecundiam. Damn.
So that’s it kids: we’re done, Ruby wins the debate – nay, the internet – and we should all just stop commenting so we can get busy making lots of money to attract pretty people and their genitals.