Fresh from the Men’s Rights subreddit, some thoughts from some dude called atiwywr on cougars, age of consent laws, and Justin Beiber.
So “cougars” are perverse, but pedophilia – sorry, ephebophilia — is natural and good?
The age of consent in most American states is 16.
Complaining that men can’t legally have sex with girls – sorry, “fertile women” – aged 15 and younger: Men’s Rights activism at its finest!
Maybe if we offered Om Nom some chips it would distract him, and he’d stop posting inane comments.
Also, Ruby, I dunno. Have you SEEN the yaoi/shounen-ai/slash market? The mainstream market in the USA is only just now seeming to notice it…
And this doesn’t necessarily contradict the idea that human beings have free will. It depends on how you define the term. I would say that there are some forms of free will that we definitely have, some which we definitely don’t, and some that I’m not entirely sure about. But I don’t know which type of free will your talking about unless you define your terms.
Seriously, if you are going to make any proclamations about whether or not we have free will, please actually explain to us exactly what you mean by “free will.”
I tend to find definitions of free will rather incoherent, but as I understand it it’s the idea that if you were in the exact same situation again (with your memories of the events following the situation wiped) you could do something other than what you did. And I don’t think that that is possible.
Nice STRAWMAN, 2-D Mangina!
Oh I see…….I say something that shatters peoples idealistic delusions of how the world works and then Sharcules tries the “ur stoopid/uve been smokin too much dope” trope on me. LOLz “Witty” one liners are the tool of the intellectually lazy in a pathetic attempt to be right when they KNOW they’re full of shit.
As for you, Dracula: You speak of cynicism as if it’s a bad thing when it’s actually the sign of an intelligent mind at work functioning correctly. If you choose happiness over truth there are plenty of sly people out there waiting to manipulate you by playing to your emotions. You’re butthurt because I’m pointing things out that you and your friends desperate wish weren’t true. 😉
MSN: People disagree because of the internal states of their brain(and hence their mind). When our brains receives information in the form of a language(which has symbolic meaning), that information is processed by different parts and there is a resulting output state which often includes an emotional response. Perhaps I am a contrarian because I’m programmed that way.
So what people choose to do isn’t deterministic… ergo you admit the possibility of free will.
Ruby. Women are not “programmed” to find men of means. Women aren’t “programmed” to do jack shit, because we are humans and not computers, but we are especially not “programmed” to do that, because you are assuming things that are very, very wrong.
Amazingly enough, the Pleistocene, and hunter-gatherer lives in general, do not much resemble 1950’s middle America. Humans don’t actually usually live in nuclear families; this is a very recent development. Humans usually live in extended kin networks or with friends and family – there’s a recent article that says that most modern hunter-gatherer couples are considered to be related to about half of the other people in their band. They didn’t say who made up the rest, but I’m guessing it was just people they knew and got along with reasonably well.
People in these larger groupings tend to take care of each other, including sharing out food and other resources. A mother does often get food from her husband, but she can expect to get help from grandma and auntie and her best bud, too, if she needs it. Really, if we’re going by brute economics here, women, if they hang out with a few other women, don’t need men at all. So, no, women aren’t evolutionarily programmed to want the rich guy, because their baby-daddy is not the only adult they can count on. People in small-scale societies do tend to want the hardest workers for their spouse, but that’s true of men and women.
Nomless: Oh I see…….I say something that shatters peoples idealistic delusions of how the world works
Shatters? As if the idea of no free will wasn’t something I argued about 35 years ago… As if it wasn’t something being discussed by D. T. Suzuki, Thomas Aquinas, Epectitus, or every college freshman taking intro to philosophy.
If you come up with an argument I’ve not seen before, I’ll be impressed enough to let you know.
RE: MSN
You speak of cynicism as if it’s a bad thing when it’s actually the sign of an intelligent mind at work functioning correctly.
Aw, you think cycnicism is proof of sanity. You’re so cute.
No, I speak of your particular brand of cynicism as a load of pretentious bullshit. Which you’re demonstrating quite nicely in the above quote.
You’re confusing “butthurt” with “unimpressed”.
@Argenti
IIRC, “pot” came about after people started growing potted weed plants. I am HIGHLY amused, however, by the fact that MSN thinks that he thinks anyone past middle school hasn’t come across the “free will is an illusion” argument.
“Nice STRAWMAN, 2-D Mangina!”
Anathema: The most generalized definition of free will is the ability of an person(or an agent) to make decisions free from constraints. So in the context I was talking about, sexual-romantic attraction is very much an emotional response to another person. Emotions, unlike thoughts, cannot simply be turned on and off. They can be suppressed, or one can attempt to manipulate them, but that’s not the same thing as direct control. Our internal emotional response to other people is not within our control. What *seems* to be in our control is our ability to decide whether or not to act upon them. In conclusion: Human behavior is not random, it has statistically detectable patterns. And when it comes to what people find attractive in a (potential)mate, these patterns are highly visible and many of them have been scientifically proven. I guess cloudiah and some other peeps around here dislike the fact that women’s sexual behavior is not unpredictable.
“Nice STRAWMAN, 2-D Mangina!”
Why do people keep mentioning my name??? Why do people keep calling me other people!! I am an individual you know!!
To Shadow and Pecunium: The debate about free will is no longer philosophical, it’s now a scientific matter because it requires NON-DETERMINISM: A system whose output is not exclusively dependent on its inputs. You’re behind the times if don’t know this.
Oh, jeez, didn’t see Mr. No-Name’s comments.
Dude, Hobbes was wrong. People, in a state of nature, hang out, tell stories, fuck, gather some food, and sleep. Yeah, sometimes, they are also jerks, but then other people stop hanging out with them, and that usually works to settle their behavior. I don’t know that you’d call that civilization, seeing as how that’s the same way other animals keep their jerks in line.
And, whatever your genes are, every being is also very much shaped by their environment, and humans are also shaped by culture. I cannot understand how anyone who has ever even heard of identical twins can spout “we are but our genes” bullshit. You do realize that they’re still different people, right?
cloudiah and some other peeps around here don’t think women’s behavior is nearly as predictable as you (and Ruby) think it is. I think you’re a very stupid person, which I hardly find shattering.
hey LBT, nice to “see” you!
WRONG
This idea that humans are entirely a product of their environment and that genes play no important role in their behavior has been scientifically disproven. However, it is a cornerstone of the left, which has preached for MORE THAN 50 YEARS that people can change and has still failed to solve the social problems it set out to fix in the 20th century.
I fail at italics.
Scientifically proven by whom, please? And how? I mean, some lazy-ass ev psych guy handing out questionnaires to freshmen is not exactly proving anything besides that many undergrads like extra credit.
@LBT
“Have you SEEN the yaoi/shounen-ai/slash market?”
Yeah, that lgbt sex promotion is working whiz bang out there in Japan. Suicide is the #1 cause of death for men between the ages of 20 and 44. Feminism and tolerance seem to coalesce into producing lotsa dead men. Sweet!
In fact, in every country in the world, suicide rates were fairly even for men and women pre-feminism. Every country that’s adopted feminism as part of the culture has seen a sharp rise in mens suicide, usually stabilizing at a rate of around 4 to 1. Alcoholism also sharply rises to become a top killer as well. You can pretty much trace the moment feminism infects any society by the moment mens suicides start to rise. Well done ladies!!!
Try it for fun and excitement. First, pick a country and see when that countrys suicide rate for men starts an upswing. Then you’ll know when that country has started pushing feminism as culturally acceptable. It’s fun for the whole family. A family in that country now means a woman and her children, man is seperate.
How true!! After all, we still live in a society that has the same social and cultural mores that we had 60 years ago!!
Please keep up the ad hominem attacks. It certainly makes you seem like an intelligent and rational person.
Again, proven wrong by whom? And please note, I never said genes had no role. I said that genes are merely the beginning. It’s like art: given a lump of clay, you’ll never be able to make an oil painting, but you can sure make a hell of a lot of other things.
And fifty years is less than a human lifespan. I am amused that you think it’s so easy to change people’s minds. Besides, it’s anthropological theory, not something meant to make the world a utopia. Next you’ll say that learning about evolution makes kids commit crimes.
I bet you go around sighing a lot, saying things like, “what do you expect? All -insert large, non-homogenous group here- are alike” and internally congratulating yourself for being so damn above it all.
To Shadow and Pecunium: The debate about free will is no longer philosophical, it’s now a scientific matter because it requires NON-DETERMINISM: A system whose output is not exclusively dependent on its inputs. You’re behind the times if don’t know this.
Your behind the times if you think that the oddities of quantum mechanics, the indeterministic effects of things at the scale of individual electrons, etc (as function in the brain) don’ t once again allow for the possibility of non-determinism.
As I said, if you come up with something new, I’ll let you know.