Rational approach to finding life partners

c_edwards

Speaking from personal experience, finding the right relationship can be HARD. I recently came across a rational take on finding relationship partners, much of which really resonated with my experiences:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html

(I'm still working my way through the Sequences, and lw has more than eight thousand articles with "relationship" in them. I'm not promising the linked articles include unique information)

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html

(I'm still working my way through the Sequences, and lw has more than eight thousand articles with "relationship" in them. I'm not promising the linked articles include unique information)

I'll guess that you're thinking about anti-discrimination laws, according to which in some circumstances an employer can get into trouble for not employing someone.

No, I'm thinking about the fact that politicians and pundits routinely talk about lowering unemployment, and this is universally agreed to be a desirable goal and not something creepy for implying that every worker 'deserves' a job, heck the "right to a job" is frequently listed in lists of "second generation human rights". Contrast this with the reaction advancedatheist got for suggesting men deserve a sexual relationship with women.

That's not what "right" means. As a EU citizen, I have the right to travel to other EU countries, but this doesn't mean that if I want to go to Poland there's someone who must take me there.

2gjm11y

Oh, OK. So in that case, again, I think I think more or less the same in the two cases. * For any given potential worker, it is good if they are able to have a job if they want one. * But no one in particular is obliged to give them a job. * (And I think at some point we will need a transition to a different way of organizing production that drops the idea that everyone should be working. But that's another matter.) * For any given potential sexually active person, it is good if they are able to have plenty of satisfying sex if they want to. * But no one in particular is obliged to have sex with them. I don't know to what extent this resembles the opinions of the politicians and pundits you have in mind. I would expect that most agree about jobs but many disagree about sex (on account of not thinking as I do that in general more sex is a good thing). One way in which I would expect politicians and pundits to treat those two cases differently: if we think it good for more people to have jobs, it's socially and politically acceptable to suggest that incentives be put in place to encourage people to employ them; but if we think it good for more people to have sex, it's not so acceptable to suggest incentives for that. I think that shows that sex is a sensitive topic; I'm not sure it indicates anything worse. The reaction advancedatheist got, so far as I can tell, was founded on the idea that he thinks women have an obligation to have sex with men. I don't know whether he actually does think that, but it's explicitly what Mirzhan_Irkegulov says he thinks advancedatheist thinks: "your belief that women as a group should be encouraged to have sex with men against their will".