Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

I would like to have the capability of filtering out the moneydiggers who don't particularly feel attracted to me and are only interested in my money. These are the only people who are less likely to date me if they were going to pay for my dinner. Women who are truly attracted to me will find the whole issue of who is expected to pay no more than trivial.

There's a spectrum of attractedness (in particular, there is a spectrum of initial attractedness). On the margin, money can matter, especially if you're competing against a sea of opportunity costs who have different opinions about who pays for dinner. You may still set this as a dealbreaker, but your analysis of the situation is flawed.

And there's some baseline of attractedness required before someone will let you buy them dinner, since your company is presumably a feature of that dinner. There are loads of people who I would not have dinner with even if they offered to buy me really nice food.

Alicorn, my goal is a healthy long-term relationship with a minimal amount of money and time. There are three categories of women:

1) Moneydiggers: The false positives. I want to minimize my chances of winding up with them.

2) The category you suggested: Those who are mildly interested in me and don't mind having a dinner and getting to know me better, as long as I'm paying. My chances of winding up with a long-term relationship with them are say 1 in 10.

3) Those who are so attracted to me they will date me anyways even if I insist we split the bill or I for... (read more)