Libertarianism is an irrational, politically extremist position?

What irrational, politically extremist positions have you recently seen a lot of on LW?

The rationalist community has a lot of independent thinkers, and independent thinkers are more likely than the general population to find the game of amassing wealth to be an obstruction to their freedom of thought and an inefficient path to happiness and life satisfaction.

Also many rationalists are quite young, as Vaniver pointed out.

How about getting a balance? Sometimes you could hang around a community where you're one of the most competent people around, and at other times you could put yourself in a position where you're a student to most of the other members.

This seems to get the benefit MrMind was describing without the drawback you've identified.

Normal people do this all the time. They just don't verbalize it.

I get the sense that you're not against the action but the phrasing. You agree that it's generally a good thing to do what MrMind is suggesting, but that it seems off to... do exactly what MrMind is suggesting. Clearly you're okay with someone subconsciously choosing to smile at people who pass because it makes them feel good, but you have a problem with someone explicitly describing the process with literal phrasing such as "romantic validation level".

Why did noticing and removing bias make you aromantic?

I assume the "it's not rape if she liked it" argument refers to circumstances where the woman doesn't consent to the sexual encounter, but then changes her mind part of the way through. In other words, we're talking about a shift from "don't want" (when the sex started) to "want" (before the sex is over), and describing the general result as "she liked it". It would be more precise, of course, to phrase it as, "She didn't like it and then she did like it."

Now, which part of my post were you saying fit that argument?

It's also that the current cultural landscape removes personal responsibility in many cases. Women will sometimes regret having sex the same way anyone may regret eating a cookie (they felt good then, but feel bad now). While no man would be proud of being the sexual equivalent of junk food during a one-night stand with a woman, I think today's society is a bit trigger happy in such situations in saying the man took advantage of the woman instead of saying that she indulged in the moment and later thought herself hedonistic.

I assume you meant this part.

With the considerations above in mind, I don't see how my point fits the "it's not rape if she liked it" argument. While that argument refers to situations where the woman felt averse to sex but then changed her mind part of the way through (with no specification about how she felt afterwards, the following day, and so on); on the other hand my example refers to situations where the woman wanted the sex both during the initial escalation and throughout the entire act (but then felt regret later on).

Let me know if I misinterpreted you.

rape is a serious accusation and all though some women may feel the way you described/misuse the legal system... I doubt that it's a common occurrence, most women are ashamed to admit they've been raped...don't think many would put themselves through the stress of it willy nilly.

I'm under the impression that when alcohol is involved the average person is more likely to use the words "taken advantage of" than "raped" unless the woman is passed out.

I wasn't necessarily referring to misusing the legal system, though that's probably an issue in certain isolated cases. My concern, instead, is that Western culture at this time in history seems to allow women an escape route from admitting personal responsibility for certain actions.

Women may not be flocking to the justice system, but there's certainly a trend where female sexual hedonism is blamed on the men who take up the offers.

Haven't read the article, but even if the idea of legalizing rape on private property is looked at as sincere for even a second... it falls flat on its face. Marital rape is a thing that happens, seems likely this legalization would condone it. And so long as we're talking about responsibility, it would be the responsibility of the owners of properties legally raping people to put up a sign saying as much..kinda like the beware of angry dog ones...except about rape...which I don't think would catch on.

It was a satirical article and Roosh has no intention of trying to legalize rape on private property. I don't necessarily suggest reading the article, as it's long and liable for misinterpretation from anyone unfamiliar with the PUA community, but if you want to criticize his reasoning in a disciplined and responsible manner then you're going to have to take the plunge.

If you do decide to read the article, feel free to post in this sub-thread any counterarguments you come up with.

CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don't think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn't available.

Rather than deferring to the judgment of the Smart Altruists and assuming that within their secret backroom discussions they've determined with logic, rigor, and a plethora of academic citations that it's crucial to the mission of raising the sanity waterline to not release a comprehensive exposition of their body of rationality techniques, perhaps we need only consider your second point except in less reverential light:

I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.

So much for the Internet-era model of "free information to be disseminated to all".

Without a deferential attitude toward the Great Rationalists of CFAR, Occam's Razor suggests that perhaps they're simply trying to keep the money flowing. Would it upset you if thousands of people without the resources or time to make it to a CFAR workshop had access to a self-study version of the CFAR curriculum?

Terms like k-close and f-close serve to disassociate emotions. Just because a word like sex is charged with emotions doesn't mean that it should be avoided. If man feel uneasy about speaking those words they should explore their relationship with those words instead of replacing it with more constructed language.

I agree that many men in the PUA community use jargon such as "k-close" and "f-close" as a technique for disassociating emotions. Where we differ is that you're condemning this method whereas I believe it's a crucial tool to have available.

First of all, let's consider where the emotions come from.

If a man is choosing between saying "I had sex with a beautiful woman I met last weekend" and "I f-closed a solid 8 last weekend", he's choosing between different linguistic constructions. The thought remains the same. In both cases, he imagines the woman, the situation, and the interaction. The difference, rather, is in the realm of cached thoughts and emotions. When he says the former, his mind transitions to associations relating to mainstream thought. When he says the latter, his cognition completes the pattern straight into the received wisdom and social influences of the PUA community.

Note that you are operating firmly within the current of mainstream thought on this topic. This isn't to say that you're wrong. You may very well be on the right track in your criticisms of PUA. But nevertheless your thoughts on this subject demonstrate absolutely no break from the mainstream of polite society. This is the only information we need to understand why you prefer to use terms like "sex" rather than "f-close".

For better or for worse, the PUA community contains a lot of information which is very much contrary to mainstream thinking and tends to draw very strong, negative emotions from the average person. Imagine a socially active and happy person using mainstream language yet trying to retain PUA-type beliefs. The amount of stoicism required to avoid cracking under social pressure would be immense.

The ultimate conclusion is this. You value the mainstream on this subject, so it's concerning to you that PUA writers run away from terms like "sex" because they don't want the associations which come along for the ride. But I'm in a different position: I think the mainstream is on the wrong track on questions relating to gender politics, thus I myself consider it very important to erect a firewall against what I see as mind control.

You phrased your objection as a separate point, but at the most fundamental level your problem with the language is a repetition of your problem with the community's beliefs.

That's a bad belief to have. It prevents guys from having deep conversations with women about their desires.

Note that the PUA community is very unusual in that it's a bunch of guys who tend to be somewhat nerdy, intellectual, or analytical, chasing after girls who tend to fall into the category of "girls who are fun and social". It's not that women don't know what they want; it's that the girls PUA practitioners tend to pursue do not speak the same language. If a large number of PUA writers switched their focus to sex with nerdy girls, I'm certain they would quickly "discover" that literal communication about desires is important.

The idea that you shouldn't take a woman's word at face value is a very prevalent meme in PUA, and it's certainly adaptive in its context. But that doesn't mean it applies to you. Whenever you run into a piece of advice which seems totally wrong, you must take into account that the person's life experiences and desires may be very different from yours. What works in one context doesn't necessarily seem sane in another.

I'll continue onto your other points after we sort out this part.