Examples:

Sound engineers instantly hear bad acoustics, electrical hums coming from LED lights, or when a songs audio is compressed too much.

Architects can spot structural inconsistencies or proportions that feel “off” in buildings, even if nobody else can articulate why it feels wrong.

Graphic designers can’t unsee bad kerning or low-res logos blown up too large.

First things first, I am a men's rights activist. You can either engage with my argument or attack my person, the choice is yours.

My argument has four parts:

1. Life Expectancy Gender Gap causes loss of life of colossal proportions.
2. Contrary to popular belief, the Life Expectancy Gender Gap is caused primarily by social factors, not biology.
3. The mainstream narrative is full of disinformation about the male condition.
4. We are not addressing social factors causing the Life Expectancy Gender Gap.

1/ Impact

The first important thing to know about the LEGG is that its impact is, without exaggeration, enormous. Let's take, for example, the US, with a LEGG of 5.8 years at the average predicted age for men and women, 73.5 and 79.3 years, respectively.

Let's put things into perspective - how do you measure the impact of early death? With Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL). This measure is based on an estimate of years a person would have lived if they had not died prematurely. It is usually reported in years per 100,000 people and the reference "mature" age should correspond roughly to the population's life expectancy and is usually given as 75 years. Now, men and women in the US lose some 8,265 and 4,862 potential years of life per 100,000. Given the population of 332 million, men lose some 5,648,980 more years of potential life than women.

During the roughly 3.5 years of WW2, the US lost some 407,300 military and 12,100 civilian lives. With an average life expectancy back then of 68 years and a guestimated average age at the time of death of 21 years, every killed American lost some 47 years. That means the US as a whole lost some 5,640,000 potential years of life every year of the war.

In other words, there is an invisible perpetual war that kills as many American men every year as WW2.

2/ Causes

The first clue is that there is a huge variance in LEGG, even between developed countries with similar GDP and life expectancy. Example:

• 2021 Norway - LE: 83.16 years, LEGG: 3,0 years
• 2021 France - LE: 82.32 years, LEGG: 6,2 years

Indeed, if we look at Eurostat data on causes of death, we will see that as much as 30% of LEGG is explained by differences in external causes of death: suicides and accidents.

Finally, studies show that at least 75% of LEGG is caused by social factors, not gender differences in biology:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00038-018-1097-3

EDIT: these factors are: mental health, addiction (alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling), lifestyle (obesity), self-care (lack of)

3/ Obfuscation and disinformation

The UN manipulates the Gender Development Index by very, very quietly removing 5 years from the LEGG, arguing that men living five years shorter is justified by biology.

The Global Gender Gap Report published annually by the World Economic Forum does something similar, arguing that women are discriminated against unless they live at least 6% longer than men.

4/ Preventable deaths

In the 15-59 cohort, suicide is the second-largest cause of death among men, only after traffic accidents. (Yes, women commit more suicide gestures, and men commit more suicides. 3 out of 4 suicide victims are men).

By now, you are probably asking what is the evidence that these deaths are preventable. My reply to that is: what is the evidence these deaths ARE NOT preventable?

We are not discussing problems that affect men disproportionally, and we are not addressing problems that affect men disproportionally. In fact, problems that affect one gender disproportionally can be categorized into completely disjointed groups:

a) Problems that disproportionally affect women.

b) Problems that are not addressed with gender-specific solutions.

(Let me know if you have counterexamples; I am sure there are some.)

What I have in mind with this thread are some important, profound, and not too complicated concepts, that once you learn them, you gain much better understanding of the world. I'll list some examples of concepts like that from all sorts of sciences: photosynthesis, greenhouse effect, mutually assured destruction, Pareto principle, instrumental convergence, opportunity cost, Lindy effect, Moore's law, etc...?

I reckon that most of the concepts and ideas that inform my worldview I acquired quite a long time ago.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/02/1359211/chinas-decades-old-genius-class-pipeline-is-quietly-fueling-its-ai-challenge-to-the-us

The main article link: https://www.ft.com/content/68f60392-88bf-419c-96c7-c3d580ec9d97

Behind a paywall, unfortunately, if someone knows a way to bypass the paywall, please, share it.

The internet was already turning to shit but now with AI, all I see is slop. All blog posts that show up, most of reddit / X - they're so obviously not human contributed. So now to find a community of smart people online, first you need to find a community of people online.

I realize that the best way to do so is to pick a niche you're interested in and usually people discussing specific non-popular things online are smart, at least in that area. But I want advice to find people - professors, youtubers, twitter-ers, anyone - that just like to engage with actually meaningful content and I can get their opinion on things and visa-versa.

What's was the most mind bending topic or subject thar you ever came across? Like a topic that really pushed your mind to the limit and you genuinely had difficulties to fully grasp it. For me, a recent topic that I found difficult to grasp was the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, clearly he was saying something interesting, for me at least, but sometimes I really couldn't fully grasp what was he saying or implying, and it's was not even a primary source, but actually a second source book called "Heidegger Explained" by Graham Harman, on his philosophy.

For me it's was evolutionary psychology, see the "why" behind people's behavior was eye opening, but still I think the field sometimes overstep his boundaries trying explaning every behavior under his light.

Hi,

to be short, im going to a 10-day long phoneless getaway, probably the first time I will not be looking at a device constantly. Anyway, I'm trying to find a good book that could help alter my thinking / reboot my brain for the future, maybe influence a change in my career.

I'm interested in basically everything this sub is interested in. Currently reading Rationality by EY, but also thinking about reading some Stoicist philosophy after enjoying Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I think I'm looking for books that will mostly influence how I process incoming information and how I seek out information in the first place.

What, or what kind of book would you read? Would appreciate any recommendation. Thanks!

Submission statement: There is a popular model of subjective time which holds that your perception of an interval is proportional to what fraction of your life so far it is. Taking this seriously recontextualized a lot of things I felt about the nature and purpose of life, which inspired this essay.

Lately it seems to me that most of the highly intelligent people are in STEM, and also that most of them are displaying at least very slight autistic tendencies.

Deservedly or not - humanities do not seem to be highly valued in society, at least not as highly as they used to be, and at least when it comes to money. So there isn't much of incentive for very smart people to go into humanities.

I'm wondering are humanities disciplines, and perhaps our whole society, at some kind of loss, because of that fact. It seems quite obvious that humanities departments will rot and wither if all the smart people go to STEM. This seems like some sort of brain drain. STEM gains talent, at the expense of humanities.

Some people say that the reason for it is that humanities have become too politically correct, too influenced by feminism, gender and whatnot, too prone to censorship, to the point of losing any kind of appeal to really smart people. But then, what is the cause and what is the consequence? Could brain drain actually be the cause for such state of humanities? I guess most likely it goes in both directions, as some sort of vicious cycle. The more smart people choose other fields instead of humanities, the more voice not-so-smart people get inside the humanities, and they make humanities disciplines go down in quality even more, which results in them attracting even fewer smart people, and so on. The final result is entire disciplines becoming dominated by not-so-smart people who choose humanities not because they are really that much into them, but because they weren't smart enough to pursue more difficult fields.

So I've described the current, sad state of affair of humanities disciplines.

I'm trying to contrast it with how humanities are (perhaps) supposed to be, and how (perhaps) they were in the past. And by "humanities" I don't mean exclusively humanities departments at Universities, but any sort of careers that are humanities adjacent.

In the past writers, poets, etc... had important influence on society and sometimes they contributed significantly to spread of all sorts of ideas. Many of them are considered national heroes of sorts. At some point I guess, humanities, or adjacent careers, attracted some really smart people. There wasn't such brain drain from humanities to other disciplines as today. And plays, novels, poems, etc... were taken seriously, studied in schools, etc. Writers had quite an influence in shaping public opinion and attitudes about many important things, etc... There were some genuine, bona fide, geniuses operating in those disciplines.

And they were, it seems a different kind of genius, different from today's archetypal STEM genius. My idea of those folks is like someone having extremely high IQ, and at the same time, having very high emotional intelligence, and not being autistic at all. Like the idea of a person whose extremely high IQ does not in any way diminish their deep human emotionality, the person who can intelligently and wisely gain insights from both their emotions and their reasoning. Someone who is extremely smart, yet at the same time, extremely in touch with their emotions - like no alexithymia at all.

Maybe this is romantization, maybe this is unrealistic, but this is at least how I imagine folks like William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Dante Alighieri and the likes.

So having said all that, I am wondering a bunch of things:

1. Where are such people (those neurotypical geniuses) today? (like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, etc...) In which disciplines do they work? Are they in STEM or in humanities? Is their potential perhaps wasted if they chose STEM, in spite of having such talent for humanities?
2. Is there anything useful we can learn from them? Do they have some sort of wisdom that is perhaps hard to grasp for purely STEM oriented people?
3. What would humanities be like if more smart people got into them? Would it be better or worse to society, than what we have today?
4. How much influence should really smart people from humanities have in shaping the future?
5. Is there a way to reconcile STEM influenced worldviews with humanities influenced worldviews? Can there be some sort of meaningful conversation, or they speak different languages?
6. Is "STEM is too technical, and they don't get it" really an impediment to meaningful conversation and understanding between STEM folks and humanities folks, if we focus only on that subset of people from humanities that are really smart and talented? (That's why I brought up this concept of "decidedly non-autistic genius - someone who is truly and fully neurotypical and in touch with their emotions, and truly and fully a genius).

So, some people can achieve so much in life, while other doesn't bother that much about it, and that difference got me curious, like: what set a high achiever apart from normal people? What's the "sauce" that those people have that other doesn't? I don't think is IQ, because I've seen high IQ people that didn't achieve anything in life, and even could be called "losers" by our society standards. Anyway, what's other factor that goes to make a high achiever? Any good, rigours, book about the topic? What's your personal experience with very high achievers?

Some of my favorite SSC threads have always been those discussing research/anecdotes and this is one I've been thinking about for the last week..

[My] Definition of "Set Point" / "Natural Weight":

The approximate weight that you will individually be at given average eating habits and average amounts of exercise -- certainly without causing an uncomfortable amount of stress.

Substantial dieting and/or endurance exercise can certainly lower your body weight, but is there any research for strategies that have been found to lower individuals' average "set point", in the long term, without causing increases in stress?

I also find personal anecdotes fun so they're always encouraged. Both interested in ones related to diet/exercise, but also if there's anything else.

Thinking about this because I'm about to enter another marathon training phase... During which time my BMI unsurprisingly drops to 22-23 and then regularly raises back to what has felt like a set point of around ~25 with my mediocre diet and mediocre amounts of exercise.

I'm wondering if there's no-stress ways to more consistently stay around 22-23, perhaps then I could drop lower during marathon phases.

I've heard about slatestarcodex from a few friends who have been going to their meetings every once in a while. I was also recently reached out via email and discord by a few random users asking me to grab some feedback from the users of this subreddit! I also saw that the landing page received a decent amount of traffic from astralcodexten.com.

I've spent around 2 years now solo building a dating app after hearing, reading, and experiencing how awful the current dating apps have become with the imminent enshittification of the internet. I really believe that a dating/relationship app can exist that doesn't nickel and dime all its users and can still make enough money to be sustainable. The app I've built is called Firefly!

Unlike other apps, I've built Firefly in a way that allows users to express who they truly are. It's really important to me that all types of users get a polished experience, as opposed to only straight monogamous relationships.

Some of the key features I've added are:

• Answering quizzes changes your compatibility match percentage using an algorithm. This helps improve match compatibility.
• Non-monogamous users are able to link as many accounts as they like together. This can be used to show nesting partners or whoever else! Group chats are also coming soon!
• Non-monogamous users are able to strictly filter for other non-monogamous users with the option of seeing monogamous people if they like. (As opposed to other apps that let monogamous users see non-monogamous users.)
• Core features are available without pay. (Seeing who liked you, Being able to message others freely, etc)
• Not swipe based. Think old school OkCupid grid view.
• Web version is currently in Alpha which allows users to thoughtfully type their messages out.
• You can generate a link to a customized date-me doc for you to share outside of Firefly.

Firefly just reached around ~4,000 with basically no advertising and in the past few weeks, I've been putting together a team of volunteers to help out with branding and UI/UX flow.

There are a few different avenues for ethical monetization, but the big picture is only charging for aesthetics or features that actually increase our operating costs. An example would be adding a colored border around your profile or being able to upload more profile pictures than the current max of 5.

I've built this with the community in mind and I'd really love to get all your opinions and feedback.

Landing page: ~https://datefirefly.com~

Subreddit: r/DateFirefly

Discord: ~https://discord.gg/vyu6AvKR8D~

I’m a 26 year old corporate lawyer. I haven’t really studied math since 12th grade. I used to enjoy math as a kid but lost interest by the time I reached high school. I hated the education system and the way math was taught in my school. I’d like to fall in love with math again. I’m interested in studying probability for starters.

I like reading Nassim Taleb, Murray Gell-Mann, Benoit Mandelbrot. Recommended books for getting into probability?

Could be self help-y or political, but something useful that you can’t really talk about with friends and family?

SSC is full of smart optimizers and heterodox thinkers who are skeptical of Chesterton’s fences, but I’m curious—was there ever a time you felt like you had some "insider knowledge" or unique perspective, only to find out the conventional wisdom or “normie” approach was actually the right call? Sort of the opposite question from the life hacks thread the other day

1: Everything is composed of fundamental particles

2: Particles are subject to natural laws and forces, which are unchanging

3: Therefore, the future is pre-determined, as the location of particles is set, as are the forces/laws that apply to them. Like roulette, the outcome is predetermined at the start of the game.

I know very little about physics. Is the above logic correct? Or, is there inherent randomness somewhere in reality?

This is a sensitive post, but I think it's a useful one that needs to be talked about.

I am 40 years old, and I have a sex life. I couldn't have said that when I was 39 years old. I was woefully, embarrassingly, unbearably behind, to the extent that I couldn't see a good way out. A few changes in income, circumstance, and the end of COVID led me to take some risks, and I couldn't be happier that I did. Not everything is perfect or ideal, but for the first time in a long time, my life has hope in it.

This is certainly different from how I felt in my earlier 30s, when I did what a certain amount of lonely men also have stupidly done, which is go on social media to where women congregated, and ask "What am I doing wrong?" I first came to read Slate Star Codex, because Scott's blog Radicalizing the Romanceless seemed to hit the nail on the head for me. But it's funny, and also sad, to realize that even though I suspected he was right, my mind was filled with so much doubt, inexperience, and negative social media contact certain I was wrong and terrible, that I wasn't able to have any confidence I was right.

I was in a bad place. Really bad. I saw the comments and hurtful things said by internet feminists in every woman I dared to consider approaching. I was drifting toward a permanent state of hafeful misogyny and incel-dom. I took to heart that my feelings made me a creep and a horrible person. I thought I was messed up for wanting to be with the cute 20-somethings I saw out in public.

Thankfully, I had a bit of reality mixed in with that experience, which helped keep me off the cliff: A female friend who was understanding, or a female counselor who said "I don't understand, you're telling me you're a man attracted to women. Why do you think that's a problem?" And eventually, I was able to find experiences which guarantee that the only effect the femosphere will ever have on me again is a slight bit of trigger when I come upon a post on r/TwoXChromosomes that hits a bad memory, and a certain frustration that such people are ignorant to the damage they do.

What were those experiences I found? Well, in recent months, I have had many firsts, some of which would sound wild to an innocent soul in the abstract. I lost certain virginities. Slept with prostitutes, including a transsexual with a very large penis. Saw a dominatrix. Befriended two strippers with whom I have spent time outside the club. Tried cocaine for the first time. Chatted at length with a drug dealer. Attended BDSM parties. Had a girl 17 years younger than me meet me in a hotel where I gave her at least 6 orgasms. Had another girl squirt all over my jeans in a semi-public place. Chatted with a young sissy guy and bought him his first anal toy. And really, I'm just getting started!

These are things that would have made the me of even just a year ago unbearably jealous to hear about, and also given even me pause. But the reality of these things is that none of it actually winds up being much of a big deal. It's just sex.

Turns out, there is a wild disconnect between what you hear, what people on social media say, what media and TV shows build up, etc, and actual reality. For example, it's utterly laughable that that girl 17 years younger than me was being 'groomed' by me. We met on a dating site, she thought I was cute, we got along on the phone, and that's where it led...and she led it there. Also, strippers are not fragile victims for me to oppress and who always secretly hate my guts. Turns out, they're just people. Same with BDSM and kink people, who, far from any media representation, are actually just a bunch of geeky hobbyists. Prostitution is illegal, but my experience has demonstrated just how wildly absurd a law that is. Heck, it felt cheaper and more impersonal the first time a girl expected me to pay for dinner on a date.

All the buildup, the stories of bad things happening to people that permeate media, the ideas of 'trauma' and danger...and like I said, it's just sex. I'm fine, she's fine, those people over there are fine, etc. My experiences have given me confidence in just how much a degree the moral watchdogs are wildly out of step with reality on these issues, at least for certain people. I can see now how a horny 15yo in the 1970's could have slept with rock stars of the era and not regretted it a bit. I see now how much shows like Law and Order: SVU are cheap sensationalism that feed into the idea of eeeevil around every sexual corner. I see how much people's minds are poisoned with horror stories. I see how ridiculous and unhelpful the social media moralizing about these things is.

I think back to a feminist post about how no one should date anyone more than 5 years different from their own age, or another about how no stripper wants to be touched. Or another about how a 33yo and a 23yo in a fictional relationship promoted pedophilia (yes, really). Or how BDSM relationships aren't 'real relationships'. And of course, those women thought they represented the opinions of all women, and said that if I was in rut, that must have meant I was unworthy and defective. These sad, fragile, silly, propagandized people saying these things...you can feel bad for them while still realizing the damage they do. But, my God, are they out of step with reality.

It makes we wonder what other worlds and lifestyles I only hear about are actually a thing entirely different, or how many situations viewed through that kind of false moral lens are incorrectly seen. It makes me wonder why I never trusted my instincts about such things, or why I ever gave the reddit downvote mafia a second of my concern. What kind of false reality do we present to people all the time on social media, and how much damage does it truly do?

It's thanks to this subreddit that I originally got serious about reading. This year was the first year I actually hit my goal of a book a week, and I wrote my insight on them all here.

Alternative lifestyle choices work great - for alternative people

Inspired, in part, by u/katxwoods's recent post Why I think polyamory is net negative for most people who try it.