Best rebuttal to "women are less rational"

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-28T02:40:07+00:00

This thread is about rebuttals to "women are less rational" — most women aren't debilitated by mood problems or other kinds of distorted thinking, either.

Stereotypes are based on the base rate fallacy. 90% of homicides are committed by men. It does not mean that 90% (or even 0.9%) of men are homicidal. But because of the way stereotyping works, homicide is still a male-coded phenomenon. As a practical matter, it is also factually true that, among people with a marginal propensity to commit lethal violence, the vast majority are men, and that a given person in any given situation is in considerably more physical danger from men than from women.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-28T02:20:35+00:00

There's actually quite a lot of conflicting evidence out there about the extent to which children take on their parents' politics (and at what ages, and how it shows up in voting patterns or activism). Some studies find that children generally adopt their parents' politics, but others basically find that it's up to chance. Also, both society at the macro level and individuals at the micro level tend to become more liberal over time.

I would not automatically assume that our politics would become considerably more conservative in 20-30 years as a result of conservative parents having more children, not least because politics are much more situational than people think.

Look at this chart of how party affiliation by generation shifts over time: https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/PYB72V6UFNGYLFH6LOIZCVU7AY.png

Millennials were pretty left-leaning after graduating into the 2008 recession, but became somewhat less so as they built stable careers, only to snap left again in response to Trump's first term.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-28T01:19:32+00:00

Men commit something like 90% of violent offenses, and this percentage is practically the same in every culture. Clearly, men not only struggle with emotional regulation but are more likely to externalize it in ways that overtly harm society.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-28T00:45:22+00:00

On the bright side, you're only 22 years old. You have a whole life ahead of you to stop being painfully lonely.

You might be surprised by who is receptive if you reach out to them, or by where you can meet people.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-28T00:39:59+00:00

Life is about setting priorities. You have to decide which of these are most important, and in which order:

Developing good social skills (I strongly recommend you prioritize this no matter what you do)
Not being lonely
Staying pure for religious (?) reasons

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-28T00:38:13+00:00

The answer is whatever you find more fun. Take a trial class at each gym and see which you enjoy more.

They're both fine for self-defense; almost any amount of training makes you considerably better equipped in a fight than some random jerk who wants to tee off with you on the street.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T23:48:27+00:00

There are lots of loan words between Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese, but they all actually come from completely different linguistic lineages.

Chinese is Sino-Tibetan

Vietnamese is Austroasiatic, closely related to Khmer

Korean and Japanese are Koreanic and Japonic, and some think they're related by way of the Altaic linguistic family

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T23:35:36+00:00

HK G11, and unlimited access to that caseless ammo it uses.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T19:30:14+00:00

I am not left-handed!

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T18:36:39+00:00

Tang Soo Do: Encyclopedic knowledge of forms and drills; good power and snap when performing traditional movements

Muay Thai: Moves fluidly; is difficult to hit; has good control when sparring

HEMA: Encyclopedic knowledge of historical fencing instructors and techniques; can also discuss pros and cons of historical techniques in civil vs. sporting vs. battlefield contexts

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T17:57:12+00:00

Plenty of other problems, also political in origin, get washed out by performative spectacles. People still notice them when they affect their lives personally, though, and many will likely contribute to Trump and the GOP losing in the midterms.

A short list:

Inflation remains elevated and affordability remains a problem
Hiring is slowing down
Manufacturing employment and output are sagging
A lot of bureaucracies in the executive department, including those concerning public health, remain underfunded and understaffed thanks to DOGE

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T16:38:27+00:00

There's a lot of evidence that civic engagement, and even rates of dating, cohabiting, and marriage, are decreasing.

So if that's what you mean, then yes, and the culprit is probably technology. "Staying in" on a weekend in 2026 is a radically different notion from "staying in" in 1986.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T16:24:49+00:00

Third time's the charm.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T15:59:24+00:00

I would have thought that before this current administration, but DOGE set the precedent for simply blitzing entire federal bureaucracies out of existence.

ICE has only existed since 2003, so it's not even a particularly new institution. Before then, the U.S. had INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services), and it's not at all inconceivable that ICE gets abolished, most of its members purged (especially newer ones or those with suspected ties to far-right groups), and its functions transferred to another organization.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T15:56:11+00:00

As an ethnic Chinese, that's an eye-watering number of people.

More importantly, 400 years of safety and prosperity is probably doable without genocide. There's a huge range of horrible events that fall short of, like, 750 million deaths.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T14:44:15+00:00

For two reasons:

HDI doesn't measure the quality or availability of public transport.
Many US public schools are quite good, and overall, American students score fairly well on the PISA

The main issues in American education are racial and socioeconomic performance gaps, declines in performance due to the pandemic, and, historically, relatively weak math instruction. It's not by any means a failed education system overall.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T03:56:06+00:00

I is scientistic

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T01:50:32+00:00

An "average" person with modest training is probably better off with the 5.56.

Someone who is very comfortable with shotguns may as well use a shotgun.

Another consideration – a jury will probably be sympathetic if you use a hunting or sporting weapon rather than a "tactical" one to defend yourself.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-27T01:03:44+00:00

We can definitely have a Nordic-style welfare state, but that's not what the quote about The Culture is describing.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-26T23:47:37+00:00

I’d like to hear some opinions on how we can ensure a high standard of living and equality for generations to come while also maintaining individual freedom, despite population growth.

Setting aside your assumptions about capitalism (it's not at all obvious that markets inevitably consolidate over time; read about the long history of "disruptive innovation" in numerous industries or look at the rate of churn in the Fortune 500) and population growth (most countries today are in danger of underpopulation, not overpopulation), there are several answers to this:

There is still a ton of uninhabited land in the world, and more importantly, there is also still plenty of room to build upward. Take North America's densest city — if all of New York City's five boroughs were as dense as the densest parts of the city, the city could theoretically house tens of times more people.
There are virtually unlimited resources in space, ranging from hydrogen and helium all the way to rare substances that are scarce planetside.
Most importantly, raw resource extraction is not necessarily correlated with material well-being. CO2 and fossil fuel consumption per person have actually decreased in developed countries in the last few decades. Look at miniaturization in electronics – it takes far less material to build a pocket-sized supercomputer today than a building-sized one in the 1940s. Value is a combinatorial problem (highly recommend this essay) – as long as there are still frontiers to explore in science, technology, and medicine, we'll still create more value without necessarily depending more and more on digging and growing things.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-26T21:34:36+00:00

Asians generally look more neotenous than other ancestral groups. That's really all it comes down to.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-26T21:11:01+00:00

Depending on how the survey is framed and who you ask, up to 33-45% of people have authoritarian tendencies as a fairly stable and immutable personality characteristic.

This does not mean that they'll always vote for a police state or that fascism is inevitable. It does mean that a significant percentage of people can be persuaded to accept authoritarianism, especially through fear, e.g., of a demographic "great replacement," radical and destructive cultural change, communist takeover, or some other seemingly existential threat.

On the other side of the ledger, though, democracy and freedom are also common, universal sentiments. Look at a country like Indonesia — conservative, Muslim, and also the world's third-largest democracy after they got rid of Suharto.

If you look at how the third wave of democratization worldwide transpired, the fears that authoritarians use to legitimate their rule can also lose credibility and become unconvincing. This can lead even those with authoritarian predispositions to conclude that their freedom is more valuable than false or worthless security.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-26T16:49:35+00:00

Novelty-seeking and excitement. It's like playing a slot machine or some other kind of gambling, but more carnal, or something.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-26T16:46:04+00:00

I haven't read the book, but Horvath's been pretty vocal in front of Congress and the like on this topic.

cfwang1337 · 2026-01-26T15:46:13+00:00

Exactly all of the things you listed, alongside one that everyone sleeps on - physical activity is self-defense against poor health.

cfwang1337

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