aurum

"Serious" is a function of commitment. If you were serious about becoming a star soccer player, you wouldn't just kick a ball around every once in a while. You'd commit and put the work in everyday, for as long as it took. That's the kind of relationship I'm talking about. "Heart" is the emotional connection that drives commitment and bonding. You're in love with that person, and that person in particular. They are not just easily replaceable, despite whatever Beyonce might say. Whether that leads to monogamy or some other structure doesn't ultimately matter. Monogamy will work best for most people and for society as a whole, but a mature couple can decide for themselves where they stand on the monogamy continuum.

You'll be alright. Just start planning for a serious relationship at some point. And think a little bit less with your dick and little bit more with your heart. Fundamentally the problem with being German guy is loneliness and lack of romance. Sex matters too of course, but even sex can be a proxy for deeper connection.

That's mostly for young broke dudes. Once they're older and have cash, they evolve into that German guy .

Great example of how collective survival and corruption works. The women benefit by making money to take care of their family, their kids benefit by getting fed, the guys benefit by getting some relief from their loneliness / horniness, and the city benefits from the tourist revenue. Even the cops benefit if you've got a big bag of money laying around .

That's a good point. When it comes to becoming a boyfriend, he certainly might not be worrying about that at all. So if she doesn't worry about it, it might not happen either.

A date will not even happen if someone isn't thinking about the outcome. Usually it's the guy.

I get it. It's definitely good if a guy can be more carefree. I'm just explaining why often they are not. If you're a woman and feel like you can just relax and not worry about the outcome, that's because he's worrying about the outcome.

It's simpler than that. It's because if you don't heavily focus on the outcome, nothing happens. You mostly cannot rely on women to initiate things.

I think that's mostly my issue. In theory, there's nothing wrong with it. Some people might be more conservative and be more comfortable with a traditional relationship. In that case overseas could be a better option.

Dude, you are going to less developed countries so you can take advantage of the fact that women have less power. This is not some enlightened perspective you have on the limitations of egalitarianism in dating.

No that's not what I meant. You are not capable of unconditional love, nor is she capable of receiving it. But neither of you need to be. Your conditional love, assuming it's not too conditional, is enough.

Your girlfriend doesn't need unconditional love. Your limited, human love will do just fine.

You mean like women having power and autonomy?

Harems almost never end up being good arrangements for women. And guys will rationalize endlessly about why they are, just like they are doing in this thread.

People mostly date based on unconscious survival advantage.

@koops no one is freeing themselves completely from suffering. At best, you can have less resistance to your own suffering. In which case you might suffer less.

@Thought Art Sounds great. The guitar solo on the outro was a nice touch. My only feedback would be to see if you can experiment with moving the energy of the song more in your writing. It tends to stay at one level, which can be good but also might be limiting and repetitive. Maybe try mixing in a chord progression change, a bridge or new melody in the verse.

...from Kyle's populist, progressive POV. Remember that a guy like Kyle tends to believe that the general populace wants progressivism, but they are just oppressed by the elites and various forms of corruption. Thus, appealing to populist / progressive rhetoric is the key to winning over voters in Kyle's mind. And of course he's not completely wrong. That kind rhetoric can indeed be popular, and you could argue Trump has lost some touch with that. But I would be careful of looking at everything through that POV.

That is still your interpretation. Other interpretations could obviously exist, whether they are true or not. The function of religion for most people is survival advantage. So people will interpret the Quran in whatever way ultimately suits survival and their level of development.

No. Wishful thinking I'd say. Trump's popularity is doing fine with his supporters.

This is a good talk by Mearscheimer on lying in politics: I was surprised to realize I had never heard a talk specifically on this topic. Many people don't seriously bother to do sense-making on "why" these things happen, they just grab their pitchforks and engage in mindless moralizing. In reality, deception can be an extremely powerful tool for survival. But because it is so powerful, it's also a threat to your survival agenda by others who employ it against you. Queue the mindless moralizing. So citizenry engage in all the same tactics Mearscheimer describes here in their own personal life. But almost never is deception condemned or even thought of as deception when performed in favor of their survival agenda. They are self-deceived about their double-standards around deception, as they must be. Something else to consider that I think Mearscheimer misses: it's not just that leaders lie because they think it's in the best interest of the public, it's that political leaders who lie are often a tool of collective ego. It's tempting to think that the citizenry is good, pure and doesn't want leaders who lie, but this itself is self-deception. Of course people sometimes want leaders who lie, for the same reasons that you lie to yourself. Edit: An additional nuance I thought of later. Of course Mearscheimer is right about “blow-back” from lying. This should be obvious for anyone doing consciousness work. But when people with more consciousness attempt to explain this to people at a lesser degree of consciousness, often it is turned into a kind of rigid morality. “Lying is a sin” would be a good example. This also contributes to mindless moralizing and often creates its own problems, but also can be a necessary stage of development for people.

Of course. The whole flaw of communism is that it's way too idealistic in its aspirations.

The challenge with this quiz was whether to answer from my ideal perspective or for what I think is realistic right now. I chose to answer mostly given our current situation.

Oh, if only it was that easy. But this is so speculative. You can't just jump from lipid oxidization in adipose tissue to "this is the cause of these chronic diseases". It's an interesting idea and good starting place. But I'm sorry, it's not enough. I look forward to seeing it. Yes I'm glad Adam brought up Medical Medium, because he's a great example of the kind of BS I am talking about. All these people claiming to be going off their "intuition" make contradictory claims. Surprise, surprise. So who is right? And how do we decide? That could definitely be possible. We might imagine that the body has an intuitive sense for what nutrients it needs, even if that intuition gets mixed-up sometimes with hyper-palatable / addictive foods. I'm not sure what research has been done on this question or what the current consensus is. It will undoubtedly always be the case that our current scientific understanding is missing something important. We just want to be mindful about what we fill in that gap of knowledge with and when it's appropriate to do so. Every bad idea assumes that it's the missing piece.