8 ms·

Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing? I’d find this statement equally compelling (wh

by d23 4y ago

Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing? I’d find this statement equally compelling (which is to say, not at all): > Since we stopped using horses as a primary means of transportation, men’s sense of self worth has diminished. Riding a horse carried a lot of high status connotations: drive, masculinity, towering above the land, and man’s domination over nature. Now, we drive metal cars, low to the ground, and driving one is seen as commonplace. All of men’s low sense of self worth stems from this.

le-mark 4y ago
Nicely articulate point, that you for taking the time.
- d23 4y ago
  Thanks. I initially thought “what’s the point” but didn’t have anything better to do.
- zo1 4y ago
  There is a certain class of very smart, articulate and well-thinking people. They are very good at arguing and dismissing and coming up with all sorts of valid reasons for all sorts of ideas. I find they detract the conversation a lot, instead of adding substance. I refer to the nebulous group of them as the "Intelligentsia", borrowed from others though.
  - clearleaf 4y ago
    They're never here to give a voice to people who don't have one, or to make us look at the material in any different way besides complete dismissal. You call them Intelligensia but I call them people who suck all the oxygen out of the room.
    - zo1 4y ago
      Oh I didn't mean the term to be a compliment in any way. They're the kind of people that bludgeon normal people's debates and arguments with their breadth of knowledge, memory, intelligence and sheer typing capacity.
hans1729 4y ago
>Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing? For me, it’s just playing with models, exploring ideas and representations in human-language space, which is fun, complex, hard… in that space, which you may call unsubstantial, every word references an individual graph. The more my attention system interfaces with the representations of such external graphs, the deeper my understanding of the world as a whole (or our shared models of it) becomes. So yeah, I enjoyed the read, Someone spent their energy on that. Don’t be so dismissive :-)
karpierz 4y ago
It's very compelling when it lines up with my worldview in a way that makes me feel validated. Then I can absorb it uncritically and regurgitate the conclusions to people without thinking about the evidence that lead me to the conclusions. Unfortunately, I'm not a WASP so your 'horse theory' doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > Then I can absorb it uncritically and regurgitate the conclusions to people without thinking about the evidence that lead me to the conclusions You forgot the part where I then accuse you of being the one blinded by ideology and bias.
  - engineeringwoke 4y ago
    As stated elsewhere in the thread, northern Europe bucks this "trend" that the author sees. The nuclear family is as weak as it has ever been, christianity and its ideals are an afterthought, and people have never been happier.
    - DeathArrow 4y ago
      And yet the suicide rate in Norway is among the highest in the world. Crafted studies proclaim people to be happy but they forgot what happiness is.
      - hhmc 4y ago
        > And yet the suicide rate in Norway is among the highest in the world In relative terms, sure. But in absolute terms it's a tiny fraction of people: 10 per 100k.
      - engineeringwoke 4y ago
        If I had a nickel for every time the wikipedia link to whataboutism was the correct response to a hacker news comment, I would be rich
ss108 4y ago
It's a shit article where the author lightly blames what one would generally call "elites" for the stupidity and moral ineptitude of lower-class people who avowedly hate elites and who make it a point of hating everything the "elites" like anyways.
- ensan 4y ago
  "the stupidity and moral ineptitude of lower-class people who avowedly hate elites" I have never encountered an individual who claims to hate the "elite". And I for one will not complain if someone hates a person who holds your classist views. And what do you mean by "elite" anyways? If people dislike those in the position of authority, especially politicians, they generally have very good reasons for that. To quote from the article, "Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s."
  - ss108 4y ago
    "I have never encountered an individual who claims to hate the 'elite'" I don't know what to tell you there. Go talk to more individuals? Go read some right-wing propaganda (e.g. almost anything that comes out Josh Hawley's mouth, or certain off-bench remarks from Justices Alito and Thomas--and yes, all of these individuals are also "elite", but because their views are in the minority among elites, they can't like they aren't "elite" and rail against the other elites). Go see who likes them, how it plays with that base, and see also how it plays with the far-left camp (e.g. Bernie, who I generally like but who has a lot wrong, and AOC) too, though they may use different language. It's a pretty popular meme (I wouldn't call it worthy of being labeled an "idea") among certain segments of the population, sometimes for different reasons. "And what do you mean by 'elite' anyways? If people dislike those in the position of authority, especially politicians, they generally have very good reasons for that." I was not thinking of politicians, but, fwiw, I would say blind/reflexive hatred of politicians is a prime example of a kind of idiotic and adolescent trend in American culture to just hate traditional authority figures. There are probably plenty of good reasons to hate them, sure, but ask people who say things like "oh yeah they're all corrupt" how they know that, what evidence they have, whether they can list the past several major corruption scandals, how corruption here compares to other countries, etc, and they can't do it at all.
alexashka 4y ago
The substance is missing, but at least the subject matter is interesting.
em-bee 4y ago
that's one thing i like about riding a bike. i get to look down at people in cars ;-)
- nicbou 4y ago
  And realise with growing horror how common texting and driving really is.
jeffbee 4y ago
No, it is garbage. A huge series of completely unsupported claims.
azornathogron 4y ago
> Do people find this stuff compelling? Sure, I mean, it's something to think about. Something I can read and consider which parts I agree with or disagree with and why that is. It's not a topic I know anything about really, beyond my general experience of life, so I don't need to be annoyed at things that an expert might recognise as being factually incorrect (unlike if I read, eg, a journalist talking about software where I'm likely to be frustrated at how many things they've got wrong)
magicalhippo 4y ago
> Do people find this stuff compelling? I enjoyed reading it. It's a subject area I've been thinking about from time to time. > Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing? It's an opinion piece, so I read it as such. That is, like having a discussion with a buddy at the pub.
renewiltord 4y ago
It’s like Jared Diamond stuff. Primarily it’s hypothesis generation. You’re not supposed to accept it as true. You’re supposed to consider it and consequences so you can consider “If this is true, what else would one conclude? Do those conclusions affect something I care about meaningfully? If so, how can I establish the truth?” They’re risky though because you have to actively discard the priors you temporarily held afterwards or you’ll go around thinking that “I read an article that said”.
polishdude20 4y ago
Yeah this horse line is a stretch.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fiftyfifty 4y ago
I don't think it's rank speculation, the article itself mentions 1 in 6 men are unemployed, and there have been plenty of other articles that have been posted on here with statistics on the number of men that aren't just unemployed but have no interest being employed. College enrollment of men is somewhere around 44% of the student body nation wide in the US, the number of men in higher education has been dropping for a couple of decades now. Girls are significantly outperforming boys from Kindergarten to 12 grade nearly everywhere. This stuff has been posted on here and discussed many times. There was another article posted on here before similar to this one and I posted my thoughts on the trend from the perspective of coaching high school girls and boys sports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30274979&p=4#30276972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30274979&p=4#30276972
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >College enrollment of men is somewhere around 44% of the student body nation wide in the US, the number of men in higher education has been dropping for a couple of decades now. Girls are significantly outperforming boys from Kindergarten to 12 grade nearly everywhere. Interesting. Are the changes in education biased against boys?
jpeloquin 4y ago
It's a personal statement from someone with relevant lived experience. Exploring others' viewpoints is interesting, if only to find out that they exist. The article touches on questions that do not currently have an objective answer: Why do people do the things they do? Should they be doing something different? Science may someday provide an objective ("substantive") answer to the first, but it can't choose our goals (make value judgments) for us, so articles like this are valuable. And social media works a lot better for opinion-based than objective discourse because everyone can participate on equal footing.
jollybean 4y ago
Honestly, that kind of makes sense. Riding horses is a bit of a masculine thing. I wonder if there's a 'tiny bit' to that. That said, I wonder if most men ever even really rode horses very often.
- op00to 4y ago
  No, horses were incredibly expensive historically speaking. They need land, food, care, all of which were real expenses.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    In my country rural areas only poor had horses. The rest had cars and agricultural tractors.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I have definitely observed the "we need to put little johnny in safety padding for all things" amongst my friends and their kids. My kids were free to roam (within reason) and try things most people shudder at. They learned to cook relatively young, use power tools (after many safety instructions), stay over at friends houses, be around adults talking about adult stuff, etc. They both survived and became healthy, happy young adults (21 and 19 currently) who weren't afraid to take a chance or risk a little pain; they learned that the journey is as important as the end of the trail (learning is a reward, and you'll hit painful road blocks along the way). I had some parents breathless when I told them I let my two 15/13 year olds camp in the woods by a lake over a weekend for fishing and enjoying nature by themselves, because I trusted them to stay out of trouble and use their common sense. I also know they snuck along their handheld gaming devices along with them too and got a chuckle out of their limited rebelliousness. Learn to give kids some slack and they'll set their own goals and not be afraid to go for them.
motohagiography 4y ago
Triggered my HN alert on horses. I ride seriously more days than not. It's a huge and rich topic, but short version is - there were no kings without horsemen. It's been the training for officer class for milennia because it uniquely inculcates a fearlessness and physicality and magnanimity that really does elevate and improve men by developing qualities that are transferrable to other beings in nature. There are men, and there are horsemen. Even in ancient mythology, wisdom originated from the "centaurs," from the "east." It's not woo. I may even write a book on it. Mostly women ride in north america (outside western/rodeo), and the reasons for that are at least as controversial as this thread. Women who ride seriously are usually superior leaders as well, and it's just not something one can easily explain without experience in it.
- StellarTabi 4y ago
  > Women who ride seriously are usually superior leaders as well Always good to wake up one day and find out I'm a superior leader.
- hycaria 4y ago
  Super interesting take! I would love to learn more about it (as as fellow rider).

by d23 4y ago

le-mark 4y ago

Nicely articulate point, that you for taking the time.

d23 4y ago
Thanks. I initially thought “what’s the point” but didn’t have anything better to do.
zo1 4y ago
There is a certain class of very smart, articulate and well-thinking people. They are very good at arguing and dismissing and coming up with all sorts of valid reasons for all sorts of ideas. I find they detract the conversation a lot, instead of adding substance. I refer to the nebulous group of them as the "Intelligentsia", borrowed from others though.
- clearleaf 4y ago
  They're never here to give a voice to people who don't have one, or to make us look at the material in any different way besides complete dismissal. You call them Intelligensia but I call them people who suck all the oxygen out of the room.
  - zo1 4y ago
    Oh I didn't mean the term to be a compliment in any way. They're the kind of people that bludgeon normal people's debates and arguments with their breadth of knowledge, memory, intelligence and sheer typing capacity.

hans1729 4y ago

>Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing? For me, it’s just playing with models, exploring ideas and representations in human-language space, which is fun, complex, hard… in that space, which you may call unsubstantial, every word references an individual graph. The more my attention system interfaces with the representations of such external graphs, the deeper my understanding of the world as a whole (or our shared models of it) becomes. So yeah, I enjoyed the read, Someone spent their energy on that. Don’t be so dismissive :-)

karpierz 4y ago

It's very compelling when it lines up with my worldview in a way that makes me feel validated. Then I can absorb it uncritically and regurgitate the conclusions to people without thinking about the evidence that lead me to the conclusions. Unfortunately, I'm not a WASP so your 'horse theory' doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

the_only_law 4y ago
> Then I can absorb it uncritically and regurgitate the conclusions to people without thinking about the evidence that lead me to the conclusions You forgot the part where I then accuse you of being the one blinded by ideology and bias.
- engineeringwoke 4y ago
  As stated elsewhere in the thread, northern Europe bucks this "trend" that the author sees. The nuclear family is as weak as it has ever been, christianity and its ideals are an afterthought, and people have never been happier.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    And yet the suicide rate in Norway is among the highest in the world. Crafted studies proclaim people to be happy but they forgot what happiness is.
    - hhmc 4y ago
      > And yet the suicide rate in Norway is among the highest in the world In relative terms, sure. But in absolute terms it's a tiny fraction of people: 10 per 100k.
    - engineeringwoke 4y ago
      If I had a nickel for every time the wikipedia link to whataboutism was the correct response to a hacker news comment, I would be rich

ss108 4y ago

It's a shit article where the author lightly blames what one would generally call "elites" for the stupidity and moral ineptitude of lower-class people who avowedly hate elites and who make it a point of hating everything the "elites" like anyways.

ensan 4y ago
"the stupidity and moral ineptitude of lower-class people who avowedly hate elites" I have never encountered an individual who claims to hate the "elite". And I for one will not complain if someone hates a person who holds your classist views. And what do you mean by "elite" anyways? If people dislike those in the position of authority, especially politicians, they generally have very good reasons for that. To quote from the article, "Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s."
- ss108 4y ago
  "I have never encountered an individual who claims to hate the 'elite'" I don't know what to tell you there. Go talk to more individuals? Go read some right-wing propaganda (e.g. almost anything that comes out Josh Hawley's mouth, or certain off-bench remarks from Justices Alito and Thomas--and yes, all of these individuals are also "elite", but because their views are in the minority among elites, they can't like they aren't "elite" and rail against the other elites). Go see who likes them, how it plays with that base, and see also how it plays with the far-left camp (e.g. Bernie, who I generally like but who has a lot wrong, and AOC) too, though they may use different language. It's a pretty popular meme (I wouldn't call it worthy of being labeled an "idea") among certain segments of the population, sometimes for different reasons. "And what do you mean by 'elite' anyways? If people dislike those in the position of authority, especially politicians, they generally have very good reasons for that." I was not thinking of politicians, but, fwiw, I would say blind/reflexive hatred of politicians is a prime example of a kind of idiotic and adolescent trend in American culture to just hate traditional authority figures. There are probably plenty of good reasons to hate them, sure, but ask people who say things like "oh yeah they're all corrupt" how they know that, what evidence they have, whether they can list the past several major corruption scandals, how corruption here compares to other countries, etc, and they can't do it at all.

alexashka 4y ago

The substance is missing, but at least the subject matter is interesting.

em-bee 4y ago

that's one thing i like about riding a bike. i get to look down at people in cars ;-)

nicbou 4y ago
And realise with growing horror how common texting and driving really is.

jeffbee 4y ago

No, it is garbage. A huge series of completely unsupported claims.

azornathogron 4y ago

> Do people find this stuff compelling? Sure, I mean, it's something to think about. Something I can read and consider which parts I agree with or disagree with and why that is. It's not a topic I know anything about really, beyond my general experience of life, so I don't need to be annoyed at things that an expert might recognise as being factually incorrect (unlike if I read, eg, a journalist talking about software where I'm likely to be frustrated at how many things they've got wrong)

magicalhippo 4y ago

> Do people find this stuff compelling? I enjoyed reading it. It's a subject area I've been thinking about from time to time. > Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing? It's an opinion piece, so I read it as such. That is, like having a discussion with a buddy at the pub.

renewiltord 4y ago

It’s like Jared Diamond stuff. Primarily it’s hypothesis generation. You’re not supposed to accept it as true. You’re supposed to consider it and consequences so you can consider “If this is true, what else would one conclude? Do those conclusions affect something I care about meaningfully? If so, how can I establish the truth?” They’re risky though because you have to actively discard the priors you temporarily held afterwards or you’ll go around thinking that “I read an article that said”.

polishdude20 4y ago

Yeah this horse line is a stretch.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fiftyfifty 4y ago

I don't think it's rank speculation, the article itself mentions 1 in 6 men are unemployed, and there have been plenty of other articles that have been posted on here with statistics on the number of men that aren't just unemployed but have no interest being employed. College enrollment of men is somewhere around 44% of the student body nation wide in the US, the number of men in higher education has been dropping for a couple of decades now. Girls are significantly outperforming boys from Kindergarten to 12 grade nearly everywhere. This stuff has been posted on here and discussed many times. There was another article posted on here before similar to this one and I posted my thoughts on the trend from the perspective of coaching high school girls and boys sports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30274979&p=4#30276972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30274979&p=4#30276972

DeathArrow 4y ago
>College enrollment of men is somewhere around 44% of the student body nation wide in the US, the number of men in higher education has been dropping for a couple of decades now. Girls are significantly outperforming boys from Kindergarten to 12 grade nearly everywhere. Interesting. Are the changes in education biased against boys?

jpeloquin 4y ago

It's a personal statement from someone with relevant lived experience. Exploring others' viewpoints is interesting, if only to find out that they exist. The article touches on questions that do not currently have an objective answer: Why do people do the things they do? Should they be doing something different? Science may someday provide an objective ("substantive") answer to the first, but it can't choose our goals (make value judgments) for us, so articles like this are valuable. And social media works a lot better for opinion-based than objective discourse because everyone can participate on equal footing.

jollybean 4y ago

Honestly, that kind of makes sense. Riding horses is a bit of a masculine thing. I wonder if there's a 'tiny bit' to that. That said, I wonder if most men ever even really rode horses very often.

op00to 4y ago
No, horses were incredibly expensive historically speaking. They need land, food, care, all of which were real expenses.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  In my country rural areas only poor had horses. The rest had cars and agricultural tractors.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

I have definitely observed the "we need to put little johnny in safety padding for all things" amongst my friends and their kids. My kids were free to roam (within reason) and try things most people shudder at. They learned to cook relatively young, use power tools (after many safety instructions), stay over at friends houses, be around adults talking about adult stuff, etc. They both survived and became healthy, happy young adults (21 and 19 currently) who weren't afraid to take a chance or risk a little pain; they learned that the journey is as important as the end of the trail (learning is a reward, and you'll hit painful road blocks along the way). I had some parents breathless when I told them I let my two 15/13 year olds camp in the woods by a lake over a weekend for fishing and enjoying nature by themselves, because I trusted them to stay out of trouble and use their common sense. I also know they snuck along their handheld gaming devices along with them too and got a chuckle out of their limited rebelliousness. Learn to give kids some slack and they'll set their own goals and not be afraid to go for them.

motohagiography 4y ago

Triggered my HN alert on horses. I ride seriously more days than not. It's a huge and rich topic, but short version is - there were no kings without horsemen. It's been the training for officer class for milennia because it uniquely inculcates a fearlessness and physicality and magnanimity that really does elevate and improve men by developing qualities that are transferrable to other beings in nature. There are men, and there are horsemen. Even in ancient mythology, wisdom originated from the "centaurs," from the "east." It's not woo. I may even write a book on it. Mostly women ride in north america (outside western/rodeo), and the reasons for that are at least as controversial as this thread. Women who ride seriously are usually superior leaders as well, and it's just not something one can easily explain without experience in it.

StellarTabi 4y ago
> Women who ride seriously are usually superior leaders as well Always good to wake up one day and find out I'm a superior leader.
hycaria 4y ago
Super interesting take! I would love to learn more about it (as as fellow rider).