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I can appreciate this perspective because I used to have it. I even wrote a similar blog post 10 years ago - it was on the top of HN and the comment section was

by jcstk 4y ago

I can appreciate this perspective because I used to have it. I even wrote a similar blog post 10 years ago - it was on the top of HN and the comment section was a beautiful shitshow. For me, this perspective was a good story to tell myself - it justified why I was only investing my time in “work”, and validated me for having “come so far”. Over time, I have reflected and shifted this perspective. That reflection centered around the question the author hasn’t asked himself yet: who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people. But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself. I found that if I find myself projecting onto social norms, society, or some other loose definition of “they”, what I’m really doing is projecting a part of myself that I haven’t been honest about yet.

jelly 4y ago
Perhaps 10 years of existing within the system led you away from the more revolutionary perspective and towards the status quo. I would be curious to see the blog post you wrote, I can't find it in your submissions.
- clearleaf 4y ago
  I hope I never find myself popping out of trap doors to defend the status quo like they are.
simulate-me 4y ago
Can’t you invalidate all social commentary with this argument? Surely there are trends in society that can be remarked on generally.
- floodle 4y ago
  I agree with what you're getting at. The prevailing belief in social science is that it's impossible to eliminate bias from your analysis of the world. In fact, I think many social scientists think that quantitative folks are kidding themselves when they think their clever statistical methods are free from their own personal biases.
- jcstk 4y ago
  The author provided data and graphs to highlight the problems in America he believes are being caused by a root problem of society having low expectations for men. He doesn't provide any data to reflect what society's expectations are. Those are just his thoughts. That's a big distinction.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    The author provides no direct data, but cited a large number of peer reviewed articles and books. For example: In a fascinating 2012 paper titled Sexual Economics, Culture, Men, and Modern Sexual Trends, the psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs wrote: “Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then many men will do precisely that.”
- wpietri 4y ago
  Your theory is that all social commentary is handwavey general remarks? If so, yes, let's invalidate it. I think effective social commentary is mostly grounded in the personal, the specific, and the (thoughtfully) statistical. Otherwise it's very easy just to project one's biases onto a complicated picture. E.g., consider whatever it is that people think is "ruining the kids" these days. In the 1700s, you know what was ruining the kids? Novels: https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-moral-panic-sounds-surprisingly-familiar https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-mo... It's similar to how arguments about "what God wants" go wrong. Researchers showed that when people talk about what their god wants, they're unconsciously consulting their own preferences: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-in-ones-own-image https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-i... With broad social argument, it's easy to introduce all sorts of fallacy. Humans aren't really equipped to reason intuitively about things at this scale. Especially if the point is to persuade and/or entertain, simplifying into broad "logical" arguments can paint false pictures. Andrew Gelman wrote about this today: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils-of-apparently-logical-thinking/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils...
  - simulate-me 4y ago
    The error in your line of thinking is that you assume humans are better interpreting statistical evidence than they are broad logical arguments. I don't see any evidence of that.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      It's not a error until a) you show that's the case, and b) it's material to my point. Honestly, I don't think people are "better" at that (if such a fuzzy construction can have a useful meaning). But I do think they are more careful with it because it's harder to get right and more easy to visibly get it wrong. It's fine with me if expecting more concreteness just drastically reduces the total amount of social commentary. Even if it dropped by 99%, we'd still have more than we needed.
the_solenoid 4y ago
I agree - and will take it one step further: he misses the root causes of "instability", and I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's, and/or the same flat-lining of wages (not keeping up with inflation etc) despite huge increases in productivity in about the same time period. Money is a huge stressor in relationships. Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise honestly). Abuse, etc. Options for financial stability to escape these things I would suspect to contribute as well.
- bradlys 4y ago
  The author of this article used Charles Murray’s Coming Apart as a source. He’s a pretty… controversial figure. The counterpart to him that is more progressive and less controversial is Robert Putnam. His books are a lot more digestible. I’d suggest looking up talks with the author on YouTube. (He even has a debate with Charles Murray - as they are somewhat of friends) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609334-our-kids https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609334-our-kids https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50124402-the-upswing https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50124402-the-upswing One thing I want to mention here is that it seems that social effects come before economic effects. People go through social change and then the economics follow later. That’s the one thing I would take away from the books/talks. Somewhat ironic to many here.
  - parineum 4y ago
    I noticed that you didn't mention which of these arguments were good or bad.
- fwip 4y ago
  It's absolutely wild to me that Rob quotes: > Lack of money is certainly a contributing cause, as we will see, but rarely the only factor. It is usually the young father’s criminal behavior, the spells of incarceration that so often follow, a pattern of intimate violence, his chronic infidelity, and an inability to leave drugs and alcohol alone that cause relationships to falter and die. Without seeming to make any sort of connection that poverty is a causative factor in every single one of these. Poor people are more likely to commit crimes of desperation. Poor people are over-policed when compared to middle-or-upper class people. Poverty makes it more difficult to escape domestic abuse. (Idk about the infidelity one). Drugs & alcohol are maladaptive coping methods that many people use to escape the reality of their daily lives - which are much worse when you're poor. But y'know, that doesn't fit into his worldview that the dissolution of "family values" is the root cause of all this.
3np 4y ago
One thing that really stuck out to me was the implicit assumption that "stable home environment" requires or is equal to "married couple of biological parents living together until child becomes adult". Especially the quote where an agreement that stability is important was interpreted as agreement that marriage is important.
- dash2 4y ago
  The evidence is that married couples are more stable than unmarried couples.
  - philosopher1234 4y ago
    Maybe you could share this evidence instead of sharing an anonymous assertion
    - convolvatron 4y ago
      i can certainly think of cases where the children and one parent are really much better off without the second
      - metadat 4y ago
        Yes it happens, but isn't the rule. On average, it's ideal to have two happy, loving parents. But only on average!
        goodpoint 4y ago
        Thinking in terms of averages and correlations should not justify absurd oversimplifications. The average human being has 1.99 eyes.
        metadat 4y ago
        It seems you might be missing the larger point and getting hung up in pedantry. Try taking a deep breath and a step back to consider the bigger picture.
andreilys 4y ago
who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people. I suggest reading the book "Manufacturing Consent" to get an understanding of how expectations are shaped by mass media. Just like there was a concerted effort to create public support for war (WW1/WW2/Vietnam/etc.), there are concerted efforts to shape public opinion and create expectations within our broader culture about morals/values/etc. Sometimes it's explicit, and often times it's implicit and picked up via signaling cues (i.e. high status reporter says X, to go against X would mean no more invites to fancy dinner parties)
gameswithgo 4y ago
pyuser583 4y ago
Are you actually disagreeing with the author? Or are you just saying the author is forming these perceptions in his head?
redmen 4y ago
The expectations are coming from our exposure to apps, articles, videos, education and opinions. It's not all in the author's head. I'm not at all sexually frustrated like most men and yet I still feel all of the same things.
zelphirkalt 4y ago
Hm. What about other things though, which are not the job, but still require effort/work? Like working on free software, working for a social project, being politically active, doing things of charity reasons ... Those don't require one to define oneself in terms of how far one has gotten in their career, but they actually add value to society. In many cases adding more value to society than the actual job. I think it's quite OK to define ones worth using such measures. We all live in a society. People should ask themselves more often how much they contributed to the well-being of society.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Volunteering tends to be an elite activity anyway. When people have to work multiple full-time jobs just to survive, it's just not very helpful or meaningful to ask whether they might find their inner fulfillment by helping out at the local animal shelter.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    > elite activity ... full-time jobs just to survive That's a heck of a false dichotomy. People are either billionaires or working at mcdonalds now?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 4y ago
>But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself. The last conclusion is a little off. Everybody who expresses any opinion is describing "his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc". That doesn't mean they can't also coincide with a general trend, for example "societal expectations" at large.
rayiner 4y ago
In Tokyo, nobody jay walks. In New York City, everyone jay walks. Do you think there’s (1) not the product of cultural norms; and (2) no way for someone embedded in that culture to be able to observe those cultural norms and comment on them?
supersync 4y ago
Well said. The glaring piece missing from this analysis is the psychology of the young men themselves. Raising two young men myself, I’m blown away by how powerful cultivating intrinsic motivation is. My eldest just went from constant gaming/sleeping/hiding in his room to working a full-time job, launching a side hustle, and enrolling in classes. Yes, my modeling & encouragement mattered. But the fulcrum was him accepting that living up to other people’s expectation in high school had left him tired, depressed, and lost. The author has clearly identified that young man lack a goal worthy of their efforts. He’s just completely ignored intrinsic motivation and the power of cultivating it. I don’t think that’s an accident. I think our entire approach to young men as a society ignores the fundamental power of their interests.
- skyde 4y ago
  father of a 4 years old boy. please help me! How do you cultivate intrinsic motivation ? any good strategy or book?
  - analog31 4y ago
    I've got two kids in college. Perhaps one thing is to avoid being consumed by your own fear of them failing. For a lot of the tasks they're given, if they're halfway intelligent, then the only hurdles will be attention and motivation. So, of you are the one supplying them with those things, then you're the one doing the work. "I'm not going to do your homework, but I'm going to make you do it," is doing their homework. With that said, the tasks are going to come on hot and heavy sooner than you expect. I didn't have homework in grade school. At all. My kids had mountains of homework. Giving them too much to manage on their own, while telling you not to manage it for them, would seem like a cruel joke, but I don't know any other answer. Also, you could be more disciplined than I was about my own chores. I didn't need to clean the bathrooms every week at the same time, but maybe had I set up a schedule like that, it might have modeled better habits in my kids. Or maybe not. ;-)
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    I just use common sense, I try to explain why doing something is good and try to make the kid to have a desire to accomplish something. Also things have to feel more fun and less of a chore. If that fails, I have to resort to authority ("please do this because I ask you to"). If that also fails, I have to use carrot and stick strategy ("you will get that toy only if" or "you won't watch cartoons unless").
refurb 4y ago
It's funny you'd say "that’s his perspective of what the world thinks" when he's an academic doing a PhD on the subject chatting with other academics about the same topic. I mean clearly psychology is a lot of "our area of study observes X and attributes Y as a part of theory Z". It's not a hard science where objective, absolute, undeniable measurements can be made. But it's not some random dude just pontificating about social structures on the internet. By your measure we should just throw all the great philosophers works in the toilet because "that's their perspective".

by jcstk 4y ago

jelly 4y ago

Perhaps 10 years of existing within the system led you away from the more revolutionary perspective and towards the status quo. I would be curious to see the blog post you wrote, I can't find it in your submissions.

clearleaf 4y ago
I hope I never find myself popping out of trap doors to defend the status quo like they are.

simulate-me 4y ago

Can’t you invalidate all social commentary with this argument? Surely there are trends in society that can be remarked on generally.

floodle 4y ago
I agree with what you're getting at. The prevailing belief in social science is that it's impossible to eliminate bias from your analysis of the world. In fact, I think many social scientists think that quantitative folks are kidding themselves when they think their clever statistical methods are free from their own personal biases.
jcstk 4y ago
The author provided data and graphs to highlight the problems in America he believes are being caused by a root problem of society having low expectations for men. He doesn't provide any data to reflect what society's expectations are. Those are just his thoughts. That's a big distinction.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  The author provides no direct data, but cited a large number of peer reviewed articles and books. For example: In a fascinating 2012 paper titled Sexual Economics, Culture, Men, and Modern Sexual Trends, the psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs wrote: “Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then many men will do precisely that.”
wpietri 4y ago
Your theory is that all social commentary is handwavey general remarks? If so, yes, let's invalidate it. I think effective social commentary is mostly grounded in the personal, the specific, and the (thoughtfully) statistical. Otherwise it's very easy just to project one's biases onto a complicated picture. E.g., consider whatever it is that people think is "ruining the kids" these days. In the 1700s, you know what was ruining the kids? Novels: https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-moral-panic-sounds-surprisingly-familiar https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-mo... It's similar to how arguments about "what God wants" go wrong. Researchers showed that when people talk about what their god wants, they're unconsciously consulting their own preferences: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-in-ones-own-image https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-i... With broad social argument, it's easy to introduce all sorts of fallacy. Humans aren't really equipped to reason intuitively about things at this scale. Especially if the point is to persuade and/or entertain, simplifying into broad "logical" arguments can paint false pictures. Andrew Gelman wrote about this today: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils-of-apparently-logical-thinking/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils...
- simulate-me 4y ago
  The error in your line of thinking is that you assume humans are better interpreting statistical evidence than they are broad logical arguments. I don't see any evidence of that.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    It's not a error until a) you show that's the case, and b) it's material to my point. Honestly, I don't think people are "better" at that (if such a fuzzy construction can have a useful meaning). But I do think they are more careful with it because it's harder to get right and more easy to visibly get it wrong. It's fine with me if expecting more concreteness just drastically reduces the total amount of social commentary. Even if it dropped by 99%, we'd still have more than we needed.

the_solenoid 4y ago

I agree - and will take it one step further: he misses the root causes of "instability", and I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's, and/or the same flat-lining of wages (not keeping up with inflation etc) despite huge increases in productivity in about the same time period. Money is a huge stressor in relationships. Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise honestly). Abuse, etc. Options for financial stability to escape these things I would suspect to contribute as well.

bradlys 4y ago
The author of this article used Charles Murray’s Coming Apart as a source. He’s a pretty… controversial figure. The counterpart to him that is more progressive and less controversial is Robert Putnam. His books are a lot more digestible. I’d suggest looking up talks with the author on YouTube. (He even has a debate with Charles Murray - as they are somewhat of friends) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609334-our-kids https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609334-our-kids https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50124402-the-upswing https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50124402-the-upswing One thing I want to mention here is that it seems that social effects come before economic effects. People go through social change and then the economics follow later. That’s the one thing I would take away from the books/talks. Somewhat ironic to many here.
- parineum 4y ago
  I noticed that you didn't mention which of these arguments were good or bad.
fwip 4y ago
It's absolutely wild to me that Rob quotes: > Lack of money is certainly a contributing cause, as we will see, but rarely the only factor. It is usually the young father’s criminal behavior, the spells of incarceration that so often follow, a pattern of intimate violence, his chronic infidelity, and an inability to leave drugs and alcohol alone that cause relationships to falter and die. Without seeming to make any sort of connection that poverty is a causative factor in every single one of these. Poor people are more likely to commit crimes of desperation. Poor people are over-policed when compared to middle-or-upper class people. Poverty makes it more difficult to escape domestic abuse. (Idk about the infidelity one). Drugs & alcohol are maladaptive coping methods that many people use to escape the reality of their daily lives - which are much worse when you're poor. But y'know, that doesn't fit into his worldview that the dissolution of "family values" is the root cause of all this.

3np 4y ago

One thing that really stuck out to me was the implicit assumption that "stable home environment" requires or is equal to "married couple of biological parents living together until child becomes adult". Especially the quote where an agreement that stability is important was interpreted as agreement that marriage is important.

dash2 4y ago
The evidence is that married couples are more stable than unmarried couples.
- philosopher1234 4y ago
  Maybe you could share this evidence instead of sharing an anonymous assertion
  - convolvatron 4y ago
    i can certainly think of cases where the children and one parent are really much better off without the second
    - metadat 4y ago
      Yes it happens, but isn't the rule. On average, it's ideal to have two happy, loving parents. But only on average!
      - goodpoint 4y ago
        Thinking in terms of averages and correlations should not justify absurd oversimplifications. The average human being has 1.99 eyes.
        metadat 4y ago
        It seems you might be missing the larger point and getting hung up in pedantry. Try taking a deep breath and a step back to consider the bigger picture.

andreilys 4y ago

who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people. I suggest reading the book "Manufacturing Consent" to get an understanding of how expectations are shaped by mass media. Just like there was a concerted effort to create public support for war (WW1/WW2/Vietnam/etc.), there are concerted efforts to shape public opinion and create expectations within our broader culture about morals/values/etc. Sometimes it's explicit, and often times it's implicit and picked up via signaling cues (i.e. high status reporter says X, to go against X would mean no more invites to fancy dinner parties)

gameswithgo 4y ago

pyuser583 4y ago

Are you actually disagreeing with the author? Or are you just saying the author is forming these perceptions in his head?

redmen 4y ago

The expectations are coming from our exposure to apps, articles, videos, education and opinions. It's not all in the author's head. I'm not at all sexually frustrated like most men and yet I still feel all of the same things.

zelphirkalt 4y ago

Hm. What about other things though, which are not the job, but still require effort/work? Like working on free software, working for a social project, being politically active, doing things of charity reasons ... Those don't require one to define oneself in terms of how far one has gotten in their career, but they actually add value to society. In many cases adding more value to society than the actual job. I think it's quite OK to define ones worth using such measures. We all live in a society. People should ask themselves more often how much they contributed to the well-being of society.

zozbot234 4y ago
Volunteering tends to be an elite activity anyway. When people have to work multiple full-time jobs just to survive, it's just not very helpful or meaningful to ask whether they might find their inner fulfillment by helping out at the local animal shelter.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > elite activity ... full-time jobs just to survive That's a heck of a false dichotomy. People are either billionaires or working at mcdonalds now?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 4y ago

>But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself. The last conclusion is a little off. Everybody who expresses any opinion is describing "his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc". That doesn't mean they can't also coincide with a general trend, for example "societal expectations" at large.

rayiner 4y ago

In Tokyo, nobody jay walks. In New York City, everyone jay walks. Do you think there’s (1) not the product of cultural norms; and (2) no way for someone embedded in that culture to be able to observe those cultural norms and comment on them?

supersync 4y ago

Well said. The glaring piece missing from this analysis is the psychology of the young men themselves. Raising two young men myself, I’m blown away by how powerful cultivating intrinsic motivation is. My eldest just went from constant gaming/sleeping/hiding in his room to working a full-time job, launching a side hustle, and enrolling in classes. Yes, my modeling & encouragement mattered. But the fulcrum was him accepting that living up to other people’s expectation in high school had left him tired, depressed, and lost. The author has clearly identified that young man lack a goal worthy of their efforts. He’s just completely ignored intrinsic motivation and the power of cultivating it. I don’t think that’s an accident. I think our entire approach to young men as a society ignores the fundamental power of their interests.

skyde 4y ago
father of a 4 years old boy. please help me! How do you cultivate intrinsic motivation ? any good strategy or book?
- analog31 4y ago
  I've got two kids in college. Perhaps one thing is to avoid being consumed by your own fear of them failing. For a lot of the tasks they're given, if they're halfway intelligent, then the only hurdles will be attention and motivation. So, of you are the one supplying them with those things, then you're the one doing the work. "I'm not going to do your homework, but I'm going to make you do it," is doing their homework. With that said, the tasks are going to come on hot and heavy sooner than you expect. I didn't have homework in grade school. At all. My kids had mountains of homework. Giving them too much to manage on their own, while telling you not to manage it for them, would seem like a cruel joke, but I don't know any other answer. Also, you could be more disciplined than I was about my own chores. I didn't need to clean the bathrooms every week at the same time, but maybe had I set up a schedule like that, it might have modeled better habits in my kids. Or maybe not. ;-)
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  I just use common sense, I try to explain why doing something is good and try to make the kid to have a desire to accomplish something. Also things have to feel more fun and less of a chore. If that fails, I have to resort to authority ("please do this because I ask you to"). If that also fails, I have to use carrot and stick strategy ("you will get that toy only if" or "you won't watch cartoons unless").

refurb 4y ago

It's funny you'd say "that’s his perspective of what the world thinks" when he's an academic doing a PhD on the subject chatting with other academics about the same topic. I mean clearly psychology is a lot of "our area of study observes X and attributes Y as a part of theory Z". It's not a hard science where objective, absolute, undeniable measurements can be made. But it's not some random dude just pontificating about social structures on the internet. By your measure we should just throw all the great philosophers works in the toilet because "that's their perspective".