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Jan 30, 2023Liked by the red quest

Awesome. Great post. Thank you.

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> Getting inside a hot chick is a real achievement. Guys achieve things so they can impress girls.

No, no, NO, do not conflate the interests of bachelors with married men, or married men with kings and emperors. Pharoah does not achieve things to impress girls. The Khan is utterly disinterested in the opinions of girls. If you are tethering your soul to the fickle feelings of fecund females, how will you ever achieve anything of real worth?

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I dunno, cutting to the chase and sleeping with hot chicks seem of real worth... and a lot of guys who achieve much "of real worth" do poorly with chicks... https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/

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I do agree that failure to convince even one woman to sleep with you is a true and genuine failure. However, unless it results in Darwinian success it is ultimately mere hedonism, nothing more. Remember, the Amish are having six children per couple by wooing their sweethearts at church and planting potatoes to feed the little ones.

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Now we're getting into utility function questions, and time horizon questions, https://theredquest.substack.com/p/the-time-horizon-question. For some people Darwinian fitness is their utility function output, I guess.

The Amish do have their thing going... I don't see many people clamoring to join them, however... interestingly, it seems like not too many people are trying to leave, either. Maybe the people who have the genetic distortion or personality to leave already have, meaning those who stay like it.

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<-- Scorns utilitarianism, but appreciates that you seem to understand what he's saying

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Utilitarianism has its challenges but like many models or ways of conceptualizing the world, it has its uses.

It's also tricky to use cause "utilitarian at what level?" At the level of the individual, just f**king a lot may be fun, but at the level of the family, group, or society, maybe that's less good.

And over what time horizon (https://theredquest.substack.com/p/the-time-horizon-question)? Probably the people one causes to be born would prefer to be born rather than not...

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Asking "utilitarian at what level?" actually exposes one of the problems with utilitarianism; only individuals experience happiness. A utilitarian has to dismiss considerations outside of human happiness from moral reasoning, and can't address questions like "But is that good for the group itself?"

Ultimately there are no really good moral systems out there, so I try to be patient with utilitarianism, but even that has limits; see https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/atheism-or-utilitarianism

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