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Result, UK Liberals vote to tell feminists where to stick their fascist laws criminalising male sexuality

ballenmra

October 9, 2014

77 upvotes

/r/MensRights

http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2014/10/09/why-are-the-lib-dems-supporting-men-who-buy-sex/

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Title	Result, UK Liberals vote to tell feminists where to stick their fascist laws criminalising male sexuality
Author	ballenmra
Upvotes	77
Comments	20
Date	October 9, 2014 8:14 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2ish36/result_uk_liberals_vote_to_tell_feminists_where/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/result-uk-liberals-vote-to-tell-feminists-where-to.994841 https://theredarchive.com/post/994841

Comments

[–]Wargame4life 11 points12 points13 points 11 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

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[–]YetAnotherCommenter -1 points0 points1 point 11 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

You made a declarative statement with no evidence to back it up.

The statement I made was a statement about the inner workings of human consciousness. This isn't really an empirically verifiable statement, unless we go on self-reports.

And the problem is that in today's society, if you confess to thinking about sex from a cost-benefit/trade-off perspective, you'll get accused of being a cad or (if you're an opposite-sex-attracted man) a misogynist. This makes self-reporting a little unreliable.

As such, I made a deductive argument from basic facts about the human condition. Humans are not omnipresent and they are mortal... hence, humans have to economize their time (i.e. allocate it between various alternative uses). It stands to reason, therefore, that since having sex with person A (or persons A, B and C simultaneously if you're a fan of group sex) constitutes a situation with what economists call "opportunity costs" (allocating time to sex necessarily means you're foregoing other potential uses of said time).

So, why would someone choose to spend that time on sex rather than, say, knitting or cooking or snorting lines or whatever? I'd presume that, for whatever reason, that person must have gotten more satisfaction (of some kind) from having the sex than they believe they would have from the alternate choices.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 11 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

[–]YetAnotherCommenter 0 points1 point2 points 11 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

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[–]Ooshkii 0 points1 point2 points 11 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

The statement I made was a statement about the inner workings of human consciousness.

And? You have provided no evidence that backs up your model of human thought.

This isn't really an empirically verifiable statement, unless we go on self-reports.

You know... except for all of the psychology and neurology that is well established though peer review processes. Except for that, there is nothing to go on.

And the problem is that in today's society, if you confess to thinking about sex from a cost-benefit/trade-off perspective, you'll get accused of being a cad or (if you're an opposite-sex-attracted man) a misogynist. This makes self-reporting a little unreliable.

And? There is plenty of peer reviewed research on such topics and those scientists seem to be doing fine.

It stands to reason, therefore, that since having sex with person A constitutes a situation with what economists call "opportunity costs"

That isn't a complete sentence.

I'd presume that, for whatever reason, that person must have gotten more satisfaction (of some kind) from having the sex than they believe they would have from the alternate choices.

And if this is your view of how an economy system works, then you should put more time into studying. You have set up an ideal sandbox in which your version works by not accounting for inefficiencies and irregularities. You are literally playing the widget game as a means to model for a good chunk of human behavior. Go prove some of your premises and then come back to us.

Oh, and by the way... you can't rest your total argument on a premise that can't be empirically known. Your whole argument, which works by deductive logic, requires premises that can be known universally, and since your argument specifically requires your first premise to be what you say it is because "it can't be known", the whole argument falls down and is stupid.

[–]YetAnotherCommenter -1 points0 points1 point 11 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

And? You have provided no evidence that backs up your model of human thought.

So economic decision-making doesn't exist? Choices between tradeoffs never happen?

You know... except for all of the psychology and neurology that is well established though peer review processes.

Neurology is the study of the brain, and thus there's a physical structure which can be analysed. Cognitive operations can, at best, "light up" certain areas within the brain as measured on an MRI, but this doesn't correspond 1:1 with what individuals will report as their cognitive function at the time.

The internal operations of someone's consciousness are invisible and thus unverifiable to everyone and everything that isn't telepathic.

As for psychology, plenty of schools of psychology distrust self-reporting. Indeed, until the cognitivist revolution, self-reports about the internal operations of consciousness were generally seen as unscientific. Even after the cognitivist revolution, there are reasons to distrust self-reporting.

And? There is plenty of peer reviewed research on such topics and those scientists seem to be doing fine.

Okay, so it seems other scientists will agree that sex can be thought about economistically. Thanks for supporting my point.

That isn't a complete sentence.

That's a punctuation error on my part and I apologize. The words "person A" should read "Person A" (thus making "Person A" into a generic person for the purposes of this exercise), which makes my sentence complete.

And if this is your view of how an economy system works, then you should put more time into studying.

I already have a Masters degree in Econ and am going for my Doctorate. Thanks for being a patronizing douche.

My statement wasn't about an economic system but rather a microeconomic statement. I simply stated that people prefer more satisfaction to less satisfaction. This statement is essentially a tautology - people prefer more of what they prefer to less of what they prefer.

I wasn't arguing for a Walrasian ideal. I wasn't suggesting that people are omniscient or that they're perfect utility optimizers. Nor do I suggest that people lack irrationalities or biases.

You have set up an ideal sandbox in which your version works by not accounting for inefficiencies and irregularities. You are literally playing the widget game as a means to model for a good chunk of human behavior.

Inefficiencies and the like are issues about economic systems. I was talking about microfoundations. You're confusing two very separate issues here.

The simple fact is that modelling human behaviour cannot be done in the same way that science is done in a laboratory. Humans are indeterminate beings - we have free will.

Go prove some of your premises and then come back to us.

How can you prove, by the same standards as used by the physical sciences, anything about the internal operations of human consciousness?

You cannot.

If you demand that any theory about how individuals act be proven in the same way as things are proven in the physical sciences, then there can be no general theory about how people act which means there can be no social science in the first place.

I've criticized Walrasian theory myself. I am not a proponent of the utility maximization model. But I am not defending the idea of utility maximization; my position is that people are satisficers rather than optimizers and that people would rather have more of what they desire than less of what they desire.

And frankly, I have no idea why you critique me in such strident, harsh terms. You call my argument "stupid," you patronize me and you tell me to "go prove some of your premises and then come back to us" (as if you have tons of people backing you... in a debate about economic methodology which is hardly the kind of topic to evoke such passion).

Frankly this subject is absolutely off-topic and I don't see why you're being so vehement about it.

EDIT: I would also like to clarify that my argument, whilst it is methodologically deductive, is not devoid of empirical content. Indeed, my deduction was based on two empirical facts - one, humans are mortal (look at all the people dying, read a newspaper's death notices, that's some empirical proof) and two, humans aren't omnipresent. I spelled out the logical consequences of certain empirical facts about the human condition; this is methodologically deductivist but it isn't an abandonment of empiricism.