Win/win solutions don't ever take too long.

Suppose you have conflicting ideas X and Y. Then you can decide: "this would take too long to sort out whether X or Y is better. so I will just do Z right away b/c it's not worth optimizing". Z can be a win/win.

note: Z could be X or Y, but is more often similar to X or Y but not exactly identical. Z can also be some kinda compromise thing that mixes X and Y. or Z can be something else, like a simple, unambitious alternative.

if doing Z is something that the pro-X and pro-Y factions in your mind can be happy with (since they value saving time and not over-optimizing), then you have a win/win.

so that's why win/wins never take too long. the cases where choosing between X and Y would take too long are addressed in this way.

if you cannot find a Z which is a win/win, you have a problem to address there. it's worth some attention. why does one or both factions in you reject every Z you think of? the reason is worth considering more than zero. it ought to be addressed somehow. you need to know what's going on there and come up with something OK (not terrible) to do about it; don't just ignore the problem.

A woman, a gay man, and a Jew banned from speaking at The University of California, Berkeley. Misogyny, homophobia, and anti-semitism. Defund!

A source.

(Guest post by Josh Jordan.)

Cosplay (e.g. dressing up as anime characters), goth and various other less mainstream fashion hides how naturally beautiful (by our current cultural standards) you are or aren't. Costumes cover you more and divert more attention to your clothes and accessories, and they sometimes include heavy makeup or even a mask. This is attractive to people who'd have less success with mainstream beauty. It's not a coincidence that you get lots of less-pretty people in fringe groups favoring appearance styles which make their physical appearance less relevant. Less-pretty people also decide to be trans at higher rates.

Cosplay also lets you put lots of effort into your appearance. It makes it socially acceptable to try hard. You don't have to pretend, "This old thing? I just threw something on." when you make a costume. That's appealing to people who are less naturally beautiful (by our culture's current standards) and want to put in effort to compensate.

More mainstream fashion has a lot of behind-the-scenes effort where you do subtle makeup and try to look like you didn't put much effort into your appearance (that would be shallow!).

This relates to the "law of least effort" explained by PUA site Girls Chase. The law is clearly explained in the book: whoever appears to put less effort into a social interaction has the social status advantage. Note it's about appearances, not actual effort behind the scenes.

Cosplay is an exception which lets you openly put lots of effort into your appearance in a socially-acceptable way.

So what? I think social dynamics that no one talks about or points out (afaik) are interesting. And mean.

The Final report of the Commission on industrial relations is a large government report from 1915. It has a disturbing section on education [emphasis added]:

All minors entering industry after 14 years of age are entitled to further aid from organized society in order to enable them to complete their vocational and cultural education. This is possible only through the establishment of compulsory daytime continuation schools of at least five hours per week at the expense of employers, and night schools.

This is supposedly about helping people. Why is compulsion the only possible way to help people?

These schools, in order to be of value, must be compulsory upon all minors in industry up to at least 18 years of age.

Why? No reasoning is given.

Our children need to know more as to their economic value, and more of their social duties and responsibilities. The schoolhouse is the place where much of this should be taught, in order that the duties of honorable citizenship shall be appreciated. Real social service is the highest attainment the individual can aspire to reach. All education is of value in life and the State should properly be held responsible for the education of her children, in order that the best possible use shall be made by the greatest possible number of the opportunities of life as they present themselves from year to year.

This says the State owns "her" children and must educate them to appreciate their social duties so the best possible use of their lives can be made.

This is really scary... And lots of it has now been implemented in today's "public" (state) schools which indoctrinate children on a massive scale.

The report also states:

The minimum amount of education which any child should receive is certainly the grammar school course, yet statistics show that only one-third of the children in our public schools complete the grammar school course, and less than 10 per cent finish high school.

How things change in 100 years! Now our society takes k-12 schooling for granted without much thought.

A Health Care Plan So Simple, Even A Republican Can Understand! is Ann Coulter's new article advocating the free market regarding healthcare. It's good. I have a point to add:

INSURANCE COMPANY: That will be $700 a month, the deductible is $35,000, no decent hospital will take it, and you have to pay for doctor's visits yourself. But your plan covers shrinks, infertility treatments, sex change operations, autism spectrum disorder treatment, drug rehab and 67 other things you will never need.

Unfortunately, having coverage of things you will never need isn't merely wasted money (or, essentially, hidden taxes to pay for other people). In some cases it's actively harmful. Rather than paying for zero value, it's paying for negative value.

The main issue is involuntary psychiatry. It's harder to subject people to unwanted "treatments" when you have to find someone to pay for it. The victim doesn't want to pay, the people who don't like the victim usually don't want to pay, and the mental prison won't pay. So who pays? Sometimes the government steps in to pay, but not always. You know what makes it easier to victimize someone? When the victim's insurance company pays. You can have a psychiatric "treatment" you don't want -- such as being imprisoned without a trial -- paid for by your own insurance company, against your will. Sometimes this makes the difference and gets you imprisoned when you wouldn't have been otherwise due to lack of funding.

Unfortunately, millions of Americans are harmed by psychiatrists every year, so this kind of issue is not as rare as one might wish. I provide some details on this in the next section, below.

There's also a milder scenario, which is you're pressured to see a psychiatrist. Or you're pressured to make your kid see a psychiatrist. Pressure can come from a teacher, friend, spouse or boss. Sometimes the pressure is tiny, and sometimes it's heavy pressure. And if you don't have insurance, you can use price as an excuse not to go or not to send your child. But if your insurance (or employer, school, or government) will pay, then you'll have to come up with some other reason to resist the pressure. Losing a particularly convenient, socially-acceptable excuse to say "no" will result in some unwanted trips to psychiatrists for some people.

So it's worth cash not to have psychiatric coverage. It'd be worth paying a higher monthly premium for it to exclude psychiatry coverage, if that were allowed (it's not). How much it's worth to get rid of psychiatric coverage is difficult to judge, but it's something.

It's the same with drug rehab. Suppose I took drugs for some reason, and then my friends were all pushing me to go to rehab but I wanted to quit on my own at home. The price of rehab – which my friends wouldn't want to pay – would be a good excuse that would help me resist their pressure and stay home.

I also wouldn't want coverage for any kind of "help" from social workers.

An interesting case is marital counseling. That can have value to people who go voluntarily, but it can also hurt people who are pressured into it. Even surgery depends. It's possible for a sports player to be pressured into a risky, expensive surgery that wouldn't have happened without an insurance company to pay for it.

The big picture is it's actively bad for you to have money readily available to pay for things you don't want. It's easier to avoid harm when finding money to pay for it is an extra obstacle in the way of it happening.

Also: read Thomas Szasz's short article, The Myth Of Health Insurance.

Psychiatric Harm

Just in California, there are over 300,000 involuntary psychiatric imprisonment orders per year. Many are converted to "voluntary" status because they will be locked up longer if they don't. Sucking up to one's captors is the standard path to freedom, rather than standing up for yourself. Many people are released quickly if they confess they were in the wrong and take a drug which causes brain damage.

Any time during a 72 hour hold, the doctor may arbitrarily place the victim on a 14 day hold if he wants to. At the end of the 14 day hold, the doctor may add another 30 days if he wants to. Meanwhile, family members are discouraged from showing up at all if a probable cause hearing takes place. And the probable cause "hearings" do not involve standard legal protections like excluding hearsay from counting as evidence. Victims commonly don't even get to wear normal clothes, they are forced to wear a hospital gown which is prejudicial.

In Florida, 194,354 involuntary (Baker Act) examinations were done in one year, and the number has been increasing significantly over time. This count intentionally ignores up to another 5,952 instances where the examiner forgot to write the date on the form. These involuntary examinations can last over 72 hours. This number includes children who were 22% of the victims. Roughly half of time time this is initiated by "mental health professionals", and half the time by law enforcement. Children are more likely to be victimized on school days. 22.7% more men are victimized than women, which the sexist report downplays as "slightly more" men.

The Florida numbers are substantial underestimates about psychiatry's reach. How many people say "no" to an authority when told they can agree to be examined now, and if they hesitate, are told their alternative is a legal order that they be examined anyway by a now-hostile examiner and lose their rights for 72 hours? That's common and documented.

The California Hospital Association says 4.1% of American adults are labelled seriously mentally ill per year and 58.7% of them receive some form of "treatment". After a little math, that means 6 million American adults per year are labelled seriously mentally ill and then have something done to them by psychiatry.

This is scary stuff. And there's a lot more info like it, and plenty that's worse. E.g. look up the present day use of electroshock "therapy" (torture) and lobotomy in the US. The FDA actually came out in favor of electroshock last year.

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My quick thoughts on Trump's missile attack on the Syrian airbase which Assad launched a despicable chemical weapons attack from:

Trump's attack was a pretty moderate, normal, mainstream thing to do.

It was OK, not great.

It's not what Trump said he'd do. E.g. in 2013 Trump wrote a bunch of tweets about staying out of Syria.

I'd prefer if Trump focused on his campaign promises more – destroy ISIS, get out of the Iran deal, build the wall, repeal Obamacare, and move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. None of those issues are going very well so far.

There's a selective attention issue. Why is this the right conflict to intervene in instead of a different one?

Trump and others haven't explained the self-interest of the attack in a clear, convincing way. What are the big-picture goals we're hoping to achieve by intervening? Spending $75,000,000 to help a few foreigners in the short term is bad policy which is contrary to the purpose of the US government and the purpose of our taxes.

Most people believe military actions should be proportional. That's wrong. They should involve whatever force is necessary for effective defense and resolving the problem.

It's bad to get drawn into back-and-forth tit-for-tat conflicts with only minor escalations. Ongoing fighting is awful. Instead, take little or no action until you're ready to go all-out and win. Trump's strike isn't anything like a last warning or second-to-last warning. It was just a response and Trump has threatened to do more small responses if Assad behaves badly again. That's a bad approach. (But note also that it's a moderate, mainstream approach. I'm the one who is out of the mainstream in my views here.)

If you're going to get involved in military conflict at all, there should be a plan to win in a fast, brutal, one-sided, non-proportional manner which is either pursued immediately or else threatened and ready. If you're just bluffing and have no plan for winning, stay out of it.

People are often nervous, defensive and stressed out about flaws they have.

For example: they are short, they have a small dick, their breasts are too small, they weigh too much, they have a blemish...

If everything else goes well, many of these issues frequently wouldn't matter to their date. But people bring up their own flaws and then act weird about them. The social awkwardness of saying, "I know I'm too fat but please don't be a bigot against me" is a much bigger problem than an extra 10 pounds. Saying, "I'm going to warn you in advance that I have a small dick, but I'll be really try-hard to make up for it." is even worse. (They don't say "try-hard" in those words, but they say stuff which has this meaning and is unattractive for this reason.)

It's ironic because people create their own disasters by awkwardly drawing attention to their own flaws. Then they take that as evidence their flaws are a big deal, deal breakers even, and so they're even more worried the next time.

If you don't bring up a flaw, a lot of times it will never be brought up. Relax and focus on stuff that matters, not "flaws" that aren't even a big deal you're just worried the other person will care about. If you don't want someone to care about something, don't start talking about it!

The same issue comes up in other contexts. Don't have a lot of work experience when applying for a job? Or maybe you haven't already done work exactly identical to what this job involves. Or you had a 2 month break between jobs. Or you got a B in a relevant university class. Or you and your previous boss didn't get along. In general, don't mention it. Don't start objecting to yourself and telling them reasons not to hire you. Address it briefly if they bring it up, but often they won't.

People go on vacations and enjoy them. But they routinely mix up several different benefits, some of which are unrelated to traveling and staying at a hotel somewhere.

Traveling to a place with something good about it (sunny beaches, museums you want to visit, etc) is one benefit of vacations.

Not working for a while is another benefit. People have more free time while on vacation. You'd still get this benefit if you took the same time off work but stayed home.

Another reason people like vacations is they spend more money. Not just on travel and the hotel, but also on food, spas, massages, entertainment and conveniences (to save time or hassle at the cost of money). They are less frugal about buying luxuries while on vacation. It's a common mistake to attribute some of the fun of this additional purchasing to travel. They could stay home but go to nice restaurants for a week and buy some other stuff they want, like they would on vacation, but without also buying a plane flight and hotel room.

I consider vacations (and travel) overrated. There are some good things about them, but try not to mentally bundle everything together. Recognize that you could do some of the stuff you do on vacation (take time off work, spend more money on your happiness for a week) without traveling, and save a lot of money, and it'd be better and more convenient in some ways. (Your home is nicer to stay in than a hotel room unless it's really expensive, and even then your home has all your stuff. And you have your car if you stay home.)