For anybody that struggles with the length and slow-paced nature of this genre -- this is hackernews after all -- I had a much easier time imagining this as a radio piece. The writing style is very melodic, like it's meant to be read out loud. The noises of the city, the description of light and temperature, all made it feel very alive. Something to absorb in a very sensual way, quite the opposite of the how-to and faq texts we read at the office during daytime.
It's not a long article or slow-paced. It literally intersperses POV scenes from a brothel. If that can't at least hold your attention for a few pages, nothing will.
I suggest that people read a few novels if they think this article is too long.
Novels have to justify themselves to be worth the read. Articles of this length would definitely do with a short comment or summary made by someone else to assess whether there's a point to reading them. There's a lot of journalists who are wannabe novelists and seem to suck at both skills.
Try to call in. I am an avid reader, but I also know that lots of people really struggle with long-form reading, can feel insecure about this even though they are likely in the majority, and react with defensiveness and pride to rhetoric like this.
Emphasizing the beauty and value of reading imo is much more important if the goal is to encourage longer form reading, which can be a learned skill.
> What do you need if you’re out seeking services at night? Food, sex, shelter.
This really encapsulates what all humans want and need. Food, sex & love, shelter & clothing. With only those three things you can live a happy life. Everything else is really to satisfy a desire for novelty and experience.
I'd rather quote the full bit, since the final sentence is important:
> What do you need if you’re out seeking services at night? Food, sex, shelter. The staunch of a wound.
What the author is trying to express isn't that someone out at night has different needs than someone out during the day, but rather that if you're out at night then whatever you're looking for has an urgency that outweighs sleep, like a bleeding wound.
Not at all! It would surprise me if someone had gone without food and shelter and then insisted that self-actualization was more important to them when they were cold and hungry.
Limited shelter plus forced fasting is a way to achieve self actualization, learning both the limits of your body and discipline. Only to a degree, too much and you’re physically injured perhaps permanently.
Why? For the record, in my early twenties I moved to a city, fell in with a bad crowd, was robbed of my savings, and ended up living in my car for a time. I lost almost a pound a day that month. At no point did I start thinking differently, like a reptile or robot (or whatever you're imagining), or stop thinking about myself as a personality or a soul. Soft-science textbooks are manipulative bullshit.
They literally said they believe the pyramid of needs to be upside down, so you'd have self-actualization at the bottom, and food and shelter at the top.
Hate this quote. This absolutely sums up certain cities though.
Some places become amazing after dark. People just want to have a nice time together. Maybe that’s over food, maybe it involves sex, but more importantly it was about camaraderie.
This resonates with me so well. Every time I'm tired, hungry or horny, it very quickly changes how I perceive reality. Keep that state long enough and things change shape and meaning, as if I'm tuning my senses to new frequency.
> Food, sex & love, shelter & clothing. With only those three things you can live a happy life.
On the surface I think most would agree, but I think you need trust in a relationship.
If your job or parents job moves you around, it becomes harder to lay down roots it gets harder to trust people in anything other than a superficial way.
Friendships become a thing of the past.
People end up becoming divided, but pre-internet this was standard practice employed by the UK govt, in the name of science and law & order.
I'd be happy to spend the end of my life on my own now, ideally I'd even like a sort of drive-thru euthanasia service, where when you decide, not somebody else like doctors, politicians, scientists or religious freaks, where you can bowl up to an incinerating crematorium, pay a fee (because only a capitalist society would charge you to end your life in a painfree manner), optionally leave some beyond the grave messages, inject myself and end my life, body removed from the room, incinerated and the waste disposed of in the bin.
Its the last act of self determination and autonomy any intelligent person could hope to have imo.
Nobody gets their life back that's stolen by people in authority like parents, teachers, employers, politicians, scientists, lawyers and judges or superstitious types.
Todays society, which everyone is in denial over, is the fact they are nothing more than the property of the entities that ultimately control society.
If its any consolation, life can leave you feeling numb enough to make suicide a viable option whilst the criminals that run the world, get fat off the land.
I hear this often and the idea that some people believe it strikes me as profoundly sad. I don't know if it's even as applicable as people who say this think it is. I don't know anyone who has ate and loved/fucked their way out of the dread of doing nothing and knowing nothing. They're usually just left wondering "is this all there really is?" I know plenty of people that primarily live off of gruel with little to no sex or romance and still feel like they have everything to live for. The nights of making things and feeling that the world is a thing I live in instead of a thing I'm just subjected to, takes up much more of my mind than any sex, food, or shelter ever has.
> I don't know anyone who has ate and loved/fucked their way out of the dread of doing nothing and knowing nothing
I think you're taking my comment far too literally but you've never known anyone that's been happier because they've gotten in a good relationship, or pulled themselves out of poverty?
I make things for a living and consider that to be a precious and valuable pursuit, but I'm only afforded that by having some degree of food, shelter, clothing, relationships.
Unlike sex work, my “good” jobs didn’t threaten to overthrow traditional power structures. Many sex workers, including myself, have long hypothesized that the reason so many people in power work to keep the commercial sex trade marginalized is because they’re threatened by it—by the idea that it’s the only field where women outearn men, that it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts.
Without it, what would tend to happen is that many more men would have no wives and families. Which means they have relatively little to lose. Which could tend to make your society unstable, since these men have little reason not to flip alliances, revolt, defect, etc.
Hence laws and consequences for adultery, prohibition of an open market for non-monogamous sex, etc.
The traditions and superstitions are just the implementation of the idea.
The people that "call the shots, outearn and get credit for other peoples work" want this polarization between men and women. While i dont think the approach in this article is no where near great, bluntly disagreeing is no better either. Maybe 'life' wouldnt be so 'selfish' if everyone realized that sometimes you need to support one another to get your own way.
i actually agree with this sentiment quite strongly. part of the reason gender identity and dysphoria, queerness, and fluid gender roles are so despised by conservatives and religious fellows, especially when it comes to masculinity, is that it threatens the dominant power structure of the last few thousand years.
sex work, and women’s empowerment is especially looked down upon. what else is labour but selling your body, yet somehow a woman is a slut to be shamed, and simultaneously the object of sexual desire.
men need these latent structured in place to remain a) powerful and b) keep their sense of worth and identity.
why else is being gay or “throwing like a girl” insults every western boy heard in the 90s?
The "dominant power structure" of the last few N centuries broadly consisted of nations of European origin enslaving and trading others in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, plenty of which under the rule of people such as Queen Victoria.
It had more to do with military differential than with gender, but now they must change the rhetoric with these discussions because wide availability of historical facts and global demographic trends do not benefit this "dominant power structure".
The former slave drivers now want local women who read this trash to hate you for their own crimes so they can skip their bill
Quibbles aside, it seems undeniable that there has existed a power relationship between men and women that likely had much more impact on people’s day to day lives than the macro-scale power structures you are describing. Nevermind the fact that it is arguable that the gender dynamics were to some degree productive of the colonialism you are describing.
I don’t really get the point of your comment except insofar as the standard HN “well actually” putdown of anything resembling feminist rhetoric.
I see. I must have been mistaken then because I've always assumed the gap between a Dutch man and a Dutch woman was narrower than that between a Dutch man and a Bantu man
Clearly, these are all tied up together. The gap between a Dutch man and a Bantu man was not merely defined by colonialism, as you well know. And gender relations defined each of those peoples day to day life far more than interactions with representatives of each other.
But I still do not know the point of your comment. Is it to suggest that gender relations was not a big factor in the past?
The point of my comment is that it's almost as if we weren't constantly bombarded by how unfair current men are to women, we would start reflecting about these inconvenient legacies instead
I hear about the legacy of colonialism all the time. People can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I agree, some strands of feminism can certainly ignore all other dimensions of power, especially when coming from more affluent women, but I disagree that this was the implication of the original comment.
In fact, your comparison about walking and chewing gum vs people's attention makes zero sense. Attention is finite and mutually exclusive, you can only look at one thing at once
Many of the strongest opponents of sex work are women.
I can't speak for the commenter you're responding to, but the delusional part of that quote for me was the idea that men opposed sex work because women earn a lot of money.
I'm not conservative, but I was raised in that world, and I can assure you they believe sex is only acceptable within marriage. The vast majority of them would absolutely support a successful businesswoman who earned her money through any moral means.
> i actually agree with this sentiment quite strongly. part of the reason gender identity and dysphoria, queerness, and fluid gender roles are so despised by conservatives and religious fellows, especially when it comes to masculinity, is that it threatens the dominant power structure of the last few thousand years.
No, it's because it's all total mental delusion, and we stand up for the truth above coddling people who should be receiving mental health treatment. You cannot be half a man and half a woman unless you're in the tiny proportion of people with an intersex genetic disorder. It has nothing to do with power structure and nothing to do with religion.
>sex work, and women’s empowerment is especially looked down upon. what else is labour but selling your body, yet somehow a woman is a slut to be shamed, and simultaneously the object of sexual desire.
Prostitution is despised because it is fundamentally exploitative of everyone involved, and bad for the stability of society. The origins of the taboo probably also involve the very high level of venereal disease that accompanied it until very recently. And it's not like that problem has been entirely solved either.
>men need these latent structured in place to remain a) powerful and b) keep their sense of worth and identity.
Delusional.
>why else is being gay or “throwing like a girl” insults every western boy heard in the 90s?
Boys don't want to be seen as girlish for the same reason that girls in the 90s (and the 2000s, and the 2010s, and probably the 2020s too, by the way) don't want to be seen as boyish. When boys go through puberty they are competing with each other to be masculine. When girls go through puberty they are competing with each other to be feminine.
The thing is, humans are ALL animals and 100% of the time. Group identification and primitive needs and instincts directly influence our behavior and the shape of society. Primatology should probably be required study for practicing politicians, economists, geopolitical analysts, etc.
And: Seeing rational thinking as a layer serving the primitive needs vs an independent process capable of overriding them explains a lot.
All our choices occur in the emotional centers of our brain (in his lectures George Lakoff often mentions research showing that brain injury in emotional centers erase the ability to choose / have a preference).
The layer of rationalization deceives us into believing we somehow made an independent choice.
It's not really one or the other, clearly there is a level at which we have expanded our rationality far beyond its basic use to serve our needs, and built a society where we in fact never really get to have what we want and if you're sexually frustrated purchasing it is criminalized. We built our own cages because we're afraid we won't be able to wake ourselves up out of bed in the morning.
Odd article for the front page of hn. But one thing about it resonates with me. People in corporate offices, turn off their humanity, and seem more like polite machines. Not to contradict the idea of night animals, more to say, there's a middle grounding that feels missing.
Agreed, found myself looking for the "like" button, something I virtually never click/tap when it's the first thing in your face at the bottom of a social media post.
This is why I imagine sex robots will only be a good thing. The humanitarian promise of AGI is it serves human needs optimally and frees humans from the need to stoop to the lowest levels to serve them.
Not if it displaces women as sex objects. Women can still be objectified by any other metric of usefulness, but at that point will reach parity with men.
The general impression I get from the article (and similar reports) is that patrons of sex workers in general do not seek the mechanical aspects of sex. They also do not seek power. What the largest majority seek is validation.
The big breakthrough would be robots that provided the emotional need of human connection and validation. If the mind could be tricked into a similar state as being in the center of a strong social network, then not only would that serve human needs optimally it would also be the single biggest health boost given.
There's a community of people who really seek out "AI girlfriends". Once or twice a year I sort of peek in and see what they are doing.
What surprises me is how bad the tech is. It's "mediocre chatbot" level currently and yet these people are VERY happy with it, spending hundreds a month and having all sort of custom artwork done.
For a meaningful percentage of the pop, very low fidelity tech, even at an extreme price, is enough.
"Replika" was the app most of them were buzzing around last I checked. There was some boondoggle with paid plans, I think the app had tried to focus on that subcommunity as whales (singly focused big spenders).
Probably start there and see where they've gone now.
Not exactly AI girlfriend territory but has a lot of overlap with it (as well as a lot of overlap with mental illness and probably occasionally just plain old cringy teenagers) but r/waifuism is also pretty similar.
I don’t see the negatives other commenters are pointing out. Yes she’s talking about her perceptions born from her clients and years worked. That’s an absolute right for all of us, right? To simply relate the experiences we’ve had.
She’s definitely seen a side of humanity that, while seen by many, doesn’t quite often get public visibility-sunlight. And lo and behold, it’s a kind of grungy crudeness-but still human and shared.
Personally, I’ve worked in retail and in corporate in major casinos. People will assume they’re better than you and treat you as something like a servant simply because you’re the one taking their money for a thing. Or just because you “work here” as was the case in both retail and casino. That dynamic even exists in organizations between divisions and teams within the same organization. Ask yourself how that would change in the authors situation?
I don’t have a thesis. May this serve as a good reminder to treat all people with decency and an amount of respect if not kindness. There’s exactly one right way to treat a person, as a person-an end unto his/it/herself.
> I don’t see the negatives other commenters are pointing out. Yes she’s talking about her perceptions born from her clients and years worked. That’s an absolute right for all of us, right? To simply relate the experiences we’ve had.
She's not "simply relating experiences" though. She goes beyond that, turning them into a general sociopolitical claim:
> Unlike sex work, my “good” jobs didn’t threaten to overthrow traditional power structures. Many sex workers, including myself, have long hypothesized that the reason so many people in power work to keep the commercial sex trade marginalized is because they’re threatened by it—by the idea that it’s the only field where women outearn men, that it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts.
Have men been told they're entitled to sex and attention for free tho? I kinda feel it's the exact opposite. Men are told they need to pay for meals, rooms, travel, and housing and custody later. Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected. I'd even say (at least in TV shows and movies) men are expected to be the funny ones and provide entertaining values in a relationship.
I'm not saying that intrinsitically wrong or right. I just like to know in which culture men are told these.
It’s all accurate and inaccurate because people are all very different and come to different positions differently. Some believe they can “sin” under the cover of night and still keep their comfortable places in society as their sins weren’t seen nor known. Secrets and all that. Imagine how such a person would treat a sex worker. Could be very starkly different than what they’d expose the rest of the time.
You’ll notice I’m not working in absolutes here. She may have, but working the night she saw things that led her to draw certain conclusions from the things she saw and experienced.
I’d venture that she would be able to admit her experiences weren’t the end all be all of humanity though. But still very informative of the people in that space.
Edit-In my experience, whether someone is told explicitly that they can exploit another or not is irrelevant. The exploitive figure that out on their own often enough.
Many normal men wouldn't want to form a long-term relationship with a current or former prostitute/sex worker, especially one that glorifies and defends that line of work instead of renouncing it completely, as the author does.
I've literally only ever seen him mentioned for the sake of ridiculing him. I'm sure some followers of him exist just as I'm sure some neo-nazis exist, but is it anything other than a tiny fringe of irrelevant weirdos?
No, he seems to have been able to effectively hack the social media algorithms and make himself an extremely prevalent voice. The mind virus definitely spread and touched millions, if not 10s of millions.
Young men are desperate for men they can look up to, to emulate. Rich, exciting, powerful, desired; this was Andrew Tate the image. Of course he was going to be popular! Mainstream media and the chattering classes are utterly powerless against this, we must elevate men of integrity so that young men do not throw their lives away. Black men, rich white men, Jordan Peterson if he cuts through, but men with integrity. Deconstruct society too much and you will just be left with the swirling entropy of nothingness. Socrates understood this, and we are fools to forget.
Interestingly enough, I had assumed the same thing. That, it was perhaps some cult-like very limited and extremist following limited to a select few.
My eyes were opened when I visited the Toronto area recently. From my (limited) anecdotal experience, there seems to be a fervent, messiah like following of Tate and the things he says. It was so bizarre to me.
P.S. not saying anything bad about Toronto! Just that it was my experience there. Please take things you read on the internet with a (bucket) of salt, and healthy skepticism!
The only thing I know about Andrew Tate is from this video (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=93i7xJDgUxQ) and I have come to the conclusion that he is hardly a person to aspire to.
> Have men been told they're entitled to sex and attention for free tho? I kinda feel it's the exact opposite. Men are told they need to pay for meals, rooms, travel, and housing and custody later. Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected. I'd even say (at least in TV shows and movies) men are expected to be the funny ones and provide entertaining values in a relationship.
Do you think in providing those things, men then become entitled to sex or attention?
Which is to say you've listed a large number of material things, or fictional things (TV sitcoms have never been reality, but boy did they do a lot of damage to millenials), absent one core element: actually being a pleasant person. Or providing emotional support. Or empathy (I also note that excluded is "be attractive to the other person in some way").
Basically: your list entirely excludes the right of the other person to...be a person. To have any independent agency or preferences.
The list of things the commenter you're replying to brought up, in addition to "be attractive", is table stakes for receiving an iota of romantic attention from women.
We talk a ton about unrealistic beauty standards, "men talking, women listening", etc - but I have to wonder, maybe the world where women marry people one income decide above them is almost guaranteed to be a world where men are just more competitive in the workplace, even at the expense of running over their female colleagues. The incentives curve says that to expect anything at all of women, you have to be successful, ideally wealthy. So, you get the behavior the incentives curve tells people to enact.
An incentives curve that is set, ironically, by women
> The list of things the commenter you're replying to brought up, in addition to "be attractive", is table stakes for receiving an iota of romantic attention from women.
that's not true though. I'd say it's not great to be "ugly" (for some definition of the word) but you don't have to attractive. Heck, you can even be pretty poor, but as long as you you're a decent person to be around, it's not that hard.
Perhaps anecdotally a lot of guys find their way somehow (heck, I myself somehow landed a few serious relationships before I was successful, and I wasn’t above average looking then) but when guys read that women expect 6’ and 6 figures which is a very common thing you hear, and you consider that’s like 1% of men that fit just those criteria, it’s pretty off-putting to men who aren’t that and don’t expect to be that.
It’s certainly not all women, of course, but there are women who feel they shouldn’t “settle” for “less” than that. As though men who are 5’9 and make $85k are dirtbags or as though tall rich guys will treat you better or be better fathers. It is contributing to the big decrease in marriage even happening, in my opinion, as evidenced by increased average age of first marriage in the West.
To be perfectly clear: I’m not daft enough to think that no guys who aren’t in this “shallowly-defined 1%” are getting dates or getting married. Rather, I’m saying that culturally we are now saying it’s very okay, or even best practice, to be incredibly shallow in evaluating men, and that’s as wrong as evaluating women by their measurements.
If the ego damage of getting turned down by a prospective romantic partner is a risk worthy of any note at all then you need to be in therapy, not on the dating market.
This is a refutation of the claim of being entitled, not a complaint. If you're ready to be rejected, then you're not entitled. Reading sentences in context aids comprehension.
So a normal, healthy person should be able to ask someone to hook up as easy as saying hello? The few people I've met who did that did not seem more healthy and well-adjusted than the rest of us; quite the opposite in fact.
I have to admit I'm a bit tired and don't know where you're going with this. They're not saying that making the first move entitles one to sex; they're saying the standards are higher for men.
I do think that there are a lot of men who feel bitter that they'll never have sex with a woman, but I don't think anything in mainstream society condones such feelings. It's more of a subculture of lonely men turning misogynistic.
Please read my comment in context. I was responding to this quote from the article:
> it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts.
The article says for free. It doesn't say "for just being an attractive guy" or "for just being a nice person". For FREE. That's what the article says, not my word.
Also your comment is just appending more things to the list of things that men are expected to do...
The "for free" part is what I disagree with because it's almost totally the opposite of what I've seen.
Men are taught that their work is valuable but they are not; they feel entitled after putting in work, even if it's work that nobody asked for, like going to the gym a lot or chatting up strangers at bus stops. No, they're not actually entitled to sex and attention, but the entire problem is that men feel like they paid and should therefore receive. "Free" is a complete reversal of the thought process of the entitled man.
>men feel like they paid and should therefore receive
Way to simplify something very complex. What do you expect men to do, quit trying everything and leave it up to fate? Keep up with women's magazines changing their minds by the day and chasing trends to get women to buy things they don't need? Accept the tax of women casually demanding 100+ bucks a date just to have a chance? Wait for them to socially atomize themselves even further to the point of 'maybe you should pick hobbies with more women instead of your own circles filled with men'? Oh wait, that last one also has the caveat of 'if you do it just to meet women, you are a creep'.
About everything in the world, people have expectations for putting in effort and others root for their success. This is the one topic society has gone nuts about chastising men, while both encouraging women to demand more and encouraging the same aggressive approach. Even just saying
>nobody asked for, like going to the gym a lot
shows you're completely out of touch with the younger generations, given the increased demands in muscularity and fitness. Seriously, the women themselves are saying it and have been saying it for decades now.
The western world has gone completely mad in regards to dating, but the most vocal party can only shout 'men bad' no matter what they do beyond being a complete doormat with zero expectations.
Men go to the gym for themselves and secondarily, because it raises their attractiveness and confidence in front of everyone, not just women. They chat up strangers at bus stops, because dating is a literal lottery for the guy.
Your second paragraph is true, but it's not related to entitlement.
When a man chats up women at a bus stop it's because he likes women and wants to date them, obviously; when he yells "fucking whore, you think your too good for me" after getting turned down it's because of entitlement, and part of the reason he feels entitled is that he put in effort to make the first move.
That is actually a classic "nice guy" trope. Women want a guy who is confident in stating his attraction to them and who doesn't dwell too much before asking her out or after being rejected. Being "pleasant" only works if you naturally meet a lot of women and the woman asks you out. The reason for that is that platonic friendships physically take up time and limit the number of women you can meet. If you have five female friends, the likelyhood of one of them being attracted to you is practically zero, because the number is way too small. Nobody is going to have a hundred female friends so that one of them is going to ask you out. The economics of male dating just don't allow it to happen.
>Basically: your list entirely excludes the right of the other person to...be a person.
How exactly did you come up with this response? Honestly, it feels like you copy pasted it from somewhere else and are now responding out of context.
How does splitting the bill dehumanise "the other person"?
> Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected.
Walking up to a woman takes courage, which is a desirable quality. Why should a woman wan't a man, that lacks the balls to talk to her? The mating dance of many species has rules they have to follow. Complaining about them does zero for your dating success. The female decides if his display is good enough for her.
The App Bumble has women message first and it is strange for them.
The point that the OP was speaking to (refuting) is that men expect favors for free. OP's point is that they are not free at all and earned by subjecting oneself to risk and absorbing the adverse consequences of taking that risk.
That might work for some relationships, but not all. My wife made the first move, and technically I think she actually proposed first - but these gender roles are by no means hard coded and are primarily enforced through social structures.
Different strokes for different folks. Don't be so strict with your social structures and you'll probably be happier.
I thought the issue was someone suggesting she should "stay within her lane". Whether I agree with them or not I like to hear a person's views if they have walked in shoes I'll probably never walk in.
No disrespect, but I am not sure if casinos are in the business of helping mankind. Therefore, it is not only the casino clients that behave badly. The fact that money changes hands means nothing.
Humans have some deeply self-destructive tendencies. It's not just a predator/prey or an oppressor/oppressed relationship. I'm not sure that if we ban all outlets for self-destructive behavior that something good will come of it. Offering some amount of consentual self-destruction is absolutely in the business of helping mankind, in my opinion.
In my opinion, humanity would be better off fighting our self destructive tendencies instead of letting those with power take advantage of their situation and squeezing the ignorant dry.
Fighting them means offering less destructive ways to release those urges, and for the vast majority of people, that's what casinos are.
If we're talking about destructive urges, another popular one would be alcohol, and yet we have many many examples of how it needs to be accessible to an extent to serve as a release, even if sometimes it still causes serious damage.
In the US, famously the prohibition era, and there are similar cases all over the world, eg cases in Iran of people getting ethanol poisoning from homebrewed alcohol, and very common similar occurances in various states of India, where the government sometimes spuriously decides to temporarily ban alcohol consumption.
Put differently, the societal cost of outright banning some self-destructive things ends up being higher than just regulating them because a ban doesn't actually stop much.
We even seem to be heading towards a similar realization for many drugs (eg Marijuana).
Humans evolved over millions of years in an environment without casinos, addictive drugs, fast food, or any of this other stuff surrounding us in modernity. The fact that a bunch of these things hack into people’s natural blind spots is not evidence of “self-destructive tendencies.” These are exploits of people’s psychology, every bit as bad as fraud, but run by powerful, politically entrenched people.
These are extremely toxic and antisocial industries and they make society much worse off.
>Offering some amount of consentual self-destruction is absolutely in the business of helping mankind,
Prostitution, substance abuse, suicide, and other self-destructive acts, are the only measure that is available to us for enforcing that Leviathan keeps its end of the social contract: that our bodies and minds are first and foremost our own, and only when we infringe on others' freedom may ours be curtailed.
The day one becomes unable to destroy oneself is is the day freedom becomes permanently unattainable.
Suicide is an expression of one's ultimate freedom to one's body, but these acts can have consequences beyond oneself. That goes from "oh well, it's your choice" to "don't drag other people down with you". What of a child born from a prostitute? What of others' safety when driving drunk? What of friends and family who expend mental energy and money? Cut yourself away absolutely or not at all, or perhaps in a more measured action, but don't just sink the ship and not care of the people scrambling for safety.
Yeah, that's something a rational person should do. Self destruction hardly ever is rational however, and it's near impossible to see all of the collateral damage you make when destroying yourself.
Irrationality (own or others') can trap people in situations where self-destruction is the most rational choice.
Furthermore, we have a bit of a scoping issue on our hands: we default to assuming that self-preservation is rational.
Self-preservation may be rational behavior for animals. But humans are qualitatively different from animals in at least the following aspects:
- We have language, which lets us continue our thoughts beyond the immediate moment.
- We are continuously aware of our own mortality.
In that light, many of the relatively irrational choices that we make, can still seem more rational in comparison with an alternative of just sitting around and waiting to die. (Terror minimization theory.)
It gets better. A being that exists, can suffer, dread, and die; not to mention, cause others to suffer, dread, and die. A non-existent being, on the other hand, doesn't have any problems at all. "Destruction" is just the process of going from existence to non-existence, and "self-destruction" is just an egosyntonic drive towards non-existence. You don't exactly act self-destructive because you want to exist more, quite the opposite.
So, from a thinking being's perspective, self-preservation is at least as irrational as self-destruction, if not more so. Of course, either way, people's thinking is much less rational than we give it credit for, while people's actions - much more. But this only reinforces the point: that the most rational evaluation of the question of self-destruction is simultaneously the most counterintuitive.
(Incidentally, if this line of reasoning makes sense to you, you can check out "Every Cradle is a Grave" by Sarah Perry. If it doesn't, also check it out, it probably contains a rebuttal to your first few arguments, and then you have no other choice but to really start thinking.)
>it's near impossible to see all of the collateral damage you make when destroying yourself.
It's still way easier to see than all of the collateral damage you make when not destroying yourself. See: the environment, the economy, the culture. All turned to shit, thanks to the presumably rational actions of presumably rational actors pursuing individual self-preservation and prosperity.
Which is why you see so many young people finding life hardly worth living. Some of them even revert to what they perceive as "traditional" value systems - ironically, the same ones that made life hardly worth living in the first place.
> Irrationality (own or others') can trap people in situations where self-destruction is the most rational choice.
Perhaps, but I made a distinction between plain suicide and other self-destructive behaviors. Is affecting others for selfish reasons a rational choice there? Suicide is both final and most directly individual, which is why I distinguish it.
I'll respond to the rest of your post without pressing the distinction.
> Furthermore, we have a bit of a scoping issue on our hands: we default to assuming that self-preservation is rational.
I think self preservation is sensible as a default. It's ultimately a matter of opinion, but I go off the premise that we live to do whatever it is we choose to do, and therefore self destruction should be a last resort.
> - We have language, which lets us continue our thoughts beyond the immediate moment.
Ignoring the evidence of language in other animals (though you might convince me that human language is more sophisticated), I don't see how this is relevant to justifying self destruction or many other things.
> In that light, many of the relatively irrational choices that we make, can still seem more rational in comparison with an alternative of just sitting around and waiting to die.
"Many" and "an alternative of just...waiting to die" suggest a far greater scale of "rational irrationality" than I think actually occurs. How often are people faced with situations where their only realistic alternative boils down to "waiting to die"?
> "Destruction" is just the process of going from existence to non-existence, and "self-destruction" is just an egosyntonic drive towards non-existence.
Nevermind, I'm bringing up that distinction again. Suicide fits your criterion, but not alcoholism. "Just" is a strong word.
> from a thinking being's perspective
From your perspective, you mean. People have opinions, thank you very much.
> the most rational evaluation of the question of self-destruction
Most rational? Really?
> It's still way easier to see than all of the collateral damage you make when not destroying yourself.
I'm not sure about that, but perhaps.
> All turned to shit, thanks to the presumably rational actions of presumably rational actors pursuing individual self-preservation and prosperity.
You're not wrong to be cynical about that, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about how self-destructive behaviors can be harmful.
> Which is why you see so many young people finding life hardly worth living.
I don't think they would be taking the most rational course of action through suicide. In fact, I highly doubt more can't be done with the their effort than without.
> But of course the prostitutes are to blame /s
Is that really what you got from my comment? It was one example and not slut shaming. Realistically, a child born of a prostitute isn't going to have a great childhood. That might change in the future if society shifts more towards sex workers that are fairly treated, but that's not here.
RE @vacuity, HN limiting depth of discussions and all (oh, the delightful irony!).
>Is affecting others for selfish reasons a rational choice there?
Selfish reasons or no, in most cases it's not practically possible to do anything that does not affect others. Whether you have affected them positively or negatively, and whether you are to be held responsible, is for others to decide - mostly arbitrarily, that is to say in accordance with a whole host of suprarational factors.
>Suicide is both final and most directly individual, which is why I distinguish it.
I didn't really notice you making a distinction. You're free to uphold one, of course - wherever you consider appropriate.
>"Many" and "an alternative of just...waiting to die" suggest a far greater scale of "rational irrationality" than I think actually occurs. How often are people faced with situations where their only realistic alternative boils down to "waiting to die"?
Who said "only"? It's just the default option.
>Suicide fits your criterion, but not alcoholism
Use of intoxicants cause consciousness to change, then, sure enough, temporarily stop existing. It can also cause people to do reckless shit and risk their lives more. The human brain is a brilliant inhibition machine.
Addiction may be understood as a process that occurs within a person's self, or outside of it, depending on where the locus of control is defined. This is beside the point, though. It is rare that one pursues addiction with the express purpose of obliterating the self, though it's not unheard of.
You seem to be reading in my comment a distinction between suicide and other self-destructive behaviors; a distinction which I don't remember putting there.
>From your perspective, you mean. People have opinions, thank you very much
People have perspectives, and everyone's is valid (when presented in good faith).
People also have opinions. However, unlike the perspectives, some opinions are incorrect and worth disproving.
What's worse, people also tend to mix up their perspectives with their opinions, and, most perniciously of all, with their identities. I don't know what to do about that, sorry.
>Most rational? Really?
According to my opinion and perspective, whose else. Why would you imply that I mean otherwise?
>I'm not sure about that, but perhaps.
It all depends on the situation, of course. After all, you never can truly be certain what the others see.
>but that doesn't mean we can't talk about how self-destructive behaviors can be harmful.
Sure, if it helps anyone.
>I don't think they would be taking the most rational course of action through suicide. In fact, I highly doubt more can't be done with the their effort than without.
Where did I say that they find life not worth living, so they kill themselves? If only.
I'm saying that they find life not worth living, because the things that are supposed to intrinsically attract them to living, are made unattainable; so they end up living lives that are ultimately harmful to others, because someone promised them that some way of life or other is what will give their lives meaning.
By the time they have the power to change anything, the world would better off without them - but good luck getting them to budge. It's funny, give em a decade or two and Gen Z are gonna be absolutely MASSIVE boomers, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
>Is that really what you got from my comment
Not really. I got some help with staying awake though, which was nice. Cheers
> I didn't really notice you making a distinction. You're free to uphold one, of course - wherever you consider appropriate.
I didn't say you made the distinction. I did. I said suicide is acceptable because it cuts one away completely, whereas behaviors such as alcoholism can have severe negative effects on others that aren't merely emotional turmoil.
> Who said "only"? It's just the default option.
So they have alternatives besides self-destruction and waiting to die but self-destruction is the rational choice?
> It is rare that one pursues addiction with the express purpose of obliterating the self, though it's not unheard of.
True, but upthread, you (or whoever the commenter is) mentioned substance abuse as an example of self-destructive behavior. I just went with it since I don't disagree.
> What's worse, people also tend to mix up their perspectives with their opinions, and, most perniciously of all, with their identities. I don't know what to do about that, sorry.
Opinions are valid insofar as they reflect one's moral axioms and the available facts. I know what you're talking about with regards to identity.
> According to my opinion and perspective, whose else. Why would you imply that I mean otherwise?
I was thinking you meant "rational" in the sense of you being reasonably correct. As in, it's rational to not go to areas with smoke if you're trying to evade danger. Seems I misread.
> Sure, if it helps anyone.
I think it is useful to discuss any harmful actions.
> Where did I say that they find life not worth living, so they kill themselves? If only.
I didn't say you said that.
> I'm saying that they find life not worth living, because the things that are supposed to intrinsically attract them to living, are made unattainable;
And I'm saying that these things aren't truly "unattainable" and they may be attained in the future.
> so they end up living lives that are ultimately harmful to others
I doubt the collective environmental impact of these people is very significant compared to the overall global energy consumption and, more pressingly, the potential preservation to be had in working to fix this mess. It's their choice, but saying suicide is most rational seems nearsighted at the present moment. Maybe in a few decades things will really be hopeless.
> By the time they have the power to change anything, the world would better off without them - but good luck getting them to budge. It's funny, give em a decade or two and Gen Z are gonna be absolutely MASSIVE boomers, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
All that goes without saying. If you are suicidal, please seek help (so you can tell us if there is any.)
On the other hand, smashing up some proverbial deck chairs or even breaking a metaphorical Wallace Hartley arm is an acceptable way of making people acutely aware that the ship is, in fact, sinking.
>What of a child born from a prostitute
IMHO abortion belongs in the list of acts of radical bodily autonomy outlined by GP.
You should try posing that question to the kind of person that works to restrict safe access to it.
What you'll get is a reminder that a great deal of our society doesn't really understand "cause and effect" -- and are completely willing to drag down everyone else through completely socially sanctioned acts, such as political participation.
> On the other hand, smashing up some proverbial deck chairs...is an acceptable way of making people acutely aware that the ship is, in fact, sinking.
That seems to err on the side of intentional damage. I don't know how to evaluate destructive protests. I suppose some suicides are clear protests, but I don't think all suicides are, and someone really shouldn't drag others into a mess they made.
> You should try posing that question to the kind of person that works to restrict safe access to it.
Well I'm not that kind of person, and I was referring to a child that was already born.
> What you'll get is a reminder that a great deal of our society doesn't really understand "cause and effect" -- and are completely willing to drag down everyone else through completely socially sanctioned acts, such as political participation.
Perhaps, but that's neither here nor there. Malice, ignorance, and whatnot are serious problems, but their prevalence doesn't justify drunk driving and the like.
That's an interesting statement. Do you think that sex workers should not be allowed to have children? Any other noteworthy groups in your eugenics policy?
My belief is that prostitutes generally aren't treated that well. I imagine children of prostitutes don't typically have great childhoods either. Do you have reason to refute either of those claims? I'm not against fairly treated sex workers, but that's not the reality we live in right now. It's the minority at best.
> May this serve as a good reminder to treat all people with decency and an amount of respect if not kindness. There’s exactly one right way to treat a person, as a person-an end unto his/it/herself.
And in the scenario where that if you have a neighbor who decides to have his apartment windows open and TV on loud till 3am? I've tried speaking to him, wrote him a letter, yet he's ignored all. I'm now looking in to taking him to court.
I always hold respect for everything and everyone, but the naivety is wearing thin, and I start to disagree. If you start and continue to disobey the rules of common decency, consideration frankly you don't deserve nice or respect.
If we lived in a truly harmonic world where problems could be squished with respect, kindness; sure. Otherwise it's moot and that line is a puff piece that falls on it's feet leaving yourself to suffer while you accept that they can get away with the conflicts.
Sure, you could say this is the most respectful option than say smashing down the door and smashing the TV with a hammer.
It’s funny you never see eloquent, well written articles about dishwashers who live in sweaty kitchens of dive Chinese restaurants, existing on the edge of society, jammed into studio apartments in the worst parts of town, just eking by.
You never read accounts of backbreaking laborers who dig ditches day in day out, or service sewer systems, covered in refuse. They sacrifice their bodies for their paycheck, and too live on the edge of society. We’re taught that laborers sacrificing their bodies in this manner is just par for the course.
The massage worker’s account almost seems white collar in comparison.
In the world of literature you will find much of what you're describing. Just to name a few: "Hard Times" by Dickens, "The Grapes of Wrath" by Steinbeck, "Germinal" by Émile Zola. "Christ in Concrete" by Donato is another one.
If you want non-fiction, I can recommend "Nickel and Dimed" by Ehrenreich or "Working" by Terkel.
I feel like I'm missing some cultural context here that made this a semi- difficult read: obviously? the word "massage parlour" is some local euphemism for some kind of sex work and its implied they aren't actually masseurs/masseuses? but can someone explain to me exactly what the nature of the arrangement/work/ business she's working in is?
is it just prostitution and for some reason they don't call it that in Canada? is it legal/illegal? is there an implication about its location? are they in some regulatory grey zone? is it men just dropping in to be touched or is it something more? are they just operating on a drop in schedule and does that imply something about the relative standing of the establishment compared to other sex work etc? are they contractors or operating their own business?
I struggled with that aspect as well, but after reading the piece entirely, it becomes clear that massage parlour is used as an euphemism.
Also about being legal or not, it's probably work in the lite-grey zone (it's not Texas after all). The schedule looks something like, during a fixed period of time at night you just wait until you get scheduled/picked. That said, I don't think it is very important for the article.
I felt it was because just as soon as I realized she was talking about a rub and tug where she gives handjobs instead of massages, she then mentions a mutual shower that I have no idea what she’s talking about. Are they both naked in the shower and nothing happens? Are these massage parlors in Finch Alley awesome? Does all of Canada specify “parlor” to mean $80 late night showers with prostitutes as distinctive from spas where people might have a license?
This always happens to me when I read editorials from Commonwealth countries, the euphemisms are so deep and ingrained that I have no idea what they’re talking about.
I could empathize better with more context.
“I rubbed massage oil on a man’s chest at 1am and I was tired” that’s an entirely different article
> the word "massage parlour" is some local euphemism for some kind of sex work and its implied they aren't actually masseurs/masseuses?
I'm genuinely curious where you live that this is not the case. It is such a euphemism in every Anglophone country, and (large parts of?) Germany and Italy. It is usually illegal (or at least unlicensed) even in places where prostitution has some kind of legal status.
In Australia there are legal brothels, there are legit massage joints and, as I've heard, something in between.
I'm told, if you're looking for an actual massage and the reception doesn't have a HICAPS terminal (similar to the credit card one but for health insurance) you're in the wrong spot.
I spent a fair bit of my youth where there's been legalised brothels (or at least I assume they were through most of my childhood) and sex work. And on the other hand there's also physiotherapists and actual massages. I don't particularly like massages that much, personally, but if needing one I go in and tap my health card and that helps cover it.
So presumably there was no need to hide the business behind the euphemism/front, everyone just knew that if you wanted sex/porn, you went to a brothel in suburb X. Even where I am now, i know there's brothels and presumably private sex workers and if i want a massage I go and I book a massage.
> Even where I am now, i know there's brothels and presumably private sex workers and if i want a massage I go and I book a massage.
I don’t think many people would be able to mix up these places after seeing them. If you only wanted a massage for health reasons you would almost certainly not consider going there.
It's a grey area. Prostitution isn't legal but nude massage is. So these places advertise as massage parlours. This article explains it a bit more head on:
yeah that bothered me too and I was hoping it got better a few more sentences in
there are places to get massages that aren’t sex work so using euphamisms as both to placate a cultural appetite and coping mechanism is odd and needlessly confusing.
I’m halfway through the article like “is this another sex worker that can’t acknowledge what they do in plain English, while the rest of us are supposed to repeat ‘sex work is work’ for the labor rights along with the ironic convenience that will come with it, or is this a place to get a massage“
This is an exceptional piece of writing, finely crafted and suffused with unusually deep insight.
I read a lot, and seldom have I run across a writer possessed of this level of skill. A writer's central task is to place the reader in another world, living another life. At this, the author succeeds with what seems like effortless grace.
Few of today's award-winning novelists display this power.
I do hope HN folks will take the time to read this essay.
Funnily enough, your observation was the basis of my criticism. I can state it semi-socratically.
What is this article about?
A woman who did sex work at a massage parlor.
Summarize what she did, then.
I... can't.
I actually thought in the beginning that it may have been sensual, not sexual. Then she described it as sex work - which changed my mind - so it was sexual (incidentally, I have heard this critiqued in pieces before in creative writing classes - preferably a reader should not read 1/2 of your story and then mentally have to reframe everything that came before a sentence which unintentionally repositions everything).
And not to be indelicate but... how? What did the sex part of it actually involve? I can think of a whole lot of variations of that, which run a big gamut of intimacy and (I imagine) danger, but I can't tell you how she fit into that. The fact that she bought condoms partially answered that, but it's still an incomplete picture. Also if she had a boyfriend or girlfriend during that time, how she talked to her parents about this, friends - how was security handled, health, pregnancy - basic social/workplace questions - all a blank.
Maybe these were limitations imposed by the magazine itself and (ironically enough) the very power structure that she mentions as a threat. But I couldn't tell you what she actually did as a masseuse, which seems like a weakness of the piece.
It is not an article, it is an essay. Wikipedia defines an "informal essay" as: characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.
> What did the sex part of it actually involve?
The reason that this part is left to the imagination of the reader is that A) it is more powerful that way and B) the details don't really matter anyway to get the message and image across.
These things should have been covered in your creative writing class too.
Beautifully written, even if I don’t necessarily agree with every single point made.
Especially towards the end, I feel that she tries to emphasize the nobility and radical nature of this work, taking umbrage at Eric Adam’s use of the word “low-skill” to describe some of these sorts of jobs. But it seems somewhat belied by the fact that, afaict, as soon as she had the means to escape, she did. And the romanticization of sex work as the only job where women get to call the shots and make profit off of men… I am curious the degree to which this is really true for these massage parlors, which are often managed or extorted by male-run organized crime. [0]
But the central message, one that seems like a call for dignity, really resonates with me. It is one of the most beautiful vignettes I have read in a long time.
> Especially towards the end, I feel that she tries to emphasize the nobility and radical nature of this work, taking umbrage at Eric Adam’s use of the word “low-skill” to describe some of these sorts of jobs. But it seems somewhat belied by the fact that, afaict, as soon as she had the means to escape, she did.
Just because something is skilful doesn’t make it enjoyable or rewarding. Not to mention a person’s health and safety (both economic and physical) being considered.
The author didn’t assert that sex work is the only job where women get to call the shots. The author suggested that could be a reason why it’s marginalized. Because if it was legitimized, then women would call the shots.
I did not read it that way and I think that she would have phrased it differently if so.
“an industry where women get to call the shots” she would have said “would get” imo if your interpretation was correct, just as you use ‘would’ in your comment.
I took her to be describing sex work in the present, not some hypothetical future sex work.
Here is the excerpt for those who want to judge for themselves:
‘Unlike sex work, my “good” jobs didn’t threaten to overthrow traditional power structures. Many sex workers, including myself, have long hypothesized that the reason so many people in power work to keep the commercial sex trade marginalized is because they’re threatened by it—by the idea that it’s the only field where women outearn men, that it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts. In my experience of the corporate landscape, there was none of this radical power structure, only an upholding of the traditional: men talking and women listening, men in powerful positions getting both credit and profit for the labour of women beneath them’
People in power work to marginalize it because they’re threatened by it. It’s pretty successfully marginalized if a woman can get arrested for it even while sacrificing economic profits to a pimp or massage parlor. Maybe the author could have been more explicit about it but to my reading sex workers can’t be both marginalized and calling the shots.
Comparing a drug kingpin to a prostitute is kind of ridiculous but if that makes sense in your mind then I doubt we would see eye to eye on pretty much anything.
It was a counter-example in the analytic/math sense, I was in no way suggesting that a sex worker is equivalent to a drug kingpin. Merely an example as to why your assertion that [calling the shots is incompatible with overall societal marginalization] is wrong.
Happy to not continue though, I think you struggle with good faith discussion and/or reading comprehension (:
Women can call more of the shots in places where it is legal like Nevada or other countries. Not saying it's a perfect system but the alterntive so far has been a trade that is controlled by criminals, bad customers, and law enforcement.
Not sure why you assume this would be the case and it also isn’t really all that true [0], nor has it been true historically in societies with legal prostitution nor is it true in other industries with many women frontline workers (like the makeup industry, obviously not that similar but I think is somewhat representative).
That’s not often true in sex work relying on a venue, and certainly not nevada, and the few women run organizations have the same power dynamics and labor problems as all the others
Should really include sex workers in these discussions
All this conjecture that its exclusively a male run coercive trait exacerbating anything
She can write, I'll give her that, but contentwise it is exactly the unreflected pseudo-intellectual crap you'd expect from a "journalist". How can you be so naive to sign up to become a propaganda foot soldier for the culture industry and then expect anything else but soulless stab-in-the-back ass-kissing work? This sense of comradery she is missing is the glimmer of class consciousness. It's strangely real, it's people who know they are at the bottom and they're in it together. The corporate world on the other hand is fake. It consists of bosses who want to be treated like a friend or a royal when it suits them. It consists of colleagues who will throw you under the bus for that promotion and you will do the same, but you both act like you don't know it will happen. It is that subconscious shame of betrayal from people like the author, who romance about the precariat on their personal blog and then go back to work to beat down on their former friends with the proverbial cultural stick in service of the man.
I worked long months in the forestry industry (re-planting trees) during university it’s not so tough as sex work but sometimes people throw it in the bag of “low-skill” or “manual labour” jobs as if thought or critical thinking we’re not required.
I have to say now working a “real” job now (for salary benefits etc.) I know way more forestry folks who could do my job today (consulting) than current coworkers who could dig out a stuck pickup truck properly, fix a broken generator, put out a brush fire…
there are jobs which require accreditation or whatever but there’s no such thing as truly no-skill-required labour
Trades peak lower, which drives the average higher for white collar work, but I think if you look at the median income for both, trades are actually higher. FWIW.
Physically the rock-pusher job is harder. Mentally the architect's. I'd say pay comes in based on demand. Do we have more brainy folks or brawny folks?
This kind of measuring jobs by efforts always ends up being won by an animal or machine. Even among humans, the guy digging ditches with his bare hands is putting in more work than the guy using a shovel.
It ends up being a stupid incentive structure, and is not a replacement for supply and demand in the labor market.
Because money is not the only thing we gain by working. And few people optimise 100% for money. People work jobs for status, friends, pride, social good, stimulation, etcetera.
I have friends who change between different types of jobs, and their reasons are often surprising.
Consider a person that carves bespoke wooden figurines. Their job takes considerable skill, even talent. But it takes then X hours to make Y figurines. Time in, widgets out, completely proportional.
Now imagine a person that configures a robot to carve crappy mass produced figurines. Their work is differently skilled, but perhaps less so. The product isn't as good. Yet they put in their time once and the machine cranks out enormous quantities with minimal additional work from them. This has high leverage, they can command more pay because their leveraged work has more value.
You can go further up the hierarchy, to the people who organize or direct the technicians or the channels that distribute the products of their machines. Their work is further abstracted, skilled in its own way but not necessarily more so. But the amount of income their efforts command is greater still-- even more leveraged.
In areas where the use of the high-skill low-leverage work are largely optional-- say custom carpentry-- they often become unavailable because the sort of highly competent people who would excel at these tasks can make more money in a highly leveraged (but perhaps less skilled!) job writing boilerplate javascript to deliver advertising or whatever. In areas where the non-scalable work isn't optional, like medical doctors-- the prices tend to shoot through the sky in part due to the income an equivalent aptitude could command in a more leveraged position.
In between the two extremes we have workers that are just flat underpaid, and we rationalize the situation by imagining that they're less deserving.
As the article points out, many of these lowly paid jobs are highly skilled in their own way-- at least if done well. What they don't have, however, is a big initial training barrier to entry that limits the supply of capable people and puts market power for this labor onto the supply side.
Skill isn't a factor in wages except in so far as the required skill impacts the level of supply or demand in the supply/demand balance.
I think we often underestimate the capability of the average person because we can't know the average person and can't see first hand the depth of their ability and because we also so often put that average person in a situation that just doesn't exercise those latent abilities (or do, but do so in ways we don't respect due to cultural biases).
The problem with this logic is that it only sort of works. I know a lot of executives personally and most of them are not high skill at all. Most of them aren't even very bright.
I guess you could make the case that their primary skill - reading the story that the people who promoted them wanted/needed to hear - is in fact what's being rewarded, but it has nothing to do with their applicability to high leverage work at all.
Skills to collaborate across multiple nodes/tasks are challenging in a different way, and some who might be good working solo flail when managing human interactions across multiple power centers.
Well, your take also seem pretty naive. Salaries in non-regulated jobs are a function of supply VS demand, that's pretty much all.
I would say office work does not actually pay more, it depends. Easy office-hand jobs probably pay much less than your previous job... but when it does pay more, it's simply because there's fewer people willing and capable of doing that job as a rate of the number of people actually needed for such tasks.
When a job is regulated (requires license, or is protected by some law etc) the equation is skewed, usually in favour of a profession.
Supply/demand dynamics do exist. However, it is naive to believe that supply and demand are orthogonal.
Desire is mimetic: you demand what you see others demanding. 99% of everything is either a layer of misdirection or support infrastructure for a layer of misdirection.
Isn’t that supply and demand? You’re in demand because you create more value than you capture. Your employer loves that about you. If they could find someone cheaper who produced even more value, they’d replace you.
My theory is: The more people you help earn money, the more you earn.
Private Equity is explicitly excluded, maybe they do, who knows?
Example 1 Bill Gates/Microsoft: Provided a stable platform for business software to run on, making it possible for millions of businesses to do accounting/inventory management/controlling CNC machinery/etc.
Example 2 Sales People/Marketing: If you got the best product/software/whatever but zero customers, how are you you gonna pay your bills?
[edit]
Example 3 Jeff Bezos: Building the dominant platform for e-commerce of all kinds. Making it easy for a huge crowd of potential customers to discover and buy your wares.
> I mean, if this was true, then why do office workers generally earn more?
Because the work (1) takes particular skills, and (2) skills that are functionally gatekept so they are disproportionately found in people coming from a middle class (or, at minimum, proletarian intelligentsia) background.
It has work that is (compared to lots of more poorly paid jobs) hard to find people minimally qualified to do, but its not hard (in the sense of arduous) work, for the most part. Work being arduous doesn’t make it well-paid.
I used to weld in a shipyard, and one of the things I miss about it was that literally everyone I worked with was skilled and knowledgeable about our work. There was literally no way to fake being able to do what we did, so all the ego-first blowhards crashed out before they could affect our day-to-day much.
Burn that jet rod! All trades are like that to one degree or another. I end up working with a lot of factory/plant maintenance personnel, and yeah there's the occasional dropout who's not pulling his weight, but mostly it's super competent people no matter what their responsibility is.
In jobs at semiconductor fab places, usually the head of maintenance holds a master's or PhD and still rebuilds turbopumps and blown out ion gauges when needed.
There is such a thing as low-skill labour. Nobody said 'no skill required'. The term is low-skill.
Of the people I have met that do manual labouring jobs, I know many people could do those jobs if they got fit and learnt to do them, and that those people could not learn to do intellectual work no matter how hard they tried.
Also working in the forestry industry is much harder than having sex for a living.
> I felt little of the camaraderie I once did while working night shifts. I’m unsure why I felt this dissonance, and it occurs to me now that it could have been more self-imposed than anything.
I doubt it. I've worked days and nights at different times in the same place, at a couple of jobs in different parts of the country. There's a real difference between what people are like in the daytime and nighttime worlds, and between people who are at home in the latter and those who are just visiting.
There is a comradery in that it sucks, you know it sucks and that we are just getting through it. No one is out to "get" you. You are also part of the suck club.
The second you get another job they are reminded of all the people who take advantage of people in the suck club. You got out. They didn't.
Abroad in the night, the human world grows tenuous, and one's connection to it likewise. Most people can learn to live in that, but you never feel perfectly at home with it. Nor should you; there's nothing like it to dispel the comfortable, foolish illusion that the world belongs to us, and not the other way around.
Humans are better, I find, for a little fear of that sort. It makes us stick closer together than we do otherwise, gives us more incentive to look for the good in one another; camaraderie comes much easier, and that is part of what I miss. Both those jobs were customer service, and even the people on the phone were different: stranger certainly, sometimes desperate, but almost never spiteful like the day shift often was. The sun revolves around every narcissist, of course, but those excepted there is less pretense in all of us in night.
Its very strangeness is the rest of what I miss. I find it frightful too, of course, but never because it's trying, which counts for a lot with me after living so long with humans. There's a lot to appreciate in that strangeness, for anyone who understands fear well enough to feel and not be driven by it - to know the difference between being afraid and being made to feel afraid.
There's a wild and ancient beauty in the night to which nothing wrought by human hands compares, and an inescapable reminder that beyond all the frantic work of busy human hands, something vast beyond our comprehension still abides: the world itself, from which we never stop fleeing, despite that we neither can nor need.
I hope whatever of this species emerges from the other side of the next few hundred years understands that better than today's version does - I can't imagine how they'd fail to, at any rate. I think they'll better understand the night than most of us can, too. Maybe by then the consequences of our lethal hubris will have far enough abated they'll even have some time to enjoy it, the way I did decades ago when I last lived a nighttime life.
Let's get this straight. The person blessed with what is basically a panhandling superpower -- an attractive female body -- somehow says her marks, the ones paying $80, have an entitled attitude toward sexual attention. Pause and think about that. Do you think these guys had a Plan B to buy them an English degree?
These places conduct zero-sum economic activity. One person loses money, one person gains money, and nothing of value is created. Draw a control volume around an economic activity to understand it. China: Opium in, silver out. Congo: Guns in, rubber out. This place: Money in, nothing out.
A hallmark of exploiters is that they have contempt for their marks. Well, I sense more than a little contempt here. Don't trust this person around children or small animals.
Of course she justifies herself eloquently; did you not just see what she spent the money on? An English degree.
Moreover, she admits that she understands what she was doing:
> my livelihood somehow still depended on men employing bad judgement.
So don't get distracted. Draw a control volume. And stay away from these places, and these people.
Most people here commenting, even those praising this writing, who will surely rush to defend her, must at some level clearly understand this. Like -- do you frequent prostitutes? ... Didn't think so. So you know I'm right.
Agreed, and I think your points will be missed amongst the cacophony of praise for the admittedly-entertaining article. Reminds you that you can dress anything up and people will accept it if it's eloquent and entertaining enough.
I guess art, music, professional sports, and fine dining are all essentially zero-sum and useless as well then? What tangible benefit does a museum visitor get for their ticket?
I presume your job must be much more important for the good of society than sex work.
> I presume your job must be much more important for the good of society than sex work.
It sure is and I think it would be hard to deny that. Everyday I go to work I generate a large amount of value for the economy, far more than I get paid for.
Sex work simply isn’t very valuable. Anyone can do it, you don’t need any intelligence or skill to make a buck via sex.
All animals can have sex, most without thinking. It’s the definition of skillless work when even a mouse can figure it out and most humans get it for free.
Some guys are lonely and will pay for any hole to stick it in, but that doesn’t mean the work has any real value.
Make no mistake that’s what they see her as, some random hole to enjoy and she’s trying to cope with that.
If this is the crux of the issue for you, I assume you don't frequent the following places:
- bars
- arcades
- any entertainment venue (concerts, etc)
The impression she seemed to be making was that many of their patrons weren't there for physical gratification but rather a sort of emotional catharsis. Yours is a highly judgmental and uncharitable take.
She's sneering at a bunch of schlubs and you're calling me the uncharitable one? You can frame this kind of stuff as therapy if you want, as something involving a pathetic kind of dignity, even as valuable work, but her essay does none of that. The only people with whom she evinces any solidarity are the convenience-store clerks and the taxi drivers. She basically says that this is not a good thing to be doing, which paradoxically means that her essay is in more logical agreement with my own condemnation of it than it is with your post. If there is to be an end to judgment and condemnation it has to begin with the author. She and I agree that exploitation is happening; we only disagree about whether it is good (or, "radical", she says). The catharsis you speak of, if real, is not something she cares about, because the people who experience it are not people she values.
Fairness in society quickly becomes a can of worms. It is unfair that someone can make $80/h in the gig economy because of their body, but what about $80/h the coder makes because they can think a certain way, which carries on being paid as they slam that fusball into the goal, or snore in a meeting.
How many people do you know that get paid just because they “think” certain way? Most of the time it’s combination of education, determination and practice to achieve something.
In this regard more accurate comparison would be sport, where you have to actively work on your body, unlike sex where being born with certain body and features is enough.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadFor anybody that struggles with the length and slow-paced nature of this genre -- this is hackernews after all -- I had a much easier time imagining this as a radio piece. The writing style is very melodic, like it's meant to be read out loud. The noises of the city, the description of light and temperature, all made it feel very alive. Something to absorb in a very sensual way, quite the opposite of the how-to and faq texts we read at the office during daytime.
(Ha.)
I suggest that people read a few novels if they think this article is too long.
Emphasizing the beauty and value of reading imo is much more important if the goal is to encourage longer form reading, which can be a learned skill.
This really encapsulates what all humans want and need. Food, sex & love, shelter & clothing. With only those three things you can live a happy life. Everything else is really to satisfy a desire for novelty and experience.
> What do you need if you’re out seeking services at night? Food, sex, shelter. The staunch of a wound.
What the author is trying to express isn't that someone out at night has different needs than someone out during the day, but rather that if you're out at night then whatever you're looking for has an urgency that outweighs sleep, like a bleeding wound.
Like, have you ever been stuck out at night in the cold and rain without eating all day and thought, "I need to focus on pursuing my passions"?
Some places become amazing after dark. People just want to have a nice time together. Maybe that’s over food, maybe it involves sex, but more importantly it was about camaraderie.
On the surface I think most would agree, but I think you need trust in a relationship.
If your job or parents job moves you around, it becomes harder to lay down roots it gets harder to trust people in anything other than a superficial way.
Friendships become a thing of the past.
People end up becoming divided, but pre-internet this was standard practice employed by the UK govt, in the name of science and law & order.
I'd be happy to spend the end of my life on my own now, ideally I'd even like a sort of drive-thru euthanasia service, where when you decide, not somebody else like doctors, politicians, scientists or religious freaks, where you can bowl up to an incinerating crematorium, pay a fee (because only a capitalist society would charge you to end your life in a painfree manner), optionally leave some beyond the grave messages, inject myself and end my life, body removed from the room, incinerated and the waste disposed of in the bin.
Its the last act of self determination and autonomy any intelligent person could hope to have imo.
Nobody gets their life back that's stolen by people in authority like parents, teachers, employers, politicians, scientists, lawyers and judges or superstitious types.
Todays society, which everyone is in denial over, is the fact they are nothing more than the property of the entities that ultimately control society.
If its any consolation, life can leave you feeling numb enough to make suicide a viable option whilst the criminals that run the world, get fat off the land.
So I can relate to the article.
I think you're taking my comment far too literally but you've never known anyone that's been happier because they've gotten in a good relationship, or pulled themselves out of poverty?
I make things for a living and consider that to be a precious and valuable pursuit, but I'm only afforded that by having some degree of food, shelter, clothing, relationships.
Terminal delusion. Beyond parody.
Without it, what would tend to happen is that many more men would have no wives and families. Which means they have relatively little to lose. Which could tend to make your society unstable, since these men have little reason not to flip alliances, revolt, defect, etc.
Hence laws and consequences for adultery, prohibition of an open market for non-monogamous sex, etc.
The traditions and superstitions are just the implementation of the idea.
Are you fucking kidding? Have you heard of Tinder?
You’re just reinforcing the authors point, which is that we treat this situation noticeably differently, for “reasons”
That would be an open market.
sex work, and women’s empowerment is especially looked down upon. what else is labour but selling your body, yet somehow a woman is a slut to be shamed, and simultaneously the object of sexual desire.
men need these latent structured in place to remain a) powerful and b) keep their sense of worth and identity.
why else is being gay or “throwing like a girl” insults every western boy heard in the 90s?
It had more to do with military differential than with gender, but now they must change the rhetoric with these discussions because wide availability of historical facts and global demographic trends do not benefit this "dominant power structure".
The former slave drivers now want local women who read this trash to hate you for their own crimes so they can skip their bill
I don’t really get the point of your comment except insofar as the standard HN “well actually” putdown of anything resembling feminist rhetoric.
But I still do not know the point of your comment. Is it to suggest that gender relations was not a big factor in the past?
I agree, some strands of feminism can certainly ignore all other dimensions of power, especially when coming from more affluent women, but I disagree that this was the implication of the original comment.
This is my first mention of an original comment, but I was referring to this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37026511
In fact, your comparison about walking and chewing gum vs people's attention makes zero sense. Attention is finite and mutually exclusive, you can only look at one thing at once
I can't speak for the commenter you're responding to, but the delusional part of that quote for me was the idea that men opposed sex work because women earn a lot of money.
I'm not conservative, but I was raised in that world, and I can assure you they believe sex is only acceptable within marriage. The vast majority of them would absolutely support a successful businesswoman who earned her money through any moral means.
No, it's because it's all total mental delusion, and we stand up for the truth above coddling people who should be receiving mental health treatment. You cannot be half a man and half a woman unless you're in the tiny proportion of people with an intersex genetic disorder. It has nothing to do with power structure and nothing to do with religion.
>sex work, and women’s empowerment is especially looked down upon. what else is labour but selling your body, yet somehow a woman is a slut to be shamed, and simultaneously the object of sexual desire.
Prostitution is despised because it is fundamentally exploitative of everyone involved, and bad for the stability of society. The origins of the taboo probably also involve the very high level of venereal disease that accompanied it until very recently. And it's not like that problem has been entirely solved either.
>men need these latent structured in place to remain a) powerful and b) keep their sense of worth and identity.
Delusional.
>why else is being gay or “throwing like a girl” insults every western boy heard in the 90s?
Boys don't want to be seen as girlish for the same reason that girls in the 90s (and the 2000s, and the 2010s, and probably the 2020s too, by the way) don't want to be seen as boyish. When boys go through puberty they are competing with each other to be masculine. When girls go through puberty they are competing with each other to be feminine.
Rather than vagueposting, would you care to leave a comment that doesn't require guessing what you're talking about?
All our choices occur in the emotional centers of our brain (in his lectures George Lakoff often mentions research showing that brain injury in emotional centers erase the ability to choose / have a preference).
The layer of rationalization deceives us into believing we somehow made an independent choice.
One of Lakoff’s lectures: https://youtu.be/T46bSyh0xc0
I need to say that I have not yet experienced or seen an action which is not driven by needs (I subscribe to the NVC model of action).
We have needs which make us want things. We rationalize based on preferences which is another label for needs.
So, we act on needs, mostly subconscious, and tell ourselves stories. That’s about it.
The pacing, the wording, the sense of atmosphere, and what to say when are just incredibly well done.
This is what writers should aspire to.
Also, great hook (we are all animals at night).
The big breakthrough would be robots that provided the emotional need of human connection and validation. If the mind could be tricked into a similar state as being in the center of a strong social network, then not only would that serve human needs optimally it would also be the single biggest health boost given.
What surprises me is how bad the tech is. It's "mediocre chatbot" level currently and yet these people are VERY happy with it, spending hundreds a month and having all sort of custom artwork done.
For a meaningful percentage of the pop, very low fidelity tech, even at an extreme price, is enough.
can you point to anything where one could start exploring this area further?
Probably start there and see where they've gone now.
I don’t see the negatives other commenters are pointing out. Yes she’s talking about her perceptions born from her clients and years worked. That’s an absolute right for all of us, right? To simply relate the experiences we’ve had.
She’s definitely seen a side of humanity that, while seen by many, doesn’t quite often get public visibility-sunlight. And lo and behold, it’s a kind of grungy crudeness-but still human and shared.
Personally, I’ve worked in retail and in corporate in major casinos. People will assume they’re better than you and treat you as something like a servant simply because you’re the one taking their money for a thing. Or just because you “work here” as was the case in both retail and casino. That dynamic even exists in organizations between divisions and teams within the same organization. Ask yourself how that would change in the authors situation?
I don’t have a thesis. May this serve as a good reminder to treat all people with decency and an amount of respect if not kindness. There’s exactly one right way to treat a person, as a person-an end unto his/it/herself.
She's not "simply relating experiences" though. She goes beyond that, turning them into a general sociopolitical claim:
> Unlike sex work, my “good” jobs didn’t threaten to overthrow traditional power structures. Many sex workers, including myself, have long hypothesized that the reason so many people in power work to keep the commercial sex trade marginalized is because they’re threatened by it—by the idea that it’s the only field where women outearn men, that it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts.
I'm not saying that intrinsitically wrong or right. I just like to know in which culture men are told these.
You’ll notice I’m not working in absolutes here. She may have, but working the night she saw things that led her to draw certain conclusions from the things she saw and experienced.
I’d venture that she would be able to admit her experiences weren’t the end all be all of humanity though. But still very informative of the people in that space.
Edit-In my experience, whether someone is told explicitly that they can exploit another or not is irrelevant. The exploitive figure that out on their own often enough.
What about the type of men who would never ask for her services? She knows nothing about them.
Well...it is nice that you seem unaware of Andrew Tate, and the millions of boys and men who are eager followers of him and similar creeps...
Young men are desperate for men they can look up to, to emulate. Rich, exciting, powerful, desired; this was Andrew Tate the image. Of course he was going to be popular! Mainstream media and the chattering classes are utterly powerless against this, we must elevate men of integrity so that young men do not throw their lives away. Black men, rich white men, Jordan Peterson if he cuts through, but men with integrity. Deconstruct society too much and you will just be left with the swirling entropy of nothingness. Socrates understood this, and we are fools to forget.
My eyes were opened when I visited the Toronto area recently. From my (limited) anecdotal experience, there seems to be a fervent, messiah like following of Tate and the things he says. It was so bizarre to me.
P.S. not saying anything bad about Toronto! Just that it was my experience there. Please take things you read on the internet with a (bucket) of salt, and healthy skepticism!
Do you think in providing those things, men then become entitled to sex or attention?
Which is to say you've listed a large number of material things, or fictional things (TV sitcoms have never been reality, but boy did they do a lot of damage to millenials), absent one core element: actually being a pleasant person. Or providing emotional support. Or empathy (I also note that excluded is "be attractive to the other person in some way").
Basically: your list entirely excludes the right of the other person to...be a person. To have any independent agency or preferences.
We talk a ton about unrealistic beauty standards, "men talking, women listening", etc - but I have to wonder, maybe the world where women marry people one income decide above them is almost guaranteed to be a world where men are just more competitive in the workplace, even at the expense of running over their female colleagues. The incentives curve says that to expect anything at all of women, you have to be successful, ideally wealthy. So, you get the behavior the incentives curve tells people to enact.
An incentives curve that is set, ironically, by women
that's not true though. I'd say it's not great to be "ugly" (for some definition of the word) but you don't have to attractive. Heck, you can even be pretty poor, but as long as you you're a decent person to be around, it's not that hard.
It’s certainly not all women, of course, but there are women who feel they shouldn’t “settle” for “less” than that. As though men who are 5’9 and make $85k are dirtbags or as though tall rich guys will treat you better or be better fathers. It is contributing to the big decrease in marriage even happening, in my opinion, as evidenced by increased average age of first marriage in the West.
To be perfectly clear: I’m not daft enough to think that no guys who aren’t in this “shallowly-defined 1%” are getting dates or getting married. Rather, I’m saying that culturally we are now saying it’s very okay, or even best practice, to be incredibly shallow in evaluating men, and that’s as wrong as evaluating women by their measurements.
You seem to have skipped the take the risk of being rejected part of that comment when reading.
I do think that there are a lot of men who feel bitter that they'll never have sex with a woman, but I don't think anything in mainstream society condones such feelings. It's more of a subculture of lonely men turning misogynistic.
It is also cheap.
So the notion that the problem is "men who will never have sex" is fairly obviously false.
> it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts.
The article says for free. It doesn't say "for just being an attractive guy" or "for just being a nice person". For FREE. That's what the article says, not my word.
Also your comment is just appending more things to the list of things that men are expected to do...
Men are taught that their work is valuable but they are not; they feel entitled after putting in work, even if it's work that nobody asked for, like going to the gym a lot or chatting up strangers at bus stops. No, they're not actually entitled to sex and attention, but the entire problem is that men feel like they paid and should therefore receive. "Free" is a complete reversal of the thought process of the entitled man.
Way to simplify something very complex. What do you expect men to do, quit trying everything and leave it up to fate? Keep up with women's magazines changing their minds by the day and chasing trends to get women to buy things they don't need? Accept the tax of women casually demanding 100+ bucks a date just to have a chance? Wait for them to socially atomize themselves even further to the point of 'maybe you should pick hobbies with more women instead of your own circles filled with men'? Oh wait, that last one also has the caveat of 'if you do it just to meet women, you are a creep'.
About everything in the world, people have expectations for putting in effort and others root for their success. This is the one topic society has gone nuts about chastising men, while both encouraging women to demand more and encouraging the same aggressive approach. Even just saying
>nobody asked for, like going to the gym a lot
shows you're completely out of touch with the younger generations, given the increased demands in muscularity and fitness. Seriously, the women themselves are saying it and have been saying it for decades now.
The western world has gone completely mad in regards to dating, but the most vocal party can only shout 'men bad' no matter what they do beyond being a complete doormat with zero expectations.
Men go to the gym for themselves and secondarily, because it raises their attractiveness and confidence in front of everyone, not just women. They chat up strangers at bus stops, because dating is a literal lottery for the guy.
When a man chats up women at a bus stop it's because he likes women and wants to date them, obviously; when he yells "fucking whore, you think your too good for me" after getting turned down it's because of entitlement, and part of the reason he feels entitled is that he put in effort to make the first move.
That is actually a classic "nice guy" trope. Women want a guy who is confident in stating his attraction to them and who doesn't dwell too much before asking her out or after being rejected. Being "pleasant" only works if you naturally meet a lot of women and the woman asks you out. The reason for that is that platonic friendships physically take up time and limit the number of women you can meet. If you have five female friends, the likelyhood of one of them being attracted to you is practically zero, because the number is way too small. Nobody is going to have a hundred female friends so that one of them is going to ask you out. The economics of male dating just don't allow it to happen.
>Basically: your list entirely excludes the right of the other person to...be a person.
How exactly did you come up with this response? Honestly, it feels like you copy pasted it from somewhere else and are now responding out of context.
How does splitting the bill dehumanise "the other person"?
Walking up to a woman takes courage, which is a desirable quality. Why should a woman wan't a man, that lacks the balls to talk to her? The mating dance of many species has rules they have to follow. Complaining about them does zero for your dating success. The female decides if his display is good enough for her.
The App Bumble has women message first and it is strange for them.
Different strokes for different folks. Don't be so strict with your social structures and you'll probably be happier.
Also well within her right to do so.
I thought the issue was someone suggesting she should "stay within her lane". Whether I agree with them or not I like to hear a person's views if they have walked in shoes I'll probably never walk in.
If we're talking about destructive urges, another popular one would be alcohol, and yet we have many many examples of how it needs to be accessible to an extent to serve as a release, even if sometimes it still causes serious damage.
Put differently, the societal cost of outright banning some self-destructive things ends up being higher than just regulating them because a ban doesn't actually stop much.
We even seem to be heading towards a similar realization for many drugs (eg Marijuana).
These are extremely toxic and antisocial industries and they make society much worse off.
Prostitution, substance abuse, suicide, and other self-destructive acts, are the only measure that is available to us for enforcing that Leviathan keeps its end of the social contract: that our bodies and minds are first and foremost our own, and only when we infringe on others' freedom may ours be curtailed.
The day one becomes unable to destroy oneself is is the day freedom becomes permanently unattainable.
Furthermore, we have a bit of a scoping issue on our hands: we default to assuming that self-preservation is rational.
Self-preservation may be rational behavior for animals. But humans are qualitatively different from animals in at least the following aspects:
- We have language, which lets us continue our thoughts beyond the immediate moment.
- We are continuously aware of our own mortality.
In that light, many of the relatively irrational choices that we make, can still seem more rational in comparison with an alternative of just sitting around and waiting to die. (Terror minimization theory.)
It gets better. A being that exists, can suffer, dread, and die; not to mention, cause others to suffer, dread, and die. A non-existent being, on the other hand, doesn't have any problems at all. "Destruction" is just the process of going from existence to non-existence, and "self-destruction" is just an egosyntonic drive towards non-existence. You don't exactly act self-destructive because you want to exist more, quite the opposite.
So, from a thinking being's perspective, self-preservation is at least as irrational as self-destruction, if not more so. Of course, either way, people's thinking is much less rational than we give it credit for, while people's actions - much more. But this only reinforces the point: that the most rational evaluation of the question of self-destruction is simultaneously the most counterintuitive.
(Incidentally, if this line of reasoning makes sense to you, you can check out "Every Cradle is a Grave" by Sarah Perry. If it doesn't, also check it out, it probably contains a rebuttal to your first few arguments, and then you have no other choice but to really start thinking.)
>it's near impossible to see all of the collateral damage you make when destroying yourself.
It's still way easier to see than all of the collateral damage you make when not destroying yourself. See: the environment, the economy, the culture. All turned to shit, thanks to the presumably rational actions of presumably rational actors pursuing individual self-preservation and prosperity.
Which is why you see so many young people finding life hardly worth living. Some of them even revert to what they perceive as "traditional" value systems - ironically, the same ones that made life hardly worth living in the first place.
But of course the prostitutes are to blame /s
Perhaps, but I made a distinction between plain suicide and other self-destructive behaviors. Is affecting others for selfish reasons a rational choice there? Suicide is both final and most directly individual, which is why I distinguish it.
I'll respond to the rest of your post without pressing the distinction.
> Furthermore, we have a bit of a scoping issue on our hands: we default to assuming that self-preservation is rational.
I think self preservation is sensible as a default. It's ultimately a matter of opinion, but I go off the premise that we live to do whatever it is we choose to do, and therefore self destruction should be a last resort.
> - We have language, which lets us continue our thoughts beyond the immediate moment.
Ignoring the evidence of language in other animals (though you might convince me that human language is more sophisticated), I don't see how this is relevant to justifying self destruction or many other things.
> In that light, many of the relatively irrational choices that we make, can still seem more rational in comparison with an alternative of just sitting around and waiting to die.
"Many" and "an alternative of just...waiting to die" suggest a far greater scale of "rational irrationality" than I think actually occurs. How often are people faced with situations where their only realistic alternative boils down to "waiting to die"?
> "Destruction" is just the process of going from existence to non-existence, and "self-destruction" is just an egosyntonic drive towards non-existence.
Nevermind, I'm bringing up that distinction again. Suicide fits your criterion, but not alcoholism. "Just" is a strong word.
> from a thinking being's perspective
From your perspective, you mean. People have opinions, thank you very much.
> the most rational evaluation of the question of self-destruction
Most rational? Really?
> It's still way easier to see than all of the collateral damage you make when not destroying yourself.
I'm not sure about that, but perhaps.
> All turned to shit, thanks to the presumably rational actions of presumably rational actors pursuing individual self-preservation and prosperity.
You're not wrong to be cynical about that, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about how self-destructive behaviors can be harmful.
> Which is why you see so many young people finding life hardly worth living.
I don't think they would be taking the most rational course of action through suicide. In fact, I highly doubt more can't be done with the their effort than without.
> But of course the prostitutes are to blame /s
Is that really what you got from my comment? It was one example and not slut shaming. Realistically, a child born of a prostitute isn't going to have a great childhood. That might change in the future if society shifts more towards sex workers that are fairly treated, but that's not here.
>Is affecting others for selfish reasons a rational choice there?
Selfish reasons or no, in most cases it's not practically possible to do anything that does not affect others. Whether you have affected them positively or negatively, and whether you are to be held responsible, is for others to decide - mostly arbitrarily, that is to say in accordance with a whole host of suprarational factors.
>Suicide is both final and most directly individual, which is why I distinguish it.
I didn't really notice you making a distinction. You're free to uphold one, of course - wherever you consider appropriate.
>"Many" and "an alternative of just...waiting to die" suggest a far greater scale of "rational irrationality" than I think actually occurs. How often are people faced with situations where their only realistic alternative boils down to "waiting to die"?
Who said "only"? It's just the default option.
>Suicide fits your criterion, but not alcoholism
Use of intoxicants cause consciousness to change, then, sure enough, temporarily stop existing. It can also cause people to do reckless shit and risk their lives more. The human brain is a brilliant inhibition machine.
Addiction may be understood as a process that occurs within a person's self, or outside of it, depending on where the locus of control is defined. This is beside the point, though. It is rare that one pursues addiction with the express purpose of obliterating the self, though it's not unheard of.
You seem to be reading in my comment a distinction between suicide and other self-destructive behaviors; a distinction which I don't remember putting there.
>From your perspective, you mean. People have opinions, thank you very much
People have perspectives, and everyone's is valid (when presented in good faith).
People also have opinions. However, unlike the perspectives, some opinions are incorrect and worth disproving.
What's worse, people also tend to mix up their perspectives with their opinions, and, most perniciously of all, with their identities. I don't know what to do about that, sorry.
>Most rational? Really?
According to my opinion and perspective, whose else. Why would you imply that I mean otherwise?
>I'm not sure about that, but perhaps.
It all depends on the situation, of course. After all, you never can truly be certain what the others see.
>but that doesn't mean we can't talk about how self-destructive behaviors can be harmful.
Sure, if it helps anyone.
>I don't think they would be taking the most rational course of action through suicide. In fact, I highly doubt more can't be done with the their effort than without.
Where did I say that they find life not worth living, so they kill themselves? If only.
I'm saying that they find life not worth living, because the things that are supposed to intrinsically attract them to living, are made unattainable; so they end up living lives that are ultimately harmful to others, because someone promised them that some way of life or other is what will give their lives meaning.
By the time they have the power to change anything, the world would better off without them - but good luck getting them to budge. It's funny, give em a decade or two and Gen Z are gonna be absolutely MASSIVE boomers, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
>Is that really what you got from my comment
Not really. I got some help with staying awake though, which was nice. Cheers
I didn't say you made the distinction. I did. I said suicide is acceptable because it cuts one away completely, whereas behaviors such as alcoholism can have severe negative effects on others that aren't merely emotional turmoil.
> Who said "only"? It's just the default option.
So they have alternatives besides self-destruction and waiting to die but self-destruction is the rational choice?
> It is rare that one pursues addiction with the express purpose of obliterating the self, though it's not unheard of.
True, but upthread, you (or whoever the commenter is) mentioned substance abuse as an example of self-destructive behavior. I just went with it since I don't disagree.
> What's worse, people also tend to mix up their perspectives with their opinions, and, most perniciously of all, with their identities. I don't know what to do about that, sorry.
Opinions are valid insofar as they reflect one's moral axioms and the available facts. I know what you're talking about with regards to identity.
> According to my opinion and perspective, whose else. Why would you imply that I mean otherwise?
I was thinking you meant "rational" in the sense of you being reasonably correct. As in, it's rational to not go to areas with smoke if you're trying to evade danger. Seems I misread.
> Sure, if it helps anyone.
I think it is useful to discuss any harmful actions.
> Where did I say that they find life not worth living, so they kill themselves? If only.
I didn't say you said that.
> I'm saying that they find life not worth living, because the things that are supposed to intrinsically attract them to living, are made unattainable;
And I'm saying that these things aren't truly "unattainable" and they may be attained in the future.
> so they end up living lives that are ultimately harmful to others
I doubt the collective environmental impact of these people is very significant compared to the overall global energy consumption and, more pressingly, the potential preservation to be had in working to fix this mess. It's their choice, but saying suicide is most rational seems nearsighted at the present moment. Maybe in a few decades things will really be hopeless.
> By the time they have the power to change anything, the world would better off without them - but good luck getting them to budge. It's funny, give em a decade or two and Gen Z are gonna be absolutely MASSIVE boomers, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
Not sure what you're trying to say here.
On the other hand, smashing up some proverbial deck chairs or even breaking a metaphorical Wallace Hartley arm is an acceptable way of making people acutely aware that the ship is, in fact, sinking.
>What of a child born from a prostitute
IMHO abortion belongs in the list of acts of radical bodily autonomy outlined by GP.
You should try posing that question to the kind of person that works to restrict safe access to it.
What you'll get is a reminder that a great deal of our society doesn't really understand "cause and effect" -- and are completely willing to drag down everyone else through completely socially sanctioned acts, such as political participation.
That seems to err on the side of intentional damage. I don't know how to evaluate destructive protests. I suppose some suicides are clear protests, but I don't think all suicides are, and someone really shouldn't drag others into a mess they made.
> You should try posing that question to the kind of person that works to restrict safe access to it.
Well I'm not that kind of person, and I was referring to a child that was already born.
> What you'll get is a reminder that a great deal of our society doesn't really understand "cause and effect" -- and are completely willing to drag down everyone else through completely socially sanctioned acts, such as political participation.
Perhaps, but that's neither here nor there. Malice, ignorance, and whatnot are serious problems, but their prevalence doesn't justify drunk driving and the like.
That's an interesting statement. Do you think that sex workers should not be allowed to have children? Any other noteworthy groups in your eugenics policy?
And in the scenario where that if you have a neighbor who decides to have his apartment windows open and TV on loud till 3am? I've tried speaking to him, wrote him a letter, yet he's ignored all. I'm now looking in to taking him to court.
I always hold respect for everything and everyone, but the naivety is wearing thin, and I start to disagree. If you start and continue to disobey the rules of common decency, consideration frankly you don't deserve nice or respect.
If we lived in a truly harmonic world where problems could be squished with respect, kindness; sure. Otherwise it's moot and that line is a puff piece that falls on it's feet leaving yourself to suffer while you accept that they can get away with the conflicts.
Sure, you could say this is the most respectful option than say smashing down the door and smashing the TV with a hammer.
Why should someone who takes a child life as an pedophile, deserve respect niceness?
Why should someone who's a psychopath who goes their own way to murder deserve respect?
Why should someone who carries out unspeakable crimes, be respected?
Your telling me that no one can answer those questions?
You never read accounts of backbreaking laborers who dig ditches day in day out, or service sewer systems, covered in refuse. They sacrifice their bodies for their paycheck, and too live on the edge of society. We’re taught that laborers sacrificing their bodies in this manner is just par for the course.
The massage worker’s account almost seems white collar in comparison.
If you want non-fiction, I can recommend "Nickel and Dimed" by Ehrenreich or "Working" by Terkel.
is it just prostitution and for some reason they don't call it that in Canada? is it legal/illegal? is there an implication about its location? are they in some regulatory grey zone? is it men just dropping in to be touched or is it something more? are they just operating on a drop in schedule and does that imply something about the relative standing of the establishment compared to other sex work etc? are they contractors or operating their own business?
please help me out HN :/
Also about being legal or not, it's probably work in the lite-grey zone (it's not Texas after all). The schedule looks something like, during a fixed period of time at night you just wait until you get scheduled/picked. That said, I don't think it is very important for the article.
This always happens to me when I read editorials from Commonwealth countries, the euphemisms are so deep and ingrained that I have no idea what they’re talking about.
I could empathize better with more context.
“I rubbed massage oil on a man’s chest at 1am and I was tired” that’s an entirely different article
I'm genuinely curious where you live that this is not the case. It is such a euphemism in every Anglophone country, and (large parts of?) Germany and Italy. It is usually illegal (or at least unlicensed) even in places where prostitution has some kind of legal status.
I'm told, if you're looking for an actual massage and the reception doesn't have a HICAPS terminal (similar to the credit card one but for health insurance) you're in the wrong spot.
So presumably there was no need to hide the business behind the euphemism/front, everyone just knew that if you wanted sex/porn, you went to a brothel in suburb X. Even where I am now, i know there's brothels and presumably private sex workers and if i want a massage I go and I book a massage.
I don’t think many people would be able to mix up these places after seeing them. If you only wanted a massage for health reasons you would almost certainly not consider going there.
https://torontolife.com/city/the-parlour-game/
But then it's not even grey where I am in New England and we still have "massage parlors" that are constantly getting shut down for prostitution.
there are places to get massages that aren’t sex work so using euphamisms as both to placate a cultural appetite and coping mechanism is odd and needlessly confusing.
I’m halfway through the article like “is this another sex worker that can’t acknowledge what they do in plain English, while the rest of us are supposed to repeat ‘sex work is work’ for the labor rights along with the ironic convenience that will come with it, or is this a place to get a massage“
I read a lot, and seldom have I run across a writer possessed of this level of skill. A writer's central task is to place the reader in another world, living another life. At this, the author succeeds with what seems like effortless grace.
Few of today's award-winning novelists display this power.
I do hope HN folks will take the time to read this essay.
What is this article about?
A woman who did sex work at a massage parlor.
Summarize what she did, then.
I... can't.
I actually thought in the beginning that it may have been sensual, not sexual. Then she described it as sex work - which changed my mind - so it was sexual (incidentally, I have heard this critiqued in pieces before in creative writing classes - preferably a reader should not read 1/2 of your story and then mentally have to reframe everything that came before a sentence which unintentionally repositions everything).
And not to be indelicate but... how? What did the sex part of it actually involve? I can think of a whole lot of variations of that, which run a big gamut of intimacy and (I imagine) danger, but I can't tell you how she fit into that. The fact that she bought condoms partially answered that, but it's still an incomplete picture. Also if she had a boyfriend or girlfriend during that time, how she talked to her parents about this, friends - how was security handled, health, pregnancy - basic social/workplace questions - all a blank.
Maybe these were limitations imposed by the magazine itself and (ironically enough) the very power structure that she mentions as a threat. But I couldn't tell you what she actually did as a masseuse, which seems like a weakness of the piece.
Most people’s lives will end without a summary of accomplishments.
It is not an article, it is an essay. Wikipedia defines an "informal essay" as: characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.
> What did the sex part of it actually involve?
The reason that this part is left to the imagination of the reader is that A) it is more powerful that way and B) the details don't really matter anyway to get the message and image across.
These things should have been covered in your creative writing class too.
Especially towards the end, I feel that she tries to emphasize the nobility and radical nature of this work, taking umbrage at Eric Adam’s use of the word “low-skill” to describe some of these sorts of jobs. But it seems somewhat belied by the fact that, afaict, as soon as she had the means to escape, she did. And the romanticization of sex work as the only job where women get to call the shots and make profit off of men… I am curious the degree to which this is really true for these massage parlors, which are often managed or extorted by male-run organized crime. [0]
But the central message, one that seems like a call for dignity, really resonates with me. It is one of the most beautiful vignettes I have read in a long time.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/massage-parlors-human-...
Just because something is skilful doesn’t make it enjoyable or rewarding. Not to mention a person’s health and safety (both economic and physical) being considered.
“an industry where women get to call the shots” she would have said “would get” imo if your interpretation was correct, just as you use ‘would’ in your comment.
I took her to be describing sex work in the present, not some hypothetical future sex work.
Here is the excerpt for those who want to judge for themselves:
‘Unlike sex work, my “good” jobs didn’t threaten to overthrow traditional power structures. Many sex workers, including myself, have long hypothesized that the reason so many people in power work to keep the commercial sex trade marginalized is because they’re threatened by it—by the idea that it’s the only field where women outearn men, that it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts. In my experience of the corporate landscape, there was none of this radical power structure, only an upholding of the traditional: men talking and women listening, men in powerful positions getting both credit and profit for the labour of women beneath them’
Disagree. Calling the shots in the business, not in society. Just like a drug kingpin might be calling the shots in their organization.
Happy to not continue though, I think you struggle with good faith discussion and/or reading comprehension (:
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hof
Should really include sex workers in these discussions
All this conjecture that its exclusively a male run coercive trait exacerbating anything
If prostitution was legitimized, way fewer shots would have to be called in the first place. Apparently nobody wants that
I have to say now working a “real” job now (for salary benefits etc.) I know way more forestry folks who could do my job today (consulting) than current coworkers who could dig out a stuck pickup truck properly, fix a broken generator, put out a brush fire…
there are jobs which require accreditation or whatever but there’s no such thing as truly no-skill-required labour
Which job was harder?
Physically the rock-pusher job is harder. Mentally the architect's. I'd say pay comes in based on demand. Do we have more brainy folks or brawny folks?
This kind of measuring jobs by efforts always ends up being won by an animal or machine. Even among humans, the guy digging ditches with his bare hands is putting in more work than the guy using a shovel.
It ends up being a stupid incentive structure, and is not a replacement for supply and demand in the labor market.
I have friends who change between different types of jobs, and their reasons are often surprising.
Consider a person that carves bespoke wooden figurines. Their job takes considerable skill, even talent. But it takes then X hours to make Y figurines. Time in, widgets out, completely proportional.
Now imagine a person that configures a robot to carve crappy mass produced figurines. Their work is differently skilled, but perhaps less so. The product isn't as good. Yet they put in their time once and the machine cranks out enormous quantities with minimal additional work from them. This has high leverage, they can command more pay because their leveraged work has more value.
You can go further up the hierarchy, to the people who organize or direct the technicians or the channels that distribute the products of their machines. Their work is further abstracted, skilled in its own way but not necessarily more so. But the amount of income their efforts command is greater still-- even more leveraged.
In areas where the use of the high-skill low-leverage work are largely optional-- say custom carpentry-- they often become unavailable because the sort of highly competent people who would excel at these tasks can make more money in a highly leveraged (but perhaps less skilled!) job writing boilerplate javascript to deliver advertising or whatever. In areas where the non-scalable work isn't optional, like medical doctors-- the prices tend to shoot through the sky in part due to the income an equivalent aptitude could command in a more leveraged position.
In between the two extremes we have workers that are just flat underpaid, and we rationalize the situation by imagining that they're less deserving.
As the article points out, many of these lowly paid jobs are highly skilled in their own way-- at least if done well. What they don't have, however, is a big initial training barrier to entry that limits the supply of capable people and puts market power for this labor onto the supply side.
Skill isn't a factor in wages except in so far as the required skill impacts the level of supply or demand in the supply/demand balance.
I think we often underestimate the capability of the average person because we can't know the average person and can't see first hand the depth of their ability and because we also so often put that average person in a situation that just doesn't exercise those latent abilities (or do, but do so in ways we don't respect due to cultural biases).
I guess you could make the case that their primary skill - reading the story that the people who promoted them wanted/needed to hear - is in fact what's being rewarded, but it has nothing to do with their applicability to high leverage work at all.
Office workers earn more because they do jobs more similar to the jobs of those who allocate money.
I would say office work does not actually pay more, it depends. Easy office-hand jobs probably pay much less than your previous job... but when it does pay more, it's simply because there's fewer people willing and capable of doing that job as a rate of the number of people actually needed for such tasks.
When a job is regulated (requires license, or is protected by some law etc) the equation is skewed, usually in favour of a profession.
Supply vs demand dynamics very much do exist. I get paid a lot, I also create measurably more than my salary in value.
Desire is mimetic: you demand what you see others demanding. 99% of everything is either a layer of misdirection or support infrastructure for a layer of misdirection.
Private Equity is explicitly excluded, maybe they do, who knows?
Example 1 Bill Gates/Microsoft: Provided a stable platform for business software to run on, making it possible for millions of businesses to do accounting/inventory management/controlling CNC machinery/etc.
Example 2 Sales People/Marketing: If you got the best product/software/whatever but zero customers, how are you you gonna pay your bills?
[edit]
Example 3 Jeff Bezos: Building the dominant platform for e-commerce of all kinds. Making it easy for a huge crowd of potential customers to discover and buy your wares.
Because the work (1) takes particular skills, and (2) skills that are functionally gatekept so they are disproportionately found in people coming from a middle class (or, at minimum, proletarian intelligentsia) background.
It has work that is (compared to lots of more poorly paid jobs) hard to find people minimally qualified to do, but its not hard (in the sense of arduous) work, for the most part. Work being arduous doesn’t make it well-paid.
It was refreshing.
In jobs at semiconductor fab places, usually the head of maintenance holds a master's or PhD and still rebuilds turbopumps and blown out ion gauges when needed.
Of the people I have met that do manual labouring jobs, I know many people could do those jobs if they got fit and learnt to do them, and that those people could not learn to do intellectual work no matter how hard they tried.
Also working in the forestry industry is much harder than having sex for a living.
Have you done both?
I doubt it. I've worked days and nights at different times in the same place, at a couple of jobs in different parts of the country. There's a real difference between what people are like in the daytime and nighttime worlds, and between people who are at home in the latter and those who are just visiting.
I don't really miss it. But I do kinda miss it.
The second you get another job they are reminded of all the people who take advantage of people in the suck club. You got out. They didn't.
Abroad in the night, the human world grows tenuous, and one's connection to it likewise. Most people can learn to live in that, but you never feel perfectly at home with it. Nor should you; there's nothing like it to dispel the comfortable, foolish illusion that the world belongs to us, and not the other way around.
Humans are better, I find, for a little fear of that sort. It makes us stick closer together than we do otherwise, gives us more incentive to look for the good in one another; camaraderie comes much easier, and that is part of what I miss. Both those jobs were customer service, and even the people on the phone were different: stranger certainly, sometimes desperate, but almost never spiteful like the day shift often was. The sun revolves around every narcissist, of course, but those excepted there is less pretense in all of us in night.
Its very strangeness is the rest of what I miss. I find it frightful too, of course, but never because it's trying, which counts for a lot with me after living so long with humans. There's a lot to appreciate in that strangeness, for anyone who understands fear well enough to feel and not be driven by it - to know the difference between being afraid and being made to feel afraid.
There's a wild and ancient beauty in the night to which nothing wrought by human hands compares, and an inescapable reminder that beyond all the frantic work of busy human hands, something vast beyond our comprehension still abides: the world itself, from which we never stop fleeing, despite that we neither can nor need.
I hope whatever of this species emerges from the other side of the next few hundred years understands that better than today's version does - I can't imagine how they'd fail to, at any rate. I think they'll better understand the night than most of us can, too. Maybe by then the consequences of our lethal hubris will have far enough abated they'll even have some time to enjoy it, the way I did decades ago when I last lived a nighttime life.
These places conduct zero-sum economic activity. One person loses money, one person gains money, and nothing of value is created. Draw a control volume around an economic activity to understand it. China: Opium in, silver out. Congo: Guns in, rubber out. This place: Money in, nothing out.
A hallmark of exploiters is that they have contempt for their marks. Well, I sense more than a little contempt here. Don't trust this person around children or small animals.
Of course she justifies herself eloquently; did you not just see what she spent the money on? An English degree.
Moreover, she admits that she understands what she was doing:
> my livelihood somehow still depended on men employing bad judgement.
So don't get distracted. Draw a control volume. And stay away from these places, and these people.
Most people here commenting, even those praising this writing, who will surely rush to defend her, must at some level clearly understand this. Like -- do you frequent prostitutes? ... Didn't think so. So you know I'm right.
I presume your job must be much more important for the good of society than sex work.
It sure is and I think it would be hard to deny that. Everyday I go to work I generate a large amount of value for the economy, far more than I get paid for.
Sex work simply isn’t very valuable. Anyone can do it, you don’t need any intelligence or skill to make a buck via sex.
No value and no skill? My foot. There's more to life than generating value for the economy.
Some guys are lonely and will pay for any hole to stick it in, but that doesn’t mean the work has any real value.
Make no mistake that’s what they see her as, some random hole to enjoy and she’s trying to cope with that.
I’m tired of the glorification of sex work and people pretending it’s anything other than what it is.
If this is the crux of the issue for you, I assume you don't frequent the following places:
- bars
- arcades
- any entertainment venue (concerts, etc)
The impression she seemed to be making was that many of their patrons weren't there for physical gratification but rather a sort of emotional catharsis. Yours is a highly judgmental and uncharitable take.
I also assume they've never really been out much around 2AM.
Same question[1].
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37028780
She gets to take money from lonely men and then call them the bad guys.
Saying it out loud costs HN points though.
Genuinely curious to know where you think she called them "the bad guys". Mind quoting a specific passage?
Well, it has to disappear somewhere, doesn't it? Otherwise why would they need to print more?
I mean, that's how it works, right?