Comment by ndriscoll

> If the best you have is garbage, then you just say that you don't have anything useful. It's like exercise science: there's almost nothing useful there. Don't pretend there is.

If you think my statements are garbage think about your own statements. You call me out for presenting valid scientific papers by denigrating the whole field of behavioral science which you then refute by pulling out random anecdotes which aren’t even backed by anything.

> If you accept that premise, then you can't frame it in terms of science

I don’t accept that premise. All science has the possibility of being wrong. It is often wrong. But it is the best we have and it has resulted in remarkable things such as going to the moon.

Anecdotes are weaker than science. If behavioral science is trash to you then the your anecdotes are raw shit.

> Again, I've "settled" precisely because I have exactly what I want. It's not the "costs" so much as it is the absence of value.

The foundation of economic theory is based on unlimited human wants and desires. We baked this assumption into theory because it’s so ingrained in human behavior that it’s the foundation of the financial world.

How about I give you an extra ten million dollars with no strings attached? If you say you don’t need it then I see it as more likely you’re just virtue signaling and lying. Bro be real.

> Being homeless is an unhappy affair because it's some combination of cold, rainy, snowy, hot, sunny, and stinky, not because it's low status. And because you have nowhere to store e.g. food or clothes, so your situation is precarious. And nowhere to cook, so difficult to eat healthy meals. I highly doubt most homeless people have social status as a top concern.

Oh let me change that to being homeless in sunny CA with free shelter and food. Most homeless people in SF have completely free access to food anyway. Or how about if your kids worked as a poor waitresses for the rest of their lives but were happy? Obviously that’s what I mean right? No point in getting pedantic about specifics when I’m talking about status.

> I suppose one thing is that my kids are all girls, and I'm going to encourage them to be stay-at-home moms instead of chasing careerism,

That’s a pretty tame one. Not really going to lower your status. You got any sexual kinks? Perverted stuff you like to do in bed that you’d never admit? Do you have any slight interest in men that you’d never admit? Anybody in your family you hate and you think should die?

That’s the level of things I’m looking for. If you truly didn’t care about status you’d be able to admit it.

But if your your perfect ideally on every level I find that harder to believe unfortunately.

We can end the argument here. You won’t be able to prove your stance (event though I’m not even asking you for scientific data) and the science I presented is the highest level of evidence anyone on earth can offer in an argument anyway. It’s not going anywhere so I’m happy to end the argument here but if you want to continue I’m still down.

As a side note, status is even more important to women than men. Your own daughters will date based off of status and they will by nature generally hold status of themselves in higher regard than you. Men are less concerned with status (though still concerned) and are not in actuality concerned with status when selecting a mate as opposed to women where status is part of the main criteria. If you want to empathize with your daughters and women in general than understanding status is part of reality. But of course like you, ironically, being concerned about status, is signal for low status so often people are in denial or they lie about it.