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Childbirth isn't that painful, reasons male redditor (+30) (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/ak16xh/childbirth_isnt_that_painful_reasons_male/)
posted on January 26, 2019 02:17 PM by u/895158
61

link.

Some other fun comments:

Side note: JTarrou has a history of falsifying personal anecdotes; he has at some point claimed to have been part of a research lab and intimately familiar with the grant-proposing process, and at another point claimed to have never earned more than the US median salary in his life. He also once claimed to be the head of some minor Republican organization, and that because of this position he has gotten catfish attempts from leftwing reporters, who were trying to seduce him to gain intel on his organization. This time he is an infantryman.

u/G0ldunDrak0n 46 points at 1548515894.000000

It’s not possible to have sex without intending to become pregnant.

What kind of absurd definitions of “sex” and “intending” do you need to have to create such an absurd sentence?

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u/yemwez 46 points at 1548521986.000000
Condoms are just virtue signaling.
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u/DELETED 27 points at 1548527541.000000
[deleted]
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 15 points at 1548527885.000000
For no dollars whatsoever folks, what is "begging the question"?
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u/ThinkMinty 1 points at 1548998331.000000
I mean if they don't believe gay sex is possible, why are they so vehemently against it then
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u/musicotic 2 points at 1549062245.000000
Anti-abortion extremists have this idea that one implicitly accepts/consents to pregnancy when having sex so there is little defense for abortion. That's their explication
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u/BewareTheSphere 34 points at 1548514892.000000

Geeze, who could think SSC was hostile to women based on the “how dare you?” exchange?

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u/multinillionaire 33 points at 1548519151.000000

hey /u/gemmaem/ you’re posting in a community that put you fifteen karma in the hole for a very reasonable and measured response to a complete psychopath who is completely full of shit, and because that post made me like you and want you to experience good things, I recommend you consider stopping

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u/gemmaem 31 points at 1548564436.000000
I've considered it :) I was wondering when SneerClub would get around to noticing this one. "It's hard to be sure if childbirth is all that painful, because after all, we only have anecdotal evidence" is the sort of statement this sub was *built* to mock, isn't it? Still, you have to admit that it's *interestingly* wrong. Most rationalists seem to treat this sort of thing as a kind of edge case: okay, sure, we can't measure everything, but that's all right, we'll just refrain from being bloody stupid about the few places where we have to concede to the immeasurable and it will all be fine. Personally, I think that's special pleading, though. Preferring what can be measured to what cannot is a serious problem, and if you only stop doing that in places where it's *obviously* bloody stupid, you're liable to start making systematic non-obvious mistakes. So it's kind of instructive to see someone just go ahead and be that bloody stupid. Oh, and I've got karma to burn on r//ssc, let's be real. Literally and figuratively. So I don't worry too much about the up/downvotes. But I appreciate the moral support.
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u/multinillionaire 20 points at 1548566369.000000
yeah i didn't think you actually cared about the internet points, just using it as a synecdoche for a hostile audience that isn't nearly as smart as it thinks it is--but sounds like you are at least in the ballpark of knowing what you're doing >Still, you have to admit that it's interestingly wrong i think the train of thought you take from this station is interesting and correct, but i'm not even willing to give this particular dude that much credit. even taken on his own terms--he pointed to "the evolutionary purpose of women's bodies" as if the evolution of childbirth was something other than a process of figuring out *exactly* how how large you can make a newborn's skull before too many women die to make it worthwhile. lots of blatant mischaracterization of the original argument, too. it was *very* hard to not touch that poop (and thank you for posting here and letting me do it vicariously, lol)
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u/895158 9 points at 1548594494.000000
>I was wondering when SneerClub would get around to noticing this one. I saw it as it happened, but decided not to post on sneerclub until all the vote counts were visible.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 23 points at 1548514287.000000

Did Robin Hanson write this?

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u/pja 8 points at 1548587402.000000

The sneers, they write themselves don’t they?

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 13 points at 1548513423.000000

he has at some point claimed to have been part of a research lab and intimately familiar with the grant-proposing process, and at another point claimed to have never earned more than the US median salary in his life.

While I don’t doubt they’re full of shit, and JTarrou is particularly irritating, are these inconsistent?

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u/895158 29 points at 1548514333.000000
[He was a "lab manager" who spent "a lot of time on grant proposals"](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/787dqd/_/doxwfl8/), which is how he knows that "if I'd put out a grant proposal to study something that against the zeitgeist, we wouldn't have gotten funded". It's from his deep experience with funding agencies, you see. Although later, when I called him on it when he touted his poverty, he [partially retracted](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7kkyqw/_/drl9d3w/) and said: >It was a post-grad position running a small psych lab for a former professor of mine. I made around $15k/yr. If you believe this excuse (I'm personally on the fence), then I guess his previous lie is not a total fabrication but merely an exaggeration that makes him sound like he has relevant experience when he doesn't. So I kind of suspect that this "witch doctor" story will turn out to just be something he *heard* when he was a kid, and also being an "infantryman" will turn out to mean he was briefly in the military but saw no battles, etc.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 25 points at 1548516316.000000
Not to mention, "he" (the infantryman) >[also didn't get stupid about birth control, and hence [is] not a single mom](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7ymhbm/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_february_19/dukq0wo/) Dunno why they didn't bring up their experience as a woman talking about childbirth though [They've also had, apparently, 8 years of active service as an infantryman, with combat, and an honourable discharge](https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8ogfrj/culture_war_roundup_for_june_04/e0eicvn/?context=3), something that they acknowledge should be awfully difficult for a woman - [at least by their own lights](https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7j0f9d/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_december_11/drdm09c/?context=2) Weird, huh? [That weird bit about journalists I remember](https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/83v587/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_march_12_2018/dvnn9b1/?context=3) [Unlikely war stories](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/932vcm/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_30_2018/e3n7bp8/?context=1) To be honest after a perusal the same themes turn up often enough that I think there's some common ground underneath it all and they're a compulsive liar/exaggerater or they're a character played by somebody bored online who can't keep the facts straight, both seem likely.
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u/895158 24 points at 1548516542.000000
8 years of active service is impressive, given that it is [not mentioned at all in his "blue collar" life summary](https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8ogfrj/culture_war_roundup_for_june_04/e0ehwyg/?context=8&depth=9).
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 13 points at 1548517514.000000
[yikes](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7bjywe/wellness_wednesday_8th_november_2017/dpjefs9/)
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u/zhezhijian 11 points at 1548528660.000000
Gotta love how this other rationalist's stinging critique was just "All I'll say is that my prior on that sort of thing being healthy is very, very low."
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u/yemwez 10 points at 1548545248.000000
tbf that is the harshest critique you’ll ever see from a rationalist that’s not about the left
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 11 points at 1548516712.000000
Some bored dude writing a character, gotta be it
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u/MI13 20 points at 1548517597.000000
This is so clearly fictional that it reads like a terrible screenplay. I like how the attempts to sound a little more blue collar are interposed with the usual rationalist thesaurus vomit. " My politics still differ from my peer group" and " byzantine slime of academia" contrast badly with " I just don't fancy the idea." I wonder, did their 8 years of fake military service come before or after their fake grad school?
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 20 points at 1548517849.000000
I dunno but I'm curious how they managed to fit that all in with their [fake abusive heterosexual marriage to a women](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/ak16xh/childbirth_isnt_that_painful_reasons_male/ef0qpcv/)
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u/MI13 20 points at 1548518745.000000
Well, fake abuse is a complex subject, but I'm sure it has its roots in the fake PTSD Sgt. Rationalist here got from their experience with intensive urban combat in Madeupistan when they were serving with the .333 Infantry Division (unit nickname: the Ol' Nonexistent).
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u/yemwez 9 points at 1548546869.000000
[dont leave out his missionary work](https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/ai6ta0/_/eevd86v/?context=1)
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 12 points at 1548547445.000000
>I and all my siblings were home births, so was everyone we knew when we were kids. Might be why I have such a different view of the whole thing. It's not some big medical emergency thing. So was my fucking brother, the fuck this has to do with anything? "Might be why I have such a different view of the whole thing" my arse...
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u/yemwez 13 points at 1548549650.000000
Maybe he just has a vivid memory of his birth.
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u/MI13 21 points at 1548518038.000000
You can tell they're fake military because I've never met a real veteran, enlisted or officer, who looked back on all of the 50s shit this poster talks about like " Total control, physical punishment, lots of physical activity, mass rote learning, recitation, memorization, public shaming, singling out and branding for exceptional stupidity\*, weaponization of the peer group, group punishment, group responsibility" as being particularly effective pedagogical methods. In fact, the military (although it moves at a glacial pace best measured in geological periods) has been moving away from all of this old fashioned nonsense because it isn't effective at all. You can't have a drill instructor haze a recruit into being a better Arabic linguist or to do radar repairs more efficiently.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 18 points at 1548518569.000000
I can't get over how dumb that "I need to apply for grant money to write a paper against transitioning" bit was It also goes without saying but...if you think it's that hard to find med lit arguing against transitioning maybe you should consider upping your grift
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u/musicotic 3 points at 1549062388.000000

Of course it’s meaningful. Evolution is an optimization process with instrumental goals that are often intelligible. The wings of a hawk are for flight. The shark’s dorsal fins are for hydrodynamics. The sensation of hunger is for making us eat. And sex is for reproducing. We can read our own meaning into life and the incidences thereof, but it’s perfectly meaningful and often useful to conceive of our meanings as repurposing the goal for which evolution designed the thing.

Wow I didn’t realize they were still that far behind on modern evolutionary biology

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u/curiouskiwicat 1 points at 1548555010.000000

he has at some point claimed to have been part of a research lab and intimately familiar with the grant-proposing process, and at another point claimed to have never earned more than the US median salary in his life

OK, so, the infantryman bit combined with all of that stretches credibility. But the rest checks out fair enough. PhD students in the sciences are generally members of their respective labs; many are very familiar with the grant-making process. Almost none make more than the median worker income of about 4,000. Even many people in Research Scientist or Postdoctoral positions would make less than that. He could also separately be running a student club for Republicans or something.

​

You have to be pretty damn clueless to be a male and downplay the pain of childbirth, but there are no shortage of socially awkward and insensitive young men in the sciences, sadly.

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 17 points at 1548559487.000000
So what about the bit where they make contradictory claims about their life as a man and as a woman?
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u/895158 7 points at 1548601012.000000
PhD students don't make much, but I haven't heard of one applying to grants. I contest the "many are very familiar with grant-making" claim; almost all PhD students are just vaguely aware that grants are a thing that exists, and have never written one or looked at one.
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u/curiouskiwicat 4 points at 1548624649.000000
hmm, you're right. I was thinking of the NSF graduate research fellowship program, which many students in my own PhD program applied for, but you are correct because that is not a 'grant'.
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u/DELETED 1 points at 1548694483.000000
>Socially awkward How does this hurt you?
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u/curiouskiwicat 1 points at 1548696232.000000
Graduate students hurting because they're socially awkward...I'm missing something - I don't think that's relevant here. Why do you ask?
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u/DELETED 1 points at 1548696757.000000
Just pisses me off is all, they're not hurting you with their awkwardness leave them alone.
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u/curiouskiwicat 2 points at 1548698621.000000
eh. I graduated from grad school about two months ago myself and am at least a little bit socially awkward. It was intended as a self-deprecating remark if anything. Sorry for the offense.
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