Review of “The Married Man Sex Life Primer” by Athol Kay

(The book is here)

I don’t believe in God, nor do I believe that God has work. But, if there is such a thing as God’s work, Athol is doing it.

The book is divided into four parts – 1) the science of human attraction; 2) the male action plan; 3) helpful suggestions; 4) mistakes. Each section deserves some discussion.

The science of human attraction

The first part is – by far – the weakest part of the book. While I strongly recommend the book, my only substantive criticisms relate to this first part. The scientific discussions are not Athol at his best (see part 3 for that). Generally, a person’s writing suffers when they’re not at their best, and as a result there are a fair number of typos in the early part of the book.

More substantively, there is a line between describing the science behind human attraction on one hand and making the whole process seem like it’s subject to scientific laws on the other hand. I think Athol probably crosses the line – you may disagree but he certainly comes close.

Ultimately, knowing the science helps, but Game is an art – you’ll do well to keep that in mind and I don’t think it can be overemphasized. I can almost picture the really dorky types reading the first part of the book and getting out their Excel spreadsheets to calculate their likelihood of success with a woman based on her point in her menstrual cycle and the amount of dopamine he’s released into her system.

If Athol plans to re-write this book – and he should – I would suggest focusing on the way he discusses the science. He needs to find a way to explain the science without making seduction sound scientific.

The male action plan

The second part explains the basics of Game. Athol explains sex rank and tells men how it increase theirs. This is familiar stuff (to me at least) but I’m not sure anybody explains it better.

Athol is the best around at explaining what alpha and beta really mean. Both should be viewed positively, as both are necessary for a successful relationship. If you’re a beta, you need to work on alpha characteristics and vice versa. This is Game as it should be discussed and used. The book should not be underestimated as an introduction to realistic thinking about sexual relationships – it’s not just advice for married men who want more sex from their wives.

Suggestions

The third – as I said – is Athol at his best. It’s filled with tips that will work on your wife and on anyone else that you’re interested in. Much of this section is taken directly from old blog posts that I’d already read, but it doesn’t really matter. The stories are good and the writing is great. Here again, basically nobody does it better.

My own style is different than Athol’s. If tried some of the stuff that works for him, my wife would call me a douchebag (in a loving way). But the overall advice works for all relationships.

Mistakes

In this section Athol covers common mistakes. Then he concludes with some thoughts on marriage 2.0. If I were dictator for a day, I would make everyone read the final chapters on modern marriage.

Fun with USG

For some reason, on Sunday, I found myself watching morning news shows, which I haven’t done in a long time.

Fox News Sunday had an interview with the Transportation Secretary about all the air-traffic controllers falling asleep. It’s fun to watch this stuff when you know what’s really going on.

Realize that this is a big deal for the Secretary’s staff. This is a pretty high profile interview and the agency is in a bad position. I imagine the staff developing a long list of possible questions that the Secretary will be asked, writing up all the answers, and then spending a long time going over the answers with the Secretary.

Here’s the transcript of the interview.

The secretary comes off as a reasonably likable guy.

This answer basically sums up all that’s wrong with modern USG:

We cannot allow controllers to fall asleep in control towers. We’re not going to stand by and let that happen. And we’ve taken steps, as of this morning, to begin changing schedules for controllers, to change schedules for managers, and to make sure that controllers cannot switch in and out of their schedules in order for the convenience of them if they are not well-rested.

But I also want to emphasize this, Chris — controllers need to take personal responsibility for the very important safety jobs that they have. We can make changes but when these controllers come to work, they have to take personal responsibility for the fact that they are guiding planes in and out of airports. It has to be done safely. They have to be well-rest and they have to be alert.

And we’ll take care of the fact they need to be well-trained. But they have to take some personal responsibility for this.

On one hand, the Secretary’s staff (via the Secretary) is saying that USG will make sure that controllers don’t fall asleep. On the other hand, they’re telling controllers to take personal responsibility. Sigh.

The staff has a plan to fix the problem:

Well, Chris, number one: we’re going to make sure that controllers are well-rested. We’re going to increase the rest time by an hour. This is what we’re recommending for pilots going from eight- hour rest to nine-hour rest. [This is what the time increase means: They [air traffic controllers] could work two evening shifts followed by an eight-hour turn-around

Randoms of the day

John Derbyshire on dissidents.

Is C. Van Carter making fun of Half Sigma (unfortunately, I could have linked to many HS posts)? I hope so.

Ilkka is following the Finnish election and it makes for great blogging.

Arnold Kling on the budget.

Compassionate reactionism.

A monarchist review of Atlas Shrugged (I love the internet).

Jehu on insurance. Public health insurance isn’t really insurance, it’s the fallacy that if everyone tries to pay for something unaffordable we’ll be able to afford it.

Whiskey on unaffordable family formation.

Ferdinand on socialism and multiculturalism.

Good book.

Austerity

It’s fashionable among economic propagandists to argue that "austerity" has failed in a few European countries.

I would point out a few things. First, if it’s already legitimate to conclude that austerity has failed, then it’s equally legitimate to conclude that High Church Economics (i.e. Keynesianism) has failed.

More substantively and less propaganda-y, I like to think of the current economic slowdown as a confrontation with truth. The truth is that every poor immigrant from Mexico can’t own his own five-bedroom house. The truth is that the country cannot afford to pay everyone’s medical bills. The truth is that high finance is built on a foundation of sand. Etc.

There is going to be a lot of pain associated with accepting these new truths. We have two choices: 1) spread out the pain over a long period of time or 2) get it over with.

I favor getting the pain over with as quickly as possible – this is not the popular answer.

Austerity is much closer to second camp. Therefore, it should not "work" in the short term, but only in the long term. I assumed this was obvious.

South Africa

Two items.

The first is a long article. It begins:

The central problem of writing about South Africa is that it is almost impossible to explain the country’s slow-motion catastrophe in terms that make sense to foreigners.

And goes from there.

The second is an interview.

Authority is rational

AMcGuinn (and here) and Aretae had some more back and forth on authority and reason.

My view is that authority natural, rational, logical and necessary. Life without authority is impossible, undesirable, nasty, brutish and short.

The only way to argue that authority and rationality are opposed to each other is to start with the false premise that everyone is equal. Not "equal before the law" equal, but equal in an "interchangeable with each other" way.

If a person is incapable of supporting himself, it’s illogical – and just plain mean – to demand that he be allowed to live without authority.

Also, this video from Kalim Kassam may be of interest.

Randoms of the past week

I’m back from a week of acting like an European public servant. It’s a tough life.

Richard Hoste reviews Richard Lynn’s new book. The review concludes:

So how will this nation of a billion people [i.e. China] treat the rest of the world after it’s raised its IQ to 150+? Lynn might be too optimistic here. He believes the Chinese will colonize the world and try to improve the IQs and living standards of their subjects. The Europeans will be kept around for their biological uniqueness and admired for their cultural accomplishments, the way that the Romans subjugated the Greeks but appreciated their philosophy and art. If the Chinese decide that the Europeans should be preserved they’d be doing more for them than whites are currently doing for themselves. A global eugenic superstate led by by the Chinese will be the “end of history.”

Lynn’s forecasts the next 100 years with a stone-cold detachment. The first government to utilize the power of biotechnology will take over the world. Thanks to third world immigration and egalitarianism, the decline of the West seems inevitable and eugenic policies unlikely. The future of humanity being in the hands of the dictators in Beijing may not be the most comforting idea in the world, but at least the reader of Eugenics may be convinced that intelligence and civilization will continue somewhere.

I’ve argued before that the free trade types radically underestimate the costs of unemployment (i.e. assume that it’s basically zero). Science begs to differ, it has found "that unemployment increases the risk of premature mortality by 63 per cent." But if we have lots of immigration, the chalupas will be really cheap, so we’ve got that going for us. Also, apparently high IQ immigrants are better than low IQ ones.

In the comments, Handle has some more thoughts on Charles Murray’s lecture, which he believes make "an interesting case for ‘The Full Moldbug’ Reactionary Argument."

It would be really fun to get Sonic Charmer and me in a room together to talk about this stuff.

Vox and I have the same personality type and it’s quite rare.

Vladimir took some heat after for his post on passivity. He responds here. First, when I read his post, I was reminded of Moldbug’s suggestion that you vote for whoever the newspaper tells you to vote for. That still seems like a decent idea, if for some reason you decide to vote. Second, though I’m not religious, I’m not anti-religious. Those of us that are not religious need to find our own ways to read writings by religious people. After all, until about 50 years ago, they were the only ones writing – if you can’t read their writing, you’re missing out on the last couple thousand years of human history.

Aretae summarizes his blog in one post.

Vladimir on modern policing.

Instead of getting arrested for protesting in favor of DC statehood, DC’s elected officials would make a better case if they spent their time not being corrupt. Just sayin’

OneSTDV notes that liberals are blind to conservative opinion. It’s particularly true with respect to abortion.

Kemba Walker has read one book in his life, and guess what sort of book it is.

About three years after a housing crisis caused by excessive borrowing due to ridiculously low interest rates, Matthew Yglesias believes that the US government should borrow more because the rates are really low. Occasionally, one can’t help but conclude that people deserve all the bad things they get.

The 20 different types of rape and some old words.

Don’t miss this informercial.

Richard Epstein:

In practice—and, increasingly, in legal theory—government officials have been given unprecedented ability to make exceptions to the law, both in enforcing it and in respecting the rights granted under it. Indeed, the past year has seen two of the most enormous pieces of legislation in U.S. history—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—make the imbalance far worse. Both laws seek to dramatically transform vast swaths of the American economy; both give enormous power to the government to bring about these transformations. And yet both laws are stunningly silent on exactly how these overhauls are to take place. The vague language of these statutes delegates much blanket authority to government officials who will, effectively, make the rules up as they go along.

Randoms of the day

Mark Tully writes that, "The Spanish philosopher Donoso Cortes wrote that monarchy was destroyed by freedom of speech just as democracy will be destroyed by bankruptcy." Cortes sounds like a smart guy.

Evo and proud has thoughts on African fertility rates.

Here’s Vladimir on an uncomfortable possibility.

I posted a link to a video of a dude getting beaten up by a girl on the DC metro a while back. The girl has been arrested. She’s 15.

Congrats to Bruce Charlton – maybe he should publish a short ebook.

Light blogging

I’ll be traveling this week, so blogging may be slow – or not, we’ll see.

Randoms of the day

In the comments, Alrenous has some thoughts on government:

Put together, modern ‘democracies’ are extremely sophisticated power-obfuscating structures. For example, there’s incredibly advanced methods of pretending that heresy and lese majeste don’t exist anymore, pretending not to have a one-party state, pretending to follow the constitution, pretending to be a democracy at all, etc…

Working out who had real jurisdiction over what in a Monarchy isn’t straightforward because various power-holders are deluded about what power they hold, and it isn’t what they formally hold. Similarly, they may have some residual formal power that depends on the illusion they do actually hold it, and will tell every lie to retain that residual.

Working out who has real jurisdiction in our system is at least two orders of magnitude more difficult.

Though it can be fairly easy to work out who doesn’t have power. To first order approximation, the president has no power. To second order, the senate has no power.* Does the house? I’ve never heard of any actual result coming from the house, but that just means I’ve never tried to evaluate if it actually came from the house.

*(I understand committees have some, but it seems DC fashion determines committee outcome rather than member politics – so who are the fashion leaders?)

Similarly, front-line bureaucrats have very little power. As you’ve shown, top-level bureaucrats have no power. So it must be someone in the middle. But who? Over what?

Beyond approximation, what changes can the president actually effect? If the president and the senate fought over something, who would win?

Must journalists toe an unofficial official line to keep their jobs, or are their delusions of ‘making a difference’ actually partially grounded in fact?

If the universities opposed the papers, who would win? Is this arrangement even possible, or are papers entirely subordinate?

Does public choice dictate university positions, or do professors dictate public choices?

Also in the comments, Handle links to an article which says that "6 pages of Obamacare equals 429 pages of regulations."

Daniel Larison: "We Need to Rescue Civilization from the People Who Always Want to Rescue Civilization Through Warfare"

Henry Blodget has no penis.

Conservatism as a losing strategy – I would have written this differently. I would tend to emphasize the ruthlessness of progressiveness. Basically anyone who practices ideologies that oppose progressivism are killed in wars to defend democracy if they get successful enough. Progressives keep conservatives around to that it looks like they have an enemy.

Dennis Mangan: "Condemnation of prejudice as intolerance and trying to ensure its disappearance makes about as much sense as treating hunger with amphetamines. Nationalism would seem to be a mechanism analogous to the function of civilization through which prejudice is minimized, allowing large numbers to form a group and to cooperate."

John Derbyshire finds some interesting stats:

Immigrant households with children with the highest use rates are those from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent). These figures remind us that although the overall use rates for immigrant households with children are quite high, this is not the case for all immigrant-sending countries and regions.”

Tino: "Richard Florida is a urban theorist, famous for his book "The Rise of the Creative Class". The book argues that since liberal cities with a large concentration of high-tech industries such as San Francisco and Boston have plenty of street musicians and gay bars, street musicians and gay bars must be causing the high-tech sector."