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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

Men do not collectively want things, as collective entities don't have psychological experiences like desire.

Individuals of whatever gender exist within incentive landscapes, and they act within those landscapes to result in the best life for them. Many men and women wish they had different incentive landscapes to navigate through. My argument would be that creating a world where men and women can choose their paths according to their individual dispositions without penalty would result in one where more men and women are happy, which is why I'd like to nudge our existing world in that direction.

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Almost all women I know who have kids prefer being the primary care taker to the primary bread winner.

About half the men I know with kids would prefer to be primary care taker.

If we somehow convince more men to want to be the primary caretaker, and feel more strongly about does that necessarily make the world a better place? It means both more men and more women don't get what they want.

I'm not proposing engineering people's desires. I'm proposing eliminating the social structures that penalize men who want to be the primary caregiver (and penalize women who want to be the primary bread winner).

Couples with compatible desires in line with the status quo would be unaffected. Couples with compatible desires opposite the status quo would purely benefit. Couples with discordant desires would negotiate the allocation of responsibilities more freely without social expectations biasing the outcome, which would lead to one partner benefiting and the other losing, but in a way that's either neutral or leads to a net benefit across the two individuals.

What social structures penalize men who want to be the primary care giver?

Companies with different different policies for non medical birth leave would be one example of a social expectation codified as corporate policy. It is a pretty fringe issue in the United States because many companies that do give non-medical bonding time, give the same to both genders.

There is also the hypothetical idea that stay at home dads get a called pussies, but I've never seen it come up.

Lol, stay at home Dads get told they're "baby-sitting". They aren't as "manly" in the eyes of their male peers (though this is changing a little).

Hell, until recently it was only women who had access to maternity leave, paternity leave in most countries seems to be quite a new concept.

If you want freedom and equality of choice, we should focus on breaking down barriers that stop people from doing what they want, not pushing them to do something different.

Adding incentives, nudging, and valorizing specific actions puts equality of outcome over equality of choice.

We shouldn't push a trend to respect and valorize men who stay home more than those who work. We should push a trend to respect them equally

> We shouldn't push a trend to respect and valorize men who stay home more than those who work. We should push a trend to respect them equally.

We are in violent agreement.

You don't think they should be respected equally?

"Violent agreement" is a phrasing often used to indicate two people were discussing something and appeared to be on opposite sides but eventually realized they want the same thing =)

I think we are in violent agreement this point.

Where I thought we differed is providing preferential incentives to men who stay home over those who work.

> Adding incentives, nudging, and valorizing specific actions puts equality of outcome over equality of choice.

I'll buy the part about adding incentives.

Nudging and valorizing, however, are inevitable aspects of human life. Abolishing heroism is not realistic (and, honestly, it's a pretty mild incentive anyway).

segue from the topic at hand, but perhaps collective entities do have desires. There are many different people converging on this idea. This link has a concise analogy for how it works: https://youtu.be/4IjW16FCpkA?t=766

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