What makes a successful relationship?

I read the following:

My boyfriend and I are well matched, but I just don’t fancy him

I’m not convinced there’s enough “spark” and find myself inwardly picking apart his appearance and his unwavering devotion to me, which I find soppy and cloying.

& 

Most of [my ex] boyfriends were narcissistic and made me feel insecure about my own attractiveness.

Many women tend to be physically attracted to alpha type men that are physical attractive, and are definitely not attracted to the cloying soppy men. However, the alpha males are precisely the type of men that tend not to be nice people. They are precisely the type of men that will tend to treat their girlfriends badly. That creates a dilemma.

Of course, the physical attraction won't last forever -- a few months at best. The most one can hope for in a long term relationship is that you become really good friends, that you emotionally bond and love each other, even though the physical attraction has somewhat diminished.

However, if someone initially irritates you, I suspect that it's probably best not to pursue the relationship in the hope it improves; it probably won't. She should try and find someone between these two extremes.

Instinctively I would say find someone who is a nice person, but who is genuine and frank and honest. Indeed, someone like me. But there's a problem as she also complains about the way he dresses, and mentions being insecure about her own attractiveness when her boyfriends are good looking. That suggests she's wrapped up in the idea of projecting an image to the world, being an actor. That she and her boyfriend should be good looking, respectable, successful, people so that other people will look up to them and admire them.

All this is utterly antithetical to how I view the world and other people. I find these pointless charades wearisome. All this social preening and pretence. Living your life as an actor. She would find someone like me, who shuns all this, utterly bizarre and bewildering as in "WTF is this weirdo??"

So it's a difficult one for her. The good looking alpha men are unlikely to lead to long term happiness. Neither will hooking up with soppy devoted men. But there again, hooking up to people like me would explode her mind.

A comment on a video by Dr Feser

I originally made a comment on a talk by Dr. Ed Feser - The Immateriality of the Intellect.

Unfortunately, the comments have now been disabled deleting my comment and one other person's comment in the process since 2 days ago (and perhaps deleted other comments if any were published since then).  So I shall repeat my comment here:

I do not understand Dr. Feser's answer to the first question. He claims that the intellect is intimately tied to the brain; that our intellect needs the assistance of the brain. Hence, we wouldn't be able to think when in a disembodied state.

I'm unclear as to how this conclusion is reached. I do not believe the mind-body correlations establish any such thing. To use a quick analogy. When a man is in a house, in order to see the sky the house has to have windows, the windows need to be clean, the curtains open etc. So the house needs to be in a certain state in order to make it possible for the man to see the sky. However, the house plays no role in creating the man's vision. After all, the man can simply go outside and have a unrestricted view of the sky.

So it needs to be established that the mind-brain relationship is unlike this analogy; that the brain somehow plays a crucial role in actually creating our ability to think, not merely either allowing or suppressing such an ability.

His argument appears to be parasitic on the notion that psi (telepathy etc) doesn't exist -- hence we need our bodies to sense anything. I think though this is question-begging. In order to have a disembodied existence it seems to me that we all have to have a psi ability, but the brain suppresses this faculty in a comparable manner to how the state of the house might suppress the man's ability to see the sky. He provides no reasons for supposing the non-existence of psi and the rejection of it runs counter to the collective experience of humankind across virtually all cultures and throughout history, as well as the parapsychological research. Indeed, the outright rejection of any psi or or other "supernatural" aspects of reality appear to be more or less an aberration of modern western culture.

Twitter is a waste of my time

I created a Twitter account a fair few years ago, but it's only in the past 5 weeks or so I've started to use it. 

I hate the 280 character limit, and I think scarcely anyone reads my tweets. I feel like I'm just talking to myself, no one ever comments on my tweets. And they are rarely liked. I'm unable to find anyone who has less followers than I have (66).

You do get people like Richard Dawkins and other notable people tweeting on there, unlike facebook.  You can respond to them, but they almost always ignore you.

Much prefer facebook.