AstralMateus
24d ago
We should start thinking about raising the birth rates as a practical, logistic and technological problem to solve and not a moral commandment to enforce upon society. And I think Caplan's approach to convincing people to have kids is a step in the right direction.
First, some things have to be be acknowledged. Pro-natalists will not get people to have more kids with moral arguments.
For most, having kids is a risk-reward calculation, and, given freedom of choice, at current levels of expected investment in terms of time, money and effort, less and less people are going to have kids, and TFRs will continue to fall. It just seems like a bad deal to many people – they don't want to give up their free time and life's little pleasures for 5-10-15 years (depending on the number of kids) for dubious benefit. The pro-natalist side may reply that "it may seem like a bad deal now, but your whole perspective on life will change once you have kids!". Well, what if it won't? The life described by you and other people down the thread seems downright miserable to non-parents. Once you have a kid, you're stuck spending most of your time and extra income on them at least for the next 10 years. That is a huge downside risk that you're asking people to take as, essentially, a leap of faith.
Trying to convince young people with spiritual arguments (from Christian pro-natalism to vaguely gesturing towards the fate of the West, human race and the infinite) is laughable. Ain't no one actually, truly believes in those things or cares about them, to the point where it influences their actions, and the minority that does already has kids. Every young Catholic I've met uses contraception, and a few have had abortions. The genie is out of the bottle and it's never coming back. Nor is the "lonely cat lady" scaremongering effective, for that matter.
You have to meet people where they are at, and where they're at is a world of hedonism and infinite alternatives. Unless you have a way take away their freedom, which you don't, you have to sweeten the deal. Alter the risk-reward calculus. Make it drastically cheaper to hire help (perhaps by mass-importing Philippina maids, Singapore style, with no path to citizenship). Offer massive tax credit and subsidize childcare. Somehow convince people that they can relax and not care about extracurriculars and mostly let their kids entertain themselves, which is what Caplan writes about. Create artificial wombs. Whatever. Make having kids somehow take less money and, most importantly, less time and effort. People can spare the money. The hand-wringing about kids being too expensive is mostly cope. But they will not surrender their time, and every attempt to take it from them forcefully will be rejected at the ballot box.
The pro-natalists have to do something other than shake their fists at people and tell them to "suck it up and just do hard things like your ancestors did". No one will "just". No one has ever "just". The left had to learn this painful lesson in the recent years, and it's high time for the pro-natalist right to do the same.
(This rant is mostly aimed at the pro-natalist discourse I see day in and day out in my feed, not your post in particular. If it is not obvious, I sincerely wish them luck, it's not a boo outgroup post)
AstralMateus
1mo ago
Three adverse law-enforcement encounters over the course of one’s college career is not a particularly good record.
I think you're using legalese to try and make an impression that this guy's record is much worse than it actually is. I remember when the liberals were twisting themselves into pretzels to describe Rittenhouse's act of self-defense as "crossing state lines with an assault weapon" – technically correct, but completely unhelpful and deliberately misleading.
Describing a citation for violating fishing regulations (that was later dismissed in court) and two speeding tickets over the course of 5+ years of being in the country as "three adverse law-enforcement encounters" is not a good-faith way to summarize this guy's record (which does not seem to merit kicking a random PhD student out of the country).
But the report generally glossed over free speech and police corruption(both serious issues) to discuss how barbaric it was that homosexuality was illegal. The attitude towards Russia seems similar- we know it’s a thuggish dictatorship, why are gay rights the top issue over there?
Because police corruption and suppression of anti-regime speech have motivations that are, if not particularly good, quite understandable to a rational person. A regime wants to keep political power and protect itself against threats almost by definition. A somewhat primitive authoritarian regime clings to power in the only way it knows how to, by throwing dissidents out of windows, duh, more news at 11. Not great all around, but very expected, and they probably won't stop even if the West tells them to – because keeping political power is their primary concern, more so than appeasing external forces.
In contrast, the laws against homosexuality seem like an exercise in pointless sadism for the sake of it. Despite what the original comment implied, countries like Russia don't just practice "don't ask, don't tell", outlawing parades and drag queen story hours at the local kindergarten. It's more like "don't ask, don't tell, don't host or participate in community events (police raids on LGBT parties at night clubs and even on private property have become the norm in Russia), don't run a private business that caters to LGBT customers (a Moscow businessman whose travel agency allegedly specialized in cruises for gay men was recently murder-suicided in jail), don't look like a fag walking down the street to a bored cop, etc". And, at least in the case of Eastern Europe, opposition to homosexuality is a top-down movement rather than a genuinely grassroots one – in the 1990s and 2000s regular Russians watched t.A.T.u girls kiss on live TV, performing alongside flagrantly gay male celebrities like Boris Moiseev and Sergey Zverev, and thought nothing of it. A Ukrainian crossdresser was one of the most popular music artists in the country for a long, long time.
Oppressing LGBT is all very based and trad if we ask the usual suspects (also Not Happening, but is a Good Thing), but serves close to no purpose in upholding these regimes, which is why it's so bizarre that they bother doing it. Coming down hard on those who swing at the king and miss is understandable, somewhat rational and also high-priority for those regimes for maintaining power, but proactively ostracizing and punishing a random group of citizens living their private lives is neither of those things, and demonstratively refusing to stop doing it in when asked nicely speaks of the barbaric nature of their elites, who seemingly delight in engaging in oppression for its own sake. There's a stark contrast with other authoritarian places like China – while the CCP isn't particularly LGBT-friendly either, but its approach is purely technocratic and doesn't demonstrate the same penchant for sadism, which is at least partly why China rarely gets singled out on this matter, at least compared to Russia.
AstralMateus
3mo ago
How much have you or do you video game and for how long?
My total gaming time is easily in the tens of thousands of hours, and I've been doing it since I was 4 or 5. Every year I bang out another 1500-2000 hours or thereabout. It's definitely a contributing factor, I'd say, although I was a bookish child anyway and whenever I wasn't playing, I'd be sitting down with a book or watching a cartoon, not running around. I'm not sure I would have turned out particularly different from who I am now in my preferences if video games were never invented.
AstralMateus
3mo ago
A rather broad question rather than a small one: do you enjoy being embodied, feeling and doing stuff with your physical body in the real world?
For me, the answer is obvious – I would leave my body behind and not interact with the physical environment at all if I could. I just don’t feel any positive emotions moving around, being present, interacting with objects that aren’t a screen of some form. I never did for some reason, even as a kid.
It is strange because I’m a fairly healthy male in my late 20s without any disabilities, nor am I terribly out of shape (although I am slightly overweight due to working a sedentary job nowadays, but I had the same feeling even when I was at a normal weight), so I should theoretically be the prime demographic for enjoying bodily sensations. Some people have described intense physical activity to me as being inherently pleasurable – I’ve played my fair share of sports at the insistence of my parents as a teenager, and never felt anything other than irritation during and after training, so hearing others say it feels like listening to an alien describing the awesome parties of Alpha Centaura.
This sincere distaste for being embodied extends to a lot of aspects of life that most people tend to find enjoyable – I don’t care much for travel, tinkering with things or the physical side of sex either. I constantly find myself actively not wanting to go places or do things with my hands, and would probably be among the first to start living in some VRMMO full-time, Ready Player One style, once (okay, okay, “if”, let a man cope) it becomes an option.
Is this some fairly unique side-effect of the ‘tism that makes me miss out on universal human experiences, or do some of you feel that way as well?
I really enjoy her personality
Like if I was in my 60's I'd stay, but not in my 40's.
If your only problem with her really is her body, then I'll go against the grain and suggest that you consider staying with her and practicing… limited monogamy or, well, monogamy as much of the world understands it.
This suggestion probably offends middle-class Anglo sensibilities, as they are really big on the whole "cheating is the absolute worst thing you can do to your partner" puritan morality (many people are saying that this and the fact that pretty much everyone on r/DeadBedrooms is from an Anglo country are somehow connected, but I guess We'll Just Never Know), as well as rationalist sensibilities that suggest always telling the Truth, circumstances be damned, but women with great personalities are in much shorter supply than those with great bodies, and you may indeed end up regretting your choice as you sift through Tinder trying to find someone tolerable, much less a woman whose personality you actually enjoy and can see yourself marrying. I think before you pull the trigger on the decision, it is important to at the very least honestly assess how likely you are, realistically, to find and attract someone who has both the looks and the personality, if that is something you value highly.
Chances are your partner will understand if you discretely get a side piece for your sexual needs (especially if she's from SEA, where it is largely tolerated, if not expected of married men), as long as you put your familial responsibilites first. Just don't do it in the retarded poly way, absolutely no one without severe autism and/or 5+ years of reading LW enjoys having their loved one announce "ok, honey, I'm gonna go bang a hot piece of ass that is 15 years your junior and has humongous tits, have a good night and see you tomorrow!", and arguably not even they do. She may even intuit that your weekly poker nights with the boys aren't necessarily about poker or spent with the boys – that's fine and in fact still very much preferable and less hurtful compared to just coming out and saying it.
AstralMateus
7mo ago
Meet Bob. He's in his late twenties, and has not done any math since high school, where he was a B- student in STEM-related subjects and moderately disliked most of them. Bob is of above average intelligence, but not exceptionally bright (think +1 SD, midwit extraordinaire territory). One day Bob decides to renounce his wordcel ways and try to learn enough math in his spare time to leave his fake e-mail job and join a rigorous quantitative PoliSci program.
How many hours of intensive study do you estimate it would take Bob to get to the level of mathematical prowess of an average incoming first-year grad student in such a program?
Claude seems to ballpark that number at 600-800 hours (200-300 to relearn math up to Calculus, and 400-500 hours for undergrad math). To me this feels like a real lowball (there are like half a dozen videogames where I have twice as many hours, surely learning an extremely valuable skill must take a lot more time and effort – otherwise everyone would do it, right?), but maybe math is that easy, and Bob, like many people, just never really tried.
AstralMateus
10mo ago
Might be a difference in the cultural context – I reside in a European country, and the local intelligentsia still cares quite a bit about poetry and literature more broadly. I did hear that the US is pretty different in that regard though.
AstralMateus
10mo ago
Haven't been keeping very up to date with competitive MtG lately (I've gotten into Legends of Runeterra last year, which is roughly everything I like about Magic stripped of a lot of the annoying parts), but I generally dislike cards that warp the meta around itself and make you play either decks with it or decks, that reliably beat it. I enjoy diverse metas with a lot of options quite a bit more. While I don't think Nadu is as game-breaking as many people seem to suggest (high T1, maybe T0.5, but nowhere near a true tier 0 like Hogaak), I haven't seen much of it.
AstralMateus
10mo ago
Thanks, that's genuinely helpful! I generally enjoy reading about history, so I'm sure I'll be able to find something of the sort.
AstralMateus
10mo ago
Yep, I try to hide my power level and pretend to be a plain, inoffensive sort of dude. Sports is not that popular in my circles. The culture at my workplace is, for a lack of better word, quite feminine, and even men tend to balk at "sportsball". Ironically for a nerd, I used to be quite into soccer, but I've fallen out of the habit of watching soccer matches on my days off some 5-7 years ago.
AstralMateus
10mo ago
Do you watch the JP branch or are you still watching Kurosanji?
JP-only pretty much. Sometimes I look up what the EN branch is up to, like a rubbernecker stopping to gawk at a train wreck.
AstralMateus
10mo ago
I'm sorry brother, you lost me at nijisanji.
That's fair. If it makes it any better, I mostly watch the JP branch (Shirayuki Tomoe, Yumeoi Kakeru) and steer clear of EN. To be frank, I just don't think HoloJP is all that entertaining due to inherent limitations of what an idol is expected to do and say. Granted, while JP Nijis can generally handle that degree of freedom, in EN it quickly turns into "e-girls with an avatar" shitshow.
Long time lurker, first time poster with a general life question here.
My current situation is as follows: I've recently finished graduate school (in social sciences) and landed a research-adjacent position at a large organization. So far I've found myself fitting in quite well in terms of professional skills, but it's been an uphill battle socially.
The problem, to put it bluntly, is that I'm basically a walking stereotype of a weeaboo neckbeard with specific nerdy interests, who was suddenly thrust into a milieu of reasonably high-IQ, well-educated if somewhat snobbish upper-middle class background normies, who are well-versed in highbrow and middlebrow culture, and expect their interlocutors to be at the same level of general cultural awareness. I knew people like these in college and avoided them like the plague (didn't have anything against them, but we didn't exactly jive), however it no longer seems to be an option, as I realize that if I stick with my field, I'll be looking at working alongside people like these for the next 30 years, give or take, and I would prefer for this experience to be more pleasant and not feel like a perpetual outsider. Not to mention that I'd probably need to fit in culturally in order to eventually move up the ladder.
As for my own level of general cultural awareness, it is abysmally low, which makes communication very embarassing at times. I'd be able to discuss at length untranslated Japanese visual novels, Magic the Gathering meta, Super Mario 64 speedrun strats, Nijisanji vtubers or obscure internet trivia, but I managed to walk around God's green Earth for ~30 years without ever having watched Titanic, becoming able to recognize more than two songs from the Beatles or learning a single verse of poetry by heart. I want to fix that, and I'm willing to spend my commutes and several evenings a week on this project, even if the task at hand seems quite daunting. I''ve made peace with the fact that I'll probably never be a literati, but I want to be at least functional in such social settings.
However, because the gaping hole in my knowledge is so massive, I don't even know where to begin. Do I divide things up into subprojects like "Movies", "Music", "Literature", etc. with their own schedules and goals? (E.g. "Movies project – knock out 2 movies from imdb top 250 a week for a year before moving on to more obscure stuff".) Is there a smarter way to go about it?
Not caring and keeping to myself at work is not an option.
tl;dr version: adult nerd with very little cultural knowledge wants to fill in that gap (speedrun it, if possible) and become pleasant enough company in educated upper middle class non-STEM milieu. What would be the best way to achieve that?
I generally like Aella and her whole schtick, and have nothing but disdain for trad larpers reaching for 18th century vocabulary to describe her activities, so I was quite sad that she faced this treatment. (Not saying this as a simp either – I generally don't find white women attractive, and Aella is no exception)
Aella is profoundly not a "normal" person, in terms of her mental constituition, and her upbringing didn't help matters either. She's a misfit through and through, and even if the trads somehow brought back the medieval morality, she would likely not be able to live as a reputable woman (that era had prostitutes too, by the way, no one is ever getting rid of "degeneracy", despite whatever the puritans might think). Trying to force individuals like her to live according to your values is bad and cruel, although I would agree that there may be a need for a soft limit on advertising potentially dangerous alternative lifestyles as desirable. However, this limit should probably take some form other than 80 IQ groypers raising hell in replies, or self-appointed RW hall monitors (profoundly abnormal male nerds, who have at some point decided to LARP as a 1950s religious family man to save the White Race and Western Civilization, hoping that some day the act will become their nature) taking potshots in quote tweets.
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