BahRamYou
6d ago
The obvious issue with that hypothesis is that, in most countries, the decline in fertility started long before the invention of smart phones. I'm sure the phones play a role, but it's hard to see them being the sole causal factor. Unless "phones" here is being used as a catch-all for any kind of modern entertainment technology, including old-fashioned CRT TVs, but I get the sense that the blog author means it literally.
My own opinion is that it comes down to the changing views of women's status and place in society. Technology like phones obviously help to change that culture and spread feminist messages, but it's not directly related to phones or technology at all. A big part of it is that, in the past, there was a relative shortage of men because they tended to get killed off in wars and dangerous manual labor, but now men are the majority in younger ages and there's a scarcity of women.
BahRamYou
6d ago
I didn't say you shouldn't understand them. I said that if you marry into a multilingual, cross-cultural family then there will always be some things you don't understand. What do you do, forbid the wife and kids from speaking their native language in your presence? "I swear to god, if I hear one word of Russian in my presence, you won't like the consequences...?"
BahRamYou
7d ago
I think people should just get used to being in situations where they don't understand every word that's being said. Maybe if you grow up speaking English in a predominantly English-speaking community, you're just used to everything being in the language you know, but the rest of the world isn't like that. People speak different languages. And even if you spend a lot of time studying, it's damn near impossible to reach the sort of native-like fluency where you understand literally everything that's being said in a big chaotic group setting, including the little jokes and obscure cultural references.
But that's OK. You don't have to understand. Most of that stuff just isn't very important. Hell, I met a guy from Glasgow once with a very thick accent, and even though we were both native English speakers I could only understand about half of what he was saying. But we still communicated just fine. People are just spoiled by media these days putting up a perfect translation of everything.
For individual advice, I think it's nice when kids make some effort to still learn and use their family's native language. If nothing else, it'll make their grandparents happy, and make family reunions less awkward. But realistically they'll never be perfectly fluent in it, and it's a lot more important for them to boost their English skills. Just don't push them so hard to practice it that they start to resent it.
BahRamYou
9d ago
I mean, I would hope that they're just teaching it as a text like any other, and letting students make up their own mind about what it means. But I'd be worried that Texas is trying to mandate it into the latter.
BahRamYou
10d ago
So therefore they are adulterating the passage and failing to teach its true meaning.
That's kind of my problem with this plan in a nutshell. The bible is a tough read. You've got this very old-fashioned text, which probably began as some sort of oral history, only later written down by various different people at different times. Then that gets translated from paleo-Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Latin and then finally to English. On top of which, a lot of it is just plain confusing, with complex metaphors and moral lessons that only made sense from the point of view of a bronze age tribe living a harsh life. From my point of view as an atheist, some of it is fascinating and great reading, but some other parts are a horrible mess or just plain boring. I don't think it should be used to teach kids reading, because they're inevitably going to misunderstand it. I don't even trust most high school teachers to properly understand it- there's a good reason that theology and bible study is its own unique discipline.
BahRamYou
19d ago
My opinion is that I don't mind a bit of hypocrisy in politicians, or flip-flopping, or even outrigh lying sometimes. It's part of their job.
We don't want politicians to be perfectly honest, consistent, straight shooters. If they were, countries would go to war over basic disagreements, and then just stay at war forever because no one could ever forgive or forget. The job of the politicians is to smooth over those disagreements however possible, and words are cheap.
So for the past few months, Trump and Vance have been saying pro-Israeli and anti-Iran stuff, because they were allies with Israel against Iran. Now they're trying to make peace with Iran and get Israel to stop fighting, so they're saying anti-Israel and pro-Iran stuff. That's just how the game of politics works. But as far as I can tell they would never actually do anything against Israel, and the deal with Iran is still basically "stop bombing, allow shipping through Hormuz, all other details TBD."
BahRamYou
19d ago
I feel like this essay kinda nailed it: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/
For a long time now, leaders of every organization have been under pressure to hire more women to make things more equal. They don't want to step down themselves, or fire anyone, so the easiest solultion is to just prioritize women for every new position. The result is that, while overall employment still tends male, new hiring is strongly stacked towards women.
On top of that, there's technology and automation, putting downward pressure on employment in general. No company wants to hire anyone at all.
On top of that, there's the relationship between the sexes. Women might say they want an equal partner, but their revealed preference seems to be that they want a partner who's superior to them and has power.
Put it all together and you've got an absolutely toxic situation for young men. I don't like where this is going.
The biggest obstacle I see is that Iran is so highly fractured right now. The IRGC isn't some tight-knit organization, it was always decentralized and now its blown up to hell. There's probably some hardliners who want to keep fighting, some doves who want peace, and a variety in between who just want personal advantage. Even if some sign a peace treaty, there's no good way to stop the hardliners from breaking it. And there may not be any one individual in Iran who can exactly account for where all of their nuclear material and anti-ship mines are.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
The thing with the tariffs is that the reaction (as measured by the stock market) was so strong and so swift that Trump instantly buckled. That makes it hard to tell how much the actual long-term economic or political damage would have been. It's almost a perfect paradox- We can be perfectly safe that he'll never do tariffs, because the reaction would be so horrendous, so he's free to threaten them all he wants.
But also, yes, if there's anything to make a trade war look trivial, it's an actual shooting war. The Iran war is taking up so much space that it's hard to think about other things.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I think the real answer is that most people are just very short-term in their thinking, especially during the most fertile years of their life. In the past, they had kids because sex feels good and they just didn't think much about the long-term consequences of pregnancy. Now, they think too much about the pregnancy itself, and not enough about the long term benefits of having children.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Sure, that's fine. Just as long as you acknowledge the yawning gulf between "here is a mathematical formula that describers all human interaction" and "as far as I'm aware this is the majority opinion." The next step might be to gather evidence to see if that actually is the majority opinion, and if so how much of a majority it is.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I would say those are all reasonable answers, but a lot of that is well you know that's just like your opinion man. Different people are going to have very different opinions on this. Some guys genuinely might not care if their wife is sleeping around, because it gives them more freedom. Some might even get off on it. Others might hate it more than anything, to the point where they would feel honor-bound to kill over it. And most people act very differently in old age than they did as teenagers. You're trying to turn complicatd, messy human emotions into some simple math formula.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Men are raised around the polite fiction that women (and society) want them to be nice above all else. Nice guys get the girl. And, after all, anyone can be nice. That's part of why this is important social messaging. But of course in the end, the boy must live. And he discovers that, in fact, niceness isn't what gets the girl. Being hot is, having status is.
Isn't the problem that there's a tension between what society wants and what an individual wants? Society doesn't really care whether some random teenager "gets the girl." It only barely cares whether men overall get married, insofar as it needs to keep the fertility rate up to produce more workers. What "society" wants is for boys to be nice, stay out of trouble, and go to work. And, you know, those are pretty good things to want overall in society... it's just not the only things that a male mammal would want. I don't know the solution, but I wish we could at least start by openly acknowledge the problem.
Is this still the case when both people are in their 60s or beyond, and have lost a lot of libido, and are mostly looking for a comfortable partner to grow old with?
Even if they still have a lot of libido, does the wife regain her value if her party days were multiple decades in the past, or does the stain on her soul linger forever?
Does her value as a "virgin" remain after she's been married for decades and had sex thousands of times with her husband?
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Sometimes heroes have to sacrifice their personnal well-being for the greater good of their society.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I would hope they'd be smart enough to do it where no teachers or untrustworthy kids are looking, which is not hard to set up in most schools. If they do get caught... probably a stern talking to in the guidance counselor's office. This whole problem starts with schools being extremely unable to really do anything to punish kids.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Maybe it's an overrepresented dynamic in schools I've observed, but in addition to outlier events like knife fights, if a kid has the misfortune to be assigned an all day elementary class with a "disregulated" classmate or two, there's literally nothing to do about it, other than changing schools. This is a Problem, actually
There is perhaps one thing parents could do: teach their kids to fight. Starting at a very early age, like age 6, they need to start taking serious martial arts classes, not just tae kwan do for tots or whatever. The Problem kids would be a lot less of a Problem if they were actually punished for their actions, and if the public schools can't do it then the kids have to take matters into their own hands. Instead of being rewarded with candy, the Problem child learns fear that his actions will result in pain. This also helps normal children develop agency and self confidence, as they learn to solve problems for themselves instead of being reliant on public school teachers whose brains have degenerated into a state of permanent childlike mush.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Additionally, women want naturals, not someone who looksmaxxed their way to trick some poor woman into dating an imposter. See, for example, how much the thought of men getting limb-lengthening surgery (or even just wearing lifts) triggers ick and seethe in women.
It makes sense when you think of the genetics. The guy who used surgery and lifts to look tall will still have short-person genes, which will hurt her legacy in the long term (or at least, be associated with things that hurt her legacy). The tall genes last forever. Same reason men would prefer a woman who's naturally beautiful over a woman who uses tons of makeup and cosmetic surgery to "fix" her looks.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
And of course, there's a simple low-cost way to do this... fight more wars. That was the traditional way society's removed their excess males, and it would be a huge strategic asset for America or any other 1st-world country if we could treat soldiers as expendable rather than a huge national tragedy every time a single grunt dies.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
I think this would be a huge improvement if it was done moderately and selectively. That is, take the people at the very bottom socioeconomic classes (mostly young unwed mothers), and offer them a financial incentive to choose daughters over sons. Then we end up with, say, 51% of babies being born female, compared to the present situation of 51% male. And that 2% would come from the demographics most likely to commit crime and get into trouble, so changing them to female would massively reduce those risk factors.
Unfortunately I think the people most likely to voluntarily choose this would be upper class liberal women, and that would just be a disaster. Even more girl boss feminist women!
You could also speculate about some fascist government forcing it on everyone, to the point where we end up like 75% female or even more. As a guy I'll admit it sounds like a fun sex fantasy, but... I suspect this would cause some horrible consequences down the line (the women would end up fighting with each other and not cooperate at all in running society).
BahRamYou
3mo ago
One possibility: Trump lost his edge after being banned from Twitter. He used to be legitimately great at writing funny tweets, even if you don't agree with him. But Twitter is an ecosystem, and a skill, TruthSocial just isn't the same (I don't think I've ever seen anyone share a post from there that wasn't Trump). He's basically just talking to himself there, so his Tweeting skills are getting rusty.
His live standup insult comedy act is still top form, though. Did you see his meeting with the Japanese PM and journalists? Hilarious. He told an extremely crass joke with no hesitation or shame, off the cuff, and made it work.
BahRamYou
3mo ago
Yeah, this. You can get massively rich on anything with enough leverage. Like what WallStreetBets calls "Faggot's Delight" options- very far out the money options with short expirations. You have to completely nail the timing and price point to make any money that way at all, its not enough to just say "turmoil in the mideast will make oil prices go up."
They may as well just put a huge disclaimer on their site "we reserve the right to void any market for any reason we deem fit
Isn't that basically what the insurance companies are doing now with Force Majeure? But yes, i agree that sites like Polymarket are at a pretty low level of respectability right now. Its like gambling in some underground mafia-owned casino.
BahRamYou
3mo ago
a bit of a small amount of a fuckton of money
I'm a bit confused whether you're just being humble here and downplaying it, or if you're just talking about a relatively modest gain. The stock market has been going gangbusters for the past 10 years, so lots of people have made great returns as long as you're not panic selling everything.
To play Devil's advocate a bit... isn't there a place for this in any realistic democracy? The average voter isn't an expert in economics, or international relations, or constitutional law. Yet we're still expected to vote on all of these things. The only way this system works is if someone else interprets and simplifies the key issues for us, and maybe that requires a funny pundit more than a technical expert.
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