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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The discourse around Kirk on the left was quite chilling though. There is at least a significant minority of people on the left who genuinely want to murder their political opponents and who are mainly held back by not wanting to risk their comfortable life, in stark opposition to their self-image of being the non-violent non-coercive side.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For many people, "meaning well" and being nice is very important, sometimes even more than actually accomplishing anything. There is in particular a stark divide between left and right (and also men vs women) on this issue. Plenty of my friends and acquaintances, when confronted with the dysfunction of some left-wing regulations, will nevertheless defend them and not want them abolished, mostly on account that they were originally meant well and should at most be reformed (which nobody ever kicks off and thus never actually happens). Aristocrats who never actually accomplished anything and certainly don't deserve their wealth will often be more popular on account of modest charitable spending and a public image carefully designed to be maximally inoffensive (which is much easier if you're not constrained by trying to accomplish something) than a revolutionary entrepreneur.


Their view, as I understand it, is that communism at least sounds nice in theory and means well originally, and the same goes for communist activist, whereas fascist activist are just irredeemable monsters. Which I even partially agree with, the problem is just that the people they call fascists pretty much never identify as such and have only little commonalities with the historic concept. It's always Adorno-style sophistry where you use a definition of fascism that is 50% totalitarism and 50% being right-wing and then, upon showing that the right-wingers are indeed right-wing, claim that there are large parallels between fascism and whatever right-winger you choose. Not to mention that irrespective of the good intention of the communist, I don't want to end up in the gulag anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Plenty of people with more money have tried and failed at the exact same purpose. The majority of the NASA expert class has repeatedly made an ass of themselves claiming that this or that is never going to be cost-effective or not even physically possible, only to be disproven a year or two later. I have no problem saying Musk is an asshole, or that he is clearly abusing substances that fuck with his mind, but you could have given ten times as much money to any other rich guy or even an established subject expert and they would have not even come close to accomplish what he did.


Otherwise, strong agree with @pusher_robot. The rational behaviour for a self-centered person with 100 million dollars is to take no risks whatsoever and make no enemies, just coasting for life. And this is what most of them do. Anyone in that position who instead risks it all and tries to create something new should be highly respected.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Aside from it never going to happen, it would be massively distortionary and set up horrible incentives. We already have the problem that most people who become moderately rich are unwilling to take any risks and basically just coast, especially those who inherited. Trying to become ultra-rich is just not worth it even now. If you look at the ultra-rich, it is often just a side effect of other goals. Say what you will, but Musk clearly wants to develop new, revolutionary technology, taking arguably irrational risks (in the sense of pure expected risk-reward in terms of money), working ungodly hours and making plenty of enemies.


Your proposal would turn everything into ultra-europe, where all the powerful people are somewhere in the government and nominally only modestly rich, and the few very richest would be extremely bland and boring inherited wealth who maybe run some old established uncontroversial business and mostly spend charitably, never taking any risks or making any enemies. Everyone else who risks becoming too rich will try to get rid of that money ASAP since it's just not worth it for the risk to get executed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I increasingly think it might even be the other way around; The more you limit the powerful people on the free market, the more the powerful will move into the state and other entities that are harder to control since they are the control. Plenty of ultra-rich are happy to let you do whatever you want as long as you let them do whatever they want. But if the same person is instead managing giant flows of money that aren't actually theirs but technically belong to the people, it's suddenly at the minimum their business to control your behaviour insofar as it concerns that flow of money. And unlike the free market, where they need to find a way to offer you a deal or product that sounds good enough, if they are in the state, they can just straight-up force you. And often enough, that taste of power will only grow; If you're already controlling people, you'll find excuses to extend that control. For their own good, of course.


The key mistake IMO lies in the idea that money equals power. No, money is primarily a consumptive element of power. You can always trivially convert money into gaming consoles, vacations, yachts or any other consumptive good. Once you try to convert it into other elements of power, you'll have to expect losses and/or require sufficient skill to do it correctly: If you want to create something new, you need a good idea and the capability of running at the very least a lab, possibly a lean&mean start-up, often against much larger, established companies with massive legal moats. If you want to change or manipulate society, you need charisma and social acumen. If you want to simply force people to submit, you need to get control of the government, and those who already control it will not appreciate your meddling. A minimum amount of money is certainly required to get things off the ground, but you don't need to be ultra-rich. Upper-middle class money and/or a bank loan is often already enough for most purposes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Problem of a Flying-Machine


Others have already explained in-detail how some of the arguments don't even hold water given current technology levels, but I always find these kinds of arguments deeply silly general. As shown from the link, there is no shortage of technology that was claimed to be outright physically impossible, yet which turned out to work just fine; See also NASA vs SpaceX discussions on reuse for a more pertinent example, though that was more about never being cost-effective, as I understand it.


That said, especially given the rapid progress in AI we're seeing, I'm expecting that space colonisation will happen first through robots, which sidesteps a large number of your objections entirely. These can then build up an adequate habitat for us anywhere, given enough time & if we so choose. I also think that we are in no hurry to colonise space soon. But it will have to happen eventually if we want to exist for a cosmologically relevant timespan.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's funny, I have the exact opposite as an impression. In Hollywood, the bully is always a complete, irredeemable asshole who ALSO is extremely privileged and from the wrong political background, making him extra-unsympathetic. The victim is always a misunderstood, gentle soul from a difficult background who will instantly blossom once given a chance. It's very obvious whom you're supposed to sympathize with.


Reality is always more complicated. Sometimes it's just two assholes trying to bully each other, and other people join in on one or the other side or even switch depending on momentary sympathy. And every time whoever is currently losing will play the victim card to authority figures.


Sometimes there just is a really self-centered, difficult kid that the others try to include, but it always predictably fails, and instead of trying to get better, the kid tries to get authority figures involved to force the others to include them.


Sometimes the bully is popular and nice in general but for some reason dislikes the victim, who is just less socially adept and so gets excluded. But the bully doesn't actually seek out and hurt the victim, he just doesn't want anything to do with him, while to the victim it feels like vicious bullying since he gets excluded so much.


And so on. Sometimes the hollywood depiction really is correct, and yours as well. But at least my impression is that on average the bully is less bad than usually portrayed and vice versa the victim is less good. Though I wouldn't quite go as far as saying that bullying is good.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


She did the career thing, and has somewhat waited out the pool of guys that she considers worthy of a relationship. She's probably going to settle for somebody at one point and be somewhat quietly disappointed.




Or not. At least from my PoV, it seems that one part of the relationship recession is women who got a wrong impression what kind of guy they can realistically have a long-term relationship with and what real relationships entail, and after seeing the reality that is possible, they decide to forego long-term relationships altogether. And as you say, these women often don't sleep around much either; They are, for lack of
better word, volcels.


But otherwise I agree, settling and then quietly resenting your partner is also a popular option.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I did enjoy my listening of HPMOR, but it IMO also gets pretty silly at times. I don't really remember examples of the top of my head unfortunately since it's quite some time ago, but I do remember coming away with the impression that there isn't a lot that Harry is doing which would work nearly as well IRL as it does in the book.


Increasingly I think that the fundamental problem is, not only would very few strategic (or tactical, for that matter) genii write a book like that, if anything writing fiction like this anti-selects for competence in harsh competitive environments, since it's fundamentally escapism. And there's no way out of this inherent contradiction.


Most military action currently is one dominant side enforcing its will unilaterally on a weaker enemy, or a slow boring grind like Ukraine. If a weaker side wins, it's usually on morale and propaganda terms as opposed to military genius.


So the closest thing we've got currently IRL is probably gaming competitions, I guess.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
FWIW, girl has been so normalized as a generic casual word for young-ish woman that it doesn't really register to me the same way as "boy". Boy is pre-puberty; Girl can be anything below ... 40 or so? It functions more like "guy" nowadays, woman would sound stilted to me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll second this. Theoretically I learned english for my entire school time. In practice, I was pretty terrible at anything but the most basic texts, and completely hopeless at even understanding normal english speech. And let's not talk about having to speak myself.


A small breakthrough was going to the UK as a teen for two weeks, but there were too many other german students with me. The big breakthrough for understanding happened at university. Well, actually, in the evenings, because I watched so much english TV with subtitles that I noticed I could increasingly just forego the subtitles. Then the breakthrough for speaking it myself came when I went to work at a Max Planck Institute with >70% foreigners, so there was just no option but speaking the english.


School wasn't entirely useless, since I also watched a lot of subtitled Anime, yet didn't learn japanese nearly as well (though I do know quite a few words and stock phrases). You need some basic framework to make sense of everything to begin with. But its benefits top out pretty early.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I can relate a lot with this, which is precisely the reason why I consider the trans-movement so scary. I've written about me & my wife's childhoods before: https://www.themotte.org/post/1794/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/311570?context=8#context


In short, this is what puberty is like for many of us, sadly. Before puberty, you might look at teens with hate and disgust. During your own teenage years, you feel like shit and hate yourself. I dunno who said this, but male puberty is like being given a completely out-of-control wild horse, against your will, and you have to tame it or else it will trash your place and piss of everyone. And it takes years. Hell, I still regularly get pissed off at my sexuality. Female puberty is different, but no less difficult.


But at the end, as an adult, you've done the work and it has simply become a part of you. You're different now, sure, but trying to forgo that transformation makes about as much sense as a caterpillar not wanting to become a butterfly because it's too different from the life it has gotten used to.


Not saying that there are exactly zero people who have so massive problems with their biological sex that medication or other changes might become a reasonable option, but in about 99.999% of cases if a teen asks "I feel uncomfortable with my sex, what should I do?" the correct answer is trying to help them find ways to become more comfortable with their body and realize that there isn't just exactly one way to be for each sex, and that a lot of stuff is, while certainly strongly correlated with sex, actually mostly superfluous for it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


fraud




And what are you gonna do about it? Not you, personally, of course, but the system. The answer, in my experience, is: Nothing. On paper, they look too much like what they claim to be, and even if the state would start to do personal visits to random benefit-receivers, their legal options are so limited that it's trivial to hide the presence of the guy. Not that I would be in favour of the state doing that to begin with. I don't think the moving around had anything to do with the government, they just used the apartment for storage or the like. In fact they were very lazy about it in a way that made it rather clear they didn't fear them catching on at all; When we had a water leak in the apartment above them and they were repeatedly notified by phone that they have to be present so a handicraftsman can enter, they just ... didn't, up until the moment they were threatened that they have to pay for damages. It was very, very clear to everyone including the landlord that he didn't really live there. But as long as the flat gets paid they just don't give a shit, especially not in these places. We actually had several other people in this building who clearly weren't living in their apartments, at least not all the time, for various reasons. This included me & and my wife; For almost three years, I was officially living in the UK, my wife officially in Germany, but in reality we spent almost half/half in each, mostly together. It's just completely infeasible to investigate anyone renting a cheap small flat, there's way too much of it.


A system isn't measured by what words are on pieces of papers, but by what it does (note: this is distinct from saying that this is outright it's purpose; Of course systems can just simply be badly designed. Though if flaws don't get fixed even after being repeatedly pointed out, it's reasonable to conclude that at least some people in fact like those flaws and don't want them to get fixed). In my experience, everyone thinks this way once it's about a topic they care about; If, say, discrimination against blacks was illegal on paper but there are no mechanisms to suss it out and nothing short of a confession is considered sufficient evidence in court, and anti-black discrimination was as a result still widely practiced with impunity as long as they aren't so stupid as to openly admit it, I'd be pretty sure you'd consider such a system racist, and defending the system with "well but that's illegal so the system is actually perfectly fine" is at best extremely naive, at worst (and, honestly, more realistically) a bad-faith defense. So there imo isn't a hard separation between fraud and gaming the system here at all.


A system is good if the rules as-written are as close as possible to the rules as-practiced, for legibility reason, and if the incentive gradient that is created as a result of the rules as-practiced are reasonably aligned with the intentions of the rulemakers and the population as a whole when the rule was crafted. The second part especially means that the benefits from fraud/gaming the system need to outstrip its cost, otherwise the money is just going to go somewhere else entirely. This is where, in my experience, left-wing systems tend to dramatically fail in a reliable fashion. It's always "nobody is going to game the system", then it's "well that's fraud so it doesn't count" and then finally "why are we deep in the red and everyone still complains that it's not enough".


You can certainly find some conservatives somewhere who really are all about punishing the wicked poor, but this is where limiting benefits to basic necessities is showing its value. Someone in genuine need is still going to be very happy about a can of rice, but it's not worth playing stupid accounting games for. A small apartment is great if otherwise you're literally homeless, but ditto. And so on. To a first approximation with maximal uncharity, that might sound like wanting to punish them, but it's simply a very effective safeguard against being taken advantage of. Which is why conservative tend to have it as an instinctive reaction.


I'm actually broadly against investigations unless it's about a lot of money, since in the west the combination of high legal requirements and high cost of man-hours means that it can happen extremely fast that the cost of the investigation outstrips any plausible amount that could have been defrauded. It's best for fraud to just not be worth it, investigating the most egregious cases, and just eating the (small, in a well-designed system) difference.




Charity for religion




I know this objection, but the same goes for a lot of left-wing charity being extremely politically charged; Imo politics is pretty isomorphic to religion in general. Once you look into the details, one might even conclude the opposite: Lots of nominally religious charities have not only overwhelmingly secular staff nowadays, but in particular very far left staff, and re-direct the money from the conservatives to their own pet causes instead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Watts might be a depressed misanthrope who prays that humanity pays for its sins (any day now), but the man can write.




Yeah, reading his online comments made me genuinely reflect on whether I might have overestimated the depth of his books. I still like Blindsight, but boy does the guy sound like a complete cliche in short-form.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Isn't Sekiro the closer match? In any case, thanks for the rec, I considered getting Nioh anyway, though it's unlikely I'll find much time playing it soon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've also read those principles when they were linked, and also immediately thought: I'm so, so not a conservative. I disagree with almost everything in that list. Not particularly surprising though, since I'm not religious, either.


But that's unfortunately where my agreement ends. Incidentally, your post sums up many things I find extremely irritating about liberals quite well, and why I currently tend to side more with conservatives.




It's this last point that really sums it all up, the idea that the system is there to be gamed, largely is gamed, that there exists an advantage in trying to game it, and the self-congratulation that comes along with not gaming it. To make a seasonal reference, it's as if we are Christ tempted in the desert. Except anyone with half a brain knows that nobody on food stamps is getting any advantage from the system. For a single individual, the income limit is about $2600/month.




Yeah, duh, all systems are being gamed. That's not a moral stance, that's just basic reality. There is about an infinite number of ways to have access to more money than that theoretic limit:


    

  • work black (by far the most common)
    • 

  • have a boyfriend earn more money
    • 

  • Have rich parents who give you a certain allowance for your basic needs, except you want to maximize the amount you can spend on frivolities instead
    • 



And so on. For a simple example from my own life: We've had neighbours - a family with two kids - upstairs back when I was a student. The guy was a construction worker and very nice, the wife was permanently unemployed from even before they had kids. But somehow, they were regularly not in their place for weeks on end, and they were the kind of white trash that certainly isn't living a jet-set life. So what was the reason? Pretty simple: The flat which we thought was theirs was actually officially only his. She pretended to be a single mom with two kids and got all the government benefits associated with that, among them a nice little house in the suburbs. And then they got all the money from his work on top, while paying very little for the cheap flat.


The reality in most western countries is that if you earn anything like the median wage legally, you'd be better off switching to gaming the system. Yes, for the rich and upper middle class it might not seem worth it, but the working poor and lower middle class not only know this, they usually personally have people around them already doing this. And yes, the only thing holding them back is a combination of self-respect and peer pressure. They tell you this, and instead you mock and denigrate them.




The most common one, both here and in popular discussion, is the desire to prohibit purchases of certain items, which some states have already begun doing. As a said in an earlier post on the topic, these items generally fall into three categories:




There is also this weird insistence to pretend that not wanting government money being spent on something is the same as prohibiting something. No, they can just pay for it with their own money! I've had this discussion with my wife when she was younger about a clearly drunk beggar. No, I don't want to give him money; He clearly already could have bought something for himself instead of getting drunk. With welfare I can't just opt out, so yeah, I want it to be limited to important stuff. That doesn't mean I want alcohol banned altogether, since not only do I expect most people to be capable of enjoying it in appropriate quantities, they may even get drunk if they want to because it's their fucking money. That's basic common sense.


Worse, there really are a lot of people who do actually want to prohibit thing. They're called "liberals":




Now, I don't have a problem with prohibiting pop and candy as some states have begun doing, at least not in and of themselves.




Or meat, or cars, or alcohol, or any number of things. For many a liberal, there are only two states: Banned or mandatory support.




Even the disabled don't get a pass anymore because we all know that they could probably work if they wanted to and they're just faking it to get their free Dr. Pepper and avoid work, which we all know they'd do if they were virtuous.




Again, yes. As a teen, I really got along great with my cousin's husband, who was ca 30 or so at the time, and I was gaming with him in the same clan regularly. Inter-personally, he's nice guy. But it doesn't change the fact that he claimed benefits for some undefined back issues that make it impossible for him to continue to do the warehouse work he did before. Even if that was true - and frankly, I don't think so - he could have certainly done a regular desktop office job instead of gaming 10 hours+ all day. He's sitting in front of a screen either way. At least once they had kids, he started helping out with house / child chores. Of course not because of virtuousness, but because my cousin got sick of his shit bc she was a full-time nurse.




You don't have to work, and unless your hobbies are watching daytime broadcast television or hanging around outside a Co-Go's, I believe you'd find yourself bored with the welfare lifestyle rather quickly.




You can believe whatever you want, 90% of young guys would certainly prefer gaming all day over working, and young women are only a little bit better. In most cases, the primary reason they don't is their parents giving them shit. If their parents are already gaming the system, their kids will usually do so as well.




Conservatives know this deep down, but they don't want to admit it because it conflicts with the First Principle. If there is an absolute, unchanging moral framework, then we can judge people based upon it. And to compound things even further, they are self-arbiters of this framework. They know what it is inherently, and if anyone tells them otherwise, they're just liberals trying to infect the culture. It makes about as much sense as someone confidently saying that frozen burritos are a luxury item that should only be available to the deserving. Because when it comes to any moral obligation on the part of ourselves, there is silence. No conservative criticizes food stamps on the one hand and speaks of an obligation to help the poor on the other. For all the Biblical allusions, I can't find the part where charity has to be earned through moral virtue. The moralism seems to be confused, solipsistic, incoherent. For his part, Russell Kirk was at least a generous man who was known to help strangers in ways that few of us ever will. But I'm not sure that he was really a conservative.




As a matter of fact, most research on the topic concludes that conservatives give more to charity than liberals despite earning less. When I was still forced to go to church, helping the poor and needy was the #1 matter being preached. But helping and indulging their worst vices are not only different, they're opposites. Kirk was pretty average in this way.


At the end of the day, I can't help but notice that most liberals belong into two camps: So sheltered that they basically don't get into contact with dysfunctional people, and the actually dysfunctional. The former can't fathom why people might game the system because they already have it so nice without doing so, and the latter can't fathom not gaming the system. Others are stuck in-between, trying desperately to keep the system working somehow.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tbh I feel like saying "no u". Decadence is very important - though not the only dynamic, of course - to my view of the decline of rome. If you agree with that framing, you are conceding my point, not the other way around. I agree that there are people pushing an overly hard version that is clearly wrong, but that doesn't make the concept overall anymore useless/wrong than a white nationalist who thinks that blacks are literal apes makes HBD wrong. HBD also isn't the only thing that matters, but it is one of the things that matter.


How did the roman elites fail to sustain their population? It certainly wasn't material poverty. It also wasn't a lack of sex. What could be an appropriate word for having plenty of orgies, yet not create enough children and to rather adopt some successful general who has nothing to do with you?


Why was having mercenerary barbarians fight enemy barbarians bad? If the romans had stayed strong, they could just weaken the barbarians by letting them fight each other, and if the mercenaries got uppity, the romans could put them in their place. But instead, they couldn't, and became dependent on them. It's true that there were other factors at play here - overextension and civil wars - but even the romans themselves acknowledged that once the practice became normalized, plenty of romans could, but just simply didn't want to fight as soldiers. And I can absolutely understand that! But again, this specific part of the story is typical decadence - refusing a necessary service to keep the society you are part of running because you're used to getting away with it.


How did Rome even keep together, if the elite got so decadent? Precisely because of non-decadent peasants and barbarian troops working for them. The former because they, being subsistence farmers and/or outright slaves, just didn't have any other options, and the latter because they felt that arrangement suited them. Decadence is a sliding scale and needs to be counted over the whole group you are part of. If I sit on the couch all day and get away with it because my wife is working and also does all the household chores, that's decadent and bad. But it's only possible because my wife is sufficiently competent and industrious, i.e. anti-decadent. For as long as she is, we will probably do okay overall. But we have less stuff and if something happens to her, we're fucked. That's just fundamentally more brittle than both partners putting in the work.


You may say now that this sitting-on-the-couch-is-bad theory sucks because it has no predictive value. After all, everything was mostly fine despite my sitting on the couch, and once it wasn't, the REAL reason was losing my wife. Which is ... kind of true? But also mostly silly. It's like saying that state capacity is unimportant, Genghis Khan conquered the world despite steppe nomad having approximately zero state capacity as a society. No, it's just not the only thing that matters.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
First, I agree with @SecureSignals that biological evolution being slow is an outdated & wrong meme at this point from back before archeogenetics existed. We now have plenty of evidence that biological human evolution happened frequently on relatively short timescales.


Second, the principle can be trivially generalized to cultural evolution. We are experiencing ourselves how fast people can spin up new memes, identities, moral/politeness rules and so on, with little concern for their practicality. Under strong selection, you expect that cultural evolution to nevertheless point towards increased function over time; But without selection, it points towards less function, for simple entropy reasons (there are always infinitely more ways to do things wrong than there are ways to do them right).


On the last point though, I actually agree with you. Wars can happen in a way where they disproportionally kill of the brave and pro-social, while the self-centered cowards survive. It needs to be kept in mind that concepts like decadence, "hard time create strong men", etc. are one among many, and they are not always the correct one. But it doesn't mean that they are irrelevant, just as the example of Genghis Khan uniting the steppe nomads and conquering the world is not a proof that the concept of state capacity is useless.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In the meantime, their soldiers, who lived rough out of both necessity and for training, beat the snot out of the tough barbarian folk for centuries; and only then were beaten by Romanized barbarians who adopted their tactics and equipment to a large degree.




This is imo a pretty major misrepresentation of history, and an instructive one for the distinction here. A more correct framing in my view would be that Rome was reliably growing back when its armies were staffed by capital-R Romans. After having grown substantially, they improved their military success even further by using auxilia allied barbarian troops alongside their regular legions. This was a great invention and worked for a long time, growing Rome even further. Having overextended so far that it was simply not feasible to fight all conflicts with enough roman legions, barbarian mercenaries increasingly got hired to stuff more and more holes, until at some point the entire distinction between "proper" legions and the auxilia got eradicated.


Paying people to fight for you actually can also work, especially if you're rich and have a technology level far beyond them. But even back then the Romans already commented on the hardiness of their allies compared to the softness of the Romans. Both sides gained: The barbarians gained access to gear and technology that would otherwise be beyond them and allowed them to beat and conquer tribes further outward, while Rome stays safe and has troops. Btw, even the Roman elite changed their ethnic composition around this time, since they didn't have enough kids and had a tendency to adopt successful military commanders.


Everything looks mostly fine if you look at it from a super eagle-eyes view, but under the hood the barbarians already substantially got into control of all the important structures. This also changed the loyalty that many people in important positions felt to Rome itself, with predictable consequences. Romanizing barbarians is a two-way street, which by mainstream historians always gets ignored. Legions would just blackmail politicians when they felt they didn't get enough, or even just because they could get away with it. Later roman leaders frequently blatantly side with their own heritage over romans. Soldiers would abandon the army on a whim and, since they would just go back to their barbarian tribes, Rome could do absolutely nothing against it. Unlike as in the past, where desertion was punished with death. In fact, they would frequently outright change sides. All of this would have been unthinkable with capital-R Roman legions fighting barbarians.


The actual sack of rome is less a glorious victory from the now-improved german barbarians against still-tough roman soldiers, and more a wimper from a dying empire whose troops by that point simply were also germans, and who had little problem with abandoning the losers once the writing on the wall was clear.


If you're getting so decadent that you can't fight for yourself anymore, you don't necessarily lose instantly. Especially if you're adaptable and find a way to get the others to fight for you. But pretending that decadence/softness or vice versa hardiness doesn't matter makes about as little sense as pretending that money, landownership or technology doesn't matter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This seems quite far from the colloquial definition. Usually it's considered sufficient if most people around them consider it humiliating. If you make a terrible joke and everyone around you laughs about you instead of about the joke, that is humiliation. If anything, not even noticing the difference makes it extra-humiliating.


Also, enough people on the left are clearly in the kind of damage control mode about the scandal that implies at least some level of awareness, even if it doesn't rise to the level of changing their entire view. Like the tapeworm guy admitting that, well, this particular tapeworm was bad, but we shouldn't hurt them unnecessarily and dewormer is still evil in general. Also, did you know there is lots of other parasites? Singling out tapeworms like that seems pretty problematic, you know.


Having to admit that you did get taken advantage of in precisely the way others predicted beforehand but you brushed them off is humiliating, even if you try to spin it to make it sound less bad.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If someone somehow convinced himself that tapeworms are actually totally fine and symbiotic with humans and that deworming is evil for hurting these beautiful creatures, and then later ends up in hospital over it, that does seem pretty humiliating. Though YMMV over how much this allegory applies to the somali fraud situation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You're partially correct, but imo also far too naive about the way this is extremely prone to first devolve into disinformation "for the good of the people", and then as the students, being people, come newly into your field believing that bullshit and the disinfo becomes the obvious truth, how could you disagree? Even noticing that there are so many older scientist secretly believing things they've been told all their life are evil and wrong will, if anything, strengthen their conviction.


In the hard sciences, if people do this right , they're very open "this is a simplification, I don't believe this & it's not true, but for the lay-person it's close enough that it's better than knowing nothing". But once politics is involved, I've personally talked with scientists in my field who defended a position in public with such conviction that I was genuinely convinced that they believe it. Until only much later in a pub after a pint in a private round they admitted that no, they actually think as well the counter-position has the better evidence, but it is getting abused by his political enemies, so to weaken them he has to bring it down, and as a scientist in the field he is well-positioned to do so. This works for a while and might seem reasonable as a single person, but it (rightfully) erodes trust in science as whole.


Once you see the public as epistemic enemy, you honestly should excuse yourself and stop being a science communicator; Arguably you aren't one anymore already anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"my father taught me, so that's what I do" is so extremely conservative-coded you might as well say you voted Trump. That's at least my impression among PMCs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Claude Pro, or does it need to be Max?


I've been using AI for asking questions, researching basic infos and summarizing them, for boilerplate texts, that kind of stuff. The free version so far has been good enough for the most part. We also want to save money, so I'm a bit reluctant to have a new expense on my list.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Afaik this is a major reason why people were not very worried about the cratering birth rates for decades - the ultra high birth rates of the recent past were a result of this massively reduced infant mortality and clearly unsustainable, there already was a scare about overpopulation shortly beforehand and so it seemed like a needed corrective. A short-lived undershoot stemming from an overcorrection is also quite normal, and due to the nature of the issue "short-lived" is measured in generation time.