TwiceHuman
3d ago
I have four theories myself:
1: People are getting older on average. As the ratio of young people go down, more careful attitudes dominate society. The average age of internet users probably doubled since 2008, and teenagers are much more accepting of sexy 18-year-olds than 30-year-old users are.
2: Womens social value goes down rapidly after the age of 25. They're upset about this, so they hope to change socities standards so that men are forced to choose them over younger women. Your "society hostility towards men" fits in here nicely.
3: Leftist moralizers. Moralizers are ruining society in general, every new law and social attitude is basically "This was okay in the past, but now it's wrong and we need to stop it". The only attitudes I see going in the opposite direction are those related to hedonism (legalization of weed, porn, psychedelics, gay marriage, etc.). While moralizers are ruining society globally, age-gaps are more accepted in Asia (I mean Japan and the surrounding countries, I don't care for other definitions of 'Asia'), which is more traditional.
4: The right hates those in power, calling them pedophiles. The left accuses the right of pedophilia, not because there's signs of it, but because it's the most damaging accusation you can currently use against another person (now that 'nazi' and 'racist' don't cut it anymore). The left attacks anime, saying it sexualizes school girls, and the right attack transsexuals, saying that they're pedophiles and that they want to corrupt children.
The consequences of this is that everyone hates pedophiles and vigilantly looks for signs of it, while also being terrified of associating with anything which might look like pedophilia. And the average person now thinks pedophilia includes sexual attraction to the 13-18 age bracket, even though it does not. So the most neurotic of them think being attracted to 20-year-olds is "almost pedophilia".
Some open-minded(?) leftists tried to get pedophilia to be accepted, with their new "MAP" concept. But due to what I assume is the above reasons, it didn't gain enough traction to sway public opinion. It may still be possible in the future, though. Laws governing porn keep getting stricter as porn is becoming more normalized, so such developments aren't self-contradicting.
TwiceHuman
9d ago
There's many forms of strength. Pressure, competition and necessity makes one (people and systems alike) stronger in the domain in which it matters. At first, physical power was important. Then intellectual power was important. Today, soft power is important. Big muscles won't get you far in life if you have an IQ of 80, and an IQ of 140 won't get you far in life if you can't make friends. If ones goal is to defeat enemies, one should optimize for that. The Buddha was a great person in some ways, but I could probably beat him in a boxing match. If the Japanese had focused more on technology than on self-improvement, they could have won. Japan optimized for a local fitness, America for a more global fitness.
From what I see, your conversation could be titled "was Nietzsche correct or not?". He was right about great people in a biological as well as aesthetic sense. However, the inhuman is stronger than the human, by far. The strongest technology wins. Morality, taste, wisdom, spirituality, resiliance, etc. can influence the strength of humans as a multiplier, but the strength of people barely matters any. A gun is worth more than 20 years of martial arts training.
You're correct because the utility of technology is exponential, and because of something which has to do with statistical laws, asymptotic limits, and game theory. Suffering is important for greatness when only humanity matters. Spoiler: The ultimate victor will be some kind of grey goo, and the particulars of that grey goo won't matter.
I have to agree with your best-fit model. It's not schooling, but exposure and necessity. Primarily in regards to the internet, if my own experience generalizes as well as I think
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