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naraburns  nihil supernum  3mo ago (text post)   6050 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for January 2025

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@George_E_Hale:

@problem_redditor:

@thejdizzler:

@barristan_selmy:

@coffee_enjoyer:

@recovering_rationaleist:

Contributions for the week of December 30, 2024

@Dean:

@naraburns:

@ControlsFreak:

@cjet79:

@Throwaway05:

Contributions for the week of January 6, 2025

@self_made_human:

@jeroboam:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@ArjinFerman:

@jake:

@netstack:

Contributions for the week of January 13, 2025

@gorge:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@faceh:

@hooser:

@Rov_Scam:

Contributions for the week of January 20, 2025

@NelsonRushton:

@WandererintheWilderness:

@Hoffmeister25:

@Dean:

@FCfromSSC:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@naraburns:

Contributions for the week of January 27, 2025

@seven:

@felis-parenthesis:

@NelsonRushton:

@jeroboam:

@Corvos:

@SteveAgain:

@RenOS:

@HonoriaWinchester:

@Rov_Scam:

@Capital_Room:

@gorge:

@Tanista:

@Amadan:

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Even so I can easily see it pushing a lot of people from "Let them die" to "Kill them preemptively." And if that sounds extreme consider that it's the default position in a lot of places.

And if that sounds extreme consider that it's the default position in a lot of places.

Albeit pre-dating HIV. "It was right all along, it just took all but the last 40 out of the ~100,000 years of behaviorally modern human history to prove it" proves too much. And if heterosexual intercourse is itself far too dangerous - clearly, only females should be allowed to live (we could hopefully use embryo selection and stores of frozen sperm, until lab-made sperm is developed) ... as a stop-gap. Since females can still spread STIs to each other, the primary goal of genetic engineering should be to create a new branch of hominids that are instinctively more hygienic than ourselves and innately capable of asexual reproduction.

Albeit pre-dating HIV. "It was right all along, it just took all but the last 40 out of the ~100,000 years of behaviorally modern human history to prove it" proves too much.

It seems to me that you have the argument backward. It was claimed 60 years ago that the previous 100,000 years of accumulated human wisdom about sexuality was fake and retarded and should be discarded in favor of unlimited license. This was done. The result was a more or less immediate collapse in family formation, precipitously declining birth rates, severe and lasting social dysfunction, and an incredibly lethal global pandemic, among other significant social ills. There was also a quiet epidemic of state-sponsered child sexual abuse, but eh, who's counting.

Advocates of the Sexual Revolution claimed it would make everything better. Instead, it has pretty clearly made most things worse in ways that even strict materialist rationalists are having a hard time ignoring.

The sexual revolution was shortly predated by a baby boom, which inflated the apparent effect on TFR (if there was one...), and "nuclear families" are a historical anomaly.

The sexual revolution was shortly predated by a baby boom, which inflated the apparent effect on TFR (if there was one...),

The TFR continued going down and is now below replacement, making whatever point you're trying to make irrelevant.

and "nuclear families" are a historical anomaly.

What are quote marks doing around a term that does not appear a single time in his post? Also, are you actually in favor of bringing back extended families or clan structures, or was this supposed to be a gotcha of some sort?

The TFR continued going down and is now below replacement, making whatever point you're trying to make irrelevant.

Fertility rates are declining globally, including in Muslim countries, so I don't think the sexual revolution was a major factor. (More likely, a secular trend of increasing female autonomy in the West contributed the sexual revolution, just as it contributes to declines in TFR. So far as I'm aware, why the 1945-1960 baby boom was so large in the US is unknown.)

What are quote marks doing around a term that does not appear a single time in his post? Also, are you actually in favor of bringing back extended families or clan structures, or was this supposed to be a gotcha of some sort?

I took the corollary to "It was claimed 60 years ago that the previous 100,000 years of accumulated human wisdom about sexuality was fake and retarded and should be discarded in favor of unlimited license. This was done. The result was a more or less immediate collapse in family formation..." to be that what immediately preceded the sexual revolution was the zenith sexual mores. I'm not advocating a particular family structure, just noting that what immediately preceded the sexual revolution was also anomalous, so this is likely no more true than any other narrative with linear social development.

Fertility rates are declining globally, including in Muslim countries, so I don't think the sexual revolution was a major factor.

So why do you think that within any given country more conservative people reproduce more?

to be that what immediately preceded the sexual revolution was the zenith sexual mores.

Nowhere in the quoted text is it even implied that it was the zenith, and the last 60 years have seen the rejection of much more than the nuclear family in particular, so I really don't understand where your argument is coming from.

So why do you think that within any given country more conservative people reproduce more?

It's paywalled, but Noah Smith wrote an article saying we don't know how to control TFR. In addition to highly religious countries also having secular trends of reducing TFR, I'm hesitant to read too much into within-country correlations with conservative culture, due to the possibility that the correlation isn't stable over the timescales needed to have explanatory value.

Nowhere in the quoted text is it even implied that it was the zenith, and the last 60 years have seen the rejection of much more than the nuclear family in particular, so I really don't understand where your argument is coming from.

What I meant was that it was my interpretation of what the comment implied and one counter-example.

due to the possibility that the correlation isn't stable over the timescales needed to have explanatory value.

Countries with long term elevated religiosity regions have long term fertility differentials- eg the Dutch Bible Belt.

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