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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 13, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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was there any existing discussion of Bryan Caplan's new project "Dont be a feminist"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=d4C-Rz3Wv5c ?

I watched it, it's fairly short and enjoyable, but it's almost entirely preaching to the choir, I find. There wasn't really any support for helping de-program the other side. (The factoid about prison rape was new and interesting for me though).

Most interesting was the very first slide, where he says the dictionary definition of a feminist ("wanting to men and women to be treated equally") is wrong, in that almost all men agree with this, but only 1/3 of men consider themselves feminists. He instead proposes (paraphrasing) feminists think that "men are treated unfairly better than women" and notes that essentially all feminists would agree with it, but most non-feminists (including ones who agree with the dictionary definition) would disagree.

The rest is kind of the classic stuff -- men die on the job more, are affected by violent crime more, commit suicide more, the pay gap is BS, the "women are wonderful" effect etc. He notes how no one sees anything wrong with the Ukraine not letting any men between 16-60 out, which is a powerful contemporary datapoint.

It's also nice that he notes he wrote this book for his daughter, because he sees the feminist ideology leading to self-pity, antipathy, and injustice, which he sees as bad, and also that he briefly explores why he thinks it so popular, which he sympathetically phrases as "If so many people disagree with me, why do I think I'm right?"