@jake comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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jake 8d ago · Edited 8d ago

I wrote on this about a year ago here, but I was replying to a Friday comment on Sunday and it found few eyes.

I'm reposting it because short of cataclysmic war or calamity, what I describe is exactly what will happen.

What's wrong here is the particular equivocation of politics and war. Politics is not equal with war, politics are meant to avert war, but they are equal in that both are about the transferral of power. If we were to assign a sex polarity to the practices, politics would indeed be the feminine method to the masculine method of war.

Beyond that, I can tell you where this divide ends. We'll pass the core of this turmoil, enough to stabilize us as we move into the approach for the singularity.

Around 2030 we'll see the first examples of convincing human simulacra. These will be proofs of the concept but they won't be largely available until later in the decade. Boston Dynamics maintaining their exact rate of advancement will have robots with convincingly human articulation by the mid-30s, especially with AI improving at helping research.

In the 2040s, simulacra will be able to replace a great deal of labor and production of simulacra will become the national industry of whatever country that perfects them. My bias is Japan: they're most poised with the combination of established acumen, workforce and key socioeconomic factors, namely their inverted population pyramid. Low TFR will be neatly solved by simulacra taking over labor. As so-ordered a nation and people as the Japanese, they will implement the necessary policies to begin the country's move toward quasi-post-scarcity. Those few other similarly ordered nations will likewise swiftly adopt simulacra, and as tens of millions are produced by the year, and only increasing, simulacra will quickly become a reasonable household expenditure. I expect by the end of the '40s they will be ubiquitous in every country where they are legal.

For the price of a mid-range car, households will be able to purchase a lifetime of service from a chef-maid-assistant. So average households will acquire simulacra, further increasing demand, and lonely men will also buy them for all obvious reasons. That motivation for purchase will not end with lonely men. "She's a 10 (she's a hotter-version-of-pick-your-hottest-celebrity), but she's a robot" won't last. One of your friends will get one, and you'll interact with it, and even if you're obstinate about "it," eventually it will be her to your mind, because she talks, she laughs, she appears to think, she in all ways seems the part. You'll only know because you know, that won't be enough. It won't matter how they aren't "real" because they will be real enough. All but indistinguishable for the existential question of soul in the machine, and it won't be long before you're not so sure about that, either.

At ubiquity they will end dating. The bottom third of men who can afford them for a start, to half, to I'd expect a Pareto 80%. The man is accustomed to not having children, it's our evolutionary history, it may bother them, it won't stop them. What women say won't matter, a guy might want what only they can offer, but not at the cost, especially not if they've never had that success, and that already increasing population will represent an even greater percentage of the next generation. To put in such effort to settle for someone less attractive, less responsive, more burdensome, more risky, to settle for something human when he can have something machine-perfect. Work, go home, play games until she has dinner ready, watch a movie, fuck, maybe play more games, go to bed. His friends can and will talk shit, his base urges are satisfied, he won't care enough about what they say. His true needs will go unsatisfied and it will be a lifestyle harmful to his soul, but it will be so much easier.

Some women will have them, not many. I'd rather not invoke inceldom, I find the specific slant to their ideas irrelevant here, but it's true men pursue while women are pursued and that imbalance defines dating. The asymmetric effort of dating as a man versus dating as a woman, again the man pursues, he works, he pays; the woman is pursued, she is worked for, she is cared for. The simulacra will thus be unnatural as a thing women acquire as a relational prosthesis; why would she pay for what, for good reason, she gets free? The simulacra will have no being (or so we'll reassure ourselves), can father no children, can offer no increase, can offer no status. Women will have them as the chef-maid-assistant models, maybe even more sometimes, but they won't replace, not in the way they will replace relationships for men.

Harems will re-emerge, they will be the only option for most women, so they will be easier. Between simulacra and harems, female sociopolitical power will collapse. They will lose too much leverage with too many low-status men, while high-status men will each become a little king with his court of concubines who will certainly have no power.

The 2050s will see human gestation in synthetic environments, so clinic-based artificial wombs. Here I don't think that it will take that long for the breakthroughs in tech, instead it will be the economics and social impacts of simulacra that will give incentive to developing the tech. Again I expect Japan to widely adopt, as their already low TFR falls off a cliff from their herbivore men taking to simulacra. They will have a reduced need for a new generation from so much of their labor being automated but I expect there still to be decades between the ubiquity of simulacra and those simulacra reaching the capacity to automate >90% of all labor. This will also be the first sight of the real benefit to the age of simulacra, the offer of stability in overseeing the drastic reduction in human population.

Starting in the 50s or 60s we'll see government regulation on reproduction. It won't be severe because it won't need to be, so anyone who really wants a big family will be able to have one with minimal structural hindrance. It will be simple incentive-based, I've referred to the policy as the "Half-Right to Reproduction." Systemically its purpose will be to halve the population with each generation, it'll work faster than that. Every person will be bestowed with one half-right they can exercise at age of majority. Would-be parents can combine to a whole-right and exchange it for their child's addition to the government dole, UBI, which will also exist. As AI and simulacra come from almost all labor, the newly jobless will need placation else promiseless young men become bored and at-risk for chaos. AI-managed industry, so all goods, pharmaceuticals, medical care, farming, and also advances in 3D printing, will see the cost of goods plummet while their quality peaks. It will become progressively harder for the government to not adopt major socialist practices as capitalism finally begins to "win" in competing itself out of existence. The population can't keep growing in such a system, at least not until we have FTL and a thousand shipyards in Sol. Assuming FTL is possible, which I don't, but I sure hope it is.

Simulacra will play a critical part in stability in keeping men satisfied. Advancements in entertainment, so another 20-30 years of development in video games, the arrival of UBI and the removal of needing to work to live. The population will need to be distracted until most can die childless but "happy enough." Half-rights help this goal, because people can sell their half-rights or buy other's half-rights, all at government exchanges. The exchanges will always buy half-rights, subject to reversible sterilization. A guy will go to a clinic next door to the exchange, maybe incorporated into the exchange, get whatever implant that stops sperm from working, get the cash to order a simulacra, sail into the sunset. Easy.

I don't expect western nations to swiftly automate labor like Japan. We'll need to acclimatize to the idea, begin the inculcation of no-work-to-live in successive generations so that when they're older, or their kids are older, they'll be prepared for not having jobs. With that and the shrinking population, by the turn of the century Western nations will be ready for post-scarcity life. New generations will still be needed in the interim, artificial gestation is pivotal here for the other paradigmatic social change.

As relationships and childbirth are "solved," as countries most adopting simulacra and bespoke children grown in vats enjoy golden ages while their men break productivity records, why would a country not produce as many sons as possible and as few daughters as necessary? There will be outgroups, so the Amish and the like, potentially a new movement of tech-circa-1999, but they will be small, none meaningful political factions, or where meaningful, supportive of the new power structure. I'd also expect a "reserve" population for practical concerns of catastrophe and ovum stocks, but most women will belong to the elite population. This above all is why we will see minimal and then no opposition to sharp sex-demo disparity with the great decline in the population of the human female: with so few, being a naturally born woman will be a position of immense status, inherently aristocratic. They will necessarily be the best of the best. Those chosen, those expressly wanted few. A new nobility, and it will indeed be so easy.

Women will "benefit" first, eventually men will, as again the purpose will be to shrink the entire population. So each generation will more-than-halve itself until the population is at an "acceptable" – at least stable – level. The sex distribution will once again be at parity, and those naturally born biological males will also be inherently aristocratic, as all civilized humans belong to the new nobility.

And all of this will just work. What I describe will happen because it isn't fighting back, it isn't trying to undo anything, it doesn't require conquest over more than a century of culture, it doesn't require recovery from war or calamity. It will work according to slopes and entropy, it will work in congruence with human nature. It will be the easiest path through, so it will just work.

If it's physically possible we'll break the tyranny of the rocket equation and achieve FTL travel. We'll begin spacefaring regardless and when, in however long, man reaches frontier planets to settle and dominate, they'll return to lifestyles us today find familiar. Those humans will begin the real work, of understanding and healing the light scarring on our gestalt soul from the depravity of human civilization, culminating in what was necessary to pass through the 20th and 21st century – with what was necessary to pass the Great Filter.

It didn't have to be this way, now it has to be this way. Or else we're all fucking dead.

Context

Southkraut Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe. jake 8d ago

How much are you willing to bet on this timeline?

HereAndGone jake 8d ago

Work, go home, play games until she has dinner ready, watch a movie, fuck, maybe play more games, go to bed.

Eternal childhood, except ersatz mommy lets you fuck her.

The simulacra will thus be unnatural as a thing women acquire as a relational prosthesis; why would she pay for what, for good reason, she gets free?

If men want the easy girlfriend, why do you think women won't want the easy boyfriend? Always attentive, romantic, spontaneous, does his fair share of the housework and emotional labour, isn't the messy real life guy who requires compromises: "To put in such effort to settle for someone less attractive, less responsive, more burdensome, more risky, to settle for something human when She can have something machine-perfect."

Time share in a high status guy versus a whole robo-boyfriend? Some women may take that deal, but if you think "little kings" will reign over powerless concubines, I suggest you watch some Chinese harem drama series. Men can and will be subtly manipulated in such situations.

as countries most adopting simulacra and bespoke children grown in vats enjoy golden ages while their men break productivity records, why would a country not produce as many sons as possible and as few daughters as necessary?

If AI is doing all the work and all the thinking and all the research and all the planning and all the productivity, why does it matter if the human in notional charge has XY or XX chromosomes? We won't need "ah, but men are more adventurous, more risk-taking, make the big breakthroughs in science" when the AI is super-intelligent and doing all the research work. Link this in with

As AI and simulacra come from almost all labor, the newly jobless will need placation else promiseless young men become bored and at-risk for chaos.

And can you not see that governments may prefer a society comprised of the more tractable half of the population. If young men are chaos risks, then tilt the reproductive balance for more daughters, fewer sons. This also means the harem scenario is more viable, since you will now have fewer men automatically making them more desirable (if having a robo-boyfriend or girlfriend is coded as low-status from the adoption by the lowest third of men as envisioned, then having a real human boyfriend is high-status). Or perhaps women will be happy to have a time share in a real human boyfriend so long as the majority of their needs are being met by their robo-boyfriend.

This may in fact break the socio-economic power of men, since the new society can be truly egalitarian: it doesn't matter if the president is a man or a woman, the real power is with the AI. Women can be just as productive as men, particularly if reproduction is done by artificial wombs etc. No more nine months growing a new human and having to take time off for baby raising! Perhaps, in a majority female society, men will now be the decorative, pampered sex whose purpose is to be charming, attractive, cultured, and raise the status of the woman/women they are accompanying.

One outcome is as likely as the other.

jake HereAndGone 7d ago

Well said.

If men want the easy girlfriend, why do you think women won't want the easy boyfriend?

Because if women prioritized ease in relationships this thread wouldn't exist.

Certainly there will be manipulation and "court drama" but on the country level, look to any Muslim nation that allows harems. It's not that individual women have no power, it's that the group "women" does not comprise a meaningful political bloc. Thus "female sociopolitical power will collapse", not "the wife's sociopolitical power."

This and your point on chaos are very strong observations. It could be that I'm wrong about sex disparity in simulacra interest, and that would significantly change the progression. I could also be wrong about the swiftness of automation and the requirement for human labor. If women are equally interested, all these changes occur so quickly there isn't the span of decades between 2050-2100 where significant amounts of human labor are still required, it would make sense to reduce the male population first. Women are sensible about these things, they'll take quite easily to life in post-scarcity civilization.

But I'm not wrong. The matter of automation isn't one of logistics, it's one of society. We can't flip a switch and become a post-scarcity civilization, we have to prepare for it. We have to draw plans to sunset all those structures based on human labor, and that's all of them. We have to develop the spirit, inculcate to posterity, so they are psychologically prepared for the cessation of the cycle of School -> Career -> Retirement. We have to develop new structures and new politics to accommodate a country where people only work if they want. This means an interim where labor is still required. Some labor automation won't cover for that reason of giving people work, some practical reasons of redundancy, some aesthetic, but wherever there is labor automation can't cover, that is the domain of men.

I'm also not wrong about the sex disparity in use. Clear evidence of biology informing these preferences can be found in the share of US households with children where the mother is the breadwinner and the father is the homemaker: 1% Women don't want to provide, they want to be provided for, deservedly, but this is exactly why simulacra simply cannot offer for women what they can for men. Men aren't attracted to Alexandra Daddario because she's an actress, but we all know why Grace Brassel is with Shane Gillis. It doesn't matter if it's by the time few are working, because attraction isn't really about being provided for either, it's toward the man doing the providing, and how. It's not enough about attentiveness or emotional labor or housework. It's not enough about physical attraction. It is a gestalt thing that a robot cannot achieve with women by fact of its existence. Shall I be more clear? The "relational prostheses" are lesser things, pathetic things, contemptible things women are above, and no enduring attraction may arise from that sort contempt.

In a vacuum, the sex disparity in births could be flipped as you suggest. It makes sense, the inclination to chaos is a powerful argument for reducing the male population. All the way up to when a country that isn't 90% women decides to invade.

HereAndGone jake 6d ago

It's not that individual women have no power, it's that the group "women" does not comprise a meaningful political bloc. Thus "female sociopolitical power will collapse"

Sociopolitical power in harem situations is wielded by being the mother of the heir. Look at Mohammed bin Salman - son of the third wife, so plainly she manoeuvred her way into getting her son made the heir:

He is the eldest of his mother's six children and the eighth child and seventh son of his father.

And Salman's father was the (reputed) twenty-fifth son of his father. The strongest alliances are those between children of the same mother (though of course this does not rule out intra-clan scheming to replace one likely successor with another, which is another theme in Chinese history when you have harems and multiple sons by multiple wives/concubines):

The Sudairi Seven is the commonly used name for a powerful alliance of seven full brothers within the Saudi royal family. They are also sometimes referred to as the Sudairi clan or the Sudairi faction. They are among the forty-five sons of the country's founder, King Abdulaziz. The King had more sons with their mother, Hussa bint Ahmed Al Sudairi, than he did with any of his other wives.

This has been the tradition: the sultan's mother and the sultan's favourite wife/concubine are the women with power, so it's worth scheming to make sure you're either the favourite of the current sultan, or the mother of his heir (best of all, of course, is to be both). That's one reason why monogamy makes for stronger dynastic lines - if there's only one legitimate wife and bastards by favourites, mistresses, or concubines have little to no hope of being in the line of succession, you cut way down on intra-family slaughter over succession (and the Wars of the Roses show how important reducing conflict over heirs is). If you look at the Al-Saud family, the succession bounces around between potential Heirs Presumptive who get replaced (and often imprisoned) as they rise and fall in favour, which means instability and public concern and unrest. By contrast, everyone knows that William is the heir of Charles, and it's not going to be "Charles decides to name one or another of his nephews, nieces, or grandkids as heir then changes his mind and names another".

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