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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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What are examples of irrationality in these discussions to you?

Instead of talking about a hypothetical dismissal, please actually explain the grounds on which you want to dismiss it yourself.

I'll be happy to, but I must also note that the dismissal would absolutely take place (and that you know it would), because the non-rationality of the discourse is part of our conversation. If you want a non-hypothetical example, just look at the conversation in this thread, and note the amount of people that don't even bother questioning OP's evidence, putting forward arguments that are later refuted with evidence, but not changing their mind, etc. This sort of stuff happens all the time, has always happened, and will continue to happen. At some point we should just come clean and admit that the conversation we're having is not based on reason.

Usual objection: coordination problem.

We ban shit all the time, and you don't need a dictatorship for it. The EU basically forced retarded cookie banners on the world, so they can force porn sites back into the underground as well.

how do you stop people from defecting to a country that doesn't participate in the bans, and that country subsequently curbstomping yours?

I'm not convinced this is even a realistic threat. Who is going to leave behind their house, job, and family, because they're not allowed to goon and/or doomscroll on a mobile device?

Uh, it depends on what exactly you define the problem to be. Do you want people to report happiness/satisfaction of a cluster of needs that could be summarised as "companionship", or do you want people to pair up?

The latter. If I wanted to maximize reports of happiness/satisfaction, I'd be hooking people on heroin, and ensuring they answer the survey while high.

To a skeptic, this exchange may be isomorphic to something like:

Tribal elder: It is a problem that nobody sacrifices to the grain gods anymore, but you progressives will never acknowledge that there might be a problem there because there is no progressive solution to it.

Progressive(?): Well, there's a perfectly progressive solution. We just have to build up a fertiliser industry and develop industrial farming, so there will never be a shortage of grain again.

Aren't you the tribal elder and me the progressive in this scenario? I'm the one insisting the goal is reflective of material reality, while you're the one pushing for a simulacrum with no connection to it.

Anyway, this only proves my thesis. Either your example is reflective of our case - two people talking about two different issues, and the progressive is more than happy to chime in, because he has a progressive solution to a progressive issue - after it's been reframed to be about something else (grain production, rather than the originally raised decline of religion). Or - let's assume the Elder was actually worried about a potential famine - he's happy to talk about it because there is a progressive solution on offer.

In my entire social bubble, tracking from early graduate school if not earlier, there are few signs of "romance recession"

Like I said, not a rational conversation. This argument would be immediately dismissed if it was used to argue for something you disagree with, and you know it.

Instead of talking about a hypothetical dismissal, please actually explain the grounds on which you want to dismiss it yourself. I don't see anything obviously wrong with it

You really don't see an issue with the bit I quoted? You'd accept an argument like "in my geographical bubble there's few signs of 'global warming'"?

variants like "$country will be majority-Muslim in a few years even if we stop immigration now" are structurally exactly the same thing deployed to right-wing ends.

Not exactly. Sure, it's possible that resistence to anti-natalism will be passed down, but then again it's also possible that it won't, so you're basically saying "we might recover or not" and bring no new definition to the table. And even if recovery does occur, your argument offers no insight into what such a world will look like, and whether we should embrace or avoid it.

Do you think that one can be dismissed too, or are Muslims uniquely capable of receiving the boons of natural selection?

I actually think Muslims in Europe are just as susceptible to progressive anti-natalism as Europeans, they might still end up the majority because of different starting points for the trends, but I'm not in favor of naive extrapolation of the present state.

I'm not convinced this is even a realistic threat. Who is going to leave behind their house, job, and family, because they're not allowed to goon and/or doomscroll on a mobile device?

Many emigrate from places such as Russia because they were merely afraid that at some point the nuts will get screwed tight enough that they won't be allowed to doomscroll what they want and goon to what they want to on their mobile devices. Or ban being gay, or ban talking about being gay, or do a number of other things the young view as backwards and retarded.

It is not very pronounced in Russia because emigrating to the first world from the second world is hard. The other way around seems like a much easier choice.

Many emigrate from places such as Russia because they were merely afraid that at some point the nuts will get screwed tight enough that they won't be allowed to doomscroll what they want and goon to what they want to on their mobile devices. Or ban being gay, or ban talking about being gay, or do a number of other things the young view as backwards and retarded.

No one, and I mean absolutely no one, emigrates out of Russia for that reason. They do it for the money. Also it's not a "at some point" thing over there, these things are already banned.

It does not appear that your knowledge on Russian emigration is enough to justify your absolute confidence in such a claim as "absolutely no one". Or to put it more bluntly, you really should know better than to say something like that which is pretty much 100% guaranteed to be wrong.

As for "those things are already banned", they were not banned a few years ago, and yet more things weren't a few more years ago, and yet more aren't banned yet but there's talk of it. There was ideologically-tinted emigration for all those years.

I'll venture I wild guess I have better knowledge of emigration out of Eastern Europe that exceeds yours, given that I am an Eastern European emigrant.

I was being bombastic, but ideological emigration is not a thing on any statistically significant scale. I suppose you can make the argument that a country might get it's ass kicked if the ideological emigrants are von Neumans and von Brauns, but even that rests on many assumptions of dubious quality.

I'll grant you have better knowledge of your personal cohort of emigrants, but so far you have not shared how that extrapolates, and in fact are being vague enough that it could be any other country than Russia and any time period within the last 30 years. Needless to say I do not claim that the ratio of those looking for money vs. those looking for freedom of speech is the same in 2000s Estonia and 2020s Russia.

I am not aware of many emigrants from Russia who did it for money and did not bring their family, so your argument about family, job and home hardly applies.

It's easy to dismiss the anxiety-wracked youths as someone who don't really impact the country's economy upon leaving. But I'm not convinced that even the money-targeting STEMlords' decision is completely unaffected by ideological differences. Seems like there'd be less friction in moving for a 100% raise in spending power/salary if the destination country is less restrictive on your habits than your home country, and vice versa.

Additionally, the more you restrict websites registered in your country without outright hard-firewalling yourself away from the world, the more people will just stick to foreign websites through VPN rather than developing your own infosphere.

and in fact are being vague enough that it could be any other country than Russia and any time period within the last 30 year

Sorry for being vague, but I'm a little paranoid. For what it's worth you're right my connections to Russia are a bit distant (second cousin tier), bit I do have them, it's also true that it's been a while since moved (but it's more 15-ish years than 30)

It's easy to dismiss the anxiety-wracked youths

We've had Russians living in the west that got canceled for not condemning Putin, do you think their anxiety, and assurances that they moved out for ideological reasons, might have something to do with that?

Seems like there'd be less friction in moving for a 100% raise in spending power/salary if the destination country is less restrictive on your habits than your home country, and vice versa.

You never talked to a westerner that moved to China? I've never heard one of them mention restrictive government as a factor in their decision. Also, I think it's completely wrong to call western government and society less restrictive. They might be more encouraging of degeneracy, but they definitely do not leave you alone to do your own thing, even when you're not harming anyone.

Additionally, the more you restrict websites registered in your country without outright hard-firewalling yourself away from the world, the more people will just stick to foreign websites through VPN rather than developing your own infosphere.

Sure, I'm fine with that. I don't mind people accessing porn through bespoke darkweb gates, I just don't want companies like pornhub and onlyfans operating in broad daylight,

Sorry for being vague, but I'm a little paranoid. For what it's worth you're right my connections to Russia are a bit distant (second cousin tier), bit I do have them, it's also true that it's been a while since moved (but it's more 15-ish years than 30)

This is fair, I'm not asking for a biography, just a bit of context.

We've had Russians living in the west that got canceled for not condemning Putin, do you think their anxiety, and assurances that they moved out for ideological reasons, might have something to do with that?

I'm more familiar with the Russians who never needed to be cowed into condemning Putin by canceling because they were doing that back in Russia, with great enthusiasm, and were anxious because of potential retaliation from the Russian government, not the Western blob. There are a few emigrants I personally know who have voiced relief in private after moving out. Admittedly, I also know someone who moved out for money, and then came back when living in Russia offered more money.

Also, I think it's completely wrong to call western government and society less restrictive. They might be more encouraging of degeneracy, but they definitely do not leave you alone to do your own thing, even when you're not harming anyone.

True, but it's a different kind of restrictive. One could even argue prospiratorial restriction by "society" is, if anything, more natural and easier to roll with than arbitrarily-tyrannical restriction from top to bottom by faceless bureaucrats and cops.

I just don't want companies like pornhub and onlyfans operating in broad daylight,

I think Russia as a state will be worse off after formally kicking out all the platforms that were hosting badspeak and not having a big enough slice of the internet to compensate locally. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.

I'm more familiar with the Russians who never needed to be cowed into condemning Putin by canceling because they were doing that back in Russia, with great enthusiasm, and were anxious because of potential retaliation from the Russian government, not the Western blob.

Sure, if someone's an actual activist, they're not going to have a lot of fun over there. Possibly even without activism, just having an anti-regime opinion will get you roughly the same reaction as saying something politically incorrect in the west.

True, but it's a different kind of restrictive. One could even argue prospiratorial restriction by "society" is, if anything, more natural and easier to roll with than arbitrarily-tyrannical restriction from top to bottom by faceless bureaucrats and cops.

I don't know about that. Authoritarians tend to demand fairly basic professions of loyalty, rather than changing your understanding of what a woman is, or that you think the Star Wars sequels are good. I find the former far more predictable, and easier to roll with than the latter.

I think Russia as a state will be worse off after formally kicking out all the platforms that were hosting badspeak and not having a big enough slice of the internet to compensate locally. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Cracking down on wrongthink didn't seem to affect western governments. Arguably Elon buying Twitter and allowing wrongthink threw much of a wrench into their work than and second-order effects of them quashing dissent.

Also, keep in mind that I was only talking about banning online dating, pornography, and prostitution. It's like I said in the other comment, western governments ban things all the time, and no one decries that as authoritarianism. We ban the sale of illicit drugs or online gambling, and while there are people arguing these things should be legal, I somehow don't see much handwringing over supposedly liberal countries that choose criminalize them.