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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31782 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Another aspect of the article I found noteworthy was that the Collinses (who are Jewish)

Where did you get that? My reading was that, as mentioned, Simone is 1/4 of Jewish origin (ie. has a Jewish grandmother), but I would guess that if there were more Jewish relatives they'd have mentioned them too.

I've been thinking about this article a lot. To some degree, the whole situation comes across as one family's attempt to grapple with the fact that they've been a part of a subculture - rationalists - that almost often seems to price being weird and doing things differently from the normies - and at the same time they've been struck with one of the most normie human emotions of all of them, ie. the wish to have children. As such, it would not be enough to just have kids like a normie, you have to find some sort of a justification for acting normal - with the whole pro-natalist shtick being this justification.

At the same time, of course, as many parts of the article spell out, they are weird as hell. Moreso, their specific motivation is "filling the Earth with little Collinses" - ie. presumably people who would share their offbeat norms and values. In a way, it's similar to one of the AI alignment problems - sure, it might be good to teach AI some values and such so it doesn't destroy or harm the humanity, but at the same time, people who tend to be the most concerned about AI aligmnment and Skynet possibilities are also often deeply, deeply weird, and their values often come across as blue-and-orange morality to many others. Are those the types we would want to be in charge of AI alignment? Or the continuation of the future generations of societies, for that matter.

Of course, traditionally natali For instance, in Finland, the traditionally famously natalist religious subculture are the Laestadians, a strongly conservative Lutheran group operating nominally inside the state church but in actuality forming their own insular communities, particularly strong in the North of Finland.

Laestadians and groups like them were a part of why the Finnish fertility rates were healthyish, somewhere close to 2, until 2010s. It's possible that Laestadian communities have been hit by secularization like many other similar groups, and this might have played a role in why Finnish fertility rates have crashed since then, which of course can be predicted to lead to societal problems in the future.

On the other hand, anecdotes from people growing up in Laestadian areas or having to do with them in other ways tend to be about how Laestadian families only do business deals with each other, use their local political power to offer municipal deals to each other, and Laestadian kids tell the other kids in schools about how those other kids are hellbound for not having been born Laestadian (it's not an easy movement to join). These comport with what I've seen, in this form and elsewhere, with non-Mormons growing in Utah or people living in Hasidic Jewish areas and not being Hasidic Jewish. Of course, the problems of separation and insularity are also a common discussion vis-a-vis strongly Islamic immigrant communities in Europe and elsewhere.

I imagine that there's a number of people who might see natalism, generally, as a positive thing, but also know that subcultures that are actually strongly natalist are often quite such that having those specific groups being natalist might not be ideal for the others. As such, if rationalist natalism of this sort took off, well, then you'd have potential for another community of people with non-mainstream values, who have already shown that their little communities are suitable for business wheeling-and-dealing (ie. FTX) and for trying to make an effect in the society (EA and, of course, FTX). Maybe they will be the next secular Laestadians (of course, more likely is that their kids will simply drop off this grand mission and do something else).

It seems reasonable that the same things which make people high natality make them clannish and xenophobic. It also seems possible that laestadians are less than thrilled about sending their kids to those schools, and tell them to behave that way as a partial antidote to what they identify as indoctrination and bad influences, and they would make better neighbors in a society that allowed them to shelter their children without hostility.

I've been thinking about this article a lot. To some degree, the whole situation comes across as one family's attempt to grapple with the fact that they've been a part of a subculture - rationalists - that almost often seems to price being weird and doing things differently from the normies - and at the same time they've been struck with one of the most normie human emotions of all of them, ie. the wish to have children. As such, it would not be enough to just have kids like a normie, you have to find some sort of a justification for acting normal - with the whole pro-natalist shtick being this justification.

I think that's part of it. But I think it's also the "low IQ/high IQ" meme template of "the best people should just have more kids". Their recent post on the EA forum is a lot more well-thought out than a post-hoc justification for hormonal instincts. It was poorly received by the EA community who correctly identified it as getting very close to the train of dissident right-wing thinking, although I mean that as a compliment rather than a criticism.

Yeah they are weird as hell, but I like it. Part of what I dislike about Effective Altruism is it seems like a fancy way for rationalists to just be boring liberals- longtermists with an egalitarian hangover, and they can't quite escape the orbit of those liberal presuppositions. This is especially evident in the comments of the EA forum:

Moreover, it seems to me that one of the core values of effective altruism is that of impartiality― giving equal moral weight to people who are distant from me in space and/or time. The kind of essentialist and elitist rhetoric common among people who concern themselves with demographic collapse seems in direct opposition to that value; if you think a key priority of our time is ensuring the right people have children, especially if your definition of "the right people" focuses on elite and wealthy people in Western countries, I doubt that we have compatible notions of what it means to do the most good.

and:

The main reason for the post is not to start a discussion on whether or not the Collins' brand of pronatalism is appropriate or a logical conclusion to longtermism. I already have a fairly settled view on this, and if it's the case that we sit here and discuss the merits of this type of pronatalism and suggest that it is a natural conclusion to longtermism, I'm simply going to reject longtermism.

There is nothing about longtermism that requires "impartiality". Longtermism is nominally about civilizational trajectory, not egalitarianism (at least it should be).

The Collinses are trying to start a fertility cult. They have escaped orbit and their wacky adventures are going in the right direction from my view.

There is a long history of fertility cults. Arguably all religion, and politics for that matter, could be interpreted through the lens of different implementations of fertility cults. The Collins cult is myopic and not something I would support, but it's thinking in the right direction.

Of course, the problems of separation and insularity are also a common discussion vis-a-vis strongly Islamic immigrant communities in Europe and elsewhere.

The Collins cult seems to be aiming for insularity, but it doesn't have to be a feature of any theoretical solution. The cult of Apollo is referenced by some in the DR as a breeding model which facilitated eugenic mate selection, and it was the center of many aspects of public life.

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