site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   11359 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I like the way both you and @Amadan are approaching this problem, but as long as we are restructuring society, I propose working from the following first principles:

  1. One goal of family formation is the raising of healthy, resilient, intelligent children.
  2. It is best for children if mothers are not drinking, smoking, or toking. Even caffeine is suspect (although research on caffeine is heavily confounded by mothers who drink coffee also smoking.)
  3. It is best medically for children if they are breastfed to age 1 or so. (Failure to do this leads to improper palete formation (mouthbreathing, dental issues), and greater incidence of leaky gut.)
  4. It is best psychologically for children if they are cared for by their parents nearly fulltime to age 3 or so. (Failure to do this leads to ADHD and attachment disorders.)
  5. It is best for children if they are raised by their biological parents (non-biological parents have a much higher rate of child abuse) and their families are stable.
  6. Women are hypergamous, and so stable families will be those in which the father has above-average social status and/or the woman has limited opportunities to meet other men with higher social status.
  7. Men are promiscuous, and so stable families will be those in which the man has limited opportunities to meet other women.
  8. Overall biological fertility is dropping precipitously (-2% per year), and it looks like the drop is due to environmental factors (food contaminants, screens, poor sleep), especially exposure to estrogenic compounds in utero around gestational age 6-8 weeks.

I propose the following interventions for maximizing fertility and child wellbeing:

  1. As a society, we desperately need to re-taboo drinking, smoking, toking, and adultery.
  2. We need to ban estrogenic compounds everywhere the modern consumer is exposed to them. (Which means in everything from plastic food containers and airborne pesticides to polyester carpeting.) We should take a precautionary approach to new compounds rather than the "generally recognized as safe" approach.
  3. Marriage should be encouraged and divorce should be strongly discouraged while there are minor children in the home.
  4. Women should be forbidden from working (or part-time WFH only) while they have children ages 0-3. I agree with @Amandan that this should be funded by fathers.
  5. We should re-segregate society so that married men and women are no longer exposed to temptations outside of the home. (Which includes gender-segregated social circles, workplaces, and social media.)
  6. Married workers should be discouraged from jobs involving heavy travel.
  7. Biological fathers should be forced into shotgun weddings. Single mothers should be shamed. Widows and widowers should be supported on the public purse, but forbidden from marrying/dating while they have minor children.
  8. Fathers should be paid more for their work to compensate for interventions (3) and (6). This should be paired with commensurate increase in responsibiliites.

Overall, I think that interventions 4-6 mean that married women are going to be doing more WFH jobs, married men are going to be doing more field jobs, and the unmarried will be doing more travelling.

Of course, this has no chance in hell of being a popularly selected policy. The game-theoretic self-interest of hypergamous women is to vote for social support so they can have more babies out of wedlock with cads (paid for by taxpayers), no matter how much having babies out of wedlock harms the children.

In order to counteract this failure mode, I suggest the following initial (moderately sneaky) political platform:

  1. uniform paternity testing in hospitals (can be mandated under testing for genetic diseases)
  2. expand maternity leave to 3 yrs from the birth of the child at half- or one-third pay (probably quite popular?)
  3. legalize sex-based segregation and discrimination in the workplace
  4. reduce economic support to "single mothers"
  5. increase child support burden based on (1), if married
  6. build more mini (sub-1000 sqft) starter homes, depressing housing prices to make childrearing more affordable
  7. gradually license more doctors, nurses, and midwives, depressing medical wages to make childbearing more affordable
  8. make divorce legal only in the case that it serves the best interests of the child, and make divorce cases self-represented like small claims court to remove the economic incentives of lawyers to promote divorce. Compensate existing divorce lawyers with large sums for their early retirement.

The effect of (1) and (4) will be to make life harder for cheaters and cads. The effect of (2) will be to depress hiring of mothers, and the effect of (3) will be to raise wages for men and limit mixing of men and women outside of the home. (1) and (5) will increase the prevalence of "shotgun" weddings. (6) and (7) are attacking cost disease to make marriage more affordable. (8) is to reduce the rate of divorces to those that are really necessary for child wellbeing.

As a society, we desperately need to re-taboo drinking, smoking, toking, and adultery.

At least all but toking are positively associated with the creation of children. (Maybe toking too)

We should take a precautionary approach to new compounds rather than the "generally recognized as safe" approach.

A precautionary approach means stagnation and ultimately being defeated by those who do not take it.

We should re-segregate society so that married men and women are no longer exposed to temptations outside of the home. (Which includes gender-segregated social circles, workplaces, and social media.)

So people who get married are required to lose half their social circle? Since if we have segregation BEFORE marriage, it's going to be a bit hard to make marriages come about.

You're going after the wrong problems. It isn't smoking, drinking, or adultery which is holding down TFR. Probably isn't estrogenic compounds either. TFR was higher before prohibition when the saloon culture existed, and higher during the 50s-70s when people smoked like chimneys.

higher during the 50s-70s when people smoked like chimneys.

Which is really funny because (if I recall correctly) there's at least some evidence that nicotine is not great for fertility; if smoking was wide(r)spread today it would absolutely be Culprit #1 for reduced fertility.

Nicotine may be bad for fertility-per-sex-act, but I'll bet smoking is good for sex-act-per-unit-time. And drinking is good for increasing number of sex acts (up to a point, whiskey dick helps no one) and skipping contraception.

I also wonder if nicotine ends up being a net win for the former (and the latter) over a large population over time due to its tendency to keep smokers thin.

Not a nicotine user myself and wouldn't encourage it. But I think we are (as a collective society, or, if you prefer, the state is) often shortsighted in perceiving the effects our actions will take. Which makes stuff like "boosting TFR" very tricky.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats