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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27979 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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New week is here, it is time for some culture war (and culture war by other means) news, news not concerning plebeian ball games, aspiring upper class winter games, or top elite human capital tropical island games.

1/ From Demography is Destiny files

It seems world's TFR as a whole is below replacement by now. It is just rough estimate from highly questionable data by anonymous xitter demography nerds, possibly the inflection point already happened few years ago.

What is certain that the exponential growth that began in early 1700's (due to potato, maize and wise leadership of European and Manchu statesmen of the time) is finally over. The line leveled up and will start going down.

Whether it is matter for mourning or celebration, is up to you.

2/ From Elite Human Capital files

Even the most elite human capital is made of flesh and blood(so far) and all flesh must perish.

How billionaires die?

TL;DR: The lessons are: if you are a billionaire, avoid choppers, it is not worth it. Also, do not be a woman.

3/ From Cold War geopolitics files

Cuba is on the ropes, strangled by intensified US blockade, and, unlike in the past, no help is coming.

It is clear now that Venezuelan operation was about regime change in Cuba.

Politically speaking, it can be Donald's crowning achievement.

Marco Rubio will have his revenge, Red tribe boomers get to enjoy one final triumph over dirty commies before they expire (imagine Donald Trump personally tearing down statues of Fidel and Che in Havana just before the midterms), the remaining old style leftists are humiliated one more time. Cuban people gain freedom and democracy (whether Mexico, Colombia or Haiti style is to be seen), ICE finally gets to round up Cubans and return them home. Everyone wins.

4/ From South Asia files

Resistance in Baluchistan embraces grandma power, and is on the roll.

One struggle against colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism and ageism.

Whether real or PR, it is interesting they think this particular PR is needed. It could be another case of provincials being slightly out of touch with Current Year(TM) zeitgeist, or it could be prescient vision that in negative population growth world, the elderly will be expendable and disposable meat (as we already see in East Europe).

5/ From Eastern European files

Most high-level assassination attempt of the current East European unpleasantness. The target was lieutenant general Vladimir Stepanovich Alekseyev

He seems to be IRL action movie hero, who successfully fought the assassin after being shot in the back twice (while the assassin seems to be boomer who was using gun for the first time in his life)

6/ Gamer affairs + more Eastern European current events files

Most oppressed people in the world, the gamers, are fighting back.

16 years old Muscovite Artem killed one Alexey Belyaev deputy head of Roskomnadzor, Russian media and internet censorship agency. There is severe media blackout about this issue, as if someone was worried.

Xitter anonymous shitposter reactions are overwhelmingly positive. Zoomer gamers are strongly Kulak pilled. As Kulak predicted.

From pure technical point of view, compared with previous event, the difference is palpable.

Lone Zoomer with knife and grudge >>>>> Boomer with gun working for big three letter organization for promise of big payoff. (only mistake Artem made was letting to be taken alive to be raped and tortured for the rest of his life, but no one is perfect)

The Age of Boomers is over. The Time of the Zoomer has come.

16 years old Muscovite Artem killed one Alexey Belyaev deputy head of Roskomnadzor, Russian media and internet censorship agency.

The poor man doesn't even have his own Wiki page.

Yes, Alexey Belyaev is going to be quickly forgotten.

"A Roskomnadzor representative responded to journalists' inquiries by saying he "does not know anyone by that name."

He will not be celebrated as hero, he will not get state burial and posthumous medal.

The system really wants to sweep this thing under the rug ASAP, really does not give the plebes idea that state bureaucrats are also people made of flesh and blood with names, faces and adresses. People who sign up for Roskomnadzor and similar jobs are there for well paid work in comfy office, heroic death for the motherland is not part of the deal.

Resistance in Baluchistan embraces grandma power, and is on the roll.

You got anything that doesn't look like AI-generated photos to back this up?

Whether Baluchi fighting grannies are real is of secondary importance (there is combat footage on Baluchi telegram channels, but we know it can be easily faked or staged).

My point was that Balochistan Liberation Army presents in their propaganda sending grannies to fight as something heroic and admirable.

It looks like AI slop to me, but Baluchistan really has been heating up over the last few months.

Well, I can always use some ammo in my contention with Amadan over Gen X older women activism. Gen X is old enough (just about) to be grannies, so go Gen X Baluchistani revolting grannies! 😁

My gen x parents are grandparents. Of little kids, but still.

Gen X is old enough (just about) to be grannies

I know (personally) at least one Millennial granny and she isn’t even white trash or anything.

I just wonder what the 'first deputy head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU) since 2011' was doing 'in a residential building near the Volokolamsk Highway', without bodyguards, presumably.

According to unverified and unverifiable internet rumors, he was there visiting his mistress.

I don't necessarily agree with the 'unverifiable' part as I think it's conceivable that the authorities will maybe clarify this, but otherwise this theory makes sense.

Standing a long way from the windows, presumably.

Living there? It's an upper-middle class part of Moscow. Or are you suggesting he was seeing a woman?

I'm no urbanist but the description 'a residential building near the Volokolamsk Highway (part of the Moscow Ring Road)' somehow does not sound to me like a cozy upper-middle class neighborhood. But anyway, what I am suggesting is that security appeared to be lax and the location chosen by the assassin is a bit suspicious.

(part of the Moscow Ring Road)

This part was written by someone who has no idea where this happened. Here's the street view. It's a new condo finished three years ago, just five stations away from the central business district, next to some good parks, practically across the road from the central military hospital.

It's a little grim that even senior government officials live right on a six lane freeway. But at least ВИНЛаБ is easily accessible.

Zero traffic lights between this house and the Kremlin, baby!

Are you saying that these guys can't just turn the lights green?

Of course not, he's not some bigwig that gets his own motorcade.

Russia is not quite at the level of Day of the Oprichnik.

Thanks for pointing that out. These are skyscrapers.

It occurs to me that to Americans this might still not read as upper-middle class. They would be looking for something like villas with large gardens and 3m tall hedgerows blocking outside views in a car-only neighbourhood, and certainly no parks, stations, big roads or hospitals anywhere in ear- or eyeshot. Perhaps more similar to a nouveau riche dacha settlement, in Russian terms.

Most high-level assassination attempt of the current East European unpleasantness. The target was lieutenant general Vladimir Stepanovich Alekseyev

He seems to be IRL action movie hero, who successfully fought the assassin after being shot in the back twice (while the assassin seems to be boomer who was using gun for the first time in his life)

Is it possible that this is all some elaborate Russian plot? War hero gets shot 3 times in the back, but lives and fights off his assassin bare-handed. They blame it on the Ukrainians. Makes for great propaganda value. (I'm probably biased because I've been reading Tom Clancy spy novels recently so Maskirovka is on my brain. The Russians are always doing this sort of thing in his books.)

...

It's a bit of a stretch to call him a 'war hero' in the everyday sense of the word.

Everything is possible. Another possibility is Ukrainian infighting. There's a coalition that really wants the war to continue: groups funded by the EU, Dems and GOP neocons, armchair nationalists, Ukrainian MIC. There's a coalition that really wants the war to stop: Trumpists, regular businessmen, populist opposition, closeted pro-Russians.

If the peace talks really reached the point where the purely symbolic (but still incredibly contentious) question of the rest of Donbass was the only remaining one, then Trump successfully pressuring Zelensky to accept the loss of it would be a real possibility. Assassinating a GRU general when his superior was in charge of the talks would be a good way to sabotage them by sowing distrust. Let Budanov lose face and explain whether he's lost control over the various alphabet agencies or is just duplicitous.

Ukraines best fortifications are all in the rest of the Donbas, so it is in no way a purely symbolic issue. Also, their whole strategy is to atrit the Russians by playing defense, so every meter of land is valuable because they can make the Russians pay in blood for it. If there was any reason to trust the Russians not to just resume the war after being given the Donbas, the Ukrainians would probably be willing to do that, but there isn’t, so giving it up without a fight is massively unpopular in Ukraine.

...

I’ve heard the opposite. I can’t understand that video, but other sources I can find all claim half a million Ukrainian casualties not dead. This claims 1.2 million Russian casualties, which would make it a bit over 2 Russian casualties per Ukrainian. https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine (and the ratio of those casualties is higher because it’s hard to medivac people on the assault in this war.

There are of course lots of people willing to lie on both sides, so I could be wrong, but it doesn’t really make sense to me that Russians would be taking fewer casualties than the Ukrainians. This is not maneuver warfare. Attacking is brutal under these conditions, and the Russians keep doing it. The side that is deliberately using disposable troops having fewer deaths just doesn’t pass the smell test. Also, the fact that the Ukrainians have been holding the line so long just doesn’t seem plausible if they were taking such bad trades.

You should strongly consider the possibility that you have been consuming propaganda. I know that I have, because all of the information about the war is propaganda. Do a little first principal reasoning about the nature of the war to see what seems reasonable to decide which propaganda to put stock in.

...

The Russians aren't storming head on. They are semi surrounding fortresses and then droning the Ukrainian logistics. To make matters worse for Ukraine Russia has a clear advantage in air power and in thermobaric MLRS that allow them to pound these fortifications.

Both sides are droning one another’s logistics. This is much harder on the attacking side because going on the assault requires more resources and manpower.

Are you asserting that the Russians are losing fewer men and the Ukrainians?

thermobaric MLRS

Do you have a link? From what I've heard, it's mostly precision-guided glide bombs these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-2

The Russians use it to clear out areas before attack.

It isn't exactly new or sophisticated technology if that is what you're alluding to. The Wehrmacht utilized a rather simplistic launcher system during WW2 already which produced the same devastating effect on enemy infantry.

No, that's not what I'm alluding to. Thermobaric weaponry is well-known, I just don't hear a lot of complaints from the Ukrainians about it.

There's no real reason to storm Ukraine's best fortifications head-on if taking Ukraine is the goal.

I agree. They should sit back and use their glide bomb advantage to just pound away. The Russians keep doing it anyway.

What sense would that make? Russians (the ones that can be reached by staged terrorist attacks on a general, at least) don't seem to need further motivation to continue prosecuting the war; fence-sitters will surely not become more inclined to stay on the fence with further evidence that internal control is weak; everyone who is against them, meanwhile, will be cheering on the attempt and consider it absolutely justified and further proof of Ukrainian pluck and skill. Any general norms against dirty tricks played on enemy leadership were long kicked to the curb by Americans and Israelis.

Killing a high ranking military official isn't terrorism. Either he was killed by the Ukranians, in which case he's a completely legitimate military target, or he was killed by the Russians, in which case it's just their ordinary procedure for replacing high level functionaries.

Killing a high ranking military official isn't terrorism.

Not if you are in a war with them. (Looking at Trump).

Either he was killed by the Ukranians, in which case he's a completely legitimate military target

Sure. However, there are rules against perfidy. Presumably, whoever shot him was not wearing an uniform of Ukrainian armed forces.

Not that I am too upset about it, though. Posing as a civilian in Moscow is unlikely to real civilians there getting killed by mistake. And killing generals is probably the most ethical way to conduct a war there is.

Killing a high ranking military official isn't terrorism. Either he was killed by the Ukranians, in which case he's a completely legitimate military target

Unless Agent Boomer was dressed in proper Ukrainian military uniform, it was long established war crime anyway. Not that there is anything wrong with it, and not that it does matter in the current year/century/millenium.

  • And this, like most war crimes, wasn't terrorism.
  • I really don't care. Killing Russians is based as fuck. (I'd argue that the defending side in a war isn't morally beholden to respect the laws of war if it helps them win) (especially against an opponent that routinely commits more and worse war crimes)

Oh bull shit, if Iran blew up a cabinet secretary you would be weeping tears of blood and calling for nuclear strikes.

I couldn't really care less about a random politician in whatever country you think I'm from getting killed. However, to the extent that I would favour retaliation, I would do so because it is an act of war, not because everything I don't like is magically "terrorism".

However, if my country had invaded Iran and Iran responded by killing a high-ranking military officer, who is, let's be clear, not a member of the cabinet, not a civilian, and obviously a completely legit military target, then I obviously would be off my rocker if I wanted them nuked in response.

You don't want your military personnel to get killed? Don't invade other countries lol.

Yes, but not because it's terrorism.

Blowing up a cabinet secretary would be an act of war, and if Iran wants a war then "Bring It On" is a reasonable response - doubly so if they start it with a perfidious surprise attack rather than by declaring war.

Ukraine and Russia are already at war, at Russia's choice. It is a defensive war for Ukraine, and if they are successfully defending themselves by blowing up Russian cabinet secretaries, then Russia should either suck less or start fewer wars. As a matter of international law, Ukraine can defend themselves all the way to Vladivostok if they want to and have the military ability to.

@GBRK @The_Nybbler I still call bullshit. If that happened your response would not be “well we’ve been propping up their regional adversary and bombing the hell out of them for three years so fair play I guess”

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding our point. Terrorism is a specific word with a very particular meaning. Saying that something isn't terrorism isn't a defense of that thing, it's an insistence on using nomenclature in a useful way. If you really want to call anything that causes terror "terrorism" then you dilute the category so much it ceases to have any meaning. That's why terrorism has to specifically be actions taken by an irregular force. If instead of Al-Quada an organized state had committed 9/11, I would have had the same emotional response-- but I would not call it terrorism. Similarly, if the actions taken by the US military against iran had instead been taken by a non-state actor, they would indisputably be terrorism. But the word is simply inapplicable to military actions taken by a sovereign nation. You're free to be mad anyways, you're free to issue moral condemnation or propose retribution, but you are not free to use the word "terrorism."

I think military attacking purely a civilian target is terrorism. I think an irregular force attacking a military target probably isn’t terrorism.

What is the point of this obstinacy? They're all correct, it is an act of war. We constantly commit acts of war by bombing the shit out of Ukrainian residential blocks, and this gets called terrorism because civilians become collateral damage, even if terror is not the point (terror is the point in human safari and arguably in infrastructure destruction though). If Russia could surgically annihilate Ukrainian generals no matter where they are, that's be merely war.

Ukrainians do commit terrorism, but not in this case.

What is the point of this obstinacy?

Because I am subjected to a perfidious media apparatus and the casuists on this forum that constantly justify the most appalling horrors on the basis of spurious “who, whom?” logic and thought terminating cliches, and it has made me salty.

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If it happened I would say "Well, looks like they're fucking around so we should make them find out". But it's still war, not terrorism. The boundaries can be blurry sometimes (because it's advantageous for states to blur them) but the hypothetical here is that Iran is doing it, not one of their associated "terrorist" militias, right?

Contra MadMonzer above, I would say it's not "perfidious", but just because it's "fair play" doesn't mean the US doesn't get to respond.

Wait, why would Iran have to declare war for it to not be a perfidious surprise attack? The US government recently bombed Iran, so Iranian retaliation would not be a strike out of the blue.

Good point. You can plausibly argue that the US and Iran have been in a state of undeclared war since the embassy siege. (Which was a perfidious surprise attack)

The US declared a unilateral ceasefire after that bombing operation completed. Iran doesn't have to accept it, but if they choose not to they shouldn't be surprised at a kinetic response.

Sure, they shouldn't be surprised by it. My point is just that an Iranian attack would not be some Pearl Harbor style surprise attack.

The US unilateral ceasefire is in my opinion meaningless since it seems clear to me that in reality the US reserves the right to bomb Iran whenever it chooses, and if it chooses to do so will just come up with some narrative about how it was justified despite the supposed ceasefire. At most the ceasefire just means that the US would wait a bit between spinning up the narrative and launching the actual attack, in order to make it look as if it had observed the ceasefire.

I mean, it probably depends on the cabinet member... But anyways non-nuclear strikes would be justified. Not on the basis that that's an act of terrorism, but on the basis that it's an act of war. And yes, I understand hat the trump has commited plenty of such acts on iran. If they ever use one as a casus belli I'm not going to be shocked or surprised. Mostly I'd just be wondering what took them so long.

Yeah, because it would be an act of war.

I think it's borderline, but insofar as the idea is to signal to the Russian upper brass that they are not even safe in their apartment blocks, it meets dictionary definitions such as Merriam-Webster's "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion".

The dictionary definition is useless on its own. As an example, this scary cave diving sign checks all of the boxes.

The problem with such a loose definition is that for example completely legal executions (which seek to deter crimes by tapping into would-be criminals fear of getting fried) fit the definition equally well.

If I said "the racist notion that black people are of higher risk of sickle cell anemia", I am technically correct, but I am also at the same time quite obviously full of shit.

You can always use further motivation to continue the war. They're relying on volunteers, not conscripts, and this will surely spark a wave of new volunteers. They'll probably play up the "IRL action movie hero" part even more in Russian media, too.

Oh, and this general was apparently from Western Ukraine, so he's practically the perfect model for their "Ukraine is Little Rus" propaganda. He can be a useful spokesman after the fighting ends.

At this point, what I expect to spark new waves of volunteers more than anything is rising compensation along with rising big expenses such as mortgages and cars, not some stale propaganda. It's been five years, infamously longer than The Most Holiest of Patriotic Wars 1941-1945.

At the very least, who's gonna be fool enough to volunteer during winter? If you're going to go to war and can pick when you go, you wait until the season of snow and mud is over.

The best time to join the war is on the end. If one was to join WWII as a Russian the best time would have been to arrive at the front when it was in Berlin and after a tiny bit of action take a selfie at the reichstag.

Russia clearly has the momentum in this war. Ukraine is losing ground faster and faster, Ukraine has rising desertion rates and the highly motivated fanatical elements of the Ukrainian military are largely spent. People want to join the winning team and Russia is clearly the team to bet on at this point.

The front line has hardly shifted for years. If a literal snail had started where the Russians did it would be halfway across Ukraine by now, and the Russians are nowhere near that. Lately the Russians have started lying about taking objectives at a greater rate because no man’s land is getting wider and wider so they can kinda get away with it. The fact that they are not attacking for the most part does not mean that Ukraine is spent. It’s a deliberate choice to remain on the defensive and win the attritional exchange. If the Russians want to send guys to die on assault, Ukraine is smart to sit in dugouts and pick them off with drones. The win condition for Ukraine is not that they reconquer their territory, it is that Russia gives up. One way to accomplish that is retaking territory to weaken Russian morale, but it probably isn’t the best one. It’s going to take time for the Russian people to sour on the war.

If you were actually paying attention, or reading sources that cover the conflict in any amount of detail, you would be concerned.

I am concerned. It’s a attritional conflict, so it’s hard to tell which side is hurting worse through the propaganda that both sides are putting out. There is no sign of a general collapse right now. The Russians have recently claimed a series of minor towns taken, but war maps which are based on photographic evidence of the presence of soldiers disagree with Russian high command on where the battle lines are. They’ve also had some recent success with deep penetration of the Ukrainian lines using infiltration tactics, but those positions got pinched off and turned into pockets.

The war is not going well for the Ukrainians, but it’s not going well for the Russians either. I’ve been seeing people confidently asserting that the Russians are winning on here for years now, and it keeps just not happening. Trading at unfavorable ratios to take a few tens of kilometers over multiple years is not winning. In an attritional conflict, it’s losing. The only complicating factor is that the Russians have more people, so they can afford unfavorable ratios.

Ukraine has been losing ground faster and faster for 5 years now, at the risk of repeating myself. I do not recall hearing about the front being in Kiev yet.

What is different about the "momentum" today that wasn't true a year ago, or two years ago, or at any other point where Ukraine was about to collapse any day now?

Ukraine essentially has no real initiative or ability to do anything larger scale. In 2022 they had two big and succesfull counter offensives. In 2023 they had a large summer counter offensive. In 2024 they did Kursk. In 2025 and into 2026 they have been losing ground at a noticeably higher rate while not being able to launch any real counter offensives.

Aren't you engaging in Atlanticist retconning here?

I'm engaging in describing my experience with reports on Ukraine as I remember it.

Another point: the recruiters ought to have more information on how the war's going than the average potential volunteer does. If they're still offering wads of cash, then it's probably not going to be a 2 weeks walk in the park.

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At least as of right now, the official-line-adjacent Telegram channels I know about (anna_news, sashakots, rybar) are not really giving this any priority over their daily war reporting noise, and I'm not seeing any traces of an "IRL action movie hero" framing. They are just talking about how those perpetrators that were caught admitted to being paid money by the Ukrainian secret services and the like.

Even if you think a false flag is conceivable, why would it be more likely than that the Ukrainians indeed did it? This wouldn't be the first time, unless you claim that all the assassinations of prominent Russian figures until now, including the ones that they openly took credit for, were actually false flags, and the benefits for their side are obvious without mental gymnastics (eliminating useful individuals, encumbering Russian processes with friction and fear, signalling Russian weakness to internal doubters and external supporters). It seems like you want this to be a false flag, contra LW principles.

I just thought it's odd that the man was shot 3 times at point blank range at survived, and i'm trying to think of an explanation. But I admitted that I'm biased because I've been reading spy thrillers recently. I'm really not making a strong claim here about anything, I just thought it was an odd story. Whats the point of Ukrainian secret services shooting some random general in Moscow?

People fail to collapse like a sack of potatoes in response to getting shot all the time, especially with handguns. The variance of how much damage pretty much anything does is huge - people have survived falling 10+km without a parachute and people have died from falling 2m. People have survived being shot with handguns, rifles, machineguns - it wouldn't surprise me if someone has survived a hit from an autocannon at some point.

If the guy clocked his assailant before the first shot went off, this goes double - hitting someone who doesn't want to be hit is hard. It's not as if cops have handguns with 15+ rounds in the mag because they need to be able to drop 15 suspects before reloading.

and i'm trying to think of an explanation

Obviously, he was using a weapon that only did 33 damage. Human beings have 100 HP; upon reaching 0 you become a ragdoll, but you'll be perfectly fine and suffer no ill effects even if you only have 1 HP. (This is why using .50 BMG, or other guns that can do 100 or more damage, are considered war crimes- people just hate the instakill meta.)

In all seriousness, it's not the getting shot that kills you, it's the other biological consequences of what happens when you get a hole punched in a part of you that may result in death, where the cells that make you up can't get enough fuel or oxygen to sustain the combustion reaction necessary for life (as in, you can't breathe, or you have no more blood) and die. When people appear to die instantly from this, it's mainly because the hole that was punched in them resulted in an immediate, catastrophic loss of blood flow (that system is also pressurized, so this tends to be really dramatic).

The meta for killing things is to create either larger holes, or more holes, so that this process happens faster. As a general rule, concealable weapons (handguns, especially the smaller ones) are relatively bad at making the large holes, so they have to depend on many holes in the most vital part of the target; typically in the blood pump [heart], the air intake/exhaust manifolds [lungs], or by destroying the ECU's ability to run either of the former two [brain]. You can make bigger more destructive holes with a rifle, but it's useless if you can't even get the gun into the fight.

I just thought it's odd that the man was shot 3 times at point blank range at survived, and i'm trying to think of an explanation.

It's odd, but far from unheard of. Bullets can do unpredictable things and it's not impossible to 'roll low for damage' so to speak.

If the person who shot him had no experience with firearms, it's entirely plausible. Hit a non-lethal spot the first time because you are nervous, and two more times because you underestimated recoil and now your hands are hurt and shaking.

What do you figure was the point in the 2024 case? I think I gave a reasonable enough list of benefits. High-ranking military being scared to leave their house without a bodyguard degrades military performance: people make worse decisions under stress, and more competent candidates may not want such a job.

But maybe it was actually done by a Japanese high schooler with a magic notebook - I've been reading a lot of manga lately...

What do you figure was the point in the 2024 case? I think I gave a reasonable enough list of benefits. High-ranking military being scared to leave their house without a bodyguard degrades military performance: people make worse decisions under stress, and more competent candidates may not want such a job.

Well, the true answer is I don't know. I don't speak Russian, and I'm not very well-informed about that case or the results of it.

But it seems to me that the reporting focuses on that general's role in charge of chemical weapons. Those are a huge trigger-word for western civilians. By killing him, the Ukrainians are making a big public statement that "the Russians are using chemical weapons on us." If that's true, it would significantly increase Western public support for Ukraine. Of course, I have no idea if that's true or not (I hadn't heard of chemical weapons being used anywhere else), and frankly I don't care, I think a few thousand dead from chemical weapons is much less important than hundreds of thousands of dead from artillery. But politically, they are a big deal.

Also, you know, they killed the guy. They didn't just lightly injure him by sending an assassin who had no prior experience with firearms. That seems like an important step in carrying out an assassination.

Also, do not be a woman.

Female billionaires die 4.5 years EARLIER than the leading benchmark. The usual 5-7 year female longevity advantage nearly vanishes. Male and female billionaires die at about the same age. No country on Earth shows a gap this small.

Isn't this just the effects of billionaires not being in the bottom quintile of men, who are more likely to die young? It's not some biological law that all men die younger than women do. If you're not a coal miner, drug dealer, fighter, suicidal... (these are usually men, admittedly for reasons rooted in biology) then you'll have a long lifespan.

Somewhere on the Motte we were having a discussion about male vs female life expectancies (IIRC motivated by the UN declaring men dying 5 years earlier than women "equality"), and the decrease in the gap comes in much earlier than billionaires. I think it was, once you get into the top decile, the gap drops to below two years.

It's much more accurate to say, if you're poor, don't be a man, than it is to say if you're rich, don't be a woman, unless your interest in life expectancy is just in having a big gap. Every step up the income ladder for both sexes increases life expectancy; it just does so much more for men.

It's not some biological law that all men die younger than women do.

It is, somewhat. Across the animal kingdom, the heterozygotic sex (XY, ZW) nearly always has a shorter average lifespan than the homozygotic sex (XX, ZZ).

I think it's worth pointing out that the life expectancy of underclass women is also generally rather bad, as their diet is terrible, they often abuse substances, and the tasks they normally do everyday either involve standing in one place for longer periods or bowing and lifting relatively heavy objects, which is also terrible for your health.

I think it's worth pointing out that the life expectancy of underclass women is also generally rather bad, as their diet is terrible, they often abuse substances, and the tasks they normally do everyday either involve standing in one place for longer periods or bowing and lifting relatively heavy objects, which is also terrible for your health.

That may be, but do you disagree that as one looks at higher and higher socio-economic classes, the life-expectancy boost is significantly bigger for men than it is for women?

I don't. I have doubts about the 'significantly' part, but I don't.

I don't.

In that case, I don't see the relevance of pointing out that life expectancy of lower class women is poor -- it just needless distracts from the male/female gap. Not everything needs to be about women.

I think it's warranted to add context. If you're poor, don't be a man, the OP said. Fair enough, but their women's situation isn't much better in that regard.

If you're poor, don't be a man, the OP said. Fair enough, but their women's situation isn't much better in that regard.

Hard disagree. In terms of life expectancy, if you are poor, you are in fact much better off as a woman than as a man.

I think it's warranted to add context.

Why?

More comments

bowing and lifting relatively heavy objects, which is also terrible for your health

I think it depends on why you're doing it.

Point taken. To be clear, I was referring to the sorts of shitty manual labor, mostly in the service sector, that underclass/prole women normally perform.

Isn't this just the effects of billionaires not being in the bottom quintile of men, who are more likely to die young? It's not some biological law that all men die younger than women do. If you're not a coal miner, drug dealer, fighter, suicidal... (these are usually men, admittedly for reasons rooted in biology) then you'll have a long lifespan.

I would think that's a factor, but I would guess there is another issue in play: The question of when in life the person becomes a billionaire. So for a trivial example, if you look at people who become billionaires at age 85, you can bet that their average age at death is at least 85.

I think it's pretty well known that extremely wealthy women are much more likely to have inherited their money than extremely wealthy men. To put it another way, I think it's much more common for male billionaires to be self-made than it is for female billionaires. It seems to me that if this is true, it's going to have an effect on when in life the person becomes a billionaire, as well as on other aspects of the person's life. These things, in turn, are arguably likely to affect the age of the billionaire at time of death.

Edit: That being said, I recall reading research indicating that among the upper class, the life expectancy difference between men and women is much smaller than in the general population. I imagine this is due to the sorts of lifestyle difference you point out. In other words, it doesn't seem that being rich is bad for women so much as it's good for men.

What is certain that the exponential growth that began in early 1700's (due to potato, maize and wise leadership of European and Manchu statesmen of the time) is finally over. The line leveled up and will start going down.

Barring some game-changing technology or disaster, it is nearly certain that the trend will reverse again and the population will explode. Right now is analogous to when you add the anti-biotic to the petri dish and select for bacteria which are immune. Because it's reasonable to expect that some small segment of the population, due to some combination of genetics and culture, will (1) think it's a great idea to have lots of children; and (2) think it's a great idea to pass (1) and (2) on to said children. And in fact I think we are already seeing this in ultra-religious communities.

it is nearly certain that the trend will reverse again and the population will explode.

Line that went up for a long time must go down. Line that went down for a long time must go up. Thus it has ever been.

Because it's reasonable to expect that some small segment of the population, due to some combination of genetics and culture, will (1) think it's a great idea to have lots of children; and (2) think it's a great idea to pass (1) and (2) on to said children. And in fact I think we are already seeing this in ultra-religious communities.

But wasn't the entire population fitting into these categories in the last 200,000 years? Why do you think the current ultra-religious communities will survive when so many haven't?

Antibiotics create immune bacteria, but only when you administer it sporadically. The current depression factors on fertility don't seem to be sporadic.

But wasn't the entire population fitting into these categories in the last 200,000 years?

I'm not sure it's 200,000 years, but I would agree that (1) for people who have no choice but to work in agriculture, there's a lot of incentive to have large families; and (2) for a long time, most of humanity worked in agriculture.

But what happens if you no longer have to work in agriculture? My impression is that for most groups, after a couple generations it starts looking more and more attractive to have a smaller family. Unless you are an ultra-orthodox Jew, an FLDS Mormon, etc. In those groups, large families are preferred even without the incentive structure of agriculture.

But wasn't the entire population fitting into these categories in the last 200,000 years?

Arguably no, they just liked fucking like rabbits and didn't care about the consequences. We'll likely start selecting for people who actually like having kids, breeding fetishists, etc.

We'll likely start selecting for people who actually like having kids

Yea, the next stage of the evolution, the Overman of the future is not super genius with watermelon sized skull, not seven feet tall bronze barbarian with gorilla sized muscles, but hobbit who wants nothing else than to sit in his burrow and hug and cuddle babies.

Whether it is utopian or dystopian future, is up to you.

I don't think this is true for a number of reasons. Firstly, declines in fertility are somewhat due to endocrine disruptors from microplastic pollution we've caused. That isn't going away for anyone any time soon. Secondly, there seems to be a deeper link between modernity and fertility that most want to admit. We may see high fertility as you say, but it won't be in the world we currently live in culturally, socially, or technologically. Finally, as many on this forum are loathe to admit, we have actually outrun the carrying capacity of this planet. There won't be another fertility explosion in this culture because the planet literally will not support it for much longer.

Firstly, declines in fertility are somewhat due to endocrine disruptors from microplastic pollution we've caused.

I think this is disproven by the example of Israel, where there is an ultra-religious population and more secular groups. The ultra-religious are growing in number far faster than the more secular groups. It's difficult to see how this discrepancy could be the result of micro-plastics. Especially when there is a much more obvious explanation: Among the ultra-religious, there is a strong cultural belief that one should marry young and have a large family.

Secondly, there seems to be a deeper link between modernity and fertility that most want to admit. We may see high fertility as you say, but it won't be in the world we currently live in culturally, socially, or technologically.

I am not sure what your point is here. If you are saying that future technological changes may affect current trends, then I would have to agree with you. That's why I included the caveat "barring some game-changing technology or disaster" in my post.

Finally, as many on this forum are loathe to admit, we have actually outrun the carrying capacity of this planet. There won't be another fertility explosion in this culture because the planet literally will not support it for much longer.

I strongly disagree with this. If this claim were remotely true, then one would expect to see mass deaths due to some resource shortage. Which may eventually happen, but it's not happening now.

One question I find myself asking is: should we try to keep expanding the population up to the point where we see mass deaths due to resource shortages?

Or stop earlier?

One question I find myself asking is: should we try to keep expanding the population

Who do you mean by "we"? And what are "we" doing to "keep expanding the population"?

Without these sorts of specifics, it's difficult to even start thinking about costs, benefits, and practicality.

That being said, I think it's worth keeping in mind that there are a lot of bad actors out there who are happy to spin, wildly exaggerate, and outright lie about impending disasters in order to grift or otherwise promote some kind of agenda. Often it's pretty obvious by their actions that these people don't seriously believe in the scare stories the peddle.

So generally speaking, I am extremely skeptical of any argument along these lines:

(1) There is an impending environmental disaster

(5) Therefore, my allies and I should received goodies and/or my out-group should be punished and humiliated.

The general argument form you've sketched, apart from the word 'environmental', is the core of a vast range of positions in politics. I agree we should be sceptical of all such arguments but there is simply no avoiding them, or it will be difficult for anyone to raise concerns about things unless they are personally unaffected.

My own view on the overpopulation question is that a flatlining population is necessarily good at some level of population/technology/culture, otherwise our species will be courting disaster. Whether we have got close to this point yet is an empirical matter.

The general argument form you've sketched, apart from the word 'environmental', is the core of a vast range of positions in politics. I agree we should be sceptical of all such arguments but there is simply no avoiding them

Sure, which is why I said "extremely skeptical." Because sometimes the IRS really does call people about tax issues.

or it will be difficult for anyone to raise concerns about things unless they are personally unaffected.

Well at a minimum people should act like they seriously believe their claims. For example, if Greta Thunberg seriously believes that we are on the brink of a climate catastrophe, it's difficult to see why she would invest so much time and energy into the Gaza conflict. To put it simply, how dare she?

My own view on the overpopulation question is that a flatlining population is necessarily good at some level of population/technology/culture, otherwise our species will be courting disaster. Whether we have got close to this point yet is an empirical matter.

Given the rapid changes in technology taking place, it's not an easy question to answer with certitude. Actually, that's not totally true. When someone predicts that the sky is falling, it's usually pretty safe to bet that they are wrong.

Anyway, for me, I would be interested to know what specific policies are being proposed by environmentalists to achieve "flatlining population"? I have a strange feeling that they are remarkably similar to general Leftist policy goals.

we have actually outrun the carrying capacity of this planet

One, the carrying capacity of the planet is not a single number, but depends on the tech package. Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer, neolithic agrarian, mediaeval agrarian, Victorian-era industrial, and distant-future zero-point-energy-powered societies all produce different figures for the 'carrying capacity of the planet'.

Two, it is far from certain that humanity will be forever limited to the surface of a single planet.

I don't think this is true for a number of reasons. Firstly, declines in fertility are somewhat due to endocrine disruptors from microplastic pollution we've caused. That isn't going away for anyone any time soon. Secondly, there seems to be a deeper link between modernity and fertility that most want to admit.

The only evolutionary pressure on humanity at the moment is to have more kids. We evolved our whole endocrine system; merely adapting to the presence of microplastics in the environment is utterly trivial in comparison. Similarly, our sexual instincts evolved; obviously the small tweaks necessary to encourage reproduction in spite of modernity can evolve. And it's not as though those adaptations aren't already latent in the population: there are plenty of high-fertility families. Population will drop until those alleles predominate, of course, but that's just the nature of the evolutionary process. That can (and likely will) cause a lot of short-term pain, but it certainly doesn't represent an extinction risk, and only extinction could prevent the population from eventually rebounding.

Finally, as many on this forum are loathe to admit, we have actually outrun the carrying capacity of this planet. There won't be another fertility explosion in this culture because the planet literally will not support it for much longer.

How can you tell? Exceeding carrying capacity generally manifests as mass death, not reduced fertility. What resource is the planet no longer able to supply?

Not space: there remain enormous tracts of undeveloped land, and far more underdeveloped land; people can live comfortably -- by revealed preference, prefer to live -- in cities with orders of magnitude higher population density than the world as a whole.

Not energy: known uranium reserves alone contain 100X the energy of all the fossil fuels humanity has ever burned, and that's most conservative possible estimate. Extracting uranium from seawater, for example, is another factor of 100X, and D-D fusion would outlast the sun at current consumption rates. And desalination makes water a question of energy. (Sea water actually contains enough dissolved uranium to power its own desalination ten times over.)

Not food: never in history has acquiring food taken a smaller fraction of human labor or a smaller amount of arable land per capita, and we're not particularly optimized for the latter -- substituting grains for meat would boost calories-per-acre by a factor of 10-30. And most 'sustainability' issues (nitrogen fertilizer production, water use) are trivially solved with sufficient energy too, and the rest with hydroponics and recycling.

I can't see any factor that dictates global carrying capacity is 8 billion -- I can hardly see any that suggests it's 80 billion.

You're missing one. Pollution! The most obvious aspect of this is climate change, where we are wrecking the climatic conditions that allow stable agriculture, but there are many other aspects of pollution including microplastics which I mentioned, and heavy metals that will heavily impact our fertility rate.

I don't believe we have unlimited energy resources like you seem to, but this is an argument for another time. In terms of space, we already use the vast majority of arable land on this planet.

You're missing one. Pollution!

Well do you agree that at the moment, ultra-religious groups are demographically exploding notwithstanding any pollution issues?

It seems to me that the most charitable interpretation of your post is that you are making a prediction about the future rather than a statement about the present.

So let me ask you this: In what year do you thing the ultra-orthodox Jewish population in Israel will experience a leveling off and/or decline of fertility due to pollution?

I don't believe we have unlimited energy resources like you seem to, but this is an argument for another time.

Well, this is core to the disagreement. The chemical details of how precisely e.g. food is produced and waste is handled are important, but energy is the ultimate constraint on growth. Plentiful energy enables all sorts of tricks like desalination for fresh water or electrolysis to produce the hydrogen required for the Haber–Bosch process. But if you run out of energy, no trick is going to save you.

To clarify: the energy resources I'm describing are finite; they're just very, very large. The 100X number comes from employing mature technology (breeder reactors, developed in the US in the 50s and currently in commercial use in China (CFR-600) and Russia (BN-800)) on proven deposits-- there's not really much room to doubt the potential there. Hell, the US could get centuries of current usage just burning its accumulated 'waste'-- our exiting light water reactors only actually extract a tiny fraction of the nuclear potential energy in the uranium, while a breeder can get much more out of their 'spent' fuel.

It's comparatively expensive energy, but it's a guaranteed backstop if cheaper sources dry up for whatever reason. There's a working process for seawater extraction, too; it's just not economical when it's still so easy to dig uranium out of the ground. With essentially no required additional R&D, that's already enough to get you to the point where running out of energy is just not going to be a concern in the near future, though the price of energy could be.

Speculative technology ranging from molten salt thorium reactors (probably not that hard, but no one bothers because the uranium process is easier and cheaper) to D-T fusion (there are moderately promising prototypes, but it's a very hard problem) to D-D fusion (science fiction at present) increase those reserves massively, but they're not necessary to e.g. completely replace ground water usage with desalination.

I'm not suggesting we do that -- it's almost certainly way harder than just exercising reasonable ground water stewardship -- but the option exists if we screw everything else up and billions are going to die.

You're missing one. Pollution! The most obvious aspect of this is climate change, where we are wrecking the climatic conditions that allow stable agriculture, but there are many other aspects of pollution including microplastics which I mentioned, and heavy metals that will heavily impact our fertility rate.

I'll admit upfront I'm not too knowledgeable about microplastics, but on other sorts of pollution: we're not yeast. Yeast arguably has a pollution-related carrying capacity, in that in a sealed container it will eventually poison itself with the alcohol that is the byproduct of it's anerobic respiration. Fortunately, out pollutants are technological, not physiological.

Only CO2 has proven both 1. genuinely dangerous and 2. truly hard to mitigate. Heavy metals are dangerous, for sure... but exposure to lead peaked decades ago. Mercury in practice is only an issue if you eat a lot of certain species of fish -- we could stop. It turned out to just not be that hard to limit human exposure. Ozone layer depletion was a real problem... with a very easy solution of banning a couple aerosols; I understand that modern refrigerants are as good as freon ever was. A century ago people made a lot of noise about smog, the price of industrialization; much less so these days. Even China's about past that stage now, if you think the first world got out of it just by offshoring manufacturing.

But that does leave climate change as a more stubborn problem. Not because solving it is impossible -- we've always had fission to fall back on, as soon as we decide it's actually important -- but because it's expensive to fix and presents a difficult international coordination problem... and because most people agree it's not that important. Ecological collapse rendering stable agriculture impossible is wildly out of line with even the most dire warnings offered by the IPCC out to the year 2100. The full-chud 'it's all fake' prediction is much closer to the scientific consensus than that scenario.

We are doing a lot to fight climate change -- co2 emissions per capita peaked around 2000 in the developed world -- and there's a lot more we could and probably should do. (I'm a fan of nuclear energy, you might have gathered.) But that's because the problems it will create are cheaper to mitigate now than they will be in the future, not because it poses a genuine existential threat. And if it turns out that, in spite of all predictions, it really is that bad, there's always stratospheric aerosol injection. I just don't see this being a serious impediment to population growth (once the demographic factors sort themselves out).

In terms of space, we already use the vast majority of arable land on this planet.

True, but we 1. don't use it very efficiently 2. we could supplement with hydroponics (at much greater expense) if necessary. There's also largely untapped options like aquaculture and mesopelagic fishing, though I can't say I'm terribly excited for either.

co2 emissions per capita peaked around 2000 in the developed world

Now do industrial production...

Fantastic post! Most of the time, when environmentalists suggest that a resource is "limited", it's because we're already meeting current supply using an ostensibly-limited source, so there's no incentive for companies to develop new tech that's more expensive on the margin. This looks to the outside observer as us "running out". Seawater is a great example: first-world nations absolutely could afford desalination for all our current needs (and Israel already does this, I believe) ... but that'd be silly while we still have fresh water to use.

My slightly tongue-in-cheek answer to what we might run out of is "work". As more nations get rich and privileged, it seems like their citizens start to feel that society owes them a comfortable life while they sit around doing nothing. (Imagine if /r/Antiwork became a popular global movement.) Our civilization is very efficient, but it's possible there's some critical threshold of indolence at which our infrastructure just starts breaking down, and fast. Unlike low fertility, this might be a self-reinforcing collapse that can't be recovered from.

We may be in a race to see if we can replace workers with AI faster than they quit on their own...

And in fact I think we are already seeing this in ultra-religious communities.

I thought their average TFR is also dropping or at least stagnating.

No? The boomers are dying off so overall numbers are shrinking, though.

Mormons and Iranians yes; Amish much less so.

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