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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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.
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...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I thought their average TFR is also dropping or at least stagnating.
No? The boomers are dying off so overall numbers are shrinking, though.
More options
Context Copy link
Mormons and Iranians yes; Amish much less so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link