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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   26274 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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I fell like much of the current discourse around social trends, such as birth rates & loneliness, need to do a better job at taking the current environmental constraints into consideration. My favorite video surrounding this topic of how environments produce cultural outcomes comes from the now defunct 1791L. (Honestly it sums up my views of current society)

On its face, this makes sense,(In response to an article by Ben Shapiro saying American spiritual ills are caused by culture) but it isn’t as though those cultural forces emerged from nowhere and spread purely by word of mouth. As argued before, it is not difficult to see how skewed incentives have developed not only through government influence, but also through market forces. This may be reflected in phenomena like pornography, which offers the convenience of sexual gratification without the associated effort, as well as media conglomerates broadcasting cultural messages into every American home. Additionally, the sexual liberation that has more recently reshaped society was facilitated in part by innovations such as birth control and the automobile, both of which were enabled by capitalist development.

After all, the number of men women can find desirable shrinks, (As women excel in the workforce) and men who are either unable or unwilling to attain those positions will grow resentful, bitter, and depressed. Whether they lack the willpower or the cognitive horsepower, the outcome is the same. “Will grow depressed” may not even be the most accurate description, considering that process is already well underway. Fundamentally, this is attributed to the cult of market success overtaking earlier moral foundations—the idea that raw economic gain nourishes the human soul rather than something higher. In their push to adopt traditionally male forms of competition, some women may find that status and excess income do not deliver the meaning they were led to expect. As some men perceive it becoming more difficult to meet standards of attractiveness, they may disengage, especially given the abundance of alternative habits available. Video games are progressing rapidly and transitioning toward virtual reality, while pornography’s exaggerated depiction of human sexuality can strongly engage the brain’s reward systems. In that context, there may seem to be less incentive to develop personality or skills if easier, more immediately rewarding alternatives are available—after all, the human subconscious has not fundamentally changed from the one shaped by evolution.

So, what might help if people are beginning to engage in actions that (I personally would consider to be) bad. Is finding a way to effect environmental structures. If one is a conservative , who values marriage & children and general human connections, you'll probably want to do this. I've talked about some solution previously. But not really targeting the environmental variables enough. I've also taken various other past critiques into consideration.

First

There needs to be a massive reconsideration of the current technological advancements. Here is a women falling in love with an AI. In Japan, this is notably worse - people paying for companion ship, and marrying dolls. Im gonna sound authoritarian here, but this shit needs to straight up be banned. There is no social positive for computers and humans to emotionally intermingle in this way. Its only emotionally harmful, for basically all involved. Same deal with "Only Fans" and any other technology that seeks to make an easy way out of human face to face interaction.

Second

Get men, especially those without a degree, into a decent paying job. I've been on the market, I Have a degree, Its fucking brutal. Ive only been able to secure a Network Engineer Internship (Paid with benefits) and a 21 an Hr job with no benefits, after about 7-8 interviews. I havent gotten an full time job with benefits offers yet. Its not fun. I can't imagine what the men who lack my experience & degree are going through. There are two sub problems with this one, mainly:

  1. Actually getting an interview to begin with

  2. Getting a good, well paying job after that

Both of these can be discussed at length. But im gonna give what I think is a good course of action. Make more vocational schools cheaper, and perhaps even free. Many states have done this. There also needs to be a cultural push to get men & boys to actually stay in these programs, and ensure an internship or entry level job after training is complete. I've been made aware of legislation to increase these jobs, Id like to see more of it.

Third

I think a lot of past discussions I've had miss an important piece by not really examining how incentives are affecting women differently.

There’s been some talk about shifting incentives away from women’s education:

So I'd suggest this has a number of impacts:

Women start attending college more often. Which has them burn more of their most fertile years, and the added debt load makes them less appealing as partners and less able to support kids.

Men start accruing more debt too, which stunts their personal wealth acquisition in their 20's and thus makes them less appealing to women... and just less able to support a partner/kids in general.

Obviously this allows economically nonviable majors like "Women's studies" to grow, which has some clear downstream impacts. Probably causes women's standards to rise, they wouldn't accept a partner without a degree if they have one.

Of course turned College into the 'default' life path rather than hopping into a career and getting married as the best practice for advancing socially. So putting us back to the status-quo ante of 1990, and NOT expanding access to loans for college, we might be able to avoid the worst excesses of Feminism entering the mainstream. I dunno.

Unfortunately, that framing skips over a few structural realities:

  1. Housing has become a much higher barrier to entry. Access to good housing in good neighborhoods is significantly more expensive than it used to be. That raises the threshold for economic stability. In this environment, the college wage premium matters more, not less—it’s one of the most reliable ways to clear that bar. This also makes single-income households harder to sustain, regardless of preferences.

  2. Women have fewer viable non-degree paths to stability. As the economy has shifted away from industrial and physical labor toward knowledge and service work, many of the historically male-dominated “no degree required” paths (e.g., trades, manufacturing) haven’t translated as easily for women at scale. That makes higher education a more central route to security.

  3. The modern economy rewards the traits women are, on average, better positioned to leverage. The college wage premium exists for a reason: today’s economy places a high value on a mix of cognitive ability and social/interpersonal skills. As demand has shifted in that direction, women—who on average tend to score higher on certain social skill dimensions—are relatively well-positioned to benefit.

It’s not that education is arbitrarily driving behavior. The causality runs the other way—economic and environmental changes have increased the returns to education, and women, given the available pathways and comparative advantages, are responding rationally to those incentives.

The easiest way around 1 is to just, well (clears throat): BUILD MORE FUCKING HOUSES. Yes, politically difficult, but If I had it my way, I'd adopt a similar housing policy on the state level, like Japan does.

I'd love for someone to add Ideas for how to deal with points 2 & 3. I'm not a well versed economists, so solutions are lost on me. Feel free to add your own thoughts, please!

Personally I'm a huge tech optimist AGI in the next few years or at least next few decades believer and I really don't think a fair bit of these things are going to be an issue. Lowered birth rates sound awful at first, but we've already made significant advantages into artificial wombs for preemies and the idea that this tech could eventually extend to the very beginning of a pregnancy until birth doesn't seem unreasonable anymore. With stable conditions and active monitoring they might even be able to be healthier! What care do we have if people aren't fucking when we won't need people to fuck for society to have children anyway? And with AGIs, robots can be effective parents (probably better on average if they aren't abusive) for the artificial womb babies.

But even that is a complete misdirection, birth rates won't be much of an issue to begin with. The current problem with an aging society is that the old don't produce as much as the youth do, but still consume resources. But who cares about that if AGI bots can do all the work for humans? There's barely a difference in productivity between a society of average age 35 vs 55 when almost all the labor is handled by automation to begin with. And with AGI, just building another robot will always be more efficient to improving the lives of already living people than creating a new baby and having to raise them.

Of course this sort of concept is creepy and inhumane and no one really wants to talk about it. The idea of machines birthing and raising human children feels disturbing for an old population that doesn't work but it's honestly one of the better possible outcomes. People are happy and humanity thrives and grows increasing utility in multiple ways. And at the very least it's way preferable to a future where humanity shrinks/goes extinct instead whether from low birthrates or robots killing us.

Lowered birth rates sound awful at first, but we've already made significant advantages into artificial wombs for preemies and the idea that this tech could eventually extend to the very beginning of a pregnancy until birth doesn't seem unreasonable anymore.

It doesn't? Pumping oxygenated air into an existing umbilical cord is different from growing one de novo along with a placenta. The best people have done to oxygenate/feed a blastocyst is mechanical rollers (I assume this is the paper you're referring to). IVF followed by gestation is still an entire other, much more difficult, level.

Don't believe anything you hear until it's in clinical trials, unless you're a biotech investor/entrepreneur. Otherwise, it may as well not exist for the public.

It doesn't? Pumping oxygenated air into an existing umbilical cord is different from growing one de novo along with a placenta. The best people have done to oxygenate/feed a blastocyst is mechanical rollers (I assume this is the paper you're referring to). IVF followed by gestation is still an entire other, much more difficult, level.

I like these types of arguments so much. The "oh my god this tech is so simple now, just do X Y Z thing that we didn't know about or understand until relatively recently. It can't possibly be used as an example of how we discover and invent new things". That alone is still something that people just a bit ago didn't know.

This recent thing was just 2017. Why should I not assume there will be substantial progress on artificial womb technology in the next 50 years if barriers to research this topic decrease and AI massively amplifies research ability? It doesn't mean we're close yet, but each step forward is progress made to a better understanding.

But even that is a complete misdirection, birth rates won't be much of an issue to begin with. The current problem with an aging society is that the old don't produce as much as the youth do, but still consume resources. But who cares about that if AGI bots can do all the work for humans?

I'm of the belief that more children and families are an inherent good, independent of any societal effect that a declining population may have. Same thing with having less friends - regardless of whatever economic effects come of it, the fostering of love between to close friends, between husband and wife, between parent and child is worth preserving in its own right.

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