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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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An elegant solution to all the male crisises, embryonic sex selection. https://mistakesweremade.substack.com/p/the-y-chromosome-is-dysgenic

Men commit far more crime than women, they are more prone to diseases and they live shorter lives.

There may be more variation in men's IQ scores and they are more common in STEM, so we would certainly need some men for new discoveries and the like but what is the need for 1:1 sex ratio?

Most people don't work on intellectual tasks in civilization which need constant innovation and incredible time spent on them with a singular focus. Most jobs are mundane and of maintaince variety. We can just have few men which work on hard research type jobs where vast majority of population is women. Maybe with lack of men female researchers would lead. Besides if super intelligence arrives we may not need men working at these jobs at all.

This would solve the incel problem since men are rarer, this would solve the problem of dangerous men preying on women.

Note I am not serious here, but talking about this hypothetical seems like fun. It does seem obviously wrong but I can't pinpoint any specific moral principle it might violate.

Surely there is something wrong with this argument but what is it? It seems fine from an purely utalitarian perspective.

Edit: i am again restating that I am not seriously considering this. It's starting prompt for philosophy and a fun writing excercise.

A fun shower thought I had:

In competitive videogames, "smurfing" is a pejorative for a more-skilled player fooling skill-based matchmaking systems to play (and win) against a less-skilled player. This is seen as a kind of stolen valor: you only look impressive because of unfair comparisons!

I think its interesting that we do not respond emotionally similarly to hypergamous norms: Chad is basically smurfing the ranked queue, no?

I think when encountering Chad "smurfing" in person, i.e. someone from a high-status environment coming to a lower-status one to fish for girls (or even just coming there without the overt intent to steal mates), men did react with hostility historically. The city boy among the country boys; the student from an elite school among the kids from a merely "decent" one, etc.

That's interesting. Do you have any examples? Also, if those men react with hostility, isn't that just simple male competitiveness? What I was talking about was more "society and social norms as a whole" e.g. including other high-status men who think that behavior is unfair.

Furthermore: historically, the purpose of monogamy was to marginalize hypergamous norms. In strong monogamous societies, "smurfing" is not possible, because the society is trying hard to equalize mens' status.

Rather, I mean: it should seem that society that acknowledges and strengthens hypergamous norms (e.g. by legalizing harems, codifying a virgin male underclass, etc.) is self-defeating: wouldn't they realize Chad is just smurfing? That it's all just positional?

So it would seem something primal about status is immune to this fairness instinct. Alternatively, hypergamous societies like this tend to never happen because people actually do feel it is unfair. I do not know.

E: Skill-based matchmaking is interesting because its an admission that high-skilled players are not entitled to high win rates in gameplay. I suppose that is fundamental difference.

I mean, even if the top players think smurfing is lame (they are motivated by their competitiveness and do not desire weak opponents), there are still smurfs who are skilled enough to stomp on weak players and driven enough by the desire to simply win, no matter against whom, to do so.

I don't think the metaphor applies to men striving to get women anyway, because most men don't appear to be competitive with other men on this. They want a partner above some baseline level of beauty, and would take several if they can get away with it, but competing with other men is not a motivation. "Trophy wives" only appear to be a male status symbol among the very top elites, who appear to be pathologically driven to competition in as may small ways as possible.

Yes, I think that is another way to see it. "high-skill players are not entitled to high win rates" is a competitive attitude. Since mating is not competitive in this sense, Chad is in fact entitled to a harem.

In gaming it's more like "high-skill players are not entitled to infinite noobs to stomp". Noobs don't like getting stomped, and it doesn't seem to be good for long-term playerbase vitality. High-skill players can always have as high a winrate as they want against bots.