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 -
An article is making the rounds on rat-adjacent twitter entitled "The Nerdy Escorts Cashing In On Silicon Valley’s AI Boom."
I can't bypass the paywall, but someone posted on X:
I know that aella, the famous rationalist whorelord, popularized this niche of pseudo-intellectual prostitutes appealing to rationalists and other tech nerds for extreme amounts of money. It's obvious that aella has become obscenely wealthy and gained a ton of social status from her pursuits, but I'm still somewhat shocked at the sheer amount these women are making.
I work a pretty boring, standard corporate marketing job, and apparently these prostitutes are taking home almost my entire after-tax yearly income in one weekend.
Even regardless of the moral aspect of the situation, the fact that a prostitute can make so much money is a huge slap in the face to people working hard for a living. That, combined with the fact that close to 18% of the economy is now in healthcare, has got me a bit depressed on the economy.
Also, Tyler Cowen had a bit of a viral moment yesterday saying he wouldn't be surprised if 15 to 20% of all jobs in the near future are elder care. This of course sandwiched in a talk where he insists AI is great and making jobs not losing them!
Anyway, all of this recent discourse combined is making me feel more and more like a retarded schmuck for working a 'real job,' as opposed to just leeching off the government, doing some sort of NGO/media grift, or even just getting a random remote job and going to live cheap in Thailand or some other extremely cheap country. And this is someone who has a pretty chill office job where I don't have to work too hard, and get to work from home a few days a week. I can't imagine how people who actually bust their asses in physical labor and make less than me feel!
Either way, the optimism from the pundit class around AI and the economy is feeling more and more hollow to me by the day. If the numbers keep going up but everyone is employed wiping the asses of boomers and sexually pleasuring tech AI millionaires, have we really improved society? How will things go otherwise without some sort of relatively radical disruption? I try not to be a 'doomer' about AI, but I'm increasingly finding it hard to be optimistic on the impact of it on society.
I work in elder care myself - can you expand on why you feel negatively about it? I tend to agree that it would be bad for a huge proportion of the population to be involved in it, and that mostly relates to concerns about the birth rate and demographics, but insofar as the elderly population is growing, needing more people to look after them seems inevitable. Lifespans are increasing and medical care is improving, so the number of elderly people is also going to increase.
Unless one wants to bite the bullet and say that increased life expectancies are bad, and it would be better if more people died at 70, there are going to be more elderly people, and through no moral failing of anybody, they will need care. What is your preferred response?
Have more controls on provision of medical care to the elderly when it's not passing any cost/benefit calculation especially on public purse. Bump the retirement age substantially upwards for public assistance since an increasingly vanishing minority are working jobs with any real physical toll.
If you want to self-fund your tilting with death sure but incentives are currently massively misaligned
It's really great you're going to be thirty years old forever and maximally economically productive and will never get old or sick and will never be replaced in your job, so you are never going to need home helps, healthcare services, or a pension. Unlike those old useless seventy years onwards people selfishly requiring doctors to treat their arthritis and pneumonia, the leeches!
Publicly funded retirement is a privilege. The line needs to be kept at a point that enables society's books to be balanced. 65 made sense when a comparatively small fraction made it there and massively costly medical interventions weren't a thing.
If you want to stop working either have enough kids or get enough money that you're not on the public purse.
In the US at least, social security and medicare is an entitlement. You essentially earn "points" (not literally but figuratively works similar) in the program the more taxes you pay into it while working, and then come time of retirement or disability you get benefits paid out based off how many "points" you have.
There is an implicit, and in many ways explicit, agreement that this is earned. Some people try to argue against that by pointing that the cash you get out isn't the same cash you put in, but that doesn't actually change anything in the agreement. Money is fungible, it doesn't matter where it comes from whether it got stored in a big bank over the 40+ years of work or it went to seniors of the time and the money comes from workers today, the seniors of today earned their "points" in the benefits system and want to see the obligations promised to them by the government fulfilled.
The correct answer to this was for the government to never make such a promise to being with, not to rip people off.
Yeah but the government sets forth with many entitlement and implicit vibes then takes them away arbitrarily. End of the day the system has to balance financially somewhat. The seniors of today didn't accumulate sufficient points to get the age target they wanted and it's better to make common sense shifts now rather than be forced through austerity or the day of the pillow in future
I think the best option is to simply raise the retirement age. There wasn't some big reason for it to be at 65, that was just the age of the federal railroad pensions. And they already raised it before, the full retirement age now is 67.
If there's any age it should be set at, it should be one where a substantial number of people are no longer able to be meaningfully employed. That way it is truly an insurance for old age, as the name implies. That more and more people are continuing to work while collecting benefits is proof that the age is not set properly for insurance purposes.
People who are crippled early can collect disability benefits as a form of early retirement, something we already did unintentionally back during the great recession.
Things are going to get really interesting when AI reverses the direction of this and brings it down from 67 to roughly 20 (ironically the highest current age at which someone finds jokes about 6-7 to be funny), as the only form of employment available to anyone becomes the original form of employment. Then again, improving cosmetic surgery and sun protection might mean that the age goes back up and/or just remains stable before going up to the 100s.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link