site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16179 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

“Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise” link

This is trending on Twitter so might as well discuss it here anonymously.

I know more than a few people say it’s just vibes and the data is good but I think this article makes a strong point that a real loss of social capital has actually made younger people poorer. And I believe this links into the fertility debate because the goods that you could buy before with social capital are especially needed with children. Having kids has gotten very expensive. I think everyone knows education, housing, and health care have boomed in costs. Being single means you don’t need to take on these costs. You can have kids if you are poor and live off government resources or you can have kids if you are rich but it’s a financial disaster for the upper middle class.

I largely come down to diversity (mass migration) and the Great Migration killing American social capital that the boomers had. Before these things occurred we had cheap urban housing because people weren’t afraid of their neighbors and cheap public schools. And homogenous urban environments have a lot of social capital for their residents. Also you had cheap babysitters because your neighbors were like you and you trusted them. Your kids could just go to the park alone. So childcare was free. I feel comfortable blaming diversity on rising housing costs (zoning the poor away from good communities) and for rising educational costs (falling public school quality).

So yes I think today’s generation is poorer in a lot of ways that really matter due to less social capital (but richer in other ways). And I do think the ways we are poorer today are especially bad for fertility where you now need to buy those goods in the market but they were free before.

Me ex left me about 5 years ago.

Previously we were splitting mortgage and utilities that came out to (for ease of calculation) $2000/month.

When she left, she got an apartment that cost (again, ease of calculation) $1500/month. I kept the house/mortgage/utilities and pay those fully out of pocket.

So I'm spending $1000/month more than I would be in the counterfactual where she stayed (was paying $1000 for housing, now $2000). She'd spending an extra $500/month (and I didn't even count utilities and such for her). We'd cumulatively have $1500/month 'extra' if we stayed together. Over a year that's $18,000. Over 5 years, that's $90,000. So I would, individually, be $45,000 richer (probably more! I could invest more!) in that counterfactual. That's several vacations, a new car, that's a new roof on the house or other major renovations.

I am doing well for myself. Salary is fine, debt is manageable.

I would be doing much better if I could find a reliable partner to shoulder either part of the bills or the housework or, ANYTHING really. Financially the 'hole' I'm in compared to the one where I'm happily married is getting deeper by the month.

And there are millions of people in similar situation, could be partnered but are not. Those folks don't, strictly speaking, show up in the economic stats as 'struggling.'

And that's before we talk covid-induced inflation and the attendant increase in prices of housing, vehicles (and insurance, and repairs), and medical care.

So yeah, there are some feedback loops out there that can make someone doing fine 'economically' still be struggling. Big one: difficulty finding affordable housing means more living with parents which means harder to find a partner, which makes it harder to afford housing, AND means there's more housing demand (if people start moving in together, that reduces demand on housing and lowers prices!).

And being clear, I'm not angry at her about it. I've processed and moved on. But I'm acutely aware of the price of being single, if for no other reason than to help me calibrate how much I should 'compromise' to bring a new woman into my life.

Having a partner can also be very very expensive. I'm easily $500k+ in the hole from paying all my ex-girlfriend's costs, who refused to get a job for 15+ years. (I'm extremely low-status in the dating market. I finally got out of the relationship, so at least I'm alone and miserable rather than paying through the nose and miserable.)

What's funny is that I wouldn't even have minded a trophy-wife situation where I at least got decent sex out of the deal. I know suggesting that makes me the worst kind of misogynist. We're supposed to pretend that relationships aren't transactional. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/communication-2

My ex was not the most frugal person.

Racked up student debt paying OUT-OF-STATE TUITION for reasons that read to me as asinine.

But at least it was a decent major. She had a tendency to just assume if you pay a lot for something it must be the best/high quality. Also had a tendency to throw out old things and buy new when something broke. Which, uhhhhh in hindsight was probably a warning sign.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

This winnows out a LOT of the field very early. I was dating a girl the last few months who apparently liked to select fancy restaurants just to see if I'd blink at paying the bill. At least, that's the game as I interpreted it. She would also cook for me so I was curious to see where things went. A few hundred dollars later and I can't even get a text back now.

Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

Seems reasonable. Though, try not to get a new GF that just has a slightly different set of horrible traits! "This time I'm putting my foot down, arson is a hard no." Nobody's perfect, but as long as you're willing to consider "alone" as a viable option, it really does let you be more selective.

Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.

Yeah, most people would (and should). I've made a lot of bad choices.

This is kind of the problem. I'm familiar with the concept of 'tradeoffs' and accept that. If I somehow land a smoking hot redhead with DD's, I can accept she might be a bit profligate in spending, which I will corral as best I can.

But the women are generally lacking so many of the desirable traits I'd look for that there's not much to trade off against!

Reading you guys makes me realize I am significantly more of a naive or fatalist romantic than I would have credited myself as. Romance is something that happens, dammit, not the synthetic end result of a deliberate, cold-blooded process.

From "Unspeakable Bargains" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Once upon a time there was a man named Simon who was a successful junior trader at a financial firm in New York City, who was heterosexual and liked conventionally pretty women. Simon used to take attractive women out to swanky restaurants, and fancy theatres, and amusement parks on weekends, and buy them jewelry and clothing; and then they would go back to his place and have fun. One day, Simon decided to stop spending money on women.

Immediately after, women decided to stop spending time on him.

Simon was very depressed by this. "So they never liked me to begin with?" he bemoaned, clutching his hands against the lapels of his $4000 business suit. "They were just stringing me along for my money all along?"

"That's admittedly a possibility," said Noelle, a well-known author who wasn't conventionally attractive and could therefore go to expensive restaurants with Simon without sex entering into it. "But considering the sheer weirdness of what you just tried to get away with, we can't even conclude that much. I don't even know how to describe the exact mistake you're making. Why on Earth did you try that in the first place?"

"Numerous movies and TV shows have told me that if girls really like me, they'll like me for myself rather than my money," explained Simon.

"Honestly I sometimes find it a bit hard to really, deeply understand from a first-person perspective what it's like to make that mistake," said Noelle. "Admittedly, I'm privileged, because I attract people by being a famous author, and therefore I identify strongly with the aspect of myself that I market sexually. Like, anyone who only sleeps with me because I'm the famous author Noelle Smith therefore does like me for myself, as I define 'myself'. So it's hard for me to imagine the existential horror of needing to market oneself sexually using only wealth, physical attractiveness, sexual skill, and other characteristics that ultimately fail to distinguish you from millions of other people. But then I know that there's other famous authors who attract people and that doesn't seem to upset me. For that matter, I know that there's centillions upon centillions of perfectly identical Noelles elsewhere in our spatially infinite universe, and that doesn't upset me. I seem to have lost track of the thread of the conversation, where were we again?"

"I was being sad about the fact that all of those girls turned out to only be attracted to me for my money," said Simon. "Honestly, it wouldn't even disturb me all that much, except for the fact that all the movies and TV shows have told me that this is an inferior quality of love, which means that somebody else is doing better than I am."

"Oh right, that," said Noelle. "Yeah, and I was saying we couldn't even conclude that much, though there is a certain prior probability in play. Look, it'd be one thing if you were poor, but honest, and also extremely handsome. But if you're visibly wearing a $4000 suit and still trying to take the girl to eat at McDonalds, that sends another message entirely. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that at least Wendy, of all the women I was dating, said that she liked me for myself and that the restaurants had nothing to do with it!" declared Simon. "I'm genuinely disturbed that she turned out to be lying!"

"Oh, Wendy? Yeah, her I liked," said Noelle. "Simon, I don't think Wendy was lying. I think she was making a deep-seated error about how her own psychology worked, like, she was having trouble interpreting reality in a way that didn't seem horrible to her, so she slipped sideways into a nearby universe instead. Look, Wendy's model-level beautiful, right? She can date in the big leagues. 'Don't marry for money, hang around rich girls and marry for love,' as the saying goes. Wendy's pretty enough that she can afford to hang around with a hundred people in your rough category of socioeconomic status, and pick out one that she likes. She could still have been attracted to you more than other rich guys, because of the fine details of your personality or something. Like, she found it cute the way you snort in the middle of laughing, or whatever the hell it is you think it's acceptable for women to be attracted to."

"Yeah, but it's not okay that Wendy also cared about the money!" said Simon. "That makes her a horrible person, right? Or at least shallow. A woman with real depth to her wouldn't care about my money at all."

Noelle thunked her head against the wall of the restaurant booth they were in. "You know," she said, "even if we concede that this hypothetical quality would earn a woman 2.3 virtue points, which could in itself be debated, my mind is still going: 'But why would somebody that virtuous need to end up dating somebody poor and unattractive? Shouldn't she be able to score a wealthy boyfriend who's attracted to excessively virtuous women?'"

"I'm starting to wonder if I've gone to the wrong friend for consolation here," said Simon.

"Possibly," said Noelle. "I mean, I'm having trouble imagining a universe whose mating market ends up that far out of equilibrium. Like, I can't believe in the implied alternative to mating markets for long enough for me to become emotional about it, or something like that. But even so I feel you're being unfair to Wendy in calling her shallow. If you hang around 20 guys whose personalities attract you, and then you marry the one who takes you to the most expensive restaurants, there's nothing wrong with that. There isn't even anything shallow about that. Deep women can like Kobe beef too. There's nothing wrong with wanting to go to expensive restaurants at the same time as being with someone you like."

"Of course there is," said Simon. "Let's be realistic here, if you like 20 people for themselves, there's going to be some quantitative level at which you like them, and if you pick the wealthiest person from among those, you're going to end up sacrificing 0.3 liking points so you can get 10 wealth points. How is that not shallow? I know, I know, you think everyone just is shallow, and maybe that's true, but it's still sad."

Noelle thunked her head against the wall again. "See," she said, "I don't think of myself as being cold-heartedly cynical when I reject that way of looking at things. I don't think that kind of exchange is bad when it happens alongside everything else in life. I don't think that optimizing your own life and reaching up for things is selfish and bad. I don't think it's wrong for a woman to want jewelry and for that to influence her dating life, so long as that one consideration doesn't take over her life at the expense of everything else. And aren't you the guy who never asks out any woman he doesn't consider to be at least a 9 out of 10?"

"That's not the same at all!" Simon said indignantly. "I can't control who I'm sexually attracted to. It's not like I try to score women on the same scale that everyone else uses, the way that wealth is objective and measurable, and then I only try to score with women who score at the 90th percentile. I just can't control who my brain is attracted to, that's all--there's no choices involved."

"Well," said Noelle, "I have to admit that I'd feel a lot more sympathetic if you said that you were willing to date 6-out-of-10s in exchange for them being okay with you being frugal. As it stands, I can't help but feel like you're trying to be a barista who insists on still getting the $4 but not giving people the coffee. It seems to imply an asymmetry in how your mind sees people--that you see them being 'selfish', but not yourself trying to 'just live a better life' or however you'd put it."

"I didn't think sex was supposed to be this cold-blooded exchange!" said Simon. "And maybe it is, maybe there's no escaping it--but then it's okay for me to be sad about that, right?"

"I'm not sure exactly how to describe what mistake you're making," Noelle said, "but it has something to do with it being really horrible for some reason that something matters, and that thing clearly does matter in the real universe, so you don't want to live in the real universe anymore. And also something to do with you having trouble really taking on somebody else's perspective, maybe because that would force you to acknowledge that the thing is allowed to matter."

"Would it kill you to say that my feelings are valid?" said Simon.

"I'll say it if you pay me $50," said Noelle.

Simon shook his head. "I wonder if the reason we have a taboo against greedy women in the first place is that women like you ruined it for everyone else."

"No, see," said Noelle, "I feel like I'd want $50 in exchange for saying that, and my feelings are valid too."

Or, as Alpha Centauri put it:

"Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant."

– CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"

This is why God gave us cats, so you could have a genuine meet-cute with a creature that will love you forever.

Cats? Those shameless, opportunist egomaniacs without a shred of loyalty?

The allergenic ones?

Well, God did not make the world to suit everyone.

More comments

I am significantly more of a naive or fatalist romantic

My Brother in Christ (said completely without irony), that is who I am on the deepest level.

I fully expected I was going to marry my high school sweetheart. But we went to different colleges so you can guess how that turned out.

My entire relationship history is me trying my damndest to wrest a romantic happy ending from an increasingly cynical world. Each time I fail, I make some adaptation that hopefully improves my odds, and each time the reality of the situation proves I wasn't cold and calculating enough. So I become more strategically machievellian with the instrumental intent of finding someone to partner with and then GTFO of the toxic pool.

I've done everything I can in the past three years to maximize by 'social surface area' so I can have that chance encounter with the love of my life.

And unfortunately all this has done, now, is expose me to every single variant of dysfunction you can imagine. I've observed other people's relationships fail for the silliest, most avoidable of reasons, I've seen the very depths of toxic female behavior. I'm still fanning a small, candle-esque flame inside of me that believes a romantic happy ending is possible. But the stats are what the stats are, I won't look away.

If I were able to acquire the necessary power, I would radically restructure the social order enough to allow the sensitive young man to once again be competitive enough in the sexual marketplace that they CAN have their organic, fated encounter with their soulmate and expect the "live happily" to actually last "ever after."

I fully expected I was going to marry my high school sweetheart. But we went to different colleges so you can guess how that turned out.

happy_padme.jpg: She was fiercely loyal, regularly visited you, steadfastly refrained from partying or entertaining male attention, and you two eventually got married and lived happily ever after, right?

More comments

Each time I fail, I make some adaptation that hopefully improves my odds, and each time the reality of the situation proves I wasn't cold and calculating enough

Do you think you may be overfitting here? If every time a relationship fails, you make an adaptation that would have ensured it worked, that does not necessarily mean you are becoming overall more desirable to the women that you want. Meanwhile, you are slowly giving up on something you value deeply.

I agree with the overall gist of it; Being the sensitive young man is endlessly disappointing, but that does not imply that meeting cynicism with cynicism of your own is a good solution that increases the odds of landing the relationship you want.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats