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 -
More debates revolving around young single men in the mainstream media. Particularly, who the young women are dating due to them being disproportionately in a relationship. The article provides some insight, stating that many are dating older men and each other. This has led to a more intresting conversation of if older men are increasingly monopolizing women. Leaving younger guys out to dry supposedly, however a good chunk (acutally half, according to study from pew research). The data gives two large reasons, mainly: Having other shit to do & just like being single. What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”. The argument from the mainstream being in a nutshell: that these single men are misogynistic, shitty bums and deserve to die alone. That take leads to some rather intresting conclusions however, when looking at the data. From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops. Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?
Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire? Is such a thing their fault? Is the black man to become white? Or the poor man rich (or at least reasonably middle class)? Could there not be barriers preventing them from achieving such feats? In most cases, progressives would be open to outside forces interfering with ones ability to succeed. The matter is being treated as if all of this is entirely within their control, and their failures are a simple matter of poor character. The issue appears far more complex is you ask me.
Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success. There is a bunch data about how expensive being poor is, poverty traps, and how difficult escaping it can be. Disputes over gender wage gaps. Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success, if anyone had such information on hand. Though my intuition tells me that such a study would be insanely difficult to do, if it even exists.
The top level post is about young women dating older men, instead of men of their own age.
You're proposing a solution to increasing birthrates. Considering older men are capable of impregnating younger women, I don't understand how this is related.
Could you explain how you landed here? I feel like I missed a transition.
More options
Context Copy link
But the political demand for this is hugely negative. The ones with current cultural power are either too old to have more children or are plugged into low-fertility norms, so it’s like pulling teeth to modestly expand parent tax credits. Your tax on careerist single women, you know, the ones with nothing better to do with their time than engage with luxury brands and girlboss feminism, would force them to do way more of the latter. What real stakeholders would back this plan for more than a few seconds?
More options
Context Copy link
That has to coexist with a moral / aesthetic desire for more children though, certainly among the 'elites' implementing the restrictions, but it'd help a lot for everyone. And incentives should extend to 4-5 children somehow, the 'marginal cost' to incentivize the least interested in children to have 2 is definitely higher than to incentivize those most interested in having 4.
Cultural factors here get weird, and this doesn't target the overall birth rate, but what about paying 'normal' women something like $5-10k per child with sperm donated from extremely-high-achievers (like, top physicists or executives or artists or w/e)? Or very large amounts like $50-100k to surrogate, and then raise, the children of two high-achievers? (Decade? out technologies like thousands-of-loci human gene editing / whole-genome synthesis, plus existing GWAS info gives something like "mental genes of random-mix-of-high-achievers, physical appearance (and maybe ""personality"") genes of raising parents, which would help with the cultural bits). Could be limited to two-parent households, or start with infertile couples, and uptake would (absent significant 'stick' or cultural shift) be pretty low, but the benefit's high - and whatever the social or individual cost of single parent households is surely dwarfed by loading the genetic dice. And ofc randomness, regression to the mean means famous mathematician / successful female exec children are still very unlikely to be famous mathematicians, but they'll still be much more economically useful, and personally benefit from the intelligence.
gwern had an interesting post on the economics of different eugenics methods; embryo selection is the most practicable in the short and medium term, and possibly net positive today depending on the estimate of an IQ point's economic value and discount rates.
If AI fizzles out one way or another, it's one of the less appreciated levers we have to improve the world.
Well, political/cultural and physical practicality are two different things! Non-iterated embryo selection, already done today (but not for IQ), is definitely less effective (for IQ or similar) than "be a surrogate/hire a surrogate for two extreme outlier parents" and i'm pretty sure less effective than "normal egg + donated sperm from one extreme outlier", and the latter has been doable for centuries! (And sorta is already done with sperm donation, but "college / graduate educated" is much much coarser than 'extreme outlier in iq/achievement'). But most people want kids who "are really their kids" and look like them, so embryo selection is better for that.
... for an infertile couple/lesbian couple who wants to adopt, this might already be both physically and culturally viable, if you can find willing donors?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wow that’s quite a big stick. Surely we don’t need that much?
Yeah, OP's solution to {problem} just boils down to "make problems illegal, or more charitably unfeasible", which can be the default answer to any problem if you are sufficiently authoritarian. To be fair that might be the only thing solution that will "fix" the problem, not to sure about how likely it is to be implemented or not have other nth order effects, but constraints are for dummies anyways.
Sometimes, "make problem illegal" is plainly pointless, no king can keep the tide back (or can they?). Other times, it's possible, if those with power intend it - if your choices were 'have four children' or 'imprisoned by neostasi', you'd pick the former. And strong social coercion to have children is historically plausible, as is "authoritiarianism" generally, so given a significant change in the morals of the elite and population, something like the above isn't inconceivable overall, even if it is in the present moment. It's suggesting that, maybe, people should be receptive to that kind of policy, when they obviously aren't now.
More options
Context Copy link
It's at least a concrete plan that would plausibly work, instead of endless ineffectual kvetching about the gender war.
Anyone can come up with an overtly authoritarian plan with no regard to feasibility or worse nth order effects, it doesn't take much creativity to suggest "make problem illegal". That's more of my gripe with such proposals.
They are certainly popular because at least something is being put forward and "doing something about it" is a winning move in many domains; E.g We certainly did something about covid, that's for sure, who cares if the cure is worse than the disease?
@DaseindustriesLtd proposal for example, aims to attain the same goal but is more thoughtfully crafted, aware of its shortcomings, aware of its constraints and just around more feasible/effective in the ways that would matter. OP even cites the same comment but ends up being a low-rung parody of it. Maybe I am being too harsh and am discussing things out of my depth but it certainly seems as much to me that @2rafa went on a diatribe about TFR when the parent post doesn't even mention it. (My model of the discussion is that the male disenfranchisement issue is a superset of the TFR issue, not the other way around.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Needs are always for something - it clearly isn't necessary for preserving society, and AI makes it less relevant, but if "raise birthrates by 50%+" is important enough, would anything else work?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Even just a mild use of the stick could probably push things back over 2.1 but any negative incentives seem verboten, not just for this but in general.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link