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 -
On the other hand we still have subgroups that maintain above replacement fertility, and they tend to not be the ones that leaned into the sexual revolution.
I don't like self-reports either. If they're dropped from all of sociology, we can dismiss them when discussing the sexual revolution as well, but not before.
Falling fertility seems to go hand in hand with both technological development and political/social liberalization. It's possible that only one is responsible for the effect, but since they almost never occur independently, it's hard to tell. If we all collectively decided to adopt the material and social circumstances of 19th century Russian peasants maybe we could get fertility rates back up, but this is exactly my problem with the "modernity is terrible because fertility rates are falling" argument. It is apparently the case that pre-modern society was able to reproduce itself, but I and a lot of people think pre-modern society was horrible in just about every respect and not worth reproducing. As far as I'm concerned, we either have to figure out some secret third thing that will solve falling fertility (whether it be artificial wombs or whatever) or resign ourselves to extinction. Either of those are preferable in my eyes to a return to pre-modern existence, though obviously the first would be better.
I don't want to defend all or even most of sociology.
It really is not that hard to make babies. Why would artificial wombs be needed?
Natural selection is making room for the ones that can figure it out. Like this bus driver in Japan.
Don't then. If you're not reproducing the future state of humanity is not really your business.
Apparently it is.
Most of the high fertility subgroups are subsidized by larger, less fertile society. Color me skeptical of the 'Amish/Haredim will inherit the earth' scenarios.
I'm a sperm donor, so I'll have some descendants running around.
So you care about the future state of fertility out of care for your descendants but you don't care enough to actually help raise them?
What other scenarios do you have?
People who don't have kids are not suddenly going to muster the courage to because Elon Musk came out with an artificial womb. Innovations in social engineering so that if you have a kid and they just up and die for whatever reason like you were too busy watching Youtube shorts then it's no big deal would go a longer way I suppose.
There was that one incident of some scientist woman who was too wrapped up in her stressful and important duties that she forgot to take out a young child out of a car and ended up losing it. This is probably what's keeping a lot of more-educated people out of parenting.
I've always had kind of a niggling, I guess atavistic drive to propagate my genetics and would feel sort of guilty about terminating my 'line', which is why I jumped through all the hoops to donate (well that and the payment). But no I have no interest in raising kids.
We could probably just pay people to raise them in Brave New World style barracks or something honestly.
I've been following this thread with interest and I feel like you've been holding your own fairly well in the face of multiple onslaughts. Here, however, you undo what I imagined was a fairly internally consistent, rational point of view (nevertheless quite different from my own, but compelling) and reveal a certain immaturity about what the hell you're talking about.
This was (mostly) a joke. I do hope technology will come to at least our aid, if not our total salvation, but I’m dreaming more of automation than BNW.
Fair enough.
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