domain:gurwinder.substack.com
hydroacetylene
5d ago
Right, the coordination problem to actually do this is a tough nut to crack, even in a totalitarian society.
TradCaths do this by having enough babies/toddlers that there are generally more of them wanting to be held than there are adults wanting to hold them; thus teenaged girls get lots of baby holding time and decide they like it(because most do). This is likely not an option for a country with a TFR of 1.0. The party might bring this up at meetings, but they probably bring up lots of stuff no one believes. China also strikes me as an… unlikely candidate for the kind of religious revival which boosted fertility in the stans.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
I think the argument is basically feudal. The employer is basically considered a liege lord to its employees, owing them some minimum standard in living. If the king (government) has to step in and provide additional largesse directly, that's a failure on the lord's part.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
5d ago
It is trivial to change TFR and eventually China will realize it, and they will be able to solve it via totalitarianism while we are unable to follow suit. You (1) judge the social value of girls and women exclusively by their aptitude and progress in motherhood; (2) inculcate pro-fertile values in adolescent girls (eg media, stories, idols), (3) train girls in the skills for motherhood.
The reason the Haredi female TFR is so high regardless of country or income is because they do this. The reason that you have some fundamentalist Christian families with high TFR is because they do this. The reason the Gypsy TFR is 1.5 to 2x the national average of whichever country they live in, despite being urban-dwelling, is that they do this. The reason I have cousins on one side of family who are going to average 4 kids each is that I know their parents so this. There was a longitudinal study where girls were given a fake baby that they had to mother throughout school; the longterm effect was 1.5x higher TFR. (I think I found this on themotte but forgot the poster).
carrot on the stick
Women care so much about their social valuation that they will starve themselves to gain more more of it; they will spend two hours a day decorating their face and hair and wardrobe; they will even go through a miserable period of hard work and stress with little monetary reward only because it secures status (we call this “academia”). In more fertile eras, these pressures were toward motherhood; a woman who wanted to be an academic would be laughed at and derided.
Anyway, China will realize this, they will totalitarianly implement changes and likely in such a way that it targets high IQ Chinawomen, and we will be fucked (impotently) because we are ruled by entertainment and corporations, not a centralized communist party.
(also paging Mr @hydroacetylene)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
That's cope and you know it.
It's very much not cope. The capture of the institutions means those who have captured them can, at will, produce "authoritative" studies supporting or opposing any proposition they care to support or oppose, regardless of the truth value of those propositions. That, in turn, means the probative value of studies from such institutions is zero or close to it, and such studies are correctly dismissed out of hand.
TitaniumButterfly
5d ago
A few things which irritate me about the LitRPG genre and web fiction in general. You may picture me as comic book guy for purposes of this rant.
- Switching tense within sentences. This is rampant and incredibly-obnoxious once one notices. "Hefting his mace, he swung at her as hard as he could." I don't know how this got to be such an entrenched institution but to me it occurs as about on par with having "Like" at the start of every sentence. Is the book still readable? Yes. Does my eye twitch a little every single time? Also yes.
- "Whelp I don't immediately understand what's going on so let's just not talk about it at all; let's not even try to figure it out until later in the plot." No use thinking about it now!
- Reflexive denigration of 'religion' even in contexts where this is obviously and absurdly inappropriate. "Oh are there literal gods walking the world, enacting their wills and communicating with humans? Well I want nothing to do with that because religion is dumb and stupid and icky and only for low-status people."
- "No don't bow to me or call me 'sir'; I don't go in for things like that." This one is everywhere and I find it especially puerile. Hierarchy is crucial in human organizations and we developed the systems we did for a reason. Particularly outside the modern context, public displays of respect and deference are both necessary and for the good of all. People need structure and boundaries to function. Refusing to take on the mantle and respect of authority, if that is your calling, does not serve anyone. It just confuses and scares them.
- Related to the above, modern progressive attitudes everywhere. Of course men and women are exactly the same. Of course everyone is having casual, consequence-free sex. Of course anyone who finds meaning in faith is secretly cynically corrupt or else a psycho child molester.
I could go on but I feel better getting at least this much off my chest.
Tree
5d ago
Walton family, whose business is only viable because the government enables them to pay below-livable wages with their welfare programs.
I don’t understand this common argument. Without welfare, wouldn’t the employees be more desperate, enabling walmart to pay them far less?
And to look at the problem from the other side: let's say Bernie decides that the state guarantees a minimum standard of living to everyone, regardless or work status, and raise that to equal or higher than whatever walmart pays : as a consequence, no one works at walmart anymore and the state pays everyone a walmart salary. It's a gigantic loss for the state. What I mean is, it's actually walmart who helps the state give money to people so they have an acceptable living standard (which is the responsibility of the state, according to leftists), not the other way around.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Actually, many rural republicans I know do self identify as people who don't need to or just don't go to a doctor. But that's more a matter of stupidity in those cases.
At no point am I arguing that rural healthcare won't be harmed, I'm arguing that they don't think it will be.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
I would love to read a regular "weird court cases" topic.
GBRK
5d ago
Replying here to both your comments.
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are inherently worse than India despite the only major difference being lack of Hinduism and castes.
This is a big claim when from my perspective the historical performance of pakistan and india have been pretty similar in terms of GDP per capita. The main reversal has come only recently, which seems like it would directly counter your complaints about indian society becoming more dysgenic. And saying that there's not a lot of differences between those countries-- and that those differences are shared with countries that perform both better and worse than india on an IQ and economic basis-- indicates that those differences are not decisive in increasing indian IQ.
India needed castes to create smarter outliers at the cost of dumber underclass which is a better deal than Bangladesh.
Elites are smarter than their underclass everywhere. You don't need castes to do it. Rather, the evidence is that creating caste-based elites makes your nation underperform relative to other nations with similar capacity for elite formation. Consider Mexico, which got mogged by brazil and the US in the 20th century at least in part due to political instability caused by the remanants of its caste system. Consider how recent european history is basically just relatively meritocratic states stunting on relatively aristocratic states. Picking smart people to form your elite just works better in every way that picking an elite and trying to make them smart.
This is simply untrue, these exams are the reason why French revolution happened
source? And what does that have to do with my argument about selecting for IQ? Even if you're right, it seems to fit pretty smoothly into my model of, "create intermarrying genetic castes -> castes put on bottom have a rational reason to revolt".
and also why you see Asians represented disproportionately in places as their society lives and dies by exam conferred status.
And this counters my argument how?
Did China or Korea produce anything resembling what Indo Europeans did until the 21st century?
Um, yes? From here:
For the Roman Empire ca. 165 CE we accept an estimate of a total population of 75 million and of an imperial income per capita of kg750 of wheat equivalent...$900
For the Han Empire ca. 2 CE we accept an estimate of a total population of 57.7 million and of an imperial income per capita of 1.88 times the subsistence minimum, or $750.
Also relevant,
1.72 subsistence minima ($690) recently estimated for the Aztec Empire ca. 149211. For the Byzantine Empire ca. 1000, an income level comparable to the Aztec has been proposed38.
It's not an exact match, but considering that rome then proceeded to collapse and never re-unite while china had long stretches of stability, it's fair to say that European and Chinese civilization were probably fairly comparable at various points in history.
The world has natural order which wants the blue blooded to be with the blue blooded, the son also rises as they say. Why are castes bad? Do you prefer a slightly higher median with a way fewer smart people. Castes are religious but I'll only defend the sociological factors here.
You foundational assumption-- that castes increase the total amount of very-smart people-- is wrong. India has the same normal distribution of IQs as everyone else. If you were right, India would have a right-skewed distribution. The caste system may or may not provide IQ benefits to the elite castes (I'd guess "not" looking at how the Indian elite underperform relative to the european and chinese elite), but it definitely fails to provide that benefit to society at large. At best, castes don't do anything except split India into a variety of fueding interest groups. At worst, they reduce global selection pressures for IQ without actually doing much to improve outcomes locally.
Tanista
5d ago
Johnson and Pascal do have some chemistry with one another, but as my girlfriend pointed out, it's the chemistry you expect between a girl and her gay best friend, or perhaps a girl and her cool uncle. It was hard for me to believe they were romantically interested in one another, even if it's implied that Pascal's character is significantly older than Johnson's (although probably not quite as much as their IRL age gap of ~15 years).
It's been a while since I saw it but that one I thought was deliberate.
The revelation about his character casts their entire relationship in a different light.
Pascal's character didn't approach her because of chemistry, but for validation.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
Tanista
5d ago
I don't know if Chris Evans is a bad actor so much as out of practice. His post MCU run isn't exactly a Pattinson/Radcliffe-style rush to stretch himself.
This is the first real movie I've seen him in since like Knives Out (which he was fine in). The rest has been streaming slop like Ghosted and Gray Man that might as well be AI generated and he could probably do in his sleep.
cjet79
5d ago
BP "beyond petroleum" Their logo of a sun exploding or expanding, which would be the end of the earth, and also the end of petroleum extraction on the planet.
In the YIMBY / NIMBY realm that I'm active in, a housing project will only receive funding (tax breaks, grants, etc.) if it can prove that a certain number of its contractors are women-owned businesses.
This is a classic example of "spending money to incentivise a change in outcomes". It's not legally enforcing that a certain number of a housing project's contractors must be women-owned businesses, it's just providing additional funding to those who employ a certain proportion of women-owned businesses. In much the same way that initiatives like providing women with supports, extra networking opportunities (see page 44 here) or extra education + credentials indirectly results in the hiring of women into certain occupations by favouring one half of the population in such a way that they will be more noticeable by or desirable to employers, this policy structures things in a way which indirectly gets people to select women-owned businesses, thus changing outcomes via changing incentives. I don't agree with the idea that the examples provided in my post are materially different from the one you've provided as an example of DEI. You could possibly draw another (IMO even more arbitrary and fine-grained) distinction between the two which doesn't rely on the distinction between "mandating an outcome" vs just "incentivising it via funding", but that conflicts with the prior definition of DEI you've set out and suggests that you likely did not have a clear understanding of the supposed distinction in the first place.
I will also note that in one of the budget statements I referred to, "employers, training providers, schools and community organisations" were being provided grants to "facilitate career opportunities and pathways for women, particularly in non-traditional industries and occupations" (page 40 here). Employers being provided grants to create career opportunities for women is pretty on-the-nose, and I'm not sure how any of that particularly differs from the "women-owned businesses" example you provided.
In addition, I disagree with how you've generally approached defining terms throughout the span of this conversation - your definition of DEI is overly centred around extreme levels of hair-splitting about means in spite of any shared ends, and I think your "retroactivity" argument fails as a defence of it (nor is calling it a "broadbrush" particularly convincing to me). For my part I can't help but argue against the repeated insistence that one should adopt terminology which "acknowledges" three million fine-grained gradations of difference while depriving people of large-scale concepts; it’s almost as if you want people never to refer to broad concepts like "blue" because there are differences between powder blue and ultramarine - but that won’t change how people feel about movements and initiatives that are clearly closely and intimately related. The very idea of categorisation exists so people can collectively refer to meaningfully related phenomena, and you can have different levels of categorisation which are more high or low-level. As such, I steadfastly reject the accusation of broadbrushing, and maintain that the usage of the term "DEI" to encapsulate all of the described initiatives is more or less appropriate.
EDIT: added more
hydroacetylene
5d ago
I am connected to two tribes of rural republicans, albeit not the poorer sorts. Having been around poor people who didn't like democrats, their likelihood of voting is rather low.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5d ago
Also, for anyone considering Vic 3
The game has improved significantly with 1.9, but still has some glaring issues. I think by 1.11 it'll be an un-ironically good game.
I recommend buying vanilla on sale, as access to Steam workshop is MANDATORY (seriously, mods make this game so much better). It's incredibly easy to CreamAPI the DLC for free once you own the base game.
That's not all that big of a gap.
No, it isn't. If he hadn't bothered to get any Botox or cosmetic surgery, I think he would have been entirely believable as a 37-year-old: even if he looked a little older, it might have made sense given that his character works unsociable hours, shares a crummy apartment with two of his mates and has a bad diet. But Evans is obviously sufficiently vain and/or concerned about his career prospects that he felt medical interventions were necessary, so we're stuck with this flat, impassive uncanny valley appearance.
I wonder how much control a director (vs the studio) has over this kind of thing (that is, the casting of the main actors).
I would be surprised if any of the three leads were Song's first choices for their respective roles.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5d ago
Legit, you see people on the forums suffering through issues that they could solve in 10 seconds with a debug_mode mod and "~"
Victoria 3 might actually be the worst for this too. I find myself constantly needing to tag over to other countries to fix whatever insane and dumb shit they (since 1.9, 90% of the time its France) get themselves into.
Also the WORST border gore, oh god the border gore.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
This seems to be a bedrock of how you feel about this topic. How did you first form this opinion,
Taxes
and what keeps you feeling this way?
I don't really see much difference between Reagan's welfare queen and the Walton family, whose business is only viable because the government enables them to pay below-livable wages with their welfare programs. Both parties simply exploited a bureaucracy.
Yes.
I don't know what to say. I have a visceral disgust reaction towards people who can't even support themselves. Taking my money to give to them, no matter how round about it is, just adds insult to injury.
Sometimes I think of the wisdom of say, giving out free food on Thanksgiving versus all year round. If the food is a one day thing where you get to enjoy a nice meal with some dignity, awesome. If it's a stipend that lets you indulge in the dangerous delusion that you're actually taking care of yourself, or capable to producing dependents, well that's another thing entirely.
But then you started circling the idea of bullshit jobs too, and how much work is actually productive. One man's blue sky research is another man's wasteful spending. Sometimes you get Xerox PARC or Bell Lab's Idea Factory, and sometimes you get whatever the fuck this is, NSFW btw. I might have a bullshit job. I might not. Gun to my head I might just be a bit player on the outskirts of an industry that may or may not generate some ecosystem of products that makes the world marginally better to live in. If I'm lucky. What can I say?
GBRK
5d ago
Are you a poor or rural republican? Your logic makes sense, but I'm looking for insights specifically into their psychology.
GBRK
5d ago
has made such "poor form" necessary for intellectual hygiene
That's cope and you know it. Either address my point or concede it. I'm not doing a gish gallop; I made an argument around a single point and provided concrete evidence to support it. I'm not trying to troll you-- or at least, as per the rules of the motte, you should assume in good faith that I'm not, and you should report me if you find evidence otherwise. It's fair to say that on the internet you need to be wary about expending way more effort than an opponent who just wants to provoke a response, but it should be obvious that that's not the situation you're currently in. You put in some effort to make an argument. I put in some effort to counter it, and a little on top of that to find a source. You can surely afford to put in a little little more, knowing that if I fail to respond after that point I have effectively conceded the argument.
If someone sincerely believed in the benefits of smoking and took the effort to post a source in support, the least I could do is post a single study countering.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
5d ago
Awesome read.
I didn’t own a car for ten years in South Florida and bicycled 2 hours a day usually.
I always dreamed of doing something like what you wrote. But also reading what you wrote I realize that I don’t think it’s up my alley. It sounds amazing - but I just want a relaxed trip on a road with a pub at the end of a few hours.
What was your most relaxed bicycling trip been ?
cae_jones
5d ago
Yeah, this whole thread, I'm thinking, "someone mention that the costs are too high", and you got the closest. If you showed this thread to Trump, he'd probably argue that he's working on pressuring the drug companies to bring prices down. How likely that is to work is another matter entirely.
I suspect that, if prices don't come down, this will mean budget cuts for my workplace, and that will almost certainly result in some unpleasantness with supplies and their quality.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5d ago
This is a really well thought out comment, thank you for writing it.
I think I agree with most of it. I still think the "mechanism of action" for a cat-call vs skimpy shorts (or whatever) is far enough apart that they don't compare well, but I'll concede they're on the same spectrum of human behaviour/motivations.
I'm gonna read this again later when I'm not in motion, thanks again.
Centralized communist parties don't have a good track record in increasing TFR. Ceaucescu tried and only managed a blip. Even taking the rest of your thesis as true, it doesn't work because Communism is essentially modern in the ways you're objecting to. Communism (theoretically) values work, not motherhood.
Nazism did value motherhood, and does seem to have increased the birthrate, but unfortunately also massively increased the death rate.
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