domain:felipec.substack.com
Crowstep
5m ago
'Since forever' was hyperbole on my part, but this article suggests that Jews have been conservative for most of the post-war period. While they started off as poor, Eastern European immigrants (and voted left), they moved up the class pyramid and switched to voting right. This report suggests that the preference for Conservative voting was well established by 1995 but I couldn't find any data from earlier.
Plus the Victorian Britains elected the extremely Jewish-sounding Benjamin Disraeli as Conservative Prime Minister in 1874, although he had converted to the Church of England as a child so his Jewishness was ethnic if not religious. The end of (limited) legal discrimination against Jews is usually dated to 1858, when they were allowed to become members of Parliament without taking a Christian oath of office.
distic
6m ago
The reason is that people eat a lot of beef. Farmers don't try to optimize the environmental impact of our food, they optimize their revenue (and they are right to do so).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
14m ago
Thanks, though the sad thing is I know I could have done better last year if I had more time: and then I went ahead and did it at the last minute again! This year I’m going to try to write next years entry now, maybe then I’ll learn.
sun_the_second
14m ago
Grandpas typically don't live as long. That's a larger factor towards why grandmas represent the covid-endangered family member than increased respect towards grandmas, I think.
To_Mandalay
15m ago
Children and especially babies require an immense amount of attention
Children really require much less attention than WEIRDos think they do. Historically you could mostly ignore your babies between feedings. And once they becomes ambulatory you can just let them do whatever pretty much except when they have to do work around the house or in the fields. They'll probably be fine, horrifying as most moderns find the prospect. High child mortality was due to illness which pre-modern mothering was powerless to prevent, no matter how attentive or caring, not due to kids wandering off and getting eaten by bears.
This is still the case in a lot of undeveloped countries, or at least it was a few decades ago. I've talked to people who grew up in Latin America in the 70s but essentially lived pre-modern peasant existences and described parenting as being very hands-off.
Like what does a modern "neglectful" mother do? She probably lets her kid eat whatever, doesn't take him to the doctor, doesn't buy him new clothes, lets him go wherever he wants with whoever he wants whenever he wants. None of these were factors in the pre-modern world (everybody was eating the same thing, nobody was going to the doctor for yearly checkups, everybody wore the same clothes all the time) except for the last one which would only result in death at the margins.
SteveKirk
18m ago
Does posting comments stall out for anyone else? The comment will be there when I refresh, so it's either a front end only bug or a browser problem.
SteveKirk
22m ago
It might be the AI from Universal Paperclips getting a head start on disassembling organic life and covering the surface with solar panels. Think positive!
I've only just recently been introduced to the concept of "media literacy"
I'm very sorry, but be reassured that top minds are working on a cure for Media Literacy.
I only read PoG and not Phleb, and while it didn't feel like a slog I was deeply unsatisfied with it. The setup was interesting, but the only payoff was... Being lectured by annoying robot communists?
If you enjoyed the other one better I'll give it a try.
AvocadoPanic
30m ago
It's things like this that make me suspicious that EA is especially beset with Dunning–Kruger.
SteveKirk
30m ago
Congratulations! Being in the top half of a competition like that was already pretty good, best of luck this year.
To_Mandalay
32m ago
Men and women are both created in the image of God.
Maybe, but to what extent? Augustine believed the woman was not as much the Image of God as the man. Aristotle said without much qualification that woman was inferior to man.
Women historically had been protected or privileged over men in things likely to result in death like drowning on a sinking ship
This actually isn't really true. Someone linked the wikipedia page for "women and children first" which makes clear this is not some ancient code of conduct but a rather recent 19th century phenomenon, observed only sporadically. Men tended to fare better in shipwrecks, the Titanic being the glaring exception, because they were better swimmers.
or serving in combat.
The idea that being exempted from combat is a privilege is itself a pretty modern one. For a very long time bearing arms was one of, if not the highest honor. Free men could bear arms, not slaves or women. Probably the oldest conception of what it means to "be a man" is to be a great warrior who can kill a lot of people.
"Where's all that 'male privilege' when it's time to get drafted?" is a complaint that belongs to the post-modern and especially post-industrial era where warfare has been stripped of all the glory and honor that historically attended it, and been reduced to merely an unpleasant duty not dissimilar from digging ditches or pulling wagons.
Occasional woman through history who have fought as soldiers or warriors, whether disguised as men or otherwise, tend to draw praise or at least neutral curiosity, while men who took on the role of a woman with regards to child-rearing or other tasks assigned to the female sphere were viewed as worthy of derision at best.
SteveKirk
35m ago
That EA paper I linked suggested that the reclaimed land be paved over to reduce "wild animal suffering." Because if the earth is a lifeless void there will be no suffering.
AvocadoPanic
35m ago
Thanks. This was my first.
hydroacetylene
36m ago
Family connections bring actual literal benefits; it's probably better to be the lower earning partner in a couple than a higher earning single person. Like the whole thing about a housewife is that it's being a housewife meaning she's married; if a sufficient amount of relationship security is available then this is a rational decision, and given that divorce risk is not distributed equitably then many women- and I would estimate most who consider the stay at home mom route- should proceed under the assumption that they have sufficient relationship/family security to make the SAHM route a more rational decision.
And most adults are not that estranged from their parents, even in early young adulthood, nor do most marriages with a SAHM end in divorce. The median 'retired housewife' is happily married and posting instagram photos of her grandchildren, not alone and working at walmart to pay the bills.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
37m ago
I didn’t think I’d make it, but I submitted my entry for the ACX book review contest.
I’m a terrible procrastinator. I have been planning to write my entry since the contest was announced several months ago, and I’ve been intending to enter since the last contest ended, but beyond putting together an outline I didn’t actually start writing until this last Monday, a week before the due date. Still, better last minute than never!
Anybody else enter this year? I don’t have much hope of being a finalist, but I’d like to improve on my performance last year (54th out of 145).
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
44m ago
Did you mean www.thepsmiths.com ???
2rafa
45m ago
Even in 2015 the Tories won the Jewish vote 50-29, and that was when the Labour candidate for Prime Minister was Jewish.
Jews voted more for Labour in the mid-20th century because many were poor recent immigrants from Eastern Europe and voting at that time in England was still very class-and-region based.
hydroacetylene
46m ago
Nope, it was definitely not intended to be a reply. Omw likes sending private messages to engage in a point for some reason.
hydroacetylene
47m ago
Mackenzie's contributions to Amazon were a lot bigger than just "being Jeff's wife".
hydroacetylene
49m ago
A significant minority of women likely do not have this instinct or have it in a much weakened form. Through human and pre-human history women really haven't had that much of a choice on whether they bear children or not, so selection for enjoying motherhood is probably not as strong as you might think.
Children and especially babies require an immense amount of attention and in the premodern environment child mortality was extremely high. There was obviously a strong selection effect for women who enjoyed childcare because their children died less often from neglect.
AvocadoPanic
51m ago
This paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00589-6
has a nice visualization of the flows of inputs.
hydroacetylene
56m ago
Sure, income isn't, but stability of income probably is. Male teachers make unimpressive salaries but probably have a good TFR compared to similarly paid servers(and high end servers routinely make teacher money in the US because tips, it's just not very steady). Every butcher I've ever met has had a wife and usually kids if over 30, despite unimpressive salaries, because it's a very stably-paid position. Roadies, bartenders, and other such drifters might have a far-above-average number of partners because they move from social circle to social circle regularly. But I'm skeptical that any of these partners have a kid with them.
Terracotta
56m ago
Oh, I agree that it's a curse of middle-aged womanhood in general. Underneath that, likely just the bitter animal truth that humans only seek the favor of other humans when they (a) have something to gain from them or (b) have something to fear from them. Men are more physically intimidating into midlife, thus retain the power to command respect and amity for longer.
However, given the choice to be a widely-reviled middle-aged woman with a fat bank account, a nice apartment, some social clout and active power over one or two resentful underlings... or a widely-reviled middle-aged woman with a menial job, no money or future prospects, and the wistful memory of long-ago baby cuddles with grown adults who are now far away living their own lives, calling maybe once or twice a year? It doesn't seem obviously rational to choose the latter.
More chicken in the US. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=58312
They optimize their revenue by using land that is best suited for the purpose. If beef weren't the most productive / renumerative use it'd likely already be used for something else.
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