domain:npr.org
oats_son
5m ago
The whole post was written pretty facetiously, so it was easy for me to classify that as a joke. I understand, though, if you can't see it that way because of some report forcing your hand or something. The Jewposters may have battered the gate enough at this point that you are quick to sound the alarm. I hope it doesn't result in a soft "no more Jew jokes" rule.
NewCharlesInCharge
7m ago
That sounds like regular selective pressure. The communities that can maintain fertility will be the ones that dominate in the long run.
You can model the sexual revolution as a heritable fertility disease for which a small segment of the population was immune or had attenuated effects, even if the source of their resistance was cultural rather than biological.
thejdizzler
14m ago
I know the dating crisis has been done to death on this forum, but I want to talk about it perhaps from a slightly different angle than previous posters; that of the collapse of the ability to make collective decisions/sacrifices. Various self-improvement substackers seem to be populating the majority of my feed these days, and one, Get Better Soon had a post yesterday about how to attract women. Although much of the post is the standard dress better, be fit, be more interesting shtick, one thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was Get Better Soon's insistence that you had to be making at least $70k to be thinking about having a girlfriend, as well as living by yourself and preferably owning your own house/car. Now the median income in the US in $60k, and even controlling for the fact that men out-earn women, Get Better Soon is effectively saying here that more than 50% of men in the US are undateable. This no longer sounds like a problem that can be fixed merely through self-improvement.
Now I'm not saying that the advice I see from this guy is necessarily unhelpful for the individual: you will have more success if you earn more, aren't fat, and can hold a conversation. And historically some self-improvement was necessary to have for example, land to support your wife and future family. But we've rapidly gone from a situation in which pretty much everyone, including the ugly, mean, and poor bottom 50% of society could expect to get married, to a world where maybe that will happen to 20% of the population, and most of those people should expect to get divorced. The system is broken and pretending that individual actions can fix it is, frankly, delusional.
It's not just dating, I kind of see this with everything. We used to be able to take effective collective action as a country. Things like ballooning government debt, government incompetence, rapid urban decay, and breakdown in communities are relatively new phenomena that have popped up in the last twenty to fifty years. Aurelian loves to talk about how much the civil service and government in general have decayed in the UK (and France I think) since the end of the Cold War, and lays a lot of the blame at the feet of the focus on individual outcomes. I'm not sure if he has the causality the right way round, but it seems clear to me that we can no longer really effectively do things as a society. The inability to form lasting romantic and family attachments is only part of that.
anon_
17m ago
Actually no.
My very earnest belief is that homosexuality is significantly hereditary and hence gay children have at least a few people in their family history that were predisposed to homosexuality but who were never gay because that wasn't actually a noun.
Consider being a man with homosexual tendencies in any of the time between 1200-1900 (roughly, not trying to litigate the specific endpoint here). You might perhaps become a priest or a sailor, but odds are reasonable (to the extent that anything pre-industrial revolution is) that you end up with a wife who you successfully impregnate (perhaps while closing your eyes and imagining the pastor). That gene continues on.
It's even more stark as a woman. Sure some end up as nuns or spinsters, but a sizable fraction end up married and no one cares about their level of arousal at all. Again, the gene continues on.
The experiment we're running in the West since 1965 now is not even half done. And perhaps I'm wrong. But it will be a fascinating thing if the acceptance of LGB leads to a significant decrease in their population come 2065. This will be especially poignant if there's far more gay folks outside the tolerant west -- a world with gay Muslims but no gay Swedes.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
17m ago
Sure, those are the birth rates, but what are the retention rates? How many of those children stay with the religion of their parents? For example, I remember reading somewhere not long ago that the above-replacement birth rate for the Mormons goes pretty much into producing ex-Mormons, and that once you add in that exit rate, they're at or below replacement. And, AIUI, the retention numbers for Evangelicals are even worse — they're pretty much having the liberal kids current liberals aren't.
Pretty much the only groups I know of with above replacement birth rates plus retention rates are the Amish and Haredi Jews (which you didn't separate out from other Jews — when you do, the numbers for non-Orthodox Jews are pretty bleak, IIRC).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your problem, but the technical side of wood carving seems to be one of the more accessible art forms - since (modern, western) wood carvers like to write books about the topic. With 3 or 4 books, you'll get a broad overview on techniques and tools that will take you thousands of hours to master. If you want your first one hundred hours to be accelerated, wood carving courses seem popular enough that most larger cities will have one. If you can't get to one, there's a million youtube videos for beginners, seeing the motions in real time might beat books during those first one hundred hours. /r/woodcarving has some in their wiki.
This obviously will still get you nowhere close to making those Chaozhou wood carving masterpieces you linked, but (also obviously) chances for you to get to that level weren't very high in the first place, with or without a master mentoring you.
If you're really exclusively interested in historical, East Asian wood carving techniques, you will have a harder time, but I'm sure there are foreign language books about the techniques. AI translators will make those more accessible than ever before. A strong foundation in western wood carving will not hurt working through those books, so you might push that project a few years into the future.
Gamers are not flattered because no one but Elon ever wanted to be an accomplished PoE player on top of a world-class business career, and Elon did it in such a cringe way that if anything, he tanked their status along with his.
Also re: "The tennis tour get money, the guys playing got attention, and nobody got hurt" - this doesn't apply to gaming as much because paying money for a boosted character and gear is widely considered illegitimate cheating in gaming as opposed to a well-deserved reward for the hard-working Chinese professional item-farmers.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
24m ago
See in my mind, I think the Ackman thing is great. (Note that I hate Ackman's cultural presence in general and find him an utterly despicable person politically and culture war wise)
<1% of the people complaining about this on the internet were aware of the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI; fewer still were otherwise aware there was a tennis tournament in Newport last weekend; fewer still regularly follow the minor leagues of professional tennis. Ackman, in faking his way into a wild card spot and getting murdered, affirmed just how good the pros are, even on the minor league circuit, and just how cool it is to be professional tennis player, even on the minor league circuit. Ackman, in buying the status of a minor league tennis pro, affirmed that being a minor league tennis pro is high status.
When tech billionaires get into rock climbing or BJJ, it raises the status of pro rock climbers and BJJ instructors. They're richer, they're cooler, they're more respected.
Now there comes a point at which you've sold too much, where the status becomes worthless when everyone can buy it. A lot of fashion items that were once rare and hard to acquire and required one to travel to certain places, be "in the know" or connected, or were simply expensive, are now no longer the same signal of status.
So, in some ways, gamers should be flattered that Elon wanted to pretend to be them. The important thing is that he ultimately be forced to prove it, like Ackman, out on the court.
anon_
32m ago
There are a lot of elections between now and when the childless 40-somethings die and the 3.5 tradcath kids are 18.
I at least hope that you appreciate the paradox here - that the sentence itself is a white lie or a myth if you will. But it has utility as a mantra preventing people from lying too much either to others or to themselves.
I hear ‘it’s just a white lie’ all the time now, and there are no limits and no brakes on its runaway use.
Exactly. Like some autistic rationalist "telling the truth" about some weapon of mass destruction - if humanity can be destroyed by the truth, then it should be. Right?
anon_
37m ago
Indeed. In the fully Malthusian limit the sex ratio becomes much less important -- and as you say, maybe it's better to have a large fraction able to fight your neighbors.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
38m ago
It isn't even to that level, though, at least not with the grant proposals. "By our rules we filled the grant proposals with language that favored us. Then you found that language and removed it or canceled the grants. HYPOCRITES!!!"
WhiningCoil
45m ago
My Rules > Your Rules Applied Fairly > Your Rules Applied Unfairly.
This is "Your Rules Applied Fairly". Congratulations, the left has completely and thoroughly won! Rejoice!
What? This isn't what you wanted after all? Huh.
Tree
47m ago
We need phrases like that because the last years have shown that if you leave people any wiggle room, they will lie every chance they get. I hear ‘it’s just a white lie’ all the time now, and there are no limits and no brakes on its runaway use. The thing I found most shocking about the woke establishment is not that they would lie (about corona, discrimination, race), but that they would casually justify it if caught. And maga/trump casually lie even more, and then deny, so there’s not even the attempt at coherence left.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
47m ago
So you believe that the differential in reproduction is entirely attributable to genetics, rather than to cultural programming?
That seems unlikely, given that all those gay atheists came from long lines of heterosexual religious parents. Pew in 2019 found that among Evangelicals, only 65% of kids raised evangelical continued to identify as evangelical as adults. The cultural pull of secular society is still going to keep those numbers down.
Now you can assume that over time the forces of selection will optimize those genetics, until those numbers are pushed up further. But I'm not sure that's going to be the case. Particularly, it's likely that young people will be getting a better deal from the "worldly" once they are rare enough to be worth bribing. This can balance out the genetic drift over time.
Shrike
50m ago
It is reasonable to assume that, if things continue on as they have for another 100 years, secularism will continue to rise.
If things continue on as they have for another 100 years (appropriate to your analogy) the "mature" civilizations will, like the elders of a community, only be a shell of their former selves, if anything is left of them at all.
jake
59m ago
I think if you have two largely identical groups, where Group A reproduces below replacement and Group B reproduces in excess of replacement, Group A, from a purely materialist and natural reading, is a biological phenomenon whose function is as a genetic terminus, i.e.; here, the humans of western civ are in the process of selecting for genetic predisposition to specific rather than generalized religiosity. ("What kinds of things you believe but can't prove.")
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
Atheism offers that too, without all the window dressing.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
As others have already been kind enough to point out, the mod team asks that top-level posts within the CWR thread have more to them than a bare-link. Ideally, with more substantive commentary or an explanation of why this worth time and attention. At the absolute bare minimum, quotes of the source material where relevant.
TowardsPanna
1hr ago
The way out of delusion and suffering, of course.
Shrike
1hr ago
There is potentially a discussion to be had about how Catholics got into that position, and I'd guess it has to do with the quite large and influential Catholic education system.
I would also just add that "evangelical" continues to be much more of a signal for "right-wing" than "Catholic" and so I think Catholics are an easy place for righties to get people who agree with them on most everything without also having a religious affiliation that is listed under I AGREE WITH RIGHTIES ON MOST EVERYTHING in the dictionary. (Obviously evangelicals are more nuanced than that, but in terms of public optics I do think it matters a bit.)
As per your comment, I would not be surprised if this actually changes, and Catholicism becomes smaller but much more visibly right-wing as older generations of leaders die out (and as the left shifts to be more and more hostile to religion and away from old Catholic-friendly patronage networks). I foresee Catholic thought-leadership staffed with evangelical foot-soldiers as being a very potent coalition in the future, despite their cracks.
The trouble with untruth is that it is hard in advantage to know when it will be harmless and when it will lead to disaster.
The same can be said about the truth. In a sense the sentence itself is highly paradoxical, as it by itself is also not true and just a rationalist myth - vast majority of them would prefer lies if it increased utils, as they are utilitarians. This can be even trivially demonstrated by people who refuse to tell white lies and make their lives unnecessarily harder and miserable for other people as well. I am sure that even rationalists can be employed let's say in sales or service sector and pretend that they are thrilled to serve their customers instead of telling the "truth". The only thing that the truth destroys in that case is their job prospects with no upside.
I do not understand why rationalist love this sentence as it obviously goes against their main moral philosophy of utilitarianism. Most people - even rationalists - are not against what they consider white lies either individually (e.g. lying to Kant's axe murderer asking where your wife is) or society wide myths (e.g. everybody is equal before law, every vote counts etc). The actual sentence should therefore be something like
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be, except if destroying it would have huge cost in terms of negative utils
Which is basically in line with other moral philosophies as well - most of them like the truth unless it goes against other key values in that system.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
Meta: This is more or less a bare link.
Did you know that if you start a line with the greater-than character, themotte will show that line as a quotation? Also, most browsers allow you to mark text on websites and "copy" it by holding the Ctrl (or Command on Apple), then pressing the "C" key (Ctrl-C). With Ctrl-V, you can "paste" that text into a text field.
Using quotations and copy pasting together, you can do something like this (Click on the view source button at the end of this comment to see how it is done):
I LOVE DANGER ZONE writes:
Left-wingers tend to think of standpoint epistemology stuff, or various kinds of language policing, as a kind of consolation prize for minorities in an economically and legally subordinate position. Scouring grant proposals for non-inclusive language, pointing out microagressions, asking people to defer to your lived experience, these are tools for non-dominant minorities to begin to build the case for economic and legal equality. The dominant majority doesn’t need those things, the idea that the dominant majority would be jealous of those tools and want to use them is absurd.
[...]
I think to a very large extent left-wing culture in the US was totally unprepared for that kind of jealousy. Because they sort of thought of themselves as underdogs it was really hard to process the idea that right-wing culture contained a ton of people who desperately wanted to be underdogs in the same way, who didn’t view those things as scraps left over by the powerful, but instead thought of it as what power looks like.
Making decisions based on how much they offend the outgroup rather than actual effectiveness. Adopting reversed stupidity as a signifier of intelligence. Noticing that certain reactionary and authoritarian trappings are reviled, but taking this as evidence that they’re actually awesome.
Doing things to trigger the libs, basically.
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