domain:ymeskhout.substack.com
Access to sex is a major incentive for being economically productive for men. If the distribution of sex becomes more unequal, the marginal utility from additional work or career growth will decrease for men for those under the xth percentile (imagine the derivative of the Lorenz curve). Those men will put less effort into moving up the curve through dedicated everyday effort and self-improvement and instead focus on consumption of other goods (video games, porn) and wild unproductive bets that would move them far up the curve in a single fortuitous event (gambling, speculative crypto, GME).
Which means a poorer, less dynamic society. Which is definitely a society that can survive, but I'd prefer a different one.
faceh
9m ago
The US took over that role. China could take that role, they have a much bigger maritime industry than the US does. They're the biggest trading nation, they're naturally interested in controlling sea lanes and trade routes.
They're not a particularly good candidate because they have a harder time projecting power, especially into the Atlantic.
And their demographic problems are even worse and more advanced than the West's... and that's just what they admit. I have no doubt the CCP could attempt some crazy political solutions. But as I mentioned elsewhere in here that still requires 20+ years to raise the children of that new baby boom to the age where they can become productive.
Highly religious groups have high fertility, this is pretty straightforward!
Yes, the Amish, having entirely rejected modern cultural, technological, and economic norms are doing fine here.
But the majority of us are living with the standard set of such norms and have to navigate the system where others hold these norms or similar versions.
I don't think there's a policy prescription I've yet seen which would manage to bring modern society's fertility levels up to that of the devoutly religious without also impacting their material conditions in a way that lowers standard of living.
Now, that tradeoff may be worthwhile, but good luck selling it.
If the US pulls back, other powers will replace America in setting rules and norms. That's why the US isn't pulling back.
But that's why the demographic issue is concerning. Maintaining the order when you have intense economic strain due to aging population at below replacement level unable to produce the necessary output to maintain the country's economy at the level necessary to field an effective naval force. Ukraine's demographics are impacting its ability to field an effective military and they will probably never recover.
The U.S.' military capacity is not immune from this.
Like, this is the point. Historically this scenario is rather unprecedented. Other scenarios where human population decreased in a rapid fashion usually indicate economic collapse.
I've yet to see ANY example from history where human population went on a steep decline without economic fallout attached.
The U.S., if it is suffering economic strain from such a decline, could be rendered unable to intervene if conflicts start breaking out around the globe, and such demonstrated failure would only encourage further defection.. The limits of U.S. hegemony are already on display since the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
And if the U.S. itself is self-sufficient for food, energy, and manufacturing, surely the motivation to keep spending time and effort maintaining the order will sink, too.
And I'm trying not to catastrophize here, but I keep asking for some reasonable solution that has demonstrated success in the past, and nobody has actually provided one.
So my priors would suggest that we have gotten used to being in an era of prosperity that is anomalous in the historical record, and the effort to maintain this prosperity could easily outstrip our capacity without some drastic intervention. Such as AGI.
yofuckreddit
17m ago
I've thought about this occasionally. I'm a member of the "haves" in this scenario, and as more men opt out of the sexual market or become women, in theory that would be great for my prospective harem.
The problem is that I'm monogamously married and am able to raise children with sufficient male attention. The "Alphas" taking advantage of the evolving sexual market (and sometimes breeding) right now are anti-social, absent fathers, creating more candidates for the underclass that will eventually victimize my children. Maybe directly, maybe through voting.
I'd need the social ability to have a harem and rely on a group of beta males to produce enough wealth to support the family (and give me enough bandwidth to effectively father). We're a bit far away from that.
Harlequin5942
28m ago
Can't think of any other reason so many cities have adopted policies of "decriminalizing" theft and lesser assaults.
Welfare state + ageing population -> reduced resources for anything else, including law & order and defence (ironically, what a classical liberal would regard as close to the entire purposes of the state).
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
28m ago
I live in Colorado, so the election could go either way in my state. But the thing is, I think both Biden and Trump are equally horrible. I don't want either of them in office. I could vote for a third party, but there's no chance (thanks to people buying into the myth that a third party is "wasting your vote") that they will win. So I am extremely unlikely to vote for President because no matter what I do, someone I hate will be in office.
That said, Colorado does have a really nice system of putting proposals on the ballot to be voted on by people directly. Those are often worth one's time, so I may vote just to weigh in on those.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
29m ago
Occasionally we are told that there is an epidemic of "male loneliness" or "male sexlessness" - an increasing number of young men are going long stretches of time with few or no sexual partners. But why is this a problem? Why should anyone care except for the sexless males themselves?
Evolutionarily, men have always been the disposable gender - the average male was historically much less likely to produce any offspring than the average female. In fact, depending on which estimate you go with, the average male is still significantly more likely to reproduce in a first world Western country today than he would have been historically. So why is there such concern over this particular dip in fertility?
You might say that a high number of sexless males is more likely to lead to violence and social instability - but plainly, that hasn't happened so far, certainly not on any appreciable scale. It's never been harder to imagine actual widespread social unrest occurring in the modern West, given how thoroughly people have been anesthetized with material abundance and cheap entertainment. (This question has been raised a few times recently, about the possibility of the culture war "going hot" over the Trump verdict or the border crisis or whatever - I am of the opinion that no, it won't "go hot", and such a development is essentially unthinkable at this point). Plus, certain MENA societies provide a case study in how you can have a resilient social order where the majority of women disappear into the harems of rich men and the majority of men are left sexless - these may not be pleasant places to live, but the society is capable of reproducing itself all the same.
do_something
29m ago
Why does Ukraine fighting Russia advance European interests? It hurts European interests, Russia is Europe's natural energy supplier.
Because Russia is stupid and instead extracting piles of money from being energy supplier they decided to wage short victorious war.
Because ruling class and society in general there was unable to accept its loss of superpower status.
For other European countries it is preferable for this adventure to go badly for Russia so they will not try it with NATO countries next time.
The mainstream argument seems to be 'Europe needs to produce more weapons to give to Ukraine so they can fight Russia'. But why?
Because otherwise Russia will invade, it it can get away with it or thinks it can get away with it?
Why is NATO so obsessed with the 2% of GDP figure?
Coordination tool.
But for those of us who live in the real world where Ukraine is much weaker than the entirety of Europe, it stands to reason that Europe can defend itself from Russia.
Assuming no coordination issues.
This is a big assumption.
despite also being a pale shadow of its former glory and losing Putin's idiotic war in Ukraine
Maybe I missed something, but if anyone is losing this war right now it is Ukraine (it was still idiotic war and bad for Russia)
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
30m ago
Lewis believed in the old Christian concept of the “Harrowing of Hell”. In summary, he did believe that Jesus saved even those who came before he was born.
As far as people who never realistically could have heard the Gospel, Lewis believed salvation through Christ was still possible.
Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.
We can see this in his final Narnia book, The Last Battle, when a Calorman who worshipped Tash all his life get to go to heaven. When the man asks how this is possible Aslan replies
I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
33m ago
I don't understand why the fact that you are shaped by influences would have any effect on the fact that your choices are very much the product of you, as you, whether deliberately or impulsively, took action by your own will.
I think that's perfectly reasonable, but as I said that isn't how I understand the idea of determinism. I don't think anyone, even the staunchest of free will advocates, believes that outside influences don't have a significant weight in the choices you make. But again, as I understand it determinism is saying that those are the only thing that matter, and that one's course is set in stone from the moment their life begins (with no actual choice to be made). And indeed that makes sense with respect to the name, because if the individual has any agency at all then the outcome is not deterministic.
Okay, if you can't define it, I'll just have to ask questions until it's clearer. Do you believe choices are based on things? That is, are they arbitrary, not based on anything, or are they based on your own state? (Or is there some tertium quid which you can describe?)
I believe that one's choices are heavily influenced by the state one is in, but at the end of the day we still have free choice. So for example, I struggle to not be lazy. This is no doubt the result of many factors (my genes, perhaps something my parents did, years of ingrained habits). It's very likely that I'll make the lazy choice in any given situation. But in the end, I do have a choice, and ultimately bear the responsibility no matter what is tipping my mental scales.
Stellula
40m ago
Because you haven’t experienced it, you cannot understand the depth of purpose and meaning that children will give your life. Almost every parent is telling you that you’ll get it when the kids are here, and that it’s impossible to explain in words. They’re all saying that because it’s right.
I used to be really into the party/burning man scene and psychonauts would always explain that they couldn’t explain a DMT trip to me. It was just outside of anything I could understand and I would have to see it for myself.
Kids are like that. I can tell you it’s great, but I can’t really explain why. You have to see it yourself.
Rov_Scam
43m ago
At first I thought you were confused when you described these as pizza places (i.e. they just happen to be owned by someone named Pirmanti) but I checked the website and they are "official" locations, even if they bear no actual resemblance to a normal location. For the record, Pirmanti's isn't known as a pizza place, and I don't think the smaller urban locations even serve pizza. It looks like the Florida locations were existing pizza places that got a franchise to use the name and sell the sandwiches, with no effort made to resemble the ones in Pittsburgh. Apparently the actual company doesn't care that much about consistent stores. That being said, I normally wouldn't go to a Pirmanti's while on vacation because I can get that here whenever I want to. But since it's evidently a bastardized bizarro version, I'm intrigued.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
46m ago
Because this is a textbook coordination problem. If NATO didn’t demand 2%, which European nations would spend even as much as they do?
No one involved has perfect information. Russia in particular has demonstrated that it will pick fights even when it can’t ensure a quick victory. That means conventional buildup (or modernization) has value.
You’re absolutely correct that the U.S. benefits from a powerful NATO. Isn’t that the point of a treaty?
NelsonRushton
1hr ago
I thought #2 was self-evident. Perhaps I was mistaken. Do you believe it is false?
This is a discussion and a conversation, not a debate being scored.
Never said otherwise. I just don't like when points are left unfinished. I try to respond to your questions, so please respond to mine before moving on.
And while tangents are not my favorite thing, but more or less acceptable, the appealing to principles that you do not actually hold, while using the first person plural is not.
Do you have examples of where you think doctors have lied to their patients (or the parents of their parients) in this frame?
Sure, the claim that puberty blockers are fully reversible is a straight-up lie. So was the claim that minors are required to undergo a thorough diagnostic process before they are prescribed hormones or surgeries. "Would you rather have a dead daughter or a happy son" is not a lie per-se, since it's not making a claim, but it is heavily implying something they knew for a fact that was exaggerated.
The most ethical doctor in the world who looked at all the reearch and thought, sounds like this is exactly what my patient needs is not being unethical.
What about the doctor who didn't really look at all the research, possibly because what he's prescribing is new and exciting, and there isn't even all that much research to begin with, but he's still convinced that what he's prescribing is what the patient needs? How about a doctor that commissioned research to prove he's right, but buried the results when he didn't like them, but is still convinced future research will vindicate him?
But that doesn't mean Dr Smith who is following the guidelines (but had no hand in writing them) is being unethical himself. Being unethical requires (ironically) informed decision making.
I'd say he has some responsibility to look into the subject himself. The WPATH is a self-declared authority, they have no special knowledge here, and a trained clinician should be able to pick up on the nonsense (which they tend to do, once they actually look at it). If nothing else, when parents express doubts, he has an obligation to state the level of his actual knowledge, and not oversell his confidence. That said, I kind of agree. Do like they did at Nurenberg, the chain of responsibility starts at the top, and is being progressively diminished as your work your way down.
But note that this is separate from the question of whether it is possible to be well-intentioned but unethical. I assign the biggest culpability to WPATH, but I maintain that they are well-intentioned.
DradisPing
1hr ago
At a quick glance it seems like the constraints usually don't add anything interesting to the results. The glass transfer process is a fair bit of work but also too clean. Wood block printing adds an interesting texture.
However Kevork Mourad's work looks kind of neat to me.
https://www.artsy.net/artist/kevork-mourad https://www.kevorkmourad.com/portfolio/immortal-city-2018/
roystgnr
1hr ago
What's the Lewis theodicy for pre-Christian-contact humans? Jews (and people exposed to Jewish missionaries? but AFAIK they were never exactly an evangelical religion...) I assume get the "Redemption ... a different way" loophole in (5). Maybe you could also argue that e.g. the Tang dynasty might have had some kind of missionary contact, though the likely tiny ratio of hypothetical-missionary to local-established-belief-systems exposure seems pretty unfair to people required to pick the former. But the further you go from the Middle East in space or the further back you go in time, the more of a stretch it gets. In the most archetypal case of the problem, the Native Americans hit points (1) through (4) so hard that people invented entire religions to try to provide a solution.
But on the other hand, Christianity didn't collapse in 1493, so clearly there's some theodicies that make Christians happy enough. Even not knowing exactly what they are it feels like they ought to apply to extraterrestrial aliens as easily as extracontinental ones.
ok-target-7361
1hr ago
I have no confirmation that they would even know wtf I'm talking about. I don't even know whether it's been a thing in the local social media. And because I don't want to alienate them, I haven't said anything like that, but how do I stop wanting to?
SSCReader
1hr ago
This is a discussion and a conversation, not a debate being scored. It goes where it goes that's the beauty of this format. So no, I won't stick to a single point, any more than you have. You don't get to set the rules in a conversation. That is not how this works. If I go on a tangent you don't want to talk about, just don't follow me down that path. Neither of ys get yo control what the other says, just what we do.
Do you have examples of where you think doctors have lied to their patients (or the parents of their parients) in this frame?
Doctors who lobotomized patients when that was the prevailing medical consensus were not themselves behaving unethically at the time. This is critical because it one of the reasons I am not a progressive. The most ethical doctor in the world who looked at all the reearch and thought, sounds like this is exactly what my patient needs is not being unethical. He is just wrong and ignorant. A doctor who did it today, knowing better would be unethical.
If we discover tomorrow that heart transplants are slowly destroying the planet, that doesn't mean heart surgeons were unethical to do it.
Lets say for the sake of argument you are correct that doctors themselves are being hoodwinked by WPATH. But that doesn't mean Dr Smith who is following the guidelines (but had no hand in writing them) is being unethical himself. Being unethical requires (ironically) informed decision making.
Folamh3
1hr ago
Of all sad words,
Of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these:
"/pol/ was right again."
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
A little less vitriol, please.
There’s nothing wrong with making a colorful point. That’s not license to throw in every epithet or meme seen on Twitter.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Sure,but where you started out was where the doctors were actually advocating for what they believed was the best solution, but were wrong. That isn't an ethical problem.
What are you talking about? Of course it is. Lobotomists thought lobotomies were the best solution, ovariotomists thought ovariotomies were the best solution, etc., etc., etc. None of that absolves them of the violation of ethics they comitted.
If a doctor is recommending something they know to be harmful, i've already said they should be dealt with however their local area prefers.
There is, again, pages upon pages of various ethical guidelines that medical practitioners have to follow, they usually don't get to circumvent them with "I think this will yield the best results". Why do you want transgender care to be handled differently?
My arguments are based on us talking about people who are genuinely well intentioned. A good person who is wrong is highly unlikely to lie to a patient about treatment because from his perspective he doesn't have to.
Yes, so are mine. There is a certain type of "genuinely good intentions" that are used to justify lying, and sometime much, much worse. This is the entire basis of me calling some types of well-intentioned behavior just as bad as ill-intentioned behavior, and transgender care would be a very salient example. They have been caught lying in public and in private, and they have been doing so systemically. They do have good intentions though.
By the way - please stick to a single subject, and limit yourself to advocating only for things you actually believe. We've went from the abstract topic of judging well-intentioned behavior just as bad as ill-intentioned bahvior, to the ins and outs of transgender care, and back again. Nothing we talked about in the middle was necessary to reach this point, and it comes off as throwing spaghetti at the wall.
SSCReader
2hr ago
I don't think you've even justified that 2 is true let alone that progressives are in it. I live in a Red Tribe area but i work mostly with Blue Tribe progressives in academia. My interactions with all of them indicate that they do care about the things they say they care about even when their opponents claim their actions show otherwise.
I think you are simply put wrong. I've given you reasons why they don't behave as you expect they do. I think those are correct and you yourself are hopelessly stuck in 7) Because everyone is tempted to think they are in G and their opponents are in G' their ability to unbiasedly evaluate the evidence is hopelessly confounded, even when they think it is not.
Whereas, I don't think there is a difference between G and G' in this respect at all.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
2hr ago
"Keyboards therefore atheism" is just as wrong, and for just the same reason, as "tides therefore theism".
I mean it really is the opposite of what Ol' Billy said, we CAN explain that!
You have not brought up prayer but it is an integral part of many christian sects and religions worldwide, most people who pray expect it does something, they have all been proven wrong time and time again. I think this is certainly a strike against any gods existing, just like every other testable religious based claim of the supernatural, all false, 100% of them, worldwide, for all time.
It is too bad you consider mastery over this universe a "paltry prize" because that is the most we can hope for. Believing in any creation myth or religious dogma is no different than establishing a cult around any fictional story with metaphysical magic sprinkled in. Just imagine the followers of Harry Potterism speaking to you as you speak to me. That is the situation from the outside of religious belief and dogma and culture.
It is much better to say, we don't know yet (but it isn't ghosts, it is never ghosts)...rather than just invent things and then stick to them well after their expiration date.
felis-parenthesis
2hr ago
I'm trying to talk about humans letting their language do their thinking for them. Language is mostly accident and happenstance. Language matters. Politically active persons have noticed. We no longer discuss "abortion" and "anti-abortion"; we discuss "pro-life" and "pro-choice". But my gut feeling is that deliberate attempts to shape the discourse by changing language are rare (or maybe common but nearly always unsuccessful to the point of vanishing without trace: who now remembers the attempt to re-brand atheists as "brights"?)
Instead our social antennae tell us which words have a positive valence and which words have a negative valence. We go with the words of pre-existing language, and choose the actions described by words with a positive valence. That valence is historical and lacking contemporary relevance. In effect, the valences of our terminology are random, and that randomizes our decision making. When we outsource our thinking to the old accidents that have formed the emotion valences of pre-existing language, we give up our human agency. That is bad.
For example, the phrase "defensive alliance" has a positive emotional valence. So we join together in "defensive alliances" and believe we are doing the right thing. My claim is that "defensive alliance" is not even the name of thing, so we literally don't know what we are doing. There are chaining alliances and isolating alliances. To join a chaining alliance is to live dangerously connected and you end up going to war. To join an isolating alliance is to live dangerously isolated and to fail to nip growing evils in the bud; war eventually comes to you. Perhaps war can be avoided, by one method or another, but we don't think the choices through and surrender our agency to words without meanings.
I'll support your position as soon as the society adopts the same indifferent view of problems and lesser discomforts that women face.
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