ProfQuirrell
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User ID: 606
ProfQuirrell
17d ago
Just for the record, I work for the federal government and what you are wondering about is exactly what happened. Some of us got the email, others didn't, we all requested clarification from our supervisor, who immediately said "everyone hold up until I figure out what is going on." The commander said the same thing shortly thereafter, and about twenty four hours later we received the directive from very high up in the chain of command to not respond to the email at this time.
ProfQuirrell
20d ago
Start Lord of the Rings anyway -- I read it after the Hobbit and even my little kids liked it more and were even more engaged.
The Mote In God's Eye is indeed a fantastic book. I don't know how many other books end literally with an around-the-table conference that still delivers an absolute nail-biter of tension for the ending as you're just praying the main characters can piece together the information in time ... while still feeling lots of empathy for the antagonists (of a sort). On the gripping hand, .....
ProfQuirrell
2mo ago
The movie may be fascist, but the book is significantly different, more nuanced, and better.
ProfQuirrell
5mo ago
I like this quote. I'm a (very minor) elected official myself, and I treated the campaign almost like a job interview. I was entirely honest about my opinions under the theory that I was going to be elected to lead and make decisions and the public should know what decisions I was likely to make. If I won the election, that meant that the public wanted people with my specific ideas in the office.
I am intensely frustrated by my fellow representatives who constantly want to circle back to public opinion when deciding issues -- they elected YOU, right? So what the public WANTS is you to make a decision in accordance with the values you ran on. If we're just going to punt on decisions every time then we're just stuffed shirts; there's no need for elected representatives at all, we'll just run Twitter polls every week and we can stay home.
Congratulations!!!! Welcome to the ranks of parenthood; life is good over here. I do have some sobering advice for first time parents:
Do not shake the baby.
Whenever I give this advice to new parents, they look at me like I'm insane. Of course they aren't going to shake the baby -- they aren't monsters.
But they don't understand -- they have not yet had to deal with the sleep deprivation, the overwhelming feeling of being lost and uncertain of how to care for a new baby for the first time, they don't know what it's like at three in the morning when your wife has begged you to get the baby to sleep because she's exhausted beyond words and she can't do it and you haven't slept either and you have work in four hours and the baby won't stop screaming and you JUST FED the baby and you JUST CHANGED the baby and what the HELL is this stupid baby screaming about and
So. Do not shake the baby. Put the baby down on the floor in a different room (you can put on a fan or noisemaker so you don't have to hear the baby cry for a few minutes). Go somewhere else, listen to some music that you like, watch a dumb youtube video, take a quick shower, get yourself a small splash of scotch, take a few minutes to calm down, and then try again. The baby will be okay without you for a few minutes.
Every parent I have ever talked to has gone through this. They are often ashamed to admit it. You're not a bad person for feeling rage and anger at your child in those desperate moments at night. Sleep depravation and the crushing isolation of new parenthood (especially in modern culture!) is a hell of a combination. It happens to all of us. It's going to be okay. You're going to get through it, you'll get better, and if you have more than one kid (which I highly recommend!) by the time #3 rolls around you'll be an expert. You've got this. You're going to be a great dad. Being a parent is wonderful.
Just don't shake the baby.
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
Part of the problem here is that modern parents absolutely suck at discipline. Most parents never learn or never feel empowered to tell their kid "Go play by yourself and if you interrupt me or pester me you will get a punishment." Modern parents are grudgingly allowed to punish kids for blatant infractions like hitting or stealing. But it has become unthinkable to punish kids for pestering or interrupting. This really needs to change. With proper discipline, most four year olds are perfectly capable of playing by themselves and not interrupting for an hour.
I just want to underscore this -- this is absolutely correct. Modern parenting (or "gentle" parenting, as the meme goes) makes life SO much harder than it needs to be. Kids do not need their parents (or a screen) to be entertained and you are a fool if you cater to their whims in this way.
I'd also gesture at the great work Jonathan Haidt has been doing calling attention to the dual problem of social media + complete lack of independence and freedom in childhood, but that's a whole other (huge) topic.
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
That's a good read. It's a pretty nifty bit of persuasive writing and a good perspective for men to be thinking about, especially if they haven't seen pregnancy and childbirth firsthand.
Much of the suffering involved in pregnancy / childbirth was known to me already as I "coached" (or whatever the term is) my wife through three deliveries with no painkillers (she wanted a natural birth and got one) and then two more with epidurals ... the latter were strange experiences; going from relaxedly playing a board game to pushing within the span of thirty minutes is a trip.
I've written about parenthood before (1, 2, 3, 4) and about my experience raising a special needs child on DSL so I think I have some credibility on this topic.
The Princess Bride has a great related quote:
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Pregnancy is hard. Childbirth is hard, occasionally horrifically so (in a previous century my wife might have bled to death after our second child -- modern medicine is a wonderful thing). Parenting is hard and cramps your style in a major way. Marriage is hard.
But ... damn it, you have to do hard things in life. Living an authentically good and virtuous life requires sacrifice of yourself in the service of greater things. We used to understand this. Hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure and utility above all else are absolutely toxic to the project of building a family, building a community, and building a country.
I realize this is a controversial claim, but I think the "fertility crisis" is ultimately a crisis of spirit. I fully acknowledge that the modern world makes the project of having and raising children difficult in important ways including but not limited to:
- The wasteland of modern dating and dating apps
- The tremendous increase of housing / education / healthcare / childcare costs relative to inflation and income
- Cultures as a whole not conferring status upon mothers and fathers and institutions seemingly going out of their way to discourage parenthood
However, I increasingly feel like the ultimate failure is one of selfishness. Raising a family requires tremendous sacrifice from both mother and father (although as a father of five I will readily admit my wife has it "worse" in many ways and I think as a good husband one of my primary duties is to support and offer assistance in recognition of that fact).
I really think the fundamental problem is that people are increasingly uninterested in anything that requires them to make sacrifices. Shying away from having and raising kids is just one example of this.
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
Father of five, one of whom has significant special needs. I wrote about him here on DSL) and I think I touch on a number of your questions in that post.
@naraburns nailed it, in particular the discussion of how parenthood is transformative. Those of us on one side of the transition really can't explain it. I will note that it is very easy to imagine all of the ways in which being a parent is a drag and a bore and very difficult to picture how it will radically transform your life for the better.
To your points:
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Our respective families are similarly about 1,000 miles (or 1,400 miles) away. It's definitely hard and we treasure time with family as a result. Invest in babysitting early and often.
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This doesn't matter at all. People used to raise families in single-room cabins. Our first apartment (while I was doing graduate school and my wife was doing nursing school) was 640 sq. ft. Finances matter much, much less than people think. All of the horrifying news articles you see about how expensive it is to raise a family are fundamentally flawed. The financial hit is less important than radical shifts in the way you have to live your life ... which naraburns already spoke eloquently about. I've opined on this topic before.
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Your independence and free time will assuredly be sacrificed as a parent, but you'll be a better person after the tradeoff, I promise.
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Well, you have some influence in whether or not this happens -- Bryan Caplan says (correctly) in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids that your children are pretty likely to turn out like you and your spouse, so if you want more people like you in the world ....
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See my link above. It is a tremendous ordeal. I cannot overstate how much of an ordeal it is. But it is also a tremendous opportunity to grow in virtue and, dare I say, a blessing and a gift ... although it took me many years to understand why.
I have no regrets. Have kids. Be a parent. The world needs good parents and good families. It's the greatest and most fulfilling adventure you can imagine (with the possible exception of marriage).
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
I'm not trying to do anything of the kind, I'm well aware of issues with academia.
I have some experience with local politics and I'm telling you one of the biggest challenges is getting good people to run. Anyone who is remotely sane or competent wants nothing to do with politics.
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
We already have a problem with smart, sane people staying the hell away from politics -- this would make it worse.
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
But it would be good to hear from people who are satisfied with their romantic life for a change. Are there any Mottezians with happy love lives who want to share their experience?
Catholic, married twelve years, five kids (one of whom has significant special needs, I typed up a long post about him on DSL). I don't know what experiences you'd want to hear about, but the most useful approach I've learned over the years is this: you need to re-frame every problem as something external to the relationship and view your spouse as a teammate in fixing the problem. Do this even if the problem seems to be your spouse.
On a related note, at a certain point the relationship needs to become more important than your individual success or happiness. This works great in a Catholic marriage where divorce is explicitly off the table; not nearly as actionable in other contexts.
Make sacrifices, and make them generously.
ProfQuirrell
8mo ago
Right, so the expression comes from that fact -- the mutually agreed upon statement points in two directions. One person can say "Aha, so we know that B is true." and the other person can say "Aha, so we know that A is false."
Let's say you have a statement:
If A, then B.
There are two syllogisms that can be derived from this statement, one of which is referred to as Modus Ponens and the other of which is Modus Tollens.
Modus Ponens:
- If A, then B
- A
- Therefore, B
Modus Tollens:
- If A, then B
- Not B
- Therefore, not A
Where the statement / joke comes in is when you start making an actual argument where the two people agree on the conditional, but one is arguing that A is true and the other is arguing that B is false. Let's say something like:
If morality is objective, there is a God.
The first person takes the objectivity of morality as proof that God exists, but the second person takes the non-existence of God as proof that morality can't be objective. Despite both parties accepting the conditional, they still believe different things.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
Only the heir to the kingdom of idiots fights a war on 13 fronts.
Great reference.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
As one of the (mostly) silent majority who got a few ACQs back when we were on Reddit, you summed it up well.
I also share your frustration that media seems completely uninterested in citing any primary source, particularly court documents. It's not hard at all to find the .pdfs, so I can only assume they don't want readers to come to their own conclusions; just trust whatever we tell you!
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
Test passed, no doubt.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
Epistemic status: Uncertain
My lifting plan is centered around barbell work with some dumbbell accessory movements. I don't use machines at all. The reason to use free weights rather than machines is that you activate all kinds of smaller stabilizing muscles that aren't hit when using a machine because the machine guides the path of the weight for you. The advantage to using a machine would be to target your larger muscles in a very specific way.
My guess would be that gym owners invest in machines because:
- They are safer; you can seriously hurt yourself on a bench press if you don't have a spotter and don't have safety rails set up. You can't hurt yourself with a chest press machine.
- They're more user friendly; any schmuck can walk into a gym and immediately start using a machine rather than having to futz around with getting the settings right on a power rack and making sure they have good form etc.
- They're more sexy; newbies love using machines
But no, you don't actually need them and in my opinion you're better off not using them ... but really as long as you're getting in the gym consistently and pushing yourself hard you will progress (especially at first); the specifics aren't really that important.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
She was mostly determined to take posed photos of the kids, culminating a very staged attempt at getting a video of her reading a book to all the kids, keeping two of them up past their bed times. I don't think she learned anything from the experience, though the video is hard to watch with all the crying from the younger two.
As someone with five kids (one special needs) and a mother in law who is similarly useless / kind of narcissistic, I was filled with second-hand rage reading this. Hang in there, that's really hard.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
I do a fitness test with my students where I can crank out a little over 20 in a row. The thing that helped me the most was adding weight for training using a dip belt. I mixed pullups into my normal lifting routine with two variations depending on what else I was doing:
Pullups at 3x6 with a low amount of additional weight (normally I do this with about 25 lbs, but start lower)
Pullups at 5x3 with a high amount of additional weight (now it's something like 80 lbs, but start lower)
Do linear progression for the above.
Throw in some 3x8 or 3x10 normal pullups or chinups from time to time too.
I think just additional volume on the same motion won't really help you; the big thing is to make it harder. So add weight, same as you do for any other lift!
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
He hides it pretty well, but this is the first Econtalk I've ever heard (and I've been listening for 6+ years) where Russ doesn't give the guest the last word and instead just ends it himself.
Please don't take this as a personal criticism.
A few threads back I said the following:
My wife and I got married right after undergrad and had three kids while I was doing a PhD and she was in nursing school. We had help from the grandparents to pay the rent, but no childcare -- nearest grandparents were 1,000 miles away. It can be done, but it requires real work and real sacrifice and I don't think anyone in #currentyear really wants that -- it doesn't maximize utility, or something.
I got some good pushback on that post, but ... here you are making my point for me. Having kids is an imposition on the way you want to live your life. Raising children requires putting the good of others above your own in a way that requires serious effort and self-sacrifice and that doesn't sound so appealing to the folk who inhabit modern times.
I suspect the data above about women who want to have kids but aren't is falling prey to known issues with polling -- women say they want to have kids, revealed preference says they actually don't. My own guess is that having kids maybe seems like a nice idea and it costs nothing to say you want them, but by and large at any given moment it's too daunting and difficult and hard. People don't want to do hard things anymore without obvious benefit to them.
What more is there to say, really?
ProfQuirrell
2yr ago
Would it be fair for your father's generation to scold you for not having kids until all the way at the end of your extended academic life?
In my particular case, it wouldn't be fair because it wouldn't be true. We got married after undergraduate and started having kids right away and we had three children while I was doing my PhD and my wife was doing nursing school. I'm not sure what the grandparents would have thought if we had waited; I think my folks would have been sad but understanding and supportive and I think my wife's parents would have been relieved -- they were convinced I was ruining their daughter's life by marrying her young and having kids right away, but they ended up liking being grandparents a lot more than they thought and now they make jokes about how they're they only people in their friend circle who even have grandkids. My wife's brothers are firmly in the "never going to get married or have kids because I'm having too much fun doing my own stuff" camp and they have committed girlfriends who broadly feel the same way as best I can tell.
By the by, I'm not sure how old you thought I am, but I'm 32. We got married at age 21 and you are completely, totally right about the landscape changing, trying to date nowadays with dating apps seems like a complete nightmare.
This is a pretty uncharitable reading ... you don't need to sneer at us to contribute
Upvoted for correctly calling me out on the snark. I appreciate the rest of your post, and I wrote my response quickly and without having read the rest of the thread in detail, so let me try this again:
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The initial, top-level post was made in the larger context of how to fix declining TFR. My own perception is that the vast majority of responses center on changing incentives for women and critiquing their behavior and I don't see the top-level post in this thread as deviating much from that.
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@FarNearEverywhere wrote a snippy (and, apparently, reported) response saying that it's very silly to complain about changing women's incentives and their role in the problem when it takes two to tango and you could just as easily complain about men's incentives and their role in the problem. I agree with other posters that there are some legitimate asymmetries here, but I am in complete agreement with FarNearEverywhere's sentiment because as best I can tell, modern men aren't exactly lining up to be husbands and fathers either. The post ended with a call-out saying if you aren't the married father of 3+ kids, you shouldn't be whining about women because you aren't pulling your weight either. I read that and thought I should reply at some point.
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As the discussion developed, a few posters (you and someone else below) chimed in with their own situations of intending to have kids in a stable marriage, but wanting to wait out a particularly challenging time in someone's career / school. This is where I was the most sarcastic, so let me try to say this more clearly and with more charity:
My sense is that one reason TFR is low is because the culture writ large doesn't prioritize, reward, or glorify parenthood. I think this is true across both sexes. It takes a lot of hard work and a total mindset change and devotion to the your spouse and the family to be a good father or mother and it increasingly seems to me that modern men and women just aren't interested in that. The idea that you should make sacrifices generously of yourself in service of the larger goal of your family just ... isn't an idea out there, at the moment.
I think there's always going to be a sense in which kids are scary. There's always going to be some financial insecurity or relationship concern or thing you enjoy doing that you'd have to give up; you can always justify why it would be better to hold off for just a little bit longer. However, it was wrong of me to throw shade at your specific situation. We've had times of avoiding pregnancy and we've had times where we're actively trying to have another kid. Far be it from me to judge you without knowing the specifics and I'm sorry for doing that.
I think the broader point I'd try to make is that at the end of the day, if parenthood is something our culture wants to value, there has to be an overriding attitude of "Just have the kids anyway, it will be okay" because raising a family is a good valued above economic security or self-actualization or maximizing utility or what have you.
But right now, I don't think the culture or most individuals value raising a family in that way, men and women alike.
(posting without editing, because I gotta run and teach)
ProfQuirrell
2yr ago
Father here, don't have a ton of time to respond -- I need to think more about what I'd want to say here, but I think @FarNearEverywhere's rant is basically right. Putting together a family with lots of kids is a lot of work and requires a total mindset change and buy-in from both spouses. It's not fair to blame it on women in #currentyear when, as best I can tell, young men aren't remotely interested in the hard work it takes to be a good husband or father -- too easy to play vidya and watch porn and bang whoever swipes the right direction on Tinder (swipes left? I actually don't know).
Or ... as we've seen in at least two responses below, too easy to say "Oh we're gonna have a family for sure, just not yet because we're waiting on the right economic conditions / career to come along / degree to finish." etc. My wife and I got married right after undergrad and had three kids while I was doing a PhD and she was in nursing school. We had help from the grandparents to pay the rent, but no childcare -- nearest grandparents were 1,000 miles away. It can be done, but it requires real work and real sacrifice and I don't think anyone in #currentyear really wants that -- it doesn't maximize utility, or something.
Until you change the culture such that the sacrifice and hard work it takes to make a family actually seems worth it, you won't get buy-in from anyone ... men or women.
We have five kids now and one of them is special needs, low-functioning autistic. It's a lot of work, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
ProfQuirrell
2yr ago
Interesting; I'd be curious to hear more about what spirits you're playing as well as what difficulty you're playing at. My guess is either you are wildly more experienced than the rest of your group, or your entire group is inexperienced -- or you're just a lot smarter than I am!
My reason for saying Spirit Island is largely immune to quarterbacking is twofold. First, the Spirits play very, very differently. If you're playing Pandemic, everyone has the same basic actions available to them -- move, cure disease, discover a cure, etc. Each "role" really is tantamount to a very minor buff (usually to one action) and rules change. It is therefore fast and easy for someone with good game knowledge to scan the basic problem on the board and tell the next player the ideal solution.
But in Spirit Island, while the underlying mechanics are the same (everyone does Growth, gains Energy, and plays their cards), each Spirit has a very different play pattern and flow. You have to think about which growth option to take, which tracks to open up in which order, which cards to play in order to hit which innates ... in order to quarterback a new player piloting, say, Spread of Rampant Green, I'd have to have a very deep understanding of how to play the Spirit efficiently, such that I could play it with my eyes closed. I'd have to have all its starting cards plus their elements plus their tracks and growth options memorized or discernable at a glance, more or less, and that isn't even taking into account whatever powers they have drafted since the game started.
I'm not saying it's impossible to get to this point -- now that I've played hundreds and hundreds of games, some of the spirits with easy play patterns (River Surges in Sunlight, for example) I could probably quarterback if I wanted to, but if I'm playing with a new player it's actually both easier (for me) and more fun (for everyone) for me to grab one of their lands, drop a reminder token on it, and tell them "I'll handle this ravage for you, nbd". I could tell them "OK, this turn you need to pick your second growth option, both from cardplays, and, uh, what minor did you draft last turn again? Let me just see your hand real quick." Like I said, though, it's actually easier for me to just handle one of their lands and let them worry about the rest of it. I don't think quarterbacking is actually optimal even if you're trying to help out a less experienced player.
The other reason I'm skeptical that quarterbacking really works in practice is my own experience with two-handed play. I play a lot of solo games -- true solo, where I'm piloting one Spirit. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm extremely good at Spirit Island. I can win against any Level 6 adversary with a near-100% win rate and when I'm interested in a challenge, I'm playing double adversaries around Difficulty 13-14. I have beaten 6/6 Adversaries before (albeit with very specific matchups). However, when I try to double-hand Spirits (even two Spirits I know well!), it is dramatically more difficult to actually play the game! It's really hard for me to keep track of everything that's going on if I'm playing two Spirits at once; I get confused about my game flow for each Spirit, make a lot more minor tactical mistakes, and the game gets bogged down as I try (and largely fail) to stay organized. It's difficult for me to imagine someone piloting a Spirit and then wanting to control the second one for a new player. I just haven't seen it happen. Maybe you're smart and fast enough that you can play your Spirit quickly and then jump over to another player and be able to tell them what to do, but if so you're a lot faster at board games than I am.
So to conclude a long-winded response, I think Spirit Island largely dodges the problem of quarterbacking because:
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Each Spirit plays sufficiently differently that it's quite difficult to tell at a glance the correct set of moves for someone else.
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Even if you are sufficiently experienced to do so, it's still easier and more fun for you to just handle a few more lands than literally try to play a second spirit.
The only place I've even been tempted to quarterback is when playing a Difficulty 0 game with new players and they're piloting an easy spirit that I know quite well -- but again, it's still both easier and more fun for me to help out with their lands and drop Gift cards on them every turn I can.
It's not internal enemies. What the fuck am I supposed with an email from "hr@opm.gov" that has never emailed me before? Asking clarification from my chain of command is the right and proper thing to do. If I had seen the email prior to all the news discussion, I would have assumed it was a phishing scam. The entire project was amateur hour from Elon.
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