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RenOS

still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™

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joined 2023 January 06 09:29:25 UTC 

				
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RenOS


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2023 January 06 09:29:25 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Morally: yes. Whether he had any chance of getting it or not in practice. I'm genuinely not sure what that observation is supposed to prove and would appreciate some elaboration. Surely a man who, by force of circumstances, is about to be lethally hit by - say - an unavoidable tidal wave, still has a "right to life" in all morally and politically relevant senses. The unfortunate nature of his circumstances has no bearing on that principle.




It's about you committing a category error. Nobody would think that saving Crusoe would be bad. However,  society-granted rights are about the most basic imaginable, things that a society can always grant no matter how poor it currently is. "Right to life" has never entailed immortality, it merely means that society should not take or needlessly risk your life. If you're alone, there is no society to threaten you (I guess you can kill yourself). If there's two, the "right to life" principle merely states that neither of you should (lightly) take actions that threaten the other's life.


Once you have some fuzzy number n and you need a leader or a group of leaders (called government), it means that those leaders shouldn't take actions against your life, and protect you from deathly threats from the other members of your society (ideally also other societies, but that is not always feasible given size differences, so again not really a right). A society can always protect its members from itself, if someone can take your life with a gun they can necessarily also protect you with the same gun. It's merely about whether they elect to do so. Yes you can confuse this by dividing a society strictly into government and non-government, but this is mostly evidence of a failed society; In a functioning one, the relevant parts of a government can always be extended or reduced (though this process may take some time).


The obvious retort here may be, but what if you have subsistence farmers so busy that they can't even organize the most basic militia to protect themselves from each other? But the answer is equally obvious, namely that if you spend all your time on your farm and can't spare any time outside of it in a militia, you also have no time forming a society in the first place; in which case you're, again, only a society with yourself, the other farmers merely geographically close but not part of the same society, similar to how irl tribes can be quite close without having any (positive) interactions whatsoever.


So in short, it's about how a society ought not being in the way of each other's life, liberty and happiness. Outright helping each other achieve it is of course desirable, and almost all societies try! But the degree to which it is attainable is dependent on many outside factors, so it makes no sense to construe it as a right, and the way progressives try to pretend they're special by doing so is simply presumptuous & arrogant.


And this distinction is still critical nowadays, since in particular healthcare is a black hole capable of eating arbitrary amounts of money. Ironically, the primary difference between America and other western countries isn't that Americans have worse healthcare outcomes (let alone "thousands dying due to unavailable treatment") - in fact, if you compare like-for-like, such as, say, japanese in America vs japanese in Japan (and most other groups), then Americans actually have significantly better healthcare outcomes then most others. It's merely that they spend excessively more compared to modest improvements; But this is simply a function of the fact that healthcare has starkly diminishing returns, the same can be seen for rich vs poor people.


Construing healthcare as a right, on top, has terrible incentives. It means that the moment a new technology to save lifes is developed, it needs to be used on everyone who needs it, costs be damned. In other words, developing new technology becomes negative sum for a society. Modern western countries have somewhat found a way out of this conundrum by labeling all new technologies unsafe and unusable by default (usually even for those who can privately afford it!), and only if you can prove it is safe by running a large-scale study (which incidentally is only really feasible with somewhat cost-effective treatments) it is allowed to be used.


But it's no accident that the overwhelming majority of new treatments is developed in America, since the incentives are much better aligned if you can develop a new treatment, let it be used by everyone who can afford it, it then gets improved (or discarded) depending on performance, and then the masses get access. Ironically, it de-facto also turns the richest into (willing, at least) guinea pigs. But of course, this is then easy to present as some sort of evil rich people conspiracy, keeping the good treatment from the regular people and letting them die. But in the rest of the western world, the people also don't get the good treatment (in fact they get it later or it doesn't even get developed in the first place), it's merely more equal by keeping it from the rich as well. This should be considered an abhorrent outcome - literally everything is worse for everyone - under most reasonable ethical systems. But the superficial optics are better, so it's favored by the easily swayed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
His req was "remote from preindustrial societies", which this isn't.


Blacks also afaik hit motoric child developmental milestones significantly faster, which are almost 100% biological, but again that's very relevant for preindustrial societies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Substack is alive and well, and there are a whole number of good posters in adjacent topics, some of which used to be prolific posters on themotte (hwfo,kulak) but most, as expected, are from other places. The problem is that themotte is starting to outlive its usefulness - twitter is better for low effort posts and a pretty open platform nowadays, substack is similarly open but better suited for quality content, and the overton window has shifted so much that Scott is now effectively writing about the things he more-or-less banned us for. Though I'm still a bit salty he isn't apologizing or at least referencing to themotte about it in retrospect, overall I'm much more happy about it.


Themotte, in contrast, has always been more a medium-effort discussion platform that discussed high-effort content as opposed to generate it. Which is just a bit of awkward spot to be in.


Also, since nobody has mentioned it, you should definitely take a look at thelastpsychiatrist/Alone/Edward Teach. He was a significant influence on Scott, and roughly stopped posting (2014) at the time when Scott blew up (incidentally, this was also shortly after I became familiar with Scott). He's definitely more on the esoteric side than the rationalist side, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Actually this is currently being investigated quite a lot, there is a massive ancient dna boom and if you can read a little bit between the lines it's pretty obvious from the papers that get published; Short story, a relatively small group migrated from africa to somewhere in the area between the arabic peninsula and the black sea, underwent (historically speaking) rapid evolution (including cold adaption and , um, "neurological changes") and then migrated further into all directions, which resulted in the modern caucasian/asian split. Modern-day subsaharan blacks have almost no ancestry from this group. I'll have to look up the exact time frame again.


But if you want to know more, razib khan also has lots on ancient dna research.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				ACX: On Priesthoods
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To bad nobody else has answered; I don't really have the time to write anything about it, but some things have to be said, so I will.


Scott is right that a) Priesthoods are a naturally arising organising principle among humans and b) Science has been a priesthood for a while before wokeness became a large issue. And it's somewhat reasonable to conclude that therefore, maybe nothing was wrong with science being a priesthood before wokeness,  which means maybe there also is nothing wrong with science being a priesthood nowadays in itself.


There is, however, some objections that should automatically come to mind here (and which imo old Scott would have noted):


First, his definition of priesthood makes little sense considering real priesthoods that have existed. Those mostly fulfilled criteria like the following: a) credentialism separating the priests from the masses b) a strong preoccupation with (personal) purity according to some internal set of moral norms. And given the central importance of religion to past societies, these moral norms were usually religious in nature. Hence, priests. But sovjet-style political commissars are fundamentally the same. It has little to do with "smart people only"; Many priesthoods didn't optimize for smartness much and had no problem with having clearly stupid people between their ranks, as long as the moral criteria were fulfilled. Instead, it is about being a coordinated group that can give benefits to insiders, control the public and punish competition. Priesthoods are clearly optimized for wielding and extending political power for a certain class of elite people. Finding truth has nothing to do with it. At the most charitable, they are about keeping peace and order in society.


Then further, we can ask:


    

  1. 

    Are there contemporary examples of sciences that don't work like priesthoods?
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Are there past times during which science overall wasn't like a priesthood?
    

    3. 



So for the first question, (theoretical) math immediately comes to mind for me. When reading up on theoretical math news , I regularly encounter solutions to problems that have stumped mathematicians, sometimes for centuries, which only were solved with the help of laymen. How does math do this? Pretty simple, actually; It uses its own specific language that generally has high requirements on your intelligence to learn, and which intrinsically serves as a barrier against low-effort swipes. Even just shortly talking with someone makes it quite obvious whether they know what they are talking about. Credentialised science obviously is the fastest way to acquire this understanding, but certainly not the only. There is often little interest in who you are, whether in terms of credentials or moral considerations, as long as you can contribute.


I'll certainly not be able to give a comprehensive overview, but just a few examples of science as practiced in the past; Let's start with the greeks, since they are the oldest with quality records (it's correct that the ancient near east scientific tradition probably predated the greeks, but the records are terrible, like a single tablet with some pythagorean triplets which may indicate knowledge of the pythagorean theorem, but also may just have been derived by brute force, we just don't know).


Greek science was mostly disorganized, some doing it as an extension to their actual craft with which they earned money, some priests, some just considering themselves "natural philosophers" with no clear occupation (first NEETs?). There were specific schools which sometimes could veer of into cultish, priesthood-like behaviour patterns internally, but science as a whole was always a mix of multiple competing schools with different interpretations of basic reality as well as many unaffiliated yet respected philosophers. Arguably the most influential philosopher, Socrates, was forced to to kill himself for his perceived clash with prevailing religious/moral sentiments. Yet, as a philosopher this did not diminish his standing in the slightest. And the greek scientific tradition is still considered one of the greatest, often explicitly labeled as the origin.


Islamic science in the middle ages explicitly saw themselves as inheritors of the greek tradition of science, and the way scientist were generally judged primarily by their results as opposed to their person and character is often considered one of the primary reasons why they advanced faster than the west at the same time; Mind you, I'm not claiming that they had no moral/religious requirements - Islam can be quite strict-, just that having less than the western monastery-dominated scientific tradition of the middle ages gave them a distinct advantage.


Which leads us to science in the late european middle age and the resulting renaissance. As mentioned, european science in the earlier middle ages was almost entirely done by monks in monasteries with all the resulting moral/religious blocks. Starting around the beginning of last millenia, partially caused by more excess resources, partially influenced by the success (and threat!) of islamic science, there was a clear progression from the very priesthood-like early monastery tradition, to the religious universities with obvious carve outs such as protections from certain wordly punishments and "ex cathedra/hypothesis" opinions allowing inquiry into moderate taboo topics. Together with the religious upheavals of the 16th century this progressed further into the Renaissance, which outright identified itself by its allowance to question everything.


Incidentally, this is usually considered the time of greatest scientific progress. Similar to contemporary math, while credentialed university-educated scholars certainly dominated science, laymen, whether self- or otherwise privately educated, were tolerated as long as they were capable of speaking a certain language and bringing results. The early british royal society included multiple members who had little meaningful credentials despite universities having existed for quite a long time at that time. It was more-or-less founded by Robert Boyle, who had the equivalent of a modern high school education in terms of credentials but who was privately taught and ran his own laboratory with his families' money. Only after having established an informal "invisible college", he later simply rented space near Oxford University to run a better lab, profiting from Oxford's University but AFAIK never officially being affiliated with it directly, yet his contemporary and later academics respected him; Make a guess, how would current universities, journals and the general educated class talk about & treat a rich kid with a high school education running his own lab?


So to summarize everything and give my own thoughts on the matter: Priesthoods are an okay institution to generate some scientific output. It has happened multiple times in the past, especially during difficult times when people are unwilling to spend money on long-term endeavours such as science intrinsically is (but they still might be willing to spend for "a good cause"). Early middle ages are a good example here. Knowledge is power, therefore priests want to extend some of it as long as it does not call into question their grip on power.


But science as its own optimized institution, capital-S Science, doesn't really mesh all that well with it. Scientific output is reliably highest when scientists are individualistic and willing to question everything, when there is no single, easily captured institution, when they are judged by output, not character (and the output itself is also not judged by how well it fits in with prevailing sentiments) and especially when it gets regularly checked against a hard reality that is difficult to socially engineer. Scott cites his Bauhaus review on the norms of scientists, but the people involved in these discussions clearly had no scientific objections whatsoever, just read it again, they didn't even claim to; it was all strictly moral considerations. At best, they aped, in the cargo-cult fashion Feynman described, some superficial properties of science.


So imo he misidentifies multiple negative priesthood-like tendencies as sensible "bulwarks". The best scientist, from whatever age, era or field were almost always occupied to degree of obsession with answering some question or attaining some knowledge. They didn't care much for giving the impression of separation from the public. They didn't care for separation from capital, often they worked with it for their own advantage. They have no tendency towards intra-social-class political games and purity spirals, often even having a distinctly amoral streak (or strong personal moral convictions that don't fit well into any particular class of people). They often have a surprising overlap with the stereotype of the eccentric, obsessed, overworked but extraordinarily smart start-up founder.


These bulwarks are instead very good markers of a priesthood that successfully managed to subjugate the institution of Science again after it has temporarily managed to wrestle itself free, while doing what it always has done. Since this process was continuous & slow, and since even priesthoods want knowledge being generated, universities have still been working somewhat well for a long time even after being taken over, just like they have worked somewhat well every time priesthoods ran science. But good science is something else.


Of course, one sneaky objection here is that, if priesthoods are optimized for power, they will always win any conflict against a non-priesthood eventually. Therefore, Scott is engaging in the long-term correct course of actions: Molding a new priesthood that is maximally optimized for science while still retaining the critical traits necessary to stay in power. I don't really disagree with this view, but it's not really a objection on content, rather on pragmatism.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"vast majority of parasites" is a massive overstatement, even though I largely agree that many could probably be fired. Most are nice, pretty normal people who work in a social context that does not properly reward - often even punishes - hard work and efficiency, so they don't. And because that's how people are, they have some clearly (to me, at least) self-serving believes why their work can't be made significantly easier.


Primarily imo government work needs to be re-structured significantly, and while doing that you can fire many, which is part of the reason why they resist efforts to change (why do you want to take away my nice & safe job?). But if you just fire them without changing the culture, you get the problem Scott described in his latest essay.


On your question for wall street, I'm still an ordoliberalist at heart; So while I think that correct pricing is very valuable, the degree to which some capital companies are both central and arcane is enough to allow substantial abuse, especially if they introduce ever-more mystic instruments. There probably is some way to limit them without hurting the overall economy in practical terms and as you say redirect their tremendous human capital to better endeavours. But at least for the time being, I don't really trust any current western government to not fuck this up massively, and any practical consequences are impossible to predict without knowing the details of any such plan.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Declaring something does not make it so. If a car salesman calls a car "a great bargain" nobody batts an eye if you say prove it, but somehow if it's the government it's considered true unless proven wrong. After their visa runs out, they have the choice to stay in a first-world country illegaly or go back to the third world legally. Would you go back? I certainly wouldn't, so I don't even blame them very much. Are they incentivized to go back? Not really, since not giving them support in line with first world standards despite their illegal status is ruled inappriopriately cruel by the courts. Are they getting deported? Not unless they cooperate, since they have first have a long time to legally fight any deportation order (unless the government can prove they have money, the government will have to pay both legal sides, which will be horrendously expensive) and even if they lose they still have a long time to vanish before a deportation order is processed (and of the already-existing illegal immigrants most aren't ordered to begin with, anyway). It's obviously hard to prove how many exactly it's going to be, but the legal realities in canada mean that any temporary worker who wants to stay will simply do so. And similar experiences from other western countries have shown that this will often be a large percentage, and unfortunately usually the least desirable to boot. It's just terrible incentives all-around.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for January 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not a particular fan of Putin, but this would actually be one of the worst options, unless you have some alliance with a group of russian oligarchs ready to take over, in which case you're better of helping them do it another way. Putin is a dick, but he is mostly reasonable, he could easily be replaced by some worse, or Russia could devolve into chaos. You do not want one of the countries with the largest nuclear arsenal to devolve into chaos.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why is it obviously fake? "Do something trivial, then demand outrageous payment with an implicit threat" is a very old but still quite common scam. Tbh I wouldn't believe any particular story on reddit and the back and forth is quite stilted to make OP sound based, but the basic incident doesn't look obviously fake to me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Fertility Crisis: Which women/couples should be having more children?
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This another of those things on which the expert class utterly fucked up. When I grew up I was taught that this is the "demographic dividend" and that we modern people benefit from a more "sustainable" fertility rate. Only now that my parents' generation is about to retire, and the utterly predictable consequences set in, they panic and try to change things around last-minute.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 20, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
64 is great (I also grew up with it), but imo Galaxy is the best. But I've always been a sucker for interesting physics in video games.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I definitely agree on the more reasonable & moderate left-wing groups that dominate the PMC and STEM, but it's not that rare in the social sciences and adjacent university staff.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I also vote for 4 as the pinnacle of the older style of Civ (stacking units, quadratic tiles), especially with various mods, many of both overhaul and rebalancing ones are great.


5 imo worth trying out as well for the newer style (non-stacking units, hexagonal tiles), again there are lots of (but much less than 4) nice mods. There is also a very well made fully free(!, no ads, nothing!) mobile version called unciv.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think what is meant there is the occasionally reported situation of the (often heavily obese, or else it would be too obvious) teenage mom and her family being in denial of the pregnancy right until birth, and then it's too late.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wow, you're not kidding. I haven't really liked /r/slatestarcodex for quite a while now, but so far its failings were imo mostly on the "naive, well meaning quokka stats nerd" end of the spectrum. Now, some of the most highly upvoted comments there are completely misinformed apologia of the killer on how the insurances are killing people for profit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So you were mostly drinking outside in the forest?




Uh, no. For may-tree planting it varied wildly since you needed lots of space, but never in the forest since you want to make a camp fire, and a camp fire in the forest while drunk is how you get forest fires. Typically it would be something like a paddock, or a large roundabout, or in someone backyard if it's large enough. For other events it would usually be some large communal building, such as the old school building.




Who bought the drinks, the older teens or the parents?




The parents usually supply whatever is on the high end of acceptance for your age, older teens whatever is on the low end. So for, say, a 14yo, parents would supply beer and older teens would supply harder alcohol (and it would be expected of the older teens to look after him, and this can be enforced since the parents know exactly who the older teens are). But it also varied a lot depending on the parents opinion.




As an American, the laws for liquor were very strict, so it was hard to get any. We would occasionally have "field parties" where you drive out to some random rural location, sit around a circle, maybe a fire if someone was prepared enough to bring supplies, and pass a bottle around (usually bought by someone with a "fun" older sibling). Really a miserable experience all around I think. The more common way was that we'd go to the house of our friend who had an alcoholic single mom, wait for her to fall asleep, and then raid her liquor cabinet. Yeah... not good times. We'd also have to think of a cover story to tell our parents.




Yeah sounds sad. I used to believe in the idea that some things can't be enforced, such as limiting alcohol, since it fit very with my experience and we were taught in school how badly prohibition fucked up. But nowadays I think it all is just secretly revealing your preferences, or at least of society at large - limiting alcohol can't be enforced if people don't want to. But if they do, it works.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 6, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which ones do you mean with "later" ? At least for the N64 ones I didn't get this impression - though I admittedly don't mind open plains much.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 6, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
theMotte may originally be an offshoot from SSC, but by now the connection is pretty weak. Scott only very rarely links here, and vice versa Scott is now just one of many writers that get mentioned here regurlarly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


where do kids there go to drink? Do they just openly drink with their parents?




It's complicated and not just about alcohol, but generally yes, or with their tacit acceptance. I'll use the example of a specific festivity, "Maibaum pflanzen" ("planting the May-Tree"), because it's a nice progression from young to old, but just our small town would have a low double-digit number of festivities like these (for the interested germans, the others I remember in my town were: Straßenfest, Dorffest, Gemeindefest, Wursteball, Osterfeuer, Schützenfest, Karneval, Vaterstag). Once you're 16, you'd also be allowed to drive over to other towns, which meant that there was something going on every weekend.


End of April, we would celebrate the start of spring by going into the nearby forest, cutting down a birch, and setting it up in our local neighbourhood. All neighbourhoods around would do this, with around 20 people per tree, so you would have something like 10 trees up in walking distance, and of those everyone would know literally everyone else. You'd sit down in a circle around a fire and the tree would be some meters away so that it's hard to see from the fire in the dark. There would be a game of stealing the trees from others, mostly played by teens and young adults, and next day the captured trees would be chopped into small pieces and distributed among the group, some keeping their piece as a celebration to commemorate the number of trees stolen, but usually just for burning wood.


Before you're 12, you'd generally just help decorate the tree, eat Bratwurst, play games with the other kids, maybe visiting some other trees with a group of kids. Some neighbourhoods would put up a "kid's tree" which was just a branch from the larger tree, and which would be small enough for the younger kids to steal without needing an axe. Once you're around 12, you'd be allowed to help cut and carry the tree in earnest and drink your first beer (obviously, cutting the tree was itself a beer drinking game) and help protecting the adult tree. Around 14, you'd be allowed to join the older teens when stealing adult trees (which is mostly done between 2-6 in the morning when the majority of the adults went to bed, and the few left over to protect the tree will be drunk or even sometimes fell asleep), and the older teens would let you drink your first hard alcohol with them. This would often also be the first time when you get REALLY drunk once, and you (as well as the older teens that supplied you) would be lightly punished or at least reprimanded by your parents to be more careful next time.


Around 16, you'd be strong enough to carry a tree with a group of other teens, which meant that you'd be allowed your own tree altogether. Whether you actually did this depends on whether you can organize a group of older teens/young adults large enough, a place where you'd be allowed to put up the tree, and food & drinks for everyone, including visitors. This would be the time when getting REALLY DRUNK will be fully tolerated. When I was around 17, we'd set up a tree with 6 teens my age at my parent's house (since they were away for the night at the neighbourhood's tree) and vowed we'd protect our tree by putting a nail in the tree for every finished bottle of hard alcohol and hang the bottle there, and when we woke up the entire tree was decorated fully with more than 20 bottles. We've had a few visitors, but even accounting for that it means everyone drank at least 2-3 full bottles of hard alcohol (and we also drank at other trees we visited), in addition to copious amounts of beer which is generally not even counted (we literally have the saying "you can't get drunk on beer") and which we obviously didn't even bother putting on the tree. We all had such a bad hangover that we didn't go out drinking the next day, which you'd usually do as it is worker's day with lots of bigger festivals. My parents just laughed and made fun of us.


So you usually don't drink much hard alcohol directly with your parents as a teen, it's expected of you to help organize events with friends which then allow you to get drunk. Most parents directly help supply some amount of alcohol for every celebration you throw or join, but usually you have to organize some on top of that (which isn't difficult). Drinking alone or at any time that isn't a designated known event is heavily frowned upon(except beer, since, again, it doesn't count). Some teens would only join events with their parents, and correspondingly drink much less, much later.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For better or worse, we've went through that process before my time; In our Bauernschaft of 500 people, there used to be 5 Kneipen, of which only a single one was still open when I was a kid (an I never went there myself, it was oly old people). I have been told that during covid, one secretly opened again though that has stopped once the measurements had been lifted.


During my teen years, it was typical to first meet at someone's place with a group to get drunk except for the designated drivers, and then you drive to wherever is the nearest current fair (usually a Schützenfest) at that weekend, which could be 20 kilometers or more. My friend group was with more than 20 people of both genders pretty large, so we would often just get drunk together and skip the part of driving anywhere.


From what I've heard, the region hasn't changed much culture and living standard-wise; It's not comparable to the pitiful misery that is the contemporary british countryside. In terms of TFR it's still among the highest in germany, but unfortunately it went through the same 2022 post-covid crash as the rest (up to that point, it had actually slowly been increasing for nearly a decade).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My kids are far too young for these particular topics, but it's pretty simple in principle: You decide beforehand where your red lines are (which should be mostly concentrated on whether something is time-consuming/expensive/impossible to undo) and communicate that as clearly as possible. If you get the impression they're trying to skirt the edges and/or rules-lawyer, you may let them get away with it the first time but with a warning, after the second you put your foot down. As usual when it comes to social topics, the trouble is in the specifics.


On drinking, I'll probably, like my own father (I literally had fights with my dad since I wanted to stay home and play video games, he told me "what are you doing on a friday night at home? Go out and get drunk!" - I was annoyed, but imo he was mostly right), actively push them towards going partying & drinking early-ish, but in environments I trust such as local fairs or the CVJM (I'm not religious, but I've had good experience with these kinds of organizations as a teen). Ideally I'm also present & available if they need me, but where it's too large and crowdy to have them in my sight all the time so they can goof of with friends, as they should. Also, imo as a parent you deserve knowing your kids friends, and they should only go partying with friends they've known for a while and which I know as well. So I know that somebody is looking after them and I know who to ask if they don't come back at the agreed time. Obviously, going to an entirely different place without telling me would include a strict punishment, since that's how teens go missing.


On internet usage, I really don't care much as long as it's age-appropriate, and I'm already even quite laissez-faire on what is "age-appropriate" to begin with.


On reddit, it is extremely lopsided towards the ultra-online with very large amounts of free time and has a strong tendency for circlejerks by basic design, and very biased towards progressive by moderator action. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if half or more of the frequent posters are young women without children, but some child-related degree/occupation that makes them feel like they know what they're talking about. So tbh I'd discount pretty much all opinions there as neither good nor representative of the average parent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Teen drinking is universal outside the US, near-universal in the US, and lindy.




This. In my town, it was normal to start drinking beer around 12-14, and to start drinking hard alcohol (up to blackout drunk) around 14-16. And I'm not talking about poor white trash, this is a prosperous, unusually high TFR conservative & religious farmer's region in western germany.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Discernment, Taste, and Snobbery/Counter-Snobbery (Or, why can't Scott see the ways in which McMansions are bad, why do people care that Laufey's music isn't jazz, and are these two phenomena related?)
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The line between status and popularity is blurry, though. Some may even say it really is the same at its core.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Discernment, Taste, and Snobbery/Counter-Snobbery (Or, why can't Scott see the ways in which McMansions are bad, why do people care that Laufey's music isn't jazz, and are these two phenomena related?)
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Welcome back, Alone. We've missed you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interestingly I have heard this is not quite as obvious as commonly assumed. While the majority may do exactly what is assumed, allegedly there is a substantial minority group that doesn't like it and thus has other practices (mostly oral).