Crowstep
5hr ago
I think you're really grasping at straws. Here's a quote from Weir himself:
I dislike social commentary. Like… I really hate it. When I’m reading a book, I just want to be entertained, not preached at by the author. Plus, it ruins the wonder of the story if I know the author has a political or social axe to grind. I no longer speculate about all possible outcomes of the story because I know for a fact that the universe of that book will conspire to ensure that the author’s political agenda is validated. I hate that.
I put no politics or social commentary into my stories at all. Anyone who thinks they see something like that is reading it in on their own. I have no point to make, and I’m not trying to affect the reader’s opinion on anything. My sole job is to entertain, and I stick to that.
He's talking more about politics, but when the author describes himself as an agnostic and says he deliberately avoids putting a political or social commentary in his books, I really don't think you can conclude that the book is a religious allegory.
Crowstep
10hr ago
The partisan gap goes in the same direction as the sex gap, but it's much larger. So American women might be 10-20% more pro-immigration then men, but Democrats are 40-70% more pro-immigration than Republicans. Unfortunately I can't seem to find any questions that have this specific crosstab (Republic women vs Democrat men) for direct comparison, but Claude estimates that we would expect something like 60% of Republic women to support an anti-immigration policy vs 20% of Democrat men, extrapolating from questions where we do have more in-depth crosstabs.
Of course, it's also worth mentioning that this is basically an Anglophone phenomenon. Outside of the English-speaking world and Northern Europe (who are I would argue are functionally anglophone in terms of English skills and how they interact with the internet) the gender gap on immigration is either tiny or non-existent.
Crowstep
11hr ago
I think both you are the writer are setting this up as a binary. Either he had vitiligo, or he was trying to change his appearance to look more European.
My understanding was that he did have vitiligo, and once he realised he wasn't going to be able to cover it up, he decided to go the other way to lighten his skin. He then had the surgeries to make everything 'match' racially.
What's the alternative, that his doctor diagnosed him with a disease he didn't have and gave him drugs he didn't need, all so that a handsome, popular African American popstar could race-swap for no reason? It's not as if his ancestry was a shameful secret.
What policy and politicians do female voters prefer?
They prefer less war than men in the UK.
You seem to be defining the BLM riots/protests and Biden's immigration policy as war, which they are not.
Although with regards to the BLM riots, I asked Claude to dig into the crosstabs of this Yougov survey on whether they were 'mostly peaceful' or not. 67% of women said they were, with 66% of men said they were, so there's no sigificant difference there. The same is true about questions of police response, who is responsible for the protests turning violent, and other similar questions.
There is a small gap between men and women on immigration/border issues in the Anglosphere, but it's trumped by a much larger partisan one.
Crowstep
14hr ago
I don't think it is a Jesus allegory. There's certainly the Hail Mary pun, but plot-wise it's just a straightforward 'hero overcoming the odds' story written by an atheist.
Crowstep
1d ago
If it was that bad then, how much the worse now that half the electorate is under moral hazard conditions to pull the trigger? And as we see in Ukraine, the minute the fighting starts it is exclusively the women who [are permitted to and as such immediately] make a run for it, which is absolutely crooked- that whole "be worth it" thing evidently won't matter when it counts.
That seems like cheating. If your argument against female suffrage (and to be fair, it's not clear if you're arguing that) is that they don't have skin in the game if a war starts, it seems unreasonable to use a war where women were literally disenfranchised as evidence that it could be worse.
In Better Angels of our Nature, Stephen Pinker makes a pretty convincing case that female politicians at least are slightly less warmongering than their male counterparts.
Crowstep
2d ago
Also women seem to be in position to be more threatened by AI. Which explains why the foaming at the mouth AI haters are mostly women.
I would put that down more to women being more risk averse and less interested in technology generally. Women are more NIMBYish than men when it comes to building houses, and men are more optimistic about technological progress generally.
And I don't think we can confidently argue that women are more threatened by AI in any case. If AI takes over all jobs, then really the only 'jobs' left will be interpersonal roles e.g. mothers and fathers, and the housewife role works better for women than for men. I suspect AI will hit white collar workers harder than blue collar ones, but blue collar workers aren't just plumbers and tradesmen, it also includes nurses, care workers, childcare workers and cleaners. And one of the main male blue collar roles (drivers) are getting automated away as we speak.
Crowstep
2d ago
But I think she's still a bit too refined and intellectual to a be a proper "chud." Frankly, I'm not sure it's possible for any woman to be a chud, that's almost an oxymoron.
I guess that's what I'm getting at. You describe JD Vance as a chud because he has socially conservative or anti-woke beliefs, but I think we agree that those aren't the same thing. I would argue they probably aren't even very correlated. The barstool conservative may be anti-woke because he doesn't like being scolded and doesn't like woke's puritanism, but he's not socially conservative.
Crowstep
2d ago
But has any of this actually worked? Well... no. Or at least, it's hit a wall. Engineering and the physical trades remain stubbornly male dominated. Women do a bit better in management, but only when they can sit in large meetings and avoid personal responsibility for anything. Their strong preference remains fields like nursing, HR, and marketing.
I think you're understating it. Women have been a majority of new doctors and lawyers for years. Young women (in the UK at least) outearn young men and there are more male NEETs than female ones. Women are about 62% of accountants. I think you can make the strong case that, in the modern economy, women are better suited to the working world. There's obviously still strong male and female preferences (vis. people vs things) and most workaholics are men but it's not as if women are just doing pretend makework while men do all the actual work.
Of course, you still see a wage gap within marriages because a) women prefer men who earn more money than them, b) women have a comparative advantage in having children and c) women who have children prefer to spend time with them while preferring their husbands work full time.
As an example, consider our new Secretary of War (that's war, not defense), Pete Hegseth. He opposes feminism, says that women should not be in combat roles, and has instituted mandatory testosterone testing for the military. He's also just generally blunt and aggressive in the way he talks. The left hates him but... he's still in charge. In his personal life, he is twice divorced due to having a lot of affairs.
Or consider JD Vance. He's a lot more intellectual than Hegseth, but still something of a chud. He opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and childlessness in general. He's flirted with the idea that parents should have more voting rights than non-parents. He wants to "de-woke-ify" all federal institutions. He's saying all kinds of things that would have gotten me fired from most corporate jobs, and yet there's a strong chance that he'll become president.
I'm not sure you can interpret much from either of these men. Hegseth seems pretty representative of Trumpian boorishness and chaos, rather than some kind of shift in the makeup of elites, and JD Vance's believes are pretty much in line with broad social conservatism. Vance's beliefs aren't too far from someone like Catherine Pakaluk, does that make her a Chud?
Crowstep
2d ago
I remember finishing that game as a kid. Even then, I knew that 'it was all a dream' was a lazy, fakeout ending. I'd rather have a happy ending than that hackiness.
Crowstep
2d ago
His autopsy listed him as having vitiligo:
After his death, his autopsy report stated that there were “patches of light and dark pigmented areas” on examination of his skin, and vitiligo was listed as a diagnosis in his medical history. In addition, a tube of Benoquin 20% cream was noted among his medications, revealing that he did use this FDA-approved treatment for vitiligo. He also had a tube of BQ/KA/RA (Benoquin 8%, Kojic acid 1%, and retinoic acid 0.025%), another effective formulation for Benoquin, as well as hydroquinone 8% lotion (which would help to lighten any remaining pigment), and UVA Anthelios XL sunscreen, a good idea for anyone with vitiligo, especially if they had depigmented their skin. Microscopic examination of his skin revealed a lack of pigment and reduced number of melanocytes, which is most consistent with vitiligo, with or without the use of Benoquin, and vitiligo was the official diagnosis on the report. Rare photos of him when his skin was exposed appear to show his depigmented skin, and one (above) shows his largely depigmented arms with some remaining spots of pigment.
I remember also seeing a youtube video of his (dark) makeup running down his face at a show. IIRC, he initially tried to cover up the white patches, but the condition progressed so much that he decided it would be easier to just lighten the remaining dark skin he had (as well as having the ill-advised nose job etc).
I'd interpret this more as your ability to lead ChatGPT in the direction you wanted it to go.
Crowstep
6d ago
Cheap childcare, social safety nets, and generous parental leave are commonly cited as reasons for why the birthrate in those countries are higher than their neighbors
It's interesting why that's the case. Lyman Stone says it's because there's an upper bound on free childcare. You can give free childcare from age five (school) or start earlier than that, but ultimately there's a limit because you can't provide free childcare for babies who are -1 years old. Whereas with baby bonuses, you can make them arbitrarily high.
Crowstep
6d ago
A tiny blip below replacement means the number might shrink very slowly for a decade or two
Population increased caused by above-replacement fertility is exponential. More babies means more parents who have more babies.
The opposite is also true. Fewer babies means fewer parents to have babies. It won't look like decline at first, because on a population tally a 75-year-old looks the same as a 20-year-old, but pensioners can't have babies, no matter how many of them there are. And the mechanism you are proposing (high-fertility subgroups drag up overall fertility enough to make a difference) has really only happened in Israel. For the other 99% of the world, there is no thermostatic mechanism in evidence. More likely population will plummet in the same way it skyrocketted after the industrial revolution.
It is concerning culturally for ethnic and cultural groups which are below average
They are the ones that maintain industrial society.
There are a bunch of people who have lots of children
Right now, that's subsaharan Africans with average IQs in the 70s, plus anti-modernity breeder cults like the Amish or Haredim. All three require industrial society to be maintained by other people. When the other people disappear, who will provide healthcare for the Amish, welfare for the Haredim or food aid for the Africans?
And more to the point, if industrial society does collapse, that makes us much more vulnerable to existential threats like pandemics, asteroid strikes, nuclear war or misaligned-AI takeover.
Although to be honest, saying 'humanity will survive' is pretty cold comfort. Like consoling the dinosaurs with 'don't worry, that big asteroid won't kill all the animals, the mammals will be fine'
Crowstep
7d ago
So what is going on here?
A more charitable take is that she is describing Britishness as it has been promoted by the British political class for decades (some of them might even believe it). Melanie Phillips didn't invent the 'Britishness is queueing and Paddington and chicken tikka masala' model of national identity, she's just describing it.
And she's right that British ethno-religious-national identity genuinely is different from Jewish identity. Judaism is an ethno-religion, Anglicanism, as a branch of Christianity, is universalist (as evidenced by the fact that we sent missionaries to our colonies when we had them). And when the only people in Britain who still believe in Christianity are pensioners and Africans, then it doesn't work very well as a pillar of our national identity.
Crowstep
7d ago
Seems like this might be worth a top level post in the culture war thread. 'Affirmative action for men to solve the fertility crisis' is a fairly big topic.
Crowstep
7d ago
Perhaps it's smartphones, perhaps it's a whole host of things reaching some critical point of delaying family formation. Who knows?
The Nordics, like most countries, saw a collapse in marriage that caused the collapse in fertility. The timing does suggest that smartphones were the cause (although this demographer thinks that the pre-2012 collapse was due to the recession whereas post-2012 is due to dating apps and shortform video). Interventions in the US would probably be more effective because there is a population of religious Americans that already want to marry and have children, so the incentives would be more effective. Whereas in secular Scandinavia paying people more money to have children won't do much if kids interfere with their expressive individualism.
Crowstep
9d ago
I like lots of immigration. Heavy indoctrination into our ethics and morals. Restrictive voting and restrictive welfare benefits for immigrants.
Does the history of every western country not demonstrate that there is an innate tension between these things? How is it possible to heavily indoctrinate immigrants while also importing millions of them at the same time? Acculturation works best when you have very small numbers, surrounded by members of the host culture.
And no democracy has ever achieved the latter. In every case, immigrants eventually get permanent residence and citizenship and then go on to vote for more immigration.
Obviously this brochure isn't the complete solution, but it's a step in the right direction that admits to the problem and tries to address it.
I guess it's whether you think the modal immigrant rapist is a mistake theorist or a conflict theorist. Shabir Ahmed moved to the UK when he was six, he absolutely knew the rules. But he also thought that white slags were okay to rape and that Pakistanis were '...the supreme race, not those white bastards' (an exact quote from his trial).
I don't think these guys are children who don't realise that rape is wrong. I think they consider it a wrong (as in, a wrong was done to me) but their circle of empathy doesn't extend to the women of their host society.
Crowstep
9d ago
Fight Club
That's the only one I've both seen and read, and the film is definitely better. Although the scene where Jared Leto gets beat up is somehow more explicit in the book.
How would you rate starship troopers?
I've been meaning to re-watch it actually. I saw it as a kid, so I enjoyed the guns and boobs, but obviously any satirical elements went right over my head (which they apparently also did for most of the viewing public). I suspect I'd enjoy it.
The book was pretty good. I struggle with descriptions of physical stuff in literature so I couldn't quite follow all the battle scenes, but I enjoyed inhabiting the strange little world Heinlein built.
EDIT: Rewatched it with my wife the other night. It was just as good as I remember. The CGI is remarkably good for a film made in 1997. The action sequences are exciting, the satirical elements are funny, and I was even invested in the relationship drama.
Crowstep
10d ago
I've been toying with the idea of working out whether faithfulness to the source material is correlated with quality of the end product.
Lords of the Rings was pretty faithful to the books, and an excellent series of films, while the Hobbit was less faithful and much less good, although I can easily imagine a faithful adaptation that was bad, since I'd say the main problem with the Hobbit was that it allowed Peter Jackson complete control to bring out his worst impulses.
The Dune films have been very faithful to the books and I would say good films in general.
The Watchmen film was infamously too faithful to the graphic novel and suffered for it.
Shogun was very loyal to the book and was excellent.
I can't think of any adaptations that are very different to the source material but still good, but I suspect in those cases the film/TV adaptation could end up eclipsing the original, which fades from public memory.
Crowstep
10d ago
Integration is not synonymous with positive outcomes.
For example, the 'intermarriage' (few of these people are literally marrying) rate of Afro-Caribbeans is extremely high (43%) but they also commit something like 10x as much violent crime. They are integrating into the native underclass, and the native underclass are integrating into them.
The demographics of the small boat migrants suggest they will have both low intermarriage rates and very high crime rates.
Crowstep
11d ago
The right has simply other priorities
'The right' is not a person (neither is 'the left' for that matter).
Religious conservatives who oppose abortion because they consider it infanticide and anti-immigration rightists who are willing to talk about HBD on twitter are mostly different people.
It's worth mentioning that there is really nothing trad* about large marital age gaps (except maybe for widowers). Amish and Haredi men marry when they are 21/22. Their brides are typically 1-2 years younger. 'Sexual compatibility' isn't really be a thing. Couples grow together, both in their sex lives, and the rest of their lives.
*Caveat here that I'm talking about the west. You do see larger age gaps in Africa, but it's not as if those guys are sleeping around in their 20s, they just can't afford the bride price when they're young and poor.
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