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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Sex in the post I responded to refers primarily to marriage and its dissolution, so "how-to-get-and-stay-married" is the relevant skill here.

I think your story makes sense for marriage but not for sex (for which as we all know marriage is neither necessary nor sufficient).

Finally, playing-the-game-of-credentialism (a.k.a. "education") is without a doubt a more widely practiced skill now than it was fifty years ago. About 90% graduate high-school; of those, half go to college; of those, about half graduate with a degree. Fifty years ago, much higher percentage of people dropped out of high-school, and less than 10% of those who graduated went on to college. (There stats are approximate but broadly correct.)

The credentialism game has changed to accommodate the large influx of people seeking credentials.

I don't really understand your point here. you seem to be agreeing with me that education is not something generally unnecessary, so it doesn't explain the bimodal distribution mentioned by OP.

I don't really understand your point here. you seem to be agreeing with me that education is not something generally unnecessary, so it doesn't explain the bimodal distribution mentioned by OP.

I think I see: OP conflated (or rather, placed in extreme proximity) education as getting-credentials and education as reading books. The getting-credentials has a coming-together pattern (more people are going for education credentials, so there is more of a continuum of the type of credentials and their quality), but the reading-books has a coming-apart pattern (majority read practically no books, a small minority read lots and lots of books).