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naraburns  nihil supernum  3d ago (text post)   3227 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for January 2025

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@George_E_Hale:

@problem_redditor:

@thejdizzler:

@barristan_selmy:

@coffee_enjoyer:

@recovering_rationaleist:

Contributions for the week of December 30, 2024

@Dean:

@naraburns:

@ControlsFreak:

@cjet79:

@Throwaway05:

Contributions for the week of January 6, 2025

@self_made_human:

@jeroboam:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@ArjinFerman:

@jake:

@netstack:

Contributions for the week of January 13, 2025

@gorge:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@faceh:

@hooser:

@Rov_Scam:

Contributions for the week of January 20, 2025

@NelsonRushton:

@WandererintheWilderness:

@Hoffmeister25:

@Dean:

@FCfromSSC:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@naraburns:

Contributions for the week of January 27, 2025

@seven:

@felis-parenthesis:

@NelsonRushton:

@jeroboam:

@Corvos:

@SteveAgain:

@RenOS:

@HonoriaWinchester:

@Rov_Scam:

@Capital_Room:

@gorge:

@Tanista:

@Amadan:

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The sexual revolution was shortly predated by a baby boom, which inflated the apparent effect on TFR (if there was one...), and "nuclear families" are a historical anomaly.

The sexual revolution was shortly predated by a baby boom, which inflated the apparent effect on TFR (if there was one...),

The TFR continued going down and is now below replacement, making whatever point you're trying to make irrelevant.

and "nuclear families" are a historical anomaly.

What are quote marks doing around a term that does not appear a single time in his post? Also, are you actually in favor of bringing back extended families or clan structures, or was this supposed to be a gotcha of some sort?

The TFR continued going down and is now below replacement, making whatever point you're trying to make irrelevant.

Fertility rates are declining globally, including in Muslim countries, so I don't think the sexual revolution was a major factor. (More likely, a secular trend of increasing female autonomy in the West contributed the sexual revolution, just as it contributes to declines in TFR. So far as I'm aware, why the 1945-1960 baby boom was so large in the US is unknown.)

What are quote marks doing around a term that does not appear a single time in his post? Also, are you actually in favor of bringing back extended families or clan structures, or was this supposed to be a gotcha of some sort?

I took the corollary to "It was claimed 60 years ago that the previous 100,000 years of accumulated human wisdom about sexuality was fake and retarded and should be discarded in favor of unlimited license. This was done. The result was a more or less immediate collapse in family formation..." to be that what immediately preceded the sexual revolution was the zenith sexual mores. I'm not advocating a particular family structure, just noting that what immediately preceded the sexual revolution was also anomalous, so this is likely no more true than any other narrative with linear social development.

As the father of many children, making my living in the Bay Area, I can only say that there almost isn't any such thing as making enough money to have lots of kids here. We make it work because my wife's mom is of an old breed which believes in helping with the grandkids as much as possible. Meanwhile my mom is enough of a normal boomer that while she enjoys the idea of helping she doesn't actually want to do so in most scenarios. I'm sending my older kids to a parochial school while we continue to make babies but the plan is to transition everyone to homeschool once it becomes temporally feasible.

The point is that I'm a fan of the nuclear family, but to actually be functional it requires one parent (the mom) to be home most of the time and/or seriously-committed grandparents. Putting grandparents in the same house seems like overkill to me but maybe we could just make more of an effort to live near family?

Putting grandparents in the same house seems like overkill to me

And a bit of a paradox, no? "Everybody's parents live with them" is only possible if everybody is an only child, unless by "live near family" you mean "in the same compound, Encanto style". (yeah, there's got to be a better reference to use there, but I've got kids too...)

I'm a huge fan of "live near family" in a looser sense, having traded (okay, it's maybe 20:80 given:received...) childcare help with a sister-in-law who's 15 minutes away, but in general moving far away for a higher salary or better college is always tempting, and if that higher salary is in a place where the rent-seekers capture a big chunk of it as literal rent then your family might not be able to move after you even if they want to.

Fertility rates are declining globally, including in Muslim countries, so I don't think the sexual revolution was a major factor.

So why do you think that within any given country more conservative people reproduce more?

to be that what immediately preceded the sexual revolution was the zenith sexual mores.

Nowhere in the quoted text is it even implied that it was the zenith, and the last 60 years have seen the rejection of much more than the nuclear family in particular, so I really don't understand where your argument is coming from.

So why do you think that within any given country more conservative people reproduce more?

It's paywalled, but Noah Smith wrote an article saying we don't know how to control TFR. In addition to highly religious countries also having secular trends of reducing TFR, I'm hesitant to read too much into within-country correlations with conservative culture, due to the possibility that the correlation isn't stable over the timescales needed to have explanatory value.

Nowhere in the quoted text is it even implied that it was the zenith, and the last 60 years have seen the rejection of much more than the nuclear family in particular, so I really don't understand where your argument is coming from.

What I meant was that it was my interpretation of what the comment implied and one counter-example.

It's paywalled, but Noah Smith wrote an article saying we don't know how to control TFR.

Yeah, sorry, he didn't get to the point within the free preview.

I'm hesitant to read too much into within-country correlations with conservative culture, due to the possibility that the correlation isn't stable over the timescales needed to have explanatory value.

Sounds like an arbitrary dismissal of evidence that doesn't go your way. We don't know if any of the discussed phenomena are stable on these time-scales.

What I meant was that it was my interpretation of what the comment implied and one counter-example.

The most straight-forward interpretation is that the last 60 years has seen us turn away from sexual mores that have been a part of any stable civilization that managed to get anywhere. Another reasonable interpretation is "we sunk to lows not seen in 100K years". This would still leave you with many things to criticize, as I don't think we quite reached the levels of ancient Rome, but it would be a reasonable interpretation given what he said. "The 50's in the US were the pinnacle of human sexual mores" seems to literally come out of nowhere.

Yeah, sorry, he didn't get to the point within the free preview.

Yeah, "We don't know, because..." take more words than "We do know, and..."

Sounds like an arbitrary dismissal of evidence that doesn't go your way. We don't know if any of the discussed phenomena are stable on these time-scales.

Or I just don't think there's sufficient evidence.

The most straight-forward interpretation is that the last 60 years has seen us turn away from sexual mores that have been a part of any stable civilization that managed to get anywhere.

Repeating that you think my interpretation was wrong won't get you a better explanation of what my interpretation was.

So why do you think that within any given country more conservative people reproduce more?

There's a difference between identifying as religious and actually practicing a religion, and conservative people are more likely to do the latter.

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