site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33252 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Can I ask all the men blaming women, the hussies, for not getting married at seventeen and pumping out a baby a year for the next ten years - are you fathers?

Working on it, plan to be in the next 2 years or so. Fiancé wants to get through the most busy period of residency before starting. In response to the rest of the comment, there are actually meaningful asymmetries between the sexes that make these swaps not really work that.

Because I'm fed-up right now of this stream of comments as if women magically are the only ones having babies or not.

In the society most of us actually live in women do pretty much get unilateral decision making on this topic.

Men who have sex are going to become fathers, or else they can wait until a woman decides to marry them.

I really think you're misreading the room if you don't expect this to be responded to with yeschad.

And let's make it harder for men to waste their prime fertile years going to college. Get them working good honest blue-collar jobs out of high school, married to their childhood sweetheart, and having babies by the time they're twenty.

This is definitely not how male fertility works, and has about a 50% chance of getting a yeschad response anyways. There is nothing like a consensus on the importance of going to college in this place.

Men can wait ten or so years to have a career, they'll easily pick one up when they're thirty-plus and asking an employer to take them on for full-time white collar work for the first time ever. It's much more important that they be around to be the head of the house and raise the kids right. Women can take a year out to have a baby and then go back to work, but it's a full-time job for a father. And since women have it so soft and easy in this world, and it's easier for women to get degrees and white-collar jobs, let Mom be the worker but Dad should be there for his brood because who else is going to teach them the right ways?

Economic incentives for men to marry early, father lots of kids, and postpone further education/career-building will surely change the fertility slump! If it would work for a woman, certainly no man would object to having his freedom curtailed in this way - after all, his duty to society and the future trumps any petty personal ambitions, right?

This survives reversal somewhat better but not all that well, it wasn't just some weird arbitrary coincidence that pretty much every culture in the world had mothers as primary caregivers and despite the artificial roadblocks men do still out earn women. I am open to and would like for where any fertility intervention to be fair to both sexes, I'm engaged to someone with two doctorates, but we do need to acknowledge that we are sexually dimorphic species. Your discomfort with the way this discussion is being had is well raised but I don't think you've actually done much damage to the argument.

This survives reversal somewhat better but not all that well, it wasn't just some weird arbitrary coincidence that pretty much every culture in the world had mothers as primary caregivers and despite the artificial roadblocks men do still out earn women

I don't think you overcame that objection. We aren't an agricultural or early industrial society where male physical strength is determinant of earnings. Men out earn women but it's not that big and gets tiny if you control for years of experience and willingness to work overtime, the stuff women give up if they become mothers.

It can be true that satisfaction from raising kids is higher for women then for men and so it makes sense for most households to have women be the primary caretaker. But it doesn't follow that satisfaction from raising kids + satisfaction from delayed career > satisfaction from immediately pursued career for the majority of women. TFR seems to be lower among educated women with good job prospects improve which suggests to me women are not irrationally deluded but correctly optimizing for life satisfaction. Asking women to unilaterally lower their happiness because it's historical tradition doesn't seem like a successful strategy for raising fertility.

TFR seems to be lower among educated women with good job prospects improve which suggests to me women are not irrationally deluded but correctly optimizing for life satisfaction.

This doesn't really follow, it'd be like claiming people who don't open their parachutes make it fastest to the ground thus they know the best route, of course the women who invest tons of money and time into their careers and put off motherhood put off motherhood. For it to be otherwise would be quite strange.

But honestly this isn't really the point. I don't object to stay at home dads when that's the best option for a couple, it's a thing I sometimes think about doing. What I do object to is that we're really not being all that honest with women. A lot of women hit their thirties before realizing that they have way less time to do this family thing than they thought, and sunk cost prevents them from correcting. We as a society sell them on "having it all" and really really push careers as not just an option but the default option. The biggest dimorphism that still exists is fertility windows. And I totally reject that idea that women are making these decisions with all the facts.

Working on it, plan to be in the next 2 years or so. Fiancé wants to get through the most busy period of residency before starting.

Well, there you have it. At the height of the last real baby boom, advanced degrees weren't something the average middle class family had to worry about. Hell, it wasn't something the average middle class family had to worry about 30 years later. Then fast forward to the 21st century, when I can name a dozen kids off the top of my head (myself included) from my working class high school that was among the worst in the state who got advanced degrees. And when you and your fiance decide you're ready for children, I'd be willing to bet that neither of you is going to be willing to quit your job to stay home with the kids (especially not with 2 PhDs and a residency already invested), so that means daycare, and with 3 kids that alone can easily cost $100k a year. Which means that for women who want careers, they're either going to have to be willing to curtail them or limit the number of children they have. I agree with you that this is largely a good thing. But you can't say that couples should be able to spend an inordinate amount of time developing their careers and hobbies and then look shocked when they aren't having as many kids as before.

Right, I don't think the current system is working even if me and my fiancé seemed to have done not too badly given the shape of things, we'll have two or three kids and do our part but I won't say it wouldn't have been better if we had them during like college years. We have some but not as much as I'd like family nearby to help a bit but are still working out how daycare and the like will work. I'm a software engineer and have been playing around with the idea of reducing my workload and finding a purely work from home gig to be a stay at home dad. We're pretty blessed/privileged to have the kind of solvable problems we have and I do think we need more practical changes.

I am not pursuing a similar lifestyle to yours, but I've never actually understood why people even consider paying more for daycare than they would for a nanny(who is not in a position to make ~$100k/yr, or anything close). Kinda off topic, I know.

Maybe we would get a nanny, and I interpreted the 100k/year estimate as hyperbole. My ideal situation would be to have my and her parents take turns watching them on the ~3 days a week I go into the office. Realistically it's going to be an evolved system where we try things and learn.

Are you planning to spend the other two days WFH while multitasking the childcare? If so, don't. Some people (including my wife and I) did WFH with kids during the pandemic because they had no other options, and it was a disaster for productivity, kids, and sanity (we now have a nanny). Responsible employers are now asking WFH parents about childcare arrangements in order to make sure that people are not WFH with uncared-for kids in the house.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats