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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38810 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Male suicides per capita have been largely static or declining in almost all Western countries including the US.

OBJECTION! Break it down by age group:

https://sprc.org/scope/age

Suicide among the ages of 15-34 demographic has increased, if there's an overall decrease it is because rates among 50+ demos (i.e. boomers) is decreasing.

But young people killing themselves is, ceteris paribus, MUCH more concerning than older people offing themselves. It should be extremely alarming if there is any significant increase in suicide rates among teens and young adults. And there is. This cannot be shrugged off.

The CDC confirms that the AGE ADJUSTED suicide rate has increased in the past 20 years!

For 2000–2016, the age-adjusted suicide rate increased 30%, from 10.4 to 13.5 per 100,000 population, increasing on average by about 1% per year from 2000 through 2006 and by 2% per year from 2006 through 2016.

For females aged 10–74, suicide rates in 2016 were higher than in 2000.

For males aged 15–74, suicide rates in 2016 were higher than in 2000.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db309.htm

INCREASED 30 fucking percent.

THERE'S the data.

/images/16632506901989577.webp

Eyeballing it, it looks like it went from 14/100k to 18/100k. 30%, yes, but doesn't seem that big overall.

Note that those are per-year, not per-lifetime risk of suicide. The 2016 numbers per-lifetime sum to something like 1%.

Add the slow-acting methods (excessive drugs/alcohol) and 'accidentally on purpose' ODs and it's getting pretty big.

Shit dude i didn't know i committed suicide back in my 20s. Also why don't we include people who dont wear seatbelts as suicides, and anyone who goes into a high risk job.

"Excessive" is of course somewhat open to interpretation -- I'm talking about the levels which will very likely kill you by fifty if you don't cut it out. I'm guessing you didn't OD in your 20s, and also that you don't have much experience with people who did. If you had, you'd know that it's very rarely quite an accident. (Less rare these days because there really is a non-negligible chance of getting a hot shot with more fentanyl in than you'd like, but still pretty unusual)

Don't mistake me for one of the reddit no-fun millenials -- I did tonnes of drugs in my 20s and beyond too; enough to know that it's all fun & games up to a certain point. More people than ever are crossing this line nowadays.

This but unironically. I've theorized that suicide as a specific act is less important to consider than a spectrum of self-preservation----self-destruction. There are a lot of guys today who kill themselves by gun or OD who in my dad's generation drove dangerous cars and motorcycles too fast too often until a crash got them, who in my grandad's generation joined the Marines and didn't duck fast enough, who in my great-great-great-grandad's generation joined a merchant ship crew and went off to tropical parts unknown and were never heard from again. It's just that today, you have to really try to get yourself killed, where in the past you could do fairly normal things (drive cars, join the merchant marine or the Marines) and probably get yourself killed if you didn't try to keep yourself alive hard enough. Young men deciding they have nothing to live for is a universal phenomenon, how it is expressed is different.

I get what you are saying, that risk taking behavior is common in young men and the risks available these days might have less reward associated, but its still unreasonable to compare a risky yet possibly rewarding strategy (striking out on your own to make a new life out on the frontier) to literally just killing yourself. Likewise, some people use drugs to escape their reality, this is not the same as permanently giving up on reality by ending your interactions with it.

Young men deciding they have nothing to live for is a universal phenomenon, how it is expressed is different

I think theres a few different "nothing"s being bundled here, the threshold for "i have nothing going for me in this town, i'm out of here even if it means joining the circuis" is pretty far away from "i have nothing to gain in this world that i can possibly reach and i would rather die than make any further attempt"

The two attitudes look identical from the outside if the way you deal with them is the same. "I'm going to join the Navy to get out of this nowhere town and see the world" and "I'm going to join the Navy and hopefully I'll die and end this stupid life" both look like "He joined the Navy and died in a storm or a fever somewhere East of Suez" to everyone but the man himself.

If the bottom 1% of men who just can't fit into normal life (and today become your school shooters, drug addicts, incels etc) existed before the 20th centure, their existence would have been hidden by just dying in ways that were written off as a normal cost of doing business back then. This article claims that during certain periods a fifth of British soldiers stationed to Jamaica died every year, while a third stationed in West Africa kicked the bucket. Merchant numbers weren't a whole lot better.

Sure, but the onus isn't on me to prove that they didn't want to commit suicide, whoever wants to add those numbers to the suicide stat needs to prove they belong there, which i am skeptical of.

This is a stat that should not be increasing in a healthy nation.

4 extra lives per 100k, just gone. With all the various second-order effects, especially on friends and family, that must imply.

And consider that this stat is just successful suicide attempts, so doesn't capture all the people who might be contemplating or having made unsuccessful attempts.

I defy anyone to explain this as a positive or neutral indicator.

I defy anyone to explain this as a positive or neutral indicator.

While the loss of life is tragic, in the long term we're optimizing for mental resilience.

Interesting point if only because it brings us into a debate over whether it requires greater mental fortitude to actually commit a suicide or to continue living with whatever pain lead to the ideation in the first place. Is suicide, in most cases, actually a case of mental 'weakness?'

Pointing out, perhaps, that women have higher rates of (many) mental illnesses and yet a lower suicide rate than men, which is usually ascribed to men choosing much more effective means of killing themselves and, likewise, actually doing it with full intent of succeeding.

While an interesting debate, I'm instead going to rephrase:

While the loss of life is tragic, in the long term we're optimizing for not being stressed to the point of suicide by the demands of modern society. Whether that's through us becoming stronger or us becoming weaker is, I think, immaterial to the widely-agreed on fact that it's better if your population isn't suiciding in droves.

Ah! That is an excellent clarification.

I can agree that the goal here should be to examine exactly what about our prosperous modern economy is still so intolerable or otherwise lacking that we have people choosing to end it.

No. We're not selecting for that. Because modern society is changing too fast for selection pressures to react.

I defy anyone to explain this as a positive or neutral indicator.

Don't tempt the devil.

Given the preponderance of Utilitarians, Aeithiests, and Accelerationists on theMotte there is a very real possibility that someone will take you up on that.

Would love to hear it, and would listen in good faith.

Gonna rip any logic gaps apart though.

And if their argument is good then it would presumably be their position that we should increase the suicide rate, so interested to see if they bite that bullet or try to dodge.

Sure, let me try.

Assumption A: A life can be so bad as to be of negative value to the person themselves.

Assumption B: Because of self-preservation artifacts, not all whose lives are negative in value are determined to end them.

Assumption C: Your desire to kill yourself generally increases as your life value drops further into the negatives.

Conclusion: More suicides means more people were pushed from the margins of worse-than-worthless lives into making a correct decision. Of course it would be better if they were raised from those margins, but apparently we can't all have nice things.

Of course it would be better if they were raised from those margins, but apparently we can't all have nice things.

This would be a stronger conclusion if we actually examined the problem to figure out what was pushing them into the decision. I don't think the majority of suicides are people who are actually suffering from material deprivation. The problem is fundamentally an emotional/mental one where people feel that life is not worth living. And in theory helping people find reasons to live and instilling purpose should be doable!

Suicide rate doesn't seem to correlate with GDP-per-capita, just ask Japan and South Korea.

Thanks for going through the data, I thought something smelled fishy about doglatines post.

Boomers and gen x males suicide rates are dropping and that’s also interesting. I guess when your economic status has never been higher, and you’re thriving and flush with cash looking forward to retirement, life feels pretty good, even if you left society a burning wreck for the youngins

Man, I'm resisting the urge to spew data all over the place in response to that comment because in my research I've concluded that the masculinity crisis, focusing on young men, is WAY WORSE than you'd think if not paying close attention.

I'm giving Doglatine benefit of the doubt that he's arguing in good faith, he probably is!

But, I mean, look at this:

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-share-of-u-s-adults-are-living-without-a-spouse-or-partner/

The economic outcomes of prime-working-age men differ substantially by partnership status. In 2019, 73% of men without a partner were employed, compared with 91% of partnered men. The gap in employment among women, which is more modest, goes in the opposite direction: 77% of single women held a job in 2019, compared with 74% of women with a partner.

and

In 2019, the median earnings of men without a partner were $35,600, lagging far behind those of partnered men ($57,000).

I have EXTREME concerns about what happens to a nation when the young male population isn't able to 'buy in' to the long-term success of the population, because said nation gives them nothing to live for and doesn't reward their efforts towards improvement. Why should such a man continue to participate and play 'by the rules' and produce wealth and value?

Suicide is just one indicator of this. There are others.

Another likely signal is the popularity of cryptocurrency speculation and reddit's /r/wallstreetbets which is largely dominated by young men literally gambling their life's savings trying to vault out of their shitty current standard of living.

Well, TIL. This is both startling and rather depressing, as 1) I'm somewhat certain that this is the first I've heard of this, and 2) I'm definately in the unpartnered category with little chance of that changing any time soon.

Atleast they try and give a reason as to why this all may be later in the article;

Researchers have considered why this relationship between partnership status and economic outcomes exists, particularly for men. Is it driven by the fact that men with higher levels of education, higher wages and better prospects for the future are more desirable potential spouses? Or is there something about marriage or partnership that gives a boost to a man’s economic outcomes? The research suggests that both factors are at play. Married men earn more because high earners are more likely to marry in the first place. Cohabiting men also receive a wage premium. In addition, marriage or partnership may make men more productive at work, thus adding to the wage premium that already exists.

None of which speak well of possible solutions, though. Christ.

It is still possible to find success on the individual level, the stats shouldn't hamper you from putting efforts into improving your own life!

But its clear that there's something failing in the current system that is showing a strain in the young male population, and I don't like where this is going to take us.

You could also look at the labour participation rate for young men, which is dropping at historically unprecedented rates.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/mens-declining-labor-force-participation.htm

During the 1996–2016 period, the nonparticipation rate increased the most for younger men of prime working age, those age 25 to 34. In terms of education, the largest increase in nonparticipation was seen among men with the middle levels of educational attainment—those with either (1) a high school diploma but no college, (2) some college, or (3) an associate’s degree.

This links data was from before the pandemic, which likely worsened things even further.

Ooh, how about college enrollment and completion?

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/10/08/the-male-college-crisis-is-not-just-in-enrollment-but-completion/

Although this might not be all that negative, on net.

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