I’m pretty sure the purpose of this post is to get people to have less children…
Look, you’re a free rider. You childless fucks are all going to tax my children so you can get your social security and your Medicare. Even Ayn Rand did that.
And who do you think is going to consume your great art or whatever you think you’re doing* with your childlessness when you’re dead if nobody has children.
Birth rates, specially birth rates amongst the smartest and most productive people in the world, are rapidly imploding. Like civilization collapsing implosion. And your reply is “like if you measure it differently maybe you can maximize lifetime dopamine by partying and then dumping your retirement on some other suckers kids”.
*hint your not doing anything, your getting a degree in professional managerialism, eating out, and staring at screens while you get old.
But your comment isnt a responsive argument at all. Its just invective (and bizarre claims about medicare and soon to be obsolete social security).
It doesnt address the article’s claims. It doesnt refute the idea that Wilcox and co were propagating shoddy data and thus discrediting the natalist cause. And it doesnt propose ways to make having children more palatable (as the current wilcox, lyman stone, IFS pitch is one of drudgery).
I remember the stats being trotted out by this clown car saying something along the lines of "bachelors die young so get married boys." The only way the numbers work is if you forget to factor in the 45-50% chance of divorce (which radically reduces male lifespain). It's sort of like when a junior analyst constructs a financial model from current year SP500 components (leaving out the dead companies no longer in the SP500), except significantly stupider since they don't knock out 50% of its components that often. Either way those people are intensely dumb.
Good article, but it's a bit disingenuous to use the Deaton & Stone stats to back up the point that children negatively correlate with happiness, when they clearly show a positive correlation. They indeed also show that life evaluation negatively correlates, and that's arguably more important, but it wasn't what was being discussed.
Very excellent post. I suppose that I am in some sense a natalist of sorts, but the biggest problem with modern fertility selection is that overwhelmingly it is the Ned Flanders of the world that have the most kids. "So everyone must become Ned Flanders" says the social conservative. I think rather the biggest problem is that these people might really inherit the future.
The problem is that so far, there are only two visions of the future for the Western world:
1. Consoomerist, childless liberal
2. Ned Flanders, religious pro-natalist
In the first case, the demographic implosion will ensure that every day there are fewer and fewer extraordinary people, while the worls turns into the Global Favela. The second case at least ensures that there will be a contiuantion of the people created the extraordinar in the world, even if they live in a flattened culture. The potential for greatness is only preserved in the second case.
Ideally, there would be a better, positive vision for the future that doesn't require a strict, religious, socially conservative society, yet maintains the fertility rate and the social demographic harmony.
Would like to see these opinions divided by age, if youre young and unmarried you might feel more euphoric, if youre a young parent you might feel overwhelmed (also depending on number of kids, if grandparents help, etc.) and if you are an older person if you might feel accomplished and thankful for your kids help (or ashamed by it).
This is the problem with statistics, it reduces information sequences and complexity to a few dull bullet points.
? It doesnt prove that. It shows that in many years amongst demographically similar groups, this without children self rate happiness and satisfaction higher than those with children
Incoherent horseshit like most BAP stuff. "Men can't run around on a street with trains in the background anymore." What does that even mean? We already hyper optimized for single people following their sexual desires all the time. Congratulations, you have infinite options like birth control, abortion, dating apps, prostitution, porn, and every possible fetish and proclivity at your disposal. Does that mean we have men running around on streets with trains in the background? Whatever that's supposed to represent (Retvrning to mythical Homeric Greece again I guess), we don't have it. Almost all of those famous non-Ned Flanders figures lived in historical periods that were much more restrictive and conservative than our own.
I was going to leave a more in-depth comment going into precisely where I believe you’re wrong, but the whole thing seems to be written in such extreme bad faith towards the strawman you think you’re taking down that it doesn’t actually merit any sincere engagement. Do better next time.
The subtext behind a lot of this is that getting married and having kids is considered dorky and unadventurous, and the "narrative" has to shift on this point to fix it. Realistically the choice is not between going on an adventure that lifts the human spirit or getting married, it is doing 90% of the same things, just doing them single vs. married and with vs. without kids.
Christian culture has outweighed the Ned Flanders side of family life, and I have pointed this out to other Christians before that this is not the example we see in the Bible. We see almost zero normalfag wifeguy behavior in the Bible, and there are characters who only very deep into the story you learn they are married or have kids, and only when it has some plot point. For example, we learn that Peter is married because his mother-in-law needs to get healed, and Paul references it when contrasting the rights of an apostle with his sacrifices he took on himself to make his ministry more effective. We also learn that the prophet Ezekiel was married only by hearing his wife died. The key point is that men are primarily thought about by what they do and what role they have in society. The idea a man would base his public persona around having a wife and kids is like a man basing his life around the fact he brushes his teeth in the morning.
What is interesting is why Christian culture has seized on this topic as a central expression of Christian values, and why sociologists would join them. Dalrock made a compelling claim that this harkens back to the development of "chivalry" which he considers an entirely negative inversion of biblical relationships between men and women, but it gets absorbed into a "tradition" that gains cultural hegemony and integrates into European thought.
A lot of the heeing and hawing about fertility, happiness scores, etc. is really about persuading women not to be boss babes, and persuading men that changing diapers is saving the world. No one is comfortable saying that men would need less persuasion to want kids if the historical norm that cooking, cleaning, diapers, and light home education, would be entirely the responsibility of the wife, and doing so would not make her a hero, but just a normal woman with normal duties. And that women would be culturally judged based on their success at this task - embarrassed to have misbehaving children, and keeping up with the Jones' by having clean houses, nice dinners, and polite children.
Christian culture is stuck between wanting some of the results of traditional marriage and family without the structure that has historically made it work, and it lacks the stomach to tell women that they have real responsibilities and duties which are not just a part of their personal quest for self-discovery and happiness.
The tenuous graphs and charts are really just permission slips to get married and have kids in an environment where it does not make as much sense as it once did. Children are seen as a "sacrifice" for women to make as opposed to the main reason that women exist, their bodies literally engineered for this purpose. It is hard to sell to women "You don't exist for your own happiness, you have duties that our culture has rejected, and you need to adopt them anyway," so you give them charts and graphs claiming it makes them happy. It is also a hard sell to tell a man that he has to give up a huge part of his life to take on a woman's work, because she can't be expected to sacrifice anything. So the kinds of great accomplishments that great men achieve could only be done without kids or by being "immoral" and neglecting the women's work.
I’m pretty sure the purpose of this post is to get people to have less children…
Look, you’re a free rider. You childless fucks are all going to tax my children so you can get your social security and your Medicare. Even Ayn Rand did that.
And who do you think is going to consume your great art or whatever you think you’re doing* with your childlessness when you’re dead if nobody has children.
Birth rates, specially birth rates amongst the smartest and most productive people in the world, are rapidly imploding. Like civilization collapsing implosion. And your reply is “like if you measure it differently maybe you can maximize lifetime dopamine by partying and then dumping your retirement on some other suckers kids”.
*hint your not doing anything, your getting a degree in professional managerialism, eating out, and staring at screens while you get old.
I want high iq worthwhile people to have kids.
But your comment isnt a responsive argument at all. Its just invective (and bizarre claims about medicare and soon to be obsolete social security).
It doesnt address the article’s claims. It doesnt refute the idea that Wilcox and co were propagating shoddy data and thus discrediting the natalist cause. And it doesnt propose ways to make having children more palatable (as the current wilcox, lyman stone, IFS pitch is one of drudgery).
Seethe harder.
I remember the stats being trotted out by this clown car saying something along the lines of "bachelors die young so get married boys." The only way the numbers work is if you forget to factor in the 45-50% chance of divorce (which radically reduces male lifespain). It's sort of like when a junior analyst constructs a financial model from current year SP500 components (leaving out the dead companies no longer in the SP500), except significantly stupider since they don't knock out 50% of its components that often. Either way those people are intensely dumb.
Good article, but it's a bit disingenuous to use the Deaton & Stone stats to back up the point that children negatively correlate with happiness, when they clearly show a positive correlation. They indeed also show that life evaluation negatively correlates, and that's arguably more important, but it wasn't what was being discussed.
I've added a note to clarify this
Very excellent post. I suppose that I am in some sense a natalist of sorts, but the biggest problem with modern fertility selection is that overwhelmingly it is the Ned Flanders of the world that have the most kids. "So everyone must become Ned Flanders" says the social conservative. I think rather the biggest problem is that these people might really inherit the future.
Such a long article just to get white people to stop having children. Okay, Satan.
Also, It's no coincidence that all the Nietzchians types like BAP have no children, like Nietzche himself.
The problem is that so far, there are only two visions of the future for the Western world:
1. Consoomerist, childless liberal
2. Ned Flanders, religious pro-natalist
In the first case, the demographic implosion will ensure that every day there are fewer and fewer extraordinary people, while the worls turns into the Global Favela. The second case at least ensures that there will be a contiuantion of the people created the extraordinar in the world, even if they live in a flattened culture. The potential for greatness is only preserved in the second case.
Ideally, there would be a better, positive vision for the future that doesn't require a strict, religious, socially conservative society, yet maintains the fertility rate and the social demographic harmony.
Would like to see these opinions divided by age, if youre young and unmarried you might feel more euphoric, if youre a young parent you might feel overwhelmed (also depending on number of kids, if grandparents help, etc.) and if you are an older person if you might feel accomplished and thankful for your kids help (or ashamed by it).
This is the problem with statistics, it reduces information sequences and complexity to a few dull bullet points.
What this article proves is not that fertility is unrelated to happiness but rather that happiness leads to fertility.
? It doesnt prove that. It shows that in many years amongst demographically similar groups, this without children self rate happiness and satisfaction higher than those with children
Incoherent horseshit like most BAP stuff. "Men can't run around on a street with trains in the background anymore." What does that even mean? We already hyper optimized for single people following their sexual desires all the time. Congratulations, you have infinite options like birth control, abortion, dating apps, prostitution, porn, and every possible fetish and proclivity at your disposal. Does that mean we have men running around on streets with trains in the background? Whatever that's supposed to represent (Retvrning to mythical Homeric Greece again I guess), we don't have it. Almost all of those famous non-Ned Flanders figures lived in historical periods that were much more restrictive and conservative than our own.
I was going to leave a more in-depth comment going into precisely where I believe you’re wrong, but the whole thing seems to be written in such extreme bad faith towards the strawman you think you’re taking down that it doesn’t actually merit any sincere engagement. Do better next time.
The subtext behind a lot of this is that getting married and having kids is considered dorky and unadventurous, and the "narrative" has to shift on this point to fix it. Realistically the choice is not between going on an adventure that lifts the human spirit or getting married, it is doing 90% of the same things, just doing them single vs. married and with vs. without kids.
Christian culture has outweighed the Ned Flanders side of family life, and I have pointed this out to other Christians before that this is not the example we see in the Bible. We see almost zero normalfag wifeguy behavior in the Bible, and there are characters who only very deep into the story you learn they are married or have kids, and only when it has some plot point. For example, we learn that Peter is married because his mother-in-law needs to get healed, and Paul references it when contrasting the rights of an apostle with his sacrifices he took on himself to make his ministry more effective. We also learn that the prophet Ezekiel was married only by hearing his wife died. The key point is that men are primarily thought about by what they do and what role they have in society. The idea a man would base his public persona around having a wife and kids is like a man basing his life around the fact he brushes his teeth in the morning.
What is interesting is why Christian culture has seized on this topic as a central expression of Christian values, and why sociologists would join them. Dalrock made a compelling claim that this harkens back to the development of "chivalry" which he considers an entirely negative inversion of biblical relationships between men and women, but it gets absorbed into a "tradition" that gains cultural hegemony and integrates into European thought.
A lot of the heeing and hawing about fertility, happiness scores, etc. is really about persuading women not to be boss babes, and persuading men that changing diapers is saving the world. No one is comfortable saying that men would need less persuasion to want kids if the historical norm that cooking, cleaning, diapers, and light home education, would be entirely the responsibility of the wife, and doing so would not make her a hero, but just a normal woman with normal duties. And that women would be culturally judged based on their success at this task - embarrassed to have misbehaving children, and keeping up with the Jones' by having clean houses, nice dinners, and polite children.
Christian culture is stuck between wanting some of the results of traditional marriage and family without the structure that has historically made it work, and it lacks the stomach to tell women that they have real responsibilities and duties which are not just a part of their personal quest for self-discovery and happiness.
The tenuous graphs and charts are really just permission slips to get married and have kids in an environment where it does not make as much sense as it once did. Children are seen as a "sacrifice" for women to make as opposed to the main reason that women exist, their bodies literally engineered for this purpose. It is hard to sell to women "You don't exist for your own happiness, you have duties that our culture has rejected, and you need to adopt them anyway," so you give them charts and graphs claiming it makes them happy. It is also a hard sell to tell a man that he has to give up a huge part of his life to take on a woman's work, because she can't be expected to sacrifice anything. So the kinds of great accomplishments that great men achieve could only be done without kids or by being "immoral" and neglecting the women's work.
This seems to be valuable work. κῦδος σοί.