We struggle to explain large scale long term cultural changes. Such as the rise and fall of empires, or the demographic transition. Yes, we do seem to find patterns that are somewhat predictable, but our abilities here are also clearly limited.
In what sense can you establish that our civilization has been drifting towards dysfunctional states? I mean we always focus on matters of concern, but looking at the broad scale I'd not only prefer to live at this time in history, I'd much rather have people who were inculturated now run a society with the tech level we had at any previous point in time.
So is there some quantitative measurement you can point to?
Do periodic wars force rich cultures back into line? Either they fix themselves in order to win, or are conquered and replaced by more functional cultures.
An expensive and tragic solution, but maybe a solution.
I think they used to, to some degree. Less so now that the world's leading rich countries have denied that sovereign states have the right to wage war and conquer each other (since the Kellog-Briand pact, but also even more so since it's become clear that wars of conquest are no longer profitable for the victor).
In extremis, when a rich culture gets *sufficiently* dysfunctional, even a backward barbarian neighbor can conquer the rich culture (which by then, I suppose, isn't rich).
Of course, this happened to Rome, which was never rich by modern standards.
But, nukes. So, probably not anymore. Musk is right - we really need to get off this planet.
No nuclear-weapons state has ever been invaded by any other state with a reasonable chance to succeed in conquest. For, I think, the obvious reason.
I leave Palestine v Israel aside because Hamas is (a) too ideologically motivated to care about rational things like getting nuked and (b) too weak to succeed. I leave the Korean and Vietnam wars aside, as well as some other proxy conflicts, because although some nuclear-weapons states fought each other by proxy, this was done in a third country without threatening the territory or governing structure of either nuclear-weapons state.
I appreciate that subtlety - in an age of algorithms, perhaps that isn’t true. How we relate to the world is different. Right now, the media see this as a thing to profit over - to boost numbers and content.
If you can't see the how are society changed in the last 60 years you must have your eyes firmly closed. You cannot fundamentally change the roles between the sexes without also getting negative consequences. Some of those consequences will, imho, be lethal for our society in the long run. Men learned to control their masculine toxicity with laws and enforcement. Women have not learned to control their feminine toxicity: emotional incontinence and weaponized empathy.
I do not have a good solution because I definitely do not want to restrict or control women but it is not very smart to close your eyes and pretend nothing is going on. The welfare of our grandchildren depends on it. If there are any left of course.
Russia and China both have strong traditional gender norms and are extremely resistant to western feminism. They are both seeing cratering birth rates and hosts of other social ills. Whatever is plaguing global industrial society it's not "strong women". You're not biased for considering the possibility (maybe it's a contributor to the North Atlantic version of malaise, why not); you're biased for blaming it as a parsimonious source of all societal ills.
We were very far ahead but we are more and more losing to the countries you mention. Huawei is now closing in on chip technology faster than people imagined. Russia's rubble is surviving against all preconditions when they invaded Ukraine.
The poster child for me is Scientific American. It used to be a fantastic publication but has been ruined and the feminist influence is clear. Look at Harvard how a few third rate female professors were able to get rid of Larry Summers for completely unscientific reasons while he was hugely beneficial and important to Harvard. Look at the current president of Harvard. See how freedom of speech is dying under the hands of mostly women because it hurts feelings.
We abandoned science and that will be the demise of the lead we had. There is a long down slope in these things but as technical engineer I can see the signs on the wall.
Again, it is a hard problem because women should not be denied access to the public space in any way. However, we should realize that their much higher level of anxiety, emotions, and neuroticism is extremely damaging to our position in the world when they get power. Men founded laws and enforcement to address the toxic aspects of masculinity, women should do the same. They should become aware how the feminine becomes toxic.
However, people like you immediately put up a moral barrier to not discuss anything that might not be fully positive for women.
The babies was a secondary position. It is a longer story
Futarchy is a potentially good idea but it must be limited or else a group can permanently wrest dictatorial control of the government and invalidate all futarchy contracts. The group, say group X - if it has enough money - just needs to propose that the country should be ruled entirely by members of group X, and bet enough money on the result of that being beneficial. Having done that, futarchy would dictate that yes, we should try letting group X rule the country! So group X rules the country, and their first act is to abolish futarchy. Then, even if the results of group X's rule are bad, group X will never be held accountable for that as long as they remain in power.
What stops that from happening?
(Of course, a rule - within futarchy - that futarchy may never be abolished, would be totally ineffective. Once group X is granted dictatorial control over the country, especially including the military, the rules of futarchy can no longer effectively bind them.)
I don't see why this is incompatible with a memes-as-genes evolutionary model. In evolutionary biology, small groups have lower rates of mutation but due to small size are much more susceptible to genetic drift (change in the average genetic makeup of the population) as those mutations can work their way through the population much more rapidly; in contrast, large populations have much higher rates of mutations but because it takes so long for a mutation to work its way through the population (if ever), genetic drift is slow.
Some cultures (populations) mutate bad memes (genes) that render them less fit. As Dave92f1 comments, wars force rich cultures back into line. The genetic analog is that predation or interspecies competition for a niche prunes less fit mutations from a population.
There's a famous evolutionary biology experiment (https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/experiments/) in which drab guppies placed in a tank with no predators evolve to be brightly colored, easily seen for attracting mates, but introduce a predator and over a few generations the showy ones are picked off and the population drifts back toward drabness.
I wrote a piece (https://whitherthewest.substack.com/p/the-heterozygote-advantage-and-the) arguing that it works the same for memes/cultures: the same memes can bring prosperity in some contexts but be dangerous in others or when taken to an extreme. To quote the relevant bit, focusing on the meme of skepticism: "the meme of skepticism is not an unalloyed good. In environs and situations in which survival is precarious and military-esque deference to authority is necessary to stay alive, having a sudden increase in skepticism and doubt of the hierarchy could lead to the death of the society and the individuals that it comprises. But at other times, the meme of skepticism presents great advantages: being creative, willing to go one’s own way, follow one’s inclinations and not blindly stumble after the herd can yield enormous benefits when it comes to science, business, art, politics, or personal interactions. I would posit that there is a strong correlation between the prevalence of the skepticism meme and the level of creativity, dynamism, and liberty of a society."
Culture are supposed to be unstable. Evolution is slow persistent adaption to slow persistent change environment. Culture is fast adaption to fast changing cultural environmental factors. Our fast changing environmental factors are mostly technology and laws.(in the past, new territories and geographies were also part of this fast changing environment)
Unstable or disruptive? Language is key and highlights how we view things as either negative or positive. Perhaps it’s a mix of both and we need to discuss the nuances when it comes to technological advancement
Wouldn’t the evidence across countries suggest that increases in wealth, not just cultural drift, are at least partially responsible for fertility declines?
A feminist analysis will help - who are bearing the children? Perhaps they’ve decided it’s too expensive to bare it. We live in a two income household now. How many kids can we really have when all we can afford is an apartment?
Maybe a viable long-term strategy is not to just try and build A society that lasts forever, but build some meta-framework (knowledge? mythology?) that allows us to rebuilt faster after each societal collapse
"Things out of perfection sail"
I had never heard of "futarchy," which just shows that I'm fifteen years behind in my buzzwords.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy
Futarchy and related concepts are like half of what Hanson writes about
Well not by words or minutes, but perhaps by social value.
I think the lowering of fertility was systematic https://mulledthoughts.substack.com/p/the-demographic-transition-as-parasitic
In what sense can you establish that our civilization has been drifting towards dysfunctional states? I mean we always focus on matters of concern, but looking at the broad scale I'd not only prefer to live at this time in history, I'd much rather have people who were inculturated now run a society with the tech level we had at any previous point in time.
So is there some quantitative measurement you can point to?
Do periodic wars force rich cultures back into line? Either they fix themselves in order to win, or are conquered and replaced by more functional cultures.
An expensive and tragic solution, but maybe a solution.
I think they used to, to some degree. Less so now that the world's leading rich countries have denied that sovereign states have the right to wage war and conquer each other (since the Kellog-Briand pact, but also even more so since it's become clear that wars of conquest are no longer profitable for the victor).
In extremis, when a rich culture gets *sufficiently* dysfunctional, even a backward barbarian neighbor can conquer the rich culture (which by then, I suppose, isn't rich).
Of course, this happened to Rome, which was never rich by modern standards.
But, nukes. So, probably not anymore. Musk is right - we really need to get off this planet.
NK wasn't getting invaded (after the DMZ was established) even before it had nukes. Sailer's "dirt theory"* is that war is just left profitable now.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2006/09/i-need-dirt-and-i-dont-care/233635/
No nuclear-weapons state has ever been invaded by any other state with a reasonable chance to succeed in conquest. For, I think, the obvious reason.
I leave Palestine v Israel aside because Hamas is (a) too ideologically motivated to care about rational things like getting nuked and (b) too weak to succeed. I leave the Korean and Vietnam wars aside, as well as some other proxy conflicts, because although some nuclear-weapons states fought each other by proxy, this was done in a third country without threatening the territory or governing structure of either nuclear-weapons state.
I appreciate that subtlety - in an age of algorithms, perhaps that isn’t true. How we relate to the world is different. Right now, the media see this as a thing to profit over - to boost numbers and content.
But is the drift necessarily random?
All people, no matter how healthy, die eventually.
And all civilizations eventually pass, just as they came.
"A generation comes and a generation goes, but the universe endures forever"
Sounds like how to be a genocidal dictator 101 but I’m no expert on that - I like peace ✌️
* Hard times make strong men,
* Strong men make good times,
* Good times make 'strong' women,
* 'Strong' women make hard times?
It's a perfectly applicable quote and you had to change it and make it sexist?
Because the differences between the sexes is exactly what is the underlying cause of this cycle.
If an true insight is sexist, then 'sexist' should not have a bad connotation?
"Because the differences between the sexes is exactly what is the underlying cause of this cycle".
Re-read the title of the blog and try again.
I did and it it is exactly what I did. There is a rather strong bias in favor of women (see the recent academic report about this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/15291006231163179) and I am doing my best to overcome it!
If you can't see the how are society changed in the last 60 years you must have your eyes firmly closed. You cannot fundamentally change the roles between the sexes without also getting negative consequences. Some of those consequences will, imho, be lethal for our society in the long run. Men learned to control their masculine toxicity with laws and enforcement. Women have not learned to control their feminine toxicity: emotional incontinence and weaponized empathy.
I do not have a good solution because I definitely do not want to restrict or control women but it is not very smart to close your eyes and pretend nothing is going on. The welfare of our grandchildren depends on it. If there are any left of course.
Russia and China both have strong traditional gender norms and are extremely resistant to western feminism. They are both seeing cratering birth rates and hosts of other social ills. Whatever is plaguing global industrial society it's not "strong women". You're not biased for considering the possibility (maybe it's a contributor to the North Atlantic version of malaise, why not); you're biased for blaming it as a parsimonious source of all societal ills.
We were very far ahead but we are more and more losing to the countries you mention. Huawei is now closing in on chip technology faster than people imagined. Russia's rubble is surviving against all preconditions when they invaded Ukraine.
The poster child for me is Scientific American. It used to be a fantastic publication but has been ruined and the feminist influence is clear. Look at Harvard how a few third rate female professors were able to get rid of Larry Summers for completely unscientific reasons while he was hugely beneficial and important to Harvard. Look at the current president of Harvard. See how freedom of speech is dying under the hands of mostly women because it hurts feelings.
We abandoned science and that will be the demise of the lead we had. There is a long down slope in these things but as technical engineer I can see the signs on the wall.
Again, it is a hard problem because women should not be denied access to the public space in any way. However, we should realize that their much higher level of anxiety, emotions, and neuroticism is extremely damaging to our position in the world when they get power. Men founded laws and enforcement to address the toxic aspects of masculinity, women should do the same. They should become aware how the feminine becomes toxic.
However, people like you immediately put up a moral barrier to not discuss anything that might not be fully positive for women.
The babies was a secondary position. It is a longer story
Futarchy is a potentially good idea but it must be limited or else a group can permanently wrest dictatorial control of the government and invalidate all futarchy contracts. The group, say group X - if it has enough money - just needs to propose that the country should be ruled entirely by members of group X, and bet enough money on the result of that being beneficial. Having done that, futarchy would dictate that yes, we should try letting group X rule the country! So group X rules the country, and their first act is to abolish futarchy. Then, even if the results of group X's rule are bad, group X will never be held accountable for that as long as they remain in power.
What stops that from happening?
(Of course, a rule - within futarchy - that futarchy may never be abolished, would be totally ineffective. Once group X is granted dictatorial control over the country, especially including the military, the rules of futarchy can no longer effectively bind them.)
I don't see why this is incompatible with a memes-as-genes evolutionary model. In evolutionary biology, small groups have lower rates of mutation but due to small size are much more susceptible to genetic drift (change in the average genetic makeup of the population) as those mutations can work their way through the population much more rapidly; in contrast, large populations have much higher rates of mutations but because it takes so long for a mutation to work its way through the population (if ever), genetic drift is slow.
Some cultures (populations) mutate bad memes (genes) that render them less fit. As Dave92f1 comments, wars force rich cultures back into line. The genetic analog is that predation or interspecies competition for a niche prunes less fit mutations from a population.
There's a famous evolutionary biology experiment (https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/experiments/) in which drab guppies placed in a tank with no predators evolve to be brightly colored, easily seen for attracting mates, but introduce a predator and over a few generations the showy ones are picked off and the population drifts back toward drabness.
I wrote a piece (https://whitherthewest.substack.com/p/the-heterozygote-advantage-and-the) arguing that it works the same for memes/cultures: the same memes can bring prosperity in some contexts but be dangerous in others or when taken to an extreme. To quote the relevant bit, focusing on the meme of skepticism: "the meme of skepticism is not an unalloyed good. In environs and situations in which survival is precarious and military-esque deference to authority is necessary to stay alive, having a sudden increase in skepticism and doubt of the hierarchy could lead to the death of the society and the individuals that it comprises. But at other times, the meme of skepticism presents great advantages: being creative, willing to go one’s own way, follow one’s inclinations and not blindly stumble after the herd can yield enormous benefits when it comes to science, business, art, politics, or personal interactions. I would posit that there is a strong correlation between the prevalence of the skepticism meme and the level of creativity, dynamism, and liberty of a society."
Maybe there is less group-level selection pressure on culture recently.
1. Improved communication technology makes it easier to culture to spread from individual to individual, without society-level competition on culture
2. Not much war, which removes the phenomenon of one culture defeating another culture via war
Culture are supposed to be unstable. Evolution is slow persistent adaption to slow persistent change environment. Culture is fast adaption to fast changing cultural environmental factors. Our fast changing environmental factors are mostly technology and laws.(in the past, new territories and geographies were also part of this fast changing environment)
Unstable or disruptive? Language is key and highlights how we view things as either negative or positive. Perhaps it’s a mix of both and we need to discuss the nuances when it comes to technological advancement
I still think you should rename futarchy to something not associated with hermaphrodites :D
Also, on a more substantive note, why do you think it will not be subject to random drift?
Wouldn’t the evidence across countries suggest that increases in wealth, not just cultural drift, are at least partially responsible for fertility declines?
Robin might say wealth is correlated with joining some global rich people cultural practices.
A feminist analysis will help - who are bearing the children? Perhaps they’ve decided it’s too expensive to bare it. We live in a two income household now. How many kids can we really have when all we can afford is an apartment?
Maybe a viable long-term strategy is not to just try and build A society that lasts forever, but build some meta-framework (knowledge? mythology?) that allows us to rebuilt faster after each societal collapse
Amen to that! Rebuild and restore
I think that Yarvin is right that cultural changes have a leftist tendency "Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left."