On the AI debate - Gideon’s First Law of Sociology says that no one ever thinks of themselves as the bad guy. As an example of that, Hitler was convinced his genocidal policies were quite correct. That is why every AI code writer and financier believes that their work is the key to a better future for all of mankind. Call me skeptical of most of them, if not all.
On 7, if we keep baby boom as the model, and accept the author's premise that it was due to marriage boom with in-marriage fertility not increasing, the question that doesn't seem to be asked in that article is what it is about marriage that makes married women want to breed to such extent even if they don't have to because they have access to contraception. That's assuming that fertility is almost entirely controlled by women. Which I suspect it is directly but indirectly some at least men divest by divesting from "potentially long term" relationships.
So to me 'get them reliably married then they'll breed' is not enough of an answer, and if we knew why marriage and fertility were related, we'd get somewhere perhaps.
As an aside (but maybe it's the main point here), I suspect patterns will be different in different places, I find the graph showing 4 live births per woman's lifetime in a married couple with spouse present STAGGERINGLY high, I'm in my 50s now I know nobody under the age of 70 who has had 4+ children here (rural Scotland) and only very few (devout Catholic typically or "underclass" or both).
To rephrase the question: what is the number of children a securely married couple or a woman in an "ideal for her" situation would want to have?
I mean, my sister had five. She's also financially secure. I think that's well within scope of my thesis: "Stop making couples too poor to have kids." The economy is egregiously superturbofucked, compared to when the Baby Boom kicked off.
I'm sure that makes a some difference, whether enough, I'm not so sure -- I also think child-having Americans seem to have or want to have wayyyy more children than Europeans. Anecdata isn't data, so I'm not going to die on this hill by any means but five is UNHEARD OF here in my generation or younger (early 50s). The securely coupled, well-off (or at least not struggling) people I see in the community do seem to have at least 2 and occasionally 3 children.
Oh one thing that will help is making people aware that waiting till after the woman is 30 (and some delay much longer) drastically reduces fertility. While it won't make people who don't want kids want kids, it might help those who want kids getting prevented from that by delaying, so it could increase married fertility.
Now, I will fully grant that I am talking only about the US. I don't know enough about other places to really even be qualified to have an opinion on the subject. I have Scots way, way back in my family tree, but other than a penchant for kilts, that doesn't mean I know a damned thing about what life there is like. :D
I'll agree that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". That said... I work on a military base that I've been living next to since middle school, and back then I had a pile of friends who lived on it. It's been ... several decades, and it's possible that the base itself has reduced staffing, or people just don't want to live on base anymore, something else entirely, but they've bulldozed an *entire* military housing neighborhood. A couple hundred houses, I'd guess. And I almost never see any kids out and around. Which may possibly be partially attributable to kids more being into video games than bicycles, but back in the day, we were everywhere on base.
It just feels like people can't f'n afford to have kids, anymore. I will grant, a lot of anecdote in that, but it's my "feels" on the subject.
Re: fertility. Low cost or free childcare, preferably at the work site. A basic income, so staying home with the kids doesn't mean a total loss of income. Ban expensive, intensive sports programs. JK. Won't happen. But making parenting less stressful by decreasing the chauffeuring, tutors, coaches, etc would probably help. But then you're fighting competition for college admission, income inequality and status competition, so probably again not realistic.
4.) "Since 2016?" Since like, forever. I heard people calling them "National Progressive Radio" in the late 90's.
7.) Stop making the world be such that couples are too fucking poor to have children in a first world nation.
9.) I find DeBoer interesting in that on occasion I agree strongly with him, and at other times it's like we're not even living on the same planet. We're looking at the same data sets and drawing radically different conclusions about things. Something I recently quoted at a friend:
deBoer: "Media bias is tough to define and tougher to speak about intelligently. I’ve often tried to find an elegant, short way to convey the fact that the media is structurally capitalist, militarist, and nationalist, with certain strong status quo biases, profoundly anti-left, and yet also fundamentally liberal, almost hegemonically so on cultural and social issues."
warmek: "Like... are we seriously talking about the same fucking media here?"
11.) My reaction to the whole debate is that I don't even actually *care* whether it was lab-leak or wet-market even a hundredth as much as the government made it effectively an internet death penalty to even discuss one of those options. That's the part I care about.
On the AI debate - Gideon’s First Law of Sociology says that no one ever thinks of themselves as the bad guy. As an example of that, Hitler was convinced his genocidal policies were quite correct. That is why every AI code writer and financier believes that their work is the key to a better future for all of mankind. Call me skeptical of most of them, if not all.
On 7, if we keep baby boom as the model, and accept the author's premise that it was due to marriage boom with in-marriage fertility not increasing, the question that doesn't seem to be asked in that article is what it is about marriage that makes married women want to breed to such extent even if they don't have to because they have access to contraception. That's assuming that fertility is almost entirely controlled by women. Which I suspect it is directly but indirectly some at least men divest by divesting from "potentially long term" relationships.
So to me 'get them reliably married then they'll breed' is not enough of an answer, and if we knew why marriage and fertility were related, we'd get somewhere perhaps.
As an aside (but maybe it's the main point here), I suspect patterns will be different in different places, I find the graph showing 4 live births per woman's lifetime in a married couple with spouse present STAGGERINGLY high, I'm in my 50s now I know nobody under the age of 70 who has had 4+ children here (rural Scotland) and only very few (devout Catholic typically or "underclass" or both).
To rephrase the question: what is the number of children a securely married couple or a woman in an "ideal for her" situation would want to have?
I mean, my sister had five. She's also financially secure. I think that's well within scope of my thesis: "Stop making couples too poor to have kids." The economy is egregiously superturbofucked, compared to when the Baby Boom kicked off.
I'm sure that makes a some difference, whether enough, I'm not so sure -- I also think child-having Americans seem to have or want to have wayyyy more children than Europeans. Anecdata isn't data, so I'm not going to die on this hill by any means but five is UNHEARD OF here in my generation or younger (early 50s). The securely coupled, well-off (or at least not struggling) people I see in the community do seem to have at least 2 and occasionally 3 children.
Oh one thing that will help is making people aware that waiting till after the woman is 30 (and some delay much longer) drastically reduces fertility. While it won't make people who don't want kids want kids, it might help those who want kids getting prevented from that by delaying, so it could increase married fertility.
Now, I will fully grant that I am talking only about the US. I don't know enough about other places to really even be qualified to have an opinion on the subject. I have Scots way, way back in my family tree, but other than a penchant for kilts, that doesn't mean I know a damned thing about what life there is like. :D
I'll agree that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". That said... I work on a military base that I've been living next to since middle school, and back then I had a pile of friends who lived on it. It's been ... several decades, and it's possible that the base itself has reduced staffing, or people just don't want to live on base anymore, something else entirely, but they've bulldozed an *entire* military housing neighborhood. A couple hundred houses, I'd guess. And I almost never see any kids out and around. Which may possibly be partially attributable to kids more being into video games than bicycles, but back in the day, we were everywhere on base.
It just feels like people can't f'n afford to have kids, anymore. I will grant, a lot of anecdote in that, but it's my "feels" on the subject.
Re: fertility. Low cost or free childcare, preferably at the work site. A basic income, so staying home with the kids doesn't mean a total loss of income. Ban expensive, intensive sports programs. JK. Won't happen. But making parenting less stressful by decreasing the chauffeuring, tutors, coaches, etc would probably help. But then you're fighting competition for college admission, income inequality and status competition, so probably again not realistic.
4.) "Since 2016?" Since like, forever. I heard people calling them "National Progressive Radio" in the late 90's.
7.) Stop making the world be such that couples are too fucking poor to have children in a first world nation.
9.) I find DeBoer interesting in that on occasion I agree strongly with him, and at other times it's like we're not even living on the same planet. We're looking at the same data sets and drawing radically different conclusions about things. Something I recently quoted at a friend:
deBoer: "Media bias is tough to define and tougher to speak about intelligently. I’ve often tried to find an elegant, short way to convey the fact that the media is structurally capitalist, militarist, and nationalist, with certain strong status quo biases, profoundly anti-left, and yet also fundamentally liberal, almost hegemonically so on cultural and social issues."
warmek: "Like... are we seriously talking about the same fucking media here?"
11.) My reaction to the whole debate is that I don't even actually *care* whether it was lab-leak or wet-market even a hundredth as much as the government made it effectively an internet death penalty to even discuss one of those options. That's the part I care about.
15.) Bwa ha ha ha ha!
17.) No fucking shit, Sherlocks.