posted on September 12, 2021 10:49 AM by
u/Sneerer666
56
u/Sneerer66640 pointsat 1631463584.000000
Also note that the argument he’s making here is a STANDARD white
nationalist talking point. The New Zealand gunman who shot up the mosque
was absolutely obsessed with fertility rates and whites being replaced
by minorities (particularly Muslims).
The rationalists (at least the SSC/TheMotte set) are weirdly obsessed with birthrates. Which is especially wild in light of their dismissive attitude towards global warming. World drifting out of the temperature range compatible with human life? No big deal, technology will fix it. Population of the US might be 250 million instead of 350 million in a hundred years? Absolutely critical, better turn back the clock on social progress as fast as we can.
For some reason tons of people on TheMotte are race obsessed Christian right wing nutjobs with no kids of their own that want to "outcompete" other religious nutjubs. They don't even appear to believe in god, just that pretending to is better for all of society...
wow, the blog has a "recent comments" box and in it I just read [this terrible comment](https://disqus.com/by/disqus_AhEZqDU1AS/) from [a completely different article](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html)
>>I’m a woman and I actually choose the man who has the most heart and ability to be compassionate.
>I'm genuinely, terribly sorry if what I say next can be interpreted as an attack on your honesty or your ability to discern your own motivations (which, to be extremely honest, it kind of is. But not out of malice, which is what we usually assume when we use "attack".).
>BUT.. what makes you think that ? There is a well-known tendency that everybody reading about brain biases reads about them in "outsider mode", the reader *assumes* that, if only he/she were in the same situation as the subjects of the experiment, he/she would have *obviously* chosen different. In a sense, it's the old "Above Average Fallacy", much more than 50% of people see themselves as above 50% of people.
>Furthermore, what makes you think your brain is an accurate measure of a man's "most heart and ability to be compassionate"-ness ? We know for a fact that people ascribe moral qualities and personal qualities to physical beauty[1].
>What makes you think that, when your higher-level brain circuits are screaming "compassionate ! trustworthy ! Good Father !", this isn't just the echo of their lower-level brethrens screaming "Dominant ! Rich ! Powerful !" ?
>Maybe it is, and this is precisely the point, those women choosing the most dominant-looking man weren't necessarily thinking "Uhmm Who Art The Most Dominant Of Thee", but they certainly acted that way. And action is a better gauge of a person's beliefs than the most stridently said words.
>I recognize and respect your indignity at the implication that "women" as a whole tend to behave a certain way as if they're machines, but sometimes humans *are* machines, in that they are bio-chemical arrangement of matter that tends to behave a certain way under certain circumstances. It's not (intentionally) demeaning or degrading to suggest that.
>[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness_stereotype
This guy is literally mansplaining this woman's own mind to her, with citations in footnotes lmao
Desktop version of /u/rnykal's link:
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**[Physical attractiveness stereotype](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness_stereotype)**
>The physical attractiveness stereotype is a tendency to assume that people who are physically attractive also possess other desirable personality traits. Stereotyping is the process by which we draw inferences about others based on knowledge of the categories to which they belong. This theory was observed in a study done by Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster in 1972 they set out to answer the question “Do individuals in fact have stereotyped notions of the personality traits possessed by individuals of varying attractiveness? ”.
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Considering that Hanson got slapped down for his racist Juneteenth
post and that it’s sub-Saharan Africa which has had fertility rates not
declining, I would have thought this is coded anti-black racism.
Although considering the timing and the similarities between the
extinction argument Hanson makes and the Eurabia argument (if we assume
this trend will continue forever), who knows. Haven’t read the comments
to confirm.
I broke down and read the article.
Alas, this fix requires that the dominant culture become much more
tolerant of local variations in gender, mating, and parenting, which may
not be much more likely than their just coming to see the wisdom of
promoting fertility. After all we are currently in an increasingly
Puritan era of more not less conformity on such things.
Huh. There’s been a reduction in acceptance of gender variation and
mating patterns in the dominant culture? Citation? Polyamory (mentioned
positively by Hanson) – and other forms of non-monogamy – seems to be
becoming more popular and also crosses numerous subcultures
(rationalists, queer leftists, boring middle-class losers). Considering
the rise in nb folks and femboys, it also seems like variation in gender
and gender expression is also increasing.
Maybe the claimed problem is that these things are increasing but it
is subcultures pushing them into the dominant culture, and thus reducing
the amount of local cultures by homogenising them? But, wouldn’t a more
fit local culture eventually outbreed the dominant culture anyway,
leading to homogeneity anyway?
How in the world is Hanson defining “connected to the dominant
culture” here?
Today the cultures associated with higher fertility tend to be more
“traditional”, and less integrated with the dominant world elite
culture. And a few small subcultures, like Mennonites and Amish, or
Mormons and Orthodox Jews, even manage to maintain high fertility while
staying closely connected to the dominant culture.
I don’t understand how you can argue that the Amish are “closely
connected to the dominant culture”, unless the other group you’re
comparing it to is like, the Sentinelese or something.
It would be a lot easier to tell what his actual arguments were if he
wasn’t too cowardly to actually name the cultures he’s trying to
criticize and fearmonger about, but I suppose ultimately that’s part of
his point.
tangential, but this link has sent me down a rabbit hole of reading
this guy’s blog posts. I’ve heard of Robin Hanson and his “everything is
signalling” hammer, but honestly this guy makes the worst posts I’ve
ever seen. Not worst in a moral sort of way, they’re bad but there’s
worse out there, just worse in a completely off the wall kind of way. It
honestly astounds me, he is so creative at just having the worst take on
every issue, like he
seriously said the reason people who like wealth redistributon are
appalled by sex redistribution is because we’re all collectively
regressing into a hunter-gatherer mentality, and this was in response to
him getting twitter dogpiled by people directly telling him why they see
those things differently! i legitimately enjoy reading his posts and
trying (and always failing) to guess what coocoo bananas explanation
he’ll smugly condescend next. I seriously cannot get enough of this guy,
thank you.
oh wow, I just stumbled across [another 9/11 post](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/09/forget-911.html) of his, actually about 9/11, posted on its 10th anniversary.
paraphrased: Only 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, untold millions have died since then, get over it and use the resources wasted on "remembering" it to help these people not die
good sneer in the comments: By the way, since Robin is the master of "X is not about Y," it's fairly astonishing that he's unaware that 9/11 is not about 3000 deaths.
Maybe he doesn’t say that, because it isn’t true? Someone with his
radical futurist outlook and persistently functionalist interpretation
of social phenomena, is unlikely to have an apriori objection to Islam.
For all we know, he might have Houellebecq-like sympathies towards
it.
What is true, is that if you want your civilization’s values to
survive, the majorities of the future need to agree with them. And as of
2021 and the restoration of the Taliban, the meaning of 9/11 is that
western values can lose in a big way.
[Also Houellebecq](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/02/scare-tactics-michel-houellebecq-on-his-new-book/): "I remain in many ways a Comtean, and I don’t believe that a society can survive without religion... the Koran turns out to be much better than I thought... I don’t feel that I’m writing out of fear. I feel, rather, that we can make arrangements."
Then he had a friend killed at Charlie Hebdo a few days later. And even after that, he says, in the follow-up interview that you quote, it's not Islam per se that is dangerous, it is the more militant interpreters of Islam, like the imams of jihad.
Bringing this back to Robin Hanson, what I notice is that his writings are devoid of advocacy for specific civilizations, religions, or races as such. He's not an identitarian in any of those senses. If he does have a visceral opposition to anything, it's antinatalism, a topic which led him to make [a rare statement](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/morality-should-exist.html) about *morality* rather than just marginal utility.
"what I notice is that his writings are devoid of advocacy for specific civilizations, religions, or races as such."
This is because even GMU will only put up with so much.
Also note that the argument he’s making here is a STANDARD white nationalist talking point. The New Zealand gunman who shot up the mosque was absolutely obsessed with fertility rates and whites being replaced by minorities (particularly Muslims).
it’s hard to imagine anything less appealing than reading Hanson opining on ‘fertility’ and ‘mating’
Squick. Skip the usual word salad and jump directly to the comments. Fantasies about North Korean women becoming “surrogates” for the state.
Focus on the fleas not the big dumb dog.
Considering that Hanson got slapped down for his racist Juneteenth post and that it’s sub-Saharan Africa which has had fertility rates not declining, I would have thought this is coded anti-black racism. Although considering the timing and the similarities between the extinction argument Hanson makes and the Eurabia argument (if we assume this trend will continue forever), who knows. Haven’t read the comments to confirm.
I broke down and read the article.
Huh. There’s been a reduction in acceptance of gender variation and mating patterns in the dominant culture? Citation? Polyamory (mentioned positively by Hanson) – and other forms of non-monogamy – seems to be becoming more popular and also crosses numerous subcultures (rationalists, queer leftists, boring middle-class losers). Considering the rise in nb folks and femboys, it also seems like variation in gender and gender expression is also increasing.
Maybe the claimed problem is that these things are increasing but it is subcultures pushing them into the dominant culture, and thus reducing the amount of local cultures by homogenising them? But, wouldn’t a more fit local culture eventually outbreed the dominant culture anyway, leading to homogeneity anyway?
“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for the dominant culture”
How in the world is Hanson defining “connected to the dominant culture” here?
I don’t understand how you can argue that the Amish are “closely connected to the dominant culture”, unless the other group you’re comparing it to is like, the Sentinelese or something.
It would be a lot easier to tell what his actual arguments were if he wasn’t too cowardly to actually name the cultures he’s trying to criticize and fearmonger about, but I suppose ultimately that’s part of his point.
tangential, but this link has sent me down a rabbit hole of reading this guy’s blog posts. I’ve heard of Robin Hanson and his “everything is signalling” hammer, but honestly this guy makes the worst posts I’ve ever seen. Not worst in a moral sort of way, they’re bad but there’s worse out there, just worse in a completely off the wall kind of way. It honestly astounds me, he is so creative at just having the worst take on every issue, like he seriously said the reason people who like wealth redistributon are appalled by sex redistribution is because we’re all collectively regressing into a hunter-gatherer mentality, and this was in response to him getting twitter dogpiled by people directly telling him why they see those things differently! i legitimately enjoy reading his posts and trying (and always failing) to guess what coocoo bananas explanation he’ll smugly condescend next. I seriously cannot get enough of this guy, thank you.
No, it’s correlated with women’s education. Which is also correlated to women’s wealth, but I guess men are individuals and women are “society”?
Maybe he doesn’t say that, because it isn’t true? Someone with his radical futurist outlook and persistently functionalist interpretation of social phenomena, is unlikely to have an apriori objection to Islam. For all we know, he might have Houellebecq-like sympathies towards it.
What is true, is that if you want your civilization’s values to survive, the majorities of the future need to agree with them. And as of 2021 and the restoration of the Taliban, the meaning of 9/11 is that western values can lose in a big way.