N.S. Lyons and Freya India on young people's anxiety; Alice Evans on anxiety and infertility; Moses Sternstein on young people not growing up; Robin Hanson rants
The term "rant" suggests an argument driven by passion more than facts, an angry declamation. I think his observations are fair and level-headed even though they embody a quite negative view of our culture, and I too find myself in agreement with them.
"This sounds like a rant of someone close to that age."
I don't see that as a rant but it doesn't seem entirely true.
Are we more promiscuous than the 60s? Than gays (and heteros) before HIV? And the young today are having sex later and an increasing number not at all.
Who is working less? We are below the peak participation rate for 25-60 year olds, and probably below the peak for teens, but what about those over 60? And maybe less are working 80+ hrs/wk but isn't that a good thing? I'm not as sure the number working over 40 is down.
When and how did we promote innovation more?
What does invest in fertility even mean? Unless it's an odd way to say we chose to have less kids, I have no clue.
Can’t resist engaging a little with Hanson’s positing “We less promote and more hinder innovation. We are less ready to die in war for our community. And we are in less awe of religion and other sacred things larger than ourselves.”
Starting with the first, if we simply go by the amount of public money being flushed down the toilet on the clientelism (discretionary) side of the budget, nominally in support of a hyper-robust industrial policy, it is difficult to accept the notion that we are hindering innovation, or at least hindering it by innanition, because we certainly are throwing boatloads of money away in grants, tax expenditures, etc, to pick winners in AI and biotechnology. This morning I was reading how Australia urgently needs public biomanufacturing innovation in order to keep up with US industrial policy: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-needs-its-own-biomade/ And indeed the US bioMADE program is busily providing US politicians with the means of engaging in clientelism across the economy: https://www.biomade.org/ something to the tune of $700 million for such urgent necessities as procuring lab grown meat to force feed the military, or at least the enlisted ranks. ManufacturingUSA, a program apparently intended to provide full employment for Democratic Party constituencies (https://www.manufacturingusa.com/studies/building-inclusive-manufacturing-talent-pipeline ), has so many funding agencies that it appears impossible to tally up the total funding which must surely tally to the hundreds of millions (https://www.manufacturing.gov/funding-opportunities ). And then we get to the really big money going to AI. In the 6 year period leading up to August 2023 :
“the value of funding obligated increased over 150% from $261 million to $675 million while the value of potential value of award increased almost 1200% from $355 million to $4.561 billion. For funding obligated, NAICS 54 (Professional, Scientific and Technical Services) was the most common code used followed by NAICS 51 (Information and Cultural Industries), where NAICS 54 increased from $219 million for existing contracts to $366 million for new contracts, while NAICS 51 grew from $5 million of existing to $17 million of new contracts. For potential value of award, NAICS 54 increased from $311 million of existing to $1.932 billion of new contracts, while NAICS 51 grew from $5 million of existing to $2.195 billion of new contracts, eclipsing all other NAICS codes.”
Perhaps Hanson means we are hindering innovation by crushing innovators beneath mountains of money?
Which gets us to the second assertion about us being “less ready to die in war for our community.” Hanson, buddy, keep up with the times! Don’t you know that willingness to die in war for one’s community is nationalism, and nationalism is bad! Bad! BAD! We are all sophisticated cosmopolitans and today we don’t die for mere material considerations like friends, family, neighbors, and a way of life. No, today we die for abstractions! The universities are the new Burkean “little platoons” and they are in no way producing a shortage of anti-fa types running around punching people in the face, blocking bridges and roads with their bodies, gluing their bodies to objects to inconvenience others, throwing soup on van Goughs, burning down small businesses, and otherwise evincing a willingness to die to stop climate change or whatever abstract notion happens to further whatever occult Straussian purpose behind it all that we are supposed to be manipulated into serving. I’d be very curious to see what Hanson considers to be “our community.” I suspect it is something akin to “our democracy.” But at any rate, the welfare of the people, the only proposition that has the potential to bind our enormous country into a community, is a secondary consideration for both the left and right establishment. The people side of the budget (mandatory spending) is under relentless assault to be slashed in order to free up more money to finance more debt spending on the clientelism side of the budget.
I understand Hanson’s concerns but don’t lose hope! Things could be much better but they could also be much worse. Even in San Francisco, so wildly reviled and condemned by conservatives, young people are trying to do new things, falling in love, working hard, dreaming dreams, raising kids, and forming new tribes.
Understanding there are no simple solutions, any "simple" solution is invariably wrong, there are no solutions only tradeoffs, etc., etc.... I still find myself thinking social media is the...or very near the... foundational problem. I believe Jonathan Haidt. There, I said it.
10/10 for your Sowell reference, but media can never be foundational. If the senders are already toxic, and if the receivers are already weak-minded and morally deficient (including children’s parents), social media is only hastening decay, not causing it.
Sure, overstated, wrong descriptor, I did say "or very near", mumble, mumble.....but dismissing with counterfactuals...coupla "ifs"... is kinda soft too.
I'm still with hardline Jonathan H. The dissenters say otherwise. Oh well...
The term "rant" suggests an argument driven by passion more than facts, an angry declamation. I think his observations are fair and level-headed even though they embody a quite negative view of our culture, and I too find myself in agreement with them.
This from the same Robin Hanson who thinks that the solution to incels is more prostitution. Or at least that's what he thought a couple years ago.
I don't have a problem with him being a weirdo but then don't get sanctimonious about traditional values lol.
"This sounds like a rant of someone close to that age."
I don't see that as a rant but it doesn't seem entirely true.
Are we more promiscuous than the 60s? Than gays (and heteros) before HIV? And the young today are having sex later and an increasing number not at all.
Who is working less? We are below the peak participation rate for 25-60 year olds, and probably below the peak for teens, but what about those over 60? And maybe less are working 80+ hrs/wk but isn't that a good thing? I'm not as sure the number working over 40 is down.
When and how did we promote innovation more?
What does invest in fertility even mean? Unless it's an odd way to say we chose to have less kids, I have no clue.
Yea, I'm fairly certain we are actually less promiscuous than we were in 1983, the year in this post that marks the fall from responsibility.
Can’t resist engaging a little with Hanson’s positing “We less promote and more hinder innovation. We are less ready to die in war for our community. And we are in less awe of religion and other sacred things larger than ourselves.”
Starting with the first, if we simply go by the amount of public money being flushed down the toilet on the clientelism (discretionary) side of the budget, nominally in support of a hyper-robust industrial policy, it is difficult to accept the notion that we are hindering innovation, or at least hindering it by innanition, because we certainly are throwing boatloads of money away in grants, tax expenditures, etc, to pick winners in AI and biotechnology. This morning I was reading how Australia urgently needs public biomanufacturing innovation in order to keep up with US industrial policy: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-needs-its-own-biomade/ And indeed the US bioMADE program is busily providing US politicians with the means of engaging in clientelism across the economy: https://www.biomade.org/ something to the tune of $700 million for such urgent necessities as procuring lab grown meat to force feed the military, or at least the enlisted ranks. ManufacturingUSA, a program apparently intended to provide full employment for Democratic Party constituencies (https://www.manufacturingusa.com/studies/building-inclusive-manufacturing-talent-pipeline ), has so many funding agencies that it appears impossible to tally up the total funding which must surely tally to the hundreds of millions (https://www.manufacturing.gov/funding-opportunities ). And then we get to the really big money going to AI. In the 6 year period leading up to August 2023 :
“the value of funding obligated increased over 150% from $261 million to $675 million while the value of potential value of award increased almost 1200% from $355 million to $4.561 billion. For funding obligated, NAICS 54 (Professional, Scientific and Technical Services) was the most common code used followed by NAICS 51 (Information and Cultural Industries), where NAICS 54 increased from $219 million for existing contracts to $366 million for new contracts, while NAICS 51 grew from $5 million of existing to $17 million of new contracts. For potential value of award, NAICS 54 increased from $311 million of existing to $1.932 billion of new contracts, while NAICS 51 grew from $5 million of existing to $2.195 billion of new contracts, eclipsing all other NAICS codes.”
(https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-evolution-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-spending-by-the-u-s-government/ )
Perhaps Hanson means we are hindering innovation by crushing innovators beneath mountains of money?
Which gets us to the second assertion about us being “less ready to die in war for our community.” Hanson, buddy, keep up with the times! Don’t you know that willingness to die in war for one’s community is nationalism, and nationalism is bad! Bad! BAD! We are all sophisticated cosmopolitans and today we don’t die for mere material considerations like friends, family, neighbors, and a way of life. No, today we die for abstractions! The universities are the new Burkean “little platoons” and they are in no way producing a shortage of anti-fa types running around punching people in the face, blocking bridges and roads with their bodies, gluing their bodies to objects to inconvenience others, throwing soup on van Goughs, burning down small businesses, and otherwise evincing a willingness to die to stop climate change or whatever abstract notion happens to further whatever occult Straussian purpose behind it all that we are supposed to be manipulated into serving. I’d be very curious to see what Hanson considers to be “our community.” I suspect it is something akin to “our democracy.” But at any rate, the welfare of the people, the only proposition that has the potential to bind our enormous country into a community, is a secondary consideration for both the left and right establishment. The people side of the budget (mandatory spending) is under relentless assault to be slashed in order to free up more money to finance more debt spending on the clientelism side of the budget.
I will conclude on a positive note with respect to Hanson’s final assertion that “we are in less awe of religion and other sacred things larger than ourselves.” Just so happens that Rod Dreher has a new book coming out entitled Living in Wonder (https://faithgateway.com/products/living-in-wonder-finding-mystery-and-meaning-in-a-secular-age?variant=42290886246536 ) that seems likely to address that issue in an insightful and practical manner. Reviews: https://roddreher.substack.com/p/advance-praise-for-living-in-wonder and Dreher’s substack post today (“Uncomfortably Numb”) seems to further address the issue: https://roddreher.substack.com/p/uncomfortably-numb Although Dreher can’t be expected to fully prepare us for the fallout from the impending debt apocalypse, perhaps he can prepare us to accept material poverty. And perhaps once material poverty is accepted, the motivation to fight for personal autonomy will be renewed. (https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-17299-1_3785 )
I guess Hansom means "you guys" not "we." :)
I understand Hanson’s concerns but don’t lose hope! Things could be much better but they could also be much worse. Even in San Francisco, so wildly reviled and condemned by conservatives, young people are trying to do new things, falling in love, working hard, dreaming dreams, raising kids, and forming new tribes.
we already know why fertility has declined
women marry later and the later you start having kids the less kids you will have
all the psychobabble is unnecessary
Understanding there are no simple solutions, any "simple" solution is invariably wrong, there are no solutions only tradeoffs, etc., etc.... I still find myself thinking social media is the...or very near the... foundational problem. I believe Jonathan Haidt. There, I said it.
10/10 for your Sowell reference, but media can never be foundational. If the senders are already toxic, and if the receivers are already weak-minded and morally deficient (including children’s parents), social media is only hastening decay, not causing it.
Sure, overstated, wrong descriptor, I did say "or very near", mumble, mumble.....but dismissing with counterfactuals...coupla "ifs"... is kinda soft too.
I'm still with hardline Jonathan H. The dissenters say otherwise. Oh well...