Fertility is a Purpose Problem

Turns out I'm interested enough in this to do it properly. Hopefully the following isn't too narcissistic, but I would do it regardless.

For my anti-confirmation-bias impulse, I will use the fact that "The Cathedral did it¹" is getting boring as an explanation. Surely, just by statistical chance, it wouldn't always be their fault... In any case, today's pathology is the Cathedral's practice of preventing hobbits from satisfying their urge to join and further a higher purpose.



So, independent corroboration. Hopefully none of these read my comment. I certainly allowed it to get long enough to repel them, so it's likely. To be fair I should also look for opposing corroborations, to get a good baseline rate, but today I don't feel like doing the other side's work for them.



"Singapore shares a planet with America, the poor bastards. As a synecdoche, I expect Singaporean women still think having a career makes them more attractive to men."
vs.
"consider the case of East Asia: the relevant change was from property being held in common by the family and economic decisions being made by the family to an individualist basis for property and economic decision making."
and
"The market hasn’t spoken, gender equality is a completely artificial State-enforced policy."


In particular, the state changed the security arrangements, but did not change prices or security procedures. They changed to treating individuals as if they were male-headed families, which, shockingly, turns out to be irrational. Luckily they can extract rents coercively, or they would have gone out of business; it's pretty bad when your security monopoly goes out of business. Chaos = Δpower, after all.


"nobody but the Islamists alieves in God anymore. Lacking a society-wide purpose"
vs.
"It’s harder than I thought to get fertility stats for Mormons, but it appears that they breed well above replacement level, their desired family size is 4 children, and that high income/education does not suppress fertility."

I'm still dubious about Mormons' alief in God, but they certainly alieve in a higher purpose. Curiously, I'm sure of that even though I can't put their purpose into words.

"It becomes impossible to reward child-having with status "
vs.
"Women try hard to do what society tells them will earn admiration. The prescription for the short term is to restore prestige and style to the role of wife and mother, not threaten to chain us to the stove, barefoot and pregnant, because we are too dumb to do anything else. When men of the right agree with gays, and view us as just breeders, something is very wrong."

No disrespect to Jim - it is necessary that someone forwards and defends the idea - but he is incorrect. The impulse to assert such things is usually a signalling effort, trying to show maturity through the capacity to affirm dark truths. Unfortunately, this isn't a truth, so it indicates instead immaturity. That said I don't know what's up with Jim in particular.
Not to let Alice off the hook - it is likely she affirms this because she's disgusted with being chained to the stove, rather than because it's true. It is almost certain women are too 'dumb' - that is, unmale - to do something, and not just warfighting, and Teller wouldn't accept it. No disrespect here either - expecting non-aspergoids to be inhuman is foolishness - merely pointing out it's necessary to correct for these deficiencies.

"turns out there’s a fallback position within the human instincts, which is approximately consumerist hedonism."
vs.
"I personally suspect it has a lot to do with the hedonic treadmill. Even in Muslim countries, hardly hotbeds of feminism, wombs are going barren. I also recall some study showing a strong correlation between access to television and fertility." 

I'd say SGW needs to train intuition reading better, but regardless this is what intuition convergence looks like. System 1 is bad at communicating details so this is where to bring in system 2.



All this said, I still think there's a well-deserved bucket of cold water around here somewhere. I also think it's Land's idea and I'm going to delegate to him the task of finding it properly. 



[1] In the bedroom with the pipe.