You should listen to your colleague Robin Hanson: culture was once the product of selection, as lots of small units competed with each other and many went extinct. Nowadays we are seeing cultural "drift" away from fitness, most blatantly in the below-replacement fertility rates which have become the norm in most advanced economies (the big exception being Israel, with its large ultra-Orthodox population who shift the norms upward). As a pro-natalist yourself you should agree something has gone wrong there. J. Storrs Hall's "Where Is My Flying Car?" is another example, showing how culture went the wrong way in the 70s against abundance and using more energy to accomplish more things, instead making it infeasible to build nearly anything and putting near infinite value on preserving certain non-human species. Perhaps we should respond to these problems with a "Let capitalism rip" option of for-profit orphanages raising children to be productive, but that's not the same as accepting the "creative destruction" of the status quo driving culture into the ditch.
Even in the coming—almost here—worldwide monoculture, there is still a “marketplace of ideas”: not as reliable as natural selection, but still somewhat effective. And in this marketplace pro-natalism and anti-regulation may yet win out.
Cultures constantly borrow, fuse and synthesize through history and places. Culture and the ethic systems that are one component reiterate combinations of entertainment and discipline that procreate and produce effectively. Country cultures interact with and rely on state and capital (aka market) systems. Sounds like these books criticize much silliness that should be. However conflating west and capital is last century categories already left behind. Measured in terms of resultant output the majority of capital is non western. Calling something they choose as ‘western’ is misnaming the borrowing and fusing process that always happens. It isn’t foreign it is native cultural production.
I haven't read the book, but I dare say "western culture" is kind of important for the life and prosperity we are accustomed to here in the US. I think it's valid to be concerned about, e.g., becoming overwhelmed with immigrants who don't share the most basic commonalities with us, and that if widely adopted would lead to the loss of everything we care about. Rule of law, human rights, the existence of objective truth, the validity of private property, equality under the law, etc., ... basic enlightenment stuff. On top of that, just saying "meh" to the breakdown of the nuclear family and even religious institutions likely comes with serious downsides.
How cultivated.
"are much cosmopolitan than "
I hope the essays don't leave out random words, like "more".
You should listen to your colleague Robin Hanson: culture was once the product of selection, as lots of small units competed with each other and many went extinct. Nowadays we are seeing cultural "drift" away from fitness, most blatantly in the below-replacement fertility rates which have become the norm in most advanced economies (the big exception being Israel, with its large ultra-Orthodox population who shift the norms upward). As a pro-natalist yourself you should agree something has gone wrong there. J. Storrs Hall's "Where Is My Flying Car?" is another example, showing how culture went the wrong way in the 70s against abundance and using more energy to accomplish more things, instead making it infeasible to build nearly anything and putting near infinite value on preserving certain non-human species. Perhaps we should respond to these problems with a "Let capitalism rip" option of for-profit orphanages raising children to be productive, but that's not the same as accepting the "creative destruction" of the status quo driving culture into the ditch.
Even in the coming—almost here—worldwide monoculture, there is still a “marketplace of ideas”: not as reliable as natural selection, but still somewhat effective. And in this marketplace pro-natalism and anti-regulation may yet win out.
Cultures constantly borrow, fuse and synthesize through history and places. Culture and the ethic systems that are one component reiterate combinations of entertainment and discipline that procreate and produce effectively. Country cultures interact with and rely on state and capital (aka market) systems. Sounds like these books criticize much silliness that should be. However conflating west and capital is last century categories already left behind. Measured in terms of resultant output the majority of capital is non western. Calling something they choose as ‘western’ is misnaming the borrowing and fusing process that always happens. It isn’t foreign it is native cultural production.
I haven't read the book, but I dare say "western culture" is kind of important for the life and prosperity we are accustomed to here in the US. I think it's valid to be concerned about, e.g., becoming overwhelmed with immigrants who don't share the most basic commonalities with us, and that if widely adopted would lead to the loss of everything we care about. Rule of law, human rights, the existence of objective truth, the validity of private property, equality under the law, etc., ... basic enlightenment stuff. On top of that, just saying "meh" to the breakdown of the nuclear family and even religious institutions likely comes with serious downsides.
"and that if widely adopted would lead to the loss"
If WHAT were widely adopted?
Cultural norms at odds with western enlightenment values.
Oh. Thanks.