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That's not how it's worked out in any society where family formation has been limited for large numbers of young men. The research on the calming effect of fami

That's not how it's worked out in any society where family formation has been limited for large numbers of young men. The research on the calming effect of family formation on young men is very straightforward: when a population of young men doesn't have the opportunity to form families, _they_ become the powder keg. It's true at multiple scales, from individual criminality to societal unrest.

bjourne 6y ago
The theory has not borne out in reality. Japan and China are the countries with the most young incels/sexless men/male virgins per capita are among the most peaceful in the world. It's a good theory, sexual frustration => violence, but it's just not happening.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  That's not really how theory works; the claim isn't that this is the single and sole determinant of civil unrest. This Atlantic article[1] looks more broadly at the effect of the young male subpopulation's size on unrest, this[2] paper references the mitigating effect of family formation on individual crime rate, this[3] one both covers unrest due to low family formation (generally through the mechanism of uneven sex ratios, given how out of favor polygamy currently is), as well as effects on individual crime. That being said, this little excursion into Google turned up some nascent evidence that this historical dynamic is shifting. The modern world is very odd in lots of different ways: wealth, recreational opportunities, the incredibly wide social circles one's exposed to. It's entirely possible that this dynamic has changed, but the research hasn't caught up yet. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/angry-young-men-are-making-the-world-less-stable/284364/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/an... [2] https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/33306/original/FamilyFormationAndCrime.pdf?1573569980 https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/33306/origin... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5983495/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5983495/
  - bjourne 6y ago
    But you presented the theory as a causative link between family formation being unavailable for young men and civil unrest. It's a classic case of correlation is not causation. Yes, there have been societies where men couldn't form families that were violent (like the Wild west in the US) but that doesn't mean that that was the cause of it. Similarly, many on the left have long thought that porn viewing causes sexual violent crime against women. And there is ample evidence showing that men who view porn are more likely to be sexual offenders than non-viewers. But then came the internet and the amount of porn and porn viewers skyrocketed - but the amount of sexual violence against women didn't - therefore busting the theory. In the same way, evidence from Japan, China, South Korea and even India means that there can't be a causative link between family formation being unavailable for young men and civil unrest.
    - Stupulous 6y ago
      Are the plethora of cases where cigarettes did not cause cancer compelling proof that they don't? Perhaps these counterexamples are evidence of additional factors, in cancer or in unrest, but they do not prove that a causal relationship doesn't exist.
      - bjourne 6y ago
        If you had a very large group of heavy smokers and if you could demonstrate that the lung cancer prevalence among this group was not higher than among the general population then yes, that would be compelling evidence against the theory that smoking causes lung cancer.
        Stupulous 6y ago
        Say you went to a city with no air pollution, a high rate of exercise, great diets with antioxidants and omega-3s, no asbestos or radon, and no genetic predisposition to lung cancer. And you find that, in this city, heavy smokers have a lower rate of lung cancer than the general population of the world. Do you conclude that the overwhelming abundance of data that shows that smoking causes lung cancer is wrong? That there cannot be a causative link between smoking and cancer because there is a counterexample where it didn't appear? I would say that these other factors are also having an effect of comparable scale.
- pas 6y ago
  A causal link might be still there, but the theory might only explain a few percent of the variance, due to many other (confounding) factors.
  - bjourne 6y ago
    Not sure what variance has to do with it? Thing is, you can always "patch" an X leads to Y theory when faced with opposing evidence by blaming confounding factors. But that is not very scientific. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
    - pas 6y ago
      Sure, you're right (also https://www.gwern.net/Causality#overview-the-current-situation https://www.gwern.net/Causality#overview-the-current-situati... ) I'm just trying to say that very few things are actually that causal in big complex systems. I'm trying to say that such issues are very likely have many-many factors, and we see an aggregate effect. And so in case of such aggregates arguing for-against them with very simple first-order reasoning is kind of useless. Because each piece of data (supporting or counter evidence) just explains a part of the big picture. So, without accounting for all data we can't really make general statements about what causes the aggregate effect that we see.
      - bjourne 6y ago
        Yes, we can use "very simple first-order reasoning" even when we argue about very complex problems. If you say that "swans are white" it is enough for me to find a single black swan to prove your hypothesis wrong. That is exactly what is being done here.
luckylion 6y ago
There is a difference though: Western societies don't strongly couple "allowing" young men to have a family to them having a job. Lots of unemployed, bored, frustrated single young men is different from having employed, frustrated young men. I have no idea how class plays into this dynamic, but I assume it's not the poorest that aren't having sex, unlike in the societies where this dynamic works as a powder keg.
vsareto 6y ago
So, "give us families, or we'll do crime and destabilize society"? Sounds like mental health problems are even more rampant than we guessed. We should probably handle that.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  Oh got it, you're one of those people who's unable to reason about the way things work without becoming overcome with emotion and desperately cramming the conversation into a simple-minded framework of "who's to blame so we can get mad at them". I'm not really interested in that kind of conversation, thanks though!
  - vsareto 6y ago
    It's because I don't believe you have any actual evidence, and even if you did, you'd end up arguing that a lack of relationships could explain someone becoming a danger to society. That alone is difficult to argue since they could have issues parallel that could have caused it.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > Sounds like mental health problems are even more rampant than we guessed. We should probably handle that. Other than generalized chemical castration I don't see how you could eliminate the "problem" of most of the male population unfulfilled sex drive. For all its problems and unfairness, patriarchal society provides an answer to that problem, if an ugly one.
  - fdsgnr0g90n0fw 6y ago
    At the risk of sounding cold... anything that causes the mortality rate of men in this high risk category to rise significantly would likely reduce the overall problem. For example, making the choice of suicide readily available for young men that face poo life prospects, and the choice of ending your own life for the better of society a virtue, perhaps even heroic. Whether enough people would see such a thing as acceptable for it to become policy is an entirely different issue.
zajio1am 6y ago
> when a population of young men doesn't have the opportunity to form families, _they_ become the powder keg. It's true at multiple scales, from individual criminality to societal unrest. Well, perhaps videogames and internet porn (both inaccessible in the past) could workaround that now ...

bjourne 6y ago

The theory has not borne out in reality. Japan and China are the countries with the most young incels/sexless men/male virgins per capita are among the most peaceful in the world. It's a good theory, sexual frustration => violence, but it's just not happening.

wutbrodo 6y ago
That's not really how theory works; the claim isn't that this is the single and sole determinant of civil unrest. This Atlantic article[1] looks more broadly at the effect of the young male subpopulation's size on unrest, this[2] paper references the mitigating effect of family formation on individual crime rate, this[3] one both covers unrest due to low family formation (generally through the mechanism of uneven sex ratios, given how out of favor polygamy currently is), as well as effects on individual crime. That being said, this little excursion into Google turned up some nascent evidence that this historical dynamic is shifting. The modern world is very odd in lots of different ways: wealth, recreational opportunities, the incredibly wide social circles one's exposed to. It's entirely possible that this dynamic has changed, but the research hasn't caught up yet. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/angry-young-men-are-making-the-world-less-stable/284364/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/an... [2] https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/33306/original/FamilyFormationAndCrime.pdf?1573569980 https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/33306/origin... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5983495/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5983495/
- bjourne 6y ago
  But you presented the theory as a causative link between family formation being unavailable for young men and civil unrest. It's a classic case of correlation is not causation. Yes, there have been societies where men couldn't form families that were violent (like the Wild west in the US) but that doesn't mean that that was the cause of it. Similarly, many on the left have long thought that porn viewing causes sexual violent crime against women. And there is ample evidence showing that men who view porn are more likely to be sexual offenders than non-viewers. But then came the internet and the amount of porn and porn viewers skyrocketed - but the amount of sexual violence against women didn't - therefore busting the theory. In the same way, evidence from Japan, China, South Korea and even India means that there can't be a causative link between family formation being unavailable for young men and civil unrest.
  - Stupulous 6y ago
    Are the plethora of cases where cigarettes did not cause cancer compelling proof that they don't? Perhaps these counterexamples are evidence of additional factors, in cancer or in unrest, but they do not prove that a causal relationship doesn't exist.
    - bjourne 6y ago
      If you had a very large group of heavy smokers and if you could demonstrate that the lung cancer prevalence among this group was not higher than among the general population then yes, that would be compelling evidence against the theory that smoking causes lung cancer.
      - Stupulous 6y ago
        Say you went to a city with no air pollution, a high rate of exercise, great diets with antioxidants and omega-3s, no asbestos or radon, and no genetic predisposition to lung cancer. And you find that, in this city, heavy smokers have a lower rate of lung cancer than the general population of the world. Do you conclude that the overwhelming abundance of data that shows that smoking causes lung cancer is wrong? That there cannot be a causative link between smoking and cancer because there is a counterexample where it didn't appear? I would say that these other factors are also having an effect of comparable scale.
pas 6y ago
A causal link might be still there, but the theory might only explain a few percent of the variance, due to many other (confounding) factors.
- bjourne 6y ago
  Not sure what variance has to do with it? Thing is, you can always "patch" an X leads to Y theory when faced with opposing evidence by blaming confounding factors. But that is not very scientific. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
  - pas 6y ago
    Sure, you're right (also https://www.gwern.net/Causality#overview-the-current-situation https://www.gwern.net/Causality#overview-the-current-situati... ) I'm just trying to say that very few things are actually that causal in big complex systems. I'm trying to say that such issues are very likely have many-many factors, and we see an aggregate effect. And so in case of such aggregates arguing for-against them with very simple first-order reasoning is kind of useless. Because each piece of data (supporting or counter evidence) just explains a part of the big picture. So, without accounting for all data we can't really make general statements about what causes the aggregate effect that we see.
    - bjourne 6y ago
      Yes, we can use "very simple first-order reasoning" even when we argue about very complex problems. If you say that "swans are white" it is enough for me to find a single black swan to prove your hypothesis wrong. That is exactly what is being done here.

luckylion 6y ago

There is a difference though: Western societies don't strongly couple "allowing" young men to have a family to them having a job. Lots of unemployed, bored, frustrated single young men is different from having employed, frustrated young men. I have no idea how class plays into this dynamic, but I assume it's not the poorest that aren't having sex, unlike in the societies where this dynamic works as a powder keg.

vsareto 6y ago

So, "give us families, or we'll do crime and destabilize society"? Sounds like mental health problems are even more rampant than we guessed. We should probably handle that.

wutbrodo 6y ago
Oh got it, you're one of those people who's unable to reason about the way things work without becoming overcome with emotion and desperately cramming the conversation into a simple-minded framework of "who's to blame so we can get mad at them". I'm not really interested in that kind of conversation, thanks though!
- vsareto 6y ago
  It's because I don't believe you have any actual evidence, and even if you did, you'd end up arguing that a lack of relationships could explain someone becoming a danger to society. That alone is difficult to argue since they could have issues parallel that could have caused it.
enriquto 6y ago
> Sounds like mental health problems are even more rampant than we guessed. We should probably handle that. Other than generalized chemical castration I don't see how you could eliminate the "problem" of most of the male population unfulfilled sex drive. For all its problems and unfairness, patriarchal society provides an answer to that problem, if an ugly one.
- fdsgnr0g90n0fw 6y ago
  At the risk of sounding cold... anything that causes the mortality rate of men in this high risk category to rise significantly would likely reduce the overall problem. For example, making the choice of suicide readily available for young men that face poo life prospects, and the choice of ending your own life for the better of society a virtue, perhaps even heroic. Whether enough people would see such a thing as acceptable for it to become policy is an entirely different issue.

zajio1am 6y ago

> when a population of young men doesn't have the opportunity to form families, _they_ become the powder keg. It's true at multiple scales, from individual criminality to societal unrest. Well, perhaps videogames and internet porn (both inaccessible in the past) could workaround that now ...