4 ms·

Honestly, I think it's simply that people have much more interesting lives these days. Babies and entertainment are substitute goods.

wesapien 3y ago
Interesting? Give me some examples. This problem goes beyond the east vs west. This is about humans failing to learn from the past. Add modernity and progress|regress.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  Sports, science, literature, movies, skydiving, games, online games, learning, I can go on forever about different modern activities.
  - cpursley 3y ago
    Most of this was around before the modern era in some form or fashion. There is nothing new under the sun.
    - yakubin 3y ago
      If you weren’t born rich, like Newton or Darwin, you were unlikely to be able to afford to learn and do science. Forget about being able to travel to the other side of the world without a huge risk of dying of malaria, dysentery or any of the other myriad diseases whose risks weren’t yet mitigated. Most people also couldn’t afford to travel even to countries nearby. Games: obviously no video games, but personally I wouldn’t miss them. ;) Other games, like poker, chess, mahjongg: true, they were there. Skydiving: nope. Learning: much more limited. E.g. there was so little communication between Asia and Europe that for most Europeans you’d need to move to Asia for months or more to even find a teacher. Beside languages, education in general didn’t use to be available to as large a percentage of society as now. Illiteracy was the common case. According to [1], in 1701 in UK 54% of population was literate, in Western Europe: 31%. [1]: <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-historical-literacy-rates https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-historical-lite...>
  - wesapien 3y ago
    One of my grand mothers was a teacher and yet she bore 9 children. She lived through WW2 in the Asia/Pacific. All her children got were engineers, couple of doctors and a successful entrepreneur. What's more interesting than that? The truth is that inequality, modernity and self-love is going push us into a demographic collapse. Being a wirehead/hobbyist is definitely less fulfilling and less noble.
    - idiotsecant 3y ago
      Pumping out children is ... noble? How?
      - mensetmanusman 3y ago
        They are raising those who will be changing your diapers.
sdsd 3y ago
I feel this can be easily dramatized in either direction Imagine sitting down for 9 hours typing, then going home and scrolling through porn and getting high and thinking that's much more interesting than conquering a village, sailing the coast of a new continent, having sex with a beautiful virgin, and teaching your sons to reach even further into greatness. Or on the other hand, the hard reality redpill that your life in the past would be manual labor on a farm as a peasant, making a lord rich. I still lean towards a romantic past - working hard with your village friends, then going to the pub with them, and coming home and making babies with your wife, in a home you own, with a tended garden and many children, sounds better than writing Ansible playbooks and jacking off to pornhub. And this is the life of a loser in the past, compared to a "winner" of the present. Maybe it's anomie, people don't have children when they don't believe in their civilization
- Earw0rm 3y ago
  The losers in the past died of diarrhea aged three. If you made it as far as wife and kids, you were a winner. If wife made it as far as the third kid without dying of sepsis, she was an ultra winner.
  - sdsd 3y ago
    By that standard, most people conceived in the present don't even survive the womb
    - defrost 3y ago
      Well, ditto the past - not only were diet and other conditions harsher, the Church was happy to prescribe, mix, prepare and administer abortifacients. eg: https://daily.jstor.org/abortion-remedies-medieval-catholic-nun/ https://daily.jstor.org/abortion-remedies-medieval-catholic-... and that's Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Abbess and founder of two monasteries handing out the Ye Olde abortion pills. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K9PfjRjxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K9PfjRjxM
      - 3y ago

wesapien 3y ago

Interesting? Give me some examples. This problem goes beyond the east vs west. This is about humans failing to learn from the past. Add modernity and progress|regress.

wiseowise 3y ago
Sports, science, literature, movies, skydiving, games, online games, learning, I can go on forever about different modern activities.
- cpursley 3y ago
  Most of this was around before the modern era in some form or fashion. There is nothing new under the sun.
  - yakubin 3y ago
    If you weren’t born rich, like Newton or Darwin, you were unlikely to be able to afford to learn and do science. Forget about being able to travel to the other side of the world without a huge risk of dying of malaria, dysentery or any of the other myriad diseases whose risks weren’t yet mitigated. Most people also couldn’t afford to travel even to countries nearby. Games: obviously no video games, but personally I wouldn’t miss them. ;) Other games, like poker, chess, mahjongg: true, they were there. Skydiving: nope. Learning: much more limited. E.g. there was so little communication between Asia and Europe that for most Europeans you’d need to move to Asia for months or more to even find a teacher. Beside languages, education in general didn’t use to be available to as large a percentage of society as now. Illiteracy was the common case. According to [1], in 1701 in UK 54% of population was literate, in Western Europe: 31%. [1]: <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-historical-literacy-rates https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-historical-lite...>
- wesapien 3y ago
  One of my grand mothers was a teacher and yet she bore 9 children. She lived through WW2 in the Asia/Pacific. All her children got were engineers, couple of doctors and a successful entrepreneur. What's more interesting than that? The truth is that inequality, modernity and self-love is going push us into a demographic collapse. Being a wirehead/hobbyist is definitely less fulfilling and less noble.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    Pumping out children is ... noble? How?
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      They are raising those who will be changing your diapers.

sdsd 3y ago

I feel this can be easily dramatized in either direction Imagine sitting down for 9 hours typing, then going home and scrolling through porn and getting high and thinking that's much more interesting than conquering a village, sailing the coast of a new continent, having sex with a beautiful virgin, and teaching your sons to reach even further into greatness. Or on the other hand, the hard reality redpill that your life in the past would be manual labor on a farm as a peasant, making a lord rich. I still lean towards a romantic past - working hard with your village friends, then going to the pub with them, and coming home and making babies with your wife, in a home you own, with a tended garden and many children, sounds better than writing Ansible playbooks and jacking off to pornhub. And this is the life of a loser in the past, compared to a "winner" of the present. Maybe it's anomie, people don't have children when they don't believe in their civilization

Earw0rm 3y ago
The losers in the past died of diarrhea aged three. If you made it as far as wife and kids, you were a winner. If wife made it as far as the third kid without dying of sepsis, she was an ultra winner.
- sdsd 3y ago
  By that standard, most people conceived in the present don't even survive the womb
  - defrost 3y ago
    Well, ditto the past - not only were diet and other conditions harsher, the Church was happy to prescribe, mix, prepare and administer abortifacients. eg: https://daily.jstor.org/abortion-remedies-medieval-catholic-nun/ https://daily.jstor.org/abortion-remedies-medieval-catholic-... and that's Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Abbess and founder of two monasteries handing out the Ye Olde abortion pills. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K9PfjRjxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K9PfjRjxM
    - 3y ago