[roosterdawn]

> it displaces "human worth" onto _individual_ fertility and offspring

I think the word "worth" could be an anthropomorphization. I read the concept through the lens of survivability. Hypothetically, a societal identity which does not ensure biological reproduction could be evolutionarily outcompeted by one that does. Even, or especially by a fertility cult. I remember this being one of the central, disturbingly dystopic outcomes that Mike Judge's Idiocracy tried to address.

A lot of progressive technocrats look at model citizens with technologically harnessed upward mobility. They observe and want to enable global movement towards this. But if the environment that enables the financial prosperity of these model citizens also disables their ability to reproduce their way of life, how does it successfully compete in "the marketplace of ideology" against opponents who out-produce them by default? Wouldn't that be a local maximum? Without some kind of mechanism in place to address that, the progression has no guarantee of continuing. And this could lead to the dystopic scenario outlined in the film.

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> Hypothetically, a societal identity which does not ensure biological reproduction could be evolutionarily outcompeted by one that does

Ah, this is pretty close to the same claim that "JayMan" made once when explaining to me how "gay people shouldn't exist, evolutionarily speaking" (because, of course, the gays would be outcompeted genetically by non-gays, and the identity wouldn't persist, right?)

Let me tie it into this:

> if the environment that enables the financial prosperity of these model citizens also disables their ability to reproduce their way of life, how does it successfully compete in "the marketplace of ideology" against opponents who out-produce them by default?

Because ideologies don't exist in a market, they exist within an ecosystem. To put it plainly: it doesn't matter if the finance guys don't have kids, because the finance guys aren't themselves breeding more finance guys. The fact that the role of "finance guy" exists at all is a product of the broader cultural ecosystem, which wont disappear even if all the extant finance guys do.

But all this is beside the point. Land's post lays out a sociological model (viewing the world as a detached observer) and then, through sleight-of-hand and careful selection of metrics, converts it into a measure of value (how one views one's life as an individual).

If your sociological frame makes the world look like a dys/utopia, consider that it might be a flawed frame, at least if your goal is to see clearly.

[throwaway_98554]

I think you missed the point the parent comment was making.

Obviously "finance guy" would not only breed other "finance guys". However if the society consumes a majority of its productive members without insuring their reproduction, then they'll be selected against.

> Ah, this is pretty close to the same claim that "JayMan" made once when explaining to me how "gay people shouldn't exist, evolutionarily speaking" (because, of course, the gays would be outcompeted genetically by non-gays, and the identity wouldn't persist, right?)

That's such a weird position and obviously made by someone who doesn't understand evolution, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it here. It's the equivalent of saying that diseases/cancer/handicaps couldn't exist because "evolution". That is not what parent is talking about when underlying the risks of hindering reproduction for a whole class of citizens.

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> if the society consumes a majority of its productive members without insuring their reproduction, then they'll be selected against.

This assumes both that productivity is heritable and that the nature of productivity is fixed. The former seems contingently true (assuming the latter), but the latter seems false, as the forms of work considered "productive" tend to shift over time.

The other Problem is the implicit assumption that "[economic] productivity is good", which is an entirely different class of argument than above.

[roosterdawn]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think your subtle distinction between the market and ecosystem is key here because they don't fully map 1 to 1. And you're correct that the market is downstream from the ecosystem itself. But with that said, I'm not sure that I agree with the spirit of your argument.

> the gays would be outcompeted genetically by non-gays, and the identity wouldn't persist, right?

I'm not sure that's historically accurate. The connection between pederasty and upper caste aristocracy goes back to Greek civilization, if not earlier, and is its own kind of a cultural reproduction mechanism that seemed to have elements of both mentorship and romance. Without a doubt, it's something that I still see today in elite circles.

> The fact that the role of "finance guy" exists at all is a product of the broader cultural ecosystem

I think I'd beg to disagree -- not with the product of the ecosystem part, but with the idea that it's cultural rather than socioeconomic and caste based. And maybe this comes back to my point earlier, which is a friction point that maybe both the IQ shredder concept and this article fail to account for, which is a certain degree of lifestyle dynamism.

That is to say, is that finance guy stuck as a finance guy forever? Or does he eventually accumulate enough wealth before moving on to a separate phase of his life, one where he can have a family of whatever size he wants with the best partner he can find that will take him? Because if that's the case, then maybe both the IQ shredder and Idiocracy argument perhaps only serve a useful function when referring to the lower and middle class, and fail to account for the upper class. And this, too seems to make intuitive sense to me: even as we see the middle class hollowed out, the upper class in America (and maybe across the world) continue to see increased prosperity at levels never before seen in history.

> If your sociological frame makes the world look like a dys/utopia, consider that it might be a flawed frame, at least if your goal is to see clearly.

I think the warning against dualistic frames is fair to keep in mind. But if you have a non-dualistic frame, that "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" then I think that it's equally fair to warn that a frame which conflates an observed scenario to as a dystopic frame rather than evidence of an apoptotic mechanism could itself be the flawed frame.

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> I'm not sure that's historically accurate

I mean, my point was that it's a relatively absurd argument based on a misunderstanding of evolution, as the sibling comment states.

> it's cultural rather than socioeconomic and caste based

Are castes and socioeconomics distinct from culture? (I'm working with Lévi-Strauss's definition of culture as the set of symbolic forms present across society)

> both the IQ shredder and Idiocracy argument perhaps only serve a useful function when referring to the lower and middle class, and fail to account for the upper class

If we consider it in this frame, it seems roughly equivalent to the "brain drain" idea that made the rounds a decade or so ago. Only difference being the ethical valence of the arguments.

> evidence of an apoptotic mechanism

Is this a valid metaphor? I'm unsure myself. I don't find myself agreeing with Spengler and co, but I also don't think I could muster a strong argument against it on demand.