21 Comments
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Harry Flashman's avatar

I was diagnosed with OECD - I vacuum the cat at least 10 times a day.

So please forward my contacts to all the ladies - I must provoke intense baby lust with my focus on household chores.

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Henry Rodger Beck's avatar

A good rule of thumb in my experience is that if a study points towards a counterintuitive result, it should be assumed wrong unless thoroughly proven otherwise. Hanania's often fairly good about that, so it's a shame to see him either fall for a trick like this, or worse yet, knowing better and promoting it anyway.

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Emil O. W. Kirkegaard's avatar

The general rule is not to take Hanania's posting too seriously.

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Paolo Giusti's avatar

People should stop treating Hanania as a good-faith agent.

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JasonWeeyams's avatar

Ever since his past, previously pseudonymous postings on controversial topics were unearthed, his posting more resembles that of someone with a gun to their head, or, of someone conducting a multiyear experiment in posting nonsense and measuring the reaction to said nonsense.

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Viddao's avatar

I have become convinced by his recent behavior that Richard Hanania is not really right-wing. Constantly mocking other people for their misogyny, racism, and anti-semitism is the behavior of a liberal.

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Andy G's avatar

“Constantly mocking other people for their […] anti-semitism is the behavior of a liberal.”

This was only true *before* Oct 7th.

Now when it comes to anti-semitism, liberals either a) openly embrace it and cheer on others for doing so openly, or b) bury their heads in the sand and repeat loudly to themselves “…but Trump is worse, but Trump is worse” when they realize that so many of their fellow liberals AND ALSO the party they vote for are now openly anti-semitic.

The b) group is made up in large part, but not in totality, by Jewish liberals.

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MikeRustA2's avatar

First guess was Obsessive Estrogen Compulsive Disorder.

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John Rawls's avatar

Female labor participation is highest in sub-saharan africa. It doesnt show sub-saharan men doing more chores but this is not still trad thing.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/female-labor-force-participation-rates?tab=map

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Anatoly Karlin's avatar

First, the OECD are the club of rich countries - that is, the countries of relevance of us and the global future more generally. The (pseudo) traditionalist ways of the Based Global South are amusing, but of very limited relevance to anything important. Moreover, the reason TFR is high in that region is banally because they haven't finished their demographic transition. The trend is down and there are no grounds to expect they will not converge or indeed go much lower than the First World before any reversal.

Second, you cannot wave a magic wand and make people more religious, traditionalist, and fertile. Rightoid governments that try to do that almost invariably end up failing ruinously. What the data does show is that there is a distinct trend for the more feminist and queer rich world countries to also be more fertile than the rightoid traditionalist ones.

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forumposter123@protonmail.com's avatar

1) Within countries social conservative beliefs and practices lead to higher fertility. Conservatives Swedes have higher TFR then liberal Swedes. Etc

2) so what your really just talking about is that northwest Europe does better on TFR then southern Europe (a low iq basket case) and former communist Europe (literally dominated by people who outlawed religion and ran a totalitarian leftist state for half a century)

Is there ANY social science metric in which the nordics don’t do better then those place? Isn’t higher TFR just a subset of “being more functional societies for centuries now”?

If I had to guess since they have higher iqs and stronger economies there is a better market work incentive for Nordic women to work, and when both work they split chores more.

The same incentive structure wouldn’t apply in say southern Italy.

3) isn’t TFR in the Nordic area also collapsing lately like everywhere else in the oecd?

4) what policy goals in this area are progressive versus conservative?

Most of the nordics for instance have full school choice, something the is intensely conservative coded and gets like zero votes from leftists.

When the nordics didn’t lock down during covid and let their schools stay normal was that conservativism?

You call South Korea a “conservative society”. Does anything about this scream “religious conservative”:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/05/anti-natal-engineering#:~:text=Oral%20contraception%20was%20introduced%20in,1977%2C%20to%20the%20first%20two.

Korea strikes me as a secular atheist society obsessed with safetyism, credentialism, and bugman conformity. Those aren’t “conservative”. Maybe they have a porn law nobody pays attention to.

Within Korea the more “modern” and western normed you are the lower your TFR.

Like I get it. Sweden is a place with a good history, a good economy, and its policies are not nearly as leftist as people make it out to be. Its dying slightly slower then garbage Europe or the anthill we call East Asia.

It’s not clear that becoming more gay and diverse is going to improve on that.

In general I’d try to look how a particular trait changes things relative to other control factors (within country usually).

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Hammond's avatar

The point is that you cannot look at this chart and assume a causal relationship! Correlation does not imply causation, and it's absolutely bizarre this still needs to be said in 2024.

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Richard Hanania's avatar

It’s a joke, which you should understand since you’re familiar with my hatred of cross-country comparisons.

To the extent that the point is serious, it's that social conservatives, as the ones who want to restrict freedom, and for dysgenic policy goals at that, have the burden of proof to show that their policies lead to their desired outcome, and OECD data at least shows that they can't meet that burden. That's why I linked to this piece, which explains why cross-national data is bad but that's only bad news for the side with the burden of proof. https://www.richardhanania.com/p/social-conservatism-as-4d-chess

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Skeptical1's avatar

The fact that you’re considered a public ‘intellectual’ is the biggest joke of all.

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Richard Hanania's avatar

You don’t matter, anonymous internet racist. Which would be fine if you had some honor and at least stood by what you say, but you’re a coward too.

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Skeptical1's avatar

Lol! Good one.

You may fool your fellow midwits, but that’s about it. Most others see you for what you are: nothing more than a paid polemicist. A sophist. A political shill. Your single talent is BS generation—fabricated out of scientism.

Anyhow, carry on, genius.

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Jon Cutchins's avatar

Sophist may be the best word for Hanania I have seen so far. He simply says what pays in his own little niche. I recently predicted that he will come out of the closet by August. I'm going to add to it the prediction that he becomes a regular CNN or MSNBC contributor in the next five years if they both last that long.

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Skeptical1's avatar

I think that is an astute prediction. I certainly wouldn't bet against it.

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Hammond's avatar

Weird how you anti-racists never want to live in non-white-majority countries. Maybe you're secretly racist after all?

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Jimmy H's avatar

You don't get to mislead people with data and then just say "it's a joke". You don't care as much about the truth as you claim. I'm an actual truth seeker, and so I can see that. You care about it more than 99% of people, but you're still not close to my level.

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forumposter123@protonmail.com's avatar

1) Within countries social conservative beliefs and practices lead to higher fertility. Conservatives Swedes have higher TFR then liberal Swedes. Etc

2) so what your really just talking about is that northwest Europe does better on TFR then southern Europe (a low iq basket case) and former communist Europe (literally dominated by people who outlawed religion and ran a totalitarian leftist state for half a century)

Is there ANY social science metric in which the nordics don’t do better then those place? Isn’t higher TFR just a subset of “being more functional societies for centuries now”?

If I had to guess since they have higher iqs and stronger economies there is a better market work incentive for Nordic women to work, and when both work they split chores more.

The same incentive structure wouldn’t apply in say southern Italy.

3) isn’t TFR in the Nordic area also collapsing lately like everywhere else in the oecd?

4) what policy goals in this area are progressive versus conservative?

Most of the nordics for instance have full school choice, something the is intensely conservative coded and gets like zero votes from leftists.

When the nordics didn’t lock down during covid and let their schools stay normal was that conservativism?

You call South Korea a “conservative society”. Does anything about this scream “religious conservative”:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/05/anti-natal-engineering#:~:text=Oral%20contraception%20was%20introduced%20in,1977%2C%20to%20the%20first%20two.

Korea strikes me as a secular atheist society obsessed with safetyism, credentialism, and bugman conformity. Those aren’t “conservative”. Maybe they have a porn law nobody pays attention to.

Within Korea the more “modern” and western normed you are the lower your TFR.

Like I get it. Sweden is a place with a good history, a good economy, and its policies are not nearly as leftist as people make it out to be. Its dying slightly slower then garbage Europe or the anthill we call East Asia.

It’s not clear that becoming more gay and diverse is going to improve on that.

In general I’d try to look how a particular trait changes things relative to other control factors (within country usually).

Expand full comment