= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_M comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (257)
I didn't say anything about poor people as such. In fact, I would bet that I have more experience with actually being poor myself than most people here (and almost anyone here who is posting from a first-world country).
Now, it certainly isn't a source of any pleasure to me when I observe that in North America, and especially in many parts of the U.S., the class system has been evolving for several decades in a direction where there is an increasingly wide and severe chasm between the growing underclass and the middle classes, with rampant social dysfunction among the underclass, and increasing correlation between being poor and belonging to the underclass. (Note that I distinguish merely being poor, i.e. non-affluent, and belonging to the underclass, which is dysfunctional by definition.) But that's what the actual situation seems to be.
You characterize my statements as "off-putting," but you don't indicate what exactly you find inaccurate about them. Do you believe that I'm exaggerating the above described phenomenon? Or do you think only that I should be expressing myself more diplomatically about it?
Sorry to take so long getting back to you, I've had internet problems all week.
I'm somewhat familiar with Charles Murray's research on this subject, I assume you are too. But he has argued that the middle-class' efforts to separate themselves from the underclass make the situation worse, not better, because they make it harder to middle class culture to spread to the underclass, and he has advocated attempting to close the chasm in various ways. By contrast in your original comment you seemed distressed that it was so financially difficult for the middle class to separate themselves from the underclass and I got the impression you wished it was easier. Do you disagree with Murray, or was I drawing an incorrect inference from your comment? Feel free not to answer if you think doing so would break the "no discussing politics" rule.
What I find off-putting is primarily that they sound rather political and we aren't supposed to discuss politics at Less Wrong. If you were making the point at some politics forum I wouldn't necessarily find it off-putting. Admittedly this sort of discussion is something of a gray area since it's hard to discuss this type human social behavior without mentioning ideas that are parts of major political ideologies. I am reticent about voicing my personal opinion on the accuracy of your description is because I'm afraid I'm skirting the edge of political discussion already.
Well, even if we assume for the sake of the argument that it exacerbates the problem, this still doesn't mean that it's irrational for individual middle-class people to separate themselves from the underclass. All that this assumption would imply is that there is a tragedy-of-the-commons effect. But this doesn't change the perspective and the incentives faced by individuals at all.
Don't worry. As long as your comments are polite, well-argued, and made in good faith, you won't break any social norms here. Especially if the discussion is about general and long-standing social issues, and not about the ongoing political controversies from the headlines.
Out of curiosity, I did a search for "father" here and got about 1,030 results.
I did a search for "father figure" and got 3 results, one of which was a comment of yours.
I did a search for "father figures" and got 4 results, all of which were about fictional Heinlein characters.
That seems to suggest that people around here say "father" quite a bit more often than they say "father figure."
So, can you summarize your basis for this claim?
I mean, I don't accept the assertion that using the phrase "father figure" endorses the position that biological fathers are unnecessary, nor that such a position is transparently false or outrageously improbable. It might be false, but it's not obviously false; plenty of families don't have fathers and yet don't spontaneously implode. My own father died twenty years ago, for example, but I didn't stop being part of a family.
But if we can't even agree on what language people around here actually are using, it seems pointless to try and agree on what the implications of certain language use would be, were they using it.
You put the phrase "say "father figure" in the context of discussing family structure" in quotes, but I don't see where that phrase appeared in the comment I replied to. Is that the phrase I supposedly deleted, or was it some other phrase? If it was, where did I supposedly delete it from? If it was some other phrase, what phrase was it?
Edit: Ah! I see... it appears later in the comment, nowhere near the line I quoted. I get it now.
In any case, if your point is that we use the phrase "father figure" and not "father" in the context of discussing family structure, can you point me at how you arrived at that conclusion? You might be right, but you appear to be pulling the claim out of thin air.
"Father figure" seems to me to permit either position, "father" not so much. It's always troublesome when someone declares that you can only be properly impartial by agreeing with them.