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Data does not speak to you

tantaman.com

11–20 of 38 posts

Re: Data does not speak to you

#11

You don't declare your position on this issue, which irritating. What do you actually think is good or bad? It seems like you're anti-individual, pro-religion (or "telos", but that always seems to be a subset of some religion whenever you mention it), and pro-reproduction, but only as a side effect of the religion. You don't want us to be coerced, or coerced into approving of pressure to conform, but you want us to c…

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Which, mine? Why?

Incidentally I give my full approval to the title of the article. Measuring things doesn't tell you answers, because it doesn't tell you theories. The idea that you can get answers from data without interpretation is logical positivism (or something associated with logical positivism), and it's nonsense, truth doesn't seep directly into our heads through our pores, we have to reason in order to be able to see any thing.

But that's all an incidental lead-in to the author's views about birth rates.

Re: Data does not speak to you

#12

I wouldn't have offspring because I don't want to have anyone be born into this world; it's awful. On the other paw, I would adopt if it could help someone already having to exist in this world to lead their best life.

Birth is as inevitable as existence, there is no opt out in the grander metaphysical scheme of things. Also just a thought - is that really your reason for not having them? If a person truly believes the bad outweighs the good I'm less inclined to believe them when they're still among the living, because the choice to stay alive shows they see some inherent value in the state of being alive. Personally I'm clear on w…

> the choice to stay alive shows they see some inherent value in the state of being alive.

Eh, you don't choose to live any more than you choose to breathe. Even if you don't want to live anymore you can't simply "choose" to no longer be alive. There's no suicide-fairy that neatly and quietly removes you from existence on command, and that would keep taking care of anyone who's depending on you.

Re: Data does not speak to you

#14
It's a shame the author falls a little foul of the very thing he criticizes - out of a wish, perhaps, to needle individualist liberals with UnHerd-style communitarian-conservative talking points.

But let's ask some more questions.

The positive correlation between income and number of children, within education bands, is intriguing - and yet doesn't explain why policies intended to be pro-birth - generous financial support for young families, for example, seem to be ineffective. Even accepting that education does suppress the birth rate relative to income, increasing income ought to fix that.. but doesn't.

Perhaps there's a different story here, that income and number of children within a given education bracket isn't causal - that a third factor is behind both - or even that the causal arrow points the other way: if you've got lots of kids, you _have_ to take that higher-paying job, because you need to keep them fed and housed.

And there's an unspoken assumption that education = individualism, and that these are antonyms to communitarian-conservatism. Which isn't exactly true, and we can look at societies which sustain relatively high levels of both.

Denmark being a case in point. Its international reputation may be free-living liberal-Scandi, but it's communitarian, place-based and in many ways conservative. Not in the obvious way along Islamic or shouty Evangelical lines - morals around sex and alcohol are relatively relaxed - but in most other respects it's a distinct, cohesive and traditionalist culture, one which places more value on faith and nation than many.

They've high income, strong child support policy, and their birth rate is.. not much better than avowedly secular-liberal countries nearby. And a disproportionate number of kids are born to immigrants, which of course upsets the traditionalists.

But again, look for third factors. Do immigrants have more children because they're from "that kind of culture", or does the sort of innate drive which motivates somebody to pack their bags for a new life in a new country (by no means the easy path) also motivate them to have a family?

Or, flip that around, is there a "drag" factor affecting people who don't emigrate/immigrate, and that's suppressing "native" births? I certainly know more than a few people for whom that appears to be a thing, they're just kind of lightly anesthetized to life.

But I've also heard it said that some folks have always been that way, and that what's driving lower birth rates is more that on one hand fewer unplanned kids are being born (because contraception, and vastly lower teen pregnancy rates), and on the other, the women who do have kids (which has never been anywhere near "all") are often having one or two less than they'd ideally like for economic reasons.

Re: Data does not speak to you

#15
post #6

This is a great article. It's why I roll my eyes when someone asks "Show me the data" or the classic "Sources please." Unless we're literally having a debate about raw statistics, the data likely adds nothing to either side of the debate; because the data is not answering any actual questions and you can draw opposite conclusions from the same data. Just because the data appears to fit nicely to a particular mainstre…

> This is a great article. It's why I roll my eyes when someone asks "Show me the data" or the classic "Sources please."

That doesn't follow. Yes, there are going to be multiple interpretations of the data, however the data must exist otherwise you're just pulling claims out of thin air.

Being asked to provide the data is just an easy filter for people who just say things, who only have the narrative, like "the earth is a flat disc" - okay, show me some experimental data that would show this to be true.

Re: Data does not speak to you

#16

I wouldn't have offspring because I don't want to have anyone be born into this world; it's awful. On the other paw, I would adopt if it could help someone already having to exist in this world to lead their best life.

Birth is as inevitable as existence, there is no opt out in the grander metaphysical scheme of things. Also just a thought - is that really your reason for not having them? If a person truly believes the bad outweighs the good I'm less inclined to believe them when they're still among the living, because the choice to stay alive shows they see some inherent value in the state of being alive. Personally I'm clear on w…

Hedonism itself isn't very clear, if basic gratification is vacuous. You end up seeking gratification through aims, because having a goal is satisfying, and then you're reintroducing values other than pure pleasure, by the back door (ooer).

Re: Data does not speak to you

#18
post #14

It's a shame the author falls a little foul of the very thing he criticizes - out of a wish, perhaps, to needle individualist liberals with UnHerd-style communitarian-conservative talking points. But let's ask some more questions. The positive correlation between income and number of children, within education bands, is intriguing - and yet doesn't explain why policies intended to be pro-birth - generous financial su…

> Denmark being a case in point. Its international reputation may be free-living liberal-Scandi, but it's communitarian, place-based and in many ways conservative.

Conservative is relative. Germany is a lot more conservative than Denmark, for instance. And many areas in the USA are about 100x more conservative than an average German.

I also don't think "scandinavian" works very well on the fine details. They are too different if you compare e. g. Denmark Sweden Finland Norway. They may be closer to one another than, say, spain or germany, but there are so many differences that the term liberal-Scandi is just too strange. With the same argument you can ask why the judicial system in Sweden prosecuted Assange. I am pretty certain this would have been much harder to do in Denmark or Norway or Finland. Are swedes thus more conservative?

Re: Data does not speak to you

#19

You don't declare your position on this issue, which irritating. What do you actually think is good or bad? It seems like you're anti-individual, pro-religion (or "telos", but that always seems to be a subset of some religion whenever you mention it), and pro-reproduction, but only as a side effect of the religion. You don't want us to be coerced, or coerced into approving of pressure to conform, but you want us to c…

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Close-minded and anti-intellectual of you.

Re: Data does not speak to you

#20
post #4

The elevation of the individual as supreme to the communal is inherently anti-child rearing, the most communal of acts

Then the community is creepy and it can do one.

If that's how you perceive child-rearing property of communities that's a shame. It takes a village to raise a child. As the african proverb goes the child that doesn't feel warmth will burn a village down to feel it.
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