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Comment by thrway99 | Hacker News Reader

My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t.

Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen just…won’t pass on genetics.

Children are a lot of work and energy.

I’m highly introverted and high earning. My wife was the aggressor in my case. She pretty much made it all happen.

I think the ball is firmly in the woman’s court now. Women have most of the advantages (education, societal promotion, fit in better with our institutions) yet i see so many women who are generally apathetic about getting into a relationship at all.

There is also a massive obesity problem. If people have trouble getting attracted to each other versus the alternatives, makes it really challenging to find the motivation.

I wonder what all these effects will have over the next 200 years? If you play out the changing “relationship market conditions,” it seems like men and women with different personalities and dispositions towards seeking out relationships in order to reproduce will have a significant effect on the species.

Will people who were genetically predisposed towards being thin, hard working, open minded to approaching members of opposite sex and forming deep attachments resulting in children become more frequent?

On a genetic and evolutionary perspective I’m super interested - we know that IQ has been rising, but what else will change?

In some societies such as Korea I am told, women are sometimes or more frequently the aggressor. I wonder if this becomes more common.

View on HN

> Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen

I don't think you need these things to find a partner and have children.

Just go to a maternity ward. It sounds like you think everyone there is highly motivated, physically fit, and dedicated to working on relationships. They aren't. They're just normal people with a range of human flaws and a regular cross-section of society. Fat, thin, lazy, hard-working, professional, unemployed, etc.

Having kids isn't as hard as you make it sound!

IDK starting the baby making process isn't terribly difficult once one has a partner. It's the carrying to term and everything after that is a lot of time, money, and energy.

Some folks will struggle more with the partnering aspect than others. Or mustering the will and resources to begin parenting.

Spend some time reading about infertility at the start of the baby making process and I think you’ll find that it can terribly difficult. Especially as you progress into your mid/late 30s (women). And it is that starting process that can also cost lots of money, time, and energy.

Great call out. I forgot about some struggles in this regard myself, though IME dwarfed by the aftermath.

As two-kid dad, I definitely agree that the time, energy, and cost of delivering and raising kids is HUGE. It's not something that you should undervalue at all.

But I think we have this unfortunate habit of severely underweighting the start process and things that aren't obvious.

You probably experience lots of stress over the span of raising a kid (or more). Other people see that in the classic screaming-kid seemingly-helpless-parent visual. You may also experience that same stress, perhaps cumulatively more, just from the start because it's (1) VERY stressful when it doesn't work, and (2) a situation that can drag on for what feels like forever.

So, everyone commiserates over work it is to raise a kid but few people talk openly or at all about how hard it is to start the process of having a kid.

The toolbox for doing it sucks too. The public school and childcare infrastructure is absolute shit and private is an expensive crapshoot

That really depends on the country, the smart move may require relocating to raise kids elsewhere.

Some jobs are unfortunately linked to areas where it’s really expensive to raise kids.

I've just looked at this recently, boarding school in Spain is around 12k per year

In the USA 12k buys you a half day of care or possibly a religious school if you are already a member

That's why I mentioned boarding schools, you don't have to live there to send your kids to it and also it might be good for them, nurture independence and a lot of experience with a foreign culture while also giving you flexibility and easing the burden of child raising.

That sounds like the toolbox when your kid is born. You are probably right as it pertains to the US. I’m talking about pre-birth part.

Spend some time reading about infertility and you'll find that the number one cause for both men and women is obesity.

Every single one of my friends or acquaintances who is obese has had trouble conceiving. Every. Single. One.

Sure, I didn’t have that in mind but I would say it augments my point rather than refutes it.

Throwaway's point about how the system is extremely self-selecting is still a very good one though.

The selection process is on Tinder, not the maternity ward, and the bar is brutally high there for men.

> the bar is brutally high

The men I've seen in maternity wards are just totally normal men.

I used to think that. I genuinely did. I thought that the bar was all the way up in space and that it’s impossible to reach it. I was pretty lonely.

Of course, I used to also think that my value was in my net worth and you could have seen all the way from space the “I’m an asshole and I don’t know why nobody will date me” vibes radiating off of me.

Then I grew up, I chilled out, and I put conscious effort into things other than my career and being Good At Tech Stuff. Stuff like listening, and exercising my capacity for empathy, and trying to be pleasant to be around. You can project being likeable or interesting for a bit, but I found that it’s easier to be likeable and interesting instead. And suddenly I stopped finding it so difficult at all to find matches and find dates.

I met my previous SO of three years on OKCupid and my current SO on Tinder, and it wasn’t until we’d been dating for quite a while that what I did for a living, all that Is This Man A Provider nonsense, even came up.

The difficulty is between the ears of one party in this selection process. It’s a mix of getting over oneself and understanding that it’s all a numbers game besides, but one of those things doesn’t work without the other.

> listening, and exercising my capacity for empathy, and trying to be pleasant to be around

None of that matters if you aren’t attractive. You have to be attractive for girls to swipe right on you and start a conversation in the first place.

> You have to be attractive

Again, looking in any maternity ward at the fathers you'll see many conventionally unattractive men.

Those are the men who "stuck around". You're not going to see all the deadbeats who are having babies with multiple women in a maternity ward.

Odd thing to but-for him about. About one in five American mothers have children from more than one father, and that includes Very Upstanding(tm) folks who divorce and remarry and not the women falling for those absolute chads of your projection.

A bit of a sidetrack, but that seems like a pretty high number to me. At least in my part of the world, the numbers are at least an order of magnitude lower.

Probably is high. Americans seem to divorce a lot.

It’s actually not that bad if you get out from behind the keyboard and practice. But it’s work and it could take a few years off practice 2-3 times a week.

This is the line peddled by MRAs and similar dirtbags, yes, when they need you to be righteously angry about your situation. And yet, somehow one can muddle along and do alright for oneself--and I am not ugly but I'm not particularly attractive.

As 'rdtwo notes, though, it does take practice and commitment and it does take time.

Continuing to believe that may be what's holding you back. There are less- and un-attractive females that are looking for a partner as well. The "bar being too high" works in both directions.

Also, in regards to longer-term relationships, if this is true:

> You have to be attractive for girls to swipe right on you and start a conversation in the first place.

Then they're probably not the right ones to be starting a conversation with.

> Then they're probably not the right ones to be starting a conversation with.

Why? Aren't women entitled to be attracted by phisique and by passing good genes?

what a wild single standard

You can work on being attractive with good diet and exercise.

I have zero experience with online dating, but I've watched a friend give it a crack after divorce. A brutal appraisal would be: struggling freelancer, doesn't own a house, overweight, mental health issues, greybeard. On the other hand: smart, good sense of humour, etc. Yet he's had a solid number of dates and he puts it down mostly to not putting a picture of him catching a fish in his profile, and holding a decent conversation.

To be fair, this is the 40+ age range. It's possible that 18-25 year olds of both genders haven't yet honed in on what makes for a good partner.

It's exactly like marketing, but the product is you: understand the customer you want, understand the market dynamics, understand the product. Carefully position the product to ensure you are reaching the right customers, and be willing to iterate. I literally A/B tested profile descriptions and pics yo improve my response rates on apps.

And now i have a wonderful SO and don't have to deal with those awful apps for the time being.

> The selection process is on Tinder, not the maternity ward, and the bar is brutally high there for men.

I’ve been seeing this exact trope repeated more and more on HN lately: Some vague assertion that Tinder is the only place for matchmaking and that only a tiny number of men are getting all of the matches.

It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.

Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.

So what is actually going on here? Is this some talking point being repeated on some corner of the internet that resonates with a subset of people who view the world through their cell phones instead of getting out and interacting with real other people? It’s an objectively absurd assertion, yet it gets repeated with great confidence in a lot of online discussions.

Genuinely asking, roughly how old are you? I'm in my early-mid twenties and of the ~100 people I keep in touch with my age range from high school, there has been one child born (by accident if the rumors are true) and zero marriages. Of the dozen or so people I keep in regular contact with I've gathered that this is not for lack of trying, either. Obviously there is bias here as this is all anecdotal, but I'm very curious as to how unique this situation is.

That was the same for me in my mid-20s. By my mid 30s, vast majority are married with children. People are waiting a little longer than the last generation, but it's still happening as normal.

Mid-20s is nothing, especially if your peer group is college educated. My wife and I married at 25 a bit over 20 years ago. Even at that time, we were the first of our friends group to marry. We had our first child right about the time I turned 30. We were only the 2nd of our peer group to have a child. Today, all of our friends from back then are married (a few divorced) with kids.

The trend has been only towards waiting longer in the 20+ years since we were ahead of the curve.

If you're from an affluent background - being married in your 20s is weird. If you're single in your 30s - you should be worried but it's too late. By then - most of your friends will likely marry.

I'm close to your age than some of the other commenters, but I also find that marriage/child statistic unsurprising, not least given the events of the last two years, and the assumption of a vaguely affluent, coastal peer group.

>So what is actually going on here?

It actually matches the real data and studies which have been done on the topic. When men ranked photos of women on a scale of 1-10, the majority of woman were ranked in the 5 category which would indicate the average person is seen as average. While when woman ranked photos of men, the majority of men were ranked bellow 5. The data that has come out of online dating is pretty damning and says a lot more than some anecdotes about some normal men finding partners.

I wish I remembered the exact study from a few years ago because there are more details which were even more depressing but I'm less certain on.

Link to the graphic I believe you're referencing: https://i.imgur.com/L9Vu4Zo.png

The original study was published on the OkCupid blog, but it was taken down after it caught on likely due to the obvious PR implications.

The real world isn't carefully structured studies with arbitrary rating scales, though. People match with each other and settle down.

If you want a scientific explanation, look up "Assortative mating": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mating

The idea that only the most attractive people are entering relationships with each other while everyone else, regardless of gender, is staying single is ridiculous.

Did you date during Covid? I did. Every possible avenue to meet partners was closed except...apps. i am extremely active and extroverted, but yoga classes went online, the gym shut down, the bars closed, concerts were cancelled. Dance studios shut their doors. How exactly were your expecting dating to work for the last few years?

I would not underestimate how much the process of dating and meeting romantic partners has shifted because of that, even as we re-open. the stigma is mostly gone and there is little reason not to at least be present there.

> It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.

> Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.

Have you considered that men are just having less partners than women? Many more men go childless (25%) than women (14%). As far as we can tell - men are having less sex overall. It's obvious that the majority of men eventually get a partner and settle down with someone but that's generally less than the number of partners a woman has before she settles down.

Here's a fun source - and this is BEFORE COVID. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame... I cannot imagine how much more grim it is post-COVID.

I find it weird that you didn't think about that. Men and women generally have very different journeys to their destination. One is usually more consistent in sexual experience whereas the other is wildly varying. The amount of men who have 50+ sexual partners completely dominates the amount of women who do. This doesn't mean that men are having more sex than women though. This means that a few men are having more sex than most women.

This is what feeds into the whole online discussion. It's obvious to anyone who has done online dating or talked to the women. They'll be like, "Oh yeah, I matched with that guy too." It's clear that many women are sleeping with the same select group of men. I don't know how this is a surprise to anyone...

Tinder isn't for relationships, it's a disgusting people market for hook ups. Every profile is basically an ad for a person.

Online dating is toxic, most people I know that used it years ago are still there safe for few unicorns. How could it possibly be? Weren't they lookimg for someone?

Maybe because it distorts relationships and people as commodities thus making meaningful relationships harder to initiate, maintain and commit.

> Online dating is toxic

Most serious relationships and marriages that I known of (including mine) that started within the last 7 years or so originate in online dating. I'm in my 40s. You might want to be a little less sure of your opinions.

Damn near every profile I see says "not here for hookups, no FWB/casual" and people are almost so allergic to any form of flirtatiousness you practically need to keep it "business casual" or you get silence/unmatched. If you're over your mid 20's, you're not using it for hookups, at least in my (US) city.

What is disgusting about consenting adults wanting to hookup?

A note on fitness. Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me. All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight.

I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Chad" ideal that there's no one out there for you (who you'd have an awesome time with). When I look at the incel subculture, it's doubly sad because these boys are being fed a model of how attraction, sex, and dating works that is just flat out wrong. It's like a self-harm club based on false premises.

I think the op was talking of being obese, which it sounds like you are not.

>It's like a self-harm club based on false premises.

My only sticking point with your comment is it's not like that, it is that.

Height is way more important than fitness to women.

Well my 193 centimetres hasn't done me much good ;)

As a 5'3 guy in pretty good shape with a nice apartment, six-figure job, and socially savvy, I agree. Almost all women taller than I am love coming to my parties and genuinely like me. But they are usually unable to see me as a romantic partner because of height. Forget dating apps or bars.

Sorry man, good luck. Your worth is not determined by a woman's superficial glance.

"Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me. All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on."

Same.

I work out as a hobby and for psychological hygeine, i.e. to keep myself disciplined and just feel better.

Oddly when I started dating my current girlfriend she thought my lack of a 'dad-bod' might be too much of a red flag.

Doesn't seem to be the case almost 5 months later.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight.

What women say and which partners they choose in reality are 2 different things. You should always keep that in mind when discussing these issues.

This isn't meant as a critique of women, rather than of people in general. Stated and actual preferences are not the same (it seems obvious once you give it some thought, yet still has to be repeated, since some people just don't get it).

Forget the incel subculture, media - traditional, social, or otherwise has been feeding us that for decades as well. If you're not thin and "beautiful", your romantic prospects are zero so why even try. Admittedly, it's also partially one's own fault for buying into it, but being fed a continual stream of the best looking people from a young age seriously alters one's perspective.

I spent my entire teenage and young adult years thinking that no one could possibly be attracted to me because I was overweight. Yet, I never could seem to pull myself out of the habits that got me there in the first place and I just kept getting larger - from somewhat overweight in high school to morbidly obese by the end of college. No one has ever randomly talked to me in a bar or out in public. The only time I ever experienced that was when I was abroad. I've not made a single non-work friend since college. I don't know where to go to "meet people my own age", etc. Here I am about to turn 29 and my social life is talking over the internet with the people in knew in college and I just feel ... lost. I have a high paying tech job, but that's about the only thing I feel is going well in my life. I recognize that never having to actually worry about money is most people's dream, but I envy those with diverse social lives.

Figured I'd start with actually getting my weight under control. 3 months ago I started religiously tracking calories and I've done a reasonable job of keeping my eating within my goals. Managed to lose 30 pounds so far. Would love to be half way to my target by my 30th birthday. Maybe try a dating app and make sure I'm honest about my looks. I'd love to be able to ride roller coasters again.

Just from a fellow friend trying to lose wait that is awesome how much you have managed to lose and I think that is great. Congratulations on that, keep up the good work. You've inspired me!

Just wanted to say good for you and keep it up re: 30 pounds lost!

What's your exercise regimen? I know there's lot of stuff out there that tells you what to do. Not all of it easy to understand or even effective. Happy to keep replying here to give you some thoughts.

Exercise regimen isn't much at the moment. I'm still 400 lbs, and my doctor said I needed to be careful what I try to do right now because I could easily hurt myself. So for now I've been trying to stick to a 3 mile walk every day, which takes about an hour. Work still being remote has been helpful in that regard. It took a bit to find shoes that didn't cause my shins to hurt when walking every day.

Don't be ashamed to go to a gym or take a fitness class. It's a great way to meet people.

Why would you start dating in an environment where you are most disadvantaged? In person dating plays to your strength as opposed to online where you are fighting your weakness

Please don't take anything I wrote as an attempt to dissuade you from what sounds like a good idea. As others have pointed out, perhaps a lot depends on just how "overweight" one is. Also, do it for yourself -- the rest is incidental.

I'm 6'3"; was 190 lbs at age 19 (university); was 210 pounds at age 21 (could afford to eat out for lunch); was 245 lb at age 40 (depressed + about to be divorced); now back to 220-230 lb at age 46. Would like to be consistently 210-215 ish.

Have dated a number of 30 to 45 yo women who explicitly like a "Dad bod".

EDIT> I have never picked anyone up off the street, at a bar, club, whatever. I pass for sociable, but am actually a big introvert. Like, it bothers me when other people are in my home, with a very few exceptions. But I'm told I have "dork game". So my experience is biased -- only seriously dated in my 40's

Met my true love on Tinder, and she's more of an introvert than I am, yet fun and relaxing / no-maintenance / no-drama to be around.

There's hope.

> I'm 6'3"

> There's hope.

You need to make more friends with people who are down bad.

To be fair though, you're in the top 5% of a massively important trait which women select for with greater precedence than any other physical attribute. 'Dad bod' almost always implies someone of above average height. Women tend to imagine more of a Norm McDonald than a Jason Alexander when they think of 'dad bod'.

If you look at male-oriented fitness subcultures, they’re almost never motivated by sexual attractiveness. The idea of “lifting for women” is typically a taboo that will get you ridiculed in most communities. The ideals of these communities typically revolve around some model of self-improvement, and if the participants are pursuing any type of social status, it’s typically in the form of praise from other men.

100%. I am an avid lifter (not competitive) and love the camaraderie that inevitably pops up at the gym, and elsewhere. I like those comments from the trainer! I like exchanging videos with friends and praising and giving feedback. Now friends with a neighbor of mine almost entirely because I told him that his Crossfit-like home gym looked awesome the second time we met.

> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on.

Contrary to popular belief by men, women are very visual. They say things to each other like 'How do I get the guys I am attracted to to notice me?' The problem we have is that when guys ask why we reject them we can't give any sort of honest answer because the men will start to debate our answers. Combine that with the fact that they are stronger and can physically assault us and many men don't get this important signal and are left with the impression that how they look doesn't matter to women.

Some men do eventually realize that their looks do matter when it plays out in the office.

If you want to look at it from an evolutionary perspective who should I choose for a mate: Someone I can see is strong, fit and in shape or someone who isn't? The lack of muscle definition hints of possible low T in the same way that overweight women hint that they are possibly already pregnant to men. Is that skin issue genetic or from lack of care? Who could better help and protect me and my offspring?

Sidenote: The fact that men don't take care of their skin is such a weird societal issue. Taking care of your skin at the basic level is an aesthetic choice like taking care of your teeth is. It shouldn't be gendered. Everyone should take care of their skin and wear sunscreen, it is your largest organ.

A man that is not overweight, has some muscle definition, showers and wears clothes that actually fit his body is instantly more attractive than the countless men that don't.

To add one final little bit to your original statement:

> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight

We never want you to say that you care about our weight. We want you to care for who we are, not for what we looked like when you met us at 19. One day we will be 60. We also will not tell you what you have to do with your body. We have had a lifetime of men telling us what we should do with ours and know how negative that is. You can weight what you want and if you are our special someone we will not care, but we will be more attracted to you when you are not obese.

The very rich by ability and the very poor by inability to attain family planning, and everyone else in TX.

I maybe in a skewed population (FAANG) but women are much more aggressive here in urban areas. While I was walking downtown, a woman pulled her Mercedes over in traffic and shouted an offer at me. I thought she was hilarious and bold but not attractive enough.

In the past, this was sometimes a thing too: in 1943, my grandmother (15) decided to have my grandfather (21 - war vet at 17 by lying). Their 70-year marriage was technically illegal too.

i mean, there are a certain subset of intelligent, highly competitive women who move to urban areas and are also kinda ugly, so they know they have to be aggressive to have a shot since most men judge women heavily based on appearance. I have been approached and asked for dates by two women in my life, both were intelligent but both were not very attractive.

> My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t.

I think the idea that everyone has the option to settle down and have kids is a relatively recent phenomenon. It used to be that most men never had kids. Nowadays most men do have kids. That said - 25%+ of men will never have children. Kinda wild when you think about that. 1/4 of all men will never have children. Whether this is a choice or not isn't clear (I'm going to go with - not a choice overwhelmingly). The interesting part though is that the number is less than 15% for women. That means that there are ~70% more men than women who will never have children. These stats are usually taken for men who are age 45+ - where the gender balance is more equal.

No doubt. It is so counter intuitive on the surface that the broad family tree has more women than men.

I think it is that we have a bias when having this discussion that children are the product of this Hollywood love story lifelong marriage.

Google says 28 percent of all U.S. women with two or more children have children by more than one man. It is an incredible statistic.

Shit sells products. Straight men are a vulnerable audience to sell to. They want sex as much or more than most women and yet they have the least access to it of all people. Sell an image - get them invested in it and sell products that aim to get them somewhere. Yet - it ultimately does nothing.

I think Japan is a pretty decent model of where most of the US is going. Anime weebs and what not with waifu pillows will become much more normalized and other various forms of NEETs. But with more violence, unfortunately. I think shootings, suicides, and “accidental” deaths are going to stay the course or get worse. We’ll find ways to skew the statistics to cover this up so that we never have to address it (cause that’s require a different way of thinking about capitalism) but I don’t think this problem is going away for a few generations.

We've already seen a few outbreaks the last six or seven years:

* The Santa Barbara shooter angry at women

* The El Paso, TX and Miami, OH shooters angry about the end of white genetic pool dominance or something

* The guy who tried to go on a shooting spree in Harlem and got caught after killing an elderly Black man as practice because "Black men are taking all the White women"

Unfortunately, there are many many more examples of real world violence. If you peer into the abyss that is the online world - it seems like there are an endless amount of shooters waiting to happen in the US. It's no surprise that it happens so often. A lot of men in pain who want everyone else to experience the pain they've been feeling before they themselves commit suicide. With access to guns - it makes it so easy to do.

The biggest surprise for most women out here might be this tidbit: most men are incels until they're not. It's that some men never get out of that horrible rut and a small amount of those are the ones you see end up doing the shootings. The rest suffer silently or just kill themselves.

It's sad. Most of my female friends are completely unaware. All of my male friends are painfully aware because almost every man who ever went through that phase to any significant degree will do almost everything but forget it. Someday we'll get to the point where we acknowledge this but part of me thinks we don't ever want to. If we did - then we'd have to really change things and no one likes to change shit.

https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood

Eh, saying "they're mentally ill" (since obviously these aren't hoaxes) merely obfuscates the sociological etiology of 'mental illness', see Thomas Szasz. Brains are responding to environments largely and for the most part, brains themselves being non-uniform, unless you can demonstrate extreme pathological divergence in the individual case.

Just so people are aware, the Santa Barbara shooter posted a final manifesto on Youtube prior to his actions, so you can totally go listen to him.

The second bullet point, a written manifesto was posted online. The third obviously admitted to his motivations.

You are generalizing your stable situation and values far too much.

The population stats are something like 60% of men will be fathers but 90-95% of women will be mothers. Most women who can reproduce will but a huge percent of men who can will not.

40% of births are outside of marriage in the US.

I would think the only real generalization that can be made is that an introverted guy with money is more likely to get married.

I would bet money on that stat that women being the aggressor in Korea is simply not true in a statistical sense.

Not sure what stats you're looking at. In the US it's about 80% of women [1] and 60% of men [2]. More interesting to me is the overall downward trend in fertility rates.

[1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-rise-of-childless-america

[2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/mens-fer...

I think I am confusing % fertile women vs all men. I think it says about 10% of women are infertile.

One thing to keep in mind with those long term fertility rates is that child mortality rates going back that far is just shocking

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al...

It is too harsh to even think about really.

It is hard also to understand the rise in fertility rates from the 80s to 2010s.

You guys are mixing up numbers. 80% of women have a child at some point in their lives, and 60% of men age 15+ currently are fathers. A lot of those 40% who are currently not fathers yet will become fathers at some point in their lives.

I don't know. It seems like the middle to upper class is having fewer kids, while the lower middle class and poor are having more kids. This could be a bunch of different factors like most needing dual income to do well but not having time with the kids, assistance programs increasing and targeting kids, etc. The ability of people to connect via dating services is high, including the people you categorized as not passing on genetics to be able to meet others in the same category.

> while the lower middle class and poor are having more kids

Most statistics show indeed lower middle class and poor are having more kids than higher income families, but in time the number is decreasing for them too

> Will people who were genetically predisposed towards being thin, hard working, open minded to approaching members of opposite sex and forming deep attachments resulting in children become more frequent?

These are not the people right now having more children - it's those who (often at least partly for reasons of disadvantage) have relatively less impulse control and are poorer at long term thinking/planning.

And/or those who are part of a culture that encourages fertility and discourages contraception.

I don't see how current trends point to this changing in the direction you mention. Being young has more to do with thinness than genetics, and most babies are born outside of marriage.

Edit: added qualifications and clarifications

IQ has been declining for a while now - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718793115

For males, in Norway, from 1962-1991, and with a range of roughly three points. Got anything a little more widespread/recent to back up that claim?

Here's what Our World in Data says: https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence

> Got anything a little more widespread/recent to back up that claim?

The Norwegian study cited to "Dutton E, van der Linden D, Lynn R (2016) The negative Flynn effect: A systematic literature review. Intelligence 59:163–169". Here's the HN thread on that paper specifically: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13723859 (Haven't read it myself; was just curious.)

This should keep you busy: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=An...

Others have linked some studies, but I wasn't aware that there's disagreement about this. I'll have to look into it more.

>I wonder what all these effects will have over the next 200 years?

Well with a birth rate below replacement level there will be less and less people with each generation if the birth rate stays at that level, so in 200 years there's virtually no one left or something like that.

> There is also a massive obesity problem. If people have trouble getting attracted to each other versus the alternatives, makes it really challenging to find the motivation.

Nobody wants to talk about this "elephant in the room" but I agree with you. Even obese people don't find other obese people attractive. Young people are dating (and having less sex) today because the majority of them are obese or overweight.

Birth control has created favor for less masculine men.

When women are ovulating, they are statistically more likely to select men with higher testosterone levels and of course the physical qualities that go along with that (bigger/more muscular, stronger jawline, more aggressive, etc...).

Let me try rephrasing that for you.

When women are horny, they are statistically more likely to select men based on appearance.

"When horny, men are statistically more likely to select women with big tits" is banal and adds nothing to the conversation. I don't understand why these references to ovulation get a pass.

"I don't understand..." Yep.

Before birth control, women normally always had ovulation roughly every month.

After birth control, not as much.

I don't have any idea why you're talking about men.

Ovulation generally corresponds to periods of increased randiness in women.

What, you think women are automatons that can't resist an instinctive prime directive to have babies when they are fertile?

>> Ovulation generally corresponds to periods of increased randiness in women.

Which doesn't mean women only fuck when they're ovulating.

>> can't resist

I'm not sure how you've implied that from what I've said. You sound awfully defensive and angry. I haven't stated any opinions here, in case you didn't notice.

This is such a weird take. You really don't need to be all that special or beautiful to find a partner, I've always been a stocky guy all my life and I never had a real issue finding sexual partners and now I'm happily married with kids.

Get yourself a personality, don't be weird, dress decently and talk to people. That's really all you need, no matter what you look like there's someone out there that's into it.

Don't overcomplicate simple things.

At the height of a loneliness epidemic, it's hard to get a personality and talk to people.

Don't get me wrong, your conclusion is spot on. Getting there is the hard part.

Another factor is we live in a period in time where we have so much choice on how to spend our time, products that are personalized to each of our own tastes, that creates sparsity of shared experiences.

No longer is there a movie like Star Wars, that you could throw a stick and find someone who shares that experience. Now unless you're suckling from the teat of mainstream media, you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.

I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been an experiment adding a social component to Netflix.

> you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.

You may as well just be with yourself at that point. Someone else bringing new experiences that you don't share, to learn and involve yourself in going forward, is where interest is found.

The thing about these kinds of comments is that it's impossible to know why it worked for you, why you're specific situations worked out different.

So many men try all your advice and still struggle greatly.

This really is it - all you have to do is consistently be around the opposite sex while being generally likeable and care about your appearance. Eventually SOMEONE is going to find you attractive.

Yeah exactly this you just need to put in time and effort.

Spot on, I would also add, have a purpose in life, be honest, practice self discipline to achieve your goals.

200 years(maybe even 30-40 years) from now the process of creating babies will probably not be the biological one that it is now. Artificial wombs and genetically selected babies would probably be the norm. You select the traits of the baby you want, share your dna, fill some forms and boom your baby is ready to be installed and delivered in 9 months.

People have been finding partners and having children ... for the entire history of homo sapiens, and our homo ancestors, and their ancestors back to the dawn of sexual reproduction. In fact, there is probably nothing we are better evolved to do than find a partner, make babies, and raise them.

The internet is helping to solve that “problem”

I think the trend is in the opposite direction - the more we advance as a society, the less evolutionary filtering is applied to the population. That means genetic regression over time.

off topic. is the usage of the word "aggressor" here correct in english? I'm not a native speaker and I never seen it used in a non violent context

> I think the ball is firmly in the woman’s court now. Women have most of the advantages (education, societal promotion, fit in better with our institutions)

I don't think we at all can define what individuals should do based on their gender; that is sort of the point. They can be who and what they want to be.

Maybe by some theory women have most of the advantages, but the outcomes clearly indicate otherwise. Look at the successful and elite in almost any field.

You can look at the elite in society and see an over-representation of men, but it's important to also look at the most downtrodden and worse off in society. The homeless; people who are the victims of violent crime; people who die in wars; people who die working shitty jobs; people who are so hopeless that they commit suicide. Perhaps even looking at things like lifespan.

Men's results are bimodal: if women are forced to break through a glass ceiling to reach the elite, men are similarly forced to walk on a glass floor that might collapse at any moment. And when it does, they're fucked.

Are men’s results bimodal or just much higher standard deviation? I feel like there are way, way too many men living a “normal, unremarkably good nor bad” life to sustain a bimodal conclusion.

Probably a higher standard deviation is the better way to phrase it, though it's pretty fat tailed.

People keep repeating this claim, but of course that doesn't signal truth. Is there research behind it?

Yes? At least as far as all the individual points about men dying earlier in general, having higher suicide rates, greater risk of homelessness, worse educational outcomes, etc.

I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.

> the individual points about men dying earlier in general, having higher suicide rates, greater risk of homelessness, worse educational outcomes, etc.

We certainly can find some ways in which the male population is worse off - though that doesn't establish any correlation or causation, inevitably in some ways it's true. But we need to look at the overall picture.

> I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.

That's a pretty incredible strawman. Can you find one person saying that?

I can list lots of ways that men are worse off, and I have done exactly that. You don't even acknowledge them besides writing them off as perhaps minor inconveniences, and ask us to look at the "overall picture" instead without even bothering to try to paint that big picture. Why is the fact that men face significant discrimination in education not part of the big picture?

> Can you find one person saying that?

Let's be explicit about this, since you seem intent on evading the discussion: why shouldn't we treat male-particular suffering, discrimination, and death as important topics for society to address? What possible explanation is there for you to write those issues off as not part of the big picture except for thinking that men deserve it?

absolutely wild to infer that fat people won't have kids because nobody could find them attractive

I think the obesity problem is linked to the fact that many people have to work 60 hours a week to survive and don't have the time/energy to get in shape.

Capitalism has taken a large swath of people out of the dating game just due to working to survive.

People work 10% fewer hours now than in the 1960s, but the obesity rate has gone up from 13% in that time period to 36%. The obesity crisis is IMO more related to what we eat, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG

This may be true, but people are probably commuting for vastly more time per day to their suburban wasteland house that can only be driven to, than fewer minutes worked would compensate for, and the money doesn't go as far—possibly because they felt spending $60k on a dumb car, and 9 hours a week in it, was more sensible than spending 2 hours a week in a physical hobby.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2019001/article...

People worked different jobs back then and did different things for recreation. Food was also different and so were the wages and cost of living.

Plz don’t trivialize it.

Not having a wife at home to make meals, because all households _need_ dual incomes

10% is what, ~30 minutes less?

Just doing dishes and laundry as well as shopping and cooking is 1.5-2 hours a day. 3 if you add cleaning 5-6 if you add child care

Total hours worked in the US has DOUBLED since then.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B4701C0A222NBEA

And more work is done part-time(usually by those are unable to work full time jobs)

https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=B4701C0A222NBEA&ut...

> Total hours worked in the US has DOUBLED since then.

That chart is not adjusted for population.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S

Working population since 1977

We have have roughly 50% working age population(136mil vs 205mil)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B4701C0A222NBEA

Hours worked is 65% more since 1977(155 257)

Or, we're working 15% more per eligible person.

Total hours worked by people who are being paid. If you’re working on a farm but you’re a farmer’s wife you’re not being paid. Female liberation resulted in a very large increase in the labor force, a much less drastic rise in hours worked than in paid labor hours.

Sadly, I don't have any data to refute that:

https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/july/nonfarm-payr....

That said, I doubt it's enough to offset the growth in population among workers.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S

thanks for the follow-up.

I've been scratching my head since orange_joes post because it didn't make sense from what I've been seeing.

Being overweight is overwhelmingly related to eating habits. As the sage advice goes: “you can’t outrun a bad diet”

You may have an argument with the absolute bullshit that people eat in our consumerist society but the fact of the matter is, if your calorie needs are 2000/day and you eat 14000 calories per week of grains, pulses, veg, fruit, meat, etc in the ‘right’ amounts, you’ll stay trim if you’re trim, you’ll stay fat if you’re fat, and any changes need you to adjust the calorie balance accordingly through eating more, eating less or exercising more.

Obesity is largely linked to economic incentives and urban design. The USA for example is dead set on building car dependent cities, which has an knock on effect on both the amount of free time available to leisure and the activity.

In some countries people are slimmer without making a real effort cause there's a higher percentage of people walking to work, and there's less time spent in traffic so that can be redirected to leisure and exercise.

Ehhhh... I don't know that capitalism can be blamed for personal irresponsibility. I'd say it's more of a motivation / knowledge thing. You don't have to live in the gym to get in shape. I spend about 4.5 hours per week total. Even when I've been in the very rare 70-80 hour/week death march, I could take an hour out of my day to go to the gym and lift.

Similarly, dieting is not an activity, more so the absence of one (shoving food in your mouth). When I'm cutting weight, I have more time because I'm not cooking eating food all the damn time. Eat a carrot rather than a Pizza to lose weight is not super rare knowledge. It IS uncomfortable, though.

Okay. And now add any of the following, or a combination, to that situation:

* Ill partner or family members to take care of * Child(ren) * Studying * Long travel times * Irregular working times * Poor upbringing food wise * Stress * Sleep deprivation * etc

Is it still so easy then? That pizza tastes good and is real comforting.

Welp, you've described "being alive," a condition for which some are still able to carve our an hour a few days per week to hit the gym.

That said, "I have sleep deprivation" is indeed a common reason for skipping leg day (along with the vernal equinox)[0].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS-oRydlnCE

The obesity problem is overwhelmingly because of the amount of sugar/HFCS pumped into our foods. We are working less today than 50 years ago, yet those times no one was morbidly obese. Obesity is caused by food, not by the amount you exercise or move.

step 0: if you’re single and think you NEED to work 60 hrs/wk to survive, quit BS’ing yourself. get a roommate and split the rent.

step 1: gather some savings and take an honest (3mo+) break from work.

step 2: take note of which of your habits actually change when freed from the work-imposed time restrictions.

my personal experience: good habits don’t just spontaneously occur out of the vacuum. and social connections don’t just come knocking on your door. you have to decide these things are important to you, motivate yourself, and build your life in support of them.

to the extent that we don’t teach non-job skills in school, that’s a societal failure. if by “capitalism” you’re referring to how much we shape schooling to focus on making you a productive worker, then sure. but this is as much a failure of our democratic systems (which govern schools) and our social norms around child raising (wherein it’s acceptable to believe that govt schooling is the only learning/wisdom a child needs to be given).

“capitalism” is a boogeyman and — without admitting anything of its merits/faults — using it in such a way only serves to keep yourself from understanding the problems you face more concretely.

Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried. (Also stop describing everything you don’t like as “Capitalism”, it is intellectually lazy, instead describe what aspect of Capitalism caused the thing you don’t like directly and provably and with a clear alternative that wouldn’t have had worse downsides)

Good critiques of Capitalism are important to help it continue to evolve, compete, and win in a competitive marketplace of ideas.

I have increasingly noticed this general trend (here, on Reddit, and elsewhere) to just blame a myriad of societal ills on “Capitalism”. Sometimes it’s related to economics or whatever, but more often it’s really a non-sequitur. Some of the problems blamed on Capitalism, it’s not at all clear how communism or socialism or any other system would result in a different outcome. It’s become a thought-ending cliche.

Agree, just tribal signaling, “thing I thoughtlessly think is bad is bad”

I feel the same about every bad weather event being “caused” by climate change in the media. The models predictions are so vague people could blame anything on climate change. Not saying climate change isn’t happening, it is, but blaming everything on it is intellectually dishonest, costs legitimacy, and can lead to poor policy.

> Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years.

That's not wrong, but it came at the cost of massively depleting the oil reserves and polluting the ecosystems.

The same Would have happened with communism or any other economic system, unless we were kept at a pre-industrial level of tech. Collectivist systems don't particularly take better care of their environment.

But to get obese..you actually need to eatmany more calories than you need for a lot of time. If obese people cannot stop eating unhealthy food the problem is mental.

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