Pickup techniques are already ameliorating the inequality by giving the loser guys a shot. Laws that encourage more equal paternal investment, and a more equal distribution of alimony and child custody decisions among sexes, could attack the problem from the other side.
Inequalities are only bad if they deprive someone of a right. You don’t have a right to sex that you don’t provide yourself—no one does. You certainly don’t have an absolute right to father children. No way in hell do you have that right.
Inequalities are only bad if they deprive someone of a right.
I do not believe that you seriously subscribe to this thesis. For example, even the most severe rich/poor divide doesn’t deprive anyone of a right—no one has a right to someone else’s money. Discrimination against women in the workplace doesn’t deprive women of a “right” to be promoted—no such absolute right exists for anyone. Any other ideas?
I do hold it, but obviously it’s more complicated than a single sentence. Severe poverty deprives people of rights to various forms of safety and health, or if not those, then to independence or freedom, that I think everyone has. Discrimination against women in the workplace deprives them of the right to be considered on their relevant merits. (If women really didn’t have the relevant merits, then I wouldn’t think the inequality needed resolution.)
I can invent similarly sounding vacuous rights to justify anything at all. For example, let’s ban cars to give everyone the right to clean air. Or, alternatively, let’s give everyone free cars: the right to transportation. Surely such a right is less far-fetched than your “right” to financial independence or the “right” to be considered, by me, on some “merits” that some organization defined as “relevant”. (Thoughtcrime alert?)
The point of this whole exchange being, of course, that your idea about rights is just a rationalization for defending the status quo of women having higher reproductive chances. No. Severe inequality can be bad for us all even when no “rights” are involved.
Look, I’m obviously not going to sufficiently explain and justify my entire novel ethical system in comments within comments within comments here on Less Wrong. Ask me about it in five years and I’ll e-mail you a copy of my thesis, okay? That is, if you’re actually interested in what I think about ethics instead of looking for excuses to put me down for not thinking you are entitled to reproductive opportunities.
Sorry, I’ll repeat it once again because your reply didn’t really address my words. Reproductive inequality is not about anyone’s personal entitlement to sex. Yes, it’s bad, and it’s bad despite being not about rights. It’s bad because it entails inequal average chances of good stuff happening to random people who were unlucky enough to be born a certain way. It’s bad in the same way that severe inborn IQ and ability gaps between people are bad. It’s not, not, not about rights or “entitlements”.
Maybe your ethical system says in advance that if some issue isn’t about personal rights, then it can’t require a communal solution. Well… then your ethical system is wrong by the criterion of my ethical system and (I imagine) those of many other people.
Could you express the problem you see and the solution you propose in more directly consequentialist language? Different kinds of inequality can lead to different problems and therefore prompt different solutions. If you want to colonise the moon, fine, but it would seem weird to justify that in terms of a “fertility gap” between the Earth and the Moon, since that would be to state a “problem” that could be solved by reducing the fertility of the Earth.
Myself, I don’t much like the socialist angle of attack that always begins with the word “inequality”. Inequality is only a problem because it leads to suffering: in our world many men suffer from being unable to have sex or offspring, whereas in a more equal world men and women would be matched more or less pairwise in percentiles of sexual market value. Yes, it would necessarily mean that some females settle for lower quality males than they currently desire, so your Moon analogy isn’t completely unfounded.
(I believe this thought is at the root of most female critique of PUA: they feel that when men deliberately increase their sexual attractiveness, it amounts to fraudulently disguising low-quality genes.)
Disseminating PUA knowledge is one way to ameliorate the problem, helping the losers rise up. Another way would be legislation to promote more equal parental investment and more equitable child custody decisions in the hope that a) women loosen up and b) alpha men start having fewer ilegitimate kids, pushing more women out into the tails.
And, of course, monogamy can be viewed as another attempt to rescue humanity from the Darwinian horror where a few alpha males get all the girls, and all lesser males are expendable labour and war fodder.
I believe this thought is at the root of most female critique of PUA: they feel that when men deliberately increase their sexual attractiveness, it amounts to fraudulently disguising low-quality genes.
IAWYC here, but I’m pretty sure they’re not actually thinking about genes.
Over the course of human history, about twice as many women as men have been able to reproduce at all. How do you propose to end the inequality?
Even supposing the inequality needs to be ended, what makes you confident that it can be, ethically?
Pickup techniques are already ameliorating the inequality by giving the loser guys a shot. Laws that encourage more equal paternal investment, and a more equal distribution of alimony and child custody decisions among sexes, could attack the problem from the other side.
Point taken.
Inequalities are only bad if they deprive someone of a right. You don’t have a right to sex that you don’t provide yourself—no one does. You certainly don’t have an absolute right to father children. No way in hell do you have that right.
I do not believe that you seriously subscribe to this thesis. For example, even the most severe rich/poor divide doesn’t deprive anyone of a right—no one has a right to someone else’s money. Discrimination against women in the workplace doesn’t deprive women of a “right” to be promoted—no such absolute right exists for anyone. Any other ideas?
I do hold it, but obviously it’s more complicated than a single sentence. Severe poverty deprives people of rights to various forms of safety and health, or if not those, then to independence or freedom, that I think everyone has. Discrimination against women in the workplace deprives them of the right to be considered on their relevant merits. (If women really didn’t have the relevant merits, then I wouldn’t think the inequality needed resolution.)
I can invent similarly sounding vacuous rights to justify anything at all. For example, let’s ban cars to give everyone the right to clean air. Or, alternatively, let’s give everyone free cars: the right to transportation. Surely such a right is less far-fetched than your “right” to financial independence or the “right” to be considered, by me, on some “merits” that some organization defined as “relevant”. (Thoughtcrime alert?)
The point of this whole exchange being, of course, that your idea about rights is just a rationalization for defending the status quo of women having higher reproductive chances. No. Severe inequality can be bad for us all even when no “rights” are involved.
Look, I’m obviously not going to sufficiently explain and justify my entire novel ethical system in comments within comments within comments here on Less Wrong. Ask me about it in five years and I’ll e-mail you a copy of my thesis, okay? That is, if you’re actually interested in what I think about ethics instead of looking for excuses to put me down for not thinking you are entitled to reproductive opportunities.
Sorry, I’ll repeat it once again because your reply didn’t really address my words. Reproductive inequality is not about anyone’s personal entitlement to sex. Yes, it’s bad, and it’s bad despite being not about rights. It’s bad because it entails inequal average chances of good stuff happening to random people who were unlucky enough to be born a certain way. It’s bad in the same way that severe inborn IQ and ability gaps between people are bad. It’s not, not, not about rights or “entitlements”.
Maybe your ethical system says in advance that if some issue isn’t about personal rights, then it can’t require a communal solution. Well… then your ethical system is wrong by the criterion of my ethical system and (I imagine) those of many other people.
Could you express the problem you see and the solution you propose in more directly consequentialist language? Different kinds of inequality can lead to different problems and therefore prompt different solutions. If you want to colonise the moon, fine, but it would seem weird to justify that in terms of a “fertility gap” between the Earth and the Moon, since that would be to state a “problem” that could be solved by reducing the fertility of the Earth.
Fair objection.
Myself, I don’t much like the socialist angle of attack that always begins with the word “inequality”. Inequality is only a problem because it leads to suffering: in our world many men suffer from being unable to have sex or offspring, whereas in a more equal world men and women would be matched more or less pairwise in percentiles of sexual market value. Yes, it would necessarily mean that some females settle for lower quality males than they currently desire, so your Moon analogy isn’t completely unfounded.
(I believe this thought is at the root of most female critique of PUA: they feel that when men deliberately increase their sexual attractiveness, it amounts to fraudulently disguising low-quality genes.)
Disseminating PUA knowledge is one way to ameliorate the problem, helping the losers rise up. Another way would be legislation to promote more equal parental investment and more equitable child custody decisions in the hope that a) women loosen up and b) alpha men start having fewer ilegitimate kids, pushing more women out into the tails.
And, of course, monogamy can be viewed as another attempt to rescue humanity from the Darwinian horror where a few alpha males get all the girls, and all lesser males are expendable labour and war fodder.
IAWYC here, but I’m pretty sure they’re not actually thinking about genes.
Even supposing the inequality should be ended, what makes you confident that there is an ethical way to end it?