In 2020, he had the role of every social media American liberal's favorite conservative (e.g. he warned about corona early, while in Hong Kong). Since then he's slid more into the Christian fundamentalist role, with lines like "my goal is to maximize the number of baptized people."
See, I don't think this is a bad piece, and Lyman is sensitive enough to understand that the peg puts him at risk of minimizing the attack and therefore he spends a lot of words at two different places saying that the attack is the sole fault of the attacker and compares him to the 9/11 hijackers.
Reading the piece, I'm left wondering what "serious restrictions on my religious liberty" the school "flirted with".
And like. If the dude is a fundamentalist Christian, then his professors were CORRECT that his "political beliefs [are] everything wrong with America"!
It’s less that as he puts his worldview on display: Kentucky is very red (it’s not), Transylvania is extremely politically liberal (it’s not), and he’s just a well-reasoned guy trying to explain everything in between (ugh)
I also just don’t acknowledge that Stone and Hess aren’t extremely obviously on a continuum with Jack Posobiec somewhere in the middle and the Christchurch shooter at the far end
Is this somehow defending "pronatalists", like really?
There are no real distinctions anymore. There are ppl who support authoritarianism - today's conservatives/GOP - & those who don't. I don't think people who are holding conferences about women needing to give birth more are outside the former.
Me: Everybody else already has Lyman Stone sewn up but I bet this Daniel Hess character and his imperatively-titled “More Births” substack are a goldmine as well.
Daniel Hess:
And Daniel Hess just seems like a guy who wants to have kids and, per his MoreBirths Substack, cites Elon Musk as another "thinker" about birth rates and how it's definitely the greatest challenge to society. So yeah, totally normal and chill people.
Yeah, I read two of his posts on his blog and he's really into that red pill "high value man" stuff and saying things like "only Israel has figured out higher birth rates amongst developed countries" race science stuff.
The big article he cited points to a study about how high density housing depresses fertility and it's based on two weird assumptions. One is a calc where they just divide population by land mass for a country (which is some Trump Tariffs-level math fuckery).
And the other compared studies with animals and density to humans, so basically saying that because we see fertility rates fall when you put a bunch of mice in a room that would happen to humans too, which is such a stretch you'd need a chiropractor.
He also seems to think you need to convince women they want more kids than they say they want, even though as you noted we're making more people than we can sustain. But hey, hard to argue with the world view of a "high tech" white guy.
Comments
So we're just going to accept any description of him that Liz gives us.
I'm super glad I was away from Twitter in 2020.
And like. If the dude is a fundamentalist Christian, then his professors were CORRECT that his "political beliefs [are] everything wrong with America"!
It was clear when I wrote about it in 2002.
The premise of that article is that it's wrong to make fascists uncomfortable.
I reject that premise.
There are no real distinctions anymore. There are ppl who support authoritarianism - today's conservatives/GOP - & those who don't. I don't think people who are holding conferences about women needing to give birth more are outside the former.
Does Liz think it was all about Ethics in Video Game Journalism?
Daniel Hess:
I'd guess that people who have c sections are often difficult births, and that's what convinces them to have fewer children, not the c section itself
Snorted when I read this
https://www.cato.org/blog/building-babies-build-baby-build-fertility
"Low birthrates" are only a problem if you ignore, say, India.