From: The Low Golden Willow (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 05 1997 - 22:28:13 MST
On Mar 5, 8:22pm, Robin Hanson wrote:
} The Low Golden Willow writes:
} >only children apparently are less constrained. (Yay! Guess what I
} >am.) ... Immortal, slowly growing populations could retain looseness
} >even if the adults themselves didn't, through the only children.
} I think you must be assuming that most people are too conservative.
} This isn't supported by Sulloway (nor contradicted). Maybe such
} populations would be too loose.
I admit a bias toward liberalism; more precisely, I consider myself
extremely receptive toward new and halfway plausible ideas, often
getting very excited over them. For a few days, since I never do
anything with the ideas for some time, allowing criticism or lack of
sustainable interest to prevent silly things from happening. And I
think this is a neat strategy.
But Sulloway's idea was that first France, and then the rest of the
West, became more conservative due to changes in family patterns. And
that China might go out the other end. Whatever one thinks of the
"right" amount of conservatism, or whether there is such a beast, the
idea that society's attitudes might change through this mechanism is
rather provocative.
Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix
"In my view, meaning-carrying objects won't submit to being shunted
about (it's demeaning.)" -- Douglas Hofstadter
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