Singapore's greatest asset is a relatively educated workforce. In the 80s Lee Kuan Yew implemented selectively pronatalist (aka eugenic) policies , like priority daycare, romantic getaways for educated singles and money for sterilization, to try to increase the number of children born to educated women. These were targeted at the better educated Chinese majority. They were both unpopular and ineffective- failing to bring Chinese birthrates up or the age of marriage for Chinese women down.

A couple of posters from Singapore's pronatalist era- 1986

A @sciam article concluded that women have an "endurance activity advantage" and that, therefore, women are as adapted for hunting as men. The piece didn't make a strong case & authors Ocobock and Lacy were pilloried.
Did they respond to criticism in a later online seminar about the pushback they got on their paper? Not really- 1/4

https://x.com/sciam/status/1715374946069692570?s=20

They responded dishonestly to this tweet saying that there was no "evidence for women doing high-risk cooperative big-game hunting in any hunter-gatherer society"


Ocobock countered this by saying there was "no evidence" of "only males" doing big game hunting among Neanderthals (not extant hunter gatherers) or "anatomically modern humans"- pushing the burden of evidence back, rather than tackling the claim directly 2/4

https://x.com/primalpoly/status/1714341374441767417?s=20

Sex differences are a central theme in the culture wars- endorsing evolved sex differences, or even a sex binary can get you in trouble. That's why #TheBigConversation - a conference bringing together some of the most prominent voices on either side of the debate was such a rare event- I wrote about it for @RealLastStand
Here are some of the highlights of the article
🧵 1/20

realityslaststand.com/p/the-sex-wars… The conference consisted of 16 talks and 5 discussion sections- see a recording of the whole conference at the link below.

Some of the attendees were Cordelia Fine @hoovlet @DaphnaJoel @ginarippon1 @PsychoSchmitt David Geary @ProfDavidBuss @CostelloWilliam @TaniaArline Marco del Guidice @sbkaufman David Puts @Lise_Eliot and Maryanne Fisher 2/20

santafeboys.org/recordings-of-…

This weekend I'll be posting from the #thebigconversation an event with opposing voices on sex differences like @Lise_Eliot @PsychoSchmitt @hoovlet @TaniaArline @ginarippon1 @SwipeWright @CostelloWilliam @DaphnaJoel @ml_fisher @sbkaufman & David Geary!
santafeboys.org/why-the-big-co… #thebigconversation on sex and gender differences is going to be livestreamed- you can attend for free at this link form.jotform.com/232276404966159

A thread of interviews I've done for @AporiaMagazine. 🧵 .@AporiaMagazine interviews me on behaviorism and evolutionary psychology aporiamagazine.com/p/make-behavio…

Women on internet forums are constantly encouraging one another to escalate small or nonexistent misdeeds into existential relationship threats. It's incredibly toxic- a few examples: Woman- my husband hasn't initiated sex since I got pregnant and it's making me feel self conscious. During an argument I said "do you think of me as an incubator?" he said "well, you kinda are an incubator" I didn't talk to him for 2 days.
Replies: You go girl!

I polled men on Twitter about if they would prefer to be slapped or to get silent treatment, get yelled at, have a long discussion or go to couple's counseling. A thread about punishment, silent treatment and romantic manipulation 🧵 Do people often manipulate each other in relationships including punishment? You might think it's dysfunctional, unhealthy, or even abusive but you can't say that interpersonal manipulation isn't common. Psychologists have been thinking about this for decades.

Summary of polls I ran asking people to take perspective of person dying & asking how much grief they'd hope their partner would experience, how long they would want their partner to wait after they died to date again and whether they would help their partner find someone new 🧵

https://twitter.com/sentientist/status/1441626746319605760

How much grief would you hope your partner would experience after you die?
21% of people wanted their partner to experience "no grief". Some people in the comments said they wanted their partner to experience intense grief for a short time.

https://twitter.com/sentientist/status/1441626746319605760

Men in relationships with women: Your wife/girlfriend is angry with you. You can either get two hours of annoyed silent treatment or one hard slap across the face. Both options result in the exact same outcome of her not being angry anymore/acting normally. Which do you choose? (Because so many men seem to like silent treatment)
Men:Your wife/girlfriend is angry with you. You can either get 30 minutes of her yelling at you or 1 hard face slap. Both options result in exact same outcome of her not being angry anymore/acting normally. Which do you choose?

The individual choices people make have both been attacked by progressives as eugenics and are defined by philosophers and bioethicists as eugenics. There are also many contexts where state incentives and individual choices come together-thread🧵

https://twitter.com/AdamRutherford/status/1438417646660243461

1-In 2019 George Church developed a dating app to match users that did not share the same genetic diseases. The decision to use this dating app is an individual one- but it caused a huge controversy as eugenics. (pic 1 is my essay)

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1203801451941765120/retweets/with_comments

If Biden's vaccine mandate is enforced, employers will be incentivized to terminate unvaccinated employees. The vaccine mandate will cause a disproportionate impact- Black employees will be most likely & Asian employees least likely to be fired.
data from kff.org/other/state-in… Because the vaccine mandate will have a disproportionate negative impact on Black Americans, it fits @DrIbram's definition of racism.

Here "sin with impunity" is to talk about ideas without prostration to critical theory, disability studies and notions of discrimination.
If you come to a conclusion disagreeable to critical theorists, no amount of handwringing about history or other perspectives is enough.

https://twitter.com/shengokai/status/1401006275014635525

Many have decided to levy a tax on subjects they dislike to impede discussion. The tax is opaque. Is talking for 5 sentences or 2 pages about slavery, the Holocaust or the history of sterilization adequate before you may put forward a controversial perspective?
I will not pay.

My interview with @Animal__People forum. Dylan Forest's excellent questions ended up distilling many of my views on an evolutionary perspective on human morality, human animal relationships and my critique of the vegan movement - thread of quotes below 🧵 animalpeopleforum.org/2021/04/29/hav… I became attracted to evolutionary psychology because it readily compares human and nonhuman animals. Considering both human and nonhuman animals through an evolutionary lens led me to take animal suffering seriously, and to ascribe moral status to the experience of animals.

When faced with the possibility that soon wealthy people could choose to have genetically smarter kids, it's fascinating that way more people are thinking "oh no! more terrible inequality" than are thinking "oh awesome, more geniuses to figure things out to make life better". One shortcut to equality- put lead in the drinking water of wealthy people's children.

From the evidence, it looks like there are going to be more Covid19 variants evolving in the next couple of years in people who are unvaccinated.
My predictions.
I'm happy to be corrected.
thread🧵 1- Many governments will impose a universal vaccine requirement so the unvaccinated don't become reservoirs for the virus to evolve. Even in these countries children and foreigners will be reservoirs. Covid strains will develop that are infectious in the vaccinated.

Interesting thread of research showing white people limit interaction with nonwhite people.
The author frames this as structural racism- but I don't think homophily in any other ethnic group would be regarded as racism. 1/2

https://twitter.com/jonj/status/1361707702733443076

Can we transcend homophily (preference to interact w others more similar)?
Authors suggest given whites choose to self segregate in diverse areas, we should engineer more contact- but what if all ethnic groups prefer to interact amongst themselves? 2/2

https://twitter.com/jonj/status/1361707703635181577

My tolerance of alternative moral, philosophical and political viewpoints comes from a history of being a hardcore vegan -a thread 🧵 1- I used to be a hardcore vegan- A little more than 10 years ago I read @PeterSinger's "Animal Liberation" and went from eating meat to being vegan in one day. And, like many new vegans, I had the fervor of the newly converted.

And yes, sexual interest is very helpful when it comes to improving your tolerance of diverging views- it's one of the only motivations that's stronger than tribalism. But rather than imagining their stick figure coitus, I like to think that Bob and Sally just like to cuddle.

In the dating market, interesting women (even later in life) have a significant edge that many people underestimate - short thread 🧵 Young women at peak physical attractiveness rarely have to try to get romantic attention by being funny/interesting- a time when average men ignored without charisma. It's easiest to learn how to get and and retain people's attention at this young age- women often never have to.

Male athletic advantage in sport via @TheEconomist's coverage of the recent banning of transwomen from rugby economist.com/science-and-te… Testosterone suppression has been a strategy for admitting transwomen into women's sport-1 year of testosterone suppression only reduces about 1/3 to 1/2 of the advantage transwomen have in strength preprints.org/manuscript/202…

Steps to finding an academic paper that you want to read online- thread🧵 Try Google Scholar- scholar.google.com