(Of course, when we use technology and read books, there is a remote participation in the social as these are cultural and thus social products, but that's not what is meant here.)

And look, he found something interesting working alone. Now he can share it with NASA.

It's nice to be able to freely explore topics.

That being said, we cannot discount the manner in which social media do affect people once they've been pulled in. I think most people who have left social media have noticed the reduction of what you might call psychological turbulence. Social media companies are for-profit and morally nihilistic, and like drug dealers, they have an interest in keeping people hooked, often through harmful means. Social media companies are not acting in the best interest of their users. They are acting in the financial interest of their clients and their own pockets. And the software architecture of phones can act as an enabler, like a pocket slot machine, by design.

So it's not either/or. It's more of a question of where you ought to assign responsibility for which observed facts.

"Meanwhile, youth have been doing better on many other outcomes: less crime, less smoking, less drug use, fewer teen pregnancies and fewer high school dropouts."

I don't know how impressive these statistics are. What needs to be considered are the causes. Like, sure, fewer teen pregnancies and less drug use sounds good on paper, but why are these the case? Is it because teens are more virtuous and responsible today? Is it because they've become more selective about who they hang out with, avoiding contact with bad influences? Is it because family life is healthy and models healthy relations? Or is the reason simply a lack of opportunity, because of total social isolation, social underdevelopment, lack of access, or pornography use? The murder rate might drop if you cut off everyone's hands, but I would hardly consider that a victory.

Just war [0] proponents will argue both. For instance, targeting civilians/civilian infrastructure is gravely immoral (the decimation part), but also any armed conflict is unlikely to be successful and thus would be immoral on the grounds that there is no reasonable chance of success (the conquer part). But frankly, in this case, we don't even meet most jus ad bellum criteria, let along jus in bello.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/

What makes you think no-fault divorce is desirable? Stable marriages are integral not only to the individual well-being of those who are married, but to a healthy society in general. No-fault divorce is one of the worst developments in the West, because it feeds mediocrity, selfishness, convenience, and self-indulgence. Requiring a grave reason seems utterly sensible. Do vows mean nothing? Are they just nice little lies to tell each other?

So, making civil divorce more difficult to obtain is beneficial, because individuals are weak, and indeed one of the purposes of the law in general is to teach and to help guide people toward a good life. So, here, by making divorce more difficult, it assists in getting couples to work their issues out. Speaking from experience, I know marriage forces a kind of ultimatum: either ship up as a human being—either keep chiseling away at becoming a better person by becoming a better spouse—or prepare for a miserable marriage. And let's not flatter ourselves: many people choose the latter and reach for the easy way out with divorce.

Appealing to Western hyper-individualism falls on deaf ears, because we've seen the effects of hyper-individualism. Collectivism is bad, but the extreme of hyper-individualism isn't good, either. Why would you want to replicate the tangible failures of the West in your country?

Pedagogy is the primary purpose of educational institutions. That includes universities. However, when research is placed first, you are often left with mediocre teachers, because "who cares?" They were hired to do research and lend the university that kind of prestige; teaching is an afterthought squeezed into the spaces that remain.

And frankly, we haven't the faintest clue today what education is even for. That doesn't bode well.

Add to this the other troubles facing the university, like declining attendance, skyrocketing costs, and AI cheating and we're in for a very interesting transition indeed.

Of course, I do think technology ought to be adopted with prudence and wisdom. We must always remember the purpose of technology which is serving the objective human good, but to be able to do that requires more than narrow technical savvy. You need a wise and substantive grasp of the broader context within which technology is located.

It utterly depends on historical context. Intelligent people understand antonomasia and eponymy.

> Actual Luddites and Pharisees would have not agreed that they were against technology or legalistic hypocrites

That's neither here nor there.

The American auto lobby has spent nearly a century manipulating Americans and American culture by insinuating car ownership and transportation into what it means to be "American". The automobile is a symbol of freedom and independence and plays into the myth of rugged American individualism ("I can drive whenever I want, wherever I want") and masculinity ("I am a real man, because I am independent and because ownership demonstrates I have means"). Certainly, cars do afford a certain practical freedom and comfort for certain use cases—in part because public infrastructure and transport can be hostile to normal human activities instead of supporting them—but in the American mind, these aren't just weighed against a backdrop of practical concerns and superior goods. The car has a quasi-religious quality for many Americans. Getting your license and owning your first car is a practically institutionalized rite of passage into adulthood.

Gov't policy—some gladly endorsed by the auto lobby—also played a role. Zoning (like Euclidean zoning) and urban planning (or lack thereof), coupled with a lack of surviving and robust public transportation infrastructure (like public passenger rail), forced and continues to force Americans into car ownership even if they would prefer other means. The rise of postwar suburb, sprawl, and the death of walkable towns and cities has entrenched the need for car ownership. And we shouldn't forget the financial incentives. Mortgages underwritten by the FHA and VA rewarded sprawl with mortgages while penalizing denser development. Taxpayer revenue also funded roads while regulations capped what privately-owned "public" transportation could charge riders, forcing them into bankruptcy and opening transport up to the predation of companies like GM who snapped up their assets and ripped out rail in favor of their own buses.

However, we're seeing some pushback in Gen Z. American cities and certainly towns are no longer the polluted industrial centers they used to be. We also don't have the post-WWII pressure to divert wartime industry toward other ends to maintain employment, or Cold War fears of having too many people concentrated in large, easy-to-nuke urban centers.

If Tao has a knowledge of the topic (which he does), then it isn't by virtue of being a mathematician per se, but by virtue of an interest in the history of mathematics (which he has). Knowledge of math is enormously helpful here, but it does not imply historical knowledge.

We're talking about adopting cultural practices in a selective and transfigurative way. If a cultural practice doesn't conflict with the Church's teachings and would be beneficial, then it could be embraced as such. A cultural practice may also be transfigured and adapted into something that maintains a certain resemblance, but has a changed and elevated meaning. For instance, having encountered a culture that practices ancestor worship, it might take that practice and transfigure it into a restrained expression of filial piety that moves it away from idolatry. Pagan harvest festivals are another example where the symbolic meaning is changed.

Modern media has allowed the pope to receive unceasing attention that the papacy never possessed historically, but what is important to emphasize is that this is not a reflection of how the Church is administered or how authority is distributed. The idea that the pope is "running the Church" or "watching every member of the one and a half billion member flock like a busybody hawk" is a fiction drawn from jejune ignorance. Rome is notoriously slow to act, which should in general not be seen as a sign of incompetence, but as an expression of subsidiarity. It is much better to view the pope as the ultimate referee rather than some oppressive overlord. The moral ball is in your court, as it were.

W.r.t. absorbing what's around it, the Church has always recognized logos spermatikos or seminal reason, meaning, it recognizes reality as an intelligible creation of God, it recognizes the inherent rational nature of every human being, and thus it recognizes that every human being has an in principle capacity to recognize and know reality, to one degree or another. So, it sees no reason to suppose that there is nothing good or true or beautiful outside the Church and plenty of reason to recognize it and embrace it. What is good is good, what is true is true, what is beautiful is beautiful. When the Church encounters a culture, it seeks what is good within it and seeks to transfigure it in order to rescue its goodness and perfect it. Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit.

Social and cultural expectations and conventions are extremely important. Even in supposedly laissez-faire Western countries where traditional cultural expectations have withered to the point of laxity, people still live their lives according to convention and expectation, even if those conventions and expectations are increasingly vulgar and dictated by powerful interest. (Indeed, the fertility crisis is determined largely by patterns of convention. It used to be that, for most people, it was expected that you would marry and have children earlier rather than later. Now, our cultural expectations actually penalize that kind of behavior. You're supposed to "find yourself", "play the field", or "build up your career" first.)

Human beings operate more by convention than by moral reasoning. Society needs an environment demands good things from them. Even when we know what the right or good course of action is through moral reasoning and discernment, it is very helpful for social convention and culture to support those choices.

The law is also traditionally a source of guardrails that help people attain better lives.

I don't know who comes up with this stuff.

Aristotle wrote extensively about fish eggs, milt and breeding habits centuries before the Christian era. Not only that, fishermen throughout history were well aware that fish laid eggs.

On the other point, original sin applies exclusively to humans. Animals were never considered moral agents, nor were they subject to the Fall of Man in a way that required spiritual redemption.

> sauerkraut and kimchi are both pickled cabbage

Yes, but one uses Brassica oleracea while the other uses Brassica rapa.