Weekly Grounding #115
News, links, writing
Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
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“Why Young Men Are Losing Faith in Science”
In a revealing op-ed for the New York Times, self-described “evangelist of science,” Adam Frank, argues that “After 30 years as a researcher, science communicator and university science teacher, I’ve been unsettled by what appears to be a growing skepticism of science among some of my Generation Z students, shaped in part by the different online cultures these young people have grown up in. While I cannot speak to what happens in every corner of the internet, I can speak to the one I’ve been invited into: the ‘manosphere’—a loose network of podcasts, YouTubers and other male influencers. I’ve appeared on some of the manosphere’s most popular shows, including Joe Rogan’s. I’ve watched how curiosity about science can slide into conspiracy-tinged mazes rooted in misinformation. And I believe the first step out of the maze for young men begins by reasserting to them the virtue of hard work—an often grueling but indispensable part of finding the right answers in science.”
What are these right answers? After maligning the “search for ‘the truth,’” promoted by podcasts he dislikes, Frank admits that the justification for science is, indeed, not truth, but, rather technology: “All the scientific marvels on which modern society depends are the fruit of extreme dedication. Rockets, computers and lifesaving medicines all come from decades of effort by scientists hunkered over pages of calculation or the laboratory bench. They required the same tireless, single-minded effort every elite athlete understands. The fringe science appearing in young men’s online social media feeds, however, requires none of that effort. Instead, it stands on proclamations based on profound ignorance and a disinterest in even the most basic scientific principles like those I’m teaching my freshmen this semester.”
Lest women feel left out, Frank proclaims that “women can be antiscience just as much as men; for example, some studies suggest women have more reservations about new vaccines than men,” since, for Frank, having concerns about novel biomedical technologies is by definition “antiscience.”
For an alternative account of the reasons behind the increasing skepticism of science in the United States, see my recent podcast appearance: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Science Philanthropy Empire.”
“Have We Passed Peak Social Media?”
At The Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch writes that “In years to come, we may well look back on September 2025 as the point at which social media jumped the shark and began rapidly accelerating its transition from the place to be seen (through a flattering Instagram filter), to a gaudy backwater of the internet inhabited by those with nothing better to do. Both Meta and OpenAI have recently announced new social platforms that will be filled with AI-generated short-form videos. This assumes a reservoir of untapped demand for the ability to create and binge-watch yet more content, with a promotional video from OpenAI featuring absurd fantastical animations and deepfakes, hinting at some of what may be to come.”
“There is sadly considerable appetite for this ‘slop,’” he writes. “It feeds people’s primal instincts, as evidenced by the multibillion-dollar industry of selling ads against videos of bizarrely soothing sights and sounds, people doing outrageous things, ‘food porn’ and, well, porn. But the gradual merger of the weird guilty pleasure corner of the internet with the major social media platforms—part of a years-long degradation—appears to be turning people away.”
Burn-Murdoch argues that, “In many ways, Meta and OpenAI’s new platforms (AI-generated content is already rife on TikTok and YouTube) are a fitting endpoint for social media’s warped evolution from a place where people swapped updates with friends and family, to one with less and less human-to-human interaction. We have now witnessed the transformation of social media into anti-social media with the progressive disappearance of most people from active participation on the platforms and the steady displacement of real-world interactions by scrolling.”
“Note on New Technologies in China and On Our Human Future”
While social media usage may be on the decline in the West, the contemporary reality in China suggests that this trajectory does not necessarily entail a broader decrease in the use of digital technologies like smart phones. At
, discusses the “most important…element of new technologies that is more apparent in China since it has advanced more on that path than in (say) New York. It is in many cases total and thoughtless dependence on information provided by smart phones to the extent of ignoring any other common-sensical and rather obvious ‘real-world’ information. One’s brain and common-sense seem to have been abandoned in favor of what the small brightly-colored screen tells us.“In part, this is the product of an extraordinary segmented life-style we lead, Milanovic writes. “The life that many people lead is so narrow: it involves going to one’s place of work (or even staying home for remote work), driving back home, driving to the mall, ordering goods on Amazon, and entirely ignoring everything else around. (Often, it involves driving to the restaurant, parking in the underground garage, and then driving back home: an evening of fun.) It fundamentally destroys all city life which consists precisely in knowing other people and places that are around us. Because of ubiquitousness of gadgets and because of problems of communication, that aspect has hypertrophied in Beijing. There is no intercourse (and I use this term in its generic meaning, but perhaps it may soon be used in its acquired meaning too) that does not, at the first step—and even several subsequent ones—involve consulting a third ‘person’: the Artificial Intelligence.”
Milanovic concludes: “I have no doubt that there would be long-term effects of such excessive use of AI. I think that intuition which is one of key ingredients of knowledge will be substantially impaired: we often make judgments of people (‘friend or foe’) or events based on intuition. If that function degenerates, one’s judgments will be much less accurate. Ability to learn would be less too. We may also expect a more generalized dumbing-down of the population. Some of that is already evident. On the other hand, contemporaries tend to exaggerate the negative impact of technological change. The fact that machines instead of people pick cotton has not made us physically weaker. We have substituted going to the gym for picking cotton. Perhaps we shall likewise replace thinking about people or about books by another intellectual activity. It is just hard for us, the contemporaries, to tell what it could be.”
“Tourists Are Flocking to a Chinese Megacity That’s Straight Out of Sci-Fi”
The high-tech, AI-infused vision of contemporary China also attracts many foreign admirers. The Wall Street Journal reports on tourism in the Chinese city of Chongqing: “An elevated train cuts through a residential high-rise. What looks like a street-level plaza is also the roof of a cliff-side building, 22-stories high. At night, the neon skyline lights up like a scene from ‘Blade Runner.’ This futuristic Chinese megacity built on mountains seems like science fiction—which is exactly why Florida retirees Bev and John Martin had to see it. ‘It was just this feast for your eyes everywhere you turn,’ said Bev, 62.”
“Chongqing welcomed 120 million tourists who stayed overnight last year, up 17% from 2023,” the article reports. “In the first half of this year, Chongqing’s border checkpoints handled a record number of foreign nationals—but only 330,000, so overseas visitors who make it here can still brag about visiting a hidden gem…Many credit the tourism surge to social-media influencers, such as ‘Chinese Trump,’ a Chongqing native named Ryan Chen who does a pitch-perfect impression of the U.S. president while eating the city’s signature spicy hot pot. Or local Jackson Lu, who shows a spiraling bus ride on a 20-story-tall elevated highway in a video with 56 million views across TikTok and Instagram.”
“Many international visitors have to apply for tourist visas, including Felix Donaldson, a 29-year-old academic researcher from the U.K., who spent a recent evening in Chongqing on a nighttime river cruise. China has become easier to navigate for non-Mandarin speakers such as Donaldson. Payment and translation apps have made things smoother.”
“Getting More Men Into HEAL Jobs Won’t Solve the Working-class Marriage Crisis”
In an article published by the Institute for Family Studies,
investigates the relationship between working class male employment and family formation: “Starting in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy underwent a sharp shift away from manufacturing, a sector that had long offered stable, well-paying jobs to men without college degrees—a group often identified as ‘working class.’ As manufacturing declined, especially in regions like the Rust Belt that were hardest hit by deindustrialization, job growth concentrated in the service sector. In my hometown of Pittsburgh, for example, civic leaders responded to industrial decline by shifting their focus toward healthcare, education, and financial services. This economic transition created new types of employment but not ones evenly suited to the displaced workers. Many lifelong Pittsburghers felt abandoned by political leaders who seemed more focused on attracting new residents to the city’s growing industries than on supporting those who had lost their jobs.”Martsolf writes that “Between 1980 and 2021, the proportion of married men without a college degree declined by nearly 45 percent…[A] substantial portion of this decline in marriage and family formation rates among working-class men is likely explained by deteriorating job quality. Improving family stability, then, depends in part on improving the economic prospects of this demographic.”
“Many pundits have argued that we should focus on helping working-class Americans enter fast-growing service-sector jobs in fields like caregiving, healthcare support, education, and administration. Some scholars group these under the acronym ‘HEAL’—Health, Education, Administration, and Literacy…However, HEAL fields remain largely female-dominated. While major efforts have been made to encourage women to enter traditionally male-dominated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) occupations, there has been relatively little investment in helping men enter HEAL fields.”
Martsolf argues that “Encouraging more working-class men to enter HEAL fields might be an important strategy to strengthen work and family life for many men, but it is no panacea. A serious strategy to address the intertwined crises of working-class male economic dislocation and declining family formation must go beyond simply promoting entry into available service-sector jobs. Policymakers and community leaders should prioritize expanding access to good jobs that provide a living wage, some degree of autonomy, status, honor, and viable pathways to family provision. Just as important, we must not overlook jobs that offer the structure and environment needed to cultivate the kind of character that also leads to success related to marriage and family. Some HEAL roles may meet this standard—but many likely do not. A more effective approach would identify which HEAL jobs align most closely with the needs and values of working-class men, then invest in education, recruitment, and workplace design to make those roles more accessible and appealing. In this way, HEAL jobs could become not just viable employment options, but genuine vehicles for restoring economic dignity and strengthening family life in the working class.”
“The ‘Tradwife’ Fantasy”
Turning to women and the economy, Rana Foroohar discusses the appeal of the tradwife ideal at The Financial Times: “While the hours women spend in paid work has risen in the past 40 years, men’s hours have barely decreased. Meanwhile, women still do a lot more unpaid work (household work and caregiving) than men do. Add on the general pressures of work life in the US, where schedules have become more unpredictable, two weeks of vacation is a luxury and there is no national mandate for parental leave, and you can see why Instagram daydreams about bread baking would appeal.”
“I think this female fantasy is akin to the one some men may have about a time when they had less job competition,” Foroorhar continues. “Women are now better educated than men in the US (Erika Kirk has multiple degrees; her deceased husband dropped out of college). Female workforce participation gains outpaced those of men for the six years leading up to July, and the growth rates in women’s savings and discretionary spending are also higher. Women are also more willing to take jobs in certain burgeoning service areas, such as healthcare.”
“Add to this the fact that America is a country with a relatively small and diminishing social safety net, as well as a childcare system that works pretty much only for the wealthy, and you have a situation that puts women in particular under a huge amount of stress. There’s a final factor here, and it’s America’s Puritan mythology—now evolved into a conservative Christian mythology—according to which we can work or pray our way out of anything. It just never seems to occur to us to collectively demand better healthcare or childcare as the price of our tax dollars (though the hard-left political swing among younger people may change that). Americans are more likely to pray for prosperity than to march for better pay.”
“I understand the fetishisation of the tradwife lifestyle,” Foroohar concludes. “And I don’t believe it’s an accident that many parts of the country in which conservative messages about female ‘submission’ are most resonant are those in which there’s concern about job displacement by immigrants, or where you have a hollowed out industrial base that resulted in more out-of-work men, lower marriage rates, higher numbers of single parent households and even the deaths of despair…But let’s be clear: most women in America can’t afford to stay at home. And many of those mythologising the lifestyle may not be practising it themselves. Instagram fantasies are no substitute for systemic change.”
What grounded your thinking this week? Share in the comments.