A kind of convoluted thought about child mortality, #science, #religion, #bitcoin and #fiat. Bear with me.

Science/engineneering and religion/spirituality mostly have an antagonistic relationship and throughout history have always shaped each other. One thing I rarely considered in this reciprocal relationship is the simple fact that the common state for mankind has been that child mortality was around 40-50% before reaching reproductive age. That means that in order to just avoid the vanishing of your family, your tribe, your town, your state, women needed to have at least 4 kids on average, often before the age of 20. And the risk of them themselves dying during child births was high.

Pretty much every parent had had to bury multiple own their own children, every sibling saw the death of a brother or sister as children, many saw their mothers dying when they where still young. The natural state of being for any human was death, loss and uncertainty and exposure to all of these as a regular occurance. How was the mind and perspective on life shaped by this reality?

In such a world, there was likely an inclination to be more cautious, to save both resources and emotional energy, and to prepare for the inevitable hardships that would come. The need to cling to moments of joy created a mindset that prized stability, savety and foresight. Is there be a connection to the preference of hard money in past times? Gold and Bitcoin align with a worldview shaped by loss, scarcity, and a high time preference. It encourages people to save and preserve wealth, knowing that the worst can happen at any time. There is a comfort in something that is solid, enduring, and impervious to external manipulation in an uncertain reality. In the face of death and loss, saving both materially and emotionally was essential.

Only the quite recents developments of the last ~100 years (chemistry revolution, antibiotics, understanding of infections diseases & pathogens, etc.) has really changed our relationship with death. Today, the average person is not exposed to death and loss during their formative years. Now, with increased safety of childbirth, there is less of an instinctive need to prepare for the worst. People may feel less of a need to cling to hard assets or to preserve wealth for a rainy day. Instead, fiat currency takes over because external stability seems more assured (so no need to look for it in hard money).

In essence, a world with lower child mortality rates may have subconsciously on a societal level favor fiat money over bitcoin, as people no longer face the same degree of existential uncertainty that characterized the lives of previous generations. Without the same degree of existential uncertainty that once shaped earlier generations, the mindset of saving and preservation has been replaced by a more speculative approach to wealth, where greater risks are accepted, even in the form of money itself.

This is how people designed video games in the past.

When you read fiction of any genre, do you tend to gravitate toward authors and/or main characters of your own gender, or not really and it’s fine either way?

In my reading, it seems about 50/50. Plenty of male and female authors I like, and usually there are a lot of major characters of both genders.

Statistically, women read novels more than men, but it varies by genre, eg romance vs military fiction. I guess part of why my reading is somewhere in the middle is I don’t read pure romance books or pure military books and the like, but rather read adventure/fantasy/sci-fi books that often have one or more romantic arcs, one or more action scenes including sometimes military scenes, heists, crimes, etc.

I listened to this podcast on how to write novels that men would like out of curiosity, and it was interesting. Basically, their thesis is that too much current writing advice is geared to writing for women, so male readers kind of get left out, but then authors pick up on that and write for men, and they do a lot of volume. I think that’s largely correct. However, I also found the advice a bit black and white, like that most women want character development and details of feelings while most men want achievement and details of things.

My assumption is that the majority of men and women readers want both of those things.

So what are your thoughts? Do you tend to gravitate toward authors and characters of your gender or not really?