Read full text: https://voxday.net/2024/10/17/the-mediocre-death-spiral/
Men are no more welcome in any field that becomes female-dominated than they are in the women’s bathroom. Any man who insists on entering such a field is regarded as a metaphorical transgender whose decision to compete with the female majority there is considered intrinsically unfair. Any man choosing to do so will be considered an interloper and opportunist by the women and as less of a man by the men.
As Carter lays out in considerable detail, this process is natural, inevitable, and absolutely unstoppable. We’ve witnessed it taking place in our lifetimes in several fields, and while academia is not something that most of us pay any attention to, we’ve seen it in books, we’ve seen it in comics, and we’ve seen it in video games. Once the women get involved in a field and start demanding mediocrity while simultaneously decrying excellence, the men start walking away. Competition is replaced by consensus, quality collapses, prestige vanishes, and eventually the entire field becomes a wasteland of posers and imposters pretending to be impressed with each other, producing nothing and selling to no one. Profitable productivity is replaced with political parasitism off financial hosts, and when the ability to parasitize is eventually lost, the entire field collapses.
This is probably a good time to start developing alternative credentials based on objective standards. They will be increasingly in demand as the value of academic credentials continue to collapse. Apprentice systems and guilds are also likely to become more important, as the need to demonstrate an actual ability to do the work required replaces paper certificates of implied potential capability.
