Friday, May 30, 2008

PUA, foreign policy

So, trolling Craigslist the other day looking for random stuff, I came across this ad

David Deangelo, the one who coined famous phrases such as "attraction is not a choice," and "cocky and funny," author of double your dating

is advertising for the craigslist community to see. Yeah, I know I'm behind the curve. There are bootcamps everywhere. But still, craigslist is everywhere, everyone uses it. Now, it's not a matter of tuning into VH1, it's just looking at classes online, and boom, theres exposure to the PUA community.



On a totally different note, some gems from Joe Biden's WSJ editorial


The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the "war on terrorism" that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.


Yeah, I think that's the basic issue. While demonizing and making us deathly afraid of terrorists, we have ignored the rest of the world. That was the message of The World is Flat and we have ignored it to our detriment.

Friday, May 9, 2008

The Singularity and Immigration

The basic lesson of our generation is that there is a cognitive problem. As technology progresses, basic human functions become outsourced to automation. Some politicians blame trade, futile efforts to gain votes and set us back. But regardless, we WILL hit a point in which more and more of the population is no longer necessary. The self check out line at Pathmark? Ordering take out on the internet? Itunes movies instead of blockbuster? Rosetta stone instead of college language courses.

And so this will continue and cause more resentment. Two solutions:

1) Restrict low IQ reproduction and immigration. In order to avoid the creation of a gigantic welfare state where the majority of the population lives off the minority controlling the machines.

2) Merge man and machine. Yeah, I'm serious. Use genetic engineering and cognitive enhancements to make man's brain adjust to the new age, so that man can keep up with
artificial intelligence and remain relevant. Eventually even the smart people like you and me will be exceeded by the AI. Then what?


Anyway......

Check out this nifty lawn mowing machine.

This is why I'm against illegal low IQ Mexican immigration.

Their brains are becoming more and more irrelevant. And instead of developing good automation technology to deal with boring, labor intensive work (like mowing lawns) instead we import Mexicans to do it. And we pay them low wages so that they can compete with the robots. But guess what? The TAXPAYER ends up footing their bill for public transportation, emergency room costs, and educating their children, while they send money home to Mexico and our trade deficit goes up.

This is not how the US builds a super power economy-using people when it can be using robots.

And instead of importing more IIT engineers to build more robots (like patrol drones so that young Americans don't die fighting insurgents in Iraq) we import low IQ mexicans and cut off HB1 visas because of 9/11.


Out with the proletariat, in with the machine revolution!


After all, Obama has the nomination, so doesn't that mean that the hope of the future wins out over the division of the past?

Monday, May 5, 2008

Yes we can.........dance?

To add to Obama's disturbing popularity as personality cult, we have a dance remix of his "Yes we Can" speech at dance department. The disturbing thing? It's not so bad.

Anyway, pretty interesting that Obama is able to get the usually politically apathetic club crowd interested.

Saletan's revenge

In response to the finding on racial differences in responses to heart medication at the nytimes he writes in his weekly column in Slate.

Or maybe not as caustic as I was hoping. Check it out here .

Honestly, I have no idea what he is trying to get across in this article. I'm guessing he's just trying to cover his ass for what he said, but NOT recant what he said. Basically, he wants to say "Yeah I guess there may be racial gaps in IQ or whatever, but why the hell are you looking at race to begin with?"


Even if hereditary inequality among racial averages is a truth, it's less true, more unjust, and more pernicious than framing the same difference in nonracial terms. "The truth," as I accepted and framed it, was itself half-formed. It was, in that sense, a half-truth. And it flunked the practical test I had assigned it: To the extent that a social problem is genetic, you can't ultimately solve it by understanding it in racial terms.


Ok, sure I guess looking at genetics is more important than race. But even in his original column, he said that we should look at people as individuals, not as members of a race. Nothing new here.


In a similar way, policy prescriptions based on race are social malpractice. Not because you can't find patterns on tests, but because any biological theory that starts with observed racial patterns has to end with genetic differences that cross racial lines. Race is the stone age of genetics. If you're a researcher looking for effects of heredity on medical or educational outcomes, race is the closest thing you presently have to genetic information about most people. And as a proxy measure, it sucks.


Ok sure. But what most HBD people believe is that genetic testing will further confirm race differences in intelligence.


We're going to find many more genetic and trait differences among populations. You can't meaningfully denounce every such finding or theory as racist. Racism has to mean something else. I think it should mean looking and settling for racial analysis when some other combination of categories—economics, culture, genetics—more accurately fits the data. It's easy to group people by race and compare averages. But it's pernicious.


I think this is the ultimate of pussy cop outs. Basically, you're setting up 'race realists' as straw men that look at only race when they analyze public policy. We don't do that. We only look at race when ALL OTHER sociological explanations have been exhausted.

Hello? Have you looked at the hand wringing in the economic development literature surrounding hell in Africa? How many people have mentioned race? Have you ever heard Jeffrey Sachs mention genetics?




On the left, it raises the question of whether any policy, including affirmative action, should be based on race. I don't know where those questions will lead. But I'm pretty sure drawing this line is the right first step.



This is by far the most important passage of his article. Sure, we shouldn't look at every single social issue (education, income, crime) through race.

HOWEVER,

if there are racial disparities in any of these fields, Saletan should say that we can't attribute it to racism. What he says is that we should stop worrying about racial disparities in anything in the first place.


All right, for people on planet earth and not on planet think tank, it's pretty hard to ignore race disparities in anything. And self gene theory will imply that we'll look out for our own. So, Saletan again fails to come up with a grand sociological theory to deal with race differences in intelligence. Until people are willing to read Animal Liberation, Saletan:

TRY AGAIN

Saturday, May 3, 2008

NYT and IQ

Well, I guess some convoluted definitions have been created to use instead of IQ, and Brooks has written a column about it here


Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change. Some Americans have seen their jobs shipped overseas, but global competition has accounted for a small share of job creation and destruction over the past few decades. Capital does indeed flow around the world. But as Pankaj Ghemawat of the Harvard Business School has observed, 90 percent of fixed investment around the world is domestic. Companies open plants overseas, but that’s mainly so their production facilities can be close to local markets.


I'm still pretty pro free trade. If you look at the records of countries declining, it usually happens after they close themselves off from the world.


The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?


This basically means that we should have an immigration policy in tune with the new age. People who can mow lawns or pick crops aren't exactly going to supercharge the American economy.

Friday, May 2, 2008

What's no one talking about

So, after this whole Wright scandal we of course had the PC left wing crowd whine about the right wing pastors that no one was criticizing, like Robertson and Falwell. However, McCain never had a long standing relationship with them, and we know that McCain is deeply patriotic and has been around DC for decades.

However, we know very little about Obama, and his pastor fills in the blanks.

But either way, I think this whole episode should highlight flaws in how our country gives moral authority to absolutely ridiculous individuals. This post editorial has the same critiques of black and white pastors, but never addresses the fundamental issue.

Why the hell do we listen to these guys?

Both the black AND the white pastors attempted to place the blame for 9/11 on the United States, whether it was our terrorism abroad or our increased secularism.

Both charges are retarded, and deeply offensive to New Yorkers like me who know people who lost others in the attacks.

No, the problem is that Islam is a violent and intolerant religion and we were stupid to let Muslims into the US, and Bush dropped the ball on looking out for attacks. And the fringe population believes that it was an inside job.

But either way, what defines us as Americans is that we believe we can control our destiny, that God isn't constantly meting out judgment on us based on the lunatic ravings of loud preachers.

So, we have to ask why did Barack Obama need a stupid black pastor to gain legitimacy with the black population on South Side Chicago?

And why did Republicans need to accept the endorsement of stupid white pastors to gain legitimacy with the Christian right?

Let's not award authority where it isn't due.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Not sure what to make of this

Well, Hillary did ok on O'Reilly, but how is she going to respond to this?


Thus began a three-year effort by a notable American to convince your husband to essentially be the "Disclosure President" and end a then 46-year truth embargo on providing the full facts to the American people regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race....Senator, it is your ambition to reach a significant milestone in American history by becoming the first President of the United States who happens to be a woman, or put another way, the 49th female head of state. While this would be an admirable legacy, what the American people need is less legacy and more truth. The people have lost patience with "in loco parentis" government that treats them like children and candidates with long lists of issues they can't discuss because it is not convenient to their campaign or the people "can't handle the truth."


ok...?