Urban Thoughts

What is the purpose of Life?

2011-02-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

Hedonism, according to Roissy

die post-coitus from a heart attack. Leave the world alone to enter a void of nothingness, no different than all those married schlubs who toiled for years to nurture and raise a legacy of strippers and delinquents

If there's nothing after death, then what are you slaving away for?

Where is the future?

2011-02-16T21:31:00.000-08:00

With the Middle East going up in flames in:

Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, Libya, and Yemen,

Where does it end?

According to Kristof

America has important interests at stake in Bahrain — and important values. I hope that our cozy relations with those in power won’t dull our appreciation that history is more likely to side with protesters being shot with rubber bullets than with the regimes doing the shooting.

But do you REALLY Want to know where the future really is?

Look no further than Jeopardy!>

“I for one welcome our new computer overlord,” Jennings wrote underneath his answer for the final clue of the night.

The protesters in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East can go out and whine all they want. But technology keeps accelerating. Islam isn't going to save them when artificial intelligence makes them question everything that makes us human.

More thoughts on Egypt

2011-02-13T22:05:00.000-08:00

An article at National Review deserves quoting:

Many other questions are not being asked in the general euphoria over Mubarak’s demise. Why are the more oppressive governments of Syria, Iran, and Libya not subject to the same degree of popular unrest that is said to be surely spreading to Jordan or the Gulf? Is it because for all the authoritarianism of a Mubarak or a Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, there was never the threat of a genocidal Hama, or thousands perishing on the proscription lists under a Khomeini, or international assassinations of dissidents in the Libyan manner? (Would Egyptian-like protests ever have deposed Saddam and his Baathists [cf. the failure in 1991 after the Shiite/Kurdish uprising]?) Does the greater anti-Westernism of a Syria or Iran counterbalance its oppression in the minds of the populace? Much of this reminds me of a Gandhi being fortunate, to paraphrase Orwell, that he was rebelling against the British, and not Germans of the Third Reich.

What if Mubarak wasn't really that bad...he was just pro-American...

Much has been made of Western social-networking technology, whose entrance in the Arab world has ignited popular outrage over the absence of the elements of civilized life — decent housing, plentiful and safe food and water, effective sewerage, available employment. But how odd that brilliant Western technology — text messaging, Skypeing, iPhones, Google, Facebook — can facilitate the furor over endemic poverty and political oppression, but has so far been unable to materially alleviate the conditions of Middle Eastern poverty — as in novel, inexpensive methods of creating housing, cheaper energy, more plentiful food — that might trump the cultural and political impediments to wealth creation. We can spread Facebook page making to create anger over poverty, but not comparable Western innovations to more directly alleviate poverty.

In a flat world, you're value is defined by how intelligently you use a computer. Egyptians have only themselves to blame for falling behind...

New era of HBD

2011-02-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

With the death of publishing does this mean a new era in HBD and politically incorrect books will be coming out?

After all, these are some other titles sold on kindle:

"Time Jump Into Bondage,"
by John Savage

Dr Helena Carter suffers bondage, pain, whipping and all manner of extreme sexual torment as she "Time Jumps" uncontrollably from the body of one suffering woman in history to another.She was known as "The Ice Woman", because no man seemed to be able to get close to her. As a scientist, her interest was in studying history by "Time Jumping", now that the complex equipment had been re-designed and she was assured that there could not be a repetition of Dr Hutton's seemingly uncontrolled "Jumping". Almost at once, Dr Helena found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Worse, she too had lost control of Time Jumps, and finally when she was thrown into a future society where it had become normal for both male and female slaves to be kept and abused for the delight and sexual gratification of their owners, it seemed there was no hope for her.

"Bang Columbia: Textbook on how to sleep with Columbian women"
by Rooshv

Bang Colombia is a strategy guide designed to help you sleep with Colombian women in Colombia without paying for it. It contains dozens of moves, lines, and tips learned after six months of research in Medellin, where the author dedicated his existence to cracking the code of Colombian women, who are more challenging than their Western counterparts. In addition to teaching you the differences between Colombian and Western culture, it details the logistics of traveling through Colombia, tips on studying Spanish, a packing guide, and recommended nightlife for the country's three largest cities. You'll learn three effective methods of meeting Colombian women, how to combat their flakey nature, how to ask them out via email and phone, how to date them, how to seal the deal quickly using non-obvious shortcuts (even if you're staying at a hostel), and much more. With lines shared in both English and Spanish, Bang Colombia aims to be a must-read for every Western man visiting the country.

"Eugenics: A Reassessment (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence) "
by Richard Lynn

fascinating, multi-faceted book.Professor Lynn sets outs to rescue eugenics from the lowly place to which it fell in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is an ambitious project, and Lynn emerges with scientific and ethical orthodoxy on many fronts. He does this with enthusiasm, moving effortlessly between history, genetics, demographics and ethics before delivering a startling prediction about the central role eugenics will play in 21st century world politics....A new debate is needed, and professor Lynn's book lays a provocative challenge to those who wish to avoid the dystopian future he foresees.

Interesting times ahead...

Friedman's BS

2011-02-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

Mangan's blog does a great job in bringing IQ-reality to Friedman's Friedman's column.

When China can make Egyptian Ramadan toys more cheaply and appealingly than low-wage Egyptians, you know there is problem of competitiveness.

Well, yes, but why? Friedman won't go near that one, as it would upset everything he thinks he knows about global competitiveness.

Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Tunisia today are overflowing with the most frustrated cohort in the world — “the educated unemployables.” They have college degrees on paper but really don’t have the skills to make them globally competitive. I was just in Singapore. Its government is obsessed with things as small as how to better teach fractions to third graders. That has not been Hosni Mubarak’s obsession.

Another great Friedmanian theme with little or no basis in reality: education will solve all our problems. Let's see: Singapore has an estimated IQ of 103, of which the Chinese portion of the population must be closer to Hong Kong's 107 (link), and ranked at number 5 in the world, while Egypt's estimated IQ is 83, ranked number 60. Somehow I doubt that even if it were Mubarak's obsession to teach third graders fractions, Egypt will be a long time catching up to Singapore.

another Friedman column with no comments allowed. Lovely.

Be careful what you wish for...

2011-02-01T18:09:00.000-08:00

neocons and liberals agree on something, I get very nervous.

Here are the results of the Pew survey on Egyptian beliefs:

The Pew survey found wide streams of opinion in Egypt that seem at the very least inhospitable to democracy. When asked which side they would take in a struggle between “groups who want to modernize the country [and] Islamic fundamentalists,” 59 percent of Egyptians picked the fundamentalists, while 27 percent picked the modernizers. In a country in which the army will likely play a deciding role in selecting the next political leadership, just 32 percent believe in civilian control of the military. And a majority, 54 percent, support making segregation of men and women in the workplace the law throughout Egypt.
There’s more. When asked whether suicide bombing can ever be justified, 54 percent said yes (although most believe such occasions are “rare”) Eighty-two percent supported stoning for those who commit adultery.

Quiver. This is not going to turn out well, despite Kristof's optimism.

And we also owe it to the brave men and women of Tahrir Square — and to our own history and values — to make one thing very clear: We stand with the peaceful throngs pleading for democracy, not with those who menace them.

Who's democracy? The right to shut down women's rights? The right to go to suicidal war with Israel? The right to stone apostates to death?

After all the leg chopping, genocide, and witchcraft he's seen in Africa, why does Kristof think that backwards people are capable of ruling themselves?

Friedman urges Israel to create a Palestinian state before it's too late. Too late.

Democracy and Freedom

2011-01-30T14:52:00.000-08:00

Following the chaos in Egypt and Tunisia over the last week, I've been thinking about the nature of democracy. Specifically coming to mind is the analogy of if Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what it for dinner.

The national review has a balanced article looking at responses to the question of if Islamists come after Mubarak.

Obsequiousness to dictators might seem a good short-term strategy, but in the long-term, it undercuts our interests and our moral authority tremendously.

I want to agree

We should not expect a pro-American regime should Mubarak flee into the dustbin of history. Egyptians are fiercely nationalistic and, across the region, ordinary peoples’ mindsets have been shaped by decades of anti-American propaganda. The Egyptian people will be angry that they have fallen so far behind the rest of the world.

How will the Islamic world react to HBD? Average Egyption GDP - 6,000 USD per capita.
Average IQ? 85. Seems about right to me.

Ross Douthat's column is especially enlightening:

The United States supported Mubarak for so long because of two interrelated fears: the fear of another Khomeini and the fear of another Nasser. Both anxieties remain entirely legitimate today.

The first fear everyone understands, because we’re still living with the religious tyranny that Ayatollah Khomeini established in Iran in 1979

Yup

We take refuge in foreign policy systems: liberal internationalism or realpolitik, neoconservatism or noninterventionism. We have theories, and expect the facts to fall into line behind them. Support democracy, and stability will take care of itself. Don’t meddle, and nobody will meddle with you. International institutions will keep the peace. No, balance-of-power politics will do it.

But history makes fools of us all. We make deals with dictators, and reap the whirlwind of terrorism. We promote democracy, and watch Islamists gain power from Iraq to Palestine. We leap into humanitarian interventions, and get bloodied in Somalia. We stay out, and watch genocide engulf Rwanda. We intervene in Afghanistan and then depart, and watch the Taliban take over. We intervene in Afghanistan and stay, and end up trapped there, with no end in sight.

Sooner or later, the theories always fail. The world is too complicated for them, and too tragic.

Current theories of international relations have not taken the differences in human IQ, nor the problems of Islam into account. Nor have they accounted for the disruption that technology will bring.

For all the hand wringing over what motivates people and human nature, I still stick to my main theme:

Follow the pussy.

Now, given the lack of acceptance that pickup ideology has faced in the current establishment, I doubt that International Relations theory is going to incorporate it's findings into the next trendy ideology.

So, we continue to grasp at straws trying to get a framework for understanding how we govern ourselves.

Are you serious? Come on, Friedman.

2011-01-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

I'm still laughing over a recent Friedman column praising Singapore for how they've adapted to the flat world.

But today its per capita income is just below U.S. levels, built with high-end manufacturing, services and exports. The country’s economy grew last year at 14.7 percent, led by biomedical exports.
...

Singapore probably has the freest market in the world

Props

So what's similar between Singapore and the United States?

Singapore is tiny and by no means a U.S.-style democracy. Yet, like America, it has a multiethnic population — Chinese, Indian and Malay — with a big working class.

HAHAHAHA. You're kidding, right? Friedman is essentially saying that being ethnically diverse is a characteristic in and of itself, and the type of diversity means nothing.

Singapore ethnic breakdown:
Chinese: 76.8%
Malay: 13.9%
Indian: 7.9%
Other: 1.4%

United States ethnic breakdown:
White: 60% (80-15% hispanic)
Black: 12.85%
Hispanic: 15%
Asian: 4.43%
Other: 2%

So, the Singaporeans have the Indians and Malays to work with, we have blacks and hispanics. Let's compare:

According to the wikipedia article

Today, Indians earn higher average monthly incomes than the Chinese or Malays and are more likely to hold a university degree than these groups.

Hmmm.....not exactly the equivalent for a minority group, eh?

this article speculates on why Malays haven't done as well as Chinese:

What is of particular in this subject is the way that Malays tended to retain their traditional social forms and many of their occupational patterns despite urbanisation, while the Chinese have embraced the whole process more wholeheartedl

Come on....do you really need to know the answer?

Here is the link: average IQ in Malaysia: 92. Average IQ in China? 100.

Even assuming that the average Malay has an average IQ of 90, African Americans have an average IQ of 85. Hispanic IQ is in the low 90's.

Therefore, Singapore has 14% minority population dragging it down, while the United States has 27.8% Black + Hispanic. Significant difference. This is in addition to a Chinese IQ higher than white IQ.

Thank god we have the jews

Yet another example of Thomas Friedman ignoring racial implications of his flat world theories.

The rest of his column, though, has good pointers about how to reform the government in the US.

Common Sense Immigration Policy

2011-01-27T22:26:00.000-08:00

Here is a recent op ed on immigration policy advocating more skilled workers.

The United States issues far more patents - a primary measure of innovation - than any other country, but immigrants were responsible for about a quarter of them in recent years, according to a study by researchers at Harvard Business School and elsewhere.

At Intel, the world's largest maker of semiconductors, 40 percent of the patents are for work done by Chinese or Indian immigrants, the Council on Foreign Relations reported in 2009.

Immigrants create patents at twice the rate of native-born Americans because they disproportionately hold degrees in science and engineering, Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle and Jennifer Hunt concluded in a study published last year by the Center for Economic Research in London.

Yes, more high-IQ immigrants! I don't think the average American is opposed to that. However, they are opposed to low-IQ Mexican immigration.

Border security and skills have nothing to do with each other. Politically linking them may placate the nativists, but it also puts us on the road to national decline, which surely neither party wants.

What the hell does this mean? Look, just come out and say it: we want engineers, not dumb illiterate Latino peasants.

Now, was that so hard?

SOTU Point by point II

2011-01-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

We need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.

I would LOVE this to happen, but all I can do is point to a phrase:

FOLLOW THE PUSSY

Roissy explains here why nerd-worship is not possible among a broad selection of the population. Guys will always go for the image that's going to get them laid, not the image that's going to help the US maintain dominance!

And let's stop expelling talented, responsible young people who could be staffing our research labs or starting a new business, who could be further enriching this nation.

I actually agree with the DREAM act, from an HBD perspective. But, we also have to do the corollary policies: Build a wall, deport those who aren't contributing, and amend the immigration system to make it easier for educated workers to immigrate, and harder for peasants with nothing to offer.

China is building faster trains and newer airports.

When supposedly patriotic conservatives criticize high speed rail as pie in the sky, what is their reaction when they see China leaping ahead in train technology? They would rather continue subsidizing Saudi oil then making it easier to ride a train from LA to San Diego instead of driving?

Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.

Nice sentiment, but geography is quickly becoming irrelevant. See here

What I'm not willing to do -- what I'm not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a preexisting condition.

Which brings us back to the eternal fundamental health care debate: do I have the obligation to pay for the health care of another American? If, over the course of 30 years, an American is going to use 5 million dollars worth of health care, but only contribute 1 million dollars in taxes, does society have an obligation to keep him maintained?

Ok, I'm done.

SOTU Point by point I

2011-01-26T19:58:00.001-08:00

I'm going to do what every blogger in the world has been doing: SOTU point by point. However, I hope two things will set me apart from the HBD-osphere:
1) I'm hardcore pro American
2) I was an Obama maniac in 2008, and honestly, I still like the guy and wish him well. While no one really knows whats going on in his head the way GWB or Reagan was readable, I think there is some inherent goodness in him.

Here we go, random quotes that I think are important either for their truth or shocking confusion:

We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled.

That, too, is what sets us apart as a nation.

Basic American creed, that the US, as a nation, transcends race and religion.

At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else. It's whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded. It's whether we sustain the leadership that has made America not just a place on a map, but the light to the world.

At stake is whether we or China dominate the Globe.

In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever there's an Internet connection.

Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They're investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer.

It was important for him to say this. Put our national challenges in a technological and globalized context. This, to some degree, pre empts the tea party "leave me alone" rhetoric.

What's more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny.

A profound statement, but accurate. Unfortunate that it was buried amid other ideas. We really are the best.

The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation. None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn't know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do -- what America does better than anyone else -- is spark the creativity and imagination of our people.

That's it - no escaping it. The creative will dominate once automation and outsourcing become standard.

But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout our history, our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need.

This is basic economics. Basic research is a HUGE positive externality, so no one has the motivation to do it. Right wing libertarians have no way to generate basic research when free riding is so rampant.

So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.

Even if global warming is a sham, do we want to be behind China on this? Do we not want to be on the forefrunt of new industries? Do we want to keep subsidizing Russia and Saudi Arabia?

Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school education. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school.

The singularity is coming. Automation is going to kill our workers more than cheap workers in China or India.

The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations.

This is purely an HBD issue. Steve Sailer eloquently breaks down the dempgraphics of our PISA scores here .

Japan vs. China

2011-01-23T21:38:00.000-08:00

Is the China fear a rehash of the Japan fears? this nytimes article says possibly .

What I think is funny, though, is no worries about Nigeria, Brazil, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan challenging US superiority.

Why? IQ.

Does no one see the irony that the two non western countries to challenge the US while the Soviet Union was in decline are both Asian?

What would Friedman say

2010-05-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

So if he could say what he wanted, what would he say?

This analysis of Friedman's Dream Team column talks about the real kind of immigration that Friedman wants:

His enthusiasm is authentic, but the immigration he's endorsing is of a kind that never figures in any of the tediously repetitive Times editorials in favor of open borders. The immigration Friedman wants – "legal," "orderly," resulting in America's attracting and retaining "the world's first-round aspirational and intellectual draft choices" – can actually be seen as consonant with the Center for Immigration Studies' advocacy of a "pro-immigrant policy of lower immigration" predicated on the national interest.

In fact, it's axiomatic that immigration Friedman-style is wholly antithetical to current immigration policy and "comprehensive immigration reform" – which begins with amnesty, though that's an instrumentality, not remotely an end in itself.

This cataclysmic immigration will come overwhelmingly from oligarchic Latin American cultures with chasm-like divides between the rich and the poor, with oppressive, rigid class systems that give their citizenry, particularly their own poor, little access to learning or the means or motivation to pursue the life of the mind. It will result in the importation of a vast less-skilled demographic that is the inverse of Friedman's "Real Dream Team." According to data from the Pew Hispanic Center, some 30 percent of immigrants from Mexico have not finished 9th grade; some 62 percent lack high school diplomas.

Unlike the 40 finalists, a high proportion of the children of today's legal and illegal less-skilled immigrants from Mexico and Central America have parents with very low levels of education, and the parents' education attainment is one of the best predictors of a child's success. The result is that many children from Latin American immigrant families are dropping out of school and socializing downward. While Hispanics once had the highest rate of intact families of any group, the native-born children and grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants have rates of out-of-wedlock births second only to those in the African-American community, one of the principal causes and symptoms of the crises that beset the black community. Nearly half of Hispanic immigrant families use at least one federal welfare program, and the education system is not providing a basis for upward social mobility. In our knowledge-based, post industrial society it is unlikely that the immigrants who come here from Mexico and Central America will provide many of the finalists for the Intel Talent Search for generations; meanwhile we can predict inverse outcomes: high rates of academic failure, functional illiteracy in two languages, welfare dependency, out-of-wedlock births, and disproportionate rates of incarceration.

Devastating.

If Thomas L. Friedman chose to use his influential voice – one especially resonant among liberal Americans – to help them understand how radically different is the immigration he advocates from the sort being pushed by the cynical, greedy, or ethnically chauvinist "comprehensive reform" crowd, he might actually make a difference.

One is allowed to hope, right?

here is another realistic take on Friedman.

another piece actually accuses Friedman of pro-Asian racism:

In our brave new multicultural world presumably it’s okay to be racist so long as the preferred groups aren’t white. Friedman (or his “brainy Indian friend”) are arguing for more immigration by what used to be called the “model minorities,” East and South Asians, who unlike America’s own minorities apparently possess the human, social, and economic capital to become exemplars of the Protestant Ethic. Of course, arguing certain nationalities inherently possess these superior traits is the essence of racism, the flipside of the Nordicism of historical restrictionism and contemporary Buchananism. Though Friedman does make a passing genuflection for immigration by the world’s “best and brightest,” it’s clear who he thinks they are.

Is that really so bad?

Either way, Mexico is completely hypocritical in it's criticism of the Arizona law

And they are actually trying to push illegal immigrants to the US to remove the powder keg.

How to articulate an immigration policy Part 2: Thomas Friedman is HBD aware

2010-04-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

So we've seen somewhat different perspectives on immigration. But ultimately this is the key fact:

Demography is destiny . The higher intelligence a country's population has, the stronger it will be. The better suited it will be to complete in a flat world. The more time will pass before the country's workers become irrelevant through automation. The more likely the country will not be a replay of what happened to Native Indians when the Europeans came .

Anyway, you got my point. But even more basically, I think the United States is the greatest force for good in the world. We spread freedom, communication, democracy, equality, human rights. And the best way for us to keep doing that is to stay as strong as possible by having the most productive people.

This means people with high IQ. This will mean an immigration policy that screens for IQ. This will mean disparate impact between races. This isn't allowed.

So, how do we gain such a policy without it being defeated by egalitarians? Marketing.

And we consult the go to guy of sexy policy marketing, Thomas Friedman.

In a recent column on America's capital, he talks about the role of intelligent immigrants in improving the US.

Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.

No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?

O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.

Not shocked. China and India are the two biggest countries in the world. So when both each are limited to only 50K immigrants per year you're naturally going to get some sort of cream. Also, the elites in both countries (especially so in India) have cultures pro-Education.

When I asked her the secret, she said it was the resources provided by her school, extremely “supportive parents” and a grant from Intel that let her spend part of each day inspiring and preparing students to enter this contest. Then she told me this: Local San Jose realtors are running ads in newspapers in China and India telling potential immigrants to “buy a home” in her Lynbrook school district because it produced “two Intel science winners.”

Haha. Supportive parents? That's code of high IQ and good parents. But yes, I agree. We've got to get the best talent possible.

But let's transition away. In wake of the Arizona law, we have to look at Mexican immigration. Well, let's see what Friedman has to say about that.

.....

No, I'm serious. On the biggest issue of the day, Thomas Friedman has absolutely nothing to say even though he's the guru of "how can America compete in the globalized economy" industry.

Oh, wait. I think I've found something from his column on green energy.

After months of heroic negotiations, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman had forged a bipartisan climate/energy/jobs bill that, while far from perfect, would have, for the first time, put a long-term fixed price on carbon — precisely the kind of price signal U.S. industry and consumers need to start really shifting the economy to clean-power innovations. The bill was supposed to be unveiled on Monday, but it was suddenly postponed because of Graham’s justified fury that the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, had decided to push immigration reform first — even though no such bill is ready — in a bid to attract Hispanic voters to revive his re-election campaign in Nevada.

That's it? Oh, wait there's one more from another recent column.

This critical piece of energy legislation was supposed to be unveiled by the three senators on Monday, but it was suddenly postponed late Saturday because of Senator Graham’s fury that the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the White House were planning to take up a highly controversial immigration measure before the energy bill.

If this is what the Obama administration is doing — to score a few cheap political points with Hispanics — it is a travesty.

This is something. Friedman rants about the paralysis in our political system, and is usually on. Too many extremists, not enough centrists. Too much political correctness. But I think he's trying to use complaining about our political system as a means by which to go against amnesty in immigration reform.

But he can't outright say it, or he'll lose alot of his neocon (invade the world/invite the world) supporters.

So, in today's column on the Mexico Narco war, he goes for the sensational.

The Mexican government just issued a travel advisory warning Mexicans about going to Arizona — where they could get arrested by the police for no reason — and the U.S. government just issued a travel advisory warning Americans about going to northern Mexico — where they could get shot by drug dealers for no reason.

Funny. Not so much for the people living there.

We take the Mexican-American relationship for granted. But with the drug wars in Mexico turning into Wild West shootouts on city streets and with our own immigration politics turning more heated, what’s happening in Mexico has become much more critical to American foreign policy and merits more of our attention. Mexico is not Afghanistan, but it also has not become all that it hoped to be by now. Something feels stalled here.

And that's all he has to say about immigration. How can you talk about Mexico and ignore the elephant in the room - illegal, low skilled immigration?

You can't, so he shut off comments for this column.

But anyway, the something feels stalled here has a very simple explanation. In terms of Mexico's potential it has already been reached. For the amount of educated, intelligent people in the country relative to the illiterate, Mexico has been maxed out. Unlike China and India, which still have a ways to meeting their potential, Mexico has been intertwined with the US for decades and so already has had the chance to meet it's potential but hasn't. We can't say that.

How to articulate an immigration policy Part 1

2010-04-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

So, on the heels of a new immigration bill recently passed by the Arizona legislature , I'm going to dive into this issue.

First, I want to get both perspectives on this issue without hitting the key issue. here is a roundtable with different views.

Liberal View:

LUIS GUTIERREZ, D-IL, CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS: The lunacy of rounding up people because they look a certain way or are suspected of being in violation of immigration statutes can only lead to one thing — violations of people's basic, fundamental civil rights — profiling

Not shocked

Conservative view:

RUSSELL PEARCE, R-ARIZ. STATE SENATE: Illegal is not a race. It's a crime. Our citizens have a constitutional right to expect our laws to be enforced.

Moderate View (Charles Krauthammer):

What liberals don't understand who support the rights of illegals in the country is that if the American people had a fence, that the borders are secure, they are shut — if we built a fence all the way — and we can — and they had a sense this is the last cohort of the illegals, the ten or so million already here, the majority of Americans including me would be in favor of amnesty. If that is the last group that were coming in and the border is shut, that would be OK.

As long as the border remains unsecure, as long as the fence is un-built, you will have states acting in this — I would agree with Fred, in this draconian way.

Frustrated View:

People who want amnesty for illegal immigrants here oppose a fence. And the people who want a fence don't want amnesty.

Did Thomas Friedman miss the memo? Or did Africa?

2010-03-07T23:05:00.000-08:00

So we live in a flat world, right? You know, borders don't matter, instant communication, location is irrelevant, information economy, etc.

At least that's what I thought.

Washington Post has a recent article on second life and the virtual economy.

Second World's economy looks remarkably like that of the physical world. At one end, where most users are, small-business owners such as Moore keep their physical-world day jobs but make a few hundred dollars a year selling niche products such as rain and T-shirts. But as Second Life has grown, some users have built much bigger, full-time businesses: Stiletto Moody sells thousands of high-end shoes for about $8 a pair, and Curious Kitties is a Japanese maker of somewhat risqué clothing.

More than 50 businesses in the virtual world made more than $100,000 each last year.

Second Life's owner, Linden Lab, makes money by selling land plots and islands. An island runs about $1,000, a high barrier of entry for most Second Life users. But to open a strip mall, dance club or office tower, or to build a home, avatars need land. Some Second Life users have taken on Donald Trump-like personas, buying land from Second Life and then leasing plots to small-business owners or would-be homeowners, or flipping their properties as speculators.

I think what we're seeing here is a precursor to a a greater prevalence of virtual reality. As time goes on and the virtual worlds become more sophisticated and people can make a living off of the virtual world, there will be more withdrawal and people will live out entire lives in their apartments since all interaction can be gained through the internet.

Despite it's low rate of success, internet dating has been in the mainstream for several years now.

Apparently, social networking sites are starting to see flattening demand.

Tom Friedman has his latest column on Intel and American Innovation:

While America still has the quality work force, political stability and natural resources a company like Intel needs, said Otellini, the U.S. is badly lagging in developing the next generation of scientific talent and incentives to induce big multinationals to create lots more jobs here.

These local incentives matter because smart, skilled labor is everywhere now. Intel can thrive today — not just survive, but thrive — and never hire another American. Asked if his company was being held back by weak science and math education in America’s K-12 schools, Otellini explained:

“As a citizen, I hate it. As a global employer, I have the luxury of hiring the best engineers anywhere on earth. If I can’t get them out of M.I.T., I’ll get them out of Tsing Hua” — Beijing’s M.I.T.

But there's a problem with this narrative. OK, so talent is everywhere. OK, so people are plugged in and compete with us. I get it.

But what about this:

The Genocide in the Congo with 4-5 million dead in the past decade from disease, starvation, and violence associated with the civil war.

The absolute mess in Somalia that the US is trying to clean up. Funny, I don't hear complaints about US imperialism when we're talking about Africa.

The genocide in Darfur

Continuing rampages of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda

inter religious violence in Nigeria

breast ironing in Cameroon as a preventative measure to prevent rape of adolescent women.

Female genital mutilation throughout Africa

Modern Slavery in Africa

Honestly, I'm getting a bit tired of these example. We keep looking, and unfortunately it's not too hard to find continuous evidence of dysfunction on the lost continent.

But I think it demonstrates a key problem with the flat world thesis. Yes, technology makes us interconnected, and yes, we do have access to all the world's information. I don't deny that.

What Friedman forgets is a set of fundamental facts:

1) Not all people have the same level of intelligence or propensity to obey the law

2) This difference is highly correlated with ethnicity

3) In the world we live in, geography and nation states are still largely organized along ethnic lines for the majority of countries

4) Interconnectedness and access to information cannot help an individual if the said individual chooses to ignore it

5) Internet usage is different between countries and intelligence is the largest determinant of interest in adopting the internet

6) There is a multiplicative factor. Regions where intelligence is low and people are less likely to adopt the internet are even more likely to fall behind because the few intelligent people will have less access to the internet and will therefore have to spend a greater portion of their lives interacting with stupid people, therefore not gaining sufficient stimulation to utilize their brains

When was the last time Friedman wrote an article about Africa? He may gush on and on about India, but ignores the fact that India has more slaves than the US ever did in it's history.

I think to some degree that he an other flat worlders try to never mention the middle east, Africa, or latin America, or Southeast Asia, or the backwards part of South Asia, is that it really bring HBD into focus.

After all, even though there are more than 4 billion mobile phones in circulation, why has the internet penetrated only 1.4 billion of the world's 6.7 billion people?

After all, if all information is available, why are they still so backwards? If everyone is equal, shouldn't we all be on facebook? Should the stigma of being tagged on your myspace profile while performing a child sacrifice ceremony be enough shame to not do it anymore?

I guess not.

HBD Denialism kills: Part 2

2010-01-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

But there's hope. David Brooks in his column on the underlying tragedy of Haiti.

The simple fact is that the tragedy in Haiti is a tragedy of poverty. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services.

So, if the 50,000 dead in Haiti is due to Haiti's poverty, what causes Haiti's poverty?

The first hard truths are universally known but rarely acknowledged among economists:
- the countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
- There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.
-By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.

This is Brook's explanation:

Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

So this is why Haiti is poor, in comparison with Barbados and the Dominican Republic, which have had similar cultural influences.

But there are two serious problems with his piece. He points to "intrusive paternalism" as a potential way to salvage the people of Haiti, pointing to the Harlem CHildren's Zone. But what's the reality?

As Steve Sailer blogged last year about the Harlem miracle, he made a key point:

there's no control group of white students in this study. Nobody bothered to check to see how much white students' scores would go up if a huge amount of money was given to a well-known superstar educator

It's the same situation as the Head Start Program

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors of Freakonomics, conclude that Head Start participation has no lasting effect on test scores in the early years of school, based on regression analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

So if we give up on paternalism, David Brooks has a quote hidden in his column earlier by the economist Abhijit Banerjee It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control

The scary thing is that alot of economists are throwing their hands up in the air and giving up. But to do that is to continue to condemn the millions of children who will die this year because of preventable causes. And that's simply not something we should accept.

HBD denialism kills

2010-01-16T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to lie to you and say I feel truly saddened and emotionally upset with what happened in Haiti.

WHAT? WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU?

Maybe I am a little to unemotional, but to a utilitarian, every person's life is important, every needless death a tragedy. Regardless of whether it's a single incident or spread out over the course of a day .

I think the website has a key quote which we should look at:

The continuation of this suffering and loss of life contravenes the natural human instinct to help in times of disaster. Imagine the horror of the world if a major earthquake were to occur and people stood by and watched without assisting the survivors! Yet every day, the equivalent of a major earthquake killing over 30,000 young children occurs to a disturbingly muted response. They die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death."

Does anyone see the irony in this? 50,000 Haitians are dead as a result of this earthquake. It's a tragedy, sure. But this tragedy happens literally every day.

So I was again dismayed by the predictable response to such an event.

What century are we living in?

2010-01-08T00:38:00.000-08:00

I have trouble believing that in the age of the apple tablet we have access to all the recent published books and all the information of the world available over a wireless internet signal,

but in this same world we have child sacrifice.

Do people who are protesting democracy and free speech and open markets in Afghanistan have any clue as to how backwards a good chunk of the world is?

Do the invite the world invade the world cohort realize that most of the world still has not internalized the values that western nations have cherished for the last 100 years?

Is the human race any better than animals?

IQ reality and terrorism

2010-01-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

So when the HBD-friendly community talks about Islam and terrorism, they make the obvious connections: Islam is a backward, violent religion. I don't deny it. I know that from Paris, New York, and London, to Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia, all the way to Southern Thailand/Phillipines, and Bali, Islam's borders have been violent, and we can point to the Koran and ant secular attitudes of the religion to blame.

But in the course of discussing the < a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab"> recent Christmas terror plot, we've been missing out the role of IQ.

One, is the role of IQ in Yemen becoming a terror haven. Well, let's see:

This Slate article tries to get at it, and they largely succeed. Yemen is poor because of civil war, corruption, and economic mismanagement. And of course low oil reserves.

But they also ask a question:
Lebanon, for example, generates six times as much wealth with no oil at all. How did Yemen get so poor?

Hmmm, just look at the Lebanese diaspora. Lebanese dominate tons of businesses in Africa with a tiny population. The world's richest man at one point was of Lebanese descent, a first generation immigrant in Mexico.

But anyway, does anyone ask WHY Lebanon is so corrupt and mismanaged? Well, let's look at a basic indicator: Average IQ and corruption index!

Top 5 least corrupt countries and their and their average IQ :

1 New Zealand 100
2 Denmark 98
3 Singapore 103
3 Sweden 101
5 Switzerland 101

And the bottom 5:

176 Iraq 87
176 Sudan 72
178 Myanmar 87
179 Afghanistan 84
180 Somalia 68

I'm shock and appalled. Yawn.

This should make us think long and hard about our overseas. post up. Shouldn't the failure of our previous policies in Afghanistan and Iraq make us think a little harder about imagining utopia in other countries?

We are all not the same.

Anyway, I've been profiled before. You learn to deal with it.

Part 2

2009-10-25T08:08:00.001-07:00

Now, while the media focuses on Chinese manufacturing drones and Indian IIT graduates outcompeting midwest labor unions and medium quality amercan engineering graduates, no one talks about how screwed the rest of the third world is in the new flat reality. A recent nytimes article highlights how far we have to go in alieviating global poverty:

I live in a third world country and my job entails screening people for an application process that is primarily computer based. In this country, most people are so computer illiterate that they can't even go on to my company's web site and fill out an application. They frequently go to public notaries, and still make basic mistakes with spelling and biographical questions. The big question I always think is: where is Thomas Friedman now? My friends keep saying: don't worry, they'll catch up eventually. I think: they can't even use a computer and are brain dead when I talk to them, how can they compete with an IIT graduate who designs machines to automate them?

Well, here is your answer on what happens to those left behind in the new economy:

The number of hungry people in the world rose to 1.02 billion this year, or nearly one in seven people, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, despite a 12-year concentrated effort to cut the number.

The global financial recession added at least 100 million people by depriving them of the means to buy enough food, but the numbers were inching up even before the crisis, the United Nations noted in a report last week.

You go hungry. You starve.

Now, I'm not another wide eyed liberal in the likes of Nick Kristof or Jeffrey Sachs who pushes campaigns to eliminate poverty as the duty of the west or "something we can achieve in our generation."

I'm just a person who genuinly cares about innocent children starving to death (about 25,000) per day from preventable causes. This is a moral tragedy on an unimaginable scale, but what really infuriates me more are the grandstanding liberals who don't give HBD a chance to UNDERSTAND the root causes of poverty and put into place measures to alleviate this.

Not to mention the meat eaters who misalocate resources into meat production that could easily go towards alleviating third world hunger.

Nytimes continues:

The so-called green revolution of the 1960s and ’70s ended the specter of mass famines then, but the environmental cost of chemical fertilizers and heavy irrigation has spurred a bitter divide over the right ingredients for a second one.

The green revolution just merely delayed a bare minimum economic reality: In a capitalist system, you get what you produce. And in a system in which an unemployed laborer has no land of his own, there is poverty.

I vast swaths of the third world, there are simply masses of people who produce less economic value than what they need to sustain themselves, and they grow hungry. Why do they produce less? HBD.

And it's just going to get worse. While machines become more intelligent, they will make redundant vast swaths of the labor market. The third world and low intelligence races will suffer the most, because they won't even have a shot at developing IT intense industries. They will be simply bypassed.

So if you're stuck in Latin America, Africa, or South Asia, and are an unskilled laborer with nothing to offer, good luck. Thomas Friedman doesn't even have enough time to write about you, because in the new economy you're already screwed.

Change we can believe in.

The Flat world clashes with HBD Part One

2009-10-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

So I've been saying for awhile now that we are living in a "flat" world in which distances and national boundaries aren't as important or constricting as they were before. This reality is easily demonstrated in the world economy through the devastation of American manufacturing and the outsourcing of tons of low end white collar jobs.

But no one talks about the real scary culprit of the decline in manufacturing: increasing automation and inability of american workers to keep up.

Considering that 85% of Americans have cellphones and while lagging behind some others, we are still one of the most connected countries in the world. Yet, Thomas Friedman has words of warning that are quite prescient:

“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,” argued Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor. “This loss of competitiveness has weakened the American worker’s production of wealth, precisely when technology brought global competition much closer to home. So over a decade, American workers have maintained their standard of living by borrowing and overconsuming vis-à-vis their real income. When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.”

Basically, this is the challenge we face right now in maintaining the US as the top dog economically.

But this is where it hits us on a personal level:

“If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”

Those at the high end of the bottom half — high school grads in construction or manufacturing — have been clobbered by global competition and immigration, added Katz. “But those who have some interpersonal skills — the salesperson who can deal with customers face to face or the home contractor who can help you redesign your kitchen without going to an architect — have done well.”

Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be.

I think that's scary. Steve Sailer agrees too, but points out some basic problems in Friedman's analysis.

I kind of have the impression that quite a few Americans, like, maybe, two or three hundred million of them, don't possess either the IQs or the personalities to be rainmakers. Are they permanently obsolete in the world that Friedman has been such an energetic cheerleader for?

And there you have it folks. While Friedman is fundamentally correct in his assertions about what hurts us, he's blind as to why it will be nearly impossible to overcome. Because everything can be low skilled can be done cheaply in the third world or automated. White collar work that involves thinking can be done over the internet. No one is untouchable from the need to compete with the world.

But what, ultimately, is the quality that determines who wins and who looses their job in the global economy?

Intelligence and IQ.

Flat world folks, meet HUMAN BIODIVERSITY and the fucked up reality:

THE BASIC SKILLS THAT ARE NECESSARY TO SUCEED IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY ARE GENETIC.

Demography is destiny

Oh shit.

I am a SWPL

2009-10-11T22:48:00.000-07:00

Because I don't like eating feces:

records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows.

Philophically, the HBD and Steveosphere has to come to a basic realization about the implications of HBD for our modern notion of what constitutes individual rights.

So here are three statements. Pick 2. You CANNOT believe in all three and have a logically coherent belief system:

1) Condemn Vegetarianism

2) Acknowledge that due to HBD, all humans are not equal

3) Condemn slavery

Now, we can get all fuzzy, Watson, and Saletan and say that intelligence is not a sign of inherent worth. But face it. In an information economy there are only so many athletes and entertainers. By far, intelligent people have more to offer than dumb people. They create civilization and technology and elevate us above animals.

If intelligence is genetic, then we are not equal. Deal with it. This post is for atheists and agnostics (aka thinking people) who think for themselves rather than look to a book to worry about the scheme of humans in the universe.

So back to my original point. I suscribe to statements 2 and 3.
Most people in the Steveosphere have been vocal about believing in 1 and 2 but have been moot about number 3.

Most hippies suscribe only to statement 3. The mainstream media and republicans suscribe to 1, with half and half for 2 and 3 depending on if you lean KKK or lean center.

But you can't go all out on all three. You can't say:

Even though all humans are not equal, I still think it's wrong for us to enslave one another and still perfectly fine to brutally slaughter innocent animals.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Conservatives on Derrion Smith

2009-10-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

I don't have to re hash what happened.

But it is starting to wear away, this idealism that I had after the election. Here is the key phrase from a anti Obama blog I look at:

It is high time for black activists and so-called leaders to put to rest the idea that this is all due to racism. Racism on the part of whites is the very least of the problems facing black America today. There is nothing white America can do other than treat each human being fairly. When you watch the video of the beating death of Derrion Albert, you see no whites involved. This young boy was not the victim of racism.

No racism here.

Notwithstanding the title of this essay, I don't know the solution to this intractable problem. I reject the notion, however, that the government has the solution, that money or programs is the solution or that this is another moment for white America to look itself in the mirror. We have done that. We have recognized our past history and, except for fringe elements, rejected the idea that we are "superior". We do believe in fair play for all. One thing I learned from working in inner cities as a DEA agent is that those areas have lots of good people trying to survive, live in security and keep their kids out of trouble. Unfortunately, there is the criminal element that preys first and foremost on the people in their own community. They are enabled by the radicals and hate-mongers who tell them they are victims of a racist society. They are enabled by liberal judges, academics, journalists and politicians who echo that sentiment. It does no one any good.

The fact is that nobody in Washington has the answer. Nobody in Chicago's city hall has the answer. The answer, whatever it is, is to be found in the south side of Chicago.

And here is the problem. Conservatives shake their heads and blame dysfunctional black culture and black apologists for the problems of black society.

But they are fundamentally wrong. The problem is biology, the fact that 100,000 thousand years ago some enterprising homo sapiens decided to head north and cross into Asia while many more stayed behind. Those that left were quickly culled by the more brutal climate that they had to face and only the intelligent and cooperative survived.

For those that remained, mother nature wasn't a problem. Rather, it was their fellow man. Dominating other men became the means to survive.

And so fundamentally different survival strategies led to fundamentally different beings that emerged.

And now, we are forced to deal with it as a society. How long will the charade of white racism persist? I don't know, but when it crashes, it will crash hard.

So the singularitarians have to be ready to put forth an alternative philosophy, one that involves conquering nature and changing our genetics to erase all these inequalities. We will technologically merge with each other to create a giant living universe where the ego is irrelevant and the concept of equality is incomprehensible.

We are one. Om.

HBD by any other name

2009-09-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

So...back from a long break, just thought I'd share this tidbit on our strange national immigration policy:

This recent article in slate talks about our immigration problems. Here is the key phrase:

About one-quarter of American tech companies are founded in part or entirely by foreigners. The proportion in Silicon Valley is even higher—a recent survey (PDF) by Vivek Wadhwa, an engineering professor at Duke University, showed that more than 52 percent of Valley startups were founded or co-founded by people born outside of the United States. According to Wadhwa's research, immigrant-founded firms produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005.

That's pretty significant if you ask me.

And this should just make you cry:

about 60 percent of doctorate degrees in engineering at American universities are awarded to foreign students who are in the country on temporary visas (PDF). And foreign workers are responsible for some of the tech world's signature innovations. In April, the Times profiled Sanjay Mavinkurve, one of Google's most respected engineers, who, among other things, came up with a brilliant way of reducing the time that Google Maps takes to load on mobile phones. But Mavinkurve—who was born in India, educated at Harvard, and would love to live in America—is stuck working in Google's Toronto office, because the United States won't let him bring his family into the country.

How the hell are we going to maintain our high tech competitiveness if we allow the Vdare anti foreigner crowd to run our immigration policy?

Now, read this phrase by Intel's chairman:

'I'm going to make it such that those smart kids—and as many of them as want to—can stay in the United States.' They're here today, they're graduating today—and they're going home today."

Is this not HBD immigration policy?

Returning to the jist of the article, one thing should jump out. Farhad Manjoo not ONCE mentions Mexicans. Not once does he mention legalization. Not once does he mention Spanish as a second language or borders. Why? Because he cares about the country more than ideology.

See the writing on the wall. The world is becoming more automated. Low skilled jobs that pay a living market wage are becoming rarer and rarer, while our low IQ population is balooning. China and India and Russia are rising to compete with us, and we have to fight back. How do we do that? Raise our national IQ.

That won't work. It's not palatable.

Alternatives? Create a new visa class:

He wants the government to create a new immigration class for founders of new firms. Every year, Graham's "Founder Visa" program would let in 10,000 immigrants who've shown a plan for starting a new company. These people would be barred from working at existing companies—in other words, they wouldn't be "taking American jobs." Instead, Graham argues, they'd be creating jobs: "If we assume four people per startup, which is probably an overestimate, that's 2,500 new companies. Each year," Graham writes. "They wouldn't all grow as big as Google, but out of 2,500 some would come close."

How do you implement HBD oriented policies without using HBD reasoning to sell it to the masses?

Marketing.

Desperation

2009-06-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

It's closing in on Kristof, and he's panicking. His latest column, #1 on nytimes.com, is total drivel and bs.

A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy — the better to read the Talmud — some 1,700 years before any other group.

The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.

But what happens when a culture values intelligence? The intelligent procreate more.

Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”

Damaging to public policy. Another generation of college dropouts that would have made decent mechanics, police officers, or army platoon leaders.

Race...IQ...Yawn

2009-05-09T23:49:00.000-07:00

I don't know, maybe Brooks was reading Saletan and was starting to get scared. After all, there aren't really too many non partisan columnists who try to challenge mainstream wisdom and avoid being pigeonholed. Brooks is one of them. So he saw a challenge when he read those Saletan columns.

So, in response to Saletan's agonizing over racial gaps, Brooks pens the The Harlem miracle essay.

Here's his point:

They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.

Great!

Oh, wait, there's a problems. Though refuted by Half Sigma and Steve Sailer I wanted to add some of my own points:

In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.

Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap.

Did you see how sly that is? Basically, he claims that when black students in a highly rigorous, self selective, intensively studied program equal the average white students in an average academic program, that's eliminating the achievement gap.

What? Brooks himself even details what the black students have to go through:

Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.

Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.

Increase by 50-100% time spent in class, and teach to the test, and you call it a miracle when these students equal non-advantaged white students? This is absurd. Like HS and Sailer said, there was no control group. The gap between black and white exists because given the same resources and opportunities white students will perform better than black students due to innate differences in intelligence.

That's it.

The desperation of Brook's columns and his previous ones such as:

The waning of IQ which is filled with rubbish

and

Genius: The Modern View which is well written but ignores the genetic basis of personality and the ability of people to have easy success with certain fields while others toil.

These columns are in response to his astute observations in The Cognitive Age where he writes:

The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers.

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

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?

How can he write this and also claim IQ is losing its relevance? There is some serious intellectual dishonesty going on with Brooks. On the one hand, he espouses relative conservative views and astute observations about human nature and the economy.

But challenge the notion that all humans are exactly the same, and he shrivels.

He isn't alone.

Woah!

2009-05-07T22:52:00.000-07:00

So Saletan pulls a fast one on us.

In a recent post he criticizes categorizing test scores by race.

Why?

Liberal creationists—people who think no genetically based difference can be admitted in average ability between populations—are mistaken. But that doesn't make race a useful or socially healthy way of categorizing people.

Damn. I didn't think he'd come out and say it. But yeah, NCLB is a failure.

Recently he asked himself what the solution to the problem of egalitarianism was. In a well written deliberation he comes to the conclusion:

In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn't mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals.

I wholeheartedly agree. However, we have 2 serious problems:

1) All of international economic development theory is predicated on the idea that all races have equal intelligence. If this is not true, then institutions will fail. The idea that there are simply not enough smart people in Africa to lead to advanced development will be devastating on multiple levels.

2) The idea of human equality is fundamentally predicated on equality of intelligence between races. Our subjugation of animals is predicated on the idea that it is "natural" and that animals are inferior due to their lower intelligence.

But guess what? Slavery existed in human society just as long as animal domestication. Slavery still exists in some ant societies.

And if it is ok to slaughter animals due to their inferior intelligence, what about humans? Can we enslave them?

To the 1 or 2 people reading this, pay attention. This issue of racial differences in intelligence is a serious problem that our current worldview is totally UNABLE to answer. In an age of massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan, widespread genocide, and political unrest, what is the future of humanity when confronted with this disturbing truth?

All humans are not equal.

Really. Let that sink in for awhile. And now think about how that tears down all our cherished beliefs, institutions, assumptions, and dreams for a better world.

The road ahead is perilous.

Kristof vs. Reality 2

2009-04-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

So, you may ask: what the hell is Nick Kristof doing writing about intelligence?
This article has jumped to #1 on the nytimes emailed list so obviously people are interested in it.

Let me tell you:

The field of statistics has advanced significantly. In the previous ages, people could claim a correlation out of thin air and we'd have to take them at their word. But now, with the use of regression analysis through easily accessible computers, people can ask which numbers correlate with which.

So, people naturally asked the same question of IQ. And guess what? Independent of income, race, gender, etc, IQ has tremendous predictive power. And there's only so long that people can go on denying it. Even Kristof.

But then we look at what Kristof says about the third world. Every week he writes a column guilt tripping us about how the US is responsible for the problems of the third world and that capitalism is flawed. We have to do more to help them. We should throw money at Darfur and Congo.

But then someone asked: what more can we do? After trillions in aid to Africa, what development has there been? Mexico has spent a century next to the most prosperous nation in world history, with export, remissions, and immigration benefits, and they can barely muster a per capita GDP around the world average. What gives? Could it be that they're just dumber than we are?

So he sees this and he gets nervous. His message goes down the tube if people start thinking that biology is destiny. So he pre empts them saying: "sure, IQ matters. But since it's not genetic, there is still a chance for Africa."

The sad truth is that there is no hope. Africa had a higher per capita GDP during colonial white rule. Recently, a poll found that South Africans are less optimistic about their country than when apartheid ended, and they are about the elect a homophobic, rapist, polygamist, AIDS denying future president.

Zimbabwe's economy collapsed when land was taken away from White farmers.

Kenya endured a bloodbath after an election because the tribes couldn't agree who won, while the United States elected it's first minority president.

Somalia's largest source of income is foreign aid and hostage ransoms.

It's a very basic question. If human civilization has collectively abused, mistreated, and slaughtered animals because it is in our benefit, why should we sacrifice our money and time to save Africa? Shouldn't we just let Darfur burn and allow Rwanda to repeat?

Why should species membership alone qualify someone for the collective sympathy and charity of the developed world? If sentient beings perish daily due to the harsh reality of nature, should barbaric humans be the exception?

Kristof says yes because we're all equal.

Unfortunately, he is wrong.

Darfur burns.

Kristof vs. Reality

2009-04-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

So today in the New York Times there is an editorial by Nick Kristof on the role of intelligence. He basically tries to shoot down the notion that intelligence in inherited. Here are some of his arguments:

One gauge of that is that when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study. For example, a French study showed that children from poor households adopted into upper-middle-class homes averaged an I.Q. of 107 by one test and 111 by another. Their siblings who were not adopted averaged 95 on both tests.

Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says.

Flynn Effect

Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades.

He has some interesting points. However, the report entitled Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns showcases a basic fact:

"Recent twin and adoption studies suggest that while the effect of the family environment is substantial in early childhood, it becomes quite small by late adolescence. These findings suggest that differences in the life styles of families whatever their importance may be for many aspects of children's lives make little long-term difference for the skills measured by intelligence tests."

So we can dispute statistics and tests. Every liberal commentator can easily cherry pick a few tests that show that in certain circumstance, stupid people will do better than usual with certain environments. But he never addressed the deep structural contradictions with claiming that everyone has equal IQ. On the surface, you know that's absurd-families raising non-twin siblings easily see the differences in intelligence between them.

What they key is, is that brain structure matters. It's what makes humans more intelligent than animals, and it gives us our own personalities

The researchers said the brain differences are structural and can be measured as variations in the size of specific regions of the brain that appear to be linked with each of the four personality types.

And even just a few years ago the NY Times reported that intelligence was genetic.

The researchers found that average children (I.Q. scores 83 to 108) reached a peak of cortical thickness at age 7 or 8. Highly intelligent children (121 to 149 in I.Q.) reached a peak thickness much later, at 13, followed by a more dynamic pruning process.

One interpretation, Dr. Rapoport said, is that the brains of highly intelligent children are more plastic or changeable, swinging through a higher trajectory of cortical thickening and thinning than occurs in average children. The scans show the "sculpturing or fine tuning of parts of the cortex which support higher level thought, and maybe this is happening more efficiently in the most intelligent children," Dr. Shaw said.

So Part I addressed why the basic science of Kristof is wrong. Part II will address the implications.

Hey

2009-04-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

So after taking some time off, I've come to some conclusions:

1) All people are all equal-not just in their rights, but in intelligence, athletic ability, and attractiveness. Actually, the oppressed groups are probably more equal than everyone else.

2) We should eat meat, since animals were created by a benevolent overlord to be eaten by humans, who were created in his image.

3) Islam is actually a quite beautiful religion once you take everything into account

4) The main purpose of life is to buy stuff to show to others and impress them. Thank God for marketers! If not for them we wouldn't know what to spend on to max out our credit cards!

5) People are usually rational and all their decisions make sense.

6) There is a meaning to our existence

7) Sex outside of holy matrimony is one of the worst sins possible

8) Beware of those advocating using technology to improve the human condition. Natural is the way to go

9) All economic differences between countries are caused by oppression by the Western world.

10) We should let as many unskilled immigrants in as possible, so that we can repay them for holding down their countries.

11) Don't pay attention to the 25K children who will die tonight because of hunger or genocide, and don't let that fact question the previous statements.

Automation is liberation

2009-03-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

How do you end slavery in the world?

How do you end the sexual exploitation of women?

Answer? automation .

But once someone no longer is forced to work because their labor is no longer needed, will they be able to sell it?

Now

2009-02-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

Sure, the negative stuff is below.

But I'm absolutely giddy of the idea of seeing Obama address a joint address to Congress. It's like the inauguration all over again.

How does the Al-Qaeda propoganda machine match this? Shouldn't the oppressed of the Middle East realize that Islam is a broken ideology and American secularism is the way to go?

What's particularly amazing is that Obama's race is no longer such a big deal. We've come far enough as a country that the focus is now shifted to the economy. What can the president do for the people? That is now far more important than what interest or racial group he belongs to.

This is what makes America, and democracy, great.

Dating and the singularity

2009-02-24T13:42:00.000-08:00

People ask why I am so obsessed with the singularity. My answer is that traveling around the world and paying attention to current events without minding political correctness or victim ideology has made me realize that human beings are seriously fucked up. Evolution is a series of selfish genes, not directed by any central intelligence. Humans are not designed to be in the image of god. We are bags of chemicals and DNA that are capable of unlimited cruelty.

Denial of human reality is manifested in the modern day dating debacle following the feminist revolution.

The problem? Women reward bad people with sex.

I'm an avid Roissy reader, but he just hit one out of the park and it's necessary that you read this in order to confront the dark side of human nature.

Hitting a woman will turn her on"

An important quotes:

I am not claiming that women WISH to be beaten. Naturally, if you ask a woman, she will say “No way I don’t want to be beaten!”. What I do claim is that despite a woman’s conscious feelings towards abusers, her loins and her heart melt for men who abuse them, as can be seen by not only their return trips to the poisoned well (50% of women return to their abusive lovers), but by their very REAL and GENUINE love for their violently abusive lovers. Nothwithstanding to the contrary all the feminist squid ink attempting to whitewash in proper PC politesse why women go back to men who hit them, the simplest, and most parsimonious explanation, is that women return to abusers because THEY LOVE THEM. They are drawn to them. I have looked into the eyes of women who were in relationships with men who hit them, and I saw love. True, deep, fathomless love. If you have ever seen the eyes of a woman in love, you’ll know what I mean. They look as if they’re cavorting on another plane of existence.

Even beautiful women like Rihanna, with nearly illimitable options on the sexual market and an extensive support network that would protect her from abusive boyfriends, cannot help but keep going back to the man who hits her. Rihanna is said to be lonely without Chris Brown. She could have almost any man, but she chooses the man who punched her in the face.

Human nature is hell. Free will does not exist. Rationality is a farce. Equality is a myth. The human idealism of leftist ideology and the resistance to change of conservatism are both based on a false premise: that humanity is capable of creating a better world.

This deep insult to our values infects the world we live in. Where women with access to all the men and money in the world go to men who hit them. When drug dealers in mexico recently returned from a beheading, mafia in russia and terror sheiks in the middle east all have access to the beautiful women of the world who happily submit themselves, what has our species become?

This is why I eagerly await the end of the human era. I am not proud to be human. My species is not worth saving and I think machines making logical decisions with moral programming will be far better beings than humans ever could. Don't be afraid. If we change things can only get better.

Don't hold on to the past if it is not worth saving.

Modern day implications of Darwin and Lincoln: Part II

2009-02-20T15:11:00.000-08:00

So unfortunately I don't have the time to write another post so I'm going to put some links down. Connect the dots and you'll find a long narrative connecting shocker race differences in IQ with shocker the singularity.

Sailer on evolution continuing

Race does exist

Darwin's enemies on the left

Sailer on the whitewashing of Darwin

Resisting looking into race and IQ is a losing proposition

Robots are getting better

New innovations make artificial limbs

Was Lincoln a racist?

Head Start Falls further behind

A-Rod and steroids

Darwin and designer babies

Designer babies are here

Evolution has been SPEEDING UP

What do women want?

Holder's absured outburst

Darwin's Descent of Man

Modern day implications of Darwin and Lincoln: Part I

2009-02-15T19:59:00.001-08:00

So on the occasion of the just passed birthday of Darwin AND Lincoln it is appropriate to reflect on their lives and the implications of what they did.

These were two phenomenal men. One of them kept the Union together and freed the slaves. The other revolutionized biology and convulsed religion.

But their legacy remains obscured. Why? Because both men, while the objects of admiration from the left, are deeply misunderstood.

Both men had very different racial views from today's prevailing wisdom. And they happen to have been right.

I'll be honest. As a perennial fan of evolutionary biology and psychology, I always knew that evolution had more to say about race than what we let on. Humans magically didn't stop changing after they branched out from Africa.

And I knew that Lincoln did not have the highest opinion of African Americans, even though he thought they had inherent rights.

But what I didn't do was put it into context. We have just sworn in the first African American President of the United States who used Lincoln's Bible to assume office. Lincoln happened to be born in the same year as Charles Darwin.

So let's dive into it. I'm going to take Lincoln quotes from a recent root article to save myself and yourself the hassle of searching.

"There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Woah! Come again?

Apparently Lincoln took the unlivability to heart

Even as he was writing the Emancipation Proclamation during the summer of 1862, Lincoln was working feverishly to ship all those slaves he was about to free out of the United States. So taken was he with the concept of colonization that he invited five black men to the White House and offered them funding to found a black republic in Panama, for the slaves he was about to free. Earlier, he had advocated that the slaves be freed and shipped to Liberia or Haiti. And just one month before the Emancipation became the law of the land, in his Annual Message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment that would “appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.”

No complaints here. That would have been quite useful.

But you know what? Despite the fact that Lincoln believed this, what makes him more amazing is that he pushed an unpopular policy of giving African Americans citizenship, realizing that ultimately in order to redeem the promise of the American revolution he couldn't lead a country where people were born without freedom.

End of Part I

The individual takes a hit

2009-02-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

So now that people will have to report their location to their loved ones.

Individual Liberty. R.I.P.

Welcome to Gaia.

Subtle Differences among the third world

2009-01-28T20:14:00.000-08:00

So I was tuned into a nytimes article earlier today on rice market betting in Senegal.

Here is a key phrase to look out for:

In countries like Senegal, which, with a population of 13 million, consumes about 600,000 tons of rice a year, cheap imports of staples like rice and wheat from farms in Asia that are vastly more efficient, and often government-subsidized, typically flood local markets. The imports drive out more expensive locally produced rice.
...
Rice is the staple of the Senegalese diet — the national dish, thieboudienne, consists of fish and broken rice grains cooked in a thick and spicy tomato sauce.

But the price of producing rice locally made it more expensive than imports, and as a result, Senegalese farmers produce on average only about 80,000 tons of rice a year, and often struggle to sell that much, according to farming experts here.

The question is why. Why, in a country like Senegal, with a per capita income of 1,800, unable to compete in prices with a big rice exporter like Thailand, with a per capita income of 8,700?

Shouldn't the low wages of the Senegalese workers make it cheap to produce a given quantity of rice in Senegal vs. Thailand?

I have the answer.

Human capital.

In economic terms, we view things simply

P=F(L,C)

Production is a function of labor and capital.

But, what if human capital isn't equal? What if for the same level of capital and labor two groups produce difference products?

HC2>HC1 as the IQ of human capital group 2 is higher than 1.

F(L,C,HC1) < F(L,C,HC2) becomes the only logical conclusion.

You wonder why the Senegalese can't compete? THIS is why.

Read it and weep. Read between the lines. IQ is everywhere. The fall will come one day. It may be sudden, it may be gradual. It may come after genetic engineering makes it irrelevant. But it will come. And we will be vindicated.

Why the Singularity Can't Wait

2009-01-27T15:08:00.000-08:00

So every day that totalitarian governments gain access to future technology while the average person remains aloof is a bad thing.

A Saletan post on Iranian citizens using cell phone cameras to tape a mixed gender soccer game and the resulting aftermath.

The first mixed soccer game—females vs. males—since the 1979 Islamic revolution led to swift punishment Monday, as an Iranian soccer club said it had suspended three officials involved and handed out fines of up to $5,000. Iran's strict Islamic rules ban any physical contact between unrelated men and women, and Iranian women are even banned from attending soccer games when male teams play. ... [The club] said its disciplinary committee suspended two officials for a year while a third was suspended for six months.

The officials—a coach and two managers—first denied the game took place, but video clips on cell phones of the game were used as evidence against them, the daily newspaper reported.

democratized technology can be used just as easily to enforce tyranny as to challenge it. Devices won't point us in the right direction. We'll have to be the ones who point them.

This is why I advocate people keeping up with machines to prevent them being used to turn us into sheep.

Tempering Obama fever

2009-01-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

Politicians are not supposed to be worshiped.

They are politicians, after all.

Barack Obama is no exception.

But yet, on Tuesday, in the National Mall in Washington DC, I was treated to a pretty amazing sight. The entire Mall was filled stretching back to the Monument and beyond.

People are saying he's an amazing man. Sure, his meteoric rise in American politics is amazing, but that is a testament to the openness of our system rather than his ability.

For one, he rose through the Illinois political establishment and ingratiating himself to a racist pastor (who he later throws under a bus when he's no longer convenient) by accommodating the corrupt powers at large. Then, to get his senate seat he was going against Alan Keyes.

You're kidding me, right?

Anyway, this guy never truly faced hardship in life. He was never accused of anything, never served in the military, and failed upwards his life. Sure, maybe racial identification issues, but that's the case with every ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) also!

But anyway, returning to the inauguration. African Americans celebrated, and they deserve that celebration. But, here's a difficult question: what is it that they are celebrating?

Obama is an African American, but he's the son of a PHD Kenyan student and a white woman from Kansas. He grew up in Hawaii. Culturally, his background is as far from the average African American as anyone else in the US.

Obamas behavior is classic "acting white". He would be ridiculed if he grew up in any inner city ghetto.

So, if they say "we did it, we got the presidency" I don't think so. White people in Iowa who were willing to vote for him did it. Sure, electorally African Americans helped Obama, but given that they voted for him based on his race rather than his policies

is this something to be celebrated?

So look. This election is something for Americans to celebrate because it shows the world that we have the most open, fair, meritocratic society out there.

African Americans, on the other hand should be afraid.

The jig is up. The myth of racist America is dead. If a first generation African American can win the Presidency with no accomplishments and no executive experience, running on a theme of change(which is quickly being thrown out the window) and good speeches, then the country truly is open.

Already, writers are trying to pre-empt this notion of a non-racist America with no more excuses

Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the majority whip, tapped into the fervor Monday night at the BET Honors awards in Washington when he proclaimed, “Every child has lost every excuse.”

What? That’s where I have to put my foot down. That’s going a bridge too far.

I’m a big proponent of personal responsibility, but children too often don’t have a choice. They are either prisoners of their parentage or privileged by it. Some of their excuses are hollow. But other excuses are legitimate, and they didn’t magically disappear when Obama put his left hand on the Lincoln Bible.

Too late. Americans are sick and tired of racial guilt. You want racism? Travel ANYWHERE is the world outside the US. I have experienced it. I've been through racism. The US doesn't compare.

So, we're going to be skeptical of excuses made by blacks.

We're going to expect Obama to change the ghetto culture

Until at least 2013, the whole world will watch a debonair black man whose studiousness and diligence transported him from a broken home to the world's most famous house. He will share it with Michelle Obama, his wife of 16 years. Just like her husband, the first lady avoided the 50-percent black high-school dropout rate, graduated from an Ivy League university and earned a Harvard law degree. The Obamas' two daughters know their father and enjoy him in their daily lives.

What a great thought. Black America sees a great role model and emulates him and removes themselves from the pits of American society.

Sorry to burst your bubble, people, but this ain't going to happen.

Why?

Because behavior is genetic. And the behavior of African Americans (failure in schools, out of wedlock births, high crime rate) is genetic in nature.

Sorry, folks.

Even more fascinating, Roissy has a post on inter racial dating.

Why don’t black chicks dig white guys and vice versa? In a word: testosterone. Blacks have more of it, and more androgen receptors, than other races. The same testosterone that imbues black men with attractive masculine features and musculature makes black women look less feminine. On average. This isn’t an assertion from anecdote, because in my personal life I know quite a few really cute black chicks. I’m judging based on general observations and what I’ve heard from men of all races when the subject came up. Since women are attracted to men with lots of testosterone (for fucking, at least), it stands to reason that black women would want men who have more of it relative to their own. Here, few white and even fewer Asian men qualify as acceptable partners for black women.

It's really that simple. Steve Sailer has been talking about it for a decade.

So now we get the racist accusations from his readers. Hedgie claims:

This is some racist shit, but hey whatever keeps you happy.

But guess what? Roissy knows his shit. Call him racist, but that doesn't make it wrong.

The jig is up. Human nature is doomed. Enter the singularity.

Ants and the Islam

2009-01-15T14:02:00.000-08:00

Is this the root of our sexual prudery, back millions of years ago when humans diverged from ants?

Roissy generally has scathing things to say about them. To me, it's simple. Marriage is a dead institution. Let women be sluts as long as they use birth control. But apparently our cultural intolerance of profligate sex isn't just a human thing.

To the long list of reasons you should be glad you're not an ant, add this: You'd have to forget about having sex. You'd also have to forget about even trying. Sneak off for a little insectile assignation and the other members of the colony would know immediately — and attack you for it...

Ants that are capable of reproducing naturally emit hydrocarbon-based odors, and the eggs they produce smell the same way. Ants that can't reproduce emit no such odor. Liebig and Smith produced a synthetic hydrocarbon in the lab that had the same olfactory properties as the natural one, then plucked a few innocent ants from a nest and dabbed the chemical on them. When they were returned to the colony, they were promptly attacked — never mind that they had essentially been framed.

"I was convinced, because I knew that Koran was giving them the responsibility to do that."

Change we can believe in? Let's wait and see. Multicultural tolerance is not going to do anything for women in the Islamic world.

Dawkins on Speciesm

2009-01-10T19:58:00.000-08:00

So for the upteenth time: It's wrong to eat meat just because humans dominate animals. Why? Because whites used Africans for slave labor because they "could". And then we realized that it was wrong.

So when I bring this up to the typical HBD crowd they freeze up. To them, most vegetarians that they criticize are tree hugging Obama groupies who eat organic and want the welfare state.

Not me. I'm a cold hearted atheist utilitarian who simply thinks it's barbaric to kill sentient beings just for nutrients that we can get more efficiently from other sources.

What's the defense of the HBD community? Humanity matters. Blacks are human beings so we don't enslave them.

But here's a simple question: So what?

A species is just a species. It's just a bunch of living beings who can mate with each other. Membership is not automatically a guarantor of rights. I fight hobbes in that respect, though I still like democracy (it's the worst system, aside from all the others).

So, I have a likely ally in the fight. Richard Dawkins. In response to the edge question of the year: What will change everything? Here is his answer:

Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status.

But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could ... fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case ... who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.

We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.

VICTORY IS MINE!

One of the greatest biologists of the century just declared that human being doesn't matter.

I recommend morningstar farms for beginners. :)

I am immortal (and so are you).

2009-01-08T20:21:00.000-08:00

Don't know, but check out this post by Saletan.

The announcement, from the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, requests "a highly interactive PC or web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with virtual renditions of deployed Service Members." The application must "produce compelling interactive dialogue between a Service member and their families … using video footage or high-resolution 3-D rendering. The child should be able to have a simulated conversation with a parent about generic, everyday topics. For instance, a child may get a response from saying 'I love you', or 'I miss you', or 'Good night mommy/daddy.' "

What we have here is a primitive form of uploading

In transhumanism and science fiction, mind uploading (also occasionally referred to by other terms such as mind transfer, whole brain emulation, or whole body emulation) refers to the hypothetical transfer of a human mind to a substrate different from a biological brain, such as a detailed computer simulation of an individual human brain.

Mind uploading, then, is the act of copying or transferring this "software" from the hardware of the human brain to another processing environment, typically an artificially created one.

The concept of mind uploading then is strongly mechanist, relying on several assumptions about the nature of human consciousness and the philosophy of artificial intelligence. It assumes that strong AI machine intelligence is not only possible, but is indistinguishable from human intelligence, and denies the vitalist view of human life and consciousness.

The idea of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many philosophical questions which people may find interesting or disturbing, such as matters of individuality and the soul. Vitalists would say that uploading was a priori impossible. Many people also wonder whether, if they were uploaded, it would be their sentience uploaded, or simply a copy

It's actually quite simple. You record as much of your personality as possible. Let's say we can have a camera follow us around and record everything we say. Then it uses an algorithm to predict our next words. Do this over the course of 10 years. That's alot of interactions. Freeze it and upload it. Parent dies, kid can still talk to it when it feels lonely.

It's a very simple idea. You replace one neuron in your brain with a chip that simulates the neuron perfectly and feel exactly the same. Do the same thing a billion times and still feel the same.

Who is the real you?

My question is simple: How are Muslims going to possibly handle the challenge of mind uploading and AI in the future? That barbaric religion is finished first.

15-20 years before the modern world (or at least Deep Blue/Blue Gene verson 10.5) laughs and pities them. Then the rest of the devout and environmental hippies.

At that point, who the hell cares about race and IQ? People, the meaning of
HUMAN-DEATH-LIFE-EXISTENCE-IS is changing before our eyes.

I could see why Saletan dropped IQ, even though he was right. The simple fact is that while its implications are important, in the long run it DOES NOT MATTER.

The World is not fuzzy

2009-01-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

So, some article to point out that have a mild thread of tearing down a kumbaya vision of the world. So let's get to it.

We'll start with a Wall Street Journal article linked by Steve Sailer.

For years, immigrants to the U.S. have viewed buying a home as the ultimate benchmark of success. Between 2000 and 2007, as the Hispanic population increased, Hispanic homeownership grew even faster, increasing by 47%, to 6.1 million from 4.1 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Over that same period, homeownership nationally grew by 8%. In 2005 alone, mortgages to Hispanics jumped by 29%, with expensive nonprime mortgages soaring 169%, according to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

An examination of that borrowing spree by The Wall Street Journal reveals that it wasn't simply the mortgage market at work. It was fueled by a campaign by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a congressional Hispanic housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, who all were pushing to increase homeownership among Latinos.

Fishy.

Mortgage lending to Hispanics took off between 2004 and 2007, powered by nonprime loans. The biggest jump occurred in 2005. The 169% increase in nonprime mortgages to Hispanics that year outpaced a 122% gain for blacks, and a 110% increase for whites, according to a Journal analysis of mortgage-industry and federal-housing data. Nonprime mortgages carry high interest rates and are tailored to borrowers with low credit scores or few assets.

Between 2004 and 2007, black borrowers were offered nonprime loans at a slightly higher rate than Hispanics, but the overall number of Hispanic borrowers was much larger. From 2004 to 2005, total nonprime home loans to Hispanics more than tripled to $69 billion from $19 billion, and peaked in 2006 at $73 billion.

Regions of the country where the housing bubble grew biggest, such as California, Nevada and Florida, are heavily populated by Latinos, many of whom worked in the construction industry during the housing boom. When these markets began to weaken, bad loans depressed the value of neighboring properties, creating a downward spiral. Neighborhoods are now dotted with vacant homes.

So yeah... the MSM now knows where to point to finger.

But taking this even further is an column in National Review:
"The Upside of Obama"

Hey, I voted for Obama for a variety of reasons. But one of the more subtle reasons was to demonstrate to the world and minorities that the US is not a racist nation. Looks like someone got the message.

If the election of Barack Obama — a 47-year-old black man with a political resume as ephemeral as a Mets pennant drive and a governing philosophy as dubious as Paris Hilton’s choice of boyfriends — accomplishes nothing else, it should illustrate the peculiar distorting effect on American society of white liberal guilt.

Ouch. But it gets better.

Whatever caused the current fiscal crisis, therefore, must be considered a prime factor in McCain’s defeat. The seeds of the crisis date back the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 — which initiated a concerted, decades-long effort by the federal government to coerce banks into making loans to lower-income borrowers.

The sentiment was noble, albeit rooted in a desperate race consciousness: If more black families owned their homes, the theory went, they’d accumulate wealth as the properties increased in value. They would pass that wealth down to their children, and the financial inequalities stemming from America’s sordid racial past would gradually diminish.

The problem, of course, is that mathematical probabilities don’t bend to noble sentiments. The reason banks weren’t lending to black borrowers as frequently, or on as good of terms, as to white borrowers, had nothing to do with racism. It had to do with risk analysis. Writing loans to lower-income, lower-collateral borrowers means more defaults.

Oh man. I sense something tough coming.

Ironies abound. The most bitter is that a disproportionate number of foreclosures have affected black homeowners, because they were riskier buyers to begin with. But the most profound is that the fiscal crisis precipitated decades ago by the Community Reinvestment Act has contributed decisively to the election of the first black president, Barack Obama.

The fallacy behind the Community Reinvestment Act, AFDC expansion, forced busing, and affirmative action is that government intervention can accelerate the natural progress of blacks in American society. Experience has shown, time and again, that the government can only ensure equal opportunities. It cannot compel equal outcomes. That’s the work of generations — just as the subjugation and exploitation of blacks was the work of generations. The white-liberal-guilt-besotted desire for quick remedies to racial inequities has produced more far more misery than redress.

Then he goes on to describe the elation people felt on election night. I felt it too when partying in DC and yelling with the mobs near the white house.

On election night, at the moment Barack Obama’s electoral vote count surpassed the necessary 270, I was walking down Ninth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, a bar-and-restaurant district. People streamed out onto the street, screaming and cheering; men and women, friends and strangers, black and white, young and old, began hugging. A number were weeping with joy. Amid the commotion, a 30-ish black man came running up the sidewalk and yelled, “There’s a new sheriff in town!” I didn’t realize he’d directed the remark to me until I saw him pass a young black couple with a knowing nod, then yell it again at a group of three white women.

Yeah...

No one has ever assumed the presidency with the unrealistic expectations Obama faces.
...
Obama, therefore, is certain to disappoint as soon as he passes from promiser to decider. But he’s also uniquely situated to effect a genuine change in America’s race consciousness.
...
The best-case scenario, though the least likely, is that President Obama, in a Nixon-to-China moment, turns to the NAACP, the Congressional Black Congress, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the entire ethno-grievance chorus and says, “Enough.” There are, he explains in a primetime speech, no governmental quick fixes to the collective inequalities in American society. Indeed, every time the government intervenes, it sets back the cause of justice for generations. Over time, without government interference, through parental sacrifice and individual initiative, inequalities will even out — unless, of course, you believe that black people and white people are INNATELY DIFFERENT IN THEIR POTENTIALS.

Caps mine. But, look at the tone in the paragraph. This guy who wrote this reads Sailer and Lynn. He knows what's up and is directly taunting people to challenge him.

Obama isn’t being kept down by the Man. He is the Man. How will that fact sit with the subset of blacks, especially black men, who attribute their personal failures to invisible racist conspiracies working against them? The thought has to cross each of their minds: If nothing stopped a black man from becoming president, then maybe the reason my life is screwed up is because I’ve screwed it up.

In the final analysis, if an Obama presidency accomplishes any of the above — if it brings an end to the politics of white liberal guilt, or provides a role model for struggling blacks — it could serve a cause that outweighs and outlasts whatever wrongheaded policies the president-elect might pursue.

People, this is what I have been saying since I wrote this after the election.

This is important. Obama's election should demonstrate a simple fact that I've long discovered over and over again while traveling: the United States is not a fundamentally racist country. In fact, the rest of the world is much, much more wedded to race than we are. Even before the election, an Indian American, Neal Kashkari, was chosen to run the bailout program.

So, what happens if African Americans are confront with this?

Despite the admirable openness of the American people, the achievement gap and high prison population remains. Africa remains a basket case. While Saletan's landmark piece on race and intelligence was widely condemned, the data remains and the state of the modern African American is still dismal.

I think this election will allow moderates and those tired of Al Sharpton's rants a chance to shed their guilt and instead focus on perfecting the Union for ALL americans.

So what happens when HBD clashes with the reality of the American promise? People will start asking questions. And people will demand solutions.

People, this Singularity starts here. At the very moment that Obama is inaugurated.

Anyway, continuing on the notion of a difficult world, just some more comments.

Fareed Zakaria on Samuel Huntington

Look around. So many of the world's problems—from terrorists in Waziristan to the devastating AIDS epidemic in Africa to piracy in Somalia—are caused or made worse by governments that are unable to exercise real authority over their lands or people. That was the central insight of Samuel P. Huntington, the greatest political scientist of the last half-century, who died on Christmas Eve.

Living through change, people have often stuck with their oldest and most durable source of security: religion. That was the most important message of "The Clash of Civilizations." While others were celebrating the fall of communism and the rise of globalization, he saw that with ideology disappearing as a source of human identity, religion was returning to the fore.

Nation states don't rise up out of nothing. People will not pay taxes or put their lives on the line to support an entity that has little relevance to them. And that's why we won't have world government for quite some time.

So, how does Huntington close his book?

He closed one of his books, another classic, by noting of such critics, "[They] say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope."

But you know what? I actually have another comment. The one sidedness of the Israel-Hamas war, in both moral authority and military power, will continue to humiliate the Muslim world and force them to confront the reason for resentment of Israel:

The presence of a successful, open, democratic society in the middle of the dysfunctional Middle East.

The essential dilemma Israel faces is this: It can't ignore Hamas's attacks, not only because of the damage they inflict, but also because of the terrible precedent they set. Israel has always been a state that is one battle away from destruction, and it cannot allow its enemies to think that it can be attacked with impunity. But at the same time Israel cannot do what it takes to wipe out the enemy, because of the constraints imposed by its own public, which is far less willing than in the past to suffer or inflict bloodletting.

IQ disparities in the Middle East cause a portion of resentment towards Israel. Enter the Singularity. Solve the unsolveable.

College: Irrelevant

2009-01-04T17:55:00.000-08:00

So in addition to Murray's column

For most of the nation’s youths, making the bachelor’s degree a job qualification means demanding a credential that is beyond their reach. It is a truth that politicians and educators cannot bring themselves to say out loud: A large majority of young people do not have the intellectual ability to do genuine college-level work.

We have another recent column in the washington post on the need for job qualification tests:

Small wonder, then, that many employers, fearing endless litigation about multiple uncertainties, threw up their hands and, to avoid legal liability, threw out intelligence and aptitude tests for potential employees. Instead, they began requiring college degrees as indices of applicants' satisfactory intelligence and diligence.

OOOOOO

Is it just me, or are people starting to question things now that the Obama election is disproving the notion of a racist America?

Clarence Page even thinks so

Yet on CBS's "The Early Show," Rush pressed further. He compared plans by Senate Democrats to block Burris to white governors in the Jim Crow south who blocked the desegregation of public schools and colleges. Never have images from the bad old days of white bigotry sounded so breathtakingly inappropriate, especially when they come so soon after the election of the nation's first black president.

Is this where the revolution has come? Has the black community become the last refuge for scalawags like Blagojevich, whose approval ratings had fallen to only 13 percent in a Chicago Tribune poll even before his arrest?

As a fellow African American, I resent that notion, and I don't appear to be alone. Secretary of State Jesse White, a black Democratic friend of Rush and Burris, nevertheless is refusing to certify Burris' appointment in what he called "a moral decision," even if it fails to hold up in court.

I don't know. Something is in the air. Especially this column vindicating Huntington.

Far from the smug racist many critics accused him of being, Huntington was attempting to shake arrogant Americans out of their delusion that the rest of the world's people are like them - or want to be. Believe that nonsense, he said, and you'll blunder into all kinds of trouble. Within a decade, the 9/11 attacks and the Bush administration's catastrophic moral crusade to turn Muslims into good Western liberals would do much to prove Huntington's point.

2009-01-02T15:38:00.000-08:00

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Face time or screen time

2008-12-29T21:02:00.000-08:00

So, technology isolates and disconnects us from our fellow man, right?

Well, I'm not sure.

I just got email and internet unlimited data plan on my phone and am curious to see what it will do. Will I no longer to sit in front of my computer since I can do all my reading on the go? Or will I ignore everyone around me when out and about to check realclearpolitics.com?

On another note, netflix just introduced streaming movies for the Mac on xbox. I never will go to a movie rental store again, or buy a DVD again. Pretty amazing stuff, I think. Score one for isolation.

Finally, to decrease driver solitude and save gas money, the iphone will introduce an iphone app to match drivers and riders.

So...does face time matter now more or less now that environments are fungible?

I got served

2008-12-25T18:06:00.000-08:00

So, promoting women to be more sluttier and condemning Islam, I thought I found a good target in opposing Roissy's post

Thought Experiments

December 24, 2008 by roissy

Thought Experiment #1

All else equal, which girl is more likely to get pumped and dumped?:

a. an “adventurous” girl who played musical chairs with the mouths of five guys in a bar one night and banged a local emo rocker in the coatroom an hour after they met.

b. a virgin.

Thought Experiment #2

A normal, emotionally stable man with a good job has been on one date with a girl he likes. She is into him. He didn’t close, but feels confident it will happen soon. One night, in his favorite bar, one of the bartenders (a guy known to be plugged into the local social scene), unaware that the man has been on one date with the girl in this story, tells the man he saw the girl making out with a random dude a couple weeks before their first date, and that a few months ago she banged one of the other bartenders.

Would this man be

a. more likely

b. less likely

to arrange an inspired, creative second date with her? to pay for her drink on the second date? to see her for longer than three months after they’ve started screwing?

So my take is simple. Hey, let women be as slutty as they want. If you want to condemn someone, condemn meat eaters, condemn people who buy SUVs. Condemn Muslims, condemn religious fanatics who push religion. Condemn corrupt wall street goons. But slutty women? Come on.

Anyway, so this was my response:

Look Roissy, I know that you are FACTUALLY correct in saying that men will treat sluts and prudish women differently. That’s a law of human nature.

BUT, this is not to say that there remains a MORAL DOUBLE STANDARD in the world.

In the Islamic world, it’s ok for men to have multiple wives, while women who cheat on their husbands are pariahs in society.

Islam is a brutal religion. It pains me to see this blog extolling the same morality that Islam preaches.

We all know what evo psych says about human sexual behavior. Just try not to push it into the moral realm.

Eh. His response:

roissy

john smith:
"That’s a law of human nature."

would a person be happier if he lived more in accordance with human nature, or less?

"BUT, this is not to say that there remains a MORAL DOUBLE STANDARD in the world."

reasoned morality is an emergent outgrowth of human nature, and as a second order phenomenon, it fluctuates more wildly, which is why you can observe wide disparities in how one culture treats its sluts compared to another culture. naturally, is != ought, and human nature shouldn’t dictate to us how we conduct our lives, but it’s also true that the more removed our morality is from our relatively immutable evolved natures, the less happy we’ll feel and the more likely we’ll wind up screwing ourselves in the biggest market that matters — the sexual market.

"In the Islamic world, it’s ok for men to have multiple wives, while women who cheat on their husbands are pariahs in society."

double standards are a consequence of human nature. no one said life was fair.

"Islam is a brutal religion. It pains me to see this blog extolling the same morality that Islam preaches."

ugh, dude. you’re putting words in my blog. please don’t pull a chic. one of her is enough. one, polygamy would be a disaster for the west, which i’ve written about here. two, i obviously don’t advocate stoning adulterous women like the more regressive strains of islam. i do say that the male impulse to avoid committing to slutty girls is hardwired and serves a useful purpose — that of protecting men from becoming financially enslaved cockolds. since this impulse has ostensibly been with us for millions of years, it stands to reason that a morality which takes into account the greater danger of female infidelity and promiscuity and attempts to mitigate its expression will benefit a cooperative western-style society more than a morality that gives free rein to women to slut it up without consequence.
of course, the more women are shamed into being sexually chaste, the less fly-by-night nookie guys like me will haul home, but i never claimed that the good of the individual and the good of the whole were perfectly compatible.

"Just try not to push it into the moral realm."

you cannot sever morality from human nature. morality is just a highly evolved mechanism for maximizing the odds of your gene’s survival and replication through the strategy of reciprocal altruism and kin favoritism.

Anyway, slutty girls are still welcome. How many terrorists come from sexually liberal societies v. sexually repressive societies?

******

Update. Check out the comments section to see a debate between Roissy and some black chick. HBD meets seduction school-fascinating.

Gold from Saletan

2008-12-21T19:48:00.000-08:00

Check this out from Saletan

Few genes are known to be decisive in determining life outcomes. Nutrition, training, and other genes matter. But the evidence that this gene significantly influences athletic ability is strong.

Now look at the frequency of the R and X variants in different populations. According to data published seven years ago in Human Molecular Genetics, the relative frequency of the X allele is 0.52 in Asians, 0.42 in whites, 0.27 in African-Americans, and 0.16 in Africans. If you break out the data further, the frequency of the XX genotype is 0.25 in Asians, 0.20 in European whites, 0.13 in African-Americans, and 0.01 in African Bantu. Conversely, the frequency of RR (the genotype for speed and power) is 0.25 in Asians, 0.36 in European whites, 0.60 in African-Americans, and 0.81 in African Bantu. Among Asians, you can expect to find one RR for every XX. Among whites, you can expect nearly two RRs for every XX. Among African-Americans, you can expect more than four RRs for every XX.

Is the order really so shocking, or just another confirmation of the Rushton scale.

I've had my share of arguments with people who deny that race is biologically meaningful. Many of them are dedicated to the proposition that all humans are created equal, not just in the sense of moral worth or treating each person on his merits, but literally, in the sense that no genetically based difference can be admitted in average ability between populations. That kind of egalitarian literalism—I call it liberal creationism—becomes harder and harder to sustain in the face of evidence such as the data on ACTN3.

Oh, it's sweet.

I just returned from traveling in a third world country with little prospects for the future, and the primary reason is that their people have too low IQ to develop meaningful industries that don't rely on natural resources or low salaries.

The Attack

2008-12-03T18:26:00.000-08:00

I´m late, but how much else is there to say? Islam is a brutal, barbaric religion that justifies killing teenage girls in cold blood.

I´m just thankful that Thomas Friedman wrote this gem in the nytimes

On Feb. 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Muhammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

...

And here is the key;

But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behavior is when the community as a whole says: “No more. What you have done in murdering defenseless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you.”

I hope this causes waves. Islam should be questioned with the same force that Christianity is constantly in the US.

Perhaps I´m one of the few who voted for Obama in the hope that his election would discredit the rhetoric of Al-Qaeda. Maybe I was to idealistic.

What?

2008-11-23T15:08:00.000-08:00

Thank God Obama won and we didn't have this stupidity and brutality on display to the world.

It's time to rethink Thanksgiving. It seems odd that we celebrate our good luck by slaughtering innocent animals for food inefficiently, thereby exacerbating third world starvation. Remember, in the exact second you eat your turkey a child is dying right now of starvation.

It's an IQ issue, but until the world can come to grips with the racial roots of intelligence gaps, we can do what we can to lower meat consumption and aid the most vulnerable people in the world.

My general point hasn't changed in over a year:

After all, if we can torture and kill animals because they are stupid and can't defend themselves, why can't white civilization do it to stupider Black people?

People, THIS IS THE HBD crux of the issue. I'll keep pounding it and pounding it until people see the connection between race and animal rights.

I'm kinda hoping that when people like Half Sigma, Will Saletan, Ray Kurzweil, Larry Summers, and maybe even Steve Sailer (minus his white supremacist hick contigent) can come together to start figuring out a new policy for a new party.

Analysts v. Technology

2008-11-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

So the Global Forecast by American intelligence experts is out.

And I was just checking out the singularity timeline.

Let's see some contrasts:

By 2025, it predicted, “the U.S. will find itself as one of a number of important actors on the world stage,” playing “a prominent role in global events” but not a decisive one as in the past.

The report said the global shift from West to East in terms of wealth and economic power “is without precedent in modern history.” Of a projected population increase of 1.2 billion worldwide by 2025, Western countries would account for only 3 percent, it said.

Nothing that we haven't seen before.

But, take a look at technology changes:

A $1,000 (in 1999 dollars) unit of computation has the computing capacity of approximately 1,000 human brains.
Permanent or removable implants (similar to contact lenses) for the eyes as well as cochlear implants are now used to provide input and output between the human user and the worldwide computing network.

...

There is almost no human employment in production, agriculture, or transportation. Basic life needs are available for the vast majority of the human race.
There is a growing discussion about the legal rights of computers and what constitutes being “human.”
Although computers routinely pass apparently valid forms of the Turing Test, controversy persists about whether or not machine intelligence equals human intelligence in all of its diversity.
Machines claim to be conscious. These claims are largely accepted.

At this point do you think that people will care whether China or the US is more powerful? Is an all powerful AI going to have a nationality?

Complexities of American Democracy

2008-11-09T05:44:00.001-08:00

So previously I wrote about how the genius of the American political system and its recent comeback could be a catalyst for the singularity.

But let's examine a difficult issue in the African American experience.

- Civil Rights and Multiculturalism

So the election of Barack Obama was a great step forward for African Americans. But on November 4, in one of the most liberal states in the country, voters decided to ban gay marriage.

Now personally, I think the issue is just so far down on the list of important issues (given our current problems w/ the economy, partisanship, terrorism, Russia, immigration, education, etc) of the day.

But apparently African Americans believed that while they greatly expanded civil rights in one dimension, they want to drastically retract it for another group, homosexuals. 70% of African Americans voted for the ban on gay marriage in 4 states.

This is a disturbing development, and points to the fragility of coalitions that attempt to address social change. Christian Lander, of stuff white people like always makes fun of white people for being multicultural and tolerant. However, these liberals are often dangerously oblivious to the human rights abuses that are present in these minority societies.

Wikipedia's article on Multiculturalism addresses this point:

Skeptics of the ideology often debate whether the multicultural ideal of benignly co-existing cultures that interrelate and influence one another, and yet remain distinct, is sustainable, paradoxical or even desirable when housed by a single nation — one that, in the case of some European nations, would previously have been synonymous with a distinctive cultural identity of its own.

The liberal-feminist critique is related to the liberal and libertarian critique, since it is concerned with what happens inside the cultural groups. In her 1999 essay, later expanded into an anthology, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?" the feminist and political theorist Susan Okin argues that a concern for the preservation of cultural diversity should not overshadow the discriminatory nature of gender roles in many traditional minority cultures, that, at the very least, "culture" should not be used as an excuse for rolling back the women's rights movement.

...

In the Netherlands, the haven of weed and prostitution, the Dutch are alarmed at the specter of Islamic influence threatening their freedoms.

In 1999, the legal philosopher Paul Cliteur attacked multiculturalism in his book The Philosophy of Human Rights.[86] Cliteur rejects all political correctness on the issue: Western culture, the Rechtsstaat (rule of law), and human rights are superior to non-Western culture and values. They are the product of the Enlightenment. Cliteur sees non-Western cultures not as merely different but as anachronistic. He sees multiculturalism primarily as an unacceptable ideology of cultural relativism, which would lead to acceptance of barbaric practices, including those brought to the Western World by immigrants. Cliteur lists infanticide, torture, slavery, oppression of women, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female genital cutting, discrimination by immigrants, suttee, and the death penalty. Cliteur compares multiculturalism to the moral acceptance of Auschwitz, Stalin, Pol Pot and the Ku Klux Klan.
...
The most prominent figure in the post-Fortuyn debate of the issue was Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her first criticisms of multiculturalism paralleled those of the early liberal-feminist critics in the United States — the emphasis on group identity and group rights diminished individual liberty for those within the minorities, and especially for women. As time went on, her criticism was increasingly directed at Islam itself, and its incompatibility with democracy and Western culture. By 2004 she was the most prominent critic of Islam in Europe. When she scripted a short film on Islamic oppression of women, featuring texts from the Quran on the naked bodies of women, its director Theo van Gogh was assassinated by an Islamist. Threatened with death and heavily guarded, she spent most of her time in the United States, and moved to Washington in 2006 to work for the American Enterprise Institute. In 2006 she also expressed support for the Eurabia thesis — that Europe is being fully Islamised —, and that its non-Muslim inhabitants will be reduced to dhimmitude.[92] In a speech for CORE in January 2007, she declared that Western culture was overwhelmingly superior:

... my dream is that those lucky enough to be born into a culture of "ladies first" will let go of the myth that all cultures are equal. Human beings are equal; cultures are not.[93]

So yeah. Not all cultures have equal respect for human rights, and the most fascinating thing is that supposedly "oppressed" cultures have done as much oppressing of their own.

It's not too hard to look at animal rights abuses in Latin America, genocide in Africa, oppression of women in South Asia, and the abuse of religious minorities in the Islamic world, smackdown of Tibet and Falun Gong in China, and the trafficking of women in southeast Asia before we see the hollowness of the rhetoric that the United States is hindering human rights efforts.

And that is why many conservatives are skeptical of international institutions such as the UN, where the human rights committee was run by Sudan. They recognize that there is something wonderful about American political culture that shouldn't be diluted by submitting our sovereignty to the whims of nations that don't have the same level of rights tolerance as us.

This undermines the charge that white oppression is responsible for the lower state of minorities, women, and other oppressed groups.

Instead, it lends credence to the idea that groups themselves are responsible for their sorry state, not the white man or the west.

So back to the election. It proved two things:

1) The most powerful nation on earth, often blamed for the ills of the third world, happens to be the most moral, just, and free nation in the world. The narrative of the United States as an oppressive imperial power dampening the hopes of minorities everywhere has been thoroughly undermined. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Karl Marx, take a hike.

2) The advancement of minority interests does NOT necessarily advance the interests of other oppressed groups. Often, we will see that a larger amount of black, Hispanic, or Islamic influence in a culture will actually harm homosexual interests.

Watch out.

Wow

2008-11-05T12:16:00.000-08:00

You've read my past posts. You know my views on race. It's not fuzzy.

But I'll be honest.

I cried last night when CNN called the race for Obama.

Sure, maybe I'm brainwashed by the liberal media and the DC environment. Or maybe it was the pure euphoria in the streets of liberal DC after the election, when people who have never appreciated being American before are now crying and draping themselves in the flag.

Or maybe it was McCain's incredibly eloquent concession speech.

But let me put this in context. Long post but hey, I haven't written alot recently so bear with me.

Almost ten years ago, I was living in Moscow, Russia. Walking with my American friends in red square, I was singled out by the military police and they demanded my documents. Shrill screaming from my Russian and American counterparts didn't assure him, and I was pulled away before he did anything. But that singular moment forced me to confront the idea that my being an Indian American made me different from white people.

And that same year 9/11 happened. Living in NYC I saw the skyline change from my school. And all of a sudden people looked at me differently. My anti-Islamic views hardened as a result of feeling defensive when people thought I was Muslim.

Years later I worked on the Kerry campaign, from the ghettos of Philadelphia to the festivals of Ohio and lots of irritated callers. What drove me to the blue side was The Republican's shameful manipulation of 9/11 to question the patriotism of those who opposed the Iraq war. It was VERY upsetting when Kerry lost. I was ready to write off the country.

But then shortly after the election I went abroad. In the ghettos of the third world, I saw desperate families sell off their daughters, condemning them to a life of prostitution. These girls had a fundamental belief that they were neither responsible for nor entitled to lead the life that they wanted to do. Their lives were products of Karma and that was it. And the political system was designed to either serve the elites or pander to the masses continued to prevent social mobility. In Malaysia I was stopped by police and they demanded to know MY RELIGION. I went to Vietnam and was shocked by the positive views that the people in southern Vietnam STILL had for the US, when we bled for their freedom decades ago.

I realized there was something special about the United States and despite the fact that I disliked the current president, the country remained an inspiration to billions, a force for good in the world, and a nation united by its love of freedom.

But in Thailand I was then faced with a disturbing realization: that I was not an American. In the eyes of the Thai, my skin color defined me. If I told them I was American, they joked and said they were American too. If I showed them my id, they would take it as losing face by being wrong and still wouldn't talk to me. They treated me differently from my white friends. I mean, it's still an incredibly friendly country with fantastic people. But yet their idea of nationality is DEEPLY connected to race. The country of Thailand had a connection to the previous kingdoms of Thailand, and so has an ethnic identity deeply rooted. And this is still a relatively liberal country. Just next door, Cambodia, is still recovering from the Khmer Rouge, which systematically killed off foreigners who were not ethnic Khmer (as well as innocent dissidents). I was face to face with hundreds of skulls and couldn't sleep that night-this is what happens when government divide their people.

Two years ago I traveled Latin America and was confronted by a police officer at the border. He asked me the standard questions and then after taking a look at my passport casually asked for a 300 dollar bribe to cross the border. I was shocked, and then found out why: he thought I was an Islamic terrorist operating under a false passport.

I'm not kidding. The idea of an Indian American was that alien to the official, or at least, rare enough, that he thought he could intimidate me into lining his pockets. Didn't happen. I was saved by the US consulate that certified I was a US citizen.

Traveling in Europe last summer I was struck by the state of Indians in those countries. All stuck in blue collar jobs. Having nothing to do with the locals. Same thing with the African and Asian minorities. And if you look at the status of their Islamic minorities, it is clear why Europe ultimately will never have the appeal of the United States. They are prisoners of their history. Sure, they may be more sympathetic to atheism, but at what cost? The Inquisition, the 30 years war, Adolf Hitler, Communism, the list goes on. Only an Italian can be an Italian. Only a Spaniard can be Spanish. Only a German can be German, and the Turks there don't even want to be German. They go there to make their money, and then leave, or establish themselves in ethnic enclaves.

So, what is special about the United States? We may be the oldest democracy in the world, but as a people with an identity we are one of the youngest in the world. Americans may be criticized for being forgetful of history, but I consider it a blessing. Because history doesn't matter, anyone can become an American. The United States will not be limited by human history. With the exception of the Native Americans and African Americans, the United States is a country of people that choose to be Americans. The American identity is not one of race, religion, ethnicity, or any other narrow demographic factor.

It is a nation of people who crossed oceans or took long flights because of a simple idea: your life is yours, and you deserve the opportunity to be the person you want. Nothing is inevitable in this world.

And so, the American identity is uniquely appealing to the world but yet so transcendent. And I only realized this after I left the US.

And so returning back to the fierce immigration debate on Steve Sailer's web site I was struck by the lack of a middle ground. The so-called HBD realists were simply white supremacists who wanted to keep America a white nation. The liberals wanted to let everyone in. I admit, at times I felt as if I'd never be considered a true American.

And then Barack Obama came along. And even as far back as a year ago I realized that if he could be elected president, then there truly are no limits in this great country.

How hollow the rhetoric of the dictators of the east, who say that American democracy is a sham to justify their regimes. Their people now know the false nationalism of their leaders is just a cover to justify their grip on power.

How bereft the Islamic religion appears now! While we elect a man with the Middle Name Hussein, the birthplace of Islam (Saudi Arabia) still does not allow people to bring religious icons into their land.

How absurd the ravings of Chavez and Ahmadinejad, the Mugabes, the Morales, who say that the imperialism of the United States continues to oppress the minorities of the world.

How laughable the accusations of the Europeans that America is a racist nation, while they condemn their minorities to ghettos and never accept them as true citizens. The same Europeans who long for a leader such as Obama in their countries but will never be able to find such a person.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

And it is important for people to realize this, both in the US and abroad.
From the Wall Street Journal:

One promise of his victory is that perhaps we can put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to achievement in this splendid country. Mr. Obama has a special obligation to help do so.

This is important. Obama's election should demonstrate a simple fact that I've long discovered over and over again while traveling: the United States is not a fundamentally racist country. In fact, the rest of the world is much, much more wedded to race than we are. Even before the election, an Indian American, Neal Kashkari, was chosen to run the bailout program.

So, what happens if African Americans are confront with this?

Despite the admirable openness of the American people, the achievement gap and high prison population remains. Africa remains a basket case. While Saletan's landmark piece on race and intelligence was widely condemned, the data remains and the state of the modern African American is still dismal.

I think this election will allow moderates and those tired of Al Sharpton's rants a chance to shed their guilt and instead focus on perfecting the Union for ALL americans.

So what happens when HBD clashes with the reality of the American promise? People will start asking questions. And people will demand solutions.

And this is where the singularity comes in.

We are a nation of transcending identities. Your birth DOES NOT MATTER in the United States.
From today's times editorial

This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

If you listen to the pundits, they are literally breaking down in tears (and I have a lump in my throat too) as they acknowledge that they can FINALLY tell their children that they can aspire to be President of the United States. In Eugene Robinson's column, he talks about a new pride in America.

For African Americans, at least those of us old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement, this is nothing short of mind-blowing. It's disorienting, and it makes me see this nation in a different light.

You see, I remember a time of separate and unequal schools, restrooms and water fountains -- a time when black people were officially second-class citizens. I remember moments when African Americans were hopeful and excited about the political process, and I remember other moments when most of us were depressed and disillusioned. But I can't think of a single moment, before this year, when I thought it was within the realm of remote possibility that a black man could be nominated for president by one of the major parties -- let alone that he would go into Election Day with a better-than-even chance of winning.

Let me clarify: It's not that I would have calculated the odds of an African American being elected president and concluded that this was unlikely; it's that I wouldn't even have thought about such a thing.

For African Americans, at least those of us old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement, this is nothing short of mind-blowing. It's disorienting, and it makes me see this nation in a different light.

You see, I remember a time of separate and unequal schools, restrooms and water fountains -- a time when black people were officially second-class citizens. I remember moments when African Americans were hopeful and excited about the political process, and I remember other moments when most of us were depressed and disillusioned. But I can't think of a single moment, before this year, when I thought it was within the realm of remote possibility that a black man could be nominated for president by one of the major parties -- let alone that he would go into Election Day with a better-than-even chance of winning.

Let me clarify: It's not that I would have calculated the odds of an African American being elected president and concluded that this was unlikely; it's that I wouldn't even have thought about such a thing.

But genetics matters.

This moment the United States embraces change and rejects the notion that birth matters.

At the same time, totally ignored by the media, we are on the cusp of a technological revolution that will fundamentally change the human condition. At this point, a very small (nerdish) part of the population is comfortable with the changes we can enact on ourselves in the coming decades.

The convergence of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence will lead to immortality, intelligence enhancement, physical augmentation, and such an intense level of interconnectedness that the concept of the individual will be gone. The concept of geography will slowly disappear. You want change? Just wait.

But back to Obama:

What was the theme of Obama's campaign? Change.

From his speech last night:

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

This country is demanding change. It is now guaranteed that the American people will not tolerate more failure from our government and we will have true reform and changing the country. Some of those changes will run into opposition from human nature. But now we will now longer be limited by human nature.

In this moment we have shown the world the uniquely fantastic entity that is the United States of America. We have again demonstrated the genius of our founders and the continued decency of the American people.

That in our entire universe, of one of the many galaxies, around an insignificant star, on a tiny planet barely distinguishable outside the solar system, life forms that have formed over billions of years of evolution have collectively have decided to take control of their future and restore honor to the greatest political entity that has ever existed. On a tiny speck of dust in the infinite chasm that is the universe, the convergence of transformative technology and a new political consciousness has the chance to remake humanity and alter the course of history.

Change is coming.

Confession

2008-10-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

Way less time to write the blog, unfortunately. Don't know why, but 11/4 it will pick up again.

I'm a volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign. Shocking, I know, since many people visit this and look at my HBD posts as racial hatred and an indictment of egalitarianism.

But here is my list of reasons. Some of them aren't as strong as others. But here goes:

1) The Singularity.

Is far more important than any other phenomenon going on these days, whether it's the rise of China, Islamic takeover of Europe, or the destruction of the environment.

Having a pro-science President in the White House is essential to maintaining US superiority in these technologies to come.

2) Sarah Palin, Joe Biden.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending soldiers out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan." –Sarah Pailn, on the Iraq war, speaking to students at the Wasilla Assembly of God, June 2008 (Watch video clip)"

Half Sigma is a blogger that closely parallels my beliefs. Even he has been dismayed by the Palin pick as pure political showgaming.

As opposed to Biden

"In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian-Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking."

As an Indian American I thought that was a riot.

or this

In what the Washington Post is describing as a “stumble,” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said in an interview with the paper Wednesday that Washington’s high minority population is one of the reasons for the city’s education problems.

Explaining why schools in Iowa are performing better than those in Washington, D.C., Biden told the Post, “There’s less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with.”

“When you have children coming from dysfunctional homes, when you have children coming from homes where there’s no books, where the mother from the time they’re born doesn’t talk to them — as opposed to the mother in Iowa who’s sitting out there and talks to them, the kid starts out with a 300 word larger vocabulary at age three. Half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom,” the Delaware Democrat added.

3) Health care

We have to do something about it. I think that if we subsidize health care enough that will make people more resistant to illegal immigrants. Counter Intuitive, but that's probably how it will play out

4) US Reputation. American interests are priority one. We HAVE to undermine the Islamic message. How do we do that? Show them that while their religion leads their societies to more dysfunction, we elect a black agnostic as president.

5) Competence

His campaign is run WELL. I mean, it's a serious tight ship and has made tremendous use of technology to get out there.

6) Economy.

We're in the shitter.

It's quite simple. If he loses and Sarah Palin become a heartbeat away from the presidency, that will be a miserable time.

BUT

If Obama wins, don't worry. January 22, I will be ON HIS ASS making calling him out on anything deviating from the centrist pro-american policies I'm hoping from him.

OMG

2008-10-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Arite movie not working just go here

Biden, Palin, Genocide

2008-10-02T20:54:00.001-07:00

I was truly proud to be an American when hearing about Joe Biden's willingness to stand up to Sudan, in front of the average american audience.

Craziness on Intrade

2008-09-29T17:03:00.001-07:00

So, just an update on weird stuff going on in the news.

McCain has plunged to a 37.4 percent chance of winning.

After the House rejected the bailout, a chance of the bailout before end of September is at 2.4 percent.

Sarah Palin to withdraw at 9.0 percent.

Iran Air strike by the end of the year at 18.4 percent.

Just too good

2008-09-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

This post from Roissy. Just brilliant.

Here is a fact for those of you still laboring under the rapidly withering illusion that women are the fairer sex with superior moral guiding principles and emotional intelligence: There are many MANY MANY more young, cute women willing to fuck the likes of Pedro Espinoza, Alpha Killer, than the guy who avoids brushes with the law, dutifully goes to his 9 to 5 McJob, and saves money for the future purchase of a home to start a family.

I can already hear the protestations to the contrary. ”Yeah, but only low class girls go for cold-blooded killers and criminal filth like Espinoza.”

From a penis’s perspective, what is the difference between a low class young, cute girl and a high class young, cute girl?

Answer: Nothing.

Marriage and the attendant class considerations are end game, not start game. Sexual attraction must come first, and a woman’s social, economic, and educational status have nothing to do with that. A girl’s class is irrelevant to her ability to excite a man. For every thug complaining that all he bangs are whores as he facefucks his girlfriend and her sister, there are a hundred betas complaining that they can’t bang anything at all.

This is why I'm a singularitarian. Because human nature SUCKS.

Liveblogging Palin

2008-09-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

So...let's see what she says: (Damn she is looking fine tonight)

"I will be honored to accept your nomination for vice president of the United States."
A historical moment, but shadowed by the absurdity of the election so far.

"Time for politics and a time for leadership."
What about Bush?

"A true profile in courage"
Right...haven't heard that before

"Victory within site"
Has anyone actually defined victory?

"Proud of the armed forces blah blah"
Walter Reed ring a bell?

"Beautiful baby boy named Trig"
WTF name is Trig? Why did she take a plane before delivering it? The baby will NEVER have a normal life.

"Children with special needs inspire love"
Why did God create this retardation? We should focus on solving it, not on accommodating and accepting it.

"World champion snow machine racer"
? Why is he receiving a standing ovation?

"My parents are here tonight."
The mom looks more presidential.

"Difference between a hocky mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."

What did the job involve?
Community organizer + responsibilities (Ha, if that's her best, she's toast)
Small town people don't know how to react...

"John McCain is the same man"
Explaining his various flip flops that came about due to Alzheimers.

"I'm going to Washington to serve the people"
Ok...?

"Leave this nation better than we found it"
Like Bush?

"I told the Congress thanks but no thanks on the bridge"
ABSOLUTE BS

"Broke the monopoly of oil companies"
Then why does she want to ruin the Alaskan environment for their benefit?

"The stakes could not be higher"
Whose fault is that on oil?

"Drilling won't solve every problem is not an excuse to do nothing?"
Do nothing? Obama's energy plan is FAR more ambitious than the same old right wing.

"Never use the word victory"
Republicans are retarded. Victory doesn't exist in Iraq.

"And he's worried that someone won't read them their rights"
The United States should never torture. Period.

Anyway, I'm bored.

Joe Biden Part 2

2008-08-23T05:59:00.000-07:00

Since he's nominated Biden as his running mate, I am slowly becoming more confident in Barack Obama's presidency. Obama chose someone who would be a better partner in the administration as opposed to a Bayh or Clinton who would be a purely political choice solely to win an election.

Merger between the silicon and carbon

2008-08-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

We draw closer to merging mind and machine here

Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of the blockbuster animation "Wall-E", Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons.

Once removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialised nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an eight-by-eight centimetre (five-by-five inch) array of 60 electrodes.

This "multi-electrode array" (MEA) serves as the interface between living tissue and machine, with the brain sending electrical impulses to drive the wheels of the robots, and receiving impulses delivered by sensors reacting to the environment.

Because the brain is living tissue, it must be housed in a special temperature-controlled unit -- it communicates with its "body" via a Bluetooth radio link.

Veggie v. IQ

2008-08-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

So, I'm gonna keep railing about the connection between vegetarianism and racial differences in intelligence.

My argument is simple: the bulk of the previous arguments used to justify slavery are the same as the arguments used to justify meat eating.

So, Saletan's new column proposes a way that we can have our cake and eat it too: growing meat.

Yeah, this will no longer allow me to lord over my peers with moral superiority, but it will open up a ton of restaurants and ethnic cuisines that were previously off limits.

You munch a strip of bacon then pet your dog. You wince at the sight of a crippled horse but continue chewing your burger. Three weeks ago, I took my kids to a sheep and wool festival. They petted lambs; I nibbled a lamb sausage. That's the thing about humans: We're half-evolved beasts. We love animals, but we love meat, too. We don't want to have to choose. And maybe we don't have to. Maybe, thanks to biotechnology, we can now grow meat instead of butchering it.

So, yeah we're an immature species but that's ok in this case.

Human sacrifice, slavery, the subjugation of women—every tradition seems normal and indispensable until we're ready, morally and economically, to move beyond it.

The case for eating meat is like the case for other traditions: It's natural, it's necessary, and there's nothing wrong with it. But sometimes, we're mistaken.

Animals are capable of various capabilities once thought limited to humans. We needed meat, but every year that goes by we gain more substitutes. Every year that goes by more environmental damage continues and children die due to high food prices caused by increased demand for meat in the developing world.

Anyway, the thing is this: Saletan took major flack for his piece last year on racial differences in intelligence. But, yet, here he is extolling the virtues of vegetarianism. To not see the connection between taking a scientific approach to human differences and animal similarities is to ignore the big picture. This isn't just about affirmative action or immigration or Barack Obama. It's about what it means to be human and what it means to be a compassionate human.

Not sure

2008-07-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

So here's another editorial by Brooks in the times.

As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school.

Yes, education matters. Not going to deny that.

I.Q. matters, but Heckman points to equally important traits that start and then build from those early years: motivation levels, emotional stability, self-control and sociability. He uses common sense to intuit what these traits are, but on this subject economists have a lot to learn from developmental psychologists.

Just simply not true. The failure of head start to make permanent differences in early development despite over saturated youth environments continues to make the case that intelligence is largely genetic in nature.

It’s not globalization or immigration or computers per se that widen inequality. It’s the skills gap. Boosting educational attainment at the bottom is more promising than trying to reorganize the global economy.

Yes, but the skills gap is INTERTWINED with the other issues:

1) Immigration exacerbates the effect of the skills gap. Instead of allowing the wages of unskilled laborers to rise with inflation, it has been artificially kept down by illegal immigration, which offers nearly an unlimited source of 5$/hr labor. So, that makes employers less willing to pay a decent wage for unskilled labor, and increases the competition for those competing for the few unskilled jobs reserved for legal residents, which then drives down wages in those jobs.

2) Globalization is also somewhat to blame. To ignore the ease by which factory jobs go to China is to ignore the elephant in the room. Less factory jobs at home. Yes, it really is that simple.

3) Computers. THIS is the crucial point. More than even free trade and immigration, automation has and will continue to eliminate jobs at an increasing pace. This is NOT going to stop. And if we want to remain a competitive economy, there is NOTHING we can do about it.

So, Brooks suggests getting more education? That will simply NOT WORK for the vast majority of the population, who hit their cognitive limit around 10th grade algebra. So, what will we do then?

Brooks isn't going to have any solutions. He already wrote himself with his IQ debacle piece which was thoroughly refuted in GNXP article awhile back.

Oh well.

No one is going to listen, not even the HBD realists. Without the active transformation, re engineering, and ultimately AI merge of the entire human race, our species is doomed to something of the order of 1984 or Brave New World.

I advocate the singularity not to destroy humanity but rather to preserve liberty. Without it, the bulk of the population will truly become proles and parasites.

The fascade is cracking

2008-07-26T06:27:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Steve Sailer, here is an article from New Republic on skepticism of Obama's secrecy towards the media. enjoy

Response to "vegan is murder"

2008-07-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, there are some brainless people in the animal rights movement who give us a bad name. Free market singularitarians are a very small component of it. Nevertheless, in response to a post
on the killing of field animals in agriculture as evidence of veganism's hypocrisy, I wrote this on the same blog:

Like in the Jain philosophy, any act of living of any living being will cause harm to another animal. However, we have to consider the morality of a society that enslaves, tortures, and consumes sentient beings for dubious nutritional benefit.

The same society that only a century and a half ago forbid the slavery of humans. A society that at the time, did NOT view all humans as equal.

Now, the question of these field animals is resolved relatively simply. My living on this planet and making use of public transportation and sidewalks involves to necessary destruction of life: the squirrel who crosses the street or the cockroach who happens upon my path. However, such deaths are not an intrinsic characteristic of the system. They are merely accidents, and they occur with the animal taking the risk upon itself. The same is the case with the field animals. These animals have been exploiting the niche of human agriculture and are purposefully putting themselves in harms way for the benefit of the food. Their injuries are not a necessary component of agriculture.

Compare that with the brutality and savagery of the meat industry and the clear suffering that these animals go through to satisfy our taste buds. To make a moral equivalence such as "vegan is murder" is absolutely absurd and designed to avoid debating the crucial moral values that define the animal rights movement.

Not as well written as I had hoped, but whatever. This is kind of just a rehash and I think that the vegetarianism articles written in the aftermath of the slate/IQ incident were far more compelling than addressing stupidity like "vegan is murder".

Objectivism v. Determinism

2008-07-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

I am a capitalist. I believe that people have a right to consume the same amount of economic value that they produce. No one is owed a living, though people have the right to make a living if they have a product/service to sell, someone to buy, and no third party gets injured.

At the same time, I think free will is an illusion. Just as 90%+ of all communication is non-verbal, many of our decisions are emotional and subconscious and we often decide and then rationalize using our thought. Because ultimately, everything that we do has a chemical pathway. The words I type now can be traced from my finger to my motor neurons to the brain, where it goes through millions of pathways that actually forms the thoughts I'm typing.

So, how do you reconcile these two? People should have the freedom to buy what they please if they can afford it. But the act of buying itself is not a free act. Either way, I don't want the government telling me what I can and can't buy.

So, there has to be a middle position.

Despite his cluelessness of genetics, Brooks has an interesting column in the nytimes about how supposedly rational people get into debt.

First, I'll let it be known that some people are just stupid and don't know what they're doing. Sure, you can call them exploited, but future-orientation is a key component of the mental capacity needed for responsibility.

In short, these predatory companies swooped down on a vulnerable woman, took what they could and left her careening toward bankruptcy.

But also,

Free societies depend on individual choice and responsibility, those in this camp argue. People have to be held accountable for their indulgences or there is no justice. As McLeod herself admirably told Morgenson: “I regret not dealing with my emotions instead of just shopping.”

The two dueling visions I'm talking about, though I blame chemicals more than predatory companies.

Here is the reconciliation attempt:

Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight.

According to this view, what happened to McLeod, and the nation’s financial system, is part of a larger social story. America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded.

Some of the toxins were economic. Rising house prices gave people the impression that they could take on more risk. Some were cultural. We entered a period of mass luxury, in which people down the income scale expect to own designer goods. Some were moral. Schools and other institutions used to talk the language of sin and temptation to alert people to the seductions that could ruin their lives. They no longer do.

Norms changed and people began making jokes to make illicit things seem normal. Instead of condemning hyper-consumerism, they made quips about “retail therapy,” or repeated the line that Morgenson noted in her article: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

McLeod and the lenders were not only shaped by deteriorating norms, they helped degrade them. Despite all the subterranean social influences, there still is that final stage of decision-making when individual choice matters. Each time an avid lender struck a deal with an avid borrower, it reinforced a new definition of acceptable behavior for neighbors, family and friends. In a community, behavior sets off ripples. Every decision is a public contribution or a destructive act.

So, the shift has to come from society. We have to stop rewarding frivolous conspicuous consumption. We have to stop treating the mediocre girl with the Gucci purse like a hot girl. We have to stop giving social standing to people with fast cars (that are probably giving oil money to the Muslims too). We have to stop this ridiculous conspicuous consumption culture that is threatening to take over the globe.

Garbage From Brooks

2008-07-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

Proving that he is not keeping up with current research, Brooks writes an editorial in the times claiming that genetics has nothing to do with behavior.

Right...differences between dog breeds are solely due to differences in the environment?

Shameful.

Genes and violence

2008-07-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

Genes matter. Check out this study:

"These results, which are among the first that link molecular genetic variants to delinquency, significantly expand our understanding of delinquent and violent behavior, and they highlight the need to simultaneously consider their social and genetic origins," the researchers said.

This is important. Blank slate continues to go down, and the genetic roots of behavior continue to increase in importance as environments become less varied. Social engineering will fail to alleviate problems in our society.

The challenge for liberals is to consider a paradigm shift away from blaming society and oppression for failed citizens. Instead, they should blame genetics as opposed to ceding the ground to conservatives who blame moral character or religious decline for crime and teenage hoodlums.

The Commandments

2008-07-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

Just going to link here for your edification. Enjoy.

Animal Equality

2008-07-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

All animals are not equal. I find it much more difficult to hit an innocent puppy than step on a ladybug.

Saletan has written a post on that in slate

GAP is scientifically honest. And science doesn't show mental parity between great apes and human adults. What it shows, as the group's president acknowledges, is that great apes "experience an emotional and intellectual conscience similar to that of human children." Accordingly, the Spanish proposal doesn't treat apes like you or me. It treats them like "humans of limited capacity, such as children or those who are mentally incompetent and are afforded guardians or caretakers to represent their interests.

Their justification?

(Apes) enjoy a rich emotional and cultural existence in which they experience emotions such as fear, anxiety and happiness. They share the intellectual capacity to create and use tools, learn and teach other languages. They remember their past and plan for their future. It is in recognition of these and other morally significant qualities that the Great Ape Project was founded.

But there is a problem. Once you open the door of rights to non-humans, then you have to start judging ALL living beings on a spectrum, where the question of rights becomes a QUANTITATIVE question rather than a BINARY choice between all rights and no rights. What happens when the rights of very intelligent animals conflicts with that of very unintelligent humans? Whose rights win out? For example, would it be justified to destroy an ape habitat to make way for a facility to house the mentally ill?

Should rights be proportional to intellectual capacity? It would be difficult to argue otherwise if apes were granted rights but mice weren't.

In that case, would rights be apportioned more to racial groups that are more intelligent?

Disturbing questions. Only more justification for the singularity.

The left is weird

2008-07-03T16:21:00.001-07:00

So, for however long I've been making the case that the Democratic party's defense of Islam and vilification of Evangelicals is fundamentally hypocritical. Here is defense for that statement in a post from GNXP.

Most striking comparisons:

Homosexuality should be accepted by society:
Evangelicals: 26%
Muslims: 27%
Catholic: 58%
Protestant: 56%

Government should do more to protect morality:
Evangelical: 50%
Muslim: 59%
Catholic: 43%
Protestant: 33%

And finally, to show that it's the religion's fault, not necessarily a lack of belief:

Belief in God: Absolutely certain
Evangelical: 90%
Muslim: 82%
Catholic: 72%
Protestant: 73%

People, Islam is, simply, a bad religion. They do not fundamentally believe in secularism, which is a treasured first amendment right.

They do not have a progressive belief system. And yet liberals love them. What an odd world!

Bad boys and Sex partners

2008-06-29T14:39:00.001-07:00

Relatively self explanatory. Bad boys get more girls

Jonason and his colleagues subjected 200 college students to personality tests designed to rank them for each of the dark triad traits. They also asked about their attitudes to sexual relationships and about their sex lives, including how many partners they'd had and whether they were seeking brief affairs.
“High 'dark triad' scorers are more likely to try to poach other people's partners for a brief affair”

The study found that those who scored higher on the dark triad personality traits tended to have more partners and more desire for short-term relationships, Jonason reported at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society meeting in Kyoto, Japan, earlier this month. But the correlation only held in males.

Human nature sucks. Go robots! I suppose this is the epitome of the question: why do bad things happen to good people?

Because being good wouldn't be a virtue if it was rewarded. At the same time, religion requires us to rationalize injustice in the world by assuming that people get their just desserts in the afterlife or their next life. What bs.

Religion Gets Life Wrong

2008-06-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

So, two important articles recently.

Again from slate a convincing theory on male homosexuality having genetic roots:

It holds that a gene can be reproductively harmful to one sex as long as it's helpful to the other. The gene for male homosexuality persists because it promotes—and is passed down through—high rates of procreation among gay men's mothers, sisters, and aunts.
...
This is an example where the results of scientific research can have important social implications," he tells LiveScience. "You have all this antagonism against homosexuality because they say it's against nature because it doesn't lead to reproduction. We found out this is not true because homosexuality is just one of the consequences of strategies for making females more fecund."

Important stuff.

And also, just as earth shattering, we have the ingredients for life on mars

“We basically have found what appears to be the requirements, the nutrients, to support life whether past, present or future,” said Samuel P. Kounaves of Tufts University, who is leading the chemical analysis, during a telephone news conference on Thursday. “The sort of soil you have there is the type of soil you’d probably have in your backyard.”

Mars today is cold and dry, and the surface is bombarded by ultraviolet radiation, making life unlikely, but conditions could have made the planet more habitable in the past. Plants that like alkaline soil — like asparagus — might readily grow in the Martian soil, provided that other components of an Earth-like environment including air and water were also present.

Pretty crazy stuff. Either way, backwards faiths such as Islam have to prepare for the possibility of two things:

1) Their hatred of homosexuality as against Islam will ultimately prove delusional, as homosexuality is a function of nature and NOT a free will choice.

2) Intelligent life exists outside this planet. Most religions will fall apart, as Earth not being the center of the universe reduces the centrality of the human god as well as showing that the existence of beings apart from the human-soul dichotomy is possible, beings that likely have 0 connection with anything the religions dictate about how to live one's life.

Interesting Essays

2008-06-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

So, some posts to look out for:

Different environments favor different genes in this slate article on ADHD and the differences between nomads and pastoral peoples.

DRD4 7R+ genotypes were associated with indices of better nutritional status among nomads, particularly higher fat free mass, but worse indices in the settled individuals. This suggests that the 7R allele confers additional adaptive benefits in the nomadic compared to sedentary context.

Increased impulsivity, ADHD-like traits, novelty-seeking like traits, aggression, violence and/or activity levels may help nomads obtain food resources, or exhibit a degree of behavioral unpredictability that is protective against interpersonal violence or robberies.

So this makes sense, right? An ADD kid would probably thrive in a dynamic environment more than a stable one. So different environments select for different genes. Basic evolutionary biology, but something most try to ignore.

And another article, again from slate on genes and homosexuality.

In overall symmetry and amygdala activity, the brains of gay men resembled the brains of straight women, whereas the brains of lesbians resembled the brains of straight men. Previous work has connected such differences to fear, anxiety, aggression, and verbal, spatial, and navigational ability. It's not just a matter of preferring men or women. The broader implication, one expert argues, is that "in gay men, the brain is feminized."

Are the differences genetic? Not likely. "As to the genetic factors, the current view is that they may play a role in male homosexuality, but they seem to be insignificant for female homosexuality," the authors conclude. "Genetic factors, therefore, appear less probable as the major common denominator for all group differences observed here."

So, what's the common factor? If the study's design rules out learned influences, and if the results in women rule out genetics, that leaves what the authors call "hormonal influences" or noncognitive differences in the infant environment.

This is standard stuff, but important to get on paper. Chemicals cause homosexuality. So, it is not a sin. It's a sexual preferences. But at the same time, there is nothing wrong with changing something that someone doesn't like. If parents don't want gay kids, there is nothing wrong with altering the chemical balance in prenatal conditions to achieve that. I see gays advocating for marriage and parading during pride weekend. Good for them, but it seems strange. After all, the marriage is simply their desire to get societies' approval. The march is simply to shove it in our faces.

Ice on Mars.

Enough said. But, either way, we're getting closer and closer to alien contact. It's going to upend everything that we've ever assumed about ourselves. The question is merely whether it happens before or after the singularity. Nation states, religion, relationships, philosophy, animal rights, everything changes.

RIP Tim Russert

2008-06-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

RIP Tim Russert. What a shame we won't have him in this election. Sure, I know I and the HBD community fall out of the mainstream media on many issues, but he was one of the few pundits who I really listened to and appreciated.

A great step forward

2008-06-11T18:45:00.001-07:00

Recognizing the importance of animal sentience chimps are human, too.

The Left is confused

2008-06-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

Again, evidence that left wingers are strange. They support Islam and women's rights and sexual freedom.

There is a clear contradiction that is easily exposed in this Times article.

I like how Half sigma put it:

I don’t have very much sympathy for these Muslim women who get the surgery. Apparently they think it’s OK to deceive their husbands and families about an issue that’s obviously very important to them. If they don’t respect their traditions (which aren’t worthy of much respect), they should abandon their families and their crazy religion. Instead, they lie to everybody about their virginity and then bring up children in this toxic Islamic environment. Sometime in the future, the female children will be beaten and possibly killed by their Muslim fathers if they behave the same was as their mother did.

It's a stupid religion. We have to call people out on it. Listen to what Sam Harris said in this article:

The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for "racism" and "Islamophobia."

Our capitulations in the face of these threats have had what is often called "a chilling effect" on our exercise of free speech. I have, in my own small way, experienced this chill first hand. First, and most important, my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali happens to be among the hunted. Because of the failure of Western governments to make it safe for people to speak openly about the problem of Islam, I and others must raise a mountain of private funds to help pay for her round-the-clock protection.

What kind of world do we live in?

immigration delusions

2008-06-03T15:59:00.000-07:00

So, a recent disturbing editorial in the times about immigration here. Very disturbing. One quote that was really bad was this:

Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. We don’t mean dollars, though those are being squandered by the billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value.

You want to debate national identity? What about a simple one: respect for laws established by a democratic society.

And to specifically focus on the Mexicans, Huntington has a great comment here:

Unlike past immigrant
groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have
not assimilated into mainstream U.S.
culture, forming instead their own political
and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles
to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-
Protestant values that built the American
dream. The United States ignores this
challenge at its peril.

So...rejecting illegal hispanic immigration does NOT threaten our national identity.

This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Some backlogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations. A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The current strategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans and some Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty.

This does not mean that the solution is letting millions of illegal Mexicans in without recourse.

The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.

Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.

Not fair. We do not advocate restricting their rights. We merely demand that they be treated as law breakers, WHICH THEY ARE. How do we treat any other criminal?

And the past is not a good lesson for the future this time. Mexicans have failed to integrate after several generations in the US. You can't compare them to the Irish and the Jews, who did very well just a generation after arriving.

PUA, foreign policy

2008-05-30T16:37:00.001-07:00

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.

The Singularity and Immigration

2008-05-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

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?

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

2008-05-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

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

NYT and IQ

2008-05-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

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.

What's no one talking about

2008-05-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Not sure what to make of this

2008-05-01T07:49:00.001-07:00

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...?

The analogy is there

2008-04-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Kinda random video, but I was reading about the premiere of This American Life a phenomenal podcast (who says the US doesn't produce anything great?)

And I ran into this video of the host, Ira Glass.

Describing a chicken farm (3:40), he compared the saving of the chicken to the underground railroad.

See, people? The analogy is there. The use of African Americans as slaves requires a similar pattern of thought as using animals as food. And the longer we persist as meat eaters with the shadow of race based IQ gaps, the more we damn ourselves.

I wrote a detailed post here on the intellectual steps needed to prepare for race differences in intelligence. First on the list? Animal rights.

And by the way, this reverend wright guy is a serious problem. Steve Sailer has written enough about him that I don't have to comment, but I was pleasantly surprised with the balanced treatment the issue received in Bob Herbert's nytimes column

This whole story is about Senator Obama’s run for the White House and absolutely nothing else. Barack Obama went to Rev. Wright’s church as a young man and was blessed with the Christian bona fides that would be absolutely essential for a high-profile political career.
...
My guess is that Mr. Wright felt he’d been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to his former pastor’s defense. What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour.
...
Beyond that, the apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf.

Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them. Very little has changed in the superdelegate count, but a number of those delegates have expressed concern in private over Mr. Obama’s inability to do better among white working-class voters and Catholics.

Rev. Wright is absolutely the wrong medicine for those concerns.

Sucks for you Obama. But then again, this is the flaw in the primary system. We got Bush instead of McCain in 2000, and we get Obama/Clinton instead of Biden in 2008.

Either way, racial reconciliation is never coming. Get used to it. Become a singularitarian.

Hope for vegetarians

2008-04-23T16:24:00.000-07:00

So, two interesting developments for those interested in vegetarianism:

1) We have notice from PETA that an offer is being made to create commercially viable meat.

People, THIS is why I want the singularity to happen. Until we use technology to improve our lives, continued suffering of third parties will be the norm in order to satiate our senses. This will be a needed first step towards preparing the liberal intelligensia for race differences in intelligence.

2) And Food shortages.

Again due to eating meat. Instead of being efficient and using grain products to feed people, we use it to feed animals with a 10% efficiency. Congrats, the beef you eat is leading to riots in the third world.

China and biological realities

2008-04-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

Unless you have your head stuck in the sand, you would have heard about the various Chinese abuses in Tibet. I hesitate to condemn the Chinese. They have different values than us, as a civilization. They stood by when ethnic Chinese were slaughtered in Khmer Rouge. Mao didn't mind starving 50 million people for ideology, and China regards the Darfur genocide as mildly annoying, but not worth giving up the country's resources.

Anyway, the repression of Tibetans doesn't strike me as out of character, and it's hard to get really upset over what's going on there compared with the brutality occurring in Africa that we're not worried about.

What's fascinating is an editorial in the times where Kristof acknowledges that Han Chinese don't mind the Tibetan repression:

It would be convenient if we could simply denounce the crackdown in Tibet as the unpopular action of a dictatorial government. But it wasn’t. It was the popular action of a dictatorial government, and many ordinary Chinese think the government acted too wimpishly, showing far too much restraint toward “thugs” and “rioters.”

I wish he would reconsider his multiculturalism, but I'll settle for same old anti-China rhetoric while he remains an apologist for the arm chopping barbarians in African ethnic conflicts.

What is heartening, though, is that in a new article, Foreign Affairs magazine is willing to talk about ethnic nationalism here

political identities often take ethnic form, producing competing communal claims to political power. The creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic separation. In areas where that separation has not yet occurred, politics is apt to remain ugly.

cough cough Iraq? Look, it all comes down to SELFISH GENE THEORY. People think on a tribal, or at least racial level, when it's a matter of them and their gene holders vs. the other.

Now, ethnic problems suck. But, what's infinitely worse is when you combine ethnic issues w/ racial disparities in IQ. That really leads to headaches, also known as Market dominant minority.

Back to China. If you read the rest of Kristof's editorial, he mentions this:

Americans sometimes think that the Tibetan resentments are just about political and religious freedom. They’re much more complicated than that. Tibetan anger is also fueled by the success of Han Chinese shop owners, who are often better educated and more entrepreneurial. So Tibetans seek solace in monasteries or bars, and the economic gap widens and provokes even more frustration — which the spotlight of the Olympics gives them a chance to express.

Very juicy piece of news. Listed here we see something of note: the average IQ in Nepal is 78-75, contrasted with the PRC, which has 100/105. Now, assuming that the Tibetans have different blood, and isolation and poverty are a factor, we can see their IQ going up to 85-90 genetically. Still a huge difference, the difference between African Americans and whites in the US.

If you look at the difference in skin tone between the Dalai Llama and Hu Jintao,

you can see that the two probably belong to two different ethnic groups, especially after comparing the picture of an average Tibetan vs. Chinese (okay, maybe I like Asian girls and was a little bias)

So, just think about the mental differences that the Tibetans have from being a relatively isolated population over the course of thousands of years. If you don't think that is enough time to evolve, check out this

“The origin of modern humans was a minor event compared to more recent evolutionary changes,” wrote the authors of the research, in a presentation slated for Friday in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Interesting stuff, huh?

Anyway, for another look at China we actually consider the Islamic world as well in a recent times article here. Usually I'd be the first to claim that Islam is responsible for all the problems. But I think biology also does, too. Look at this paragraph:

Like Tibetans in Tibet, Uighurs have historically been the predominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, indigenous groups have chafed at the arrival of large numbers of Han Chinese, the country’s predominant ethnic group, who have migrated to western regions with strong government support.

Uighurs, like Tibetans, have complained that recent Han arrivals now dominate their local economies, even as the Han-run local governments insert themselves deeper into schools and religious practices to weed out cultural practices that officials fear might reinforce a separate ethnic or religious identity.

Oh man. At the same time, though, these are Muslims. They generally want to be able to live under Sharia law without interference. A large Han presence threatens that, just as in Malaysia where they are dependent on the Chinese minority to keep the economy running.

Oh well.

Now, finally, we turn to the China-India relationship in this where India is painfully aware of their inability to control the Chinese giant.

But as the two emerging Asian giants engage in their own version of the Great Game, it is impossible for New Delhi to escape the reality that the playing field is badly skewed in China’s favor, and hence the need for caution.

The planned Africa summit meeting, for instance, only highlights the vast gap between Indian and Chinese ambitions on the continent. Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of state for commerce, pointed out that a $640 million line of credit to Ethiopia was India’s largest single loan to an African country; by comparison, he noted that China had extended a $13 billion line of credit to oil-rich Angola.

“We can’t race with them at all,” he said. “There’s no point. They have left us behind.”

That imbalance has forced New Delhi to walk a fine line between competing with China and challenging it.

China mostly buys iron ore from India and sells a variety of consumer goods and auto parts

Now, think about everything India has going for it: a better sex balance, a free government, a large English speaking population, ability to feed itself, a young population. And then think about the fact that India has never come close to catching China and never will.

IQ reality, people. It aint going away anytime soon.

4000 people die for political correctness

2008-03-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Strange, it seems, right? That I am on the same page as Barack Obama on the perhaps most pressing foreign policy issue of our time: the war in Iraq.

My opposition to our current course in Iraq is based on a single idea:

Iraq WILL NOT become a stable democracy with a strong central government.

Now, the reasons why is what makes me different from liberals. My primary position isthat the Iraqi IQ is far too low and the people to insular to be able to overcome tribal and religious allegiances necessary to build a functioning democratic government.

And it is not fair to make our soldiers die because of this fantasy.

So, because every new death is one death too much, we must gamble on the Biden plan to create strong regional governments. To do any less would be to favor ideology over the lives of our soldiers.

Remember what happened in Falluja?

The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerry (Jerko) Zovko, Wesley Batalona, and Michael Teague, were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set on fire. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates.[6][7] This bridge is unofficially referred to as "Blackwater Bridge" by Coalition Forces operating there.

A group of boys yanked a smoldering body into the street and ripped it apart. Someone then tied a chunk of flesh to a rock and tossed it over a telephone wire.

Iraqi people are not simply Americans in the middle east. They are a product of a violent and hateful religion as well as a culture that puts tribe over all else. They have no concept of minority rights, power sharing, or democratic secularism. They are a generation that has grown up under the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war. They are a country that tolerated the use of chemical weapons against 20,000 innocent Kurds. They are a people that do not hesitate to behead their enemies, and send their loved ones to be suicide bombers.

And, most importantly, they are a country without a national identity.

Is this worth dying for?

The myth of monogamy

2008-03-20T09:14:00.001-07:00

So, like I've been saying: stop taking sex so seriously. Everyone cheats .

Conflicting feelings of victimhood

2008-03-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

So, this week saw an interesting twist of victim baiting. Ferraro made her comments about Obama:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

I don't think you have to be a pundit to realize that this is pretty obvious. Obama's entire candidacy is based on transcending lines: party, class, racial, etc. If Obama were white, then his candidacy wouldn't be noticed, because it would just sound strange hearing a white guy say the stuff that Obama says in this video .

But apparently people don't get it. Like these whiners

"Barack Obama’s appeal has as much to do with being black as Robert F. Kennedy’s appeal had to do with being Roman Catholic, or as César Chávez’s had to do with being Latino, or as Mao’s with being Chinese.

Such personal appeal by another name is charisma."

Give me a break. This Post editorial sets the record straight.

Anyway, this whole sordid affair with Spitzer got the feminists really upset. Complaint after complaint of prostitution and whatnot.

For example, here is Kristof's column on prostitution. I think his most possibly convincing line is this:

I changed my mind after looking at the experiences of other countries. The Netherlands formally adopted the legalization model in 2000, and there were modest public health benefits for the licensed prostitutes. But legalization nurtured a large sex industry and criminal gangs that trafficked underage girls, and so trafficking, violence and child prostitution flourished rather than dying out.

The problem is, however, is that Kristof ignores what is really the problem with Amsterdam: the crime and African/Arab immigrants.

I went there last year. At night, there are basically no cops around and it was pretty scary with all these minorities walking around. My friends almost got mugged.

So, basically what we're looking at is a city that doesn't have a good police system, and so trafficking occurs. But, are you going to blame this on the prostitution, or on the fact that it's just an unsafe city? I'd go with the latter. If a country lets in scum, then trafficking is going to happen.

And this one?

Yet the evidence is overwhelming that, in the United States, prostitution is only very rarely just another career choice. Studies suggest that up to two-thirds of prostitutes have been sexually abused as girls, a majority have drug dependencies or mental illnesses, one-third have been threatened with death by pimps, and almost half have attempted suicide.

Sooo seems like a pretty rough life, right? Until you actually read what Dupre's life was like.

She claims that she's a survivor of drug abuse and homelessness. What really happened?

As written about here

The truth is she's a spoiled little girl from NJ who didn't get a second Porsche and now spreads her legs so she can go on fancy trips and buy fancy purses. Bo-hoo.

Don't we have a war on? Isn't there genocide in Sudan going on right now?

?

2008-03-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

Spitzer used a prostitute to fulfill his sexual desires.

Bush used 9/11 to fulfill his oedipal desires to start Gulf War II.

How many died when Spitzer banged the hooker?

When is our society going to get out of our stupid sexual hangups?

Genes are important

2008-03-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

Genes are important .

And yet, I keep hearing the same thing from anti-singularitarian Luddites: if you alter our genes, then there is nothing left to live for, because our entire live will be by design.

That is true. But do you trust nature more than yourself to determine your fate?

Last Debate

2008-02-26T21:55:00.001-08:00

Hillary Clinton went for a hail mary tonight and the quarterback wasn't even able to throw the ball.

Her attacks on Obama fell flat.

Healthcare? She's nitpicking. Any centrist American would BY FAR be more likely to agree with a law mandating parents to buy health insurance for their kids instead of mandating everyone to buy it.

NAFTA? She supported it. And instead of actually defending Nafta, which she should, she instead put the spin on and claimed that she never supported it.

Afghanistan and Iraq? She voted for the war. Simple as that.
When Tim Russert put the possibility of future conflict in Iraq, she dismissed the possibility, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the situation. While Obama said he'd be willing to use force.

Who is more likely to regain the world's respect of the United States? The cackle or the orator?

FINALLY people are asking Obama questions about Wright. Obama seems to have dealt with it well. Friend of Israel and the Jews. But rebuilding the relationship between AA and Jews is difficult (market dominant minority-HBD problem). He spoke out against antisemitism in the AA community, which is somewhat respectable.

This whole reject/denounce Farrakhan business should settle the matter.

And Clinton did not know Putin's successor (I knew his name of the top of my head). That was funny. But I think we are demonizing Russia too much. Their wealth depends on their oil, their people care little for democracy, and their national identity is under constant assault by ethnic-based succession movements throughout the world, and they are barely able to control their nuclear weapons. To say that they are our enemy is absurd. They are merely trying to regain a past glory. We really should look at genocide supporting China, or the million other tragedies in the world.

I voted already. But this election is a damn dynamic animal.

Delusional white people

2008-02-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

Intrade puts Obama at 85% on the Democratic nomination. Clinton is making her last stand at Ohio and Texas.

Is it just me or is this crazy? A black man with the middle name Hussein is going to be running for President against a war hero. This should be a VERY interesting election. And I think that if John McCain is willing to rethink his support of Bush policies now that he's already wrapped up the nomination (Iraq, Taxes, etc), I may yet switch.

Anyway, Obama is a fad. Yes, he may have decent policy prescriptions, but when people claim that he's bringing new people into politics, it's not because of his enlightened political philosophy. It's because apathetic people now have something cool to root for and people who don't understand the policy divides in this country and how difficult it will be to overcome them.

Anyway, the wildly popular blog Stuff White people like has a post on Obama . I've been trying to put up HBD realism on the site to counter anything that speaks well of criminal minorities, but the sheer size of the comments prevents me.

Either way, it's a treasure trove. An unmoderated popular blog? That's the central spot for me to put links on my blog to posts that use evolutionary biology to back up his amusing white observations. Should be interesting.

Because white people are afraid that if they don’t like him that they will be called racist.

This is brilliant. And I think it is also half the reason why Obama does well in Caucuses.

Anyway, so I've been reading another blog occasionally which posted a pretty rough sketch of Rush Limbaugh's talking points against Obama in the coming months.

As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for their ... well, support.

Your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of any legislative achievement, my pastor's relations with Louis Farrakhan and Libyan dictator Moamar Quadafi, or my blatantly leftist voting record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of change.

Oh man, this is gonna be good. According to Steve Sailer, Michelle Obama failed her bar exam and wrote a stupid thesis, which is now being opened up. But then again, McCain slept with a lobbyist? Obama has ties to a radical pastor? But McCain is decaying!

Get the popcorn ready.

Machines

2008-02-21T18:20:00.000-08:00

The immigration debate provokes a very strong reaction. This debate takes place in the same poisonous environment that characterized the beginning of the Iraq war and didn't allow for serious debate. People started asking the hard questions only after the occupation failed and we got screwed. So, in the interest of creating calm dialog and clarity, I'm going to respond to a recent comment with a story, written in the spirit of the fable of the dragon-tyrant .

Also, the Democratic debate muddles have brought up the issue too.

Bear with me, please.

------------------------------------

The year is 2050 AD. Humanity has been exterminated from the planet. They imbued machines with the spirit of man and intelligence far beyond that of man. Result? Annihilation. However, the machines now occupy the earth in different areas, each adapting to the climate to generate energy in different ways. Some are more efficient than others, such as the nuclear machines in the resource poor areas, while some are less efficient, like the machines in the oil rich areas of earth.

The objective of the entire machine society as a whole is generating knowledge, while individual machines strive for utility. In order to gain utility, however, they have to use some of their time and energy towards productivity. Now, the machines in different parts of the world have different production curves. Machines using nuclear energy are very numerous in area A of the world. They tend to have high productivity and therefore are accustomed to a high utility of existence. In area B of the world, most of the machines run on oil and coal. They have low productivity and are accustomed to low utility. The rest of the world is a mixture, with some countries having huge diversity, with solar powered, nuclear, oil, coal, fusion powered machines and so on.

There was a large area of the world, area C left untapped, with various different energy fuels. It was first discovered by Area A, and so it was mainly populated by nuclear machines, or A machines. Area D was right next door, and was mainly populated by machines from area B, or B machines.

Eventually the machines in area C came to expect a high degree of utility as a daily reality, while the B machines in area D, due to their inefficiency, had a lower productivity, but were never willing to re engineer themselves into nuclear powered machines in order to have higher productivity. So, the average machine in D had a relatively low utility.

The thing is, is that area C still had a significant amount of empty unused space that could be used by machines in other parts of the world, which was relatively crowded. So, the area C grand AI began inviting machines from all around the world to come in. However, the selection process happened to use energy efficiency as a means of selecting machines. So, more nuclear machines (A machines) came in, as well as some fusion machines (F machines), solar powered machines (S machines), and the rare outlier efficient coal/oil machine. These newcomer machines also happened to be very productive and so enjoyed a large amount of utility.

The only problem with the society was that there were some very basic functions that were left unfulfilled in the society because they required too much time and rewarded a low amount of utility, as the did not utilize the high productivity functions of the local machines.

At some point, some management-oriented machines looked nearby and took notice of the machines in area D. They noticed that the machines in area D, though very unproductive, were used to low levels of utility. The management machines also noticed that these machines had about the same level of productivity (in terms of time investment) for the low level functions that were needed to be done in Area C. So, they brought in the B machines to do the low level work.

Things seemed to go well. Most A machines in Area C benefited from the labor of the B machines, who needed very little utility to work. Some A machines were displaced, and went on to higher level functions, while others simply did nothing.

But things changed. Being surrounded by the higher utility demands of the A machines made the B machines adjust. All utility is relative, and so the B machines adjusted to requiring more utility in order to do the same work as before.

So, in the long term, what happens is the B machines now demand large utility for the development and creation of NEW B machine spawns, but yet the new B machines will still only produce as much as the old machines, but we had to bear the additional cost of making the machine. The creation of new machines is handled by a central factory that all machines put labor into.

In addition to this, the B machines now requires maintenance, and also requires maintenance of non-useful parts of the machine (for example appearance). However, there is one central authority that does appearance maintenance and it is all machines contribute to the central authority.

The machines also use a different programming code, so the local machinery has to adapt their code to the new machines. It was fine originally, because there were special management machines that converted the code of local machines to the code of the new machines. But after the new B machines needed more utility from different sectors of machine society, the other machines in society had to reprogram themselves to be able to accommodate the new machinery. And so since all of the area wasn't operating in the same language, overall efficiency went down.

Finally, the machine also starts to spew out large amounts of pollution that doesn't really harm the owner but has significant external costs on society.

So the impact of the machines is felt at different levels of society. Many native machines in the short term, especially the elites, benefit from the machines and encourage them to keep getting imported. However, some parts of the machine society generally dislike ALL new machines and exaggerate the drawbacks of ALL new machines.

Of course, since Area C is an area of machines that were new at some point, and all the machines in the nation ultimately came from some machine or another, the policymakers ultimately reject the position that new machines should be banned from entering the country.

However, these low quality machines keep getting imported and by the time that the locals realize that not all machines are equally useful, it is too late. The machines have become too embedded in society to be shipped out on an mass scale. So, the best working machinery has to spend more effort maintaining the crappy machines instead of pumping out products.

So, ultimately the addition of the new machines hurt in the long run, but wasn't bad in the short run. If there was some way to import the machinery only after it was built, and remove the highest polluting machinery, and not spend resources on maintenance of their appearances, then the imported machines could be a net benefit. However, that is unlikely.

So, instead what the policymakers should try is to only import new machines that may have high building costs and maintenance costs, but don't emit alot of pollution and have huge levels of productivity to balance out the other costs.

Unfortunately, the debate around the importation of machinery has gotten quite heated. In one camp sit the people who hate all new machinery. In another camp sits the machines who thinks all new imported machines are great and don't want to stop and new machines from coming in. In a third camp sits those who think that the new machines are good because they have such low costs for their owners.

In the fourth camp sits a tiny minority that points out that certain machines are more productive than others, and that we should only import the machines that produce more than their costs.

However, saying that not all machines are equally productive in the long run is considered an affront to the engineering genius of the great creator, and so is rarely mentioned.

And so, the problem remains unsolved.

And remember, humans are just organic machines.

Look around

2008-02-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

I've always liked Kristof's editorials, though I often disagree with his positions. He brings attention to backwater places of the world with the poorest people, and ties events there into the greater global picture.

But it seems like in his last editorial he's so disgusted that he's grasping at straws trying to blame the US instead of the Kenyan people for their problems.

a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

And then he blames us

Many Kenyans also say that the United States has been a part of the problem. In our desire for stability, we acquiesced in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signaling that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election.

The United States cozied up to Mr. Kibaki and initially congratulated him on his “victory,” without being emphatic enough that election-rigging is intolerable.

And then returns to the brutality

Flying over northern Kenya to Eldoret, you see smoke still rising from some of the countless Kikuyu farms that have been burned to the ground in areas where many Kikuyu were murdered. And here in Kisumu, the arriving Luo tell horrific stories.

“My wife was burned to death with our two children, aged 5 and 1 ½,” said Nicholas Ochieng, speaking as if in a daze. “Now I have no wife, no children, no house, no job. I have nothing.”

Mary Odhiambo, an aid worker tending to the new arrivals, said one shell-shocked woman arrived on a bus still clutching her husband’s head, wrapped up in newspapers, after a mob had hacked it off and mockingly presented it to her. A man arrived with his own severed penis in a sock.

I mean, COME ON. Seriously. You ask why I keep preaching HBD? It's because people who don't have abstract thinking skills (average Sub Saharan African IQ=70) think on a TRIBAL level. And don't understand nor respect the democratic process enough to create a functioning government with respect for minority rights.

And our attempt to impose one size fits all democracy on them is going to end up in flames. Sure, maybe we could have been more careful with Kenya, but stealing elections is something that happens all the time around the world. But the only place you see this level of brutality is in certain countries with certain religions and certain racial groups.

Bush stole the election, but how many Americans chopped each other? None, because we are a fundamentally CIVILIZED people.

And the longer we delude ourselves that people with the mental age of 12 can rule themselves and abide by our standards of civilization, the more innocent children are going to get hacked to pieces.

If you are a liberal and care about the world, stop going ga ga over Obama. Look at the world, and question your egalitarian beliefs.

It just won't go away!

2008-02-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

This damn racial dating disparity!

GNXP has a recent post about this phenomenon. I love how you can get James Watson defenses as well as a plug for Mystery's tv show on the same blog.

Anyway, the blog has some interesting things to say:

Why is it that Asian guys seem to experience shell-shock in the bar and nightclub scene?

The answer may lie in the arms race between the sexes, whereby males become better and better at showing off or charming and seducing females, which makes females evolve higher standards for the showing-off trait or greater skepticism and iciness when they sense they're being hit on. It's clear that this arms race has escalated much farther in sub-Saharan Africa and other places of similar latitude, compared to more extreme latitudes (although latitude is not the primary cause -- probably pathogen load, ease of female farming, and so on, that correlate with it). So, when an Asian male is dropped into the lion's den of the Western bar and nightclub scene, he is not dealing with a merely unfamiliar group of females -- a large proportion of Europeans and Latin Americans -- but one that has evolved to defeat a far tougher opponent than he.

Now, the question is whether the evolution happened on a meme level, or a genetic level? I say that they go together, but what's important is that the love is NOT colorblind and the new blogger stuff white people like is living in denial with his painfully truthful/resentful look at white liberal American society.

I suppose it will take time for people to realize VERY basic truths about human nature. Given that Watson has been shushed, pickup artists vilified, and the average American prefers a Muslim president to an atheist president,

it's not hard to see why common sense is lacking in the world.

Oh well. At least there are smart people making money off it, like Asian Playboy but since his site is more marketing than tactics, something tells me that genetics can't be overcome in the time of a short seminar.

Approach anxiety is a chemical process. I have it. We all have it, to different degrees. Some races have less of it, other races have to try and desensitize themselves from it.

In other news, Obama looks like he's doing pretty well. Oh well. I don't know how he'll fare in November since John McCain is looking pretty old . Bless his soul, he's a decent man, but just not right for the job. He would have been great after 9/11, but we don't want anymore fear mongering.

Trying to lose weight?

2008-02-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

If the genetic gods were not nice to you, and gave you a predisposition to loving carbs and things like chocolate cake, then here is something that will make you a little more careful the next time you eye the delicious brownie or cupcake in the bakery window. Hopefully this will make it easier to avoid those cravings.

Courtesy of jihad watch .

The Daily Mail reports of shop owners who sold chocolate cake SPRINKLED WITH SHIT.

Yup, you read that right.

Two shop-owners were today fined for selling chocolate cake - which had been sprinkled with human faeces.

A horrified customer ate the foul-smelling gateaux but noticed that it didn't taste or smell "quite right" and handed the cake to public health scientists.

The analysts soon established that the sweet treat was covered in faeces and legal proceedings against the shop owners were started.

Shop owners Saeed Hasmi, 25, and Jan Yadgari, 23, were fined £1,500 for selling food unfit for human consumption.

What a lovely world we live in. I think Allah is proud.