Face time or screen time

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

Arite movie not working just go here

Biden, Palin, Genocide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

Just going to link here for your edification. Enjoy.

Animal Equality

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recognizing the importance of animal sentience chimps are human, too.

The Left is confused

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

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

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

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?

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

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

Saletan's revenge

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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




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



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

HOWEVER,

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


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

TRY AGAIN

NYT and IQ

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


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


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


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


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

What's no one talking about

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

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

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

Why the hell do we listen to these guys?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not sure what to make of this

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


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


ok...?

The analogy is there

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

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

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.