More Fake Science

Last week ArsTechnica reported on the journal Tumor Biology withdrawing 107 cancer articles because of fraud in the peer-review process.

The journal Tumor Biology is retracting 107 research papers after discovering that the authors faked the peer review process. This isn’t the journal’s first rodeo. Late last year, 58 papers were retracted from seven different journals— 25 came from Tumor Biology for the same reason.

This is a timely revelation, as I have been frequently making the case lately about the rampant fraud in academia in debates regarding the science march and the Bill Nye controversy. Although I don't know if additional evidence really matters, as advocates of Scientism -- scientishts, as I call them -- seem to be suffering a severe case of the Gell-Man Amnesia Effect when it comes to fraud in science. Here's basically how the conservations on the subject play out.

Me: There is widespread fraud in academic science.
Scientisht: That's a bold claim with no evidence.
M: Well here is example A of fraud in academic science.
S: Yeah but that's just one isolated example.
M: There is also example B of fraud in academic science.
S: Okay well yeah there's that, but it's a special case. There is generally not fraud in academic science.
M: There is also example C of fraud in academic science.
S: Sure no field is perfect but you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
M: There is also example D of fraud in academic science.....

And so on. The problem here is that so many people have a binary viewpoint of...everything, pretty much, but especially in categorizing other people. A person is either pro-science or he is anti-science. There's no in-between. To point out the fraud prevalent in the scientific community, even if with pro-science intentions, is to be labeled as anti-science by the binaries. In a debate, it doesn't matter how much evidence you bring to the table because you have been labeled as anti-science. The scientisht will never acknowledge that your arguments or your evidence are credible. To do so would be to agree with "anti-science" viewpoints, and they're too sophisticated to fall for that trap!

Polygamy is Legal

In the post Should the State Proscribe Non-Marriages we looked at the historical role of marriage. The major argument of that piece was that, if society does not prohibit living arrangements that are like marriages in all aspects other than legal status, then there really is no point in marriage at all. That argument was then taken to apply to non-standard living arrangements as well. Specifically, polygamy. All states ban polygamy, but because there is no enforcement against relationships that are practically but not legally polygamy, there is effectively no ban on polygamy.

Today I see a video on facebook about a couple who has found a way to incorporate the major legal benefits of marriage into their polygamous relationship. For all practical purposes, this man has two wives. He is now divorcing his first wife -- who, as mother, will retain legal status over her children -- and marrying the new wife, who will thus attain legal status over the children. It's not quite pure polygamy. If he has a kid with the new wife, then the original wife will not have legal status over those children. Also, the original wife has given up her ability to sue for divorce and must file her taxes independently. But that's about it. As the family is now, they now have legal status approximately equivalent to a polygamous family. In whatever state they are living in, the law against polygamy is but a quaint relic.

This video was posted by someone who was actually praising such a progressive arrangement. There is a certain perspective where one could support this, which is by completely ignoring all social and historical contexts. If you perform your analysis in the universe of just those 3 individuals, then there is little to object to. Of course the man will prefer two wives if he can swing it. And if the wives are happy with the arrangement, then who's to judge? It's all very easy and happy if you refuse to ask more difficult contextual questions such as: why is it that nearly all stable societies seem to adopt monogamy? Note that the context-less opinion is really the libertarian argument. Are these people directly infringing on anyone else's liberties? No. Are they following the letter of the law? Yes. Then it's perfectly libertarian friendly! There is some difference between the liberals who advocate for these things and the libertarians why merely find it acceptable. Libertarian opinions, wrong as they often are, come from principles. Liberal support for this type of arrangement is not because it satisfies the libertarian tenets of amoral legal transactionalism (although they'll appropriate those arguments to suit their ends) or because it satisfies any formal liberal principles (of which there are none). The liberals love it because they love anything that bucks traditional western culture, and particularly anything they think will really rub conservatives' noses in it.

TL;DR
Polygamy is banned yet permitted in the US. Libertarians are okay with it because it fits their principles. Conservatives are opposed because they see it as degeneracy. Liberals support it because they hate western society. Reactionaries understand that degeneracy is a defining characteristic of civilizational decline.

Muslim Kill Liberals pt 4

The UK's Evening Standard reports on more cultural enrichment in London in Battersea murder: Cyclist, 17, 'hacked to death by masked gang armed with machetes' on south London estate.

A 17-year-old cyclist was hacked to death by masked youths wielding machetes in a terrifying attack on a London housing estate, witnesses said today.

The victim was chased by a gang wearing balaclavas and carrying large knives who stabbed him multiple times and left him sprawled on the bonnet of a car in Battersea.

Neighbours told how they raised the alarm after being woken at 1.25am on Sunday by the boy’s scream of “help me, I’m dying”.

He was rushed to a south London hospital by paramedics where he he was pronounced dead around 90 minutes later.

He is the fourth teenager to be murdered in London in this month alone, and the eighth this year.

The article doesn't specify the identity of the victim, but you'd have to be pretty dense not to comprehend the source of cultural enrichment that gang stabs random teenagers with machetes and leaves them to bleed out in a parking lot. It does mention that it has been the fourth murder of a teenager this month. 

I would never tell a parent who lost a child that they deserved it, but then again you'd never find me raising my child in an area with such cultural enrichment. Native Brits who remain in Londonistan must realize they are taking on these kinds of risks by living amongst Europe's favored sons & daughters. Immigrants themselves are also the victims of immigrant violence, judging by the names, but even they made the willful decision to root their families out of their ancestral homeland. It's not apparent to me that the migrants are any safer in the European neighborhoods they end up in. But if I was living in Jihadistan and Britain was offering welfare bennies to anyone who could make it there with a sad enough sob story to apply for asylum...well I'd certainly be tempted.

There is another lesson in this story. The article mentions that knife and gun crime is on the rise. I'll spare you a gun control argument, but notice what's happening here. In London there are armed gangs roaming and killing people nearly at random. Four dead in a month. If four were killed all at once it would be breaking international news for a couple days. Since they're spread out, they're barely covered. Google News shows only four outlets picking up the story, all British.

If you're somewhat conservative or K-selected, this would be an abhorrent reality. In America, we pretty much look the other way as gangbangers shoot each other up, but once innocent citizens start getting hit we take strong action to stop the random criminality. This is a core distinction between r- and K-selected traits. In r, violence is okay just so long as it is random. The violence should not give any group selective advantage. Note the British stance on guns. Absolutely not allowed. Why, because it will lower crime? Certainly not! This article alone should be enough to destroy that narrative. No, they're against citizen gun ownership because it would give one group -- gun owners-- a competitive advantage. Guns by themselves don't give an advantage (in a lawful society), and random crime doesn't either, but put them together and the armed folk gain a survival advantage versus their gunophobic counterparts.

Ostensibly the r-selected rabbits don't want random violence or gun rights (which is equated with violence). They don't want any violence at all. That's what they say, but r/K theory would predict that, at a subconscious level, they should actually desire the violence. And in practice, isn't that what we see? Besides the gated communities of the very rich, every place liberals touch there is violence. The inner cities are violent. The refugee camps are violent. The Mexican gangs are violent. The Muslims are violent. BLM is violent. Their foreign policy (under Obama) tended to support violent radicals. Their protests turn violent. They bring violence to the peaceful rallies of their political opponents.

For a group that is against violence of all sorts, they sure seem to surround themselves in a perpetual cloud of violence. Still they loathe self-defense gun rights. This is probably the most confounding thing to standard conservatives, but it is all perfectly congruent with r/K theory.

What Science Ain't

I sparked a bit of an argument on social media with a little jab at Bill Nye the Scientism Guy.

Bill Nye the Science Guy is a science expert in the sense that Larry the Cable Guy is cable expert.

People don't really like it when you attack their cherished sciensh celebrities. The reaction of those who chose to defend the attack was what we've come to expect: a discussion of credentials. For instance, because Nye is a degreed mechanical engineer, that makes him a qualified scientist. More than just a fictional character with a children's show, I suppose. But is he a scientist? What is a scientist? To find out, let's name the things we know aren't scientists and see where things start to get uncomfortable.

A tech junkie is not a scientist

There's a tendency for people to lump all technology in with science. For instance, people say that because engineering is a subset of science, engineers are scientists. But does working in technology make one a scientist? By that understanding, gadget gurus would have to be scientists, as well as mathematicians, etc. If all STEM is science, then why even have the TEM at all? It should just be S.

A book reader is not a scientist

Merely possessing knowledge does not make one a scientist. An idiot savant whose only skill is voracious reading skills coupled with perfect retainment might learn the entirety of some scientific discipline in a number of months. But that would not make him a scientist. Learning science does not count. I've taken quantum mechanics but no one pretends I'm a physicist.

A figure skater is not a scientist

Further, employing knowledge found from science does not make one a scientist. A figure skater might be a top-notch scholar, with a deep understanding of the laws of centripetal motion.  She might employ that knowledge to create visually stunning performances of her art. But that does not make her a scientist. An engineer is not a scientist just because he builds bridges. If they were, they'd have to build a series of spans at each crossing to determine which design & materials had the best results. But they don't do that. They build bridges using best design practices and knowledge previously acquired.

A teacher is not a scientist

Teaching is not science. Teaching is teaching. Science might be applied to teaching, but that is not the norm. Science is about discovering new information. Teaching is about passing the information down to others. Both are very important roles, but they are not the same. Just because Nye goes in front of kids and recreates science experiments does not make him a scientist any more than performing Beethoven makes a pianist a composer.

A computer scientist is not a scientist

The term science has been so abused that it cannot be trusted on sight. People have a tendency to latch on to the word in the belief that it will convey an air of legitimacy. But not much of what happens in the field of computer science is really science. The same can be said of political science and probably any field that feels compelled to include the word science. Computer science graduates understand the distinction and call themselves programmers or software engineers instead. Even within academia, they are more likely to refer to themselves as researchers than scientists.

A taxonomer is not a scientist

Here things start to get uncomfortable, as taxonomy is defined as a field of science. Is it really science? It doesn't do much to expand the field of human knowledge. Then again, organizing things allows for humans to perceive relationships they might otherwise miss. I would suggest that taxonomy can be a science, as long as it organizes observations against a testable theory. For instance, I might organize my record albums by the middle name of the drummer, but there is nothing to test. There is no underlying theory. I might theorize that all the K albums will be terrible, but testing random hypotheses probably doesn't constitute science.

On the other hand, organisms tend to be organized according to the theory of evolution. It is tested every time a new organism is discovered (does it fit in nicely or does it mess up the order?) and with the advent of new technologies, such as genomics. So a taxonomer might actually be a scientist, but we have a pretty good idea of when they are not.

A theoretician is not a scientist

Are theory guys scientists? What about philosophers and logicians? Our theory of science probably shouldn't exclude theoretical physicists, but what if it does? The job of the theorist is to create hypotheses. We might make a similar argument as we did of the taxonomer. Their work must be testable. String theory has lost support in the scientific community; no one believes it is a testable theory.

Can we apply the same requirement to the logician or the philosopher? I reckon there is no other way. Arm-chair philosophers might analyze their world view and come up with unique insights, but the process can only be called science if those insights are testable. In Make Predictions or STFU I implored anyone making social commentary to make predictions if they expect to be taken seriously. To be credible, one must be regularly proven correct, or show that they have modified their world view in response to poor predictions. This prediction-making is a poor man's science. Yes, it's prone to some confirmation bias, but formal science suffers that as well. Perhaps even more so, as disagreeing with the academic orthodoxy is a good way to sink a promising research career.

Bill Nye is not a scientist

Perhaps science is not really that complicated to define after all. Actions that expand or sharpen the collection of testable human knowledge is science. Everything else is something else. Acquiring scientific knowledge isn't science. Applying scientific knowledge isn't science. Teaching scientific knowledge isn't science. It would seem that there isn't anything that Bill Nye does that could actually be called science. Making and testing predictions on a blog is closer to science that what Bill Nye does, which is to apply pseudo-scientific rationale to preferred political and social objectives. We all tend to do it, but we don't all have a large platform to broadcast from or the veneer of scientific credibility. Really Bill Nye is a model for us of what not to be doing.

Science is a process. You are a scientist if you engage in science. Having a degree doesn't make you a scientist. Advocating science doesn't make you a scientist. However, to go back to my initial point, the question was never whether Nye is a credentialed scientist, or even whether he is a scientist at all. The question was whether he is a science expert. Can one be an expert in a field of which they do not participate? Yes, I think they can. Historians of medieval warfare don't normally engage in jousting tournaments to prove their legitimacy, for example.

So how do we know if Bill Nye is a science expert? Well if we could definitively answer that question then we could also answer a great number of more substantive problems. Like who to elect. The normal human intuition must suffice. Does he have great command of the science he discusses? Does he communicate that knowledge without contradicting himself? Is he able to make solid arguments in favor of the positions he advocates? The answer to all those questions, as shown in Bill Nye the Scientism Guy, is no he does not. He does not have the facts of climate change at his disposal. He deeply contradicts himself. And not only are his arguments easily refuted, they betray a novice grasp of the concepts he using. If he goes on Tucker Carlson specifically to talk about cognitive dissonance and then shows that he doesn't really understand the term, then what else is he talking about that he does not understand? 

It's interesting that Bill Nye is arguing that climate skeptics are suffering cognitive dissonance because they question the results of the academy, and so many people defend Nye because he is (allegedly) credentialed. It all sounds like the sort of dynamic that science was supposed to avoid. In the days before science, the epistemological orthodoxy was strictly controlled by the academy, which was basically the church. While the anti-science role of the church is somewhat exaggerated in the modern zeitgeist, it can't be denied that they kept a strong grip on what could be believed and what would be punished as heresy. The whole point of science was that knowledge became a matter of provable fact rather than theological or authoritarian belief. And yet here we are, being told that consensus of the academy is all the proof we need, and academic credentials are all that convey credibility. By the same people, mind you, who typically condemn religion because of it's enforced monopoly on intellectual discourse. It seems that too many of those people are less interested in destroying religion as a matter of  principle as they are in replacing it with their preferred religious orthodoxy, Scientism.

The Science March is Bullshit

First off, a bit of a prediction confirmation. In Discussion of March For Science Analysis, I pointed out that while the march was mostly about liberal social advocacy, the organizers had done a good job of keeping their website free of specific scientific controversies, such as climate change, and kept the topic to science in the abstract. (Secondary to the social issues, of course). I predicted that we would see that science predominately translates as climate policy, and that it would be more obvious as the march approached. I've actually not seen a lot about the march in my particular bubble, but this video came up yesterday in my facebook feed. The first issue mentioned, predictably, was climate change.

Also this image is the only depiction I've seen of the march in Washington, via William M. Briggs' post March for Science a Dud.

I'm going to go ahead and call the prediction accurate, based on the small sample size of march promotional materials I encountered.

The march is bullshit predominately based on the evidence given in the March For Science analysis, where I analyzed the verbiage of the March for Science website and determined they were more consumed with social agenda than actual science, by approximately an order of magnitude. For the sake of discussion, let's pretend that the evidence I compiled doesn't exist. (Should be easy for the liberals here reading, if there are any.) Let's suppose that the march isn't just an exercise in social/political expression, wrapped in the veneer of science concern. In that context, are the marches making compelling arguments? Witness this marcher from the satellite march in my hometown, which is typical of what we've seen today.

As always, I'm available for free-lance Photoshop work.

Let's start with the caption: Who could have imagined that you would have to defend science in America in the 20th century?

Have to defend? Who is forcing him? And from what? Are there armed science deniers lurking in downtown Springfield, and quirky hand-drawn signs are their only kryptonite? He doesn't want to have to do it, but he's absolutely forced to defend science from....something. [Hint: it's Trump!!! It's evil Trump!! The whole thing is a thinly veiled protest by liberals against Trump.] The notion is that they believe he is going to cut funding to education, and that is the same as a direct attack on scientists. Trump might as well lurk in their labs and stab each scientist in the throat with broken shards of a shattered Erlenmeyer flask.

In their minds scientific output is directly correlated with academic funding, despite plenty of evidence that American education is producing worse results with more funding. To see budget cuts as a direct threat to the western institution of scientific inquiry, you have to not only believe in that specious correlation, but you also must make the assumption that scientific progress is dependent on government funding. You must ignore that the major scientific and technological breakthroughs in history have mostly occurred outside of government influence. The fact that government has almost completely taken over the funding of science does not imply that the government is a necessary prerequisite for science. In fact, the government dominance in academic funding should be an issue of contention for anyone interested in purely objective scientific inquiry. Washington bureaucrats decide the funding priorities and the career academics adjust their research proposals accordingly. The amount of control the government has on academic pursuits is troubling. But that issue is not raised by these liberal activists science promoters. Their implied message is that the government is a noble entity, without whose funding science would disappear forever, and that science itself is under threat because a bunch of racist science-deniers elected a clown president. Remember this all has very little to do with science. It is political virtue signaling. I have to go defend science, m'lady. My fedora, please.

The text of the sign is taken from a meme the was circulating the week before the march. What do we want? Evidence-based science! When do we want it? After peer review!

Perhaps this marcher is not informed that peer-reviewed research is a massive massive industry already. One list, not comprehensive, puts the number at 15,000 peer-reviewed journals, and doesn't include a vast number of minor journals. Everyone knows that academic careers depend on their ability to generate peer-reviewed publications. Publish or perish, goes the mantra. The academic industry in the US, which is enormous, is completely centered on peer-review journals. And yet this marcher has gone out and, with a straight face, declared, "It's time for peer-reviewed science!" What do we want? Running water! When do we want it? After opening the tap!

And all of this presupposes that peer-reviewed science isn't, well, bullshit. It's not total bullshit, in the sense that the march itself is total bullshit. But the peer-review process is enormously corrupt and is experiencing a reproducibility crisis that the marchers, who love science so much, seem to be unaware of. The number of scientific studies that can be reproduced is a small fraction of the total. One investigation found that only about ten percent of "landmark" cancer studies published by top journals could be reproduced! Can you imagine if my boss found that only ten percent of the code I write would compile? Or if a company made cars and only 10% ran? Not only is 10% reproducibility apparently a satisfactory benchmark in academia, but protesters marchers like this one promote it as the gold standard of intellectual achievement.

If science was predominately about providing benefit to mankind, we'd see a highly rigorous and self-policing institution that enforces high standards. If it was mostly interested in obtaining as much government funding as possible, we'd be likely to see signs of rampant corruption. We'd see that journals would accept submissions of computer-generated nonsense, that they'd accept submissions in exchange for cash bribes, and in fact there would be an entire ecosystem of fake academic research. This is in addition to the fact that up to 90% of the "real" research in the most respectable journals is bunk. I spent a couple years in grad school. I've seen first-hand that the obsession is with crafting research proposals to match the greatest number of funding-fad buzzwords. And I've heard second-hand about the out-right embezzlement of research funds that often occurs. One trick they like to use is to provide housing to researchers as part of their salary package, but to bill it at several times the market rate, pocketing the difference. Think about it. Someone loses a loved one to cancer, so they make a large donation to cancer research. After the charity takes a large enough cut to pay their executives millions of dollars a year, the researcher is then liable to pocket as much for himself as he can possibly get away with, in return for results that are 90% bogus. What an epic swindle, and an outrage.

If the science marchers were so concerned about the future of science that they felt compelled to "defend" it, you'd think they would have grave concerns about the government dominance of science and the rampant fraud. But they aren't interested in science that much. They're more preoccupied with social agendas, political advocacy, virtue signaling, and most of all, STOPPING DRUMPF!

The Uselessness of the Neutrals

Vox Day struck a nerve in his post The Only Reasonable Position.

It's well known that fence sitters are cowardly, but their intrinsic dishonesty in equating both sides is arguably more contemptuous.

Ugh, tell me about it. I have a friend on social media who only ever comments when I'm in a heat about something liberals have done, and it's always to let me know I'm getting too critical. (Maybe friend is a strong word.) His response is always to the effect of how both sides do it so it's not really a big deal, let's not get worked up. For instance, when I complained about the unprecedented vitriol against Trump supporters in the election, he responded that it was no different than rednecks talking about "libtards." As if! That's not an equal comparison. Trump supporters were being called racist and worse by the mainstream media and by Hillary herself. That's hardly comparable to what some right-wing nobodies say in the Breitbart comments.

I find the trait so annoying that I don't spend much time with that friend anymore. I just can't imagine living in a mindset where all factions are morally equivalent. Then what's the point of anything? Why be human at all? I really don't understand this. He's a churchgoer too. Does the knowledge of good and evil not compel him? Why go to church if you can't perceive evil and side against it? It should go without saying that he is a libertarian.

Muslims Kill Liberals pt 3

A black Muslim in Fresno just targeted and killed 4 whites in the liberal gun-free paradise of California. While I don't know the political leanings of the other victims (you can run the odds though), one of the victims was not just very liberal, but the rumor is circulating that he was a member of the left-wing political activist network Antifa. His twitter profile indicates that he is at least with them in spirit.

The article from the local paper doesn't mention an Antifa affiliation, but there are some comments to note.

Randalls, 34, ... was excited about his new job in the call center.

I don't like to mock people for their jobs, but when I see the Antifa losers I definitely imagine them as 34-year-old men working in call centers.

He and his wife of eight years, Katie, a Madera Unified School District elementary school teacher, have a preschool-aged son and daughter. 

A family man. Somewhat surprising, and sad to hear.

“He wouldn’t want this to turn into any type of hateful reaction from anybody in the public,” Valencia said. “He would want the focus to be on the love we have for him … to use this as an opportunity to heal and come together, not use this as ignition for any other hateful acts.”

Liberal status confirmed. At least he died knowing he'd never be called a racist.

Friends say Randalls was someone who could sway another’s beliefs in others because of his nonjudgmental attitude.

If by persuading with his nonjudgmental attitude they mean punching people he disagreed with.

“That makes it even sadder because Zack was truly a person who never saw color in anybody.”

A little self-preservation goes a long way.

“Zack would be the first person to ask why we are judging him for his beliefs,” Contente said. “He would say he (Muhammad) obviously had a mental issue, that his beliefs didn’t cause this.”

He would never judge someone for their beliefs, except of course by punching them.

The Law of Canceling Hypocrisy

A month or so ago in Democrats Face a Pandora Dilemma I described the wiretapping situation as being one where the left had to decide whether to condemn the actions that took place under Obama or to normalize them at a time when Trump holds the same powers. As predicted, they've opted to accept the activities that occurred under Obama and to even attack Trump for daring to criticize them. Let's look at today's article from Business Insider, Congress is poking holes in a key Trump talking point about Obama-era surveillance. Note the tactics they employ in the headline, because they know in the facebook era most people will 'Like' articles based on the headline alone, and assume that the article supports the headline, and thus the headline can be taken as fact. They're trying to make it look like it's an article about what Congress is saying, and not just a propaganda piece. And yet the sources are, as usual, anonymous US officials. From the first sentence:

Obama administration officials did not act inappropriately in trying to unmask officials on President Donald Trump's transition team whose conversations with foreign officials were incidentally collected during routine intelligence-gathering operations.

When I said they're normalizing it I meant that in the literal sense. The first sentence comes right out and says Trump was monitored in routine intelligence-gathering operations. Totally normal.

Let's look at some more language from the article.

Trump's accusation, for which he offered no evidence...

Well duh, the evidence is classified. We assume that if the case can be made it will be eventually made to the American public. No one expects a secretive kangaroo court like, I dunno, the FISA Court that was used to spy on Trump in the first place.

Nunes reiterated in multiple press conferences that there was still no evidence to suggest that Trump or his team had ever been surveilled illegally.

Yes but the surveillance may have been done in way that obeyed the letter but not the spirit of the law. Just because they got a FISA warrant doesn't mean they should have. And the bigger question here anyway is about the unmasking.. Improper unmasking and dissemination is spying whether or not the initial collection was incidental, and especially if it was "incidental."

that investigation was ultimately fruitless

Are they saying the investigation is over? Then what are they even talking about?

Rice's requests to unmask US persons were neither unusual nor against the law. 

So long, Pandora's lid.

Rice requests were neither unusual nor against the law. That means that Trump's people can do the exact same thing to their political opponents. Not just can, but should. In fact my biggest worry about Trump is not that he'll turn into a neocon (and that's a big concern) but that'll he'll refuse to use his enemies' own tools against them. He should use the foreign intelligence apparatus to spy on political opponents. He should circumvent rules of government transparency in the ways the left excused Hillary Clinton for. He should use the IRS to target opposing political organizations. He should funnel government money to friendly NGOs.

He should do all those things. Because that's what his predecessors did, and no one was ever punished. If he doesn't do those things, then he's just leaving them for the next Democrat to pick up and run with. The worst thing Trump could do would be to worry about being called a hypocrite. They'll make up things to call him a hypocrite anyway, so it doesn't matter. Let me put forth what I shall dub the Law of Canceling Hypocrisy.

Tenet: hypocrisy is not a valid argument against hypocrisy. Perceived hypocrisy is immaterial if the accuser must engage in hypocrisy to make the case.

If Trump set up a secret, private email server the left would scream it was the biggest hypocrisy they had ever encountered. But they must be hypocritical to make the case because they've already excused Clinton's behavior, and she faced no legal repercussions. Because they've declared those actions to be acceptable they cannot reasonably condemn Trump for engaging in what they allowed to become precedented behavior, even if he was previously opposed to it.

Remember, When They Go Low, We Go Low. When the opponent engages in "cheating" behavior, they must be punished and, if they are not punished, the behavior must then be used against them. If your opponent fights with knives, you must fight with knives. And if he brings a gun, well we all know the sage wisdom about not bringing a knife to a gun fight. It is not hypocritical to bring a gun to a gunfight, no matter how much you might have railed against gunfights in the past.

United Against Temper Tantrums

We've all seen the infamous United video with the man being roughed up and dragged off the plane because he was randomly chosen to give up his seat to make room for airline staff. Finally, an issue that everyone on Facebook can agree on, liberal and conservative.

That's actually a problem. Remember, liberals are wrong on virtually every subject. If you find yourself in agreeance with them, on anything, take that as a sign to rethink your position. We can probably all agree that, once you are boarded, there is an expectation that you won't be randomly booted from the airplane. A reservation is a reservation (see: Jerry Seinfeld). But what left-leaning commenters seem to be most incensed about is the heavy-handedness involved in extraction. Many proclaim that he should have refused to do the task, and have taken the opportunity to engage in the hobby of cop-bashing.

But let's take a more nuanced assessment of this. The security guard has a job for a reason. Sometimes airlines need a passenger removed, and it's his job to do so. If they don't comply, he must apply physical force to complete the task. The is his entire job description. It is not his job to play judge & jury in each incident to determine if the action he is being ordered will find general social acceptance. Whether the passenger is violent, drunk, or otherwise belligerent, or is a victim of an airline that cares so little for their customers that they now treat the like cattle, if the cop is called on to remove a passenger by the airline, it is a lawful order which he must obey. If the passenger refuses to co-operate, force is used. There were four passengers give the middle finger by United that day. Only one responded with autistic shrieking. And only one was drug out by the ankles with a bloodied face.

If the goal of Mr. Dao was to garner max publicity for his cause then he succeeded wildly. But if his goal was not to lose his seat, not only did he fail, but he paid a price for that decision. The positive outcome of this incident is that United -- who I've long hated and avoid as much as possible -- is getting a shitload of bad press for their treatment of customers. Does that justify Mr. Dao's behavior? No, it was abhorrent. At best this is a case of two wrongs making a right. But the downside is that it has just given a massive and public award to belligerent behavior by passengers. Airlines, especially United, will now balk at anything that might cause PR blowback. Expect an increase in passenger belligerence. The customer is always right to throw a tantrum.

Update: Mike Rowe takes a similar stance, but writes much more convincingly on the subject.

Here's Looking at You, Kim

While most of the alt-right are criticizing Trump's attack on a Syrian airbase, many conservatives defend the actions, providing supporting arguments of varying quality. One of the most frequent arguments, as well as one of the worst, is a nod towards North Korea. By bombing Syria, we're told, North Korea knows that America means business.

The assertion is wrong for many reasons. How many? I'm not sure. I'll just start writing them out and we'll see what we get.

1. North Korea doesn't need to be shown we mean business. America's ability and willingness to fire off Tomahawk missiles at will or to otherwise utilize military muscle to against adversary's has been displayed by ever president in my lifetime. And no one suspected Trump was a pushover.
2. It doesn't show anything. If indeed Assad used weapons (he probably didn't but Trump believes he did) then taking some shots at the offending airbase is a fairly tame response, assuming one was warranted. Is Kim Jong-un terribly concerned about having some military equipment bombed? Probably not.
3. Saber rattling is not likely to have much effect on Kim. All indications are that he's totally nuts. Don't expect him to respond rationally.
4. In general does firing off missiles in response to emotion-invoking pictures with no investigation make it easier for the US to operate as it wishes on the world stage? Do people really respect that. You can be sure there is at least one man who doesn't think much of the action: Putin.
5. If bombing tin pot foreign countries exudes strength, then consistency requires we also label Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton as strong national leaders. (which they clearly were not)

There you have it, 5 solid reasons why the argument that the attack will evoke some desired response out of North Korea is flawed. That's not to say that we shouldn't finally deal with North Korea. Despite my strong objections to interventionist foreign policy in Syria, Korea is another matter. It is not a hotbed of geopolitical interest like the Middle East. While the world has generally been okay to let the hermit kingdom be as quietly insane as she wants to be, they're now getting real loose with flinging missiles around the Pacific and threatening to nuke anyone in range. They'll have to be dealt with eventually. It wouldn't bother me much if Trump decided it was time, if the North Koreans become unmanageable.

There is a big difference between deposing Kim versus Assad. There is no worse alternative to Kim in Korea. Whatever replaces him will be an improvement. For Assad, any replacement is likely to leave us worse off than we started. It is almost sure to lead to an Islamic government and the persecution of the minorities that live in Syria, like the Christians and the Alawites. From a pragmatic stance, leaving Assad in is the best option. The same can't be said for his pudgy Korean counterpart.

Muslims Kill Liberals pt 2

Well it's only been a day, but already there is reason to follow up to yesterday's post, Muslims Kill Liberals. Today they bombed a German soccer team, with at least one player injured. Here is an image of that same soccer team.

Muslims Kill Liberals

Captain Capitalism's post Why I Just Don't Care About the London Attack laid out several reasons for Mid America conservatives to take an aloof stance to the threat of Islamic terrorism. Chief amongst them was that terrorists tend to target liberal locales. Paris, London, a gay nightclub in Florida. The irony is that the people most likely to open the doors to all Muslim immigrants are the ones most likely to end up with their guts spilled out on the pavement of some chic cosmopolitan neighborhood. (Maybe it's not that ironic.) It seems like the post was very recent; like I just read it. And yet it is somewhat aged in the genre of Crazed Islamic foreigner rams speeding truck through European crowd events.

Since then we've had the Stockholm incident. This image showed up on Reddit.

It may seem a bit macabre or cold to call this poetic justice, but really what else can you say about it. And what an almost immediate validation of Cappy's post on why even the angsty alt-righter can find some serenity in the chaos of the modern world. But wait, there's more! Another victim was a Belgian psychologist who had worked with failed refugees.

Cappy might be a lot of things: a womanizer, an asshole, and an overly excited speaker on his podcasts. But he sure can call a murder trend when he spots it routinely over the course of several years. It's not often a blogger gets his model so quickly verified by world events, so I'm sure if he has seen these headlines he is taking some measured amount of validation.

And sadly, I feel compelled to post the following picture, since this is the week where we post pictures of dead kids to drive political objectives. This young girl was the first victim of the Stockholm massacre. I'll spare the gruesome imagery (a courtesy our corporate media ignores when there's a desirable war to be mongered), but she started her day as a happy Swede and ended it with her body ripped in half on the streets of Stockholm. I doubt anyone will launch cruise missiles in her honor.

Who's Doing the Stumping Here?

One of the most debated questions concerning Trump and the media is to what degree is Trump strategically manipulating the press? Some commentators were noting way back in the early part of the primary season that Trump was either very lucky or very cunning. His energetic supporters routinely refer to him as playing "5D Chess" against the media. On the other hand, many today are still convinced he is a mindless buffoon and any perceived brilliance is just the observers Rorshach projection onto Trump's twitter-vomitblots.

These divergent interpretations were strongly tested recently in regards to his wiretapping tweets. The whole plot was wonderful. The media reported for months that Trump had been wiretapped, and ran with revelations said to have arisen from surveillance, Flynn's communications with the Russian ambassador being the most significant. After Trump tweeted that he was being wiretapped, the media flipped the script, called it ridiculous, Politifact quickly gave it a Mostly False rating, and the New York Times even took the Orwellian step of modifying the online archives of a relevant headline. Here's a situation where the two Trump viewpoints can both be validated. On the hand, Trump's tweet is brilliant, because it forced the media into blatant self-contradictions obvious to anyone with some sense of rationale left in them. On the other hand, it really could just be that Trump heard he was being spied on and immediately tweeted to calm his aggravated amygdala. He tweeted about it because he was upset at that particular moment, not because of any calculated political strategy.

The incident doesn't give us any resolution. Did Trump stump the media, or did they stump themselves? Did they fall into a Trump trap, or is their reporting so riddled with absurdity that any idiot with a prominent Twitter account can inadvertently expose it?

A more recent incident shows that the media is perfectly capable of stumping itself without Trump's help. The media was proud to tell us that Obama was a "big winner" in dealing with Syria, and successfully forced Assad to hand over all his chemical weapons. That was something of a ruse. In reality, the US was making possessions and use of chemical weapons by Assad as a pretext to war. They got little support for the action domestically and from allies (has everyone forgotten about Obama and Kerry trying to rally the country to war?), and it was the Russians who swooped in with the diplomatic arrangement that made it difficult for the US to justify invasion. But in either case they reported that Obama got all the chemical weapons removed.

So it should seem quite unlikely that, following reports of chemical agents being release in Syria, the media would simply assume without question that Assad was the culprit. These are the same people that assured us that Obama took care of the problem. It set us up for another one of those great national questions where any answer paints the media as incompetent or deceitful. Either

1. They were wrong and Obama wasn't really a "big winner" in regards to the Syrian weapons, or
2. They wrong now and jumping to a dangerously rash conclusion.

It seems to me that if Trump was playing 5D Chess he would not have let the media off the hook so easily. He could have manipulated the situation in such a way to clearly demonstrate that Obama's alleged accomplishments were a ruse, and the media doesn't do its job. But Trump wasn't playing politics with this one. He became convinced that Assad was the culprit, despite strong arguments that he likely wasn't, and acted quickly and the little regard for legal concerns.

The response by the media to all this has been enthusiastic. Trump may turn out to be the kind of president the establishment cherishes most: a warmonger. At the time of this writing (Sunday night) the top article in my Google News feed is Tillerson, on Eve of Trip, Takes a Hard Line With Russia from the New York Times. A search for the term Russia makes hardly a mention of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, with the only references being somewhat indirect, discussing the roles of Nunes and Schiff in the matter. Gone is the wild-eyed hand-wringing about collusion, secret servers, covert "backchannels", rigged elections, treason, and Trump being a Russian puppet; in short, all the media has railed about for months has suddenly vanished. Was this the result of 5D Chess by Trump? Can we really label doing exactly what the establishment wants you to do as 5D Chess?

Four Faults of the Syria Attack

One of my favorite activities on this blog is to take something an action or argument made by liberals and show how it is wrong in multiple dimensions. A thorough rebuttal shows how it was wrong not wrong from the a certain persepective, but from all perspectives. The same analysis can be applied to Trump's recent actions in Syria.

Culpability. We don't know that Assad used chemical weapons. I don't believe he did. It would be beyond stupid to do so. He's finally retaken clearly dominance in a civil war that had his survival in doubt just a year or so ago before Russia intervened. Less than a week prior the US official policy relaxed on demanding regime change in Syria. And we're to believe that he celebrated by doing the one thing that would give Western powers reason to rattle the sabers again? Interesting that this is the second time that Assad was either enormously foolish in using the weapons, or was framed by a false flag convenient to neocon interests. There are too many question marks on this, and for Trump to rush to missiles is brash to say the least.

Responsibility. Even if Assad gassed his own citizens, and that's a big if, so what? Are we supposed to unilaterally attack the Syrians because the Syrians attacked the Syrians? Are we supposed to bomb every country when the rulers are assholes? Assuming universality, then that would imply the Canadians should have bombed US bases after the Waco incident. It's not our job to be policing the world.

Pragmatism. If we've learned anything in the last 15 years it's that the US isn't so good at regime change and nation building. These places tend to end up worse than they were to start with. Let's say Assad really is this vicious monster who uses chemicals weapons on his own people. That's pretty bad. Yet he's still better than any other option. Look at it this way. There are 3 kinds of terrible governments you don't want: fascism, communism, and theological tolatarianism. Let's say the reports are right (they're not) and that Assad is a fascist. If those are the options, then fascism is your best bet. At least under fascism the trains run on time. Communism isn't going to happen in Syria but theological totalitarianism is almost certainly the result if Assad is toppled. And, if ISIS is any indication, that is your worst-case outcome. Assad was treated as a liberator when he booted ISIS from Aleppo. So even if he's bad, he's not ISIS bad.

Uniformity. America sure is worried about the humanitarianism in countries that have strategic value. They're really worried about kids who die along the paths of envisioned oil pipelines. But they don't give a shit about kids anywhere else. If all it takes to get Trump to abandon his campaign promises is to broadcast pictures of dead children, then we're in trouble. Because they're real good at finding pictures of dead children whenever necessary, even if they have to kill the kids themselves to do so. And they're even better at hiding the pictures of dead kids they don't want you to see. If foreign policy is decided by dead kid pictures, then the media are our undisputed rulers.

The Good.
There are a couple perspectives from which the attacks might be looked at less negatively. For one, it absolutely puts to bed this Russia conspiracy bullshit. From that perspective overall it's very bad: US irrationality is so extreme that bombs fall half a world away as a result. But from the perspective of a Trump supporter, it gives some lenience. He had no choice. He was under extreme pressure from the left-wing hysteria to act strongly on the world stage against Russia.

Second, the act itself didnt' amount to a ton. We damaged a single Syrian air base. Before the attacks Scott Adams said something to the tune of, "How do you respond to a fake attack? With a fake response." Perhaps Trump acted in a way that would cause some short-term damage to alleviate long-term disaster. Perhaps this the route that gives Assad the greatest chance for survial. We can't know if Trump believes Assad used chemical weapons, but it seems he does. In either case, if this is an isolated incident to help Trump keep the wolves at bay and strengthen his grip on the deep state, then it will all be forgotten soon enough. What's troubling is the chance that he's turned full neocon already.

There is No Rule of Law

From the Chicago Tribune's Court: Civil Rights Act covers LGBT workplace bias

A federal court in Chicago on Tuesday became the first U.S. appellate court in the nation to rule that LGBT employees are protected from workplace discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

A federal court has decided that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which doesn't give protected status to sexual orientation, does give protected status to sexual orientation. This follows the convention set in 2015 by the US Supreme Court that gay marriage is a fundamental constitutional right, even though straight marriage is not a fundamental constitutional right. They've become something of magicians, except that instead of rabbits they perform tricks with federal laws and they work in reverse. Now you don't see it, now you do!

From USATodays' coverage

Judge Richard Posner, one of eight 7th Circuit judges appointed by Republican presidents, issued a lengthy concurrence. "I don’t see why firing a lesbian because she is in the subset of women who are lesbian should be thought any less a form of sex discrimination than firing a woman because she’s a woman," he said.

Let's explore the three ways that his statement is absurd.

1. You don't see why? Is that a legal opinion? Is this how judges operate now, based on their own perceptions & feelings versus a sober application of the law? Your job is to look at the law and see if it applies, you raging idiot.
2. The law doesn't allow employers to discriminate by gender. Firing someone because they're gay doesn't violate the law as long as it applies to both genders. Firing someone because they're conservative (happens all the time) doesn't violate the law as long as it is applied uniformly to both genders. Firing someone because they're terrible at their job doesn't violate the law as long as it is applied uniformly to both genders. Do you see the pattern, judge?
3. He's managed to take these illogical arguments and twist them into a third mind-numbing absurdity: firing a woman because she is in the subset of women who are [X] is discrimination. What if she was in the subset of women who are felons? What if she is in the subset of women who don't have the proper qualifications? Since everyone is a subset of some gender, we can't fire anyone! This is without a doubt the stupidest thing I've ever heard a judge say, yet USAToday just casually inserted the quote into their article because (a) it didn't strike them as stupid (I wonder why) and (b) most of their brain-dead readers will just nod along while they chug their Starbucks.

Judge Posner wasn't done. 

Judge Richard Posner asked Maley: "Who will be hurt if gays and lesbians have a little more job protection?" When Maley said he couldn't think of anyone who would be harmed, Posner shot back, "So, what's the big deal?" Posner also said it was wrong to say a decades-old statute is "frozen" on the day it passed and that courts can never broaden its scope.

Ah, so the standard is that judges can decree any law into existence they choose just so long as it won't hurt anybody. With the words "hurt" and "anybody" being quite subjective. Perhaps I'll find Mr. Posner's house and moon his wife then appeal my charges for indecent exposure to his own court. After all, no one was hurt, were they? I highly doubt he holds the principle to be universally true, but only applies it here because he wants to change the law. 

It would seem that the employer who wants to get rid of an employee is hurt, in a sense, because they've lost control of their staffing decisions. One might argue that gays themselves are hurt by the decision. Why would an employer risk hiring gays at all if firing them is by principle grounds for a lawsuit? In the case that was before Posner's court, a woman who wasn't promoted decided it was because she's a lesbian. There could be no other reason for her not to be promoted, I'm sure.

He says it's wrong that the courts could never broaden the scope of a "decades-old statute." Says who? Where is the permission of the courts to expand a law if it's old enough? Can they broaden law against murder to outlaw squashing bugs? Can a conservative judge "broaden" the right to bear arms into the right to bear heavy-duty military equipment? This judge has declared that scope creep is the natural right of the judiciary. 

Not to be outdone, the Chief Judge opined on the matter.

"It is actually impossible to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without discriminating on the basis of sex," Chief Judge Diane Wood wrote for the majority. "It would require considerable calisthenics to remove the 'sex' from 'sexual orientation.'"

It really wouldn't require "considerable calisthenics", Judge. Also "calisthenics" is a poor metaphor for the intended meaning of logical contortions. If you think gender and sexual orientation are equivalent, you really don't possess the common sense to be serving, let alone the mind for understanding legal distinctions. You're engaging in low-brow rationale to justify the thing you want to be true. "The term sexual orientation contains the word sex, so it's the same!" By her logic getting caught having sexual intercourse with the secretary in the boss's office is also protected by the Civil Rights Act, as it would require considerable calisthenics to remove the 'sex' from 'sexual intercourse.'

All humans engage in this type of post hoc rationalization, but judges are paid good money for the sole purpose that they shouldn't do that. If we lift the requirement that judges have to apply objective reasoning first to come to conclusions second, then there is no reason to have specialized judges at all. Literally anyone could do the job. Any one of us could have a preferred outcome and make weak rationalizations to support the decision. It would be the easiest job in the world.

Laws are made in Congress, not the courts. Changes to the laws should be pursued through legislation. If judges are free to create laws where they don't exist, then we really have no rule of law. If judges are free to ignore laws they don't like, then we have no rule of law, and it no longer matters what the laws state. Soviet Russia's constitution bestowed generous rights to the citizenry; more than our own does. But the contents of the law did not matter in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and increasingly they do not matter in the United States of America.

They're Not Going to Come Around

They say the definition of a fool is someone who keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. In that spirit, call me a fool. Because I keep believing that people will finally come around and wake up to the manufactured media narrative, observe its undeniable absurdity, and dismiss it. And that keeps not happening.

The first time I was convinced we were at a sort of event horizon for national sanity was with the Wikileaks and Project Veritas revelations during the election. We were provided with incontrovertible proof that the establishment Democrats and mainstream media were actively colluding to spin a narrative and to prop up a preferred politician. We could read their emails, hear the words coming out of their own mouths. What more proof could you need? Liberals had a brilliant strategy to counter the damning evidence: they simply rejected it. They either ignored it or dismissed the source as biased. What a technique! They label anyone who contradicts their world view as biased, and dismiss anything that appears to be biased. Ergo, they can literally never be contradicted. They can never be proven wrong! This should have been enough to demonstrate the principle: evidence and reason won't work on our opponents. Oh, but how we try anyway!

The next example came on election night. We had been saying for weeks the polls were wrong, and had been called conspiracy theorists in response. Many an argument were had on social media about the topic. The results showed the Trump supporters as vindicated. The polls and media predictions are completely off. It would seem that to anyone with a brain this was proof that the media wasn't reliable in these matters and strong evidence to support the claim of widescale media bias and dishonesty. (Coupled with the Wikileaks the case was effectively made.) Liberals didn't linger on these thoughts for a second. Instead, they almost immediately congregated in our nation's cities dressed as female genitalia. Still, we thought our best bet was to counter these reactions through argumentation.

Next came the Russian conspiracy, which wasn't actually new. Hillary and her media allies had made it the most discussed theme of the presidential debates. Yet even after being the premiere issue of the debates, it rose an order of magnitude following Trump's victory. At no point was any substantive evidence produced. The major "evidence" was that the DNCs hired investigators decided in a day it was the work of Russia (which they have since backed off of) and that it seemed like something the Russians might do. That was it. The intelligence community issued a report that provided no evidence, resorting to talk of internet trolls. Surely this was so ridiculous that anyone in their right mind would see the desperate smear job by both the intelligence community and the media. But no, to this day many people think that absurd document is all the proof they need. But it got even better. The infamous Russian dossier story, which Buzzfeed broke, was ludicrous beyond comprehension. No right-wing satirist could have even in jest concocted such an absurdity, which is yet more support for the claim promoted on this blog that The Left Can No Longer Be Satirized. Even after everything, I honestly believed that the fallout from this absolute circus would destroy the mainstream media. And yet nothing really changed. It didn't matter. They can turn the absurdity to 11 and most liberals will just keep believing what they hear. It really is mind-boggling.

Then there was the tax returns fiasco. You would think that after she so thoroughly embarrassed herself in front of a record audience, that Rachel Maddow wouldn't show her face in public again, and that no one would dare use her as some sort of source in social media. Yet she shows up on my facebook feed all the time. No one cares that she didn't just make herself look like an idiot, but also made millions of people and DNC officials who had hyped up the tax return non-scandal for months look like idiots. It doesn't matter how wrong she was; if she's saying what the left wants to here right now, she's right.

Currently, we're in the middle of Supreme Court nomination drama. If you wanted to prove that Democrats would oppose anyone Trump appointed, the best political move for him would be to nominate someone the Democrats had previously supported. Which is what Trump did when he nominated Gorsuch, who was unanimously approved by Senate Democrats to the circuit court, by current senators such as Chuck Schumer, and other Democrat bigwigs like Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. Not only are Democrats now all of the sudden opposed to him, but they've decided that for the first time in all of American history, a Supreme Court nominee will be filibustered by the Senate, a candidate they unanimously supported until Trump nominated him. You won't find any greater proof of their unreasonable nature than that.

The big story now is the wiretapping scandal breaking loose. I have to ask: even if Jeff Sessions' Justice Department can put together a rock solid case against Obama and his cronies abusing foreign intelligence capabilities to spy on a political opponent, will it matter? Liberals won't come around on this. If they were capable, they would have done so after the Wikileaks. Not only will they not come around, but the media will so poison the public perception that Obama's administration will be largely exonerated in the court of public opinion long before anything comes to a grand jury. Does it matter what evidence is brought? No, clearly it does not. Liberals won't believe it is anything but a political witch hunt no matter what the evidence is. I can't say it enough: it doesn't matter what the evidence is. This is, of course, the definition of irrationality.

Assuming there is strong evidence of crimes, there are three ways this can go, the first two of which benefit the right.

1. The case is brought and high-level officials of the Obama administration are sent to prison.
2. The case is brought with little resulting punishment; at most some staffers are sacrificed. The precedent is set that spying during an election is safe and Trump claims those powers for himself.
3. The case is brought with little punishment. The precedent is set, but Trump chooses not to use the newly permitted powers. Democrats regain power and regain their abuse of their positions of authority.

There's plenty of reason to worry that #3 will be the outcome. It would be a big mistake. The only thing to lose by assuming those powers is the opposition will cry foul. But they will cry foul no matter what Trump does, and they will defend their own not matter what the evidence is. The biggest mistake would be to act reasonable under the assumption the left will respond accordingly. They're not going to come around. If evidence and arguments were going to work, they would have by now.

Will Sweden Win the First National Darwin Award?

Sweden is in a race with itself. To survive, the state must destroy itself before the nation is too weak to deal with their little invasion problem. Or at least that's been my take on their situation. This video gives reason to question that assessment, as the state hasn't collapsed but they seem to be not just unwilling to deal with their new neighbors, but unable to.

If I was to write a HowTo guide for destroying one's own country, it could be condensed in to 2 steps.

1. Provide open borders to young men from 3rd world countries who embrace an ideology of militant expansionism.
2. Send your women to deal with the problems.

To advocate not doing those two things is just the most basic common sense. Yet in this country the majority would consider it to be racist and sexist. Which just shows you how removed from common sense the western has become.

The problem with irrationality is that ideas no longer sink or swim based on their merits. When society can't choose a good argument from a bad one, then the bad ideas are just as likely to be promoted. But bad ideas can't last forever. Eventually they must square off against the old-fashioned rigors of cold Darwinism. Isn't the whole point of humanity that we are the next step past natural selection? That we can shape the world with intellect and consciousness rather than random chance and selective pressure?

Darwin can't tell us much about whether an idea is good or bad, but he will certainly cast judgment on whether a group of organisms generally makes good decisions. Whether letting in foreigners into your country and sending your women to physically engage is morally right or wrong is a matter that we debate at long length. But Darwin will have his say in either case.