Thursday, August 31, 2017

It it Ain't Communism, It Ain't Christian, Pt 2

As mentioned in If it Ain't Communism, It Ain't Christian, liberals like to conflate Christian values with communism. Then they beat up on Christians for hypocrisy whenever they fall short of the Marxist ideal.

This dynamic has been on full display for the last couple days with the witch hunt of Houston-based MegaChurch pastor Joel Osteen. Social media is running wild with headlines like Joel Osteen Can’t Get His Story Straight On Why He Didn’t Offer His Megachurch As A Shelter. That article includes a link to this interview.


What part of his story is he not keeping straight? The building was indeed flooding. The government entities enacting disaster responses did not, at the time, ask his church to become a shelter. What was he expected to do, just throw his doors open anyway? For whom? I can't find any media accounts of anyone being turned away from the official city shelters in the period that Lakewood Church was closed. But to hear their accounts, there were masses of cold starving orphans knocking on the doors and Osteen was standing on the roof with a megaphone politely encouraging them all to piss off. And if he opened the doors, then what. They'd sit in the seats of the church auditorium and eat what? What to drink? Was Joel just expected to have all those things on hand in case of cataclysmic flooding? What about medical staff and equipment? Are churches expected to have these at the ready at a moment's notice? The city and higher governments coordinate these things. The church served as a shelter when the organizers asked them. They also mobilized volunteers and supplies to help out however they could. What did people expect him to do, work miracles? Do liberals actually think he's supposed to be Jesus or something?

None of this hysteria is rational because no one really knows why the church responded as it did. Maybe Osteen is a greedy asshole. I can't tell. He sure does live lavishly. But he did explain why the church responded as it did, and no one has really specified what he should have done differently, or the flood victims who were negatively impacted. This is just the same shit as always. It's oppressor/oppressed dynamics. It's communist values. It is the expectation that material wealth be redistributed from rich to poor. That is the prime objective. Any hesitation is met with indignant outrage. No one right now really knows if Osteen should have acted differently. No one can cite any party harmed by Osteen's decisions. No one has made the case that he would have made the situation any better had he responded differently, or that he wouldn't have made things worse. None of that logic matters, of course. Witch hunts are inherently illogical.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Old Man Yells at Cloud



If the oil economy causes global warming, and global warming causes hurricanes, then what city is more to blame than Houston? Taking the crazy old man's argument to its logical conclusion, and it just amounts to victim blaming. I haven't had the immense please of arguing this one out with any liberals, but I can guarantee it would take less than two minutes before they blamed the 10% of Houston that are straight white males for being the recipients of petrol largess, while the oppressed 90% saw no benefit whatsoever from Houston's heavy oil industry.

 Also, I can't help but note that cities housing 2 of the 3 largest oil hubs in the US have been drowned by acts of nature. If Cushing, OK gets taken out by a freak earthquake or tornado we can be certain that Mother Nature is methodically exacting her revenge. I'm not an ideologue on the climate change issue, I'm just very skeptical of the scientism cult and Big Research. If it appears that oil cities are being ravaged by angry gods, I am prepared to make whatever human sacrifices are necessary to regain their favor.

Bernie isn't posing a question when he says we need to determine global warming's contribution to Hurricane Harvey. He's making a statement. He's saying it was climate change. The implication is clear, and all that's left is to round up the details. Like everything Bernie says, his statement betrays some lack of understanding on subject, even for a tweet.

To get the understanding that Bernie wants "tomorrow", we must ask two questions. (1) What is the effect of global warming on hurricanes? and (2) What is the global warming? Clearly, we must know how much the Earth has warmed since some previous time to know its effect, and we can't be entirely sure of that, with all the measurement corrections and cherry-picked sensor data. But even most climate skeptics agree the warming is a bit over one degree per century, so let's go with that.

As to the other question, every eco-obsessed halfwit knows for certain the science - Holy Science! - tells us that global warming means stronger hurricanes. That certainty comes from studies such as this one run by Nature in 2006. While I have no reason to doubt their analysis, can you spot the flaw in making the conclusion that global warming drives stronger hurricanes?
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta examined data for a range of climate variables thought to contribute to the formation of hurricanes in categories 4 and 5, the upper end of the strength scale. Only sea surface temperature showed a strong correlation with the observed increase in the occurrence of these storms since 1970.
At first blush it makes sense. Hurricanes are fueled by heat. More heat $$\rightarrow$$ stronger hurricanes. That is junior high science. Everyone can understand it! No one can deny that kind of scientific fact! But it is a simplistic understanding. College-level thermodynamics gives a better insight. Hurricanes are heat engines. (Most people have at least heard that.) Higher temperature does not mean more heat. Technically speaking, heat is the movement of thermal energy caused by a temperature gradient. There must be a temperature differential for heat engines to run. Hurricanes are powered by temperature differences between the sea and the atmosphere, as well as within the sea and within the atmosphere.

The study narrowed in on surface temperature but said nothing about the other variables. Of course, if all other things are held constant, higher surface temperatures drive stronger hurricanes. That's to be expected. But we could get a similar effect by holding surface temperate constant and lowering deep sea and upper atmosphere temperatures. What really matters is the thermal gradient.

If the global temperature rises, the surface of the ocean will warm. But so will the atmosphere. And so will the rest of the ocean (which will lag but catch up). There's no reason to expect that global warming will only increase the temperature of the ocean's surface.

So how much did global warming contribute to Hurricane Harvey? How much did a monarch butterfly flapping its wings in South America last June contribute to it? It's hard to say. It's not due to global warming that a hurricane would strike a hurricane-prone locale during peak hurricane season. And it's not due to global warming that the storm would happen to stall out and dump almost all its contents over coastal Texas. And it's not due to global warming that Houston is a concrete jungle on a flood plain. But for Bernie, this isn't about science. It's about blame. Oppression causes all bad things. Houston must be a victim of evil greedy capitalist forces. It's just a bit inconvenient for him that so much of the Houston-oppressing oil economy would happen to reside in Houston.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Pathological Empathy

Empathy is becoming a much-bandied word these days, especially from our friends on the left. Empathy is the capacity or tendency to understand the viewpoint and emotional state of another. It is a virtue, but it is a weak virtue. If Sheila has empathy for Larry, we're only talking about Sheila's internal state, and how it relates to Larry's internal state. If Sheila's behavior is not affected by her empathy, then it is irrelevant. This is in contrast to a strong virtue like courage, which describes a person's actions in the face of fear or uncertainty.

Most psychological conditions seem to stem from a shortage or excess of some human trait. It is not healthy to have too much anger, nor is it healthy to have too little. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not list a disorder for an excess of empathy. The lack of empathy is sociopathy, which often drives ruthless blind ambition. Sociopathy is especially onerous in our loose-knit democratic society, where power comes from popularity, popularity comes from image, and sociopaths are chameleons who can quickly adopt whatever image will lead to power.

We can imagine what an excess of empathy might look like: someone so overwhelmed by the emotional states of others that they can't function normally in the world. Such a person would find it difficult to socialize, conduct business, or even turn on the TV. While we all know people who seem to have a bit too much empathy (I'm sure the average man believes the average woman to be over-empathetic), pathological empathy must be rare enough, as it is not even given it's own designation in the manuals.

Pathological empathy may not exist in the literal sense, but there is reason to suspect that the term empathy is mostly not being used in the literal sense. When tumblrinas talk about their empathy, they aren't saying, "I can easily relate to the viewpoint and emotional state of others." Clearly they can't. They're saying, "I care," which is quite different. "I'm empathetic" describes my relation to your condition. "I care" just describes me. In this usage, claims of empathy are used to declare allegiance to the Cult of Caring. Look at me! Look how much I care! It's just so much virtue signaling.

Empathy is not just an abused term, but it has been hijacked entirely, much like racism, which is now just a generic term meaning evil that is applied only to conservatives. (see here) Empathy just means virtue, and only gets applied to liberals. The radical lefties lack any sort of visible virtue, so they create one. Empathy is a soft-virtue, so it's near impossible to disprove. They can then justify any horrible stance they want through the lens of caring. We care about blacks, we are virtuous. White conservatives don't care about blacks, so they must be eliminated with violence. We know their caring is a sham. But they don't have to really care. It's difficult to prove a lack of caring. Just pretending is enough.

Today's big story from the liberal media, besides Melania's shoe choice for boarding a plane, is that Trump displayed a lack of empathy in Houston. Apparently he didn't hug enough of the destitute to quench their insatiable thirst for victim voyeurism. Caring is as difficult to prove as to disprove. How could Trump prove that he really cares about the people in Houston? More importantly, why does it matter? Is he showing effective leadership, or is he not? I don't recall CNN attacking Obama's lack of empathy when he golfed while Baton Rouge was inundated. (Recall that candidate Trump was the first prominent political figure to visit that region.) Just as with baseless charges of racism, if you hear accusations of a lack of empathy, or boasts of one's own empathy, you can be fairly sure you're dealing with an unprincipled lefty with a shortage of any real, demonstrable virtues.

The good thing about this empathy nonsense is that no one actually gives a shit about it. We all know it's a ruse. Do you think Trump was concerned that the media, fresh off calling him a Russophillic traitor and neo-nazi racist, are now calling him weak on empathy? He's probably getting a kick out of it, and noting just how watered-down their assaults are getting.

Monday, August 28, 2017

Dogma Behind Progressive Hate Speech

I don't use Twitter, but it might be a nice idea if I ever decide it's time to discard my last remaining bit of faith in humanity.


These comments aren't disturbing just because they're incredibly hateful. They're disturbing because they're so ironically stupid. How does one, in a single sentence, call for ethnic cleansing against a race that is undesirable because they are racist, without one's head exploding? Your instinct might be to explain logically why calling for the death of a race for racism any reason makes you a racist genocidal monster. But you really need to understand the Prog cult first.

Progressivism seems to be just Protestantism gone secular. Take WASPy Puritanical Christianity, swap out theology for some worldly virtues, and you're left with Progressivism. The transformation took place after World War II, when youth church attendance started to plummet.


Protestantism, already heavily saddled with Enlightenment principles, replaced its Christian mythology with World War II mythology. Satan became Hitler, demons became Nazis, and forces of evil became oppression. Sins against the Father became crimes against humanity. The 1st Commandment was rewritten to state: Thou shalt not be racist. Racism is the cardinal sin, to the extent that other sins can be largely ignored. The great virtues are no longer piety or humility, but diversity and inclusiveness. Jesus was replaced with MLK Jr., angels with social justice advocates. The concept of original sin remains. All are inherently guilty of the great sin of racism, but only white people. It is, after all, primarily a white religion.

When lefties, like those who Tweeted about the hurricane, say white people are racist, they don't mean literally racist. They couldn't possibly, as it's in itself an incredibly racist thing to say. No, they are just hurling the worst insults in the lefty lexicon. When I was a kid the worst thing you could call another boy was a faggot. There was a taboo against homosexuality, the slander carried weight, so that's what you used. You weren't providing commentary on a young boy's sexual nature. You were calling him the meanest and most disrespectful name you could muster. The leftists are doing the same when they call everyone a racist, white supremacist, a Nazi, or, their new favorite term, a "Nazi sympathizer." They're just hurling what to them are the worst insults imaginable. This is why it's a fool's errand to explain the illogicality or incorrectness of these statements. To do so is to engage in an adult conversation with petulant children. "Well actually Billy, I couldn't possibly be a faggot because I kissed Susie just last week." Such a response is not going to have any effect on Billy or his potty-mouthed taunting. It might even encourage him to double down. Likewise, we should not lob their insult grenades back and engage in what Vox Day calls DR3 (Dems are the real racists). DR3 is to be avoided because calling people we don't like racist and fascist endorses the Progressive cult worldview, which is the last thing we should do.

This all provides context for the Nazi symbolism we see from some on the far right. There is an argument for it after all, because, what could possibly be a larger middle-finger to the Progs than the open display of Nazi symbols? In that sense, the swastika is the banner of anti-Progressivism. Perhaps we should all wear swastikas to rub their noses in it! The problem with all that is that, while they are an abstract concept in the Prog religion, Nazi still existed in the real world and were very reckless and genocidal. Don the symbol to trigger libtards and suddenly you're brandishing the propaganda of an enemy that killed many American soldiers and committed countless atrocities in Europe. What's needed are symbols that snub Progs without alienating us from decent ordinary Americans. (The American flag actually does very nicely for this.)

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

The Self-Actualization of Conor MacGregor

Here's a ten-minute video that was put together about the self-actualization of MMA star Conor MacGregor.


Pretty powerful stuff. And motivating, too. It's easy to get bogged down by life and forget there is a higher plane of existence out there. Get your internal house in order (Sort yourself out bucko, is what Jordan Peterson would say) and you can rise above the mucky mucky, and anyone can do it. One doesn't need to be a superstar, celebrity, or other bigwig to achieve self-actualization. 2400 years ago Diogenes found self-actualization as a homeless philosopher.

Another public persona may have come to your mind on viewing this. Trump displays all the characteristics of a self-actualized man. The relentless work ethic, stubborn persistence, brutal honesty, religious-like sense of a calling, and even the childlike temper and antics, are all just as present in Trump as in MacGregor.

Self-actualized people trigger the hell out of leftist radicals and SJWs. Trump is the epitome of a lefty trigger. He literally drives them crazy, and this is far and away his finest attribute. Ideologically Trump isn't all that conservative. He's not significantly more conservative than Democrats were during the Clinton administration. But his persona is the anti-liberal. The left live in the Marxist worldview that the entire world is just a battlefield of oppression dynamics. They despise any challenges to their belief of insurmountable forces of evil in the world. Leftists reject the notion that our outcomes are tied to our self-determination and personal ethics rather than the product of endless victimization. To them there is only one way these people rose to the top: they are oppressors. MacGregor is also labeled as a bigot and racist by left-wing activists. I theorize that if the issue was properly researched, we'd see that self-actualized people are highly likely to be vilified by progressives.

In Equality as a Gauge for Political Stance we postulated the five stages of equality. Self-actualized people stop at equality of opportunity, and perhaps even short of that, because they know they can rise to the top no matter what their starting position. If equality is a gauge for political stance, these people are, by their nature, conservative. The final stage is equality of being, where people are prevented from achieving more than the norm. Self-actualized people will be the first ones targeted by mediocrity zealots. A society that suppresses its self-actualized people has fated itself to stagnation and outcompetition by outsiders. It's the tiny minority that combine profound creativity and work ethic to birth the "black swan" events that advance society. These are the people who work 80-hour weeks for years to see their vision through. They are the movers and shakers. We normies just ride in their wake.

Metallica's James Hetfield is another self-actualized man. Check out his interview on Joe Rogan's podcast. He exudes the kind of confident zen-like state that MacGregor describes. He spends the first 30 minutes talking about bee keeping. Metal icons don't talk about bee keeping. He's risen above playing the role he's expected to play. And no surprise. He long ago penned the self-actualization anthem.
And the road becomes my bride
I am stripped of all but pride, so in her I do confide
And she keeps me satisfied, gives me all I need
And with dust in throat I crave
Only knowledge will I save, to the game you stay a slave
Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond
Call me what you will
But I'll take my time anywhere
Free to speak my mind anywhere
And I'll redefine anywhere
Anywhere I roam, where I lay my head is home
And the earth becomes my throne
I adapt to the unknown, under wandering stars I've grown
By myself but not alone, I ask no one
And my ties are severed clean
The less I have the more I gain, off the beaten path I reign
Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond
Call me what you will

Monday, August 21, 2017

Selective Singlethink


This is a montage (by my understanding not comprehensive) of the media badgering Trump during the election campaign to disavow David Duke*, and Trump routinely doing so. Supposedly these are news organizations, which means they should strive to provide their audiences with new information. Yet they convey zero new information when they ask him if he disavows Duke 25 years after he first did so, and a day after he most recently did so. Trump disavows Duke and doesn't care for his support. That's the story. By bringing the subject up constantly the outlets are seeking to psychologically condition their audience. By forcing Trump to constantly talk about Duke, they're are training people to subconsciously associate him with Duke. Not only that, but the insinuation is always what about Duke, why have you failed to disavow? The audience is left with the impression that Trump has hesitated to disavow America's favorite bogeyman, even though he hasn't. This is how they were able to build the belief that Trump is a white supremacist, even though Trump has never said anything remotely to that effect, and his immigration policy was largely indistinguishable from that of Democrats during the Clinton administration.

Now we see they are similarly pushing the notion that Trump is "embracing neo-nazis." Despite the fact that he specifically denounced white supremacists and neo-nazis by name, the narrative is that Trump needs to be impeached for publicly supporting them. They've justified this narrative because Trump also denounced left-wing violence. The message from the left would seem to be: if you question our violence you are a nazi. At any rate, I've had success quoting Trump's statement on facebook, often baiting with something like, "this is what Trump should have said."
No matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws. We all salute the same great flag, and we are all made by the same almighty God. We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence. We must rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans.

Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our creator, we are equal under the law and we are equal under our constitution. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry, strike at the very core of America.
This tends to garner positive feedback. People heap on praise on it and they agree that's what should have been said, and even ask why Trump didn't say that. I then inform them that it is actually Trump's statement, from the same news conference in which they say he embraced neo-nazis. What do you think their reaction would be? Something like, "Wow, maybe I was wrong about Trump on this issue. Thanks for sharing the source so I could directly analyze the comments for myself rather than relying on the media spin." Lol. Sorry for the camp humor, just trying to lighten the mood. While we would never expect to hear that, we would expect responses of the type, "well sure his speechwriters wrote that but we know what he really thinks" (the Trump-is-a-racist-no-matter-what-he-says-and-does fallacy), or "by calling out Antifa he's supporting fascism" (a childish black-white stance on morality, as well as high gullibility to marketing). Which of those responses do you suppose I see the most?

Actually I get no responses at all. None. By my little trick I've forced the person to realize that their own impartial judgment of Trump's statement flies in direct contrast with their strong opinions on it. And because they didn't recognize the quote, I can assume that they didn't know what Trump actually said at all. Why don't they comment? Because they don't know what to say? Because they're embarassed and bail out of the convo asap? Maybe, but my experience with debating liberals online is that they usually have something to say and they don't get too embarrassed by logical contradictions.

The reason they don't comment is they would have to admit they had read it. By saying anything at all, or even so much as giving a reaction, they admit that they are now aware of the contradiction. By not commenting, they can pretend they didn't read it at all. They never saw it; it never happened. They can continue to believe that Trump issued a pro-nazi statement, just as they believe he didn't disavow David Duke. This is what brainwashing looks like. I think Orwell got it a little wrong. He said the characters in 1984 displayed doublethink, the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in their mind at the same time. Or, as I think of it, an immunity to cognitive dissonance. But did they really? When they switch from we're at war with EastAsia to we've never been at war with EastAsia, they aren't really holding two contradictory ideas in their minds at all. No, they just flush the first out entirely, and convince themselves it never happened. It's not doublethink, it's selective singlethink. It's not an immunity to cognitive dissonance, otherwise they'd have no problem responding to my posts. It's just extreme confirmation bias, where contradictions to bias are rendered invisible no matter how prominently they are presented. Are you scared about the future yet? I am.

It's probably all gloom & doom from here on out, but that doesn't mean we can't have a little fun with it. What ridiculous things can you get them to pretend doesn't exist so they don't disturb their established biases? Make it a game. Be creative. Then we'll get together and share selective singlethink war stories over beers sometime before The Purge begins.



*Aside: who the fuck is David Duke anyway? I venture onto some pretty far-right forums and I've never seen a reference to Duke. I don't know anything he's ever said or his stance on any issue. Does anyone? The most I know is that he was once a high-ranking clan member, but is no longer a member. Which can't be so terrible in itself, given the praise Democrats threw onto Robert Byrd. Previous Klan membership is not enough, so why is Duke given an evildoer level on par with Satan himself? Something else that has been noticed: Twitter has been purging alt right accounts feverishly, especially since Charlottesville, and virtually no one is verified. Yet Duke, the paragon of evil, maintains a verified account. (Twitter says 49K followers. I wonder how many are just reporters waiting for Duke to say something racist so they can beat the crowd in demanding that Trump disavow the latest outrage). If Duke is a hate peddler, and Twitter is banning hate speech, then why is his account up still? The answer must be that either Duke doesn't actually say anything bad enough to be considered hate speech, or he does but they don't want to banish their bogeyman and lose a convenient weapon of psychological association with evil.

Unfazed by recent favorable press, Antifa resumes savage public behavior

This weekend there was a massive protest of a small free-speech event in Boston by the Democrat's (and Mitt Romney's) favorite communist political action group, Antifa. As always the anti-democratic action was justified by calling the other side nazis. (In a previous era in MA they would have been called witches.) Official Boston Antifa Twitter called for the removal of classical liberals and supporters of the US Constitution. (Which is sedition under US code, where you at Sessions?) Police went to Twitter to kindly ask Antifa heroes against fascism to please stop throwing bottles of urine at them. When reached for comment, Arnold Schwarzenegger stated, "it's okay for Antifa to throw rocks and bottles of piss at cops and classical liberals."


Boston's own mayor thanked protesters for standing up to white supremacy. For a while the only defense against the white supremacy label has been to be non-white, and now even that is not a valid defense! What is an Indian that liberals don't like? A white supremacist. What's a flamboyant gay Jew arguing against feminism? A nazi.

Conservative political action needs to look like this. Make them protest the most ridiculous things. Right-wing extremists should temper their personas or stay home, or be sent home. At this point I assume anyone trying to organize right-wing events like what was seen in Charlottesville are saboteurs who should be blacklisted. There does, at least, seem to be a silver lining to it; it has fueled despicable behavior from the left. The didn't gain a PR victory in Charlottesville by peaceful action or providing sober commentary on the right's use of universally despised symbols. They did so by being violent and crude. That behavior has been reinforced and they are now out there damaging themselves. The goal for dealing with Antifa should be to find ways to reinforce their bad behavior that are not huge PR disasters for the right.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Democracy's Demographic Demonry

Here at the Emergent Sea we're into omni-nationalism. (How is that for positive labeling, rayme4raw?) That means nationalism for everyone. Every nation gets a home and practices self-determination. People might quibble over what a nation is, but usually that's only people who aren't operating in good faith. We intuitively know one when we see it. A nation is a people united by a unique ethnicity, culture, history, and language. We understand the difference between a Mexican and an America and an Inuit. Liberals think an American is anyone who currently resides on American soil, but they are experts in contradicting common sense.

Self-determination means a nation self-regulates. They decide how the nation will live and what to do with the land on which they find themselves. There is also the notion of reciprocity. The Turks may self-determine they need to invade Elbonia for more resources, but then that sort of denies the Elbonians of their right to their own self-determination. Nations can determine to be ruled if they like. It sounds unlikely, but then it happens. Look at Puerto Rico, the American territory with only a very minor independence movement. They are a different nation that Americans, yet choose to be governed by Americans anyway.

While it's never really stated, nations have a duty to preserve themselves. Before we lived in the crazy times such a concept didn't need to be stated. It was just the natural way. Now that we're in crazy times, it's still not stated because that would be racist, somehow. The people of a nation have a culture, language, ethnicity, and some land that were given to them by their forebearers, and they should preserve their heritage and pass it on. Of course, we can't compel a nation to preserve themselves. If they seek to destroy their own nation there isn't much we can do. Nations should engage in self-preservation, but we can't really make them.

There seem to be about three ways that nations can die: conquest, outcompetition, and democracy. Conquest we understand pretty easily. If the Turks sweep in and kill every last Elbonian, then Elbonia ceases to be a nation, relegated to the history books, which we mostly be full of lies. Outcompetition death is slowly ceding ground to a more powerful neighbor until there's not much left to call a nation. This was largely the case with Amerindians. They were not killed off so much as they were pushed into the margins. The final way to kill a nation is through democracy.

The real problem is what we might term free-domain democracy, where headcounts are all that matters, and people are free to move around however they want. It's always been remarkable to me that I can move to any state, to any city, and to any neighborhood, and the people already living there have zero input into having me as their new neighbor. I'm not sure which part is more dangerous, the free-domain attribute or democracy itself, but combined they are a nation-grinding machine. Let's look at some examples.

First we might look at western countries like America and France. These are nations with very strong identities, yet are being diluted by immigration (free-domain aspect). It would be one thing if the French maintained full control of France but, because of democracy, the French nation loses control of France with each immigrant that enters. France becomes less and less interested in preserving the French nation as it becomes less French. And soon France just won't be very French at all. We can see that if a democratic nation loses vigor in preserving itself, it sets down on a slippery path to doom from which it cannot recover. Not without jettisoning democracy, at least.

Another example is Tibet, which is a nation but no longer a country, having been annexed by China. The Chinese have done what they can to control Tibet demographically, by dumping ethnic Chinese into the region and encouraging the Tibetans to water themselves down through intermarriage. This may be a boon to China's empirical stability, but is a threat to humanity. The uniqueness of the Tibetan people should be preserved. China is not a democracy but the effect is the same. If they can crowd out the Tibetans as much as possible, they can more easily justify polices that are friendly to the Chinese at the expense of the Tibetans.

The final example is Hawaii. Hawaii is only 10% Hawaiian. When they were annexed by the US in 1898 they were 20% Hawaiian. Just a few decades before that they were 97% Hawaiian. The largest ethnic group in Hawaii today is Japanese, followed by whites. The Japanese are there largely because US businesses dominated the islands and recruited Japanese laborers as plantation workers. The Hawaiians were outnumbered before 1898 but still ruled the islands through their monarchy. It's pretty appalling really. The Americans drastically altered the islands' demographics, then forced democracy on them, meaning the Hawaiians lost control of their own lands. They are so hopelessly outnumbered today that there's no chance of Hawaiians regaining control of their islands. They are doomed to forever be a minority in their own land.

The most amazing thing about this is that liberals, who hate whites and shriek oppression constantly, don't say much about Hawaii. I'm sure they do some, but not loud enough that it ever really reaches me in the midwest. Yet here is a pretty clear example of the things they rail against. Why don't they decry the demographic destruction of Hawaii? Perhaps because Hawaii is something like a dream scenario for them, where no one is the majority.

We might say the Hawaii isn't unique, just a special case of the Amerindians displaced by whites. However, whites didn't so much displace them as had them displaced by a 3rd party. Hawaii might be more similar to southern colonies like Mississippi, where Amerindians were replaced with blacks. This is in contrast to the northern colonies, where they built European states populated mainly by Europeans. In the north they were building a civilization. In Hawaii and Mississippi they were profiteering; taking land from one group and labor from another and reaping the profits. Displacing the natives to build great cities and states is at least more justifiable than than short-term business gains. And the results show. Mississippi is the poorest state in the union and Hawaii the most liberal. We are paying now for the near-sightedness of many of our forebearers, and, had they practiced omni-nationalism, we'd be in a much better situation today. Violating omni-nationalism is, in the long-term, a losing bet. There's actually a fourth way nations die. Nations that engage in imperialism often end up destroying themselves.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Courage, the Anti Anxiety

"I have anxiety." It's a common phrase you hear today. People are fairly open about it, even talking openly about their medication and whatnot. Leftists display psychological conditions (typically undiagnosed) on their social media profiles as if they are badges of honor, which always include some form of anxiety, PTSD, or similar.

Saying you have anxiety is something like saying you have feet. Anxiety is a normal functioning of the brain to protect us from situations we aren't prepared to handle. When I was a child I told my mother that I wished I didn't feel pain. She replied that there are people in the world who actually don't feel pain, and their lives are not so easy. For one, they must constantly monitor themselves for injuries that could lead to life-threatening infections. It became clear that pain served a vital function after all. As a parent now, I've watched as pain provided a feedback for my daughter to learn to walk and function in the world safely.

Anxiety seems to work in a similar fashion. It keeps us from situations that could cause us harm. We understand what it means when people say they have anxiety: they have too much anxiety; they feel anxiety when they really shouldn't. It's rightfully an undesirable psychological condition. It exists on a spectrum, but too many treat it like a binary condition. To them, anxiety is a disease, like cancer or hemophilia, and you have it or you don't. And I suspect many use it as a handicap, as an excuse for lack of achievement, success, or whatever. It's yet another form of oppression.

Most people are over-anxious these days, for lots of valid reasons. We all wish were less so, a little more calm, a little more cool and collected. I would advise that the last thing people should internalize is I have anxiety. To do so is to work from a position of defeat. A better mindset is I need to develop more courage. Work towards a positive goal, rather than thinking yourself fundamentally flawed. Courage is the ability to overcome anxious self-doubt and act in accordance with one's values and intellect, rather than to react to one's uncontrollable emotions. Courage enables us to exercise our full capacities as human beings. Giving in to fear despite our better judgment reverts us to a more animal-like mode of existence.

The core thing to know about anxiety is that you can't reason your way out of it. (Anyone who experiences public speaking anxiety, as I do, understands this.) The amygdala is the brain structure that triggers anxiety. It exists in a deeper, older portion of the primal human brain, and it doesn't care much what the cerebral cortex tells it. The amygdala is just a pattern-matching function. It scans the environment and, if it finds great uncertainty or matches it to previous situations where harm occurred, it triggers the anxiety state. You can't tell it what to do. You can only update its historical data records. It's no different than training a dog. You can't tell the dog what to do, only train it through an ample amount of positive and negative reinforcement in a regimen of gradually increasing difficulty. We take the same approach to learning to play basketball or guitar. We know in our head what good music sounds like, or what a basketball player should be doing, but we can't talk ourselves into a great shooting technique. We must train ourselves through repetition.

Anxiety is just psychological pain, and it drives people to avoidance behavior (to the point of safe spaces being implemented in many of our educational and corporate institutions). The same can be said of exercise. Lifting weights is difficult and painful. Squats are tortuous, in my opinion. Successful athletes learn to appreciate the burn, because they know that's where the improvement occurs, and they seek it out consistently. They also learn not to push too hard, otherwise they will overly exhaust or injure themselves.

The amygdala is entirely analogous. Anxiety is the burn. The brain hack is to learn to appreciate the burn because it is making you stronger. If instead of avoiding anxiety you seek it out, you'll find that it will take increasingly stressful situations to feel the same anxiety. Speaking to an audience of two used to make you anxious; now it takes five. And then ten. And so on.

There is no way to cure anxiety but to enter the stressful situation and demonstrate to your amygdala that everything is fine, and to do that routinely. The only way to do so is to muster up some good old fashioned courage. Not once, but routinely. Make courage a lifestyle decision and in six months you'll be amazed at how much more enjoyable life is.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

RE: Facing the Coming Government Shutdown

Some commentary on Brett Stevens's recent post, Facing the Coming Government Shutdown.
[A] currency backed by debt is not as valuable as one backed by industry or other actual value.
Why would that be so? I suspect he may be violating The Compounding Debt Fallacy, an extremely common misunderstanding I see from smart people on the right. Why is a debt (i.e. contract) backed system lower in value than, say, a shiny-metal backed currency? And how do you back a currency by industry? The value of the debt backed currency derives from the US government's authority to enforce legal contracts.

He quotes from the Washington Post:
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues in a new report that once you take these kinds of tax breaks into account, the U.S. actually devotes far more resources than many other countries to “social spending” — spending on pensions, health care, family support, unemployment, housing assistance, and similar benefits meant to help people out in hard times. And, compared with most advanced countries, the U.S. gets far less bang for its buck in terms of health outcomes and equality.

…The U.S. offers huge amounts of what Kirkegaard calls “tax breaks for social purposes,” including the Earned Income Tax Credit, tax-exempt pension contributions, and new tax breaks for Americans to buy health insurance. In contrast, many European governments give services or cash benefits directly to their citizens, but then take some of that money back by taxing those cash benefits, or the person’s spending more generally.

…Once you add in that private social spending and the effect of taxes, it changes the ranking entirely. Now the U.S. devotes more to social spending than Sweden, the U.K., Germany, and Denmark – actually, every other advanced country except France.
This is a subject that was discussed on this blog in January in the proposition for an Energy Backed Currency. In EBC, the government controls spending but income comes in solely through energy sales, removing their ability to tinker on that end. Currently the fiscal policy is like a ship with rudders at each end. The actions at one end can be negated by actions at the other and they can do sneaky things like redistributing wealth at the taxation end but calling it okay because they didn't increase spending.
In addition, the more we are in debt, the less stable we are as an investment, which makes companies and other countries value our currency lower than it could be.
Why should we worry about being a foreign investment? When foreign countries invest in America, they own a part of us. We lose a part of our sovereignty. America is rich enough that it isn't starving for foreign investments. And why would we want other countries to value our currency? Driving up the dollar hurts our manufacturing and other export sectors, furthering the state of America as a nation that doesn't make things, and is forgetting how to make things. Foreign entities acquiring our currency is the same as us acquiring debt. How does, say, China, acquire dollars? They trade real value for them, in the form of goods and services. At any time, China can use its dollars to extract real wealth back out of America. Thus we are in debt to whoever holds our currency, and have lost some of our sovereignty.
This leaves the US with two grim choices, which Trump is brave enough to take on where no other American politicians will:

1. Default and lose currency value, or
2. Cut social programs and pay off the debt

Our present path leads to the first option. At some point, we will simply have borrowed too much. The experts will tell us that since our debt service is still under 10% of the budget, we are doing fine, but the real effects will be secondary. Our currency will lose value, we will lose prestige, and our government will be manipulated by foreign debtors.
The first option is indeed the only real option. US debt is sure to implode at some point. In addition to this, the vast sums of US currency in foreign exchange reserves means that, if there is ever a run on the dollar, foreign entities will unload their dollars as fast as possible, sucking wealth back out of the US. The only way to prevent that scenario will be for the US to debase the dollar, and to do so while we're strong enough, militarily, to get away with it. The causal chain of currency devalued $$\rightarrow$$ manipulated by foreign debtors is not sound. No, devaluing the currency will be the only way to reduce manipulation by foreign debtors.

From here out Steven's transitions from economics to a political discussion.
For those on the Alt Right, a transition to minimal American government — funding military and infrastructure alone, and leaving everything else to the states — would be an optimal scenario. With the fall of entitlements, diversity also will fall, and with that, the economic model of the circular Ponzi scheme will fail. At that point, the US will politically fragment as it already has socially.
Agreed, this is the ideal outcome, and one in which we might even get some help from some on the left, as long as they don't think we're agreeing with them on anything.

I read Brett Stevens almost daily. My biggest gripe is that he writes so much it is hard to keep up with it (not the worst gripe in the world, to be sure), but when you see these kinds of economic fallacies mixed in you have to wonder what else is askew. The bigger point here is that even the smartest guys out there misspeak about the economy. If you, the reader, understand the criticisms made here and start seeing them for yourself in the wild, then you understand economic reality better than the vast majority of Americans, which is knowledge that may one day work well in your favor.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Label Warfare

If Alex Jones ever got anything right it was in calling his organization Infowars. We are in the midst of a heated information war. Ideally this would be a battle of ideas, but in practice it is a war of labels. Each side seeks to assign labels in such a way as to display moral superiority to the other. Some labels are apt and defensible, while others are outright farcical. Labels are deployed as weapons, and some become rendered useless in battle and must be replaced.

Generally the left is more active in this domain than the right, but also less effective. They must rely on weaponized labeling as they tend to fare poorly in the marketplace of ideas. Their ideas are easy to repudiate, and they aren't very good at arguing to begin with, because they haven't really had to. The liberal narrative has been the unofficial state religion for some time now, and they been able to get away saturation and shaming rather than engaging in logic.

We see that the left constantly has to rebrand themselves as their self ascribed labels become burdensome. Sometimes the labels are degraded by the right, but more often they are soiled by the left's own behaviors. A few years ago liberal became something of a dirty word, thanks to constant attack from conservative radio. So liberals started calling themselves progressives. Progressive had a positive connotation, and depicted their push forward in their linear worldview. It's an excellent label, but they've ruined it. Progressive is the term used by 3rd wave feminists, intersectionality psuedo-intellectuals, and street-brawling anarchists. Most people these days associate progressives with radical communist revolutionaries. It's interesting watching some on the left call themselves progressives to avoid the negative stigma of the term liberal created by conservatives, while many moderates seek to assure us they are liberals, to avoid the negative stigma given to the term progressives gave to their own term. They are in a position of defining themselves by what they are not. The Z Man has written extensively on the dangers of negative identity, or defining oneself on what they are not, in posts such as The Anti-Man.

The left rebrands any of their pet projects that become soiled. They frame illegal aliens as undocumented immigrants. The right has made the obvious rebuttals, calling shoplifters undocumented purchasers and so on. Negroes became colored and then black and then African-Americans and then black again. Now many say "people of color" which is just another way of saying colored. The left has had a lot of success dubbing the economic refugees storming Europe as refugees, making it nearly impossible to turn them back as the preferred label portrays them as victims who face certain death in their home countries. (Never mind that it's all young men who have left the rest behind.) They have also managed to label any identity they dislike (white, male, straight, Christian, etc) as privileged. While it hasn't garnered mainstream adoption like some other terms, it has given them an easy way to dismiss anyone they want.

The left engages in what I would call loose labels, or labels they can ascribe to themselves that apply to nearly everyone. Recently I heard a musician say he was a feminist because as a father/son/brother he could not allow his daughter/mother/sister to be degraded. Well that's a hell of a loose definition. Who wants to see their mother, daughter, or sister degraded? Feminists defend their position by pretending the definition is something that has universal approval. This musician practices up to 17 hours a day and is fairly successful. I wonder if he supports the notion that a bunch of the money he makes be taken and given to a mediocre female musician who practices an hour a day. Because that's what feminists actually want to do. And they also have a tendency to degrade themselves in public. He should just raise his daughters not to be feminists.

More often than not their labels fail. They can't call themselves Marxists anymore, or Communists, even though that's what they are. Cultural Marxist is considered a pejorative, as is their own invented phrase "social justice warrior." While Bernie was big they defended the term social democrat, not knowing, it would seem, the original name of the Russian Communist Party. [The Russian communists also rose to power through label warfare. Bolshevik just means majority in Russian. The battle between the Bolshevik and Mensheviks was over before it started.] The left has become exceptionally bad at labeling their opponents as of late, resorting to the worst names that practitioners of the progressive cult can imagine: racist, sexist, Nazi, anti-semitic, Nazi, and a whole slew of hate-based terms. These terms mostly only serve to radicalize themselves, which probably doesn't bode well for their long-term success.

The right doesn't engage so much in labels but doesn't fail as much either. Mostly it's enough just to call the leftists whatever they call themselves, and they will generate the negative connotations for us. We spend more time deconstructing and sabotaging their labels than we do creating our own. One area where the right really hit a home run was in the term Pro-Life. This has been almost impossible for the left to counter, and is a powerful tool in rallying Christian votes. The countering Pro-Choice label just doesn't have the same gusto. During last year's March for Life in Washington DC that news orgs were using the term anti-abortion instead of pro-life. By choosing to use a negative definition for the marchers rather than their own term for themselves, the enormous bias of the media was revealed, showing the power of the label.

One conservative label that has acquired a negative connotation is neocon. But then again, neocon was never really a conservative label at all. It was the label that imperialists gave themselves to get conservative votes, and was ruined by their failed foreign interventionism. Other negative terms have come from the right itself, by calling liberals posing as conservatives RINOs and cuckservatives.

All this brings us to the alt-right. It was a label given to conservatives who wished to separate themselves from the establishment right; from the neocons and the corporate globalists and the National Review. It was dangerously close to a negative identity to begin with. It was also an abused term. The left found the most radical component of the alt-right and used that to try to attack Trump with. (Hillary's anti-alt-right speech wondrously backfired.) It's worrisome now that the term has finally become a burden, and was done so by members of the alt-right in Charlottesville. While the left instigated the violence, the world now associates the alt-right with yokels popping off Nazi salutes. The brand is all but ruined. We find ourselves in the position of having to rebrand, just like the left always has to do. What can we say, that the Nazi saluters aren't alt-right? They certainly fit the definition of non-establishment right-wingers. So now we're forced to do what we should have been doing already: providing positive identity labels of what we are, rather than negative labels of what we are not.

Monday, August 14, 2017

The Futility of Right-Wing Political Activism

The big news this weekend seems to have been the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. The major story is an incident that a right-wing activist ran his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. The narrative, of course, is that this was a deliberate attack. If so, there is not much to say about the media's rampant hypocrisy, as they've already been expertly skewered by Ann Coulter. However, this case isn't even equivalent to the incidents of Islamic attacks she compares to because it appears that the driver was under attack first (there is a video showing his car hit with a baseball bat before he accelerates into the crowd). It seems that the driver is likely to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter at worst, a far cry from the pre-meditated mass murders carried out by "Allahu Ackbar" chanting Islamists.

The rest of the rally is somewhat as predicted. Right-wing marchers were forced to get permits; Antifa and their ilk did not need permits to counter protest. Police did not protect the permitted activists from lefty violence, yet the right-wingers took 100% of the blame when they returned the violence or acted in self-defense. Any moral infraction by a right-winger was broadcast at full signal strength and decreed as representative of the whole group. Any moral infraction by a lefty was ignored as much as possible and characterized as an isolated incident committed by someone not really affiliated with the larger group. In short, street activism is a domain that fully and completely favors the left.

Which brings up the obvious question: why even bother with it? What exactly is the goal here? I nearly wrote against the Unite the Right March last week, because I didn't see the point. But it seemed harmless, at least, so I left it alone. Well, it's not harmless. Every other time these people organize, the alt-right spends weeks in damage control. Unite the Right as a public demonstration theme was doomed to failure. Because, guess what, there are Nazis on the right. Maybe they're not real Nazis, maybe they're just being edgy carrying a swastika flag, but in either case, those are some of the people we are supposed to be uniting with. If you have 10,000 right-wing demonstrators and one of them has a Nazi flag, what do you have? 10,000 Nazi militants, at least in the eyes of the public. Any why shouldn't that be the case? If the alt-right is okay with marching with a Nazi flag, or kids throwing out "Roman" salutes, then they will be identified with that symbolism.

The unwanted symbolism is being associated with the alt-right because no one is following the advice given in To Save the Alt Right, Punch Right. What is the point of having Richard Spencer or Baked Alaska on board if all they do is cause us trouble? We'd be better off without them. Punch right. What is the point of having supporters so dedicated they'll risk personal injury to march in the streets of Charlottesville Virginia, but they only serve to give the left a concrete instantiation on which to focus their abundant hate? We'd be better off without them. Punch right. This is the reason why Milo refused to be designated as a leader of the alt-right. (Well one of several). Giving them something concrete gives them an attack surface. It violates the principle of assume formlessness. And it violates the principles recommended on this blog in The Resolution of Ideology. These people think that if they take the full-spectrum ideological signal and make it public enough, they will win the war of ideas. They are seriously misguided, and leaders of the alt-right are not doing enough to keep these amateurs in check.

Marchers do nothing to advance our interests. Perhaps they fuel energy within the movement, but are these really the people we want to be highly energized? What moderate ever realized the failures of progressivism because they saw some flag-waving white trash walking through the streets? They are not helping us at all. In fact, the people who are helping us are mostly mainstream persuaders. Rush Limbaugh does more for us than these marchers could ever do. Having conservatism associated with Nazi salutes and vehicular manslaughter makes it impossible for them to continue their work. Everyone is now playing defense, instead of what we have been doing, slowly turning the tide in the marketplace of ideas and reclaiming the cultural institutions.

Worst of all, these activities feel like the things the lefties do, which means they must be wrong somehow since liberals are always wrong about everything. Liberals organize protests and complain in the streets. Conservatives go to work and raise families. Marches are shows of force. They are the democratic equivalent of military processions. In more autocratic regimes, the military is marched through town to say look how strong your rulers are; don't even think about rebelling. Similarly, political movements put on marches to show how strong they are, how many votes they command. A march makes sense from a position of strength.

The alt-right does not operate from a position of strength. It is an upstart political movement, even if conservatism is nothing new. It is an insurgency. It needs to start thinking like one. Successful insurgencies do not parade through town when they are outgunned. They would get demolished in the war of bullets, just as the Unite the Right marchers are now being trounced in the war of propaganda. I may start a series on successful insurgencies and how they might correlate to the arena of public opinion, as that seems to be a discussion that is either not being had or is being ignored.

In the meantime, the major takeaway should be this. One of the core principles of the alt-right is the existence of a natural human hierarchy, in opposition to the left's notion of "equity" (i.e. communism). If the alt-right practiced what it preached, none of this would have ever been an issue. No one affiliated with the march would have been permitted to don Nazi garb or flash Roman salutes, at the direction of wiser leaders-in-charge. Actually, the march would have been nixed altogether, because it was stupid in principle. If the alt-right can't even implement a functional hierarchy in its own ranks, how can it ever hope to do so in a largely hostile society? They need to get their house in order and very quick-like. The movement has nearly been destroyed for failing to practice what it preaches.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

More On Moron Google

This Google memo debacle has been nothing short of amazing to watch. A smart, soft-spoken politically moderate engineer wrote an internal memo describing how Google was not taking the best approach towards the shared goal of building a working environment that is diverse, inclusive, and, more specifically, female friendly. For that, his memo was blasted by the media as right-wing sexist bigotry, the media engaged in the most egregious lie-telling, and his employer publicly denounced him as dangerous and summarily fired him without even the pretense of due process.

How do you know your society is dominated by a cult of lies? When soft-spoken, private truths are amplified into national fits of outrage. Let's look at some examples of the sheer mendacity at play here.

Gizmodo first broke the story, where they set the tone by dubbing the memo as an Anti-Diversity Screed. Despite the fraudulent title, the article actually gives the memo a reasonably fair shake.
In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and is titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the author argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” he writes, going on to argue that Google’s educational programs for young women may be misguided.
Of course, they seem to have missed the very first sentence of the memo as they posted it:
I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes.
Googler: I value diversity.
Gizmodo: That's anti-diversity!!!

The Guardian chimed in with their piece, Fired Google memo writer gives first big interviews to rightwing YouTubers. I'll concede that Molyneux could be called right-wing these days, but Peterson? What is the basis for that?
Damore – who argued in his memo that “biological” differences between men and women contribute to the gender gap in the tech industry – gave lengthy video interviews to Stefan Molyneux and Jordan B Peterson, who both have large followings on YouTube and have espoused anti-feminist views.
Oh, there it is. If you aren't a 3rd wave feminist you're right-wing. Look at the quote they use to qualify the memo. "biological." That's it. One word. It's just about the longest quote I've actually seen from the memo. They don't dare quote an entire statement. Because it would come off as too rational. So they just describe it however they want, using a single word quoted from the memo to make it appear to be properly sourced.
One former Harvard student, who was in the systems biology program at the same time as Damore, told the Guardian that it was not surprising to find out he was the author of the controversial manifesto, which was widely criticized for relying on shoddy science.

“His comments do not reflect the ability to read literature critically that a typical Harvard student develops over the course of actually completing a PhD,” the former classmate said.

Damore’s views, the source said, made him an outlier in the department, which values diversity.

“It’s pretty unusual someone would have those opinions and be stupid enough to voice them,” the former classmate said. “Part of me worries that he got into some dark corner of the internet.”
Again, Damore literally states in the first three words that he values diversity. This couldn't be a more blatantly false critique if it tried. It's like reviewing The Cat in the Hat and stating, "I'd prefer a book about a cat in a hat." We also have the insinuation that he relied on shoddy science. His external references were previously compiled on this blog here. Sources include, but are not limited to:

The Atlantic
Wikipedia
The New Yorker
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
The Wall Street Journal
The New Yorker
Scientific American
Psychology Today
Boston Review
Perspectives on Psychological Science
Association for Psychological Science

When the same lefties condemning Damore's referenced science start criticizing the (mostly liberal) sources he referenced, then we can at least give them credit for consistency and move on with the debate. But until they do so, the situation is apparent. Science is the holiest sacred word unless quoted by a conservative (or someone merely defending conservatives), in which case it becomes "shoddy." We can't have a debate with people expressing blatant intellectual dishonesty. Also note that the classmate doesn't say it's stupid to have those facts opinions, but that it's stupid to voice them. Everyone knows that the liberal orthodoxy is a cult that seeks to punish dissent.

Google's Vice President of Diversity, Integrity, and Governance (i.e. Social Justice) was also compelled to virtue signal show leadership. From Fortune:
Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I'm not going to link to it here as it's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.
Can you take a moment to appreciate how fucking insane this is? "I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender." Okay but, which one? Which of the 22 linked sources is faulty? Do journals or media outlets need to issue retractions? Do the institutions of the researchers need to take action? What is actually the thing that is wrong here, and what further action is required, oh head of governance?

"I'm not going to link to it here as it's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages." Holy child's argument. If you don't know why I'm mad I'm not going to tell you. Like The Guardian, she doesn't dare reference arguments made from the article, because there is no way to quote it to make it look unreasonable. It's so offensive I must shield you from its horrible power, is merely the excuse to avoid anything that smells like truth or logic. This is the Vice President of Integrity. Anyone know how to short Google stock in the long run?
Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.
Oh boy, I bet Googlers are lining up to share their differing views and political opinions. Why don't you feel safe sharing? Just because we publicly degraded and fired that other guy? Note the cop-out, that views must comply with the Code of Conduct. But she's not even attempted to explain how it violated the Code of Conduct; hasn't recited a single sentence or a single fact cited in the memo. They decided they don't like it overall, thus it violates the Code. You're free to share alternate views that don't violate the Code of Conduct. Also, all alternate view violate the Code of Conduct.

To be fair, the CEO did make an attempt at this in his initial response.
Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
The source of those facts is here, done by American, Estonian, and Austrian researchers and published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Is this study faulty? Should it be retracted? Should researchers be forbidden from determining gender correlation with psychological measurements? Is referencing those studies to make your company more hospitable to all genders really a violation of the Code of Conduct, and, if so, doesn't that seem a bit self-defeating?

The Google CEO made another statement:
First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.
Much of the memo is fair to debate? I agree. But, like the VP of Social Justice, he insists that portions of the memo violate the Code of Conduct by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes." Which. Fucking. Portions? Which statements or cited facts were the offensive ones then? Which research institutions are producing these fraudulent hate facts, and which publications are promoting them? He mentioned some before, then decided not to. I wonder why.

Just like fish swimming in water, these people so accustomed to navigating a web of lies and deceit that they don't even realize it anymore. These are Fake People. Someone's blog, maybe it was Brett Stevens, put forth the notion that democracies inherently lead to this kind of mass delusion. In a democracy, the only way to be important is to be popular, and the only way to be popular is to tell people the little lies they want to hear. At some point we become so accustomed to the sound of lies, and so immune to the resulting cognitive dissonance, that truth starts to sound strange. People don't understand it and are upset by the truth. And, as Mr. Damore's old college contemporary rightfully states, you'd be stupid to voice it.

Mr Damore is not really conservative. He shares the values the left cherishes. Diversity, inclusion, etc. If he was truly conservative he would not really hold those values to begin with. Instead, he attempted to use reasoning to help the left advance those goals more effectively, and they've done everything to destroy him for it. Being a liberal and a truth seeker are no longer compatible behaviors. Objective liberals and moderates have only two choices. They can abandon their desire for truth and recite falsehood to gain social status on the left. Or they can change their values and join us on the reactionary right. The irrational left is driving the schism, we are responding to it. The left may control the public narrative, for now, but they also push the best & brightest in our direction, and they put us on the side of objective truth. And doesn't the truth inevitably win out?

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Google Hatefacts

Here is a collection of 22 hatefacts referenced by James Damore in his infamous Google memo. They mostly are references to scientific literature, or sources that reference the relevant literature, or are pieces out of the left's own media outlets.

These are the biological realities that Google CEO Sundar Pichai describes as "advancing dangerous stereotypes." As such, we demand that all investigators, authors, and publishers related to the following links be publicly identified, retract their works, and step down from the positions in which they serve. It's time for the scientific community and liberal media to stop advancing dangerous stereotypes.


Google Hatefact 1
Mainstream media outlets politically left of center
Link

Google Hatefact 2
Sex differences in psychology
Link

Google Hatefact 3
Women prone to empathizing over systemizing
Link
Link

Google Hatefact 4
Women score moderately higher than men in neuroticism (anxiety, stress)
Link

Google Hatefact 5
Greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits
Link

Google Hatefact 6
Men Suffer 93% of work-related deaths
Link

Google Hatefact 7
Competitiveness and self-reliance disadvantaged in education
Link

Google Hatefact 8
Women prefer a work-life balance
Link

Google Hatefact 9
Diversity programs can increase race and gender tensions
Link

Google Hatefact 10
The left is doing more than the right to set back scientific progress
Link

Google Hatefact 11
95% of the humanities and social sciences lean left
Link

Google Hatefact 12
Enormous confirmation bias in the social sciences
Link

Google Hatefact 13
Men paid more for a variety of reasons
Link

Google Hatefact 14
Political correctness constrains discourse
Link

Google Hatefact 15
Moralizing an issue halts cost/benefit analysis
Link

Google Hatefact 16
Conservatives alienated in field of psychology
Link

Google Hatefact 17
Conservative professors fake liberal political beliefs to avoid workplace hostility
Link

Google Hatefact 18
Conservatives score higher in conscientiousness
Link

Google Hatefact 19
Excess empathy causes us to overvalue anecdote and harbor biases
Link

Google Hatefact 20
Microaggression training equates words with violence
Link

Google Hatefact 21
Evidence does not support the premise of microaggressions
Link

Google Hatefact 22
Stereotypes more accurate and open to new information than training suggests
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Monday, August 7, 2017

Shots Fired in the War on Biology

I have been anticipating that the left would eventually begin attacking three academic fields: biology, evolutionary pysch, and anthropology. The first two are because they will reject any scientific results that imply a biological basis for gender, race, or sexual behaviors. The last one has recently been added as I've learned about the social brain hypothesis for the evolution of human intelligence, which makes the case that it was internecine competition, not ecological pressures, that drove the emergence of intellect. Liberals will seek to dismiss or silence any result that shines a positive light on human competition.

As expected, Google has fired the engineer who dared to distribute a memo questioning the effectiveness of the social-justice monoculture for "advancing gender stereotypes." The CEO signaled the firing with a memo sent out today, which includes the following snippet:
To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”

The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
The war on biology is now underway. Biological results will not be tolerated in Gootopia. I hate to delve into credentialism, as the arguments made by the engineer should stand alone, but they are very juicy here. Not only did the memo include numerous references to scientific literature, but the author himself has a PhD from Harvard -- the favored lefty institution -- in Systems Biology!


To quote a commenter on Steve Sailor's post, Google Fires Honest Man Pour Encourager Les Autres:
They said that if DRUMPF got elected we’d have scientists silenced just for speaking out against the grain, and they were right!
The author of the memo was making the observation (a risky activity these days) that the differing outcomes between genders are more explained by different inclinations and capabilities of the genders as measured through scientific inquiry rather than some vast culture of institutionalized oppression. Common sense has long been under assault, and now the scientific world is as well. Liberals must by their very nature destroy anyone promoting uncomfortable objective truth, as they are in a constant struggle to reject it. We are at the point where the statement women tend to have vaginas could put one at risk of termination for advancing gender stereotypes.

The good thing is the truth must prevail, eventually, one way or another. (Although, how we get there can be the difference between simple honest debate or wholesale tyranny followed by inevitable social collapse.) It's hard to know if this engineer was very naive thinking he could influence liberals through logic and proper scientific rigor, or if he knew the score but was courageous enough to declare battle anyway. Probably more of the naivety, but we'll be hearing plenty of his side of things to be sure. The fact that Google fired him so swiftly only serves to underscore his case, and to give this thing huge exposure, huge-redpilling potential. They didn't even wait the measly 2-3 days for the news cycle to move one, let alone give the illusion of bureaucratic due process. He said dissent to the sjw monoculture was not to be tolerated (not his language), and they proved him correct. This only goes to show that Google is a fully converged institution. It is a political organization first, followed by its role in providing IT services to the public.

Google will fall. Slowly, but it's death sentence has been signed. Now would be a good time to think about business ventures that might compete with Google's products, as they are now severely handicapped to properly compete in a reality-based competitive market. Rational and observant (i.e. evil) white males will start looking for the exits, leaving only the rabid feminists who don't actually contribute to the code base. And it's not much to begin with. I've only had limited exposure, but I did once try using their open source Google Test library, written in C++, which I wanted to modify a bit for the output I needed from the test results. The code was not at all written in a modular way to allow for expansion. I tried to tease it apart to do so, but it was such a tangled web I had to abandon the task. In short, the code was very poorly designed, if you could call it designed at all. The hype is real over there. [And would seem to confirm Damore's assertion that Google's culture is one of individual heroes (favors the boys) versus collaborative teamwork (favors the girls). Team code is more likely to be modular, because that's the only way to do parallel workloads in a project.]

If you are interested in the leftist war against scientific results and objective facts, I've started keeping a list at https://voat.co/v/hatefacts. If you're on voat I encourage you to contribute, if you like.

UPDATE: looks like Slate is going after evolutionary psychology too, as predicted. http://www.unz.com/isteve/it-cant-be-hate-speech-against-white-men-because-you-deserve-it/

Contradictions in the Ctrl Right?

A key difference between liberals and conservatives is we believe in a more traditional social arrangement based on natural hierarchies. The alt-right, being very conservative, tends to be more intense in its desire for a return to hierarchy, to the point of being anti-democratic and desiring a political structure based on aristocracy or even monarchy. Brett Stevens is one such advocate:
[P]eople choose what is more convenient for them, at the expense of civilization and nature, every time. This means that we need a force to intervene and force civilization at large to do what is right, because its impulse is to do otherwise unless such an intervention occurs.
Our major complaint with the left is that it ultimately boils down to a movement for centralized social and political control, under their terms. In fact, we dub them the "Ctrl Left" for just that reason. Just the other day this blog stated:
For every liberal opinion, there is advocacy for state control of other people's behavior.
That doesn't seem all that different from "force civilization to do what is right." Are we hypocrites for condemning their program of social control, while advocating our own? Let's first look at this through the lens of the Law of Canceling Hypocrisy, postulated on this blog, which states:
Hypocrisy is not a valid argument against hypocrisy. Perceived hypocrisy is immaterial if the accuser must engage in hypocrisy to make the case.
There are two ways we might attack the Ctrl Left. First would be the application of straightforward partisanship. Wars are ultimately fought this way. It's bad if the Nazis bomb England, but it's okay if we bomb Nazis. It's bad if the left tries to control society, because they will ruin it. It's good if the right tries to control society, because we will save it. Such an argument is fine, but it does put us on an even moral footing with the left. We'd prefer to have the superior position.

The second viewpoint is that we point out that the left is controlling to call them out on their own bullshit. The ideological core of the left is that there is an oppressor class (i.e. the controllers) and a victim class. The left purports to free people from control, yet in action everything is about government control of behavior. Thus, hypocrisy. But the right can't condemn the liberals for seeking to control society since that's what they do. The rule of canceling hypocrisy applies.

The difference may be that, as long as the right is open about their intentions, and they don't make the implication that a drive for social control is implicitly evil, then they are not committing hypocrisy, but merely stating a fact. If I'm a serial killer on death row, it would by hypocritical to declare the Hillary is wicked because she killed Seth Rich. But it would not be hypocrisy to merely state as fact that Hillary did indeed kill Seth Rich. If we are trying to "force civilization to do what is right", then we can't condemn the left for doing the same, but we can point out that social control is their intent no matter how nicely they dress it up, and that their version of control will destroy all the good things our society has built. In this case we take the superior moral position. They seek to control civilization just as we do, except we don't lie about.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

The Case for Cruelty

I saw a great guitarist this weekend, Michael Chapdelaine, an accomplished classical guitarist who is most noted for his fantastic pop covers. It was a house party in a small living room, so there was a lot of interaction between performer and audience. The first thing I noticed about him, right when he walked into the room, was how calm he is. He seemed totally at ease and free of anxiety. It wasn't very surprising when later he mentioned he is a practicing Zen Buddhist. I don't know much about Buddhism, but this isn't the first time I've met someone who radiates inner peace and later found out they were a Buddhist. We can't be sure if Buddhism truly guides people to tranquility or if tranquil people are simply drawn to Buddhism (likely both are true to some degree), but there seems to be something to it.

Tranquil people are really worth their weight in gold. They're the types you want to surround yourself with, while keeping the dramatic people at arm's length. Anxiety is contagious. We see that all the time. One person emits anxiety and the uneases ripples through the group like a wave, with an uptick in fidgeting, foot tapping, and throat clearing. Tranquil people are anxiety neutralizers. They're like baking soda in the freezer, or an active carbon filter. When they're around, everyone else feels at ease. Ideally, every social gathering should have one of these types present. (Otherwise alcohol is the typical substitute.)

Whatever your thoughts are on religion or Buddhism, this man was spiritually enlightened. On this blog we're typically concerned with intellectual enlightenment. Human nature is a triad composed of mind, body, and spirit, which is approximated in Christianity with God the Father, the omnipotent; Jesus, the physical incarnation; and the Holy Spirit. Most people believe we need to live with each in equal proportion for proper balance. Christianity would seem to imply an ordering. God is foremost, followed by the son, and the Holy Spirit playing a more minor role. Given the spiritual wisdom of Jesus, the order of importance overall is really Mind > Spirit > Body. Intellectual enlightenment is the most important component of the three because intellect is the unique gift given to humans. All things have a physical embodiment, and many animals display emotion, but intellect is the sole domain of humans. To call intellect no more important than physical well-being or emotional concerns is to resist one's own humanity. Genesis makes the point very clear. Mankind did not emerge thanks to the Tree of Physical Health or the Tree of Spirituality, but the Tree of Knowledge.

At some point during the performance, the guitarist was talking about how his favorite arrangements were those that conveyed songs that had a component of anger too them. (He's quite fond of Somebody That I Used to Know.) He said he had learned to embrace the full range of human emotions, including anger, except that he just couldn't comprehend humans' ability or propensity to be cruel to each other. This seems to be a common condition for thoughtful or enlightened people. It is the great tragedy of humanity, that we could build so much and then destroy it through war. The key component of this is frustration. It seems so irrational. But there is an order to this. We can't escape the cruelty paradox, but with deeper wisdom we can at least soothe the frustration. Cruelty has played an important role for humans, and, surprising as it may sound, we would not be here without it.


The Social Brain Hypothesis is the leading theory from anthropology for the evolution of human intelligence, and argues that the primary selective pressure was internal, not ecological. Most people would likely assume we evolved from ecological pressures. For example, to survive under predation by lions, or harsh environmental conditions. Yet these kinds of pressures face nearly all organisms, and all have evolved much simpler solutions than the human brain, which is by far the most complex structure in the known universe, and which comes with costs. It has extreme energy requirements makes childbirth difficult and risky.

The social brain hypothesis posits that the primary evolutionary force on intelligence was other humans. There are two aspects to this. First, humans are tribal, and human tribes are complex. Those at the top acquire better reproduction opportunities, but getting to the top requires the cognitive ability to navigate the complex social situation. The second aspect is that smarter tribes are likely to displace duller tribes. The uncomfortable aspect of evolution that people prefer to ignore is that it requires death by competition. The prairie grasses that give Illinois its nickname prospered at the expense of the oak forests that preceded them in wetter times. The Megalodon was driven to extinction by sharks and killer whales. And nearly every tribe or nation on earth that occupies some location displaced other people that were there first. Certainly intelligence yields an advantage in tribal and national rivalries, and there is empirical evidence to support it. For instance, Indo-Europeans, who birthed the most successful nations in history, displaced the Neolithic farmers of Europe and modern genetic testing shows they are indeed more intelligent than those they displaced. The Indo-Europeans also had an advantage as they were the first to domesticate the horse, but we assume greater intelligence yields a greater rate of technological progress. The Neolithic farmers themselves dominated thanks to their invention of agriculture. We should suspect they were more intelligent than whoever they replaced.

At any rate, the theory provides a reason for cruelty. If more intelligent tribes did not displace and kill less intelligent tribes, human intelligence would not have improved much. Without improved intelligence we'd not have agriculture or writing or beautiful classical guitar compositions. In Genesis, the Tree of Knowledge was provided by God, but in reality the tree was paid for by many thousands of years of men killing each other for access to resources and women. This doesn't sound like a revelation the should ease the consciences of men pondering the great tragedy of human cruelty, but in fact it should. Knowing there is a cruelty paradox is a much better position than frustrated grappling with the question of why cruelty should exist at all. We can deal with paradoxes. Duality of nature seems to be the norm and, as mentioned here before, if you find yourself in some field of thought that embodies no duality, tradeoffs, or paradoxes, then either you don't understand the field adequately or there is an opportunity to make a breakthrough in that field.

Mr Chapdelaine is comfortable with the range of human emotions, including anger. That is because we understand that the dark emotions, while dangerous in abundance, can also be dangerous if absent. This seems to be a fundamental principle of psychology. We strive for a balance of emotions, not the removal of bad emotions and the forced imposition of good emotions. (Although in America a lot of people demand just that.) Look at anger. What is the role of anger? Too much anger is bad, and we see those results all the time. But anger plays an important role. It causes us to act in the face of great injustice or incompetence, and to defend what is good. Think of a man that never gets angry, even if his wife or children are at risk of harm. We would never say his lack of anger was a virtue. Everyone would despise such a man and call him a coward of the lowest order. Likewise, a tribe that didn't express anger would be quickly destroyed by a tribe that did. We know that there is a healthy expression of anger, and extremes in either direction are dangerous and immoral.

The same must be true for cruelty. The great accomplishments of humanity require an intelligent and stable society. If building such a society was easy, then it would be easy. But it's not easy. It requires sacrifice, work, a general sense of morality, and leadership willing to make difficult decisions and to engage in cruelty when necessary. A tribe that decides to forbid cruelty will degrade and be replaced by a tribe that embraces it. It's no surprise the western countries are being invaded by Muslims. It's the natural way of things, given the current co of the two civilizations.

The question isn't is cruelty permissible? but, rather, in this instance do the benefits of cruelty outweight the costs? Let's look at America as an example. No one can deny that whites were cruel to the Amerindians. We do debate on extent; for instance, the mainstream narrative tends to overstate the genocidal nature of Europeans while understating the primitive and barbaric nature of most of the Indian tribes; but ultimately the Amerindians were cruelly displaced by an invading tribe. The costs are immense. But what of the benefits? Would America, or the world, be a better place if Europeans had landed and said "Oh my, looks like some people are here already, better turn those boats around," instead of building a nation that has exported democratic ideals to the world, exported technology that has dramatically risen the standard of living of virtually every person on the planet, and created an era of Pax Americana, an unusual period of time where the primary causes of death are not violence and starvation? In most of the world these days you're more likely to die from too much food! That is truly incredible.

You could hardly say this in our society without being demonized, but I believe the wholesale displacement of the natives was worth the cruelty cost, just as the near eradication of Neolithic farmers by Indo-Europeans was, overall, beneficial to humanity, and just as we benefited by the Neolithic farmers displacing their predecessors, and so on. What if America had compromised, and instead blended with the natives? Well that was the outcome for all countries in the Americas besides the US & Canada. (After that Argentina is closest.) None of those countries has profoundly benefited the world. (Unless maybe we count bossa nova. 😃)

Like all emotions, the human propensity for cruelty plays a vital role. It fits into the Ying & Yang of human morality, just like everything else. The fact that people find so much cruelty to complain about in our society means that either (a) our society is indeed excessively cruel, or (b) those people have an unhealthy dismissal of cruelty as a natural aspect of building and maintaining an advanced society. I suggest our civilizational malady is of the second variety. The typical westerner recoils at the thought of any sort of cruelty. We are as unbalanced as the man who never rises to anger, not even in the face of grave injustices or harm to his family. If we don't learn to responsibly apply cruelty from an intellectual perspective, then we will be eventually forced to do so out of pragmatism. And if still we find ourselves unable to do so, we will simply be replaced. This is all perfectly natural.