The intrinsic unreliability of science

More and more investigations of quasi-scientific shenanigans are demonstrating the need for more precision in the language used to describe the field that is too broadly and misleadingly known as "science":

The problem with ­science is that so much of it simply isn’t. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field. Scientific claims rest on the idea that experiments repeated under nearly identical conditions ought to yield approximately the same results, but until very recently, very few had bothered to check in a systematic way whether this was actually the case. The OSC was the biggest attempt yet to check a field’s results, and the most shocking. In many cases, they had used original experimental materials, and sometimes even performed the experiments under the guidance of the original researchers. Of the studies that had originally reported positive results, an astonishing 65 percent failed to show statistical significance on replication, and many of the remainder showed greatly reduced effect sizes.

Their findings made the news, and quickly became a club with which to bash the social sciences. But the problem isn’t just with psychology. There’s an ­unspoken rule in the pharmaceutical industry that half of all academic biomedical research will ultimately prove false, and in 2011 a group of researchers at Bayer decided to test it. Looking at sixty-seven recent drug discovery projects based on preclinical cancer biology research, they found that in more than 75 percent of cases the published data did not match up with their in-house attempts to replicate. These were not studies published in fly-by-night oncology journals, but blockbuster research featured in Science, Nature, Cell, and the like. The Bayer researchers were drowning in bad studies, and it was to this, in part, that they attributed the mysteriously declining yields of drug pipelines. Perhaps so many of these new drugs fail to have an effect because the basic research on which their development was based isn’t valid....

Paradoxically, the situation is actually made worse by the fact that a promising connection is often studied by several independent teams. To see why, suppose that three groups of researchers are studying a phenomenon, and when all the data are analyzed, one group announces that it has discovered a connection, but the other two find nothing of note. Assuming that all the tests involved have a high statistical power, the lone positive finding is almost certainly the spurious one. However, when it comes time to report these findings, what happens? The teams that found a negative result may not even bother to write up their non-discovery. After all, a report that a fanciful connection probably isn’t true is not the stuff of which scientific prizes, grant money, and tenure decisions are made.

And even if they did write it up, it probably wouldn’t be accepted for publication. Journals are in competition with one another for attention and “impact factor,” and are always more eager to report a new, exciting finding than a killjoy failure to find an association. In fact, both of these effects can be quantified. Since the majority of all investigated hypotheses are false, if positive and negative evidence were written up and accepted for publication in equal proportions, then the majority of articles in scientific journals should report no findings. When tallies are actually made, though, the precise opposite turns out to be true: Nearly every published scientific article reports the presence of an association. There must be massive bias at work. 

Ioannidis’s argument would be potent even if all scientists were angels motivated by the best of intentions, but when the human element is considered, the picture becomes truly dismal. Scientists have long been aware of something euphemistically called the “experimenter effect”: the curious fact that when a phenomenon is investigated by a researcher who happens to believe in the phenomenon, it is far more likely to be detected. Much of the effect can likely be explained by researchers unconsciously giving hints or suggestions to their human or animal subjects, perhaps in something as subtle as body language or tone of voice. Even those with the best of intentions have been caught fudging measurements, or making small errors in rounding or in statistical analysis that happen to give a more favorable result. Very often, this is just the result of an honest statistical error that leads to a desirable outcome, and therefore it isn’t checked as deliberately as it might have been had it pointed in the opposite direction. 

But, and there is no putting it nicely, deliberate fraud is far more widespread than the scientific establishment is generally willing to admit.

Never confuse either scientistry or sciensophy for scientody. To paraphrase, and reject, Daniel Dennett's contention, do not trust biologists or sociologists or climatologists, or anyone else who calls himself a scientist, simply because physicists get amazingly accurate results.

Brainstorm debate: Free Trade

As I mentioned, tonight at 7 PM Eastern I'll be debating Dr. James Miller, Associate Professor of Economics at Smith College, on the topic of free trade. Dr. Miller has a PhD from the University of Chicago and is the author of Game Theory at Work and Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World.

There are 440 seats left, so if you're interested and you plan to attend, you can register for the free event here. 

This promises to be interesting. PhD from THE monetarist school vs BS from a econ department of Keynesians and socialists. Game Theorist vs Game Designer. Academic vs gamer.

The folks on Twitter don't appear to like my chances of success. The worst odds that have been given against me are 68-1. On the other hand, Nate refuses to throw in the towel: Speaking as someone who's actually debated you. I'm going to say the poor bastard has no idea what he's in for.

So, whose chances do you like better? Looking at it objectively, I'd have to say that if I can somehow manage to win this one in a convincing fashion, I'm probably smarter than I think I am. There is only one way to find out.

The Second Law in effect

Anti-GG writer Jesse Singal points-and-shrieks at the SJW List at New York Magazine. Needless to say, being the author of the Second Law of SJW, I am entirely unsurprised.

Ever been worried that you might accidentally hire or interact with a “social-justice warrior”? SJWs, as they’re known to the free-speech warriors of gaming message boards, look and often act like anyone else — until they start screaming about lesbian rights in the middle of a meeting. Luckily for those concerned, there’s now a list of known SJWs. Because, generally, making lists of people based on their political and social alignments has worked out well in the past.

On Saturday, the far-right writer Vox Day (“The Jews in Europe are doomed because they spent the last 70 years undermining European nationalism and supporting the transformation of European population demographics”) noted in a blog post that it would be useful to create a list of known SJWs, or social-justice warriors.

And now, voilà, such a list has materialized in the form of a helpful wiki that Day himself likely created (it links to his book, SJWs Always Lie, as well as to his original post). The author cutely implies that the list should be used by SJWs to hire like-minded folk.

I’ve interacted online with many people who fly the anti-SJW flag, including plenty of GamerGaters. They’ll tell you that they didn’t start this fight — it was brought to them by SJWs invading their cultural spaces. These anti-SJWs, of course, have no political agenda of their own: Their views are common sense, and by definition apolitical. They simply want SJWs to stop trying to make everything about wacky far-left politics. Anti-SJWs are for free speech and, unlike SJWs, righteously opposed to the idea of lobbying to get people with unpopular views fired (well, sometimes). They are also sick of how SJWs are constantly trying to launch online shaming campaigns, which they, the anti-SJWs, are opposed to (well, sometimes).

Anyway. Creating an enemies list composed almost entirely of progressive and feminist voices seems like a really smart way to express these sentiments and show the world just how reasonable and commonsensical and apolitical anti-SJWs are.

The amusing thing about SJWs attempting to write hit pieces like this is that they simply don't know very much about the relevant topics. He's trying to make my opinion on the future of European Jewry sound controversial, perhaps even anti-semitic, when it happens to be more or less shared by, among others, the Prime Minister of Israel.

And I'm not being cute when I say that I genuinely hope that SJW-converged organizations will learn about the SJWs featured on the list and hire them. From the anti-SJW perspective, there is literally no better outcome.

That's some great journalism there too. He writes of "a helpful wiki that Day himself likely created". He could have simply done 10 seconds of research and he would have learned that I did not create it, and that all of the content has been created by the Dread Ilk, not me.

UPDATE: The SJW journalists are belatedly beginning to realize that not everyone is quite as enthusiastic about social justice as they are:

Tess Townsend ‏@Tess_Townsend
This is f-d up. Combing for quotes to harass folks is the opposite of promoting any kind of speech period.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
We don't have to comb for SJW quotes, Tess. You do it for us. Now stop harassing me.

And who said anything about promoting speech anyhow? The SJWs identified can still push their Narrative and pursue people's jobs if they wish, it's just that, for better or for worse, everyone is going to know precisely what it is that they have done.

UPDATE II: Jesse Singal tries to check all the boxes. He doesn't care, but I do, but he was only joking, but I'm a crybaby. It's like an object lesson in Gamma. 

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
TIL @voxday is a delicate, sensitive soul It'll be okay man :(

 Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
I triggered Vox Day. He's upset. His response is longer than my jokey post

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
.@peterb @CountUlairi @voxday yeah that's what gets me a/b it. Was such a mild post! If you have ANY self-esteem that shit rolls off you

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
tfw you're Vox Day and you've been triggered by a brief mildly critical blog post and the only person you can tag in is...Mike Cernovich

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
Rare video footage of Vox Day responding to a brief blog post mildly critical of him

Roran_Stehl ‏@Roran_Stehl
why do you guys (i.e. you, @Popehat or @scalzi ) care about that person? I fail to see his relevance.

Jesse Singal@jessesingal
I don't! He freaked out that I wrote the mildest blog post ever. It is funny! Don't mistake it for caring about.

The best part: his "jokey post" is 332 words. My response to it is 147 words. No wonder SJWs hate STEM.

The fence-sitter's lament

Status 451 makes it clear that they are NOT on our side:

As many will now be aware, a certain person whose handle makes an unfortunate monogram has entered the LambdaConf controversy.  Like many on the SJ side of this long-running conflict, he appears to be making his living as a culture war profiteer, only by selling books rather than consulting services to monetize the tribal conflict he has stoked.  Now, just like some on the other side, he is compiling a targeting database of ideological enemies.

Lately the use of mobbing and ostracism tactics by SJ advocates has been a matter of much concern for me and for this blog. However, we must make it clear that our interest is in opposing these tactics and the mentality of total cultural war they arise from, rather than siding with the opposing tribe.  They’d be just as vicious if they had equivalent influence, as VD’s McCarthy-esque enemies list illustrates.

This is ridiculous. Criticism is not merely irrelevant, it renders the critic irrelevant, when it is not accurate.  I don't fight the culture war because I am a "culture war profiteer" or because I expect anyone to agree with me, I fight it because the SJWs in science fiction and gaming were not content to leave me alone to write my books and columns, or design and develop my games, in peace.

These are ignorant words from someone who hasn't been seriously targeted for discrediting and disemployment yet. And when she is, I expect she'll come running and crying to those like me, who are willing to stand up and defend those who have been attacked for nothing more than their beliefs.

The SJW List isn't about belief. It is about action. Every single person on that list belongs there, and is there for a sound and solid and documented reason.

Now, if Status 451 can recommend more effective tactics, I am entirely willing to listen. What I am not willing to do is give any credence or respect to someone who considers themselves above the fray, or believes that leading by example, or being the better person, will lead to anything but submission to the SJW Narrative.

But she is wrong. We have no desire to denounce her or even think about her at all. We don't want moderates and fence-sitters and equivocators. Nor do we shoot at them. Unlike the SJWs, we ignore them. So let her run to her refuge. The only reason it will survive is because there are men and women who are willing to stand, take the heat, and take the battle to the other side.

Open borders is anti-libertarian

It turns out that even Murray Rothbard turned against open borders before he died, as evidenced by this essay published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies in the fateful year of 1994, the year NAFTA went live.

On the recent edition of Mises Weekends, Jeff Deist interviews Dr. Jörg Guido Hülsmann.  The topic is “Nation, State, and Borders.”  It is a worthwhile interview.  Fair warning: Hülsmann offers views similar to those of Hans Hoppe on these matters.  Quite importantly, he makes the distinction of nation vs. state.  It is a distinction worth internalizing for those who want to consider the application of libertarian theory in this world populated by humans.

From the interview, I learned of an essay written by Murray Rothbard in 1994, entitled Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State.  As is often the case, when I discover something of Rothbard’s I find myself torn between excitement and depression: excitement because I have somehow worked my way to a conclusion similar to his, and depression because all I have done is somehow worked my way to a conclusion similar to his.

It's a very interesting essay, all the more so due to it being almost entirely unread in libertarian circles. To his credit, Rothbard, despite his dedication to praxeology, admits that his reason has been demonstrated to be wrong on the basis of events:

Open-Borders, or the Camp of the Saints Problem

The "nation", of course, is not the same thing as the state, a difference that earlier libertarians and classical liberals such as Ludwig von Mises and Albert Jay Nock understood full well. Contemporary libertarians often assume, mistakenly, that individuals are bound to each other only by the nexus of market exchange. They forget that everyone is necessarily born into a family, a language, and a culture. Every person is born into one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions. He is generally born into a "country". He is always born into a specific historical context of time and place, meaning neighborhood and land area....

The question of open borders, or free immigration, has become an accelerating problem for classical liberals. This is first, because the welfare state increasingly subsidizes immigrants to enter and receive permanent assistance, and second, because cultural boundaries have become increasingly swamped. I began to rethink my views on immigration when, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it became clear that ethnic Russians had been encouraged to flood into Estonia and Latvia in order to destroy the cultures and languages of these peoples.

Previously it had been easy to dismiss as unrealistic Jean Raspail's anti-immigration novel The Camp of the Saints, in which virtually the entire population of India decides to move, in small boats, into France, and the French, infected by liberal ideology, cannot summon the will to prevent economic and cultural national destruction. As culture and welfare-state problems have intensified, it became impossible to dismiss Raspail's concerns any longer.

It is even less easy to dismiss in light of the 61-million strong invasion of the USA and the recent European migrant crisis. But it was always an observably stupid dismissal in the first place, a logically fallacious appeal to subjective incredulity.

It's very satisfying to not only be confident that I was correct to reject the open borders position - although I did so on purely logical grounds - but that one of the great libertarian thinkers eventually came around on the very important issue as well, although I am rather less certain that the same can be said of Mises. It increasingly appears that National Libertarianism, as I describe it, is the only viable libertarianism.

Book of the Week

I'm pleased to be able to announce that Martin van Creveld's Equality: The Impossible Quest is now available in audiobook.

Read by Jon Mollison, who also narrated A History of Strategy, the audiobook is 10 hours and 34 minutes of delving deep into the historical development of the concept of equality.

From the reviews: In his exploration of the development of the idea of equality from antiquity to the present day, Dr. van Creveld provides both an important analysis of one of the major touch stones of modern thought and rhetoric, as well as some hard lessons concerning the reality of attempts to impose utopia upon a world "red in tooth and claw." He leaves us with the warning:

"Equality, certainly the equality of the kind Plato, Nabis, Caligula, Rousseau, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tze Dong, Pol Pot, and not a few present-day proponents of political correctness and diversity have envisaged, is a dream. When we keep in mind the costs that dream demands, the contradictions to which it inevitably leads, and the horrendous amounts of blood that are often shed in its name, we would be wise to ensure that the quest for it does not become a nightmare."

Alt-Tech and Alt-Society

Eventually, the Alt-Right is going to transform into an entirely alternative society. The reason this will happen is due to the totalitarian nature of social justice. Notice that I used the term social justice, and not SJW.

Social justice inherently requires totalitarianism because it demands both total convergence and total compliance. This is why SJWs are just as likely to attack Stephen Fry as they are to attack Curtis Yarvin despite the vast ideological and identitational differences between the two men. The sin both men have committed are the same: a refusal to submit to the current social justice Narrative.

The reason societies devolve into civil war, split up, and eventually segregate is because it is no longer possible for one group to live in close quarters with another group. And it appears we are rapidly approaching the point where SJWs and non serviams can no longer occupy the same social media space because the latter are not permitted, as The Ralph Retort reports:

I had been trying to spend more time on the subreddit I setup lately, which is called SJWsAtWork. After Twitter suspended the account I had made for it, due to false spam reports, I kinda got out of the habit of posting stuff over there. Last night, I made a new account (@SJWAlert) and then went to post some new stories on SJWsAtWork itself. One of those was a link to Vox Day’s new site, SJW List. I had no idea this would be a controversial move, but it ended up getting my entire Reddit account suspended.

Honestly, Reddit is sort of a shithole, so I’m not too broken up about it. Still, I’m kinda pissed for the small community we have going on over there. I’m still going to continue posting with my new account, and I will get put back on the mod team by one of the other mods, but it’s just annoying. There was no sort of warning at all, just a straight permanent suspension.

The Alt-Right is still taking shape. But unless it develops the Alt-Tech and successfully creates its own alternative technological and infrastructural institutions, it will suffer the same fate as other minority groups that have been subjugated and forced to choose between submission and elimination.

Reddit isn't the only SJW-owned institution to act this way. Facebook just no-platformed A Voice For Men yesterday as well:

The A Voice for Men FaceBook page was unpublished by FaceBook today. No reason was given other than a generic inference that we were in violation of their community standards. I find no reason to believe that this means anything but the fact that we were in violation of their feminist based rules for speech.

This does not yet mean an Alt-Society is necessary. We can still drive the SJWs out, and indeed, their insistence on converging the organizations they infest significantly improves our chances of reclaiming control of society so long as stop supporting them and we keep them out of the new institutions and organizations. That is why they are so terrified of the SJW List and that is why they have been attacking it relentlessly almost since the moment of its creation.

Stop using Facebook. Stop using Reddit. Stop using Wikipedia. Only use platforms that play fair - say what you will about Google, but they are not in the business of no-platforming and silencing people - and start building and supporting and using alternatives to the fully converged platforms.

Takeover attempt at Eagle Forum

Phyllis Schlafly alerts the media:

"At 2:00 pm today, 6 directors of Eagle Forum met in an improper, unprecedented telephone meeting. I objected to the meeting and at 2:11pm, I was muted from the call. The meeting was invalid under the Bylaws but the attendees purported to pass several motions to wrest control of the organization from me. They are attempting to seize access to our bank accounts, to terminate employees, and to install members of their own Gang of 6 to control the bank accounts and all of Eagle Forum.

"The members of their group are: Eunie Smith of Alabama, Anne Cori of Missouri, Cathie Adams of Texas, Rosina Kovar of Colorado, Shirley Curry of Tennessee, and Carolyn McLarty of Oklahoma.

"This kind of conduct will not stand and I will fight for Eagle Forum and I ask all men and women of good will to join me in this fight."

Always be wary of those who are eager to help. And don't give them power simply because they are useful. Entryism takes places in various forms and in every organization, from the children's church to the Catholic hierarchy. SJWs are the worst entryists, but they are not the only ones.

It is interesting to observe that the Eagle Forum entryists are all female.

A voterless victory

Ted Cruz wins what is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory in Colorado:

It was last August when officials with the Republican Party in Colorado decided they would not let voters take part in the early nomination process.

The Denver Post reported Aug. 25: “The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state’s delegates to support the candidate that wins the caucus vote.”

The Cortez Journal reported: “Cruz had 17 bound delegates ahead of the Republican state convention. Another four delegates are unpledged but publicly expressed support for the candidate, who hopes to curb momentum seen by front-runner Donald Trump.

“Cruz declared victory in Colorado, pointing out that he won all 21 delegates from the state’s seven congressional assemblies. Another 13 delegates were awarded at the state convention on Saturday. An additional three delegates in Colorado’s 37-member national delegation are unpledged party leaders.”

Remember, this is the same Republican party who said we had to invade Iraq to bring democracy there and waxed ecstatic over purple fingers. Now they're running with the "it's a representative republic, not a democracy" line. And if you still believe that they care about anything but maintaining their own power, you're a fool.

Of course, given that he is ineligible for the presidency anyhow, Cruz probably doesn't care that he is now regarded as an illegitimate candidate for the nomination.

Challenge accepted

A professor of economics with a PhD from the ultimate monetarist school throws down a gauntlet, albeit in a considerably more civil manner than I've come to expect from my critics:

I've recently started a podcast called Future Strategist and I would love to interview you by Skype audio.  We could discuss political correctness and debate free trade.  While I do not support open borders for people, I do support free trade in goods and while I doubt I could get you to change your opinion I hopefully wouldn't underwhelm you as have other economists.

James Miller
Associate Professor of Economics, Smith College
Phd University of Chicago

I have accepted Dr. Miller's challenge to debate free trade. More details to come.

By the way, he's the author of Game Theory at Work, so he's obviously a smart guy. We're going to do one podcast discussion of political correctness first - he obviously won his 2003 tenure battle - and then we'll do the debate, Game Theorist vs Game Designer.

UPDATE: Dr. Miller and I have decided to simply do the free trade debate, and we'll do it at the Brainstorm on Wednesday. Invitations have already gone out to the Brainstorm members. Once all the members interested have taken their seats, I'll open the remaining ones up to everyone else on a first-come, first-serve basis.

This is the sort of thing that Brainstorm makes possible, so if you want to be a part of it, consider signing up for an annual membership.

Civil war in Europe

A Danish professor's warning:

Writing in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Professor Helmuth Nyborg, who is an expert in the connection between hormones and intelligence, discussed his previous research on how, “The effect of Europeans having few children and immigrants with low IQ” would lead to “Westerners (being) a minority in Europe, and that the average IQ drops so much that prosperity, democracy and civilization is threatened”.

Nyborg has previously asserted that low IQ migrants arriving from non-western countries leads to a decline in the average intelligence of western societies and therefore a drop in living standards and rising crime rates.

“In 2016, the current immigration policy gives us three alternatives – submission, repatriation or civil war. Unless Europe starts to lead a responsible family, immigration and integration policy, stated by the theory of evolution, I think civil war is most likely,” writes Nyborg.

Nyborg goes on to caution that simply referring to “right-wing extremism” will not make the chronic problems caused by overpopulation and failed multicultural policies disappear, warning that ethnic Europeans will be a minority in their own countries by 2050.

Ethnically homogeneous, civilized and democratic societies in Europe will be a thing of the past unless there is an “honorable repatriation” of migrants, warns Nyborg.

I concur. And I'll go much further. I think civil war in the USA is even more likely. The war in Europe isn't going to be much of a contest; Reconquista 2.0 will take 1/100th the time that its predecessor did. But the USA is considerably more divided, and considerably more muddled, than even the most heavily invaded European nation.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. As Martin van Creveld demonstrated in "Migration and War", mass immigration is almost invariably connected to war in one way or another.

Does Ben Shapiro belong on the SJW list?

The readers at Instapundit are divided on the subject:

Aigghh
Ben Shapiro? You doing Vox Day's dirty work now Glenn? What's next? Going after Nick Searcy for his kid? Join in with him saying Sarah Hoyt's not an American?

ChicagoRefugee
As the link on SJWList documents, Ben Shapiro has publicly stated that "racists" should be hunted down and hounded from their places of employment. Targeting people for unemployment because you disagree with their views? Sounds like a SJW to me.

Richard McEnroe
Ben walked through a crowd of screaming, cursing antisemites to confront them at CSUNLA. What have you done lately?

ChicagoRefugee
What I haven't done is publicly advocate for a SJW witch hunt against my philosophical and/or political opponents. Which is why he's on the list and I'm not.

Rad4Cap
"Why am I on the list?

You were added to the list because you publicly called for someone to be fired, disinvited, shunned, no-platformed, or otherwise punished or silenced for refusing to submit to the SJW Narrative. The particular incident is linked to your name in the list.

There are three criteria for inclusion on The Complete List of SJW:

• Self-identifying as a Social Justice Warrior
• Publicly advocating the disemployment or no-platforming of an individual for failing to submit to the SJW Narrative
• Being a journalist and publishing articles that support the SJW Narrative or an SJW attack campaign. "

Crawf
Ben is saying people should be anathema for their views. Does he extend that to socialists or just racists? Socialists murdered 100,000,000 or more during the 20th century -- shouldn't being a socialist be as obscene as being a racist?

I have to admit, I don't think of Ben Shapiro as an SJW, I think of him as a cuckservative. The two are entirely distinct specimens. However, given that Shapiro has publicly endorsed the most SJW of tactics for one of the five primary SJW ideals, I think his presence on the list is absolutely justified unless and until he publicly recants his support for hunting down racists, punishing them for their opinions, and excluding them from employment.

After all, the purpose of the SJW List is to inform prospective employers who will be a good little SJW and support the organization's purpose of seeking the highest abstract standard of social justice, and I think it is clear that Ben Shapiro would make an absolutely ideal employee for any converged organization.

That is intrinsically anti-American and anti-Constitutional activity. Regardless of what you think of racists, they have the same right to work and to enjoy free association that you do. One of the reasons SJWism is not merely totalitarian, but will inevitably lead to violence is that they stupidly insist on backing their opponents into a corner from which they must either fight or submit.

Since many, if not most people will never submit to the SJW Narrative or to SJW authority, they thereby seek the very violence they claim to decry and oppose. And if they were more capable of dialectic or had longer time preferences, we might even believe they do so on purpose.

A review of the gods debate

Robert Beisert reviews On the Existence of Gods:

In the past couple of weeks, an amazing written debate on the existence of gods (not God, but gods) was published to the Amazon store. Theist Vox Day (Theodore Beale, for those who care) and atheist Dominic Saltarelli exchanged three rounds of debate concerning the question of whether or not gods could exist. Though it does not establish an airtight case on either side, it serves as an interesting launching point into the debate itself.

He does regret that the arguments were not examined more deeply, but a debate is simply not the idea mechanism for that sort of thing. I would like to consider some of the ideas Dominic and I discussed in more detail at some point, but right now my hands are more than full.

Anyhow, it's good to see that people who are serious about the subject appear to have thought rather well of both the approach as well as the exchange of ideas.

And don't miss A Pius Geek's review of Iron Chamber of Memory, which he says has more in common with Victor Hugo than James Patterson.

SJWs are already crying wolf

As I mentioned in SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, SJWs are all offense, no defense. They can't take ANY heat, or even the simple, factual documentation of their public statements and actions:

I work in a datacenter and we have just received an abuse complaint (at 1:30 in the morning) from Tim Chevalier regarding the website SJWList.com - a site hosted by one of our clients - claiming it, "Incites harassment and violence against individuals."

He's asking us to "take appropriate action according to our acceptable use policy" meaning take it down, which, knowing our client, probably won't happen. But anyway… the abuse emails are submitted to every person on our team, so I can't just ignore it and have it go away, but I'd just like to let it be known that this type of backlash is occurring. They are trying to use GG's tactics against it.

This is who submitted the abuse report to us. He works at Google, apparently.

This sort of counterattack is precisely why I told everyone to keep things absolutely factual and very tightly and narrowly defined on the SJW list site. If you are stupid enough to justify or rationalize the inclusion of anyone whose presence on the list is even remotely questionable, it's going to be portrayed as incitement or harassment or rape or something equally false.

So, do not explain, justify, rationalize or add anything that involves the words "since" or "because". Stick to the cold, hard, and objectively verifiable facts that do not require any context or agreement with your opinion.

And clearly, someone needs to add Tim Chevalier to the list for his deceitful attempt to have the site taken down by filing a false report of inciting harassment and violence.

In the meantime, the front page is locked down and a number of admins have been appointed, so there won't be much trouble handling the griefers. You can still create new pages for individual SJWs and admins will add them to the list on the front page once they're created.

Not QUITE past it

While the team is doing great, my season has been a little more down than up. This year is the first time I've felt too old at times in practice and I've been running out of breath and energy much faster than I think I should. I suspect, however, that it is mostly the unusually cold weather we've been having combined with a lack of pre-season stretching and being overweight.

The most recent practice went very well at times. I scored three of my sides seven goals and actually managed to beat a good midfielder off the dribble without using either my speed or strength for the first time in about six years. He was so badly faked-out that he actually spun halfway around and fell down, which inspired no little mocking. I was running out of energy too fast, but I was optimistic that I'd play well in the upcoming game, especially when it became clear that instead of starting up front, I'd play the second half on the wing.

We were up 4-1 when I came in, so the captain told me to hang back and help out our right defender, who normally plays midfield. We were under heavy pressure on that side from two of the other team's three best players, but despite being overmatched, we managed to keep them from any dangerous chances, although it was repeatedly a close-run thing. Generally, they'd tika-taka past me as if I wasn't even there, then the defender would slow them down enough for me to get back and help close out the attacker before he could shoot, and they'd either lose the ball to us, put it out for a goal kick, or be forced to pass it back to the middle or the far side. Somehow, we managed to avoid giving up a single corner; I'm not entirely sure how considering how under pressure we felt.

I managed to beat the defender on the right once, but then sent over a horrendous cross that hooked; fortunately it went to our center-mid and we somehow ended up with a corner out of it. The center-mid then promptly headed in the corner, which we thought would suffice to finish off the game. 5-1.

The problem was that our staunch and speedy right defender got hurt on a slide tackle and his substitute, though game, is the only player on the team older than I am. He's even less technical than I am, so we were pretty seriously overmatched, and the attacker who'd been pressuring us all game blew right by him about 10 seconds after he came in and scored. I couldn't help, because I'd been forward for our corner kick at the time. 5-2.

That encouraged them to attack hard on the left side, and I got completely beaten, didn't get back in time, and the attacker sent over a nice ground cross that was promptly buried in the net. That made it 5-3 and they were starting to think they might be able to make a game of it. They also knew that our right side was our weakest link. So, at that point, I quit even trying to go forward and didn't try to cover their wing much either, I just doubled their attacker every time I didn't have to break off him to attack the guy with the ball.

That frustrated some of my teammates, who didn't realize that our defender simply couldn't stop the guy by himself and that it was more important to shut the guy down than worry about their defender or wing advancing the ball, but the double-teaming sufficed to keep them out of the net for the rest of the game. Fortunately, the captain understood what I was doing, and confirmed afterwards that it had been the right tactic to take in that particular situation.

It wasn't a very good game for me, but the team played pretty well as a whole. I've got to lose more weight - I've already dropped seven pounds, but I think I'm going to see if I can lose another 13 to get completely lean and see if that improves my speed and overall performance. I'm also back on the stretching machine and have added 10 degrees to my range, but I'd like to add another 20.

Aging is hard for every athlete, but despite the challenges, I feel very fortunate after running into one of my teammates the other day and being told that he'd just learned, after an MRI, that he was done for good. He was a really good player, a wing with an ability to sneak forward undetected and a powerful cannon of a shot. He'd been out all season already, but I really hated to hear that. I don't know how much playing time I have left to me, but I'll do what I can to stay on the field as long as I still have something to contribute.

SJW attack on Jim Butcher

This is one of the many, many reasons that an alternative to SJW-run Wikipedia is badly needed. To the admins' credit, at least it has been tagged as "persistent vandalism".

It seems to have less to do with his inclusion on the Rabid Puppies list than it does with some SJW activist with a particular axe to grind at a literary celebrity's expense, but it tends to demonstrate that anyone, no matter how publicly apolitical, is subject to SJW attack.

Personal life

Butcher was born in Independence, Missouri, in 1971.[1] He is the youngest of three children, having two older sisters. He lives in Independence, MO, and has one son.

[Information about Butcher's personal life redacted.]

Following Spencer's lead, the moderators of the /r/dresdenfiles sub-Reddit proceeded to threaten any posters making negative comments regarding Butcher with a ban and deletion of their content.[3]

Many Reddit users protested, alleging that the moderators' actions constituted censorship, a practice that is generally regarded as anathema by artists, authors, and others in the creative fields.

In response, the /r/dresdenfiles moderators proceeded to codify their censorship by requiring users meet certain requirements prior to being able to post comments and also that new users or users with 'unpopular' points of view must have their comments approved by a moderator before publishing.[4]

On or around April 9, 2016, several of Butcher's fans posted an open letter requesting that Butcher comment on the North Carolina transgender law. Other fans requested that Butcher adopt a more public stance, similar to the actions of Bruce Springsteen.

There have been many concerns by Butcher's fans that Butcher's books were not friendly to LGBT issues.[5][6][7]

The /r/dresdenfiles moderators proceeded to delete and censor all comments regarding Butcher's views on LGBT issues, under the posture that those comments were "spam" or "shitposts." [8]

The /r/dresdenfiles moderators proceeded to post in other sub-reddits regarding LGBT issues and political issues in order to discredit the legitimate concerns of Butcher's LGBT-friendly fans. [9][10]

This is the great challenge of crowd-sourcing, as we've already seen on The Complete List of SJW. The problem is less the purely destructive vandals, who are easily anticipated and blocked, than those who see an opportunity to hijack the platform and try to use it for their own particular interests.

It would be good if we were also able to identify people like the vandal responsible for adding this to the page about Butcher.

As a general rule, if it is even necessary for you to explain your position, let alone rationalize or justify it, it does not belong on a wiki. The moment you find yourself telling someone "well, this is okay because", the moment you even use the word "because", just stop and give it up. If it's not so absolutely obvious that there is no need to explain it, then it does not belong.

If you're going to contribute to The Complete List of SJW, an excellent place to find SJWs is to look for quotes in articles by SJW journalists. For example, this pair of articles by SJW journalist Tess Townsend, who is running interference for the LambdaConf no-platform campaign, exposes several SJWs. They will readily hang themselves by their own words through their endorsements of no-platforming people on SJW grounds.

Also, Cynic in Chief: a) email me and b) lock it down now. We need admins.

That was quick

You know The Complete List of SJW is going to be important, because the SJWs are already starting to criticize and vandalize it. Time to lock it down, Cynic in Chief. Email me for some admins.

My suggestion is to protect the main page so only admins can edit it, protect the existing pages that have decent proof of SJW already, and have the admins add the new pages to the main page as they come in.

Also, block the vandal's account. Be a hard target.

SJWs fear exposure

It's been interesting to see the reaction of SJWs on Twitter to The Complete List of SJW. The mere announcement of its existence has both SJWs and moderates alarmed:

time cube denier @yung_kacho
oh vox. never stop being batshit insane

Ana @ #SweetsJam @SpaceDoctorPhD
Excuse me, why am I not on your blacklist? Can't even bully people properly, what a mess.

/wooo/'sDolphZiggler @DZwooo
"Have you now, or ever been, a Social Justice Warrior?"

Mariconcito @armlessphelan
You're an idiot. You don't fight censorship and blacklists with censorship and blacklists.

Big Dog Barack @BarackSaysWooo
I HAVE IN MY HANDS A LIST OF 50 STATE REPRESENTATIVES WHO HAVE TIES TO THE SJW PARTY

 /M/ischief Reborn @Mischief_Arises
Can you build a waiting list for the gas chamber and put yourself on it? Thanks

Anonymous Damn Crow @CrowReturns1
What is this? A list of people you plan to harass? Don't even think about it.

Anonymous Damn Crow @CrowReturns1
Looks like a list of people targeted for harassment

Anonymous Damn Crow Retweeted Supreme Dark Lord
This is a list of people targeted for harassment. Really sucks. #Anonymous

deepseadiva @thedeepseadiva
LMAOO this is the funniest thing I've ever seen

Nightwing @Daltimus_Prime
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT. Whatever happened to "being the bigger person" and "not stooping to their level?"

Notice the wide variety of conventional responses. We have the Lolipop response, the "I'm telling Dad" response, the "it's not me, it's you" response, the "aren't you above this?" response, and the McCarthy response.

Translation: the idea that their actions will be tracked and they will be identified and potentially held responsible scares them.

This is why it is absolutely vital to be accurate and conservative in identifying SJWs. They are going to try to transform what is quite clearly a list of harassers into a false claim of being harassed. Don't give them any ammo; only definite and self-defined SJWs who can be confirmed to have attempted to disemploy or no-platform people in defense of social justice ideals should be included. And take the time to provide the archived evidence of their SJW activity or self-designation. The stricter we are, the more effective the list will be over time.

As for the idea of not stooping to their level, I am the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil. We delve deeper than they even imagine.

Cameron must go

Is it possible David Cameron is a secret Leave? Because short of growing a Hitler stache and dressing in a EU fascist uniform, complete with a blue-and-yellow armband, it's hard to imagine how David Cameron could more aggressively drive the British people towards #Brexit:

Thousands march on No10 calling for Cameron to quit over tax revelations: Under-fire PM admits 'I should have handled it better' and agrees to publish his returns amid Panama Papers scandal

Protesters called for Mr Cameron to resign after he admitted profiting from more than £30k in an offshore tax haven. Revelations about Mr Cameron's financial affairs followed a leak of 11 million documents held by Mossack Fonseca. PM's ratings now lower than Jeremy Corbyn with 56% saying they did not think he had been 'open and transparent'. Speaking at the Tory Spring Conference, Mr Cameron admitted he botched the handling of the row over his finances.

He's also botched the handling of the most important political decision of his time, which is the recovery of British sovereignty.

Wonderful timing from Wikileaks.

I don't know if the Prime Minister will resign, but he most certainly should follow the lead of Iceland's prime minister and do so. He's a horrendous hypocrite, he's openly taken sides against the nation he is supposed to govern, and he has zero credibility.

This looks like a Labor protest, but if the Conservatives join them, as they should, Cameron will have no choice but to step down in disgrace. It's time for Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage to step up and demand his resignation.

Diversity is educational

A freshman at the University of Texas receives a Very Important Lesson in diversity:

University of Texas freshman Haruka Weiser wrapped up a class at the drama building about 9:30 p.m. She called a friend to say she was on her way, according to an Austin police affidavit.

She never made it.

The remains of Weiser, a first-year theater and dance major, were found about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in a creek near the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center, on the university campus in Austin, not far from the school's football stadium, officials said. An autopsy noted trauma to the body and the death was termed a homicide.

Investigators "don't have a clue what the motive" was for the homicide, Acevedo said....

Not a clue. No idea at all. Who could possibly figure out what might have led to the first murder on the UT campus since 1966? I guess we'll never know.

Say what you will about diversity on campus, but you cannot deny that it is educational.

An SJW list

It occurs to me that it will be helpful to begin compiling a list of confirmed SJWs, both for those who work for SJW-converged organizations and want to add to their collection as well as for those who wish to keep their organizations free of the creatures.

In either case, it will be useful to know if an individual is an advocate of an ideological movement that promotes the politicization of the workplace, insists that all individuals and organizations make social justice their primary objective, and seeks to disemploy or no-platform everyone who rejects their principles or refuses to submit to their ever-shifting Narrative.

Here is a useful start:

The organizers of LambdaConf, now in its third year, describe it as “one of the largest, most diverse gatherings of functional programmers in the world”. This year, it selected Curtis Yarvin as a speaker—a man known as a founder and advocate of an ideological movement that promotes racist bigotry, and as an apologist for slavery.

Yarvin's selection as a speaker says to marginalized people that their humanity is considered merely another matter for debate. LambdaConf cannot live up to its goal of being a “friendly community of like-minded souls” when it does not protect current and potential members of that community who are vulnerable to those who would deny their humanity.

We believe that functional programming should warmly welcome those who have been systemically excluded from participating in programming communities. We strongly object to LambdaConf's actions, which are a step backwards as we work together to share functional programming with a wide audience.

April 8th, 2016


    Joseph Abrahamson (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Andy Adams-Moran
    Carlo Angiuli (Carnegie Mellon University)
    Mario Aquino (co-organizer of Strange Loop, The Climate Corporation)
    Morgan Astra
    Lennart Augustsson
    Timothy Baldridge (developer at Cognitect)
    Gershom Bazerman (co-organizer Compose Conference, LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Josh Bohde
    James Brechtel
    Travis Brown (Typelevel)
    Kevin Burke
    Harold Carr (LambdaConf 2014, 2015 speaker)
    Chris C Cerami
    Manuel Chakravarty (UNSW Australia; Haskell language, libraries & tools contributor)
    Tim Chevalier
    Kat Chuang (co-organizer Compose Conference)
    Athan Clark
    Alex Clemmer (Microsoft, !!Con co-founder)
    Declan Conlon
    Laurence E. Day (Haskell developer, Standard Chartered Bank)
    Reid Draper (Helium)
    Richard Eisenberg (U. of Pennsylvania, GHC implementor, LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Mark Farrell (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Richard Feldman (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Jonathan Fischoff
    Adam Foltzer (Galois; Haskell.org Committee; LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Kenneth Foner (U. of Pennsylvania, co-organizer Hac Phi)
    Phil Freeman (PureScript; speaker, LambdaConf 2014, 2015)
    Harry Garrood
    Gabriel Gonzalez
    Austin Haas
    Coda Hale
    Elana Hashman
    Pat Hickey (Helium)
    Jenn Hillner (Cognitect)
    Libby Horacek (Position Development)
    John D. Hume
    Juan Pedro Villa Isaza (Stack Builders)
    Dan Peebles
    Ranjit Jhala (University of California, San Diego; LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Joseph Kiniry (Research Lead, Galois; CEO and Chief Scientist, Free & Fair, LambdaConf 2015 contributor)
    Edward Kmett (Haskell developer, HacBoston organizer)
    Geoffery S. Knauth (Lifelong Friend of GNU)
    Lindsey Kuper (Intel Labs; !!Con co-founder; ICFP Steering Committee member)
    Justin Leitgeb (CTO & Co-Founder, Stack Builders)
    Aaron Levin (SoundCloud)
    Simon Marlow (co-author of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler)
    Vincent Marquez (LambdaConf 2015/2016 speaker)
    Chris Martens (UC Santa Cruz)
    Conor McBride (Mathematically Structured Programming group, University of Strathclyde)
    Andi McClure (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Bartosz Milewski (keynote speaker: LambdaCon 2015, LambdaDays 2016)
    Alex Miller (Organizer of Strange Loop, Clojure team at Cognitect)
    Richard Minerich (co-organizer Compose Conference, NYC F# User Group)
    Adriaan Moors (Scala team lead at Lightbend)
    Jared Morrow (Helium)
    David Nolen (Cognitect)
    Liam O’Connor (UNSW Australia)
    Erik Osheim (Typelevel)
    Daniel Patterson (member/owner, Position Development)
    Greg Pfeil (SlamData)
    Isaac Potoczny-Jones (Author of Haskell Cabal, Former Haskell Prime Chair)
    Prabhakar Ragde (University of Waterloo)
    Tavis Rudd (Unbounce; Polyglot Software Meetup & Conference)
    Miles Sabin (Underscore Consulting and Typelevel)
    Tom Santero (Helium; MoonConf co-organizer)
    Kyle Schmidt
    Austin Seipp (Glasgow Haskell Compiler maintainer, ATX Haskell founder)
    Amar Shah (LambdaConf 2016 speaker - cancelled)
    Chung-chieh Shan (Indiana University; Haskell Symposium steering committee chair)
    Ghadi Shayban
    Satnam Singh
    Aditya Siram (LambdaConf 2016 speaker)
    Leon P Smith
    Jon Sterling (SlamData; PhD student, Carnegie Mellon University; LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
    Bodil Stokke (LambdaConf 2016 keynote speaker - cancelled)
    Asumu Takikawa (Racket developer)
    Patrick Thomson (Helium)
    Seth Tisue (Scala team at Lightbend)
    José Manuel Calderón Trilla (Galois, Inc.)
    Stew O’Connor (Typelevel, speaker: Lambdaconf 2015)
    David Van Horn (University of Maryland)
    Malcolm Wallace (Haskell developer at Standard Chartered Bank)
    John Wiegley
    Brent Yorgey (Hendrix College; former Haskell core library & Haskell.org committees)

Additional Signatories:

    Colin Barrett, 4/9/2016
    Rob Rix (GitHub, Inc.), 04/09/16
    Morgan Chen, 4/9/2016

To this list we can add obvious SJWs such as Anita Sarkeesian, John Flynt aka Brianna Wu (SpaceKat), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Amber Scott (Beamdog), Dee Pennyway (Beamdog).

If you know others, add them in the comments and eventually we'll create a PDF that can be distributed with the SJW Attack Survival Guide.

Rampaging Puppies

It has been brought to my attention, by several critics, that we of the Rabid Puppies have unfairly focused our attention on the Hugo Awards, and that it is only due to the unique nature of the Hugo Awards rules that our presence is able to make itself felt.

It has been suggested, for example, that were we to turn our attention to other awards in the field, with other, more democratic systems, that our dearth of numbers would become apparent to all and sundry.

Which is why, sweet, slavering Puppies, I would direct your attention to the venerable Locus Awards, that bastion of science fiction history, where Tor Books has won the Best Publisher award for 27 straight years, and which we are informed is more representative of the science fiction mainstream than the elitist Hugo and Nebula Awards. For those of you who were unable to afford the entry fee or otherwise missed registering for MidAmericaCon II, this is your opportunity to respond to the Call of the Dark and run with the Puppies.

You can enter your ballot here; though keep in mind that the voting ends in one week, on April 15th. My recommendations are as follows, although in many cases you will have to write them in, since Locus mysteriously tends to leave books published by Baen Books and Castalia House off its list of recommendations.

An unfortunate oversight, no doubt.

UPDATE: SJW author Matthew Woodring Stover doesn't take the idea of expanded inclusivity well.

Matthew Woodring Stover April 08, 2016 12:40 PM  
You better hope we never meet in person, Beale. I will knock out all your nazi teeth. Same warning goes for Wright and Correia."

It's rather cute that he thinks he would be permitted an audience with the Supreme Dark Lord. Now, where were we? Ah, yes.


Best SF Novel

1    Golden Son, Pierce Brown (Del Rey)
2    Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
3    Somewhither, John C. Wright (Castalia House)
4    Agent of the Imperium, Marc Miller, (Far Future)
5    A Borrowed Man, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

Read more »

Scientistry and sciensophy

Keep this sordid history of scientific consensus in mind every time you hear the AGW/CC charlatans selling their global government scam on that basis:

In 1980, after long consultation with some of America’s most senior nutrition scientists, the US government issued its first Dietary Guidelines. The guidelines shaped the diets of hundreds of millions of people. Doctors base their advice on them, food companies develop products to comply with them. Their influence extends beyond the US. In 1983, the UK government issued advice that closely followed the American example.

The most prominent recommendation of both governments was to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol (this was the first time that the public had been advised to eat less of something, rather than enough of everything). Consumers dutifully obeyed. We replaced steak and sausages with pasta and rice, butter with margarine and vegetable oils, eggs with muesli, and milk with low-fat milk or orange juice. But instead of becoming healthier, we grew fatter and sicker.

Look at a graph of postwar obesity rates and it becomes clear that something changed after 1980. In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an aeroplane. Just 12% of Americans were obese in 1950, 15% in 1980, 35% by 2000. In the UK, the line is flat for decades until the mid-1980s, at which point it also turns towards the sky. Only 6% of Britons were obese in 1980. In the next 20 years that figure more than trebled. Today, two thirds of Britons are either obese or overweight, making this the fattest country in the EU. Type 2 diabetes, closely related to obesity, has risen in tandem in both countries.

At best, we can conclude that the official guidelines did not achieve their objective; at worst, they led to a decades-long health catastrophe. Naturally, then, a search for culprits has ensued. Scientists are conventionally apolitical figures, but these days, nutrition researchers write editorials and books that resemble liberal activist tracts, fizzing with righteous denunciations of “big sugar” and fast food. Nobody could have predicted, it is said, how the food manufacturers would respond to the injunction against fat – selling us low-fat yoghurts bulked up with sugar, and cakes infused with liver-corroding transfats.

Nutrition scientists are angry with the press for distorting their findings, politicians for failing to heed them, and the rest of us for overeating and under-exercising. In short, everyone – business, media, politicians, consumers – is to blame. Everyone, that is, except scientists....

In a 2015 paper titled Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?, a team of scholars at the National Bureau of Economic Research sought an empirical basis for a remark made by the physicist Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

The researchers identified more than 12,000 “elite” scientists from different fields. The criteria for elite status included funding, number of publications, and whether they were members of the National Academies of Science or the Institute of Medicine. Searching obituaries, the team found 452 who had died before retirement. They then looked to see what happened to the fields from which these celebrated scientists had unexpectedly departed, by analysing publishing patterns.

What they found confirmed the truth of Planck’s maxim. Junior researchers who had worked closely with the elite scientists, authoring papers with them, published less. At the same time, there was a marked increase in papers by newcomers to the field, who were less likely to cite the work of the deceased eminence. The articles by these newcomers were substantive and influential, attracting a high number of citations. They moved the whole field along.

A scientist is part of what the Polish philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck called a “thought collective”: a group of people exchanging ideas in a mutually comprehensible idiom. The group, suggested Fleck, inevitably develops a mind of its own, as the individuals in it converge on a way of communicating, thinking and feeling.

This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. In the long run, however, we’re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn’t been following a diet based on poor advice.

It is always necessary - it is absolutely vital - to carefully distinguish between scientody, or the scientific method, and scientistry, which is the scientific profession. The evils described in this article are not indicative of any problems with scientody, they are the consequence of the inevitable and intrinsic flaws with scientistry.

To simply call everything "science" is to be misleading, often, but not always, in innocence. Science has no authority, and increasingly, it is an intentional and deceitful bait-and-switch, in which the overly credulous are led to believe that because an individual with certain credentials is asserting something, that statement is supported by documentary evidence gathered through the scientific method of hypothesis, experiment, and successful replication.

In most - not many, but most - cases, that is simply not the case. Even if you don't use these neologisms to describe the three aspects of science, you must learn to distinguish between them or you will repeatedly fall for this intentional bait-and-switch. In order of reliability, the three aspects of science are:

• Scientody: the process
• Scientage: the knowledge base
• Scientistry: the profession

We might also coin a new term, sciensophy, as practiced by sciensophists, which is most definitely not an aspect of science, to describe the pseudoscience of "the social sciences", as they do not involve any scientody and their additions to scientage have proven to be generally unreliable. Economics, nutrition, and medicine all tend to fall into this category.

Will they ever learn?

It's not that I expect everyone to have read SJWs Always Lie. But it amazes me that people are still failing to notice that backing down and attempting to virtue-signal in the face of manufactured SJW outrage only leads to additional attacks:

The furore began when Atonement author McEwan gave a speech to the Royal Institution last week about the representation of the self. He had said: ‘The self, like a consumer desirable, may be plucked from the shelves of a personal identity supermarket, a ready-to-wear little black number.

‘For example, some men in full possession of a penis are now identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges, and the right to change in women’s dressing rooms.’

The Man Booker Prize winner then reportedly clarified his comments to a member of the audience, saying: ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.’

His remarks prompted criticism from the transgender lobby and he was accused of being ‘backward-looking’ by cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard.

Whilst appearing to back down on his views, McEwan’s statement indicates he was surprised by the reaction to his comments. He wrote: ‘In response to a question, I proposed that the possession of a penis or, more fundamentally, the inheritance of the XY chromosome, is inalienably connected to maleness. As a statement, this seems to me biologically unexceptional.’

He went on to condemn discrimination against the transgender community and to say that changing or redefining gender is an ‘extension of freedom’.

‘That the transgender community should want or need to abandon their birth gender or radically redefine it is their right, which should be respected and celebrated,’ he wrote. ‘It’s an extension of freedom and the possibilities of selfhood. Everyone should deplore the discrimination that transgender communities have suffered around the world.’

LGBT charity Stonewall, which last week described McEwan’s views as ‘uninformed’, said yesterday: ‘Although it’s good to see that he has acknowledged the hurt that has been done to the trans community, his comments at the lecture and statement do nothing to help their situation and in fact further isolate trans people and entrench transphobic attitudes.’

But the message is getting out there nevertheless, and so strongly that the SJWs are afraid of it. I did an interview recently that was intended for the Huffington Post, but when the editors there saw it, they spiked it. They are terrified of exposing their left-liberal readers to alt-right ideas, because even when presented with all the usual spin and virtue-signaling, those ideas are proving more convincing, attractive, and in harmony with reality than their dogma.

Thus proving the Alt-Right right

Actual headline and subtitle at the increasingly mistitled Reason:

The Alt-Right Is Wrong: Trump Is an Enemy of Western Civilization, Not Its Champion

If your candidate opposes free trade and free speech, he's not a defender of classical liberalism.

This is almost astonishingly ignorant. It amazes me to have to point out that classical liberalism is not Western Civilization, which predates classical liberalism by literal centuries.

Moreover, it is free trade that poses a deadly danger to Western Civilization, as the combination of cheap travel and communications technology, relaxed border controls, and the free movement of people that is necessary for the operation of free trade are putting Western Civilization in the greatest peril it has known since the Turks were knocking at the gates of Vienna.

It's not just a stupid headline writer either, as Robby Soave doubles down in the body of the article itself:

No presidential candidate who fails to grasp why unrestricted trade across national borders is the hallmark of a civilized society is fit to lead one, and no leader who seeks the power to shut down newspapers who criticize him can be trusted to defend classical liberalism from its enemies.

Apparently Robby is not only ignorant of European history, but of American history as well; no American president has ever favored unrestricted trade across national borders, not even Bill Clinton or George Bush.

And, again, classical liberalism is not Western Civilization. The temporal and conceptual subset should never be confused with the set.

The campaign takes its toll

A few people have asked me what is wrong with Trump lately, given his recent media missteps and his bigger-than-expected loss in Wisconsin. I think the answer is very simple. He's tired. This nomination campaign is a marathon, not a sprint, and it is an exhausting process. In every human endeavor, we see the pattern of ebb and flow, the fractal Elliott Wave pattern of 1-3-5 with the 2-4, the back-and-forth swing of the momentum pendulum.

Trump has had two big surges, one that began in New Hampshire and carried through Super Tuesday, the other that carried him through big victories in Florida and Arizona. The question is if he can summon up the energy required for the final push to victory.

The last two weeks have been what happens when a candidate who depends upon his high energy to carry his campaign through finds himself flagging. And, as usual, all the short-term linear thinkers who look only at the present assume that it's all over and his trajectory is downward.

I suspect that being back home in New York will energize Trump and he'll roar back into aggressive action after he is remotivated by a landslide win over Cruz there. Whether that will be enough to carry him through California, I don't know, but remember, what he absolutely needs to win before the convention are: a big win in proportional New York, solid wins in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a minor state win, and then a clinching victory in California.

That's not certain, but it is far from being impossible, or even unlikely. April 26th looks to be an interesting day, as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware will vote and the finalists for the Hugo Awards will also be announced.

UPDATE: Nate adds an important observation:

I think this is a fair assessment. but you're also ignoring Trump's weak spot, which is also one of his strengths. Trump doesn't handling failure well. Oh, he's fine losing one or two while winning 10. But he's had a bad couple weeks and it is clearly showing. You can see it in his temperament. Looking back at the debates where Cruz and Rubio were ganging up on him he was clearly off-his game in the post debate interviews.

When he's winning he appears to have a better grasp on what attacks to address and what attacks to ignore. When he isn't winning he appears to lose that ability and lash out at everything and everyone that says anything negative about him.

This is an excellent point, and it is one reason why I've been saying New York is so important even though it's not winner-takes-all. Trump is a high-energy front-runner who feeds on momentum. He's a steamroller, he's not a counterpuncher who is energized by finding himself on the ropes, a die-hard who will fight until the bitter end, or a comeback kid who needs to be knocked down once or twice before he even starts to get serious.

Making SF awards great again

Lela Buis comments on the new Dragon Awards:

I see today that DragonCon has announced they will give out awards in 2016. This is kind of a biggie. DragonCon is a huge convention, with an annual on-site attendance of about 70,000 people. The press release says the awards will be based on nominations and votes from all fans, not just attendees or members, through an open system. They’re apparently going to run this off their Website where voters can register to vote.

Contrast this attendance figure with WorldCon that gives out the Hugo Awards. Wikipedia lists 4,644 attendees and 10,350 who bought memberships to vote the 2015 Hugo Awards, which was a record for numbers. With DragonCon moving into the awards game, I’m thinking the Hugo’s are officially undermined. The Puppy scandal has not only disrupted the voting system, but it seems to have led to an inspection of the Hugo process where works are winnowed through a narrow review and recommendation system and onto the ballot.

While most people aren’t going to swallow the Puppies’ complaints of a vast conspiracy whole, their grievances do seem to have resulted in concerns about the fairness of the process. WorldCon has scrambled to provide additional controls, but it could be that their credibility is already shot.

Yes, indeed, I think the Hugo Awards might have just taken a few hits over the last decade or two. In any event, I'm sure the science fiction fandom community is every bit as delighted about people taking their advice and setting up a new and alternative award as they were about people taking John Scalzi's advice to nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards.

I am registered to vote in the Dragon Awards and I would encourage you to do so as well. I'll post my recommendations here the week after the Hugo shortlist is announced, in the event that any of you might happen to be curious about them.

The funniest thing is the way a self-appointed Hugo Defender immediately popped up to white-knight for Worldcon in the comments at Lela's site. That, more than anything, tells you how fandom actually feels about the new competition.

You wrote: “…it seems to have led to an inspection of the Hugo process where works are winnowed through a narrow review and recommendation system and onto the ballot.”

What does that mean? The Hugo Awards are nominated by the thousands of members of the World Science Fiction Society. How is that a “narrow review and recommendation system?”

Whatever does it mean, Mr. Standlee asks, even as the rules are changed to protect the perceived interests of the Tor Books cabal.