Christianity is not an option

Strange, that Rod Dreher seems to think so, but he doesn't grasp that it is only the foundation built upon the rock that will stand:

I heard from a friend this morning who told me a story about a family we both know. A solid white working-class family. In the youngest generation, they’ve started falling apart in a way that will be hard to fix. It’s the usual Charles Murray Coming Apart thing: the loss of being bound by a sense of religious or traditional moral obligation, followed by a loss of a sense of the importance of marriage, especially for childbearing, and on down the line. Maybe they’ll pull out of this spiral, but odds are against them. I would bet money that some of them are thinking of the trouble they’re in as something that just happened to them. It’s like people who live in a nice house, but who wake up one day to discover that the yard has turned into a jungle of weeds, and the roof is leaking, and termites have eaten out the walls … and they wonder who came overnight and destroyed their nice house....

No social species can survive if its men (and women) are too drugged out and undisciplined to hold a job. No social species can survive if its people cannot make the adaptive imperatives that Wade Davis says all cultures must make. My dad was a civil servant and my mother was a school bus driver. My folks never had much money, and were, as I see now, living much closer to the edge than they let us know as kids. They didn’t want to burden us with anxiety. I also understand why my father instinctively imprinted the same taboos on his children. His basic code was:

• Work hard, and above all things esteem those who do
• Respect yourself and those around you, especially your elders
• That means dress up for church, say “yes ma’am” and “yes sir,” “please” and “thank you,” and keep a clean yard
• Be honest and fair
• Do not lie, and that means in all things be true to your word
• Be generous to others, but never expect anybody to give you anything
• Kids need mamas and daddies, but a mama and/or a daddy who puts their own interests above doing right by their kids are of no account
• Do not keep company with people who don’t believe these things and live by them, because they will only bring you down

You will note that “God” is not in this list. He believed in God, but his God was pretty much the transcendent guarantor of this code, and nothing more.

The problem is that there are too many who want to cut down the tree but keep living in the tree house. They don't understand that it simply isn't going to float there in the air by itself, but without the tree, it will fall to the ground, be smashed to bits, and badly harm everyone inside it. This is not a mystery. The descent of the modernists is the descent into post-Christianity and societal self-destruction. And the fact that the modernists are opposed to their natural successors, the post-modernists, does not make them on our side.

The suicide of the West

That's the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, which I expect will be primarily interesting for how Jonah tries to dance around the obvious, based on this extensive interview about it with Russell Moore. I'll be posting my review of it after I finish reading it.

It tends to strike me as an attempt to defend the West while simultaneously de-Christianizing it. The core thesis strikes me as being fundamentally wrong, because "the fundamental form of human corruption" is most certainly not "I don't like your artificial constraints on my human desires and my desire for my group to be victorious."

---

Russ Roberts: It's a fascinating book. It's a disturbing book. It's a somewhat depressing book, at times; and maybe we'll look for some bright spots on the horizon and in our conversation. But I want to start with a paragraph from near the beginning of the book. You say the following

My argument begins with some assertions. Capitalism is unnatural. Democracy is unnatural. Human rights are unnatural. The world we live in today is unnatural, and we stumbled into it more or less by accident. The natural state of mankind is grinding poverty punctuated by horrific violence, terminating with an early death. It was like this for a very, very long time.

Elaborate on that. And talk about what you mean by the Miracle, which is the unnaturalness that we're in the middle of.

Jonah Goldberg: Right. So, what I mean--I'll just start with what I mean by 'unnatural.' If you took a jar of ants and you dumped them on a planet very much like ours, with our atmosphere, ants would do what ants do. And they would build little colonies and they would dig their little ant tunnels. If you took a pack of dogs and you put them in the wild, they would very quickly become a natural pack like they would. If you took human beings, absent all of the stuff that they learned from culture and education today and put them in the wild, they would not all of a sudden start building houses and schools and have startups. They would take to the trees, and have spears, and it would take a long time to discover spears. And they would behave the way that we are wired to behave. One of the core beliefs I have about a definition of--at the heart of conservatism--is this idea that human nature has no history.

And so, when I say that 'capitalism is unnatural': if it were natural, if it were the way human beings, like ants or dogs or any other creature naturally behaves in its natural environment, we would have developed capitalism a little earlier in the evolutionary history of man. We would have developed democracy a little earlier in the evolutionary history of man. In the 250,000 years, give or take, since we split off from the Neanderthals, the amount of time where we had any conception of natural rights--particularly for strangers, right? People within the tribe, that's different. But for strangers, the idea that someone we just met has any dignity or any claim on justice--that is an astoundingly new idea in human history. And, this whole world that we live in--so, a big inspiration for this book is this idea you talk a lot about on EconTalk, which is: Hayek's distinction between the microcosm or the microcosmos, and the macrocosm. And, I take Hayek--I think Hayek is absolutely correct, where he says that we evolved to live in small bands of people--troops, tribes, whatever label you want to call them. And that's how our brains are structured. And our brains haven't changed very much in the last 10-, 11,000 years since the agricultural revolution. And so, this entire extended order of liberty and contracts and the monopoly on violence of the state--all of these things are really new. They don't come to us naturally. We have to be taught them. We have to be civilized--as a verb--into believing in these things.

And this Economic Miracle--and so the Miracle is--and I was heavily influenced by Deirdre McCloskey; and I think she gets a lot right. We can talk about one of the things she might get wrong, later. But, you know, for, what is it, 7500 generations? For 200-, 300,000 years, the average human being everywhere in the world lived on average on about $3 a day. I think it's Todd Buchholz who says that man lived no better for most of man's existence he lived no better on two legs than he had on four. And, it is only when you get this radical change in ideas that comes from the bottom up--what I call the Lockean Revolution, but I don't think Locke gets credit for it. He just simply sort of represents it. For the first in all of human history basically in one place, this little corner of Europe, human prosperity, human wealth starts to explode. And that explosion radiates out around the world and is still doing so today. And that is a miracle. And the reason I call it a Miracle is not because I think God delivered it--the first sentence of the book is, "There is no God in this book."

Russ Roberts: A promise you don't quite keep; but, I know what you meant.

Jonah Goldberg: We can talk about it.

Russ Roberts: That's all right.

Jonah Goldberg: But, what I'm saying is, it's not providential. Right? God didn't suddenly decide to give us all of this bounty. It's a miracle because you people, you, you know, you witches and warlocks of the economics profession have not reached a consensus about why the hell it happened. You know, there is a consensus about the $3 a day stuff. But there is not a consensus about why this miracle or this explosion of rights, liberties, and prosperity happened. And, no one planned it. We stumbled into it by accident. And, my argument is that we should be incredibly grateful for it. And, therefore, protective of it. You only protect those things you are grateful for. And, that's what I--that's sort of the opening precis of the book, I guess.

Russ Roberts: Yeah. Just a couple of comments. I always think of it as the goose that lays the golden egg. If you have a goose that--all of sudden you get this goose that happens to be laying golden eggs instead of regular ones--you'd kind of want to be interested in what keeps the goose healthy and alive, and how this came to happen, as you keep it going. And we seem to be somewhat oblivious of it. I think it's a human trait to be--take things for granted, and to think that tomorrow will be like yesterday. And so, the era of progress we presume is just a natural thing. And, as you point out--it's hard to accept, but it's not so natural.

Jonah Goldberg: Right.

Russ Roberts: And just to expand on the Hayek point, in The Fatal Conceit, he says: This micro-cosmos and macro-cosmos, we have two --we have to have two ways of thinking about the world. In our small families or our bands or our tribes or our communities, we have a more socialist--what you and I would call a Socialist--enterprise. We don't sell stuff to our kids: typically, we share. It's top down, not bottom up. In the family, the parents tend to run things. And, that's very appropriate in a small group that's held together by bonds of love, for genetics--whatever keeps it together. And, he says, we have to have a different mindset when we go out to the extended order--when we are traders and commercial actors. And he said, we have a tendency to try to take the beautiful and poetic ethos of the family and extend it into the larger order. And he says that leads to tyranny.

Jonah Goldberg: Right.

Russ Roberts: In a way, that's--that's what I want to--you might--it's one of the things you are worried about in your book. Which is that the tribalism that we are hardwired for seems to be spreading beyond the immediate family.

Jonah Goldberg: That's right. I think it's worth pointing out: It is disastrous going both ways.

Russ Roberts: Hayek makes that point, yeah.

Jonah Goldberg: Right. Right. It's disastrous to treat the larger society like a family or tribe. But it's also disastrous--getting your g'mindschaft[?] and your Gesellschaft is always a problem. And treating your family like a contractual society destroys the family. And, both are really, really bad. And I agree that it's not just that we are Socialist. I mean, the way I always put it is: We are literally Communist, in the sense that in my family it is: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. You have a sick kid, you don't do any kind of calculus about what their contribution to the family is. You just do whatever they need. And, yeah. So, part of my argument is that--you know, the Roman philosopher Horus has this line where he says, 'You can chase nature without--you can chase nature out with a pitchfork, but it always comes running back in.' And, so, part of my argument is that human nature is always with us. Right? We are born with it. That is the preloaded software of the human condition, and you can't erase that hard-drive. All you can do is channel and harness human nature towards productive ends as best you can. And when you don't do that, human nature will assert itself.

And I think of this in terms of corruption: That, just as if you don't maintain their upkeep--a car, a boat, or a house--the Second Law of Thermodynamics or entropy or just rust will--you know, rust never sleeps. Eventually, nature reclaims everything. And that's true of civilizations, too. And if we don't civilize people to understand this distinction between the micro- and the macro-cosm, what inevitably happens is that the logic of the microcosm, the desire to live tribally which we're all born with, starts to infect politics. And if you are not on guard for it, it can swamp politics. And this is why I would argue that virtually every form of authoritarianism, totalitarianism--whether you want to call it right-wing or left-wing--doesn't really matter to me any more. They are all reactionary. Because they are all trying to restore that tribal sense of social solidarity--whether, you know, it's a monarchy or treating the leader of the country as the father of the country or the Fuehrer or whatever you want to call it. Or whether you are just saying that the entire society is just one family.

Whether it's nationalism, or socialism, or populism--all of these things are basically the reassertion of human nature, which says: I don't like your artificial constraints on my human desires and my desire for my group to be victorious. And that is the fundamental form of human corruption.

Mailvox: I don't hate Jordan Peterson

But I am starting to seriously dislike some of his fans, who apparently are determined to prevent me from returning to happily ignoring their favorite integrity-challenged psychologist. A Peterson fan by the name of Y is the worst culprit so far. His comments are in bold.

I agree in general with what you say (that people set up those unwinnable games), but I believe your problem is that you don't really know who you are or why you do things you do.

No. Your problem with me is that you really don't know who I am or why I do the things I do. I have various problems, but those two are not among them.

For example, from the CW perspective, it makes literally no sense to shit on Peterson. for your differences on Jewish question.

My perspective is not whatever the CW perspective is. That is irrelevant. I had previously demonstrated the myth of the 115 mean IQ. Peterson attempted, ineptly, to defend that myth. I tore down his arguments just as easily I will tear down the arguments of everyone else who attempts to perpetuate it, just as I have demolished the arguments of everyone who attempted to perpetuate the myth that religion causes war.

That's the thing about myths. It is very foolish to attempt to defend them, because they are myths. You will be taken down, along with the myth, by any honest, competent investigator, and no amount of verbal or rhetorical facility will save you.

Don't get me wrong, he has a lot of flaws, but saying what you said about him because you have some not-so-solid reasons to believe Jewish IQ is 105 instead of 113.

No. My reasons are absolutely solid in terms of logic and relatively solid in terms of statistics. The fact that you do not understand this, or grasp you are implying that the majority of the non-Arab Israeli population is less intelligent than African-Americans on average, is not a sign of your own intelligence.

It doesn't make sense. You're both in the same fight.

No, we are not. Jordan Peterson is not a friend of mine, he is not an ally of mine, he is not a co-religionist of mine, and he is not a nationalist of any kind. So, he is either a neutral or an enemy. I don't know which, nor am I interested in doing the research necessary to determine his true status.

To me it seems the degree of your animosity and vitriol directed at Peterson is unwarranted from a rational perspective. He has his flaws, lack of cynicism being the chief one. Rationalwiki has helpfully collected most of his fuck-ups in one place if anyone is curious.

I haven't directed any vitriol at him. I don't have any animosity towards him, but I am certainly developing some towards his idiot fans. And I certainly don't place any confidence in anything Rationalwiki says about anyone. If I were to direct vitriol at him, I would point out that he is a drug-addled, integrity-challenged depressive little bitch prone to crying in public, who is one of the last people any sane young man should look to as a role model. I would also point out that he has said that most Israelis of Jewish descent are less intelligent than African-Americans. But I haven't done any of that.

He is justifiably massively more successful than you are. More charismatic, better spoken, probably somewhat more intelligent, infinitely better at public relations.

Maybe, but my wife is hotter and I don't look like I'm borrowing George Will's bowtie. But more importantly, NN Taleb is vastly more successful than Peterson by every measure. If I was prone to envying anyone on the grounds Y suggests, it would be Taleb. Do I exhibit any animosity for him? Am I seeking to tear him down? I note that Taleb has apparently reached much the same conclusion about Peterson as I have, which is that he's a lightweight who is prone to stupid opining in ignorance.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb@nntaleb
I think I am completely done with @jordanbpeterson. Gave him the benefit of the doubt with Monsanto and other nonsense. This does it.

Sure, you get to be the Dread lord, he is a Sith whom you can't really attack without making yourself look quite foolish.

Want to bet? Keep annoying me about the Canadian Crier and I will begin looking into dissecting Peterson as thoroughly as I've vivisected Harris, Dawkins, and others. My instincts already suggest that there will be no shortage of holes in his poorly-researched arguments. The fact that Taleb is now of a similar mind tends to confirm my suspicions.

So there is reasons why the part of your soul that has the Devil's ear may want to make you hate him. You're a Christian, why hate someone who is in the business of using evolutionary science for the purpose of making a rational case for christian virtues? Worst case, he converts some atheists into supporting socially conservative policies sympathetic to Christians.

Is there reasons? I don't hate him. I don't care about him. I merely harbor an amount of contempt for his demonstrated lack of intellectual integrity, as I do for all such creatures. But at this point, I am certainly beginning to dislike him - unfairly - due to the annoying behavior of his fans such as Y.

Those who are accusing me of wanting to tear down Peterson should probably consider what happened the last time I was falsely accused of something, namely, gaming a certain collection of literary awards. Do you really want me to conclusively demonstrate that I was not doing anything of the sort by showing you what the real thing looks like? Because, at this point, I am genuinely starting to feel the desire to see if my initial readings of the man are not merely correct, but can be conclusively proved to even the most die-hard Peterson fan.

Then again, it looks like a job better left to Taleb.

If you want to work together with people and spread your ideas as effectively as possible you don't lash out to people like Peterson who has in the past congratulated @nntaleb for his book and cited his theories on his lectures.

The imbecile doesn't get that

1) My judgment of pple has NOTHING to do with whether they like my book

2) Social life, where relationships are nurtured, is for PRIVATE citizens, nothing to do with intellectual life bound to rigor/truth

3) Follow inspirational charlatans not me

4) I do not derive my income from some philantropy or Paltreon where I have to act inspirational & suck up to a crowd of followers cutting me a charity check. I derive my income from financial & business activites in the real world.

I don't owe nothing to nobody.

I know where I'd place my bets. Taleb is one of the very few people on my "if he disagrees with you, you had better take a close look at your assumptions, facts, syllogisms, and conclusions list."

Kallmunz has been repeatedly demanding an answer.

This is interesting and it brings to mind your recent attack on Jordan Peterson’s stance on Jewish intelligence. Your tack is on the offense. There is no “Peterson is right, but on this issue” Peterson would of course be on the defensive in answering this charge. Peterson being a nominal ally is now ostracized. I am interested in your reasoning here.

My attack is not on Jordan Peterson's stance on Jewish intelligence. My attack is a complete and conclusive demolition of the myth of Jewish intelligence. The fact that Jordan Peterson happened to to be foolish enough to again perpetuate the myth afterwards was mere coincidence. I don't believe Peterson is right about anything, mostly because I do not know his positions about almost anything. He is most certainly not an ally of mine, nominal or otherwise. I have never had any contact with the man, I have never paid any attention to the man or his work, and more than a few of his connections and influences, such as Monsanto, Sam Harris, and Stephen Pinker, appear to merit deeper investigation.

In summary, I am beginning to suspect many of his fans are making the same mistake that their fathers and grandfathers made with the neoconservatives, and that they themselves made with NeverTrumpers like Jonah Goldberg and Ben Shapiro. You may not trust my powers of discernment, but I most definitely don't trust those of Jordan Peterson's fans.

UPDATE: This statement confirms that Jordan Peterson is not, and will never be, an ally of the West. Note that he has declared the need to separate from us. We are merely acknowledging that he is correct to do so.

Jordan B Peterson@jordanbpeterson
The true liberals need to separate themselves from the identity politics types. The doctrines are NOT commensurate...

It's true. They are not commensurate. They are, in fact, diametrically opposing doctrines. On the one side is the West, with its Christian and European identities.

The fact that a globalist ideologue attacks elements or particular doctrines of the Left every now and then does not make him of the Right. It does not put him on our side, nor does it make him an ally of anything more than momentary convenience. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you will stop falling for the William F. Buckleys of the world.

Of criticism and envy

Here is something you should probably consider before resorting to the same stupid equation of criticism with envy that I have literally witnessed a certain type of individual making here on this blog for 15 years. It tells everyone that envy is a particular weakness of your own. In fact, when you criticize someone, or when you accuse someone of something, you are betraying information about yourself that others can read very clearly.

For some reason, this always seems to escape the gammas and the alphas of the world.

The strange thing, from my perspective, is that if you follow the logic of some of my critics, I should never criticize anyone for anything. If I criticize someone who is less well-known, then I am engaged in bullying and directed social media mobbing. If I criticize someone who is better-known, then I am merely exhibiting envy and am inspired solely by jealousy.

Now, what sort of individual habitually tries to set up this "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario? The delusional secret kings, of course. The telling thing, of course, is that there is never any attempt to even consider if the criticism is correct, let alone justified, it's always "do not pass go, do not collect $200, go direct to discredit and disqualify". It is pure gamma rhetoric.

There is literally not a single individual I have criticized, from PZ Myers to John Scalzi to George RR Martin to Ben Shapiro to Sam Harris to Richard Dawkins to Richard Spencer, of whom I have not been immediately accused of being jealous or envious.

As one observer recently noted:

Interesting to see the litany of tactics they used to try to discredit you or trick you into making a mistake. They go to them because against the average person they work very well. They're trying to bait you into something they can latch onto then discredit you.

But here is the thing. I've had different people attempting to use the same tactics for 15 years. They didn't work then. They won't work now. What these inept little anklebiters engaged on their never-ending crusade of futility do not grasp is that intellectual integrity is its own reward. To paraphrase Liam Neeson in Rob Roy, it is a man's gift to himself.

I am not saying that I am innocent of envy. But you do not understand me if you think I envy any e-celebrity, media figure, popular author, or talking head. You do not understand me at all.

Cuck State is dead

NeverTrump killed it:

Salem Media, owner of the influential conservative outlet RedState, froze the site on Friday and dismissed many of its writers. Bloggers were locked out of their accounts -- some just temporarily, while the cuts were made, and others permanently.

Erick Erickson, the site's longtime editor who left in 2015, tweeted about what he called the "mass firing" on Friday morning.

"Very sad to see, but not really surprising given Salem's direction," he wrote. "And, finally, after all these years, they've turned off my account."

Multiple sources told CNNMoney that they believed conservative critics of President Trump were the writers targeted for removal.

"Insufficiently partisan" was the phrase one writer used in a RedState group chat. "They fired everybody who was insufficiently supportive of Trump," one of the sources who spoke with CNNMoney said, adding, "how do you define being 'sufficiently supportive' of Trump?"

Good riddance. How do you define being sufficiently supportive of President Trump? Easy. If you refer to him regularly as the God-Emperor and mercilessly hunt down his enemies without showing them mercy or quarter, then you are sufficiently supportive.

Voxiversity 006

The sixth Voxiversity video is now live! This is a graphic narration of my foreword to Moira Greyland's THE LAST CLOSET: The Dark Side of Avalon. It features Moira's music, as well as a number of family pictures she provided, and the video is all the more powerful for it.

Episode Six: The Last Closet

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The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon is available in paperback and on Kindle. To support Voxiversity, sign up here.

This is why you should not lie

Especially not to the God-Emperor's Warmaster:

Secretary of Defense James Mattis explained Thursday why he directed a strike that reportedly killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria back in February.

Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. has a deconfliction line with Russia to ensure that the two countries can communicate in order to avoid direct conflict with one another in Syria. He said that a group of "irregular forces" were in conflict with U.S. forces, and once it was ascertained that those forces were not Russian regulars, Mattis directed a counterattack.

"The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated," Mattis said. "And it was."

It never pays to play tricksy word games with a warrior. Be direct. Be honest. And learn to understand when you are defeated and behave accordingly, lest you be destroyed.

A Nobel for the God-Emperor

There is no question that the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to Donald Trump:

North and South Korea will seek a peace 'regime' to end the 68-year Korean War, their leaders announced today, after Kim Jong-un agreed to a 'complete denuclearisation' during historic talks. Kim became the first North Korean leader to step into the South for 65 years as he met with President Moon Jae-in for a peace summit.

The two sworn enemies exchanged a warm greeting at the 38th parallel in the truce village of Panmunjom before the pair held talks and planted a commemorative tree together. The dramatic meeting has been seen as a precursor to planned talks between Kim and US President Donald Trump next month.

This afternoon, Kim and Moon embraced warmly after signing a statement in which they declared 'there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula'. The two countries said they will push for talks with the US, and potentially China, to officially end the 1950-53 conflict, which stopped with an armistice and left the Koreas still technically at war.

They also agreed to rid their peninsula of nuclear weapons but did not provide any new specific measures outlining how to achieve the objective.

Kim said: 'We are going to be one again, as we share the same history, the same language, the same culture, the same blood. We are going to happily look back at the hard times in the past when we achieve a new future. No pain, no gain. Let us go forward, step by step for the bright future together.'

This is a staggering development of the sort we have not seen since 1989. I expect the Nobel committee will give the award to Kim and Moon, of course, but the world knows who really deserves it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Donald Trump is already one of the greatest presidents in the history of the United States of America.

And he hasn't even delivered on either of his signature campaign promises yet. But he will.

Mailvox: it is good for the Jews

Critical G flips the narrative entirely by observing that it is in the best interest of the Jews to be told the unvarnished truth rather than reassured by obvious falsehoods that have been perpetrated for decades.

High-IQ (140) full-blooded Ashkenazi here — long time lurker, occasional commenter —, and I can tell you that @VD is totally right. I've been thinking about these matters for a long time, and I can tell you @VD does us all a far greater favour by stating the unvarnished truth than JBP does by perpetuating a falsehood. I share the following thoughts and observations to back up what @VD has been saying.

(1) Jewish average IQ of anything higher than about 106 is a myth. I grew up amongst, and went to school and university with, both Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. Yes, a lot of us are smart, but we are nowhere near *that* smart. Maybe the neurotic Jewish emphasis on education results in higher than whites', but that's not solely a question of natural general intelligence.

(2) I ran the numbers on Israel's IQ and came to Vox's conclusion, i.e. the Ashkenazi average can't be higher than the 102-106 range. I am skeptical of Israel's national average being as low as 96, but even if it were as high as 105, Vox's argument would still stand. Given the three variables — Ashkenazi IQ, non-Ashkenazi IQ, and Arab IQ (which can safely take as 83) — the higher the average Ashkenazi IQ, the lower the non-Ashkenazi IQ must be, and an average Ashkenazi IQ of 115 results in non-Ashkenazim having a lower IQ than Arabs.

As the vast majority of Jews outside of Israel are Ashkenazim, the rest of my comment pertains to Ashkenazim only — which actually supports Vox's argument.

(3) Although our general IQ is only a couple points higher than whites', I do think our verbal acuity is at least a standard deviation higher. I don't have numbers to back it up, just my personal experience looking at it from within and without. That is (and this is a double-edged blade), we are extremely talented when it comes to language, debating, polemics... and propaganda, lying, and swindling. A fighter for truth has the same weapons as the most fork-tongued deceiver, the difference being in their respective commitments to Truth or the Message.

(4) The myth of Ashkenazi super-intelligence is as harmful to Jews as the myth of IQ equality between blacks and whites is to blacks. It gives rise to anti-semitic beliefs in the super-human evil cunning of Jews, and it also turns Jews into a philo-semitic fetish. I get very annoyed when a philo-semite tries to place me on a pedestal, and my admonitions to be proud of your own culture often fall on deaf ears.

(5) Owing to the myth of Ashkenazi super-intelligence, we labour under unrealistic expectations to be naturally gifted and clever in every which way, and I am convinced a lot of Jews in prominent positions suffer from imposter anxiety, much like those blacks who are undeservingly admitted to elite universities.

(6) I have a pet hypothesis that blacks in America are ultimately unhappy because they know they will always have low sexual market value no matter how prosperous they be. Telling a black woman that she has it better than her sisters in Africa, when 90% of desirable men automatically downgrade her SMV, simply doesn't speak to what really makes her unhappy. By the same token, I think we Jews, in our heart of hearts, feel the same way. We're simply not as tall or good looking as the northern Europeans, and we know it. In Israel, the things we're embarrassed about — big noses, frizzy hair, etc — are the norm, and Israelis, for all their obnoxious tendencies, at least do not suffer from the Diaspora Jew's neurosis about looking Jewish.

If you know many Israelis, one thing you immediately notice is that they exhibit very little of the neuroses, the false bravado, and the prickly defensiveness so often evident among Diasporans. They tend to have a little swagger to them, a genuine self-assurance that I find quite likable. They love to talk about Israel, and you can barely speak with an Israeli for five minutes without him inviting you to come and visit it.

This often reminds me of Garrison Keillor writing about Lake Woebegon and the signs on the outskirts of town: A TOWN ON THE GROW! Israelis are rather like the Middle Eastern version of 19th century American town boosters, a little gauche for the tastes of the cultured individual, perhaps, and yet their enthusiasm for the country they are building is genuinely infectious.

They are, in a word, self-confident. They know they are not parasites. They know they have sweated, fought, and bled for what they have. They are proud of what they have built in the desert, and rightly so.

And as for the Palestinians, let me assure you that the Israelis I know have shown considerably more concern and compassion for the defeated people they have displaced than I have ever heard any American show for how the American Indians are treated today, never mind in the past.

What is the difference between these two halves of the same nation? The Israeli has skin in the game, he is fully committed, and he knows it. The Diasporan is a nomadic pillager, his commitment is conditional upon his perception of his momentary best interests, and he knows it. It's the difference between being a bossy backseat driver on the weekly run to the supermarket and taking the pole at the Indy 500; which responsibility do you think is going to build more self-confidence. We often talk about the deleterious effect that parasitism has on the societal host, but the parasite pays a heavy price too, because his state of being shatters his psyche and erodes his soul. Have you ever met an individual who does not economically support himself who is self-confident, psychologically mature, and secure in his abilities? As with a person, so it is with peoples; one has only to visit an Indian reservation to observe as much.

A mere 8% of Israeli Jews describe themselves as being on the left while 55% describe themselves as centrist and 37% as being on the right. This is radically different from Jewish opinion in any other nation.
- Pew Research Center

That's the difference that skin in the game makes. It fundamentally changes one's perspective, one's time preferences, and one's behavior. Critical G's prediction is in line with this: "I make a prediction, which I hope to be tested one day: if the Western Jews migrated en masse to Israel, most of them would become right-wing nationalists. This is exactly what happened in Israel, and I bet you it would happen again."

The Alt-Right is inevitable. Especially - not even - especially in Israel.

Critical G's observation of imposter anxiety is a significant one. He believes that the only cure for this and the other psychological ailments of the Diasporans is for them to move on to Israel, and that such a mass exodus would be materially and spiritually better for everyone on all sides of the equation. Based on my observations and experiences, I think he is almost certainly correct. Diversity is no one's strength and ultimately operates to the disadvantage, if not the actual destruction, of everyone it touches.

Why the Dread Ilk are so superior

To Jordan Peterson's milquetoast millennials.

All I can say is that if I ever screwed up as thoroughly, and as publicly, and demonstrated such a flagrant lack of intellectual integrity as Peterson has, I would damn well expect every single member of the Dread Ilk to jump down my throat with sharpened spurs on.

Instead, what do we see here? Oh, poor Jordie, it's just so difficult for him? It's so hard! How can a philosopher be expected to simply tell the truth? He's done so much good that we shouldn't criticize him when he's running around calling people cowards and failures because they point out the obvious to him! Don't be mean to Jordie and make him cry!

Excuses. Complaints. Rationalizations. Whining. Accusing. Anything but holding the man accountable for his deceitful words and his lack of intellectual integrity. I'm unimpressed enough with the man, but it's his followers that really have me rolling my eyes.

WTF? Is the guy such a delicate depressed flower that he's going to kill himself over being called on acting like an uncharitable and uninformed jackass? I thought this was supposed to be the fearsome debater, the formidable man of principle who isn't afraid to go into the belly of the beast to tell it like it is?

Let me make one thing clear. I do not give a fragment of a flying fuck about poor little Jordie or any other public figure with whom I am not personally acquainted. I have not read his books nor watched his videos. I care about the truth and the Truth, and I do not cut any intellectual figure any slack in that regard, including myself. I ask for neither quarter nor mercy from anyone, least of all my supporters.

When I get it wrong and you can conclusively prove it, then show me! If you're correct, I won't attack you, much less call you a coward and a failure like Peterson did, to the contrary, I will be grateful to you for helping me get back on the correct path of true understanding.

NFL Draft Day

This is an open thread to discuss Day One of the NFL Draft. And just to get the conversation started, if I was the GM of the Cleveland Browns, I'd take Barkley, then Mayfield, with Allen as my fallback unless Darnold was still available and Mayfield wasn't.

I don't think that is what they will do, however. I think they'll take a quarterback at 1, then the Giants will take Barkley, as they should.

DOJ investigating Harvard's anti-Asian discrimination

This expanding lawsuit against Harvard University is not entirely unrelated from the recent discussion of intelligence, success, and ethnicity:

The Justice Department is actively investigating Harvard University's use of race in its admissions policies and has concluded the school is "out of compliance" with federal law, according to documents obtained by CNN.

The Justice Department's battle with Harvard potentially sets the stage for the first major legal test of affirmative action policies under the Trump administration. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that race can be one among many factors universities use in making admission decisions. Two letters from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division indicate that Harvard has challenged the department's authority to investigate, and further state that if the school fails to provide documents to the department by December 1, the agency may file a lawsuit against the school....

Additional correspondence obtained by CNN shows that the Justice Department formally notified Harvard it was under investigation on September 20 and since that time, lawyers for the agency and the school have been trading letters over the scope of the department's document requests, despite what Harvard noted were "its concerns about the highly unusual nature of this investigation." The Justice Department's interest in Harvard's policies stems from a 2015 federal complaint that accuses the school of discriminating against Asian-Americans in admissions. When The New York Times reported in August that the Justice Department was looking for lawyers to work on "possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions," the department said that the posting was related to an ongoing case rolled over from the Obama administration.

But these more recent letters from the Justice Department, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, mark the first confirmation that the school is currently under investigation.

Who knows whether Harvard will be able to wave its magic wand and make it all go away somehow. But if they can't, here is what the statistics very strongly indicate they are trying to hide:

• Asian-Americans are being heavily discriminated against.
• White Christians are being moderately discriminated against
• White residents of Midwestern, Southern, and Southwestern states are being heavily discriminated against.
• Many unqualified Jews are being admitted by Jewish admissions officers
• The majority of the Jews who attend an Ivy League university would not qualify for acceptance without affirmative action on their behalf.

The last bullet point is the big one, as it will have significant societal repercussions going forward. It's a little difficult to convincingly claim that you are merely a smart and meritorious elite when most of your children can't qualify for the top schools on an objective, merit-based standard. And, of course, there may be even more egregiously corrupt goings-on that the statistics do not even suggest. Regardless, Harvard would not be fighting this tooth-and-nail if it the release of the relevant information did not promise to be seriously damaging to its reputation and that of its alumni.

Digital Maoism

This is a really good interview with Jaron Lanier which hits on three important concepts:

This dovetails with something you’ve said in the past that’s with me, which is your phrase Digital Maoism. Do you think that the Digital Maoism that you described years ago — are those the people who run Silicon Valley today?

I was talking about a few different things at the time I wrote “Digital Maoism.” One of them was the way that we were centralizing culture, even though the rhetoric was that we were distributing it. Before Wikipedia, I think it would have been viewed as being this horrible thing to say that there could only be one encyclopedia, and that there would be one dominant entry for a given topic. Instead, there were different encyclopedias. There would be variations not so much in what facts were presented, but in the way they were presented. That voice was a real thing.

And then we moved to this idea that we have a single dominant encyclopedia that was supposed to be the truth for the global AI or something like that. But there’s something deeply pernicious about that. So we’re saying anybody can write for Wikipedia, so it’s, like, purely democratic and it’s this wonderful open thing, and yet the bizarreness is that that open democratic process is on the surface of something that struck me as being Maoist, which is that there’s this one point of view that’s then gonna be the official one.

And then I also noticed that that process of people being put into a global system in which they’re supposed to work together toward some sort of dominating megabrain that’s the one truth didn’t seem to bring out the best in people, that people turned aggressive and mean-spirited when they interacted in that context. I had worked on some content for Britannica years and years ago, and I never experienced the kind of just petty meanness that’s just commonplace in everything about the internet. Among many other places, on Wikipedia.

On the one hand, you have this very open collective process actually in the service of this very domineering global brain, destroyer of local interpretation, destroyer of individual voice process. And then you also have this thing that seems to bring out this meanness in people, where people get into this kind of mob mentality and they become unkind to each other. And those two things have happened all over the internet; they’re both very present in Facebook, everywhere. And it’s a bit of a subtle debate, and it takes a while to work through it with somebody who doesn’t see what I’m talking about. That was what I was talking about.

But then there’s this other thing about the centralization of economic power. What happened with Maoists and with communists in general, and neo-Marxists and all kinds of similar movements, is that on the surface, you say everybody shares, everybody’s equal, we’re not gonna have this capitalist concentration. But then there’s some other entity that might not look like traditional capitalism, but is effectively some kind of robber baron that actually owns everything, some kind of Communist Party actually controls everything, and you have just a very small number of individuals who become hyperempowered and everybody else loses power.

And exactly the same thing has happened with the supposed openness of the internet, where you say, “Isn’t it wonderful, with Facebook and Twitter anybody can express themselves. Everybody’s an equal, everybody’s empowered.” But in fact, we’re in a period of time of extreme concentration of wealth and power, and it’s precisely around those who run the biggest computers. So the truth and the effect is just the opposite of what the rhetoric is and the immediate experience.

A lot of people were furious with me over Digital Maoism and felt that I had betrayed our cause or something, and I lost some friends over it. And some of it was actually hard. But I fail to see how it was anything but accurate.

This guy is sharing some important insights into the intrinsic danger of centralization, even when it is unintentional and inadvertent. It also underlines the importance of the Infogalactic approach, which rejects the concept of the One True Page that defines objective reality for everyone on the basis of the opinions of the information gatekeepers.

The myth of Jordan Peterson's integrity

yclepedbobali observes that Jordan Peterson not only cannot answer my critique in a for summarized by someone else, he is downright afraid of his readers encountering it and exposing his posturing on a subject he refuses to honestly address.

I'm a midwit, at very best. Just synthesising your arguments, with a little embellishment, blew his grand 'arithmetic triumph over the bucko Nazgul' into a million tiny leaves on the Canadian breeze.

He can publicise and flaunt his flawless victory over the lead comment, so 'representative' of the apparent poor intellectual stock of right wing thugs. Just another conspiracy theorist helpless before the isolate and trinity of that 'irrefutable' average IQ of 115, the bell curve tail distribution, and openness to experience and liberalism. But he knows, and he knows we know.

I see why no one debates you. Even a midwit like me becomes something formidable armed with your mental tools and pugilist approach.

Here is my articulated critique of Jordan Peterson's argument. First, I suggest reading Jordan Peterson's actual argument in full: "On the so-called Jewish Question" as well as his subsequent response to a critic who did a reasonable job of showing how Peterson's argument did not hold up given the population demographics. I linked to the archive as well as to his site because I anticipate Peterson will memory-hole it once he realizes how hapless and dishonest it makes him look to an unbiased reader. His argument is summarized as follows:

1. One requires a victim and a perpetrator in order to play identity politics.
2. The Far Right has chosen European culture as a victim due to its unrecognized resentment and cowardly and incompetent failure to deal with the world forthrightly, and have incorrectly selected the Jews as perpetrator due to Jewish overrepresentation in positions of authority, competence and influence. 
3. Jewish people are overrepresented in positions of competence and authority because, as a group, they have a higher mean IQ.
4. Jews have a mean IQ of 115.
5. "40.8% of the 145+ IQ population is Jewish."
6. "There is no evidence whatsoever that Ashkenazi Jews are over-represented in any occupations/interests for reasons other than intelligence and the associated effects of intelligence on personality and political belief. Thus, no conspiratorial claims based on ethnic identity need to be given credence."

Peterson's argument is not merely incorrect, literally every single aspect of it is false. It is so resolutely and demonstrably false that it is not possible for Jordan Peterson to have constructed it in innocence by mistake. In my opinion, it clearly represents a purposeful intent to deceive his audience and falsely accuse those he labels "the far right". My responses to those six points, with the numbers updated to reflect the most recent population demographics.

1. One does not require a victim or a perpetrator in order to play identity politics. One does not need to be aware of identity politics or even to believe they exist to find oneself engulfed in them. To quote Lee Kwan Yew, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” All a society requires is multiracial, multiethnic, or multireligious components and identity politics will inevitably appear once the minority populations become sufficiently numerous or influential.
2. European culture and the European nations are observably victims of mass immigration. This is a fact that is no more disputable than the fact that the indigenous American populations were victims of mass immigration in the 16th and 17th centuries and Asian populations were victims of colonization and imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. The perpetrators are, by definition, the immigrants, as well as those who worked to alter the various laws to permit the immigrants entry.
3. Jews are not overrepresented in positions of competence and authority because, as a group, they have a higher mean IQ, because a) IQs over 145 do not tend to help, but rather tend to hinder, an individual's ability to attain such positions, and b) their higher mean IQ is not high enough to compensate for their much smaller population.
4. Jews do not have an average mean IQ of 115. Globally, they have an average mean IQ that is a maximum of 103.2. In the US, where the percentage of high-IQ Ashkenazim is higher, they have a maximum average mean IQ of 105.1.
5. Less than 4 percent of the 145+ IQ population in the USA is Jewish.
6. Thus, conspiratorial claims based on ethnic identity remain a valid potential explanation for Jewish overrepresentation in positions of competence and authority. Jordan Peterson is at best an inept intellectual disputant, and at worst an intentional deceiver.

Now I will proceed to prove responses 3, 4, and 5 in detail. Response 6 follows naturally from them.

On point 3.

There is a linear relationship between intelligence and effective leadership, but only up to 120 IQ. This association reverses at IQ 120. This is primarily due to the IQ communication gap which prevents effective communication across 2 standard deviations (30 IQ points) of intelligence. This negative effect of high IQ is further compounded by the statistical exclusion of the cognitive elite from intellectually elite professions.

The probability of entering and remaining in an intellectually elite profession such as Physician, Judge, Professor, Scientist, Corporate Executive, etc. increases with IQ to about 133. It then falls about 1/3 by 140. By 150 IQ the probability has fallen by 97%! In other words, a significant percentage of people with IQs over 140 are being systematically and, most likely inappropriately, excluded from the population that addresses the biggest problems of our time or who are responsible for assuring the efficient operation of social, scientific, political and economic institutions.

Jordan Peterson's explanation for Jewish success is not only wrong, but, ironically, even if it had been factually based his argument would have proven precisely the opposite of that which he was attempting to demonstrate. The fact that Jews are overrepresented in positions of competence and authority is actually conclusive statistical evidence that their average mean IQ cannot be uniquely and extraordinarily high.

On point 4

The primary and oft-cited source of the "115 mean IQ" claim is the 1957 study by Boris Levinson entitled "The Intelligence of Applicants for Admission to Jewish Day Schools" published in Jewish Social Studies,Vol. 19, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1957), pp. 129-140.

In the study, which reported a 114.88 mean IQ for the 2083 very young students sampled, the author duly noted its intrinsic limitations.

"This study is limited to applicants for Day Schools adhering to the principles of the National Commission for Yeshiva Education. This sampling does not claim to represent the entire Jewish school population or even those children attending yeshiva Day Schools with a different educational emphasis."

The 114.88 mean IQ did not represent the entire U.S. Jewish population in 1956 and therefore cannot possibly represent the entire U.S. Jewish population 61 years later. Furthermore, even if it did correctly represent the entire Jewish Ashkenazi population in the USA then, it would not do so now, due to the fact that what used to be a relatively pure Ashkenazi population is now 44 percent genetically adulterated by the mainstream population due to intermarriage. The current US population of 5,425,000 Jews is now made up of the following genetic groups:

• 51.6 Ashkenazi
• 40.6 Half-Ashkenazi, Half-European (Which really means three-quarters European ancestry.)
• 07.8 Sephardic, Mizrahi, and other backgrounds

Remember, it's not the ethnic identity that magically conveys intelligence on an individual, intelligence is primarily a consequence of the individual's genetic ancestry. Even if individuals in the second category consider themselves to be every bit as Jewish as their immigrant Jewish grandparents in a cultural, ethnic, or religious sense, it is not true from a genetic perspective and the studies on mean Ashkenazi IQ therefore cannot apply to them. I suspect that this is an unintentional focus on identity instead of genetics on Peterson's part, (an ironic one, given his attack on identity politics), and it is a mistake that he makes it twice. Now, given that the 107.5 mean Ashkenazi IQ given by Lynn is at least possibly correct (unlike the false 115 claim which cannot be) and the 102 mean IQ for white Americans, we can reasonably estimate the Half-Ashkenazi mean IQ to be halfway between the two population groups, or 104.8.

Since the non-Ashkenazi Jewish mean IQ is somewhere between 84.2 (if A-IQ=115) and 91 (if A-IQ=107.5) given the reported average IQ of Israel being 95, this means that the maximum mean IQ of the U.S. Jewish population is 105.1, 3.1 points higher than the mean White IQ of 102 but below the reported mean East Asian-American IQ of 106.

On point 5

Peterson's claim that 40.8 percent of the 145+ IQ population in the USA is Jewish is not merely wrong, it is off by more than an order of magnitude! First, he omits the Asian and Black populations, second, he exaggerates the US Jewish population by 10 percent and fails to account for the fact that 48.4 percent of that population is either part-Ashkenazi or non-Ashkenazi, and third, he again makes the mistake of relying upon identity rather than genetics for the White population. Use of the White, Non-Hispanic population is not correct here, because the White Hispanic population is defined as being genetically white and therefore cannot be excluded from the relevant White population numbers.

With a mean IQ of 105.1 and a population of 5,425,000, the standard distribution curve indicates 21,158 Jews with 145+ IQs in the United States. In addition to this, the mean IQ of 102 for the White population of 246,660,710 indicates 517,987 Whites with 145+ IQs, plus another 31,913 equally high-IQ Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans resident in the United States.

Jews therefore account for 3.7 percent of the 145+ IQ set in the United States, not 40.8 percent of it. Jordan Peterson was off by more than an order of magnitude, his argument is completely incorrect, and his public charges of cowardice and "incompetent failure to deal with the world forthrightly" appear to be emotional projections of Peterson's own cowardice and incompetent failure.

On point 6

I do not know Jordan Peterson, but his incorrect and deceitful arguments and his unfair, unjustified attacks on his critics show him to be an inept and integrity-challenged coward who lacks commitment to the truth. The combination of his sudden success with his observable intellectual ineptitude suggests that he has been elevated by the mainstream media in order to provide a harmless, toothless, and non-Christian alternative to the failed conservative movement of William F. Buckley and the failed neoconservative movement of Bill Kristol and Ben Shapiro.

It's probably for the best

No more songs of Ice and Fire for you, at least not this year:

George R.R. Martin is confirming what Game of Thrones fans have increasingly suspected: The long-awaited sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire saga, The Winds of Winter, will not be out in 2018 (here are some of the best fan reactions to this news).

The author revealed the decision in a press release announcing a publication date for Fire and Blood, his upcoming history of the Targaryens which has clocked in at a massive 989 pages long.

“No, winter is not coming… not in 2018, at least,” Martin wrote. “You’re going to have to keep waiting for The Winds of Winter. You will, however, be able to return to Westeros this year. I do want to stress… indeed, I want to shout… that Fire and Blood is not a novel. This is not a traditional narrative and was never intended to be… let’s call this one ‘imaginary history’ instead. The essential point being the ‘history’ part. I love reading popular histories myself, and that’s what I was aiming for here … (Though there are enough stories here for twenty novels. Battles, bloodshed, betrayals, love, lust, horror, religious wars, politics, incest, historical revisionism, all the fun stuff) .… As for me, I’m returning once again to The Winds of Winter.”

I can, however, confirm that the full A Sea of Skulls will be released this year. The hardcover will definitely be available for Christmas.

In which I address Jordan Peterson

As you've probably noted, I have remained resolutely silent on the man. Tonight, at about 7:15 EST, I'm doing a Darkstream to address what I believe to be his inherent lack of intellectual honesty and integrity. Tune in via Periscope.

My analysis of the so-called "Jewish question" has been criticized by exactly the people you would expect to criticize it. I responded today with an update, making the mathematical case linking higher IQ to higher Jewish achievement properly:

In summary, his updated case is based on a false premise that is supported by inaccurate numbers which are based on irrelevant and outdated studies that never purported to claim what is being cited. It is the most intellectually shoddy case I have seen any public intellectual attempt to make since Richard Dawkins tried to prove that a religious upbringing is worse than sexual abuse in childhood by citing an apocryphal story about Alfred Hitchcock driving through Switzerland.

Peterson would have done much better to simply state that he is not free to state his opinion on the subject since he lives in Canada and is subject to Canadian anti-speech laws.

Torn between truth and identity

John Derbyshire is frustrated with geneticist David Reich's one-step-forward, two-steps-back routine in Who We Are and How We Got Here.

It is plain from the evidence, amply presented in this book, that many—perhaps most—of the “mixture” events Prof. Reich urges us to “embrace” in fact involved one group of human males killing off another group’s males and mating with their females.

Does Prof. Reich really expect males from that second group to “embrace” their annihilation?

The last three chapters of Who We Are are marbled with incoherent gibberish like this, punctuated with shamefully gratuitous insults to more honest and brave human-science writers like Wade, Cochran, the late Henry Harpending, and even the great James Watson.

What makes it all very odd is that these preposterosities and insults are interleaved with commendably frank statements about the reality of biological race differences, e.g.

If selection on height and infant head circumference can occur within a couple of thousand years, it seems a bad bet to argue that there cannot be similar average differences in cognitive or behavioral traits.

Reich’s lurching between PC pablum and honest race realism left this reader feeling positively dizzy. Why is the book like this? The most charitable explanation: Prof. Reich believes he needs to do the signaling in order to preserve his funding.

It is more than a bit bizarre, as are Reich's regular digressions into Jewish history, the myth of Jewish intelligence, and various other Jewish minutiae that have literally nothing to do with the science of ancient human DNA that is the nominal topic of the book. Reich is a serious and accomplished scientist, but as Derb points out, he lacks the basic literary competence of science popularizers like Dawkins and Wade, and he is almost astonishingly nasty and unfair to Wade as well as James Watson. That being said, Reich does step firmly, if not fully, away from the blank slate theory and leaves the anti-racist anthropologists without a single scientific leg to stand on. From Chapter 11, The Genomics of Race and Identity:

Beginning in 1972, genetic arguments began to be incorporated into the assertions that anthropologists were making about the lack of substantial biological differences among human populations. In that year, Richard Lewontin published a study of variation in protein types in blood.7 He grouped the populations he analyzed into seven “races”—West Eurasians, Africans, East Asians, South Asians, Native Americans, Oceanians, and indigenous Australians—and found that around 85 percent of variation in the protein types could be accounted for by variation within populations and “races,” and only 15 percent by variation across them. He concluded: “Races and populations are remarkably similar to each other, with the largest part by far of human variation being accounted for by the differences between individuals. Human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance.”

In this way, through the collaboration of anthropologists and geneticists, a consensus was established that there are no differences among human populations that are large enough to support the concept of “biological race.” Lewontin’s results made it clear that for the great majority of traits, human populations overlap to such a degree that it is impossible to identify a single biological trait that distinguishes people in any two groups, which is intuitively what some people think of when they conceive of “biological race.”

But this consensus view of many anthropologists and geneticists has morphed, seemingly without questioning, into an orthodoxy that the biological differences among human populations are so modest that they should in practice be ignored—and moreover, because the issues are so fraught, that study of biological differences among populations should be avoided if at all possible. It should come as no surprise, then, that some anthropologists and sociologists see genetic research into differences across populations, even if done in a well-intentioned way, as problematic. They are concerned that work on such differences will be used to validate concepts of race that should be considered discredited. They see this work as located on a slippery slope to the kinds of pseudoscientific arguments about biological difference that were used in the past to try to justify the slave trade, the eugenics movement to sterilize the disabled as biologically defective, and the Nazis’ murder of six million Jews.

The concern is so acute that the political scientist Jacqueline Stevens has even suggested that research and even emails discussing biological differences across populations should be banned, and that the United States “should issue a regulation prohibiting its staff or grantees…from publishing in any form—including internal documents and citations to other studies—claims about genetics associated with variables of race, ethnicity, nationality, or any other category of population that is observed or imagined as heritable unless statistically significant disparities between groups exist and description of these will yield clear benefits for public health, as deemed by a standing committee to which these claims must be submitted and authorized.”

But whether we like it or not, there is no stopping the genome revolution. The results that it is producing are making it impossible to maintain the orthodoxy established over the last half century, as they are revealing hard evidence of substantial differences across populations.

It's not a good book. But it is a useful one that may well point the way towards better-written, more intellectually coherent books in the future.

The Rainbow Coalition unravels

We can expect more of this inter-party conflict as whites cease to become the only identity group with influence who can be safely targeted:

California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, the prominent #MeToo activist now under investigation for groping and sexual harassment of former legislative staffers, was reprimanded by former Assembly Speaker John Perez in 2014 for making racially insensitive comments directed toward Asians.

Perez confirmed to POLITICO on Saturday that he had to “strongly admonish” Garcia after she made comments against Asians in a closed-door Assembly Democratic Caucus meeting in 2014 — the same year in which she also acknowledged using homophobic slurs aimed at Perez, the first openly gay speaker of the California State Assembly.

Sources familiar with the incident say Garcia’s anti-Asian remarks came during a legislative battle that arose when Asian-American community activists successfully lobbied to defeat a Democratic proposal to overturn California’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions. They argued that such a move could hurt Asian student admission rates.

Perez in mid-March 2014 announced a move to return the bill to the Senate without any action from the Assembly, effectively blocking its advance. Garcia, the sources said, erupted in anger during a tense meeting of the entire Assembly Democratic caucus.

“This makes me feel like I want to punch the next Asian person I see in the face,” according to sources present at the meeting and other legislative sources who were told about the comments in the immediate aftermath.

It is beginning to look like there will be a Hispanic-Jewish alliance battling the Asians for control of the Democratic Party. Which is why LA Mayor Garcetti, who is the poster boy for that alliance, will be heavily pushed to be the next Democratic candidate for President.

The importance of rhetoric

Thales points out that the social media world is literally engulfed in low-level leftist rhetoric:

Surfing around Instagram, you will find a large number of scantily-clad women travelling the world petting cute little animals, talking about “body positivity” and posing provocatively, generally with the juicy bits only barely covered enough to avoid attracting the attention of the censors. Invariably, every cause spouted by these Instagram ladies is boilerplate Leftism. Save the whales, maybe, or fat is beautiful, or white men are vaguely shitty and probably shouldn’t even exist. Also, Christianity is crap, and Atheism is morally superior to the zombie sky wizard.

Now, we roll our eyes at this and go about our business. Why, after all, should we worry excessively about near-porn fusing with idiotic Leftism?

Truthfully, this is a massive problem. Leftism is seen, even by most Rightists, as the default position. It’s the ‘no thinking required’ setting. If you want to spout some kind of philosophical nonsense to make yourself look smart and cultured while your boob is falling out, you do Leftism. It’s easy rhetoric. Hey look, there’s a man with no fish. Saying “somebody should give him a fish, look he’s starving” is the easy rhetorical answer. Defeating this argument is simple with dialectic, but few people care about dialectic. It’s boring. Nerdy. Too many words. Better to just call somebody a bigot and move on.

The correct way to fight this is through memes. That's why I created the Daily Meme Wars, although to be honest, the memes I create tend to incorporate excessively high rhetoric. But it would be more effective to simply subvert the low-level rhetoric by taking their imagery and repurposing it. This will tend to be even more effective than their incoherent, dishonest rhetoric because, as Aristotle notes, the most effective rhetoric is based on the truth.

One can even engage in destructive meta-rhetoric, by taking their message and attaching it to images that make it clear how absurd and false their rhetoric is.

So, I'm going to be experimenting with lowering the level of the rhetoric and making it more direct to see if that makes it more effective on social media. For example, it doesn't change the message if the background image is a painting of the signing of the Constitution or a girl in an American flag bikini when the words, and the intrinsic truth underlying those words, are the same.

It is not your Country. It is not your Constitution. You have to go back.

The only substantive difference is in the effectiveness of the memes on different people. Some people do react emotionally to images from 1776. But a lot more react emotionally to images of attractive young women.

UPDATE: Here is an example from today's Daily Meme Wars that directly addresses the feminist body-positivity rhetoric.

 

This could be interesting

Or it could be a whole lot of nothing. We'll find out soon enough.

Back to the balance of power

Russia now has the ability to drown the US coasts:

Russia's new nuclear drone submarine could be capable of causing 300ft-high tsunamis, able to wipe out coastal cities, experts say. The existence of the drone, believed to be the Status-6 system - also known as 'Putin's doomsday machine' - was confirmed by the Russian President himself in his annual state-of-the-nation speech in Moscow last month.

Experts say a 50 megaton underwater nuclear bomb would be able to create tsunami waves reaching more than 320ft - the 'Status-6' is allegedly able to carry a 100 megaton warhead.

Perhaps the neocons should stop trying to throw the US weight around and interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations. On the plus side, the prospect of having both coasts submerged underwater is considerably better than thermonuclear war. Indeed, one could quite credibly argue that the American nation would be better off without either of them.

Even dead, he's more productive

JRR Tolkien is releasing a new book, The Fall of Gondolin, which sounds right up my alley.

In the latest sad episode of the saga of George R. R. Martin’s next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, never being published, legendary deceased author J.R.R. Tolkien has reportedly finished another book before Martin could complete Winds of Winter. Not only is the legendary Lord of the Rings author publishing a new book before Martin, but he’s publishing them at a faster rate in general. Tolkein’s new book, The Fall of Gondolin, which will be published in 2018, follows 2017’s Beren and Lúthien, meaning despite being dead since 1973, Tolkien is somehow able to release books at a rate of one per year, while Martin hasn’t released a new ASOIAF book since 2011’s A Dance With Dragons.

The Fall of Gondolin is billed as the first “real” story of Middle Earth, and tells of the fall of the titular city to dark forces. Edited by Tolkein’s 93-year-old son, Christopher Tolkien, the book was reportedly written while J.R.R. Tolkien was convalescing after the Battle of the Somme. The Guardian, which broke the story, provides a summary of the story:

The book, said publisher HarperCollins, sets the “uttermost evil” of Morgoth against the sea-god Ulmo. Morgoth is trying to discover and destroy the hidden city of Gondolin, while Ulmo is supporting the Noldor, the kindred of the elves who live in the city.

The story follows one of the Noldor, Tuor, who sets out to find Gondolin; during his journey, he experiences what the publisher described as “one of the most arresting moments in the history of Middle-earth”: when Ulmo, the sea-god, rises out of the ocean during a storm.

When Tuor arrives in Gondolin, he becomes a great man and the father of Eärendel, an important character in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. But Morgoth attacks, with Balrogs, dragons and orcs, and as the city falls, Tuor, his wife Idril and the child Eärendel escape, “looking back from a cleft in the mountains as they flee southward, at the blazing wreckage of their city”.

It might seem shocking that a deceased author could publish two books in his popular fantasy series in just two years, while Martin has taken over 7 years to provide fans with the penultimate chapter of his series and seems unlikely do so before HBO finishes Game of Thrones, the television adaptation that had to chart its own course after lapping Martin. However, it’s worth noting that, being dead, Tolkien needn’t be distracted by things like LiveJournal or WildCards books, so he has a distinct advantage.

Look for The Fall of Gondolin sometime this year. Don’t bother looking for The Winds of Winter. It’s never coming out.

They may well be right. I strongly suspect that George RR Martin simply can't write at the same level as his previous books in the series anymore, and he knows it. Being a gamma, he'd rather not even try than take the risk of trying, failing, and destroying his literary legacy.

That's my current theory, anyhow. And it's totally not based on any concerns about the rest of A Sea of Skulls living up to the first two-thirds....

The dysgenic city

Freeman Dyson explains why cities, and indirectly, interracial relationships, are inherently dysgenic:

If a small population is inbreeding, the rate of drift of the average measure of any human capability scales with the inverse square root of the population. Big fluctuations of the average happen in isolated villages far more often than in cities. On the average, people in villages are not more capable than people in cities. But if ten million people are divided into a thousand genetically isolated villages, there is a good chance that one lucky village will have a population with outstandingly high average capability, and there is a good chance that an inbreeding population with high average capability produces an occasional bunch of geniuses in a short time. The effect of genetic isolation is even stronger if the population of the village is divided by barriers of rank or caste or religion. Social snobbery can be as effective as geography in keeping people from spreading their genes widely.

A substantial fraction of the population of Europe and the Middle East in the time between 1000 BC and 1800 AD lived in genetically isolated villages, so that genetic drift may have been the most important factor making intellectual revolutions possible. Places where intellectual revolutions happened include, among many others, Jerusalem around 800 BC (the invention of monotheistic religion), Athens around 500 BC (the invention of drama and philosophy and the beginnings of science), Venice around 1300 AD (the invention of modern commerce), Florence around 1600 (the invention of modern science), and Manchester around 1750 (the invention of modern industry).

These places were all villages, with populations of a few tens of thousands, divided into tribes and social classes with even smaller populations. In each case, a small starburst of geniuses emerged from a small inbred population within a few centuries, and changed our ways of thinking irreversibly. These eruptions have many historical causes. Cultural and political accidents may provide unusual opportunities for young geniuses to exploit. But the appearance of a starburst must be to some extent a consequence of genetic drift. The examples that I mentioned all belong to Western cultures. No doubt similar starbursts of genius occurred in other cultures, but I am ignorant of the details of their history.

West’s neglect of villages as agents of change raises an important question. How likely is it that significant numbers of humans will choose to remain in genetically isolated communities in centuries to come?

You know the current situation is becoming entirely unsustainable when both the traditional religious perspective and the secular scientific perspective are increasingly in alignment concerning the pressing need to eliminate big cities.

Ironically, despite the 20th century being known for eugenicism, it may prove to be the biggest experiment in dysgenics that Man will ever know. The Alt-Right is not only scientodific, it is apparently necessary for future human achievement, if not survival.

The dangers of Facebook dating

That is clearly the important lesson women should take from this British woman's harrowing ordeal:

A British woman held as a sex slave in Italy and raped repeatedly by three men managed to escape after calling her family for help, police say.

The victim, from the north of England, originally met Mamadou Jallow, a migrant from Burkino Faso, on Facebook and travelled with him to Rosarno, south-west Italy. But when she arrived, Jallow, 37, held her against her will, took away her mobile phone and then raped her repeatedly. Two more men, from Mali, also abused her at the house, it has been claimed.

The victim, 39, was only able to escape when she managed to get access to her phone and made a secret call to her family for help. Eventually she escaped through a window and made her way to safety with the help of police.

Jallow had met the woman though Facebook and travelled to Germany to live with him. But she revealed that he was forced to flee the country after knifing a rival during a drugs dispute and they ended up in Italy, local media reports.

Well, at least she can't say he was boring, right? This is a really irresponsible article, as I think we can all agree that the real danger here is that women might become afraid to date migrants from Burkina Faso. That would be racist and we all know there is nothing worse than that.

Terror attack in Toronto

1. 9 dead, 16 injured after van strikes pedestrians in Toronto, sources say suspect is Alek Minassian.
2. Minassian is an Armenian name.
3. Armenia's opposition leader has demanded a snap parliamentary election in the wake of former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan's resignation over widespread anti-government demonstrations.
4. Why was Armenia mentioned recently? Clowns losing control. Q

Which makes me wonder if the Toronto attack could be revenge for Sargsyan being forced from office. Then again, it may be just another case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome.

What we're up against

It's hard not to be stirred by the new SJW anthem, THIS IS ME. It hits all the right rhetorical chords. Only if you understand what the composer and lyricist are doing, and what their underlying purpose is, can you grasp the pure and unapologetic evil of the song. It is literally a celebration of sin and an assault on Western civilization.

And yet, most of those who consider themselves firmly anti-SJW will be tempted to deny the possibility of any ill-intent and to defend it, in much the same way they defend Hamilton, Let It Go, and other weapons of cultural mass destruction, despite the fact that the message of hatred, defiance, and opposition is openly declared.

Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away 'cause today, I won't let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades and
Reaching for the sun (we are warriors)
Yeah, that's what we've become

My first response to hearing the song and seeing the video was to feel the profound and programmed emotional stirring. My second response was to put that emotional effect in intellectual context, and think, kill it with fire. And my third response was to reflect upon how good these evil rhetoricians are, and realize how far we have to go in order to effectively counteract their influence on the mass culture.

Don't be surprised if you find yourself feeling oddly defensive of the song. That defensiveness you are feeling is testimony to the power of the rhetoric. But review the lyrics and analyze the imagery. It is powerful cultural programming, but it loses its power and becomes transparent when viewed through coldly dialectic analytical eye. "Reaching for the sun" indeed.....

Just remember that we're the ones with the guns. We're the side with no reason for shame. We are servants of the King and the defenders of the West. They know they are guilty, they know they are damned, and they are openly flaunting their sin. They are warriors and they are at war with our God, our civilization, our faith, and our nation.

I knew nothing about the lyricist, so I looked him up. Disney, check. Gay, check. Jewish, check. He even admits that "we were tasked with writing an anthemic identity song." Quelle surprise.

Whatever. Their satanic hymns will not save them from the justice of the Almighty God in the end. Deus vult.

In defense of the Deep State

Even its proponents are now admitting its existence and are worrying that it might have gone too far:

America doesn’t have coups or tanks in the street. But a deep state of sorts exists here and it includes national security bureaucrats who use secretly collected information to shape or curb the actions of elected officials.

Some see these American bureaucrats as a vital check on the law-breaking or authoritarian or otherwise illegitimate tendencies of democratically elected officials. Others decry them as a self-serving authoritarian cabal that illegally and illegitimately undermines democratically elected officials and the policies they were elected to implement.

The truth is that the deep state, which is a real phenomenon, has long been both a threat to democratic politics and a savior of it. The problem is that it is hard to maintain its savior role without also accepting its threatening role. The two go hand in hand, and are difficult to untangle.

The deep state has been blamed for many things since Donald Trump became president, including by the president himself. Trump defenders have used the term promiscuously to include not just intelligence bureaucrats but a broader array of connected players in other administrative bureaucracies, in private industry, and in the media.

But even if we focus narrowly on the intelligence bureaucracies that conduct and use information collected secretly in the homeland, including the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), and National Security Council, there is significant evidence that the deep state has used secretly collected information opportunistically and illegally to sabotage the president and his senior officials – either as part of a concerted movement or via individuals acting more or less independently.

As deep state officials get a taste for the power that inheres in the selective revelation of such information, and if the leaks are not responded to with severe punishments, it is easy to imagine the tools that brought down Flynn being used in other contexts by national security bureaucrats with different commitments and interests.

Even the most severe critics of Trump should worry about this subtle form of anti-democratic abuse. The big loser in all this will probably be the national security bureaucracy itself and, to the extent it is weakened, the security of the American people.

This is just a Stage One admission. "Yes, it's real, but it's not that bad, and besides, it means well." That means we still have a few stages to go before everyone understands that the Deep State is the Praetorian Guard of New Babel, acting to preserve the secrets and the rule of the the elite Satanist pedophiles.

Right Ho, Jeeves #3

Right Ho, Jeeves #3: Bertie at Bay is now available in Kindle format.

BERTIE AT BAY is the third issue in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series, which tells of the travails of the inimitable Bertie Wooster, summoned from the comforts of #3A Berkley Mansions, London to Brinkley Manor by his imperious Aunt Dahlia. Love is in the air and Wodehousian shenanigans are afoot, as Wooster's well-meaning attempts to help out his friends sort out their romantic difficulties only leads to one hilarious disaster after another.

Adapted from the classic Wodehouse novel by comics legend Chuck Dixon and drawn by SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN illustrator Gary Kwapisz, BERTIE AT BAY is issue #3 of 6 in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series

But that is not all. There is more good news on the Castalia front. Both Hitler in Hell and The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon are now available in paperback editions. The former is 472 pages in our standard demi-octavo size, the latter is 550 pages in royal octavo. Due to our desire to keep them under the $19.99 price point on Amazon and the discount structure required to do that, both books are slightly more expensive on the Castalia Direct Store.

We do our best to keep our prices down and are continuing our efforts in that vein. This sometimes leads to anomalies, such as the $3 comic price and the occasional higher price on the direct store.

Beyond irreproducibility

As I observed in my most recent Voxiversity, Why the West Needs Christianity, the most serious challenge now facing science is the historical decline in the percentage of scientists who are Christians, and the concomitant decline in the personal and professional ethics of scientists that has inevitably resulted from this demographic change. And this lack of ethics is having a profoundly negative effect on science, including some unanticipated consequences.  In his book Who We Are and How We Got Here, David Reich laments the decreasing willingness of American Indian tribes to permit their DNA to be studied by genetic scientists as a result of bad behavior and broken promises by previous scientists.

Modern genomics offers an unexpected way to recover the past. African Americans—another population that has had its history stolen as its ancestors descend from people kidnapped into slavery from Africa—are at the forefront of trying to use genetics to trace roots. But if individual Native Americans often express a great interest in their genetic history, tribal councils have sometimes been hostile. A common concern is that genetic studies of Native American history are yet another example of Europeans trying to “enlighten” them. Past attempts to do so—for example, by conversion to Christianity or education in Western culture—have led to the dissolution of Native American culture. There is also an awareness that some scientists have studied Native Americans to learn about questions of interest primarily to non–Native Americans, without paying attention to the interests of Native Americans themselves.

One of the first strong responses to genetic studies of Native Americans came from the Karitiana of Amazonia. In 1996, physicians collected blood from the Karitiana, promising participants improved access to health care, which never came. Distressed by this experience, the Karitiana were at the forefront of objections to the inclusion of their samples in an international study of human genetic diversity—the Human Genome Diversity Project—and were instrumental in preventing that entire project from being funded. Ironically, DNA samples from the Karitiana have been used more than those of any other single Native American population in subsequent studies that have analyzed how Native Americans are related to other groups. The Karitiana DNA samples that have been widely studied are not from the disputed set from 1996. Instead, they are from a collection carried out in 1987 in which participants were informed about the goals of the study and told that their involvement was voluntary. However, the Karitiana people’s later experience of exploitation has put a cloud over DNA studies in this population.

Another strong response to genetic research on Native Americans came from the Havasupai, who live in the canyonlands of the U.S. Southwest. Blood from the Havasupai was sampled in 1989 by researchers at Arizona State University who were trying to understand the tribe’s high risk for type 2 diabetes. The participants gave written consent to participate in a “study [of] the causes of behavioral/medical disorders,” and the language of the consent forms gave the researchers latitude to take a very broad view of what the consent meant. The researchers then shared the samples with many other scientists who used them to study topics ranging from schizophrenia to the Havasupai’s prehistory. Representatives of the Havasupai argued that the samples were being used for a purpose different from the one to which its members understood they had agreed—that is, even if the fine print of the forms said one thing, it was clear to them when the samples were collected that the study was supposed to focus on diabetes. This dispute led to a lawsuit, the return of the samples, and an agreement by the university to pay $700,000 in compensation.

The hostility to genetic research has even entered into tribal law. In 2002, the Navajo—who along with many other Native American tribes are by treaty partly politically independent of the United States—passed a Moratorium on Genetic Research, forbidding participation of Navajo tribal members in genetic studies, whether of disease risk factors or population history. A summary of this moratorium can be found in a document prepared by the Navajo Nation, outlining points for university researchers to take into account when considering a research project. The document reads: “Human genome testing is strictly prohibited by the Tribe. Navajos were created by Changing Woman; therefore they know where they came from.”

However, David Reich manages to completely miss the point and fails to learn the obvious lesson of not lying to people and failing to deliver on one's promises.

Scientists interested in studying genetic variation in Native American populations feel frustrated with this situation. I understand something of the devastation that the coming of Europeans and Africans to the Americas wrought on Native American populations, and its effects are also evident everywhere in the data I and my colleagues analyze. But I am not aware of any cases in which research in molecular biology including genetics—a field that has arisen almost entirely since the end of the Second World War—has caused major harm to historically persecuted groups. Of course, there have been well-documented cases of the use of biological material in ways that may not have been appreciated by the people from whom it was taken, not just in Native Americans. For example, the cervical cancer tumor cells of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman from Baltimore, were distributed after her death, without her consent and without the knowledge of her family, to thousands of laboratories around the world, where they have become a mainstay of cancer research.

But overall there is an argument to be made that modern studies of DNA variation—not just in Native Americans, but also in many other groups including the San of southern Africa, Jews, the Roma of Europe, and tribal or caste groups from South Asia—are a force for good, contributing to the understanding and treatment of disease in these populations, and breaking down fixed ideas of race that have been used to justify discrimination. I wonder if the distrust that has emerged among some Native Americans might be, in the balance, doing Native Americans substantial harm. I wonder whether as a geneticist I have a responsibility to do more than just respect the wishes of those who do not wish to participate in genetic research, but instead should make a respectful but strong case for the value of such research.

Yeah, attempting to justify ethical lapses and avoid the responsibility to obtain consent on the grounds that you're ultimately doing more good than harm isn't exactly convincing when the argument is being presented by a group of godless, amoral individuals who are already known to be corrupt, untrustworthy, and ethically challenged.