Archive for November 2017
Thoughts on Jonny Anomaly’s article at Quillette
http://quillette.com/2017/11/29/politics-science-scientists-might-not-say-evidence-supports/
1. If James Damore (the guy from Google) was surprised that he got fired, it’s because he was stupid. Socially stupid, not intellectually stupid. He has probably become socially smarter as the result of destroying his career.
2. I think the author is afraid to come out and say that he believes in HBD, so he’s beating around the bush. However, I suppose the world needs articles like that in order to change minds.
3. This quote:
But the case for deferring to scientific consensus on politically contentious topics is much weaker. This is true because what scientists publicly say may differ from what they privately believe. It is also true because, as Nathan Cofnas argues, some of the research that bears on a topic might not get done due to the fact that those who authorize or accept funding for it might incur reputational costs for working on a topic that is likely to produce results that most people don’t want to believe.
That’s why you shouldn’t believe the “consensus” on “climate change.” It’s the same as the consensus that there’s no genetic difference in intelligence between blacks and whites, or no biological difference in interest in computer programming between men and women.
4. Quillette still seems like an alt-right website where the articles have a higher reading level and sophisticated plausible deniability.
T-Rex extinction
What does it mean for Trump?
Neither a borrower nor a lender be
In Hamlet, Polonius counsels his son:
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
“Husbandry” means the management and conservation of resources in general, not the more common modern usage specifically meaning the care, cultivation and breeding of crops. So Polonius means that borrowing harms your ability to take care of your money and property in a prudent manner such that you never fall into the trap of needing to borrow in the first place.
Those who believe in libertarian economics believe that humans are hyper-rational consumers who only spend money after careful consideration that the spending of it increases their utility by an amount greater than what is spent.
But society has always known that the libertarian belief is false. 400 years ago, Polonius knew that his son needed to be trained to have higher future-time orientation, otherwise he’d spend all of his money on hookers and booze and useless trinkets and have nothing left for his future married life. So don’t borrow money you don’t have, and don’t lend money to your friend because that just enables your friend to behave in an imprudent spendthrift manner and furthermore you might not get paid back and may lose a friend trying to get paid back.
Polonius’ advice is badly needed by American proles. According to Google, 40% of Americans have credit card debt, and the average amount of debt is scarily high.
This is where the government should step in. When people act against their own interests, and they lack a wise father like Polonius to set them straight (and the percent of people who even have a father who was married to their mother and helped raise them is shrinking every year), for the good of society the government should step in and prevent people from making bad decisions.
But aided and abetted by Republicans, the government has been doing the opposite by enabling student loans for bogus for-profit colleges. Also, there used to be usury laws to prevent people from being ripped off too badly by unscrupulous lenders, but libertarian types are against those laws because they “interfere with the free market.”
Nazi sympathizer fired
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/30/nazi-sympathizer-loses-job/
The guy who foolishly allowed himself to be profiled in the NY Times last week for being a Nazi sympathizer was fired from his food service job. Not only was he fired, but his wife and brother-in-law were also fired.
Comment about Glenn Thrush
Here’s another comment from “fortaleza84”:
If you are a man who attains some degree of status and power, suddenly girls start treating you very differently. They are eager to spend time with you; if you meet them for a cup of coffee, they don’t come late, they don’t flake at the last minute for some ridiculous reason; they don’t take cell phone calls while you are together; and they dress nicely for you. Perhaps most importantly, they are interested in learning about you.
If you are a man in this situation, what are you supposed to do? Normally when a girl acts this way towards you, it’s an indication that she is very much sexually interested. If a girl acts towards you as if she is sexually interested, and you are interested in her, the naturally thing is to make a sexual advance and see what happens. But unfortunately, just about any sexual advance can be spun as sexual harassment if it turns out to have been unwelcome.
And a lot of these girls have no interest in having sexual relations or a sexual relationship with the men in question, they are just hoping — consciously or subconsciously — that the man will do nice things for them simply because they deign to pay attention to him. But then again, some of them probably really do want to take things further.
So if you are a man with status and power, the only way to be safe is to refrain from hitting on any girls in connection with work and to avoid any situation which could be spun as sexual harassment.
The situation involving Thrush is instructive. One of the girls who accused him was with him at an informal gathering of journalists at a bar. She said right in the article that he was the sort of person who would be good to know. The gathering broke up and dwindled down to the two of them, sitting alone in a booth together. Thrush allegedly put his hand on her bare leg (apparently wearing a miniskirt) and tried to kiss her. She rebuffed his advance, pushed past him, and left.
The first point of the story is that this girl could have easily left with the other guests but instead lingered with Thrush; she was dressed at least somewhat provocatively. It seems pretty clear that she wanted to make use of his status and connections and was at least interested in paying him special attention to get what she wanted. Second, she had to have known that any man in that situation would see her actions as a green light to make a pass at her. Third, he in fact did make a pass at her but it was pretty mild and evidently he desisted once it became clear his advances were unwelcome. But even given all this, she still perceived his conduct as inappropriate.
Like I said above, the only safe thing for Thrush to have done would have been to refrain from hitting on this girl and give up the possibility of a sexual relationship with her. As I said, to be super-cautious.
Addressing the specific question of “If you are a man in this situation, what are you supposed to do?” One answer is that you could be like Mike Pence. Mike Pence would never have been in that situation because he has a policy of never going anyplace where there is alcohol being served unless his wife is with him.
This comment also demonstrates how these purges have nothing to do with men who are regular cubical workers (or HVAC technicians for that matter). Women aren’t gong to flirt with those types of men. And besides, corporations already will fire a regular cubicle worker with the slightest hint of any sexual misconduct. It’s powerful men in the media industries for whom the rules weren’t enforced until now.
And I don’t watch any of these news shows anyway. If all of the male talking heads are replaced by bimbos, I don’t care. I just mourn for the old Squawk Box on CNBC when it was three grumpy non-liberal men talking stocks, before they added bimbo Becky Quick and pretty boy Carl Quintanilla.
Regarding the story about Thrush, it sounds like the girl thought she could turn Thrush into what gamesters call a “beta orbiter,” but high-status men don’t become beta orbiters.
The positional good of living in a good neighborhood
An unknown commenter writes:
The “nice neighborhoods” with “good schools” are becoming prohibitively expensive for many people, and it’s only going to get worse.
As I’ve stated many times before (and I think Steve Sailer said it first), the worst part about being poor (in modern-day America) is that you are forced to live in the same neighborhood as other poor people, and send your kids to schools full of other poor kids.
Living in a good neighborhood is a positional good. Wikipedia defines a positional good:
Positional goods are goods valued only by how they are distributed among the population, not by how many goods there are in total. For example, getting a college degree is useful in the job market because it helps the new graduate, yet slightly worsens the situation for all others holding that degree as it increases competition from that graduate. That is, the total benefit from all instances of a positional good is zero-sum, neither increasing nor decreasing.
Our value-transference economy is based primarily on positional goods, but too many are still stuck in 19th century economic thinking. “Economic growth” and tax cuts are of no benefit to people who can’t afford to move to “good” neighborhoods, such things just increases everyone’s nominal wealth and the cost of the “good” neighborhood goes up proportionally and remains just as unaffordable as it was before.
* * *
In fact, I would say that the cost of desirable positional goods have been increasing faster than the rate of inflation and faster than the rate of growth of the median person’s income. This is a consequence of the top 1% (and other topmost percents) getting a larger share of the wealth, which they then use to buy up the best positional goods for not only themselves, but also for their children.
Republican tax cuts for the top 1% will only make things WORSE (except for those already in the top 1% or who have parents in the top 1% who give them financial support).
Pat Buchanan says to vote for Roy Moore.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/11/28/why_roy_moore_matters_135629.html
Three reasons:
1. Judges.
2. Judges.
3. Judges.
While I think it would be a bad thing if conservative justices on the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade as Buchanan still hopes will happen one day, there is no doubt that we need conservative judges, because liberal judges will find that people in other countries have a constitutional right to immigrate here, and transgenderism is a constitutional right, and other crazy nonsense.
And just as scary, liberal judges will stop protecting free-speech rights of what they consider to be “racist” speech. That’s already the case in Europe, and liberals would love to bring that to America.
NBC has to fire Matt Lauer
http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/29/media/matt-lauer/index.html
After the purges are finished, will there be any male news anchors left, or will TV news become entirely female?
But when Trump-hating liberals get fired for sexual misconduct, they are getting their just deserts. So I hope the purges continue.
* * *
Comment from fortaleza84:
I do think that there will be male news anchors in the future but they will be more like Mike Pence, i.e. super-cautious in terms of interacting with women.
What’s happening now is that the rules of the game are being changed retroactively. For high status men, anyway. For low status men, it’s always been the case that one complaint can get you fired. It’s just that for low status men in the workplace, it’s unusual for them to be in situations where they are alone with an attractive female co-worker.
* * *
And now the host of some NPR show I never heard of has been fired.
The purge continues!
http://www.startribune.com/garrison-keillor-reportedly-fired-for-improper-behavior/460802703/#1
In an email to the Star Tribune Wednesday, Keillor said, “I put my hand on a woman’s bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”
Well he THOUGHT she was a friend, but she secretly hated him for being an old and ugly beta male.
The benefit of blue-pillism
Commenter Andy Byron writes: “It’s quite lonely being in the real world if everyone else is living in the Matrix.”
Lion of the Blogosphere 