What allows groups to behave intelligently? One suggestion is that groups exhibit a collective intelligence accounted for by number of women in the group, turn-taking and emotional empathizing, with group-IQ being only weakly-linked to individual IQ (Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, & Malone, 2010). Here we report tests of this model across three studies with 312 people. Contrary to prediction, individual IQ accounted for around 80% of group-IQ differences. Hypotheses that group-IQ increases with number of women in the group and with turn-taking were not supported. Reading the mind in the eyes (RME) performance was associated with individual IQ, and, in one study, with group-IQ factor scores. However, a well-fitting structural model combining data from studies 2 and 3 indicated that RME exerted no influence on the group-IQ latent factor (instead having a modest impact on a single group test). The experiments instead showed that higher individual IQ enhances group performance such that individual IQ determined 100% of latent group-IQ. Implications for future work on group-based achievement are examined.
This falls into the category of science confirming common sense. Women and gamma males, both of whom tend to be obsessed with rules and process, almost invariably get in the way of the smart individuals who drive accomplishment. Sounding boards are useful, but they are vastly overrated, particularly by the kind of people who are incapable of fulfilling a proactive role themselves.
Anyone can critique an idea or offer a nonsensical spin on it. In most cases, it is not “helping” to do so, but distracting, if not demoralizing. That is one reason why I crack down hard on those whose immediate reaction to any announcement is to try to come up with an alternative or an improvement.
My rule of thumb is this: if someone doesn’t explicitly ask me what I think about something, I try to avoid telling them what I think about it. “Congratulations” or “I hope it goes well” is by far the most useful thing you can tell anyone who tells you about a new idea or a new product.
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The Right would do well to adapt this friendly denial of service approach. The next time someone you don’t like, or of whom you don’t approve, wants you to bake a cake or whatever, just inform them that they are in conflict with your values and terms of use.
It’s particularly useful for breaking up with women. “Hey, I’m really sorry, but you’ve been found to be in conflict with my values. Because of this, I’m unable to offer you continued relationship services.”
There is no point crying about this attempt to shut down dissent and police both thoughts and speech. It’s what converged organizations do; they are more interested in your submission than your business. Pointing out their double standards and hypocrisy will accomplish nothing; they know they are hypocrites and they consider it to be a virtue.
So, build your own platform. That is the only way to avoid being techno-silenced.
Meanwhile, the Zman explains the worthlessness of the Establishment Right and why the Alt-Right need spare no sympathy for pseudo-rightists like Charles Murray now that SJWs are attacking them as well as the actual Right.
When Ann Coulter gets screamed at on campus, guys like Murray just shrug, because after all, Coulter deserves it. She’s a bad thinker.
That’s the thing with these guys. They don’t care about free speech or the open exchange of ideas. They care about their free speech and their access to the marketplace of ideas, which means staying in good with the Left. When a John Derbyshire is shut down by the campus lunatics, Conservative Inc is silent. To defend Derb or anyone else the Left has ruled out of bounds would risk their standing and that can never happen. The only core principle of these so-called conservatives is to remain on the good side of the Left.
This is not supposed to happen to good thinkers like Charles Murray, so it is a big deal to the people who pretend to be on our side. It also offers another opportunity for Conservative Inc. to pretend they are on the front lines fighting the Left. As I pointed out the other day, these guys are looking for a way to insert themselves at the front of the movement they claim to lead, at least until things get serious. You just know that one of them will be declaring himself the “respectable” version of the Dissident Right.
The incident is a good reminder of Official Right’s worthlessness. Murray’s piece reads like an apology. That’s because it is an apology. The boys and girls of Conservative Inc have always worked to position themselves at the edge of what the Left considers the respectable Right. Twenty years ago, the Bell Curve was right at the edge. Now, the Left considers it heresy and Murray knows it. It’s why he invested so much effort into advertising his opposition to Trump. It’s part of the long apology for his past heresy.
Murray is fond of the label Establishmentarians to describe his peers. While it is true that they are forever defending the establishment, they have no say in what is and what is not the “establishment.” That’s decided by the Left. Since that is always changing, most of these guys spend their days trying to justify the latest movement of the Overtone Window as conservative. It’s why a Jonah Goldberg was out declaring homosexuality a core conservative principle It’s why a National Review is pro-tranny.
It’s also why the most important project of the Dissident Right is discrediting those palace guards of the Progressive establishment. Guys like Charles Murray are useful opponents for the Left and not just because they are always willing to take a dive. Like the tomato cans that fill up the fight card for a weak champion, Conservative Inc insulates the Establishment from a real challenge. Instead of having to face off against people who are willing to punch back, the Left likes these journeyman who are just happy for the payday.
Of course, if you punch back, or even permit others to punch back, you will be deplatformed. The choice is always the same, no matter what the context. Fight back or submit.
On March 6, 2017, the President signed a new Executive Order (E.O.) on Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States that contains provisions that impact visa adjudication and issuance procedures (NOTE: this E.O. does not yet have a number. End Note). This new E.O. has an effective date of March 16, 2017 and revokes its predecessor, E.O. 13769, as of that date. We will not begin implementing the new E.O. until the Department of Justice confirms that pending litigation does not interfere with implementation of the new E.O. Further guidance will follow.
Sam Harris, who said on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Hillary Clinton would win the election (and also that Trump “terrified” him) wants to debate me….
One topic could be this: How could Sam Harris support Hillary Clinton when it’s Clinton who wanted to import radical Islam into the U.S. with her open borders policy?
Whatever, I accept Sam’s debate challenge. I suggest Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report moderate it on neutral territory.
Interesting that Harris’s fans want him to debate Mike. They probably underestimate him; I have no doubt at all that they don’t want him to debate me. I doubt Mike will have much trouble with him, though. Mike is smarter than most people think, and Sam, although smart enough, is very intellectually careless, and habitually leaves very large holes in his arguments.
I would expect Mike to be able to spot those holes without too much difficulty.
Galactic society is ruled by algorithms. From interstellar travel and planetary terraforming to artificial intelligence and agriculture, every human endeavor has become completely dependent upon the hypercomplex equations that optimize the activities making life possible across hundreds of inhabited worlds. Throughout the galaxy, Man has become dependent upon the reliable operation of ten million different automated systems.
And when things begin to go wrong and mysterious accidents begin to happen, no one has any idea what is happening, except for a sentient medical drone and the First Technocrat of Continox. But the challenge of fixing the unthinkably complicated problem of galaxy-wide algorithmic decay is made considerably more difficult by the fact the former is an outlaw and the latter is facing a death sentence.
THE CORRODING EMPIRE marks the English-language debut of Johan Kalsi, Finland’s hottest science fiction author. An accomplished geneticist as well as a 6’3″ ex-Finnish Marine, in THE CORRODING EMPIRE, Kalsi shows himself to be more Asimovian than Isaac Asimov himself! THE CORRODING EMPIRE is now available for preorder on Amazon with a retail price of $4.99. It will be released on March 20, 2017. And speaking of corroding empires, one can’t help but note that Tor Books has slashed the preorder price of John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire from $25.99 to $13.68, presumably due to insufferably good, think-y prose such as this:
Kiva Lagos was busily fucking the brains out of the assistant purser she’d been after for the last six weeks of the Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby’s trip from Lankaran to End when Second Officer Waylov Brennir entered her stateroom, unannounced. “You’re needed,” he said.
“I’m a little busy at the moment,” Kiva said. She’d just finally gotten herself into a groove, so fuck Waylov (not literally, he was awful) if she was going to get out of the groove just because he walked into it.
The Third Edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says: “If anyone stands at the core of the American science fiction tradition at the moment, it is Scalzi.” That explains a great deal about the precipitous decline of American science fiction, does it not? The award-winning McRapey is, we are frequently informed, the very best that 29-time Best Publisher Tor Books and mainstream science fiction has to offer. That may be true. Nevertheless, from concept to cover, from title to text, THE CORRODING EMPIRE is a very clear and public demonstration that the Castalia House team can do what they do, and do it better, even as an in-house joke in our copious spare time.
After all, what would be more amusing than for THE CORRODING EMPIREto outsell and outrank The Collapsing Empire? This isn’t a lame Bored of the Rings-style parody, it is, quite to the contrary, a legitimate Foundation-style novel that effectively demonstrates how hapless Tor’s latest imitative mediocrity is by comparison.
The first number produced by the extrapolated algorithm was off by one-ten billionth. There were nine zeros behind the decimal point. It was a tiny error, all but impossible to detect unless one was looking specifically for it.
The second number was off by twice that. Two in ten billion. Or, rather, one in five billion. One might more reasonably fear being struck by lightning. On a cloudless day. Indoors.
And yet, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the size of the error that was relevant so much as the fact that it existed at all. Somehow, he concluded, even though it was impossible, the data set must have become garbled. Garbage in, garbage out. Geist had run the extrap-algo more than a million times in the past month, using it to check and and recheck Orland’s agro-surveys. But there was no denying it. Somewhere, somehow, something had introduced an unknown variability into the process, but whether it was to be found in the data or the equations, he did not know.
A former civic nationalist writes to tell of his experience of discovering his white identity, much to his dismay.
I’m a recent reader of your site, and its been a boon to my ability to put language to the “race realism” I have been aware of and experienced over the course of my life. I’ve experienced first-hand the truth that race+proximity=war. The Soviet collapse brought Eastern European migrants to my Columbus, Ohio school district. These in turn formed a criminal mob, pooled resources, and bought all kinds of property. I lived across the street from a group that bought the church there. Kenyans, Somalis, and Mexicans also flocked to my area, crashing the school district, trashing the surrounding areas. Ghettos spread, crime spread, and people divided along racial lines at school, often resulting in fights. School became prison where white people were not permitted to defend themselves. This planted the seed of race realism, as you term it, though it would be many years before it germinated.
I married into a Baha’i family, and adopted the religion despite growing up as a Christian. Things were more or less fine until I had Baha’i friends who were Mexican, Japanese, and Iranian turn on me along racial lines and prevent me from participating in conversations about race/white privilege, etc…even though the religion espouses the belief that the Earth is but one country and mankind its citizens…they were not aware of the monumental irony or hypocrisy. Or how enraging it was that they live in my country, enjoying the fruits of what my forefathers built, and are more successful than I am, while simultaneously excluding me from important political/cultural discourse.
Baha’i is a religion for multi-culti liberals, and white people are gradually being shunted out of it. I discovered here that I hadn’t ever stopped being a follower of Christ, and that the simplicity of His words, deeds, and example appeal ever more to me than their pseudo-intellectual, religiously dressed-up, UN-worshipping, secular humanist, Israeli-apologist “faith”. I turned my back on these people.
My experience in the Army was not much better. In my training class of 230, whites were outnumbered by minorities, and my mestizo drill sergeant, who was a straight-up no-apologies killer, resembled more the visage and character of a cartel guy than an apple-pie Uncle Sam man. Both black drill sergeants were post-thug, but explicitly black. The female drill sergeants were either male-hating feminists, or resembled a man more than a woman in manner and appearance. The two white ones were war-weary and half-crazed, one being a rampant alcoholic. It was a total shit show, where the racial lines were barely hidden by a forced civic nationalism. That civic nationalism I dared to believe in and live out almost got me killed later. I discovered it to be a dangerous breeding ground of lies and illusions, not typically shared by members of minority groups. They didn’t share the weight of the chains I took up in the name of service to them and my supposed fellow country men. That realization broke me.
Recently, my family got caught in the sizeable crossfire of black-on-black gang violence. These people live half a mile from me, and their petty tribal violence keeps spilling out into my neighborhood. The Nu Black Power group in town has members who support their gangland “warriors”. I can do very little about this because I have no tribe and the law is against me. Some of my ever smaller group of friends have turned on me over my reaction to that event. I was forced to become explicitly white that day for the sake of my wife and children.
Everything that I’ve read of yours about these things, I have experienced first-hand. Everything I formerly believed is gone. I have no land, no flag, and I have no tribe.
What is he to do, he asks? There are only ever three choices. Run, fight, or surrender. That is a choice that every man has to make for himself. And if you will not surrender, have nowhere to run, and no tribe with whom to fight, then you have to either make or find one.
It’s a very sad situation. I would even say it is tragic considering how totally unnecessary it was and how easily it could have been avoided. But I’m not even a little surprised, because I’ve been pointing out that the USA is stone-dead for more than 13 years. If you want to better understand what has happened, and why we are now where we are today, then you might want to consider acquiring a copy of the newly published hardcover edition of the first volume of my collected columns, Innocence & Intellect, 2001-2005, for future reference. It has turned out to be an inadvertent history of America’s decline at the very moment of its supposed triumph.
Tibetan religious tradition has it that when the Dalai Lama dies, the Buddha of Compassion leaves his body and incarnates in the body of a young child. The monks immediately go out in search of this blessed child, and when they find him – as they inevitably do – he is tested by a group of high lamas and enthroned as the reincarnation of his successor.
Imagine, however, if the lamas refused to recognize that the Dalai Lama was, in fact, dead. Suppose that instead of going in search of the Buddha’s new carnal home, they hooked the corpse up to a life support machine and waited patiently for the Holy One to awake and rise up. It’s not hard to see that they would be doomed to disappointment, and furthermore, would fail to find the next Dalai Lama as well.
This is precisely our dilemma today, for America, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, is dead. By every measure, large and small, the original vision of limited government by, for and of the people has been folded, spindled and mutilated beyond recognition. When one reads the Constitution, one simply marvels at the distinct difference between its words and our present reality.
Germany planned to close its border with Austria and turn back asylum-seekers in September 2015, a move that could have dramatically changed the course of the European refugee crisis that was at its peak at the time, according to a German newspaper.
The Welt am Sonntag reported Sunday that Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers agreed Sept. 12 to send thousands of police to the border, where they were to turn back migrants who didn’t have documents entitling them to enter Germany – “including in case of asylum request.”
The plan was halted hours before it was due to take effect on Sept. 13 after officials raised concerns about the border closure during an emergency meeting at Germany’s Interior Ministry, the paper reported .
Citing interviews with several unnamed high-ranking officials involved, Welt am Sonntag reported that ministers didn’t want to take responsibility for a decision that might have been illegal under German and European law. The possibility of unpopular images of police officers blocking women and children was reportedly also a concern, resulting in a change to the police order that effectively allowed all asylum-seekers to enter the country.
It was an invasion and the German officials knew it. But they didn’t want to take responsibility for doing what was necessary or endure the inevitable media heat. So, instead they doubled down on their idiocy. And they are responsible for every theft, every rape, and every murder that has taken place since.
The rules are different this year, and so tactics have to change accordingly. One year sooner than anticipated, the Hugos are no longer about single-party domination or single-author award-pimpage, they are now divided between three to five major factions, of whom Tor and Rabid Puppies are merely the most obvious. In order to ensure a seat at the table as a faction, it’s now important to limit nominations to one per category in the bigger categories, and an absolute maximum of three in the smaller ones. Two will likely prove to be the optimal number in any category outside the five fiction categories, which this year includes the new Best Series category in addition to the usual four.
Remember, under E Pluribus Hugo, an additional nomination isn’t merely wasted, but halves the effectiveness of the primary nomination. More to come tomorrow. And yes, there will beare t-shirts from Dark Lord Designs. In any event, here are the Rabid Puppy picks for the 2017 Hugo Awards. Rabid Puppy picks for the Dragon Awards will be provided later this year. If you’re not already registered, you can’t nominate, so don’t sign up now. Especially when you can get four Castalia ebooks and the Rabid Puppies 2017 t-shirt for the same price.
BEST NOVEL An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity by J. Mulrooney
BEST NOVELLA “This Census-taker” by China Miéville
BEST NOVELETTE “Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex” by Stix Hiscock
BEST SHORT STORY “An Unimaginable Light” by John C. Wright (God, Robot)
BEST SERIES Arts of Dark and Light by Vox Day
BEST RELATED WORK Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie by Ralph McQuarrie (Abrams) The View From the Cheap Seats, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline)
BEST GRAPHIC STORY none
BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM P. Alexander, Cirsova
BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM Vox Day, Castalia House
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM Deadpool
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM “The Winds of Winter”, Game of Thrones, Miguel Sapochnik, David Benioff & D. B. Weiss
BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST Tomek Radziewicz JiHun Lee
BEST SEMIPROZINE Cirsova
BEST FANZINE Castalia House blog
BEST FANCAST The Rageaholic by Razorfist Superversive SF
BEST FAN WRITER Jeffro Johnson Morgan (Castalia House)
There is a very good case to be made that Obama and/or someone on his team is now in serious legal jeopardy as a result of the reported wire-tappings of Trump Tower:
If the stories are correct, Obama or his officials might even face prosecution. But, we are still early in all of this and there are a lot of rumors flying around so the key is if the reports are accurate. We just don’t know at this time. The stories currently are three-fold: first, that Obama’s team tried to get a warrant from a regular, Article III federal court on Trump, and was told no by someone along the way (maybe the FBI), as the evidence was that weak or non-existent; second, Obama’s team then tried to circumvent the federal judiciary’s independent role by trying to mislabel the issue one of “foreign agents,” and tried to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “courts”, and were again turned down, when the court saw Trump named (an extremely rare act of FISA court refusal of the government, suggesting the evidence was truly non-existent against Trump); and so, third, Obama circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (and apparently under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the FISA court unwittingly granted, which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump. Are these allegations true? We don’t know yet, but if any part of them are than Obama and/or his officials could face serious trouble.
Read the rest of it there. Robert Barnes goes into some detail concerning the legal minutia of the laws related to FISA and how the Obama administration almost certainly misbehaved if it even attempted to get a FISA warrant to spy on a presidential candidate.
I discussed some aspects of this at last night’s Darkstream. And as I stated, the Trump administration is already on top of it: “A senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s chief counsel, was working on Saturday to secure access to what the official described as a document issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing surveillance of Mr. Trump and his associates.”
It seems pretty clear now that a FISA warrant was secured and the subsequent wire-tapping took place. Reporter Cathy Aureu stated on Fox News that a female source, who worked in the Obama administration for nearly the whole of his two terms, confirmed that a FISA warrant was secured. However, she does not know who was responsible for securing it.
