Author: VD

Never far from controversy

Allum Bokhari publishes an article about The Complete List of SJW on Breitbart:

Sci-fi author, game designer, and provocateur Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) is never far from controversy. His latest project, a crowdsourced attempt to catalogue every social justice warrior (left-wing political activists known for their intolerant attitudes) in existence is no exception.

The project, called “SJWlist,” describes itself as a resource to “help SJW-converged organizations locate and identify Social Justice Warriors they wish to hire or otherwise support.” However, critics of Vox Day are calling it a blacklist. Even some opponents of SJWs have distanced themselves from the project.

The 200-strong list already features some of the most notorious names in the world of social justice activism. It includes Australian feminist Clementine Ford, known for getting a man fired over a Facebook comment; Melissa Click, known for her attempt to use physical force to expel a student journalist from a public demonstration; and Randi Lee Harper, known for inciting reputation-destroying internet mobs against her political and personal rivals.

Given SJWs’ penchant for destroying the lives and careers of their opponents, Vox Day’s defenders argue that tracking their activities is a relatively mild response. Day’s recent book, SJWs Always Lie, instructs opponents of the regressive left-wing activists to always “punch back twice as hard,” and defenders of Day argue that this is precisely what SJWlist is doing.

It’s a very fair and balanced article, presenting both the pros and cons, but it is clear from the comments that most people on the right support the list, some of them very enthusiastically. The counter-arguments have to date proven extremely weak and unconvincing; no one has any ideas at all how to stop the SJWs from running roughshod over people other than “be nice to them and hope they’ll stop”.

I can only conclude they haven’t read SJWAL yet, because that is absolutely terrible advice akin to the Swedish government telling Swedish women to tell a migrant intending to rape her “stop” in an authoritative manner. These moderates have no tactics, they have no strategy, they have nothing but wishful thinking to offer. Which is why I usually just ignore them and you should too.

And some have asked about the new SJW doxxing campaign called SocialAutopsy, which is now on Kickstarter. The SJWs behind it have already been added to the list, and if they follow through on their plans, their pages on the SJW List will perfectly reflect whatever tactics they use.

What the SJWs fail to realize is that they lost their ability to influence us once they managed to make us unhireable one way or another. No SJW-influenced organization will ever hire me for anything, and I realized that back in 2008. But having reached that realization, I also realized that I was now free of any employment-related constraints on my actions. As it turns out, there are far more people who are not SJWs and their numbers are growing every day as SJWs increasingly attack moderates and even leftists who fail to submit, or even keep up, with their dynamic Narrative.

The fact that SJWs fear being on the SJW List is an indication that not only are their intimidation tactics failing, they know they are failing. And that scares them, because SJWs Always Project and they fear others doing to them what they have been trying to do to others: discredit, disemploy, and destroy.

UPDATE: BC explains the problem with her position to Status 451 in the comments there.

Look, when the Germans started using poison gas in WWI, the British, French and other allied forces did not tsk tsk disapprovingly and show themselves to be the better people in order to convince the Germans through example to stop using such dastardly tactics. No, they used poison gas right back against the Germans, and did it even more effectively. Please note that this did not turn them into Germans.

The result? Everyone stopped using poison gas.

In the Culture Wars, holding oneself above the fray and showing that you are a better person has a consistent record of losing on nearly every issue for the past 60+ years. It doesn’t work. It is time for different tactics, to fight fire with fire, so to speak.

If you are not willing to fight the good fight, so be it. At least stop turning your guns on your erstwhile allies because… *gasp* …they are using effective tactics that work.

The Free Trade debate

At 7 PM Eastern, the free trade debate between Dr. James
Miller, PhD, JD, and Associate Professor of Economics at Smith College, and Vox Day, Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil, will begin.

There are 250 seats left, and you can register for the free event here. 

This is an open thread for those watching the debate to discuss it as it is happening. Please be polite to Dr. Miller regardless of whether you agree with him or think well of his arguments or not. As for me, well, feel free to identify any holes in the arguments I present… if you can.

UPDATE: Great turnout for such an esoteric matter. 278 people showed up over the course of the event. We held a show of hands before and after the debate. The numbers aren’t even because there were 170 people at the beginning and 215 at the end.

FREE TRADE PRO: 35 to 24
FREE TRADE ANTI: 80 to 110
NEUTRAL: 55 to 50

While Dr. Miller graciously conceded the actual debate, I think he nevertheless won the evening with his AI bombshell. It was spectacular.

The anger is rising

Ron Paul correctly identifies two locuses of European anger at US foreign policy:

The anger is rising and there is no telling where it will end. In June, the United Kingdom will vote on whether to exit the European Union. The campaign for an exit is broad-based, bringing in conservatives, populists, and progressives. Regardless of the outcome, the vote should be considered very important. Europeans are tired of their unelected leaders in Brussels pushing them around and destroying their financial and personal security by following Washington’s foolish interventionism. No one can call any of these recent interventions a success and the Europeans know it.

One way or the other, the US empire is coming to an end. Either the money will go or the allies will go, but it cannot be sustained. The sooner the American people demand an end to these foolish policies the better.

Speaking as someone who is nominally an American living in Europe – although my European friends not infrequently hasten to add that they don’t consider me one any longer – it has been absolutely astonishing to observe the change in European attitudes towards the USA and towards Americans over the last two decades.

When we first arrived here, everyone wanted to visit the USA. Being an American meant you were treated like a minor rock star, particularly if you could speak even a little of the native language. But over the last five years, attitudes have changed dramatically, particularly among the young. Nowadays, one is more likely to meet with narrowed eyes and suspicion than smiles and expressions of admiration.

Europeans know perfectly well who is behind the coups in Ukraine and the Middle East, the banking debacles, and the unelected EU officials in Brussels. And most of them are not particularly pleased with any of these events.

It’s common for Americans to sneer at Europeans and brag about how they had to “defend Europe”. But what history-challenged Americans always seem to forget is that all they were doing was defending one set of Europeans from another. And the two most recent American interventions in Europe have been a) the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and b) preventing the Christian Serbs from defeating the Muslim Bosnians.

Dr. Jerry Pournelle wins 2016 Heinlein Memorial award

I am very pleased to see Dr. Pournelle recognized for his many contributions to Man’s exploration and development of space. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to have the opportunity to work with such a brilliant man and he continues to be an inspiration to those of us who believe in the importance of Man and Western civilization. Congratulations, Dr. Pournelle! – Vox

The National Space Society takes great pleasure in announcing that
its 2016 Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award has been won by acclaimed
science fiction author Dr. Jerry Pournelle. This prestigious award
selected by an international vote of NSS members will be presented to
Dr. Jerry Pournelle at the 2016 International Space Development
Conference (ISDC).The public is welcome to
attend the conference and see the award presentation at the Sheraton
Puerto Rico Hotel and Casino in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The ISDC will run
from May 18-22, 2016.

About Dr. Jerry Pournelle

This award recognizes Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s many years of support for
space science, exploration, development and settlement and his close
association with Robert Heinlein. He was active in the NSS predecessor,
the L5 Society, during its early years. Jerry served as co-chair of the
very first ISDC, NSS secretary, and as a Board member.

Jerry was also Chair of the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National
Space Policy. This group was active during the 1980s and was one of the
most effective groups promoting specific space related policy positions
at that time. Robert Heinlein was also an active member of that group.
The group’s early support of missile defense eventually led to the
perceived need for an inexpensive launcher. The briefing that he and two
others gave to then Vice President Quayle was instrumental in getting
the approval of the DC-X program, overcoming widespread skepticism about
the project. Jerry was present at White Sands on September 11, 1993
when the first large rocket, the DC-X vehicle, was reused.

Jerry has consistently supported the vision of self-sustaining human
settlements in space and on planetary surfaces, and as part of a free,
spacefaring civilization, which is at the very heart of the space
movement. Jerry’s work as a science fiction author, focusing on science
fiction with realistic physics, has contributed to a better
understanding of the limitations and the abilities of human space
operations. Few have made such a rich contribution to these fields.

About the Robert A. Heinlein Award

This award is presented once every two years for lifetime achievement
in promoting the goal of a free, spacefaring civilization. The winner
is decided by the vote of the entire NSS membership, not by the awards
committee. The award consists of a miniature signal cannon, on a
mahogany base with a black granite inlay and a brass plaque as shown.
The award concept came from Robert Heinlein’s classic book The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress. Some of the early award winners include Sir Arthur C.
Clarke, Carl Sagan, Neil Armstrong and Elon Musk. More information about
this award and the past winners is here.

The intrinsic unreliability of science

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

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

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

Paradoxically, the situation is actually made worse by the
fact that a promising connection is often studied by several
independent teams. To see why, suppose that three groups of researchers
are studying a phenomenon, and when all the data are analyzed, one group
announces that it has discovered a connection, but the other two find
nothing of note. Assuming that all the tests involved have a high
statistical power, the lone positive finding is almost certainly the
spurious one. However, when it comes time to report these findings, what
happens? The teams that found a negative result may not even bother to
write up their non-discovery. After all, a report that a fanciful
connection probably isn’t true is not the stuff of which scientific
prizes, grant money, and tenure decisions are made.
And even if they did write it up, it probably wouldn’t be
accepted for publication. Journals are in competition with one another
for attention and “impact factor,” and are always more eager to report a
new, exciting finding than a killjoy failure to find an association. In
fact, both of these effects can be quantified. Since the majority of
all investigated hypotheses are false, if positive and negative evidence
were written up and accepted for publication in equal proportions, then
the majority of articles in scientific journals should report no
findings. When tallies are actually made, though, the precise opposite
turns out to be true: Nearly every published scientific article reports
the presence of an association. There must be massive bias at work. 
Ioannidis’s argument would be potent even if all
scientists were angels motivated by the best of intentions, but when the
human element is considered, the picture becomes truly dismal.
Scientists have long been aware of something euphemistically called the
“experimenter effect”: the curious fact that when a phenomenon is
investigated by a researcher who happens to believe in the phenomenon,
it is far more likely to be detected. Much of the effect can likely be
explained by researchers unconsciously giving hints or suggestions to
their human or animal subjects, perhaps in something as subtle as body
language or tone of voice. Even those with the best of intentions have
been caught fudging measurements, or making small errors in rounding or
in statistical analysis that happen to give a more favorable result.
Very often, this is just the result of an honest statistical error that
leads to a desirable outcome, and therefore it isn’t checked as
deliberately as it might have been had it pointed in the opposite
direction. 

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

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

Brainstorm debate: Free Trade

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

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

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

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

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

The Second Law in effect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
TIL @voxday is a delicate, sensitive soul It’ll be okay man 🙁

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fence-sitter’s lament

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open borders is anti-libertarian

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

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

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

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

Open-Borders, or the Camp of the Saints Problem

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

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

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

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

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

Book of the Week


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

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

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

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