Author: VD

Mailvox: idiocratic rule

A reader learns that the idiocracy extends to the highest levels of government:

I thought you would enjoy this, given your recent post on our current state of idiocracy.  The following is an outline of actual remarks to be delivered by an actual high-level USG official, redacted to protect identity. 

Draft Remarks
[High-Level USG Official] Participation in the [EVENT REDACTED]

•    First of all, wow.  Just, wow. 

•    As [High Level USG] for the last five years, I have had the chance to travel far and wide across the Americas.  I have crossed borders between many countries, and have had the chance to see firsthand the professionalism, the challenges, and sometimes the difficulty of national relationships.  And one of the best ways you can determine the relationship between two countries is to look at how it structures, manages, or doesn’t, its shared border.

Wow, just wow, indeed. How far is the West fallen from the days of diplomats such as Talleyrand, Goethe and Don Giovanni de Medici.

Mailvox: in defense of Baby Boomers

Chris has some thoughts on just how responsible the Boomers are for the present state of the USA:

Having long ago contended with the fallacy of conspiracy theories, I formulated more of a humanity based explanation for human societal and cultural phenomenon.  Therefore, I would like to put forth a few ideas to defend boomers from the blame you seem to assign them for current problems and the general direction of decline in western society. I think the generalization of blaming boomers is a mistake.

The point here is not to defend boomers per se, but to consider the causes of generational uniqueness as external to any generation or group.  After all, humanity hasn’t changed fundamentally.  Boomers weren’t different as a species from the generations a few before, nor a few after.  The conditions of the world have been changing dramatically (while humanity has not), and humanity’s circumstances therefore are the more likely key ingredients for the path we are on. 

I’m not saying bad decisions were not made by boomers, but what conditions accommodated those decisions, and allowed a series of degenerate shifts in society at all levels, without consequence to their near term survival?

My answer is prosperity.  Without proper governance (which humanity seems incapable of), prosperity sows the seeds of its own destruction.  This is not without historical precedence.  Study prosperous societies (for example: Roman, or Greek), and how they end.  Why don’t they last?  Human nature under prosperous conditions is destructive, and the prosperity creates an environment where the feedback for stupid decisions is blunted if not eliminated.  The feedback in prosperity is certainly not consequential to survival. 

After all, why do you think “feelings” have been elevated to such a level of reverence in our society?  Survival is no longer a factor, so the focus of the survival instinct has shifted to “feelings.”  Before prosperity, anyone with a propensity to focus on feelings had a survival disadvantage.  Now, they don’t.  The personality characteristics that come with focusing on ones feelings are clearly destructive in many ways. 

The advantages of principled decisions and common sense are reduced in proportion to prosperity, the proportion of the population without proper mooring to reality rises.  Worse yet, they thrive.  SJW are the realization of the fulfillment of this populations’ “self-actualizations.”  It wouldn’t be possible without prosperity.  They wouldn’t be tolerated or even given attention if survival were an issue, and their own survival would be threatened by their own propensities. 

The human (and Christian) trait of empathy works best under conditions where survival is threatened.  For those whose empathy is not tempered by rational principles and larger historically informed context, poor decisions are common: for example supporting illegal immigration. 

In the end, the proportion of the population with destructive characteristics rises.  Their power also rises because there is no survival threat for their psychological self-absorption or other anti-survival characteristics.  It is the diversity of humanity, in the presence of prosperity, which allows devolving of key elements of a prosperous society, because the worst characteristics can thrive. 

There are plenty of boomers who didn’t (and don’t) agree with the path taken.  A huge number didn’t just lie down and let it happen, but it happened anyway.  There was a dramatic rapid shift in society.  The rules changed wickedly fast with only subtle evidence at first.

The shift to the current state was rapid, and hard to believe in real time.  Things that seemed ridiculous, nonsensical, even impossible, occurred, and then became mainstream so rapidly many were blindsided.  The ones who saw it coming were actually considered kooks.  “How could that ever happen?”  “You are nuts.”  There was no reward for having warned of the future.

Boomers grew up when survival was still at the forefront of people’s minds, just one generation removed from the great depression.  They didn’t recognize there would be no negative consequences for all the irrational foolishness and abandoning of common sense.  And when there were no consequences, the bar was moved, and those trying to hold the line were marginalized.  This is still happening today. 

Those of us who saw it coming, and thought we were working against the wave, didn’t realize it was a tsunami.  And could only be stopped, can only be stopped ever, by a larger counter-tsunami.  Otherwise, maybe the flood comes, and we start over with natural selection in survival mode.  Humanity seems to self-select best when survival required good choices.

I think it is reasonable to say that the Boomers didn’t grasp the consequences of their actions and their ideology in their youth. And perhaps that is even moderately excusable. But what I, and other Generation Xers find so unforgivable, is the way that so many Boomers still attempt to justify their actions, defend their ideology, and deny the consequences observed.

The penitent can be forgiven. But how can one forgive the unrepentant?

Book of the Week: Son of the Black Sword

When I first heard that Larry Correia was dipping his toe into “epic fantasy”, I have to admit that I rolled my eyes a little. How, I wondered, was he going to transform his patented gun porn, in which he lovingly chronicles every detail of a firearm, right down to the special blend of custom gunpowder that was formulated by the gunsmith for maximum impact, and which is of particular appeal to his core audience, into faux medieval terms?

I had visions of entire chapters being dedicated to the forging of Very Special Swords, and frankly, I doubted it was going to be as entertaining; a portrayal of a man testing the heft and balance of a sword just isn’t the same as one competitively testing out the accuracy of a firearm at a firing range. Also, no vampires, werewolves, or Agent Franks.

But I should have known better. The most recent Monster Hunter International book showed how Larry has improved as a writer, both in terms of conceptual originality and characterizations. Son of the Black Sword represents another step forward for him; Correia may be a bestselling author, but unlike other bestsellers in the SF/F field, he has not been content to stand pat and keep churning out the same sort of thing over and over again, he has instead continued to refine his craft.

Son of the Black Sword is not, strictly speaking, epic fantasy. Neither is it high fantasy. I would describe it more as high sword & sorcery as there is a distinct flavor of REH about both the hero and the world, neither of which owe anything at all to JRR Tolkien, much less Robert Jordan, or, some political machinations aside, GRR Martin.

While I was less impressed with the worldbuilding than John C. Wright was, it is a competent use of the seldom-seen-in-fantasy Indian caste system and lends itself nicely to several key aspects of the plot. As you’d expect from Correia, there is a lot of action and the story never bogs down from start to finish. What you might not expect from him is some better-than-average characterizations, and the tale of the protagonist, Ashok, is gradually unveiled in a remarkably sensitive, even touching manner considering that he is a nigh-unstoppable killing machine with no more inclination towards mercy than the average Terminator.

And what you definitely won’t expect from Correia is an intelligent subtext running throughout the novel providing a subtle metacommentary on the civilization-scale challenge facing Western society today. It is so subtle, in fact, that I’m not entirely certain Correia actually intended it, but regardless, it gives Son of the Black Sword an amount of the melancholy depth that endows the Conan stories with enduring power.

Although it will come as unwelcome news to some, Son of the Black Sword shows Larry Correia in the process of transformation from a popular author to a very good author who merely happens to be popular. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys action-fantasy, martial arts revenge thrillers, political intrigue, sword & sorcery, or in particular, RE Howard’s Conan.

Idolocracy and idiocracy

I saw part of an episode of American Idol last night, and what struck me immediately was that it, and the commercials run for its viewers, was entertainment for retards and children. There was an Angry Birds skit/commercial that was very nearly as embarrassing as it was insulting to the intelligence of the audience. As near as I could tell in the 10 minutes or so that I managed to endure it, it looked as if it was aiming for an audience with an IQ of around 85-90. This makes commercial sense, of course, given the fact that I’ve calculated the average US IQ has fallen at least four points based on demographic change alone.

I thought my calculation was pessimistic for the long-term fate of the USA, but it turns out that the situation may well be considerably worse. If Bruce Charlton and Michael Woodley are correct, idiocracy is already here and there appears to be no way to reverse the course of the intellectual decline short of either a) a cataclysmic collapse and rebuilding of Western society or b) totalitarian scientific eugenicism on steroids.

It has been a fascinating, and I must admit horrifying, three-and-a-bit years since Michael Woodley and I first discovered the first objective evidence that there has been a very substantial decline in general intelligence (‘g’) over the past two hundred years – the evidence was posted on this blog just a few hours after we discovered it:

Since then, Michael has taken the lead in replicating this finding in multiple other forms of data, and in a variety of paradigms; and learning more about the magnitude of change and its timescale. His industry has been astonishing! 

We currently believe that general intelligence has declined by approximately two standard deviations (which is approximately 30 IQ points) since 1800 – that is, over about 8 generations.

Such a decline is astonishing – at first sight. But its magnitude has been obscured by social and medical changes so that we underestimate intelligence in 1800 and over-estimate intelligence now.

On the other hand, magnitude and rapidity of decline in world class geniuses in the West (and of major innovations) does imply a decline of intelligence of at least 2 SDs – so from that perspective the rate and size of decline is pretty much as-expected.

So much for the quaint notions of a shiny, sexy, seculatopia where reason and logic would reign over all. If they are right, we’ll be fortunate if our great-great-grandchildren don’t return to the trees and seas, a-grunting as they go.

To a certain extent, the crisis facing the species is similar to that of Nigeria, only writ large. Whereas the Nigerian population used to be limited by high child mortality and was able to feed itself, the importation of Western science and medical care reduced the child mortality rate, caused the population to explode, and has rendered the nation both unable to feed itself, and less intelligent on average as well.

In the West, one need only compare the difference between the popular books of fifty, one hundred, and two hundred years ago with today’s bestsellers to observe that there has been a prodigious decline in reader’s tastes, despite the fact that the less-intelligent half of the population doesn’t read at all.

These changes are not merely dysgenic and dyscivic, they are dyscivilizational. Which causes me to suspect that the future trend is not merely going to be nationalistic, but highly eugenicist as well. The first nation to ensure its homogenuity and solve the declining intelligence challenge will have a significant advantage over all the rest. The only upside that I see is that there should be no desire whatsoever to attack and rule over other nations and populations, although that carries some potentially ominous implications too.

I certainly hope they’re wrong, because it’s enough to make even a hard-core atheist science-fetishist want to say: “Come, Lord Jesus, and soon!”

Sanders sweeps Saturday caucuses

Hillary’s meltdown continues:

Bernie Sanders swept all three Democratic caucuses Saturday — scoring
victories in Hawaii, Alaska and delegate-rich Washington state.

While the underdog’s West Coast wins are not nearly enough to trip up
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination, his
wide margin of victory provides his campaign with a burst of momentum
heading into a 10-day break before the next primary contest. The Vermont
senator’s big victories are also typically followed by a considerable
fundraising bump.

Sanders was victorious in Washington state’s caucuses 72.7 percent
to Clinton’s 27.1 percent and won Alaska’s caucuses by a landslide,
defeating Clinton 81.6 percent to 18.4 percent. At 4 a.m. Sunday, with
87.8 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders was declared the winner in
Hawaii, leading Clinton 70.6 percent to 29.2 percent.

I will be surprised if Hillary Clinton doesn’t withdraw from the race for health reasons before the DNC. She quite clearly is not well and she won’t want to endure the humiliation of losing to such an obvious no-hoper as Sanders.

Stupidity vs psychopathy

That is the correct way to describe the argumentum ad absurdum of the religious mind versus the rational mind:

To believe in a supernatural god or universal spirit, people appear to suppress the brain network used for analytical thinking and engage the empathetic network, the scientists say. When thinking analytically about the physical world, people appear to do the opposite.

“When there’s a question of faith, from the analytic point of view, it may seem absurd,” said Tony Jack, who led the research. “But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical/analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight.”

Jack is an associate professor of philosophy at Case Western Reserve and research director of the university’s Inamori International Center of Ethics and Excellence, which helped sponsor the research.


”A stream of research in cognitive psychology has shown and claims that people who have faith (i.e., are religious or spiritual) are not as smart as others. They actually might claim they are less intelligent.,” said Richard Boyatzis, distinguished university professor and professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve, and a member of Jack’s team.

“Our studies confirmed that statistical relationship, but at the same time showed that people with faith are more prosocial and empathic,” he said.

In a series of eight experiments, the researchers found the more empathetic the person, the more likely he or she is religious.

That finding offers a new explanation for past research showing women tend to hold more religious or spiritual worldviews than men. The gap may be because women have a stronger tendency toward empathetic concern than men.

Atheists, the researchers found, are most closely aligned with psychopaths—not killers, but the vast majority of psychopaths classified as such due to their lack of empathy for others.

This is yet another piece of scientific evidence in support of my hypothesis that atheism is nothing more than the predictable consequence of being neurologically atypical; that atheism is what might as reasonably be described as social autism.

Which, of course, is just another way of describing a lack of empathy. This makes sense, as I have all the attributes of the average atheist, with one key exception: I am highly empathetic. The short answer to the common question: “how can you believe in God when you are highly intelligent and well-educated” is “Because I am capable of empathizing with my fellow Man.”

As will be clear to anyone who has read the Metaphysics bestseller, On the Existence of Gods, atheism is not a rational position justified by reason and evidence. It is, quite to the contrary, an instinctive and emotional reaction to the atheist’s inability to identify with and relate to the world around him. This is why most atheists become atheists in their teenage years, and why so few are able to provide any justification for their atheism beyond a highly subjective appeal to their own credulity.

That doesn’t mean that atheism is not a legitimate expression of disbelief. It absolutely is, it simply isn’t what it purports to be.

However, it also explains the intrinsic distrust that normal individuals harbor for atheists; it is the same distrust they harbor for psychopaths and others who do not “read” normally.

As I once told Sam Harris in an email when I was helping him with the neurology experiment that led to The Moral Landscape, the scientific investigation into belief and unbelief is far more likely to discover things that trouble the atheist perspective considerably more than the religious one.

For example, if we can ever cure psychopathy by instilling empathy into those who lack it, one likely consequence will be the eventual elimination of atheism. And if the suppression of religious belief necessarily means the suppression of empathy, this renders all dreams of a functional post-religious society intrinsically impossible.

In any event, this will provide a useful rhetorical weapon for the theists. The next time an atheist tells you that you are less intelligent because you believe in God, the obvious response is that you are also, unlike the atheist, not a psychopath.

He is risen

While Christmas is the expression of Christian hope, Easter is the expression of Christian certainty. It is of particular import at this time, when the once-Christian West, having fallen away from its faith, reels before five decades of invasion from the pagan East and South.

But it is always darkest before the dawn and this present darkness is far from the most dangerous that Christianity or Western civilization have endured.

The solution to the decline of the West is not to be found in politics, in tribalism, in violence, or even in the courage of its defenders. The solution is the hope that can only come from the faith in the Risen Lord Jesus Christ and obedience to the Word of God.

Without that faith, Western Man lacks purpose. Without that obedience, the nations of Europe miss the societal discipline that made them historically great. As C.R. Hallpike has shown, neither science nor secular humanism are credible replacements for Christianity and the cultural confidence that is a consequence of Christian hope and Christian faith.

So, don’t despair that the soldiers of Islam are on the march again. Don’t despair that the weak-in-faith have succumbed to temptation and doubt and have fallen away. Don’t despair that the numbers of the faithful have dwindled. Don’t despair that the pews of the unfaithful churches are empty. Don’t despair that those who call themselves Christian leaders throw the children’s bread to the dogs.

And don’t be surprised that the worship of the world and acceptance of its Narrative has enervated the converged institutions. All of this should fill you with confidence, with certainty, because all of it is exactly as we were told it would be.

Remember, Jesus Christ of Nazareth required a mere 12 apostles to change the course of human history and shake the world. It doesn’t matter if there are one billion believers or only one dozen, the Gates of Hell will not prevail.

So stand firm in your faith. Stand fast. Speak fearlessly. When you feel fear, when you feel doubt, think about the empty tomb. For he is risen and he has not given you a spirit of fear, but of victory. The victory that we celebrate today.

Happy Easter.

A review of “Safe Space as Rape Room”

Lela Buis reviews the series:

This work is an expose about pedophilia within the SFF community. It’s posted by Castalia House in five parts on their website, plus three appendices for supplementary information. Like most people, I’ve been aware that particular members of the community had a dark side to their reputations, but this is an eye-opener. I’m impressed by the author’s integrity, and the challenges he brings about dealing with the problems. The law is the law, and everyone needs to observe it, regardless of their personal philosophies.

The only issue I have with this is that it gets sidetracked with attacks on John Scalzi as past president of the SFWA, and others, as enablers. However overwrought the charges, I have to admit Daniel does have a point with some of these complaints. I’m tempted to say this series should be required reading, but readers should keep in mind that Castalia House has an axe to grind, especially with Scalzi.

Four stars.

For me, the most damning thing has been the reaction to the series on the part of the SF community. Instead of grasping that they have a serious and ongoing problem on their hands, they have tried to minimize the extent of the problem, claim that it is just a few bad apples, and resolutely ignore the indications that there are more bad apples still active in their midst.

It’s not important that many of the people associated with Castalia House harbor contempt for SF fandom. What is important are the facts of the matter. And it is disingenuous, in the extreme, to claim that they have done anything but attempt to sweep the latest revelations under the carpet as fast as possible.

Contrast the claims of the Pedofilers at File 770 that the series is either old, irrelevant news or circumstantial evidence versus Ms. Buis’s statement that it is “an eye-opener”. While “Safe Space as Rape Room” is neither definitive nor conclusive, it is a very important first step in discovering just how pervasive the sickness in science fiction is and putting an end to it.

SF-SJWs always double down

A PedoFiler defends last year’s lies about the Sad Puppies at the Mad Genius Club while telling new ones about the Rabid Puppies:

As far as people wanting off the list goes, it’s strictly a problem of branding. In branding, perception matters. Perception is everything, and the “Puppy” brand has come to be associated with “cheaters who flooded the ballot with very poor stories” at best and “white supremacists who want to kill gays with tire irons” at worst. You can debate whether you think this is fair, but that’s why very few people want to be associated with “those bad people who want to destroy the Hugo Awards out of pure meanness.”

I agree that Kate did a lot this year to improve things. I read and reviewed all of the puppy-nominated works, and the Sad-Puppy ones are mostly pretty good this year.

But she didn’t do anything to fix the branding problem. The Sad Puppies kept up the same, tired campaign of name calling–the same name-calling that the Rabid Puppies use. They kept repeating the same conspiracy theories. And–unfathomably–they refused to repudiate Vox Day. Given the history, it would take a stupendous effort to disassociate themselves from him–an occasional mild “we’re not Vox Day” is nowhere near what it would take–but making a statement to the effect of “we will not endorse or condemn anyone” was broadly heard as “we really are Vox Day.”

You can argue all day that that’s not fair, but that’s the perception, and in branding, perception is everything.

You might think his omission of the rather important fact that the so-called “branding problem” was entirely based on blatant lies about the Puppies, and me, by people at Tor Books running to the media, was an innocent oversight. But Greg Hullender’s response to Joel Salomen makes it clear that the dishonesty, as well as the sexual deviance, runs deep in the little freakshow.

Joel Salomon   
You’re completely right. Of course, this implies that all those upset at being included in SP4 should direct their ire at the liars who created this false perception of the Sad Puppies brand.

greghullender
It’s a fairly accurate description of the Rabid Puppies, though, and you guys should take some responsibility for allowing the confusion. 

As the Overgrown Hobbit pointed out, it is not “a fairly accurate description”. It is “a damned lie”.

It is considerably more fair and accurate to say “homosexual pedophile and predatory chickenhawk” is a “fairly accurate description” of Greg Hullender than it is to say “white supremacists who want to kill gays with tire irons” is a “fairly accurate description of the Rabid Puppies”. I have absolutely no problem asserting that I have never been a white supremacist and I have never wanted to kill gays with tire irons, or anything else, for that matter. Now let us see Mr. Hullender publicly attest that he has never been attracted to anyone under the age of 18. And let us see the rest of the Puppy-kicking Pedo-Filers do the same.

If they don’t, they will stand condemned by their own silence, just as they stand condemned for the decades of silence in which they have been harboring multiple predators in their community.

Notice how the SF-SJWs shriek that it is unfair to label them as sexual deviants and defenders of pedophilia and child molestation even as they continue to defend the celebration of individuals such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Samuel Delaney, and Arthur C. Clarke, and try to justify their lies about the Sad and Rabid Puppies. The fact is that none of the SJWs who spent last year lying about the Puppies, and calling us racists and Nazis, has any right to complain about being correctly found guilty of their well-known associations with multiple alleged and confirmed child molesters.

Meanwhile, Sarah Hoyt explains the reason for the SF-SJW need to constantly decry, denounce, and disqualify:

I’ve said before that years ago, being mentioned at Instapundit would have meant the end of my career.

It wasn’t a stupid fear.  It was real.  Even though writers can’t control who reads them and likes them, if you’re liked by the “far right” you must be using “dog whistles” — and thus the blacklisting starts.

So those people asking to be removed from the Hugo recommendations which were made by fan vote?  Perfectly logical.  Getting tainted by association is a thing in their circles.

The people proclaiming that we: Larry, Brad, myself, John C. Wright, I don’t know if they were stupid enough to include Kevin J. Anderson and Butcher in that, but definitely everyone else in the list, had “ruined their careers” are right.  For their world and their definition of career.  None of the big four will ever publish us again, except Baen.

They are stuck in the old push-model days in their head.  They think that everyone down the chain will now boycott us.  And they want to make d*mn sure it doesn’t splash on them.

They don’t have the power to intimidate the right into silence anymore, so they are frantically casting about to find other ways to shut us down. But what they simply don’t realize is that they’re not dealing with the frightened, cowering conservatives of the past. They’re dealing with the criticism-hardened, ruthless Alt-Right of the present and we don’t run from conflict with them. We run towards it.

The medical police state

There is no way that California can be permitted to proceed with its vaccine totalitarianism:

In a brazen act of medical tyranny, California recently became the first state in the U.S. where lawmakers removed religious exemptions to those opposing vaccines for their children. The bill now signed into law, SB277, faces legal hurdles in court next.

Now, legislators in California want to pass the “first US adult vaccine mandate with NO personal exemptions and CRIMINAL penalties for failure to comply.” SB 792, would eliminate an adult’s right to exempt themselves from one, some, or all vaccines, a risk-laden medical procedure.

There is a much better case to be made for the legal rape and forced impregnation of American women than there is for forcing vaccines on adults or children. This is a moral and constitutional abomination; every legislator who voted for this should be impeached.