Author: VD

The sucker’s game

Ironically, those who constantly preach the value of a college education clearly missed economics 101:

Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.

Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she’s been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments. This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up.

Going 100k into debt in order to obtain a job that pays $22 as a photographer’s assistant is not an intelligent action. The correct answer to the question about attending college is “it depends”. What college, what degree, and what job prospects? Remember, since the median debt for attending private, nonprofit colleges is $22,380, that means that you have to keep in mind the average cost of 5 years without wages, the cost of the degree, and the debt.

The statistics on the monetary advantages of a college degree are misleading because the number of college graduates has risen dramatically as have the number of women obtaining college degrees. The equation has changed, which is why it is necessary to sit down and crunch the numbers before you automatically assume that a college degree from the best university that will accept you makes any sense. I thought it was particularly interesting that the article mentioned the way in which a debt burden that can repel potential life partners… one assumes this is generally aimed at women with degrees.

Like most things, it comes down to supply and demand. Because full-time college enrollment has increased 44 percent since I graduated in 1990. The US population has increased 20 percent, thus rendering a generic college degree approximately 24 percent less valuable while the cost has risen 63 percent in constant dollars. Even if you assume that you graduate successfully, your education dollar is worth about 28 percent of one spent in 1990. And since only 53% of college undergraduates manage to graduate in six years – a statistic recently increased from the five-year measure in order to keep it above 50% – the chances are nearly one in two that you’re literally buying nothing, not even a piece of paper.

Basically, if you have to borrow money or if you are at all prone to not finishing what you start, you shouldn’t even think about going to college. And if you do go, get a degree in something meaningful, not outdated liberal arts degrees in English, Art History, or Business. You’ll learn more about business running a fast food franchise for a summer than you will in six years of college. Throw in a little reading of Peter Drucker, Sun Tzu, Malcolm Gladwell, Dilbert, and whoever the business author du jour happens to be and you’ll know more management-speak too.

Who said women killed science fiction?

WisCon: a report from the very large, reinforced trenches:

Thinking Ahead: Feminists thinking about possible near and middle futures and feminist responses to them

WisCon description: What challenges and opportunities will feminists face in the coming decades? Feminism has always looked to the future. But are feminists now in danger of falling behind the curve? Isn’t it time to use our SFnal skills to feminist advantage?

Panelists:

* Moondancer – A white woman who is Native American because she wears a cowboy hat and has wolves all over her shirt. And because she calls herself Moondancer.
* Xakara (no last name) – Saucy black woman who writes multicultural, bi-poly-transamorous science fiction.
* (Three other people…)

This panel seemed innocent enough. Future feminism. I can do this. Seems like a sane crowd.

Moondancer starts going on about how your womb space has power, and that men are threatened by your womb power. Women exude energy during their moontime.

Feminism is making progress, because Moondancer’s son is a little pussy who gets beaten up by his sister and takes it.

Then, out of nowhere, a broad-shouldered woman with an Adam’s apple shouts out, “How can we say we are moving forward when Hillary just gets consistently struck down!”

The crowd gasps. This is what I came for!

“She opened her mouth and said things she shouldn’t have said!”

“A president can’t be nice! She can only go so far because women have to be nice!”

“Systematic, intentional vilification of Hillary as a nagging woman is because of socialization of men!”

“Every strong woman is a lesbian!”

“My magi-shapeshifter race is council-governed by all women!”

After reading this, I feel inspired to run against John Scalzi for SFWA President next year. My platform is going to involve disenfranchising all of the female members and endorsing a Federal law banning women from writing any science fiction or fantasy that does not contain vampires or wereseals and comes with a warning label: WARNING: this is Vampire/Wereseal fiction, not actual science fiction or fantasy.

Yes, it shows

PZ Myers provides an illuminating example of the careful logic and deep thought that goes into so much atheist reasoning:

A couple of years ago, I sat down one morning, bemused by yet another bit of empty apologetics from god’s sycophants, and banged out a short bit of amusement called The Courtier’s Reply. It got picked up everywhere, to my surprise. I mean, seriously, I have to confess that I whipped that out in 20 minutes, no edits or rewrites, just shazam, it’s done.

That’s certainly amusing, if not exactly surprising to anyone who has read it. As I have mentioned before, The Courtier’s Reply is a blitheringly stupid attempt to justify atheist ignorance of that which they are criticizing. In his recent post, PZ tries to claim otherwise, but the fact of the matter is that whatever PZ’s original purpose may have been, that purpose is not synonymous with either its logical consequences or how it is habitually utilized by atheists who refer to it. He states “they see the Courtier’s Reply as an attempt to excuse atheists from bothering with theology at all, when it’s quite the opposite: it’s a rebuke to theologians, pointing out that going on at length about rarefied epiphenomena and delicate points of dogma is a waste of time when you haven’t even established the central point of the matter, a reasonable justification for believing in a god or gods, period.”

Of course, being cited to excuse atheists from bothering with theology at all is exactly how The Courtier’s Reply is utilized; it is the ONLY way it is utilized. PZ’s attempt to provide a belated defense is easily proven to be false by no less than Richard Dawkins himself, who publicly cited it as an excuse for his own ignorance of theology in the Times.

You can’t criticise religion without detailed study of learned books on theology.

If, as one self-consciously intellectual critic wished, I had expounded the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope (as he vainly hoped I would), my book would have been more than a surprise bestseller, it would have been a miracle. I would happily have forgone bestsellerdom had there been the slightest hope of Duns Scotus illuminating my central question: does God exist? But I need engage only those few theologians who at least acknowledge the question, rather than blithely assuming God as a premise. For the rest, I cannot better the “Courtier’s Reply” on P. Z. Myers’s splendid Pharyngula website, where he takes me to task for outing the Emperor’s nudity while ignoring learned tomes on ruffled pantaloons and silken underwear.

As if Richard Dawkins knows the first thing about the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Tertullian, or even CS Lewis. But this example of Dawkins is far from the only one and many more can be found on PZ’s own site for those with the fortitude to slog through that swamp of pseudo-scientific smuggery. The core problem with The Courtier’s Reply is that it is a category error. PZ does not understand that while the discussion of God’s Will or divine characteristics are conceptually related to discussions of God’s existence, they are not synonymous. The Courtier’s Reply is that of the innumerate individual claiming that because no one has ever shown him a “one” or a “two”, it is a waste of time for mathematicians to go on at length about rarefied imaginary numbers and delicate points of calculus. The fact that religion and the theology from which it derives makes real, material, and observable differences in the lives of its practitioners, be they for good or for ill, is sufficient to justify its study regardless of whether one can establish its ultimate source to the satisfaction of scientists or not. And only a complete ignoramus who knows nothing of history, economics, socionomics, or demographics would be foolish enough to assert that the material effects of theological differences are too unimportant to bother with the matter.

The thing that is so ridiculous about latter day atheists like PZ is that they are not only theologically ignorant, but they know next to nothing about secular philosophy either. Intelligent atheists have known for decades that science can never provide the replacement for religion that fantasists like PZ and Sam Harris believe it can for the simple reason that science does not and cannot dictate values. This is why a strong dedication to rational science, with or without the additional complication of atheism, so readily produces monstrous leaders like Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin in such short order, monsters of the sort that were so few and far between in the centuries prior to the Enlightenment.

Theology is the precise opposite of useless because it provides that which science intrinsically cannot; a basic framework upon which guidelines for human behavior can be structured in a viable manner that is coherent, self-consistent and understandable even to the non-believer. Consider how it is entirely normal for the atheist to criticize the Christian for failing to live up to the standards set by Christian theology; to what scientific standard can the non-atheist ever hope to hold the atheist?

Myers further demonstrates his astounding ignorance when he claims: “Science provides tangible evidence of its accuracy and importance. Religion makes excuses for its absence of the same. There is no “rich tradition of rigorous inquiry” in religion, as we can see from its lack of progress, and the apologists are deluding themselves when they claim there is.” And yet, ironically enough, there is no shortage of empirical evidence, scientific evidence, demonstrating both the accuracy and importance of religion. PZ’s incompetent blathering would be entirely amusing, were it not for the panoply of self-deluded idiots at Pharyngula that actually take the man’s illogical meanderings seriously. But, if nothing else, the forthcoming book he mentions should provide for a deliciously target-rich environment.

UPDATE – Buttressing my point about how mathematics, among other disciplines, demonstrates the philosophical absurdity and irrelevance of The Courtier’s Reply, wrf3 quotes from Introduction to Artificial Intelligence by Philip C. Jackson:

“[T]he mathematical theory of Euclidean geometry gives us certain axioms or postulates concerning the undefined concepts of “point,” “line,” “plane,” “between,” etc.; the “thing” described by this theory is a “geometry,” consisting of interrelationships existing among lines, points, planes, circles, spaces, etc.

The ingredients of a mathematical theory, then, are the following:

1. A set of basic words (e.g. “point,” “line,” “between,” “distance,” “x,” “y,” “not,” “implies,” “for all,”) that refer to different objects, relations between objects, variables, logical connectives, quantifiers, and so on. These are the undefined words or symbols of the theory.

2. A set of basic sentences made of these basic words. These basic sentences are the axioms or postulates of the theory.

3. A set of logical rules, also made of these basic words, that tell us how to derive new statements from the ones we are given.”

If one is so foolish as to take The Courtier’s Reply seriously, one must then throw out all mathematics since mathematicians haven’t established the central point of the matter, a reasonable justification for believing in the undefined words or symbols of the theory. As I have said on numerous occasions before, the New Atheists are logical incompetents and philosophical ignoramuses. This is precisely why I have referred to them from the very start as The Clowns of Reason.

Mailvox: libertarian success

JY asks about the prospects for an applied libertarian society:

Do you believe that the success of applied Libertarianism is at all related to a society’s “collective morality”? The question I’m dealing with is whether a form of limited government, which some Libertarian’s advocate, is sustainable apart from a moral society (in this case, by “moral society” I mean one that closely aligns with the general Judeo-Christian ethic).

Not in the slightest. Libertarianism is a secular defense mechanism against evil; a moral Christian society can tolerate and survive big government much better than a purely secular one due to the limits built into Christian morality. Those limits will be violated from time to time, Man being fallen, but the centuries-long history of hundreds of Christian near-absolute rulers who never once engaged in the sort of routine butchery of their people that secular irreligious rulers regularly do shows that it is secular and immoral societies that are the most in need of libertarian government.

The problem is not that people are not Christian enough to pursue libertarian government, it is that they are not intelligent enough. Anyone who seeks special favors from a government empowered to grant them is a self-interested, shortsighted, gambling fool, because the government that can give can also take away and will do so whenever its own interest comes into conflict with the individuals.

Non-libertarians want cheap government health care, but they don’t want the government to deny them care or euthanize them when their health care threatens to become expensive. The problem is that most people are insufficiently intelligent to recognize that the former necessarily dictates the latter.

UPDATE – TZ points out an omission: I don’t think you answered the question that was asked: “whether a form of limited government, which some Libertarian’s advocate, is sustainable apart from a moral society”

Fair enough. Okay, my answer is this: no form of limited government is sustainable in the long term because no form of government is permanently sustainable. The most that can be said is that a moral society can be sustained longer than an immoral one, regardless of whether the form of government is limited or unlimited.

What books would you recommend for a young person (teen) just forming political ideas, leaning libertarian?

A lot of Robert Heinlein. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Tunnel in the Sky are probably the two best. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is the conventional work that has probably has the most influence on current libertarians. Orwell’s 1984 isn’t libertarian per se, but is well worth reading. And Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is a must. Unfortunately, I haven’t read much in the way of explicitly libertarian philosophy or ideology that I find worth recommending.

Mailvox: you can’t stop the signal

That doesn’t mean that the IT fascists won’t try to prevent their serfs from hearing it:

“Well, it’s official. My company’s IT department has, as of today, blocked Vox Popoli as a “Fringe Usenet Group.” This also came with a stern talking to by the IT department head to me personally about the inappropriate, off color nature of the Ilk. Be proud, VD.”

It’s certainly an interesting categorization, given that the blog is not, and has never been, a Usenet Group. Please feel free to tell the IT department head from me, personally, that no amount of foolish devotion to corporate fascism is going to save his job from the contracting global economy. Since IT doesn’t produce income, it’s a luxury and in most cases a counterproductive one at that.

The fact is that it really doesn’t matter if anyone reads this blog or not. It doesn’t matter if anyone believes anything I write or not. What is going to happen will happen whether the cubicle serfs or their corporate overseers like it or not. And you can’t stop the signal.

The original Dr. Doom speaks

Marc Faber pronounces his verdict:

Central banks will never tighten monetary policy again, merely print, print, print.

Bubbles used to be concentrated in one sector or region in the 19th century, but off of the gold standard this concentration has ended.

“The lifetime achievement of Greenspan and Bernanke is really that they created a bubble in everything…everywhere.”

“Central banks love to see asset prices go up,” and their policy reflects their desperation to perpetuate this.

US housing bubble that Greenspan could not spot (even though he has recently spotted bubbles in Asia) stands in stark contrast to that of Hong Kong in 1997, where prices fell by 70%, yet none of the major developers went bankrupt; this was a result of a system not built on excessive debt like that of the US.

“You have to ask what they were smoking at the Federal Reserve,” during the housing bubble, as prices were increasing by 18% annually when interest rates started to steadily rise in 2004.

Over the last couple of years, when the gross increase in public debt has exceeded the gross decrease in private debt, markets have risen, whereas when private debt growth has outpaced public debt growth, markets have tanked.

However, last year Economist Gregory Mankiw articulated the position which according to Faber essentially echoes that of Fed #2 Janet Yellen and pervades much of the Fed generally, that “The problem is that people are saving money instead of spending, and we have to get the bastards spending to keep the economy going,” so the key is to inflate the money supply at something like 6% per annum. Thus, Faber says “As far as I’m concerned, the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at 0, precisely 0…in real terms”.

I understand and respect his case, but for reasons I have delineated in RGD, I do not think the hyperinflation scenario will proceed as Faber assumes. That being said, I agree that the central banks will leave their interest rates at zero; the more important question is if that will ultimately have any relevance to anything during an ongoing debt-deflation process. Notice that contra both Keynes and Friedman, very liberal monetary policies are not instigating growth of the money supply.

The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history.

Watch Oprah, mostly

In which a decades-old question is answered:

In her own writings, Mosher was acutely aware of her foresight, and of the possibilities that lay ahead for women once sex became less of a secret and gender less of a burden. “Born into a world of unlimited opportunity, the woman of the rising generation will answer the question of what woman’s real capacities are,” Mosher wrote in 1923. “She will have physical, economic, racial and civic freedom. What will she do with it?”

My suspicion is that the men of my generation and the following one have a far lower opinion of “woman’s real capacities” than the men of Mosher’s generation did. Mostly because we have the advantage of seeing what women have done with the physical, economic, racial, and civic freedom that Mosher anticipated: Twilight, Oprah, Girls Gone Wild, Prohibition/War on Drugs, and the current debt/GDP ratio pretty much covers it.

No amount of male cynicism could possibly have anticipated a post-patriarchal world in which female professors would utilize their astrophysics degrees in order to teach lesbianism in Hindu film as part of a Women’s Studies program. The moment of that fortuitous discovery, for which I will always be deeply grateful to my interlocutor at the time, Mr. John Scalzi, was the precise one at which my loathing for feminism transformed into a genuine appreciation for the vast amount of intrinsic humor it offers. And the more I have learned about the history of feminism, the more I read about the optimistic hopes and dreams of its antecedents and activists, the more amusing its absurd reality has become.

Explaining sigma. Again.

I find it remarkable that so many men here have demonstrated such a difficult time understanding that being a social outsider, for whatever reason, does not in itself have anything to do with the social category I describe as sigma. It’s really not a difficult concept once you understand that the Game theoreticians, with their binary score/no score perspective, would consider sigmas to be a sub-category of alpha. Remember, their whole goal is to a) educate men about the realities of female behavior and b) teach betas to simulate alpha behavior in order to have a better chance of achieving their goals, whatever those goals might be. So, the more refined categories are unnecessary for their purposes even though a few of the synthetic alpha techniques they recommend are more reminiscent of sigma behavior than alpha dominance.

Perhaps an image of a social scene might help better illustrate the categories in a manner everyone will comprehend.

Alpha: The tall, good-looking guy who is the center of male and female attention. The classic star of the football team who is dating the prettiest cheerleader. The successful business executive with the beautiful, stylish wife. All the women are attracted to him, all the men want to be him or at least his friend. At a social gathering like a party, he’s usually the loud guy telling self-flattering stories to whom several attractive women are listening with big, interested eyes. Alphas are only interested in women to the extent that they exist for the alpha’s gratification, physical and psychological.

Beta: The good-looking guys who aren’t as uniformly attractive or dominant as the Alpha, but are nevertheless confident, attractive to women, and do well with them. At the party, they are the loud guy’s friends who showed up with the alcohol and who are flirting with the tier one women and pairing up with the tier two women. Betas tend to genuinely like women and view them in a somewhat optimistic manner, but they don’t have total illusions about them either.

Deltas: The normal guys. They can’t attract the most attractive women, usually aim for the second-tier women with very limited success, and stubbornly resist paying attention to all of the third-tier women who are reasonably in their league. This is ironic, because deltas would almost always be happier with their closest female equivalents. When a delta does manage to land a second-tier woman, he is constantly afraid that she will lose interest in him and so he will, not infrequently, drive her into the very loss of interest he fears by his non-stop dancing attendance upon her. This is the vast majority of men. In a social setting, these are the men clustered together in groups, each of them making the occasional foray towards various small gaggles of women before beating a hasty retreat when direct eye contact and engaged responses are not forthcoming. Deltas tend to put the female sex on pedestals and have overly optimistic expectations of them; if a man talks about his better half or is an inveterate White Knight, he’s probably a delta. They like women, but find them confusing and are a little afraid of them.

Gammas: The outsiders, the unusual ones, the unattractive, and all too often the bitter. Often intelligent, reliably unsuccessful with women, and not uncommonly all but invisible to them, the gamma alternates between placing women on pedestals and hating the entire sex mostly depending upon whether an attractive woman happened to notice his existence or not that day. These are the guys who obsess over individual women for extended periods of time; gammas supply the ranks of stalkers, psycho-jealous ex-boyfriends, and the authors of excruciatingly narcissistic doggerel. In the unlikely event they are at the party, they are in the corner muttering darkly about the behavior of everyone else there… sometimes to themselves. Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women which is directly tied to their current situation.

Omega: The truly unfortunate ones. The losers who were never in the game. Sometimes creepy, sometimes damaged, often clueless, and always undesirable. They’re not at the party. It would never have crossed anyone’s mind to invite them in the first place. Omegas are either totally indifferent to women or hate them with a borderline homicidal fury.

Sigma: The outsiders who don’t play the social game and manage to win at it anyhow. The alphas hate sigmas because they are the only men who don’t accept or at least acknowledge their social dominance. (NB: Alphas absolutely hate to be laughed at and a sigma can enrage an alpha by simply smiling at him.) Everyone else is vaguely confused by them. At the party, it’s the guy who stops by to say hello to a few friends accompanied by a tier one girl that no one has ever seen before. Sigmas often like women, but also tend to be contemptuous of them.

So, hopefully that makes everything a little more clear. To me, it is lunacy to attempt to describe yourself in some manner that you think is “better”. No one cares what you think you are and your opinion about your place in the social hierarchy is the one that matters least. There is no good or bad here, there is only what is observable social interaction. Alphas seemingly rule the roost and yet they live in a world of constant conflict and hierarchical testing. Sigmas usually acquired their outsider status the hard way; one doesn’t become immune to the social hierarchy by virtue of mass popularity in one’s childhood. Betas… okay, betas actually have it pretty good. But the salient point is that you can’t improve your chances of success in the social game if you begin by attempting to deceive yourself as to where you stand vis-a-vis everyone else around you.

What he said

I’ve told you this before. But the Dark Lord articulated it better:

CR Maxim #57: Never trust a woman’s advice on how to please women. Her advice is designed for alpha men she already finds attractive and from whom she seeks signals of attainability and commitment.

It’s vital to understand that women have pretty bright lines regarding who they find attractive and who they do not. You’re placed in one category or the other in the first five seconds. And while it’s always possible to make yourself less attractive to a woman, there is virtually nothing you can do to make yourself more attractive to a woman except to be seen dating a woman who is more attractive than she is.

Too much principle

Ross Douthat reveals the intrinsic and incoherent dislike for principle harbored by the pragmatic Republican:

Like many outside-the-box thinkers, they’re good at applying their principles more consistently than your average partisan, but lousy at knowing when to stop. (Hence the tendency to see civil rights legislation as just another unjustified expansion of federal power.) And like many self-conscious iconoclasts, they tend to drift in ever-more extreme directions, reveling in political incorrectness even as they leave common sense and common decency behind.

It isn’t surprising that two of the most interesting “paleo” writers of the last few decades, [Samuel] Francis and Joseph Sobran, ended their careers way out on the racist or anti-Semitic fringe. It isn’t a coincidence that the most successful “paleo” presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan, opposes not only America’s interventions in Iraq, but the West’s involvement in World War II as well. It isn’t surprising that Ron Paul kept company in the 1990s with acolytes who attached his name to bigoted pamphleteering.

And it shouldn’t come as a shock that his son found himself publicly undone, in what should have been his moment of triumph, because he was too proud to acknowledge the limits of ideology, and to admit that a principle can be pushed too far.

Douthat is correct to say that Rand Paul could have and should have avoided a discussion of the merits of a 46 year-old law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 isn’t on any libertarian’s top 10 list of Federal actions that require overturning. In fact, it probably isn’t even on anyone’s top 25 list. But Douthat’s criticism of Paul’s principles naturally leads to the question of how much principle is too much? How much good is too good? And precisely how much principle should be, ideally, be cast aside in order to reach an optimum balance between principle and pragmatism? The illogic stems from ignorance; Douthat has clearly never stopped to think that the civil rights act, however justifiable, was in fact an expansion of central state power with all of the long-term danger that presents. He obviously has never thought about World War II in a critical manner, viewing it instead as a mystic and hallowed event that is beyond question. And he adroitly skips over the fact that the only reason Francis and Roberts ended up on what he calls a “fringe”, despite the fact that their views are far more popular in the mainstream public than those of their neo-conservative foes, is because they were exiled by the neocons after their successful conquest of the conservative media’s high ground.

Rand Paul is hardly “undone”, no matter how much Douthat and the other faux conservatives in the Republican Party would like to believe he is a political dead letter. The America of 2010 simply doesn’t view the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the same manner that the America of 1980 did. The liberal white guilt that fueled the civil rights of the 1960s and diversity of the 1990s is all but dead, having been slain by the Vibrant Society, and besides, what does a Mexican or Somali immigrant care about 18th, 19th, or even 20th century American history anyhow.

It is, of course, entirely possible that Americans have ideologically devolved to the point that they are simply too unprincipled to elect principled politicians, in which case it doesn’t matter whether men like Rand Paul are elected or not. Because an unprincipled electorate will fully merit the fate that appears to be in store for them.