Author: VD

JB plunges once more into the breach:

In his 2nd response to me, Vox gives two criticisms. First, Vox states “one need only find a few extant remaining DNSP ecosystems” to falsify. From his original links I understand what he means: places where the guppies are getting bigger, or are pressured to. I expect we will find many such ecosystems. That is not what I meant by DNSP.

Perhaps I was not clear when I defined it as “gentle pressure to develop a trait.” My DNSP is really Potentially Speciating DNSP, or PS-DNSP. I don’t care about the kind of DNSP that sterilely bounces species between hereditarily predefined poles. Obviously, demonstrating an ecosystem is PS-DNSP is MUCH harder than simply observing DNSP. But I suspect DNSP is common, and PS-DNSP may be too. There are other reasons besides rarity why abundant PS-DNSP may fail to speciate.

This brings us to Vox’s second criticism. I contend PS-DNSP could conceivably stop or slow to a crawl for long periods of global stasis, as often and frustratingly happened in Sim Earth. Meanwhile DNSP would still be constantly arbitrating inter and intra species wars. This is especially possible during competitive late stage ossification, where advanced adaptable species mop up all available ecological space. Vox scoffs at this possibility; I suggest he play Sim Earth. The ecological space and environment needed to foster the next wave of transitional forms can’t be taken for granted, even when you have a planetful of pondscum bubbling for revolution.

Tangentially, VD finds it very hard to believe all species, “including the ancient ones,” have reached stasis. But ancient species are hopelessly bypassed on the tech tree. One should expect nothing from them, and everything from the latest, still freshly malleable models, e.g. humans.

Going back to Vox’s first reply, I find I would respond differently. Vox says there’s no evidence EVERY extant ecosystem has the capacity to exert DNSP. No evidence is good for my unfalsifiability. But perhaps some ecosystems have always lacked the capacity to exert DNSP, and don’t living fossils support this? To answer: In general, I suspect HS-DNSP is ubiquitous while PS-DNSP is a special confluence of factors that can touch one species in an ecosystem and leave unaltered the one beside it. The idea of a major ecosystem without HS-DNSP is absurdly unlikely, and it follows that PS-DNSP should also be evenly distributed among them, yet could leave some fossils untouched.

FODOR TANGENT
As for Fodor’s attack on evolution, I evade the dilemma by failing to adhere to either adaptationism or the opposite. His point is a contentless Zeno’s paradox, which I will demonstrate by exploding the example given.

In the first example of the field experiment controlled test, the conclusion is wrong. TENS predicts brownness wins on brown snow. If brown loses, well, TENS doesn’t GUARANTEE the fittest will arrive, survive, or thrive, much less outbreed. It simply claims to be the only force promoting speciation. More accurately, natural selection eliminates the vast majority of potential speciation.

The non-vacuous formulation of natural selection is that the phenotype best adapted to the ecology is also the most sexually successful. But if a better design comes along and the bear girls refuse to sleep with it, no kids for Mr. Fittest. Darwin can predict phenotypic improvements well but much of the rest is up to “chance,” i.e. everything we don’t know about evolutionary ways and means. A weak force is not the same as “no predictive ability.” Dilemma solved.

I’ll restrict myself to addressing JB’s reply to Fodor as I’m content leaving him with his retreat to Sim Earth and speciation-related natural selection to preserve his concept’s unfalsifiability. It boils down to rarity and great quantities of time, as evolution defenses so often do. If the non-science needs to hide in that corner, then let it hide, I say.

But I must point out that the Fodor dilemma is not so easily ducked, because JB has misunderstood the definition of fitness. TENS not only guarantees that the most fit will outbreed the less fit, it declares the most fit MUST outbreed the less fit for what should be the obvious reason that fitness is defined as the most successful production of progeny. However, JB has pointed to the weakest point in the logic – not science – that presently serves as the foundation of TENS. To slightly adapt his terminology: is the phenotype best adapted to the ecology also the most sexually successful?

Darwinians answer yes, on balance. They have little choice, since this is the foundation of their entire theory. But they don’t actually have much, if any science on their side to date, as the Penn State scientists performing natural selection studies have readily admitted. It seems strange to have to point out to scientists and science fetishists that logic is not science, especially considering that many of them consider the Enlightenment triumph of science over logic to be one of the seminal points of human history. And if any Darwinians are unwilling to accept the implications of a hypothetical failure of science to demonstrate natural selection, then the only rational conclusion is that their faith is in Darwin, not science.

This was a decent chapter from a historical perspective, but I felt that it lacked an awful lot regarding any actual, you know, economics. Of course, this is a problem that can be safely expected of any economics-related history written by a non-economist. Quite possibly the biggest flaw, however, was the author’s failure to demonstrate the leftism of the very concept of the modern corporation given that it is intrinsically a creation of the state. This isn’t a knock on Jonah Goldberg, it’s just interesting to see how different the non-economists’ perspective on economics can be.

But honestly, an entire chapter on economics without a single chart, formula, table, or folksy analogical tale? What sort of strange beast is this?

However, Goldberg also overlooked the easiest way to demonstrate how corporations and corporatism cannot possibly be considered inherently right-wing. It is a little-recognized fact that Communist governments have owned and controlled a number of the world’s largest corporations. In fact, until recently, one of the largest “capitalists” in the world as measured by the revenues of the many corporations it owned, was the People’s Liberation Army of China.

Next week’s reading is Chapter Nine, “Brave New Village: Hillary Clinton and the Meaning of Liberal Fascism”. The quiz for it will be posted on Saturday, August 15th.

Salt sends an email informing us that North Carolina has raised the bar:

§ 14-454. Accessing computers.
(a) It is unlawful to willfully, directly or indirectly, access or cause to be accessed any computer, computer program, computer system, computer network, or any part
thereof, for the purpose of:

(1) Devising or executing any scheme or artifice to defraud, unless the object of the scheme or artifice is to obtain educational testing material, a false educational testing score, or a false academic or vocational grade, or
(2) Obtaining property or services other than educational testing material, a false educational testing score, or a false academic or vocational grade for a person, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises.

A violation of this subsection is a Class G felony if the fraudulent scheme or artifice results in damage of more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or if the property or services obtained are worth more than one thousand dollars ($1,000). Any other violation of this subsection is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Rumor has it that the White House is putting pressure on Hawaii to consider similar legislation regarding birth records….

He explains why more government involvement isn’t going to make anything cheaper:

I believe that Econ textbooks say that price controls haven’t worked from Diocletian on. Wrong. They work splendidly. Ask Bausch & Lomb. If you could make over twenty-two bucks on a dime’s worth of salt water, wouldn’t you be in favor of governmental interference in the economy?

Let me explain medicine briefly. It’s an unholy scam. Here in Mexico my wife occasionally gets ear infections. At any pharmacy, we pick up Amoxicillin, 250mg three times a day for ten days. Six bucks.

Recently we were staying in Maryland with friends, and she got an ear ache. Amoxicillin is by prescription only in the US, which means that doctors have a monopoly on ear aches. It was Friday evening. It was either agony until Monday or go to one of those mall-based walk-in clinics, which wanted $150 for the appointment and prescribed $78 in medicines. It’s a scam, pure and simple. Above the level of county government, the US is as corrupt as Mexico could ever be, and it’s mostly legal.

The problem boils down to this: focused interest groups will always have more influence with national politicians than the public. And the more centralized the industry, the easier it is for those interest groups to wield their influence. It is, as Fred describes it, government by looters.

The so-called lull in the foreclosure rate had nothing to do with fewer people failing to pay their mortages:

Khater said the foreclosure rate and REO rates have been impacted by government tinkering in the market. He said federal and state efforts have mostly delayed foreclosures, preventing few. The same is true for loan modifications — they fail about half the time. So to tune out the noise, just look at the 90-day rate. In Khater’s view it shows “one giant wave.”

I never understood why people were commenting on the “lull” in foreclosures and REOs when California had declared a short-term moratorium on permitting banks to foreclose. Combined with the demonstrated reluctance of banks to follow through on the procedure because of what it does to their balance sheets – they carry the delinquent, abandoned property on their books at the full value of the mortgage until the whole process is complete – the mortgage banks are terrified of taking ownership of foreclosed properties. But the graphic below shows the true picture, which indicates that there can’t be any reasonable expectation of a substantive economic recovery until 2012 at the earliest.

The gap between REOs (foreclosures on the books) and foreclosures in process is the extent to which the damage is being underestimated. And the delinquency rate is an indicator of more foreclosures in process still to come.

Of course, the reason more people are finding it difficult to pay their mortgages is because their wages and salary are continuing to drop. In 1973, the median male weekly wage was $486.10. Source: The State of Working America by Lawrence R. Mishel, David M. Frankel, p. 78. Corrected for inflation, that is $2,361.45 in 2009 dollars, or $122,795.40 annually. In its report entitled “USUAL WEEKLY EARNINGS OF WAGE AND SALARY WORKERS: SECOND QUARTER 2009”, the BLS reported the median male weekly wage is now $815, or $42,380 annually.

So, that’s what immigration, offshoring, and women’s rights have accomplished for the country, a two-thirds reduction in male wages. Inexpensive debt has hitherto concealed some of the ramifications of that collapse in real wages for a while, but as the chart shows, it can’t do it forever.

Yet another reason for men to avoid marrying American women:

Thinking her husband was dead, a 26-year-old newlywed pulled up to her Boynton Beach town home Wednesday morning in apparent panic. She surveyed the crime scene tape and swarming police officers and began to sob hysterically. A good act, police called it. Investigators say she was the one planning his death – and they were a step ahead. The would-be widow was Dalia Dippolito, and since Monday police say an undercover detective posing as a hit man had been planning with her the details of her husband’s demise.

For $6,000, he was to murder Michael Dippolito, 38, Dalia’s husband of six months, police say. “I will be very happy,” she allegedly told the hitman, and laughed at the thought.

Of course, upon reflection, one realizes that this is all the husband’s fault. Why should his petty desire to continue living stand in the way of a woman’s right to happiness? This arrest is really an outrage. It is obviously nothing more than sexist patriarchal oppression for the police to forcibly prevent a woman from leaving an unsatisfactory marriage. And it is total fascism to set up a fake crime scene in order to make a perfectly innocent woman doing nothing more than legally exercising her woman’s right to end her marriage look bad.

Fortunately, the American judicial system is a little more enlightened. Since the penalty for a woman shooting her sleeping husband in the back with a shotgun is three months jail, we can be confident that the soon-to-be ex Mrs. Dippolito will soon be set free with six months probation. Outrageous, to be sure, but every revolution must have martyrs to make the occasional sacrifice.

It often turns out to be a very good way of finding it. AW, who also informs us that she is in the process of bidding the market adieu, writes of her experience with the blog:

For every 20 emails you get from irate, offended females, I hope you receive one like mine. My original email was about three pages long – I realized what I had done, and promptly deleted it. You don’t know me, therefore you definitely don’t care about my back story or what I’ve been through or my thoughts on women today, so it would have undoubtedly gone unread. Instead, I’m just going to thank you and tell you what you – and the Ilk – have done for me.

When I started reading your blog about two years ago, I was initially offended by the things you wrote about women. I don’t like to think of myself as a feminist, nor do I care for anything resembling female “equality”, so it wasn’t that – maybe your meanness sparks something in about 99.9% of the female population to stand up and defend whoever is being attacked (usually other women). As well it should, because you continually hold up the modern Western woman for inspection. In the glaring light of logic, common sense, decency and reason – what you write can be an ugly reality to swallow. But – it’s undeniable and avoidable, especially if you don’t want to become “that” woman. To avoid turning into the shrill, selfish harpy whose only goal in life is to be “happy” (the definition of which changes endlessly) and actually believes that fulfillment comes from pursuing that personal happiness, you have shown me that I must:

1.) Get over myself

and

2.) Realize that “being happy” isn’t guaranteed by getting what I think I want, even if at the expense of others. Often, the consequences of pursuing your own personal happiness causes disaster and misery to others and, eventually, yourself.

I have to say – my happiness has actually grown over the last two years. The more I discard the secular view of “womyn”, and embrace the Biblical definition of what a woman of value truly is, the richer my life, my relationships, and my walk with God becomes. It’s like shedding a disgusting piece of clothing and finding that you’ve been wearing a beautiful gown all along. While you need no encouragement from me, I do hope that you keep your blog going for a long time. I enjoy it greatly, and have learned much from you and your long-time commenters.

The simple fact of AW’s realization that complete strangers aren’t particularly interested in the minutiae of her personal history reflects how far she has evolved from the average woman today. It’s not that people don’t care at all, it’s merely that they don’t care that much. Understanding that we all live in occasionally intersecting self-orbiting universes is one of the keys to tranquility for men and women alike, although learning to stop looking to a man to provide for her ever-shifting happiness is absolutely vital for the dynamic creatures known as women.

And while it’s true that as an independent theocentric universe I have no need of external encouragement, I’m nevertheless pleased to see or hear when people demonstrate that they have not only learned something here, but been able to put it to successful use in their lives. You can always tune me out if you wish, but it’s rather more difficult to escape the remorseless logic of real life behavioral patterns that I am attempting to describe.

Deutsche Bank has a grim forecast:

The percentage of U.S. homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will nearly double to 48 percent in 2011 from 26 percent at the end of March, portending another blow to the housing market, Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday.

Home price declines will have their biggest impact on prime “conforming” loans that meet underwriting and size guidelines of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bank said in a report. Prime conforming loans make up two-thirds of mortgages, and are typically less risky because of stringent requirements.

“We project the next phase of the housing decline will have a far greater impact on prime borrowers,” Deutsche analysts Karen Weaver and Ying Shen said in the report…. Covering 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, Deutsche Bank in June forecast home prices would fall 14 percent through the first quarter of 2011, for a total drop of 41.7 percent.

This can be expected to significantly increase the rate of foreclosures, which will take down an increasing number of banks. And the FDIC already has some sizeable problems on its hands, as its inability to find takers for the assets and deposits of several large banks that are in the process of failing has it scrambling to split the banks’ assets among acquirers, which it has to do before it can seize them and shut them down.

Don’t put too much faith in the short term happy talk on housing. That’s just a blip from the foreclosure hiatus and people snapping up the initial wave of foreclosure “bargains”. The fragility of the housing market is why the Fed won’t even think of doing what needs to be done and raising interest rates, which would appear to doom the US to a Japan scenario at best.

NW notes a pattern with regards to dating at the office and sexual harassment:

Please don’t assume I’m whining or anything. The following is more like a casual observation from patternist that is despairing just a little for people. [Consider the] funny SNL skit about sexual harassment. The moral? Just don’t even associate with girls unless you’re good looking. What’s sad is how true this seems to becoming. Once upon a time when you asked someone out, the worst they could say is no. Now the worst is losing your job for “sexually harassing” someone or outright being thrown in jail.

Personal aside: yes I may have some light Asberger’s syndrome myself but I at least recognize that I’m awkward and bad at social situations. Still at one place I tried to be friendly and fit in only to later get a warning for sexual harassment. (still don’t know what I did) So I just stopped talking to everyone.

Anyway, reading posts like this or ones where you talk about women always being the pursued and I can’t help but wonder… maybe the game is too rigged? One article spoke about how a lot of trouble in the middle-east arises from polyagamy because the older men are sapping up most of the brides, leaving a large segment of young, single (and bored) men. Meanwhile in the west it seems like we’re also getting a large segment of young, single men only here they are actively punished for trying to rectify the situation.

You asked: “Which came first? The murderous bitterness or the inability to attract women?”

With the way things are, isn’t it a bigger surprise that there isn’t more murderous bitterness out there?

I don’t think it’s quite fair to assert, as the SNL skit did, that being attractive is the only way for men to be able to ask women out without sexually harassing them. There’s also being rich, as well as being famous and being powerful. But it’s true, the Tom Bradys of the world are permitted behavior that would see another man lose his job. It’s not fair, but then, what is? Of course, once you recognize that unfairness is inherent to the system, you will realize that men also have an advantage, which is that women don’t have a reliable way of knowing who is rich and powerful, and who is not. Players exploit this information gap all the time, which of course leads women to complain that those men aren’t playing fair. But again, what is?

Anyhow, the main thing to keep in mind is that women despise desperation and weakness more than anything. They view it as creepy; therefore a man who sends off signals of being weak is by definition a probable harasser. It’s almost absurd how a man who stops viewing women as beautiful pedestal-dwelling dispensers of love and social approval and instead looks at them as prey becomes almost instantly more attractive to them. Single women are complicated and dynamic, which in male terms means that because what they want tends to change rapidly, there is no point in putting any stock in what they say at any given moment. And once you figure out that women find your honesty unattractive… why are you still being honest with them? Seriously, Asperger’s or not, is this difficult? As I have had occasion to tell both men and women: “Sometimes people say things that aren’t true.”

When honesty is acceptable, women usually want you to tell them what you want; they don’t want you to always be asking them what they want. They often want you to take responsibility for their decisions for them. That’s why they have such common fantasies about being ravished and swept away and so forth. So, to the extent that a man’s behavior is not in line with the way women’s desires orient – which is very often directly opposed to not only what they say they want, but what they think they want – a man’s behavior will usually be self-defeating.

For deeper insight into what makes women tick on a sexual level, I recommend reading Roissy or some of the Pick-Up Artist sites. Like good predators, they study their prey incessantly and make a point of knowing them intimately. I don’t recommend their attitude lifestyle because it is both immoral and ultimately unfulfilling, but it is at least an antidote to the misinformation under which so many men labor. But there’s a very good reason why women are naturally drawn to men like me and Tucker Max; it’s BECAUSE we’re independent bastards, it’s not DESPITE that.

Now, that independence came naturally to me because Spacebunny was, and is, the only woman I’ve ever loved or even cared much about. But we’re not talking about love, we’re talking about initial male-female interactions. The key is that you can’t ACT independent, you have to BE independent. For most men, it’s a process, but you can get there in time. Never forget that there are plenty of girls on the girl tree. If one happens to be out of reach, pluck another. Remember, it’s not love you’re feeling, it’s just physical attraction and momentary infatuation.

So, I have no sympathy for the bitter nice guys. They’re stupid, they’re stubborn, they’re reactive, and they’re naive. It’s not hard to understand why no woman wants them to bend her over and take her hard. Because, let’s face it, they probably wouldn’t anyhow. As PJ O’Rourke once pointed out, women fantasize about Nazis, they don’t fantasize about nice, sensitive liberals.