Category: Uncategorized

A troublesome defect

Fred Reed has read Nicholas Wade’s book too, and while he identifies a similar flaw to one that I observered myself, he has a different take on it.

A minor defect of the book, understandable since Wade works for a very PC newspaper and may want to keep his job, is that he dances away from the conclusions to be drawn from what he says. Differences among people are actually small, he asserts, and only in cumulative effects on societies do they really count. Yet he puts the mean IQ of Sub-Saharan Africans at 67, of Europeans at 100, and of Jews at 115. He also says that four of every thousand Europeans have IQs in excess of 140, but 23 Jews. These are huge differences and, if real, have equally huge implications.

As is the case with high-IQ atheists versus high-IQ theists, the implications of the various sizes between the populations that possess different average intelligence is seldom considered. Take the numbers Fred cites: 0.4 percent of Europeans have 140+ IQs but 2.3 percent of Jews do. But first, I suspect this is erroneous and that 2.3 percent of Ashkenazi Jews are actually indicated. Further research indicates that I was correct, as Wade actually wrote:

Average northern European IQ is 100, by definition, and 4 people per 1,000 in such a population would be expected to have IQs above 140 points. But among Ashkenazim, if the average IQ is taken as 110, then 23 Ashkenazim per 1,000 should exceed 140, the Utah team calculates, a proportion almost six times greater than that in northern Europe. This helps explain why the Jewish population, despite its small size, has produced so many Nobel Prize winners and others of intellectual distinction.

This reasoning doesn’t hold up. The global Jewish population is 13,854,800. This would seem to indicate 318,660 Jews with 140+ IQs.  However, since Ashkenazim account for 74 percent of the global Jewish population and “enhanced cognitive capacity is confined to the Ashkenazic branch of the Jewish population”, the likely number of high-IQ Jews around the world is 235,809 Askenazim plus 14,409 non-Ashkenazim for total of  250,218. A very conservative estimate of the global European population is 680 million. This indicates 2,720,000 Europeans with 140+ IQs around the world.

Therefore, crediting Jewish success to their high level of intelligence when there are at least 11 high-IQ Europeans for every high-IQ Jew isn’t logically credible. Especially because there are at least 48 high-IQ Han and 5 high-IQ Japanese to factor in as well.

How to vote No Award

Hugo voters are instructed in the most effective way to use the No Award vote by the Weasel King:

More so this year than most years, it’s important to understand how voting “No Award” works.

The Teal Deer: If you want to vote No Award over something, put No Award at the end of your ballot and DO NOT list the things you’re voting No Award over.

Basically, if you put something on your ballot AT ALL, you risk your vote going to that thing, especially since “No Award” is most often the first thing eliminated. The reason it works that way is a little counterintuitive, until you realise that No Award is just another candidate on the ballot.

For an example showing the problem, let’s take perennial No-Award-voting favourite category, “Best Doctor Who Episode Written By Stephen Moffat”. In 2012, the candidates were Community, some dude having a meltdown at the previous year’s Hugo awards, and three largely indistinguishable Doctor Who episodes written by Stephen Moffat, Neil Gaiman aping the style of Stephen Moffat, and Tom MacRae.

Let’s imagine your ballot. You are a sensible person of good taste! You want Community to win and all the other options to die in a fire.

You SHOULD vote:
1. Community
2. No Award

The naive model of Hugo voting that a great many people have might make this mistake, though: Because they want the other options to die in a fire, but ESPECIALLY hate that one dude’s meltdown and the particularly bad Stephen Moffat episode, they might vote like this
1. Community
2. No Award
3. Some dude having a meltdown onstage
4. Stephen Moffat.

And, y’see, that’s bad. Because of how the vote counting works, many people THINK they’re “leaving off” Tom MacRae and Neil Gaiman but making extra sure to “downvote” Moffat and Some Dude, when actually they’re voting *for* Some Dude and Stephen Moffat *over* MacRae and Gaiman.

Because the voters in this category historically have poor taste, let’s imagine the first-round of ballots runs:

Gaiman:50
Moffat: 40
MacRae: 30
Some Dude: 30
No Award: 10
Community: 1. You are the only person with taste this hypothetical year, hypothetical Hugo Voter.

So, Community is eliminated, and all the first-place Community votes (yours) now go to their second choice: No Award. Which is now last and *it* is eliminated, which dumps all the votes for it (including yours) to the next choice down. In your case, Some Dude.

Let’s pretend the 10 people who stuck No Award first really did mean it and didn’t list anything, so their votes now vanish. This leaves the current voting as:

Gaiman:50
Moffat: 40
Some Dude: 31
MacRae: 30… and MacRae is now last, and is eliminated.

Congratulations, Hugo Voter. You just eliminated Tom MacRae by throwing your support to Some Dude, when you *meant* to say that Some Dude was so terrible that the only person he should lose to this year is Stephen Moffat and you were actually somewhat okay with Tom MacRae even if you didn’t think Doctor Who should be mistaken for “best of the year”.

More so than most years? Duly noted. I shall be certain to provide my Hugo recommendations once the Hugo packet has been released and I’ve had the chance to read it. I have a feeling No Award is going to do very, very well across the board this year.

He’ll surely beat this guy: Charles Stross showed a complete lack of class in claiming his rival Larry Correia’s Best Novel-nominated WARBOUND “is on the ballot as a protest nomination, not a real contender” for the award. I’ve read the work of both men, I like the work of both men, and I can say WARBOUND is better than any full-length work Stross has published except the excellent ACCELERANDO. Of course, voters may not be able to read Mr. Stross’s work anyhow since, unlike Mr. Correia’s publisher, Mr. Stross’s publisher has refused to include the complete novel in the Hugo packet.

Stross writes: “My point about Correia is that he and V* D* allegedly engaged in
ballot-stuffing — jointly advancing an example shortlist and
encouraging their fans to vote for the party line. To the extent that
this happened (and we’ll probably find out after the awards when the
usual nomination breakdown is released) then he and V* D* both picked up
votes from one another’s clan, thereby amplifying the volume of their
nominations.”

The point is totally false. Unlike Stross himself, who explicitly declared he was engaged in a “shameless campaign” for specific Hugo nominations this year, I neither campaigned nor ballot-stuffed anything. The fact is that I put up a single post with my own recommendations, which differed at least somewhat from Larry’s, just like dozens of other writers in the field. If I happen to have more loyal readers than other authors, well, it is a popularity contest, isn’t it?

Kicking out Cantor

The Republican Party needs to rid itself of one of its traitorous “leaders”:

Sources tell PJ Media that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s long-time top consultant, Ray Allen, has “angrily” stated to multiple individuals that he intends to bankrupt the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV), to install his own people throughout all levels of RPV’s State Central Committee, and to rebuild the RPV with money from Eric Cantor’s donors.

Ray Allen is considered the “brain trust” of Eric Cantor’s Young Guns, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and has hired staff with the intention of retaking control of the RPV at all levels. (Eric Cantor and Ray Allen lost control of the RPV in 2012, when Tea Party/conservative candidates won seats at all levels of the party, taking majority control from Cantor allies.) In this effort to reclaim the majority, Ray Allen has helped orchestrate the parliamentary procedure of “slating” at several RPV conventions this season.

Slating involves disenfranchising all properly registered delegates at a district convention in favor of a vote by only a few dozen handpicked delegates. This tactic was employed to protect the incumbent chairmanships of some Cantor allies: hundreds to thousands of Tea Party/conservative delegates have been forcefully ejected from VA RPV conventions over the past few weeks and months.

However, the ejected delegates and others opposed to Team Cantor have since had success appealing the slating attempts, leaving Allen and Cantor with little to show for their hardball tactics other than alienated constituents, a terrible local public relations problem, and worse, a rapidly gaining primary opponent in challenger Dave Brat.

Eric Cantor seems to think that he is some sort of monarch, not a democratically elected official with no inherent right to the office he holds. Here is hoping that his challenger sends him home and ends his disastrous political career. The Republican Party of Virginia should be actively pressuring him to resign.

40 years of declining wages

I’ve been pointing out this wage stagnation for years; many people even used to argue with me about whether it was real or not. Perhaps in another decade, the US Census Bureau will also admit that these declining wages are the result of a) 2x more women in the post-1950 workforce, and, b) post-1965 immigration:

The real median income of American men who work full-time, year-round peaked forty years ago in 1973, according to data published by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1973, median earnings for men who worked full-time, year-round were $51,670 in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars. The median earnings of men who work full-time year-round have never been that high again.

In 2012, the latest year for which the Census Bureau has published an estimate, the real median earnings of men who worked full-time, year-round was $49,398. That was $2,272—or about 4.4 percent—below the peak median earnings of $51,670 in 1973.

Why 1973? Two reasons. The consequences of the 1965 change to immigration law was beginning to take effect and it marked the year that the number of old men leaving the work force stopped balancing the number of young women entering the work force. Essentially, the system was structurally rebalanced to substitute inexpensive young women of child-bearing age in the work force for expensive old men of retirement age.

Which means that young women have been forgoing families so that they can be taxed to pay for old men sitting around collecting social security checks. It was a system structurally and mathematically doomed to eventual failure. When the financial and social security systems collapse, it will be important to remember that it was the encouragement and embrace of careers over marriage that was the necessary factor. Middle-class educated young women were not liberated, they were enticed to enchain themselves to feed the corporate mills in lieu of marriage.

Keep in mind, too, that this only accounts for men who work full-time. If the nonexistent wages of the additional men no longer in the labor force were included in the calculation, the comparison would look even worse. Perhaps one of these days I will bother to work out the numbers, but off-hand, I’d estimate that the 4.4 percent decline from peak median earnings would increase to about 15 percent on the basis of the 10-point decline in the 40-year male employment-to-population ratio.

Women can get as upset as they like about how they should have the right to choose what they want to do and so forth. That doesn’t change the facts. It doesn’t change the math. And it won’t undo the incredible societal damage that has been done by four decades of lowering working men’s wages and producing too few children.

Sedition in the USA

Washington, we may have a problem:

“The causes and motives of seditions are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons; strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and what soever, in offending people, joineth and knitteth them in a common cause….

“Above all things, good policy is to be used, that the treasure and moneys, in a state, be not gathered into few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread. This is done, chiefly by suppressing, or at least keeping a strait hand, upon the devouring trades of usury, ingrossing great pasturages, and the like.”
– Francis Bacon,  “Of Seditions And Troubles”

  • Innovation in religion, check.
  • Taxes, check.
  • Alteration of laws and customs, check.
  • Breaking of privileges, check.
  • General oppression, check.
  • Advancement of unworthy persons, check.
  • Strangers, check.
  • Dearths, check.
  • Disbanded soldiers, check.
  • Factions grown desperate, not yet.

And as for suppressing the devouring trade of usury, well, the economy may be in the doldrums and the employment/population ratio is down, but at least the stock market and the big banks are doing well.

VP’s First Rule

1. You will be addressed in the style you choose. If you come in here
slinging insults and acting disrespectfully, you will be treated with a
contemptuous and derisive disdain that will, based on past experience,
probably upset you. This is particularly true for visitors who are
under the impression, mistaken or not, that they are far more
intelligent than the average individual here. If instead, you elect to
offer substantive and civil criticism, then you will meet with a
similarly civil response.

I understand that some would-be rhetoricians mistakenly think that it is effective rhetoric to inappropriately apply labels that I have created specifically to describe certain things to me, to this blog, and to my readers. This is a false claim, moreover, a claim that can only be made in the full knowledge that it is not true.


So, be advised that if you describe this blog as a warren or its readers as rabbits, I will respond to you as if what you claim to believe is actually true. Which is to say that you will be expelled from the so-called warren in precisely the same manner you would be if it were a real intellectual warren.


If you wish to criticize, then criticize. You are free to do so. I have no objection to straightforward and honest criticism. But do not lie. Do not bear false witness. Do not engage in dishonest childish rhetorical tactics. And keep the First Rule in mind.

An interview with Nicholas Wade

Social Matter interviews the author of A Troublesome Inheritance: 

In writing A Troublesome Inheritance, what response did you expect to receive? What has been your impression of reviews so far?

I feared the book would be condemned out of hand and have been delighted that the preponderance of reviews so far have been favorable.  The two main themes of the book – that race is biological, evolution continuous – are not so hard to accept, and I hope that I’m pushing on an open door. 

In your book you write “The rise of the West is an event not just in history but also in human evolution.” How much do we miss in our understanding of the rise and fall of civilizations by not incorporating the role evolution plays in human populations?

A thesis of the book is that social institutions rest on human social behavior, which is shaped by evolution.  Institutions have a large cultural component, so it’s hard to know at present how important evolution has been.  But I think we should look out for it in all major social transitions, such as the foraging-settler transition, the escape from tribalism, and the Industrial Revolution, and if one accepts that the natural selection has been active here then all major societies probably have been shaped by evolution to some extent.

I think Wade’s reference to “evolution” is considerably broader than that customarily utilized by biologists when referring to evolution by natural selection, (for example, Wade occasionally uses “natural selection” to encompass selection that does not appear to be based solely on environmental pressures), but among other things, his book points to one obvious point of logical tension in the progressive dogma. If TENS is true, then a lot of progressive dogma is not merely false, but completely impossible. And if TENS is not true, then a lesser, but still considerable amount of progressive dogma has, contra to progressive assumptions, no greater basis in science than many competing non-progressive dogmas.

Which is precisely why most progressives attempt to avoid thinking about such matters. The relative silence with which Wade’s book has met from its anticipated critics is a strong indication that they at least suspect they are not merely outgunned, but scientifically outdated.

Pale Moon will stay DRM-free

Since many of you who have made the switch from Firefox to Pale Moon wanted to know if Mozilla’s embrace of DRM meant that Pale Moon would follow suit, I shot the responsible party an email and received the following note:

“I’ve researched the topic and I believe it goes straight against what FOSS
stands for, so I will keep Pale Moon DRM-free.”

It would be hard to describe the issue more succinctly than that. If you’re still using Firefox and you don’t support DRM, give Pale Moon a try.

The end of the Nebula

It’s more than a little ironic that so many people are expressing fear for the fate of the Hugo Awards due to the nominations of works by Larry Correia and me when it is readily apparent that it is the status of the other science fiction award that is in considerably more danger. While the pinkshirts are celebrating the wonderful news that four women won the four SFWA awards for the best “science fiction” this year, more astute observers will recall the principle that men have a long-standing tendency to abandon what are viewed as women’s professions and any field dominated by women tends to lose status in the eyes of both sexes.

(This is why the fact that men are statistically overrepresented as firefighters and computer programmers is supposed to be a major societal problem, but no one is concerned by the fact that women are statistically overrepresented as nurses and primary schoolteachers.)

Whether this is the consequence of raw male sexism or the female tendency to reward others on the basis of their status in the herd rather than individual excellence is irrelevant. What the awards sweep indicates is that the reputation of the Nebula award, which has been dubious since The Quantum Rose won best novel, is now in freefall.

It will be interesting to see if there are any male winners in the next few years; I would not be surprised if, within five years, there are not even any male nominees. The organization is not only in the process of being abandoned to women, but to the sort of women who are much more interested in the sex and politics of the author than in the actual fiction.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be SFWA if they couldn’t host an awards dinner without shooting themselves in the foot. Robin Wayne Bailey posts on Facebook:

“The amazing fuckitude of the 2013 Nebulas blind-sided and shocked me as my presentation speech, including Frank Robinson’s acceptance remarks, were totally fucking skipped. I’ve promised to be silent for a few days while the ombudsman figures how how it happened, but I won’t be totally silent, and I won’t let SFWA off the hook for this affront to Frank Robinson and also to myself. I’m furious. Never in the history of SFWA has something like this happened.”

That is certainly a novel way of honoring a “special guest”. The observable reality is that SFWA isn’t a science fiction organization anymore, it is now a women’s political action committee. Male members, even those who are past leaders of the organization, shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves silenced and shunned in the future.

Fortunately, those running the show are SF/F nonentities, many of whom have never even published a single novel, so it’s not like such treatment is going to harm anyone’s career.

Shifting priorities

Perhaps the Gulf States can hire the IDF to provide for their security as the US military shifts its attention to China:

Saudi Arabia and a clutch of Arab Gulf states responsible for a quarter of the world’s oil supplies have been told to provide their own security as the US and the UK slash defence spending.

For the last 30 years the six members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) have drawn heavily on US and British military support to safeguard their security but these unwritten guarantees are now unravelling amid cuts to defence spending and a reduced dependence on Middle East oil.

“Bilateral ties with the United States and American military presence are not enough to guarantee regional security,” US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel told a GCC ministerial conference in Riyadh yesterday. “America’s engagement with Gulf nations is intended to support and facilitate, not replace, stronger multilateral ties within the GCC.”

If the USA can’t protect the oil fields of the Middle East, it seems unlikely that it is going to go to the mat with Russia over Ukraine. Unless, of course, that is what Obama the master strategist wants Mr. Putin to think….