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Mailvox: why flaunt IQ?

NorthernHamlet doesn’t understand why I flaunt – not flout – my intelligence:

How would one describe that you trot out “superior IQ” during conversations, even while you acknowledge that neither you nor many of your readers think the criteria for it is legitimate?

First, I wouldn’t say that IQ is totally meaningless or even illegitimate. It clearly measures something real and objective; you will try in vain to discuss anything even remotely intellectual with an individual possessed of a 50 IQ, and I have yet to see someone with an IQ of 100 that I consider, upon the basis of non-IQ related factors, to be more intelligent than someone with an IQ of 150. That being said, it is clearly an imperfect measurement, and it can even be misleading as two people with the same IQ, one stronger on the verbal side and one stronger on the mathematical side, can look either much smarter or much more stupid than the other depending upon the subject.

Ironically enough, I’m a very good example of someone whose measured IQ score tends to significantly underestimate my relevant intelligence in my primary areas of interest because I am so handicapable when it comes to spatial relations. Anyone who has seen me packing a car or even a suitcase would be justified in thinking that I should qualify for special parking privileges, and probably three spaces at that. On the other hand, my ability to recognize patterns and generate useful predictive models from them has been considered to be rather remarkable by many. Am I a retard or a genius? The IQ score is an ineffective metric because it alternatively answers both and neither, depending upon the perspective.

(My answer, of course, is neither. I don’t believe genius is denoted by IQ or any other quantitative measure, but rather unique and significant intellectual accomplishments.)

Long before I wrote my first WND column 11 years ago, I recognized that the arguments presented by the Left, especially those that were blithely accepted by the Right, seldom amounted to more than crude appeals to intelligence. We’ve seen it on this blog time and time again, most recently in the recent series that focused on the dissection of the skeptics. Their main argument, indeed, their only real argument, is “don’t argue with me because I’m smarter than you.” It’s often couched in terms of academic credentials, but since universities no longer provide educations, but primarily serve as intellectual brand markers, credentialist-based arguments are simply slightly modified version of the same position. The reason a Harvard PhD trumps one from Auburn University isn’t because there is any legitimate reason to believe the Harvard PhD has received a better education, indeed, in at least some fields it can be easily demonstrated that the reverse is the case, but because Harvard places more stringent IQ requirements on its applicants. An appeal to academic status is mostly an appeal to intelligence, once-removed.

This is, of course, why the Left repeatedly cites study after study, many of them fake, showing that Blue state residents possess higher average IQs, why Democratic presidents are smarter than Republican presidents, and so forth. It’s all they’ve got. And so, when I flaunt my official, Mensa-approved, readily observable high intelligence in their faces, it removes from them their only rhetorically effective argument by virtue of their own metric. In other words, I’m simply playing by the rules of their game that they have established. Notice how few on the Right, even if they are highly intelligent academics with hard science PhDs, take any exception to my assertions of superintelligence, especially compared with the way the Left instinctively reacts to it rather like vampires to holy water. Of course, since they can’t convincingly claim that I am not every bit as intelligent as they are, they have no choice but to resort to the customary claim of craziness. The path that Delavagus recently trod was not only predictable, it was inevitable, as we’ve been witnessing exactly the same responses to exactly the same stimuli for more than a decade now. One could quite credibly write a paper on it with a larger sample set than one often sees in the social sciences.

Is the appeal to intelligence game nonsense? Of course it is! This is where and why I part company with the modern philosophers. Since true belief is true regardless of whether it is justified or not, whether it is known to be true or not, whether it is even believed or not, it is entirely possible for the 50-IQ retard to be correct and the 175-IQ statistical genius to be completely wrong, regardless of whether the former can even begin to reasonably articulate his beliefs or not, let alone justify them. Indeed, the history of the 20th century is riddled with example after example of the false beliefs to which the intelligentsia subscribed that were rightly rejected by hoi polloi. The reason is that tradition is more than the democracy of the dead, it is also the cumulative intelligence of the centuries. It takes considerable intelligence, intellectual humility, and usually, significant temporal and technological advantages to correctly supersede that cumulative intelligence. No doubt that is why even the most brilliant of the ancient skeptics demanded that custom and traditions be given their due.

No-Limit, No-Case Nigga

Upon perusing the evidence, Alan Dershowitz concludes Trayvon Martin already received his due justice:

A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting. Moreover, the New York Times has reported that traces of marijuana were found in Trayvon Martin’s body and that Martin’s father initially said that the voice crying for help was not that of his son. It is also been reported that a bruise was found on Martin’s ring finger that would be consistent with Martin having punched Zimmerman. No other wounds, aside of course from the fatal bullet hole in the front of Martin’s body, were found.

If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.

This is hardly a surprise. I haven’t written much about this since I didn’t see any reason to doubt, from the beginning, that given a choice between a white guy who wasn’t a white guy doing Neighborhood Watch in a relatively high crime neighborhood and an innocent Skittles-bearing African child who referred to himself as “NO_LIMIT_NIGGA”, the core situation was anything more than a simple matter of a predatory African attacking someone. The only genuinely unusual thing about it is that in the interests of self-preservation, most predatory Africans have the good sense to limit their attacks to Europeans, Hispanics, and other Africans who are incapable of self-defense. Like all predators who wish to survive, they focus on the sick and the weak. The No-Limit Nigga didn’t abide by those sensible limits of predation and that is why his case, such as it is, has been presented post-mortem.

The African community in America, abetted by the mainstream media, has completely missed a potentially important teachable moment. Instead of attempting to media-lynch a decent Hispanic man who was merely attempting to protect his neighborhood, they would have done much better to teach their young men that in a nation with millions of concealed-carry permit holders, and millions more who carry without bothering with permits, it is not merely criminal, but criminally stupid, to attack even the most apparently indefensible individual. Instead, the well-publicized violence of the idiotic “Justice for Trayvon” attacks has only ensured that even more people will be carrying weapons and they will show even less hesitation about using them when attacked in the future.

In fact, the one thing I did find surprising about Zimmerman is that he only shot Martin once. That alone should have sufficed to prove that he had no intention of killing Martin. I was always taught to fire an automatic three times, starting low and progressing upwards with the muzzle rise, which technique I will confess did not render me popular on the few occasions I played paintball.

A triumph of effort

Ender has had a tough couple of weeks. Missing two weeks due to a poorly timed illness at the beginning of the spring season caused him to lose the starting position he’d worked so hard to merit in the fall. Even when he came back, he was looking a little lost on the field, and his coach was quite right in deciding to demote him to a second-half substitute. He was a little frustrated, naturally, but I told him to be patient, keep working, and everything would sort itself out in time. So, he kept practicing, playing respectably when he went into the game, and generally maintaining his equanimity.

He finally got his chance four weeks ago when the team was having a very tough time stopping a small, but very fast attacker who was blowing past the starting right defender at will. The team was only losing 1-0, but the first twenty minutes of the game had been played in their end, the keeper was getting shellacked, and the next goal was clearly only a matter of time. One of Ender’s friends had come to watch the game, and at one point, I heard him muttering “Mama mia, che disastro” and I couldn’t help but agree. Finally, the coach, who is really quite good, decided he had to change things up in order to keep the team from collapsing. He put in Ender at right back, who like the defender for whom he was substituting was badly overmatched in terms of speed, but I’d been watching the attackers closely and pointed out to him how the speedy attacker always wanted to go down the line. Every time, it was fake inside, go outside. So, by going aggressively to the ball, utilizing smart offside trapping, anticipating that inside-out move, and committing outright fouls when the attacker was getting around him, Ender managed to shut the kid down and help his team to a 3-2 victory. (Having once been a speed player myself, I have a pretty good idea how to disrupt them.) The other team’s second goal initially looked like his fault, as he failed to clear a ball that was coming across the area, but as it turned out, the goalie had called for it and he’d properly let it go. After the game, his coach was delighted, as the one thing the defense has tended to lack is toughness, and he promptly restored Ender to his position at starting right back.

This, however, led to another problem. The boy whose starting position he’d taken has a friend who is a bit of a troublemaker, and after practice, the troublemaker egged the other boy, who is a full head taller, into attacking Ender. He wasn’t much of a fighter, though, and Ender sent him away crying. I have to give the kid credit though, as at the next practice, when the coach asked about what had happened and the troublemaker lied, claiming Ender started it, the boy stepped forward of his own volition and set matters striaght. Things were just a bit uncomfortable before the next game, as there was a miscommunication about the meeting place, and when Ender and I showed up, the troublemaker was the only one there. But we gave him a ride anyhow, for as I explained to Ender, who was half-inclined to leave the kid there, you don’t have to like your teammates, but you still have to have their back.

It was a big game for everyone, since it was against their archrivals from the bigger neighboring town and there is a noticeable inferiority complex that affects kids and adults alike. They got off to a bad start, going down 1-0, but struck back quickly with goals from their two best players. It was 2-1 when his team won a corner kick; Ender went up in support, as always, but this time the other team failed to send anyone out to guard him in his position just outside the 18-yard box. He noticed this, called for the ball, and to my surprise, the girl taking the corner kick quickly passed it to him. He stepped in and hit it on the first touch, and sent the ball in a beautiful rainbow right into the far upper corner. Goal, 3-1, and the game was essentially over. It was his first goal at this level and the look on his face was a marvel to see, half exultation, half incredulity, as his teammates all ran over to mob him. After the game, I was talking with one of the other parents when I noticed that the kid walking along next to Ender and discussing the game with him on the way to the locker room was the troublemaker.

The team is actually coming together rather nicely. Two days ago, they played an evening game against an undefeated team from the big city. I was just hoping they’d lose respectably, as in the warm-ups it was quite clear that the other team was much more skilled. Before the game, the coach snorted angrily to me that they were acting like stars and looking down at the little peasants from the countryside. But despite going down 1-0 to an absolutely ridiculous penalty call after, the team stayed calm and struck back with a beautiful goal from one attacker in the first half, then the team’s other attacker scored a second goal to take the lead with about ten minutes left in the game. Ender was worn out by keeping an even faster attacker under control and had to come out for a while, but the coach switched to a catenaccio strategy at the end and despite his exhaustion put him back in as a fourth defender. The other team was attacking with all the desperation of big city boys who didn’t want to lose to the little peasant team, especially with the potential winning goal scored by a girl. But despite a few close calls, the catenaccio held firm, and they very nearly added a third goal on the counterattack. You would have thought it was the World Cup, as when the final whistle blew, Ender’s team was celebrating wildly while half the players on the big city team were in tears.

They’re not going to win the league this year, in fact,they’re not even going to win their conference. They’ve only got one, possibly two, players who could start on either of the two best teams. But it’s really a lot of fun to watch them play, and I’m very proud of how Ender never gives up, no matter how bleak the prospects appear.

Fear of lack of failure

Daniel Hannan points out what the Eurocrats really fear:

Eurocrats are especially concerned that Greece might leave the euro – but not for the reason you might think. Their worry is not that Greece will sink into a state of Levantine poverty: that has already happened. No, their true fear is that, after a few wretched months, Greece would bounce back, using its newly competitive currency to price its way into the markets and export its way to growth. If that were to happen, other countries on the periphery of the eurozone, also struggling with an over-valued exchange rate, might try something similar. The whole euro project would unravel faster than you could say ‘Jacques Delors’.

Eurocrats often liken the EU to a bicycle that has to keep moving forward or topple over. A ravenous shark that has to keep swimming or die might be a better simile, but never mind: the point holds. Any rolling back of the single most important integrationist project would call the whole enterprise into question.

This is why it is unlikely that Greece will actually leave the Euro or the ECB and IMF will follow through on their threats to cut off their loans to the Greek banks in the short term. Tsipras has already publicly stated that Greece has enough money to keep its workers and retirees afloat if it stops paying its creditors, so if the loans don’t come through, they’ll simply default. Since the entire purpose of the various bailouts and rescue plans was to save Greece’s European creditors, not Greece, the EU doesn’t actually have any real leverage despite all of its posturing. While this has been obvious from the start, none of the Greek politicians were willing to say anything about it in public because the two major parties are both bank-owned. Tsipras and Syriza are not, or at least, not yet, so the game of chicken continues.

The EU was always an illusion of power and progress, so the fiction will have to be maintained until the very end of the Euro and the EU alike. The Greeks have seen through it, the question is when the rest of Europe will do so. So, as Hannan points out, the one thing the EU absolutely cannot afford to happen is for Greece to default on its sovereign debt, leave both the Euro and the EU, and begin an economic recovery. And that is why Jean-Claude Trichet, the former head of the ECB, is proposing the forcible takeover of the Greek government. He suggests giving the EU the power to declare a sovereign state bankrupt and take over its fiscal policy, further illustrating how the EU is little more than the Third Reich with banks instead of tanks.

R stands for Rape

Does Undead Press publish Wängsty?

There’s recently been a flurry of posts about Undead Press, a small publishing house that a) doesn’t pay, b) allegedly humiliates its authors by inserting gratuitous rape scenes into their stories, without asking those authors if they want those rape scenes to be there, and c) has apparently published and continues to advertise a sequel to George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD, showing an absolute lack of respect for copyright or concern for the legal consequences.

Trick question. As anyone who has ever read R. Scott Bakker knows, there is no such thing as a gratuitous rape scene. Or rather, as anyone who has ever read R. Scott Bakker possesses justified true belief, there is no such thing as a gratuitous rape scene.

One of these days, I’ll have to go through Bakker’s books in order to create a poll on Black Gate where the legions of Bakker readers can vote on their favorite rape scene written by Rapey McRaperson. After all, it’s so hard to choose between the one in Neuropath where the woman rapes the man accompanied by some of the worst sexual dialogue outside of 1970s era pornography or the one in The Warrior Prophet where the Sranc – a demonic winged creature with an Alien-style double skull – not only rapes a man, his wife, and their child to death, but also manages to make the woman climax while raping her. (Contra Umberto Eco, I have long regarded the orgasmic rape as the definitive indicator of pornography.) But make no mistake, these rape scenes are not gratuitous! They are philosophy.

I have to admit, however, that Mr. Giangregorio’s publishing style appears to be more than a little awesome. Some might see it as a strange little man humiliating female authors, but I tend to interpret it as a sardonic commentary on the sex scenes in seventies and eighties science fiction, which always seemed to feature that one completely pointless scene in which the hot primary female character – usually red-headed – seduces the unsuspecting male protagonist without ever having given any signs of being attracted to him. I always viewed it as the fat, clueless SF author’s perspective on the Stygian mysteries of inter-sexual relations.

God is not dead

Jonathan Frost concludes that God is dead:

Like many young men in the 21st century, I’ve come to some grim conclusions about the state of the world. I’ve developed a healthy mistrust of conventional wisdom and the institutions responsible for teaching it. I’m hardly the only one. The blogroll to the left is mostly composed of men like myself who have also been raised in the late 20th century American tradition, and found it lacking. In short, we have lost our faith. We are adrift.
But wait!
Traditional Christians like Dalrock, Ulysses, Elusive Wapiti, Throne and Altar, Koanic, Larry Auster and Patriactionary have a message for young men like myself. The message is: “We have an alternative for you. The Alternative is Christ. Turn to Christ, and the world will make sense to you. Turn to Christ en masse, and the world will become just.”
But the message is not landing, and I’ll tell you why:

The message is not new, but at least the reasoning is original. Let’s consider his explanations for his loss of faith:

1) Christian Theology is implicitly leftist

This is a simple confusion of Christian Theology with the infiltration and perversion of many Christian churches concerning which the Apostle Paul warned. Not only is there nothing leftist about Christianity, Christianity and left-wing ideology have very few things in common except a belief in the inevitable progress of history towards a fixed end. Christian theology declares the world will end in fire and blood of the Harvest of Souls, left-wing ideology asserts it will end in the pink and sparkly gay globalist picture presented at the end of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World ride. What Frost fails to realize is that leftism is the substitution of the State for God, for a static humanity instead of Christianity’s intrinsically dynamic one. This, of course, is why leftist regimes invariably persecute Christianity, as unlike Frost, they recognize their implacable enemy.

2) Christianity is already responsible most for our problems

Christianity didn’t bring down the Roman empire. That’s simply the long-outdated view put forth by Edward Gibbon. And the chief difference between a Leninist and a Christian is that the former believes in the perfectibility of Man whereas the latter rejects it entirely. This is, to put it mildly, a fundamental and irreconcilable difference. Nor can Christianity be reasonably blamed for the demographic or debt crises of the West, indeed, it would be closer to the mark, though still incorrect, to blame Judaism.

3) The Church Is Doomed

Nero couldn’t wipe it out. Diocletian couldn’t slow its growth. Julian the Apostate couldn’t put a dent in it. The left-wing butchers of the French Revolution, the October Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and the Killing Fields all failed in their murderous efforts to eradicate it despite the possession of absolute power. Christianity persists even in the death camps of the North Korean communists. Frost is correct in that the atheist hate and the desire to destroy the Church is most definitely there, but he fails to recognize the historical reality that persecution has always purified and refined the faith and made the Church stronger. The weaker brethren will fall by the wayside, as they always have, while the stronger ones convert their very killers through the powerful witness of their martyrdom. The Gates of Hell will not prevail.

4) Modern Christianity is a feminist and leftist institution

Correction: modern churchianity is a feminist and mildly leftist institution. It is true that many of the formal denominations are rapidly dying out as a result of their abandonment of Christian theology. They may possess the name and the form, but the animating spirit has left the building. However, the number of the non-denominational “unchurched” continues to grow explosively and at the expense of the dying mainline institutions.

5) Christianity is False

Frost is certainly welcome to his conclusion. But again, his reasoning that supports it is flawed. He writes: “But if Christianity is true, there should be some indication of it as such in our observable reality. The texts of Christianity should accord with morals that encourage stable and just societies. Christianity should be associated historically with righteousness. Christianity should not be breathing its last breaths before landing on the ash heap of history.”

I note first Frost’s implied opinion that the West is in decline and his declared opinion that Christianity is in decline. If he values the traditional West, which was historically known as Christendom, then it would appear to be obvious that its decline is at least in part due to the decline of Christianity within it. Moreover, he has a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity, as it explicitly states the complete opposite of his assertion that Christianity should be associated historically with righteousness, because Christianity provides the very metric by which we are able to discern our own unrighteousness. To his credit, Frost himself admits his general lack of knowledge concerning Christian theology, and I would tend to second the commenter’s recommendation of beginning with The Chronicles of Narnia, continuing with the first two books of Lewis’s Space Trilogy, before then moving on to some of Lewis’s non-fiction as well as Chesterton.

Only then would it perhaps make sense to consider exploring the Catholic catechism or reading Augustine, Aquinas, and the early Fathers if he is still interested in delving deeper. It may sound ludicrous to suggest beginning with children’s novels, but then, the sad and observable reality is that most of the opinions expressed by various critics of Christianity reveal that their theological knowledge doesn’t even rise to that remarkably low level. As for a very good historical overview of the effects of Christianity on Rome, I would recommend the first volume of the Cambridge Medieval History, subtitled The Christian Empire.

Game over

The demographic sun sets on the USA:

After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history. Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration….

Minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth in the decade that ended in 2010, Mr. Frey calculated, a surge that has created a very different looking America from the one of the 1950s, when the TV characters Ozzie and Harriet were a national archetype. The change is playing out across states with large differences in ethnic and racial makeup between the elderly and the young. Some of the largest gaps are in Arizona, Nevada, Texas and California, states that have had flare-ups over immigration, school textbooks and priorities in spending. The nonrural county with the largest gap is Yuma County, Ariz., where just 18 percent of people under 20 are white, compared with 73 percent of people over 65, Mr. Frey said.

It is most certainly a milestone, but precisely what does that milestone signify? At the risk of being accused of historicity by Karl Popper, the answer seems fairly obvious. Historical multi-ethnic societies have traditionally been empires, more specifically, empires ruled by hereditary monarchs. And as the ethnic differences grew, those empires, even those sharing the bond of an all-encompassing state religion, tended to break apart on ethnic lines. So, even if we discount any possibility of qualitative differences between the various ethnicities that have now replaced the relatively homogenous white population, we should expect a) a move towards increasingly authoritarian, winner-takes-all, short term-oriented government, and b) an eventual breakup into two or three political entities.

The obvious one, of course, is the split between Hispanic America in the southwest and the rest of the country. However, as we’ve seen with the Euro debacle, once it becomes obvious that one split is on the cards, others will become seen to be increasingly viable. And once the Hispanic portion of the country exercises its legitimate right to self-determination and goes its own way, presumably before 2033, it seems readily apparent that White America will at long last separate into its “liberal” and “conservative” halves when conservative America finally realizes that the country, to say nothing of the nation, was literally unable to survive the self-destructive tendencies of its liberal population. These political separations won’t necessarily require civil war or even large-scale violence – Czechoslovakia peacefully divided into Slovakia and the Czech Republic after 74 years of political union – but in this case, it probably will due to the heavily ideological aspects of the divide.

Pulling out all the stops

The ECB and the EU are desperately trying to figure out how to jettison Greece without causing the entire Fourth Reich project to collapse:

Because it is one thing to predict the inevitable when one doesn’t have a PhD in Economics, it is something totally different when it comes from the likes of Goldman Sachs (Huw Pill and Themistokis Fiotakis to be precise). In this case, that something is what happens at T+1, T being the inevitable (there’s that word again) point where payments from the ECB to sustain the zombified Greek patient, all of which go to ECB funded entities anyway, stop. The biggest concern is that, as we suggested first thing this morning, the ECB is now engaged in a fatal game of chicken, whereby it is forcing Greeks to vote “Pro Bailout” (something that just dawned on the FT), in exchange for continued funding, because unlike last year when the threat of a referendum resulted in the termination of G-Pap, now there is no leader who can be sacrificed, and Europe has no real leverage over the people who have lost so much already, aside from threatening a full out bank system collapse. However, this could very well backfire as more and more Greeks pull their money out, not wanting to find out who blinks first as it would be their money that could be locked up in perpetuity, in essence making the ECB threat into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And as Goldman says, “If confidence is lost and a run on banks occurs, the implications are hard to assess.” Well, as ZH warned yesterday, this is already starting. Again from the FT: “Athens-based bankers said withdrawals exceeded €1.2bn on Monday and Tuesday – 0.75 per cent of deposits – as President Karolos Papoulias failed in two final meetings with conservative, socialist and leftwing leaders to form a national unity government.” Or double what was suggested yesterday…

Don’t assume that this straw will definitely be the one to break the camel’s back. I expect them to pull a few more rabbits out of a few more hats before the entire edifice collapses. But regardless of whether they’re able to keep Greece, Italy, and Spain in the fold for another year or two, the long-term trend is clear.

Mailvox: God and the post-game

01 asks about the conflation of Christianity and Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis:

Okay, this is interesting: appears Vox here is some kind of simulation-solipsist, actually. And to think I thought he’s some kind of christian…hehe… Vox, would you care to answer a question ? If your simulation hypothesis is, in a general sense, correct (that is, universe is a simulation, and religious rules are supposed to be a factor by which the system selects AI programs that are “fit” for some unknown external purpose), what exactly makes you believe that simulation-designer is granting a happy future existence to those who abide by the “in-universe” rules he set, and not vice-versa (sinners go to “data haven / a better employment”, pious ones are tortured eternally or deleted)?

Is there any reliable way to tell that sim-op isn’t actually preferring AIs who see the author of “religious rules” as “crazy lying fucktard”, and deleting everyone else as soon as they “in-universe die” (or worse)? It’s not like you can have out-of-simulation knowledge of sim-op’s goals, can you?

I not only don’t see any conflict between the simulation hypothesis and the concept of a supernatural Creator God, to me it appears obvious that there is no way of reasonably distinguishing between the two from the human perspective. What leads me to believe the assurances of the “happy future existence” is that they are contained in the same game manual that contains the various reliable predictive models of human behavior provided in The Bible. I don’t know that I would necessarily describe it as “a happy future existence” so much as “the next level”, though. The interesting question to me is if Eternity is static as most Christians assume and Platonic Form theory would suggest, or if it is dynamic and it will be possible to fall from grace in that level too. I tend to incline towards the latter view, but it’s just an impression, not even an opinion.

I don’t think there is any way of meaningfully performing in-game testing of post-game results. The manual itself could be a deception, delivering on its in-game promises while deceiving with regards to its post-game ones. I touch upon this in TIA. For example, if Moloch were the sim-op aka Creator, then abortionists would be ministers and Hitler and Mao two of the saints. We can’t have out-of-game knowledge of anything because we are in the game. But to me, the important thing is to realize that you are playing the game regardless of whether you want to play it or not, whether you believe you are playing it or not.

Police for the police state

Actually, it’s rather hard to blame them:

ATHENS, MAY 11 – More than half of all police officers in Greece voted for pro-Nazi party Chrysi Avgi’ (Golden Dawn) in the elections of May 6. This is the disconcerting result of an analysis carried out by the authoritative newspaper To Vima (TheTribune) in several constituencies in Athens, where 5,000 police officers in service in the Greek capital also cast their ballot. At some polling stations Chrysi Avgi’ obtained 19 to 24% of votes.

The tragic thing isn’t that the police are supporting Golden Dawn. The tragic thing is that the Golden Dawn is, despite the very legitimate concerns about its ideology, probably the most sensible political option in Greece. In a choice between Greek Neo-Nazis and the real thing in Berlin and Brussels, you really would have to prefer the former.