Category: Uncategorized

The ennui of the divisional playoffs

I very much suspect Jay Cutler is French. He plays quarterback in exactly the manner in which one imagines a nihilist philosopher would. A long touchdown strike to the tight end, a goal line pass thrown directly to the breadbasket of the opposing linebacker, what is the difference, really? Atoms are arranged one way, atoms are arranged another way, none of it has any meaning.

Don’t ask him questions, media wretch. You bore him. How could you not? The hole in the zone, the wafting of grey smoke from a Galoises Blonde, the thin sheen of sweat on the naked buttocks of a so-called “Hollywood” actress, these are all mere ephemeral pleasures. You ask Jay Cutler why he sneers; Jay Cutler asks why you do not shriek at the tedious horror of it all.

Most atheists have sub-normal intelligence

I mean that quite literally, not that this is any news to those who have read TIA and understand the two churches of atheism or have been forced to slog through the reasoning exhibited by some of the atheists commenting on this blog. The Inductivist points us to empirical evidence that proves 56.8% of all atheists have IQs below 100.

Should you wish to verify this information for yourself, go to the GSS 1972-2008 database, type “god” in the column field and “WORDSUM” in the row field, then hit the “Run the Table” button. Be sure to select the unweighted numbers if you want to see the raw results.

So, while it is true that a slightly higher percentage of atheists have IQs in the highest range, 8.8 percent compared to 8.0 percent of those who believe God exists, because there are so many more theists than atheists, there are 9 highly intelligent theists who are sure that God exists, (and 13 who believe in God’s existence), for every highly intelligent atheist who believes God does not exist. And on a personal note, visiting atheists who believe that they are more intelligent than theists by sheer virtue of their non-belief and/or commitment to Science Reason would do well to keep in mind that less than nine percent of all atheists reach the level that is from twelve to six points lower than the very minimum you know my IQ could be.

It should come as no surprise that the highest percentage of highly intelligent individuals are agnostic since it is the only position fully supported by all the material evidence. Nor should it be a surprise that atheists so often attempt to claim agnostics as atheists, as there are nearly three times more highly intelligent agnostics as there are atheists. The GSS data is more evidence for the idea that atheism is little more than a less intelligent form of socially maladjusted agnosticism.

Cue attacks on the scientific validity of the General Social Survey or an abandonment of the appeal to intelligence argument in 3… 2… 1….

UPDATE: Contrary to their self-advertising, atheists are actually more over-represented at the low end of the intelligence spectrum than they are on the high end. 8.4 percent of atheists have IQs below 63 (nearly as many as have high IQs) whereas only 1.9 percent of believing theists do.

The best rivalry in the NFL

I really enjoy watching Baltimore-Pittsburgh games. It’s not the oldest rivalry in the league, but now that the New England-Indianapolis rivalry has faded with the Colts’ decline, it’s the most fun for a non-partisan football fan to watch. I think the Steelers have the advantage because I trust Big Ben at QB more than Flacco, but I don’t actually care who wins.

In which logic is abandoned

And empirical evidence is embraced in its stead.  Now, I have long contended that it is worthwhile to pay attention to those with whom one disagrees even if one is convinced that they are wrong. While I am most certainly not a fan of Malcolm Gladwell and have little regard for science fetishists, after reading What the Dog Saw and engaging in the recent series of discussions related to the limits of science, it occurred to me that even without taking MPAI into account, I was asking far too much of most people in thinking they would grasp the benefits of a radically different interface by simply presenting them with the specifications and features and expecting them to reach the appropriate conclusions.  Most people don’t want to have to think about something in order to figure it out, they want to be informed.  But how can you inform someone of the detailed specifics when you don’t even know what they are?  Most people find it far less meaningful to hear “X will be significantly better than Y because of Z”  than “X is 20, Y is 10.  So X is twice as much as Y.”  They don’t want to think about Z or to work out how much better X is than Y.  In fact, experience suggests that they often regard the first option as complete gibberish.

This should have been obvious to me from the beginning. Whenever people react to something that is perfectly logical by saying that it is crazy, this is little more than an indication that they really don’t understand either the logic or the conclusion. I suspect the modern fetish for unassailable empirical evidence is in part the result of a decline in the average individual’s ability to think in the abstract; I noticed that the early adopters of the interface with whom I have communicated have almost uniformly been highly intelligent. That might appear flattering, except it’s actually indicative of a problem because it means that the vast majority of potential users are not grasping the potential advantage to them.

Therefore, I concluded that empirical evidence was necessary.  I therefore went about designing a means of acquiring that evidence, which has worked out rather well indeed.  I now have a strange new respect for both Gladwell and blind, thoughtless faith in empirical evidence.

You might consider a new model

Mike Shedlock borrows future Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen’s economic model to extrapolate the future:

Here is a summary of what will happen based on projections of Yellen’s model:

The Fed created 3.5 million jobs.
The Fed bloated its balance sheet by $2.3 trillion to do so.
It takes $657,142.86 in balance sheet additions to create a single job.
It takes the same $2.3 trillion to lower the unemployment rate .5%
The Fed’s balance sheet will reach $18.4 trillion by the time the unemployment rate drops to 5.9%
It will take another 3.5 years to get to a “full employment” situation with an unemployment rate of 5.9%.

If Yellen’s model holds, Nate’s hyperinflationary scenario would certainly appear to be in full E-F-F-E-C-T. Of course, at that point, the Fed would own literally the entire U.S. economy, Federal debt would increase from $8 trillion to $22 trillion and the Employment-Population ratio would fall to 52.3 percent. So, I’m just going to go out on a limb and predict that it will not, in fact, hold.

Doesn’t it just fill you with confidence that the people who hold such power over the economy and your own economic well-being are so unspeakably competent?

The dessicateddesiccated tree of liberty

A CBS News poll reveals the spineless nature of the sons and daughters of the American Revolution:

while three in four Americans say violence against the government is never justified, 16 percent say it can be justified — the same percentage that said as much in April. Twenty-eight percent of Republicans said such violence can be justified, compared with 11 percent of Democrats and independents.

Government is founded upon violence, which is why the Founding Fathers, who quite clearly believed that violence against the government was justified, also believed it was vitally important to limit government very strictly. And it is why no one who believes that violence against the government is never justified should be permitted to vote in America, hold political office, or work as government employee. It is an intellectual position that is about as fundamentally un-American as it is possible to hold.

Remember, the present U.S. government is asserting it has the right to assassinate American citizens without trial or even arrest, the U.S. Constitution notwithstanding. This naturally leads to the obvious question: if one accepts that the federal government possesses the right to murder Americans that it presently asserts, (and which is clearly not limited to it under the Constitution), on what rational grounds can anyone complain about individuals like Jared Loughner exercising exactly the same right?

Science champion wanted

I’ve gotten a few emails from people relating to science, so I think it would be beneficial to hash this out in public. I propose a Socratic dialogue to examine the following question: Is science self-correcting?

Whoever is nominated the Official Champion ofSpeaker for Science should at least be an enthusiastic believer in the scientific method, although an actual scientist would be preferred. Don’t forget to inform everyone of your credentials, as I’m told they’re very important! Now, this isn’t intended to be a debate per se, because I am not defending a position and I have nothing against the idea of science being self-correcting. If the matter is as obvious as my various emailers believe it to be, it should be no problem to successfully answer my simple and straightforward questions in a manner that will prove illuminating to everyone.

So, feel free to throw your name in the hat if you’re interested in educating me and everyone else can discuss who they believe would provide the strongest and most credible champion of science here.

UPDATE: We have several volunteers, two of whom stand out in particular. Matt is a Scienceblogger and PhD candidate for a degree in Physics, while 445supermag is a Senior Research Scientist with 15 published papers ranging from biophysics to quantum chemistry. Matt has suggested that the dialogue include both of them, seeing as they represent different disciplines within science, and I tend to agree with him. I think they will both make for excellent Speakers for Science, but feel free to share your opinon on the matter.

The source of evangelism

Christians are driven to evangelize out of duty or out of a sympathetic desire to prevent others from destruction. Other religions proselytize for similar reasons. But why do militant atheists evangelize so fervently? I suspect one reason may be from an instinctive demographic fear:

The World Values Survey, which covered 82 nations from 1981 to 2004, found that adults who attended religious services more than once a week had 2.5 children on average; while those who went once a month had two; and those who never attended had 1.67. Prof Rowthorn wrote: “The more devout people are, the more children they are likely to have.”

As Rowthorn notes, people do fall away from their childhood religions, although as I have shown in the past, this is also true of those with no childhood religion. But the demographic disadvantage means that the atheist community has to keep all of their children within the godless fold and deconvert one out of every three religious children just to keep pace with the growth of the religious community.

No wonder their evangelical efforts are so feverish. And no wonder their writings are so frequently tinged with despair, because their own children are converting to religion faster than religious children are converting out of it.

Shakespeare had it wrong

The first thing we do is bankrupt all the prospective lawyers.

YOU WENT TO LAW SCHOOL, YOU RAN UP A LOT OF DEBT, and now you can’t get admitted to the bar because having huge debts and no plan to pay them back fails the “character and fitness” test. What the hell kind of legal education system are we running where we charge people more than they can afford to get a legal education, and then prevent them from being lawyers because they can’t pay off their debts?

I don’t know, it strikes me as a rather good way of preemptively punishing those who thought to make a living by leeching off the blood of productive society. Since lawyers are literally officers of the court, which is to say the state, they’re just another unnecessary and unproductive layer of government. We’ve clearly reached that societal stage where, having plundered nearly as much of the private sector as possible, the various aspects of the public sector is now devouring itself.

Phantom income, real bonuses

You almost have to admire the insane insouciance of the bankers, who boldly invent fake profits in order to pay themselves gargantuan profit-shares as bonuses:

The giant US banks have been bailed out again from huge potential writeoffs by loosey-goosey accounting accepted by the accounting profession and the regulators. They are allowed to accrue interest on non-performing mortgages until the actual foreclosure takes place, which on average takes about 16 months.

All the phantom interest that is not actually collected is booked as income until the actual act of foreclosure. As a resullt, many bank financial statements actually look much better than they actually are. At foreclosure all the phantom income comes off the books of the banks.

This means that Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, among hundreds of other smaller institutions, can report interest due them, but not paid, on an estimated $1.4 trillion of face value mortgages on the 7 million homes that are in the process of being foreclosed.

That does explain the slowdown in foreclosures rather nicely, doesn’t it. This is amazing news and makes the Enron accounting look downright angelic in comparison. It’s the equivalent of Intel booking income from the sales of millions of chips, then admitting 16 months later that it never actually sold anything. And it would certainly be an incredible way to launch a startup and take it public, assuming you could get it done in 16 months.

I’ve been reading the most excellent An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, specifically the chapter on the pre-Salamancan scholastics, and I have to admit that the medieval anti-usury arguments Rothbard criticizes are looking more and more reasonable in the light of the way modern banks have taken the core concepts of credit and interest that were originally derived from natural law and private property rights and turned them into a fraudulent and usurious monstrosity that completely defies reality, reason, and logic.

By the way, there will definitely be a future Voxiversity on Rothbard’s History. It is approximately 61.8 times more interesting and informative than AGD was.