Mailvox: How not to critique

This dialogue rather nicely addresses the two most recent Darkstream topics, Jordanetics and learning how to think effectively at the same time. It is perhaps most useful to contemplate this in juxtaposition of how I have gone about criticizing Peterson and his work.

MC: You are confusing the dialectic process which dates back to Socrates himself with dialectical materialism. “Political philosopher…” yeah, right. I challenge you to a livestreamed debate about your essential premise that Jordan is utilizing Marxism to formulate his philosophy.

VD: No, I’m not confusing that. No, that’s not my essential premise. Yes, I am one of the bestselling political philosophers alive, with three #1 bestsellers in that category. And no, I’m not going to debate someone who has never read my work and misrepresents my statements. Peterson is not utilizing Marxism to formulate his philosophy, but he is utilizing the same structural approach that Marx did. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis is structurally identical to Chaos-Order-More Perfect Order aka 12-Rule Path to Balance.

MC: You said verbatim that “his intellectual approach is fundamentally Marxist.”  This requires a gross misunderstanding of what the dialectic process— I.e., thesis-antithesis-synthesis— actually involves, and its rich history. It was developed in its earliest stages by Socrates through the Socratic method, and it was adopted by the scholastic Christians as the premise for their dialectic. Far from being philosophically Marxist and anti-Christian, Peterson’s adoption of the dialectic method is both a rejection of Marxism, and an acceptance of a method that has been used by Christians for hundreds of years. As for your credentials, I’m not arguing about how many best sellers you have. Any professional, career political philosopher would laugh at your claim that Dr. Peterson’s intellectual method is Marxist. And I’ve read more of your work than you think. The challenge to debate is still open.

VD: Yes, and obviously I misspoke as I intended to say that his structural approach to his philosophy is fundamentally similar to the Marxist approach. You are trying to build an entire narrative on a false foundation. And you are completely wrong about that being my “essential premise” even given that misstatement. I will never debate you, because you are not honest, you are primarily interested in demonstrating that you are a Smart Boy. You’re not a mind reader, you are wrong, and you haven’t bothered to even do your homework on this subject. So, drop it before I remove you from the channel.

MC: Now you’re making a different claim— and I appreciate that you’re no longer saying that Peterson’s intellectual approach is fundamentally Marxist. That may not have been considered an essential part of your argument to you, but as someone who watches your videos fairly regularly (and hasn’t criticized your work once until today), it matters to me how you paint the people you criticize. If you had claimed Jordan was fundamentally Marxist and stuck to it, that would have been an extraordinary claim. And in my defense, I am not at all concerned about being viewed as a “Smart Boy.” I am concerned about discovering the truth, wherever it comes from. And by the way, I’m still buying the book because I think there may be worthwhile criticisms in it. But I could not in good conscience let such a drastic accusation slide so easily. Kick me from your channel, if you will, but I think banning and refusal to debate are beneath you. Isn’t that what we criticize the Left about?

VD: Yes, it would have been an extraordinary claim, moreover, it would have been completely in contradiction to every single reference to Peterson and Marxism in the book I just wrote. Not that there are many, since Peterson is not only not a Marxist, he doesn’t even know very much about it despite his constant blathering about it.  The point is that your criticism was almost completely off-base. At no point did you ever stop to confirm that the meaning you quite reasonably assigned to it was intended, nor did you possess enough information to know that it was obviously an unintentional statement. Why would I ever debate anyone who suggests a totally irrelevant debate topic? There is literally nothing to debate.

So, what is the problem with this critical approach? Some of you will already have a pretty good idea of not only the problem, but the underlying reason for the problem, but we will ignore the latter as being obvious to those familiar with the topic.

First, never begin with a superior posture. Second, never make a definitive value statement at the start. Third, be very cautious about building a mountain out of a molehill, especially from a single piece of evidence. Fourth, always place more confidence in the written word than the spoken one. Fifth, refrain making any personal judgments in the early stages. And that’s just in the first paragraph.

Sixth, accept the responsible party’s expression of his intentions unless there is reason to believe he is lying or being evasive. Seventh, do your homework. Eighth, always be slow to leap to judgment. Express your suspicions, do not make concrete assertions.

All news is fake news

It’s the metahumor here that is the funniest aspect of this story:

He had launched his new website on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign as a practical joke among friends — a political satire site started by Blair and a few other liberal bloggers who wanted to make fun of what they considered to be extremist ideas spreading throughout the far right. In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55.

“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”

The amusing thing is the way that the guy doesn’t realize that he’s merely replicated the situation that has existed on the Left for decades. They believe literally everything the mainstream media reports, despite the fact that what is generally known as “the news” is a false narrative that has little more than an incidental relationship with the objective truth of what actually happened.

One should also keep in mind that as Owen Benjamin notes, humor is often predictive. The very humor produced by the overstatement tends to come from the discomfort created by the extrapolation of the current trend, which is why his Gay Town is now at least partly real.

Translation: don’t bet on undocumented immigrants not defacing Mount Rushmore in the next ten years or California not recognizing sharia.

Striking distance

A few more preorders and we can switch the order of the two top bestsellers in Political Philosophy. A bonus for those of you who have tickets to attend a Jordan Peterson lecture: an appendix containing a list of 12 Questions for Jordan Peterson.

Sample: You have said that you consider group identity to be dangerous and pathological. Do you consider yourself to be a Canadian?

Be sure to review it once you read it, as you know there are going to be beaucoup fake reviews on this one, once it comes to the attention of the Jordaneticians Postulants of the 12-Rule Path.

UPDATE: Now THERE is the image we were waiting for. Thanks to all the Dread Ilk who made it happen in preparation for tomorrow’s launch. If you’re on Twitter or Facebook, be sure to share it around.

UPDATE: For a chapter-by-chapter video preview of Jordanetics, watch the Darkstream.

Darkstream: Learning how to think more effectively

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

If you look at at other mistakes that people make I would say probably the biggest one, and the one that is the biggest single problem, is the tendency to apply the genetic fallacy. You see that applied all the time to people like me who are on the Right, but you also see people on the Right applying it to people on the Left. What you need to understand is that it is a logical fallacy to dismiss someone because of the nature of the source. Let me rephrase that: it is a logical fallacy to dismiss something based on the nature of the source.

So the fact that Sam Harris is saying something does not mean that it’s going to be false. Now, if he is playing around with words and that sort of thing then you can have a heuristic that says: Sam Harris is babbling about definitions again and so he’s probably wrong, he’s probably not telling the truth. So it it’s a useful heuristic, but again you cannot place any heavy reliance upon it. You always need to check and you always need to pay attention. What’s what’s important is you apply the heuristic when you don’t have time, but at no point do you ever claim that it has proved anything.

We’re here to help

The USA is graciously offering to protect the freedom of the seas and the financial integrity of several Pacific island nations, whether they want US protection or not.

The US has said it will join Australia in the development of a naval base on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to “protect the freedom of the seas,” in a move apparently aimed at curbing China’s presence in the Pacific.

Australia, a staunch US ally in the Pacific, had already set its sights on Papua New Guinea’s Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island earlier in November, seeking to build a deep-water facility for its Navy. Now, Washington apparently has also decided to join the effort, in a move clearly aimed at sending a signal to Beijing, which is already locked in a trade war with Washington and in disputes over the South China Sea.

It is no surprise that the US decision apparently came on the heels of rumors that China might also emerge as the eventual developer of the deep-water base. Some other reports suggested that China approached another Pacific island nation, Vanuatu, seeking to open a military base there.

Apart from that, the US also seems to be concerned that Beijing might use its growing influence over the Pacific island nations to get access to some military infrastructure in the vicinity of major maritime routes in the region. Pence even engaged in an indirect verbal duel with China’s President Xi Jingping at the APEC summit, where the two apparently fought for the attention of the smaller Pacific nations.

“Do not accept debt that could compromise your sovereignty. Protect your interests,” Pence called on the island nations, referring to China’s active policy of giving loans to the Pacific states, which might turn it into a major bilateral lender to island economies.

He then called on the Pacific nations to stick with the US as it allegedly offers a “better option” because it would supposedly never “coerce or compromise your independence.” Xi, in turn, said that “no one has the power to stop people from seeking a better life,” while calling on the Pacific nations to “strengthen development cooperation” as well.

However, in its attempt to outplay Beijing in its supposed rush to gain control over strategic locations in the Pacific, the US and Australia seemingly completely forgot to ask the locals about their take on the prospect of the base re-development.

No one has sought support from the locals, Manus Island Governor Charlie Benjamin said, as cited by Reuters. The project was also criticized by a former Papua New Guinea MP from the island, Ronnie Knight, who said that “there is lot of questions to be answered” first.

“There was no discussion with any of the locals, it has just been bulldozed through again and that is what makes people cross,” he told Australia’s ABC broadcaster, expressing his concerns about potentially “having a foreign base on our soil.”

See, they’re the BAD empire. We’ll save you from them, and all out of the goodness of our hearts. Now, shut up, stop talking to them, and do what we tell you to do. While we’re at it, can I interest you in an offer of some loans at an interest rate you can’t possibly refuse? No, I mean, you literally can’t refuse them. Or else.

Don’t mind us just doing a little construction over here. It’s just a teeny, tiny, little military base. You’ll hardly notice it.

An addendum

In writing an appendix to Jordanetics – note that today is the last day to preorder – I revised my numbers a little to account for the inexcusable omission of Indians – dot, not feather – from my earlier statistical review of his claims concerning the high-IQ subset of the U.S. population. I also took a look at his assertion from another perspective, which in addition to better illuminating the absurd nature of his claim, nicely demonstrates his admitted inaptitude for math and statistics.

Less than 4 percent of the 145+ IQ population in the USA is Jewish. Not more than 40 percent.

Note that even if we were to generously allow Peterson his original assertion as well as a causal relationship between IQ and societal success, his math is incorrect. At the high end of his suggested range, Jews would account for 123,690 of the 713,113 high-IQ population of the United States, or 17.3 percent. At the lower end he asserts, a mean IQ of 110, the Jewish percentage would decline to less than one-twelfth of the 145+ IQ set.

And just to demonstrate how ridiculous Peterson’s original statement was, accounting for the 40.8 percent of the U.S. 145+ IQ population claimed by the statistically-challenged professor would require a mean Jewish IQ of 123.4, with 7.5 percent of all U.S. Jews possessing an IQ over 145.

I’m a little bit dubious of some of the numbers that go into this equation, particularly the estimated mean IQ reported for the immigrant Indian population by Forbes, but they are a damned sight more realistic than what serves as the foundation for Peterson’s attempt to dismiss observable reality as conspiracy theory.

Truly an inexplicably poor performance by Humanity’s Greatest Thinker.

To a Butthurt Boomer

Dear Baby Boomer,

You whine, cry, and kick up a fuss EVERY SINGLE TIME anyone says anything negative about the Boomers. You get defensive EVERY SINGLE TIME, which would be amusing if it wasn’t so annoying

You really must learn to control your reactive Boomer defensiveness. Because it is no business of yours if the younger generations hate your g-g-generation, which has never stopped talking incessantly about itself. We have the right to feel as we do, just as you Boomers had the right to feel so infinitely superior to your unforgivably square parents.

Look, while I can’t speak for younger generations, I can say that on the average, Generation X HATES and DESPISES your generation. That’s just a fact. We hate your stupid music. We hate your narcissism. We despise the way so many of you have neither the time nor the inclination to love our children the way our grandparents loved us. We hate what a pain in the ass you are now that you’re starting to require caretaking but are still determined to live where and how you want to live. We hate the way so many of you are actually hoping to leave nothing to your kids and grandkids and “die with the most toys”. Decades ago, we actually used to joke that your generation would be babbling about “70 is SEXY” when it got old, and then you guys actually WENT AND DID it.

It’s not about the Boomers failing to deliver Utopia. No one ever has. It’s not about the perfection of past generations, some of whom collectively made incredibly bad decisions that have resonated down through the decades. But the fact is that your g-g-generation actually DID do a number of things differently than their predecessors, things of which they were proud, things that “changed the world”, and they are the first U.S. generation to leave its successors materially worse off than they were.

I’m not saying it’s your fault. Obviously it’s not. I’m not saying you are personally responsible. You couldn’t be. We’re talking about macro, not micro here. But your constant defensiveness whenever the subject arises tends to indicate that you at least share somewhat in your generation’s weird, self-obsessed collective consciousness.

Love,
Generation X

Right Ho, Jeeves #6

A HERO AT BRINKLEY is the sixth and final issue in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series. RIGHT HO, JEEVES tells of the travails of the inimitable Bertie Wooster, summoned from the comforts of #3A Berkeley Mansions, London, to Brinkley Manor by his imperious Aunt Dahlia. Love is in the air and Wodehousian shenanigans are afoot, as Wooster is not the sole guest at the manor, which is also playing host to the fairy-gazing Madeline Basset as well as the famous newt-fancier Augustus Fink-Nottle. But, as always, the inimitable Jeeves is there to set things right and save the day!

Adapted from the classic Wodehouse novel by comics legend Chuck Dixon and drawn by SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN illustrator Gary Kwapisz, A HERO AT BRINKLEY is the brilliant culmination of the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series.

We anticipate releasing the RIGHT HO, JEEVES graphic novel, which collects the entire six-issue series, in a premium 10×7 paperback, before the end of the month. It’s going to be beautiful. In the meantime, the Kindle edition of Issue #6 is now available.

Yeats the Baptist

Greg Johnson writes of what he considers to be the hopeful message of Yeats’s Second Coming:

And the poem seems to indicate a reversal of that flight, and a reversal of the birth of Christ. Could Mary, resting on the flight into Egypt, rocking Jesus cradled between the paws of a sphinx, have vexed the stony beast to nightmare? Could it have finally stirred from its troubled sleep, its womb heavy with the prophet of a new age, and begun the search for an appropriate place to give birth? “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” And what better place than Bethlehem, not to repeat but to reverse the birth of Christ and inaugurate a post-Christian age.

One can ask, however, if the poem ends on a note of horror or of hope. As I read it, there are three distinct stages to Yeats’ narrative. The first is the age when Christian values were the unchallenged core of Western civilization. This was a vital, flourishing civilization, but now it is over. The second stage is nihilism, both active and passive, occasioned by the loss of these core values. This is the present-day for Yeats and ourselves.

The third stage, which is yet to come, will follow the birth of the “rough beast.” Just as the birth of Jesus inaugurated Christian civilization, the rough beast will inaugurate a new pagan civilization. Its core values will be different than Christian values, which, of course, horrifies Christians, who hope to revive their religion. But the new pagan values, unlike Christian ones, will actually be believed, bringing the reign of nihilism to its end and creating a new, vital civilization. For pagans, this is a message of hope.

I think his interpretation of the three distinct stages is correct. Which is why it is really going to be fascinating to see what Greg makes of Jordanetics, which I understand he plans to review. Because, despite the best efforts of fools, false prophets, and philosophers, no Man has been able to coherently conceive, let alone construct, a viable post-Christian civilization.

Slandered by the Secret King

Two-Face van Sciver is clearly shaken by something, as he’s now emotionally projecting worse than the average SJW and resorting to outright slander. Perhaps Nick Rekeita informed him that IndieGoGo is going to be required to turn over all of their communications with him to Arkhaven as part of the discovery process permitted by the required arbitration system. Or perhaps it’s just the strain of Cyberfrog being late and 2VS feeling the pressure to deliver something capable of justifying more than half a million dollars’ worth of hype. This is from the transcript of his November 15th video called The FUTURE of the CG Movement.

You know about John Del Arroz, and I’ll tell you guys here, you know John Del Arroz, basically, I’m not sure what his whole thing with white nationalism was. He says “I was just explaining what it is that’s not how I feel.” That’s not what I remember him saying when I heard him say it, but I’ll take his word for it. Uh, the problem is, and I told him privately, I said, “yeah you know, listen, even if it’s true that everyone’s smearing you as a white nationalist and you’re not, we all misheard, you everyone knows you an apology because that’s a serious thing.” But the next thing you know, when Vox Day tried to take over ComicsGate and I fought back, he sided with Vox Day in a really snake-like way, and then what he did after we had kind of, after we had sort of, it seemed, made up, um, he started to he started to mess with me on behalf of Vox Day, like he became Vox Day’s little toady.

Vox Day said, “you think that you can stop me with, you think you can stop me with,  with your copyright trademark stuff, I’ll show you what trademark, you know what I can do with trademark, I’ll play with you with that. So what he did was he went on Amazon.com and he launched a parody kind of, of CyberFrog, but spelled with a P like PsyberFrog, and he put it up for sale on, on Amazon.com. Now I never would have known about this because I don’t talk to Vox Day so he wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have found out, so who was the one who was assigned to let me know that this troll had happened?  John Del Arroz! And he shows up immediately and goes, “hey man, I just wanted to let you know about this, like what do you think of this, like that’s wrong,” and I was like, I got it, so you guys are just gonna do this, what what’s next, it’s gonna be like cyber frog but spelled like TSyberfrog, I mean like, are you guys just gonna do this just to show that you can get around? I get it, I get it, it’s funny, now stop it!

So after that,  like, I just kind of said, all right this guy is there’s something up with him. I don’t know what his thing is. I don’t know what what his thing is, but like if he’s gonna be Vox Day’s toady and troll me on behalf of Vox, like, I just, get away from me. Kind of, you know, like, just get away from me! But me saying get away from me, like, that’s apparently, you’re not allowed to just tell people to go away. You used to be able to tell people to go away, now when you tell people to go away,  they go “he’s harassing me by telling me to go away, how dare he told me to go away, this guy,  and he’s turned everyone against me and he’s telling me to go away!” No, I just, I don’t, I don’t like you, I think you’re a snake, you’ve proven yourself to be a snake over and over again. I don’t know what’s up with the white nationalism thing, but you know it seemed to me that you know that’s what you said, and then you’re gonna do this on behalf of Vox Day? You, you know, it’s, it’s just two-faced! Get away, you’re trouble.

First of all, as you might expect, 2VS is shamelessly and blatantly lying. And he knows he is lying. I did nothing of the sort. I didn’t say that and I didn’t do that. I had absolutely nothing to do with this Psyberfrog parody. I didn’t create it, I didn’t launch it, I didn’t put it on Amazon, I didn’t tell anyone to do it and I didn’t suggest the idea to anyone do. This is straightforward slander and I can easily prove it by providing a court with the complete list of all of our products in our Amazon accounts.

Second, Jon Del Arroz is not my toady. He’s not one of my 535 Vile Faceless Minions. He’s not Dread Ilk. Nor is he two-faced or snake-like; 2VS is clearly projecting. Jon is, of course, one of our Dark Legion and Castalia House authors, as we will be publishing his Flying Sparks as well as his Alt-Hero novel, and he was an outspoken figure within ComicsGate who refused to denounce and disavow me, which is probably why 2VS is attacking him and attempting to imply that Jon is a white nationalist despite being one of the leading Hispanic science fiction authors. And speaking of Jon Del Arroz, here is his take on why ComicsGate fell apart.

Third, I never tried to take over ComicsGate and 2VS knows that better than anyone. Again, he is projecting his own behavior onto others and repeatedly lying to cover the fact that he had no objection to my acquisition of the imprint and creation of a logo until others reacted badly to it.

And fourth, everyone here knows that if I were to launch a parody of something, it would be high-quality and quite likely better than the original. Read The Corroding Empire Book One: Corrosion and The Collapsing Empire, if you harbor any doubts about that. If I were to do a parody of a 2VS comic, I would hire a good illustrator and a good colorist, then publish a comic called Rainbow Brutus in January which would almost certainly be considerably more entertaining than whatever hapless story 2VS will end up cobbling together when Rainbow Brute finally appears in April 2021.

2VS is a good example of what happens when Gammas find themselves in positions of leadership. It never ends well.