Mailvox: the irrelevance of psychology

A reader emails to write of his reflections on the way in which the psychological approach is entirely unsuited to handle genuine evil.

On a serious note, the JBP discussion brought up something I wrote out and saved.  You saved me the same few hours of reading, to reach similar conclusions.  I’m disturbed by the dreams and unmoored personality, and disturbed similarly by the “Clean your room.  Take your meds.  Be Nice”  set of commands.

Normally, suicide prevention is one of those mandatory training things that you nod through and then forget immediately.  We had the unexpected benefit of having parents come in to “share their story” about how their son suicided at age 21, after years of drug issues.  The emotional testimonial is one that I loathe, so I was busy tuning them out.  It was crisis acting in action, complete with the special choreographed music for the slide show.  But in the middle of mom’s opening speech about her dead son, she mentioned reading Gene Wolfe stories and going to conventions hosted by the local Science Fiction Society.  Oh, now you got my focus.

The father was distant and not really involved with his family, and mom was associated with the SF scene in some way.  I had read the Castalia House blog posts and The Last Closet, so at this point I tuned out the mom and soundtrack and paid attention to the boy’s pictures.  What really got my attention were the activities the pictures came from: Scouts, swim team, boys’ choir, lead role in the school musical…. 

Oh, ye cats indeed.

The pictures were random and not in time sequence. Starting at about age 9-10 the boy’s stance, facial expressions, and attitude began changing in the pictures.  It became overacting and getting outrageous in pictures shown to the public.  The behavior changes did not look normal for the age. It was about age 15-16 where his drug use went into heavy opiate addiction, according to parents, and the pictures shown were of a ravaged young man with some serious ghosts in his eyes.

Short of adding peer counselor or gymnastics to the above list, it’s hard to consider a worse combination of potential exposure to pedophiles or homosexual groomers.  After ten minutes, I wondered if drugs were used as part of the grooming, or if he turned to hard opiates to try forgetting.  Moira Greyland’s words came back to haunt me for the next couple days.Were the parents blind to this possibility?

I thought I had this out of my system, but then came the issues concerning Jordan Peterson.  I listened to about one and a half of his videos, and tuned out.  Your analysis, including the diabolical influence, was on target.  My thoughts came out of background.  Peterson advocated therapeutic measures to mitigate the pain, and nothing to stop it, defend the youth, and counterattack.  Then there were his writing about the cannibalistic and incestuous dreams.  This does NOTHING to help young men.  &*^{0f7560f409a8026d7b9d46efb18eca7d6fc1e8f4d90e8abec425fae450ca0aef} that, there are souls at risk.

The Winestream

First, I would like to point out that some of you are unmitigated freaks. Second, I’m not eating anything after midnight; I have worked hard to get down to my post-college fighting weight and I’m not about to blow that. Third, I gave the matter some thought, and I realized that when one is in the YouTube arena, one must do as the YouTubers do. I therefore concluded that there is one area of personal interest that coincided with what people apparently enjoy watching, and it’s something that I am entirely willing to do, nay, I regularly do anyhow, after midnight.

Scott Adams drinks coffee in the morning, I drink wine at night.

Ours not to reason, fine.
Ours but to drink red wine.

So, if you all come up with $500 in Voxiversity or StreamLabs donations in the next week, I will institute a weekly Winestream, which will consist of me reviewing a wine live for the viewership, complete with the bottle. A contribution of $50/the cost of the bottle (whatever is more) will allow a viewer to suggest a specific wine for me to review, with the caveat that I am based in Europe and cheap American wines like Night Train and Ernst & Julio Gallo are not available here.

Since I have no idea how anyone would talk more than five minutes about a wine, this will merely be an intro to the rest of the Darkstream, which I will cleverly attempt to tie to something to do with the place where the grapes involved came from. Or perhaps I’ll just talk about current events. Regardless, the initial Winestream will be tonight.



100{0f7560f409a8026d7b9d46efb18eca7d6fc1e8f4d90e8abec425fae450ca0aef} committed to diversity

Marvel is not dissuaded in the slightest by declining sales or a customer base that hates its commitment to SJW convergence:

When asked about the films, new editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski called the movies the face of Marvel, and extended that metaphor to describe the TV shows as the arms, the consumer products as the legs that move the body along, but the comics as the heart, the muscle pumping ideas into the blood to the rest of the body.

He talked up the Marvel Fresh Start initiative as “one big tapestry, one big soap opera. And our job is to keep adding to this tapestry in new and original ways and every now and then we have to come up with new ideas, create new characters, switch up the creative teams and that’s what we’re doing now.”

The show talked about bad PR in 2017, including Senior VP David Gabriel as they put it, blaming sales slump on diverse characters. Leading Cebulski to say,

“We’re 100 percent committed to diversity, Marvel is the world outside your window and we want not only our characters but our creative talent to reflect that world and it hasn’t been an easy road to be honest with you. Going back to the 60s when Marvel were created it was created by a number of white men here in New York City who were working in our studio. But now, we do not have any artists that work in Marvel. All our writers and artists work — are freelancers that live around the world so our talent base has diversified almost more quickly than our character base has.”

Miller also talked to senior executive Sana Amanat, including the creation and publication of Ms Marvel, their first lead female Islamic character. “Ms Marvel number 1 just having that copy and knowing its a part of history. People paid attention because there’s something about the idea of Kamala Khan and it has nothing to do with being Muslim or South Asian or whatever. But something about the idea of representation and having a character like that who is totally unexpected that I think people had been craving for such a long time.”

“I hope to be very much like a lifestyle brand. And also, the other big thing that’s going to happen at Marvel is, I don’t think it’s going to be associated as a boy brand. Marvel has always been inclusive and I think it should be a place that anyone looks at that red logo and they realize, ‘Oh yeah, that’s just a really cool entertainment company.’”

This is the corporate version of being 100 percent committed to cancer. I addressed Marvel’s commitment to diversity in last night’s Darkstream, which also features an early glimpse of some of the art from future Alt★Hero issues.

A commenter on the video makes a good point about the likelihood that Marvel is going to learn anything from its declining sales.

One of the first American colonies had to have something like 80{0f7560f409a8026d7b9d46efb18eca7d6fc1e8f4d90e8abec425fae450ca0aef} of their colony starve to death before they finally decided that wealth redistribution was a bad idea. If 50+{0f7560f409a8026d7b9d46efb18eca7d6fc1e8f4d90e8abec425fae450ca0aef} of everyone someone knows dying isn’t enough to convince a colony that they should drop the wealth redistribution idea, what are the chances that anything short of a complete collapse in sales is going to be enough to convince Marvel to stop being so awful?

Help Arkhaven kill them off faster and pick up a copy of Alt★Hero #1.

The nationalist Third Republic

The EU blinked and accepted the Left-Right nationalist alliance rather than risk a La Lega government.

Italy’s new populist leaders commemorated the founding of the Italian republic by attending a pomp-filled military parade Saturday — and then promised to get to work creating jobs and expelling migrants.

“The free ride is over,” League leader Matteo Salvini, Italy’s new interior minister, warned migrants at a rally in northern Italy. “It’s time to pack your bags.”

The pledge of mass deportations to come was a reminder that Italy has a staunchly anti-immigrant, right-wing party in its governing coalition — and that the European Union will face a whole new partner governing its fourth-largest economy.

Earlier, Salvini joined Premier Giuseppe Conte and the rest of the newly sworn-in Cabinet to view the Republic Day parade. Italy’s aeronautic acrobatic squad flew low and loud over downtown Rome trailing smoke in the red, white and green of the Italian flag.

The national pride on display is a feature of every Republic Day, but it took on a particular significance this year after Italy on Friday ended three months of political and financial turmoil and swore in a government whose populist and euroskeptic leanings have alarmed Europe.

Conte, a law professor plucked from relative obscurity to head an unlikely governing alliance of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and League, said the celebrations Saturday transcended all the tensions of recent days.

“It’s the celebration for all of us, of our republic,” he said.

Conte’s Cabinet was sworn in after a last-minute deal averted the threat of a new election that could have turned into a referendum on whether Italy stayed with the shared European euro currency. The political stability relieved financial markets on Friday but Italy’s European neighbors continued to express concerns about the euroskeptic bent and the heavy spending agenda of Italy’s new government…. The political upheaval that has created western Europe’s first populist government this week has been dubbed the start of Italy’s Third Republic.

I think I would have preferred another election, but the fact that Salvini is still the interior minister is the most important thing. And it wasn’t exactly as if the Italians took the EU’s objection to Paolo Savona lying down, instead, they took trolling to new heights by naming him to the Ministry for European Affairs in place of the Treasury. The thing is, it took a while for Italy to get into the Euro, and they’re not going to extricate the nation from it overnight. The most important thing is for the new government to deliver on the promised deportations. As long as it does that, La Lega will be in a stronger position in the next election cycle.

And, of course, this being Italy, the chances are about 85 percent that the new government won’t last a year anyhow. It is tremendously encouraging, however, to see that the eurocrats are so desperate to avoid a popular referendum on the Euro. They know they would lose, because most Italians would prefer to go back to the Lira, despite what the new Minister of the Treasury says.

Italy’s new finance minister Giovanni Tria is a political economy professor whose policies dovetail with those of the far-right League party, with one crucial exception: he wants Italy to stick with the euro. This is an important distinction from Paolo Savona who was previously touted for the job and whose hostility to Italy’s eurozone membership turned out to be a dealbreaker for Italy’s president. But although Tria wrote on the Formiche analysis website that it was “not in our interests to leave”, he also said that the eurozone needed to be reformed. “Before saying why I think that we must reply ‘no’ to the question of a euro exit, I would start from the question ‘what are the conditions for the euro’s survival’, so we can move in the opposite direction of any breakup,” Tria said.

Except that’s not quite what he said.

“Tra tutti i partiti italiani, sia all’opposizione che al governo, non ho sentito una sola forza politica che dica che voglia uscire dall’euro. Questa è la verità: il mondo deve prenderne atto” 

“Throughout all the Italian parties, including the opposition and the government, I have not heard a single political force that says it wants to exit the Euro. This is the truth: the world must take note.”

I found this statement more significant.  Sembra di essere tornati ai tempi in cui Maynard Keynes criticava i vecchi ortodossi.

“It feels as if we have returned to the times in which John Maynard Keynes criticized the old orthodoxy.”

In other words, no major political party has made it an official policy… yet. My take is that he’s warning the Eurocrats that either they shape up fast or Italy ships out. And I am quite sure that he knows they have no intention whatsoever of shaping up. And, as I’ve already mentioned, Italy intends to deal with the migrant situation first. If the EU gets in the way of that, then Italy will leave both the Euro and the European Union.

Yes, yes, that does sound weird

I don’t even know what to do with this YouTube comment.

It might sound weird but I wish Vox would put aside all of this intellectual stuff and do one of those videos where he just eats a cheeseburger on camera or something. Like don’t even say anything, just sit down and dig into a burger. I would watch the fuck out of that. There are people who do only that and they get millions of views. Then once in awhile he could go back to making a video of intellectual content, but after hooking in a brand new audience with videos where he eats pasta or whatever. It could be anything. Something indigenously Italian. I think this appeals to me because I can’t really picture it, so it would be entertaining and interesting to see. Like I could easily imagine Molyneux chewing on a bagel or having a smoothie or something. So that wouldn’t really interest me. I just can’t imagine Vox eating anything. I’m sure he does eat; he would have to. I just can’t really imagine it, though. I wish he would do it. 

The video medium is bad enough as it is. I didn’t know it was even necessary to draw a line, but I definitely draw one at making eating fetish videos.

Darkstream: Hierarchy and Human Behavior

From Hierarchy and Human Behavior.

The important thing to understand is that the names don’t matter. This is something that for some
reason a lot of people struggle with; the fact is that we’re not creating anything here, we’re not inventing anything here. Now I like to use the example of the okapi. The okapi is an animal that looks kind of like a combination of a zebra and a giraffe, and it’s only found in some of the deep jungles in Africa. People told scientists and zoologists for decades that this animal existed, but it wasn’t “discovered” until you know sometime, in I think it was, in the mid-20th century. And then they named it “the okapi”, but the thing that you need to understand is that the animal existed before it was named. The animal was always there.

These behavioral patterns exist and are exhibited on a daily basis by people around you every single day. It doesn’t matter what you call them, it doesn’t matter whether you think they’re good or you think they’re bad, you know, all we’re doing is recognizing that similar people in similar social positions, they are all playing out the same role.

Chronicle your behavioral patterns with regards to how you interact with others and it’s very, very easy to categorize your behavioral form through the eyes of someone else. Most people have no ability, they have no ability whatsoever, to honestly judge themselves. And that’s one reason why I  stopped blogging at Alpha Game, because I got so tired of all these people who wanted to talk about
what they were, you know, what other people thought they were, and then argue about what they were. You know, to do that, to focus on that, is to completely miss the point.

It’s not about you, it’s about how you can anticipate and predict the behavior of others, and anyone can do it. It doesn’t matter what you are, you know, doesn’t it matter more if you’re hiring someone, if you’re bringing someone in as a volunteer, isn’t it more important to understand whether that person is going to try to take over your company, if they’re going to be incapable of taking responsibility and  making decisions on their own, or if they’re going to lash out in a fit of rage and attempt to destroy you and the organization if they don’t get their way, or if they’re going to pay no attention to whatever you tell them to do and they’re just going to go off and do their own thing without really paying much attention to what your objectives are?  Wouldn’t you agree that being able to distinguish between  those things is much much more important?

Mailvox: opinions solicited and otherwise

A Darkstream viewer comments on a recent video:

Spot on. One additional tendency worth noting: Gammas feel an almost irresistible urge to contribute their unsolicited opinions. Most folks do this from time-to-time, of course, and it is usually relatively harmless. But with the Gamma, it is pathological and constant. The need for attention, for adulation, means he must do this all the time.

For the Gamma seeking to rid himself of Gamma behavior patterns, as you said in the video, it is often preferable to just shut the fuck up. Fact of the matter is, smart or not, Gammas are insufferable toolbags and nobody wants to hear their opinions, even if the Gamma is right. No, especially if the Gamma is right. The only thing worse than a loser is a loser who, by some quirk of fate, chance, whatever… is actually right about something. He’ll lord it over everyone and talk himself up incessantly. He’ll milk it far past the point of good sense.

I know, I did enough of this in my time as a Gamma.

If a Gamma (or a former one, I suppose) feels the desire to contribute his opinion, it is often best to do so in private, one-on-one, and not speak of it further, not use it for social gain, posturing, etc… This increases the chance that the opinion will be appreciated, rather than dismissed as coming from a passive-aggressive ass.

Put another way: let others take the credit for a while. Serve and follow – for those worthy of those things, anyway – don’t try to command. It never works for the Gamma.

This is one of the most readily identifiable aspects of the Gamma, which is his insistence on offering unsolicited advice, opinion, and correction. Not only is it unsolicited, it is absolutely unwanted, particularly when it can do absolutely no good at all.

There are few things more infuriating than presenting something that is clearly finished, only to have the immediate response be, “do you know what you should have done instead?” No, I really don’t, and I especially do not want to know right now, even in the unlikely event that you happen to be right.

The petty delight with which Gammas appear to take in attempting to crush the joy in the accomplishments of others is possibly their most despicable trait. I don’t know if they are genuinely seeking to be helpful, if they are seeking to demoralize, if they are being passive-aggressively mean, if they are constitutionally giving a compliment without providing a complaint to balance it, if it is an expression of envy, or if it is some combination of these motivations that depends upon the circumstances.

But unless you are the other individual’s coach, mentor, or boss, do NOT offer criticism unless it is specifically requested when something is first announced or shown to you. It not only doesn’t make the other person appreciate your helpful contribution to their future success, it makes them want to punch you in the face… and determined to leave you out of the loop next time. The correct thing to do is say, “congratulations!” The polite thing to do is throw in a compliment or two, if you can honestly do so. And then leave it at that.

What positive purpose is served when telling someone that something that is obviously finished could have, or should have, been different?

I’m not saying that you should lie if someone asks you if you like something. If you don’t like it, then don’t say you do. But if you do, then say so, find something nice to say about it, and leave it at that. There is a time and place for criticism; the moment of the initial unveiling is absolutely not one of them. Relentless negativity is not attractive to anyone, and creative men and women are particularly averse to it by necessity.

That being said, I have learned over the years that most people’s opinions of incomplete art are totally useless. I call it “the drums are too loud” phenomenon. It used to drive me crazy, when playing an early rough cut of a Psykosonik song for someone, that they would almost inevitably fail to have any useful opinion on the melody, the rhythm, the structure, the lyrics, or the vocal stylings, but would reliably concentrate on something entirely trivial like the mix. I finally stopped letting anyone hear anything that wasn’t at least a prospective final mix.

UPDATE: NH attempts to answer my implied question:

You said you weren’t sure if gammas offer unsolicited advice because “they are seeking to demoralize, if they are being passive-aggressively mean, if they are constitutionally giving a compliment without providing a complaint to balance it, if it is an expression of envy, or if it is some combination of these motivations that depends upon the circumstances.”

It starts because they have no experience and little to offer, so in a sense, it’s meant to be harmless, maybe helpful in its own way. Criticizing feels smart when you’re young, and it’s easy. They honestly don’t know at first how much pain and sacrifice lead up to presenting that finished product.

Over time, however, they learn how they get a strong emotional reaction when they do it… and that’s power. If there’s one thing that a gamma is dying of thirst for, it’s power over others. So, they keep doing it until their bitterness eats them alive.

Secret Maikos

As amusing as this Band-Maid video is, it’s even funnier to learn that it is an April Fool’s joke carried out to an extent that only the Japanese can imagine. My Japanese is not up to discerning this myself, but I am reliably informed that the band even went to the trouble of changing the lyrics of the original song to Kansai-ben, which is a Kyoto dialect that is said to descend from the geisha speech of the past.

Chinese lasers already have impact

They can’t actually take down a fast-moving fighter yet, but Chinese lasers are already inhibiting US aeriel movement:

Chinese company Poly Technologies showed off its new bit of next-age tech at a military exhibition in Kazakhstan this week. The “Silent Killer” laser is able to obliterate unmanned drones from about 328 yards away. It is, however, only able to target slow-moving, low-flying, and small-sized targets.

Silent killer’s lasers are also able to jam incoming electronic attacks, effectively making an hack attempt impossible. The weapon is capable of being mounted onto mobile vehicles as well as warships, according to its developers.

The advancement in laser technology comes just weeks after US military chiefs warned fighter jet pilots to “use extreme caution” near a Chinese base.  It later emerged high-powered lasers were in operation at the facility.

As I have repeatedly pointed out since we published Riding the Red Horse, US air supremacy probably has less than a decade left. This will have considerable implications for US foreign policy, and likely explains the push for obtaining military superiority in space on the part of both the US and the Chinese militaries.

Darkstream: why no one likes you

I probably should have called this Darkstream “how to be less disagreeable” or something, but regardless, it’s something that unpopular people really need to listen, understand, and apply. So much behavioral unattractiveness is avoidable, it just requires a modicum of self-awareness and self-control.

A really big giveaway is trying to make a issue about the person rather than the issue. If you disagree with someone, do you have a tendency to focus on what the person said and what was wrong about that or do you immediately go to try to question the person’s motivations, you immediately go to try to question the person’s character, you try to discredit the person in the eyes of other people? Those are all gamma behavioural patterns.

There’s a good comment here and this is exactly true. He says, “I notice that they tend to scan for trigger words that they respond emotionally to rather than processing the ideas and then responding to the ideas.” People don’t like this behavior. This is what this is what is so strange about these patterns is that no one likes this behavior. Men don’t like it, women don’t like it, absolutely no one likes to be around it, and no one likes to be subjected to it. And so, you know, if you find that you’re not popular, if you find that people go out of their way to avoid being around you, if they kick you out of their groups online, you know, the chances are very good that your behavior is caught up in in this vicious spiral of negativity. Some of it is directed internally, but a lot of it gets directed at anybody who upsets you or makes you feel bad.

The problem is that other people know about this even if they even if they can’t articulate exactly what your behavior is. They have seen it before in others and they have had bad experiences with others who exhibit those behavioral patterns….

The one thing that I would like to convince you if you are someone that is unpopular, disliked, etc, the one thing that I’d like to convince you more than anything is to understand that everyone sees through all of your little posturing. Okay? The snarky declarations of victory, the redefinitions of defeat and claiming that you actually really won, these are things that are not fooling anyone, you know?

Because, like I said, there aren’t that many fundamental behavioral types and so when you’re doing that kind of crap, then you’re doing something that the other person has seen a hundred times before from other losers like you. So you know, you’re not getting anything past them. Even if they don’t call you out, even if they just roll their eyes and let it go, you shouldn’t think you’re getting away with anything and you’re not fooling anyone, all right? The snarky comments, the posturing, the eye rolling, these are things that people notice and they remember.

UPDATE: Then again, this comment tends to indicate that many unpopular, disagreeable people prefer their negative behavioral patterns to popularity.

I often find that the people who self-identify as alpha and put everyone else down are actually narcissistic sociopaths attempting to justify their anti-social behavior and pretend they’re a much higher status than they actually are. That you admit to looking to your wife for approval before you speak definitely takes you out of the alpha category.
– Jack Burton

I suggest Jack watch the video again. I’m literally talking to him and men like him. By the way, Big Trouble in Little China quotes are also a gamma tell.

In any event, I don’t look to Spacebunny for approval. I look to her because she actually pays attention to the social mood of the gathering and the flow of the conversation, which I don’t always do. This helps me avoid humiliating someone who really doesn’t deserve it or responding to a harmless statement in a manner others are likely to deem awkward or inappropriate.

His audio is never good. His content is never good. His speaking ability is never good. Why does a self-proclaimed genius speak like he has brain damage? He’s stupid, lying or both. Using your podcasts to attack others all the time = gamma of the lowest order.
– Jack Burton

I suggest you look in the mirror because you’re literally talking about yourself and projecting your faults on others. You ARE the nerd, a huge nerd. You don’t just know quotes, you create the quotes. You don’t just visit fantasy worlds, you live in a fantasy world. You make your living writing third-rate fiction to appeal to the same nerds you seem to hate. Your complete lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy is astounding and just shows how deep your narcissism is. The idea that merely quoting a movie or book means you’re gamma is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard and is completely nonsensical. You’re a nerd pretending you’re better than other nerds. It’s really pathetic. You’re a liar and a fraud. I’m not making sarcastic sounds. I’m not indirectly taking shots. I’m telling you directly that you’re full of shit. Something your wife, real or imagined, does a lot I’m sure. 
– Jack Burton

Who lies more, Peterson or “Vox Day?” Who lives in a fantasy world and sells his fantasies to others, Peterson or Vox? Who is a huge nerd but attacks and exploits other nerds? Vox is clearly much more dysfunctional, deceptive, parasitic and negative than Peterson.
– Jack Burton

It’s amusing that the biggest gamma nerd of them all pretends he’s alpha, LMAO. He’s up to his castizo eyeballs in comics and pretends he’s some kind of chad alpha. He’s a short, doughy geek who couldn’t defend himself to save his life. He even admitted he doesn’t respond to people unless his wife gives him permission. Just stand there and hold her purse, you wimp.
– Jack Burton