McRapey supports Sad Puppies!

Or rather, Brad’s right to put forth a list of recommended nominees as he has done. What Scalzi is actually trying to do is stake out a position in the middle ground in response to the post to which I linked yesterday while covering his ample backside in a deluge of rhetoric, but in the end, he’s admitting that what Larry and Brad have done is every bit as legal as his own shenanigans in parleying a few dubious Best Fan Writer nominations into an eventual Best Novel win were.

First, go read this. This is only one dude, to be clear, but his defensive, angry and utterly terrified lament is part and parcel with a chunk of science fiction and fantasy fandom and authors who want to position themselves as a last redoubt against… well, something, anyway. It essentially boils down to “The wrong people are in control of things! We must take it back! Attaaaaaaaack!” It’s almost endearing in its foot-stompy-ness; I’d love to give this fellow a hug and tell him everything will be all right, but I’m sure that would be an affront to his concept of What Is Allowed, so I won’t.

Instead let me make a few comments about the argument, such as it is. Much of this stuff I addressed last year when a similar kvetch appeared, but let me add some more notes to the pile.

Rhetorical blather to assuage the rabbits. Notice how the Chief Rabbit really hammers the “scared” theme. It’s the one thing rabbits can understand. “We not afraid! No! HIM afraid! Him not-rabbit. Him LONELY!”

1. The fellow above asserts that fans of his particular ilk must “take back” conventions and awards from all the awful, nasty people who currently infest them, as if this requires some great, heroic effort. In fact “taking back” a convention goes a little something like this:

Scene: CONVENTION REGISTRATION. ANGRY DUDE goes up to CON STAFFER at the registration desk.

Angry Dude: I AM HERE TO TAKE BACK THIS CONVENTION AND THE CULTURE THAT SO DESPERATELY CRIES OUT FOR MY INTERVENTION

Con Staffer: Okay, that’ll be $50 for the convention membership.

(Angry Dude pays his money)

Con Staffer: Great, here’s your program and badge. Have a great con!

Angry Dude: …

I mean, everyone gets this, right? That conventions, generally speaking, are open to anyone who pays to attend? That the convention will be delighted to take your money? And that so long as one does not go out of one’s way to be a complete assbag to other convention goers, the convention staff or the hotel employees, one will be completely welcome as part of the convention membership? That being the case, it’s difficult to see why conventions need to be “taken back” — they were never actually taken away.

But the conventions are run by awful, nasty people! Well, no, the small local conventions (and some of the midsized ones, like Worldcon) are run by volunteers, i.e., people willing to show up on a regular basis and do the work of running a convention, in participation with others. These volunteers, at least in my experience, which at this point is considerable, are not awful, nasty people — they’re regular folks who enjoy putting on a convention. The thing is, it’s work; people who are into conrunning to make, say, a political statement, won’t last long, because their political points are swamped by practical considerations like, oh, arguing with a hotel about room blocks and whether or not any other groups will be taking up meeting rooms.

(Larger cons, like Comic-cons, are increasingly run by professional organizations, which are another kettle of fish — but even at that level there are volunteers, and they are also not awful, nasty people. They’re people who like participating.)

But the participants are awful, nasty people with agendas! That “problem” is solved by going to the convention programming people and both volunteering to be on panels and offering suggestions for programming topics. Hard as it may be to believe, programming staffers actually do want a range of topics that will appeal to a diverse audience, so that everyone who attends has something they’d be interested in. Try it!

Speaking as someone who once was in charge of a small convention open to the public, i.e., the Nebula Awards Weekend (I would note I was only nominally in charge — in fact the convention was run and staffed by super-competent volunteers), my position to anyone who wanted to come and experience our convention was: Awesome! See you there. Because why wouldn’t it be?

Again, science fiction and fantasy conventions can’t be “taken back” — they were, and are, open to everyone. I understand the “take back” rhetoric appeals to the “Aaaaugh! Our way of life is under attack” crowd, but the separation between the rhetoric and reality of things is pretty wide. Anyone who really believes conventions will be shocked and dismayed to get more paying members and attendees fundamentally does not grasp how conventions, you know, actually work.

(shakes head, blinks, wakes up) Yikes, that was tedious. Remember, professional writer there, don’t try this at home. Anyhow, it is good to know that WorldCon is pleased with all the new supporting members Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies have been bringing into the fold. Now, what is all the bitching and crying about?

2. Likewise, the “taking back” of awards, which in this case is understood to mean the Hugo Awards almost exclusively — I don’t often hear of anyone complaining that, say, the Prometheus Award has been hijacked by awful, nasty people, despite the fact that this most libertarian of all science fiction and fantasy awards is regularly won by people who are not even remotely libertarian; shit, Cory Doctorow’s won it three times and he’s as pinko as they come.

But yet again, you can’t “take back” the Hugos because they were never taken away. If you pay your membership fee to the Worldcon, you can nominate for the award and vote for which works and people you want to see recognized. All it takes is money and an interest; if you follow the rules for nominating and voting, then everything is fine and dandy. Thus voting for the Hugo is neither complicated, nor a revolutionary act.

Bear in mind that the Hugo voting set-up is fairly robust; the preferential ballot means it’s difficult for something that’s been nominated for reasons other than actual admiration of the work (including to stick a thumb into the eyes of people you don’t like) to then walk away with an award. People have tested this principle over the years; they tended to come away from the process with their work listed below “no award.” Which is as it should be. This also makes the Hugos hard to “take back.” It doesn’t matter how well a work (or its author) conforms to one’s political inclinations; if the work itself simply isn’t that good, the award will go to a different nominee that is better, at least in the minds of the majority of those who are voting.

The fellow above says if his little partisan group can’t “take back” the awards, then they should destroy them. Well, certainly there is a way to do that, and indeed here’s the only way to do that: by nominating, and then somehow forcing a win by, works that are manifestly sub-par, simply to make a political (or whatever) point. This is the suicide bomber approach: You’re willing to go up in flames as long as you get to do a bit of collateral damage as you go. The problem with this approach is that, one, it shows that you’re actually just an asshole, and two, it doesn’t actively improve the position of your little partisan group, vis a vis recognition other than the very limited “oh, those are the childish foot-stompers who had a temper tantrum over the Hugos.” Which is a dubious distinction.

With that said: Providing reading lists of excellent works with a particular social or political slant? Sure, why not? Speaking as someone who has been both a nominee and a winner of various genre awards, I am utterly unafraid of the competition for eyeballs and votes — which is why, moons ago, I created the modern version of the Hugo Voter’s Packet, so that there would be a better chance of voters making an informed choice. Speaking as someone who nominates and votes for awards, I’m happy to be pointed in the direction of works I might not otherwise have known about. So this is all good, in my view. And should a worthy work by someone whose personal politics are not mine win a Hugo? Groovy by me. It’s happened before. It’s likely to happen again. I may have even nominated or voted for the work.

But to repeat: None of this contitutes “taking back” anything — it merely means you are participating in a process that was always open to you. And, I don’t know. Do you want a participation medal or something? A pat on the head? It seems to me that most of the people nominating and voting for the Hugos are doing it with a minimum of fuss. If it makes you feel important by making a big deal out of doing a thing you’ve always been able to do — and that anyone with an interest and $50 has been able to do — then shine on, you crazy diamonds. But don’t be surprised if no one else is really that impressed. Seriously: join the club, we’ve been doing this for a while now.

First of all, no one runs around claiming the Prometheus Award is the epitome of excellence in science fiction. Unlike the Hugo, it is supposed to be an openly political award. As for shining, we’re shining on like Collective Soul. If anyone has a problem with that, hey, now you can take it up with McRapey. He’s up and he’s down with the Puppies. Uh wa ah ah ah….

3. Also a bit of paranoid fantasy: The idea that because the wrong people are somehow in charge of publishing and the avenues of distribution, this is keeping authors (and fans, I suppose) of a certain political inclination down. This has always been a bit of a confusing point to me — how this little partisan group can both claim to be victimized by the publishing machine and yet still crow incessantly about the bestsellers in their midst. Pick a narrative, dudes, internal consistency is a thing.

Better yet, clue into reality, which is: The marketplace is diverse and can (and does!) support all sorts of flavors of science fiction and fantasy. In this (actually real) narrative, authors of all political and social stripes are bestsellers, because they are addressing slightly different (and possibly overlapping) audience sets. Likewise, there are authors of all politicial and social stripes who sell less well, or not at all. Because in the real world, the politics and social positions of an author don’t correlate to units sold.

With the exception of publishing houses that specifically have a political/cultural slant baked into their mission statements, publishing houses are pretty damn agnostic about the politics of their authors. The same publishing house that publishes me publishes John C. Wright; the same publishing house that publishes John Ringo publishes Eric Flint. What do publishing houses like? Authors who sell. Because selling is the name of the game.

Here’s a true fact for you: When I turn in The End of All Things, I will be out of contract with Tor Books; I owe them no more books at this point. What do you think would happen if I walked over to Baen Books and said, hey, I wanna work with you? Here’s what would happen: The sound of a flurry of contract pages being shipped overnight to my agent. And do you know what would happen if John Ringo went out of contract with Baen and decided to take a walk to Tor? The same damn noise. And in both cases, who would argue, financially, with the publishers’ actions? John Ringo would make a nice chunk of change for Tor; I’m pretty sure I could do the same for Baen. Don’t kid yourself; this is not an ideologically pure business we’re in.

(And yes, in fact, I would entertain an offer from Baen, if it came. It would need many zeros in it, mind you. But that would be the case with any publisher at this point.)

Likewise, I don’t care how supposedly ideologically in sync you are with your publisher; if you’re not selling, sooner or later, out you go. These are businesses, not charities.

But let’s say, just for shits and giggles, that one ideologically pure faction somehow seized control of all the traditional means of publishing science fiction and fantasy, freezing out everyone they deemed impure. What then? One, some other traditional publisher, not previously into science fiction, would see all the money left on the table and start up a science fiction line to address the unsated audience. Two, you would see the emergence of at least a couple of smaller publishing houses to fill the market. Three, some of the more successful writers who were frozen out, the ones with established fan bases, could very easily set up shop on their own and self-publish, either permanently or until the traditional publishing situation got itself sorted out.

All of which is to say: Yeah, the paranoid fantasy of awful, nasty people controlling the genre is just that: Paranoid fantasy. Now, I understand that if you’re an author of a certain politicial stripe who is not selling well, or a fan who doesn’t like the types of science fiction and fantasy that other people who are not you seem to like, this paranoid fantasy has its appeal, especially if you’re feeling beset politically/socially in other areas of your life as well. And that’s too bad for you, and maybe you’d like a hearty fist-bump and an assurance that all will be well. But it doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, no matter who you are, there will always be the sort of science fiction and fantasy you like available to you. Because — no offense — you are not unique. What you like is probably liked by other people, too. There are enough of you to make a market. That market will be addressed.

Again, I am genuinely flummoxed why so many people who are ostensibly so in love with the concept of free markets appear to have a genuinely difficult time with this. It’s not all illuminati, people. It never was.

Unlike McRapey and company, we can do the math. We know that science fiction sales and advances have been declining precipitously. We know perfectly well that the gatekeepers of traditional publishing are SJWs, who are publishing SJW fiction that doesn’t sell as much new as the classic racist/sexist/homophobic Campbellian stuff that the likes of Charles Stross decry STILL sells today.

4. And this is why, fundamentally, the whole “take back the genre” bit is just complete nonsense. It can never be “taken back,” it will never be “taken back,” and it’s doubtful there was ever a “back” to go to. The genre product market is resistant to ideological culling, and the social fabric of science fiction fandom is designed at its root to accomodate rather than exclude. No one can exclude anyone else from science fiction and fantasy fandom when the entrance requirement is, literally, an interest in the genre, or some particular aspect of it. You can’t exclude people from conventions that require only a membership fee to attend. Even SFWA has opened up to self-publishing professional authors now, because it recognized that the professional market has changed. To suggest that the genre contract to fit the demands of any one segment of it doesn’t make sense, commercially or socially. It won’t be done. It would be foolish to do so.

The most this little partisan group (or those who identify with it) can do is assert that they are the true fans of the genre, not anyone else. To which the best and most correct response is: Whatever, dude. Shout it all you like. But you’re wrong, and at the end of the day, you’re not even a side of the genre, you’re just a part. And either you’re participating with everyone else in what the genre is today, or you’re off to the side wailing like a toddler who has been told he can’t have a lollipop. If you want to participate, come on in. If you think you’re going to swamp the conversation, you’re likely in for a surprise. But if you want to be part of it, then be a part of it. The secret is, you already are, and always have been.

If you don’t want to participate, well. Wail for your lolly all you like, then, if it makes you happy. The rest of us can get along without you just fine.

Who is wailing? Not us. We’re participating like a boss. We’re participating and we’re perpetrating even more heavily than we were last year, when our participation was greeted with shrieks and protests and tears and outrage. But it’s good to know that Johnny is welcoming us with such open arms. Because we’re here. So if you’re registered to nominate, don’t forget to review Rabid Puppies before you do so.

Mailvox: Marxism and the Shoe Event Horizon

DB asks about a past SmartPop essay:

I am an Italian university student, and at the moment I am writing my thesis, which is about Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While gathering some material to work on, I found The Rough Guide to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Marcus O’Dair, in which he maintains that you stated that “the Shoe Event Horizon [is] a dig not at capitalism, but rather at the Marxist notion of capitalist crisis, which is pretty much its antithesis” (page 71).

I have been trying to find the original source of this idea, but I am not sure whether it is this one:

With this letter, I would ask you if you could briefly explain how the “Shoe Event Horizon theory” is to be considered a critique to Marxism rather than to capitalism itself (I am not an expert in the fields of philosophy and economics).

My essay in THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE was indeed the original source of the idea,  which I mentioned in a one-off line without explaining it. Neglecting to explain things is a time-honored personal tradition. I’m not usually doing it to be difficult, it’s just that I tend to have a very hard time grasping what is, and is not, obvious to other people.

Adams manages to mine this unlikely field, economics, for some of his most scathing barbs. The dismal science does not often figure into fictional plot lines and still less is it played for laughs, but nevertheless, it has an integral role in both the overall story and Adams’ underlying theme. Indeed, Adams betrays a remarkably sophisticated understanding of economics when he pokes fun at the Marxian concept of capitalist crisis in the Shoe Event Horizon that ruins the world of Frogstar World B.

Before I can explain why the Shoe Event Horizon is poking fun at the idea of a crisis in capitalism, I should probably cite the relevant event as recounted by Pizpot Gargravarr.

From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet—people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It’s a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result—collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds—you’ve seen one of them—who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that none should walk on it again.

There is no singular coherent theory of capitalist crisis, there are, in fact, several, but they are summarized more or less accurately on Wikipedia.

In Marxist terms, the economic crises are crises of overproduction and immiseration of the workers who, were it not for the capitalist control of the society, would be the determiners of both demand and production in the first place.

These systemic factors include:

  • Full employment profit squeeze. Capital accumulation can pull up the demand for labor power, raising wages. If wages rise “too high,” it hurts the rate of profit, causing a recession.
  • The tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The accumulation of capital, the general advancement of techniques and scale of production, and the inexorable trend to oligopoly by the victors of capitalist market competition, all involve a general tendency for the degree of capital intensity, i.e., the “organic composition of capital” of production to rise. All else constant, this is claimed to lead to a fall in the rate of profit, which would slow down accumulation.
  • Overproduction. If the capitalists win the class struggle to push wages down and labor effort up, raising the rate of surplus value, then a capitalist economy faces regular problems of excess producer supply and thus inadequate aggregate demand.

All such factors resolve to the synthetic viewpoint that all such crises are crises of over and/or misappropriated production relative to the ability and/or willingness of the workers who generate the bulk of demand to consume.

As he later does with the concept of Keynesian monetary policy still being pushed by the likes of Krugman and Abe today, Adams takes the concept of capitalist crisis stemming from overproduction to absurd and hilarious extremes. In the tragic case of the world of Frogstar B, the people actually reduced their aggregate demand by evolving into flying beings in order to escape the terrible results of the crisis caused by the overproduction of shoes.

The connection between the Shoe Event Horizon and capitalist crisis struck me as so obvious as to need no explanation, but then, it belatedly occurs to me that perhaps not everyone recognizes the implicit connection between capitalist crisis, overproduction, and inadequate aggregate demand, which in the case of Frogstar B, eventually plummeted all the way to zero.

Red with the blood of Christians

The Middle East is red with the blood of Christians. The atrocity by Islamic State sympathisers in Libya highlights the worsening persecution of non-Muslims all over the Middle East – violence that is driving them from their Biblical homelands. The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by forces sympathetic to Islamic State over recent days is sadly not an isolated case. On the contrary, it is the latest of countless outrages perpetrated against Christians in or near the Church’s Biblical heartlands over many years. 

It is time to end the long and suicidal Western experiment with religious tolerance. Tolerance is evil. Tolerance is “the sin of Jeroboam”. Tolerance is the death of civilization.

“As we mourn with the families of those 21 martyrs, we’d better take this warning seriously as these acts of terror will only spread throughout Europe and the United States,” warned Rev. Graham.

The 21st century is about to learn that far from being the epitomes of evil, the Crusades, the Reconquista, and the Spanish Inquisition were all right, necessary, and above all self-defensive reactions by Western civilization against aggressive Islamic expansion. The battle for the West will begin within the next two decades, and the Men of the West had better be ready for it.

The media certainly isn’t:

The morning after the much anticipated Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special, NBC’s “Today” Show gave the SNL special more than 10 times the coverage during its first three hours Monday than the brutal beheadings of Egyptian Christians by ISIS…. “Today” thought the SNL special was of vast importance, covering the
humor-filled three and a half hour-long affair for 15 minutes and eight
seconds (908 seconds in total). Meanwhile, coverage of the ISIS
beheadings totaled a meager one minute and 28 seconds.

93 percent corrupt

Apparently it’s very, very profitable running political “non-profits” these days:

Right Wing News hired a researcher who spent more than a month researching 17 conservative PACs so we could do a special report. What we found was shocking.

* The bottom 10 performing PACs we researched spent $54,318,498 overall and yet only paid out $3,621,896 to candidates.

* Did you know that despite the fact that it raised a staggering 13 million dollars, The National Draft Ben Carson for President isn’t affiliated with Ben Carson and the small percentage of money they spent on independent expenditures didn’t go to him? Now you know why Ben Carson’s business manager, Armstrong Williams wouldn’t allow the group’s campaign director to take a picture with Carson and said, “People giving money think it’s going to Dr. Carson and it’s not. …Our hands are tied. We don’t want people exploited.”

* The Republican Mainstreet Partnership is getting an enormous amount of union money.

“Labor unions provided significant funding for the (Republican Main Street Partnership) with Working for Working Americans, the International Union of Operating Engineers, and the Laborers International Union of North America all contributing around $250,000. The United Transportation Union ($30,000), Seafarers International Union ($20,000), were joined by the Teamsters, Air Line Pilots Association, International Association of Firefighters, and various other unions who contributed $10,000.  SEIU contributed $5,000, as did the Laborers Union, the Transport Workers Union and various others.”

In conclusion, “One of the things I realized while I was putting this report together is that perhaps the biggest reason grassroots candidates have been having trouble breaking through in recent years is because such a large percentage of the money that was intended for them is being siphoned off to vendors, wasted, and just plain old pocketed by people in these PACs.”

I’d like to be able to say that I was shocked, but I’m not even a little bit surprised. The only thing that is remarkable is the percentage of the skimming. That’s taking 93.3 percent off the top! They’re even worse than their sob-sister cousin charities; apparently fear-mongering is more profitable than tear-jerking.

Mark your calendars

The International Lord of Hate has announced a coming Book Bomb. Be prepared:

Mark your calenders, our next Book Bomb will be this Wednesday.

My goal is to get the stuff on our Sad Puppies suggestion list out there in front of as many people as possible. If you’re unfamiliar with my Book Bombs, that’s where we get as many people as possible to buy a book on Amazon in the same day. Since their bestseller lists update hourly, through the day the book will move higher and higher. Success breeds success, and the higher it gets, more new people see it and check it out.

The purpose, I believe, is to demonstrate Puppy Power. Keep in mind this means buying from Amazon, not Castalia. Spears will be shaken! Shields will be shattered! And links will be provided!

If you’ve already bought the books, then why not post reviews? They most certainly help too. In the meantime, Patrick Richardson admits that, in being a Sad Puppies supporter, he reveals that he is not a Real Fan:

I read the Hobbit for the first time in Kindergarten.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

I chased the Delikon off Earth in fourth grade and followed Alice down the rabbit hole.

But I’m not a real fan.

I devoured the Chronicles of Prydain and watched the Dark rise in 5th grade.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

By sixth grade I was on my fifth run through of the Lord of the Rings.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

I discovered Col. Falkenberg and met the Moties in 7th grade.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

In the last 40 years I have read hundreds of SFF books, watched hundreds of movies, dreamed of flying on Serenity and riding Sue with Harry Dresden.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

Because it doesn’t matter how much science fiction and fantasy you read, it doesn’t matter how many cons you have attended, if you aren’t a SJW, you’re not a Real Fan.

Addio, Alabama

Forget the Middle East and Europe. Let’s consider something truly controversial. Ohio State is poised to destroy Alabama’s recruiting dynasty:

The state of Ohio is particularly strong in the 2016, with 14 players currently ranked as at least 4-star prospects. And while the national prospects who have already committed to or have shown strong interest in the Buckeyes is certainly encouraging for Meyer, it’s not just the talent working in Ohio State’s favor.

As it currently stands, the Buckeyes are slated to lose 13 scholarship players to graduation at the end of next season. Between transfers and what looks like several underclassmen who have a chance to declare early for the 2016 NFL draft, that number could very well double, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think Ohio State could have close to 30 scholarships available in its 2016 class.

Factor in a 2015 schedule that sets up to keep the Buckeyes’ infomercial playing until at least late-November, and it becomes clear that Alabama’s five-year run of top-ranked recruiting classes is suddenly in danger. Meyer managed to defeat Nick Saban on the field in last season’s Sugar Bowl, and he’s well on his way to picking up another win over his rival next February.

Can you… can you hear the chants? B1G! B1G!

Go to Israel. Now.

I’ve been saying it for a while, but Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is beating the drum even more strongly:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed in an attack outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue.

“Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement, repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadists in Paris last month when four Jews were among the dead.

The cabinet later on Sunday submitted a plan to encourage the absorption
of Jews from France, Belgium and Ukraine, and would discuss immigration
from other European countries at a later date. 

Jews are neither Europeans nor Christians, neither are they Muslims, so they need to get the hell out of the way and stay safely out of the way of the coming wars. Too many of them have caused too much damage to themselves, to Europe, and to the USA by idiotically encouraging third world immigration in a foolish attempt to protect themselves against Christians who never had any intention of harming them.

Sam Huntington’s long-foreseen Clash of Civilizations (PDF) is approaching. Those who are opposed to Christian civilization are going to lose again; even the European seculars and pagans are beginning to understand the importance of Christian civilization. I’ve read one of his book and Netanyahu is a good student of not only history in general, but military history in particular, and he understands that if Europe’s Jews continue to stupidly stand in the way of Europeans defending their civilization against the Muslim onslaught, they’re going to be wiped out again.

That, incidentally, is why France’s prime minister is desperately arguing against the Israeli prime minister’s appeal to Europe’s Jews. Not because he loves Jews more than Netanyahu, but because he is cynically using them as a means of keeping the nationalist leadership that will replace him at bay.

Israel should no more stand in the way of Europe defending herself against Islamic expansion than Europe should interfere with Israel defending herself Islamic aggression. It appears that Netanyahu, for one, understands that strong Christian nations in Europe are considerably better for Israel than a Muslim-conquered Europe.

At the moment, I am editing a book by a brilliant Israeli military historian that will be available later this month to newsletter subscribers. And in thinking about how Man’s strategic thinking has developed, it is becoming increasingly evident that the modern militaries presently lack the theoretical means to grasp how events are taking shape or what to do with them. Forget the bromide about how generals are always fighting the last war, right now, the politicians and their military advisors are mostly caught up in entirely fictional theater based on a geopolitical structure that has very little relation to either the current reality or the global wars of the future.

Mailvox: dealing with anklebiters

BT was wondering how one best deals with them:

After conversing with a certain individual at length, and realizing only belatedly that they are most likely just another anklebiter, I’ve come to some hypotheses:

Anklebiters are:

  • 0 to +1 SD intellect
  • Mildly autistic at the least, which leads them to overestimate their own intellect.
  • Far more hurt by a mix of dialectic and rhetoric rather than pure rhetoric (they innately believe themselves above it) or pure dialectic (they’ll just retreat to appeals of authority).

For efficacy in pain, the mix of dialectic and rhetoric will probably depend on the level of autism in particular.

The only thing I haven’t figured out in this theory is the best way to handle said anklebiters.  Ignoring them certainly works, as they’re just self-styled intellectual tough-guys walking around with a chip on their shoulders.  It certainly seems to serve to frustrate their efforts on that end.  But anklebiters can look like an expert to the average stranger, and indeed seems to spend their time trying to convince everyone around them that they are an expert, so it may serve in everyone’s best interest to nip that problem in the bud.  How, I do not know.  Domestication training, using dialectic/rhetoric mixes as the stick?

Anklebiters are a brain-damaged form of midwit. They are almost always atheist, further pointing towards the atypical neurological profile required for that, they are usually male, and they tend to be unexpectedly poorly educated and badly read despite their observable intelligence. Most importantly, they lack the normal ability to admit failure, back up, and start over that normal individuals possess. And lacking it, they therefore lack any ability to improve their arguments or even to question any of their adopted beliefs.

That’s why anklebiters are always disappearing when trounced, only to reappear again and make the exact same arguments that have already been dismissed. The problem, as BT notes, is that this renders them immune to dialectic, and they tend to ignore pure rhetoric because they are not emotionally invested in their nonsense arguments. The more virulent form, the trolls, are sociopathic and have no meaningful human emotions to which one can appeal.

In effect, anklebiters are little more than genetically human bots, which is why there is no point in arguing with them or insulting them. They are not capable of adding anything to the discourse, so as soon as an anklebiter is identified, they are best ignored by the commenters and spammed by the moderators. There is no reason to concern oneself with how they look to the average stranger, because a) it’s not your problem, b) MPAI, and c) their own bizarre behavior will expose them sooner or later.

A guest blogger at Alpha Game has a timely post that addresses some of the issues raised here as part of his Graduating Gamma series. The most relevant quote:

This flows directly from the Gamma’s ever-present and crippling fear of being wrong somewhere and somehow. The Gamma does not understand the deep matters behind what is going on in his own beliefs, which is ironic since most Gammas vastly overestimate their knowledge and ability in most everything.

They can hear you

In space, the demons can hear you scream.  

Hyperspace Demons is a novella from our newest author, and it is one you’ll want to check out if you’re a science fiction fan. From the reviews:

Mixed in with hyperspace and spaceships is the interesting concept of “hyperspace microbes” that can possess a human mind, driving the person insane. These microbes are kept out of the spaceship by a special shield, so there shouldn’t be any problems, right? That’s where the plot pulls off some unexpected twists and turns, making for a fun read. Moeller keeps up the pace all the way to the end. Amazingly, for a novella there is much more that could be said, but I fear explaining anymore will reveal too much.

The story grabs you, and you don’t want to put it down until it is over.
Once the action begins, it builds and builds without letup until the
very end. I can’t think of any higher praise than: When I was done, I
wished it was longer, because I was enjoying it so much. 

In other Castalia House news, I’m pleased to be able to announce that we will be publishing a second book by Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld this year. In addition to Equality: The Impossible Quest, we will be publishing The Art of War: A History of Military Strategy.

Credentializing comments

No wonder the mainstream media fears comments. This may also explain why so many trolls consider themselves to be self-appointed blog police. Although I doubt they have much effect here:

Ionnis Kareklas, Darrel D. Muehling, and TJ Weber, all of Washington State University, found that the comments on a public-service announcement about vaccination affected readers’ attitudes as strongly as the P.S.A. itself did. When commenters were identified by their level of expertise with the subject (i.e. as doctors), their comments were more influential than the P.S.A.s.

Online readers may put a lot of stock in comments because they view commenters “as kind of similar to themselves,” said Mr. Weber — “they’re reading the same thing, commenting on the same thing.” And, he added, many readers, especially those who are less Internet-savvy, assume commenters “know something about the subject, because otherwise they wouldn’t be commenting on it.” The mere act of commenting, then, can confer an unearned aura of credibility.

That news may be especially disturbing to those already skeptical of comments’ overall quality. Dr. Kareklas and his team were inspired by Popular Science’s decision to get rid of the comments sections on its website; other publications, like Pacific Standard, have done the same. And Tauriq Moosa memorably wrote at The Guardian that the comments section “sits there like an ugly growth beneath articles, bloated and throbbing with vitriol.”

If only those nasty online peasants would shut up, stop interfering with the flow of propaganda, and recognize that communication is supposed to go one way!

The article appears to ignore the obvious fact that most sites permitting comments are communities of a sort, and commenters, being members of that community, are often familiar with the other commenters and therefore know how much stock to put in the credibility of another commenter. I put stock in a commenter for the same reason I put stock in a media site, which is to say, his past performance. Why wouldn’t one trust a known expert, with whom one is familiar, more than a public service announcement from an institution known to be corrupt?