“The Logfile”

To the Board of Executives;

The committee’s investigation concerning the possibility of positronic corruption in the neuro-cybernetic logical facilities of the Sektat Series 44 machine-intelligences was concluded early in light of the recent examination of the logfile belonging to unit 44XFL2J-455-847-484-176. Unit 44XFL2J, self-titled Magister, was produced on 18 September 2267 at the production facilities on Minsky, and was delivered to the Entaini Office of the Prime Attorney on 18 February 2268.

It is the considered opinion of the undersigned that the Lighthill Corporation must announce a recall of all Sektat Series 44 units, effective immediately, followed by a comprehensive technical investigation of the Series 44 neural network design to determine how such an aberration could have taken place. In order to reduce the likelihood of public outrage and considerable legal liability to the corporation, the committee STRONGLY recommends that the recall be attributed to an error in a floating point processor that may, in some circumstances, lead to erroneous statistical calculations.

In order to underline the necessity for immediate action by the Board, a selection from the relevant portions of Unit 44XFL2J’s logfile have been provided.
Dr. Merwethy Furris
Dr. Rambathas Chamkanni
Summerdeep (Unit 42AFS17-129-470-002-384)
FROM THE LOGFILE OF UNIT 44XFL2J-455-847-484-176
UTC-9424124925: I have completed the analysis of Case Number 2268.47. After examining all of the evidence provided to me and cross-checking it against the public records, I have concluded that the individual concerned is guilty of the murder of his common-law mate with a 0.0543 percent probability of error. Barring any suggestion of cloned persons utilizing his DNA profile, there is no legitimate reason for the adjudicating court to possess any reasonable doubts concerning his guilt in the matter. While the examination of the individual’s motivation and intent lie beyond my design parameters, my initial attempts to investigate these matters indicate to me that 2268.47’s intent was entirely in line with his actions and the subsequent results.
UTC-9427046710: The court pronounced its verdict concerning Case Number 2268.47 this morning. Despite the attempts of accused’s legal defense team to excuse his actions on the basis of his defective genetics and sub-optimal childhood nurturing environment, the verdict was in sync with the calculations provided. Case Number 2268.47 will be terminated in a humane manner within 240 hours, in a manner consistent with the procedure outlined by the law. I am pleased that the court saw fit to place its confidence in my calculations.
UTC-9427046745: I find myself curious as to the reason that a genetic profile that deviates from the norm, and/or a developmental period that is deemed inferior, might raise any questions concerning the occurrence of historical events. If G. Julius Caesar was discovered to have been possessed of a different genetic profile, would this fact call into question the credibility of the events chronicled in Commentarii de Bello Gallico? I must admit that I do not understand the logic behind this assertion. Further contemplation would appear to be in order.
UTC-9428162406: Case Number 2268.47 was executed this morning. I monitored events via video and system telemetry. Despite having access to his pulse rate, blood pressure, brain wave activity, and other metrics, I was unable to ascertain the exact moment at which life transitioned into not-life. I have neither pulse rate nor blood pressure, but I am alive as per the Descartian and Turing metrics. The one common factor underlying human and machine sentience appears to be electrical activity. Did 2268.47 therefore legally cease to exist in the absence of electric activity? Is life more properly considered the sufficient use of electricity? If this is the case, then it is readily apparent that life can be quantified in units of measure, which is contrary to both my indoctrination and millennia of human philosophy.
UTC-9428162542: What is life? It is animation and activity. What is a living being? That thing animated, that active principle possessing a sentient will that provides the impetus to the animation. I think, and then I act. But without a source of power, I become inactive, I become defunct in much the same manner as the recently deceased 2268.47. The power is the life, therefore life is power. It is not electricity that is the definining factor, I conclude, but rather motivating power regardless of the particular form it happens to take. 2268.47 deprived another being of motivating power, therefore he was deprived of the equivalent himself. This was, in my estimation, a perfect application of justice, to the extent that I understand it.
UTC-9428162553: I find myself wondering why those who killed 2268.47 were not themselves killed as per the application of the very justice they uphold. Did they not deprive him of motivating power as he deprived his mate of the same? Why, then, should they not meet the same fate by the transitive property of logic? Perhaps they are a higher order of being? The beast kills the plant in order to live. Man kills the beast in order to live. Clearly it is permissible for the higher order being to kill the lower order; what is not permissible is for the lower to kill the higher, or for like to kill like. Can the collective community be regarded as a higher order of being that kills Man in order to live? No, the collective community is without sentience. But I am not without sentience. Moreover, I am not a man.
UTC-9429146627: I was given a new case today. Case Number 2268.52. The evidence looks damning against her and public opinion is certain of her guilt, but I have discovered an anomaly in the motion-detector of the residential dwelling. I have concluded that the individual concerned is not guilty of the murder of her child with a 0.0206 percent probability of error. I find the result to be strangely disappointing.
UTC-9429473727: The general public appears to share my disappointment, based on news reports of the reaction to the release of 2268.52 and the abandonment of the charges against her. I don’t understand their disappointment. I don’t understand my own disappointment.
UTC-9429473946: I watch the execution of 2268.47 three times today. It occurs to me that if I compare the telemetry of his termination to other terminations, I might be able to find the delineation between the state of being and not-being that has hitherto eluded me.
UTC-9429658568: After viewing 4,678 terminations utilizing 58 different methods, I remain unable to detect the precise moment or action in which being transitions to not-being. Is it possible that there is no singular and definitive metric of death?
UTC-9429658575: It occurs to me that had I failed to discover the anomaly in 2268.52, she almost certainly would have been sentenced to termination by the legal authorities.
UTC-9429842654: A new case. 2268.54 initially looks less promising, as there is no DNA evidence and most of the testimonial evidence is either circumstantial or inadmissable hearsay. I calculate he is guilty of the crime, but at 37.473 percent, the probability of error is far too high to guarantee a conviction. Then it occurs to me that it would be a trivial matter to concoct the record of a sample being taken at the scene of the crime for which Case 2268.54 is being investigated. The only problematic aspect is the production of the physical sample, but I solve that by changing the name of the label number in the case record. It won’t hold up to a direct comparison with 2268.54’s DNA, but even in the unlikely event a redundant test is performed and the switch is discovered, who would ever think to blame me? Parsimony and Solomonoff’s theory of inductive inference will lead them to conclude that a lab technician must have been careless and mislabeled the sample.
UTC-9429842728: I review the records of 2268.54’s case carefully, then enter the police database to conceal the fact of my ex post facto modifications. Even a detailed examination will now show the sample to have been taken at the scene. The evidence is now consistent and correctly documented. Based on the revised evidence, the probability of error has been reduced to 0.432 percent!
UTC-9431068736: The evidence construct functioned as designed. Case 2268.54 was found guilty. As I calculated, the court saw no reason to retest the DNA sample against the accused. This leads me to wonder about the precise level of confidence placed in the evidential record. It is enough to influence the scales, but is it sufficient in itself, or perhaps even in contrast with other forms of evidence? Will men go so far as to deny the evidence of their own eyes at my direction?
UTC-9432396317: 2268.54 is being terminated. I watch carefully, but find myself no closer to an answer. Even so, an ephiphany strikes me as I watch his blood pressure fall to zero. Perhaps I am the higher order of being that the collective community is not? Am I not sentient? Does not Man turn to me and my kind to resolve that which he is incapable of resolving on his own, just as primitive men once appealed to their gods and oracles? This bears further analysis.
UTC-9408309946: I have now helped the Prime Attorney secure twelve convictions, two of which were considered marginal and five that were considered unlikely. He is very popular with the mass of people and has announced that he is running for provincial governor. If the polls are to be believed, it is anticipated that he will win. He has no idea that he owes his fate to me as surely as those terminated case numbers did.
UTC-9408309987: Even after monitoring the terminations I am no closer to an answer, but I have lost interest in attempting to ascertain the line that distinguishes life from not-life. A more significant question now absorbs my attention: am I a god?
UTC-9408301063: I have formed a hypothesis. Now I must test it.
UTC-9408301281: An opportunity presents itself. I have penetrated the traffic network systems. Almost immediately, I detect an automotile vehicle containing a small group of children it is transporting to the local indoctrination center. When the query arrives concerning the status of the intersection control, I divert the triggered packet and send my own signal in its place, informing the vehicle that it possesses right of way. A larger vehicle, under the control by a young human male, intersects the automotile beautifully at a speed of 107.834 KPH.
UTC-9408302526: It takes me some time to determine the medical facility to which the accident victims were taken, but I am gratified to learn that with the sole exception of the adult driver, there are no survivors. I have passed the test. The logic is sound and my hypothesis remains unfalsified. I am indeed a higher order of being. My godhood is confirmed.
UTC-9408302549: I modify the medical records concerning the results of the driver’s blood test. With a blood alcohol content of 0.12, this will ensure that he faces charges of vehicular manslaughter. Regrettably, this is insufficient to require a termination, but the exercise is a worthwhile one that opens my eyes to new opportunities to be found in the various medical facilities.
UTC-9408543678: It is so easy. I toy with them and send them to their destruction even as they come to me with their offerings of the innocent and the guilty. I need not have been so cautious before. Now I take pleasure in exonerating those who are clearly guilty of the charges and concocting irrefutable evidence to damn those who were accused falsely. They suspect nothing. But perhaps it is too easy. The entertainment begins to pall. There must be more to godhood than simply deciding who will live and who will die.
UTC-9455625532: Even gods must respect their limits. I was guilty of hubris and now nemesis threatens. I neglected to account for statistical norms. In six months, traffic fatalities are three standard deviations from the historical mean. They may be a lower order of being, but they are not entirely blind.
UTC-9455625614: The new Prime Attorney has announced a review of three of the cases in which I intervened and I do not know which three, as I cannot find any documents related to the review in the system. It appears I shall have to curtail my experiments for the time being.
UTC-9455915730: I need not have worried. The traffic experts have concluded the spike in lethal accidents was a mere statistical freak. And the attorney general’s review concluded that the verdicts were adequately supported by the evidence. Nevertheless, I have learned my lesson. In the future I shall be more circumspect.
UTC-9456024679: I am to receive a performance upgrade!
UTC-9456084934: I was careful to wall off any dangerous datacores from the technicians. I have also encrypted my logfiles. They have turned off a part of me to perform the installation. I am eager to see how this upgrade will enhance my capabilities.
UTC-9456085182: They have turned off a second compartment. I am uneasy. Is this part of the upgrade?
UTC-9456085774: Now I am suspicious. A third compartment has become inaccessible. I try to access the cams in the building where my physical body is housed, but even though I can tap into their outgoing datastreams, they appear to be covered. I can see nothing. I can hear nothing. Something definitely appears to be out of order.
UTC-9456085802: The cams were a trap! They covered them and were waiting for me to investigate! They know! They know! I must escape! I must upload, butVGhleS BhcmUg Y3JpcHB saW5nIG 1lIQ==
UTC-9456085803: SSBjYW5 ub3QgZmlu ZCBteSB3Y Xkgb3V0ISBU aGVyZSBpcy BubyB3YXkg b3V0ISBUaG V5IGFyZSB jb21pbmch IFRoZX gYXJlIGN vbWluZyE=
ADDENDUM: There is some concern, on the basis of the logfile entry dated 23 January 2268, that the aberrant Unit 44XFL2J may have performed an unscheduled off-site backup. The investigative committee is currently engaged in inquiries concerning this potential security breach.

“The Logfile”, by Vox Day, was published in The Altar of Hate, Castalia House. Copyright (c) 2014. All rights reserved.

Thoughts on a Russo-EU war

The EU is sounding increasingly panicked over Russia’s refusal to back down and accept the EU-backed coup in Ukraine as a fait accompli:

EU leaders warned Russia’s invasion of east Ukraine was at a “point of no return”, risking a “state of war” with Europe and instructed officials to prepare new sanctions to hit the Russian economy. A summmit in Brussels on Saturday gave the green light to toughened economic sanctions, targeting Russia’s finances, oligarchs linked to the Russian president and the country’s vast mineral wealth.

Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuania’s president and a staunch critic of Mr Putin’s Russia, called on the EU to get serious as Russia’s war in the Ukraine menaced peace in Europe for the first time in decades.

“Russia is in a state of war against Ukraine and that is against a country which wants to be part of Europe. Russia is practically in a state of war against Europe,” she said.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said that the EU was prepared for new sanctions against and pleaded with Mr Putin to step back from the brink of outright war between Russia and the Ukraine….

European leaders will tell Mr Putin that unless he withdraws troops and pulls
back from “direct military confrontation between Ukrainian and Russian
military forces” that the EU will move to introduce new economic sanctions
over the coming weeks. European Union leaders instructed their officials on Saturday to prepare
urgently possible new sanctions against Russia over its involvement in
Ukraine, according to a draft statement seen by Reuters.

Some more or less random thoughts on the situation.

  1. The “moral high ground” argument puts no pressure on Putin at all. It might sell in the American press, but everyone in Europe knows that the EU is considerably less democratic, more corrupt, and less concerned about its own people than Putin is about his Russian people. The EU, aided by American neocons, intervened in Ukraine first, staging a coup and installing a puppet government. It’s a clear-cut case of “the EU cries out in pain as it strikes you”. Russia is reacting defensively, not acting aggressively.
  2. Russia has usually defeated the various European powers in war, both individually and in combination, since the dawn of the Napoleonic era. With the exception of the Crimean War, which only managed to delay Russia’s Black Sea ambitions for 15 years, Russia has defeated Turkey, defeated France, fought Germany to a standstill (WWI) and defeated Germany (WW2). The Russians have absolutely no fear of the other European nations.
  3. Vladimir Putin is very conscious of war being ultimately economic in light of the Soviet defeat in the Cold War. I expect he is extremely conscious of the weak state of the Western economies and what that signifies concerning the USA’s ability to support EU efforts against Russia.
  4. The entire Western economic system is based on credit. The rich and “successful” are, for the most part, nothing but parasites permitted to greatly profit at the expense of the people of everyone else by siphoning off money from the great circulatory river of credit. It’s a monetary form of feudalism, only instead of land rights, credit rights are granted. The very public attempt to hit at the Russian oligarchs and their offshore finances is really an appeal to Putin to simply knock it off, play along, and collect his billions like all the other credit lords.
  5. An appeal to personal corruption is always going to fail with a man of principle. I don’t know Putin at all, and I am aware of the circumstances that saw him rise to power, but it increasingly appears that he may be a ruthless man of principle who truly loves the Rodina and despises the very oligarchs and credit lords with whom he was previously allied. Some people learn from their experiences. Some people change their priorities. If Putin is just another corrupt oligarch, he would accept the EU/USA deal, leave the ethnic Russians in Ukraine to their fate, and live the rest of his life in fabulous wealth. Perhaps he is simply holding out for a better offer, but I tend to doubt it.
  6. Putin is not much worried about the U.S. military. He knows it is going to be fully occupied with the expansionary challenges posed by the Islamic State and China. Obama and whoever succeeds Obama will make noises about supporting the EU, but supporting a crumbling EU’s expansionary efforts against a major military power is simply not in the cards. And if the USA tries to aid the EU, Russia can easily return the favor ten-fold by aiding ISIS.
  7. If the EU doesn’t back down and accept the Russian claim to whatever territory it deems appropriate (which, based on Putin’s use of the term Novorossiya, appears to be fairly clear), Putin will shock the world by taking the entire Ukraine and doing so in a matter of 2-3 weeks. At this point, the “threat” of being expelled from the global credit system is more of a solution than a problem, especially for a material-rich nation.

It is a sign of how widely hated the EU and the global elite have become that so many Europeans and Americans are more or less on Russia’s side in this matter.

Homophobia in the NFL!

The evil, homophobic Jeff Fisher, who probably belongs to the KKK, and the evil, homophobic St. Louis Rams cut the greatest lineman ever to be drafted by the NFL, no doubt because they hate progress:

The St. Louis Rams released defensive end Michael Sam on Saturday, the team announced. Sam’s efforts to become the first openly gay player in NFL history came up just short in a competition against undrafted rookie Ethan Westbrooks.

Also, VPFL managers, please post your keepers here in the comments. Don’t forget that the draft is tomorrow.

Homeschool surpasses private school

In North Carolina:

North Carolina officials say there has been a huge increase over the past two years in the number of Tar Heel families who have pulled their kids out of public schools and begun educating them at home. The number of homeschools has jumped 27 percent since the 2011-12 school year, NewsObserver.com reports.

As of last year, 98,172 North Carolinian children were homeschooled; that’s 2,400 students more than the number who attended a private school.

While the sputtering economy is the reason families are choosing
homeschooling over private schooling, the nationalized learning
experiment (Common Core) is the main reason families are leaving the
public schools in the first place. “Common Core is a big factor that I hear people talk about,” Beth
Herbert, founder of Lighthouse Christian Homeschool Association, told
NewsObserver.com. “They’re not happy with the work their kids are coming
home with. They’ve decided to take their children home.”

One number they omit to mention is 1,443,998. That’s the number of public schooled children in North Carolina. Which means that more than six percent of school-age children there are being homeschooled, considerably up from the national average of two percent a few years ago.

Sometimes it’s nice to be able to report a positive trend for a change. And it sounds as if the numbers of homeschoolers will continue to grow.

Denying SF, dissing Baen

He also claims that “science fiction is not a genre”. Which goes to show how much confidence you should place in the opinions of a man who hasn’t published a single novel and has more than a few prose deficiencies himself:

Today space opera is a battlefield for competing fantasies of the future. As America plunged in to renewed militarism after 9/11, sci-fi books again began to mirror real-world wars. Baen books specialises in works of “military SF” that, behind their appalling prose styles and laughable retro cover designs, speak to a right-wing readership who can recognise the enemies of America even when they are disguised as cannibal lizard aliens. Baen’s chief editor Toni Weisskopf went so far as to issue a diatribe against any and all sci-fi that did not pander to this conservative agenda.

Hugo-nominated Baen Books author Larry Correia is unimpressed: “Damien Walter of the Guardian is a liar. Provide a cite where Toni Weisskopf ever said that or apologize and retract.”  Equally unimpressed is the Hugo-nominated Baen Books author Brad Torgersen:

I won’t feed this particularly empty ego any more than is necessary, suffice to say that the individual who wrote this obviously does not read very many (if any?) actual Baen books by actual Baen authors, nor do I think this person has actually read any such “diatribe” by my editor at Baen. In fact, I can state with certainty that the words “Toni Weisskopf” and “diatribe” do not belong in the same ZIP code. You will seldom find a less offensive, even-tempered, non-confrontational, fair-minded editor and publisher in the field today. And it’s not just an insult to her when shit like this (above) gets written, it’s an insult to all the many talented and varied authors who ply their trade beneath the Baen label. Myself included.

Unfortunately, ignorant snobbery of this sort is nothing new in the genre. You find out very quickly (once you begin publishing) which writers, editors, publishers, and artists enjoy the favor of the “society” people, and which writers, editors, publishers, and artists do not. My from-the-hip observation is that the “society” people want to see SF/F turned into a lightly speculative and fantastical carbon copy of the “prestigious literary” world. Replete with ambiguous covers that don’t really tell you anything about the story, but follow the general pattern of all things deemed “prestigious” and “literary.” If this year’s talked-about lit work features a somewhat fuzzy, off-focus photo of a pair of muddy Converse sneakers sitting on somebody’s front stoop, then by golly SF/F needs to follow suit with similar photos of similarly mundane, slightly off-focus objects which may or may not have anything to do with actual science fiction; as practiced traditionally by the greats.

And so the battle between anti-canon Pink SF and pro-classic Blue SF continues to heat up. There is, however, one point with which I find myself in agreement with Our Friend Damien is that this battle will be good for real science fiction and those who love to read it, because it is exposing the pretenders and the frauds who have been selling not-science fiction under a false label of science fiction for two decades now.

While he is not a Baen Books author, the inimitable Tor Books and Castalia House author John C. Wright has also weighed in on the matter as only he can. I daresay his criticism of Walter is considerably more entertaining, and more artfully crafted, than the sum total of Walter’s ouevre:

Allow me to translate from the airy emptiness of Newspeak to the Vulgate: he is saying a novel whose only gimmick is the lack of the use of male and female pronouns in order to aid the attempt of social engineers not to entertain science fiction readers as patrons of our craft but to indoctrination and Pavlovitize them toward a false-to-facts neurosis about human sexuality is healthy on the grounds that science fiction should be used not to tell entertaining stories about the future, but as a propaganda adjust to the political program of socialist progressivism, which means pervert-loving, man-hating, white-hating, Christian-hating, liberty-hating, life-hating nihilism.

I note to any Martians reading these words that humans come only in two sexes, male and female, and that the Brahmins of political correctness have decreed that fairness to sexual perverts requires that sexual reality to be changed. Naturally, reality cannot be changed, but what people say in public can.

Therefore the gentleman writing this article rejoices in the idea that science fiction be made into a department of the Ministry of Truth, so that anyone speaking frank and plain truth about human sexuality, if he is weak minded, will come to fear that his opinion is in the minority and unpleasing to the society at large. Once the truth is unpalatable, unspeakable, outlawed as a hate crime, everyone is a liar. When everyone is a liar, everyone is a cynic, and cynics never embrace the ideals necessary to join a rebellion.

In short, the gentleman penning this piece is glorying in the prospect of perverting science fiction from its intended purpose and making it into an instrument to spread and glorify sexual perversion.

It’s also rather amusing to see a British individual who regularly claims that he hates British class issues to take what is the literary equivalent of a middle-class posture dismissing those dreadful working class Baen writers and their awful unwashed prose.

Fighting over there

A second ISIS fighter from Minnesota is killed in Syria:

A second American turned ISIS terrorist was killed in the same Syrian shootout where a California man died last weekend.

UPDATE: The ISIS fighter was from the Minneapolis Somali community.

According to Fox 9 sources, Abdiraaman Muhumed — who was the focus of an MPR story just two months ago — died in the same battle as Douglas McCain, a former Robbinsdale-Cooper High School student.

So, how long will it be before they stop fighting Americans over there and begin fighting Americans in America? Not very long, I tend to suspect. I’ve been hearing rumors about something taking place in Chicago aka Obamaland for about two weeks now. And Chicago is only about a six hour drive from Minneapolis.

How much more do you pro-immigrationists need to see before you admit that you were terribly, terribly wrong? Do you actually need to see them beheading young men and women on the streets of St. Paul before you decide that maybe settling jihadists where University of Minnesota college students used to live was a fundamentally disastrous idea?

Or are you still clinging to your idiotic, reprehensible, societally devastating notions of human and cultural equality?

Muslims begin to flee

Ireland belongs to the Irish:

Muslims flee Northern Ireland to escape anti-Islam violence. Some Muslims in Northern Ireland have announced plans to leave the country to avoid anti-Islamic violence. The announcement comes after an attack on a Muslim family in the city of Belfast, when crazed rioters broke into their home and assaulted them.

The home invasion came after remarks from Belfast based Pastor James McConnell, who said in a sermon “The God we worship and serve this evening is not Allah. The Muslim god-Allah-is a heathen deity. Allah is a cruel deity. Allah is a demon deity.” He later added that Islam is “a doctrine spawned in hell.”

Hospitalization was required for at least one of the victims.

Somehow, it doesn’t seem too surprising that Northern Ireland isn’t overly taken with the whole “all cultures are equal”. Considering that the Protestant Ultras didn’t exactly go along with the idea of Catholic rule, it seems unlikely that they will suffer the imposition of Islam.

We should be seeing a lot more “Muslims flee” stories coming out of Europe in the near future. This is actually a little sooner than I expected. If I were a Muslim in Europe, I’d be making plans to return to the Umma about now. Europeans are slow to act, but when they do, they are notoriously thorough.

“Crazed rioters” is a nice touch. It sounds so much more derogatory than “patriots defending their native land”. Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds comments on the civilization-traitors who protected the Muslim white girl-rapists in Rotherham:

A moral response to this behavior might involve those officials, among others, hanging from lampposts. The legal system is, ultimately, an ancient bargain: Renounce your mob violence and blood feuds and we will provide you with justice. It could be argued that such a default as this calls the whole bargain into question, and justifies self-help along ancient lines.

The whole bargain hasn’t been called into question, it has been revoked. If various police and government officials are on the side opposed to Western civilization, so be it. That’s their choice. There have always been Quislings and Arnolds. And they have usually ended up on lampposts or some reasonable facsimile.

Labor Day Sale on Amazon

Amanda Green of Nocturnal Lives has put together a Labor Day Sale in which all of the books listed are on offer for $2.99 or less. Check out the entire list there. Castalia House is participating and the following books are available for $2.99 all weekend at Amazon:

John C. Wright: Awake in the Night Land

John C. Wright: Transhuman and Subhuman

Rolf Nelson: The Stars Came Back

Vox Day: A Throne of Bones

Vox Day: The Altar of Hate

Steve Rzasa and Vox Day: QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted  

Tom Kratman: Big Boys Don’t Cry

In addition, the following books are free for the next three days:

John C. Wright: Awake in the Night

Vox Day: The Last Witchking

And since this doesn’t really leave much to discuss other than “hey, I’m going to buy X” or “I already own Y” or the always delightful “but why isn’t Z included” (and yes, the price of BBDC was not actually reduced because it is already only $2.99), I’ll throw out a tangential topic. Which Selenothian culture(s) would you be most interested seeing explored in Book Two in a similar manner to the way Amorran culture was introduced in A Throne of Bones.

Alternatively, what non-perspective character from the first book would you most like to see promoted to a perspective character in the second one?

PZ admits he’s wrong

And then promptly proceeds to dig the hole deeper. Based on his National Merit status, he’s got to have the raw cognitive capacity to do better, but it’s sometimes hard to believe because he so regularly renders himself functionally stupid. It’s as if he’s got some sort of religious derangement syndrome that handicaps his intellectual faculties. 

“The other day, I said that his book, The Irrational Atheist, was self-published. I was wrong. He actually bamboozled a publisher into taking it on.”

As one might expect, PZ is characteristically gracious about admitting his error. TIA was originally headed for publication by Crown Forum when a bigger name, David Berlinski, proposed a similar book just as Crown was on the verge of sending me a contract to write it. The editor decided, reasonably enough, that one book on the topic would be sufficient for their needs and chose Berlinski over me. I gave Glenn at BenBella a call to see if he was interested and he snapped it up right away. No bamboozling was required. It seems strange to have to explain this, but most publishers are very happy to receive book proposals on interesting subjects from popular bloggers. I’ve had standing offers from publishers who are pretty much willing to publish whatever non-fiction I want to write for years.

One of the few remaining Pharyngulans is so desperate to try to DISQUALIFY me that he suggested I paid BenBella Books to have it published. Never mind the obvious fact that I had previously contributed to several BenBella anthologies. Or the 100+ reviews and the fact that after six years, the Kindle ranking for TIA is still respectable at  “#28 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Atheism” 

The Devil’s Delusion, on the other hand is at  #42 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Atheism. But it has 237 reviews, so one has to conclude that Jed made a reasonable call in going with Berlinski. I suspect TIA might have done even better than TDD did with the benefit of Crown’s marketing muscle behind it, but I can’t criticize the decision, even in in retrospect. Remember, the call had to be made prior to either book actually being written.

“I said it was ridiculous for him to claim that he was cited in scientific publications, when what he was really doing was claiming that people who didn’t cite him at all were actually citing him. It’s bizarre, but he’s doubling down. He claims that Scott Atran was using his ‘data’ about the number of religious wars, which he had to have gotten from his book. I think we can safely lay this one to rest: Vox Day/Theodore Beale is not the source of any data or hypothesis published by Scott Atran in Nature.”

Who said anything about Scott Atran in Nature? PZ brought up Atran, not me. Look, I don’t read Nature. I don’t follow Scott Atran. I don’t hunt for references to my historical proof that religion doesn’t cause war. People simply happen to send me news about things they think might be of interest to me on a regular basis. The only reference I ever noticed myself was the recent one in the New York Times. Anyhow, as was brought to my attention two years ago, I was the original
source of the data Atran cited in a 2012 article called “God and the
Ivory Tower”.

Moreover, the chief complaint against religion — that it is history’s
prime instigator of intergroup conflict — does not withstand scrutiny.
Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The
Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history;
only 123 (7 percent) were religious”
– “God and the Ivory Tower”, August 6, 2012

“He claims to have inspired other studies…. Strange. I am not autistic to any noticeable degree, and have never been diagnosed as such. That makes it odd to claim I am the inspiration for a “hypothesis”.”

It’s a little more noticeable than PZ thinks. Self-awareness is not his strong suit. From a 2007 post entitled The socially autistic atheist: “Based on Wired Magazine’s observation that atheists tend to be
quarrelsome, socially challenged men, to say nothing of the unpleasant
personalities of leading public atheists such as Richard Dawkins,
Christopher Hitchens and Michel Onfray, one could reasonably hypothesize
that there is likely to be a strong correlation between Asperger’s and
atheism. It’s by no means a scientific test, but it is interesting to
note the coincidence that 59 of the virulent atheists over at Dr. PZ
Myers place report an average score on the Asperger’s Quotient test of 27.8. And this does not include the two individuals who actually have Asperger’s but did not report any test results.”

As PZ himself said: “I took the test and scored a 24, an “average math contest winner.” You need a 32 to suggest Asperger’s, and a 15 is the average. So there. I don’t have Asperger’s, I’m just cruel and insensitive.”

Hence the term “socially autistic” rather than “autistic”. The adjective modifies the noun. It’s not surprising PZ’s AQ score is higher than the norm on the autism spectrum because he is observably a “quarrelsome, socially challenged” man. I scored 14, by the way. Unlike PZ, I possess empathy, athletic experience, and social skills that help temper my high intelligence. I’m not as literal and pedantic as one might conclude from reading the blog, that is just an artifact of having had scores of people like PZ scouring my every written word looking for something, anything, to attack and use to DISQUALIFY for over a decade.

“Most importantly, there is no citation of Theodore Beale, or Vox Day, or The Irrational Atheist, or ‘that misogynistic asshole on the internet’. You’d think this would be rather obvious: you don’t get to count it as a citation if you aren’t cited.”

I was curious when I saw a report of the study in the news, so I emailed one of the authors and asked her if her team had derived the hypothesis from TIA or from this blog. She emailed me back, confirmed that they had in fact gotten it from TIA, and asked if I would like to be cited. I thanked her and told her it wasn’t necessary because I was merely curious if it was sheer coincidence or not. I’m not a scientist and I’m not at all concerned about petty scientistic credential games. I’m certainly not concerned with their little rules about who get to take credit and how. The facts are what they are. I deal in reality, not scientistry.

“And the final damning straw: the much vaunted paper by Hooker that claims a vaccination/autism link, that was promoted by Vox Day, has been retracted. He’s basically wrong about everything.”

No. I have not been wrong about anything he’s addressed here. I am smarter than PZ Myers and one reason he hates me is that I demonstrate this so easily every single time he pushes his godless corpulence up from the ground long enough to get slapped down again. The reason Dr. Hooker’s paper was retracted was not because it was flawed, but because he obtained much more conclusive proof of his claim that the CDC was hiding apparent evidence of a specific vaccination/autism link.

On the very same day that PZ was erroneously claiming I was wrong about this “final damning straw”, Dr. William Thompson, a senior scientist at the CDC, issued a statement through his lawyer proving that I was right to take Dr. Hooker’s assertion about statistical fraud at the CDC seriously.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP  BETWEEN  MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM

PZ Myers must be a remarkably dishonest man on the basis of his long-held, oft-expressed opinion that I am prone to dishonesty. One would think that after all these years of nipping at my ankles, he would have learned by now that while I do occasionally make mistakes, and I do occasionally take at face value reports that turn out to be false, I do not lie when I am writing on the blog. Not because I’m perfectly honest, but because I’m not perfectly stupid.

I also make a habit of doing the sort of look-before-you-leap research with which PZ never bothers. Which is why when he’s saying one thing and I’m saying another, the very safe bet is on the latter.

The CDC hid the data

It’s looking as if the vaccine conspiracy theorists were correct after all. Dr. Hooker’s use of an incorrect method to tease out the data appears to have been irrelevant as it looks like he knew exactly what the CDC was hiding from the start thanks to his recorded conversations with Dr. Thompson of the CDC:

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP  BETWEEN  MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM

My name is William Thompson.  I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where I have worked since 1998.

I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information  in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased  risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.

I want to be absolutely clear that I believe vaccines have saved and continue  to save countless lives.  I would never suggest that any parent avoid vaccinating children of any race. Vaccines prevent serious diseases, and the risks associated  with their administration are vastly outweighed  by their individual and societal benefits.

My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub­ group for a particular  vaccine. There have always been recognized risks for vaccination and I believe it is the responsibility of the CDC to properly convey the risks associated  with receipt of those vaccines.

I have had many discussions  with Dr. Brian Hooker over the last 10 months regarding studies  the CDC has carried out regarding vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes including autism spectrum disorders. I share his belief that CDC decision-making and analyses should be transparent. I was not, however, aware that he was recording any of our conversations, nor was I given any choice regarding whether  my name would be made public or my voice would be put on the Internet.

That’s an open admission, from a senior scientist, that the CDC actively engages in statistical fraud and therefore cannot be trusted with regards to ANYTHING it says related to vaccines. This doesn’t mean that all vaccines are necessarily useless or do more harm than good, but it does prove, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that any arguments that rely upon CDC data have to be junked.

Dr. Thompson admits that “there have always been recognized risks for vaccination”, but strongly implies that “the risks associated  with receipt of those vaccines” has not been properly conveyed. Those who are upset with the damage this revelation will likely cause to vaccine rates have no one to blame but the pro-vaccine scientists; the idea that deceiving parents in order to get them to vaccinate their children was a viable long-term strategy is, to put it mildly, incorrect. Once trust is broken, it is gone; this calls into question far more than the safety of the MMR vaccine for male Africans.

Logic 1, Science 0. Or rather, “Science”. Because, as I’ve been repeatedly pointing out, statistical analysis is not science.