Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: Republican hatred of Ron Paul

Stickwick wonders why conservatives react in such a stereotypically liberal manner to Ron Paul:

I have a question about the conservative perception of Ron Paul. Rachel Lucas seems like a reasonable right-of-center person whose political views are moving towards libertarianism. In fact, she now refers to herself as a libertarian. However, she still hangs on to the idea of American interventionism. In a recent post she criticizes McCain for his criticism of Rand Paul and for his overly-interventionist policy, but agrees with Ace that *some* interventionism is necessary:

I don’t agree with it, but at least their position is stated reasonably. What I find odd is how her commenters are using this as an opportunity to dump all over Ron Paul. Here’s a typical example:

“For the record, I cannot STAND Ron Paul. Fiscally he makes sense, but in every other conceivable way he’s a senile, batshit crazy old fuck.”

Why do some right-of-center people get so vitriolic about Ron Paul? They go right past “I strongly disagree with his ideas on foreign policy,” and straight to “crazy old fuck.” This is exactly the sort of thing they denounce when the left gets personal in its attacks or calls right-of-center ideology a “mental disorder.”

Why do conservatives call Ron Paul crazy instead of just disagreeing with him? Would you shed some light on this?

It’s not at all hard to understand why so many conservatives hate Ron Paul with all the fury of a thousand suns.  The reason is that he shames them for their hypocrisy.  He reveals the inconsistency in their non-conservatism.  He forces them to confront the fact that they are not the proponents of small government and liberty they believe themselves to be.

Big government, international interventionist, and monetarist “conservatives” hate Ron Paul for exactly the same reason the Pharisees and Sadducees hated Jesus Christ.  Because he exposes their intrinsically false nature to themselves.  And the reason they dismiss him as crazy instead of responding rationally to the arguments he presents is because they know they cannot do so without losing.

Mailvox: rabbits gonna rabbit

And Asher’s gonna asher:

“He’s not dumb but when I point out that without science and
philosophy everything that makes his art media possible wouldn’t exist.
It doesn’t even register with him.”

It clearly runs in the family.

“The most obvious possibility is that the “it” refers to science being a necessary condition for various art media used by my brother. However, the reference doesn’t make any sense given the context which is that I am aware of the scientific advances that make my brother’s visual art possible.

The other possibility for Vox’s “it” is that “things” don’t register for me. Fine, but that is, in itself, an empty reference. What things? Everything? Some things? If not everything then what set of things? Vox doesn’t make this clear, and, in doing so he ends up sounding like Amanda Marcotte.

Yes, science being a necessary condition for various art media is clearly the most obvious possibility.  And yes, I sound EXACTLY like Amanda Marcotte.

“Your “it” has no clear object of reference.”

It is sufficiently clear to the sufficiently intelligent.  I often find Asher’s take on things to be more than a little fascinating.  It’s rather like watching a retarded Spock in action.  His attempts at ad hominem are the best; they resemble someone attempting to trash talk in a language they’ve studied for three semesters in college.

“And I suppose you your mother find sex response to attract, yes?”

Mailvox: the line between F and SF

An SFWA author writes concerning the upcoming SFWA election:

 I voted for you and my ballot’s going out tomorrow in the mail. I thought your opening statements were hilarious! Outlandish, too….  But anyway I liked most of your ideas for SFWA.

The idea of establishing two Nebula awards — one for SF and one for F is really over the top. They overlap. Just as a good story also overlaps with dark elements. (Which we politely do  not refer to as “horror” but it is.) This is the main reason I’m writing you –I’d like to know just how you would possibly chop SF & F in half –when novels and stories contain elements of both. “Hard” sf isn’t the only definition of Science Fiction. “Hard SF” implies that there is some explicit element of science explained within the story or novel (which Landis and Haldeman do well) but it’s not the only element and anything we imagine becomes fantasy.

This was my response:  In answer to your question, those nominating a novel for a Nebula Award would be expected to indicate that they considered the nominated work to be either F or SF as part of the nomination process.  A novel that received both SF and F nominations would have both types of nominations counted but would be put up for the award in the category that received the most nominations, assuming that it received enough combined nominations to qualify.  If the author happened to disagree with the categorization and the difference between the two categories was between one and three nominations, then the category would be switched at the author’s request.

Obviously, if everyone nominates something that is clearly Fantasy and the author prefers it to compete in the Science Fiction category because he believes he is the second coming of Isaac Asimov or because he thinks it will be easier to beat out Star Trek 562: Spock Takes a Nap than the most recent rewrite of a Brontë novel published by Tor Books, there would be no reason to accommodate that.

But if a book could be reasonably considered to be either science fiction or fantasy, to such an extent that it is unclear to the readers, there is no reason not to permit the author to determine which category the book most properly belongs.

Mailvox: impeccable girl logic



How can one possibly hope to refute these fiendish adversaries?  Or to confound their impeccable and diabolically clever arguments?  And seeing as how Miss Paradis is not only breaking out logic, but Latin, I can only conclude she must be a witch!  In fear and desperation, I attempted to dismantle her argument, but there were simply no flaws to be found!

  1. I did, indeed, write that widespread rape makes a society uncivilized whereas widespread female employment makes a society demographically unsustainable.
  2. And in doing so, I did, without question, show a certain lack of empathy.
  3. And furthermore, this dreadful dearth of empathy did inspire the Paradis sisters to collect THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIVE DOLLARS from similarly disgusted individuals and give it to an incest charity… in my name!

Thereby proving, beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt, that my thesis concerning the demographic unsustainability of widespread female employment and the relative damage it causes to society vis-a-vis widespread rape can only be completely and totally incorrect.

I stand corrected.  Quod sherat demonstrandum.

UPDATE:  Miss Paradis expounds upon her dialectical approach: “I’m not attempting to refute an illogical argument. The argument is
based on false premise and was meant only to be inflammatory, either
that or your ‘super intellect’ has no understanding of capitalism.”

Mailvox: to forgive or not forgive

BR asks about the consequences of cheap and easy grace:

As always, thanks for the work you do.  Your blogs are exceedingly useful to me in organizing my own thoughts on everything from politics to relationships.  Unless I’m completely confused, I believe you consider yourself a Christian.  As you seem to also be a Man of Reason, I assume a large part of your Faith is also rooted in Reason.  I love Reason-based Faith.  One of the main reasons I don’t subscribe to any religion is because I find too many people in religions that subscribe to the fallacy that Religion and Reason are not compatible.  I tend to dislike Atheists for the same reason.  Yes, The Irrational Atheist is queued on my Kindle.

Today’s question is on the Christian Principle of Forgiveness.  Does Christ want us to forgive people who harm us in the absence of any sort of reparation?  And I mean harm, not mean words that hurt our feelings.  Words and actions that cause our standard of living to be reduced.

It seems that most “mainstream Christians” believe Christ taught that we should forgive people who harm us regardless of whether that person makes any attempt to undo the damage they caused.  However, this seems to be to be in direct opposition to Christ’s own actions.  God forgave us our sins not in a vacuum, but only because of Christ’s sacrifice.  This to me is more Redemption, than Forgiveness.  Sinning comes with a price tag, however that price was paid for us.  Had it not been, we would not have been forgiven.  If you and I went to dinner, and I paid the bill, you would not say that the restaurant forgave your debt to them.  The debt was still paid, just not by you.

This position seems to be taken most often in regards to unintentional harm.  Harm done not out of malice, but through negligence and carelessness.  However, this still seems to be at odds with other aspects of Christian theology.  I am not Christian, and therefore will not receive the benefit of Christ’s sacrifice.  Yes he died for my sins, but until I take the additional step of acknowledging his sacrifice and committing to his principles, I don’t get the benefit.  In other words, I have to do something to gain forgiveness.

I agree that a person who makes reparations for harm they unintentionally do should be forgiven.  If a person accidentally rear ends my car, but pays for all of the repairs, it is absurd for me to hold a grudge against them.  On the other hand, if the person accidentally read ends my car, but refuses to pay for the repairs, it would be equally absurd for me to forgive them.  However, it seems to me this is exactly what many mainstream Christians seem to think should be done.

 I’m bringing the question to you because I think it dovetails with the “saving Western Civilization” aspect of your blogs.  It seems one of the biggest problems we have in modern society is everyone going around doing whatever they want without regard to the consequences.  Obviously, when their actions only harm themselves, I don’t care.  When their actions cause harm to another person, they simply say “I’m sorry”, and expect that to somehow be enough.  Unfortunately, “I’m sorry” doesn’t make my car functional again.  This problem is further compounded by the above “forgiveness fallacy”, because society now refuses to hold these people accountable.  I don’t mean in a criminal prosecution sense, but in a social consequences sense.  Because everyone is so eager to forgive everyone else, there are no social consequences for bad behavior.  Because there are no social consequences, the bad behavior continues, and the harm done to others by the bad behavior continues to mount.  This harm ultimately results in misplaced resources, which leads to a lower standard of living.

An example:  I rent my spare room to a tenant.  The lease requires that rent is paid by a certain date, and defines penalties for failure.  The first time my tenant missed his rent, I slapped him with the fine.  He was never late again.  I could have chosen to “forgive” him because he simply forgot to pay, and not levied the fine, but then what reason would he have to pay his rent on time?  The harm done by not paying his rent goes beyond simple financial transactions.  I have my own bills to pay, and depend on his rent to make them.  If he is routinely late on his rent, I have to hold more cash reserves to ensure I can pay my bills on time.  This additional money just sitting around “just in case” is an inefficient use of resources.  It’s either unavailable to purchase goods and services, thereby reducing the number of people employed in the production of those goods and services; or it’s unavailable for investment, which costs me money due to lost opportunities (as well as costing another person an opportunity due the reduction of loanable funds in the system).

Taking the example further, if he were routinely late, but always paid the late fee, I would actually be doing him a disservice to completely forgive him this constant “sin”.  By not holding him socially accountable for this lazy attitude, I provide him no incentive to correct his behavior.  Even though it’s his choice to effectively pay a higher rent than the market demands, it reduces his standard of living.  While I could certainly take the position that it’s none of my business, such lack of concern would seem to be at odds with Christ’s message.  In other words, letting your child eat chocolate cake for breakfast is not love. 

Cheap and easy grace, as well as ready forgiveness for sins not repented, is the hallmark of modern Churchianity.  It is also indicative of a false and overtly anti-Christian religion that cloaks itself in Christian language.  The parents who make a showy scene of publicly providing unrequested forgiveness to the murderer of their only daughter when the man responsible refuses to even admit the crime aren’t demonstrating their Christianity, they are simply posturing emotionally, because repentance is required as a part of the process of forgiveness.

God doesn’t forgive the unrepentant and therefore neither should the Christian.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” – Luke 23:39-43

Notice that Jesus doesn’t tell both criminals they will be with him in paradise, only the repentant man.  When he does ask his Father to forgive the unrepentant, he does so because “they know not what they do”.  So, my conclusion that the Christian can forgive, without repentance, those who do their harm in ignorance, but not those who willfully intend a harmful course of action.

I would, of course, be remiss if I did not point out that BR is making the same mistake I once made, which is to judge the -ism by the -ist.  This is logically fallacious, particularly considering that Christianity not only accounts for, but depends upon, the imperfection of Man.

Mailvox: which is worse, work or rape?

A drive-by commenter throws out a few questions:

women don’t have to stay home and breed simply because it intimidates
you that we’re in the workforce. What about the fact that women may
wish to work and be very capable of doing so. Are you saying women are
less intelligent than men? Is there any reason that a man couldn’t stay
home and provide childcare if that is best suited to a family? 

1) True.  Women don’t have to stay home and breed because it intimidates anyone that they are in the workforce, about two-thirds of them have to stay home and breed in order to prevent society from either collapsing into demographic and economic ruin or being transformed by the imported replacement workers into a third world society.  The birthrate has already fallen well below replacement level without the rate of female employment even drawing completely even with the male employment rate; one wonders how low it would go if all women were required to enter the workforce.

One can look to Londonistan if one requires an example of this process at work: “[F]or the first time, white Britons are now in a minority in the country’s largest city…. White Britons now make up 45 per cent of the population, compared with 58 per cent in 2001.  London’s population has been boosted by immigrants. Three million foreign-born people now live in the capital.  

2) The fact that women may wish to work and are very capable of working no more implies that they should always be encouraged to do so anymore than the fact that men may wish to rape and are very capable of raping means that they should always be encouraged to do so.  The ironic, but logically inescapable fact is that encouraging men to rape would be considerably less damaging to a society than encouraging women to enter the workforce en masse.  Widespread rape makes a society uncivilized.  Widespread female employment makes a society demographically unsustainable.  History demonstrates that incivility can be survived and surmounted.  Unsustainability, on the other hand, cannot.

3) Are women less intelligent than men?  On average, no.  In terms of the highest standard deviations, yes.  However, I think it is readily apparent that both men and women are to blame for constructing an equalitarian society that, in terms of intelligence, doesn’t even rise to the ability of a dog to avoid defecating in its own bed and staying off the railroad tracks.

4) Yes, there are a number of reasons that a man cannot stay home and provide childcare.  The three most important are that a) most men don’t want to provide childcare, b) most women don’t want to work to support a man, and c) doing so significantly increases the probability that his wife will stop being attracted to him and his marriage will fail.  A woman simply OUTEARNING her husband increases the risk of divorce by 50 percent; this implies that it is untenable to expect women to be willing to completely support their families.  But certainly, if there are women who dream of marrying men who will stay home and play video games with the children while they work 60 hours per week to support the family, there is no reason they should be barred from doing so. 

I tend to doubt there are enough of these hard-working snowflakes to be of any statistical, let alone demographic, significance to society.

Mailvox: value is not objective

Asher claims to know something of economics despite making a massive and fundamental error that requires complete ignorance of subjective value theory:

My undergrad was economics and my grad work was in philosophy focusing on theory of mind and the social sciences, prompted by investigating whether or not economics is a positive body of knowledge. Yeah, I know just a little bit about the topic.

A little bit is not enough to intelligently discuss these matters.  Other than the Mises Institute, there is not a single undergraduate economics program of which I am aware that is not based on the neoclassical assumption of objective value.  Unfortunately, the state of economic education is now such that one can possess considerable economic academic credentials while still knowing nothing of some of the most fundamental basics.  Subjective value is a proto-Austrian concept that is not taught in either Econ 101 or 301; most economics PhDs, to say nothing of undergrads, are completely unfamiliar with the scholastics and the pre-Smithian economists and genuinely believe that economics is a 200-year old discipline that began with Adam Smith.

This is where Asher demonstrated that he simply does not know what “subjective value” is:

 This is where the subjective theory of value leads. If everything of value has to be reflected in a market price then to not pay anyone for something of value is ‘unjust’.

Subjective value does not lead there; it cannot lead there because it neither requires anything, (much less everything), of value to be reflected in a price nor assigns any significance beyond the immediate exchange to the exchange value.  As it happens, I’ve been reading Volume II of Rothbard’s excellent Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, which I recommend to everyone, but especially Asher, and happened to read the following at the gym today:

In contrast to the Smith-Ricardo mainstream of Smithians who set forth the labour theory (or at very best, the cost-of-production theory) of value, J.B. Say firmly re-established the scholastic-continental-French utility analysis. It is utility and utility alone that gives rise to exchange value, and Say settled the value paradox to his own satisfaction by disposing of ‘use-value’ altogether as not being relevant to the world of exchange. Not only that: Say adopted a subjective value theory, since he believed that value rests on acts of valuation by the consumers. In addition to being subjective, these degrees of valuation are relative, since the value of one good or service is always being compared against another. These values, or utilities, depend on all manner of wants, desires and knowledge on the part of individuals: ‘upon the moral and physical nature of man, the climate he lives in, and on the manner and legislation of his country. He has wants of the body, wants of the mind, and of the soul; wants for himself, others for his family, others still as a member of society’.  Political economy, Say sagely pointed out, must take these values and preferences of people as givens, ‘as one of the data of its reasonings; leaving to the moralist and the practical man, the several duties of enlightening and of guiding their fellow-creatures, as well in this, as in other particulars of human conduct’.

At some points, Say went up to the edge of discovering the marginal utility concept, without ever quite doing so. Thus he saw that relative valuations of goods depends on ‘degrees of estimation in the mind of the valuer’. But since he did not discover the marginal concept, he could not fully solve the value paradox. In fact, he did far less well at solving it than his continental predecessors. And so Say simply dismissed use-value and the value paradox altogether, and decided to concentrate on exchange-value….

But whereas Say simply discarded use-value, Ricardo made the value paradox and the unfortunate split between use- and exchange-value the key to his value theory. For Ricardo, iron was worth less than gold because the labour cost of digging and producing gold was greater than the labour cost of producing iron. Ricardo admitted that utility ‘is certainly the foundation of value’, but this was apparently of only remote interest, since the ‘degree of utility’ can never be the measure by which to estimate its value. All too true, but Ricardo failed to see the absurdity of looking for such a measure in the first place. His second absurdity, as we shall see further below, was in thinking that labour cost provided such a ‘true’ and invariable measure of value. As Say wrote in his annotations on the French translation of Ricardo’s Principles, ‘an invariable measure of value is a pure chimera’.

Smith, and still more Ricardo, were pushed into their labour cost theory by concentrating on the long-run ‘natural’ price of products. Say’s analysis was aided greatly by his realistic concentration on the explanation of real market price.

– Murry Rothbard, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, 1.5 Utility, productivity and distribution

Not only does Asher not understand what subjective value is, he then compounds his error by leaping to an erroneous conclusion on the basis of his false understanding.  Subjective value severs any possible connection between price and justice; it specifically denies even the possibility that there is necessarily any connection between the exchange value of a particular object to two parties at one point in time and the value of that same object to those two parties at a different point in time, much less any significance to any one else of either of those two different exchange values.

Nor is subjective value theory new.  Rothbard traces it back to Democritus, a contemporary of Socrates, of whom he writes: “Democritus contributed two important strands of thought to the development of economics. First, he was the founder of subjective value theory. Moral values, ethics, were absolute, Democritus taught, but economic values were necessarily subjective. ‘The same thing’, Democritus writes, may be ‘good and true for all men, but the pleasant differs from one and another’.”

Rothbard also noted that Saint Augustine grasped the essence of subjective value: “Augustine’s economic views were scattered throughout The City of God and his other highly influential writings. But he definitely, and presumably independently of Aristotle, arrived at the view that people’s payments for goods, the valuation they placed on them, was determined by their own needs rather than by any more objective criterion or by their rank in the order of nature. This was at least the basis of the later Austrian theory of subjective value.”

There is, there can be, no such thing as a “just price” under subjective value theory because the value placed upon an object by an individual, which is used to establish the price, is both unique and dynamic.  This is in direct contradiction to the objective value concept that has dominated economics ever since Adam Smith revived the ancient value paradox by confusing exchange value with use value.

Mailvox: surviving in the coming chaos

DA seeks advice on the matter:

Dear Rabbit Hunter Extraordinaire,

I write to you seeking your help in how millennial young male should go about preparing for the future. To provide some context, I am a 20 year college sophomore. Additional not-insignificant details about me include black, upper middle class, Traditional Catholic, and if it helps, my college major is in computer engineering. ( I included this to get your opinion on the usefulness of my degree. I also add that I will leave college debt free.). Forgive me if I come across as attempting a snow-flaking/woe is me act, but my circumstances do leave me fairly isolated. To make matters worse, my political sentiments lean very heavily towards the far right( think Walter Williams) and I’d rather avoid getting caught in the crossfire between the “vibrant” cohorts.

I’ve been reading/lurking/commenting occasionally on your blog for the past three years and your writing has contributed greatly to my current understanding of economics and history. Though my knowledge of said topics is not nearly as comprehensive, it doesn’t require a genius to know that current times are bad and are going to get a whole lot worse.

Having said all that, what are your recommendations as to what I should do to hopefully survive the coming state of entropy? I understand that providing a definitive response to this may be difficult but anything at all would be very much appreciated.

Cue a few thousand little rabbit minds exploding.  Anyhow, being black, intelligent, aware, and intrinsically attractive to SWPL’s seeking token black acquaintaces to prove their SWPLness, DA potentially finds himself in an excellent position to not only survive, but thrive, in the increasingly difficult times ahead.  What looks like a serious disadvantage given the increasing polarity of the American racial divides could actually prove to be an opportunity for a young man of his abilities.

The greatest advantage will be to do as the rabbit people do, but in reverse; a sort of wolf in rabbit’s clothing.  By taking advantage of the SWPLs’ desperate desire to be seen as anti-racist, DA will be able to write his own ticket so long as he keeps his very incorrect ideology to himself.  At the same time, DA will have to realize that the days of whites pretending to be color-blind are over.  Only those SWPL who live in 98.9% white communities can still affect the pretense any longer, but the end of nominal color-blindness will make SWPLs even more desperate to seek absolution from him than they already are.  The more racial polarization, the more the left-liberal white class will be seeking to cling to their living, breathing, get-out-of-racism free cards.

I doubt it has escaped DA’s attention how certain whites fall all over themselves for the likes of Obama and RGIII.  It’s an advantage freely offered to any sufficiently well-spoken black man, so why not avail oneself of it?  The key to success here is to always exceed their secretly lowered expectations.  Being a former white sprinter who is now an American soccer player in Europe, this is something with which I am very familiar myself.  The less they expect, the better you tend to look.

The degree is potentially a good one, particularly as it came debt-free, but programming can be a career dead end and credentials mean little in the programming world.  DA should be careful to keep up on the latest fads and shoot for design and management opportunities as they present themselves.  But, at the same time, he should insist on keeping up with his programming, as the most valuable managers are those that genuinely understand the issues involved.  He should stay away from the false security and bureaucratic mediocrity of the large corporations and look for opportunities in small-to-medium size firms where he can take advantage of his ability to exceed expectations.

In terms of avoiding the crossfire from the vibrant cohorts, the best place to be is in the SWPL strongholds.  Being upper middle class, he’ll be more than welcome among them so long as he doesn’t burst their bubbles by betraying what he thinks of their ludicrous equalitarianism.

Mailvox: a rabbit attempts econ

It’s fascinating to see a creature that can’t count to six attempt to tackle supply and demand.  Phoenician returns and a modicum of economic hilarity ensues:

“And the more women that work, the more women have to work and the less time women who don’t work will have with their husbands who support them, because an INCREASE in the SUPPLY of labor necessitates a DECREASE in the PRICE of labor, demand remaining constant.”

Alas, dipshit, demand doesn’t stay constant – the women working and earning wages also spend those wages.  Fucked up again with basic economics, dipshit.

Wait, working women are going to spend their wages?  Why didn’t someone point that out to me earlier?  This changes everything!

Actually, it doesn’t.  It is obvious that consumption patterns change when a woman works instead of staying home.  More office clothes and restaurant meals, to say nothing of day care and transportation costs.  So how much does total female demand have to increase in order for this altered female consumption to break even with the increase in the labor supply, everything else remaining equal?

35 percent net.  Since not all women work, every single woman who does and is part of the aforementioned post-1950 delta would have to increase her new work-inspired consumption 81.7 percent just to balance her wage depressing effect.  Since Does that sound even remotely plausible given that real household income has remained essentially flat between 1965 and 2012?

And anyhow, we can forget that required 81.7 percent increase because it is extremely unlikely that female consumption-based demand has increased AT ALL due to more women in the labor force for the obvious reason that working women bear fewer children.  The US fertility rate has fallen from 3.7 to 1.9 children per woman since 1955, which means that the increased number of women in the labor force has reduced overall consumption and demand due to there being 1.8 less children in the average family.  At the USDA middle-range estimate of $234,900 to raise a child to 18, that reduced fertility rate translates to $422,820 in reduced demand per woman, or $983,302 per working woman in the delta.

Which effect, I note, is something I had already pointed out in the post to which Phoenician was so ineptly responding: “The reduced birth rate has a negative effect on consumption, and
therefore the demand for labor, 20 years before the consequent negative
effects on the supply of labor can help balance it out, putting further
negative pressure on wage rates.”

It was brave of the little guy, though, wasn’t it?  Perhaps if he’d only thrown in a few more vulgarities, he would have won the debate, because rhetoric is always so effective in an intrinsically dialectical discourse.  Well, there is always next time.  Hop along now, furry little fellow.

Mailvox: “McRapey and me”

EGA writes to describe how l’affaire McRapey has caused him to rethink his opinion of the theory of Game, particularly as it concerns the socio-sexual hierarchy:

I have read your blog for some time. Your posts at Black Gate during the fluffle started by Leo Grin’s descriptive essay on the “bankrupt nihilism” of the current wave of epic fantasy were my start. You made me laugh and cringe while arguing with R. Scott Bakker, and I enjoyed your posts on economics, about which I admittedly know very little and found many of your posts challenging, yet enlightening.

I read your blog mostly for the economics posts, and enjoy much of what you write on other subjects. I never exactly agreed with your writing on a few subjects. I am very skeptical about much of what is written about “game,” about human biodiversity and a few other subjects. In fact, I didn’t think that your breakdown of the sexual market place hierarchies synced, at all, with my own experiences or observations. And while I do enjoy some of what is written in the manosphere, Heartiste and others set me on edge.

So when the posts on John Scalzi started, I cringed worse than I ever did when you had a similar argument with Mr. Bakker. And I wanted for Scalzi to win, at least in some fashion. I was the one who commented on his blog, trying to point out how much he was only proving you correct. Every chance he gets, he manages to do almost as you (and I) might predict, almost as if he were following a script. You know because of your experience and observation. I know how to predict him because, honestly, I am him.

I didn’t want him to lose that fight because I didn’t want to believe that what you wrote about the “gamma male” was true, which is perhaps indicative of how weak my intellectual opposition to the idea was in the first place. You wrote that it is a good thing to lose well. I don’t know how to do that. I am that guy and I hate myself for it. You wrote that it is a good thing to use knowledge you share to improve your lot, but I don’t even know how to start with that. Few things I have ever read have ever scared me or caused me to question what I’m doing with myself, but I am lost here. Hence, I’m writing to you, asking for any advice on what to do with myself now that I’m ready to admit that I’ve been looking at the whole subject of male-female relations, intellectual argument and epistemic pursuit hopelessly backwards.

P.S. I recall that in my exchanges with Scalzi, I claimed that you were
enjoying an echo chamber of sycophants. This was unfair and untrue. I
apologize for that.

His apology is accepted, of course.  Unlike the rabbit warrens, VP has never been an echo chamber and even the Dread Ilk cannot be reasonably described as “followers”, much less “sycophants”.  And EGA’s ability to admit that he was wrong is the first step forward in the journey upon which he is about to engage, in consciously developing his self-respect and improving his status as a social creature in a social hierarchy.

How does one learn to lose well?  One puts oneself in competitive situations where one is going to lose, regularly and frequently, until the sting of defeat disappears and the fear of failure is gone.  That is the point at which progress towards becoming a true competitor begins.  It is also why non-athletes are disproportionately represented among the gamma population; few athletes reach 10 years of age without experiencing a considerable amount of defeat.  I may have been a NCAA D1 sprinter who played for a #1 ranked soccer team in high school, but I was also a member of a church basketball team that lost its first game by 47 points.  (Note: if you’re a white kid without a jump shot who is going to play in a church basketball league, a Lutheran league is your best bet.  Baptist leagues, not so much.)

I’ve written before about my favorite kids team.  I was their coach for all three years they were in the scuola calcio, from 6-8.  The first year, we had one 7 year old and we were winless, losing most of our games by double digits.  It was brutal, but by the end of the season, there were no more tears and losing didn’t faze them.  The second year, they started to become competitive, winning games here and there, although they were still beaten badly by the two big teams attached to the professional clubs.  But the third year, they went undefeated, and I have never seen a more fearless and ruthlessly competitive team play any sport at any level.  It was like watching a squad of sharks dispassionately ripping apart everything that crossed their path.  It was one long glorious bloodbath.

Before the first game, some of the parents complained that I was only bringing the 8 year olds and the best seven year olds to the tournament.  So, I brought everyone and started all the little kids.  We were down 3-0 within three minutes, two of the little ones had been hurt and had to come out of the game, (they weren’t hurt badly, they’d just been hit by the ball), and my playmaker cried out, in genuine anguish, “what are you doing?”

“I’m making a point,” I said, loudly enough for the problematic parents to hear.  Their ringleader promptly stepped forward and explained that the point had been taken, so I signaled the ref and mass substituted the entire team.  The boys cheered as they ran onto the field, visibly alarming the other team, and went after them with all the gleeful fury of weasels in a hen house.  We won that game by four goals. 

In the championship game of the big tournament, it was tied 1-1 at halftime.  I knew we would win, and even told a Brazilian acquaintance whose son played for the other team as much, because my kids knew how to lose and didn’t fear it, while some of their opponents had quite literally never lost a game in their lives.  I knew that if the other team scored next, my kids would try all the harder, whereas if we scored, they would quit.  Sure enough, we scored the next goal, every head on the other side went down, fingers started pointing, and their voices started sounding accusatory and panic-stricken.  We ended up winning 5-1, beating the very same team that had beaten us 14-0 two years before.  More importantly, we had beaten a club that had beaten ours for literally generations.

One defender’s father was openly in tears at the end of the game.  I asked him what was wrong and he shook his head and smiled.  He said: “They always beat my grandfather.  They always beat me.  But my son, he has defeated them!”

The best thing was that the competitive culture the kids created was, for a short time, passed down to the younger kids.  We went undefeated the next year too; four of my boys ended up being recruited by the top pro program, which was three more than in the previous 20 years.  And their pride in having been a part of that team was such that when the big club played against our club in subsequent years, they refused to take the field.  In one star striker’s case, he even put on his old training jacket over his uniform and sat on our bench for the entire game.

They weren’t any better than the kids from the best programs, in fact, they were mostly smaller, slower, and less skilled.  Two of our three biggest players were rejects who didn’t make either of the elite teams.  But they were fearless, so perfectly fearless, that it was a joy to watch them and a privilege to coach them.  I quit coaching a few years later when I found I couldn’t replicate their success to the same extent.  I definitely played a role in their success, but I now believe it was mostly the result of the tempering they had received during that season of unending defeat.  Looking back, I realize that my three most valuable players were, ironically enough, the least talented; the miniscule defensive rock who couldn’t kick the ball ten yards, but reliably brought down attackers twice his height, the single-minded lupolino who couldn’t do anything with the ball but put it in the back of the net, and the emotional leader of the team, who had two left feet and berated his own failures more ferociously than anyone else’s.

They were magnificent.  I’ve had my share of victories in athletics, as an individual and as part of a team, in a variety of sports, but I couldn’t forget those kids if I tried.  If you ask me what is a champion, I think first of them.

Just as the seeds of future failure are often sown in success that comes too easily due to good fortune, the seeds of future success are planted in our failures.  Don’t be afraid of them.  Admit failure and attempt to understand it, so that you can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.  Even when you can’t reasonably expect to succeed, you can try to fail for a different reason.