Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: of free trade, Austrians, and authors

CA asks about protectionism in Alabama:

If I understand your position correctly, you say the free movement of labor is an inherent flaw in the free trade ideology. If this is true, the recently passed Alabama HB 56 would theoretically correct for the free movement of labor by forcing illegal immigrants out of the workforce. Apparently it did force them out of the workforce and now Alabama farmers cannot find enough labor to meet their needs because legal workers are unable or unwilling to perform the work that the illegal immigrants had been doing. The situation turns the “they took our jobs” argument on its head.

Would you chalk this up to the fact that Americans have become soft and lazy because illegal immigrants have been doing all the hard work for so long? Do you expect that, if the law is kept on the books, legal workers will eventually take the reigns when the situation becomes more dire? Am I entirely missing the point somewhere? Basically, how do you fit this empirical data into your anti-free trade theory?

I have been enjoying this discussion, btw, thanks for the intellectual stimulation.

First, I have to offer a mild correction to the statement that “Alabama farmers cannot find enough labor to meet their needs because legal workers are unable or unwilling to perform the work that the illegal immigrants had been doing”. The fact is that Alabama farmers cannot find enough labor to meet their needs because legal workers are unable or unwilling to perform the work that the illegal immigrants had been doing at the same lower wages the immigrants had been receiving. Would they have any trouble finding sufficient labor if they paid $1 milllion per hour? Of course not. So, it’s not a problem of a shortage of labor, but rather, insufficient wages.

How does this fit into my anti-free trade theory? Perfectly. In the free trade scenario, the low-wage laborers migrate legally to Alabama and stay there, increasing the farmers’ profits at the expense of the Alabama workers and the local Alabama culture which is now permanently transformed into Mexico-Alabama. The Alabama workers must either reduce their standard of living by accepting Mexican wages or leave Alabama in search of a place where they can find higher wages. Even if overall wealth is increased temporarily, it comes at a high cost in societal destruction, as even if Alabama’s population remains the same, its demographics do not.

And since immigrants are disproportionately young men, the qualitative change in the workforce likely means exchanging young, single Hispanic men for Alabama family men. This will tend to increase crime, lower property values, reduce social cohesion, and incur other costs that don’t show up in the simple economic calculations.

AM, on the other hand, thinks that opposition to free trade is impossible for a libertarian:

According to the lead for your columns you are a “Christian libertarian.” Perhaps you really are a Christian. Your column on free trade definitely scratches the libertarian part. You also seem to believe that NAFTA, etc. are free trade agreements. You also fail to explain any harm from real free trade or any benefits from using force and violence to interfere with individuals who want to trade. You are good at name calling of Ricardo and others who advance the principles of comparative advantage. Yet you have not one word about what is wrong with the principles. I eagerly await your analysis and criticism of the principles of comparative advantage. I suspect I will be waiting a long time. Government borrowing is a problem. That it borrows from those the people of the US trade with, rather than from people of the US doesn’t make the borrowing any more destructive.

I can see how some libertarians can reasonably argue that I am No True Libertarian, but their thinking is simplistic and relies upon the fallacious concept that maximizing human liberty requires maximizing the legal range of human behavior. I will eventually be presenting a positive case for opposing free trade in some circumstances as part of my argument for National Libertarianism. In the meatime, as we can see from the example of this email, many free trade advocates are blatantly dishonest. Let’s list just a few of the obvious falsehoods some of them keep repeating:

1. Free trade does not mean free trade in services.
2. Free trade does not involve the free movement of labor.
3. Free trade does not involve free trade agreements.
4. Free trade is binary.

AM also throws in numerous other falsehoods as well, but I expect most of you can see how absurd they are since, just to give one example, I have obviously supplied considerably more than one word about what is wrong with the principles of comparative advantage. But let’s focus on the idea that NAFTA, GATT and other free trade agreements are not free trade agreements.

Now, I don’t deny that these various agreements do not constitute perfectly free trade. After all, we still have immigration laws, work visas, and numerous other means of preventing the free movement of labor and various tariffs are still on the books. But there is no denying that these free trade agreements have led to a greater volume of trade as well as a reduction in tariff rates and the number of tariffs. Consider the facts:

NAFTA provides for the elimination of Mexican tariffs on 5,900 categories of imports from the United States and Canada (mostly machinery and intermediate goods), representing more than 40 percent of Mexico’s overall trade. Other products are reclassified in a simplified tariff list having four rate bands–5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent, and 20 percent. The United States eliminated tariffs on 3,100 additional categories of Mexican goods, bringing to 80 percent the portion of all Mexican exports to the United States that will be free from tariffs. Some 4,200 categories already had been included in the General System of Preferences (GSP) and were thus already exempt from tariffs. The treaty eliminates some tariffs immediately and phases out the rest over five, ten, or fifteen years, with vulnerable industries in the United States and Mexico receiving the longest protection.

Mexico’s deadlines for lowering trade barriers are generally longer than those for Canada and the United States. The latter countries are required to lift immediately their tariffs on some 80 percent of Mexico’s nonoil exports, while Mexico must grant immediate free entry to 42 percent of United States and Canadian exports. Special rules apply for trade in textiles, vehicles and auto parts, and agricultural products. The treaty also governs trade in services, including overland transport, telecommunications, and financial services, and it includes provisions for the liberalization of government procurement.

NAFTA requires Mexico to abolish protectionist limitations on foreign investment (except in the energy sector), allow free profit repatriation by United States and Canadian firms, and guarantee investors against property seizure without full compensation. The treaty allows foreign banks to take up to 25 percent of Mexico’s banking market and allows foreign brokerages to take 30 percent of the securities business by 2004, after which all restrictions are to be eliminated.

The dishonesty of the “free trade agreements are not free trade” argument is readily apparent in the way in which the free trade arguments oppose adding new tariffs, raising tariff rates, or reducing immigration on the basis of their free trade doctrine while simultaneously attempting to claim that no amount of eliminated tariffs, reduced tariff rates, or increased immigration can be considered free trade. They’re claiming that the protectionist pros and cons can be judged on a graduated basis, but the pros and cons of free trade cannot be. This is not only dishonest, but is obviously absurd, since the benefits of free trade cannot magically arrive all at once with the Traders’ Paradise if the costs of protectionism appear piecemeal.

NAFTA is not an entirely free trade agreement, but it is an agreement to engage in freer trade, it has in fact led to freer trade, and as such, it serves perfectly well as an example of the failure of free trade doctrine. I note that in all the denials of connection between NAFTA, GATT, and other free trade agreements and genuine free trade, very few free trade advocates have come out and called for the cancellation of those agreements. This is not to say that no free traders ever opposed NAFTA; it should come as no surprise that Murray Rothbard did.

And on a mildly amusing tangential note, I’m not the only one who has noted Gary North’s inability to distinguish between related, but distinct concepts.

According to Gary: “[Mises’s] disciple Murray Rothbard promoted 100% reserve banking. But, because he [Rothbard] opposed the existence of the state, his call for 100% reserves was not a call for legislation requiring 100% reserves.”

Murray Rothbard of course opposed the state. But, according to Gary, Murray would therefore have to oppose all legislation or laws. Yet, clearly, Murray (as a libertarian, not an Austrian), favored laws against murder, rape, etc. In his view, they would be implemented not by the government, but by private defense agencies. It is a misconstrual of free market anarchism to say that advocates of this philosophy oppose all laws. Au contraire: We are supporters of proper law, i.e., laws upholding individual rights and private property. Indeed, our criticism of the government is that it violates such proper law.

And finally, a member of the Dread Ilk has published a book on Round One. No doubt Nate will want to check it out.

Mailvox: free trade and automation

JC has a question concerning the different consequences of free trade versus automation:

Interesting discussion on free trade on your blog. Im still going thru the comments on the last one. I have to admit this discussion is all new to me and I have a lot of homework to do to keep up. But I have a question which I shall preface thus:

If for example an American manufacturer moves to another country with lower labor costs, etc., and sells products to American consumers at a lower price than they would have had they stayed in America and hired American workers, the lower priced consumer goods would not really help them since they wouldnt have jobs to take advantage of the lower prices.

I’m thinking this is just the same as a manufacturer deciding to automate production and laying off workers because it’s cheaper to use machines, which is what is happening in America where manufacturing output continues to grow because of American ingenuity in technology but unemployment remains high. It would be like the manufacturer moving the factory overseas because it would be cheaper to produce there. My question is: How is free trade bad, while automation is good in the example I gave above? (I’m assuming you think technological advances in manufacturing is good of course.)

Im looking forward to spending more time over at Vox Popoli. I know you put it up mainly for yourself, but Im sure you are aware that a lot of people are getting a real education reading the posts there and participating in the discussions.

There are several ways that job losses through automation is preferable to job losses through free trade, but JC is right to point out that there are still some material problems presented by it. This is something that has concerned me for some time, and I’ve been contemplating a post about it ever since Chateau Heartiste brought up the issue a few weeks ago.

First, when jobs are lost to automation rather than free trade, the capital and the profits remain in the domestic market. Second, it’s much easier to prevent free trade than technological progress because in the one case the national interest is in line with the domestic producer, in the other it opposes the producers interest. Third, (and this is a consequence of the first thing), the transition of labor from an automated industry to a new one remains viable when the capital and profits remain within the domestic market, otherwise, labor has no choice but to move where the capital investment is taking place.

This is why dishonest advocates of free trade falsely attempt to claim that the free movement of labor is not part of the free trade doctrine. They know that no one will support free trade once the understand that it intrinsically necessitates the large-scale export of their friends, relatives, and neighbors to other markets, and quite possibly their own expatriation. In the case of automation, on the other hand, there is a reasonable expectation that the capital will be reinvested in the domestic market, thereby creating new jobs in that market. That doesn’t mean the process won’t be painful, or as increasingly concerns me, because there is no real productive need for the excess labor, it will be mopped up using a combination of makework private sector jobs, public sector sinecures, and welfare payments.

Of course, in the case of automation, such a solution is possible because the profits have increased and remain within the country. In the case of free trade, not only have the jobs disappeared, but so have the capital and the profits that would pay for either jobs in a new industry as well as the social safety net.

Mailvox: the permissive will of a red-handed god

KH asks about the so-called “permissive will” that is part of the Calvinist concept of the divine:

I have followed your discussion of Calvinism with great interest. Some of these questions come up routinely in an on going group Bible study. Recently, one Calvinist used the term “permissive will” in reference to God allowing a natural disaster to kill people. (The term was new to me). He argued that God does not cause these tragedies but permits them or allows Satan to cause them. The problem I perceived with this argument is that one is still blaming God for the earthquake or tornado fatalities, whether it was His “permissive/passive” or active will. The term “permissive will” seemed like a euphemism to get around the belief of God controlling every storm and fault line without actually accusing Him of murder. I still feel like there was a missed opportunity for the use of logic to take out that argument. How would you have responded to the use of that term?

This is one of the concepts I lampoon in my occasional reference to the nine billion wills of God – actually, I think I previously referred to 17, but nine billion more appropriately reflects my view of the matter – and it refers to the distinctions that some Calvinists make between the “perfect”, the “permissive”, the “decreed”, the “directive”, the “perceptive”, and the “directed” wills of God. This isn’t quite as insane as it sounds, as there is a necessary and legitimate reason to distinguish between what God demands, what God decrees, what God anticipates, and what God wishes but does not expect, all of which can be reasonably described as what He wills.

However, KH is correct in smelling a rat. Those inclined to omniderigence will draw no such distinction; John Piper, for example, is straightforward about his belief in a literally murderous Jesus Christ who purposefully kills people with tornadoes. But this is a theologically incorrect use of “permissive will”, as that is what is used to explain Man’s ability to sin, not Man’s suffering natural disasters, which is generally considered to be a consequence of God’s “perfect will”.

This use of “permissive will” actually sounds rather more like my very non-Calvinist perspective, although I would never use such a term to describe what I observe to be Satan’s partial sovereignty over the world. It is always intriguing to compare the Calvinist claims of God’s sovereignty with the contradictory claims of Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul concerning the being they describe as “the prince of this world” and “the god of this age”.

Mailvox: understanding the exotic

TPB-01 postulates an inability to understand the mental exotics of Voxkind in a series of comments I have abbreviated for focus:

”I mean, sure, I see someone on the street, I have no idea whats going on in their minds. Yet there is the possibility of recognition, of understanding through communication.”

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is a common human illusion of believing they do indeed have a lot in common with a random other “human”

You see someone on the street. He has a wiring not unlike that of Bundy (naturally so), and what then ? You don’t have the benefit of understanding – you will never understand each other. If you’re lucky, you’re just a boring bit of scenery to him. If not, you’re fresh meat. You can communicate with him alright – but what possible understanding could you achieve ?

Or maybe it’s someone like Vox, living in his very own private reality which is besieged by demons (and not some fancy-shmancy metaphor demons, the real shit – supernatural evil and all that jazz). Unless you also have a worldview that includes invisible horned douchebags, what possible understanding could communication bring?

Well, *some* degree of mutual understanding is possible with distinctly inhuman agents, like say, wolves, and human “mental exotics” like Vox (We have painstakingly established that Vox’s model of reality includes exotic paranormal entities and a constant low-intensity conflict with said entities, and I am reasonably sure that Vox understands that I find such a world model, as well as agents who sincerely subscribe to it, highly comical.)

The same understanding that is possible between an individual who is aware of the existence and purpose of x-rays and one who does not. Or, to take a more extreme example, between blind and sighted individuals. Communication might be difficult, though not impossible, concerning certain matters, but that leaves the vast realm of human reason, emotion, and behavior still on the table. I have no problem understanding either your attitude or your belief system; you don’t actually have any problem understanding me, your problem is accepting the possibility of my belief system.

Which is fortunate for you. Once you find yourself in the presence of sufficiently naked evil, you will likely find yourself more open to the possibility.

Actually, I do have a problem understanding you, since your peculiar belief goes well beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate/prove .
A sighted person could contrive numerous means to demonstrate existence of light-based detection systems to the blind (much like sighted humans have managed to build systems for detecting neutrinos, a task for which human sensory system is radically unfit).

Yes, we do have a “degree” of understanding – you “understand” that I happen to have a grievously inaccurate model of “reality” that is characterized by an absence of “demons”. I happen to “understand” that you happen to have a grievously inaccurate model of “reality” that is characterized by a presence of “demons”. Unless I invent a way to somehow “disprove” unfalsifiable entities 😉 , or you invent a demon detector I can replicate and use to go find some horned invisible doucheroos, there is no way we could advance understanding beyond this boundary.

I strongly doubt that you would bother to demonstrate a protocol that would reliably permit me to detect demons, though of course I am quite eager to listen if you do.

“Why not? Surely your imaginations are not so limited as to make it impossible for you to postulate how your thinking would be modified by personal experience of some aspect of the religious supernatural! Whereas you see Vox-kind as crazy, Vox-kind merely sees you as something akin to colorblind.”

I can totally imagine living in your Lovecraft County – after all, I called it “Cool Lovecraft county”.

Now, I doubt you can actually “argue me into your Lovecraft County” (unless there’s a demon detector in your pocket, or something) and thus there is a fundamental limit to how well I can understand your position, let alone predict your further activities.

Imagination can only go so far in modeling the behavior of someone who faces a radically divergent “reality”.

I am pretty sure both you and me would have a lot of trouble really understanding someone who sincerely believes that Republican party is actually lead by disguised space aliens hellbent on conquest, while Democrats are time-travelling cyborgs from a dystopian future.

“Actually, I do have a problem understanding you, since your peculiar belief goes well beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate/prove.

Why? We all harbor peculiar beliefs that go well beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate or prove. Perhaps you believe your dead grandmother loved you. Perhaps I believe my brother is the nicest person in the world. Perhaps we both believe in human equality. None of these things can be demonstrated or proved any more than the existence of demons and none of them need inhibit understanding.

You might point to a letter that your grandmother wrote. I claim that it’s a forgery. I might point to the behavior of the dead Miami face-eating cannibal. You claim “cocaine psychosis”. Repeat as needed.

In any event, your conclusion simply doesn’t follow from the premises. And the existence of a working demon-detector would not make my position more intelligible, it would make it correct. The concept is perfectly intelligible already and has been understood for thousands of years. Nor is the claim of demonic unfalsifiability correct any more than the rings of Saturn were unfalsifiable prior to the invention of the first telescope powerful enough to see them; even setting aside the fact that there is considerable evidence for the existence of demons, TPB-01 has presented a temporally limited technological argument that is intrinsically invalid from the perspective of proper Popperian falsifiability. This is hardly uncommon, as I previously pointed out the flaws of such arguments in TIA.

TPB-01 responds:

Well, I find it kind of remarkable that when you proceed to illustrate possible exchange between two agents disagreeing in regards to allegations of a poorly documented deceased person, you kind of make my point for me.

There is a distinct “understanding horizon” at work here, running along a number of allegations regarding the deceased relative, and claims related to those. Same goes for allegations regarding “human equality” (whatever the fuck that is…)

Consider the case of nice fellow who thinks that both US parties are run by “Secret Inhumans”, specifically conquest-crazy space aliens for Republicans and creepy cyborgs from the future for Democrats. We can establish *some* degree of understanding (at least, we can find out hypothetical person’s weird beliefs and establish an understanding in regards to the fact that we disagree with him and he disagrees with us), but there’s only so far we could go. When imagining ourselves in his shoes we will only muster a distorted projection reflecting neither his actual state nor our own (kind of like imagining yourself as participating in a battle and actually participating in a very real fucking battle are two different things), and same would be true for him (assuming he ever bothers to try imagining what our worldview feels like).

Same of course goes for unverifiable and unfalsifiable assertions regarding dead relatives.

Human equality… well, for starters it would be nice to define it in a way that does not summon Captain Obvious 😉 then see if anything approaching a framework for pragmatically assessing various such “claims”. I find it entirely plausible that there is as little chance of understanding between you and hypothetical “equality fellow” in regards to this vague “equality” thingamajig as between you and me in regards to the existence of supernatural intelligent forces scheming to affect the world in some manner.

[Insert Top Gun quote here]

I have the feeling that even if Chelm hadn’t already accused me of anti-semitism, someone else is bound to by virtue of the extreme ease with which I will show the erroneous aspects of his arguments. After I disputed what he described as “the danger of the alternative right”, Chelm doubled-down and attempted to bolster his position as follows:

The other day I wrote a post about an exchange I had with Vox Day on his website Vox Popoli. I made a rhetorical mistake by referring to some of his more hotheaded anti-semitic commenters as “Amalekites.” Vox took this to be a credible and realistic threat of violence against his readers… which I believe reveals more about Vox’s thinking than mine. You can read his post here and my response here. If you didn’t read the post, additionally, I had the nerve to described him as dangerous, because his blog is a great example (in terms of quality) of a group of web sites of the “alternative right” (or alt-right) which, among other things, seeks to create an intellectual basis for a more socially acceptable anti-semitism….

So, this is what Vox did in today’s post. There are so many errors and accusations in it that to try to refute them all in one shot would require a long rambling… boring… post. In advance, he is slamming me for doing exactly what he is inviting me to do. So here is how I will approach this… I will list the accusations below (paraphrased) and over the course of the next few days, I will refute them one by one.

So many errors that he can’t possibly respond to them all right now… that sure sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But it’s not actually a Fighting Withdrawal, as Chelm proves himself to be more than the usual handwaver in actually troubling to list seven of my purported charges and declaring that he will respond substantively to them. Unfortunately, he’s already provided some indication that he’s not going to be able to respond effectively to them, given the prelude provided above.

First, I absolutely did not take his reference to “Amalekites” to be “a credible and realistic threat of violence” against anyone, least of all my readers. I understood it to be simple rhetorical exaggeration, which Chelm himself subsequently admitted, as he was using the term to refer to what he described as an “irrational Jew hater” in the modern sense. In fact, my very first response to him was “I think you exaggerate quite a bit. How do you define “Amalekite”? Most people here neither curse nor care about Jews.” I subsequently added: “Given the historical metaphor, calling someone an Amalekite strikes me as giving the less metaphorically astute a perfectly understandable justification to not only hate Jews, but commit violence against them. So, you may wish to rethink the use of the slur.” At no point did I ever take it as any sort of threat, much less a credible and realistic one, nor would any reader of this blog ever believe that I am so intellectually humble as to number myself among “the less metaphorically astute”. I not only understand, but have frequently pointed out on this very blog, that metaphors are not reality.

Because Chelm is incorrect about how I interpreted his rhetoric, he is necessarily incorrect about what that interpretation reveals about my thinking as well. It should be readily apparent that if there is any projection taking place here, it is Chelm projecting his own fearful tendencies upon me, since I don’t believe there is any threat posed by him whereas he has already openly referred to me as “dangerous”.

Now to the question whether my blog “seeks to create an intellectual basis for a more socially acceptable anti-semitism”. There are 10,667 posts on this blog, dating back to 2003, precisely 118 of which have any reference to Jews. And many of those 118 posts aren’t concerned with the Jews as such, but rather, are related to Biblical references as part of discussions of atheism or Christian theology. So, given that less than one percent of the posts are even potentially related to what Chelm describes as an objective of this blog is an exaggeration so vast that it borders on outright falsehood. I assert, to the contrary, that it is the actions of Jews such as Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Chuck Schumer, and Eric Cantor that are actively providing the basis for that socially acceptable anti-semitism in America that he fears. Perhaps Chelm has forgotten that I live in Europe, where there is simply no need to create a more socially acceptable anti-semitism because far more virulent forms of anti-semitism are already quite socially acceptable here. For example, I find it hard to imagine that Americans would refer to any political leader as a “sale juif”, as Sarkozy was often called.

Moreover, being a libertarian, even a nationalist libertarian, (which I would argue is logically one and the same), I simply do not adhere to the concept of collective identity that genuine Judenhassen requires. I have previously blogged on the topic of anti-semitism here.

Concerning the seven charges listed, I shall wait for his promised refutations before adding anything further. I will, however, note that his characterization of numbers 2, 4, 5, and 6 are inaccurate and he should probably look at them more closely or they will be as easily and conclusively dismissed as his “threat of violence” claim was. And as for 7, he can rest assured there are plenty of non-Jews for whom a mere 60,000 African criminals would also be a bargain.

And finally, I suspect Chelm will want to comment upon some recent and related events in Israel, in which Sudanese migrant workers were attacked by a large and angry mob which also broke store windows and searched passing vehicles for suspected migrant workers to beat up. One wonders whether he will be able to draw any obvious historical parallels between yesterday’s events and European history.

Mailvox: why flaunt IQ?

NorthernHamlet doesn’t understand why I flaunt – not flout – my intelligence:

How would one describe that you trot out “superior IQ” during conversations, even while you acknowledge that neither you nor many of your readers think the criteria for it is legitimate?

First, I wouldn’t say that IQ is totally meaningless or even illegitimate. It clearly measures something real and objective; you will try in vain to discuss anything even remotely intellectual with an individual possessed of a 50 IQ, and I have yet to see someone with an IQ of 100 that I consider, upon the basis of non-IQ related factors, to be more intelligent than someone with an IQ of 150. That being said, it is clearly an imperfect measurement, and it can even be misleading as two people with the same IQ, one stronger on the verbal side and one stronger on the mathematical side, can look either much smarter or much more stupid than the other depending upon the subject.

Ironically enough, I’m a very good example of someone whose measured IQ score tends to significantly underestimate my relevant intelligence in my primary areas of interest because I am so handicapable when it comes to spatial relations. Anyone who has seen me packing a car or even a suitcase would be justified in thinking that I should qualify for special parking privileges, and probably three spaces at that. On the other hand, my ability to recognize patterns and generate useful predictive models from them has been considered to be rather remarkable by many. Am I a retard or a genius? The IQ score is an ineffective metric because it alternatively answers both and neither, depending upon the perspective.

(My answer, of course, is neither. I don’t believe genius is denoted by IQ or any other quantitative measure, but rather unique and significant intellectual accomplishments.)

Long before I wrote my first WND column 11 years ago, I recognized that the arguments presented by the Left, especially those that were blithely accepted by the Right, seldom amounted to more than crude appeals to intelligence. We’ve seen it on this blog time and time again, most recently in the recent series that focused on the dissection of the skeptics. Their main argument, indeed, their only real argument, is “don’t argue with me because I’m smarter than you.” It’s often couched in terms of academic credentials, but since universities no longer provide educations, but primarily serve as intellectual brand markers, credentialist-based arguments are simply slightly modified version of the same position. The reason a Harvard PhD trumps one from Auburn University isn’t because there is any legitimate reason to believe the Harvard PhD has received a better education, indeed, in at least some fields it can be easily demonstrated that the reverse is the case, but because Harvard places more stringent IQ requirements on its applicants. An appeal to academic status is mostly an appeal to intelligence, once-removed.

This is, of course, why the Left repeatedly cites study after study, many of them fake, showing that Blue state residents possess higher average IQs, why Democratic presidents are smarter than Republican presidents, and so forth. It’s all they’ve got. And so, when I flaunt my official, Mensa-approved, readily observable high intelligence in their faces, it removes from them their only rhetorically effective argument by virtue of their own metric. In other words, I’m simply playing by the rules of their game that they have established. Notice how few on the Right, even if they are highly intelligent academics with hard science PhDs, take any exception to my assertions of superintelligence, especially compared with the way the Left instinctively reacts to it rather like vampires to holy water. Of course, since they can’t convincingly claim that I am not every bit as intelligent as they are, they have no choice but to resort to the customary claim of craziness. The path that Delavagus recently trod was not only predictable, it was inevitable, as we’ve been witnessing exactly the same responses to exactly the same stimuli for more than a decade now. One could quite credibly write a paper on it with a larger sample set than one often sees in the social sciences.

Is the appeal to intelligence game nonsense? Of course it is! This is where and why I part company with the modern philosophers. Since true belief is true regardless of whether it is justified or not, whether it is known to be true or not, whether it is even believed or not, it is entirely possible for the 50-IQ retard to be correct and the 175-IQ statistical genius to be completely wrong, regardless of whether the former can even begin to reasonably articulate his beliefs or not, let alone justify them. Indeed, the history of the 20th century is riddled with example after example of the false beliefs to which the intelligentsia subscribed that were rightly rejected by hoi polloi. The reason is that tradition is more than the democracy of the dead, it is also the cumulative intelligence of the centuries. It takes considerable intelligence, intellectual humility, and usually, significant temporal and technological advantages to correctly supersede that cumulative intelligence. No doubt that is why even the most brilliant of the ancient skeptics demanded that custom and traditions be given their due.

Mailvox: God and the post-game

01 asks about the conflation of Christianity and Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis:

Okay, this is interesting: appears Vox here is some kind of simulation-solipsist, actually. And to think I thought he’s some kind of christian…hehe… Vox, would you care to answer a question ? If your simulation hypothesis is, in a general sense, correct (that is, universe is a simulation, and religious rules are supposed to be a factor by which the system selects AI programs that are “fit” for some unknown external purpose), what exactly makes you believe that simulation-designer is granting a happy future existence to those who abide by the “in-universe” rules he set, and not vice-versa (sinners go to “data haven / a better employment”, pious ones are tortured eternally or deleted)?

Is there any reliable way to tell that sim-op isn’t actually preferring AIs who see the author of “religious rules” as “crazy lying fucktard”, and deleting everyone else as soon as they “in-universe die” (or worse)? It’s not like you can have out-of-simulation knowledge of sim-op’s goals, can you?

I not only don’t see any conflict between the simulation hypothesis and the concept of a supernatural Creator God, to me it appears obvious that there is no way of reasonably distinguishing between the two from the human perspective. What leads me to believe the assurances of the “happy future existence” is that they are contained in the same game manual that contains the various reliable predictive models of human behavior provided in The Bible. I don’t know that I would necessarily describe it as “a happy future existence” so much as “the next level”, though. The interesting question to me is if Eternity is static as most Christians assume and Platonic Form theory would suggest, or if it is dynamic and it will be possible to fall from grace in that level too. I tend to incline towards the latter view, but it’s just an impression, not even an opinion.

I don’t think there is any way of meaningfully performing in-game testing of post-game results. The manual itself could be a deception, delivering on its in-game promises while deceiving with regards to its post-game ones. I touch upon this in TIA. For example, if Moloch were the sim-op aka Creator, then abortionists would be ministers and Hitler and Mao two of the saints. We can’t have out-of-game knowledge of anything because we are in the game. But to me, the important thing is to realize that you are playing the game regardless of whether you want to play it or not, whether you believe you are playing it or not.

Wängsty doubles down again

His posterior still clearly giving him an amount of pain, R. Scott Bakker keeps desperately trying to come up with a means of attacking me while avoiding the direct engagement that will expose him as the intellectual fraud he so clearly is:

Vox, it appears, has decided to wage a war of attrition, to keep throwing his cherries until people turn their bowls upside down. I’ve decided to oblige him. But since it stings my vanity knowing the self-aggrandizing way he’ll inevitably spin this, I figured I had better lay out some reasons, as well as discharge an old promise I made regarding the uses of abuses of arguing ad hominem.

Vox literally believes, if you recall, that he really is the winner of the Magical Belief Lottery. You might be inclined, on a occasion, to think that he is simply having one on, but I assure you, when he says things like, “Of course, I am a superintelligence, so the fact that [delevagus] been studying it for years whereas I read Sextus once on an airplane meant that it really wasn’t a fair contest,” he genuinely means it.

At this point, I’m inclined to simply take him as ‘Exhibit A’ of human irrationality. Some, in the jungle that has overrun the comment thread on the previous post, have suggested that I’m ‘running scared’ and the fact is, I am. But from what he represents, not what he ‘argues.’ Vox is what you might call an ‘epistemic bombast’–self-described. He literally believes he has the most powerful three pound brain in the universe. That, in my books, counts as delusional.

One thing I was always big on in my teaching days was what I called the ‘minimum condition of rationality.’ Once you realize that reason is primarily argumentative, as opposed to epistemic, you realize that reason is just as liable to deceive as to reveal. So the question you always need to ask yourself in any debate is whether you are the victim of your own ingenuity. You are more apt to use you intelligence to justify your stupidity post hoc—to rationalize—than otherwise. And that’s a fact Jack.

Thus the crucial importance of epistemic humility. Rational debate is impossible with epistemic bombasts simply because, as more and more research shows, reason is primarily a public relations device, a way to snag other three pound brains, and only secondarily epistemic, a way to snag the world. It is quite literally impossible to convince an epistemic bombast of anything on theoretical subject matters lacking any clear, consensually defined truth conditions.

This is why some cognitive psychologists are now arguing that rationality is quite independent of intelligence.

So what then is the measure of epistemic humility? How can you tell whether you should trust yourself, let alone your interlocutor?

Well some interlocutors, like Vox, make things easy for you. Vox is a self-declared epistemic bombast. As such, given that you accept that science is the best tool we have ever devised for sorting—even if only contingently—fact from fiction, you can write him off as a serious interlocutor.

In other words, you can safely dismiss him on ad hominem grounds.

He’s certainly desperate to do so. This is little more than another attempt to justify his own cowardice in failing to either answer my questions or accept my invitation to a written debate concerning his claims regarding the importance of Uncertainty and the intrinsic dangers of Certainty. His argument that he can safely dismiss me on ad hominem grounds, much less do so convincingly, doesn’t hold up, however, not only because it is a logical fallacy, but also because it is based on a complete falsehood. Wängsty is such a shameless liar, can anyone wonder why I repeatedly call him out for being such an intellectually dishonest charlatan? I don’t believe, literally or otherwise, that I possess “the most powerful three pound brain in the universe”. I’ve never claimed anything like that. I’m not the smartest one in my extended family and I wasn’t even the second-smartest in a house I shared with three other guys after college; both Horn and Big Chilly test out higher than I do. But I am a superintelligence nevertheless, and I do believe, with considerable evidence to justify that belief, that I’m observably more intelligent than Wängsty and his fellow wannabe PhD, Delavagus. This quite clearly, bothers them, as it appears to offend their sense of multiversal order that someone who does not share either their left-liberal ideological orientation or academic credentials could actually be more intelligent than they are.

Of course I genuinely believe it wasn’t a fair contest between Delavagus and me. Is there anyone who read the Dissecting the Skeptics series who did not? If so, do speak up and share your reasoning with us.

It is amusing, to be sure, that Scott asserts I am delusional while being simultaneously dumb enough to lie about things that anyone can easily check and confirm to be false. And it is even more amusing that he insists on a “minimum condition of rationality” while apparently failing to be aware that in the aforementioned unfair contest, Delavagus’s argument attacked human reason and asserted its self-refuting nature.

Scott is running scared and inclined to simply take me “as ‘Exhibit A’ of human irrationality” because I have consistently exposed his cowardice, his dishonesty, and his inability to argue his way out of a paper bag. He’s desperate to avoid direct engagement because he knows that what I will do to his arguments will make what I did to those presented by Delavagus look merciful in comparison. People have been telling Wängsty nearly from the start, eight months ago, that he had gotten me all wrong, but he keeps doubling down again and again on his original position… because you are a complete fraud when it comes to your Uncertainty Doctrine.

But as all the long-time readers here know, I won’t hesitate to continue beating the dead horse that is The Prince of Wängst until there is no longer so much as a maggot wriggling in the corpse. By the time the white flag flies, absolutely no one will take any of his claims seriously, mostly because he’ll have stripped every last vestige of intellectual integrity from himself.

Mailvox: evolutionary ideology

Anonymous Conservative writes of an amusing spin on the “science says conservatives are crazy” theme:

I’ve done a ton of research into the linkage between r/K Selection Theory in Evolutionary Ecology and political ideology. The short of it is
ideology looks like it’s just an intellectual expression of the underlying psychologies motivating r/K behaviors. Obviously, this likely speaks to the mechanism by which our ideologies evolved. That ideology and r/K behaviors are both related to the same DRD4 gene, and that the brain
structures which govern these behaviors is also the same also raises interesting questions about their evolutionary linkage.

This material is pure gold, if you’ve ever wondered why our species has this psychological divide within it. It even answers where exactly
Liberals came from, given their obvious reduced ability to function in what we often call “the state of nature” (ie a K-selected, competitive
state of nature – they would thrive in an r-selected stated of nature, where competitiveness is disfavored).

I’ve run this work by liberals, and it devastating to them, on a visceral level. They do not want to be the bunny-rabbit people, embodying a prey
species psychology within a highly K-selected, competitive species. I posted for a bit at TED, very benignly on this, just to test my
presentation in a hostile, more Liberal environment. I got the feedback and insight I needed (every liberal abandoned any thread this was posted
to), and then I left for six months. When I went back every one of my postings referencing this had been quietly deleted, despite the fact I
purposely was hyper-civil and cited everything I asserted. I don’t think they’ve ever done that to anyone else. Liberals are horrified by this
work, and the implications which naturally arise from it.

Now, I tend to regard all of this evo-psych as a ludicrous joke, especially since I am a confirmed evolutionary skeptic. Because there is so little scientific evidence in support of evolution by natural selection, I conclude it is unlikely to be the mechanism distinguishing the liberal Bunny People from the conservative Wolf People. And, of course, being a libertarian and rejecting both big government ideologies, I have neither a wolf nor a rabbit in that hunt. That being said, this is certainly a potentially useful rhetorical response to the faux-scientific rhetoric so often presented by liberals in a misguided attempt to somehow shame conservatives out of their psychologically inferior ideological perspective. (The very attempt betrays both the intrinsic intellectual flexibility of liberals as well as their inability to understand the other side.) And it certainly explains the way in which liberals are constantly looking to the government as a way to rein in their more successful competitors; because the Bunny People can’t do anything to control the Wolf People themselves, they need to appeal to the Hunter… never stopping to think that the Hunter is just as pleased to shoot bunnies as wolves… and may in fact prefer eating rabbit meat.

Anyhow, if you happen to find this sort of thing interesting, you can read a related paper on it.