Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: the impact of nurture

M reports how science compares paternal behavioral patterns:

I thought you might enjoy this excerpt from the book NurtureShock:

“Dr. Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan did a study of parenting styles, and how they relate to aggressiveness and acting out at school. The fathers in her study fell into three camps–the Progressive Dads, the Traditional Dads, and the Disengaged Dads…. However, Schoppe-Sullivan was surprised to discover that the Progressive Dads had poorer marital quality and rated their family functioning lower than the fathers in couples who took on traditional roles…

[The Progressive Dads’] inconsistency and permissiveness led to a surprising result in Sullivan’s study: the children of Progressive Dads were aggressive and acted out in school nearly as much as the kids with fathers who were distant and disengaged.”

This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest and my own observations tend to bear out the research. It makes sense if you think about it, since it doesn’t really matter if the figure who is theoretically supposed to provide discipline is present or not if the discipline isn’t provided in a predictable manner. Of course, anything that can reasonably be described as “progressive” is usually a reliable indication that someone is in the process of unnecessarily screwing something up by attempting to improve it.

Mailvox: gammas and the church

JM wonders about the transformation of the church:

I am sure you’ve gotten quite a bit of mail on the while alpha, delta, sigma discussions, but I have some questions. Just as a delta can model alpha behavior, is it possible that our overly feminized society is creating betas and gammas from alphas (or sigmas)? Would a true alpha tell mom to go pound sand during sensitivity training?

How do you distinguish between socipathic behavior and alpha behavior OR a sigma’s attitudes toward the world and Asperger’s Syndrome? For instance, for all my life, my attitude as been mostly sigma-like, but recently, it’s been pointed out to me that my withdrawal and disinterest is a result of Asperger’s. It bothered me at first, but after thinking about it, I don’t care. I just wish I could make it work for me a little better.

And finally, I have seen gammas (and to a lesser extent omegas) attempt to behave as alphas in situations where there are few true alphas – church groups come to mind. I know many “pastors” who are slimly little, ass kissers who will do anything to get people to like them, but when someone asks them a question beyond their pay grade that challenges their authority, they go into a bitchy little approximation of an uber male. How would you categorize this or is this expected from gammas?

I would say that Western feminized societies are primarily turning betas into deltas and deltas into gammas. The imaginations of many commenters here notwithstanding, there are very few genuine alphas and sigmas about and they tend to be much less subject to social pressures than normal men. Game is threatening to the feminist agenda because it teaches Deltas and Gammas to surmount their assigned status in the social hierarchy by willful and synthetic means. A true alpha isn’t likely to be at for “sensitivity training” in the first place, so I think it would most likely be a Beta who would go, but resist. Alpha behavior is easily distinguished from sociopathic behavior because Alphas are successful, charismatic group animals. It’s the Sigmas and Omegas who are the sociopaths; the Sigmas are the charming ones and the Omegas are the creepy ones. The difference between the Aspie – who is almost always going to be a Gamma or Omega – and the Sigma is that the Aspie has fundamental difficulties with human relations whereas the Sigma makes friends and seduces women with ease. It’s not about introversion vs extroversion and a few people don’t seem to have grasped the point that Sigmas are almost always confused with Alphas, not Gammas or Omegas.

The most important thing to understand is that one’s role in the social structure is not defined by one’s internal motivations, but by the perception of others. One can alter this perception over time, but it’s the perceptions that are the ultimate metric, not the internal dialogue.

As for the pastoral behavior, what you are describing is textbook Gamma behavior. Gammas who find themselves in charge almost invariably behave like petty, micromanaging dictators; Gamma male behavior is very similar to normal female behavior in a lot of ways. It should be no surprise that as the feminization of the church proceeds, the only men who will be left in it will be Gammas since they are quite comfortable with all the bitchy, passive-aggressive political infighting and petty rule-mongering that is the hallmark of female-dominated institutions. Academia is another area that now tends to be overloaded with Gammas, as they are the only men who are not reluctant to submit to female domination. But as various Protestant denominations have been demonstrating in real time, the church that worships at the altar of sexual equality is not a church that will worship Jesus Christ for long.

Mailvox: splitting up

BNP appears to already know it can get messy:

I was wondering if you would ask your commentators, and say yourself, what an unmarried dad should do when he and his partner are splitting up acrimoniously? I am being as nice as possibly can be, but she is simply a woman on a hate mission. I wouldn’t care, but I love my son more than anything else in the world, and want to see him right. Indeed, I want joint custody. I’m not sure how to go about getting it though.

The first thing to do is to stay focused on your prime objective, which is to preserve the possibility of your relationship with your son. This absolutely does not mean acting servile towards his mother, but it does mean setting aside all of the anger and frustration you are probably feeling towards her. That relationship is dead, so don’t worry about it and don’t let her push your buttons. And while she does hold a lot of the cards, she doesn’t hold all of them. Money is always the big one, so make sure that you don’t play your only real card too soon and always make sure that whatever you give her is contingent upon her delivering her end of the bargain.

It’s probably best to preemptively lawyer up and get a consultation on what sort of rights and responsibilities you have in your state of residence. It’s unfortunate that the legal system will take advantage of your desire to do the right thing by your son, but that is the reality of the world we now live in.

Mailvox: “You are my Dawkins”

Samuel J. Scott reviews RGD:

The aver­age reader could prob­a­bly be for­given for pass­ing Vox Day’s “The Return of the Great Depres­sion” with­out giv­ing it a sec­ond thought. After all, the author is a weekly colum­nist for World­Net­Daily, a far-right, news web­site that is as biased as it is sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic.

But the reader would be miss­ing one of the poten­tially most-important eco­nomic reviews in recent times.

Con­trary to what some might have pre­dicted from a writer for WND, Day’s sec­ond non-fiction book — the first was his cri­tique of the so-called “New Athe­ism” of Richard Dawkins, Sam Har­ris, and Christo­pher Hitchens in “The Irra­tional Athe­ist” — is not a polemic in favor of end­ing the Fed­eral Reserve, return­ing to the gold stan­dard, or other such issues that dom­i­nate among fringe con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­tar­i­ans. Rather, it is largely a cold, ratio­nal, even-handed assess­ment of the eco­nomic his­tory of the past twenty years from the rise of Japan in the late 1980s to the finan­cial tur­moil of today.

Beware of spoilers! Chris Bechtloff posts reviews Summa Elvetica:

Could not put it down. This is one of the best fantasy books I have read in a while.

And finally, Mr. B.A.D. takes me to task for sticking to the literary formats:

To be blunt, you and your buddies are intellectual snobs. Which is fine if all you ever want to do with your great think tank is circle jerk each other about how much smarter you are than the dummies who are running the world.

However if you aspire to make the world a better place with your great minds, which is the only choice of use in a great mind that does not result in total waste, you ought to learn the value of the idiot. The key element of my favorite movie of all time, Conan the Barbarian, is that Will alone is the true power behind anything. Once you have the will of the mob, who are all idiots, you have the means to change the world. This is why Hitler’s number 2 guy was in charge of propaganda, this is why transformers 2 was a box office hit, this is why those red handed atheists found it easier to just kill people than change their minds, this is why Liberals pander to the poor and welfare crowd, and this is why you ought to format your great thoughts and books into something the idiot can enjoy/ comprehend: Documentaries with pretty colors, animations, zingy noises, and humor.

Now I’m no idiot on an all inclusive scale, but I am a far cry from you and your friends in mental capacity. I’ve never had an actual IQ test but…..I scored 136 on one of those Internet tests 8 years ago. I drank a lot back then, and have since enrolled in college. I bet I can squeak in the last few points on a real IQ test and qualify as a genius. I’ll wait till you stop laughing….

Now, my only point was that I am more intelligent than the average human, and I feel I was able to comprehend your books, but they certainly gave my brain a stretch. I am certainly not as sharp as you, and lack the ability to see through the multiple layers of BS spoon fed us by the media each day. In a way you can say that I am the Christian version of the atheists who take science and the unholy trinity as gospel truth, except you are my Dawkins. I do not have the capacity to see the big picture the way you do, nor the reasoning ability to weigh what is bullshit and what is not. On the grand scale I’d actually be on the same level as Dawkins intellectually, I can remember facts, and reason fairly well, but not as well as I think I can, and probably have huge gaps in my logic. Watch Dog of the big picture being your gift, you should use it in a manner that will benefit all, not just the intellectual elites that your blog caters to. If your books were at the far end of my ability, than the people I run across on a daily basis who are barely literate have no hope of grasping the vital truths that you are shining a light upon. So please, draft up some cartoon characters, saddle up with your power point, and put something together for a limited theatrical release with a broad DVD release. If the Lord was able to pass down his higher thoughts to us, than I’m sure you can figure a way to do something similar.

I am his what? Anyhow, I suppose the criticism is not entirely invalid. I have been looking into putting together some sort of bi-monthly YouTube deal with the intention of permitting those who prefer video to follow some of the economic matters I’m writing about. However, it’s important to keep in mind that some subjects can only be dumbed down so far. I mean, if someone genuinely cannot understand that 8.3% annual credit growth over the same time period as 3% annual GDP growth means that the increase in GDP is wholly dependent upon increasing credit, or grasp the significance of what it means when that 8.3% credit growth is replaced by a 6% contraction even when I point it out to him, then there’s really not a whole lot I can do even if I spell everything out with pretty pictures and monosyllabic words.

Of course, Mr. B.A.D. also has to keep in mind that I simply don’t care all that much about the rest of the world except for my desire to stay away from it. I tend to follow my intellectual interests as they happen to evolve; I’m certainly not attempting to save Man from himself.

And returning the subject to RGD, those who have read it should be amused by this inadvertant, but telling confession by Paul Krugman in today’s NYT column:

As you read the economic news, it will be important to remember, first of all, that blips — occasional good numbers, signifying nothing — are common even when the economy is, in fact, mired in a prolonged slump…. Such blips are often, in part, statistical illusions.

You don’t say…. In case you don’t understand the significance of what Krugman is saying here, it is a straightforward admission by a Neo-Keynesian Samuelsonite that macroeconomic statistics are insufficiently reliable for macroeconomic policy making. Which, of course, is the very point I was making in the chapter entitled “No One Knows Anything”.

Mailvox: Minds do change

It sometimes seems as if human minds are about as capable of changing as rocks; only high explosives and slow erosion over vast quantities of time are capable of effecting it. But, as this email from a longtime regular demonstrates, it does, on occasion, happen:

At risk of sounding all fawning and shit, I want to thank you, and the Ilk, for aiding in my political transformation. When I went to law school, then started frequenting your blog, I began to appreciate the ramifications of political ideology, particularly the dangers of expanded and intrusive federal government. The fact that you and yours have ALWAYS afforded me a deal of respect, even when I was toting the Democratic party line, speaks volumes about the character of not only yourself but the cabal at Vox Popoli. Even Nate and the dearly departed Bane treated me with respect, a rarity indeed. So, just let me extend my thanks for always being honorable in a time when the concept of honor has seemingly been forgotten.

He is welcome, of course. The reason I chose to share this email is that a common and completely false accusation is that this blog is some sort of echo chamber where disagreement and criticism are not permitted. The reality is that the readers, and to a lesser extent, regular commenters, here represent a wide variety of ideologies and very few of them entirely share my idiosyncratic political and religious beliefs. While the dominant intellectual strain is unsurprisingly libertarian and protestant Christian, there are no shortage of those who do not share either perspective and their opinions are no less regarded for being different. And as the emailer testifies, so long as one abides by the rules of the blog, even the most vehement critic will be treated exactly same as the most fawning sycophant. In fact, I probably pay far more attention to the critics than I do to those who have no criticism to offer; after all, the truly arrogant require no praise.

Mailvox: the materialist writes back

JS continues the discussion of his previous email:

Thank you for addressing my e-mail on your site. I appreciated your responses and the responses of those who commented on the post. I have to say that much of the naturalist community seems to hold on to what are obviously suppositions on their part. They believe that since their unproven explanation is the best natural one, it is the correct one. Up until very recently, I too tended to believe this, taking a similar approach. As I waxed about a bit in my last e-mail to you, what has chafed me recently about those in the secular web community is the absolute refusal to even allow a line of thinking that goes against their worldview. This growing intolerance is bothering me, as the secularist community seems to be increasingly more defensive and myopic. So, since this question will gain me only ridicule and exile in this community, I will ask you — what are some good books on the argument against TENS that an inquiring mind such as mine should endeavor to read?

I thought that TIA was one of the best refutations of neo-Atheist arguments I’ve ever read (they hate you on the secular boards btw, if I didn’t know any better, I would say you are made of straw). Here is to hoping that RGD finds continued success.

I’ve always felt that one is defined by one’s enemies as well as by one’s friends, so I am pleased to be hated by such a collection of contemptible intellects. Unfortunately, I really can’t recommend any good books that make a case against TENS because I have never read one on the subject. This is in part because I have very seldom heard any author making what I consider to be the substantive arguments against TENS, and in part because my interest in the subject is tertiary at best, I’ve only read pro-evolution books by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and Gould. My skepticism of TENS is largely endogenous, with a few bits and pieces that I’ve picked up on the Internet such as the revised Haldane’s Dilemma and the application of Chomsky to the tautology of natural selection.

But, I’d like to open this discussion up to suggestions from others, for books that people feel most effectively defend TENS as well as those that most effectively dissect it. I tend to prefer to read those books that most effectively defend their subjects, because then I can see how easy or difficult it is to pick apart that optimal defense. I’m presently in the process of reading Dawkins’s latest, and if it is truly the optimal defense of Neo-Darwinism that its more enthusiastic reviewers apparently believe it to be, I am increasingly inclined to believe it will not be very difficult to demonstrate that TENS is in serious trouble.

I have even discussed writing a book on the subject myself with my publisher, but I’m not convinced that it is necessary. My suspicion is that TENS will eventually implode with or without my assistance in the matter. While there are certainly scientific and atheistic interests who will cling to the Neo-Darwinism in the face of any contrary future evidence, they are neither as powerful nor as powerfully incentivized to hold to it as is the case with political and financial authorities and Neo-Keynesianism.

Voxicon

This Voxological lexicon may be of some utility when reading this blog:

Aprevistan: One who subscribes to some form of Open Theory or opposes the concept of an omniderigent God on Biblical grounds.

Atheist, High Church: An individual lacking god belief who is college-educated, self-identifies as an atheist and subscribes entirely to a materialist model of the universe, rejecting all supernatural concepts. Usually subscribes to “Enlightenment values” as well as secular humanism, considers himself rational and is often evangelical or militant about his lack of god belief.

Atheist, Low Church: An individual lacking god belief who does not self-identify as an atheist, usually has not completed college and does not possess a conscious model of the universe, although assumes an essentially materialist one. May or may not reject the supernatural and is not terribly interested in abstract concepts. Doesn’t know what “Enlightenment values” are, doesn’t care, but generally subscribes to a belief in evolution and trusts in science. Not the least bit evangelical or militant about his lack of god belief.

Atheist Dance: Changing the definition of atheism depending upon what the atheist is attempting to prove or disprove at the moment.

Broken Bamboo: A defensive argumentative technique which asserts that the non-atheist is attacking a strawman position instead of an actual atheist argument, even when the argument attacked is a specific argument made by a well-known atheist in one of his best-selling books.

Captain Underoos: Mitt Romney

CCD: Confront, Cow, Destroy. One of Vox’s favored methods of removing intellectual legitimacy from an opponent. First, challenge the claims made by the opponent. Second, intimidate them by demonstrating a superior understanding of their own arguments. Third, demolish whatever respectability they may have in the eyes of others by showing their verifiable errors of fact and logic.

Circle Jerk: The action when one Horseman publicly reviews, critiques or judges another Horseman’s work, especially when one Horseman judges the quality of another Horseman’s judgment of the quality of his own work.

Climacaustal: A member of the pseudoscientific cult of Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change. (AGW/CC)

Defiance on Hill 1917: Any of the various arguments used in a futile attempt to separate atheism as a belief system from the historical fact that regimes ruled by atheists have committed a statistically disproportionate amount of atrocities. This can take the form of a No True Atheist argument, a Rage Against the Facts argument or the “Communism is a religion” argument.

Extinction Equation: Sam Harris’s central argument from The End of Faith, which states that Science plus Religious Faith equals Imminent Human Extinction.

Four Horsemen of the Bukkakelypse: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Less Dennett, also known as the Unholy Trinity.

Fowl Atheist: Pharyngula blogger Paul Myers, an outspoken atheist afraid of public debate.

Hultgreen-Curie Syndrome: The lethal disease that strikes female pioneers. Named after Kara Hultgreen and Madame Curie, the syndrome has struck down numerous brave women on the frontiers of female innovation, including the first woman to use a washing machine, who tragically drowned in it, and the first Roman woman to eat reclining on a couch, who choked to death on a grape.

Magic Negro:Barrack Hussein Soetoro/Soebarkah/Obama

Magic Negro Part II: Republican Edition: Hermain Cain

ND-TENS Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

TENS: Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

TE(p)NSBMGDaGF: Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow.

Omniderigence: The concept of an all-acting God who is responsible for all human decisions, actions, and historical events, large and small. Also known as the God of the Perfect Plan or the Swallow-slaying God.

Omniderigiste: One who subscribes to omniderigence.

Voliscience: The ability to know whatever one wishes to know at any given moment. This is distinguished from omniscience, which requires knowing all things at all times.

Irratheist: An atheist who asserts the superiority of atheism on the basis of its supposed foundation in science and reason while simultaneously defining atheism as being a concept strictly limited to the absence of a belief in the existence of God, thereby accepting the validity of atheist belief in astrology, Buddhism, reincarnation, Heaven, Hell, pagan gods and every other supernatural phenomena or concept currently unknown to science. This is usually an extreme example of a Fighting Withdrawal argument, but can, in some cases, represent a genuine intellectual position.

Science Reason: The pagan god of the science fetishists and militant atheists. Its great prophet UberDawks has revealed that it will one day push out IDIOT FUNDIES from the shiny, sexy, secular society that will be established after the Singularity.

Fighting Withdrawal: An argumentative technique often used by atheists which involves defending a position or an individual by sacrificing the larger part of the defended position or the defended individual’s arguments, usually without understanding that the sacrifice has been made.

Silence That Gun: A post-argument technique utilized by many atheists of falling silent and disappearing rather than conceding the point when their arguments have been refuted. This can also apply to book reviews.

Subtraction Fallacy: An argument made in near-complete ignorance of Christian theology in which it is argued that atheists only believe in one less supernatural deity than Christians. Also known as Stephen F. Roberts’s One Less God argument.

Rage Against the Facts: A counter-ontological argument which states that because the atheist cannot understand the logic which would explain the nature of the relationship underlying an observed causation, said causation cannot exist, all supporting empirical evidence notwithstanding. Also known as the “In the Name of” argument.

Hume’s Last Gasp: A logically fallacious and anti-scientific assertion about the varying nature of the quality of evidence required to prove the verity of one claim versus another claim. More commonly known as the Extraordinary Claims concept.

Marinello: A bizarre defensive response which involves accusing the accuser of being/doing precisely what he has just accused the defendant of being/doing . Example: “I’m not 0-10, you’re 0-10!”

MPAI: Most People Are Idiots.

Scientage: The body of scientific knowledge.

Scientody: The scientific method.

Scientistry: The profession of science. (This refers to the labor performed by sufficiently credentialed scientists, not an expression of quasi-religious faith on the part of the scientific faithful.)

Scienthology: The practice of a division of doxastic labor which involves blindly placing one’s uninformed faith in the opinions of scientists, particularly those opinions which are advertised as a “scientific consensus”. Also includes the fetishistic worship of a romanticized Platonic ideal of science, primarily by those lacking professional scientific credentials.

Unholy Trinity: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens

Lizard Queen: Hillary Rodham Clinton

Euzi: A politician, bureaucrat, or supporter of the European Union.

APHORISMS

Get up. Don’t argue, don’t complain, and don’t cry. Just get up and go on.

Never assume error, inquire to confirm it.

Reason can no more deliver operative moral systems than socialism can provide functional pricing models.

A ruthless commitment to logic and truth tends to be persuasive over time because the human mind can only stand so much cognitive dissonance before it either begins to break down or accept that which is both logical and observable.