Tag: philosophy

A special kind of cowardice

Vox Maximus observes that people are much more interested in talking ABOUT me than TO me:

I recently listened to the Nerdvana Podcast on the 2015 Hugo Awards (a two-part series with Part 2 being located here).
Minute after minute, I listened to these individuals converse about Vox
Day. They mused about his motives. They psycho-analyzed him. They
called his family members “stooges”. And they just talked, and talked,
and talked about Vox in quite a bit of detail (they also
cried–seriously–when they thought about what Vox was “doing” to the Hugo
Awards).

But do you know the one thing that they did not do? TALK TO VOX DAY HIMSELF.
That’s right, these individuals used up precious time speculating about
everything from Vox Day’s goals to his potential financial fixing of
the Hugo Awards themselves. And yet, they did not talk to him.
They did not send him an e-mail with questions. They did not try to
contact him on his blog. In fact, they did not even quote anything from
his blog or his writings (or a bad paraphrase or two was included).

I don’t think that this is so much a special kind of lying as it is a special kind of cowardice. The reason so few people are willing to take me on directly can be seen in my interview with David Pakman. Sure, I didn’t cover myself with glory there, but the fact is that even with all the advantages on his side, even when taking me completely by surprise by misleading me about the topics the interview would address and demanding that I explain why I had written words that I never wrote and defend a case I never made – see if you can find where I said anything about “signs” or declared that the Denver shootings were definitely a false flag operation in The Lone Gunmen – I still managed to get him on record confessing himself to be in the habit of having sex without obtaining consent first.

Can you blame them for not wanting to take such risks?

Sure, they claim that I am stupid, that I am an idiot, that I am crazy, that I am a badthinker, that my views are beyond the pale and unacceptable to all goodthinking people. But if they are correct, why are they so afraid of me? Why are they so afraid to simply meet me on equal terms and prove that my ideas are indefensible and wrong?

Because they can’t. And more importantly, they know they can’t.

This sort of thing doesn’t upset me. I just sent an email to David Pakman offering to do a second interview with him, one that would actually address #GamerGate, the game industry, and the Hugo Awards. I’m entirely willing to talk to the people on the Nerdvana Podcast too. If you’d like to see me do either, go ahead and contact Pakman or Nerdvana and let them know.

But (and I cannot stress this strongly enough), I don’t care. I don’t have a media career. I’m not concerned about looking like a politician on camera. I’m not concerned about talking points or winning people over, and I neither need nor want any more platforms than the one I’ve got.

And if people want to attack me for being a criminal badthinker, well, that’s something for which they will have to answer one day. Not to me, but to themselves. For all my terrible thoughts and deeds and words, the one thing I have never been guilty of is telling anyone “you are not permitted to think that and you are a bad person if you do.”

The world is what it is. You can be as upset about calling homosexuality a “birth defect” as you like, but being upset is not going to save the life of a single homosexual fetus if – note the word IF – it turns out that there is a detectable genetic component that reliably predicts homosexuality in the unborn child. The “born that way” concept doesn’t go very far in a society that permits the murder of the unborn.

If you could boil my perspective down to its essence, it would be this: “The world is what it is and there is no point in pretending otherwise.” I may be wrong about some things. I may be wrong about many things. But I do not pretend.

UPDATE: David Pakman emailed me back and expressed his opinion that there was no ambush and no hit piece. He also declined to have me back on next week to discuss GamerGate, the game industry, or the Hugo Awards.

Mailvox: the racism lens

It’s always fascinating how some people have an amazing ability to detect racism no matter how clearly the absence of racism by literally every definition is explained to them. From a discussion on Eric Flint’s blog:

I may as well go all-in here: In comments above Vox Day has repeatedly been called a “racist,” perhaps dozens of times. Have any of you ASKED him what his position is on racial differences? Have any of you READ what he has to say about racial differences? No? Then those of you who call him “racist” are simply a mob. In an attempt to educate, here is what Mr. Day wrote recently in a comment on Brad Torgersen’s blog; it was in response to the following statement by someone else (not Brad): “Vox Day believes that white people and Asians (and clearly Hispanics, since Beale is one, at least in part) are superior to black people, and he believes this inferiority of blacks is innate, genetic.”

Here is what Mr. Day wrote in response:

“Correction: I don’t have any reason to believe any one human population sub-group is intrinsically superior to any other population sub-group. That being said, both science and logic quite clearly indicate that no two population sub-groups are identical, and therefore every population sub-group is either superior or inferior to another sub-group on the basis of any chosen metric.
“It makes no more difference that you like or dislike this fact than if you disapprove of the speed of light or the rate of Earth gravity.
“I assert that an unborn female black child with a missing chromosome and an inclination to homosexuality is equal in human value and human dignity and unalienable, God-given rights to a straight white male in the prime of his life and a +4 SD IQ. How many of my dishonest critics will do the same?
“That doesn’t mean that I think it is wise to ask that particular child, when she is grown, to design the next plane on which I intend to fly. Or even to work in the air traffic control tower.
“I deal in reality as determined by history, science, and logic. And I care no more about what an equalitarian fantasist thinks about me or anything else than I do about the mentally deranged babbling in the psych ward. The world is as it is, not as we might wish it to be. If you can’t understand that, then I am among the least of your problems.”

So query: Do the above statements validate the multiple assertions above that Mr. Day is a “racist”? (Disclaimer: I’ve never met the man, nor talked to him; I have exchanged perhaps a couple of emails when I challenged a statement he made. But I do despise mindless online mobs screaming “racist!”)
Reply

    Gav says:
    April 21, 2015 at 10:39 AM

    A moment’s thought shows that his premise is completely ridiculous. Choose people A, B, C such that A & C are from one group and B from another, but A is taller than B is taller than C. So now I’ve got a metric (height) where group 1 is both superior and inferior to group 2 on the height metric. (For a real-life example, choose Robert Wadlow and his father for A & C, and Michael Jordan for B).

    You have to be not only racist but also stupid to believe that “every population sub-group is either superior or inferior to another sub-group on the basis of any chosen metric.”
 
        Mike says:
        April 21, 2015 at 12:21 PM

        This is a result of false equivocation between individuals and categories. Yes, the mean of the heights of all adult men if taller than the mean of the heights of all adult women, but that doesn’t mean all men are taller than all women.

        It ends up being a big problem in the scientific study of people. Some people have political/personal reasons to try to see one group as better than another, while other people have similar reasons to try to see no groups as being any different from each other. Both camps accuse the other side of being unscientific and ignoring the data.

        Really there is no conflict between the idea that one group may, on average, have a measurable difference than another group, and also the idea that the variance of individuals withing the groups may be much larger than the difference between the groups. But due to confirmation bias, people tend to ignore whatever part of that equation it is convenient for them to ignore.
        Reply
            Eric Flint says:
            April 21, 2015 at 12:33 PM

            The problem goes deeper than that, because there’s an intrinsic bias in the categories someone chooses in the first place. For instance, if you choose to compare “the race of whites” to “the race of blacks” you are assuming not only that such races exist but that they are the proper basis for comparison. But why should that be true? Due to the way the human race evolved, there is more genetic variation among Africans than there is between any given group of Africans and any non-African segment of humanity. The reason people think all Africans belong to the same “race” is because they share certain literally superficial features: skin color, hair and some facial features. But why should those criteria be used as the basis to define a “race” in the first place? Why not, for instance, choose the average distribution of blood types? In which case you wind up with a “racial map” of humanity that is completely different from a “racial map” drawn according to skin color, hair and facial features.

            My point is that there is an inherent bias in the way the question is posed in the first place, which makes any answer to the question automatically questionable. What defines a “racist” in the first place, intellectually speaking, is the firm conviction that “races” as defined sociologically have an actual biological reality which is more basic than any other possible differentiation. For which there is not a shred of actual evidence. It is a faith-based conviction. That’s a polite say of saying it’s just bigotry.
            Reply
                Mike says:
                April 21, 2015 at 1:59 PM

                Yes, I agree. There very definitely are biological races, if you define that as subsets of the overall human gene pool where certain collections of genes are much more prevalent than they are in the general population. But there is so much nonsense and xenophobia and misunderstanding involved that it’s a real nightmare to try to approach these questions without stepping on any land mines.

                I recommend a really interesting book called “The Sports Gene” that gives some great examples of how this can be done properly (IMO), and also some examples of where it has been done very much improperly.
                Reply
                    335522 says:
                    April 21, 2015 at 2:13 PM

                    With all due respect to all of you, I believe you’re missing the point. Please read the third paragraph by Vox Day that begins “I assert that an unborn female black child….” And then answer the question that I posed at the end, please (it being notable that not one of the responses addresses it).

The following quote from that exchange is an astonishing assertion that clearly demonstrates both the intellectual inferiority as well as the logical incapacity of the SJWs:

“You have to be not only racist but also stupid to believe that “every population sub-group is either superior or inferior to another sub-group on the basis of any chosen metric.”

Quite to the contrary, you have to be utterly stupid and wholly irrational to deny that assertion, or else possess hitherto-unknown evidence demonstrating that every human population sub-group is absolutely and entirely equal across the board. Every single group has an average, a mean, and a median, regardless of the metric chosen. None of those three statistics are likely to be precisely equal to the average, the mean, and the media of any other group.

At no point have I EVER claimed, suggested, implied, hinted, or intimated that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of one human population group is superior to EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of another one. And anyone who claims that I ever have is either lying or simply too dim to bother even attempting to talk down to.

The idea that “races” don’t exist is simply antiscientific dogma. They might as well deny that “species” and “groups” exist while they’re at it.

Mailvox: constructing Xanatos

NH asks about setting up a Xanatos Gambit:

With some of your recent posts, I realized before you had pointed it out you were forcing the SJWs to make a choice, one that could lead to them nuking their own awards. The moment I realized this, I thought, that bastard! What a genius! It was simple, yet I wouldn’t have thought of it.

Recently, I had been considering similar ideas… all roads leading your enemy to defeat, as you quoted. Yet I struggle to see those moves because those moves can be so deceptive in their simplicity, so hidden in plain view.

How did you get better over time at seeing those strategic moves? I’m not a stupid guy, but I’m looking for mental exercises if you will. What is the difference between being Machiavellian (which I score high in on tests) and being manipulative?

The difference between being Machiavellian and being manipulative is little more than the amount of foresight involved. Those who are manipulative are usually reactive, their goals are short term, and they often contradict themselves and get in their own way. Those who are Machiavellian usually have a long term goal in mind and their every move is designed to move them closer to that objective. There are two famous military dictums that I like to keep in mind at all times, the former credited to Sun Tzu, the latter to Napoleon.

  • If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
  • When your enemy is executing a false movement, never interrupt him.

The reason you must know yourself is so that you can know your strong points, your weak points, and your capabilities. Few battles are won through overwhelming strength, they are won by breaking the enemy’s weak points before he can break your strong points. The reason you must know your enemy is so you can know his strong points to avoid them, his weak points to target them, and his capabilities so you can defend yourself against them.

[NB: This is why I HATE the term schwerpunkt in military theory, because it is an offensive term meaning focal point of effort, not a defensive term indicating a hardened resistance point as would make more sense in the above context.]

Where win-win situations, or Xanatos Gambits, are created is by taking advantage of the enemy’s illusions. Informational friction is absolutely key, and in situations like the present struggle for the Hugo Awards, it is compounded by people seeing what they want to see. So, applying Sun Tzu, you must first do two things:

  • Ensure that you are seeing an accurate picture of yourself and your enemy.
  • Identify what their illusions are concerning themselves and you.

Then present them with options where they will predictably react by choosing the one that works to your advantage. Soon enough, they will find themselves in a position where they are choosing between options that are equally beneficial to you. More or less. In some cases, you may well find that you don’t even care which option they choose.

Let me give an actual example of what underlay the Hugo situation. The SJWs in science fiction are constantly making ridiculously stupid mistakes because they violate Sun Tzu’s dictum by a) wrongly believing themselves to be more influential than they are and b) wrongly considering me and the Sad Puppies to be less influential than we are. The former is not their fault; John Scalzi has relentlessly misled them for years. “The biggest blog in SF” that they had on their side was literally 15 percent of the size they were told it was and erroneously believed it to be in August 2010. And yet, even 18 months after being exposed, there are still some SJWs who will tell you in all seriousness that Scalzi is “huge”.

Blame for the latter, on the other hand, is entirely theirs As recently as last year, there were SJWs who quite literally believed this:

My website averages well over 600 visits a day. Based on comments from other fanzine people, I’m guessing that’s more readers than VD’s blog would get even when he provokes a shit storm. Let’s deprive him of the traffic.

At the time she posted that, the site traffic was 46,456 Google pageviews per day. Yesterday it was 68,539. Last month’s average was 51,068. The ludicrous aspect of this is that the Sitemeter widget has always been publicly available, and though it’s considerably stingier than Google or WordPress, about ten seconds of research would have provided whatever ratio is required to compare apples to apples.

The immediate consequence is that the other side imagines that the Dread Ilk cannot possibly account for the numbers that are overwhelming their core strength. Ergo #GamerGate must be involved and a whole host of other delusions that the rational observer knows are not even possible, thereby leading to a series of mistakes that will likely lead to the very situation they erroneously believe is already taking place. And their failure to know their enemy means they do not know what our objectives are, so they never know if their attempts to counter our actions are thwarting us or playing into our hands.

These two comments by Alexander are apt:

  • So how long until the rabbits put 2 and 2 together and realize that they have waaaaaaaay more than just 300 sad puppies to deal with. The voters were the tip of the spear, we are now seeing the obvious signs that we have magnitudes of support behind us.
  • They’ve already gotten Breitbart, Instapundit, Twitchy, Ace, and Gamergate involved. At this rate, Finland will have declared war on SJWs by Friday.

By the time they do recalibrate their thinking, it will be far too late. It is already too late, which is why I don’t mind spelling it out. As for how I learned to see these things, part of it is a natural propensity for pattern recognition, part of it is playing a lot of wargames like Advanced Squad Leader. Nothing teaches harsh lessons in actions and consequences, or demonstrates the importance of accurate information, like wargaming.

The most important thing is this: do not underestimate your enemy or ignore his strengths out of a foolish desire to believe yourself his superior. If you want to learn more about this sort of strategic thinking, I very highly recommend reading Martin van Creveld’s A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind, which Castalia House just published last month.

Of course, sometimes it is very hard to take your enemy seriously when they are dumb enough to do things like post this caption:

Annie Bellet, one of the writers on the nominees list who was not included in the Sad Puppies or Rabbid Puppies campaign.

“Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet, The Apocalypse Triptych in fact appears on both the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies lists of recommendations.

Right rhetoric

Consider a few of the following reactions to Martin van Creveld’s article entitled “Pussycats” yesterday:

  • Mr. Van Creveld vastly misstates the issue. In none of the conflicts he lists have the soldiers on the ground suffered anything but the most glancing and isolated defeats. I’ve been there, I’ve seen what it looks like when western soldiers fight third-world tribesmen. It’s not pretty. And it is precisely the level of training which overrides the natural impulse to protect oneself that makes us so effective. When ambushed, you walk straight into it. Sounds daft until you see it in action. Face in, plates in front, front sight post up, and you walk in shooting. They can’t match our discipline, our equipment nor our skills. In every skirmish I was ever in, the iraqis or the afghans would hang their AKs out over the wall, empty the mag blind, and then run for the hills or curl up in a ball.Van Creveld mistakes or misstates the fact that it is the political leadership (officer corps included) which “loses” these wars after the soldiers win every objective. Or else the retards back home set ridiculous non-military objectives.
  • I call bullshit. If Western Forces have been unable to win since
    Clinton was in office because our troops have been personally unwilling
    to fight, our enemies would have trumpeted our mutinies, routs,
    desertions and cowardice in battle. Extravagent assertions for which the proponents admit there is no empirical evidence inspire no credibility.
  • There is no other reasonable interpretation of van
    c’s words and he’s dead fucking wrong. If it is a language barrier or
    translation problem, he should fix it or find a competent interpreter.
    Otherwise, perhaps the strategist should stick to writing about
    strategy.
  • The most charitable explanation for van c’s hissy fit that I can see is
    either Vox’s interpretation that he’s really talking about the lack of
    political will to prosecute the war in a manner calculated to win along
    with a corresponding lack of will among the flag ranks (and possibly
    field grades) to take risks or he’s simply projecting an end game level
    of morale onto the troops. Yet words have meaning and I cannot fully
    reconcile van c’s words with either of those interpretations. Nor am I
    willing to accept a, shall we say calvinistic, position of “that’s what
    he said, but what he really meant was…”

What I found amusing about reading these attempted criticisms is that they are all examples of the right behaving in a rhetorical manner similar to that of the left’s customary form of response. They might appear to be based on dialectic, but they’re not. They are primarily emotional responses written in instinctive reaction to trigger words. It’s easy to identify when someone who is normally capable of dialectic descends to rhetoric out of emotional distress because they suddenly become dishonest; van Creveld may be wrong, but there is absolutely no way the article can reasonably be described as a “hissy fit”. Or for nonsensical claims, such as the idea that assertions the proponents have not made have anything to do with the credibility of the author or the article.

As for the appeal to personal experience, that’s not invalid, it’s just irrelevant. As strategists have noted going back to Maurice at the very least, one cannot judge Eastern military performances by Western standards. Shoot-and-scoot is their conventional tactic and it’s no more indicative of individual cowardice than the West’s convention of everyone dutifully lining up and bashing into each other is indicative of individual stupidity.

Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that the Western militaries are psychologically weaker and less willing to fight than they once were that don’t rely upon what is going to be dismissed as enemy propaganda anyhow. Look at pregnancy and suicide rates, for example:

  • A study published in February in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology found
    that about 11 percent of active-duty women ages 18 to 44, from all
    branches of the military, said they had had an unplanned pregnancy
    within the past year…. according to a 2010 survey, two of every three enlisted female sailors
    became pregnant during their tenure in the Navy.
  • Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and other elite troops from the military’s
    secretive Special Operations community are also killing themselves at
    record rates. Our all-volunteer military reflects the society in which its soldiers were raised, and any problem that affects the country also affects those troops. Suicide is one of those problems. Indeed, troops who take their own lives have often been heavy drinkers or suffered from mental health issues such as bipolar disorder — the same factors linked to suicide in the civilian world. Although the military suicide rate recently eclipsed the rate among civilians of similar age and background, the civilian rate has also soared.

As to some of the other suggested metrics, there is good reason to doubt that the US military is entirely reliable when it comes to reporting anything that might be considered to reflect badly upon it.

  • Thousands of U.S. service members are believed to have deserted their units during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Bergdahl’s case is uncommon because he allegedly did so while on the battlefield. Some have escaped while in the United States and remain beyond the reach of the military in Canada, parts of Europe and other locations…. Many of those in his unit have been waiting years to see the Army acknowledge potential wrongdoing by Bergdahl, said Nathan B. Bethea, 30, a former Army captain in New York who was deployed with Bergdahl’s battalion when he went missing. “I think they’re pleased because this comes as a surprise,” Bethea said of the overall reaction. “I think that, given how long this has taken, it comes as a shock. The Army never made a statement on what happened. There was always just obfuscation and smoke and mirrors.”

However, there is an important difference between the left’s emotional rhetoric and the right’s. And that is the right’s ability to return to the dialectical level after the initial emotional reaction dies down. One of the above-quoted authors subsequently commented:

  • “I retract my criticism of van c. The “man for man” comments most likely translate poorly given the fact that he correctly diagnoses the problem and places blame squarely where it belongs for failures of western militaries. I engaged in a knee jerk reaction even though I know better. Mea culpa.”

I can only applaud the gentleman’s ability to re-read, rethink and recant. This is the hallmark of one capable of surmounting the rhetoric; Aristotle would observe that he has a mind capable of being changed by information. I suggest that in the future, it will be useful for him, and others, to understand that this kneejerk instinct to react emotionally  and descend into the rhetorical when the bravery or efficacy of the American soldier is called into question exists.

Now, the thing to keep in mind that we all have triggers that will cause us to respond rhetorically rather than in a dialectical manner. And while there is nothing intrinsically wrong with rhetorical responses, they are inappropriate responses to dialectic, especially when they are presented as dialectic. Here are some clues that your emotions have been sufficiently triggered to cause your response to be pseudo-dialectical rhetoric.

  1. You use passive-aggressive language or launch passive-aggressive attacks.
  2. You incorrectly characterize what you are criticizing.
  3. You use loaded words or unnecessary vulgarities.
  4. You utilize dismissive language or strike a dismissive pose without providing any justification for it.
  5. You ignore any and all evidence of alternative explanations.
  6. You rely upon a pedantic exegesis of a very small part of the text.
  7. You offer justifications that are nonsensical.
  8. You attack the character or competence of the author.

If you find yourself doing any of those things, that is a sign that you need to step back, re-read, and reconsider. You may well be right, but I suggest the chances are that you’re not.

Do what thou feel

That is not only the whole of the modern moral law, it is the whole of history as well. “Do what thou feel, with due regard for the shrieking of the herd around you, for the truth is nothing more than an opinion.”. A philosopher discovers that this is a philosophy instilled at an early age, in public school:

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism, dating back at least to Protagoras who declared that “man is the measure of all things,” and several who deny that there are any moral facts whatsoever. But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?

A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. A misleading distinction between fact and opinion is embedded in the Common Core.

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

No wonder so many millennials are clueless science fetishists who know nothing of what has gone before them. This definition of “Fact” has completely erased the very concept of history, and rendered the past nothing but mere opinion.

Public school is an unvarnished and unmitigated evil. If you are still foolish enough to be subjecting your children to it, think again. They are not only being intellectually lobotomized, they are being morally and temporally crippled as well.

There is no amount of Christian upbringing or Sunday School teaching that is capable of counteracting this philosophical programming. It will all be neatly slotted into the “opinion” category, which they are taught cannot overlap with the “fact” category. Consider the professor’s test of his own son.

Students are taught that claims are either facts or opinions. They are given quizzes in which they must sort claims into one camp or the other but not both. But if a fact is something that is true and an opinion is something that is believed, then many claims will obviously be both. For example, I asked my son about this distinction after his open house. He confidently explained that facts were things that were true whereas opinions are things that are believed. We then had this conversation:

Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”

Him: “It’s a fact.”

Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”

Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.”

Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”

The blank stare on his face said it all.

The idea that children as young as five are going to be some sort of Christian missionary light unto the pagans in public school was always an abysmally stupid one, but the fact that even a philosopher’s son can be reprogrammed in such an insidious way should shake even the most foolish Christian parent’s blithe confidence in public school. And the idea that your local school is “really good” is far from a panacea, it merely means that it is better at instilling this pernicious anti-philosophy into its students’ heads.

In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either
facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the
latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are
no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.

Relativists regret consequences of relativism

It is becoming increasingly obvious that abandoning traditional Christian moral values comes at a very heavy societal cost. Unfortunately, even those who belatedly recognize this can’t quite bring themselves to do the obvious and call for a return to the traditional white Christian civilization of Western Christendom:

The health of society is primarily determined by the habits and virtues of its citizens. In many parts of America there are no minimally agreed upon standards for what it means to be a father. There are no basic codes and rules woven into daily life, which people can absorb unconsciously and follow automatically.

Reintroducing norms will require, first, a moral vocabulary. These norms weren’t destroyed because of people with bad values. They were destroyed by a plague of nonjudgmentalism, which refused to assert that one way of behaving was better than another. People got out of the habit of setting standards or understanding how they were set.

Next it will require holding people responsible. People born into the most chaotic situations can still be asked the same questions: Are you living for short-term pleasure or long-term good? Are you living for yourself or for your children? Do you have the freedom of self-control or are you in bondage to your desires?

Next it will require holding everybody responsible. America is obviously not a country in which the less educated are behaving irresponsibly and the more educated are beacons of virtue. America is a country in which privileged people suffer from their own characteristic forms of self-indulgence: the tendency to self-segregate, the comprehensive failures of leadership in government and industry. Social norms need repair up and down the scale, universally, together and all at once.

There is no easy way out. Humanity is not going to magically, or rationally, invent a better moral system than those that a) were handed down from on high, or if you prefer, b) evolved through trial-and-error. In light of the failure of secularism and multiculturalism, the nations of the West are going to embrace some past moral structure, absolutist judgments and all.

The only question is if it will be pagan or Christian. And the former is considerably less pretty than its historically ignorant proponents understand.

The best of all possible worlds

I stand corrected. Dr. Pangloss was right. Because we live in a world where THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! We live in a world where A WEASEL TOOK A RIDE ON A FLYING WOODPECKER’S BACK. I don’t even want to know the real story. I’m just happy to know that it happened on my planet.

Soft equalitarianism

Fred Reed points out how flawed assumptions lead to bad policy:

The commentators don’t realize that not everybody is like them. Those with IQs of 140 and up (130 gets you into Mensa, I think) unconsciously believe that anything is possible. Denizens of this class know that if they decided to learn, say, classical Greek, they could. You get the book and go at it. It would take work, yes, and time, but the outcome would be certain.

They don’t understand that the waitress has an IQ of 85 and can’t learn much of anything.

Conservatives think in terms of merciless abstractions and liberals insist that everyone is equal. Not even close. Further, people with barely a high-school education and low-voltage minds regard any intellectual task with utter discouragement.

Some commentators urge letting people invest their Social Security taxes in the stock market. To them it is a question of abstract freedom and probably the Federalist papers. The commentators are smart enough to invest money. I’ll guess that at least half the population isn’t. Go into the tit bar (does it still exist) in Waldorf, Maryland, and ask the dump-truck drivers and nail-pounders what NASDAQ is.

Liberal commentators want everyone to go to college, when about a fifth of people have the brains. Conservatives think that people can rise by hard work and sacrifice as certainly many people have. Thing is, most people can’t.

This affects a lot of smart people. My father used to constantly get on my case because he felt my MPAI philosophy was too contemptuous. And yet, he constantly ran into problems because he overestimated the capability of the average individual. At one point, we had an argument about calculus. He felt that it was easy and that anyone could learn it, because it was easy for him. I pointed out that the opinion anyone who’d been finishing an engineering PhD at MIT when he was hired out of school by a tech giant was not relevant to the average human being.

That sort of soft equalitarianism is nothing more than false humility. There is nothing arrogant about the simple observation that X is smarter than Y, anymore than there is in the observation that X is taller than Y, or X is heavier than Y. We know these things before we quantify them, and to pretend otherwise is not sane.

It harms people to pretend they have capabilities they don’t have, because we set them up for failure. To help someone be all they can be, the focus has to be on the word “can”. Sometimes we can do more than we think we can, but more often, we can’t do as much as we fancifully imagine.

Mailvox: thought of the day

A Nameless Reader has an observation:

Random thought: The fact that people who are skeptical of one “consensus” tend to be skeptical of other consensuses suggests there’s a correlation in mental capacity – since one has to have a very high level of intellectual self-confidence and an ability to do independent research and thinking in order to sustain an argument against, e.g., evolution, global warming, Austrian investing, or vaccination, when there is enormous “consensus” pressure to adopt the other opinion, it would make sense that such iconoclastic beliefs would bundle.

I don’t think there is any question about this. I have zero regard for consensus on the grounds of MPAI. In fact, if someone who I otherwise consider to be intelligent falls for an observably incorrect consensus position, I tend to keep a skeptical eye on his future assertions and conclusions.

Everyone makes mistakes, but falling for the appeal to authority, or worse, the appeal to popularity, simply is not indicative of an functioning and intelligent mind. Consensus is another word for “lowest common denominator”.

But keep in mind I’m not talking about skepticism and iconoclasm for their own sake, I’m talking about maintaining an open mind when there are obvious holes, if not outright flaws, in the consensus position.