Tag: trainwreck

Another left-wing backfire

At this point, the Left can almost be defined as the ideology which regularly features policies which, when implemented, are guaranteed to provide results that are the reverse of those predicted.

Adriana Kugler, who teaches economics at Georgetown, recently published her research on the gender-gap in STEM fields. She found that STEM recruitment efforts that stress the gender-gap in STEM actually serves to discourage women.

“With the media, women are getting multiple signals that they don’t belong in the STEM field…”

“Society keeps telling us that STEM fields are masculine fields, that we need to increase the participation of women in STEM fields, but that kind of sends a signal that it’s not a field for women, and it kind of works against keeping women in these fields,” Kugler says.

Many of the common explanations for the lack of women in STEM don’t hold up under investigation, Kugler explained to Campus Reform. While previous research suggests women are less “resilient,” or more negatively impacted by “bad grades,” Kugler says there’s “no evidence” to support that.

Likewise, the claim that women do poorly in STEM solely because it’s male dominated isn’t supported by evidence either, Kugler says, noting that an aspiring female computer scientist won’t necessarily be turned away from knowing that the field is male dominated.

The trouble begins when the media and recruitment efforts capitalize on that preponderance of men, since it “sends an additional message to women that they don’t fit into those fields, and that they don’t belong there.”

“With the media, women are getting multiple signals that they don’t belong in the STEM field, that they won’t fit into the field. That’s what we find,” Kugler told Campus Reform. “It’s very well intentioned, but it may be backfiring.”

It’s not really that hard. If you write “here there be dragons” on a map, some people are going to believe you. And a disproportionate number of those people are going to be women.

Priming is confirmed fake science

It’s sometimes a pity that science doesn’t have a simple “that’s obvious BS” card. Because I absolutely would have played it when the hypothesis of “priming” was not merely hypothesized, but asserted to be solid scientific fact:

In 2011, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman published a popular book, “Thinking Fast and Slow”, about an important finding in social psychology.
In the same year, questions about the trustworthiness of social psychology were raised.  A Dutch social psychologist had fabricated data. Eventually over 50 of his articles would be retracted.  Another social psychologist published results that appeared to demonstrate the ability to foresee random future events (Bem, 2011). Few researchers believed these results and statistical analysis suggested that the results were not trustworthy (Francis, 2012; Schimmack, 2012).  Psychologists started to openly question the credibility of published results.
In the beginning of 2012, Doyen and colleagues published a failure to replicate a prominent study by John Bargh that was featured in Daniel Kahneman’s book.  A few month later, Daniel Kahneman distanced himself from Bargh’s research in an open email addressed to John Bargh (Young, 2012):
“As all of you know, of course, questions have been raised about the robustness of priming results…. your field is now the poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research… people have now attached a question mark to the field, and it is your responsibility to remove it… all I have personally at stake is that I recently wrote a book that emphasizes priming research as a new approach to the study of associative memory…Count me as a general believer… My reason for writing this letter is that I see a train wreck looming.”
Five years later, Kahneman’s concerns have been largely confirmed. Major studies in social priming research have failed to replicate and the replicability of results in social psychology is estimated to be only 25% (OSC, 2015).
Looking back, it is difficult to understand the uncritical acceptance of social priming as a fact.  In “Thinking Fast and Slow” Kahneman wrote “disbelief is not an option. The results are not made up, nor are they statistical flukes. You have no choice but to accept that the major conclusions of these studies are true.”
Yet, Kahneman could have seen the train wreck coming. In 1971, he co-authored an article about scientists’ “exaggerated confidence in the validity of conclusions based on small samples” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971, p. 105).  Yet, many of the studies described in Kahneman’s book had small samples.  For example, Bargh’s priming study used only 30 undergraduate students to demonstrate the effect.

I pay very little attention to “studies show” science for this reason.

Preserving ISIS

This is utter insanity. A strategic white paper by “a veteran authority on the Arab-Israeli conflict and strategic developments in the Mideast and expert on Israeli strategic doctrine” argues for saving the monstrous Islamic State.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction. A weak but functioning IS can undermine the appeal of the caliphate among radical Muslims; keep bad actors focused on one another rather than on Western targets; and hamper Iran’s quest for regional hegemony.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently gathered defense ministers from allied nations to plan what officials hope will be the decisive stage in the campaign to eradicate the Islamic State (IS) organization. This is a strategic mistake.
IS, a radical Islamist group, has killed thousands of people since it declared an Islamic caliphate in June 2014, with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its de facto capital. It captured tremendous international attention by swiftly conquering large swaths of land and by releasing gruesome pictures of beheadings and other means of execution.
But IS is primarily successful where there is a political void. Although the offensives in Syria and Iraq showed IS’s tactical capabilities, they were directed against failed states with weakened militaries. On occasions when the poorly trained IS troops have met well-organized opposition, even that of non-state entities like the Kurdish militias, the group’s performance has been less convincing. When greater military pressure was applied and Turkish support dwindled, IS went into retreat.
It is true that IS has ignited immense passion among many young and frustrated Muslims all over the world, and the caliphate idea holds great appeal among believers. But the relevant question is what can IS do, particularly in its current situation? The terrorist activities for which it recently took responsibility were perpetrated mostly by lone wolves who declared their allegiance to IS; they were not directed from Raqqa. On its own, IS is capable of only limited damage.
A weak IS is, counterintuitively, preferable to a destroyed IS. IS is a magnet for radicalized Muslims in countries throughout the world. These volunteers are easier targets to identify, saving intelligence work. They acquire destructive skills in the fields of Syria and Iraq that are of undoubted concern if they return home, but some of them acquire shaheed status while still away – a blessing for their home countries. If IS is fully defeated, more of these people are likely to come home and cause trouble.
If IS loses control over its territory, the energies that went into protecting and governing a state will be directed toward organizing more terrorist attacks beyond its borders. The collapse of IS will produce a terrorist diaspora that might further radicalize Muslim immigrants in the West. Most counter-terrorism agencies understand this danger. Prolonging the life of IS probably assures the deaths of more Muslim extremists at the hands of other bad guys in the Middle East, and is likely to spare the West several terrorist attacks.

This is utter madness and lends support to the idea that ISIS was, if not an outright creation of a US-Israeli alliance, at least supported by both the United States and Israel. This is not realpolitik, or whatever its advocates might like to style it, it is hubris and dangerous lunacy.
These jokers claim to be expert strategists, and yet they reliably fail to predict even the most obvious events. And their advice is reliably terrible.

Don’t argue with Damore

You’d think a reporter would be aware that he was overmatched when he went to interview the author of the Google manifesto:

During an interview with Business Insider, Damore, who was fired from Google for publishing a viewpoint diversity manifesto, claimed he “was simply trying to fix the culture in many ways. And really help a lot of people who are currently marginalized at Google by pointing out these huge biases that we have in this monolithic culture where anyone with a dissenting view can’t even express themselves,” he continued, adding, “Really, it’s like being gay in the 1950s.”
“These conservatives have to stay in the closet and have to mask who they really are. And that’s a huge problem because there’s open discrimination against anyone who comes out of the closet as a conservative,” Damore explained. He sparred with Business Insider’s Steve Kovach, who tried to claim that Damore attacked women in his manifesto.
“I was simply talking about the population level distributions. And I specifically call out that we should never treat an individual differently based on this because there’s so much overlap,” stated Damore. “The document was simply trying to address why there may be fewer women in technology than men. And it never said anything about the women at Google being any different than the men at Google.”
This prompted Kovach to reply, “Not at Google. But broadly it made assumptions about women as a general population though, right?”
“It didn’t make assumptions. It stated scientific facts about the population level distribution,” Damore responded.
“OK. I mean, that’s obviously up for debate too,” Kovach claimed, forcing Damore to explain, “Not really. I mean, these are empirical facts.”
“The population level distributions are not up for debate,” he continued. “Those have been documented hundreds of times.”

Clearly Damore did not realize that Mr. Kovach did not like the population level distributions. Therefore, they were an assumption, ergo subjective, consequently wrong. You’d think these SJWs would, sooner or later, get suspicious about the statistical improbability of their being absolutely right every single time.
Of course, if they grasped statistics, they wouldn’t be SJWs blithely refuting empirical facts as one man’s assumptions.

The underperformers of Google

Further evidence that the Ivy League’s affirmative action is rewarding the undeserving and the underperforming:

A Google Research project indicating that underrepresented minorities and Ivy League graduates were more likely to receive softball interviews at the company was shut down by Google’s human resources department upon seeing the results, according to an insider.
The Google insider (alias “Chuck”), who worked at the company for several years, was part of a team tasked with determining which Google employees were most likely to succeed at the company based on their interview feedback.
According to Chuck, the predictive model they created determined that employees who received mixed feedback at the interview stage performed far better than those who received only good feedback.
Those who were most likely to receive only good feedback (“inflated interview scores,” in the words of Chuck) tended to be Ivy League graduates or underrepresented minorities. Those who were most likely to receive mixed feedback (and, according to the model, go on to achieve the most success at Google) were more likely to be white and Asian men who did not go to Ivy League schools.
The insider’s team had been tasked with the project by Google’s HR department, but according to him, they promptly shut it down once they realized its results would not serve their goals.

Google is an SJW-converged organization at war with reality. That is why it is doomed.

All the heads of the medusa

First, I’m not applauding the official Google response. Their position is intrinsically and observably absurd; the fact that they are managing to refrain from digging themselves in deeper by going on a witch hunt and burning one of their employees at the stake is merely an indication that someone in the Google executive team possesses at least a minimal amount of common sense. If you want to provide a platform for everyone, then you obviously have to give up any ambitions of playing thought police.

Second, we can see that Google’s SJWs are starting to get nervous as evidence of their internal thought-policing begins to leak out into the public. And never forget, they genuinely believe that they are better-educated, as well as our moral and intellectual superiors, because Google only hires the smartest, best-educated people, right? You would almost feel sorry for the executives who have to deal with this nonsense, until you stop and think, what else could have possibly resulted from their decision to hire SJWs and prioritize diversity?

However, the way in which the SJWs immediately go to no-platforming as an ideal response underlines my oft-repeated point about the importance of building and supporting our own platforms.

What part of “cruelty artist” do they not get?

Do home run hitters ever stand there watching a nice fat pitch heading straight over the plate, and, as they start to swing, find themselves thinking, I cannot believe he thought THAT was a good idea?

Choy Li Fut Lady虎爪‏ @HungSingMA
Why does being a physicist make Brian Cox more intelligent? Btw, Liam Gallagher’s IQ is Higher than Einstein’s was.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday

Because you have to be able to grasp the math involved. Most really smart people (150+) don’t work in intellectually elite professions.

Choy Li Fut Lady虎爪‏ @HungSingMA
So? Doesn’t mean people who are able to grasp the maths don’t do history.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
True. But the highest measured IQ of 148 Cambridge faculty members was 139. Academics, on average, are third-rate intelligences.

Matthew L‏ @Blethigg
When asked what his IQ is: “I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.”
 – Steven Hawking

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
I bet he doesn’t know his 100-meter time either.

The irony, of course, is that Steven Hawking himself is a wildly overrated academic who could not philosophize his way out of a box. Like most popularizers, he is considerably less intelligent than his fans believe him to be. Hawking wouldn’t fare much better in a debate on religion or philosophy than he would in a footrace.

I discussed the concept of overrated intellectual elites in last night’s Darkstream on Our Third-Rate Intellectual Elites. There is an Easter Egg in there if you listen to the whole thing. I suspect it will amuse most of you.

Meanwhile, the outraged response to this tweet should prove entertaining.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
For her next trick, “historian” @wmarybeard is going to defend Kevin Costner’s American accent in Robin Hood.

The creepy thing is that Mary Beard was attempting to justify BBC diversity propaganda aimed at children while obviously being aware that mass rape is “a way of creating a mixed society”. What are we supposed to conclude from this, that Rotherham is the modern equivalent of the Rape of the Sabine Women and therefore justified in the name of diversity?


The Romans’ sense of their society as a hybrid one, Beard finds, is folded into their founding legends. Virgil’s Aeneid celebrates the Trojan hero who founded the city—a foreigner who, though he kills some of the native inhabitants, also unites the warring tribes. And without downplaying the horrific violence in the tale of Romulus and Remus and the rape of the Sabine women, Beard notes that the mass rape is portrayed not just as evidence of Roman aggression but as a way of creating a mixed society.


UPDATE: Mary Beard is already trying to run away from her own positions. Not that it will do her any good. It just adds two steps to the same conclusion. She’s also cried to The Times already.




UPDATE: Taleb pulls no punches, as usual.


NassimNicholasTaleb‏@nntaleb
More Evidence that Ms Beard is a bullshitter. She tried to degrade me to “pop risk” until I compated the “pop” to HERs. Her report. Bullshitter!

NassimNicholasTaleb‏@nntaleb
If that’s how Mary Beard bullshits about her exchange with me, how can anyone trust her historical reports? No more use for her.

All Americans are now antisemites

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
It seems #AIPAC has forgotten with whom they are dealing. Americans will not give up their First Amendment for Israel’s sake.

Isaac Hebestein‏ @isaachebestein
I mean, since Israel is America’s only ally in the ME, why would anyone want to boycott them in the first place?

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
That’s irrelevant. Obviously some Americans do. And that is absolutely their First Amendment right.

Isaac Hebestein‏ @isaachebestein
Boycotting Israel stems from deep-seated anti-Semitism, and therefore is religious discrimination. Would rather have terrorism over not being able to boycott an allied country. That makes sense.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
We don’t give a damn. Try to fuck with the First Amendment and you go right to #1 on the enemy’s list.

Isaac Hebestein‏ @isaachebestein
You sound ridiculous, wanting terrorism over the ability to boycott an ally. Just don’t buy our stuff if you don’t like us, no need4 boycott

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
We don’t give a damn what you think. Americans killed their British brethren for those rights. Americans will kill Jews for them if need be.

Isaac Hebestein‏ @isaachebestein
This is the anti-Semitism we deal with on a daily basis. It really is so disheartening

Isaac Hebestein, Rabbinics Curriculum Coordinator at Academy for Jewish Religion and Adjunct Assistant Professor at HUC-JIR, New York, New York.

It’s rather astonishing, actually, to observe how many Diasporans clearly have no understanding whatsoever of Americans or how Americans will react to this proposed law. I knew Jews are not Americans, of course, by definition, but I didn’t understand how utterly foreign the American perspective is to many of them until now. The following was the truly funny part of the exchange. Mr. Hebestein clearly didn’t understand why some Americans are very much supportive of the idea of an AIPAC-endorsed federal law against the criticism and boycotting of Israel.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
We don’t give a damn. Try to fuck with the First Amendment and you go right to #1 on the enemy’s list.

Zorost_Risen @JoeWatson1414
You convinced me, I now support a law against BDS

Isaac Hebestein‏ @isaachebestein

Which is the true text order?

Here is an apt demonstration of what I meant when I said that postmodern literature is bad writing. Not only is it bad writing, but it isn’t even meant to be properly read at all, only skimmed for the surface impressions made by the words. In fact, it’s not even necessary for the words to be in any particular order from paragraph to paragraph.

The following three passages are the same string of words taken from the 1985 National Book Award winner. I divided the original passage into 15 strings based on the punctuation and randomized it twice. Now, without looking anything up on the Internet, see if you can tell which passage is in the correct order, Number 1, 2, or 3.
  1. We simply walk toward the sliding doors … This is not Tibet … sealed off … timeless. Code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering … Another reason why I think of Tibet. Dying is an art in Tibet … Energy waves, incident radiation … Look how well-lighted everything is … Not that we would want to … Chants, numerology, horoscopes, recitations. Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think. Everything is concealed in symbolism… This simple truth is hard to fathom. But once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die … Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. We don’t have to cling to life artificially, or to death …
  2. Everything is concealed in symbolism … The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. Energy waves, incident radiation … code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering … Not that we would want to … This is not Tibet … Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. This simple truth is hard to fathom. But once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die … We don’t have to cling to life artificially, or to death … We simply walk toward the sliding doors … Look how well-lighted everything is … sealed off … timeless. Another reason why I think of Tibet. Dying is an art in Tibet … Chants, numerology, horoscopes, recitations. Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think.”
  3. Energy waves, incident radiation … This is not Tibet …timeless. Chants, numerology, horoscopes, recitations. Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think. We don’t have to cling to life artificially, or to death …Another reason why I think of Tibet. Dying is an art in Tibet … Everything is concealed in symbolism… Look how well-lighted everything is … code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering … We simply walk toward the sliding doors … Not that we would want to … Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. Sealed off … This simple truth is hard to fathom. But once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die … The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. 

AIPAC vs 1st Amendment

In case you didn’t believe that immigrants have never, ever, understood literally the first goddamn thing about the Rights of Englishmen or the U.S. Constitution. Note that limiting the 1st Amendment rights of Americans is AIPAC’s top legislative priority for 2017. Everything below is straight from Congress.gov.


S.720 – Israel Anti-Boycott Act
115th Congress (2017-2018)

Sponsor: Sen. Cardin, Benjamin L. [D-MD] (Introduced 03/23/2017)
Committees: Senate – Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Latest Action: 03/23/2017 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

This bill declares that Congress: (1) opposes the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution of March 24, 2016, which urges countries to pressure companies to divest from, or break contracts with, Israel; and (2) encourages full implementation of the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014 through enhanced, governmentwide, coordinated U.S.-Israel scientific and technological cooperation in civilian areas.

The bill amends the Export Administration Act of 1979 to declare that it shall be U.S. policy to oppose:

  • requests by foreign countries to impose restrictive practices or boycotts against other countries friendly to the United States or against U.S. persons; and
  • restrictive trade practices or boycotts fostered or imposed by an international governmental organization, or requests to impose such practices or boycotts, against Israel.

The bill prohibits U.S. persons engaged in interstate or foreign commerce from:

  • requesting the imposition of any boycott by a foreign country against a country which is friendly to the United States; or 
  • supporting any boycott fostered or imposed by an international organization, or requesting imposition of any such boycott, against Israel.

The bill amends the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945 to include as a reason for the Export-Import Bank to deny credit applications for the export of goods and services between the United States and foreign countries, opposition to policies and actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with citizens or residents of Israel, entities organized under the laws of Israel, or the Government of Israel.

Cosponsor and Date Cosponsored
Sen. Portman, Rob [R-OH]* 03/23/2017
Sen. Nelson, Bill [D-FL] 03/27/2017
Sen. Rubio, Marco [R-FL] 03/27/2017
Sen. Menendez, Robert [D-NJ] 03/27/2017
Sen. Collins, Susan M. [R-ME] 03/27/2017
Sen. Blumenthal, Richard [D-CT] 03/27/2017
Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC] 03/28/2017
Sen. Young, Todd C. [R-IN] 03/28/2017
Sen. Boozman, John [R-AR] 03/28/2017
Sen. Isakson, Johnny [R-GA] 03/28/2017
Sen. Peters, Gary C. [D-MI] 03/28/2017
Sen. Hatch, Orrin G. [R-UT] 03/30/2017
Sen. Perdue, David [R-GA] 03/30/2017
Sen. Roberts, Pat [R-KS] 03/30/2017
Sen. Wicker, Roger F. [R-MS] 03/30/2017
Sen. Hoeven, John [R-ND] 04/04/2017
Sen. Cornyn, John [R-TX] 04/04/2017
Sen. Fischer, Deb [R-NE] 04/04/2017
Sen. Heller, Dean [R-NV] 04/24/2017
Sen. Moran, Jerry [R-KS] 04/24/2017
Sen. Crapo, Mike [R-ID] 04/24/2017
Sen. Cantwell, Maria [D-WA] 04/24/2017
Sen. Grassley, Chuck [R-IA] 04/25/2017
Sen. Capito, Shelley Moore [R-WV] 04/26/2017
Sen. Schumer, Charles E. [D-NY] 05/01/2017
Sen. Ernst, Joni [R-IA] 05/01/2017
Sen. Hassan, Margaret Wood [D-NH] 05/08/2017
Sen. Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [D-NY] 05/09/2017
Sen. Lankford, James [R-OK] 05/16/2017
Sen. Burr, Richard [R-NC] 05/17/2017
Sen. Donnelly, Joe [D-IN] 05/23/2017
Sen. Scott, Tim [R-SC] 05/25/2017
Sen. Cruz, Ted [R-TX] 06/05/2017
Sen. Manchin, Joe, III [D-WV] 06/05/2017
Sen. Strange, Luther [R-AL] 06/05/2017
Sen. McCaskill, Claire [D-MO] 06/06/2017
Sen. Thune, John [R-SD] 06/12/2017
Sen. Wyden, Ron [D-OR] 06/12/2017
Sen. Sasse, Ben [R-NE] 06/15/2017
Sen. Coons, Christopher A. [D-DE] 06/26/2017
Sen. Bennet, Michael F. [D-CO] 07/12/2017
Sen. Sullivan, Dan [R-AK] 07/12/2017
Sen. Cassidy, Bill [R-LA] 07/18/2017
Sen. Tillis, Thom [R-NC] 07/19/2017
Sen. Cotton, Tom [R-AR] 07/19/2017