Sophomore Year

There were so many things I learned sophomore year. Almost none of them came from school. Actually, I’d be hard-pressed to think of any, in absolute terms. They all came from my own reading on the net, primarily of politics and philosophy. This year, my interests lay in the sciences.

Not coincidentally, the one tidbit of information I did learn from school wasn’t even part of the curriculum, necessarily. The class was going over World War 2 and the motivations behind it. There are the political and legal stimuli that were necessary, but what was far more interesting had to be the psychological underpinnings. This was obviously not reviewed in fantastic depth; however, when we did review this material I tended to agree with my teacher. He noted that the individuals in post WW1 Germany were no different than ourselves, outside of unfortunate political circumstances. There is obviously a bit more to it than that; the Germans may have had more of a proclivity towards authoritarianism than ourselves. Actually, we know this to be true by virtue of our founding principles. But as a general piece of wisdom, my teacher was correct: it’s easy to think of Germany and particularly Hitler as outliers, when similar events might spur our own nation down that same path. He noted that many aspects of life can be described as having fascist tendencies. The most striking have to be sports. Many high school sports end off practice (I know mine does) by having all participants congregate in a circle and chanting some sort of colloquialism. There is a reason it is done, and that is to remind the team that they are fighting for something beyond themselves, the collective. Your shitty performance is detrimental to the entire team, and you don’t want to let that happen. Conversely, you are fighting for something bigger than yourself, and if you perform well it does not go unnoticed. You will gain recognition for your service towards achieving a collective goal.

Punitive measures also revolve around this idea of the collective. If you fuck up and are subsequently sent to run a few miles in atonement, it sucks, but you perservere. But if you fuck up and the entire team needs to run a few miles as a result, the physical pain is the last of your problems. The associated psychological damage is far more compelling: you are to be shunned by your team, reminded constantly that you are the sinner. Word gets round and you might be the butt of a few jokes. Are you going to fuck up again after that? Hell no.

Coaches know this. And though I understand their tactics, I wholly disagree with them.

Deceleration

I found myself walking home today and there were a couple instances I felt that death was rapidly approaching. The first was on a crossroad that conveniently intersected a freeway exit. As a good citizen, I waited for the walking insignia to appear and I began to walk- but wait! Though it was clear that it needed to stop, I saw a car on the freeway exit around 150 yards away hurtling towards me. And though it was my opportunity to cross, I waited for the car to stop at the crossroad before I walked. It turns out the car did see me, but I had not anticipated how quickly it would decelerate. Frankly, it seemed to be going too fast to stop. The same happened at another crossroad, and this one was more a boulevard of sorts: there were many different cars in their respective lanes racing towards me as I strode across.

All of this isn’t to say I found myself in a near-death experience. Every one of those cars were driving well within constraints of the law, and their deceleration had no trace of amateurism. My takeaway is how heavily we rely on technology. Had but one of them been driving with a faulty break system, I would be roadkill. Maybe I’m mildly complaining because I’m too poor to afford one myself. Probably more importantly, too lazy as well.

James Watson is a Fucking G

The man is 89, so it’s understandable that he isn’t under the impression that his statements are bellicose. Actually, scratch that. His statements aren’t provactive; they aren’t inflammatory. They are firmly rooted in science- perhaps not the science Watson became world-renowned for, but science.

From Britain’s The Independent:

Dr. Watson told The Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours- whereas all the testing says not really.”

The public and particularly the mainstream media like to dismiss his comments as musings from a crazy old man with no firm grip on reality. The sad irony being that the reverse is true- and the man’s 89- and THE DATA IS AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC AT LARGE. I hesitate to write these posts because they’ve been fantastically restated by individuals far more established than me. There isn’t too much to contribute here, other than additional vocal support for the politically incorrect intellectual coalition. Meanwhile, I live on the left coast, and I’m quite sure California might just switch its stance on the death penalty lest anyone speak a little truth in this godforsaken state.

11:50

Though my lack of posts haven’t been particularly flattering on my behalf, much of it has been devoted to schoolwork and training. I am humbled more and more by own deficits, and rely more on conscientiousness than raw talent in several domains. It’s unfortunate, though, that I am compensating for intrinsic ability with grit so early on in my life. It is natural, though it occurs later on in life, and I am only seventeen. I am not the smartest person out there, nor am I the quickest on the track. Nevertheless, I feel I am doing better a giving my best in every respect. If I underperform relative to my expectations, I have love to fall back on. I love my girlfriend. And, as a corollary, I aim to be a better person too. The ideal is a positive feedback loop. Sadly, I am hyperanalytical and excessively neurotic, so much of my efforts to rely on raw self-determination dissipate into a smattering of foresights that I won’t be able to succeed. But today, I feel love, and this is why I am writing. I encourage anyone reading to cultivate and nurture their own relationships. More and more I realize that adage of effort > success is true. Not everything needs to go according to plans, as long as you are continually cultivating it.

Average IQ does not represent every individual

Yeah, this is something fairly obviously and I’m pretty certain most of my readers understand this. But true racists love to tout the average IQ’s of Hispanics and Blacks as representative of every individual in their respective ethnic group. This is not the case. I’m mixed race (half Hispanic and half White) and I feel my IQ is above the average of both norms.

A Little Self Love

I’m fairly certain I’m the youngest blogger of Human BioDiversity out there. Conservatively, I’m going to name the several HBD bloggers that I’m aware of and make an IQ comparison based on these norms.

• Audacious Epigone
• Steve Hsu
• Greg Cochran 
• Pumpkinperson
• Lion of the Blogosphere
• Jayman 
• Steve Sailer 
• Robert Lindsay 
• Razib Khan

That’s all I can really name off the top of my head. Assuming the average IQ of this group is 135(really, a conservative estimate,) and assuming an eighteen point disparity between myself and the average, my IQ should lie around the 153 mark. Assuming I’m smarter than all of them by virtue of my youth, that is.  This is obviously a massive extrapolation, but assuming perfect correlations would be the case.

The reality is I’m pretty sure my IQ is in the ballpark of 120. I’m not especially great at math, but I can hold my own verbally. 

Converging Paradigms

The notion touched upon in Jordan Peterson’s recent conversation with Ben Shapiro is correct. In the absence of religion, it is supremely difficult not only to develop your own personal philosophy, but also to subscribe to it wholeheartedly and practice it. This means there is something fundamentally missing from atheism/agnosticism. They also imply that the moral and ethical values preached by prominent atheists are derived only from Judeo-Christian theology, and are not apparent by themselves. Here, I posit a more nuanced approach. I tend to believe that the morals taught by Christianity are self-apparent to maintain and cultivate a functioning society. But I agree there is no true incentive for society in the absence of religion, with exceptions in the form of hardcore thinkers that truly do exemplify the qualities of Nietzche’s Ubermen. You might be able to create a moral architecture that is coherent (just do a little analytic philosophy,) but given that humans are inherently social, the lack of communal practice and support of said architecture would tear apart your “convictions” and their very roots. I feel that atheists masquerading lack of belief as existentially fulfilling is intellectual dishonest. Because it isn’t. I am one, and it’s difficult to grapple with. The thing is, though their points are valid, they don’t offer a true solution beyond wordplay. It is true that the notion of us being machines floating around in space isn’t one that is conducive to maintain a healthy society, but what is the alternative? They really don’t offer one. Hard determinism is incorrect only because it feels incorrect.

The best compromise is compatabilism, but that isn’t palatable to Ben Shapiro. For him, the more sound argument is that free will exists because God made it that way. He genuinely believes that is a more fortified epistemology. It really isn’t. Assuming it is, however, one would still need to address the “soft” form of determinism: biological. Because evolutionary psychological largely elucidates the variance in personality among individuals, and even personality is determined more by genetics than environmenal factors, what’s the incentive for you to get up and exercise if both of your parents considered it and couldn’t bring themselves to it? There is none.

Though I disagree with many people in that I don’t believe you need to offer a solution to make a criticism, to offer a half assed one is undoubtedly worse. I don’t respect you more for offering a solution moored to religion.

The Constraints of Discourse

Ben Shapiro made another guest appearance on The Rubin Report the other day. A Patreon supporter inquired whether Ben “believed” in the existence of a cognitive elite and differences in intelligence among people more generally.

Fortunately enough, he took the intellectually honest course and clarified “yes.” From my interpretation, during the brief moment Rubin was posing the question, Ben was a little flustered about how he was going to respond. I have a feeling these guys are only politically incorrect to the extent that the “politically incorrect” coalition allows them to be. Though the boundaries of political incorrectness are variable, there are some that aren’t to be crossed if Ben is to maintain his popularity. The existence of individual differences in IQ make no one happy, and even tolerant folks on the right wouldn’t enjoy hearing that variation in economic status can be explained by IQ. The alt-right and the HBD community cannot compensate for this, as they constitute such a minute portion of society. There are some ideological incongruencies as well: the alt-right is deathly opposed to Jewish overrepresentation, while HBD’ers are primarily agnostic/atheist and don’t subscribe to Shapiro’s intellectual backflips to justify his faith.

Shapiro also suggested that Eric Weinstein’s IQ was around 160. This is obviously extremely tentative since I don’t know the upper limits of his IQ awareness and whether or not he understands the relative frequency of a 160 IQ. Nevertheless, Weinstein obtained a degree in mathematical physics from Harvard University, and that’s likely the most potent sponge for cognitive ability of all disciplines. Ben seems to indicate that he’s in over his head with respect to many of the ideas promulgated by Eric. A 142 IQ being stumped doesnt happen too often; in this way, a 160 IQ also becomes plausible for Eric. There’s obviously an imperfect correlation between ideas and intelligence, and considering the very different backgrounds of both, I wouldn’t acknowledge cognitive disparity as the sole perpetrator for Ben’s confusion.

Those that do are bereft of the competence to acknowledge statistical significance, but accept that said significance does not imply accounting for all the variance in a conversation between two individuals.

The Website Demographics of Various Bloggers

Amazon’s Alexa has some pretty interesting statistics. I’m particularly interested in the demographics of different bloggers. Some bloggers report the self-reported IQ of their readers. For example, Razib posted a graph indicating the highest density IQ of his blog hovers somewhere around the 137 mark.

 

This is especially interesting because on a Gaussian curve IQ’s that high appear only once in a pool of 147 people. I wouldn’t be surprised if some high IQ societies didn’t quite approach that mark, although they are obviously more exclusive. A pending question is how esoteric does a blog need to be to achieve the highest ratio of IQ to quantity of readers. For example, could a blog that has 1,000 daily readers maintain a 130+ IQ? Obviously, the larger a blog grows, the more diluted it becomes. I’m assuming the best ratio would be derived from an esoteric physics blog. Since not all bloggers report their readers’ IQ, formal education as a proxy helps. Without further adue, here are the demographics of some notable bloggers.

Greg Cochran’s WestHunter:

Pumpkinperson

The Unz Review 

Steve Sailer’s iSteve

The Audacious Epigone

Robert Lindsay 

Some points of interest:

• I’m a bit surprised about the low frequency of doctorates among Audacious Epigone’s readership. His diction and extensive use of graphs to synthesize data is up there among the anonymous bloggers. Only Jayman is as deliberate, as far as I’m aware of. 
• The Unz Review’s reader constituency is comprised of far more doctorates than the New York Times. But the Review is far smaller, so the readership is largely self-selected.
• Im not too familiar with Robert’s work, but he’s the first mainstream HBD blogger I’ve interacted with, so hats off to you. Hope you’re reading this.
• Genetics and Anthropology are more esoteric than IQ, and Cochran is a fantastic writer. I’m not surprised, then, that Cochran has the highest proportion of readers with doctorates along with Robert Lindsay and Sailer. He also has the highest proportion of at-work readers, likely due to the actual science that can be referenced off of his site. 

Meanwhile, on Some Remote Farm

Chris Langan, popularized for his performance on the Mega IQ test, ostensibly the smartest man in the United States, is revered on a false pretense. This is interesting because a plurality of comments on a YouTube video where he is interviewed indicate that most people don’t believe IQ tests are representative of intelligence. This nothing new; however, though they aren’t aware of it, they aren’t exactly wrong. Though IQ tests are obviously the best metric available and for the most part capture the defining aspects of intelligence, the test Langan took in particular falls somewhere short of painting an accurate picture of his cognitive abilities (at least relative to the general population.)

The Mega Test at face value is highly g loaded, with the assessment partitioned into verbal analogies and visio-spatial problems. But I’m not arguing against that. I am, however, vehemently contending that the test has been normed sufficiently to produce a full range of scores and a distribution that mirrors the Gaussian curve found in the general population.

Given that the test is open source and has no time constraints, I doubt the validity of his score. Nothing on his Quora page indicates profound intelligence, either. Though he seems to embrace real science more now; this hasn’t always been the case, evidence by his CTMU.

At least he’s a solid writer.

• https://www.quora.com/profile/Chris-Langan