Shapiro and JBP on the Rubin Report

It was mediocre by their own lofty standards. There was a point when the Rubin Report was characterized by, and heavily criticized for incessant bashing of the postmodern left. And the criticism was not misplaced. It isn’t as if I don’t giddly enjoy watching the left burn itself through use of identity politics, because I do. But Dave Rubin capitalized on that far too much and the show began to regress. He responded by deliberately shifting away from that robotic algorithm for his show, but the underlying theme remains. That’s fine though. Recently however, the repetition lays in the constant circlejerk of himself and other prominent intellectuals; namely, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy listening to all of them, but many times I tune in to a podcast or show, it is partitioned into two parts. The first half is general fawning over how they came together to have a civil intellectual conversation, and the latter half is true content. They probably know what they’re doing, if not solely masturbating their egoes. The adoration of their meeting probably makes the average person tuning in feel that much more rational and intelligent. I’m skeptical, and I feel one benefits far more in terms of aggregate volume of knowledge retained by merely reading. Like, if you transcribed their video, you’d realize not only how short their conversation really is, but how few novel ideas were actually discussed.

They are the best public intellectuals out there for the average person, though. I think really smart people read more of Chomsky, Dershowitz, and the like. And though I love to bash the left I sorrowly concede that there are far, FAR more intellectuals on the left and almost no right leaning intellectuals match their depth. Realistically the proportion of intellectuals across the political dichotomy is probably 95-5. You can name a few outliers, sure, but they don’t quite compare. If the left gives you Paul Krugman, the right responds in kind with Ron Paul. I like Ron Paul, but really? The former won a Nobel Prize in economics while the latter has a layman’s understanding of libertarian principles. That doesn’t mean Krugman is always correct, nor does it mean the philosophy he promulgates is the best one. But Ron Paul shouldn’t be the best the right has to offer. Or even Thomas Sowell, for that matter.

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.

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.

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids (For Ethnic Europeans in the United States)

Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, wrote a book in 2011 titled Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. Not incidentally, Caplan is also keenly aware of IQ and its valid, predictive properties.

See here: “I’m an IQ realist, all the way.  IQ tests aren’t perfect, but they’re an excellent proxy for what ordinary language calls “intelligence.”  A massive body of research confirms that IQ predicts not just educational success, but career success.  Contrary to critics, IQ tests are not culturally biased; they fairly measure genuine group differences in intelligence.”

I respect him far more for daring to even address the topic of intelligence, despite how crucical it is to an academic discipline like economics, where financial success is predicated on selection for talent (for the vast majority of jobs, cognitive ability is being selected.) Stultifying political correctness plagues our universities, though economics is perhaps the most conservative field- and this isn’t saying much, with the proportion of liberals narrowly edging out the conservatives (I read this somewhere on Razib’s page, I think.) Also, the individual institution matters as well; the proportion of conservatives or merely tolerance for right wing views could be above the mean. At any rate, this signifies intellectual honesty to some tangible degree.

Still, some maneuvering has to occur if he is to balance his political views with his knowledge regarding IQ. What follows as a corollary from IQ as an independent property is mean differences among different populations. Caplan understands this. He’ll never explicitly say it, because at the end of the day he’s affiliated with a university and there is a political threshold that even the most ape-shit reactionary can’t cross when one is affiliated with higher learning in the United States.

A brief overview of notable populations in the United States and their associated IQ scores:

1. Ashkenazi Jews: 112
2. East Asians: 104
3. Gentile Whites: 100
4. Hispanics: 95
5. African Americans: 85

Hispanics are rapidly growing as a population in the United States and they reproduce far more quickly than Whites do. This is uncontroversial. However, the associated effects of lower intelligence, but not exclusively lower intelligence, is the lack of assimilation and its political implications.

Caplan is an anarcho-capitalist. Essentially, anarcho-capitalism is the political philosophy of society with no government, steered solely through voluntary transactions. I harbor many sympatheties for anarcho-capitalism. I’m libertarian, and I advocate for the most freedom that is palpable in society. But it is difficult to reconcile IQ literature with a notable tenet of anarcho capitalism; namely, open borders. With Caplan’s book, I feel he is attempting to ameliorate the relatively sterile white population into reproducing more to counteract the rapidly growing Hispanic population. Now, I know even with a white majority in the United States we have nothing remotely close to anarcho-capitalist society. But we have rights. We have a constitution. And we have significantly more liberty than any other country on Earth. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but Caplan likely feels the mass immigration of Hispanics could potentially spark a reverse trend in the state of our liberty. One need only look at the many failed socialist Latin American states for evidence of this.

Credit: The Audacious Epigone

He doesn’t explicitly say this, but as I said before, Caplan is a university affiliate, so there are intrinsic limitations on what he can publish. Caplan doesn’t need to cater to the white population of society by cat-calling them with a title like the one of this blog post. His readers are primarily white already, by virtue of self selection. Those that read consistently have higher IQ’s on average than those who don’t (this is obviously true intuitively, though I don’t know of any research on it) and those that are familiar with Bryan Caplan are also selected for higher intelligence- he’s a relatively obscure economist, who advocates for a fringe political ideology. Whites account for  >65% of society, and also have a fairly high mean intelligence. 

The counter argument would be that Caplan can’t reasonably expect his book to make a palpable difference in the political tides of the United States with such a limited reader pool. My qualm with this is humans are irrational creatures, and we want to believe our work has an effect beyond what it truly does. For Caplan, this may be the case, as this book isn’t centered primarily on economics and as a result is more accessible to the general population. 

The Triggering

As of today, my political beliefs are still primarily characterized as libertarian. But as a result of my keen interest in psychometrics, many of the facts I avidly read about are widely circulated in white nationalist circles, less so in libertarian avenues. Does mean I skew more towards the alt-right than I previously did? I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. However, as my HBD enlightenment grows, so too do my perceived flaws in libertarianism arise. Take, for example, political beliefs in a nation. If it happens to be the case that political views are more heavily derived from hereditary qualities than environment or reason, and hispanics predominantly do not agree with traditional American fundamentals (particularly liberty and democracy), then it very well may be the case that closing the borders in order to maintain and foster political views that produce both economic and social well being in a nation is a tenable option.

    This biological/genomic/hereditary component to politics becomes more and more apparent the further I read. I don’t consider myself racist in any way, but it becomes easy to imagine how carefully someone might need to tread.  With a more malleable mindset, one could fall prey to racism when presented with biological facts and their sociological corollaries. And although I certainly do not consider myself a good person, I do contemplate often what could be done to remedy innate deficits of ethnic groups in an effort to close the gap between them and higher achieving ones. The most cited and distinct gap in mean intellectual capacity between groups is the 85 IQ average of African-Americans and 100 IQ mean of U.S. whites. That’s a sizable gap, and considering the associative properties of those values it does seem to explain much of the disparity in social tendencies between those groups. However, I’ve read that British blacks average around 94. In the event that African American IQ can raise that high, we would see a far more equitable arrangement in social outcomes. It’s actually a very optimistic number, and you can think of the implications! That’s around the same disparity between White Americans and Asian Americans, and while there is a conspicuous difference between the two, the social outcomes aren’t too substantial- there might be a gifted class comprised of sixty percent Asians and forty percent Whites (not taking into account other ethnic groups in this example.) However, there has long been an effort to compensate for the deficits between black americans in particular, with not much success. (Since I am saying this, I suppose I should take it upon myself to actually find these studies that claim this- instead of referencing bloggers that summarize the studies.) Nonetheless, though Black Americans score lower than whites on average, I do realize that the distributions overlap and don’t have any difficulty judging a person on an individual basis. I suppose this is what differentiates me from the alt right; they either don’t care or don’t comprehend the intersecting distributions.

       With respect to my own cognitive ability, I genuinely do not know where to place it. It does appear to me at this point in time that it’s lopsided towards verbal prowess rather than fluid intelligence. There are routes I feel could guarantee me success (politics) but I find myself interested more in science, I love reading about associations in social sciences. Even statistics, which is a firmly quantitative discipline, I enjoy. Although I cannot quantify this, I feel I have decent mathematical intuition. I’ve also yet to see my peers calculate equations in their head as opposed to working them out on paper. Conversely, I don’t feel I understand mathematics at a quicker rate than any of my peers.

Either I hate planning things out because I’m inherently unorderly, or I’m unorderly because I make existential justifications to do so. If I plan out my entire life, I’d likely be reasonably successful. But if I develop a plan for my life starting from now and stick to it, I feel there’s something missing from it existentially.

    

Animus

This blog is primarily intended for those that value free speech and science above other principles. At any rate, it doesn’t truly matter whether I intend for this blog to predominantly consist of rational, independent thinkers because the content is going to select for those inclined anyways.

I don’t subscribe to any particular tenets but politically I identify as a libertarian, however fashionable it is in young right leaning circles today. I’m unabashedly right-wing, I don’t dance around it and label myself as a “moderate” or “independent.” Yes, I’m nuanced enough to understand that libertarianism is essentially classical liberalism and shares economic views with modern conservatives but aligns more closely with liberals on social issues. This is obvious, but given that modern libertarianism gains more traction in the conservative movement, I feel more comfortable labeling myself as such. Besides, I’m far more incensed by SJW’s than some regulation on marijuana (though I disagree wholeheartedly.)

IQ exists, it has statistical validity, and there are many societal outcomes associated with it. This too is obvious. It isn’t a difficult concept to grasp and the negligence of contemporary society regarding its existence is due solely to political correctness. This was eye-opening to me. Prior to familiarizing myself with intelligence and genomics I legitimately did not believe that scientific research could be stifled by politics. At least not in the 21st century.