Month: May 2017

The importance of IQ

From Vox Day, published in 2012 The importance of IQ: For some reason, the discussion of IQ differences makes people uncomfortable; it doesn’t matter how obviously intelligent one is, people still find it offensive in a way that they never find a tall man being straightforward about his height is. This is strange, because one… Continue reading The importance of IQ

Stuck in the quicksand of philosophy

The System that Wasn’t There: Ayn Rand’s Failed Philosophy (and why it matters) -Nicholas McGinnis Unsurprisingly, the politicians and businessmen who admire Rand focus on such policy recommendations and are rather less familiar with, for instance, her grounds for rejecting the analytic-synthetic distinction. There’s a radical disconnect between the impact her political thought and the… Continue reading Stuck in the quicksand of philosophy

System-based rationalism, part 2

The systems-based approach to rationalism could not have foreseen Trump’s win (and neither could the behaviorist approach), but it predicts that policy, despite the pretense of populism, will resemble something similar to neoconservatism.

The Atomic Bomb as a Hungarian High School Science Fair Project? Hardly

Scott’s latest article, The Atomic Bomb Considered as Hungarian High School Science Fair Project, went viral, as most of his articles do. It’s as interesting dissecting why an article goes viral, than studying the content of the article itself. The title and the premise invokes mental imagery of a renegade band of Hungarian scientists working… Continue reading The Atomic Bomb as a Hungarian High School Science Fair Project? Hardly

A systems-based approach to rationalism

Most discussions of rationalism involve the study of cognitive biases, personality, and human behavior, but, imho, a ‘systems/logical’ approach to rationalism is more propitious than understanding cognitive biases and human behavior. I believe that rationalism is to choose the optimal choice of all available options. Once one acquires an understanding of the fundamentals of an… Continue reading A systems-based approach to rationalism

Bryan Caplan and Dave Rubin: Anarcho-Capitalism, Economics, and Immigration (Full Interview)

I wanted to like this video more, but there is too much hand waving. It’s all based on assumptions. He doesn’t cite any studies/data except for a “1930’s charity”. Maybe he is right, maybe he is wrong. Who knows. Free markets produce improvements, but other times not. Yahoo Finance is still awful and has gotten… Continue reading Bryan Caplan and Dave Rubin: Anarcho-Capitalism, Economics, and Immigration (Full Interview)

The Inescapable Pull of Biology

This story is going hugely viral: In ‘Enormous Success,’ Scientists Tie 52 Genes to Human Intelligence This comment stood out: Ive known people who were related to certain very famous physicists and their intelligence was obviously much higher than most people. As in very conspicuous. There is no doubt thay intelligence is purely genetic. The… Continue reading The Inescapable Pull of Biology

How much should a philosopher be blamed for the consequences of his beliefs

Marxist Origins of Communism, I Communism is, he explains, “the positive transcendence of private property, or human self-estrangement, and therefore the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man… the complete return of man to himself as a social being…” (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844) Innumerable social thinkers disagree with much of… Continue reading How much should a philosopher be blamed for the consequences of his beliefs

Collapse

Over the past few years, there has been considerable interest in the subject of ‘collapse’, whether it be the collapse of America as a superpower, economic collapse, or the collapse of civilization, in general. Reddit even has a popular sub devoted to discussing collapse, appropriately named /r/collapse, which has become a sub-culture in its own… Continue reading Collapse