Month: October 2018

On Medium.com, The New Yorker, and other ‘smart’ sites, articles that go viral often contain one or more of the following themes: 1. ‘The Enlightenment’ is/was overrated. For example, because it assumes humans are endowed with ‘reason’ and are ‘rational’. 2. Same for democracy. Democracy assumes voters are well-informed of the issues, but instead voters… Continue reading Common themes

Anti-IQ articles tend to be of dubious quality. A recent article from Nauseous magazine Your IQ Matters Less Than You Think, which went viral, is no exception. I am sharing this only because it was so viral and generated some interesting discussion. Regarding the apparent failure of the famous Terman study to produce ‘unambiguous exemplars… Continue reading Your IQ Matters Less Than You Think: Response

It’s funny how Vox Day continues to attack Jordan Peterson. Vox and others believe that by trying to ‘expose’ Dr. Peterson, that Dr. Peterson’s followers will disavow him and he’ll lose credibility. However, in early May, 2018, when Vox began his first round of attacks on Dr. Peterson, I predicted that Dr. Peterson’s popularity would… Continue reading Jordan Peterson Cult?

This tweet is generating a ton of discussion and is interpreted as betrayal by some: If confirmed Kavanaugh should step down. https://t.co/UwsH52ts3b — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) October 5, 2018 A related tweet by Bret Weinstein calling Kavanaugh ‘entitled’ (which is the type of labeling that the IDW is supposed to oppose) was also poorly… Continue reading Jordan Peterson Misfires

A few days ago, the NY Times article In Praise of Mediocrity went hugely viral on Hacker News, getting over 400 votes and over 200 comments. In contrast, a typical post that makes it to the ‘front page’ may only get 40-100 votes and only a few dozen comments, so it’s evident this article struck… Continue reading Deconstructing a viral article: In Praise of Mediocrity

These were pretty much no-brainers, but I may as well take credit where it is due. A couple months ago, the punching bag of the left, Elon Musk, got into trouble for making a tweet promising an acquisition of Tesla at $420/share, which turned out to be false. This lead to an SEC investigation and… Continue reading Two correct predictions

Everyone is aware of the long-standing division between classical liberals versus welfare/SJW-left. And among the right, there is the division between ‘establishment conservatives’ versus the alt-right. But among the the alt-right there is yet another division that I have observed over the past few years, specially since Trump’s victory. The division concerns the JQ (Jewish… Continue reading Alt Right- Two Variants

Tyler Cowen has written about the so-called ‘great stagnation‘ to describe what he perceives as stagnation of the U.S. economy and innovation in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. But the evidence suggests he was wrong. In terms of GDP, stock market gains, Silicon Valley innovation, and plethora of other metrics, there is no stagnation,… Continue reading The great slow-down