Month: April 2019

One question that has vexed me for awhile is how and why trans issues and trans people have so much influence and such a large voice despite being such a small minority. “A survey in 2016, from the Williams Institute, estimated that 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. Studies from several nations, including the… Continue reading The trans sports debate

A long essay from The Washington Post The strongmen strike back: Authoritarianism has reemerged as the greatest threat to the liberal democratic world — a profound ideological, as well as strategic, challenge. And we have no idea how to confront it, by Robert Kagan. And, of course, the United States has been experiencing its own… Continue reading The Myth that Refuses to Die

Many on the left justify affirmative action by arguing that racial groups that get preferential treatment are only slightly less meritocratic than better-performing groups and or that such differences are small. As this excellent presentation by Glenn Loury shows (starts at 15 minutes in), the disparities and amount of favoritism given to blacks is huge,… Continue reading Affirmative action: much worse than expected

One thing I have noticed is, is how there is so much fact-checking and how little tolerance there is for bullshit online, especially on Reddit and in the comments. As the viralness of mundane, non-politicized topics shows, smart people–especially in recent years with the rise of the IDW–are tired of: moralizing sentimentalism the imposition of… Continue reading The ’90s and now, part 3

Facebook stock is surging higher on yet another quarter of huge earnings: Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak believes ad sales will only grow bigger with Instagram’s promise as an e-commerce tool. In raising his price target on Facebook shares to $195 from $190 on April 9, Nowak estimates Instagram could add $4 billion in incremental… Continue reading More correct tech & stock predictions

The liberal media is celebrating Trump’s polls “falling five points” after the Mueller report, but as shown below, you literally have two contradicting headlines within a day of each other. Which one is correct? According to 538, which is probably the most reliable meta-poll, Trump’s approval rating fell from 42.3 to 41.3, which is insignificant.… Continue reading Trump approval rating holds steady

Every day, there are headlines and predictions about how “college is a bubble,” or about the “trillions of dollars of student loan debt,” or how the “student loan bubble must burst,” and yet, as the years pass, tuition and debt keeps going up, and the people who keep predicting bubble and crisis must revise their… Continue reading Why the student loan and college ‘bubble’ won’t be bursting anytime soon

Vox Day is at it again: Jordan Peterson humiliates himself. Um…except that: No one really cares what The Guardian, which is a second-rate British newspaper, says; not Dr. Peterson’s fans, nor Zizek’s fans. The New York Times or the WSJ carries weight; The Guardian doesn’t, especially not an opinion column written by some no-name contributor.… Continue reading Jordan Peterson Zizek Debate

A few days ago I wrote about fake experts, who are taken seriously by the media despite having little to no credentials and having generally bad and or unoriginal ideas, but that does not mean actual credentialed experts are also immune from having bad ideas. An example of the latter is Peter Turchin, who despite… Continue reading Peter Turchin is (probably) wrong about crisis, again

I’m sure many have heard about a 2013 study that purports that people of the Victorian era were smarter than current-day people, which has gotten considerable media attention. Reaction times – a reliable marker of general intelligence – have declined steadily since the Victorian era from about 183 milliseconds to 250ms in men, and from… Continue reading Were the Victorians smarter? Probably not