Author: smartistone

Another wrong-thinker who has been disinvited by the ‘open-minded, pro-science’ left: Linda Gottfredson, an expert on occupational interests and intelligence, is the latest disinvited speaker. (She's also on a McCarthyite list of "extremists" by the Southern Poverty Law Ctr, once a respected civil rights org., now aggressively illiberal.) https://t.co/7DDmbobr8q — Steven Pinker (@sapinker) October 14,… Continue reading Why we should support Steven Pinker

What happened to that ‘trade war’ that the liberal media was insistent would happen? Trump’s tariffs on China are doing the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to: But at the moment, the primary conclusion to draw is that the US-China trade war isn’t yet hurting China all that much, says Evans-Pritchard: “This is a… Continue reading Economics report: tariffs, inflation, stock market

It has been while since I updated about Bitcoin and others. It’s helpful to compare crypto-currencies relative to Bitcoin (BTC) than the U.S. Dollar. If BTC falls to $2k or less, then pretty much all the alts will become worthless. End of story. In the extremely unlikely even Bitcoin gets to $15k or higher, alt… Continue reading Crypto-currency report

Saudi media: Any US sanctions over Khashoggi would ‘stab its own economy to death’ But in a strongly worded op-ed published later on Sunday, Turki Aldakhil, general manager of the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel, warned that if the US imposed sanctions on Riyadh “it will stab its own economy to death,” cause oil prices to… Continue reading Khashoggi and Trump

The viralness of the Reddit post Recent Philosophy, visualized , which got over 9,000 up-votes, is further evidence we’re in a ‘philosophy boom.’ The article Progress in Philosophy, which went viral on Hacker News, also agrees with this trend. There’s a ton of interest in philosophy right now, whereas as recently as 10-15 years ago… Continue reading Why philosophy is so popular these days

In his best-seller Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman makes a distinction between two ‘systems’ of thinking: System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, … System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious I disagree they are always distinct, because often system 2 precedes system 1, except for possibly completely unforeseen events that require system 1,… Continue reading Notes: Kahneman System 1 and System 2 Thinking

Because Jordan Peterson and Nassim Taleb have a large fan base overlap, use similar platforms for communication (Twitter), oppose political correctness, and both have contrarian tendencies, it’s understandable why one may be inclined to believe they share a similar philosophy; however, their philosophies are quite dissimilar. I think Peterson is more ‘right wing’ than Taleb.… Continue reading Jordan Peterson vs. Nassim Taleb: Philosophical and Political Differences

With Brett Kavanaugh confirmed despite the predictable (and still ongoing) protestations from the the left, the news cycle once again resumes its lull. Of course, there is ‘stuff’ going on–but it’s stuff that is ongoing. As discussed in the post Unknown unknowns, although there are a lot of unknowns, they are all known. Or when… Continue reading Black swans and ongoing stories

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