It’s not news that many pundits, both on the left and the right, dislike Trump, who is possibly the most polarizing politician in recent history, but the reasons are not always as simple as ideological differences, but rather due to fundamental differences in how pundits see the world versus how most of Trump’s voters do.… Continue reading The pundit disconnect

One of the ironies of crypto currency is that although the developers are pretty smart, the average speculator or pundit is really dumb. One thing you may notice is that there a lot of people who have money but are stupid…people who hype crypto currencies and other bad investments, as well as those who invest… Continue reading James Altucher Wrong About Crypto Currency

BlogviewRon Unz Archive An Open Letter to the “Alt-Right” and Others Ron Unz is one of the rare specimens of smart empiricists. As I argue, empiricism and materialism are ‘easier’ than rationalism and idealism, because the former can merely defer to manifest reality whereas the latter has to create reality in his or her own… Continue reading Ron Unz on Hispanic Crime

Nassim Taleb is at it again with a Medium post that expounds on his anti-IQ twitter rant, which I critiqued earlier. Taleb’s argument, essentially, is that IQ tests only work on the ‘low end’ and not ‘high end’, and that IQ is not a predictor of above-average ability. Taleb’s post is mostly incoherent. As a… Continue reading Taleb: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (Wrong again!)

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or… Continue reading The Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Economic Injustice

Vox Day put out a really interesting video purporting to give the ‘true’ value of of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s IQ, which he puts at only 115-120. He bases this on Dr. Peterson failing to get into law school, which suggests an unimpressive LSAT score, and on Dr. Peterson’s own GRE scores. For reference, here is… Continue reading Jordan Peterson’s IQ…estimate and Vox Day may be wrong

From Quillette Reversing the Descent of Man: Heavy rates of unemployment are widely seen as related to the collapse of male morale and motivation. But it is a mistake to regard joblessness in itself as the cause of men’s problems. Male unemployment is no novelty, and reached high levels in the ’30s without weakening male… Continue reading The Descent of Man: Culture vs. Economics

Vox Day put out a video refuting Taleb’s criticisms of IQ, as well a blog post. Recommend watching the video in its entirety: I disagree regarding the ‘inappropriately excluded’ hypotheses, as discussed awhile back. My explanation is, IQ tests underestimate extremely high IQ, which means individuals who score above 135 or so may be miscategorized… Continue reading IQ and Politicians

This tweet went viral: Indentured servitude. https://t.co/Z8ZVpnOBl4 — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) December 24, 2018 It links to the article The Next Financial Calamity Is Coming. Here’s What to Watch. This chart immediately stands out: One may mistakenly believe that this is total debt outstanding, but the faint description actually says it is the number… Continue reading Student loan crisis: putting it in perspective

Merry Christmas From Ben Ben G-G-G-Garrison: We all want a wall, but for now have to settle for smaller wins. It’s about time we see Trump standing his ground for wall funding instead of caving in to a vague ‘border security’ compromise. I was right about the Michael Cohen indictment being self-limiting and about Trump… Continue reading Christmas Round-Up