The 9th installment of the Wealth, Intellectualism, and Individualism serial. I eventually want to get this wrapped up. Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8 The rise of intellectualism is also apparent in changing beauty standards and celebrity culture. For example, the permanent stardom of brunettes… Continue reading Wealth, Intellectualism, and Individualism, Part 9

When the Twitter Mob Came for Me Williamson is surprisingly controversial and incendiary for someone who the far-right deems a ‘cuck’ and is a ‘never-trumper’. I have a lot of respect for Williamson’s realism and unabashed style, and many of his ideas are correct or make sense, although his views on abortion are possibly inconsistent… Continue reading Kevin Williamson responds to his firing

To say things are slow is an understatement..they are downright glacial/comatose, as I correctly predicted last year. it seems the news cycle over the past few weeks, and this week in particular, has slowed to a trickle. There’s no need to keep close tabs on stuff, because if something even slightly important happens the media… Continue reading Biggest winners of the Trump administration: centrists, moderates; biggest losers: the far left

In response to the excellent New Statesmen article The IQ trap: how the study of genetics could transform education, Steven Pinker tweeted: The Blank Slate is cracking: With polygenic scores corroborating twin & adoption studies in showing IQ is in good part heritable, even schools & left-leaning mags are walkiing back the tabula rasa. https://t.co/mpKTDB8sQ7… Continue reading The IQ trap: how the study of genetics could transform education, New Statesmen

We’re still in the Smartest era. It began in 2009, picked up steam in 2013 with the post-2013 SJW backlash, and accelerated further in 2017 with the post-Trump rise of centrism and the ‘rational middle’. Notice how everything is in multiples of four. Between 2005-2009, for example, the political cultural landscape consisted of low-information activism… Continue reading The accent of the alt-middle/center: how it began

The surge from $6600 to $8300 got the usual losers in a frenzy on twitter and elsewhere. Such celebration will be short-lived because the sellers who drove the price from $11600 to $6600 are still here, and they continue to unload Bitcoin in 300-500 coin chunks at periodic intervals as shown below: Bitcoin spent 2… Continue reading Bitcoin update: it’s going lower

Mistakes happen for a reason It’s an interesting theory–that by opening trade relations with China, America gravely miscalculated and unleashed monster of its own doing–but unsupported by evidence. At any rate, Scientism on Twitter had a good elaboration of what it means that “we got China wrong”. What did USG really think? Was it just… Continue reading Does the rise of China pose a threat to the U.S.? Likely not

See part 1 Eliezer Yudkowsky disagrees with Scott’s Crypto Autopsy post, writing: The idea of “rationality” is that we can talk about general, abstract algorithms of cognition which tend to produce better or worse results. If there’s no general thinking pattern that produces a systematically better result, you were perfectly rational. If there’s no thinking… Continue reading Bitcoin and Rationality, Part 2: Why Bitcoin is not like the lottery, and when to sell

From Vox: The Bell Curve is about policy. And it’s wrong. What’s more, despite the mythmaking around Murray, nobody has silenced or stymied him. He is one of the most successful authors of policy-relevant nonfiction working in America today. He’s ensconced at the center of the conservative policy establishment as an emeritus scholar at the… Continue reading Matthew Yglesias regarding Charles Murray and The Bell Curve

Some confuse Jordan Peterson for being an optimist. He’s not. He’s a realist, and sometimes realism calls for optimism, and other times pessimism. For people with high IQs and STEM skills, now is time for optimism. College grads, particularity in STEM, fared the best in the years following the 2008 crisis. For those with average… Continue reading Society’s Invisible Men