This article from Quillette Why Should We Be Good? went viral, but it possibly gets some things wrong. Today we are witnessing an irrepressible and admirable pushback against the specters of ‘cultural relativism’ and moral ‘nihilism.’ On the Right, thinkers such as Patrick Deneen and Jordan Peterson have responded to an increasingly cynical postmodern culture… Continue reading Moral Nihilism

Right now the big story is Trump’s Supreme Court appointment. Supreme Court appointments are supposed to last a lifetime, but positions have changed hands far more frequently than one would intuitively expect. Since 2005, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch have acceded the position, and now there will be a… Continue reading Trump updates

From Scott’s Periscope https://www.pscp.tv/w/1nAKEQjQkpYKL Although I usually agree with Scott Adams, when political pundits start pontificating about HBD, they tend to sound misinformed, often misconstruing or getting the pro-HBD arguments wrong. Even someone as smart as Scott Adams gets it wrong. When these so-called ‘racists’ talk about white superiority, they don’t mean at the individual… Continue reading Scott Adams gets HBD Wrong

In an uncharacteristically short post, Scott discusses the state of the so-called rationality community. What is rationalism, anyway, or at least in the context of this internet movement and community? What makes someone or something rational? Rationalism, in my opinion, encompasses more than object-level topics such as AI risk, human psychology, or effective altruism. Although… Continue reading The Craft of Rationality

From Scott Adams’ Periscope https://www.pscp.tv/w/1yNGaXyVWDDKj I agree with the beginning of the video, that America’s system of government has proven to be surprisingly resilient. But more interestingly, Scott takes a neo-liberal view, praising America’s ‘checks and balances system’ and how the media (by acting as a defacto branch of government) shaped Trump’s policy regarding his… Continue reading Why Scott Adams is so popular

From Paul Graham: Economic Inequality and The Refragmentation: Economics is a social science, which means, to some extent, it affects everyone, allowing anyone to participate in the debate. Wealth inequality touches everyone, including the rich, who are often blamed for wealth inequality. People have observed how much things have changed in this ‘new era’ we… Continue reading Wealth, Intellectualism, and Individualism, Part 16

Repeating something over and over does not make it so. For the ‘left’, for example, it’s the narrative that Trump is bad for the economy. The evidence suggest his contributions are positive or, at worst, neutral. Nearly six months later, the tariffs have had no deleterious effects on GDP or other metrics. One can argue… Continue reading The death of neoconservatism? Unlikely

As an example of contrarian journalism and the post-2013 mainstream backlash against democracy, an article by Vox.com, 3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake, went hugely viral and was shared on Facebook over forty thousand times. As recently as two decades ago, such a contrarian and potentially controversial article would not have appeared in… Continue reading Wealth, Intellectualism, and Individualism, Part 15

Scott recently published a 2-part series on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century: BOOK REVIEW: CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (he also wrote two follow-up posts) When one includes the thee posts but also all the comments on Scott’s blog and on Reddit, that is a considerable amount of reading. By my estimate, over… Continue reading Thomas Piketty Analysis, and the US Economy

The news cycle has been pretty slow as of late. Although there is a lot of stuff going on, it falls under the predictable/ongoing quadrant, than being surprising or unexpected. It’s not like “OMG..this is totally unexpected!” There’s gonna be more immigration, like it or not. The people who are in charge are powerless to… Continue reading Trump, threats, & the news cycle