Skeptics and Rationalists Denying Race and Sex

Philosopher Michael Ruse died recently. He was mainly famous for being on the front lines of the evolution-religion wars, firmly on the side of the evolutionists.

Here is a recent interview, Michael Ruse - Philosophy of Race and Ethnicity, where he argues that racial differences are all cultural:

I think 4:59 what see is it's the there are differences 5:02 but the differences are cultural not 5:05 genetic and so that's why for instance 5:07 it Living in America, I'm very keen on 5:11 programs of diversification and that 5:14 sort of thing. you might have to do this 5:16 but let's make sure that people who are 5:19 not. you know, white Anglo sax Protestants 5:22 are not as it were pushed into the same 5:25 group as the rest. I mean we see this 5:27 don't we say with Catholics think of 5:29 Cath Catholics in the 19th century as we 5:31 go into the 20th century clearly way 5:34 below white Protestants now what this 5:38 because Catholics had some genetic 5:40 defect no or Jews no it was because they 5:44 didn't have the 5:46 opportunities Jews for instance we all 5:49 know how Harvard wouldn't let Jews in. we 5:52 know that we know that so the point is 5:55 what I'm saying is I think that there 5:57 are if you like racial differences. 6:00 clearly some are genetic but I see no 6:02 reason to think that any of these have 6:05 any significant thing on intelligence 6:08 and it's all cultural, we can change it.

This bizarre, as he wrote many books on Darwinian evolution. How would intelligence ever evolve, if it were not inherited in the genes?

Another well-known veteran of the evolutionist-skeptic community is Steven Novella. He also has a long and prolific history of scientific skepticism, rational thinking, and debunking pseudoscience.

Now Novella goes to rationalist meetings denying human sex differences. See When Skeptics Get It Wrong: Debunking The Debunker for a discussion of his errors:

Obviously, Dr Novella’s definitions don’t represent the consensus of biologists. Indeed, they weren’t even written by biologists, and they certainly didn’t come from biology journals. ...

Another interesting (and telling) component here is the number of biologists who are silent on the topic. That alone rings my skeptical alarm bells. Why would biologists be afraid to say sex is NOT binary in the current social climate? ...

Humans are definitely sexually dimorphic, and no one is arguing against that basic biological fact. However, although there are many ways to be male and female, there are still just two sexes.

Thirty years ago these guys help win the wars against Creationism, by arguing science, reason, Evolution, skepticism, and rational thinking. Now they make these leftist arguments that are not based on any science.

The fact is that sex is binary in humans and other mammals. People are either male or female. And nearly all human trait, whether physical, psychological, or behavioral, are heritable, and lead to genetic and racial differences.

These issues are not complicated. Whether Catholics are, on average, higher or lower in intelligence than Protestants, I do not know, but it can be measured. There is evidence that Ashkenazi Jews are of higher intelligence. Some of that is questioned by The myth of Jewish intelligence. I have not examined it myself.

Left-wingers have certain egalitarian goals, and they get upset at the idea of racial, sexual, or genetic differences, even when those differences are plain to see. Apparently those political goals have corrupted the thinking of people who are otherwise advocates of hard science.

The Major Polls were Tilted against Trump

The pollsters seriously underestimated Pres. Trump in 2016 and 2020, and assured us that they had taken corrective measures to avoid that in 2024.

They did it again in 2024. All except Rasmussen. Why?

The NY Times reported a week ago that Trump was confident of winning because his internal polls showing him winning.

Now the Harris campaign admits that her internal polling also show Trump winning the whole way.

Statistician Nate Silver told us that Trump had a 51% chance of winning. Others said this was going to be one of the closest in history. They were way off.

Polls can be wrong, and statistical estimates inaccurate. But it is hard to explain the major pollsters dramatically underestimating Trump in three straight elections, especially when Rasmussen and the private Republican and Democrat polls were getting it right.

Rasmussen Reports posted regular videos throughout the campaign explaining why the other pollsters were underestimating Trump. Maybe he was just lucky. Or maybe he is a better pollster. I think it is more likely that the other pollsters were biased against Trump, and refused to correct their biases even when they are pointed out.

The Lawfare against Trump Backfired

A NY Times law professor op-ed admits:

“our search for political salvation primarily through the law has backfired. To oppose Mr. Trump in his second term, liberals must learn the lesson of this defeat, which is that there is no alternative to persuading our fellow citizens of our beliefs.”

Really? Is that what those Trump prosecutions were all about?

The coalistion of Leftists and Deep State warmongers could not convince their fellow citizens of their beliefs, so their best alternative was to jail Trump?

This was sold to the public by saying that Trump was Hitler, so Hitler-like tactics must be used to destroy him.

Now that the election is over, Trump is being exonerated on all counts.

Pride Flag is now Flag of Canada

News:

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has fined Emo Township for refusing to fly the “Pride Flag” in June 2020.

In a November 20 decision, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal awarded Borderland Pride, a local LGBT activist group, $15,000 from Emo Township and Emo mayor Harold McQuaker after the small Ontario town refused to bend to the demands of LGBT activists and celebrate June as “pride” month.

Europe news:

Over the past three years, more than 1,300 citizens in Germany have faced legal proceedings for allegedly insulting public officials. The surge in cases, particularly under the current coalition government led by the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and Free Democrats (FDP), has prompted a nationwide debate over the limits of free speech. ...

One of the most controversial cases involved a 64-year-old pensioner from Bavaria, Stefan Niehoff, whose home was raided by police last week after he posted a meme calling Habeck an “imbecile.”

Geology has a White Supremacist Praxis'

The London Daily Mail reports:

A geography professor at a leading British university has described the study of rocks and the natural world as racist and linked the academic field to 'white supremacy'.

Kathryn Yusoff, who lectures at the prestigious Queen Mary University of London, said that the geology as a subject was 'riven by systematic racism' and influenced heavily by colonialism.

The study of prehistoric life through fossils was also branded as an enabler for racism, with the professor referring to the field of palaeontology as 'pale-ontology'.

Arguing that geology began as a 'colonial practice', Professor Yusoff stated in her book 'Geologic Life' that the extraction of metals such as gold and iron had created hierarchies, pushed materialism, ravaged environments and was the route cause of climate change.

Claiming that 'geology continues to function within a white supremacist praxis', the academic referenced the theft of land, mining and other geological practices as having led to the creation of white supremacy and a resulting 'geotrauma'.

Professor Yusoff's new book focuses on geology between the 17th and 19th centuries and puts forward the notion that non-white people have a closer relationship to land than white people.

'Broadly, black, brown, and indigenous subjects… have an intimacy with the earth that is unknown to the structural position of whiteness,' she wrote.

Ms Yusoff is described as a professor of 'inhuman geography' on the official Queen Mary University website.

Why do White folks put up with this? These professors are teaching falsehoods and hatred.

California Repeals Marriage Law

California Proposition 3 passed, and repealed the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

It does not explicitly authorize same-sex marriage, but leaves that to the courts.

That may seem odd, but it is consistent with the anti-democracy positions of today Democrat Party. VP Kamala Harris hardly took any political positions in the recent campaign. One thing she was clear on, was that she very much preferred the US Supreme Court dictated abortion law, as long as she agreed with the opinion. She sharply criticism the decision that allowed the states to pass their own abortion laws.

So who is eligible to marry in California? Underage couples, incest, polygamy, animals, robots, etc. No one knows. It is up to future courts to decide.

Part of the purpose of marriage is to have some institutional authority for the process. That has eroded. When the same-sex marriage cases went to the US Supreme Court, it refused to rule on the California marriage law, and instead ruled on certain other privileges, such as filing a federal joint tax return and getting a federal estate tax exemption. It was concerned with federal monetary side-issues, not the marriage itself.

The major religions, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, etc. do not accept same-sex marriage.

Marriage should at least mean joint custody of the resulting kids, but that is not true anymore. As I posted yesterday, a dad lost all rights over his sons, over his objection to transgenderizing one of them.

Dad loses Son to Tranny Mania

News:>

A California judge has permanently stripped Texas father Jeffrey Younger of all parental rights to his twin sons, James and Jude, granting Younger’s ex-wife, Anne Georgulas, the authority to chemically and surgically transition their 12-year-old son, James, against his father’s wishes.

Younger, whose ex-wife, a pediatrician, began transitioning their son to a girl at just two and a half years old, has fought tooth and nail to protect his child. Despite video evidence supporting his concerns, courts in Texas and California have systematically stripped him of his parental rights.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that a video of James Younger when he was only 3 years old surfaced, revealing that his mother put dresses on him and painted his fingernails when the child was just an infant!

The abuse from the mother all started because James liked a toy from the movie ‘Frozen’ meant for little girls.

This is part of why Pres. Trump won the election. Decent people on the Right and Left agree that is is seriously sick and wrong.

The dad tweets:

I lost all parental rights to my sons. Goodbye, boys. ...

Let my story be a cautionary one for young men. Fathers have no rights to their children. Do not enter the family law system. ...

No parent should do supervised visitation. It’s bad for the children, bad for the father, and allows courts invent false findings to further endanger the father.

I agree that supervised visitaion is demoralizing, humiliating, harmful, and evil.

Andrew Anglin writes:

I wrote yesterday about the retardedness of referring to American democracy as “fascism.”

Would a fascist country steal a man’s son and cut his dick off? It’s nonsensical.

This is something that can and would only ever happen in a democracy. Stealing sons and chopping off their dicks is fundamentally a democracy action. ...

This situation is a prime example of the fact that America is the single most sickening and satanic shithole that has ever existed in history. Nothing even remotely comparable to this has ever happened.

This is Satan unleashed on an industrial scale. It is total separation from God in the name of Jewishness and feminism.

Anglin is widely censored for saying stuff like this.

Possible to Reverse the Demographic Decline?

People have a lot of unrealistic expectations for Pres. Trump, both positive and negative.

An anonymous pessimist writes:

I’ve been angry about the decline of Western “Civilization” for a long time. ...

Let’s say Donald Trump by some miracle keeps all of his promises, that somehow he can break the entrenched power structures in the United States and accomplish his promises. Let’s imagine, and I’m sure it would feel glorious, that 10 million illegal migrants are rounded up and deported from the US, let’s imagine that government spending is curtailed, there are no more foreign wars, peace in Ukraine, imagine whatever you want. You can have it, all of it.

Would it reverse the demographic decline of the White race in America?

Would it get 5th-column alien elite Marxists out of our academia, every branch of government? Would it get them out of our banks and financial institutions?

Would it stop the owned, demonic, Satanic, pathologically lying corporate media machine from pumping lies into our televisions 24 hours a day, would it take the pesticides out of our food? Or for that matter the refined sugar or seed oil?

Most importantly, would it imprint on our people en masse a sense of the importance of preserving our bloodlines, heritage, traditions, health, self-confidence, virility and our institutions?

Truthfully, we all know it wouldn’t.

I think he is correct that nothing Trump can do will reverse the long-term demographic trends.

He expresses some pro-White views, but note that he has to do it anonymously. There is no open movement for the changes he really wants.

Demographics is Destiny

Richard Hanania writes, commenting on recent election results:

Time to Retire "Demographics is Destiny"

Stop trying to engineer future politics through racial bean counting

The Economist recently ran a poll of various countries across the world on whether they prefer Trump or Harris. Here are the very funny results.

What are the implications here for conservatives? One might say that if you want America to become a country that values small government and individual liberty, you need to import groups like Turks, Nigerians, and Egyptians. We definitely need fewer people of Northern European descent.

That would obviously be a very stupid conclusion to draw from the data. But why exactly did third worlders prefer Trump while wealthier countries supported Harris? Is it because Nigerians are more pro-market than the Dutch? Of course not. Trump just has a cultural appeal to the third world masses, while repulsing populations that are better educated.

The point here is that people, especially those who are poor, mostly don’t develop political attitudes based on issues, whether they’re thinking about their own countries or other nations.

So people's votes are correlated with their ethnicity, but not necessarily along the racial lines that you might expect. That is what he deduces from the recent election.

Sometimes I think Hanania is trolling us. If conservatives want the USA to have American values, why would we import anyone?

He explains that Trump overperformed in all non-white groups. Okay, but is that a reason to import more non-whites?

Even if importing Turks, Nigerians, and Egyptians would produce more pro-liberty votes, they would still be changing America to something different, and there is no good reason for such a change. We already have people who believe in liberty.

Revisiting the Crypto Wars

Cryptology professor Dan Bernstein criticizes Meredith Whittaker on her lecture, AI, Encryption, and the Sins of the 90s.

The argument is that strong end-to-end encryption made certain kinds of spying harder, but actually helped mass surveillance.

The big argument of the 1990s crypto wars was between strong and weak encryption. The technology for strong encryption had become available, making code breaking intractable. With weak encryption, there is the possibility that a well-funded spy agency could crack it. USA had favored weak encryption for international communications.

While I was on the side of strong encryption, it is difficult to make the economic case for it. That is, what were the economic losses from use of weak encryption, in dollars? Did any businesses actually lose money using weak encryption?

No. For most people, the most common use of encryption was to secure passwords in web browsers, and to secure credit card numbers for online purchases. Some browsers used weak encryption, and that was adequate for the purpose.

Even with strong encryption, spy agencies might still figure out with whom you are communicating.

There is still a debate in many countries over whether law enforcement should have the ability to crack encrypted communications.

For some people, privacy is very important. Most people do not care much, and are happy to give up some privacy so that Facebook or Google can deliver more targeted ads.

DEI is Wrecking the Space Program

We put a man on the Moon in 1969, but that was racist and sexist, because we put a White man on the Moon, and did it all with White male engineers. Even worse, one of the leaders was a German Nazi.

That is now embarrassing, so they made a movie about how all the calculations were done by Black women.

Nobody believed that, so the feds started the Artemis program to put a Black woman on the Moon, using DEI engineers. It has spent about $100 billion already, and a lunar landing is still 5-10 years away.

Now it is in danger:

NASA's plagued Space Launch System rocket, which is being developed to deliver the first astronauts to the Moon in over half a century, is on thin ice.

According to Ars Technica senior space reporter Eric Berger's insider sources, there's an "at least 50-50" chance that the rocket "will be canceled."

"Not Block 1B. Not Block 2," he added, referring to the variant that was used during NASA's uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022 and a more powerful design with a much higher translunar injection payload capacity, respectively. "All of it."

NASA spending is often justified as advancing technology, but this is not even doing that. The SpaceX rockets are reusable. The Artemis rockets are not. It is obsolete already.

The problem here is that the government now hires and operates based on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion now, while in the 1960s it was able to get the best and smartest for the Apollo program.

Our Culture Celebrates Racism against Whites

From a federal appeals court opinion by judge James C. Ho:

Our culture today increasingly accepts (if not celebrates) racism against whites.

Law professors teach that “angry white people” are “fearful of racial diversity,” and that “white evangelicals” in particular are “waging war on democracy.” Rena Steinzor, American Apocalypse 1, 10 (2024).

University students are told that there is a “cost of talking to white people ... the cost of your own life, as they suck you dry,” and that “[t]here are no good apples out there.” Michael Levenson, A Psychiatrist Invited to Yale Spoke of Fantasies of Shooting White People, N.Y. Times, June 6, 2021. As one university lecturer put it, “[w]hite people make my blood boil.” Id.

Writers and journalists proclaim that “‘White America’is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, Letter to My Son, The Atlantic, July 4, 2015. “White identity is inherently racist,” and “white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.” Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility 149 (2018). “Racist ideas make [w]hite people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas.” Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Anti-Racist 6 (2019). “[T]he white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.” Jordan Boyd, In Racist Screed, NYT’s 1619 Project Founder Calls ‘White Race’ ‘Barbaric Devils,’ ‘Bloodsuckers,’ Columbus ‘No Different Than Hitler’, The Federalist, June 25, 2020. See also Christopher F. Rufo, America’s Cultural Revolution (2023) (government agencies and corporations teach that “all white people” are racist and America is a “white supremacy system”); Heather Mac Donald, When Race Trumps Merit (2023); Barton Swaim, How ‘Antiracism’ Becomes Antisemitism, Wall St. J., Dec. 29, 2023; Jeremy Carl, The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart (2024).

So it’s not surprising that more institutions increasingly believe that they have cultural permission to tolerate (if not encourage) racism against whites, under the guise of promoting diversity. Racism is now edgy and exciting—so long as it’s against whites.

This is the world we live in today. The case involved a White male Trump-supporter student who was bullied in high school. He lost 9-9 on appeal because political views are not protected, and blaming Whites is just conventional wisdom.

“I wish I hadn’t been born male.”

Warren Farrell is the leading expert on troubles facing men and boys, and he writes:

In 2020, Joe Biden won young men under 30 by 15 points. In 2024, Donald Trump won them by 13 points. What happened, and what can Democrats do about it? As someone who has been elected three times to the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, I was worried about dynamics that I felt few Democrats were registering.

I saw these repeatedly as I was researching my book, “The Boy Crisis.” I recall interviewing a young man from Mill Valley, California, a city with deep Democratic Party ties. As the interview concluded, he broke down, “I wish I hadn’t been born male.”

I knew why: He had already shared: “In public schools and even in the private all-male school I attend, all we hear is ‘The future is female.’ That doesn’t inspire me for my future. As for masculinity, it’s ‘toxic masculinity.’ Then we are told we’re part of the patriarchy that makes rules to benefit men at the expense of women. The conclusion is that ‘Men are the oppressors; women are the oppressed.’ I can’t help being who I am.”

When I asked him who he talks with about this, he said, “My guy friends. They feel the same. But I’d never tell my girlfriend. She’s a feminist. She’d break up with me.”

We also have lots of people who are embarrassed to be born White, Christian, and American. They are all demonized and devalued by Democrats, and by the Kamala Harris campaign.

Election was a Big Win for Jews

80% of Jews voted against Pres. Trump. More importantly, the Jewish-controlled part of the news media was against him, and hundreds of millions of Jewish dollars were against him. So Jews were the big losers in the election, right?

Nope. Trump has announced appointments to Secretary of State and Defense, and National Intelligence. They are all staunchly pro-Israel, and more so than the Biden administration.

News:

The US election was not only a major victory for Donald Trump and the Republicans – but also for the already very influential Israel lobby, led by AIPAC. On social media, they boast how almost all of their candidates won their respective elections – while managing to “stop” a number of anti-Israel candidates. It has long been known that the lobby group has a huge, and according to many observers very destructive, influence on American politics, where any voice that in any way expresses criticism of Israel’s actions is demonized, fought and character assassinated. The advocacy campaigns waged by AIPAC and similar groups are widely seen as crucial to ensuring that the US continues to pump money and arms into Israel and give it its full support – regardless of the abuses and war crimes committed by the Israeli regime. After last week’s election, they openly boast of their influence on American politics, proudly declaring that almost all the candidates they funded also won their respective elections. “AIPAC endorsed 362 candidates and won in every primary we had a candidate on the ballot! We helped our friends win and defeated 11 anti-Israel candidates. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics”, they wrote on X.

Who Raised the Transgenderism Issue?

Piers Morgan hosted a debate on who made transgenderism a political issue.

Coming onto Uncensored today is host of 'The Rubin Report' Dave Rubin, host of 'The David Pakman Show' David Pakman, host of 'No Lie with Brian Tyler-Cohen' Brian Tyler-Cohen, podcast and radio host Ben Ferguson, Democratic activist Brianna Wu and member of DNC Finance Committee Lindy Li.

Pakman argued that transgenderism is a fringe issue of no significance to most citizens. Very few people are transgender, or affected by athletic competition controversies. Only Republicans are making a fuss, and they use it to demonize the marginalized. Kamala Harris never even mentioned the issue in any of her speeches or ads.

Pakman has the worse end of this argument. From what I can see, the Republicans would rather not discuss transgenderism at all. But it is forced on them, because:

Democrats put transgender flags everywhere.
Democrats put transgender propaganda in the schools.
Democrats use anti-discrimination laws to forces girls sports to allow boys to compete.
Democrats try to change children without parental notification or consent.
Democrats celebrate transgenderism with DEI affirmative action and benefits.

Interviews gave Harris multiple chances to back off her previous radical pro-transgender positions, and she refused.

All the LGBTQ issues are raised and pushed relentless by Democrats.

Update: Harris seems to be controlled by extreme leftists. Fox News reports:

A campaign official reportedly said Vice President Kamala Harris backed out of appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast out of fear of backlash within the Democratic Party. .

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Jennifer Palmieri, senior advisor to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, said talks about Harris appearing on "The Joe Rogan Experience" fell through "because of concerns at how the interview would be perceived within the Democratic Party."

"There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash," Palmieri reportedly said.

Rogan is not a right-winger. He endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020. But I guess Rogan is not leftist enough for her and her staff.

Update: The leftist Wash. Post editorial board now admits that we need a debate on trans-women in sports. It quotes a Democrat congressman:

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. … I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

He is being called transphobic for saying that.

Why the Democrats Lost

Marc Thiessen writes:

Donald Trump deserves enormous credit for his historic victory, in which he increased his support among almost every demographic group in the country. But Democrats made it possible with several catastrophic choices over the past four years. Here are the eight key blunders that paved the way for Trump’s comeback:

1. They ignored warnings from liberal economists that their massive new spending would unleash disastrous inflation.

2. They created a border disaster. Democrats knew that illegal immigration propelled Trump into the White House in 2016.

3. Their catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan convinced Americans they were incompetent.

4. They broke their promise to unite the country. Biden pledged in his inaugural address to put his “whole soul” into “bringing America together.”

5. They covered up Biden’s cognitive decline.

6. They didn’t give voters a benign alternative. Unlike Biden, who at least had the veneer of moderation, Democrats nominated the most radical Democratic ticket in the history of the country.

7. They offered Americans continuity when they wanted change.

8. Their campaign of lawfare locked in Trump’s nomination.

Any one of these mistakes might have been survivable, but together they created a perfect catastrophic storm that Trump rode back into the White House.

I agree with this.

On CNN, a Black man tries to explain:

A lot of families out there who don't believe that boys should play girls sports ...

Then he gets interrupted by another panelist saying "I'm not going to listen to transphobia ... listen to the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, ...".

Democrats are on the losing side of that argument. Yes, I have listened to those associations, and they are wrong, unscientific, sick, and perverted.

The transgender issue by itself is not particularly important to most people, Republicans or Democrats. But it symbolizes a very sharp difference of opinion between normies and the radical leftists who have taken over the Democrat Party, the medical associations, and CNN panelists.

San Harris is Sad about the Election

It is funny to hear an Atheist Jewish Leftist trying to rationalize his Trump hatred:

Sam Harris discusses the result of the 2024 presidential election, the lessons that the Democratic Party should draw from it, and the implications of a second Trump term.

If you just listen to the parts where Trump's name is not mentioned, you might expect him to be a Trump supporter. but then his Trump hatred overrides everything.

Sam Harris has no sense of free will, so he is just following the voices in head, and not making any deliberate decisions.

Jewish women voted Democrat at about a 90% rate, with Jewish men about 75%. The Orthodox and Israeli Jews mostly voted for Trump. These are rather extreme differences.

Update: Here is Sam Harris in essay form.

The Failure of Psychology

Adam Mastroianni podcast:

Ever since I started my training in experimental psychology, I've been haunted by a doubt: how do we know that all of our work amounts to anything? Are we even headed in the right direction? I propose five tests to answer this question, and I show that psychology passes one and fails the other four. We're stuck in the adolescence of our field because we haven't yet discovered a paradigm. There s a way to cross that threshold, but it requires entertaining some strange ideas.

He says that if clinical psychologists really had useful skills that they learned, then they would be able to outperfeorm amateurs in an objective study. But this has been studied, and psychologists do no better than those with no training.

These studies are so embarrassing that they have now been declared unethical.

He also says that the Big Five personality traits, a high point of serious psychology research, does no better than enneagrams. But both do better than Myers-Briggs.

About 30% of psychologists subscribe to discredited Freudian ideas.

He says that for Psychology to become a science, it needs a theory for how the mind works, and rules for obtaining information.

The more scientific parts of psychology are in testing for intelligence, personality traits, and mental disorders.

Russell T. Warne writes a Quillette essay on how IQ testing gets bad press.

Because of IQ’s distorted image, some of the most well-established facts about intelligence are unknown outside of the field:

A standardised test administered at the age of twelve can predict who will earn a PhD, register a patent, or achieve another major accomplishment by midlife.
Smarter people tend to live longer than average.
For most jobs, IQ is one of the best predictors of employee performance.
Genetic factors are a stronger influence on people’s IQs in adulthood than in childhood.
Some of the same genetic variants that are more common in low-IQ individuals are also more common in people with some mental-health conditions.

He notes that leftist journalists like to deny that IQ is meaningful, but they obviously do not believe what they are saying, because they happily report some IQ stories such as lead exposure lowering IQ. It is a little like those denying that race exists, while also arguing for racial reparations.

The upsetting thing about IQ is its relation to genetic determinism. People think that IQ is determines by genes, is innate and immutable, and determines life outcomes. Furthermore it is correlated with race, sex, nationality, and religion. That makes IQ scary.

Many Americans have Mental Illness

Here is NIH data on mental illness:

Mental illnesses are common in the United States and around the world. It is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (59.3 million in 2022; 23.1% of the U.S. adult population). ...

Prevalence of Any Mental Illness (AMI)

In 2022, there were an estimated 59.3 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with AMI. This number represented 23.1% of all U.S. adults.

The observed prevalence of AMI was higher among females (26.4%) than males (19.7%).

Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of AMI (36.2%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (29.4%) and aged 50 and older (13.9%).

The prevalence of AMI was highest among the adults reporting two or more races (35.2%), followed by White adults (24.6%). The prevalence of AMI was lowest among Asian adults (16.8%). ...

In 2022, among the 59.3 million adults with AMI, 30.0 million (50.6%) received mental health treatment in the past year.

More females with AMI (56.9%) received mental health treatment than males with AMI (41.6%).

Younger adults now consider it normal to be medicated with anti-psychotic drugs. Especially women.

The recent election has also convinced me that many of our elites, journalists, pundits, politicians, rich, celebrities, etc. are mentally ill. Many have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Schools from Harvard on down canceled so students can grieve over the election. Some are providing furry animals to pet. And counselors to talk to.

And there are many more with undiagnosed mental illnesses.

I do not know why mental illness would be increasing. Perhaps children today are not taught to solve their own problems.

Sweden being Destroyed by Migrants

News:

As Sweden’s murder rate soars, new data shows how much migrants are overrepresented in this growing trend.

According to Swedish government data, three out of four murders are committed by migrants, and the rate of gun murders per capita in Stockholm is 30 times that of London. In 2018 alone, 162 bomb blasts rocked the country — almost one every two days. In Sweden, the number of fatal shootings has increased significantly since 2017, resulting in a record-high number of shooting murders.

Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Brussels has included this data in a new report on the profound and often out-of-control effects of mass migration on Swedish society.

There was no good reason for Sweden to take all those criminal migrants. It is committing national suicide.

College is getting Cheaper

For decades, it college fees were increasing faster than inflation, and nothing could be done about it.

To my surprise, this has been reversed:

The actual price of tuition at many of America’s colleges continued a steady, decade-long decline as the sector enters an era of shrinking high-school enrollments and greater competition, according to analysis released Monday by the College Board.

While sticker prices have continued to balloon to as large as $100,000 at some private, nonprofit universities, the average net price — the remaining cost of tuition after institutional and grant aid is deducted — for undergraduate students entering their freshman year at these institutions clocked in at $16,510 for the 2024-25 academic year, down from $19,330 in 2006-07 (adjusted for inflation to 2024 dollars). Net prices at public institutions followed similar trend lines: $2,480 was the average amount charged in 2024-25 at in-state, four-year institutions, down from $4,340 in 2012-13 (inflation adjusted); and, according to the College Board, freshmen attending two-year colleges continue to receive on average enough grant aid to cover tuition and fees, a trend that dates back to 2009-10.

The article is behind a paywall, so this is all I have.

40 colleges have closed recently, and CNBC reports:

At least 20 colleges closed in 2024, and more are set to shut down after the current academic year, according to the latest tally by Implan, an economic software and analysis company.

Coming out of the pandemic, a small group of universities, including many in the Ivy League, experienced a record-breaking increase in applications, reports show.

So the elite colleges can be as selective as they want, but the others have to lower prices to meet declining demand.

Update: Tyler Cowan writes:

There are a lot of numbers, but here is the comparison I find most impressive: Adjusting for grants, rather than taking sticker prices at face value, the inflation-adjusted tuition cost for an in-state freshman at a four-year public university is $2,480 for this school year. That is a 40% decline from a decade ago…

As might be expected, the trajectory for student debt is down as well. About half of last year’s graduates had no student debt. In 2013, only 40% did. That famous saying from economics — if something cannot go on forever, it will stop — is basically true. Due to changes in the formula, aid for Pell Grants is up, which helps to limit both student debt and the expenses of college.

It is Morning Again in America

The title refers to a 1984 Ronald Reagan ad, described here, that helped him win 49 states.

See also Les Misérables | Do You Hear the People Sing?

It is commonly said that Republicans cannot win the popular vote, but they have now gotten over 50% in 5 of the last 12 presidental elections, and the Democrats only 3 times. In 4 cases, no one got a majority.

About 80% of the news media I have consumed in the last year has been anti-Trump. I read the indictments, newspaper articles, blogs, tweets, etc. This election was Good v Evil.

Kamala Harris really was a terrible candidate. She was the lowest IQ and lowest competence candidate in memory. She was the most extreme leftist. She was unable or unwilling to define her agenda. All she would say that she was pro-abortion and not Trump.

She was also the most divisive. She was anti-man, anti-white, anti-democracy, and favoring the prosecution of her political enemies. If she had been a White man with the same record, she would have done a lot worse.

The Democrat DEI faction wanted to get a DEI candidate nominated without going through primaries. NBC News reported a year ago:

Republicans float a quiet conspiracy theory that Biden won't be on the ballot ...

Though no incumbent president has declined to seek a second term since Lyndon Johnson in 1969, there is an unfounded conversation among a faction on the political right that goes something like this: Democratic power brokers will intervene at the last minute to replace a weakened 80-year-old Biden with someone else as the party’s nominee.

“So here’s the scenario that I think is perhaps the most likely and most dangerous,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on his podcast last month. “In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama.”

“I view this as a very serious danger,” he said.

That is what they did, but with Harris instead of Obama. It is funny how they thought Michelle Obama would be a more credible candidate than Harris. It is also funny how the press blames right-wingers for conspiracy theories, even when the theories are completely correct.

Claire Lehmann writes:

I spoke to various professionals who said that they had never voted Republican in their lives, but had voted for Trump that day due to his support — in their words — “for the Jews.” ...

By any objective standards, Elon Musk is a great man of history, who is influencing the course of human civilisation for generations to come. As one party-goer told me, “He caught a fucking rocket with mechanical chopsticks.” ...

As the final results came in that night, it became clear that what I witnessed in New York was playing out across the nation. The election wasn’t just a victory for Trump. It was a victory for a way of seeing the world that many thought dead: one where individual achievement matters, where male ambition serves a purpose, and where great men still shape the course of history.

Update: From the Harris concession:

The adage is, "Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars."

I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant billion of stars.

Makes no sense. If you fill the sky with light, then you cannot see the stars.

But then, she believes in Astrology!

Why Secular Jews Hate Trump

A Jew at Slate writes:

The Lie Trump Is Offering Jewish Voters ...

Jews have, for the past 100 years, overwhelmingly voted for Democratic presidential candidates. ...

“I gave them Golan Heights. I gave them the Abraham Accords. I recognized the capital of Israel and opened the embassy in Jerusalem. And most importantly of all, I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which was the worst deal ever made in the history of Israel, in the history of the Middle East,” Trump said at an event in September. ...

Most Orthodox Jews and Israelis support Trump, so it is hard to see how the Jewish religion requires opposing Trump. No, this Jew hates Trump because:

This is before we get to some of his greatest antisemitic hits from before this election, like when he dined with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes in 2022, or when he said there were “very fine people” among those chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally, or even before that, when he hired Steve Bannon to be his chief strategist in the White House.

Ahh, the fine people hoax, which Pres. Obama, Pres. Biden, and VP Harris keep saying. It is a lie, as even the left-wing fact-checkers agree.

As far as I can determine, people chanted “You will not replace us” in Charlottesville. Assuming they chanted "Jews", why are Jews and their surrogates so angry about people not wanting Jews to replace them with immigrants?

Apparently secular Jews reject most of the Jewish curstoms but believe, above all else, that the USA must import millions of foreigners to replace the native born.

I have now read about ten Jewish essays like this. They have very little to say about Harris being good, and very little bad about Trump's actual Presidency. The rambling rants against Trump read like the delusions of paranoid schizophrenic. They are not rational.

I don't know if this is related, but there is a stereotype of Jewish leftists being anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-masculine. The Harris campaign has realized that it has lost the male vote, and so it has put out ads to appeal to men, such as this. The ad portrays a Pittsburgh "girl dad" trying to support his family of a wife and two daughters. He is happy to have daughters instead of sons, and is offended by Trump's masculinity. The message seems to be that the future is female, and that men should subordinate their interests to whatever please, such as a female President and easier abortions.

Am I Racist?

I watched the Matt Walsh Daily Wire documentary Am I Racist?

It does an entertaining job of skewering DEI consultants.

It could have been better. Many of the DEI opinions are so ridiculous that it is hard to believe anyone really saying them.

Robin DiAngelo seems like a scammer, but the bigger issue is that Google, Netflix, Amazon, and others pay her the big bucks to say what she says. So she is just playing a role, and doing as she is paid. I would like to see why those companies hire her, and how those corporate seminars go. Do those companies really think that her seminars reduce racial animosities or misunderstandings, and make the employees more productive by working together better? It is hard to believe.

If I had to take such a seminar, I think that my main takeaway would be to assume that all Black people hate all White people. Whites should just avoid Blacks, because Blacks will show hostility to Whites no matter what.

Is that really what these companies teach their employees?

Walsh's previous movie mocked those sex experts who could not define a woman. That is, they deny that sex exists. I would have liked him to similarly go after those who deny that race exists.

Also, I would like to see the next step, and explain why sex and race matter.

DiAngelo is misunderstood:

DiAngelo describes white fragility to be a defensive response by a white person when their whiteness is highlighted or mentioned, or their racial worldview is challenged, whether this response is conscious or otherwise. ... DiAngelo proposes that white people are used to viewing themselves as "raceless" or the "default" race, and as such are insulated from feelings of racial discomfort.

In other words, most Whites are not racist, do not think about race, and get offended when you call them racist. She learned this doing corporate seminars that largely consisted of falsely accusing Whites of racism.

Some would hear this, and conclude that the White were doing it right. DiAngelo takes the attitude that if Blacks hate Whites, then Whites must have something to apologize for.

Again, she is just a grifter. Why are companies giving her millions? Why is her book required reading in colleges? Why did it get good reviews and sell millions of copies?

Maybe Walsh will make another movie where he goes after bigger fish.

Obstetricians are not Racist Baby Killers

In the aftermath of George Floyd, wokists desperately tried to find evidence of systematic racial discrimination. The most convincing example was a study showing Black babies die more often with White physicians.

Now it turns out that the study was fooled by a bogus correlation.

The Economist magazine reports:

“when Black newborns are cared for by Black physicians, the mortality penalty they suffer, as compared with White infants, is halved.”

This striking finding quickly captured national and international headlines, and generated nearly 700 Google Scholar citations. The study was widely interpreted—incorrectly, say the authors—as evidence that newborns should be matched to doctors of the same race, or that white doctors harboured racial animus against black babies. It even made it into the Supreme Court’s records as an argument in favour of affirmative action, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (mis)citing the findings. A supporting brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges and 45 other organisations mentioned the study as evidence that “For high-risk black newborns, having a black physician is tantamount to a miracle drug.”

Now a new study seems to have debunked the finding, to much less fanfare.

Black babies do have lower birth weight, and the underweight babies survive less often, but it has nothing to do with the physician's race. The only relevance of the physican's race is that the most difficult cases are more likely to be referred to an expert specialist, who is more likely to be White.

Will the bogus paper and the 700 citations issue corrections? No. The US Supreme Court did not its incorrect citation. Wokesters will continue to claim this proves systemic discrimination.

I criticized Justice Jackson for saying:

"For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live."

I did not know the study was completely bogus, but I am suspicious of any study when (1) it draws causal conclusions from a correlation; (2) there is no control group; and (3) the policy recommendation matches the woke agenda.

Use common sense. Do you really think White physicians are killing Black babies? I resent these accuxations. It is outrageous that scientific, medical, legal, and political authorities go along with them.

Trump is the Most Authentic Candidate

I see this:

Trump's Critics Keep Undermining Their Case by Lying About Stuff He Supposedly Said

Not news. Trump's critics have been lying about what he said for as long as I can remember. Pres. Joe Biden, VP Kamala Harris, and everyone else lie nearly every time. For example, they keep saying that Trump said Nazis were fine people, or that you should inject bleach to prevent covid.

His true comments were recorded and widely available, and it is plain that the accusations are deliberate lies.

There are also an assortment of allegations about what Trump said in private. These were not recorded, so they cannot be proved false, but they are mostly out-of-character and denied by witnesses.

In spite of this, people keep saying that Trump is the liar.

No, Trump is the most transparent politician I have even seen. He is exactly what he appears to be. He sometimes exaggerates, but he is not deceptive about it.

In constract, the Harris campaign tries to portray her as authentic, but it has failed. No one believes anything she says. She is just saying what her advisers recommend to win the election.

Does she agree with what the Biden administration has done? Does she agree with her radical leftist positions of five years ago? Her explanations are confusing and dishonest.

His biggest lie, according to his critics, is that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It is not a lie. He plainly believes that he would have won, but for various election irregularities. He may be right.

Here are the final video ads from Trump and Harris. Compare them yourself.

Then there is this late Harris ad. The main argument, from an 82-year-old movie star:

Kamala Harris will protect your right to disagree with her. ... The other guy, he demands unquestioning loyalty. ... I am Harrison Ford.

I liked some of his movie roles, but this is just too stupid. Trump stands for free speech. Harris stands for censorship. She is even supporting the prosecution of Trump, essentially for the crime of running against Biden-Harris.

Trump hired dozens of officials who were disloyal to him. Loyaly is evidently not a requirement. The Democrats have been far more successful in enforcing loyalty.

I wonder why people like Ford are really endorsing Harris. They cannot really be as stupid as their arguments. They must have other reasons.

Yes, I think Trump is much more honest than Ford or Harris. Trump is able to explain himself, clearly and convincingly.

Update: Here is a video from a couple of left-wingers on All The LIES Kamala Told In Her DC Ellipse Speech! Yes, her whole campaign is based on lies.

Prep Students cannot cope with Trump Win

NY Post:

An uber-woke, $65K-a-year New York City private school will allow “emotionally distressed” students to skip class the day after the election next week — in an eyebrow-raising move that drew ire from parents, including comedian Jerry Seinfeld, whose kids once attended the elite institution.

The upcoming presidential election “may be a high-stakes and emotional time” for students, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School administration wrote in a newsletter to parents titled “Election Day support.”

Students will not be assigned homework on Election Day and there will not be any assessments on Wednesday, the email obtained by The Post explained. ...

Psychologists would be available during the week to provide counseling.

Harris Jailed Parents for Truancy

Some RFKjr partisans have put out an excellent ad:

Dear Kamala Harris,

The vast majority of American men have no issue with electing a female president, our issue lies solely with you. Your reputation precedes you, defined by a relentless pursuit of power, from your tenure as California’s attorney general to the present day. Your track record presents concerns that we cannot overlook. You are simply a risk we are not willing to take.

The video show how Harris jailed parents for truancy. Watch it.

Harris is a low-IQ puppet who knows littls about the issues of the day, like war, economics, immigration, etc. Truancy is not on anyone's list of important issues.

But Harris spent her career as a prosecutor, and her proudest accomplishment was jailing parents for truancy.

I 1:19 learned that with the swipe of my pen I 1:23 could charge someone with the lowest 1:25 level offense that person could be 1:27 arrested they could lose time from work 1:30 and their family maybe lose their job 1:32 they'd have to come out of their own 1:33 pocket to help hire a lawyer they'd lose 1:36 standing in their Community

You would not want this woman in any position of responsibility.

The producers have some other excellent ads, such as What Happened To The Democrats?, Why Did Tulsi Gabbard Join Trump?, The Overturning Of Roe V Wade, What Else Are They Hiding?, Dear Kamala, Stop Pushing Us Toward WWIII, End Free Speech!, and For The Love Of Our Sons And Daughters.

It is funny how the political parties have re-aligned. The Democrat Party is now the party of endless war, billionaires, censors, fascists, etc.

CNN reports:

In the video, the group of actors began to brainstorm some superhero-themed catchphrases for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

After some clever ideas, including “Kamala Forever” – a play on Marvel’s blockbuster “Black Panther” franchise – the stars ultimately landed on: “I’m Kamala Harris and I’m down with democracy.”

Whose side are they on? Yes, Harris is the anti-democracy candidate, as she ousted the democratically elected nominee and is prosecuting her political enemies.

Defining America’s racial justice movement

AP reports:

One is of Michael Brown.

Brown’s death 10 years ago in Ferguson, Missouri, was a defining moment for America’s racial justice movement. It cast a global spotlight on longtime demands for reforms to systems subjecting millions of people to everything from economic discrimination to murder. ...

“I know that someone’s life was saved, that there was an officer, that there was an encounter where a police officer could have made a different decision had there not been 400 days of protest during the Ferguson uprising,” Bush said.

No one's life was saved. Thousands died, in excess murders.

Brown died while trying to kill a cop, after robbing a store. Democrats spread rumors that he was an innocent, shot in the back while saying "hands up don't shoot". They claimed cops routinely shoot innocent Blacks. It was all a lie. After hearing the facts, everyone agreed that Brown deserved to get shot.

A defining moment? I guess it was. It convinced me that demands for racial justice were just demands to let Blacks murder Whites. Those who defend Brown, or who use him as an example of police injustice, are just advocating a race war.