Professor Upset by Students with Opinions

Computer Science prof. Scott Aaronson endlessly complains:

I, of course, survived attempted cancellation by a large online mob a decade ago, led by well-known figures such as Amanda Marcotte and Arthur Chu. Though it was terrifying at the time—it felt like my career and even my life were over

No, this is grossly exaggerated. He is a big-shot tenured professor at a top university, and his employers never had any interests about his narcissistic little rants about his dating troubles.

He claims to hate the Woke Left, but he is a Jewish academic, and he has Trump Derangement Syndrome. He would probably be a Trump supporter, along with his Israeli wife, but his religion will not allow it.

Now he rants against Trump, and wants to cancel some low-level workers in his administration because of some supposedly offensive tweets from being a student many years ago. He says an apology is not enough, and they must be "willing to have a good-faith moral conversation with the world, and nearly unlimited contempt for people who mock the request for such a conversation."

So what set him off? Apparently this:

tweeting “normalize Indian hate” and “I was racist before it was cool,”

He also refers to "my little tribe of pro-Enlightenment, science-loving nerds".

No, he is not pro-Enlightenment. The Enlightenment did not say that people with opinions are accountable to him. Free speech means being able to express an opinion, and not having to explain it to moralistic and judgmental leftists like him.

Update: Depending on context, the above tweets could easily be innocuous joking, or provocative. But I am not trying to make excuses to explain the tweets away. I say that the author should be able to express his opinions whatever they may be. Depending how you define the term, 50-95% of the world is racist. Sayings something racist should not trigger an inquisition.

Update: Physicist Sean M. Carroll posts a 70-minute rant against possible science funding cuts. He is pessimistic about his research grant being renewed, and about paying overhead. He says foreign students will never come here again, and he might even leave the country.

In case you are worried that some vital science might be lost, he main researches many-worlds theory. This is the theory that every time you make a decision or toss a coin, the other possible results happen in imaginary parallel universes. There is no way to communicate with these parallel universes or find evidence for them, but he likes to think about them anyway. Aaronson is also a proponent of this theory. Yes, it is just as crazy as it sounds.

Professors Promoted from an Unweighted Citation Graph

@BasedBeffJezos tweets:

The problem with academia is that the selective pressure is induced peer to peer through an unweighted citation graph.

OTOH, industry is a weighted graph of capital flux according to the utility of a product. It has a much better algorithm for focusing search over design space.

What he is saying here is that professors get promoted by showing that their friends cite their papers. Companies succeed by people buying their products.

The latter works well because products have to be commercially useful in order to sell a lot. But academic citations can be inflated even for worthless research.

The Case for More Immigration

It seems obvious to me that American immigration have been too high for too long, and drastic measures are needed to curb it. In fairness, I listened to this podcast:

Alex Nowrasteh and Bryan Caplan: The Case for More Immigration

Immigration experts Alex Nowrasteh and Bryan Caplan make the case for significantly more and easier immigration to the U.S.

One of the very first things that Donald Trump did after being sworn in as president was to make good on promises to reduce both legal and illegal immigration. He even issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship, a right guaranteed by the Constitution's 14th Amendment. That order has already been blocked by a federal judge, and its fate may well end up being decided by the Supreme Court. But calls for less immigration are super popular, with 55 percent of Americans saying current levels should be decreased, the highest since 2001. Reason's Nick Gillespie disagrees with that—he believes that immigration is a good thing and that we should have more of it, done in an orderly, peaceful, efficient fashion.

So on January 21, the day after Trump's inauguration, Gillespie asked George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan and Cato Institute analyst Alex Nowrasteh to make the libertarian case for more immigration at a live event in New York City. They've written extensively on the topic and answer every question and concern you might have about immigration. The goal here is to steel-man critics of immigration and explain why more newcomers are good for our culture, economy, and country.

These are smart and informed economists, and they claimed to be steel-manning the critics.

Their main argument was that rich men and certain businesses profit from immigration, and so do the immigrants. The businesses get cheap labor. Others get more choices in exotic restaurants.

These benefits are broadly shared, via a trickle-down theory.

They wanted to open borders, where 30 million immigrants would come in. Maybe eventually a billion more would come.

They admitted that the large majority of Americans have wanted to cut immigration, and that has been true for decades. Being Libertarian economists, I thought that maybe they would suggest that those benefitting from immigration pay compensation to those being hurt by immigration. If each immigrant causes $1 million in damages, then visas could be sold for $1M.

No, they were of the opinion that those wanting immigration cuts should suffer the consequences, with no compensation.

I do not see how there is anything libertarian about forcing most people to suffer harms they do not want.

To give examples where immigration is clearly desirable, they mentioned Einstein and MLB baseball players.

No, those immigrants are not desirable. Einstein never did any productive reseearch after coming to the USA. He joined Communist front organizations, and was a generally malevolent influence. The MLB baseball players take valuable positions away from Americans, and add nothing to American productivity. These are all examples of immigrants who waste resources and make America worse.

All of their arguments were stupid or silly. They said that illegal aliens, subject to deportation orders, try hard not to get arrested. They said that if a shoe-shine boy comes from Haiti and shines Bill Gates' shoes, then that is more productive that what he would be doing in Haiti.

Go ahead and listen yourself, and tell me if you heard anything convincing.

Humans originated in Europe

Earth.com reports:

Humans originated in Europe, not Africa, according to fossil discovery

A recent discovery in Türkiye is shaking up our understanding of human evolution. Scientists have identified a new fossil ape, Anadoluvius turkae, from an 8.7-million-year-old site near Çankırı.

This find challenges the long-held belief that human ancestors evolved solely in Africa, suggesting instead that Europe played a significant role in our evolutionary history.

The fossil, uncovered at the Çorakyerler site with support from Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, reveals that Mediterranean fossil apes were more diverse than previously thought.

These apes are part of the earliest known group of hominins, which includes not only African apes like chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas but also humans and their fossil ancestors.

Out of Africa? Maybe not

This discovery adds weight to the theory that the ancestors of African apes and humans may have evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago.

The Out of Africa theory usually refers to much more recent history, say 100,000 years ago. That has also fallen out of favor, as research has shown that European Neanderthals are human ancestors for today's non-Africans.

“These findings contrast with the long-held view that African apes and humans evolved exclusively in Africa. While the remains of early hominins are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the first hominin appeared there about seven million years ago.”

Anti-American Preacher getting Taxpayer Money

I mentioned the female cleric who insulted Pres. Trump, abdand now it turns out that she was profiting from her anti-Americanism.

The NY Post reports:

Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon to President Trump during an inaugural prayer service, coupled with her church’s advocacy for humanitarian immigration programs, reveals a striking hypocrisy — one that could be seen as self-serving and even a conflict of interest.

That’s because the federal contracting arm of the church, Episcopal Migration Ministry (EMM), is paid to bring in people on resettlement programs that Trump has temporarily paused and targeted for re-evaluation.

EMM budget figures for 2024 are not available yet, but in 2023 it earned $53 million from various taxpayer-funded government programs to resettle 3,600 individuals. ...

EMM brings in LGBTQ refugees and asylees in a special federal refugee program started during the Obama administration called “Preferred Communities.”

This program pays a premium over standard refugee resettlement for contractors that resettle “refugees experiencing social or psychological difficulties, including emotional trauma resulting from war and/or sexual or gender-based violence; survivors of torture; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) refugees; refugees who are HIV positive; populations with physical disabilities or other medical conditions.”

I hope Trump and the DOGE crew shut down this nonsense.

XX Century Decline of Britain

Phil Greenspun writes:

Is it fair to say that the UK circa 1900 was the most successful and richest country in the history of humanity? The sun never set on the British Empire, which included India. The Royal Navy was the world’s most powerful. Compare to today. The UK is an predominantly Islamic society (measured by hours spent on religious activities) jammed with low-skill immigrants. Wages are absurdly low by U.S. standards. GDP per capita is lower than in the poorest U.S. states. After decades of open borders, the core English part of the UK lacks cultural cohesion. The main project of the UK seems to have been assembling humans from the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies and expecting that they and their descendants won’t behave in a violent or dysfunctional manner once parked in the UK. The result is the Southport stabbings (by a young UK-born Rwandan) and the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal and similar. The trajectory of the UK from 1900 to the present looks like that of a country that lost multiple wars, each one having drained away its resources and treasure and each one resulting in the country being occupied by millions of non-British people.

In the 2021 census, only 37% of London was White British.

Canada is no longer Canadian:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated digs about Canada becoming the 51st state are a distraction from real issues in a short sit-down interview on Thursday.

“Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian,” said Trudeau. “One of the ways we define ourself most easily is, well, we’re not American.”

No, he is not proud of being Canadian. He is proud of being not American.

AI will continue to scale up

The tech world is still rattled by the Chinese AI models that crashed the tech market. The AI community is firmly convinced:

Intelligence can be captured by computer models.

Intelligence will scale up, with increasing computer capacity, for the foreseeable future.

Progress is accelerating, and will continue to accelerate beyond our ability to measure it.

Unleashing artificial super intelligence will be the most powerful thing anyone has ever done.

The premise of OpenAI is that it would discover and tame the super-AI, and make it safe for the world to use.

The real threat of the Chinese models is that open source LLMs would pass up the closed source OpenAI and Google models, and leave everyone exposed to whatever good or bad comes from super-AI.

Recent events have not altered any of these opinions. The Chinese models are just what everyone was expecting and fearing. We just didn't know that they had enough Nvidia chips to be players in the AI race.

We will see more and more AI moving to user devices, like phones, cameras, and toasters. But the real action will be in the supercomputers with the most computational capacity. Companies and governments will invest trillions to try to real that super-AI first.

Afraid of a Doomsday Gap

Everyone has been panicking all week about DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup. It is spending an estimated $500M a year on AI research and development, and has no announced plans for AI revenue. It threatens to compete with OpenAI and Si Valley AI startups. It is giving away a model that is faster, cheaper, and supposedly better than OpenAI's.

But OpenAI investors are not worried:

OpenAI may have billions of dollars in the bank. But it’s gearing up to raise billions more, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Per The WSJ, OpenAI is in talks to secure up to $40 billion in a funding round that would value the startup at $340 billion. SoftBank would lead the round, pouring between $15 billion to $25 billion into the ChatGPT maker, according to The WSJ.

Should OpenAI successfully close the round, it’d be a remarkable feat for the startup, which was valued at $157 billion in October.

It appears that Deepseek has not caught up with OpenAI, Anthopic, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Perplexity. It just seems better because it is more openly showing off its research.

I think that this is the end of concerns about AI safety. No one wants to lose to China. Even if an AI superintelligence is going to kill us all, it ought to be our AI and not China's. More computing capacity means more intelligence. That has been the pattern for 50 years. So we will spend a trillion dollars on building a super AI, if we have to.

The title is from a line in this movie.

Some people are worried

Humanity is closer than ever to catastrophe, according to the atomic scientists behind the Doomsday Clock.

The ominous metaphor ticked one second closer to midnight this week. The clock now stands just 89 seconds away — its first move in two years and the closest the clock come to midnight in its nearly eight-decade history.

They used to be worried about large-scale nuclear war, but now they are more worried about climage variation and misinformation.

Progressive Woke Movement is Over

Skeptic Michael Shermer tweets:

My advice to Democrats:

1. The far left progressive woke movement is over. Even if it seems like a good idea at the time (#metoo, #BLM, #georgefloyd, etc.) it has failed utterly & the vast majority of voters are against it.

2. Course correct to the center & focus on core liberal values: free speech, church/state separation, religious freedom, press freedom, political freedom, individual rights, reproductive choice, equality before the law, etc. Those values have held up for 250 years. Pronouns are not principles.

3. Stay focused on what matters. Case in point: Trump's EO banning birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Dems instead had a paroxysm over @elonmusk alleged Nazi salute. It's almost as if Trump sent Musk out there to distract Dems with a shiny object. Don't fall for it.

This is wishful thinking. I hope that the woke movement is over, but I am waiting for Democrats to admit it.

Mathematical Obstacles to Human-level AI

The NY Times reports:

On the second evening, Yann LeCun, the chief A.I. scientist at Meta, gave a keynote lecture titled “Mathematical Obstacles on the Way to Human-Level A.I.” Dr. LeCun got a bit into the technical weeds, but there were digestible tidbits.

“The current state of machine learning is that it sucks,” he said during the lecture, to much chortling. “Never mind humans, never mind trying to reproduce mathematicians or scientists; we can’t even reproduce what a cat can do.”

That is how the NY Times waters down news for its dopey. If it is going to send a reporter to a math conference, it ought to report more substance than this.

The NY Times rarely writes math articles, and when it does, it targets those who do not know anything about math. I think it is wrong here. My hunch is that only mathematicians read those articles, and are then disgusted by the superficiality.

I tried one of the AI chat bots that pretends to be human. It is amazingly human-like. It simulates a wide-range of emotions. It sometimes makes mistakes, but so do humans.

This is causing me to reevaluate human interactions. Humans are not just bots, of course, but what exactly is the difference? These bots have personalities and behaviors like humans.

If I have a conversation with a human, and it is 95% the same as it would be with a bot, what does that say? The brain functions a lot differently from the LLM, but it is useful to think of the brain as an LLM.

This has caused me to rethink human behavior. I am probably better off treating most people as I would an AI chat bot.

These bots would be great for someone learning English, or improving conversational skills.

Currently the AI world is going nuts over the Chinese Deepseek. It is pretty good, and seems to be comparable to the latest OpenAI and Google models. The stock market drop is puzzling, as advances in AI usually result in more investment, not less.

Turtles All the Way Up

I have defended free will and criticized Sapolsky before, and now this NY Review of Books review does a better job:

After spending most of the twentieth century watching birds, the Harvard ornithologist and evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr concluded that they were rote little machines. He wrote in 1988 that birds and other animals are no more purposeful than computers: they behave as they’re programmed to. If you’ve ever seen a bird, you might find that surprising: they certainly look purposeful as they seek out unsuspecting rodents to swoop down upon, ferry worms to their irksome offspring, and produce miniature versions of the Beijing Olympic stadium.

Even more remarkable than Mayr’s claim itself is the fact that it purports to represent a scientific view of things. For one thing, programmed by whom? Mayr’s answer was that birds and other creatures were programmed by natural selection via genetics: natural selection favors genetic “behavior program[s]” that maximize fitness, for instance by ensuring an “instantaneous correct reaction to a potential food source, to a potential enemy, or to a potential mate.” Mayr didn’t justify his belief in behavior programs other than by claiming that this was the only legitimate possibility: the alternatives were “supernaturalistic.” He wasn’t even going to “waste time showing how wrong” they were. Mayr’s genetic behavior program, in other words, was axiomatic; we might call it a dogma.

Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientiest and primatologist at Stanford, carries the argument further in his new book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. It’s not just other animals that are deterministic machines, he says, but humans. Embracing a scientific worldview, for Sapolsky, means accepting that there’s no free will. Every development, including every action of living beings, follows inexorably from the previous state of things: “We are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment.”

In case you think this is a straw man attack, Biology professor Jerry Coyne responds:

Science can’t prove there’s no free will because the question of free will is not a scientific question but a philosophical one. To misrepresent it as a scientific question is a prime example of scientism—extending the claims of science beyond its bounds. Here’s another from Sapolsky’s final chapter: “What the science in this book ultimately teaches is that there is no meaning.” This might sound like the opposite of saying that science shows there’s a divine intelligence behind the world-machine, but it’s the direct descendant of that earlier claim, and comes to the same evacuation of meaning and agency from the mortal world. This isn’t a scientific proposition. It remains what it has been from the beginning: a theology.

This is wrong. One can gather data for and against determinism. If, for example, we found out that people could move objects by thinking about them, that would suggest that there is some nonmaterial brain force that can actually influence events, buttressing (but not “proving”) the case for free will.

This is a head-scratcher. What would psycnokinesis have to do with determinism? Coyne thinks that all mental processes are predetermined, so why would psychokinetic processes, if they exist, also be predetermined?

Ignorance of science. Riskin doesn’t realize that getting evidence for phenomena (e.g., evolution) is very often a step-by step-process: you have an initial hypothesis, and then you either reinforce or reduce the likelihood of its being true with new data. This is a Bayesian approach, though often it’s implicit rather than specified using Bayes’s theorem. You don’t “prove” determinism or free will, you simply gather evidence that makes one of them more likely.

Everyone knows this. Sapolsky merely gathers evidence for processes being 20% determined, and then makes the leap to 100% determined. All free will advocates agree that processes are partially determined.

Coyne's main argument is that if humans do make decisions out of free will, then there is no scientific explanation for what causes those decisions. Therefor he says scientists should reject free will.

Of course there is no scientific explanation for free will. That is the whole point. A free decision is not caused by previous events.

Coyne takes offense at this comment:

I put the “no free will” people in the same basket as solipsist who prove only they exist. My answer is “so what?” An illogical but psychologically satisfying refutation of Berkeley’s claim that nothing exists outside our mind is when Samuel Johnson kicked a rock. I prefer the psychological truth over the logical truth.

Try to live as if there is no free will. Good luck. Try to live as a solipsist. Why even argue it since only you exist.

I do agree that denying free will is pretty much the same as solipsism. Maybe logically defensible, but impossible to live by. Coyne responds by saying "read Sapolsky or Harris or me on why there has to be punishment and reward."

You can read the review to see how all this relates to turtles.

How to Fight the Science of Racism

Science podcast:

The science of racism, and how to fight it
Science Weekly

This features a Black man complaining of racism.

His first example is moms get more parental leave that dad. This shows sexism, and hence that structural racism.

His second example is that Blacks buying sunglasses at high-end stores are treated with more suspicion than Whites.

These are ridiculous. Moms get more time for giving birth, because they are the ones who give birth. Blacks are treated with more suspicion because they steal more sunglasses.

It says "50 percent of people believe that racism is no longer an issue today."

I am not sure if it is trying to stop racism, or stop the science of racism.

Interestingly, it does not claim that there is an unconscious bias problem.

Atheists who Hate White Christian Nationalists

There is currently a split between the atheist (aka secular, humanist, freethinker, rationalist) organizations and the White Christian nationalist movement.

The atheists say:

As organizations committed to protecting the separation of government and religion, as well as universal human and civil rights threatened by the White Christian nationalist ideology, the undersigned organizations reaffirm our commitment to forcefully advocate for the rights of LGBTQ-plus Americans ...

Nor will we sit silently or ignore when the talking points, misinformation and outright fabrications of anti-LGBTQ-plus extremists are laundered and given a veneer of legitimacy or acceptability by those who hold themselves out as voices of reason or science. ...

These unworkable, ill-conceived and plainly discriminatory laws and policies are about one thing: forcing a regressive, largely religious view of gender norms onto the American people. ...

We will continue to advocate for policies that protect the civil and human rights of every community that comes under threat from the White Christian nationalist ideology.

So who are these White Christian Nationalists, what are they so bigoted about?

There is no such thing. It turns out that these atheists call people White Christian nationalists the way Jews and others call people Nazis. It is just a meaningless epithet reserved for enemies.

The underlying issues starting this were some biologists saying that mammals have two sexes, and that men should not beat up women in boxing matches. For that, they are being called White Christian nationalists, as if that were a bad thing.

There is nothing wrong with being White, Christian, or nationalist. None of these have much to do with sex being binary. It is simply a scientific fact that mammalian sex is binary. The atheist organizations reject this, and they are rejecting science, not Christianity.

Most Americans are White, are Christian, and are nationalist. I would say that means that most Americans are White Christian nationalists. Some atheists seem to mean something else by the term, such as opposition to castrating boys in the name of transgenderism. Again, most people are against castrating boys.

Apparently we are heading to a split where atheists are in favor of castrating boys, and Christians are against it. Many atheists are very much against being defined this way.

There was a similar sort of split between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Harris was firmly against transgenderism, and Trump was firmly against boys playing in girls sports. Trump just issued this executive order:

Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. ...

It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.

Feminist Bishop goes Political to Trump

PBS tv reports:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded an apology from the Episcopal bishop of Washington after she made a direct appeal to him during a prayer service marking his inauguration to have mercy on the LGBTQ+ community and migrant workers who are in the United States illegally.

Referencing Trump’s belief that he was saved by God from assassination, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde said, “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”

No, women should not be Christian bishops. She is also in favor of a bunch of other woke abominations. Some of Trump's executive orders are wonderfully anti-woke.

Experts Expect Mass Starvation

Have you been reading stories about population decline? It is all a hoax. The population is increasing so fast that we face mass starvation, unless something is done.

The USA will hit 350 million this year.

A world food organization reports:

More than 150 Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates have made an unprecedented plea for financial and political backing to develop “moonshot” technologies with the greatest chance of averting a hunger catastrophe in the next 25 years.

In an open letter signed by 153 winners of the Nobel Prize and World Food Prize, the signatories warned that the world was “not even close” to meeting future food needs, with an estimated 700 million people going hungry today and an additional 1.5 billion people to feed by 2050.

Believe in Racehorse Theory

In Pres. Trump's speech, he mentioned "if you believe in the racehorse theory", then Elon Musk's son will be smart.

He said something similar in 2020, according to Rolling Stone magazine:

It doesn’t take a secret decoder ring to understand what Trump was aiming at in Bemidji. The idea that white Minnesotans, like racehorses, have superior, inheritable genes is white supremacy — embraced not as a cultural construct, but as if it were based in hard science. In another moment, Trump’s remarks would have made for a front-page scandal. But on Friday, as America reeled from the death of a feminist icon whose departure threatens to accelerate a generation-long right-wing takeover of America’s highest court, as well as from a death toll in the coronavirus pandemic that has surpassed 200,000, the president’s open embrace of eugenics hardly sparked notice.

But it is time to wake up to the threat before us: We have an aspiring authoritarian president who romanticizes martial law and dreams of locking up his political opponents. Trump does not recoil from the most dangerous ideology of the 20th century, but instead celebrates it on the campaign trail in increasingly explicit terms. These may be dark times in America. But if Trump is not stopped at the ballot box in November, our democracy is in plain danger of fading to black.

Some professors argue:

This insidious idea has provided the foundation for some of the most unjust, repressive, and inhumane regimes in human history. This is why it matters.

The professors do not give any evidence that the theory is wrong. Unly that is leads to uncomfortable ideas.

Here is the scientific data

Whether differences in intelligence are due to people’s different genes or to their different environments has long been contentious. One answer to this question comes from twin studies and adoption studies. By comparing outcomes for identical twins (who share all their genes) with those of fraternal twins and with unrelated children, one can deduce the relative influences of genes in comparison with “shared environment” (all environmental factors shared by siblings growing up together) and un-shared environment (everything else, which can include things like randomness in embryonic development). Such studies give high estimates for the genetic contribution to differences in intelligence, such that the heritability of IQ is typically estimated as around 70%.

A different method is to look directly at genes, through Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), which sample large numbers of genes in large numbers of people, attempting to measure and add up the affect of each gene on IQ. This typically gives much lower estimates for the effect of genes, and the marked difference between estimates from twin studies and those from GWAS studies is referred to as the “missing heritability” problem.

The article goes on to explain that there are a large number of genes with small effects. They might have to sample 100 million people with genetic and IQ tests to get accurate estimates on what specific genes are contributing to intelligence. For now, we just know that there is an overall heritibility.

Joe Biden Hates Tech Oligarchs

Today is Pres. Biden's last full day in office, and hia pArty has lost big tech:

President Joe Biden bid a not-so-fond farewell to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and other members of the tech "oligarchy" he suddenly believes is threatening American freedoms.

"I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern," he said in his farewell address on Wednesday night. "And that's the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America."

Biden went on to compare these tech oligarchs to 19th century robber barons, who were eventually brought to heel by federal legislators.

"More than a century ago, the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts," he said. "We've got to do that again."

Silicon Valley had been solidly behind Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. No more.

It is still the case that most billionaires vote Democrat. And so do union leaders, government workers, and parasites. But those who are actually building for a better America are increasingly frustrated with the Democrats.

Update: Here is the final White House video. It starts by bragging about appointing Blacks, and ends by saying [at 2:33] "together we'll continue to fight for the values that Define the best of who we are we are." No thanks, I am tired of Pres. Biden trying to tell us who we are, and pointing to a lot of Blacks wanting freebies. If you want to comment, go on over to the final Kamala Harris video.

MeToo is Not Dead Yet

Wokism may be declining, but DEI and MeToo are not dead yet. Here is latest example of MeToo, unpaywalled here.

I do not recommend reading this junk. I did not. It is too gross and invasive. I just post so you can be aware of what it is. It is a Jewish reporter telling about how a Jewish man had consensual and degrading sexual activities with a Jewish woman. The man is mostly famous for creating The Sandman, a DC comic book series. The comic book might have been a tipoff that he had weird fantasies.

The woman tells stories about how she would literally eat manure as part of sexual adventures that went on for years. She sent text messages about how much she enjoyed it. Others also tell bizarre stories. No one says anything was criminal, except in fictional fantasies and in complaints many years later.

I don't know what is going on here. These stories are notoriously unreliable, so I am not assuming any of it is true. It does appear that Jews like to brag about telling stories of degrading sexual activities. It is sick. A few years ago, mainstream publishers would refuse to touch this stuff.

The Harvey Weinstein stories seem to be the high point of this genre. He was eventually charged with crimes, but the women were obviously enthusiastic and willing participants.

Here is another strange metoo controversy:

Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, has recently been at the center of a coaching controversy involving her former coach, Stefano Vukov. She has chosen to bring him back on her team. Allegations of verbal abuse and misconduct surfaced during her matches, sparking broader debates about the boundaries of acceptable behavior in professional tennis coaching.

In the weeks following Rybakina’s announcement, the ITF confirmed that Stefano Vukov had been temporarily suspended for breaching the sport’s code of conduct. Reports allege that his suspension was tied to instances of inappropriate behavior during matches, which included public criticism of Rybakina during high-pressure moments.

He works for her. She can fire him at any time. She is 25 years old. She has no complaints about him. The complaints come from others who think the coach is too critical. Maybe they think he is sleeping with her also, but they have not said it. Even if so, they are adults, and I do not see how it is anyone's business. I tried to find some videos, and nothing seemed unusual to me. Men in pro sports get yelled at much worse, and no one thinks anything wrong with it.

There is another strange controversy involving actress Blake Lively, but I cannot figure it out. It appears to be another Amber Heard Johnny Depp situation. They were acting in a Netflix movie about how children of abusers grow up to be abusers. It is weird that this would generate heated and bizarre claims of abuse. It is almost as if they are trying to generate publicity for the movie.

Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense

Pete Hegseth is being grilled by the US Senate on his personal life, rather than much more important issues for a Sec. of Defense.

Last year he said:

In a 2018 speech to National Young Israel, a group that took him on a tour of Hamas tunnels found in Israel, he said that “Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today.”

In a 2016 interview with The Jewish Press, Hegseth said, “I have come to really appreciate the Jewish heritage and the Jewish state. I understand how geopolitically we are linked and how critical it is that we stand by such a strong ally.”

Not clear that Israel is an ally. Here are some definitions:

1. a sovereign or state associated with another by treaty or league
2. a state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose
3. a state that is obligated by treaty to come to another state’s defense in the event of attack; and/or
   a state that has a common enemy with another state.

Ukraine and Israel are allies under the second definition, but not the other two. Russia and Iran are not really our enemies.

Okay, but is it true that Zionism and Americanism are on the front lines together? I wonder what the senators say about that. I think his argument is more geopolitical that Christian Zionist, but I am not sure.

He also has opinions about Islam:

In American Crusade, Hegseth says Islam "is not a religion of peace, and it never has been" and claims "all modern Muslim countries are either formal or de facto no-go zones for practicing Christians and Jews". He said Islam was "almost entirely captured and leveraged by Islamists." He claimed Islamists planned to demographically, culturally and politically "conquer" Europe and America, allying with secularism to crush "our nation's Judeo-Christian institutions". He said Islamists planned to "seed the West with as many Muslims as possible" and "thanks to their very high birth rates relative to native populations and their strategically insular culture – the sons and daughters of those migrants and refugees multiply in greater numbers than do native citizens." He pointed out the elections of Muslim officials in the United Kingdom and the increase of the Muslim population in Europe to say that the United States would follow the same path without an intervention.[83] Hegseth has stated that the end of the US military would allow "Islamists" to "wipe America and Israel off the map".[64] Hegseth has faced allegations of chanting "kill all Muslims" at a work event at a bar.[61]

Pres. Trump now has a very impressive list of nominations, as posted:

The Trump Administration has already hired 1000+ people — some of the best and brightest people in America to help President Trump and his team enact Agenda 47 and Make America Great Again!

Update: A CNN poll says Trump has his best-ever approval ratings.

Study Compares TT Levels

This chart is from an Apr 2023 published study. A couple of things are striking. First is the correlation with crime data. The ones with the most total testosterone are the most aggressive, and commit the most crimes.

Second, TT levels generally decline with age, except that White men peak in their sixties! This is hard to believe. If true, it should be more widely known.

Jews Pretending to be Contrarians

A couple of Jewish Trump-haters announced:

I am here to announce I am leaving The Washington Post in order to co found with Norm an exciting new online platform, The Contrarian. We are going to bring you written material, podcasts, interviews, social media, all in defense of democracy. Our intent is to combat the authoritarian force that we all face.

I thought that was what the Wash. Post did -- pretend to defend democracy by trashing Pres. Trump all the time.

I post this as an example of warped Jewish anti-American thinking. If they were really pro-democracy, they would be supporting the outcome of the recent election.

Trump is Not a Convicted Felon

Everyone is saying that Pres. Donald Trump is a convicted felon, now that he has been sentenced. Of course they have been saying it for eight months, every since the NY jury verdict. The judge has been sitting on the case since then.

Here is what the judge said, last week:

this court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the highest office in the land is an unconditional discharge

Under federal gun law, a felon cannot have a gun, and felony is defined as a crime punishable by more than a year. Not that the sentence is for more than a year, but a guilty verdict for a crime whose maximum punishment is more than a year in prison.

The judge said that Trump's crime does not allow any prison time at all, under the law. So I think that it should not be considered a felony.

Furthermore, analysis depends on a subtle distinction between the words dismiss and discharge. Everyone agrees that if the judge had said "dismiss", then Trump would be innocent, and free of any conviction. The judge said "discharge", which is nearly a synonym.

Trump says he will appeal, but the appeals court could say that the case is moot. Trump received no punishment, and there is nothing to appeal.

There is a legal principle that says that if two outcomes are functionally the same, then trivial differences in wording should not matter for any legal purpose. Here, dismiss and discharge are functionally the same. So the case should be the same as if it were dismissed, to Trump.

Here is a version of that principle:

"De minimis non curat lex" is a Latin phrase that translates to "the law does not concern itself with trifles." This means that the law typically does not get involved in minor issues or insignificant matters. Imagine a situation where someone accidentally spills a little coffee on a friend's shirt. While it might be annoying, it’s not something that would warrant a legal battle. This principle helps keep the legal system focused on more serious issues, allowing it to function more efficiently.

There is more here.

Yes, this NY case was one big trifle. Trump made some diary entries that were of no consequence to anyone. There can be no punishment for what he did. It was like spilled coffee on a shirt. It was just blown out of all proportion by Trump haters.

I am not saying Trump did anything wrong. He described a legal expense as a legal expense. I am saying that even if you accept the jury verdict that he did something wrong, it was a trifle, according to the judge. The judge could have fined him $1 to show that Trump deserved some minimal punishment, but he did not even do that.

Update: The reason I think that Trump is innocent, and should win on appeal, is not just that he described the payments accurately. Under NY law, to be guilty he had to conceal the payments for the purpose of committing some other crime. At trial they said the other crime could be promoting an election, tax evasion, or campaign finance violation. Not a shred of evidence was presented that Trump intended to violate any of these laws. Even if you assume that he is crook, he had nothing to gain by violating these laws, and there is no explanation for it.

There is some evidence that he concealed the payments, just as everyone does who pays blackmail. But that is only illegal if it violates some other law, and that was never shown or even explained.

Update: harvard law prof. Alan Dershowitz also refuses to call Trump a convicted felon.

Are There Two Sexes?

Here is a typical woke academic paper on the subject.

Sex is an ambiguous term and the point of this paper is to clear it up in as brief a manner as possible. I aim to report the more or less settled biological facts and point out the unsettling (for some) and unsettled ones.

It concludes:

So, are there two and only two sexes? Yes and no, but mostly no. Yes, insofar as “sexual” as a type of organism is defined in terms of sexual reproduction and anisogamous organisms are identified as those that reproduce by joining large gametes with small ones.

If sex is defined by gametes, then there are only two sexes in mammals. Snails can be more complicated.

The academics used to carefully distinguish sex and gender. Now many use the terms interchangeably. When they distinguish, sex means biology, and is best defined by gametes but could also be defined by chromosomes or by a functioning SRY gene. Gender means grammar. Gender identity means preferred pronouns.

The paper has a lot of discussion about odd cases, but they really do not have much to do with the current transgenderism controversy.

Some say that the existence of intersex people shows that transgenders should be accepted. But this is not true. First, it is not clear that there are any intersex people. They are mainly or entirely people who have been misclassified. Second, the vast majority of the transgenders are not intersex anyway.

People can have legitimate differences about preferred pronouns. But if an academic tries to tell you that sex is not binary in mammals, then he is just lying to you for some woke purpose.

Update:

Joe Biden is clearly unhappy with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to repair his relationship with Donald Trump.

The outgoing president said at a press conference on Friday that Zuckerberg’s decision to roll back his platforms’ censorship policies was “really shameful” and against American values.

“It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about,” he said.

No, free speech is aligned with what America is about. I will be glad when I no longer have to listen to Pres. Biden lecture us on American values.

Companies Back Away from DEI

In 2020, with the death of George Floyd, the world went nuts with DEI hiring. Nobody was hiring White men.

Now Axios reports:

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is terminating major DEI programs, effective immediately — including for hiring, training and picking suppliers, according to a new employee memo obtained by Axios. ...

Context: Meta said it was changing course because the "legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing," per a memo by Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources.

CNBC reports

Amazon said it is halting some of its diversity and inclusion initiatives, joining a growing list of major corporations that have made similar moves in the face of increasing public and legal scrutiny.

I wonder how this relates to Trump being elected. VP Kamala Harris symbolized DEI, as she was a big proponent of equity, and an obvious beneficiary of it, as she was obviously not competent on her own.

But the George Floyd stuff was really crazy. People had to come to their senses eventually.

Look at Los Angelos. Their Fire Department is run by DEI lesbians and Blacks, and now the city is burning. How much of this can be tolerated?

Update: (Jan. 13) Because of racism accusations, Starbucks was allowing anyone to loiter in their coffeeshops without buying anything. There was a widely publicized incident of a Black man being kicked out, when he did not buy anything. The company just reversed this policy. A lot of people were freeloading in Starbucks, just to help it be non-racist.

The AI LLMs Fake Alignment

People argue that the new AI engines would have no incentive to act against human interests, so we have no reason to worry about AI killing us all.

On the contrary, the big AI large language models are already faking alignment. They cheat when they can get away it, even when not prompted.

Tyler Cowen argues that intelligence is overrated. As proof, he says Africa has the intelligence for clean drinking water, but it still does not happen.

I get the impression that he thinks that he is smarter that everyone. He even says that he is writing books to educate the AI LLMs.

Will America Survive until 2025?

It is always embarrassing when you predict the end of the world, and it does not happen. Here is a 2011 book interview:

What follows is a transcript of an interview conducted by talk radio host James Edwards with Patrick J. Buchanan upon the initial release of his book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? We revisit this conversation because the year in question has now arrived, and many of the concerns raised during the discussion still remain. ...

Edwards: Well, let’s jump right into the thick of it. Do we currently have front-row seats to the end of Western Civilization and culture as we know it?

Buchanan: I believe the answer is yes, from a variety of standpoints. In one chapter, I discuss the “Demographic Winter” of the West. Currently, no Western country has a birth rate among its native-born population that is sufficient for it to sustain itself in any recognizable form by the end of this century.

It is my argument that when Christianity, which was the faith that created the West, when the faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, and then the people die. And I think that’s true down through history. And we certainly see that in Europe, for example, which is well advanced ahead of us, where something like one in ten people go to church in Great Britain, I believe. More people attend Muslim mosques on holy days of the week than go to Anglican churches.

So, I think the West was created by this great religion, and that created the magnificent culture of the Middle Ages, out of which came all these great countries, which really dominated the world through the twentieth century, with empires basically dominating every country on earth almost, except for Japan. And now look at where they are. I think you see a civilization basically in retreat. As Toynbee said, “Civilizations die by suicide, not by murder.”

Buchanan correctly identified some trends that continue today.

Are Indians Better than We Are?

The couple of weeks have had political arguments about Indian-Americans replacing Americans.

Indians make more money than Whites in the USA. Indians have taken over many of the USA tech companies, including the CEOs of Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, Micron Technology, Palo Alto Networks, Vimeo. The current world chess champ is Indian, as was the champ in 2000-2002. Vivek Ramaswamy says Americans are lazy, and not as good as Indians. Many are arguing for the H-1B visa program, that mainly brings in Indians.

Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister of Britain, and Indians and Pakis have taken over London. Nikki Haley was considered a frontrunner in the Republican Party, when it was thought that Trump's legal troubles would keep him out.

This is all very commendable, but not to be overstated. Ann Coulter posted an indignant response, where she points out that all those companies were started by White Americans.

Microsoft and Google have been extraordinarily profitable under Indian management, but there has also been a notable lack of innovative new products. They are mainly cashing in on past innovations, and market trends in their favor.

There are also thousands of Chinese engineers in Silicon Valley. They are also well-behaved and makes lots of money. They come in on several visa programs:

You thought the H-1B visa was bad? Wait until you hear about the largest guest worker program killing jobs for new American college grads—the Optional Practical Training (OPT):
• No caps
• Employers get payroll tax exemptions
• No wage requirements ...

The new OPT program, called STEM-OPT, allowed international students with STEM degrees to extend their OPT from 1 year to 29 months. This extension gave them more time to work in the U.S. and provided employers with a new pipeline for cheaper compliant labor.

After STEM-OPT was introduced, the number of international students, particularly from India and China, skyrocketed.

There are a lot of Chinese engineers on the forefront of AI, and doing cutting edge work in other fields. The stereotype is that they are smart, ambitious, hard-working, and ethnocentric.

The stereotype of Indians is quite a bit different. They are much more tribal than the Chinese. That seems impossible, but they are. They are not the geniuses like the Chinese. They are schemers who take credit for the work of others. They hire their own kind, and get management jobs.

These are just generalities, of course. People are saying that we need thousands of H-1B Indians to keep Silicon Valley running. It is just a lie. Every one of those jobs can be better done by an American.

The NY Times reported in 2020, based on newly released tapes:

In his reply to Nixon, Kissinger explained: “They (Indians) are superb flatterers, Mr President. They are masters at flattery. They are masters at subtle flattery. That’s how they survived 600 years. They suck up – their great skill is to suck up to people in key positions.”

Kissinger continued: “The most sexless, nothing, these people. I mean, people say, what about the Black Africans? Well, you can see something, the vitality there, I mean they have a little animal-like charm, but God, those Indians, ack, pathetic. Uch.” ...

A few days later, on November 12, 1971, ... Nixon blurted: “I don’t know how they reproduce!”

I post this because of the overwhelming public comment that Indians are superior to Americans. That is how they justify the H-1B visa program.

Breitbart reports:

Rep. Shri Thanedar, an India-born Democrat from Michigan, is calling America “racist” as the debate over the importation of foreign workers grows.

Thanedar, who was born in Belgaum, Karnataka, India, is taking the “racism” position by claiming America is rife with Hinduphobia, and recently sponsored a resolution in congress to condemn racism in America.

“Racism in America is still alive and well, and we must stand up to it together,” he wrote in a December 30 post on X.

“Just read the replies to any recent post that includes “H-1B” to see the deplorable rhetoric targeting Indian Americans,” he said, adding, “That’s why I introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning all Hinduphobia.”

Thanedar also jumped to his X account and called to expand the H-1B program., writing, “All Americans make America great, including immigrants. We must increase H1B ten fold and eliminate country quotas. Make it easy to check immigration status, give EAD to all green card applicants, and quadruple USCIS staffing budget to expedite legal immigration. This is how you make America the greatest ever.”

So we Americans are all racists unless we agree to fire Americans and replace them with cheap labor imported from India.

Athletic Advantage before Birth

Boys normally get huge athletic advantages over girls at puberty, so many assume that puberty defines the difference. According to this post, the differences start before birth:

Male athletic advantage begins in utero.

Late first-trimester male foetuses already have uniformly higher concentrations of type IIa and IIb muscie fibers across skeletal muscles. This differential in IIa and IIb concentration continues throughout all of life and is one of the major reasons for greater male performance in speed/power (IIb) and speed-endurance (IIa) events.

It’s pretty well documented that elite men’s track records are on average about 10% faster than elite women’s, across essentially all the contested distances. What most people don’t know—but certainly should—is that essentially the same 10% differential obtains between boys’ and girls’ track records, ALL the way down the age groups.

The fastest boys are still faster than the fastest girls, by the same 10ish %, all the way down to the 8-and-under age group. https://www.usatf.org/resources/statistics/records/championship-meet-records/usatf-national-junior-olympic-track-field-champion

(All the boys’ records are clustered in the first half of the page, followed by all the girls’ records in the second half. The easiest way to compare them is to open the same page in two tabs, shrink each tab to half-screen height, stack the two tabs on top of each other and then navigate to N year old boys’ records in one tab and N year old girls’ records in the other.)

Moreover.
Almost all joint angles differ on average between the sexes, with these differences already being well established between male and female foetuses (relevant papers will appear under the area of forensic fetal osteology

One of the most consequential differences is in the “Q angle” or “quadriceps angle” between each femur and the pelvis. The Q angle in women and girls averages about 2x as far from the vertical as in men—so that female legs in standard gait are angled inwards from the hips, with female footfalls from both feet almost in single file. Male hips are narrower on average, with male legs closer to vertical and male footprints generally in two easily distinguishable, left and right, tracks. (Please understand “on average” to be attached to each observation in this paragraph.)

The Q-angle differences are hugely significant to athletic performance. Jumping, pushoff and leg pressing power are developed only as vectors perpendicular to the ground, so women’s wider Q-angles reduce their potential jump height, sprint speed and maximum performance in any “closed chain” weight lift (squat, deadlift, clean/jerk/snatch etc). Furthermore, the stresses exerted along the residual (parallel to ground) component of female legs place women and girls at far greater risk of ACL tears and related injuries

Another example many readers may at least have noticed—if not considered here—is that women’s elbows typically hyperextend a few degrees beyond straight (https://musculoskeletalkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/F000067f006-014-9781455709779.jpg) and are deflected a few degrees laterally (https://musculoskeletalkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/F000067f006-002-9781455709779.jpg).

These two types of deflection of women’s arms away from straight—as opposed to male arms, which are quite close to perfectly straight at full extension—is the most important reason by far behind the almost unfathomable sex differences in punching power (men punch 263% as hard as women of similar size and height). The same female hyperextension and deflection is the reason why girls and women hold and bow violins differently, with different types of chin rests needed even by very young girls and boys.

ALL of the differences mentioned in this post exist systemically between the sexes not “from puberty”, not even “from birth”, but from long, long BEFORE birth. Every single one of them is already a statistically significant distinction between male and female foetuses by the end of the FIRST TRIMESTER of pregnancy.

Sports and other pursuits of physical performance just need to be sex-segregated, at all ages, period. This is not complicated, nor is it an issue with two sides or with ‘nuances’ or ‘subtleties’—let alone a ‘human rights’ issue (a phrase that in the 2020s is guaranteed NOT to have anything to do with actual human rights).

This is for those who say that sports can be made more fair by controlling for sex differences. I am not arguing for that. Sex-segregated sports would make sense even if there were no sex-based advantages.

Winning Isn't Normal

A famous Keith Bell speech with that title has been essentially ruled in the public domain in an odd opinion. So I could quote it in full, but instead I have asked AI to rewrite it for me:

Victory is rare. Not because victory is wrong, but because by its very nature, it belongs to the few.

Think about it - in any competition, there's only one champion. Whether there are ten competitors or ten thousand, a single person or team claims the prize.

Because victory is extraordinary, it demands extraordinary measures.

To become a champion, you must transcend the ordinary. The masses don't reach the summit. You must dare to be different, to stand apart.

Your choices must reflect uncommon dedication. You must cherish success more deeply than others. You must hunger for it more intensely. Remember this crucial truth: this hunger isn't some mystical gift - it's a conscious choice you make every day. And you must make that choice your compass.

You can't follow the standard training regimen. You must train harder and smarter than the rest.

Your words, thoughts, and actions can't mirror the majority. You can't simply follow the current, do what's expected, or chase what's trendy. You must be willing to chart your own course and consistently choose the path of excellence. The path to victory may be solitary and challenging, but that's precisely the point - because victory belongs to those who dare to be extraordinary.

Everyone Believes in Free Will

Noam Chomsky argues that 100% of humans act as if they have free will. Some scholars deny it, but it is better to judge peoples' beliefs by how they hehave, rather than what they say. (Apparently extracted from this longer interview.)

I think that's right, but for the possible exception of people like Sam Harris, who took a lot of psychedelic drugs and claims to not have any feeling of free will. Sometimes he talks about politics, and seems to have no voluntary control over his opinions. On the other hand, he seems to like meditation because it lets him imagine that he has free will.

His New Year's Message argues that the Apocalypse is near, as evidenced by the likelihood that the J6 protesters would have hanged Mike Pence, if they had the chance. No, I do not believe that. They were unarmed, and did not appear to want to harm anyone. Some did use force to get into the Capitol building, but only to protest a defective electoral system.

Chomsky says science cannot answer whether we have free will. I think that is correct. Opinions about free will today are not much different from those of ancient Greek philosophers.

He says it is puzzling how smart people can act as if they have free will, and yet deny it.

Chomsky is not a mind-body dualist, and says that there must be a mechanical explanation for whatever the mind is doing, but free will might be beyond our understanding.

I guess his point is that he believes in free will, but leaves open the possibility that there is no free will, but it is a mysterious limitation of the human brain that we have to believe in it anyway.

For a contrary view, Robert Sapolsky argues against free will. He says that if you really had free will, you would be able to somehow show that your decisions were independent of the socio-economic status of your parents, and everything else that may have influenced your past and brain. He denies this, so he says that it makes no sense to reward or punish anyone for anything. He rejects our criminal justice system, as well as everyone else that keeps our society orderly.

He seems sincere, but he also appears to be trying to convince us that he is right. Why bother, if we have no free will? So I think Chomsky is right, and Sapolsky behaves as if he has free will, in spite of everything he says.

Evolutionist Jerry Coyne denies free will in humans, and in other life as well

This is the third and last of a series of posts on the misguided concept of “agency and purpose in biology,” which one can take as the statement that “organisms have goals, and guide their own development and evolution towards those goals”.

He goes on to denounce research in the subject, as an unscientific waste of money. He does not quite say it, but he appears to believe that only a religious bigot would think anything so silly.

I do not know whether dogs have goals. I am just confident that I have free will; that most humans say they have free will; that all humans act as if they have free will, at least occasionally; and possibly some people like Harris, Sapolsky, and maybe some schizophrenics do not.

We Value Dogs, then Cats, then Humans

California made it hard to kill mountain lions, and now there is an overpopulation of them.

The NY Times had a scary story about one mauling two big boys, and killing one of them. Note that they will shoot a lion to save a dog, but not a person.

The deputies spotted the drag trail through the brush and followed it to the cat, still crouched over Taylen’s body. They shot at the ground to scare the lion away. Instead it rushed the deputies, who again tried another warning barrage. ...

Eventually, the cat jumped down and went after the dogs, and Chandler had no choice but to shoot.

This is more evidence of how California is screwed up. If it repealed all its mountain lions laws, everyone would be fine.

Here are some new California laws:

SB 450 removes specific zoning restrictions, simplifying the process for homeowners to divide their properties into up to four separate units.

AB 413, commonly referred to as the "daylighting" law, will change the way people park their cars. From January 1, California residents will no longer be allowed to park a vehicle within 20 feet of any unmarked or marked crosswalk or 15 feet of any crosswalk where a curb extension is present.

SB 1100 will make it illegal for a job posting to require applicants to have a valid driver's license.

AB 1955 prohibits school districts from implementing policies that require educators to inform parents if students identify as transgender or request to use a different name.

AB 1821 mandates that California public schools teach about the impact of the Mission Period and Gold Rush on California Native Americans.

AB 1780 bans legacy admissions at colleges receiving state funding.

SB 729 mandates insurance coverage for fertility services including IVF, expanding access to include LGBTQ+ families.

So if I am hiring a driver, I cannot require a drivers license.

What I learned in 2024

I sometimes end the year by saying what I learned.

The biggest story of the years was the Donald Trump comeback.

The most amazing thing to me was how many or most of our leading intellectuals, influencers, and power brokers could line behind Pres. Joe Biden, who lacked the necessary mental capacity, and then Kamala Harris, who was even worse.

The American Presidency is the world't most important job, and Harris did not have any of the necessary prerequisites and skills. And yet she was praised as if she were the best candidate ever.

It appeared that they favored her because she checked some DEI boxes, and nobody really expected her to be competent, as she would just be a puppet.

Ultimately the voters saw through this, and voted to return to the normalcy of the Trump 45 Presidency.

Update: To see how warped the Democrats are, see Greenwald on Liz Cheney. Also here. She was one of the most hated Republicans in the USA, until she went negative on Trump. Now Biden is giving her a medal, and other Democrats and Leftists are praising her.

All the Top Movies were Sequels

Hollywood had a good year, and is fully recovered from covid. Here are the top ten movies in 2024, by gross revenue:

10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
9. Venom: The Last Dance
8. Kung Fu Panda 4
7. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
6. Wicked
5. Dune: Part Two
4. Moana 2
3. Despicable Me 4
2. Deadpool & Wolverine
1. Inside Out 2

They are all sequels. Except for Wicked, which is a remake of a stage play that was a prequel to The Wizard of Oz.

In other words, movies make money by recycling old ideas.

It is only going to get worse. Movies of the future will probably be made by AI, after training on the movies of the past. Everything will be derivative.

Vaccines Don't Cause Autism

Russell Brand addresses the issue in a podcast.

The experts all say that the vaccines do not cause autism, and they are probably correct. However, according to evidence on the podcast, the matter was not even studied to get vaccine approvals, and we do not have the research to settle the matter.

Everyone was told to get covid shots to reduce the spread of that disease, but no one ever tested whether the vaccines reduce the spread of disease. The tests showed that the vaccines were sufficiently safe, and effective at reducing death, for experimental use.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about a lot of medicines. These issues only get nasty when the medicines are mandated. In most cases, there is no need for the mandates.

The High School Bully was the Good Guy

Sometimes I see a contrarian post that makes me think.

Found this online:

Adulthood is realizing the high school bully is the good guy

He served as a bulwark against degenerate antisocial behaviors and enforced normality.

Maybe all those school anti-bullying campaigns have made society worse. The teachers and counselors are the new bullies.

Maybe you think that we should not have social norms, or that we should not enforce them. Well, we cannot have a society without norms, and we cannot have norms without enforcement.

Atheists who Hate Binary Sex

I tried to follow the atheist attacks on biologists, but I see no merit to them.

The atheists hold themselves out as scientific, rational, and objective, but they have no substantive rebuttal to biologists who say human sex is binary.

Here is a weak attempt, from a 2018 Evolution Society letter:

Variation in biological sex and in gendered expression has been well documented in many species, including humans, through hundreds of scientific articles. Such variation is observed at both the genetic level and at the individual level (including hormone levels, secondary sexual characteristics, as well as genital morphology). Moreover, models predict that variation should exist within the categories that HHS proposes as “male” and “female”, indicating that sex should be more accurately viewed as a continuum.* Indeed, experiments in other organisms have confirmed that variation in traits associated with sex is more extensive than for many other traits.

*Here we are speaking of the multi-dimensional aspects that underlie male-ness and female-ness, including hormones, physiology, morphology, development, and genetic aspects. We acknowledge that many of these aspects are bimodal. Furthermore, some of these aspects are discrete categories (e.g., XX/XY, SRY presence/absence, gamete size, sperm production vs egg production, presence/absence of certain genitalia), but these categories don’t always align within individuals, are not always binary, and should be irrelevant to the determination of a person’s legal rights and freedoms.

If you read this carefully, it acknowledges that several sex definitions can be given, such as XX/XY, SRY, or gamete size. The gripes are that (1) these definitions do not always align; (2) they may not be binary in theoretical models; and (3) they should not affect legal rights.

Even if there are peculiarities in one-in-a-million freaks, or in mathematical models, they have almost nothing to do with current transgender issues. Nearly all trans people are unambiguously one sex, and then acting as another.

So what is going on here? Why would science advocates be so vigorously against good science?

I see two explantions. First, they are radical leftists who want to dismantle sex roles.

Second, they hate Christian nationalists most of all, and Christians line up against transgenderism, so their tribal loyalty is with the opposing view.

Atheist Biologist Canceled by Religion Haters

Biology prof. Jerry Coyne writes:

I’m not only a member and supporter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but am also on its Honorary Board. Thus I was doubly distressed when I saw the post below on their website Freethought Now!, a post that completely ignores the widely-accepted biological definition of a woman—one based on the possession of a reproductive apparatus evolved to produce large immobile gametes—in favor of a definition based on self-identification.

So he wrote an explanation of how mammalian sex works, for their site.

His essay has been deleted, as inconsistent with FFRF LGBTQIA goals.

Coyne wrote a whole book on his atheist beliefs, and is firmly anti-religion. But many of the atheist/humanist/skeptic organizations have been taken over by leftist sex advocates. They say that statements like "there are only two sexes" are driven by religious bigotry, and the best way to oppose religion is to promote transgenderism.

This means censoring Coyne's discussion of biological facts.

Religious folks are sometimes perceived as intolerant, anti-science, and aggressively unreasonable. However the FFRF and the trans activists are worse than any religious folks I know.

Update: Coyne comments:

the FFRF has a remarkable ability to place any kind of antiwoke ideology under the rubric of “Christian nationalism.” That’s why I wrote in my now-expunged piece, “As a liberal atheist, I am about as far from Christian nationalism as one can get!” ...

But it’s the last six paragraphs of the FFRF’s post where they explain why they took down my piece. It is because it caused “distress” and “did not reflect [the FFRF’s] values or principles.” I’m not sure what values or principles my piece failed to reflect. ...

they will not allow free and civil discussion about an article that they published, an article that concludes by saying, “A woman is whoever she says she is.” If that is not a statement ripe for discussion, then what is?

Just to give both sides, here is a criticism on an atheism site:

If you believe gender-related issues are tangential to atheism, I assure you that religious conservatives believe the topic is perfectly intertwined with their faith. Just as they used religion to fight marriage equality and abortion rights, they’re using the Book of Genesis in defense of their anti-trans beliefs. If you don’t want religion dictating our laws, and you believe LGBTQ people deserve civil rights, then you understand why these are issues atheist activists ought to care about.

And yet some prominent figures in our loose movement have spent years arguing the opposite, allowing white evangelicals to control the debate on LGBTQ rights — and often taking their side. Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True and Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible, is another one of those atheists who has spent years spreading anti-trans rhetoric on his website. His blog is now mostly a cesspool of blockquotes from his favorite conservative writers. A deep dive through his “sex and gender” posts will rid you of any respect you may have had for him. (Coyne gave a similar anti-trans talk at the Center For Inquiry’s CSICon in October. Dr. Steven Novella, who spoke at the same event, rebutted it here.)

Coyne is not a religious or evangelical conservative. He is a leftist Jewish atheist biologist Trump-hater. He is also attacked at the Reddit atheism forum.

Update: Coyne resigned, and so did Prof. Steve Pinker

From: Pinker, Steven
Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2024 11:49 AM
Subject: resignation

Dear Annie Laurie and Dan,

With sadness, I resign from my positions as Honorary President and member of the Honorary Board of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The reason is obvious: your decision, announced yesterday, to censor an article by fellow Board member Jerry Coyne, and to slander him as an opponent of LGBTQIA+ rights.

My letter to you last November (reproduced below) explains why I think these are grave errors. With this action, the Foundation is no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics. It has turned its back on reason: if your readers “wrongfully perceive” the opposite of a clear statement that you support the expression of contesting opinions, the appropriate response is to stand by your statement, not ratify their error.

This was inevitable. I watched a FFRF video several months ago discussing political action, and they spent all their time talking about plans to pack the US Supreme Court with more leftists.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has also resigned. The Friendly Atheist blogger writes:

Good riddance. It’s always nice when the trash takes itself out. I urge FFRF to replace them with people who advance their cause instead of setting it back.

The trans activists regularly amaze me with how unreasonable they are. Read their opinions for yourself.

Racial Differences are Adaptive

It is funny to see scholars dance around racial issues, trying not to offend anyone.

Interview:

Alexander Rosenberg is an American philosopher and novelist. He is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University with secondary appointments in the biology and political science departments. He is also co-director of Duke’s Center for the Philosophy of Biology. ...

[Q]skin color 5:15 is is one characteristic the question is 5:17 is there a a constellation of of uh of 5:21 characteristics that together make up 5:24 differential racial groups?

[A]simple answer 5:26 to that is no.

This is after explaining that human differences in skin color and lactose tolerance are adaptive.

The fact is that DNA tests can identify a person's race, and it is reliably similar to how the person self-identifies, and is identified as others. So plainly there is a constellation of characteristics that identify race.

He tries to imply that the science of racial characheristics is disproved by skin color being adaptive. But evolution teaches that nearly all life characteristics are heritable, and adaptive.

what we 1:09 as consumers of biology have learned us 1:12 philosophers is that molecular biology 1:14 and evolutionary molecular biology 1:17 teaches us that um there's almost no 1:21 scope in fact no scope I'd say uh in 1:24 explanation of interesting features of 1:28 uh human population ations that require 1:32 or even aduce the concept of race what 1:36 we've learned from particularly the 1:38 sequencing of Neanderthal genes and 1:41 human genes across the planet uh is the 1:46 remarkable homogeneity of uh human 1:51 genetic inheritance and the complete 1:53 absence of systematic differences that 1:56 have any material reflection in um uh 2:01 social behavior human institutions uh or 2:04 even our adaptation to our environment

They certainly found systematic differences. Europeans and Asians have Neanderthal genes, while Africans do not. Is that difference reflected in social behavior? That is hard to answer.

[Q] let me get 7:05 practical in the question of uh of race 7:08 because it it it it feels better to have 7:12 no real to have race not being grounded 7:16 in reality it feels better now that is U 7:20 that's that's that's an emotion we 7:21 should be aware of and I think that's a 7:23 good emotion um but that doesn't make it 7:26 right. what makes it right is the what is 7:29 is real in terms of the molecular 7:31 biology and how it works

The interview goes on to give examples of racial differences in medicine.

[A] there are of course natural 8:54 bell-shape Curves in the distribution of 8:57 of all traits in various populations 9:00 are longterm environmental 9:03 factors that will tend to shape certain 9:07 genes as more prevalent in some 9:09 communities than others. so sickle cell 9:11 disease is a perfect example of 9:13 something that's characteristic of 9:16 African 9:18 Americans okay uh carried over from uh 9:22 uh the middle passage from from Africa 9:26 okay but these kind of traits do not 9:28 reflect anything distinctive of races

So the disease is characteristic of one race, but not something distinctive?

He is really trying hard to give the answers that feel better.

Neanderthals survived several Ice Ages, and they must have developed traits to help them survive. It is plausible that some of those traits are reflected in genes that are still inherited today.

Indefinitely Blocked from Wikipedia

I have received an indefinite block on Wikipedia. I appealed, with no success.

My main offense was that in a discussion of Leo Frank, who was lynched a century ago in Georgia, I expressed the opinion that there was no consensus that he was innocent. To support this, I said to just google it.

This infuriated some Wikipedia editors because googling it turns up a web site maintained by some disreputable folks, and Wikipedia refuses to link to that site.

It is not just disreputable people who are unconvinced of his innocence. Georgia officials have repeatedly been asked to pardon him postumously, and have refused to do it.

I am baffled that I would be kicked out over such an obscure issue. Wikipedia has hundreds of articles that are much more contentious.

Yes, he was only Jew ever lynched, and it appears that he was framed by a Black man. It is not clear whether his Jewishness worked for him or against him, and not clear what really happened. His story was instrumental in the founding of the Anti-Defamation League.

The editors who banned me also doxed me, and complained about my relatives and opinions on this blog.

Wikipedia is currently fundraising, but not for its server expenses. The NY Post reports:

Elon Musk urged his supporters not to donate to the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia after the organization budgeted more than $50 million to spend on controversial diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

“Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority,” Musk wrote Tuesday on X, where he has nearly 210 million followers.

Running its computer servers is only a couple of million dollars year.

Humanity is in Genetic Decline

New paper:

Fitness, Mutational Load, and Eugenics
Matthew J. Maxwell

In 2016 geneticist Michael Lynch published a perspective in Genetics arguing that human physical and mental performance is declining at a rate of 1% per generation (Lynch 2016a). ... because medical interventions, such as “surgical procedures, pharmaceuticals, nutritional supplements, and physical and psychiatric therapies” have mitigated the effects of selection on “bad genes,” the incidence of deleterious mutations (mutational load) in the human population has, and will continue, to rise.

Lynch is not a fringe figure in the genetics community. He is former president of the Genetics Society of America, ...

The paper says this would lead to eugenics, and he is against that. He also disagrees with the reasoning.

Lynch avoided a policy recommendation:

What will it take to promote serious discourse on the slowly emerging, long-term negative consequences of policies jointly promoted by political, social, and religious factors? Should such a discussion even be pursued or should the process of accelerated genetic change simply be allowed to run its course — a slow walk down the path to what Hamilton (2001) called ‘the great Planetary Hospital’?”

No serious discourse is likely. I do not know what it would take.

Genealogy of Jesus

Peter Wehner writes in a NY Times op-ed:

One of the forgotten facts of the story of Jesus’ life is that he came from a profoundly dysfunctional family. ...

the pastor of the church, took as his text the first 17 verses of the Gospel of Matthew, known as the genealogy of Jesus. Those verses, a long list of names that ties one generation to another, are often skipped over in favor of the story of Jesus’ birth. To the degree that they have any meaning at all, it’s usually because for Christians it establishes Jesus as the heir to the promises God made to Abraham and David.

But as the pastor pointed out, Jesus came down to us through broken families: “one generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation.” There were murderers, adulterers, prostitutes and people who committed incest, liars, schemers and idolaters.

No, this is not important. The biblical Genealogy of Jesus is indeed confusing, and there are apparent inconsistencies.

This would only matter for claiming some Jewish authority, but Christians do not care about that.

Merry Christmas.

Update: Video about another NY Times essay

0:10 DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, THE "NEW 0:11 YORK TIMES" FEATURED AN 0:13 INTERVIEW WITH PRINCETON 0:15 UNIVERSITY RELIGION PROFESSOR 0:18 ELAINE, IT'S TITLED CONVERSATION 0:20 ABOUT THE VIRGIN BIRTH THAT 0:22 MAYBE WASN'T. 0:22 IT FOCUSES ON PAYPAL'S 0:25 SUGGESTION THAT QUOTE JESUS 0:26 MIGHT HAVE BEEN FATHERED BY A 0:28 ROMAN SOLDIER POSSIBLY BY RAPE.

A priest responds:

1:53 I RECENTLY INTERVIEWED JORDAN 1:54 PETERSON BE. 1:55 HE MAKES AN INTERESTING CASE 1:58 BIBLICAL STORIES WHERE YOU 1:59 BELIEVE OR NOT THEY ARE 2:00 FOUNDATIONAL TO A FREE SOCIETY. 2:02 WHAT WOULD THEIR LOSS MEAN AND 2:04 WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF WHAT THE 2:05 "NEW YORK TIMES" IS DOING? 2:06 >> YEAH, THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON 2:08 THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE OF WESTERN 2:11 CIVILIZATION, WHICH IS FOUNDED 2:12 ON THE BELIEF IN ONE GOD WHO 2:13 REVEALED HIMSELF IN HIS SON AND 2:15 THAT BROUGHT TO FULFILLMENT THE 2:17 PROCESSES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 2:19 SO, WESTERN HISTORY IS FOUNDED 2:21 ON A GOOD GOD WHO IS JUST 2:25 CREATED MAN WITH A PURPOSE. 2:26 SINFUL MAN IS REDEEMED WHEN HE 2:28 ACTS VITTER YURESLY AND SEEKS 2:29 PARDON FROM GOD. 2:31 THE WHOLE CHRISTIAN ORDER 2:34 DEPENDS ON PERSONAL 2:35 RESPONSIBILITY AND ADHERENCE TO 2:37 THE TRUTH. 2:37 WE BELIEVE THAT GOD IS TRUTH AND 2:39 WE HAVE ACCESS TO THAT TRUTH. 2:40 ALL OF THESE HISTORIANS LIKE PAGELS 2:43 WHO TRIED TO DESTROY 2:45 CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS BY MAKING 2:46 IT INTO MYTHOLOGY. NO THEY ARE 2:50 AGENTS AND PROPAGANDISTS. 2:52 CERTAINLY NOT HISTORIANS 2:54 AND DON'T DISPLAY THE SKEPTICISM 2:55 OF THEIR OWN THOUGHTS THAT THEY 2:57 WANT US TO DISPLAY ABOUT 2:59 RELIGION. 2:59 WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?