Preview of Social Matter Post

This is a preview for an upcoming piece for Social Matter. This excerpt from the Staff Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence should set the mood:

The BSU’s off-campus center is not a particularly easy place to find, even when you have the correct address. First you have to find the center of the “Fillmore,” a narrow, low-income, mixed-minority group neighborhood of Victorian-style wooden buildings stretching north over a series of hills from Market along Fillmore Street. The address is on Ellis, but Ellis Street stops at one of the sparkling concrete urban-renewal projects neighborhood groups

The Reasons Underlying the Actions of the Black Student Strike Leaders 91 have raised so much protest over, and you have to snake your way around to a battered, three-story structure in the slummiest, blackest part of the Fillmore, where rotting buildings are rapidly being abandoned in the face of the advancing urban renewal. There, hand-crayoned signs direct visitors to the down- stair meeting halls or the upstair tutorial office. One door of the BSU center has been smashed away from its padlocked hasp, and propped shut from the inside with a battered old table. Weather beaten plywood panels cover smashed windows. It is the kind of neighborhood where, in larger cities, whites instinctively lock their car doors as they drive through.

Middle-aged and elderly black men lounge around the signposts and building corners throughout the day, some drunk, others just idle. Toward the middle of the afternoon, one of the city’s largest interracial prostitution operations swings into action, supplying a variety of girls to stroll the side-walks in micro-mini-skirts or tight bell-bottomed pants until well past dawn on some corners, volunteering a variety of services to anyone who does not look like a plainclothesed cop.

Boldmug Says @ Scott Aaronson’s Blog

As many of you have seen, Boldmug was spotted over at Scott Aaronson’s blog. You can find the original post here: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3167

I’ve taken the time to copy Boldmug’s 57 comments on that post below.  Many are responses but I’ve chosen to leave out the context.  You can always go to the original comment section if you’re curious.

Boldmug Says:
Comment #61 January 26th, 2017 at 12:36 pm

Sure, let me give it a shot.

All Trump is doing is reiterating that we don’t live in the world of John Lennon’s _Imagine_. If we did, American citizens and Iranian citizens would be exactly the same thing. Iran would be a state. And we’d be wondering how many electoral votes it got. Do you want Iranians voting in our next election? If so, say so.

If you’re concerned about international law, it helps to know something about the subject. I recommend the text that was the standard summary of international law for the 18th and 19th centuries, Vattel’s _Law of Nations_ (https://books.google.com/books?id=z8b8rrzRc7AC).

Vattel TLDR: the law of nations is natural law as applied to countries. Reciprocity is an essential aspect of making the system work. And individuals are not direct actors in the law of nations, any more than quarks are direct actors in the laws of chemistry.

Your student is not a citizen of science or a citizen of the world. He’s a citizen of Iran. If Iran wants to be a member of the greater community of nations, and (for instance) renounce blowing up synagogues in Argentina, and (in this exact case) give us background information about its citizens who wish to travel to the US, that’s great.

If not, why can’t Iranians stay in Iran? One, Iran is a beautiful country with an amazing, rich history. Two, exactly what kind of a favor are we doing Iran by extracting their smartest and most diligent young people and turning them into Americans? The damage you’re doing to Iranian physics is far greater than the value added to American physics.

An American nationalist, a Jacksonian like Trump, might say that’s fine. One, who cares about Iran? Two, especially considering that Iranian physics seems to spend a lot of time figuring out how to make things go boom, maybe advancing Iranian physics isn’t exactly the best thing for America.

I may be an American nationalist. But I don’t think you are. Especially in the emotional arena of politics, thinking clearly and consistently is incredibly important.

Boldmug Says:
Comment #67 January 26th, 2017 at 12:57 pm

> the unemployment rate is currently *good*

Look at the labor force participation rate (falling for a decade), not the rate of people seeking unemployment benefits. Just because the USG calls the latter the “unemployment rate” doesn’t mean we have to.

> crime is *low*

Crime in Japan is *low*.

Crime in the US is two orders of magnitude higher than in Japan (eg: 119 robberies per 100,000, versus 1.1). It’s also two orders of magnitude higher than in Victorian England. All the graphs you see that tell you “crime is low” are showing the US since the cultural revolution of the ’60s — they don’t dare push it back even to 1950.

> illegal immigration is roughly zero

Notes #9 From Frost to NPR

 

Today on the radio I had the urge to listen to NPR.  I don’t know what inspired me to do so, but I’m glad I did.  I caught an interview segment and a very topical one at that.  The NPR journalist was interviewing Cubans in Florida.  Cubans in Florida are a perennial fascination for the media complex because of their abnormal political leanings, at least they are abnormal for Mestizos.  Typically Cubans vote majority Republican.  As was noted by NPR in recent years they have shifted left, to the point they vote 50-50.

NPR briefly mentioned children and recent immigrants and I would suspect that we are seeing the same sort of trends from Cuba as we see from the rest of the Mestizo immigrants.  The children of Cubans generation by generation are more and more connected with our culture OR should I say the Brahmin or Dalit culture and therefore become progressive or thuggish.  Recent immigrants, probably, are less likely to come from the upper and middle classes, and therefore are not fleeing communist tyranny but seeking a richer master.  That is my best guess on the reasons behind this shift.

The interview was with a seemingly Republican Cuban. Here is the transcript but I’ve selected the most interesting bits.  Apologies for the presentist content, I swear I will eschew it where possible.

GREENE: May I ask you about some of the allegations that have come out about sexual misconduct? A lot of women have come forward and said that they feel that they were sexually harassed by Donald Trump. He has denied this very strongly. But has any of that led you to doubt him?

RUIZ: Well, what I do find doubtful is at this point in his life, after 70 years and not a hint of any allegations from any of those women, it takes about four weeks before a presidential election for that to come out. It doesn’t make sense that there’s never been an allegation against him until he decided to run for president.

Miscellany #5 English Proverbs 2

11. Advice. Advice comes too late when a thing is done.

12. Afraid of wounds. He that’s afraid of wounds must not come nigh a battle.

13. Afraid. More afraid than hurt.

14. Age. Age before honesty.

15. Age (old). Old age is honourable.

Miscellany #4 ON SOCIALISM

I wish I could comment on this Encyclical, but I am afraid I have nothing to offer.  Just know that there is a Wisdom worth preserving.  Let us not be ignorant of our enemies, for Pope LEO XIII with far less history to look back on wrote this in 1878.

QUOD APOSTOLICI MUNERIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON SOCIALISM

To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and
Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and
Communion with the Apostolic See.

At the very beginning of Our pontificate, as the nature of Our apostolic office demanded, we hastened to point out in an encyclical letter addressed to you, venerable brethren, the deadly plague that is creeping into the very fibres of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction; at the same time We pointed out also the most effectual remedies by which society might be restored and might escape from the very serious dangers which threaten it. But the evils which We then deplored have so rapidly increased that We are again compelled to address you, as though we heard the voice of the prophet ringing in Our ears: “Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet.”(1) You understand, venerable brethren, that We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning – the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever.

Thoughts on Proverbs 5

PROVERBS 5 KING JAMES VERSION (KJV)

5 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: 2 That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. 3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: 4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. 6 Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.

This is a beautiful transference of metaphor: lips keeping knowledge compared to the lips of a strange woman.  First the obvious, as is a common theme words are powerful.  Now of course actions speak louder than words, but the Wisdom of Solomon does not advise one to run their mouth.  One must talk as well as one acts.  “The lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb…”  Clearly Solomon is wise to the temptations of women.  “But her end is bitter as wormwood…Her feet go down to death…”  The temptation of the “strange woman” is clearly dangerous.  This follows the theme of the path and walking into life or death.  The temptations of strange women take one away from the words of the father.  Because they are a woman’s words they are a meandering path that can never be known.  Because they are strange they lead not to life.

Where Count Nothing Face does my work for me

I had a post in the works on a similar subject to the one Count Nothing Face has written. The title was going to be “Where I begrudgingly argue for prostitution.”  Now I’m not sure Count Nothing Face would agree with me,  but I agree with him, and he made a complementary argument to the one I will make.

The left can call porn sexist, misogynist, or racist,  but we on the right have our own word for porn: degenerate. Indeed, how could anything defined as “the graphic depiction of vile whores,” be anything but degenerate? -Count Nothing Face

As Count Nothing Face argues porn is degenerate in that it is a depiction of whoring.  He continues:

What is a whore? A prostitute. What is a prostitute? Someone who engages in sexual activity for money. What does a porn star do? I think we can connect the dots here.

Sex has a function, a telos, and that function is both unitive and procreative. It’s purpose is to unite a man and a woman for the sake of building a family and contributing to their community. The pimp, the whore, the pornographer, and others one might sportively refer to as “sex workers” violate this function by reducing sex to a base transaction. As such, they have taken something sacred and made it profane. You would be hard-pressed to find a feminist, even one stridently opposed to pornography, willing to defend this conception of sex. -Count Nothing Face

Miscellany #3 CAS

This is a reminder that while Complex Societies and Evolution have many features in common they are neither the same thing nor do they function in the same way.

 

CAS

 

Notes #8 Brain Levers etc.

Once again I am subjecting my dear readers to some selections from a biology paper.  While this has not yet been labeled as torture by the UN, it might as well be.  However as I do not believe in human rights, your only recourse is to run screaming away from your user interface.

This week on things beyond me we will be looking at:

Evolutionary Development of Neural Systems in Vertebrates and Beyond

Lauren A. O ’ Connell

Neurogenetics, Early Online: 1–17

Abstract: The emerging field of “ neuro-evo-devo ” is beginning to reveal how the molecular and neural substrates that underlie brain function are based on variations in evolutionarily ancient and conserved neurochemical and neural circuit themes. Comparative work across bilaterians is reviewed to highlight how early neural patterning specifies modularity of the embryonic brain, which lays a foundation on which manipulation of neurogenesis creates adjustments in brain size. Small variation within these developmental mechanisms contributes to the evolution of brain diversity. Comparing the specification and spatial distribution of neural phenotypes across bilaterians has also suggested some major brain evolution trends, although much more work on profiling neural connections with neurochemical specific city across a wide diversity of organisms is needed. These comparative approaches investigating the evolution of brain form and function hold great promise for facilitating a mechanistic understanding of how variation in brain morphology, neural phenotypes, and neural networks influences brain function and behavioral diversity across organisms.

I can’t wait…

“Although developmental patterning of central nervous systems is remarkably similar across animal phyla, small variations on developmental themes have produced striking variation in brain morphology.”

One of the major themes of this paper is the how conservative the methods of generative neural diversity are.

Miscellany #2 Before the USSR