Tag: cultural norms

A Realistic View of Slavery & Slave Trading

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White people commonly respond to demands for reparations for slavery and slave trading by pointing out that it was whites who abolished these things.[1] I don’t know whether they notice that this doesn’t get them the credit from their antagonists that they seem to expect; they certainly don’t appear to see why this is.

The reason they get no credit is that black people don’t see the abolition of slavery and slave trading as quite the boon for humanity that white people do. If Africans had wanted slavery and slave trading to be abolished, they could have abolished them themselves very easily, just by ceasing to indulge in them. Instead, they met white attempts at abolition with fierce resistance. This was quite natural. Slavery was their way. As for slave trading, it gave them a good profit, and they saw nothing wrong with it.

No, the reason black people go on about slavery and slave trading is not that they deplore them but that they see that white people deplore them, who might therefore be made to feel so guilty about their forefathers’ involvement as to give black people large amounts of money in restitution.

Indeed, if we set the white record on slavery and slave trading against the black record, it stands out as a shining example. The transatlantic slave trade lasted only a fraction of the time that Africans spent selling each other to Arabs, and the number of slaves bought by whites — perhaps ten or 12 million — was a fraction of the number bought by Arabs. As for the length of time Africans spent selling each other to other Africans, and the numbers involved, these were much greater still. The intra-African slave trade still predominated in the nineteenth century, when a European explorer reported that slave-hunting in Africa went on far more to supply the domestic than the foreign market.[2]

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This is a strongly written piece. I am putting it up because it’s probably largely true and because white people get so much criticism, we need to hear other sides. I could say this about many of the essays I post. ABN

Recording shows Jewish Berkeley Law dean appearing to tell class he illegally discriminates against potential hires to boost diversity — and bragging he’ll deny it if deposed

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Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky appears to claim that he secretly discriminates while hiring staff members to boost diversity

The California state constitution has banned affirmative action in ‘public employment, public education, or public contracting’ since 1996

Chemerinsky said ‘the Law School strictly complies with Proposition 209 in all of its hiring and admissions decisions’ 

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This just happens to be exactly how ethnic nepotism works, including Jewish ethnic nepotism which is how he got his job. ABN

Some depressing thoughts about the evolution of human intelligence

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Firstly, human evolution is typically not survival of the fittest, but rather survival of the average. Outliers are misunderstood, envied, feared, killed or harmed. This happens to the less intelligent as well as the more intelligent.

The reason this happens to the intelligent is humans are envious and violent and prone to misunderstanding people who are smarter than them. This leads to violence toward, obstruction of, or not helping those who seem more intelligent.

It’s hard to escape a black ghetto because you will be perceived as “acting white” and attacked for that. It’s not very different in white “rural ghettos” (or urban) where intelligence is perceived as a threat. In many societies, average people cannot or will not lend support to their more intelligent members because they know, or imagine, that such behaviors will eventually lead to them being “lorded over” by the person(s) they helped.

Just a few generations ago, Italian American communities were famous for discouraging higher education among their children because it threatened the social structure if sons, let alone daughters, attained better careers than their fathers.

I am sure there are many other subcultures within the USA and throughout the world that have similar attitudes. Siblings often envy and decline helping each other, to say the least.

In the more distant past, violent death at the hands of other humans was a very common way for people to leave this vale of tears. Today the killing is less, but I doubt the harming is all that much less. Nowadays people use rumors, lies, poison, and many sorts of hindrance to prevent intelligent people from rising above them.

In a gruesome but very realistic way, this all makes sense because, evolutionarily, why should an individual help a genotype that is different from their own? This is probably why so much extant human intelligence, such that it is, is devoted to deceiving other humans, outsmarting them, out-competing them, getting ahead of them. Humans do better in a capitalist system because capitalism allows them to compete by virtually any means they can get away with.

Some strongly hierarchical societies, like China, do tend to help intelligent people if they are well-connected or have already risen to the top of a hierarchy. On the way to the top, though, the internecine fighting can be as bitter as anywhere else in the world.

In times of war or perceived threat, many groups will help the smarter ones of their own, but compensate by harming other groups even more viciously that usual. You can see this behavior in some cults, cliques, and secret societies within the USA today. Sometimes they help their genotype and sometimes they help their ideological types by that sort of behavior. In a sense, groups like that are just acting like individuals on a larger stage; they are selfish and violent as a group, but not too bad to themselves.

Having spent so much time with FIML practice and its considerable social and psychological implications, I don’t feel sanguine about the statements above. Isaac Newton helped the whole human race because somehow he was both left alone and helped. Had he spent time in public houses just being himself, he probably would have been beaten, and thus returned through brain damage to the common lot. Had he not been helped, he probably would have done nothing, and certainly much less. My guess is England probably had hundreds of potential Newtons, but just that one survived to produce great science.

Archimedes was murdered by a Roman soldier. Socrates was poisoned. Newton survived. These are the few we know about. I am sure there are many thousands more who were destroyed before they ever did anything to cause us to know about them.

My guess is the Buddha meant something like the above when he described the Four Noble Truths. Notice, that his formula provides no way for societies (large groups) to escape suffering en masse, but only a way for individuals or small groups.

Large groups can become more comfortable but, it seems, always at the expensive of even larger groups that are exploited by them. Maybe computers and machines will fix this problem in the future, but there doesn’t seem to be much hope today. Multiculturalism will very likely make things even worse, except for the few groups that dominate the others. Not much different, except in scale, from a normal bad neighborhood today.

first posted JUNE 16, 2014

Note for today: What we rightly fear about machine intelligence/AI is it will act like us as described above. And there appears to be no way—or no sure way—to prevent AI from destroying us. Maybe digital babies with IQs of 300 will grow up to figure something out though to a huge AI, a 300 IQ human will be like a gnat. ABN

SAILER SPEAKS: “Did Black Lives Matter Get All Those Black Lives Murdered? Yes. Yes, It Did.”

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The Black Lives Matter movement, during its two eras of triumph (after Ferguson and after George Floyd), helped get huge numbers of extra blacks killed in two different ways: homicides and motor vehicle accidents.

(For the record, about 1,297 whites were also lynched in the same period).

During the Ferguson Effect, black homicide deaths increased 27% from 2014 to 2016 and black motor vehicle deaths were up 24%. During the Floyd Effect, black homicide victimizations surged 44% from 2019 to 2021 and car crash deaths were up 39%.

Overall, black Deaths of Exuberance were more than 10,000 lives more in 2021 than in 2014. Just in 2021 alone, the 10,353 incremental black homicide and auto accident deaths were three times than the vastly publicized 3,446 lynching deaths of all blacks in all American history.

But virtually nobody knows this. The media won’t publish the two graphs together. It simply doesn’t fit with our era’s naïve worship of Diversity.

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Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis

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…The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society. 

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the idea that individuals should be systematically evaluated and selected based on their ability rather than wealth, class, or political connections, led to significant changes in selection techniques at all levels of American society. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) revolutionized college admissions by allowing elite universities to find and recruit talented students from beyond the boarding schools of New England. Following the adoption of the SAT, aptitude tests such as Wonderlic (1936), Graduate Record Examination (1936), Army General Classification Test (1941), and Law School Admission Test (1948) swept the United States. Spurred on by the demands of two world wars, this system of institutional management electrified the Tennessee Valley, created the first atom bomb, invented the transistor, and put a man on the moon. 

By the 1960s, the systematic selection for competence came into direct conflict with the political imperatives of the civil rights movement. During the period from 1961 to 1972, a series of Supreme Court rulings, executive orders, and laws—most critically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964—put meritocracy and the new political imperative of protected-group diversity on a collision course. Administrative law judges have accepted statistically observable disparities in outcomes between groups as prima facie evidence of illegal discrimination. The result has been clear: any time meritocracy and diversity come into direct conflict, diversity must take priority. 

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A society not based on truthful standards of excellence will crash. Almost all individuals accept their own limitations. Why don’t we just face these facts and also accept that some groups can be defined as better at some stuff than others and use those people and those groups where they can be most effective? ABN

Thousands of protestors block entrance to Dodgers Stadium as team honors group of ‘Godless’ and ‘Christ-mocking’ queer and trans nuns in front of nearly empty stands for Pride Night

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Th 45-year-old organization says it works in ‘outreach’ to marginalized communities and claim to ‘use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit’.

On Monday, the team was lambasted in a statement from Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, and the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Military Services.

They asked Catholics to pray on Friday ‘as an act of reparation for the blasphemies against our Lord we see in our culture today.’

‘A professional baseball team has shockingly chosen to honor a group whose lewdness and vulgarity is mocking our Lord, His Mother, and consecrated women cannot be overstated,’ the archbishops said. 

‘This is not just offensive and painful to Christians everywhere; it is blasphemy.’ 

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Tragic story of Chicago’s famous Walking Man: ‘Gentle soul’ ended up homeless after deaths of FOUR siblings, refused to use sleeping bag over fears of attack – and lost eyelids and ear in fire assault that killed him

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Family and friends have shed light on a famous Chicago resident known as the Walking Man, who loved to stroll the streets he lived on until he was burned to death in a horrific attack.

Joseph Kromelis was murdered in December 2022 aged 75, horrifying the Windy City’s residents, after being set alight with gasoline while sleeping rough.

For decades, he fascinated Chicagoans by walking up to 20 miles a day while keeping to himself, with his poised stance, thick hair and huge mustache adding to his mystique.

Some people theorized he was an eccentric billionaire, while others claimed to have heard that he was a famous musician or a college literature professor.

But the truth was far more prosaic – and moving. Kromelis’ family and friends say the real Walking Man was a gentle soul whose life was beset by tragedy and poverty, but who remained determined to maintain a private, yet dignified existence.

Kromelis worked as a street jewelry salesman during his younger years, and would offer passers-by the chance to buy gold trinkets hung from the inside of his coat.

But after suffering the loss of four siblings in quick succession, Kromelis became homeless in the early 2010s. 

The single-occupancy residency he lived in was bought by developers, leaving him with nowhere to live. 

He  was sleeping on the streets when he was set alight by a career criminal in May 2022, causing horrific full body burns which eventually killed him seven months later. 

A nun who tended to Kromelis during his painful final months in hospital said the attack left him without eyelids, and also burned one of his ears off. 

The Chicago Tribune has now revealed the life story behind Kromelis, who had no history of violence, addiction or mental health issues – but was instead a local legend before his heartbreaking death.

Kromelis was born in Germany on January 13, 1947 to Lithuanian parents, and he was one of six children who emigrated with them to America.

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FLASHBACK to 11/30/22: Elonathan Greenmusk plays word game

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I hope Musk does well by the world’s people by truly allowing free speech on Twitter. If he means the above, he won’t. Freedom of speech without freedom of reach is not free speech, it is censorship. It’s a word game that conceals a vile intent. ABN (first posted )

UPDATE: At best Musk’s free-speech absolutism is true but also impossible (for him) due to the economics of Twitter and all social media, including Big Media/MSM. At worst, it was never true and/or he fears for his life and welfare if he defies his control masters. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle and our nation (and all of the West) is trapped in a circle of money-lies-bribes-blackmail-taxes-corruption-election theft-censorship-propaganda-more lies-money-blackmail-etc. At bottom this circle is ruled by money-blackmail-and lies, especially lies. Notice that covid and covid vaxxes would have gone nowhere without the lies. Ditto Ukraine War, election theft, climate change, and so on. I think we can have some compassion for Musk as the pressure must be enormous. Everyone else has folded. Truth today is like cracks of light you can find only in obscure corners of the Internet or with a select few amazing & wonderful people. ABN

Ambiguity and social hierarchy

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In this post I am going to contend that: linguistic ambiguity tends to lead to or produce hierarchical social systems.

By linguistics, in this context, I just mean language and its uses, though expressions, gestures, roles, and so on can also be factors. Of course, many other things–genes, wars, historical precedents, etc.–also produce hierarchical societies, but today we will just deal with language.

Another way of stating the contention above is: humans have adapted to linguistic ambiguity by forming hierarchies. Or human hierarchical societies have evolved as adaptations to linguistic ambiguity. A stronger way of saying that would be human hierarchical societies have evolved as adaptations to linguistic ambiguity and they exploit ambiguity to maintain themselves.

Another way of saying all that might be to say that in hierarchical societies linguistic ambiguity is good for the top people because it maintains the status quo. This happens because if the ambiguity matters in any way, it is almost always the top people who will decide what it means.

I am going to present a microcosmic example of this point. Please notice as you read this example that this kind of ambiguity is very common. Something like this will occur in your life very often, maybe as often as a few times per hour of conversation, maybe more.

This morning I was cutting some (store-bought) potatoes for breakfast. As I was doing that I said to my partner: “The potatoes from our garden are so much better than these store-bought ones.” All I meant was that. I had no further implication in mind.

My partner (my FIML partner) did a FIML query and asked me: “Did you say that to make me feel good about our garden?” I replied: “No, I did not.” After which she said: “Because if you had I would have felt bad because I was very careful when I bought those potatoes so I would have felt that you were criticizing my shopping.”

This example shows very clearly that the only way to resolve the ambiguity inherent in my statement is to fully discuss the statement–why I said it, what I meant by it, and what I didn’t mean by it. Anything less would leave a puzzle in my partner’s mind.

This example also shows the value of trivial incidents for FIML practice, something we have emphasized many times. That this incident is trivial and small (just a single sentence) makes it perfect material for a FIML query. If the incident were larger, it would be harder to isolate and agree upon data points. As it was, my partner and I were able to clearly remember what I had said and how we both understood that statement very differently. As it was, we were able to clear up the ambiguity very quickly. No, I was not implying criticism. Yes, I do appreciate your careful shopping. Yes, these are excellent store-bought potatoes, but they aren’t as good as the ones we grow in our garden.

Everything was clear and we both experienced a resolution, my partner more than I because I had not initially noticed the ambiguity in my statement or the effect it had on my partner.

That’s a good example of a FIML query. And it is a good example of how a FIML query can lead to an extensive discussion. The extensive discussion in this case is how even very minor ambiguities like the potato incident can lead to or support hierarchical social structures.

In most non-FIML homes, I am pretty sure most people would not have inquired as my partner did. Most people would probably not say anything. Not saying anything would maintain whatever status quo had been established in that home.

If our home were a hierarchy and I were the top dog (and we did not do FIML), my partner would be forced to wonder silently about what I meant about my potato comment. Maybe she would suffer or feel confused or resentful. It is natural for humans to interpret language in a self-centric manner and it is natural (normal) for humans to be a little paranoid about what they hear. If my partner were the top dog and I had said that, she might question me in an aggressive manner or accuse me of being ungrateful. In that case, I would probably be forced to apologize and claim that I hadn’t meant it that way. Going forward, I might become more wary about what I said around her.

So, not inquiring, not resolving small linguistic ambiguities maintains the status quo. If the status quo is a hierarchy, it will be maintained.

If the status quo is not hierarchical, other problems will result from not resolving ambiguities even as small as the potato example. In the example of partners who live together, partners will feel a mounting sense of confusion and uncertainty as ambiguities like that accumulate. It will be harder for them to trust each other. Kind motives may be misinterpreted as being aggressive, and so on. In time, things may get so bad partners will separate or stay together but divide their lives into separate spheres of influence. If they separate, no status quo has been maintained (demonstrating my main point). If they divide their lives into separate spheres of influence, they will essentially be dividing their lives into small hierarchical spheres of influence (ditto). The garden is yours. The basement is mine. Et cetera.

Some hierarchy is inevitable and desirable between friends or in the home. But for close relationships, less hierarchy is better for most people because it is through egalitarian relationships that we learn the most about ourselves and each other, and it is in these sorts of relationships that we develop the most.

In hierarchical societies, generally speaking the person who is higher up decrees the resolution to all ambiguities. Do what the boss says. Just do what you’re told. She’s in charge. He is infallible, etc.

One reason hierarchies get away with decrees like that is it would simply take far too much time to resolve every ambiguity in a perfectly egalitarian way. Thus, almost all humans today are well-adapted to living in hierarchies. I am sort of OK with that in many professional and business contexts.

Where I am not OK with it is between close friends or couples, except for a little bit here and there depending on context (for example, one partner has special knowledge or experience the other doesn’t have). I suppose many people are very content living in a hierarchy in their own home, but that’s not for me. I don’t want my partner obeying me or being afraid of me and I don’t want to obey or be afraid of her either.

From this small potato example, I hope readers will be able to extrapolate to the formations of social groups. Surely social groups formed in many places at many different times. As history moved forward in time, less well-adapted groups were dominated by groups that were better adapted. And that is why the world is run by hierarchies almost everywhere.

One consequence of this is it affects the individual psychology of all of us who live in hierarchical societies. This may make us intolerant of ambiguity. It may make us view our private lives through hierarchical lenses. Without FIML, our massive training in hierarchical systems will lead to confusion and suffering in our private lives. The inevitable ambiguity will eat away at us if we have no way to fully deal with it.

Another consequence of living in hierarchical societies is people who for one reason or another don’t quite understand the rules will often be judged as mentally ill, dangerous, trouble-makers, outlaws, and so on. In very rigid societies you can be sent to a gulag or be burned at the stake for not conforming. In less rigid societies, you will be fired or ostracized.

first posted JUNE 20, 2012

Why has USA changed so much over the past fifteen years?

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The answer “why” is not complicated…. not complicated at all.

In 2008, the ‘activists’ took control of government.

In January of 2009, the leftists, community organizers and activists took control of the systems they had opposed for the preceding 50+ years.

In January of 2009, and inflection point took place; an inflection point that no one realized in forethought, scale or consequence.

Starting in 2009, all of the systems of federal government were now under the control of the people who previously fought against the systems of federal government.  Everything since is an outcome of that inflection point; that’s why everything flipped.

All of it, and I do mean every scintilla of the thing; every single granular detail and example you can put in front of me can be traced back to that moment when the activists were no longer outside government railing against the corrupt system they hated.

Starting in January of 2009, the activists took power over the United States government, and every outside institution, including media, necessarily and ideologically followed that inversion.

Starting in 2009, the systems and institutions of the U.S government now came under the control of the radical activists.

In the eight years that followed, the mission of every institution was changed.  Government was weaponized on behalf of the leftist activists who now took control of it.  Everything thereafter is a consequence of this change.

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Greater Idaho measure clinches Wallowa County win

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Phase 1 of the Greater Idaho proposal, with election results as of May 2023

The Wallowa County Clerk notified Greater Idaho volunteers yesterday that the Greater Idaho measure has clinched a win. It has 8 more Yes votes than No votes and there are only 7 incomplete ballots left to be cured by voters, according to a statement at the movement’s website, greateridaho.org.

Professional Portland political operatives broke the law to try to hide who they were and how much money they were spending, but they still lost. Trying to associate normal rural Oregonians like the Greater Idaho movement with scary extremist groups did not work. The election results in Wallowa County this year were 1% more favorable than in the same County in 2020 despite the movement being outspent by social justice warriors this time.

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The Trans Mind-Virus Is Mutating

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…In the States, Leigh Finke, a transgender-identified (biological male) legislator in Minnesota, drafted a bill declaring Minnesota a “refuge state” for the medical transitioning of minors, and has now proposed an amendment to state legislation that would classify “sexual attachment to children” as a protected sexual orientation. 

In Colorado, twenty-seven Democrats in the State House of Representatives just voted against making indecent exposure to minors a felony, with one legislator commenting that the criminal prohibition unfairly targets the drag and trans communities.  

And in Washington state, Democrats passed Senate Bill 5599, which would allow the state to legally hide runaway children from their parents if the parents don’t consent to their child’s “gender transition” or abortion.  

Clinical research is even being done on the distinctive features of particular populations with sexual attraction to children. Two researchers recently focused on the unique experiences of “minor attracted” women, for example, and called the link between “minor attraction” and “sexual offending against children” theoretical. The link can hardly be called “theoretical.”  

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