In dissident circles, it is generally accepted that the West has lost its way due to two main problems. One is that the ruling class has embraced a set of ideas about human organization that are at odds with biological reality. Either from a desire to feel righteous or just from reckless disregard for their duties, they have embraced a set of beliefs about humanity we loosely call multiculturalism. The two roots of this belief set are the blank slate and egalitarianism. We are amorphous blobs with equal potential.
The other problem is that this desire to include everyone has allowed all sorts of barking at the moon crazies to gain positions of influence in the culture. These are the people who show up in the corporate human resource department chanting about the need make sure everyone holds the exact same opinions, all in the name of diversity. These are the people running around attacking statuary on the college campus. Fear of these crazies has damaged our normal mechanism for defending society from external threats.
At Our Wit’s End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for Our Future, by Edward Dutton and Michael A. Woodley of Menie, offers an alternative explanation for why we are seeing the West in crisis. Ed Dutton is an English anthropologist who teaches at the University of Oulu in Finland. Michael A. Woodley is a British ecologist and intelligence researcher with the Center Leo Apostel at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Both have written extensively about human intelligence.
Their book is an effort to track general intelligence in the West, against the backdrop of human accomplishment in the West. More specifically, they make the case that the West is getting dumber, even when adjusting for immigration, and the process has been going on for a long time. As a result, the West is following in the same path as prior civilizations that experienced a similar decline in general intelligence. Stupid people do stupid things and cumulatively, they eventually bring the whole thing down.
The book starts with one of those obvious examples that is so obvious, you wonder why you did not notice it. Fifty years ago this July, humans landed on the moon. The lunar program was started roughly a decade before and NASA went from having crude rockets unable to put satellites into space to sending people to the moon and bringing them back safely. To people alive in that time, it was an incredible moment, and one they assumed was the dawn of the space age, when man would traverse the stars.
Today, we cannot reach the moon. In fact, we struggle to hurl a probe to the moon. The Israelis are celebrating because their probe managed to actually hit the moon, rather than miss it entirely. NASA is no longer able to do much of anything and instead spends its time celebrating diversity. Whatever the reason, in this one area, the West is clearly not where it was fifty years ago. Instead of the moon landing being a launching point for the exploration of space, it was the peak of human ability to explore the stars.
Another obvious example they begin with, one that should hit home for men in their middle years, is the Concorde. If you were a kid in the 1970’s, the Concorde was the shape of things to come. Instead of six and seven hour flights across the continent or the Atlantic Ocean, flight time would be a few hours. Everyone was sure we would soon be hopping on super-fast planes to be halfway around the globe in a few hours. Instead, we stand in line for hours at the airport to get on planes no faster than fifty years ago.
These two great examples are the jumping off point to explain that we are not only getting dumber, but the biological process causing it. The book itself is actually a series of essays, grouped together into topics related to the main theme. It is written for a general audience, so even if the reader has little exposure to cognitive studies, the material is easy to follow. In fact, the book also works a great introduction for those curious about IQ and the ways in which science has for studying human cognitive ability.
For those with an interest in Roman history, the discussions of intelligence in the Republic, as well as the Empire, are very interesting. There are a great many theories as to why the Republic collapsed into autocracy and why the Western Empire collapsed. In fact, that’s the fun part of studying the Romans. Why they suddenly, so it seems, veered from consensual government to military dictatorship and empire is one of the great stories of Western history. It’s a great story full of amazing characters, both good and bad.
What the authors suggest is that a biological process was the root of the rise of Rome, it’s flourishing as a republic and then it’s decent into autocracy and eventually collapse. Their theory is a great addition to Joseph Tainter’s ideas about the collapse of complex civilizations. Taken together, it suggests Spengler’s observation about civilization is the result of people building social organizations that eventually become too complex for them to manage. Or, they simply become too dumb to operate what their ancestors left them.
Perhaps the most compelling example is their look at the golden age of Islam. Maybe it is because it is unfamiliar to Westerners, so we have no emotional bias, but the math presented to explain the rise and fall is revelatory. Not only does it explain the collapse of “high Islam” but it explains the rise of modern Islam. It opens the door to understanding this strange, esoteric civic cult that has taken up residence among the ruling elites in the West. It is a short essay, but very powerful in explaining their argument.
Now, the one complaint about the book is it really could have gone into great depth about some of the examples used to make their points. The section on Islam would make for a great 10,000 word essay. They only brush up against the phenomenon of religion rising, falling and then rising again in the late stages of civilization. It is a great example of a short book that the reader will wish was much longer. Usually, the opposite is true. Most books are too long and in need of a ruthless editor. This is not one of those books.
Finally, for dissidents, this book is a black pill. Most of us hang onto the hope that we can find a way to argue and organize our way out of this decline. The truth is, the West may simply lack the human capital to keep the plates spinning much longer. In other words, the die may have been cast a dozen generations ago when smart people started limiting their fertility and helping the poor make it too adulthood. The result being a steady decline in our IQ to the point where we are no longer fit to carry on as a civilization.
Maybe our movement of dissent is a form of biological sorting of those aware of the decline, who understand at least in part some of its causes and are willing to self select themselves out of the eventual collapse.
Instead if saving the West we should separate and save ourselves. If the collapse is inevitable we should get out of the way. Our dissent is only holding back the march into the abyss. We should be pursuing separation from not accommodation with something no longer redeemable.
Having dealt with the dunderheaded state and county bureaucracy for decades in the business world, it was always my contention that we never went back to the moon because we couldn’t get a permit.
You’re on to something. I think it would take nine years to write the environmental impact statement for a manned moon mission.
now that is funny!
If you are intelligent enough to note Western decline, I don’t see how you could simultaneously hold the utterly delusional idea that separatism from the masses would be allowed prior to the point where the state was so weak that separation itself was a formality.
Separation has been going on for decades. Suburbs are white refugees relocation camps. During the past two decades whites have begun migrating north while non-whites have drifted south. No one has to run an advertising campaign, they are doing it already. Even retirement communities are no longer expanding aggressively in FL, CA, etc. Maine and the Northern Rockies are where even the Boomers are seeking escape.
Quiet conversations among families and friends about leaving blue rat holes and actually doing it as small groups of families and friends will be very difficult for clown world to interfere with.
It’s already started in my area and your welcome to join before it gets even more expensive to be here…If people would of listened back when I first advocated to build Communities they would be setting pretty right now…But alas no one saw the need at the time and they were just to comfortable to make that move…Sad That…
The central issue seems to be very simple.
All the “minorities”- Jews, blacks, Mexicans and assorted mystery meats, seem to hate and wish to destroy whites while at the same time demand access to Whites, white societies and their achievements on their own terms,
The solution is very simple too, it may however be too brutal for whites to implement.
@bile
Well Brother that’s what parasites do they latch on to a host and then proceed to kill it… Nothing new under the sun…
At the close of the 20th century the West still had the prospect of an extraordinarily bright future full of amazing triumphs such as human colonization of the solar system (and the stars), life extension, human intelligence augmentation through brain-computer interfaces, limitless energy from fusion, etc… It seems this is all going to be closed off in various ways for the mainstream society at least. What I suspect will start to happen is simply that various groups of upper middle class and wealthy people who are NOT part of the Establishment or are dissidents within it will start building their… Read more »
@Pozy
Very Well Said…I concur and am doing what I can to make it happen…
Early Monasticism was such a form of sorting. Likewise, the Amish today – here and in many places around the world – preserve one strand of western tradition, and thrive. They took your advice several centuries ago: They separated themselves and staked out a homeland of the spirit, some two hundred years before the Enlightenment.
I actually had Dutton playing on Youtube when I saw the new post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXkspDRJlxo
I’ve always thought the “Golden Age” of Islam was bullshit. It was just converted Goths and Carthaginians continuing their Classical civilization ways for a couple of generations without being bothered by Islamic raids and piracy.
After 2 generations, their descendants were fully indoctrinated into Muslim life and had bred with the Arab invaders. Then the region that had been the bread-basket of the classical world quickly descended into permanent poverty and irrelevance.
At least where advancement of science and other civilizational metrics are concerned, the so-called “Golden Age” of Islam is a myth created over the last century or so by the leftist academy. Germanic tribes were responsible for the end of classical Greco-Roman civilization; that dubious honor also falls to the Muslims, who began the Dark Ages by rolling back or destroying much of classical civilization. The book, “Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy” by Emmet Scott concerns the lengthy history of the historical controversy which attached to the 1920s work of Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, who advanced… Read more »
Not directly commenting on the exact topic but I just want to acknowledge the high quality of this post and indeed this blog in general. Thanks for the time you put into creating it.
Will put in a vote for the ‘too complex to operate’…or at least that complexity becomes fatal if there is not an almost hard encoded set of operating rules in all the participants. Start to introduce “diversity” and those formerly unconsciously automatic operating rules fall apart. Have seen it in spades in the financial services industry over the last three decades. Firms got so big, so complex, but more importantly as acquisitions occurred, kept importing foreign cultures to companies that might have operated successfully and grown organically with no problem. Eventually management loses control, has no real idea of how… Read more »
There’s an excellent related article on UNZ this morning about intra-European brain diversity. Long but worth it.
http://www.unz.com/gdurocher/intra-european-brain-diversity/
The thing about the financial services industry is that the bureaucratization is now mostly complete. The plan is not to prevent the downside, which can’t be prevented anyway, only delayed, but to identify the scapegoats within the system, once things come apart. Look around, if you are in the industry, and identify those scapegoats in your midst. If you can’t, that scapegoat is likely you. Plan accordingly.
If I could up vote this a 1,000 times I would. It was happening to me a few years ago (more responsibility, oversight of other departments not related to anything in my purview, assigned to dead-end projects, fewer personnel and resources, left out of meetings, didn’t get the memo, etc…), so I left. A former colleague was recently terminated, and the interesting part was that it was clear 2 years ago that he was positioned to be the scapegoat.
“Scapegoatism” is not confined to the financial services industry, but other industries and society (see yesterday’s Zman post)
It goes hand and hand with the “too big to manage”. Scapegoats are necessary for executive management that largely has no idea what is going on in most of these organizations. Have to hand it to the old CEO of my former firm. When he took over, called the CDS guys in and kept asking “how do I have a loss on these things”. Kept getting bullshit answers and models that showed virtually no chance of loss. Then asked ‘why are we being paid so high a risk premium?” No good answer. Circle didn’t square. So in ’05/06 he ordered… Read more »
“Complexity” is often just obfuscation of theft. Other times, it’s people who simply can’t think straight being put in charge of systems they do not understand. You can see ridiculous levels of complexity in government laws and codes, and also within the financial system – which both rest on a huge foundation of theft. This is why I constantly go back to the money. If people have become so stupid as to try to excuse away the massive amount of theft they have to suffer thru on a daily basis – well then they probably are just too stupid to… Read more »
The U.S. is certainly too dumb to operate the Republic we’ve inherited. I think that exact thought every time I hear a moron wanting to get rid of the electoral college or scrap the Constitution.
They have no awareness that those were the fundamental compromises that made the nation possible. Those are the load-bearing walls they want to pull down. Maybe I should be cheering for them to do it – but unlike them, I have an idea of the consequences.
The left is the politics of envy.
The modern world is amazingly toxic in the literal sense. It seems everything from plastic wear to food is designed to destroy testosterone. Women were so eager to get useless degrees, that we still dont know exactly what hormonal birth control does to their brains.
As sad as it to watch the fermi paradox in slow motion, the collapse of complex chemical manufacturing will probably make us healthier. As the collapse of urban Rome into fuedal latifundia did for Europeans.
Blame the 1930 Lambeth Conference of the Church of England. For the first time a major Christian denomination approved contraception. It was prompted by the country’s rich and powerful and smart, who didn’t want so many kids themselves, and wanted to limit the births of the masses. All major Protestant denominations soon followed. Within a couple decades, abortion also was legalized. Even the Catholic Church, which resisted strongly until the 1960s and still officially opposes contraception, hardly mentions it. Smart people are more likely to use contraception properly, or to drive to the abortion clinic on time. Meanwhile, the smart… Read more »
The irony is….we are hardwired to do what ever it takes, work hard, organize, birth control, invent.. to create and strive for an easier life. Once we achieve this, we commence to fall apart! How many of us in Z’s threads have noticed we were meant to be occupied with the struggle….not the Barcalounger.
Range Front, right on. This is why I’m so much against welfare proposals such as UBI. Without a bit of a struggle to survive, man is a degraded soul—and shows it!
In a normal world I would agree with you, Compsci – “He who does not work does not eat.” But in today’s Clownworld, where the decline is already apparent and demographically irreversible, and where Whites are systematically degraded and milked of their labor and assets, I believe Whites should get whatever they can from the carcass before all the diversity strips the bones clean. No, I won’t vote for the Oriental (or vote at all any longer) and I don’t see Whites ever really getting any gibs at all – but cut corners on your taxes, take every discount offered… Read more »
3g4me; under normal circumstances I’d agree with you.
The issue is that our society is now a hijacked plane. The only way we live is to soft crash it and build a new civilization in the landing zone.
Part II is something that has to wait for another day. Part I can be addressed now by “pouring sand in the gears” at every opportunity.
To me, UBI = looting the Empire for startup capital. It’s a survival strategy to help escape a sinking ship, the technocratic final solution to problems created by technocracy. In a properly based society, we would care for our people because they’re our people, not because GDP, efficiency, etc… For now, Get That Bag & put it toward a better future for our own.
All my best friends are ‘conservatives’ – work hard, listen to the daily roster of AM ‘thinkers’, scroll through their phones at lunch for stories from Breitbart or The Daily Caller, and never – ever – hear a sour word about President Trump. In their way they are as impenetrable as the enemy. They don’t read books, or the Zblog; they do all the things that the proper white suburbanite of 1980 is expected to do: They pursue the material idyll, as the natural and normal pursuit of all real men at all times. Their souls are monetized. I reject… Read more »
First Western country to suffer from a major decline in reproduction rate was France in the 19th century-long berfore the Lambeth conference.
France was the only country that went through the Industrial Revolution and didn’t see a huge increase in population.
Not sure about the extent to which 19th century France was influenced by 20th century Anglicans.
Crowding plays a part on all this. 30 million people in a nation as small as France in 1800 is incredible . Its a bit over twice that now and terribly crowded. Europe is overcrowded so if the USA and a non demented leadership in the West ones who weren’t obsessed with money, growth technology having more people to rule over would acknowledge this, close the borders and welcome slow population decline In a few decades of that the population would reach the point where it stabilizes at a smaller level and with the than cheaper housing, larger families will… Read more »
We haven’t gone back to the moon because it is barren rock and nobody has figured out how to make money off of it. I’m not saying the thesis doesn’t have merit, just that the timeline is longer. We have plenty of human capital but it is occupied with consumer goods. The modern phone is a true wonder. Note that we didn’t even know the structure of the hereditary vehicle 70 yrs ago. Now we can manipulate it at will. The Chinese just announced that they have made a smarter monkey. South africa is, in contrast, is getting to the… Read more »
Yeah, I’m not disputing (or affirming) Dutton’s thesis, but the the moon and concord aren’t great examples. Going to the moon was a pissing contest with the Soviets, no more. We won, and everyone decided there were better things to do with their money. For a variety of reasons, the Concord wasn’t economically feasible. It wasn’t a matter of brains.
Again, not saying that Dutton is incorrect, just that these examples don’t prove his point.
Our Germans beat their Germans.
“No Senator. They did not. Our Germans are better than their Germans.”.
The Right Stuff is a great movie.
The thing about the moon landings and the Concorde is to do these things, and see where they lead. That they led to nothing significant is not a surprise, it is how most leading edge experiments turn out. These were simply very high profile ones. Now we don’t even try any more, though Elon Musk, a nutcase or the first order, is out there trying a lot of things. If you watch his people land rockets on floating rafts and don’t get a tingle down your spine, you have something wrong with you. One can also argue that the whole… Read more »
Musk is not a nut. What would you do if you found yourself with several billions? A man can only consume so much coke and hookers in a lifetime. Keith Richards is probably the benchmark here. The real nut is Bill gates. Apparently his goal is to prop up africas population so that when the die-off comes it will be really horrific and destructive. Who knows, maybe it will take Europe down with it. We are lucky that we have musk. He and bezos are keeping the know-how from the from the moon shot advancing, however tenuously. My hope is… Read more »
Agree re Musk. As far as I can tell, he is guilty of a number of outright criminal acts (e.g. securities fraud), as well as being a bit of a huckster overall.
Still… may a thousand Musks bloom! We’re better off with him than without. Just be careful about investing any money with such people.
The problem with space exploration is the same as from day one: too costly to use the present technology to lift payload into orbit. We, and the Soviets, had rocket technology developed primarily to lift heavy nukes to each other’s borders and those (technology) were “borrowed” to start a space program. But the whole thing was a stunt and predictable in limitations. NASA of course continues to send costly stunts into space, but those will never get us off this planet. If we were serious, we’d spend most of our resources to develop an alternate, cost efficient launching technology and… Read more »
There is no “alternate, cost-efficient launching strategy” that could enable routine space travel from Earth. It takes a fixed, massive amount of energy to accelerate a mass to critical velocity to escape Earth into space. That amount of energy is a function of the laws of physics and will never change. The efficiency of rocket engines can be improved, but that has limits. There is an analogous problem with hypersonic airplanes. As a matter of physics, it consumes a massive amount of energy to accelerate a mass to hypersonic speeds. This cannot be overcome with better airframe design or more… Read more »
I’m trying to figure out how literal you are being about ‘barren rock’ and ‘making money’ because if you are being 100% literal that is sort of scary. The thing about the moon is that it requires capital outlay and risk that is simply not the norm today. We don’t ‘go boldly’ anywhere anymore for paragraphs full of reasons I won’t be typing here that are already known to most readers. As for the ‘making money’ once you had the initial huge upfront cost covered there is this little thing on the moon you may have heard of it before,… Read more »
Interesting post. Take the Moon landing. The NASA of 1969 is not the same NASA of 1980 let alone that of 2008. he NASA of today is the end result of 30+ years of bad management and AA policies that drove out their talent and replaced them with degreed ticket punchers and mouth breathers.. You know why we don’t have a shuttle replacement? Because Lockheed and Boeing are too stupid to make one. They tried in the 1980’s and failed horribly. They had no idea how to design and build them. NASA had to cancel the contracts they were so… Read more »
“The truth is, the West may simply lack the human capital to keep the plates spinning much longer. In other words, the die may have been cast a dozen generations ago when smart people started limiting their fertility and helping the poor make it too adulthood.” Indeed. People don’t realize that one of the most ingenious, though perhaps evil, inventions of the modern West is its bureaucracy. Before y’ll get enraged, hear the Booby out: Anyone who has ever had to deal with the maddening layers of bureaucracy in modern society thinks bureaucracies are stupid. They’re not stupid; they’re brilliant.… Read more »
I can’t remember who said it (maybe Buffett) that he only invests in companies a monkey can run, because all companies end up being run by monkeys.
I have always believed that Christianity has as much to do with the current decline of the West as it originally had with it’s rise. Christianity did a lot for the growth of Western Civilization for many reasons not the least of which was the propensity of the West to explore, conquer, colonize, and civilize the world in the name of bringing Jesus to the savages. And it worked. Then they decided the “savage” had been driven out of these people and there are “the same as we are”. Sorry, not it wasn’t and no they aren’t. Hence here we… Read more »
Jonathan Bowden once pointed out that in medieval times the attitude of Christians was, “God created the peoples of the world different and meant for them to stay different.” If only that attitude had been preserved…
19th-20th century Chrisitianity (esp. after WWII) mostly discarded their good ideas and doubled-down on the bad. I blame the leadership not the religion. Russell’s “Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity” showed the good side of syncretism. Christianity’s 20th Century decline, esp. after WWII, shows the bad side. Until the late 20th, most Christians were parochial, not universal, and looked at the Chosen as pariahs, not blessed overlords.
Why can’t it be as simple as the stupid are out breeding the smart.
Mostly because the stupid don’t always out breed the smart. For long stretches, the opposite was true. In the Middle Ages around fifty percent of children of peasants died before puberty. The upper classes, in contrast, saw most of their off-spring make it to adulthood. Having a lot of kids was a status symbol. There is a point where this flips. The smart build up society to a point where it is relatively safe and well fed. Child mortality declines. Violence declines. Elite fertility also declines. Why do smart people stop having children? Why do they lose their religion and… Read more »
Even if the stupid are outbreeding the smart currently, the absolute numbers of smart people are higher than at any point in history simply due to population growth. So in theory, the inventions, cures, innovations, etc. should keep happening. The bigger problem is that we are being ruled by the ever growing stupid population, who are putting so much sand in the gears that the smart people are having trouble navigating.
The vibrants protested funding for NASA. Those funds would have been better spent on gibs.
Here’s an example of this. Perhaps you even had this song in mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
Don’t want gibs? Have lots of jobs that pay well enough to start a family in an urban environment for all skill and education levels . We haven’t had that in half a century or so If the private sector doesn’t support such jobs and ours clearly does not than people will turn to the public sector In any case , you cannot get out if paying for society and as society gets more and more complex , the cost of running it will increase and sooner or later ever dime, private and public will be eaten up Once we… Read more »
Well, we may not actually have more geniuses today that say 300 years ago in absolute numbers. Generations of bringing the bottom up, so to speak, meant the odds of a genius marrying and reproducing with another genius went up each generation. When the pattern flipped, the genius pool gets quickly diluted. That said, smart fraction theory is something worth considering here. At what point does the cart become so laden that the horses can no longer pull it? Then there is the very real observation that the truly smart are systematically excluded from the institutions. Creativity is frightening to… Read more »
Yep, it doesn’t a much of a drop in average IQ (assuming similar variance) to dramatically decrease the number of geniuses. OTOH, we may more assortative mating going on today than ever before. The Soviets couldn’t have designed a better system for bringing smart people together. Our system sorts them at a very young age, funnels them into classes with one another through high school (helping develop a shared culture), sends them off for four years to mix and mingle and, finally, encourages them to live in relatively isolated urban neighborhoods to get the remaining singles together. It’s a fairly… Read more »
We do not have assortative mating by IQ, but by social status. Two very different things. Most graduates of “elite” educational indoctrination centers are not particularly bright. Ask me how I know.
We have high-efficiency assortative “mating” in terms of forming couples, but it doesn’t translate into actual “mating” viz. childbirths. Family fertility is massively suppressed through feminism, esoteric ambition, two-income trap, cultural propaganda, boutique parenthood, and the high cost of either living in hipster enclaves or else fleeing vibrancy. In terms of actual childbirths the system is a catastrophe.
Sending women off to college probably has been responsible for suppressing white child birth massively. Women go off to college – and then (even if they don’t have a student loan or a head full of feminist BS) – are still in the position of having to ask the question of themselves: What was the point of college if I just get married and take care of kids for the next 25 years? So they go off and have a “career” (most of them are just jobs – but they need to tell themselves they have a career) – which… Read more »
One thing to note is that in some ways, computing and automation allow a single smart person to make a much larger impact, faster. But they also allow con artists to take from many more on a much faster scale as well.
“At what point does the cart become so laden that the horses can no longer pull it? Then there is the very real observation that the truly smart are systematically excluded from the institutions. Creativity is frightening to the mediocre minds we see in control of institutions today.” I’ve always considered the bureaucracy necessary for day to day management of any large operation to be more or less a natural limit. Since the managers must necessarily have power and since power means politics you end up with the CYA culture. Managers, after all, are managers whether they work here or… Read more »
Well, unless you are a genius with a farm, as Spock would probably say…having children in this day and age is not logical…and the practicing is all the fun anyway….
DLS, don’t think so. The tail end of the Bell curve may have larger total number of folk (due to it being a percent of a greater base population), but to the extent to which the population IQ mean has declined (remember, we renormalize to 100 every so often, so you can’t use that mean as an indication of non decline), that total number does not necessarily contain more “smart” people than previous generations. In short, the “smart fraction” cutoff has moved farther out on the tail. Farther out, means fewer people. Fewer people means less people with the capability… Read more »
“the smart fractions we reached the moon with in the 60’s”, according to the old man, who would know, were rednecks that could do math. Those people don’t even get a sniff of those positions anymore. Actual conversation: “according to the computer model it should be working” “clearly your computer model doesn’t work” “according to the computer model it should be working”. If only the answer was in the appendices of their textbook.
Well said. You do remember that many calculations in those good times were done by slide rule. Anyone out there know how to use a slide rule? I do.
Me too. Still have my Post Versalog and a 6″ Pickett.
The slide rule is – or was – one of the most elegant demonstrations of human ingenuity ever. Does anyone remember the old sic-fi movie called ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’? Peter Lorre and Walter Pidgeon figure out the exact place to fire a nuclear missile to save the world – and they do it with a slide rule. That would have not seemed comical in 1960 or thereabouts, when the movie came out. A young Barbara Eden may also be seen and held in awe in this picture as well… Anyway, +1 for the slide rule, and… Read more »
In my straight out of school job with shell oil I used a slide rule.
I still have one somewhere.
Well thanks for taking away my hope. I do wonder why we no longer produce Mozarts. Now it’s low IQ “musicians” creating beats by pushing buttons on a computer, or pop stars following the same style and patterns from 50 years ago.
This argument is specious. There are many excellent composers and musicians making technically complex, good music. Just because you don’t like some of what modern music produces and prefer Mozart does not mean they no longer exist. The crappy ‘pop’ music existed in Mozart’s time as well.
I am eager to find recorded examples of ‘crappy pop music’ from Vienna AM radio ca. 1780. They must exist – how else could you be so sure of yourself?
Ah, if only we hadn’t bred ourselves into ineptitude we’d have time travel by now and could ask the man himself.
A good start is “love songs of the American revolution”: https://www.americanrevolution.org/songs2.php
The “classical” music that has come down to us has stood the test of time for a reason. Folk (ie Pop) music has always been derided as low culture.
Why should the shape of the bell curve remain the same if reproduction at the lowest end is greatly increased and at the upper end sharply reduced? There will be a much longer tail on the left, shorter on the right than previously. Renormalizing the mean may move the midpoint but deoesn’t alter the shape.
It will show a bi-modal distribution.
“the absolute numbers of smart people are higher than at any point in history simply due to population growth.” This may suggest that “intelligence” is perhaps not the pinnacle of evolution. Perhaps the point of intelligence is to be a brief burst that sends your genes to another continent or another planet, then the race normalizes until the next cycle. As pointed out below, we are getting to the point where very smart people– the Atlas who holds up the tech world– are being excluded from society. It’s just not polite to be very smart and accomplish things… your neighbors… Read more »
China and India are purportedly filled with vast numbers of smart, high IQ individuals. That’s why they are such paradises on earth.
tl;dr: While the overall IQ of a nation matters, what matters more is the culture that those high IQ people create. I don’t want an alliance of Derb’s ‘ice people’ – the Orientals are not Europeans and their nations are not where I want to live. I already spent 2 years of my life in one – it’s not paradise and it’s not my natural environment.
Separate nations for separate peoples.
Doing engineering work with Indians and Asians is eyeopening. If it’s been done before they’re golden, if not they’re lost. Sometimes the answer isn’t known, sometimes there isn’t an answer, and sometimes what works makes no sense at all. They just aren’t new idea people. For some odd reason the Japs I’ve worked with are a little different.
Big countries produce lots of smart people. That’s just arithmetic and the law of averages. In its dying convulsions today, the USA produces – or imports – immense numbers of smart people.
In the 1960s, smart people got together and collaborated on a common – patriotic – purpose. A task had been set: To beat the Russkies to the Moon.
Eliminate the common purpose, and you eliminate the incentive for collaborative intelligence.
I’m of the opinion that in the end it will be seen that the worst thing that ever happened to the West was winning the Cold War.
Saw a fascinating video by an expat in China. He said regardless of how smart the Chinese may be, they just don’t have social trust at all. Everyone looks out for number one and they don’t cooperate unless someone makes them. His thoughts, don’t know myself, but it bears pondering. Really good criminals often have high IQs, it takes brains to crack a modern safe, or run the logistics of a narcotics distribution ring effectively.
I don’t know what Eisenhower’s IQ was, probably lower than Elon Musk’s or even Bill Clinton’s.
He led multinational armies in one of the great operations of military history. A hundred Elon Musks don’t give us one Dwight Eisenhower.
Can it be that character and purpose count for something in the making of great achievements, as well as that IQ we are all so smitten with?
Of course, high IQ isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss if it isn’t constrained by wisdom and discipline. I think we all know a brilliant colleague that spun off the rails early never to be heard from again. Personally i’m barely hanging on by my fingernails heh.
@3g4me
I agree and let every country stand on its own merits no charity from one to another…
India is an amazing example and I’d love to run the equation now without the British East India Company variable for 200 years…. They were once, by themselves, over a quarter of the World economy….
of course little things like a common language, railroads and postal system were lacking before that too…
Maybe the dreams we dream are mundane?
Yes — the dreams our elites / intellectuals et al dream are mundane, hostile and stifling. Multiculturalism, diversity, intersectionality, toxic masculinity, white supremacy etc. All the products of dreams gone awry.
This is another aspect of what I was talking about above. The genius is available but the society’s resource flows bypass it entirely on their way down into various sewers.
Zman wrote: “Why do smart people stop having children? *Why do they lose their religion* and more important, lose the will to impose that religion on society?” The second question is the heart of the problem. Smart people who lose religion lose future-orientation and see the burden of more children as an impediment to pleasure-seeking in the here & now. The campaign to undermine Christianity in the West has both native and (((alien))) roots. The native ruling class followed the secular values of Christianity so far they talked themselves out of Christianity and became so open-minded their brains fell out… Read more »
I was just going to make this point but you beat me to it.
I’m a big believer in the Pareto Principle – which in this context means 80% of your problems can be solved with a single fix. Many, ZMan included, have pointed out that the Tribe is not the cause of every single problem we have. That being said, if we resolved the JQ, we’d solve 80% of our current problems.
I love the Pareto Principle. It tells me – correctly, as experience shows – that one can become conversant in four foreign languages with the same effort required to master just one. I can ask for coffee in ten languages, but I can’t talk about the purpose of existence in more than just one. But no one I know wants to talk about the purpose of existence, so the PP makes me a scholar among men.
Long live the Pareto Principle.
“…that the Tribe is not the cause of every single problem we have. That being said, if we resolved the JQ, we’d solve 80% of our current problems…”
DING, DING, DING you win the see reality as it is prize!
China will not allow (((them))) in. Overseas Chinese Culture and (((their))) culture operate in very similar ways. They will have to return to their homeland.
Owing to first-hand observation and personal expereince I agree that Chinese think and act like ((special people)). WRT your first comment, however, a few articles and photos I’ve perused show that (((Economic and political consultants))) have been hobnobbing with the Chicom elites, including Mao himself, for many decades. Today some Chinsese universities offer courses on how ((special people)) accumulate wealth.
The science-based mindset is toxic to religion in general. Relligious leaders have mostly declined the challenge, retreating into anti-modernity. Protestants and Catholics alike are cheering Team Vibrant because they can’t sell faith to WEIRDs anymore. Islam & Buddhism’s adherents are vast-majority pre-modern. One of the toughest tasks facing dissidents today is how to inspire religious faith and meaning in people raised in modern society. Christianity’s defenders failed to show the faithful how the faith was still relevant and valid in the scientific age. Jung wrote a lot on this. Too many skeptical straws broke the back of faith. I’m not… Read more »
Look, I’m not a bible thumper. I’m one of those guys who can go to Church for years and never pay attention to the readings, and never really grasp what it’s all about. Still, on Palm Sunday, I caught this bit from Luke: Christ, being mourned and lamented by various women as he was driven to Golgotha, said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say,’Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will… Read more »
@roo_ster
Amen Brother…
In the Middle Ages being born a peasant was not necessarily a sign of stupidity, nor was being born noble a sign of being smart. You were just stuck in your assigned category from birth with rare exceptions (probably best chance to rise was military valor or the Church). There was then as now regression to the mean, but also outliers of high-ability peasants simply carried off by famine, plague, or sheer exhaustion.
I have no opinion either way of the overall IQ theory, simply think that just-so stories are too common and should be avoided.
The idea that people were locked into their classes in the middle ages is a great example of the “just so story.”
A movie to watch is “Le Retour de Martin Guerre”. Sure, it’s just a movie, but it’s all grounded in court-recorded fact. It’s also a terrific movie, and is relevant to your thoughts here.
The church poses a threat to aristocratic power. Power being what it is, people always want more. So get rid of the church. This has side effects. The church helps restrain the natural character of the aristocrat, who is a leftist by nature. Without a fear of God, the leftward ratchet goes faster and faster. Globohomo is just deracinated aristocracy. If it comes down to a rhetorical battle between the 100IQ farmer and his 130IQ liege, the latter will always win unless the former has institutional support. I know you don’t like the LARP characteristics of NRx. I think the… Read more »
What if free will was actually true? What if people weren’t mere victims of biological processes but capable of good and evil? Interesting thought.
Because the stupid are being subsidized by the smart. Raising a child is hard enough. Add in having to be smart enough to make a living in a “modern’ economy – a living that will allow you to live in one of those white suburbs – and it gets harder still. I have spent a decent amount of my working career working in jobs that paid by the hour – or in start up companies where time was precious. At the same time I was working in start-ups, I was building a house. Literally every minute has to be made… Read more »
calsdad, while I have sentiments similar to yours, such as not subsidizing the breeding of those who can never contribute to the community, the message in your posts seems to be that everyone should be an atomized individual pursuing only self-interest.
If so, there simply aren’t enough like you to withstand the attacks of organized groups like the chosen or the non-whites, especially if your ultimate credo is “leave me alone” libertarianism. You must join and support an organic community to survive. I believe those groups are racial although I admit that the white community is weak now.
Human achievement in all kinds of areas has stalled or gone backwards. Medicine still can’t cure a virus. There is no one alive who can paint or sculpt like a Renaissance master. Computer science stalled out in 1968. The list goes on.
Whether Computer Science has now stalled out, I won’t debate. But it did not stall out in 1968. Not even close. I had the fortune of being in the field and working with computer scientists during some of the greatest applications known. The human genome project was complete via scientists developing the computer/mathematical algorithms for putting the gene splices together (circa 90’s). Google search algorithms/databases for what is now known as the internet (circa 00’s). For that matter, the internet itself, circa 90’s. Not to mention the WWW software that continues to expand. Hell, we’re using it right now.
in 1968:
1. using von Neumann architecture for CPUs
2. RAM memory
3. spinning hard disks
4. source code written in text
5. serial communications over wire
Still doing all those things the same way. When was there ever a big breakthrough in computer science in the last 50 years? OS360 was the pinnacle…
But you must understand that those “applications” are small beans compared to “getting electricity to do logic” or “making a process for integrated circuits.”
In the same way that Hubble is an amazing achievement– but it’s NOTHING compared to putting a man on another celestial body– all these algorithms are just “using the tools our predecessors built.” They’re not great leaps forward.
hepatitis C is cured. Child mortality rates in the West are minimal. Heart bypass surgery. The Green Revolution. And the list goes on…
We living in a golden age man. That’s what makes it so perplexing that they seem determined to throw it away
The US has rather high child mortality and is the worst in the developed world . we are 76% more liable to die at birth and 57% before more likely before adulthood than other developed nations The US isn’t really developed socially anyway, its far more like Latin America However its far too expensive for it to be developed and frankly Americans do not like one another well enough to pay what it takes to build a more modern state , if we could manage honest enough government which we can’t Of course splitting the union is unthinkable untenable and… Read more »
I am not a computer scientist or, indeed, any sort of scientist so I cannot speak from knowledge. But the impression I have is that computer science was once about pushing the frontiers of knowledge every-forward. Now it appears to be all about cobbling together the right algorithms for more effective monitoring and control.
yeah, all i knows is that red dead redemption sure looks alot better than pong.
Thanks Z…as always thought-provoking article. Why must we approach this “either/or?” Both Saml and Yves have solid points. Am voting for: Down we go and we should separate. Mainly though, we have developed the ability to medically save most people who 150 years ago would have died and not passed their genes into the gene pool. No later than 1910, 4 out of 10 kids under 5 DIED because their immune system took a gob smack and they went down. Case in point, I would have been dead 3 times by the age of 23. I am genetically the problem,… Read more »
In any societal collapse, the first to die will be those dependent on modern medical technology for their survival – pace makers, liver dialysis, refrigerated insulin, etc. It’s not ‘fair’ and it will be heartbreaking in individual and personal cases, but species-wide it’s nature’s way.
It is! Read post EMP world book https://www.amazon.com/Second-After-John-Matherson-Novel/dp/0765327252
I vote for modern medicine as the cause of the decline of the quality of human beings. With greater ability to defy death, the need for God slipped away. Now we immanetize the echaton. Too many dumb folk trying to equalize outcomes.
Coincidentally, I was just thinking about this the other night. Take a look at the two image links below. The first is the courthouse in my county seat. It’s not architecture on the scale of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC or the Palace of Westminster by any means, but it’s an elegant, imposing building, built in the late 19th century in what was, even then, a remote Appalachian backwater. The second is a Catholic Church in a nearby small city, built in the same period. These buildings were built by big gangs of 19th century workers with local masons and… Read more »
I built this amongst other things and the standard of masonry is as high as ever, its not easy though as the planning authorities rather like modern boxes, it can be done though and not at a bank busting cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFym-BGE4MM
It’s a lovely little cottage, but I don’t think it compares. The photos don’t really do the courthouse and church justice on the detail (and of course you can’t see the interior work).
The small detail is there but not too obvious on clip, I’m working on something bigger and grander at present, we built to please the heart and soul once and still can at a pinch, but profit comes before beauty it seems.
It does do my heart good to see something built with such obvious care and skill.
There was a file sharing error. Should be fixed now.
I had a similar thought at Cape Hatteras light house. Its a purely functional building in what was a remote, low population site but has fairly ornamental ironwork and masonry.
Having the low IQ of our ancient Anglo-Saxon forebears, but with none of the conquering and pillaging–well that just sucks.
The average IQ of Anglo-Saxons was probably higher than the average IQ today.
Here’s the blackest pill of all (and if you want to ban me after this, I totally understand): Western Civ won’t make it, because increasingly stupid people have access to nuclear weapons. I’m actually a big fan of Vlad Putin, for the simple reason that he’s not stupid. He’s a shady guy, and the Russians are always up to their eyeballs in capers, but Putin isn’t dumb enough to let a nuke loose. Everyone else, though….? I don’t know what Kim’s IQ is, or the Ayatollah’s, but they’re full retard because of ideology — they remind me of nothing more… Read more »
Ultimate victory is swallowing the blackest of black pills, every day, and simply refusing to let it take you down. Keep doing your thing, even though you know what’s up. It drives everyone else crazy.
Our only hope to postpone getting nuked is the human proclivity to achieve and keep…..the 17 year old gymnast/hot women (yes, Putin as her), good liquor, a beach house/dacha. Religion wise, the Shia muslims scare me. They are waiting for the 12 imam to climb out of the well only when the world is set on fire. These religious nuts don’t have normal human desires for the 17 year old gymnast/liquor to stop them from blowing up the world. Derb wrote an article >15 years ago about a British scientist, “Sir Wigmore Can’tremember”, who wrote a book predicting our demise… Read more »
The 12th Imam thing promises 72 hot gymnasts later, instead of the one they aren’t going to get today. A bunch of people take them up on that flimsy promise.
Yep…weird Shia delayed gratification.
Another way we will collapse is this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GilletteVenus/status/1113565570354409473
Aren’t you guys looking forward to this babe! Yum!
Another people walk in and push us over like Bobo the sandbottom Clown.
Unless you know a lot more about Shia Islam than I do, I opine that the Sunnis are decidedly worse: more prone to ISIS-style violence, and rigidly dogmatic in religion.
The Sunnis I’ve met were generally arrogant assholes, while the Shia were thoughtful gentlemen. Then again, they all had doctorates….
Having no personal experience, will consider your personal experience. My point isn’t about personal behavior; it is about the cultural ideology to get the 12h Imam out of the well, oh well, the world must be set on fire. Different from Sunnis. Just because someone is nice, doesn’t mean they don’t dabble in assholery.
Why would you be banned because of this? Doubly so since it is complete fantasy. A ‘nuke’ is the absolute LEAST of your worries, so you may want to go spit that blackpill out. You are already under attack by a weapon of mass destruction far more insidious than the fission variety. A two prong combo of mind-virus (SJW/NPC/Die-versity fanatic cult) and a very effective bioweapon in the form of the Orc Hordes. It is happening in slow motion right in front of your face every single day and your biggest fear is a rogue nuke? LOLWUT. I think your… Read more »
Mr. Predator…..yes…you are addressing a large chunk of truth. In addition to “facing annihilation by a very effective and constant means already deployed against us, and the Die-versity fanatic cult” …..this is a game of 52 card pickup. Yes..the orc hoards are a massive threat. Yes the Left has gone insane, hate us and desire to kill us. Have you not read in my posts my horror at the tsunami of Orcs and Progs? Additionally, there are multiple other threats as we decline. Included is a hand-off dirty bomb threat. Shia want the apocalypse by fire. Trump just signed a… Read more »
” Invite you to move to a western town to get ready. Room to breathe and prepare. Take care out there.” I’m trying bud… I am unfortunately locked in at Sodom on Potomac by circumstance because I was an ‘early adopter’ of pushing back against The Machine. Pro Tip: Don’t try this at home. It had… consequences. I didn’t go to prison, but only barely and it still fucked me up in manifold other ways as you can imagine. I am a bit testy because I walked my talk unlike 99% of others and I paid quite dearly for it.… Read more »
Apex man…..do you have a story! Let me put it this way, you have knowledge gained the hard way.. to share and shape. So keep analyzing and shaping opinions and us as your words teach and inspire. We can learn from you. And do keep in mind that some of us had different patches of fur singed off in bloddy battles, also. Most of us are here to help and buoy up each other in a monumental time of history. Extend the same to you, brother. PS: I’m an almost old girl, not a bud…not transitioning ever….so you can call… Read more »
Oh gadd you didn’t go the tax protester route, did you? You would been be better off if they found you with vibrants stacked like cord-wood in your basement.
Sid…you’re babbling. What in God’s name are you talking about? Happy to have a dialogue but you make no sense. Try again?
Oh, just took a stab at what ApexP did to almost get thrown in jail. May be confused regarding who replying to who.
Roger that.
A brown fella was running his mouth because he had never met a White Man before. He had met ‘white males’ which are pretty much all you will find anywhere near DC. I corrected his behavior. One call to the po-leece “threatened by whitey” is all it takes today to be completely destroyed by this system. No concern about how we got into that situation all they knew is a minority is threatened by a white man who is also a firearms owner. A ‘Roger Stone’ SWAT raid later, and I survived w/o being killed but the did manage to… Read more »
South Africa has nukes, for Christ’s sake (unless you really believe they scrapped ’em).
I would believe that they have failed to maintain them in operable condition.
Actually, I thought I remembered something about the outgoing White government handing over its nukes to someone else when Black rule was imminent.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the older nukes, worldwide, aren’t readily operable. They need a good bit of skilled maintenance and periodic resupply of some rare materials.
And here’s a punishment worse than banning:
https://youtu.be/9jK-NcRmVcw
(Heh. They’re still together with the same lineup from this video!)
Yes…one of the points I was making to keep on the radar. Hopefully, as a society we can still juggle multiple balls in the air. Maybe not.
I find the neoliberal End of History, sought after by the whole of the Western elite and by millions upon millions of NPC’s they’ve developed and control, a much bigger black pill. Globe spanning dystopian idiocracy, masses of mixed-race consumer-retards living entirely for consumerism and modern pop culture (fast food, video games, Hollywood, negro athletes, porn, status signalling, et al) within massive, sprawling ghettos, ruled over by a tiny, distant plutocrat elite, obscenely wealthy, debauched, and demonic. Virtually all human nobility, high culture, healthy ecology erased and forgotten. I personally don’t foresee the West being saved without some sort of… Read more »
We routinely land probes on Mars, where they drive about looking at stuff. Space failed to go anywhere simply because there was no way to “monetize” it. The only possibility for profitable space activities is asteroid mining, specifically for PGM’s, and that is only a $7 billion a year market. Additionally, SpaceX is now flying reusable rockets. Something NASA never even attempted in its “heyday” of the late 1960’s. The Concorde was never economically competitive (consumed too much fuel) and generated a sonic boom where ever it flew. Concorde overflights over the U.S. were banned in 1976 because of the… Read more »
Once you are in orbit, the solar system is yours. The obvious next step in space exploration / exploitation was a space elevator. Depending on who you ask, either we don’t have the available technology to form the necessary carbon-strands, or we do have the ability but can’t be bothered. Or maybe we’re smart enough to form the concept but not smart enough to engineer the solution.
A better idea than the space elevator is the Lofstrom Loop/Launch Loop. Active support structures do not need super strong materials.
NAD precursor is sitting on my kitchen sink for mitochondrial renewal.
This is essentially what I was getting at in my post above about small independent groups forming with the goal of continuing the mission of Western Civilization whether the various tribes of malcontents and parasites like it or not. This is what we all need to realize – we need to stop asking permission of the dregs and forge ahead without them.
One problem is that if we fall completely off the cliff, it will be much harder to climb back up because all easily exploitable resources have been used.
…if we fall completely off the cliff, it will be much harder to climb back up
Astronomer, and no mean intellect, Fred Hoyle was of the opinion that due to the limits of easily exploitable resources, technological civilizations get one and only one chance to become space-faring. If you don’t get off the planet at your first opportunity, your species is likely doomed long-term.
DOOMED I say!
Salvation is to be found in the spiritual life, not in technology. Believing the opposite is a big part of our degeneration.
One Concord flight could spread Ebola all over the planet in days . Its getting bad enough that we’d be better off banning private aircraft in some ways and restricting flight to the military and government agencies Hell we are almost to the ban engines on ships stage now And yes I am well aware there is an experimental Ebola vaccine , not the point. There are plenty of other emergent diseases and a hundred other vectors that we can’t control I am NOT mind you advocating for that but no matter how you slice it connectivity is very risky… Read more »
Probes are all well and good but we’re not going to settle Mars because the first “Xuman” to set foot must be a tranny or an Orc and they’ll never find one with sufficient smarts and resilience to survive the journey. So we’re staying right here.
Book ordered. But not from Amazon. The irony of purchasing books from a company that bans them is too much for me to stomach.
Book Deposity, AlLibris, Powell’s…anyone but Bezos the Book Banner.
Sing it, Chuckles! The Booby’s with you. Screw Amazon and that little fascist prick Bazos!
While you’re at it, quit Facebook, too, and use DuckDuckGo instead of Google.
The fruits of conservative cowardice. When these lunatics could have been stopped the right just punted. I have more contempt for our supposed allies who are bought off with GDP and sending our money and men to the Middle East for Israel. When that’s your definition of winning, it’s no wonder we’re going down.
Another factor is the dysgenic effect of war. Our strongest and bravest were put through a meat grinder in The War Between the States and the World Wars in particular. The fake post-war prosperity led to the soyboy baby boom.
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is burning;
the spire has collapsed;
the roof is nearly all gone.
Yes, a colossal tragedy. As far as I can tell, it took firemen over two hours to get water trained onto the blaze. If that turns out to be so, the IQ collapse argument holds. The French micro-manage the hell out of ordinary existence. Yet they can’t put out a fire.
Tragic! What a metaphor for Western Civilisation….Shudder. Shall see if Muslim induced (that may be covered up in the news), or large bureaucracy/low IQ induced (forget to lockout/tagout and contractor corruption taking shortcuts).
If the official report states the burning was caused by mistake, will the Yellow Vests believe it? I think not.
Then again, maybe going down in flames is a more dignified fate for the old cathedral than eventually be turned into a mosque.
So deeply ironic. France is no longer Catholic. Her most religious inhabitants are Muslim. Perhaps the most famous cathedral in Christendom crumbles in ashes, long after Christendom vanished from its own people and country.
If it’s rebuilt it will be only because it’s required to serve Asian and deracinated white tourism.
Christianity is in need of many things, but a large pile of carved rock in the center of Paris is not one of them.
This takes me back to the “Northern Alliance” idea from years back (from Derb?), a political re-alignment where higher IQ K-selected “Ice People” (Europeans, North Asians, North Americans) join ranks to hold back the tide of lower-IQ, r-selected “Sun People.” Lower density isolated populations are the seedbeds of fortuitous mutations like high IQ while billion-man favelas epitomize reversion to the mean. If we’re to avoid Idiocracy, Ice People need physical separation, population control and generations of “cultural infrastructure” investment to rebuild or replace the institutions wrecked by freak-friendly fanaticism. We’re in the protean stage now, dissolving old loyalties (muh Constitution,… Read more »
My understanding is that “Protoss v. Zerg (with Sakoku characteristics)” is a good way to meme this to people 40 and under.
#YangGang is going to force me to do a gamer deep dive for fresh memes.
Crispr -> Speciation
So, Notre Dame de Paris has been almost ruined by fire. I attended Mass there with my wife in 2009, honored to do so in this edifice that has survived so much. A building that was assembled over generations, a monument to the greatness of a people and the Faith that informed their civilization. By tomorrow the White Nationalists will be getting blamed for it. It breaks my heart. The French, as annoying as they are, are a wonderful and proud people, and this has to be a shock for them. And to the rest of us, who have visited… Read more »
The French police are now stating that they believe the fire to be an act of arson, but will they – or the rulers of France – drop the other shoe (chaussure) and identify the perpetrators, who are almost certain “cultural enrichers” from the MENA region? Cathedral de Notre Dame Paris is synonymous with France herself. The soldiers of Allah have been trying to conquer La Belle France for more than a thousand years; now that they are making progress toward that goal, what will the French people do about it?
Notre Dame survived everything except Macron.
No, it survived everything but imported, weaponized Mohammedism. This was deliberate, particularly at the start of Holy Week, and the authorities will never, ever admit it.
“Somebody maybe did something”.
When I first saw the video of the three SpaceX boosters land safely (two on land and one on a ocean barge) I thought it was pretty impressive. But then I thought, well, in 1969 Neil Armstrong did the same thing, only he did it on the moon, without GPS, without supercomputers, and his life was on the line. If he failed he was dead. After getting to the moon, the Apollo astronauts undocked from the command ship in moon orbit, descended, landed, relaunched, redocked, deorbited the moon, traveled to earth, undocked again, and made a firery descent. If any… Read more »
Reaching the Moon took almost 2% of GDP for ten years, and all we got was some lousy rocks. There’s no reason to go, not with that price tag.
Likewise with the Concorde: it doesn’t have a viable business model. It could only fly over water because of the sonic boom, which meant that the only lucrative route it could service, was Paris/London-New York. Also, just as it was introduced, fuel prices shot through the roof, and haven’t come down yet.
Not to mention the Concorde was basically a flying bomb, as those poor folks in Paris learned
All planes are flying bombs, as those poor folks of New York learned. The Concorde had only one accident in its lifetime.
You miss the point entirely with your MBA mentality. A bunch of men with slide-rules did what a bunch of engineers with super computers on their desks can’t do. Put a man on the Moon and bring him back safely.
Today we can’t even put a man in orbit or supply the space station because we have lost so much of our technical prowess.
No, he isn’t. Those are simply bad examples to use to support the claims of Dutton and Woodley, because there are much simpler explanations for why there hasn’t been moon flights since the 70s or why there are no supersonic commercial passenger aircraft in use today. The Apollo program was first and foremost a Cold War propaganda exercise and further development of supersonic passenger jets was killed by the oil crisis. We don’t really know whether we could repeat those feats today or not, because no one has tried. Because ultimately, there isn’t much of a point in trying to… Read more »
If we dumped that kind of cash on a new Apollo program, of course we could go to the Moon – hell, we could probably put a man on Mars for that kind of dough. It’s not that we can’t do it, it’s because there’s no reason to. Manned spaceflight is a dead end until launch costs come down to allow space tourism. The ISS is a case in point: for the budget of the ISS,we could’ve launched sixty robot missions with the size and payload pricetag of the Hubble telescope. Sixty. The Hubble greatly advanced our knowledge of the… Read more »
And one more thing: as robot missions are getting cheaper and better at a dizzying pace, the practical value of a human in space is diminishing rapidly. We could finance a Mars mission for what we’ve used on zero gee plumbing. There’s only so much space money to go around, and the ISS is a hog of almost no scientific or commercial application. If I were Elon Musk, I’d shoot the fucker down so we had an excuse to get real about space. What would you rather have? One guy puttering around on the Moon for a week, or twenty… Read more »
Makes one wonder what % of GDP ancient Egypt devoted to the pyramids. Remember we didn’t send food or gold to the moon. The material cost was minuscule. The cost was directing our brains and skilled workers to the task. Also think about the most exclusive professions today. Dermatologist! What a fukkin joke. We populate that field with our best and brightest. That and bonds trading.
We populate that field with our best and brightest.
Good point, but that’s the way of the world. You can’t force people to become engineers just because they’re good at math.
And not every engineer gets to design rocket engines, 99% of them are ham-and-eggers spending their lives to shave off 2% of the fuel consumption on 100-year old ICE designs.
Bond trading – as long as the Ponzi scheme keeps running – is money in the bank, and money in the bank is not to be scoffed at.
I have been assured that we’ve been on the moon since the Fifties.
People who were alive at the time will recall that the baby boomers, then in the full bloom of young adulthood, were not particularly enthusiastic about the moon landing. They didn’t give a shit about accomplishments that signified national greatness and their enthusiasms came to define our politics for the next half century. IQ doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
This is a good point. Our smartest people in past generations wanted to create something real. Today, all the Zuckerbergs, Cooks, Bezos’, etc. want to do is sell you shit you don’t need. The internet was a great invention. Now the entire thing revolves around spying on your personal habits to target you with ads. Zuckerberg, with his high IQ and perfect ACT, should be curing Alzheimer’s, not creating a better way to view pictures of your friend’s kids.
I was just a tyke when the first moon landing happened — five years old. I can remember sitting between my Mom and Dad, though, watching it on TV. I didn’t really understand it, but Mom and Dad had impressed on me that something important was happening.
Yep, in the early 60’s we were already discussing the creation of paradise on earth if we only had the funding that NASA and the military were spending. Hell, I remember when Reagan was pilloried when the national budget went over $300B. We now spend more money on social programs (even adj for inflation) than those early SJW could have dreamed of—and how are we the better for it? At least we got to the moon, took some pictures, and brought home a few souvenirs. LBJ’s “Great Society” spending produced nothing of value and arguably the desolation of a great… Read more »
I read this as a satirical comment. The last sentence is a well known boomerism.
There is a chicken and egg conundrum for the problem of declining intelligence throughout the society. Western societies are increasingly being driven by stupid narratives. Do the structures and incentives create dumb people or are the dumber people creating a dumb society. Almost all organizations are now structured in a way where there is a strong disincentive to be smart. There is a great article written by two organizational behaviorist on this problem. Stupified: you don’t have to be stupid to work here but it helps. https://aeon.co/essays/you-don-t-have-to-be-stupid-to-work-here-but-it-helps Their findings of the need to join every popular bandwagon, no matter how… Read more »
I wouldn’t say we can’t go back to the moon because we’re too dumb. Go back and look at NASA’s budget as a % of the Federal budget in the 60s vs. now.
Islam is embraced by the ruling elites because it is composed of the haves, and have nots. With the have nots being slaves to the haves. Democrats, and others, missing the cause and effect genes are led to believe that the slaves have a chance of becoming haves, through hand outs, free stuff, welfare, redistribution of wealth vote buying scams, etc. unfortunately, without the cause and effect genes, they are incapable of seeing, or grasping, the reality of this dead end road.
The Left appears to not be very good at seeing where things lead. They are either blinded to the actual by the appeal of the theoretical, or are too busy taking the “skims” of various sorts to bother with longer term thinking. Our longer term preoccupation with where things lead, and how we get there, tends to hobble us. On the other hand, we are more resistant to false lures, and at least our world view and our reality, as much as we can make them out, appear to be mostly consistent, and full of real world possibilities.
The globalist western elites want to advance their project and secure for themselves more power, centralization and wealth. One of the social engineering mechanisms which has been extremely effective for them is the Hegelian dialectic. Foment a crisis, provoke a reaction, and then step in with the “solution” which advances their agenda. Importing Muslims also imports the violence, bloodshed and chaos of jihad (holy war) which have always accompanied them wherever they have gone down through the ages. By letting the Saracens rape, murder, riot and pillage their way across the continent, the elites hope to provoke a crisis so… Read more »
Employment advertisements today always contain a phrase such as “must be a team player”. In our Advanced Products engineering group in the early stage of the Apollo program, we would have welcomed an Elon Musk. There was no HR department.
I find your blog posts interesting and informative, but I am glad I am old.
I’m with you. There is a human conceit that there is a good answer for every question or problem. Sometimes the brush fire simply needs to burn itself out.
Ha. I’m not old enough. Do I want everything to fall apart now when I’m still vigorous or later when I’m infirm but maybe dead. Hard call
Hon…you crack me up! Yep, bring it on or wait a generation or two. But we both know this is unraveling really fast at warpspeed. Is imminent.
The “obvious examples” — the Apollo program and the Concorde — are not at all persuasive. I could argue that the reason we haven’t been back to the moon is because there is no money to be made there, and that the Concorde was dangerous plane from the beginning and that its luck was bound to run out sooner or later. These arguments aren’t necessarily right, but they aren’t obviously wrong either. The thing is, we have technological achievements today that are enormously impressive. We may not have gone back to the Moon, but we can measure its distance from… Read more »
Yeah. Whats coming is only the strong survive. A certain Armageddon. Christianity speaks much about Armageddon. It is a wake up call and a test of our mettle. Thats where being strong gets you survival. Out of that it is a long brutish climb back up to high IQ civilization. We are on that downward slope for now. It doesn’t mean Ragnorak for us dirt people, if anything it vindicates who we are and we being and always have been the ones who ever effect positive change in this world. Happens all the time. It is the cycle of legacy.… Read more »
Given the extreme risks our technology poses to the well being of our peoples , I for one am fine with seeing high tech society come to an end Nukes, bio engineering , networked surveillance, chemical poisoning with a hundred deadly things all of this right now tech much less possible future tech like nano tech , AI and autonomous killing machines pose an existential threat to us all Hell simple automation played a huge part in the fertility decline , the loss of male utility means smaller families and a thus far permanent below replacement fertility Outside of low… Read more »
As I’ve said before, only to be shouted down because it’s too controversial, war is a natural cleansing mechanism that culls vast amounts of stupid people. Not only the people fighting the wars, but the refugees fleeing it, or living in war torn slums. During a major conflict you need to 1) plan survival/exit scenarios, sometimes by the minute, and 2) execute them when necessary. Even a median IQ can do that, but not the very low end. It’s no secret that Rwanda is one of the most thriving places in Africa right now. No one wants to admit that… Read more »
Then WWI and WWII should have improved the populations of the UK, Germany, France, and Russia. Nothing of the sort happened, as can be seen from observation today.
Casualties in modern warfare are based much more on wrong-place, wrong time than on personal factors like decision-making or prowess. It’s hard to believe Europe & Russia were not set back decades by the World Wars which targeted civiliian populations indiscriminately.
How is that any different compared to ancient warfare? Do you think all those Romans got slaughtered at Cannae because of their personal failings, or because they happened to be in a really wrong place at a really wrong time?
Weeeeell, I’m 80 so it’s hard to give a shit.but you are right. And I watched a 100 year old company collapse for exactly the reasons you say
Open Borders
+Cloward Piven
+Dunning Kruger
———————–
=Calizuela X 50
=DemSoc plan for permanent political power in the USA.
“Edward Dutton and Michael A. Woodley of Menie,”
Who or what is “Menie”?
Are they Blue?
” In other words, the die may have been cast a dozen generations ago when smart people started limiting their fertility and helping the poor make it too adulthood.
Idiocracy, in a word. Like the movie of the same appellation.
This discussion is but one side of the coin (mating selection to favor intelligence). The other side is the extinction of hardship and existential threat in a modern affluent society that eliminates selection via subtraction of the stupid from the gene pool. Things will get worse until they get better.
Wasn’t NASA just grooving along doing its thing until Obama told them that their mission was to make Muslims feel good about the things they did centuries ago? If they’re still focused on that and not the “Space” part of their name, it’s Trump’s fault.
When the Space Shuttles were retired, they went out of the manned-space business. They’ll loft an occasional satellite for the CIA and launch space probes with unmanned rockets. That’s about it.
I would like to read the book, but it’s still a bit pricey right now. I’ll be the first to admit that we stand on the shoulders of giants, but I’m still not convinced that white iqs are plummeting. Is there objective evidence for this? In the form of real iq testing? I think it can all be attributed to decay of standards in education. If you look at pop culture and the arts, the collapse is too sudden and complete. It suggests a sudden political intervention rather than a gradual decrement of cognitive ability. Are white brain sizes (correlated… Read more »
Maybe the problem is that the powers that be really don’t want the high IQ people doing things. They would rather remain comfortably ensconced in an environment where hereditary nobility is safe, living amongst the bureaucratic mediocrity. Keep the “skims” from the system in front of the amount of “gibs” given, and personally pocketing the difference. Ask Bernie Sanders how it all works, he has it dialed in down cold.
Yeah I agree. They don’t want real quality out there to have to compete with.
“I’m still not convinced that white iqs are plummeting”
That is because they aren’t.
The Flynn effect has masked the decline in general IQ (also called G). While G has been proven (as good as can be anyhow) to have peaked in the period 1800-1850, the flynn effect (increase in abstract reasoning skills) has added more IQ point than have been removed.
There is however evidence that the flynn effect is levelling out and IQ may (or has?) start(ed) to decline by about 1 point per decade.
Hitler brought Germany out of worse. We now have the internet which WE invented. The Word is Out.
Using NASA Moon missions or Concorde is a bad argument
SpaceX will put people back on the Moon and on to Mars in the next five to ten years, I suspect most people reading this hate Musk but he is slowly getting it done. Also there are a few super sonic passenger jets in the works, smaller than Concorde but they may last longer since its easier to fill a ten seat jet than Concorde i
I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere, so forgive me if I’m reheating leftovers. Another possible contributing factor could be the millions of European men killed in WWI and WWII. The military doesn’t take the cripples, mentally deficient and (as far as I know) people who are crazy. They take the strongest, smartest, the best; special ops are always touted as the ‘cream of the crop’. The men who should have been at home running things were getting killed, and the 4F types were all that were left to birth the next generation. It’s not a complete theory, since American losses… Read more »
The really unintelligent should be encouraged to accept their fate.
https://suicide.is/threads/10-reasons-to-drop-dead-already.113/
Atlas Shrugged……When the Right Gives Up
Here is the Rep. Green doing his best to humiliate white men. Black Nationalist? Or just race baiter? Both?
https://youtu.be/NhnO8CUfJDQ