What the fuck is wrong with these people?
- Posted by Paul Gowder on August 18th, 2009 filed in blogospheric investigation into the existence of "game", doom, stupidity, things so horrible that commentary is superfluous
- 29 Comments »
The “game” culture has spawned something even more bizarre. My spies have informed me of something called “The Beta Revolution,” which is a blog devoted to… as far as I can tell, to racism (in the guise of the “human biodiversity” movement, which is just a massive code word for “people who think that black folks are stupid”), religion, and insisting that somehow the world ought to be regulated in the interests of these self-described “betas.” This is a typical post, in which it’s argued that “religion is beta,” and thus that the racist human biodiversity movement errs by not adopting it.
What are we to do as a society about the fact that we’ve somehow created subcultures in which these horrors exist?
August 18th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Subculture? Reading that, I feel “cult” is more apt. Kinda scary. Some weird shit.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Human biodiversity recognizes that people who evolve in different environments develop different attributes relevant to those different environments. Which is pretty much how Darwin figured out the whole evolution by natural selection thing – looking at all the different shaped peaks.
Current scientific [sic] orthodoxy: Evolution stopped about 10,000 years ago. Which is pretty much LOL.
Oh, and cut it out at your “spies.” You read Roissy. As does Tyler Cowen and an entire subculture of educated and intelligent people.
There is no shame in it. Roissy is a brilliant dude. If he were a fem-bot or gay person, he’d have an entire subculture of hangers-on. Roissy is much smarter and more insightful than Andrew Sullivan.
But since Roissy says true things that make people uncomfortable, we all gotta keep our reading a secret.
Step 1: “Hello, my name is Mike, and I read Roissy.”
Ah, I feel much better!
August 18th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Mike,
1) Is there anything — anything — these “human biodiversity” folks have ever advanced to contribute to the debate on any issue other than the specious claims about racial intelligence differences?
(Claims, incidentally, that are flawed in a million ways, from the bad factor analysis underlying “G” to the total uselessness of this concept of “race” at all.)
And there is nobody in their right minds who thinks that evolution has “stopped.” It’s certainly not scientific orthodoxy. It’s important not to confuse the claim that there haven’t been certain kinds of changes in the human species with the claim that there have been no changes at all, or that it’s impossible for there to be changes.
2) I occasionally (but not regularly) click over to Roissy, though only for the train wreck rather than because he says rational things (he doesn’t). That’s hardly a secret. Also, occasionally, people forward me things that I haven’t read from that whole “game” group of blogs. (Hell, you’ve forwarded me things from that group yourself.) And sometimes it amuses me to classify various information sources as “my spies,” mainly to add a bit of menacing spice. I suspect Tyler’s reading patterns are similar, but you’ll have to ask him.
(Edit: and Andrew Sullivan is an idiot.)
August 18th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Horrific stupid hateful subcultures have always existed. It is just easier to find them now, with the internets and all.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
[...] [...]
August 18th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Jeff, my fear is that the internet promotes their development, because it permits them to indulge the false consensus effect by bringing them into contact with more people who agree with them…
August 18th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Can we postulate, by analogy to the mass density of physical objects, that texts can have a property called wrong density (my ear prefers that phrasing to “wrongness density,” though I’m happy to defer)?
August 18th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I like that Steve.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Is the wrong density of the linked website so great that it’s analogous to a black hole, from which no common sense or good judgment can escape?
August 18th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Is there anything — anything — these “human biodiversity” folks have ever advanced to contribute to the debate on any issue other than the specious claims about racial intelligence differences?
Depends on who you consider HBD people. Gene Expression focuses on a lot of issues:
http://www.gnxp.com/
Also, there are entire colleges devoted to Women’s Studies, African America Studies, Gay Studies, etc. All of these people make the even more specious claim that any differences between races and gender must be socially constructed. As if people who grew up in different environments and have materially different biologies cannot actually be different.
So it seems peculiar to point to guys like Steve Sailer or Charles Murry before asking: “What is with their obsession with race!?”
And sometimes it amuses me to classify various information sources as “my spies,” mainly to add a bit of menacing spice.
I know that. I was just busting your balls. Which are no doubt socially constructed.
Andrew Sullivan is an idiot
Sure. But my point re: Roissy still stands. People at least are out of the closet about their Sullivan reading.
Incidentally, I don’t read Sullivan. I do read Megan Mcardle. She’s not an idiot, but I’m convinced she receives – directly or indirectly – remuneration from the banksters. Her recent post on walking away from a mortgage reads more like a propaganda piece for Goldman Sachs. A U. Chicago MBA really can’t be as confused as she is in her post (said confusing is pointed out in the comments). Maybe she wants to quit being a “journalist” to write press releases for the banksters?
August 18th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
This is a typical post, in which it’s argued that “religion is beta,”
Do you disagree with the assessment?
Religion is beta. By “finding religion,” you are merely adopting the morality of the ruling class.
Proof of that is any system where there are religious leaders. The religious leaders get all of the money, the women, and break all of the holy laws.
So if you are religious, you are definitely beta.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Steve Sailer is definitely a racist. If you read his blog, you’ll find all kinds of disgusting comments about “fiesta culture” and the like. And isn’t he basically the leader of the HBD movement, the guy who coined the term, etc.? (I don’t count Razib as part of that group — I’ve actually met him a couple of times, and he’s reasonable and non-racist in person.)
As for religion and betaness, as you know, I’m skeptical of the whole alpha/beta distinction, so can’t really get any traction on it — but to the extent the claim stands for something like “religion is for the meek,” well, not all religions are Christianity. And some of the most outrageously domineering religious leaders have been genuinely devout — Savonarola comes to mind most obviously.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I’m with Steve on wrongness density(wrongness because it’s a noun, whereas wrong in this context is an adjective which don’t make no sense.) It’s a pile of pseudospeak that is but seriously creeping me out.
August 18th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
No one believes that evolution has stopped.
August 18th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
But the cult of Zeus was totally alpha, right?
August 19th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
But “wrong density” is funnier that “wrongness density.” I suspect that’s actually because it’s not quite right. But I shall defer.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I’d looked at Roissy’s website once before, briefly. I just perused it, the better to inform myself,and I can’t really express my reaction. I mean that literally: I just don’t have the words. “Disappointed” comes to mind, but it fails to connote the appropriate sense of shock. In that vein, one commenter on one thread helpfully noted, in the course of making a point about dancing, that “Andrew Jackson may be the most alpha president ever.” Good to know.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Jonathan Edwards sure warn’t meek.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Regardless, I think it’ pretty clear that George Washington was the most alpha president. Andrew Jackson, after all, never patrolled the land on a horse made of crystal.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Ben, I am glad that the mere pleasure of god keeps me out of hell.
Steve, he saves all the children. But not the British children. (Also, Teddy Roosevelt would have kicked all their asses.)
August 19th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Theodore Roosevelt! That answer is so obviously wrong as to be evidence of Harvard-graduate solidarity.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:32 am
TR was pretty badass. Let’s not kid ourselves.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
That TR was a badass is not in dispute. The question is whether he’s entitled to the superlative.
August 20th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
The point is to remove it from the realm of “so obviously wrong as to be evidence of Harvard-graduate solidarity” and into the realm of perhaps being an honest mistake.
August 20th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Fair enough. Though I wrote in jest! (Sorry, Harvard friends!) I really would, however, put my money on Jackson in a fair fight.
August 20th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
You know, if Harvard solidarity were strong enough to give me reason to unjustly prefer the rough rider to old hickory on the badass scale, I would totally be ambassador to Bermuda by now.
August 30th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
“I occasionally (but not regularly) click over to Roissy, though only for the train wreck rather than because he says rational things (he doesn’t). That’s hardly a secret.”
You should probably read it a bit more. It might save you $125 on pants.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Paul Gowder writes: “total uselessness of this concept of “race”
Mr Gowder, you are obviously unfamiliar with the studies of people like geneticist Neil Risch. People fall into recognisable clusters that correspond with traditional categories of race. In fact you get more discordance in terms of gender classification.
Risch explains here why identifying genetic differences between races and ethnic groups, be they for random genetic markers, genes that lead to disease susceptibility or variation in drug response, is scientifically appropriate.
http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007
If you want further explanation of recent papers, see comments here by Steve Hsu showing 40 years of progress on genetic clustering analysis:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/06/genetic-clustering-40-years-of-progress.html
September 21st, 2009 at 9:41 pm
“No one believes that evolution has stopped.”
That is just as well, because it has in fact accelerated over the past 10,000 years as population growth & agriculture lead to increased genetic changes.
http://unews.utah.edu/p/?r=120607-1
A fair fraction are neurological and likely to affect behavior in some way. For example, you see new versions of SLC6A4, a serotonin transporter, in Europeans and Asians. There’s a new version of a gene (DBA1) that shapes the development of the layers of the cerebral cortex in east Asia.
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0030090
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%