June 15, 2010 by CH
Fred Reed on “the 99th percentile“.
The tendency of the Beltway 99th to live in an imaginary world, of conservatives to think that everybody can be a Horatio Alger, of liberals to believe that inequality arises from discrimination, guarantees wretched policy.
I’d add, “of libertarians to believe humans are rational actors”.
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Human beings are inherently irrational that’s for sure.
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Ha! I’ll second that last line. Anyone with any knowledge of game can see that humans are NOT rational…
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depends on the ‘libertarian’ since the libertarians believe humans are rational actors when acting in their own interests.
i.e. Whatever incentives or penalties are the result of a Government’s legislation, human beings will choose the actions that serve their own interest.
Which is why welfare queens see no problem having 4 kids by 4 different thugs…Government provides just enough incentives so that it’s in her own interest to recklessly breed.
Or why no-fault divorce gives women incentives to break up their families and alienate the father from his kids…because it benefits her legally, financially and also allows her to follow her ‘gina tingles.
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Hey! I’m a libertarian. I know humans are rational actors.
…
…
Wait.
They’re not, are they?
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O’Doyle Rules!
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The world of man is the world of lies.
Turn you back on man (governments, politicians, celebrities).
Then truth will come.
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Hello Roissy, & Co.
Firstly, I’d like to say that I’ve been a fan of Fred Reed for many years and I’m happy to see you’ve taken an interest in his writing. With study and application of his, Michel Houellebecq’s, Robert Greene’s and your works, a man is very likely to become a self-actualized [if not wonderfully cynical] agent.
Secondly, this article has made me ponder the reason behind the works of the men I’ve just mentioned and to a greater extent, the Roissysphere/PUAsphere/MRAsphere: A desire to give men of various stations in life the oppurtunity to change bad habits and circumstances into successful ones.
With this in mind I’d like to propose a challenge to you and other commentators —
Design a list of concise but highly valuable advice for male adolescents and young men in the following categories:
* Approximately 13 years of age
* Approximately 16 years of age
*Approximately 18 years of age
* Approximately 21 years of age and just graduated college
* Approximately 21 years of age and still struggling to self-actualize personally and financially (terminally working class)
The advice would be geared towards improving and amending one’s life towards satisfaction and success.
I suspect many commentators will enjoy giving their perspectives on the matter from their own lives and experiences.
Good luck and thank you.
[P.S. — How’s the book coming along? Seriously?]
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Bunch of crap. I hate D.C., go there as little as I can — once or twice a year, if I can’t help it. I live in a poky house on a sixth of an acre in the boonies, drive a 1993 Mercury, and pay taxes from my Home Equity Loan. I’ve never met Kara Hopkins & never heard of Bill Lind. I was born poor and I look set fair to die poor. Steve Sailer’s even poorer than I am. We’re martyrs to fucking truth, that’s what we are. Show some respect, Fred, goddamit.
Not only do I think the Horatio Alger stuff is goose poop, I’ve written a book saying so. Having failed to learn seven languages, I’m under no illusion that I could master classical Greek.
Fred’s lost touch with reality. Too much happy cactus juice.
Oh, and the 99th IQ percentile for white folk is 135, not 140. Some fucking mathematician.
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teh great thing about a fiat currency is that it unites us inside da beltway
1: liberal: pro butthex 4 men
2) conservative: pro secretive tapings of butthex without the girlth’s conthent
3) libertarian: pro butthex while smoking dope
the great thing is that senior democrats are now trying to butthex young college repbulpicans on the streets!
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So that is what libertarians believe.
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Hola, Derb!
If you are a regular reader of this blog you will have recognized me by now. I was just about to email you anyway re a mutual acquaintance.
I agree that Reed is full of crap. He’s right that much of the commentariat has an unrealistic view of the capacities of the median person, but it’s ridiculous to put you and Steve S. in that class.
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If only there was a way to cause libertarians to have less influence on policy…
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That is not really Derb….
He would not say ‘fucking’ – he is too much of an old chap for that.
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You’ll find the same type of foolish beliefs everywhere that people are sufficiently removed from the source of the problem. They let their own biases take over and fit everything there is to know into one of their already held beliefs. I write this as someone who deep down in his heart of hearts is a libertarian.
If the lefties here in Tel Aviv had there way, the Arabs would push them into the sea in a matter of years. They may only be a few miles away, but it might as well be a thousand with the strength of the Israeli military. The Jews in Jerusalem aren’t nearly as delusional; the problem is right on their doorstep.
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Funny you would presume to tell me that, since you have only the datum of his age while I have a long familiarity with all the varieties of his formal and informal writing styles.
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“I’d add, “of libertarians to believe humans are rational actors”.”
That’s not a tenet of libertarianism.
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Dostoyevsky has provided the ultimate criticism of libertarians in the first part of ‘Notes from the Underground,’ the second part of which is, by the way, the ultimate investigation of resentful betatude.
I’m a libertarian anyway, for lack of a better label / ideology.
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This analysis forgets that pundits and politicians are about projecting an image, not saying what they really believe. These people are not merely smart — they are smarter than they pretend, smarter than the beliefs they espouse. Many don’t have strong convictions at all. If they did they wouldn’t make for good politicians.
LBJ for instance was an FDR hating conservative in real life. He just played a lefty in DC.
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Life is nothing but suffering. The sooner we realize this ultimate truth, the better off we will be.
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Eh, “rational self-interest” and all that… give humans alcohol and something to fight over, you’ll irrationality aplenty and pretty much on-demand!
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Roissy,
The “Rational Actor” argument is not part of rational libertarianism and by that I mean Austrian Economics. From the days of Menger the Austrians have shown that laissez-faire does not depend on “rational actors”. Von Mises destroys that idea in “Human Action”. You are attacking a straw man. Even worse, you are parroting a LEFTIST argument. I find that paleoCons are constantly agreeing with Leftists on the subject of economics. Its disheartening.
If you are going to comment on economics or on libertarianism at least study the subject.
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Not to pile on too much, but…
For one, I’d point out that part of the reason that politicians treat people as though they’re smarter than they really are is because most people believe they’re smarter than they really are. Something like 2/3 of people would describe themselves as being of above average intelligence. When you’re trying to sell something, you treat people as they imagine themselves, not as they are in reality.
Others have mentioned that his characterization of conservatives is poor, but so is his portrait of liberals. Liberals know that people aren’t equal but don’t want to see the lower rungs used and abused, so they support government programs to help them out. Liberals realize that most people shouldn’t go to college and want people in blue collar jobs to be able to live decent lives, which is why they support unions.
That said, Fred Reed just did a pretty good job showing exactly how out of touch most commentators are with reality.
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Lots of stuff to untangle. Among which:
If the “inside beltway” crowd is so blindingly
smart, how come they make such stupid blunders?
I am not talking about disagreements on policy,
but really stooopid shit in the areas too small to be vote-getters. . I will give just a few
examples.
Recently, a congressman stood up and questioned the
military about the risk of Guam tipping over due to
the density of the population.
Hillary goes to Moscow with a “Reset” button with
the wrong Russian word (“Peredruzhka” [overload] instead
of “Perezadruzhka” IIRC, my Russian is not good enough),
printed in LATIN letters. She has a whole State Department
with lots of Russian experts to get this right.
Obama gives the British PM a DVD set coded for American DVD-players.
The examples are just too many, and NOT limited to
Democrats.
And no, not everybody in the 99+ crowd can learn Classical Greek. IQ as currently measured is largely the
sum of mathematical/logical and linguistic ability. While these are fairly strongly correlated in the population as a whole, this is NOT true if you truncate the sum hard enough; the NE pointed loaf gets its very top sliced off,
and the slice has a main axis perpendicular to the loaf
as a whole, so the two correlate negatively for the 99+ crowd. But most in the 99+ crowd could probably do at least ONE of learning Classical Greek or Differential Calculus.
As to “not rational choices”, many irrational choices are so only by the interviewer’s economists’ definition. Maybe somebody forgoes a monetary award to get more publicity, even if he has no plan to turn the publicity into cash. And the farmer might invest in a more comfortable tractor instead of a more comfortable car, an “irrational”
choice by some dumbshit economic theory that says you want to keep your business expenses down and maximize your personal income. Etc. Not that irrational choices don’t happen, including in the 99+ crowd, especially when the super-powerful irrational-choice-detector is turned own, the detector being hindsight.
Thor
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Human beings are not perfectly rational actors. But they’re pretty darn good at being rational when their own interests are on the line.
As Hawaiian Libertarian points out, seemingly irrational acts are often explained by perverse incentives setup by others, especially the government. Thomas Sowell has an entire book illustrating this point, Knowledge and Decisions.
Other large organizations are not immune from perverse incentives. Even families can and often do suffer from them. But government is both the largest organization and the organization with the greatest separation between decision maker and consequences. Therefore perverse incentives, seemingly irrational decisions, and painful consequences run rampant within government and the areas of life managed by government.
Lots of people bear the consequences of a welfare queen with four babies by four different daddy’s. The lives of the children are devastated, if not destroyed. The lives of those who interact with the children are often damaged or destroyed. The local neighborhood suffers the impact of poverty and crime. And society as a whole bears the financial costs in taxes.
But the government officials who decide we must give welfare to single moms are not affected in the least little bit. They live far away, secure in their jobs and gated communities. And they go home at night convinced that they are superior to you because you would not give your money to the welfare queen unless they told you to. Aren’t they caring, giving, morally superior beings? They think they are, and it’s their egos which drive their policies.
But the key point, the point Sowell drives home in Knowledge and Decisions, is that people like our hypothetical welfare queen are not being irrational. The welfare queen is paid to get knocked up by the thugs who make her wet any way. Why would we expect her to do anything else?
If the government paid you to knock up 18-21 yo models, all 9’s and 10’s…and I mean no child support, instead you actually get paid…wouldn’t you do it?
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From the days of Menger the Austrians have shown that laissez-faire does not depend on “rational actors”. Von Mises destroys that idea in “Human Action”.
this is troof. however, i believe roissy is referring to the self-proclaimed libertarians of the mainstream with this criticism. the gay marriage and open-borders advocate types, like andrew sullivan, conor friedersdorf, and any proud “progressive” fall into this category.
take rand paul and this civil rights act controversy nonsense. racialists do not have the freedom to behave, in their own estimation, ‘rationally’ by excluding some demographics. rand paul thought that could be a net disadvantage to small-gov sympathizers. he couldn’t comprehend that a PC groundswell would burn any such businesses to the ground to express their contempt, making the cost of enjoying an ethnocentric atmosphere (white, that is) unbearable to any would-be sympathetic consumers.
you could nitpick that a married mother banging a teenage felon is ‘rational’ in evo-psych terms. if the punishment for this is light, there is really little deterrent to giving it a shot. thus… ‘rational’ after all. if your cuckhold husband will show up in court with an “i love my wife” tshirt and death-stare your 16 year old accusers, your fling is paid for with house money. risk vs reward, baby.
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@Thursday,
going on about the hunters and gatherers.
History the last couple of centuries would prove
this wrong or at least largely irrelevant.
Farmers (traditionally the great majority) had a built-in
savings mechanism, farm and children. When the farmer
got too old, one or more by now adult children took over,
and part of the deal was to take care of the parents for
the rest of their lives.
The upper classes worked much the same, just larger plots
of land, and maybe peons to work them.
The burhger classes to some extent DID save, but also
relied to some extent on children. 100 years ago, most
non-farmers in Europe build up substantial savings
(in proportion to their often meager income), precisely
to take care of them in their dotage. I am sure somebody
could dig up figures. Now, with the advent of Social Security and massive inflation, this practice became increasingly rare. And “inflation being built into interest
rates” would be true in a rational economy, not in a
massive deficit spending one. Also note, interest is taxable,
regardless of if all or most of the “income” is an illusion
due to inflation.
Thus the big business of tax-free (more-or-less) pension funds and the like, which are, despite everything,
rapidly building up.
Thor
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“If the “inside beltway” crowd is so blindingly
smart, how come they make such stupid blunders?”
Who told you the beltway is blindingly smart? If there was mandatory IQ and general knowledge (i.e. English, history, science, math) testing for government officials tomorrow people would be shocked at the results.
I often struggle to reconcile the resumes of our politicians with the IQ’s they appear to have from their speeches, ideas, and decisions. Charlie Rangel throws me for a complete loop because he has a law degree and passed his state bar exam, but listening to him speak I am convinced he has an average or slightly below average IQ.
And what could the IQ be for Hank “Guam is going to tip” Johnson? I had a better grasp on the geology of islands when my friends and I were still running from girls on the playground because they had cooties and might kiss us! (I think I had better game back then. I ignored girls, and if they got too close I pulled their ponytails. Amazingly they became more interested. Then some woman told me to be nice to them, and I was too young to realize how stupid it was to listen to her.)
I would guess that Obama has an above average IQ, but not far above average, and not better than George Bush. (Vox Day estimates Obama at 116 and Bush at 125.)
And IQ is just the beginning. Critical thinking skills (logic) and general knowledge are huge. An IQ of 160 is worthless if you’ve never learned formal logic and/or have zero knowledge about a subject you have to vote on.
The only thing blinding about the beltway is their complete lack of any ability to research issues, come to rational conclusions and compromises, and properly lead.
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most people with strong political rhetoric are either:
1. faking it for strategic reasons
or
2. misdirecting a personal issue on a political one
usually a combination. some people require a political identity and therefore lie to themselves first.
ideology exists so that non-thinking people may express an opinion.
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this is insane. i’d buy the possibility that obama got afffirmative action at every level, including admission to harvard. i’ll buy that he did a mediocre or worse job once he was on the harvard law review. however, it’s absurd to suggest that a person who (by all accounts) competed fairly against the best and brightest jews, asians, wasps etc… at harvard law and made summa cum laude could only manage a 116 in IQ. law tests are blindly graded. there was no affirmative action in that.
that feat alone places him in the top 1% of american, maybe global, IQ’s.
the guy’s left wing policies are dangerous- but non- liberals do themselves a disservice by assuming he’s weak and/or less intelligent than he really is.
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@Thor:
most could do both. Classical Greek is not that hard a language. It has about 120,000 words total. English has 8 million and Latin has about 40,000 words.
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If their life is unbearable in DC or NYC making $250,000 a year, all because they can’t get a spot at the hot new restaurant, or because they didn’t receive notice at a charity event, then life working for the “local pickle bottling” plant is utterly not worth living. From their perspective it has to be. How can someone with kids in a $30,000 a year private school respect an individual that makes $30,000 a year?
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I always wondered how the French and Russian revolutions could be so bloody, now I totally get it.
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Bad Scenes of Game from the Movies:
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DT,
Good comments. Having a baby and going on welfare is the best deal by far for a lower class woman. It wouldn’t make sense to do it any differently.
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Behavioural economists have a really simple explanation for why people don’t save money.
It’s not a very good one, given that the savings rate is historically dynamic and responsive to a number of influences, only one of which is the interest rate. The primary consideration is individual time preferences.
Never mind that inflation expectations are already incorporated into interest rates.
This is incorrect. It is textbook Econ 101 theory, but it is not supported by either the empirical evidence, the construction of CPI-U, or the Taylor Rule which is presently favored by the Federal Reserve.
In defense of libertarians, I would point out that our goals are much, much smaller than most non-libertarians realize. We don’t expect flawlessly rational behavior leading to an anarchic utopia, it’s just that we’re content with simply making it impossible for the central government to kill its citizens en masse or easily interfere with the operation of market forces.
The important thing to understand about the Misean concept of rational human action is that the relevant motivation is solely defined by the actor. No one else. So, the rational action may justifiably be considered irrational by an observer who does not know or agree with the actor’s motivation, but this does not make the action inherently irrational. Game theoreticians should understand this concept more easily than most, given their solid grasp of the important distinction between a woman’s claimed motivation for her actions and her actual motivation.
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derb’s a regular!!
Come one Pat Buchanan has to be here somewhere too.
Maybe he is gbfm
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We’re martyrs to fucking truth, that’s what we are
If that was really Derb, and you’re reading: some 12 years ago when I was still in my twenties and all I knew was mainstream media, I started feeling like I’m insane because of my strongly felt but inarticulate “forbidden thoughts” on taboo PC subjects, including anger with all the official lies.
Then I stumbled on your articles at National Review and realized that there is nothing wrong with me. Just wanna say Thanks, man!
I was born poor and I look set fair to die poor.
No man who has a son is poor.
Libertarians
Libertarians come in these varieties:
– Nerds with little insight into human nature
– Profiteers on human misery
– Non-lefties who lack the balls to be righties
– “legaliiiize it, duuudde…SssssssnnnnffffflTHP!
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Anonymous,
I feel pain just watching it!
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“If their life is unbearable in DC or NYC making $250,000 a year, all because they can’t get a spot at the hot new restaurant, or because they didn’t receive notice at a charity event, then life working for the “local pickle bottling” plant is utterly not worth living. From their perspective it has to be. How can someone with kids in a $30,000 a year private school respect an individual that makes $30,000 a year?”
Politics is a status-driven operation, Hollywood for ugly people. So not making right-side-of-the-bell-curve money and not being seen at social trendsetters wrecks their pretty little heads.
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On the topic of MPT and other Y chrom issues, study shows sperm-donor children suffer:
http://www.slate.com/id/2256212/
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To be fair to some of the smarter libertarians who operate in good faith, I’ll grant this much: the libertarian principles can work, but only in an environment where there is a strong cohesiveness, a culture of cooperation, respect for certain social taboos, and the population is of high average intelligence. This is more likely to occur in a monocultural, strongly religius traditions.
But absent those conditions, libertarianism is unsustainable.
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Agree with the above poster who mentions that libertarian philosophy rests on acting in one’s “economic best interest”.
Ayn Rand libertarians are another story altogether.
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Off topic, but here’s a debate on whether women can be happy if they’re successful but single.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1286611/What-singletons-think-Lisa-Snowdons-bane-Successful-Attractive-Single.html
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Your statement about libertarians is true, however most political factions will have to have some assumption that generally speaking, most people are rational. Otherwise none of the parties will be able to formulate policies that would benefit the general public. Libertarians do have the right mindset, they pick the “beneficial” aspects of liberals and conservatives.
The fact that there are only two major political party will guarantee that American politics will continue to be “wretched.”
There is no accountability or power if the voters have limited options. Most politicians abuse their power, because they can.
Don’t fret tho masons such as myself will rule the world soon.
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Maybe libertarians who haven’t advanced past a high school intellectual level believe that humans are rationally self interested actors. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few such specimens inside the Beltway.
“My” libertarianism, to the extent that I am one, is that government’s capacity for evil always outruns the individual’s capacity for self-destruction, and therefore that limitation of government power is the second most important aim, after reducing the violence inherent in the state of nature.
Ironically, I think the best way to prevent violence and encroaching government interference is to have a state power that is secure and unitary, that has no need of corrupt exploitation because it exploits openly, and that has no need of violent suppression because resistance is futile. Historical examples would be dynastic monarchies and the rule by enfranchised virtuous classes of republics such as Rome and Sparta and early America.
I think most of the criticism of laissez faire libertarianism is really aimed at faux big business libertarianism. A libertarian would not permit the formation of corporations, much less the formation of a corrupt sozialdemocratisch corpokleptocracy. Nor would he enfranchise the low IQ, propertyless classes who would vote such a state into existence, nor import more of the same until they overwhelmed his state’s native stock in a demographic tidal wave.
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Wow – did The Derb really leave a comment here?
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How the fucking hell do college dropouts like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove etc become the most influential voices in the Republican Party? Every single one of these dumbasses weren’t even smart enough to graduate from college. Not Ivy League colleges, but just regular state colleges.
So it begs the question…. how can anyone take anything that any of these men say seriously or put any stock into their opinions? How much of a fucking moron do you have to be not even be able to graduate college? None of these clowns did and they have millions of people who listen to everything they say and don’t even realize how fucking idiotic it is.
I am glad everyone agrees.
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Some misc. observations.
1) Zoo Bar is an excellent divey bar across from the national zoo. It was one of my favorites during my misspent youth in DC.
2) It was a good article but, as if to highlight the very stratification argument it presents, I arrive here to find long comments arguing about the behaviorist economic theory of savings with references to the taylor rule and… my god. Perhaps it’s some kind of satire I just don’t get, but given that I’m in that same stratified sphere, that seems very unlikely.
3) Derb is the man, love his stuff, glad to see him here, if that was him. And it seemed like it well could have been except for the perhaps uncharateristically coarse language. But given that I’ve never seen his writing in such an informal setting before, perhaps he was just “letting his hair down.” To the extent he still has any, of course.
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The following came in over the transom:
“Why some of the commentators are so bright they
can repeal the ancient and universal law that
improvidence causes pain. That in the end you’re
fucked. That life sucks. If only, they think, we could get them, the little people, to just share the wealth.
Fred’s polemic, though truthful, begs the question. Why are all these talented people inside the beltway? Because the veteran’s money and the waitress’ money has been stolen and bought inside the beltway by and for people like them. They are the cells of Leviathan. Kill the beast, let
them find something useful to do.”
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Re: Obama’s IQ
“this is insane.”
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2008/09/barack-obamas-iq-is-116_18.html
I would prefer published results from a direct test, but some how I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon. We can’t even get the name of the hospital the man was born at.
“i’d buy the possibility that obama got afffirmative action at every level, including admission to harvard. i’ll buy that he did a mediocre or worse job once he was on the harvard law review. however, it’s absurd to suggest that a person who (by all accounts) competed fairly against the best and brightest…”
If you accept the possibility of affirmative action at every level, then you accept that he did not compete fairly against the best and brightest.
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sam,
Some people are very smart and find that college is not making them smarter at the rate they would like (in terms of time or money or both), so they get into the world sooner and make successes of themselves. When you’re smart ENOUGH, you can self-educate, the tools exist for that.
That’s not true for them all, of course. Rush Limbaugh is truly smart, as anyone who regularly listens to him and reads him unblinded by prejudice will see. But Sean Hannity is an intellectual lightweight.
You might say “well, Bill Gates may be smart at computers and have a head for business, but because he never had a college education he is uncultured”. You’d be wrong about that too, but there are also successful people in non-technical walks of life who have no college education but whose cultural knowledge and erudtion are very impressive (Mark Steyn, for example).
Your own post contains a quite a few grammatical and conceptual errors. What college did you graduate from?
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@Sam
“How the fucking hell do college dropouts like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove etc become the most influential voices in the Republican Party? Every single one of these dumbasses weren’t even smart enough to graduate from college. Not Ivy League colleges, but just regular state colleges.
So it begs the question…. how can anyone take anything that any of these men say seriously or put any stock into their opinions? How much of a fucking moron do you have to be not even be able to graduate college? None of these clowns did and they have millions of people who listen to everything they say and don’t even realize how fucking idiotic it is.
I am glad everyone agrees.”
Because before/after college experience trumps everything. The whole point of going to college it to gain knowledge, connections and experience. Glenn Beck was impeded by alcoholism and ADHD, won’t do tell well in college. Even Tom Leykis who is considered “smart” by many dropped out of college to become a millionaire. It’s after college that counts. I’m betting most of them also had family connections to get a job that helped them create a career.
There is a significant amount of Americans that never went to college, maybe they are the followers? I personally judge both by credentials and experience. Latter being more heavily weighted. Do celebrities like Emma Watson attend Ivies because of her intelligence?
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“Every single one of these dumbasses weren’t even smart enough to graduate from college. Not Ivy League colleges, but just regular state colleges. ”
Dude, in their time it took a 115 IQ max to graduate from college.
You think their IQ is less than that? Really?
You sound like a typical clueless credential-idealizing twentysomething millenial.
Now go make some snide remarks about Sarah Palin while you watch your future evaporate under the current impeccably credentialed administration of, as your partisan shill Chris Matthews said, “idiotic cerebral meritocracy.”
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“[A]n imaginary world, of conservatives to think that everybody can be a Horatio Alger, of liberals to believe that inequality arises from discrimination . . . .”
I’ve always shared this criticism of conservatives, it’s good to see it put so succinctly. And the knock on liberals (and Roissy’s on libertarians) is pretty spot-on too.
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What we know about Obama’s IQ:
1) Hasn’t released any of his standardized test scores.
2) Has made general knowledge gaffes that would shame a bright 5th grader.
3) Has not shown any academic output commensarate with an IQ of, as some claim, 135.
Judge him by his works. There ain’t none. I trust the leftists at HLS as far as I could throw them.
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“commensurate” that is.
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I’m a libertarian, and I do believe humans are totally rational actors. Each with his/her own demented value system they are rationally seeking to maximize, even if they are not consciously aware of those values. Sane methods + insane goals = irrational behavior.
Total aside, but for those who are curious after reading Fred’s column, the tit bar in Waldorf is in fact still open. Not because it deserves to be, but because neither the staff nor the customers can imagine doing anything else. Sort of Fred’s point.
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Fred hit the nail on the head about what us truly brilliant people believe… we can do it… so can anyone else so quit bitching. I disagree with his assertion that we are wrong.
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polymath: Umm….. Bill Gates attended Harvard and dropped out to start the most successful company in the world. He didn’t attend a state school like every single person I mentioned. I love how dumbfucks like you always use Bill Gates as an example of a person who dropped out of HS and became extremely successful. So predictable. You are only the 1045689958934049 person to use that example. Congratulations.
As far as my post, there are no grammatical errors. Even if there were, these are blog comments you fucking dumbass, Tell the lolzzz guy about all his errors. Don’t get defensive that you were too much of a dumbfuck to graduate college. Accept that your IQ is 50 and live with it.
I guess when people are seeking jobs, their prospective employers look at their resumes in amazement at their self-taught educations they received at their local library or by reading wikipedia articles. Give me a fucking break!!!!
I can tell you watch Glenn Beck. The utter bullshit you wrote are exactly the views that he espouses on his crackhead rants every night about self education. Go back to watching Fox news.
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More precisely, the problem with libertarianism is it’s a political philosophy built on HBD denial.
Modern-day libertarianism CANNOT embrace HBD since it is for open borders on principle. In other words their “principles” are suicidal to the very values they espouse.
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What we know about Obama’s IQ:
We know a little more than this, actually, since we know that Obama’s IQ cannot be higher than 129. He attended a prep school where everyone takes the PSAT, but he was not a National Merit Scholar, a National Merit Semifinalist or an Outstanding Participant. This strongly indicates a hard ceiling on his PSAT percentile at 96.9, which indicates a maximum possible SAT score of 1230 and therefore a maximum IQ of 129.
Don’t forget that he wasn’t accepted by an elite university right out of high school either. He transferred to Columbia after two years at Occidental, which further indicates that he has a distinctly sub-Ivy level IQ. Note that Occidental’s average SAT scores are 209 points below those of MIT and are equal to those of Kalamazoo College.
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*college.
If you can’t graduate from college, you are a dumbass. Who the hell can’t graduate from college?
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“If you can’t graduate from college, you are a dumbass. Who the hell can’t graduate from college?”
You need to check your premises.
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“I can tell you watch Glenn Beck. The utter bullshit you wrote are exactly the views that he espouses on his crackhead rants every night about self education. Go back to watching Fox news.”
You’re an ignorant punk, as is a good chunk of your worthless, sheeplike generation. Go read a book or something. Like a book on IQ. Maybe then you’ll start to get a clue.
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Horatio Alger was just the author of “up from poverty” stories.
Anyone dealing with reality knows that there are as many different combinations of brainpower, personal skills, business sense, etc. as there are people. They are not all “equal” in the sense of being “the same.” And anyone dealing with reality also knows that luck plays a big part in most big success stories.
I think the real question is, have you ever known a person (in the “normal range” – not a legit mentally handicapped person) who was willing to absolutely work their ass off, do whatever it took, learn a new skill, move to a new area, take any job or any three, who simply could not make it? I’ve known a lot of smart people and a lot of dumb people over the years, and I’ve never known someone (outside of the “child-level ward of the state”) who had those characteristics and still just couldn’t keep himself fed and clothed.
It’s stupid to claim that such a person will necessarily get rich or wildly successful. There’s way too much luck involved to predict that. But I bet they wouldn’t ever starve.
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I should add, and didn’t make obviously self-destructive decisions.
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Did John Derbyshire really write that comment?
Well, Fred is right. I’ve been to the same gatherings as Derbs on the one hand, and I’ve worked the night shift in a warehouse and waited tables on the other. The disconnect Fred’s describing is real to me.
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Deconstructiong Sam (my edits in brackets)
“How the fucking hell do college dropouts like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove etc become the most influential voices in the Republican Party? Every single one of these dumbasses weren’t [was not] even smart enough to graduate from college. Not Ivy League colleges, but just regular state colleges.
So it begs the question…. how can anyone take anything that any of these men say seriously or put any stock into their opinions? How much of a fucking moron do you have to be [to] not even be able to graduate college? None of these clowns did and they have millions of people who listen to everything they say and don’t even realize how fucking idiotic it is.
I am glad everyone agrees. [self-congratulatory nonsense!]”
That much about “no grammatical errors”.
Sam goes on:
“I guess when people are seeking jobs, their prospective employers look at their resumes in amazement at their self-taught educations they received at their local library or by reading Wikipedia articles. Give me a fucking break!!!!”
The implied statement is that it is hard to sell self-taught
knowledge to a prospective employer. This is generally true, but with lots of exceptions. Once you have achievements, few people outside of academia care about
your degrees etc. Now, for most people, including smart
people, a college degree is a helpful starter, but not
an absolute requirement. I know several people who are college dropouts and nevertheless did very well in the computer industry – one managed to drop out of
the equivalent of junior high (and barely dodged getting
locked up in a mental ward for this).
And Glenn Beck & Co recommends that people self-educate to become politically engaged, NOT to impress a prospective employer. So what’s the argument?
Thor
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“Who the hell can’t graduate from college?”
At many state schools, about half of the people who enroll as freshman drop out by senior year. And even with the lowering of the admission standards over the last thirty years, about half of high school grads can’t even get into a state school. Now, add in the kids who even graduate from high school.
So, who can’t graduate from college? Most people–not that any of their parents believe it.
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crazyshoe,
Of course the disconnect is real, the point is that Derb himself does not suffer from it and has written extensively on this very issue, so for Fred to lump him in with the heads-in-the-clouds crowd was stupid.
sam,
heh heh heh. You don’t know me. You also don’t get at least one of the meanings of my screen name, and have either not read anything I’ve written here or have poor comprehension skills.
Don’t get defensive that you were too much of a dumbfuck to graduate college. Accept that your IQ is 50 and live with it.
You’re off by several degrees and more than 7 standard deviations.
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Sam,
Just out of curiosity, how did you find this blog? Was a women complaining at Daily Kos about right wing misogyny? Or are you a woman? Your name is ambiguous though your aggressive style writing resembles that of a man.
I know many people like you. Angry young liberals upset that their political science degree doesn’t guarantee them a 50k starting salary, or that the cute progressive girls still end up sleeping with frat guys instead of their intellectual companion.
I would recommend you start getting some programming certifications at the local CC to make yourself more marketable.
PS This post is an ad hominem attack intended to make you realize how dumb ad hominem attacks are. Just wanted to make sure you got it.
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Troll troll troll troll. Troll troll troll.
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I would add that the low IQ population is reproducing much, much faster than the beltway 99th.
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Reed is worth reading
as he represents the “wisdom of BOTH sides” mentality I am seeking to adopt.
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Anyone who advocates for self teaching instead of college can’t be taken seriously.
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thor: Beck advocates for self-education only because he knows that he is a college dropout and tries to spin his failures on the “liberal agenda” or some other nonsensical bullshit about university professors in the US.
If you believe that spin I feel sorry for you.
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Actually… the whole point of Libertarianism and its logical conclusion… anarcho-capitalism (http://athousandnations.com/2009/07/03/secession-week-friday-non-territorial-secession/)… is that humans are irrational actors. Hence the bottom-up design instead of the top-down design. Bottom up is the way evolution and nature and everything works… top down is the way creationists and democrats and republicans and just about everyone thinks the world actually works.
I would think you of all people would understand that the world works best via a bottom up complex adaptive system instead of a top down system of monopolistic government.
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“Reed is worth reading
as he represents the “wisdom of BOTH sides” mentality I am seeking to adopt.”
None of the current political philosophies have all the answers. They are all fatally flawed in some way.
That’s because political philosophy isn’t the answer.
All those guys have an IQ of 140.
But Kurzweil makes them look dim-witted in comparison.
And he is essentially right: only sufficient advancement of technology can resolve the contradictions.
When a super-high IQ comes in a pill, you get a synthesis of anarchocapitalist self-sufficiency and communist equality (well, relative anyway.)
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@ polymath
Understood, but Derbs seemed to suggest that Fred’s entire point was off-base.
@ Science
You’re right. Man, how did Roissy miss that?? We all better go read Man, Economy, and State a few more times so we can understand as well as you how the world REALLY works.
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I would add… of Rossyites to believe everyone acts only out of primal instinct.
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@Schmoe
Emphasizing the extent to which evolutionary instinct shapes behavior is not the same as saying evolutionary instinct is behavior.
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Holy smoke – the Derb showed up on this thread.
Fred Reed “went native” in Mexico and then developed numerous blind spots.
There’s a good thread on Udolpho’s forums called “Critiques of Libertarianism,” Roissy. I’m betting you’ve already read it.
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There are a lot of dumb lawyers (Biden, for instance). There are numerous ways Rangel could have “passed” the bar besides taking it himself. Bar exam passage is not necessarily a high-IQ marker. Lots of TTT grads pass it.
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@ sam
Have you, uh, looked at what college can cost?
Nevermind, you’re right–it’s sooooooooooo worth it. Anyone who wouldn’t want to pay that much for a credential and a faggy upwardly-mobile social circle lacks a clue in a big way.
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Paul and other millenial bashers: Why the hell are some of you bashing millenials that read this blog?!??? How the fuck does that make any sense? This makes me laugh as it automatically shines a spotlight on your own insecurities about your failures with women, hence your reading of this blog at your advanced ages. If you were so smart, wouldn’t you dumbfucks have figured out how to relate with women a long time ago? Perhaps you were too busy dropping out of college and self-educating yourselves at your local libraries in the writings of Plato or Tolstoy. Haha. Go drink some prune juice.
Daily Kos huh? Why the fuck would I read that? Haven’t you watched Bill Oreilly? He is not a fan. Everyone who watches Fox news is so predictable. They just regurgitate the talking points that the hosts of their “opinion shows” say. At least Oreilly graduated from Harvard.
So, continue to be bitter at the world I guess. Instead of complaining like little girls, you should have graduated from college and learned how to deal with women back when you were young. It is amazing to me that simply being an advocate of graduating from college instead of being a dropout caused such heated anger among the Baby Boomers who are reading this blog. Pathetic.
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So being an Ivy League drop out is superior to being a state college drop out? Think how much more successful Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, David Geffen, John Glenn, etc would be if they had dropped out of Yale.
Drop Outs Hall of Fame.
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@ sam
blah, blah, insecurities, fox news, republicans, college, baby boomers, romantic inadequacy. what’s your point? whatever it is i agree.
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“Anyone who advocates for self teaching instead of college can’t be taken seriously.”
The best computer programmers I have met thus far in life were self taught. The worst had college degrees.
I’m not sure what can be safely extrapolated from that experience to life in general. But I have noticed a rash of essays, articles, and blog posts lately about the education bubble and the low value of many degrees.
And I’m not the only one to observe that college degrees mean little in the field of computer programming: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html
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mmmmmmmmmmmmm sammmmmmmmmm tell me how inadequate i am. ohhhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhh just like that. i love it when anonymous commenters get alllllllll butch on me like that. it’s getting hot in here. mmm mmm mmmmmmmmmm.
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“If you were so smart, wouldn’t you dumbfucks have figured out how to relate with women a long time ago?”
Isn’t male high IQ negatively correlated with successful pickup?
Roissy Maxim #59: High IQ is no inoculation against beta delusion. If anything, high IQ obstructs clear thinking about women’s nature.
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/july-2009-beta-of-the-month/
I think most high school and college kids would agree. Nerds don’t generally have a reputation for picking up the ladies.
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montzilla: Where you drop out of isn’t the issue. Once again, I always love how the same handful of names are always mentioned in the college dropout debates. Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Larry Ellison are always among the first names mentioned. For every ONE guy who is able to become successful by being a college dropout, there is a million who work shitty jobs their entire lives.
crazyshoe: I bet you are a middle age or older man who never went to college and is earning a shitty salary. It is so glaringly obvious by how defensive you are. I guess it is good you have your hand. You sure as hell aren’t getting any women with such a pathetic existence.
Why don’t you all you Baby Boomers go cause another subprime mortgage meltdown or send the stock market down another 4 thousand points with your stupidity? The Baby Boomers are the worst generation without question. I am glad everyone agrees with me.
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Dear sam…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky
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DT: Nobody said you had to have a genius IQ to be good with women. However, not even being able to graduate from college and being dumber than dirt isn’t going to get you anywhere either.
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I meant to link to this instead:
http://athousandnations.com/2009/07/03/an-introduction-to-non-territorial-secession/
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Agreed – poli phi is no longer the answer at present, yet, even long ago, (when people were less educated), it performed capably. So, it is not the philosophy that failed, but the participants.
The problem lies in the so-called “Best & Brightest” avoid politics, thus leaving the field open for the criminal, pandering moron to reign.
Today’s endless stream of crises and predicaments are the predictable result.
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@ sam
you’re sooooo right! mmmmmmmm i love it.
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@Original JB and Firepower
politics in general in pointless because its a monopoly. A monopoly on law and order. people have a voice, but they have no real exit option.
In the free market, say, in a grocery store… if you don’t like the selection, or the service, you can walk out and go to another store. If you don’t like your local laws, or your police… you can’t choose another legal system, or another police service. You can move, but thats unrealistic, so politicians have a geographic monopoly.
Why not let people choose the services they want based on ones provided on the market:
http://athousandnations.com/2009/07/03/an-introduction-to-non-territorial-secession/
that’d make all politics irrelevant
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“In fact, if we had real competitive government, then we would be no more interested in elections and speaking out to government officials than we are in holding elections and town-hall meetings at the supermarket”
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/08/what_is_real_fr.html
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Libertarians think humans are rational actors? I don’t think the evidence supports that assertion. One of the main themes of public choice theory is that people are selfish and irrational, and that they don’t suddenly become logical angels when they enter government service.
If libertarians have a flaw, it’s that they may be excessively optimistic regarding the stability of a truly free market. The evidence to date suggests that free markets rarely last long in pure form. They face constant assault from macro parasites (governments, unions, corporations, interest groups), who seek to impose taxes/regulations that benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. So far, libertarians don’t offer much in defense against such assaults, in theory or practice.
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DT,
The relationships between IQ and pickup success is complex.
Raw IQ is positively correlated with success, just because if you are smarter you can play the game better. All other things being equal, making a man smarter will make him better with women.
However, people tend to cultivate their strengths, so people with a high IQ are likely to spend more time on academic subjects and less time learning practical life skills, introducing a negative correlation factor.
Furthermore, even apart from this, there is a selection effect because the people who are conspicuously smart tend to have worked hard at being smart and thus worked less hard at other things (just as, for example, major league ballplayers not only have natural talent, they have spent less time at non-baseball pursuits than those less talented and so are less likely to be good computer programmers).
Yes, nerds aren’t good at pickups, but that’s not because they’re smart, it’s because they’re nerds. Plenty of smart people only spend average amounts of time on academic and technical pursuits, and they do just fine.
The best natural alpha I know was a college friend of mine who had perfect SATs and dropped out of high school at age 15 to go to MIT (he turned 16 his first month there). Because he was so brilliant, he did not need to spend much time studying; he was a genius at computer programming (and later became a well-known web guru) and fit in perfectly with the nerds in that subculture, but he also knew how to dress, appreciated fine arts, music, and food, and was absolutely devastating with women.
His appearance was a 7 — pleasant unhandsome Jewish face, 6’1″, somewhat awkward movements, looked 19 when he was 16 because he was pretty hairy. He pulled a string of hot grad students and postdocs when he was a freshman due to complete self-confidence and the attitude of a cultured adult rather than a college student, as well as the DHV that came from being a highly paid consultant. He was an excellent photographer and used that game well too.
It was all natural, not calculated — when he finally got involved with a girl in his own year, she broke his heart and beta-ized him, though he recovered after a year or so. He went on to start a bunch of companies, then cashed out and became an airplane and helicopter pilot and eventually a flight instructor, just because that’s what he enjoyed. He finally married a couple of years ago at 45.
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Polymath,
Much as I would love the thought of the Derb honouring us with his presence (and the author of “We’re all Doomed” would fit in perfectly here), I suspect that it’s a Pseudo-Derb we have in our midst.
Too much profanity – in his whole website there isn’t a trace of it.
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I hear a rationalization hamster whirling away, polymath…
I’d love to see a chart of male IQ and sexual partners. I’d bet that IQ is inversely proportional with the quantity of sexual partners… that is once you get over like 120. There would be some outliers at the higher end because of game, but not enough to skew the numbers.
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Derb and the Dark Lord would be quite a combo.
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lzozlzlzloozlzllzll!!
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@ Science
I see your point.
Still, the politics of America are substantially less restricted than those in dictatorships like Iran or China.
The thinkers among us deplore Americans’ perpetual, docile reelecting of incumbents. Voters truly get the politicians they deserve.
Our public brethren are too complacent to discern between the valuable message and the one pushed by multi-million dollar advertising campaigns; they repeatedly fall for style over substance.
If there are no results proving this public rejects the political status quo, it must be because they are either satisfied with those they’ve voted for, or they don’t care to do the research.
The public repeatedly reveals itself satisfied with whatever regime gives them material happiness.
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@Firepower-
Check out “The Myth of the Rational Voter” by Bryan Caplan…
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter/
here is a short taste of it.
Voters pick policies that are actively bad for society. Always.
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where did sam goooooo? he was fun. i have lots of insecurities, he has none.
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polymath – I would agree with you for the most part. I was merely pointing out the correlation, not the root cause.
Am I guessing correctly that your college friend was Philip Greenspun? I wouldn’t get the impression from his own writing that he was an Alpha when it came to women. But then I don’t know the man personally.
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Why do you guys doubt that was really John Derbyshire? He linked to his own article and website and he wrote personal detailed information about himself. He is probably angry about being written about inaccurately.
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partly because i’ve met him and it seems out of character.
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@Freakshow:
I think you over estimate the brains of most lawyers. CPAs, engineers, doctors, hard scientists are all smarter on average than lawyers.
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Science,
hear a rationalization hamster whirling away, polymath…
I’d love to see a chart of male IQ and sexual partners. I’d bet that IQ is inversely proportional with the quantity of sexual partners… that is once you get over like 120.
True but irrelevant. The question was not whether higher IQ leads to more sexual partners, the question was whether IQ is correlated with game skills.
Those are not equivalent, unless you assume that the only use of game skills is to get more partners, rather than to get better partners, or to have better relationships with existing partners.
Furthermore, I do not even deny that IQ is, empirically, negatively correlated with game skills — as I pointed out, people with high IQ are likely to spend less time on anything non-academic.
My point was simply that, all other things being equal, being smarter will allow you to do better with girls — that all other things are not always equal is a different discussion.
There is no rationalization going on in my mind here, because I am not denying that smart men sometimes are deficient in their ability to relate to women. I used to be, myself. As I said to Cannon’s Canon a couple of threads ago:
Despite my natural endowments, I failed with more than 20 girls….If I had known game I would have done much, much better. I got dumped, LJBF’d, failed shit tests, missed clear IOIs from girls I thought were out of my league, got rejected in favor of “bad boys” for being too nice, chose bad locations for dates, creeped girls out by pursuing them too hard, rejected good advice from wingmen, chose unsuitably flighty or bitchy girls, ruined excellent opportunities with clumsy approaches, mishandled ASDs, and on and on.
But once game is actually made available as a coherent body of knowledge with its own structure and logic, being smart allows you to “get it” better and faster.
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“For every ONE guy who is able to become successful by being a college dropout, there is a million who work shitty jobs their entire lives.”
Out of my family (including aunts, uncles, and cousins) there are three self made millionaires. One dropped out of college, and the other two never went.
Out of my family members who have or have had peak earnings in six figures, most never went to college or dropped out.
None of the college graduates in my family have done poorly. Some of the none graduates have done very poorly and experienced years of poverty. So the college degrees appear to at least create a floor, a minimal level of success. But the graduates haven’t done much better than average either. The idea that a college degree is a ticket to an upper middle class existence is a myth.
Granted, these are just my own personal observations within my own family. If I include friends and acquaintances the observations would be roughly the same, except that I know some graduates who are self made millionaires outside of my family, which would even out the top end. But again, looking at everyone I know, I cannot conclude that a college degree guarantees success or even proves that the holder is competent within the named field.
Half Sigma has written before that college is about the right career path rather than pure learning. He has also written about the right colleges versus the wrong or average colleges, and what college choice means for said career path. I tend to agree with his thoughts on the matter.
Unfortunately for the “college is everything” crowd, if his theories are correct then many degrees are overvalued by those who seek or hold them. A good percentage are probably not even worth the tuition paid. His focus was on law and his conclusion was that if you don’t get a degree from one of the top law schools it may not be worth it, but I suspect that conclusion can be extrapolated to other fields.
As the liberal left pushes the idea that “everyone should have a college degree”, I would expect the education bubble to expand and the value of the average degree to plummet even further.
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I’m constantly amused at how often commenters think that some other commenter is not really who he claims to be, based on trivial factors and ignoring massive evidence. Such people lack both a sensitivity to writing style and a grasp of the logic of conditional probability.
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I once knew a retarded guy with few social skills make a good living with his own tow truck. He was friendly, and worked hard. People took a liking to him and sent him business. He made the equivalent of high five figures at the time and his business was growing. This was in the DC area too. People can do much more than we think them capable of regardless of their IQs if we give them the opportunity and the chance. The best thing politicians can do for us is to create a stable and secure environment for business to flourish. Much of the underclass’s inability to succeed is due to modern life being too complex, often for little valid reason other than to featherbed interest groups. They can’t cope and we throw them in jail for it.
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@ polymath
oh, you’re right, too. there’s no reason to ask, “is that really john derbyshire?” man, i’m feelin really dumb today, but luckily i have lots of knowing commenters to straighten me right out!
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> If you are going to comment on economics or on libertarianism at least study the subject.
At which point you would notice that economics uses rational actors as a convenient short cut but is fully aware that it is such – and has been for a while, it’s not like Daniel Kahnemann (who is not even an economist, BTW) did get a noble prize or anything. There are literally dozens of well known biases of how people deviate from rationality.
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oh my christ we get it already with the rationality issue.
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As for hiqh IQ hurting pickup I think it’s less the failure to recognize women’s nature and more of a shyness or insecure overachiever symptom that does most nerds in.
> But once game is actually made available as a coherent body of knowledge with its own structure and logic, being smart allows you to “get it” better and faster.
But again only if everything else is equal. The tenets of game are not exactly rocket science but applying it successfully means having to overcome the above issues first.
In my case, it’s mostly shyness – even though I work in a ridiculously demanding job (60h is a good week for me) and am in a 6 year LTR (using a lot of push pull and independent thinking/doing), I have to this day not been able to overcome terminally crippling approach anxiety one bit.
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nupinup,
Shyness is a neurological issue independent of IQ. There’s good medication for shyness now, that works for a significant fraction of the people who suffer from it.
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Except you can’t actually enjoy the benefits for the obvious side-effects it has.
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If you aren’t earning a minimum of $100,000, you shouldn’t even be alive. That is the minimum amount of money needed to be a productive member of society. If you can’t even earn that, why the fuck do you even get up in the morning? I have a feeling a lot of people here don’t even earn the measly amount judging from how defensive everyone got about being college dropouts.
I am glad everyone agrees.
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Polymath–
I too am skeptical that that’s really derb, though the claimed John Derbyshire does link to the Derb’s real web page. I too have read a lot of Derbyshire in different venues.
It’s not impossible it’s really him. But I’m a bit skeptical. Wouldn’t surprise me if he SOMETIMES reads Roissy though. Would really doubt he reads him “religiously”.
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(That is true at least for all the SSRI I have read about as well as Effexor, I’m told Wellbutrin is different but it comes with its own ugly list of side-effects. I’ve only ever tried Effexor and while it certainly flatlined my mood on a very high level which at the time was a very much needed thing, I don’t think it did much beyond that)
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Alright people stop with the back and forth.
College education is important.
How else are you going to become a doctor, lawyer or investment banker? Self-education? Please… private education trumps everything else. Not to mention for most going to college is about connections (gaining alumni network, fraternity and other organizations), legacy and honing social skills.
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There are different kinds of libertarians, ranging from Objectivists to rothbardians to pragmatic neo-libertarians to paleolibertarians, and so on. Some flavors are less asinine than others.
I don’t believe in isms myself. If people ask me, I say that I am “chaotic neutral”, heh.
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I just realized that human being not being rational actors is actually a supportive argument for libertarianism. If all humans are rational and they choose to create top-down hierarchy, there is some chance of that hierarchy being rational. If humans are usually not rational actors, then it is unreasonable to assume that any top-down hierarchy is going to be rational. The purpose of libertarianism, then, is to discredit any concept of monopolistic, top-down hierarchy.
Who will watch the watchmen?
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@ polymath
What you described is actually “anti-game”. If you would have just shutup and looked bored (without running any formal game), you would have gotten laid, as the only times I did when I was young without knowing it.
Anti-game is THE problem, not having game is secondary. And I believe the main cause of anti-game is a poor social environnement, such as pussy-whiteknight values from a babyboomer father.
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On reflection, a lot of this is nonsense. You don’t need a
monster IQ – or even necessarily an average IQ – to
live a decent life. Nor do you need 100 000 dollars
per year income, although the required income for
a given level of life-style varies with location.
The “rules” are spelled out, believe it or not, in the
Murray/Herrnstein “The Bell Curve” book.
It comes down to get a job (or, if female, get a job
AND/OR get married). Any job. If female, DON’T get
pregnant outside of marriage. Work at your job AND
your marriage. You will probably never be a Horatio
Alger, but modest living will be fine. This BTW
(not in TBC) will work particularly well in rural areas.
And Sam will decide that your life is Unwertiges Leben.
Live with his derision, it won’t hurt you!
Thor
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Except libertarians don’t do anything that actually affects policy matters. They just blog and moan.
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If human beings are not rational actors, it is stupid to put one human in charge of other humans.
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G,
It wasn’t anti-game, it was the cluelessness of inexperience. You’re judging from a biased sample since I was listing only my mistakes. I had my share of successes too, when I applied game correctly, but I did not know what I was doing when I succeeded any more than I understood my mistakes.
Since my overall performance with women was at least average in terms of number and quality, I didn’t have anti-game, I just had no game.
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“College education is important. How else are you going to become a doctor, lawyer or investment banker?”
Doctors work long hours, must continually study to keep up with new medical advances (self education), have high liability and stress, and often graduate with six figures worth of debt. Unless you’re at a top school and are looking to slide into a profitable specialty, I’m not sure doctor is a solid career choice any more. Especially with the passage of health care reform. I’ve known plenty of people who made as much as your average doctor but without the hours, liability, stress, or college debt. I know a few firemen and I think they have a much better deal than your average doctor.
Law is a good career choice if you can graduate from a top school and get into a top law firm. And, of course, if you can survive the early years at said law firm. I suppose you could also get lucky and end up at a firm which wins some massive liability lawsuit. But the average student hoping to become a lawyer is in for a rude awakening when they realize they’re lucky to pull an average income in a crowded field while carrying a massive college debt load.
Investment banker? Not bad if you can avoid being shot by a member of the general public.
“Not to mention for most going to college is about connections (gaining alumni network, fraternity and other organizations), legacy and honing social skills.”
Exactly. And that’s very beneficial if you’re at the right schools and can make the right connections for your chosen career.
Otherwise, college is not all it’s cracked up to be, and is not a guarantee of success. Which would be fine except for the fact that the left and the education industry portray college as the be all and end all of life choices.
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Behavioural economics, which is a reaction to the rational actor model that Roissy claims underwrites and undermines libertarianism, was pioneered by Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith. Smith is a libertarian. The first Nobel prize awarded to a libertarian was awarded to F.A. Hayek whose work explored the how markets and institutions functioned when the perfect information requirement of the rational actor model was not met.
That said, humans are still largely rational which is why nothing else developed so far has the same predictive power as the rational actor model so loved by most libertarians. Roissy doesn’t like it because game seems to rest on a theory of sub-conscious thought and desire in the female psyche. His mistake is to think these can’t be incorporated into the rational actor model. Of course they can — as given preferences. Moreover, there is some nice scholarship out there by men with alpha success levels showing that rational choice theory meshes quite nicely with evolutionary psychology as I’m sure Roissy is aware.
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Most of the people posting here are of only average intelligence, if that. No way do they have what it takes to study and practice medicine.
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Wow, OJB. Really. A shiny scientific future where sufficiently high IQ comes in a pill and the anarcho capitalist scifi wonderland results?
When it comes in a pill, it won’t be sufficient.
Someone who wasn’t an idiot would realize that shifting power begets violence, and the singularity is exactly that. What happened when high IQ supermen first landed in the Caribbean?
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I think Fred is suffering from the “Populist’s Disease” where he believes both sides are equally wrong and the best course is somewhere in the middle.
The problem with that analysis is when one side wants to jump off the top of a 100 story building and the other side doesn’t.
Fred is going to compromise, take the best of both sides,
and jump off the 50th floor.
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I make over $100k, and I have a graduate degree in theoretical particle physics from an Ivy League university.
Given that, Sam is an arrogant POS fucktard. Piss off, troll.
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u guys r morons on economics. if u kick out the illegals and i have to clean my own toilet and mow my own lawn and cook my own food, i will kick ur fucking ass.
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if john derbyshire is a poor fuck that explains a lot. he cant afford to eat in a nice restaurant. i can and i enjoy it. but if u want to kick all the illegals out of the kitchen, then we will all be cooking our pork and beans at home like poor john derbyshire.
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I’m thinking it was the real Derb. His style of writing. Possibly after some wine. If a Reed piece were to hit a nerve with him, that woudl have been it.
[editor: if it was derb, i sympathize. reed was unfair to lump him and sailer in with the out-of-touch cognoscenti.]
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Average income of someone with a Bachelor’s degree :
$54,000
The average income of someone with “some” college :
$36,800
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Derb does read this site. He has mentioned or linked to it before.
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If you are built in such a way as to enjoy nuggets of truth through the mountains of bullshit you have to deal with on a daily basis of course you enjoy this site. Love Derb and love this site.
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Agree with polymath and others that the comment reads like Derb. He does occasionally mention alphas and game in his writing.
@ sam
Your constant use of profanity to punch up your “arguments” is proof enough of your feeble intellect. Go join the circle jerk at Democratic Underground.
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Seems very much like the real Derb to me. The same cranky articulate Englishness.
And Derb lives, I believe, in Queens.
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does it really matter? maybe it’s john derbyshire and maybe it isn’t. anyway.
as far as libertarianism, there’s something being lost in this bitchy back-and-forth. not every strain of libertarianism stresses the rational character of individuals and their choices, true, and roissy’s original flip comment superficially gives a different impression. but it’s a rare strain of libertarianism that *doesn’t* put the rationality somewhere, in a big way–usually in the overall functioning of a system based on free choice and exchange. you still arrive at rationality, you just locate it less simply and directly, in the implicit matrix of exchange and economic relations instead of the explicit judgements of individuals. think hayek’s spontaneous order.
i like that idea over the rational actor theme but i still don’t wholly buy it. there is a spontaneous, ordered element, yes, but i find you need more than economic analysis and libertarian philosophy to say what it is and what it’s doing. just sayin’.
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@ GP
fred is definitely airing the idea that no particular class or iq group has a monopoly on truth. that’s not the same as saying the truth exists in the middle somewhere.
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My own experience with libertarians validates the bit about rational actors. My College had so many libertarians that they were the second largest political party on campus.
In all my discussions with them, I never once had one successfully explain to me how it wasn’t in my best interest to get a group of friends together and take stuff from other people in a world absent governmental regulation in so many areas.
Some of these same libertarians tried to tell me that roads and the military should be privatized as well. Because we need more toll roads, and mercenaries have always been a great thing to have around…
The problem with them was their parents were always rich or upper middle class, and they had never experienced the joy of having to bust your ass to eat one meal a day and trying to work their way up from the bottom. Untill you’ve spent a few months living at the poverty line, working a shitty job, and living in a bad niegborhood, you can’t understand the average American.
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How many had pencil necks as well, Timitz?
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My problem with girls was I couldn’t bring myself to have a conversation with them about the really stupid shit they were into. And when someone here posts a conversation example, I have as much trouble putting those words into my mouth as, oh, the Fonz had saying “I’m sorry.”
That’s the trouble with high IQ. It’s damn hard work to dumb down, most of the time even sex isn’t enough of a reward.
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Joey,
Because women’s bell curve has a lower variance than men’s, high IQ guys will outnumber the high IQ girls.
But it’s a relatively small effect — if you are willing to take off an IQ point for every 5 or 6 above average you are there will be plenty of girls. (In frequency, girls 109 = guys 111, girls 118 = guys 122, …, girls 145 = guys 155). You don’t have to look for girls who are really dumb relative to you, just a little bit dumber, in order to have a 1:1 ratio.
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“fred is definitely airing the idea that no particular class or iq group has a monopoly on truth.”
Is he? I read it that it’s difficult to any one person to guage the incentives and abilities of another, and that the human mind tends to project out based on what it already knows.
I read him pointing out that politics is inherently a matter of special interests. Competing interests. No matter in what language those interests are put forward – commie or free market.
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If by average, you mean well above average, yes. If you mean average, you’re spending too much money on crack.
As for studying and practicing medicine, my feeling is that you need a great memory, not a great intellect.
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I’m always surprised whenever life, career, and college choices come up that the option to be an entrepreneur is usually overlooked.
And when does it even cross peoples minds to be an entrepreneur living in a place where you can live in a comfortable furnished house in a good neighborhood for $1500/year rent? And have easy access to hot girls who like older men?
College is for wage slaves. College? For wage slaves.
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And when does it even cross peoples minds to be an entrepreneur living in a place where you can live in a comfortable furnished house in a good neighborhood for $1500/year rent? And have easy access to hot girls who like older men?
xsplat — most people don’t have the combination of (a) adventurousness and (b) lack of attachment required to just pack everything up and move to a completely foreign country. that’s why.
don’t take this the wrong way — your contributions regarding the nature and handling of women are usually quite trenchant — but you write like a man who has never had a close male friend in his life, and couldn’t maintain a viable social network, other than a harem, if his life depended on it.
this doesn’t mean, of course, that the truth in your words regarding harem maintenance is in any way diminished.
but i don’t think that you ever dial down the pointless brusqueness and gratuitously bellicose attitude enough to actually realize that other people sometimes stay where they are, marking time, because they actually give a shit about other people, who in turn reciprocally give a shit back.
this is why your recent loss hurts as badly as it does — when you start giving a shit for the very first time, it hurts more when it’s taken away.
the older you are, the more traumatic it is to have your wisdom teeth removed.
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@xsplat: No high school is for wage slaves, college is for salary slaves. It’s a better class of servitude or at least that’s the PR.
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Johnny Five, I’ve queried expats about friendships and bonds, and most say they find it easier to make and maintain more and deeper friendships outside their home countries.
So ya, people are fraidy cats to leave home. But don’t put it down to loving their close friends too much to make new ones.
Social life for men with other men tends to improve for expats.
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Which would you prefer:
a) High status high paying job as an employee, which leaves you vulnerable to layoff and with less free time than you’d enjoy, and the time spent at the job is not much enjoyed, or
b) Self employment and the ability to match your income to your expenses as your security, the ability to adjust your free time as you see fit, and a feeling of working on what interests you to your own ends?
I spend a great many years living hand to mouth, rather than work for anyone else. I think a lot of people would improve their lifestyles and match their temperment to their times better if they spent more time in entrepreneurial activities, and learned to lower expenses rather than only raise salaries.
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ok, i could see how fellow expats’ formerly superficial commonalities could suddenly become a stronger glue.
after all, “commonality” is a relative term.
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And you were saying something about being a socially inept insensitive and soul-less jerk? Hmm. Maybe you’re attitude is what I should follow?
HAhahahahahah.
Bleh. Whatever, dude.
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And you were saying something about being a socially inept insensitive and soul-less jerk?
i said no such thing, nor do i think any of the last three are even pejorative.
there’s more than one way to be socially adept; i maintain what i said earlier re: friendships.
while i’ve no doubt that you could maintain cordiality with other men in a foreign country — or in a foxhole — who couldn’t?
the real test is whether you experience a notable increase in camaraderie when thrown into such a foxhole. if so, this indicates a low baseline rather than a high result.
i would be interested in finding out whether you would maintain this smug truculence if we were face to face; i’m betting not. i don’t mind it — it’s quite entertaining, in much the same way that it’s entertaining to watch certain animals camouflage themselves to resemble more fearsome prey — but it’s quite obviously a facade.
i’ve never understood the joys of attempting to “nuke from orbit”, but, then again, i’ve never had to recede all the way to orbit in order to avoid reprisal.
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“As for studying and practicing medicine, my feeling is that you need a great memory, not a great intellect.”
As a Doctor I can tell you that this is largely accurate if all you’re doing is practicing medicine.
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johhny five your contributions regarding the nature and handling of women are usually quite trenchant
birds of a feather my good man.
The two of you are similar in the way you talk about controlling women.
old guy
@xsplat: No high school is for wage slaves, college is for salary slaves. It’s a better class of servitude or at least that’s the PR.
EPIC COMMENT!
somebody get old guy a bottle, it’s on me.
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Jonny, are you talking about me, or the option of being an expat?
Cause I’m me wherever I go.
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And Jonny, that you don’t seem to notice your snide arrogant anti-social condescention towards expats is very mildly amusing. Considering the message of friendship and bonds you seem to be selling.
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And Jonny, that you don’t seem to notice your snide arrogant anti-social condescention towards expats is very mildly amusing.
i’m not a woman, so don’t interpret my comments as if i were. thanks.
i stated only this: it makes sense that expats would have a relatively high level of camaraderie, because they are suddenly more like each other than like the people surrounding them. this is not a knock against expats; it’s just an acknowledgment of objective reality.
what i did say, however, is that the extent to which this camaraderie is real, and not forced by the external environment, is inversely proportional to the extent to which it feels oh-so-much more intense than it did back home. your statements in this regard, as well as your immediate instinct to take my comments as personal slights rather than as objective remarks, reveal that some sort of target has been hit here — possibly more dead center than i’d originally thought.
and, yes, i doubt you’d have such a cute attitude if you were standing in front of me. that consideration is wholly academic, though, so let’s not let it become a sideshow.
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Johnny, you hippocritical little bitch; rather than accept the cowardice of your fear of change you rationalize it as something noble. Then while taking a swipe at my character accuse me of being you.
Funny guy. Just the kind of guy I’d like to sit down to a beer with.
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@Polymath, no doubt you are correct, but it’s still the problem of the small minority; how to find the one in a hundred.
The trouble didn’t plague me forever; lost virginity a bit late at 20, but the girl was perhaps the smartest I’ve ever been with. And when I find an available woman with a brain, I can get her.
Still can’t make small talk with bar tramps. Never will be a PUA.
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@crazyshoe
Yes, with a closer reading I’ll agree that Fred’s point is not that the truth is in the middle. His point seems to be to mischaracterize the belief’s of the Commentators as absolutes in the same way he believes they deal in absolutes with regard to the other 99%.
How much nuance does Fred think can be conveyed in an 8 minute appearance or 250 words? Especially considering the antagonistic nature of political media.
Also, while not explicitly saying the truth is in the middle, he stakes out that position with some of his anedotes.
For example, instead of only saying the pickle factory switched to 1099’s to avoid paying benefits, why not include that the factory was trying to avoid bankruptcy like GM due to it’s unsustainable compensation model?
When talking about waitresses needing retirement benefits, why not mention that the oldest quintile of the population is also the richest and recieves the most government handouts? There is no asset test for recieving Medicare and Social Security. Warren Buffet is on the dole right now. Fred might know some old poor people, but on average (and median), that’s not the case.
To me, Fred’s anecdotes lack the real world view that he bemoans Commentators lack and his analysis of the Commentators is more of a reflection of Fred’s belief’s about the Commentators than insight into their beliefs.
Fred’s thoughts were a good choice for discussion, and Roissy’s Libertarian addendum was very funny, but Fred’s wrong about Commentator’s Disease
and I still think he’s looking for an open window so he can make some good policy.
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@xsplat:
Was not disagreeing, quite the contrary. The richest salary man is still just a big time serf. Been self employed most of my life, worked for others less than one fifth of my working life, hated it.
Also a wage slave has the advantage of being able to forget about work as soon as he’s out the door. A salary man by definition must do homework included in the salary. Better to be a high earning wage slave than a low earning salary man by far.
Self employed you work all the time but it’s your thing. Your life, integral. It’s the way to go, I agree.
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Yes, for a smart and interesting man, smart and interesting women are easy. Kind of like for a tattooed guy tattooed girls are easy.
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Johnny, you hippocritical little bitch; rather than accept the cowardice of your fear of change you rationalize it as something noble
go ahead, point out a single instance of “my fear of change”.
i.e., MY supposed fear of change. not my pointing out the obvious fact that many people don’t like change.
i’ll wait.
i’ve followed your method of argumentation on this site with interest: you’re basically “schrodinger’s interlocutor”.
your consistent pattern is to “argue” with an admittedly clever mosaic of strawmen and ignoratio elenchi, constantly shifting or distorting the focus of the argument rather than conceding the slightest bit of legitimacy to the other person’s position.
this is a case in point: here there is zero evidence for my supposed fear of change. nil. nada.
with each of your posts it’s increasingly clear that your sole expertise lies in “argument” and dialogue with women, who utilize the same techniques and are therefore more vulnerable to them. you are completely incapable of arguing like a MAN and sticking to the actual point at hand.
in fact, i’m increasingly convinced that your turn to entrepreneurship was just as much a function of your complete refusal and/or ability to interact meaningfully with MEN, and within hierarchies of MEN, using male criteria such as objective arguments with a well-defined focal point, as it was a function of “following your dreams” and all that other kumbaya bullshit.
the fact that you have never once acknowledged a single weakness, misperception, or error of yours elevates from “guess” to “virtual certainty” the notion that you are exaggerating your strengths, abilities, and conquests.
hint: constant DHV’ing, and pretending you’re always in the right, works with bitches. yes it does.
but it doesn’t work with MEN.
now back up your statement about X, with actual evidence of X.
thanks.
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Wow, Johnny Five, I don’t know about the target of your rant, but you just described perfectly my best friend.
Just thinking the other day about how his being self-employed at the same low-expectation trade for 30 years was a great way to avoid having to rise to anyone else’s expectations.
And the shifting conversational focus… aarrgh!
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Johnny, you started this conversation, in response to the idea of being an expat. You opened with personal remarks about that, and haven’t let up since.
Are you talking about the idea of being an expat, or are you just using any opportunity to talk about my character?
I find your original premise stupid, and explained why it doesn’t hold up to empirical testing.
But if it’s my character you really want to discuss, I have a suggestion on how we can further that topic. Something to do with fuck and off.
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Joey, is it possible to be self employed at a trade? That’s just hourly labor under a number of bosses.
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so, to no one’s surprise, you still refuse to acknowledge the actual points at hand, even as the last shells of your arsenal of misdirection, misrepresentation, and namecalling (what sort of little bitch would criticize hippos, anyway?) fall harmlessly to the ground.
so, ok, the combination of fuck and off works with me, although i prefer each separately.
it’s been a pleasure.
really.
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never thought id agree w xplat on anything but he is right on about being an entreprenuer.
i think he s full of shit re anything else he says.
johnny, maybe u r right, maybe he dont get along well w other men in general. so the fuck what?
people mostly r what they r. my criticism of the hoopla over game. people dont change, much. game works but i doubt it can be taught.
testimonials are only testimony of HOPE.
lets replace game for a moment with playing the piano. a piano instructor is helpful of course — for those who play piano! or for the otherwise musically talented wanting to pick up a new instrument.
but nobody over the age of 25 suddenly becomes a musician if they werent already one.
the word Game may be relatively new but pick up isnt. a guy with alpha potential will evince himself as such early, just like a talented musician.
the idea there are guys with good game potential who havent naturally gravitated toward the art of pick up their whole lives is as unlikely as someone with great musical potential who didnt naturally gravitate toward making music. (the dude who was struck by lightning in musicology and had his brain physically altered being the only exception)
teaching game to a 30 year old who finds pick up techniques revelatory is like teaching piano to the tone deaf. their sudden zeal to learn wont help much.
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What point, Johnny? All you’ve talked about is my character.
Why you would presume that I’d be in the least bit interested in feedback from you on my communication style is beyond me.
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the word inclination exists for a reason.
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The idea of controlling a woman is pretty lame. But if you touch them hard enough right on their sweet spots they cannot help but drag you to the edge… to the place of definitions.
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the idea there are guys with good game potential who havent naturally gravitated toward the art of pick up their whole lives is as unlikely as someone with great musical potential who didnt naturally gravitate toward making music
lemme guess — i bet you also think you can’t turn a housewife into a ho.
also, you’re forgetting at least one significant confounding variable, viz., the anti-game propaganda that permeates the atmosphere in which the western bourgeoisie is raised.
if men were constantly admonished about the purported evils of music, starting from well before the age of reason, don’t you think you’d see more late musical bloomers?
same with game.
while nature obviously matters to some extent, nurture is not negligible, even at surprisingly advanced ages.
exhibit a: our very own poster “gorbachev”.
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xsplat, look man, i’m saying goodnight; your bait doesn’t tempt the likes of me.
you are obviously self-aware enough to have relocated, physically, socially, and professionally, to an environment that suits your own proclivities — an environment in which your sui generis method of “argument” is optimal, or at least close.
i, on the other hand, spend at least part of my time in an environment in which i must prove myself, day in and day out, to young men.
disaffected young men.
restless young men.
young men who, if left to sag like a heavy load, will explode.
so i have little patience for soi-disant “men” who argue like women — a style of argument that begs to be bested by disinterested mastery.
in your environment, you win.
in my environment, i win.
we’re both winners!
let’s leave it there.
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Anunhappiness experiment takes an extreme view of the nature/nurture side of the equation. Taking the opposite extreme isn’t the counter-balance. We all do work within our limits, and even the ability to re-program our own software is limited. His mental map is both flawed, and proves his point at the same time. He’s so fucked up that he really can’t change.
Gorbachev does indeed have some innate talents and skills working for him. He’s learning baseball in his thirties, instead of growing up with a mit and ball in his hand.
We’ll never know how much unanpinessexperiment could change or not. Could is just hypothetical. His software is broken beyond self-repair.
For others who have drive and sex drive and some talents and interests and inspiration, change continues and is expected.
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“lemme guess — i bet you also think you can’t turn a housewife into a ho”
u write well but ur intuition sucks.
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I’m going to call you Jonny Mirror from now on. What a projectionist.
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@Johnny Five
while nature obviously matters to some extent, nurture is not negligible, even at surprisingly advanced ages.
exhibit a: our very own poster “gorbachev”.
Dude, you think everyone else didn’t start out the same way?
I can vouch for two things:
You can turn a housewife into a ho. I’ve seen it. Roissy has probably done it. (Housewives I fucked were pretty much already there).
And you can learn game. You might not be Mystery. But you can get laid, sir, and not have to get married to do it.
But, … Especially for AHappinessExperiment, you disaffected wretched self-hating misanthropist:
You, like, you know, um, gotta try, eh? Maybe talk to a real girl sometime.
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“Anunhappiness experiment takes an extreme view of the nature/nurture side of the equation. Taking the opposite extreme isn’t the counter-balance”
yes, it is. somebody needs to play devils advocate in this echo chamber. or as nietzsche and prob dark lord would have it: Gods advocate.
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No, unfortunately unhappy, you are not needed at all.
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now you’re at this level?
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I seriously do see the value of the service you think it is that you provide, unhappy.
People come here to learn how to improve. You don’t want to. So don’t. I don’t care.
Even if you got everyone to agree with your point, so what?
So don’t change. So some people can’t. You think that’s some sort of helpful counterpoint?
I don’t care. It’s not helpful. Go be unchangeable somewhere else.
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Seriously do not see.
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“you’re forgetting at least one significant confounding variable, viz., the anti-game propaganda that permeates the atmosphere in which the western bourgeoisie is raised.”
there is a lot of anti-drug propaganda too. how is that working out?
ive argued before that the anti-game propaganda is the straw man of the game industry. (i dont consider this site as part of the industry as it doesnt bring in much revenue)
that girls dig bad boys is not some top secret government file.
anyway, people learn reality in the school yard not at home listening to their parents.
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“Even if you
got everyone to agree with your point, so what?”
my beef against game is not with roissy or those on this site but with the dudes giving the seminars. if u like conmen thats fine. i realize there s one born every minute and we shouldnt give a sucker an even break and all that…
but if we take this amoral attitude to its logical conclusions, then what? then hit_ler isnt such a bad guy. he was just a player looking out for number one. he found out what worked for him and we shouldnt criticize it lest we be castigated as a
white knight.
where do we draw the line on moral behavior? where?
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On leaving the US (or some other established
Western country) to go live in Eastern Europe
or what used to be called “the third world”:
Maybe this is great for finding women, regardless
of if you are after ONSs, STRs or LTRs.
Not doing this does not show “a lack of courage”
or “adventurousness” or anything else, at
least not in the typical case. I have moved
several times, but only within the “established
Western country” sphere.
The key is a source of income. To pull a move to
Eastern Europe or the third world, you need to
either be independently well off, OR have a source
of income that is not based on earning money locally.
For one thing, the receiving country will in many
cases not let you (except within the EU if you are
an EU citizen), for another, if you are used to a Western
standard of living you probably would not WANT to
live on a local salary. (Although some people
have actually done this). If you have some kind
of consulting/writing/whatever job, you might pull
this off, otherwise probably not. And the vast
majority of people, including the posters on this
list, fall in the “probably not” category.
Oh, IF you can pull this off, the main reason
local women are so great is to be found in the
income differential – if you have a Western-style
income (anyting above say USD 50K a year, or even
less) you are, in terms of relative salary levels,
the equivalent on sombody making
maybe USD 250 000 a year in the US/Canada
or the Western part of the EU.
Thor
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That’s not what I’ve seen nor has it been my experience. I’ve been successful with young college educatated SE Asian women while being too broke to afford regular hair cuts.
Splain that.
And by successful I mean had the pretties in love with me and coming over whenever allowed, or living with me and sexing me like mad.
Splain it.
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And yes, securing a source of income is the challenge.
What a lot of guys do is to slowly build up some internet based income in their non employed for employer time. Then go full time with that. Then move to a cheaper country to live.
A lot of guys find other solutions.
Nobody said it’s easy. Is getting pussy easy? Money and pussy are not easy for most people.
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“my beef against game is not with roissy or those on this site but with the dudes giving the seminars. if u like conmen thats fine. i realize there s one born every minute and we shouldnt give a sucker an even break and all that…
but if we take this amoral attitude to its logical conclusions, then what?”
The someone like Obama might become president…
Oh, wait…
Yup, I’m pretty sure worrying about someone making a buck in the self-improvement racket is just about priority #1,005,345 on the “How to fix the world” list at this point.
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I used to do my own shoe repair.
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I used to actually cut my own hair. I can’t tell you the number of time I was late paying my rent – which was only $100 or $150.
Income differential my bald head. Most locals had more dosh than I. People have wacked notions of how poor SE Asia is. Take a look at any picture of any location. Notice all the automobiles? Notice how they are all new? Notice the fresh clean clothes on everyone? Care to know what percentage of the girls go to college? About the same as in the West, I think.
Yes, people make less $, but the standard of living here costs less$. It works out to be not a big differential of quality of living. And there are wealthy and middle class girls in SE Asia also. I’ve dated plenty of em.
Dated em while being too broke to buy new pants.
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We draw it on being boring.
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BEEF! BEEF! BEEF!
i’m such a fan when i see it here. i’m going to take a position this morning and see if i can get a little pop on it against pork bellies futures.
holllllaaaaaaaaaaa
(that’s “holler”, not “hola”, for the clarity of all you illegal immigrant sympathizers that might confuse me with some other guy)
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“We draw it on being boring.”
then we can draw the line at your oeuvre.
yeah. ok. a cheap shot at a cheap piece of shit. it’s like wrestling with worms. the indignity is that one entered the competition to start with.
Cannon, just keep shorting sugar. Best futures trade out there. the Fed is going to keep this disinflation going and prices ain’t going up. cattle might go up but i wouldn’t put money on it.
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@xplat
OK, so you say that getting SE Asian women
is easy, you don’t need money.
I am guessing here, but the mere fact you
are an American (or citizen of some other
Western country) confers a lot of cachet,
on several levels. You are the “different” guy,
triggering exogamous instincts. This works
particularly strongly in small villages where
inbreeding has started to do its ugly work,
but can work anywhere.
Another thing, a Westerner in SE Asia
who is poor is probably seen as
temporarily and/or voluntarily poor, with many
options, including going back to where he
came from. I believe this was what happened
to you?
And yes, I am working on building up internet-based
income, it is already working, having a day job
is the limiting factor, and I am not ready to give
up my day job – just yet, but I am waiting for a
meltdown from the Obasmotron.
Thor
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That was a very skilled dismantling of Xsplat. It’s like watching a butcher to learn how to handle a knife.
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Thor, certainly there are reasons why westerners are considered more attractive.
They just aren’t the most obvious reasons. For some girls it’s more about our cock size than our wallet size. And never discount the out-of town advantage – it works huge when you are really, really from out of town. Any Frenchman in the US or US guy in South America would tell you that. Hell, any New Yorker in Denver would explain his advantage. But you are right that more than anything, the advantage of westerners is about status.
Status status status status status. Not looks, not clothes, not money, not haircut, not height, and not money. Nor is it about money.
And by the way, if you know where to look, you can find bumfuck villages that are have an extra-ordinarily delightful mongrel mix of European, Chinese, Japanese conquering blood generously mixed together with the Indonesian/Malay stock. It isn’t just the Filipinas who have that mongrel beauty going on.
Yeah, conquistadores! Thank you!
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@Jonny5
little patience for soi-disant “men” who argue like women — a style of argument that begs to be bested by disinterested mastery.
Excellent. This is exactly the way I’ve had to learn to interact with my friend to prevent pointless bickering.
You one smart.
@xsplat
Yeah, that line was redundant and poorly written.
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disinterested mastery.
And it just occurs to me that this is core game. Unexpected that it could apply to a male friendship as well.
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@Timitz:
The problem with them was their parents were always rich or upper middle class, and they had never experienced the joy of having to bust your ass to eat one meal a day and trying to work their way up from the bottom. Untill you’ve spent a few months living at the poverty line, working a shitty job, and living in a bad niegborhood, you can’t understand the average American.
Funny, but that has generaly been my experience with Progressives or Socialists. I know quite a few Libertarians who have worked their way up just as you describe, or have at least lived in poor circumstances, myself included. As far as why you couldn’t go out and steal stuff, is because most libertarians don’t have a problem with a police force or a sound military to back up the state. In the absence of that, I suppose you could get private security firms as is done in South Africa because the police and socialist system are so ineffective that the private sector is all that can be counted on. Why do so many socialist states detereriorate into anarchy in practice? Is it because no one has an incentive to produce or honor contracts?
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The interesting thing about the hardware of the brain (IQ and so on) is that like any computer… garbage in, garbage out. High IQ guarantees nothing.
A friend of mine is a member of Mensa. At their meetings, there is a wide range of people from all economic and social classes of society. People who are “successful” and people who might not be considered “successful”. But they all have IQs of at least 130.
High IQ guarantees nothing. It’s merely hardware. The training of the mind is also important. But being willing and able to go and DO things is critically important.
I’d say the 80/20 rule is more indicative of success than IQ. You can be of average success, but if you get off your ass and DO, you’re ahead of a lot of people.
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One reason meatheads and other low IQ types have a favorable time scoring with women is that they are often too stupid to realize they aren’t that special. They actually believe they are somehow great, and project this through a powerful gina tingling aura of confidence.
Smart people have a hard time being irrationally self confident. Something about that irrational part.
As someone in the 99th percentile IQ wise, I was all too keenly aware that I was little more than an intellectually above average and physically below average flesh bag of soon to be rotting meat, an insignificant player on a vast world stage where only the truly great, or perhaps miraculously lucky, might get to be remembered for a little while, if even noticed in the first place. You get my point. I was not happy and shiny. Sure, I was aware of my impressive talents, but I still felt like I needed to prove myself somehow before I got all uppity with the hos, and being cocky in one area doesn’t rationally translate to being cocky in other areas anyways. I debated college professors as if I was their intellectual superior (because I believed it, and still do), but that didn’t mean I thought my skills at flirting and gregarious banter should be just as cavalierly applied. Plus, I found the whole courting process irrational, overly time consuming, and needlessly complicated to begin with. Its hard to take something serious that one finds silly.
I can now say, thanks to learning game, that I am totally irrationally self confident (and incredibly good at it), as well as better understand the very un-silly evo-psych explanations for flirting and courting.
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The swindle here is to present the word ‘rational’ to a non-economist audience when the word is used in a different fashion in economics. In econ, rational only refers to calculating costs and benefits to fit your goal. YOUR GOAL IS GIVEN, TAKEN FOR GRANTED. So your goal could be banging prostitutes all day and thats what you will do.
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I am a little confused here. I am not an economist,
but what ELSE would “rational” mean than addressing
how to achieve your goals?
Thor
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@Jabberwocky
“One reason meatheads and other low IQ types have a favorable time scoring with women is that they are often too stupid to realize they aren’t that special. They actually believe they are somehow great, and project this through a powerful gina tingling aura of confidence.
Smart people have a hard time being irrationally self confident. Something about that irrational part.”
I think really high IQ people rarely make it to the top
level in politics, for the same reason.
You need to be a little dim and/or be a little crazy to
believe that you are REALLY THAT GREAT. And believiing
that, you will act as if it were true, and enough
voting meatheads might believe you…..
Thor
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Some more history about movies and actors:
Preceding film by thousands of years, plays and dances had elements common to film: scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, and scores. Much terminology later used in film theory and criticism applied, such as mise en
scene (roughly, the entire visual picture at any one time). Moving visual and aural images were not recorded for replaying as in film.
Anthemius of Tralles used an early type of camera obscura in the 6th century[1] The camera obscura was further described by Alhazen in his Book of Optics (1021),[2][3][4] and later near the year 1600, it was perfected by Giambattista della Porta. Light is inverted through a small hole or lens from outside, and projected onto a surface or screen, creating a moving image, but it is not preserved in a recording.
In the 1860s, mechanisms for producing two-dimensional drawings in motion were demonstrated with devices such as the zoetrope, mutoscope and praxinoscope. These machines were outgrowths of simple optical devices (such as magic lanterns) and would display sequences of still pictures at sufficient speed for the images on the pictures to appear to be moving, a phenomenon called persistence of vision. Naturally the images needed to be carefully designed to achieve the desired effect, and the underlying principle became the basis for the development of film animation.
With the development of celluloid film for still photography, it became possible to directly capture objects in motion in real time. An 1878 experiment by Eadweard Muybridge in the United States using 24 cameras produced a series of stereoscopic images of a galloping horse, arguably the first “motion picture,” though it was not called by this name. This technology required a person to look into a viewing machine to see the pictures which were separate paper prints attached to a drum turned by a handcrank. The pictures were shown at a variable speed of about 5 to 10 pictures per second,
depending on how rapidly the crank was turned. Commercial versions of these machines were coin operated.
Historian man
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Wow, I need to go check out this Zoo Bar, sounds great….
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