Bloody Shovel 4

So the news from last week were how China changed the constitution and abolished term limits in the only thing that had term limits; the presidency. This was followed by the USG propaganda apparatus (AKA the press) going into fits of panic. “We got China wrong”, they say. It took China changing its constitution without American permission for Americans to notice that they got China wrong.

What did they get wrong? China was dirt-poor in 1980. Really, really poor. It would have likely remained ...

So, you might remember a series of posts I did about Jordan Peterson, now famous psychology professor from Canada, about his philosophy of life. I wrote about him here and here and here.

You might also remember that Jordan Peterson was invited to the podcast of Sam Harris, of which I wrote about here and elaborated here. That podcast made me very, very conflicted. Because I think that Peterson is right, and Harris is wrong. But Peterson makes absolutely no sense in the podcasts, neither the f...

Let me explain what I mean when I call myself a Behaviorist. No, it's not about blank slatism, or being able to completely manipulate anyone at will. It's about not taking what people say at face value.

See this tweet:

https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/827054957329260544

No, no. Just, no. Please, somebody just close all the psychology faculties. Or close the whole universities while they're at it. But this is completely wrong. Nonsensical, really. "People believe that..." doesn't make sense. Loo...

So let me follow up on my last post on Sam Harris vs. Jordan Peterson, and what constitutes a solid epistemology. The podcast itself is quite painful to listen to, and Jordan Peterson doesn´t do much of an argument there. I think the guy doesn't do debates well. He's best when you let him speak for hours. Just give him a mike and let him ramble. He'll get somewhere. You'll notice he doesn't use notes when he speaks, he improvises all the time.

That's impressive, but there's a reason why most goo...

Last week Jordan Peterson went to Sam Harris' podcast. I had mixed feelings about it. I thought nothing good could come out of that. And as I had expected, Sam Harris trounced Jordan Peterson. Completely. The podcast got into a complete bog down on epistemology, where Jordan Peterson tried to define the word "truth" as "good", and Harris wasn't buying it, explaining 30 times how it's very useful to have a concept of truth which is separate from the concept of good. Peterson stood his ground and ...

I propose a short ritual for when reactionaries meet each other. You go to a church, or some nice old building. Emphasis on old, more than nice. You get there, and the master says the following string, which the apprentice is to repeat.

There is no God but Gnon. Kek is his avatar. And Jordan Peterson is a pretty good prophet.

Once that is done, the master shows a red pill to the apprentice, hands it to him. And the apprentice swallows it. No. He bites it. Munchs it. He chews it. It's hard. It's bi...

So I wrote this whole last post; and soon later I found that Jordan Peterson was saying pretty much the exact same thing but in more accessible language. So if you didn't quite get my last post, you can listen to him say it.

https://youtu.be/bjnvtRgpg6g?t=1h23m7s

 Start at 1h23m.

Some people, religious people usually, get angry when I make this pragmatic argument. Like I'm a toxic personality which is arguing for nihilism. Look, I'm no nihilist. But you don't need to be a nihilist to be depressed....

People call me cynical because I say ideology is crap. It's just stuff people say to look good to their peers. Signaling, that is. And I support this claim by pointing out that people just don't know shit. David Hume proved that. We don't even "know" the laws of nature with any certainty. Yes, we're used to some things happening after certain things. There's chains of events that strongly hint at causality. But you can never know for sure.

Of course that kind of fuzzy knowledge is good enough for...

Master Xun (荀子 Xunzi):

Which translates as:

Translation from Eric Hutton's Xunzi. Pretty good translation, I must say.

And yes, Classical Chinese writing really is that short.

Razib Khan recently wrote a good post about how retarded the whole tirade on "social constructs" can be. Gender is a social construct! Sports should be integrated! Come on. As a scientist it's natural he gets pissed at the whole thing.

I commented there a while ago about how, you know, leftists are actually right. Race is a social construct. Gender is a social construct. They got that exactly right. It's a rather profound point, and I've been thinking on exposing my argument a bit better. It's a...

This has been going around. Guess I should say something. I really don't know how to comment on that pile of nonsense. I might as well let the sages do it for me.

Confucius and his disciples were gathered at the master's house. One of his disciples, Zilu, asks the master.

Zilu: The Duke of Wei has asked for your opinion in how to rule his realm. He'll call you for an audience any time. What will be the first thing you tell him?

Confucius: Oh, that he must fix the names.

Zilu: What? That? Oh come o...

Foseti links to Laura Wood's blog, aptly named "The Thinking Housewife". She's a longtime commenter at Lawrence Auster's, and gives a fresh perspective as a Traditionalist woman, who wants neither to work outside the home, nor vote, nor dominate her husband. Her blog is also much fun because it resembles so much a stereotypical Victorian house, with all those housewives debating moral topics while drinking tea, and the odd wimpish man participating.

Yet on the whole the tone of discourse is just....

It used to baffle me that universities have such a thing as an Ethics department. I had read enough philosophy during high school to know that ethics is just one aspect of philosophy, and the hardest one to get any consensus. I also was under the Humean spell, namely that you can't drive an 'ought' from an 'is'. The fact is the only societal ethics that work are those enforced under the power of religious coercion; you make up some shit and kill people who don't agree with it.

So I wondered: what...