Rant

Staked In

Chill Rant

This article gets something really right.

In fact, the advent of digital media marks the third information crisis humans have lived through: the first came after the invention of writing; the second followed the printing press.

This is correct. The Ian Welshian doofclown assertion that the internet changed nothing, meant nothing, transmogrified no human relation, is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard in my entire life. And I grew up in rural North Florida, so I’ve heard some absolutely fantastically stupid things.

As the article points out, we are living through the first stages of what will be the largest information apocalypse (in my view) probably since the Sumerians first started pressing wedges into wet clay thousands of years ago.

And if you can miss that as Welsh has, I can’t trust your assessment of anything else.

(I’d argue that the first info crisis truly came with the invention of language itself, but that was probably more gradual.)

In Out

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Rant

To those who say AI isn’t a substantive advance (or even more absurdly, a “plagiarism machine”) you’re wrong. No, it’s not a tech Jesus and it’s not the end of the humans on earth as the AI cultists imagine, but it’s at least the equivalent of gene sequencing + editing or other tech like that.

Most of you have a GIGO problem with AI — garbage in, garbage out. And here’s the thing: you’re the garbage in that equation.

IT Shift

Chill Annoying, Rant

Does anyone else feel like the culture of IT has quietly shifted into something… completely different?

Definitely. It’s become professionalized and corporatized.

The truly exceptionally-skilled people who were not well-socialized have been pushed out, mostly. Thus, the average level of talent has decreased by a whole lot. Contributing to this is that those like me who grew up with real computers and excellent troubleshooting skills are starting to age out.

This means that the average skill level is a lot lower, and most managers are not as competent. Relatedly, there is vastly more attention paid to the appearance of things (not software or design, I mean socially). The put-up-with-no-bullshit greybeards and (more rarely) doyennes have nearly all departed — what’s left are gladhanders, ass-kissers, corporate social butterflies and sycophants of all stripes.

It was a lot better field 15-20 years ago is what I am saying. There is no nearly no one left at my level any longer. Which means there is no competition but it’s also very lonely. Those with actual impressive skills aren’t present anymore, and the juniors coming up can’t troubleshoot their way out of a wet paper bag.

It’s been sad to witness.

Facecrime

Chill Annoying, Rant

It’s not racist to have more trouble telling people apart you’re not used to being around. It’s just normal and human.

When I first went to China, I had trouble distinguishing some of my first acquaintances from one another, especially at a distance. But then I got to know them and even from 300 meters, I was like, “Oh, hey, Ling Ling, we’re over here!”

Or, “That’s Xiao Mai on the way. I see her down the street.”

It took me about a month to get a lot better at distinguishing Chinese faces. And then I couldn’t believe after that I’d had any trouble. Noticing human differences and acknowledging them is not racism; that’s just life and reality. The left would do a lot better to accept that and deal with it like adults.

Do What They Do

Chill Rant

AI is useful in many instances and for many use cases. Just like everything else in known existence, most people are not that smart and thus are bad at using it.

Intelligence is multiplicative. That applies to AI just as much as it does anywhere else. Perhaps more so.

(In other words, smart people do smart things with AI. Dumbasses do dumbass things. Just as it always was and ever will be.)

Supposed Sex

Chill Annoying, Rant

Supposedly, the only reason men do anything nice for women is to attempt to get sex. And since sex is bad for some reason, this commutatively means men are bad.

But what’s never examined is what women expect to get out of the nice things they do for others, and why these motivations are automatically good and noble? I’d argue that since women are just as human as men, we shouldn’t de facto assume women are immaculate angels. And in fact they are not.

Look, I love women. Literally my closest friends are all women. Which is why I know they are just people with all the complexity — and darkness and light — immanent to all humans.

Women aren’t angels. Men aren’t demons. We’re all just human.

War and Chaos

Chill Annoying, Rant

If people have told you this doesn’t matter: they’re wrong. It does. There’s been a categorical change in humanity’s relation to the world of the actual. The consequences are hitting hard now. This also happened after the advent of the printing press. And it took hundreds of years to work out, along with much chaos, destruction and war.

Truly Unnatural

Chill Rant

It really is strange how it’s treated by so much of the left as hateful and anomalous that, broadly speaking, people wish to live near other people like them who speak the same language and hold the same values as they do.

Because, brothers and sisters, it’s the most natural thing in the universe to want that. I’d even say that it is part of human nature. Of course, leftists insist human nature does not exist. They are wrong, of course. If it did not exist then neither would we.

On the other hand, inviting millions of people into your country who want to destroy it and would kill you if they could and will rape any women they have the chance to is what is unnatural. It’s kind of sad that has to be pointed out these days. But it does.

No Chance of Understanding

Chill Annoying, Rant

Why did I get rejected?

As is the case with nearly every straight woman alive, this person has absolutely no fucking clue what dating is like for men, how we lead a life constant rejection (and even worse, pre-rejection), and how that impacts everything we do when we talk with women we’re interested in romantically.

Of course you’re not going to reject me! I’ve basically been interviewing you, and who doesn’t love being asked insightful things about their life and opinions?!

Oh fuck, this right here is about the very top thing men hate about dating! MEN DO NOT WANT TO BE INTERVIEWED/INTERROGATED AS PART OF A DATE.

Again, for all the women: MEN DO FUCKING NOT WANT TO BE INTERROGATED AS PART OF A DATE.

How can so many women just not understand this? This writer sounds absolutely insufferable, by the way. I thank all the gods I’ve never gone on a date with her. If my partner is kidnapped by aliens and I decide to date again, I’m adding her name to the list of “Big Always Nope.”

It wasn’t that he couldn’t answer my questions [about sex], it’s that the act of asking caused him to shut down.

I can’t imagine why! It’s because 99.999999999% of the time any time a man talks about sex frankly with a woman, he’s demonized, castigated and thrown to the wolves. It’s never, ever, ever, ever a good idea unless it’s someone you already know really well. There’s absolutely no upside in it for a man at any time. Not ever. Don’t do it. Don’t land in that trap.

(I do talk about sex with my platonic female friends, and sometimes quite extensively, but we’ve known each other for a long time.)

Getting dating advice from a straight woman for a man is totally worthless. Might as well get dating advice from a cat, or a turnip. It’ll help just as much. Maybe more as since they cannot talk, at least it will not be bad advice.

Not Buying It

Chill Rant

What was that BS adults were trying to peddle to us when we were kids about how terrible and hard it was being grown up?

Man, I fucking love being an adult. It’s infinitely superior to being a kid. I can do what I want when I want. People aren’t constantly beating on me. If I decide to eat ice cream at midnight, I can. Pizza for breakfast? Bring it. Go on a road trip? Heck yes.

Being an adult is great. No way I’d go back to the comparative hell of being a kid.

Actual Harm

Chill Rant

This is so clownishly wrong and destructive. Aptitude and intelligence/ability just do not work like that.

I’m gonna debunk the hell out of this asinine clownery.

I’ll stress it again below, but it’s annoying how the post sets up a false dichotomy between “natural ability” or “hours of practice.” In reality, elite performance in any realm emerges from ability combined with training, opportunity and luck, with measurable genetic constraints on both baseline ability and how much someone improves and can improve from the same practice. Denying that will give a ton of people false hope and makes the examples seem indicative when they just mean that someone already with genetic gifts still needs to practice a whole lot to get an edge.

But let’s lay it out (And I have to say, why the leftist tards think it necessary to insist all people are identical, I haven’t a clue):

1) False dichotomy of ability vs. practice.
“Not born knowing calculus” is a straw man argument. No one claims people inherit knowledge. They inherit capacities that affect how quickly they learn and how far they can get. Heritable things like working memory, processing speed, spatial ability, etc., matter a ton and they are about 40-60% genetic.

2) Selection and survivorship bias in the sports anecdotes.
Stephen Curry and other people like that are already at the elite level. Everyone in that pool trains an absurd amount. Everyone. However, here in the real world where we’re all forced to live, practice explains surprisingly little of who ends up on top of the heap. Meta-analyses find deliberate practice explains a modest slice of performance variance overall. And, importantly, even less among elites.

3) Reverse causality of “Smart kids do more homework” type nonsense.
Of-fucking-course they do! They are better at it. That’s why they do more. People gravitate to what they’re good at. People who find learning easier get higher returns from studying, so they invest in it more. This isn’t mysterious or unknown. It’s just classic human-capital logic where their genes help them pick and evoke study-rich environments (standard gene–environment correlation).

4) Misunderstanding genetics in athletics.
There are extremely robust genetic influences on traits that underpin sport (height, muscle fiber composition, aerobic capacity, etc.) and on trainability itself. None of this is even controversial. In the HERITAGE study, how much people improved VO2max from the same training program was around 47% heritable. The sad (for leftists) truth is that some bodies adapt far more than others. Things are just easier for them.

5) Folk genetics dipshittiness.
Polygenic traits don’t match parents one-for-one. That’s just a ridiculous oversimplification of how the genetics actually work. Recombination, sex differences, nonlinearities, as well as training mean offspring can exceed both parents on specific phenotypes. Twin and family work shows vertical-leap and explosive strength have meaningful heritability, but genetic expression isn’t a simple average of mom and dad’s maximum capabilities.

6) Mindset matters, but it’s not even close to the whole shebang.
Believing you can improve helps, but large studies and meta-analyses find small average effects on grades with benefits primarily accruing to small, specific subgroups. Also, raising achievement via study hours isn’t the same as changing underlying general ability. The post blurs that distinction (intentionally, I guess).

7) The post ignores basically all the long-run evidence on high ability.
Decades-long tracking of highly-capable youth shows early cognitive differences are real and predictive. That is, with the caveat that when the environment provides appropriate acceleration and enrichment. Denying meaningful variance at the top ends up shortchanging both advanced and struggling learners. So, as is typical, leftist clownery harms just about everyone. I mean, it’s designed to pretend we’re all exactly the same so of course it does.

The post argues that anyone in capable of anything. The actual reality is that talent sets ceilings and slopes, while practice gets you to them in each particular person’s case. Some people have vastly higher ceilings and easier slopes. Denying either half is just extremely-harmful motivational rhetoric dressed up as (poor) explanation. The bottom line and sad truth is that I could shoot 10x as many baskets as Curry and never be 1/10 as good as he is at the three, and I could have spent 10x as long studying physics and never achieved anything like Feynman et al. did. Because in both cases, I just simply do not have the talent.

I know leftists deeply, deeply hate that and wish it weren’t true. But alas we’re all forced to live in the real world as it is, not as we wish it were.

Fraud and Lies

Chill Annoying, Rant

A group of scientists set out to study quick learners. Then they discovered they don’t exist.

Ah, bullshit.

This is another variation of the “everyone is exactly the same” go-to leftist argument. It’s fraudulent. It’s a convenient lie. My sister had zero head start on me in music (in fact, I started learning before she did). With less practice and time invested, she was better at everything to do with music than I was in three months; I’d been playing for two years at that point.

In my direct experience, I can generally learn a concept or idea in a few minutes that takes others days, weeks, years or never to learn. Even if I’ve had no exposure to it and know nothing about it in advance.

They may have already had exposure to fractions by making pancakes at home using measuring cups.

LOL. What a bunch of dipshittiness.

This is how the researchers massaged their data and the study design itself to get the result they wanted: One problem is that they define and model “learning rate” in a very specific, narrow way and apply it to a very specific kind of data, which they knew would show what they wanted it to demonstrate. And calling 2.6 vs 1.7 pp per attempt “the same” is absolute nonsense. On a log-odds scale the difference is about 2x, which is certainly non-trivial even if it’s small relative to intercept gaps.

That barely gets into all the problems with how that study was conducted. It reveals nearly nothing except exactly what they wanted us to believe (which is, of course, wrong).

Lord, what a load of fucking crap.

Soul Removal

Chill Annoying, Rant

It’s creepy, all the women with “Instagram face.” They’ve all gotten the same work done on their faces by the same plastic surgeons using the same techniques. And as a result, they all look like Stepford Wives clones. I’m sure men will get the blame for this as women aren’t usually forced to take accountability but trust me, ladies, men do not want this, do not like it, and wish you would not inflict it on yourselves.

The reason I was thinking about this is I saw a photo of Phoebe Cates from the 1980s. This photo, specifically.

She’s very beautiful but even better what makes her face distinctive hasn’t been sanded off, polished, redacted for plasticine pseudo-perfection. In other words, she still looks ensouled. She looks like a real person. And that’s so much more appealing than the power-sanded version of Phoebe would be. Why is this not obvious?

The Liberal Problem

Chill Clowns, Rant

Painting your opponents as stupid, believing they are stupid and yet you still lose to them…what does that make you?

Seems like a bad way to do things. “My adversary is a dumbass but beats me every time.” Dude, this isn’t middle school. No one cares that you tried really hard. Winning is what matters. Doing the thing is the crux; all else is fluff and failure.

When someone outperforms me in an area where I typically excel, you know what I say? I say, “They must be really good to have done that.”

Because being beaten by idiots makes me worse than an idiot. Which the Dems and libs seem content to loudly announce over and over again.