>T*****PornO
The one dude I’m not okay referring to by his preferred name lmao
Anyway the way he argues is exclusively via combining paywalled articles written by discredited racists far outside the mainstream with legitimate papers that make abstract claims about statistics which don’t actually support what he says. He clearly has no understanding whatsoever of statistics beyond what he surmises from the buzzwords, but in a community where science is a status game rather than a method of inquiry people see that he’s “citing his sources” and are willing to hear him out.
Edit: [Exhibit A](https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/akk8nc/_/efnq0lu/?context=1), [Exhibit B](https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/akk8nc/_/efnr391/?context=1)
(In Exhibit B the crank science at least isn’t paywalled, but he makes up for this by citing a particularly low-quality article for the actual science this time. See for yourself whether “famine has little to no effect on cognitive development” is a claim justified by the article’s conclusions and methodology.)
Personally I prefer Exhibit A. If you actually look at his [second link](https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/metzen-2010.pdf), you'll see that it actually found that malnutrition decreased scores on *all* measured subsets of cognitive ability (see pages 98 and 99). But the differences in which subset decreased to which degree had a small (r = -0.15) negative correlation with the "g factor." But TPO constantly confuses "negatively correlates with g-loading" with "does not have any impact on g," so he interprets this as "There's not evidence that famine or malnutrition impact general intelligence."
Even assuming for the sake of argument that "g" really is "general intelligence," this is like finding a house where every part of it was damaged in a fire, pointing to a wall that was slightly less burned than the rest of it, and saying that clearly the fire had no impact on that wall.
> If you actually look at his second link, you'll see that it actually found that malnutrition decreased scores on all measured subsets of cognitive ability (see pages 98 and 99).
I'm a little lost, what exactly were the authors trying to test in that section? Their conclusion starts with:
> The goal inherent to all studies in this section was to test whether differences in IQ due to biological-environmental variables show no strong correlation with general intelligence.
So were they trying to suss out whether the drops were happening in *g*? Like were they asking "Well these studies showed drops in IQ tests, but would that drop also happen in *g* tests"?
Or were they testing how "*g*" a test was affected the drop? Like were they asking "Here's a bunch of intelligence metrics starved kids did poorly on, did they do even worse on the more *g*-related tests?"
Or am I completely off base lol. If you have the time, please explain like I'm a freshman who just finished probability 101 (ELIFWJFP101).
The common tactic in the HBD community is that when a result about IQ says something you don't like (e.g. Flynn effect, gains from education, loss from malnutrition, gains from adoption into the upper class, etc.), you change the goal posts to saying "well what we *really* care about is g, which didn't change". Then you don't actually attempt to measure whether the g factor was affected, but you just check the *loading* - that is, whether the loss from malnutrition was correlated, across different IQ tests, with the g-loading of that IQ test (this is the correlation of the IQ test with the g factor, so we're taking a correlation between correlations here).
This is stupid on multiple levels. First, since the g-factor fundamentally depends on the battery of IQ tests used to define it, you could always manipulate your battery to get your desired result. Second, negative correlation with g-loading does not mean that the g factor isn't affected; the most studied example is the Flynn effect, where even the most g-advocating papers I can find fall short of saying "the Flynn effect is not on g" and instead merely say "the Flynn effect is not *entirely* on g", something the HBD community consistently glosses over.
So in summary, for your ELIFWJFP101, the story is as follows. A bunch of IQ tests show IQ gains from better nutrition. Some IQ tests show more gains than others. You pick a battery of these IQ tests, and find their g-loadings (essentially the g-loading of a test is how well it correlates with the other tests). Then you see that the IQ tests that had a higher g-loading showed less gains from nutrition (but they still showed positive gains). You conclude the gains from nutrition are negatively correlated with g-loadings, so you declare the gains are "hollow" and don't count as *real* IQ (despite the fact that every single IQ test showed gains from nutrition, and despite the fact that your statistical methods didn't actually show the g-factor failed to rise, and despite the fact that the g-factor is battery-dependent and could easily have been chosen so that the opposite effect held).
Tagging /u/INH5 because you tagged me
Ahhhh. So if you put a heavy weight on e.g reaction time for your g-factor, and reaction scores drop 20% while the other metrics drop 30% because of malnutrition, you'll get a negative *g-loading* even though your *g-factor* was massively impacted. Hence /u/INH5 's "Examining the less burnt wall and concluding there wasn't a fire" analogy.
Thanks so much! One more question, what was the *researcher* aiming for here? Was he trying to pull the same sleight of hand, or was he doing something reasonable (trying to figure the correct weightings?) and the HBD folks misinterpreted it.
I didn't read the whole Master's thesis, but most likely Metzen was trying to pull the same sleight of hand. I think the motivation is that if your g-loadings negatively correlate with nutrition (or whatever), this is at least *some* evidence that nutrition does not affect g, or at the very least it is evidence that nutrition does not *only* affect g (i.e. it must also affect some non-g component of the IQ tests, at least if you use a simple model in which each IQ test is a linear combination of g plus independent factors).
This Master's thesis is advised by Nijenhuis, who is a researcher that has published other work that is IMO similarly misguided - for example, a meta-analysis saying the Flynn effect negatively correlates with the g-factor, trying hard to imply that the Flynn effect did not increase g (again, I find this wrong from step 1, because g is not defined until you specify your battery, and the g-loadings can be manipulated by modifying the battery).
You may ask: why do these guys keep focusing on the correlations with g-loadings instead of, you know, actually measuring the effect of nutrition on g? Well, I believe the answer is that the statistical techniques they use (e.g. method of correlated vectors (MCV)) don't allow them to compute the direct impact of nutrition on g, even if they have the impact of nutrition on each IQ test. Actually I think this is a little silly, because it is fairly model-dependent - if you use a slightly different model, you could just do a PCA analysis instead of the MCV (which I actually don't fully understand), and in PCA is it trivial to find the effect of malnutrition on g for your desired battery. But they decided they don't like this - I think because PCA doesn't take into account some tests being inherently noisier than the others - so they are stuck with a technique that doesn't let them directly measure g. Or at least, that's my current understanding.
Anyway, to the researchers' credit they usually do not explicitly conclude "therefore malnutrition does not affect g", but merely say it's not *only* on g or the result suggest that non-g factors are involved, etc. So they are still doing better than the HBD folk.
> Or were they testing how "g" a test was affected the drop? Like were they asking "Here's a bunch of intelligence metrics starved kids did poorly on, did they do even worse on the more g-related tests?"
The latter, I think. u/895158 would probably be able to explain it better.
> How does anyone take this person seriously?
Just look at his username. With that kind of casual contempt for minorities, you know he must be extremely rational.
TrannyPornO's MO is short, declarative, über-confident sentences with plausible statistics words and no further explanation.
If a study refutes any of his cherished far-right talking points in any way whatsoever, he will say that the study is invalid because it "doesn't correct for errors" or "failed to replicate" or "had poor experimental design" or "the author is a hack", and will not elaborate on any of the above when asked: you're just supposed to take it on faith. If you really press him, he'll just start sending unrelated papers that he clearly hasn't read and is judging based on the title or, if he feels like putting a little more effort in today, the abstract.
That or he'll just insist things without backing them up at all. I dropped out of the conversation when he kept insisting that [in the graph on page 8](https://psyarxiv.com/9qnwy/), Japan is only "slightly below the regression line," when anyone with functioning eyes can clearly see that the distance is not at all "slight."
Which naturally raises the question: how can a "mental gaming score" mostly made up of *esports statistics* rank Japan that low? I first thought that the study merely ignored incredibly obvious confounders, but I'm wondering more and more whether there's something just fundamentally broken in the statistical analysis, likely having to do with the weird non-linear controls for population size.
EDIT: Okay, I did a bit more research and it turns out that [until recently esports hadn't really taken off in Japan due to laws limiting the awarding of prize money](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/at-long-last-japan-finally-oks-video-gaming-as-a-profession). Which adds yet another reason why using esports statistics as a proxy for national intelligence is absurd. I'm still really wary of the statistical analysis in that paper, though.
The trouble with adjusting for awarding prize money is that it is itself caused by differences in cognitive ability.
[/s](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/amna7n/we_know_nigerians_have_low_national_iq_because/efn7r4x/)
Seriously though, has anyone tried to challenge TP0 to make a causal graph of his central claims? It would at least cut down on the correlation handwaving.
If you outright insult 19th century sexists who believe women should be kept out of college, he’ll also get really [defensive and flustered](https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/amahfo/_/eflldgr/?context=1) since he so badly wishes he were one of those 19th century sexists.
hahhahahaha
“you should have asked about it here instead of instigating a brigade,” I say pinging you from my ethnosubreddit as I clutch my Bayesian proof of racism published by a [journal devoted to white supremacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Social,_Political,_and_Economic_Studies). “Maybe if you understood regression to the mean and financed hucksters peddling pseudoscience you’d understand why this fraction shows black people without computers will never be LoL top-10.”
I love...love love love...the way that the Miller article opens by purporting to give a *general* mathematical proof and just kvetches for a bit about political correctness.
For the undecided folks at home: this is what is known as a "red flag", almost designed to tell you you don't need to pay it any attention.
What a crock.
edit: my flatmate has gone to the shower to take a break from the sound of me shouting at admittedly anti-social volume at my computer screen
> edit: my flatmate has gone to the shower to take a break from the sound of me shouting at admittedly anti-social volume at my computer screen
this is a sign that you should be writing the book about the rationalists
(and not e.g. me)
For the causal readers at home: yes, these are cherry-picked studies which do not anyway demonstrate the inviolability of that evil cunt's point, because I checked.
Ironic that you talk about illiteracy of any form while demonstrating unfamiliarity with the ubiquitous [generic you](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you). At any rate since the person to whom you were responding didn’t make any statistical claims, but instead made claims about the positive feedback effect of inflating/deflating high/low scores, it’s inconceivable that they could have demonstrated any statistical illiteracy at all.
> At any rate since the person to whom you were responding didn’t make any statistical claims, but instead made claims about the positive feedback effect of inflating/deflating high/low scores
This is a statistical claim, and it's wrong. It stems from misunderstanding how correction for regression to the mean works.
> it’s inconceivable that they could have demonstrated any statistical illiteracy at all.
As I said, very rampant here. You don't even understand the objection. [Look, here's a tutorial](https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/34/1/215/638499). Any time you read "cholesterol", replace it mentally with "IQ". In short, the correction for the regression to the mean will result in increase of the scores just as often as it will result in the decrease, and this is true for both populations, black and white. The difference is that if you measure a black person and obtain a measurement of 95, you correct it downwards, while if you measure a white person, you correct it upwards, because the black mean is below 95, and white mean is above 95. If you measure two people, one black and one white, and obtain 140 for both, you correct *both* downwards, however the black one gets corrected *more points* downwards than the white, because, again, of the difference in the means.
Get it now? This procedure doesn't change the means, and so doesn't "self perpetuate" itself.
Let us reread what T*****PornO suggests we do and consider whether it is the same thing as correcting for regression-to-the-mean:
>If we're being fair and trying to use the tests with the least amount of error, it's necessary to subtract points from groups with lower mean scores and add them to groups with higher mean scores due to regression to the mean. That means, if we want to grade as impartially as possible, we convert all scores to true scores. That goes in the opposite direction of what they want.
Behold: this is literally a completely different suggestion than the one you’ve condescendingly linked to a theoretical physicist who studies out-of-equilibrium dynamics and knows perfectly damn well that the *statistically literate* way of correcting for sample variation is not at all what TPO suggests. In particular, what TPO suggests, as he admits freely, would not “result in increase of the scores just as often as it will result in the decrease” but instead “goes in the opposite direction of what (((they))) want,” we can easily conclude that the top-level comment came to the correct conclusion about the bias of population means as a result of the procedure actually proposed. But since you seem to have difficulty with reading what people from your outgroup write (perhaps this is why you need heuristics like “replace IQ with cholesterol,” rather than simply evaluating arguments made on their merits?) you assumed that TPO was the reasonable one and the top-level comment, who read TPO correctly and deduced the obvious consequence, was “statistically illiterate.”
> Behold: this is literally a completely different suggestion than the one you’ve condescendingly linked to
Because this is spoken about in context of university graduate testing and GATB for civil servant hiring purposes, where, due to the nature of the cutoff, you'll be more often than not doing exactly that. Read his other comment.
> but instead “goes in the opposite direction of what (((they))) want,”
Again, this is in context of hiring decisions and affirmative action. The "(((they)))" you're talking about are hiring officers. And indeed, they don't want that, because if your hiring cut-off is set at, say, 50 percentile of total population, then if you get a black person scoring in 50 percentile, and you apply correction for RTM, you decrease their score and they don't get a job, while the opposite happens when you get a white person scoring in 50th percentile.
> came to the correct conclusion about the bias of population means as a result of the procedure actually proposed.
Only if you interpret it out of context, and apply uncharitable interpretation that makes it a strawman, but I expected nothing else from people here.
Where is there talk of any cutoff?
I highly doubt that hiring managers that employ aptitude tests have affirmative action as their goal.
Additionally, the issue that affirmative action seeks to address is not measurement error or fluctuation, which is what RTM corrections try to account for. Instead it addresses proposed iniquity in the measurement procedure itself, which is a totally different issue and TPO is conflating it with statistical variance because he wants to make the argument that black people are dumb. If the problem is indeed that there is some structure impacting black test takers which does not impact whites then ignoring this structure to talk about correcting black scores toward an erroneous population mean due to statistical fluctuations is a diversion.
Indeed, by looking at the *context* we can see that the linked articles don’t speak about cutoffs as relevant goals for takers of the GATB or about statistical variance as a relevant factor in black underperformance on these tests. So it is *curious*, wouldn’t you say, that you’re now discussing a hypothetical scenario in which employing more sophisticated statistical estimation techniques just so happens to be unfortunate for black people?
> I highly doubt that hiring managers that employ aptitude tests have affirmative action as their goal.
Do you know what GATB stands for? Do you know who uses it? For what purpose? They are not using aptitude tests to promote affirmative action, quite contrary -- it stands directly as an obstacle to their goals. However, they do use it, because they are required to do so, and are trying to achieve their goals despite it.
> This is a statistical claim, and it's wrong. It stems from misunderstanding how correction for regression to the mean works.
or maybe Hailanathema is skeptical of the assumption that the differences between groups are not due to test bias. in that case they are correct.
but of course you are on script with ssc which only allows you to "steelman" racists
you say statistical illiteracy but the statistical intuition is not as straightforward as you think.
1) in fact it's counter-intuitive, you can't blame people for not recognizing a simpson's paradox at first glance
2) it comes from a racist that has posted studies before that completely contradict the point they were making
so it's not that unreasonable to be skeptical of the claim at face value
I'm sorry for the lost opportunity to have worked with someone who would've been a brilliant student if s/he made it that far in spite of political BS blocking internet access. It's seriously messed up how many people out there would call this process "meritocracy" in spite of this incident having NOTHING to do with the student's skill interfering with opportunity.
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/sneerclub] [There is a very important and much more general lesson here than is immediately implied, but I'm far too angry right now to tell anybody who doesn't already get it what it is.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/amtp5h/there_is_a_very_important_and_much_more_general/)
*^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^\([Info](/r/TotesMessenger) ^/ ^[Contact](/message/compose?to=/r/TotesMessenger))*
A question for the peanut gallery: considering that there are only
about 1500 chess Grandmasters in the entire world, what are the chances
of anyone being related to 4
of them, in any sense other than “I looked up our family trees and
it turns out we’re 16th cousins”?
It's pretty damn unlikely even if we're looking at a very smart family; there are [related grandmasters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_families) but I don't think it's any general trend. And:
>two of them had no formal play or training and were not members of clubs til they were in their 20s. They played casually and were very good at this.
*That* I call horseshit on. GM level is not something you get "casually" in any sense of the word regardless of natural talent/intelligence, the chess fruit is just not that low hanging. And late-teens is considered a very late start for seriously playing chess, a GM who first walked into a club in their 20s would be super notable (see [this chess.com thread](https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/gmsims-who-started-late)). Either TP0's fibbing or confusing GM with a lesser Master title on that point.
I am writing this to persuade you that no matter how much TP0’s
policies are rationalized, they still accelerate our descent into the
cesspool of absolutism. I will persuade you of this by providing a few
examples and illustrations of the way in which TP0 seeks to focus too
much on one side of the equation and not enough on the broader
perspective of things. First and foremost, anything may happen if he’s
able to waste our time and money. Uppity loudmouths may provide material
support for terrorism. Intransigent bottom-feeders may declare that
racialism is a be-all, end-all system that should be forcefully imposed
upon us. And nauseating hammerheads may deny that TP0 wants to prohibit
any discussion of their attempts to dismantle national civil rights
organizations by driving a wedge between the leaders and the
rank-and-file members. While it is clear why he wants that to be a taboo
subject, the tone of TP0’s disquisitions is eerily reminiscent of that
of irresponsible, pertinacious skivers of the late 1940s in the sense
that one of TP0’s pickthanks keeps throwing “scientific” studies at me,
claiming they prove that serfdom and slavery do not represent oppression
unless the serfs or the slaves themselves “articulate” that oppression.
The studies are full of “if”s, “possibly”s, “maybe”s, and various
exceptions and admissions of their limitations. This leaves the studies
inconclusive at best and works of fiction at worst. The only thing these
studies can possibly prove is that TP0 wants nothing less than to leave
us in the lurch, hence his repeated, almost hypnotic, insistence on the
importance of his execrable doctrines.
TP0’s initiatives are not the solution to our problem. They
are the problem. I know that I’m emotional now, but the
poisonous wine of phallocentrism had been distilled long before TP0
entered the scene. TP0 is merely the agent decanting the poisonous fluid
from its bottle into the jug that is world humanity. The most
drugged-out blaggards you’ll ever see, almost by definition, divert
attention from his unprovoked aggression. In reaching that conclusion I
have made the usual assumption that TP0’s view is that the stork is
responsible for procreation. That’s his message in a nutshell, and his
co-conspirators find themselves judged largely on their willingness to
echo it. Of course, such manipulative blacklegs also fail to see that
TP0 believes that he’s imbued with a sacred mission to undermine the
foundations of society until a single thrust suffices to make the entire
edifice collapse. That’s just wrong. He further believes that cultural
tradition has never contributed a single thing to the advancement of
knowledge or understanding. Wrong again!
Nature, habit, and opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction
between us and the self-centered drunks who deny the obvious. There are
different ways of reconciling oneself to this unpleasant, yet definitely
loathsome, fact. Some people see nothing at all, or rather,
want to see nothing. Others are perfectly well aware of the
acrasial consequences which this plague must and will some day induce,
but only shrug their shoulders, convinced that nothing can be done, so
the only thing to do is to leave things alone.
You may be wondering why TP0 is so desperate to send children to die
as martyrs for causes that he is unwilling to die for himself. The most
charitable answer is simply that it’s easy for him to accede to the
voices of invidious balloon heads and their lecherous campaigns to usher
in the rule of the Antichrist and the apocalyptic end times. Another
possible answer is that I no longer believe that trends like
malthusianism, reductionism, and kafka-esque rank-order essentialism are
random events. Not only are they explicitly glorified and promoted by
TP0’s stuporous belief systems, but my goal is to shine a bright light
on his catch-phrases, which flourish mainly in the darkness of
teetotalism. I might not be successful at achieving that goal, but I
unmistakably do have to try. For the moment, let’s take TP0 at his word,
that he’s not opposed to people stopping his encroachments on our
humanity. If that’s the case, then isn’t he the quisquilious grifter who
recently wanted to take us all on a totally reckless ride into the
unknown? Well, we all know the answer to that question, don’t we? In
case you don’t, you should note that my only wonder is, Why can’t we
simply agree to disagree? Let me give you a hint: When his randy
utterances are translated into plain, words-mean-things English, TP0
appears to be saying that everyone who doesn’t share his beliefs is a
lickerish brigand deserving of death and damnation. For me, this
childish moonshine serves only to emphasize how the space remaining in
this writing will not suffice even to enumerate the ways in which TP0
has tried to use our weaknesses to his advantage.
Is there, or is there not, a Pecksniffian plot to stab us in the
back, organized through the years by fractious, nugatory sots? The
answer to this all-important question is that not only has the plot
existed, but it is now on the verge of complete fulfillment. We must
worry about two classes of cullionly showboaters: acrimonious and catty.
TP0 is among the former. There’s a lot of talk nowadays about his
beer-guzzling holier-than-thou attitudes but not much action. He,
already oppressive with his dour, ill-tempered criticisms, will perhaps
be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separate species we
be—for his reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal
brains if loosed upon the world. If you think that that’s a frightening
thought then consider that TP0 sometimes puts himself in charge of
imposing a “glass ceiling” that limits our opportunities for promotions
in most jobs. At other times, one of his followers is deputed for the
job. In either case, TP0’s entourage is a manifestation of a
simple-minded, sleazy subculture that is both indulged and
self-indulgent. And here we have the crux of the problem. Disagree in
any manner with TP0’s orthodoxy and he calls you a backwards turncoat.
Or is it a loud losel? I get so confused with all the various
pejoratives that TP0 throws around like confetti. In any case, it’s sad
that TP0’s most full-throated claim is that his splenetic schemes will
make you complacent beyond your wildest dreams. One would think he could
strive for a little more accuracy there. He could perhaps even admit
that if he thinks that he can make me languish in prison on trumped-up
charges then he’s barking up the wrong tree.
I am not fooled by TP0's phlegmatic and eristic rhetoric. I therefore gladly accept the responsibility of notifying others that if I were to compile a list of TP0's forays into espionage, sabotage, and subversion, it would fill an entire page and perhaps even run over onto the following one. Such a list would surely make every sane person who has passed the age of six realize that it is not necessary to continue living with the risks induced by TP0's soporific metanarratives in order reap the cautionary benefits bestowed by the knowledge that TP0's long-term goal is to rot out the foundations of our religious, moral, and political values. I hate to break it to him, but down that path lies only heartache and tears. That's why I insist on mentioning that you may make the comment, “What does this have to do with disgraceful liars and cheats?” Well, once you begin to see the light you'll realize that TP0 is the secret player behind the present, asinine political scene. He must be brought out from behind the curtain before it's too late, before his underbosses turn our nation into a “totalitarian meritocracy” devoted to the secular state religion of fogyism.
I've repeatedly pointed out to TP0 that even his most pea-brained confreres are trained in the use of force, deadly force, advanced weaponry, and offensive and defensive tactics. That apparently didn't register with him, though. Oh, well; I guess TP0 says that he has a “special” perspective on extremism that carries with it a “special” right to demand special treatment that, in many cases, borders on the ridiculous. Such verbal gems teach us that TP0 dismisses his enemies as either servants of an existing power structure or as sufferers of false consciousness. I explained the reason for that just a moment ago. If you don't mind, though, I'll go ahead and explain it again. To begin with, I sometimes encounter people debating whether or not it would be beneficial to society for him to shackle us with the chains of mysticism. The arguments pro and con are familiar. On one side is the infelicific assertion that prisons exist not for punitive or rehabilitative purposes but rather to carry out a costive political agenda against minorities and the poor. On the other side is the more reasonable assertion that he should not construct the specter of a terrible armed threat. Not now, not ever.
TP0's toadies have been seen destroying the values, methods, and goals of traditional humanistic study. TP0 claimed he would take responsibility for this base-minded behavior, but in fact he did nothing to fix matters or punish the culprits. This proves that there is an unpleasant fact, painful to the tender-minded, that one can deduce from the laws of nature. This fact is also conclusively established by direct observation. It is a fact so obvious that rational people have always known it and no one doubted it until TP0 and his secret agents started trying to deny it. The fact to which I am referring states that TP0 is more than merely disreputable. He's über-disreputable. In fact, TP0 is so disreputable that an understanding of the damage that may be caused by his grotesque effusions isn't something I expect everyone to develop the first time they hear about it. That's why I write over and over again and from so many different angles about how TP0 is not a responsible citizen. Responsible citizens state publicly that there are none so blind as those who will not see. Responsible citizens unquestionably do not create catchy, new terms for boring, old issues.
If we let TP0 substitute breast-beating and schwarmerei for action and honest debate, then greed, corruption, and onanism will characterize the government. Oppressive measures will be directed against citizens. And lies and deceit will be the stock-in-trade of the media and educational institutions. He has had some success in rewarding those who knowingly or unknowingly play along with his ploys while punishing those who oppose them. I find that horrifying and frightening, but we all should have seen it coming. We all knew that TP0 has been trying hard to protect what has become a lucrative racket for him. Unfortunately, that lucrative racket has a hard-to-overlook consequence: it will keep a close eye on those who look like they might think an unapproved thought sooner than you think.
TP0 and his legates are a bunch of knuckleheads. As you know, knuckleheads are airheads; airheads are bureaucrats; bureaucrats are analphabetics; and analphabetics all want to lead us into an age of shoddiness—shoddy goods, shoddy services, shoddy morals, and shoddy people. The point is that I feel no more personal hatred for TP0 than I might feel for a herd of wild animals or a cluster of poisonous reptiles. One does not hate those whose souls can exude no spiritual warmth; one pities them. Now that I've said what I had to say, I should remark that this rant may not endear me to some people. Indeed, it may even cost me a friend or two. However, friends do not let friends get trampled by nosism-oriented pinheads like TP0. The truth is the truth and we pay a steep price whenever we ignore it.
Also, the fair thing to do on tests is “subtract points from groups with lower mean scores and add them to groups with higher mean scores becuase of regression to the mean”. How does anyone take this person seriously? Surely this is assuming the conclusion and will create a self-perpetuating system whereby the lower mean group will always have lower mean scores since they were penalized starting at some time T for being lower mean.
Yep, this looks fair and unbiased to me!
[deleted]
Big if true.
Low-IQ gamers rise up
Wole Soyinka might have won the Nobel Prize, but I don’t think we can really gauge his intelligence until we see him playing Overwatch
…
Can confirm, Nigerian in high silver.
A question for the peanut gallery: considering that there are only about 1500 chess Grandmasters in the entire world, what are the chances of anyone being related to 4 of them, in any sense other than “I looked up our family trees and it turns out we’re 16th cousins”?
Other way around, dingus.
I am writing this to persuade you that no matter how much TP0’s policies are rationalized, they still accelerate our descent into the cesspool of absolutism. I will persuade you of this by providing a few examples and illustrations of the way in which TP0 seeks to focus too much on one side of the equation and not enough on the broader perspective of things. First and foremost, anything may happen if he’s able to waste our time and money. Uppity loudmouths may provide material support for terrorism. Intransigent bottom-feeders may declare that racialism is a be-all, end-all system that should be forcefully imposed upon us. And nauseating hammerheads may deny that TP0 wants to prohibit any discussion of their attempts to dismantle national civil rights organizations by driving a wedge between the leaders and the rank-and-file members. While it is clear why he wants that to be a taboo subject, the tone of TP0’s disquisitions is eerily reminiscent of that of irresponsible, pertinacious skivers of the late 1940s in the sense that one of TP0’s pickthanks keeps throwing “scientific” studies at me, claiming they prove that serfdom and slavery do not represent oppression unless the serfs or the slaves themselves “articulate” that oppression. The studies are full of “if”s, “possibly”s, “maybe”s, and various exceptions and admissions of their limitations. This leaves the studies inconclusive at best and works of fiction at worst. The only thing these studies can possibly prove is that TP0 wants nothing less than to leave us in the lurch, hence his repeated, almost hypnotic, insistence on the importance of his execrable doctrines.
TP0’s initiatives are not the solution to our problem. They are the problem. I know that I’m emotional now, but the poisonous wine of phallocentrism had been distilled long before TP0 entered the scene. TP0 is merely the agent decanting the poisonous fluid from its bottle into the jug that is world humanity. The most drugged-out blaggards you’ll ever see, almost by definition, divert attention from his unprovoked aggression. In reaching that conclusion I have made the usual assumption that TP0’s view is that the stork is responsible for procreation. That’s his message in a nutshell, and his co-conspirators find themselves judged largely on their willingness to echo it. Of course, such manipulative blacklegs also fail to see that TP0 believes that he’s imbued with a sacred mission to undermine the foundations of society until a single thrust suffices to make the entire edifice collapse. That’s just wrong. He further believes that cultural tradition has never contributed a single thing to the advancement of knowledge or understanding. Wrong again!
Nature, habit, and opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between us and the self-centered drunks who deny the obvious. There are different ways of reconciling oneself to this unpleasant, yet definitely loathsome, fact. Some people see nothing at all, or rather, want to see nothing. Others are perfectly well aware of the acrasial consequences which this plague must and will some day induce, but only shrug their shoulders, convinced that nothing can be done, so the only thing to do is to leave things alone.
You may be wondering why TP0 is so desperate to send children to die as martyrs for causes that he is unwilling to die for himself. The most charitable answer is simply that it’s easy for him to accede to the voices of invidious balloon heads and their lecherous campaigns to usher in the rule of the Antichrist and the apocalyptic end times. Another possible answer is that I no longer believe that trends like malthusianism, reductionism, and kafka-esque rank-order essentialism are random events. Not only are they explicitly glorified and promoted by TP0’s stuporous belief systems, but my goal is to shine a bright light on his catch-phrases, which flourish mainly in the darkness of teetotalism. I might not be successful at achieving that goal, but I unmistakably do have to try. For the moment, let’s take TP0 at his word, that he’s not opposed to people stopping his encroachments on our humanity. If that’s the case, then isn’t he the quisquilious grifter who recently wanted to take us all on a totally reckless ride into the unknown? Well, we all know the answer to that question, don’t we? In case you don’t, you should note that my only wonder is, Why can’t we simply agree to disagree? Let me give you a hint: When his randy utterances are translated into plain, words-mean-things English, TP0 appears to be saying that everyone who doesn’t share his beliefs is a lickerish brigand deserving of death and damnation. For me, this childish moonshine serves only to emphasize how the space remaining in this writing will not suffice even to enumerate the ways in which TP0 has tried to use our weaknesses to his advantage.
Is there, or is there not, a Pecksniffian plot to stab us in the back, organized through the years by fractious, nugatory sots? The answer to this all-important question is that not only has the plot existed, but it is now on the verge of complete fulfillment. We must worry about two classes of cullionly showboaters: acrimonious and catty. TP0 is among the former. There’s a lot of talk nowadays about his beer-guzzling holier-than-thou attitudes but not much action. He, already oppressive with his dour, ill-tempered criticisms, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separate species we be—for his reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. If you think that that’s a frightening thought then consider that TP0 sometimes puts himself in charge of imposing a “glass ceiling” that limits our opportunities for promotions in most jobs. At other times, one of his followers is deputed for the job. In either case, TP0’s entourage is a manifestation of a simple-minded, sleazy subculture that is both indulged and self-indulgent. And here we have the crux of the problem. Disagree in any manner with TP0’s orthodoxy and he calls you a backwards turncoat. Or is it a loud losel? I get so confused with all the various pejoratives that TP0 throws around like confetti. In any case, it’s sad that TP0’s most full-throated claim is that his splenetic schemes will make you complacent beyond your wildest dreams. One would think he could strive for a little more accuracy there. He could perhaps even admit that if he thinks that he can make me languish in prison on trumped-up charges then he’s barking up the wrong tree.