Thought Crime

None of these tell the whole tale of any particular topic. Some of them don’t even represent opinions I agree with. But the point is that they provide good evidence for alternate points of view which may be closer to the truth.

1.  Politics
   1. Mexifornia and Mexifornia (five years on).
   2. The Flight 93 Election, while Trump (as of 12/18) hasn’t managed to accomplish all his campaign promises, this essay is still a fairly good case for “The Trumpening.” On the other hand, 
   3. Left Wing Authoritarianism
      1. Crushing on the Crushers: Theodore Dalrymple explains the troubling legacy of left-wing academics and their quasi-romantic attachment to authoritarian and fascist regimes.
      2. Left-Wing Authoritarianism is not a myth, it’s actually a persistent an frightening reality.
   4. The arguments for gay-marriage are logically fallacious. One may need to copy and paste excerpts into google.com/translate.
   5. Are conservatives less scientifically literate than liberals? The answer is basically, no. The correlations and associations between scientific literacy and political orientation are trivial and given sample sizes used, could disappear or break opposite.
   6. Here is Jason Richwine’s dissertation that argues that immigration policy should be based on IQ. It’s been treated as controversial, but I honestly don’t know how it could be. Other countries prefer immigrants to have difficult to acquire skills, many of which require a high IQ to even approach mediocrity in. 
   7. There is evidence that identity politics along ethnic lines is what one might call an optimized survival strategy, or in other words, it appears that it may be something selected for. See “The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation.” Often conservatives decry black and Hispanic voting blocks for voting for policies to benefit their kin. Similarly, liberals tend to decry white voters for doing the same. But if this model and other similar models (like GST) are to be believed (maybe they aren’t), there could be nothing more natural and perhaps just than the expression of such in-group preferences in political circumstances. 
2. Education/College
   1. Doctoral Programs either select for individuals with or trigger mental illness The survey cited in the article can be found here. I suspect that a combination of factors: the desire to delay entry into the work force, a lifestyle built around a skill that can only be performed in short bursts (studying), the proliferation of fields whose work feels meaningless (rarely cited papers), fear of future joblessness, and poorly adjusted role models working as your supervisor all contribute to data like this.
   2. Academic papers in the humanities are rarely cited/read. Academia, as it is commonly understood, is nearly worthless.
   3. Biologists don’t read papers with hard math This is alarming, but unsurprising since one of the greatest biologists of all time thinks hard math should be excised from the biology curriculum.
   4. Most social psychologists are liberals (no viewpoint diversity) Jonathan Haidt found 8 of them who were conservative, not 8,000 or 800.
   5. Many students show no improvement of critical thinking skill after college.
   6. The Myth of Digital Natives show that young people don’t know how to use electronics well and multitasking is impossible.
   7. Belief in microaggresions, trigger warnings, and so-on weaken students’ minds
   8. Young People are less physically active than ever The study they cite is here. This is connected, of course, to our technology. But I think a major association we’re leaving out is the nature of the public school system as well. Making young people sit for 6-8 hours a day sure contributes to this. And while public schools existed in the past, the things young people did and were encouraged to do were radically different in the past.
   9. Peter Thiel’s criticism of higher education.
   10. High School curricula are typically just liberal indoctrination.
3. Ethics
   1. Giubilini, Alberto, and Francesca Minerva. “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” Journal of Medical Ethics (2012) In the article above, the claim is made that infanticide is just as moral as abortion (and the authors approve of abortion). Get ready for practical questions of hospital behavior to be answered based on reasoning like this, for instance: Hospitals can pull life support on sick babies now.
4. Random but Alarming Science
   1. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False This is one of the most alarming studies I’ve read, but it’s an important reminder to use an engineering mindset with respect to appropriating scientific findings into your life
   2. Fluoride Consumption and IQ Deficits
   3. Vegetarian Diets Decrease Sperm Count and Motility This probably should have been obvious.
   4. The HPV Vaccine may decrease fertility.
   5. The growing evidence of demonic possession. This is either alarming evidence that science if bogus or alarming evidence that materialism is false.
5. Crime

   1. The association between county-level IQ and county-level crime rates

   2. Intelligence is associated with criminal justice processing: Arrest through incarceration

   3. Correlations between estimates of state IQ and FBI crime statistics

   4. Intelligence and criminal behavior in a total birth cohort: An examination of functional form, dimensions of intelligence, and the nature of offending

   5. Individual and group IQ predict inmate violence

   6. On the genetic and environmental reasons why intelligence correlates with criminal victimization

6. Vive la différence!
   1. Men and Women Have Different Partner Preferences
      1. Men are more attracted to strangers
      2. Violent Pornography is Viewed More Frequently by Women than Men
      3. Female racial sexual attraction bias tracks with ovulation.
      4. Male racial bias in romantic partner selection appears to be persistent, although, it appears that political affiliation may predict out-group ethnic attraction.
   2. Major Differences
      1. 6,500 genes with sexually differentiated expression
      2. Sex differences in personality hold across cultures Incidentally, in countries with traditional gender roles, the sex differences are less pronounced, but in egalitarian cultures sex differences in personality are more pronounced.
   3. Sexuality in General
      1. Only one form of sexual activity is generally safe and positively good for you. The form, of course, is PVI (Penis-Vagina-Intercourse), unimpeded. All other forms of sexual activity are either neutral or actually unhealthy. Money quote: “one sexual activity (PVI and the orgasmic response to it) is associated with, and in some cases, causes processes associated with better psychological and physical functioning.”