- The Dark Enlightenment:
- The movement that concludes that the Enlightenment took a bad turn, or that the Enlightenment itself was a bad turn. I take both positions: That the Enlightenment was wildly and dangerously wrong to proclaim all men created equal, and that restoration England was a pretty good political system, which gave us the scientific and industrial revolutions, and the British conquest of most of the world, and it has been downhill since the restoration, with things going to hell in a handbasket around 1800 or so, and getting steadily worse since then.
- Dark Enlightenment:
- Forbidden knowledge about society. For example that while women want their husband to do woman’s work around the house, they don’t want their husband if their husband does woman’s work around the house. If you realize the truth of some hate fact, you have been darkly enlightened (verb).
- The Endarkenment.
- Plain meaning: The coming dark age of the west, and perhaps the world, the rise of magical and superstitious thinking, for example Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, the transformation of science into theocracy, the stagnation of an increasing number of technologies.
- Ironic meaning: A sarcastic reference to the enlightenment, implying that it blinded men, rather than enabling them to see. Roger Bacon and Galileo popularized rationality, but Voltaire and Rousseau abandoned rationality. That the planets go around the sun follows from the evidence. That all men are created equal defies the evidence.
- The Left Singularity:
- Leftism leads to more ever more leftism, ever faster. If the process was not interrupted by dictatorship, civil war, or social collapse, it would end with everyone torturing each other to death for insufficient leftism, Khmer Rouge style, and the last torturer committing suicide for his failure to inflict infinite torture in finite time.
Archive for the ‘science’ Category
Dark Enlightenment and the Endarkenment
Sunday, April 7th, 2013How sweet it is
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013Marcott et al recant the blade of their Hockey stick
This is a huge change, in that previously, when warmists lied, and got caught doing so, every scientific institution, every science journal, every prestigious academy, and every organized group of scientists would piously swear holy fealty to the lie. Now, instead, they quietly twist the liar’s arms behind closed doors. (more…)
The latest PC
Sunday, March 17th, 2013It used to be mandatory to believe that evolution was a mere creation myth, something that happened long, long ago, and far far away, but had not happened in the last hundred thousand years or so, so that it was impossible for there to be differences between races, or indeed between men and woman.
But, in that case, we would still be shaped for eating meat and fat, and not yet shaped for eating wheat and vegetable oil, which is horribly politically incorrect. Vegetable oil would produce heart disease, which is as bad as lack of global warming. And so, it is now mandatory to believe that evolution is extremely fast when it would produce politically correct results, and does not happen at all when it would produce politically incorrect results.
PC gets ever more stupid, as the arrogance of power has excused it from making any sense at all. (more…)
Did Hormonal Contraception cause the destruction of the family?
Tuesday, March 12th, 2013The sexual revolution happened when the pill happened, that is, when Hormonal Birth Control happened.
In the comments Spandrell provides compelling evidence that the effect of hormonal birth control on the sexual revolution was not very large.Â
Why Darwinism is more controversial than ever
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013Darwin not only tells us that one individual is not equal to another, he also tells us that races are the origin of species, which means that in general races will be unequal in major and important ways.
Darwinism also tells us that men and women are genetically predisposed to different and unequal social roles, which implies that attempts to make their roles legally equal will not work very well.
Darwinism tells us that we have a moral sense evolved to further our self interest, leading to the proposition that people’s real moral theory is closer to that of Ayn Rand or the classic Greeks, and that claims to the contrary are lies and hypocrisy. Darwinism tells us about our nature, and tells us about our moral sense, and what it tells us about our moral sense implies that the man who says he would hold a child’s face in the fire to find the cure for malaria is apt to hold a child’s face in the fire and forget he was trying to cure malaria
If you believe that men were not created equal, that some races really are inferior, that most endangered species are overdue for extinction and need to be turned into fur coats and hamburgers, that women should stay in the kitchen and if they must work, do female work, lest their delicate souls be shocked by male crudity, because if they are in the male workplace doing male jobs, they are apt sue their coworkers and bosses for being males, then Darwinism looks mighty like common sense.
If you believe that most people raising money to help far away strangers are going to use it to rape children, then Darwinism looks like realism rather than nihilism.
Darwinism should not cause you to doubt all morality. Darwinism tells us we evolved from killer apes by evolving towards more cooperation and more successful and effective cooperation. It should, however, cause you to doubt the morality of the Pharisees.
Teleology and Darwinism
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013Darwin freely used teleology as a metaphor for natural selection, that natural selection works as if an intelligent breeder was consciously pursuing a goal, as if aiming at horses, to take advantage of the grasslands, or as if aiming at men, to create a creature capable of planning and cooperating to defeat any creature less capable of planning and cooperation.
And by an interesting coincidence, whosoever hates the metaphor, hates natural selection. (more…)
Postmortem on Warmism
Thursday, February 14th, 2013We are always moving leftwards, but not every leftwards program succeeds. Should one fail, they try something different.
I have not published much on warmism lately, because they were defeated by Climategate, even though every academic institution, every government institution, and every group of organized scientists swore fealty to Warmism, officially proclaimed that Climategate was no big deal, and have been trying to carry on as if Climategate was no big deal. But now they are subsiding, so time for a post mortem on the warmist movement, which has pretty much gone the way of the communist movement, where fans of the proletariat have shrunk down to few little academic circles holding reality at bay from behind their little Berlin walls, while the rest of the communist movement substitute females and minorities for the proletariat, and continue business as usual. (more…)
The left singularity versus the technological singularity
Friday, December 14th, 2012Lately this blog has largely been about the left singularity: That leftism leads to more leftism, which leads to even more leftism even faster, until everything goes to hell. The best known singularity, however is the information technology singularity, the rapture of the nerds
What of the theory that information technology leads to more information technology?
Well, in a sense, in the long run, looking back over the last several million years, it is obviously true. Problem is that it is far from obvious that dramatic technological change is coming any time soon. We have had quite a few dark ages interrupting the process, and there is what looks like a dark age coming up now.
The distinguishing feature of the technological singularity, what makes it singular, is accelerating progress. Progress has been accelerating from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth, but during the twentieth century, in one field after another, progress has slowed, usually stopping altogether within the west, while continuing at a somewhat slower pace in Asia. Accelerating progress continues in DNA reading, but that is the last place where it is still evident that progress is accelerating. Progress may well have stopped in DNA writing, and any future advances in DNA writing are likely to come from Asia. Rapid progress continues in integrated circuit manufacture, but that progress is not accelerating, and the shrinking number of fabs and increasing cost of fabs threatens to end that progress.
If yet another dark age hits, then when the next civilization rises, the high point of western civilization will be dated precisely to 1972 – last man on the moon, tallest buildings in the west, coolest muscle cars. (more…)
Dude, where is my flying car?
Monday, August 27th, 2012The first man on the moon has died, and pretty soon the last men on the moon will be dead also.
where are the space settlements? By the year 2000, we were supposed to have flying cars, space settlements, and cities that looked like this: (more…)
A tell revealing central authority over the official line
Friday, August 10th, 2012The most useful tells are short and sweet – you twit someone with something, and their response reveal their real beliefs and real motivations. This tell is, unfortunately, long, tedious and complex, but it not only reveals an elite that believes or pretends to believe in official truth absolutely regardless of evidence, but reveals that there is an official line, and the politically correct know it – reveals that they do not just believe certain improbable things because its is fashionable, or because it is what all the right people believe, they believe in the edicts of a a highly centralized authority, after the fashion of Orwell’s Winston Smith, believe because they are damned well told to, fear punishment from on high for heresy, that they are not speaking what they believe, nor what is fashionable to believe, nor what is high status to believe, but what they are damned well told to believe, like communist party members who would spout the official line, and claim to have always spouted that line, and that the line had never changed, even when the line had reversed itself yesterday. (more…)
