NOTE: THIS PAGE IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION
There is a lot of confusion about where I stand ideologically. Am I a queer GloboHomo shill? Am I a White supremacist? Am I a stooge of the American Empire? Am I a flip-flopping troll?
optionality core of my ethics and ideology
Let’s try to clear this up.
Politics
Society
Education
Misc Issues
- Single sex schooling? Obviously bad. Any performance gains are obviously selection effects.
Conspiracy Theories
Major Theories
Holocaust Denial
Let’s start with the spiciest one. Holocaust denial has become quite prevalent in recent years, with as many as 20% of zoomers in the US subscribing to it according to contemporary polls. As I wrote in Jail is Programmed for all Rightoids, I believe this is intercorrelated with the general rise of conspiracism (vaccine skepticism, Qanon, etc.) on the Right on account of the collapse of right-wing intellectualism (such as it was) and its secularization (which was substituted not by rationalism, but mysticism).
I have always found Holocaust denial implausible not so much on account of the physical and anecdotal evidence – which, incidentally, happens to be vast, the Holocaust probably being the single most documented and studied event in world history – but because of the question of where all those Jews in East-Central Europe went. They existed in censuses before the war, and disappeared from censuses after the war, while failing to reappear in Israel, the US, or anywhere else in the world. So absent some mass, sudden integration event, the absence of millions of Jewish deaths in Europe c.1941-44 is statistically impossible. I wrote out that argument in The Holocaust in the USSR after Ron Unz came out as a Holocaust denier in 2018, which was problematic as I was then a (paid) blogger at The Unz Review. I mention this to confirm my point that The Unz Review had no editorial line and each blogger/author managed their own stall.
The number of Jews who died in the Holocaust is around 5.5-6M with plausible estimates clustering in a relatively tight bell curve around that region. The chances that this number is off by factors is almost impossible. P = ~0%
I am likewise skeptical of virtually all “Holocaust revisionism” that falls short of denial. A large percentage even of ordinary Germans were at least vaguely aware of what was going on, and the idea that this was a secret to the Führer strains credulity.
Moon Landing Hoax
The Apollo Program involved about half a million people and 0.5% of US GDP. Pulling the wool over that many eyes in an open society is implausible. P = ~0%
History
Lost Advanced Civilizations
Technological progress loads on the numbers of innovators/inventors, which in turn is a function of carrying capacity and average IQ. Carrying capacity was much lower during the Ice Ages, as were polygenic scores for IQ/educational attainment. Consequently, contra Robin Hanson (e.g. here), I view this is as extremely unlikely. P = 1%.
This does not apply to dark ages in which regional civilizations experienced loss of complexity. History is rife with examples.
China Discovered America
In 2005, I read 1421 by Gavin Menzies and found it plausible, but subsequent research has conclusively ruled it out. P = 1%.
Shakespeare Didn’t Write His Plays
OK, this is one theory I find credible; though this is just based on reading Hanania and Ron Unz (!) (1, 2, 3) about it. I may change this assessment in the highly unlikely event I ever properly research this myself. P = 30%