The Rise and Fall of Science

In this post, I'll argue that scientific progress has significantly slowed over the last century, both at a per-scientist and absolute level, and then offer some speculative hypotheses about why this might have occurred. On Measuring Scientific Progress To begin with, it is necessary to make clear how we go about measuring scientific progress. Broadly speaking, …

On Proposed Environmental Causes of the American Black-White IQ Gap

In this post, I will consider specific environmental variables which have been suggested as causes of the roughly 15 point IQ gap between black and white Americans. I will conclude that there are currently no known ultimately environmental variables which totally or even partially explain the IQ gap and that proximate environment causes which may …

Psychological Well-being and Societal Progress

Some people think that history, or at least history since the enlightenment, can be characterized as a process of consistent long run improvement even if there have been occasional bumps on the road. This is sometimes called a Whig view of history and is probably most famously championed today by Steven Pinker. Pinker and people …

On Trusting Academic Experts

In this post, I will argue against the view that we should trust academic experts. By "trust academic experts" I mean endorsing  the following two propositions: Academics endorsing a proposition is strong evidence that the proposition is true or at least that the proposition is maximally warranted by the available evidence. The fact that an …

American Racism and the Anti-White Left

In contemporary America, professors openly say things like "All I want for Christmas is white genocide" or "OK, officially, I now hate white people,". Teaching assistants claim that "some white people may need to die" so that Black people can get what they deserve. Editors at the New York Times assert that "White men are …

Jewish Influence on American Politics

In this post, I will argue that Jewish people have become highly represented among circles of American elites, that this has shifted the political ideology of American elites towards leftism and Zionism, and that the leftist and Zionist ideology of Jewish elites is partially explained by ethnocentrism on the part of Jews. This should go …

How Deadly is the Corona Virus (COVID-19)?

Roughly half of Americans are pretty freaked out about COVID-19. People who went to college, make a lot of money, are old, or are white, are especially likely to be freaked out. Marist (2020) On March 3rd, the World Health Organization declared that 3.4% of people who had contracted COVID-19 had died (WHO, 2020). Since …

The Catholic Church and Western Genetics

Much has been written recently about Schulz et al. (2019), a paper which argues that the Catholic church made the West less conformist, more individualistic, and more open to outsiders by insisting that people organize into nuclear families rather than larger kin networks, and by demanding that people never marry their relatives. In this post, …

White People and Identity Politics

Some people look at American society and feel that the media, the education system, and the economy, are increasingly biased against white people, that many white people are taught a distorted view of politics and history which leads to them disliking their own racial group, and that explicit displays of hatred of white people are …

Protestantism and Western Civilization

In this post, I want to document the relationship between Protestantism and the rise in Western civilization that occurred via the Industrial revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution. (In case anyone was wondering, I am not a Christian, and so these posts about religion do not reflect a bias on my part about which …