The Wayward Axolotl

Here are two thought experiments to make you think about consciousness. A scientist offers you $1000 to participate in an experiment. You will walk into a room, be strapped to a chair, and be given a drug that causes extreme pain. The scientist tells you the pain will be something like having your shins bashed with a baseball bat. The pain will last for 5 minutes. After that, the effects of the drug will wear off. There will be no permanent effects. Then he will give you a second drug that erases your memory of the last 6 minutes — enough to cover precisely the amount of time you spent in the chair. The second drug also has no harmful permanent effects. It just erases your recent memory. After giving you the second drug, the scientist will unstrap you from the chair and pay you $1000. From the perspective of your future self, it will be as if you just walked into the room, sat down in a chair, and then got out of the chair and were paid $1000. Your future self will not have any memor...

The immigration and multiculturalism policies of Western societies are often described as “pathological altruism”. The implication of the phrase is that you can have too much of a good thing: that altruism is generally good, but it becomes pathological when it goes too far. Exactly when altruism becomes pathological is not specified, but the current policies are going too far. I reject this view. Altruism is always pathological. People are not altruistic at all, so individual altruism cannot explain these policies. The challenge is not to explain why people are too altruistic. The challenge is to explain how selfish individual behavior causes altruistic collective behavior. Pathological altruism is a type of collective irrationality. It is the result of a social delusion and a tragedy of the commons. Social delusions are caused by social feedback. To some extent, people select their beliefs to agree with the beliefs of others. This causes people to synchronize their views. ...

Book recommendations, organized by category. Physics Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws by John C. Taylor This is an excellent overview of theoretical Physics. It is not pop science, but it is readable and it does not assume that you have a background in the sciences, just that you are intelligent and can handle a few equations. It goes over all the major theories of physics and shows how they fit together into the conceptual framework of modern physics. QED by Richard Feynman This is a really good introduction to quantum theory. It discusses the observations that quantum theory explains, and then it shows how quantum theory explains those observations. It gives you the empirical basis for quantum theory in everyday observations and simple experiments. If you want a basic understanding of quantum theory, read this book, not some pop-science book on the "multiverse". Chaos by James Gleick This is a book I read when I was around 20 years old, and I really enjoyed i...

The recent controversy over the Nazi LARPing at the NPI conference got me thinking about how we can save the West. As I have said before, I am not a white nationalist or member of the alt-right. But I am a biological and cultural realist. I share some of their views and some of their goals. I agree with them on the dangers of mass immigration and Islam. I disagree with some of their views, and in this case, I definitely disagree with their methods. I don't think we can save the West by LARPing as Nazis. The big issues facing the West right now are demographic: immigration, low fertility, dysgenics, Islam, etc. We have the power to solve these problems, but we lack the will. The reason we lack the will to solve them is that we are morally required to pretend that they don't exist, or don't matter. The religion of the modern West, Humanism, is based on Utopian fantasies about life and human nature. When reality contradicts Humanist delusions, we are required to ignore reali...

On the night of the election (US 2016) I was elated. I haven't felt that good in a long time, and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. I had been depressed during the day, because I expected Hillary to win. If that had happened, it would have been the end of the United States as we know it. There wouldn't have been an immediate disaster, but the establishment would have consolidated its grasp on power and the US would have accelerated down its trajectory toward anarcho-tyranny. That evening I walked home under grey skies, made myself dinner, and then opened up twitter to see what was happening. I was expecting bad news, so I was pleasantly surprised that people were posting predictions of a Trump win. Still, it was early on, and I didn't want to get too optimistic. As the results rolled in, I stated to get excited. Could Trump actually win? Could he? As the predictions flipped from Clinton to Trump the cucks and progs started getting more and more nervous. Wa...

Both of us sat at the table and neither of us said anything. Or at least not anything much. Today was the day. I was leaving home. Grade 12 was finished. I had written the last final exam a few days ago. Now it was time to go and face the world. I had no idea where I was going, but I knew that I had to go. The pizza came with a free bottle of Coke, so we had pizza and Coke. My two cats bounded in and out of the apartment over the balcony. They knew what the backpack meant. They knew I was going away. They didn’t know forever. “Here Smiley,” I crooned, “Here Smingala.” They came to be petted and scratched. They purred as I rubbed noses with them. “Have you got enough warm clothes?” my mother asked. It was her way of expressing love: to be concerned about my survival. “Yes Mom, of course.” I said, and brushed my hair out of my face. There was nothing to be said. My backpack was on the balcony. It was an old green Trapper Nelson. I had packed it with my sleeping ...

Society is not just a collection of individuals. It is a power structure. That structure holds society together and allows it act as a unit. It gives society coherence and agency. Regardless of the nominal political system (democratic or otherwise), the social power structure will always be hierarchical, because a hierarchy is the only effective way to organize a large system. The establishment is the upper level of the social hierarchy. The establishment itself is a power structure. In the modern West, the establishment is complex, and few people view it as a unit. We are taught to view the components of the establishment as independent parts of society. In this essay, I will describe the establishment in terms of its component parts and how those parts are linked. In the modern West, the establishment has the following components: The government. The financial system. The owners of big capital. Politicians and political parties. The entertainment and new...