The Wayward Axolotl

Modern civilization has given us abundance. It allows us to easily satisfy many of our desires. When we are hungry, it is easy to get food. When we feel cold, we can turn up the thermostat, or put on a sweater. When we feel hot, we can turn on the air conditioning, or get a cold drink from the refrigerator. Few of us do hard labor for a living. We don’t come home exhausted after a long day’s work in the fields. We don’t have to worry about predators. Interpersonal violence is rare. We have homes that are safe, comfortable and convenient. Most of our basic desires are satisfied. Yet, we are not happy. Abundance has made it easy to satisfy many of our desires, but we are not satisfied. If we can easily satisfy a desire, such as hunger, then it fades into the background. We still feel hunger, but it isn’t a major driver of our thoughts and actions, because it is easily satisfied. When we feel hunger, we simply eat and it is gone. We don’t experience the depths of hunger that our a...

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Recently the UK denied entry to Brittany Pettibone, Martin Sellner, and Lauren Southern, all of whom are right-wing activists/commentators. Martin and Brittany were going to give a speech at Speaker’s Corner in London, a supposed haven for free speech. Brittany was also going to interview Tommy Robinson, a UK citizen and right-wing activist. Lauren was going to meet with Tommy, Brittany and Sellner. The grounds were as follows: Martin: Member of Generation Identitaire, might disturb “local communities”. Brittany: Going to speak with known “extremist” Tommy Robinson. Lauren: Past “racism” in the UK, consisting of a social experiment in which she distributed flyers saying “Allah is gay” (an attempt to expose hypocrisy). I don’t know the exact process by which it occurred, but I can make some guesses. Probably “anti-hate” groups (left-wing, of course) informed government bureaucrats and/or politicians that Martin, Brittany, and Lauren were coming to the UK. Then, either bureaucrats ...

We live in strange times. In many ways, things have never been better. The world is mostly peaceful. Poverty has decreased in most parts of the world. Globally, most children live to adulthood, probably for the first time in human history. In developed societies, such as the US, almost everyone has adequate food and shelter. The kings of old would have boggled at the array of food in a typical grocery store. We have little gadgets that allow us to easily communicate with friends, family and strangers around the world in less than a second. We live in an era of relative peace and prosperity that, by almost any measure, is the best of times. And yet, it feels as if we are living in end times. In many ways, the future has never seemed so bleak. The engines of progress have stalled. New problems are emerging that humanity seems unable to understand and acknowledge, let alone solve. These new problems include population growth, dysgenics, finite resources, and the mismatch between huma...

There is a lot of confusion over the concept of regression to the mean, so I thought I would try to explain what it is, and what it isn't. Let's start with a very simple example. Suppose you have 10 6-sided dice. Assume that these dice are all fair, so that the expected value on any given roll is 3.5. You roll each die once. Then you select the 5 dice that rolled the highest and set them aside. Probably the average of the top 5 dice is higher than 3.5, simply because you selected the highest rollers. Now roll those 5 dice a second time. Probably the average of the second roll is lower than the first: something closer to 3.5. That is regression to the mean. If you select a sample based on the measurement of a random variable X, the value of X within the sample is a biased estimator of X. Future measurements of X will tend to "regress" to the mean of X. No physical process is involved in this. It is simply the removal of sample bias by a second measurement or experime...

This is an excerpt from a book that I am writing. I am sitting in a coffee shop in Seattle, Washington. A few minutes ago, something amazing happened. I walked up to the counter, made eye contact with the pretty girl behind it, and said “Medium drip coffee, please”. She took my money, said “Thank you”, and gave me back some change. Then she asked me “Do you want room for cream?”. I said “Yes”. She poured coffee into a cup and handed it to me. I said “Thank you”. Then I found a table, sat down, and began to write. As I have just described it, the event was not remarkable at all. It was just a little slice of ordinary life. Behind that simple description, however, there lies an enormous amount of complexity. Once you start unraveling that complexity, it seems amazing that such an event could take place. For some reason, my brain generated the intention to buy a cup of coffee. That intention was selected from an almost infinite number of possibilities. Somehow, I knew that I coul...

In case you follow this blog and not my YT channel, I am posting a couple of links here. I created an ebook. It is a compilation of (mostly) cleaned up blog posts and video texts, with some new stuff. It makes a great last minute gift for your liberal uncle. Check it out here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078H8KJLK. I have another book in the works, but I thought I would put out this one first. If you use discord and want to talk to me, you can find me on discord here: https://discord.gg/zfMtWK2. Merry Christmas!