On Conspiracies

The word conspiracy means to plot in secret, often to harm others. Companies, political parties, and other organizations regularly do it. We aren't invited to their meetings. Yet we are subtly urged not to use the word conspiracy to describe such activities.

During just wars, just groups have good reasons for plotting in secret. Some other groups also have justifiable reasons for plotting in secret.

The phrase conspiracy theory is a combination straw person and circumstantial ad hominem attack used to dismiss opponents and treat them as mentally unhealthy. The phrase is used equivocally, meaning crazy, preposterous or a secret plot (or all three), often by establishments to associate critics with those who believe in alien abductions or other preposterous ideas. Calling alien abductions a conspiracy theory has little ethical importance. But the conspiracy theory phrase is a big deal when used to demonize well-reasoned political criticism.

Today, many facts get treated by establishments as "conspiracy theories." To name a few:

1. Marxian states failed to return some allied POWs.
2. Cultural Marxism not only exists, it is the major form of Marxism, with 71 percent of college freshmen opposing speech freedoms, but not their own speech freedoms, of course.
3. Fast jihad is Islamic and is done by Muslims.
4. We live in an intellectual climate far worse than McCarthyism. (The linked list is a fraction of those punished or threatened with punishment.)
5. Nonwhites have worse ethnoracial behavior than whites and their behavior gets worse when their numbers increase.
6. Words have more than one meaning: Jihad means both inner struggle and anti-Infidel totalitarianism, though the former meaning is used for equivocation to fool infidels.

Conspiracy matters are riddled with ironic contradictions. Writers pointing out plots by establishments get slurred as conspiracy theorists by establishment writers whose opinions are, in fact, preposterous.

Which Group Is More Ethnoracially Unethical? A or B?

A: Supports freedom of political speech for all.
B: Supports freedom of political speech for Muslims, establishments, and followers of Marx.

A: Opposes imperialism.
B: Supports anti-white imperialism.

A: Supports self-determination for all ethnoracial groups.
B: Supports self-determination for only Muslims and nonwhites not subjugated by Muslims.

A: Supports pan-Europeanism or pan-Arcticism.
B: Supports wars among whites, war against China, plus wars for egoism, cronyism, globalism, and cultural Marxism.

A: Supports evidence from science.
B: Supports scientism and junk science for the cause.

A: Allows philosophical diversity.
B: Acts as if humans must live in cultural Marxian ideological bubbles.

A: Uses slurs sometimes. Uses neutral terms sometimes.
B: Almost always uses ad hominem attacks to refer to ethnoracial fact facers.

A: Supports Austerity.
A: Supports Austerity.

A: Uses relevant statistics sometimes. Uses small samples sometimes.
B: Uses small sample fallacies for worldwide demonization of whites

A: Tolerates criticism.
B: Demonizes whites. Treats Muslims and nonwhites as if off limits to well-reasoned criticism.

A: Tolerates political dissenters.
B: Believes political dissenters should be fired, sued, assaulted, murdered or ostracized.

A: Supports eugenics.
B: Supports dysgenic totalitarianism.

A: Good, enforced fences make better neighbors.
B: Permits Muslims to do evils in infidel countries. Supports Muslim subjugation of infidels in Muslim countries. Permits nonwhites to do evils in white countries.

A: Supports self-reliance or ethnoracial self-help.
B: Sacrifices almost nothing themselves to help nonwhites but destroys the jobs, lives, wages, schools, nations, cultures, families, and neighborhoods of nonwealthy whites to help nonwhites. Demands cheap labor races to bottoms.

A: Sometimes supports merit. Often supports rent seeking.
B: Almost always supports rent seeking.

A: Sometimes democratic. Sometimes autocratic. Sometimes kleptocratic.

B: Almost always authoritarian kleptocratic.

A: Cares little about environment.

B: Pretends to care about environment.

A: Supports sustainable societies sometimes.

B: Supports dystopian hells in the name of equality and other buzzwords.

A: Capable of cognitive dissonance.

B: Seemingly unaware of thousands of self-contradictions.

A: Opposes cultural imperialism.

B: Supports cultural imperialism.

A: Sometimes acts as if claims should correspond with reality.

B: Acts as if repeating falsehoods turns them into facts.

A: Bait-and-switch, divide-and-screw.

B: Bait-and-switch, divide-and-screw more often.

A: Opposes genocide.

B: Supports anti-white genocide.

A needs some reforms. B does inverse weathervaning.

A List of Causal Factors and Other Ideas to Consider When Weighing Causal Claims

Let's say we plan to do a social science study or evaluate one or weigh an argument positing causes.

We should consider plausible alternative causal factors left out by a thinker.

I keep a book on my nightstand. When I read or think of a causal factor or other idea I should keep in mind, I sometimes write it in the first few pages of the book.

The list:
IQ, age, war, race, time, luck, laws, wealth, stress, fraud, zest, genes, diet, height, weight, BMI, wealth, income, culture, status, habits, power, gender, famine, crowding, apathy, egoism, altruism, anomie, placebo, nocebo (feeling harm from a harmless treatment), boredom, honesty, ethnicity, weather, fatigue, religion, diversity, seniority, incentives, geography, popularity, patience, hedonism, confusion, standards, novelty, naivete, sadism, nihilism, obeisance, anxiety, isolation, commitment, experience, solipsism, nationality, expectations, misanthropy, proximity, fanaticism, busyness, motivation, scientism, triumphalism, salience, replicability, ruminations, militarism, aggressiveness, suggestibility, masochism, desensitization, optimism, labor unions, obsessions, compulsions, groupthink, misandry, misogyny, careerism, xenocentrism, ethnocentrism, infrastructure, desensitization, self-loathing, nonbelief, corruption, ruthlessness, credentialism, cronyism, nepotism, competition, cooperation, victory, defeat, tax rates, tax targeting, participant compliance rates, street smarts, mortality rates, faulty study design, family size, tokenism, trustworthiness, skill level, arrival dates, leadership quality, overconfidence, underconfidence, one-sidedness, divorce rates, imitating others, democracy, non-democracy, self-pity, self-contradictions, noise levels, exercise levels, body image, employment status, confirmation bias, perceived weakness, career specialty, opportunity costs, pathogen load, educational level, youth bulges, genetic load, abortion rates, free riding, new discoveries, self-control, shared struggles, shared danger, unethical guilt, guilt proneness, shame proneness, false positives, false negatives, mutual causation, shell shock, Stockholm syndrome, witch hunting, misplaced loyalty, alliance quality, organization level, Hamilton's rule, educational field, absence of study controls, age at which a participant practiced a skill, perceived victimization, availability of distractions, feeling needed, perceived equality, unrepresentative sampling (including survivor bias and self-selection effects), ethical character, monocausal fallacies, body language, faulty study controls, voice tone, group polarization, development rates, job mobility, perceived fairness, drug use (including alcohol and smoking), improved police tactics, residential mobility, moral hazard, laziness, task persistence, hormone levels (testosterone, estrogen), crowd psychology, savings rates, monitoring effects (white man effect), study protocol violations, brain size, brain tumors, brain trauma, availability errors, halo effects, wedge issues, purposefulness, happiness, depression, despair, group cohesion, asceticism.

Plus some more: jealousy, anchoring (believing first claim heard on a subject), antinomianism, anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism, moral aestheticism, mechanical failures, math errors, hindsight error (easier to see errors after the event), chronic pain, acute pain, commitment level, conspicuous compassion, expected value, nutrient deficiencies, Duchenne smiles, political stability, single influential individual, repetition effects (believing claims repeated most often), other popularity effects, feeling entitled, celebrity worship, world weariness, legalized bribery, philosophical farsightedness, probability of success, belief in sacredness, small sample sizes, transitory situational factors, hyperbolic discounting, declining marginal utility, other cognitive impairments, enforcement or nonenforcement of standards, level of cognitive dissonance, perceived legitimacy, belief in karma, tit for tat, belief in ontological guilt (blood libel), inaccurate self-reports, tragedy of the commons, improved 911 service, substance poisoning (lead poisoning), publication bias, self-esteem, feeling superior, religious subtypes, the "big five" (openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism, extroversion, conscientiousness), framing effects (slanted questions, leading questions, and bad definitions), paradoxical effects, goal related effects, social skills, public policies, teacher quality, historical factors, teacher training, fatalistic beliefs, scaling effects (inaccurate extrapolation), relativistic beliefs, birth control rates, blood sugar levels, the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy), belief in scientism, peer group types, nation-state formation, divide-and-rule, time spent on activities, threshold effects (straw that breaks the back), social pressure, statistical insignificance, media influence, environmental aesthetics, study confederates influencing results, beliefs about hell, high, unstable self-esteem, chips on shoulders, faith in experts, length of employment, beliefs about grace, belief in authoritarianism, treasonous leadership, bait-and-switch, population increases, population decreases, faulty tests to measure alleged factors, study participants dropping out, fear of losing face, various other isms, chips on shoulders, non-parental environments, failure to ignore sunk costs, regression to the mean, ability to delay gratification, no causal relationship exists, perception of decay, follow the money, follow the power, errors due to random chance, belief in plausible deniability, homogeneous unrepresentative sampling, strength of will, time spent using electronics, browbeating and struggle sessions, viewing others as objects, reversing cause and effect, winner-take-all markets, results are statistically significant but too small to be important, swiftness and probability of punishment, monopoly and oligopoly effects, variance in genotypes and phenotypes, ratio of performance IQ to verbal IQ.

Wait.

I'm not done: number of working adults in a family or household, increased survival of big brained c-section babies, increased survival of small hip genotypes, belief in reciprocation, improved test taking skills, belief in exploiting weakness, belief that the feel good end justifies any means, belief that a feel good means justifies the result, ingroup and outgroup beliefs, improved emergency room medicine, economic opportunities in early adulthood, other technological factors, the probability of being caught, plus numerous other genetic and environmental factors I haven't thought of.

Good luck.

Figuring out causes is a pain in the rear.

"Correlation is not cause" is a banal statement. Correlation by itself does not prove cause is a better statement.

Most plausible study factors aren't looked at in most studies. Many studies are designed to fit the scientist's favored conclusions.

Six Loathsome Genres of Political Arguments

1. Trying to prop up atrocious ruling group worldviews by ridiculing something worse (the Westboro Baptist Church, for example).
2. The man or woman of "reason."
3. The team or party stands for [insert specious platitudes]. Popular among the likes of George Will, David Brooks, Paul Krugman, and party platform writers. Bait-and-switch, divide-and-screw.
4. Contradicted by reality: neoconservatives and Third Wayers pretending they support America and democracy, egalitarians pretending they support equality, neoconservatives and Third Wayers pretending to be pro-worker, multiculturalists pretending they own the moral high ground.
5. Fake centrism: mixing totalitarian ideas from left and right (Randism, neoconservatism, third wayism).
6. Pretending to defend the nation but in reality, more divide-and-screw profiteering, salami slicing, shoring up political support or escalating tit for tat.

More Contradictions

Helicopter parents fret about the miniscule probability their children will be abducted by strangers, but act unconcerned about the high probability their children will be indoctrinated with hedonism, nihilism, neoconservatism, third wayism or biocultural Marxism.

Almost nobody tells these parents that their childrens' phenotype IQs not vary much from their genotype IQs by adulthood, no matter how many faddish "enriching activities" parents provide. Children are far more likely to die driving to and from an enriching activity than die from abduction by strangers.

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We're supposed to believe white racism is society's greatest evil, yet any behavior multiculturalists don't like, including ethical behaviors, can get whites fired, sued, unhired, boycotted, assaulted or ostracized.

And far worse actions by multiculturalists get ignored by establishments.

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Multiculturalists demonize Westerners for refusing to take more "refugees" during World War II, but multiculturalists refuse to take white refugees at risk of genocide in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Those former refugees had moral duties to stand and fascism and Marxism. Instead, they left the fighting to others.

And Muslim migrants should not be labeled refugees.

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They think: "democracy is a certain way of thinking, a specific set of opinions, and if you do not share them, then you aren’t democratic, and then we condemn you and you ought to be eliminated. The People? That is not democratic. We the Elite, we are democracy."

Human Reasoning Tendencies

Some who easily change beliefs have little willingness to stand up for those beliefs. They change beliefs with social pressure and feel good fads more than ethical evidence. In other words, they act wishy-washy not because they are guided by good evidence, but because they are easy to trick with rotten ideas.

Others care little about ethical beliefs, except trudging forward or backward with their own egoism, hedonism or selflessness. Just do it might be their motto.

Still others, pretend. They say, "Bro, do you even science?" But they wall off most of the moral universe to good reasoning. They think of themselves as scientific, philosophical, and open minded, but in practice, they use intuitions on moral issues, often reserving good reasoning for self-interest or the natural sciences. Albert Einstein was a paradigm case of this type.

Many unconsciously anchor with what they heard first or float with what they hear often.

Then we have those with minds even more closed to ethical reasoning. They will fight hard for whatever horrible ideas they have. They are also easy to manipulate, but once they choose a belief system, or more specifically, a team, they will fight like hell for the team. In tribes, they team up for life, unless they are sold, bartered or kidnapped. Evidence on individual issues seems irrelevant to them. Team beliefs on an issue matter more. That's why Trump was loudly booed for saying there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (unless we define Islam, endogamy, and demography as weapons.) Trump's claim violated still existing team beliefs. And that team is no fan of Trump's team. Some switch teams for ideological reasons--David Brock and P.J. O'Rourke, for example--but devotion to a team often remains.

In tribes, even the most preposterous superstitions manage to survive.

The old witticism about a liberal being so tolerant that he will not take his own side in a fight now seems like a sick, cruel joke.

The fanaticism of establishments is so great that even societal or personal ruin might not change their beliefs. They attribute ruin to their political enemies and anything but their own egoism, militarism, and multiculturalism, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. Every Western city could be in ashes, and they would still chant the R word as the main cause.

The fact that contemporary mass media are able to create such fanaticism, combined with so much glitz, is both creepy and horrifying.

The above is neither an exhaustive nor non-overlapping list of tendencies. Some individuals move from one tendency to another. Many other tendencies exist, especially policing the boundaries of acceptable myths, keeping out unwanted facts with straw person and ad hominem attacks, plus searching for reasons to feel morally superior to others, without having to make any sacrifices oneself.

We could write thousands of books describing logical fallacies, psychological errors, and ethical wrongs.

But I will eat a roll of paper towels if anyone can show me an establishment donor, thinker or politician who gathers and accurately weighs the good points from various sides.

How do we teach and eugenically build better humans out of that mess? Contemporary logic and ethics textbooks are atrocious. Today's parents and thought leaders likely dysgenically engineer children to be worse.

But improving reasoning is even more important than increasing intelligence.

The Demonization of Eugenics

For those who demonize eugenics with ad hominem attacks or fallacious appeals to tradition regarding Nazism: Why the inconsistency?

Why not demonize the thousands of other sciences and technologies practiced by Nazism? No more physics, chemistry, medicine, agriculture, and so on. Why not demonize the Islam, atheism, occultism, Lutheranism, and Catholicism practiced by Hitler's supporters?

And don't say it is because eugenics is evil and the others good.

Eugenics is beneficial. Otherwise no ethical humans or other animals would have evolved. An earth with only single celled organisms would be a worse place, as would an earth filled with ISIS supporters.

Hitler didn't practice eugenics. Hitler's allies practiced dysgenics, murdering individuals smarter and more ethical than themselves.

Many other fields produce numerous benefits but overall worse consequences than eugenics.

Physics brought us nuclear weapons. Biology brings bioweapons. Automotive and petroleum technologies cause evils of sprawl, OPEC, diversity, lung cancer, corruption, collision deaths, and jihad funding. Electronics technology helps indoctrinate billions with Islam, Randism, Marxism, Nazism, neoconservatism, multiculturalism, and third wayism.

Islam spread the hyper tribalism of Arabia to hundreds of countries.

Demonize dysgenics instead. Should we believe it better for individuals devoted to rent seeking, often with justified criminal convictions, to outbreed ethical citizens? We shouldn't help those with genes for aggression breed with gusto, yet we do.

Do liberal opponents of "idiocracy" not realize they're criticizing dysgenics and providing de facto support for eugenics?

Is cowardice so great they can't bring themselves to believe ethical facts that establishments oppose, even when there is little cost and many potential benefits? What will the establishments do? Hunt us down because we read about eugenics on the internet? Establishments have plenty of more self-interested reasons for wanting to crush us. We can keep eugenics beliefs to ourselves if necessary. We can also politely argue with acquaintances and their fanaticism about eugenics. Acquaintances may dump you, but big deal. Do you want to be acquainted with those who will not face easy facts?

Multitudes of individuals have been assaulted or murdered for telling the truth to multiculturalists or their Muslim pals, but has anyone been assaulted or murdered in the West merely for having eugenic beliefs?

The Return to High Growth: What Would Do It

Recent arguments focus on the preposterousness of returning to high growth with Democratic and Republican Party prescriptions, raising the question of whether any set of policies would achieve high growth.

Yes, they could by:

1. Enacting large Pigouvian taxes on negative externalities.
2. Stopping migration to the West.
3. Reducing one-sided, totalitarian trade ("free trade").
4. Sending most secondary students to work or vocational schools.
5. Enacting eugenic policies.
6. Eliminating the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and the Department of Homeland Security. (No army, no COIN. Less temptation to pivot to Asia or elsewhere. Let fake allies pay for their own armies. And less temptation for the ruling groups to use the military against American civilians.)
7. Providing fiscal stimulus equal to shortfalls in demand.
8. Strictly regulating finance.
9. Slashing government spending on post-secondary schools, bringing back civil service exams.
10. Increasing taxes on the super rich.
11. Eliminating most tax entitlements.
12. Eliminating payroll taxes.
13. Paying Muslims and other individuals of mass destruction to leave the West.
14. Implementing thousands of other reforms.

But these are policies establishment parties will not do.

Big Ben and the Benjamins

The late Ben Wattenberg claimed neoconservatism is about reducing crime. Yet Wattenberg's articles were devoted to promoting cultural Marxism and the career of Joe Lieberman, the former senator devoted to militarism, Wall Street, cultural Marxism, and grandstanding on minor issues. (Don't wait too long for that tough on Wall Street crime article from neoconservatism.)

Wattenberg also said neoconservatism would be more popular if it were called chocolate.

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Tough on crime Democrats and Republicans are surprisingly pro-rich and anti-worker, as if the tough on crime stance is a pretext to increase establishment power. Crime reduction and pro-worker policies are a double movement of the soul the modern politician dares not enact.