October 6, 2010

Why I like Mark Zuckerberg

The movie The Social Network exaggerates how asocial the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is in its efforts to make him look like the world's biggest jerk. In comparison to the sneer with which Jesse Eisenberg plays him, Zuckerberg has a likable smile (and the computer nerd is even a little better looking than the movie star who plays him).

Judging from interviews, when Zuckerberg starts explaining something complicated, he stops trying to charm the interviewer and just focuses on the middle distance and lets his face go blank. His expression isn't hostile like in Eisenberg's performance, it's just neutral because he's concentrating on the logic of what he's trying to say. He's a monotasker. (I do the same thing -- if I'm being engaging and personable, well, you can tell I'm not thinking that hard. But, if I stop looking at you and start speaking in a monotone, then I probably found your question very interesting.) When Zuckerberg tries to spin something he did for money, like the recent privacy default settings imbroglio, he tends to sweat a lot: in other words, he's not an expert conman. This awkwardness makes it easy for The Social Network to attack Zuckerberg, but I like that in somebody that rich and powerful.

Still, as The Social Network emphasizes,  Zuckerberg's traits might seem, on the surface, ironic for the founder of the top social networking firm.

For example, unlike all the millions who go on Facebook (or Twitter or their blog) to alert their hundreds of close friends that they are going to the grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk and some toilet paper, Zuckerberg is quite private. And, relative to most billionaires (and contrary to the impression fostered by the movie), he also doesn't seem to be that socially or sexually ambitious, as the paparazzi pictures from Roissy's blog that I linked to in my review of the movie suggest.

Of course, when you stop and think about it, the kind of person who would likely do a better job of abstracting out the rules of how social interactions work is exactly like Zuckerberg: somebody who is not at all autistic, but who is just enough outside the human personality mainstream, just enough Mr. Spock-like, to be struck by, say, the fact that people like to tell you stuff about their day that isn't very important; and that, therefore, you could get rich by giving people a computerized way to efficiently tell even more people stuff about their day that isn't very important. 

Similarly, Adam Smith was good at thinking about making money in general because he didn't spend all that much time thinking about making money for himself in particular.

Ironically, in Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, however, Zuckerberg is the antihero because he says out loud the kind of things that everybody feels. In the now-famous opening scene that establishes him as the bad guy, his girlfriend dumps him for saying things like that he wants to social climb into higher circles. Why in the world would he want to do that? "Because they're exclusive and fun and they lead to a better life."

That makes Zuckerberg a bad person because you aren't supposed to say that (you are just supposed to do that).

Zuckerberg is a fish who notices that he, and all the other fish, are wet. 

Obviously, I rather identify with Zuckerberg (minus the seven billion dollars).

If my one important insight is that race and genealogy are more or less all part of the same thing -- that a racial group is a partly inbred extended family, a definition that makes how the world works simpler to understand in many ways -- then the reason I noticed that in the abstract is because I care a little bit less than most people about things like race and genealogy at the personal level. For a variety of reasons, I'm slightly less invested emotionally in such things than the median person.

And because I say out loud stuff I've figured out about how the game is played, that makes me a bad person. 

Perhaps. It's possible that if I succeed in explaining to more people more about how the game is played, that will lead to all sorts of horrible consequences because I, due to my mild personality, just don't understand how horrible people would be to each other if they found out the truth. 

Or, possibly, the people who are winning at the game right now just don't want more competition from the currently clueless.

I don't know.

89 comments:

Mike Courtman said...

Off topic, but I'd just like to alert everyone to Randall Parker's suggestion for a mass blog posting today/tomorrow on behalf of Geert Wilders, see: http://www.parapundit.com/archives/007537.html

PRCalDude said...

This was similar in tone to your essay that began, "As a long time admirer of Israel..."

headache said...

The real question is how you could make seven billion dollars out of your theory of race and genealogy?

But of course you are right. Sarrazin, who is a kind of German iSteve, got sacked from his job because he made a thoughtless comment about a certain group, which we must not name, who are better at this game than Germans.


@Mike Courtman: Geert Wilders is a fake. I still cannot figure out exactly why the money men running western society (see Steve's post) are financing him, but I have a hunch that he is supposed to draw the air out of any nationalist movement springing up in Holland and Europe. Those who finance him are obviously more afraid of European nationalism than they are of Islam.

Anonymous said...

I once told a guy about all the ideas on race that I've stolen from Steve...

And he said to me "You're the person who starts wars"

Admittedly I am still nursing a wound over that one....cuz I think I'm the least likely person to start a war (muahAhahAhahahAhah)

But I think HE would be the type to start a war based upon such knowledge....so really these people who find such ideas so scary are just projecting or trying to supress their own violent tendencies.

Anonymous said...

Sailer compares himself to Zuckerberg.

That reminds me of how Dinesh D'souza compares himself to Obama.

Hilarious

Wanderer said...

the reason I noticed [racial differences] in the abstract is because I care a little bit less than most people about things like race and genealogy at the personal level.

I'm not sure I understand that logic.

The real question, I think, is why you decided in the '90s to start writing about it. Whereas most people today would (and do) self-censor out of desire for social-respectability.

Whyever that was, the world is much better that you decided to "live not by lies" (to quote the banner at the top of the old isteve.com).

Anonymous said...

It is hard to argue with the money he earned, but I am not very impressed with facebook or what it does.

Most people would have a hard time making a personal web page. Facebook makes it very simple and throws in a sort of blog (the wall). When I started an ISP every user got a personal web host (a directory where whatever files they put in showed up on the web as http://myisp.com/~username. It was just clunky, most of the users friends would not know how to look at their web page most users could not publish their web pages.

facebook made all that simple. go to their URL, register, upload pictures and content. The only thing original is the idea of opening your page to friends and closing it to others. My old ISP allowed users to password protect their personal page but "frending" someone is easier than sending them a password for your page.

Personally I think facebook is destined to be subsumed by the next development pretty soon. I think it is pretty clunky. Does anyone use frendster or whatever that was called anymore?

Anonymous said...

Zuck was charismatic enough to convince highly skilled men to abandon their plans to join him in a campaign for world domination against the combined forces of Newscorp (Myspace), Google (Orkut), Friendster, Yahoo, etc.

There are so many people who've been propagating the notion that "nerd with Aspergers" is the only personality for someone of quantitative bent. It's not. As entrepreneurs, Zuck, Gates, Andreesen, and the like are analogs of *admirals* and *generals*. Go back and read their biographies. It's amazing how many top military men were not necessarily physically imposing, but had a head for logistics and an ability to inspire a certain class of men to give their all. Still other flag officers commanded the respect of their peers because of their indispurtable martial accomplishmemts; this too is true for every engineer at Facebook, who knows that Zuck could pick
up a terminal and simply *do* that guy's job if he had to.

SFG said...

"It's possible that if I succeed in explaining to more people more about how the game is played, that will lead to all sorts of horrible consequences because I, due to my mild personality, just don't understand how horrible people would be to each other if they found out the truth.

Or, possibly, the people who are winning at the game right now just don't want more competition from the currently clueless."

Are the possibilities mutually exclusive? I think both are true. Yes, we'll see lots more racial violence, and yes, my distant relatives are worried about a repeat of Germany in the 30s.

Anonymous said...

I found this post surprisingly moving. I had not expected you to write so well about yourself (not that I think you lack self-knowledge or something, it's just a different talent.) I would like to see more blogging like this.

jack strocchi said...

Steve S. said:

Similarly, Adam Smith was good at thinking about making money in general because he didn't spend all that much time thinking about making money for himself in particular.

For quite a while after leaving school I was clueless about how to make friends, get girls and make money. I compensated by reading up on the subject and became better at average in the social science of these subjects. A kind of scholarly voyeur of the world.

But it was only when I stopped studying these things intellectually and started doing them instinctively that I actually got ahead and make friends, got girls and made a bit of money.

I think this is what Oakeshott was talking about when he wrote his essay "Rationalism in Politics".

Knopfelmacher always used to say Jews made good social scientists because they were somewhat alienated from the gentile world and so could analyse it with some degree of objectivity.

jack strocchi said...

Steve S. said:

If my one important insight is that race and genealogy are more or less all part of the same thing -- that a racial group is a partly inbred extended family, a definition that makes how the world works simpler to understand in many ways -- then the reason I noticed that in the abstract is because I care a little bit less than most people about things like race and genealogy at the personal level.

It's possible that if I succeed in explaining to more people more about how the game is played, that will lead to all sorts of horrible consequences because I, due to my mild personality, just don't understand how horrible people would be to each other if they found out the truth.


Knopfelmacher used to say that just as sex was the old taboo of the 19thC so race was the new taboo of the 20thC. By which he meant that there were good reasons to make rational analysis of sex and race out of bounds from polite society on account of the demonic social forces that could be unleashed once the lid had been lifted off the can of worms.

History shows he had a point. Sex and race tap into such powerful human emotions that reason, by comparison, is a very thin reed in that storm.

Victorian Darwinians and the eugenics movement were scientific and well-meaning intellectuals. But they did give the nationalist political program quite a thick veneer of scientific respectability.

Likewise Kinsey, Masters & Johnson et al were scientific and well-meaning medical professionals. But they did give Hefner and Flynt and pornographic hucksters thick veneer of scientific respectability.

So the taboos against analysing sex and race, though not rationally defensible, served a reasonable social purpose. Once the taboos are lifted there are elemental instincts that can completely overcome the quite mild-mannered intentions of the taboo-challengers (whether they be Kinsey or Sailer).

Of course there is little danger of h-bd resulting in the resurrection of the Third Reich. But alot of Left-liberals (especially Jewish) do think that way for obvious reasons. And given their history one can hardly blame them.

ricpic said...

Have no fear about how horrible people would behave if they found out the truth (about what makes them tick) because just as quickly as they had discovered the truth they would forget it. It's the forgetting and then rediscovering and then forgetting and then...that keeps humanity from dying of boredom.

Anonymous said...

Zuckerburg is no more clued in about human nature than your average Harvard student. I think his invention took on a life of its own. Like Napster.

I mean, did he really predict how popular Facebook would be at its inception? Perhaps reality TV clued him in to the fervid desire of the average nobody to be noticed, to the point that they are willing to humiliate themselves on national TV, sometimes with fatal consequences later.

Kylie said...

Steve Sailer said..."It's possible that if I succeed in explaining to more people more about how the game is played, that will lead to all sorts of horrible consequences because I, due to my mild personality, just don't understand how horrible people would be to each other if they found out the truth."

I don't think you understand how horrible people are to each other now. It's the only failure of imagination I've ever detected in your writing.

No offense intended. It should be obvious by now that there is no one whose ideas and writing I respect as much as yours.

Anonymous said...

Are you going to cry dude?

DCThrowback said...

I'll step up and defend the application that is Facebook. It's simple. It's free. It's easy to use. Stealing Jeff Jarvis' idea, it allows you to organize your friends for quick reference whenever you need to find them. You can catch up on what others are doing without picking up the phone (an advance this guy really appreciates).

It can be as little used as you want it to be (just a spot to let people get a hold of you) or you can be involved as you like (mafia wars and farmville). And, did I mention, it's free?

Zuckerberg did the hard work, did all the programming and built it from scratch. He deserves all the credit in the world for his value loaded invention.

He saw the truth in people - that folks believe that whatever they are doing, others will find just as interesting. Either that, or we like to have a central place to show off pictures of our trip to the Grand Canyon or kids where everyone can see them.

Anonymous said...

Knopfelmacher always used to say Jews made good social scientists

Was he being tongue in cheek?

KallenK said...

I want Steve Sailer to friend me, but he won't open a Facebook account.

AllanF said...

And because I say out loud stuff I've figured out about how the game is played, that makes me a bad person.

Interesting you point this out in a post that references Roissy. I'm sure you're aware the same can be said of them. I think that's the appeal that accounts for the overlap between the HBD'ers and the PUA'ers. Social convention is an abstraction for <ahem> us. There is a protocol and we can't help but analyzing and reverse engineering it into a set of "rules".

It sounds "Aspergery" and it sort of is, but the difference is realizing (and coming to peace with) the "rules" as generalizations, not absolutes. That's why Aspergers and and so many other hard engineer types don't succeed. They can't handle the grey area as an absolute turns into a generalization.

Garland said...

Keep buttering up Zuckerberg; hopefully he will eventually notice you, be flattered, read your stuff, be at least semi-converted, and ditch the Bill Gates act he's up to in Newark and use his money for some of your more practical IQ-related suggestions. It can happen!

Anonymous said...

wow roissy is creepy

please never link to him again

I feel like a rapist just reading him.

:shudder:

Jeff said...

Ultimately, a film like this causes people to focus on the wrong things.

What made Facebook a success was not the psyche of its tortured founder or even the concept(as commonly noted, sites like Facebook already existed at its founding).

It's the execution!!! Facebook is a well designed site that's super easy and intuitive to use. The site never crashes and is amazingly quick (unlike twitter). The design was and is much better than its competitors (just look at myspace or Orkut).

I think the real story behind Facebook is much more boring. Zuckerberg and company worked really, really hard to make a great product better than their competitors.

Anonymous said...

Anyone hear of Friendster? When Facebook came out it was a copy of Friendster where the pages actually loaded quickly. Friendster came out years before Facebook, but because of high traffic, poor coding, and lack of investment in servers, the pages took forever to load (if at all). The main innovation in Facebook -- the news feed -- came years after it was launched, and was not Zuckerberg's idea. Zuck is a good database programmer and fairly intelligent, but more lucky than anything.

Whiskey said...

Re Zuckerberg. While monogamy may be a time saver, I think we are at the end, of the kind of smart entrepreneur, like Zuckerberg, or Gates, or Henry Ford, and in the age of Mark Cuban, or Vince McMahon, or Donald Trump. The Deal Maker.

The Entrepreneur may be possessed of frightening ego and charisma (Jobs, Ellison at Oracle) but mostly is mild. Deal makers like Cuban or Trump are different, being famous and such is part of their schtick, and monogamy is definitely not on the menu.

California is a community property, palimony state, Zuckerberg is definitely at risk there. I find it notable that Bill Gates had to go wife hunting in his company's project manager division, women were not exactly throwing themselves at him despite his wealth and power. Melinda Gates IIRC was responsible for Microsoft Bob, and not much else. Was it her influence the Gates Foundation forbids White applicants? I would not be shocked if Zuck's G/F leaves him and files a palimony suit.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you seem awfully proud of the fact that you state something trivial, though controversial, and that you spend most of your time writing sarcastic posts about non-white groups. Maybe you should spend more time offering concrete solutions to society's racial maladies, instead of deriving so much joy from the unfortunate plight of blacks and Hispanics.

Fred said...

I find it interesting that few commenters so far can wrap their heads around the possibility that Sailer is actually playing it straight in praising Zuckerberg. Sailer may do his share of tweaking Jews, but as with Tom Wolfe, one can't be that insightful about any group of people without having some level of admiration and affection for them.

I get the feeling that's the case with other groups Steve writes about as well, which is rare and refreshing in this usually dark and bitter corner of the Internet. That's also why Steve (and Tom) are so funny. Humor normally requires a certain spirit of goodwill; anger, hate, and bitterness aren't funny.

Steve Sailer said...

In terms of getting superrich, you have to be at the right place at the right time, work really hard, and not screw up. You don't necessarily have to have "vision" (although it can certainly help). The Facebook people didn't have vast amounts of vision, but they had enough to keep themselves in position to be able to make decisions about where the product should go as they learned more about what customers wanted. And they kept making the right decisions. A lot of that is luck, but a lot of it is working superhard.

Another part is having just the right amount of ego: You have to believe that what you are doing is worth more than the absurd amounts of money that Yahoo and Microsoft are offering your for the company, and you have to be able to communicate that confidence to your minions, but not have so much ego that you stop listening to suggestions and stop revising.

headache said...

Why did you censor my post Steve? There was nothing obnoxious in there.

Severn said...

A previous entry:

Of course, to understand other people, you have to bear in mind various verboten hatestats, so my efforts to be broadly empathetic have made me broadly hated.


This one:

And because I say out loud stuff I've figured out about how the game is played, that makes me a bad person.


Don't let the bastards get you down, Steve.

Severn said...

In terms of getting superrich, you have to be at the right place at the right time, work really hard, and not screw up.



And it helps to be moderately rich and well-connected to begin with.

Severn said...

Of course there is little danger of h-bd resulting in the resurrection of the Third Reich. But alot of Left-liberals (especially Jewish) do think that way for obvious reasons.



It's not obvious to me that what Jews think ought to determine the direction of Western civilization. Especially if that direction is into the gutter.

If they find us so horrible and scary, well, the door's open.

Severn said...

Are the possibilities mutually exclusive? I think both are true. Yes, we'll see lots more racial violence, and yes, my distant relatives are worried about a repeat of Germany in the 30s.



There's actually a time honored solution to this. A place for every people, and every people in its place. But your distant relatives are determined that this not occur.

Dahinda said...

"Or, possibly, the people who are winning at the game right now just don't want more competition from the currently clueless."

It don't matter why Steve, just keep up the good work!

Evil Sandmich said...

I want Steve Sailer to friend me, but he won't open a Facebook account.

That's because Facebook, like Zuckerberg, is evil.

Anonymous said...

The Facebook people didn't have vast amounts of vision

Facebook platform, the news feed, and the open graph were pretty visionary.

Regarding whether it was "luck" that Friendster went down and Facebook stays up: it is not luck. Among large conpanies, Facebook
Engineering is tne strongest group in the Valley, pound for pound. Only Google can compare. There is a LOT of very sophisticated computer science involved in scaling a service to accomodate hundreds of millions of simultaneous users. Take a look at Thrift or some of the Youtube talks by Tom Cook. Or read about Haystack, and realize that FB has the single largest collection of photos on the internet, with highly random access patterns.

FB probably needs a PR campaign to show people that building something at that scale is rocket science. There is a reason Myspace and Friendster could not compete, and that reason is IQ.

Anonymous said...

I still don't get Facebook. The world is full of creeps. Why would you want to put your private life out there, forever. Do you really want to embarrass your great-great grandchildren.

Maybe everybody should put counters on the bottom of their Facebook page for number of times farted, burped, masturbated, said something stupid in public, got rejected by a smart attractive person, discovered a skid mark in underwear, noticed underarm odor or halitosis, found blood on dental floss, stabbed filling station attendant with a sharpie, etc

David Davenport said...

California is a community property, palimony state, Zuckerberg is definitely at risk there....

Steve, I suggest that you do a piece on PayPal founder (and also Tesla and SpaceX founder)Elon Musk.

Elon's getting divorced, and he claims that he's broke.

Anonymous said...

I saw the movie and really liked it. (I am in rare disagreement with Steve on this one.) I found the dialogue highly subtextual and nuanced. Despite the film's outward portrayal of the Winklevii as heroes, I believe the script oozed with scathing jabs at them--Sorkin showing tribal solidarity, presumably. For example, when they go to see Larry Summers, he says "how did you two get in here? That's dishonesty!" It seems the writer is alluding they got into Harvard through family connections, not merit.

OhioStater said...

The funny thing about the movie is the key players were fat, happy, and content before Facebook entered their lives and ended up miserable after.

Money doesn't make you happy.

Rohan Swee said...

jack strocchi: Of course there is little danger of h-bd resulting in the resurrection of the Third Reich. But alot of Left-liberals (especially Jewish) do think that way for obvious reasons. And given their history one can hardly blame them.

How many epicycles have to be added to the denial system, how destructive does denial have to get, before you stop letting people off the hook for good intentions?

It's one thing to play "let's pretend" in circumstances where the consequences are relatively innocuous. A small dose of racial affirmative action and lip-service to "diversity" in 1960 America would have had little consequence, and that arguably more positive than negative. It's a bit more difficult to keep thinking "one can hardly blame them" after a half-century of denial soldered to actively pursued displacement, balkanizing identity politics, and out-and-out villification of white men.

Can hardly blame them? Left-liberals, right-liberals, conservatives, Jews, Irish, Esquimaux, Catholic, Buddhist, Jains, my sainted grandmother, anybody who engages in this, you name 'em I'll blame 'em.

Anonymous said...

"Knopfelmacher always used to say Jews made good social scientists because they were somewhat alienated from the gentile world and so could analyse it with some degree of objectivity."

Well, great; but when, exactly, does Knopfelmacher suggest that Jewish social scientists will start analysing "the gentile world" objectively? 100 years from now? 1,000 years from now? Because they haven't done it yet; indeed most of their "objectivity" is barely concealed hostility.

Also funny how the reverse rule never seems to apply; goyim are never considered to be objective in their analysis of Jews, ever, no matter how closely they adhere to objective standards.

The reason for the double standard is easy to see: the same people are defining "the rules" in both cases, and it ain't the lowly goyim who are setting the standard here.

headache said...

OK, hows this for a kick-start to that 7 billion Dollars:
Most people, against the conventional wisdom, are extremely interested in their racial makeup. SO maybe a network system, where having the DNA of family or even distant relations, can aggregate the genetics according to the genealogy. So you enter your family tree, others join in, and as people enter their genetic data you can use that to make predictions for those who have not had theirs tested yet. Kind-of a Facebook with genetics as input/output and genealogy as structure.

Svigor said...

Of course there is little danger of h-bd resulting in the resurrection of the Third Reich. But alot of Left-liberals (especially Jewish) do think that way for obvious reasons. And given their history one can hardly blame them.

^^^^
That's what happens when you let them take over your schools; you get pod people like this poor fellow. Gulag? Is that like a Polish stew or something?

Nick said...

"Maybe you should spend more time offering concrete solutions to society's racial maladies, instead of deriving so much joy from the unfortunate plight of blacks and Hispanics."

And what about cold fusion and interstellar travel, Steve? I'm waiting . . . Or perhaps virtual reality that will make the living world obsolete. Or, best of all, time machines to eliminate all the injustices of history. Lefties should really be working on that one, I guess. I should bring that up next time I see one.

For the record, Steve *does* present policy, these suggestions will just never be considered until the underlying truth is accepted. Till then we'll just keep working at the impossible.

Finally, if Steve and the rest of us HBDers truly took pleasure in NAM failure, our lives would be unending ecstasy. It'd be more than just a bit of mordant wit, which in and of itself is hardly evidence of hysterical joy.

Svigor said...

[...]

Another part is having just the right amount of ego: You have to believe that what you are doing is worth more than the absurd amounts of money that Yahoo and Microsoft are offering your for the company, and you have to be able to communicate that confidence to your minions, but not have so much ego that you stop listening to suggestions and stop revising.

Steve, that's vision.

Svigor said...

Knopfelmacher always used to say Jews made good social scientists because they were somewhat alienated from the gentile world and so could analyse it with some degree of objectivity.

Would help the observation if they actually made good social scientists, which, in the aggregate, they do not. Way too many axes to grind.

GD said...

I find it notable that Bill Gates had to go wife hunting in his company's project manager division

Why is this notable? A lot of self-made wealthy men meet their wives through work, as they're workaholics who spend 80% of their time at the office. The only difference is that nowadays she's less likely to be the cliched secretary of yore, and more likely to be a professional.

The monogamous billionaire seems to be a programmer phenomenon - Zuck & other young men like both Google founders, the youtube guys, etc. are positively monastic compared to Gates, who was at least linked with several women before marrying Melinda.

My ex-gf's mom does event-planning in the Bay Area & she much prefers working tech events to the show biz ones. Partly because couples tend to stay together long-term & she doesn't have to scramble & do additional research before each event to be able to provide personalized service to the new flavor of the month.

What's funny about people like Trump is that they really seem to want to be married even though they are so bad at it. He's married, what, 3-4 times? He's lost millions in each divorce. He already has kids. And yet he keep doing it. Ron Perelman's another one.

Has to be said...

"There's actually a time honored solution to this. A place for every people, and every people in its place."

You are welcome to be my serf.

helene edwards said...

Anon: you poor thing. You haven't realized yet that those unfortunate blacks and browns have more rights than you do. And Steve's not sarcastic toward them, so much as toward those who insist on covering up for them. Big difference.

Severn said...

You are welcome to be my serf.



I'm not following you. Perhaps you're a little too terse.

Chuck said...

Perhaps. It's possible that if I succeed in explaining to more people more about how the game is played, that will lead to all sorts of horrible consequences because I, due to my mild personality, just don't understand how horrible people would be to each other if they found out the truth.

“[A]n ideology that tacitly appeals to biological equality as a condition for human emancipation corrupts the idea of freedom Moreover, it encourages decent men to tremble at the prospect of ‘inconvenient’ findings that may emerge in future scientific research ” — Bressler, 1968

Steve,

Let me break this down for you so to help you rest easy at night.

First, there is no inherent connection between acknowledging group differences and acting in horrible ways. Hypothetically, one might just as well celebrate real diversity. As such, the only ways that thinking the despised knowledge would lead people to engage in the feared behavior is if the said people were culturally conditioned or psychosociobiological predisposed to act as such. Now, am I the only one who finds it queer that blank slaters -- especially the ones in control of the media and therefore the chalk the writes on the slate -- tacitly argue that differences can’t be acknowledged because if so, this will transform everyone into national socialists? Think about it. Obviously, either the concern is about maintaining a game winning position or our supposed blank slaters are not really blank slaters.

Second, to the extent people have acted in a 'horrible' way in conjunction with acknowledging differences, there was a lot else going on. In Europe, for example, biological nationalism, like marxism, developed in context of the collapse of a previous world-view (Christendom), rapid social change, and some idiosyncratic philosophical tendencies which I have discussed before. Moreover, rapid technological change, more than ideology, precipitated the atrocities of the world wars. So the relation between acknowledging differences, per se, and acting horrible is not at all clear.

Third, and most important, even if people are psychsociobiologically predisposed to act in 'horrible' ways -- it's hard to see how this is much a problem. People are obviously rather psychobiologically predisposed to notice minor differences and notice patters. We evolved a potent predilection for pattern detection over millions of years. And yet PCism in conjunction with numerous social taboos is so potent that it is able to override this tendency. Are you telling me that -- if desired -- taboos and PC codes could not be erected to suppress the supposed HBD werewolf lurking in our genes?

I'm not, of course, saying that there wouldn't be a problem if Steve Sailer was syndicated nationally. There would be. But it would not be because of Steve Sailer or his truths. It would be because the reigning ideology is structured such that these truths are dangerous. isteve is, indeed, a lingerie shop in a Victorian age. But last I checked the spread of Victoria’s Secret didn't unleash an epidemic of horrible deeds.

travis said...

It seems to me that Fincher divides the world into two kinds of men: a) men who are honest with themselves and admit they want to be Justin Timberlake/Brad Pitt/Tyler Durden and b) serial killers. He's already made two serial killer movies, Zodiac and Seven ("I wished I could have lived as you do"), and he's currently working on a third, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Steve, you're too decent a human being to understand Zuckerberg fully. Fincher, on the other hand, understands Zuckerberg perhaps better than Zuckerberg understands himself. Both are equally cold and ruthless.

Chuck said...

Steve,

My previous comments never posted. Let me restate my general point.

1. We are told that thinking about HBD is dangerous. If it is dangerous, it is only so because either a) we are culturally conditioned to act 'horribly' if we think about HBD or b) we are pychosociobiologically predisposed to act 'horribly' if we think about HBD.

2. It is odd that the blank slaters tell us that thinking HBD is dangerous, since by virtue of being a blank slater they must think a) and yet they control the media and, as such, what's written on our slate.

3. Given 2) there is only a danger if b is true, that is, if humankind is pychosociobiologically predisposed to act 'horribly' if we think about HBD.

4. I have found no evidence of b. But, if so, worry not. If PC/taboos can make people not see what is before their eyes -- something for which we have a rather strong predisposition for -- PC/taboos could be made, if desired, to keep the supposed HBD werewolf in our genes for coming out.

My verdict: It's not about the inherent dangers of HBD.

SFG said...

"I find it notable that Bill Gates had to go wife hunting in his company's project manager division, women were not exactly throwing themselves at him despite his wealth and power."
I wonder. You'd think he would have done like the CEO of iRobot and picked up a former Miss Massachusetts (Washington in his case) with an MIT degree or something.


"There's actually a time honored solution to this. A place for every people, and every people in its place. But your distant relatives are determined that this not occur."

Could be. Of course if all the Jews leave for Israel the country will be instantly invaded by the Arabs and they'll all get killed.

Me, I'm converting as soon as I get out of the NE. I thought I was white until I discovered this website, and I like bacon.

Cordelia said...

Steve said: "But, if I stop looking at you and start speaking in a monotone, then I probably found your question very interesting."

That is totally aspergery.

As is trying to under the system behind everything. (But you already know that.)

A reader said...

It's interesting to note that the two most popular sites on the Internet (Google and Facebook) were founded almost entirely by Jews-- (Brin and Page)-- Google and Saverin, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz (Facebook). The only non-Jewish founder of either company appears to be Chris Hughes.

For all of the legitimate criticism one can place concerning the generally baleful Jewish effect on our political discourse, there is little denying that Jews also contribute a lot in other areas.

jody said...

i like jesse eisenberg. i used to think "man i wish we could replace michael cera with jesse eisenberg in all of these movies" but it looks like cera's career is declining naturally on it's own. thank goodness.

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

[jody]i like jesse eisenberg

I had to look him up at IMDB, where I discovered ... THEY CHANGED AND TOTALLY SCREWED UP THEIR PAGE LAYOUTS. %(^*^&!-ers

michael farris said...

Steve, one of my own asperbergery traits is not having much of anything like firm beliefs of a metaphysical nature and therefore finding the mechanisms of belief inherently fascinating (whether in saints, the constitution or shape shifting reptilians).

Here's why HBD does not and will not gain any particular traction among hoi polloi:

1. People want to believe in something that makes them feel good about themselves. Americans in general want to believe in progress and self-improvement.

HBD doesn't help normal people feel good about themselves. It does do that for a few race/caste obsessed weirdos of the kind that haunt your comments, but normal they are not.
It also demeans individual accomplishments (in the minds of normal people) by in effect saying: "So what if you studied hard and worked hard? either:
a) you succeeded because of the genetic profile of your racial group allowed you to,
b) even if you succeeded in spite of your racial genetics then you're a statistically insignificant outlier and your kids will probably fall back to the norm won't benefit by studying and working hard.

2. Americans want to believe a moral narrative where the good guys win and the bad guys lose even if it takes some time.

HBD invites re-examinations of recent history that are too painful to bear.

3. Americans want to belive that progress is possible even if it is very difficult to achieve.

If your particular version of HBD is to be believed then progress isn't possible. Black and Mexican children are doomed to never achieve much collective success in school no matter how hard they try.
Now if you believe that, and you apparently do, then what kind of educational system is possible that doesn't contradict any number of other core American beliefs?

There's more but that's a start. If you want HBD to achieve wider acceptance then it needs to be packaged in a way that either doesn't disturb American core beliefs of the possibility for individual progress or somehow makes the prospect of becoming an overtly racial categorizing state like Malaysia seem like a good idea.

jody said...

friendster came out even before myspace. in fact, there was an offer to buy friendster made by either yahoo or google, of about 30 million dollars, which the guy who programmed friendster turned down. this was before these social media sites had gone mainstream, and 30 million was far above market value at the time. of course, myspace eclipsed friendster within 2 years or so, going mainstream and taking away all of friendster's market share. the guy who programmed friendster ended up with nothing.

zuckerberg is no kind of genius, just the right guy at the right time. but in general we should not discount ashkenazi jews in computer science or psychology. they have made important contributions in both fields.

Anonymous said...

If Steve like Zuckerberg, is he on facebook?

adfasdfasdf said...

"Sailer compares himself to Zuckerberg."

Stevebook beats facebook. Money aint everything.

Anonymous said...

In this new, fake profile, he listed Cameron's height as 7'4", his hair color as "Ayran Blond," and his eye color as "Sky Blue." He listed Cameron's "language" as "WASP-y."

You know, you just can't make this stuff up.

Severn said...

Of course if all the Jews leave for Israel the country will be instantly invaded by the Arabs and they'll all get killed.



Yes, no doubt the Arabs are holding off on killing all the Jews in Israel until such time as all the Jews in the world more there. Crafty buggers, those Arabs.

Do you have any slightly less far-fetched theories?

Mr. Anon said...

"Has to be said...

""There's actually a time honored solution to this. A place for every people, and every people in its place.""

You are welcome to be my serf."

He said "people", not "person"

Kylie said...

adfaetc. said..."'Sailer compares himself to Zuckerberg.'

Stevebook beats facebook. Money aint everything."

My sentiments exactly. Thanks for expressing them so succinctly.

Has to be said...

""Has to be said...

""There's actually a time honored solution to this. A place for every people, and every people in its place.""

You are welcome to be my serf."

He said "people", not "person""


People, person, whatever. In either case he is endorsing a key principle of feudalism.

Anonymous said...

I liked the blog as well. It had a sweet tone to it. Wishing you well...

Steve Sailer said...

Business Insider has some good articles on various scandalous things Zuckerberg did at Harvard, as documented by his archived text message conversations.

I think it's an interesting example of the increasing archiving of personal communications, which may have implications for personal behavior.

Severn said...

he is endorsing a key principle of feudalism.




If you actually think that a key principle of feudalism is "a place for every people, and every people in its place", then you either do not understand feudalism or you do not understand the English language.

Mike Courtman said...

Mr Farris,

Its a question of balance. We live under a liberal hegemony which says that will power and or environmental factors determine just about everything. I don't think Steve ever said he totally dismisses these factors he just wants to provide a more nuanced view of reality. Americans and other westerners believed in HBD to a much greater extent in the 1920s, but they still tried hard to make the most of their genetic potential. They certainly weren't any lazier or more depressed.

In fact, I'd say people actually tried harder when they had a more nuanced view of reality, as this made them more philosophical and happy to just get on with things without worrying too much.

milieu said...

After watching the movie, I just thought what benefit the world might have had, if he had gone to work in science or more useful technology. But hey, its his life he can do what he wants with it.

Sylvia said...

In this post:

Steve utterly fails to understand Facebook and the young people who use it. Heh.

SFG said...

"Yes, no doubt the Arabs are holding off on killing all the Jews in Israel until such time as all the Jews in the world more there. Crafty buggers, those Arabs.

Do you have any slightly less far-fetched theories?"

What, that the Jews in America are manipulating American policy to support Israel? I kind of thought that was AIPAC's whole raison d'etre. Without that the US would never bother with some stupid little country halfway across the world. There's no Cold War anymore, even if, as Sobran said, "whenever I see a deathmatch between a mammal and a reptile, I instinctively root for the mammal." The Israelis are more like us (Americans) than the Arabs, but we probably wouldn't waste blood and treasure there just for that. Neither side's Christian, after all.

Mr. Anon said...

"Has to be said...

He said "people", not "person""

People, person, whatever. In either case he is endorsing a key principle of feudalism."

No he isn't. And if you don't recognize the distinction between "people" and "person" in this context, then you are an idiot.

by "a place for every people, and every people in thier place", he obviously meant "a nation for every people, and those people in thier nation". And what's wrong with that?

Blythly saying "whatever" is not an excuse for an inability to read. And by read I mean not just sounding out the words, but actually understanding them.

Severn said...

HBD doesn't help normal people feel good about themselves.



But is it true? If it is, than it remains true regardless of how many people don't want to hear it.

Anonymous said...

The anti semites here are so predictable. White anglo saxon people in West Virginia are poor, backward, and on meth? Blame the jews.

Ashkenazi people found Google and Facebook, creating both web sites out of nothing, and in the process making billions of dollars? All explained by nefarious tribal connections.


I understand why people who fail have to blame others for their failures. It is too painful to look yourself in the mirror and admit that the people with billions of dollars are smarter and harder working than you are.

So I can forgive the anti semites here for feeling the need to lash out at someone - ANYONE - to make them forget their own failings. But can't they at least make it plausible and interesting by picking a softer target that hard working self made young men like the ones that founded Google or Facebook?

travis said...

We live under a liberal hegemony which says that will power and or environmental factors determine just about everything.

Where do you live? Where I live we've been ruled for 150 years by Harvard Calvinism. Of course every ruling regime wants you to believe it's inevitable, but that's doesn't make it so, a lesson the Winkelvi learned the hard way.

"In my neighborhood, none of my friends ever looked at the film industry as this thing you couldn't do, couldn't dream of, because that was Hollywood, and you had to have all these different skill sets. It was like, There's this guy with a beard who comes down in his bathrobe every morning to pick up his Independent Journal. So why not?" -- David Fincher

The "guy with a beard" was George Lucas, for whom Fincher would later work at Industrial Light & Magic. It easy to imagine Fincher's relationship to Lucas resembling the relationship between Zuckerberg and Sean Parker in "The Social Network." Lucas taught Fincher, as Parker teaches Zuckerberg, the most important lesson of his life: the possiblity that free will exists.

But if you don't believe in free will, then don't worry about it. Everything will take care of itself.

Anonymous said...

milieu: keeping in touch with family and friends is a pretty important component of the human experience. Thanks to Facebook, it is much easier to know what old friends from high school, college, and previous jobs are up to nowadays. I am just barely old enough to remember a time when we didn't take that for granted, when "we'll keep in touch" was a fake pleasantry that required writing letters (which is why it never happened).

Especially for women, Facebook may be the most important application they use on a daily basis.

Anonymous said...

I don't think I'd trust the movie to correctly convey the emotions and motivations of the actual people.

Computer industry outsiders seem to have a limited number of narrative devices for talking about techies. People like Sorkin and Fincher use, but don't understand the technology. It pervades their lives, but they're ignorant of how it all works. The people who work in the industry are not really on their radar, and they don't have any real understanding of them.

In this case, Sorkin attributed to Zuch a bunch of emotions and motivations he apparently really didn't have. It seems he wasn't really that worked up about final clubs, and the searing social class resentment portrayed in the movie in all probability wasn't there either. But Hollywood and others have a limited vocabulary for talking about techies, and every story has to fit within the established frameworks.

Truth said...

"by "a place for every people, and every people in thier place", he obviously meant "a nation for every people, and those people in thier nation". And what's wrong with that?"

And what nation do the (strong hint coming here, Grasshopper) NATIVE...AMERICANS have?

CC-bLF said...

"And what nation do the (strong hint coming here, Grasshopper) NATIVE...AMERICANS have?"

The reservations.

Anonymous said...

>hard working self made young men like the ones that founded Google or Facebook<

Thanks for the laugh!

Anonymous said...

"FB probably needs a PR campaign to show people that building something at that scale is rocket science. There is a reason Myspace and Friendster could not compete, and that reason is IQ."

Whatever. Craigslist handleds millions of requests everyday with less than 30 people. By your reasoning they must be vastly smarter than the facebook army.

Anonymous said...

"keeping in touch with family and friends is a pretty important component of the human experience."

True, but if it's family that matters then you already have their contact info. Nobody cares about their third cousins...

"Thanks to Facebook, it is much easier to know what old friends from high school, college, and previous jobs are up to nowadays."

Why would you want to though? Your school chums have their own lives in different cities. Unless you are trying to track down an old flame, I don't really see the purpose of "friending" your best friend from 2nd grade.

"I am just barely old enough to remember a time when we didn't take that for granted, when "we'll keep in touch" was a fake pleasantry that required writing letters (which is why it never happened)."

I think it was better that way.

"Especially for women, Facebook may be the most important application they use on a daily basis."

Women are silly creatures. If Facebook is your most used application, then you are not a serious person. Not only is it impersonal, but why would anyone want to broadcast their entire life to hundreds of pseudo friends and distant relatives?

Rohan Swee said...

Truth: And what nation do the (strong hint coming here, Grasshopper) NATIVE...AMERICANS have?

There were many "Native...American" nations. Some of them were conquered, destroyed, or just pushed off their land by other "Native...American" nations. Eventually some nations from across the Atlantic showed up and conquered, destroyed, or just pushed them off their land in turn, carrying on with the same conquer-or-be-conquered stuff that had been going on in Old World and New for millenia.

Or, as CC-bLF notes, some of these nations survived and ended up on reservations. Which is one of the limited number of unpleasant outcomes available for peoples who can't/won't uphold their nation's claim to a territory, and keep usurpers at bay.

Silver said...

michaelfarris,


Here's why HBD does not and will not gain any particular traction among hoi polloi:


It's more important that it gains traction among the ruling class -- like people "in education" like your good self.

As for the hoi polloi, there is traction ready to burst through the seams if only people like your good self would acknowledge the racial realities that the benighted masses have to daily struggle with.

I mean, it's wonderful that you've managed to construct a worldview which permits you to be believe "race doesn't matter," Farris. Pity that's something you'll never have any lasting success in transmitting it to the masses who, again, have to live with it.

(Btw, you'll do a whole lot of people a very big favor if you stopped wasting there time with "education" that they'll never understand or care for and teach them things that are capable of grabbing their attention and which they'd actually enjoy doing. Try Charles Murray on this.)

Chuck said...

michael farris said: "HBD doesn't help normal people feel good about themselves."


True Michael, normal people would not feel good, but would feel indifferent, were much ado not made about inter-group disparities. But, as things are, HBD has the potential to make White people feel LESS BAD about themselves, given that disparities are otherwise blamed on an ubiquitous, and presumably bad, mean, and ugly white (read: active, historic, or institutional) racism in Europe, South America, Canada, the US, etc.
For example, this recent guardian article: 'More Black People Jailed in England and Wales Proportionally Than in US' where crime rates are REFLEXIVELY attributed to "decades of racial prejudice in the criminal justice system."

Of course, were other people normal, a commonsense Sowellesque counter to the mountains of lies and libels based on HED (human ethnic diversity) and the complexities of life would suffice. But, as it is, investigating and pointing out the HBD behind the situation is necessary to stop the infinite regress of white guilt and infinite progress of an unwanted neosocialism. That is, to be clear, is morally necessary -- and as such deserves to be righteousness propounded.

To quote Linda Gottfredson:

"According to social privilege theory, there would be no racial inequality in a fair, non-discriminatory society. The continuing existence of racial inequality is therefore proof of continuing discrimination. The fact that racial inequality permeates nearly all aspects of American life means, then, that racial discrimination permeates nearly all aspects of American life. The fact that overtly discriminatory acts are rarely observed today means only that discrimination has become hidden from view. That seemingly sincere, well-meaning whites deny being bigoted means only that their bigotry is unconscious and they refuse to admit it. That black students perform less well on average than their white classmates means that their teachers must be racist, and the latter seem to prove their guilt if they suggest that their black students sometimes have more difficulty learning the curriculum. The fact that some racial-ethnic groups disproportionately fail to meet objective race-neutral standards is proof of further insidious racism, namely, that these standards were established with the intent to favor the dominant class while appearing to do otherwise. According to social privilege theory, high-achieving groups (at least European whites) are therefore automatically guilty of profiting from an oppressive social system, and low-achieving groups are being robbed of what is rightfully theirs. Every inequality becomes more evidence of entrenched evil. The talk of brotherhood 50 years ago is replaced by talk of reparations and retribution; the hope of mutual respect among the races by mutual resentment."

Given the situation, I for one, have no moral qualms when it comes to HED/HBD Truth-telling.