Paul M. Jones | Smart 2026-05-08T09:12:58-05:00 Why Rationality Fails 2021-02-23T17:03:14-06:00 Specifically, Bayesian rationality: Rationality is a real thing. It says, “Use these formulas, from math and logic, in this way without error.” That’s fine and sure advice. But — here’s the big but — rationality is sile... Scribes Seek Status 2017-10-05T09:19:12-05:00 Nothing is so unsettling to a social order as the presence of a mass of scribes without suitable employment and an acknowledged status…The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claim... Are people with very high IQs generally happy? 2017-08-28T13:26:36-05:00 When someone is excluded from a group, ousted or ostracized, it makes him or her unhappy. Loneliness and exclusion is the most common reason for anomie - losing the reason for life and will to live and to commit suicide. And overtly high IQ is the mo... "Smart" Is No Better Than "Strong" 2016-07-15T10:10:32-05:00 Higher-than-average intelligence doesn't make you any better than anyone else, any more than being taller, or faster, or stronger does. What it often does, however, is allow others to convince you that you should be something different than you are, ... The Argument from Fallacy 2016-06-29T15:20:04-05:00 "Argument from fallacy" is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. It is also called argument to logic (argumentum ad logicam), fallacy fallacy, fallacists fallacy, an... Rebellion Against The Credentialed Clerics 2016-04-06T17:17:40-05:00 What we are seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking "clerks" and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league,... How To Think Real Good 2015-12-08T16:55:50-06:00 Via http://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think. All of the following are quotes from the article that, in general, appeal to my priors. All emphasis in original, which you should read in its entirety. The implicit assumption is that the problem Ba... I'm not anti-intellectual; I'm anti-intelligentsia. 2015-03-02T18:54:47-06:00 One kind of “anti-intellectualism” is opposition to “intellectuals” considered as an interest group or social class in the Marxian sense – what Russian writers called the intelligentsia. The only more specific term I can thin... The "Hollaback" Video: Facts Are Meaningless Without A Theory 2014-11-08T16:29:33-06:00 The Hollaback video also shows why “data” without theory can be so misleading--and how the same data can fit multiple theories. Since all data collection involves some form of data selection (even the biggest dataset has selection going int... You Think Atheists Are More Intelligent? Think Again. 2014-09-28T16:21:31-05:00 A summary of Vox Popoli: Mailvox: the distribution of atheist intelligence: - On average, atheist IQ is a little higher than theist IQ. Of course, averages are misleading, because ... - There are more high-IQ theists than high-IQ atheists. - The majo...