at the level of traffic GNXP has been receiving between 2004-2008 i would say that the rate of the increase of trollishness is directly proportional to the % of trolls at any given time. IOW, a positive feed back loop. the more trolls there are the more comfortable they get, and the less inclined intelligent people want to allocate their marginal time to leaving a well thought out comment (time = $$ remember). 
 
I have no problem with moderation or "censorship." In almost all cases, comments get deleted mainly because they are stupid and/or make major unsupported statements and/or are unfocused and/or are angry, not because someone is a Nazi, Commie, pro-terrorist, etc.  
 
Not only does moderation keep out trolls, it also keeps generally intelligent people from degrading into trolls or getting into flamewars. Now, flamewars can be fun, especially with big-time haters and major league wackos, and they can be even more fun when you've had a few too many, but they aren't informative of anything other than the flamers' biases. 
 
I can be guilty of trolling myself, especially if something really irritates me. e.g. I check out a girl, she gives me the evil eye, therefore I look for a topic that allows me to trash feminism and/or social and sexual conservatism.  
 
I think most people already know this, but hitting the blogs when someone has got you PO'ed over something with some marginal political or scientific angle is usually not a good idea.

Wall Street bankers, big business cartels and a cowardly Congress have bilked us taxpayers of as much money per second in the past. God knows how much they'll bilk in the course of their golden- parachuted lifetimes. 
It's too bad most of them weren't downs babies, then they'd have cost us less. 
 
Probably. But just because some people in Wall Street are major league crooks does not mean smaller-time bloodsuckers, like parents who carry Down's babies to term out of "principle" are not deserving of criticism. I mean it's one thing to succomb of one's desires and irresponsibility and end up having (say) a bad accident under the influence and ending up with a $100K hospital bill*** or having an "unexpected" conception. It's another to make a *concious and premeditated decision* to bilk society out of millions. That's not even counting the nasty family feuds and symptoms of PTSD (including lower productivity on the job) that often afflict families of Down's babies carried to term. I'd say that the average Down's baby carried to term *easily* does $5,000,000 in damage to the economy, if the effects of PTSD and family conflict (including lawyers and courts) are taken into account. 
 
And this damage is *virtually guaranteed* as opposed to that of the parents of the crooked Wall Streeters. Admittedly my taste for women who are into works like "The 48 Laws of Power" may increase the risk of having a crooked kid, but assuming the kid is not totally saturated with pro-corruption genes (s)he will end up doing important research or making some other major contribution to society. 
 
Now speaking of "The 48 Laws of Power," if I really followed the book's advice I'd keep my mouth shut, or talk about how great having a Down's kid is, and only make arguments like this when and where it counted (such as if I were faced with such a decision). But then "keeping your lies consistent" is not as fun and easy as it sounds--it takes a lot of work and self-discipline. And I tend to see "The 48 Laws of Power" and related works as more a way of protecting myself and society from the kind of people who practice them by second nature (ie before even reading a book like "The 48 Laws..." or "The Prince") than as a good guidebook for living. 
 
***Of course while such individuals should not be further punished or denied services, we should not be in favor of propagating such defective genes. This doesn't mean sterilization or such, but it *does* mean a strong stance in favor of genetic engineering and funding genetic research. 
 
My main "solution" to the weak genes I carry is marrying someone who is the opposite ie not susceptable to the maladies I am susceptable to Thus my love for high executive function, addiction resistant, dark-skinned East Asians. 
 
As an aside, my guess is that if I had the same gene frequencies as 'pure' Celts in terms of physiolog
More....

The best hope for Obama is that he will be more concerned with long-term popularity, comfort, and power than pushing his left-wing politics. Ultimately he will have to decide what's more important to him, making lots of speeches for $50K or "helping" the proles by letting off violent criminals. 
 
As for Palin, her views on abortion, for example, are pretty scary...no abortion in rape and incest, even in the first trimester, maybe not even a morning after pill for rape victims? Way uncool. And carrying a Down Syndrome baby to term is a pretty big loser too. I mean I wish the best for such children who have already been born, but frankly their parents should be jailed. In terms of the costs to society, carrying a Down Syndrome baby to term is up there with a $3,000,000 embezzlement ($100K/yr for care times a life expectancy of maybe 30 years). 
 
Even for those who have their own problems, bringing people into the world who are so costly should seem like a big loser. If you are dependent on some form of govt services, more Down Syndrome kids is more competition [this includes Down's victims themselves], much like the illegals. Just because we should be compassionate to charity cases doesn't mean more should be brought into the world or into America.  
 
The inability to distinguish between being compassionate to existing people with problems, and bringing more into the world/country is a huge problem I have with both the far left and the theocons.

"jinderella:the set of fundamentalist xians that also have libertarian tendencies is empty. 
null set. 
 
tggp:You don't read lewrockwell.com much, right?" 
 
There is a big difference between moderate Christains, who in their heart of hearts many not even be 100% sure there is a God, and the fundies, who say baby Jesus cries over say, sins of the right eye. Or that pharmacology is a form of witchcraft, and "God does not suffer witches." 
 
I don't think that there are many true fundies of the "God will strike you down if your right eye causes you to sin" type at lewrockwell. 
 
Fortunately I know the God stiking down right eye sinners is not true, or else almost all young males and a lot of females would be struck by lightning rather often.  
 
If the fundies were right, there'd probably be a lot of burning witches and warlocks in doctor's offices, drug stores, and chem and bio departments too. 
 
Now I think there may be some people with triple-digit IQs who believe such nonsense, but they were probably severely manipulated, to put it mildly.

one: religious belief is deeply antipathic to libertarianism--Jefferson knew this. 
 
Almost anything to the extreme is not terribly friendly to libertarianism. In fact almost any emotionally charged thing done by people with double-digit IQs...whether religion, politics, drugs, sex, money, consumption of mature entertainment, tends to be managed poorly and have lots of negative effects on people accross the IQ spectrum. Thus the tendency of people with double-digit IQs to eventually end up eschewing all the above other than religion of the fundie variety. Of course poor executive function (which I'll admit I have a streak of) also contributes to such destructiveness.  
 
And their political stupidity tends to cause them to support government legislation, and particularly national govt legislation, against the above, including religion if it is not their fundie variety.  
 
Now personally, I believe such individuals should be allowed "theocracy in one county." If county X in the Bible Belt wants to throw people in jail for a year for possession of over-the-counter cough medicine or small amounts of pot, I say have at it. Just don't impose it on an entire state, much less the entire country. 
 
Now the problem is that all of the candidates are mostly representative of people with double-digit IQs, as well as aristocrats like Dem party higher-ups and oil company execs.  
 
Obama's solution to the low IQ problem is to support hardcore violent criminals and give them little, and possibly no jail time. McCain's is to throw college students who use pills and pot in jail along with the real criminals. 
 
Thus it is ultimately peoples' unwillingness to discriminate against the low-IQ that leads to anarcho-tyranny.  
 
Since neither the Dems nor the neocons/theocons believe in political equality, the phrase "all men are equal" has lost its real meaning and become something equivalent to "all men are red-haired" or "all men are tall," or "everyone is above average," all obvious absurdities.

Just based on personal observation, this makes sense to me (I apologize for stream of conciousness writing below).  
 
This goes for many other things to: for example a "strong" radio station may be well over a million times stronger than a "weak" one, where as on a 1-10 scale "strong" may be rated as 8 or 9, and "weak" 2 or 3. A station rated as having strength of "5" may be 1,000 times stronger than the weak, but only 1/1000 as strong as the "strong" station. Of course for heavily geek populated groups like radio dx'ers, a logarithmic scale is already established...for example "strong" might mean ~90 dBu (w/"very strong" upwards of 110 dBu), medium ~60 dBu, weak ~30dBu.  
 
The biggest factor I can think of here is that most people find it a lot easier to think in terms of linear, rather than logarithmic scales, even though i think most things in nature are best seen in terms of logarithmic scales. I guess that's why they call a*10^b notation "scientific" notation.  
 
IQ is probably another thing best seen in logarithmic terms. By the way I believe the Gaussian distribution is designed for a logarithmized scale; this would make sense as something like height can't have a negative value, but log (height/avgheight) can, and indeed does about 50 percent of the time.

As an aside, I miss Godless Capitalist's frequent political blogging. Sure I know it irritates moderates and sympathetic lefties, but it sure was entertaining while it lasted.

Also, speaking of the evil in good and the good in evil: for all the evil of Communism and Nazism, I believe there is an important grain of truth in both ideologies' view of history: that is, history as a history of class struggle (Marxism), or of race struggle (Nazism). 
 
Think about it: what is class struggle? It is a struggle about access to money, that is, access to resources. This seems like a fairly fundamental struggle in life; it is hard to survive, much less reproduce without food, a place to live, and a mate, preferably all of high quality. I think even a reptile would understand these things at some level; certainly any mammal would. These things all activate the reward system in higher vertebrates, and activation of the reward system typically is important in creating memories as well as motivation. 
 
Same goes for race struggle: race stuggle, or in more ancient terms, clan or tribe stuggle, is the struggle of one's genetic relatives against another's genetic relatives. Ultimately, race/tribe/clan struggle is about the survival and reproduction of one's own genome, a struggle for all of life. This, I believe, is also a struggle that any higher vertebrate would "understand." For example, even mother snakes, for example, have been observed caring for their young. Family, clan, and tribe are much more clearly important for mammals and their "mammal-like reptile" ancestors who lived about 250-300 million years ago. 
 
So, in spite of the gross oversimplification and often ill motives of Nazis and Communists alike, their view of life and history is not *completely* off-kilter. They speak of struggles that are probably, at some level, 250-350 million years old, and at an even broader level, as old as life itself.

Along sort of the same line of thought, I did find some amusing similarities between Ingsoc and Cognitive Elitism (the supposed ideology of gnxp?ers like myself) or, in Newspeak, CogElite. 
 
For example, membership in IngSoc is "by examination," presumably an IQ-type test. IngSoc, while highly xenophobic and warlike (I say unlike CogElite and more like Bush-McCainism), is also aracial: "Jews, [blacks],--note: the Latin word for black used in the book seems to trip off something in Haloscan-- and South Americans of pure Indian descent" could be found in the highest ranks of the Party. Ingsoc, while hierarchal, is also in principle non-hereditary, willing to draw itself anew from the low classes if necessary. (see in Goldstein?s book, Chapter One: Ignorance is Strength). Hmm, sounds very much like the CogElite ideal of a deracinated, high-IQ elite.  
 
I could even think of three slogans for a future twisted CogElite Party, a hodgepodge amalgamation of Cognitive Elitism and futurism as advocated by myself, and limousine liberalism, "bourgeois bohemianism," multiculturalism, neoconservativism, religious fanaticism, and good old-style totalitarianism, Marxism, and Nazism.  
 
Proposed CogElite Slogans, circa 2086: 
 
INTELLIGENCE IS STUPIDITY 
Origins: my (and society?s) obsession with intelligence; contrarily, the tendency of the orthodox mutli-culti Left to deny the importance of intelligence; the tendency of both intelligent and stupid people to be politically stupid (see Derbyshire?s law), the necessity of intelligent people to create and maintain the ultimate evil: a totalitarian, unchangeable, 1984-like society. 
DIVISION IS STENGTH 
Origins: The slogan "diversity is strength," the old militarist slogan "divide and conquer"; contrarily, the need for division of labor in economics, the enrichment that other cultures can bring (even if all too often the reverse is the case). 
UGLINESS IS BEAUTY 
Origins: Naomi Wolf?s "The Beauty Myth," perhaps the stupidest and most irritating book ever written and the quite authoritarian feminist movement?s hatred of beauty; contrarily, the utter lack of taste of nerds like myself (see the writings of Udolpho); the barrenness of the modern "concrete jungle" that pervades much of the world today and is always pervasive in dystopian visions; the concepts of goodsex and sexcrime from 1984, my concept, borrowed from the examples of substance use in 1984 of crimedrugging (drug use for personal enjoyment, for alleged spiritual or mind-expanding purposes) and gooddrugging (drug use that advances the interest of the State, i.e. that is mind control purposes).

I wasn't aware that reckless data selection was part of "the empirical habit of thought", but maybe my memory is a bit foggy. 
 
Well, what an orthodox thinker might interpret as "reckless data selection" someone else, like myself, might interpret as willingness to come up with and accept new and/or unorthodox ideas. I have always found the criticism of h-bd, and lines of scientific thought in general, as "too reckless" or "not rigorous" to be irritating; if one had to come up with an elaborate proof for every new, unorthodox, or unpopular idea, scientific and social progress would come to a halt.  
 
This goes for learning in general: I couldn't come up with the proofs for many important scientific and mathematical formulae I have frequently used if I had to save my life (this goes even for ones as simple as the quadratic formula), but this does not make my use of such formulae "reckless." I am not denying the occasional utility of rigorous proofs. In fact, thinking about the nature of formulae, rather than learning and using them by rote, can be critical in understanding them and coming up with new ones. 
 
As an aside, one thing I like about Vaillant's writing is his willingness to come up with new ideas, and support them by "metaphor" rather than hard proof, to be refreshing. It is true that such thinking can lead to many false positives, especially when used by someone who is not as smart or informed as they think they are, but in the end one must realize that the need to avoid false positives must be balanced with the utility of finding true positives. 
 
See also: the persistent skeptic, solipsism

Everybody uses Orwell against their enemies, which was the opposite of the effect that Orwell was hoping for. [also quoted and elaborated on by "toto."] 
 
True...I think 1984 is as much a self-criticism as a criticism of Orwell's enemies (for example, Orwell considered himself to be a socialist, yet IngSoc, or English Socialism, is the ruling ideology of the evil Party). Remembering the principles of doublethink (or is it undoublethink?), I think both the reading of 1984 as a self-criticism and as a scathing critique of society, and of mindlessly orthodox thinking in general is important to keep in mind.

Could you give an example of where you think Damasio is making a pro-HBD points in Descartes' Error? 
 
Example (p.76 in the Vintage 2006 printing of Descartes Error): 
 
A recent and especially relevant finding for my argument on the concentration of one of the chemical receptors for serotonin in the ventromedial sector of the prefrontal cortex and in the amygdala...One of the roles of serotonin in primates is the inhibition of aggressive behavior (curiously, it has other roles in other species). In experimental animals, when neurons in which serotonin originates are blocked from delivering it, one consequence is that the animals behave impulsively and aggressively. In general, enhancing serotonin function reduces aggression and favors social behavior.  
 
In this context it is important to note, as shown in the work of Michael Raleigh, that in monkeys whose behavior is socially well tuned (as measured by displays of cooperation, grooming, and proximity to others), the number of serotonin-2 [5HT-2] receptors is extremely high in the ventromedial frontal lobe, the amygdala, and the medial cortices in its vicinity, but not elsewhere in the brain; and that in monkeys exhibiting noncooperative, antagonistic behavior, the opposite is true.

Seems to me you need to distinguish between at least two 'theories of multiple intelligence'. On the one hand you have a lot of useful work in trying to find factors beyond g that contribute to performance on various tasks. I don't think any serious student of human cognition would deny the existence of such attributes. On the other hand, you have proponents of stuff like Emotional Intelligence who more or less 
- don't bother even trying to do broad studies to see what sort of predictive value their model or factor has (probably because they already suspect the answer) 
- promote their work as a more palatable PC alternative to IQ-based theories 
- are basically just trying to muddy the waters as a way of hiding the unpleasant truths that research into human intelligence has revealed  
 
Point well taken. But as I said above, testing attributes besides g, and even more so the correlation of such attributes to economic success, is a difficult excercise. The requirement of high ability, diverse knowledge, and a high investment of resources, not only PC ideology, I think is a large part of the reason for the lack of good research on important non-g attributes. For example, Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence seems to tacitly admit the validity of The Bell Curve and the concept of IQ.

M Simon: 
 
The problem with drugs and alcohol is tolerance and withdrawal, as well as intoxication and psychosis. Now some drugs are better in these respects than others. Tobacco does not cause intoxication or psychosis, for example, and use appears to enhance the reward system even well after nicotine has left the bloodstream. Dissociatives (dextromethorphan, ketamine, PCP [though PCP has lots of other nasty effects and often is mixed with dangerous cyanide-like substances]), cannabis, hydrocodone (Vicodin), and methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta) appear to have more favorable tolerance and withdrawal profiles than say, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine (perhaps due to retarding the mechanism in the brain, which may have a lot to do with the D2 receptor system, that says "TOO MUCH DOPAMINE! TIME TO CUT BACK!"), but are still have substantial withdrawal and tolerance issues.  
 
The other big issue with drugs and alcohol is that for those susceptible, they tend to take over a person's entire life and thinking. When I do drugs, it usually begins to take precedence over everything else, which causes a lot of problems. This is not to say that drugs aren't loads of fun, or even that they aren't valuable. But anyone who has depression issues should really try antidepressants. I had to try 5 over a period of nearly 3 years before I found the 6th one (Cymbalta) that's actually worth a damn for me. Note that mixing antidepressants with recreational drugs can be dangerous; though in my personal experience Cymbalta has reduced (street) drug cravings and stereotypical "addict" like behavior and thinking while not causing any negative interaction effects.

Speaking of IQ, when is someone here going to make any remarks on Cosma Shalizi's assault on g? A whole lot of that is over my head, so I'm counting on you guys. 
 
Don't have much time right now, but the random correlation matrix seems fishy. In any real set of data, you don't just get a random set of correlations averaging (say) .5. Two variables correlate, above chance, because they are in some way actually related. Of course two variables are not necessarily causally related--the old correlation is not causation thing. But they are somehow actually related--if not causally related, then they at some level measure the same thing.

Re: Conscienciousness and gullibility 
 
I would definitely put myself on the lazy end of the spectrum, am not very religious, and am probably less 'spiritual' than many militant atheists. 
 
I would tend to think that more consciencious people would be willing to put their effort/resources into something even if they did not get much reward, or even if there was a good chance of no reward. I have a hard time putting effort into anything that I don't get clear results from...for example, I can do even fairly advanced 'bookwork' physics (do a problem, get a reasonable answer, feel like I've made progress), but I'm a disaster when it comes to an open-ended project where it's harder to measure progress or results of effort. 
 
My guess is that people who are more religious and spiritual are less likely to expect material results from their efforts, and are thus less lazy/more consciencious.

"2) i assume that at the high end of the IQ range you also have abnormal individuals. here, the issues aren't as genetically concerning, insofar as deleterious mendelian diseases aren't causing hyper-intelligence. but, the evidence of higher rates of auto-immune disorders of males with very high IQs suggests to me that these individuals are starting to operate beyond the "safe limits" of human physiology in regards to the convential genetic background." 
 
This is pure conjecture here, but I have read that low NMDA receptor activity, high GABA activity, high CB (canniboid), high nicotinic receptor function, high sigma1 activity, and high opiod activity can all cause increased brain cell death during development (and I would suspect, lower IQ). Unfortunately, the inverse of this (high NMDA activity, low GABA activity, low CB activity, low nicotinic receptor function, low sigma activity, low opoid activity), while it may be beneficial during development in terms of IQ, can also cause a host of emotional and psychological problems (and perhaps other neurological problems) during adulthood. Specifically these problems include depression, anxiety, fatigue, attention deficit, high sensitivity to pain, and others (which would be interpreted by many as laziness and emotional weakness). I have a very high IQ (perhaps over 140 based on extrapolation from SAT and GRE scores), GRE scores of 800M, 680V, and 740 on the physics subject test. Unfortunately I am also very anxious, generally feel down, have a hard time getting motivated, and have self confidence issues. Taking drugs that act positively on the above receptors can all help considerably, but unfortunately I also tend to seriously abuse them (thus creating even worse problems).

For an example of the above (in my post) see this writing of the far-left, anti-white, anti-American, anti-middle class Tim Wise: 
 
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-12/19wise.cfm 
 
"Since drinking under 21 is illegal, and since one might consider law-breaking indicative of oneÂ’s character, it is also worth noting that whites are 70 percent more likely than blacks to drink underage, more than twice as likely to binge drink underage, and four times as likely to binge drink regularly, according to federal data."

Well...I'm not sure how much Constitution-worship there is, other than when it is convenient for ACLU types. I mean, look at crazy-ass groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving who want people to automatically lose their careers and/or education simply for blowing a .06 BAC (going to jail and/or losing your DL for a year pretty much amounts to this). That's not to mention their support for $30K+ fines (it's the law in California) simply because a 20 year-old is sold a beer. I mean seriously, if you think a 20 y/o drinking a beer or a 17 year-old smoking a cigarette is worth 30 grand in penalties, you're pretty far away from the Founders' ideals, methinks. 
 
I don't think that the people at VDare who speak of "anarcho-tyranny" are that far off their rockers. At least some of those who believe in major penalties for minor offenses (parking violations, speeding tickets, underage drinking and smoking, smoking pot, "off-label" OTC and prescription drug use, etc.) are the same people who think murderers should be able to get out after 10 years. This may be a manifestation of the axiom of equality--the only difference between a serious criminal and someone who breaks picayune laws, in the anarcho-tyrannist/postmodern/axiom of equality view, is that they simply are more privileged. That is, if the upper-middle class kid who drinks a beer at 19 or drives 80mph in a 65mph zone were raised in the ghetto, he'd be out robbing, raping, and assualting people...because the upper-middle class kid and the ghetto kid are lawbreakers all the same.

Isn't insurance kind of pointless if someone decides you are extremely high risk? I mean, if the insurance company knows, with (say) 95% confidence, that you will have $200,000 of medical costs in some amount of time, it's kind of pointless to get insurance. Isn't the whole point of insurance to protect you from any dangers you may face that you cannot afford? Essentially, the more insurance companies know, the more useless insurance is. It's like playing poker with someone who already knows everyone's hand--after some time playing with this person, you are virtually guaranteed to get screwed.