The director of the first Human Centipede film – the one about a psychopathic doctor who sews three unwilling and unwitting captives together mouth-to-anus to make a sort of “centipede” — proudly declared that his film was “100% medically accurate.” That is, he found a doctor who was willing to say that if one were indeed to create such a centipede, the second and third segments (i.e., people) would be able to survive, provided that you supplemented their rather dismal diet with IV drips to give them the nutrition they were lacking.
This dubious claim to 100% accuracy came to mind today as I perused a post by the blogger who calls himself Dalrock, a manospherian nitwit with a penchant for pseudoscientific defenses of old-fashioned misogyny. In a post with the whimsical title “We are trapped on Slut Island and Traditional Conservatives are our Gilligan,” Dalrock argues that the best “solution” to out-of-wedlock births is some good old-fashioned slut shaming.
Here’s how he breaks down the (imaginary) numbers in a post that is “100% mathematically accurate” – which is to say, not accurate at all:
Assume we are starting off with 100 sluts and 30 alphas/players. The sluts are happily riding on the alpha carousel. Now we introduce slut shaming. It isn’t fully effective of course, but it manages to convince 15 of the would be sluts not to be sluts after all. This means an additional 15 women are again potentially suitable for marriage. This directly translates into fewer fatherless children. This also makes the next round of slut shaming easier. Instead of having 99 peers eagerly cheering her on her ride, each slut now has 15 happily married women shaming her and only 84 other sluts encouraging her. After the next round this becomes 30 happily married women shaming the sluts, and only 69 other sluts cheering them on, and so on. This process continues until all but the most die hard sluts are off the carousel. You will never discourage them all, but you can do a world better than we are doing today.
Why not shame the fathers as well, while we’re at it? Dalrock explains that this just doesn’t make good mathematical sense:
Start with the same base assumption of 100 sluts and 30 players. Now apply shame to the players. Unfortunately shame is less effective on players than it is on sluts, so instead of discouraging 15% of them (4.5) in the first round, it only discourages three of them. No problem!, says the Gilligan [the social conservative], at least there are now three fewer sluts now that three of the evil alphas have been shamed away, and all without creating any unhappy sluts! But unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. The remaining 27 players are more than happy to service the extra sluts. They are quite maddeningly actually delighted with the new situation. Even worse, the next round of player shaming is even less effective than the first. This time only 2 players are discouraged, and one of the other 3 realizes that his player peers are picking up the slack anyway and reopens for business. This means in net there are still 26 players, more than enough to handle all of the sluts you can throw at them.
Well, there’s no arguing with that!
Seriously, there’s no arguing with that, because it is an imaginary construct with only the most tenuous connection with how things work in the real world. “But … MATH!” doesn’t really work as an argument here, since human beings don’t actually behave according to simplistic mathematical formulas.
Film critic note: While the first Human Centipede film offered little more than a workmanlike treatment of a fantastical idea, the recently released sequel, which details the attempts of a deranged Human Centipede superfan to take human-centipeding to the next level, is actually sort of brilliant. If you like that sort of thing.
Crap… I am still not at my mental best… I blame the drugs :).
The Whiskey Rebellion was while Washington was President, but he didn’t take the field.
And yeah, with the amount of stuff Meller puts out it’s easy to lose track of something which was close, but not quite.
I am mixed on the Volokhs’ philosophy, because I know them personally. Also, Eugene has said we should practice public tortures, and allow victims/families to perform it as part of public executions.
they’re both clearly at least a little bit nuts, and i don’t take anything sasha volokh says seriously. he’s one of the reasons i’m glad i decided not to apply to emory law. (i’m in atlanta, and i wanted to stay there, so i had to choose between emory and georgia state, and i think i made the right choice). but eugene volokh’s commentary on the first amendment is still great.
still, i think somin and orin kerr are the real treasures of that site.
ugh that came off more aggressive than i meant it to. sorry.
Sharculese: No problem here. Sasha is, in some ways, the more radical of the pair. He spent several years as an in house writer for reason, between his BAs, and going on to his Masters (econ: I don’t recall if he finished it, but probably), and then Law.
Given that Eugene has been teaching ConLaw since he got done clerking for O’Connor, I understand why his commentary is decent. I am also not sure that my personal knowledge of his opinion, as opposed to his statements, doesn’t color that (and I am not in contact with him in the way I was 20-30 years ago).
But I am glad that I don’t see either of them likely (at this point) to be able to get a seat on the Supreme Court, because they are, in a lot of ways, more on the Paulist end of Libertarianism, than anything else.
Ron Paul “getting back to the Constitution” is a good thing–as a first step! Hopefully, once this is done, IF it can be done, libertarians can go on from there, if possible on a local, municipal, or country basis (or State, although as the several States have been so thoroughly subsumed by the usurpers on the Patomac since 1865, I am not even sure that the “States” would be even recognisable once the Feds were reduced to their legitimate constitutional limits.
Nevertheless, it is possible, and perhaps even practical, that dissolution of the leviathan be devolved through the several “states” if possible, and through recognised Constitutional means.
I too, am looking at the past, including Ron Paul’s past, as part of my guess as to what may happen in the future. However, I am keenly aware of our current situations, both domestically and around the world, and my “hedging” is due to the extraordinary levels of uncertainty we are encountering even in the short term. What would the consequeces be if, e.g.
1) Greece, and perhaps Italy default on their debt, leading to the collapse of the Euro, and American banks and pension funds invested in Euro denominated assets?
2) A military (perhaps a nuclear) pre-emptive strike on Iran by Israel, the USA, or both?
3) China, Japan, and the Saudi and Gulf Royal families liquidating their debt holdings of US treasury bonds and other Dollar denominated assets, partly to satisfy short-term obligations, and partly to shield what is left of their economies and fortunes from the remnants of the US Dollar?
4) Admittedly not likely, but certainly flat-out impossible–Anti-American terrorists acquire (probably by theft or even by purchase, especially when the Dollar evaporates–see point 1 and 3 above) a “small” thermonuclear bomb c. 100-300 KT yield) and use a large city here for target practice–kind of like 9-11, but several dozen times bigger?
5) Any of the above freezes the US banking system for an indefinite period, leaving almost everybody, both personally and businesses, cashless and broke?
All of these (except perhaps #4,) are almost daily fare in the news, both outside the mainstream, and mainstream. It is certainly not “religion” or “treating all possible events as equally likely” whatever that is supposed to mean. I am not advocating a military takeover in the event of a Ron Paul Presidency, Pecunium, I have no idea, as I think I have even communicated on other posts, if we will have a functioning military after the collapse hits–and not only because of infestation by women–but where will the officers’ loyalties, lie? Where will the troop’s loyalties lie? Who will pay them and in what,or will the “armed forces” degenerate into a rabble of heavily armed street gangs looting and attacking the very people they are supposed to defend? If a large battalion of (say) black soldiers are sent to quell a riot by fellow blacks in a large urban center (make it Washington DC, just for the hell of it), and the majority of “soldiers”, already infuriated by the cancellation or default on veterans benefits, decide to join the rioters, what happens then? Somehow, I think that my doubts regarding the viability of the United States acquires a logic all its own, doesn’t it?
My idea of a military takeover to support Ron Paul was–and is–hypothetical. It has nothing to do with what I want to happen, or what I even think is possible. All I know is that there would be better chances for more people if Ron Paul were President, then if Obama, Romney, Gingrich, or for that matter, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or Hillary Clinton…
As far as what would happen to women “soldiers” in a disintegrating government(?)-that clearly had trouble governing in far more normal times–an,armed forces whose members are all desperate, demoralized, heavily armed and out-of-control, and economy–not even going THERE–, you were in the Army, Pecunium. You tell us!
What I, or other people want is totally outside our control now, from the Presidency on down! I think that Ron Paul’s lapses–if they even are lapses–from liberty notwithstanding, he is vastly better as a person, as a libertarian, and–if this means anything anymore–as an American–than the truly dismaying choices we are offered by a degerate and criminal establishment! If you disagree, that is certainly your privilege, but forgive me if I don’t see Paul Ryan as an improvement!
ps- on point #4- I meant to say ” but NOT flat-out impossible.
@pecunium- there’s no question eugene volokh has made some valuable contributions for the law. when i was taking employment discrimination, the section on religion was all ‘for more on this topic, read this article by eugene volokh’. but yeah, i don’t see either of them picking up a lower court judgeship, much less the supremes.
Meller: Nevertheless, it is possible, and perhaps even practical, that dissolution of the leviathan be devolved through the several “states” if possible, and through recognised Constitutional means.
Care to expound on those, “recognised Constitutional means” of dissolving the Union?
I too, am looking at the past, including Ron Paul’s past, as part of my guess as to what may happen in the future.
Nope. You said no one could know the future if Ron Paul were elected. That was one of the selling points you were touting. You argue, “Elect a Democrat or a Republican, get the same old thingl; elect Ron Paul and no one knows what will happen, but it will be better because, “RON PAUL”!!!!!!”.
As far as what would happen to women “soldiers” in a disintegrating government(?)-that clearly had trouble governing in far more normal times–an,armed forces whose members are all desperate, demoralized, heavily armed and out-of-control, and economy–not even going THERE–, you were in the Army, Pecunium. You tell us!
Why? The last time I told you, you pretended I was saying get rid of all male soldiers.
Short answer, you have no idea and your fantasies (all of them) are crackpot nonsense.
What I, or other people want is totally outside our control now, from the Presidency on down! I think that Ron Paul’s lapses–if they even are lapses–from liberty notwithstanding, he is vastly better as a person, as a libertarian, and–if this means anything anymore–as an American–than the truly dismaying choices we are offered by a degerate and criminal establishment! If you disagree, that is certainly your privilege, but forgive me if I don’t see Paul Ryan as an improvement!
If the first is true, then why bother?
You’ve not actually defended any of Paul’s positions, merely said, “If you don’t vote for Paul you are DOOMED!”
And I don’t know why you decided a question on my part, which you haven’t really answered), i.e. what do you think of Paul Ryan equals either an endorsement, or encouragement to you to endorse him.
I think he and Paul are, in more ways than one, peas in a pod, and I agree with you, I don’t see Ryan as an improvement over Paul; but I don’t see Paul as any better than Ryan. The lesser of two unmitigated evils is still too evil to have in charge.
Sharculese: Eugene is smart (though he has some blind spots.. sometime when we are in person ask me about his the first test he gave on equal protection), but there was a time I thought, given the way he is seen as, “moderate” by the left, and “libertarian” by the right that his position in Academia might, in conjunction with his clerkships, have him considered as an, “outisider”.
I love this quote from David: “The blogger who calls himself Dalrock, a manospherian nitwit with a penchant for pseudoscientific defenses of old-fashioned misogyny.”
This dude and his manospherian minions are like something out of Medieval times (or the 1950s, at the very least). One of his cronies actually went as far as to say that feminism deprived women of their “soft landing,” namely their ability to contentedly enter amorphous grandmother-hood after they reach the dreaded age of 50, a non-negotiable, definitive social death sentence when they are “no longer sexually desirable to men.” Conversely, guys will continue to have their pick of young super model facsimiles into their dotage.
Another presented as “fact” that women who do not pursue the traditional role of marriage and stay-at-home mommie-hood were doomed to wind up alone and in poverty in their old age. Every single last one, without exception, is destined to experience this fate.
Whenever I or anyone else attempted to counter these preposterous notions with actual facts and real-life anecdotes from the actual real world the women were attacked and automatically assumed to be fat “old maids” who must spend their nights sleeping with their cats, while the men were deemed “manginas.”
What a bunch of tools!
I am so happy I found this blog…