I baffled a sociologist at the university today with this piece of news:

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

The cornerstone of maintaining the quality of scientific papers is the peer review system. Under this, papers submitted to scientific journals are reviewed anonymously by experts in the field. Conducting reviews is seen as part of the job for academics, who are generally not paid for the work.

Cracks in the system have been obvious for years. Yesterday it emerged that 14 leading researchers in a different field – stem cell research – have written an open letter to journal editors to highlight their dissatisfaction with the process. They allege that a small scientific clique is using peer review to block papers from other researchers.

She was baffled, because yet again we see the flaws of the European education system, which otherwise is so highly praised. The idea behind peer review was to let academics self-manage each other to ensure quality, but since much of the research today is politicized and most people act like monkeys when they're not checked, academics have begun using the system to self-promote political motifs.

This is one problem the whole Western scientific community needs to ponder. But there's a European-specific factor to note here. Most European universities are government-managed. This means that politicians are enforcing quality checks like the peer review system to be certain that tax money actually produces results. This system is now being manipulated and questioned.

America, only introducing similar systems with the GPRA act in '93, has escaped much of this dilemma since about a third of its universities are privately owned, funded by private and philanthropic resources. It also happens that those universities are ranked as the world's best. Do we see a pattern here? The government's quality systems have failed. Private investors are looking for results and seem to have created an academic environment unparalleled by any public system. Yawn, what's new?

We've written before that good-looking people are better singers and musicians than the rest of you, and now we also have scientific evidence that handsome guys are also superior athletes, even when rating the attractiveness of their faces alone (so, unfortunately for the girls participating in this research, they didn't get to check out their muscular bodies). We already know that guys with certain kinds of face shapes are stronger and more aggressive, but I was still somewhat surprised that this even works in not-so-aggressive sports like tennis.

So, there you go. Equality not just for the weak and stupid, but for the weak, stupid and ugly.

I love this Planet, Life, Science and the Internet.

What's prompting me to declare this? Check the video out.

There's more Symphony of Science videos here.

I ran across a research paper which found that while the average guy would like to have a lot more muscle, the average woman prefers men with only slightly above-average muscle mass.

Now, I could try to poke holes in this - say that university students' preferences are weird and they should go ask some farmgirls at a disco, or that you should always trust what women actually want and never what they say they want, but let's take this finding at face value. Assume everything in this study is true, and also assume that your only goal in life is to attract more desirable women. If you're a muscular guy, should you lose a bunch of muscle for the sake of the ladies?

Naaaah. I can think of two good reasons why you should keep growing more meat on your bones. One is that women like socially dominant men. For most of us being bigger and stronger than other guys helps achieve that. They'll take you over the better-looking guy who thinks you're more man than him.

Two is that this study is talking about "the average woman", and there are plenty of non-average women as well. Now, I know that when told women don't like something he does, damn near every guy tries to hide behind "well, most women don't, but the ones who are really worth it love it". That's bullshit, of course. No matter who you are, plenty of women who are really worth it hate you and hate what you do. You should be man enough to admit it to yourself. However, there are also plenty of women who prefer meaty dudes, and they sure seem to be more plentiful than the meaty dudes they crave. In other words, the distribution of women's tastes is wider than the distribution of guys' meatiness, and us bigger guys don't have as much competition. Average guys are plentiful - it's a meat market and you want to be in short supply!

I do suspect that there is a grain of truth to this study, though. Whether it captures women's preferences accurately or not, men do care about how big and strong they are a lot more than women do.

Some scientists tried to perform a valuable service for fat guys by finding out just how much money they have to make in order to attract women. The resulting amount is much lower than I'd have expected, but then again the research was on married couples, so the dynamics there are very different. I suspect single women are a lot more sensitive to lardassness in guys.

This sentence from the abstract made me laugh, though:

Interestingly, these findings suggest that female physical attractiveness plays a larger role in men's assessment of a woman than male physical attractiveness does for women.

Equally "interestingly", some other researchers suggest that some women have boobs. Sure, it's good sometimes for science to demonstrate that obvious things are true, especially if it can also put some specific numbers on them. But don't call this kind of discovery "interesting" unless for some reason you're trying to live up to the worst socially clueless nerd stereotypes.

Bruce G. Charlton provides a great explanation why intelligent people don't just have stupid ideas sometimes, they are making all-out war against common sense and normalcy. You should read the whole thing, but here is a short summary from the conclusion:

Because evolved ‘common sense’ usually produces the right answers in the social domain, yet the most intelligent people have personalities which over-use abstract analysis in the social domain, this implies that the most intelligent people are predisposed to have silly ideas and to behave maladaptively when it comes to solving social problems.

Ever since the development of cognitive stratification in modernizing societies, the clever sillies have been almost monopolistically ‘in charge’. They really are both clever and silly – but the cleverness is abstract while the silliness is focused on the psychological and social domains. Consequently, the fatal flaw of modern ruling elites lies in their lack of common sense – especially the misinterpretations of human psychology and socio-political affairs. My guess is that this lack of common sense is intrinsic and incorrigible – and perhaps biologically-linked with the evolution of high intelligence and the rise of modernity.

What can we do? Well, we vastly outnumber and outgun our cognitive elites, so if we wanted to it wouldn't be all that difficult to just remove them from power and/or kill them all (in a reversal of the typical misanthropic eugenicist's calls to kill everyone with an IQ lower than himself), but I wouldn't really recommend that. I'm not sure who originally said this, but if you think sociology professors have crazy ideas about the world, try talking to someone who dropped out of eighth grade. Putting average or stupid people in charge would be an improvement in many areas, but not all and might actually be a net loss. Besides, we already tried killing millions of people in order to make the world a better place already, and that didn't work out too well. So what other options remain? Convincing really smart people to pay more attention to everyone else's ideas is a pretty hopeless task, as Udolpho points out in his commentary on Charlton's post:

Here we find the hubris of the educated (in some cases over-educated) man: because his reasoning powers have gifted him with status and prestige, it is unthinkably humbling to suggest to him that his ideas in other spheres (notably politics) are inferior to those of the common individual far below him in status and measurable intelligence. How can a man who only follows his own dumb instincts, who can barely talk or write effectively, come up with a better conception of society than an academic or pundit who is respected by his equally intelligent peers! (In fact we find this hubristic force at work among elites who are far from demonstrating a particularly high cognitive ability, notably actors and musicians.)

I'm not gonna try to come up with any grand schemes to try to fix the world, but an older Udolpho post about how loathsome computer geeks are reminded me of something that each of us can do in our daily lives.

Our cognitive elites are basically nerds on a larger scale. Even the ones who aren't nerdy in their private lives - most of the people who succeed in politics, business etc. have both high IQ and good social skills, and quite a few even had good athletic ability in their youth - basically engage in the worst nerd behavior of substituting thinking (which they are good at) for the normal social instincts which they lack. While the nerd merely irritates those near him (especially single women), though, our masters impose their nonsensical and harmful ideas upon the world.

My proposed solution is to mock and humiliate nerds at every opportunity. By relentlessly picking on nerds we can stigmatize the overuse of abstract reasoning for situations where it doesn't work well. If we do this enough, the perceived worth of reasoning powers will decline and the status of common sense will rise. At some point even really smart people will be less ashamed to follow what little common sense instincts they have instead of suppressing them with brainpower. There's no risk that the elites will fight back, either - no one likes nerds except for other nerds, after all, so no one will rise to their defense.

So, pick on a nerd today! It'll be a tiny step towards a better world.

"IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid?" Why is Bush still being depicted as a fool? Is it because he started a war? Didn't find any WMDs? Or is it simply because he's a true Texan, and not ashamed about it? Most anti-Bush people refer to videos like these on the web:

Yet this doesn't prove anything other than that Bush has slipped during his speeches, which, when you think about it, is not that difficult to do. Obama will have time to make his slips during his presidency. No, we need a better explanation:

IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and "as a result ill-informed". The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was "in a league by himself". Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical".

How can someone with a high IQ have these kinds of intellectual deficiencies? Put another way, how can a "smart" person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity - how much information you can hold in mind.

But the tests fall down when it comes to measuring those abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations. That's because they are unable to assess things such as a person's ability to critically weigh up information, or whether an individual can override the intuitive cognitive biases that can lead us astray.

I think this is bad science, for two reasons:

(1) That social or intuitive factors overshadow the use of raw cognitive power, doesn't say much about whether IQ tests are good or bad at measuring intelligence. It's like saying we shouldn't bother measuring the muscle mass of a martial arts expert, because he might not be using those muscles anyway in a competition. The point is that he's got the power, and he is able to use it if he wants to. Those who lack the power might be able to make better use of what they have, but they can also only achieve so much.

These funny speeches and the decision process around the Iraq War don't really add up to an unintelligent President. We just don't think he made the right decision, but that's a completely separate question. How come we address Obama as "intellectual," when clearly, his speeches are almost all rhetoric and no substance? That's usually sign of lower intelligence but developed social skills.

(2) Not everyone of high IQ is smart, but no one of low IQ is smart. Funny they don't mention this.

We might also be better equipped to elect leaders that did the same. Bush's successor is intellectually engaged, shows cognitive flexibility, can question beliefs, is sensitive to inconsistency and engages in counterfactual thinking, says Stanovich. "They could not be more different in their rational thinking profiles." President Obama's IQ, incidentally, is well above average - but then so was Bush's.

"Cognitive flexibility?" What the hell does that mean? That he's more indecisive than Bush? This article was probably written by a progressive journalist, because it highlights the worst of science journalism. More politics than reality. If Bush's a smart fool, Obama is a fool who is smart enough to try to cover up his lack of political experience and intellectual leadership. I can't say either appeals to me.

Regular CORRUPT readers should by now know that I'm a big fan of Gilgamesh. One thing that early on fascinated me about Gilgamesh is how he reveals the blurry outposts of humanism. According to the Epic there are no clear boundaries between animal, human and god. If you hang out in the desert with other animals and drink water from ponds, you'll stay animal. If you fornicate with humans and acquire an understanding for friendship, empathy and civilization, you'll become human. And if you have the luck of being born by gods but still can face the idea of death, you'll become god.

Many Abrahamists falsely believe the opposite. Humans are special and different from animals--a category of creatures distinct from all other creatures on Earth. Most can't argue why, but one common argument is that animals lack morality. Now science can confirm this is just another anthropocentric myth:

Philosophical and scientific convention, of course, has pulled toward a more conservative account of morality: Morality is a capacity unique to human beings. But the more we study the behavior of animals, the more we find that different groups of animals have their own moral codes. That raises both scientific and philosophic questions.

Researchers like Frans de Waal (The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society), Elliott Sober, David Sloan Wilson (Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior), and Kenneth M. Weiss and Anne V. Buchanan (The Mermaid's Tale: Four Billion Years of Cooperation in the Making of Living Things) have demonstrated that animals have social lives rich beyond our imagining, and that cooperation and caring have shaped the course of evolution every bit as much as competition and ruthlessness have. Individuals form intricate networks and have a large repertoire of behavior patterns that help them get along with one another and maintain close and generally peaceful relationships. Indeed, Robert W. Sussman, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues Paul A. Garber and Jim Cheverud reported in 2005 in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology that for many nonhuman primates, more than 90 percent of their social interactions are affiliative rather than competitive or divisive. Moreover, social animals live in groups structured by rules of engagement—there are "right" and "wrong" ways of behaving, depending on the situation.

While we all recognize rules of right and wrong behavior in our own human societies, we are not accustomed to looking for them among animals. But they're there, as are the "good" prosocial behaviors and emotions that underlie and help maintain those rules. Such behaviors include fairness, empathy, forgiveness, trust, altruism, social tolerance, integrity, and reciprocity—and they are not merely byproducts of conflict but rather extremely important in their own right.

One might argue back that the morality of animals lacks the self-reflection and structured complexity of humans, which seems right, but all this really "proves" is that humans are different from other animals. When you think about it, the evolutionary view makes for a much more interesting life. You can choose to become an animal with a poorly developed morality, or aim for building culture and civilization like a real human. Instead of doing like the misanthropes and calling "immoral" people for "low-life humans," we can just call them animals, which potentially could be offending to already advanced animals.

This GNPX post mentioning the different attitudes of various social classes regarding the importance of genetics in athletic success reminded me of a Dusk In Autumn post from last year about what hip-hop lyrics have to say about the heritability of personality traits. That got me thinking about all those country songs about being an alcoholic, criminal etc. Do they blame these "poor life outcomes" on environmental variables or genetics?

Of course the first song to come to mind was Kevin Fowler's "Long Line Of Losers".

The lyrics are full of indications that Fowler believes genetics are very important, and no blame directly placed on environmental variables. The meaning of lines such as "my bloodline made me who I am" is obvious enough, but there are more subtle clues as well. Note that his grandmother was never around during his life, his grandfather wasn't around much as he was in jail half the time and working on the road a lot (running moonshine), but he considers them important enough to how he turned out to start the song with them.

Even the "good" environment of having a mother who always went to church is not shown as helping Fowler grow up to be an outstanding citizen. The most telling line, though, is "I was born with a shotglass in my hand" - that is to say, inclined towards alcohol from birth, before any environmental variables had much of a chance to influence anything. So, there you have it - just like underclass blacks, rednecks generally believe that personality traits are strongly heritable. In this they are also joined by urban underclass whites, as evidenced by these Euro-wiggers who recorded a hip-hop cover of "Long Line Of Losers".

If you want this post to have a serious point, it might be that scientific research and the common beliefs of the stupidest and least educated members of society are pretty well aligned in this case, and the nurturist beliefs so popular among the middle and upper classes are wrong.

Sometimes it's good to confirm the really obvious with scientific data, and here is some about drunk women and sex:

Researchers, who surveyed 3000 women aged 18-50, found on average they slept with eight men, but were drunk with at least five, and on two occasions couldn't remember the man's name the next day, the Herald Sun reports.

Four out of 10 had been tipsy when sleeping with a partner for the first time.

The study found 75 per cent of women liked to drink before getting into bed with their husband or boyfriend, and 6 per cent had never had sex sober.

More than half claimed drinking with a prospective partner was "part of the dating process" so were a bit drunk when they had sex.

It also revealed 14 per cent of women in a relationship can't sleep with their partner without a couple of glasses of wine beforehand.

The Herald Sun writer thinks all this means that "women drink alcohol before having sex because they lack confidence in their bodies". I guess that's why the really hot women who have plenty of confidence and massive egos from dozens of men hitting on them every day never drink. If only uglier women had more confidence then they'd also stop drinking, just like the real hotties. Oh, wait... yeah, that's obviously bullshit. Women drink before sex for pretty much the same reason most people drink in all kinds of situations - to lower their inhibitions and enjoy life more. Many women are just plain better in bed when they're slightly drunk, and men might be too. That's probably why many older married guys drink a glass of cognac or wine every evening.

All this reminds me of a hyphothesis I heard somewhere that alcohol helps humans evolve towards more serious and responsible personalities. I don't know who came up with it, it might have been Steve Sailer, but basically the hypothesis goes that alcohol can help uptight people loosen up and be more social in the evenings, therefore allowing them to be serious and productive during the day without being boring nerds with no personality all the time. That gives them a reproductive advantage over both the uptight people who don't drink and those who are always uninhibited even when sober. I have no idea how true this is, but at least it seems plausible.

Whether that hypothesis is true or not what many of these women are doing just plain makes sense and makes their sex lives, and lives in general, better. It's easy to overdo it, though... I know it's tempting.

The downside, though, is definitely unpleasant.

It's that time of the year when I don't buy any fruit or vegetables for a couple of months because I just go outside and pick whatever's ripe. The peppers are doing really well this year. A pepper is filled with air, quite a bit of air in the case of a large bell pepper. How does that air get there? I'm guessing it probably permeates through the skin and flesh of the pepper, but maybe it gets there some other way. Also, how does it differ from the air outside? I have an unsubstantiated hunch it contains more water vapor, and probably different levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide, but has anybody really investigated this? I'm sure some grad student of horticulture somewhere has done research on this just out of simple curiosity.

Why are cognitively demanding fields such as math and science dominated by nerds? That's been one of life's litte mysteries which nobody paid much attention to because, well, nobody pays much attention to nerds. GNXP brings us the answer, though, from research looking into the effects of interacting with other people on cognitive performance:

The present research tested the prediction that mixed-sex interactions may temporarily impair cognitive functioning. Two studies, in which participants interacted either with a same-sex or opposite-sex other, demonstrated that men's (but not women's) cognitive performance declined following a mixed-sex encounter. In line with our theoretical reasoning, this effect occurred more strongly to the extent that the opposite-sex other was perceived as more attractive (Study 1), and to the extent that participants reported higher levels of impression management motivation (Study 2).

No wonder nerds do so well in cognitively demanding fields - because women, especially attractive women, avoid talking to them, their reasoning ability is not impaired. That allows them to use their brains fully in the service of science. Their natural repulsiveness can be a good thing after all.

We should be make even better scientific progress, though, if we took full advantage of the knowledge that good-looking women make the men around them stupider. It is tempting to say we should just keep women out of science, but I think that's unnecessarily harsh. Setting up separate scientific institutions for women is a better option, but it would be rather expensive and inefficient. Instead I propose that all women working in science or studying science (including those who need to take basic science courses as part of their university degrees in other fields) simply fatten themselves up to the point of repulsiveness. That's a simple and fair solution.

This research can be applied to any guy's daily life as well. If your wife or girlfriend calls you stupid, just answer "I'm not stupid, you're hot - it's science!"

Although writing about medical research news is normally Bhetti's job there is some reasearch she is just too shy to write about, or something like that. We've written before about how not all people are equal: more attractive people are better violinists, tall people are smarter etc. Now we can add one more item to that list of inequality: guys with bigger asses have bigger penises. Yes, life is unfair to the rest of you. We who are blessed with large glutes are not only more athletic and better adapted to walking upright, we're also better in bed. I could go on about this but I think I've already done more than enough to attract some atypical search traffic.

Note, however, that the popular Nigerian stereotype that small glutes mean a big penis was proven dead wrong. Also, other research has shown that there is nothing to the popular Western belief in a correlation between shoe size and penis length. Does this mean that stereotypes in general are wrong? Nah. Most stereotypes are probably true, especially if they are about easily observable things, such as "men are taller than women". In these cases, though, few people see enough penises in their life to form accurate ideas about correlations with other body parts, so the popular beliefs end up being pretty much random noise.

Oh, and since I seem to remember that PubMed archives research supported at least in part by the USA's National Institute of Health, I would like to personally thank all Corrupt readers who are American taxpayers for funding research to prove my superiority over other people.

Racists have spent the past few decades marginalized, neglected and ignored by mainstream society. But no more!

About a decade ago, biologists David Schwartzman and George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC hypothesised that our modern brain could not have evolved until the Quaternary ice age started, about 2.5 million years ago. They reckoned such a large brain would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times, but they lacked evidence to back their hypothesis . . .

A new study by Schwartzman and Middendorf suggests that a small drop in global temperatures may have made a big difference. The pair used basic equations of heat loss to estimate how fast the small-brained Homo habilis would have been able to cool off. Assuming overheating limited the size of H. habilis's brain, they then calculated what drop in air temperature would have been needed for Homo erectus to be able to support its bigger brain... They found that a drop in air temperature of just 1.5 °C would have done the trick.

So, hominids living in a slightly warmer climate cannot have human brains? Of course, only white supremacists who believe that peoples living tropical climates have inferior brains and may not even be fully human would buy into such a theory. But why is science suddenly reviving ideas which have been socially unacceptable since roughly the 1940s? It's all because of global warming:

If global cooling allowed humans to evolve their big brains, will today's global warming take them away again? "I'd hate to think that a difference of 1.5 °C might mean the end of humans because our brains cook," says George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC, "but I guess it's a scenario that might play out."

Yes, climate science is reaching out to you racists. You can no longer be ignored - your help is needed to fight global warming. It must feel great for you to be taken seriously by science, especially by a highly prestigious branch of science with its Nobel Peace Prize and its highly amusing public food fights.

Some people aren't buying this study - John Hawks attempts to debunk it, but apparently his travels have taken him to tropical lands one too many times as this is what he concludes:

OH NOES! Me brain, she be sizzlin' away like a hot ball o' buttah. WHAAAAAAH! hot Hot HOT HOT!

Commenting on one of Alfred's posts, Bhetti writes:

Oh, Al, you give such good advice! I would literally stick my hand in a pool of acid just to read you.

Hold on a sec! Before you go sticking your hand in a pool of acid, you might want to familiarize yourself with the latest relevant scientific research so you will know to go about this. Although the liquid is a different one, this study happens to be very directly applicable to Bhetti's situation:

They recruited 67 undergraduates, and asked to make two short lists of words - one containing five words they might use after hitting themselves on the thumb with a hammer, the other containing five words they might use to describe a table. The participants submerged one of their hands into room temperature water for three minutes, to provide a standardized starting point, then transferred it to a container of cold water and instructed to keep it submerged for as long as they could. In one condition, they were told to repeat the first swear word they had included in their list; in another, they repeated one of the words describing a table.

The researchers measured how long the participants kept their hands submerged in cold water, and asked them to rate the amount of pain they felt. Their heart rates were also recorded after they had submerged their hands in room temperature water as well as after the submersion in cold water. Contrary to their hypothesis, they found that swearing actually reduced the amount of pain felt. The participants kept their hands submerged in the cold water longer for longer, and also reported experiencing less pain, when they repeated a swear word than when they repeated a word describing a table.

So, when you do this please remember to curse like a sailor! Sure it won't reduce the damage or help your skin heal, but it actually works as a painkiller. And in case you think this isn't a very ladylike thing to do, according to the results it is very much becoming of a lady:

A difference between males and females was observed. Swearing led to a greater reduction in pain perception and a bigger increase in heart rate in females.

It's great to know that science sometimes studies things which are actually useful and relevant to our lives!

HT: Razib

Milan, Italy - Thanks to the revolutionary research of Dr. P. Sandrini, a professor of computer science and genetics in Milan, our dreams of a fully-automated lifestyle may come true sooner than we think. Using new advances in organic circuitry, Sandrini was able to insert a microchip into the brain of a young guinea pig, which successfully took over many of its motor and behavioural functions.

Still more impressive, the guinea pig can be "remote controlled" via an antenna extending from its ear. Experiments are due to begin with brain-dead or severely impaired human subjects in 2012. At a press conference earlier this week, Sandrini was quoted saying, "Computer scientists gave up the idea of 'good old fashioned AI' years ago, but organic-electronic hybrids are something that simply never occurred to us 25 years ago. Now, the "home robot" – or "manbot", if you prefer – may be a reality as early as 2024."

Needless to say, the potential for this technology is astounding. Imagine a "manbot" to go to work for you, do the grocery shopping, clean the house, and even give you a foot-massage? Undoubtedly, early interest (and funding) will be for military applications, but economist Martin Sales foresees a socio-economic revolution. "This could be the dawn of a capitalist utopia – wage-free labour, which will leave consumers free to do what they do best – consume," he says. But don't expect too much too quickly – the first commercial models are expected to set you back at least $2.5 million.

Nerdy guys' thoughts on human interaction are usually pretty worthless, but Bryan Caplan seems to be one of the exceptions to that rule. Yesterday he posted what might be the best advice for people with poor social skills that I've yet seen.

1. Good conversation is an exchange.  The most basic form of social ineptitude is to say what's on your mind, even though you have no reason to believe your listeners are interested.  Even more cloddish: Saying what's on your mind, even though you know that your listeners are not interested. 

In a useful conversation, in contrast, there is a double coincidence of wants.  You have to be interested in what I have to say; I have to be interested in what you have to say.  This is an important reason why people with conventional interests seem more socially intelligent.  Even if they don't check whether their audience cares, it probably does.

I imagine that my teenage self would immediately object, "But no one's interested in what I have to say."  My two replies: (1) If that's true, it's still better to keep your thoughts to yourself than antagonize people you're going to see repeatedly.  (2) People will be much more interested in your thoughts if you make marginal adjustments in topics and presentation.

2. Be friendly.  It's not just good advice for libertarians; it's good advice for people.  A strong presumption in favor of kindness and respect almost never hurts you, and often helps you.  Note that I say "presumption."  Don't "wait and see" if people deserve friendly treatment.  Hand it out first, no questions asked.  You will make friends (very good), avoid making enemies (good), and occasionally show undeserved kindness and respect (only mildly bad).

3. Keeping friends is more important than getting your way.  You should think twice before asking anyone for help.  If you still think it's a good idea, try to make your request easy to refuse.  "How would you feel about..." is much better than "Please, please just do me this one favor!"  In the short-run, of course, the pushy approach is often effective.  But life is a repeated game, pushing leads to resentment, and your relationships are more valuable than almost any specific victory.

In spite of being an asshole myself, I agree with all of the above. You can get away with asshole behavior only if you are interesting, likable and worth being around. It won't work unless it's underpinned by at least basic social skills. Think of it as a more advanced level of social interaction than Caplan's tips - it can help you push your way from the middle of a social group to the top, but if you are at the bottom it'll just make you come off as a loser who's bitter and resentful of everyone.

Another way to boost your social skills is to take up music. I have written about scientific research in this area before, and there is a new article in Scientific American summarizing more findings from the field. This stuff doesn't just work by causing changes in the brain, it works really quickly:

Does musical training really affect the brain or could it be that musicians are simply born with a different brain -- that they are naturally drawn to music by their cognitive strengths? Another study suggests that musical training really does drive changes in the brain. Daniel J. Bosnyak and a team of researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, demonstrated that the brain responses of a group of non-musicians could change as a result of their participation in a just two weeks of training to perceive pitches accurately.

Note that this does not mean that you should take up the guitar. It's better take up a different instrument which will offer more opportunities for ensemble playing - that will let you work both on your listening and sound-processing skills and actual human interaction at the same time. Guitarists tend to spend too much time playing alone at home and are usually weaker listeners than other musicians.

Oh, and one more thing... dress like an adult. That is one way of showing respect to people you interact with which doesn't require much skill at all.

With the debate around my post on American religiosity in mind, I just stumbled across this article on reason vs. faith:

In 1802 Georg W.F. Hegel wrote an impassioned treatise on faith and reason, articulating the major philosophical conflict of the day. Among European intellectual circles, the Enlightenment credo, which celebrated the "sovereignty of reason," had recently triumphed. From that standpoint, human intellect was a self-sufficient measure of the true, the just, and the good. The outlook's real target, of course, was religion, which the philosophers viewed as the last redoubt of delusion and superstition. Theological claims, they held, could only lead mankind astray. Once the last ramparts of unreason were breached — our mental Bastilles, as it were — sovereign reason would take command and, presumably, human perfection would not be long in coming.

Taylor contrives a new "faith based" lexicon of social criticism to indict the multifarious shortcomings of a secular age. In his view, modernity's "crisis of meaning" has reached grave and epidemic proportions. As denizens of a fallen world, we systematically lack commitments and allegiances that transcend the narrow confines of our own monadic egos. Our social existence has withered to the point where we have become a mass of atomized, "buffered" selves — living caricatures of Descartes's shallow, epistemological solipsism, ego cogito sum. As social beings we are incapable of creating cohesive and lasting bonds. For this reason, we have become incapable of community.

But from a narrowly neo-Darwinian perspective, it is impossible to account for religion's indispensable role in forming the higher ideals that, as a species, help to make us genuinely civilized. Historically, religious ideals have inspired agape, compassion, selflessness, brotherly and sisterly love, community, and numerous good works. They have spurred political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Desmond Tutu to oppose oppression and champion the cause of social equality. Religious conviction provided the moral suasion behind the 19th-century antislavery movement and has been a spur to numerous instances of humanitarian intervention.

This debate is mostly nonsense and here is why: science is not a metaphysical or ethical discipline. A scientist doesn't develop ethical guidelines or speak about the fundamental metaphysical nature of reality. These are academically the fields of moral and theoretical philosophy. Both disciplines have historically embraced both scientific and religious ideas, and continue to do so. In other words, the people who debate this issue don't seem to have any idea what they're talking about.

The ancients knew better: science has got one role, religion has got another. No, science didn't give us affirmative action or the Egyptian pyramids, because scientists don't work with racism or build with stone blocks. Similarly, priests haven't brought us electricity or computers. Science advances our empirical understanding of reality. Religion offers spirituality, moral guidelines, and community services. Comprende?

Looking at it from this perspective you quickly come to realize that this so called "reason vs. faith" debate is a confused idea about the role of science and religion in society. Only in a progressive world dominated by crowdism could we commit such a mistake, and pretend it's the biggest problem since the Enlightenment.

Don't worry, this post isn't about Cristiano Ronaldo's conquests. It's university exam season in much of the world, and some research news I ran across this morning is immediately applicable by all the students thinking of staying up all night to study:

Researchers, led by Jessica Payne of Harvard Medical School, set out to determine if sleep boosts the creation of emotionally salient memories, and memories relevant to future goals, when it follows soon after learning. At the heart of the study is the notion that the sleeping brain actively and selectively consolidates memory. So, let’s say that what you are trying to learn is a side of beef, and your sleeping brain is the butcher. When you sleep (according to this hypothesis) the butcher takes the side of beef and trims it down to a stack of top sirloin and fillet mignon.

It turns out that’s not too far off the mark, but it’s even better than that. The results show that not only does sleep consolidate the most relevant, adapative and useful information, but the effect can last for up to four months. The trick is that you have to sleep soon after learning. Waiting 24 hours after learning greatly diminshes the effects.

This research adds more substance to the argument that the sleeping brain isn’t dormant in any sense of the word. It’s actively calculating what’s most important about our recent experience, and selecting what can be consolidated for long-term storage.

There you have it - sleeping is an important component of learning and you will not learn more by pulling all-nighters. Well, they might be effective in helping you pass that exam tomorrow morning if you really are unprepared, but if we define learning as the acquisition of actual knowledge and not the passing of exams, sleep is an essential component.

So that's for intellectual young folk. Some of us are long past the age of having exams, though. Sleep is important for us, too. Coach Charles Poliquin has a piece of excellent advice, as well as a quick test of whether a guy is getting high-quality sleep:

High-quality sleep means putting your head on the pillow and not waking up until the next day. You also want to wake up at the same time every day.

But quantity of sleep isn't the only problem. Erratic sleeping patterns are also bad for your health and your physique. If you wake up in the middle of the night to go pee, it's not good sleep.

Remember, all the anabolic-hormone cascades depend on the quality of your sleep. A lot of males with low Testosterone levels can be cured simply by fixing their sleep patterns.

A low estimate is that 68% of the population doesn't sleep properly. When I work with pro teams as a consultant, the first thing I do is teach them all the tricks I have for improving quality of sleep.

Now, a young guy can go out on Friday night, hunt for quiff until 4 a.m., then go to the gym on Saturday morning and deadlift without it affecting him much. Eventually, though, it starts to take a toll on you. Many men these days start to see a decline in Testosterone at age 31. Thirty-one is the new 50.

If you're not sure if you're getting quality sleep or not, this is your standard: You should always wake up under a teepee. If you don't have a boner so solid you have to do a handstand to take a morning piss, your Testosterone levels are probably low.

Since I read that last month I've been making a deliberate effort to stop getting up in the middle of the night but no, I'm not going to tell you how well it's working according to that test. Sorry.

Behavioral genetics is a science which seems to undermine the roots of many core leftist beliefs - so should conservatives pour their money and energy into supporting behavioral genetics research instead of politics? As Bryan Caplan summarizes:

So why are behavioral geneticists so eager to downplay the practical relevance of their field? The most plausible explanation is that these scientists already have enough trouble with political correctness. They don't want to amplify their public relations problem by pointing out that their science undermines a bunch of popular, feel-good policies.

Critics of behavioral genetics are prone to hyperbole, but they do have good reason to fear this science. It really does undermine a lot of their sacred cows. Example: If differences in talent - not differences in opportunities - explain the inter-generational income correlation, people with normal values will conclude that a lot of redistribution is unjustified. "Giving everyone a chance to realize his potential," isn't the only rationale for redistribution, but it is an important one. If people admitted that family environment has little effect on economic success in our society, there is every reason to expect a decline in support for redistributive policies.

Admittedly, the critics of behavioral genetics could reply, "We want our current level of redistribution (or more!) no matter what the science says." But they don't want to say that, because it makes them sound like dogmatic ideologues. The upshot: Behavioral genetics makes its politically-correct critics angry because the scientists are putting the politically correct in an awkward position: Deny the science, abandon some of their favorite policies, or sound like dogmatic ideologues. It's no wonder that they're angry - and no wonder that they deny the science. They're not just making the best of a bad situation; they're also getting a little revenge on the researchers responsible for their unpleasant predicament.

I don't think many open-minded progressives will change their mind about their goals just because their policies are completely incompatible with human nature. I do hope that they'll become a little more realistic in their justifications for it, though. In other words, "we want to redistribute income because it's the nice thing to do", not "we want to redistribute income because it's the fair thing to do". It might lead to less waste to even openly decide that we want to discriminate against white people by quotas or a race tax instead of constructing byzantine policies which attempt to effectively distriminate against white people in non-discriminatory ways while doing non-whites no good. That would be a small improvement.

This isn't just about politics, though. While I have little hope for the death of progressivism, I do hope that discoveries in behavioral genetics will gravely wound or even kill the stupider offshoots of modern art. What does one have to do with the other? In this passage from G.K. Chesterton's The Flying Inn the politician Lord Philip Ivywood explains his enjoyment of post-futurist painting to his poet cousin Dorian Wimpole.

And Philip Ivywood was interested also; his cold eyes even shone; for though his pleasure was almost purely intellectual, it was utterly sincere.

"And I do trust the untried; I do follow the inexperienced," he was saying quietly, with his fine inflections of voice. "You say this is changing the very nature of Art. I want to change the very nature of Art. Everything lives by turning into something else. Exaggeration is growth."

"But exaggeration of what?" demanded Dorian. "I cannot see a trace of exaggeration in these pictures; because I cannot find a hint of what it is they want to exaggerate. You can't exaggerate the feathers of a cow or the legs of a whale. You can draw a cow with feathers or a whale with legs for a joke--though I hardly think such jokes are in your line. But don't you see, my good Philip, that even then the joke depends on its looking like a cow and not only like a thing with feathers. Even then the joke depends on the whale as well as the legs. You can combine up to a certain point; you can distort up to a certain point; after that you lose the identity; and with that you lose everything. A Centaur is so much of a man with so much of a horse. The Centaur must not be hastily identified with the Horsy Man. And the Mermaid must be maidenly; even if there is something fishy about her social conduct."

"No," said Lord Ivywood, in the same quiet way, "I understand what you mean, and I don't agree. I should like the Centaur to turn into something else, that is neither man nor horse."

"But not something that has nothing of either?" asked the poet.

"Yes," answered Ivywood, with the same queer, quiet gleam in his colourless eyes, "something that has nothing of either."

"But what's the good?" argued Dorian. "A thing that has changed entirely has not changed at all. It has no bridge of crisis. It can remember no change. If you wake up tomorrow and you simply _are_ Mrs. Dope, an old woman who lets lodgings at Broadstairs --well, I don't doubt Mrs. Dope is a saner and happier person than you are. But in what way have _you_ progressed? What part of _you_ is better? Don't you see this prime fact of identity is the limit set on all living things?"

"No," said Philip, with suppressed but sudden violence, "I deny that any limit is set upon living things."

Modern art and progressive politics are different aspects of the exact same mentality, which also hasn't changed a damn bit since Chesterton wrote those words almost a century ago. Modern art, though, lacks the deep-seated emotional appeal of progressive politics which at least allow one to pretend to be a good person. Even those people who will violently deny reality in an attempt to remake the world according to their ideas aren't quite as willing to get violent for the sake of "truly serious music".