Woke is the new Roman Christianity

 There's a lot of political upheaval down south right now.  The rationalization that it's better to ignore election fraud than to risk legitimizing Trumpish bullishness will have major ramifications. There was just no way out of the US' quagmire. You either got Trump and establishment tears or you got Biden and populist tears. That the establishment would back itself should be unsurprising. And yet, many people seem genuinely shocked that the judiciary would largely ignore rule of law by choosing Robert's fairly rational stance that "whatever happens when votes are count is what stays happened". Legitimate illegality be dammed.  Nothing is significant enough to overturn the ousting of a destroyer and usurper.

The energizer in all this is Wokeism.

As I've been saying for a few years, Wokeism is a new modular, guerrilla, religion. It's removal of supernaturalism, eschewment of brick-and-mortar organization, intertwinement with governance, and growing enforcement by force of law (and mob based tar-and-feathering) reflect an evolutionary step as significant as the emergence of the "World" religions.

From a Structural Demographic view (see Peter Turchin), Wokeism affords a perfect tool for elite classes to lock out aspirant elites.  Realistically, it doesn't so much lock them out as control the means of their migration.  Only certain vectors, like 

    Media -> politics 

    Hollywood -> politics

    Activist -> politics

    Establishment family -> politics

will soon be legitimized.

When you get to a high-enough level view, it's hard not to see this as an entrenchment of caste. Caste entrenchment is a hard to resist human cultural well. The evolutionary transition literature sees it (role specialization) as one of three of four key criteria for an evolutionary change. It's hard not to see its cultural change equivalent as something other than a landscape "trap".

Thus, I tend to see the whole Woke equality thing as something of a motte and bailey. It's designed to make all us commoners more equal. Heaven knows society needs something here. But it does not make society at large more equal. It, like communism and Christianity before it, make society more caste based.

The political upheaval Wokeism affords is analagous to what ancient Christianity afforded power hungry Roman elites. It is a high cost commitment display that enables a broad, competitor purge. Communism enabled much the same thing. These socialist movements all tend to resonate with progressive proximate causes. I'd wager that since the age of empires (10kya) there has been selection for governing preferences which include some level of "give-back" or "equality". The idea that leaders would, on balance want real liberty and power sharing is a-biological. What gets selected is an appearance of equality with a heart of imbalance. You need the plebes to really believe things are equal and fair. You just can't have those rules apply in any meaningful way (other than symbolically) to you.

The hypocrisy of one-sided racism and gain-power to destroy power are pretty obvious. But, they're being sold hook line and sinker to people. "This time the revolution will be different!". But what scares me, is that communist revolutions, while similar to today's moral political hysteria, missed the religious elements that enabled Christian and Islamic domination. If you read 1984, the Party needed a way, not just to cajole people into belief, but a way to really get them to believe. But this belief required support for hypocrisy. Communism was too utopian. Leaders were still theoretically required to play by the same rules as the commoners. While animals have different needs, 20th century Marxism made no allowance for difference. It just accepted that corruption was inevitable and revolution would have to be continual.

Today's Wokeism turns this around in a very pernicious way. Continual revolution between castes and within the control caste is not needed. Flipping the "patriarchy" is a feature not a bug.  What could go wrong with a governing population with this mindset. It's not like they would think of deplatforming inconvenient voices - say like disbarring Sydney Powell and other people who won't shut up about things that have already been decided....

Choice - If it just saves one life...

 Here's a good one for the "if it just saves one life" crowd.  

Suicide rates drop after school choice laws get adopted....

Consulting Oracles in the Old World

 I've been listening to some Dan Carlin podcasts while renovating a laundry room / bathroom.  One point I see repeated quite often in standard approaches to history is how illogical and superstitious it was for ancient leaders to consult oracles and temple priests concerning major state questions.  I think this is just flat out wrong.

Last year I went through Wright's Evolution of God.  While I can't stand his persona and attitudes as expressed on his podcasts, I really really enjoyed this book. I'm not sure why he can get the evolutionary perspective of religion so right in his books and then be so dismissive of its utility in modern contexts, or fail to see the religious aspects of wokeism or today's hyper liberalism.  Oh well.

The big insight from his book was that ancient temples are best seen in terms of modern political think tanks rather than supernatural venues.  They certainly represented community moral meta narratives framed supernaturally. But modern views which separate supernaturalism and religion from governance and politics, are quite frankly not the way old societies worked.

To understand this, think of the way indigenous societies, such as Plains Indians view religious narrative. At a deep level, there is no supernaturalism. It is all meta-narrative designed to teach fundamental, evolutionarily selected lessons in the most efficient way possible. The chaos/unpredictability of Napi reflects the reality of nature's randomness. I suspect, Blackfoot mythology sees this character less in supernatural terms and more in life-lesson terms.

When you apply this cultural evolution logic to ancient temples, what you get is a view that these temples curate certain political and governing perspectives / ideologies much the same way different University based think tanks do today.  If you want a hawkish approach to a certain foreign policy you go to group X based on the academic school of thought.  They will frame your answer nicely, pull in some post facto data to make things look good and presto.  If you wanted to see how opposing views looked on your issue, just select a different group of oracles.  See the end of this post (and the hole series) for some more discussion.

The one thing missing with today's political think tanks is their tight connection to public opinion. Modern think tanks can serve up opinion surveys, but until the rise of the moral activist press, they really have never embodied a group of committed followers in the same way ancient religious cults did.  Now, however, I would suspect "consulting BLM or other wokeish cults" would be very much the same.

Imagine Biden going to BLM to see how supporting Chineses interests in Ethiopia would go over? Are my drone attacks going to be seen as anti-black? You might get an answer like, no, as long as you phrase it this way, and you pay the right sort of price to keep us, the media, and the folks we influence on your side.

This is VERY much like ancient oracles. The main difference is that ancient oracles / temple groups, probably leveraged the poetry of old textual styles more.  Nowdays our speech is very prole. We expect clarity. But imagine if speech from educated folk was expected to be Biblical (or Shakespearan). Matter of fact speech would be too vulgar. Why? In these cases it would be too blunt and afford the regal asker not enough freedom of movement.  In a kingly world, that is bad. Piss off the king, and your cult is in danger. Get too many things wrong and you become a Lincoln Project grifter.  The cultural evolution market selects for a certain level of ambiguity.  Politically, people are coming to the oracle for this.  The king needs to show his people that they sought some outside advice. That outside advice was in the scope of the king's plans. The king took some of that advice to heart and mitigated risk accordingly. The people are now more satisfied that a protected group, who has a fair bit of range to speak to real risks, backs you. This oracle group also pushes some political wheels and some populist wheels. It gives a nice "talking point" narrative for public consumption. This is often framed in meta-narrative mythic form. But, usually the depth of mythic form depends upon the depth of the existential threat facing everyone as a whole.

So, Dan Carlin and others, don't discount the wisdom in old leaders like Leonidas going to the oracle of Delphi before the battle with the Persians. There were probably real political, real populist, and real strategic reasons to do so. Did this consultant see the populace having your back through this? As the 2020 US election shows, media narrative and media control do matter. Knowing just the right narrative to sell can be crucial.  Just think of how Tech Bro's multi-year prep for hate-speech and misinformation checks played out. Who's back would other countries have? That insight is what you pay an oracle for. In the ancient world, the distribution of temples across multiple states gave them significant insight into what was happening on the ground and and elite levels of state.

Lockdown Consequentialism

 Like many places, Toronto is going into a Covid lockdown. While not as dramatic as the Australian Reicht moves, I thought I'd do a simple analysis.

Sounds like they've had 8 Covid deaths today.  Let's assume it would get a factor of 10 worse without the lockdown.  That would be 80 deaths a day.

Let's assume a Toronto level lock-down affects only 2 hours of people's day M-S. You can't go to a movie. You can't hang out with friends. It's a net quality of life bummer of 2 hours a day for your 29h free time week (M-F = 3h, S-S=12h).  For people like me, the psychological burden of authoritarianism is MUCH higher. But, this seems reasonable. Lots of people just watch TV. And many people will just ignore dumb rules (hence Australian authoritarianism).

So with 6 million people in Toronto locked up for a stratified problem, we get 12 million people hours (1.2 x 10^7 )of lock up each day.  A lifespan of 80 years is about 700,000 hours.  80 deaths mean about 6 x 10^7 equivalent hours of life.  That's about a fair trade off.

But, we have to assume that people dying aren't losing a life from age 0. Kids rarely die from Covid (99.997% survivability in 0-19). So I made up a simple spreadsheet based on Canada's demographics and CDC relative death risks by age group and found the total number of early-death-hours based upon an expected lifespan of 80 years.  For 80 deaths I get 1.6 million early-death-hours.  

Thus, the covid lock-down will save 1.6 million early-death-hours each day at a cost of 12 million hours of meaningful lock up.  So your lock up time to loss of time ratio needs to be about 10:1 to break even. That means you would rather lose 1 hour of your life if you got 10 hours of meaningful freedom.

Lock-downs are close to a washout.  They don't really save any more life-time than they cost.  All you get out of them is a sense that you're doing something at the cost of absolute destruction of 

• the economy, 
• people's enjoyment of life, 
• trust in government, 
• and decrease in social support net (due to deficit costs).  

What probably happens is we have to work more to pay for our lockdowns (due to increase tax rates). Therefore the lock down hours of life saved are probably more than made up for by the loss of life-freedom-hours and tax-workload-hours.

I'll take Liberty and a Stratified response please.....

Overboard? People's bans on politicians

 A decent number of people are in favour of lockdowns. As I've mentioned before, there is definitely a small bias in human nature that makes moves toward castes and caste based authoritarianism more adaptive than not. It's the evolutionary selection arrow for larger polities.

Democracy curtails this trend in interesting ways. It puts the majority of the people in charge of leadership decisions.  In most cases this still results in a creep toward European style state paternalism. But, in the US, it resulted in a resistance to big state power.

Covid emergency powers (which never seem to be going away) supplant constitutional rights for individual liberty. If you want to lock someone down because they are sick - fine. But if you want to pre-emptively lock them down because you're looking at things at a population level, not individual level, then not-fine.

So I look at this tiny signal with a bit more interest than normal.

We know that facebook-twitter-google ban people for their identity and political/social views. We know gofund-me and monitary service providers ban people for wrongthink too (at least wrongthinkg that energizes a mob based upon journalistic threats like "please comment on your support for X's white supremacy views). We know that BLM and political machines try to ban people for wrongthink.  That's why it's interesting to see the populace thinking about doing the same thing.

Remember, during the American revolution, loyalists and patriots were banned from commerce and public social venues based upon their identity.  I suspect this is a fairly good way for the populace to let politicians know when they've crossed a line.

But, It will of course result in the hardening of political-identity groups. That seems to be the natural trajectory of things now. Something as historically simple as a minor plague may reveal more about tribalization and weak empire splits than we could have ever imagined.

Minimal Counter-Intuitiveness & Voter "fraud" Debate

 I was just going through one of the Cultural Evolution Society's podcasts on Cognitive Biases in Folklore.

They don't raise many points you wouldn't already have heard from Scott Atran's In God We Trust. But, they do mention that it is stories as a whole and not elements within a story upon which cultural selection for minimal counter-intuitiveness operates.

That has some implications for the current voter fraud debate.

Right now we're getting tonnes of "just so" voter fraud and voting extra-legality (back dated time stamps, observer exclusion, 100% Biden vote batches, programmed hardware bias, etc.).  Each one is a bit hard to believe, but is certainly plausible. But, as a whole, people around me tend to think the sum of all of it is definitely conspiracy theory land.

The narrative as a whole has too many slightly counter-intuitive ideas.

If the cultural evolution theory is right, what should happen is that the narrative should change so that only a few slightly counter-intuitive ideas are present.  Thus the narrative should predictably evolve into something like "systemic voting bias which slightly favours Biden".  This seems to be happening.

But, what is also interesting, is that along this way, you should have voters thinking either:

- All this is just too coincidental to be true. Trump is grasping at straws to stay in power.  This could occur due to post hoc rationalization (I hate Trump, or I don't want to disbelieve that all media are fairly fake). Or it could occur due to a rational assessment of the probability of so many "just so" stories all being true.  This reflects analysis at the elemental level.

-All this is just too coincidental to be true. Biden must really have pulled some strings to play as unfair as he thought Trump would. After all, what could people who believe Trump's literally Hitler justify as fair. This could occur due post hoc bias. It could also occur due to rational assessment of the evidence (each actor has a slight probability to do something within their control to slightly influence results, none of which is extra-ordinarily unusual. Or, the big guy & Hillary said "unleash the hounds" within their political machines). This reflects selection at the story level.

This leaves one with two competing stories. Trump is an aspiring dictator. Biden reflects or enabled systemic extra-legality. Both are slightly counter-intuitive to swing people. What I expect we should see for detail is that the elements told in each retelling then get switched based on the audience one talks to. After all, believers within one camp wouldn't find either of these narratives hard to believe. For the story to be meme-orable, you'd need a better level of counter-intuitiveness.

In religion this is "putting your pearl's before swine" logic. It reflects the ideas in the side-bar on lynch-pin signalling.

2+2=5

The other month James Lindsay had a twitter feud with the 2+2=5 group. For those not up on that discourse, it's basically Critical Theory saying everything is relative. That tool is now being applied in the harder sciences. Part of that is to get easy papers published (academia always needs a new kick for job progression). 

Part of the thinking is accurate. Not all operators or things are always understood the same way. That's why assumptions are always baked into discourse. One argument is that things like addition operators and numbers are well defined. Therefore, if you're using slightly different logic, it's on you to explain your assumptions, not upon others to infer them. This is what separates white supremacy from Critical Theory.

But, the power dynamic boils down to being able to say 2+2=5 and being free from critique. It's what 1984 discussed with respect to the ultimate goals of newspeak - being able to eliminate any ties language has to objectivity. The narrative matters more than objectivity. Why? We've already got enough objectivity.

It's hard not to see the media's reaction to the Biden laptop (there is no evidence it gives) or the censorship of election issues in the same light.  For instance, twitter is now banning Benford Law links (the standard? statistical analysis used to look for fraud, including voter fraud). Or, perhaps more accurately, they're banning specific links which tie Benford's law to voter fraud and then specifically cite the objective data on swing state votes.

It's not just that saying "2+2=4" is getting you banned off twitter, youtube or facebook.  It's that discussion must say 2+2=5 and saying 2+2=4 is offensive, divisive and aligns you with white supremacy.

Is that just the natural trap that cultish utopian movements fall into? "Say the name of God". Just recognize our power/legitimacy (in an Orwellian way).  It seems like once you can't say objective facts because they convey the wrong meta-narrative balance, you're in trouble. Once too many people start believing 2+2=4, then the overlords will say, then we have a problem. They're trying to curate the right level of detachment from reality. And, that's scary.

War Game: Is the Chicanery going as planned?

Remember the election war game white paper from this summer that most people dismissed as conspiracy theory thinking? (see one report). Is it going as planned?

I think so.

If I remember, the talking points around its analysis suggested the key for things for the Dems was to gain narrative control early. This would pressure state legislatures not to disrupt things. Media control was used to ensure Trump couldn't declare early victory. Slow counting was key to enable this. Then media control would declare Biden victory.  One weak point was how to solidify this without seeming duplicitous. Getting foreign leaders to congratulate early seems to be a very smart innovation since the white paper came out.

The war game's likely scenario was that some electors would not be able to validate the election. That would leave things up to the house. 

I suspect that's where we'll wind up. 

I think that is the best and fairest case anyway. Republicans might not like it. But it seems the most honest. Then the Trumpist move is to stoke Pelosi's ego so it happens. Then, from the Republican side, Biden is castigated. 

As far as the Supreme court goes. If things get to them with respect to uncertified electors, they may decide they need to nip election chicanery in the bud. The easiest way to do that is to enable uncertified electors, trusting the House not to upset the Dem's wise move of getting things called early. Plus, this protects Deep State institutions and corruptions from Trump's laptop enabled criminal probe.

The main chip Trump has to play here is the special prosecutor chip. If this scenario buys Trump off from burning down "corrupt" elite actors & institutions with a vindictive special prosecutor, Trump MIGHT go for it. He goes down as less of a loser, at the cost of unfulfilled revenge.

I think that deal would work for him. He's taking the bet that state apparati will resist any criminal investigation so much it probably won't happen. The media will play cover for that. Therefore the safe bet is to avoid tearing the country down more, and get it out in the open that "extra-legal" means were used. This then forces government strucutres to come out and decide how to enfrancise voters via mail-in or equivalent means while figuring out how to keep just the right number of extra late counted votes from going to your side.

Here's the logic that keeps things from an early shutdown - provided of course the war game plan to demoralize Trump does not succeed. If I remember, that seemed to be a key point mentioned in the war game play.

link for this excellent twitter thread statistical analysis

link

Rabbit Hole

 Looks like I'm heading down the rabbit hole in election conspiracies.  I stumbled on the Penssylvania GOP site and it was better than rando social media (which is infinitely better than any big media). Then I went to Barne's Law, as his experience (doing?) and litigating fraud, including in Gore Florida. That brought me to some technical analysis, which being a mathematician I enjoyed.

That's when I got mad.  P-values of 10^-147       yes -147      yes!!!!!

Here are some threads

• Shylock Holmes
• Elefant Respecter

And to think social media will throttle all this to the nth degree - because "narrative" & "illegitimate use" by conspiracy theorist nuts.

Optics

 Most election fraud stories can be explained non-conspiratorially. The issue seems to be the perfect storm of:

• Tech giant censorship
• Biden has his son's jailtime riding on this
• Biden has his legacy riding on this
• Hillary will do anything for revenge (and to avoid Clinton foundation investigation)
• The media, via the Hunter laptop, has shown they will deny the sun is yellow to avoid giving anything to Trump
• The media and many elites are now a de-facto quasi-religion who don't want their sacred utopian ideals repudiated
• Media has no credibility
• Mail in voting obviously enables electioneering (all votes matter rationalization or Ilhan Omar styled pay-outs)
• One opponent is literally considered Hitler
• People are willing to riot, burn and beat to not give space to Trumpists
• China, Iran, and many other world powers obviously prefer Biden to Trump
• Trump is gunning to expose Obama and lots of power players
• The intelligence agencies are about to get exposed via Flynn's return to head of the NSA of DNI
• Guilianni was likely going to replace Barr to "get some blood" and pull a RICO on Antifa-BLM and whichever politicians were colluding them to RICO standards.

The major problem though, is, while each of these are conspiracy theory type stuff, the throttling of info means none of it can be discussed rationally.

The logic is that enabling rational discussion last election is what enabled Trump to play the dynamics of populism. The establishment vowed that should never happen again.  But what that means is channels like this one, with a few POTENTIALLY disturbing issues, are siloed and prevent a nexus of verification from occuring.

That's bad. It also makes for back reactionary dynamics.  Watch most any historical movie about tribal groups fighting off an imperial power. It's always the prevention of expression or culture that is the rallying cry. Stories rely on that for a reason....

So look at this to see what's throttled. Some of it is obviously conspiratorial low percentage issues. But, so was Epstein Island and Weinstein, and Flynn frame job, and.....     That's the dynamics at play. 

https://twitter.com/PhillyGOP

My now "Restricted" blog

 Looks like this blog is now in a restricted mode on Parler. It wasn't yesterday. 

https://parler.com/profile/Cgoble72

Not sure why. I checked various google blacklist tools to see if academic discussion about election dynamics from an evolutionary perspective are now banned (by the a very open social media site). Nothing.

I still come up in google search terms. So this is very interesting... Not sure what I did to anger the algorithms.

(And yes, I did test posting links to other blogger blogs)

The Ethos of Inclusion: Forces its Formalization via Lawfare?

The sanest way to think of Trump's lawfare w voter "fraud" is to think of it as forcing out some uniform rules for future elections. 

• When does voting start and end?  The moment you write your ballot or the moment it is recieved? Or anytime up until the hegemony gets what it wants because "all votes matter"
• What type of ID do we really want?  None? All persona's are legal? Exclusionary ID like photo ID like most Western countries?
• How do you balance security against "every vote matters" inclusion?
• And most importantly, what role is voter harvesting going to play? And how does it get safeguarded?

The last point is the most salient, but hardest to confront through lawfare.  One side will deny its existence. But as Blogojevich's recent Fox interview, and Ilhan Omar's project Veritas expose with the Somali community - it is alive and well and certainly played a pivotal role in Trump's loss (though apparently hard to find on youtube even with direct search terms...)

But just making it illegal isn't going to change much. It is a default modus operandi.  Whoever doesn't play with it won't survive for long.  This reality has been hammered home to the politically naive and inexperienced Trump.

Results support the Democratic narrative that there are huge numbers of voters for whom the old process doesn't enfrancise.  How do you accommodate their political interests without guaranteeing more "extra legal stuff" that, for many, is now part of the ethos of inclusion?

 

Evolutionary Transitions & Political Trajectory Wells

"All votes matter" vs "Conservative rule of law"

This post could have been called: Why we're seeing the "All votes matter" ethoses pushing ballot counting one way while "Conservative rule of law" is pushing it another. 

Written another way, it comes out as

• "doing the right thing by people" by way of  "if it just saves one life" heart-string-tugs / villainization
• save the system by giving up what seems compassionate for the moment, but which kills boundary maintenance & system trust (by way exploitive manipulation guard erosion). 

In practice, the rhetoric of white supremacist (intersectional logic) emerges as essential for understanding what is happening.  See James Lyndsay's twitter or New Discourses to see why.  

THE HEARTLESS TRAP

The "all votes matter" logic is impossibly hard to refute: at least within large populations where individuals are largely insulated from the direct effects of their aggregated individual decisions. For instance "all votes matter logic", where you always have to stretch to accommodate just one more thing/item/person, is not a general feature of aboriginal populations. These groups have great intra-support networks. And individuals within them go to great extents to avoid greed & grift. But, if you break norms there is absolutely no slack given. The tribe does no sacrifice itself for individuals who violate (logical or irrational) survival norms. They are EXTREMELY conservative.

THE INESCAPABLE PROGRESSIVE VECTOR

The rhetorical position of "all lives matter", represented by ballot counting norm changes & open border logic, is an inescapable vector in human groups.

This means, in the long run, you really can never beat the State (as Trump has found out). The State will always tend to grift and enlargement. This follows Evolutionary Transition literature. 

According to this literature, systems are selected for:

1. dependency increases (eg big gov, social state, we riot if you don't support us)
2. role specialization (eg elite classes, sacred identities)
3. coordination (eg media, state collusion)
4. conflict minimization (eg the application of law which "solves" noisy voices, authoritarianism, selective prosecution, special rules for key organs)

To expect these tendencies not to be expressed in government means fighting the inescapable current of human evolution. That states like revolutionary France, revolutionary US, etc. have been able to do this for a time is rare. 

1800's European critiques of the survivability of Jeffersonian democracy are apt. The US was always a rare blip.

Error

 Well it looks like I blew the election prediction. I figured Trump would sneak by in PA, WI and maybe MI for a 290 - 300 take.  Now it looks like even GA may flip blue.

Both sides' fall-back states are getting the late votes they need that just cause them to eek by. It's a game of he who counts last gets to count just right.  In this PA is king, and mail-in voting from big urbans is your savior.  See the Barnes video (he seems well used to the chicanery played in Bush-Gore Florida).

The real issue is obviously, should late votes count (rule of law) or does every vote matter. The latter matches the Black Lives Matter ethos so perfectly, I suspect it reflects the major moral fault line facing the US (and other countries).

Do you go so progressive that everything matters that no one can be left out or not made to achieve equal outcomes? Or, do you stay hard nosed, keeping tight arbitrary norms, which inevitably exclude things in "racialized" ways.

THE BIOLOGY 

As I've said before, globalization, specifically pan-nationalism, reflects one deep seated biological tendency now being probed by groups. It is operationalized by an out-group focussed, no-borders societal approach. But his increases the likelyhood of severe gaming (freeloading). If norms can't keep up with things, the adaptiveness of your group implodes.

That, is what people fear about the US right now. In order to win an election, the blue side opened things up so much, so quickly, in such a norm breaking way, it was going to be near impossible for faith in rule of law to stay. The red side's fight against systemic bias in the system is similarly burning up social cohesion capital.

So while I think Hillary certainly used her dirty political machine to nail Trump, and while I think corrupt Biden decided to play in the gutter to hit Trump and save his son (& political elites) from jail, I think it wouldn't matter who won or who didn't. The US is now functionally ungovernable, and the structural forces that led it to be that way are increasing and really can't be tamped down.

CONCLUSION

So while I would have preferred a purge of the deep state, more legs to the current Israeli peace movement, and a removal of woke religion from public institutions, it seems like the deep-state's supporting edifices have finally proved too much for Trump.  The odds were never in his favour. Covid and the leverage it gave for voting norm shifts proved too much for non-elite populism to overcome. Big tech thumbs were just enough to edge it out. Trump's achille's heel was always getting too many enemies. But it was also his strategic strength. It caused everyone to fire all their guns. Sometimes the superposition proves just too much.

Weekend Violence

 Other than a house contested election, this looks to be about the worst scenario possible for election violence.

I got surprised that Biden took Arizona so easily. Some republicans still think mail-in and absentee ballots may make that a pre-mature call, but I doubt it.

That leaves Pennsylvania as the key to the whole election. They allow late voting and don't require signature matching.  That's a rife combo for fraud.  In addition, Pittsburg is a known hotspot for election shenanigans. 

That leaves both camps ready to come out this weekend at the same time in their "shows of commitment". That spells disaster!  I doubt things will be sorted out by then. But the legal theatrics will have peaked. That means my model for civil unrest (R celebrations peaking Tuesday and Wed, D protests peaking on the weekend) is wrong.  You'll get competing demonstrations and violence will ensue.

Add to this, the Supreme court's decision under Roberts to steer away from uniform voter decisions to favour state autonomy via some convoluted reasoning between which non-legislative rule changes are and aren't allowed under emergency Covid measures, and you're going to end up with a Supreme Court deciding the whole election via its call on Pennsylvania.

Decisions like that which the populace sees are fairly arbitrary and politicized do not bode well for civil stability.

It is going to get nasty as duelling protests gradually ramp up. The rate at which violence emerges all depends on how much control Democratic grass root activists have over BLM and Antifa. I think the dragon is out of the box on this one.

Why are Pollsters Wrong?

Why pollsters this year were as wrong as last year is going to be source of endless punditry. This will be doubly true over the next few weeks as news networks struggle to avoid uncomfortable riot coverage.

Some people push a DNC-media collusion narrative with respect to systemic polling bias. I just don't buy that. While I'm sure some "news" agencies purposefully push misleading polls in order to grab attention or sell a narrative, I really doubt the aggregate of polling institutions do this.

Rather, it seems likely pollster's just haven't kept up with the demographic shifts that track the moral changes now occurring in political-group identity.  An example in simpler terms may be apt. The left's intersectionalism now means they're the party of "racists" (classical racists at least). See California prop #16.  This has shifted a lot of classical liberals over into the Trump-if-I-must camp. Similarly law and order has shifted a lot of inner city minorities into non-traditional political camps. And, the very wealthy have shifted from Republican to Democrats. Never Trump neo-con's are the obvious example.

But, this just begs the deeper question - why haven't pollsters recognized, what are too many, very obvious social shifts? It's like the woke left that can't even conceptualize how they're the new racists and how the dynamics of BLM supremacy mirrors KKK supremacy. It's the revolutionists blind-side. After most any revolution, the revolutionists become basically indistinguishable from those they overthrew.  Why?

This feels like a General Systems complexity question (see Bathalamy's research from the 1930's - 1960's).

My suspicion is that pollsters just can't control for the levels of tribal group migration/realignment we're now seeing. More importantly, they aren't trying to figure it out.  Because of this they're functionally blind with respect to the changes that actually matter for the levels of precision they're after.

Nate Silver's tunnel vision epitomizes this. They just don't feel how far the world has shifted. And, I would guess there is a sizeable systemic bias in the friends networks. They are just too isolated amongst liberal elite circles to really sense the magnitude of what is happening in the deplorable and red-pill castes.

Nov 3 week riots: Predictions

Early polling suggests a Trump win. Campaign actions hint at an electoral blowout (think - Minnesota is in play!).

So how will the Left's commitment to protest intersect with the Right's growing jubilance and rally energy?

Social media and legacy media are certain to tamp down any proclamations of victory. But, I suspect, electorally, things will be pretty clear. While many swing states will have a razor thin margin that mail in votes and post dated fraud could flip, I suspect Trumpers are going to ignore all priestly advice and are going to go CRAZY in the street.

I don't think one can underestimate the enthusiasm that gets generated when a persecuted group overcomes all odds and all institutional pressure against them and wins. Here are the adaptive energizers:

• lots of public physical assaults against Trump voters
• Trump yard sign vandalism
• obvious social media throttling and censorship against Trumpists (& centrists)
• the Biden corruption vs Russia hoax journalism differentials
• the McCarthyist blackballing and deplatforming of mainstream conservatism
• the violent ANTIFA - BLM "protests" & their "non-violent" property destruction
• the rise of racial supremacy (KKK level progressive intersectionalism)
• the meta-narrative-breaking rise of minority-based Trump groups (blacks for Trump, gays for Trump)
• etc

So, I think Trumpists will head out Tues and Wed for YUGE celebrations. If Trump rallies are drawing 50k+ then the celebrations are going to be huge. People locked down by Corona are going to want to get together. The Trump energy is very much based on "positive" energy as opposed to ANTIFA styled "tear it down" energy. There are going to be street parties galore, especially in locked-down blue states. It will be a big FU to ppl like Whitmore.

The suburban mom group that ANTIFA-BLM relies on for coverage will likely hold off until the election is called by official channels. I don't think the masses will have the energy necessary for early protests. They will be despondent because of the fake poll lies. And, social media has been wise enough to try and forestall confrontation by setting structural throttles for conclusive election declarations. Biden karens seem highly likely to follow the advice of their moral priests and secular shamans.

That means their protest energy should peak closer to the weekend. The media will have time to properly spin "the steal". And social media should have had time to rip out broker nodes on conservative social networks.

That leaves Proud Boy types and Antifa types squaring off on the weekend, with suburban moms flushing out Antifa numbers. That spells bad news for the more violent Trumpers. They are likely to get really hurt. Progressives angst is going to be huge. And, this group of Trump aligned nationalists have shown they won't back down and suffer public space to be fully controlled by those who refuse to acknowledge rule-of-law (and its associated social contact) expectations.

But, maybe, Trump enthusiasm will continue into the weekend. I doubt it. I suspect they think "rule of law has spoken", and will feel no need to rub victory in.

That leaves defence of public space as the only likely reactionary dynamic. I suspect many will give law & order a chance here. I suspect they expect Trump to pull in the national guard and "take the gloves off". That's kind of stupid since most of that power is at the state level. But, nobody said ppl are rational....

... that leaves a worse reactionary backlash as all but inevitable as violent weekend rioting fails to get quelled. It gets even worse as mainstream media figures express solidarity with "intensely peaceful protests".

But I don't think you'll see many rightwing militias coming out to do police's jobs for them. I suspect you'll see a growing COLD anger. You'll certainly have a number of proud boy groups getting nasty. But, conservatives tend to be slow to anger. Hence you'll see growing background energization on the right until it suddenly breaks in two to four years.  

That's why I continue to think an assassination based entry into civil war by rightwing extremists is the most likely vector for civil war. The exception I've always predicted is if in 2024 a reactionary wokeist gets into power. Then the right will go down the road of unbridled mob violence as 2nd A rights get trampled and UK styled authoritarianism gets enacted..."for people's own safety".

Cold Anger

 A couple of days ago I noticed an article on conservative's "cold anger". I think it captures things almost perfectly.

• American Thinker
• conservative treehouse

I've always said Canada tends to have a populace that is very slow to anger. You let people be who they are. But, there's a tipping point where the country just goes into a rage. It's a very Scandanavian thing. But it's also a very Native thing.

Why? Because it is extremely adaptive. Islamic terrorists show one angle as to why it is adaptive. It reflects a highly cohered group. Highly cohered groups are almost always adaptive. But, they can get outcompeted by larger groups. So what you need is an open group that has norms or tests to detect likely freeloaders and then the ability to rapidly phase change into a suicidal mob. But who's target of suicidal angst is something that is winnable.

That's where jihadist Islam fails. It has optimized itself for the long game. By doing so it is risking existential annihilation by the western militaries. But the larger group seems to have bet, by way of its outlier population (extremists), that it is sufficiently seeded across the world to survive. I would wager, a part of these fused identities has wagered that Ottoman or German level genocides are unlikley. There are no signs that radicalism is going to be stopped. If there were signs, any suicidal nut would be looking to see if their terrorism would cause the death of their extended family and their village. This doesn't happen (outside of the Taliban doing it). So, its pretty clear that existential risks are minimal. This makes long-game calculus a much better pay off than it normally ever is in evolutionary games.

CONSERVATIVE COLD ANGER

As the articles mention, conservatives feel numerous systemic pressures building against them. Twitter, facebook, and google censor them like nothing. And, then tell lawmakers to their face that it is not intentional, it is just enforcement of pro-social norm policy.

Supression of conservatives in the public space was huge up until a month or two ago. BLM and Antifa goons had claimed ownership of public gatherings. Any pro non-progressive group was purposefully excluded from space by the charge of "we can't let these Nazi's organize". Except that Nazi and white supremacist was now applied to anyone right of AOC. Black people had their racial identity erased. The most vile racist language now comes from BLM Antifa goons. But it is never mentioned in any news feed. It's just not the right narrative. And right wing media tends not to obsess over speech the way the left does (maybe to their demise, but doing so would also likely erode their founding moral cohesive ethos - classical liberalism).

So, as I look around the nets, interact with youth, union leaders, teachers, health professionals, I see a growing sense of people having their heads down in the sand, holding back the expression of their angst until after the November election. You read between the lines that they still expect rule of law to provide a barrier against chaos, extra-legal rule, and mob violence which is politically condoned. Plus, should they do anything overt, the whole system will crash down on them and use it to further de-legitimize them. The difference in coverage between Charlottesville and the 120 days + of Antifa rioting and violence is stark.

But, once the election ends, I think people's tolerance will be used up. The left will be going crazy with a Trump win. Trump will push all their buttons as he puts people like Flynn in charge of the DNI and starts to think about replacing Barr with Giulianni due to Barr's inability and unwillingness to institute reform.

But as those "resist" riots play out. The cold anger of the right is going to go hot. Trump rallies are how people are testing the waters of expression. The job firings and digital tar-and-featherings, while as strong as ever, aren't cowering people (other than academics). Project veritas is going crazy with the number of whistleblowers coming their way who are knowingly giving up their livelihoods.

A cold anger has been created. It is not the hot suicidal range of the identity fused jihadist. Rather it is the cold calculation of a soldier storming a beach.  You know the odds aren't good. But, the false hysteria that its death to step out is gone. The adaptive signals of the group are sufficient to support a rational decision to go into the meat grinder. Politically, I think conservatives know how the Nov riots are going to go. It is going to be ugly. But I think they have decided to engage.

That leaves only one question - how violent will the BLM Antifa groups be towards the rural folk and subarbanites who simply sit down on the ground while the Black Clad thugs surround and threaten them.  What percentage of the Cold Angered will head down the Proud Boys path of retributional violence? What percentage will start to become pro-active (assassins)?

I'm willing to wager, it will be quite a bit. 

Why?

Because adaptively, it will need to be a sufficient quantity of people doing sufficient actions to make the other side realize that the whole country could go to pot. Until CNN is truly scared enough to feel a mob, with nor restraints, is headed their way looking for a scalp, the fire will continue to get more logs thrown on it. And, during that process, a growing number of Cold Angered rationalists will turn Jihadi. Then it's just a numbers game about the civil war model the States enters into.

Covid Crazy

 I just did a rough crunch of the numbers for Canada based upon the CDC's fatality rates (by the way who makes a rookie mistake like listing the Infection fatality rate as a decimal, but labelling it as a percent!!!)

and StatCanada's population by age numbers. And while the parsing doesn't exactly line up, I get a rough value of about 53k dead under 70'ers, and 300k-400k dead 70 pluser's.

I just don't know how you justify any of the extreme measures we're now doing without pushing for age stratified responses.  It is just unfathomable how politicians are keeping state of emergencies on for this.

Take precautions, but this is a stratified problem....

Here are a couple of reasonable videos on the issue (not everything is getting banned - just heavily throttled

If it just saves one life ...

Utilitarianim's and consequentialism's main idea is that outcomes determine something's normative properties. Is a Covid lockdown good? It depends upon how outcomes aggregate. Time scales are always an issue. You also have to determine how to handle Black Swan events (improbable events that might not occur when the same scenario is repeated, even if all conditions remain the same). Fitness in biology is very concerned about similar issues. Has the covid lockdown been more of a net positive or net negative? 

Obviously one can't really judge. But as per Steven Crowder's recent lockdown protest and demand for open info suggests, people are at the point where messages of "take care if you have cold symptoms" have been recieved as much as they can, and people are legitimately demanding open information about lock down efficacy vs costs. Facebook and twitter info bans do nothing to further this conversation. Neither does legacy media's refusal to do any sort of investigative journalism on the real issues. That leads to polarization.

ALBERTA 

Here's some research me and my wife did. We were on opposite sides of lockdowns and masks in the Spring (with me being much more cautious than she was as a nurse). Lately we've switched positions and remain on opposite sides (with her now being in favour of mask mandates and its associated authoritarianisms). If it just saves one life, and the personal costs are low....

Alberta's Covid deaths are as of Oct 8 are about 283.  The Heritage Foundation shows that in the US, the percentage of deaths in the under 55 age group are about 8% of the total deaths. This means Alberta should expect to have about 23 deaths under 55 due to Covid. Most of those likley have co-morbities to them.

How does this compare to increases caused by Covid lock down dynamics occurring from suicide?

Alberta has about 550 suicides per year. Coroner information from the US suggests an increase in suicide rates of about 30% this year.  Yakima Washington says their rate is now about 30% higher that it was pre-covid.  Other hard stats aren't "hard", so we'll use a 20% figure as a "safe bet".  The distribution of suicides by under 55's is about 40%-50%. (I used absolute suicide rates and didn't adjust by % of population). 

That means we would normally expect on the order of 240-250 suicides by under 55's in Alberta. But with the 20% or so increase due to Covid, we now have an additional 50 or so.

THAT IS twice the deaths caused by the lockdown that have occurred due to Covid.

This doesn't mean a lockdown hasn't saved more lives. It certainly may have. But it does suggest one really needs to question whether the social effects of the lockdown exceed its severity. 

This doesn't account for the fairly large number of deaths that are occurring due to breaks in medical service. I know my mom had a close-enough call due to an infection that normally wouldn't have occurred without a lock down.

CONCLUSION

Failure to account for secondary deaths due to the lockdown is immoral.  This includes failure to account for the absolute devastation done to social contracts, civil life, and debt levels which down the road will certainly curtail social net spending.

If it just saves one life rhetoric is not a moral position with respect to covid lock downs. It may be that lock downs save many lives. But they also cost many lives. The best solution would seem to be one that allows freedom of choice and institutes safety measure for vulnerable populations.

Clearly the West is not doing that. I hate to say it, but I suspect Sweden provides a good case study. Victoria province in Australia, the UK, California, Minnesota and New York provide good case studies on the other side. Authoritarianism has very real consequences. It is almost always justified by "if it just saves one life" logic. Then you just ramp up to the next level of "small things need to just save one more life".

See any of JP's Awaken comedies for satire on the issue.

Ed: Pluralism or Religion

Ed is starting its deep dive into its role as a pluralistic coherer or religious indoctrinator. Religious indoctrination seems to be its historical role (up until the end of the enlightenment era). There's normally a pacing and leading which happens between religion and governance (see Norenzayan's Big Gods). For a while governance adopts the lessons learned by religion, but does so in a more pluralistic way that enables group size increase or other adaptive group traits. For a while religion leads. Right now Ed is ostensibly determining (along with society) whether -everyone is equal under the law, or -some people are more equal than others (for the sake of equality of outcomes). Applied Critical Theory certainly takes the latter, Orwellian approach. Recently it seems like fricition within Alberta's Teachers Association is just starting to reflect this dichotomoy. The Orange bubble urban areas are heading one way, while rural venues are heading the other. There are structural reasons why urban centers gain ideological dominance within large institutions. This seems to be a historical "law". But this tendency isn't neutral, or "progressive". It simply reflects the cultural evolution cycles Peter Turchin describes in his Secular Cycles work and Cliodynamics. It leads to periodic revolutions, purges, and societal collapses. Fighting these cult like Trosky tendencies is not easy. By the time these behaviours become non-ignorable, instituitional technocracies and structures are largely monopolized by ideological conformity. Self selective processes gradually tip the balance toward homogeneity, and it is very rare that enough counter-balancing momemtum can be generated to bring things back into balance before over-reach leads to collapse. We'll have to see where things end up in the West. My guess is that much of US education is in serious trouble. Canada's pluralistic nature (and lower population) may give it enough breathing room to survive. But, here in Alberta at least, there are going to be some nasty fireworks as the Urban progressive minority start going head to head with the sleepy conservative base.

A Peaceful Protest?

 More peaceful protests continue. Not all involve mobs of people </irony>

Witnesses say antifa shooter Michael Reinoehl was armed with a semi-auto rifle when he engage in a firefight with four officers in Lacey, Wash. https://t.co/Jz7qNeUmvm

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 4, 2020

Modern Lynching

 This is a modern lynching. Simple as that.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/saw-our-hats-and-hunted-us-down-alleged-witness-recounts-fatal-shooting-of-right-wing-protester-in-portland

Cut to the Chase

 I tend to get to the end game of things pretty quick. I rarely feel the need for gradual ramp ups to energize yourself under the guise of allowing space for escape valves. If you're ready for the end game and fully accept it then the process of a mutually agreeable exit becomes easy. But there is no dallying around one-sided exits while the other side subterfuges. 

For instance, it's been since at least 2010 when I figured US civil war was going to be inevitable. The main question is whether it would take a mob based tit for tat, or whether it would be predominately a targeting assassination affair.

Now that everyone is waking up to this fact, we've got until Jan 2020 to figure out what to do. It will take a few months for the mail-in ballot fubar to work itself out. During that time you'll have a HUGE number of protests and counter protests with violence levels graudually increasing each weekend. Just like the Kenosha - Portland tit for tat, each side will fight for its legitimacy to occupy space and maintain a grip on its right to exist within the public sphere.

But, nothing will settle this down.

The only real option is to decide how to parse up that nation so that BLM/Antifa progressive cultists can comfortably exist in their space and Trumpist conservatives can exist in their own.

To that end you'll probably need an amalgam of states that start going by their own set of rules. Those rules will be very draconian for outgroupers. You'll have a lot of intimidation based emigration. That's similar to the sorting that happened during the Patriot-Loyalist conflicts in the war of Independence. It will also mean watering down Federalism. That is going to be very hard, nay impossible to do. Systems don't like to give up power, and I don't think the Judiciary is liable to give up any of the righteous rule.

That functionally means finding a way for the mid-west and south to have good port access. While I'm no expert, the Caribbean is poorly suited to this end. That means the crux of things will be the Carolinas and Virginia. But it also means finding a way for East coast puritanism to function as a political entity with West coast fundamentalism. That is hard.

There's also no easy answer for what to do with Washington. It's the Federal seat of power but is clearly in the boundaries of the progressive sub-nation. There may be no real way to get rid of Federalism's overpowering nature without giving up most of Washington's current physical role.

OTHER OPTIONS

The only other option is to explore the limits of City state power.

The current conflict can be well characterized as an overgrowth of city state size and power. Rural California, Oregon, Washington, etc. have very different politics from their city centers. Much of the over step of city center power is based on the deference outsiders give to the rule of law.  With the social contract now irredeemably broken (with the realization of such only slowly dawning on people), there will be a functional limit to how far cities can pressure their rural residents.

I don't think this polity size change is viable though. It is too many units of selection down from where polity size is currently stabilized at within our population.

Why It's a Bad Idea to Ban Conspiracy Theorists

Conspiracy theorists are annoying. It's the inevitable tail end of aspergery tendencies. Like 9/11 conspiracies or ant-vax stuff, it is incredibly time consuming to disprove.

But, like Russiagate, or relativity, occasionally, they're right. A system's characteristic to allow a certain percentage of its populace to engage in this type of behaviour is adaptive. Just like its adaptive to have a certain percentage of your population pushing existentially risky out-group sympathetic positions.

Here's another reason you shouldn't ban conspiracy theorists. Sometimes you won't hear a lot of pop-narrative damning stuff from mainstream players.

ST. LOUIS PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE BUSTED ALTERING EVIDENCE; REASSEMBLED NON-OPERABLE MCCLOSKEY PISTOL TO CLASSIFY AS LETHAL

https://www.infowars.com/st-louis-prosecutors-office-busted-altering-evidence-reassembled-non-operable-mccloskey-pistol-to-classify-as-lethal/

Racist?

Does something that is clearly racist cease to be so if it is politically agreeable? Or, if it is both politically agreeable and done by a protected class?

At some point one hopes that people will realize that objectivity & equality is probably the best way to keep racism out of society.