Deprogrammed, College Scams, Sex Differences

Interview + links and recommendations

I recently appeared on the Deprogrammed show hosted by Evan Riggs and Harrison Pitt. This was an impromptu conversation recorded in between events at NatCon in London, and it turned out well.

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From the archives:

Young men will only do what’s expected of them, which, today, is not much. Garbage in, garbage out.

No One Expects Young Men To Do Anything and They Are Responding By Doing Nothing

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Links and recommendations:

• The Newest College Admissions Ploy: Paying to Make Your Teen a “Peer-Reviewed” Author by Daniel Golden

  • Rich people now have the option to pay for their kids to be authors of scientific papers. Expect more of these scams as colleges continue to ditch standardized testing requirements. The other day I saw a book written by a Cambridge graduate that looked interesting. I thumbed through it and found some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen. Then I noticed it was published by a vanity press, which allows anyone to pay a large sum to have a book published and become an “author.”

• The Sanctification of the Self by Megan Wildhood

• Inside the World of Leg Lengthening by Chris Gayomali

• Accepting Difference by Alex Kaschuta

• Feminism Against Humanity by N.S. Lyons

• Left-brain thinking will destroy civilisation (Iain McGilchrist interview with Freddie Sayers)

• Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories

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Three interesting findings:

1. Children are remarkably good at lying. In a study, social workers, teachers, police officers and judges were shown footage of kids who were either lying or telling the truth. None of the adults (not even the kids’ parents) could consistently detect the lies. (source). Relatedly, people’s ability to formulate believable lies appears to peak between ages 18 and 29. (source).

2. Compared with the rest of the U.S., progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated, and white. They are twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year, and nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree. (source).

3. Sex differences in height, BMI, obesity, and blood pressure are larger in cultures with more sociopolitical equality and stronger egalitarian sex role socialization (e.g., Scandinavian countries). (source). Many people are aware that psychological differences between men and women are larger in more gender-equal societies, but the fact that even physical and physiological differences are larger in such societies is truly fascinating.

Specifically regarding psychological sex differences, one interpretation is that in rigid, traditional societies, differences between men and women are compressed. People have fewer options to express themselves. But in freer and more politically equal societies, men and women then become liberated to express their underlying traits. Men become more narcissistic and things-oriented (which they are in more egalitarian societies), and women become more agreeable and people-oriented (which they are in more egalitarian societies). Men seem to do more of the changing. That is, women seem to change a little bit based on the structure of society, whereas men change more. This has led me to wonder if the arrow of causation might run in the opposite direction. Historically, men have been more likely to establish and run societies. Maybe peculiar (self-centered, autistic spectrum) men are more likely to create societies that go on to reflect their preferences of individualism, impartiality, political equality, and so on.