Here are some 2013 statistics just for my iSteve.blogspot.com site -- i.e., not counting outside articles, reprints of my blog, or old iSteve.com writings.
What about RSS feeds? Does Google Analytics count those? No. So, the following are underestimates, but they are still pretty interesting.
1,389 posts = 3.8 per day (365 days per year)
What about RSS feeds? Does Google Analytics count those? No. So, the following are underestimates, but they are still pretty interesting.
1,389 posts = 3.8 per day (365 days per year)
Pageviews: 6,635,426 (18,179 per day)
All Visits: 3,831,881 (10,498 per day)
Pageviews by Old Users: ~5,700,000
Pageviews by Old Users: ~5,700,000
Avg. Visit Duration - All Users: 3:32
Avg. Visit Duration - New Users: 2:02
Minutes spent on iSteve: 13,526,540
Man-Years (24/7) spent reading iSteve in 2013: 25.7
Man-Years (40 hour week) spent reading iSteve in 2013: 90.7
Avg. Visit Duration - New Users: 2:02
Minutes spent on iSteve: 13,526,540
Man-Years (24/7) spent reading iSteve in 2013: 25.7
Man-Years (40 hour week) spent reading iSteve in 2013: 90.7
New Users: 936,550
This nearly a million "New Users" number in 2013 seems big, but it is less impressive than it looks, since the conversion rate of new visitors into regular readers is low.
I appreciate it when you regular readers say that if only ol' Steve got noticed the whole world would beat a path to his door, but you guys are biased.
The reality is that web searches bring a lot of people to individual postings I've written and then ... it doesn't make much impression on them. They presumably stare blankly for awhile and then they're on their way.
I suspect that my combination of highbrow content without highbrow affectation is a turnoff for the vast majority of random visitors. They can't quite follow what I'm talking about -- I keep drawing analogies they've never heard before, and I keep shifting perspectives and tones and it's hard to tell if I'm being serious or satirical -- but whatever it is, I'm talking about it in this plain Dave Barry-type style, so they figure the reason my ideas aren't recognizable to them as old ideas they are comfortable with must be because I'm stupid.
I mean, what other explanation could there be?
In general:
There's a huge market for non-highbrow content in a non-highbrow style.
There's a large market for non-highbrow content in a highbrow style.
There's a small market for highbrow content in a highbrow style.
And there's a tiny market for highbrow content in a non-highbrow style.
The good news is that for smart people comfortable in their own skulls, that unpopular fourth quadrant offers a high bandwidth.
Having a decent share of a tiny market adds up to some fairly large numbers.
The Google Analytics system isn't set up to deliver the most useful numbers, but after poking around for awhile I'd say that my blog seems to average in recent months a little under 5,000 individuals as daily (or more frequent) readers, while a little under 10,000 are weekly (or more frequent) readers.
Thus, the top 10,000 iSteve readers average perhaps 275 visits and 550 pages per year (many of those pages being the main page, which has multiple postings).
Overall, 13.5 million minutes were spent viewing this blog last year, or 25.7 round-the-clock man-years. (In other words, at any moment, there are an average of 26 people currently reading iSteve.) Working 40 hours per week, it would take a staff of 91 to do all that reading. (Of course, in the real world, they'd have to spend 20 hours per week in diversity sensitivity self-criticism sessions, so make that a staff of 182.) At 91 full-time-equivalents, I'm probably using up $5 or $10 million per year of your time.
Uh-oh. The old marketing man in me says I should probably rephrase that ...
Okay, let's try: Reading iSteve is worth $5 or $10 million per year.
That's better!
Thanks.
Thank you for what you have given us, and for who you have been.
ReplyDeleteThe Google Analytics system isn't set up to deliver the most useful numbers, but after poking around for awhile I'd say that my blog seems to average in recent months a little under 5,000 individuals are daily (or more frequent) readers, while a little under 10,000 are weekly (or more frequent) readers.
ReplyDeleteIf that 10,000 just donated $100, you'd have a million dollars.
$100 wouldn't be a big burden for each of them, while it would make you a millionaire.
My educated guess is that $10 each would total a substantial increase over his current take
DeleteThis nearly a million "New Users" number in 2013 seems big, but it is less impressive than it looks, since the conversion rate of new visitors into regular readers is low.
ReplyDeleteActually, Steve, I'm impressed. Given the subject matter, if the conversion rate of new visitors into regular readers was high I would question the value of your blogging. Keep up the good work!
Steve, that you for what you do, and all that you do.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what % of visitors come to read the comments.
How many unique site visits do you get? That is by different users?
ReplyDeleteI probably check in around 4 times/day on average, so about 1500 visits/year is just me. :)
ReplyDeleteTalking of which, feeling slightly guilty I haven't donated recently due to straitened finances, but things are looking up now so I should be making a small donation later this month. Sadly it's not tax free from over here!
But long-time iSteve regulars wanna know:
ReplyDeleteHOW MANY DADGUM KOMMENTS WERE CENSORED BY KOMMENT KONTROL IN 2013?
1,000? [That would be me alone.]
10,000? [Me plus Svigor.]
100,000?!?
Yeah, I wonder percentage pony up for their appreciation. Wikipedia returns a really nice thank you when you donate. hint
ReplyDeleteOT, but hilarious: a member of David Brooks's high school choom gang strikes back: "I smoked pot with David Brooks".
ReplyDelete"Pageviews by Old Users" thanks for rubbing it in Steve
ReplyDeleteAfter I posted that last comment, I saw Greenberg added an addendum that his post was satirical. Still hilarious though.
ReplyDeleteYou need more pictures.
ReplyDeleteWhat about RSS? I read isteve from a blog reader.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you give as an example of low brow content packaged with high brow style ?
ReplyDeleteDownton Abbey and much of Masterpiece theatre ?
AKAHorace
I've been blogging for about a year and I'm currently at 500 pageviews per day, so your numbers are pretty impressive to me. I don't think the lack of people who stick around is unique to your site--it's really tough to convert a visitor to a regular. In any case, thanks for all the great content!
ReplyDeletefwiw, I like quantcast's metrics for my site.
But long-time iSteve regulars wanna know:
ReplyDeleteHOW MANY DADGUM KOMMENTS WERE CENSORED BY KOMMENT KONTROL IN 2013?
The thing is, Steve reads every single comment that's submitted, which must be a pain in the ass. Although he does seem to get some post ideas and material from the comments.
Steve, about how many comments get submitted per post on average? The average number of approved comments seem to be around 30 to 40, with quite a bit of variation. They seem to range from between about 10 to close to 100, with the average around 30 to 40.
With all due deference to self-promotion the reason no one's going to pay you $10 million is because no one believes you'll quit otherwise (cf. phony VDARE pledge drives). And if $10 million is your opener then, well, maybe we don't need Barry Sanders* if there's a way to manage with 2 or 3 versatile backs at runner-up prices who could be used in diverse situations over time. If blogs were limited like FCC licenses then sure, you'd want Barry Sanders. But that ain't so.
ReplyDelete*(Only making above ludicrous analogy in the service of tending Sailer's colossal ego + self-valuation. And Galileo and Van Gogh didn't earn much, so using them might needlessly dilute the point.)
Given that HTTP is a stateless protocol, how is it possible to measure the amount of time a reader spends reading your site?
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that the site knows when someone checks in, but it doesn't know when they check out. I could spend two minutes reading a page and then close the browser, or I could open the same page, go on vacation, then come back a week later and close the browser. Unless I completely misunderstand the way HTTP works (which I suppose is possible -- hence this question), either way the site won't know when I left the page, so it has no way to judge how long I spent reading it. Can anybody tell me what I am missing?
1. Write a book. Even if crappy, just write and package it. People put stuff like that on shelves. Don't self publish though.
ReplyDelete2. Need more pictures.
Yeah, but we still can't donate via Paypal. When asked about it previously, no answers were given.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to run thru hoops to *give* a $100 or so, while I would do it with a couple of clicks thru Paypal.
Paypal started hasselling steve, not accepting payments with no explanation.
DeleteMy parents always tense up when I start another sentence in a conversation with "Steve Sailer has a theory that..." but then after I finish the sentence they laugh and say, "Well, that's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought of that before."
ReplyDeleteI read just about every post you put up Steve and then I read almost all of the the comments too.
ReplyDeleteWhereas with most MSM articles I barely read them at all, enough to know whether Im reading left/liberal boilerplate or neo-con boilerplate. Then I just charge straight into the comments to join in the fray.
But how many comments? How many individual commenters? How many different individuals are represented by "Anonymous"? Who made the most comments, and who made them on the most posts?
ReplyDeleteWe should count, too!
They can't quite follow what I'm talking about -- I keep drawing analogies they've never heard before, and I keep shifting perspectives and tones and it's hard to tell if I'm being serious or satirical -- but whatever it is, I'm talking about it in this plain Dave Barry-type style, so they figure the reason my ideas aren't recognizable to them as old ideas they are comfortable with must be because I'm stupid.
ReplyDeleteI think you're on to something. I write even more plainly than you do, yet somehow my plainest comments never get past Komment Kontrol.
"The reality is that web searches bring a lot of people to individual postings I've written and then ... it doesn't make much impression on them. They presumably stare blankly for awhile and then they're on their way."
ReplyDeleteOr they pluck out their own eyes while screaming "I am unclean! I am unclean!"
Steve. You are a national treasure. I gave. $$ thru VDare. Keep up the fight. I read you multiple times daily. A big fan in Lexington ky.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHowever my visits here might be counted, I consider none of them a waste of time.
Steve Sailer for President!
Steve, do those Google stats include hits to your archived pages/threads?
ReplyDeleteI repost more iSteve posts to facebook than any other source. (Walter Russell Mead is a very distant second.) If I were rich, I'd bankroll your whole project. Alas, I can offer only my fondest thanks and wish you long life and health, peace and prosperity.
ReplyDeleteSince you mentioned Dave Barry, I thought of you when reading Barry's review of 2013 b/c he makes a couple of decent jokes at Obama's expense, in contrast to the comedians you've criticized in the past who can't come up w/ anything to say about the Lightworker and Ocean Healer.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhat would you give as an example of low brow content packaged with high brow style?"
Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. Quentin Tarantino movies, in a kind of meta-fashion. Any movie based on a "graphic novel".
Yeah, but how about a blog or pundit example?
Deletehttp://youtu.be/n__1Y-N5tQk
ReplyDeleteA marvel. One of the zaniest and most inspired movies--in juggling genres and emotions-- I've seen in a long time.
This level of verbal wit and banter is uniquely British.
So deft with the daft; who else can pull it off with such expertise without missing a beat?
It explains the success of the Beatles and the Stones: mixing raw American sounds with a charm no other nation can lay claim too.
In the end, offers food for thought as a satire on globalism and the pros and cons of being authentic.
"What would you give as an example of low brow content packaged with high brow style?"
ReplyDeleteAt this point, Camille Paglia.
Malcolm Gladwell. Much of NPR which is pop culture coverage.
Salon.
There is another reason. Many smart, high IQ people are uncomfortable with the plainly racist comments. You are not a racist but some of those commenting here seem to be.
ReplyDeleteLet me make a strong assertion: the people making openly racist comments on your blog just aren't very smart. Very smart people tend to be more thoughtful on this subject. Even if smart people agree with the HBD thesis, they don't agree this means *individuals* should be put down on racial terms. At the very least, it drives away your traffic.
"There's a huge market for non-highbrow content in a non-highbrow style."
ReplyDeleteRap and R&B, "urban" fiction, boy-bands, pop divas, soap operas, day-time talk shows, WWF, horror movies.
"There's a large market for non-highbrow content in a highbrow style."
Abstract paintings, performance "art", ugly modernist architecture, unlistenable modernist "classical" music, modernist "poetry" that has no rhyme or meter, runway fashion.
"There's a small market for highbrow content in a highbrow style."
The performance of real classical music, the study of classical languages, of old art, literature and architecture.
"And there's a tiny market for highbrow content in a non-highbrow style."
I don't think that market is tiny at all. There's always been some high artistry in pop culture. Beatles songs, old Simpsons episodes, etc. There's even lots of it in this corner of the Internet besides Steve. Roissy/Heartiste and Jim Goad combine incredible writing talent with lack of pretension.
Brow height sounds ambiguous. One can picture a three-dimensional space with X measuring the complexity and originality of factual and ideological content, Y the level of stylistic craftsmanship and Z the vulgar - wholesome dimension. I mentioned Roissy and Mr. Goad in my previous anonymous comment. They're middling on X, extremely high on Y and very low on Z. Steve is very high on X, middling on Y and high on Z. Self-importance can be the fourth dimension. I don't know if Steve meant it as a part of brow height. It's obviously not the same thing as the vulgar - wholesome continuum.
ReplyDeleteSteve Sailer: funnier than Orwell, funkier than Waugh. And in a sane world, he'd be as famous.
ReplyDeleteI check here compulsively. Surely upwards of 10 times a day. iSteve and Daily Mail are the only sites I check these days on a daily basis. If you think Komment Kontrol is bad, you ought to get a Daily Mail account to realize how good you have it.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you give as an example of low brow content packaged with high brow style ?
ReplyDeleteSocial sciences
What would you give as an example of low brow content packaged with high brow style ?
ReplyDeletetv dramas
I second Christian's comment.
ReplyDeleteSteve's posts are discussed in places that may surprise him, for example the Davidson Gifted Forum (for parents of high-IQ children). I have linked to him there, and so have others.
I'm one of those uncounted RSS users, reading every post and most of the comments, but not hitting the web site itself unless I'm posting a comment. Also, because the comment form is not on your isteve subdomain, I suspect that means that when I do click through to a page to comment, I get counted as one of those "looked at one page and went away" visits.
ReplyDeleteWith RSS, I see all comments, not just those on the most recent posts that I happen to check, so it would take many daily visits to many different pages to accomplish the same thing without RSS. That would be impractical, though, so it's hard to say how many "daily page visits" it should really be worth.
"Given that HTTP is a stateless protocol, how is it possible to measure the amount of time a reader spends reading your site?"
ReplyDeleteIt's not possible to know precisely, but they can make some educated guesses. First, as long as they give you a tracking cookie (nearly every site does now) or track you by IP, then if you click to another page on the same site, they can measure the time between requests at the server end. In addition to that, Google Analytics uses Javascript code that runs in the browser, and it's used by so many web sites that even if you click to a different site, GA can tell that you've done so. I'd be surprised if it doesn't keep track of browser activity too, so it can tell if you went idle for a while and subtract that time.
It's not perfect, of course, because it doesn't know whether you were reading the page the whole time between clicks or went to get a beer and took a phone call. And with multiple windows/tabs, it's even less certain that being "active" on a page really means you're looking at it. But they can make some reasonable estimates, probably throwing out unlikely numbers (a page with 1000 words didn't really take someone 34.1 minutes to read, so toss that). And it's not so much the absolute numbers that matter, but relative comparisons: which of my pages seem to be holding people's attention the longest and leading to the most clicks to other pages/products?
As much as I think Google has become the "evil" company their motto originally warned against, Analytics is like crack for the blogger with stathead tendencies.
BTW I don't think I've ever had a comment rejected on moderation, so when people complain about Komment Kontrol I have to wonder what the heck you are saying! :D
ReplyDeletehttp://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2014/01/reactionary-progressives-take-over-new.html
ReplyDeleteI hope Bill de Blasio destroys NY and make all those a-holes suffer.
ReplyDeleteBut I think he will just serve the elites... just like Obama.
I can assure folks that if you simply mail a check to the P.O. box, it will be received and cashed. By Steve Sailer, or by someone of that name.
ReplyDeleteRe the light-on-one-page-and-decline-to-poke-around behavior, I get that on my own site when it is accessed via this site, but the explanation is likely simple: when you see a Portuguese-language epigram and a photo of a railway station in eastern Turkey, you probably don't exclaim, "Hey, my passions exactly!" In any case I thank people here for going there. Steve's content, on the other hand, appeals (or ought to appeal) to a much wider audience. I do not think that casual visitors are often unenchanted visitors because Steve is neglecting to give them old ideas and must therefore be a stupid guy. It is possible they find his evident enjoyment offputting. Most blogs are shallow and grim; this one is deep and fun. In my grad-school days I set myself apart from the other biochemists by actually liking, volunteering to give seminars, but even I could tell that the fun I was clearly having bothered onlookers. I think they thought I was playing a joke on them, possibly a cruel one. I wasn't, and Steve isn't, but impressions matter. Anyway, don't change a thing!
Steve, long time reader (sometime donor, should do it more often) - how has the trend in your readership changed over time?
ReplyDelete"Okay, let's try: Reading iSteve is worth $5 or $10 million per year."
ReplyDeleteYour readers would say it's worth $15-22 million to me.
If you write about controversial topics, in an intelligent way, then your audience is going to be relatively small. Only the far right of the Bell Curve can appreciate you.
ReplyDeleteI speak as one of your non smart readers. Are you using this as a way of flattering your regular readers, so we'll come back and - hopefully, fingers crossed - donate? Because it's remarkably effective. (Now if I only had some spare money.)
ReplyDeleteIt's like reading "The Bell Curve" and "Real Education", where Charles Murray basically says that if you're reading, you're part of the cognitive elite. Nice thought, a deeply flattering thought, but frequently untrue.
The Gulen article on Taki was absolutely brilliant. Its also almost entirely HBD free (the testing schools can be interpreted in an HBD neutral way).
ReplyDeleteMost viewers who leave are dissatisfied with the constant harping of the single HBD perspective. There have been multiple empires, Chinese, Ottoman, Mongol, Persian, Egyptian, Indus Valley etc that seem to suggest other causes.
The election of Obama also indicated what such an HBD based society might look like. Large majorities of whites believed Obama was not eligible to be President as only one of his parents was American and he might have been born overseas. Strangely that entire sickness went away with the emergence of Ted Cruz.
So, there may be something in what you say. But the solutions are lacking and the constant harping of differences entirely based on race do not quite ring true based on history; and even if true recent political behavior of whites lead readers to reject your site.
I do read every article and comment. But then again I read from a variety of sources. I do think this Gulen business has many interesting offshoots, particularly the Graham Fuller related ones that bear investigation.
Low-brow or middle-brow content in [faux] high-brow verbiage would also include most of the articles and comments on the HuffPo, Atlantic, Daily Beast and more traditional news sources like WSJ, Wash Post, NYT, etc.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing a provincial middle-brow loves more than using a few multi-syllabic words in description of his/her self-righteousness. It is a status marker to distinguish the respectable from the Walmart undesirables. I know Prof Gottfried says the bourgeois is dead, but I suspect old-fashioned bourgeois insecurity also encourages the high-falutin' language.
In any case, Mr. Sailer, you confuse them and amuse those of us smart and humble enough to follow you arguments. You are a latter day Mencken.
CENSORSHIP: I don't understand this. I almost never have been censored here and I am often censored on mainstream sites like Breitbart. I visit a lot of sites but for many I can't get a comment published. I'm generally careful about etiquette, but the filters on many sites can be very touchy. iSteve is like an oasis in a desert of robo-censors.
ReplyDeleteTIME ON SITE: I spend a lot of time on iSteve but usually because I'm composing a comment. I write, rewrite and check my facts. And I still make silly errors. Yesterday I went off to Wikipedia looking up Daniel Defoe based on some iSteve remark. One reference led to another and I was lost in 18th century history for hours. I wonder if this time is counted?
READERSHIP: Steve has a lot of readers but not a huge number. That number must be judged in context. I spent two months researching one of my twenty minute political videos on the Tuskegee Airmen. I read three or four books, watched three movies, and read hundreds of web articles. I also finally mastered some more of the movie making technology. In the end I produced a product that has been viewed by maybe only two or three people. It was all original research not available anywhere else. I think I'm right about the Airmen - but who else knows? My toxoplasma homosexual theory is also likely to be right but again who has ever heard of it?
I chose not to have a blog because everyone has a blog and the completion is fierce. Obviously talking head movies are not a better way to be heard.
I'm mindful that The Huffington Post is the most visited blog in the world and that they are in financial trouble. I'm also mindful that there are several wonderful blogs by brilliant authors for which I am often the only reader. I'm not the only one has never been noticed. Among serious bloggers (and vloggers)Steve is an outstanding success.
CONTENT: It is quite easy to get a lot of hits and comments if you just want to be a political incendiary. Steve probably has fewer hits and less comments than most of the other sites that focus on issues like racial realism. If you encourage that element it seems pretty easy to have a hundred long comments every day in which the same people rant about the same things every day. In the mainstream political blogs any article just mentioning something like 'the knockout game' can generate five hundred to a thousand short but incoherent hate rants. These are evidence of something or other but what? No body reads these comment threads past the first few remarks. Numbers aren't everything.
Albertosaurus
OT/ you might be interested in this recent bit of scholarship by Amy Chua's husband:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.feministlawprofessors.com/2013/10/rubenfelds-big-step-backward-rape-law/
I think Richard Rorty did a phenomenal job of packaging highbrow content in a non-highbrow style.
ReplyDelete>Write a book.<
ReplyDeleteSeconded.
A possible stumbling block is two senseless/dispiriting marketing assumptions. Assumption #1: A nonfiction book must be a platform or policy brief. It must Preach a Message and Offer A Solution. Assumption #2: Any book's primary purpose is to make the author a rock star.
If these onerous assumptions can be disregarded (#1) or reasonably minimized (#2), Steve, then I don't see why you couldn't confect a fine anthology of some of the better blog posts, with minimal or no editing, and then shop it around with a smidge of sympathetic help. The hook? It's Steve Sailer's book.
But you can give it the very provocative title "The Secret Thoughts of Smart People." And even include on the cover a photo of you looking rather skeptical.
Finally, it's kind of obvious, but the constituent posts might be grouped under heads such as "The White Vote," "Let the Good Times Roll," "Invade and Invite the World," "Who? Whom?", "My War with Malcolm," et al.
But practically any of your major posts in any rough order would do the trick. Don't overthink it.
Will we see it this Christmas, Steve?
(You could always turn out a "big picture" book later, if ever.)
What I like best about Steve is the way he mixes the important stuff in with a steady stream of pop culture riffs and juicy gossip.
ReplyDeleteThis is, frankly, what allows me to defend myself from the PC police who think Sailer and company are the Ku Klux Klan 2.0. Some of us unfortunately work in places where an interest in HBD could be a career-killer.
Steve's site contains enough entertaining extra material to maintain plausible deniability. "I read iSteve for the goofy pop culture stuff and/or the wacky stuff in the comments" is like an "I read Playboy for the articles" for the 21st century. :)
* Correction. "marketing assumptions made by others" (not by Steve). Didn't mean to come across as rude.
ReplyDeleteI REALLY want to see that book.
Yesterday I went off to Wikipedia looking up Daniel Defoe based on some iSteve remark. One reference led to another and I was lost in 18th century history for hours. I wonder if this time is counted?
ReplyDeleteHey, I do this too. And I also googled Daniel Defoe and read the wikipedia article.
Sailer's writings are philosophical, courageous, and funny, which makes for a potent--and rare--combination.
ReplyDeletewiseguy
Anon 10:05:
ReplyDeleteThe cognitive elite is . Is it the half or so of the population that reads a book at least once a year, or the tiny fraction who will ever advance scientific knowledge or build anything new in their lives? Further, the smarter and more intellectually curious you are, the more likely you are to know of a lot of stuff you don't understand too well, to have studied some stuff that seemed very hard to get, to have met people who just seemed smarter than you, etc.
Only half the population reads a book per year when they're not required to for school or work or something. Readers of Malcolm Gladwell and listeners of NPR are a plausible definition of the cognitive elite, even though they're not all that impressive in a lot of ways. Most people aren't bright and curious enough to even listen to NPR or read Malcolm Gladwell, or for that matter to read Steve Sailer and get much out of it,
NOTA, true. Only my own limitations first convinced me of the at least equal importance of Nature (as against Nurture). Prior to reading and meeting peers much smarter than me, I tended to ascribe dumbness wholly to morals. That is, a dumb person "just isn't trying." After encountering some supernova-bright sorts, I realized I couldn't get up there no matter how conscientious I was. I was trying but was (by comparison) D-U-M. I saw only then that sheer mental capacity just is not evenly distributed. Paradoxical though it may sound, this (and HBD generally) has made me more tolerant of differences in intelligence generally, or less of an implicit scold.
ReplyDeleteNOTA said...
ReplyDeleteAnon 10:05:
The cognitive elite is . Is it the half or so of the population that reads a book at least once a year, or the tiny fraction who will ever advance scientific knowledge or build anything new in their lives?
1/4/14, 6:07 PM
=============================
Murray seems to define the cognitive elite as being the bestest and brightest. (Unless I'm very much mistaken, which is very much possible.) Not quite the tiny fraction who'll do something truly mind blowing and innovative, but the new thought/business/political/whatever leaders.
And Murray, at least in "The Bell Curve" and "Real Education" (not so much in "Coming Apart", though) likes to flatter the readers by claiming that if you're reading, you're just so, so, utterly clever that even the people you think are stupid are actually well above average. A lot of the time reading him, I can hear the chortles of every teacher I've ever had.
This, actually, might explain why the HBD side of things isn't publicly catching on, no matter how much people might believe it in private and act on those beliefs. As other commenters have touched upon here, a lot of the commenters are spectacularly unpleasant. Sometimes it can seem like a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequates trying to prove to themselves that all their problems are someone else's fault. And that's unfair both to Steve and to the vast bulk of his readers, but it's not helpful. And it's not helpful to see said unpleasant types fellating themselves over how wonderfully smart they are, especially compared to those awful, awful proles. (There's a lot of overlap between the two groups.)
"$100 wouldn't be a big burden for each of them, while it would make you a millionaire."
ReplyDeleteI assumed said guy would be a millionaire. Clever marketing guy and all that. But deserving of $100 or so. Not fair to provide content gratis for intellectual stimuli junkies...ahem.
I love your blog Mr. Sailer. Keep up the great work.
ReplyDelete>Sometimes it can seem like a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequates trying to prove to themselves that all their problems are someone else's fault.<
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, you stayed on message. Now run al ... YAWN .. ong.
"Sometimes it can seem like a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequates trying to prove to themselves that all their problems are someone else's fault."
ReplyDeletelol did you wander here from SPLC HQ?
If only ol' Steve got noticed, the whole world would beat a path to his door… with pitchforks and torches.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes it can seem like a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequates trying to prove to themselves that all their problems are someone else's fault."
ReplyDeleteI just had a vision of a Bolshevik Commissar telling a Kulak that during the Holodomor: "You're a racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequate trying to prove to yourself that your problems are someone else's fault."
10,000? [Me plus Svigor.]
ReplyDeleteAu Contraire, Steve has largely tamed the Svig-monster. I hardly have anything fail to show up any more. Or maybe I've tamed Steve? Hey, we tamed each other! Group hug.
If only ol' Steve got noticed, the whole world would beat a path to his door… with pitchforks and torches.
Hahaha, that was truly LOL-funny.
There is another reason. Many smart, high IQ people are uncomfortable with the plainly racist comments. You are not a racist but some of those commenting here seem to be.
Let me make a strong assertion: the people making openly racist comments on your blog just aren't very smart. Very smart people tend to be more thoughtful on this subject. Even if smart people agree with the HBD thesis, they don't agree this means *individuals* should be put down on racial terms. At the very least, it drives away your traffic.
Racists of the online variety tend to be smarter than the average. There's a whole discussion to be had here, but thinking for yourself and ignoring the popular religion tend to be the domain of the smarter-than-average.
"Sometimes it can seem like a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequates trying to prove to themselves that all their problems are someone else's fault."
Does it make me a bad person that I would rather be racist, sexist, homophobic, and "ANTI-SEMITIC!!!" than someone who has to lean on logical fallacies (here, argumentum ad hominem)?
Steve, I really appreciate everything you do. Keep up the good work and keep fighting. For now, I suppose most people live by the lies they have been fed, despite what must be migraine inducting levels of cognitive dissonance, but revolutions are often a surprise until after the fact when they seem inevitable.As my favorite middlebrow alt-rock band once observed "everything sticks, everything sticks, everything sticks like a broken record, everything sticks until it goes away..."
ReplyDeleteAnd to quote my favorite middle-brow journalist-cum-author:
"One solitary person, with clarity, single-mindedness, energy and will can thrust his shoulders against the hinge of history, shift the equipoise, and thus accomplish the work of multitudes."
Johnson, Paul, "A History of the English People", London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson (1985), pg. 50.
Don't feed...don't feed...trolls...can't stop..worse than addiction to cheap vodka, graphic novels, and downton abbey...
ReplyDelete"Awesome. You stayed on paleocon message. Now enjoy your little ghetto, and whining about how everyone else is too stupid and sheep like to understand how awesome you are."
Come on in. The ghetto is nice this time a year.
"Sometimes it can seem like a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequates trying to prove to themselves that all their problems are someone else's fault."
Hmmm...most of the commentators here evince a Pelagian view of free will as opposed to an Augustinan one with its requirement of grace; so I do not think that is a fair statement. Your clarity of thought and PC conviction seems particularly Donatist.
Anyway - the next time the auto-da-fe in town perhaps you should prevail on the Dominicans to round up the usual iSteve subjects, put them to the question and, if they refuse to recant, have them burned as heretics.
Then, and only then, I am sure, Steve's blog stats would shoot through the roof; his articles would be inundated by admiring comments of Slate, Salon, and NPR types who agreed with him all along, you see, but since Whiskey rubbed them the wrong way stayed away, but now they are telling ALL their friends they just MUST, MUST read iSteve. In addition, Steve would be hired to replace David Brooks at the NYT and get his own MSNBC show called "Let's not kill the Boer!" In a surprising move, he would narrate the smash hit PBS documentary "Paul Walker: The Saint of Valencia" and finally get around to doing a review of "Pacific Rim", driving the sale of "Gipsy Danger" figurines through the roof.
Politics makes for uncomfortable alliances, for associating with and getting support from people you really dislike. And one of the most powerful weapons the supporters of current mainstream views have to silence criticism is the facts that:
ReplyDeletea. All political organization involves building coalitions and making common cause with people with whom you have some fundamental disagreements on other issues. (Think of the antiwar movement.).
b. The more mainstream a view is, the less weird and crazy and evil it sounds, even when it's batshit nuts and genuinely nasty as hell. (Think of the stuff that became mainstream policy in te war on terror.). This is largely an effect of familiarity--monstrous or crazy things that you hear repeated a lot start seeming less monstrous or crazy.
The combination of these two makes it easy to attack any coalition that opposes the mainstream respectable view. How dare you oppose the war in Iraq--see these dirty hippies you're siding with? How dare you oppose more immigration--see these racist rednecks you're siding with.
There was a hell of a lot of ink spilled in the last election on trying to discredit Ron Paul from the left. The purpose wasn't to argue about issues where RP disagrees with most everyone on the left, it was to make it uncomfortable for potential Democratic voters to make common cause with Paul's supporters on issues like the war on terror, or the bailouts, on which the mainstream Democrats are pretty much indistinguishable from the mainstream Republicans.
Mainstream politicians make common cause with nauseating people all the time. We are close allies with Saudi Arabia. Prominent Democrats will happily cosponsor legislation with people who think we should torture prisoners, or who think Muslims shouldn't have religious freedom.
My impression is that a huge fraction of partisan media is about preventing people on your side from making common cause with outsiders. Make sure the Tea Partiers are all portrayed as lower class trailer trash, racist and sexist and stupid. Make sure the Occupy types are all portrayed as doped-up unemployable losers who want to impose some kind of socialism. Make sure the antiwar people look like America hating smelly hippies. Because otherwise, someone on your side might start thinking "Wait, how exactly *does* granting more H1B visas help me get a job so I can get off my mom' couch?"
"Anonymous of 1/4/14, 6:57 PM said...
ReplyDeleteSometimes it can seem like a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti Semitic inadequates trying to prove to themselves that all their problems are someone else's fault."
Trying to prove that all their problems are someone else's fault.......sounds like the ADL's playbook.
The Gulen article on Taki was absolutely brilliant.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I forget whether I said so on the specific thread. It was brilliant. I felt like a satisfied junkie at the end.
Paradoxical though it may sound, this (and HBD generally) has made me more tolerant of differences in intelligence generally, or less of an implicit scold.
ReplyDeleteVery true for me as well. It helps to be able to understand where one fits in life and in the ability continuum. Only when you can understand your relative strengths and weaknesses can you figure out where you have your advantages relatives to others and act appropriately. And for those who are less intellectually endowed, it stops the unfair criticism that they are just lazy, even if not stated explicitly.
People who do not understand bell curves, HBD and the like are apt to repeat the mistake of the Peter Principle - that everyone reaches the level of their own incompetence. Implicit in blank slatism - if everyone is equal, there are no mental differences, then success is just a matter of work ethic, motivation and education.
When you read the comments at the Daily Mail on Nigel Farage saying that Enoch was basically right - here - you can see how far we've come in such a scant time. One wonders by how much time this revolution has been advanced by Sailer et al. An idea whose time has come? Partly that perhaps, but without someone to deconstruct a lot of the (and I use the term generously) "intellectual" framework behind the pro-immigrationist push and construct a competing one, it would have taken longer I think.
ReplyDelete>Implicit in blank slatism - if everyone is equal, [if] there are no mental differences, then success is just a matter of work ethic<
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that the advocacy of the more extreme theories of "free will" is a cowardly (i.e., psychological) form of aggression. Behind the decrying of "the bigotry of soft expectations" is sometimes (not always) the desire to crow about one's own supposed moral rectitude, and posture in the glow thereof.
Nature/Nurture is very possibly 50/50, so it behooves both sides to keep it in mind. To put the point more bluntly: 50% of one's endowment may not be due to one's moral superiority.
I find that hbd ideas have made me much more receptive to social programs and charity for the folks on the bottom. To a large extent, they're on the bottom because they aren't very bright or they have some kind of mental illness or addiction. All three of those are largely genetic, perhaps with a small component of peoples' choices. (Addiction stems from a choice to start drinking or smoking or using drugs, but once you're hooked, quitting looks to be hard enough that nobody has much of a good way to do it, and that most people who try seem to fail.)
ReplyDeleteBREAKDOWN BY COUNTRIES!!!
ReplyDeletePlease.
Steve:
ReplyDelete"At 91 full-time-equivalents, I'm probably using up $5 or $10 million per year of your time."
To paraphrase the sage response to Mr Hand, if I'm reading it, and you're writing it, then doesn't that make it *our* time?