I first came across Joseph Bronski via Eric Orwoll (aarvoll.)
I as well as many others who commented on Aarvoll’s video found him distastefully arrogant. From reading some of what he wrote online, it seems that he is so sure of himself I find it mind-boggling that people pay attention to him at all.
(The “smacking” or “squelching” noises he makes while talking are extremely annoying and almost more insufferable than his arrogant know-it-all attitude.)
He even wants to tell us what we should read and that reading, as is often claimd by lazy thugs online, is a waste of time (except if a lot of math is in there …) That he is making use of internet jargon sex-crazed—i. e., mentally ill—men came up by using a shallow, dubious term like “wordcel” is reason enough for me not to read someone like Bronski anyway. A narcissist he is for sure, maybe even a psychopath. (He was not even aware of E. Michael Jones’ work “Libido dominandi,” it seems, claiming there exists no history of the so-called “sexual revolution.”)
Here, I certainly side with Vox Day, who is an avid reader as well, especially though not only regarding history. (Unfortunately, Vox Day is pretty arrogant too, but at least he has a bit more to back it up.)
In a video about Jewish intelligence (Ashkenasim), he was complaining in a manner hard to stomach about the fact that hardly anyone is interested in what he has been working on. Why would that be important? History shows that—and I do not think his work has merit—great works were ignored often enough.
He also links to Edward Dutton on his substack page. (Dutton’s The Past Is a Future Country was a horrible book, I could not even finish it.) I cannot take Dutton seriously, even Deep Left Jokl (Kenneth Brown) can’t, saying in one of his YouTube videos that Dutton is endlessly hashing off statistics and has gotten nowhere with this stuff. Yet, there are still commenters on videos by Bronski and others who really claim that the Dissident Right needs to use more HBD arguments to be taken seriously.
I disagree, it needs to get back to the roots, and rather follow Aarvoll’s advice of getting a good classical education.
Regarding literature, I argue that on the contrary, the Right is actually reading way too little. Especially when it comes to the Classics and works of high literature.
Bronski may have some kind of reading deficiency, otherwise I fail to see why he needs to go on about how most books are a waste of time or too wordy; he even critiqued other peoples’ substack pages as being too verbose. With few exceptions I have little interest in reading contemporary books and articles of length either; however, classical and ancient books are just too good and important to ignore.
Regarding the above video where he critiques the view put forth by Leather Apron Club that the Jewish people do not have an IQ as high as is usually thought, Joseph Bronski can be heard saying that an IQ of 140 is “genius” already, which is certainly a preposterous position to take.
An IQ of 140 is not even three standard deviations above the mean, the Triple Nine Society requires its members to have an IQ of at least 146. Someone in the comments section also mentioned that the score certainly needs to be higher than 140 for calling someone a genius.
However, even if one disregards such a numbers game, genius itself is without a doubt way more than just an IQ score. Bruce Charlton wrote a book about the topic which Bronski, who even links to co-author Dutton’s site, should be aware of.
That very smart people are even interested in managerial positions is at best questionable, as at least one commenter correctly remarked. Usually, wouldn’t such people be more interested in a scholarly life? Thorsten Heitzmann (IQ 150) never had much ambition in life, for example. Nils M. Holm (Heitzmann link above) wrote an (as of yet) unfinished book (The Gap) and article about people with IQs that are more than three standard deviations above the mean and who failed in life (socially).
I was at least pleasantly surprised that more than once, commenters called into question the view that IQ and educational attainment are positively correlated. However, someone even made the arrogant claim that many subscribed to Leather Apron Club because they want to feel better about themselves, being losers. As I wrote above, Nils M. Holm presents numerous examples of people with three+ sigma IQs who did fail in life. He even wrote, and I quote:
“[…] Note that not much is said here about very successful people with a 3σ or higher IQ. This is not because they do not exist, but because they are the exception to the rule, and the greater the distance from the average the greater the exception. […]”
Further, Bronski said that democracy is only possible with people who have political agency (or so), even though in his talk with aarvoll he seemed to be a kind of Christian or theist. Democracy, though, is a result of decadence, it is a worship of man.
During his long complaint about not being well-known enough, he praised a book he wrote in a manner that cannot be seen as nothing else than narcissistic. I have not read it, the topic seems dubious: young people are more mature than usually thought, the brain does not develop until twenty-five. He bases this on studies, he also believes in evolution, which is already way too shaky as a foundation. We hardly know how our ancestors lived. Further, being able to survive in a harsh environment does not even mean that our brains have to be mature before the age of twenty-five.
We all know that young people are prone to act in stupid, immature ways; that during one’s youth, radical views are more common. Even Dutton made this remark in his awful book At Our Wits’ End. Dutton wrote:
In Elizabethan England, 36% of the population is under 16 and 7% is over 60. From our discussion of age differences in personality and g alone we can see how this will shift behaviour patterns to a society that is more risk-taking, adventurous, creative and self-confident. Think of all the creativity you engaged in as a student before you settled down to sit in front of a computer all day, like almost all of us do. Think of all the reckless and embarrassing experimentation you engaged in with sex, booze and political or religious extremism as well.
Apart from the fact that basing anything on studies alone is dubious, it is of no importance if organ X is already developed at age Y, because maturity, wisdom, foresight have to be taught, learned, maybe even experienced; Aquinas himself wrote a book about the teacher. Given that we live in a toxic culture, letting young, easily impressionable people drive cars and have more rights in general is to be rejected, it is a recipe for disaster.
Fitting escolio by Don Colacho:
What we discover as we age is not the vanity of everything, but of almost everything.
I found a review (archive.org) online, though it is of low quality (ironically making use of immature internet slang like LOL). The reviewer also makes use of ridiculous terms like ageism, and writes positively about the abolition of racial segregation, praising the 1960s … this guy is hopelessly immature, uneducated and almost insane; can be disregarded.
The reviewer even writes that after the age of fifteen, pregnancies reach their plateau in safety and quality, basing it on two studies (!!) (Loto et al. 2004 and Makinson 1985). Yes, let us have a ton of teenage single mothers, this will improve society a whole lot …
Since he treats studies as Gospel truth, I will cite Holy Scripture. Isaiah 3:12:
As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
(Seems to be what is happening, with so many women being politicians now, and very mature teenagers like Greta Thunberg leading the way, telling us how to live …)
Several times he makes reference to slavery and how horrible it is, but most likely lives a sexual promiscuous life, being a slave to his lust. Reading this was a waste of time.
From reading this horrible review, it seems that Bronski is basing his worldview on studies, on soft science! Apparently, Bronski also believes in rights. I would never base a world-view on studies. Enough with this reviewer now, he even thinks people read or take seriously someone as irrelevant as Moldbug …
It almost reads as if only teenagers are being oppressed, as if being a legal adult is akin to Heaven. When I was around fifteen, my life and and psyche was so damaged, I was hardly able to go outside.
I rather side with Vox Day, who, in a blog post titled Only Fools Trust Science, wrote:
Trust God and engineering.
Maybe the reason he so often calls other philosophers sophists—accomplished ones, no matter what one may think of them—is because he himself engages a lot in sophistry. Aarvoll, in the video I linked above, did at least point out that he uses language to show that language is (supposedly) meaningless (“pseudo-logic”.)
Further, there were serious philosophers who also knew a lot of mathematics, like Leibniz. This did not prevent him from writing his monadology. While Spengler was a philosopher of history, he also studied natural/physical science at university. Hegel, too, knew quite a lot of math, which became a problem for some of his students who wanted to edit and publish his works because of their lack of knowledge in this area.
Apart from that, not everyone is equally talented in mathematics. From the book The Gap by Nils M. Holm:
“[…] Not all skills are typically developed to the same degree, so the perceived resistance may differ in different areas. One person I know has a weakness in mathematical thinking, which in their case means that they score only 1.5σ in math tests, but 3σ to 4σ in other tests. They recognize their weakness very distinctively. Whenever they try to solve a mathematical problem it feels like ‘wading through molasses’ to them. Interestingly, they score very high in logical thinking when it is unrelated to mathematics. […]”
Saying Quine did not contribute to ChatGPT (!!), that he should have entered a monastery or worked in science is not only immature, it betrays his attitude towards technology: he is, like many, drunk on it. Apparently, science for him is just science, as if disciplines do not differ in terms of hardness (psychology being the softest, for example.)
In the “discussion” with Aarvoll above, he childishly concluded that a sophist—in his eyes—like Hegel only led to Marxism which led to the Cambodian genocide.
Why did he not mention The Great Leap Forward, which caused even more lives? Lack of historical knowledge? Either way, the way he snickers there is awful, simply off-putting.
His analogies are crude, too. Saying Quine is like someone who gorges himself on food, i. e., yet another reference to base desires, like food and sex, obesity in this case, which they usually do not rail against because they want to help people, but because of their sex addiction (they bow down before sex-crazed “alphas”, being too weak, nay, addicted to criticize promiscuous sexuality.)
Or saying that using words alone is like showing someone a 144p video, while he with his math and models is comparable to showing us the 4K version. A rather crude analogy, there are way better ones; he most likely does not read a lot, especially not high literature, his tastes being vulgar.
It is indecent and obscene anyway to use a vulgar and decadent term like “wordcel“ in a supposedly serious discussion. This is not how educated men of the past have carried themselves. Aarvoll’s behaviour was commendable; I found Bronski even more insufferable than the already arrogant “BlitheringGenius”.
Either way, another waste of time. It no longer really upsets me, I am just glad when I am dead, and long for death even more now. I live like a dead person; which is how we should live as Christians, according to Kierkegaard.
Regarding his immature and juvenile insult wordcel, Chris Langan, who is certainly way way smarter, said, in a four hour interview with Curt Jaimungal titled Chris Langan on IQ, The Singularity, Free Will, Psychedelics, CTMU, and God Theories of Everything that the claim that language is not as precise is because most people use language sloppily, that is all (around 14:44).
To quote one of the greatest readers of the 20th century, Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
Man’s three enemies are: the devil, the state, and technology.
We should ask the majority of people not to be sincere, but mute.
When we sail in oceans of stupidity, intelligence requires the aid of good taste.
Good breeding seems like a fragrance from the 18th century that evaporated.
It is fine to demand that the imbecile respect arts, letters, philosophy, the sciences, but let him respect them in silence.
Without dignity, without sobriety, without refined manners, there is no prose that fully satisfies. We demand of the book we read not just talent, but also good breeding.
The majority of men have no right to give their opinion, but only to listen.
Each day I expect less and less to meet somebody who does not nurse the certainty of knowing how the world’s ills might be cured.
In every age there are two types of readers: the curious reader in search of novelties and the aficionado of literature.
Those who prophesy more than indefinite cycles of decline and ascent are hiding some suspicious product they want to sell for cash.
New evidence is not more perfect than old evidence.
It is merely new evidence.Each one of a science’s successive orthodoxies appears to be the definitive truth to the disciple.
To appreciate the ancient or the modern is easy; but to appreciate the obsolete is the triumph of authentic taste.
One could object to science that it easily falls into the hands of imbeciles, if religion’s case were not just as serious.
Unless what we write seems obsolete to modern man, immature to the adult, trivial to the serious man, we must start over.
An extensive card catalog, an imposing library, a serious university, produce today those avalanches of books that contain not one error nor one insight.