Rerun from yesterday, the intelligence test described in the second of four panels here.

I forgot to mention another important part of abstract reasoning, which is 'mapping.' Basically expressing one thing in terms of another.

For example:

Imagine a picture of an arrow, colored in a gradient from yellow to Green, following the direction of the arrow. Imagine a one-way residential street with a sending house numbers with the lowest number being at the entrance of the street and the highest number being at the exit.

If you mapped the arrow onto the street what color would house #1 be?

This question isn't really tricky for most 100+s. It has some minor ambiguities, but anyone of normal intelligence can do the 'mapping': that is, the expression of one thing in terms of another.

Maybe the mental mapping question is an example of why word problems confounded so many people in math classes.

Yeah, it feels like someone quoting the challenge from memory added a few ambiguities which wouldn't be permitted in an actual test item.

As I did! "A sending" was, of course, "ascending."

And "entrance" and "exit" aren't words Americans usually use with streets.

Years ago I was on scuba boat with a bunch of Antipodals, a Canadian and a few Euros, and late in the week we were all trading anecdotes. One of them described visiting a city somewhere in Oz with an event "on a high street."

And I said, "What's a 'high street'?"

And the guy, an Aussie 'Nam vet, said "It was a High street. You know, a High Street!" Everybody looked at me, waiting for the moment to pass… Most urgently, the young woman from Christchurch who worked as a translator at the U.N.

So I nodded, as if boat noise had been the problem, and we all moved forward.

And I thought, quietly but with featureless certainty, 'This fucker meant "downtown"… America is the BEST.'

Jordan Peterson and Thomas Dalrymple discuss Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom; talking about poverty, the correlation of IQ and criminality, violence, the breakdown of the family structure, morality, and other things in this podcast.

Excerpt:

DALRYMPLE: I think one of the things that is clear about the … intellectual classes is that one of their greatest fears is the fear of being considered censorious. And, of course censoriousness is not a very attractive quality. … The best way to avoid being censorious is to fail to make any judgement whatever.

That should have been "Theodore Dalrymple."

Chinese Premier Xi may have looked at the U. S. "leadership" and figured a bit of expansiveness was warranted.
Headline from Sky News, Aus.
China's Xi Jinping issues 'bloodshed' warning to foreign powers at Communist Party centenary event

And Biden's back-up seems hardly competent for the task.

https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-officials-describe-vps-office-as-s-show-axios-2021-7?amp

"I think one of the things that is clear about the … intellectual classes is that one of their greatest fears is the fear of being considered censorious."

This helps me place the wokies on the IQ scale.

How can it be anything other than yellow? The tip will be at the exit and the tip is green and the exit is where the high numbers are. Gonna go read the comments

From May, by Jill Filipovic:

"Why does the very concept of parental regret engender such outrage?"
__________________________________

Me: I'm kind of surprised that it still does. After all, it's been almost half a century since Ann Landers asked her readers "if you could do it all over again, would you have children?"

Out of more than 10,000 respondents, 70% said no.

Of course, it wasn't a scientific survey, but even saying "no" anonymously must have been a huge, daring step back then, for individuals.

At any rate, it's a long, fascinating article, especially when at one point, she tells of her years of interviewing victims of war. (I wouldn't dream of quoting from it - it's that powerful, poignant and grim.) The whole article makes it clear that while most mothers learn to love their kids, even when things turned out less happily than they were hoping for, there's always the chance, when their families and friends push them into motherhood, that they WON'T learn to love them. Which raises the question, which is worse - risking the regret from not having children, or risking the regret from having them?

Check out the Canadian article she links to as well (MacLean).

She's written similar articles this year as well.

https://jill.substack.com/p/the-things-we-dont-discuss

Oxford Comma Violation, July 2, 2021 9:17 AM. Helluva way to start the holidayweekend. Could someone call my lawyer? He doesn't usually do jailsprings, but for years he's known this day was coming.

> a bit of expansiveness was warranted.

A Thursday tweet from Henderson ties this whole comment stack together: The Chinese and the dim in one tight bundle.

"Ann Landers asked her readers "if you could do it all over again, would you have children?"

Out of more than 10,000 respondents, 70% said no."

Self selected opinion polls, aka slop.
All it shows is those who like to read Ann Landers think this way.
May be just as valid as asking everyone at a Guns and Roses concert if Guns and Roses is the best, and be surprised when many say yes.
People who read advice columns are often regretful of their decisions and wanting to change their life.Not surprising finding many who want a different life.

> even saying "no" anonymously
> must have been a huge, daring
> step back then, for individuals.

"Daring"? Can't imagine why.

Not having kids isn't really that bold a life choice. If oh-so-audaciously turning away from this-or-that social circle to courageously live the life you want to live is such a punishing odyssey, then maybe that circle means too much to you.

For generations before ours in America and still across the globe, gays have done it routinely.

> Which raises the question, which
> is worse - risking the regret
> from not having children, or
> risking the regret from having
> them?

Lenona, that's a long way to get to such a specific, fraught, and predictable narrative inquiry.

Did you face some daunting consequences for your life choice?

(I suppose I did for my own, but it was all of a piece, and regrets aren't central, or especially hostile, to the fulfillment.)

> even saying "no" anonymously
> must have been a huge, daring
> step back then, for individuals.

"Daring"? Can't imagine why.
______________________________

Because I, for one, have heard of people reading advice columns, spotting a letter they didn't like, and then accusing (or suspecting) someone in their family, or a neighbor - of having written it. That could just as easily have happened half a century ago, when the condemnation from friends and family could easily have been worse. Not to mention that those who were raised religiously typically feel horribly guilty just for having certain FEELINGS.
_________________________________

Not having kids isn't really that bold a life choice. If oh-so-audaciously turning away from this-or-that social circle to courageously live the life you want to live is such a punishing odyssey, then maybe that circle means too much to you.
__________________________________

There's a big difference between choosing NEVER to have kids and openly expressing regret for HAVING kids. Chances are one's kids will find out and be deeply hurt, after all. So, when it comes to parental regret, per se, politeness calls for discretion and anonymity, at least. (Of course, expressing such regret anonymously should not be condemned, any more than regret for joining a religion or a political party should be. After all, such stories could HELP young readers to think twice before having children they end up neglecting.)

And, it's one thing when you rely too much on the approval of strangers on the Internet. But why WOULDN'T people be fearful of losing the love and respect of their closest friends and family? There's a reason many - most(?) people born into fundamentalist churches don't defect.

And religious leaders like Albert Mohler (Baptist), plus fundamentalist journalists like Don Feder (Jewish) still wield influence when they condemn the childfree as practically evil.
(In Mohler's case, he's also clearly not happy about parents who refuse to have more than one or two kids. Imagine what his kind think about parents who regret parenthood!)

One might think, at first, that writers like that would be GLAD that non-fundamentalist people are often CF - but obviously, they're fearful because they can see that CF people have a strong influence on everyone just by refusing to stay in the closet, so to speak. (The Southern Baptist Church, like other - but not all - religions, has been hemorrhaging, membership-wise, for years, so recruitment isn't working, and that just leaves reproduction.) Since fundamentalists also don't want gay people to adopt or reproduce, they still demand that THEY stay in the closet too - or "convert" - with electric shocks, if necessary - and enter heterosexual marriages.
________________________________

For generations before ours in America and still across the globe, gays have done it routinely.
_______________________________

Not without terrible risks to their lives, liberty and employment. See above. In the 1950s, according to the late journalism professor Ellen Willis, just being a bachelor over a certain age made you suspect - or, at least, made you seem immature and unstable in the eyes of employers. Plus, we've all heard of gay people getting married to the wrong people and having children, in past centuries, just to save themselves and their livelihoods - and making everyone unhappy, mostly.
________________________________

Did you face some daunting consequences for your life choice?
________________________________

Not at all. I was lucky enough to have relatives who were NEVER condescending to children (as in "you'll change your mind" - and, like Kevin, I knew from age 5 that I didn't want children, since I couldn't stand my baby brother's screaming).

Also, I've been lucky enough to have friends and acquaintances - always - who are POLITE enough not to be nosy or openly judgmental about obviously private decisions, whether with regard to that or anything related to politics, religion, money, etc.

But, as anyone can guess, lots of people are not so lucky, since relatives, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and strangers alike often consider it their moral duty to change your mind when you go against the grain, even in ways that are perfectly legal. (Or, they regret their own choices and try to pull you down with them, like the crabs in the bucket.) So, they refuse to mind their own business and make you miserable. Hence, the existence of the childfree forums at Reddit, etc.

Joe J, I was aware of that. I just found it somewhat remarkable that as many as 7,000 people would stick their necks out like that, even anonymously, in the 1970s.

Oh, yes - I forgot to mention that I remember a documentary, I think, about gay liberation. In it, someone told a story of how just having an organized meeting, circa the 1950s, to TALK about homosexuality, was typically done indoors, at night, with the doors locked and the shades down, since they were that afraid of the police. (No, I don't remember what part of the U.S. that was in.)

Lenona, that's really silly.

The anti-gay laws, you mean?

I seem to remember that you couldn't very well sue, back then, if it was rumored that you were gay and your boss decided to fire you for that. Plus, word could get around and make you unemployable.

OK, I found one source. This book is from 2018, but I'm pretty sure I heard that story years earlier.

(It was in Los Angeles, pre-1953. Harry Hay, who died in 2002, gets mentioned. From Wikipedia: "He was a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States.")

https://books.google.com/books?id=dVhHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT31&lpg=PT31&dq=%22group+met+secretly+in+los+angeles+homes%22&source=bl&ots=eLEvImpjvq&sig=ACfU3U2qcjZTumbiuFt2KHLcR581ZrMoPw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_l9ScscjxAhWSGs0KHYFXA74Q6AEwAHoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22group%20met%20secretly%20in%20los%20angeles%20homes%22&f=false

Societal norms are always churning, but nobody gets what they want out of life without courage for choices.

> The anti-gay laws, you mean?

No.

I mean, what exactly are you cranked about? Can you put it in a sentence?

I thought it was clear.

When there ARE anti-gay laws - and no laws protecting people against anti-gay discrimination, what is "silly" about posting a lookout for the police on all gay-related occasions - and/or keeping the shades down? You'd probably be scared too, back then. Similarly, even those who aren't necessarily afraid of the police have good reason to be scared of other people in, say, white-supremacist hotbeds in the Northwest.