Good point Benj! Nerds are basically intolerable and it's not a laughing matter. Maybe all women like me basically have zero tolerance for nerds.

“There aren’t too many HBD purists at Vdare who prefer cool GNXP/La Griffe style analysis over race baiting Buchanan and Brimelow style.”

I guess race-baiting whites is OK since it’s intrinsic in “modern” culture.

There aren’t too many HBD purists at Vdare who prefer cool GNXP/La Griffe style analysis over race baiting Buchanan and Brimelow style.

Too funny. Everything in “HBD” supports what evil “race baiters” claimed all along.

Here in Britain some people like to claim Babbage as a (or even the) pioneer of computers. What he actually pioneered was something that is characteristic of the IT industry/academia today – getting an enormous government grant for a project that could never work.

Johnson, don’t confuse most of us with the GOP leadership or lumpen. To my knowledge, none of us had any serious problem with Romney in contrast to Obama.

Only when the GOP idiots nominated McCain-Palin did some people here permit themselves to support them, again in contrast to Obama. It was lame, but they gave it the old college try. Steve made a heroic effort (but too late) with his article comparing Palin to Thatcher.

But electing Romney would have been a giant relief to most of us on most (not all) fronts compared to the way it all horribly unraveled.

You actually believe that McCain represented some sort of VDare endorsed candidate

I’m specifically referring to Palin.

The ex-KKK on this site remind me alot of the pro-Palin hics.

There aren’t too many HBD purists at Vdare who prefer cool GNXP/La Griffe style analysis over race baiting Buchanan and Brimelow style.

Who’s fault is that? You backwards vdare supporters are the same people who prevented the Republican party from embracing a rational libertarian agenda in favor of culture war.

Hey its a comedian, thanks for the laugh.

Culture war, jeez. And who won the culture war, that battle anyway? You actually believe that McCain represented some sort of VDare endorsed candidate – when did your starship land, as you clearly just came out of suspended animation.

If a computer nerd gets married today, it’s after a long search through the mail-order bride catalogs.

—

One of my friends married a very pretty ukrainian, 20 years younger than himself

The mail order gave him a much better looking wife than what he could have got on his own

And American women dont value a good steady provider

If a computer nerd gets married today, it’s after a long search through the mail-order bride catalogs.

Which computer nerd? Bill Gates and Michael Dell both have a few kids. Alan Ashton, the co-founder of WordPerfect, has 12 kids. His business partner, Bruce Bastian, has 5 – and Bruce is gay.

“It’s hilarious to see people keep trying to pin the economic crisis on America’s *low* IQ minorities.”

It’s being pinned on the elites that thought it would be a good idea to put minorities (their words, not simply poorer people) into homes with no-money-down schemes and the like. Disagree, but you’re disagreeing with giants like Nouriel Roubini who explicitly stated that it all began with housing.

Anonymous said…

The real reason is that the Asians do not respect African intellectual ability. They Asian leaders see the election of Obama from a completely non-PC point of view.

This is a real risk. The Chinese have hinted that they have quite a few reservations about Obama. Of course, the American media outlets entirely misinterpret what Chinese they interview say, because they have no idea what Chinese are really getting at when they say things such as “isn’t he a bit young?”

Obama is loved only in southern India, sub-Saharan Africa and the West. Eastern Europe, Asia and the Muslim world are not all that impressed with him. American prestige will probably tumble even more than people expect over the next few years.

They may or may not be misjudging the situation but China is going to pull serious crap on Obama

Who’s fault is that? You backwards vdare supporters are the same people who prevented the Republican party from embracing a rational libertarian agenda in favor of culture war.

You think China wouldn’t pull this on senile McCain or the idiot Palin or even Huckabee?

If you Republicans were intelligent you would have nominated Romney or someone smart who gets economics and could take on the Chinese. Now, we have to hope that Geithner and Summers know what they’re doing.

Kruschev sensed the JFK weakness and pulled crap he never would’ve attempted against Eisenhower.

Ironically, exactly that comparison came up yesterday on LGF, regarding Iran’s response to Obama’s recent “show of weakness,” i.e., his attempted outreach to them.

I don’t think Ada Lovelace has much in common with modern programmers…

Indeed she does not … but then, she wasn’t really much of a programmer, anyway. From
Repurposing Ada:

“All of the programs cited in her notes,” [Allan Bromley] writes, “had been prepared by Babbage from three to seven years earlier”….

“She didn’t write any programs,” says Martin Campbell-Kelly, Aspray’s co-author…. Campbell-Kelly honors Ada as a pioneer, if not a programmer as the term is understood today….

“She happened to write the first ever documentation on what it meant to be computer programmer.”

So, she wasn’t a programmer at all; she was at best a technical writer. Huge difference.

(Funny how an attempted slap at un-spongeworthy dorks/geeks/nerds turns into an exposé of the feminist rewriting of history, isn’t it?)

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Not only that, but more recently:

“We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe/That’s a good estimate with well-defined error bars/Scientists say it’s true, but acknowledge that it may be refined/And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.” (Katie Melua)

“The real reason is that the Asians do not respect African intellectual ability. They Asian leaders see the election of Obama from a completely non-PC point of view.”

Coming from Africa I can only agree with you. Whites down there ruled with an iron fist but I can tell you that Indians and Chinese disdain Africans. They did not even bother to research and try to understand black culture, as Afrikaners and Rhodesians did. They just loathe them and try and make as much money out of them as possible. It is well known amongst blacks that the Indian store owners in the black townships were ripping them off compared to white supermarkets in the city. Only Europeans and white Americans believe all this O-Messiah crap. Not even blacks believe it. They just see O as a ticket to more handouts and wealth-redistribution. Whites (-J’s) are such sentimental dunces.

“I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”

I’d say that has nothing to do with Babbage being a nerd. He obviously had a realistic view of politicians. How else to explain the course of western society in the last 2 centuries?

Some things do change … Babbage was married in his early 20’s and had a number of children. If a computer nerd gets married today, it’s after a long search through the mail-order bride catalogs.

Peter

The real reason is that the Asians do not respect African intellectual ability. They Asian leaders see the election of Obama from a completely non-PC point of view.

It’s hilarious to see people keep trying to pin the economic crisis on America’s *low* IQ minorities.

“The real reason is that the Asians do not respect African intellectual ability.” About a year ago a Chinese asked who did I think would win the US Presidency. I said “Obama, probably”. He replied, with some horror, “But he’s black”.

Babbage should have known when to feature freeze.

While Babbage counts as forerunner of modern computer nerds, I don’t think Ada Lovelace has much in common with modern programmers…

Steve, you know the real reason why the Chinese are going to flee US Treasuries like your buddy Denninger is predicting, don’t you?

The real reason is that the Asians do not respect African intellectual ability. They Asian leaders see the election of Obama from a completely non-PC point of view.

And are we supposed to think that foreign leaders don’t notice Obama’s lack of a paper trail? And they don’t notice Obama’s near total lack of leadership history and political/economic accomplishments? Besides writing books about himself and getting elected?

JFK got into huge trouble early in his term due to his highly questionable leadership skills and lack of experience. Kruschev sensed the JFK weakness and pulled crap he never would’ve attempted against Eisenhower.

They may or may not be misjudging the situation but China is going to pull serious crap on Obama.

Speaking of computer nerds: Steve’s old co-worker Karl Denninger is very smart and he’s now talking about the Dow crashing to 2000.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/759-Here-It-Comes.html

“Reality has started to intrude into the market and it’s not a pretty picture. FCBs (foreign central banks) sold Treasury and so did Primary Dealers in the most recent week. This is new, it is ominous, and it signals that market participants in the bond market have detected smoke in the room. Should they all rush the door at once the bond market dislocation that I have been warning of for months will gather steam and cut off federal funding, along with kneecapping the stock market. The Fed cannot possibly absorb this supply as it will not be limited to Treasuries; they would have to print up literally $20 trillion dollars to halt the collapse and should they attempt it the dollar would collapse instead as that would be a literal ten times over expansion of the monetary base. This would produce a monetary and market implosion twice as bad as what occurred in Iceland overnight.”

For those who don’t follow this stuff the Dow is at 8000 now. It peaked at 14000 and a decline from 14000 to 2000 would mean the entire mountain was Madoff in nature.

Basically Uncle Sam is getting pantsed.

It may be bigotry that finds this particularly humorous but so be it.

From his wiki entry:

Babbage once contacted the poet Alfred Tennyson in response to his poem “The Vision of Sin”. Babbage wrote, “In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

… If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next version of your poem should read]:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

That final sentence is fantastic…but, in a moment of introspection I wonder whether that’s on account of the fact that I live in a society where youth is prized and age is not (and someone who lived a hundred fifty years ago is very very VERY old and thus its cute to think of him as being able to say anything freshly profound or genuinely humorous). In cultures where the ancients rather than the babes are most appreciated for their wisdom I’m not sure whether I’d get such a kick out of hearing this quote.

This post reminded me of the single funniest thing I have read in the Wikipedia. From the article on Charles Darwin:

Used to jotting down daily notes on animal breeding, he scrawled rambling thoughts about career and prospects on two scraps of paper, one with columns headed “Marry” and “Not Marry”. Advantages included “constant companion and a friend in old age … better than a dog anyhow”, against points such as “less money for books” and “terrible loss of time.”

Yeah, to see him up on stage ranting about open source and scratching his genitals at the same time is wondrous. NOT!

Stallman also has a tremendous libido, and it is interesting to see him try to put the moves on women. (And if you go to SF cons or Free Software movement events fairly often, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll see Stallman pitch his woo.)  
 
The same issues come into play when he’s romancing (Even when he’s gunning for women who are about as techno geeky as he is), but he’s utterly oblivious to them.

On the contrary, Stallman’s place in history is secure. emacs, gcc, etc will be significant from a historical point of view, but he also created the GPL, which will endure just about forever.

It’s true; I’ve know Stallman, on and off, since 1984 and the first Hacker’s Conference. I was young, and didn’t quite know what to make of him at the time. With a little age and experience on me, now, it’s clear that he’s borderline autistic/Asperger’s or the like. Talking to him is really weird; you get the feeling he isn’t engaging with you, but with his own ideology refracted through the lens of the conversation. It’s strange; he does this whole, “secrets are bad for us”, “openness makes for community” etc., but you get the feeling that he wouldn’t know warm, community or sincere friendship if it fell on him from a great height. That said, he has made some excellent contributions (Gnu, etc) but he’s taken it out of the public at large in other ways. I don’t think he’ll be more than a small footnote, in the long run. At this point, there are 1,000 open source hackers who can do what he does, better — and without inflicting all the perversity and ideological chest-pounding and emotional disorientation he inflicts. He had his fifteen minutes. He’s a relic, now.

Daniel. 
 
You don’t really know how old I am, either 😉 Anyways, if you have doubts as to my opinion on the whole “game” just read my post higher up in this thread. 
 
I have found that the *more* high status the woman, to *more* the rules of game apply. And by “game” I mean the ability to demonstrate (and be) a socially cool guy that can emotionally connect with women. I don’t mean being a dancing-monkey. 
 
In any case, this is all I’m going to say about this. We could argue back and forth by post and it won’t solve anything. The answer lies in obtaining practical experience not rhetorical points on a thread. 
 
AJ

I’ve had my share of field experience in the day AJ. I have found high status women to be very smart and astonishingly practical. They are far more materialistic than most men IMHO (generalizing of course). And very cynical and perceptive about “The Game”.  
 
I think Neil Strauss would be an interesting read for the average teenage boy (or girl for that matter, as a cautionary tale). It’s a step up from Playboy.  
Casual sex holds no interest for me at my age. I long ago gave up studying it, or worrying about it.

Wow. I know this will sound arrogant, DD, and really I want to avoid this at all cost since that’s not my nature, and you are obviously a well-intentioned seeker-of-truth… 
 
…. but all I can do is suggest that you read “The Game” by Neil Strauss; anything by Erik Markovik; or anything by Lance Mason. 
 
Some field experience might also be useful.

AJ  
 
When a high-status female judges your appearance in respect of matters like clothes, I would say she is really consciously/unconsciously assessing your prospects. She is basically looking for the same things a potential employer would look for: 
 
Are you the kind who is likely to succeed? Would you be an asset as a partner?  
In forming this opinion, past success is relevant. So is good presentation and social skills, intelligence and sound judgement. Stability, reliability, loyalty (especially to her).  
 
The most important questions potential partners (of either sex) want to know are:  
1. Are you a loser or a winner?  
2. Would we work well together? 
 
The problem is difficult because of the prevalance of deception. 
The easiest ways to deceive is with clothes and talk.  
The hardest are with established power, position and status, formal qualifications, wealth in the form of demonstrable assets.

Daniel Dare: 
 
Of course clothes are not about status: they’re about COMMUNICATION. That’s why emos and goths and counterculture types of various types have their uniforms of non-conformity. It signals that they’re part of a group. 
 
Likewise wearing a nice suit in the right context says that you’re to be taken seriously. Wearing well-fitting designer jeans that flatter you says something else in another context in which you may choose to wear them. Hell, wearing sackcloth and ashes will say something about you too. 
 
And if you don’t believe that wearing X says Y about you… most people will impute that meaning anyways. I figure you might as well put some foresight into getting the impression right. It makes things easier for you.

Oh geez guys if you want to impress her with your status, ask the chauffeur to drive the Cadillac around the block while you shop. Ask her out for dinner at a nice little restaurant in Paris (assuming you are in the USA) and have your pilot fly you both over in your private jet. Enjoy the trip across the Atlantic while being served with a few special snacks provided by your personal chef and drinks served by the bartender. 
 
If you don’t have the staff to take care of the little things, then what good is status? 
 
Then wear black jeans and a sweater like Michael Blowhard said. 
 
Moral: Real status is not about clothes.

randy: 
 
I don’t wouldn’t wear late model Hugo Boss to a venture capital company boardroom merely to impress the non-existent ladies there. 
 
Clothing is a means of social communication. It is a way of establishing your place in the hierarchy. Like a fast car, a stunning girl on your arm, a USMC tattoo, or an ugly battlescar, clothing says something about you without saying a word. 
 
The mere fact that you care/don’t care about it says something as well. To men as well as women, high status and low.

dressing up is for girls. you guys who are into clothes are suspicious to me.  
 
and when i say that it’s “for girls” i mean two things. one, it’s kinda queer, and two, the only good reason to do it is to get girls aka get laid. 
 
i consider kow-towing to women beneath me. if i wanted to be told what to do i’d just hire some s&m girl to come chain me up and hit me. 
 
are you sharp dressers into THAT as well?

Conroy – I wonder if that reflects cultural differences. It seems possible.

Black jeans and sweaters is one of those matches made in heaven — almost impossible to go wrong with ’em, unless you’re trying the combo in summer, of course.

Agnostic, 
 
I hate ties and any tight clothing, but years ago when I worked as a consultant and wore silk ties and heavily starched white shirts and pressed and creased suits – even when on my belly, half way under a server room floor, working with cables – it was amazing the kind of instant respect that it engenders in others. 
 
Today I prefer medium starched colored shirts – open neck, sleeves rolled up – loose, creased trousers and well-worn sneakers – as it combines some formality with much comfort.  
 
I find that dressing in t-shirts makes people presume that you don’t have management ability, or else don’t care to be in management – just an observation…

Roissy, Sandgroper, 
 
My experience has been that girlfriends and wives give horrible advice on purpose. 
 
I have been told by a former girlfriend that gray is “my color” – and I’m already washed out looking?! 
 
A wife once told asked me to grow a beard and wear glasses, as she found that sexy – years later she admitted that she thought I looked too youthful beside her and that it made her look older and made me look more attractive, so she had suggested this?!

Nuts. Wives/girlfriends get kudos from other women thinking their husbands/boyfriends look hot/manly. Daughters get kudos from friends thinking Dad looks sharp. Women may have very different opinions from men on what suits a man, but then that is exactly the kind of advice you should be taking. It’s a bell curve, some women have dreadful taste, but I doubt any woman will deliberately want her husband to look bad/uninteresting, it reflects on her. 
 
For work, simple/timeless/classic/sober colours/mix and match with plain fabrics is best. Pin stripes suck. You want to lift the appearance, wear an attractive, tasteful tie. Ties are uncomfortable and serve no practical purpose, agreed, but the fact is they look sharp. We’re stuck with them, so quit bitching and do what Aggers says, get a shirt collar the right size. 
 
Ties are worth a major investment, and silk is the only material worth having – a nice looking silk tie makes a huge difference to the overall appearance, and you need a different one every day for at least a couple of weeks. Get soup or spaghetti sauce on one, throw it away, you can’t clean them. Lesson – don’t eat spaghetti when you are wearing a silk tie.  
 
For casual wear, fleece looks good on no one – you want to be warm and cosy, wear it at home. It’s not street wear.  
 
How shapeless and unattractive a sweatshirt is depends on the shape of the body inside it. 
 
Real men don’t wear pink, not ever, no matter what colour they are. My daughter says so. “It just looks slightly gay.” Yeah, exactly.

Alternative explanation: fleece is very warm and comfortable.  
So are (some) wool sweaters. Fashion choices needn’t be rational. A part of the cause is conformity/signaling which clique you belong to. Two kinds of sweater might be techniqually equivalent, but their origins/associations endear them to different sorts of people. Fleece, like ski parkas and sweatshirts*, are shapeless and not flattering, ever.  
 
*Some girls’ ones are pretty svelte, I admit.

>Hell, you should become a pickup artist, because I don’t know which one’s wisdom to trust. 
 
No chance: by figuring out, through detailed first-hand experiences, how easy it is to manipulate women, you’ll lose respect for them. And that can’t be easy to get back. I don’t think I’d have the tolerance required either — with slutty dopes, I’d probably end up spilling my drink on her “by accident” just to be rid of her company. 
 
 
On the contrary, agnostic, I have found a greater respect for women, since I now more fully understand them. That being said, I’m mostly past my ‘slutty dope’ phase, and (though it sounds cheesy) focus on women with both inner and outer beauty. 
 
It’s weird, I’ve gotten far more protective of women than I ever was at the beginning, now that they fully open up to me. There’s some Zen parable about coming full circle buried in there, I think. 
 
 
That guy is giving some kind of presentation, for crying out loud. I mean, there’s disarming, and then there’s anxiety-inducing. “We’re investing our money in him?” 
 
LOL, well said! Still, that’s probably the uniform of Silicon Valley. If so, wearing Hugo Boss might send the wrong idea. Clothing, like most forms of human social communication, is context specific.

I have been told by reliable sources that neckties reduce brain blood flow!! 
 
See, that’s why you need the neck of your shirt to fit — i.e., have it measured by someone at the store, don’t guess. If you buy a size too small, it’ll squeeze your neck when you button it all the way. If you get the proper size, you’ll be able to place a finger between the collar and your neck. If the tie is flush against the collar, and the collar is a finger-width apart from your neck, by transitivity it’s impossible to get a choking feeling. 
 
but women have better color vision than men on average 
 
OK, I’ll grant color discrimination, but I’m talking about the whole shebang. Line, form, texture, fit, what it projects, etc. 
 
Hell, you should become a pickup artist, because I don’t know which one’s wisdom to trust. 
 
No chance: by figuring out, through detailed first-hand experiences, how easy it is to manipulate women, you’ll lose respect for them. And that can’t be easy to get back. I don’t think I’d have the tolerance required either — with slutty dopes, I’d probably end up spilling my drink on her “by accident” just to be rid of her company. 
 
when exactly did mountain hiking gear became acceptable attire? 
 
I think that started in the late ’90s. I’m surprised it’s still around. But this gets back to the main point of the post — dressing well is about professionalism, showing others that you don’t treat meeting them as equally important as washing your car on Saturday afternoon. 
 
That guy is giving some kind of presentation, for crying out loud. I mean, there’s disarming, and then there’s anxiety-inducing. “We’re investing our money in him?”

cuchulkhan: when exactly did mountain hiking gear became acceptable attire? possibly linked to the general demand trend for pointlessly enormous humvees and off-road vehicles? 
 
Alternative explanation: fleece is very warm and comfortable. Also the North Face is a popular brand among the mildly affluent at American colleges; mainly with the people in social frats and sororities. And I think there is much more at work to be able to draw conclusions between American’s taste for large SUVs and the fashion trend in colleges.

I’m not too offended if people think I’m gay. In fact some of my gay friends say I dress more “gay” than they do. I could probably get a lot less of it if I toned down the more idiosyncratic quirks in my style. 
 
Besides, most of it goes away once they talk to me for any period of time. Then I just become “Latin” without the machismo. 
 
Bringing the topic back to hbd, it’s rather interesting being a “nerd” with the bulk of one’s other personality aspects coming from other areas. Granted, I don’t think my (g) is anywhere near most of the science/engineering types, but it’s shocking to many folks to find out that a flashily dressed passionately tempered guy who loves singing and dancing is also deeply interested in science and the arts. 
 
I think the greatest amount of cognitive dissonance comes from when I discussed the moment I realized I probably should switch majors away from Computer Science, years ago. After attempting to do a massive hardware upgrade on my old computer, I became frustrated with problems with the power dropping out and destroyed the thing by punching it till the hard drive head crashed. While I control my temper a lot better nowadays, it seems that sort of response is about as non-nerdy as one could possibly have towards a technical problem, though oddly I used to have one old monitor that would only work properly with a good punch on the top every now and then. 
 
Physicality isn’t very nerdy or gay now that I think of it.

when exactly did mountain hiking gear became acceptable attire? possibly linked to the general demand trend for pointlessly enormous humvees and off-road vehicles?

men should be wary which women they take fashion advice from. girlfriends and wives do not have their man’s best interests in heart. they will try to outfit him with clean but unsexy clothes that won’t catch other ladies’ eyes. a guy’s best bet is to go shopping with a hot girl buddy. they will relish the challenge of making him over into a sexually alluring commodity.

Well, at least you’ll be a hit with Marion Bartoli, then.

Only dark-skinned people should wear pink suits 
 
pink looks good on blondes, even blonde guys who wear pink shirts, it just looks slightly gay. 
 
I sometimes combine a navy blazer with dark blue jeans rather than more formal trousers, the overall effect is casual-chic, and it gets a good response. Does agnostic approve?  
 
Anyway when I make my millions I intend to buy at the unfortunately named Aquascutum , if for no other reason than this series of advertisements. Style is never out of fashion, as they say. 
 
The onion on a heterosexual male fashion show.

Razib, thanks for clearing that up. Wearing say, a pink oxford can help to avoid a certain class of man, which you might or might not want. (For that latter offense, I was called a Gay Republican by a friend.)  
 
On that note, if wearing something makes you self-conscious, don’t wear it, as you’ll be constantly primping yourself and looking about furtively, channeling your insecurity. Or get used to wearing it.

Agree with Razza – when I want advice on what colours suit me best, I ask my daughter. She’s never wrong. Now I just won’t shop for clothes without her along to give advice.

Albert Einstein wore sweaters that were too big for him, but I think it was a deliberately cultivated look. 
 
I’ll take a guess that Peter doesn’t like men’s suits because he has a lot of upper body muscle, which makes conventional suits in normal sizes very constricting. I agree with him on that. 
 
Clothes can’t substitute for or conceal not being in good shape. To me what characterises the classic nerd is skinny arms, no muscle in the shoulders and pallid skin colour. 
 
Most important appearance wise is to be well groomed, in shape, and behaving politely, manfully and intelligently. Do that, open doors for ladies, and you’ll have to beat them off you with a stick.

Do nerds really dress dramatically worse than non-nerds? A large part of the problem, IMO, is poorly fitting clothing and lack of physical fitness and grooming. Posture/Body language is a huge part of it too. Considering how everyone dresses pretty much in t-shirt and jeans, it can’t be the clothes per se that point to one being nerdy. 
 
In sum, cut your hair (shorter cuts make you look manlier), walk erect, chest out, chin up, wear the right size, work out, leave your hands at your sides, groom yourself.  
 
the main downside is that everyone keeps asking if you are gay 
If this is a concern, you need to work on your confidence, though I’m the guy who feigns homosexuality on occasion (verbally). 
 
For the skinny pencil necked nerds, I recommend long sleeve button down (as in the button placket, not the collar) shirts, for two reasons: A collar shortens the neck, and long sleeves draw attention away from your skinny upper arms. I avoid polos as they always highlight my scrawny torso and arms (150 lbs, 6′) Short sleeve shirts button downs are considered prole, BTW. 
 
I recommend Flusser’s Dressing the Man. It has some terrific and inspiring photos (though I thought the last section on more modern clothing was far from up to par). It features very traditional styling, think Cary Grant, golden era of film style. FWIW, I favor a Brooks Brothers/J Crew style, and am a sophomore at an elite college. 
 
mmm, I never thought my sartorial and HBD interests would meet. Even some seduction/pickup artist wisdom is seeping through here. 
 
Agnostic, I really love your posts, very insightful social commentary and advice. If you haven’t read Fussell’s Class yet, I heartily recommend it. Hell, you should become a pickup artist, because I don’t know which one’s wisdom to trust.

p-ter: while swedes do have a modicum of dress sense, their egalitarian streak makes them react to symbols of status – not necessarily in a negative way, but often by clamming up or withdrawing. I noted that when I walked through Helsinki in a neat suit people treated me with noticeably more deference than in Stockholm.  
 
Using Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions framework, one explanation could be the lower masculinity of Swedish culture (lowest in the world) and the higher Finnish uncertainty avoidance. 
http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_sweden.shtml 
http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_finland.shtml 
 
Peter: no, suits are fine. It is ties that are evil – they constrict the throat, prevent you from unbuttoning your shirt and tend to end up in the soup. The neat thing about suits is that you can take off the jacket or wear it depending on temperature (very useful in severely airconditioned countries like the US).

I have been told by reliable sources that neckties reduce brain blood flow!!

> Men’s suits are the most evil form of clothing ever invented. 
 
ummm…. chastity belt?

Men’s suits are the most evil form of clothing ever invented.

I can see that we’re going to have to beat a lot of nonsense out of you this fall. 
 
Hmmm, that could give me an “under siege” mentality that would force me to wear a tux everywhere I go… 
 
as more people catch on then the return will diminish as the market shifts so the opportunity is no longer there. 
 
This is one worry guys have, but I’m not recommending dressing well just to get girls. I’m happy with a state where the mean is a lot higher, even if natty dressers don’t stand out as much as before, just because nice “uniforms” are better than ugly uniforms. Such a place feels more worthy of emotional investment. 
 
the main downside is that everyone keeps asking if you are gay 
 
I’ve been dressing like a good grown-up for about 5 years, and I’ve never once been asked that — nor even hinted at, like “Out of curiosity, what’s your favorite Cher song?” or something. Just don’t act gay and they won’t think you’re gay. I think the main thing is to just act more mature and dignified in general — that’s what sets gays apart from straights if they’re both dressed well. The gays are more juvenile, narcissistic, “omigod like I totally know what you mean!!!” etc. A straight guy comes off as more grown up. Failing that, your voice and hair whorl will prove your straightness. 
 
Plus if you worry about taking an interest in gay things, then good bye to classical music, Greek philosophy, danceable pop music, etc.  
 
a suave black guy wore a completely pink suit, without seeming gay. Only a black guy could pull that off. 
 
Only dark-skinned people should wear pink suits — imagine how bright it would be if a pale person wore one. Same goes for any other bright colored item — can you imagine a Finn in a canary yellow shirt? Like staring into the sun! 
 
why the hate on reggaeton? 
 
The music stinks: not danceable. Ass-jigglable, bump-and-grindable, but not danceable. Dance music should be about teasing, provoking, or at most flirting with a boundary. If someone wants to cross the boundary, go get a room, don’t dry-hump on the dance floor. And besides, I mentioned it in the context of blaring from car stereos, where there are no booties to be seen anyway. 
 
the slobby way that straight dudes in amerika dress is kind of like prol/peasant chic. 
 
Yeah, it’s all a hopeless put-on, like some nerd at MIT and a truck-driver or maid have much in common. As Udolpho pointed out, these are always the first people to brag about how smart & better than everyone else they are, so their attire can’t be an act of humility. 
 
Agree on not letting women dress you: there’s a reason the best fashion designers & stylists show an overrepresentation of males. Probably due to lower female visuospatial skills. 
 
Re: Einstein, he wasn’t a hit with the ladies for nothing. Look at the other IAS “Gods” like Goedel and von Neumann. That was as recent as the 1950s. John Forbes Nash was a stylish if eccentric dresser — that and being 6’1 and full of muscles is at least part of why his Salvadorean megababe wife became interested in him.

I blame Einstein. Without looking up a picture, you think of him as a bit of a slob, right?  
 
Now go look him up in Google images. His hair is a disaster, but he’s always well-dressed.

Spike: you’re absolutely correct. 
 
And that goes for taking dating/relationship advice from women in general. They always tell you what they think they want, rather than what they really want… which they may not even consciously know, but only subconsciously respond to. 
 
The worst is when they tell you what they think they should tell you. That has no bearing on reality at all and woe betide the man who follows THAT advice.

In regards to women dressing you, I would not recommend it. I’ve gone shopping with female relatives before. Only one had recommendations I could take seriously. I’ve had better luck going shopping with my gay uncle. He seems to have better sense of what makes a man look good. Women tend to recommend things that are too frou-frou and colorful.

>If anything, clothing and comportment is something that any decent systematically focused person can get behind, as long as they’re able to get a good handle on self-assesment.  
 
I concur wholeheartedly. It’s not hard AT ALL once you decide to do it. I’ve gotten style handbooks similar to the ones that have already been mentioned. I buy most of my stuff online or on ebay. I buy brand name clothes (formal and casual) and easy spend less than 25% of what most slovenly dressed people do. 
 
> the main downside is that everyone keeps asking if you are gay, because of the conditional probabilities. 
 
Yeah, that’s been a bit of a downside… but I find that if you up the alpha, you do ok. Remember — pimps and mobsters wear fur coats. 
 
It’s funny… now that I’m dressing decently, I keep getting friends on facebook forwarding me requests from single girls they now… but I also get random dudes trying to friend me. Not cool. 
 
> that being said, the easiest way to dress better is to find a woman who is willing to invest time in dressing you…at which point you kind of defeat the purpose 😉 
 
LOL. True… but if she wants you to herself, she’ll probably dress you like a dork… or enough of a dork that other women won’t bother looking at you. Much better is to spend a little extra time to figure out for yourself what you need. This has the added benefit of your woman being more attracted to you, even if you’re not interested in (dating) multiple women simultaneously. No matter how maternal a woman is, you’re better off being a man than a boy/son that needs babying.

Now this is something I can get behind. It always irritates me that nerdishness is equated with tastelessness and carelessness in regards to dress.  
 
If anything, clothing and comportment is something that any decent systematically focused person can get behind, as long as they’re able to get a good handle on self-assesment. Me, I absolutely adore clothes, shoes and assembling a good look from various components. 
 
The one sad thing I miss is the fact that with death of taste since the late 60s it’s impossible to find good tailors who can do anything more than taking something in or out, as I believe that every man should have at least one bespoke suit. There’s nothing like having one piece of clothing that is a complete reflection of one’s own personal vision in wear. 
 
Of course the problem I run into is the perception that men who take the effort to dress themselves, especially in a distinctive style are gay. I could probably lessen the effect if I eschewed hats and silk, but eh, I like them and I dress as much for myself as anyone else.

Wearing a suit reduces questions after a lecture to Swedish students by ~50%, wearing a tie completely abolishes questions 
 
that’s interesting. stockholm was the more frighteningly well-dressed city I’ve ever been to, wouldn’t expect that.

I can recomend John T. Molloy’s _Dress for Success_. It is a relatively old book and very directed towards business types, but what makes it great reading is the experiments the author and his collaborators did to check the social impact of different clothing. Does a brown or black raincoat improve your chances of being let through a door first? What are people’s reaction to suits of different colors? That approach, to deliberately look at what social signals you send with your clothes and then engineer signals that fit what you want to say, is both fun, nerdy and useful.  
 
Moving as I do between the think-tank world and the academic world it is very amusing to study the reactions to appropriate and less appropriate clothing. Wearing a suit reduces questions after a lecture to Swedish students by ~50%, wearing a tie completely abolishes questions. Conversely, you can easily scare most Swedish businessmen with your sense of style just by having something relatively cheap from Armani.  
 
Dress for Success also makes the important point that the smart businessman of course buys as much clothes as possible during the sale. I think I pay less for my formal wardrobe than many people pay for their casual clothing.

dude, why the hate on reggaeton? speaking as someone who has been to many a south american disco, that shit *rocks*, for reasons you’re known to appreciate 🙂

sir, 
 
bravo i say to you! what folly that such utterances could elicit contempt from the defenders of slovenliness. ’tis truly a fallen age when the aspiration toward grace & civility is synonymous with sexual deviance. one’s exterior is truly a window upon the soul, let it not be forgotten that man is a social creature, and the unsightly ills inflicted upon the fairer sex are but returned a thousandfold! 
 
yours truly, 
c.v. snicker

The gay thing pisses me off. ‘Metrosexual’ as well. The worst recently was the lauding of the latest James Bond flick because blondie (supposedly) abandoned the ‘metrosexual’ Bond of Brosnan for a more thuggish variety, in the modern world this being ‘progress’. Bullshit. The gay thing is more of a problem for white guys though, I once watched a show where a suave black guy wore a completely pink suit, without seeming gay. Only a black guy could pull that off.

Your Japanese genes got the better of you this time, I think.

I can see that we’re going to have to beat a lot of nonsense out of you this fall.

Interesting stuff. Ali g interviewed a guy about fashion before, touches on many of these subjects, albeit not the nerd angle (although you could substitute Ali’s blazoned advertisement for something comicbookguy would wear, e=mc2 or whatever) The guy’s suit rocks, red socks actually work quite well.  
 
I agree with this post completely, in theory… the obesity epidemic is undoubtedly a product of the general decline in standards of public presentation.

Camille Paglia is such an embarassment. “Western” style armor orginated in Persia. Persia is the East to our West.

This calls to mind the Myers Briggs distinction between N (theorist; 25% of the population) and S (experiential; 75% of the population) personality types. As an extreme N type, I’ve found the N/S distinction to be absolutely crucial to understanding people. The simple fact is that most people don’t walk around forming theories and trying to reduce the world to some overarching, abstract principles. Instead, they walk around thinking about what to do, observing what is happening, etc. The news media, which provide a steady stream of what’s happening with little meaningful context, primarily serve the majority S type.

Regarding the Telegraph article on women preferring less masculine looking men, that has nothing to do with nerds. Nerds aren’t pretty boys.

Regarding nerds and black culture, I wonder what sort of nerds you’re all associating with because I know many young nerds who love rap, and most older nerds love earlier forms of black music. Nerds, as social outcasts, identify with the black alienation from white society, even though the alienation has a completely different cause.

Most of the “wiggers” posting in ebonics on blogs are nerds.

Nisbett says East Asians are holistic and Westerners reductionist, but for other cultures (eg. continental Europeans, Middle Easterners, Jews, Indians, Africans etc…) what about them? Nisbett just skims on them very briefly…
And why would there be a polarized East Asian on one side and Westerners on the other side… would other cultures be in between?

Bill,

That’s fascinating.

What I wonder is, how does the Arab/Muslim notion of shame and face track with this Asian facet of observation determining truth? Presumably they are at least in line with the Western mold in the sense that Allah is supposed to see all, no?

Re: IQ variance, while there is evidence that (and supporting evolutionary arguments for why) men have higher variance than women, there is no evidence that IQ variance in white men is larger than for Asian men. (At least, not in the data as far as I can tell, although I never seem to meet really, really dumb Asians.)

I think you ignore the reality of Chinese civilization for the last several thousand years and the rewards to those who passed the civil service exams, and the enormous downward mobility in Chinese society during that time.

The left hand tail has definitely been purged.

Whie I do thinkthat there are differences in East Asian and Western thinking styles, I don’t think it is as clearcut as the formulation given earlier:

“Asian thinking” vs. “Western thinking.”

·The West is reductionist, the East is holistic
·The East is accepts contradiction, the West must be consistent
·The West focuses on the object, the East observers the context

A counter-example to the above would be how Westerners think about race: All races are equal in ability and disposition (but blacks and Hispanics are underperforming and violence-prone). This contradiction seems permanently implanted in the Western mind, impervious to rational critique. People will espouse the most egalitarian and dogmatic discourse—and convince themselves of it—then act in their own self-interest, living as far away as possible from blacks and Hispanics.

In my experience, East Asians have none of these quandries regarding race. I suppose in this case, they can be accused of being “reductionist” while Westerners take the “holistic” approach. They have no compunctions focusing on the object (violence and under-performance of certain groups), while Westerners must always consider the context.

The two types of thinking alluded to earlier are applicable to both East and West, depending on circumstances. Those circumstances are usually based on fear reactions. Having to endure centuries of living under despots, East Asians develop mental blocks and acceptance of contradiction in cultural and social matters in the same manner that Westerners sustain opposing views in regard to race. East Asians fear tyranny and the power of the state, while Westerners fear being called racists.

The real difference between East and West, then, revolve around how Westerners are able to create societies that tame the power of the state, only to be paralyzed by criticisms of how they have historically mistreated others. East Asians, on the other hand, have always been held captive by the power of the state, and are not about to waste any time and energy dreading about past misdeeds.

One could spend a lifetime studying the differences between Eastern and Western philosophy in search of an answer to this question. you are getting into metaphysics here, and it is near impossible to give any definite answers on the subject.

However, I can offer a few observations:

The Asian concept of truth and reality is fundamentally different, but no less real or true (if that makes any sense).

Objective reality is far more limited to the Western mind. On the other hand, objective possibility is more limited to the Eastern mind.

To an Asian, if something was not observed or is not known the truth is ambiguous. For example, the idea Westerners have that “God sees all” is alien to Chinese. This attitude penetrates all facets of life. If a married woman has an opportunity to advance her family’s material well-being by sleeping with a superior, there is no moral quandary if the matter is only between her and the boss. She will feel no guilt about it, because if only they know it really only happened in an alternate universe from their point of view. This is very relevant to the Chinese idea of “face”.

This may seem ludicrous to Westerners, but the Western idea that we can do or be whatever we want in this life is equally absurd to Chinese. No Chinese would ever tell their child that they should only “dare to dream” and one day their dream may be fulfilled. To the Chinese, the world of dreams and the real world are quite distinct. Watch their movies: One common theme is the impassable gulf between the ideal and the real world, which both exist, but only in parallel. Trying to cross the line always ends in tragedy.

So what does this have to do with civilizational trajectory? Well, if you’re a young philosophy student feel free to write a doctoral dissertation about it and let me know what you come up with. Don’t be surprised if you end up raving mad 50 years later in the bowels of a university library mumbling about the Duke of Zhou (yes, I have met a couple of these).

Don’t know where this falls on the Nerd-Big Man spectrum, but thought it was kinda interesting:

Girly men are perfect partners, say women
telegraph.co.uk

Women searching for the perfect partner avoid macho men in favour of feminine-looking types whom they see as more committed and better parents, research has found.

Men with masculine features, such as a square jaw, larger nose or smaller eyes were perceived to be less faithful, more detached and worse fathers. Those with fuller lips and wide eyes were seen as being more caring, nurturing and less likely to stray…

I’m beginning to think you’d rather watch High Noon instead of Patton.

I saw a bit of High Noon on the AMC channel late one night recently, for the first time since I learned what it was supposed to have been an allegory for.

BLECCH – the thing is so nauseating now, it’s unwatchable.

Whatever the mean and variance of verbal IQ among East Asians, it remains that their visuospatial IQ is far far greater. If you excelled in one area, but were only a bit above-avg in another, which career path would you choose? Now, aggregate these individual choices.

Re: IQ variance, while there is evidence that (and supporting evolutionary arguments for why) men have higher variance than women, there is no evidence that IQ variance in white men is larger than for Asian men. (At least, not in the data as far as I can tell, although I never seem to meet really, really dumb Asians.)

The Asian *category* (as defined by ETS), which includes S, SE and NE Asians all together, has an anomalously *high* variance but should really be disentangled into more than one distribution.

In 1991’s Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia also argued…

Steve, do you have all of the arguments from that book listed in your head? Or did that lone factoid just happen to jump to the front of your melon?

Either way, disturbing.

I hope this blog’s recent “computer trouble” and “camping trip” weren’t actually cover for some sort of Orwellian government thought crime deprogramming experiment performed on the real Steve Sailer.

Or maybe you have always been a Starbucks-sipping, Saab-driving, sandal-wearing, leftwing yuppie doing deep deep cover work for George Soros or, I dunno, maybe Marty Peretz.

I’m beginning to think you’d rather watch High Noon instead of Patton.

Originally “object-oriented” went together with the word “programming” or the word “language”. It is an overhyped programming methology. There is nothing wrong with it but C (which is technically non-OO) can mimic obect-orientedness well enough.

Of course i have no real right to make such pronouncements because I’m really only thinking about the traditional OO methodology of Java, Smalltalk, and C++. I have heard that the new langage, “Ruby”, takes OO to a new, more elegant level, and alas I know almost nothing about Ruby. Incidentally, Ruby was created by Japanese man. Maybe others would like to add their own two cents.

The data supporting a lower East Asian verbal IQ is pretty weak, if not nonexistent.

La Griffe du Lion also makes the point [in fact, it’s almost his fundamental thesis] that variance is far more important than mean when trying to analyze these things.

Low variance means a very sharp gaussian [closer to what the physicists call a “delta function”], clustered narrowly around the mean, whereas high variance means a very broad gaussian [with lots of outliers].

For some reason [and if anyone could determine the reason, it would be a whale of an insight], whites, and especially, white men, always seem to have very broad, flat bell curves, with lots of outliers at the very far extremes.

So, for instance, in terms of IQ, this means that white men are disproportionately likely to be severely retarded, but also disproportionately likely to be supreme geniuses.

And La Griffe du Lion has shown that this is true even of an underlying criminality index – at the one extreme, white men are disproportionately likely to be choir boys, but at the other extreme, they’re also disproportionately likely to be mass-murderers.

Go figure.

Speaking of Testosterone Nation, and while it’s maybe a little off topic [although not by much], the single guys around here [and, for all I know, maybe even the single gals, as well] might get a big kick out of Atomic Dog’s classic essay:

Girls Gone Not So Wild

Although I don’t know that it’s exactly what you would call “appropriate” reading material for the married fellas.

anonymous 8/07/2007 2:57 PM

The data supporting a lower East Asian verbal IQ is pretty weak, if not nonexistent. If you look at SAT verbal scores by ethnic group, the Asian average is not much below the non-hispanic white average, even though a sizeable number of Asian test-takers don’t come from English speaking homes (many are even recent immigrants). If you correct for that environmental handicap, the verbal average may well be higher for Asians. (It’s also true that the Asian category that ETS uses includes some south-east asian groups like Hmong or Filipino that drag down the NE Asian averages — it’s been remarked before that the variance of the collective “Asian” group is extremely large.)

This post tripped me up because “object-orientation” has very specific computer science definition, which does not map perfectly to the psychological categories you are describing. Despite being a nerd, I am able to appreciate the irony.

That’s interesting. Being a software programmer, I can see where the functionality of programming languages has been geared towards reducivism and focused on objects. The big trends in programming over the last couple of decades have been towards object-orientation and building applications out of largely independent services, i.e. “plugins”. The latter approach is often taken to absurd extremes, with every minor task encapsulated within its own module.

I wonder East Asian software development is geared in a different way? Probably not, since I’m guessing they mostly use western created developer tools.