Dunbar's Number

The British anthropologist Dunbar presented a theory that associated brain size with average social group size. He developed this theory studying primates, and then transferred his findings to humans. His conclusion is that the sweet spot for human relationships is 150.

This is all pseudoscience, of course. Assuming that there is an evolutionary link, and humans are just upright apes who crawled out the jungles and became homo erectus. Maybe that happened. I doubt it. But whatever.

The Science says it, so it has to be true, right?

Long time readers of My Cousin the Carp, are well aware that the very essence of this blog is not "racism," but rather to poke the bear that is evolution.

And before you start thinking, "Wait a minute, isn't racism a byproduct of evolutionary science?" keep in mind that I never claimed to be a "racist."

I would classify myself as more of an Idiocracist: 

But this isn't about me, this is about you. Nobody cares how I label myself. We don't construct our own image. Your opinion of me likely doesn't match my opinion of myself.

I read this book one time. It was titled the Power of Now. The idea behind the book was that you are not your ego. At least that's what I took from it.

Isn't it weird how you can read hundreds of books and barely recall some of them? Or maybe just recall an idea that the book was attempting to convey?

Honestly, who cares about Dunbar's number? What is the significance of it? How is it relative? I suppose anarchists love that theory. Because it's the theoretical (or is it hypothetical?) number of people within a tribe that eliminates the need for government. 

But there are tons of theories that would answer pretty much every existential question. Do we ever enact them? 

What is the point of evolutionary science anyway?

I'm more interested in emotional self control when I lose at a competitive event.

Evolutionary science says we are hard wired to hate losing.

So if you're not a sore loser, you're just a loser.

Actually, I completely understand our emotions in correlations to self control. What I don't understand is luck.

Explain it to me like I'm 5, because I sure can't explain it to you like you're 50.

God bless.

P.S. Yes, I lost at poker today.

P.S.S. Yes, I'm still sober.

P.S.S.S. Bitcoin is crashing. If you bought BTC back in 2015 when it was $250 like I told you too, you're rich. Don't be stingy about donating a little to me for making you wealthy. 

April Abstinence

Abstinence is the practice of voluntarily not doing something that is wanted or enjoyed.

Why would anyone voluntarily not do something they enjoy doing?

There are lots of quick-witted axioms that come to mind. I think most people understand why people practice abstinence of one form or the other.

For me it comes down to self-control, general health and well being, overall self improvement and morality.

When I pray, I ask God to heal me "mind, body and spirit." When a person takes "eat, drink and be merry" too far, the "mind, body and spirit" become sick. Those things need time to heal. I need time for reflection. This is why God has encouraged me to abstain from the pleasures of this world for the month of April.

In other news, this AI thing is just ridiculous. I can't quite figure out what all the fuss is about. AI is autistic. I mean, have you ever tried to have a conversation with it? 

Just look at the above picture. I asked AI to "create an image of a writer struggling with alcoholism" and that's what it "created."

Why in the world does it have a picture of this man's family facing away from him? Why is he using a typewriter? Why are there cigarette butts on the desk? Why is the book upside down?

I've written about this AI thing many times on this blog over the course of the last 12 years. 

People who worry about AI overtaking humanity haven't really worked through the details in their head. Where is the motivation of the machine? The machine is just a manifestation of it's programmer. It's like a calculator and an encyclopedia were impregnated by an anti-white liberal and produced a child of Satan.

I asked AI to create an image of a hillbilly with a confederate flag on his hat and AI said it was incapable of doing that.

If you're a writer, musician or mathematician, you might have some worries. 

But modern music is just crap. Mostly because it's influenced and/or created by AI. 

Writers are too lazy to write, so they use AI. So it's crap, too (btw, this is one of the only 100% HI blogs still in existence). 

And everything above algebra is crap that was invented by AI to make humans believe that they are intellectually inferior to the machines they created.

So, in conclusion, AI is the autistic love child of an anti-white cyborg.

Quit overthinking the "I have to learn AI because everyone is talking about AI so it must be cool" and just focus on God.

It's good Friday.

And abstinence April.

He is risen!

What Happened to the UFC?

As I said in yesterday's post, my TV consumption consists of the Reality TV trinity: First 48, Jeopardy, and UFC.

Recently the UFC signed a new deal with Paramount +. It got rid of the PPV model, which is a good thing for people who actually spent $100 to watch 5 fights. Although I would speculate that roughly 1 in 10 people who watched the UFC PPV's actually paid for them. According to friends, it was never hard to find a stream online.

However, ever since this new deal (and even before; there was like 6 weeks without any fights) the quality of fights have just been crapola. 

It's easy to play armchair quarterback. Everyone thinks they know more than they do. But some of these fights are atrocious and completely uninteresting.

Just look at the UFC London card from yesterday. Who would pay to watch that card? That MVP fight was horrible. The UFC should cut that guy.

I hated watching MVP even when he was in Bellator. He is such a boring fighter to watch. A lot of people would say "it's his style," but Wonderboy Thompson has the same karate style and his fights are never boring. MVP just sucks to watch.

Who knows, maybe I'm just racist. But did you watch that fight?

I mentioned the new deal with Paramount because I think it was for like $8 billion over a few years. And I wonder if the UFC struck gold with that deal and they just don't really care anymore. They're getting paid, so complacency has set in.

Or maybe the deal was bad and they can't afford to pay the fighters enough to make good fights.

In any event, they really need to step up their game, because these fight cards have been whack.

Everyone had such huge expectations for the White House card, and did you see what it ended up being? 

The main event will be good, but Nickal vs Daukaus? Really?

Maybe I'm just being cynical, but if you have the opportunity to put on a monumental show at the White House, the card should be better than this. 

Be honest, aside from the Gaethje vs Topuria fight (which is going to result in Gaethje going night-night), are you excited about any of those fights? Even the press conference is going to suck.

I mean, sure, I'm going to watch, but will I be counting down the days in excitement? Not a chance.

Maybe there will be some bangers on the prelims.

Cheers! 

The Banshees of Diversity

Do you know what a banshee is? I honestly thought it was some type of monkey. But it's actually a crazy Irish woman. Like an Irish witch.

I wonder how many things we think we know but actually don't.

Dumb people think they know everything. Smart people know they know nothing.

I don't watch many movies. I don't watch much TV at all. But, when I do it's the reality TV trinity: Jeopardy, UFC or First 48. 

However, last night I decided to not pickle my liver, and opted for a movie instead. The problem with me watching movies is that I have really bad ADHD, so it's hard to stare at a TV screen for 2 hours unless it's something I'm really interested in. In fact, there are a couple of movies that I've always wanted to watch, but won't even attempt them because they are 3 hours long.

Is that weird?

So I scoured the plethora of scribbles on the various pieces of paper which clutter my desk in search of some movie recommendations that I wrote down, and I was only able to find two: Nocturnal Animals and The Banshees of Inisherin. 

I had already watched Nocturnal Animals, and as much as I appreciated the artistic imagery in the first 5 minutes of the movie, there are only a handful of movies that I can watch more than once due to my severe ADHD, and Nocturnal Animals isn't one of them.

So that left me watching The Banshees of Inisherin.

As you can tell from my movie selections, I only watch weird movies. This is a sign of normalcy. Weird people watch normal movies, and normal people watch weird movies. It's that opposites attract thing that Paula Abdul sang about in the 80's.

The movie was odd. That along with the lack of diversity made it worthy of watching.

There were literally no non-whites in the movie. Seriously, when was the last time you watched anything on TV that didn't force diversity on the viewers.

Diversity in the form of entertainment is okay, I guess, as long it's realistic and organic. But the entertainment industry has always been obsessively anti-white.

Nonetheless, the plot of the movie is based on a couple of drinking buddies who have a falling out. One doesn't like the other anymore, and the unliked one won't accept it. The one who wants to be left alone, tells the other one that if he doesn't leave him alone, he is going to start cutting his own fingers off, which are valuable to him because his legacy depends on his violin playing. Without his fingers, he can't play music.

Spoiler alert: The unliked one won't leave him alone, so he cuts all of his fingers off and throws them at the man's door who won't quit talking to him. The unliked man's pet miniature donkey eats the fingers, chokes and dies. This makes the unliked man furious, so he burns the fingerless man's house down. 

The End. 

You're Only as Good as You Feel

What is this crap? That sounds like something a liberal would say.

But this blog isn't about cons and libs, it's about the Truth!

On my run today, I had this great idea for a blog post. It's weird how when you're running you always have the best ideas. The same thing happens when I'm drunk, too. I literally transform into a genius.

All great writers, human and otherwise, write backwards. What I mean by that is that we conceive a title, then create the plot and text body based on the title. The plot is just the summation of the title, and/or vice versa. The genesis of literary greatness is a thorough explanation of a simple idea. 

Writing is like a puzzle, you just slowly put the pieces together.

You have this jumbled up idea in your head, and you translate that idea into written words that act as puzzle pieces in order to interpret your thoughts.

Intelligent men have always been great at interpreting their thoughts using written words. The annals of human thought were written by men. In fact, history itself is nothing more than the biographies of great men. 

This is why the future extinction of human writers is an interesting phenomenon. I wrote about this yesterday, in case you were hungover and didn't feel like reading. 

Back to this "you're only as good as you feel" thing. 

Is there some validity to your feelings? Do your feelings determine anything tangible? What if you feel great, but perform like shit? What if you feel like shit, and perform great?

In the future (as you well know), feelings will be marketed and sold. Currently, there are pharmaceuticals that synthetically alter your feelings. But at some point you'll be able to get some kind of procedure or supplement that will induce certain feelings.

We will all have personal assistants (AI) who are somehow digitally synced with humans (nanochips; voluntary?), and they will give readings on our personal app that will keep our feelings optimized at all times.

As with writers, depression will be a thing of the past. Everyone will be perpetually happy.

You won't even need to go down the "feelings" aisle at the health food store, you'll be a machine that will be updated by your personal assistant hourly or daily. 

Weird, huh?

Eventually, those with the genetic inheritability of European explorers will all be doing space exploration. 

Will it be the final frontier? 

I've written about this, too. Earth will just be a nature exhibit for the elites who live on Mars. People won't vacation to other countries, they will visit other planets. 

Times, they are a changin'

HI vs AI

I just told Gemini to "write a short blog post titled Chink in the Armor." It was pretty impressive considering it only took 1 second for Gemini to produce it, and I didn't instruct it on the content, just the title. I encourage you to read it and see what you think.

Writers have become obsolete. Why do we need human writers? What can I say that AI can't?

I wonder how much of the stuff you read is AI? Do you even care?

There is going to come a day when humans no longer write. By the time that happens, nobody will care because the transition will be gradual. It'll be a generational thing, where writing just slowly gets phased out.

As you age, it's weird to watch generational change. I've written a lot about socially engineered change and that's not the change I'm talking about here. I'm talking about cultural change that evolves organically due to circumstances.

Pennies are another example. In 50 years only the "old-timers" will even know what a penny is. I suspect by that time all currency will be digital anyway, so people may not even know what a nickel or dime is either.

It's cliche to say that "time flies," but it really does. One day you wake up and look in the mirror and don't recognize the person looking back at you. That doesn't have anything to do with artificial intelligence eliminating the writer, it's just the realization that we all come to one day if God gives us enough time on earth.

The oddity about the elimination of writers is that so much of humanity is rooted in the writings of men. Practically all of our knowledge comes from the pens of great men. Even our existence is explained in the written words ordained by God.

The subtitle to this very blog is John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word

For 2,000 years man has used the written word to solve his existential crisis, and soon men will no longer write (very few still do).

I don't want to try to manipulate you, but I'm one of the few writers left who don't use AI in some format. And before you say "what about that chink in the armor post?," that was to give me fodder for this post. There are only two posts on this entire blog that were written by AI: Chink in the Armor and Beyond Good and Evil: Unpacking Nietzsche's Radical Challenge. Every other word on this blog was written by yours truly. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that pennies are about to be gone. One day you're going to look in the mirror and say, "Damn, I'm getting old!" And humanity has birthed its last great writer.

A great writer once said: "Life sucks, then you die." 

A great writer who read those words later wrote: "Life is amazing, then you die."

Buckle up, buckaroo.

Chink in the Armor

Chink in the Armor: The Power of Strategic Vulnerability

We often spend our professional and personal lives trying to become "bulletproof." We build up layers of expertise, curated social media feeds, and stoic exteriors to convince the world—and ourselves—that we have it all figured out. We want a suit of armor so polished that not a single ray of doubt can get through.

But here’s the truth: The most "perfect" person in the room is usually the most disconnected.

The Perfection Paradox

In materials science, a structure with no flexibility is brittle; it doesn’t bend, it snaps. The same applies to us. A "chink in the armor"—a visible flaw, a moment of admitted uncertainty, or a shared failure—isn't a sign of impending defeat. It’s actually where the light gets in.

Why Vulnerability is Your Greatest Asset

• It Builds Trust: People can’t relate to a statue. When you admit you don't have the answer, you give others permission to be honest too.

• It Facilitates Growth: If your armor is sealed shut, you can't take anything new in. Acknowledging a gap in your knowledge is the first step toward filling it.

• It Humanizes Leadership: The best leaders aren't those who never fail, but those who are transparent about the "why" and "how" behind their setbacks.

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Embracing the Gap

Finding a "chink" in your own armor shouldn't lead to panic. Instead, view it as a strategic opening. It’s an invitation for collaboration, a prompt for learning, and a reminder that being human is far more valuable than being a machine.

Don't spend all your energy patching every tiny hole. Sometimes, those gaps are exactly what allow you to breathe.