trenton

It really is looking pretty bad for Russian soldiers on the ground as the casualties continue to rapidly increase. Ukraine said that they should be ready to take back Kherson within a few more weeks, hence they refused the ceasefire. So far Kherson is still at a standstill for the moment. Ukraine is not advancing, but Russia moved a lot of civilians out of there not too long ago.

A few weeks later there have been some major developments. So far the war is mostly a stalemate with a lot of back and forth in terms of the territory occupied. The same cannot be said for the vehicles and soldiers. The Russian army is sending less advanced equipment to the front line, including cars without armor. Conscripts are surrendering for two common reasons. One, they are abandoned by their commanders. Two, friendly fire is a serious issue in the Russian army. The problem is that Russian artillery fires in the general direction of the enemy with less precision. The soldiers close to the front line often get hit because of this. The gap in technology is becoming noticeable and problematic when the Ukrainian army receives all kinds of up to date equipment from NATO. The daily casualties have been increasing as untrained men are sent to the front line. Apparently, Russia is getting low on tanks and missiles, making it increasingly dependent on North Korea. Belarus does not seem to be joining the war, which is good news for Ukraine. One thing I can't tell is if the numbers are inflated. Is Russia really getting low on tanks? How many are left? Counting the losses for both sides remains complicated. I don't know if I trust all of these numbers, especially since it is a common point for propaganda to make the soldiers feel high morale like they are winning.

I am doing my best to learn more about money, business, marketing, and financial literacy. I would like to continue learning more, but my inner voice has a lot of objections before I continue. If I keep reading about these things, then it might cause more harm than good given my current attitude. In the self help field there seems to be a lot of talk about money and psychology. To some extent it is true if you spend everything you have, don't spend at all, or make a foolish investment and lock yourself in wage slavery forever. For most of my life, I have been very stingy and I am trying to learn what to do with the money I have. I am trying to invest it in personal development, books, seminars, and maybe something else that actually makes me money. I don't want to buy things that give no value. That said, I am skeptical of the emphasis on money psychology. It's because I am looking at how people ultimately make money rather than how they think about it. Although the psychological aspects seem deep and profound in conjunction with the law of attraction, it does not seem to add up. At the end of the day, many self help authors started buying and selling real estate. Sometimes they made tens of thousands in a matter of hours. It looks like they learned some marketing techniques, figured out how to raise the value of land and then this ultimately made millions. It seems to me that the most effective way to make money is learn the marketing techniques and then just do it. If I don't know the business techniques, then what does psychology do for me in the end? Why is there so much emphasis on psychology when so few people are taught financial literacy given the current educational system? It looks like the real problem is that so many people are simply never taught how to make money, so of course they fail. If they are ambitious and start a business anyway, then had of businesses fail within 5 years. These are not promising statistics. So much of business requires insider information that most people don't have access to whether it is legal insider trading or otherwise. Maybe the problem is not psychology, but the fact that so few people access good information. There are people who exploit disaster capitalism for hundreds of millions. It seems that I could treat business in a very cutthroat way and through low consciousness I could throw out psychology and be a corporate sociopath. All this talk about deep psychology and the law of attraction do not seem to add up when so much money is made through unethical exploitation. The reason I am not interested in doing this is because I want to make good money and impact the world in a positive way. Maybe this is the real lesson in money psychology rather than how money is actually made. Before I continue with self help on this topic, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. Why is there so much deep talk about psychology, yet self help authors buy land, increase the value, and sell it after attending seminars and chatting with rich friends to learn the necessary techniques? It seems that if I had the techniques and applied them properly, then I could make the same money as they did. I did notice a couple of signs up for land I could buy. There probably is a way to profit off of it, but I don't know the techniques to make the entirety of my self worth in a matter of hours by selling a house, nor do I know how to develop the empty land. I need to figure that out. What is the flaw in my thinking? I don't want to frustrate myself more and take the advice the wrong way and be destructive about it. Why not learn the marketing techniques and just do it? Is this not as effective if not more effective at making money then all this talk about psychology? Sorry if I come off as foolish or arrogant. I don't mean to, but I need to express these doubts as soon as possible so that I can grow and move on with a healthier attitude toward money and self help. Thank you for any thoughts.

@Thought Art actually if I made a chess course, then I could seriously start by finishing the mark to a life master and then include limiting beliefs as a section in the course. A lot of players get stuck around 1600-1800, just under a candidate master even though they showed promising results as a child. This looks doable if I set up an easier way with work to get to tournaments. I tried before, but sometimes it is inconvenient because I have to say I am available on Saturday and Sunday. One idea is to get a second job as a tournament director. This requires availability on weekends, but not all weekends. Maybe this is the push I need to claim unavailable on weekends for sure.

@Thought Art I will definitely look into that. Thanks for giving me hope.

Maybe your right and I can keep trying. First I tried following my passion in chess. I clearly have the potential to be a master level player because I defeated multiple candidate masters and drew some master level players. I ran into several problems with this. One problem is that I had to go to college, but there was nothing I wanted to do that requires a degree. I could do writing or chess without it. I practiced everyday until I got out of college. I bought a ton of courses and books and studied them so strongly that sometimes I didn't notice I was hungry. Once I got out of college, I performed well in two tournaments before COVID not and all the tournaments shut down. My success in chess includes becoming the best player in the history of my high school and training the first chess team. I even can link you to a game in which I defeated an international master. I played with black. https://lichess.org/guK01WfB/black Eventually, the tournaments opened again. I won a medal in the INDY 5000. I played four candidate masters with 3 draws and 1 win. I didn't get to play the grandmaster in this tournament, but if I keep playing then eventually I will get the opportunity. The second problem came with my job. I spoke with a grandmaster who told me that holding down a full time job kills the idea of being a globe trotting professional player. Furthermore, tournaments became a hassle to organize with my work schedule and I need to pay rent. Hotels can be expensive. What I enjoy in chess is not the money, but the inner peace when nothing else in the universe bothers me and being focused to the point of flow. Once money starts to interfere with this, I get very frustrated. I looked for jobs that I could take related to chess. There are not as many opportunities as I would like because many of them are out of the state. I will always be required to hold a second job to pay for the house. I have been a successful chess teacher before and I enjoy the job, but chess in schools and kidchess are both located out of the state. In order for me to do something like that, I need to build something similar in this state near where I live. The question becomes how to do it. I probably could do that somehow. I start getting frustrated when all of it seems like a net negative in terms of how much money I put into it and I feel pressure from my family telling me to track the expenses of the tournaments I need to become an official master player. Moving out seems like it would make it harder as I would have to pay even more for rent. My second try has been unrelated to chess and it is my current attempt. I will expand on this later if you want. That is a good story and it gives me more hope. Thank you for showing me this is possible. I'm glad I posted all of this.

I should add that I took the life purpose course and felt that it only helped a little in terms of values of strengths. Basically, I need to figure out how to run a business, but I don't know how to do that. If I can't figure out how to make a business for a purpose I enjoy, then I could pursue money for money sake. I would not enjoy that, but the emphasis on starting a business makes me think in this direction when it also seems hard. I have a few ideas for business ideas I enjoy like writing books, but the money will likely be very limited. Once I start making it about money I feel like passion in everything dies very quickly. I know money does not solve the problem because what I want is sustained passion.

@Thought Art thank you for the post. I could sense that my thoughts were misguided. My goal in this post is to get out of a meaningless job. What I really want is to make money doing something I enjoy, but if I can't have that, then I want to make money and get of working. I would enjoy a job in which I am constantly learning, growing, and sharing what I learn for the benefit of others, but it seems like I can't do it. In this frustration I am looking to just get money and get out of working. For example opportunities for teaching chess are very limited, so I turned to other fields like maybe sharing research on politics or something else but I found nothing. Maybe going to college again would make me a journalist. In this sense How the money is made matters because I don't get anywhere following my passion. I don't trust get rich quick schemes because they look like scams. I started with rich dad poor dad. The author recommended another book that I was going to check out, but I needed to express my likely untrue emotional thoughts before reading to ensure I don't take what lies ahead the wrong way. Sometimes I feel trapped and I know deep down more money will not solve the core problem of how I am living and for what purpose. I should probably mention that suicidal thoughts occasionally come up around this topic of meaninglessness, dead end jobs, lack of passion, and so on. Being rich is meaningless in terms of how I want to impact the world, but if I am otherwise stuck, then maybe it would help me find something I love. Maybe they made money on other ways aside from buying and selling land. I remember reading how to get rich a while back as well. The author was very diversified in how he made money. Maybe if I look again at what he did it would help. I can't look with a misguided attitude and expect good results though. There is actually a deep emotional and existential issue surrounding this topic of money, work, and so on. I see how psychology impacts this attitude and I should probably learn more about this one.

@Julian gabriel I contemplated this issue myself a lot. I often ended up getting nowhere, but this has recently changed. One thing you need to realize is that these beliefs are designed to be self validating. The survival of your ego identity is such that it becomes irresistible to attach yourself beliefs like "I am smarter than you." There are a lot of smart people who end up believing in things that logically don't make sense because of how it serves the ego. In the case of " I am smarter than you." It is irrational because other people likely know something that you don't or are experts in other fields. It is not that you are to blame for believing these things because your mind is designed to seek out self validating beliefs even if they are not rational. If you understood how deeply social beliefs were and how much these beliefs were tied to survival, then you would have an easier time stopping this behavior. You will naturally become happier without much less of a need to resist these notions. I wish nothing but the best for you in understanding your attachment to convincing yourself that you are smarter than others. I want you to discover how happy you will be once you see that you don't need these beliefs for self validation. Try getting a journal and writing out beliefs you think are true. Once you quickly realize "I don't know" your mind will start to free itself from these attachments. Good luck and lots of love.

I have been having a lot of mind blowing epiphanies that have dramatically changes my worldview. It has to do with the nature of belief. The primary function of a belief is social and only secondarily a function of what is true. Beliefs are social because they are designed to tell us who we are and are thus designed to be self validating. These insights from contemplation have helped me to go meta on everything I believe. when a belief validates your identity, then it can become irresistible to believe something even when you logically know it isn't true. Take for example the belief that I am smarter than others. I logically know this isn't a smart belief because other people likely know something I don't. Intellectual arrogance is logically self defeating, but if it serves my identity as a smart person, then it becomes irresistible to develop a smart ass attitude anyway. One of the benefits of being philosophically minded or intellectual is that it makes you more willing to question your beliefs or watch something like actualized because it is thus self validating. Even so intellectual integrity is hard because even for smart people it is irresistible to believe something self validating and it becomes hard to admit when you are wrong. If we take someone like Jordan Peterson for example, his beliefs about the left are irresistible to him because it is self validating to criticize the excesses of stage green. In a way it no longer makes sense to criticize someone for what they believe if these social and psychology factors are such that they must believe in a delusion. A common dogma in science is rationality. It treats humans as if we are normally rational and delusional beliefs are consequence of bad epistemic integrity. In reality this is a very limited way and crude way to think about delusions. It blames the individual, almost on an implicit moral level, for the social factors which make delusions unavoidable. Humans are not rational because the primary function of all beliefs, even in those of science are social. You can look at how scientists quickly subscribe to some big name guy with authority. These beliefs are not rational, but science pretends to be rational because it is self validating to convince ourselves of our intelligence while distinguishing ourselves from delusional religious people. The rest of the scientific beliefs are a consequence of who you think you are no matter what formula is created because this formalization is acceptable within your social group, hence you created it. The function of belief is to distinguish self from other. While your beliefs tell you who you are, they also tell you who you are not. For example, the debunking of the bible is a survival strategy for an atheist to say "I am not like these crazy delusional religious people." Politics is a good example. The reason so many people vote based on identity rather than policy is because your beliefs tell you who you are not. If you focus on all the lies spread by republicans about the 2020 elections, then it tells you "I am not like them." Without belief, there would be no way to distinguish self from other. Ultimately, without belief you have no identity. The truth also has no identity. The truth becomes nothing, but indistinguishable from everything. When you demonize other people to distinguish yourself from them, this act is fundamentally misaligned with truth because you are demonizing yourself. In this way all criticism is untenable. When all belief tells be who I am, I ask myself who am I really. I am simply left with "I am." Here is an interesting site about this paradigm shift happening in science right now. It is mostly profound, but it labels the belief that you are God as a delusion. The dogma that I am not God still persists in modern science, but it will change as society changes to by becoming more interested in awakening, and therefore in exploring altered states of consciousness. https://psyche.co/ideas/beliefs-have-a-social-purpose-does-this-explain-delusions In my case my methods were with a notebook without any psychedelics. For a long time I kind of sucked at contemplation and I needed to fill up a couple of notebooks before I got better at it. I was stuck in contemplation for a long time because I knew I held false beliefs, but I didn't know how to uncover them. I tried asking myself "what false beliefs do I hold" but nothing came to mind because whatever beliefs I hold, I hold as true. I then started writing about any belief that came to mind like "the bible was written by humans." Ultimately, I wasn't there to witness the writing of the original bible. Maybe there is a divine being out there somewhere who rights holy scriptures, but I don't know which scripture it is. A lot of my beliefs were quickly replaced with "I don't know" and this is what triggered all of these mind blowing epiphanies. I could almost feel a sense of heat from the internally clinging to my self validating beliefs which is pretty much all of them. This is why I can now go meta on the fact that I accept or reject any belief. This act of accepting or rejecting beliefs is tied to my identity, and thus in of itself misaligned with truth in that this identity or pretense is fundamentally false. It does not matter what the content of your beliefs are because the act of believing or disbelieving is the function of a false identity which distinguishes itself from the rest of reality. This is very life transforming stuff, and there is more to come but I don't know what. I hope you enjoyed reading this. I enjoyed discovering all of this. I have been laughing a lot and very energetic. I tried to explain it, but this forum might have an easier time understanding this.

This is a concerning and complicated issue. There are several factors which indirectly link to gun violence. One important factor is brain damage. Some people want to shoot up a school because of this. When their brain damage is healed, they lose the desire to shoot dozens of children. Brain damage can be caused by the food we eat. A lot of the foods we eat do not the EPA and FDA safety guidelines because there is too much money on the line for massive food and water corporations and they can get away with it. Baby food can cause brain damage when linked with arsenic and lead. To make matters worse, the safety guidelines are severely outdated because there are carcinogens in Europe that are outlawed, but still legal I America. America is giving its citizens brain damage out of corporate greed and poor science in heavy metals. Maybe depression is a factor. When people feel they have nothing to live for they usually kill themselves, but sometimes they externalize these suicidal tendencies and take it out on others. Helping people to find meaning in their lives might prevent them from doing these horrible things. Of course there are many other factors in depression, but psychedelics are useful in curing depression. A lot fewer people would act in these ways if they were more loving and compassionate. Maybe psychedelics are so life transforming that it could prevent someone from becoming a school shooter. Another suggestion I have is online courses. Although not everybody has to take online courses, it can reduce the classroom sizes and disperse the target. The reason people attack schools is because there are a lot of people. If some students are better learners online rather than in a classroom because of abnormal social behaviors for instance, then fewer people would die in school shootings. Likewise, increasing the quantity of public schools would help classrooms to be less crowded. Instead of having 30 kids, they could have 20 or 10 kids. This would make evacuation during any emergency more efficient and fewer kids would die. Economic inequity often makes people give up on life. It could be student loans, stagnating wages, expensive medical care, unable to afford a house, a miserable dead end job, and many other factors. A lot of limiting beliefs come from money and a lot of society's problems could be solved through the combination of education and equalizing income and creating material abundance. Raising the age for owning firearms has been discussed recently. Background checks for people under 21 are important because their brains are less developed and it might make them more impulsive to the point of committing suicide or worse be a mass shooter. Alcoholism and other drug addictions can cause brain damage. Treating drug addicts rather than punishing then can solve a lot of behavioral problems. Most of the people who shoot up schools are crazy people with brain damage. If so many Americans are drug addicts, then no wonder they act insane. Maybe the ibogaine treatment can help alcohol and heroin addicts. Psychedelics also have anti addictive properties and legalizing them could help make the drugs less profitable for drug trafficking. For example, marijuana is smuggled across the border because it is easy to grow in Mexico and drug traffickers become less optimistic about their actions when it is legalized in America, giving doctors more control over the drug. It could work for other drugs as well. This also solves the issue of border security by the way. I'm sure there are many other solutions to gun violence other than these suggestions, but this is a few of them. By the way, there is a lot of talk about banning ar-15s. This could make the issue worse because there are less popular guns which are actually more powerful. If these guns become more popular than more people would die, not to mention how many guns are purchased illegally.

I am aware that there are problems with these images. I was talking about late term abortions because I remember that about 95 percent of abortions take place on or before week 20. The right wing often misuses these images to pretend that it represents most abortions and it isn't obvious to people who aren't aware of the true statistics. I understand that this is far from the truth and it doesn't mean all abortions should be banned all the way down to conception. Considering that most late term abortions take place because of complications during the pregnancy, it now makes sense why people get so enraged by the images. If it wasn't the woman's fault then I can see how much it hurts to starting calling her a baby murderer. The woman is innocent and it isn't her fault when images like these come about. Thanks for explaining that part. Maybe it is more accurate to say that the left goes too far when they call for "unrestricted late term abortions" rather than "late term abortions". In practice late term abortions are so rare that these images are misleading and emotionally manipulative. The argument against these images is now more clear to me.

@DocWatts this is a good example of hypocrisy from the left. Blaming an individual's moral character is a very myopic way to think about massive issues. The number of men under 30 who don't have sex could be increasing for many reasons. It could be economic reasons. If it is harder for men to move out and afford house, then it makes sense that more men would stop prioritizing sex. Inflation adds to these economic problems which could distract men from meeting women. It's mean to take a broad brush and assume these men are morally incompetent. Vaush makes a lot of excellent points on this topic.

There are many examples in feminist hypocrisy. It often devolved into man hating as women convince themselves they are superior. My sister is part of this and our arguments talk past each other. I tried to show her examples of tier two feminism that recognize the excesses of the feminist movement and seek to rise above them. If feminists don't take this approach, then it will be a major detriment to the cause. Many feminists seem arrogant and they don't think through the consequences well enough. Here are some tier two feminists who are through the hypocrisy. Toxic forms of feminism seem to be related to late term abortions when women adopt the mindset that they don't want men controlling them. Although understandable, if they don't treat complicated issues with nuance, then it may lead to their rights being taken away. If a woman has six late term abortions and uses the procedure as a contraceptive in the name of exercising her rights, then she might lose her rights. The excesses late term abortions can be found when you go to Google images abortion babies. The images may be disturbing so proceed with caution. These images are immediately dismissed as offensive by many on the left, but it isn't hard to see where the conservative is coming from.

When discussing progressive policies it doesn't help that this face comes to mind for conservatives. These are the people they think of when they hear terms like "socialism." Honestly it looks like college students are too young and immature to be involved in politics. They are very emotionally sensitive and trigger happy. if college students didn't treat Peterson this way, maybe he would have become a very effective stage yellow thinker. Now he is probably stuck with his stage green shadow until he dies. When you tell a conservative that liberals are more cognitively developed them, they will reject spiral dynamics. These are the images they think of when talking about social justice warriors.

@DocWatts I listened to a couple of small clips from the podcasts. They were pretty amazing. The hopelessness of a meaningless death in opposition to a tyrant hits pretty hard when judging those who didn't oppose Hitler, Stalin, and other powerful people. Those who opposed the tyrants simply disappeared without expressing themselves. If I compare this to what is happening with Putin, it is getting harder to hide this practice with the advance of technology. News stories about people falling from windows spread all over, news stations get cut off when they start criticizing Putin, the world wide web makes it easier to see through the lies and so on. It seems to be more obvious what Putin is doing than it was when Stalin was doing it. People are disappearing, but not without a trace. At least I don't have a problem admitting that I would most likely be a Nazi if I were born in radically different circumstances.

@DocWatts I have a lot of questions about how you learned all of this. Are there books on politics that Leo should add to the book list? Do you follow sites other than actualized? Did you go to college and major in history, economics, or something else? Did you take any online courses? Were they paid courses? What motivates you to do so much research? Should Leo make a video on how to do good research? I think he mentioned that a while back. How do you get your news? I stopped following a lot of alternative news sources because they demonize way too much. In fact that demand for demonizing is so high that I could build voodoo dolls of republicans so people would practice dark magic on people like Donald Trump. I would be rich. Another business idea I'm considering is building a university that points to the future of education. I would have to understand a lot more about the world for something like that to be successful. I like the impact of such an idea more than Trump voodoo dolls.

@MarkKol I think you have given a lot of valuable input. Comparing the profits of movies and series seems to be a good point. It takes a lot more work from a dedicated team to get a long series to come to a close after five or more seasons. The idea that inspired me to make this post was a new Zelda cartoon. I tried calling Nintendo, but they currently have no plans until a production company purchases the rights to produce it. I'm sure it would get a ton of attention. I wrote out some of the script and it is pretty entertaining.

I am wondering about businesses which produce cartoons. This would be mostly kid shows like cartoon network, Nickelodeon, cookie jar, and so on. The producers of adult shows like family guy could be included in this question. If I produce a cartoon and put it on tv, where does the return for the investment ultimately come from? Is it mainly from advertising? How much of an investment does it take to produce about 100 episodes that run once a week? I also need to know how to get such a company off of the ground if it turns out I have to build one.

@Heart of Space I think the reason people are getting fired up at you is because of your stance on innate intelligence. This was used by racist people throughout history to justify things like slavery through arguing that blacks are animals. Maybe you don't mean to come off that way. On a deeper level this debate is about nature vs. Nurture. Given the inequality between blacks and whites throughout history, most on this forum understandably argue that nurture is the greatest cause for these differences. That said, there is research that suggests that environmental factors can influence genetic expression of your children and grandchildren. In the case of the Japanese, the seafood diet stays in place for centuries, influencing the genetic expression of their children and grandchildren. The genes which emerge from this environment may lead to higher IQ as you argued. Even so, there is still significant genetic variety within any race. Two black people can be more different than a white and black person in terms of their DNA. If you maintain the belief that genes are inherent and inflexible, then this misguided scientific belief can get you in trouble. In fact genes are much more flexible than originally assumed. "Biologists originally believed the DNA passed down to offspring remained unaltered, regardless of environment. Scientists are now learning this may not be the case." Keep in mind that the gap between whites and blacks in IQ scores and test scores is getting narrower. The change is happening relatively quickly. Perhaps this demonstrates how quickly genetics can evolve between generations as environmental factors are equalized.

@Consept it is good to know that the test gaps are shrinking at a relatively fast pace. Thank you for sharing your findings.

@Shakazulu I used to follow the daily wire. There is a lot of fear mongering about the radical left. It is often overblown, but sometimes there are real examples that feed the right wing. A couple more come to mind. No wonder I used to think the left was insane. I accidentally put this one on twice. Anyway it is very hypocritical to have a man as a women's rights activist kicking pro life women in the face. Apparently there is a more recent example of a pro choice man punching a pro life women in the face. The anti kavanaugh protests were at best ineffective and at worst a detriment to the left. According to the Washington post some protestors were paid. These protestors banged on the door and left scratch marks. It makes them look kind of crazy. Sometimes the left wing makes a lot of noise in these protests, but it ends up being fruitless until they forget about it next month because of another outrage. Sometimes it looks like they start all kinds of drama and it doesn't solve anything. This is part of the left wing being overly sensitive. Micro aggressions is another example. Asking "where are you from" could be interpreted as racist. When the left wing is overly sensitive it wants to destroy any symbol of stop any conversation that is Even remotely racist because of some historical context. This made me think the left was crazy when they started destroying statues. Most importantly, why the left is losing. Antifa has a violent history and harassed a lot of conservatives. I can't find the video I'm thinking of, but there are plenty of examples of antifa violence mentioned in Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)

I think this video is relevant. Vaush does a good job of explaining how environmental differences can lead to genetic differences. Although these genetic differences may coincide with race, it is not inherent to race itself.

A couple come to mind. There were many social justice warriors who broke into the classroom and started shouting Peterson down. I believe that this kind of behavior has made Peterson even more toxic in recent months. Part of the reason why I used to find the daily site convincing is because of leftist identity politics. Oftentimes there is no serious discussion. It is making blanket judgements based on a person's race. They are not interested in understanding other perspectives. In my personal experience I was uncomfortable when my college teacher pointed out that I was the only white guy in the room. There is clearly an anti white stereotype and vaush is aware of this.

I used to be very skeptical of movements like BLM. It seemed to me that these movements were playing the victim to gain undue advantages. One example was calling a teacher racist because she gave blacks lower scores arguing that some black students objectively lack discipline and score lower in reading and math. Although many environmental factors are at play, it is concerning that black students often fall behind. I was afraid to tell people this because I would seem racist for pointing out the lower test scores in black students. I am not arguing that they are inherently inferior. It is concerning that this could make it more difficult for black students to get in good schools. It makes it harder to desegregate white universities without lowering the standards that black students need to pass. The result of all of this is the reinforcing of economic disparity between black and white people. From this point of view it seemed to me that systemic racism was just a boogeyman with which to shirk personal responsibility. I never believed that genetics actually made black people intellectually inferior because two black people can be more genetically different than a black person and a white person. The main difference is just the skin pigment according to modern science. It therefore seems to me that most of the difference has to do with black culture and identity, not genetics. Black culture includes both the consequences of systemic racism and the victim mindset about systemic racism. It creates a vicious cycle of disempowerment and racism by outcome. Reasoning like this is what made me drawn to people like Ben Shapiro to begin with. "It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture" he argued. Although I now know Shapiro is a shameless partisan, I believe this accurately depicts the perspective of white people who are strongly conservative and deny the existence of systemic racism.