I'm old and I'm no longer excited about learning how to optimally exploit new technologies like I was in 1984 with the personal computer or in 1994 with the World Wide Web.
At this point in my life I mostly just want to keep doing over and over the small number of things I've gotten good at (e.g., posting). I'm no longer thrilled by the idea of studying this new system, Substack, in depth to figure out how most cleverly to boost subscribership in Mauritania or how to best exploit paywalling to convert free subscribers to paying subscribers.
I'm still going to do all that because that is how I make my living now, so I need to do it, but I'm hardly as enthusiastic about it as I would have been in the past.
For example, in 1984 the vice-chairman of the tech startup where I worked, Dr. Gerry Eskin, used his sizable windfall from the firm going public in 1983 during the first ever tech bubble to buy himself a $9,000 PC XT with the top of the line 10 megabyte hard disk and 528k of RAM. And he got himself a $2,500 HP laser printer.
But then he realized that he didn't know how to type, and at his advanced age he was too old to learn, so his PC was pretty useless. (I don't remember exactly how old Dr. Eskin was, but to me at the time it seemed like he was really old, like 52 or 54. He was a great guy, just immensely old.)
So, Dr. Eskin looked around the firm for an energetic youngster who knew how to type, and so he gave 25-year-old me his $9,000 personal computer and his $2,500 laser printer. That evening I stayed to 10 pm getting the two devices hooked up for the first time ever. And I devoted the next four years of my life to the opportunities introduced by the PC.
Today, I'm over a decade older than Dr. Eskin was back then 40 years ago. I'm slowly learning how to use Substack, but learning Substack for the sake of learning Substack isn't as fun as it would have been for me in the 20th Century. For example, creating a spreadsheet of countries where I have the most Substack subscriptions per capita was mostly appealing to me in 2024 because it would make an entertaining post rather than because it would immediately suggest clever ways to exploit Substack like it would have decades ago.
> "creating a spreadsheet of countries where I have the most Substack subscriptions per capita was mostly appealing to me in 2024 because it would make an entertaining post rather than because it would immediately suggest clever ways to exploit Substack"
Presumably, if you were spreadsheeting to convert Substack subscribers, you would be more interested in absolute numbers than per capita? After all, subscribers pay in absolute dollars, not per capita dollars...
But per capita makes for more interesting global discussion.
I'll do the upcoming 50 US states breakdowns both by total subscribers and free subscribers. But the overseas paid subscribers run into big sample size problems (after 10 weeks -- perhaps a year from now that will be less true). For example, I would imagine my Mauritanian subscriber signed up for free. Not good for my bank account, but I get good posting content out of him.
Substack is likely banned in the PRC and Russia. Your subscribers in those countries are most likely government/academic intelligence gatherers. Imagine some Chinese academic compiling isteve content and then presenting a report on golf course architecture's influence on American political hierarchy or something like that.
There's probably some poor Chinese-American who went to make his fortune in Beijing and he can't figure out why all the Chinese Communist Party officials who have been so friendly toward him now are so adamant that he stick with his golf lessons and develop a plus handicap. It's because, based on the research of the one Steve Sailer reader in China, the CCP has figured out that their Manchurian Candidate to get elected President in 2048 must be a golfer.
Yes, all of Substack is blocked by the Great Firewall of China, as is all of YouTube and a slew of other Western sites, so it's nothing to do with Steve personally.
Unz.com, on the other hand, is available in China, though I have no idea what Unz's international stats look like.
As you surmise, government officials can have site access not available to ordinary citizens, so it is a reasonable inference that a Substack subscriber with a Chinese IP address is a government official.
That said, VPN use is pretty common in China, so Steve might have more Chinese readers than the stats show since they would be using VPN exit nodes elsewhere, probably in the US.
I know Steve said he doesn't want to learn about Substack optimization, but maybe Substack tells its authors how they identify subscribers' geolocation? Is it just by IP address, or do they have more sophisticated algorithms that use browser fingerprinting, etc. to de-mask VPN layers, ISP service areas, etc.?
It must be fun and a relief to read in detail about a foreign country's problems and insanities instead of one's own. The US seems to have an infinite supply, with its multiple levels of government and every race and ethnicity on the planet.
I’m cooking up a theory that your popularity, as reflected in paid subscribers, is somehow related to how far the particular country has progressed on the “let’s abandon our national shared values and instead try this great DEI stuff that the Americans love” scale.
I spent a month in New Zealand recently and their political masters went all-the-way, especially during Covid. The resentment amongst the dwindling Anglo majority is significant. The Māori are more sacred than America’s black population.
Yes, I was thinking that too. Everything I read tells me that New Zealand has gone well into the wacky-woke side, even more than in the UK and U.S. So it's a reaction to the craziness--and a breath of fresh air.
I would also thank Tucker Carlson for some of your new found subscribers! To be honest, I’d never heard of you until I watched your great interview on TCN, and now I’m hooked! Keep up the great writing, you have ignited and generated new brain cell growth and activity for this 67 year old brain! I’ll be forever grateful to you and Tucker for his interview!
I'd be particularly interested in the stats for Mr. Sailer's native California, ideally with a regional breakdown... For several actual reasons, and also because of what Vice President Harris is quoted as saying in today's WSJ: “I, maybe with a bit of bravado, will repeat what I think we all say: So goes California, goes the nation.”
(Whether or not she's right here, this meanderingly bungling expression reminds me why I've come up with the private nickname "K-Hole" for her, in tribute to the state that overtakes me--and possibly her--whenever she opens that mouth of hers.)
Also, what's the deal with Cal Tech? I'm not knowledgeable or astute enough to read between the lines of the official PR to find out What's Really Going On. But I always thought CalTech was the unwoke bastion, so this is sad news.
"Caltech’s latest STEM breakthrough: Most of its new students are women"
Caltech is captured. They actually announced a couple years ago that they were banning the SAT from consideration through 2025 (which is unusual as most other schools went test-optional instead of outright banning the test).
Thankfully, they've announced (as did a slew of other top schools) that they will once again be requiring applicants to take either the SAT or the ACT. But they are no longer the shining pillar of meritocracy that they once were. The most meritocratic school now is MIT who were the first to bring back the SAT and the first to ban diversity statements.
Cal Tech's acceptance rate this year was less than 3%. Virtually everyone accepted would have had an 800 on the math portion of the SAT or ACT equivalent. The test is of very little value for Cal Tech admissions.
If 10,000 people apply, and Caltech decides beforehand that it will select 300 people by pulling names out of a hat, its acceptance rate would also be 3%.
I'm not implying that Caltech is currently pulling names out of a hat. What I am saying is that selectivity is not the same thing as meritocracy.
I'm sure that Caltech is using other metrics like grades and AP scores to sort through applicants. But based on my reading about college admissions, standardized tests contain information that is orthogonal to the other components of the application. Standardized tests are useful precisely *because* you can't perfectly predict who will get an 800 just by looking at their grades, and including the standardized test in a regression improves the ability to predict performance e.g first year grades.
When one is selecting at 3%, one goes way beyond grades and AP scores since the students will have above a 4.0 and all top scores on the AP test. Why Cal Tech is looking for is winning national science, math, and technology competitions, publishing scientific papers, participating in mentoring and internships, and going way beyond what the average high school students had done. That is why MIT and Cal Tech have higher suicide rates than the Ivy League. 50% of the freshmen go from being the biggest thing in their high school to being in the bottom half.
"Why Cal Tech is looking for is winning national science, math, and technology competitions, publishing scientific papers, participating in mentoring and internships, and going way beyond what the average high school students had done"
I don't know the number off the top of my head, but there are only so many prestigious math and science competitions. And for competitions that aren't strictly test-based like Math Olympiads, there are significant concerns about the role of outside help in determining performance (e.g. the father has his professor friend basically do the project for the student.)
"That is why MIT and Cal Tech have higher suicide rates than the Ivy League."
I would say this is more so a function of the personality of the type of student who opts to go to Caltech than a statement about their ability. There are pretty small differences in the ability level of the average student between Harvard and Columbia. (Though in the top 5% of the student body, interesting things start to happen where Stanford, MIT, and Harvard start to really pull away.)
"50% of the freshmen go from being the biggest thing in their high school to being in the bottom half."
This is a universal experience at all top 10 schools.
I'm not sure why you are so skeptical. If schools didn't need the SAT to select the best applicants, they wouldn't have brought it back.
Schools need the SAT when there is a wide range of scores among applicants. But if one looks up the range of SAT scores for Cal Tech when the test was accepted, the 25th percentile was 790. That means the test gave very little information to the admission committee versus competing and placing high in at least one of the many STEM competitions. And since the judges are allowed to interact with the students, it is not that hard to spot parents work. In reality, parents work does not make it to the national level. The more important issue is high school students participating in STEM mentoring programs where the student is repeating what they have learned from others.
Interesting. So you have more NZ readers than Canadian. I’ve heard from other sources that NZ went badly woke, perhaps the worst case in the anglosphere.
It's about the type of people (demographically) that are interested in far-out ideas like futurism and rationalism. There should be a similar overlap in the type of people interested in your content (though I would think that there is also a significant part of your readership that fits a different mold--older, Boomer generation, intelligent conservatives--perhaps in the Midwest--working white-collar jobs like doctors and lawyers, but feeling increasingly isolated due to the cultural gap between them and the woke youngsters that are replacing them.)
A big mystery for me about coffee salon demographics is why Indians are underrepresented. In many ways, Indians are like white people (e.g in terms of personality profiles like extroversion and assertiveness, and perhaps in psychometric profiles like verbal-tilt as well). But there's these interesting little differences that I don't have a good handle on yet. It like an important clue to me somehow that while Indians are highly represented among the tech industry, they aren't similarly represented in the rationalist community. For East Asians, I can point to conformity as the culprit. But Indians don't seem all that conformist. So what gives?
Steve - if you’re comfortable with sharing, I’m curious to learn why you waited until mid-2024 to launch on Substack.
I'm old and I'm no longer excited about learning how to optimally exploit new technologies like I was in 1984 with the personal computer or in 1994 with the World Wide Web.
At this point in my life I mostly just want to keep doing over and over the small number of things I've gotten good at (e.g., posting). I'm no longer thrilled by the idea of studying this new system, Substack, in depth to figure out how most cleverly to boost subscribership in Mauritania or how to best exploit paywalling to convert free subscribers to paying subscribers.
I'm still going to do all that because that is how I make my living now, so I need to do it, but I'm hardly as enthusiastic about it as I would have been in the past.
For example, in 1984 the vice-chairman of the tech startup where I worked, Dr. Gerry Eskin, used his sizable windfall from the firm going public in 1983 during the first ever tech bubble to buy himself a $9,000 PC XT with the top of the line 10 megabyte hard disk and 528k of RAM. And he got himself a $2,500 HP laser printer.
But then he realized that he didn't know how to type, and at his advanced age he was too old to learn, so his PC was pretty useless. (I don't remember exactly how old Dr. Eskin was, but to me at the time it seemed like he was really old, like 52 or 54. He was a great guy, just immensely old.)
So, Dr. Eskin looked around the firm for an energetic youngster who knew how to type, and so he gave 25-year-old me his $9,000 personal computer and his $2,500 laser printer. That evening I stayed to 10 pm getting the two devices hooked up for the first time ever. And I devoted the next four years of my life to the opportunities introduced by the PC.
Today, I'm over a decade older than Dr. Eskin was back then 40 years ago. I'm slowly learning how to use Substack, but learning Substack for the sake of learning Substack isn't as fun as it would have been for me in the 20th Century. For example, creating a spreadsheet of countries where I have the most Substack subscriptions per capita was mostly appealing to me in 2024 because it would make an entertaining post rather than because it would immediately suggest clever ways to exploit Substack like it would have decades ago.
> "creating a spreadsheet of countries where I have the most Substack subscriptions per capita was mostly appealing to me in 2024 because it would make an entertaining post rather than because it would immediately suggest clever ways to exploit Substack"
Presumably, if you were spreadsheeting to convert Substack subscribers, you would be more interested in absolute numbers than per capita? After all, subscribers pay in absolute dollars, not per capita dollars...
But per capita makes for more interesting global discussion.
I'll do the upcoming 50 US states breakdowns both by total subscribers and free subscribers. But the overseas paid subscribers run into big sample size problems (after 10 weeks -- perhaps a year from now that will be less true). For example, I would imagine my Mauritanian subscriber signed up for free. Not good for my bank account, but I get good posting content out of him.
one of germany's lucky 48 i guess!
Substack is likely banned in the PRC and Russia. Your subscribers in those countries are most likely government/academic intelligence gatherers. Imagine some Chinese academic compiling isteve content and then presenting a report on golf course architecture's influence on American political hierarchy or something like that.
There's probably some poor Chinese-American who went to make his fortune in Beijing and he can't figure out why all the Chinese Communist Party officials who have been so friendly toward him now are so adamant that he stick with his golf lessons and develop a plus handicap. It's because, based on the research of the one Steve Sailer reader in China, the CCP has figured out that their Manchurian Candidate to get elected President in 2048 must be a golfer.
Yes, all of Substack is blocked by the Great Firewall of China, as is all of YouTube and a slew of other Western sites, so it's nothing to do with Steve personally.
Unz.com, on the other hand, is available in China, though I have no idea what Unz's international stats look like.
As you surmise, government officials can have site access not available to ordinary citizens, so it is a reasonable inference that a Substack subscriber with a Chinese IP address is a government official.
That said, VPN use is pretty common in China, so Steve might have more Chinese readers than the stats show since they would be using VPN exit nodes elsewhere, probably in the US.
I know Steve said he doesn't want to learn about Substack optimization, but maybe Substack tells its authors how they identify subscribers' geolocation? Is it just by IP address, or do they have more sophisticated algorithms that use browser fingerprinting, etc. to de-mask VPN layers, ISP service areas, etc.?
Yes, this is my experience as well. No substack in the PRC, but Unz is fine. The next time I'm up there I'll give it a try using a VPN.
It must be fun and a relief to read in detail about a foreign country's problems and insanities instead of one's own. The US seems to have an infinite supply, with its multiple levels of government and every race and ethnicity on the planet.
Greetings from Greece
Congratulations, Steve
I’m cooking up a theory that your popularity, as reflected in paid subscribers, is somehow related to how far the particular country has progressed on the “let’s abandon our national shared values and instead try this great DEI stuff that the Americans love” scale.
I spent a month in New Zealand recently and their political masters went all-the-way, especially during Covid. The resentment amongst the dwindling Anglo majority is significant. The Māori are more sacred than America’s black population.
Ireland has also hit max on the scale.
Yes, I was thinking that too. Everything I read tells me that New Zealand has gone well into the wacky-woke side, even more than in the UK and U.S. So it's a reaction to the craziness--and a breath of fresh air.
"The rise of Mauritania shocked many, except those familiar with its new ideology, Sailerism.
Any chance we can meet the Mauritanian subscriber? Or the Malawian?
https://youtu.be/dkBGT1EVaNQ&t=40
A 21st century Evelyn Waugh novel incoming?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mischief
Hi, I'm a subscriber from Spain (Northern), but not an "European retiree". All the 'Sailerists' I know here are either from Madrid or Barcelona.
> "All the 'Sailerists' I know here..."
You all know each other?
Sailerista
Sailerillos?
Yes, we are a selected minority.
I would also thank Tucker Carlson for some of your new found subscribers! To be honest, I’d never heard of you until I watched your great interview on TCN, and now I’m hooked! Keep up the great writing, you have ignited and generated new brain cell growth and activity for this 67 year old brain! I’ll be forever grateful to you and Tucker for his interview!
Proud to be one of those Argentinian subscribers. Keep it up!
Do you have the Subscriber Stats for the 50 States? Might be interesting to see if it correlates to iSteve Generator locations.
I'd be particularly interested in the stats for Mr. Sailer's native California, ideally with a regional breakdown... For several actual reasons, and also because of what Vice President Harris is quoted as saying in today's WSJ: “I, maybe with a bit of bravado, will repeat what I think we all say: So goes California, goes the nation.”
(Whether or not she's right here, this meanderingly bungling expression reminds me why I've come up with the private nickname "K-Hole" for her, in tribute to the state that overtakes me--and possibly her--whenever she opens that mouth of hers.)
Keep noticing and commenting on what you find - the subscribers will come.
Sorry to break this to you, but EVERYTHING's big in Lithuania.
wink wink nudge nudge
It's true.
Also, what's the deal with Cal Tech? I'm not knowledgeable or astute enough to read between the lines of the official PR to find out What's Really Going On. But I always thought CalTech was the unwoke bastion, so this is sad news.
"Caltech’s latest STEM breakthrough: Most of its new students are women"
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-08-27/caltech-long-male-bastion-to-enroll-majority-women-for-first-time
Everyone needs to remember that the freshman class at Cal Tech is less than 500 students.
In addition, women have been 40% of math majors and more than 50% of chemistry and bio-sciences majors for some time.
And the men who were on the wait list at Cal Tech were probably admitted to Stanford, UC-Berkley, or any number of Colleges of Engineering.
Caltech is captured. They actually announced a couple years ago that they were banning the SAT from consideration through 2025 (which is unusual as most other schools went test-optional instead of outright banning the test).
https://www.highereddive.com/news/caltech-wont-consider-sat-and-act-scores-through-2025/628571/
Thankfully, they've announced (as did a slew of other top schools) that they will once again be requiring applicants to take either the SAT or the ACT. But they are no longer the shining pillar of meritocracy that they once were. The most meritocratic school now is MIT who were the first to bring back the SAT and the first to ban diversity statements.
Cal Tech's acceptance rate this year was less than 3%. Virtually everyone accepted would have had an 800 on the math portion of the SAT or ACT equivalent. The test is of very little value for Cal Tech admissions.
If 10,000 people apply, and Caltech decides beforehand that it will select 300 people by pulling names out of a hat, its acceptance rate would also be 3%.
I'm not implying that Caltech is currently pulling names out of a hat. What I am saying is that selectivity is not the same thing as meritocracy.
I'm sure that Caltech is using other metrics like grades and AP scores to sort through applicants. But based on my reading about college admissions, standardized tests contain information that is orthogonal to the other components of the application. Standardized tests are useful precisely *because* you can't perfectly predict who will get an 800 just by looking at their grades, and including the standardized test in a regression improves the ability to predict performance e.g first year grades.
When one is selecting at 3%, one goes way beyond grades and AP scores since the students will have above a 4.0 and all top scores on the AP test. Why Cal Tech is looking for is winning national science, math, and technology competitions, publishing scientific papers, participating in mentoring and internships, and going way beyond what the average high school students had done. That is why MIT and Cal Tech have higher suicide rates than the Ivy League. 50% of the freshmen go from being the biggest thing in their high school to being in the bottom half.
"Why Cal Tech is looking for is winning national science, math, and technology competitions, publishing scientific papers, participating in mentoring and internships, and going way beyond what the average high school students had done"
I don't know the number off the top of my head, but there are only so many prestigious math and science competitions. And for competitions that aren't strictly test-based like Math Olympiads, there are significant concerns about the role of outside help in determining performance (e.g. the father has his professor friend basically do the project for the student.)
"That is why MIT and Cal Tech have higher suicide rates than the Ivy League."
I would say this is more so a function of the personality of the type of student who opts to go to Caltech than a statement about their ability. There are pretty small differences in the ability level of the average student between Harvard and Columbia. (Though in the top 5% of the student body, interesting things start to happen where Stanford, MIT, and Harvard start to really pull away.)
"50% of the freshmen go from being the biggest thing in their high school to being in the bottom half."
This is a universal experience at all top 10 schools.
I'm not sure why you are so skeptical. If schools didn't need the SAT to select the best applicants, they wouldn't have brought it back.
Schools need the SAT when there is a wide range of scores among applicants. But if one looks up the range of SAT scores for Cal Tech when the test was accepted, the 25th percentile was 790. That means the test gave very little information to the admission committee versus competing and placing high in at least one of the many STEM competitions. And since the judges are allowed to interact with the students, it is not that hard to spot parents work. In reality, parents work does not make it to the national level. The more important issue is high school students participating in STEM mentoring programs where the student is repeating what they have learned from others.
Interesting. So you have more NZ readers than Canadian. I’ve heard from other sources that NZ went badly woke, perhaps the worst case in the anglosphere.
Obligatory link to Anatoly Karlin's Coffee Salon Demographics:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/salon-demographics/
It's about the type of people (demographically) that are interested in far-out ideas like futurism and rationalism. There should be a similar overlap in the type of people interested in your content (though I would think that there is also a significant part of your readership that fits a different mold--older, Boomer generation, intelligent conservatives--perhaps in the Midwest--working white-collar jobs like doctors and lawyers, but feeling increasingly isolated due to the cultural gap between them and the woke youngsters that are replacing them.)
A big mystery for me about coffee salon demographics is why Indians are underrepresented. In many ways, Indians are like white people (e.g in terms of personality profiles like extroversion and assertiveness, and perhaps in psychometric profiles like verbal-tilt as well). But there's these interesting little differences that I don't have a good handle on yet. It like an important clue to me somehow that while Indians are highly represented among the tech industry, they aren't similarly represented in the rationalist community. For East Asians, I can point to conformity as the culprit. But Indians don't seem all that conformist. So what gives?