The progressive left and far right are both shredding the faith I once had in institutions. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but at this point I don’t read mainstream media, don’t trust that most academic studies are objective and don’t support politicians who lean far right or far left.
The center right and center left need to work together to pull this country back from the brink of political stupidity on BOTH sides.
I wonder... is the act of engaging in the topics of the absurd a mistake as it gives legitimacy to the absurd?
If I knock on your door and noting your whiteness start yelling that you are a racist simply because of your whiteness, is the proper tactic to try and calm me down to have an intellectual discussion explaining why that claim is absurd? Or, should you just shut the door and turn the front sprinklers on me?
I worry that because we are the people that value objectivity we are making a mistake in the way we address the absurdity of the woke ideology. We attempt to use calm logic to explain away what is clearly nearly insane. And in doing this we incrementally mainstream the insanity.
I don't think this is working well. I think what we need to do instead is just dismiss those that hold these ideas... shut the door on them and turn on the sprinklers. And if they will not stop coming around, move to a secure gated community where they cannot get in. Then go to work making new institutions with a primary mission to remove the insane from positions of power and influence.
Wokeism is elite luxury virtue signaling. It is the way they get attention and get social media likes from their Manhattan peers. It is also an America-defeating ideology with roots in the ongoing war between collectivist authoritarianism and classic liberalism that is the bedrock of modernist western civilization.
I don't think we should engage it at an intellectual level because it is fake scholarship. It is really a toxic mind virus powered by campus radicals and Twitter mobs. John McWhorter wrote the book "Woke Racism" and Helen Pluckrose/James Lindsay wrote "Cynical Theories"... and THESE are the correct approaches in my opinion because they basically go directly at the source to attack the absurdity of the ideas and the absurdity of the people that buy into them.
I think we win the fight against woke when we turn the tide making it the laughing stock it should have always been.
The problem is that the narrative is controlled by people who either believe fervently (such as John McWhorter calls CRT a new religion) in wokeness, or people who are so afraid of cancellation they don't want to buck the system.
I have had exchanges here on this blog with people who claim to be Liberals ( I would classify myself in the Conservative spectrum) but at the end of the day, our beliefs are not that far off. There are indeed some rational people on both sides of political belief.
My wife has a colleague who is a moderate, who's married to a Liberal. When my wife asked him how his wife felt about illegal immigration, she apparently had no problem with it unless it affected her neighborhood. I'm not sure she recognized her own hypocrisy.
Right. I live in liberal land and have spent decades trying to understand them. My conclusion is that there is something broken in them... a personality disorder where they pursue emotional feel good and then wrap it in arguments that they cement as a "rational" defense that is never rational. This leads them to lack self-awareness of their blatant hypocrisy. They believe they are better people... part of the ordained ruling class... that is righteous to hold an opinion that others need to comply but not them.... or that others can suffer the consequences of their righteous edicts, but not them.
Which gets me back to the point that they are absurd. They are not logical, pragmatic nor objective. So how do you have a debate with someone like that? How do you engage them in a conversation when they mainstream hypocrisy and demand acceptance of ideas that have no basis in reality?
I am having conversations with people on comment sections that are 99% them, and they are all just batcrap crazy. Nothing makes sense, and if you make sense in opposing their ideas, you are just called every vile name in the book. They are not interested in real healthy debate, so why do it?
I think what has happened... they are clutching at a need to feel part of something that makes them feel meaningful and superior. They are having a strong negative reaction to anything that seems to knock them off their high horse. They have adopted an absurd sort of religion in this woke nonsense as part of that. When we engage them in a rational discussion... not only does it not work to move the needle... it serves to validate that their woke religion is real.
I have started taking a different tact. When they make arguments that are absurd. I tell them so and shut the door telling them that they are not qualified thinkers and not worthy of any discussion. I think the method needs to be to take away their feeling that they are superior in owning these beliefs. Because they are not... they are in a space of cognitive behavior dysfunction.
I have come across some rational Liberals out there and enjoy discussions with them, mostly on comment boards. We have several good friends who are Liberal, but we avoid heavy political discussions with them, why breakup a friendship?
I like discussions that bring out factual evidence, and frankly while I may not always agree, I can at least see the other side of the argument.
The ones that devolve into: You're a racist, or transphobic, or some other name, I just bow out out.
“Today, the political right is hard at work scrubbing school libraries and curricula of what they deem to be critical race theory (whatever that is) and LGBT “grooming” (whatever that is).
Meanwhile, on the left, scholars are calling for rethinking academic freedom so that it does not protect “some ideas [that] don’t deserve a hearing.””
Was this intended sarcasm? Clearly the author recognizes that the toxic mind virus of critical theory is the source of this politicized academic nonsense.
I once saw science described as a ‘universal acid’ that dissolves all ideas that don’t pass the test of actually being ‘true’. NHB knows this all too well. So did the church in the time of Galileo. There is a deep fear on the left, that science will undermine and ultimately destroy ‘wokeness’. The fear is entirely justified. Some ideas must be suppressed to protect ‘woke’. Men and women have different interests? For reasons that may well be biological? James Damore was right? Perish the thought! Evidence be dammed.
e pur si muove
To state this in different terms, Lysenkoism can only be maintained by preventing the publication of non-Lysenkoist thought. Stalin knew this. So did Hitler and Mao. Today’s version of Lysenkoism is ‘woke’. ‘Woke’ has to be defended the same way. All non-‘woke’ ideas must be suppressed and purged. Stalin/Hitler/Mao all knew this. So does NHB.
Meanwhile younger leftist journalists are making the case that objectivity is racist and should be canceled from the "profession". Journalism is in the toilet in terms of public trust. Science is heading to the same. What fascinates me is that there is apparently too few professionals in these disciplines to oppose the destruction and save their profession over their desire to see their politics prevail.
Given the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic, the constant DEI infusion into medical journals and into medical practice, and the clamor over "misinformation" and what that actually constitutes, I think it's too late for science to disentangle itself from politics.
"Above all, remember that *by far* the greatest engine of social justice, human rights, and equality has been the advancement of knowledge, and the rolling back of ignorance, by a community of truth-seekers empowered to follow evidence wherever it leads." Exactly! Imagine how much better off we'd be if people who call themselves "progressives" were willing to recognize the progress we've made. (Simply admitting that the America of 2022 is *much* less racist than it was fifty or a hundred years ago would be a good start.
Many of the leaders in the development of statistics and genetics a century ago were leading lights in the eugenics movement. They filled academia, including the most prestigious institutions.
Of course science has a political aspect because scientists are people and subject to the social winds. But if there is no, admittedly imperfect, attempt to have some fact-based body of knowledge there will be no way to center the swings and divergences of political sentiment in those areas where science is relevant.
Original thinking and research require, as the expression goes, "thinking outside the box". The NHB editors are putting the small portion of the discipline that they control in an iron box, encasing that box in concrete, and then burying the box in a landfill. Let's not expect anything creative to come of it.
When I was in school in the '80s, kids I knew went into the social sciences and humanities because they were '60s type liberals in the first place. They weren't seeking truth. They already knew the truth and just wanted to get paid and garner status while promoting their creed - exactly as one might enter the priesthood. That was true 40 years ago and it appears the lefty takeover is complete, notwithstanding rearguard fighters like Rauch. The Enlightenment needs new institutions now. It needs a movement.
Your final point is the strongest. Effectively, you're asking "If you're introducing considerations other than Science, why should anybody believe you about the Science?"
The example of homosexuality and the DSM, though, is not a great one. Yes, its inclusion in the DSM before Hooker was a value judgement, not science, but its exclusion after Hooker was simply a different value judgement (and the result of fierce lobbying, Hooker hardly being dispositive).
I prefer using an example like Quantum Foundations, which for years wasn't even recognized as a legitimate field of inquiry, solely because all the key academic positions were held by students loyal to Bohr, who opposed it. If something as socially and politically neutral as that is subject to prejudice and groupthink, who can credit that the Nature editors will retain objectivity?
The progressive left and far right are both shredding the faith I once had in institutions. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but at this point I don’t read mainstream media, don’t trust that most academic studies are objective and don’t support politicians who lean far right or far left.
The center right and center left need to work together to pull this country back from the brink of political stupidity on BOTH sides.
I wonder... is the act of engaging in the topics of the absurd a mistake as it gives legitimacy to the absurd?
If I knock on your door and noting your whiteness start yelling that you are a racist simply because of your whiteness, is the proper tactic to try and calm me down to have an intellectual discussion explaining why that claim is absurd? Or, should you just shut the door and turn the front sprinklers on me?
I worry that because we are the people that value objectivity we are making a mistake in the way we address the absurdity of the woke ideology. We attempt to use calm logic to explain away what is clearly nearly insane. And in doing this we incrementally mainstream the insanity.
I don't think this is working well. I think what we need to do instead is just dismiss those that hold these ideas... shut the door on them and turn on the sprinklers. And if they will not stop coming around, move to a secure gated community where they cannot get in. Then go to work making new institutions with a primary mission to remove the insane from positions of power and influence.
Wokeism is elite luxury virtue signaling. It is the way they get attention and get social media likes from their Manhattan peers. It is also an America-defeating ideology with roots in the ongoing war between collectivist authoritarianism and classic liberalism that is the bedrock of modernist western civilization.
I don't think we should engage it at an intellectual level because it is fake scholarship. It is really a toxic mind virus powered by campus radicals and Twitter mobs. John McWhorter wrote the book "Woke Racism" and Helen Pluckrose/James Lindsay wrote "Cynical Theories"... and THESE are the correct approaches in my opinion because they basically go directly at the source to attack the absurdity of the ideas and the absurdity of the people that buy into them.
I think we win the fight against woke when we turn the tide making it the laughing stock it should have always been.
The problem is that the narrative is controlled by people who either believe fervently (such as John McWhorter calls CRT a new religion) in wokeness, or people who are so afraid of cancellation they don't want to buck the system.
I have had exchanges here on this blog with people who claim to be Liberals ( I would classify myself in the Conservative spectrum) but at the end of the day, our beliefs are not that far off. There are indeed some rational people on both sides of political belief.
My wife has a colleague who is a moderate, who's married to a Liberal. When my wife asked him how his wife felt about illegal immigration, she apparently had no problem with it unless it affected her neighborhood. I'm not sure she recognized her own hypocrisy.
Right. I live in liberal land and have spent decades trying to understand them. My conclusion is that there is something broken in them... a personality disorder where they pursue emotional feel good and then wrap it in arguments that they cement as a "rational" defense that is never rational. This leads them to lack self-awareness of their blatant hypocrisy. They believe they are better people... part of the ordained ruling class... that is righteous to hold an opinion that others need to comply but not them.... or that others can suffer the consequences of their righteous edicts, but not them.
Which gets me back to the point that they are absurd. They are not logical, pragmatic nor objective. So how do you have a debate with someone like that? How do you engage them in a conversation when they mainstream hypocrisy and demand acceptance of ideas that have no basis in reality?
I am having conversations with people on comment sections that are 99% them, and they are all just batcrap crazy. Nothing makes sense, and if you make sense in opposing their ideas, you are just called every vile name in the book. They are not interested in real healthy debate, so why do it?
I think what has happened... they are clutching at a need to feel part of something that makes them feel meaningful and superior. They are having a strong negative reaction to anything that seems to knock them off their high horse. They have adopted an absurd sort of religion in this woke nonsense as part of that. When we engage them in a rational discussion... not only does it not work to move the needle... it serves to validate that their woke religion is real.
I have started taking a different tact. When they make arguments that are absurd. I tell them so and shut the door telling them that they are not qualified thinkers and not worthy of any discussion. I think the method needs to be to take away their feeling that they are superior in owning these beliefs. Because they are not... they are in a space of cognitive behavior dysfunction.
I have come across some rational Liberals out there and enjoy discussions with them, mostly on comment boards. We have several good friends who are Liberal, but we avoid heavy political discussions with them, why breakup a friendship?
I like discussions that bring out factual evidence, and frankly while I may not always agree, I can at least see the other side of the argument.
The ones that devolve into: You're a racist, or transphobic, or some other name, I just bow out out.
If they are the type that activity debate politics they will resort to calling you those names... maybe just not to your face.
It's become a situation where being called a racist means nothing- kind of like crying wolf.
“Today, the political right is hard at work scrubbing school libraries and curricula of what they deem to be critical race theory (whatever that is) and LGBT “grooming” (whatever that is).
Meanwhile, on the left, scholars are calling for rethinking academic freedom so that it does not protect “some ideas [that] don’t deserve a hearing.””
Was this intended sarcasm? Clearly the author recognizes that the toxic mind virus of critical theory is the source of this politicized academic nonsense.
I once saw science described as a ‘universal acid’ that dissolves all ideas that don’t pass the test of actually being ‘true’. NHB knows this all too well. So did the church in the time of Galileo. There is a deep fear on the left, that science will undermine and ultimately destroy ‘wokeness’. The fear is entirely justified. Some ideas must be suppressed to protect ‘woke’. Men and women have different interests? For reasons that may well be biological? James Damore was right? Perish the thought! Evidence be dammed.
e pur si muove
To state this in different terms, Lysenkoism can only be maintained by preventing the publication of non-Lysenkoist thought. Stalin knew this. So did Hitler and Mao. Today’s version of Lysenkoism is ‘woke’. ‘Woke’ has to be defended the same way. All non-‘woke’ ideas must be suppressed and purged. Stalin/Hitler/Mao all knew this. So does NHB.
Meanwhile younger leftist journalists are making the case that objectivity is racist and should be canceled from the "profession". Journalism is in the toilet in terms of public trust. Science is heading to the same. What fascinates me is that there is apparently too few professionals in these disciplines to oppose the destruction and save their profession over their desire to see their politics prevail.
Given the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic, the constant DEI infusion into medical journals and into medical practice, and the clamor over "misinformation" and what that actually constitutes, I think it's too late for science to disentangle itself from politics.
"Above all, remember that *by far* the greatest engine of social justice, human rights, and equality has been the advancement of knowledge, and the rolling back of ignorance, by a community of truth-seekers empowered to follow evidence wherever it leads." Exactly! Imagine how much better off we'd be if people who call themselves "progressives" were willing to recognize the progress we've made. (Simply admitting that the America of 2022 is *much* less racist than it was fifty or a hundred years ago would be a good start.
Amen.
Many of the leaders in the development of statistics and genetics a century ago were leading lights in the eugenics movement. They filled academia, including the most prestigious institutions.
Of course science has a political aspect because scientists are people and subject to the social winds. But if there is no, admittedly imperfect, attempt to have some fact-based body of knowledge there will be no way to center the swings and divergences of political sentiment in those areas where science is relevant.
Original thinking and research require, as the expression goes, "thinking outside the box". The NHB editors are putting the small portion of the discipline that they control in an iron box, encasing that box in concrete, and then burying the box in a landfill. Let's not expect anything creative to come of it.
When I was in school in the '80s, kids I knew went into the social sciences and humanities because they were '60s type liberals in the first place. They weren't seeking truth. They already knew the truth and just wanted to get paid and garner status while promoting their creed - exactly as one might enter the priesthood. That was true 40 years ago and it appears the lefty takeover is complete, notwithstanding rearguard fighters like Rauch. The Enlightenment needs new institutions now. It needs a movement.
Your final point is the strongest. Effectively, you're asking "If you're introducing considerations other than Science, why should anybody believe you about the Science?"
The example of homosexuality and the DSM, though, is not a great one. Yes, its inclusion in the DSM before Hooker was a value judgement, not science, but its exclusion after Hooker was simply a different value judgement (and the result of fierce lobbying, Hooker hardly being dispositive).
I prefer using an example like Quantum Foundations, which for years wasn't even recognized as a legitimate field of inquiry, solely because all the key academic positions were held by students loyal to Bohr, who opposed it. If something as socially and politically neutral as that is subject to prejudice and groupthink, who can credit that the Nature editors will retain objectivity?