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Notes -
RIP James Watson
And so we lose one of the 20th Century pioneers of DNA research. He made it to a nice and comfortable 97 so at least he got to live a full life. His contributions were undeniable but we are all aware of what happened to him in his later years when his awards and honours got stripped because he talked to liberally about HBD. Back then I interpreted all this as yet another example of "Woke gone mad" left wingers who couldn't attack the argument so decided the best shot was to attack the man himself.
Other than the HBD stuff I thought he was a perfectly normal retired scientist, a bit wacky maybe but that's almost obligatory if you have a Nobel prize.
However I have very recently (in the last hour after news of his passing broke) learned that there's more to the sorts of things that Watson said than merely "respectable" HBD. For example there's this quote:
and this:
and this:
and then there's this:
This new knowledge has made me reevaluate my views on him. Now my new provisional views on him are that he clusters with Brian Josephson: academically brilliant but kooky in the head:
except that Watson's views were even more corrosive to modern civil society than Brian's. The more you know, as they say...
Can you perhaps expound more about why you think these quotes, if even true, are bad? They seem like jokes with a solid grain of truth in them.
I'm not the OP, but I believe as an ubermensch who was a leading authority on genetics he had a moral responsibility to not casually sling such inflammatory shit that would carry the weight of genetic condemnation. He had a right to his shitposting, but the world is correct to complain that this shitposting is undignified.
Nah, fuck off with that. We're talking about like six sentences of random jokes from across a guy's entire life, and at least four of them are complete and total nothingburgers. Maybe everyone else has a moral responsibility to not be a motherfucking baby about it.
He is not saying this stuff in the comfort of his home with his friends and being secretly recorded and outed. He has said much of it in interviews with journalists.
It is beneath the dignity of the academy for its members to use that opportunity to crack racist (and sexist) jokes, Especially if one is a world famous geneticist.
This list is incredibly paltry compared to a list of naughty things my family and I have said in the last week. As the result of one of these tedious "look at what no-no words this bad man said" fishing expeditions, one with a public figure's entire lifetime to muck-rake, it's positively pathetic in how anodyne it actually is.
As for the academy, it's been so thoroughly disgraced at this point that concerns about its dignity are beneath comment.
In this house we believe in holding intellectuals accountable for both going full retard on wokeness and for bigoted JAQing off.
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Do you not see the difference between you and your family engaging in bar talk in relative privacy and The Most Decorated Science Man saying this during interviews with the press?
Not really. This kind of thing just seems really trifling across the board, and we'd be better off if nobody cared. You can't even articulate a reason to care other than the long since dead "dignity of the academy."
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Other geneticists have a right to not want to be associated with that. In the same way if someone in my friend group says some extremely inflammatory shit in a public place, now I’m complicit in his statement and actions and condemned by association. It doesn’t matter if you share the same sentiment or not at that point and it may very well be stupid and ridiculous, but it’s easy to understand why people don’t want the spotlight and attention on them. Whether in my personal or professional life I’m not someone who’s out to antagonize others intentionally and would prefer not to fight battles I don’t have to.
Naa, they can fuck right off, if for no other reason than because Watson was the big dog. He didn't have an obligation to shut his mouth because his less-talented successors found him embarrassing or something.
He didn't have an obligation to shut his mouth but the rest of the scientific community wasn't obligated to let this guy who fits right in with shitposting Twitter edgelords represent them.
Charles Murray's dignity he does not have.
And in the end Watson was the one crying like a bitch that his reputation was ruined.
Our society should have great men and and if they want to be recognized as great men they should behave more on the Bertrand Russell or Richard Feynman end of the scale than the Andrew Tate or Dan Bilzerian end.
Okay what about Crick, the person he won the Nobel with, who had a much more accomplished career? He also found him embarrassing. They're not all scrubs complaining that the big swinging dick brought the truth too hard and it hurt their feelings.
As far as I know he did not claim to speak for the scientific community in the controversial things he said.
Yeah, see what that got Murray
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