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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35346 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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The triumph of the blank slate

an article in the Atlantic recently made the case that separating sport by sex doesn’t make sense, because it ‘reinforces the idea that boys are inherently bigger, faster, and stronger than girls in a competitive setting — a notion that’s been challenged by scientists for years.’

On a similar theme, a few weeks back the New York Times ran a piece arguing that ‘maternal instinct is a myth that men created’. In the essay, published in the world’s most influential newspaper, it was stated that ‘The notion that the selflessness and tenderness babies require is uniquely ingrained in the biology of women, ready to go at the flip of a switch, is a relatively modern — and pernicious — one. It was constructed over decades by men selling an image of what a mother should be, diverting our attention from what she actually is and calling it science.’

Just recently, Scientific American stated that ‘Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex — the male — and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the “two-sex model” served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body.’

Yet what is strange is that such ideas are triumphant, even as the scientific evidence against them mounts up, with the expanding understanding of genetics and the role of inheritance. The tabula rasa should by all rights be dead, indeed it should have been killed twenty years ago with the publication of one of the most important books of the century so far, Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate.

Rather than blank slate-led ideas falling to mockery and obscurity, the opposite has happened — they’ve proliferated and spread. Pinker was obviously right, yet seems to have lost.

i recently was in a seminar discussing fixed versus growth mindsets, and it was argued that believing in any innate/genetic component of intelligence was connected to a 'fixed' mindset. we were discouraged from using the idea of 'talent' as it implied that some people were just naturally better at some things than others. it seems like a core part of the 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' mantra that is finding its way everywhere - the idea of innate difference is anathema to the principle behind caring about equity versus equality.

I am naturally a conspiratorial minded person, and yet no possible conspiracy theory could account for the mass mindlessness of modern academic "science."

I have grown weary of reading science fiction because nothing exhibits such extraordinary madness and fantasy as the modern society in which I currently reside.

Many academics posit that the concept of mammalian sexual dimorphism is a conspiracy of straight white men to oppress everyone else. The true believers are 100% convinced they are making the world a better place with their feminism/leftism. The only reason one would disagree with their theories is deep rooted misogyny/white supremacy.

Truly unbelievable!

Many academics posit that the concept of mammalian sexual dimorphism is a conspiracy of straight white men to oppress everyone else. The true believers are 100% convinced they are making the world a better place with their feminism/leftism. The only reason one would disagree with their theories is deep rooted misogyny/white supremacy.

What I think is happening is something that happened in Soviet Russia before. It also required all scientists and everybody really to say the politically correct things, you know the original 1917 Soviet style "political correctness". You guys in the west are just slowly and step-by-step finding out how really feels to live in such inherently dishonest society full of Havel's greengrocers. Of course it won't work and it will cause destruction and damage morally, mentally and for sure physically as well. And then the history will be rewritten as if "no true progressive" ever really believed it, possibly blaming it on reactionary corporate neoliberal fascist forces that distorted the original pure message, and it took some progressive heroine in 2030ies to push back against it proclaiming that true social justice was never tried. Rinse and repeat after two or so generations.

I am naturally a conspiratorial minded person, and yet no possible conspiracy theory could account for the mass mindlessness of modern academic "science."

Well there is no conspiracy there. It is just emergent behaviour of the money allocated for science has been taken over by greed and ideology. There is a long tradition spinning science communication to spread doubt. Tobacco companies pioneered it in modern massmedia with sowing doubt to the absolute scientific fact that they are killing their own customers. They wanted to communicate "alternative facts" that their products caused lung cancer. But the phenomena damages perception on what is science in the public eye because it benefitted their greed. That miseducation on science and scientific continues in the media even today. Somehow an avocado that travelled half way around the world on a fossil fueled transport is better for the climate than me eating a piece of meat that has grown less than a mile away.

There is a replication crisis going on also. That is also a function of allocation and greed. Researchers apply for grants for some research but there is nothing in the system that awards negative outcomes of research. So researchers have now an incentive to tweak, massage and fudge numbers to have positive outcomes on their research, because the moment they don't prove their hypothesis their funds dry up almost instantly.

But there is huge component bad ideas being inserted in that funding process too. The scariest thing that I heard of was an astrophycisist needing to show how it relates to DEI and gettings his grant denied because it wasn't furthering the 'cause'. Which is just plain incompetence.

Somehow an avocado that travelled half way around the world on a fossil fueled transport is better for the climate than me eating a piece of meat that has grown less than a mile away.

It is entirely possible that the extra fossil fuels needed to grow the piece of meat relative to the avocado outweigh the fuel needed to transport the avocado.

And in reality, meat is often transported across large distances.

Well I was trying to get across the point here, if I buy locally produced meat. If I buy meat that has been transported long distances or it comes from a "meat factory" then I'll concede that it can be carbon intesive. I have never touched an avocado tree but I've petted farm animals, so locally produced meat is an option for me and locally grown avocados aren't, so going vegan with something that you can't touch might not be better for the climate.

I agree. It's more like ants marching in a death circle.

Many academics posit that the concept of mammalian sexual dimorphism is a conspiracy of straight white men to oppress everyone else.

I don't think "conspiracy" is the right term for what they're positing. They don't believe in some smokey room where all the old straight cis men gather around to coordinate how to socially engineer everyone else to their liking. It's rather an emergent phenomenon in society that is downstream from all the old straight cis men oppressing everyone else. The upshot is that they get to claim vast nefariousness akin to a conspiracy but also get to stay strong in their views when all the evidence indicates that there's no actual men in smokey rooms coordinating anything of the sort. It really is an innovative worldview that has just enough layers of obfuscation to be acceptable to people who consider themselves intellectual while also retaining the passion and fervor that grand conspiracy theories can inculcate in true believers.

And notably, this phenomenon itself seems to be an emergent one, rather than the result of a bunch of power-hungry "academics" coordinating with each other to produce the ideology with the perfect combination of contagiousness and fervor for their audience. Rather, I think it's the result of simple evolution, as similar ideologies that were too conspiracy-minded or not totalizing enough got weeded out, leaving behind the highly optimized ideology that has been so successful in taking over so many institutions today.

I am naturally a conspiratorial minded person, and yet no possible conspiracy theory could account for the mass mindlessness of modern academic "science."

It's not a conspiracy theory, but I'd argue that for example, The Toxoplasma of Rage explains this fairly well. It's an obviously controversial opinion, so as much, it's going to garner the most out-group derision/in-group status, with the concept of how those things feed into one another.

I agree but my point is that I am a 9/11 truther inasmuch no one has ever convincingly explained to me why WTC7 collapsed.Or why there wasno investigation of The State Farm Arena election fiasco. I believe a group of global world leaders are pushing an agenda called Build Back Better etc.

But none of these explain what's happening on universities. Not even Alex Jones on ayuasca would predict the content coming straightfaced out of tenured University professors.

I found the NIST report on the collapse convincing. Did you read the actual report or only 'internet' analysis?

I'm with you on The State Farm Arena and the crazy at universities. Some of the university crazy is the academic equivalent of fake email jobs. I'm kinda wishing for a long deep recession that culls those with a disconnection from the nature of reality.

https://link.aps.org/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.010119

I'm kinda wishing for a long deep recession that culls those with a disconnection from the nature of reality.

Oh me too. I just hope I don't find out I was one of them.

"The collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires..."

https://www.nist.gov/pao/questions-and-answers-about-nist-wtc-7-investigation

Yes I read it. I didn't find it convincing. I now consider it an early proto- factcheck.

I believe it looked like a controlled demolition because it was likely a controlled demolition.

Any evidence for blasts? I would be more skeptical if it sounded like a controlled demolition.

Weak evidence in one or two videos and witnesses claiming to have hear blasts.

However the perfect collapse into its own footprint is a feature of a controlled demolition.

However the perfect collapse into its own footprint is a feature of a controlled demolition.

It's a feature of any collapse, except where a side component is added by the thing doing the collapsing. It's not intuitive, because we think of buildings as rigid things which can fall over sideways... but they aren't. As soon as they start shearing, their structural members are no longer able to support them and they collapse straight down.

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So assuming it was indeed a controlled demolition, who do you figure did it and why? Does the theory involve the two main towers also having been demolished deliberately? If you are the Shady Cabal and actually managed to orchestrate something as complex as having fake terrorists fly planes into two big towers (and then potentially demolishing them without being noticed), why would you risk it all to demolish another much smaller building that you didn't even have a plane fly into?

Have you heard of the Surfside collapse? There, a reasonably tall building neatly pancaked due to the collapse of an adjacent parking deck. The emerging consensus seems to be that this was due to a combination of water damage, shoddy construction and possibly vibrations from an adjacent construction site serving as the ultimate trigger. If vibrations from a construction site can push a structure over the edge like that, surely fire plus something WTC1-sized collapsing right next to you can.

"If you are the Shady Cabal and actually managed to orchestrate something as complex as having fake terrorists fly planes into two big towers "

You're putting claims into my mouth to make me appear more ridiculous.

This is where conspiracy theorists get into trouble. It's not my job to speculate with meager information as to what actually happened.

I need only point out that the official version doesn't add up and that powerful people benefitted from the event.

If I go into a lizardman theory then I am easily debunked.

Pointing out the obvious and irreconcilable errors in the official story is a position of strength. Speculating on the unknowns is a position of weakness.

For example, is there any evidence that a plane hit the Pentagon outside of officials saying so?

I didn't put any claims into your mouth; I just preemptively addressed what I thought would be the most likely missing part of your story. The official story "adds up", in the sense of not being literally nearly impossible, just fine, since as I pointed out we do have other examples of buildings collapsing neatly from seemingly minuscule external triggers. You can at most argue that it is unlikely, but you haven't done anything rigorous to that end; and if you do, explaining why and how someone would engage in the clearly high-effort act of demolishing 7 WTC shortly after planes flew into an adjacent landmark and it collapsed is the most important (in the sense of being impactful on the probability of the official story being wrong) thing you need to do, not some irrelevant tangent.

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How many controlled demolitions and burning skyscrapers have you seen, such that you would be able to tell the difference between them?

Does watching a lot of "China's Funniest Demolition Accidents" count? I can usually tell it's not going to plan before the engineers even start running.

WTC7 is apparently the only modern tall building to collapse primarily from a fire.

But I've seen videos of dozens of controlled demolitions and they all look like WTC7.

That would be a no then.

The point is that if you haven't seen both kinds of things, you have no way to distinguish one from the other. You're trying to say that looks more like a demolition than it does like something else. In order to make that comparison, you have to have seen the something else.

A telescope looking at the moon makes it look like a piece of fake plastic. Just saying "I've seen lots of plastic and that looks like plastic" is bad reasoning.

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