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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35361 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!

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

"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.

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.

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