Let me see…Jordan Peterson, Tim Pool, Posie Parker, Dave Rubin, James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, Ben Shapiro, Gad Saad, Dennis Prager, Sam Harris, JK Rowling, Gavin McInnes, etc. I could go on. That’s a portrait of every free speech warrior and mouthpiece for conservatism on the internet.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Richard Dawkins.
Ive always called people like that assholes. That whole heterodox whateveritis is too long. Im going to stick with calling them assholes, its easier to remember.
Defends outright falsehoods as free speech. I.E. Tucker Carlson.
The whole problem with “heterodox” is that it carries so much arrogance with it. While you can’t make progress without questioning conventional wisdom, there’s often a consensus that has developed based on a lot of informed people working through every single “contrarian” point you’ve thought of and addressing it. It’s not necessarily the majority consensus either, but most of the time you’re better off looking for somebody else’s ideas first, and not just making shit up.
I also realize that few people achieve fame by making boringly correct commentary, so the incentives will always be there for assholes waving a finger in the air.
I had to check three times…. surely you meant to include Pinker?
How about reflexively dismissing Critical Theory as Wokeness without having heard of Habermas, Horkheimer, Adorno, Honneth, or Fromm. Fromm got kicked out because his name didn’t start with an “H”.
But yeah these dingbats probably think Frankfurt is something you grill at a cookout.
Should be required reading before one opens their mouth:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/
On a WEIT post today about something Dawkins wrote, Coyne parades his ignorance with “the roots of Critical Theory are in the filthy humus of postmodernism”. Did pomos build a time machine? What an ignoramus.
BTW Eiynah does a good job excoriating Sam Harris in several episodes of her Polite Conversations podcast. Ironically finishing one of Pinker’s audiobooks freed time for me to get back to my podcast pile.