New professorial challenges for those teaching philosophy

The new academic problem is the bad information spread by Peterson, Boghossian, Lindsay, that ilk. I suspect it wasn’t so bad when these ignoramuses just turned up their noses and ignored philosophy, but now they’ve decided that they completely understand it, and they don’t like it, nosir, so they’ve begun active disinformation campaigns that are infecting college-aged students. A professor writes in to Reddit to vent:

But in the past few months internet outrage merchants have made my job much harder. The very idea that someone could even propose the idea that there is a conceptual difference between sex and gender leads to angry denunciations entirely based on the irresponsible misrepresentations of these online anger-mongers. Some students in their exams write that these ideas are "entitled liberal bullshit," actual quote, rather than simply describe an idea they disagree with in neutral terms. And it's not like I'm out there defending every dumb thing ever posted on Tumblr! It's Simone de fucking Beauvoir!

It's not the disagreement. That I'm used to dealing with; it's the bread and butter of philosophy. No, it's the anger, hostility and complete fabrications.

They come in with the most bizarre idea of what 'post-modernism' is, and to even get to a real discussion of actual texts it takes half the time to just deprogram some of them. It's a minority of students, but it's affected my teaching style, because now I feel defensive about presenting ideas that I've taught without controversy for years.

Peterson is on the record saying Women's Studies departments and the Neo-Marxists are out to literally destroy western civilization and I have to patiently explain to them that, no, these people are my friends and colleagues, their research is generally very boring and unobjectionable, and you need to stop feeding yourself on this virtual reality that systematically cherry-picks things that perpetuates this neurological addiction to anger and belief vindication–every new upvoted confirmation of the faith a fresh dopamine high if how bad they are.

I just want to do my week on Foucault/Baudrillard/de Beauvoir without having to figure out how to get these kids out of what is basically a cult based on stupid youtube videos.

Honestly, the hostility and derailment makes me miss my young-earth creationist students.

I haven’t had to deal with this yet in my classes — post-modernism isn’t part of the biology curriculum, and since I address sex and gender from the ground up with genes and molecules and signaling in my genetics class, by the time we would get to cultural aspects (we don’t, they’ll have to go to the social sciences or humanities for that), they’re already accustomed to the fact that the biology is complex and plastic and variable. But I’ve definitely seen this intransigence and stupidity online. Peddling simplistic misrepresentations of science and philosophy seems to be a major money-maker for those who understand neither.

That last line, though…yeah, I’d rather deal with young earth creationists. The difference is that creationists, whether they’re aware of it or not, have a serious case of science envy. They’re all wanna-bes who are constantly trying to rephrase the Bible in sciencey-sounding terms, thinking they can explain the Flood with geology, or constraints on evolution with genetics. That’s the whole point of Intelligent Design creationism, to provide pseudo-scientific, rather than religious, justifications for their beliefs. They can’t, but it means their arguments can be spanked by somebody who understands the scientific discipline better than they do.

It’s their greatest weakness, actually. It’s why they don’t make greater inroads into academia, because everyone who is well-trained in the sciences can see right through them.

But these anti-philosophy gomers are taking a completely different approach. They don’t want to be philosophers, or sound like philosophers, because they hate philosophy and women’s studies and sociology and all those other disciplines. Rather than trying to learn just enough of what they’re complaining about to try and turn the jargon against them, they’re in flat-out denial and a total rejection of everything to do with, for instance, post-modernism. They’re engaged in simple-minded anti-intellectualism (creationists come out of a religious tradition that usually respects an intellectual foundation, or at least a pretense to one), and the know-nothings who eat that crap up won’t even listen to word one from someone who has the educational background to know what they’re talking about.

Mad Mike Hughes actually did it!

Mad Mike Hughes, the guy who build a steam-powered rocket to prove that the Earth is flat, succeeded in launching himself into the sky yesterday. He reached an altitude of about 600 meters, was battered in the landing, but he survived.

The one thing he did not accomplish was to prove that the Earth is flat.

I don’t quite get the point of the rocket, though. He could have just rented a Cessna, which has a service ceiling of something around 5000 meters, and reached a significantly higher altitude with little personal risk, and he probably wouldn’t have needed to be carried away in a stretcher afterwards.

Listen while you still can

The last episode of the Just Us Women podcast is up, for now, and it’s heartbreaking. She’s leaving the atheist movement for reasons that are all too common.

I will no longer be interviewing women who have left religion, since I cannot in good conscience refer them to the atheist community, where they could find support. … All the resources are tainted with connections to the top tier of misogynist, sexist men.

This is where we are now. I don’t see how atheism, as any kind of movement, will recover.

That’s quite the just-so story you’re selling, Atlantic

Are your eyes in need of a little rolling exercise? Get ready to read The Evolutionary Case for Great Fiction. Here’s how it begins:

Picture this: It’s 45,000 years ago and a small Pleistocene clan is gathered by a campfire. The night is bone cold and black and someone—let’s call him Ernest—begins telling a story.

Lips waxy with boar grease, Ernest boasts of his morning hunt. He details the wind in the grass, the thick clouds overhead, the long plaintive wail of the boar as his spear swiftly entered its heart.

The clan is riveted.

Among them sits a moody, brilliant devotee of campfire stories. Every now and then she pipes up to praise or decimate a tale. Tonight she says, “Excellent work. Unsurpassed.” Ernest breathes a sigh of relief.

Let’s call the girl Michiko.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ridge, there’s another tribe, where John is telling his hunting story. Except he sucks, and the story falls flat, and everyone shrugs and goes to bed.

And then, later, John’s tribe goes extinct. The end.

That’s it. No evidence, no data, no actual measurements of any survival benefit to storytelling, one invented number (is there a benefit to good storytelling? “If it increases your offspring by only 1%—yes”), and the author comes to the conclusion that good stories enhances survival and makes the talespinner sexy (well, an author would say that, wouldn’t they?)

It is literally a just-so story, and nothing more. Nothing. It’s someone sitting at a keyboard fantasizing about how important their writing skills are on an evolutionary scale, and inventing a series of rationalizations.

It’s terrible.

I guess I’m going to have to predict the imminent extinction of every member of the tribe who writes for the Atlantic, if this story were true.

By the way, after being named, Michiko doesn’t appear in the story any more. The first critic, and she doesn’t even make it to the next page.

The criticism Jordan Peterson deserves

Oh my god. Jesus. Holy fuck. I’m reading this critique of Jordan Peterson by Nathan Robinson, and at every paragraph all that’s running through my head is expletive-laden expressions of disbelief. It’s not at what Robinson says, though — it’s because he has taken Peterson very seriously indeed, gone back to his first book, quotes extensively from it, includes some of the diagrams, and also transcribes some of talks, so the article is like a mega-dose of Petersonisms so thorough that you’re not going to be able to claim these are out-of-context excerpts that distort his meaning. There is no meaning there.

Jordan Peterson appears very profound and has convinced many people to take him seriously. Yet he has almost nothing of value to say. This should be obvious to anyone who has spent even a few moments critically examining his writings and speeches, which are comically befuddled, pompous, and ignorant. They are half nonsense, half banality. In a reasonable world, Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot that one hopes not to get seated next to on a train.

You have to read the transcript of his lecture about a children’s book to believe it. It starts off with Peterson reading a few lines about feeding a dragon pancakes, and then he meanders off into this long twisty anecdote about how he and his wife were taking care of some kids and they had to give them lunch and one of the kids wasn’t enthusiastic about eating but they were having none of that and then it segues into this totalitarian morality play.

So, we bring all the kids to the table and they’re sitting around and they’re having lunch and the rule is, as I said, eat what is in front of you and be PLEASED AND HAPPY ABOUT IT.

Oh, you better. Because Jordan Peterson is going to sit there for four hours poking your face with a spoon if you don’t eat it all up, and he expects to be able to control your thoughts about it, too. And then the story ends with the kid’s mother coming to pick him up and Peterson is visibly furious about this anecdote from years ago because the mother was far more casual about forcing the kid to eat than he was, and he’s now calling that mother the dragon who probably ruined the kids life. It’s nuts. You can watch the performance, and it’s horrifying. He is supposedly talking about his book, Maps of Meaning, and analyzing this children’s book, somehow, yet he spends 17 minutes in this incoherent angry ramble about a trivial incident that he has stuffed full of nefarious meaning in his head.

I read one chapter of Peterson’s latest book and was dismayed and incredulous that this guy is considered a popular, serious scholar. Nathan Robinson dug deep and reviewed a mountain of Peterson’s work, and I don’t know how he did it. I hope he’s OK.

That one chapter was enough for me to see that he was a worthless pseudo-intellectual. But then, I’ve been reading intelligent design creationism crap for years, and have learned to spot a fraud pretty quickly.

I ought to be getting used to atheists embarrassing me

One of the ways religious offenders defend themselves is by falling back into the arms of their co-religionists. “Why, when they attack me for molesting that girl, they are attacking the sanctity of Jesus Christ and his Holy Church!” It’s a way to gather allies by telling them that the criticisms against you are actually assaults on your entire belief system and all of your fellows.

Keep that in mind while reading Krauss’s response to accusations of sexual harassment. He is openly recruiting us atheists and skeptics to side with him.

On February 22, reporters from BuzzFeed published a libelous story defaming me specifically, and by association the skeptical and atheist community in general. To those friends, colleagues, and others who have written me kind notes of support, I want to thank you sincerely. To those who have expressed anger, I understand the disappointment you may have experienced upon reading the story. It has been very hard to remain silent thus far as my integrity and the integrity of the academic and skeptical communities, which I care about deeply, have been impugned.

My first thought is to defend myself — #NotAllAtheists, Dr Krauss! It’s you that is being accused, not me or my friends, so how dare you drag me into your community.

But then…damn. I think I’m being too optimistic about the quality of this community. I have to stop that. It ought to be easy to be cynical, since atheists are so happy to help. For instance, self-labeled atheists are proud to step forward and pull this kind of crap.

Some of you will dismiss this blatant sexism by saying it’s just one guy, one particularly repulsive guy. That’s true. Except…

TJ Kirk AKA the “Amazing Atheist” has been around for over a decade, and he’s been this repugnant since he first popped up. He has over 100,000 followers on Twitter. He has a million subscribers on YouTube.

You want to defend the skeptical and atheist community? We’re going to have to face up the fact that the popularity and persistence of terrible people who wave the banner of atheism has already compromised us, and realize that when some of our ‘heroes’ go further and commit sexual harassment, that doesn’t mean that they’re exceptional, but are perhaps more representative than we like to admit. At the very least, we have to recognize that being a misogynistic scumbag does not disqualify you from claiming to be an “amazing” atheist.

Further, that so many atheists insist that no moral stance can be assigned to atheism means that the awful people can not be repudiated as atheists; we can do so as individuals, as human beings, and as humanists, but the lack of any principle but “there is no god” in atheism means there are no grounds for forswearing or dismissing these people within the atheist movement.

So what’s the point of the atheist movement? There is none. It’s killed itself.

So, atheism is becoming a refuge for people who learned biology in kindergarten?

Some days I feel like I’ve spent one quarter of my life learning oversimplifications, and the remaining three quarters trying to encompass all the wonderful complexity out there. And then I have to deal with all the people who have turned the beginning stuff they learned in grade school into rigid dogma, rather than the first step in learning. I appreciate learning I’m not alone, like from this Stanford blog from a few years ago.

The simple scenario many of us learned in school is that two X chromosomes make someone female, and an X and a Y chromosome make someone male. These are simplistic ways of thinking about what is scientifically very complex. Anatomy, hormones, cells, and chromosomes (not to mention personal identity convictions) are actually not usually aligned with one binary classification.

The Nature feature collects research that has changed the way biologists understand sex. New technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that chromosomal sex is a process, not an assignation.

As quoted in the article, Eric Vilain, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology at UCLA, explains that sex determination is a contest between two opposing networks of gene activity. Changes in the activity or amounts of molecules in the networks can sway the embryo towards or away from the sex seemingly spelled out by the chromosomes. “It has been, in a sense, a philosophical change in our way of looking at sex; that it’s a balance.”

Two very nice words: process and balance. Those are so much more accurate than bang, your sexual identity was determined by a collision of two gametes in your Mom’s fallopian tubes, and don’t you argue with me. Or this: a fascinatingly perverse video from a guy who has been banned from playing the card game, Magic: The Gathering for harassment.

Just to explain the context a little bit: the banned player is quite irate, and has discovered a horrible thing that the makers of his favorite card game have done that is ruining the game. You only have to listen to the first 30 seconds of this excerpt, but you can continue if you enjoy listen to a growed man ranting about SJWs wrecking his fantasy game.

“Magic has adopted “they” as the preferred third-person-singular pronoun for a player, replacing “he or she”.”

This on the 25th anniversary of the world’s most popular card game is a fucking disgrace. Gender is real.

Then he goes on to whine about the low frequency of transgender people in the US, as if the number makes any difference, and is if the only possible reason to make this change is to satisfy transgender men and women (hint: there’s a larger spectrum of individuals who don’t identify by those pronouns). It’s a 12 minute video. All that’s in it is this guy complaining about how a card game company wasted all this effort making a grammatical change via one sentence in an internal document about some upcoming card releases, listed in a section titled “various nonfunctional changes”. The sad thing is that over 20,000 people have watched this performance.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to pay more attention to the views of experts in reproductive and developmental biology, published in Nature and by Stanford, than the angry ravings of a bigoted game player who doesn’t like these new people sneaking into his gaming community. But what do I know? That whiny gamer has been invited to speak at an atheist convention in Milwaukee. Remember when atheism used to try to associate itself with science?

Just when you were thinking the skeptic movement couldn’t get worse

Ooh, 16 September? I’m sorry, I think I have an appointment to scald my skin off with a bucket of boiling hot vomit that night. I guess I’ll have to pass.

Lawrence Krauss should look at that and be reassured that this too shall pass. You can be an alleged rapist and still be invited to share the stage with one of the Big Names, and that Big Name will still welcome you. It’s quite the cozy little boys’ club.

It’s not just the internet

I was listening to Monette Richards and Steve Shives talking about #MeToo this morning while preparing for my class. It’s a good discussion, and I only objected to one thing: they talk for a bit about how social media, YouTube, Facebook, etc. was enabling a bold new wave of rotten people. I’m old enough to remember a time before any of those things, and before the internet even.

It was bad then, too.

But it was different. Case in point: look at the John Birch Society. They were thriving in the 50s — they were more mainstream then — and the 60s, and they were peddling some heinous, hateful shit, even without a YouTube channel. They were recruiting racists, they were putting together marches, they were setting up their own private conferences. Even as a pre-teen I was exposed to their horrid dogma (and was repulsed by it — you know you’re pushing bad propaganda when even an 8-year-old can see through it). They were a minority, but they were influential, in a very bad way, and they were more cloaked.

I think the difference is that back then, if you supported an evil organization, whether it was the KKK or the John Birchers, you would proudly tell them, but you didn’t have a bullhorn to announce to the public at large that you were signing on with the bad people. It was more of a surreptitious growth, just as damaging, but you weren’t seeing it flamboyantly displayed. Nowadays when you think the alt-right is just peachy, you openly support it with an upvote or repost on Facebook, or you leave an ugly misspelled comment on YouTube, and everyone knows, oh yeah, those assholes have another fan.

But the point is that those supporters were doing the same thing way back when. It was just quieter. Nowadays the big difference is that everyone is wearing big bold colors that declare where you stand. I don’t know whether that’s better or worse, because the awful reactionary conservatives were pretty pernicious even without their own Facebook fan page.

You can also wear big bold colors that say you are on the side of righteousness by supporting the conference Monette is organizing, Secular Women Work. Attend or get a t-shirt by donating to their kickstarter.