Don’t waste your time with this survey

I am now on the radar of the dumbest people on the planet. No, not the creationists: MRAs. After my post on that ridiculous “sexual market value” curve, I’ve been getting email from terrible people trying to justify it…and yesterday, the walking chancre known as Heartiste tried to contact me on twitter.

@heartiste
Hey @pzmyers give your wife this test: http://tinyurl.com/lzyexse And yourself this one: http://tinyurl.com/kud2myg See if either of you break -20.

I looked. Those links go to some simple-minded surveys that ask simple-minded, loaded questions to determine your Dating Market Value. I didn’t bother to actually take the test, I was too busy laughing.

You know how the SMV curve had women peaking in their late teens/early twenties? In case you were wondering how these goons determined that, here’s a sample question:

1. How old are you?
15 to 16 years old: +5 points
17 to 20 years old: +10 points
21 to 25 years old: +8 points
26 to 29 years old: +3 point
30 to 33 years old: 0 points
33 to 36 years old: -1 point
37 to 40 years old: -5 points
41 to 45 years old: -8 points
46 to 49 years old: -10 points
over 49: you’ve hit the wall. waysa?

Remarkable. They’ve essentially hard-coded the result they want into the design of the questions. Then they’ve got a series of questions for the women asking about their appearance: having breasts that are “D cup, naturally firm”, for instance, gets you +2 points.

So when you ask these dumbasses how they determine this mysterious “sexual market value” thing, they point you to a test that uses the assumptions of the SMV curve to hand you a confirming number. See, look: a test that proves that large-breasted 19 year olds have the highest “market value”! Science!

Oh, and the men’s test is all about your attitudes and mastery of stock pick-up lines use by PUAs, with scattered bits about your income and IQ (you will not be surprised to learn that having an IQ above 145 gives you a negative score.)

There’s circular reasoning, and then there’s spinning around in circles chasing your own tail until you fall over and vomit. That’s these pick-up artists and so-called men’s rights activists.

No! Not the manosphere! I can’t take it!

Like many of us, I read ManBoobz regularly — it gives us a window into the weirdly repugnant world of the manosphere. But I assumed it was a snapshot of the worst of the manosphere…and to my horror, I have just realized that it was a representative snapshot. I now have this discombobulated picture of David Futrelle: he’s like a guy mining for turds under an outhouse. You simultaneously think, “OMG, that’s the easiest mission in the world” and “OMG, that’s the most horrible mission in the world.”

I was led to this insight by Vox Day, of all people. Yesterday’s foray into his hateful mindset led me to an awful discussion of a chart, and then…well, let’s just say I went spelunking beneath an outhouse, started climbing upwards, and suddenly found myself in the colon of the manosphere. I need a shower, badly.

Here’s the odious graph. All my scientific training is shrieking in outrage at this thing.

Print

It comes from a site called The Rational Male — yes, the second word does not belong there. Here’s what the author says about it:

All that said, I can’t help but recognize the nerve that my SMV chart has struck throughout the internet. I’m not just talking about the manosphere proper here; from recognized psychology sites (generally for comparison) to BodyBuilding.com, this chart is easily the most linked-to picture from Rational Male. Whether it’s about refuting its accuracy or comparing how my instinctual understanding of SMP valuations gel with more scientific studies, that graph has become a benchmark, or at least the starting point, for a better understanding of comparative SMV over the course of a subjective lifetime.

Oh, jebus. The “struck a nerve” trope that every idiot who says something stupid on the internet trots out…

SMV? What’s that, you’re wondering.

It stands for “Sexual Market Value”. It purports to show the worth of men and women over a range of ages. Hold off on your rage for just a moment, and let’s look at it objectively.

First, the SMV axis. What are the units? There aren’t any. Why? Because he doesn’t actually measure anything. Get that? All of the values in this chart are arbitrary inventions that he totally made up. The entire thing is a fiction.

Second, the whole concept of “Sexual Market Value”. What does that even mean? It’s dimensionless. He doesn’t have a way to look at any person and say, “Your market value is X”. It doesn’t even make sense to put this into a chart; my sexual appeal to my wife is huge, but negligible to everyone else. Scarlett Johansen may have a reputation as a very sexy woman, but her sexual “market value” to me is zero, and not only is it offensive to propose that her sex is purchasable for some imaginary sum of a million quatloos or whatever, it probably isn’t even a real commodity.

Except, and here’s the scientifically repugnant part, he has no way to assess the SMV of an individual, except to look them up on the chart. Which he made up. The circularity is so perfect, it’s practically Biblical.

And then in his post he chastises critics for their inferior understanding of statistics, and unironically titles his post “Sex, Lies and Statistics”. Gaaaaah.

Let’s not even start on the ethics of judging people’s worth by the sole parameter of their sexual attractiveness. By that criterion, the author of that graph is a negative ten, and should be shoved in the hole beneath the outhouse and ignored for the rest of his days.

One last tip: don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. In between totting up the scores on all the women they’ve had sex with, they’re laughing at the critics for not appreciating the science of the graph.

Hey, Dave Futrelle! I’m gonna let you handle this gig from here on out. I don’t think I have the stamina to handle it.

Vox Day may be the Worst Person in the World

You won’t believe what he’s said now (link is OK, it’s not to his site).

[I]n light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban’s attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.

His “empirical perspective” is based on freakish ideas about Game, hypergamy, and those dang uppity women not having babies at his command, i.e., not empirical at all. His justification for shooting girls in the head is that they need to be taught a lesson so that they’ll buckle down and make more babies.

That’s quite possibly the most evil sentiment I’ve heard in, oh, a week.

Still?

The myth will never end. The Three Stooges…errm, I mean, the three main egos of AVoiceForMen met in a video chat to crow over their fame, and among the topics that came up was that universal obsession of MRAs everywhere, Rebecca Watson. Dave Futrelle transcribed the relevant bits so we don’t have to watch it, but it’s a remarkable demonstration of their opacity to evidence. Here’s John “the Other” Hembling, describing the most notorious elevator ride ever.

Watson then went online and did a video admonishing the male members of the atheist community, of which she was a part, “guys don’t do that,” and characterized this conversation in the elevator as if it was some sort of great, terrible, frightening threat, and crafted her victimhood out of that, and essentially used that story to launch a professional speaking career on the atheist circuit.

Really? They’re still repeating this nonsense, despite the ready availability of the video that shows they’re all wrong? She didn’t even imply that the guy was frightening, she didn’t present herself as a victim, and she was already a popular speaker on the lecture circuit — why do these guys think she was in Ireland anyway?

Apparently it’s not just religion that schools people in self-delusion.

I have a sudden craving for Girl Scout Cookies

If a Girl Scout showed up at my door right now, I’d buy half a dozen boxes, easy. Not that I’d eat them, but apparently Girl Scout cookies are now the cool way to promote feminism, lesbianism, and unbiblical womanhood, at least according to a couple of right wing radio hosts.

Swanson: The individualism of feminism has been devastating to this country. I’d say you ought to say no the Girl Scout cookies too. I don’t want to support lesbianism, I don’t want to support Planned Parenthood and I don’t want to support abortion, and if that be the case I’m not buying Girl Scout cookies. Now I suppose if you take a big, fat, black magic marker and you say, ‘give me that box,’ and you start marking out all of the references to the Girl Scouts of America on all the boxes then maybe we’re not promoting that organization anymore and I’d be willing to buy it. Maybe it’s not food offered to idols anymore if I had the opportunity to scratch out references to the Girl Scouts of America on the boxes of the Girl Scout cookies offered to me at Safeway.

Buehner: Those are some pretty expensive cookies you’re eating though. At some point a Christian has to say, ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ and where you spend your money does count.

Swanson: It does and I don’t want to promote a wicked organization that according to its own website doesn’t promote godly womanhood, it just doesn’t, I don’t see anything that promotes godly womanhood. The vision of the Girl Scouts of America is antithetical to a biblical vision for womanhood, it’s antithetical to it.

I think these guys have very dirty minds. They seem to think Girl Scout meetings are lesbian orgies.

Now Dave if you go the website for the Girl Scouts and you find out what the Girl Scouts are doing with their national conventions, some shocking things. Now you showed me these websites this morning, this is the first time I’ve ever seen this, you know who shows up at these Girl Scout conventions? Guys just check it out at the Girl Scouts’ websites and you’re going to find that the people showing up are lesbians, lots and lots of lesbians. Dave I didn’t realize there were this many lesbians leading this country but they certainly show up in Girl Scout conventions across America.

This one was October, 2011, in Houston, Texas, and the first openly homosexual mayor in the United States, which happens to be Annise Parker, showed up at the convention. A lesbian; a lesbian. By the way, her lesbian partner Kathy Hubbard is the treasurer for Planned Parenthood PAC so apparently there is this unholy alliance between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood. Also Sara Bareilles is a prominent voice for the gay and lesbian agenda, she performed at the 2009 Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Rights Celebration, she lends her image to the YouTube video ‘President Obama will you say I do?’ campaign supporting gay marriage, she’s joined the True Colors Tour as ‘a vehicle to entertain as well as engage audiences to take part in the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality,’ anyway this woman showed up at the lesbian conference—I mean, the Girl Scouts conference down in Houston.

I’m telling you Girl Scouts: print out a transcript of that little chat. Show it to potential customers. It won’t just be the atheists who whip out their checkbooks, I think a lot of non-evil Christians would do likewise.

I get email

It’s from another physics and Christianity crank. I wish he’d go bug Paul Davies; I’m a biologist, not a cosmologist.

Atheists are superstitious

1. There is no rational reason to reject the Our Lord Jesus Christ since it is scientifically demonstrated He is Divine and the One and Only True God. Only unscientific minds would reject empirical scientific evidence.

2. The universe is geocentric. Every experiment designed to measure the speed of the earth through space has always returned a speed of zero just as the Bible claimed all along. Only prejudicial minds reject scientific facts. Your leading Pagan cosmology writers offer biases with no scientific proof . Unbeknownst to you is the fact that no one in all history has ever proven that the Earth moves in space. As an honest scientist Lincoln Barnett admits in his book endorsed by Einstein “…nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.” (Lincoln Barnet, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, p. 73.) Einstein invented his relativity mythology to counter the Michelson-Morley experiments and other innumerable successor experiments demonstrating the earth is immobile in space and at the center of the universe.

“So which is real, the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. As in the case our normal view versus that of the goldfish, one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.” (The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, 2010, pp. 41-42) Hawking cannot face the empirical scientific evidence that Geocentrism is scientifically proven and heliocentrism disproven. In his bias he ridiculously opts to put the two systems on the same level.

3. That the myth of Copernicanism is the foundation for modern man’s independence from God is a connection that was recognized by the editor of the world’s most prestigious scientific journal. When confronted in the late 1970s with the model of cosmology promoted by the evolutionist well-known physicist George F.R. Ellis – it promoted geocentrism – Paul C. W. Davies, the editor of Nature, was forced to reply: “His new theory seems quite consistent with our astronomical observations, even though it clashes with the thought that we are godless and making it on our own.” (P.C.W. Davies, “Cosmic Heresy?” Nature, 273:336, 1978. In the same article Davies admits: “…as we see only redshifts whichever direction we look in the sky, the only way in which this could be consistent with a gravitational explanation is if the Earth is situated at the center of an inhomogeneous Universe.” Confirming Davies’s agnosticism is a letter he wrote to Dr. Robert Sungenis on Aug. 9th, 2004, stating: “I have long argued against the notion of any sort of God who resides within time, and who preceded the universe.” Davies, however, is honest enough to admit he cannot lightly dismiss Ellis’ science and mathematics that connect the Earth with the center of the universe.

So in addition to being a friend to the Templeton Foundation, a coauthor on the arsenic life paper, and proponent of a bad cancer theory, Davies was, once upon a time, speculating about geocentrism? Somehow I’m not surprised. Here’s the “Cosmic heresy?” paper.

Hey, if Nature can publish kooky weird speculations, who am I to say Jesus ain’t science?

The best review of The Happy Atheist yet

The Happy Atheist

It’s good to see The Happy Atheist getting great reviews. This one is from…the Discovery Institute! And even better, they put their top man on it, the inimitable Casey Luskin!

Go ahead, you can read the whole Luskinish thing, but here’s the shorter version of Casey Luskin:

PZ Myers can’t be happy, because he’s angry and kinda mean.

Thank you, Casey! I’m glad you were able to discern my true character there, unlike all these other people I meet who keep insulting me with phrases like “teddy bear.” But I should point out that “happy,” “angry,” and “mean” aren’t necessarily incompatible. Maybe he’s used to the Christian version of “happy,” which is synonymous with sheeply and oblivious bliss-ninny idiocy.

I like my joy ferocious.

Gulf states develop amazing new biomedical technology

First off, I must mention that these states are awful, evil, terrible places under the thumb of an obsolete religious morality.

Those under the age of 21 living in Kuwait found to be taking part in homosexual acts currently face prison sentences of up to ten years. Homosexual acts are banned in all GCC member countries, which include Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Earlier this week Oman suspended their newspaper The Week, alleging it had printed an article that was considered sympathetic towards homosexuals.

Homosexuality is illegal in 78 countries across the world and is still punishable by death in five countries, which include Iran and Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

But despite their repressive social policies, they must have made an astonishing scientific breakthrough.

Yousouf Mindkar said routine clinical screenings of expatriates entering Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) such as Kuwait would be introduced under new proposals. Persons who are identified as LGBT through the tests would then be refused entry into the country.

Whoa. They have clinical screenings for the Gay? I would like to know about those, but they aren’t giving out the details. I hope it’s not that fuzzy digit length stuff, or lie detector tests, because they don’t work. But something that can unambiguously detect what sex a person finds attractive would be really interesting.

They couldn’t possibly be lying about this, could they? Those government officials from the GCC all sound so rational.

MP Mohammad Al Jabri called on the Kuwati authorities to clamp down on Amnesty itself, ‘I condemn the brazen requests by an organization that introduces itself as a protector of freedoms and human rights,’ Al Jabri said.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should respond urgently to the so-called Amnesty International to highlight the noble Islamic principles, values and teachings in which the people of Kuwait believe and which reject the propagation of vice and debauchery in the community.”

Retired MP Mohammad Al Hayef accused Amnesty International of “interlacing honey with poison” and suggest that gay people “destroy humanity”.

He told Al Rai “It should have reinforced the slogan of human rights and the defense of the oppressed, not confuse issue[s] and interlace honey with poison so that one of its officials dares to encourage behavior that is against the human nature and clashes with the teachings of all apostles. Deviant behavior and attitudes undermine and destroy humanity.”

Don’t they sound nice? They’d be right at home in Texas or Washington DC. I guess we can expect our Republicans to follow suit on this important issue any day now.

The Kuwait Times reported earlier on Wednesday that coffee shops which allow men and women to drink together “corrupt morals” according to Kuwaiti MPs.

I wonder if there is a clinical test in the wings to determine whether someone has shared coffee with a person of a different sex, and I wonder if it will be sensitive enough to detect whether you’ve had coffee with a gay person.

Feminism in Tech is Cancer!

For your entertainment, Stop Tech Feminism.

Feminism should be treated in the workplace the same way other hate speech and hateful ideologies are, through outright rejection.

Make it clear that your workspace is one which fosters open discussion and tolerance of difference of opinion. No one should be fearful for engaging in a conversation.

When hiring, look for posts and tweets of support for militant feminism during standard HR scans. Make this a normal part of your filtering process, just as you wouldn’t hire a Klansman or a member of the Westboro Baptist Church.

The goals of most feminists don’t intersect with those of your company, as they wish to spend their time manufacturing outrage both within your company and on social media.

The best way to deal with the innovation killing drama that feminism brings is to never have it allowed into your organization to begin with.

It would be hilarious if there weren’t a lot of people in positions of influence who actually had these beliefs.

If you need an antidote now, read about the Petrie Multiplier instead.

That taciturn fool sitting sullenly in the corner at the party is Lord of All

Niall Ferguson, that great gallumphing Harvard clod with delusions of superiority, has discovered a new way to put his critics in their place: he has invented a Blo(g)viation Index, which purports to provide a measure of one’s competence. It is — get ready for this — your number of twitter followers divided by your number of tweets. He has 60,000 followers and has made only 140 tweets, therefore his Index is very large. Of course. He wouldn’t have mentioned it or invented it otherwise.

The one virtue of it is that it will give him, and only him, incentive to shut up on twitter, since his index favors those who say little. And it allows him to disparage his critics who engage on twitter more.

(By the way, I looked, my Blo(g)viation Index is about 7, compared to his 400+. Does he realize that every time he snipes at Paul Krugman, his score goes down?)