Via a post by Jerry Coyne, I learned of an egregious smear by PZ Myers of Steven Pinker. PZ posted the following on his Facebook page:
He is referring to the following remarks by Pinker. Watch this clip — the entire clip — and ask yourself, as I did: How could any honest and rational person view this and then paint Pinker as “a lying right-wing shitweasel”?
What the hell has happened to PZ over the years? Wasn’t he rational at one point?
There’s people who will find offensive and “extreme-righty” any critique of political correctness.
Pinker makes false claims about what things can’t be said on universities due to “political correctness”, then offers a series of corrections that actually are the sorts of things that are said on university campuses all the time, and none of which has anything to do with the “alt-right” or with “political correctness” or with why Trump won. Pinker is just making shit up and has no idea what he’s talking about. As usual.
When people on the alt-right complain about ‘political correctness,’ what they mean is, “it’s not fair to white men that they can’t abuse their privilege the way they used to, because now they no longer have unfettered access to women’s bodies and they don’t have any advantage over other ethnic groups in competing for jobs.” These are the kind of mediocre douchebags who got outraged when a black man was cast as Heimdall in the Thor movies.
Also, anyone who thinks that there’s a problem with “the authoritarian left” in American universities today clearly has not set foot on a college campus since the 1960s. The American university system has completely capitulated to the consumer mindset — the students are to be pampered and coddled because “the customer is always right”, and adjuncts and instructors are treated as cheap and disposable labor, because there’s always another one waiting in line for a job if someone starts speaking too much truth to power.
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t know which university you might have experienced, but here the problem is a double-edged sword. On one side the university wants to be a “safe space,” which means, beware of even suggesting anything that could sound even-if-so-slightly politically incorrect. I’ve experienced some pretty bad misunderstanding myself for pretty innocent stuff. On the other side is the supposed mission of universities to be the place where things can be discussed, which means being allowed to talk so that, if you’ve got it wrong, then you can be shown why you’re wrong, rather than just shut up and yelled at.
Steven started in the worst way he could have, by listing all those things without immediate clarification. That leads directly to people thinking of him as a privileged white male who wants to preserve the status quo. Nobody listened to the clarifications afterwards, because, by then, they had made their minds about what Steven was all about. I would have started the other way around, but I doubt that I would have gotten a better response. People are hypersensitive about these issues, and once they make their mind it’s impossible to talk, for example, about mistakes made in trying to fix the problems, without getting labeled as a bigot.
That sums it up nicely.
Full disclosure: I am not a Pinker fan. I did read one of his books, “The Language Instinct” and I mostly disagreed with Pinker. But then his field is EP (evolutionary psychology), which seems to mainly consist of creative fiction (i.e. “just so” stories).
Neil Rickert,
Not a fan either. I find Steven quite boring (from a few videos I tried to watch) and never read anything by the guy. There’s a book in the shelf, the language instinct, but I haven’t read it yet.
Hi keiths,
It’s not often that I say this, but I find myself in agreement with you. PZ Myers has slandered Steven Pinker, and owes him an apology. No fair-minded person who watched the 8-minute video could possibly consider Pinker an alt-right sympathizer.
Yeah, and the whole ‘Atheism Plus’ shit-show. Worrying authoritarianism.
Bonus: site:freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula “quote mining”
I agree with that. He got off on the wrong foot and so made what points he claims that he wanted to make very badly. Don’t know him well enough to opine on whether he was actually intending to provoke just this sort of controversy by going about things that way.
So the way I look at this is, sure, some of the stuff he says is undeniable, but the idea of giving comfort to the often racist and violent doofuses that now call themselves the alt-right is reprehensible. As a group, they actually are NOT intelligent or reasonable, even if this or that thing they say or believe happens to be true. So to the extent that Pinker intended to praise or defend those assholes, fuck him.
Not sure about that. I think he might be intentionally elusive on just that point. As Entropy says this emanates from his opening remarks.
Oh, he is that guy. FMM referred to his book in the Adam and Eve thread. Supposedly Pinker argued that Neanderthals did not possess anything resembling modern speech. You didn’t like the book, I gather?
That’s at least plausible.
Quite right.
Vincent:
walto:
You say that after having watched the entire clip??
walto,
It’s the people who suppress those truths, or react angrily to them, who are inadvertently giving comfort to the alt-right and other non-reality-based folks.
The right approach is to freely acknowledge the truth, openly discuss it, and then proceed to show that it does not support the idiotic claims that the kooks are making.
Absolutely(!!) If he’d wanted to be completely clear on that, he could have been. He seems to me to have sought the controversy he’s received.
Does Pinker even know what the alt-right is? Does he know how “the red pill” metaphor is used by Men’s Rights Advocates? Does he know anything at all about the conceptual space between Marx’s criticisms of capitalism and the totalitarian regimes that take themselves to be Marxist?
At my university the problem is getting students to care about anything at all besides their grades and getting the certification they need for whatever skilled vocation they hope will save them from the shrinking of the American lower-middle classes.
I think he tried to look that way, but it’s not clear that he was doing much more than playing at it. His tendency to rip into religious people was never really commensurate with any actual threat they might pose, they were just people he thought he was better and smarter than, rather than people who might be persuaded (that was after he gave up accommodationism, of course). Anyway, he’s just been a self-righteous prick for some time now.
But KN doesn’t know of a problem from the “authoritarian left,” suggesting that for him shutting up others is just fine if they’re, you know, “wrong.” Never heard of Evergreen State College? Disinvitations of those who say the “wrong things?” Here’s Jerry Coyne:
From Why Evolution is True
Yes, it’s true that students are being coddled, but that includes being saved from other opinions than the standard bourgeois righteous line at university. I should note that the last paragraph of the above excerpt, in particular, isn’t very clear, but I believe what he’s saying is that of 28 disinvited speakers that were deplatformed by action from identifiable factions, all but four of the identifiable political sections responsible were leftist factions. Anyway, at the link there is a link to the list of disinvited speakers, if anyone wants to check out the claims.
Another Coyne blogpost, this time on the anti-free speech claptrap coming from officials of several San Antonio colleges
I don’t know much about Pinker, but clearly he recognizes an actual problem that others can’t or won’t.
Glen Davidson
Vincent:
walto:
keiths:
walto:
He was completely clear on that. He pointed out exactly why the truths he mentioned do not justify discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, or religion. It’s the antithesis of alt-right sympathizing.
How could you possibly miss that?
Ridiculous. That’s totally insufficient. He focused on their truths, how they are discriminated against, their intelligence, etc. etc. You’re completely wrong. I’m wondering whether your political acuity meter needs to go to the same shop as your irony detector.
Wow, walto. Your emotions are preventing you from seeing what’s right in front of you.
Entropy:
Don’t judge him by his presentation style. His writing is much more interesting and engaging.
Well, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I have the book.
Either way, it’s interesting watching what’s happening here. As I said, as soon as Steven made those points, everybody stopped listening. As in really stopped listening. Maybe they heard, but listen? No way. They’d be paying attention to someone they already labeled as a bigot.
Well, yeah, but if he’d just say the right things we’d know he wasn’t a bigot.
See how tolerance works?
Glen Davidson
He said them the way he said them because he wanted controvery–and guess what, he got controversy. And now people cry about that.
The alt-right should not be characterized as a generally intelligent, truthful group that makes enemies by telling unpleasant truths that lefties don’t like to hear. But that’s what Pinker did. He didn’t defend racism, etc. But he defended purveyors of it.
Cry me a river for those poor Nazi souls.
Of course he didn’t. He said,
Was he supposed to be discussing why Trump won, or condemning the alt-right in order to appease the righteous? He did a bit of the latter, while being more interested in discussing the issue before them, what sort of reactions come from the censorious nature of too much of the left at this time.
Anyway, I thought I’d link to the entire discussion. Well, I thought I would (didn’t work like a typical link), but it looks like it works this way:
It’s very long, at an hour and a half, but since the Pinker clip is clearly taken out of a much longer discussion, some might like to at least survey the entire panel discussion, or even watch it all. Just giving more options.
Glen Davidson
Nicely put.
Either Pinker knew that he was aiding and abetting Nazi sympathizers by presenting them as accepting hard truths that are banished from the academy in the name of “political correctness”, or he should have known that he would come across that way. As a public intellectual he does bear some (not complete) responsibility for how his words will be interpreted.
Yeah, a bunch of righteous whiners will take his words to mean what they don’t mean, and that’s his responsibility.
How about taking responsibility for thinking about these things, instead of responding in the approved reactionary manner?
Glen Davidson
Kantian Naturalist,
I have no idea how you came to this conclusion from listening to the 8 minutes.
My take is that his thesis was trying to avoid people falling into the alt right because they suspect liberal censorship in the universities and other venues.
Where do people fall into the alt right from?
GlenDavidson,
Thanks for the link.
newton,
People without formed political identity perhaps. College and post college.
Do people really believe that too-left unis are responsible for the largely not-university educated alt-right movement?
That’s one of the stupidest suggestions I’ve heard this week. (And this is ‘international shithole week!’)
Universities are thus responsible for both the dimwitted left and the dimwitted right. And why? Because they’re so far left! No responsibility on the right for this at all. It’s not racism or antisemitism or stupidity or greed. It’s all the left’s fault.
Nice.
You’re welcome, but I couldn’t find a transcript, which is what I’d have liked to link.
Glen Davidson
Yeah, I’d have preferred that too. It’s more than I’d like to sit through.
Is there a way to get transcripts from YouTube vids by compiling captions?
No, he was always a creepy scary flake the whole time I knew of him. Atheists like thunderf00t and atheist Sargon of Aakad are much more rational and to my liking. What happened to all the atheists from the Ayn Rand school? Why has atheism gone done the gutter with left-wing Marxist post modern social justice triggly puffery feminist man-hating transgender Islam kissing anarchy?
If I had a favorite atheist to pick, it would be TJ Rodgers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._J._Rodgers
He’s a lot like Donald Trump. I love him. Speaking as a creationist, TJ Rodgers is what I consider the model of atheist rationality.
but back to the OP:
“Nevertheless, it’s likely that men and women differ in some average “aptitudes”.
Well duh, men don’t usually get pregnant so they don’t have as much aptitude for bearing children as women. Duh.
walto,
Doesn’t Google Home do that?
He’s become an attention whore and is willing to destroy people to maintain the spotlight.
PZ Myers is scary. Why did he pick a fight with Michael Shermer and publicly accuse him of rape?
PZ Myers essentially trivializes real crimes by over emphasizing the made-up “crimes” of SJWs and unsubstantiated accusations of rape against fellow atheist Michael Shermer.
keiths:
Sal:
Sal,
You’re the last person I’d ask for an opinion on who is, or isn’t, a “creepy flake”.
https://udoj.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/salvador-cordova-asshole-of-the-year/
walto,
I don’t think he is arguing that the far left is responsible. He is arguing how to find a responsible middle ground using open discourse which leads to a deeper understanding of the issues.
Yes, and that seems to be exactly what happened with walto. He heard the words, but he didn’t listen.
Lol, keiths, you cite JanieBell McKnight’s blog. He’s some guy pretending to be an high school girl. You like reading blogs like that? In that case, you should really enjoy hanging out with
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/12/11/15/2F47E99A00000578-3356084-image-a-6_1449847692374.jpg
Let me ask you Keiths, in front of all the left-wingers here. Do you think a 55-year old man parading as a six year old girl has some psychological issues?
Sal,
You made an ass of yourself, in a particularly creepy way, in full view of the blogosphere. I don’t trust your opinion regarding “creepy flakes”.
Very well said.
He thought he should be able to get away with saying- “Oh, yes, its true that blacks cause more crime, but that wasn’t always the case, so don’t blame those who say it…Don’t blame the Steve Bannons, the Sebastian Gorkas, the Trumpettes, the Stephen Millers of the world, blame our interpretations. ”
Nonsense.
We have one right here, Sal Cordova. Pinker tries to make them sound reasonable for their views, just slightly lacking in facts. Its not the facts they have wrong, however, its their internal hatred which is the make-up of their character.
+1
Probably about as much as the guy who spends half his time online looking for them Sal.
I am fairly mild mannered. I don’t think I have many posts in guano.
But I’m glad I’m not attending college now. I would not survive a week. I have nothing but contempt for the safe space movement. I really don’t care about the details. A university that limits political speech is rubbish.
Hear hear!
Have you considered the possibility that the criticisms of universities are greatly exaggerated?