Kyrie Irving, deconstructed, is no Colin Kaepernick, but neither is Kap

This is a very good piece by Brian Phillips at The Ringer. It's about the walking mass of contradictions and self-indulgence that is Kyrie Irving, while also noting that he's had a real social background at times, like the bubble last year. Phillips also notes the power of the players in the NBA, starting with LeBron James being the first player to act to assemble a "superteam," then Kyrie working to step out from his shadow from the Cavs return years and do the same himself.

But, Phillips IMO doesn't go far enough.

Did Kyrie want the NBA and Adam Silver to undo the bubble because he was worried about endorsement $$$ as well as social justice? Not asked by Phillips. If Kyrie Irving really cares about his American Indian heritage, why has he gone to events on reservations maskless? Not asked by Phillips but asked elsewhere.

(There's the added fact that, per Irving's Instagram Live clip [I don't do Instagram] he acts puzzled that the Nets wouldn't give him kid-gloves treatment,  per this Fansided blog. And, maybe that reflects part of the problem. I'd have to agree with ESPN's Bobby Marks and others that it's unlikely he plays a game for the Nets this year ... or ever. That leads to a sidebar: Can the Nets list him as physically unable to perform or in any other way get any NBA relief? Maybe they shouldn't get such relief. They chose to sign a player known to be disliked by previous teammates.)

Then there's the shitshow of some people comparing him to Colin Kaepernick, especially in light of more and more Chucky Gruden emails being unveiled, with one email saying that a team should "cut the fuck." There's the BS of him attacking Eric Reid as well, and also his bullshit over PEDing.

There's even more racism, when talking about Robert Griffin III still playing, while Tim Tebow isn't. Real answer is that Griff's second-best year was the same as Tebow's best and his third-best year was about as good, or TLDR, Tebow sucked.

That said, Colin Kaepernick may still be laughing all the way to the bank himself, as I said a couple of years ago.

We can all agree that Chucky Gruden is a racist, homophobic, misogynist dumb fuck. Are there others in NFL positions of power? The Shield claims not. Sure. We know Redscum, now WFT, GM Bruce Allen shared Gruden's email about Kaep. But to whom?

The real edginess of The Edge and John Brockman

The Edge Foundation is well known to science and philosophy fanbois and fangrrlz, including myself, with its big "annual question" that founder and proprietor John Brockman asks leading philosophers and scientists.

But, there's also a private version.

And there's plenty of story behind that.

Evgeny Morozov calls it "an elaborate massage of the ego (and apparently much else) for the rich, the smart, and the powerful."

Turns out there's a horrible pun of sorts in that material in parentheses.

In the article, Morozov drops the reveal on just how much of a "FOJ" Brockman is. That would be as in "Friend of Jeffrey," with the Jeffrey being Jeffrey Epstein. And there's your horrible, and horribly true, in all likelihood, pun.

Brockman is also a heavy hitter in the book agency world for science authors. THAT now explains, I think, the Lawrence Krauss connection with Epstein.

Morozov explains:

Epstein participated in the Edge Foundation’s annual questions, and attended its “billionaires’ dinners.” Brockman may also be the reason why so many prominent academics—from Steven Pinker to Daniel Dennett—have found themselves answering awkward questions about their associations with Epstein; they are clients of Brockman. Marvin Minsky, the prominent MIT scientist who surfaced as one of Epstein’s island buddies? A client of Brockman’s. Joi Ito, the director of the elite research facility MIT Media Lab, who has recently acknowledged extensive ties to Epstein? Also, a client of Brockman’s.

So, Krauss, infamous for his own Epstein connections, was either an imperial playtoy at one of these dinners, a Brockman agency client, or both. (That "prominent academics" link makes clear Krauss was invited to one of the shindigs, if nothing else.)

This, in turn leads to further issues.

Krauss was also the recipient of one of Epstein's grants to theoretically creative scientists.

And, the Slate piece that Morozov links in that pull-quote above points up more of the Epstein problem. He has almost exclusively courted male scientists with his grant funding. That, in turn, beyond its relationship to sexual procurement, is a clear promotion of sexism in science. That may not be on Brockman, but even it kind of is, even if he didn't know about Epstein's hideous sexual abuse. That said, people whom Brockman invited to participate on the public version of The Edge were almost all men, too.

Speaking of, I've long considered Ev Psych sexist, what with its bragging about man (the male) as the "noble hunter gatherer," ignoring aeons of the male as the less noble, and female assisted, scavenger gatherer, along with the pseudoscience of the EEA and other things.

Well, re Epstein, and re many of the writers in Brockman's stable, somebody's nailed the coonskin to the wall on Epstein's love of Ev Psychers.  Robert Trivers and Steve Pinker are among the name checked, but here's the money quote:

Of all academic disciplines, evolutionary psychology has the most to do with pussy.

And, I'm reminded that the douche, Pinker, defended the indefensible, and pseudoscience squared, "A Natural History of Rape." Alexandra Walling also notes Pinker's comments about rapists elsewhere, as in criminal rape cases today, and how they don't square with him defending Thornhill let alone dodging Epstein's connections with silence.

And, puhleeze, ev psych fanbois AND fangrllz, don't send me names of women in ev psych, make claims about it that aren't true or are scientism based, etc.

Beyond that, I thought the "great question" on the public version of The Edge often bordered on pretentiousness. Many of them recycled themselves. And, a number of them were at least partially connected to ... ev psych.

It seems that John Brockman's greatest sales job has been selling himself.

And, maybe, by silence, he's trying to sell scientists and philosopher clients, or at least the fans, that he's not connected to Epstein.

Morozov said he'd like to believe otherwise himself:

When the Epstein-Brockman connection first surfaced in the news, I wanted to give Brockman the benefit of the doubt. ... In the last few weeks, such a charitable interpretation has become very hard to sustain, especially as other details ... became public. John Brockman has not said a word publicly about his connection to Epstein since the latest scandal broke, preferring to maintain silence on the matter. That I have found quite infuriating.

Morozov then personalizes why he finds this infuriating. He said he got an email from Brockman in 2013, intended for somebody else. They had a back and forth and Morozov makes this observation, aided to some degree by hindsight, as he says that, years ago, he didn't know who Epstein was (born in Belarus, I have no doubt on that):

In that old email, it seems clear that Brockman was acting as Epstein’s PR man.

There you go. And, 2013 was after Epstein's original conviction, of course. He expands:

(N)ow that I’ve found that old email he sent me, I cannot believe that he knew absolutely nothing of Epstein’s wild sexual escapades—in fact, his email suggests he was trying to capitalize on them to recruit yet another useful idiot into Epstein’s network.

OK, that's that.

Morozov has decided to act.

I’m just one of the many authors in Brockman’s agency; my departure wouldn’t affect anything. I am also the last one to complain: His agency sold two of my books, and I have two more underway, also sold by them. 

Yet, I am ready to pull the plug on my association with Brockman’s agency—and would encourage other authors to consider doing the same—until and unless he clarifies the relationship between him, the Edge Foundation, and Epstein. If such an explanation is not forthcoming, many of us will have to decide whether we would like to be part of this odd intellectual club located on the dubious continuum between the seminar room and a sex-trafficking ring.

Sounds reasonable enough and straightforward enough.

So, after reading this, I Tweeted the link to two online friends of mine, philosopher and philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci, and science journalism professor John Horgan.

Let's just say I found Horgan's response "interesting":

Brockman ceased being my agent a decade ago, but I'm not going to speak ill of him. And Morozov is a rat jumping off a ship he thinks is sinking.

— John Horgan (@Horganism) August 22, 2019

I don't think I'm at "infuriating," but beyond the scare-quoted, not reference-quoted, "interesting," I find his response more than "interesting." 

"Defensive" was the first word that came to my mind.

I've followed Morozov semi-regularly for several years, ever since the late Leo Lincourt turned me on to him. His "solutionism," the idea that modern technology, including and usually above all the social media world, claims to have "the answer" for social problems of all sorts, is mirrored in my blog label "salvific technologism."

Morozov was born in Belarus. I think that, having seen bits of the communist cum state capitalism version of Brockman's hedonic capitalism may be part of what put Morozov off. Maybe what he saw as pretentiousness was an additional factor — and pretentiousness among Brockman's Roman Senate lackeys at the court of Caligula (with Brockman kind of a Wizard of Oz behind Epstein's Caligula, to complete the analogy).

And his answer to his rhetorical question is no:

In Brockman’s world, billionaires, scientists, artists, novelists, journalists, and musicians all blend together to produce enormous value — for each other and, of course, for Brockman. This mingling of clients doesn’t happen in other literary agencies, at least not to this extent. Nor does this happen at Brockman Inc., as all such interactions that we know of took place under the umbrella of the Edge Foundation, a sibling organization, with Brockman as its president. Would Brockman Inc. exist without the Edge Foundation? Possibly—and it did, at the outset. Would it be as powerful, trading on Brockman’s ability to rub shoulders with academics and billionaires alike? Probably not. Still, I can attest that Brockman’s authors face no pressure to get involved with Edge: I, for example, diligently responded to their annual questions between 2010 and 2013—and then stopped, as I was put off by Brockman’s insistence that people responding to the annual question should keep away from politics.

So ... Dennett, Pinker and many others, even if, unlike Krauss, they have never had anything besides their egos massaged, have been at least partial accomplices in having Brockman's ego massaged through silence. That's Morozov's take. 

I personally found the Edge big questions, even before it dawned on me now that they were largely repetitive and recycled, to be pretentious in the answering thereof. That partially dovetails with Morozov's take. There was a degree of scientism in some answers, too, and maybe even philosophism from a few philosophers.

The final issue is Morozov's call for action.

Whether the ship is sinking or not, I don't think he's a rat, if there's any pejorative angle to John saying that.

Rather, the ship seems to be captained by a rat. Whether or not Morozov has Brockman as his agent at this time, which Horgan does not, he has an ethically honest stance. It's basically a call to boycott Brockman, at least as an agent.

I just think Morozov should go further. I think that, until Brockman not only clarifies those relationships, but to the degree needed, offers an apology, any remnants of The Edge ought to be boycotted, not just Brockman's agency. (The Edge is in a sort of limbo, or something; it had no 2019 Big Question.)

Also going beyond Morozov, I think Brockman needs to address the issue of sexism in being a science book agent, as I noted above.

And, turns out many science foundations, research agencies, etc., not just individual scientists, all got money from Epstein and many are refusing to comment.

GIVE THE MONEY TO CHARITY! Like an anti-sexual trafficking organization!

===

Via Twitter, Morozov also reminds me of pseudoskeptic grifter Al Seckel's connection to Epstein.

Still surprised by how little attention the Epstein-chasing media have paid to Al Seckel - a top-notch charlatan, a one-time TED Talker, a member of the Edge community, an ex-husband of Ghislaine Maxwell's sister, and a co-organizer (with Epstein) of the Mindshift conference.

— Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) September 6, 2019

Jim Lippard years ago noted this.

Lippard and Tom McIver, via Tweets, reinforce that Brockman was an enabler for Epstein.

John Brockman knew. Here he is with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s rape victims on one side, and alleged abuse coordinator, at an https://t.co/oEYOr4yISa billionaire’s dinner in the early 2000s. pic.twitter.com/dwm6UJhe9r

— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) August 24, 2019

And, to complete the circle, Seckel was an Edge member.

There's also this:

Why is Jeffrey Epstein's association with John Brockman's Edge Group touted in numerous spam blogs?

— Jim Lippard (@lippard) January 5, 2011

That would seem to be answered here.

This all said, while movement skepticism, or Skeptics™, doesn't have a sexual assault problem, as anybody who knows the history of skepticism organizations, conferences and events knows, like Center for Inquiry, it's got a HUGE past history of sexual harassment. Are there other connections to at least Brockman, if not Epstein?

Respectful note to John Horgan — I think you need to rethink your attitude toward Morozov and the "rats." There's only one (still-living) rat in this equation.

Can we "deprogram" racism with a good night's sleep, tinkered with?

A new study claims that we can at least partially "deprogram" racist, sexist or other biases while people sleep. Now, the science website where I saw this caveats that nobody expects major change overnight. Rather, that this methodology is just a mild interventional help.

First, I definitely want to see replication. Otherwise, as it stands, it sounds too good to be true. You know, like the study that claimed door-to-door interaction could reduce people's anti-gay bias? Until that proved to have been faked.

Second, per the top link, you have to get people to admit they might be more biased than they consciously want to believe of themselves. Then, you have to get them to admit they're biased enough to need work like this. Then, you have to get them to do this not just for a few nights, but weeks, maybe even months. True bigots won't.

Third, per the link, maybe this is a psychological equivalent of "teaching to the text."

No wonder, per the cartoon, that Ted Rall is skeptical. Rightfully so.

How will we use this? I mean, to me, "Clockwork Orange" thoughts popped up immediately in my mind.

Again, for certain classes of liberals, like Cass Sunstein type social neoliberals and the use of behavioral "nudges," I'm sure this sounds great.

Not to me.

Even if my Clockwork Orange thoughts are a bit overblown, I don't think they are totally so.

As presented in the study, these aren't even Sunstein-level nudges. They're micronudges. To get to real nudge level, we probably would have to go halfway to Clockwork Orange.

And, who's going to decide who's worth of this treatment?

Let's not forget that, less than 100 years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the name of a pseudoscientific American eugenics movement that influenced Nazi Germany, said it was OK to sterilize alleged "imbeciles."

Do you trust either the government or private counselors with something like this above, if it's hardcore?

Michael Shermer, meet Barbara Ehrenreich: two self-flunked not-so-#skeptics

Mr. & Mrs. Michael Shermer; not a ghost of a chance?

I've already blogged about Ehrenreich and her new book on alleged teenage mystical experience, starting with a long book review and then adding blogging thoughts about the psychological struggles I see lying behind both the teen and the modern Ehrenreich.

Well, now, Michael Shermer, at a minimum, leaves himself open to the criticism and interpretation of seeming to have dived even deeper into the ex-skeptic pool, but all based on recent adult experience.

He married the loverly Jennifer Graf (more related to this further down) just a few months ago. Shermer notes that she was raised by her mother, and describes her late grandfather, Walter, as "the closest father figure she had growing up, but he died when she was 16."

Anyway, Ms. Graf is a native of Germany. Before their marriage, they had her possessions shipped over here to the States.

Among them was one item of sentimental value once owned by her grandfather, an old radio.

Shermer gives the details:

His 1978 Philips 070 transistor radio arrived safely, so I set out to bring it back to life after decades of muteness. I put in new batteries and opened it up to see if there were any loose connections to solder. I even tried “percussive maintenance,” said to work on such devices—smacking it sharply against a hard surface. Silence. We gave up and put it at the back of a desk drawer in our bedroom.

OK, so Shermer admits he's not a professional electronics repairman, while also letting us know that he could have hit the radio hard enough to jiggle something loose.

Moving on ...

We're at their at-home wedding and reception, when this:

Being 9,000 kilometers from family, friends and home, Jennifer was feeling amiss and lonely. She wished her grandfather were there to give her away. She whispered that she wanted to say something to me alone, so we excused ourselves to the back of the house where we could hear music playing in the bedroom. We don't have a music system there, so we searched for laptops and iPhones and even opened the back door to check if the neighbors were playing music. We followed the sound to the printer on the desk, wondering—absurdly—if this combined printer/scanner/fax machine also included a radio. Nope.

At that moment Jennifer shot me a look I haven't seen since the supernatural thriller The Exorcist startled audiences. “That can't be what I think it is, can it?” she said. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out her grandfather's transistor radio, out of which a romantic love song wafted. We sat in stunned silence for minutes. “My grandfather is here with us,” Jennifer said, tearfully. “I'm not alone.”

First, we have a clearly emotional situation for both, which he later admits. And, doubly so for her.

However, he seems to "recover" with this observation:

What does this mean? Had it happened to someone else I might suggest a chance electrical anomaly and the law of large numbers as an explanation. ... In any case, such anecdotes do not constitute scientific evidence that the dead survive or that they can communicate with us via electronic equipment.

All would be fine and dandy if he ended there.

Next, he tells us:

Yet the eerie conjunction of these deeply evocative events gave her the distinct feeling that her grandfather was there and that the music was his gift of approval. I have to admit, it rocked me back on my heels and shook my skepticism to its core as well. I savored the experience more than the explanation.

Seemingly, he wants to believe. Not just wanted to believe, then, past tense, but wants, present tense, a couple of months later. Note the "had it happened to someone else" caveat from the previous pull quote. And, add to it that, even with others, he "might suggest a chance electrical anomaly." Not "would suggest," but "might suggest."

And, we're still not quite done.

But, he doesn't.

First, though, I want to go to the first sentence from the paragraph where the last pull quote came from, which says:

Jennifer is as skeptical as I am when it comes to paranormal and supernatural phenomena.

Sounds great, right? Also sounds like a typical "pitch," with the pitchman establishing his alleged bona fides before making the sale.

Now, let's go to his last sentence:

And if we are to take seriously the scientific credo to keep an open mind and remain agnostic when the evidence is indecisive or the riddle unsolved, we should not shut the doors of perception when they may be opened to us to marvel in the mysterious.

Boy, is that laden with loopholes, both stated and unstated.

First, true scientific investigation would have taken the radio to a repairman. Note that Shermer said he HAD changed batteries, so a normal power source for the radio was in place. Change in humidity or other things could have caused a connection to be made. A transistor radio would then have played for what? About a day, that's what, until the batteries died.

Indeed, he didn't even have to start by taking the radio to a repairman. A scientific investigation, or a semi-scientific skeptical investigation, would have started with carefully, carefully removing the old, dead batteries from the radio -- carefully so as not to jar again whatever loose wiring, or loose crud that can build up on batteries and connections -- Shermer presumably jarred loose with banging the radio in the first place. Then, replace the batteries with fresh ones! If it plays, voila! Solution and answer.

Second, both a true skeptic and a true scientist wouldn't operate off "sample size = 1." That's even more so when a true skeptic or a true scientist recognize that when that "1 = yourself," you don't have single-blinding, let alone double-blinding.

Third, a true skeptic, and a true philosopher, would recognize the logical fallacy or fallacies being committed. I could argue that they include shifting the burden of proof, appeal to authority, the regression fallacy (since he claims the event's importance is what it is, without looking at its cause), and the bull's-eye fallacy, also called the sharpshooter fallacy (relates to that "sample size =  1).

Fourth, you can't tell me that the phrase "the doors of perception" isn't a deliberate play toward Aldous Huxley's book of that name. Fifth, the phrase "marvel in the mysterious" also tells me Shermer wants to believe.

Thus, I have to agree with the current top commenter on the story page; the last paragraph is an embarrassment.  Next thing, Michael Shermer will join Barbara Ehrenreich in writing a book about his teenaged mystical experiences. And, per that note, and feedback I've gotten, if I'm misinterpreting this piece, I'm not alone; I may be taking my interpretation up a step from that commenter, but we're in the same neighborhood.

Barbara Drescher, maybe it's time you write about your new boss as part of blogging about why smart people do (or believe) stupid things. Beyond her, I wonder what Jim Lippard, Daniel Loxton and others at Insight think about this. I know I'm not alone in my interpretation. Besides the scornful first commenter on the piece, another person, on the place on Facebook where I saw this shared, invokes Marcello Truzzi, who fell out of the modern skeptical movement precisely because he wanted to treat the study of paranormal phenomena with too much use of intellectual kid gloves.

Does Shermer actually "believe"? I don't think so. But, the eagerness of his degree of "wanting to believe" is, in itself, highly anti-skeptical and strong enough to leave him open to the charge that he does appear to actually believe, at a minimum.

And, if Shermer didn't want to leave himself open to critique like this, at a minimum, he didn't have to write the piece he actually did write, since he had a couple of months of reflection time since the wedding. At a maximum, he didn't have to write anything.

Also, is Scientific American now embarrassed by this? No Tweet and no Facebook post about it, though it does a lot of other stuff on both its social media.

==

Sidebar: Now that he's married, that puts up another (theoretically) obstacle to his (alleged) pantsitis, which I discuss in moderate depth in this post about the James Randi Educational Foundation's problems with finances, alleged sexism, and apparent founder's syndrome, and with a more narrow focus, this piece about Shermer's alleged sexual behavior problems.

Also, per that "pantsitis" issue, which I discuss in those two blog posts linked two paragraphs up, that picture of the Mr. and Mrs., while not quite cradle robbing, seems to indicate a full decade of age difference, at least. If there's fire behind the smoke of sex-related allegations against him, the picture's a partial explainer.

So, arguably the three biggest leaders in movement skepticism today are an ill-healthed octegenarian with founder's syndrome (Randi), a mystic pseudoskeptic with a pants problem (Shermer), and a libertarian-leaning lawyer with his own baggage (Ron Lindsay of Center for Inquiry). Seriously, who would want to be involved with that until the Augean stables are cleansed?

At the same time, an overall good roundup here of why PZ Myers has no business criticizing anybody else's sexual behavior. Liquor him up as much as Shermer may have been at times, and the yucky behavior toward women he sometimes has shown himself would probably be at the level of rumors of criminal behavior on his own part.

==

Sidebar 2: If it's all for the sake of love, then surely the irrationality of love had Shermer ready to feel this way before the wedding, and will do so in the future, too. And, that's probably another reason I'm single. It's not romantic idealism about marriage or other romantic partnerships; it's compatibility idealism.

==

Sidebar 3: I don't think that most people at a skeptics' group who are commenting on my posting this there are actually reading through to read all of this.

Check your #privilege

No, this is not another post about the so-called "social justice warriors," despite the hashtag in the header. Well, it's not primarily about them, but they'll eventually get worked into the picture.

Rather, it's about who most exercises "privilege" in modern-day America. And, I'd say it's not whites as whites, males as males, or straights as straights.

Rather, it's Christians as Christians, specifically, the mix of fundamentalists, conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics. Whether it's the #PrayForSouthKorea hashtag on Twitter over the recent ferry sinking, or a bunch of evangelicals pretending to refute Bart Ehrman's new book "because the bible says its so" when they've done nothing of the sort, it's the assumption that a conservative version of Christianity is the default version of Christianity and the default version of religion in general in this country. (I'm not counting cultural "Christianists" like Bill O'Reilly, who is probably not that much more Christian than Samuel Huntington.)

It usually doesn't infuriate me, unlike the way it seems to do so to the atheist version of social justice warriors, or Gnu Atheists and Atheism Plusers in general. Rather, it leads to more of a sad laugh.

Among those Christians trying to gin up fake culture wars, or pretend that they have no responsibility for actual ones, most such people seem to be blandly and blindly unaware that they're engaging in privileged stances.

And, the way to deal with people like this is to first try to enlighten them, make them aware of their unawareness. Now that often may not work. But, it's the first thing to try, rather than berating them.

Berating such people assumes one has the right, er ... the privilege! of being a berater. As well as doing little to no good. Per the old academic left-liberal literary theory political correctness mash that fermented social justice warriors, you see how easy it is for someone to go "meta" on you?

Atheist SJWs might try turning the mirror around, and ask how much they've liked Christians who don't care about the issue of privilege willingly berating them.

See, I told you we'd get to the SJWs.

So, atheistic types? I've said it before. If you don't want to be a mirror image of conservative Christians, and don't want them to be your tar baby, the ball's in your court.

Beyond that, every one of us has at least a bit of privilege vis-a-vis one other person in the world. A great many of us have, in some part of our lives, even for those who are of a racial or ethnic minority, women, gay/lesbian, etc., have some aspect of privilege vis-a-vis a few other people at least. (A good example of "never assume" would be the number of men who have eating disorders.)

I don't claim to know what it's like to be black, or Hispanic. But, I have lived in black plurality and black majority towns. I'd like to think I've learned a little bit about what it's like to be a minority in a non-minority society at least. But, I'll never know perfectly. And, even among people who are aware that they're not fully enlightened, it's a struggle to get them interested; that's kind of what Perry's getting at.

Otherwise, none of us can ever perfectly know another ethnic, sex, sexuality or other group, or another individual from that group. Indeed, we'll never know our own selves perfectly.

Rodney King famously asked, "Can't we all just get along?" No, not perfectly, because, beyond the issues above that can be barriers, we're all individuals.

Can we, at least, reduce how much many of us don't get along? That's more likely and more possible. And more reasonable. Beyond the fires of idealism comes the progress of realism. At the same time, we don't have to have minimalistic definitions of realism.

Back to the original point in a wandering post, though.

Conservative Christians who do semi-deliberately speak from a point of privilege will ultimately result to one of two answers to this.

One is the "success gospel." You're right and doing well because you're propperly aligned with god. (Unfortunately, many a New Ager holds to a more pantheistic version of this.)

The other is that there's no Jew nor Gentile, etc., so all current-world differences are virtually erased now in religion and totally will be so thereafter.

The first? We saw that become a new opiate of the masses in the run-up to the Great Recession. The second? It's the usual answer when people complain about the first.

If we could get a few conservative Christians to have just an ounce or two more of honesty and self-insight, we might start something.

And, if not? While I don't go out of my way to berate conservative Christians, when I see a "PrayForX" hashtag on Twitter, I usually give one, or both, of two responses, using the same hashtag:
1. To which god are "we" praying?
2. If a god didn't stop tragedy X in the first place, why should I pray to he/she/it now?

Pop Ev Psych and sexism

Legitimate evolutionary psychology, as it has developed, has enough problem with scientific rigor, especially on gender issues. That all starts with its idea of an environment of evolutionary adaptiveness, or EEA. (Scratch that; I think ALL ev psych, even with the bathwater thrown out, is borderline pseudoscientific.)

Ev Psych "conveniently" postulates a long history of Homo sapiens as hunter-gatherers, with noble, brawny males battling to hunt down big game while dutiful demure women gathered up tubers, roots and herbs.

However, early in H. sapiens' history, and going back to our Homo erectus predecessors, we were scavenger-gatherers long before, and for many millennia before, become hunter gatherers. Nothing "noble" about it. Nothing particular androcentric about it, either. 

Of course, that's actually three scientific problems, or more.

• Getting human development wrong by ignoring scavenger-gathererers;
• Trying to artificially constrain the "evolutionary" part by limiting it to homo sapiens;
• Either accidentally or willfully putting Nos 1 and 2 in the service of sexist conclusions.  

That said, as someone who accepts the neo-Darwinian findings of evolution by natural selection, I don't argue with the baseline idea, that as hominids, including but not limited to H. sapiens, evolved, so did the minds expressed by their brains in interaction with their external environments.

I do object to the things above.

Beyond that, I object to:

• Making unfalsifiable statements, especially ones we may NEVER be able to falsify. And, given that brains generally don't fossilize, that covers a lot of territory.
• Telling "just-so" stories, for which Steve Gould, especially, criticized evolutionary psychologists. 

Pop Evolutionary Psychology is to legitimate ev psych (to the degree it's becoming more legit) as Dan Dennett's idea of folk psychology is to legitimate psychology (to the degree psychology is becoming more legit scientifically). And, in going beyond the first three issues with much of ev pscyh, Pop Ev Psychers seem determined to be egregious about the second set of bullet points.

(Note: This post was inspired, originally, and developed from, one I did about sexual objectification among Pop Ev Psychers and nth-wave feminists alike. And, yes, feminists can be sexists, just like blacks or other populations can be racists.)

The  EEA, being based on sexist ideas about hunter-gatherer societies’ operation, as well as further sexist ideas that Homo sapiens had a long period as hunter-gatherers when we probably had just as much a period as less sexy scavenger-gatherers, has shown itself to be bathed in about as much an aroma of sexism as a bottle of Old Spice gone past its expiration date. (This long and colorful metaphor assumes Old Spice has an expiration date, of course.) And, Pop Ev Psychers like to treat it like the Nicene Creed

Example No. 1 is like shooting fish in a barrel — Randy Thornhill claiming rape isevolutionarily adaptive. Tosh. Bullshit.

In pre-state tribe/band sized societies, you raped once, inside your clan, you were likely killed. There was little hierarchical structure for a chieftan, jefe or whomever to "pull rank" to rape lower-class women, either.

You raped some woman in another band? You immediately started a small-scale war, most likely satisfied when your clan handed you over ot the other clan to be put to death by them.

So, even if you were 100 percent sure your rape caused a pregnancy, it was only a break-even on "adaptiveness" if you were caught immediately. And, rape appears to be less likely to cause pregnancy than even the hit-and-miss of normal human sexual intercourse.   

Short of rape, though, there's plenty of other "just so" storytelling that's sexist.

Here's another. Theoretically, based on porn or whatever, we men in the modern West like big boobs. But,  Pop Ev Psychers claim that a genetic variation that appears to have given East Asian women, on average, smaller breasts, possibly to adapt to its cold winters (and per Jerry Coyne, even the issue that the genetic change coded for small breasts is debatable) was actually driven by sexual selection.

But Joshua Akey, a geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said he thought the more likely cause of the gene’s spread among East Asians was sexual selection. Thick hair and small breasts are visible sexual signals which, if preferred by men, could quickly become more common as the carriers had more children.

There's a just-so story staring the likes of Ed Clint right in the face. 

Here's Coyne's take, though:

He wonders how the researchers concluded that the variant EDAR gene shrinks breasts at all, given that mice don’t have breasts­—at least, they don’t have pronounced lumps on their chests the way people do.  

Er ... good point.

That said, such nuttery has better-known touters than Joshua Akey.  

Per Massimo Pigliucci, it seems Michael Shermer's also still swimming in the waters of Pop Ev Psych sexism. Gee, what a shock!

Here's Shermer, in an ongoing dialogue about how much science does (Pigliucci) or does not (Shermer) need philosophy to guide discussions of ethics:

Most men, for example, are much more receptive toward unsolicited offers of sex than are women. 

Just wow. And, as Massimo notes, simply not true!  

Shermer then goes on to claim rape is scientifically shows to be immoral, ignoring that Pop Ev Psycher Randy Thornhill claimed it was evolutionarily adaptive! Now, it is not true that everything adaptive should be moral. However, since Shermer himself has previously mangled David Hume's classic is-ought distinction, which in turn led to this dialogue between him and Pigliucci, I think it's legit to hoist him on this petard.

Meanwhile, it's not just differences in sexual desire. Whether it's Pop Ev Psych or John Gray-type pop psychology, the whole "men are from Mars, women from Venus," is getting more and more refutation.

"Sex is not nearly as confining a category as stereotypes and even some academic studies would have us believe," study researcher Bobbi Carothers, a senior data analyst at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a statement. 

Are there differences? Yes:

Carothers, who completed the research as part of her doctoral dissertation at the University of Rochester, and her colleagues are not denying that men and women often do differ from one another. Women, for example, are known to have higher levels of anxiety than men, on average, and to react to bad news with more stress. Studies also turn up gender differences in aggression, sexuality, frequency of smiling, and body image, Carothers and her colleagues wrote.

But researchers haven't spent much time examining the structure of these differences, Carothers wrote. It's possible, for example, that men and women usually fall into distinct groups. In this categorical world, knowing someone is a man would automatically tell you that he's aggressive, interested in short-term sex over long-term relationships, good at math and bad verbally. Alternatively, gender differences could occur more often on a continuum. You might know someone is a man, but it would tell you little about his skills with math. 

Which possibility is more likely might seem clear to anyone who has ever known a guy who can't figure out a tip to save his life. But humans tend toward categorical thinking, the researchers wrote, and gender is about as basic a category as you can get.

Bingo. And here's some specific issues where gender differences are an overlapping continuum:

Men and women fell along a continuum on such measures as interest in casual sex, frequency of thoughts about sex, and the appeal of certain traits such as virginity, looks and wealth in a mate. The same was true of attitudes toward close relationships, empathy and other interpersonal factors.

In other words, if told that a person is more than 6 feet tall, you would be pretty safe in guessing that they were a guy. If told that a person is very empathic, you'd be much harder-pressed to correctly guess their gender.

So, let's just put this "men are from horndog, women are from demure" idea on ice. It's insulting to both sexes. It perpetuates stereotypes, many of which then translate into our legal system, such as judges still occasionally admonishing rape victims about how they dress. 

Oh, and women don't talk more than men, either. 

Their "gap" on spacial relations skills appears to be at least somewhat culturally driven.

But, a lot of people like to assume they do. And, there have been Pop Ev Psych just-so stories about that, too.
And, on the psychology side of Pop Ev Psych, let's make sure that claims aren't being made on the basis of biased psychological studies, with such bias including gender bias. (Per Robert Sapolsky, in "moving backward" from Pop Ev Psych to some thought within evolutionary biology in general on sexual selection, such sexism isn't confined to thoughts about human evolution.) It also seems that Pop Ev Psychers, like drug companies, don't have any problems with being "selective" on how they frame their research or on what results they report.

Now, I’m not saying there are no sex-based differences in formulation and expression of sexual desire. But, the differences are smaller than either Pop Ev Psychers, nth-wave feminists or male-hierarchy Christians will admit. And, all three are similar in throwing bullshit ideas against the wall, hoping something will socially stick, either due to religious prejudice (the Christians), reverse sex prejudice plus tribalism (the nth-wave feminists) or sex prejudice cloaked in pseudoscience (Pop Ev Psychers).

I'm also not saying every Pop Ev Psycher, let alone every legit evolutionary psychologist, has such sexual issues, but, unless anybody close to a Thornhill is deliberately marginalized, the legit movement risks getting tarred with this big, black brush.

And, speaking of "black," what if such Pop Ev Psych sexist nonsense statements were made about blacks vs. whites?

Well, maybe we don't totally have to.

I've blogged this before, but I'm going to do so again.

Shermer has had two known racialists, Frank Miele and the recently deceased Vince Sarich, on the masthead of Skeptic magazine.

The two co-wrote "Race," a horrible racialist book which believes the different races are subspecies headed toward speciation, ignores the cultural background of IQ tests and much more, as I note in this review. A sampling:

On page 1, the authors misinterpret a Lincoln quote about the difference between races, and infer that, rather than talking about the sociologocial fallouts from a clearly perceived difference in skin colors, Lincoln was talking about deeper differences in physical attributes. ...

Page 9 - Going with their unproven -- and logically fallacious idea-generating -- 50,000 year date for the evolution of modern Homo sapiens, Miele and Sarich then use this to bootstrap their own arguments about the degree of difference between races, claiming this shows how rapidly human evolution can progress. It's clear circular reasoning based on an already assumed point of view.

Pages 9-10 have a laughably racist "genetic" rather than sociological assumption of evidence for various types of athletic prowess. ...

And, the piece de resistance on page 10 -- the "mean sub-Saharan African IQ of 70." All together, now, can we say Bell Curve?

How bad is it, and are/were they? They're both associates of A-grade racialist Philippe Rushton. With Rushton, at least, I am comfortable with removing the second syllable from the word "racialism."

It's yet more reason not to trust Shermer on any issues like this. Given that racialists like this mentioned above and Arthur Jensen and others, have spouted just-so stories about alleged differences in brain sizes, brain size vs. penis size and more, I have no doubt some racialists have a foot in the currents of Pop Ev Psych.   

I'll also counter Shermer's "scientism" with repeated recent revelations of cheating on grants, Ben Goldacre's whole new book about selective research reporting in the pharmaceutical industry, and more.

Say, Joseph Mengele? Eugenics "research" in the US? Arthur Jensen? Shockley?

Science is, to riff on Euclid, NO royal road to morality. Period. End of story. 

And, as I've said before, science in general is no guarantor of morality. Science badly practiced, or abused and twisted, though, usually is a guarantor of bad ethics, sometimes in narrow ways, sometimes in broad ones.

Besides that, Pop Ev Psych, and to some degree "legit" ev psych, "whiff" on more than sexism. More below the fold.

IOKIYAR applies to personal-public distinction on abortion

Boy, the hits just keep coming from the Katie Couric interview of Sarah Palin, don’t they?

In this case, hard-care anti-abortion candidate Palin refused to follow her stances to their logical conclusion.

First, Palin is on record as opposing abortion even in cases of rape. But, when Couric spells out how this would play in the real world, we get yet more Palin follies:

Couric asked, “If a 15-year-old is raped by her father, do you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion, and why?” Palin dodged, explaining that she’s “pro-life,” and wants to help “women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal.” Couric asked again. Palin dodged again, before saying she’s uncomfortable with sending a woman to jail for having an abortion. “That’s nothing I would ever support,” she said.

But it gets better, as Couric moves to contraception:

Since Palin mentioned reducing the number of abortions, Couric asked about the morning-after pill. Palin dodged. Couric asked again, and Palin dodged again. Couric asked a third time, and Palin would only say, “[P]ersonally, I would not choose to participate in that kind of contraception.”

Every election, we see the Religious Right and its GOP handmaiden attack Democrats who claim they are “personally against” abortion, but support reproductive choice rights.

Well, now the shoe is on the other foot.

And, no, it’s NOT OK If You’re A Republican.

Sidebar: There's plenty of sexism at CBS for how it's handled Couric as its evening news anchor.

She has done an excellent job in these interviews, and CBS should be ashamed of itself for ever backing away from full support for her.

Yes, Virginia, sexism in politics exists

Likely, Hillary Clinton did get screwed to some degree, because of it, and not just from any “Clinton baggage.”

LiveScience says:

A new Pew survey finds that when it comes to honesty, intelligence and a handful of other key traits valued in leaders, the public rates women as superior to men.

And, women are even rated better on such “male” qualities as decisiveness.

Yet, only 6 percent of Americans say women make better political leaders.

Yes, there still is sexism out there.

And, Joe Biden probably wasn’t the best Veep pick to address that issue. Still think B.O. should have gone wit Sebelius.

But, I’m voting Green anyway.

Is Evolutionary Psychology the new sexism, or the new Social Darwinism?

Note – per a blog post earlier this week, I once again have clearly explained the difference between Evolutionary Psychology and scientifically investigatable evolutionary psychology.

Here’s the link to my evolutionary psychology label; a few of the more illustrative individual posts. Several of these are especially illustrative of how Ev Psych approaches, if not goes beyond sexism … and no, you Ev Psychers, not just beyond a social construct called sexism, but, beyond sexism.
Women’s improvement in gaming refutes Ev Psych;
Ev Psych claims for sarcasm are “stretched” (mainly by ignoring cultural evolution);
The stereotypical male-female math gap can be reversed;
Susan Pinker plays wrongly plays down workplace sex discrimination;
Definitional questions EvPsych, and, to a lesser degree, ev psych, leave undefined;
The core of the differences between Ev Psych and ev psych.
Some serious snark about Ev Psych riffing on Leibnitz’s “best of all possible adaptationist worlds”;

And,finally, David Buller’s seminal article on the subject at Scientific American. (To you Ev Psychers who dismiss him as “just a philosopher, what do you do with Dan Dennett, then?)

Read his book, too.

Or, a decent but not really good read is Richard Francis’ “Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions.”

On the flip side, in this post about behavioral economics, among several posts, you’ll see how I praise evolutionary psychology. Just not Evolutionary Psychology.

Do NOT e-mail me, or comment to this post, that I am against evolutionary psychology, lowercase, until you’re read that post, at least, and perhaps others on my blog in general.

That said, I do propose that capital-letter Evolutionary Psychology does threaten to become the new Social Darwinism, and with a political bias to it, too, at least in some cases.

Steve Pinker admitted as much, near the end of “The Blank Slate.”

He told political liberals that they needed to accept the reality of what he said was “evolutionary psychology” (and what I say is Evolutionary Psychology), deal with it as best they could, and adjust their political prescriptions accordingly. Pretty political to me.

The other reason I think that threatens to be Social Darwinism is its focus on sexual differences. By arguing that men have dominated societies in the past (not true, as far as I can see, before the invention of agriculture), capital-letter Ev Psychers give the appearance, at least, of telling women today to accept the glass ceiling, accept secondary status in society, and deal with it – because it’s all normal.

And, if you’re not prepare to describe why you personally, if you do, focus so much of your ev psych discussion, or especially, your Ev Psych discussion, on sexual selection issues, move on. Because that WILL be part of the dialog and investigation from my end.

A book with a few thoughts on that is Robert Sapolsky’s “Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals.”

In fact, let me excerpt a few sex-specific comments from my Amazon review of Sapolsky, by page number:

63. In a study with ducks, with attractive males, it actually appears that the female invests more energy in the egg, laying a larger egg when impregnated by an attractive male. (The egg size is under female control.)
Both of these should put some question to old stereotypes about peacock tails being signs of fitness and so increasing mating, etc. At the least, they should caution us to look for more nuanced explanations.

177. In many species, females in some way manipulate alpha-male type males into fighting over them, to go off and mate with more "nice guy" types.

Some more food for thought.

And, I’m not going to even bother linking to the recent story showing girls do as well on math as boys, which undercuts one of Ev Psychers’ favorite male-female difference talking points.

Beyond that, with true, lower-case ev psych, there’s plenty of things to talk about in the evolution of the human mind, not the “male” or “female” mind.

I mean, look at Scott Atran’s “In Gods We Trust.”

There’s books on behavioral economics; the effect of evolutionary psychology on Homo economics is certainly not small. (Don’t forget to allow for cultural evolution here, too, though.)

Enough said.