.png){kind=logo}
February 22, 2012 at 8:28 pm 
Natalie Reed Sorry for not getting a proper afternoon post up today… things have been a bit weird and busy the last couple days.
So to make up for it, and to make for my lack of a proper recording (perhaps), here’s the little outline from which I constructed last night’s talk at The Railway Club. Bare in mind this is rough, and was really just a loose guide for me to construct my notes to speak from, and isn’t really a proper “polished” post:
The current skeptics’ movement appears to be undergoing a few dramatic changes right now, and along with that, a sort of tension or duality has begun to emerge. We can observe a clash between the “old guard” of skepticism, who primarily focused on certain tried and true areas such as theism, aliens, cryptids, psychics and the paranormal, and a newer emerging group of younger skeptics with a more intense interest in confronting those forms of superstition, pseudoscience and irrationally held belief with more immediate social consequences: like alt med, for instance, evolutionary psychology, and religious bigotry against the LGBTQ community. In this process, social justice causes have become coupled with skeptical activism, such as feminism, race theory and queer advocacy.
As this new emerging group of skeptics brings new issues into skepticism, it demands that those who had already positioned themselves as the rational intelligencia confront assumptions and challenge beliefs that had previous gone unquestioned. This ends up creating an interesting conflict, where we more and more observe that regardless of however capable an individual is of applying critical thought outwardly, everyone still carries bias and is still capable of logical fallacy. Making things tougher, it is often times those who have become accustomed to perceiving themselves as above cognitive distortions and bias who often have the most difficulty confronting whatever irrationality may still exist in their own beliefs.
The introduction of feminist concerns to skepticism has exposed a considerable undercurrent of irrational misogyny, and failure to properly apply critical thought to the concepts that support it, like the aforementioned evolutionary psychology. In the past seven months since the infamous Dublin Elevator Incident, we’ve seen countless instances speaking to the degree to which these beliefs are entrenched. There was the rape-jokes at the expense of a teenage girl trying to join r/atheism and showing off the copy of The Demon Haunted World she’d received for Christmas, Staks Rosch “tokenism” rant in response to people questioning the conspicuous absence of women from his list of finalists for atheist of the year, DJ Grothe’s defense of Ryan Long’s misogynist threats against Greta Christina and her readers, Penn Jilette deciding to go around decreeing that women he doesn’t find funny are “cunts” and a horde of his supporters defending the use of that term, the Amazing Atheist’s public meltdown over his hatred of feminism and disregard for the practice of including trigger warnings, a set of adult men prodding Jessica Ahlquist to join the “sexy atheists” Facebook group and not understanding why that was considered inappropriate, and recently John W. Loftus decided to accuse me of being a mere diversity hire lacking in any real qualifications, and that the kinds of work I and others do in regards to creating a more diverse movement are not relevant or important.
A common argument against discussion of these kinds of issues is that they aren’t “real” skepticism and that they aren’t backed by hard data. Feminist justification is derived mostly from sociology and the humanities. But nonetheless we can observe that on the most basic level things like misogyny, racism, transphobia and homophobia are motivated not by empirical evidence and facts but instead by irrational, emotional, human instincts and bias. Skepticism is fundamentally about questioning our assumptions and beliefs, holding them up to critique, and asking for the evidence. I believe that when the irrational beliefs carry widespread social consequences and human cost, the way that bigotry does, it becomes all the more important that we bring the full force of our critique to bear upon it. And so long as we exist in a culture that is built upon and upholds intrinsic biases about identity, such as gender, we can never actually be unbiased thinkers. We are forever linked to our cultural position.
But when we have these irrational beliefs, these culturally coded assumptions, running so deep within our community and movement, how do we actually change that? How do we get people to further question themselves when they’ve already become convinced that they’re a rational person, a skeptic, and have moved on from irrationality, cognitive distortion and bias?
Well I think what we need to do is to change the fundamental structure and values of skepticism. We need to build our community and movement around slightly different premises.
As it has stood in the past, skepticism has been predicated on a belief in the power of the empirical and rational. It has been based on the premise that there is an empirical truth, and that it is knowable, and that certain tools and strategies like science and logic will allow us to reach that truth. In short, the “old guard” skepticism was based on a veneration of the rational. But the veneration of certain techniques or certain philosophies creates the problematic possibility of choosing to consider certain conclusions or beliefs to BE empirical and rational and above criticism, particularly beliefs derived from the “right” tools, and even more dangerously, to consider oneself “rational”.
For example, this form of skepticism will typically automatically assume the conclusions drawn from science to be above questions and criticism drawn from humanities or sociology. This is problematic in that scientists are themselves human, and capable of drawing biased conclusions, and practicing flawed methodology. We need only look at the pseudo-sciences of phrenology and the concepts that supported racism, the psychological construct of “hysteria” in women, the psychiatric pathologization of homosexuality, and the pathologically flawed model by which transsexuality, intersexuality and other forms of gender variance were treated until very recently. Science is a valuable tool but the conclusions drawn from it are not always ideal.
I believe that in order to be able to question our own beliefs as well as we question those of others, we need to restructure skepticism around awareness of human limitation, irrationality and flaws. Rather than venerating the rational, and aspiring to become some kind of superhuman fully rational vulcan minds, we need to instead create a more human skepticism, built around understanding how belief operates, how we draw conclusions, and how we can cope with the human limitations. I believe we need to remove the focus from aspiring towards ridding ourselves of the irrational, and instead move the focus towards understanding how this irrationality operates and why we believe all the crazy things we believe. We need to position as our primary aspiration not the achievement of a perfect comprehending mind, but instead an ability to maintain constant hesitation and doubt, to always always ALWAYS second-guess our positions and understand that they’re being created through a flawed mind, from flawed perceptions.
Science and reason are excellent tools to allow us to cope with being crazy, irrational human beings, but it CANNOT allow us to transcend that. The instant we begin to believe that we have become A Skeptic, A Rational Person, that is when we’ve fucked up, that is when we stop practicing skepticism, stop keeping an eye out for our mistakes, and begin to imagine our irrational perceptions as perfect rational conclusions. It’s only by building a skepticism based on the practice of doubt, rather than the state of Skeptic, that we’ll truly be able to be move on from our assumptions.
Posted in 
Great post on the whole, but I have a couple of minor quibbles. First, as far as I know, most people who try to practice skepticism/rationality don’t “aspire to become some kind of superhuman fully rational vulcan minds”. Rationality (or at least, the version of it that the writers I read try to practice) is supposed to be exactly what you advocate here: trying to obtain the most accurate mental model of reality possible, being aware of the biases that make this difficult, and trying to understand how our minds function in order to work with them better. You may have already seen it, but if you haven’t, Julia Galef provides a good look at stereotypes of rationality vs. realities in her Skepticon talk, “The Straw Vulcan”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLgNZ9aTEwc
Second, I’m not sure the inclusion of evolutionary psychology in the list of irrational beliefs is entirely merited. I will admit, there are a lot of bigoted, pseudoscientific crackpots within the field of evolutionary psychology (Satoshi Kanazawa is one egregious example), but I don’t think this means the field itself is worthless; it just means we need to be doing it better. The human brain is as much the product of evolution as any other part of our biology is, and it makes sense to study it as such. Done right, this can probably help us to understand why we believe all the crazy things we do.
Other than these details, though, I completely agree with this post. In fact, I’ve been reading your blog regularly since you joined FTB, and this is the first post that I have taken any issue with. Keep up the excellent work!
Interesting. In my experience, people trying to be super-rational are indeed common among atheists, but more common are people who imagine themselves to be objective (and thus, reasoning from good evidence) when they’re not. At the only talk I’ve been to by Richard Dawkins a man asked a question about women, which he answered with some really awful evopsych nonsense (you could hear half the room sigh or start). And he’s a scientist! I’ve resolved to challenge him if I ever get the chance.
I agree with the general thrust of your article Natalie and I identify as part of this new breed of sceptics. Aliens cryptids and paranormal phenomena don’t really interest me, what interests me is how people think. The poor logic that leads to believing bigfoot is using remote viewing to lay the path for an alien invasion, has far more harmful applications such as thinking water cures cancer or for that matter that you can conclusively define whether someone is “really” a woman.
I can understand why scepticism has traditionally focussed on the double-blind experiment: it’s the best kind of evidence, that permits the highest level of confidence, it’s not perfect as you note, but it’s the best. The problem is that not every question can be answered with an experiment that clean. I’m an economist and I can tell you the reason no-ones ever run an experiment to see whether stimulus works isn’t that we’re lazy, it’s because there’s no way to do it. Use the best evidence you can get – that’s where psuedoscientists go wrong, but accept that sometime (most of the time if we’re being honest) we have to rely on lesser techniques which means we can’t be quite as confident of our findings.
The other thing the old guard needs to be careful about is falling prey to the naturalistic fallacy – you can’t derive an ought from an is. There mere fact that, say women have historically performed the majority of domestic labour doesn’t mean there’s any thing right or proper about that. The same is true for the fact that historically most intellectuals have been men.
One thing I do disagree with you about a little (I guess it’s more of a niggle than a full-out disagreement) though is about transcending irrationality. Of course we can’t do so completely, but we can try to be Less Wrong, in the words of one of my favourite websites. We should strive to become more rational, by identifying and (where possible) overcoming the biases in our thinking. But of course that starts with recognising our fallibility, to do otherwise is to risk becoming a cult. And for anyone who doesn’t think that’s possible, I recommend Michael Shermer’s book Why People Believe Weird Things, and in particular his discussion of Objectivism.
Thank you thank you thank you for linking to Less Wrong! It’s by far one of the best skeptic/rationalist sites out there.
Yeah, definitely have to second that: “Less Wrong” is amazing.
I cannot concur, if you are speaking generally; I think you are conflating skepticism with empiricism.
Skepticism, as I understand it, refers to the philosophical stance that belief in claims requires sufficient justification.
(In short, I think your case is predicated on a misapprehension)
Wasn’t Natalie just saying that skepticism has been based on empiricism? She wasn’t confusing the two ideas, she was using the latter to describe the former.
Well, it’s possible (even likely), but it’s not necessarily the case.
Thus my conditional: “if you are speaking generally”; certainly, the skeptical movement has in the main employed empiricism as its epistemic stance, which is a rather good thing.
(Perhaps I’m being overly pedantic)
You make excellent points, and I agree wholeheartedly with the gist of this post. That said, and recognizing that it is basically a draft, I do have some nitpicks
and also commentary. The first is that it’s important to distinguish now-disproven legitimate science from outright pseudoscience. Phrenology, “hysteria” and racial supremacy theories, for instance, have pretty much always been pseudoscience; even using the data available at the time they were formulated, those disciplines have never been consonant with the available facts any more than palmistry is. The pathologization of homosexuality and transgenderism isn’t so clear cut, and there’s probably an argument to be made that that was at the time a reasonable conclusion to draw from the recorded data. That said, science is also about error correction through checking your data and conclusions against not just yourself, but also other people. The whole point of the scientific process is that if your results aren’t replicable by any other investigator repeating your process, then it’s no good. Also, speaking as someone who has gone from a mild type one to a hardcore type two, I am inclined to argue that in fact science, empiricism and rationality are what brought me on board with feminism, racial theory and all that good stuff. The numbers actually demonstrate bigotry of all stripes perfectly well. When you look at the rate of violent crimes, queers are disproportionately victimized. When you look at economic indicators, POCs are economically screwed. Redlining is a reality, and it can be demonstrated with numbers and documentation. I really think that most of the snobbery about the social sciences in certain areas of skepticism is exactly because they show conclusions that certain people don’t like. Especially, of course cis straight white men, but as you say no one is immune. Also, of course, it’s easier to ignore the numbers if you also blow off the accounts of the people who are experiencing the bad side of bigotry and social failings. I know this is also a bit incoherent, and I apologize. It’s a stream of consciousness type of thing.
Just a reminder: this was just a rough outline of my initial thoughts, it’s not really a properly thought through post. So just bear that in mind in terms of noting the little flaws and things in the argument, and go a bit easy on me with this one. I know it’s not perfect, and is instead just a sort of tentative set of things I was thinking through. As in, it’s not like a This Is What I Think About This kind of post, you know?
As I said, I agree with you, and I didn’t mean to jump on you, I just have a kind of knee-jerk response when people classify racial superiority theories as a failure of science. Also, those other posts weren’t there when I started writing mine
. It was an excellent and thoughtful post, overall.
Sorry, I have to say that you are wrong on the issue of racial superiority theories. While said theories could have been debunked at the time they were put forward, they were widely embraced within academia and science during the late 19th-early 20th centuries and initially popularized by Paul Broca, Herbert Spencer, and Francis Galton. (Contra the creationists, though, Darwin himself was progressive for his time and even an ardent abolitionist.) This came to be later known as “scientific racism,” which has still held some influence, though mostly marginal, to this day among followers of, e.g., J. Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Charles Murray:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
http://www.skepdic.com/cranial.html
http://www.skepdic.com/iqrace.html
I’m perfectly aware that “scientific racism” was supported by many of the leading scientists of the day, but that doesn’t make it a valid conclusion from the available facts. They were simply projecting their pre-existing prejudices onto the data and ignoring the bits that didn’t fit. Isaac Newton spent a huge amount of his time on alchemy, but alchemy is still pseudoscience, and physics isn’t.
Um. Wait. If many of the leading scientists of the day embraced an idea that was not a valid conclusion from the available facts, how is that not a failure of science? Isn’t that exactly what “failure of science” would mean? You can’t just define science so that anything that turns out wrong doesn’t count.
Science can clean its own house, so to speak, by figuring out how such a mistake went wrong, finding the real answer, and throwing its weight behind that. Even better, it can make general improvements to its process so that the same sort of mistakes are unlikely to happen again. But it can’t just say “no, that didn’t count, gimme a do over” and pretend it had nothing to do with the consequences. If we screw up, we screw up.
The distinction that I’m drawing here is between cases where insufficient data resulted in erroneous conclusions or unethical behaviors, e.g. ptolemaic celestial mechanics in the first category and human testing on uninformed subjects in the second, versus situations where the desired conclusion overrode the facts, which were then massaged and trimmed to fit, in the manner of scientific racism and intelligent design.
It’s easier to be skeptical about Big Foots and poltergeists than it is about topic the social sciences examine. The problem is the existence of UFOs doesn’t effect everybody but which economic solutions policy makers chose does. Dowsing is inconsequential whereas how society treats women has serious consequences.
Most old-school skeptics try to stay away from the social sciences. They’re too squishy, they’re too prone to disputation by the social science theorists. I’m an economist and a firm believer in a parody of Newton’s Laws of Motion:
1. For every economist there is an equal but opposite economist.
2. They are both wrong.
These two statements can be generalized to all of the social sciences.
Related, but perhaps not identical is there are plenty of pseudo-skeptics out there. For this breed, rationalism isn’t so much abotu having philosophically solid beliefs as it has the same appeal as religion and conspiracy theories: It makes you feel like you have special knowledge that lesser people don’t. These are the ones that dismiss things out of hand for sounding wooey with no solid reasoning. See, for instance, Heina’s recent article about Monsanto in Skepchick or climate “skepticism” or a lot of the stuff on Bullshit!. Youtube is a big venue for these types as is Reddit.
Lately, I keep finding myself reacting to things as either “wow, humanity is fucked” or “wow, humanity is awesome!”. I’m losing track of in-between. How amazingly common our desire to cling to things that allow us to feel specialer and smarter and better informed than everyone else, like we have access to secret vaults of ___ wisdom, definitely falls in the “wow, humanity is fucked” category.
I was remembering someone defending Glenn Beck fans, who said they don’t like him because he’s a conspiracy theorist, but because he lets them feel like they have secret insight into things most people don’t. I LOLed.
I get way more of the “Wow, humanity is fucked” than “HOLY CRAP PEOPLE ARE AWESOME”. I’m frankly amazed that I have any hope at all for the future of humanity, with all the observations of behaviors that are stupid or hateful to a degree that I can scarcely believe.
Depends entirely on my mood. When I’m down, people are idiots and deserve to die. When I’m up there’s no problem we can’t solve. ATM? I can’t wait for the aliens to come and begin the harvest.
I think I’ll second/third/ what ever it is we’re on that I’m mostly with you on this. Since people are more or less bringing up my areas of possible contention and you’re still smoothing the edges on things I’ll leave out any points of contention. It also fills me with complete dread trying to comment on an idea that’s in a rough form as I really want to try not to attack a straw man.
‘As it has stood in the past, skepticism has been predicated on a belief in the power of the empirical and rational.’
It is human to come to a conclusion then only validate additional information that supports my take on things. Of course I am right! How easy is it to use the narrow experiences of oneself to draw conclusions? I have never done that…doh! I do it all the time. So does everyone else and it really is important as you pointed out ‘to begin to imagine our irrational perceptions as perfect rational conclusions.’ I liked reading this post
Thanks
Good post! The word you’re looking for is “scientism.” Unfortunately, the word has been bandied about by cranks so much that it has essentially lost currency with many folk. What generally goes under the banner of “skepticism” today is an outgrowth of loose movements formed around figures from mid-late 20th century secular humanism and popular science (e.g., Paul Kurtz, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Martin Gardner, James Randi, etc.) This, in fact, has little to do with philosophical skepticism, which ranges from Pyrrhonism to postmodernism. Thus, there is nothing inherently limiting what many call “skepticism” to debunking Bigfoot or psychics.
I do have to pick one nit on the evo psych topic, though. I am a fan of David J. Buller’s distinction between capital “EP” Evo Psych and lower-case “e-p” evo psych, where the former is closer to the Flintstones than reality: http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/ep.htm
Evo Psych is mostly what it makes it into the popular media, not to mention being rife with gender essentialism. If you want to see some legit evo psych, I’d highly recommend Scott Atran’s work, which is unpopular with gnu-types because of his bashing of Sam Harris. Start with his interview w/ POI:
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/scott_atran_violent_extremism_and_sacred_values/
Atran makes the salient point that “reason” is a sacred value among the new atheists. The problem is, as another one of my great influences Antonio Damasio has pointed out, reason and emotion are essentially inseparable (see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMrzdk_YnYY)
Whoops, that Damasio link is to the wrong talk. The one where he talks about how emotion and reason are inseparable, covering his books (again, highly recommended) Descartes’ Error and The Feeling of What Happens. Apologies for the presence of Bobo, but fortunately he lets Damasio talk for most of the time:
http://fora.tv/2009/07/04/Antonio_Damasio_This_Time_With_Feeling
There are some areas where social justice, as it is commonly understood, will split the skeptic movement. We’ve already been through this – skepticism is about the world of facts. Did man walk on the moon? Do vaccines cause autism? Is harm reduction a more effective way than a war on drugs to reduce the undesirable effects of substance abuse?
Social justice is more than that. It’s about values. Justice is about equality of outcomes. Egalitarianism is a good that trumps certain other values. There are cases where the state must set aside equality before the law in favor of fairness.
If you combine facts and values you get the recipe for action. Institute progressive taxation. Occupy Wall Street. Boycott McDonald’s.
But while there are certain values that are nigh-universal in the skeptical movement – everyone pays at least lip service to the virtue of self-examination*, for instance, the movement is profoundly split on the values of social justice.
The question then becomes is it possible to critically examine values? I don’t know. It hinges on the question of whether there are axiomatic values, like there are axiomatic concepts. I’ve been thinking a lot about this the last few years, and my answer is probably not.
But if you bring these values into the movement, there will be no way to adjudicate them by skeptical means. It will instead be a question of popularity, rhetoric brilliance and sheer weight of numbers. And a number of people, me among them, will find that they no longer have a place here and will leave.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t focus more on social issues, but you should be aware of the problems, the conflicts and the costs. And then you should ask yourself if it is really worth it.
Something like that.
*although I agree we could use more of that.
I think you’re oversimplifying. Anything that has an effect on society involves values. Whether vaccines cause autism is a question about facts. What the actual negatives of vaccination are is a question about facts. How we should let this information influence our public policy is a question of values. The skeptic movement has never shied away from this all the same.
Which differences between men and women are imaginary, socially constructed or inherent is a question about facts. How this should affect employment policies is a question about values. Some values just get assumed more than others. The core value of skepticism is that believing true things is good and false things is bad.
There are values that are nigh-universal in the skeptic movement and there are those that are not. The important thing is that there is little hope that we can settle this via a calm, rational discussion. Both because people tend to take their values very personally, and because values may not be amenable to such a discussion. And that means that there will be a price to pay. Whether setting new goals for the skeptical movement is worth that price is something everyone has to decide for hirself.
I should add that I think it’s important to raise these questions from now and again and that Natalie’s activities are very valuable. Just as long as everyone remembers that actions will have consequences.
I doubt that she would be at home in a skeptical movement that advocated a flat tax, de-regulation of the market and the abolition of government-financed health care. Why should she – or anyone else – think that we libertarians are less firm in our beliefs?
Because these policies have been tried and have failed in numerous places and at numerous times. The U.S. is the only industrialized country without universal health care, and we spend a larger part of our GDP for worse health and longevity outcomes. Unregulated/”deregulated” markets are havens for every variety of fraudster and snake oil salesman, as well as those who simply prioritize their own gain over the health or lives of others. The environmental, labor, and other regulations that exist now were implemented to solve problems that existed and were severe, and can be observed still in many places today. Compare air quality in Beijing to that of L.A., and remember that before the Clean Air Act, L.A. was just as bad. There are similar laws in Sweden, passed for similar reasons, I’m certain, but I’m not at all familiar with Swedish legal history. The flat tax and other popular libertarian policy propositions have similar empirically demonstrable problems.
But these policies have costs as well, and whether you think the cost is worth benefit is a question of – values. And so we return to the bedrock of the discussion. Can one derive an ought from an is? And I don’t know. I’m still thinking about that one.
I will not discuss concrete proposals, however. I have given my reasons elsewhere.
Of course. If we are going to have oughts, they need to come from somewhere. It’s this or just making them up arbitrarily. Ises are necessary, though not sufficient for oughts. Values get onvolved, too, but the values are often uncontroversial, like the idea that being happy and productive is good.
I recognize that you don’t want to get into this too deeply at the moment, but I would ask you to consider many of these regulations in light of the values I note below, to wit human life (although I think in retrospect that longevity is a better word) human health, and human happiness, particularly the first two, on which the third rather depends.
I’d be inclined to claim that universal values would include things like human life*, human health, and, to the extent that it can be measured, human happiness. We can certainly determine what policies will increase the former two empirically, and we’re getting better at the third one. As far as I’m concerned, other values pretty much all follow from those ones, and I haven’t got much use for any that don’t.
*Actual human life, mind you, not potential human life.
That just gave me a really morbid thought. The most common pro-life argument I hear is that abortion is murder because once conceived, the whatever-it-is-called is a human being. If that is so, wouldn’t many sexually active females not using a physical contraceptive be guilty of involuntary manslaughter many times over? Even those that don’t use contraceptives (from my off hand recollection that I really should go research but feel entirely too lazy to go through with doing properly) 40-50% of conceptions end in miscarriage… which would also be involuntary manslaughter as I currently understand the terms.
So erm… Pro-lifers think women are serial killers? That makes me glad I’m pro-choice!
TomeWyrm: 40% is about the correct rate of early miscarriage. It’s hard to nail down because some failures happen before the woman realizes she’s pregnant.
Also, the “abortion is murder” belief system, and hypocrisy thereof, is examined in depth by Libby Anne over at LoveJoyFeminism. She’s an ex-fundamentalist who knows it from the inside out. Try this:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lovejoyfeminism/2012/02/19/abortion-murder-and-smokescreens-2/
I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said, I wish more people were concerned about this too. There seems to be a very real desire to attach liberal belief structures to skepticism even when those belief structures are themselves ideological and logical.
It worries me. I am an independent, scientific bias occurs both on the left and the right. I don’t want a skeptical movement that is dominated by the left, because then it will be blind to the scientific abuses of the left.
Right now, I think it’s pretty clear that the right is (on the whole) the bigger enemy to science, but we need to think of the inevitability and resist the temptation to go with the lesser of two evils.
I suspect that I have inborn non-social tendencies that at least partially account for my aversion to identifying myself with movements of any kind. I do not think that this is necessarily a positive attribute, but it may sometimes have it’s advantages as well. Your article addresses apparently shifting priorities and perspectives within the ‘skeptical movement’. Considering myself as being something of an outsider to this movement I certainly cannot quibble with the validity of your assesment, and certainly not in contrast to my own perceptions. One thing that stood out to me in your brief discussion were your references to elevatorgate, the teen-girl r/atheism incident, the Staks Rosch “tokenism” affair, the Grothe/Christina mini-conflagation, Penn Jilette’s mysogynistic abuse of women via inappropriate language, the Amazing Atheist’s public meltdown, an inappropriate invitation for Jessica Ahlquist to join a Facebook group, and finally John Loftus’ public insult of your journalistic competency.
While I can appreciate that you, and a signigicant number of others, may consider these events as being worthy of focused interest and discussion, I’ve got to admit that from my limited perspective they are all very trivial concerns. At worst, they provide scant anecdotal evidence that there are some people who fall significantly short of somewhat arbitrary standards of being sufficiently sophisticated in their grasp of issues pertaining to sex, gender, etc. I think that these sorts of kerfuffles, and the interest that they draw, best illustrate that even the ‘skeptical community’ has an embarassingly high interest and appetite for interpersonal drama.
I understand that we all cannot, and should not, share the same interests and concerns to the same degree and I hope that you do not take personal offense by this comment to that effect in response to your article. After all, it seems to come with turf in the broad domain of skepticism, doesn’t it?
You’ll have to get used to this and this is only skeptical shitfight area #231 of 492042.
At least on the internet that deals with skeptical metacommentary anyway, I find the real world events that I attend or more focused areas of the internet far less angry.
They’re hardly trivial concerns if you’re the kind of person who’s being threatened and abused. Lucky you, eh?
That’s one of the properties I have observed that seem to be somehow integral to the internet. The magnification of “kerfuffles” into full blown – erm, the term escapes me. Movements? Argumentative signposts? Rallying points? – which is something I’ve come to accept as a denizen of the ‘net. Even if I don’t personally agree with something like ElavatorGate being important (which, I actually do. To me is speaks to a disturbing trend of misogynistic sentiments from a LOT of people coming to the surface), I can accept that someone else does, and try my best to see things from their perspective.
Part of what makes ElavatorGate important to me as a possible offender (I’m rather unmistakeably male in public, and I’ve got the social graces of a mountain), is that it DOES bug some/most women when things like that happen. I don’t want to creep women out by trying to be friendly. I like people of that gender too much in general to do them that kind of discourtesy.
The thing I found interesting about all of the situations you name is the reaction to them:
– the framing of attractive women as public utilities who are obligated to ‘be nice’ to those objectifying them
– the almost universal framing of men objectifying women as ‘socially awkward’ instead of as proto-rapists
– the defense that threats of rape and assault aren’t serious but ‘just kidding around’
– and in particular that discussions about barriers to the full participation of half the population in all aspects of society are dismissed as “very trivial concerns”.
I don’t think any of those are trivial matters. However, once you get to the 4th or 5th round of “W’s reaction to X’s comment on Y’s commentary on Z where he called my hair dark blond instead of light brown,” One starts to wonder if anything constructive is getting written.
Personally I think it just ends up entrenching the ridiculous false dichotomies that the Melinda Tankard-Reist’s of the world operate so well in. And you can’t always rely on them to self-immolate like she did.
Shorter Steve: The rights of people who are not straight cis white men are nothing but trivia and drama.
Thank you so much for weighing in on that; I don’t know how the rest of us could have lived without you letting us know.
Sophisticated??
Jeez, some days I’m as socially awkward as they get, but even I can figure out the difference between “avoiding drama” and “not respecting other people”. In particular, even if you can’t deal with real life, the Internet has given us the ability to listen to many people who have laid out very clearly some problematic patterns of behavior, why they are problematic and how much they affect people, and how not to do that. This blog in particular is great writing on trans feminism /and/ great writing addressing some of the social reasons we need skepticism; it takes work to write stuff this comprehensive.
Comments like this one of Steve Schuler are so strange to me. The ones that say they don’t care about interacting with other people, and the implication is that if you just did the same you’d be happier. But it is a rare luxury to be able to survive financially without social interaction, let alone emotionally. And there’s an inherent paradox: if you claim not to interact with people or care what they think, and not to think about issues of social justice, then you wouldn’t be commenting in this discussion. To do so is to express an opinion and a desire to be acknowledged socially. I’m very literal-minded by nature and prefer to believe people mean what they write, but I have to conclude that someone who does this actually has another social purpose, such as trying to make others feel inferior.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/02/on-divisive-atheists-and-some.html
*scratches my head* It’s a good essay, though I still think you’re mistaken to put the weight on formal credentials rather than directly on intellectual quality. I’m not sure I see why you linked to it in response to this essay, though. I mean, there’s plenty of things that might be connections, but nothing so clear that I’m sure that’s what you meant. Would you mind clearing up just what you were responding to with this link?
“Of course I’m a feminist! If you want proof, just look at how many times I’ve said I’m a feminist!”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/02/01/but-im-an-ally-im-on-your-side/
It’s really neither here nor there, Robert, and we don’t need to ask him to explain himself. As far as I’m concerned, this is over. If he can’t even admit the “diversity hire” remark was over the line, I hardly expect a cogent explanation of his mentality to be forthcoming. To repeat his oft-asserted demand: “let’s give it a rest”
… actually, yeah, I take it back. Loftus’ essay is quite clear, I just should have read it more closely. (Missed both the title and the second-to-last paragraph – go critical reading skills!)
I’m pretty sure the second to last paragraph was just edited in. It didn’t seem to exist until a few minutes ago. At least the apology part.
JWL:
That apology is rather back-handed.
“Ally” isn’t something you state you are, and then are done with it. It’s something you do.
Calling a trans woman a “diversity hire” isn’t being an ally.
You can’t even be bothered to respond personally now, save for blogwhoring?
It seems to me that alt med has been pretty much a mainstay as a focus of traditional skepticism for a while now. Pharmaceutical corporations are something else altogether. All of the arguments I’ve had about corporate agriculture are nothing compared to the response to these challenges.
You seem to be drawing a line between science and the social sciences which separates the latter from reason and evidence. This is incorrect.
Again, just pointing out that the conclusions drawn in any discipline should be based on reason and evidence. I have commitments in sociology that no doubt shape the way I form my questions and my methods (which are always open to criticism), but I try to be aware of this, and of course to base my conclusions on the evidence. Sociological evidence is evidence, and criticism of methods or arguments on the basis of their ignoring or not adequately engaging with social phenomena or evidence from the social sciences are scientific criticisms.
This is true, but seems to conflate motivations/values and empirical evidence. I understand what you’re trying to get at, but this reads as suggesting that skepticism concerning misogyny, racism, transphobia and homophobia is rooted solely in opposition to its motivations and not to the utter failure of the arguments and evidence people try to marshal in their support. It’s complicated, because often you want to get people to see that they’re ignoring or dismissing all of the weaknesses and holes in what they’re claiming as scientific justification for bigotry because of their ideological commitments, but once you start talking about those ideological commitments they turn around and try to accuse you of ignoring the evidence and being unscientifically all about their “politically incorrect” motives, even if you’ve been discussing the evidence all along. As written, some of your post plays into that accusation a bit.
And that premise is correct. Again, I understand the point you’re trying to make, but I think it’s being overstated in a way that throws out science itself along with false claims to objectivity and scientific certitude.
No, I’m not drawing a line between social sciences / humanities and “hard” sciences, I’m only pointing to a line that others have drawn. I myself think the distinctions aren’t as strong or important as others suggest.
As I said, I understand that’s what you’re trying to do. But at various points it comes across quite differently. Perhaps my first comment wasn’t as clear as it should have been; I think the subsequent ones said it better. The problem isn’t so much that it reads as drawing a line, but that it seems you’re trying to erase the line in favor of arguing that the natural sciences are much more like the social sciences than people appreciate in the sense of not being immune to irrationality/emotion/bias, but without correspondingly making clear that the social sciences are much more like the natural sciences than people appreciate in the sense of being rational and empirically-based.
So it sounds at points like you’re saying that because people have wrapped bad and unsupported arguments in the mantle of science and because science doesn’t provide an infallible key to Truth, we should give up on expecting reason and evidence to provide true knowledge and focus only on warping motivations. This plays into criticisms from the other side that people fighting bigotry are only interested in motives and that we don’t have science on our side. I don’t think you’re trying to say that, but that’s how this piece comes across to me at various moments.
I think we should focus on warping motivations (and many people have) to understand people better, to counter weak arguments and evidence, and to develop our practices to overcome this problem to the extent possible. Because science as a practical method is a powerful, and essential, weapon for fighting bigotry.
“For example, this form of skepticism will typically automatically assume the conclusions drawn from science to be above questions and criticism drawn from humanities or sociology.”
Could you elaborate on this?
By conclusions, do you mean proposed scientific facts?
And therefore, do you then believe that non-scientific types of argument have place in criticizing scientific assertions about reality (statements of statistical truth based on evidence)?
I believe that the conclusions drawn from scientific data aren’t always correct, that criticisms of those conclusions being voiced from the humanities, sociology and “soft” sciences aren’t always invalid, and that we shouldn’t always default to considering theories put forth by the STEM community automatically superior to counter-arguments put forth by others.
I agree that we need to weigh every argument on its own merits and not discredit it simply because of the source, that wasn’t what I was intending to probe into with my question.
I’m concerned by the way you put it, because you make it sound like statements of science derived by hard research and theorizing should be open to serious criticism from the humanities that isn’t necessarily criticism of the kind we consider valid in science.
In science, calling a finding into question is a matter of presenting counter-evidence, poking holes in the research methodology used to establish that finding, or showing a direct logical conflict between that particular statement and another established statement.
Anything that falls outside of this criteria is, in my view, a non-scientific argument and has no business in the realm of science. This is not the kind of argument that the humanities typically advances.
This was the kind of argument that was used to disprove all of those bunk sciences you mentioned, not the objections that the isms, ideologies, and humanities of the day presented.
Besides, isn’t the humanities intruding on science what skeptics are already fighting against? Religion is a humanity. Politics? A humanity.
The goal of skepticism is to keep ideology out of science. I find your comment here very questionable.
Scientific counter-argument is necessary to ultimately debunk a poor scientific theory, but often the initial push to question the existing theory is provided by humanities and social movements. Feminism and LGBTQ rights were necessary to make the push to modify the medical community’s perspectives on sex, gender, homosexuality and transgenderism.
So yeah, I think you’re representing exactly the kind of mentality I regard as problematic, relying solely on the scientific community to do our intellectual work, and considering the scientific community’s views somehow above questioning from other angles.
Those movements were certainly agitators against previous consensus that pushed for a revaluation of the evidence, but the claim that they were necessary is not one you can make. There is absolutely no evidence to back that up at all.
Science deals with inanimate matter all the time that cannot defend itself against ideas and conclusions it doesn’t like, and yet it has no difficulty finding the truth of the matter in those instances even when it is initially wrong thanks to the self-correcting nature of science.
If people don’t present well-reasoned, scientifically minded objections to science, that doesn’t mean we should ignore them. It’s never a good idea to completely shut out an entire stream of input. If that’s the point you’re making, I completely agree there.
But there’s definitely a danger in listening too much to what the subjective, experientially driven, fuzzy-logic wielding ideologues have to say about science.
If you think I’m talking about giving the floor to cranks, you’re setting up a straw man. I am saying that yes, scientific consensus needs to be challenged and prodded by people from other fields, and by those who are pushing social conceptions forward. The reason there’s “no evidence to back up” the claim that it’s necessary is simply because science never has existed in a vacuum. Trying to act like it COULD, though, that what history has taught us repeatedly about the important role of culture and the humanities in driving human ideas forward is simply a coincidence, is an extreme claim to make, and I disagree strongly. I think the attitude you’re presenting is dangerous, and leads us away from maintaining a healthy skepticism and into an unhealthy reification of conclusions that happen to come from particular circles and fields.
I didn’t say you’re suggesting you should open the floor to cranks, I just think you’re giving the humanities a bit too much credit.
I feel like I’m being strawmanned as well. I never said science should exist in a vacuum or ignore these groups, in fact I specifically said the opposite.
[...] So in my efforts as a skeptic, as a person who values truths (as dark as they may be) over falsehoods (as comforting as they may be), I seek not to rid myself of my human fallibility and emotional subjectivity. I seek instead to understand it and learn to cope. [...]