I thought this was going to be a useful list

Vox-Day

Vox Day started to make a list of all SJWs — he calls it a complete catalog. Well, good, I thought, it could be handy to know who all the decent people are. Unfortunately, it’s very short, so I think he’s missing a lot of people, and also, weirdly, it includes people like Ben Shapiro, far right fanatic and former editor at Breitbart.

So it’s more of a list of people Vox Day doesn’t like.

It is kind of a strange obsession that some of the worst people on the internet have, of maintaining Enemies Lists and threatening to put people on it if they get out of line, as if anyone has ever been intimidated by such a fate, and as if being put on a List was significant. Anyone remember the List Lord of Talk.Origins, Peter Nyikos? I think I was on a few of his Lists. It was mainly good for a laugh.

The governor of Florida creates an attack ad…against a constituent?

I had no idea Cara Jennings was running against Governor Scott, or was so powerful and influential that she must be crushed, but I guess she is. Or maybe that public rebuke in a coffee shop was so painful that he had to relieve himself of some bile.

Here’s Rick Scott’s reply to a citizen:

I learned one thing from that ad.

Rick Scott is weak and afraid.

Good.

What I would say to Bernie and Hillary, if they cared about my opinion

amicabledivorce

Remember the long game.

In a few months, the Democratic party will hold a convention and pick a nominee. It will be one of you. Go ahead, imagine that it’s you.

You are then going to turn to the second place finisher and ask them to continue their campaigning and help you defeat the abomination that is going to lurch out of the Republican convention. You want them to agree to do so. Put everything you say now into that future context, please.

I say the same thing to all the Bernie and Hillary supporters.

I would also say something special to Bill: your wife is doing a fine job without you. Stop “helping”.

Nothing but us big fat chickens around here

fatchicken

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are deeply suspicious of twin studies, and those who welcome their confirmation that that their identity is fixed and heritable. I’m in the first group. I always have been. Maybe it’s something in my genes.

I first encountered the popular accounts of the Minnesota twin studies when I was a teenager, seeing the scientist and some of the twins doing the rounds of the afternoon talk shows — I think I saw them on the Mike Douglas Show (I’ve dated myself now). I remember them going on and on about the amazing similarities between the twins who had been raised apart. They both married women with the same name! They drank the same brand of beer! They were both volunteer firemen! They gave their dogs the same name! But while there were some recognizable similarities in the pairs, at the same time the obsession with superficial trivia wrecked the credibility of the stories. What? You’re trying to argue that my pet’s names are somehow encoded in my genome? It seemed to me that what we were seeing is echoes of similar culture in their upbringing (later confirmed: most of the twins weren’t really ‘separated’, but were raised by different relatives).

I also saw psychological tropes that ought to have been recognized. These were people who were rewarded for finding coincidences, and they avidly complied, and the scientists were readily accepting of coincidences as evidence of fundamental causal similarity. I was exposed to this pop genetics at the same time I was reading Fate magazine with a critical eye, and the stories were similar. I’d see stories that claimed to confirm the fact of reincarnation, for instance, by compiling lists of similarities between the contemporary claimant and their past life incarnation. They have the same birthday! Note the resemblances in this old-timey photograph! He lived in the Civil War era, now he is a Civil War re-enactor! He died in a fire, and now he’s afraid of fire!

It was exactly the same. That bugged me. And to this day I still see people touting the old twin studies as conclusively demonstrating the genetic basis of personality and intelligence, declaring that it has been positively confirmed that the heritability (a word they often don’t understand — genetically, it has a very narrow and precise meaning that isn’t exactly what they think it is) of intelligence is exactly 50%, meaning that half your IQ is determined by your genes (again, that’s not what it means), and therefore we should be more concerned with breeding intelligent people than teaching people. I also see this fandom coupled with other ugly associations — racists love it, as do Libertarians and simple-minded techno-fetishists. There are definitely genetic contributions to brain development and behavior, but human twin studies are deeply flawed and prone to exaggeration.

Stephen Hsu is a member of the gullible second group. He has posted a reply to my criticisms of his claim that we can readily ramp up human intelligence to reach an IQ of 1000 because hey, intelligence is obviously heritable. The twin studies say so.

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Jessica Williams vs. Gordon Klingenschmitt

The man is totally outclassed.

The most telling exchange is when Klingenschmitt tries to justify oppressing transgender people because all of them are sexual predators.

That is perversion. it’s people who label themselves as transgender for the purpose of getting that access to violate the rights of others.

“Is it fair to say that because you’re a priest that you’re a pedophile?”

Well, of course not.

“Why, ‘Of course not’? Why?”

Because some people are criminals and some people are not criminals.

“Could you take that logic and apply that to the transgender community?”

They’re apples and oranges.

“By apples and oranges do you mean apples and apples?”

David Klinghoffer whines about an imaginary foul

fakeinjury

Uh-oh. I’ve disappointed David Klinghoffer. I should probably put that on my CV.

You see, the other day he praised a fellow named Tom Gilson for a post in which he provided a succinct summary of Intelligent Design creationism, and I took that summary apart, point by point. You might think, perhaps Klinghoffer finds fault with my analysis? He doesn’t provide any rebuttals. Did I get something wrong in using Gilson’s definition of ID? Nope, he doesn’t say…that would be hard to do anyway, since Klinghoffer praised it as exactly accurate!, exclamation point and all. Even in his title he declares that Tom Gilson Nails It.

So what’s his complaint? That I corrected the wrong person.

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A new hope?

rogueone

There’s going to be a new Star Wars movie in December. Really new, not like that recycled plot line we saw in the last movie.

It’s a Star Wars story that has escaped much of the baggage of the characters and plots of the George Lucas movies? Yes please. Also, the smaller scope (“steal some plans!” rather than “save the galaxy!”) is welcome, as is a character with more personality than “hero”.

I also look forward to the angry tears of the fanboys who discover that it’s another movie that puts a woman protagonist front and center. Don’t you all know that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, gender roles were identical to the traditional expectations of 1950 America?