This month’s linkspam is predominantly about trans and gender issues. That might be a coincidence.

Prejudice, “Political Correctness,” and the Normalization of Donald Trump – Julia Serano has enough in here that she really could have written three essays, and then I would put it in my linkspam three times.  I particularly like the middle essay, where she talks about the uses of “political correctness”, and why activists think the word should be ditched even if it includes some genuinely objectionable activities.  I have said such things myself but could never say it so well.

Science isn’t Broken – In the past year or so, there have been many articles about the unreliability of science, and this is one.  I’m linking it just for the interactive toy that lets you try p-hacking.

I’m inclined to believe that science is doing just fine.  It’s journalists who have been too quick to trust an claim just because a study said so, and who are now surprised to find that studies are not so reliable as that.  Working scientists have always known to distrust studies’ conclusions.  This is true in physics too, being a “hard” science does not help.  In my field we don’t really calculate p-values, so p-hacking isn’t a thing, but we still have biases, just ones that are more difficult to characterize.

An epic battle between feminism and deep-seated misogyny is under way in South Korea – This is a pretty interesting read about the South Korean version of the culture wars.  It sounds like misogyny is really bad there.  The feminist organization Megalia is characterized as rather extreme, but in that context it might be warranted, I dunno.  This link was shared by a commenter. [Read more…]

This linkspam does not mention the election, since I collected the links in the previous week.

How Should We Respond to Passive Communication? – Miri discusses the conflict between “ask” and “guess” culture, and more specifically how she responds when people around her use “guess” culture.  I was also raised with ask culture.  But I’d say for me the more serious cultural conflict is between positivity and negativity.  Many people have trouble understanding that I don’t like compliments.  I’d rather people be critical of me, and let me be critical of them.

Valeant sued for botching marketing of female libido pill – Some of you may heard of Addyi (aka Flibanserin), which is used to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder in pre-menopausal women.  After getting approved by the FDA last year, it seems to have been a market failure.  Possibly because it’s barely effective and has serious negative side effects.  And now the investors are suing the owning company for poor marketing.  Via Next Step: Cake.

Entropy and Complexity, Cause and Effect, Life and Time – Sean Carroll teams up with Minute Physics to explain stuff.  I particularly like the one on cause and effect, embedded below the cut.  One of my pet peeves is when people cite physics as supporting their intuition that causation is real.  Causation isn’t really a physics concept, it’s a philosophy concept.

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Earlier this month, Niki Massey of Seriously?!? died.  Dana has a roundup of memorial posts for Niki, and to that I would like to add one from Prismatic Entanglements.  All I can say about Niki was I ran into her blog around February, and it just immediately clicked for me.  I didn’t even know her and yet I feel this was a great loss.  On a side note, she was also openly ace, although not known in the ace blogosphere.

In more positive news, new bloggers are now being added to FtB.  I’ll link them all later, once they’ve been given a chance to settle.  Now, for links from the past month.

Rebirth of Dudebro – Great American Satan shared this one in the comments, in response to the idea of atheist jerks.  I definitely agree with the observation that the atheist dudebro type is systematic, and endlessly replenishes itself.  Just the other week in the local student group, some new guy made jokes about Asians.  Dude, you live in California, you can’t be that clueless.

When people complain about atheist assholes, I have a mix of feelings.  First, I don’t necessarily believe you, because everyone is a jerk according to someone else.  Second, you think you have it bad, but I willingly associate with these people on a frequent basis.  Which maybe makes me a jerk too, although I’m a different kind of jerk.

Thoughts on cults – Ozy suggests replacing “cult” with “spiritual abuse”.  “Cult” has the problem of targeting strange (but not necessarily harmful) behavior, and targeting new religions, whereas “spiritual abuse” can equally apply to major religions, and is not either/or.  I largely agree with this, although I also agree with the first comment that “cult” captures a bunch of heuristic properties of a certain kind of problematic group.

I generally avoid calling groups cults because I think of it as basically an insult for new religions, and I don’t have any particular beef with new religions.  On the contrary, since non-belief is gaining popularity among the younger generation, I fully expect to see more sympathetic atheistic new religions in my lifetime. [Read more…]