I mentioned that Satoshi Kanazawa has a new column on Big Think. Now I’ve got two flavors of responses for you!
-
Flavor #1 is spicy! Adam Lee, who is also on Big Think, is indignant that standards have dropped so low.
I can only speculate as to the lapse in editorial judgment that must have occurred for Big Think to extend this racist, sexist, genocide-advocating pseudoscientific bigot a platform. Were they unaware of his views? Were they aware, but went ahead anyway because controversy is good for traffic? (Racism can’t be good for traffic, can it?)
I don’t want to be accused of giving any extra publicity to Kanazawa, so I won’t be writing to criticize him again. However, I want to make it clear in the most emphatic terms that I think him utterly vile and contemptible. And rest assured, I intend to follow up with Big Think’s upper echelons to find out who made this decision and why, and I’ll update when I know more.
Apparently, he did talk to the upper echelon at Big Think, because a nameless editorial source posted a response, which is Flavor #2.
-
Flavor #2 is oleaginous, lumpy, and full of sugar — it’s a kind of lard-flavored ice cream, with bullshit chunks (Hmm, what would Ben & Jerry’s call that? “Fecal Globsplosion”?). The editors support Kanazawa with many adjectives.
Having tracked his thinking for years, including having him appear for an interview on Big Think, we cannot help but admire Satoshi’s convictions to freedom of thought, even if sometimes we too have cringed at his missteps . At its best, it yields wondrous new perspectives on confounding aspects of modern life, such as the challenge of dating in big cities. At its worst, it yields the intellectual equivalent of shock-jock antics which serve as a call-to-arms for the legions of self-righteous self-promoters eager to decontextualize and oversimplify matters into stark injustices they condemn into oblivion across the cable news airwaves.
Our support for his approach to thinking, and intellectual purview, should not be confused with an endorsement of his conclusions and prescriptions, to the extent that he actually argues on behalf of any specific outcome or conclusion in any given instance. The best and fairest criticisms of his work are truly academic in nature and involve just how far his cross-cutting postulates (one might call them intellectual mash-ups) can extend on the backs of the (current) consensus theories that underpin them and the empirical data he marshals alongside them (often circumstantially).
Whoa. Read the whole thing. It reeks of desperate justifications, but it’s entertaining to watch this person twist themselves into knots trying to simultaneously praise Kanazawa while also trying to make sure they don’t get splashed with the slime from his certain eruptions.
Our support for his approach to thinking, and intellectual purview, should not be confused with an endorsement of his conclusions and prescriptions, to the extent that he actually argues on behalf of any specific outcome or conclusion in any given instance.
How can one support his “approach” without supporting his conclusions?
The best and fairest criticisms of his work are truly academic in nature and involve just how far his cross-cutting postulates (one might call them intellectual mash-ups) can extend on the backs of the (current) consensus theories that underpin them and the empirical data he marshals alongside them (often circumstantially).
Could this be a Sokal hoax?
How completely missing the point they are. Nobody’s against “Freedom of Thought” except when those thoughts, when voiced, turn out to be horrid crap. Nobody that I know of was criticizing Kanazawa for thinking, we were criticizing the output of said thinking, which was in my opinion, loose, turbid and muddy, to say the least, and downright disgusting racism to say a bit more.
Exactly how do you endorse someones thinking, without endorsing the obvious results of that thinking?
That’s like helping someone pick up stones, but denying association when the windows start getting smashed.
ragingbee said:
‘How can one support his “approach” without supporting his conclusions?’
I say:
No shit dude WTF. Take that 1st paragraph you quoted and apply it to ANY of the worst sociopathic fucks in history. Completely works…
ricardodivali having sniffles over stiffles says:
That’s like helping someone pick up stones, but denying association when the windows start getting smashed.
You see, this is why I love you guys here so much. An endless trove of win…
Is this load of shit supposed to actually mean something?
It should be noted that Kanazawa turned off comments on his first thread.
And once again the point is completely missed, in that one can absolutely support Kanazawa’s right to free thought and speech without giving him a column.
Ashleybell
<blockquote>Quoted text here</blockquote>
gives you
This has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood chimp.
Wow. That is some of the most turgid drivel I have read in a long time. The editors apparently need editors, along with people to do their thinking for them. It would almost be funny if it weren’t in support of a bigoted shitmonger.
I was going to say “oil and sugar? ew.”
Then I read on. X-)
Freedom of speech! It only ever works one way!!!1!
Quite.
How can one support his “approach” without supporting his conclusions?
An analogy might be “I can concur with allowing nazis marching through Chicago, but that does not mean I like Illinois nazis.”
“Fecal Globsplosion” – The official B&J flavor of the Romney/Ryan campaign.
A better analogy: I will give the Nazis permission to use my lawn for their rally, I’ll invite the whole neighborhood over, set up a sound system, have my kids keep up a steady flow of lemonade, and clean up the mess afterwards.
But I don’t support the Nazis.
I think we learnt from bitter experience here that many people do not [want to] understand this concept.
“it’s a kind of lard-flavored ice cream, with bullshit chunks (Hmm, what would Ben & Jerry’s call that? “Fecal Globsplosion”?).”
Aw man, I was eating chocolate frozen yogurt, and now I can’t finish it. Damn you! :(
In fact, I’m fairly certain that most people are criticizing him for not thinking . But the people who whine about Freedom of Thought seem to always prioritize FREEDOM over thought, so that’s pretty typical.
we cannot help but admire Satoshi’s convictions to freedom of thought, even if sometimes we too have cringed at his missteps
I.e.: “He sucks, but he’s really good at it.”
Not a particularly good analogy. Better: “I’m going by some new jackboots for some nazis so they can march through Chicago, but that does not mean I like Illinois nazis.”
It should be noted that Kanazawa turned off comments on his first thread.
Let’s hear it for free speech and thought! :D
What approach to thinking would that be then? A sloppy simplistic rejection of the foundational concepts of the enlightenment is now a new, edgy “approach to thinking” is it?
translation: don’t worry, it’s not like he has anything much to say (that makes sense) anyway.
Isn’t that true all the time for everyone anyway?
Now this last bit is just a re-writing of “the simile of the underlying metaphor” from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Time to throw somebody out the airlock (only metaphorically, of course, note the underlying simile)
Er?
What is this arguing? That scientific rigour and methodology are plastic to the extent that they should bend to test poorly-formulated, loaded hypotheses?
By being rewarded with a gig at big think, and without really having to address his twin failures of scientific rigour and methodology.
Daring to engage a taboo? I thought it was because of the naked racism and sexism on show.
Is Satoshi their Dancing Bear, then? Chained rage that struts and gambols, aping real scientists so that we can feel the pleasure of knowing we are superior beings?
They’ve already failed.
Ok, point taken. I seem to have missed / overlooked that the dipshite is apparently a regular. I was assuming it was a guest / one-off article, which was then made worse by a poor editorial response.
Kacy Ray, last seen blaming the victim of the gropey cop in Arizona over at Dispatches, is in Adam Lee’s thread defending Kanazawa’s racist foreign-policy recommendations.
(TW: This comment is particularly special. He blames his younger adopted sister, who is “mentally challenged” and was only 11 at the time, for having been raped.)
Also, the mix of cranks with some really good people on “Big Think” is a problem that all web publications have: in order to generate traffic they need something controversial. That explains why we have this guy and Penn Gillette in the same part of cyberspace as Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson.
I only ever looked at “Big Think” because for a brief time they hosted one of my a favorite bloggers. But she had the integrity to jump ship on them within a year (to be honest I am not entirely sure exactly why she left). Surely the big names can do the same and do not need that freak show to provide them a platform?
Just appalling.
kacyray is a disgusting piece of shit. No thanks for showing it off, Ms. Daisy Cutter.
It’s not just me, I know it, but these kacyray types just live for the shit that the Kanazawa’s of the world produce. Something about justification …
And giving Kanazawa a further platform is just gratuitous controversy baiting. It certainly didn’t take long, and just look at the ‘defence’ of Big Think’s decision to have him on! It looks as though they are completely aware of Kanazawa and are literally just waiting for him to say something incredibly stupid just for the controversy. At least, that’s the only interpretation I can make out of that one nonsense paragraph.
Have they read academic criticisms of Kanazawa? They have titles like “Mind the gap(s) … in theory, method and data: Re-examining Kanazawa” or have abstracts like
I wouldn’t find those especially encouraging, as the editors.
we cannot help but admire Satoshi’s convictions to freedom of thought
Grammatical mangling aside, I am heartily sick of “freedom of thought” being used as an excuse for opinions which are distinctly lacking in the latter. Yeah, OK: you’re free to make shit up, but no outlet with any aspirations to credibility should put it on a plate and serve it.
The rest is just risible in its postmodern word-saladiness.
If you were so inclined, you could translate Satoshi Kanazawa as Wisdom Goldenswamp.
Eamon Knight,
I just substitute “freedom of thought” with “freedom from thought” in my mind when reading something that stupid.
Boasting about how you or someone you are praising is defying/engaging a taboo is second only to praising them as “politically incorrect” as a diagnostic for ignorant andor dishonest hogwash.
Kanazawa: “I THINK WE SHOULD KILL EVERYONE IN THE MIDDLE EAST”
Everyone else: “Stop being a jerk”
Kanazawa: “HA HA JOKE’S ON YOU I WAS DOING THE INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENT OF SHOCK-JOCK ANTICS”
Nao wif moar cross-cutting postulates!
#34 FTW
No.
At best, Kanazawa shows why evo-psych belongs in the dustbin of history along with astrology, alchemy, and supply side economics.
We’ve already tossed it once when it was called Sociobiology. It came back again. Zombies can be so hard to put down.
It should be noted that Kanazawa turned off comments on his first thread.
indeed it should be, especially given the supposed “editorial” response praising his “free speech approach”
liars and the lying liars that support them.
Big Think should be renamed Big Thought, because the editorial staff obviously wish it to become a thing of the past.
Fuck, I missed that when I was calling him out.
tn;dr, I guess.
We’ve already tossed it once when it was called Sociobiology.
we did?
I recall a lot of controversy invoked by people like Gould, where they IMAGINED where sociobiology might be misused.
I do not however, recall sociobiology being tossed as a field.
Yes, for certain more-or-less ignorant values of ‘we’.
It did disappear.
A lot of people these days have never even heard of it and have no idea it ever existed.
A lot of people these days have never even heard of it
you most certainly have if you’ve spent any time in academia studying behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology.
my own major prof was an expert on the subject:
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/2/286.abstract
so, those claiming I’m the one who is ignorant on this subject?
please.
it was my FIELD OF STUDY AS A GRAD STUDENT.
and, of course, there is STILL the journal of sociobiology itself:
http://www.csuchico.edu/biol/Sociobiology/sociobiologysubscription.html
please, don’t let yourselves get confused.
sociobiology is a legitimate and extant field of endeavor.
so is evo psych.
that there are idiots in any field is a given, it’s just that since sometimes these fields deal with human behavior, it gets politicized out of all proportion when these idiots extend themselves too far.
and, for those unaware, the only thing proposed by sociobiology is that behavior is like any other phenotype, and can be explained by interactions between genetics and environment, and is also heritable, like any other trait, thus selection acts on it, drift acts on it, etc.
is this really so controversial an idea at its base?
I really hope not.
…it’s also an idea that goes back to the days of Nikko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz (even into the 1940s); it was only popularized with the label “sociobiology” by EO Wilson in his book of the same name in the mid 70s.
Not necessarily.
At a university I was at for a while, there was a large and well known ecology and evolution section.
I never once heard them use the word “sociobiology”. They did have a few people studying behavioral ecology and evolution though.
They did have a few people studying behavioral ecology and evolution though.
go back and directly ask them what sociobiology means to them then.
or, read a few volumes of the journal itself.
see who publishes in it.
check out who the editorial staff is.
I’m just going to repost what I said yesterday.
The basic premise isn’t flawed. Our brains are shaped by evolution.
The execution is totally flawed. It’s all just personal bias, just so stories, and culturally driven prejudices. Our minds are also very plastic and shaped by the cultures we live in 24 hours a day and differ dramatically from person to person and change over our lifetimes as well.
Separating plastic minds, personal diversity, growing up and older, and culture from evolutionary effects is hard. The evo-psych people aren’t even trying.
It’s time for evo-psych to join astrology, alchemy, and the demon theory of disease in the dustbin. It’s just not worth reading or thinking about any more.
This is BTW, the second chance for evo-psych. A few decades ago it was sociobiology. Sociobiology flamed out for exactly the same reasons and few people have even heard of it these days.
The execution is totally flawed. It’s all just personal bias, just so stories, and culturally driven prejudices.
Ok, just stop.
you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
don’t keep digging this hole for yourself, please?
This is BTW, the second chance for evo-psych. A few decades ago it was sociobiology.
again, this is blind ignorance.
evo pysch has fuckall to do with how sociobiology developed, or is studied.
*sigh*
The problem with evo-psych at least as applied to humans, is that is filling up with pseudoscience, just so stories, and junk science.
You then end up with a few nuggets of real science amongst a huge amount of garbage.
No one should have to wade through a lot of garbage like Kanazawa or Bering looking for something worthwhile.
More importantly, the fundie agencies stop funding it. Science runs on money.
I don’t have to. I was there for years, knew them well, went to their seminars, went to their parties. Never once did I hear the word “sociobiology”. This was BTW, a large group of world class scientists.
Not the best indicator for anything. It’s easy to set up a journal these days and there are a lot of weak ones, Journal of How Mercury causes Autism, Journal of Herbal Cancer Cures and so on.
I don’t see that at all. Compare the defintions of evo-psych and sociobiology.
The definitions of evo psych and sociobiology seem pretty similar to me. Both claim that behavior is a product of evolution.
I don’t find that at all implausible as stated before.
The actual execution, the work in the field, has been pretty weak at least as applied to humans. Which is what we are talking about here. Not fish or dandelions.
I don’t see that at all.
that’s right, you don’t, because you’re relying on wikipedia instead of the actual field itself.
look at the people involved in both fields, and you will see little overlap in publications.
seriously, your ignorance on this issue just has to stop.
have you ever even READ Wilson’s book?
I’m betting not, that you instead thought it was likely just pop pyschology trash given, that people like Gould critcized it.
go and read it.
THEN come back and tell me it’s all hand waiving and poor techniques.
The actual execution, the work in the field, has been pretty weak at least as applied to humans. Which is what we are talking about here.
neither of these is actually correct.
one, sociobiology as a field encompasses far more than the evolution of human behavior
two, if you think there have been no significant studies regarding the evolution of human behavior, you again are displaying your ignorance.
i’m sorry, but this knee-jerk reaction to BOTH sociobiology and evo psych is just pathetic.
even Gould would not have wanted to think his critiques would have lead to it.
Which is what most people will do. It’s not a huge field even in biology.
OK, YOU WIN.
I’m serious about not wasting any more time on evo psych and have things to do today besides this.
And since Ichthyic has the last 500 posts to fill, feel free to explain why evo psych is worthwhile paying attention to and what important and useful findings have resulted.
I’ll be off the internet until late tonight but the other posters are, I’m sure, wondering.
That depends.
What proportion of its adherents insist that the inevitability and/or optimality of 50s gender roles and racial segregation NATURALLY follow from that proposal, such that questioning the latter claim necessarily equates to denying the former?
This has more or less always been the problem with Evo-Phrenology.
*flails in rage*
KANAZAWA’S APPROACH IS ALSO WRONG.
“Wondrous new perspectives”????
Really?
Who exactly finds this pseudo-intellectual’s rants on who or what the racist personally finds attractive “Wondrous”?
PZ, y’all have been good to me, but I’m applying for a job at BigThink
What proportion of its adherents insist that the inevitability and/or optimality of 50s gender roles and racial segregation NATURALLY follow from that proposal, such that questioning the latter claim necessarily equates to denying the former?
not any significant number, actually. like I said, it’s the assholes that get magnified by the media.
go take a look at the journal articles and see for yourself.
or, let your ignorance feed your stereotypes.
just don’t speak for science when you do, is all I ask.
I’m just trying to work out what the ‘Big Think Editors’ are saying. From what I can work out, it can basically be summarized as ‘Kanazawa is being provocative, even if he’s wrong.’ If I’ve got that correct, is that not simply another way of saying Kanazawa is a troll? So does this mean Big Think officially support trolls and gives them a platform to troll?
seriously, fuck all of you
One actual example, please.
This Kanazawa clown doesn’t count. We’re talking about science here.
One. Something to actually discuss.
Otherwise it always feels like playing ‘shit Studies profs say’.
I have to say in fairness that I did have a very good evopsyche class in college that didn’t have any of the oddities we see of evopsyche as reported. I think it has merit as a field of study but yeah
***How can one support his “approach” without supporting his conclusions?***
You can appreciate someones willingness to look at novel hypotheses while disagreeing with their evidence or logic.
Why do you insist on oversimplifying matters into stark injustices. Apparently, Kanazawa has an intellectual purview and you’re just being academic in thinking he’s full of shit.