Oh, look, I just alienated another 42,000 atheists!

A few months ago, I called out a couple of atheist Facebook pages. I wasn’t a member of either “Atheist Safehouse” or “The Thinking Atheist Fanpage”, but stupid obnoxious Facebook kept pestering me with suggestions that I join them…and I’d tell it “no!”, it would leave me alone, and then a few weeks later it would start up again. I was annoyed.

The reason I wasn’t interested was that they advertised themselves with a photomontage of Famous Atheists, you know, the usual suspects, some of whom I’d rather not ever meet again, and they were almost all men. It was just stunningly bad advertising, for one, since they were clearly aiming at a target demographic that was rather narrow, but it was also shallow and cult-like. It was too much trouble to portray an idea or a principle, so hey, let’s just make it clear that we’re a boys’ club and that we adhere to a dogma promoted by these modern prophets.

As I said, I didn’t join, for obvious reasons. But what if someone did join? Atheist Safehouse apparently has over 42,000 members, and is one of the biggest special interest groups in Facebook atheism. And what if they were a woman? And what if they pointed out the sexism of their advertising?

Chrys Stevenson entered their lair.

The equal representation of women in public and private spaces matters. It matters because saving women’s lives and maximising their wellbeing requires a tectonic cultural shift in our society that starts with recognising women’s contributions. It is, frankly, inconceivable that a group which prides itself on intellect and reason would choose a composite photo showing eight men – mostly white – to represent its mixed-gendered membership of 42,114 members.

I joined the group last night in order to comment. Naively, I thought it would be a simple matter of drawing the issue to the attention of the admins and getting the photo changed.

(Note: the one non-white man in the photo is Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is not and does not want to be associated with movement atheism at all. It would be nice if people would at least respect that. But at least he gets to join Charles Darwin in the list of scientists uncomfortable with atheism who get coopted anyway.)

What she discovered is that, rather than make a simple change to the profile photo of the group, they have rules that you’re not allowed to talk about the photo. They have encountered this complaint so many times before that the regulars were bored and predicted that the suggestion would be squashed…and it was.

If an atheist group of 41,114 (41,112 members now Cushla and I have been booted) cannot take the simple step of removing a single photo and replacing it with a more representative image, what hope is there that atheism can be rescued from the grip of the immature, socially inept, MRA man-babies who seem to have colonised the movement.

They use a photo of 8 famous atheist men to illustrate their “Atheist Safehouse”: two of them are dead, two, maybe three, are libertarian jack-offs, one is under investigation and has lost his prestigious position for sexual harassment, and one doesn’t want anything to do with the atheist movement. They refuse to even consider changing it.

I can maybe see their point. One could argue that the picture is a fair and honest portrait of the atheist movement today, so they’re just practicing truth in advertising.

Joshua Preston for President!

OK, that might be a little premature. How about Joshua Preston for Minnesota House District 60B? One has to start on the cursus honorum somewhere, but give him a few years.

Joshua is a former UMM student, and also the creator of Giraffes Drawn By People Who Should Not Be Drawing Giraffes. He’s a good smart guy, so go to his campaign page and donate. Or at least cheer him on.

Victim-blaming, an online sport

Oh god, I could tell exactly how this was going to turn out. A woman did an experiment: when she received abuse on Twitter, she tried being nice and asking them politely if they wanted to talk about it. I’m sure you can guess how it went. She boiled the results down to 6 observations/conclusions.

1. None of these people considered themselves misogynists. Yeah, I’ve noticed. They can spew out the most horrific sex-based insults, but they’ll insist to the end that they really love women.

2. They later doubled-down on the sexist insults. It only escalates. I’ve never seen a troll realize that what they’re doing is disgusting.

3. According to them, all of this was my fault. They think they can avoid all blame/guilt by shifting responsibility for their actions to the target.

4. This wasn’t harassment; I’m just too sensitive. This is part of #3. The real problem, they think, is that everyone else is too thin-skinned.

5. They accused me of harassing them. You want to see an affronted yawp? Block ’em. They react as if their rights have been abridged by your callous action.

6. This was about power. Exactly! It’s always about silencing someone with harassment.

And then the wrap-up:

There’s a lot of discussion about how we need to reach out and talk to people who disagree with us – how we need to extend an olive branch and find common ground – and that’s a lovely sentiment, but in order for that to work, the other party needs to be … well, not a raging asshole. Insisting that people continue to reach out to their abusers in hopes that they will change suggests that the abuse is somehow in the victim’s hands to control. This puts a ridiculously unfair onus on marginalized groups – in particular, women of color, who are the group most likely to be harassed online. (For more on this topic, read about how Ijeoma Oluo spent a day replying to the racists in her feed with MLK quotes – and after enduring hideous insults and threats, she finally got exactly one apology from a 14-year-old kid. People later pointed to the exercise as proof that victims of racism just need to try harder to get white people to like them. Which is some serious bullshit.)

I spent days trying to talk to the people in my mentions who insulted and attacked me. I’d have been better off just remembering that when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first tweet.

Yeah, I’ve seen that: my first reaction has been to block, because I’ve learned that there is no point in trying to engage with someone who shows you that they are an asshole with their first words.

Have you been wondering what’s happening in the city of Morris, Minnesota?

I’m sure it haunts your dreams, but you’ve been starving for news about Morris because, well, they’re just now discovering this internet thingie. For years we’ve been getting by with the standard modes of communication: you know, A) stopping in the grocery aisle to gossip, or B) two cars stopping in the middle of the road, rolling down both drivers’ side windows, and chatting, or C) the church coffee social. But all that is changing! The City of Morris now has an official Facebook page and Twitter feed and are on Instagram! There’s not much there yet because they were just recently set up by some of the kids down to the university, dontcha know.

Anyway, you can now see footage of the construction of our new water treatment plant.

We’re very excited. It’s been hard getting by with our coffee solidifying in the cup and having to hack mineral deposits out of our pots.

It’s not on the social media pages yet (get to work, kids!), but you can also read the local paper and learn that our local theater is getting a second screen! This is fantastic news. We peeked in the other night and it’s all shiny and modern-looking.

Keep on eye on those pages! You don’t want to miss any of the thrills.

Oh! And before I forget, the Stevens County Fair will be livening up the town in a couple of weeks! I don’t know, I moved here because it’s peaceful and quiet, and all this modern hub-bub is a bit discombobulating.

What if she says “No”?

It used to be I’d get up in the morning and get battered with blog comments and email, and now I’ve added YouTube comments to my morning exercise. I think of it as part of my mental health regime.

I should probably stop, but I feel it’s necessary to clear out the worst slime from the comments there — and there’s a lot. Here’s one example of the kind of stuff that doesn’t get instantly trashed, but is indicative of the kind of mindset common there.

Why is the SSA suddenly the police regarding sexual rules between consenting adults? So now there are age restrictions against white men having sex; [Incorrect. There are rules about speakers of any age or color or gender hitting on student attendees] and if they’re too old, they don’t get to ask? Wow, actually the SSA seems way, way more gross and creepy and soul-dead and just plain inhuman than Carrier. I don’t get any of this so far. So “creepy” people no longer have the rights guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights? [I think it’s more like that women have rights, too. I know, what a surprise!] I don’t get why you call yourself a progressive or a liberal. You sound like a Puritan, uptight square. Your into vlog sound just like a, “I’m normal and conformist,” video, so I don’t see anything deep or self-reflective other than that since our own people don’t really permit debate anymore, just a kind of weak self-preservationism in order to belong to the larger group by 100% conformity to the dogma of that group. (Note: I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries and Hillary in the general election; and I just got done voting for Feinstein in the midterms and virtually all Democratic candidates in our area [Would you like a cookie?] ; but I don’t get why being a liberal entails being a member of the #MeToo crowd.) I think you got by on your really calm, soothing voice style [Thanks, I think], that people mistook that for reasoning. I don’t see any reasoning here, just kind of stuff that my mean feminist friends say. (Because I’m progressive economically, I’ll continue to vote Democrat, but once we leave economic issues, most of the people around here in Northern California are just plain awful and cold and unfeeling; and I used to love them. Something really hideous is happening in our movement.)

There is a lot of this sort of thing, and there is so much to decode within it. I am trying to police men propositioning women! I don’t want people to have sex, because I’m a prude! I am the death of fun!

I do have a sledgehammer, though. It’s the word “No”.

You want to proposition women, OK. What do you do when they say “No”?

Sex is lovely. What if she says “No”?

What is your definition of a mean feminist? It seems to reduce to “A woman who says ‘No’.”

Can I hit you with this sledgehammer? No? Well, gosh, you’re no fun. Why are you trying to ruin this movement with your rules?

All right then, how about if I just run a calm, soothing hand across your thigh, sir? You can’t possibly complain about that. It would be something really hideous if you said “No.”

Although, to be honest, usually I just sigh and ignore these rants. It gets really tiring swinging a sledgehammer all morning. The women I know must have phenomenal upper body strength.

He’s only the president of Planet Trump

This seems like a good loophole: he’s not really our president, he’s a president who leaked through from a parallel universe. For instance, he thinks we’ve got invisible airplanes.

Amazing job, and amazing job. So amazing that we’re ordering hundreds of millions of dollars of new airplanes for the Air Force, especially the F-35. Do you like the F-35? I said how does it do it in fights, and how do they do in fights with the F-35. He says we do very well, you can’t see it. Literally you can’t see. It’s hard to fight a plane you can’t see right? But that’s an expensive plane you can’t see. And as you probably heard we cut the price very substantially, something other administrations would never have done, that I can tell you.”

He repeated this claim several times!

According to the pool report of the president’s Thanksgiving Day visit to Coast Guard Station Lake Worth Inlet, in Florida, Trump told his audience he had discussed the invisible plane with some air force guys. He asked them, he said, if it would perform in a dogfight like similar planes he had seen in movies.

They said: ‘Well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it, even if it’s right next to it, it can’t see it,’ Trump said.

I guess he’s from the universe where Wonder Woman is real.

Also, he seems to think we peons have to show our ID when we buy groceries.

You know if you go out and you want to buy groceries you need a picture on a card. You need ID. You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture. In this country, the only time you don’t need it in many cases is when you want to vote for a president, when you want to vote for a senator, when you want to vote for a governor or a congressman. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. But we’re turning it around.

I’m kind of afraid, though, that he’s not a dimension-hopping alien, and that what he’s actually saying is what he hopes to be true, or wants to make true, and he’s unable to distinguish his fantasies from reality.

I guess we better make sure to bring our passports next time we visit the local Dairy Queen.

An inevitable child death in a detention center

Even if these ICE child detention centers were happy little paradises staffed by loving, caring child psychologists and nurses (they aren’t), it was statistically inevitable that at some point one of the children would die while separated from their parents. It seems to have happened.

The question is whether the institution takes responsibility for the death, and whether it made reasonable efforts to prevent the circumstances that led to it. The tweet mentions “possible negligent care” and an infection caught in the crowded conditions, in which case ICE is responsible for the death. ICE has also been aware that their policy actively damages children, and don’t seem to care.

Unfortunately, since law enforcement can literally gun down unarmed people in the back, I have no faith that anyone in our government will take responsibility. They’ll make excuses again.

Please, evolutionary psychology, just fade away

Rebecca Watson takes on the evolutionary psychologists again. I’m glad someone is.

I looked into the papers she’s talking about several days ago. I was unimpressed with and disgusted with them, and just said to myself, “Do I really want to wade into this shit again?” and let it pass, because I tell you, evolutionary psychology fans are the worst. Every criticism is dealt with by suggesting that the critic doesn’t really accept science, because the whole field is cloaked in a layer of pseudoscientific pretense that the true believers don’t question.

I first read “Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy: A Critical Analysis of Kevin MacDonald’s Theory” by Nathan Cofnas, published in Human Nature. As it says, it’s critical of the idea that Jews have some exceptional genetic trait that makes them more tribal and capable of ‘taking over’ the world, which is a positive sign…but at the same time it blithely accepts a whole lot of biological assumptions.

MacDonald argues that a suite of genetic and cultural adaptations among Jews constitutes a “group evolutionary strategy.” Their supposed genetic adaptations include, most notably, high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. According to this thesis, several major intellectual and political movements, such as Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and multiculturalism, were consciously or unconsciously designed by Jews to (a) promote collectivism and group continuity among themselves in Israel and the diaspora and (b) undermine the cohesion of gentile populations, thus increasing the competitive advantage of Jews and weakening organized gentile resistance (i.e., anti-Semitism). By developing and promoting these movements, Jews supposedly played a necessary role in the ascendancy of liberalism and multiculturalism in the West. While not achieving widespread acceptance among evolutionary scientists, this theory has been enormously influential in the burgeoning political movement known as the “alt-right.” Examination of MacDonald’s argument suggests that he relies on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts. It is argued here that the evidence favors what is termed the “default hypothesis”: Because of their above-average intelligence and concentration in influential urban areas, Jews in recent history have been overrepresented in all major intellectual and political movements, including conservative movements, that were not overtly anti-Semitic.

The “default hypothesis” claims that two factors are sufficient to explain Jewish success in certain fields of endeavor: IQ (they’re smart) and geography (they live in urban areas). OK, but the reliance on IQ as a factor raises my hackles. The author even admits that this might not be due to genetic factors.

The default hypothesis is not tied to any particular explanation of the cause of above-average Jewish IQ. Some researchers favor a genetic explanation. In an influential paper, Cochran et al. (2005) argued that during the Middle Ages Ashkenazim were selected for the intellectual ability to succeed in white-collar occupations. However, it is theoretically possible that the Jewish–gentile IQ gap is due at least in part to some yet-to-be-identified cultural factor (Nisbett 2009). Whatever the cause, high Jewish IQ presumably plays a role in Jewish overrepresentation in cognitively demanding activities.

That’s a start, but I’d have to say that the “yet-to-be-identified cultural factor” has been identified. It’s a cultural value that promotes literacy and education as a social good. You may not have noticed, but a lot of cultural subgroups don’t — I know that the white protestant subculture I grew up in disparaged academic achievement and put a much higher priority on sports and money. Do we really need to bring this fuzzy, poorly defined thing called IQ into the discussion? Evolutionary psychologists certainly do, and simply take it for granted. This same paper also includes this garbage:

The mean Ashkenazi Jewish IQ appears to be around 110 (Lynn and Kanazawa 2008)—moderately lower than MacDonald’s estimate of 117. Jewish intellectual accomplishment is consistent with higher mean intelligence.

That’s your source? Really? Richard Lynn, white supremacist psychologist, and Satoshi Kanazawa, sloppy fraud.

That’s the problem with evolutionary psychology in a nutshell. It’s built on a foundation of bad evolutionary theory with a set of assumptions about genetic determinism that are never questioned; instead, they constantly churn over the same old discredited authors and same old unfounded theories, and treat the fact that they’ve been published in uncritical, lazy EP journals as sufficient to establish their truth. They can’t question their assumptions about the primacy of genetic causes in determining complex phenomena like culture because, if they do, the whole field collapses about them.

Cofnas’s article isn’t as terrible, though, as the original article by Kevin McDonald, the “neo-Nazi movement’s favorite academic”, nor is it as ghastly as the putative rebuttal to Cofnas published in Evolutionary Psychological Science. That one uses Herrnstein & Murray, Philippe Rushton, and the ubiquitous Richard Lynn as sources, and again fails to question the genetic causes and instead unquestioningly endorses “group selection”.

Kevin MacDonald (1998) has argued that a series of twentieth century ideologies which have challenged European traditions should be understood as part of a Jewish evolutionary strategy to promote Jewish interests in the West, as evidenced by Jewish leadership of and disproportionate involvement in these movements. Cofnas Human Nature 29, 134–156 (Cofnas 2018a) has critiqued this model and countered that the evidence can be more parsimoniously explained by the high average intelligence and urban location of Jews in Western countries. This, he avers, should be the ‘default hypothesis.’ In this response, I argue that it is MacDonald’s model that is the more plausible hypothesis due to evidence that people tend to act in their ethnic group interest and that group selectedness among Jews is particularly strong, meaning that they are particularly likely to do so.

This is the kind of thing the alt-right loves: Jews are just so tribal, they want to claim, as they march around with torches chanting “Blood and Soil!” and “Jews will not replace us!”. They are justified in wanting to oppress them, because gosh, those Jews are just so oppressive.

EP journals are just sitting there indulging them, too — my objection isn’t to the Cofnas article itself, but the whole field that seems to think this is a subject that is worth discussing, to the point where they’re feeling the need to publish rebuttals to bad theories that are widely endorsed in their own journals. I think it’s a good idea for science journals to be open in criticizing creationism, for instance, because those bad ideas are currently widespread in popular culture (as are racist ideas). It would be a disgrace if science journals were also publishing creationist trash, but that’s exactly analogous to what EP journals do: publish an onanistic mix of terrible, awful, ridiculous articles with a few articles that try to rebut them. It’s a roiling mess that keeps the publishers in business but does nothing to advance our knowledge.

If you’re in evolutionary psychology, get out while you still can. Distance yourself. Refuse to publish in the usual EP journals, because you’re just going to get tarred with the deplorable taint of the whole field. Maybe you’re a competent scientist with great logical skills, but you can’t build on a foundation of invalid rubbish.

It’s too late for the editorial board of Evolutionary Psychological Science. I hadn’t looked until Rebecca mentioned it, but all the usual suspects are there: Kurzban, Buss, Pinker, and Sam Harris (his affiliation is listed as “Independent Scholar”). They ought to be as embarrassed as the board of a molecular biology journal that started printing articles by creationists.