Early on, one of the things that led me to atheism was that so many Christians insisted on things that were patently wrong. Why did I leave the church at a young age? This would horrify Ken Ham, but they lost me precisely because of the anti-science and specifically anti-evolution slant.
Then the racists lost me because they insisted that black people were a parallel (and inferior!) evolutionary line that looked more like gorillas than white people do. I knew a fair bit about other primates, and no, that’s definitely false. It’s absurdly false. So nope, the racists will not persuade me, especially since now I have even deeper knowledge of the subject than I did as a child.
And then there are the anti-feminists.
It is incomprehensible to me how anyone committed to an evidence-based perspective can be opposed to feminism. You hang out with a few anti-feminists and they’re just oozing with bullshit, which was one of the features leading me to part ways with the atheist movement. This stuff is damaging to any social organization, and if you let it thrive, I want no part of you.
Like this:
At that link, there’s a whole series of dumbass assertions by ignorant idiots about biology. Ick. They’re all from those hives of villainy, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. And I realized that my problem isn’t just with Christianity, or atheism, or racism, or misogyny — it’s with all of humanity. Or, at least, that part of humanity that gravitates towards social media. And with that, my heart shrank two sizes that day.
Oh, come on! That’s barely half the world.
Let’s not shake hands then. My favourite book title is Misanthropie voor gevorderden — that I would translate as Advanced Misanthropy. Another one (a short story) is Wegens mensenkennis gesloten. ~Closed Due to Judgement of Character.
Male milk? That dude has some physiological problems
Misanthropy club? They don’t really use their clubs any more. It’s mostly pepper spray, tasers, and, old favorite, guns.
I’m not only a member of the Misanthropy Club, but I’m also a client!
…
Hmmmm… I think I need to workshop that joke a little
You all are welcome to join. We don’t hold meetings, don’t pay damn dues, and we give each other a wide berth.
Misanthropy club is Groucho Marx’ old “I wouldn’t want to be in a club that would have me as a member.”
There is already a misanthropy club or rather many.
They are all on social media.
One of the more horrible features of this pandemic have been the attacks on health care workers. It’s hard work and dangerous to treat Covid-19 virus patients. Some health care workers have caught the virus and some of those have died from it.
And they get attacked often by people who blame them for the pandemic or for, well, who knows why.
It’s a lot more common than that.
These days, most of the Covid-19 patients in the hospital are Covid-19 virus deniers and antivaxxers. It’s still high in the tens of thousands.
Occasionally, for a variety of reasons, these patients will attack the health care workers and sometime try to tear off their Personal Protective Equipment. While screaming at them that the Covid-19 virus is a hoax and their protective gear isn’t necessary because they are just pretending. Often, shortly after that they die. Of Covid-19 virus.
Did you know, that most Covid-19 health care workers are suffering from burnout?
Another good reason not to drink of that particular poisoned chalice.
I knew there were good reasons I’ve never had a Facebook, Twitter or Reddit account.
I really, really did not need anymore reasons to not have facebook, twitter, reddit, etc…
raven@8
If you look at the source article, you will see a map of documented attacks that covers approximately a year. Note that this is not COVID specific, and that 60% of the attacks are apparently not related to COVID.
You’ll see relatively big clusters in Syria, Libya and Yemen; countries that are in a state of war and see a lot of war-related attacks. Another big group in India, where one could say that the government has basically fucked up by the numbers.
Given that hospitals will deal with distraught patients and family members on a regular basis, and the huge amount of hospitals in the world (over 164,500 in 2015), the number of reported incidents seems remarkably low.
Looking at the data, I would say that either people are generally behaving themselves, or there is a huge number of unreported cases.
@drksky:
Aren’t there actually some bats in which the males lactate as well?
(And yes, I know the original message was almost certainly about something else.)
Cthulhu, you aren’t helping my morning case of misanthropy at all. I’ve already dealt with one cosmically stupid person and that is enough
IIRC, you are in the Netherlands and don’t have the slightest idea what we have to deal with in the USA. No surprise.
That isn’t my only source. In fact, I know lots of health care workers treating Covid-19 patients.
As you would know if you bothered to read what I wrote, most of the tens of thousands of Covid-19 patients in our hospitals right now are Covid-19 virus deniers and antivaxxers. Many of these patients will go on to die of Covid-19 virus.
These attacks by dying patients on health care workers here are common, happen daily and happen to many or most of them sooner or later.
What we are seeing is the Trump voters/fundie xians meeting reality. And losing. And it ends up costing them their lives.
The point I was trying to make went over rsmith’s head at the speed of light.
Apparently he has never seen a Trump voter or an American. Lucky him.
What is happening here is obvious to us in the USA.
The Covid-19 virus is a hoax, doesn’t even exist.
Patient ends up in the hospital. They are sick. They can’t breathe. They can barely move.
The health care workers around them are all dressed head to toe in protective gear and look like they are scared of catching the imaginary virus. Which they are.
The patient panics as it starts to dawn on them that they might die and soon.
They attack the health care workers while screaming at them.
This happens all the time now since these are most of the current patients.
Quite often, shortly after that they actually do die of the imaginary hoax virus.
The patient’s relatives show up.
They scream at the health care workers some more because the Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist.
Accuse them of killing the patient because they get paid for every time they put down Covid-19 virus on the death certificate.
Security is called. They know what to do.
Relatives are escorted out of the hospital.
I don’t have to join PZ’s Misanthropy club.
I’m already in one.
In middle age I’m a lot less misanthropic than when I was younger. It’s not that I’ve found that people are better than I thought. They’re the same or worse. I just have a more realistic set of expectations.
I was just listening to Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim as an audiobook. I’ve read it more than once, and it’s one of my favorites, but I’m on a screen so much now it’s nice to rest my eyes.
One thing that struck me (for those who’ve read it, and if not, I recommend it; it’s not as bleak as Heart of Darkness) is how awful many of the people described by Marlowe are… the grotesque captain of the Patna, it goes without saying, and treacherous Gentleman Brown. There is a lovely vignette involving a would-be entrepreneur who has found a guano island and is just certain Jim is damaged goods enough that he’d be happy to be stranded there to oversee slave labor as the one armed white man on the Island.
But all of this makes me laugh out loud. Conrad’s writing sparkles, and I am not sure if this makes me a bad person or Conrad for that matter, but what I get out of it is that he really loved people. Any great novelist has to. He shared the prejudices of his era, but at least he paid attention.
OK, well PZ’s examples are not just of bad people but insufferably boring ones. I mean I am still not joining a misanthropy club, but I have no attention to expend on crap like the image inlined above.
For anyone who wants to join the Misanthropy club and needs a reason.
This relatively recent poll from January 11, 2021 shows that 25% of the US population thinks the Covid-19 virus pandemic is a hoax. This is 83 million people.
Given that this virus is very transmissable and it is everywhere, chances are they will all eventually get the virus. And some will end up in the hospital and some of those will end up dead.
Of course, they won’t get the vaccine because why get vaccinated against a hoax.
There is a huge overlap between Trump voters, fundie xians, Covid-19 virus deniers, and antivaxxers.
Does it count if youv’e felt this way from childhood experiences too distant to currently figure out? Or is this a philosophical thing? I don’t know if connecting this to social anxiety works.
“they lost me precisely because of the anti-science and specifically anti-evolution slant.”
Quite silly, because there are even in the USA many christian churches that accept evolution just fine.
“It is incomprehensible to me how anyone committed to an evidence-based perspective can be opposed to feminism.”
This is meaningless, because you don’t care to define feminism. So I suspect that what you’re really saying is something like “It is incomprehensible to me how anyone committed to an evidence-based perspective doesn’t share my enlightened, intellectually and morally superior opinions.
Because I’m very sure you are not thinking of feminists like this one:
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/641724
Make my day and pull of the No True Feminist Fallacy.
“You hang out with a few anti-feminists”
Yes, that’s a good way to gain sympathy for feminism, especially because they never explain what they mean with feminism either.
For the sake of clarity, given all the prejudiced folks here (mostly ignorant Americans, see beneath): all my four female partners were educated and had jobs. One had a more impressive career than me (according to regular standards, which I personally reject) and my ex-wife, when we divorced, made more money (she still does). I raised our son.
@Raven: “you are in the Netherlands and don’t have the slightest idea what we have to deal with in the USA. No surprise.”
Actually you should be surprised, because the Dutch have to deal with about the same.
https://joop.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/aanslag-op-teststraat-in-bovenkarspel
I don’t think I need to translate “corona test locatie”. “Ontploffing” means “explosion”. “Doelgerichte actie” means “done on purpose”.
Also there is this:
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/belgie-blijft-jagen-op-zwaarbewapende-voortvluchtige-demonstranten-betuigen-steun-aan-ex-militair~bce3ab5d/
I’ll translate the header and add some context. “Belgium keeps on hunting the ex-soldier who’s armed to the hilt, on the run and has announced an attack on the virologist who’s in charge of the fight against the corona epidemy. Protesters have expressed their support to the ex-military.”
Apparently, like so many Americans, you don’t have the slightest idea what happens at the other side of your borders.
#7 @Marcus Ranum, Groucho also said “I’ve got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it” (in Duck Soup). That too sounds like the Misanthropy Club.
There’s this place where the social anxiety from peers and corporal punishment, blurs into the hyper-aggressive, conservative protestant, military culture that fears “outsiders” on a wide range of axes.
In one song, Tom Lehrer gives a considerable list of pairs of groups that hate each other. he ends with “…and I don’t like anybody very much.”
whheydy@22 I don’t think that’s Lehrer. It sounds more like The Merry Minuet, which was popularized by The Kingston Trio and (looked this part up) written by Sheldon Harnick.
Re: PaulBC @ #23…
IIRC, Lehrer used it in “National Brotherhood Week”, which was originally done for “That Was the Week That Was” TV show.
I am willing to hang out with misanthropic people who are capable of learning, and even change their opinion about things.
-For the template of a good misanthropic I recommend Lewis Black, the old stand-up comedian that has made angry rants an art form.
Brony @21
The other…
The rioters in DC did not being to any usual category of rioters. They were a very socially diverse bunch.
The one thing they had in common was a belief in ‘the great replacement’ fallacy, saying white anglo-saxon protestants will be replaced as the dominant demographic (and presunably get as badly treated as marginalised groups in the past).
In reality even if the WASP group drops below 50% it is not as if they are going to be sent to bantustans (for starters, they will still be the largest demographic).
Charlatans in the GOP have been happy to fan the flames of this particular paranoia for decades. Thus the scaremongering about Messican immigrants continue even as the inflow drops below the outflow.
@ 25: spell check turned ‘misanthrope’ (Lewis Black) into ‘misanthropic’ .
“It is incomprehensible to me how anyone committed to an evidence-based perspective can be opposed to feminism.”
I’ll one-up you there — it is incomprehensible to me how anyone committed to being a decent human being can be opposed to feminism.
You don’t need to be smart, have a science education, or understand standards of evidence (even at a high school level) to understand that treating people equally is the decent thing to do. On the contrary, even if there were some incontrovertible evidence that women (or men) were, on average, “inferior” by whatever definition, this still would not dissuade me from treating them equal.
I am happily reminded of The Diogenes Club! As Sherlock Holmes remarks of his elder, and brighter brother, Mycroft in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter: “There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.” I would happily join such a club!
@mnb0 — We get it, you’re anti-feminist. Why are you even here?
@WMDKitty I think mnbo is just here to show us how superior they are to the rest of us.
There is a fair amount of talk about white feminism in anti-racist circles. Movements are never perfect.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #26…
That’s the difference between “majority” and “plurality”. In California, non-Hispanic caucasians are now a minority (less than 50% of the population) but still a plurality (largest single minority).
BTW, anyone else here not a misanthrophe (other than me)? Yeah, people kind of suck, but on the other hand it is all a matter of expectation. It’s not like there are other sentient beings that you can choose to associate with instead (or choose to be for that matter).
So I have two keys to happiness. First Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear.
Second, don’t feel you have to test this hypothesis on actual human beings. Take lots of “me time”!
Is there a nefarious feminist plot for women to be shirtless? The educational reply on the double standard of having a moral fetish about the sight of bare breasts is not addressing the basic dishonesty of the question. I doubt that the guy making claims about shirtlessness could imagine a world where naked female skin is not sexualized.
As for mnbo, it’s just dumb to claim that PZ has failed to define feminism, therefore something.
Nah ya dumkoff!
Anyone who has been paying attention knows that PZ is a feminist, and has written numerous posts on the subject. A quick search shows a plethora of past threads on the topic. Here is a nice bell hooks quote from one such thread.
.
mnb0: enough. You’ve had enough rope. But now that you’ve concluded that I’m unaware that many christians favor evolution, or that I’d somehow claim a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist wasn’t a feminist, I’ve had enough.
Bye.
Male… Nope. Not touching it. Not with a fifty meter cattle prod.
They do ! Two characteristics without doubt place blacks closer than whites in appearance to gorillas; dark skin and flared, flattened nostrils. How can you state otherwise, it’s a fact !
@nurnord — Uhh… I hope that’s sarcasm, otherwise you need to read the room.
I’m very, very picky about my people. If that makes me a misanthrope, eh, so be it.
@ nurnord, #38
Even if we accepted that all black people resembled your description, which they don’t, or that white people never possess the characteristics in question, your little edit omits the most important part of the quote- the idea that black people are a separate and inherently inferior species, based on their appearance. Both claims are easily disproven. There is nothing in your butchered quote is worth discussion. I can think of no non-racist reason why you’d even say such a thing.
Don’t compare humans to other animals. That’s a practice with too ugly a history to play stupid semantic games with.
@39 WMD
It is a straight comment
@ 38 nurnord
Dafuq?! Gorillas don’t have “flared, flattened nostrils”, what are you on about?
@#24, whheydt:
That specific joke isn’t in the version on the album. (In the spoken intro, he does say “I’m sure we all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings and I hate people like that”, and one of the lines runs “all of my folks hate all of your folks”, but no “I don’t like anybody very much”.)
@41 vuco
It’s 2 general traits that blacks have; dark skin and flared, flattened nostrils, contrasted with whites that generally don’t have either of. Your attempt at pointing out exceptions is irrelevant to this obvious, general observation.
No, the edit was to exclude that as it’s a point I didn’t disagree with (“were a parallel (and inferior!) evolutionary line”) ! The introductory portion (“Then the racists lost me because they insisted that black people…”) itself is only there to give context to the part I disagree on (“looked more like gorillas than white people do) The fact is PZ disagreed with that, (again “looked more like gorillas than white people do”) and I commented my view.
Ok, that’s your limitation. I pointed it out as those 2 traits give blacks a closer appearance than whites to gorillas, simple; no racism involved.
The failure of others (you included, in this instance) to discern or allow for genuine comparison free of agenda is not my issue nor a reason to stop me doing so.
You know, you could actually answer it !
Does dark skin and flared, flattened nostrils place blacks closer in appearance to gorillas (THAT HAVE THOSE SAME TRAITS) than whites ? It’s a simple and obvious – yes.
With the right hormone mix most people can lactate. So clearly we need to ban all chests
@43 Silentbob
They clearly have a flared shape and are less pronounced in regard to the flat facial surface around them. Both of these are closer in appearance to blacks than whites. Then, there’s the other trait placing blacks closer; dark skin.
The Vicar@44 Right. It’s a line from The Merry Minuet
I can see how someone would group the songs together though.
nurnord@47 Oh fuck off. Have you ever taken a close look at a gorilla’s nose? It bears very little resemblance to a human nose of any size or shape.
What’s your point anyway? I could imagine childishly that a white-furred poodle is “closer in appearance” to a sheep than to a wolf and insist “Both of them have curly and light hair.” A closer look at morphology would contradict the imagined resemblance, but anyway, it’s irrelevant because obviously a poodle is a dog and much more closely related to wolves than to sheep.
I wasn’t going to reply because you’re either trolling or a genuine racist. So just fuck off.
@49 Paul
I stop reading as soon as the insult appears, so…
kthxbye
To be more explicit about gorillas, since it’s actually interesting in its own right: actually look at a picture of a gorilla instead of imagining you know what they look like. Their nostrils point out from their face, like most other mammals. Human nostrils point down, which is quite unusual. (Not sure of the explanation.) A presumed resemblance between human and gorilla nostrils is immediately contradicted by observation.
It takes a stretch of the imagination to claim that gorillas have any sort of nose that resembles a human nose. It takes no imagination to make such a blatently racist statement.
Gorillas don’t exhibit any variation in complexion, though this is possibly due to their very limited geographical range. Solar radiation levels correlate very nicely with the observed range of human complexions.
Gorillas aren’t even relevant to a discussion on human pigmentation, except as racist dog whistles.
@38 nurnord
When recapitulation was popular in the 19th century scientific racists used to argue that black people were like white children. They believed children and “lower” races represented a lower stage in evolution/ontogeny to the civilised white man. When it was realised that humans are actually paedomorhic (resemble the children of other apes) racists made a complete 180 degree flip, arguing that “higher” races are more paedomorphic than “lower” races.
Have you considered there might be a bias to your assessment that black people resemble apes more than white people? The similarities you state are complete horse shit. Look up a picture of a chimp, many of them have white (pink) skin. They also pretty much have a muzzle, not a nose that resemble’s any human.
@53 king
Yes, there’s not.
Chimps are irrelevant, gorillas was the comparison ! Skin colour alone means blacks are closer to gorillas in appearance than whites, a simple point of fact.
Based solely on colour, black people are also closer in color to the night sky, obsidian, panthers, and mahogany than are white people. So what?
It’s a simple point of fact that comparing black people to gorillas is a long standing trait of race bigots.
@54 nurnord
Why do you consider skin colour so important? Why not body hair coverage or penis length?
Orcas are like pandas, because they have similar pigmentation. They are not at all like dolphins, because they the wrong color.
And this is why the notion of “race” is such bullshit, because we are looking at numerous populations of humans with multiple cosmetic characteristics that exist along a spectrum, and all we focus on is skin tone. And even that is arbitrary, there are many “white” people with darker skin than “black” people. It’s all bullshit, but unfortunately, the damage done isn’t bullshit
@56 king
It’s not about ‘importance’, it’s about ‘relevance’. Skin colour is a trait that places blacks closer in appearance to gorillas; both have dark skin, whites don’t. I don’t think I recognise that blacks have body hair coverage and penis length closer to gorillas than whites, do you ?…
Racist troll
What is the relevance of comparing human complexions to gorillas?
nurnord
What do you mean by “blacks”? Are you talking about people?
Ethiopian? Ghanaian? Sundanese? Sri Lankan?
Fijian? Maori?
re: mnb0 ban. Yay!
@58 nurnord
Those are characteristics that put white people closer (on average) to gorillas than black people. My point being that you’re picking an arbitrary characteristic because you want to defend a racist trope for some reason.
@62 king
In the case of body hair, whilst plausible, it needs data to back it up. On appearance alone though, it’s not at all clear that blacks are less hairy than whites. Same for penis length; whilst plausible, it needs data to back it up and remains an unclear distinction.
Now then king, please don’t venture down the path of slurs and accusations that infest this site. There’s a reason I’m still interacting with you and not others; civility ! I used skin colour because in blacks the average tone is far darker than in whites and much closer to gorillas’. Racism is irrelevant, I’m talking about visible traits that place blacks closer in appearance to gorillas, nothing else.
It’s like the “I’m not touching you!” game. Make a random connection between black people and gorillas knowing the racist history of the connection. nurnord defends the connection and then acts like other people are the problem when nurnord chooses the racial dominance display.
Are “blacks” a “race”?
White people have straight hair. They’re like gorillas.
(/sarcasm)
@63
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroid#Neoteny
Citation for black people being less hairy. The other paedomorphic traits listed probably also make them less like gorillas than white people. I don’t want to look up a citation for the penis thing.
I can be civil, but I think you know that comparing black people to apes is a racist trope. Can’t say I understand why you think colour is so important, I liked lochaber’s comment about orcas and pandas.
If colour is the only relevant trait, then White people are like polar bears, according to the deep (totally not racist) reasoning of nurnord.
@ nurnord, #45
I’ve seen a hell of a lot more white people with hairdos that resemble a typical gorillas’ coiffure and, in my experience, white people are more likely to have back hair that resembles that of a silverback. Therefore, white people more closely resemble gorillas than black people do.
Also, I’ve almost never seen any human with skin color comparable to that of a gorilla.
You excised the point of the statement you’re taking issue with to argue over some irrelevant piffle.
Nooo… that’s the way human discourse works. It relies on the context and history to give the noises that come out of our mouth and the squiggles we write meaning. You can’t just pretend the whole racist history of comparing black people to gorillas or other non-human animals doesn’t exist, just because you want to make an irrelevant point.
You cannot make comparisons like that without “agenda,” because without context language is a bunch of meaningless throat farts. Whether you intend to be racist when you compare black people to gorillas isn’t relevant, because it’s fucking racist.
Nope, sorry! I have conclusively, and with every bit as much scientific rigor as you’ve applied to your claims, proven that whites look more like gorillas. In fact, my pasty ass has been called “gorilla” on more than one occasion. I swear, you pick one tick off someone and eat it, and you never hear the end of it.
Civility can sit on a manure-encrusted garden weasel and spin.
Jeez, you ban mnb0 and nunord immediately turns up. Further evidence for the principle of Conservation of Arseholery.
@chrislawson — Nature abhors a vacuum, I guess. JFC, WTF is wrong with that guy?
Can anyone explain to me what the benefits are of engaging with this nurnord troll? He will be banned, I hope all his comments will be deleted (perhaps also all replies that contain quotes from his comments) and all that’s left for us is the headache after having banged our heads against a concrete wall several times over and getting nowhere.
“Don’t feed the trolls” is often disparaged as being too easy and non-confrontational, but noboday gains anything by engaging with him. Just report him to PZ, let PZ clean up and forget about this turd.
M’thew, all responders know that stuff.
Had others not responded, I would have.
This one is trying to get a raise out of people, and failing badly.
Because this is Pharyngula.
As to your question, rebuttal is the point.
@67 king
Fair enough, but as stated, ‘On appearance alone though, it’s not at all clear that blacks are less hairy than whites’, and particularly in comparison with gorillas, the average hairiness between blacks and whites is a tiny distinction, unlike skin colour !
It is, sadly, used that way. But it’s also a genuine, legitimate exercise. I’m merely mentioning visible traits that are more alike, that’s it !
Answered and corrected this already above
loch;
“Orcas are like pandas, because they have similar pigmentation. They are not at all like dolphins, because they the wrong color.” ***
It was irrelevant, incomparable, mischaracterised snark…
1. The comparison loch made was between 2 very different species with a suite of visible trait differences ending with an absurd conclusion (snark) that one was not at all like a third (that it’s an actual member of !) on the basis of a single trait…
2. Whereas this discussion is comparing 2 very alike members of the same species to another animal only in terms of the appearance of a few trait differences that place one member visibly more alike the other animal, without drawing any stupid conclusions whatsoever.
*** I’ll add as well that loch’s comparison falls to pieces anyway when you consider that there are OTHER DOLPHINS THAT HAVE SIMILAR PIGMENTATION TO ORCAS !!! See here…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hourglass_dolphin
and here…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerson%27s_dolphin
@69 vuco
incivility and snark = kthxbye
nurnord:
“I’m merely mentioning visible traits that are alike, that’s it !”
But they’re not, as others have noted — any more than that’s all you’re doing.
I don’t even think you yourself believe your claim. Nobody else here has, so far.
What you’re trying to do is to poke non-racist people into being offended.
(How’s it working for you?)
@76 JM
Just as I was about to reply, out comes the accusations and snark; kthxbye.
@74 nurnord
I don’t know, I think I could tell the skin colour of any human from a gorilla, their skin is actually black, not brown. The hardest person to tell from a gorilla in my view would be a jacked up guy with a lot of dark back hair which I think we’ve established is more likely to be a white guy than a black guy.
Don’t know what these “few other trait differences” are by the way. I thought you stopped talking about the nose thing because you knew it was ridiculous and I don’t know of any other traits.
@79 king
I’m not claiming exact matches with, but traits closer to, gorillas. So exact pigment match is not the claim. It’s the general appearance of darker pigment in blacks that’s a trait that visually more closely resembles gorilla pigment. And in fact, the black person spectrum runs very close indeed to actual black; https://urbanintellectuals.com/black-people/simeon-niger/ I maintain; skin pigment is a trait that blacks are closer to gorillas with than whites. And no, I still maintain the more flattened and flared nose/nostril characteristics also resemble the gorilla more than whites’ do.
I’m just going to make popcorn and watch y’all eviscerate this jackass. I’m bored.
Just to poke the bear, here, I have Black people in my family, and they do not resemble gorillas any more than white people do.
nurnord:
Hey, is this a game?
I maintain that whites resemble maggots more, and their schnozzles are closer to those of proboscis monkeys. And you know, those monkeys are basically redheads, too. Uncanny!
I woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I looked at alot of images of primate noses. Human noses don’t look anything like non-human primate noses. Not at all.
The last common ancestor of humans and gorillas were the homininidae who lived around 14 million years ago. We are much more closely related to chimps and bonobos than gorillas, and every human ethnicity is equally genetically distant from our ape cousins. Doesn’t matter if the human in question is African black, Melanesian black, Asian, Polynesian, Native American, Northern European white or any other ethnic group or mixture thereof.
Human evolution started to diverge (in trivial ways, I stress) about 100K years ago because that was the first time the human diaspora brought populations of people into significantly different climate environments and with geological barriers to back-mixing. Even then, a large subset of African humans are descended from people who re-entered Africa from the Arabian peninsula and later from the Iberian peninsula. There is a 13.9 million year gap that makes any comparison between gorillas and any particular human ethnicity competely anti-scientific. It makes as much sense as saying Polynesians are more related to fish or Inuit are more related to seals. Heck, might as well claim white Europeans’ pale skin makes us more related to mushrooms.
Which means nunord’s approach is to choose superficial (and often blatantly wrong — how many times now has he defended his glaring errors by noting that he has no knowledge of the evidence, as if that’s a reasonable rebuttal?) comparitors between gorillas and one particular ethnicity of humans — a comparitor that has a long and vicious history in racist propaganda against that particular ethnicity — for the sole purpose of drawing an association that makes no sense at all except as justification for ongoing racial oppression.
My opinion? Nunord is hoping to show off his Banned From Pharyngula scout badge to his racist friends.
I think nurnord is stupid.
@84 chris accusations and racial slurs; kthxbye
nurnord
What do you think “kthxbye” means?
M’thew@72–
I’m a great believer in not feeding trolls — but that means not giving them what they want (which is usually personal validation for their sociopathic leanings) and banning them if they refuse to change or go away.
But there are still some very valuable reasons to respond to trolls:
(1) Occasionally it will turn out that the troll is not actually a true troll but someone infested with bad ideas put in their heads by malicious authority figures, and such people sometimes learn and change.
(2) There are many people on a given forum who can learn from the rebuttals to trolling. I can certainly say that I have learnt a ton of interesting and important knowledge from reading troll rebuttals here and elsewhere (eg. Panda’s Thumb).
(3) If the troll continues to troll, then a trail of rebuttals makes it clear to moderators that the troll is resistant to constructive communciation, which makes it easier to bring the banhammer.
(4) Sometimes we can learn how best to respond to rhetorical monstrosities from trolls. For instance, not that this is a new trick, but nunord is particularly fond of making horrifying, offensive comments and then rejecting any rebuttal that contains strong language. It’s the Southern genteel tactic in full peacockery. You know the drill: “I was so polite when I defended slavery and the innate inhumanity of blacks, and those abolitionists responded with most uncivil vulgarity! It gave me such vapours I decided I’d better keep my slaves after all!” Trolls like nunord let us experiment to find the responses that he can’t handle. Which we can then use the next time nunord or another like him turns up.
nunord —
The racial slurs all came from your posts. There is not a single racial slur in my post, not one, you damned liar, only arguments as to why your racist argument is wrong. And as for the “accusations”, well you divebombed this forum to insist that blacks are closer to gorillas than non-black humans, so I’m not accusing you, I’m observing and referencing what you wrote.
@89 chris Another chance…
Even in the denial, you can’t resist an accusation (liar) !…THIS “My opinion? Nunord is hoping to show off his Banned From Pharyngula scout badge to his racist friends
– racial; ‘of or relating to race including accusations of negativity toward racial groups
– slur; an insult against a person or persons
– regardless though of how I classified it, you still made a slur against my friends
I commented, not a ‘divebomb’
I merely stated; in a couple of traits blacks have a closer appearance to gorillas than whites do, nothing more ! There’s nothing racist in stating that ! Your rewording above introduces ambiguity to that by omitting, well just compare…
1. insist that blacks are closer to gorillas than non-black humans
with…
2. in a couple of traits blacks have a closer appearance to gorillas than whites do
is open to wide interpretation; behaviour ? genetics ? phylogeny ?
specifies what is meant (and what I stated at all times in my comments !); in a few visual traits, blacks are closer in appearance than whites are
As it happens, even if I did comment (I didn’t and DON’T think this) ”blacks are closer to gorillas than non-black humans’ (as in, genetically), why is that a racial slur anyway !? It’s just making a claim of biological relationship between 2 species !
Now chris, try adjusting your demeanor, it helps…
No, nunord, I can tell I hit a nerve because you are now openly lying about there being racial slurs in my post. You know full well that stating something is racist is NOT the same thing as a racial slur (even if it was unjustified, which it was not). You are lying. Blatant, utter lying. Repeated, documented, blatant, utter lying. Proves my point. You just want to stir up trouble in support of your insistence on the philosophical value of comparing blacks to gorillas — which is a long-historied racist slur, as you know (yet again) full well.
But thanks for confirming that descriptions of simple scientific knowledge can make you descend into froth-mouthed lie-spewing. Brings a cheer to this old heart to know that something as simple as describing basic evolutionary knowledge can make a racist troll melt down into such overt mendacity that even a card-carrying UDC member would recognise that the fail is strong with this one. While you’re here, can I entice you into a blistering rant about the evils of feminism with some observations about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? Perhaps a diatribe about gender identity triggered by introductory set theory?
@91 chris
more mindless ranting and offensive accusations; kthxbye
This fellow nurnord has been dishonest from his very first comment when he elided a sentence from PZ’s post, entirely modifying its meaning. (Or to be generous I suppose there’s a small chance nurnord truly had reading comprehension difficulties in reading PZ’s post.) Clearly, in the original sentence, PZ doesn’t say what he thinks about appearances, but only disparages racists’ facile evolutionary conclusions.
Then nurnord later wrote, in his own words mind you:
If you look at the picture of the gorilla linked above, I mean really look at it, the nose of a gorilla is closer in appearance to the very end of an elephant’s trunk (absent the prehensile, superior projection of course).
https://i.natgeofe.com/n/23a85f5b-32be-4bc1-af13-3e1a403b8557/mountain-gorilla_thumb.jpg
Show me a picture of a black person with a nose like that. The comparison you’re making is to a stereotype in your head, not physical reality. It’s like those people who claim that black people have thick lips like a great ape. They are clueless about what’s right in front of their eyes.
So racists try to argue by poorly constructed (ad hominem) analogy, two fallacies in one with an incompetent cherry on top. And your reaction to that is to gleefully ejaculate, “It’s a fact!”
Seriously, that’s your takeaway?
Re mnb0: I’ll miss the cranky Dutch bastard.
Re nurnord: Nur, Arabic for light. Nord, French for north. So, Light of the North? More like dim bulb in the basement.
@95 mnb0 was really repetitive, and frustratingly wrong in his “Donald the Clown” comments. I don’t mind a clown for president. I’d take Wavy Gravy in a heartbeat. I don’t want is a mobster in the White House. But more to the point, it’s not about personality at all. Any Republican would have given us the FedSoc justices and the 2017 tax scam. No Democrat would have. Former guy was also closer to declaring himself president for life than any predecessor in my memory.
I can’t say I’ll miss mnb0, but he was a regular and I feel a little odd about it. I’m not sure his comments rose to the level of abuse, but it’s PZ’s platform.
Racist crapheads sure like to compare the “other” they hate to gorillas and other primates. You can find cartoons from the 19th Century where the Irish are portrayed as gorillas.
Here is a link to a paper on Human skin pigmentation as an adaption to UV radiation.
It makes a good case for UV radiation being causative, and also includes the world map which illustrates the direct correlation between UVR and the skin-tone spectrum of human populations.
The effect of intense, year round UV on folate levels is the primary selective pressure for enriched melanin levels.
Outside of such environments, other selective pressures are involved. Depigmented and tannable skin has evolved multiple times in different human populations as a response to these diverse environmental selective pressures.
stroppy@94 In my comments about gorillas in @51, I completely missed the implication that gorillas have “flattened nostrils.” Uh…. wuhhh?
I have also never spent as much time looking at gorillas’ noses as now. I would describe them as heart-shaped (meaning a valentines heart and not an actual one). And needless to say, those are some serious wide-open nostrils. They are fascinating and would look extremely strange on a human being.
Here’s an aspect to nurnord’s DARVO.
They are presenting it as unscientific to act negative about comparisons between people used for racism, yet it’s unscientific to act like the effects of the racism in memory are irrational. Society put those feelings there and the effect of just ignoring this is to let racist dominance displays happen and make people keep feeling it.
The utter neglect of the experiences of people who have understandably and necessarily different experiences reminds me of the dismissal of people with misogynist experiences of c#”t. It’s racist based on outcomes, and like an example of Lewis’s Law when you challenge social dominance behavior you see it’s justification.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite@100 I agree.
The claim that it is “unscientific” to criticism language can indicate an honestly sophomoric understanding of how language works or (more commonly) it’s a disingenuous tactic to make bigoted remarks while attempting to turn the tables on anyone who criticizes you.
Comparisons between racial groups and non-human primates is a red flag of racism because racists have a long history of making such comparisons. It is irrelevant whether you can cobble together some “scientific” defense of the comparison. It’s still racist for anyone to use that rhetoric.
Analogously, one hallmark of bigots (in English) is the use of a noun in place of an adjective for groups they disparage (it’d be interesting to know why this is). But actually, there’s nothing wrong with a noun phrase grammatically. I can make a “plum pudding” and nobody will object that it should be a “plummy pudding.” On the other hand if I were to replace neutral descriptive terms like “Chinese man” or “Jewish boy” with noun phrases, it’s a safe bet that I’m a bigot. No lessons on grammar are going to change the fact that I’ve adopted the language of bigots.
Likewise, no interspecies comparison used by bigots can be cleaned up by claiming it’s just a “rational” observation. The only reason to state it is to provoke.
Yesterday, I read the initial comment, was suitably shocked, decided not to reply and took a break from screen time to go for a walk. When I came back, there were enough replies that I chimed in. What I find most interesting is not what I wrote above, but how laughably wrong the comparison is at a factual level, and the commenter’s refusal to see this.
We get it, nurnord: you’re a freaking dipshidiot racist. No need to keep proving the point, jeez. -_-
I think I see the point or at least one of the subtleties this nurnord is trying to make. he insists that he said the “blacks resemble gorillas” and he did not say that blacks are gorillas and not humans. if that is how we are speaking and can ignore all of the social connotations and usage that language has used todate OK .
Then I would say that nurnord resembles an ignorant white supremacist Neo-Nazi klansman more closely then anyone of the regulars who post here on this blog or any who have replied to his post
.uncle frogy
kthxbai, nurnord.