Have you ever heard of Aporia? It’s an online magazine. If you want to follow that link, feel free, but it will taint your search history, so let me just describe a little bit of what you’d see on the Aporia main page and spare you the contamination. There are articles about kinship realism
, about men and romantic relationships, about incels and evolutionary psychology, about the feminism backlash, about the Roman Empire, about In Defense of German Colonialism
, and a lot of nonsense about AI. The authors listed include:
All those links in that list are just to this site, where their names have popped up a lot in discussions of racism, but actually there are other sites that have much more in-depth analyses of those individuals — for instance, Hope Not Hate has a substantial investigation of Aporia and its contributors. These are not good people. These are some of the very worst eugenicists, racists, fascists, neo-Nazis, and all-around heinous bigots you can find on the internet. For example…
HDF is led by three men. The CEO and founder of Human Diversity Foundation LLC is Emil Kirkegaard. Kirkegaard is a well-known Danish scientific racist and far-right activist, having spoken at the Traditional Britain Group conference in 2022.
Kierkegaard’s disturbing views extend beyond race. In 2012, he published a blog on his website about paedophilia, suggesting that abusers should be allowed to rape children drugged with sleeping medicine. “If they dont notice it is difficult to see how they cud be harmed, even if it is rape [sic],” he wrote. Kirkegaard later claimed he was merely discussing a hypothetical scenario. He now leads HDF’s research team.
In case you don’t know what HDF is, it is
- The Pioneer Fund, a Nazi-affiliated eugenics organisation —thought to be essentially defunct — has rebranded as the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF)
- Aporia is part of the HDF’s organisation, as is a scientific racism research team
- Andrew Conru, the multimillionaire entrepreneur who created Adult Friend Finder, has given $1.3 million to HDF. After being contacted prior to this report’s publication, he said he would cut ties with the company
- HDF has connections to Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right German party, and hopes to create a white-only ethnostate
- HDF is working to create a cult of weapons-trained activists inspired by Scientology and the Nazi SS
Really, this is the worst of the worst. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.There was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench!
All you have to do is glance at their web page, and you will see exactly what they’re all about. They aren’t even trying to hide it, so there has to be something deeply wrong with you to be interested in reading it, and contributing to it? Unthinkable.
But now they have a new contributor.
Oh, hi, Steve.
Steven Pinker is genuinely one of our dumbest “public intellectuals.”
I am glad FFRF shed themselves of their association with him.
Even if Pinker might claim he doesn’t share the racist & eugenecist values of Aporia, it is clear he doesn’t consider them to be abhorent.
The name of this outfit is funny. Dictionary def of ‘aporia’ is Greed for doubt–like the frowning necessary concern-doubt of the modern anti-vaxxer or professional contrarian. But the main meaning of ‘aporia’ is the rhetorical device of expressing doubt to establish a rhetorical position–fake doubt, basically. So the name is a perfect expression of the fake position they have adopted.
You can’t use the word “intellectual” in the same sentence with Steven Pinker.
He is a fake pretending to be a scholar.
It looks like Pinker isn’t even bothering to pretend to be anything but a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer these days.
It isn’t like Aporia is hiding who they are, white racists.
Or who knows, maybe no one else will publish him these days.
It also didn’t do him any good.
The white racists who now control the US White House, Trump and the GOP, have a deep hatred of Pinker’s home institution, Harvard, and are trying to destroy it.
Yeah, that really impressed me.
To the point that I immediately made a donation to them and will make it an annual event.
People who claim to be for human diversity while preferring a world where you can divide people into a handful of easily discernable groups. Or what they think are easily discernable groups.
@5: Well, they’re trying to cash in on the positive associations of the term “diversity” (and humans really are a diverse lot, in certain senses) to hide a racist agenda. It would be a lovely irony if they got caught in the current Trumpist anti-diversity crusade (which seems at times to be implemented by a rather mindless string-matching algorithm).
Their use of the word diversity is a bait and switch scam. It’s deliberately dishonest.
.1. Humanity is made up of many diverse groups. (Which is true.)
.2. Some human groups are more intelligent than the other groups.
.3. Our group, the European white group are the most intelligent group.
.4. We therefore deserve to rule over and abuse all those other groups and get all the money and toys.
Statements 2 through 4 aren’t true and have a lot of other problems.
Notably, it treats each group as being completely uniform, which they are definitely not. There are huge intragroup variations such as that 50% of all whites have IQs less than 100 and aren’t all that bright.
It is basically simply a restatement of 19th century racism.
Continental Divide @2
Aporia is a perfectly legit word and used in context of Socratic method to refer to an induced state of perplexity associated with a state of discomfort. Nowadays it might be called cognitive dissonance.
There is a slightly Machiavellian angle to Socratic method called irony in which one feigns ignorance of a topic while interrogating the alleged knowledge of an interlocutor.
But there is a sincere or genuine form of aporia and it is a perfectly fine word regardless of what some jackasses chose to name their online magazine.
@1 and @4
Pinker is no longer on that FFRF board but interestingly Rebecca Newberger Goldstein still is. Hopefully she doesn’t share a similar ideology as her husband.
This is the group that believes IQ and race are the two most important factors of reality but become visibly uncomfortable when they’re reminded that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ of any group.
They don’t mind admitting East Asians generally have IQs but that Jewish thing rubs them the wrong way for some reason.
Walter Solomon @10: FWIW Pinker himself is Ashkenazi.
anat, good point; needs more context, but.
So: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/02/the-unwelcome-revival-of-race-science
What a fascinating moral theory! By that logic, if someone were to, say, shoot Emil Kierkegaard in the head from a great distance using a rifle whose projectile travels faster than the speed of sound, so that his melon was reduced to a chunky mist before he even knew anything was amiss, would he really suffer any harm? After all, he’d be blissfully unaware of his own demise, even if it was technically murder. Why, it would hardly be different than if he’d peacefully passed on in his sleep! For him, anyway; sucks to be the person who has to clean the carpets.
That’s all purely hypothetical, of course. Far be it from me to suggest that anyone should go around popping Nazi’s tops for science. Or shits and giggles.
@13 vucodlak
Ooh, edgy. Tell ya what, you go first. “Screw the optics, I’m going in”-style. We’ll be right behind you if things go wrong (we swear!), don’t worry about it.
@ beholder, #14
Go first at what? I suggested no action. Please, do explain what I’m supposed to be doing to get you behind me. I’m ever-so-eager for your approval.
Kierkegaard’s disturbing views extend beyond race. In 2012, he published a blog on his website about paedophilia, suggesting that abusers should be allowed to rape children drugged with sleeping medicine.
Ed Brayton wrote a blog post some time ago about some college professor who’d said the same thing about raping unconscious girls or women: it’s okay if it’s “quiet gentle rape” when the victim is unconscious. I don’t remember the rape-apologist’s name or where he was teaching, but I’m wondering if he might have got his ideas from Kierkegaard…
Walter Solomon@10–
The race “scientists” who say that are doing so to deflect criticisms of racism. “White people dominate the highest levels of power in the US because they are genetically more intelligent. This doesn’t make us racist because we acknowledge that Jews and East Asians are even smarter!” But they never grapple with the implication that the lack of Jewish and East Asian representation at the highest levels of power in the US is overwhelming evidence of structural race-based barriers, even by their own rotten philosophy.
@15. vucodlak : Have you and others here noticed, like I have, that Trump enabler & de facto Trump voter “beholder” whose old shtick here was promoting an indirect Trump vote via third party spoilers and attacking the ONLY actual alternative to the Trump Fascist party now seems keen to encourage the use of violence in several of their recent comments?
Almost like they are an :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
Delibrately trying to stir up problematic comments that would hurt those on this blog and the Left and give an excuse for violent repression of progressives and possibly get this blog shut down?
Note that the KKK-Konfederate Slaver’s lost cause’s aligned side of politics, the Fascist Trumpist side, has been openly calling for Civil War; has been preparing for it and tends to be heavily armed and full of hate and Trump planned for repressive govt crackdowns ignoring human rights and basic fairness. I’m sure they think they’d win if things turn (more) violent. Especially when they control the Presidency – now Dictatorship – the courts and the military.
It seems highly probable that Trump is itching for an excuse to use emergency powers and martial law and go even more fully repressive dictator crushing dissenters than he already has.
Even if it were otherwise and as a rule of thumb, public blog posts are obvs NOT the places to plan for anything that counts as, shall we say, extreme measures.
Beholder, note, is almost certainly not commenting here in good faith and is blatantly dishonest and refuses to consider their views based on evidence and logic.. All they have commented here – that I’ve seen – has been urging actions that would harm those on the political left and not help us.
Also notice now Trump is in power – thanks in part to beholders own efforts to help him by attacking her – beholder seems to have totally forgotten about Gaza and the far worse genocide and plans for the worst possible ethnic cleansing and genocide that Far Worse Genocide Don is committing right now?
At very best and most charitable interpretation of their comments here; beholder is willfully thoughtless, counter-productively toxic to what they claim to believe in, massively bad at critical thinking, logic and understanding generally and lacking even the willingness to be minimally self-reflective or reasonable. At worst, well, see above.
The effect of what beholder has done, well, we all know that don’t we? We’re seeing it play out all around us currently.
Beholder is NOT to be trusted and no friend of anyone here. Their credibility is about minus infinity here for anyone who actually cares about progressive causes and values.
Steven Pinker looks like Jordan Peterson with an 18th century haircut and now I can’t unsee it.
So I took a look at the magazine; par for the course. Pabulum, mostly.
This bit amused me:
“I am what’s derisively (but accurately) called an “AI doomer.” Although I recognize that AI could supercharge technological progress and make every human fantastically rich, I believe that creating an AI significantly smarter than ourselves, without first learning to align it with our values, would probably lead to humanity’s extinction—or perhaps something worse. To understand why AI alignment is so challenging, consider a historical analogy.”
(https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/ai-is-going-to-kill-us-allor-save)
(Obviously, the author conflates AI with GAI)
John Morales @ 20
We should not expect authors at a site aimed at the flakiest fringe to be familiar with the correct terminology. Be grateful they do not believe in the flogiston theory, or Lamarck’s idea of evolution.
PZ and Raging Bee @ 16 about Emil Kierkegaard.
Good grief, and he is allowed to be at large? 🤮
The similarity is even deeper than that.
Steven Pinker is a Canadian like Jordan Peterson and a migrant.
Somehow I don’t think ICE is going to grab him in the middle of the night and deport him though.
Elon Musk is also a Canadian citizen, with a Canadian mother and Canadian first wife.
I’m not saying there is a pattern here but then again, I’m not saying there isn’t a pattern either.