In Bill Maher’s latest comedy/politics bit on Real Time —called“F with your algorithm—he calls out people for assuming that because he criticizes the left, he must be a right-winger. This criticism hits home for me, as I’ve been accused of the same thing. As Maher notes, he’s been criticized for being a right-winger by people who deliberately ignore his criticisms of the right—even though he does that as well, and often. People don’t like to call attention to things that make them uncomfortable.
One example is our joint anthology, The War on Science, which was attacked for criticizing the left’s erosion of science when in fact many of its authors are liberals. The slant of the book apparently angered some “progressives,” who argued (many without having read the book), that it should have been aimed instead at the right (which also damages science). My response to these critics is pretty much the same as Maher’s, but this is a family-oriented site so I will simply echo what Maher says at 1:07.
As Maher says, “If you think your job is to tell people what you want to hear, you’re not a journalist—you’re a wedding D.J.” He gives examples of his own demonization for being a right-winger when, in his piece, he had in fact he’d criticized both right and left. Much of the reportage on Maher’s so-called conservatism (he’s a classical liberal) involves deliberately distorting or truncating his views. Maher may seem a bit defensive, but he deserves to be!
(The guests appear to be Mark Cuban and Andrew Ross Sorkin.)
At the end he analogizes this journalistic tactic to how websites and devices also type their users, developing algorithms that, as we all know, aim their ad at users who, they think, will bite. His solution? Mess with those computer algorithms by clicking on things that you don’t like or want. That has a side benefit. You’re a liberal like most of us, start reading conservative sites: that will do you good anyway.
Apropos of Maher’s monologue, we have a new video (below) about The War on Science book, or rather about its thesis. Lawrence Krauss, author of the anthology, says this about the 100-minute video (I haven’t yet watched it):
We’re closing our campaign of interviews and discussions for the book with something special: the official broadcast video of the War on Science Panel Discussion. This was a remarkable event put on as a collaboration between The Origins Project Foundation and the Free Speech Union, their largest ever event in fact, celebrating the book’s launch.
You can now watch the full video, where I was joined by several eminent contributors including Richard Dawkins, Alice Sullivan, John Armstrong, Alan Sokal, and Amy Wax. We debated the causes of, and solutions to, the ideological and political capture we’re witnessing in mathematics, the natural sciences, theoretical physics, medicine, and even government statistics. It was a good-natured but feisty exchange of ideas across political divides, driven by a panel of speakers who care passionately about truth and reason, all chaired by FSU founder Lord Toby Young.
This discussion really captures the core of the entire project: a candid exchange about the very real problems facing science and academia, and a necessary defense of free inquiry and objective truth.
Reader Bat recommended this video in an email:
I am finding it very engaging. I have read the full book of essays and maybe that helps me appreciate the authors’ verbalizing, but in any case I find it to be surprisingly fresh and engaging. It is nice to have both of the two mathematicians on the panel, and for two reasons: 1. It forewarns people that even math is under serious woke attack; and 2. Both guys give very nice talks of what hogwash the attacks are.
Science is a universal acid, destroying the cherished beliefs of most folks. This is hardly a unique observation on my part. I am quoting from someone, but I don’t know who.
No so!
The antidote is in the ‘written Word of God’. 🙂 https://creation.com/universal-acid
Are you serious?
No. I was joking! 🙂 If you are asking if I agree with the creationists about the word of God being true, then no. Of course not.
I believe Dan Dennett said that, but about evolution, not science in general.
Thank you
Sorry, I misspoke slightly in my note to Jerry quoted above. Armstrong and Klainerman wrote the two articles in the book specifically about impacts on math but only Armstrong of those two was on this panel. Alan Sokal, a mathematician (and physicist and philosopher and….) was noted as a second mathematician on the panel, though his essay in the book was much broader on the impacts of ideology on science….and really excellent btw I think.
The “War on Science” panel (and the book as well) left out one matter that could be
very important: Sociology of how DEI wokeness slipped into some Nature
journal offices, some STEM departments, and many medical schools. One factor that occurs to me is the presence of an antechamber of some STEM departments focused not on the subject itself but on its teaching. If these vestibules were in the Schools of Ed, where they belong, they might have less behind-the-scenes effect on the STEM departments to which they are appended. Another factor is clearly the way in which administrative officials, particularly at med schools, are recruited/appointed.
Jon, I gather you don’t spend time on X, because the following piece has been all but impossible to avoid.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/
There is also an article soon appearing in the “Journal of Controversial Ideas” titled “From Worriers to Warriors: The Cultural Rise of Women.” It is embargoed until later this week, but here is the abstract:
“For the first time in history, women hold substantial cultural and institutional power. Men and women differ, on average, in their values: women are more harm-averse, equity-oriented, and prone to resolving conflict through social exclusion. As a result, shifting sex compositions can bring palpable cultural change. The transition has been particularly dramatic in academia, where women were once almost entirely excluded and now constitute majorities. I review research showing that sex differences in self-reported academic priorities correspond to recent institutional changes, including (1) preference for equity (e.g., DEI initiatives, grade inflation), (2) prioritization of harm-avoidance (e.g., trigger warnings, safe spaces), and (3) increased ostracism (e.g., cancel culture). I then expand my analysis to other trends that may be partly attributable to the ascendancy of women, including the rapid success of the LGBT community, animal rights progress, rising mental health concerns, and increased accountability for competent but unethical leaders. Women, once dubbed “worriers” by evolutionary scholars, participate in culture as warriors for justice. This inflection point offers an opportunity to examine the costs and benefits of both the male-oriented status quo and the emerging female moral order, so that societies may draw on the best aspects of both.”
Thanks, Doug. I do indeed spend no time with X, but have watched an on-line
talk on this subject. It makes sense, particularly in regard to academia. In fact, at
my own former institution, there is an obvious example of the feminization rule. The Office of Faculty Well-Being, a creature of the 2000s, always has a
staff that is heavily (sometimes exclusively) of the XX karyotype.
Thank you Jon and Doug. I must stiffen my backbone a bit to read this material, as I have raised three daughters to compete as equals in the world, but I do have an excellent sixty something female friend whom I can have a good discussion with. I was aware of the Larry Summers kerfuffle but not the background and follow-up material you have provided here. This is one reason we in the hinterland love WEIT!
I have always blamed the DEI and Social Justice hysteria on boards of visitors and some powerful individuals on them. I never thought about what it was about those members.
Helen Andrews’s thesis is that even though individual women like your daughters can work at levels equal to men and can thrive in male-dominated workplaces, once women become the majority in a discipline, they collectively change the culture so that it becomes hostile to men, and to those women who had been able to thrive in the formerly male culture. The pioneering women in surgery and the medical subspecialties, usually unmarried and almost always childless, are very different, and faced very different barriers, compared with today’s women thronging into “family” — the very word is telling — medicine, psychiatry, and general pediatrics. The fraud of medical gender manipulation has grown up in this feminized environment, to the great consternation of individual women like Helen Joyce, JK Rowling, and our own Joolz.
Men have always known that when a line of work becomes feminized, it’s time to head for the exits. The reason usually offered is that once something becomes “women’s work”, — work that can be scheduled and subordinated to family responsibilities, meaning no one really cares when it gets done, or ever — society will pay much less for it. (Andrews echoes this.) But escaping the torments of the “HR lady” as Andrews calls her is to escape the toxic culture as well.
At my old university, an experimental test of sex-related differences in academic priorities has been going on in full view for at least a decade. Within the med school’s Office of Faculty Affairs, there is a “Well-Being” sub-office. It is explicitly aimed at nurturing faculty, helping them achieve resilience, avoid burn-out, practice meditation, etc. etc. The staff of this office has always been heavily female. However, if anyone were to note this evidence of sex-related difference in average interests, he/she would probably share the fate of Harvard’s ex-prez Larry Summers.
[I must add that my own offer to serve in the Well-Being office as Associate Dean for Restful Naps has not been accepted.]