Category: I get email

I get emails

May 14, 2019 • 10:30 am

This is a new one on me. A reader called “Kolmogorov” made the following comment on my post  “Two defenses of Camille Paglia”:

Scott Aaronson writes about the the Kolmogorov option (suggested alternate title: “Kolmogorov complicity”). Mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov lived in the Soviet Union at a time when true freedom of thought was impossible. He reacted by saying whatever the Soviets wanted him to say about politics, while honorably pursuing truth in everything else. As a result, he not only made great discoveries, but gained enough status to protect other scientists, and to make occasional very careful forays into defending people who needed defending. He used his power to build an academic bubble where science could be done right and where minorities persecuted by the communist authorities (like Jews) could do their work in peace.

Let’s be like Kolmogorov and do some good within the entirely reasonable restrictions that the social justice movement places on us. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Identity politics doesn’t seem quite true, but it’s not doing too much harm, really, and it helps keep the peace, and lots of people like it. Just ignore this one good prosocial falsehood that’s not bothering anybody, and then you can do whatever it is you want.

I disagreed, of course, and you can see my answer to this comment at the first link above. But truly, I’m astounded at someone claiming that we should shut up and just go along with the social justice warriors and identity politics so we can get on with our quotidian tasks. I want the Democrats to win in 2020, and I don’t want the lunacy of some Leftists to scotch that possibility. I can still do science while criticizing what I see fit.

I forgot to add, however, that even doing a particular kind of science can land you in trouble, as happened with Nikolai Vavilov during the Lysenko era in the Soviet Union.

I’ll call “Kolmogorov’s” attention to this post, so feel free to respond to him/her. But be polite, of course.

I get emails

March 20, 2019 • 10:00 am

The volume of comments I have to deep-six has increased, and I’m not sure whether it’s because the moon is full or because the volume of traffic has increased over time. Either way, I thought I’d put up two that were especially striking.

Here’s a comment from “The Knot Specialist” whose website is, unsurprisingly, private. Kerissa (gravitar is a female, and she signed the attempted contribution) is commenting on my post “NYT goes soft on astrology” She thinks that I am criticizing newspaper columns on astrology when I actually linked to a paper in Nature that was a double-blind test of the readings of professional astrologers. (They failed.) This is like my posts on theology being criticized because I am not going after the Most Sophisticated Types of Theology. My own comments are in bold.

To wit:

The Knot Specialist
theknotspecialist.com

I respect and honor each person’s free will and the accompanying tangents of thought that may spring up in the process, but in this day and age of technology, when one can gather enough information to confirm what they want to be true, I find it terribly sad how many people decide to cement their confirmation bias. I find it sadder still when those same people pass it along like Mono.

(“like Mono” — get it? No? OK: 1) cause the group of tweens that always start the outbreak never seem to know where they got it; and 2) serious cases of Mono have led to terrible, life-changing outcomes. It’s the perfect example here.

I have no intention of raining on your parade [Passive-aggressive; of course she does!], but when WP suggested I check out the astrology tag on this feed, sadly, this was at the top of the results page.

My first reaction was to roll my eyes, shake my head, and move on. But, I don’t believe in coincidences, only synchronicities. OOOOoooooh, yeah, I said that. [I’m sorry for you.]

See, I haven’t been on WP very long, haven’t posted anything or even finished my page, so WP’s suggestion of astrology has no obvious cause. Yet there it was and here this was.

So here I am. Aloha.

I didn’t read your entire post, only the parts where you weren’t referencing someone else’s opinion, research, or – excuse me – bullshit. So it didn’t take me long to get to the comments section.

I don’t have a problem with people who have differing opinions, beliefs, sexual preferences, sexual genitalia, political views, etc., etc. I have a problem with people who don’t do their homework and then proceed to spread, sorry, bullshit. Not just about astrology, I mean half-assed, televangelist-worthy bullshit about anything. But since you brought it up…

If you did your homework you’d know that most serious astrologers think newspaper horoscopes are like a G rated movie (cute, but not really at the top of an adult’s list of Must Sees).

That’s not to say that non-horoscope writing astrologers hate on those that fill the Culture section with 2 sentence entertainment-only prophecies. No, no, the astrology community is a hugely diverse group. You know what has a lot to do with that? No, silly, not voo-doo. [Yes, they are a diverse community, but they’re all peddling bullshit.]

Well, a little voo-doo, but I’m guessing mostly in Louisiana.

The melting pot of astrology is largely due to the sheer volume of it. Did you know that there are dozens of different schools of astrology, from all over the world. There’s traditional, Evolutionary (my fave), Hellinistic, Jyotish, Chinese, Psychological, Esoteric, Neo-classical, Predictive – and that’s only a few of the many. [Again: all bullshit. The motions and positions of stars and planets have no influence on your personality or life.]

You say astrology is harmful…harmful how? Because it what? It “tricks people” into believing something that makes them smile or gives them the motivation or whatever other push they needed to help themselves or find a solution? You’re right, happiness and motivation and reasons to not give up are the real causes of harm in this otherwise perfect plane of existence. [Yes, it tricks people into giving astrologers money for fake predictions. It may give the credulous a useful opportunity to talk to someone, but if you really want to help someone, go into therapy rather than astrology. Oh, I forgot: therapy takes training.]

I just threw up a little in my mouth. But I’m okay. No harm done.

I could point you to an endless amount of places that would blow any of the shit in this post out of the water…but I don’t plan to. [Curious that she can’t even name one site that verifies any form of astrology.]

Although it is objectively, thoroughly, and continuously well-researched, [and continuously disproven] I’m not trying to project my opinion *cough*KNOWLEDGE*cough* of astrology and other topics of a similar nature on you because I respect your right to your confirmation biases and the void that they create.

Rock on with your biases.

So why did I take 20 minutes that I’ll never get back to write this lengthy bit which you may have already tuned out of so you can start thinking of – what are they called – burns? That you could whip back at me? I think of it as my own little PSA [Prostate-specific antigen????]; doing a little to help the lot.

By the way, don’t waste your time with that burn thing, if that’s what you really are thinking of. I meant it when I said that my first response was to just move on and I won’t be baited into a back and forth about something like this. I know what’s real for me and that’s enough.  [Ah, the frequent assertion that “what is real for me” is “real”. That’s what religious people say, too.]

That said, you’re welcome to email me directly to discuss, if you were, say, interested in some objective information and personal experience. [I’ve read enough about astrology, thank you. She doesn’t want a back-and-forth; she wants to tell me why I’m wrong. No, thank you.]

To me? Your post is an example of how social media and the Opining Operatives that feed there can be harmful and obstruct people’s freedom of choice.

It’s like this: wen you represent a poorly researched and marshmallow-filled post like this in a way that implies you know what you’re talking about, when you clearly don’t, you potentially cause harm to someone looking for answers. [Translation: I’m hurting the pocketbooks of professional astrologers and woo-peddlers]

Like, say, someone who followed WP’s suggestion and clicked on that tag for astrology and found this.

Someone who is not a person well-versed in the ENTIRETY (good, bad, ugly, and awesome) of astrology, like me. [LOL]

This post drips with the acid of shaming and I wouldn’t be surprised if that questioning soul, sensitive to such acid, is shamed into not doing more research than just your post; shamed into letting you and your fellow skeptics and this string of half-assed assumptions decide for him or her whether it’s something that speaks to them or not.

You don’t have the right to THEIR opinion. [Yes, but I have a right to give my opinion, which is apparently an opinion you don’t like because you know SO MUCH about astrology.]

To be clear: I’m not here to defend astrology and I’m not offended by your comments about it because I honor and respect your right to your personal opinions.

I’m here to remind you that people have the right to decide for themselves – not just about astrology, about anything. [What kind of nonsense is this? Have I ever forced my opinion on anyone, saying, “You must believe this or else”?]

Go ahead, say what you want, but don’t say it as if you KNOW when you don’t. Leave a door that readers feel comfortable walking through to do their own research. Leave their rights to them. [I will criticize astrological bullshit as much as I want, thank you, and I know more about it than you think, and more than was evinced in my post.]

Basically: Dude, do your homework or stick to things you could actually be an expert about because a passionate opinion does not an expert make. [She’s very close to being a Sophisticated Theologian® here. She apparently knows tests by skeptics that show that astrology works, though she can’t be arsed to cite any.]

And finally, make good choices founded in respect for others and their rights. Maybe you don’t believe in Karma, but she believes in you. [Wow! A Deepity!]

Regards,
Kerissa

************

And evolution hater Raegan commenting on my post “More email from evolution-haters.” The “about me” page on his website (I’ve omitted it) notes that he is home-schooled and 12 years old.

Raegan

why do you think evolution is true? I want to know cause i can prove that evolution is not true are wold is to complex for evolution to be true PS not trying to hate telling the truth and I love your kittens!!!

I think Raegan needs to go to public school. I won’t go after him because he’s so young, but I feel sorry for him and all his ilk who are denied the chance to learn the truth about biology.

 

Weekly emails

July 12, 2014 • 9:06 am

Besides the usual rants from believers, I’ve received a number of rude or nasty personal emails this week, including a couple from Michael Robbins, who (after I criticized his Slate piece on the evils of New Atheism), continued to email me despite my asking him to stop. He needs to be treated for Maru’s Syndrome stat: the usual treatment, I hear, is a tuna. But that post continues to inspire discussion, and is nearing 400 comments, which may be a record. Of course that’s nothing compared to the thousands of comments on Robbins’s Slate site (the bulk of them negative), but this isn’t Slate.

And if Slate wants to publish that kind of mush as clickbait, they’re welcome to it. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if Slate publishes stuff like that, which no respectable magazine would touch (can you imagine Robbins’s piece in The New Yorker?), just to get hits. I’ve long ago written Salon off on that count, but had more hope for Slate.

This really is a new phenomenon in journalism, brought about by the fact that online “magazines” get paid for page hits. That gives them a strong incentive to publish contentious pieces, even if, like Robbins’s, they hold no water. And that just drags down journalism as a whole.  (I’m not mentioning the pathetic amounts they pay writers, which is driving many freelancers into penury.)

In the meantime, here are a few comments of interest that came in the past ten days or so. They weren’t intended to be posted here, and weren’t, but I’ll put them up now (the commenters won’t be posting here again):

kmlmbs commented on “Oy vey!”, a six word post consisting of this:  “This is embarrassing for one team. . .”

Soccer & FIFA are corrupt. Brazil threw today’s game against Germany. It was obvious by the way all of the Brazillians played. They played to lose. A bad high school soccer team would’ve done better against Germany. The final score said 7-1, a Germany win. But what is the final talley for the players who took an unknown amount of money to throw the game?

Soccer is awash in corruption and it will continue to get worse as long as FIFA controls soccer tournaments.

It’s beyond me how somebody can believe such a twisted conspiracy theory. Really, Brazil threw the game? Why on earth would they do that? Now I recognize all the problems with FIFA, but I’m 100% sure they didn’t tell the Brazilians to take money so they could suffer a humiliating defeat. But there is no conspiracy theory so bizarre that someone doesn’t believe it.

Reader Steve Willy has a few things to say about atheism in a comment on the post, “Moar bad stuff from Satan (and the Pope)”

Wow, you’re an atheist? You must be really smart. A real free thinker. Except, well…. Let’s put the faux-analytical hyperbole away for a while and look at reality: Kalaam Cosmological Argument, teleological argument, First Cause/Unmoved Mover, the impossibility of infinite causal regress, the necessity of at least one unconditioned reality, the Argument from Reason, Fine Tuning of Universal Constants, irreducible biological complexity, the argument from morality… While you sit there in your Hitchens-Dawkins parroting bubble and regurgitate pseudo-intellectual douchisms, your entire world view lies shattered at your feet. If you truly honor the gods of reason and critical thinking half as much as you claim, you would plant your face firmly into your hand, step away from the device, find a quiet place, and rethink your life.

This person has clearly not read any counter-arguments dealing with these Mediocre Arguments for God.  Really, morality is irrefutable proof of God? Which god, exactly? And the teleological argument—is that the one about evolution? I’m looking around at my feet now and I don’t see any shattered world view. Is it shattered and I just don’t perceive it?

Another reader, Mark,  just noted that Steve Willy has recycled this comment from one he made on Patheos in October of last year. You can see the self-plagiarism here.

Reader aubrey mouths some familiar sentiments in a comment on the post “Tim White pwns a creationist student“:

There is no greater act of faith than to accept evolution as scientific fact. Talk about drinking the kool-aid. You worship a religion of futility that elevates you to god. No wonder evolutionists are such self righteous zealots. You are too busy engaging in self worship to actually birth a original thought. You are always good for a laugh though. Thanks.

You’re welcome.  This missive is just so garbled that the person is either not thinking clearly or is so full of venom that he/she actually believes that atheists worship themselves. But even if we did, at least we’d be worshipping something real!  To be sure, I’d like to hear one of aubrey’s original thoughts, for the stuff he/she’s regurgitating here is just a parade of ill-thought-out , familiar, and unevidenced claims.

Hey, here’s an original thought: the Trinity!  Now that’s a really good one: a three-in-one God!

josephomorrow commented on “Facebook on science vs. religion“:

Both science and religion, as folks used to know them, have been hijacked by arrogant folks. When BOTH sides of an argument are inherantly [sic] wrong, of course there are endless arguments and counterarguments. At one time it was individuals who each had their views regardless of affiliation. Science and religion in general agreed on most things while strong individuals often did not.

As religion was hijacked by those wno basically knew not their Bibles, and science was also hijacked by some of the same, only then was the development of today’s great polarization made possible.

The only solution then, it would seem, would be to get back to the True God and His actually Book, shucking all the unnecessary prejudice and bigotry that has been indoctrinated into so many by the hijackers!

I wonder what “true God” he’s talking about, and what “actually Book”. I presume it’s not Allah and the Qur’an, respectively.

Here we have accommodationism at its most incoherent—from a person who professes to criticize arrogance yet says he knows who the True God is!