Steven Pinker 🖤 Michael Shermer

Two pals who love race pseudoscience

I recently discovered Steven Pinker has an Instagram account. He's had it for years, I just didn't bother to look for it.

He doesn't post the usual reactionary offensiveness there, like he does on Elon Musk's shitshow "X," but he did reveal there that he has a warm personal relationship with Michael Shermer. 

The caption is: "MAMILs (middle-aged men in Lycra) - me and Michael Shermer in Santa Barbara"

First, since when is late 60s "middle-aged"? The image was taken in October 2021 when both were 67. 

But also never forget that Michael Shermer is a blatant racist, much more so than Pinker.  I'm not saying Pinker is not a racist, I'm saying he's much less blatant about it.

Certainly Pinker is not so disturbed by racism that it prevents him from being good buddies with Shermer, who is so racist he agrees with extreme racist and thankfully dead J Philippe Rushton and his bogus claims about Black people.

When E. O. Wilson's promotion of Rushton's career was in the news, not long after Wilson died, Shermer tweeted: "I thought (Rushton) was (a racist) too until I looked at the evidence. You should try that some day instead of motivated reasoning"

Rushton is well-known for the very poor quality of his work in addition to his racism. So it's Michael Shermer who is guilty of "motivated reasoning" and he's projecting here: Michael Shermer wants to believe that Rushton was correct that Black people are virtually a different species from white people, and intellectually inferior and genetically inclined to crime.

And E. O. Wilson encouraged Rushton and helped him with his career.