Chat GPT spills the tea about Peter Thiel and the Intellectual Dark Web

Since ChatGPT told me that Bari Weiss received a quarter of a million dollars from Peter Thiel in 2017, it occurred to me that perhaps her 2018 article for the New York Times about the splendors of her fellow travellers, Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web, was a public announcement of who had agreed to be on the Peter Thiel payroll. In addition to all those associated with Quillette.

In the article there were twenty-five individuals named by Weiss as connected to the Intellectual Dark Web, including Steven Pinker, Kanye West, Milo Yiannapoulos, Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones. 

But the most significant of the IDW bunch are those who were photographed for the article, standing in the dark in the bushes. 

I guess the photographer wanted to make a point by posing these Intellectuals in the Dark, but drew the line at literally portraying them in a Web and so had to stick them in some bushes instead.

The eight bush skulkers include Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, Heather Heying, Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin and Eric and Bret Weinstein.

So what does ChatGPT have to say about them?

NOTE:  this must be investigated further, since ChatGPT is known to be factually unreliable.

        Has Peter Thiel ever funded Sam Harris?

Yes, Peter Thiel has provided funding to Sam Harris in the past. In fact, Thiel was one of the early supporters of Harris' podcast and helped fund the creation of the Waking Up app, which was later renamed to the Sam Harris app. Thiel and Harris have also engaged in public conversations and have expressed mutual respect for each other's work in various fields.

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Supposedly Harris says he's done with the Intellectual Dark Web.

I came up empty on a Thiel funding source for Michael Shermer, but ChatGPT did have this info, which is not even available at SourceWatch.

Has the Skeptic magazine received funding from Donors Trust?

Yes, according to public records, Skeptic magazine has received funding from Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that provides support to a variety of conservative and libertarian organizations. Specifically, tax filings from Donors Trust show that they provided funding to the Skeptics Society, the organization that publishes Skeptic magazine, in both 2014 and 2015. It's worth noting that Donors Trust supports a wide range of organizations across the political spectrum, and the fact that an organization receives funding from Donors Trust does not necessarily imply any particular political alignment or agenda. 

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Donor's Trust is the infamous right-wing funding vehicle that also gives millions to racist monsters VDARE.

ChatGPT had nothing about Thiel or Donors Trust funding for Christina Hoff Sommers, but it's not a secret that she's taken money from Koch-funded organizations for decades. ChatGPT agreed:

Christina Hoff Sommers, a conservative writer and critic of contemporary feminism, has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on policy, education, and advocacy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Sommers     include:

• The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Bradley Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, civic engagement, and free markets.
• The Charles Koch Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research and education programs on a variety of topics, including economics, political science, and civil liberties.
• The Independent Women's Forum (IWF), a conservative organization that advocates for policies and initiatives that promote economic freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on policy research in areas such as urban policy, energy, and education. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)

Here's what ChatGPT had to say about Heather Heying:

Heather Heying has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on science, education, and policy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Heying include:

• The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative think tank that promotes free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses.
• The John William Pope Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, healthcare, and public policy.
• The Templeton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research on science, spirituality, and human purpose.
• The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes intelligent design theory and critiques of evolutionary biology.
• The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on political philosophy, constitutionalism, and American exceptionalism.

I'm curious what The Discovery Institute hopes to get from Heying for its money, since it promotes intelligent design and critiques of evolutionary biology.

We do know that Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein have promoted junk science during the Covid pandemic. But that's Game Theory.

When I asked ChatGPT about Dave Rubin it said:

Rubin has expressed support for many conservative and libertarian ideas and causes, and he has collaborated with a number of individuals and organizations in these spheres. Some of the individuals and organizations that have expressed support for Rubin or his ideas include:

• Peter Thiel: As mentioned earlier, Thiel has expressed support for Rubin and his work, but there is no clear evidence that he has provided direct financial support to Rubin.
• PragerU: Rubin has collaborated with PragerU, a conservative educational organization that produces videos promoting conservative and libertarian ideas.
• Turning Point USA: Rubin has also worked with Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization that promotes conservative and libertarian ideas on college campuses.
• The Federalist Society: Rubin has expressed support for the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that promotes originalist interpretations of the US Constitution.
• Republican politicians: Rubin has expressed support for several Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul.

Eric Weinstein of course works for Thiel Capital, but I did not know he and Bret had been Thiel Fellows:

Bret and Eric Weinstein were both fellows at the Thiel Foundation, which provides funding to young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. The Weinsteins have also been associated with the Intellectual Dark Web, a loose network of public intellectuals who are known for challenging mainstream narratives on a range of topics. While the IDW is not a formal organization and does not receive direct funding, many of its members are supported by conservative and libertarian donors who share their views.

Curiously ChatGPT wouldn't say that Bret Weinstein was funded by the same organizations who fund his wife, Heather Heying, which makes no sense. It did say about Weinstein:

Weinstein has also been critical of what he calls "woke ideology" and the progressive movement, and has spoken out in support of free speech and academic freedom. These views have earned him support from some conservative and libertarian organizations and donors. For example, he has appeared as a guest speaker at events hosted by the National Review Institute, a conservative think tank, and has been praised by conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro.

Shapiro was another person named in Weiss's NYTimes article as IDW.

I came up with bupkis for Joe Rogan.

So according to ChatGPT,  Sam Harris has taken money from Thiel, and Eric and Bret Weinstein were fellows at the Thiel Foundation, and all the others, except Joe Rogan have connections to lots of other far-right funders.

And since Thiel has funded Quillette we can infer these people have received Thielbucks due to Quillette authorship (my annotations in parentheses):

Quillette is an online magazine that publishes articles on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Some of the individuals who have written articles for Quillette include:

• Jordan Peterson: Canadian psychologist and author (IDW member per Weiss article)
• Claire Lehmann: Australian psychologist and founder of Quillette (Quillette is the primary publication of the IDW per the Weiss article)
• Sam Harris: American philosopher and author (see above)
• Christina Hoff Sommers: American philosopher and cultural critic (see above)
• Jonathan Haidt: American social psychologist and author 
• Heather Mac Donald: American political commentator and author
• Gad Saad: Canadian evolutionary psychologist and author
• Bret Weinstein: American biologist and evolutionary theorist (see above)
• Douglas Murray: British author and political commentator (named member of IDW)
• Andrew Doyle: British comedian and writer (or "comedian")
• Cathy Young: Russian-American journalist and author
• Debra Soh: Canadian sex researcher and science writer (named member of IDW)
• Conor Friedersdorf: American journalist and writer
• Peter Boghossian: American philosopher and professor
• Toby Young: British journalist and author (also was Quillette associate editor)
• Maajid Nawaz: British activist and writer
• Meghan Daum: American author and columnist
• Yascha Mounk: German-American political scientist and writer
• Helen Pluckrose: English author and editor of Areo Magazine
• James Lindsay: American author and mathematician
• Bruce Gilley: American political scientist and professor
• Claire Fox: British author and commentator
• Jamie Palmer: British writer and commentator (Quillette editor)
• Heather Heying: American evolutionary biologist and writer (see above)
• Ed Husain: British writer and commentator
• Coleman Hughes: American writer and podcaster
• Frances Widdowson: Canadian academic and writer

This is not an exhaustive list, as many other individuals have also written articles for Quillette.

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It's important to note that Peter Thiel is a democracy-hating far-right funder of monsters like Donald Trump, and has been called both a psychopath and a sociopath. And he's a babbling, Bible-quoting crackpot, with billions to spend on his far-right agenda. 

And those people have taken his money.

Or as David Bertoli, one of the admirers of the Anna Krylov/Jerry Coyne grift might say:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” 

Claire Lehmann loves race pseudoscience and hates women

It should come as a surprise to nobody that Claire Lehmann, founder of right-wing race pseudoscience rag Quillette, is still promoting race pseudoscience.

And Iona Italia, who interviewed Lehmann for her site Areo, was in full agreement with her. Italia herself has published articles in Quillette.

Now the reason that these two are so sleazy, besides their racism, is because they won't admit they get funding from right-wing plutocrats. 

It's been reported that Quillette gets funding from Peter Thiel, and when I asked ChatGPT if Peter Thiel had funded Areo, this was the response (my highlight):

There have been reports that Peter Thiel has financially supported Areo Magazine in the past. Areo Magazine is a digital magazine that covers politics, culture, and society from a liberal and rationalist perspective. Thiel is known to have supported a number of conservative and libertarian causes and organizations over the years, so it is possible that he has provided financial backing to Areo Magazine as well. However, I don't have access to up-to-date information on whether Thiel is currently supporting Areo Magazine or not.

Unfortunately, ChatGPT has been shown to be factually unreliable, so this must be confirmed by other sources.

And Areo publishes many of the same people who publish in Quillette and has published articles by extreme racists Noah Carl and Razib Khan, and neo-Nazis Bo Winegard and James Lindsay. All while claiming to be a liberal publication. I assume in order to move the "Overton window" - a concept Claire Lehmann is well acquainted with.

I didn't listen to the entire interview with Italia and Lehmann because there's only so much ninnitude I can stomach in one 24-hour period. I actually wanted to find out if Lehmann still admires pedophila-loving Camille Paglia and OF COURSE SHE DOES.

But as I was searching for the Paglia section I landed on the section right before, where they discuss their support for race pseudoscience:

Minute 47:35 (my highlights)

ITALIA

A lot of articles have been published in Quillette about links between race and IQ and about human biodiversity. In fact someone, a mutual of mine on Twitter says that you coined the term human biodiversity 1., you personally, which seems I think is probably incorrect? But I think that that is the thing that is probably on the Left causing the most anger, and I have even been the subject of a lot of kind of the backwash from that myself - an academic who has a very large following wrote this thread in which he said I was a fascist and racist 2.a and I had published lots of articles on race and IQ, and although I think it's perfectly valid to publish on that topic, um I've never published anything on that in Areo 2.b and I said this and all his examples were articles from Quillette. 3. Because he was confused, right who is associated where? What is your response to people who accuse you of having a kind of hierarchical notion of race that is based on differing average IQ or other kind of hereditary markers? 4.

 

LEHMANN

Well, I would disagree with anyone if they were to suggest that I had to have a hierarchical view of races. I mean, that's just completely wrong and I reject that completely. I do not think that all I don't believe the science suggests that all human populations, whether we wanted to describe them as racial populations or all humans of all ethnic backgrounds, I don't think we're all the same basically. And just as men and women are not the same 5. and this, this is not my opinion, this is just scientific fact. 

I guess, what we've been in trouble, what we've gotten in trouble for at Quillette is simply airing a hypothesis called the hereditarian hypothesis.6. Now the group differences in intelligence scores on standardised intelligence tests is a scientific fact. What is controversial is the hypothesis that these gaps may have a genetic, partially genetic component. Now, I'm not a scientist. I'm not doing research in this area. I am not going to make a claim one way or the other. These gaps could be entirely the result of environmental factors like poor nutrition, lack of vitamin D, whatever. But I think to rule out that genes may play some role is to be antiscientific, anti intellectual. So I mean we've published articles that have aired this hypothesis and but this hypothesis is completely taboo. In certain academic circles. 

But I mean we just as we don't apologise for running articles on the efficacy of vaccines and the stupidity of advocating for Ivermectin without good evidence,7. I mean, we will also publish articles about that plausible and valid scientific hypothesis when it comes to individual differences, intelligence and other human other factors important to human behaviour.8.

Now I have a little bit of back - I mean, I'm not a scientist and I'm not doing research in this area, but I was trained as a psychologist and I did learn about intelligence. I did learn about individual differences whilst at university. So I have some confidence in my ability to read scientific papers aroud these subejcts. So I'm confident that everything we've published at Quillette is scientifically valid. 9. 

But I certainly reject any notion that because there may be group differences or individual differences, and there may be differences in IQ scores, I certainly reject any notion that that suggests people are morally unequal 10. or unequal. In terms of their human worth, their value, that innate dignity, I think every human being on the planet is precious, and we all have equal we’re all deserving of equal human rights and and respect and dignity and I abhor ideologies which rank people according to racial groups.11. I think it's abhorrent and vile and I actually don't think there's anything I. I don't think there's any justification of it. I mean I I'm not going to, you know, if I have a sibling or one of my children is let you know schools, Warren and IQ tests and the other, I'm not going to rank them in terms of their moral values. You know, I love my children equally and I think, we have to be able to separate compassion and our love for each other as human beings from, you know, being completely identical on traits, measurable traits 'cause it's just impossible. We can't all be the same. We can't, you know, I can't have the same score as someone else on an IQ test 12., but we have to be able to treat each other equally and with equal dignity and respect. 13.

1.  Steve Sailer coined "human biodiversity" as I just mentioned a couple of days ago. Although it's not surprising if someone confuses Lehmann with Sailer. RationalWiki has a great summation of Lehmann in its Quillette entry:

Claire Lehmann, Editor-in-Chief who founded Quillette in 2015 — an anti-feminist crank, who blames feminists for obesity[12] and has made videos for the alt-right The Rebel Media. Lehmann is a proponent of HBD and was quoted by Hbdchick in 2014 for posting a definition of "human-biodiversity".[13] Lehmann follows more than 16 alt-right accounts on Twitter including Richard Spencer and Steve Sailer.

 

2. a Italia doesn't say who called her a racist and fascist, so I can't verify the claim - a Google search came up empty although it did find Italia defending racist E. O. Wilson, as reported by reactionary race pseudoscience clown Jerry Coyne.

 2. b  A lie - Areo published a pro-hereditarian article in 2017 by Quillette author Oliver Traldi called The Philosophy of Group Differences. Areo has also published notorious racist  Noah Carl, another Quillette author, and not only published neo-Nazi Bo Winegard, they published an article presenting his side of his "I was fired because they hate free speech!" campaign. Written by Christopher Ferguson who of course has also published in Quillette.

3. Understandable confusion, since Areo is Quillette Lite as I discussed four years ago.

4. Notice how Italia claims that IQ is an "hereditary marker."

5. But women are also different from each other - I very much like to think I am very different from right-wing ninnies Claire Lehmann and Iona Italia.

6.a  Sleazy sleazy Lehmann. First, Quillette doesn't "simply air" the hereditarian hypothesis, they heartily agree with it, as when Razib Khan agreed with Charles Murray that Black Americans are an existential threat - when Murray claimed Black people are genetically inclined to criminality.  

Lehmann commented on the article comment thread:

Not a word of complaint about Khan's and Murray's incredibly vicious, racist claims about Black American morality.

(Like much of Quillette content lately, the Khan article is now behind a paywall, but you can still see it via the Wayback Machine.)

6.b  Second, it's the ONLY hypothesis they discuss - they never present criticisms or alternatives to the hereditarian hypothesis. Probably because Peter Thiel is a great big racist.

7.  In the moderate abilitied-brain of Lehmann,  the hereditarian hypothesis is as scientifically valid as vaccinations.

8. 9.  Lehmann thinks the hereditarian hypothesis is "plausible." Probably because she's a racist. And stupid.

10.  Clearly a lie - see note 6.a.

11. Another shameless, easily-refuted lie, as Quillette is a firm supporter of Linda Gottfredson. Gottfredson likes to rank races as I documented here.  

Also Quillette employs Bo Winegard who is such a neo-Nazi he wants to use "racial demographics" to "preserve a country's demographic composition." Presumably in Winegard's mind, he and his friends will be in charge of ranking races to determine the best "demographic composition."

12.  Apparently Lehmann is not aware that IQ tests are scored within a finite range. Of course you can have the same IQ score as someone else.

13.  Unless you're Florence Griffith Joyner. Lehmann became an internationally-reviled Twitter main character for her vicious lie about Flo-Jo. I can find no evidence that Lehmann ever apologized for her false claims about the death of Griffith Joyner.

Now what did Lehmann say about Camille Paglia? 

Minute 53:00 (my highlight)

LEHMANN

It's been a little while since I read Paglia, but I do love her work and she has been very influential. She was, I discovered her when I was an undergraduate in English, I  studied English before I went into psychology. And she was the first person I found who actually criticised the post-structuralists. She was the only critic I could find who was willing to to push back on Foucault and Derrida and the others whose philosophical thought came to dominate the humanities, to its detriment. 

And so I loved her for that. I loved her for her criticism of post-structuralism, I loved her for her sex positive feminism. I consider myself a feminist, but it's a complicated kind of feminism 1. because I actually think that women have a have a lot of power. I don't think we're necessarily oppressed by the patriarchy. I also think that sexism exists. It's just that I think that women have a particular type of power that is, is not, that is female power and some some people might describe it as sexual power.2. That's certainly part of it. But I think female power has been under-appreciated by scholars and even feminists and but Paglia was one of the only thinkers who was able to conceptualise and articulate what female power was, and I found it just extraordinarily refreshing, empowering, invigorating to read her work and she's just such an original thinker. I mean, she she's she's not the most exquisite writer. Her stuff is a little bit punchy, but just the density of original thought in her work is just unparalleled, I think. I think she's just an international treasure. 3.

 

1.  I assume when Lehmann says hers is a "complicated kind of feminism" she means the kind of feminism where you despise women, as a group. This week Quillette is running a defense of Roman Polanski. The author, Peggy Sastre, is one of those misogynist boys-will-be-boys types. Or as the website Philonomist says, Sastre "is a journalist and writer with a PhD in philosophy of science, known for her polemical essays against feminism." 

But "asshole" is more to the point.

2.  So does Lehmann think that, for example, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister because of her particular kind of female sexual power?

3.  This is what "international treasure" Paglia said about pedophilia:

...As far as Ginsberg's pro-NAMBLA stand goes, this is one of the things I most admire him for. I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In "Sexual Personae," I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization. Donatello's historically pivotal bronze sculpture, "David" (1430), was my main exhibit -- a languidly flirtatious work that would get the artist arrested for kiddie porn these days. In "Vamps & Tramps," I said that Western moralism and hypocrisy have driven the matter underground and overseas, where impoverished Third World boys now supply the sex trade.

Allen Ginsberg was the apostle of a truly visionary sexuality. Like the expansive, sensual, democratic Whitman but unlike the twisted, dishonest, pretentious Foucault, he saw the continuity between great nature and the human body, bathed in waves of cosmic energy. Seen from this pagan perspective, Ginsberg's celebration of boy-love was pure and sinless, demonstrating the limitations of Judeo-Christian paradigms of sexuality.

So does this not bother Lehmann? If she has a young son, would she let someone who agrees with Paglia babysit him? 

Or is she too stupid or lazy to bother to do any research on Paglia before calling her an international treasure?

Lehmann and Italia - what a couple of dull tools, useful only to right-wing racist plutocrats.

UPDATE - I took a quick stroll through professional race pseudoscience hawker Razib Khan's tweets recently and found him promoting Italia promoting an idiotic "decoupling" article in rightwing Unherd from 2020.

From the Unherd article:

As a high-decoupler, Harris thought that it was OK to talk about what-ifs; if there are genetic components to racial differences, then we still need to treat everyone with equal dignity, etc: “I’m not saying there are, but if there are…” He thought he’d performed the ritual.

 

But for Klein, the editor of Vox, the ritual was not strong enough. Murray’s ideas are reminiscent of a grim history, in which pseudoscientific ideas about a hierarchy of humans were used to justify slavery or Jim Crow laws. For Klein (a low-decoupler, in Nerst’s taxonomy), you can’t simply take an idea out of its context like that. The context comes with it.

What utter bullshit. This tells you everything you need to know about the author, in addition to the fact that he writes for rightwing Unherd.

Harris did not simply ask "what-if" - he defended The Bell Curve by linking to an article in QUILLETTE written by Ben Winegard and his twin, Bo Winegard, which claims the hereditarian hypothesis promoted by The Bell Curve is correct. 

According to ChatGPT, Unherd's funders are funded by Peter Thiel  - my highlight.

UnHerd's website lists its supporters and partners, but Peter Thiel is not mentioned among them. It's worth noting, however, that some of the organizations that have supported UnHerd in the past, such as the Nuffield Foundation and the Legatum Institute, have also received funding from Thiel's charitable organization, the Thiel Foundation. Nonetheless, it's important to emphasize that UnHerd maintains editorial independence and the views expressed in its articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of its supporters or funders.

It's not just that the IDW-race pseudoscience industry is rightwing and racist, it's that they are so sleazy in their pretending not to be rightwing and racist. 

ChatGPT has something to say about Sam Harris and Peter Thiel - more about that tomorrow.

Sabine Hossenfelder and the Intellectual Dark Web

Hossenfelder is not nearly as impressive
as she finds herself.
_______________________________________________________

I recently became aware of German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder when I came across her videos on nuclear energy, in which she minimizes the dangers of nuclear energy and especially nuclear waste storage. 

(Watch John Oliver on that topic.)

I immediately smelled Intellectual Dark Web.

Also, I found her personality so irritating that even though I basically agree with her about the absence of free will, I found myself coming up with pro-free will arguments as I watched her video on the subject.

So, did she have an IDW connection? I Googled her and found her hobnobbing with race pseudoscience promoter Michael Shermer. Bingo. I have a practically infallible nose for the stench of the Intellectual Dark Web after doing this blog for four and a half years.

But worst of all, Hossenfelder thinks Steven Pinker's melange of sociobiology and reactionary politics, "The Blank Slate," is an important book. 

I've read The Blank Slate. It's hot garbage. The New Yorker had Pinker's number when the book was first published.

(Fun fact: in The Blank Slate we find that Pinker is a big fan of pro-pedophilia Camille Paglia.)

I just found Rebecca Watson has a great response to Hossenfelder's feckless and poorly-supported commentary on transgender issues. And I had to share.

P. Z. Myers wrote:

But then (Hossenfelder) did the stereotypical physicist thing: she studies the fundamental building blocks of the universe, energy and matter and mathematics, so she decided to slide over into a field she knows nothing about and explain it to us. That’s why people were pestering me to critique her recent video, titled Is being trans a social fad among teenagers? I guess having a Ph.D. in physics makes you an expert in psychology and sociology as well as biology.

See also Sabine Hossenfelder, Quillette, racism and Thielbucks.

Steven Pinker and Razib Khan - still buddies pushing race pseudoscience

This past January I noted that Pinker hadn't been seen publicly associating with race pseudoscience promoting sociobiologist Razib Khan for awhile. 

I thought Pinker might be in the process of ghosting Khan like he did to racist Steve Sailer after a decade of promoting Sailer's career, but apparently not. I recently saw that Khan's Substack - which I guess I should monitor more closely than I have been - has an interview with Pinker on March 16. 

But the full interview is only available to Khan's subscribers and I'm not about to give money to Razib Khan - who do you think I am, Ron Unz?

So as usual, Pinker is preaching to the racist choir about his "Blank Slate" claims, with no need to worry he might receive any inconvenient questions or pushback about his views.

Based on the summary, it appears the interview is the usual combination of sociobiology and whining about the failure of American society at large to express admiration for Pinker and his Deep Thoughts (now shamelessly monetized) the way the lazy gullible media usually does.

Despite extraordinary advances in genome-wide association analysis and the application of cutting-edge computational biological techniques to understand how the brain and behavior work at the scale of DNA, much of American society remains wedded to the blank slate, and indeed widely applied policies have taken the implications of the assumption still further than a generation ago. Pinker points out that arguments for cultural variation driving group differences are now taboo, on top of the earlier wariness around exploring any genetic basis of these differences. 

First of all, genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) has not proven sociobiology beliefs correct, as Pinker, Khan and people like their pal Kathryn Paige Harden like to claim.

But also this sentence reveals the sociobiological thinking of Pinker and Khan:

Pinker points out that arguments for cultural variation driving group differences are now taboo, on top of the earlier wariness around exploring any genetic basis of these differences. 

"Group differences" is sociobiology-speak for different socio-economic levels of success by race. It's right next door to "human biodiversity."

According to this paper from 2021, How White nationalists mobilize genetics: From genetic ancestry and human biodiversity to counterscience and metapolitics - my bold.

The public face of human biodiversity includes, on one side, writers for the far right, White nationalist outlets like Steve Sailer of the Unz Review and Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, and, on the other, people who are not ostensibly political but willing to write provocatively about topics like race and eugenics like Razib Khan of Discover magazine and Steve Hsu, physicist and entrepreneur of the company Genomic Prediction (Eror, 2013; Feldman, 2016; MacDougald & Willick, 2017; Schulson, 2017) or centrist liberals like Steven Pinker (2006) who legitimates human biodiversity ideas like the evolution of Jewish intelligence. There is also a large set of less well-known and especially anonymous or pseudonymous bloggers and tweeters in the human biodiversity orbit. There is an effort to conceal or deny how organized human biodiversity is. The humanbiologicaldiversity.com website’s design is attributed to the generically named “James Wilson” though no contact information is offered. Blogger @hbdchick recently tweeted “human biodiversity isn’t a movement” it’s “simply the diversity found among and between human populations that has a biological basis.”10

We know that Pinker discounts racism and poverty as drivers of crime. So what does Pinker think drives crime, especially "group differences" in crime? 

Well he doesn't come right out and say it, as usual, but it's easy enough to infer, and not just because he's been supporting race pseudoscience hawkers for at least twenty years - like Sailer, Khan, the Quillette gang, Linda Gottfredson, etc.

In Pinker's book "The Better Angels of Our Nature" he wrote:

...The idea that young men are civilized by women and marriage may seem as corny as Kansas in August, but it has become a commonplace of modern criminology. A famous study that tracked a thousand low-income Boston teenagers for forty-five years discovered that two factors predicted whether a delinquent would go on to avoid a life of crime: getting a stable job, and marrying a woman he cared about and supporting her and her children. The effect of marriage was substantial: three-quarters of the bachelors, but only a third of the husbands, went on to commit more crimes. This difference alone cannot tell us whether marriage keeps men away from crime or career criminals are less likely to get married, but the sociologists Robert Sampson, John Laub, and Christopher Wimer have shown that marriage really does seem to be a pacifying cause.

So according to Pinker it's people deciding not to get married that is the problem. Unfortunately for him, Pinker is completely wrong about the magic of marriage preventing crime, as I discussed here.

The marriage is magic theory he is promoting reverses the causal arrows to claim that low marriage rates cause crime rather than that people who can't afford to get married or support a family might have stressors - like poverty - that cause the crime.

Pinker and his right-wing,
plutocrat-funded, Republican & IDW pals
on the board of Fair-for-all
__________________________________

When Jon Stewart interviewed Andrew Sullivan, (Pinker's fellow member of the board of advisors of the anti-CRT grift organization Fair for all) Sullivan claimed that the struggle for Black people in the United States had everything to do with "Black culture."

Sullivan is notorious for promoting racist Charles Murray's sociobiological claims in The Bell Curve.

So why exactly have Black people had lower marriage rates? What makes "Black culture" the way it is, if you completely discount socio-economics and history? 

Stewart didn't force Sullivan to give an answer to that - but Pinker gives an answer:

Pinker points out that arguments for cultural variation driving group differences are now taboo, on top of the earlier wariness around exploring any genetic basis of these differences. 

It's obvious here that Pinker believes the "cultural variation driving group differences" is due to the "genetic basis of these differences."

So hawkers of sociobiology like Pinker, Sullivan and Khan believe the ultimate cause for why Black people in the United States don't get married as often as other "races" ...is because they are Black. 

They believe there is some special genetic component of Blackness that makes Black people avoid marriage, and because they don't get married as often, therefore are more likely to commit crimes. And they think that GWAS studies will identify genes in Black people that cause this reluctance to get married. That is what sociobiology is all about.

Of course all "groups" in the United States are getting married less often now, but I've never seen contrary data cause sociobiologists to change their minds.

A curious coincidence, none of the three was born in the United States. Pinker was born in Canada, Sullivan was born in England and Khan was born in Bangladesh. But they seem to share the mission of coming to the United States to support racist claims (and take money from right-wing plutocrats to do it) about Black Americans, based on sociobiological beliefs.

The term sociobiology was popularized by E. O. Wilson, who, like Pinker, mostly avoided making blatant racist statements, while at the same time encouraging racist extremists. 

Wilson encouraged the career of a racist, Jean-Phillipe Rushton - who was a big influence on - you guessed it - Razib Khan. 

Because many people reacted negatively to E. O. Wilson's sociobiology claims, the term sociobiology is almost never used by those who promote sociobiology. The preferred terms are evolutionary psychology, something Pinker is closely associated with, and behavioral genetics, most recently connected to Kathryn Paige Harden but invented by extreme racist Francis Galton. 

Never forget that the people promoting GWAS as evidence of genetic "group differences" have political agendas and they are not afraid to advocate for making those agendas public policy while claiming they don't have political agendas. 

Like the time Kathryn Paige Harden, a friend and promoter of Razib Khan, compared people who refute sociobiology-based political solutions to bank robbers.

Sociologist and criminologist Callie Burt:

Harden argues that there are others who support genetics research on social outcomes, include a eugenics right, which has and will put this to use in the service of inferiorizing racial/ethnic and other disadvantaged groups. Harden positions herself as occupying the rational (ostensibly non-ideological) middle: In contrast to this ‘eugenics view’, Harden states that “[w]hat I am aiming to do in this book is to re-envision the relationship between genetic science and equality.” She asks, “[c]an we peel apart human behavioral genetics … from the racist, classist, and eugenicist ideologies it has been entwined with for decades? Can we imagine a new synthesis? And can this synthesis broaden our understanding of what equality looks like and how to achieve it?” (p18-9).

To this she answers not just ‘yes we can’, but ‘we must’. Indeed, in a surprisingly aggressive section of the book, which departs somewhat from her tone elsewhere, she argues that to do social research without considering genetic differences between individuals is the moral equivalent not of jaywalking but bank robbery(!!). Specifically, Harden writes about an asserted (but not demonstrated) “tacit collusion in social science to ignore genetic differences between people.” She states such ‘tacit collusion’ (which I dispute exists, more on that below), “is not wrong in the way that jaywalking is wrong…. It’s wrong in the way that robbing banks is wrong. It’s stealing.” 

Yikes. For the non-criminology readers, robbery isn’t ‘stealing’. Robbery is the use of force or threat of the use of force to take something from others; in bank robbery, this would be money. Perhaps if she mentioned this offhand or in a talk, I may let it go, but in a book this was clearly a thoughtful, albeit absurd and unjustified in my view, moral comparison. How does she get here? And, are her arguments sound? [Foreshadowing: no idea and no.] 

The journey is interesting, especially with the relatable personal examples, but the logic and evidence presented is partial and tendentious. Harden battles with straw men, overlooks nuance and contrary or complicating evidence, and deftly avoids several of the longstanding critiques of behavior genetics, which now apply to sociogenomics: these include the population specificity and, therefore, incomparability of heritability studies across groups (defined, for example, by social class), the social construction of the outcomes, and downward causation, as well as a host of methodological issues, including assumptions and limitations, in current GWAS and other sociogenomics studies.

 I do think there is much to discuss on these issues (in fact, I’m writing a book about it myself), but charitable engagement with different views and thorough engagement with existing scientific evidence and theory is not found in this book, in my reading. She’s selling a view, in part by curiously denigrating her opponents while ignoring their critiques.

Unsuprisingly, the Peter Thiel-funded Big Think promotes behavioral genetics and Harden. Although the page for the interview is branded:  IN PARTNERSHIP WITH John Templeton Foundation.

According to SourceWatch: The John Templeton Foundation tries to encourage the integration of religious beliefs and free-market principles into the classroom.

My letter to Pamela Paul ~ plus Bari Weiss, Peter Thiel and Chat GPT

Dear Ms. Paul

Your latest op-ed claims that "A Paper That Says Science Should Be Impartial Was Rejected by Major Journals” without mentioning that many of those who wrote this paper are associated with the “Intellectual Dark Web” and/or have written for racist far-right Thiel-funded Quillette.

I am including Jerry Coyne, Peter Boghossian, Anna Krylov, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Lee Jussim and Jay Tanzman - and those are the names I recognize immediately. 

I suspect they are not the only co-authors with right-wing views. I will investigate further - something that you apparently refuse to do. Or worse, you are deliberately hiding what you know about their political views.

After all, your former spouse was caught promoting race pseudoscience and his IDW friends rushed to his defense. It would not be surprising if you had your own IDW connections.

https://www.pinkerite.com/2020/05/four-koch-toadies-defend-race-science.html

I addressed Krylov’s dishonest, hysterical screed on the same topic on my blog a couple of years ago, and it's also available on Medium.

https://medium.com/@nancymcclernan/anna-krylov-and-the-peril-of-bullshit-31ca795583d5

You seem to be, at the very least, a deeply unethical employee of the New York Times.

Nancy McClernan

Pinkerite

-------------

The paper in question was published in "The Journal of Controversial Ideas" thus confirming that it is, along with Quillette, a tool of the Intellectual Dark Web which many of us always suspected it was.

The paper appears to have been organized by reactionary bullshit-swilling Anna Krylov, who I assume is by now on Peter Thiel's payroll. She was also an organizer for Peter Thiel's CPAC for racists. 

And while many of the co-authors are horrible reactionaries and hawkers of racist "science," the references for the paper are even worse - no less than three links to Quillette, plus citations of race pseudoscience promoters Pinker and Andrew Sullivan and grifters Pamela Paresky, Katie Herzog, Helen Pluckrose and the thoroughly grotesque Trump-loving asshole James Lindsay.

More and more it appears to me that Pamela Paul was hired to ensure that the NYTimes has someone to represent the interests of the Intellectual Dark Web, now that Bari Weiss has gone on to more obviously rightwing plutocrat-serving gigs. 

This is from TODAY. Note how Weiss describes right-wing ghouls Blake Masters and JD Vance as "anti-establishment." 

I think you mean fascist, you sleazy shameless handmaiden of stochastic terrorist monsters and babbling lunatics.

I asked Chat GPT about Weiss's connection to Thiel. 

Bonus link - Majority Report (again!): Bari Weiss HUMILIATED When Trans Child's Powerful Response To Her Lies Goes Viral. Pamela Paul is also infamous for beating the anti-trans hate drum.

NOTE: This must be investigated further, since ChatGPT is known to be factually unreliable.

UPDATE - someone put me on the "In Defense of Merit" mailing list and so I received an email today that links to this "In Defense of Merit" website. 

Apparently the people behind this grift felt that it wasn't clear enough that this is a project of right-wingers, race pseudoscience promoters and associates of the Intellectual Dark Web, so the page includes testimonials, not only from the odious Bari Weiss and Pamela Paul, the IDW-cheerleader twins, but from:

Richard Dawkins - anti-Muslim crackpot and instigator of the infamous stochastic terrorist pioneer event known as "elevatorgate"

Jordan Peterson - reactionary crackpot beloved by Quillette

Jeffrey Flier - Quillette author and a co-president of Pinker's Council of Academic Freedom grift 

Jonathan Rauch - Thielbucks via Quillette, Kochbucks via Reason Magazine

Jesse Sabatini - right-winger opposed to COVID lockdown

David Bertoli - right-winger who likes to retweet people like Nicholas Christakis and Conor Friedersdorf. Hilariously Bertoli tweeted the Upton Sinclair quote “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” while praising people who are indisputably political operatives working for Charles Koch and Peter Thiel. The lack of self-awareness and/or hypocrisy of these IDW goons is always mind-boggling.

Judith Curry - climate change denier who "receives funding from the fossil fuel industry" - what a surprise. Maybe David Bertoli can lecture her on the topic of salary sources and not understanding things. Predictably, the Koch-funded City Journal loves her.

The College Fix - funded by Koch and other right-wing plutocrats

And best of all...

Noah Carl loves neo-Nazi Bo Winegard
and "human biodiversity" -  if
I had to guess, I'd say everybody
who contributed to this grift
is fine with race pseudoscience

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Noah Carl - hardcore but sneaky racist and promoter of race pseudoscience and co-author with neo-Nazi Quillette editor Bo Winegard. According to RationalWiki, Carl

is a British sociologist who, outside of his respectable sociology work, publishes racialist pseudoscience and wrote an Islamophobic paper for OpenPsych and a paper for the white supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly.[2] For this reason, he has been described as living a "double life".[3] After the latter was exposed in December 2018, hundreds of academics signed a letter calling for Cambridge University to reconsider the award of his fellowship and to stop employing him as a postdoctoral researcher.[4][5]

Krylov and her IDW pals are not even pretending anymore - they are just blatant about being far-right and racist ghouls.

I asked ChatGPT about Krylov and it said she

...holds the Stephen and Laura Hsu endowed chair in analytical chemistry.

Which certainly sounds plausible especially if that Stephen Hsu is the supporter of race pseudoscience. That Hsu can be seen Tweeting encouragement for her earlier attempt at building a culture war moral panic grift.

Like many other hawkers of race pseudoscience, Hsu gets serious funding:

...Even though mainstream science has pretty much scrapped the notion that race has any kind of biological basis long ago, that hasn’t stopped Steven Hsu from trying to link intelligence with race and getting a billion and a half dollars for research based in China. 

I don't think Krylov has ever met a race pseudoscience hawker she doesn't like. But Google couldn't find any evidence of Krylov's connection to this endowed chair and there's no mention of it on her USC page.

But WHERE IS PINKER? This IDW-heavy grift is right up his alley and he is pals with the two people I think organized the paper, Krylov and Jerry Coyne.

Pinker was hanging out with Anna Krylov at Peter Thiel's CPAC for racists and Coyne adores Pinker.

Pinker, left and Krylov  wearing glasses behind and on the right of him
at the very skewed old-white-man CPAC for racists keynoted by 
(and funded by, I suspect,) crackpot Republican fascist Peter Thiel
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Did Peter Thiel tell Pinker to stand down and focus his attention on his "Academic Freedom" grift?

Never fear, loyal Pinkeriteers, more about Steven Pinker tomorrow.

The Majority Report: Larry Summers VOX POPULI!

I know I just recently posted a Majority Report video but I have been posting recently about Larry Summers - his support for race pseudoscience hawkers from Steven Pinker on down -  and MR has a great piece on Jon Stewart's take-down of Larry Summers pro-plutocrat fiscal views. 

One of the best aspects of this video is demonstrating what a creep Larry Summers is, just personality-wise, in addition to his being a courtier of the plutocracy.

The YouTube left is really getting good, especially with criticisms of the IDW and pro-plutocrat financial policies. My pals "Some More News" just posted a video about credit scores.

UPDATE: speaking of what a creep Larry Summers is:

Harvard President Asked Epstein for Donation to Wife’s Poetry Project after Sex Offender’s Conviction

Alan Dershowitz approves his friend Steven Pinker's Council on Academic Freedom

Confirming my view that the driving force behind the council is whiny right-wing soreheads who think they should be revered and kept free from all criticism.

Dershowitz:

The difference is that today's censors have tried to silence and cancel me, as well as others who espouse centrist, liberal and civil libertarian positions — and certainly if they express conservative or God forbid pro-Trump views! That is why this council on academic freedom is so important, and that is why it is so disappointing that so many former liberals and civil libertarians have declined to join it.

Ian Chotner interviewed Dershowitz for the New Yorker to give him plenty of space to whine and spin bullshit.

Dershowitz:

Every year, they would have an overflow crowd to hear me speak about whatever book I was writing, or whatever I was doing. But suddenly, after I represented the Constitution on behalf of President Trump, the library found excuses for never having me. Their first excuse was that my crowds were too big. So I said, “Well, why don’t you limit the crowds?” They said, “Oh, we hadn’t thought of that.”

Chotner:

Can you imagine if Ed Sullivan had done that with the Beatles? It’s a ridiculous excuse.

Yeah, of course. So I’ve been cancelled, basically, by the Chilmark Library. That has resulted in lots of people in Chilmark calling me and calling the library and saying, “We’re being deprived of Alan’s annual speech.”

 [Ebba Hierta, the Chilmark’s director, disputed Dershowitz’s characterization, and said, “Not one single person has contacted me to complain that they haven’t had a chance to hear Alan speak.”]

Dershowitz is such a clown:

But you broadly support the work of the committee?

I broadly support efforts to get into what happened on January 6th. I think what happened on January 6th is appalling and dangerous. I think President Trump should not have made the speech he made. I said this publicly. I condemned him for making that speech, even though it was probably protected by the Constitution, but I condemned him for doing it. Just as I condemned the people who tried to interfere with Justice Kavanaugh’s dinner, even though I think they had the right to do it. Just because you have a right doesn’t mean you’re right.

A riot at the Capitol on one hand, and then the Kavanaugh dinner.

My views are fairly complex and nuanced on these issues, but they’ve been simplified and stereotyped.

Pinker is such a good buddy of Dershowitz that when Dershowitz asked him to help with Jeffrey Epstein's defense, he was happy to step up:

After Jeffrey Epstein was indicted for sex crimes in 2006, his Harvard lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, called on the expertise of one of his Harvard colleagues, famous linguist Steven Pinker.

An obscure document from Epstein’s legal defense shows that Pinker weighed in on the precise meaning of a federal law about using the internet to entice minors into prostitution or other illegal sex acts.

Pinker told BuzzFeed News that when he offered his opinion to Dershowitz, he was unaware of the details of the client or the case. He now regrets his involvement, he said.

“Though I did this as a favor to a friend and colleague, and not as either a paid expert witness or as a part of a defense team, knowing what I know now I do regret writing the letter,” Pinker said by email.

Steven Pinker has the best friends - from Larry Summers to Steve Sailer to Alan Dershowitz.

Majority Report: Bill Maher is Elon Musk's little bitch

And they mention something I've been pointing out for a long time on Pinkerite:

...this is a hallmark of the IDW right, to say "my conservative views are not really actually political in fact they're moderate" or they might not be involved in politics whatsoever because they're consistently trying to launder conservative thought through apolitical means and it's the same thing. 

We saw with the Bari Weiss crowd before and now these guys are just a little bit richer and have a little bit of a bigger platform saying the same stuff we saw six seven years ago and what does it mean that Bill Maher is "they're trying to cancel me" - it means that people are criticizing him from all sides and yet he's had a show for 25 years yeah minimum and there's one time when he's been canceled and that was in the wake of uh 9 11 and with pressure from the Bush Administration...

Bill Maher is a creaky old reactionary tool. And Elon Musk is a stochastic terrorist.

Substack's Chris Best will not say that racism is banned from Substack

Which of course anybody could have predicted given that, like many people associated with Substack, Best has a Thiel connection, and has appeared on the Thiel-funded Quillette podcast.

And race pseudoscience promoters are already on Substack.

Nilay Patel of Decoder interviewed Best. The entire interview is here.

I heard about this interview because folks in the Fediverse were sharing the part where Patel nails Best to the wall.

More from Mike Masnick at TechDirt.