Steven Pinker: still undefeated as the world's biggest weasel

"Ferahgo the Assassin," by Steven Pinker's

hereditarian ally Emily Willoughby, an image 

made publicly available by Willoughby 

on Facebook. Willoughby borrowed the 

character's name as a pseudonym while 

writing in support of race pseudoscience. 

It's too perfect that a Pinker ally 

identifies with a humanoid weasel.

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

Although Steven Pinker was originally dubbed the world's most annoying man by someone else, I originated calling him a weasel. But I confess that while reading some of Pinker's latest book "When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows..." I found the flagrance of his weasellitude so breathtaking I'm amazed I was able to write about it outside of an oxygen tent.

In the chapter "The Instinct to Cancel" Pinker argues that it were better if we not discuss race and intelligence in public.

Fear not, Pinker has not given up on race pseudoscience.

I was alerted to Pinker's position by those who have the greatest self-interest in talking about race and intelligence because they have staked their entire careers and livelihoods on the issue: the neo-Nazis at Aporia Magazine.

In an article in Aporia called 'Pinker is wrong. We should "go there"' neo-Nazi Bo Winegard says:

Few topics inspire bad arguments as reliably as race differences in intelligence. So often have I responded to them that I have plausibly been accused of obsession. But as long as the bad arguments persist, someone must respond. Consider it a public service.

But of course Winegard is not doing anything as a "public service" - this is his full-time job. He works for Emil Kirkegaard's race pseudoscience and Nazi network, so brilliantly exposed by Hope not Hate a year ago:

In recent months, however, Aporia has dropped its pretence of balance, as evidenced by the interview that eventually took place with (Jared) Taylor in May 2024. Taylor’s interlocutor was Bo Winegard, Aporia’s new executive editor, who, on the website, has called upon his readers to “​​embrace” white identity politics and believes racial stereotypes are “reasonably accurate.”

That's not to say that Winegard is only doing it for the money. I'm prepared to accept that Winegard is such a dullard he truly believes in race pseudoscience, that collection of pre-20th century European folklores presented as science from Social Darwinism to eugenics to Nazism to sociobiology to evolutionary psychology to behavioral genetics. 

I'm in favor of publicly discussing race and intelligence claims so that people who are not right-wing psychologists can gasp in wonder at how stupid race pseudoscience really is.

In the next paragraph, Winegard states why Pinker is so useful to the cause of race pseudoscience:

The latest comes from Steven Pinker’s new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows… It deserves attention precisely because it comes from Pinker, a celebrated academic and an outspoken defender of free speech and open inquiry. This is not some indignant progressive who made a career of castigating “racist pseudoscience”, but a rational centrist who has long argued against the left’s denial of human nature.

Pinker's also been called a "celebrity intellectual" by the New York Times.

In "When Everyone Knows...," Pinker makes the case for race pseudoscience while pretending to weigh the pros and cons of discussing the issue:

The case for not going there, to be sure, has many problems. It’s almost impossible to enforce. It faces the polar bear paradox: telling people not to think about an idea forces them to think about the idea. It may be hard to draw the line around the no-go zone so that it doesn’t swallow up neighboring territories, like the study of intelligence or of continental ancestry. It forecloses the possibility of obtaining decisive evidence that racial differences are wholly environmental and eliminable, with all the social benefits that would bring.

And it may be too late. Our era is obsessed with racial differences, attributing them unquestioningly to racism, which only invites curious people to wonder whether they might be attributed to other causes, intensifying the regime that criminalizes such curiosity. As the writer Coleman Hughes has argued, there are good reasons for even the most open-minded people to want to keep the issue of race and intelligence out of mainstream conversation. But that tacit agreement should be a part of a larger commitment to color-blind policies in public and private life.

Coleman Hughes is in a tough spot - he's Black but has taken money from race pseudoscience-promoting Quillette -  so it is in his self-interest to "want to keep the issue of race and intelligence out of mainstream conversation." With Pinker's apparent approval, Hughes offers a deal on behalf of hereditarians along the lines of: "we won't mention that Blacks are genetically inferior if you promise to stop making efforts to ameliorate systemic racism via programs like DEI." 

Pinker hates DEI.

Pinker is so comfortable with race pseudoscience that this year he had a byline in Aporia, then appeared on the Aporia podcast.

For Pinker, being a true believer in race pseudoscience has only ever been a minor inconvenience in his progress as a celebrity intellectual. I've found only three times when the issue was raised by the mainstream press: 

• when fellow celebrity intellectual Malcolm Gladwell called him out in 2009 for using data from professional racist Steve Sailer; 
• when the British liberal newspaper the Guardian asked him about Sailer in 2021;
• and when the Guardian wrote about his appearance on the Aporia podcast this year. Pinker's most groveling sycophant Jerry Coyne could be seen whining that the Guardian would dare discuss that appearance.

I am convinced that Pinker's strategy, in order to promote race pseudoscience while maintaining a career as a celebrated academic/rational centrist/celebrity intellectual, is to loudly claim he is opposed to racism - he told the Guardian that racism was stupid - while at the same time promoting the careers of racists who will go there for him, from Sailer, to Razib Khan, to Linda Gottfredson to Claire Lehmann to Richard Hanania to Bo Winegard. 

In his book, Pinker mentions the ISIR meeting participant Cory Clark with approval a couple of times (including to mention she's co-authored a paper with him) but doesn't mention she has worked for Emil Kirkegaard, and when he notes another paper Clark co-authored, fails to mention Bo Winegard is one of the co-authors.

Because that's just the kind of weasel that Steven Pinker is. 

The book's reference section includes racists, hereditarians, evolutionary psychologists and right-wing reactionaries: Lee Jussim, Nathan Cofnas, Roy Baumeister, David Buss, Richard Dawkins, Alice Dreger, Jonathan Haidt, Carole Hooven, Eric Kaufmann, Greg Lukianoff, Donald Symons, Lawrence Summers, John Tooby, Leda Cosmides and Matt Yglesias.

Pinker talks about journalists muzzling themselves:

Journalists, too, despite their ironclad commitment to freedom of the press, muzzle themselves in particular circumstances. They may, for example, choose not to identify confidential sources, juvenile suspects, the victims of sexual assault, or details surrounding prominent suicides. They may decline to publish the manifestos of rampage shooters, or train a camera on sports fans running onto the field.

But he doesn't seem to appreciate how this has helped his career, how his weasellitude is enabled by most journalists being too chummy with celebrity intellectuals to dare ask anything potentially embarrassing. After all, Pinker might get huffy as he did when the Guardian dared ask:

Angela Saini, a science journalist and author of Superior: The Return of Race Science, told me that “for many people, Pinker’s willingness to entertain the work of individuals who are on the far right and white supremacists has gone beyond the pale”. When I put these kinds of criticisms to Pinker, he called it the fallacy of “guilt by association” – just because Sailer and others have objectionable views, doesn’t mean their data is bad. Pinker has condemned racism – he told me it was “not just wrong but stupid” – but published Sailer’s work in an edited volume in 2004, and quotes Sailer’s positive review of Better Angels, among many others, on his website..

I know exactly how high the bar is for journalists to care about the pro-racism activities of celebrity intellectuals like Pinker. Back when the New Yorker was helping to promote behavioral genetics via a glowing profile of Kathryn Paige Harden, I had a brief exchange of emails with the profile's author Gideon Lewis-Kraus, a frequent New Yorker contributor. He said:

If you have emails between Pinker and Sailer, I will gladly review them. Otherwise, I think I'll hold my own counsel on the stories that I do... 

Now we do know about letters between E. O. Wilson and ultra-racist J. Philippe Rushton, which did seem to convince some people that Wilson was a racist. But the reason the correspondence was significant was that it provided evidence that Wilson used his celebrity intellectual powers to help advance Rushton's career.

But we don't need emails between Pinker and Sailer, there is plenty of evidence that Pinker has helped to promote the career of Sailer and many other racists as I've documented for the past seven years on this blog. And by the way, Pinker could be seen promoting Rushton too, on Boing Boing in 2009.

For journalists like Lewis-Kraus, which is almost all of them, Pinker can promote all the racists and appear on all the neo-Nazis podcasts in the world, he will always be acceptable as long as he doesn't record a precise declaration of his beliefs. The rest of us are forbidden from drawing conclusions based merely on a quarter century of Pinker's activities.

But if Pinker making common cause with neo-Nazis does not faze journalists (except the Guardian), I doubt anything will.

NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam is part of the media gentlemen's agreement on the career of Steven Pinker

I wasn't surprised that Steven Pinker, in his latest media appearance, this time on a podcast with National Public Radio's 

social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam, was not asked about his long-time and ongoing support for race science.

I was surprised that the interview wasn't about Pinker's free speech martyrdom, for a change, but rather focused on Pinker's Panglossian schtick, which, although full of his usual specious arguments is probably the least objectionable of all of Pinker's causes.

As Pinkerite has noted, there is clearly a gentlemen's agreement in the media to refrain from embarrassing Steven Pinker by asking him about his support for race science, a support so extreme he promoted the career of professional racist Steve Sailer for about a decade and has never disavowed Sailer.

Steven Pinker is a know-it-all intellectual mediocrity who has written for right-wing race science promoting Quillette while also promoting the work of many Quillette race science authors including racist Bo Winegard; is a stout defender of race science extremist Linda Gottfredson; is often criticized in reviews of his work for his tendency to "have it both ways" and was caught by anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson misrepresenting studies about prehistoric violence. 

Pinker supports grifting frauds like James Lindsay, and promotes a hobbled pseudo-science called "evolutionary psychology."

On top of all that, even his most devoted fan boy, Jerry Coyne, won't declare with absolute certainty that "Stephen," the bike-riding enthusiast Harvard professor who shows up in the testimony of Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims, is definitely not Pinker.

And Pinker is gob-smackingly, utterly shameless.

So why do men in the media work so hard to protect Steven Pinker from criticism while blowing sunshine up his ass? Why are they so invested in promoting Pinker as a celebrity intellectual?

You can understand why a Koch beneficiary like Conor Friedersdorf and Pinker's professional twin Freakonomics Steve D. Levitt would  be invested in promoting the celebrity intellectual career of Pinker, but I expect something better from the partially public-supported National Public Radio.

I suspect the primary reason Pinker shows up everywhere from the United Nations to Koch-funded events is pure laziness. Steven Pinker has an impressive PR machine and it is easy for media schedulers to say yes to another Pinker media inquiry, instead of making an effort to go out and find the less media-groomed, who actually know what they are talking about and are not part-time political operatives like nuclear energy lobbyist Pinker.

But as to why they refuse to bother him with questions on his activities in support of race science and even bona fide racists is still a mystery. The media has no problem asking Andrew Sullivan about his support for race science. Perhaps Pinker's PR team makes them agree in advance not to ask Pinker embarrassing questions? Or are people in the media so awed by Pinker's status as celebrity intellectual - a status that the media itself granted Pinker - that they dare not trouble him with questions on topics he'd rather not discuss?

The Boot Boys versus Pinkerite ~ is Jerry Coyne deliberately obtuse? Is Steven Pinker really a racist?

One of the "Boot Boys" displays his 
value as an alpha male.
----------------------------------------

Almost a year ago I was called "tenacious" by infamous anti-trans grifter and Kiwi Farms apologist Jesse Singal, although I prefer the word "relentless."

But at the time I admitted that in fact I do a fairly half-assed job with this blog. Especially compared to people who make money from promoting the issues I write about - like race pseudoscience and transphobia. People like Singal and Razib Khan.

And here's another example: Jerry Coyne came after me back in June, and only now am I getting around to discovering it.

In my defense, I do have a Google alert set to "Pinkerite," but apparently Coyne's blog is not notable enough to get flagged.

The amazing part is that last month I even linked to the blog post where he mentions me, but I missed the mention. 

Here it is:

I haven’t heard the podcast, nor do I read Aporia, though I am a bit aware of Noah Carl. But what the Guardian is doing here is really smearing Pinker, trying to make him out to be a racist because of who he’s associated with. The relevant question is this, though: Has Pinker expressed any sentiments that would brand him as a racist? I’ve read nearly all of Pinker’s books and essays, and talked to him a fair bit, and never have I heard a single word that would make me think him racist. The guilty-by-association trope is a lazy strategy used by people who don’t want to do the work of adjudicating the science or parsing the arguments, and is a speciality of one of the worst sites on the internet, called Pinkerite (I won’t link to it). The writer knows nothing about heredity or the genetics of differences between groups, but simply dismisses the whole endeavor as “race pseudoscience.” Her latest endeavor involves not just calling Pinker a racist explicitly, but also adding both Adam Rutherford and Michael Shermer to that class.

Finally, I still fail to understand why so many people have it in for Pinker, and this was well before the Aporia magazine podcast.

First, Coyne has claimed to "understand why so many people have it in for Pinker." 

In his article about Pinker "The World's Most Annoying Man" Nathan J. Robinson said:

The Chronicle suggested that “by proclaiming the gospel of progress,” Pinker “has made a lot of enemies.” (It cited a cartoon printed in Current Affairs as an example of the “hate” Pinker gets.) Pinker’s friend Jerry Coyne thinks people dislike Pinker because he is famous.

Coyne took to his blog to agree with Robinson:

Well, yes, I do think that some people dislike Pinker because he is famous, for they’re always mentioning his fame and his books (and often, like P.Z. Myers, their own lack thereof).

Coyne's deliberate obtuseness, if it is deliberate, is on display when he writes:

Has Pinker expressed any sentiments that would brand him as a racist? I’ve read nearly all of Pinker’s books and essays, and talked to him a fair bit, and never have I heard a single word that would make me think him racist.

So unless Pinker is explicit about it, it doesn't count. The entire past quarter-century of Pinker promoting racists and participating in racist organizations like the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR), and publications like Quillette and now Aporia - none of that counts.

For Pinker, being a true believer in race pseudoscience has only ever been a minor inconvenience in his progress as a celebrity intellectual. I've found only three times when the issue was raised by the mainstream press: 

• when fellow celebrity intellectual Malcolm Gladwell called him out in 2009 for using data from professional racist Steve Sailer;  

• when the British liberal newspaper the Guardian asked him about Sailer in 2021; 

• and when the Guardian wrote about his appearance on the Aporia podcast this year. 

I am convinced that Pinker's strategy, in order to promote race pseudoscience while maintaining a career as a celebrated academic/rational centrist/celebrity intellectual, is to loudly claim he is opposed to racism - he told the Guardian that racism was stupid - while at the same time promoting the careers of racists, from Sailer, to Razib Khan, to Linda Gottfredson to Claire Lehmann to Richard Hanania to Bo Winegard, who is a neo-Nazi and works for Aporia, owned by neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard.

What's perhaps even more breathtaking than Coyne's obtuseness is his shameless hypocrisy. Coyne is obsessed with antisemitism, frequently writing about it and about Holocaust victims on his blog, and has a horror of pro-Palestinian protesters.

So how is Coyne able to be so sanguine about Pinker making common cause with neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard and his Aporia magazine, (see this post on how we know Kirkegaard is a neo-Nazi) while being hyper-sensitive to anything that he believes has a hint of antisemitism?

But maybe worst of all, for someone who used to be a scientist, is Coyne's lack of intellectual curiosity. Coyne writes:

The guilty-by-association trope is a lazy strategy used by people who don’t want to do the work of adjudicating the science or parsing the arguments, and is a speciality of one of the worst sites on the internet, called Pinkerite (I won’t link to it). The writer knows nothing about heredity or the genetics of differences between groups, but simply dismisses the whole endeavor as “race pseudoscience.” 

Her latest endeavor involves not just calling Pinker a racist explicitly, but also adding both Adam Rutherford and Michael Shermer to that class. 

But if Coyne wasn't so lazy himself he would realize that I have parsed the arguments, which he should know because he mentions Rutherford, so he is aware that I wrote a nine-part series: "What happened to Adam Rutherford" in which I discuss a paper Rutherford co-authored with nine other people and in which I critiqued behavioral genetics. I'm not a scientist, but I can certainly read what scientists and scholars have written about behavioral genetics and draw my own conclusions and then write about them.

The series is now one whole story on Medium.

Shermer's hero Rushton
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Although unsurprisingly, Coyne lies about what I said about Rutherford. I never called Rutherford a racist. I pointed out that he and most of the co-authors of a paper he wrote have racist connections. 

What is it about these hereditarians that makes them incapable of accurately reporting on articles about hereditarians?

I did call Shermer a racist because, among various reasons, one of Shermer's heroes is racist charlatan Jean-Philippe Rushton. E. O. Wilson's encouraging correspondence with Rushton even convinced Wilson's fan club that Wilson was a racist. Shermer and Pinker are best buddies.

I certainly wasn't happy to have to discuss Rutherford's hereditarianism, since it had been so great to have someone so charismatic and famous and explicitly anti-racist on the anti-hereditarian side. Or what I thought was the anti-hereditarian side.

It was so depressing to discover that Rutherford's paper makes its argument in part through the disgraced pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology. 

Biologist P. Z. Myers explains why it's so bad here.

I really just could have saved time and dismissed Rutherford's paper for its use of evolutionary psychology alone, but there were a lot of issues I wanted to talk about, so I spent hours and hours writing about those issues. 

But Coyne doesn't know any of this because he already made up his mind in advance that I hadn't done any work on the issues. 

I'm sure that part of Coyne's refusal to face unpleasant facts about Pinker is because Coyne has a personal relationship with Pinker. 

It's not my place to kink-shame Coyne, but I have the distinct impression that Coyne has Daddy issues with Pinker. I've noted Coyne's obsession with Pinker's cowboy boots before, but recently Coyne bought his own cowboy boots, in what looks to me like an attempt to impress Daddy. 

He likes to call himself and Pinker "the Boot Boys."

As I said, Coyne's blog is apparently not noteworthy enough for Google alerts to flag his mention of "Pinkerite." If you ask Google's AI about "Why evolution is true," it doesn't talk about Coyne's blog, only about Coyne's book by the same name.

HOWEVER, Pinkerite does get a mention by Google's AI.

Although I don't call Pinker a "public intellectual" I call him a "celebrity intellectual" because that's what the New York Times called him. But still, pretty impressive for one of the worst blogs on the internet, huh?

QUICK, ROBIN! To the Boot Mobile!
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Steven Pinker and his other connections

I've mentioned here on occasion that Pinker fanboys freak out because I created a diagram (with associated text which they never seem to read) demonstrating Pinker's connections to the Right and/or purveyors of race "science." 

I've also noted previously on this blog that Steven Pinker appears to be a sacred cow of the media, and has escaped serious blow-back for his support of race science in a way that Andrew Sullivan, for example, has not. 

How did Steven Pinker, "celebrity intellectual" achieve this? Even after another celebrity intellectual, Malcolm Gladwell, called out Pinker's promotion of professional racist Steve Sailer, 12 years ago.

I've speculated on this before, suggesting it could be the Pinker PR machine or his lack of intellectual integrity, but another likely reason is that Pinker has the right connections.

In addition to his connections through colleges and connections to rich guys like Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Gates, Pinker is or has been, according to his CV on boards of 76 scientific, scholarly and public interest organizations - most of them are current.

Editorial Boards of Scientific and Scholarly Journals

1. American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience
2. Canadian Psychology, 2003-.
3. Cognition, 1982-2008.
4. Cognitive Science, 1991-1996.
5. Daedalus, 2002- .
6. Developmental Review, 2019- .
7. Earth & Sky, 2007- .
8. English Linguistics, 2003- .
9. Essays in Philosophy of Humanism, 2012– .
10. Evolution and Human Behavior, 1998- .
11. Evolution and Culture, 2020- .
12. Evolutionary Psychology, 2001- .
13. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2014- .
14. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2003- .
15. International Journal of Bilingualism. 1996- .
16. Journal of Child Language, 1994-2004. 
17. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2000- .
18. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 2014- .
19. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2008- .
20. Language Acquisition, 1990-2004; Advisory Board, 2004- .
21. Language and Dialogue, 2010- .
22. Mind & Society, 2002- .
23. PLoS ONE, 2006-2015.
24. PsyCh Journal, 2018- .
25. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2014- .
26. The Evolutionary Review, 2008- .
27. The Humanist, 2007- .
28. The Scientific Study of Literature, 2010-.
29. Theoria et Historia Scientiarum: An International Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2000- .
30. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2000-2010.
31. Words, 2002- .

Advisory Boards of Scientific, Scholarly, and Public Interest Organizations

1. Apolitical, 2018- .
2. Breakthrough Institute, Senior Fellow, 2018- .
3. Campus Freedom Network, 2009- .
4. Cellular Agricultural Society, 2020- .
5. Center for Empathy in International Affairs, 2015- .
6. Center for Inquiry Canada, 2016- .
7. Center for Research on Language, Mind, and Brain, McGill University, 2003- .
8. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, 1994- .
9. Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, 1979- .
10. Counterweight, 2021- .
11. Cybereditions, 1998- .
12. The Decade of Behavior, 2003-2005
13. Diamond Sky Productions/The Day the Earth Smiled, 2013- .
14. E. O. Wilson Foundation, 2007- .
15. Endangered Language Fund, 1998- .
16. English for the Children, 2001-2004.
17. Environmental Progress, 2016– .
18. Ford Hall Forum, 2012- .
19. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 2007- .
20. The Foundations Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Max Planck Society, 2019- .
21. Global Secular Council for the Scientific Study of Nontheism, 2014- .
22. HumanProgress.org
23. Institute for Science and Human Values, 2010- .
24. International Academy of Humanism, 2010- . 
25. International Association for the Study of Attention and Performance, 1992- .
26. Kärnfull Energi, Sweden, Pro Bono Advisory Board, 2020- .
27. National Writing Project Writers Council, 20106– .
28. Naturalism Research Project, Center for Inquiry.
29. NSF Science of Learning Center at Gallaudet University, 2011- .
30. Office of Public Policy, Center for Inquiry, Washington DC, 2006- .
31. Origins Project, Arizona State University, 2009- 2018.
32. Oxford University Press, Heretical Thought series, 2013- .
33. Paul G. Allen Institute for Brain Science, 2001- .
34. Peace Research Endowment, 2012- .
35. Planet Word Museum of Language Arts, 2016- .
36. Potential Energy, 2019- .
37. Rock-It Science, 2008- .
38. Secular Coalition for America, 2007- .
39. Sesame Workshop, 2012- .
40. Science for Peace, 2009- .
41. Science and Entertainment Exchange, National Academy of Sciences, 2008- .
42. Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law, 2009- .
43. Society for Language Development, 2003- .
44. Student Achievement and Advocacy Services, 2002- .
45. World Science Festival, New York, 2006- .

In addition to those, he's an Advisor to FAIR; Honorary President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation; on the Board of Directors of Ideas Beyond Borders, and likely more.

I see two of the organizations listed by Pinker also have connections to the Right, including Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) funded by Koch - I mention FIRE in my Pinker diagram, and Human Progress, also Koch-funded. There are probably more.

I should have been paying better attention because I just noticed Pinker is publishing a new book due in September, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. I can't wait for the New Yorker magazine review - the New Yorker is one of the very few publications that isn't baffled by Pinker's bullshit. 

But then, Pinker isn't a New Yorker advisor nor a board member.

The logical fallacy of non-tenure track assistant professor of philosophy Peter Boghossian

Poor bitter Peter Boghossian

I haven't paid much attention to Peter Boghossian, one third of the Sokal Grift, mainly because James "your mom" Lindsay is such an attention hog. 

I've mentioned Boghossian a few times on Pinkerite but never as the main subject. I wrote about him in his connection to Lindsay; his business connection (along with Lindsay) with Christian nationalist / Soros conspiracy obsessive Michael O'Fallon; and when I noted that he appeared on alt-right racist Stefan Molyneux's show at least four times.

So imagine my surprise when I found Boghossian attacking me on Twitter for daring to criticize Steven Pinker when only one of my three papers on Google Scholar got any citations - only 2  (the article about the intellectual property lawsuit I was involved in)  compared to "celebrity intellectual" Steven Pinker's more than 100K citations.

I'm not sure what his point about verified accounts is - to be verified on Google Scholar you basically have to have an email address.

Now Boghossian is a professor of philosophy, albeit a non-tenure track assistant one, so he must be acquainted with the logical fallacy known as "appeal to accomplishment" described on the web site Logically Fallacious as :

When the argument being made is sheltered from criticism based on the level of accomplishment of the one making the argument. A form of this fallacy also occurs when arguments are evaluated on the accomplishments, or success, of the person making the argument, rather than on the merits of the argument itself.

Several people I follow on Twitter immediately pointed out the problem of Boghossian in particular using this approach, since Boghossian criticizes others who are far more prominent and more often-cited than Boghossian.

Boghossian holds his ideological opponents to much higher standards than he holds himself, exactly as James Lindsay, co-author with Boghossian of the book "How to Have Impossible Conversations" urges civility while being consistently uncivil on social media.

I'm not the only person who has noted what utter hypocrites James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian are. In this review of Impossible Conversations, Oliver Traldi writes: 

Imagine if Donald Trump wrote a book advising you on how to avoid drawing attention to yourself. Or if Antonio Brown wrote a book advising you on how to keep your job as a professional athlete. You might feel an initial rush of puzzlement — you might even feel a little resentment at their gall, their presumptuousness. You might ask yourself: “What do they take us for? Don’t they know that we know who they are?” These are the sorts of thoughts that might cross your mind.

And there is this issue: if Boghossian's point is that I am an under-accomplished nobody, who should dare not criticize a prominent and accomplished celebrity intellectual, why is he talking about me at all? What possible interest could my "relentlessly publishing hit pieces" have for anybody?

And as if Peter Boghossian making a fool of himself on my behalf wasn't enough, Evan Marc Katz jumped into Boghossian's thread.

Evan Marc Katz makes a living telling women in the 21st century to be passive:

Men win you over by giving to you. We ask you out. We call you. We pay for dates. We initiate sex. We ask for commitment. We propose marriage. We give. You receive. Reverse this order by asking him out, initiating sex, asking for commitment, or proposing marriage, and a masculine guy will feel, well, emasculated. Thus, if you want a masculine guy, your greatest move is to embrace your passive feminine side.

Katz has clearly been harboring bitter resentment towards me for years, because although he uses present-tense "writes about me" as if this is an ongoing thing, in fact the last time I wrote about Evan Marc Katz was in 2017 in a post on my personal blog which is entitled, with obvious justification: Evan Marc Katz is a right-wing snowflake who can't tolerate criticism. So although in Internet time my criticizing Katz is ancient history, he is unable to let it go and fails to take his own advice: "all you can do is ignore."

Apparently all it takes for Evan Marc Katz to label a woman a "loon" is for that woman to criticize a man. Maybe Katz should write his own book lecturing others on how to be civil in public discourse.

This latest Katz incident has convinced me that not only was I right all along about Katz being a right-wing misogynist asshole, I may have underestimated how misogynist he is. What a freaking creep.

It's time to say it out loud - Steven Pinker is a racist - a shameless racist

Steven Pinker has been called many things during the years of his fame.

A "celebrity intellectual" by the New York Times.

"The World's Most Annoying Man" by Nathan J. Robinson.

"A weasel" by me.

But it's time for another word to describe Pinker and he's been working towards it for about the last quarter-century, since at least when he was helping to promote the career of professional racist Steve Sailer. 

Pinker and Quillette founder Claire Lehmann at the "Heterodox" conference
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As already established, Steven Pinker is utterly shameless, so it's no surprise to see him following up his appearance on the neo-Nazi Aporia magazine podcast with his participation at the "inaugural Heterodox Conference" which wraps up today.

Just about every single person at this conference has a connection to Aporia, Quillette, the far right, (MAGA Christopher Rufo,) or has become famous for sexual harassment like Lawrence Krauss and Joshua Katz. Plus that idiot Yascha Mounk of the reactionary-infested Persuasion. 

And of course the Intellectual Dark Web, including named member, and complete racist Michael Shermer, good personal friend of Steven Pinker.

The conference was organized by Eric Kaufmann, a member of racist extremist Richard Hanania's think tank. Which makes me think that Hanania funded this conference, but considering how many people at the conference have worked for or with Emil Kirkegaard via Aporia and other outlets of Polygenic Scores (formerly Human Diversity Foundation) Kirkegaard is also a suspect.

And Jonathan Anomaly, eugenics huckster, and SLAPP suit plaintiff, was also there.

The Guardian took notice of Pinker's close alliance with racists today in its article, Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism, writing:

The Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker appeared on the podcast of Aporia, an outlet whose owners advocate for a revival of race science and have spoken of seeking “legitimation by association” by platforming more mainstream figures.

I had to laugh at "legitimation by association." Pinker and his sociobiology sympathizers like Abdel Abdellaoui like to cry "guilt by association" whenever their connections to racists are mentioned, so it's great to see Pinker's racist buddies admit they do exactly what I've always accused them of doing - using Steve Pinker, celebrity intellectual, in their campaign to mainstream race pseudoscience.

More from the article:

Patrik Hermansson, a researcher at UK anti-racism non-profit Hope Not Hate, said that Pinker’s “decision to appear on Aporia, a far-right platform for scientific racism, provides an invaluable service to an extremist outlet by legitimising its content and attracting new followers”.
He added: “By lending his Harvard credentials to Aporia, Pinker contributes to the normalisation and spread of dangerous, discredited ideas.”

That was always the plan - to mainstream race pseudoscience. That's why Quillette recruited Pinker to write for them. 

After decades of Steven Pinker promoting race pseudoscience it's time to find Steven Pinker guilty of racism.

Steven Pinker and his fan boys

Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right
and hereditarian connections

I am certainly not interested in saying anything untrue about Steven Pinker. I think his verifiable history of promoting race science and in the case of Steve Sailer, promoting the career of a bona fide racist, while at the same time swanning around the world, expressing his opinions on everything and anything in the role of - in the words of the recent NYTimes hagiography - "celebrity intellectual" is sufficiently ghastly sans embellishment.

And if Pinker's fan boys are to be believed, I haven't said anything untrue about Pinker. Because if I did say something untrue about their hero and sometime shoe model, wouldn't they tell me about it?

But all I can get out of them is content-free insults.

My article Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right and hereditarian connections, especially seems to enrage them to the point of inarticulation. Just the concept alone, a diagram containing information, short-circuits their brains.

It's annoying enough when Steve Sailer and other recipients of wingnut welfare, like Quillette staff members Colin Wright and Bo Winegard insult me personally without explaining what is wrong with the data presented -

- but even Pinker's college professor fan boys do it.

For instance, Lee Jussim a "distinguished professor" and chair of the department of psychology at Rutgers suggested that it was insane to present Pinker's connections in a diagram format.

 

Now Jussim is in deep with Quillette and uses segregationist terminology and his career seems to consist of saying over and over: "stereotypes are real" so I don't hold him in very high regard to begin with. But as wacky as I think he is, I still find it bizarre that he is so repulsed by information in pictorial form. It's all verifiable stuff. It's a fact that Steven Pinker chose to publish the work of Steve Sailer in the 2004 edition of "The Best of Science and Nature Writing." It's in the public record. Pinker even admits it on his web site.

So why is it so crazy that I drew a line between Pinker and Sailer, and Pinker and the book he edited? I explain why I did so in the text. Why does Lee Jussim consider this "nutso"?

And now another college professor has come at me over Pinker. My article Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right and hereditarian connections is posted at Academia and I occasionally get comments. This weekend I got a couple from Douglas Eckberg, retired professor of Sociology from Winthrop University.

He stopped by to suggest that my work is somehow tainted because I am a "left-wing partisan" (I've written about Steven Pinker's hypocrisy on this issue) and then suggested I don't understand Pinker's work (presumably he classifies me with Stephen Jay Gould as well as all those New Yorker and NYTimes reviewers who have panned Pinker's books, as just too stupid to comprehend Pinker's brilliance.) Naturally, he does not say what I got wrong about Pinker.

Steve Sailer marveled that unlike James Watson or Lawrence Summers, Pinker has received very little blow-back over his support for hereditarian hypotheses. Although like all "Summers was a martyr to political correctness" complainers, Sailer neglects to mention that Summers went to work at the Obama administration after stepping down as president of Harvard. Although since Sailer considers Obama his arch-enemy maybe Sailer considered that a demotion.

I suggested Pinker gets away with it because of Pinker's relentless self-promotion coupled with Pinker's lack of intellectual integrity. But another strong possibility is Pinker's fan boys in mainstream media.

This was first most glaringly obvious when Pinker, speaking at a Koch-funded event, claimed the New York Times among others radicalized the alt-right. He received some negative response for that so the New York Times got one of Pinker's fan boys Jesse Singal (also on the Koch payroll but best known for antagonizing the trans community) to defend Pinker. His piece was so dishonest PZ Myers responded:

But then this kind of disingenuous denial of reality, of focusing superficially on he said/she said note-taking, is exactly what the New York Times specializes in.

It certainly does when it comes to Pinker. Recently Pinker got to play free speech martyr because some linguists did not want him to represent them. He was defended everywhere from the National Review to Mother Jones. It was his dream come true I imagine - much like Christiana Hoff Sommer's response to someone yelling Black Lives Matter at her in front of a camera.

And the New York Times gave the martyr a big spread, How a Famous Harvard Professor Became a Target Over His Tweets.

One of the very few voices speaking for the linguists, Todd Synder, wrote a response to the deck-stacking by Michael Powell in the NYTimes:

Meanwhile, it is the public signatories of (the linguist letter) — especially early-career linguists like myself — who have already been met with threats of abuse and retaliation. Both from online trolls, fans of Pinker and the “Intellectual Dark Web” (unfortunately unsurprising, given the current state of the online world) and from some more senior voices in the field, enough so that some non-signatories of TOL felt the need to write a public letter condemning such reactions. If anyone in this story is in danger of suffering any actual consequences as a result of “fraught cultural battles”, it’s people like me whose careers are potentially jeopardized by willing to take a public stance which threatens to upset the status quo. And all the more so for my colleagues who are women, or who are non-binary, who are people of color, who already have a tougher time fighting for a career, and who attract an unequal amount of the harassment and abuse from Pinker supporters.  

Pinker sees himself as someone bravely standing against public opinion, but he represents the status quo, not its opposition. His is the voice that “carries power”, not the letter writers’. It would be nice if the Times would reflect that actuality, rather than making Pinker out to be the powerless victim.

Although I should say that I was not impressed by the linguist letter which deliberately put aside Pinker's support for race science:

Though no doubt related, we set aside questions of Dr. Pinker’s tendency to move in the proximity of what The Guardian called a revival of “scientific racism”,

The Letter was so weak and feeble a statement against Pinker I could easily believe it was written by friends of Pinker in order to give him a chance to play the free speech martyr. That has ended up being its main impact.

It's my impression that there is a kind of gentlemen's agreement among the mostly white men who run established media, to avoid embarrassing Steven Pinker, their celebrity intellectual, with questions about his support for race science.

But maybe that's why Pinker's fan boys get so tongue-tied with rage by my article with the diagram. It has an impact. The diagram makes it clear at a glance that Pinker has connections with the alt-right, conservatives and hereditarians. It may not be considered significant by Pinker or the media, since I'm a nobody and they are big on credentials, but people do look at it, and unlike most of the text-dense and often very badly written academic papers available online, people can understand the information easily and quickly. I have a background as a technical writer - helping people to absorb complex information quickly is my job. But it's not what you'd call a prestigious intellectual job, not like being an op-ed writer for the Times like David Brooks.

The fan boys hate the diagram, not because anything in it is incorrect, but because I have ignored the gentlemen's agreement and embarrassed, not Pinker himself (I believe he has no sense of shame) but rather the fan boys.

Meanwhile Pinker needs a safe space on Twitter so he has set his account so only those he follows or mentions can comment on his tweets.

In this tweet we see Pinker promoting two other race science proponents. 

The story continues - the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf is also a Pinker fan boy.

Steven Pinker appears on a neo-Nazi podcast

The second time Pinker has used his "celebrity intellectual" status to promote neo-Nazi media
---------------------------------

I just mentioned in the last post that Steven Pinker has a byline in Aporia magazine, which is owned by neo-Nazi weirdo Emil Kirkegaard. Read more about Kirkegaard's neo-Nazi organization - including Aporia, in the Hope not hate article Race Science, Inc.

I created this handy diagram, using a lot of the information from the article. Click to enlarge. Text for the diagram on this post.

And now Pinker has appeared on the Aporia podcast, featured on Youtube.

Bluesky noticed.

Pinker is absolutely shameless.

As I say in my "who is behind Pinkerite?" page:

Fun fact: Steven Pinker is one of Emil Kirkegaard's influences. And in turn, Pinker uses the force of his "celebrity intellectual" status to promote the career of Razib Khan and the Substack-platformed neo-Nazi Aporia Magazine. 

The big question is why does Pinker, who is Jewish (although an atheist), promote a neo-Nazi media outlet?

My guess is that he is such a true believer, even evangelist, for race pseudoscience that he'll promote an organization devoted to race pseudoscience even if it includes neo-Nazis. 

And it is not hyperbole to use the term "neo-Nazi" to describe Aporia. As the Hope not Hate investigative report concluded about Aporia's parent organization: "HDF is working to create a cult of weapons-trained activists inspired by Scientology and the Nazi SS."

Clearly Steven Pinker has no qualms about promoting a neo-Nazi organization. 

Elon Musk is a stochastic terrorist

KRIS GOLDSMITH

Per CNN:

Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.

Yoel Roth, who resigned from the social media company in November, has in recent weeks faced a storm of attacks and threats of violence following the release of the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal Twitter communications that new owner Musk has released through journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

Roth’s position involved him working on sensitive issues including the suspension of then-President Donald Trump’s account in 2021. On Monday, Weiss posted a series of screenshots purported to show internal Twitter documents where Roth and others discussed whether to ban Trump’s account, with some employees questioning if the former president’s tweets violated the platform’s policies.

While Musk had initially been publicly supportive of Roth, that soon changed after he left the company.

Roth has since been the subject of criticism and threats following the release of the Twitter Files. However, things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia — a common trope used by conspiracy theorists to attack people online.

A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory. 

This is the second time Musk has falsely accused someone of pedophilia. It's insane he didn't lose the first case. Clearly he has no qualms about using false accusations to smear people. He needs to be sued into bankruptcy.

The American far-right loves stochastic terrorism. And by far-right I am very much including the Intellectual Dark Web. 

Elon Musk is clearly a member in good standing of that crowd of ghouls. 

It's curious, that the far-right and the Intellectual Dark Web pretend to hate pedophilia when, as I have documented, they love blatant pro-pedophilia Camille Paglia.

Although for the last four years, this blog has focused on criticizing the race pseudoscience promoted by the Intellectual Dark Web, which has been aided and abetted by mainstream "celebrity intellectuals" like Steven Pinker, I have also ended up writing about the various stochastic terrorism projects connected to members of the Intellectual Dark Web.

• Maybe one of the earliest examples of social media-delivered stochastic terrorism was Gamergate, in 2014, with its connection to three members of the Intellectual Dark Web: named members Christina Hoff Sommers and Milos Yiannopoulus, and Cathy Young. The guy who attacked Paul Pelosi was a fan of Gamergate.

• Pizzagate in 2016 promoted by Mike Cernovich, a named member of the Intellectual Dark Web.

• The entire career of former Quillette staff member Andy Ngo, who lent his free speech grift to the Trump campaign, which hoped to use ANTIFA-panic as an excuse to declare martial law.

Oh how the Intellectual Dark Web loved Andy Ngo. Sommers calls for backup from members and fans of the IDW in this tweet.

• The career of James Lindsay, a beloved "intellectual" of the Intellectual Dark Web and influencer of the guy who attacked Paul Pelosi. Bari Weiss was a big fan of "Conceptual James."

I recently wrote about Libs of TikTok, the account created by self-proclaimed stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik. LOTT is funded by Seth Dillon. LOTT is defended by Bari Weiss. 

Is there any stochastic terrorist who Bari Weiss DOES NOT LOVE?

Libs of TikTok goes far beyond expressing political opinions about transgender issues. That would certainly be allowed under Twitter’s policies, which exist to curb harassment, violence, and hate speech, not opinions. In fact, Libs of TikTok has repeatedly highlighted specific individuals, events, and institutions with inflammatory language, often falsely suggesting they are guilty of heinous acts against young children. The account’s spotlight has repeatedly resulted in harassment and violent threats toward the individuals involved, in a process typically referred to as stochastic terrorism. Those targeted include doctors and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for youth, teachers and schools with inclusive policies, and all-ages or youth-focused drag events.

"The Twitter Files" is Musk selectively releasing email exchanges in the hopes it will make old Twitter look bad. Musk has asked right-wingers Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss to help him.

When her access was granted, Bari Weiss tried to show that Libs of TikTok was treated unfairly. As Kevin Drum writes:

...Bari Weiss, a writer whose primary motivation in life seems to be her deep resentment of liberals, is the author of Part 2, and she provides the names of three political actors who were de-amplified:¹ 

• Charlie Kirk
• Dan Bongino
• Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok)

And that's it. Weiss doesn't explain why she picked these three to highlight. She doesn't say why these three were de-amplified. Nor does she say if she also knows of any liberals who were de-amplified. And even though Musk has given her access to anything she wants to see, she provides no statistics about how many people were de-amplified; the reasons they were de-amplified; how long they were de-amplified; or anything else. She just provides three hand-picked names and that's the end of it.

Charlie Kirk is another named member of the Intellectual Dark Web.

Apparently Weiss failed to show Libs of TikTok was discriminated against, and in fact revealed it was given special consideration. 

The American far-right tries to discredit the concept of "stochastic terrorism" - at least as applied to its members, as seen recently in a piece by Koch employee and all-around soulless political operative Christopher Rufo a friend of James Lindsay and member of the IDW-loaded FAIRforall board of advisers. Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger are, of course, also advisors of that organization.

But I'll end this post on a high note:

Elon Musk HUMILIATED When Crowd Turns On Him And Dave Chappelle

and:

Musk, the CEO of Twitter and Tesla, joined Chappelle onstage Sunday night at the Chase Center in San Francisco, where Chris Rock was also headlining. 

“It was more boos than I’d ever heard,” an attendee, Jason, said in a direct message. “Sustained jeering.” 

Two audience members said they booed Musk because of the widespread firings and layoffs at Twitter. A third person said he booed Musk because of his political agenda — before the midterm elections, Musk urged followers to vote for Republicans. The three people shared screenshots of their tickets to the show with NBC News and spoke on the condition that only their first names be used to protect their privacy and to avoid backlash from Musk’s fans.

Both cheers and boos can be heard in videos of the event, which were viewed millions of times on social media Monday. Later on Twitter, Musk attributed the mixed reception to his recent embrace of conservative politics.

“Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter),” Musk tweeted. 

He added, “It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.”

All three audience members said that Musk’s tweet was inaccurate and that the booing drowned out the cheering.

The incident and the audience members’ explanations represent a shifting tide for Musk, who has reached a new level of notoriety since he took over Twitter while vocally supporting conservative causes.