Heather Heying: "we’re now getting the chance to do something on a much larger scale than we could ever do in the classroom"

Michael Shermer demonstrating
IDW "civility" by calling a critic
of Steven Pinker a cockroach while
suggesting the critic's motive was
nothing but being desperate for attention

I recently discussed the mystery of why Bari Weiss decided for herself to group people like Stefan Molyneux in with Steven Pinker and other presumably more respectable individuals in her article Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web.

I did not solve the mystery.

But while reading the article more thoroughly than I ever have before, several things jumped out at me.

One is a Big Lie of the IDW, which Weiss promotes in her piece:

...they all share three distinct qualities. First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness...

If Pinkerite has demonstrated anything, it's that nobody in the IDW is especially civil. And in fact Weiss demonstrated it herself when she wrote:

“I’ve figured out how to monetize social justice warriors,” Mr. Peterson said in January on Joe Rogan’s podcast. On his Twitter feed, he called the writer Pankaj Mishra, who’d written an essay in The New York Review of Books attacking him, a “sanctimonious prick” and said he’d happily slap him.

So why does Weiss repeat the IDWs self-congratulatory marketing copy?

And who exactly is writing the copy?

My bet is on Eric Weinstein. He's often mentioned as merely the coiner of the term "Intellectual Dark Web" but Weiss's article makes it clear that it's about more than just the nomenclature:

...when Ms. Owens and Charlie Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA, met last week with Mr. West at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, just outside of the frame — in fact, avoiding the photographers — was Mr. Weinstein. He attended both that meeting and a one-on-one the next day for several hours at the mogul’s request. Mr. Weinstein, who can’t name two of Mr. West’s songs, said he found the Kardashian spouse “kind and surprisingly humble despite his unpredictable public provocations.” He has also tweeted that he’s interested to see what Ms. Owens says next.

And then there is this quote from Weinstein:

“I’m really only interested in building this intellectual movement,” Eric Weinstein said. “The I.D.W. has bigger goals than anyone’s buzz or celebrity.”

Weinstein has goals for the IDW.

And then there is Heather Heying, Eric's sister-in-law. I've argued several times with fans of the IDW on Twitter, pointing out that there is another side to the Evergreen story than the one promoted by the IDW and Fox News narrative. As Bari Weiss puts it:

A year ago, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying were respected tenured professors at Evergreen State College, where their Occupy Wall Street-sympathetic politics were well in tune with the school’s progressive ethos. Today they have left their jobs, lost many of their friends and endangered their reputations.

But then Weiss includes Weinstein and Heying in her discussion of IDW profitability:

That hunger has translated into a booming and, in many cases, profitable market. Episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which have featured many members of the I.D.W., can draw nearly as big an audience as Rachel Maddow. A recent episode featuring Bret Weinstein and Ms. Heying talking about gender, hotness, beauty and #MeToo was viewed on YouTube over a million times, even though the conversation lasted for nearly three hours.

Bret Weinstein in particular seems to have parlayed his increased fame into a series of high profile public forums, including one for the Koch-sponsored Spiked Magazine/Learn Liberty.

As Weiss writes:

The exile of Bret Weinstein and Ms. Heying from Evergreen State brought them to the attention of a national audience that might have come for the controversy but has stayed for their fascinating insights about subjects including evolution and gender.

Spoiler alert: their "fascinating insights" on gender are garden-variety evolutionary psychology and in Heying's case scolding young women to wear more clothes lest they be guilty of "toxic femininity."

All in all, it sounds like they've used the Evergreen controversy to level up. And Heying seems to agree. Weiss quotes her:

“Our friends still at Evergreen tell us that the protesters think they destroyed us,” Ms. Heying said. “But the truth is we’re now getting the chance to do something on a much larger scale than we could ever do in the classroom.”

So is this what Heather Heying meant by "we’re now getting the chance to do something on a much larger scale than we could ever do in the classroom"?

Heather Heying made that statement in Bari Weiss's 2018 IDW article. 

It's been pretty clear since even before the article that Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein and her brother-in-law Eric Weinstein are opportunistic grifters, and more recently they are probably working for the Trump campaign like so many other members of the IDW appear to be: Joe Rogan, James Lindsay, Andy Ngo and Bari Weiss herself.

But even I could not guess how stupid and sleazy they would turn out to be. 

Per Business Insider:

Unity 2020 is the brainchild of former Evergreen State College professor Bret Weinstein, a charter member of the "intellectual dark web" (IDW) who is probably best-known for being the target of a student-led mob on campus in 2017. Unity 2020 isn't a party; it's "a grassroots presidential campaign to restore patriotic, courageous & capable leadership to the United States," according to its website.

Fundamental to the Unity 2020 ethos is the belief that the country faces certain doom if either President Donald Trump or Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins the election in November. The idea, then, is that a "patriotic" bipartisan ticket can save the day.

The "student-led mob" story was very likely one of the earliest free speech grifts of the Intellectual Dark Web, before they even decided on their little club's name.

Somehow, mysteriously, the IDWs of the Unity 2020 grift can't see a difference between Trump, a treasonous, corrupt, pussy-grabbing monster from hell and a middle-of-the-road standard politician like Joe Biden.

Heying could be seen hawking the "both sides are bad" on Twitter recently. It's so funny to see such a conscience-deficient sleazeball like Heying proclaiming anybody else to be guilty of playing to "basest instincts." 

The continuing dishonesty of Bret Weinstein was on display a little later in the Business Insider article:

A self-described "radical progressive," Weinstein said: "Economic inequality, growing past a certain point, tends to trigger revolts." But he added, "The focus on race on the BLM left is going to drive the entire nation to a place that it has been in the past, where race was a primary feature of how we viewed each other. And anybody who understands the United States knows that moving in that direction will be negative and not positive."

How stupid would someone have to be to buy Weinstein's story that he's a "radical progressive?"

I have to say, though, that Heying and the Weinstein brothers did get me to agree with an actual Libertarian:

The Libertarians and Greens have other ideas about Unity 2020's ambitions. 

"They're absolute f---ing morons," Nicholas Sarwark, the Libertarian Party chair from 2014 to 2020, said. "They don't have any plan for ballot access other than pretending it's not a thing."

Sarwark said Unity 2020's plan is to "transcend laws" by using a kind of magical thinking that he likened to Marianne Williamson's big-on-love and short-on-policy campaign.

"Who's your ticket? Dan Crenshaw and Tulsi Gabbard? And the runners-up were William McRaven and Andrew Yang. It's like the start of 'Street Fighter': Randomize your fighter and let's see how it goes," Sarwark added.

That was pretty damn funny for someone who admires Ayn Rand.

But I think it's extremely unlikely that they ever meant Unity 2020 to be on any ballots. The likely point of the whole thing is to help Trump by claiming to their idiot social media followers that Joe Biden, a vastly superior human being to Trump (as virtually all human beings are) is somehow on the same incomprehensibly psychopathic level as Trump, thus dampening their enthusiasm and likeliness of voting for Biden.

The IDW in general, and certain members in particular are soulless, corrupt, lying, sleazy grifting rat-fuckers. They do absolutely nothing in good faith and they have absolutely no qualms about it.

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.

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

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. 

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

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.

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

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.” 

What the IDW is really all about and the Dunning-Kruger effect

Married couple Bret Weinstein and Heather E. Heying are, along with Eric Weinstein, the leading exemplars of the Intellectual Dark Web so it's no surprise they are also exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect. As described in the Forbes article The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows Why Some People Think They're Great Even When Their Work Is Terrible:

Coined in 1999 by then-Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the eponymous Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias whereby people who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence. And not only do they fail to recognize their incompetence, they’re also likely to feel confident that they actually are competent.

Bret and Heather appear to be having a competition on Twitter today to determine which one of them is the biggest exemplar of Dunning-Kruger.

First Bret tells the International Chess Federation how chess works:

Then Heather tells Mathematical Association of America how math works.

These two are truly the perfect combination of stupidity and arrogance.

Meanwhile Eric Weinstein, founder of the IDW, explains what the IDW is all about, which aligns exactly what I've been saying about the IDW all along: it's about claiming Black people as dangerous and violent.

Now is a good time to mention that Eric Weinstein is the Managing Director of Thiel Capital.

Peter Thiel Met With The Racist Fringe As He Went All In On Trump

Some random anonymous Black guy uses bad words and says mean things about the police. And this is presented by Eric Weinstein as somehow "what comes next" for tech platforms and universities.

It's likely that those are references to two of the IDWs grifts - the "tech platforms" refers to the James Damore Google letter grift, and the universities refers to the Evergreen grift. 

This tweet truly does reveal for all to see what the "Intellectual Dark Web" is about. 

That and helping exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger make a living. For as Heying said about the Evergreen grift, quoted by Bari Weiss, in Weiss's big IDW profile:

The exile of Bret Weinstein and Ms. Heying from Evergreen State brought them to the attention of a national audience that might have come for the controversy but has stayed for their fascinating insights about subjects including evolution and gender...

“Our friends still at Evergreen tell us that the protesters think they destroyed us,” Ms. Heying said. “But the truth is we’re now getting the chance to do something on a much larger scale than we could ever do in the classroom.”

The quote also demonstrates the way IDW grifters portray their perceived enemies - Heying makes a claim about what the protestors think, not based on evidence, but rather based on what "our friends tell us."

Bret & Heather & Game Theory

I don't talk much about Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying on Pinkerite, even though they are bona fide members of the Intellectual Dark Web and related by blood and marriage to Peter Thiel's number 1 lackey, Eric Weinstein. While they are sleazy scam artists, hyping ivermectin for Covid...

...That leaves Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying, the ex-Evergreen professors, married couple, and co-hosts of the Dark Horse podcast who have made ivermectin advocacy a cornerstone of their work. (Heying has called the “demonization” of ivermectin the “crime of the century.”) Heying and Weinstein extensively discussed the TOGETHER trial during Saturday’s episode of their podcast, denouncing it as poorly designed, suggesting it actually hadn’t been randomized or placebo-controlled (it was), and primarily recommending other people’s potted analyses, including Martenson, the economic researcher, and a site called IVM Meta, a site which claims to be a constantly updating real-time meta analysis of ivermectin studies.

...they don't promote race pseudoscience as far as I am aware.

But I had to share this. Beware if you are drinking liquids while watching this, said liquids may come shooting out your nose.

The IDW and the Fox News Narrative

The picture Weinstein tweeted, implying these
students were "roaming the campus."

Last summer Noah Berlatsky wrote a piece for Pacific Standard that presented a different take on the Bret Weinstein/Heather Heying martyr narrative from the one so beloved by the Right.

It's important to note that Weinstein and Heying received $500K in a settlement with Evergreen College and now seem to be working full time as members of the Intellectual Dark Web.

Bret Weinstein Wiki

Following his resignation from Evergreen, Weinstein has been described as being part of the "Intellectual Dark Web", a term which his brother Eric coined to describe a group of academics and media personalities who publish outside of mainstream media.

Heather Heying web site

I will gladly spend hours watching parrots klatsch at a clay lick, lizards hunt katydids, and squirrel monkeys do anything. I enjoy wandering around foreign cities. I enjoy wandering around natural places even more–the Washington coast in Spring during the shorebird migration, neotropical cloud forests with squirrel cuckoos and colorful bursts of tanagers, the San Juan Islands, the Amazon.

Berlatsky wrote:

...Though Weinstein calls himself a progressive, he went on the rabidly right-wing, anti-immigrant Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News shortly after the protests. Carlson claimed that white people had been forced off campus, which was not true. He then played a clip of the protest, framing it to suggest, falsely, that the protest had been a response to Weinstein's email alone. Weinstein co-signed that version of events, and did not correct Carlson when he said that the core demand of the protesters was that white people leave campus—which, again, was completely false. Participation in the Day of Absence was voluntary, and student demands did not include any discussion of forcing students off campus. 

Weinstein's appearance on Carlson alerted the far right to the anti-racist protests at Evergreen, unleashing a flood of hate mail and a credible far-right terrorist threat that led to administrators evacuating the campus for three days in June. The school had to move the location of graduation.

Weinstein also tweeted a picture of college students who he claimed were involved in violence. For example, he claimed that students with bats were roaming campus, and used as evidence a clearly staged photo, unlinked to the protests, with no evidence that the students pictured were involved in any violence. The fallout for these students was intense. One student, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their safety, said that they started receiving death threats from people who knew their address. "I had to move three times for my safety and eventually left the state," the student says. Later, the student was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of the constant threats. "I feel incredibly isolated, like no one could understand or even wants to take the time to understand what really happened," the student says. "The narrative surrounding our goals and actions has been so horribly skewed, I don't know how to begin addressing it."*

So it sounds like the only ones who did well by the controversy were Weinstein and Heying.

Vice discovers that IDW grifters gonna grift

The Intellectual Dark Web continues to get increasingly pathetic. Per the Vice article Why Is the Intellectual Dark Web Suddenly Hyping an Unproven COVID Treatment?

It's a familiar set of claims, amounting to an assertion that being given the broadest possible platform is the same as being silenced, and that one's theories being tested is the same as them having been suppressed. While Big Tech continues to issue a confused, belated, and at times contradictory response to the problem of people using its platforms to promote health quackery, Weinstein, Heying, Taibbi, and Weiss have positioned themselves as the vanguards of intellectual freedom by, in their ways, buttressing these claims. In fact, and without, perhaps, even realizing it, they’ve acted as foot soldiers for something entirely commonplace: a politicized and pseudoscientific response to a deadly disease.

Not long ago Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying were promoting a spoiler political party during the 2020 presidential campaign that even libertarians thought was stupid.

Although Evergreen State College gave Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying a payout to get them to resign, it's looking more and more like half a million dollars was a bargain to get rid of this couple of crackpots.

The Intellectual Dark Web strikes again

Eric Weinstein, here to explain
the whole purpose of
"post-menopausal females."

J. D. Vance is owned by Peter Thiel, so that was plenty of evidence for me that J. D. Vance was a creature of the Intellectual Dark Web, but it turns out he had another connection.

And a reminder that the Intellectual Dark Web is not ONLY racist, although it is that of course - the Intellectual Dark Web is hideously misogynist:

In a 2020 appearance on the Portal podcast — hosted by Eric Weinstein, the Managing Director of Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital — the then-venture capitalist expressed his weird take on elderly women and how his mother-in-law has helped raise his son — he now has three children.

“There's sort of all the classic stuff that grandparents do to grandchildren — it makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents,” Vance told Weinstein.
“That's the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female, in theory,” the podcast host said, as Vance chimed in, “Yes.”

Eric Weinstein is the apparent leader of the Intellectual Dark Web, credited with coming up with the name. And you don't even have to speculate whether he is funded by Thiel - he is an official employee of Thiel.

I was just talking yesterday about Bari Weiss - the biggest cheerlead of the IDW - promoting right-wing grifter Christina Hoff Sommers as a "feminist" in spite of the fact that Sommers is a female misogynist whose career has been funded by wingnut welfare.

Sommers was one of those profiled in the Bari Weiss article, one of the special ones photographed lurking in the dark, back in 2018, along with Eric Weinstein.

Bari Weiss is a long-time fan of Eric Weinstein and other horrific right-wing ghouls including that freak James "your mom" Lindsay.

I notice that Weinstein's 55-year-old sister-in-law, Heather E. Heying, appears to be ignoring her whole purpose as a post-menopausal female. When does she have time to mind the children? Tsk tsk!

Heather and her husband Bret Weinstein are big fans of GAME THEORY.

IDW University

Well it looks like the usual IDW gang has started a new grift.

From the Bari Weiss substack:

But we are done waiting. We are done waiting for the legacy universities to right themselves. And so we are building anew. 

I mean that quite literally. 

As I write this, I am sitting in my new office (boxes still waiting to be unpacked) in balmy Austin, Texas, where I moved three months ago from my previous post as president of St. John’s College in Annapolis.

I am not alone.Our project began with a small gathering of those concerned about the state of higher education—Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, Arthur Brooks, and I—and we have since been joined by many others, including the brave professors mentioned above, Kathleen Stock, Dorian Abbot and Peter Boghossian.   

We count among our numbers university presidents: Robert Zimmer, Larry Summers, John Nunes, and Gordon Gee, and leading academics, such as Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt,  Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Vickie Sullivan, Geoffrey Stone, Bill McClay, and Tyler Cowen.

We are also joined by journalists, artists, philanthropists, researchers, and public intellectuals, including Lex Fridman, Andrew Sullivan, Rob Henderson, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sohrab Ahmari, Stacy Hock, Jonathan Rauch, and Nadine Strossen.

So basically, if you support race pseudoscience, are on the Koch payroll or are a grifter, you are welcome to teach at The University of Austin.

Of course Pinker is part of this. You can't escape Pinker.

And you can't have an Intellectual Dark Web scam without a connection to  Peter Thiel:

At present, UATX is fiscally sponsored by Cicero Research, which is an exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Joe Lonsdale is listed as an officer of Cicero Research. Lonsdale is a longtime associate of Peter Thiel:

Lonsdale, after all, spent much of his early career in Thiel’s footsteps. He served as an editor of the Stanford Review, the provocative conservative student publication that Thiel co-founded, years earlier; interned at Thiel’s PayPal before it became a Mafia; and eventually became a right-hand man to Thiel, himself. Lonsdale would become one of the first employees at Thiel’s first investment shop, Clarium Capital, and then in 2004, helped him found Palantir, the data-mining, terrorist-hunting software company that made them both fabulously wealthy. That kickstarted a meteoric career—interrupted by a too-tangled-to-quickly-explain personal scandal—in which Lonsdale struck out on his own, founding the wealth management platform Addepar and a venture capital firm, 8VC.

Although race pseudoscience supporters are already listed as part of the Austin University team: Pinker, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Haidt, it is inevitable that even more extreme, more obviously racist people will be brought in to teach "Forbidden Courses" on race pseudoscience.

Noah Carl and racist Bo Winegard are ready.

Steven & Bari & Stefan & Eric

A little over a year ago Bari Weiss published "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web" subtitled "An alliance of heretics is making an end run around the mainstream conversation. Should we be listening?"

Weiss wrote:

Go a click in one direction and the group is enhanced by intellectuals with tony affiliations like Steven Pinker at Harvard. But go a click in another and you’ll find alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneux and Milo Yiannopoulos and conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich (the #PizzaGate huckster) and Alex Jones (the Sandy Hook shooting denier).

Eric Weinstein, his brother Bret and his sister-in-law Heather Heying all appeared in the silly photoshoot for the article, and were interviewed by Weiss, so there was certainly a high level of cooperation on the article from them. But Eric, who has been given credit for the name "intellectual dark web" does not consider Molyneux to be a member of the gang, in spite of Weiss's including him in "the group". As we can see in this tweet exchange from September 2018.

Later the same day Weinstein claimed he never met Molyneux and that he barely knew his ideas.

In January of this year, Weinstein still says he does not know Molyneux.

It seems that Bari Weiss did not speak to Molyneux for the article. 

As we can see by his reaction.

Weiss has never been on Molyneux's show, although several other people she included in the IDW have, including Michael Shermer, Charles Murray, Jordan Peterson and Candace Owens. Meanwhile Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan both had Molyneux on their shows. Weiss appeared on Rogan's show.

Weiss opened her Intellectual Dark Web article like this:

Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And we’re in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered “dark.” 

I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo.

Before I continue, there are skeptics who doubt Sam Harris is an actual neuroscientist and that Dave Rubin has ever been a comedian.

Also "fundamental biological differences between men and women" is not nearly the extent of what they believe, and the description doesn't mention race, which is at least as important to IDWers as gender.

This is Weiss's group definition in the article:

Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.

Then Weiss links to this web site as the "closest thing to a phone book for the I. D. W." which includes many people not mentioned explicitly by Weiss, including Carl Benjamin, AKA Sargon of Akaad, described in his Wiki:

British political commentator, politician, anti-feminist, polemicist and YouTuber with the online pseudonym Sargon of Akkad. He was a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate for the European Parliament's South West England constituency in the 2019 election, although he failed to win his election. Benjamin grew to prominence through the Gamergate controversy. Since Gamergate, he has covered topics such as identity politics, the alt-right, Brexit and political correctness.

However, the site does not include Milo Yiannopoulos, Mike Cernovich, Alex Jones nor Stefan Molyneux. Weiss writes:

But in typical dark web fashion, no one knows who put the website up.

By the end of the article, there is still no explanation for why Bari Weiss grouped Molyneux in with the IDW. She writes:

I get the appeal of the I.D.W. I share the belief that our institutional gatekeepers need to crack the gates open much more. I don’t, however, want to live in a culture where there are no gatekeepers at all. Given how influential this group is becoming, I can’t be alone in hoping the I.D.W. finds a way to eschew the cranks, grifters and bigots and sticks to the truth-seeking.

But I think that what Pinkerite has been demonstrating, blog post by blog post, is that in fact there really are few differences in point of view, especially about race and gender, between those Weiss considers respectable, like Steven Pinker, and "the cranks, grifters and bigots."

Shermer celebrates the IDW, is ratioed and mocked

For those who are not involved in Twitter, getting ratioed is what happens when there are significantly more comments than likes in response to your Tweet. In Shermer's case the ratio is 412 comments to 199 likes as of the time this screen cap was made. An almost exact 2:1 ratio.

The image Shermer so proudly shares is made of the photos from the original Bari Weiss article Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web, turned into a collage.

In case you're keeping score, the members of the IDW in the image are, from left to right, Michael Shermer, Eric Weinstein, Heather Heying, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Christina Hoff Sommers, Sam Harris and Bret Weinstein.

The IDW is so tolerant that Jordan Peterson has sued people for insulting him, so in favor of free speech Charlie Kirk advocated for Donald Trump to regulate tech companies over "viewpoint discrimination" and loves liberty so much that Christina Hoff Sommers and Dave Rubin never mention how they are supported by Charles Koch.

What the IDW actually stands for is the same as the editorial positions of Quillette: anti-trans, pro-nuke, Islamaphobic, anti-socialist, anti-left, anti-feminist, pro-race science and constantly banging the drum about free speech in Academia over rude college students while ignoring plutocrats buying themselves their own academic hacks.

Ultimately the IDW is about is the grift.

Jonathan Katz on J. D. Vance and the Weinstein brothers

Jonathan Katz took a deep dive into the infamous Eric Weinstein-hosted interview of J. D. Vance and came up with some good, if predictably nauseating stuff.

He refers to Bret Weinstein as "disgraced evolutionary theorist Bret Weinstein." I certainly have long thought Bret was a disgrace, since the Evergreen incident, which I am convinced was at the very least partly a deliberate scam on the part of Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying. My opinion was then bolstered by Bret and Heather shilling ivermectin as a treatment for Covid. 

And then there's that obsession with Game Theory.

But I didn't know about this latest Bret Weinstein disgrace:

Bret Weinstein, the evolutionary biology professor turned podcaster and ivermectin guy, repeated a series of discredited pseudo-theories about AIDS in a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Weinstein, a frequent guest, told Rogan that he found the theory that party drugs like poppers cause AIDS to be “surprisingly compelling.” (It is not.) Weinstein also told Rogan he came to these ideas by reading a recent book by anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, creating a sort of unholy turducken of misinformation passed onto an audience of millions. 

Wow, what a garbage person.

Katz goes on to give a full accounting of the Intellectual Dark Web's racist, misogynist pseudoscience context that inform's Eric Weinstein's views, and demonstrates how much Vance agrees with them.

The problem is that race-baiting, misogyny, and a general obsession with supposedly in-born hierarchies aren’t distractions from the Trump team’s message. They are the campaign’s message. Even when confronted with an issue that genuinely concerns the electorate — such as the still-high cost of living, especially for those of us raising children — they can’t resist offering rhetoric and solutions that sound like they come from the minutes of a 1920s meeting of the American Eugenics Society, if not the pronatalist movement in Fascist Italy itself. The reason is simple: They really believe this stuff.

***

The vice-presidential candidate concludes:

VANCE: Just to sort of bring this full circle to where we started, is that the economic logic of always prioritizing paid wage labor over other forms of contributing to a society is to me, it's actually a consequence of a sort of fundamental liberalism that is ultimately gonna unwind and collapse upon itself. It has to. I think it's, yeah — it’s the abandonment of a sort of Aristotelian virtue politics for a hyper market.

Yes, Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and great influencer of medieval Christian doctrine, who taught, among other things that: “the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying”; and “for the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority,” and who summarized “the female is a misbegotten male.” Those virtue politics.

In spite of Steven Pinker's public distaste for Trump, the Republican ticket is the Intellectual Dark Web ticket, holding the same pseudoscience beliefs that Pinker has been promoting via evolutionary psychology first, then by a cleaned-up version of Steve Sailer's "human biodiversity." Or as David Lubinski, bigwig at the International Society for Intelligence Research calls it "human psychological diversity."

Which is why the Republican ticket, funded by anti-democracy Peter Thiel and lead by a pussy-grabbing rapist and a misogynist creep, is the most evil in American history. 

And Pinker likes to attack Trump but he has no qualms about allying himself with Republican operative Bari Weiss and her garbage rag. But that's who Pinker is, a complete and utter weasel.

Bernie Sanders makes common cause with the IDW

Sanders appeared on Joe Rogan's show and then made a promotional ad featuring Rogan's endorsement.

This is Joe Rogan:



Rogan made the Sanders endorsement, appropriately enough, while interviewing Bari Weiss, publicist for the Intellectual Dark Web, who wrote about Rogan in her NYTimes article about the IDW:

“People are starved for controversial opinions,” said Joe Rogan, an MMA color commentator and comedian who hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the country. “And they are starved for an actual conversation.” 

That hunger has translated into a booming and, in many cases, profitable market. Episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which have featured many members of the I.D.W., can draw nearly as big an audience as Rachel Maddow. A recent episode featuring Bret Weinstein and Ms. Heying talking about gender, hotness, beauty and #MeToo was viewed on YouTube over a million times, even though the conversation lasted for nearly three hours.

Rogan is considered such an important member of the Intellectual Dark Web he had his photo taken for the article, just like Michael Shermer and Christina Hoff Sommers.

It's important to note that Rogan would like to see a ticket with Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. In other words the two candidates who hate the Democratic Party.

I hope that this stops Sanders' recent rise in the polls. I can't imagine why any African Americans, who were already trending towards Biden, would ever vote for Sanders in the primary after this.

Sanders supporters of course can't admit any of this is a problem. I am very disappointed in Ezra Klein for defending Sanders over this. Just like the Trump cult, the Sanders cult cannot admit when their mighty leader is wrong.

More anti-trans hatred promoted by the NYTimes

Carole Hooven - hardcore hate-monger
-------------------------------------------------

Oh look, Steven Pinker's protégée, the right-wing grifter Carole Hooven and right-wing grifter Alex Byrne, are promoted in today's NYTimes with their predictably transphobic op-ed piece "The Problem with Saying 'Sex Assigned at Birth'." 

The two grifters whine about the phrase "sex assigned at birth" and at the end, actually fall back on brevity as their last argument:

Meanwhile, we can each apply Strunk and White’s famous advice in “The Elements of Style” to “sex assigned at birth”: omit needless words.

Carole Hooven and Alex Byrne are not simply word Nazis - they are huge fans of the monstrously evil "Kiwi Farms" as I have documented on this site. Byrne has gone so far as to use illustrations in his own book from Nina Paley, a horrific hate-monger who glorified Kiwi Farms in her hateful Gender War cards. 

And Hooven was seen promoting racist neo-Nazi Bo Winegard a couple of years ago on Twitter.

But just my calling Hooven a protégée of Pinker should be enough to clue you in that she is a horrible far-right grifter who makes a living by spreading hatred and evolutionary psychology pseudoscience. In addition to the NYTimes she just published in racist right-wing ghoulish Quillette. More evolutionary psychology twaddle - of course. Pinker has a long history of promoting racists and other horrible people, like Steve Sailer, Razib Khan and most recently Richard Hanania.

I suspected Hooven and Byrne were married - I found out for sure thanks to the article Alex Byrne vs. transgender people. Oh how adorable, a husband-wife hate-monger team. Reminds me of the grifting ivermectin ghouls Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, those lovers of game theory.

James Lindsay and his allies - more shameless IDW hypocrisy

Pinkerite noted the connection between James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and right-wing Christian fanatic and Soros conspiracy-monger Michael O'Fallon back in March, and lately the issue has erupted on Twitter.



The connection between Lindsay and O'Fallon is in the public record as discussed in an article The unholy alliance between atheists and evangelicals:

...The conference, organized by Sovereign Nations and titled ‘Speaking Truth to Social Justice,’ featured the masterminds behind the so-called ‘Sokal Squared’ scandal: Helen Pluckrose, Peter Boghossian, and James A. Lindsay. Its name is a nod to an earlier hoax, which parodied the extreme postmodernist criticism of science, perpetuated by physicist Alan Sokal, who graced the occasion with his presence. Last year, the three current and former academics, who are prominent speakers in atheist and humanist circles...

They found in Michael O’Fallon, the evangelical Christian founder and editor-in-chief of Sovereign Nations, an ally who is likewise deeply concerned about our postmodern era in which ‘grand narratives that have guided our discourse are collapsing.’ What he fears is the encroachment of the secular theoretical perspectives that undergird social justice upon the gospel and the church, weaponizing identity to upend the Christian interpretation of doctrine. 

And so an unholy alliance between a bunch of atheists and evangelical Christians was born...

O'Fallon is obsessed with Soros conspiracy theories, but it should be noted that Lindsay has his own bizarre conspiracy theories.

On his twitter profile, Lindsay claims to be "Founder of New Discourses" (as well as "apolitical.")





But it's a fact that New Discourses is registered as an LLC in Florida to Directors/Officers Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Michael O'Fallon, with O'Fallon acting as "agent."

According to the web site LLC University:

A Registered Agent in Florida is a person or company who agrees to accept legal mail on behalf of your LLC in case your business gets sued. 

In Florida, your Registered Agent can also serve as a general point of contact for receiving business and tax notices, payment reminders, and other documents.

Now Lindsay is claiming O'Fallon works for him.

We know that James Lindsay received funding for the 'Sokal Squared' grift because he admitted it on Twitter, but refused to say who was paying.




So clearly Lindsay is open to work-for-hire.

Meanwhile, Michael O'Fallon is "CEO of Sovereign Nations and owner of Sovereign Cruises and Events LLC, which runs vacation excursions for religious and political groups, alike."

It seems unlikely O'Fallon would work for Lindsay rather than vice-versa.

Here we see the Sovereign Nations Twitter account approving the alliance between Christopher F. Rufo and James Lindsay.

Rufo is a contributing editor at the Koch-funded City Journal, as well as a research fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for on Wealth, Poverty & Morality, which promotes "intelligent design."

Another ally of James Lindsay is Bari Weiss.



In this tweet Weiss also mentions chateau bouncer Thomas Chatterton Williams and Eric Weinstein, founder of the Intellectual Dark Web and employee of Trump supporter Peter Thiel.

So although Lindsay was not mentioned in Weiss's 2018 article it would appear that Lindsay is in deep with the IDW.

I've noted often the utter hypocrisy of the IDW, and hypocrisy is a notable trait of Steven Pinker, but it doesn't hurt to mention the pure shamelessness again.

 In her 2018 article Weiss wrote:

The core members (of the IDW) have little in common politically. Bret and Eric Weinstein and Ms. Heying were Bernie Sanders supporters. Mr. Harris was an outspoken Hillary voter. Ben Shapiro is an anti-Trump conservative.
But they all share three distinct qualities. First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness. 

There are many examples of IDWs being extremely uncivil, but James Lindsay's incivility is especially shameless in light of his book "How to Have Impossible Conversations." Hilariously, according to its publisher Hachette:

Boghossian and Lindsay teach the subtle art of instilling doubts and opening minds. They cover everything from learning the fundamentals for good conversations to achieving expert-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. This book is the manual everyone needs to foster a climate of civility, connection, and empathy.

When presented with undeniable evidence of his connection to a right-wing Christian extremist conspiracy-monger, here are some of James Lindsay's responses:

It appears that "How to Have Impossible Conversations" is yet another grift by James Lindsay and anybody who bought the book should ask for their money back.