12 ms·

An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science

97 points by curmudgeon22 4y ago

sposeray 4y ago
[dead]
NeverFade 4y ago
We have a lazy tendency to judge complex phenomena by superficial external features. It's a mental shortcut. The word "tyranny" evokes images of mid 20th century fascist soldiers marching through streets, in shiny black leather boots. Tyranny is seen as instigated by the known set of motivations that were in play at that specific time and place: hate, racist bigotry, intolerance, a sense of superiority. We then fail to identify tyranny, even when it's the same phenomenon at its core, because superficially it looks different. It looks the opposite: where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism, this apparently new and different phenomena is motivated by an extremely strong reaction to racism. We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it. We ended up in a very similar position of hatred, intolerance, and sense of superiority. We just fail to realize it, because the flag-bearers of this new form of tyranny are entirely convinced they are "the good guys", and are only correcting the faults of the "bad guys": the fascists and bigots of yore. Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.
- causi 4y ago
  where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism When has that happened, though? It's more often the opposite. Hitler magnified racism as a tool to gather power. Racism against African-descended people grew out of the institution of slavery, not the other way around. Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves. One of the most tragic facets of human psychology is that being abused a particular way makes you more likely to abuse others in that same way, not less likely.
- endominus 4y ago
  If I may quote Orwell, who opined at length on the tendency of his countrymen towards authoritarianism in support of 'good' causes, "But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?" And in the words of Aldous Huxley, "The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats." Of course, C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
  - NeverFade 4y ago
    > The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. This is exactly where this current tyranny is coming from: The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves. Dissidents who reject this new tyranny aren't respected fellow citizens who hold differing opinions: they are evil people who must be silenced. If this trend is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, the dissidents will be silenced permanently, by eradication. > To be able to destroy with good conscience Like those ignorant young students, barging into complex discussions they often fail to understand, to shut them down. To shut down thought, invention, investigation, and discussion. And to do all that primarily in the very academic institutions dedicated to promoting these projects. > to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' A succinct description of cancel culture, the radical left's mob justice that has become normalized.
- somesortofthing 4y ago
  > We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it. I think it's interesting that you speak in such abstract terms about this. What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right? > the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves. I've personally never heard of a political movement--left, right, or center--that considered itself the antagonist in its own narrative
  - NeverFade 4y ago
    > What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right? This line of reasoning would just fall into the same error of justifying oppressive actions by the American left "because they are aimed at a group that is even worse". I consider the examples cited in the article to be very alarming, for example: > Soon after that, a few colleagues and I attempted to pass the Chicago Statement—what I viewed as a very basic set of principles about the necessity of free speech on campus. My shock continued as students broke into a faculty meeting about the Chicago Statement screaming “free speech harms” and demanding that white male professors “sit down” and “confess to their privilege.” This scene chillingly echoes the birth of previous oppressive tyrannies, in Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia and China. Its overt oppression and silencing of opposing views, its deliberate disruption and eradication of civil open debate, its ideological principled and fervent objection to civil liberties such as free speech, the identity politics (and motifs of divisive class/race warfare), the implied violence, the struggle-session public pressure on the sinful individuals to confess their sins... The fact that the radical American left aligns itself with two of these past tyrannical regimes serves to increase this alarm. But the worst of all concerns is that these aren't some shrill fringe radicals who are being ignored as such; no, this faction has become dominant to the point of controlling the policies of our academic, social, and cultural institutions. The article describes leading academic institutions, publications, and even government institutions like the National Science Foundation and the NIH which are bowing to the radical leftist mob and its demand. All these key institutions are increasingly captured and controlled by this radical ideology, putting these oppressive, tyrannical radicals effectively in control of an increasing number of our important societal, cultural, and academic institutions. (In a way that the small number of right-wing radicals who tried to storm the capitol are very much not; in fact, their magnification as an excuse to further promote oppression, tyranny, and institutional radicalism also evokes alarming echoes of the past.)
jraby3 4y ago
How do we as a society combat this oversensitivity? Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression? Why is it so rare for someone to stand up against this type of behavior?
- kens 4y ago
  > Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression? As a serious answer, Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame) wrote in 1982 about the problems of using "guys", which has a "default assumption" of maleness. This isn't a new issue, but something people have been discussing for 40 years. See "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness" in the book Metamagical Themas: https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas/page/n143/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas/page/n143/mode...
  - kgwgk 4y ago
    On the other hand, 2022!=1982 https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/guys-defense-gendered-etymology/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/guys-defen...
    - eesmith 4y ago
      That's a call for everyone to interpret "guys" as gender neutral. > In any case, to the great bulk of the population, guys already is gender-neutral and thus inclusive, thanks in part to women who embraced it. Maybe it’s time to set it free. I disagree with that first assertion. While "guys" is somewhat gender neutral, as in "you guys want anything?", it's not gender neutral with something like "two guys came here earlier" (not used to include "two women came here earlier") or "guys only want one thing" (not used to mean "all people only want one thing").
      - diffeomorphism 4y ago
        Eh, it is not really different from other plurals in this regard. For example one might say a catering event has 100 waiters. Depending on convention you could also write waiters/waitresses or waitrx or service personal or... Used generically it is gender neutral, while non-generically it is not.
Animats 4y ago
Well, we'll have to rely on the superior race - Chinese - to do work in those areas. Average East Asian IQ, 105, remember.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  That does seem to be the case already right? The united states has massive numbers of east asian people working in tech. What does it have to do with the article?
  - Animats 4y ago
    The work will take place in China.
reilly3000 4y ago
I value academic freedom and the integrity to pursue knowledge regardless of its outcomes. It’s the fruit of a just and wealthy society, it’s value endures across millennia. Why then is OP scared of some kids. It’s as if he’s perceiving this generation of his students as an invasive species, upsetting an ecosystem of which he is the apex. He gives no voice to his interloper’s concerns or goals; simply that it is too much. This is classic form of a well-trodden, meaningless screed. He feels somehow powerless in the face of ignorance of his students. Find a new career, or teach them. Learn from them. Offer some dignity to their humanity even when they don’t reciprocate. Model maturity. I think that there are vast vestiges of academia which still don’t understand how completely their relationship with knowledge has changed in the past 30 years. Universities historically have “owned” knowledge and its artifacts. Now knowledge is universally accessible and rapidly growing. We need to train people to Integrate, Validate, and Develop knowledge. That takes personal, challenging work from all. As a biologist it’s easy to fixated on the mechanics and metrics of reproduction. We’re seeing a decline in population growth and interest in reproduction in humans despite an overabundance of food. Young adults are facing economic turmoil, religious trauma, a doomed planet, and a bunch of regressive twats violently clinging to power. They perceive it as so futile that fertility is not viable. The way an organism perceives its environs dictates its behavior, not only the environment itself. Baby Boomers dictated the environment of the generation you proclaim to fear. You are complicit in what formed their grievances, passively or actively. You can participate in their resolution, and help these powerful young people to mature into the tolerant, curious individuals they are capable of becoming. This piece is not instructive. It’s as petulant as a toddler that has to share. It’s the same tenor as a small business owner trying to invoke pity and obtain material support from a governing body. It’s frankly pathetic. A bunch of teens aren’t going to destroy biology. Acknowledge your own ignorance of the lives of your patrons, their novel circumstances, and do what can be done to remedy it. Or retire. I could be writing YAML right now, but I’m writing this with the hope that someone voluntarily does what the author of this piece missed to understand that you are the solution, not the victim. Every adult needs to learn this, every mentor needs to teach it. We face challenges of unprecedented scale which test the limits of our evolutionary progress, especially around our ability to collaborate in increasingly vast numbers. We face the practical limits of human empathy, where global 24/7 news brings a deluge of tragedies to mourn and mend. We are seemingly incapable of stopping ourselves from destroying our own environment. The weight of it all has given rise to extremes. If those extremes threaten the things you hold dear, please do what you can to reduce the standard deviation. That means welcoming unpleasant extremists into your spaces and lives, and engaging with their beliefs. It involves seeing them as whole people, valuable and vulnerable. I feel so very strongly that it is the responsibility of our leaders and literati to model and advance the cause of cooperation. If for nothing else than our own survival.
devwastaken 4y ago
Every generation believes their Ronald Reagan is progressive and moral. From reviewing their other articles this site is clearly a republican news source. It's likely this story is significantly altered from the truth.
- Dig1t 4y ago
  Rather than addressing the content of the article, you are just dismissing the entire thing because it is associated with people you don't like. Republicans do this same thing with information that comes from Democrat sources. If we as a country continue to have this mindset, we are completely screwed. For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.
- squillion 4y ago
  The anecdotes in this story sound perfectly plausible to me. I've been hearing this kind of stories for years now, and no, not from "republican" sources. By the way, there's no shortage of anti-woke leftists. Just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqV3ARvuymY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqV3ARvuymY
  - rbop 4y ago
    My favourite conspiracy theory is that this push for 'woke' activism on the political left was done as a means to undermine it, and distract away from more pressing labour and economic activism that would actually be a threat to the wealthy and powerful, if implemented. While the purportedly left-wing activists sit there arguing if math is racist, and so on, exploitation of working people continues as it always has, largely ignored.
MrJohz 4y ago
I don't want to correct a biologist on a subject that they're clearly an expert on, but the discussion on sex seems like it's missing a lot of context. I wonder if they are making the mistake of thinking everyone is referring to the word "sex" in the same way? The author seems to be talking about sex in terms of gametes - i.e. sperm and eggs. They make the claim that there is an absolute sex difference between male and female sexes in terms of this gamete structure. I am happy to take them on their word on this point. But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex. Individuals in a gonochoric species have a sex that in most cases corresponds to the gametes that they can produce, but this is not absolute. In humans, we know that intersex and possibly even hermaphroditic individuals can exist: these people certainly do not conform to a perfectly binary sex distinction. So clearly there is a definition of sex - and a widely used one at that - where the author is incorrect, and human sexes are more complicated than a perfect binary split. This obviously doesn't invalidate the rest of the article, but it does suggest that some of the issue may lie in communication rather than oppression. For example, the author links to the "gender unicorn" model, but this fairly plainly discusses sex as a medical phenomenon (where it is typically assigned at birth, corresponds to reproductive organs, and where some people will not clearly fall in one category or another). This is presumably not being used by the same people studying evolutionary biology, where sex is an expression of gamete-based reproduction and - at least at a population level - binary. (Or at least, if it is, I imagine it will be within a specific context.) Looking through some of the evidence linked by the article, this seems to be the case. For example, the article links statements from scientific groups claiming that sex is a continuum, but the statements are very clearly in response to decisions that would affect medical care for humans (where it would be incorrect to assume a strict distinction - if anything, medicine is the study of exceptions to the norm), and do not in principle disagree with that continuum being bimodal in respects to gamete-based reproduction. Similarly, the author cites another article that they believe restricts discussion on reproduction to species that don't have binary sex. But my reading of the same article is (a) that it is exclusively focused on educating students (rather than wider scientific discussion), and (b) arguing for more examples rather than fewer to help students understand that reproduction can be much more complex than the traditional "sexual/asexual" model that they are often taught before university. I am not in academia, so ultimately I can't tell the author that what they're experiencing isn't true. But as someone reading their article, I came away with the impression that the author would do well to read through some of the sources they cite with a more open mind, and attempt to understand why some people are concerned about biological gender in humans being restricted to a binary state.

97 points by curmudgeon22 4y ago

[dead]

We have a lazy tendency to judge complex phenomena by superficial external features. It's a mental shortcut. The word "tyranny" evokes images of mid 20th century fascist soldiers marching through streets, in shiny black leather boots. Tyranny is seen as instigated by the known set of motivations that were in play at that specific time and place: hate, racist bigotry, intolerance, a sense of superiority. We then fail to identify tyranny, even when it's the same phenomenon at its core, because superficially it looks different. It looks the opposite: where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism, this apparently new and different phenomena is motivated by an extremely strong reaction to racism. We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it. We ended up in a very similar position of hatred, intolerance, and sense of superiority. We just fail to realize it, because the flag-bearers of this new form of tyranny are entirely convinced they are "the good guys", and are only correcting the faults of the "bad guys": the fascists and bigots of yore. Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.

causi 4y ago
where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism When has that happened, though? It's more often the opposite. Hitler magnified racism as a tool to gather power. Racism against African-descended people grew out of the institution of slavery, not the other way around. Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves. One of the most tragic facets of human psychology is that being abused a particular way makes you more likely to abuse others in that same way, not less likely.
endominus 4y ago
If I may quote Orwell, who opined at length on the tendency of his countrymen towards authoritarianism in support of 'good' causes, "But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?" And in the words of Aldous Huxley, "The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats." Of course, C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- NeverFade 4y ago
  > The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. This is exactly where this current tyranny is coming from: The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves. Dissidents who reject this new tyranny aren't respected fellow citizens who hold differing opinions: they are evil people who must be silenced. If this trend is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, the dissidents will be silenced permanently, by eradication. > To be able to destroy with good conscience Like those ignorant young students, barging into complex discussions they often fail to understand, to shut them down. To shut down thought, invention, investigation, and discussion. And to do all that primarily in the very academic institutions dedicated to promoting these projects. > to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' A succinct description of cancel culture, the radical left's mob justice that has become normalized.
somesortofthing 4y ago
> We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it. I think it's interesting that you speak in such abstract terms about this. What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right? > the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves. I've personally never heard of a political movement--left, right, or center--that considered itself the antagonist in its own narrative
- NeverFade 4y ago
  > What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right? This line of reasoning would just fall into the same error of justifying oppressive actions by the American left "because they are aimed at a group that is even worse". I consider the examples cited in the article to be very alarming, for example: > Soon after that, a few colleagues and I attempted to pass the Chicago Statement—what I viewed as a very basic set of principles about the necessity of free speech on campus. My shock continued as students broke into a faculty meeting about the Chicago Statement screaming “free speech harms” and demanding that white male professors “sit down” and “confess to their privilege.” This scene chillingly echoes the birth of previous oppressive tyrannies, in Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia and China. Its overt oppression and silencing of opposing views, its deliberate disruption and eradication of civil open debate, its ideological principled and fervent objection to civil liberties such as free speech, the identity politics (and motifs of divisive class/race warfare), the implied violence, the struggle-session public pressure on the sinful individuals to confess their sins... The fact that the radical American left aligns itself with two of these past tyrannical regimes serves to increase this alarm. But the worst of all concerns is that these aren't some shrill fringe radicals who are being ignored as such; no, this faction has become dominant to the point of controlling the policies of our academic, social, and cultural institutions. The article describes leading academic institutions, publications, and even government institutions like the National Science Foundation and the NIH which are bowing to the radical leftist mob and its demand. All these key institutions are increasingly captured and controlled by this radical ideology, putting these oppressive, tyrannical radicals effectively in control of an increasing number of our important societal, cultural, and academic institutions. (In a way that the small number of right-wing radicals who tried to storm the capitol are very much not; in fact, their magnification as an excuse to further promote oppression, tyranny, and institutional radicalism also evokes alarming echoes of the past.)

jraby3 4y ago

How do we as a society combat this oversensitivity? Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression? Why is it so rare for someone to stand up against this type of behavior?

kens 4y ago
> Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression? As a serious answer, Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame) wrote in 1982 about the problems of using "guys", which has a "default assumption" of maleness. This isn't a new issue, but something people have been discussing for 40 years. See "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness" in the book Metamagical Themas: https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas/page/n143/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas/page/n143/mode...
- kgwgk 4y ago
  On the other hand, 2022!=1982 https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/guys-defense-gendered-etymology/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/guys-defen...
  - eesmith 4y ago
    That's a call for everyone to interpret "guys" as gender neutral. > In any case, to the great bulk of the population, guys already is gender-neutral and thus inclusive, thanks in part to women who embraced it. Maybe it’s time to set it free. I disagree with that first assertion. While "guys" is somewhat gender neutral, as in "you guys want anything?", it's not gender neutral with something like "two guys came here earlier" (not used to include "two women came here earlier") or "guys only want one thing" (not used to mean "all people only want one thing").
    - diffeomorphism 4y ago
      Eh, it is not really different from other plurals in this regard. For example one might say a catering event has 100 waiters. Depending on convention you could also write waiters/waitresses or waitrx or service personal or... Used generically it is gender neutral, while non-generically it is not.

Animats 4y ago

Well, we'll have to rely on the superior race - Chinese - to do work in those areas. Average East Asian IQ, 105, remember.

snapcaster 4y ago
That does seem to be the case already right? The united states has massive numbers of east asian people working in tech. What does it have to do with the article?
- Animats 4y ago
  The work will take place in China.

reilly3000 4y ago

I value academic freedom and the integrity to pursue knowledge regardless of its outcomes. It’s the fruit of a just and wealthy society, it’s value endures across millennia. Why then is OP scared of some kids. It’s as if he’s perceiving this generation of his students as an invasive species, upsetting an ecosystem of which he is the apex. He gives no voice to his interloper’s concerns or goals; simply that it is too much. This is classic form of a well-trodden, meaningless screed. He feels somehow powerless in the face of ignorance of his students. Find a new career, or teach them. Learn from them. Offer some dignity to their humanity even when they don’t reciprocate. Model maturity. I think that there are vast vestiges of academia which still don’t understand how completely their relationship with knowledge has changed in the past 30 years. Universities historically have “owned” knowledge and its artifacts. Now knowledge is universally accessible and rapidly growing. We need to train people to Integrate, Validate, and Develop knowledge. That takes personal, challenging work from all. As a biologist it’s easy to fixated on the mechanics and metrics of reproduction. We’re seeing a decline in population growth and interest in reproduction in humans despite an overabundance of food. Young adults are facing economic turmoil, religious trauma, a doomed planet, and a bunch of regressive twats violently clinging to power. They perceive it as so futile that fertility is not viable. The way an organism perceives its environs dictates its behavior, not only the environment itself. Baby Boomers dictated the environment of the generation you proclaim to fear. You are complicit in what formed their grievances, passively or actively. You can participate in their resolution, and help these powerful young people to mature into the tolerant, curious individuals they are capable of becoming. This piece is not instructive. It’s as petulant as a toddler that has to share. It’s the same tenor as a small business owner trying to invoke pity and obtain material support from a governing body. It’s frankly pathetic. A bunch of teens aren’t going to destroy biology. Acknowledge your own ignorance of the lives of your patrons, their novel circumstances, and do what can be done to remedy it. Or retire. I could be writing YAML right now, but I’m writing this with the hope that someone voluntarily does what the author of this piece missed to understand that you are the solution, not the victim. Every adult needs to learn this, every mentor needs to teach it. We face challenges of unprecedented scale which test the limits of our evolutionary progress, especially around our ability to collaborate in increasingly vast numbers. We face the practical limits of human empathy, where global 24/7 news brings a deluge of tragedies to mourn and mend. We are seemingly incapable of stopping ourselves from destroying our own environment. The weight of it all has given rise to extremes. If those extremes threaten the things you hold dear, please do what you can to reduce the standard deviation. That means welcoming unpleasant extremists into your spaces and lives, and engaging with their beliefs. It involves seeing them as whole people, valuable and vulnerable. I feel so very strongly that it is the responsibility of our leaders and literati to model and advance the cause of cooperation. If for nothing else than our own survival.

devwastaken 4y ago

Every generation believes their Ronald Reagan is progressive and moral. From reviewing their other articles this site is clearly a republican news source. It's likely this story is significantly altered from the truth.

Dig1t 4y ago
Rather than addressing the content of the article, you are just dismissing the entire thing because it is associated with people you don't like. Republicans do this same thing with information that comes from Democrat sources. If we as a country continue to have this mindset, we are completely screwed. For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.
squillion 4y ago
The anecdotes in this story sound perfectly plausible to me. I've been hearing this kind of stories for years now, and no, not from "republican" sources. By the way, there's no shortage of anti-woke leftists. Just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqV3ARvuymY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqV3ARvuymY
- rbop 4y ago
  My favourite conspiracy theory is that this push for 'woke' activism on the political left was done as a means to undermine it, and distract away from more pressing labour and economic activism that would actually be a threat to the wealthy and powerful, if implemented. While the purportedly left-wing activists sit there arguing if math is racist, and so on, exploitation of working people continues as it always has, largely ignored.

MrJohz 4y ago

I don't want to correct a biologist on a subject that they're clearly an expert on, but the discussion on sex seems like it's missing a lot of context. I wonder if they are making the mistake of thinking everyone is referring to the word "sex" in the same way? The author seems to be talking about sex in terms of gametes - i.e. sperm and eggs. They make the claim that there is an absolute sex difference between male and female sexes in terms of this gamete structure. I am happy to take them on their word on this point. But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex. Individuals in a gonochoric species have a sex that in most cases corresponds to the gametes that they can produce, but this is not absolute. In humans, we know that intersex and possibly even hermaphroditic individuals can exist: these people certainly do not conform to a perfectly binary sex distinction. So clearly there is a definition of sex - and a widely used one at that - where the author is incorrect, and human sexes are more complicated than a perfect binary split. This obviously doesn't invalidate the rest of the article, but it does suggest that some of the issue may lie in communication rather than oppression. For example, the author links to the "gender unicorn" model, but this fairly plainly discusses sex as a medical phenomenon (where it is typically assigned at birth, corresponds to reproductive organs, and where some people will not clearly fall in one category or another). This is presumably not being used by the same people studying evolutionary biology, where sex is an expression of gamete-based reproduction and - at least at a population level - binary. (Or at least, if it is, I imagine it will be within a specific context.) Looking through some of the evidence linked by the article, this seems to be the case. For example, the article links statements from scientific groups claiming that sex is a continuum, but the statements are very clearly in response to decisions that would affect medical care for humans (where it would be incorrect to assume a strict distinction - if anything, medicine is the study of exceptions to the norm), and do not in principle disagree with that continuum being bimodal in respects to gamete-based reproduction. Similarly, the author cites another article that they believe restricts discussion on reproduction to species that don't have binary sex. But my reading of the same article is (a) that it is exclusively focused on educating students (rather than wider scientific discussion), and (b) arguing for more examples rather than fewer to help students understand that reproduction can be much more complex than the traditional "sexual/asexual" model that they are often taught before university. I am not in academia, so ultimately I can't tell the author that what they're experiencing isn't true. But as someone reading their article, I came away with the impression that the author would do well to read through some of the sources they cite with a more open mind, and attempt to understand why some people are concerned about biological gender in humans being restricted to a binary state.