Hey Rutherford, Goldacre, Humanists and Skeptics

[binaryfinery]

I know you like to think that you are Galileo - that you are one of the heroes who would stand up to anti-rationalism and anti-science and would bravely take a stand, and put your selves on the line to hold to your principles of reason and science and objectivity.

But you are not that person are you? You are actually the people who, in a society of religious orthodoxy, would be siding with the orthodoxy to condemn the minority speaking for rationality. At best, you would stay silent as others persecuted those calling for science and rationality, but, more likely given your actions over the past decade, and yes I am looking hard at you humanists now, you would be joining in the jeering and persecution.

Because you see, those who speak out, its a personality type. Its those who have the clarity of thought and morality to be able to think for themselves. To be able to discern for themselves, and then have the courage and integrity to hold firm to what they have evidenced and to speak out. Its about valuing integrity over tribalism. Its about valuing integrity over being popular.

And you self-identified empiricists and rationalists have failed that test, so badly failed. Your moment came, your moment came in gender ideology, your moment came especially in Tavistock. And you failed. The people who actually are walking in the footsteps of Galileo are people like Graham Lineham, Maya Forstater, Hannah Barnes, Alf up a tree, Jo Phoenix, Helen Joyce, KJK, Julie Bindel, and all the many, many other women, and some men, - most whose names will never be in newspapers, who have been patiently gathering the evidence, gathering the data, analysing the facts, speaking out.

We are the rationalists, the empiricists, the ones who follow the evidence, the data and draw our conclusions from that, not you. We are the ones who speak out, who put our necks on the line and pay the price for what is true and can be evidenced. Not you.

All you are, are people who have enjoyed mocking and laughing at the religious, the followers of supernatural beliefs, the homeopaths, because, in the time you are fortunate to live, that was easy and no cost to you. But when you were actually called to stand up for the principles you claimed to have, by God you failed to do so. How you failed.

How you can have the brass neck to publicly stand up for science and reason and rationality after that, how you can lack that self-reflection I will never know. And Rutherford,. saying we are mistaking caution for incuriosity is such bullshit. This debate has been raging for over a decade. It doesn't take that long to see though gender ideology. You are simply trying to hide your cowardice under a cloak of incuriosity.

( And yes, not all humanists and skeptics but an awful lot of them, especially that none of that should have fallen for this unevidenced, counter reality belief system. Not that liberal humanist on a recent episode of Anti-social, she was good, I liked her)

Absolutely spot on. Belief in progress is a modern secular religion. In this worldview, mankind is on an inevitable journey from the caves to the stars, and any setbacks are only temporary.
Anyone who is perceived as attacking progress will be treated as the worst kind of blasphemer or infidel.
Author John Michael Greer has a lot to say on this.

As I see it, the "left" in the West have more or less given up on economic equality or economic justice (socialist ideas), so are going for social equality/justice instead. It is an easier option, and allows them to have their cake and eat it - benefiting from capitalism and economic inequality whilst still seeing themselves as "the good guys".

It really is mindblowing how that idea of progess/justice/rights/diversity and equality has latched onto transness to the cost of all else, and trans rights/gender identity "diversity" is used to mean "diversity" in general. So you have hospitals, libraries, councils, train stations and workplaces plastering themselves in trans flags (or to some extent, it's "LGBTQ") to demonstrate their inclusivity. I don't understand how they can make that decision, especially people involved in politics, healthcare etc, without noticing or caring that inclusivity and diversity involves lots of other things like disability, sex, ethnicity, age, poverty etc and that it's odd that just one thing is being prioritised.

And yes it happens because it appeals massively to anyone in charge who can tick a box by featuring the trend of the moment and simultaneously not have to actually change any of the power imbalances or unfairnesses they should be dealing with - and of course in the case of women, gay people and some disabled people, female prisoners etc, actively make things worse and more dangerous for them.

Although another extremely bonkers thing about this is how many employers (the actual managers who sift through CVs) are reluctant to hire apparently transactivist types because they're scared to get sued if anyone puts a foot wrong, So the whole caboodle has actually encouraged discrimination against trans people too.

I used to be a regular lurker and occasional participant on Ben Goldacre’s now defunct forum. It was indeed quite a sexist place to hang out but I grew up in the 70s and 80s so it didn’t really faze me. The positive outweighed the negatives.

At least one of the ex-regulars is now de rigeur for being a fairly prominent Twix sex realist. There are a few sensible posters left in their New Place, but it’s largely a brainless TWAW echo chamber, when they can bring themselves to discuss it. Cass=tumbleweed. It’s very sad.

Yes I agree. I have found it quite difficult to articulate in my head why I feel uncomfortable with 'progressives'. What do they mean by 'progressive'? Just because you call yourself progressive, doesn't automatically make yourself so. I do think it is people thinking that being progressive means they will automatically be on 'the right side of history ( another stupid made up phrase) but because they are wealthy/university educated and in many cases, White and Male, they are a member of the most privileged group in society. So how can they be the good guys without causing any detriment to themselves socially or economically? By fighting for 'social justice' they can virtue signal to their hearts content and still know that they have the cushion of money to protect their own daughters from battered women's shelters or mixed sex wards, and they can have 'people like them' ( White, male, middle aged and middle class) can suddenly turn into a marginalised minority group that they can support. Humanists are almost exclusively these types too, so its no surprise they feel they are morally and intellectually superior, so even when they are wrong, in their heads, they are right.

Humanism was a development of Christianity, not just in a general, everything in the west comes out of a Christian worldview kind of way - it was an explicitly Christian philosophical position based on a specifically Christian metaphysics.

Later humanists shed the metaphysical underpinnings (without really replacing them with anything) and also, in many instances anyway, made it a sort of materialist idea, so all of the elements that in Christianity aren't meant to be seen as historical phenomena but are understood as eschatological suddenly need to manifest historically in the material world.

A bit like Marxism, which maintains the idea of meaningful progress to an end, but it's all played out in the physical world, because it believes that's all there is.

It's kind of interesting that there doesn't seem to be much awareness of this in the humanist society, at least from what I've heard from people.

I think your last paragraph has hit the nail on the head.

I haven’t been able to understand why class or economic inequality have been dropped from discourse despite being a key indicator of disadvantage and pretty much the whole gamut of adverse outcomes.

But this explains it!

@TempestTost

That’s interesting and makes sense of what I’ve experienced. Thanks for that.

I remember in my 20s wondering how anyone could be right-wing because surely being left-wing aligned with goodness - fairness, progressiveness, helping the poor, opposition to inequality. Why would anyone not want that thought I naively. So I thought of tories as simply mean and nasty people and lefties as nice people.

Then it took a lot of life experience, combined with the changing political landscape, for me to start noticing that a lot of lefties weren’t nice at all, a lot of them also seemed very unquestioning and ill-informed, and misogyny was rife. Once we all had kids, supposedly lefty families still seemed to have a traditional expectation for the woman to do everything. I’ve met a LOT of smug lefty men who’ve told me things like we don’t need feminism any more as women have equality now, or done things like unthinkingly help themselves to all the free time they fancy and leave their wife with none. Or glide to high-ear ing success at work as a white male, despite being mediocre. I had cognitive dissonance about it for ages with my own ex. How could someone “nice” and left-wing live out and benefit from inequality in their own life like that?

I’m still a lefty myself, at least economically. But I’ve realised for so many left-wing people it’s about being seen as a good person, not caring about equality or actual progress towards something better. And then believing they’re let off the hook so they can be venal and selfish and convince themselves they aren’t. And I have more respect for tories than I used to because at least they’re honest with themselves that they’re ok with inequality and you can argue with that directly. Whereas with wokery, especially transactivism, you’re dealing with this weird defensiveness/Darvo and inability to see the inequality they’re perpetuating and making worse by embracing the idea that you can just change reality in the name of social justice.

I agree. Although the misogyny on the Left has been long held ( probably going back to Marx) it is the 'I'm so good and virtuous therefore everything I do is good and virtuous' that allows no questioning of anything they do. It is also catnip to entitled men. Also the studious avoidance of any talk of class unless like Owen Jones you forget to mention your University lecturer parents in favour of your miner etc great grandparents! Because talk of class being a driver for inequality, no matter what race you were would mean them having to acknowledge their own privilege. I won't vote Tory and never have or will but at least they are honest about class, which is how they have ended up with such a diverse Cabinet. They don't really care what colour you are, as long as you are one of them. As an Asian woman, the thing that most annoys me is the Lefts stereotyping of Asians. Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and the rest are individual people, as are the rest of us, influenced by things that happened in their lives ( including racism) but class wise they track to most Tories. They were not 'too stupid to realise what they were doing' when they decided to be Tories. They are not ' race traitors' they are people who thought about what was best for them and made a decision, just like White Tories are entitled to do, including the huge numbers of blue collar working class Tories. Black and Brown people can be pleasant or unpleasant. Some are pretty racist about other black and brown people. Some are extremely wealthy. We are not a homogeneous hive mind that has to think the same way and if we don't we don't understand racism. Especially when most of the time it's coming from middle class white people with trust funds.

This is such an interesting topic OP, I remember watching a Peter Boghossian interview where he was similarly complaining about the Atheist movement buying into all this crap - despite their previous sneery distain for unevidenced belief systems. It seems like this is the one issue where scientists, skeptics etc. refuse to adhere to their own rules.

And I agree about the economic inequality being surreptitiously absent from conversations or campaigns about equality these days. The reality is that childhood poverty is still a huge indicator of a range of problems in adulthood - addiction, homelessness, incarceration etc. But I suppose it's harder to solve, and requires more than just a trendy flag. And like you say this is a very convenient way for wealthy, educated, established people to align with the 'underdogs' without having to give up an of their financial gains.

I read a theory a while ago about the fact that after the 2008 economic crash, many companies needed a way to distract from the fact that wages were stagnating etc. but they still wanted to appear to be progressive/ have positive brand association (without spending much money) and therefore aligned themselves with rainbow flags, and Blm etc. whatever was the social cause of the moment. So instead of actual fair and decent practices such as paying a decent living wage or ensuring an ethical supply chain, both of which cost money and eat into shareholders profits, they could just pay lip service to social causes. Win win for them.

Sorry for the big long ranty posts, a bit off topic but I also think this is why advertising has gone a bit ridiculous, full of emotional manipulation these days. I would love someone to do a comparative analysis of advertising speak, tone, messaging from 20 - 30 years ago compared with today. It is couched in so much lovey-dovey speak, and the messaging is so much about 'we care, we understand you, we're here for you, we're one of you' etc. It's weird and sort of intrusive.

I keep thinking - no, you're not my friend, you're not my community, you don't actually give a shit about me - you are a brand, a company trying to make a profit, trying to sell me something, just do that please!

I suppose it all fits in with trying to distance themselves from being the big, bad profiteers. They can align themselves with the little people while making huge profits off us...

I can't find the original text, but I remember reading that the radical feminist Mary Daly pointed out that none of the great Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers ever mentioned, let alone condemned, the witch-burning craze in Europe during the early modern period. You would think, wouldn't you, that for men trying to propose rational thought and evidence as an alternative to superstition that witch-burning would be a prime example of the thing they were fighting against. Yet, they completely ignored it.

I guess we see something of the same impulse in men like Rutherford et al.

HornyHornersPinkyWinky that’s so true about advertising and marketing. I’ve been noticing it for the past couple of decades. I remember when Sainsbury’s “Tu” range was launched (prob even longer ago) and the slogan was “it’s all about you”. That sounded so odd to me then, like I associated that with something a selfish person would be told in an argument! The idea that you are the centre of the universe and only you matter is so big in marketing and it’s works in direct opposition to the concept of actual social cohesion even while companies drape themselves in lgbtq flags.

Another one is bloody innocent drinks, all over the chatty marketing speak trying to act like they’re your best mate. I read one package that said something like “we’re all super friendly here at innocent, if you’re passing by why not pop in for a chat!” Can you imagine if you did? They’d probably call security.

And there’s a New Look near me that says on it “here for you 24/7”! I always think you’re selling cheap dresses, you’re not the fecking Samaritans!

I’d rather read “we treat our workers well”. Which to be fair some do, eg Timpson. As long as it’s really true.

Yes, agree to all re. big brands.

I guess the common theme big brands with humanists / skeptics / self-defined ‘cautious’ men like Rutherford, is that they want to be seen to be doing something without actually really doing anything much, and certainly not something that could cost them.

And there’s a New Look near me that says on it “here for you 24/7”! I always think you’re selling cheap dresses, you’re not the fecking Samaritans!

This made me laugh!

Just popped over to one of the Cass report threads, where Hilary Cass talks of the misinformation spread about her report and the abuse she is getting.

You’d think the science fans and rational men like Rutherford and Goldscre would want to come out and speak against this assault on research and researchers. But they’ve been quiet on this throughout.

You’d think at least they would want to condemn those trying to intimidate and threaten those trying to do and publish research to build up an evidence base. But they can’t even stand up for that basic principle of preserving the integrity of research.

shameful.

You’d think the science fans and rational men like Rutherford and Goldscre would want to come out and speak against this assault on research and researchers. But they’ve been quiet on this throughout.

Yes. I think the reasons for opposing gender ideology fall into two categories. Category one is the ethical stuff - the misogyny, the homophobia, the sterilisation and abuse of children. I would have hoped that Rutherford et al would have something to say about those, but they don't, and that's shocking enough.

Category two is the offence gender ideology commits against rationality and science. It's the sort of thing that would normally be meat and drink to these guys, who routinely sneer at homoeopathy, anti-vaxxers and the like. Gender ideology is at least as irrational as homoeopathy (more so, I'd argue), but there hasn't been a peep out of them. It suggests to me that the reason they sneer at anti-scientific ideologies is not because they care about the harm done by anti-scientific thinking but because they think it makes them look clever. The belief that men can be women is probably the most irrational idea I have ever come across, and yet they would rather protect their public image than speak out against it.

It’s the superiority that I can’t stand. They think they’re not only so intellectual but they’re so brave speaking up in the way they do. And in reality they’re such cowards. It’s the same with the ones who think they’re leading the resistance and would have actually been in the Stasi’s list of top ten snitches.

And yes to the advertising! I was watching an ad not so long ago and it was one of those spoken word poem things, very emotive, and I thought oh yes this must be for a charity cancer and it turned out to be for a bank.

instead of actual fair and decent practices such as paying a decent living wage or ensuring an ethical supply chain, both of which cost money and eat into shareholders profits, they could just pay lip service to social causes. Win win for them.

Absolutely. Talking loudly but not doing anything at all.

Also many things are predominantly practiced by women like herbalism, meditation etc ( also homeopathy but that is rubbish) and has been laughed at for being ' anti science' when actually later, after years of scientific research these things have proven to have worked. A lot also comes from Eastern medicine. I know science involves a lit of research and evidence, and that is good, but anecdotal evidence from predominantly female practitioners is dismissed favour of profit making drugs and people saying ' no evidence'. Even placebo, previously dismissed has been shown to ge valuable illness, for example, using the body's own ain receptors as medicine.But gender ideology is mainly a male driven phenomenon,. It's automatically accepted with no scientific basis. I believe becsuse the main advocates of this are middle aged middle class males. Just like them.

So apparently Goldacre has been off doing a proper job, making it possible to use NHS data for research without compromising patient anonymity:

open.substack.com/pub/jamesomalley/p/how-to-use-nhs-data-for-scientific?r=xhvm&utm_medium=ios

That seems like a reasonable excuse for why we've not heard from him for a while. He's science-doing, not science-journalisting.

I think it's probably more accurate to say that conservatives see equality or inequality rather differently than people on the left. For a couple of reasons. Pragmatically, because they think it's not possible to actually eradicate it without creating other, worse problems. And also they are not as likely to assume that differences between groups are always a problem, reflecting some kind of social or economic injustice. As a simple example, they wouldn't tend to assume that it is necessary to have an equal number of men and women in every type of work.

That leads to a different way of thinking about policy, it's more about balancing the benefits and costs in society rather than working towards some ideal endpoint, so the policy approaches are differernt. Traditionally, conservatism does think justice is important and that includes fairness in employment and responsibilities that people like employers have to employees. (That's less the case with right wing liberals, in the same way that left wing liberals don't care much about balancing the benefits and costs of social freedoms.)

As a simple example, they wouldn't tend to assume that it is necessary to have an equal number of men and women in every type of work.

I’d agree with that and I’m very left-wing. But I agree there is such a thing as moderate right-wing thinking that is basically reasonable and involves social conscience. And I do like and respect some moderate tories. But some of the tories and other right-wingers in the public eye do definitely seem to actively oppose helping the poorest or fighting injustice, eg some recent cabinet members.

As I see it, the "left" in the West have more or less given up on economic equality or economic justice (socialist ideas), so are going for social equality/justice instead. It is an easier option, and allows them to have their cake and eat it - benefiting from capitalism and economic inequality whilst still seeing themselves as "the good guys".

I think your last paragraph has hit the nail on the head.

So do I! Perfectly put.

There are some pretty selfish people.

In some cases though, even when it's extreme, I think it can be a differernt view of pragmatic elements that is the real differernce.

There is a tendency for many people on the right to think that better economic performance will ultimately better things for everyone. Sometimes that's justified in certain instances, others it's a sort of magical thinking (imo), but certainly it's true that without economic productivity there isn't any money for social programs of any kind.

There is also, I think, a stronger tendency for conservatives to think that helping the poor with social programs can have negative outcomes, even for those people. I've recently watched a film from a few years ago about black conservatives in the US, and it's fresh in my mind, so I'll give an example from that. Many of the people interviewed felt that the increased social supports in the 1970s had really screwed up the economic progress that the black community there was making. Because of the nature of the supports, the number of single mothers increased hugely, and coming from a one parent household is itself one of the biggest risks for poor outcomes and poverty.

One of the common themes that comes out for me is that Tories in general seem less concerned about whether their policy ideas are "nice," or whether people think they are kind.