All other issues aside, I cannot stop thinking about this throwaway comment about bicycles by Tristan Harris:
TRISTAN WHAT. The moral panic that ensued when bicycles gained popularity is one of my favorite things. it helps contextualize how willing we are to get in a complete frothing panic over things that are not a threat (cough campus free speech cough)
Totally exaggerated and completely breathless depictions of bicycle accidents were common around the time people started buying bicycles like the ones we use today:
It was apparently thought that too much bicycle riding could give you a heart attack:
We thought it was a credible threat that people might regularly garrotte themselves somehow:
Among other things, we invented maladies like bicycle foot and hand, based on our fears that habitual bicycling would affect our skeletal structure.
And of course, OF COURSE, we found a way to get upset about a device that allowed women more autonomy and literal mobility, adding fuel to the belief that a "new woman" was a bad and dangerous thing to be.
Look at this bad girl, smoking her cigarette and mowing down unsuspecting gentlemen in her single-minded quest for liberation! Surely the bicycle is making a monster of our women!
Doctors speculated that women could damage their nether regions by putting too much pressure on them, & others thought the problem was that the placement/shape of the seat might cause too much pleasure! Of course there were inventions to help with this:
The sense of freedom afforded to women was obviously very dangerous to their virtue. After all, if you can wander too far from your home, you might be able to meet the wrong sort of man. You know the sort.
Bicycling would of course cause women to develop masculine muscles, body types, and even behavior. Oh, heaven forbid!
Watch out for bicycle face--the lines that result from having to maintain an expression of concentration as you hurtle through town, exacerbated by the fact that you can't bike with a parasol to protect you from the sun! Look at this poor soul:
Also beware cyclomania, the addiction to bicycling and insatiable need for speed that also made you impulsive and disheveled.
So no, bicycles were not just a neutral tool that nobody worried about. Not by a long shot. And the fact that nobody corrected this error in the Social Dilemma makes me very skeptical about the rest of it...
I think this is meant to depict a murder attempt? "Outrage" used to mean an act of violence.
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i do think it’s kind of a problem for your theory that “wokeness” has taken over all our institutions that the second a professor who works on “woke” stuff acts on her theories, the university lets the cops drag her away in zip tie cuffs
if nothing else this week has been very instructive for anyone who was wondering whether to take any of these people seriously when they say the university is captured by wokeness
this is the kind of thing you do if you *didn’t* want open inquiry in science unimpeded by political pressure
the tagged ppl are: a politician, an activist, a blogger, a journalist, ex-spider biologist/activist, a lawyer, and a popsych author who is publicly aligned with zucker’s conversion therapy approach. they are offended by a letter by zucker’s peers that finds his work substandard
those expert peers are exercising their right of free association, a core tenet of academic freedom, to cease associating with a journal that has demonstrated that it is unable to execute its mandate for unbiased peer review and produces unscientific work asbopenletter.com
there are 1.5 million faculty in the united states, which puts your likelihood of experiencing a “cancellation attempt” at some point over 23 years at a whopping 0.072% chance. scared yet????
145 attempts in 2022 would mean 0.009% chance. and even if you’re one of the unlucky few to experience a “sanction attempt,” you’ve got a ridiculously good chance of keeping your job anyway lol
3/4 of the attempts were on untenured scholars?? ah well then @TheFIREorg you must be laser focused on labor protections, precarity, adjunctification, that kind of thing.
oh what’s this? are we out of touchy? no!! it’s the children who are wrong!
today i am thinking about the time jerry coyne and richard dawkins argued against viewpoint diversity
you see, when the available evidence overwhelmingly supports one side and not the other, you don’t have to invite the incorrect idea onto your campus for everyone to hem and haw about, obviously!
jerry coyne and richard dawkins: you see, proponents of invalid theories are trying to get legitimized by appearing in educational contexts despite their lack of substance. we shouldn’t allow them a platform lest people be fooled into thinking they’re worth considering!
we’ve spent nearly a century telling cons that liberal profs r indoctrinating students into marxism, that they’re unable to recognize facts bc their ✨feelings✨ are too strong, that they’ll discriminate against cons. anyway my big plan is for con students to listen to lib profs
how about you work on your contempt for your students and colleagues first!
a master class in self-victimizing deflection, truly he is the best to ever do it
no mention of the many accounts of jamie reed lying to patients/prospective patients to prevent them from accessing healthcare. just a bunch of whining that people made jokes about why he deactivated that didn’t strictly comport with his earlier statement!
i won’t be rebutting the criticisms of my reporting and behavior because the people making them are ghouls