Thread by @Katja_Thieme

#ColinWright, #Quillette editor: "Being trans is just a state of mind. . .you can't empirically verify it in any way."

I know we didn't really need any more confirmation. But here it is.

When asked about his previous identification as a progressive, this is how he defines it: "I was pro the gay rights movement, and yeah, for sure."

Yep. Progressive. When you support legal and political changes that have just happened and without any of your participation.

#ColinWright about non-binary identity: "It's common but I still don't think people know what they're talking about when they say it. . .Just ask anyone of this ideology about what is a woman, and you just get insanity back."

Then he says "insanity" at least three more times.

This boy has the most rigid mind.

Next he and Joe Rogan are performatively aghast about "the genderbread person" and they are shocked, shocked that such a picture could be shown in classrooms! The horror! The horror!

#JordanPeterson also tried to pull this oh-so sophisticated argument of "Look at this picture of a unicorn! Isn't it shocking?" and "Can you imagine college professors show a gingerbread person to students and talk about it?" as a stand-in for argument and discussion.

#ColinWright keeps talking abut his gamete crusade as "the final levy." Guess it's all Reality's Last Stand branding masquerading as analysis.

After paraphrasing the Pluckrose & Lindsay argument about postmodernism's march through academia, he's plugging #Quillette's book on persecutions. Mentions how #Quillette gets so many messages from academics who don't dare speak or have received pushback against their views.

And guess what? Stories of more or less anonymous complaints he receives from academics, the problem is the cancel mob! He knows it's cancel culture. He just knows.

Transness? Non-binary identity? We cannot say such exists! No empirical evidence! Insanity to say otherwise!

But cancel culture, that's for certain. The cancel mob, he can clearly see it. And more than that! It's the same thing across the whole continent. Easily seen in the stories he hears. From people's minds to his inbox.

Simple boi says: As a new atheist he used to argue with creationists (that's what got him into a PhD program in evolutionary biology). And that's how he can now say with conviction that wokeness is like a religion!

Sweetie, that's a nice little story. *pats the boi's head*

Same shtick as Pluckrose, Lindsay, Boghossian (writing about it in an article I’m trying to finish):

1) Only natural-science-like observations, statistical calculations, quantifiable measures are acceptable when I’m asked to consider research that goes against my personal views!

2) My own writing? My constant railing against other people’s research? My fight against “trans activism” and “woke cancel culture”? Why, it’s not natural science research. No, I don’t do statistical analysis myself. Is there something replicable about my work, of course not!

3) But listen, what I do is very urgent. You must see *holds up genderbread picture/dog park paper* that this alone is enough to eliminate much of the work that goes on in gender studies departments! The time is nigh! End these university departments now!

INTERMISSION.

Also known as cooking dinner, eating it, hanging out with kids, sleeping.

Now back at it.

Listening to this, by the way. Making it through to the end cause it will nag at me if I don't.

reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/com…

Colin Wright argues academia has been "ideologically captured," that it's over 50% taken over by "this thing." That you can't wear a Trump hat on social media if you want to be hired, that committees google that stuff. And it's scary, he says.

I've discussed for him here that it's more complex than that. And that he needs to step up the quality of his analysis, survey more evidence, before he can make such claims.

But he has taken his story the other way and become more simplistic since then.

https://twitter.com/Katja_Thieme/status/1278353549835948037?s=20

Oh, juicy stuff on his warped concept of progressiveness:

"Where we were going before. . .we made a lot of progress on this liberal notion of some people are gay, some people are bi, some people are trans, get over it! Let people live the way they are. I think that was working."

Ctd: "I mean we got gay rights in the US. They can get married. That all happened before the major woke takeover of a lot of the institutions. That's good progress. I just say more of that is what I think we need to do."

It just happened! Gay rights drifted in at the right time!

"We have a hyperfocus on identity as well. If there's anything I can recommend for people, really try not to identify with as many things as possible. Try to keep your identity as small as you possibly can."

He makes a distinction between just being a man and identifying as one.

Colin, if there's anything I can recommend here for you, it's that you could really try to identify with fewer things than you currently do. Try to keep your identity smaller than this. :)

He keeps going on how he finds it difficult to have arguments with identity-aware people: "It's not just an intellectual disagreement anymore. If they cede any ground, they have an identity crisis. Because they've made this part of their identity, it's part of who they are."

Holy shit, Colin.

How many times have we told you, Colin, that being gay in a homophobic environment, being trans in an overwhelmingly transhobic society is *not just an intellectual argument* to the those who are gay and/or trans?

"If they cede any ground."

Why should they cede any ground to you and your simplistic notions in the silly intellectual sparring match you favour, child?

Why should they?

Out of sympathy for your sad lack of knowledge, wisdom, insight, and argumentative ability?

Colin says that "this hyperfocus on identity needs to go" because it keeps our thinking from corresponding to reality!

The correspondence theory of tru-hu-hu-hu-th!

Has he any sources for this thinking other than Lindsay, Rufo, and Quillette Circle?

"This is just turning back the clock on so much progress. If you can just use their own empathy against them & also accompany that with scientific facts, that's all you can do. I mean, there's nothing else to do. Without conversations there's nothing else. . .besides violence."

Now he's talking about Alan Sokal's hoax. Which I've been reading about again for an article I'm working on. It's been discussed in detail on here.

And his notion of it is so hazy and incorrect.

But his conclusions from it are big and confident!

I'm cringing very hard.

"Sokal wrote those papers, was it physics journals or smth. He just wrote a bunch of nonsense & got it published...arguing with people who had this relativistic notion of reality & he used a bunch of jargon. But that was stamped out pretty quickly because it was clearly insane."

Colin, my dear, the story you just told about Alan Sokal's hoax? It does not correspond entirely to the tru-hu-hu-hu-th. You are presenting a hazy, relativistic notion of what happened, I would say.

Ctd.: "They've now morphed where they are using that SAME jargon, that same ideology but they're doing that ambulance chasing now with the gay rights, the LGBT rights, the civil rights movement. They're using the same insane relativistic, everything is a social construct . . .

. . .everything is power dynamics, they're using the same language but they're using the shield of people's empathy toward these movements but these are not natural extensions of civil rights or LGBT, it's a completely new ideology. It's illiberal. It's very authoritarian."

I'm sorry, Colin, since you're so fond of correspondence theory of truth, can we clarify:

What words of jargon from Sokal correspond to which words of jargon on Twitter today?

What's the evidence do you use, Colin, to measure, truthfully, the nature and strength of an ideology?

Can you establish your way of identifying and measuring ideology, please, before asking us to accept that the ideology that one person presented, in hoax-format, in 1996, is the same ideology exhibited by thousands of unnamed people today?

Hmmm?

Colin?

And, my dear, please enlighten us:

How do you determine what is and isn't "a natural extension" of a previous political movement?

I will leave my questions about what Colin considers illiberal and authoritarian for when he's able to answer the questions posed so far.

Until then, my confirmed view is his reasoning is unbelievably shoddy.

The demands he makes on others to present their views so he's willing to consider them hugely contradict the demands he places on himself. Which is to say, there are no such demands that he places on himself.

He says very early on he went on Glenn Beck's show, and was criticized for it. His response was: well, CNN isn't contacting him to talk about binary sex! If the NYT were to contact him, he'd gladly write for them!

Child. With this incoherence, why would CNN and NYT contact you?

On the question of whether he's frustrated about writing so many essays and seeing little change: "I've had parents call me and say that based on some of my writings their kid had decided for themselves that yeah maybe they were using stereotypes to identify themselves as male...

...or female and they're no longer deciding to go through with their transition. I had one of those happen. And that was superpowerful to hear someone say that based on something that I wrote. That's like a life-changing thing."

Sigh.

More chatting about universities and political tests in academia which I'm too tired and hungry to type.

/end