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Colin Wright Profile picture
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Jan 24 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A few people tagged me in one of those chain tweets asking for my favorite book. That's really difficult to choose, but "The Ancestor's Tale" by @RichardDawkins comes to mind as the best popular science book on evolution I've ever read. It's a masterpiece.
amzn.to/3tPZ3jq
My favorite book on free speech is "Kindly Inquisitors" by @jon_rauch. This is simply a must-read. No exceptions or substitutes! amzn.to/3FUEIfd
My favorite book on race is "White Guilt" by Shelby Steele. Very eye-opening. I can't recommend it more highly.
amzn.to/3fTnRiq
And possibly my all-time favorite book in any category is "One River" by Wade Davis. It's an extraordinarily captivating book, beautifully written, full of adventure and interesting science. You'll be sad when it's over.

amzn.to/3fSSUe0

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More from @SwipeWright

Colin Wright Profile picture
Jan 18
Is there a difference between "identifying" as or with something and just being aware of simple facts about yourself, like your height or sex, or that you like chocolate more than vanilla ice cream?

Because if not, the concept of "identity" is mundane as hell.
People are losing their minds in a thread because I rejected the notion that simple facts about myself, innate proclivities, and tentative conclusions I've reached on issues constitute "identities."

It makes no sense to view these things as "identities."
If identity formation is simply the process of becoming aware of one's natural inclinations, then fine, say that.

But it makes absolutely no sense for me to "identify" as being tall, for instance, when I'd still be tall even if I identified as being short.
Read 5 tweets
Colin Wright Profile picture
Jan 8
You must watch out for industries that begin for good reasons but have financial incentives to persist long past their expiration dates.

We are seeing this with many LGBT rights and antiracism orgs. They need homophobia, transphobia, and racism to exist, otherwise they wouldn't.
It's good to have organizations that stand up for human rights, but when financial incentives prevent an organization from acknowledging their own victories and success, we have a problem.

This doesn't just stall progress, but eventually actively reverses it.
There's a similar thing happening with COVID. COVID was & is a serious problem worth addressing, but COVID panic will outlast its expiration date because of the incentives for doing so.

I don't know the solution other than pointing out the phenomenon & staying vigilant about it.
Read 5 tweets
Colin Wright Profile picture
Jan 5
The latest Genderbread Person (version 4.0) purports to clarify one's "gender understanding." It claims that "Gender isn't binary. It's not either/or. In many cases it's both/and. A bit of this, a dash of that."

Here's how the poster defines gender identity for children: 🤪
Full poster. Look, whether you're a man or woman is determined by “personality traits, jobs, hobbies, likes, dislikes, roles, [and] expectations.”

And remember, kids who are confused by this are being medicalized and sometimes given puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery.
And one's sex is apparently determined in part by "body hair, chest, hips, shoulders" and even "voice pitch."

Learning this is the opposite of an education. It is indoctrination into a religious cult.
Read 5 tweets
Colin Wright Profile picture
Dec 27, 2021
A new letter in @ScienceMagazine deploys the Univariate Fallacy to obfuscate around the nature of biological sex:

"No one trait determines whether a person is male or female, and no person’s sex can be meaningfully prescribed by any single variable."
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
To highlight the problem with a statement like this, note that it is also true that no *single* trait determines whether an organism is a human or a chimpanzee, or a dog or a cat. Yet humans and chimps and dogs and cats are unambiguously distinct, and we don't pretend otherwise.
They also claim that "sex is a context-dependent summary of a multidimensional variable space."

Sorry, no. The sex of an individual is based on their reproductive anatomy and is determined by the type of gamete this anatomy is organized around, through development, to produce.
Read 4 tweets
Colin Wright Profile picture
Dec 27, 2021
Oof, my heart hurts. EO Wilson is a major hero of mine. Reading his work was enormously influential in my decision to study social insects. Not only was he a truly bold intellectual giant, but he was also a kind and good person to his core.

An absolute legend.
Some EO Wilson book recommendations:

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis

It's impossible to overstate the impact this book had on the behavioral sciences. This is his landmark contribution to science.

amzn.to/3JmUDpC
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

This is one of the first books of his that I read, and was perhaps the most influential on my thinking. Highly recommended.
amzn.to/32zxrU3
Read 7 tweets
Colin Wright Profile picture
Nov 28, 2021
In a large @TwitterSpaces room hosted by @TjSotomayorKOC, someone asked how we stop gender ideology & the resulting medicalization of gender non-conforming children.

The answer is to keep exposing it. The last thing the activists want is a debate, because they know they'll lose.
Right now the activists don't have to debate because they hold institutional power and cultural inertia. While the institutional power is real, the cultural inertia is on borrowed time.

When the sleeping majority start to wake up, as they're doing now, we will see real change.
The landscape has change A LOT since I started writing and talking publicly about this stuff. Most of the comments I received back then were ignorant and dismissive of the problem. That's no longer he case. People see exactly what's going on now, and want nothing of it.
Read 5 tweets

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