Thread by @KrisAtLarge

#purity.

purity is the obsession of bigots, who define themselves as perfect and hence demand perfection in others.

one sees that arrogance constantly in the behavior of bigots like @NateSilver538 and @Cernovich. they act like nothing matters more than their approval.

(1/x)

Christians habitually have been obsessed with purity and perfection, which they only ever find in things they can't really see. there's a kind of diffuse Gnostic fallacy that pervades Christianity—a belief that there's something intrinsically sinful about *matter itself*.

(2/x)

I value many of the insights of Gnostic Christians but I don't agree with that one—I can't make myself think of the physics and chemistry of the Cosmos as somehow *broken*. if the Gnostics are right, and the work of the Demiurge is flawed...I don't blame the *materials*.

(3/x)

that's like blaming a bad painting on the choice of pigments—presumably a GOOD painting could have been executed with exactly the same ingredients.

the Gnostics tended to regard material things as suspicious—it's hard to generalize about Gnostic Christians, however.

(4/x)

and now we've got right-wing Christians like @MattWalshBlog and @PastorMark, people who tend to regard Earth as a mere staging-ground for the Kingdom of Heaven, ultimately worthless, surely not worth studying in detail, much less keeping around any longer than necessary.

(5/x)

the Earth is dirty and sinful—far better is the #purity of God and Jesus.

purity has this quality, as a virtue: it's extremely easy to idolize. one can turn an obsession with purity and cleanness into a *life's work*, one's grand passion and mode of eternal existence.

(6/x)

in my basement somewhere there's a sack of potassium carbonate, "pearl ash"—maybe five kilos. I bought it from a Seattle shop specializing in pottery supplies, and it's what we've made potassium compounds from in the past.

I could spend my LIFE purifying that one bag.

(7/x)

seriously. my entire career could be "making the purest possible sample of potassium carbonate" using that feedstock—with care, I could keep reusing the substance over and over, saving up all the residues and putting them back into the cycle of endless recrystallizations.

(8/x)

and meanwhile I'd have to be devising more and more and more TESTS for the purity of the potassium carbonate—do you know how difficult that is to *bootstrap*? (and yes, I've thought of it. our system has thought of how to purify potassium carbonate, and even tried it.)

(9/x)

a life's work: purifying one white substance.

I have now just described @charlesmurray's career, with a metaphor about chemical purity.

replace the *assay value* of the potassium carbonate—its percentage of purity—with Murray's and @NateSilver538's notions about #IQ.

(10/x)

it's the same obsession. the same zeal for purity. that's the @charlesmurray / @EPoe187 / @joerogan / @elonmusk obsession with "intelligence".

~Chara of Pnictogen