There was a rather heated debate that played out in part in Nature regarding whether evidence for Moralistic High Gods tends to come before or after the emergence of complex societies cross culturally. I think this is largely an unresolvable question due to 1) the limitations… …in historical & archaeological evidence and 2) the relationship will likely have been different in different locations due to various contextual factors. Other researchers disagree and think we can infer general relationships from the data we have.

This was very interesting to listen to in order to better understand Huberman & Attia’s approach to science and examining scientific papers. It highlights both their strengths and weaknesses, as well as illustrating the reasons they attract such large followings. In ‘guru’ presentation terms rather obviously they are both excellent speakers. They talk authoritatively & confidently. They also readily slip into using complex technical language, yet always remember to summarise points with simplified metaphors or descriptions afterwards.

This 10,000-word article by Scott Alexander following up on his previous 15,000 one on Ivermectin is a good illustration for me of the limitations of the rationalists. So much ink spilt to arrive at a conclusion relevant experts reached long ago & still...
astralcodexten.substack.com/p/response-to-… ...seemingly little appreciation that researchers are not capable of replicating what conspiracy theorists & anti-vaxxers generate because their success relies on misrepresentation & zealotry. Alexandros got into this topic because of being an obsessive fan of Bret Weinstein...

The credulous response amongst the heterodox to Rogan's 'apology' is exactly why they fall for people like Bret Weinstein and never anticipate the conspiratorial & partisan trajectory of people like Rubin, Maajid, & Lindsay until it is transparently obvious. It is an epidemic of credulity.

The anti vaxx stuff feels like it comes in waves. First, you have the old school anti vaxxers who made use of the pandemic to increase their relevancy (eg RFK Jnr releasing a book on Fauci). Then you have a 2nd wave, which developed from people promoting alternative covid cures. Here you have people like Pierre Kory, Robert Malone, & Peter McCullough. Most of whom were not public figures pre-pandemic. Obviously, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin play an important role here, as do celebrity contrarian conspiracy theorists like Joe Rogan & Bret Weinstein.

I’ve been wrong about this before but I think the Weinsteins arc is almost complete. A few years back they were widely considered the sensible/serious members of the IDW. Bret was a mild mannered evolutionary biologist and Eric an eccentric but brilliant polymath. Skip forward to the present and both are widely recognised as conspiracy theorists. Bret & Heather have become infamous for their promotion of anti-vaxx rhetoric during a pandemic and Eric’s long heralded revolutionary Theory of Everything has been released to deafening silence.

This interview by @fullydavid with @ydeigin is the most thorough rebuttal to date of Bret and Heather’s dangerous anti vaccine position. It systematically breaks down just how weak each of their claims are and how badly they misunderstand the research lit. Yuri is a charmingly cantankerous fellow and a well known advocate for lab leak origins of Covid. So I don’t agree with his assessments universally. But he’s always technically informed & thorough and is entirely spot on here.

This is one of the problems with Heather, Bret, & Eric. They are utterly disdainful of any ‘mainstream’ sources until they find a single instance that agrees with them (or appears to) then they tout the existence of the article as offering complete vindication of their position.

https://twitter.com/HeatherEHeying/status/1421152335540064258

It’s a clear illustration of motivated reasoning and how their standards for assessing evidence are so lacking. Heather is misinterpreting the study but even if she wasn’t finding a study that makes an argument that supports a view you hold *is not a vindication of your view*.

I’ll advised use of Twitter functionality for a chapter by chapter review of @evantthompson’s #WhyIAmNotABuddhist. Will link the threads with that hashtag. This is the Introduction chapter. The Introductory Chapter is not a perfunctory one. It provides a nice overview of the overall thesis of the book and a lot of relevant details about Evan’s substantial personal & professional background with Buddhism / efforts to combine Buddhist practices & cognitive science.

Taibbi tripling down on Bret as free speech martyr being censored for just daring to discuss a controversial issue. This is *not* why he’s gotten strikes. He’s gotten strikes because DH promotes ivermectin as a miracle cure and demonises vaccines. His show has the thinnest…

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1411077119707389953

…veneer of scientific rigor but it’s enough to convince people like Taibbi, Weiss, Carlson, & all of the usual suspects. Taibbi treats these people as if they are ideologically diverse but they are not. On every IDW/anti-SJW issues there is no daylight between any of them.

Here’s one example of a claim that @BretWeinstein & @HeatherEHeying made that doesn’t hold up to basic scrutiny. In the video below they claim that the CDC is artificially reducing positive tests for vaccinated people by using different PCR thresholds.
They cite this document as evidence. Claiming that it shows they are using a more stringent 28 PCR cycle threshold to identify positive cases for the vaccinated, as opposed to the more common ~35 cycles. More cycles = more chance to detect virus.
cdc.gov/vaccines/covid…

Eric frames it as a virtue that he will continue to promote anyone, regardless of what they do or say, as long as they broadly fit within his self referential network. His obsession with cliques & self aggrandizing might be the first documented case of permanent teenage angst. There is such a cloying desperation here that it’s almost tragic. But the depressing thing is that it seems to work with so many people. Eric might be recognized as a delusional narcissist in private DMs by people like Sam Harris, but they won’t ever say that publicly.

No, Taibbi has this completely wrong (shocking I know...).

If anyone spends time looking critically into Bret's content you quickly realise it is extremely similar to Alex Jones act just with a superficial veneer of scientific credibility.

The 'credentialed authorities'...

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1406283673297694720

... that Bret interviews are mostly fringe conspiracy theorists. See for example his fawning interview with Geert Vanden Bossche, who claims the vaccines are likely destroying natural immunity, or the recent horror show with 'serial entrepreneur' Steve Kirsch who talked about...

Listen, if you watched Bret’s Ivermectin video and you still have any respect for his understanding of science… 😩. The dude doesn’t understand basic science. He may as well be wearing a white coat and a stethoscope. He’s a cosplay scientist. Like the bald entrepreneur explains he heard a story from his carpet cleaner that he had a heart attack two minutes after getting the Pfizer vaaccine and the cleaner’s wife got a shakey hand after hers. He says this would be impossible if the vaccine was safe .

He would have expected Bret Weinstein to platform a fringe academic who is promoting unfounded fears about the vaccines?!? Am sure he will provide suitable critical pushback.

For those curious about the guest, see:
sciencebasedmedicine.org/countering-gee… pca.st/episode/4fe8d2… Some more useful articles:
deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressin…

Ok so #CynicalTheories Chapter 2: Applied Postmodernism. This chapter out of the gate feels thick with hyperbole. We are told: “The postmodernists sought to render absurd our ways of understanding, approaching, and living in the world and in societies.” The heavily anthropomorphised ‘Theory’ is also up to no good. Bored with its adolescent stage of deconstructing everything, it has now entered its moody teens & wants to mess things up properly.

So kicking off the chapter by chapter #CynicalTheories review/reaction-a-thon with a look at the Introduction. There’s quite a lot of ground covered over 9 pages so strap in. The introduction starts with a rousing paean of ‘liberalism’ defined as a political philosophy that advocates political democracy, limitations on the powers of government, universal human rights, legal equality, freedom of expression, respect for viewpoint diversity & debate...

Ok so last thread on #ScienceFictions by @StuartJRitchie covering the epilogue, the appendix, and my overall thoughts. To spoil the surprise I went in expecting to like this book and found I loved it. I’d put it up with Demon Haunted World and Bad Science as books to recommend. I also think Stuart deserves a hat tip for the public service he did writing this book. Immersing yourself in frauds, publication bias, and crappy studies for a few years is depressing. It would be hard not to become jaded. And I think it did take some toll.

Chapter 4 of #ScienceFictions by @StuartJRitchie is on Bias. This is a subject often discussed by academics but mainly in regards to other people’s research. Personally, I think it’s hard to overstate how important this topic is but let’s see what the chapter offers. The chapter opens with a brief discussion of the 19th Century American scientist Samuel Merton and his efforts to demonstrate that the moral and mental faculties of different races could be traced to their skull size. Morton’s measurements were later harshly critiqued by Gould.