I’d like to note that Richard Dawkins in 78, and was already fairly
prominent in the media (as a source of controversy, if only because his
groundbreaking work on selfish genes attracted a lot of smoke and heat
and not very much light in the 1970s) long before the internet entered
mass public awareness. More to the point, Facebook came along when he
was 60 and twitter was invented when he was 65.
He is teh olds, and probably quite clueless about how discourse
operates in these new media. In particular, he has decades of prior
media experience to overcome.
Some elderly public figures dive into social media: I don’t need to
mention the POTUS here, do I? Others employ a social media consultant.
But some are just oblivious to how the rules changed in the past
decade.
(Source: am 55, have a creeping sympathy for anyone over 50 trying to
deal with the modern world.)
FWIW, I don't blame Dawkins himself too much for this. He said something stupid, but he seems to have apologized, and to be trying to understand the other side of things, rather than just doubling down as so many do. I blame all the idiots defending him how pretend there's absolutely nothing controversial about the claim he made.
Obliviousness is a big part of it but I think Dawkins's main problem is ego. He's a famously successful explainer of complicated things (that he has studied), so if his comments about other things (that are far from his personal experience) are poorly received, the only explanation he can see is that the critics are misconstruing him in bad faith. I think he legitimately wants to be antiracist and antisexist, but when people tell him his comments are (to put it charitably) not helping those causes, he can't listen to the criticism and his only move is to dig the hole deeper.
I think it's also a product of him having spent 90% of his life in a very specific environment of fellow British Middle Class academics which has very different social norms from the mainstream. So it's genuinely surprising/confusing to him that bringing up a topic for abstract discussion makes people think you're in favor of it. And he reacts by thinking everyone else is weird, not changing his own "Discourse norms" (if you'll forgive the phrase)
I don't know what "mental rotation" means, so I'm choosing to interpret it as "mentally imagining something turning over" and realizing that I cannot do this and must be a dummy. Perhaps I should be eugenics'd
(NSFW warning for seriousposting)
It's a common IQ test sort of task; you're given a drawing of some 3D shape, like a cube with letters or shapes on the side, and then each of the answers is another similar drawing with the sides in different places and you're asked which of the answer shapes could be the question shape rotated into a new position (or which one couldn't be the same one).
As with all IQ test sorts of tasks, it's really only testing a very particular skill. One that, for instance, people who experience aphantasia tend to be very bad at, and which I am fairly good at despite objectively being a dumbass about many, many things. But since a bunch of dorks got together and decided that "intelligence" = "IQ" and "IQ" = "rotating things in your mind, knowing grammar, and doing a half-dozen other brain-related party tricks that we all just happen to be good at", apparently I've got a smart big boy brain.
(This is something that was actually emphasized in the test prep I did for the SATs way back when: which of the answers is the "right answer" is always subjective, decided by the people who wrote the test, and those people have their own biases. If you've got a choice on an essay question between "the author was deeply moved by their childhood experiences" and "the author was lazy and didn't like to work", always pick the first one, because Pam is the person who wrote this part of the test and Pam wouldn't pick an essay by an author she thought was lazy. If you've narrowed down the choice of answers on a math question to the highest and second-highest values but aren't sure which is right, pick the second highest one, because Jim wrote this section and Jim generally prefers not making the highest or lowest answer the right one.)
I don't know if you've watched Shaun's video on The Bell Curve, but yeah, it's basically that. Worse than that, even; replace "some 30 black folks in Rwanda" with "the miners in one Rwandan steel mine" and "couldn't answer some questions about rotating shapes in your head" with "couldn't answer some questions about rotating shapes in your head \*that were written in English, a language they barely spoke\*".
I think part of it is that very few of them have taken a real iq test. Maybe they’ve taken some online “iq tests,” but barely any have sat down with a psychologist for a couple hours to do one.
I think this was a big influence on me
I had (and retain) a lot of developmental issues as a kid that I have to work through on a daily basis, but I also ended up sitting down with a psychologist multiple times to show that I had the brain power (on this exact test!) that would arbitrarily demonstrate I knew what I was doing to people who value that arbitrary measure, so I wouldn’t flunk out of higher education or some shit
A different test also showed that I had a serious developmental disorder that severely limited my chances at a variety of skills but hey that doesn’t get counted in your IQ score so it’s one massive shrug in favour of posh white boys who can rotate shapes in their head effectively for no particular discernible purpose
I feel like its part of the general problem that crops up a lot of taking things designed for a specific academic context and over applying them. Those kind of iq tasks work fine when what you want is a single simple figure you can use for studying broader correlations. It's like how grip strength is used as a proxy for general strength and fitness, because it can be quickly and easily measured, but noone would say a random guy with good grip strength is better athlete than an Olympic athlete
A famed and influential scientist casually says “eugenics works in
practice, but it’s immoral”
The anti-dawkins crowd uses this as an opportunity to point out that
selective breeding of animals for particular traits tends to result in
the target population becoming fucked up in other ways, and that every
practical attempt at eugenics has been a failure even by the standards
of the eugenicists. They also point out that eugenics can only “work” by
the standards of the people deciding the traits, which is inseparable
from their ideology.
The pro-dawkins crowd uses this as an opportunity to complain that
dawkins is technically correct if you charitably interpet “eugenics
works” in a narrow way, and that everyone is being really mean to famous
scientists who casually bring eugenics into the national
conversation.
The rational and smart people, are, of course, the 2nd crowd.
I think Dawkins means that eugenics can literally be done in the sense that you can literally selectively breed humans like you can any animal. He's not saying it would lead to good outcomes, that it is moral, preferable, acceptable, etc.
I mean, Dawkins isn't Charles Murray. He's put his foot in his mouth a few times and is irascible, but he's said too many liberal things on race/eugenics.
The problem is that if you read his tweets, you could come away with the impression that the only obstacle to eugenics is morality, that the only reason we don't do eugenics is because we are too morally rigid.
Does dawkins believe that? Probably not! but it's *grossly* irresponsible to just casually drop "eugenics works" into a conversation. He could have pointed out that eugenics only "works" in a very narrow sense, he didn't. People have already used this as an excuse to spread eugenics propaganda.
Again, one side of this is debating the personal morality of richard dawkins. That may be fun, but it is *not* more important than debunking eugenicist propaganda. The people critical of dawkins are the one spreading facts and science here.
I guess he should communicate better, but nobody is perfect.
I feel that if this tweet makes you favor eugenics, you likely already support it, were unlikely to ever not support it, and/or are a sloppy/lazy thinker (and ii is hard to communicate for such people)
It doesn't matter if dawkins is good or bad. It's too late, the topic of eugenics has been brought up, and the pro eugenics propagandists have crawled out of the woodwork.
All i'm saying is that in response, it's better to debunk eugenics on practical, moral and scientific grounds than it is to whine about how people are mean to a rich science dude.
> you can literally selectively breed humans like you can any animal
I don't think it's clear that you can breed any animal for anything. Even taking a shallow Guns Germs and Steel approach, humans only successfully domesticated a handful of animals, most of them with pre-existing strong social or herd tendencies.
Maybe he's making the extreme point that it's *theoretically possible* to breed and train an animal for anything, given infinite resources and time. In which case, I have to ask, okay?!?! Thanks grandpa. Enjoy your sentient public lice or whatever.
That's... Not what he's saying, I think? Rather than "it is possible to breed any animal to do anything" it's "it is possible to breed any animal for certain things". (I mean, arguably even that isn't true, as we have huge problems getting certain animals to breed at all, but still)
>"it is possible to breed any animal for certain things"
So "eugenics works" depends on the goal of "works", even given infinite time and resources?
Agreed, but I challenge you to find Dawkins admitting such.
Criticizing eugenics and race science is a good thing. Being irascible and putting his foot in his mouth isn't, but it is hardly evil and it's very human.
> But from what subjective POV has the breeding of chickens not succeeded? From the chicken's POV? Sure, but that's because of the social environment that chickens live in where they live to produce food for uncaring masters.
When we're talking about eugenics on humans, the fact that the targeted population gets fucked up is *obviously* important. Eugenics is about creating "better" humans (thats the "eu" part of the word), the fact that this has been a massive failure is highly relevant!
I'm getting kind of annoyed at people just assuming critics are denying humans can be selectively bred for traits. If you look at [the](https://twitter.com/Lawforall007/status/1228975408231714816) [top](https://twitter.com/eugenegu/status/1229041278555262978) [replies](https://twitter.com/destroyed4com4t/status/1228954901931151361) to the tweet, there is noone actually denying this. people are just pointing out that this comes with downsides to the target population, that eugenics can't be seperated from an ideal of what "good genes" are, that practical attempts at eugenics have failed horribly, etc.
Whenever someone like Charles Murray… makes a politically incorrect
but probably somewhat factual or plausible pronouncement, the people who
actually hold prejudiced views can easily take it and run with it
because of the seeming veneer of scientific legitimacy.
Imagine thinking that Charles Murray doesn’t hold prejudiced views,
and hasn’t built their entire career around and written multiple books
about said prejudiced views.
Sabisky said that “women’s sport is more comparable to the
Paralympics than it is to men’s”.
…
If anyone could compete in women’s sports or the Paralympics, then
lots of mediocre able-bodied men would win them and there would be no
women’s sports or Paralympics left.
…
But to a low-decoupler, it sounds, I think, as though he is saying
they are inferior.
Uh… am I missing something, or is that exactly what Sabisky
(and the author) are saying?
(Maybe this was OP’s point, but wow this guy seems to be such a “high
decoupler” that he misses when a statement actually does imply
a point.)
I’d like to note that Richard Dawkins in 78, and was already fairly prominent in the media (as a source of controversy, if only because his groundbreaking work on selfish genes attracted a lot of smoke and heat and not very much light in the 1970s) long before the internet entered mass public awareness. More to the point, Facebook came along when he was 60 and twitter was invented when he was 65.
He is teh olds, and probably quite clueless about how discourse operates in these new media. In particular, he has decades of prior media experience to overcome.
Some elderly public figures dive into social media: I don’t need to mention the POTUS here, do I? Others employ a social media consultant. But some are just oblivious to how the rules changed in the past decade.
(Source: am 55, have a creeping sympathy for anyone over 50 trying to deal with the modern world.)
Dear god, this dawkins situation is ridiculous.
A famed and influential scientist casually says “eugenics works in practice, but it’s immoral”
The anti-dawkins crowd uses this as an opportunity to point out that selective breeding of animals for particular traits tends to result in the target population becoming fucked up in other ways, and that every practical attempt at eugenics has been a failure even by the standards of the eugenicists. They also point out that eugenics can only “work” by the standards of the people deciding the traits, which is inseparable from their ideology.
The pro-dawkins crowd uses this as an opportunity to complain that dawkins is technically correct if you charitably interpet “eugenics works” in a narrow way, and that everyone is being really mean to famous scientists who casually bring eugenics into the national conversation.
The rational and smart people, are, of course, the 2nd crowd.
Imagine thinking that Charles Murray doesn’t hold prejudiced views, and hasn’t built their entire career around and written multiple books about said prejudiced views.
Tom Chivers has taken up “high-decoupling” without questioning why it isn’t “low-coupling”
Uh… am I missing something, or is that exactly what Sabisky (and the author) are saying?
(Maybe this was OP’s point, but wow this guy seems to be such a “high decoupler” that he misses when a statement actually does imply a point.)