# "Intellectual Dark Web" Stupidity Omnibus **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 4, 2019, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193 "2019-01-04T13:53:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/281 "2019-06-27T20:57:38Z")
You just illustrated my earlier point. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/282 "2019-06-27T21:13:33Z")
I doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/283 "2019-06-27T21:47:08Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > You just illustrated my earlier point. That there are hundreds of millions of people on the Right in America? That’s trivial to show. That’s _not_ the same as the alt-right, though. **BPC** ’s post remains un-paradoxical. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/284 "2019-06-27T22:15:54Z")
No, different point. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/285 "2019-06-27T22:42:21Z")
Your brain is lost in a maze of mirrors. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/286 "2019-06-28T07:49:31Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > No, different point. Perhaps you could explain what point, then. With quotes, for preference. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/287 "2019-06-28T17:06:32Z")
It was the one about the vast majority of the electorate looking “right wing” to those on the far left. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/288 "2019-06-29T10:01:24Z")
That’s a pretty trivial point. And, again, doesn’t make **BPC** ’s point any less true. It’s because most Americans \*are \*more Right than Left. Even your “moderate left wing” looks ridiculously right wing to leftists outside America. Only the American “far left” even \*approaches \*what I consider Left Wing. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/289 "2019-06-29T17:03:50Z")
Virtue-signalling, holier-than-thou claptrap. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/290 "2019-06-29T19:05:43Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Virtue-signalling, holier-than-thou claptrap. Well, telling us that you are constantly blindsided by your ignorance does not help. > **[Opinion | What Happened to America’s Political Center of Gravity? (Published...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html)** > > The Republican Party is farther right than U.K.I.P. and France’s National Rally, according to an analysis of their platforms. > [@](#): > > These findings are based on data from [the Manifesto Project](https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/), which reviews and categorizes each line in party manifestos, the documents that lay out a group’s goals and policy ideas. We used the topics that the platforms emphasize, like market regulation and multiculturalism, to put them on a common scale. > > The resulting scores capture how the groups represent themselves, not necessarily their actual policies. They are one way to answer a difficult question: If we could put every political party on the same continuum from left to right, where would the American parties fall? > [@](#): > > The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are often an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream. > [@](#): > > The Democrats fall closer to mainstream left and center-left parties in other countries, like the Social Democratic Party in Germany and Britain’s Labour Party, according to their manifestos’ scores. > > And the United States’ political center of gravity is to the right of other countries’, partly because of the lack of a serious left-wing party. Between 2000 and 2012, the Democratic manifestos were to the right of the median party platform. The party has moved left but is still much closer to the center than the Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/291 "2019-06-29T19:37:23Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > People seem to be reluctant to take on Pinker ITT, but maybe now that he has taken on climate orthodoxy and BLM in the same post, along with some other progressive shibboleths, some of those who tend to reflexively but fiercely defend said shibboleths will be roused into a righteous fury:[https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/06/focal-point-harvard-professor-steven-pinker-says-the-truth-lies-in-the-data/:](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/06/focal-point-harvard-professor-steven-pinker-says-the-truth-lies-in-the-data/:) Not reluctant, only that he seems to also fall for the issue of pondering about things where he is not an expert. Many deniers of the dark web are now in the stage of “yes humans are responsible” on the global warming issue but they go for lukewarm solutions like Lomborg or positions that in reality end up telling Republicans specially to not bother. Hence the problem I noticed coming from Pinker here: > [@](#): > > They imagine that fossil fuels can be replaced by solar energy, without doing the math on how many square miles would have to be tiled with solar panels to satisfy the world’s vastly growing thirst for electricity. And they think that voluntary sacrifices, like unplugging laptop chargers, are a sensible way to deal with climate change. > > How do we change this destructive statistical illiteracy and disdain for data? Well, it is destructive alright, because people like Pinker, like the ones from the Dark Web are trying to become the new pundits for the right when the right eventually will finally stop carrying the idiot ball, but while pretending to look more at data, at best it looks more to me that they do it in an incomplete manner. IMHO Nuclear can be an effective compliment to solar and wind, but Pinker clearly ignores new developments in solar and batteries to ignore data that he does not like. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/v2IVTM0N2SE/maxresdefault.jpg "What Would It Take To Power The United States With Solar Energy?") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2IVTM0N2SE) > [@](#): > > We calculated the land area needed to supply the entire United States with solar power. [It would only take 0.6% of the surface area of the continental United States to power the entire country with renewable solar power] Written and Produced by Gabriel Reilich > **[The Amount Of Land Required To Run America On Solar Power Is Shockingly Small...](https://www.good.is/infographics/solar-power-all-of-america)** > > But there’s also a catch. Source: > **[56290.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf)** > > 1570.94 KB (Annoyingly, I noticed that Pinker does not provide in the article you quoted and in another more recent one, support for declaring Nuclear as the best solution and to allow him to dismiss Solar almost completely) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/292 "2019-06-29T19:57:28Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Virtue-signalling, holier-than-thou claptrap. Who exactly am I signalling virtue to, pray tell? The other 3 hard leftists on this board? And of course I’m holier than _you_, I’m not an admitted racist so that’s ridiculously easy. Go back to taking the weekends off, your responses are (marginally) better when you do. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/293 "2019-06-29T21:23:26Z")
Again, terms like “virtue signaling” were invented by the right to go after the left\*. It is merely a rhetorical attempt to change arguing about or advocating for doing the right thing into some sort of vice. It’s ridiculous to try and use it against the left, with whom you share common values, or you wouldn’t identify as a _Democratic_ centrist. \*It was coined in the US, so I mean what counts as left in the US. I’m sure that arguing about the right thing to do is the centrist position in many countries. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/294 "2019-06-29T21:46:59Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well, telling us that you are constantly blindsided by your ignorance does not help. > > [Opinion | What Happened to America’s Political Center of Gravity? - The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html) I started a post on this. It has some interesting graphics, but I gave it up as a lost cause. I applaud your energy. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2019, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/295 "2019-06-30T17:15:00Z")
Oh, GIGO. No, actually this time you made some good points. I’m impressed! BigT, I don’t agree that a useful term is out of bounds just because loathsome people use it. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2021, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/296 "2021-09-30T11:14:08Z")
Bumping due to this scathing takedown of Pinker’s latest book: > **[Washingtoninquirer is under construction](https://washingtoninquirer.com/in-rationality-steven-pinker-sticks-up-again-for-reasons-role-in-human-progress/)** > > Latest News Portal Some prime Pinker stupidity: “Are mortgage lenders who turn down minority applicants really being racist, he muses, or are those lenders simply calculating default rates “from different neighborhoods that just happen to correlate with race?” (A long history of racist redlining may “happen” to have something to do with this too, but Pinker doesn’t get into it.)” Gee, Steven, I wonder if maybe all that racist redlining and stuff may actually be related to racism? ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2021, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/297 "2021-09-30T13:37:55Z")
A post of mine from 12 years ago: > [@NYTimes: In Which Steven Pinker eviscerates Malcolm Gladwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nytimes-in-which-steven-pinker-eviscerates-malcolm-gladwell/517564/28): > > [Gladwell responds to Pinker](http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/pinker-on-what-the-dog-saw.html), calls him out on his “IQ fundamentalism” and ties with well known Internet racist Steve Sailer: > > > [@](#): > > > > It is always a pleasure to be reviewed by someone as accomplished as Stephen Pinker, even if—in his comments on “What the Dog Saw” (Nov. 15)—he is unhappy with my spelling (rightly!) and with the fact that I have not joined him on the lonely ice floe of IQ fundamentalism. But since football has been on my mind these days, I do want to make one small observation about his comments. > > > > > (snip)quarterbacks taken in positions 11 through 90 in the draft actually slightly outplay those more highly paid and lauded players taken in the draft’s top ten positions. I found this analysis fascinating. Pinker did not. This quarterback argument, he wrote, “is simply not true.” > > > > > > ```auto > > > I wondered about the basis of Pinker’s conclusion, so I e-mailed him, asking if he could tell me where to find the scientific data that would set me straight. He very graciously wrote me back. He had three sources, he said. The first was Steve Sailer. Sailer, for the uninitiated, is a California blogger with a marketing background who is best known for his belief that black people are intellectually inferior to white people. Sailer’s “proof” of the connection between draft position and performance is, I’m sure Pinker would agree, crude: his key variable is how many times a player has been named to the Pro Bowl. > > > > > > ``` > > It seems that Gladwell’s blog is now flooded by Sailer blog readers… > > I’m not a fan of Gladwell for the same reasons that he was criticized by Pinker (it’s too much close to popular journalism and less of scientific analysis for me to enjoy), but like **susan** I don’t like Pinker’s sickening polemics. I find that Pinker [is](http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker_rose/pinker_rose_p1.html) [a gene](http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker_rose/part2/part2_p1.html) [ce](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jun/18/iq-steven-pinker-blank-slate)[nt](http://reason.com/archives/2002/10/01/biology-vs-the-blank-slate)[ric](http://books.google.ca/books?id=7rJ5gI1LbXoC) [fundamentalist](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11Genome-t.html); a point of view which IMO leads him to [reactionary](http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2005_01_19_crimson.html) [anti-leftism](http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/11.14.02/work-0246.html) and to an [uncomfortably close](http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_3.html#pinker) [relation with racists](http://www.vdare.com/sailer/pinker_progress.htm). Steven Pinker is well known for advocating teaching “race science” (19th century racialism with vague 21st century genetic possibilities and implications) as a real, **and imperative** , on-going scientific debate. There are clear ethical concerns of propagating age-old harmful racism by rehashing popular racialist (and genetically essentialist) assertions as an never ending _de jour_ debate. It becomes even more insidious when those advocating these racialist ideas reject the requirement of establishing causal links, or genetic correlates to behaviour, or any objective racial framework (the idea of essential racial categories are always explicitly advocated while no rigorous attempt is made to delimit these categories). It still amazes me how much people will cloak themselves as lone, besieged bastions of rationality and scientific freedom, all in the hopes of completely avoiding addressing the real world issues of racism and the ethical concerns that flow from their fixations and advocacy. Either way Pinker sometimes acknowledges a lack of evidence with the racialists that he gives his favour to (check out his [supportive tweet](https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/462666861725749248) of Nicholas Wade’s horrible race book) but he also says very dumb things in support of indefensible racist, wack-jobs like his decades long relations with OG internet Alt-Righter Steve Sailer (as I mentioned in my above 12 year old post and from yesterday’s [article below in the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/28/steven-pinker-celebrity-scientist-at-the-centre-of-the-culture-wars) ). > Many critics allege that Pinker’s recent remarks are part of a longer history of comments and behaviour that have come dangerously close to promoting pseudoscientific or abhorrent points of view. To take a single example: the journalist Malcolm Gladwell has called Pinker out for sourcing information from the blogger Steve Sailer, who, in Gladwell’s words, “is perhaps best known for his belief that black people are intellectually inferior to white people”. Angela Saini, a science journalist and author of Superior: The Return of Race Science, told me that “for many people, Pinker’s willingness to entertain the work of individuals who are on the far right and white supremacists has gone beyond the pale”. When I put these kinds of criticisms to Pinker, he called it the fallacy of “guilt by association” – just because Sailer and others have objectionable views, doesn’t mean their data is bad. Pinker has condemned racism – he told me it was “not just wrong but stupid” – but published Sailer’s work in an edited volume in 2004, and quotes Sailer’s positive review of Better Angels _,_ among many others, on his website. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2021, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/298 "2021-09-30T13:41:59Z")
Thank you. I didn’t know he lent credibility to supremacists like Sailer. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2021, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/299 "2021-09-30T14:05:50Z")
And thank you for bumping an old thread. I love rereading such things to see how my opinion has or has not changed with time. [I don’t think I’ll ever not love this post though](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/60). ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2021, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/300 "2021-09-30T16:51:05Z")
Aah, I’d forgotten this thread existed. I can think of a new-ish poster who could do with reading it in full. Paging @DemonTree… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193.md?page=16)