# "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:** 10\ **Page:** 16
**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:** [October 16, 2021, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/301 "2021-10-16T20:47:21Z")
Why would you do that? It’s been pleasant around here lately. ---
**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:** [October 17, 2021, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/302 "2021-10-17T10:17:09Z")
That was when she was still active around here - or at least before her absence was noted. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2021, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/303 "2021-10-17T15:09:12Z")
I’m pretty sure DemonTree is taking a break to enjoy the summerday. ---
**Author:** ![Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mundane_super_hero/32/6304_2.png) [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mundane_Super_Hero)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2021, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/304 "2021-10-17T16:41:19Z")
To what? Ruin 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:** [March 20, 2023, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/305 "2023-03-20T13:44:30Z")
Bumping due to even more Steven Pinker idiocy: > **[Pinker is embarrassing](https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/03/20/pinker-is-embarrassing/)** > > Seriously, dude? Steven Pinker is peddling NFTs now? On March 14th at 7pm ET, thought leader and Harvard professor Steven Pinker will release digital collectibles of his famous idea that “Free spee… Now he’s selling NFTs. Jesus. What is it about this philosophy, or crowd, or whatever, that seems to turn smart people into bumbling doofuses? EDIT: Here is the Pinker tweet: > ---
**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:** [March 20, 2023, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/306 "2023-03-20T17:07:01Z")
Pinker knows how to sell his brand of [scientism](https://blog.apaonline.org/2018/01/25/the-problem-with-scientism/) mixed in with freedom/free speech and self-associating his image/brand to it. Its the intersection of evo-psych personality grift, with IDW personality grift, with technobabble grift. ---
**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:** [June 2, 2025, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/307 "2025-06-02T12:35:44Z")
More Steven Pinker idiocy: > **[Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/stairwaytokevin.bsky.social/post/3lqlabayf7k2k)** If you can’t see the linked post, he appeared on a Nazi-adjacent podcast. ---
**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:** [June 2, 2025, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/308 "2025-06-02T13:58:02Z")
Speak of the devil. I just posted [about this in another thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-current-second-trump-administration-a-compendium-of-horrors/1009774/1702). It comes off a growing frustration I have with people defending Pinker since they are unfamiliar with his polemics (or scarier, simply giving Pinker allowances on his disgusting, decades long, racialism). Since Pinker is hijack over there I’ll move any comments back here. Plus I can curse him out here. Fuck you Pinker. Bad Canadian! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/309 "2025-06-02T14:52:56Z")
Meanwhile, in the time since this thread was started, “moderate left-winger” Joe Rogan endorsed Trump. ---
**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:** [June 7, 2025, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/310 "2025-06-07T13:37:22Z")
While Pinker didn’t respond to [questions from The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/07/harvard-steven-pinker-aporia-podcast) about his appearance, they have done previous reporting on Aporia and filled me in on some of the behind-the-scenes movers and shakers (including some names I recognize -like Noah Carl and Kirkegaard- who are quite dedicated internet racialists). > [Reporting last October in the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/16/revealed-international-race-science-network-secretly-funded-by-us-tech-boss) revealed that Aporia operates within a broader network of groups and individuals seeking to mainstream racial pseudoscience. > > The initiative had been secretly funded by US tech entrepreneur Andrew Conru until he was contacted for comment on the reporting, and Aporia’s editors are connected to far-right extremists, including Erik Ahrens, whom German authorities have designated a “rightwing extremist” posing an “extremely high” danger. > > The investigation also found that Aporia was owned by the Human Diversity Foundation, a Wyoming LLC founded in 2022 by Emil Kirkegaard, a Danish self-described eugenicist and race scientist who has spent years attempting to access genetic datasets, and maintaining publishing platforms including OpenPsych and Mankind Quarterly that serve a network of race-science researchers. > > The [same reporting revealed](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/16/revealed-international-race-science-network-secretly-funded-by-us-tech-boss) that in secretly recorded conversations, Aporia co-founder Matthew Frost expressed ambitions for it to “become something bigger, become that policy, front-facing thinktank, and bleed into the traditional institutions”. He also said that the publication had recruited mainstream writers for the purposes of “legitimacy via association”. > > Carl, listed as editor on Aporia’s masthead, was [dismissed](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/01/cambridge-university-college-dismisses-researcher-far-right-links-noah-carl) from a Cambridge fellowship in 2019 after an investigation found that he had published articles in collaboration with far-right extremists. He [spoke at least twice](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2018/02/it-might-be-pseudo-science-students-take-threat-eugenics-seriously) at the eugenicist London Conference on Intelligence and in [a 2016 paper](https://openpsych.net/paper/48/) wrote that anti-immigrant stereotypes were “reasonably accurate” in relation to their propensity for crime. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193.md?page=15)