The other day Darksidecat introduced me to what I now consider to be the Greatest Webpage Ever (this week): Regender, a handy tool that will take any web page and, well, regender it, turning male pronouns and references into female and vice versa. It even works with names.
Following Darksidecat’s lead, I have started plugging the writings of some of my favorite manosphere misogynists into the magical regendering machine. The results are, well, instructive. And frequently hilarious. As DSC noted, Roissy and MarkyMark are perfect for this sort of treatment. As is, I discovered, MarkyMark’s longtime pal Christopher in Oregon. Here’s what happens when Christopher of Oregon becomes Christine of Oregon with the help of regender, and all the horrible shit he wrote about women becomes the horrible shit she wrote about men:
Men are whores. They are far more likely to have STD’s than women. Be aware of this. Handle with extreme care. Men are filthy, and they will lie about their infections. Condoms will NOT protect you. …
Men are walking cesspools of filth! Most of them have or will have a permanent STD infection. It is unavoidable. These are FACTS, and not the rantings of an unstable misandrist.
(I’m a very STABLE misandrist, thank you kindly)
Men are DIRTY creatures, pure and simple. Be dignified, and don’t lower yourself to engaging in any filthy behavior with them. You WILL be infected with the diseases they are carrying. A moral, dignified woman does NOT rut like an animal with one of these creatures. Sexual intercourse and oral sex are filthy, disgusting activities, and ruin a woman morally. They spread disease.
Elevate yourself above such filth of the flesh. …
Do not lust after men in your mind. Masturbate only as a last result to relieve tension. Do not lust after men sexually. It weakens you.
Goddess made woman in Her image, and men was made in the image of Satan. Squeal all you want, but history proves me right. A man is a test; a stumbling block for woman. Our life is an adventure. A journey. A pursuit of our creator, and a pursuit of excellence in our personal lives. A man and his filth is part of the obstacle course set before us. If we are wise, and avoid them, we will grow stronger as a result. We will finish the race successfully.
Men was not put here to support us as such, and we will only grow stronger if we AVOID his snares. ..
Christine in Oregon
Woah. Critics of Man Boobz often say that feminists are “just as bad” as the guys I quote. Well, if they were, the posts on their blogs would look a lot like this regendered post. I ask all of you: have you ever seen something so grotesquely misandrist on any feminist web site? I thought not.
Here’s a challenge for all of you: See if you can come up with a regendered post that tops this one from “Christine in Oregon.” You can draw from old posts of mine, or go poking about in the manosphere yourself. Post your results in the thread below, along with a link to the regendered web page you got them from. I’ll highlight the best in a future post.
@Molly:
*sigh*… Well, a guy can try. I seem to recall doing this exact same thing to another troll (ask them to state their point after thread-long banter), and I didn’t get an answer then either.
Marc doesn’t seem to get that the reason why evo-psych isn’t scientific isn’t because it has been disproven, but because the stories people tell aren’t testable. You have to positively prove your claim rather than expect others to disprove you.
The biggest problem is that “evidence” often goes like this: “According to this story, we should expect to see Y. We see Y, therefore the story is true.” Of course this is nonsense, as it is similar to a logic failure of false premises. You start with knowing the result, and (eductated or not) guess on the rest.
Nobinayamu –
How is the issue of consent an issue of sexual morality? How is consent an abstract concept?
Well, the issue of consent IS an issue of morality, even if you separate it from the sexual aspect. We have defined a number of cases under which a person’s consent is not required or can be overridden: they are underage, they are determined to be legally incompetent, they are unconscious, a doctor determines that they need a certain treatment even though they don’t want it, they have been determined to have behaved badly (we send them to jail, take their children away, seize their assets).
Not that I’m saying rape is anything like any of these cases. It is obviously not. But they are all illustrative of the idea that we have, as a society, ideas about when consent “counts” and when it does not. And other societies make different determinations (i.e. societies where wives have no rights and only their husband’s consent counts). This makes it both an abstract issue and a moral issue.
Marc: It’s not that you used them, it’s that you said you wanted one, and don’t believe there is the other.
That, my dear boy, is either massively confused, or dishonest debate. Since you refused all the cogent arguments you did get
and allege that rational debate is impossible here… you’ve admitted to being dishonest.
The bobbing and weaving” “if you look at it abstractly you have to come to my conclusions”, is nonsense. That’s question begging. It’s based on the idea that 1: you are correct, and 2: that your premeses are valid, and the conclusions sound.
The first is in contention, and the second hasn’t been shown.
And it’s false on it’s face. Lots of people (some of us among them) have looked at rape abstractly. We’ve come to quite different answers.
The rest of it… please, pray tell, explain to me the errors in my understanding of fallacy; when you keep commiting equivocations, shifting goalposts and appeals to emotion (really, what do we care what Ruse looks like, or how kind he is. This isn’t about him; it’s about the ideas he’s espousing, and you are promulgating)
2. It’s not pseudoscience. The vast majority of evolutionary psychologists support a position similar to Ruse’s (READ: “Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans: An Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression Against Females”).
Ah… the “Sixty Million Frenchman Can’t Be Wrong Argument”
(god, how I hate this Pecunium nonsense “blah blah it’s just a civil offense, hah, I proved you wrong”
No, I didn’t say I’d proven you wrong; I said you were comparing a criminal offense (rape) to a civil offense (defamation).
Here is what I see, from reading your, lengthy, posts.
You have a faith in EvPsych. It fills some need. You aren’t willing to actually entertain the idea that it might be wrong. When presented with evidence that refutes your points (such as the claim that assault requires actual harm, or that using a toy gun to commit a crime will be dealt with differently: the latter with the prosecutor saying that the psychological harm was the reason for giving someone 15 years in prison for failing to commit a robbery) you ignore them, or say that wasn’t relevant.
EvPsych fails because it’s failed the tests, or it’s not-testable (i.e. question begging; the answer is in the question). Evolution is testable. It’s also observable. Tests have been done. Answers have been obtained. Hypotheses have been proven, and disproven.
EvPsych hasn’t. Large bodies of it are obviously false (Blonde hair and blue eyes are “evolutionarily” more attractive). If (and it’s a big if) they can get their act together there is a lot of stuff it would be nice to understand the why of, but as it’s presently constructed, it’s all stuff and nonsense.
Marc: This is a separate subject, only slightly related. but I’m not even going to try to deal with you on torture here. Google my name, or my handle, and put interrogation (or torture) into the search string. The short answer on that one is, you are wrong. And while you may not think (though since you seem to be playing the, “I’m just talking about ‘ideas’, not what I personally believe, well why should we believe you? Again, you aren’t arguing in good faith) that it ought to be punished, it has been.
We put people to death for waterboarding prisoners. I happen to be against capital punishment, but I have no problem with putting people who commit torture into prison, perhaps even for the rest of their lives.
I have acquaintances who got not enough jail time (if you ask me) for what they did. I have others who got off; to all intents and purposes, scot-free.
I have other people, friends, who may have committed torture (or at least abuses). If they did, I want to see them prosecuted. That the body politic seems to not care, that bothers me. Because the harms you are discussing (be they from rape, or abuse, or “merely psychological” torture) are real harms. Brushing them aside because they don’t leave physical scars… well I notice you reacted differently to the idea of homosexual rape.
If it’s just sex, what’s the difference? No blood, no foul, right?
Evolutionary psychology is ONE among MANY competing theories in the academy; there is no doubt a range of good and bad work done in it.
However, academic work operates by a dialogic system–claims are challenged continually.
Here is a succinct summary of some of the work done by academics who are feminists and biologists (and don’t even try to tell me that evo psychologists wh are mostly men aren’t interpellated in ideology just like everybody else) that ritiques evo psychology and sociobiology:
Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy
Feminist Philosophy of Biology
Section on feminist critiques of evo psych and socio bio
Simple version: if “rape” is constructed in multiple ways (meaning: how rape is explained, theorized, defined, and legally dealt with) across time and cultures, then claiming it is some “natural and universal” human behavior is bunk, pure bunk.
And it is, so it is.
From what I observe here, Ruse= Appeal to Nature Fallacy (my most favoritist of extremely common fallacies). Either that, or he is begging the question, or both. For example, a utilitarian can tell you if rape is bad on Andromeda really easily. First, you determine the utility of every moral person who might be affected. Next, you see whether having rape or not having rape maximizes utility. An egoist can also indicate whether attempting rapes is a good idea in any given theoretical situation. Moral law or divine command theory, while very flawed, seem to be able to do this as well. Kantian ethics, not so much, but then again, one of the major flaws in Kantian ethics is that it presupposes too much consistency between individuals (I am the troublesome masochist, so I might enjoy being burnt with candle wax, but I am pretty sure many people would be really upset if I did it to them, for example). So, most of the ethical theories really do not seem to have this problem regarding figuring out morality across species. Descriptive ethics is pretty solid here. The issue then is normative ethics, why we should do what is good. Well, egoism and utilitarianism actually have a good built in answers to that (as do certain kinds of divine command, as they assume ultimate egoistic type rewards). Egoism makes it easy. Doing what is best for you is best for you because, well, it is best for you. If you look at game theory, utilitarianism gets really nice results when dealing with interactions of more than one person, which, presumably, ethical questions generally involve. In divine command theory, you obey to avoid punishments, which are really bad for you (which is why it is mostly egoistic). The question of why group species tend to have instinctive leanings towards utilitarianism can be easily answered if one looks at the game theory equations-it makes the group more likely to survive and prosper. Why solitary animals tend to be egoistic, and why groups animals may maintain some lesser degree of egoism is easy as well: “not dying” ranks pretty high on the evolutionary skills list. Avoiding things that make you likely to die (such as injury, poisons, etc) is sort of necessary, except when it comes to certain types of reproduction (which continues the genes), and, in these types of reproduction, you get back to utilitarian ideas-what is best for the group. Creatures that always die when reproducing always have more than one offspring as the norm. It is a non-problem that Ruse is arguing against here.
Also worth noting: traditional matriarchies have extremely low rates of rape, to the point where it is almost unheard of. There really is no good evidence that lack of established paternity goes hand in hand with higher rape rates across cultures, in fact, quite the opposite. As far as I know, a genetic study on Y chromosome diversity vs mitochondrial diversity has never been done on a matriarchy, so it may be the case that this low Y diversity issue is one that derives from patriarchies as a social system.
darksidecat: Kant has some problems, and pure Kantianism is hard to practice, but the categorical imperatives still work pretty well.
Take your masochism. Making a kantian “universal law” that anyone may pour hot wax on a masochist, anytime they feel like it would be patently unworkable.
Where Kant falls apart is his definition of “virtue” and, “good”, in those applications his idea of universality fall down hard. For those who don’t know… Kant believes in intent. Only where one has no intent but to do right is an action virtuous. If you return someone’s money when they overpay you, any motive but, “This is their money, they should have it” moves from being, “good” to merely being proper, and so the person returning the money wasn’t acting in a morally correct way.
He tied himself into knots to explain how this meant that lying to person A, to save the life of person B was immoral; when the person B in question was an ax-murderer, looking for his victim. There’s been a lot of work trying to make Kant’s larger theory work, but, if you ask me, the two formulations of the Categorical Imperative, tempered with Hillel’s Golden Rule make for a pretty good way to weigh general questions of ethics.
And they would say rape wasn’t acceptable; and would allow a fairly severe punishment.
Sorry, Person A is the ax-murderer.
Evopsych is almost universally meaningless pablum. They never actually test their claims, that’s the problem. If you’re going to claim something provides a benefit to species fitness you need to, you know, actually demonstrate that by producing data to back it up. Without that, it’s just “Just so” stories with a veneer of scientific support.
I’m gonna die of laughter because of this 😀
:starts looking for MRA sites to regender:
Rutee: No, not support, it’s dressed up with scientific language, it’s packaging.
A “note” on “science” claims–remember that psychology, sociology, etc. are called “SOCIAL sciences” — and on my campus at least and others, I’d bet, the HARD science dudes (physics, chemistry, biology) tend to look down on them because, well not TRUE SCIENCE. Any discipline involving the study of human being is going to be difficult because (thank goodness) you can’t put people in the labs any more. I don’t consider psychology a science (and the fact that the majority of psychology research is done on college students totally undercuts any claim it has to universality in my mind). It’s not that these disciplines/methods cannot develop rich and interesting arguments about their subjects, but to claim OMG WE R SCIENCE is dodgy.
So it’s interesting that evolutionary psychology and socio biology have tried to lay claim to the mantle of science by glomping onto “evolution” and “biology” but not really in most cases taking the methodology that identifies sciences. Literary studies tied to develop scientic methods in the 50s, but it didn’t work, thank heavens.
I’m trying not to laugh like hell that a feminist, on a very feminist site, who presumably uses terms like ‘kyriarchy’, discusses social inequalities, is talking about how you can’t trust social scientists. A lot of the data on equality you mine and use is collated by sociologists. The research you use to demonstrate that there are hiring gaps, even when everything’s equal? Sociologists. You can’t predict people perfectly, and a lot of experiments that might be instructive wouldn’t get past an IRB, but there yes Virginia, real science is being done by a decent number of social scientists.
So I’d like to ask; what is your point re: rape? Why do you think what you do? I’d like to see if I can help clear some stuff up (or at least muddy the waters more).
Well I think that this issue is slowly getting unfunny, but in a last attempt to save it…
Yes, I want to answer your question, I promise. But first I need to know if you mean “rape” or “rape-rape” (in the way Whoopi Goldberg defines these terms)? That’s very important.
1: I don’t think pecunium is a troll, in fact, I found most of his points to be cogent and worth reading, albeit coming from an intellectual position I am farther from these days (again, this is why I don’t pop by much anymore). However, I will let him defend his statements, Instead, allow me to concentrate on some of yours.
Yes, you’re probably right, I think he’s not a troll because he’s so easily trolled, it would be against the troll honor to react to such troll attempts.
the latter with the prosecutor saying that the psychological harm was the reason for giving someone 15 years in prison for failing to commit a robbery) you ignore them, or say that wasn’t relevant.
Look at what he really said:
“Alabama law is based on the opinion of the person being robbed, if they were in fear for their life.”
he just explains the law, the definition of the crime, he doesn’t claim that “psychological harm” is the actual reason why this crime was punished that hard.
Let’s have a look at this one:
http://supreme.court.com/USSup/476/476.US.16.85-5189.html
Three reasons, each independently sufficient, support the conclusion that an unloaded gun is a “dangerous weapon.” […] In addition, the display of a gun instills fear in the average citizen; as a consequence, it creates an immediate danger that a violent response will ensue.
Now you see it’s getting unfunny… I’m actually bothering with your very uninteresting and unrewarding arguments. It’s about time to stop…
Evopsych is almost universally meaningless pablum. They never actually test their claims, that’s the problem. If you’re going to claim something provides a benefit to species fitness you need to, you know, actually demonstrate that by producing data to back it up. Without that, it’s just “Just so” stories with a veneer of scientific support.
Facts:
1. Newtonian Physics can’t be tested
2. Ohm’s Law is a tautology
http://www.cleonis.nl/physics/phys256/inertial_coordinate_system.php
3. There’s no exact definition of mass in physics. Last sentence of “Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics” by Max Jammer:
“Thus, in spite of all the strenuous efforts of physicists and philosophers, the notion of mass although fundamental in physics, is, as we noted in the preface, still shrouded in mystery.”
And this is the hardest of all sciences, PHYSICS.
How on earth can you complain that supersoft biology has it’s problems to prove that behavior X provided benefit to a species Y when physics can’t even explain what mass is?
And why is evolutionary psychology different from the rest of evolutionary analysis, like the claim that it was advantageous for birds to have wings, mmh? All evolutionary arguments must be fallacious to you (creationist?).
What about the feeling of hunger… is it unscientific to believe that we have this feeling because it was advantageous to experience an unpleasant feeling that drives us to look for food so we don’t starve? Is this unscientific to think evolution selected for this feeling? Yeah… because evo-psychs didn’t prove that it was selected for, they guess it. But if that’s guessing, what’s not guessing, please?
I’ll say you something:
You’re really a weird bunch of people, dismissing whole fields of biology. Fields of biology that have their professors, their students and even their own departments. But of course you’re smarter than all of them.
Again: creationists?
Especially Nobby, he really wrote: “Antibiotic resistance is a different case. […] its not evolution but bodily adaptation.”
This is the creationist micro/macroevolution distinction, am I right?
and he also denies the results of the Lederberg experiment…
OK, we see us in another comment section…
“1. Newtonian Physics can’t be tested”
In what way, exactly? Because the fields of reference can be changed, which you imply? Not sure why you mean it “Can’t be tested”, since it can and has been. Please, expand on it, I’m curious. If you mean this: “inherently impossible to provide a justification of scientific theories” then that is different. Can’t be proven =/ can’t be tested. A theory can never be ‘proven’, it is logically impossible. It can, however, be tested and supported.
“2. Ohm’s Law is a tautology”
Um, so? Your link again: “Historically, Ohm’s law was intuited on the basis of very little evidence, and subsequently Ohm’s law influenced the way that the concept of electromotive force was defined. Over time Ohm’s law grew from strength to strength, gaining support in ways that were entirely independent from its first conception.” It was given as a hypothesis, and later supported. Just because the reasons for it’s existence weren’t clear at the beginning doesn’t mean it wasn’t tested or supported or useful.
“Thus, in spite of all the strenuous efforts of physicists and philosophers, the notion of mass although fundamental in physics, is, as we noted in the preface, still shrouded in mystery.”
Huh. So you’re saying that, despite the fact that a theory is put forward and eminently testable, the fact that we do not know everything means, what exactly? We still put forward testable theories of matter and physics that are then tested for veracity. Obviously we don’t know everything going in, or we wouldn’t do it! But our hypotheses are testable.
Also, Higgs Boson. Oh, and look, they’re testing that theory right now.
You seem to be confusing the idea of a testable theory with a proven theory. What’s your point? That because no one knows anything, untestable hypotheses aren’t worthless? But they are. All branches of science, including biology and sociology, put forward theories and test them. And different branches of science are working on different problems. Saying we have to wait around for physics to solve all of it’s problems first is just silly.
Here’s the gist: evolutionary psychology does not make testable theories. It gives, as Pecunium stated, “Just So Stories”. They look at the world, make a claim, and then say “Look at the world! It fits the claim, so it’s right!” That is begging the question.
Let’s take an example: A biologist does is look at one condition, and make a claim. Then it looks a other conditions. If the claim holds, the theory has been tested and proven. Say, that nerves carry instructions to a muscle. They look at a fish, and say “we hypothesize that nerve buncles carry impulses to the muscles at the terminus. For instance, bundle of cells A carries signals from the brain to the muscle B at the terminus. We determined this by cutting the bundle, and the muscle ceased to function”. There, a theory has been put forward. Now, they test. They say “we will test it by finding this second, analogous bundle of cells in section C of the fish. It’s terminus is at muscle D. If we cut C, muscle D will cease to function”. The test is made. If the test works, the theory is supported. If it fails, the theory must be revised.
Now take your example: “Rape is punished ‘harshly’ everywhere”. First problem: it’s not, and was not at all times (which is a problem with the evolutionary timescale you have to be using). Theory is already shaky. But what is your test? You said it yourself. The test is that “Rape is punished ‘harshly’ everywhere”. This is not a test. This is begging the question.
Now, if you say your ‘theory’ is that “rape favors a group’s survivability” you have slightly better wording. But, that is not what you are putting forward, and that is also not testable in the same way. Your analogy is a false one, because physical features of a creature can be looked at and tested in various situations. Also, relationships of these features to other animals (say, comparing wings to those of flightless birds) are possible. How do we test your theory? By looking at laws. Laws that were on the books and used to make your theory. Again, circular reasoning. You cannot put forward a theory with “This is universal, therefore evolutionarily advantageous” (and, again, ignoring the fact that it’s not universal) and then test it by looking at examples that you used to create the hypothesis. You’re giving a story to how a behavior originated, and then using the examples of behavior you already used to ‘prove’ it.
And sociology, since Ithiliana brought it up, also makes testable claims. Say, that a group of people of a given type will react in a certain way to a given situation. It tests this theory by taking different groups of people and then exposing them to the same situation. If they react the same way, it holds. If not, it does. It is much, much harder to do, and thus sociological theories are considered less stringent then those of harder sciences. But it is possible to test. Evo Psych says “We evolved rape”. Test? We would now have to say “so, you can see this feature in an intermediate form in our evolutionary forbears”. Oh, wait, no, you guys don’t. You say “look at population A. Pop A has feature B. This means feature A is evolved. You can test it by seeing that Pop A has feature B”.
And, as a last distinction, you are proposing a mechanism of action that you, also, have not proven. The difference between sociology and evo psyche is that evo psych is saying it’s evolution. That these behaviors are heritable, and part of our genetic makeup. Sociology makes no such claim. Evolution makes the claim that the physical features are heritable, and then showed how by proposing older species and genetic trees. These have since been found in the fossil record and thus support evolution. Again, Evo Psych does not make such testable claims.
“What about the feeling of hunger… is it unscientific to believe that we have this feeling because it was advantageous to experience an unpleasant feeling that drives us to look for food so we don’t starve?”
Testable claim. If we remove the feeling, what happens? The species dies. Therefore, it’s reasonable to believe (and testable, by testing other creatures in the same manner) that it is an advantageous adaptation. How do you test rape? By removing the urge to rape, and watching a population? Have you done that? And then have you proven a mechanism by which this occurs? Because we have shown the mechanisms of hunger via biochemistry.
Also, Creationists have professors and departments too, in backwater areas. Makes them no more right.
“Especially Nobby, he really wrote: “Antibiotic resistance is a different case. […] its not evolution but bodily adaptation.””
Let’s look at the context you dropped! “Either it’s in BACTERIA, which, you know, divide about ever twenty minutes and therefore have a much faster evolutionary timescale, or if its in mammals, its not evolution but bodily adaptation. ”
So, one is an evolutionary timescale that is very different from humans, and one that doesn’t, so far as we know, involve ‘culture’. Or, it does apply to humans, in which case antibiotic resistance over time is not a single person spontaneously evolving, but of the body reacting, in specific, biochemical ways, to a change in body chemistry. What is your point?
And how am I denying the results of the Lederberg experiment? In what fashion? Beneficial, or silent, mutations exist in populations. What does that have to do with evo psyche?
And you still haven’t answered me about cheating not being punished as badly as rape.
And you haven’t answered me as to why cultural differences, specifically Iraq’s as an example, exist if such culture is evolutionary in origin.
HTML fail. Ah, well.
And okay, I finally got what you’re blathering on about with the Lederberg experiment despite your willful obtuseness. So you’re saying the fact that mutations exist despite evolutionary pressures is somehow support for evo psych? Please explain how.
In what way, exactly? Because the fields of reference can be changed, which you imply? Not sure why you mean it “Can’t be tested”, since it can and has been. Please, expand on it, I’m curious. If you mean this: “inherently impossible to provide a justification of scientific theories” then that is different. Can’t be proven =/ can’t be tested. A theory can never be ‘proven’, it is logically impossible. It can, however, be tested and supported.
I mean that rigorously there’s no scientific theory that can be falsified.
For example, because if the law F = m a or any other Newtonian law is disproven in experiment you could still say “well, that’s only because we are not in an inertial system.” (because there’s no way to define inertial system but to say “it’s a system where Newtonian physics works”), therefore if you stubbornly want to stick to classical mechanics, there’s no experiment that can force you to abandon it, rigorously, it is unfalsifiable.
And now don’t come up with Ockham’s Razor again, who can define “simple”? That’s so subjective… maybe General Relativity is simple for you, but in the 19th century it was simpler for them to introduce imaginary planets like the planet Vulcan.
And okay, I finally got what you’re blathering on about with the Lederberg experiment despite your willful obtuseness. So you’re saying the fact that mutations exist despite evolutionary pressures is somehow support for evo psych? Please explain how.
That’s only because you said antibiotics resistance were a bodily adaption of the bacteria. But that’s wrong, it’s the combined result of mutation and natural selection. I just said that because you were wrong.
Here’s the gist: evolutionary psychology does not make testable theories.
Evolutionary psychology normally doesn’t make any theories, it’s just an application of the theory founded by Darwin.
If some astronomer calculates how an astronomic event in the past took place, you also have no further evidence that these calculations are true except that the mechanics of the solar system were calculated, a “proven” theory was applied.
You can’t complain that evo psych doesn’t make testable theories if it doesn’t make any theories, it applies a proven theory.
It gives, as Pecunium stated, “Just So Stories”. They look at the world, make a claim, and then say “Look at the world! It fits the claim, so it’s right!” That is begging the question.
I don’t see a problem with that approach.
Look:
There are coins with a picture of a man and the words NAPOLEON EMPEREUR around his head, there are portraits the same man, sometimes depicted as a king or an emperor with the words “Napoleon Bonaparte” on their frames, there are 200 year-old letters addressed to him as the emperor of France, thousands of original prints with reports about him, claiming he was the emperor of France, there is a grave in Les Invalides, Paris with his name written on it, and so forth…
Then we look at the world and then make a claim, that there actually was a man called Napoleon who once was the emperor of France. And then we say “Look at the world, our (not very far fetched story) fits the claim, so it’s right!”
So where’s the problem?
We looked at what we see today and “guessed” the rest.
And if it’s not possible to find new observations corroborating this claim after it was made (simply because we’ve found all portraits, letters, coins, reports, … in the world) , there’s no way to test it again, it’s not testable, there’s no way to confirm it any further, so with your criteria it must be wrong or irrational to believe in the existence of Napoleon.
But I think:
Believing in the existence of Napoleon is just applying the normal rules of inference.
Similar to the evo-psych claims, only that’s there it’s not only the application of common sense rules of inference but also the rules of a scientific theory.
“That’s only because you said antibiotics resistance were a bodily adaption of the bacteria.
But that’s wrong, it’s the combined result of mutation and natural selection. I just said that because you were wrong.”
For a second time: Let’s look at the context you dropped! “Either it’s in BACTERIA, which, you know, divide about ever twenty minutes and therefore have a much faster evolutionary timescale, or if its in mammals, its not evolution but bodily adaptation. ”
bacteria are not mammals, sorry. I admit mammals do not usually have antibiotic resistance, and I was replacing ‘antibiotics’ with ‘narcotics’ instead. However, this doesn’t make the first part, “in BACTERIA, which, you know, divide about ever twenty minutes and therefore have a much faster evolutionary timescale” Which, being as it’s before the “or” is a different statement.
I have said this three times. You have misrepresented what I have said twice. This conversation is no longer worth continuing when you are arguing in bad faith. Good day.
Oh, Whoopi Goldberg’s bullshit distinction between rape and rape-rape is fucking bullshit. Ah! But so is everything else you believe. Just thought I’d let you know, Marc.
Rutee: I’m not saying I do not trust “social scientists” (though there is some psychology I am v. dubious about). Showing flaws in some of their work, and pointing out that their work does not meet the criteria for the lab sciences is not the same thing as not trusting them (though, really, I don’t think of academic evaluation in terms of trust). There’s good work and shit work and a lot of mediocre work in every discipline and every field
Yes, sociology especially has done some excellent work in the area of inequalities (though surprisingly enough they replicate those inequalities in their own profession!). Not surprising, but something to keep in mind–i.e. a lot of that work is being done by white men, and they bring their own ideologies to it.
Some very good work is done, but it’s a SOCIAL science, NOT a lab science. That was my only point–so going around saying “it’s science it’s TRUE” is a flawed position.
And I served for a number of years on my university’s IRB because of my internet research so am well aware of the type of research done in other departments.
But I still have a major distrust of psychology because so much of their work is done on such a small group (i.e. college students, who take the intro psyc course, and get extra credit for volunteering to be studied), and because of a lot of problems with their theories as well as methods.
And their policing of some sexualities as mental illness….
p.s. Rutee: A lot of the data on equality you mine and use is collated by sociologists
Actually, I do sociolinguist work, and while some of that data is collected by sociolinguists, a whole lot of my work on critical race analysis comes from humanities disciplines–I don’t do quantitative methodology (and my friends in sociology are pretty clear about how many US dept. in sociology are all for the quantitative and none for qualitative approaches), but I’m as likely to draw from work in literary and film studies and media studies and popular culture on the way cultural constructions operate–and from history. Sociology because of its quantitative focus just isn’t that useful for me, except on occasion to link to on the internet.
There’s been a lot of critical race work done in the academy in the last few decades–and not just in sociology.
Nobby: It gives, as Pecunium stated, “Just So Stories”. They look at the world, make a claim, and then say “Look at the world! It fits the claim, so it’s right!” That is begging the question.
Marc: I don’t see a problem with that approach.
Which is why you don’t understand science.
ithiliana: But I still have a major distrust of psychology because so much of their work is done on such a small group (i.e. college students, who take the intro psyc course, and get extra credit for volunteering to be studied), and because of a lot of problems with their theories as well as methods.
Having both read the papers, and participated in psych studies, I have some problems with a lot of them. Not the limited groups (which can be controlled for), but the questions.
I am a professional asker of questions. I am in a field which requires applied psychology to be any good at. There are good questions, and there are bad questions. I’ve see a huge number of bad questions in psych studies. Single questions that shaped answers (which then determined follow up questions), or questions which allowed for incomplete answers, which then shapes conclusions.
Multiple choice questions with gaps in options for answers, and repeat questions that didn’t really repeat.
A good psych study can find a lot of really good data, but a bad one leads to all sorts of garbage.
Pecunium: I am not very aware of applied psychology–but I’m struck with what you said here about your experience. And yes, there’s a range of good and bad in scholarship, every area. But I’m still not quite buying they can adjust for decades of research that pretty much excluded all sorts of populations who did not attend college, and for a few other issues relating to their position in the hegemony (but that is true of every single academic discipline–literary studies has its own racist past as well).
One of the slightly frustrating things about serving on IRB was we were not there to police badly designed scholarship, just the ethical elements of it — but wow, are there some badly designed studies out there.