Comments on: Dangerous Ideas?

By: Polly

Polly — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:42:51 +0000

I applaud this post.
I hate how conversation about “sensitive” topics has a tendency to get shut down quickly, often running into the brick wall of political correctness. PC stifles intellect by arbitrarily demarcating and limiting the horizon of imaginative question-asking by deeming certain thoughts as “racist” or “bigoted” or “chauvenistic” or any other label.
We should be allowed to ask questions and demand answers. Only those who doubt the strength of their ideology hide behind PC.
It amounts to soft censorship.

My contributing outrageously eevil question: “Is post-mortem cannibalism more desirable, due to its greater resource efficiency, than burial or cremation? Or are the risks of disease transmission too great?”

By: Tim D.

Tim D. — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:35:12 +0000

All politics aside, some of these questions are very interesting. It’s good to see that, for whatever reason, they are being given a platform for examination.

You know, this whole idea reminds me of an earlier post I saw on this blog:

http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/07/10/can-we-have-government-without-faith/

Asking these kinds of questions may seem outrageous at times, but they will inevitably need to be addressed if people who stand for reason want to be taken seriously. Which isn’t really a problem, as most of them are easily addressed, anyway–but a select few people feel that some of the answers are obvious enough to warrant calling the questions “stupid.”

By: olvlzl, no ism, no ist

olvlzl, no ism, no ist — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:57:13 +0000

The crime rate in the 90s probably went down because Clinton wasn’t wedded to the conservative idea that keeping the unemployment rate high was a good way to suppress the demand for higher wages. It was a lot easier to find a job around here during his administration.

It’s interesting that the assumption is that women who had abortions were more likely to produce children who would be “prone to violence”. Where are the hard numbers from various sources that support the idea? Considering that the Bush Crime Family has produced more violence than just about any other family you could name it’s a pretty far fetched assumption for even the always sucking up to the establishment Pinker to have a part in. And people consider this kind of thing science.

By: Question Authority at The New Atheist

Question Authority at The New Atheist — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:02:54 +0000

[...] Friendly Atheist led me to an article by Reason Magazine about dangerous ideas. I was an econ major in school, and many of the questions actually come from economists, which I find really amusing as economists are (were) not well known for bringing up moral topics. A few that that come from economic arguments (or at least I’m pretty sure they are): Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence? [...]

By: Maria

Maria — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:42:53 +0000

sounds like an interesting book. I’ll be on the lookout

By: olvlzl, no ism, no ist

olvlzl, no ism, no ist — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:53:15 +0000

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?

Several points, in the case of the ability to imagine and rotate a figure in the imagination, which I believe is the only really documented aggregate difference between the gender groups tested, there is only a very small documented difference and there is the documented ability to improve the ability with training.

These kinds of studies are usually reported as some kind of average of each gender. Of course, the average isn’t a person, it’s a number which is in a sense an agreed upon myth. This mythical person doesn’t exist, the people studied did.

Pinker is an ass who has gotten by on celebrity, probably in part due to his hair sense. He is a prop for the establishment, a citation for those who want to suppress the rights and aspirations of women. I’ve heard and read other, less flashy, scientists in his area who think he’s pretty much fact free.