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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2013 : 10:22:05 [Permalink]
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| We sure do a lot of cross posting. :P |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
 Posted - 02/14/2013 : 10:22:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
The core is science advocacy. |
Which is a moral issue, and not a conclusion from any scientifically skeptical investigation or test.| Scientific advocacy is not a fringe claim. It’s not even a claim! |
It certainly is. Two of them are implied, actually:
1) Science is a good thing, and
2) Acceptance of science by more people would be a good thing.
If neither of those is thought to be true, why advocate?Why? There are other movements that do science advocacy. I thought that our core mission was something unique.| We don’t have to become another arm of their movement... |
Can you name anyone who claims otherwise? |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2013 : 10:23:46 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
We sure do a lot of cross posting. :P |
I'll be stopping for the day, soon.
Um, now actually. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2013 : 13:12:26 [Permalink]
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Dave:
Which is a moral issue, and not a conclusion from any scientifically skeptical investigation or test. |
Perhaps, but science is our issue.
Dave:
1) Science is a good thing, and
2) Acceptance of science by more people would be a good thing.
If neither of those is thought to be true, why advocate? |
So we should advocate for all the things we think are true? There are a lot of them.
And maybe the ACLU should expand its scope beyond the constitution, and especially the first amendment. And maybe feminists should be advocating for science. What's up with that? Global warming is bad for feminists too!
I am assuming you have no problem with science advocacy.
Dave:
Why? There are other movements that do science advocacy. I thought that our core mission was something unique. |
It is unique because of the approach we take. And you know it. Must we really get bogged down with your nitpicking every word and phrase I write, and did you really not know what I was getting at? It might be effective as a debate tactic but it’s tedious and it wastes our time.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/16/2013 : 07:03:47 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
So we should advocate for all the things we think are true? |
We certainly shouldn't oppose advocacy for them within our own movement. You say we need to clean up our act, but much more prominent skeptics than you have publicly opposed harassment policies at skeptical conventions with arguments riddled with logical fallacies and misrepresentations.
Hell, merely saying that we should clean up our act is advocacy. I don't understand why you're opposed to the movement embracing such advocacy while you engage in it yourself for the movement.| And maybe the ACLU should expand its scope beyond the constitution, and especially the first amendment. And maybe feminists should be advocating for science. What's up with that? Global warming is bad for feminists too! |
If the ACLU were hosting talks from and publishing papers by global warming deniers, and defending them with ridiculous arguments, I'd consider the group's credibility to be very much damaged.
Look at the latest dreck from Benjamin Radford. It's a good thing the Center for Inquiry has a bunch of other high-level people speaking out against the anti-feminists. Radford is merely tarnishing their reputation, and not destroying it. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/16/2013 : 10:12:48 [Permalink]
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| Dave:We certainly shouldn't oppose advocacy for them within our own movement. You say we need to clean up our act, but much more prominent skeptics than you have publicly opposed harassment policies at skeptical conventions with arguments riddled with logical fallacies and misrepresentations. |
Who? I know you can’t be speaking about DJ. There most certainly was a harassment policy at TAM. The policy itself can be questioned, and probably should be, but I know that DJ’s intention was to make TAM as safe as possible for women.
Dave:
Hell, merely saying that we should clean up our actis advocacy. |
Yes. It is advocacy within the movement. Granted.
Dave:
I don't understand why you're opposed to the movement embracing such advocacy while you engage in it yourself for the movement. |
In the broader sense, I have already explained why I think that. But I also said (and I’m paraphrasing) that if you find pseudo-scientific testable claims related to feminism that you feel are consistent with how we apply skepticism that needs to be challenged, go for it.
Dave:
If the ACLU were hosting talks from and publishing papers by global warming deniers, and defending them with ridiculous arguments, I'd consider the group's credibility to be very much damaged. |
Yes. We would be all over them. I agree.
As for Radfords article, I’m somewhat mystified. I take his points about getting the facts straight, whatever they are, but demonstrations have always been a part of any movement’s canon. Hell… A group of skeptics demonstrated in front of a Sylvia Browne “show” at a hotel in Vegas. The Rally in Washington for Atheism included people like Randi and other high profile skeptics. (Many of us wear more than one hat.) I absolutely don’t agree with Radford on that. Demonstrations serve a purpose.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
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Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/16/2013 : 15:51:37 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Who? |
Russell Blackford, calling the policies under discussion "Talibanesque codes of conduct," for one example.| I know you can’t be speaking about DJ. There most certainly was a harassment policy at TAM. The policy itself can be questioned, and probably should be, but I know that DJ’s intention was to make TAM as safe as possible for women. |
No, I wasn't thinking of DJ at all. I said "publicly opposed," not "ignored questions about."| As for Radfords article, I’m somewhat mystified. I take his points about getting the facts straight, whatever they are... |
The irony in lecturing about getting one's facts straight while erecting and burning straw feminists is apparently lost on Radford. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/16/2013 : 19:20:36 [Permalink]
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Dave:
Russell Blackford, calling the policies under discussion "Talibanesque codes of conduct," for one example. |
I don't even know who he is. So how prominent can he be? I looked him up. I see that he is a writer and a blogger, but he seems to be way more involved in the atheist community than he is in the skeptical community. I see that we have some mutual friends, but that doesn't mean much because a lot of people accept anyone who asks. I used to, but I don't anymore. I've been culling the herd when I see a post that really offends me.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2013 : 07:32:17 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
I don't even know who he is. So how prominent can he be? I looked him up. I see that he is a writer and a blogger, but he seems to be way more involved in the atheist community than he is in the skeptical community. |
As if there's no overlap. PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Jen McCreight, Sean Faircloth and Hemant Mehta all spoke at TAM 2011, along with Justin Trottier, the founder of CfI Canada, who seems to have used his position in that group for some "Men's Rights" advocacy. My point wasn't specifically about harassment policies, of course, but that it's easy to find anti-feminist advocacy from big names (even if you'd never heard of him) in the skeptic movement. It was just one example. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2013 : 09:04:11 [Permalink]
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Dave:
As if there's no overlap. |
There is overlap, of course. Thing is, whether this person, Russell Blackford, doesn't think there should be harassment policies at skeptical and atheist events doesn't mean so much because the people on top think there should be. And there is. So we should expand our scope because some people are dumbshits or sexist? I don't see how that follows.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2013 : 18:17:56 [Permalink]
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Dumbshits and sexists within a movement devoted to scientific rationality and protecting others from harm? If our scope needs to be expanded in order to deal with them, then damn straight we need to do so.
Is the PR damage that Radford does to CfI balanced out by his cryptozoology and ghost-buster-busting? How many women are going to say, "well, the actual skepticism that Radford provides is far more important to me than his vile, biased, unskeptical dismissals of feminists"? |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2013 : 10:23:14 [Permalink]
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Radford didn't didn't dismiss feminists. He opined that protests do no good and facts should be facts. While I don't agree with his take, I think calling what he wrote "vile" is like calling him anti-feminist. He gets to be wrong, but he doesn't get to be labeled as "anti-feminist."
One of the problems with this debate, and Radford can be excused from engaging in it, is there is too much hyperbole coming from both sides.
And yeah. Radford in involved in far more than cryptozoology and ghost hunting. Expressing an opinion that I don't agree with doesn't make him a vile anti-feminist. And that's one of the problems that has been leveled at FtB. If you don't agree, you are anti feminist and labeled as such. Perhaps in some cases they are correct. But I would probably be labeled as anti-feminist because of my position on scope. But calling me anti-feminist couldn't be further from the truth. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2013 : 16:38:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Radford didn't didn't dismiss feminists. |
Yes, he did. He created an insulting straw feminist and attacked it in order to dismiss feminists actual ideas. It was a vile, anti-feminist thing to do.| He opined that protests do no good and facts should be facts. |
He did much more than that.| While I don't agree with his take, I think calling what he wrote "vile" is like calling him anti-feminist. He gets to be wrong, but he doesn't get to be labeled as "anti-feminist." |
He gets to be both, actually, when he's insulting feminists for no good reason.| One of the problems with this debate, and Radford can be excused from engaging in it, is there is too much hyperbole coming from both sides. |
Radford can't be excused from something that he did.| And yeah. Radford in involved in far more than cryptozoology and ghost hunting. Expressing an opinion that I don't agree with doesn't make him a vile anti-feminist. |
No, what makes him a vile anti-feminist is his vile anti-feminist writing.| And that's one of the problems that has been leveled at FtB. If you don't agree, you are anti feminist and labeled as such. |
No, you've fallen for the anti-FtB rhetoric. Plenty of people disagree with FtB writers all the time, without being labeled as anything but wrong. It's when they are more than wrong that they get other labels attached.| But I would probably be labeled as anti-feminist because of my position on scope. |
Speculative and unenlightening of anything. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2013 : 17:05:51 [Permalink]
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By the way, the idea that people are being labeled as awful things for mere disagreement is the sort of hyperbole you're also complaining about, Kil. So if there's too much of that coming from "both sides," then you're part of the problem.
The "both sides" thing needs to stop, also. "Both sides" of what, exactly? Aside from a few straw people here and there, the actual debate over scope has been nothing but civil. On the other hand, the "debate" over whether women are fully human has a bunch of douchenozzles on one "side," and normal people on the other. (I put "debate" in quotes because there is no debate to be had, on that subject.) There's a lot of overlap amongst the actors in these two struggles, so don't mistake someone hurling insults at Thunderf00t (for example) for that same person spewing hate at Daniel Loxton's ideas. That isn't happening. |
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Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2013 : 22:15:48 [Permalink]
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Well, PZ Myers put up a post criticizing Radford's dreck, titled You don’t get to be “over” rape. (It seems that PZ and I shared a confusion over what Ensler meant by being "over" rape - mine since rectified - but that's irrelevant.)
Radford, it appears, has responded to only the title of PZ's criticism, and not any of the substance of it. It's a completely off-base response, since in no way did PZ "criticize an anti-rape poem," but instead criticized Radford's "hyperskepticism" (PZ points out that Radford's claim that Ensler's statistics are misrepresented is itself a misrepresentation in order to dismiss the core facts).
In the comments at CfI (note, the comments are at CFI, not FtB), it appears that none of Radford's supporters actually read PZ's post, either, they just dogpile against PZ (and FtB and feminists in general) with rather uncivil nonsense.
Amusingly, Radford had originally attributed PZ's post to Melody Hensley (Executive Director of CFI–Washington - essentially a coworker!!) and so his supporters were crapping on her instead, and despite several corrections in the comments, continued to do so. Radford at some point corrected his mistake, but made no mention of the edit at all. Guaranteed that six months from now, we will still be hearing "Melody Hensley criticized a famous feminist activist's poem" from alleged "skeptics," much like we hear "Ophelia Benson compared TAM to Nazi Germany." It's a great way to tell who the douchenozzles are who can't be bothered with facts while trying to advance their anti-feminist agenda(s).
And, of course, I shouldn't have to point out the irony of getting such a simple and easy-to-check fact wrong when Radford's original piece was about making sure one used the correct facts in their arguments.
Oh, I was going to say that Radford had doubled-down on his original sentiments, but he really hasn't. He's so completely off in the weeds that it'd be unfair to criticize it as such. Some of his commenters seem to think that this odd little note against PZ is equivalent to a defense of his first piece, but it isn't because it's so totally off-target. If anything, this second blog is a defense of Eve Ensler against a giant straw PZ (and the pitchfork-wielding citizens are on the march). But Ensler probably doesn't give shit and the real PZ is probably going to mock the ridiculous mess that Radford has created.
(By the way, it seems that Radford is no stranger to the use of quote mining and cherry picking in support of his arguments. Doesn't this kind of crap throw all of his research conclusions into question?) |
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Why is There a Skeptical Movement?
