Hope had been expressed during the early part of this century that DNA testing might be used to identify individuals with exceptional athletic ability.
It is not only religious “zealots” who get obsessed about good and evil. All human beings do.
What is it about other people that bestows such joy, such comfort, such indispensable meaning on our lives?
We are effectively being told that, at this truth-seeking institution, it is inappropriate for us to utter certain indisputably true statements, because the value of truth is trumped by the emotional states of one or another demographic.
The activist group Extinction Rebellion is telling us that climate change represents “an unprecedented global emergency” and is calling for radical measures to deal with it.
Modern trans activists reframed transsexualism/transgenderism as a political problem rather than a clinical problem.
Government and policy would be better off if they were presided over and/or dictated by technical experts.
In recent years, psychologists and political scientists have identified several factors that influence conspiratorial thinking, such as political orientation, race and power (or the lack thereof). These are proximate causes of conspiracism.
The theory that science is based on evidence derives from a philosophy known as empiricism.
Feminist research into sex differences has typically concluded that the number of sex differences is small, and therefore unimportant, thus making the logical error that a small number of differences means those differences are inconsequential.
Day by day, as genetic science advances, it becomes ever clearer that all psychological traits are genetically influenced.
The last lesson of Gelernter’s piece is that while we shouldn’t judge someone’s arguments by their credentials alone, neither should we give unwarranted credence to those who have impressive credentials, particularly when they pronounce on a field in which they lack expertise.
Shouting someone down for speaking a thought in public effectively ends the critical discussion. There can be no further exploration of why the idea at issue is wrong, or what kernel of truth there may be therein.
The evidence that men are more violent and more criminal than women is overwhelming, and yet it doesn’t imply that all men are violent, deserve to be incarcerated, or are undeserving of our sympathy or compassion if they are imprisoned.
As chilling effects go, “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk going to jail” is not all that different from “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk losing my friends and my livelihood.”