Gad Saad’s Homage to the Late Harvard Biologist EO Wilson

I've followed the works of E.O. Wilson for many years, starting with his book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), which I read as a teenager. His recent death is both a great loss and an opportunity to remember his substantial contributions to evolutionary biology.

Gad Saad offers this excellent homage to E.O. Wilson's work. One thing that stood out to me is Saad's coinage of the term "human reticence effect." Here is Saad's explanation of this critically important term (and phenomenon):

The human reticence effect: It's perfectly okay to apply evolutionary principles to explain one million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine species, but if you apply to study one species called humans, well then, you are Himmler and you're a nazi. And so E.O. Wilson, in daring to apply incredibly rigorous and profound evolutionary principles to explain incredible animal behavior, including some very puzzling animal behavior, once he used that framework to apply it to human behavior, then he was a persona non grata which, of course, is exactly what you see 45 years later with evolutionary psychologists. If you apply a principle to study the evolution of mating behavior of the salamander then bruh, you're a great scientist. If you apply the exact same mechanism the same methodology, the same epistemology, to study the evolution of human mating in humans, well then, come on bro that's just faux science. It's "nazi science" it's "pseudoscience." I have written about why people have these emotional and cognitive obstacles to accept the application of evolutionary principles to the study of human behavior in much of my scientific work.

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The “Race” Endgame

Sam Harris appeared on stage with Scott Galloway to discuss many topics, including "race." I am using these scare quotes because I do not recognize "race" to be a reality-based category, but only an extremely toxic temptation for both well-meaning people and power-seekers. I'm convinced that from Day One, recognition of "race" was always a bad idea and it continues to be a bad idea that needlessly tears people apart, often causing physical violence and sometimes causing death. The concept of race has the scientific validity and reliability of astrology--both concepts are gross miscategorizations, attempts to silo complex human beings (and all human beings are complex) on the basis of immutable irrelevant characteristics. The less credence we grant this concept, the better, in my view. Here's what Sam Harris had to say about his view of the best endgame for the concept of "race."

The goal has to be to get to a society where we care less and less about the superficial differences between people. It seems to me patently obvious that there can't be a matter of caring more and more about these differences. [There are] people who were actually living in a post-racial society in the sense that they weren't they did not care about the color of anyone's skin or anyone's sexual preference or gender identity. There were many people living truly ethical lives having broken out of this this truly toxic past with respect to those forms of bigotry. They're getting pushed back. They're being told by this corner of the culture “No no no! It's too soon to say that. It’s always going to be too soon to say that you're post-racial or blind with respect to these differences among people. These differences have to be ramified. They have to be acknowledged. You as a white person have no standing with which to say anything about race.” That's madness. It's absolute madness.

The goal for us ethically and intellectually has to be to arrive at a time where we don't care about these things no more than we care about hair color. Just imagine if we were coming from a time where people had been discriminated against based on hair color. That would be totally perverse.

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Speaking Truth to Hate

Abigail Schrier recently deliver an impassioned speech to various organizations at Princeton. Her speech included this quote: "You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down."

I invite you to read her entire presentation. I responded in the comments:

You've got me thinking, what will I do next time I'm asked to provide my "pronoun"? Perhaps I'll say something like: "To do that would suggest that hundreds of years of biological science got it wrong in fundamental ways. Instead, you are free to assume which one of the two sexes I am." Thank you for your heartfelt essay/speech. Your money quote: "You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down." I'm trying to do what you do on a much smaller scale--you take 1,000 times more abuse than me and you seem to be thriving. This seems to prove your statement that speaking the truth to those who hate you is freeing. You, along with a couple dozen other highly visible people who have given themselves permission to speak what they believe, have given me more courage to say "no" whenever the the SJW tribe demands that I confirm that up is down. Thank you for your hard work leading up to your book and ever since. BTW, I am a classical liberal without a political home, yet you speak for me and many others like me. Please don't overlook that. Yours is not a "conservative" position. It is a thoughtful position anchored in reality.

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NYT and WP Play Coy Regarding Sources for their COVID “Natural Origins” Cheerleading

The Biden Administration is rightfully looking into the COVID lab origin theory (even though it was seen as shameful to even ask this question in recent times). In the meantime, NYT and WP are now cheerleading for the "natural origin" theory based, in part, on the opinions of two thoroughly discredited infectious disease researchers. Follow the public evidence offered by Glenn Greenwald to see that Peter Daszak has a well-documented career-threatening conflict of interest (and history of deceit) and Robert Garry received a multi-million dollar NIAID research grant shortly before his 180 degree change of opinion. Glenn Greenwald's story is focused on the irresponsible reporting by the NYT and WP. Why would these newspapers fail to inform their readers that there are concrete reasons to distrust both of these two experts upon whom their recent stories rely? National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is the well funded agency directed by Anthony Fauci, who also has some explaining to do.

Greenwald's article is titled: "To Deny the "Lab Leak" COVID Theory, the NYT and WPost Use Dubious and Conflicted SourcesA bizarre and abrupt reversal by scientists regarding COVID's origins, along with clear conflicts of interest, create serious doubts about their integrity. Yet major news outlets keep relying on them."

Here is Daszak explaining his state of the art research back in 2017:

Here's another link to Daszak's video.

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