Michael Huemer’s Progressive Myths is the best book on wokeness. One of its many strengths is its focus on basic facts. As the author explains:I have selected beliefs that can be debunked fairly quickly and forcefully. Many other progressive beliefs require long argumentation and subjective judgment calls to assess. About these more difficult issues, I…
CBC News is reporting that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ordered the small town of Emo to pay damages after failing to hoist an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag” in celebration of Pride Month. One problem is that the town of fewer than 2000 inhabitants does not have a flagpole (though you could presumably “show the […]
It is no surprise that the Government is reducing the number of public health staff members, when they are spending their time on opposing resource consent applications for a McDonalds in Wanaka, rather than oh preventing the current whooping cough epidemic. Around half the public health staff (those who deal with infectious diseases) do amazing […]
A group of economists have written to Nicola Willis complaining about the modest fiscal restraint imposed on the public sector. Grant Robertson grew government expenditure by $76 billion/year or a massive 7.6% of GDP, leaving NZ with a structural deficit. Many were champions of his policies or worked for him, and now they complain his […]
At the CSICon meetings in Las Vegas this November, I gave a half-hour talk on the two aspects of evolutionary biology that have been most deeply misrepresented by ideologues: sex and race. “Progressives” maintain that sex is not binary but a spectrum, and also that “race and ethnicity are social constructs, without scientific or biological […]
If you are not yet a fan of Michael Huemer, you should be. Hyperbole is the worst thing in the universe, but I still affirm the following: Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority is the best book on political philosophy. Huemer’s Ethical Intuitionism is the best book on meta-ethics. Huemer’s Knowledge, Reality, and Value is…
The Centrist reports – In a Q&A interview with Jack Tame, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer acknowledged Māori have separate rights under Te Tiriti o Waitangi as tangata whenua. When pressed on whether this meant different standards of citizenship, she said, “We have different expectations and different rights, absolutely.”
This new course, to be offered next spring at MIT, was first singled out on The Babbling Beaver site, which calls attention to “fake news” at the university that usually turns out, as in this case, to be real news. The Beaver said this about the course. Feminist theory, disability justice, critical race theory, queer […]
The Australian Green party has proposed cancelling all student debt in Australia, as part of an aim for government to provide “free education for life”. However, free education is not free. In an article in The Conversation earlier this month, Bruce Chapman (Australian National University) makes a case against the claim that cancelling student debt…
My dear friend and colleague Dan Klein wrote this. He loves feedback, so please share your thoughts in the comments. And he’d especially appreciate reactions from friends Shikha Dalmia and Nils Karlson, which I’d definitely be glad to run.P.S. Dan asked me to link to the latest Milei news.I define popuphobe as someone who propagates…
The good news is that the Washington Post, defying the inevitable cries that the paper is “transphobic”, is calling for a “respectful debate on trans women in sports”. This is, of course, because of the increasing number of biological men who identify as women (I prefer that jawbreaker to “trans women” because the latter plays […]
Bob Edlin writes – Associate Justice Minister David Seymour “refused” Morning Report’s invitation to be interviewed on RNZ’s Morning Report, the day after the Treaty Principles Bill he is promoting had passed its first reading in Parliament after “a fiery debate and vote”. No matter. There were plenty of other people all too eager to […]
I’m actually surprised that the article below was published in The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS), one of the more high-quality science journals, just a tad below Science and Nature in prestige. It has had a reputation for being “progressive” (e.g., woke), one that I discussed last year when Steve Pinker had […]
With Kemi Badenoch taking over the leadership of Tories in the UK, newspapers have been replete with how this represents a radical turn to the right. Similar headlines appeared when Labour was booted from power in New Zealand. There was a time when I would have thought: “Shame. Why can’t these people not be more…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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