thought this was pretty genius..very stewart/colbert like
KilldaDJ
them 18% of americans are more stupid than average.
leph555
woscar
quote:
Aug 31, 2010 01:30 PM in Evolution | 24 comments
Evolutionary psycho-logy: Commandeering genetics to explain why Obama really is a Muslim
By Gary Stix
Okay, here's one for the annals, something that is going to make it even more difficult for evolutionary psychology to get the respect the field thinks it deserves.
A controversial academic from the London School of Economics has recently penned a blog post for Psychology Today called "If Barack Obama Is Christian, Michael Jackson Was White." Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist who gained attention (I'm not sure fame is the right word) for various outlandish claims, including the assertion that low intelligence is the basis for poverty and disease in places like Africa, drawing critics who suggested that he was trying to lend legitimacy to the faux science of eugenics. His blog, "The Scientific Fundamentalist: A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature," has recently featured entries on topics such as why men go through midlife crises. (Answer: "From an evolutionary psychological perspective, a man's midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife's imminent menopause and the end of her reproductive career…" Sic. No, very sic.)
Now Kanazawa has returned with another howler: the notion that religion is genetically determined and therefore (you guessed it) Obama, like his father, is really a Muslim. Wow. I guess he's trying to top his previous attention grabbers. Anyway, this one ranks up there.
Here's the logic (probably the wrong word): Muslims, as other religious groups, are made up of "endogamous" ethnic groups, which marry within the religion and then become genetically distinct from other groups over time. In this world view, genes are all, so Michael Jackson was still black even though he tried to alter his appearance. "No matter how white his skin was, underneath he was still just as black as the day he was born," wrote the blogger. So Barack Obama has "Muslim" genes from his father, although he declares himself to be a Christian. I told you logic may be the wrong word.
So let's let the man speak:
"Similarly, the fact that Barack Obama's father was a Muslim Kenyan, descended from a long line of Muslims, will remain true until the day he dies, and nothing he ever does in his life can change half of his genes that he inherited from his father. His genes are for keeps. The fact that he has attended Christian church for the past 20 years is not going to change that. Michael Jackson looked white much longer than Barack Obama sat in the pews of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church. Obama is still as (half) Muslim as the day he was born."
That quote deserves a replay to savor its outrageousness. So what about that other "half," for one? And do adherents of Islam in the West African country of Senegal have the same "Muslim" genes as the Uighurs in western China? That's just for starters. Maybe this is why evolutionary psychology often encounters such intractable public relations problems.
But Kanazawa's posting really did achieve its tacit goal of setting the blogosphere afire. Here are two of the best responses, including one from the Psychology Today blog site:
"I need more information to understand the claim that "Obama is still as (half) Muslim…" If religion is inherited through the Y-chromosome, he is fully Muslim; if it is inherited through the mitochondrial DNA, he is fully Christian; if the religious gene is located somewhere else, he has a 50-50 chance of being one or the other, and the premise of Satoshi's post is moot. Now, Satoshi knows all this. I therefore conclude that his post is meant to entertain, enrage, and befuddle. That's too bad because the primary purpose of these blogs is to help, advise, and educate. Am I wrong?" -Joachim Krueger, One Among Many (Psychology Today)
"Religion, unlike eye or hair color, is not something we've discovered as a genetic trait. There has been no discovery of a "religion gene." So while Kanazawa provides the analogy of Michael Jackson and his apparent attempts to become lighter-skinned, it is a false analogy. Skin color is encoded into our genetics. Religion is not. If it is, I would ask Kanazawa to point out the gene (or set of genes) religion is encoded on." -John M. Grohol, World of Psychology
Kanazawa will probably keep it up in the future. Good for some hoots. Bad for evolutionary psychology.
Originally posted by Lira
Hey, this is actually good!
What I took away from this:
Kevin is a nazi.
:)
Lira
You need to watch it again then :p
Joss Weatherby
quote:
Originally posted by Lira
You need to watch it again then :p
So we should tolerate nazis?
Lira
quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
So we should tolerate nazis?
It really depends on what you mean by "toleration" here. Should you condone ideas that promote segregation and (potentially) violence? No. Should you try to persuade anyone who holds these beliefs? Well, you should try to debate with everyone, and there's no reason why these fellows should be exempt from this. However, and this is the difficult bit, should you allow these ideas to flow freely? In this sense, yes, you do have to tolerate them in this sense, lest you become the creator of further divisions yourself.
Joss Weatherby
quote:
Originally posted by Lira
It really depends on what you mean by "toleration" here. Should you condone ideas that promote segregation and (potentially) violence? No. Should you try to persuade anyone who holds these beliefs? Well, you should try to debate with everyone, and there's no reason why these fellows should be exempt from this. However, and this is the difficult bit, should you allow these ideas to flow freely? In this sense, yes, you do have to tolerate them in this sense, lest you become the creator of further divisions yourself.
Mind isnt it.
EddieZilker
quote:
Originally posted by Lira
It really depends on what you mean by "toleration" here. Should you condone ideas that promote segregation and (potentially) violence? No. Should you try to persuade anyone who holds these beliefs? Well, you should try to debate with everyone, and there's no reason why these fellows should be exempt from this. However, and this is the difficult bit, should you allow these ideas to flow freely? In this sense, yes, you do have to tolerate them in this sense, lest you become the creator of further divisions yourself.
What I've noticed, in America, is that most of the radical ideas disseminated on the grassroots level have (perhaps I should say, had a very limited and mediocre dispersal. They have their admirers but their admirers are often so socially marginalized that there is little threat of the idea fomenting enough popular sentiment to become mainstream. Their very message is in competition with a number of other messages which either ignore or outright contravene them. But this is on the "grassroots" level.
A single person might find a small group of people who are willing to share his sentiments but, by the very nature of the psychology - the fundamentally flawed personality - requisite to hold and promote such beliefs, these causes are essentially doomed. Part of it is the fact that the ideas are too radical to begin with but a lot of it is that the people who hold these ideas are fundamental failures in their everyday lives. Sooner or later that failure, be it in their personal lives or professional livelihood; or both along with other areas of life, is exposed and recognized and as the failure is recognized, the future of his ideas is compromised.
What is instructive is to realize that the Nazis didn't start with balls to the wall anti-Semitism. In the beginning, they were very careful to present it with other ideas that people could readily grasp. In one speech early in his ascent, Hitler spoke about the internecine political landscape, indicating that it was so divided there was a political party representing nearly every profession in Germany. He wasn't discussing Judaism, at that point.
Over the course of time, however, the ideas started making their way into his speeches. At that point, he had a cult of personality; enough sound ideas enmeshed with popular sentiment and a common social narrative that he could begin carefully weaving his thoughts on the Jewish people into the milieu of an increasing Nazification. Even after his election and the Holocaust was in full swing, the totalitarian nature of the regime crept at a snails pace.
For Jews, still living in Germany, new terms, with which to refer to them, and rules, they were to live by, were introduced over a period of time. Curfews for them were introduced. Then their women were only allowed to go shopping for food unaccompanied by men. Then they weren't allowed to keep pets.
It didn't begin with some loan nut standing on a street corner uttering blather so ridiculous that common reason would hobble its wide dissemination. It began by someone who did make sense, at the time and who had significant social efficacy with his policies which, in turn, rewarded the wanton erosion of reason into a pathological state of blissful and willful ignorance if not blind obedience.
Notwithstanding the fact that the "What it Means to be an American" video (perhaps posted on an ironic note considering the political climate, today?), which I believe I've seen in grade-school, woefully under serves the historical context, the current situation in America didn't happen overnight but has a large part of its causality due to activists with access to main-stream media.
Lou Dobbs, who had his own show on CNN until recently, functioned to inform the debate over illegal immigration with fevered rhetoric and outright conjecture which has only caused more chaos. His ideas went largely unchallenged by anyone of substance and when 60 Minutes interviewed him, confronting him about claims that he made a specious allegation that immigrants were widely infected with tuberculosis, Lou brushed them off into a fluff piece, simply sticking to his guns and then arguing that it wasn't motivated by racism because his own wife is Hispanic.
To try and have a conversation, let alone a debate with someone, currently, means having both the time and ability to upturn years upon years of erroneous information underpinning most of their arguments. People's feelings on the issues, today, are so close to the surface that to deconstruct the mythology responsible for their opinions is akin to psychological bomb neutralization.
Cut the wrong wire and they explode and you'll never actually be too sure that you had a relevant impact other than to actually reinforce their already ossifying ideas.
