The Atheism+ Moment
Was Obama (or more likely one of his speech writers) throwing a dog whistle to young activist types as he praised the old heroes of the Civil Rights Movement? While I don’t mind my faction being pandered to, if that’s what it was, it’s a very safe / plausibly deniable way to do it, and that isn’t very impressive. Still, it’s nice to imagine he’d have our backs in the fight.
Tests for “intelligence” might have some positive utility in helping diagnose those who could use some special assistance in education. But those test results cannot be taken in isolation from the individual, or over-applied to think you’ve captured the sum-total of everything that intelligence is. There’s too much chaos in nature and the human brain is too complex to put this kind of reductive thinking on. I’ve known people who would bomb every standardized test of intelligence, but be far better than average at other kinds of mental activity.
What is “intelligence” even supposed to mean? It’s a word being used to describe a reality that goes beyond words. When you hear someone say their feelings are more than words can describe – and they don’t happen to be speaking in cliché at that moment – you don’t question that it’s true. So why do we assume the more archetypally Vulcan aspects of cognition can be reduced to words and numbers so easily?
Hell, even unthinking systems go beyond words. If you accept philosophical materialism (er, whatever that’s called), then you know atoms exist whether humans do or not. Gold was here before the first human word for it and will be here after humans are gone. And in the absence of humans and our ability to view reality reductively with measurements and verbal communication, what will it be? The same thing is is now: a physical thing which we can describe, but which has a substance greater than description.
So it is with human cognition. And to a lesser degree, parrot cognition. There’s no metric or even collection of metrics that captures the full scope of what a human brain is and what it can do, and with the constant nature of change, even if there was it would have lost accuracy within an hour of testing.
So I’m not convinced you can even say with authority that this or that person has greater intelligence. When you’ve gone however many years down the road and have vastly better systems than we do at present (assuming global warming doesn’t stall or destroy civilization), when you have the real deal most perfect way of comparing cognitive functions to say “Hey, this person’s brain is better than that person’s by all possible measures,” get back to me. And while you may have come up with a way to say who the best physicist is going to be, you still won’t have established that the less “intelligent” person deserves any less respect and esteem in life.
Take your IQ to mensa and smoke it, dogg.
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I am aware of the contradiction in making very hate-filled posts (“Hate for...”) decrying hate movements and hate sites. It’s the classic “being intolerant of intolerance” conundrum. But I make no pretense of being a very thoughtful or considerate kind of blogger, so it all stands. Enjoy.
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Atheism is not an intellectual achievement. Pass it on.
Or as Natalie Reed said in a very powerful essay, “...being able to answer that one question correctly, that one ridiculously obvious question, that never meant anything much in terms of one’s capacity to be a more rational, more intelligent, more moral, more perceptive, more insightful or better human being than anyone else. And I saw that confirmed over and over again in the awful, spiteful behaviours in that community, and beliefs adhered to with as much dogmatic fervor and irrational justification as any religious zealot. There were atheists who struck me as immensely more small-minded and cruel and self-absorbed and lacking in critical self-reflection as any of the theists I’d ever known, and in all honesty, as much as I found myself believing in the merit of atheist arguments, I found myself believing that had less and less to do with what makes someone a decent human being who I wanted much of anything to do with.” (Directly relevant parts bolded by me, the rest is definitely to be read as well.)
Organized atheism lost someone important in her, but as a whole, we deserved it. When I say “as a whole,” I mean both sides of the Deep Rifts 2.0 taken together – the progressive and the regressive. I don’t like being taken together, but I can’t blame outsiders for doing so. Two and a half years later, the hateful face of atheism is still the most visible. Thanks, motherfuckers.
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Let’s play a game called “Google a Feminist.” I believe in the Greater Chestwester area of Northcyberlund it is also known as “Object Lesson in Ways Google Fails its Most Well Known Motto” ...
The substance of this article was not archived. It is lost media.
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People like Ophelia Benson (EDIT from 2026: lol sigh), Rebecca Watson, Stephanie Svan, and (to a sexist-riffic degree less) PZ Myers have been familiar with this phenomenon, but it’s easy for an everyday shmoe to forget about it: When the internet’s hate sites are so bloated with screeching shit-flinging masturbating monkey men that they metastasize into the top google results for your name.
I made the mistake of google image searching Brianna Wu. That poor lady, holy crap. Lemme just take another moment to tell any and all hate site flunkies Fuck You, fuckboys. And to tell google that they are long overdue to include hate sites and images of violence in their “safe search” filter.
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First and foremost, fuck Kellogg’s the fuck off for their cowardly racist Annie-without-Annie commercial that ran for months after the movie came and went from theaters, and may still be on air AFAIK. Target and any and all corporations who saw the racist reaction to Annie, then decided to “play it safe” with ads that featured zero black people? Go to hell.
I noticed this phenomenon a long time ago – this post is very overdue – and it bothers me immensely whenever I’m reminded of it. I think about the doll test, I think about how open racism has gained a new life in the last several years as a direct response to Obama taking office. And I hate the world.
Commercials are pitifully unimaginative servants of the status quo, which sometimes is nice – like when the number of interracial couples increased dramatically a few years ago, reflecting a positive change in the mainstream. Most of the time, it’s wallowing in banal heteronormativity and reinforcing capitalist values. Easy to become inured to.
But some commercials rise above the din to be extra offensive. As I’m most prone to noticing class issues, let me give a shout out to this fucking piece of shit from Chevrolet (video unrecoverable) over here. “Can a truck change the way people feel about a guy?” It goes on to show focus groups of people saying good things about the man standing next to a 15 ton overcompensation engine. What would I say if I was in one of those focus groups?
That looks like someone who would call me a faggot when he sees me walking somewhere at night. That looks like someone who has more than one firearm, probably at least one in the vehicle. That looks like someone who gets drunk at football games and then drives home afterward. That looks like someone who would make excuses when the subject of spousal murder comes up. And that definitely looks like someone who is contributing to the extinction of the human species.
Do you think I’m stereotyping? Every example on the list is based on my experience of life. I’m not saying every truck owner is a fascist homophobic misogynist gun fondler. But enough of them are that owning a large truck is somewhat emblematic of those things. Sorry if you have one and aren’t. But to the people at Chevy encouraging violent masculine insecurity and status-seeking materialism? Eat shit.
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Johnboy Gregweiler
— February 24, 2015 at 8:56 pm
I just saw the cutest animated gif! It was a boot with a bunch of kittens inside. They were all struggling to get out, but were too sleepy and adorable to put in the proper effort. All striving paws and baby yawns. Aww!
Seriously fuck the game industry yo.
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One stand-up comedian’s take on some current bullshit.
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(Note: This article is written from the perspective of a white guy. Any “we” or “us” refers to white people. It’s certainly possible for members of other races to be racist, when they are in a position of privilege over another race. But here, I’m only going to discuss my position.)
An article by Heina about encountering racism in the kink community has rolled around the back of my mind for a bit. It occurred to me that the different flavors of racism encountered by people of color will vary with circumstance a lot. White people frustrated by economic travails will express the usual froth about crime, welfare, and immigration, and white people that are happy and having fun will be letting out something rather different.
Consider Heina’s situation, where a prominent member of a kink group was at an event she had helped organize to get sexual pleasure. The lady came for a good time – the meetup and everyone at it was there for her pleasure. She may have had progressive or anti-racist politics under normal circumstances, but when her own jollies were the primary consideration, people of color were not, and she forced an Orientalist fantasy on someone of Asian origin.
Then there are the parties. For years now we’ve been seeing images of and stories about white people participating in racist theme parties, from fraternities to politicians. In a similar vein, costumes. No doubt these things have been going on forever, but are only being seen now due to the prevalence of social media.
There are also toys – especially antiques and memorabilia – and other entertainment products that trade heavily on racism, and tourism often commodifies the people of “exotic” destinations. The mid-twentieth century in the USA brought a fad of Polynesian exploitation that is quite embarrassing, and who hasn’t heard someone going on about how the people in some place they visited were “simple and kind”?
What is it about having fun that brings this out of us? I’m guessing it’s that when we’re looking for a good time, we are going to seek what we’ve been sold. Our culture has sold white supremacy to us. Presently, overtly negative racism is still frowned upon by most mainstream media (probably because they’re financially conservative and aren’t convinced of the market for it yet), but positive racism is still gold. African Americans so zany and entertaining, Asians so orderly and uptight, etc.
The idea is that they are something other than the “default human,” and therefore exist only in relationship to whites. They’re the comic relief or wise friend, but they’re never you, as the viewer and consumer. And that makes them into objects. The same principle turns “man” fun into major sexist crap on the regular. White buyer beware. You don’t really want it to be like this, so don’t let it.
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