I tend to lean on my education when discussing these topics (I have a Master of Sociology degree), but I’m also a minority with a lived experience on top of said education, so these topics always interest me. The issues of systemic racism and sexism - which are very real and long embedded in our institutions and history - are not uniform across all areas in life. The folly in believing that they are often leads to misplaced focus and wasting valuable resources on solutions, sometimes in search of a problem, with little ROI.
As a progressive, my worry is that the masses will tire of this over saturation of virtue signaling and stop supporting diversity and equity initiatives, which really are needed in many areas of life
Well put Zach. However, there is an even more worrisome possibility as a result of the continued encroachment of these twisted identity first versions of "diversity" initiatives though. This is the possibility that the masses will not only "stop supporting" initiatives to address actual oppression or anti-humanistic unfairness, but actively seek to destroy them in all their forms (not just the counterproductive Woke versions, but even the kind more aligned with actual civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King Jr). It is very likely that reciprocal radicalisation may occur and the pendulum will swing back the other direction. In fact, I think it has already been occurring for a long time. The failures of the proactive and prospective progressive left to manage the influence of its more extreme identity focussed edge has, in my opinion, massively empowered the further edges of the reactive and reflective conservative right. For example, the prolonged failure to honestly and openly explore the potential that our recent pandemic could have occurred due to a lab leak in Wuhan, because of a fear of being racist against Chinese people, was an easily weaponizable failure that could be used in against the progressive left and even against the endeavour of science as a whole.
No need to apologize for the length, always happy to read anything that is well-thought out.
I agree with much of what you said. I’m fact, I think a fair amount of the support Trump has gotten has been a reactive pushback to much of what you described (not a valid reason to support such a person but I digress).
As to the China origins of the virus and the left’s fear of sounding racist if they voiced any level of openness to the lab-leak idea - absolutely true in most cases - the way Trump was selling that idea WAS completely racist. Unfortunately, a lot of this problem has to do with a fear of providing sound bites to be used against them by other more liberal Democrats, and the sad reality that long answers to complicated issues don’t resonate in part to the 24-hour news cycle and disinterested and minimally informed voters
Actually, let's hope the science community forms an effective board on their own. Guys with newly found celebrity maybe, using their exposure to press home all the issues the general public seem to be misled on or have little interest in. Obviously that's what you all do separately, but a coalition that meets every so often to discuss (live on youtubeland) these issues, should have the same effect on a much larger scale. Because I'll tell ya, I've always been interested and not alone, but it's these past 5 or 6 years of your guys' fame rising to the point where at least millions more Americans know what the standard model of the universe is. A decade ago they would have been waiting for you to bust out a diorama, me included...
Nuclear winter, engineered pandemics, misaligned AI, runaway climate change, lower probability natural threats like space rocks etc, and who knows how many as of yet unknown existential threats are staring us in the face. But instead of employing the power of scientific truth seeking to focus on these risks, alongside trying to address the individual "meaning crisis" evident in suicide rates and addiction levels, we find ourselves caught up in these identity politics absurdities. It is not hard to imagine that we will end up destroying the future of humanity--through extinction, unrecoverable collapse, or locked in techno-tyranny--simply because we have allowed ourselves to be sidetracked by a small minority of dogmatic zealots who continue to impose their arrogant pseudo-religious worldview on the rest of society such that our error correcting social technologies like science and democracy no longer function adequately enough to avoid the icebergs.
That said, have you considered asking Prof Anna Krylov of USC onto the podcast Lawrence? As well as her 4 written pieces over the last year about the insidious creep of this Woke ideology into science, she did a brilliant episode on Sigma Nutrition here that might be of interest: https://sigmanutrition.com/episode425/ As a serious scientist and former subject of Soviet tyranny, her writing and perspective on this madness is of extreme importance.
I tend to lean on my education when discussing these topics (I have a Master of Sociology degree), but I’m also a minority with a lived experience on top of said education, so these topics always interest me. The issues of systemic racism and sexism - which are very real and long embedded in our institutions and history - are not uniform across all areas in life. The folly in believing that they are often leads to misplaced focus and wasting valuable resources on solutions, sometimes in search of a problem, with little ROI.
As a progressive, my worry is that the masses will tire of this over saturation of virtue signaling and stop supporting diversity and equity initiatives, which really are needed in many areas of life
Well put Zach. However, there is an even more worrisome possibility as a result of the continued encroachment of these twisted identity first versions of "diversity" initiatives though. This is the possibility that the masses will not only "stop supporting" initiatives to address actual oppression or anti-humanistic unfairness, but actively seek to destroy them in all their forms (not just the counterproductive Woke versions, but even the kind more aligned with actual civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King Jr). It is very likely that reciprocal radicalisation may occur and the pendulum will swing back the other direction. In fact, I think it has already been occurring for a long time. The failures of the proactive and prospective progressive left to manage the influence of its more extreme identity focussed edge has, in my opinion, massively empowered the further edges of the reactive and reflective conservative right. For example, the prolonged failure to honestly and openly explore the potential that our recent pandemic could have occurred due to a lab leak in Wuhan, because of a fear of being racist against Chinese people, was an easily weaponizable failure that could be used in against the progressive left and even against the endeavour of science as a whole.
(see Alina Chan of MIT on the resistance to lab origins due to fears of racism: “At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn’t want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins,” https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/559050-harvard-scientist-says-trump-hatred-motivated/ )
Sorry for the long reply Zach.
No need to apologize for the length, always happy to read anything that is well-thought out.
I agree with much of what you said. I’m fact, I think a fair amount of the support Trump has gotten has been a reactive pushback to much of what you described (not a valid reason to support such a person but I digress).
As to the China origins of the virus and the left’s fear of sounding racist if they voiced any level of openness to the lab-leak idea - absolutely true in most cases - the way Trump was selling that idea WAS completely racist. Unfortunately, a lot of this problem has to do with a fear of providing sound bites to be used against them by other more liberal Democrats, and the sad reality that long answers to complicated issues don’t resonate in part to the 24-hour news cycle and disinterested and minimally informed voters
Actually, let's hope the science community forms an effective board on their own. Guys with newly found celebrity maybe, using their exposure to press home all the issues the general public seem to be misled on or have little interest in. Obviously that's what you all do separately, but a coalition that meets every so often to discuss (live on youtubeland) these issues, should have the same effect on a much larger scale. Because I'll tell ya, I've always been interested and not alone, but it's these past 5 or 6 years of your guys' fame rising to the point where at least millions more Americans know what the standard model of the universe is. A decade ago they would have been waiting for you to bust out a diorama, me included...
Nuclear winter, engineered pandemics, misaligned AI, runaway climate change, lower probability natural threats like space rocks etc, and who knows how many as of yet unknown existential threats are staring us in the face. But instead of employing the power of scientific truth seeking to focus on these risks, alongside trying to address the individual "meaning crisis" evident in suicide rates and addiction levels, we find ourselves caught up in these identity politics absurdities. It is not hard to imagine that we will end up destroying the future of humanity--through extinction, unrecoverable collapse, or locked in techno-tyranny--simply because we have allowed ourselves to be sidetracked by a small minority of dogmatic zealots who continue to impose their arrogant pseudo-religious worldview on the rest of society such that our error correcting social technologies like science and democracy no longer function adequately enough to avoid the icebergs.
That said, have you considered asking Prof Anna Krylov of USC onto the podcast Lawrence? As well as her 4 written pieces over the last year about the insidious creep of this Woke ideology into science, she did a brilliant episode on Sigma Nutrition here that might be of interest: https://sigmanutrition.com/episode425/ As a serious scientist and former subject of Soviet tyranny, her writing and perspective on this madness is of extreme importance.