Garbage out
Dawkins this morning, a couple of hours ago.
Richard Dawkins@RichardDawkins
Obviously doesn’t apply to vast majority of feminists, among whom I count myself. But the minority are pernicious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecJUqhm2g08 …
https://youtu.be/ecJUqhm2g08
Meanwhile, Michael Nugent and his heinous commenters continue to defend this cesspool of a human being.
A couple of responses:
Lord Tracy King @tkingdoll 14 minutes ago
@RichardDawkins What the hell is wrong with you?
ben goldacre @bengoldacre 2 hours ago
@RichardDawkins you’re… you’re endorsing a video with the line “a whiny pair of little spastics”?
Christ. I know that this is just another instance demonstrating that Dawkins is not a good man, but it really haunts me. I think of the public platform he built for himself — with all due credit and respect for having built it — and then I think of how he really had a chance to leave an incredibly positive mark on society by using that platform well. Instead, he just keeps showing himself to be a small person who is using his large platform to create a larger, mean-spirited community of sycophants (see also: dipshits like Nugent) who support and cheer his every casual cruelty.
I can’t help but think of the Voltaire line, “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” Some are guiltier than others, apparently.
Oh I don’t think it’s just another; I think it’s in a league all of its own. It’s horrifying. I share Ben Goldacre’s horror and Tracy King’s, and that of many others I’ve been hearing from.
Good thing the video clearly distinguishes between the majority and the pernicious minority unambiguously. Good one, Dawk. ‘Social justice equals jihad’ just gained his endorsement. Fucking amazing.
I’m the world’s worst judge of character. So many people I’ve met and socialised with and liked, damnit have turned out to be horrible.
I admired Dawkins since I read The Selfish Gene sometime in the 70s. He was someone who was interested in the same sort of things I was! He explained an idea that a lot of people still don’t get in a genuinely beautiful way! Then Twitter happened.
I predict that Dawkins will spend all today on Twitter explaining why everyone who was outraged about his post can’t logic.
With all the qualifications in clinical psychiatry of a typical Monday morning quarterback, I guess my first inkling of his beginning dementia was when he blithely let the Dawkins foundation get ripped off for a million pounds, a number of years ago.
As the saying goes here: “Half mad and surrounded by bad advisors, I can only deplore the unfortunate end of Erik XIV”. (It’s a classical example from an old collection of school essay mistakes, Purre’s Stilblommor och grodor.)
Again, in the words of Tom Lehrer: “If a person can’t communicate, the very least they could do is to SHUT UP!”
@Rrr:
But he can communicate. It’s basically what he’s done since the 60s. The problem here is not that he can’t communicate his ideas, it’s that his ideas are horrible.
Well, I think part of the problem is also that he is unclear about what he is communicating. He “likes to think” he is being gracious and that people just don’t get his “sarcasm”.
Not so effective communication, to say the least.
Also, he has horrible ideas. And he refuses to be persuaded otherwise.
Fair enough, but let me put it this way: he seems to think that his perspective is self-evident and logical. That’s an extraordinary thing for a scientist to think but he demonstrates that attitude every day.
It’s not that he is ineffective at communicating his ideas, it’s that he refuses to listen to his critics. He doesn’t just like to think he’s gracious, it’s that he actually does think that. It’s not poor communication, it’s just basic being a shit.
Problem is, people keep inviting him to speak. A little bit like the Pope in a way?
Not that he needs much encouragement to spew his wits out. Au contraire.
It seems as though he sometimes gets to decide who else gets invited to speak, as well.