Dinner with the vanguard

May 8th, 2018 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog
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Well this one sure has all the kids talking: Bari Weiss at the Times explaining the “intellectual dark web” and how courageously iconoclastic and awesome it is.

Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And we’re in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered “dark.”

I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo.

But would they have been considered simplistic, meaningless, a disguise for something less anodyne, pointless, in need of further explanation? Of course they would. No shit there are “fundamental biological differences between men and women,” but what’s your point? That women are more stupid or more suited to the helping professions than to tech? When you say identity politics is a toxic ideology, what the fuck are you talking about? Free speech is under siege how and where and in what sense and how much more than it ever has been?

Or to put it another way, how about fewer clichés and more precision?

What is the I.D.W. and who is a member of it? It’s hard to explain, which is both its beauty and its danger.

Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.

Sam Harris? I doubt that he’s “locked out of legacy outlets.” On the other hand Dave Rubin? Why should he feel welcomed to “legacy outlets” – they’re not public schools or libraries, open to all, they’re publications (I assume that’s what she means by that unattractive descriptor) that want good writers and thinkers as opposed to random people who just turn up brandishing an opinion.

The closest thing to a phone book for the I.D.W. is a sleek website that lists the dramatis personae of the network, including Mr. Harris; Mr. Weinstein and his brother and sister-in-law, the evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying; Jordan Peterson, the psychologist and best-selling author; the conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Douglas Murray; Maajid Nawaz, the former Islamist turned anti-extremist activist; and the feminists Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christina Hoff Sommers.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a former Islamist turned anti-extremist activist just as Maajid Nawaz is, and she’s more known for that than she is as a feminist. Sommers of course is not known as a feminist at all, but as a contemptuous critic of feminism.

The core members have little in common politically. Bret and Eric Weinstein and Ms. Heying were Bernie Sanders supporters. Mr. Harris was an outspoken Hillary voter. Ben Shapiro is an anti-Trump conservative.

But they all share three distinct qualities. First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness. Second, in an age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are, each is determined to resist parroting what’s politically convenient. And third, some have paid for this commitment by being purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought — and have found receptive audiences elsewhere.

Oops. She started by saying they all share three distinct qualities, then she says that one of those three is that some have paid for this commitment by being purged – if only some have been purged then they don’t all share that one, do they. Sharpen up. This is why the “legacy outlets” are so shut-outy.

“People are starved for controversial opinions,” said Joe Rogan, an MMA color commentator and comedian who hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the country. “And they are starved for an actual conversation.”

This is the “intellectual dark web”? Intellectual?

Offline and in the real world, members of the I.D.W. are often found speaking to one another in packed venues around the globe. In July, for example, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray and Mr. Harris will appear together at the O2 Arena in London.

Of course they will.

“I’ve been at this for 25 years now, having done all the MSM shows, including Oprah, Charlie Rose, ‘The Colbert Report,’ Larry King — you name it,” Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, told me. “The last couple of years I’ve shifted to doing shows hosted by Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Sam Harris and others. The I.D.W. is as powerful a media as any I’ve encountered.”

Mr. Shermer, a middle-aged science writer, now gets recognized on the street. On a recent bike ride in Santa Barbara, Calif., he passed a work crew and “the flag man stopped me and says: ‘Hey, you’re that skeptic guy, Shermer! I saw you on Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan!’” When he can’t watch the shows on YouTube, he listens to them as podcasts on the job. On breaks, he told Mr. Shermer, he takes notes.

Exciting!!!

And safer than getting women drunk and then “having sex” with them.

Editing to add: H/t Sackbut

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