Cultural Vs Physical Anthropology

Physical Anthropologist Robert Lynch over at The Laughing Ape" highlights some of the extreme deterioration of evidence-based scholarship in his field. We have heard stories like this, but it is interesting to see how some sectors are much worse than others. How Anthropology Lost Interest in the People it was Founded to Understand. 

 I was already used to the massive differences between the two wings of anthropology, and all the jargon (e.g. embodied subjectivity, intersectionality, structural violence, hegemonic knowledge production), but was still surprised when the cultural anthropology students went up one after the other and explained what they were going to find. Not what they were hoping to understand, or learn, or test, or discover, but what they were going to find. Here is an excerpt from a typical defense that was read1 to us called “Portside Synaesthetics: Sensing the Politics of Place”:

“Architectural models and projections in Marseille are experienced as uncanny, rather than as communicative… Based on the ethnographic evidence, I argue that there is progressive potential in taking seriously the impacts material ‘objects’ have on human ‘subjects.’”

 There were no questions. No hypotheses. No data to be collected, let alone analyzed. There were claims about arguments being “based on the ethnographic evidence,” but no evidence was ever cited. Conclusions were drawn from a series of assertions. It sounded like they were all already done and weren’t seeking to learn anything at all. I remember asking one why they were even bothering to go into the field at all.

This is not a political essay.  Most physical anthropologists are liberal as well.  The registration is 42:1 of Democrats to Republicans among anthropologists in general. 

Nicotine Works

Sebastian Jensen shows how a little nicotine really does boost IQ 3-8 points for a short period of time.

I believe it. The movie stereotype of the journalist who sits down at the typewriter and lights up was exactly my experience.  If I wanted to concentrate and think hard I pulled out an Old Gold. When I quit, the moments that I noticed the lack most were sitting at a computer and starting something difficult. My thinking just felt a little gummy and slow. Doctors and others would ask "Why do you smoke?" and I would point out that I loved smoking.  Smoking is a great drug delivery system, getting chemicals to the forebrain almost immediately. 

Of course, I also had sixteen other cigarettes every day even when I didn't need to think all that hard, and those were bad for my lungs. Detail, details.  It is very hard for schizophrenics to quit smoking because they already feel mentally slowed and/or disorganised. Being in hospital provokes a lot of extra anxiety, and feeling even more zombified than usual is tough to endure...especially if you think there's nothing wrong with you to begin with.

The Beauty of Settled Science

 Eliezer Yudkowsky made the case almost two decades ago. It was passed on to us by Scott Alexander at ACX. 

…and if you only care about scientific issues that are controversial, you will end up with a head stuffed full of garbage.

The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science is worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like “General Relativity still governing planetary orbits” or “Phlogiston theory remains false”? So, by the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. “Newsworthy” science is often based on the thinnest of evidence and wrong half the time—if it were not on the uttermost fringes of the scientific frontier, it would not be breaking news.

Scientific controversies are problems so difficult that even people who’ve spent years mastering the field can still fool themselves. That’s what makes for the heated arguments that attract all the media attention...

Don’t be embarrassed to read elementary science textbooks, either. If you want to pretend to be sophisticated, go find a play to sneer at. If you just want to have fun, remember that simplicity is at the core of scientific beauty...

A steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid.

I stand convicted. 

Links From 2015

I have discussed taking the Lord's Name in vain since 2007. In 2015 someone asked where I had gotten the idea and I couldn't remember.  Readers, especially Earl and Texan99 discovered that I had gotten it from CS Lewis, which makes entire sense. Everything I know about the faith I got from Lewis. Please Exercise Caution. 

I sent two books to Ben, both humorous. I tell people about How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read often. 

In Polls We Trust 

On Being Rich It's difficult for the rich to make their children work hard.

Henri reveals his ennui. 

Recent Links

 Were Successful Insertions in the SARS-CoV-2 Genome common enough... Way beyond my full understanding, but if you fight through by context you can see what he's driving at.

Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes 

David Foster on Germany: What Happened?

Turns out it's bad Karma to GoPro your rape spree   

Paper is your best play.  Unless your opponent knows that trick. 

Willkommen

 After I put up the intro from "The Producers," this one has been running through my mind ever since.

When the movie came out, I thought it unbelievable that people could be so base and depraved as to find this erotic. I have lived to see similar work come to American stages.

Sources

Christian lifestyle books are a combination of evangelical standards - take time to be with God, read Scripture, pray with discipline - and a buffet of pop psych ideas from 10 - 40 years ago.

Misandry

What are little boys made of?
Snips & snails & puppy dogs tails
And such are little boys made of.

What are little girls made of?
Sugar & spice & all things nice ^[
And such are little girls made of.

Robert Southey, early 1800s 

Third World

The term originated because the democratic world was the First World, the communist countries were the Second World, and the Third World was the poorer, nonaligned countries that had to navigate their way through this dangerous arrangement, playing one off the other as well as they could. It soon came to mean just technologically poor countries, and by the time the Iron Curtain collapsed, the original meaning collapsed for good as well. 

It might pay to recall the original framing, at least for purposes of understanding the resentment that comes our way, even from third-world nationals who have come here. We are puzzled that Islamists and leftists make common cause so easily, and this is at least part of the answer. The belief is that the First and Second Worlds fought over them and used them, leaving them nothing. They were victims of the great powers, which ruined them. Now that one of the worlds has collapsed, there is only the West left to blame. For many, victimhood and resentment are permanently installed. They don't just want a seat at the table, they don't just want to start making money, they want revenge. One can find this all over the Global South.

The first thing to notice is that it is not completely untrue. We have much to be ashamed of. We might feel the same in their shoes, and even in America there are groups that cling to the victimhood narrative. 

We read about people who came to see us differently, who had experiences which turned them around, but in general, those who grew up with this mentality keep it all their lives. Charts and graphs that show how much they benefited from contact, or illustrating it was their own leaders who took the money, or revealing how cultural attitudes prevented them from doing better often have no effect. There are cartoon images, movies, rumors, and myths that rule their minds. The Maya Angelou line is almost true: I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. The missing piece is that that won't forget how they did feel, but they will forget whether it was even 10% their own fault. They will forget everything but how they felt, and blame it on you.

It becomes an entire mindset of "if you succeeded and we didn't, you must have cheated." We believe that about sports teams, business competitors, and romantic rivals. Is it any wonder that people believe it of all billionaires, or the majority of the other sex, or political competitors, no matter how crazy that is in reality? Not to mention that it is sometimes true. 

This has resulted in one of the most bizarre inversions of my lifetime, that Israel must be oppressors because they have succeeded. Facts do not matter, only impressions, and the need to retain victimhood.  

Casting

Yuri Bezmenov. Jul 24
How To Subvert Subversion with Yuri Bezmenov

Sophie Cunningham should have been cast as Helen of Troy - the point that launched a thousand memes.