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E-Pluribus | November 8, 2022

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E-Pluribus | November 8, 2022

A new -ocracy: Cacophonocracy; science takes more fire from the left; "diversity" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.

Jeryl Bier
Nov 8, 2022
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E-Pluribus | November 8, 2022

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A round-up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

George Case: Cacophonocracy

While clearly there is no going back to a simpler, quieter, slower world, George Case writing at Quillette says that the noise of communication overload is not just an annoyance but has become an impediment to good and useful communication to accomplish worthwhile societal and political ends.

Much of what comes to us as news is just basically information about other information: not the proverbial five-W descriptions of “Man Bites Dog,” but “Government’s Dog-Bite Numbers Don’t Add Up, Says Our Expert”; or “One-Third of All Men Would Bite Dogs: Poll”; or “Dog-Biting By Men: Last Year’s Thing?”; or “Top Ten Reasons Everything You’ve Heard About the Dog-Biting-Men Narrative Is Wrong.” A lot of this falls under the category of so-called pearl-clutching, where opposing camps opportunistically profess shock and dismay over some petty affront committed by their adversaries. In other instances, though, it’s the news that does the pearl-clutching on the news readers’ behalf, digging up mites of indignation in order to keep us upset and logged on. Unlike Marshall McLuhan’s global village, the effect is of being in a global school yard or hair salon where a gaggle of bored troublemakers whisper dirt all day—Did you hear what she had the unmitigated gall to say to him? Can you believe what they said about it? Don’t listen to those big mouths, let me give you the real scoop! Wait till I tell you, you’ll simply die when you find out! “Demanding more than the world can give us,” Daniel Boorstin summed up in 1962, “we require that something be fabricated in order to make up for the world’s deficiency.”

Across 50 or 60 years, then, the recurring implication has been that advertising, style, show business, and raw sensation are not just commercial ephemera but as meaningful as new laws or scientific discoveries, and can be reported as such. The hard line between incoming bulletin and puff-piece has evaporated. Combine that with legacy media’s increasingly desperate rearguard defense of its own mission (“Democracy Dies In Darkness,” vows the Washington Post’s webpage slogan, over headlines like “On TikTok, Instant Fame Often Comes with a Price” and “9 Highly Anticipated Book Adaptations Are Coming to Big and Small Screens”) and the result has been termed the epistemic crisis, or a regime I’d label cacophonocracy: rule by discord.

Read it all.


Luana Maroja: An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science

The right (and particularly the religious right) often takes the brunt of the criticism for being “anti-science.” In recent years, however, even some on the left have acknowledge a growing penchant on their own side for subjugating science to social or cultural concerns. Writing at Bari Weiss’s Common Sense, evolutionary biologist Luana Maroja gives an insider’s perspective on this growing threat.

The restriction of academic freedom comes in two forms: what we teach and what we research.

Let’s start with teaching. I need to emphasize that this is not hypothetical. The censorious, fearful climate is already affecting the content of what we teach.

One of the most fundamental rules of biology from plants to humans is that the sexes are defined by the size of their gametes—that is, their reproductive cells. Large gametes occur in females; small gametes in males. In humans, an egg is 10 million times bigger than a sperm. There is zero overlap. It is a full binary. 

But in some biology 101 classes, teachers are telling students that sexes—not gender, sex—are on a continuum. At least one college I know teaches with the “gender unicorn” and informs students that it is bigoted to think that humans come in two distinct and discrete sexes. 

[ . . . ]

Let’s move on to the stifling of research. Some grants focus almost exclusively on identity, as federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, now offer a surplus of grants with the purpose of “broadening the participation of members of groups that are . . . currently underrepresented”—instead of funding research to answer scientific questions.

But the field that is most directly affected is research related to humans, especially those dealing with evolution of populations.

Read the whole thing.


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Diane Yap: The Educational Benefits of “Diversity”

Cases before the Supreme Court have put the spotlight on affirmative action in general and at Harvard in particular. At City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s Diane Yap examines Harvard’s policies and concludes that what passes for seeking “diversity” at the Ivy League giant is nothing short of “racial balancing.”

It’s worth examining the meaning of the word “diversity” in the context of college admissions. My Manhattan Institute colleague Renu Mukherjee has shown that at Harvard, little viewpoint diversity exists—the very type of diversity that has been shown to enable creative problem-solving, among other benefits. In fact, as Mukherjee noted, fewer than half of Harvard students polled felt comfortable expressing dissenting views during class.

At highly selective colleges, achieving diversity in practice often means enforcing an artificial cap on Asian enrollment in favor of admitting less-qualified applicants of “underrepresented” races. Admissions officials do this by giving eye-popping advantages to applicants just for being born as one of the favored races in an increasingly unpopular and legally contested policy known as affirmative action. In his expert witness testimony against Harvard, economist Peter Arcidiacono estimated that an Asian male with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 95 percent chance if he could just check the “African-American” box instead. Nothing else about him would have to change to receive these dramatically improved odds. This type of disparate treatment based on race is all too common in elite college admissions.

One can find little evidence for the educational benefits of diversity that isn’t based on self-reported attitudes.

Read it all here.

Around Twitter

What’s scarier than Michael Jackson’s Thriller? How about the phrase “cultural appropriation investigation”?

Twitter avatar for @TheFIREorg
FIRE @TheFIREorg
Hey, @WashburnUniv, what’s there to investigate? The First Amendment protects students’ and faculty members’ choice of Halloween costumes. /1
washburnreview.orgNew details in ongoing cultural appropriation investigation revealedThe Washburn Review received the attached video and photo following the publication of this article. Holly O’Neil, associate professor of chemistry and interim assistant dean of the College of Arts...
9:26 PM ∙ Nov 7, 2022
19Likes3Retweets
Twitter avatar for @TheFIREorg
FIRE @TheFIREorg
If the professor is facing investigation solely for dressing as Michael Jackson and dancing to ‘Thriller’ at a Halloween party — even if she inadvertently wore blackface (“a poor effort to look like a zombie,” she said) — Washburn is violating the First Amendment. /2
Michael Jackson Halloween GIF by Vevo
9:26 PM ∙ Nov 7, 2022
5Likes1Retweet

A short thread from the Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium on a new innovation - financial deals with banks to improve “diversity”:

Twitter avatar for @aaronsibarium
Aaron Sibarium @aaronsibarium
SCOOP: Amid an uptick in race-conscious policies throughout corporate America, many prominent businesses are now writing racial and gender quotas into their credit agreements with banks, tying the cost of borrowing to the companies’ workforce diversity.🧵 freebeacon.com/latest-news/ho…
freebeacon.comHow Business Giants Get Lower Interest Rates for Meeting Diversity Quotas - Washington Free BeaconAmid an uptick in race-conscious hiring programs throughout corporate America, many prominent businesses are now writing racial and gender quotas into their credit agreements with banks, tying the cost of borrowing to the companies’ workforce diversity, a Washington Free Beacon analysis found.
3:14 PM ∙ Nov 7, 2022
1,704Likes695Retweets
Twitter avatar for @aaronsibarium
Aaron Sibarium @aaronsibarium
Over the past two years, each of those companies has secured a lending agreement, known as a credit facility, that links the interest rate charged by banks to the company’s internal diversity targets, creating a financial incentive to meet them.
3:14 PM ∙ Nov 7, 2022
122Likes13Retweets
Twitter avatar for @aaronsibarium
Aaron Sibarium @aaronsibarium
If the business achieves its targets, it won’t have to pay as much interest on the loans it takes out; if it falls short, it has to pay more.
3:14 PM ∙ Nov 7, 2022
103Likes6Retweets

And finally, on this election day, a reminder from David French about defamation - “free speech” isn’t a free pass:

Twitter avatar for @DavidAFrench
David French @DavidAFrench
One of the worst of (many) terrible elements of election conspiracies was the avalanche of defamation directed at innocent, private individuals, including election workers. This is a good piece--a reminder that defamation isn't protected speech.
Twitter avatar for @BulwarkOnline
The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline
Conspiracists Beware: Post-Election Lies Could Land You in Legal Hot Water https://t.co/GOSODmFOLZ
9:59 PM ∙ Nov 7, 2022
957Likes260Retweets
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E-Pluribus | November 8, 2022

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E-Pluribus | November 8, 2022

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Marla Hughes
Nov 9, 2022

IMO coloring someone's skin to match a specific person they're emulating isn't "blackface" and should be considered a compliment if intended that way.

Man, she can dance....

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