Gene Expression: more elitism and eugenics
Gene Expression is linked on the Steve Sailer website. Sailer is a conservative who runs a eugenics think tank called the Human Biodiversity Institute. This group has been instrumental in the promotion and dissemination of, among other things, academic racism, sexism, and heterosexism under a facade of science. As sociologists have noted (Mackenzie et al), eugenics is an ideology associated with the emergence of the professional middle class that stakes its claim to expertise on science.
Although all of these ways of thinking need to be challenged, this investigation only covers people connected with Steve Sailer who are involved with J. Michael Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen. This instant classic of transphobia has been the subject of intensive investigations since its publication. Eventually, every avenue leads us to eugenics.
Which brings us to these two. Newamul K. Khan (Razib) and “Godless” run a blog where they display their quaint bourgeois sensibilities about science and genetics and what-not. Their connection to this debate on gender variance is tangential, and I hope this page describes both the start and the end of it.
Until he reads this page, “Godless” has been laboring under the delusion he is anonymous on his little Gene Expression website. One of my research assistants took a break from getting the scoop on J. Michael Bailey to do a quick topline on “Godless.” If it were only so easy to disabuse him of his ideological delusions.
Anyway, “Godless” decided to take a swipe at world-renowned electrical engineering Professor Lynn Conway for investigating this eugenics think tank, by saying “‘she’ is a ‘he'” and making fun of her appearance. One of my research assistants captured Google’s archive of a 26 October 2003 entry by “Godless” before he thought better of it and pulled it.
Though this is a minor footnote in all this, those who are extremely thorough can read about Godless here.
Gene Expression: more proof evolutionary psychology = bigotry
Here’s another typcial blog entry from a bigot laboring under the delusions of evolutionary psychology.
Razib (aka Newamul K. Khan, U. of Oregon biochemistry class of ’00) and some temporarily anonymous internet coward named “Godless Capitalist” run a blog where they display their quaint bourgeois sensibilities about science and what-not.
One of my research assistants captured Google’s archive of a 26 October 2003 entry before someone thought better of it and pulled it.
Godless writes:NKVD tactics
For those of you who feel that I’m too paranoid about anonymity, or who believe that I’m somehow exaggerating the danger to my academic career by even posting here…you need to read this post.
Xsteve recently linked an investigative reporter’s excavation of the membership of an e-group list to which a number of people interested in behavioral genetics belong to:Beginning in the summer of 2003, our investigators began sending us information about these “HBDG” people, their connections with Bailey, their support of his work, and their coming to his defense as his work and reputation began unraveling….
Over time we hope to fill in even more details about Bailey’s supportive network, and thus better answer such questions as “Why did he do it?” Why did he do it the way he did? What could he have been thinking? Who inspired him to think that way? Who supported the publication of his book by the National Academy Press, and defended it within Academy circles? We’d also like to further reveal how his small circle of supporters tried to defend him, desperately trying to make their defense look in the media like a larger “mainstream” defense by “unaffiliated people” (when in fact it’s been easy to link them all together, and show that only Bailey’s original supporters have come to his defense…mostly from among his key HBDG friends).
To return to our main topic – in the best tradition of the Spanish Inquisition, we are probably going to see an extensive smear campaign directed against Michael Bailey and all other non pseudonymous members of the list, including Steven Pinker. The people who’re running this particular investigation are mainly transsexuals (and are thus politically marginal), but the far larger group of “antiracists” who want to use Nazi smears on guys like Pinker[1] will love the fact that Pinker is on the same list as “the devil himself”, Charles Murray. Bet on it – the HBDG will be used like the Pioneer Fund to smear people with guilt-by-association.
Update:
The plot thickens. The person doing the investigating is Lynn Conway. Now, anyone who’s ever taken a class on VLSI design has heard of Conway – along with Carver Mead, she wrote the seminal text on the subject back in 1978, “Introduction to VLSI Design”.
Thing is, “she” is really a “he”. Seems like investigative reporters tracked down the fact that she was a man in her early career and exposed her. Which makes one wonder why she’d want to invade the privacy of others…
Bonus laugh
This picture is from Conway’s website.
Standing next to Conway is Brent Scowcroft, realpolitiker extraordinaire and mastermind of the first Gulf War. Somehow, I doubt ol’ Brent would have had that smile on his face if he’d realized that Conway was a transsexual 🙂
Showing class this loser will never attain, Lynn Conway writes:
Thanks!
That’s pretty cool. Looks like we’re really getting to them!
BTW, one of the best antidotes to the old-time “scientific racism theories” such as Shockley’s work, The Bell Curve, Rushton’s work, etc., is the outstanding book titled “The Mismeasurement of Man”, by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould.
Here’s a good bio of Gould that I highly recommend that you read. It provides a good intro to his critiques of the evol-pysch movement:
http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/gould/I knew Gould pretty well, having served with him on a number of Academy committees. He was a great scientist, who unfortunately died prematurely in 2001. If he were around now, he would have been the first person I would have called to our defense…
Stephen was very highly respected in academe, and his conflict with the scientfic racists still echoes there. He jumped on “The Bell Curve” kinda like we’ve been going after Bailey – as being a bunch of non-science wrapped in what looked like a scientific package, and which could cause a lot of harm if taken seriously by the general public.We can gain an ongoing benefit from Gould’s work by reminding academic people about him…
Albest,
LynnPS: I know Brent Scowcroft well. He know’s about my past and is fine with it.
It’s amazing that those biodevos think that people will cringe if they learn that we are “transsexuals”. The very idea reveals their totally biased thinking, and their ignorance regarding our emergence as accomplished, successful people.
I need to stay anonymous (or at least preserve plausible deniability) for career reasons. Till then, I can volunteer the following facts:
1. I have never met Razib in person.
2. I was born in the United States and have lived here all my life.
3. I am of Asian ancestry.
4. I’m a non-evangelistic atheist. I look at “God” as a shorthand for “that which we don’t know yet .”
Philosophically, I’m a pragmatist who believes that the most important issue facing us today is the potential of transhumanism: both genetic and cybernetic. I’m a unrepentant materialist who believes that every physical phenomenon (in principle) can be reduced to calculating dynamics with the four fundamental forces. In other words, I’m against vitalism and the “ghost in the machine”.
Politically, I’m a registered Democrat who voted and campaigned for Gore, but I started leaning right after 9/11 and will vote Republican until & unless the Democrats put up a candidate who’s not afraid to kill people when necessary – perhaps like Wesley Clark or John McCain. I’m basically center-right on most economic matters, center-left on most social matters, and center-right/right on foreign policy. Most people mistake me for “far right” because I believe in th e reality of human biodiversity, but I have very little in common with ethnic national socialists (e.g. Stormfront) or paleoconservatives (e.g. Lew Rockwell). My package of beliefs is probably best approximated by the label “neo-libertarian”. I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of those that threaten them. [1]
Concerning human biodiversity (aka h-bd), I’m a reluctant convert from the school of egalitarianism. I used to be a committed anti-racist, to the point that I harangued my relatives about the statistical illiteracy inherent in the use of anecdotal examples. [2] Once I started seeing the science, though – crime statistics, IQ research, brain research, population genetics, genomics – I started to convert. My change in beliefs was complete by the time I started my current line of work. To the extent I’ve incorporated my beliefs into my political philosophy, I’d say I subscribe to cognitive elitism: the belief that the intelligent (of either sex and any ethnic origin) are the engine of society. In my personal life, I prefer talking and socializing with the sort of intelligent, deracinated people one meets around Route 128. I’m not blind to the potential of racial balkanization, which is why I believe it’s a good thing that the multiracial American cognitive elite have high intermarriage rates. If history is any guide, mutts have loyalty to the USA rather than foreign powers.
My personal, idiosyncratic definition of racism is: judging something by their ethnic ancestry *rather than* the content of their character, after the content of their character is known to you. I have no tolerance for people who employ racial epithets, because I believe that the truth of h-bd can and must be communicated without hostility or vituperation.
Finally, I believe that scientific truth will always come out sooner or later. Like Galileo and Darwin, the ideas of h-bd are currently unpopular…but after the haplotype map is completed, they’ll soon become common sense.
[1] Not my saying – found it at the Neolibertarian News Portal, but I like it.
[2] The whole business reminds me in retrospect of the Soviet Union and China, where children were propagandized to rat on their parents.