I’ll be one of the featured speakers for the Skeptics of OZ Conference on Saturday October 17 (2015), in the CAC Theater at Wichita State University (Wichita, Kansas). Details here. Lanyrd here.
I’ll be discussing my book Proving History, but in particular answering the general question of “How science and history can prove or disprove miracles, and how we could (in theory or in practice) establish supernatural things exist or happen,” if there really were such things. So I’ll be talking about my work in defining the supernatural as well as the logic and method of history and the foundations of historical knowledge.
Others speaking will include communications expert Jeffrey Jarman, ex-scientologist Chris Shelton, and Vyckie D. Garrison of No Longer Quivering.
For some reason I can’t reply to the ‘polyamory’ thread where you say. Apologies in advance, my writing/grammar isn’t so good.
“Richard Carrier says
October 1, 2015 at 9:53 am
That’s full on sexist, pseudoscientific, anti-humanist bullshit.
For example:
“Women do have to live with the consequences of their actions and men don’t.”
Biologically false. Lots of women don’t. Not only are lots of women sterile, and more sterilized, the rest have a fancy new technology available called birth control. Incidentally, this fact, refutes the entire thesis of that comment, all the way down to the last paragraph. If you have a grand philosophy of life and it is refuted by a tiny piece of plastic, you are clearly the dullest crayon in the box.
But I should also note that this is legally false. Men are equally on the hook under the law. Thus what nature made unfair, democracy made fair. Welcome to humanity fixing nature’s evils.
Even the EvoPsych angle is bullshit. There is no scientific evidence supporting the supposition that women are substantially biologically different in their interest in sexual partners or financial security from men. When cultural barriers are removed, they always behave the same (equally promiscuous; equally interested or disinterested in financial security). This is even supported by studies of other mammals: female mammals are commonly just as promiscuous as the males.”
When cultural barriers are removed? Well, I’m rather keen on Jane Austen so I’m doubtless very retrograde and sexist etc. Those ‘barriers’ (moral constraints) are sexist and repressive for many I’m sure, but generally perceived as such for the wrong reasons. In Pride And Prejudice (for which I daresay you harbour much contempt) Mr Bennett, I think it would be fair to say, was a representative of the ‘patriarchy’, however, whilst basically a good man, he was failing in his patriarchal duty. He had a habit of spending too much time in his library while his two youngest daughters (Lydia, in particular) were getting ever more frivolous and out of control (maybe even foolish enough, given the chance, to indulge in ‘polyamory’).
It is an elder daughter, Elizabeth – who is intelligent, has self possession, circumspection and inclined to reflect morally on her faults – who pleads with her father (the patriarchy figure) to reign in Lydia’s excesses. How killjoy is that? Bring on the pill and industrial scale abortions, eh. His neglect to do so results in Lydia being dangerously exposed to the Wickham’s and Willoughby’s of this world. Actually they’re quite tame by comparison to the predatory men that a lot of women are fatally attracted to.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_1_oh_to_be.html
“The nonsense about beauty standards is partly true (we have evolved a gendered difference in preference for mate appearance), but problematized by the bell curve (variation produces wide ranges of preferences in men and women, so one cannot generalize). And I don’t see what relevance this even has to any point being made. I know lots of women who are gorgeous in their forties and lots of men who just went to pot; and in my experience anyone who isn’t an immature child finds the same qualities attractive in women as this douchebro claims women find attractive in men (power and success are always hot—unless you are an insecure sexist jerk, and thus threatened by a woman’s power and success).”
A lot of this may indeed be due to insecurity buy with a 16, 17, 18… 19? Trillion dollar deficit, I don’t see the future being at all congenial to a shift in the direction you’d like to see. Much more likely a dramatic shift in the direction we should all be dreading.
“And as if to make fun of himself, citing cultural differences (Asia, Japan) refutes this douchebro’s claim that it’s about biology. Refuting themselves is almost a defining attribute of the douchelectual.”
I’m not sure what you mean by that
“They also don’t seem to have an accurate understanding of those foreign cultures, and on top of that are stereotyping them, evidently not realizing he is talking about a statistical minority within those cultures. But we shouldn’t be surprised, since racism is also a common attribute of the douchelectual.”
Or that
“His assuming his own attraction standards are universal, is yet another common defect of the douchelectual. A general narcissistic assumption that everyone is just like them, which false assumption they build entire worldviews on. Which gets us back to the dull crayon. Disregarding ample evidence of enormous variation in those standards among actual people, and abundant evidence of cultural variation in attractiveness standards as well (historically as well as geographically and even within subcultures), is also a common defect of the douchelectual, because they are all fanatical believers in the religion pseudoscience called astrology EvoPsych, and so constantly forget to control for culture as a causal factor. (Except when refuting themselves.)”
I’m not sure what to think about EvoPsych, but to get back to “Women do have to live with the consequences of their actions and men don’t.”
And
“But I should also note that this is legally false. Men are equally on the hook under the law. Thus what nature made unfair, democracy made fair. Welcome to humanity fixing nature’s evils.”
If by the law you mean affirmative action (which, I admit, I don’t know that much about, it comes up a lot on online discussions) I strongly suspect this is a very expensive distortion, an aberration, a house of cards… and also I think it is largely motivated by a rather fundamental inequality. I don’t agree with all this analysis https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/womens-morphing-need-for-male-investment/
But I think there is some real truth in the SMP graph.
To quote:
“One way to look at the chart above is not just in terms of attractiveness, but the relative power this gives the respective sexes as they age. Young women are the rockstars of the dating world. In one sense Rollo’s chart understates the scale of young women’s SMV power, because very few 38 year old men (the male peak in the graphic) will experience the kind of raw attraction power that the average 23 year old woman experiences. It is only when you include the female desire for male investment that the relative heights of the two curves come into balance.”
And to quote Pride And Prejudice
Jane: “It is our vanity that fancies SMV means more than it does.”
Elizabeth: “And White Knights take care that it should.”
I think much of the peculiarly female obsession with equality is governed by SMV shaped expectations. And on the flip side you have the bitter low SMV women who will almost always look for ways to punish men, before their traitorous sisters, for the unfairness of the SMP.
No, like the proliferation of tattoos and unconventional body piercings, polyamory is a very bad sign of the times.
Anyone who says that is an Archie Bunker out of touch with modern reality and pretty much any common sense.
I can almost see you clutching your pearls while complaining about how the lascivious gyration of Elvis’s hips will destroy civilization.
Meanwhile, that you don’t know what a child support law is, and somehow confuse it with affirmative action (?), pretty much guarantees you don’t know jack shit about anything relevant to this discussion.