There is an old line about how some things are so stupid that only educated people are willing to believe them. Sometimes it is phrased as the smartest are the ones who believe the dumbest things. It is one of those aphorisms that is often used to dismiss arguments or ideas that are unpleasant. Most clichés and sayings are conversation enders, not conversation starters. On the other hand, there is a kernel of truth here and you see it in this gem from a Dr. Rachel Pope.
As we know from the great Doctor Jill Biden, there are a lot of very stupid people walking around with the label “doctor” in their profile. Another good rule is that when confronted by someone insisting you call her doctor or she puts that title in her social media profile, you are most likely dealing with a stupid person. It is not always the case, as there are smart jerks in the world too, but people who wave around their titles like this tend to be narrowminded and remarkably insecure.
In this case, it appears to be warranted. The claim that there is no genetic basis for skin color is laughably ridiculous. There is a genetic basis for all observable human characteristics like skin color and eye color. That is why we have no cases of two Irish parents giving birth to a Chinese baby. Children look like the people who made them, because they inherit the genes of the people who made them. Things like skin color, eye color, facial features and so on are all genetic.
This is not complicated stuff. Five minutes on a search engine gets you hundreds of studies explaining what is basic high school biology. If Dr. Rachel Pope is so haunted by multicultural taboos that she cannot bear to think of race differences, she could find studies like this one that examine the genetic basis of African skin color. You see, all of the gene combinations for skin color were present in humans from the start, so she could claim that skin color is a genetic response to environment.
If that first tweet was not embarrassing enough, she follows on with a truly deranged claim that there are no indigenous people in Britain. By her definition, there are no indigenous people anywhere. Humans did not spring from the soil by magic and they did not stay in one range. The story of humans starts with populating every nook and cranny of the planet. When people with an IQ about room temperature say “indigenous people” they mean those who settle a place first.
Of course, where Dr. Rachel Pope and her coreligionists in the denialist cult reveal the depth of their stupidity is when they insist race is skin color. The only people who insist this are the people in the science deniers cult. People familiar enough with the human sciences to accept the great diversity of man know that race is a general shorthand for a large basket of measurable human traits. These baskets of traits largely conform to the big geological divides on our home planet.
That last bit may sound awkward, but it is a good way of understanding how it is we have so much diversity in the human animal. If one hundred thousand years ago a group of aliens scooped up a few thousand humans and transported them to another planet, those humans would have adapted to their new world. They would no doubt have evolved unique characteristics because their world required it. No one would pretend that they are not different from earthlings.
It turns out that humans are the product of mating decisions made by their ancestors going back a very long time. Evolution worked on humans just as it does on everything else on the planet. When people migrated to a new environment, they quickly began to adapt to that new environment. The reason Africans have a genetic defense to malaria, but Scandinavians do not, is malaria is not present in the north. Thousands of generations of adaptation are why we have so much human diversity.
What makes this strain of stupidity carried by Dr. Rachel jaw-dropping is the people afflicted with it never shut up about diversity. From the comfort of their whites-only enclaves, they harangue the rest of us about diversity. The term “white privilege” has become a passphrase for these people. Yet, if race is not real, then white is not a logical construct, as it assumes race is real. Similarly, diversity cannot exist if there is no genetic basis for the human differences, we call race and ethnicity.
This brings us back to the beginning. The denialist is always someone who is educated, but also strangely stupid about the obvious. They tend to have inflated credentials in fields that are not particularly taxing. Archeology is a little better than education or psychology, but it is not a STEM field. There is a sense that their credentialism is a defense mechanism rather than a trophy case. That is also why they fall for every nutty fad popular with the modern intelligentsia.
Biological denialism, the refusal to accept the observable and measurable differences in humans, may be the ultimate expression of the aphorism at the start of this post. It is an idea so stupid that only pseudo-intellectual poseurs believe it. It signals to the rest that the person believing it is willing to accept on faith whatever nonsense is running through that particular subculture at the moment. It is an act of submission, showing that the person will never question the tenets of the subculture.
That is an important aspect of the modern intelligentsia. Membership is not just about holding the right beliefs. Those are important, but they change quickly, so what is most important is the willingness to accept the most absurd beliefs. The man who starts wearing a dress, claiming he believes he is a woman must be met by his fellows with absolute acceptance. That is the point of the pronoun stuff. When you address the guy in the sundress as “them” you are a true believer.
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This is simply what has filled the void left by abandonment of religion. But with the hubris that all things can be explained by their theories rather than leaving some things as mysteries we cannot explain. Yet, as you demonstrate, virtually every “explanation” is a circular torpedo run.
This is simply what has filled the void left by abandonment of religion.
wrong, this curse has plagued old school evangelicals as well, many have tried to convert native americans(who were constantly murdering europeans) into God fearing christians. A few centuries later native americans still aren’t christians and they live segregated from other americans.
Israelites simply took the anglican missionary spirit and channeled it towards inviting all sorts of non whites into their countries and granting them citizenry. It has nothing to do with italians or irish who are blamed for ruining america’s values and all that crap.
I think you missed the point. I’m not particularly religious, but understand there are always x-factors that will always be beyond my ability to comprehend. Make a living in a business where we use enormously complex modeling to quantify events–and despite having some Fields Medal quality quants, we’re still often badly wrong. Leftists live in world of utter certainty and no doubt.
Another problem with these whack jobs is social media. If the idiots got nothing but ridicule for mouthing these idiocies, they’d shut up fast enough. But there are plenty of co-tards out there who will enthusiastically agree, stroking their fragile egos. A generation ago, this moron probably wouldn’t even be a “doctor”, but if she was, her blatherings would confined to peer related journals that the vast majority would never see or give a shit about.
My theory has been for a long time that the basket of fads we associate with the managerial elite is just filling that void left by a formal religion. Humans are believing machines.
Z – how is archeology not STEM?
Archaeologists are SJW lunatics. I knew a bunch in grad school. Ask them about human sacrifice. They’ll have huge piles of evidence staring them in the face, but deny it, because the Noble Savages couldn’t possibly have done it.
well, ask yourself how archaeology is stem? no math, no science, no engineering. just a lot of guessing.
Agreed, no bones about it, it ain’t STEM.
I never see it listed as a STEM field. Look at the undergrad requirements and you see little in the way of math and science. It’s mostly an indoctrination into the beliefs of archeology. It’s why it is included in the humanities. It was originally the study of humanity’s physical past, but like the rest of the humanities, it is now mobbed up with multicultural twaddle.
As you’ve said in previous posts, Z, it’s like some sort of insanity has infected these people. How they come up with these beliefs and apparently actually believe them is jaw dropping. A great culling will be coming down the road.
At present they are culling us.
I remember an academic colleague telling me about a book that absolutely *destroys* the “myth” of race, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that “race is just a social construction.” The author’s very impressive scientific credentials? She was the Something-or-other Professor of Black Women’s History (her actual title) at some cow college.
Even the denialists with genuine credentials in the human sciences take to avoid debating the issue with people who know the material. Instead they posture on-line or chat with other denialists about their favorite straw men, like the skin color nonsense. At some level, most of these people know they are spouting nonsense, but the nonsense is the currency of their world, so they submit. I go back on forth on whether we are entering a dark age or that maybe we are about to exit one. The denialists look a lot like Tycho Brahe to me. There’s also the… Read more »
Even worse than calling oneself “Dr.” is when they use their first name, like Dr. Drew or Dr. Phil. Yeah real folksy.
unlike Dr Mantis Toboggan.
It’s amazing how often it works, though, even at this late date. Pretentiousness aside, I was always afraid to use my title out in the real world – I figured someone would punch me (“he’ll know the reason why”). But waving your title around works great on SJWs. I’ve been able to cut all kinds of lines at SJW-infested places like bookstores – make way for DOCTOR Severian! They of all people should know better, but hey, if it helps me throw sand in the gears, I insist on my full academic titles. I think i’m going to start wearing… Read more »
There are two kinds of stupidity out there, fellas. There is the honest, genetic stupidity caused by defective parents or other environmental or genetic factors… and then there is the plodding, deliberate idiocy put up by people for it’s shock and outrage value. And yes, women are more susceptible to it than men. You can’t have a conversation with them either. They will be idiots going into it, and they’ll be idiots coming out.
Z recommended a podcast on Greek history. One of the episodes was on, yup, White privilege and the classics! The podcaster, who sounds like he is in his 30s, invited on a Latin language scholar, who also sounds like a millennial, and who devotes his free time to combating hate groups and White supremacy in the classics. I wasn’t aware of it, but apparently there are dissidents who look to Greece for models of an ethno-state. Besides liberally using the term hate group, this guest used the ADL and SPLC and some lady’s book about white supremacy during the trump… Read more »
“There is an old line about how some things are so stupid that only educated people are willing to believe them.” The midwit phenomenon is real. The highest IQ profession is MD and the average IQ of MD’s is only around 120. The other educated professions go down from there. In ages past the right tail of high IQ types had an outsized influence over their profession but as everything becomes more democratized and converged the great unwashed center comes to dominate. This means that people just clever enough to earn a credential yet incapable of critical or independent thought… Read more »
Reminds me of Gene Wilders character working as a waiter after he had been driven out of the medical field for sleeping with a sheep! “I’m a doctor! I’m a doctor dammit!” Haha! Say what you will about j*ws, they are funny…
My sister was talking about some degenerate the other day who engaging in some elaborate gender pretending ritual and my sister was working really hard to get all the pronouns right. It made her sound like some sort of mental defective who didn’t understand how to use language and I finally said you sound like a crazy person. She flew into a rage. But I knew she would because she is pathological liar with rage issues who gives money to the Church of Satan and treats baby killing like a Sacrament. You know, typical leftist
I actually think these credentialed people are as stupid as their beliefs. All it takes to get credentials is an ability to parrot back little details for a test and a see / hear nothing system compliance to slug through years of schooling and debt. They are that stupid. That’s why they obsess on nonsense and then expect all the stupid, dirty tradesmen to save their ass when the toilet backs up.
Sorry to be that guy, but Orwell really knew what he was writing about:
I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.