From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Tue Jul 15 1997 - 15:26:23 MDT
> > 2.0 John Gray (Mars/Venus): Interesting ideas, thin on facts.
>
> So John Gray is better than Hoagland? At least Hoagland gave us links to
> his ideas. Well, I guess when we get to the bottom of the scale the
> differences are negligible, but I must say, if I have to buy it, it
> better be more than "thin on facts." Any gender stereotype is worthless
> in my book, and stereotyping without facts is more than worthless, it's
> the memetic equivalent of entropy. And some guy is making beaucoup
> d'argent off of it?
>
> John Gray is definitely worse than an astrologer. He's predicting the
> future of your relationship based upon not the heavens, but some
> primordial fact sheet that only he has a copy of. No man is alike, no
> woman is alike. And I leave it at that.
>
> > 1.0 ?
> > 0.0 L. Ron Hubbard, Creationists, Astrologers.
>
> I would add racists, misogynists, and relationahip experts to this as
> well.
Not if the particular racist, misogynist, or relationship expert has
some respect for science. Many call Teller a racist; he's still in
the 8.0 - 10.0 range. Einstein was a misogynist. Political ideas
and science are disjoint sets, and I for one refuse to allow my mind
to be clouded by them. This scale is about scientific integrity and
only that, not about popularity.
I gave Mr. Gray a 2.0, and astrologers a 0.0, because astrologers
don't make any attempt whatsoever to test their ideas; many people
have tested them, and they fail every time. Mr. Gray may not have
much of a scientific method, but he is /honest to his own observations/,
and makes no apologies for them. The fact that they are politically
unpopular observations raises his score rather than lowering it,
because he is showing that he doesn't give a damn what the popular
egalitarian dogma of the country is. What he sees is what he sees,
and he refuses to change his observations from his own interpretation.
The truth always matters, even if it's not pretty. Those who hold
on to the pretty-sounding bullshit of gender equality are willfully
denying the plain evidence of their senses, and deserve scientific
ridicule, even if they do happen to be nice guys. Of course we want
to grant equal rights under law, but that's a matter of law, not a
matter of science. There certainly are "stereotypes" based on
ignorance and fear, and we should work to remove them. But other
generalizations based on the realities of human nature are valuable.
Men and women have distinct natures, and studying those natures is
good science; dismissing them all as "stereotypes" is dogmatic nonsense.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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