On Horowitz

This - "Apart From Being An Idiot, Horowitz Is Also An Unwiped Anal Orifice With Hemorrhoids" - is the worst and nastiest blog-post title I ever used. But I was furious. See why.... (first posted here on March 05, 2005, then republished here on December 10, 2005):

Chris is so nice. Way too nice. And naive. He actually contacted David Horowitz and offered to do a study that has a potential to PROVE Horowitz's claim that conservatives are discriminated against in the Academia. Read the whole episode here.

As you can see, my title is just an euphemistic version of what Horowitz called Chris! My title is also a sign of jealousy that blogs like Rox Populi and Pharyngula are listed as Terrorists on Horowitz's pitiful blog, while Science And Politics is not - it's a badge of honor of sorts, a proof of belonging to the reality-based community. His blog is pitiful not just due to its sophomoric and hateful content, but also its ineffectiveness. People who have been linked there reported NO DETECTABLE rise in traffic! Is DH just talking to himself? Singing in the shower?

Of course Chris was snubbed by DH. DH knew instantly that he was dealing with a damn pinko-commie liberal. Who else would even think of getting emipirical data for any reason? Conservatives like Horowitz don't need data - they know The Truth . They have no use for research - only academic liberals do research .

Chris keeps claiming agnosticism. I think we differ on this because of different definitions of conservatism. Isolationism in foreign policy, or fiscal responsibility are NOT logical components of the conservative worldview. Instead they are a result of historical contingency. At some brief point in history long time ago, Republican Party, which is supposed to be conservative, was isolationist and fiscally responsible and the labels somehow stuck although the reality has been the opposite for many decades now. Thus, what he calls "serious conservatives", i.e., people who actually think and do research ARE NOT CONSERVATIVE in my book.

Developmental psychologists have described stages in cognitive development of children. At one point, infants can make a connection between two events happening simultaneously. This is like that old experiment with a horse: presented with a bell-ring and an electric shock through the floor, the horse learns to lift the foot at the sound of the bell. At a later stage, the child is capable of making a linear connection: if A precedes B, this means A caused B. This is hierarchical way of thinking as everything has to have a single direct cause (e.g., Designer). Many, many years later, one becomes capable of grasping how complex systems of multiple interacting elements produce novel results that are not caused by any single element, but by the act of interaction betwen these multitudes of elements. Many people never reach that stage, due to the way they are raised. Strict Fathering impedes the development of this kind of abstract reasoning and gets children stuck at the hierarchical stage. Conservatives, BY DEFINITION, are stuck at the hierarchical developmental stage, and it takes TWO generations of active effort at Nurturant Parenting to get out of this predicament. DH appears to be incapable of even making a two-event connection like the horse described above.

When hearing liberals explain something, conservatives are just incapable of understaning it. They are not developmentally ready for it. Liberals get called communists all the time. Wonder why? Because Communism on the Left, just like its counterpart on the Right - Conservatism - is a hierarchical top-down control system. Such systems are the only ones conservatives are capable of understanding. They will never understand that liberalism is NOT hierachical, NOT linear, NOT governmental top-down control of anything. They are psychologically incapable of grasping such complex notions.

University is a place where the top thinkers in a society do their best thinking, research and teaching. Why would developmentally arrested people expect to be hired there, beats me! University faculty, both in natural and social sciences are SCIENTISTS. They are trying to test their hypotheses and generate empirical data. Compared to biologists, physicists have it easy - the systems are much simpler, thus it is easier to do well-controlled experiments. Compared to biologists, social scientists have it hard. They are dealing with even more complex systems that are even more difficult to test well. Everybody is trying to identify and eliminate own biases, but they sometimes creep in. But when they do, they are pointed out and corrected by liberal colleagues doing better research, not by screaming preaching conservatives who "know" everything a priori. What even the most inept and biased social scientists do is still science, perhaps shoddy science, but still science. What conservatives have are preconcieved absolutes, opinions based on belief not supported (actually very well refuted) by empirical research. They, like Creationists, do it backwards: start with conclusions, then design and cherry-pick arguments that invariably lead to those conclusions. That type of "reasearch" is not something that will get you hired at a University.

Of course, this is yet another instance of conservative Luntzian framing. By talking about "liberal and conservative opinions" and "liberal and conservative scholarship" they are trying to place on an equal plane conservative OPINION and liberal SCHOLARSHIP. This is the same tactic that Creationists use, stating that both IDC and evolution are science AND that both IDC and evolution are BELIEF systems. Sorry, but evolution is science, and IDC is religious belief. Liberalism is based on empirical evidence about the world, conservatism is based on wishful thinking about the world (Rich White Femiphobic Protestant Men uber alles).

So, Horrorritz is either a lying thug, or an insane moron. Or both. Come on now, put me on your Black List already.