The Intellectual Dark Web: A home for heretics of all stripes

[Ad Orientem]

Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And we’re in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered “dark.”

I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo.

Today, people like them who dare venture into this “There Be Dragons” territory on the intellectual map have met with outrage and derision — even, or perhaps especially, from people who pride themselves on openness.

It’s a pattern that has become common in our new era of That Which Cannot Be Said. And it is the reason the Intellectual Dark Web, a term coined half-jokingly by Mr. Weinstein, came to exist.

...But as the members of the Intellectual Dark Web become genuinely popular, they are also coming under more scrutiny. On April 21, Kanye West crystallized this problem when he tweeted seven words that set Twitter on fire: “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”

Candace Owens, the communications director for Turning Point USA, is a sharp, young, black conservative — a telegenic speaker with killer instincts who makes videos with titles like “How to Escape the Democrat Plantation” and “The Left Thinks Black People Are Stupid.” Mr. West’s praise for her was sandwiched inside a longer thread that referenced many of the markers of the Intellectual Dark Web, like the tyranny of thought policing and the importance of independent thinking. He was photographed watching a Jordan Peterson video.

...A year ago, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying were respected tenured professors at Evergreen State College, where their Occupy Wall Street-sympathetic politics were well in tune with the school’s progressive ethos. Today they have left their jobs, lost many of their friends and endangered their reputations.

All this because they opposed a “Day of Absence,” in which white students were asked to leave campus for the day. For questioning a day of racial segregation cloaked in progressivism, the pair was smeared as racist. Following threats, they left town for a time with their children and ultimately resigned their jobs.

“Nobody else reacted. That’s what shocked me,” Mr. Weinstein said. “It told me that a culture that told itself it was radically open-minded was actually a culture cowed by fear.”

Sam Harris says his moment came in 2006, at a conference at the Salk Institute with Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson and other prominent scientists. Mr. Harris said something that he thought was obvious on its face: Not all cultures are equally conducive to human flourishing. Some are superior to others.

“Until that time I had been criticizing religion, so the people who hated what I had to say were mostly on the right,” Mr. Harris said. “This was the first time I fully understood that I had an equivalent problem with the secular left.”

Read the rest here...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opin ... k-web.html

I am astonished that this was published in the NY Times.

[Kriegsspiel]

At one point, I had to go back like 3 paragraphs to figure out who "Mr. West" was... Why the shit would anyone call him anything but Kanye?

I like the final paragraph,

“Some say the I.D.W. is dangerous,” Ms. Heying said. “But the only way you can construe a group of intellectuals talking to each other as dangerous is if you are scared of what they might discover.”

[Kriegsspiel]

I am astonished that this was published in the NY Times.

They wanted to name names to get all these people blacklisted, but with plausible deniability.

[stuper1]

I've lately been listening to Dennis Prager on a local, conservative talk radio station. I find him to be very well spoken and reasoned about today's issues. So, you don't have to go to a dark web to hear non-leftist thinking. Maybe it seems so to some people. Or maybe the NYT wants people to think that for some reason. I'm not really sure. I don't like to always assume that the NYT, Washington Post, etc. are up to no good, but more often than not, it seems that they are, often out of just youthful ignorance I imagine.

[Benko]

Reasonable minds can differ is an obvious (I would argue) statement. Alas today many look at things as you must believe our dogma (subject to weekly revision) or we will totally destroy you.

Dave Ruben has nice podcasts. A married gay man, certainly not a conservative (classical liberal is how he identifies), but a mild mannered very reasonable man who interviews people from across the spectrum and has thoughtful conversations.

[dualstow]

I don't want to use up my few free NYT articles (per month) on that one, but I did see references to it on Twitter, maybe last night. Mainly, people saying

for someone (who's complaining of) being silenced,
Bari Weiss sure is loud

.
.
.

At one point, I had to go back like 3 paragraphs to figure out who "Mr. West" was...

[hardlawjockey]

I tend to think that all attempts to get human beings to think alike are destined to fail. As evidence for my assertion I offer that it is now 2018 so Orwell's vision of 1984 is at least 34 years off (or did it happen, and we didn't notice - a debatable proposition).

[hardlawjockey]

I tend to think that all attempts to get human beings to think alike are destined to fail. As evidence for my assertion I offer that it is now 2018 so Orwell's vision of 1984 is at least 34 years off (or did it happen, and we didn't notice - a debatable proposition).

Interesting point. 1984 did happen, in 2003.

Why 2003?