2022-04-08

Worthy

Propaganda surged on social media after invasion of Ukraine, Meta reports
Gmail sends far more emails from conservatives to spam: study
Why the experts keep getting it wrong - spiked

I propose a specific mechanism by which ‘experts’ trapped in monocultures come to advocate for the absurd and nonsensical. My thesis: most truly bizarre theories arise when smart people adopt a premise that sounds plausible, even if it is factually incorrect, due to factors like peer-group pressure, and then reason forward correctly from that premise.

Reams of evidence for this claim await anyone reviewing the more implausible famous theories of our era. The idea of systemic racism – at least as defined by Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo – emerges from a single specific claim: any gap in performance between racial groups must be due either to racism or to actual ‘inferiority’ on the part of one of the groups. Thus it follows that, unless you’re a literal racist who believes racial minorities are inferior, you must see all struggles or failures on the part of people of colour as evidence of racism.