Pranks, bubbles, disappointments

 

In 1996, Alan Sokal, a professor of mathematics and physics, submitted an article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to an academic journal of postmodernist cultural studies. It passed through peer reviews with flying colors and garnered praise across the targeted segment of academia. Shortly after, Sokal announced that it was a prank. Prompted by his annoyance with pseudo-intellectuals, he had packaged lengthy nonsense in obscure language and tested how well it would sell. It did sell well, not to the amusement of the duped parties, at least not after he exposed the trick. Astonishingly, some of them even doubled down. Instead of owning their embarrassment, they claimed that Sokal might have been insincere, but his article accidentally happens to be full of gems.

Twenty years later the philosopher Peter Boghosian, the mathematician James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose, an English literature scholar, pulled off the same trick. To expose poor scholarship of certain academic fields, they submitted a series of bogus papers to various journals. Their target this time was yet another subfield of postmodernism, the gender- and race-studies - "grievance-studies" as the trio puts it. They rewrote some parts of Mein Kampf, wrote an essay about how dog-parks facilitate rape-culture in society, another one about the benefits of anal sex toys for men in the fight against transphobia, and a series of others in a similar vein. Boghosian's "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct" probably crowns their efforts, but it's a tough race. Like Sokal, Boghosian and his partners in crime wanted to cast a spotlight on what they perceived as pseudo-intellectual bullshit masquerading as science.

The hoax was eventually exposed and it predictably ruffled the feathers of a great many people. It generated both furor and discussion about many topics around ethics, groupthink, cultural influence over academia, orthodoxies, etc.  Lindsay and Pluckrose recently wrote a book about the broader topic of their interest with the lengthy title of "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody".

I listened to many interviews with the guys, and I like them a lot. This all happened in the past. Then a couple of days ago Lindsay' tweeted: "Frankly going to unhappily vote Republican, including Trump, until the left walks this shit all the way back." 

Well, that was a bombshell. I don't think Lindsay is a racist or misogynist or even the kind of guy who suffers Trump. But it is a colossal error in judgment, for two reasons. 

For one, Donald Trump dragged the presidency and public discourse in the gutters like no one ever has before, and by paralyzing America, it made the world a more volatile, dangerous, and cynical place. Yes, America never fully lived up to its ideals, but: 1. no country ever had 2. the world's hegemon at least had noble ideals. Good luck with the world that is governed by Chinese, Islamist, or Russian ones instead. The damage being caused by irritating poseurs, virtue-signaling craze, and victimhood culture on the Left is very bad and it does real harm to real people, but it still doesn't even come close. Your sense of proportion has to be so imbalanced to see that exactly the opposite way, that it's a miracle if you can even utter a straight sentence. Clumsy metaphor, never mind.

Nevertheless, Lindsay's opinion on the dangers of the two extremes is at least defendable. Maybe he is right and my sense of proportion is useless. But what is not defendable, in fact, almost inexplicable for a man of Lindsay's intellect, is that he thinks reelecting Trump would somehow help his cause. A ruling white-grievance party is not a bulwark against left-wing idiotism. It's the fuel of it. Lindsay seriously thinks that another four years of Trump wouldn't make Wokes even crazier?! It would make me crazier.

Luckily, his college, Helen Pluckrose, has not fallen in the same pit. She, without judging her acquaintances' decisions, encourages everyone to vote for Democrats. I wonder whether it has to do something with gender (that would be ironic for the trio). Women certainly seem to be less enamored by this faux-strongman-shtick.

Anyway, read what Jerry Coyne has to say about the matter.

The affair made me sad but also prompted me to contemplate bubbles. Lindsay lives in a bubble where he faces the absurdity of and harm caused by Wokeness every day. He probably also suffers attacks from them every day. And this apparently distorts his picture of the world to a dangerous extent. It is sad and disconcerting.

It's sad to realize that someone, whose opinion you have valued high so far, proved to be very fallible. It is also frightening, because if a smart guy like him can't see the forest from the trees, how do I know that it's not I who lives in a bubble? How do I know that Lindsay is not right, and a Trump presidency is, all things considered, still better than a Biden one? Or how do I know that Lindsay was right about Wokeness, to start with? It's both true and meaningless to say that everyone lives in a bubble. Obviously, everyone has preferred sources of information and a specific group of fellow humans he or she regularly interacts with.

I suppose the only remedy for close-mindedness is to follow the well-known and rarely practiced advice of staying out of your comfort zone. I suppose one can try to stay informed simultaneously inside multiple bubbles with little overlap or push the walls of her preferred bubble as far as she can. 

When Trump won in 2016, I started actively seeking out right-wing information sources. The farthest I had to stomach to go was National Review, and even that one I'm planning to ditch now (although, had they not gone all-in for the GOP by 2020, if not for Trump, I would stay). I never had it in me to watch Fox, let alone to read Breitbart. Gad Saad, Jordan Peterson, Niall Fergusson, Andrew Neil, Douglas Murray, Charles Murray, and few other people whose names I can't recall now, are whom I strongly disagree with at times, but I enjoy listening to. I can't listen to anyone who I can't enjoy. Probably that's the reason why I never sought left-wing sources of information. They are humorless. Hm...I just realized I have to correct myself here. I accidentally stumbled upon Slavoj Zizek, and he is quite funny, but I have no idea where he is on the political spectrum - even though he calls himself a communist. Anyway, this post has descended into a rumbling, it's time to stop.