Things That Caught My Eye - #2
Scientific dissidents, confused feminist, and awesome parenting
Self-delusion is in the news. I’m not talking about the obvious stuff, where whole swaths of the world seem to be nodding sadly and saying—man, that guy just cannot see what the rest of us see about him.
No, I’m talking about the middle ground scramble1, where talking heads and power brokers and would-be intellectuals see vaguely that they have been wrong, and work to position themselves as if they hadn’t been wrong. It’s tricky, though, because they need to do so without stepping outside of the Overton Window, wherever it happens to be right now. You have to feel for these people. It’s a delicate game, figuring out how to be precisely current, saying everything up to but nothing beyond what you are allowed to say today. It’s an entirely social game, one with little if any reference to the reality of the topics being discussed. Time being zero-sum and all, it must cut into these people’s ability to get other things done—things like learning something about the reality of the topics being discussed.
This week in Things That Caught My Eye: higher ed’s half-assed embrace of scientific dissidents; Megan Rapinoe’s confused feminism; and some truly awesome parenting.