'course, I didn't say nothin' about an hour. . . but I did say it wasn't possible to effectively satirize some of the children on the other side of the ideological fence (with one caveat). This was before I saw TCS - Where Scientific Ignorance Meets Industry Lobbying:
When so-called scientists say that the Earth's average temperature is rising, it might be time to bring a few facts into the discussion. For example: temperature is not a thermodynamic variable that lends itself to statistical analysis, nor does it measure a physical quantity. Additionally, there is no such thing as an "average", and, if the Buddha is correct, the Earth itself is nothing but an illusion meant to trap us in a world of suffering. How can scientists study something which may not even exist? Why do they so blithely dismiss this ancient wisdom believed by billions throughout the centuries? Is it because the Buddha wasn't white?
Which I reached, after a bit of searching as he didn't actually link the piece, from Steve's No Direction Home Page, after doing a search for reviews of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.
No, I don't understand how my mind works either.
I couldn't bring myself to finish The Blank Slate. It's one of the few books I not only put down before finishing it, but wanted to toss across the room before I finished it. That I got as far as I did is either a tribute to my fortitude or a testament to my masochism.
OK, I need to not even read blogs until this effing vertigo problem goes away, 'cause I had to vigorously (!) mouse-over that link to get that it was satire. I was so worked up, for a second there, I think my ear might have popped. (so maybe I get to thank you for solving said vertigo issue! woo!)
Jessica, that just means it was very effective.
Also, that might be the first positive health reaction to reading this site.
Ginger, would asking what it was you didn't like about the book be a Bad Idea? I'm also refraining from pursuing Bad Ideas.
I had two big problems with The Blank Slate.
First, he spends as much (if not more) time in the first 3/4 of the book (which is about what I read before I gave up) doing a hatchet job on people whose politics--both real and academic--he doesn't like as he does trying to prove his point. Even if their politics are suck, a point on which I start neutral, that doesn't make their science suck. Prove their science is bad; let their politics speak for themselves.
I spend long enough as a grad student to recognize that kind of fertilizer when I smell it, ya know?
Second, while there's clearly some good stuff under all the BS, Pinker seems to want you to accept A in chapter N for the sake of argument, then build on A as a solid support for his next proposition in chapter N+1. Even if A is worth accepting for the sake of argument, it doesn't make a solid support for D in chapter N+3.
I'm not a sympathetic audience for Pinker--I come to him with a deep contempt for RL genetic determinists. I've been in online brawls with Bell Curve fans who believe in strict genetic inheritance of intelligence, and who call humans "gene bags". So I'm not the best person to ask for an unbiased perspective. I went into the book hoping to have my sorry impressions of the nature-first camp dispelled. *Even when I saw the point of the science*, I found Pinker's arguments in support uncompelling.