Evasion strategies for belief system defence
A funny new study outlines strategies that people use to slip and slide away from morally objectionable scientific research. More evidence for the importance of viewpoint diversity in academia.
Backcountry Psychology
Essays from an outdoorsman and social scientist. Perspectives on social science from the "backcountry" of heterodoxy. Stories of hunting the wild backcountry of New Zealand. Mental Health, Culture, Arts, Outdoors, and everything else.
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Latest episodes
The Dismal State of Masculinity Research
Social science still acting as propaganda, defenestrating anything not radical, and then slamming the Overton window behind it.
The warmth of corruptivism
Leftists relate to the concept of collectivism purely based on vibes. They don't realize that what they want only Western individualism can give them, and collectivism is its antithesis.
Thinking, Fast and Loose
On public intellectual masturbation. Progressives think they’re System 2 and everyone else is System 1.
The Classroom Panic Over ‘Trump Boys’: The ideological bias of NZ educators
A moral panic stirred up by the fact that young people no longer buy the hyper-progressive narratives enforced in school. Yell "toxic", "Trump", and "trad" as if that constitutes an argument.
A Fetish for Theory
On the now widespread idea that theory will fix everything in the social sciences. In the absence of viewpoint diversity, it won't.
The Invisible Left Hand
The left's outlook on tradition, morality, stigma, social norms, etc., shows they believe in the underlying logic of the 'invisible hand'—just not in economics, where it actually works.
Transhumanist schizophrenia
On my brief but surreal interaction with a transhumanist/tech accelerationist. it's like talking to a schizophrenic patient, or sci-fi fan on mushrooms. Their politics is aliens and sun explosions.
"Total suffering" is not real (against utilitarians, part 3)
A final thought on utilitarian moral calculus.
Nature is not "hell" (against utilitarians, part 2)
Hypersensitive urban utilitarians who, apparently, have never been in nature, think that nature is defined by extreme suffering, that most animals live "hellish" lives. It's not true.
Misspecified utilitarians hate existence (against utilitarians, part 1)
Utilitarians' weird moral calculus, based in their inability to accept that suffering is part of life, leads them to, basically, a hatred of nature and existence.
Phantom limb
A little topical vulnerability this Easter
Free Kiwis podcast appearance
A sort of annotated bibliography for my first podcast appearance. Re: Affective polarization, therapy culture, authoritarianism, hunting.
Pious Fraud, or the Moral License to Lie
Moral licensing is "the heirloom of all philosophers and priests who 'improved' mankind. [They] have never doubted their right to lie."
Identity satiation
Some rarely discussed psychological phenomena can shed light on why the focus on identity and introspection has coincided with a rise of mental health issues and identity disorders.
Reign of Error: The failure of social science.
Ideological homogeneity, the canonization of poor research, biased measurement, premature scientific foreclosure, invalid findings, citation bias, ignored alternative explanations...
Return to Paradise
Another one for the Outdoors section. I am completely burned out on social science and academia. Still keeping an eye on the exit. Here I discuss a hunting trip, Chamois, alpine frogs, etc.
A Tale of Two Rams: an account of wild sheep hunting in New Zealand
Sprinkled along the shores and slips above certain rivers in the central North Island of New Zealand you can find, in discrete little pockets, feral Merino sheep...
The Woke Left and The Ship of Theseus
A thought experiment can help highlight the fallacious thinking underlying the Left's worldview.
Back-Country Therapy, or, Mountains and Mental Health
A story of hunting and battling near crippling panic attacks. How forcing myself back into the mountains helped to cure my anxiety. I call it Back-Country Therapy.