The stupidity and tenacity of these people is mind-boggling -- they just won't stop. This nonsense continues because the scientific community is passive and complicit. We should ridicule every instance of this renaming olympics and every one of its promoters. Instead, most scientists are politely looking the other way, saying "they mean well." They--the Woke--do not mean well. They are hell-bent to destroy science and the entire western civilization.
As a proposal of an action point -- how about establishing the Woke Hall of Shame? Post there updates of each instance of Wokeism in science, with names of people and societies who is responsible for the deed? Develop Woke Score and give Woke of the Year award, in the spirit of IgNobel prizes?
Thank you Anna Krilov for your voice for science and Western Civilization. As you know, pretend-humanitarian ideology is resistant to good ideas and difficult to eradicate. Communism and its destructive consequences in Russia and around the globe is still with us at more than a century. However, in the USA, educators are accountable to the public and pedagogical malpractice is subject to law. STEM has the tools to abate and prevent advanced Woke Mind-Virus infection. What we can do is: post classroom content on a dedicated website for all to see and critically evaluate (this is current practice for all validated knowledge, and will, sooner or later, become current practice for all that students are welcome to learn. What is taught in class should not be a secret). Members at Heterodox and FIRE should invite students to post classroom content (beginning with invalid and ideologically driven lessons). Technology will likely rid us of disinformation and imposed-ideology in the classroom. STEM can eradicate the Woke Mind-Virus. AND Thank you to Scott Turner for acknowledging the reality of the Woke Mind-Virus on Heterodox STEM. Elon Musk’s perspective, seeing Woke for what it is in the real world, empowers the public and us to take action and devise effective treatment.
As far as I can tell, there is not one square inch of inhabited territory on earth that has not changed hands innumerable times over the last few hundred thousand years. If you want to define the start of humanity as even earlier, then the numbers are even more stark. So who "owns" the land, any land, or has "rights" of any kind, to any of it?
I am BIPOC, with an indigenous heritage, as I have repeatedly mentioned here. I completely reject and disavow this sort of "virtue-signaling theatre". It is pointless, and meaningless and has no real substance behind it. It is a-historical, really, if you want to be precise about it. It is just some supposed magical incantation that a few smug woke characters repeat to spuriously cloak themselves in some illusory garments of virtue and self-righteousness. It is a waste of time and energy. Does it really benefit anyone aside from the nincompoops who are chanting this crap? And I am not really sure that it benefits the wokists, particularly.
We should return to merit for evaluations, as flawed as merit is as a concept. Our energies would be far better directed at improving our ability to discern and reward merit, and to encouraging merit and competence rather than this nonsense.
Let's do what works, even if it is admittedly imperfect. Let us try to improve, to get more efficient and productive. Anything else is just yak-shaving foolishness.
If you think you've seen it all, check out ACS Inclusive Language Guide cited in the above. It will keep you occupied for hours. Examples of forbidden words: nursing mother, black market, dark cloud, New World, immigrant, lame, obesity, other.
The irony is they only attack and care about symbols and symptoms. Never, ever the actual problems or cures. They’re only interested in their “moral” crusade and the burning of heretics. I should have expected the Spanish Inquisition… because that’s only place this ends up if it’s not squelched.
Indeed, to your point on the creation of the new Anthropocene epoch recently failing, that was a Soviet-era term we learned there decades ago. In the West, it has been picking up speed exactly because it made it easier to make political points. Certainly humans do quite a bit of earth moving and other geological-scale activities, but it is due to our technology - at least call it the Technocene! As a biological entity (the Anthropo- part … so no clothing, tools, or fire), modern humans would not last long in most environments on Earth.
The proposed epoch also had no globally correlated timeframe as humans began to alter landscapes (and do not forget the climate!) at different times in various places. We should just leave the Holocene alone (it is only ~12,000 years young) and tackle the real geoscience problems, such as adapting to and being good stewards of our exciting and rapidly changing world!
This is a nice essay. I am reminded of the protests at the SETI conferences. Why? The woke were upset about the word "intelligence" because they thought it was some slur against minorities. One has to admit, this reasoning is quite a stretch.
The demands to "sanitize" language to such extreme extents might be backfiring. My own subjective and admittedly limited observations are that all sorts of expressions that had previously almost completely exited common speech are returning in force. People were shamed out of using certain mildly offensive terms for years or even decades, but now in fits of spite and pique, they are using these terms again.
For example, I am thinking of the word "retard" which can mean to slow down, impede or decelerate. However, it would seem that now "retard" and assorted variants are having something of a comeback. There are possibly many other coarse and crude expressions, or words and phrases with questionable connotations that are returning as a form of protest.
I know I am now purposely exhibiting extra deference to women, holding doors open for them, etc., partly as a direct protest to the wokists and to the feminists. It is a small counter-cultural statement, but these things all add up. We have to push back any way we can.
Unfortunately, this is a major and serious goal of these people. One of the most imperfect people I know, Bill Gates, has stated this repeatedly in speeches, interviews and in print. And it would seem he has put his money where his mouth is, in some ways. And he is far from the only person of means who has done so.
Who is Bill Gates, with his pathetic record, to judge who must be eliminated?
and of course, these arrogant people think they are invulnerable. the world is just a Ted Talk for them, create their whiteboard bullet points and get it done.
These attempts at revision of the botanical historical record are as absurd and dangerous as those who attempt to revise history by removing statues and rewriting textbooks. There is something that the scientific community should consider in response to this situation. Given that the "woke" endorse and practice cancel culture, perhaps the same should be applied to them. Attempts to revise botanical history in support of virtue signalizing political correctness are as much an assault on the integrity of science as those that would fabricate research results. Perhaps they should professional sanctioned by their universities, colleagues and funding agencies in the same way?
Elon Musk focused on the horrendous harm done to students. Our primary responsibility is to protect our students and eradicate the WokeMindVirus (something that STEM knows how to do). Our next responsibility is to abate the dismantling every aspect of our society, including our democracy by disinformation and ideology fabricated by faculty. The intrusion of ideology into education and science is adequately documented.(1) It is time for Heterodox Academy and FIRE to act.(2) To do so, we would need to turn 360 and question our own orthodoxies. We would need to redefine the professional responsibilities of educators, restore scholarly discourse on campus, and reinstate a system of checks and balances on campus. Science cures viruses. Free expression regardless of content does not.
Pondering this topic a bit more, I think of all the terms in mathematics, chemistry and astronomy that are Arabic and/or Muslim in origin. Almost every single star that is visible by the naked eye has an Arabic name. We still refer to some of them by these Arabic names.
To some, these names might symbolize the blatant cruelty and disgraceful history of Arabic and Muslim culture. So, should they be sanitized? Or, because some classify Arabs and Muslims as victims and oppressed, should we change all the words in these fields to "honor" them?
I think leaving the names and terms as they are, as a tribute to a complicated history, is probably smarter and easier. Instead of doing real work, all kinds of virtue-signaling dufuses (dufi? doofi?) could squander extensive scarce resources doing meaningless nonsense and garnering all kinds of accolades for it. We already have more than enough of that kind of activity in STEM, I would argue.
Great piece! Perhaps we should rid botany of systematics altogether--the subject may be too racist to be redeemed.
Matthias Schleiden wrote in Principles of Scientific Botany: "A knowledge of the systematic arrangement of plants is only of importance to the botanist: for all others it is a pastime, if not a waste of time." Except now it is a waste of time for botanists too. https://archive.org/details/principlesofscie00schlrich/mode/2up?q=waste
"More recently, a cadre of geologists tried to create an entirely new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – to shame bad humans and their stupid Industrial Revolution." That's a very strange interpretation of their intentions.
The onset of the Anthropocene (which was originally set to a few millennia ago) has now been reset to the mid-18th century so that it correlates with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Since then, the new Anthropocene is used as a trope in some of the more radical climate change geoengineering proposals. It also motivated the fight to have it 'scientifically' recognized as a geological epoch. If you think the Anthropocene is not a politically-driven concept, I think you're not paying attention.
And some propose that the isotopic signature from 50s nuclear testing be used as the marker. The idea still seems entirely sensible to me. That some politicize it is irrelevant, and I'm positive that that was never the original intention.
Well, it is not THAT far from reality. At least, those are the intentions of some, for sure.
We have degrowthers and and Malthusians and Luddites and all kinds of other malcontents who are lobbying hard for assorted ludicrous agendas. How many times have I encountered putative environmentalists who think a nuclear holocaust would be good for the environment because it would rid the planet of those awful humans? Plenty of times, I am sorry to say.
There are lots of people who want to make agriculture and hunting and fishing illegal. Others want to make it illegal to cook food. And they are serious about it.
Humans are having a clear impact on the planet. We've accelerated the movement of animals, shifted more of the Earth's surface than natural forces, and created a 'technomass' that now outweighs the world's biomass. Acknowledging that we've entered a period dominated by human activity is simply recognizing the facts, and not a value judgment.
We are having an effect. We have always had an effect, just like all the other species. We are more aware than the other species, it is true.
However, many of our "earth friendly" efforts are making things worse, and are just a way to put money in the pockets of the elites. So it is one thing to be aware. It is another thing entirely to be sensible in response to this information.
Proposing we put all gardeners in prison or exterminate 99.9% of humanity through bioweapons are not particularly reasonable "solutions", I am sure you would agree.
"Proposing we put all gardeners in prison or exterminate 99.9% of humanity through bioweapons..." ??? You seem to be politicizing the idea as much as the folks you criticize.
I think it is quite telling that you would not agree that those extreme positions are unreasonable. I gather you want to claim no one has such positions, or something similar.
So let me phrase it another way. Let's suppose that you are uninformed enough that you are unaware that anyone anywhere on planet earth has ever held a position similar to these. Let's consider this a form of "argumentum ad absurbum".
So if some made an argument like this, would they be unreasonable? Or would these be perfectly rational and sensible things to assert and promote?
Or would you rather just throw a puerile tantrum and pick a fight?
Let's put it this way: imagine that 45 million years from now a species of intelligent rat redevelops the science of paleontology. They can clearly discern the sudden and widespread movement of species across the globe due to human activities. It is in fact rather hard to miss in the paleontological record (pets, livestock, human crops suddenly everywhere). Would it not be sensible to for them to view this as a distinctive and identifiable epoch, and even give it a name?
Who cares if some loons want the human race to go extinct? Was that a position ever taken by Stoermer, Crutzen, whoever? The whole point of the proposal is that human activity creates a possibly convenient demarcation. Are you going to insist that the intelligent rats from my scenario must be politically motivated?
My guess is that you are in massive denial, or that you are incredibly uninformed, or that you are just "trolling", or you have caught the woke mind virus.
We do have some on Heterodox STEM who are "wokists". They argue fervently that nothing is wrong whatsoever with college rallies demanding that we kill all the Jews, and efforts to ban merit from academia, and that anyone who says there are two sexes is mentally disturbed, and that all biological males menstruate, and it is reasonable for law students to threaten to kill federal judges, and similar nonsense. We even have some who threaten legal action if their posts are not removed, and upon removal of their posts, they protest vigorously as though it were somehow unfair and unwarranted.
If this sort of stuff the wokists advocate is correct and perfectly appropriate and rational, I guess every one of the regular followers and contributors on Heterodox STEM is delusional at best, and alarmists, or something even worse. There is no reason for Heterodox STEM to even exist, right?
Is that what you subscribe to? Or are you just trying to yank everyone's chain?
The stupidity and tenacity of these people is mind-boggling -- they just won't stop. This nonsense continues because the scientific community is passive and complicit. We should ridicule every instance of this renaming olympics and every one of its promoters. Instead, most scientists are politely looking the other way, saying "they mean well." They--the Woke--do not mean well. They are hell-bent to destroy science and the entire western civilization.
As a proposal of an action point -- how about establishing the Woke Hall of Shame? Post there updates of each instance of Wokeism in science, with names of people and societies who is responsible for the deed? Develop Woke Score and give Woke of the Year award, in the spirit of IgNobel prizes?
Thank you Anna Krilov for your voice for science and Western Civilization. As you know, pretend-humanitarian ideology is resistant to good ideas and difficult to eradicate. Communism and its destructive consequences in Russia and around the globe is still with us at more than a century. However, in the USA, educators are accountable to the public and pedagogical malpractice is subject to law. STEM has the tools to abate and prevent advanced Woke Mind-Virus infection. What we can do is: post classroom content on a dedicated website for all to see and critically evaluate (this is current practice for all validated knowledge, and will, sooner or later, become current practice for all that students are welcome to learn. What is taught in class should not be a secret). Members at Heterodox and FIRE should invite students to post classroom content (beginning with invalid and ideologically driven lessons). Technology will likely rid us of disinformation and imposed-ideology in the classroom. STEM can eradicate the Woke Mind-Virus. AND Thank you to Scott Turner for acknowledging the reality of the Woke Mind-Virus on Heterodox STEM. Elon Musk’s perspective, seeing Woke for what it is in the real world, empowers the public and us to take action and devise effective treatment.
https://gideonsteinbach.substack.com/p/pedagogical-malpractice?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Dear Anna Krylov (sorry for the typo)
This is a brilliant idea. I love it!
And no expansion of the “land acknowledgment” business. It just feeds that line of thinking.
As far as I can tell, there is not one square inch of inhabited territory on earth that has not changed hands innumerable times over the last few hundred thousand years. If you want to define the start of humanity as even earlier, then the numbers are even more stark. So who "owns" the land, any land, or has "rights" of any kind, to any of it?
I am BIPOC, with an indigenous heritage, as I have repeatedly mentioned here. I completely reject and disavow this sort of "virtue-signaling theatre". It is pointless, and meaningless and has no real substance behind it. It is a-historical, really, if you want to be precise about it. It is just some supposed magical incantation that a few smug woke characters repeat to spuriously cloak themselves in some illusory garments of virtue and self-righteousness. It is a waste of time and energy. Does it really benefit anyone aside from the nincompoops who are chanting this crap? And I am not really sure that it benefits the wokists, particularly.
We should return to merit for evaluations, as flawed as merit is as a concept. Our energies would be far better directed at improving our ability to discern and reward merit, and to encouraging merit and competence rather than this nonsense.
Let's do what works, even if it is admittedly imperfect. Let us try to improve, to get more efficient and productive. Anything else is just yak-shaving foolishness.
Thank you Thomas, for an exceptionally fine comment!
It was a little joke to highlight the absurdity of the renaming project. Just maybe they'll take it seriously! ;)
Every field seems to be engaging in this nonsense of renaming as well as a war on language. Some exhibits from chemistry:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/critical-social-justice-subverts-scientific-publishing/29AF22D23835C74AECDA7964E55812CF
If you think you've seen it all, check out ACS Inclusive Language Guide cited in the above. It will keep you occupied for hours. Examples of forbidden words: nursing mother, black market, dark cloud, New World, immigrant, lame, obesity, other.
The irony is they only attack and care about symbols and symptoms. Never, ever the actual problems or cures. They’re only interested in their “moral” crusade and the burning of heretics. I should have expected the Spanish Inquisition… because that’s only place this ends up if it’s not squelched.
Indeed, to your point on the creation of the new Anthropocene epoch recently failing, that was a Soviet-era term we learned there decades ago. In the West, it has been picking up speed exactly because it made it easier to make political points. Certainly humans do quite a bit of earth moving and other geological-scale activities, but it is due to our technology - at least call it the Technocene! As a biological entity (the Anthropo- part … so no clothing, tools, or fire), modern humans would not last long in most environments on Earth.
The proposed epoch also had no globally correlated timeframe as humans began to alter landscapes (and do not forget the climate!) at different times in various places. We should just leave the Holocene alone (it is only ~12,000 years young) and tackle the real geoscience problems, such as adapting to and being good stewards of our exciting and rapidly changing world!
There is a session on the failure to approve the Anthropocene at GSA next month. I will attend and share what happens if people are interested.
This is a nice essay. I am reminded of the protests at the SETI conferences. Why? The woke were upset about the word "intelligence" because they thought it was some slur against minorities. One has to admit, this reasoning is quite a stretch.
The demands to "sanitize" language to such extreme extents might be backfiring. My own subjective and admittedly limited observations are that all sorts of expressions that had previously almost completely exited common speech are returning in force. People were shamed out of using certain mildly offensive terms for years or even decades, but now in fits of spite and pique, they are using these terms again.
For example, I am thinking of the word "retard" which can mean to slow down, impede or decelerate. However, it would seem that now "retard" and assorted variants are having something of a comeback. There are possibly many other coarse and crude expressions, or words and phrases with questionable connotations that are returning as a form of protest.
I know I am now purposely exhibiting extra deference to women, holding doors open for them, etc., partly as a direct protest to the wokists and to the feminists. It is a small counter-cultural statement, but these things all add up. We have to push back any way we can.
As soon as they can cleanse the world of all the imperfect people, they'll be done.
Unfortunately, this is a major and serious goal of these people. One of the most imperfect people I know, Bill Gates, has stated this repeatedly in speeches, interviews and in print. And it would seem he has put his money where his mouth is, in some ways. And he is far from the only person of means who has done so.
Who is Bill Gates, with his pathetic record, to judge who must be eliminated?
and of course, these arrogant people think they are invulnerable. the world is just a Ted Talk for them, create their whiteboard bullet points and get it done.
These attempts at revision of the botanical historical record are as absurd and dangerous as those who attempt to revise history by removing statues and rewriting textbooks. There is something that the scientific community should consider in response to this situation. Given that the "woke" endorse and practice cancel culture, perhaps the same should be applied to them. Attempts to revise botanical history in support of virtue signalizing political correctness are as much an assault on the integrity of science as those that would fabricate research results. Perhaps they should professional sanctioned by their universities, colleagues and funding agencies in the same way?
Elon Musk focused on the horrendous harm done to students. Our primary responsibility is to protect our students and eradicate the WokeMindVirus (something that STEM knows how to do). Our next responsibility is to abate the dismantling every aspect of our society, including our democracy by disinformation and ideology fabricated by faculty. The intrusion of ideology into education and science is adequately documented.(1) It is time for Heterodox Academy and FIRE to act.(2) To do so, we would need to turn 360 and question our own orthodoxies. We would need to redefine the professional responsibilities of educators, restore scholarly discourse on campus, and reinstate a system of checks and balances on campus. Science cures viruses. Free expression regardless of content does not.
1. https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/download/article/3/1/236/pdf
2. https://gideonsteinbach.substack.com/p/pedagogical-malpractice?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Gideon Steinbach
Han shot first…
Pondering this topic a bit more, I think of all the terms in mathematics, chemistry and astronomy that are Arabic and/or Muslim in origin. Almost every single star that is visible by the naked eye has an Arabic name. We still refer to some of them by these Arabic names.
To some, these names might symbolize the blatant cruelty and disgraceful history of Arabic and Muslim culture. So, should they be sanitized? Or, because some classify Arabs and Muslims as victims and oppressed, should we change all the words in these fields to "honor" them?
I think leaving the names and terms as they are, as a tribute to a complicated history, is probably smarter and easier. Instead of doing real work, all kinds of virtue-signaling dufuses (dufi? doofi?) could squander extensive scarce resources doing meaningless nonsense and garnering all kinds of accolades for it. We already have more than enough of that kind of activity in STEM, I would argue.
Great piece! Perhaps we should rid botany of systematics altogether--the subject may be too racist to be redeemed.
Matthias Schleiden wrote in Principles of Scientific Botany: "A knowledge of the systematic arrangement of plants is only of importance to the botanist: for all others it is a pastime, if not a waste of time." Except now it is a waste of time for botanists too. https://archive.org/details/principlesofscie00schlrich/mode/2up?q=waste
Why only purge the racists. Can't we purge toxic masculinity too? I suggest that we take all plants that exhibit signs of toxic masculinity out of college and university greenhouses. I would start with Amorphophallus (warning: this picture may offend you) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphophallus_titanum and Aristolochia, the scrotum vine (warning: this picture may offend you) http://lisabonassin.blogspot.com/2013/10/dutchmans-pipe-aka-scrotum-vine-october.html
"More recently, a cadre of geologists tried to create an entirely new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – to shame bad humans and their stupid Industrial Revolution." That's a very strange interpretation of their intentions.
The onset of the Anthropocene (which was originally set to a few millennia ago) has now been reset to the mid-18th century so that it correlates with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Since then, the new Anthropocene is used as a trope in some of the more radical climate change geoengineering proposals. It also motivated the fight to have it 'scientifically' recognized as a geological epoch. If you think the Anthropocene is not a politically-driven concept, I think you're not paying attention.
And some propose that the isotopic signature from 50s nuclear testing be used as the marker. The idea still seems entirely sensible to me. That some politicize it is irrelevant, and I'm positive that that was never the original intention.
Well, it is not THAT far from reality. At least, those are the intentions of some, for sure.
We have degrowthers and and Malthusians and Luddites and all kinds of other malcontents who are lobbying hard for assorted ludicrous agendas. How many times have I encountered putative environmentalists who think a nuclear holocaust would be good for the environment because it would rid the planet of those awful humans? Plenty of times, I am sorry to say.
There are lots of people who want to make agriculture and hunting and fishing illegal. Others want to make it illegal to cook food. And they are serious about it.
Humans are having a clear impact on the planet. We've accelerated the movement of animals, shifted more of the Earth's surface than natural forces, and created a 'technomass' that now outweighs the world's biomass. Acknowledging that we've entered a period dominated by human activity is simply recognizing the facts, and not a value judgment.
Ah, but it certainly is a value judgement.
Ah, but it is not.
This kind of reasoning speaks volumes.
Agreed: bald assertions prove nothing.
We are having an effect. We have always had an effect, just like all the other species. We are more aware than the other species, it is true.
However, many of our "earth friendly" efforts are making things worse, and are just a way to put money in the pockets of the elites. So it is one thing to be aware. It is another thing entirely to be sensible in response to this information.
Proposing we put all gardeners in prison or exterminate 99.9% of humanity through bioweapons are not particularly reasonable "solutions", I am sure you would agree.
"Proposing we put all gardeners in prison or exterminate 99.9% of humanity through bioweapons..." ??? You seem to be politicizing the idea as much as the folks you criticize.
I think it is quite telling that you would not agree that those extreme positions are unreasonable. I gather you want to claim no one has such positions, or something similar.
So let me phrase it another way. Let's suppose that you are uninformed enough that you are unaware that anyone anywhere on planet earth has ever held a position similar to these. Let's consider this a form of "argumentum ad absurbum".
So if some made an argument like this, would they be unreasonable? Or would these be perfectly rational and sensible things to assert and promote?
Or would you rather just throw a puerile tantrum and pick a fight?
100% irrelevant.
Let's put it this way: imagine that 45 million years from now a species of intelligent rat redevelops the science of paleontology. They can clearly discern the sudden and widespread movement of species across the globe due to human activities. It is in fact rather hard to miss in the paleontological record (pets, livestock, human crops suddenly everywhere). Would it not be sensible to for them to view this as a distinctive and identifiable epoch, and even give it a name?
Who cares if some loons want the human race to go extinct? Was that a position ever taken by Stoermer, Crutzen, whoever? The whole point of the proposal is that human activity creates a possibly convenient demarcation. Are you going to insist that the intelligent rats from my scenario must be politically motivated?
My guess is that you are in massive denial, or that you are incredibly uninformed, or that you are just "trolling", or you have caught the woke mind virus.
We do have some on Heterodox STEM who are "wokists". They argue fervently that nothing is wrong whatsoever with college rallies demanding that we kill all the Jews, and efforts to ban merit from academia, and that anyone who says there are two sexes is mentally disturbed, and that all biological males menstruate, and it is reasonable for law students to threaten to kill federal judges, and similar nonsense. We even have some who threaten legal action if their posts are not removed, and upon removal of their posts, they protest vigorously as though it were somehow unfair and unwarranted.
If this sort of stuff the wokists advocate is correct and perfectly appropriate and rational, I guess every one of the regular followers and contributors on Heterodox STEM is delusional at best, and alarmists, or something even worse. There is no reason for Heterodox STEM to even exist, right?
Is that what you subscribe to? Or are you just trying to yank everyone's chain?
Are you talking to me???