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Welcome Michael, I have been looking forward to your substack and expect it will be a great complement to Skeptic magazine and The Michael Shermer Show which I really enjoy (great guest picks). I hope your contributions can help "swing the pendulum back".

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The Laura Helmuth tweets provided are ironic in that they actually describe those who refer to themselves as "woke." (It's not a pejorative when the group being referred to refers to themselves using the same word.)

Individuals who describe themselves as woke exhibit an arrogance of moral certainty (another way of saying "self-righteous") and do indeed pick the fights, because they are invariably the party who resorts to name-calling or labelling, i.e. racist, sexist, transphobic, etc.

Those of us who abhor the woke perspective find it hard to conduct a dialogue or conversation when the refutation to all of our arguments are calling us those names. Moreover, the calling of names and the labels are pretty much the definition of "being cancelled."

For instance, if I argue that there are only two sexes: male and female, and the response is that no, there are myriad sexes: male and female as well as many degrees in between—that's a defensible statement and constitutes dialogue. However, if I argue that there are only two sexes, and the response is "You are sexist, transphobic, intolerant and as such a bad person..." Well, that sounds like bullying instead of disagreement, and it's a call for others to disassociate themselves with (otherwise known as "cancel") me.

The overall point being that if you are on the side that responds to statements by labelling people and calling them names, maybe you should reconsider your position. No argument of ideas should include calling anyone unequivocally pejorative names.

For reference, the tweets Michael sited read: "Substack seems to be attracting a certain set of writers who are arrogant, self-righteous, offended by social justice efforts, and/or just looking for a fight. This thread is about one small part of this pattern: editing, and what contempt for editing says about someone. Writers who resent editing tend to be belligerant and disdainful of their potential audience. Some of them are people who use the word "woke" as an insult and claim they're being cancelled if anyone disagrees with them or has a different interpretation of the world."

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Worse than corrupting a pop magazine like Scientific American is the threat that woke ideologies pose to science itself, as practiced in academic departments and scientific journals.

Almost all academic positions now require applicants to submit (and voice) statements about JEDI (a term that Micheal has pointed out triggers some SJWs), often as a precursor to any discussion of scientific qualifications. University administrations have gone all out on not just the optics of faculty diversity, but supply guidance on how to teach (and grade) so that results look more just.

And journals have also embraced editorial and content that substitutes fairness for scientific rigor. And that's my point: as evolved in the Enlightenment, science derives from a deliberately neutral and apolitical approach to knowledge. Proscribing certain ideological methods (and banning some undesirable results) is NOT science.

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A concerning report. It seems the culture of "Competitive Compassion" is undermining the very foundations of rational thought. The truly brave ones are those who risk opprobrium by pointing this out.

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