i think we need to respect a human nature and human needs. And this means that there are going to be people who are going to find fulfilment in believing things that probably aren't true. It's going to make them feel happier. And then i have the right to think that they're wrong and say so, and argue with them if they want to argue with me. If they don't, they can be left alone and and live their lives out. I think we just have to try and work with human nature. We really are quite irrational to who on stories.
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn’t practice yoga or cook Chinese food? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed so quickly to challenge the very logic of Western society?
In this wide-ranging conversation Helen Pluckrose recounts the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. Today this dogma is recognizable as much by its effects, such as cancel culture and social-media dogpiles, as by its tenets, which are all too often embraced as axiomatic in mainstream media: knowledge is a social construct; science and reason are tools of oppression; all human interactions are sites of oppressive power play; and language is dangerous.