It feels like "dangerous" has become the easy cop-out for "things I don't like". Like that fatuous "this puts NYT staff in DANGER" nonsense about an op-ed.
More recently since Musk's takeover of twitter, I've seen lots of "he's allowing DANGEROUS people back on". (Every person I've seen come back was originally kicked off for misgendering, or saying something later proven right - or at least defensible - about covid, etc. Am I now "in danger" because I might be exposed to their tweets?? Give me a fucking break).
Driving on an icy road without headlights is dangerous. Go poke an alligator with a stick if you want danger. What's not dangerous? Streaming a tv show. No matter what it's about.
I wouldn't say it's a cop-out; I would say it's a thinly disguised plea for censorship, which progressives have been conditioned to rely on because 1) the censors generally side with progressives, and 2) it's easier than trying to win in the marketplace of ideas.
Disagreement = danger really starts with what sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning described as "victim culture" as a recent evolution in Western societies, which started as "honour cultures" and became "dignity cultures" before recently transitioning to victim cultures. To borrow from another writeup here https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/honor-dignity-victim-cultures/
"In contrast to honor cultures that expect victims to be strong and stern enough to defend themselves, and dignity cultures that expect victims to be calm and charitable when in a dispute or disagreement, victim cultures emphasize how complainants are emotionally or physically fragile, vulnerable, and weak....Confidently espousing one’s own weakness, frailty, and suffering might seem, perhaps, dishonorable or shameful from an honor culture perspective, or gratuitous and self-absorbed from a dignity culture perspective."
Victim cultures are all about being very easily offended (similar to honour cultures where getting "dissed" warrants responding with violence), but rather than engaging in direct interpersonal dispute resolution, victim cultures encourage appealing to institutional authorities to demand disciplinary action against those alleged to have caused offense. Think tattling to the teacher, complaining to college admins, filing a complaint with HR, flagging social media posts for content moderators, etc.
Because progressives tend to work/live in large bureaucracies, and tend to practice victim culture, progressives spend a LOT of time perfecting the subtle art of 'gaming the system' of institutional disciplinary mechanisms. In your example, when progressive NYT staffers were offended by the Tom Cotton riot editorial, the staffers figured out very quickly that framing their complaints as a "workplace safety issue" limited upper management's ability to shut down Slack channels, punish Tweets disparaging the company, etc. So they landed on “This puts Black @nytimes staff in danger” as their go-to phrasing to complain about his op-ed.
So rather than saying "I disagree with this op-ed" or even "this op-ed makes me feel emotionally uncomfortable", NYT staffers/mutineers coalesced around a "lives in danger" talking point as a way to game the system of HR regulations. It worked perfectly; the only person who got fired was the editor who approved the op-ed, and the NYT retracted the op-ed in fairly short order.
To someone who hasn't dedicated their lives to perfecting the art of manipulating institutional authorities, this type of histrionic victimhood rhetoric seems like snowflakery of the highest order. How exactly does an op-ed calling for law and order put black NYT journalists' lives in mortal peril? But when properly understood as a tactical decision to game the system, “This puts Black @nytimes staff in danger” starts to make a perverse kind of sense. It's not about whether the victimhood complaint is truthful per se, it's about whether the victimhood complaint succeeds in manipulating the proverbial adults in the room into responding the way progressives want them to.
Progressives understand intuitively that whenever they feel offended or are hearing discourse they'd rather not hear, the way to achieve their desired response from institutional authorities (censorship, cancellation, etc.) is to lean heavily into victim culture when lodging their complaints. The four major avenues they use to get speech shut down are:
1) This speech is putting [black/trans] lives in danger
2) This speech is misinformation/conspiracy theory
3) This speech is hate speech
4) This speech is violence/targeted harassment/stochastic terrorism
Sometimes they're combined, as was the case with lab leak. Progressives flagged lab leak discourse as misinformation and also as anti-asian racist hate speech, and the strategy worked to achieve the desired institutional censorship. An account like Libs of TikTok only recirculates content that progressives have already posted online, but progressives can (and have!) got the account shadowbanned and suspended by claiming various iterations of the above 4 go-to victimhood complaints.
This strategy of 'gaming the system' does have the side effect of discrediting progressives in the eyes of the general public, as they look like out-of-touch crybullies, and it does seem like progressives tend to eventually cross an event horizon of believing their own bullshit. Somewhere along the way, at least some percentage of progressives really do seem to believe that conservative op-eds put black journalists' lives in mortal peril, and that Ancient Apocalypse really is dangerous. With Elon Musk buying Twitter, progressives are up in arms that their censorship strategies won't work anymore on the new management, so they're predictably claiming that:
1) Twitter is putting [black/trans] lives in danger
2) Twitter is tolerating misinformation/conspiracy theory
3) Twitter is tolerating hate speech
4) Twitter is tolerating violence/targeted harassment
To some extent, this is yet another attempt at gaming the system; progressives are appealing to advertisers and internet-gatekeepers like Apple to punish Twitter for allowing wrongthink on the platform (hall-monitors gonna hall-monitor). But again, a tragic percentage of progressives sincerely believe that 1-4 above are truthful statements as opposed to a reverse-engineered strategy for maximizing the impact of self-appointed hall monitors running to the nearest teacher and demanding the wrongthinkers be silenced.
That's an interesting analysis. I was aware of honor/dignity cultures, but the idea that this victimhood stuff could be mapped as an entire cultural worldview is interesting.
Yeah I didn't come up with "victim culture", but the basic idea is it combines the worst of both predecessors. It takes the 'thin-skinned/easily offended' piece of honour culture, and the 'reliance on institutional authorities to mediate serious disputes' piece of dignity culture, and the end result is basically peak hall-monitor.
Life is so cushy for some that they have to find “danger” in the most ridiculous places.
I can readily spot someone who has never experienced actual physical danger. They’re the one screeching that someone’s opinion is going to literally kill who simply hears/reads it.
Some of my professional interests are proximal to the material covered in "Ancient Apocalypse." I've watched a few episodes, and my impression of Hancock's work is that it takes some interesting case studies and uses them to construct a larger narrative that is, well, let's say "unparsimonious when compared to the larger body of evidence." But "dangerous"? The historical sciences have faced much more focused attacks in the past (creationism and intelligent design) and somehow were not burned to the ground in the process.
Calling Hancock "dangerous" is basically giving him free advertising. He WANTS people to say he's dangerous. It's part of his schtick. It's just about the first thing he says in the first episode of AA: the establishment is terrified of me and wants to shut me up, because I have the real truth and that truth will destroy them. Media like AA actually provide a great opportunity for mainstream scientists to engage the public and calmly introduce them to the counter-evidence for Hancock's narrative, but that unfortunately takes longer, is not professionally rewarding, and is often met with a new farrago of nonsense claims and personal abuse from the Hancocks of the world and their fans. I can see why the professionals don't want to do it. But going for hysterical claims of "danger" and crying for censorship instead is hugely counterproductive.
Hancock does not claim that he has the “real truth.” He is quite clear that he is presenting a counter narrative that at least merits consideration. I find much of what he says compelling, but at the same time would be open to substantive critiques of his work.
What is clear to me, at a minimum, is that he is presenting evidence that is not well explained -- if explained at all -- by the current accepted narrative.
I am trying to choose my words carefully here, because I don’t want to make accusations that I can’t back up, but let me put it this way: pseudoscientists are often extremely good at making false or misleading claims sound compelling. Often they will offer up a silly straw man version of the ‘current accepted narrative’ and then attack that straw man with “evidence” that is much less impressive than it sounds, if viewed in context of the larger body of knowledge—a context that the audience usually lacks.
Is that what Hancock is doing? Is he a pseudo scientist? I don’t know. I don’t know enough about his work or the relevant mainstream work to make that claim. But the way he presented himself in Ancient Apocalypse reminded me a great deal of other pseudosciences that I am more familiar with, FWIW.
I have no doubt that mainstream archaeology has gotten some significant things wrong, and perhaps he has indeed stumbled upon some of them. But if someone from outside a scientific field comes in and says that they’ve gotten most of it wrong—which is what I perceived Hancock to be doing in those first few episodes—that’s a big red flag that they’re letting their own narrative run far out ahead of their evidence, in my experience.
One further point. Perhaps Hancock is seen as dangerous because his inquiries challenge our assumption that our civilization is the result of a more or less continuous process of progress. If we were to complicate the narrative of progress, that might cause us to question our own narrative of progress in the contemporary age.
Such as, say, gender ideology, which results in the sterilization of minors and the removal of their breasts. Or putting men in women’s prisons.
If you are ideologically committed to this narrative of progress, then you would likely find an exploration of the past that challenges the narrative of progress as “dangerous.” Because then you might be called to question your own views on a host of topics.
That might turn out not to be dangerous, but rather a way of enhancing your ability to perceive danger.
Here’s the thing: my partner and I watched, and enjoyed, Ancient Apocalypse. We both think the host is a total wingnut windbag. The show is very entertaining and it’s shown us archeological sites a had no idea existed. It is possible to watch something skeptically, to know it’s best watched for entertainment and not information. Did I roll my eyes when I saw it was number one in Canada a couple weeks ago? You bet I did. But I’m also really glad I know about the ancient hunter-gatherer giant dick room.
I see your point but I would suggest that what you call a red flag might instead be a yellow flag: proceed with caution. But of course that should, in my opinion, be a default setting. Skepticism is also warranted with with accepted narratives, as a matter of course.
I am familiar with the work of the “pseudo-scientists” you reference. Many of them present narratives that far outrun their evidence. I don’t engage with them too deeply.
For a handful of them, such as Hancock (who, for the record does not claim to be scientist but rather a journalist and therefore cannot fairly be charged with being a pseudo-scientist), or Robert Schoch (a credential scientist and professor of Geology at Boston University), I find their narrative does not outrun their evidence. Their narrative may be wrong or in need of modification, but they marshal sufficient evidence to merit my attention. Hancock and Schoch disagree on fundamental points, and I myself have criticisms of both of them.
Randall Carlson is another figure who presents a large body of evidence to support his claims, and he handles it carefully (a key requirement for me). He is not a credentialed geologist but he displays a depth and breadth of knowledge of the subject that borders on astonishing.
I go beyond their presentation and the seeming outlandishness of the claims they make and think for myself about the evidence they adduce. I myself cannot avoid at least seriously considering that mainstream archaeology has gotten a great deal wrong.
Just as you find Hancock’s presentation to be a red flag, so do I find the airy dismissals of him as a pseudo-scientist and refusal to engage with him and his ideas and the evidence he presents. If his ideas are so wrong and so dangerous, why not take them down? How hard could it be? If his burgeoning popularity is so disturbing, then surely they have ample incentive. Instead, crickets.
No, that’s not quite right. Instead they label him a pseudo-scientist, the laziest possible response. This is akin, in the current political climate, labeling someone far right. It is done so reflexively that it is drained of all meaning. It fails to make an argument, and if you make no argument at all, it leads me to suspect that you don’t have one and that your own narrative does indeed merit calling into question.
I find this so disappointing, because I very much want substantive critiques of their work (and so do they, I might add). I am impressed so far with how they handle and present their evidence, and how they structure their arguments. The next step in my intellectual process would be to see how their theories stand up to criticism. But if all anyone has to say is that they present like “pseudo-scientists,” there is no value added.
I have admitted and admit again that I am not qualified to offer a substantive critique of Hancock's argument (f there is one to be made), and I don't plan to post further on this. What can I say--I have debated cranks in my own area of expertise, and Hancock reminds me of them in half a dozen different ways, so I couldn't resist pushing back on your post a little bit. But I actually agree with a fair amount of what you've said in this latest post. I find AA interesting and am trying to watch it with an open mind. But I can't ignore all the red flags or yellow flags or whatever-you-want-to-call-them which force me to constantly wonder whether I can trust anything he's saying.
if it's true that there are no substantive mainstream critiques of Hancock's work (or the others you mentioned), I think the unsatisfying but practical reason for this is that there's really no percentage in it for your average expert, who is already incredibly busy with grant applications and manuscripts and grad students and the like. Back when I used to debate cranks--excuse me, 'heterodox thinkers'--in my field, I found it to be an incredibly frustrating experience. Not because I wasn't open to learning anything from them--I absolutely was--but because, at the end of the day, they weren't willing to learn anything from me. It doesn't matter how good my argument is, or how many citations I throw at someone, if they are ready and willing to fall back on "well, that's just lies. Scientists are liars." Eventually I just accepted that I had better things to do with my time, and I think many people who might be qualified to push back on Hancock have reached similar conclusions. Now, maybe you're thinking that I've just described the lazy mainstream response to Hancock as well ("that's just lies"), and there may be some truth to that. But again, I can see why it is that way. If you're interested in "the other side" I'm afraid it may be up to you to dig through the primary literature yourself, to get a better idea of whether Hancock is representing the "mainstream narrative" fairly.
As a matter of fact, a fair amount of ink has been spilled on what does or doesn't count as pseudoscience. I don't think a person calling himself a journalist precludes him from being a pseudoscientist, and I'll leave it that.
Fair enough. I am not suggesting you shouldn’t be skeptical. Default setting, as I said.
What I would add is that I have read practically all of his books that pertain to AA, which is like an introductory course to his ideas. I find that they are presented in too cursory a fashion in AA; I was disappointed that the episodes are only a half hour in length. Given the manner of presentation, in the absence of documentation for his claims, I understand your skepticism. It’s unfortunate that he bears at least a superficial resemblance to the cranks you reference, and I wonder how a better presentation might overcome that problem, which is inherent for anyone presenting ideas that are so far out of the mainstream.
The books, on the other hand are much more detailed, carefully argued, and well-sourced. So I don’t have the same reaction to AA that someone who is new to his ideas would have.
I myself have worked as a professional political researcher, and I have developed a lifelong practice for evaluating research. I am not attempting to argue from authority (a practice I despise) but rather to say that I have not accepted his ideas uncritically, and that I differentiate him from those whom you might fairly designate as pseudo-scientists. He could turn out to be wrong, or course, but that’s different from not being rigorous.
As to whether Hancock is a pseudo-scientist, that would require a substantive critique. I understand that time constraints may prevent academics from making that critique. In that case, perhaps they would be better served by acknowledging that fact, and otherwise declining to offer an opinion.
I cannot say that you would find his books worth your time. But I found them worth mine, and if AA, whatever it’s flaws, prompts you -- or any other skeptics -- to dig a little deeper than I would judge it to be a success.
When a person takes a swing at your field and your work, it must be tempting to fire back even if only superficially (calling them pseudoscientists). Especially if you can see major flaws, despite not having time to spell out those flaws for the public. But I take your point.
At one point I had a copy of Fingerprints of the Gods (that’s Hancock, right?), but I never got around to reading it. Maybe it’ll turn up in my storage unit and I can take a closer look.
Fingerprints of the Gods starts with his argument about medieval maps representing the way the oceans looked before the end of the last ice age. I found this quite compelling and it opened the door for entertaining, at least, his thesis.
Second point, I have been three times to the Channeled Scablands that Randall Carlson argues were the result of an enormous flood triggered by a comet strike. Whether or not you ultimately buy that theory, it’s a fascinating and mysterious landscape, and the topic is well worth considering.
It was my understanding that a megaflood explanation for the Scablands isn’t controversial at this point and hasn’t been for a while. I’m not sure why you would need to invoke a comet strike as a causal mechanism, but I guess that’s something I can look into.
Accepted theory is ice dam(s) broke. Problem: not enough water. So now it’s multiple floods. Comet theory would explain a much larger flood than possible with the ice dam theory. In a nut shell. Either way, fascinating place.
I’ve been following Graham Hancock’s work for years. I think he is right about some things, probably wrong about others. At a minimum he raises important and provocative questions.
Do his claims merit skepticism? Sure. But so does the accepted narrative of human history. If it’s seen as dangerous to question that narrative, then we will remain stuck in our view of the past. We will cease to engage in meaningful inquiry about the past.
Would that be “dangerous?” Maybe not. But it would be incredibly stultifying.
I'm guessing the vast majority of your readership here are refugees from the kind of blind catastrophising common in echo-chamber journalism these days. I think honest debate and nuanced thinking is on its way out because it's far more psychologically comfortable to believe your views are pure and right rather than have to challenge them with inconvenient counter-arguments.
If things weren't "more complicated than that", if you could draw a nice neat line between Pure Good and Pure Evil as easily as you'd choose up sides on the playground, free speech wouldn't make any sense. Neither would liberal democracy.
I miss message boards so much! Whether for religion, philosophy, or fantasy novels, I used to spend hours a day posting and reading. Now they're all gone, like tears in the rain.
Reza Aslan has gone out of his way to suppress views he disagrees with. Pre-Elon Twitter did the same thing. The Twitter files (parts 1-8) show that censorship was the norm in the old Twitter. When Reza called for censorship, he got a standing ovation from students. The list of extreme leftists going bonkers over the end of Twitter censorship is long and revealing. Reza isn't even the worst. He has plenty of competition.
This is an aspect of the discourse that I sense contains a religious element. Sinning - even by displeasing God with Bad Words - is dangerous because it lands you in hell for an eternity of unspeakable suffering.
It would be great if all the reactionary weirdos screaming about the danger of groomers take their rhetoric down a notch in 2023 but somehow I don’t think they’re interested in steelmanning the arguments for youth gender medicine.
But as long as our media superstructure relies on clicks as the fundamental basis for its economic survival, people will write and speak and act to provoke strong reactions rather than to enlighten. Nationalized media (and social media) could be a good place to start to address this.
Oh for sure, public media is definitely not a panacea. In the context of a political system largely captured by the ruling class, state ownership can only do so much, but it can provide a small measure of insulation from the imperatives of the profit motive. There’s a reason Ancient Apocalypse is airing on Netflix rather than PBS.
Because NPR gets money from Congress, rather than advertisers, that means even greater ideological capture. In other words, NPR is predictably worse than Netflix. On NPR you can 'learn' that 'sex is a spectrum'. Amazingly enough biologists think otherwise.
Of course, the BBC 'somehow' failed to mention that Caster Semenya was an XY male. Of course, so did the Associated Press, Reuters, NY Times, NPR, and Washington Post.
The profit motive means a content provider is looking for the broadest possible audience. That makes them far less susceptible to Narrative Capture than an organization like NPR.
Goalpost shift. It was you that made the claim that AA on Netflix showed how NPR was insulated from the "profit motive", when in fact there's mountains of evidence that shows that NPR has a distinct narrative slant which AA simply doesn't line up with. So what exactly is your evidence of "insulation"? Both MSNBC and NPR cater to a particular audience. Netflix doesn't. So where does the "profit motive" offer some unique insight regarding NPR's editorial choices?
Jesse, your essay is extremely dangerous! Jk. Hmmm, Hancockism might lead to Trumpism. Or maybe not. The "journalist" Stuart Heritage is a synecdoche for less-than-mediocre writing. The trajectory of the internet reminds me of a slide. In the early years the was a lot of stair-climbing, now it is mostly downhill, the speed is picking up.
Noah Smith at Noahpinion wrote a good piece recently on how the internet wants to be fragmented. At Twitter, we're all in one room he says, that is not good. Gresham's law really prevails at Jack Dorsey's creation.
It feels like "dangerous" has become the easy cop-out for "things I don't like". Like that fatuous "this puts NYT staff in DANGER" nonsense about an op-ed.
More recently since Musk's takeover of twitter, I've seen lots of "he's allowing DANGEROUS people back on". (Every person I've seen come back was originally kicked off for misgendering, or saying something later proven right - or at least defensible - about covid, etc. Am I now "in danger" because I might be exposed to their tweets?? Give me a fucking break).
Driving on an icy road without headlights is dangerous. Go poke an alligator with a stick if you want danger. What's not dangerous? Streaming a tv show. No matter what it's about.
I wouldn't say it's a cop-out; I would say it's a thinly disguised plea for censorship, which progressives have been conditioned to rely on because 1) the censors generally side with progressives, and 2) it's easier than trying to win in the marketplace of ideas.
Disagreement = danger really starts with what sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning described as "victim culture" as a recent evolution in Western societies, which started as "honour cultures" and became "dignity cultures" before recently transitioning to victim cultures. To borrow from another writeup here https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/honor-dignity-victim-cultures/
"In contrast to honor cultures that expect victims to be strong and stern enough to defend themselves, and dignity cultures that expect victims to be calm and charitable when in a dispute or disagreement, victim cultures emphasize how complainants are emotionally or physically fragile, vulnerable, and weak....Confidently espousing one’s own weakness, frailty, and suffering might seem, perhaps, dishonorable or shameful from an honor culture perspective, or gratuitous and self-absorbed from a dignity culture perspective."
Victim cultures are all about being very easily offended (similar to honour cultures where getting "dissed" warrants responding with violence), but rather than engaging in direct interpersonal dispute resolution, victim cultures encourage appealing to institutional authorities to demand disciplinary action against those alleged to have caused offense. Think tattling to the teacher, complaining to college admins, filing a complaint with HR, flagging social media posts for content moderators, etc.
Because progressives tend to work/live in large bureaucracies, and tend to practice victim culture, progressives spend a LOT of time perfecting the subtle art of 'gaming the system' of institutional disciplinary mechanisms. In your example, when progressive NYT staffers were offended by the Tom Cotton riot editorial, the staffers figured out very quickly that framing their complaints as a "workplace safety issue" limited upper management's ability to shut down Slack channels, punish Tweets disparaging the company, etc. So they landed on “This puts Black @nytimes staff in danger” as their go-to phrasing to complain about his op-ed.
As Erik Wemple later wrote in WaPo, "The [Black @nytimes staff in danger] formulation came from the internal group Black@NYT and received the blessing of the NewsGuild of New York as “legally protected speech because it focused on workplace safety” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/27/new-york-times-tom-cotton-oped-james-bennet/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
So rather than saying "I disagree with this op-ed" or even "this op-ed makes me feel emotionally uncomfortable", NYT staffers/mutineers coalesced around a "lives in danger" talking point as a way to game the system of HR regulations. It worked perfectly; the only person who got fired was the editor who approved the op-ed, and the NYT retracted the op-ed in fairly short order.
To someone who hasn't dedicated their lives to perfecting the art of manipulating institutional authorities, this type of histrionic victimhood rhetoric seems like snowflakery of the highest order. How exactly does an op-ed calling for law and order put black NYT journalists' lives in mortal peril? But when properly understood as a tactical decision to game the system, “This puts Black @nytimes staff in danger” starts to make a perverse kind of sense. It's not about whether the victimhood complaint is truthful per se, it's about whether the victimhood complaint succeeds in manipulating the proverbial adults in the room into responding the way progressives want them to.
Progressives understand intuitively that whenever they feel offended or are hearing discourse they'd rather not hear, the way to achieve their desired response from institutional authorities (censorship, cancellation, etc.) is to lean heavily into victim culture when lodging their complaints. The four major avenues they use to get speech shut down are:
1) This speech is putting [black/trans] lives in danger
2) This speech is misinformation/conspiracy theory
3) This speech is hate speech
4) This speech is violence/targeted harassment/stochastic terrorism
Sometimes they're combined, as was the case with lab leak. Progressives flagged lab leak discourse as misinformation and also as anti-asian racist hate speech, and the strategy worked to achieve the desired institutional censorship. An account like Libs of TikTok only recirculates content that progressives have already posted online, but progressives can (and have!) got the account shadowbanned and suspended by claiming various iterations of the above 4 go-to victimhood complaints.
This strategy of 'gaming the system' does have the side effect of discrediting progressives in the eyes of the general public, as they look like out-of-touch crybullies, and it does seem like progressives tend to eventually cross an event horizon of believing their own bullshit. Somewhere along the way, at least some percentage of progressives really do seem to believe that conservative op-eds put black journalists' lives in mortal peril, and that Ancient Apocalypse really is dangerous. With Elon Musk buying Twitter, progressives are up in arms that their censorship strategies won't work anymore on the new management, so they're predictably claiming that:
1) Twitter is putting [black/trans] lives in danger
2) Twitter is tolerating misinformation/conspiracy theory
3) Twitter is tolerating hate speech
4) Twitter is tolerating violence/targeted harassment
To some extent, this is yet another attempt at gaming the system; progressives are appealing to advertisers and internet-gatekeepers like Apple to punish Twitter for allowing wrongthink on the platform (hall-monitors gonna hall-monitor). But again, a tragic percentage of progressives sincerely believe that 1-4 above are truthful statements as opposed to a reverse-engineered strategy for maximizing the impact of self-appointed hall monitors running to the nearest teacher and demanding the wrongthinkers be silenced.
That's an interesting analysis. I was aware of honor/dignity cultures, but the idea that this victimhood stuff could be mapped as an entire cultural worldview is interesting.
Yeah I didn't come up with "victim culture", but the basic idea is it combines the worst of both predecessors. It takes the 'thin-skinned/easily offended' piece of honour culture, and the 'reliance on institutional authorities to mediate serious disputes' piece of dignity culture, and the end result is basically peak hall-monitor.
Now do consecutive victim culture because that’s considerable.
Can't say I've heard of that, so the soapbox is all yours.
I’m lazy and spending time with family so here is an article. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/conservatism-reaches-dead-end/617629/
I mean, I live in Michigan and holy crap have the right been terrible in our state.
Life is so cushy for some that they have to find “danger” in the most ridiculous places.
I can readily spot someone who has never experienced actual physical danger. They’re the one screeching that someone’s opinion is going to literally kill who simply hears/reads it.
. . .and the corollary, utterly debase the word "violence." While dismissing actual violence as inconsequential, for that matter.
Exactly. It is safetyist bullshit. Or perhaps weaponized safetyism is a better description.
Some of my professional interests are proximal to the material covered in "Ancient Apocalypse." I've watched a few episodes, and my impression of Hancock's work is that it takes some interesting case studies and uses them to construct a larger narrative that is, well, let's say "unparsimonious when compared to the larger body of evidence." But "dangerous"? The historical sciences have faced much more focused attacks in the past (creationism and intelligent design) and somehow were not burned to the ground in the process.
Calling Hancock "dangerous" is basically giving him free advertising. He WANTS people to say he's dangerous. It's part of his schtick. It's just about the first thing he says in the first episode of AA: the establishment is terrified of me and wants to shut me up, because I have the real truth and that truth will destroy them. Media like AA actually provide a great opportunity for mainstream scientists to engage the public and calmly introduce them to the counter-evidence for Hancock's narrative, but that unfortunately takes longer, is not professionally rewarding, and is often met with a new farrago of nonsense claims and personal abuse from the Hancocks of the world and their fans. I can see why the professionals don't want to do it. But going for hysterical claims of "danger" and crying for censorship instead is hugely counterproductive.
Hancock does not claim that he has the “real truth.” He is quite clear that he is presenting a counter narrative that at least merits consideration. I find much of what he says compelling, but at the same time would be open to substantive critiques of his work.
What is clear to me, at a minimum, is that he is presenting evidence that is not well explained -- if explained at all -- by the current accepted narrative.
I am trying to choose my words carefully here, because I don’t want to make accusations that I can’t back up, but let me put it this way: pseudoscientists are often extremely good at making false or misleading claims sound compelling. Often they will offer up a silly straw man version of the ‘current accepted narrative’ and then attack that straw man with “evidence” that is much less impressive than it sounds, if viewed in context of the larger body of knowledge—a context that the audience usually lacks.
Is that what Hancock is doing? Is he a pseudo scientist? I don’t know. I don’t know enough about his work or the relevant mainstream work to make that claim. But the way he presented himself in Ancient Apocalypse reminded me a great deal of other pseudosciences that I am more familiar with, FWIW.
I have no doubt that mainstream archaeology has gotten some significant things wrong, and perhaps he has indeed stumbled upon some of them. But if someone from outside a scientific field comes in and says that they’ve gotten most of it wrong—which is what I perceived Hancock to be doing in those first few episodes—that’s a big red flag that they’re letting their own narrative run far out ahead of their evidence, in my experience.
My latest post was intended as a response to this post. I regret their error but you can find my response below.
One further point. Perhaps Hancock is seen as dangerous because his inquiries challenge our assumption that our civilization is the result of a more or less continuous process of progress. If we were to complicate the narrative of progress, that might cause us to question our own narrative of progress in the contemporary age.
Such as, say, gender ideology, which results in the sterilization of minors and the removal of their breasts. Or putting men in women’s prisons.
If you are ideologically committed to this narrative of progress, then you would likely find an exploration of the past that challenges the narrative of progress as “dangerous.” Because then you might be called to question your own views on a host of topics.
That might turn out not to be dangerous, but rather a way of enhancing your ability to perceive danger.
Excellent point. Over and over we find utopian thinking is the real dangerous ideology.
Here’s the thing: my partner and I watched, and enjoyed, Ancient Apocalypse. We both think the host is a total wingnut windbag. The show is very entertaining and it’s shown us archeological sites a had no idea existed. It is possible to watch something skeptically, to know it’s best watched for entertainment and not information. Did I roll my eyes when I saw it was number one in Canada a couple weeks ago? You bet I did. But I’m also really glad I know about the ancient hunter-gatherer giant dick room.
Gotta love archaeology expert Rebecca "The" Onion's name. She should be interviewed on every subject for maximum confusion.
I see your point but I would suggest that what you call a red flag might instead be a yellow flag: proceed with caution. But of course that should, in my opinion, be a default setting. Skepticism is also warranted with with accepted narratives, as a matter of course.
I am familiar with the work of the “pseudo-scientists” you reference. Many of them present narratives that far outrun their evidence. I don’t engage with them too deeply.
For a handful of them, such as Hancock (who, for the record does not claim to be scientist but rather a journalist and therefore cannot fairly be charged with being a pseudo-scientist), or Robert Schoch (a credential scientist and professor of Geology at Boston University), I find their narrative does not outrun their evidence. Their narrative may be wrong or in need of modification, but they marshal sufficient evidence to merit my attention. Hancock and Schoch disagree on fundamental points, and I myself have criticisms of both of them.
Randall Carlson is another figure who presents a large body of evidence to support his claims, and he handles it carefully (a key requirement for me). He is not a credentialed geologist but he displays a depth and breadth of knowledge of the subject that borders on astonishing.
I go beyond their presentation and the seeming outlandishness of the claims they make and think for myself about the evidence they adduce. I myself cannot avoid at least seriously considering that mainstream archaeology has gotten a great deal wrong.
Just as you find Hancock’s presentation to be a red flag, so do I find the airy dismissals of him as a pseudo-scientist and refusal to engage with him and his ideas and the evidence he presents. If his ideas are so wrong and so dangerous, why not take them down? How hard could it be? If his burgeoning popularity is so disturbing, then surely they have ample incentive. Instead, crickets.
No, that’s not quite right. Instead they label him a pseudo-scientist, the laziest possible response. This is akin, in the current political climate, labeling someone far right. It is done so reflexively that it is drained of all meaning. It fails to make an argument, and if you make no argument at all, it leads me to suspect that you don’t have one and that your own narrative does indeed merit calling into question.
I find this so disappointing, because I very much want substantive critiques of their work (and so do they, I might add). I am impressed so far with how they handle and present their evidence, and how they structure their arguments. The next step in my intellectual process would be to see how their theories stand up to criticism. But if all anyone has to say is that they present like “pseudo-scientists,” there is no value added.
Work with me here. Please, something substantive.
I have admitted and admit again that I am not qualified to offer a substantive critique of Hancock's argument (f there is one to be made), and I don't plan to post further on this. What can I say--I have debated cranks in my own area of expertise, and Hancock reminds me of them in half a dozen different ways, so I couldn't resist pushing back on your post a little bit. But I actually agree with a fair amount of what you've said in this latest post. I find AA interesting and am trying to watch it with an open mind. But I can't ignore all the red flags or yellow flags or whatever-you-want-to-call-them which force me to constantly wonder whether I can trust anything he's saying.
if it's true that there are no substantive mainstream critiques of Hancock's work (or the others you mentioned), I think the unsatisfying but practical reason for this is that there's really no percentage in it for your average expert, who is already incredibly busy with grant applications and manuscripts and grad students and the like. Back when I used to debate cranks--excuse me, 'heterodox thinkers'--in my field, I found it to be an incredibly frustrating experience. Not because I wasn't open to learning anything from them--I absolutely was--but because, at the end of the day, they weren't willing to learn anything from me. It doesn't matter how good my argument is, or how many citations I throw at someone, if they are ready and willing to fall back on "well, that's just lies. Scientists are liars." Eventually I just accepted that I had better things to do with my time, and I think many people who might be qualified to push back on Hancock have reached similar conclusions. Now, maybe you're thinking that I've just described the lazy mainstream response to Hancock as well ("that's just lies"), and there may be some truth to that. But again, I can see why it is that way. If you're interested in "the other side" I'm afraid it may be up to you to dig through the primary literature yourself, to get a better idea of whether Hancock is representing the "mainstream narrative" fairly.
As a matter of fact, a fair amount of ink has been spilled on what does or doesn't count as pseudoscience. I don't think a person calling himself a journalist precludes him from being a pseudoscientist, and I'll leave it that.
Fair enough. I am not suggesting you shouldn’t be skeptical. Default setting, as I said.
What I would add is that I have read practically all of his books that pertain to AA, which is like an introductory course to his ideas. I find that they are presented in too cursory a fashion in AA; I was disappointed that the episodes are only a half hour in length. Given the manner of presentation, in the absence of documentation for his claims, I understand your skepticism. It’s unfortunate that he bears at least a superficial resemblance to the cranks you reference, and I wonder how a better presentation might overcome that problem, which is inherent for anyone presenting ideas that are so far out of the mainstream.
The books, on the other hand are much more detailed, carefully argued, and well-sourced. So I don’t have the same reaction to AA that someone who is new to his ideas would have.
I myself have worked as a professional political researcher, and I have developed a lifelong practice for evaluating research. I am not attempting to argue from authority (a practice I despise) but rather to say that I have not accepted his ideas uncritically, and that I differentiate him from those whom you might fairly designate as pseudo-scientists. He could turn out to be wrong, or course, but that’s different from not being rigorous.
As to whether Hancock is a pseudo-scientist, that would require a substantive critique. I understand that time constraints may prevent academics from making that critique. In that case, perhaps they would be better served by acknowledging that fact, and otherwise declining to offer an opinion.
I cannot say that you would find his books worth your time. But I found them worth mine, and if AA, whatever it’s flaws, prompts you -- or any other skeptics -- to dig a little deeper than I would judge it to be a success.
And I will leave it at that.
When a person takes a swing at your field and your work, it must be tempting to fire back even if only superficially (calling them pseudoscientists). Especially if you can see major flaws, despite not having time to spell out those flaws for the public. But I take your point.
At one point I had a copy of Fingerprints of the Gods (that’s Hancock, right?), but I never got around to reading it. Maybe it’ll turn up in my storage unit and I can take a closer look.
Great having an exchange with you.
Fingerprints of the Gods starts with his argument about medieval maps representing the way the oceans looked before the end of the last ice age. I found this quite compelling and it opened the door for entertaining, at least, his thesis.
Second point, I have been three times to the Channeled Scablands that Randall Carlson argues were the result of an enormous flood triggered by a comet strike. Whether or not you ultimately buy that theory, it’s a fascinating and mysterious landscape, and the topic is well worth considering.
I’ve enjoyed the exchange as well.
It was my understanding that a megaflood explanation for the Scablands isn’t controversial at this point and hasn’t been for a while. I’m not sure why you would need to invoke a comet strike as a causal mechanism, but I guess that’s something I can look into.
Accepted theory is ice dam(s) broke. Problem: not enough water. So now it’s multiple floods. Comet theory would explain a much larger flood than possible with the ice dam theory. In a nut shell. Either way, fascinating place.
I’ve been following Graham Hancock’s work for years. I think he is right about some things, probably wrong about others. At a minimum he raises important and provocative questions.
Do his claims merit skepticism? Sure. But so does the accepted narrative of human history. If it’s seen as dangerous to question that narrative, then we will remain stuck in our view of the past. We will cease to engage in meaningful inquiry about the past.
Would that be “dangerous?” Maybe not. But it would be incredibly stultifying.
I'm guessing the vast majority of your readership here are refugees from the kind of blind catastrophising common in echo-chamber journalism these days. I think honest debate and nuanced thinking is on its way out because it's far more psychologically comfortable to believe your views are pure and right rather than have to challenge them with inconvenient counter-arguments.
If things weren't "more complicated than that", if you could draw a nice neat line between Pure Good and Pure Evil as easily as you'd choose up sides on the playground, free speech wouldn't make any sense. Neither would liberal democracy.
The late 90’s to early 2000’s message board culture was the best
I miss message boards so much! Whether for religion, philosophy, or fantasy novels, I used to spend hours a day posting and reading. Now they're all gone, like tears in the rain.
The only message board culture that isn’t totally toxic has to do with College Football
I had just finished reading Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland when AA hit Netflix and laughed at America's yet insatiable hunger for Aquarian mumbo jumbo.
While the headline for this includes the word "Dangers," it presents Hancock and his theories as mystical wackadoodle nonsense.
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/ancient-apocalypse-pseudoscience/
And the author's name is really Flint Dibble.
Reza Aslan has gone out of his way to suppress views he disagrees with. Pre-Elon Twitter did the same thing. The Twitter files (parts 1-8) show that censorship was the norm in the old Twitter. When Reza called for censorship, he got a standing ovation from students. The list of extreme leftists going bonkers over the end of Twitter censorship is long and revealing. Reza isn't even the worst. He has plenty of competition.
This is an aspect of the discourse that I sense contains a religious element. Sinning - even by displeasing God with Bad Words - is dangerous because it lands you in hell for an eternity of unspeakable suffering.
It would be great if all the reactionary weirdos screaming about the danger of groomers take their rhetoric down a notch in 2023 but somehow I don’t think they’re interested in steelmanning the arguments for youth gender medicine.
But as long as our media superstructure relies on clicks as the fundamental basis for its economic survival, people will write and speak and act to provoke strong reactions rather than to enlighten. Nationalized media (and social media) could be a good place to start to address this.
As a Canadian, nationalized media comes with its own set of problems I assure you. You can also look at NPR or BBC as a case study.
Oh for sure, public media is definitely not a panacea. In the context of a political system largely captured by the ruling class, state ownership can only do so much, but it can provide a small measure of insulation from the imperatives of the profit motive. There’s a reason Ancient Apocalypse is airing on Netflix rather than PBS.
Because NPR gets money from Congress, rather than advertisers, that means even greater ideological capture. In other words, NPR is predictably worse than Netflix. On NPR you can 'learn' that 'sex is a spectrum'. Amazingly enough biologists think otherwise.
Thank you for exemplifying the phenomenon I referred to in my initial comment lol
Of course, the BBC 'somehow' failed to mention that Caster Semenya was an XY male. Of course, so did the Associated Press, Reuters, NY Times, NPR, and Washington Post.
You seem normal!
The profit motive means a content provider is looking for the broadest possible audience. That makes them far less susceptible to Narrative Capture than an organization like NPR.
Yes, MSNBC and Fox News are known for their ideological diversity lol
Goalpost shift. It was you that made the claim that AA on Netflix showed how NPR was insulated from the "profit motive", when in fact there's mountains of evidence that shows that NPR has a distinct narrative slant which AA simply doesn't line up with. So what exactly is your evidence of "insulation"? Both MSNBC and NPR cater to a particular audience. Netflix doesn't. So where does the "profit motive" offer some unique insight regarding NPR's editorial choices?
Where do you get the bizarre idea that Netflix doesn’t cater to an audience?
Jesse, your essay is extremely dangerous! Jk. Hmmm, Hancockism might lead to Trumpism. Or maybe not. The "journalist" Stuart Heritage is a synecdoche for less-than-mediocre writing. The trajectory of the internet reminds me of a slide. In the early years the was a lot of stair-climbing, now it is mostly downhill, the speed is picking up.
Noah Smith at Noahpinion wrote a good piece recently on how the internet wants to be fragmented. At Twitter, we're all in one room he says, that is not good. Gresham's law really prevails at Jack Dorsey's creation.
You have understated your case. Hancock is well-known to be a Trump agent / propagandist.
I hope we can get back to some nuance in 2023, but I'm not hopeful.