Zachary Sheldon
404 posts
@zdsheldon
Anthropologist researching AI and esotericism. Chicago-based Mets fan, roleplayer, and aspiring neophyte.
@chris_j_paxton Next up Pennsylvania!
This meme has done irreversible generational damage to Daniel Dennett and the entire illusionist community
This career previously had a name: intelligence. James Angleton had a background in literary criticism, Sherman Kent was a historian. That we no longer marshal these quirked up elite talents in the interest of the American Empire remains a capitulation of the highest order.
It’s amazing how Anthropology keeps proving that the Vanderbilt report was right about it. The president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) says the field is open to debate. Then she’s asked about a panel on “Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology” that the AAA canceled in 2023. The interviewer reports that “the AAA said at the time that the panel would have harmed members’ ‘safety and dignity,’ and that its premise contradicted ‘settled science.’” The AAA president says, “we know, factually, that there are different types of ‘sexes’ and ‘genders’” and that teaching otherwise is “the equivalent of turning an astronomy department into an astrology department.” She adds (regarding the panel): “It should never have been accepted. At this point, we are demanding that people do good peer review, because that’s what happened — they slacked on the peer review.” The interviewer: “There was a survey in 2022, published in the journal Forensic Anthropology, that asked forensic anthropologists about this question, and 42 percent of them said they agree that sex is binary, and 56 percent disagreed that it’s binary. So that ratio would seem to indicate that, in the field, the question hadn’t actually been settled.” AAA President: “I don’t believe in opinion research.” The interviewer: “In the AAA’s response to the Vanderbilt report, you wrote that anthropology contains ‘vigorous and ongoing debates about theory, evidence, ethics, method, public engagement, and the future of the discipline itself.’ Is there any contradiction between those stated values and the cancellation of the panel in 2023?” AAA President: “Rigorous debate with factual information, or rigorous debate with just people who like to troll people on social media? […] I don’t think we’re contradicting ourselves. I think that that panel might never have made it into the program, if it had been peer-reviewed properly.” It was generous of the Chronicle to use a question mark in the headline for this interview.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp says Peter Thiel is so misunderstood in Europe that Germany effectively lost their most successful investor: "I think the treatment of Peter is atrocious." "I think the question historically one would have asked in Germany is: can we afford this? Can we afford not to learn from this person?" "The German tech scene should be #2 in the world by any historical standard. Honestly, the German tech scene was the #1 in the world, so #2 is already, like, maybe shouldn't be the aspiration." "It's on no one's list." " The largest company in Germany by market cap, I think, is Siemens, and Palantir is significantly larger, even where we're obviously undervalued currently." "I've known Peter Since we were poor students at Stanford. We had conversations as poor students fighting about intellectual things. He was always heterodox right. I was always heterodox left. I don't think much has changed. He's still heterodox right, meaning he's very frustrating to classic Republicans." "He's never been a neocon. He actually does not really believe in classic Republican economic theory. He was the first person to flag and will always flag—you tend to have people on the right basically explaining all problems as the result of capitalism not being driven far enough." " That's just not Peter's view." "He's not a simplistic or a caricature thinker on the right. And he's definitely not the caricature that the left wants to present." "But what's fascinating to me is—why is it so important to spend so much time blocking Peter from the German market?" "It's so obviously thin what they're saying about him, what they say about Palantir, so obviously doesn't make sense on the merits. You only need 10 minutes, 5 minutes on Google to see this isn't true."
