Interview with Virginia Heffernan on Science & Culture Wars (Audio Version) *UNEDITED*
Added 2022-01-27 05:26:26 +0000 UTCVirginia is a journalist and author who has written a bunch on the topic of technology and social media and especially in regards to the Edge organisation. She has a new podcast 'This is Critical' that is encouraging people to look critically at topics, which is quite on brand for us!
We have a broad discussion about academia, the culture war, anthropology debates, race & IQ rationalists, etc. Will be interested to hear your thoughts. The edited version will not be out on the main feed for a few weeks.
Enjoy!
P.S. I did level the volume on all audio so hopefully this one has less variance in volume level. Let me know!
Comments
No offense intended, but it feels like Virginia is so eager to interject that she almost forgets she is in a conversation with other people. Im starting to feel myself tense waiting for her to interrupt the other speakers every time she isnt talking. Does this go on for the whole audio? would it be better to just extract from a transcript?
Dez Ebuwa
2022-02-07 20:39:53 +0000 UTCAnd btw! I wish I could cut and paste your statement that starts “Darwin’s proposal of evolution via natural selection stands as the best explanation…” and then sign it! It’s so succinctly and well said. I’m not trying to slip any knot or leave room for some minorly idealist / theist position. I promise.
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-05 17:16:10 +0000 UTCIt’s the zeal some scientists/quasi-scientists/atheists of the 00s have to see others knuckle under to their blocky conversion narrative — “I walked in darkness as a Muslim or Christian or random schmo and was a fool and now you have shown me a great light and I renounce my former ways” — that contains a power dynamic I reject. And wanted to send up. I didn’t want social pressure or even fear of being trolled or fired to make me recite a catechism scripted by the new atheists or IDW or whatever. As biologists, some of these guys seem great. As propagandists, several are good. As writers, most except Hitchens are terrible. As ideologues & philosophers, these guys are very parochial, don’t know analytic OR Continental traditions, & they don’t really — Hitchens is an exception - understand baseline ideas about how tropes work and achieve hegemony, get subverted, get rebranded as “true” etc etc. So it’s not much fun to mix it up with them. Chris and Matt are exceptions, of course. L
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-05 17:11:26 +0000 UTCLet’s see. I’d say that every single biologist from Darwin to the present has a better hold on the dynamics of evolution than I do — and as with many things in science, I accept whatever account of these dynamics works best for the people who deploy it. I can sign on to your statement above. In turn, I assume you’d accept as truth almost anything I say about Keats’s representation of death, as that’s an actual area of expertise, where I know the field.
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-05 17:01:34 +0000 UTCInteresting!
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-05 16:58:44 +0000 UTCShoot. I do really appreciate your taking the time to type out these thoughts and comments in response to my questions and concerns, but I remain a bit baffled. You are a very articulate (and wordy ;)) person -- why not just publish a piece somewhere - e.g., Medium - or wherever would make sense to you - that sets this story straight? This clarification, "I entirely accept the facts of evolution" is somehow not very satisfying -- I have a hard time parsing it for such a short sentence and it seems an odd way to say that Darwin's proposal of evolution via natural selection stands as the best explanation for the biological diversity we observe around us and in the fossil record and has stood up to scrutiny as well as any scientific explanation for anything for 150 years and across great advances in our technological ability to investigate such things. Why not say that? Are you trying to reserve some space for "other stories"? Is yours an objection to the authority which science holds over the modern imagination -- or an emphasis on epistemic humility in the sense that science itself is far from complete and goes through regular paradigm shifts such that one shouldn't pretend that what we know now is even a good sketch of what there may be to know? These points can be made in ways that are not so retrograde and lending of support to anti-science/anti-intellectual tropes borrowed from past hegemonic systems of thought.
Tom Allison
2022-02-05 16:57:40 +0000 UTCAnd to clarify: I entirely accept the facts of evolution.
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-05 12:07:50 +0000 UTC…but the blowback for that slight piece was maybe the worst I’ve ever gotten for anything, and I just came off a full Tucker Carlson attack which involved the FBI, so that’s saying something. (Brookings did an analysis of that recently: https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/gender-based-online-violence-spikes-after-prominent-media-attacks/). I think the best I can say was I thought at the the time that the idea of “creationism” was cartoonish in an interesting way; I didn’t think a serious person could own the word; I was reacting to some evopsych scandals at Harvard; I wanted to play with the “Why I Am Not a Christian” format of Bertrand Russell. It didn’t land as funny or provocative, I see that now. But it hardly seemed so scandalous that it should land me in the penalty box — I had to leave journalism for a time — for so long. The NYT did a round table about the piece that took it all way too seriously, but at least it they didn’t issue violent threats. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/08/15/should-creationism-be-controversial/creation-and-evolution-beliefs-define-who-i-am-and-who-i-am-not
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-05 12:06:08 +0000 UTC@Tom — yes, for such a short piece, and one intended as humor (though it missed the mark), that piece has followed me around and even briefly led to a hashtag campaign: #worsethanisis ! My Wikipedia entry is still regularly vandalized, I got death threats, etc. I did give context for it in 2 places: in an interview with VICE for video, and in one on Jian Ghomeshi’s old radio show. (Ghomeshi = whole other story.) I can’t find the links for these. I know that Andrew Brown in the Guardian gave it a fair treatment: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2013/jul/18/virginia-heffernan-creationism-nothing-wrong
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-05 11:57:32 +0000 UTCGood to hear that it was meant in some way other than straight on. It is unfortunately still top-of-mind for some smart people who I asked about you since -- for whatever deficit in my own reading, this episode of DtG was my introduction to you. I'd be super interested in some links I could send back to these friends to give them a richer understanding of what was going on around that imbroglio... I hope its clear from my other comments that I find the way your mind works and your historical path through Internet culture quite fascinating and worth the time.
Tom Allison
2022-02-05 09:32:05 +0000 UTCOh and many thanks for the Batesman citation and the proper Eliot poem — I need to keep more books at hand when I discuss such wide-ranging topics!
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-02 14:39:51 +0000 UTCThanks for great comments, everyone. Yes, I’m an inveterate interrupter. It’s enthusiasm and building/collaboration — that’s what it feels like — but it’s also just being a dick. My 2013 essay on “creationism” was intended as a provocation in the ironic spirit of Bertrand Russell—and never fear for those who hated it! It got me dropped by Yahoo, blackballed from NYU, and down to income zero — so a truly sound cancelation. Mea culpa. True that IDW thinking strikes me as stultifying, but it also seems to open the imaginations of others, including our intrepid hosts, and that can’t be a bad thing. Richard Rorty was my college advisor, and pragmatism seems roughly the way to go: make your private life beautiful and your public life humane. Thanks 1m to Chris and Matt for having me.
Virginia Heffernan
2022-02-02 14:37:33 +0000 UTCThat was fun.
Jason Trock
2022-02-02 01:51:03 +0000 UTCHere it is "from the horse's mouth", so to speak: https://news.yahoo.com/why-im-a-creationist-141907217.html And here is another article on it with some more context: https://slate.com/technology/2013/07/virginia-heffernans-creationism-why-evolution-matters.html This brings me no joy. I really enjoyed your conversation with Ms. Heffernan. I think her insight into the culture around the Internet is amazing. She seems to be a great fan of yours. I hope she has updated her thinking on science (no evidence of that that I could find -- and what most friends who were familiar with her first thought about was this stuff from 2013 - so either my network is faulty, or there is something to worry about here). I am unfamiliar in any detail with her work regarding Trump which also seems a positive contribution to the culture. She's really bright and we would appear to agree on many things and she knows more than I do about many interesting topics -- but there are some deep and important epistemological game-breakers in what I can make out of her takes on science.
Tom Allison
2022-02-01 13:51:38 +0000 UTCThe only thing that made me crazy with trumpcast was Virginia’s pushy, selfish over talking… and she does it when she’s a guest, too. Argh. A great listen, but I wish she didn’t try to out-talk everyone.
Amy McDonald
2022-02-01 09:48:24 +0000 UTCNo that's fair and people are free to have their own critical takes was just curious if there was something specifically that you disagreed with strongly. I can understand what you meant from the reply.
Christopher Kavanagh
2022-01-31 04:08:23 +0000 UTCThey will be on the main episode when it's released.
Christopher Kavanagh
2022-01-31 04:06:28 +0000 UTCAlso I found the Wired article Virginia wrote, getting ahead of future show notes, in case anyone's interested. https://www.wired.com/story/an-end-to-pornography-sophistry-and-panty-raids/
Chelsea Tremblay
2022-01-30 23:27:51 +0000 UTCThank you for this conversation, I really enjoyed it! For me it included some really interesting context to the broader history of the IDW within the academic/popular-discourse sphere. And like so many conversations, I could have taken another hour of elaboration or debate on each topic and probably still enjoyed it! Appreciate the side-angle look at the culture/COVID wars after all the other episodes of deep diving into it. I also wanted to punch Brockman in the face after hearing about their meeting. But I understand the 'freeze' moment that can come in those imbalanced power situations . A hug from a stranger on that one, Virginia, thanks for elbowing your way through the BS to the other side for the rest of us.
Chelsea Tremblay
2022-01-30 23:24:08 +0000 UTCMaybe I shouldn't have chimed in as I don't think have the time or patience to do a careful re listen in order to be as fair and accurate as Virginia deserves. I always appreciate the way DTG is generous and careful with critiques, and Virginia could really take a lesson from Chris and Matt on this front. I just re listened to her answer to Matt's first question, and it's hard to know where to start. I never want to defend these IDW folks, but the idea that they are all uneducated, non degreed, unpublished sophomore types is factually incorrect, and painting with such a broad brush is embarrassing. She seems to think that intellectuals are people that agree with her about topics like Ayn Rand ( another person I never want to defend ), and have specific academic credentials, otherwise you are a sophomore who needs to be gently silenced. And this is in the first 3 minutes alone. Virginia seems to me to be the inverse of the IDW, making sweeping generalizations and unfair attacks against those she disagrees with. Sorry that I don't have time to go through the episode again and list the worst problems, but I appreciate you asking. I thought chris and Matt asked good questions as usual. Love the podcast , thanks for hearing me out !
Loki
2022-01-30 20:54:27 +0000 UTCWhat’s the worst parts you identify?
Christopher Kavanagh
2022-01-30 17:53:49 +0000 UTCI'd love to hear Virginia's interview decoded DTG style. Lots of problems here.
Loki
2022-01-30 15:29:01 +0000 UTCGot links re: evolution stuff? We aren’t in the business of endorsing or challenging ALL of our guests views but probably would have mentioned it, if it is as you described.
Christopher Kavanagh
2022-01-30 08:11:03 +0000 UTCI love Bateson! Mind And Nature is a fascinating and very important work too.
Daniel Reed Miller
2022-01-30 05:45:39 +0000 UTCWell... the short arc of an intellectual infatuation. That was a really good and massively enlightening conversation about Internet history bearing on the contemporary IDW. That was solid. I was also introduced to Ms. Heffernan and thought I had met a kindered spirit -- then I read around. She's white-hot bright and capable of juggling big ideas and -- as far as I could tell -- just ripped off one stellar take after another on a substantial breadth of subjects -- but have you read her on "science" in general? Have you followed her thinking about metaphysics and what counts as worth attending to? Ugh. Evolution/natural selection is "just another story" and creationism is a better story and therefore she chooses to believe it? Not sure I would give her a platform without at least asking her to address how this works, exactly, and why she finds global warming so boring...
Tom Allison
2022-01-29 22:58:48 +0000 UTCWow. That was SO good. (I hope to find more words, soon -- but, just wow, for now. Excellent, excellent stuff.)
Tom Allison
2022-01-29 18:32:53 +0000 UTCThe quote from TS Eliot is from Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, III, line 12: "...... Only a flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind, That blows time after time, Wind out of unwholesome lungs Time before and time after."
cv lCalm
2022-01-29 17:27:01 +0000 UTCThat's what I thought you were trying to say, so thanks for that! The argument Virginia was making is very old in terms of anthropology and archaeology so I was quite frustrated.
Nina Davies
2022-01-29 14:45:22 +0000 UTClol! Ah well... the basic summary is that genetic analyses have demonstrated that there is genetic evidence for a "shift from widespread mixture to strict endogamy" which is "mirrored in ancient Indian texts". In some cases there are neighbouring populations which display remarkably low levels of genetic mixing. So the impacts of the caste system, which are well attested in historical material, is backed up by modern genetic evidence. This contradicts some claims made that the caste system was not very influential until colonialism.
Christopher Kavanagh
2022-01-29 14:31:42 +0000 UTC„All the disqualified sophomores who suddenly have a microphone.” Love.
Tom Allison
2022-01-29 13:47:45 +0000 UTCOh. And schismogenesis was actually coined by a different anthropologist, Gregory Bateson. Which is less by way of a correction than an opportunity to plug Bateson for anyone who hasn't come across his work before. His "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" wide-ranging collection of essays is awesome. Check it out
Paul Bowman
2022-01-29 13:08:13 +0000 UTCAlso, where will the show notes be?
Paul Bowman
2022-01-29 12:51:10 +0000 UTCFirst - thanks for fixing the sound levels! Defo worked for me. Content-wise, all enjoyable, but like Chris said at the end, the EDGE + Epstein + IDW-genesis stuff is really interesting (I'd never heard of EDGE or Brockman before) and could have done with more time. If the core of the pod is the synchronic analysis of the traits and techniques of gurudom, a diachronic history of the birth and evolutionary arc of IDW history would be an interesting related subject.
Paul Bowman
2022-01-29 12:49:46 +0000 UTCI adore Virginia!
Sian Gibby
2022-01-28 19:41:57 +0000 UTCI got really confused because every sentence was interrupted and never reached its conclusion - especially during the whole first half. I am still waiting to know what Chris was going to say about genetics and caste and the vedas.
Nina Davies
2022-01-28 19:27:11 +0000 UTCI love this description but have no idea what it means!
Christopher Kavanagh
2022-01-28 18:56:10 +0000 UTCThis is a conversation that needs to be be continued. Excuse the expression, but you were just getting your trousers off when it comes to the history of the IDW and it’s precursors (how far back can you go!?!) Virginia is fantastic and Matt’s final comments were beautifully simple and realistic and highlighted the difference between the real world and the Web 2.0. Truly magnificent work. When’s the research paper coming?
elcid
2022-01-28 13:58:31 +0000 UTCReally enjoyed this one.
Joel H. Dinolt
2022-01-28 03:01:14 +0000 UTCI liked the bit about the fairies and Obeyesekere. The rest was like trying to chase a Roborovski Hamster round a victorian parlour.
Nina Davies
2022-01-27 13:36:05 +0000 UTCHells bells.
Nina Davies
2022-01-27 09:27:34 +0000 UTC
