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If you're working in a politically salient science (like sociology and biology), then you gotta examine the most dissident-coded positions as well as the currently most popular ones. If you haven't studied "cranks" comprehensively, you're probably underestimating their reliance on the mainstream.

Like it or not, elitist "cranks" are more ascendant than ever, and your beloved institutions and disciplines aren't safe unless they support them. They're using widespread untruths (conceptual and empirical) and mistakes, and taking them to "honest" conclusions. You wanna stop that? Then fight it.

“It, your, they, them, they’re, them, you, that, it”… I just didn’t know what you were talking about.

Point is that the "politically extreme" and "populist" assholes aren't just "those freaks over there". Their masters run the show now. Whatever doesn't support them is getting buried under mountains of bullshit that does support them, and it's mostly recycled and extended "reputable" "science".

e.g. the "race realists" aren't just making up their own shit. They're relying on some quite nuanced statistical models and piles of alleged evidence, including country-level educational data of the sorts that your favorite pundits' favorite think tanks use.

I am TIRED of people just brushing them off like ignoring them will make them go away. They've only been platformed even more thanks to slimeballs like the PayPal bros. This has been the direction of the zeitgeist for decades, apparent to anyone who saw what Dawkins started saying about eugenics.

There you go with pronouns again. Who is “them”?

You get one more shot to show me you're not a troll. When I said: "I am TIRED of people just brushing them off like ignoring them will make them go away." I was clearly talking about "the "politically extreme" and "populist" assholes". Earlier, I called them "elitist "cranks"".

Sure, we're on a microblogging site. Dorsey's pet project and its Musked predecessor have predisposed you towards picking at little snippets of text, in (feigned?) ignorance of important context right nearby. But SURELY you can bother to show you've read the whole of a relatively short thread.

I guess I know so many elitist cranks that I’m not sure to which you are referring.