Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

[Nihilus]

No, it's stupid because it's saying that you shouldn't complain about something if there are people who have it worse.

Actually, it's saying it's disingenuous to suggestively parallel a phantom issue you have with the tangible, serious issue others have in order to make yours seem viable. To presume that complaint merits attentive coddling merely because it's made is like saying a theistic belief merits intellectual respect just because it is imagined.

It's the same argument as "why are the police wasting their time on the theft of milk bottles from people's doorsteps? Haven't they got murderers to catch?" It implies that one can't be wrong because the other is worse, whereas the reality is that both are wrong.

Because of the fact that "right" and "wrong" are relatively subjective concepts, selective emotional hypochondria can indeed sway the sentiment of how important addressing a particular thing may be. That doesn't mean we should be blind to the reason it seems so, though.

Now, we can debate whether Watson was right to find this approach uncomfortable or not, for sure. I don't think we really have the right to dictate to others how they should feel about such things and my problem with Watson is how she behaved after people had responded to her original video, rather than with the original video itself. But I think people are entitled to disagree with her original video. However, while there are arguments to be made about whether Watson was right or not in her original video, the one that Dawkins made isn't one of them. It's fatuous and dismissive.

Dawkins is always sharply dismissive of the illogical. What about this issue merits different comparison?

And, seriously, you think that Dawkins was being subtle?

I'm not measuring the subtlety of the comparative words, nor the delicacy of the parallel example he used to point out how the original claim works. Underneath all that is the concise, clear demonstration of how "male privilege" metaphorically fuels itself by tossing misogyny into its own furnace.

 

[bedlin88]

If you think about it some more you will realize that most likely the person never thought twice about it after he was rejected. After all, do you stalk every woman that rejected you to make sure your approach didn't ignite a war in the skeptical community?

To be fair I should have prefaced with, if the elevator guy even knows about/remembers the whole elevatorgate incident. I kind of suspect he doesn't.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

"I'm neither from Africa, nor actually black...".

I'm neither from Europe, nor actually white?

I'm betting most Asian-Americans weren't born in Asia, too.

The term "People of Color" is a problem because it still has "otherness" built into it. So, some people have "color", and others don't? How does that make any sense? And who gets to decide what makes somebody a "person of color"? Does it just mean anybody who isn't European-American?

 

[RandFan]

These people can go to hell.
I took my own kids into the actual firezone protesting Wall Street's hegemony. I know what it's like to be staring down a gun. I know what it's like to fear for the life of your kids. I know what it's like to be a brown person demanding citizenship.
The A+ people can go to hell.

Black and white thinking. You either agree with them or you hate women. **** them.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

To be fair I should have prefaced with, if the elevator guy even knows about/remembers the whole elevatorgate incident. I kind of suspect he doesn't.

I find it a little hard to credit that someone who considered themselves enough a part of the sceptical community to attend a sceptic conference would be unaware of this whole kerfuffle. There's not many people who are active in these circles who haven't, I'd have thought. I mean, I have absolutely zero intent of ever attending a sceptical gathering, I don't read any sceptical blogs, or follow any sceptical vloggers, or even visit any sceptical sites other than this one and, even so, I only peruse the message boards, rather than reading the main site. Yet I know a fair bit about Elevatorgate.

So I find it unlikely that ElevatorGuy hasn't heard the term "Elevatorgate". And it's rare to hear that term without also hearing the name "Rebecca Watson". Were I him, upon hearing the name "Rebecca Watson", I'd think "oh, I met her", and find out what "Elevatorgate" was all about just out of curiosity.

What I think is far more likely than that he has never heard of it, is that he heard of it after it all blew up and decided that he had no interest in getting involved in a bitch-fight with half of the internet, and so decided to remain anonymous. Can you imagine any side of the story that he could give that a) hasn't already been put forward by someone, somewhere and b) wouldn't get shouted down as ridiculous/misogynist/misandrist/whatever?

Shut up and pretend it's not you seems like the best way to live a life unhampered by stupid and tiresome drama.

 

[Daald]

I find it a little hard to credit that someone who considered themselves enough a part of the sceptical community to attend a sceptic conference would be unaware of this whole kerfuffle.

How do you know it was a person that was part of the skeptic conference?

She said that he was at the bar. There were photos that were taken at that bar and she could not point the person out. She also seems unable to remember faces.

Let's not take speculation too far afield from the established facts.

 

[bedlin88]

I find it a little hard to credit that someone who considered themselves enough a part of the sceptical community to attend a sceptic conference would be unaware of this whole kerfuffle. There's not many people who are active in these circles who haven't, I'd have thought. I mean, I have absolutely zero intent of ever attending a sceptical gathering, I don't read any sceptical blogs, or follow any sceptical vloggers, or even visit any sceptical sites other than this one and, even so, I only peruse the message boards, rather than reading the main site. Yet I know a fair bit about Elevatorgate.

So I find it unlikely that ElevatorGuy hasn't heard the term "Elevatorgate". And it's rare to hear that term without also hearing the name "Rebecca Watson". Were I him, upon hearing the name "Rebecca Watson", I'd think "oh, I met her", and find out what "Elevatorgate" was all about just out of curiosity.

What I think is far more likely than that he has never heard of it, is that he heard of it after it all blew up and decided that he had no interest in getting involved in a bitch-fight with half of the internet, and so decided to remain anonymous. Can you imagine any side of the story that he could give that a) hasn't already been put forward by someone, somewhere and b) wouldn't get shouted down as ridiculous/misogynist/misandrist/whatever?

Shut up and pretend it's not you seems like the best way to live a life unhampered by stupid and tiresome drama.

Well that was the gist of my original comment as well.....

 

[recursive prophet]

She said that he was at the bar. There were photos that were taken at that bar and she could not point the person out. She also seems unable to remember faces.

Let's not take speculation too far afield from the established facts.

So someone has asked her to describe the guy and she couldn't do so??

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

How do you know it was a person that was part of the skeptic conference?

Perhaps this is because I've never been to one, but I thought conferences like this took place in hotels, and that the people attending them essentially took over the hotel as accommodation. Well, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

 

[Daald]

So someone has asked her to describe the guy and she couldn't do so??

She has some sort of disorder where she does not remember faces. It is in one of those timeline links I provided earlier. She only remembers that he was an older white guy that talked to her at the bar at some point. That's it. On the big thread where we were hashing through all this we were even questioning if it was the same guy at the bar and in the elevator.

Point of the matter is that all these inconvenient facts have been overlooked and the focus placed on using this as a teaching moment or to knock on Dawkins for being insensitive. It is the moment which has made me lose a lot of respect for the entire skeptical movement and made me realize that the entire thing might just be intellectual masturbation. (I prize logic, reason and evidence except when something offends me and **** you if you disagree. Basically the whole thought nexus we see at A+ forums)

 

[Daald]

Perhaps this is because I've never been to one, but I thought conferences like this took place in hotels, and that the people attending them essentially took over the hotel as accommodation. Well, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

Usually they rent out a conference hall from the hotel. Sort of if you had a wedding at a hotel. You would control your hall and book a substantial amount of rooms, but that would not mean that the public areas of the hotel were only filled with your guests. The place where she first "remembers" him is at the hotel bar which would be a public area where other guests of the hotel would be. Her supporters have said that he must have been at the conference and that he should have known that she did not like being "sexualized in that way" as her talk was about that subject.

That is the reason I am being a little short. I am not trying to be a dick. I just want to nip this in the bud before we go down that rabbit hole again.

 

[Empress]

She has some sort of disorder where she does not remember faces. It is in one of those timeline links I provided earlier. She only remembers that he was an older white guy that talked to her at the bar at some point. That's it. On the big thread where we were hashing through all this we were even questioning if it was the same guy at the bar and in the elevator.

Point of the matter is that all these inconvenient facts have been overlooked and the focus placed on using this as a teaching moment or to knock on Dawkins for being insensitive. It is the moment which has made me lose a lot of respect for the entire skeptical movement and made me realize that the entire thing might just be intellectual masturbation. (I prize logic, reason and evidence except when something offends me and **** you if you disagree. Basically the whole thought nexus we see at A+ forums)

That's one of the reasons I've always given the whole ElevatorGuy claim the stink-eye. I have a very difficult time identifying faces, and am more likely to remember someone by their voice or what they wear, unless they have a strong or unusual feature that I can identify.

As a result, I can't imagine saying that someone I met on the elevator was the same person I had just been talking to, unless, for example we walked from the bar to the elevator together talking, and there was no possibility I'd made a mistake.

For someone to have difficulty identifying people, and yet make no mention of why she knew this particular man was someone she'd been speaking to amongst a group of others, just strikes me as highly unlikely, given her admitted disorder.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Her supporters have said that he must have been at the conference and that he should have known that she did not like being "sexualized in that way" as her talk was about that subject.

I thought she'd said that she was talking about the same stuff in the bar, too.

For someone to have difficulty identifying people, and yet make no mention of why she knew this particular man was someone she'd been speaking to amongst a group of others, just strikes me as highly unlikely, given her admitted disorder.

Actually, she claims that he was listening to her talk in the bar, but hadn't actually spoken himself until finding himself in the lift with her (or deliberately engineering the situation for them to be together in the lift, depending on who you believe).

 

[Daald]

I thought she'd said that she was talking about the same stuff in the bar, too.

I am not too sure about all the particulars since it has been quite some time since I looked at it.

The only good thing that can come out of it is if "elevator guy" becomes synonymous with "straw man".

 

[CynicalSkeptic]

Him: Joe's over there.
Me: Which one is he?
Him: He's the...ummmm..guy in the suit.
Me: They're all wearing suits.
Him: He has a red tie on.
Me: Three of them are wearing red ties. Four if you count maroon as red.
Him: He's the one in the middle.
Me: There are four guys. There is no middle.
Him: He's the tall one.
Me: The black guy?
Him: Shhhhhhhhh!!!!! They might hear you!

I am not making this up. Instead of immediately saying "Joe is the black guy", he had to go through 2 minutes of gyrations, just to avoid "black guy".

Boxing (or MMA) fights. They never refer to "the white guy" or "the black guy" or even "the bald guy", it's always the guy with the "black trunks with white trim" even if the other guy has black trunks with beige trim.

 

[qayak]

For someone to have difficulty identifying people, and yet make no mention of why she knew this particular man was someone she'd been speaking to amongst a group of others, just strikes me as highly unlikely, given her admitted disorder.

So what's the name of the disorder where you fabricate stories to further a lie to garner attention?

 

[qayak]

I find it a little hard to credit that someone who considered themselves enough a part of the sceptical community to attend a sceptic conference would be unaware of this whole kerfuffle. There's not many people who are active in these circles who haven't, I'd have thought. I mean, I have absolutely zero intent of ever attending a sceptical gathering, I don't read any sceptical blogs, or follow any sceptical vloggers, or even visit any sceptical sites other than this one and, even so, I only peruse the message boards, rather than reading the main site. Yet I know a fair bit about Elevatorgate.

So I find it unlikely that ElevatorGuy hasn't heard the term "Elevatorgate". And it's rare to hear that term without also hearing the name "Rebecca Watson". Were I him, upon hearing the name "Rebecca Watson", I'd think "oh, I met her", and find out what "Elevatorgate" was all about just out of curiosity.

What I think is far more likely than that he has never heard of it, is that he heard of it after it all blew up and decided that he had no interest in getting involved in a bitch-fight with half of the internet, and so decided to remain anonymous. Can you imagine any side of the story that he could give that a) hasn't already been put forward by someone, somewhere and b) wouldn't get shouted down as ridiculous/misogynist/misandrist/whatever?

Shut up and pretend it's not you seems like the best way to live a life unhampered by stupid and tiresome drama.

More likely scenario: There was no elevator guy.

 

[recursive prophet]

More likely scenario: There was no elevator guy.

This ^^. Below is a link that goes into incredible detail on the face recognition problem RW suddenly developed. Not that I think it matters all that much given her profile. In a way I have to admire her. I mean there are countless attention whores in the cyberverse, and RW has succeeded on a level I'm sure most of them really envy. My only concern is she and A+ will provide the theists with lots of quotes they will claim speak for most atheists.

http://integralmath.blogspot.com/2011/10/almost-skeptical.html

 

[Potentiated Synapse]

This ^^. Below is a link that goes into incredible detail on the face recognition problem RW suddenly developed. Not that I think it matters all that much given her profile. In a way I have to admire her. I mean there are countless attention whores in the cyberverse, and RW has succeeded on a level I'm sure most of them really envy. My only concern is she and A+ will provide the theists with lots of quotes they will claim speak for most atheists.

*Removed link since I can't post them*

Wow... pretty damning I have to say. Her ability to lie without flinching and her charisma (one has to have it to become so popular yet contribute almost nothing of real substance) makes me wonder if she is actually a sociopath. She has no empathy, no remorse while dragging innocent people through the mud, and is ultimately taking advantage of many people who are troubled psychologically.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

This ^^. Below is a link that goes into incredible detail on the face recognition problem RW suddenly developed. Not that I think it matters all that much given her profile. In a way I have to admire her. I mean there are countless attention whores in the cyberverse, and RW has succeeded on a level I'm sure most of them really envy. My only concern is she and A+ will provide the theists with lots of quotes they will claim speak for most atheists.

http://integralmath.blogspot.com/2011/10/almost-skeptical.html

Sheesh. I knew she was a mildly-sociopathic attention whore who will make **** up (all the rape and death threats from atheists and skeptics being just one example), but I didn't think she was a pathological liar. That post certainly makes a case for her being so.

I'm sure her personality cult will ignore any evidence of like this because it doesn't fit the haigeography.

- eta Maybe she vomited in the elevator and EG was made up to be her cover story.