Thunderf00t - another video, another controversy

I just watched the latest video that Thunderf00t published: https://youtu.be/cKKQdJR7F_I

I've also just watched Dillahunty's response: https://youtu.be/nyjW36Ri45Q

I've never been a big fan of Thunderf00t - largely because he has a tendency to be a bit scattershot with his arguments. He rarely makes incisive attacks - they wind up missing their mark most of the time.

In this video he presents a bunch of clips of people without explanation of context and draws wild conclusions that simply cannot be supported by the evidence presented. He has also conflated the issues of restrictions of freedom of speech, atheism+ and feminism and has effectively made out that they are all the same thing. I personally think the video is a steaming pile of crap.

Any thoughts?

My thoughts are that commenting on the polarising video is probably not the best place to start. Especially as I feel sorry for Matt at this point.

I did think, though, about what I would say if i were making a video. Why am I 'angry at the feminists' ?

And it's this. The secular community that we've now lost was shaping up to be a community around a number of events and media which shared a common philosophy. The two things that were valued were firstly freedom of speech, and secondly a desire to justify or challenge ideas based on reason and evidence. That was it. If you subscribed to both of those then you were a 'member' to the extent that such a loose, emerging community had 'members'. It didn't matter if you were socialist, liberal, libertarian or conservative.

And here's the point. It wasn't that politics was taboo, people could claim that the only rational politics was their politics if they wanted to. We could have flaming rows about it, but there was an unspoken agreement that these these differences were to be expressed within the context that all ideas are able to be discussed, and that disagreement is good. The unspoken agreement was that, in an environment which was part of the sceptical movement, then no one political group would claim to 'own' scepticism or to seek to exclude those of different persuasions. They may seek to use the sceptical forums to persuade. They may not seek to give the impression to the non-sceptic world that scepticism is simply a subset of their own politics.

The 'identity' part of being a sceptic was only linked to your support for discussion being free and rational, not at all to do with the conclusions you actually drew from the discussions.

Michael Sharmer is an excellent sceptic and also a libertarian. I am not a libertarian, but I'm a fan of Sharmer and I'd be happy to support him if he was standing for some office of a sceptical group where I'm a member. Jen Peeples (I believe) identifies as a feminist. Likewise I'm a huge fan of Jen's and I'd be very happy to support her. In the 'old' and sadly passed away sceptical movement you could support people regardless of politics because the purpose of the community was to facilitate discussion not to lead people to a given conclusion. So it didn't matter if the president of the jref, say, was a liberal, libertarian or whatever. It wasn't a question of this or that political group supporting their own candidate, because people weren't trying to push the jref in a political direction.

We've lost all that now. It's probably gone for good. It took years to painstakingly build up and it took Richard Carrier about 5 minutes to demolish it.

Carrier blew the unspoken agreement out of the water. Now, scepticism is just yet another brand of identity politics, the one thing is had so carefully avoided being. If you don't share Carrier's conclusions you are a 'douchebag', a 'neanderthal', you are to be shunned. You are dangerous and to be avoided. You don't belong.

And then we had an influx of these 'political animals' (as noelplum would say). People who didn't know or care about the sceptical community. It's just an opportunity to push their political agenda. Anyone who disagrees is the enemy and to be got rid of.

So that's why I'm angry.

Pig - time to read some Hitchens. (I just finished "Arguably" today.)

I can't be that pessimistic about the community. It was inevitable that the community would undergo some change when the the leading light of the movement passed on.

Has the community been completely hijacked by the Atheism+ group? That seems...a stretch. I'm going to go and read Richard Carrier's article...and perhaps comment on it afterwards.

There are still plenty of us with that old community spirit.

I never felt part of that 'community' (tho I'm interested in some of the topics which come up, post on a board and have been following all the hoohah).

I think maybe because I don't identify as a 'Sceptic'. And new atheism is virtually synonymous with sceptism. Atheism isn't tho, and there's no reason why scepticism should be the overwhelmingly dominant focus of new atheism, or what binds the community.

The fact that new atheism was kicked off by dawkins, the other 'horsemen', and the key public faces of new atheism tend to be sceptical boffin types would naturally attract a lot of people who shared their perspective, interests and concerns, and I guess this is the 'community' which is being fractured.

But I'd put this question - given that religion tends to be disproportionately damaging to say women and LGBTQ peeps, why isn't the new atheism community teeming with these people, why aren't their real life problems at least part of what binds the community together?

I have long contended that identifying as an atheist (as opposed to actually being an atheist) requires people to acknowledge that they belong to a minority. When you already identify as a member of a minority group like lgbt then you are less likely to identify as a second minority such as atheist because it will further alienate you.

My suggestion is that reducing the stigma felt towards atheism has enabled more people from other minorities to be open about their atheism. I think this is a positive step.

nullnvoid wrote:I just watched the latest video that Thunderf00t published: https://youtu.be/cKKQdJR7F_I

I've also just watched Dillahunty's response: https://youtu.be/nyjW36Ri45Q

I've never been a big fan of Thunderf00t - largely because he has a tendency to be a bit scattershot with his arguments. He rarely makes incisive attacks - they wind up missing their mark most of the time.

In this video he presents a bunch of clips of people without explanation of context and draws wild conclusions that simply cannot be supported by the evidence presented. He has also conflated the issues of restrictions of freedom of speech, atheism+ and feminism and has effectively made out that they are all the same thing. I personally think the video is a steaming pile of crap.

Any thoughts?

I think TF has succeeded in what he set out to do, getting people to watch and talk about him and the video.

Just under 100,000 views, does anyone know how much he makes from that? Not a rhetorical question, I'm curious how much YouTubers make from their videos.

He's marketing his product, his opinions.

You could be right - seems plausible.

Google makes no promises how much you will make.
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=72902

But there are several articles out there that state it is 0.33 of 1 cent per view.

So 100,000 views = $330

nullnvoid wrote:You could be right - seems plausible.

Google makes no promises how much you will make.
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=72902

But there are several articles out there that state it is 0.33 of 1 cent per view.

So 100,000 views = $330

That's not to bad for the time that it takes to make a video.

At one video a week, $17,000 a year. That'll keep the beer fridge stocked!

Michael Nugent makes a much better response to Tfoot's video.

Although IMHO, he leaves mostly unaddressed the issue tf00t showed where it was asserted during one of PZ Myers google round table that since your freedom to swing your arms ends where your arm meets my nose so too, it was asserted without dissent, that your freedom of speech ends when it causes me harm. This statement alone should have thrown up red flags to anyone at that round table.


http://www.michaelnugent.com/2013/01/03/thunderf00t’s-inflammatory-video-of-misleading-personal-attacks-on-atheist-feminists-is-not-helpful/

nullnvoid wrote:I have long contended that identifying as an atheist (as opposed to actually being an atheist) requires people to acknowledge that they belong to a minority. When you already identify as a member of a minority group like lgbt then you are less likely to identify as a second minority such as atheist because it will further alienate you.

My suggestion is that reducing the stigma felt towards atheism has enabled more people from other minorities to be open about their atheism. I think this is a positive step.

I was talking more about the community thing.

It would be too crude to say that new atheism is a movement created by people whose interests and concerns are similar to Thunderfoot's and naturally drew people like him, which eventually became 'the community'. And hence a lot of people like Thunderfoot are pissed off that 'teh feminists' are spoiling that and why can't it stay about showing creotards are how dumb they are with our superior logic cos that's what I like and it's my club!

But there's some truth in that imo.

mood2 wrote:And hence a lot of people like Thunderfoot are pissed off that 'teh feminists' are spoiling that and why can't it stay about showing creotards are how dumb they are with our superior logic cos that's what I like and it's my club!

But there's some truth in that imo.

I'll give that a strong second, mood2. And isn't it also true at SC and just about every site? Look at how the Fleamailman matter was dealt with. The writing style police have arrived.

Despite your request on A+ I'm finding it hard to resist entering the fray there on your behalf. The level of projection about your queries is really hard to fathom. Maybe it's a gaslighting experiment, lol.

lol! could be!

@mood, this is off topic for this thread...

Off topic:

Appreciated, thanks