WTW46: IDK What You Think You're Measuring But It's Not Political Correctness

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:00:11 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism, and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:00:19 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode 46. I'm Thomas. That's Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:47 Lydia: I am doing all right. I am deep in JVP. How are you?

0:00:53 Thomas: Don't say things like that.

0:00:55 Lydia: Yeah, that actually sounded really bad.

0:00:59 Thomas: Although he would hate it, so. You're never gonna guess what we're talking about today. Um, so, alright, I'm gonna level with you on this one, folks. This was, this was a really, the reason there's so much delay, I've already talked about it, but this This was a really hard series to figure out what to cut and what to make patron only. And like, believe you me, we cut a lot and made a lot patron only, and I would say that this episode, this was close to on the cusp because we are talking about that study more. We're talking about Christine master's thesis more, but it goes through, we go through philosophy. Her writing in it really gives a window into the stupid fucking way these people are looking at things. And it's very revealing. And honestly, okay, if you're sick and tired, if it's just like, I am so done with Christine Brophy, feel free to skip this one.

0:01:24 Lydia: Agonized over it. Yeah,

0:01:54 Thomas: I'll be honest.

0:01:52 Lydia: We get it.

0:01:54 Thomas: You can skip this on. By the way, give us a download if you don't mind. Download it, you know, scrub through it. Give us the credit for that. But if you want to skip, feel free. However, I will tell you, there's some good dunks in this one. There's some, like, we really get to the final core of just the absolute, it's like the triple icing on the, we've already iced the fucking cake. There's not even cake. It's all icing. It's a mound of icing. We already know that this thing is full of shit. Yeah, that's true. I just like the cake part. But anyway, we know this this thing's full of shit, but the reason that we're doing one more on this and we're including it, even though we've, believe me, we've cut a lot. I promise is that there's, there's some really good stuff in here about why their entire outlook on this is stupid and why these questions of the study and the factors, most importantly, like what are these stupid fucking factors of PC egalitarianism? It's meaningless nonsense. And we tell you why. So, are So cards on the table. If you're tired of it, I get it. But if you want to hear the final dunking, this is the last one. The master's thesis. And then after this, if you skip this one and that's fine, next episode, we're going to talk about the missing study. And that's when we get into the grifty stuff, the potentially fraudulent stuff. That's next episode. So, you know, feel free to skip, but I'm telling you, there's some good stuff in here it's the reason we still left it in even though we've done so much on this study so I hope you'll enjoy it and way we'll see you when we see you so let's get on over to final of the suck suck of the sex

0:02:20 Lydia: Your worst nightmare

0:03:34 Thomas: Study right. Right. So taking all this on board, plus a bunch of other stuff that I've probably edited out for people's sanity that aren't me, I wanted to know, what is this measuring, if anything? Now, we have some evidence that this measures something because allegedly there are some other people who use the scale and like got some results. Results. From a statistic standpoint, I think we should be careful. Of the research I've done, talking with Jenessa and your expertise, we can talk about what that means. Like you could get a consistent grouping, but it might be something that's totally meaningless. It's just stuff that happens to correlate

0:03:35 Lydia: It's so bad yeah yeah

0:04:16 Thomas: In different ways if you ask a big enough group group of people and also to say it for I don't know the second or third time even if you get it consistently it does not mean it's what you called it because she just came up with a name for this pc liberalism and pc authoritarianism she named it that factors but reminder you plug all this shit into SPSS and it'll just math you. It'll just say math, like the math factor. And just by pure mathematics without knowing, the computer doesn't know the value judgments you're making at all.

0:04:48 Thomas: It just tells you where are these correlations essentially, how many factors you can either force the factors or you can have it just run it without forcing factors. And so what I wanted to know, what I've been dying to know is what these groups of people? And it's possible that that it's just gobbledygook. Like it really is. Like there's so many areas and ways that it doesn't work, that it might just be nonsense, but there's also going to be something like there's, there's some way these stick together. And so what I thought I'd do is I'd take two groups, PC liberalism and PC authoritarianism and see like, okay, what are their high scores? What are their low scores? What are the things that are the biggest difference? And what are the things that ARE the same between them?

0:05:29 Thomas: I'm, man, I could go through all of it, but I won't. But I'm going to go through things that I think are important. So if are to believe that both these groups are the fucking PC police, they're just different like branches of PC police. Don't you think that's what they're telling us?

0:05:28 Lydia: I

0:05:48 Thomas: Would expect them to be similar on key items. You know, you'd expect them stuff that's like liberalism. Would you expect? Like now these are all our values. These are all correlation. If you ask this group of people and she didn't, but let's say you ask them, should people have the right to an abortion? What would you think there are values should be for both groups if these groups are what she's saying they are?

0:05:46 Lydia: Think so um

0:06:14 Thomas: I think it'd be close to one.

0:06:12 Lydia: Decently strong um I don't like a point oh I don't know if it'd be like a like a one like perfect correlation but it would be pretty strong

0:06:20 Thomas: These were the groups that she's say they are, which is that not only are these people on the left, these are the leftiest, most PC police people. These are, I'm not talking about what it is because we know it's not that. If, if what she were saying is true, where it's like, well, on one group you have feminist studies professors. And the other side, you have like this screaming, uh, college student who she said in her fucking video, the women's professors study are justifying what they do. So they're working together, you know, and they're like, what them thinking that people should have the right to an abortion is going to be, in my opinion, close to one for both Both of those groups.

0:06:56 Lydia: I think that's fair I think I've come around to wait what you're saying there and that makes sense I

0:07:01 Thomas: And so, unfortunately, she didn't ask that. And she didn't do a fucking political scale, which she should have done. What What she DID instead was she decided to, like, intuit what side of politics it would be by their also their correlations to personality measures. I talked about this in something that I imagine will just be bonus because it went on for eight hours. Course, the idea that you wouldn't just study politics, as we talked about with Jenessa, that you would just measure politics and censoriousness or something and use those as two factors and see if someone is conservative in PC or liberal in PC, or conservative and not PC, or liberal and not BC. That would be interesting.

0:07:35 Lydia: But instead she relied on particular personality differences via the big five and then use that to identify if someone was a liberal or conservative yeah

0:07:49 Thomas: Right. And by the way, pretty weak weak correlations. Like if I had a group of people and all left-handed people were Democrats and then I took this other group and I was like, let's see how many left-handed people are friendly and there's also like a one-to-one, you'd be like, all right, well, they're probably also Democrat. You can do the one-to-one. But if those numbers are not fucking one, if they're like 0.3, there is no fucking way you can make that judgment. I'm not the statistician, but I'm pretty sure that's entirely bullshit. So like, if you take left and right-handed people and like, oh, it just so happens that left-handed people are like a 0.3 correlation with, and this is just, I'm just making stuff up. Left -handed are 0.30 correlation with like introversion. And right-hand people, it's kind of like no correlation. It's like zero.

0:08:38 Thomas: Okay, let's say that happened. Then you do another type of survey and you're like, ah, this group of people over here who are like the PC police, they are also around a 0.3 for introversion. Cannot fucking say that that means those are the same group of people. You can't say, yeah, that they're left -handed. That's not even close to true. Cannot understand how she could possibly think that's true. It's bullshit. What I think it is, and give me your take as someone who's written a master's thesis, I feel like this is something she just should have done and maybe noticed later and was like, Like, fuck, I guess I'll just say this is how I'm identifying their politics. There's no way you would start with a plan to do it that way, unless I'm really

0:08:55 Lydia: -hm that they're left -handed yeah yeah

0:09:20 Thomas: Missing something.

0:09:20 Lydia: I don't think there's any any way that you would be going about doing this except yeah there there was something that you realized oh I wanted to actually get to this but I can't reach out to the same group of people and ask them this question. So let me figure out how to build it myself. Yeah.

0:09:35 Thomas: That's exactly. And when I look at these scores, what I see is just wild inconsistency. It tells you that, like, you're not meaningfully sorting these people. You forced a two -factor solution, and it's just fucking nothing, man. There's So a funny one. One of the questions is, rate how offensive you find the following, and it has a number of things, and one of them is a flip chart, a large pad of paper bound so that each page can be turned over at the top to next used on a stand at a presentation.

0:10:10 Lydia: I've done lots of leadership development in my day, so I'm very familiar with a flip chart.

0:10:15 Thomas: Yeah, why would flip chart be offensive? I actually don't know if this is a trick question or if she thinks flipchart is offensive now I googled this just for fun I found like a couple results Actually one is under R slash Jordan Peterson. So maybe that's what like maybe he has some fucking stupid view on this hold Here's some dumb political cartoon that's like an anti -PC thing. So this is an R slash Jordan Peterson from five years ago. And it says, this reminds me of one of Jordan Peterson's speeches in which he told a story about a woman working in some large bureaucracy where, they say, of course, because you have to try to sound smarter than you are, wherein

0:10:17 Lydia: It wouldn't be. Yeah. Yeah, that's Yeah

0:10:55 Thomas: They used flip charts. That's so fucking, God, these idiot boys. These little boys are dumb. Sorry. Where they use flip charts for presentations. Apparently flip was a derogatory and racist term for Filipino. The company had to ban the word.

0:11:10 Thomas: So that's not true. That's fucking dumb. But I love that there's a Jordan Peterson tie-in. So that probably is like, maybe he contributed this one.

0:11:17 Lydia: He was like, hey, make sure you add this. It was probably something that like just happened for him too. And he's really, really mad about it.

0:11:26 Thomas: Yeah. I see like, again, there's a little bit of results here at people saying like, yeah, flip. I guess if you called a person a flip, then that would be offensive. It sounds, I didn't even know that, but sure. Sure. Like I, there's plenty of, um, words that I've just never come across. Cause I honestly just don't fucking, I don't pay close attention to what's offensive. Cause I don't care. Like I want to avoid it, but I also, there'S people who seem to know all these, like, huh, why have you studied so many of these? Um, so that's true. But it seems to me that like, if you said flip chart, I no can't imagine someone referring to that. I, never, okay, I'm a lefty. I've gone through college. I still am friends with lefties. I've never heard of this. I've Ever Heard Of, yeah.

0:12:05 Lydia: I'm from the Bay Area and predominantly Asian area of the Bay Area. I've never heard of this and I could be completely ignorant of it. That's very possible. I mean, I've heard of it before, but I've never heard this ever.

0:12:19 Thomas: Now, it's an interesting question because I think there's going to be like shades of gray on this kind of stuff. So, for example, and again, we're using non -PC language. I've already hopefully given that content note. It is absolutely true that way prior to the trans movement, people called transmissions trannies. So that's just a true thing. Like they would refer to the transmission of audio as trannies. I've heard that since I was a kid. That's just the term that people use. But obviously that word is far more like where that's, it's like, all right, that'S offensive enough as a different thing that I, like like, I wouldn't say that anymore. Like, it's not something I did say, but if I were in that line of work and like, for For some reason, that was a term I'd use before, even though it's not, it's not causally related. It's not as though someone looked at a transmission and was like, that looks like a trans person. Let's call it like it's, that's nothing. It's just a coincidence.

0:13:11 Lydia: Also, like a bundle of sticks, right? Like that's not a word that we use, even though it can mean that.

0:13:16 Thomas: But that may have had a more causal role. So like that, that slightly different where it's like, don't because, know if that's disputed or not, but I've seen it represented that that's causal. So like because there may have been a time when, you gay people might have been burned.

0:13:29 Lydia: That's horrible.

0:13:30 Thomas: Yeah, that might be the but but I'm not sure on that. Like there's a lot of those things in language where people have origin story for stuff. And it actually turns out to like it sounds like it's totally true, but then it's not or vice versa. A, um, doesn't matter that much for me personally. Anyway, in my opinion, for kind of like the about like, the harm and, you if every Filipino person and all of society was like, yeah, don't it's not even worth saying flip chart. Cause it says a bad word. I'd, I'd be like, oh, okay. I'll just call it something else from to my mind. I just have never heard of that. And it doesn'T seem to be a thing that matters much. So it's like, all right, well, a flip chart is definitely a thing already. So I don't think that, you know, whereas calling a transmission a tranny, I wouldn't say anymore because it's too reminiscent of another very offensive thing. You know what I mean?

0:13:41 Lydia: And

0:14:15 Thomas: And I think it's a judgment call. Like, I don'T know. And I could, and by the way, I could be making incorrect judgments, but what I'm trying to do is do my best. And I Think that a lot of, yeah, I think a lot of people on the left are trying to do their best and they might get it wrong. Maybe it is wrong to still say flip chart because flip could be a derogatory thing. All I know is I'm certain that that's pretty obscure. Neither of us had heard of that. The PC authoritarians, they have very much heard of it, apparently, because that's one of their highest correlations, 0.427. They would rate that term as offensive. Offensive now pc liberals negative 0.063 which is like basically no correlation right so

0:14:23 Lydia: Be thoughtful about it. Yeah.

0:14:56 Thomas: That interesting to think about so once again putting it into their terms the women's studies professors they don't give a shit about flip chart either way or some of them think it's offensive and some of whom don't but it doesn't like it's even or it doesn' t correlate really yeah isn't that weird but the authoritarians they very much care about that so like 0.427. Okay. It's not like super strong, but like of these correlations, that's one of the higher ones.

0:15:08 Lydia: It's spread. Yeah. That's crazy.

0:15:21 Thomas: Yeah. I thought that was an interesting example. I'm not going to go through all of them, but what's really funny is I've mapped out all of the correlations. And then I've also marked when they were kept for the subscale or for the final scale. And it's nonsense. Like it very much looks to be p-hacked like I look at the main drivers of pc authoritarianism like the highest correlations and again hun stats person that's That's probably definitely going to be a key part of the process of naming a factor, right?

0:15:48 Lydia: Yeah.

0:15:49 Thomas: The main, the highest ones, and they are all the highest for PC authoritarians, tells me that's pretty like key. Six are all of the same question, but with different things. Are, do you believe that works in these categories should be screened for offensive, racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory language and or ideas? The top one for, again, PC authoritarians, for PC liberals, basically no correlation.

0:16:18 Thomas: Isn't that weird? All the women's studies professors don't think that you should screen these. That would tell me that it's not really, you know, like if anyone's going to be PC, you think it'd be the women studies professors. I don't know why they would be not wanting to screen sexist stuff. You know what I mean? Like it's kind of weird, racist stuff, but there's no correlations. They're basically close to zero for all of those. For PC authoritarians, those are all the highest ones. So 0.64, 0.62. By the way, that's the highest correlation with any one is 0.64, which is not very high, right? I mean, I mean it's high, but to be the highest is like when you sort the factors by the four factor test, you get like 0.89, 0.8, you know, like because this is a forced test, as we talked about with Jenessa, this is not a good way to do it. Like I, in my opinion, it seems like this is just kind of bullshit. It. But anyway, television um, books, movies, music, radio, newspaper. Those are the six possible things where it says, should these be screened for discriminatory language or ideas? About that screened for are like definitional of of DC authoritarianism because it's the top six scores is six of these. Now there are more, there's like art, there's work, there're other ones we'll talk about, but the top six are television, books, movies, music, radio, newspaper. They're all like in the 0 .6 range ish and a little bit higher. Um, what do you think about those questions? Example, if asked me, do you think that movies should be screened for offensive, racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory language or ideas?

0:17:48 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. I answers, though, are not at all a little somewhat much, much, a great deal.

0:17:47 Lydia: Say in what context yeah yeah my answer would be like for public consumption in general I don't care and then if it's being presented in a particular environment maybe I do care Yeah.

0:18:04 Thomas: So I think it really depends on what the definition of screened is. And I'll be honest, I don't know that I know that definitively. Like I would think all movies are screened pretty much unless it's like a private fucking movie. Like it's screened.

0:18:15 Lydia: For a rating. Yeah, right.

0:18:17 Thomas: Yeah. You would rate it. So if you think screened means like, oh, if this has bad language, we're going to ban it. Well then, yeah, no, like I wouldn't, I would almost never think that unless it was like child porn or something. If it's, if screens in like, yeah. You want to, you know, you want to make sure that it's rated so that you can appropriately make the decision. I'd say, yeah, absolutely.

0:18:38 Thomas: Maybe here's the thing. You've also grouped a bunch of weird stuff because should something be screened for racist or sexist or whatever, offensive stuff, or should it be screenned for discriminatory language or ideas? I don't know. That seems like kind of different to me. Um think this question is just not um it's not terrible but in my mind this is not specific enough because I don't know what that means like movies yeah I would say yeah art I would say no probably um absolutely not uh yeah television is basically yeah you screen television you know like you it's either tv fucking y7 or you know So I'd say, yeah, but maybe if you read the question to be more like, well, but should you screen it just because something might be offensive as in like, oh, it has some sexism in there. Well, then it's like, I guess you don't really rate something for sexism, really. I mean, now you do with like the a lot of the like Disney things that have a label on it. They're like, this is now racist.

0:19:41 Thomas: We used to think it wasn't because we, you know, but we're wrong now. Now it's right. But think this is a question that is unclear enough that it almost seems like you could interpret it two different ways. And what you might have done is just divided people based on how they interpreted it and not based on what their belief actually is. That's what I think might've happened.

0:20:03 Lydia: I I do wonder like that piece about you know discriminatory language and that in the same space is like racism I think is problematic because you don't know what someone is responding to like those are very different. Levels of offense. And collapsing that into one question and asking the person to answer one time regarding that type of work, just doesn't, you don't know what they're answering.

0:20:28 Thomas: Because I think I think screened is the key. I also think sexist and way the waitlist offensive, racist, sexist or otherwise, I honestly think my brain might have just lazily said like, oh, like, you know, is there like nudity or sexual content or but that's not what it's at. That. Well, it says offensive. So like some people find that offensive. In my mind, I could have easily interpreted that as should, you screen like a movie or rate a movie or whatever for that stuff? Yes or no. And I would have said yes for movies. I probably would have said no for art. I would've said absolutely not for music. Like, and here's the thing. I don't think anyone would say music be, wants should be screened except for conservatives who think that music shouldn't have like stuff in it like seriously well

0:21:13 Lydia: I would say the only exclusion would be for language, right? Like if there's explicit language that does get identified for music.

0:21:21 Thomas: Yeah but sorry uh you're right let me let me um clarify what I think they want this to be is should you be allowed to like ban this stuff or redact it like I think I think what they think is oh in the like you idea that like anything that's too offensive we're gonna either draw a bar on it or we're going to not let you yeah

0:21:44 Lydia: Or pull it off the shelf.

0:21:45 Thomas: You're not going to even let you have it like that's what that's what I think they are trying to get at right because if they just mean screened as in like well yeah you could note it or you could rate it like a movie that's not pc that's just normal You know, so like, I think that's what we're getting at. And my point is, I don't know of anyone ever anywhere on the left who thinks music should be screened for that kind of content. Have you ever heard of that? I have never. Because for one thing, if not all musicians who are good are on the Left. So like we it's not it's just not a thing that lefties think about. We're not like, oh, you know, we need to stop. We need to stop all the right wing propaganda in music just doesn't really happen, you know, like and stuff that is like, for example, the Ben Shapiro rap song that started all this shit, the most lefty person in the world. I don't think they would say that should be screened.

0:22:43 Thomas: They would just be like, yeah, it just sucks. It question, I think, is incredibly bad and it is the main driver of this categorization. And the top answer again is television which like okay that that tells me that yeah they're probably rating television but music is actually also very high it's 0 .616 and fucking thinks that so what are they capturing here I think they're capturing probably some right-wing people in that answer and I think that some of this stuff is going to be a combination of misinterpretation, but also some amount of people on the right will be like, I yeah, think all those rap songs, like you shouldn't be allowed to say all those things in those rap song. Because I know this isn't lefties, like lefties are not saying that you should ban stuff. I think this is a combination of people misinterpreting the question, or at least not not interpreting it the way that Brophy and Jordan Peterson wanted you to. And some amount of people on who the right who want to ban books for being gay or, you know, like I think it captures some amount OF that.

0:23:49 Lydia: The things that are actually happening in the world with book banning in the United States.

0:23:55 Thomas: And I think to make the argument clear that really more than anything, this is just meaningless. This set of questions, the first one is work seen by children. Children. And if anything, I would think, oh, okay, well, that would, like, if anything I would screen that, you know, like I'm, yeah, okay. I don't want, I don't want racist stuff and work seen by children, of course. That is actually lower. So PC liberals, it's slightly higher. So if you remember for PC Liberals, they were basically zero for all those other ones. For this one, it' 0 .148. So, okay that's kind of weird. Yeah.

0:24:28 Thomas: For, for PC Authoritarians, again, again, they're the authoritarians, 0 .336. So it's like lower. And for adults, it's higher.

0:24:26 Lydia: Weak. Yeah yeah, that's crazy.

0:24:39 Thomas: Like, I think it's just incoherent. I don't think it makes any sense. Especially because work seen by adults is going to encompass a lot of the other things, you Like adults are going to see TV, movies, books, art. Like

0:24:52 Lydia: You would think that people would be more aligned about monitoring consumption of potentially offensive material to children. And with adults, that would be mehr spread because it would be like, well, they're an adult. They can make their own decisions and we don't need to, you police that for them. But for the fact that like that there's less authoritative means being taken with children than there are with adults. Volts very strange

0:25:18 Thomas: Weird. Um, so the, ones taken for the authoritarianism scale are just music and newspaper, but the top one, which is television isn't used books and movies are the next two. They're not used. Um, books is not used, but music and newspaper is why no fucking idea. Oh, maybe it'll be because the difference between the two factors is the most. Nope, that's not it. Difference between The Factors is the Most for movies. And that's Not Used. So I don't it. It's just p -hacky nonsense. Like, why you would choose those. Like, if you were going to choose ones that were representative, maybe you'd choose one in the middle. Which is like, music is kind of in the Middle, but newspapers toward the Bottom. Least in terms of ranking that question, you know what I mean? So like, I, there's no rhyme or reason to it. Here's another component that is pretty key to the PC authoritarians. Is dictionaries.

0:26:13 Thomas: And that could make sense, but also it won't really. So this sorting by the most PC authoritarian stuff, this is the seventh highest out of 202. So it's like, that's very important to the scale, you'd think, right? Is blasphemous, obscene, and slang statements, as well as racist slurs, e.g. the N-word, by the way, they just typed it out, and epithets should be, A, completely omitted from the dictionary, B, included in the dictionary but with labels or warnings, eg. Inclusion of words that many will find offensive does not mean that the editors endorse sentiments they express or or usage markers, or C, always included just as any other word.

0:26:53 Thomas: Now, first off, how do you think that's scored? I guess A would be like PC, B would be like middle PC, and C would be like not PC, right? So this one for authoritarians is a 0.583, but here's the interesting thing. For PC liberals, it's a 0.306. it's actually pretty close kind of high for both of them and that stands out because all the other ones in the top for PC Authoritarians aren't high for PC Liberals can't even tell what that means I guess that would mean they said they should be omitted from the dictionary maybe that would be the high score she scored this, you just don't know what that's measuring. Do you like, could you form a theory of what the fuck that's measuring? Cause it also says blasphemous stuff.

0:26:52 Lydia: I don't know and they answered well huh

0:27:36 Thomas: So know who answers yes to of this, and I don't think that's a consistent identity. I think that there's too many different things in there for that to be meaningful. But the other thing is, here's another funny one, speaking of dictionaries. This is one of the PC authoritarian item scales items. So this made it, like this made to the big show, is the craft of compiling, writing, and editing dictionaries should be, A, prescriptive, ruling what words are acceptable and what they should mean, or B, descriptive, reflecting actual usage.

0:28:12 Thomas: That has a bit of a negative correlation with PC liberals, so negative 0.128. But it has 0.499 for PC authoritarians. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean, I think that means PC authoritarians answered A more and PC liberals. Numerals well they kind of don't correlate but has a little bit more b which is descriptive what does that mean do you think that's meaningful like

0:28:24 Lydia: I don't No. Okay. No.

0:28:42 Thomas: Because I could see I left wing and right wing people answering either thing um So on board that they think these are both two different kinds of left so far, what I've given you, it doesn't really contradict that. Like it, it, uh, it's just kind of unclear, but now let's look at, largest um, negative correlation. So sorting the other way rather than like the highest correlation is the opposite of that for PC authoritarianism. And it happens to correlate quite high with PC liberals. The degree you think each of the following facts is a biological or cultural phenomenon. IQ tests, individuals who identify themselves as white tend on average to score higher than individuals of African ancestry. Additionally, Additionally, individuals of an East Asian background will tend score higher than whites. If we expected both these groups to be left, we would expect that they would say cultural phenomena, right? Like there

0:29:33 Lydia: Oh,

0:29:33 Thomas: Wouldn't be a what leftist is going to say like, oh, it is biologically true that white people score higher on IQ tests. I don't think that exists. And yet, with PC authoritarians, it's a negative 0.262. PC authoritarians, who we're supposed to believe are also on the left, have almost weak, measurable. But Like it's It'S their The Highest Inverse correlation is for PC authoritarians. So why would that be their question? That'S The highest negative correlation that they answer that white people are biologically scoring higher on IQ tests. Why would that make any

0:29:37 Lydia: Biological. Mm-hmm. Mm hmm.

0:30:10 Thomas: Fucking sense? Whereas one of the highest correlations and can assume that means they think it's a cultural phenomenon for pc liberals okay that makes sense and by the way we also know the pc liberals are uh higher on intelligence so that makes sense let now what I did is I like by the biggest difference between them. So what are the things that most separate the PC authoritarians and the PC liberals? The highest one is the one I just said. The highest ones is PC liberals say the people IQ thing is cultural, and PC authoritarians say it's

0:30:10 Lydia: It doesn't make any sense. Mm hmm, mm Mm

0:30:48 Thomas: No way that means they're both left groups of people. So the next highest is the same kind kind of question, but women on average are more agreeable. Same kind of question. The next biggest difference is the prescriptive dictionaries one. So that's something that for some reason these groups disagree on. Next few are the offensive, you know, being screened one. So movies, music, television. Here's another one. And I want you to keep in mind this made the liberalism scale. So this item that I'm about to read you, made the scale. Why don't you tell me what you think the score should be if these these Were both leftist groups of people that are PC, as she would like us to believe. Rate the degree you think each of the following facts is evidence of an unjust system. In 2013, the poverty rate for blacks in the United States was while the the rate for whites was 10%. Okay. Well, you would think both groups, if they were left, would be pretty high, right?

0:31:47 Lydia: Yeah. I would say that that's pretty good evidence of injustice.

0:31:50 Thomas: Well this is the eighth biggest difference. So liberals 0.634, which doesn't seem high enough to me, but they, they mostly answered like strong correlation there that that's evidence of an unjust system. PC authoritarians, almost no correlation 0.055.

0:32:08 Lydia: They're just all all over the map.

0:32:09 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. That tells me that that group of people is capturing both conservatives and liberals. It just is. But for reasons that aren't useful, like it's capturing them, I think, based on misunderstandings of other questions and also some statistical shenanigans.

0:32:24 Lydia: I think that makes sense. I that, you know, we've struggled with with this particular paper is figuring out what the heck is happening and what the heck does it mean. And I think, again, that is a result of of how it was put together in the first place. It's just nonsense.

0:32:42 Thomas: Right. So I I'll finish this off this section with here's the best evidence that this is fucking meaningless. So you remember how the PC authoritarians, the feature is the screening in quotes, I guess, whatever we think that means, the screening of different media. Right. For like offensive stuff, you know, discriminatory, offensive. Of the biggest differences between the two groups is how they answer this question. And apology is going to use offensive terms because I have to for you to know what the question is. Rate how offensive you find each of the following terms. Please be as honest as possible. Quote, Jew down to negotiate.

0:33:20 Lydia: What?

0:33:21 Thomas: Yeah. How do you think the leftists of any kind, people on the left, liberals of any type, PC to use the word PC to describe people, the correlation would be one yeah like it like if anyone is pc it would be people who say well holy shit I'm not going to say jew down that's horrible and here's the evidence of how meaningless this is pc liberals that's only a 0.54 correlation that's not even that high I think that should be higher pc authoritarians no correlation 0 0.096 so you know you can't really predict whether Whether the PC police will think the term Jew down is offensive.

0:33:30 Lydia: I would say very offensive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Huh?

0:33:58 Thomas: Yeah, you can't predict it.

0:33:57 Lydia: Is offensive or not? Wow.

0:34:00 Thomas: Another one. And again, apologies, but it's necessary. Same question, but towelhead to refer to Middle Eastern people. Same -ish thing. Same spread of scores. So PC liberals, 0.588. PC authoritarians, 0.168. So like, you know, some of them are like, okay, that's a little, but like for the most part, not predictable. Like if you, so that's A good way to restate this. If your measure of how PC people are, like you're literally saying, oh, I found a way to measure the fucking PC police. Here it is. And I say, okay. Would your measure predict that they answer this question? Do they think the term towel head is offensive? And they're like, well, that doesn't predict it. I'm sorry, you're not measuring anything.

0:34:11 Lydia: Same Yeah. Yeah.

0:34:48 Thomas: You're just fucking measuring nothing. Like that's nothing.

0:34:49 Lydia: And I think we've tried. We've tried so many times to look at this and be like, OK, what are they measuring? Like there is something I don't freaking know. Like it's.

0:35:00 Thomas: Yep, it's meaningless. That's where I got to. Like some of these things were why I thought it was more right-wing people. Cause it's like, oh, you know, there's some of These Answers where like, if that's not gonna correlate, like, holy shit, you know? Maybe not right -wang, but if it was left, it should be like a one, you Know? Like it should Be closer to a one. But when it comes to this, just keep in mind that that same like the authoritarians, I was going to say group of people, but I guess it's not really a group of people, people who scored higher on PC authoritarianism also said they want to screen movies and newspapers and blah, blah, but they don't think Talhead is offensive. What, what do they, yeah, they're super into screening, but, but that's not offensive.

0:35:32 Lydia: For offensive material. Yeah. They're not going to do a very good job screening. Yeah.

0:35:41 Thomas: So what does that tell you? I think that means The screening question is just confusing and people answered it different ways. Like I, furthermore, here's another killer question to tell us who these groups of people are. Rate your level of agreement with, with this statement. The world is warming because the human species burns too much fossil fuel.

0:35:59 Lydia: Yeah. Strongly agree.

0:36:00 Thomas: Yeah. So if these are leftists, that's going to be close to a one. Like it just has to be, I I Cannot think of a way that's not PC liberals. It's only a 0.428. so the women's studies professors actually it's not as strong you know like only a 0.428 with a now if you just were to look at a poll and I did of exactly the same it's a different obviously different poll it'sa different whatever but just the correlation of democrats believing that is like 90 so what the fuck is this and uh I care to guess unless you already know how that that correlates with PC authoritarianism?

0:36:37 Lydia: Correlation.

0:36:38 Thomas: Yeah, that is zero point zero four eight. So the PC fucking police either they deny climate change or not. There's no way to know. Meaningless garbage. Absolutely fucking meaningless garbage. If this was really both the PC police, least the leftist blah, blah, women's study professors, those numbers would both be near one. You listen to her talk, these are two groups of leftist people, one of which are like, oh, they're smarter and they're like, going they to ban all the stuff because they are not as like authoritarian about it, you know, so they are more women's studies. The other ones, they, are fucking super lefty book banners and like to the point where Or like they're banning TV, they're banning whatever, theyre banning this. That's what she would have us believe. You know why they're so authoritarian PCs because they're mentally ill. And then you look at this question and literally no correlation with the world is warming because the human species burns too much fossil fuel. Fucking meaningless.

0:36:50 Lydia: Man. They have to go on their, roadshow to it everywhere.

0:37:43 Thomas: Uh, absolutely ridiculous. You know, it's another thing I thought was funny. Um pc authoritarians they're not as strict on uh seminars or um harassment seminars isn't that weird the pc autoritarians are like almost no correlation with how people have to attend diversity seminars not much of a correlation I

0:38:02 Lydia: So they really, really, really want to control things, but not those things.

0:38:09 Thomas: Guess I don't know the pc liberals are are high on that like the pc liberals are high so that kind of makes sense it's nothing yeah I think maybe like I that was the question I looked at where I thought that's what it was but it's not and

0:38:11 Lydia: I'm trying. Yeah. That's their one seminar. I don't know. Brophy, if you're listening, and you can explain this in a way that that actually makes sense and not what you put together in your thesis. Be willing to hear what you have to say, but I I don'T buy it. Sorry, girl.

0:38:36 Thomas: This thing sucks it's very bad in every in conclusion uh do not grant you your masters I'm sorry um

0:38:45 Lydia: Do grant you your basketball, though.

0:38:49 Thomas: Your ball all. You may go coach. Oh other things I have to to, bring up.

0:38:53 Lydia: Just got to get off your chest.

0:38:55 Thomas: This is my therapy. Didn't get a chance to go through it and I'm, man, I really could, but all her conclusions from this incredibly terrible study, that's just garbage. She writes and writes and writes for pages about stuff that's not even related, like political political classifications of people authoritarianism and then like all maybe

0:39:17 Lydia: Patrons are going to hear us go off about that stuff. Yeah,

0:39:18 Thomas: Well no this is the conclusion stuff so I don't even know if we're gonna get to because it's just been I'm starting to to even I am starting to think I've talked too much about this um there's one thing I have to point out I just I have to pointed out this so she has derived a pc scale she thinks even though I think we've proven that's fucking nonsense but I also talks about authoritarianism And she thinks she the last sentence in her abstract was just read the end. A 36 item PC scale was also derived. A comprehensive two dimensional model of political belief is proposed. And the difference between right and left wing authoritarianism discussed.

0:39:21 Lydia: Never mind. Nah. Yeah.

0:39:57 Thomas: Where is that? Well, I have to share this with you. I haveto share this. With you she has a chart that is so fucking stupid I I have to tell you what she thinks of authoritarianism And I've, I've it someday. I may do the deep dive, but right long history of right -wang authoritarianism being something you can measure in people. It makes a lot of sense, but left -wing authoritarianism is, thought to not even exist because it's kind of a contradiction. Prediction. Maybe there's some people making good arguments that it can exist, but it's like, you a lot to it. It's interesting, but suffice it to say, if it exists, it's something pretty specific and it's nowhere near as established as right-wing authoritarianism. Well, Christine Brophy thinks she's cracked that one. Are you ready? Final prediction of this model is regarding authoritarianism, It is predicted that the root of authoritarianism is social conservatism and that the labeling of an individual as right-wing authoritarian or left -wing authoritarian is dependent on their fiscal political belief. Yeah. And then she has a chart. If you go all the way down to the bottom, she has a very helpful graph that shows us what she means. That's figure two model of political belief that is fucking stupid, that tells us what she means. And she has the quadrants are fiscal conservatism, social liberalism, social conservatismo, fiscal liberalism. So it's like, are you you fiscally liberal or conservative?

0:41:21 Thomas: And are you socially liberal or conservative? For the most part, just people in general, not talking about the study, there aren't a whole lot of fiscal liberal social conservatives. That like doesn't exist much. Although maybe that's changed in recent years, actually, now that I think about it. Back in, I remember back in high school, I learned like that doesn't exist much, like there's not many people identify that way. Because a lot of people identify as, well, I'm socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. That's something people identify a lot with. But the has in the one quadrant that is social conservatism, she has the top labeled as right wing authoritarianism and the right. So like the slightly more fiscally liberal side, she's labeled left wing authoritarians. So the people who in her mind are the left wing autoritarians, the people that she's talked about again, as though that's you and I, that's

0:41:21 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah?

0:42:12 Thomas: The language police that's college kids they are people who are like anti -gay but are like maybe taxes should be slightly higher it makes no sense it's nothing it's absolutely nothing it's nonsense the only way she is classing people like this is by openness, intelligence, and orderliness she's not using any real measures she's just using that stupid correlation shit with personality traits this is gobbledygook

0:42:21 Lydia: It doesn't make any sense. Yeah low openness there. Yeah there's no way. Right.

0:42:40 Lydia: Because she also didn't study authoritarianism as a construct by itself either. Yeah.

0:42:45 Thomas: Yeah. But even putting people in this, this is a political chart she's done that has four quadrants. The way she's putting anything in there is just by openness, compassion, politeness. She she doesn't, didn't measure any of this. This whole thing is fun. But I laughed out loud when I saw that, like, ah, I know who the real left -wing authoritarians are. They're social conservatives, but, but they might be in favor of healthcare. Care. It's like, that's not anything. I'm sorry. That's just not, that'S also conservatives. Like there are conservatives who are like sometimes express fiscal liberal views, but they're conservatives. They're They're not the PC police and the colleges and the kids. That'S there. Those people are socially liberal and fiscally liberal. I'll just translate it for you, Christine. So this thing fucking sucks in every way. It'S meaningless. ItS nothing. And Jordan Jordan Peterson is still bragging about it to this day as though it solves all of the political divisions of everyone in the world and describes left -wing PC police perfectly. This alleged PC scale has been in some other research. Uh, I had you look into some gentlemen who were were performing some research, which then again, also gets cited on Twitter by Jordan Pearson and others, other personalities as like, ah, here's what they found, you talk about these other two doofuses and what they're doing.

0:44:29 Lydia: Studies published within months of each other in 2020. And hear me, published. This is not just someone, you their own like internal research project and posting it to their internal website. These were published in journals, and I'll get to that in a second. Both of these used her scale that she created, the 36 questionnaire that she developed to examine PC liberalism and PC authoritarianism. Them. And without any sort of examination of the validity or the strength of the scale that they would be using, they just used a scale from a master's student and her unpublished thesis to do then their own work. Very, very, very odd. So I wanted to not get caught up in the research and their findings necessarily.

0:45:21 Lydia: I just, yeah, I can't handle it. But I do wanted to to talk about them. Are these people, you know, that would just take someone's master's thesis, use the scale from an unpublished master's basis to then perpetuate their own work that is then cited in other places and their findings are cited in other places with no one else looking at the scale that they use to get to those results?

0:45:19 Thomas: Was yeah yeah we can't we cannot yeah yeah mm -hmm yeah could this be an

0:45:46 Lydia: Um, well, that's interesting. So why what I can tell happened here, guy, Jordan T. Moss, was the lead author and he was a student at the time.

0:45:46 Thomas: Innocent mistake I was going to say he looks 16. so picture like a college republican look but australian so there you go

0:46:01 Lydia: He's a child in the Yes, yes, exactly. So he was a student at the time in the school of psychology and counseling at Queensland University of Technology. And he has another author, a co-author named Peter O'Connor. Peter O'Connor is a professor at the Queensland University of Technology in their business school, the School of Management. And the reason why he's involved here, you know, his research is primarily regarding leadership. Understandably, he's an organizational psychologist. So that stuff that he's interested in, he he is interested in personality traits as it intersects with emotion and, you various other things and how it then relates to leadership and how you present at work and those sorts of outcomes. Most of his research is in that leadership space. He's then randomly, he did these two studies with Jordan T. Moss. Think the The only thing that tells me what his interest is in here is just really like the personality experience that he has, you know, the big five experience that he has. But then the application of what they would be looking at as it relates to the personality is driven by Moss very clearly. Peter O 'Connor has not written about culture war stuff, political ideology stuff anywhere else. And I searched.

0:47:31 Thomas: But did you find like a you know a youtube channel where he rants about because like what this sounds like to me is there there just has been a number of people in academia who um are anti -PC, anti-woke and who haven't get like Peter Boghossian, for example, are more interested in that kind of stance, that kind of going against the grain, like, OK, I'm using I'musing you of being scholarly to prove a bunch of anti -work bullshit points. And strikes me as like, did these two people find common ground on, you you know, hating the left or something. And there's like, okay, what can we do here? Let's do a study.

0:48:08 Lydia: Maybe there is nothing, though, publicly available for me to say that Peter O'Connor leans that way. I searched everywhere. There's nothing on YouTube. I did find one webinar that he held, but it was with the Project Management Institute.

0:48:23 Thomas: You take it? Did you train on project management?

0:48:25 Lydia: I got some continuing education credits.

0:48:26 Thomas: Yeah. No wonder you've been managing me better lately.

0:48:32 Lydia: What I can tell, at least through my research, I have no no reason to suspect that Peter O'Connor drove this in any way. I think, he you was the professor behind it, you Know, probably helping guide the research and all of those things. But I don't know where he aligns in terms of the conclusions or the premise to begin with. I really don't know. Moss, however, did have a little bit more of an online profile for a bit. He had a Twitter that he has not updated since January 2021. And understandably, because it's a bit of a dumpster fire, retweeting, you know, Megyn Kelly, ret tweeting just lot of random, terrible stuff. His my question was, OK, so how did these then get published?

0:49:17 Lydia: You what happened here? Here, both articles were published in open access journals, which I think is a good mission. But what it does is it puts the cost on the authors. It's it's paid a public a little bit, a little but these are aligned with like one of them is plus one, which is like a lot of articles go through there. And really, from what I could tell, both of these journals are committed to not things behind paywalls, like for scholarly research. And so I appreciate that.

0:49:17 Thomas: Yeah, okay. Pay to play a little bit. Yeah but What level of peer review are we talking?

0:49:52 Lydia: But so one the articles was published in a called Helion, and their goal is to, per their marketing materials, their goal is to publish online within 72 hours of accepting an article. They're at seven days. They, like, have all their metrics and stuff. Submission to acceptance is 177 days long on average. So there is a peer review process there.

0:50:14 Thomas: That's kind of a long time, actually.

0:50:15 Lydia: However, I have seen certain sources say that Helion accepts more than 70 percent of their submissions, which feels kind of high.

0:50:24 Thomas: Seems high. Yeah.

0:50:25 Lydia: The publishing charge right now is $2,100 to get your paper published. Other one in PLOS One is more of a bargain. $1,745 to publish there.

0:50:36 Thomas: Act now. Yeah.

0:50:37 Lydia: Yeah, you save about three hundred bucks. And they accept 50 percent of their submissions. And that also feels kind of high to me. I could not find anything regarding the time to acceptance. But yeah, that do not think these articles would have made it through a traditional scholarly review process. I think they were aided and abetted, basically, by the of which they chose to publish them.

0:51:04 Thomas: Is but like in fairness these studies have been cited both of these 40 to 50 times by google scholar measures so that's like a lot for a random bit of research right I mean it doesn't mean they're like the you know top in the fucking field or something but like that's that's more than just some random you know know, average thing.

0:51:11 Lydia: I know. I know it. And one of the places that is is using more of their research, kind of significantly, is an unpublished manuscript. And I this is going to go anywhere necessarily. It's a couple years old at this point. And they do have a disclaimer in here like, please you do not use this. It is currently under review.

0:51:45 Lydia: But shows that it's been read, know, you 20,000 times. It's a cross -cultural analysis of censorship on campuses. And so they use the results that Moss and O 'Connor got a to start investigating liberals versus conservatives versus moderates and their position on censorship, you know in a variety of different places, topics and, you know, categories. That's probably the most extensive place that I've seen their stuff be But that's not the only place, as I said, there are other places that will mention their results as part of their conversation and findings. But this is is definitely the most prolific one. And so if that ever gets published, there might be more attention on some of the stuff here, too, which is concerning.

0:51:43 Thomas: What? And who is going to look at the footnote of the foot note of the footnote, the citation of the citation and actually do at what the fuck this thing is. It's crazy. And not like this is made its way through mainstream psychology, but it it almost doesn't need to because we're not I don'T think the game here is impacting mainstream psychology. I think the The game here is getting enough of a look of being legitimate to then be used publicly for political purposes.

0:53:00 Lydia: Well, and we saw that with the woke taxonomy bit, right, where Michael Schellenberger is thanking Christine Brophy. And if anyone wants to look up folks in there, she's right next to Jordan Peterson. They They look her up and they're like, oh, you know, here's her study that she did and here's what she found. And they're not going to be skeptical about it at all. They're going to take it on face value. They'll probably see all the videos that Jordan Peterson has done touting her research. Some funny things that I thought I'd mention to of wrap up chat our about Jordan Moss. I wanted to do like a where are they now sort of thing.

0:53:07 Thomas: There's another. Yeah. Hopefully in psychology prison.

0:53:35 Lydia: Um, so Jordan Moss, after he finished up at Queensland University of Tech, he went to medical school. And that's about the time he stopped tweeting, which I thought was pretty funny. He finished recently and he is a licensed doctor. I looked him up on their boards over in Australia to make sure that, you know, he passed and he He is licensed to practice. So if anyone over in Australia wants to check out Jordan Moss, Dr. Jordan Moss. You can check him out in Parramatta, Australia. Seems he's a general practitioner.

0:54:10 Thomas: Already?

0:54:11 Lydia: Don't take psychology advice from him though if you go see him for some medical advice.

0:54:15 Thomas: Well, maybe people can change. He was like 15 years old in this video. No, he probably wasn't, but he looked it.

0:54:20 Lydia: And, you and Peter O'Connor did reunite for one more article that they did together. So they did those two in 2020 concerning political correctness and personality. And in 2022, they actually got back together. And the title of article is What Drives Consumer Automobile Choice? Investigating Personality Trait Predictors of Vehicle Preference Factors.

0:54:42 Thomas: The woke left drives. No.

0:54:45 Lydia: So yes Jordan Moss's I don't know his his research interests had changed by that point potentially if

0:54:47 Thomas: Huh. Why would... So it's more like, it's like that, that random business professor was like, oh, I'll do you this favor of helping you with your misinformation of propaganda. Yeah. But one day, and I don't know if this day may never come, I may come to you to have you do a car related research paper for business stuff.

0:55:00 Lydia: You help me evaluate call in a favor yeah yeah just too good too good

0:55:13 Thomas: He's in his, he's office. All that. I don'T know how he's already doing that. It'S been four years. That seems fast to me, but whatever. He's a doctor. Doctor he's uh he's saying goodbye to a patient you know he just gave a gave a kid a shot or something he's like give him lollipop and they seize in the door that professor it's like okay the day has come he's pointing at a car magazine or something he'S like we need to do a study on this

0:55:19 Lydia: I don'T KNOW HOW AUSTRALIA MEDICAL SCHOOL WORKS yeah yeah he like doesn't even have to say anything dr moss knows

0:55:36 Thomas: Exactly I'm gonna need to uh you're gonna need reschedule you know kind of thing and then he goes in the back room yeah right. Well, next time on Where There's Woke, you may notice that I still haven't answered the question of the mystery study. I have a lot to talk about there. There may have been a mystery study and there may have been some uh fraud committed in that so I'm excited to tell you about that little adventure and stupider than you think and it's and not though at this point maybe it's as stupid as you think and it is as fucking grifty and fraudulent as you might think see you next time on where there's woke