Today's Great Joke: People Are Taking Satoshi Kanazawa Seriously

(Contents include racism and sexism and weird pseudoscience)


That guy is like Teflon.  Nothing seems to stick to him, sigh.

On the other hand, this is really funny:

Satoshi Kanazawa, the LSE psychologist behind the research, discussed the findings that maternal urges drop by 25% with every extra 15 IQ points in his book The Intelligence Paradox. In the opening paragraph of the chapter titled "Why intelligent people are the ultimate losers in life", he makes his feelings about voluntary childlessness very clear:
If any value is deeply evolutionarily familiar, it is reproductive success. If any value is truly unnatural, if there is one thing that humans (and all other species in nature) are decisively not designed for, it is voluntary childlessness. All living organisms in nature, including humans, are evolutionarily designed to reproduce. Reproductive success is the ultimate end of all biological existence.

What's funny about that?  Kanazawa is not a psychologist at all but a sociologist who has decided to do Evolutionary Psychology of the type which asks why "all" men prefer blonde Barbie doll women (answer: evolution) and why black women, according to Kanazawa, are ugly (answer: presumed manliness of black women).  He got a slap on the fingers a few years ago but is back telling us "the truth" about complicated issues which  nobody can actually study.

Sigh and sigh and sigh.  For more on this guy, check out my series ( part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and an addendum) on this article.

And another series on Kanazawa:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 .

I'm not gonna write on his arguments because it is a waste of time.   You know, such as IQ being the same as intelligence and all that other crap, not to mention having to wade through his methodology etc.

----

Added later:  Oh my.  Lots of people are quoting Kanazawa on this topic, including in the Washington Post. Though at least the author points out that Kanazawa's earlier research was a bit "controversial."

This is really worrying.  If a guy can do his utmost to be outed as something not quite savory, he still gets coverage in all the cool places.