Attacking Pinker’s status as an LSA fellow and a media expert doesn’t pose that much of a threat to him;
This might be explained by inter-LSA politics. When canceling someone it’s also useful to first shoot for the weak links. If the LSA would fold it’s easy to expand the demand to Harvard and his publisher.
It seems that your idea is that groups of people are supposed to be responsible for the letter. I don’t see why that should be true. It might be simply writing by an individual who isn’t very skillful. Hanlon’s razor seems to me like the best explanation.
Given that cancel culture happens to be a big problem at the moment, it would however be a great public service to create a bunch of Sokal style cancelation petitions in this style. It would be a nice tool for embarrasing people who sign petitions for cancelation without much thought.
Writing by an individual who isn’t very skillful doesn’t seem likely to get this much attention or ~500 signatures, even if many of them are fake. Some sort of momentum was behind this that I think is more than the effort given by an individual — certainly given that this letter appears to be anonymous! Some authors would have this clout but seeing as how we don’t know who authored this...
If you start with a bunch of fake signatures and alert a few people who are on Pinkers side of the equation it’s easy for the letter to go viral and in the process also bet some real signatures.
It’s worth noting that using Google docs is a low-skill signal.
It’s not a signal because it’s easy to fake. “one party credibly conveys some information about itself to another party”
In that case, I challenge you to write a letter approximately this bad, targeting a public figure approximately as famous as Pinker, disseminate it as you describe but without any attribution, and we’ll see if it gets any traction.
This might be explained by inter-LSA politics. When canceling someone it’s also useful to first shoot for the weak links. If the LSA would fold it’s easy to expand the demand to Harvard and his publisher.
It seems that your idea is that groups of people are supposed to be responsible for the letter. I don’t see why that should be true. It might be simply writing by an individual who isn’t very skillful. Hanlon’s razor seems to me like the best explanation.
Given that cancel culture happens to be a big problem at the moment, it would however be a great public service to create a bunch of Sokal style cancelation petitions in this style. It would be a nice tool for embarrasing people who sign petitions for cancelation without much thought.
Writing by an individual who isn’t very skillful doesn’t seem likely to get this much attention or ~500 signatures, even if many of them are fake. Some sort of momentum was behind this that I think is more than the effort given by an individual — certainly given that this letter appears to be anonymous! Some authors would have this clout but seeing as how we don’t know who authored this...
If you start with a bunch of fake signatures and alert a few people who are on Pinkers side of the equation it’s easy for the letter to go viral and in the process also bet some real signatures.
It’s worth noting that using Google docs is a low-skill signal.
It’s not a signal because it’s easy to fake. “one party credibly conveys some information about itself to another party”
In that case, I challenge you to write a letter approximately this bad, targeting a public figure approximately as famous as Pinker, disseminate it as you describe but without any attribution, and we’ll see if it gets any traction.
It’s a high risk battle that I don’t want to fight myself. Especially not after a public challenge.
Yes, I certainly can’t blame you!
It’s a signal. Whether or not it’s a trustworthy signal is a different matter. It’s still noting that it got sent.