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> Rather, they rarely land in front of the people who disagree with the contention held within.

The open letter wasn't penned to end up on a blog post. The goal was to be printed in Scientific American: But the editor-in-chief was a coward:

> Today, after sitting on our rebuttal to Scientific American’s prominent reappraisal of Wilson for eight days (curious given that the original article was rushed out within three days of his death) editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth wrote to officially reject it.

"Rather, they rarely land in front of the people who disagree with the contention held within."

You are likely right as those involved will probably dismiss any criticism. However, I believe the authors of this open letter probably want their position put on the record for posteriorly.

However, such is the outrage against Scientific American and Associate Professor McLemore that this open letter may have a life of its own.

The outrage was palpable 14 days ago with the HN story The Demise of Scientific American and many of those who posted shared the same discust. The public release of this open letter signed by many prominent people will probably reinforce this view and give the matter a continued existence in the public domain.

I've posted a link to the earlier HN story below.

There's something terribly jarring about the phrase:

> Associate Professor McLemore

It's embarrassing that someone with the special kind of bold stupidity that Monica McLemore displays is credentialed in anything. It certainly does no favors to the credibility of Nursing as a field.

Precisely. My thoughts exactly.

As someone who believes structural racism and sexism in science are real problems, but also highly values EO Wilson's work and intellectual freedom in general, this rebuttal did me a great service by bringing some history of the controversy into one place. It may not shape discourse today, but statements like this serve a purpose in maintaining a record that people can be thoughtful about on their own pace. EO Wilson's own 1981 defense, cited in the article, serves the same purpose: we don't have to wonder how he interpreted his own findings.

https://www.nature.com/articles/289627b0.pdf

> The most incredible platform to watch this on is TikTok - if one doesn't purposely engage with opposing viewpoints, one's "For You Page" will be nearly entirely filled with shorts confirming your existing ideological biases. The only remaining few percentage points of content will be extremely popular Toks, which are almost always non-political trending memes, such as dances.

I'll also add that it tries very hard to pin you to a 'side'. I work in politics and am thoroughly disgusted by every major political faction right now, so the only political TikToks I like watching are shitposts or political humor. TikTok doesn't understand this, and I've noticed that whenever I dislike something political and serious, TT very quickly tries to serve me up political and serious videos from the opposite side of the aisle.

I’ve recently taken up twitter for my birdwatching hobby and professional science interests. It constantly tries to show me political commentary. I ruthlessly block any account posting political stuff even if I emotionally agree with it. The point is that twitter is just not verbose enough to have a considered political argument so the whole thing is a shitstorm.

What I’ve notice is that twitter definitely seems to think I support a particular side of Australian politics. But it has it slightly wrong (I dislike both major parties and their policies) and so it’s attempts are all the more grating.

Is it better to say nothing, or to meet each other -- those with differing views -- at the margins? Certainly some of the staff at SA seem to have read it.

For what it's worth, my Tiktok feed has 0 political content. It's all dancing, contortionists, singers, and magicians.

I think the algorithms serve their masters.

I have very little political content on my main FYP these days, instead purposely confining it to the puppet accounts I set up just for that purpose. That said, it is very easy to fall into one of the political TikTok streams with just a few inadvertent likes or shares.

I increasingly worry this division will end in widespread violence in some form of civil war(s). Please change my opinion about this.

Division is with us since forever, but societies in the developed world are aging and thus lack the necessary "cannon fodder" of enough fit young men for a civil war. Civil wars are very often associated with youth bulges [0] and our days of having a youth bulge are over in the West.

(There is a possibility of massive influx of young men from Africa and Asia into Europe, which would replenish the potential, but that does not concern the USA.)

[0] https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/youth-bulge-a-de...

40-y.o. somethings are less militarily capable and, these days, usually fat. They will stick to their keyboards.

But yeah, all that hate worries me as well.

Great answer, especially [0]

> (There is a possibility of massive influx of young men from Africa and Asia into Europe, which would replenish the potential, but that does not concern the USA.)

Didnt this basically happen in 2015

Having just seen MLK day go by, I think the situation in the US is considerably better than it was back then, when despite campus cultural policing being enforced by actual shootings and both dissidents and presidents were being murdered, the country did not have a full civil war.

You can't really have a civil war without an economic crisis, and the one thing all the helicopter COVID money guaranteed was not having a massive economic crisis. See Kazakhstan; it's been somewhat unfree for years, but the thing that triggered fighting in the streets was a spike in energy prices.

However I do think there's a risk of more political violence around elections. Eventually some group is going to bring guns to a government building and refuse to leave.