It’s trash. There’s no clearer indicator of where Shermer’s vanity magazine’s focus lies than this, A Review of Milo Yiannopoulos’s new book Dangerous by George Michael, which manages to go on and on and tell us very little about the book, but does regurgitate a massive bolus of alt-right talking points. The author seems to have very little interest in what Yiannopoulos actually says, or how he says it, but mainly wants to repeat every tired cliche of the alt-right/mens rights movement.

I'm increasingly concerned with the degree of censorship within the "new atheist" and "skeptics" community. As some of you know, after I published an article that was critical of what I would describe as a strain of anti-intellectualism among some skeptic leaders, Michael Shermer sent me an email complete with vulgarities, personal insults (e.g., you're a bad scholar and you'll never be a good scholar!), and basically a threat to harm my career because I'm a "backstabber" (search The Moral Arc for some fun reading about how Shermer sometimes fantasizes about murdering "backstabbers"! Seriously).

Similarly, after writing a critique of Peter Boghossian and James A. Lindsay's gender studies "hoax," both blocked me on social media and the former even blocked my phone number! I have also been permanently banned from Jerry Coyne's blog for literally asking, "So, why not focus on something else?," which he angrily claimed was a violation of the blog's rules (it wasn't).

Most recently, I posted a question in the private FB group for "Street Epistemology" (SE) about how one balances (a) advocating epistemological principles and (b) being associated with Boghossian, who founded SE, given his frequent defenses of white nationalists and derogatory statements about male feminists (for example). It was a serious question written for a group of what I thought were serious thinkers. Yet instead of responses, push-back, or commiseration, they simply banned me from the group! No explanation, no discussion.

I continue to be awed by the reflexive censoriousness and stunning hypocrisy of the "skeptics" community. This community demonstrates why evangelizing for epistemology remains so very important.

You're a liar Torres. Here's a screen shot of a tweet that you retweeted in 2013, more than 2 years before you asked me to endorse your book and write you a letter of recommendation for a Ph.D. program at Oxford. So you clearly new all about the false allegations against me and yet used me to advance your career anyway, now claiming that you believed them all along. So not only are you a liar, you're a hypocrite and a schemer. There is no "censorship" problem in the skeptical community. You're the only one being banned from all those sites you are whining about because everyone can see that you can't be trusted, that you are a hypocrite and liar, and that you have no morals or scruples.

[Link to screenshot of tweet regarding "Naughty Naughty girl" comment of Shermer's]

When I went to withdraw my letter of recommendation from Oxford I was relieved to find out that you were never in the running to be admitted to their program. So you're not even a real scholar, even while pretending to be one, another reason why no one takes you seriously and why, in addition to being hypocritical and dishonest, you've been banned from those sites. The problem is not with "skepticism". The problem is with you. Look in the mirror Torres. I'm sorry I ever tried to help you. It was a big mistake that I will not make again.

As for our email correspondence Torres, at the bottom of every email I've sent you appears this statement below. I have nothing to hide at all, but privacy laws exist for a reason and our correspondence is private. You asked if you could make it public and I declined. If you do not understand why the law protects peoples' privacy, or why people want privacy, then you don't understand what privacy means. Here is the statement that appears in every email I send out:

This private email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential information. Any unauthorized publication, broadcast, review, use, disclosure or distribution of its content, substance or meaning, by email, social media or any other means, is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

FIRST, you are wrong about the censorship. (a) Grown men who loudly advocate for the importance of free discussion and consider themselves "serious thinkers" shouldn’t block *anyone* for expressing opposing views (with Coyne it was literally a question that I asked; with Boghossian it was criticizing his factually flawed “hoax”; with you it was simply linking to a Buzzfeed article that outlines a few of your Weinstein-esque, morally unacceptable behaviors); and (b) it is most definitely not just me. I know many, many people who have been banned by Coyne for expressing opposing views and blocked by Boghossian (ah, the “body habitus” Paragon of Rationality guy) on social media. This is pretty unacceptable for a group of men who pride themselves on intellectual integrity.

SECOND, your scholarship comment is quite puerile and it exemplifies exactly the sort of behavior among “skeptics” that has lost my intellectual respect. Is this high school or middle school, Michael? Also, I have a book out that’s as well-blurbed as any I’ve ever come across, numerous papers forthcoming in tier-one academic journals, and a job with a leading think tank, ETC. Behave yourself, please.

THIRD, the “private email message” only appears under your last two emails, not the first two. This is perhaps lucky for you, since the third was the most vulgar and inappropriate, and thus the one that would most surprise folks who are under the impression that you're a reasonable guy. (Again, why not just let me release all the emails? I'm happy to be transparent about this. Are you?)

FOURTH, one reason that people like you, Weinstein, Trump, and all the others, are able to compartmentalize (a) certain morally unacceptable behaviors, especially toward young women (e.g., your "naughty" comment above), from (b) your public image is because people like *me* don’t say anything. I don’t remember retweeting that Mofo comment from four years ago, but no doubt I quickly made myself forget about it (to eliminate cognitive dissonance; this is what I would have done until pretty recently in my life). It was only after Motherboard rejected our interview because of your history of rape allegations that the "feminist" in me said, “Rape culture is real, and it behooves me as a moral person to actually research this guy with whom I’m associated.” This research was also motivated by the dawning realization that you are often willing to put ideology before epistemology, whereas I am not (and our exchange proved this, because I took ZERO pleasure in severing ties with you). I talked to a lot of people (including numerous men and women that you know, because they are “higher-ups” in the community) and was pretty horrified by what they told me (as mentioned before, the word "sleazy" was used by several of them independently). Even James Randi once said, “Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that[.] I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference.” Just, wow.

So yeah, I suppose that you’re correct a bit about me being a “liar,” but not quite in the sense you intended: I lied to myself about the rumors that I tried oh-so-hard to ignore. I wish I had done more research on the "luminaries" of the "skeptics" community long ago and discovered just how heavy-handed, dogmatic, fact-resistant (when the facts don’t support some prior view), and morally unscrupulous you “powerful white men” are. Consider one quick example from a forthcoming article of mine: “Shermer even published a quite favorable review of Yiannopoulos’ book Dangerous in his magazine Skeptic. Apparently, Yiannopoulos saying that “feminism is cancer,” identifying a trans student by name during his “Dangerous F*ggot Tour,” and joking that “I know what you’re thinking—if every priest looked like this those little boys would stop complaining” wasn’t enough for Skeptic to say, “Hey, maybe saying nice things about Milo could damage the credibility of the ‘skeptic’ label.”” Really, think about that. Milo, a professional troll who constantly lies, tergiversates, and embodies the opposite values of the Enlightenment; a Trump supporter who is about as anti-intellectual as I can imagine.

You can use your “power” within the community to spread whatever rumors you want about me, to tell others that I’m a “backstabber,” “fucking clueless,” or an awful scholar (to quote you). I've said this before and I'll say it again, I’m not interested in childish games with unserious thinkers.

...

I would add:

(1) You once told me in an email that I shouldn’t hesitate to be controversial, because controversy sells. (I won’t actually quote you so I don’t get sued.) This single sentence gets at, I would argue, the most significant intellectual difference between you and me: after staring at that sentence for 10 seconds or so in disbelief, I literally thought to myself, “But I don’t give a sh*t about what sells, I care about what’s true—if that means being controversial, then fine; if it means not being controversial, then that’s fine too.” Perhaps much of our disagreement about my articles, my "loyalty" to you (and the "Old Boys Club"), etc. comes down to this important divergence of attitudes.

(2) I have never seen a group of people (you, Boghossian, Coyne, etc.) so susceptible to motivated reasoning and confirmation bias (two biases of great importance to "rationalists" and "EAs" like myself). When a black professor cancels a lecture due to death threats, the white male “skeptics” are silent; when this happens to women, feminists, etc., there's consistently zero attention to it from the Rational Men of the community. But when Milo Yiannopoulos, a professional troll who jokes about child rape, or some other white nationalist gets “deplatformed,” there’s a torrent of moral outrage. The lack of balance is quite telling. (Also, Maajid is tired of you misusing and abusing the term “regressive left,” as he told me in a recent interview.)

Wow, new from CNN. Seriously, Michael Shermer published a quite sympathetic review of this guy's book. Not even the Daily Caller is interested in him. Skeptic magazine should be (to say the least) so very ashamed, for moral reasons, for giving this guy a platform. Or so I would argue.

[Link to CNN article titled "Daily Caller's opinion editor fired over Milo Yiannopoulos column"]

Backstabber? Phil, you asked me to blurb your book, which I did because I try to help new authors get started. Then you asked me to include you in my lecture agency's roster of speakers so that we could do a public dialogue about existential threats, which I did because, again, I try to help up-and-coming scholars. Then you asked me to write you a letter of recommendation for a Ph.D. program at Oxford, which I did because I saw potential in you as a scholar. In response to these acts, you wrote an article in Salon repeating lies told about me in an article with no regard whatsoever to their veracity, just so, as you said, "people could decide for themselves." That's what I mean by backstabbing. And that is exactly what you are. And repeating a libel is legally libelous. You are forewarned.

Or, here’s another perspective: I thought you where a morally good guy with high epistemic standards, so I asked you to provide me with a blurb, letter of recommendation, etc.

Later, I discovered a long list compiled by someone else of Weinstein-esque misdeeds, plus some pretty creepy emails trying to cover up those misdeeds. I talked to many people, both men and women, about the situations mentioned below (link), and on multiple independent occasions the word “sleazy” was used. So, I came to believe the victims—a radical act in our rape culture where people are afraid to speak up because “powerful men” won’t be too happy with them (see Weinstein, Trump, B. Clinton, Cosby, ETC.).

Around the same time, the gender studies “hoax” made it painfully clear to me that Skeptic magazine not only supports bad scholarship but doesn’t care about the facts when they don’t support some prior narrative (since the “hoax” was based a falsehood that no one involved ever acknowledged, and which should have resulted in the article being retracted.) Even more, this sort of motivated reasoning/confirmation bias has become endemic in the “skeptics” community, reflecting a general lack of curiosity about opposing points of view and self-reflection about accepted views. B&L’s statement that “We don’t need to know gender studies to call for the entire field to be defunded” provides a stunning example of this sort of anti-intellectualism. (Kids: don’t listen to them!! Knowledge is oh-so important!)

You’re claiming to be a offended victim. But just imagine how disappointed I was when I realized that so many of the white men I looked up to aren’t as reasonable or moral as I thought they were.

[Link to B.j. Murphy's post that says]:

We need to be vigilant against the purveyors of misogynism and violence, especially if those predators are from your own community - in this case, the skeptics and atheist community. Michael Shermer, you don't get a free pass from everything that's going on!

You're innocent until proven guilty, but using your lawyers to shut up alleged victims isn't exactly a good sign of your supposed "innocence."

[EDIT: this article hits it on the head. Now is the time for those who embrace the sort of ethical standards that prescribe respect for women to stand up and speak out. Which I will continue to do. [Link to NBC Think piece titled, "Stop Rewarding Men for Turning a Blind Eye to Other Men's Sins"]

Here’s a snippet (attached below) from our email exchange, which I will probably make public at some point soon. Only the last two of four emails that Shermer sent me says, to paraphrase, “Confidential. Do not share without permission.” So the first two are fair game.

It is really baffling, Peter. I think this is what happens with “powerful men”: they come to believe that they can bully and intimidate others to stay quiet, and very often that works. But not with me: my dedication to truth (however absurdly cheesy that sounds!), whatever it happens to be, is greater than my fear of retaliation.

As mentioned above, if I had known about the low epistemic and moral character of some of the white dudes who I used to admire so much, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in this community of heavy-handed, Weinstein-esque ideologues in the first place. I don’t like stubborn ideology, and I won’t protect repeated sex offenders. (That being said, I am a fallibilist and hope to be perpetually open to criticisms of all sorts. So I welcome feedback of any kind on any position that I (tentatively) advocate!!)

[Link to an image of a couple of lines of an email]:

This has apparently devoled into a conversation about feelings rather than facts, and I take it skepticism is about facts.

I also find the loyalty, "culture of honor"-type objection here less than compelling. This looks like a Trump-Comey moment: what I can promise you is honesty, not loyalty.