Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

Yesterday, I published my take on the Sokal Squared scandal on my page at Medium , and was surprised that it got a bump from the editors, “Our curators just read your story , It’s a Publish or Perish World , that you submitted for review. Based on its quality, they selected it to be recommended to readers interested in Education across our homepage, app, topic page, and emails.”   While the recommendation immediately meant more people read my story than the one I posted a week before (six reads vs. none), what really caught me off guard was a related story I read this morning on The Daily Beast .   While I didn’t specifically cite the Quillette story referenced, I did send the link to it to my wife as an   example of my sense that the lefts’ obsession with identity was alienating people that should be politically aligned with our larger goals.   Yet, in reading the Daily Beast article, I realized I’d been hoaxed (a direct response to the Sokal Story) as well. ...

                    A while back, I was reading an old friend’s Facebook (FB) post about how both political sides are corrupt and another old friend commented, “I'm going to disagree with you on that point. True people on the Right listen to the other side without putting the other side down and point to facts...The difficulty I have is that the left likes to use emotion and opinion for the disagreement and when you confront them on where they got their information it's MSN.”                 I responded, “…your take is exactly what I experience in reverse, and when you ask them where they got their facts they'll point to Fox, which I don't think is reliable sourcing.    Of course, social media has made it easier to get caught up in bubbles and tribalism and leads to only really hearing opinions that support our pre-existing opinions.   I think...