The Cognitive Dissident
A podcast of essays and lively interviews featuring nuanced, civil discussion of interesting cultural and political topics. We question why we believe what we believe, and what place the media and other social forces have in not only fostering those beliefs, but in framing our basic assumptions. We are obsessed with injustice, irrationality, and with injecting some civility and tolerance back into civic discourse. To that end, questioning assumptions, slaughtering sacred cows, and calling out nude emperors is also a lot of what we do.
Episodes
Thursday Jan 06, 2022
January 6th and the Perseverance of Belief
Thursday Jan 06, 2022
Thursday Jan 06, 2022
One year later, the Big Lie is going strong. How can a lie with so many internal contradictions persist? Human nature is to blame, and, alas, human nature seems to preclude any remedy.
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
CD Quickie: Why is gender mutable but race cast in stone?
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
The furor over trans women athletes outperforming their biologically female counterparts raises even larger questions, like:
Why is gender presented to us as a mutable attribute, something based solely on our own state of mind about ourselves, while race is viewed as utterly unchangeable?
Is this view based on biology, or is it merely a cultural opinion, something we've come to accept, perhaps in rejection of biological realities of the nature of gender and race?
Is it valid to decry a white woman 'passing' as black as wearing blackface while at the same time, accepting a man 'passing' as a woman, as a woman, and if so, why?
Monday Jan 03, 2022
Trans Women in Sports: it’s not just about testosterone.
Monday Jan 03, 2022
Monday Jan 03, 2022
The mass media will tell you that allowing trans women to compete against biological women is a human rights victory.
In reality, science shows us that it is a gross injustice.
Trans Women in Sports - What the media are telling you is unscientific.
Is it fair to let trans women compete against biological women in sports?
Science tells us it's not. but mainstream media are telling us that not only is it fair, but that to even question its fairness is to be 'transphobic'.
Whether it's denying climate change, or denying the manifest advantages that trans women have over biological female athletes, ideology, and what we may want to believe should never override facts.