Talk:Razib Khan

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When you create

When you create a draft in Wikipedia, you are allowed to do it without others jumping on your work before it's ready for review.

Any chance Rational Wiki will adopt this policy? It's really distracting when you're just putting an article together and someone keeps changing it. Pinkerite (talk) 15:52, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

That's what userspace (a "sandbox") is for. Drafts are open for all to edit. Carthage (talk) 04:05, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

By default, people assume they can edit things which are neither essay nor usespace page on RW. But there's more than one way to make an exception. Moving or copying it to (for your user) User:Pinkerite/Razib_Khan would signal it. Anything which begins with your user name is understood to be private. But it sometimes also happens that people just mark something with Template:WIP to let others know to leave it alone for a shorter time. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 04:24, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, some of the edits were to keep the page in line with RW policy on drafts. In particular, drafts should not contain categories meant for mainspace. Plutocow (talk) 04:33, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

OK thanks. So I can mark a draft a Template which makes it the functional equivalent of an unpublished draft in Wikipedia? But I don't know what is meant in this context by "mainspace" and I wasn't aware there was a RW policy on drafts. Where is that located?

And do I understand correctly that this is my userspace/sandbox? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:Pinkerite Pinkerite (talk) 04:49, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

1) yes. 2) Mainspace is where our articles not considered essay, fun, or niche (like Conservapedia) are. 3) The wiki operates more or less on consensus. Everyone usually knows what's expected, and unless and/or until a specific need has arisen to carve out explicit policy it tends to remain unwritten. Carthage (talk) 05:24, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll spell out a bit more as Pinkerite is not so familiar with wiki syntax etc. The short version is that pages usually called drafts here have names beginning with "Draft:", and all such pages look alike on RW in beginning with {{draft}} to mark them, and in not being listed in normal categories. I don't think there's more to the policy in requiring anything extra of drafts. And {{WIP}} is the template you would add, making it like {{draft}}{{WIP}} at the top, to mark it as "don't touch this while I edit".

Any page with nothing added to the start of the name, no "Something:", is called a "mainspace" page, and that's how normal articles look. (Help:Namespace lists more name prefixes.)

Yeah, your main user page is part of your personal userspace, but you can also create/edit more pages that start with that name. For example, a generic sandbox could be User:Pinkerite/sandbox, or you could add something else instead of "/sandbox" at the end. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 05:55, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for all the helpful tips. There are policies here that appear to be unique to RW, and since they tend to remain unwritten, are known only to seasoned RW contributors. So knowledge of wiki syntax is not always enough to avoid breaking RW conventions. Pinkerite (talk) 15:52, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I think this one thing was overlooked earlier, and was a little surprised to find nothing on it. Usually things that are considered important at least have a brief mention somewhere. I've edited RationalWiki:Drafts to make properly starting a draft simpler in the future (though a bit more is needed for the WIP template part).

On another note, I found there's an old deleted draft for this, which was smaller and removed during a big purge of old undeveloped drafts early this year. Maybe it contains something reusable, maybe not (you should be able to view it). --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 17:50, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. 17:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC) OK let me try to sign this again with four tildes. Pinkerite (talk) 17:15, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Wow no Rational Wiki entries for neither E. O. Wilson nor Charles Murray? I guess they go on my to-do list.17:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)17:13, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

E.O. Wilson

The Panda's Thumb blog also released a kneejerk ideological response: [1]

Honestly incredibly disappointing to see such a once great titan against ID and creationism fall down the neoreactionary rabbit hole. Carthage (talk) 17:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Is there a thumbs-up equivalent here? Pinkerite (talk) 17:17, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

{{goodpost}} Carthage (talk) 17:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

thanks Pinkerite (talk) 17:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry. "nowiki" is meant to use as a demonstrator for syntax. It'd actually look like this: Carthage (talk) 17:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Psychology template

I think, because this article is about Khan's pseudoscience, we shouldn't legitimize it by having the psychology template on the page. This isn't science; it's harmful, racist bullshit. And as such, there already exists an appropriate template that accurately describes the article's content. Carthage (talk) 18:38, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Thanks. Pinkerite (talk) 01:59, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Blondes

I would like to know how this jackass managed to concoct a relationship between intelligence and hair color. That seems like two irrelevant variables to me tbh. Carthage (talk) 20:11, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure Khan is suggesting that blondes are more intelligent. I think in his mind, "blonde" is a synonym for both European and attractive, and he sees "blonde" women as trophies: 'high status "blondes."' But then I have long maintained that Khan is a terrible writer, so I could be misinterpreting. He's talking directly to people on the same page as him (Steve Sailer, VDARE people) as far as race, gender etc. so he may not have felt the need to be any clearer, confident that they would understand what he meant.Pinkerite (talk) 20:57, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I mean, I see him as referring to them as less intelligent. Is that wrong? Carthage (talk) 21:15, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I found that quote to be really weird (as well as poorly written), even for a racist/racialist. I also found it peculiar that a (once) highly-regarded Ph.D. professor (Pinker) is propping up a double-B.S. graduate school dropout. It seems to be indicative of the echo chamber tokenism involved in this group of racialists. Further evidence is that Unz gave $108,000 to this guy to do nothing at all. Bongolian (talk) 01:53, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Well I guess he is saying blondes are less intelligent, in comparison with East Asians - the general race pseudoscience hierarchy is East Asian, then European, then other "races." Unless they decided to peel off Ashkenazi Jews from the European category and put them at the top. But when Khan says: "while the more intelligent Eurasians would marry less intelligent blondes (i.e., European derived females)." it's hard to tell if he means less intelligent because "European derived" or even less intelligent than average European female, which are lower on the IQ hierarchy than Eurasians because the Eur is ameliorated by the Asian. Ah the mysteries of race pseudoscience and bad writing. Pinkerite (talk) 05:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

That's funny you should say he paid him to do nothing at all - that is literally what happened with Gregory Cochran and Ron Unz was mad. LOL https://www.pinkerite.com/2021/10/ron-unz-funding-gregory-cochran-steve.html Pinkerite (talk) 05:21, 10 August 2023 (UTC)