“Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

I unironically believe that the emergence of "political correctness" in America in the 1960s-1980s and it's disappearance as a political force in 1991 and its reemergence as "social justice" in 2012 both stem from "active measures" originating with the KGB/FSB.

See this interview from 1998 ( https://web.archive.org/web/20070627183623/http://www3.cnn.c... ):

"On the other hand -- and this is the other side of the Soviet intelligence, very important: perhaps I would describe it as the heart and soul of the Soviet intelligence -- was subversion. Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs. To make America more vulnerable to the anger and distrust of other peoples.

"In that sense, the Soviet intelligence [was] really unparalleled. ... The [KGB] programs -- which would run all sorts of congresses, peace congresses, youth congresses, festivals, women's movements, trade union movements, campaigns against U.S. missiles in Europe, campaigns against neutron weapons, allegations that AIDS ... was invented by the CIA ... all sorts of forgeries and faked material -- [were] targeted at politicians, the academic community, at [the] public at large. ...

"It was really a worldwide campaign, often not only sponsored and funded, but conducted and manipulated by the KGB. And this was again part and parcel of this campaign to weaken [the] military, economic and psychological climate in the West."

The description of movements funded basically fit the entirety of the New Left coalition of the 60s-80s and the current politics of the Extremely Online set typically found on places like reddit, tumblr, 4chan, and twitter.

Given what's been released of the Mitrokhin archive ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive ), the Mueller report re: "Russian troll farms" (e.g. the Internet Research Agency), social media disinformation campaigns (e.g. https://help.tumblr.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002280214 ) and pre-Putin-takeover transparency of ex-KGB officers, I don't think it's farfetched to say that Russia and the FSB currently have the means, methods, and motivation to inject any and all corrosive ideologies and misinformation possible in order to paralyze and disintegrate American society.

The Mitrokhin archive (allegedly) and other extant primary aources contains blueprints for these kinds of active measures, including inciting a race war in the US by blowing up a historically Black college and blaming it on right wing militias (Operation PANDORA) and using Soviet media fronts to claim AIDs was made in American-funded biolabs (INFEKTION or VÖRWARTS II):

"We are conducting a series of [active] measures in connection with the appearance in recent years in the USA of a new and dangerous disease, "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome – AIDS"…, and its subsequent, large-scale spread to other countries, including those in Western Europe. The goal of these measures is to create a favorable opinion for us abroad that this disease is the result of secret experiments with a new type of biological weapon by the secret services of the USA and the Pentagon that spun out of control."

This isn't to say that it's impossible that the last decade in America has all been the fruits of American miseducation and inherent civil contradictions coming home to roost, but Occam's Razor and available evidence suggest otherwise--that the Russians currently and historically fund, sow, and amplify any division whatsoever in America that leads to disintegrating social fabric and institutional decline.

This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple and obvious fact that population group differences in intelligence are noisy and confounded. In fact it is far stronger a fact than any of the actual results from this research.

Second, research results in population group differences are social poison. They are memetic viruses that fuel violent extremism. The murderer of 10 people in Buffalo directly cited human behavior research in his manifesto. Extremist racist groups regularly discuss this research. This is a fact.

So we have a dangerous combination: weak research that destroys societal bonds. This should be handled with care, and extra consideration should be given to whether the tenuous, fallible results from this research will result in violence.

This isn't fucking Orwell, its people trying to make sure that dogshit research in their journal doesnt get cited by mass shooters.

Perhaps it's wise for everyone to carefully distinguish physical injury versus emotional damage. Perhaps it is true that we can tie ourselves into knots if we treat emotional damage as completely equivalent to physical injury. And, perhaps also, notorious serial sexual harassers groping apparently hundreds of women (such as our man Asimov) have something of a vested interested in teaching us all that emotional damage in important ways doesn't count.

What's interesting to me, revisiting Asimov after medical school, is that we are unable to create a workable definition of pain that is absent an emotional component. This is of course not to claim there are no important ways that physical violence and non-physical emotional harm differ.

The cotton gin did indeed revive slave produced cotton when it came out. But it was hardly industrialization. It was a hand cranked box. But that was not enough by mid century, and the slave economy was foundering again.