Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: she’s not the biggest fan

Sunny reflects on the various responses to AA, the engineering student:

Just about everyone here disgusts me. Vox, and just about all the people commenting, with the exception of a few. I happened to stumble on this blog yesterday and I have to say its one of the worst things I have ever discovered. I’ve found only one post by Vox that isn’t completely infuriating. Which was his opinion on Abortion.

Everyone is telling AA that she has to see reason. To marry and further the evolutionary cycle by having children. The world is over populated. For proof of this, please go check up on China’s policy on bearing children. Honestly, who are any of you to presume to tell anyone what to do or how to live? You’re all nothing more than a bunch of cult members flocking to Vox who has an insane world view.

No one is telling AA she has to see reason.  She doesn’t.  She can do whatever she likes.  I don’t care what she does, in fact, I expressly pointed out that neither I nor anyone else cares what she does, says, thinks, or feels.  The point about marriage and children is that a) she will probably want them sooner or later, regardless of how she feels now, and, b) there is nothing else she can do that will be as important to species and society as bearing and raising children.

The world is not overpopulated with people like AA.  Moreover, if there is overpopulation, AA replacing herself and her eventual husband cannot possibly contribute to it.  If overpopulation is a genuine concern, then the West should stop sending food to Africa, stop intervening in Third World wars, and permit the African and Asian populations to fall back to the levels they were prior to World War II.  But China’s policy for how to deal with one billion Chinese has nothing to do with how the English should deal with 50 million English.

Overpopulation is a Third World phenomenon, not a First World one.  The entire population of Europe, the USA, and Canada is only one-seventh of the global population, therefore, if it is a problem, it is one for which the West is neither responsible nor capable of resolving without actively reducing non-Western populations.

Sunny appears to have forgotten that AA emailed me and asked me to explain myself.  I merely did as she requested and she is certainly free to ignore my advice if she chooses.

Sunny doubles down:

As I’m sure the comments are about to be spammed with his cult members
agreeing with him. I’m 100% it would take me far too long to reply to
everyone.

I am not, in any way, telling you that you were wrong
in explaining yourself. However explaining yourself does not equate to
to the harsh judgement you rendered. Knowing full well that your
followers would leap to agree with anything you said.  Absolutely no one deserves that.

As
you’ll also find, I also commented on the fact that I do not agree with
your beliefs. I was not just simply leaping in to defend AA. Although
as I said, your treatment of her was extremely harsh.

I hope that
one day, the words you speak and your disregard for other people will
have consequences and you will truly see how you have erred.

Also, my point of China was not me agreeing on the methods they use. Simply pointing out that there IS overpopulation. 

Oh Sweet Sade.  My dear Sunny, perhaps you do not realize it, but my response to AA was far from harsh.  It was a delicate shower of rose petals compared to the way in which I normally respond to anklebiters and midwitted critics.  You see, I am an Award Winning Cruelty Artist.  My gentle admonishments once inspired a strong, independent, well-educated woman, in the middle of a debate with me, to run off to Nevada to become a stripper and prostitute.

The amusing thing is that you probably think I’m joking….

I do find it strange, however, that you seem to think no one deserves for me to render judgment upon them, for fear that my followers will agree with me.  Would it be truly more kind to simply smile, pat AA on her little head, and leave her to a barren life of petty material accomplishments and a lonely death?  Why do you think it is disregard to warn others they are on a self-destructive path that leads to misery?

I am entirely aware that actions have consequences.  Just last week, I lost a book contract because the publisher does not believe they have the ability to defend my inclination to speak the truth about the world as I see it.  Many people, perhaps most, prefer to dwell amidst their pretty little lies.  That is their prerogative.  But they have no right to ask me to confirm their lies and expect me to lie to them.

As for China, you are still missing the point, which is that no government policy of any government is sufficient to prove that the Earth is overpopulated.  And you also failed to understand that further suppressing white upper-middle class births will not help solve the purported overpopulation problem, for the very obvious reason that white, upper-middle class people are a very small percentage of the total global population.

Mailvox: writing back to a young female engineer

AA inquires concerning some inexplicable views that she finds both contradictory and insulting:

Dear Sir,

I don’t think you’ll answer me, or read my message… But this is worth a try. I will try very hard to keep polite about all this. It will be difficult, but I’ll try.

See, I’m a young woman. I’m currently 20 years old and a student in environmental engineering in one of the best engineering schools in the world. I got in fair and square. I didn’t get a special grant for being female or any favors. I have to work my butt off to get good grades in fluid mechanics, calculus, environmental chemistry…

I have had the opportunity to read some of the posts you’ve written in your blog and I feel very insulted by them. What happened to you that made your brain go this wrong? How can you claim that women’s rights are wrong? You defend forbidding abortion by claiming unborn children of rape merit all “the legal protections and rights afforded all other human beings”, yet claim that women shouldn’t have those same rights because we “ruin everything”?

I am working hard to be an engineer. My goal in life isn’t to get married or to stay at home and take care of the children. I am not here on this planet to serve a man and raise his children. I have my own goals and my own motivations.

I would continue, but I have finals to prepare and I’ve lost enough of my time on you already.

I would wish you a nice day, but it would be a lie.

Dear AA,

First of all, as a young woman studying engineering, you have very
likely been granted special favors whether you know it or not.  All
those programs designed to encourage young women like you to pursue a
career in engineering exist for a reason.  And the reason is that most
women just don’t enjoy engineering the way men do.  You’re obviously
smart, you can do the schoolwork, but it is unlikely that you will want
to do the real thing for very long.  Assuming you don’t drop out in
favor of an easier discipline before you graduate, the probabilities indicate that you won’t spend much time actually working as an engineer; you’ll
soon be moved into some sort of management or marketing position. 
Whether you have been told as much or not, that is the conventional path
for smart, educated women like you in the corporate world.

There is no shame in that.  I started out in engineering myself.  I had
the ability, but not the aptitude, and quickly switched to a field I
vastly preferred.  If you’re smart enough, you’ll likely figure that out
before long. Whatever you do, don’t waste your life doing something you
don’t really enjoy simply because you are capable of doing it. 
Remember that actual engineering is very, very different than studying
engineering, and being very good at the latter is not necessarily
indicative of real interest in the former.

Now I’m going to teach you a hard, but very important lesson.  You see, I
don’t care you how feel.  I really don’t.  More importantly, neither
does anyone else.  Only about 200 people on a planet of 7 billion
actually care about your feelings, and that’s if you’re lucky.  The
sooner you grasp this lesson, the better off you will be.  And since
almost no one gives a damn what you do, say, think, or feel, appealing
to your feelings when you encounter differences of opinion is not only
illogical, but useless.

What happened to me to make my brain go this wrong?  The short answer is: living life with my eyes open.  Keep in mind
that I’m more intelligent than you are.  The fact that you can’t
understand the way I think doesn’t make my brain wrong, it merely means
you aren’t keeping up.  But more important is the fact that I’m
considerably more experienced than you are.  I’ve had three decades to
observe the differences between all those school lessons about valuing
equality, diversity, and vibrancy and the way human beings actually
behave.  Equality is a myth; it doesn’t exist anymore than fairies and
unicorns do.  As for women’s rights, well, a young woman as intelligent
as you should be able to handle the math that dictates what happens to a
society when an insufficient number of young women marry and have
children.  Since women’s rights are very strongly correlated with
demographic decline, they are not sustainable and are, in fact,
societally deleterious.  They are not so much wrong as fatal when viewed
from the macro perspective.

I do believe women should have the same legal rights and protections
afforded to unborn children.  There is no contradiction there.  You see,
I don’t believe that unborn children should be given the right to vote
or permitted to murder other unborn children either.

I understand you have your own goals.  That’s fine. The problem is that
women are not only valuable to society, they are invaluable.  They are
necessary. The one and only thing both society and the human race
actually need from you is for you to marry and raise children.  If
you’re not going to do that, then it really doesn’t matter if you’re
going to become a human resources manager with an engineering degree or
drop out of school and become a stripper.  If you’re only  going to do
what any man of similar capabilities can do, then you are an
evolutionary dead end and as unimportant to society as the average man
is.

In the entire history of the human race, the actions of a few thousand men have actually made much of a difference one way or the other.  If that. But without women deciding to marry and have children, the species would die out.  Do you really want to limit yourself to the same sort of irrelevance as the average man?

Another thing you have no reason to know is that young women are
reliably bad at foreseeing what they will want to do in the near
future.  I graduated with a number of women like you.  None of them
thought they were interested in marriage and children until they were
about 27.  Then they suddenly changed their minds and some of them were
very upset that they had spent the previous ten years pursuing goals
that were now unimportant to them.  I even wrote a column about it
called Spiting Their Pretty Faces back in 2003, you can google it. 
Think about 2003.  You were ten.  Are your goals the same now as they
were then?  If not, then how can you be certain that your goals, and
your opinion about marriage and children, will be the same when you are
30?

In any event, I wish you good fortune regardless of what path you eventually choose.

Regards, etc.
Vox

Mailvox: Vox’s First Law redux

Rufusdog is the latest to discover that I really and truly don’t give a damn what he happens to think:

Vox could be a strong voice for gun rights, but when he says things this
stupid he just comes off like a crazy person and loses credibility. He
dishonors those children and their families and damages his own
reputation in one crack pot post.

Vox is what he is.  Take him seriously or dismiss him as a crazy person, it makes no difference to him.  Nor does he care in the slightest for honoring “those children and their families”.

As for my reputation, well, one of the dangers of dismissing someone as a crackpot means that the individual so dismissed no longer has any fear of it.  If you happen to believe in the economic recovery of 2009, global warming, and the heroic teachers of Sandy Hook elementary school, that’s fine with me.  It doesn’t bother me any more than your belief in unicorns, evolution by natural selection, or human equality.

Vox’s First Law: Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.

Mailvox: on the importance of doll faces

GV notes that IGN cares an awful lot more about Disney princesses than pretty much anyone who reads it:

I wasn’t going to send this until I saw this story up at IGN three times.  First they reported the new redesign of Merida then they reported two stories on how Disney would not cave in to pressure to go back to Merida’s orignal design.  Here is a link to the third article. 

Basically, Disney decided to change Merida’s goofy appearance into a prettier and more royal looking doll for her coronation as a Disney Princess doll.  It appears that IGN has posted this story a third time to try to bring attention to this issue.  Of course IGN is a video game website where most of their audience is male and it appears to have backfired since most of the comments are making fun of this or saying this is a non-issue.  Now in my opinion there is an obvious reason Disney won’t back down despite a petition of about 205,000, and it’s not because they are against feminism, but instead because most little girls would rather buy the prettier and royal-looking doll as oppose to her original goofy appearance in the movie despite the admittedly great but absurd feminist propaganda that is Brave.

Honestly they would most likely lose a lot of money since most little girls and their mothers would prefer to buy a prettier doll despite all the feminist complaint.  If they were to release a goofy-looking doll of Merida, most little girls and there mothers would most likely just buy a pretty doll from a competitor. 

I wonder if the feminist will get so angry at their failure at altering little girls preconceived notions and desires that they will demand that they play with cars just so they can get them to stop thinking of appearance despite the fact that most women’s natural and honest inclination is to try to look good and put on make-up to look pretty.  I guess in the end Merida’s mother has a happy ending since in the real world most little girls, (because of what they want to buy and play with), are forcing her to be pretty and royal as an actual princess.

Who knows maybe next they will come out with a doll that is her husband which will really make feminist head explode.  What to you bet that he won’t look goofy.

I think the feminists at IGN are in the process of discovering that they’re not going to find a lot of concern over what women think about the appearance of a doll on the part of either a) male gamers, or, b) a lavender corporation.  While Disney cheerfully pays lip service to the Female Imperative, all it really cares about is money and pushing whatever happens to be the lavender agenda at the moment.

And since both little girls and gays like pretty dolls, not goofy ones, we can expect that the pretty doll will prevail.  The primary thing to take away from this: IGN is officially irrelevant.

I’m trying to picture CGW publishing three articles about this issue of vital importance to hard core gamers….

Mailvox: of Game Informer and Calvin Klein

Conan asks my opinion about some old friends:

Have you ever met the group at Game Informer?  I could ask many questions, like how y’all mixed (as they come across as SWPL in their mag) but not really that important and probably boring anyhow.

We got along exceedingly well.  Paul was Big Chilly’s younger brother’s best friend, so I used to see him all the time at Big Chilly’s house when we were in high school.  Andy and Paul usually came to our parties at the Digital Ghetto, and I still have pictures of me at one of Andy’s band concerts.  Big Chilly and I didn’t actually mix with them all that much professionally, however, since they were console and we were PC.  I don’t think they ever wrote about our stuff, whereas CGW did, although they knew all about it and sometimes played the pre-alpha stuff when they were over.

In all the years I knew them, and hung out with them, I can’t remember once ever discussing anything political with either Andy or Paul.  We talked about games, music, girls, and botany projects, but never politics.  I suppose we all had too much in common.

If I recall correctly, Andy made some noises about me writing for GI ages and ages ago, but since I was in the St. Paul Paper and nationally syndicated in my own right as a game reviewer at the time, it wasn’t something that ever interested me.  To be honest, we tended to think of their magazine as a cool little thing, but not a truly big deal like CGW or Electronic Entertainment.  I wasn’t always clear on how it was different than, say, Nintendo Power.  I remember it being really, really, thin, actually, since it was put out by a game rental operation or something like that.

It’s amusing that Andy is a bigger deal in the industry than any of us now, although Micron is doing well as the audio director at Epic.  I’m absolutely pleased for Andy.  He did a remarkable job in building up that magazine from almost nothing and he’s one of the few people about whom I have literally nothing negative to say.  I mean, quite literally, nothing.

Paul was a very funny guy in a quiet way.  The kind of guy who would say something with a totally straight face and you’d suddenly start laughing a few moments later when you realized what he’d said. He was also astonishingly good-looking and somewhat embarrassed by it.  A funny story about him: Joel West, the Calvin Klein model, was a friendly acquaintance of mine and accompanied me to the Game Informer offices one day.  After meeting Paul, Joel told him he could have a lucrative career in modeling and should consider coming to New York with Joel to meet with Calvin Klein.

Paul just looked at him as if he was completely and utterly insane.  He didn’t even say anything, he just snorted and shook his head.  Joel didn’t try to argue with him, Paul was clearly no more inclined to pursue a career in underwear modeling than one in infant cannibalism. His ALS and death at 38 was just ridiculously tragic and unfair.

Mailvox: the shortest genre

Phony is convinced he has evidence lending support to the myth of the Woman Warrior:

“The amusing thing is that throughout the comments, no one even stops to realize that the entire premise of women attempting to fight with swords is physically ridiculous. “

Nusaybah bint Ka’ab.

Dipshit.

Very well, let’s examine the military career of this famous female warrior, which is recounted on Wikipedia:

“Initially, Nusaybah was attending the Battle of Uhud like other women, and her intention was to bring water to the soldiers, while her husband and two sons fought. But after the Muslim archers disobeyed their orders and began deserting their high ground believing victory was at hand, the tide of the battle changed, and it appeared that defeat was imminent. When this occurred, Nusaybah entered the battle, carrying a sword and shield.

“She shielded Muhammad from the arrows of the enemy, and received several wounds while fighting.

“When a horse-mounted Quraish attacked her, she pulled on the horse’s bridle and plunged her sword into its neck, toppling the horse on top of its rider. Witnessing this, Muhammad then yelled for Abdullah to help his mother and the pair dispatched the struggling rider. The pair then circled around Muhammad, throwing stones at the advancing Quraish troops, until Muhammad noticed Nusaybah’s wounds and ordered her son to bandage them, and praised their heroism. Abdullah was wounded himself, as a Quraish cut across his left arm, and Nusaybah treated him and told him not to lose courage. Picking her sword back up, she was complimented by Muhammad on her own courage and he pointed out the man who had wounded her son. Advancing to him, she cut his leg off with a blow of her sword, and he fell to the ground where he was killed by other fighters.

“Nusaybah’s twelfth wound, cut across her shoulder by a Quraish named Ibn Qumiah, left her unconscious on the battlefield. When she awoke after the battle, her first inquiry was whether Muhammad had survived.”

So, this most exemplary of all women warriors managed to unhorse one rider and cripple one man in a tribal skirmish while trying to defend her family in a desperate situation.  If we are to take Nusaybah as sufficient justification for the plethora of female Conans that presently litter bad fantasy, we should also believe that it is perfectly realistic to have your average suburban mother throwing around Chevrolets.  This is akin to asserting that because a middle-aged woman shot a home intruder once, it’s perfectly realistic to write about female SEALs.

And note that this fearsome woman warrior took no less than twelve wounds, very nearly got herself killed, and never took arms again.  Courageous? Indubitably. A warrior? No. Not in the slightest. If this is the historical basis for women warriors, the genre is going to consist of a series of very slim volumes indeed.

Has Phony ever hit a woman?  Has he ever seen a woman’s head snap back, seen her knees buckle, and stood over her as she lays crumpled on the floor?  Has he ever bloodied a woman’s nose or blackened a woman’s eyes?  Has he ever toyed with a woman desperately trying to lay a hand on him before stepping forward and flattening her with a single jab?

I have. It wasn’t even amusing because it was so easy.  I had a harder time fighting a well-trained eleven year old boy.  I wasn’t even throwing any combinations or throwing my strikes at more than half-force, and that was still enough to lay them out. If you are a man who hasn’t ever hit a woman in the face, or if you are a woman who hasn’t ever been beaten up by a man, your opinion on the subject is guaranteed to be irrelevant. The cumulative difference in speed, strength, and mass simply has to be experienced to be believed.

I sincerely encourage anyone who wishes to write about women warriors to visit a full-contact dojo and ask to spar a few rounds with the opposite sex.  They will accommodate you and it will be an eye-opening experience.

Mailvox: #1 “bestseller”

THE WARDOG’S COIN
  
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#145 Free in Kindle Store 
#10 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy
 #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy > Epic 
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > War 

While a book can’t actually be called a best seller when it is being given away for free, it is still satisfying to see The Wardog’s Coin reach number one in Epic Fantasy in the free Kindle store. Thank you if you were a part of making that happen, whether by downloading the book or reviewing it. One of my objectives for next year is to see either A THRONE OF BONES or Book Two in the Arts of Dark and Light series reach #1 in Epic in the Kindle Store proper.  Also, if you haven’t scored a copy of Wardog yet, note that it is still free today.

And while The Last Witchking doesn’t appear to be threatening the bestseller lists – it only reached #37 in Epic on its first day out – I’m very pleased that most of those who have read it appear to find the three stories it contains to be worth reading. Given the semi-canonical and allegorical nature of “Hoblets”, the unrestrained darkness of the title novelette, and the complete lack of any action in “Opera”, I was half-expecting Selenoth fans to be disappointed in it. I should have known that those who already appreciate a relatively broad spectrum world would tend to enjoy seeing the scope of the world expanded.

Gecko asked: “what’s the recommended reading order for the first Selenoth run-through?”  That’s a good question, and one which I’ve never actually considered in light of how most of the series has only been published in the last five months.  But I suppose there is a considerable amount of text out there in comparison with the average series where only the first book has been published already. This is the order I suspect may be optimal for the average reader, but keep in mind that there is absolutely no authorial intent here.  And, as you will note, I am very skeptical of the value of authorial intent when it comes to these matters.

A Magic Broken
The Wardog’s Coin 
Qalabi Dawn
A THRONE OF BONES
Summa Elvetica
Master of Cats
Birth of an Order
The Last Witchking
Opera Vita Aeterna
The Hoblets of Wiccam Fensboro

Now, I think an advanced reader who prefers epic fantasy would be best advised to begin with A THRONE OF BONES from the start, but since it is a giant novel and one that begins slowly at that, it’s probably better for most readers to begin with a few of the smaller works.  I wrote the smaller works in the knowledge that many of them would be read prior to the central series; that’s why all of them are set in times prior to the events of Book I.

In answer to Gecko’s other question, “Nephew or Wardrobe?”, I can only say “Wardrobe” and declare that I am fully prepared to fight to the death anyone who would be so abysmally stupid to assert otherwise.  I have staunchly resisted buying a new set of Narnia novels, even though our old paperbacks are mostly in pieces now, because I don’t want to own a set that is ordered incorrectly.

NB: the free copies of Witchking went out to those who preordered the Summa Elvetica hardcover at 9:30 PM Mountain time.  If you didn’t receive it, first check your spam traps and if you still can’t find it, let me know.

Mailvox: the mind of the science fetishist

The following assertion by Towler is a beautiful example of the way science fetishists think.  They genuinely believe that unless something is stated in a published, peer-reviewed paper written by a real Scientist with a Degree, it not only didn’t happen, it cannot possibly have happened.

There is no reason to believe that a marriage arranged by a father of the bride will lead to more children.

Except, of course, the entire written record of human history, to say nothing of the readily observable fact of the currently extant societies, which exist by virtue of their ability to sustain themselves at replacement level birth rates that are higher than those now seen in the West.  No reason, no reason at all, except for that.

The mode of discourse demonstrated by Towler and others clearly did not escape Catan’s notice:

Note how the naysayers here are arguing their side. They require peer-reviewed scientific papers posted in Nature Magazine for anything opposing their points, but they require absolutely no proof for an assumption of equality between the daughters’ judgment and the father’s judgment. They simply assume that both have equal judgment without any proof whatsoever until proven otherwise.

This is why leftism is intellectually bankrupt. There is absolutely no a priori evidence that life and reality has any basis in equality or fairness, yet they require no proof whatsoever to assume it.

The ironic thing is that there is no shortage of scientific evidence which indicates the probability that the judgment of a reproductively fit, middle-aged male will be superior concerning nearly everything, let alone something as emotionally laden as mate selection, to that of a young female whose fitness is unknown.

Mailvox: that which cannot survive won’t

Who Nose asks a pertinent question:

“If you want to understand why women are not permitted serve in Church
leadership, and why human societies do not survive more than a few
generations of young women being permitted to choose their own spouses”

It begs the question: Who ought to choose their spouses?

The Church?
The Father?
The Mother?
The State?

The question is further begged: What kind of law would need to be passed to enforce the choosing of a spouse.

Finally,
another question is begged: What would you do with the 99% of women who
responded to the suggestion or the law with, “F*ck Off”?

  1. The Father, with the advice of the Mother.
  2. No law is necessary. Simply informing their daughter that a woman who is capable of choosing her own spouse is clearly also capable of paying for her own college education and supporting her own lifestyle decisions will suffice for most parents. If a woman is independent enough to insist on paying her own way in order to pursue a career, she’s probably not wife-and-mother material anyhow and would likely end up a reproductive dead end regardless the options she is afforded.  We can always hope that instead of children, such a woman will contribute some revolutionary Powerpoint slideshows to society, produce a cure for cancer, or introduce some truly ground-breaking HR policies that will change the world for the better.
  3. I would simply wish them the best of fortune in their future endeavors.  But the number won’t be anywhere nearly that high because women are, first and foremost, the practical sex.

Demographic patterns make it perfectly clear that societies where women are not only permitted, but encouraged, to make their own mating choices are not sustainable.  I find it deeply ironic that so many people who claim to firmly believe in evolution by natural selection demonstrate that they do not understand the basic concept of fitness as soon as the issue of societal demographics is raised.

One of two things will happen. The society will collapse or be overrun, or the government will pass laws to prevent the demographic collapse from taking place. There are no other alternatives; if Who Nose or anyone else should like to suggest one, I’m quite willing to add it to the list.  It should be kept in mind that a government which has the power to conscript men to die for the security of the nation quite clearly has the power to force women to marry and bear children for the same purpose.

Many would-be critics here don’t seem to understand the implications of my being a libertarian. I don’t believe that laws are the answer to undesirable human behavior, not because they are wrong or evil, but because they are ineffective. Customs and traditions are much more powerful; laws only tend to function if they are reasonably in line with them. Laws don’t shape society, they tend to follow it instead.

Mailvox: the innumerate atheists

SM has a request that is appropriate for National Autism Awareness Week.  Let’s not forget to be aware of our Socially Autistic friends such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris:

hey vox, can you show me some evidence that dawkins sucks at math? would be awesome thanks.

 “The anthropic principle has been an embarrassing problem for secular scientists in recent decades due to the way in which the probability of the universe and Earth just happening to be perfectly suitable for human life is very, very low. The extreme unlikelihood of everything being not too hot, not too cold, not too big, and not too small, to put it very crudely, has often been cited as evidence that the universe has been designed for us, presumably by God. 

Now, Richard Dawkins is arguably not an individual particularly well-suited to play around with probability. He may not be quite as mathematically handicapped as Sam Harris, but he is known to have some issues in this regard, being openly mocked for his “comic authority” and “fatal attraction” to mathematical concepts by the French mathematician Marcel-Paul Schützenberger.

(“But look, the construction of the relevant space cannot proceed until a preliminary analysis has been carried out, one in which the set of all possible trajectories is assessed, this together with an estimation of their average distance from the specified goal. The preliminary analysis is beyond the reach of empirical study. It presupposes—the same word that seems to recur in theoretical biology—that the biologist (or computer scientist) know the totality of the situation, the properties of the ensemble of trajectories. In terms of mathematical logic, the nature of this space is entirely enigmatic.” )

Schützenberger’s contempt for Dawkins’s mathematical abilities is well-founded, as it’s generally not considered to be a good idea to adopt a casual approach to mathematical probability, as Dawkins does with the “one in a billion” chance of something like DNA spontaneously arising which he invents ex nihilo, before reaching the shocking statistical conclusion that if there are a billion billion planets and a one in a billion chance of life spontaneously arising on a planet, then life must exist on a billion planets throughout the universe! Dawkins is genuinely surprised by his astonishing discovery of mathematical division, so much so that he repeats it twice.”
– TIA p. 151

As a bonus, this was the reason behind the reference to Sam Harris:
“The first thing one notices is that Sam Harris can’t even manage elementary school math. The percentage for the safest cities determined by state voting patterns is not 62 percent; seventeen blue state cities divided by twenty-five total cities equals 68 percent safe blue cities.“
– TIA p. 124