CT/CRT promotes an external locus of control as the source of societal problems. In other words, its not the fault of the individual/human hardware its the fault of the patterns that society has entrenched aka systemic racism or the software of a culture.

Its a top down theory/solution to what critics would argue is a bottom up problem. Individuals must be responsible for what they say, how they regulate their emotional state, and how their experiences and cognitive distortions skew their thinking. CT/CRT, by my understanding, argues against this. Thus it seems reasonable to say it leads to a lack of accountability if you define accountability as a responsibility for ones actions and beliefs.

I’ve read a small bit on CT/CRT, intersectionality, and the modern culture of safetyism. Primarily from Haidt who has more peer reviewed sources on things than anyone could ever want.

https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Gen...

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...

I find CT/CRT to be compelling to a degree, but it brings along with it too much baggage in my opinion. You’re likely not going to find or be given a specific source of data that says CRT leads to lack of accountability (however you would measure that), its an assumption made by the previous poster. You don’t need one either to have a discussion, so don’t fall back on the lack of academic evidence as an argument in itself.

I don't have the actual study at hand, but it's cited in the book "The Righteous Mind".[1] They looked at independent communes[2] in the US in the 1800's, and 20 years after the founding of a commune, 6% of the secular ones were still around, as opposed to 39% of the religious ones. The latter had more things binding them. One insight: In religious communes, sacrifices (no alcohol, etc) correlated with longevity. In secular communities, there was no correlation. Over there, every sacrifice had to be argued about and justified. There was less thrash in religious communes.

(Just found the author of the study/studies: Sosis[3]

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...

[2]: A commune being defined as a group of people not sharing kinship deciding to live and work together.

[3]: https://anthropology.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/944/...

From the links, it seems like his main criticism of Dawkins is actually merely the word "selfish" in the title of his book, and that the CEO of Enron liked it?

Yes, Dawkins is saying that "universal love" does not have an evolutionary component, which seems like a fairly uncontroversial claim.

It seems like your criticism of Dawkins is more a criticism of how other people have misunderstood him, rather than any criticism of the arguments in The Selfish Gene itself?

If you haven't, I highly suggest you read Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind". While it's at a popular level, it does a fairly good job at presenting a plausible framework for how moral behavior (like altruism) can emerge from evolutionary principles. [1] Haidt is probably one of the most influential moral psychologists today.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...

Often mentioned on HN, Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind (https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...) is a worthy read. Briefly: Almost everyone comes up with the conclusion first, and rationale later. The former drives the latter. He gives examples from studies where people gave responses similar to what this paper has: Very poor reasons, and occasionally nonsensical ones.

This is true for pretty much everyone - don't go and count yourself as the exception. The more intelligent you are, the more refined your reasoning, but there's evidence to show that intelligence will not lower the bias. Counterarguments from others as intelligent or more intelligent will. One of the curses of being more intelligent is that if you hold a biased view, you usually need someone as smart as you to change your mind. The smarter you get, the fewer people there are who can help remove your bias.

Some people are more objective than others, but often only in a limited domain - not in their whole lives.

>However, 20 per cent of justifications were subjective and involved making a reference to one’s cultural identity, personal experience.

The book also touches on this. In my personal experience, fact based reasoning is rarer than this. There are many reasons people believe something. Attempting to discern the Truth is usually in the minority. It is to be expected that all the other reasons will be more prevalent - they simply have more utility than merely gaining knowledge. It shouldn't surprise people that factual reasoning is rare - it has little utility in most spheres of life. Much less than social cohesion and tribalism does.

Consider the issue of intelligence, and its spread across various groups (usually race and gender). It's very common to find a very well educated person insist that everyone is born equally with the same mental/intelligence potential, and differences exist merely in the extent they foster it. When asked for their rationale/evidence, the answer is usually a variant of "I choose to believe it" (usually for ideological or cultural reasons). I'm not referring only to ordinary folks, but also to university academics, etc.

(I'm not saying that they are factually wrong - merely the reasons they believe it are not based on any facts).

>whether they agreed with the scientific consensus on climate change, vaccines, genetically modified (GMO) foods and evolution

Two of those items (vaccines and GMO foods) touch on a strongly cultural force on purity. The book shows that a lot of people value purity (likely a genetic trait). They associate food consumption not just with physical health, but also mental/spiritual health. So they are quite sensitive to "unnatural" or foreign agents going into their bodies.

>Oddly before opening the article I had assumed it was about how moral "disgust" is positively correlated with left-leaning. But then the study was referring to digestive disgust which appears positively correlated with right-leaning.

Actually, even moral disgust is positively correlated with right leaning folks. The Righteous Mind (https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...) is a great read that covers the research on the topic.