Declare that Caitlyn’s not a woman, and within moments, echoing the infamous Monty Python “Spanish Inquisition” skit, transgender enforcers—from various corners of the media, politics, and, increasingly, public schools—will rush in, displaying alarm, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to magical gender fluidity. Caitlyn, we are told, is a woman, because she says so; it is rude, cruel, backwards, and dangerous to think or say otherwise.  After the Vanity Fair cover release, in fact, a Washington Post reporter teamed up with a friend to diligently code a program to automatically reprimand and correct any Twitter user who referred to Caitlyn as a “he.”

This insistent squelching of the freedom of thought, and of simple facts, is remarkable. It’s also remarkably unscientific. But in this sense, the Caitlyn Jenner media adoration explosion becomes illuminating, as it reveals an eternal truth about human beings: We can be incredibly intelligent and incredibly moronic at the exact same time, and are desperate for certainty in an uncertain world. 

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a retrospective on the work of Paul Ehrlich, an acclaimed Stanford biologist who famously predicted mass chaos and apocalypse if world population growth didn’t come to a screeching halt. His now-discredited 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” caused a panic of sorts, encouraging a wide range of anti-human, anti-growth policies and cultural norms, often spurred Ehrlich’s infamous comparisons of human beings to insects or garbage factories.