Everyone tries to pretend it's "just not being an asshole". But it's never that simple. It's always comes with demands for an ideological obedience that goes well beyond just accepting others or letting people be free to do what they want.
“Anti-racism” is actually about racism against Asians.
“Equity” is actually about lowering the standards and destroying meritocracy.
“Inclusion” is actually about excluding people that have different political or moral opinions (e.g. that don’t want to be racist against Asians or that support meritocracy).
I believe GP is referencing American university admissions, where DEI-flavored racial quotas tend to disadvantage Asians when compared to a race-blind system based purely on standardized tests.
Huh, okay, so, to clarify my understanding, because of the quotas, assuming a fixed amount of available spots, less Asians get in than they would without the quotas.
But a) wouldn't that apply to other demographics too? and b) All Asians? Are Hmong, for example, over-represented in college enrollments?
I'm just trying to understand why it's specifically anti-Asian.
A bunch of pro-diversity people see white people do well and get successful. They see the same in Asians. They see the opposite for black and latino. They conclude "we must give black and latino preferential treatment to catch up". It is a bit more elaborate, but not much more than that.
>All Asians?
Yes. Despite their fronts, diversity initiatives don't look much further beyond sex, gender and skin color. You're already one level deeper than most of these politics go.
Elaborating on this, there is a passage quoted in the article from the most common text on "anti-racism" : "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The consequences of this are easy to illustrate in orchestras. Orchestras have always been heavily dominated by white and Asian musicians. When it was argued that this was due to discrimination in hiring, the solution was quite simple and tasteful - swap to blind auditions. And that is something few would oppose. So they did.
The problem is that not only did it fail to create more diverse orchestras, in many cases they became even less diverse than they were prior. So now the 'anti-racist' view is that orchestras need to begin being racist against white and Asian applicants, and start biasing selection by race. [1] Groups that disproportionately overperform become acceptable targets for racism.
Incidentally this is not entirely different than the motivation for some of the darkest moments in our history. Alas people never seem to appreciate that the "evil" groups in times past never saw themselves as evil, but simply as people engaging in temporarily distasteful action for a greater future. That greater future never comes, but the distasteful actions certainly do. Of course, "this time it'll be different."
From my understanding, the Jewish diaspora in Christendom often became moneylenders due to various laws that a) prohibited Jews from owning property or businesses and b) laws that prohibited lending money at interest by Christians.
Then yeah, when someone fired up some anti-Semitic hyperbole, well, great way to get out of that debt you owed, right?
IIRC Edward I of England expelled the Jews primarily to confiscate their property after years of taxing them superhard, but it also gave the Crown ownership of debts owed to the Jews, so he was playing the populist hand, and getting funds at the same time.
By their very nature, "diversity" and "inclusion" are racist because it must consider someone's race. By arguing for "diversity" and "inclusion" we are mandating we judge people for what they are, rather than who they are; judge them by the color of their skin rather than the quality of their character.
"Anti-racism", which in American academia usually comes about in the form of blacks and latinos receiving preferential treatment at the cost of whites and asians, is indeed racism.
Racism is not acceptable, no matter how benevolent the intent or goal.
And while we're here, since it's part of the bigger, main discussion anyway:
"Equity" is the anti-thesis of equality, because "equity" mandates that all individuals arrive (and stay!) at the same place in life no matter who they are. It throws out individual ambitions and efforts towards obtaining a better silver plate in lieu of society handing everyone the same steel plate.
It's anti-asian and also anti- any race that isn't on the list of beneficiaries. The original argument could have been conveyed better by framing it more broadly, but it isn't wrong.
Aah, that makes sense, if I'm understanding it correctly, they specified Asians because they're another minority, but disadvantaged by policies that seek to help other minorities.
I guess, but it's, well, complicated. In my country, there are (a small number of) spots in medical school reserved for the native people.
Naturally, lots of non-native people considered that racist.
Except it was done to try to correct a very real problem - that the native people have disproportionately worse outcomes in our health system. And likewise, due to about 150 years of deliberate policy that marginalised the native people, they were disproportionately less likely to enter medical school.
And there's now, after some years of this policy, an emerging body of evidence that this "racist" policy around medical school spots is making a difference around health system outcomes for native people.
So yes, the policy is, on the surface racist, but it's slowly combating a systemic racism that was baked into all of our government institutions by previous racist policies. (E.g., native people experience a higher conviction rate and harsher sentencing for the same crimes as white people)
There's still a long way to go for us, but yeah, it gets damn complicated when you're trying to undo the damage of previous racism by introducing positive discrimination.
Asians were mentioned specifically because one common example of those "anti-racist" practices: college admissions is well known to discriminate against Asians - if you're an Asian you need to be more competent and score better on exams to have the same chance for an admission as a black person for example.
I see "egalitarianism" as "equality of opportunity". That, and "equality before the law".
But even with the same starting conditions/talent/upbringing/genes, some people will climb further than others. Effort, creativity, etc. We as society should encourage that and reward people who achieve more, for the common benefit of all.
>exceptional people
Why would you only provide free/subsidized schooling to exceptional people. Why not all people? If you truly believe in meritocracy, wouldn't you want everyone to have a fair opportunity to prove themselves?
If resources are limited (and they're always limited) you invest into the highest ROI options.
Exceptional people have a chance of pushing society forward (i.e. creating more resources for the future... exponentially).
(But yeah in general I oppose age-segregated schooling, I think education should have "tracks" (math, physics, sports, music, etc.) and people should attend whatever "level" they're at in each track, in mixed-age groups. And make mostly free (but guided) choices regarding which tracks to put most effort in.)
No that's bullshit. If you ask me to say "I hate hitler and bin laden" for no reason I would have a similar reaction as well.
How can people put up with this filth? It repulses and disgusts me so much when kindness, compassion and even justice are absorbed by this bureaucratic ideological machine where people say and do things out if insincerity, just as lip service to fall in line politically. How do people feel comfortable living lies and forcing others to live and practice falsehoods?
No matter how much I agree with the statement, when you force it, it becomes an insincere compelled speech.
You are generally free not to stand for the national anthem.
Suppose the SPSS (the professional society Haidt left in protest) had instead made a rule that they would play the national anthem at the start of every conference and anyone who didn’t stand wouldn’t be allowed to present their research.
If he had left in protest of that, would you assume he’s an unpatriotic asshole who hates America or that he’s standing up for free speech?
Yes, you might get some criticism for it, just like Haidt is.
A private organization like the NFL or the SPSS might not let you be a member if you don’t follow their rules. That’s within the bounds of free speech.
We only have freedoms by continually asserting them and sometimes sacrificing some social capital to use them.
I get that. I was just trying to understand from the original person I was responding to if they found the National Anthem “requirements” as repulsive.
Yes and no, a private organization can’t deny someone membership if a prospective member refused to make an oath to the effect of “I swear to discriminate against Asians”. So their freedom of speech ends where it infringes on the civil rights of others. Arguably, some DEI statements could come close to crossing that line.
Thanks for reminding me, yes it does. I use to stand but refuse to say or do anything when I was in school. I didn't get in trouble but teachers were visibly upset and would be mean afterwards.
I love america and will defend her if we ever get attacked for the record.
I work at a multi national now and I see upper management do this but I or anyone else I work with never had to do this, also when I worked at a national (only in US and canada) company that employed mostly older folk and has a "mom and pop shop" kind of culture I never had to see this at all.
Only companies that have a lot of HR,legal and management people that were indoctrinated with this stuff in college seem to have this cultural component.
He wasn’t asked to sign a statement that he was anti-racist. He was asked to sign a statement explaining how the academic work submitted to be presented “advanced… anti-racism goals.”
He’s quite right that not every academic paper need directly concern itself with the very specific set of ideologies contained within contemporary anti-rascist texts.
> newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."
Diversity is fine. But every single piece of research has to be related to diversity? Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues?
This is not a statement about promoting diversity, this is a statement that identity issues are the only thing that matters and only research that has to do with identity will be considered (for presentation at this conference)
An ideological monoculture is not a healthy intellectual environment.
Research should not be dependent on whether or not it hurts any cause.
If the research is poorly done, exclude it for that reason.
If not, maybe re-examine what your cause is in light of the research.
Copernicus's research into the Earth revolving around the Sun hurt the Catcholic church's cause of being the ultimate source of truth for all humanity. They wanted to put a stop to that...
Starting with the answer and rejecting anything that doesn't support it is not how research is supposed to work.
Copernicus and Galileo being harangued by the Church of their time, and stifling progress of the obvious, is more popular myth than historical fact. It has been debunked many, many times. Ironically, the fervor and persistence with which this story gets propagated ad nauseam feels almost ... religious.
I wish people would stop dropping it as the de facto example of interference with science when there are so many better ones (and also current ones). It's a bad analogy, evokes emotion, and ultimately it typically does a disservice to the argument intended.
Astronomical books regarding heliocentric theory were on the banned book list for centuries.
The banned book list was compiled and maintained by the Church. We can split words whether Copernicus or Galileo were harangued in person and to what degree, but nascent modern astronomy was very much in the scope of Catholic censorship.
> Copernicus and Galileo being harangued by the Church of their time, and stifling progress of the obvious, is more popular myth than historical fact.
I’m not sure why it has suddenly become so popular to claim that every single historical fact is a myth. Galileo’s prosecution by the Church is not only well-documented, John Paul II. officially apologized for it in 1992. He might have looked into their archives before doing that.
I swear, going around smugly claiming “Only sheeple still believe that theory” about random facts doesn’t make a person seem nearly as smart as they might think it does.
> The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI.
Demagogues will use any factoid for their own goals, and racists will use things to promote racism, but that's not an argument to stop research into biology, sociology, psychology, behavioral econ, etc.
> It's not so much off-topic research. The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI. They want to stop that.
This might be the most potentially fascinating comment in the thread. In what way is the research of much of social psychology hurting DEI?
As far as I know, based on my limited understanding of the field, there's not a lot of research that's performed/approved/funded in that field where people know that the research could yield some "politically incorrect" data or conclusions.
Just roll with it. These are fake internet points anyway. They don't have any value. You can't leave them to your kids (something a commenter said the other day that's still ticking my brain). Complaining only motivates people to poke at you with more downvotes because they know it bothers you.
No, it's more like requiring everyone submitting papers to the ACM to explain how their research will result in a more equitable society. That'd exclude a ton of research topics: how is a faster rendering technique going to result in anti-racist outcomes? I guess you cant submit that paper.
Don't worry, Marx is still fair game in Western academia! It has even become fashionable as of late to proclaim oneself a "socialist" (though generally some sort of "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics" is being implied).
Even though the larping socialist dummies here in the US don't know the history of socialism in scandinavia and how Sweden in particular famously abandoned it in the 90s after a 20 year experiment with it where they saw their GDP remain absolutely flat despite almost 10% population growth.
Swedes will proudly claim to be capitalists with healthy social welfare programs.
The tax rates of New Yorkers and Californians are very similar to those across Scandinavia except that the Americans are getting way way less bang for their buck in services for that tax money due to state and local governments that are woefully ineffective. That and Norway/Sweden/Denmark have close to 1/3 public sector employment.
Or alternatively, faster renders magnify the advantages of people who can afford graphics cards. After all, the most marginalized people don't even have GPUs, so this research is further oppressing the poor.
did they really say this? reading the comments it seems they wanted people to commit to only doing work/research that also serves the goal of anti-racism, no?
1. "anti-racism" is a specific ideological doctrine with nefarious branding because it falsely implies anyone who does not support present and future discrimination (c.f. kendi's def) is a racist. i am "anti racist" but not "Anti-Racist (TM)".
2. haidt is clearly protesting the requirement to describe how any research further's the associations "anti-racism goals". there's plenty of knowledge to be uncovered that has nothing to do with it and targeting all your work to uphold a specific viewpoint offends the general idea of "academia" as a tool for broadly and impartially adcancing knowledge.
Haidt argues that much of the work that researchers do have no relationship to 'anti-racism' that Kendi popularized, or DEI goals in general.
It also appears that Haidt is taking SPSP's new direction literally - whereas you appear to be taking it figuratively. That SPSP's direction is a requirement for all members, not an interpretive statement that all members can come to terms with on their own accord. I think being compelled to a specific viewpoint by an institution is antithesis of freedom. Your comment seems like a huge dismissal of Haidt's view with this regard.
That is, if we are to trust that you looked at the linked article as you claim.
It isn’t that black and white…to look at it in that light is reductionist.
Further equality is good however it would be helpful to do so in a constructive manner.
What often happens is that SJWs just shut down debates and discussions.. because they disagree. This kills freedom of speech and ideas. This goes exactly to your last point. Are you threatened by others who disagree with you?
Being mostly sheepish about responding to this kind of argument, it feels me with gratitude that so many here can more finely discern the situation presented.
Would you support requiring a pledge of allegiance to a particular political party or ideology before conference attendees made their presentations?
This is surprisingly close.
The issue at stake is more abstract than American racism. This is a dangerous precedent.
And it requires some itchy mental gymnastics. Thinking about and encouraging diversity and inclusion through action is great. Forcing people to do it seems specifically contrary to the abstract goals of diversity and inclusion! Said another way: Is the point of these statements to increase or decrease the intellectual diversity of discourse?
Agreed. And the whole style, wording, method is dumb.
> intellectual diversity of discourse
The goal is clearly to reduce a certain part of the "thought space" (intellectual diversity), in particular the goal is to weed out anti-racist thoughts.
I guess they think of this as public health thinks of pathogens. Diversity of species is great but we still want less of pathogens.
What these people seemingly have no idea about, is that populist xenophobic movements can start, spread and become popular at no time. And obviously (?) the way to contain them is not with preemptive firebombing of academia, but by strengthening the ideals of equity, and the institutions themselves that implement those ideals. Make them shining beacons of good. The first criterion for that is efficiency, transparency, etc.
> He quit that group because he can't sign a statement that he is anti-racist, and supports diversity and inclusion?
Incorrect, this statement was not directed to members' conduct. The diversity statement was to pledge that members' research submissions are advancing anti-racism, equity, and inclusion. This would, for example, prohibit a psychologist studying something like memory retention. This has no reasonable link to advancing equal racial outcomes. How does measuring the amount of time it takes to memorize a paragraph advance racial justice? Thus such research would thus fail to live up to this pledge, and be ineligible for submission - if this pledge were actually enforced, that is.
Of course, I doubt the people making this pledge actually intend to have every piece of their research connected to an anti-racist goal. This is just performance and naval-gazing.
> prohibit a psychologist studying something like memory retention
wat? how? why?
real social justice doesn't work that way. (contrary, it needs to know deficiencies so it can help those who are in need, so people have equal opportunities for self-actualization.)
In this context anti-racist doesn't mean what it appears to mean by a "plain language" interpretation.
If you look at the quote in the article, it illustrates that "anti-racist" actually means supporting discrimination:
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
This "friendly fascist" form of discrimination festers under the cover of cheap political expediency.
It is abhorrent, at least to any society that supports liberal values.
"Anti-racist" here requires signing up to the following creed:
> "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
>He quit that group because he can't sign a statement that he is anti-racist, and supports diversity and inclusion?
Can you reply to my comment with the anti-racist and supportive of diversity and inclusion phrase "it's OK to be White"?
>I'm from the american south. It was full of racists when I lived there, who were all against diversity, hated the idea of needing to hire minorities to be teachers, things like that. There was no need to hire them, everything was fine. It didn't matter that all the school principals were white men, there was no point to a kid seeing a black man or woman as the principal I heard.
I'm from the american west. It was full of racists when I lived there, who were all against diversity, hated the idea of needing to hire whites to be teachers, things like that. There was no need to hire them, everything was fine. It didn't matter that all the school principals were women of color, there was no point to a kid seeing a white man or woman as the principal I heard.
>That's all I can take way from the usually white men who see some incredible threat from saying there's a benefit in including more voices. I can only see this as people threatened by including other voices that might disagree with their own.
That's all I can take way from the usually women of color who see some incredible threat from saying there's a benefit in including more voices. I can only see this as people threatened by including other voices that might disagree with their own.
> he can't sign a statement that he is anti-racist, and supports diversity and inclusion?
The strange part to me in comments similar to yours is how you have chosen to interpret his actions and completely ignore his explanation or the context around it.
I will not be surprised if this sort of incendiary kneejerk where you deliberately misrepresent a person is becoming pervasive, and causing people to leave.
Haidt was required to endorse an ideology stating “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination…only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” We can debate the merits of that premise. Simpler is concluding it’s contentiousness. Academia exists to resolve contention; forcing an outcome by dictat is dishonest.
"Antiracists" is literally, as explained in the article, are a political group that prescribes racial discrimination against white people. They're a very ironically named group of people considering. If your research is not specifically engineered to justify racial discrimination against a group of people you may be subject to a number of administrative consequences.
Regarding your experiences in the American South, all I can say is two wrongs don't make a right. This is hardly about including more voices, this is about opposing a policy that prescibes the acceptable Overton window of research, it's clearly about limiting the acceptable range of discourse.
We are literally maybe a quarter of a century towards whites becoming a plurality, and not much longer after that until they become an actual minority. You can't just think about the past, think about the future, making publishing scientific racism an ideological goal because a group is politically powerful NOW when they won't be in the future is bound to have unintended consequences.
Did you know that forcing schools to hire teachers and principals that better reflect the demographics of the school worsens the outcomes of black students in those schools?
Err... the gist of the protest is: not all research is there to advance diversity, while Uni requires it, that guy doesn't want to lie to get his work presented. I'm not going to assume any interior motives.
Isn't forcing left/right political views counter productive? I've seen this in the industry (people rant) and local politics (e.g. my country swings between left and right every few years after they get fed with one PoV).
But the SPSP requirement went a step further, dropping "diversity" in favor of "anti-racism," a term frequently associated with Boston University's Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist and other works. Among the book's passages is a widely shared one highlighted by Haidt:
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
In this thread I’ve noticed people have jumped from these principles, which do seem true to very specific statements about race that don’t seem true. Interesting.
How is the principle incorrect? It’s a truth like evolution. You can’t fix past discrimination without future discrimination, in most cases. That is something you can model quite nicely mathematically.
The question is just if it is reprehensible to do so. Or if there are times when it is more or less reprehensible.
The important thing is establishing that one group has too many resources which rightfully belong to some other group. The rest is implementation detail.
No one will take your house for that reason by itself. But they might take it when you can no longer afford to pay the mortgage because you were convicted of a drug felony where you were given a harsher sentence than someone of a different race, after being arrested under suspicion that others wouldn’t be. As a result you can’t find a job after release from prison.
> How is the principle incorrect? It’s a truth like evolution. You can’t fix past discrimination without future discrimination, in most cases.
True like creationism more like.
Here's some other perspectives:
- Things in the past can't be fixed. We can't "fix" past discrimination any more than we can fix 9/11 or retroactively fix the holocaust.
- Are you trying to decrease discrimination or racially biased life outcomes? If you want less discrimination, adding more discrimination is obviously counterproductive. If what you want is more wealthy black people, why don't you say that?
- There's lots of ways to help people of color without discriminating against white people. Like introducing better social support for single parent families, reducing prison sentences for non-violent offenders, etc.
- Having discriminatory hiring quotas misunderstands how wealth creation works. Promoting people in companies based on skin tone or gender instead of their skills makes companies weaker, and in turn rusts the engine of capitalism. That makes everyone more poor.
- Discrimination like this causes new problems. For example, I know several female programmers who worry that they were only hired / promoted as "diversity candidates". That sucks. As a white dude, I know the only thing keeping me employed is my capacity to add value to the business. So in some ways I'm actively supported more because I'm white and male.
- The research shows that diversity of background makes teams stronger, and diversity of values makes teams weaker. Where is this nuance in the political conversation?
There's plenty more ways to think about this issue. Fixing past racism against black people with modern racism against white people is an obviously controversial policy. (This thread alone is proof enough). Shutting that conversation down is censorious and utterly unbecoming of the academy.
> - Things in the past can't be fixed. We can't "fix" past discrimination any more than we can fix 9/11 or retroactively fix the holocaust.
You're right -- fix is not the right word. But you can dampen the impact of the event. For example, I think we provided various types of relief to different classes of victims of 9/11.
> - Are you trying to decrease discrimination or racially biased life outcomes? If you want less discrimination, adding more discrimination is obviously counterproductive. If what you want is more wealthy black people, why don't you say that?
I want people to not be impacted by discriminatory practices. The problem is that there are many practices that exist, for which their reduction in the name of this cause would be noted as discriminatory in themselves. At any given point in time you often must choose between which discriminatory practice to continue. For example, giving admissions benefits to legacies. Or tax breaks for estate taxes. Or property tax based funding of schools. Etc...
> - Having discriminatory hiring quotas misunderstands how wealth creation works. Promoting people in companies based on skin tone or gender instead of their skills makes companies weaker, and in turn rusts the engine of capitalism. That makes everyone more poor.
This is an example of a practice that only looks like it helps underreresented minorities, but is actually long-term discriminatory against them. I don't support such policies. In fact as you note, this actually helps you as a white male even more -- and I actually do believe this.
> - There's lots of ways to help people of color without discriminating against white people. Like introducing better social support for single parent families, reducing prison sentences for non-violent offenders, etc.
This is where it gets interesting and where anti-racism comes into play. There are things that can reduce the gap, and based on anti-racism principles these policies are indeed anti-racist, and discriminatory against whites. Again, it's about being results driven and not intent driven. These practices can reduce discrimination aginst minorities in outcomes -- but the mere fact of doing so increases discrimination against whites in outcome (at least relatively so). I don't think you can do one w/o the other. This is why the only way to counter past discrimination is future discrimination, even if not intended to discriminate.
And what anti-racism asks is to look at all policies through this lens. As I noted in another thread, unfortunately, this tenant of anti-racism itself is racist (usings its own definition). Not because of "reverse-racism", but simply because once things are cast as beneficial to minority groups, their support amongst the general population reduces. In essence the most effective way to reduce discrimination is to discriminate, but w/o intent.
> based on anti-racism principles these policies are indeed anti-racist, and discriminatory against whites.
I don’t think the best policies are racist. Providing more financial support for single parent households helps poor, struggling single parents of every race. It doesn’t discriminate.
And nor should it - poor white children deserve support just as much as poor black children do. No child deserves to be homeless.
Policies do discriminate in who they benefit, even when unintentionally so. School free lunches help Blacks more than Whites. But narratives often (usually?) matter more than discriminatory impacts — whether it helps Blacks or Whites.
1) Evolution is not "a truth", as in a revealed truth that is true just by uttering it. Evolution is a well-supported and falsifiable scientific theory.
2) Evolution was not blindly accepted as "truth" the way you seem to expect this so-called "principle" to be accepted simply on your say-so (or prophet Kendi's?). Quite the contrary, it was not accepted at all and evidence had to provided. Lots and lots of evidence. Overwhelming evidence. And it is not accepted as truth by faith now either.
3) The mere claim "you can model [this] quite nicely mathematically" is not evidence for the claim. It is only evidence for you making that claim.
4) Even an actual mathematical model, should one actually be presented rather than just claimed, is not evidence for the claim. There are infinite mathematical models that are consistent with themselves yet inconsistent with the real world.
5) Yet, there are mountains of evidence that identity politics lead to bad outcomes.
6) And yes, racism (which this so-called "anti-racism" clearly is) is clearly reprehensible. This is something we fortunately figured out a while ago, and the fact that we figured it out was a major step up in our societal evolution. Quite frankly I am shocked and dismayed that we are even having a discussion about this. No. NO. Doing away with this nonsense was a major achievement for humanity, we can't give it up this easily.
For 1-4, we will mostly set that aside for now. But I do think that most people find it obviously true -- it just may or may not be to their benefit to say so.
Identity politics does lead to bad outcomes, yet here we are. Unfortunately we've gotten ourselves to the point that now acting like there are no identities is just another form of identity politics. E.g., saying "lets stop talking about gender -- we have male and female and lets just stop there and move on" seems less appealing to those that feel currently disenfranchised by the status quo.
On 6, anti-racism is racist, but not for the reason that most people assume. It is because white people tend to double down when confronted with anti-racist data. For example, when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more. By anti-racisms very definition of being strictly results, and not intent, oriented -- it itself is racist.
On your second 6 -- the second wrong can dampen the impact of the first wrong. I also notice that the beneficiaries of the first wrong, do love this quote. A tad convenient?
Reminds me of the rental manager at my London flat justifying a raise in my rent with "well, rents are rising". When I confronted him with his own organisation's web site, which unambiguously said that rents were flat or falling, he countered with "Statistics aside, rents are rising".
But I see the problem. Previously you claimed that these things actually were true. That people may believe they are "obviously" true is an entirely different matter, and probably the crux of the problem.
Because people believe in false things as "obviously true" all the time. For example, people used to believe that the sun obviously revolves around the earth, and many still do (and our language certainly still does: sunrise, sunset etc.)
And these things are just as false.
> that now acting like there are no identities is just another form of identity politics.
No it's not, and that's also a false dichotomy. Repudiating identity politics does not require claiming that (or acting like) there are no identities. But group identities don't define us, and certainly not to the exclusion of everything else. I am an individual first, and a member of various groups second. This isn't hard.
> anti-racism is racist
Glad we agree.
> It is because white people tend to double down when confronted with anti-racist data.
That's both untrue and also even if it were true it would not mean that "anti-racism" is racist. "Anti-racism" is racist all by itself without any external help required.
> when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more.
This is not true.
However, speaking of doubling down on the false (and inconsistent) things people believe: the same people who believe that blacks are discriminated against, and use the legal system bias to justify their belief, also fervently believe that males are privileged. Yet the bias against males in the criminal justice system has been shown to be 6x larger than the bias against blacks. When confronted with these facts, do they ever double down!
But thanks for clarifying that what you are talking about is the not actual facts, but all the various false beliefs that people in fact do have.
My experience has been that it is better to base policy based on actual facts, not on things that feel truthy, though of course policy based on the latter is easier to sell.
I know it doesn’t sell well, but most whites do, at some level, prefer blacks not to do well. Not because they necessarily hate blacks, but in aggregate it means they’ll do less well (in aggregate).
So you talk about facts, but the data shows that whites will choose to enact policy they think hurts blacks. Those are the facts.
You haven’t cited any data. Review the Vox article and linked study within it. You won’t address any of this.
Edit: what’s your point about gender bias? That’s a reasonable point to raise — in a different discussion. Maybe you can next talk about biases due to height and looks too? Also irrelevant.
Your take away from the original study was fear of crime? Now I understand what our problem is — your basic logic skills. This is like a basic LSAT question you got wrong.
Edit: the quote is right on. Your statement that it wasn’t racism missed the point of the authors quote. Try again and see if you can see where you missed.
And no, I didn't miss anything. Fear of crime ≠ racism. And unconsciously associating crime with blackness also is not racism when, for example:
"According to the FBI, African-Americans accounted for 39.6% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 29.1%, and "Other" 3.0%".[1]
So 14% of the population, but almost 40% of the homicides[2]. That's a rate almost 3x higher than you would expect from the population numbers. And whites are 61.6% of the population, so their share of homicides is slightly less than 1/2 of the expected rate. If you combine these two figures, you find that blacks have a 6x higher per/capita share of homicide offenders than whites.
Now this is all very unfortunate, problematic etc. But unconsciously associating blackness more strongly with crime than whiteness is not racism, but sound statistical reasoning based on the real world[3]. And humans are generally very good natural unconscious statisticians, particularly when it comes to assessing personal danger.
And please note that I am not in any way claiming that this association is "intrinsic" or that it is fair, or saying anything about the causes of the disparity in crime rates whatsoever[4]. I am just showing the unambiguous fact that the association is based on reality.
Also note that even if, in spite of the facts, you still hold that associating blackness with crime is solely or primarily due to racism, it would still not support your original assertion that "For example, when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more." and certainly not your assertion that "most whites do, at some level, prefer blacks not to do well." That's just complete BS you made up.
[2] Homicides tend to be a good indicator because they are fairly unambiguous (there's a dead person) and also tend to have less chance of inconsistent investigation than other crimes.
[3] Note that this only applies to such unconscious associations as was the case here. It does not justify other sorts of inferences, particularly on an individual level.
[4] Except that, particularly for homicides, it isn't the result of unfair policing practices in any way that comes close to explaining the actual disparity, see [2] as well as the research on racial disparities in the criminal justice system, which came to more a 10% divergence, so nowhere near the 6x difference we see here.
Racism is symmetric/reciprocal. If it is wrong for group A to discriminate against group B, then it is ALSO wrong for group B to discriminate against group A.
Ibram X Kendi is explicitly advocating for racial discrimination here. Just racial discrimination in favor of his race. That is pretty obviously racist.
That's ... not how this works. This is not a zero-sum thing. (Even if there are parts of the problem where the actual conflicts are zero-sum, ie. there's a limit of how many first-year students can fit into classes, etc.)
Discriminating against already well off groups to help chronically not well-off groups (affirmative action) is of course discrimination but the consequence is very unlikely to cause the well-off groups to suddenly find themselves at the other end of the spectrum. (Mostly because they have a lot of other opportunities... that's why they're well-off. Of course it's not that simple, because there's stratification of these groups themselves, so it's very important to look at people individually, and don't simply give them plus/minus points just because of an external trait. Eg. skin color.)
I haven't read anything from him (except that one line, I assume, you quoted a few comments back), but now I'm interested. Can you cite the relevant parts?
Kendi argues that policy outcomes are central in measuring and effecting racial equity. He has said, "All along we've been trying to change people, when we really need to change policies." When speaking in November 2020 to the Alliance for Early Success, Kendi was asked if that even means abiding racist behavior and attitudes if it leads to winning an antiracist policy. Kendi answered with a definitive yes. "I want things to change for millions of people – millions of children – as opposed to trying to change one individual person."
Kendi provoked controversy when he tweeted about the relationship between Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, and two of her seven children, who had been adopted from an orphanage in Haiti. Kendi said:
Some White colonizers 'adopted' Black children. They 'civilized' these 'savage' children in the 'superior' ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity. And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can't be racist.
His remarks were interpreted as criticizing interracial adoption. A substantial backlash against Kendi ensued. He later said his comments were taken out of context and that he does not believe that white parents of black children are inherently racist.
I can't really say much about this. It's typical vague bullshit. Kendi projects everything onto white people. (This argument/rant that "white person does X and now they think racism is no more" or "white person does X and now white person is automatically a hypocrite" is typical in radical social justice texts. Here he hedges it with "too many" white people have this belief.)
That said, I don't see where they say that fuck poor Asians, or where they say that being black entitles someone to more social help/justice than being a poor Asian.
"That said, I don't see where they say that fuck poor Asians, or where they say that being black entitles someone to more social help/justice than being a poor Asian. "
It isn't just Asians, any racial minority that is "too" successful, like Jews, Indians, Asians, Persians, etc, would be hurt by Kendi's ideas because they are essentially just the same philosophy that is mocked in the story Harrison Bergeron. Kendi thinks any difference in outcome between racial groups proves racism and thus must be fixed.
For too long, Kendi told the audience, society’s understanding of racism has focused on the perpetrators rather than the victims. “We should be outcome-centered and victim-centered,” he said. “If a policy is leading to racial injustice, it doesn’t really matter if the policymaker intended for that policy to lead to racial injustice. If an idea is suggesting that white people are superior, it doesn’t really matter if the expressor of that idea intended for that idea to connote white superiority.”
If we train our focus on outcomes and victims, Kendi said, “intention will become irrelevant.”
The book presents 5 questions to settle the question of "Am I racist?"
__always giving primacy to the individual over the collective, or group;
__always embracing the concept of individual rights to help me judge problematic social interactions;
__never assessing quantities of stuff in gauging whether a policy is racist;
__always attempting to embrace the “color-blind rule” when making choices;
__always maintaining awareness of the distinctions between equity and equality; never compromizing equality of rights in order to bring about equity of stuff.
the central idea of antiracism seems to be that all racial groups are equal, and therefore, any inequality is proof of racism, and any policy that arguably contributed to that inequality is also racist. This too, does not make sense. If inequality is due to racism, how can we explain inequality within racial groups? Why do white people in one state make more money than in another state? Why do chlidren from two parent households generally do better academically than children from single parent households of the same race? Racism can't be the answer. And Kendi rarely offers any proof that racism is the primary source of inequality between groups, let alone the only source. The book also feels overly long and highly repetitive, with Kendi driving home the same handful of points/ideas over and over again.
His name is Ibram Rogers Kendi, and under this name he has published books that make his "anti-racism" a moderate view. He's switched to this X pseudonym to make readers forget what kind of extremist he had been.
I did not say that it's okay, I stated a simple fact, that positive discrimination is discrimination too.
Then I tried to explain the likely consequence of one usual version of that, and then I explicitly said that it's not that simple, because looking at ethnic groups and deciding the fate of individuals, just because they belong to that ethnic group, is almost textbook racism, as you also pointed out.
Because what often passes for equity/diversity/inclusion in these contexts is the farthest thing from what would be truly equitable or inclusive. True diversity is not fostered by EDI goals, these are purely about enforcing conformity. And dangerous conformity at that - many people ITT have pointed out that "anti-racist" has pretty much become code for anti-Asian.
As a hiring manager, DEI efforts have made hiring a lot more challening.
For my team we pretty much can only hire experienced, senior candidates with specialized skillsets. We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively. Anyway, women and minority candidates do apply (and get hired) for our positions but at much lower percentages.
To meet DEI goals though, our internal recruiters shove completely inexperienced/unqualified candidates into our pipeline and then put internal pressure on us to hire their candidate (one time there was a complaint from HR to a few exceutives claiming we were sabotaging their DEI efforts...the executives had to explain to the HR team how difficult and specialized the job that we do is and how important it is for us to have a pipeline of the best candidates...) even though they can't succeed in the role at that experience level.
They've even gone so far as to modify resumes of people we interview to inflate the experience level and immediately get caught out by the candidate who tells us that isn't the resume they submitted...and these are our _internal_ recruiters fucking with us like this. They even pushed through a candidate once who didn't speak any of the same languages as anyone else on our team. We only found out at the in-person interview stage...
Damn, that's where diversity initiatives become too much for me. Hiring people for the sake of diversity only perpetuates negative stereotypes about women in tech.
I don't want anyone I hire to be set up to be in a situation where they will surely fail, but that does seem to be where this is going. DEI seems to care about short term efforts/results but not long term.
My team has huge demands put on it as a result of product development and most of the time we need to hire entirely self-sufficient people. That's simply not possible without a significant amount of in-field experience. Having inexperienced people shoveled into our pipeline is a complete counter-productive waste of time.
OTOH it also takes like two years of dedicated peformance coaching in my org to fire anyone so the DEI folks are getting exactly what they want in the end anyway.
So these individuals are like potential spies inside the organization? To whom would they report?
I've seen a considerable number of people hired who seemed to have no productivity but the idea that they might have a reporting function outside the usual "chain-of-command" (e.g., like communist party political officers in the military) never occurred to me.
mandated DEI hires without also working on providing training for candidates (or at least post-hiring training) .. wow, what a bold strategy.
> We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively.
If DEI is a real goal then ... training has to be a real priority, not just "when big enough" and "when have time".
So if the company doesn't want to spend resources on it then it'll get strictly worse results. (Ie. it'll either find itself unable to hire people, it'll be chronically understaffed, and/or it'll end up with a lot of internal conflicts about skills/competence.)
That is in fact what the book How to be Anti-Racist prescibes that you do.
Part of the thesis of that book is that you are a racist if you treat people as individuals. To be Anti-Racist, you must treat people as part of their collective and then treat them well or badly based on membership of that collective in the name of equity. Thus whites and asians must be treated poorly because of their race and other minorities treated positively because of their race.
Basically you fight racism with racial discrimination.
As stupid and wrong it is, it is invading every aspect of our professional lives. It's extremely disturbing to find how many of my generation (let's say 30s & 40s) have accepted this belief system uncritically.
It seems at least that zoomers are somewhat more critical, or at least 50-50 on the topic. It's going to take many, many decades to unravel the harm this is causing.
They like that it's vile; that's the point for them. The power, the influence, and the authoritarian ability to control people's lives and, eventually, kill them (in my opinion), is what they crave.
Do not underestimate these people and how insane they are.
The book presents 5 questions to settle the question of "Am I racist?"
__always giving primacy to the individual over the collective, or group;
__always embracing the concept of individual rights to help me judge problematic social interactions;
__never assessing quantities of stuff in gauging whether a policy is racist;
__always attempting to embrace the “color-blind rule” when making choices;
__always maintaining awareness of the distinctions between equity and equality; never compromizing equality of rights in order to bring about equity of stuff.
These questions and what you said are two different things. You don’t need to treat any group poorly and none of those questions suggest you do. You made a leap that doesn’t logically follow.
You clearly have not read the book or even the quoted parts of it in the article. This quote is highlighted by Haidt who even supports and says there is a place for anti-racism.
> "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The book makes its point of view as plain as day. I haven't made any kinds of leap whatsoever.
Haidt only drew the line at his work being compelled to promote anti-racism because that's contradictory to the aim for truth and why we do research in the first place.
Your characterization of poor treatment seems like a leap. I guess the question for you is: if I discriminate against you in the post in such a way it creates inequity, but never attempt to correct it but merely say from this point forward no one can discriminate — is everyone being treated fairly?
You say it's a leap but then you present an argument where only way to achieve "fairness" is to engage in discrimination the other way. WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE BOOK WE'RE TALKING ABOUT CALLS FOR!
Life isn't and will never be fair. The fairness you seem to be seeking is "eye for an eye". You know what does make life fair though? We're all headed for worms and dirt eventually. None of us escape that. That's how you square the inequalities of what happens in between.
I can't engage with you any more on this. The doublethink required to accept your argument is off the charts.
Your rationale for the lack of attempting to right past wrongs is we all die? Is that how you view the Justice system? I assume you see no need for detectives.
As a society we view “further wrongs” differently. Taking money from someone who stole from you (with the help of the legal system) isn’t considered a further wrong. Criminals rarely utilize the “let’s do no further wrong defense” at sentencing. But maybe they should, as there seems to be a huge appetite for this sort of thing.
> As a society we view “further wrongs” differently.
Yes, and that includes letting bygones be bygones when we all have terrible injustices in our collective past. This is what a generalized amnesty is all about. The only alternative is a destructive war of all against all, as indeed is often seen in "honor-bound" societies where "the duty of righting wrongs" is taken as an absolute.
There is a big difference between punishing a criminal for a thing they did, and punishing a disfavored-race-person for a thing their ancestor did. It’s both a moral difference (collective punishment is wrong) and a practical difference (unwinding history to determine the true victim and true perpetrator is almost always impossible - as illustrated by the case of “mixed-race” people with both slave and slave-owning ancestors).
The point of all this is to have people who are unqualified as individuals embedded deep in every organization who are loyal to and owe their jobs and livelihood not to their own merit, but to external political movements.
Unlike unions, these external political movements do not care about the organizations their members are embedded in, but have other goals which is why they are unconcerned with merit. Unions at least wanted the organizations their members belonged to to survive and employees to have some level of competence.
I understand that, I tend to avoid them as much as possible also, but if it's the only place where certain facts are present, I'll read them.
But I ignore the emotive language or opinion dressed as reporting.
Which is something I noted while staying in LA recently - all the news shows I had access to on the hotel TV were "here's something that happened", which typically ran for 30 - 60 seconds, followed by 15 minutes of people offering opinions on it. And the channels that wanted to present as unbiased would give a Democrat aligned commentator and a Republic aligned commentator equal "this is how you should interpret this" time.
But yeah, blew my mind that so much of the "news" was talking heads telling you what to think about the news.
If you are not simultaneously against bezos-funded propaganda or zuck-funded propaganda (he still funds fwd.us whose main goal is to lower tech salaries by increasing immigration), you are a hypocrite.
A true act of courage. Suffering personal consequences to stick up for what he believes in and do the right thing. The world needs more people like this.
He's the most important public intellectual today in more ways than one. Probably the only person who is communicating a deep understanding of the political divide to the public, and what can be done to fix it. Unlike some of his colleagues like the hack Gad Saad or the slightly less hacky but still partisan Jordan Peterson.
FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has been defending student rights from attacks from all sides since the late 90s, well before any of this social justice stuff. They've done innumerable good works that your slanderous implications here deny without cause simply because the world changed around them and they're not exclusively protecting students from one political block instead of all political blocks.
But maybe you're just acting the clown to highlight the very issue this comment thread is discussing: inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization.
And I like this phrase: "inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization". It is well-said. Many intersting intellectual discussions are about exploring shades of grey in a difficult topic.
You can be in favour of immigration and still object to immigrants being carted (likely illegally) around the country for political stunts.
If you feel you need to call out hypocrisy, why don't you complain that people are not allowed to carry guns into an NRA or Republican convention, or how security and supporters beat up people protesting at trump rallies. Or about senators family members getting abortions while the same senators are advocating for making abortions for any reason (including rape) illegal.
The more people talk against racism the more racism is generated. As if they are ashamed from their racist practices and they try to exorcise it ... with just talk.
Incidents like the Jussie Smollett hoax, the Jazmine Barnes hoax, and what happened to the Covington Catholic kids show that the demand for racism often exceeds supply.
>But to civil rights activists, including Shaun King, who received the tip that led to the arrest, the race of the suspect did not upend the meaning of the case — for Jazmine's family or for the country.
>"We live in a time where somebody could do something like this based purely on hate or race," he said on Sunday. "And that it turned out to not be the case I don't think changes the devastating conclusion that people had thought something like that was possible."
I am extremely glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and will be stricken down by the courts immediately (as will be any sort of preferential treatment of any minority in hiring or admissions). Hope it stays that way.
I think there is a burgeoning push back on quotas and such as well. I think the woke crowd pushed their luck a bit too hard. This is coming from a very progressive person (me) but who also feels egalitarianism and personal responsibility should always be the goal and not an afterthought.
I'm not getting that impression. For what it's worth, "woke left" has always been a minority, yet it hasn't lost momentum as much as it continually rotates in direction. Specifically, we're seeing more and more non-NA countries adopt these rhetorics from both the US and CA.
Politics is becoming more and more extremist too, with the extreme left lashing out and calling anyone who even questions the status quo an extreme rightist bigot, and the extreme right doing the equivalent. And the two are fueled by both one another, as well as increasing tensions due to national issues.
The extreme left and right do fuel each other. I think Trump's rise in 2015 was somewhat related to the rise of wokeness in 2012. A large slice of right wing media today is outrage at wokeness. It's animating them. The fascists in Japan and Germany were partly motivated out of a fear of Bolsheviks.
This is my main gripe with wokeness. Yes I dislike the illiberalism of quotas and the collectivist nature of its moral system (collective guilt and inherited guilt). But my main concern is the right wing backlash and the consequences of that on democracy and freedom.
Interestingly, in my EU country we have explicit laws in constitution which forbid any kind of preferential treatment or discrimination based on gender, race and etc. However, there are agencies and courts who allow affirmative action policies to exist. For example, a public grant for entrepreneurs where women are officially awarded extra points for their gender. So basically constitution is ignored and no one cares.
In Switzerland it's illegal to make a difference between genders...however since a very short time woman's had to work not as long as men, now some woman cry it's unfair and blablabla, and there is still one or more thing, woman's don't have to go to military-service OR pay money for not going.
But if you say that, some of them will tell you that they would do that if they earn the same as men, but that is already in law...if you ask them for proof they never have any...
>>Appropriate measures aimed at achieving true equality are not regarded as discriminatory.
So since Men have a shorter lifespan (even in country's where alcohol and drugs are a nogo...if someone want to come with that argument) Men should not work as long as Woman's ;) excellent!!
BTW: What are Appropriate measures?....that's a typical Swiss law, it just say's nothing..and everything ;)
> Interestingly, in my EU country we have explicit laws in constitution which forbid any kind of preferential treatment or discrimination based on gender, race and etc. However, there are agencies and courts who allow affirmative action policies to exist. For example, a public grant for entrepreneurs where women are officially awarded extra points for their gender.
Yes it sure is. Interesting, in California in 2020, there was an attempt (Proposition 16) to overturn Proposition 209. It went down in flames, almost 60% against / 40% for.
Prop 209, passed in 1996, "amended the state constitution to prohibit government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education."
If Prop 16 had passed, it would have allowed government agencies to deliberately and explicitly discriminate against people based on immutable characteristics.
The wording from Prop 16's advocates seems to embrace Kendi's punitive stance on using active discrimination to reach some kind of equity goal:
"Despite living in the most diverse state in the nation, white men are still overrepresented in positions of wealth and power in California. Although women, and especially women of color, are on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, they are not rewarded for their sacrifices. Women should have the same chance of success as men.
Today, nearly all public contracts, and the jobs that go with them, go to large companies run by older white men. White women make 80¢ on the dollar. The wage disparity is even worse for women of color and single moms. As a result, an elite few are able to hoard wealth instead of investing it back into communities. Prop. 16 opens up contracting opportunities for women and people of color. "
In 2020 I tried to find data and studies backing the laundry list of assertions but came up empty-handed. The wording seemed very slanted... "older white men"... "single moms"... Certainly there are disparities in society, but we must always consider, objectively, what are the root causes.
Where does it end? Does anybody want an NBA where the makeup of the teams is based on the racial percentages in society, or do people want the best players playing? Do you want the best surgeon or pilot? Absolutely I bet 99% of people on HN want everyone to have equal opportunity; in my experience, in the vast majority of American tech companies (I don't work in healthcare of finanace, etc. so I can't speak to them), if you had 2 equally qualified candidates, and one was a white man and one was a woman or a racial minority or perhaps even not-straight, the white man will usually be the one not getting the job.
There aren't a lot of fully private academic education institutions in Europe, compared to the US.
But I wonder if they could do that sort of thing based of their existing limitations for academic freedom. If an institution funded by Volkswagen wants the professors to work on car related stuff to advance technological goals, couldn't they also require them to work towards social or political goals?
autonomy of "private" institutions partially died with the mechanism of tying title ix compliance to any federal dollars. i think there are 2 colleges in America that take 0 federal aid (pell grants etc.) so don't have to comply.
tbh i always found it contradictory we don't use those federal $ to require compliance with all constitutional rights, e.g. 1 and 2a.
They were trying to make sure the country I live in (which has more than 1 significant "traditional" minority) does not partition along ethnic lines by instituting differentiated treatment on the basis of ethnicity.
But thanks for bringing your bullshit, unapplicable anglo concepts to the entire world. We really appreciate it every time.
Unlikely, I don't know what "continental Europe" means here, but DE&I is gaining a lot of traction in Western/Central Europe. In countries whose history is completely different from the US' and where it makes literally no sense to think of race this way.
"Now that many university presidents have agreed to implement many of the demands, I believe that the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to become unmanageable."
Can someone ELI5 what is this conflict between truth and social justice Haidt refers to?
That sounds nice, but the de facto the purpose of a university is the furtherance of the intellectuals.
The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth.
Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)
Ah yes, the always correct "society" should be heavy handed, to counter unnecessary heavy-handed university administration. That is just shifting the tyranny of the majority from an internal to a less qualified external source. Universities' end should be pursuit of the truth, not society's "goals". If society must intervene, it should be to uphold the pursuit of truth, not its own goals. That is a tall task, but lets at least aim in the right direction.
This comment is also a bit odd given the context of the last 5 years of society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
> society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
This has been ongoing for ever. This happens because there's a big overlap between rich, powerful, and educated groups, and there's simply a fuckton of bad "us vs them" arguments that pick one easy to identify trait and attack anyone using that.
And of course the ongoing globalization led to a lot of job displacement. Whole regions suffered and continue to suffer heavily, and ... while the whole country reaps the benefits the affected areas only got a lip service. (And of course a lot of federal transfer payments.) This created a big group ripe for populist resentment, ready to project the drawbacks of free markets onto whatever Trump said. China. Mexico. Millenials. Green stuff. Welfare queens.
It goes a little bit beyond this. You're supposed to do research with an open mind and allow your conclusions to reveal themselves through the course of study. Swearing that your research advances the goals of anti-racism and equity means that your research can only have pre-formed conclusions.
It completely taints your research and any results you might come to.
Attacking "Political Correctness" in a vague and non-specific way lets you sound noble.
As soon as you specify what that means in practice you just sound like a nasty bully (at best), so best leave that implied.
But a quick glance as the history of social science that these things are a direct response to, would reveal people "proving" that various groups are inferior in ways that mirror contemporary prejudices and reinforce right-wing politics that consistently builds hierarchical models to justify current social inequalities.
I think this is the quote you mean, which sounds very very different to yours?
a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."
You're getting downvoted and flagged because you're breaking the site guidelines by going on about getting downvoted and flagged. It's tedious and off topic. Please stop now.
does it rly change anything? like, take sports. asians have some structural advantages (endomorphism and limb to body ratio) for lifting, west africans at mnay explosive/power sports (fast twitch muscle concentration, arms/legs to body), east africans at long-distance running etc. (lighter structure, efficient muscles over long term), whites at swimming (shoulder structure & torso length).
should we stop large swathes of research into athletic performance? bc i guess it doesn't provide sufficiently "antiracist" outcomes?
Studies that show the genetic diversity of the continent of Africa are in fact "anti-racist".
They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though.
They still try to fit every new fact into their old model.
Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology?
Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth.
This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.
i mean, i agree they're imperfect but there's also not "0 basis". if nothing else they may continue to associate with stuff because society often sees them as coherent groupings.
but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do?
also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.
yeah, i've read it. they're requiring people to write statements on whether/how their research advances the stated goals of the society in this area. next year, they will make it part of the scoring rubric for submissions.
here's the thing: "anti-racism" is being used as a motte-and-bailey argument. it's basically dogwhistling an intent to promote present discrimination (c.f. kendi) even if they're using a different definition that doesn't explicitly state that, because it's how that term has been widely used and understood. but when people take issue with it, they can be like "oh our definition doesn't say that." and ngl i find it pretty disingenuous.
I don't understand the argument that genetics isn't correlated with race. I would imagine a better argument is that it's a spectrum - but the fact is that when plotting the principle components of any large scale set of human genetic data from around the world, self reported race actually clusters (PC isn't even a clustering technique) quite well. So the fact that the axes of tbe largest explained variance of the data (PC_0 and PC_1) correlates with self reported race is hard to mend with the idea that is loudly exclaimed in academia that race isn't genetic. Am I missing some important subtlety here?
While I agree that we need to do as much as possible to eradicate the awful racism we see in far too many places today, this idea to turn a blind eye to the largest explained variance in large scale genetic studies by saying it doesn't exist is perplexing.
It's correct to say that: there is a genetic history to all humans, and that history roughly correlates with pre-scientific clustering of humans by visible attributes.
The academic claim that "Race is not scientific" is really an overstatement of the case being made by people who are very optimistic but also fairly good at overlooking some fairly well understood science. It's not a universally held opinion but most people who disagree with it are fairly circumspect because it's very easy to get cancelled by talking about race and science in public.
What's that research going to be used for? Will it become of the basis of policy that says 'only asians are allowed to enter the power lifting club', 'only east africans on the running team', 'only white land owning men are allowed to vote'.
Setting aside the question of whether the truth should be suppressed because of consequences, this kind of research could very easily be beneficial.
Suppose you find out that the green people from East Arbitria are less productive. The immediate effect is that an innocent objective employer who being tried for discrimination or hated by a community no longer has to suffer- the cruelty of the universe is no longer being made anyone's fault. The secondary effect is that we now have grounds to investigate why Arbitrarians have that disadvantage. Maybe green people have a harder time metabolizing a nutrient; a non-issue with the diet/climate/lifestyle of Arbitria. An update to health recommendations later and millions of people's lives are improved.
It would also mean that people could use this to say "All East Arbitaria people are less productive than all other ethnicities, therefore I shall ban them from my workplace. I am not anti-Arbitrian, I am just using the latest science". And of course these things are always statistical and so high performing East Arbitarians are going to be shut out of work because of this study.
The point is, there is a history of race-based discrimination in the world and researchers can't just pretend that it doesn't still exist when constructing these kinds of studies and how their outcomes could be used negatively by both benevolent and malevolent actors. It isn't just 'truth or not truth', also because lots of sociological studies aren't repeatable and many others suffer all sorts of issues with methods, populations, etc. Measuring people is crazy hard to do reliably. Anyway, my hot take is that its not a simple question and does not have a simple answer.
1. we don't know how a piece of research will be used because we don't even know what the outcome will be.
2. rarely is a piece of research only used for 1 thing, and even if someone uses it wrongly, maybe someone else uses it for good purpose or builds on it for an important discovery.
3. the correct answer is to address the person attempting to abuse the data when that person does it not to attempt to suppress that information by preventing the research or limiting how it's done.
4. are you saying we shouldn't do research on e.g. whether certain groups are better at lifting because it could be abused?
The question of whether certain research should be banned because of the potential outcomes is one with deep philosophical roots and the basis of much science fiction. The 'just because we could do something, doesn't mean we should' question. I don't think there is a single absolute answer to this, as context matters.
What I do see is a long history of race-based 'science' being used to justify some pretty terrible policies and laws.
One might respond along the lines of: "why are we investing in ways to operationalize a concept of 'superiority' in the first place?"
The long lesson from the history of this research is that it produces garbage wrapped in a thin veneer of credibility, and becomes a weapon to justify or deepen real existing problems. It doesn't matter if it gets debunked eventually, the problem is how it is used now."
edit: (I don't know that I'm happy with either pole in this debate, but it seems like a good thing to worry about)
> One might respond along the lines of: "why are we investing in ways to operationalize a concept of 'superiority' in the first place?"
Becomes sometimes it's important. The efficacy of modern medicine is not uniform across ethnic groups. To deny this fact would effectively be to deliberately withhold treatment from some groups of people. Does that seem fair and just to you?
That's not fair, they should encourage people to include:
> Diverse research participants (e.g., understudied or underserved populations)
or in case it's due to the team they should also probably encourage:
> Diverse members of the research team (e.g., those from underrepresented sociodemographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages, from outside the United States, or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP such as predominately undergraduate serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, or outside academia)
Hopefully if thay do that won't be portrayed as a bad thing by anyone.
This comment doesn't really explain the conflict, if it was a response to the ELI5 request.
Instead it seems to be at best discounting that there is a conflct to explain or at worse is participating in the conflict by defending one side of it.
I think a stronger case could in theory be made that the conflict is non existent but it's a harder position to advocate.
It's actually even worse. It is enough for research to not actively promote "social justice" (which is of course anything but social or just) to get the boot.
So everything must be politicised. "How does your new caching algorithm promote social justice?". (If the same criteria were applied in CS).
It seems to me that the real snowflakes are those who got out of their way to have the convention changed. But then again, I am just a slav who thankfully doesn't have to live in the shithole that is contemporary usa (or the valley).
Are you offended when someone expresses that they want to "master the art of pasta making?" The word 'master' has many meanings, only one of which relates to slavery; every color of people on the planet has practiced slavery at some point; your boogeyman white people stopped practicing it a century and a half ago; yet just the existence of the word prevents you from being able to push code to a repo. And you call other people snowflakes...
> It must be so difficult being so offended by the regular function of language. Context matters in language, and meanings and vocabulary change over time as contexts change.
The sheer irony of someone who's in favor of linguistic prescriptivism typing this out (when master record and master key have no linguistic relationship to master/slave) is astounding.
"Snowflake?" Either you're projecting, or that doesn't mean what you think.
Don't forget that there were people like Rich Salz who took their ball and ran home crying[0] because of a freaking word. Was this just a fit of temporary 2020-insanity that was going around? Nope - apparently 1 year on, it's still intolerably reeecist to have a "master key" in cryptography.[1]
What is equity if not equality then? (Honest question, as I just assumed it was equality as generally that's something we've been historically striving for.)
Equity is equality of outcomes (done by explicitly redirecting resources as needed to get this result). As opposed to equal opportunity which is what is generally meant by "equality".
Or to ELI5 it's treating people differently to get them all to the same position, instead of treating everyone the same. The argument for "equity" is then that we aren't all starting from the same place. It's the same line of reasoning that justified affirmative action in the US.
Opportunities and rights on the one hand, outcomes on the other. e.g.
- Equality: We are both free to operate in an open market to secure the best outcomes for ourselves
- Equity: You made $1000, I made $100, we both get $550
Wokes will bend over backwards to paint equality as an impossible project, claiming that it is doomed because of historical white supremacy, generational oppression, moon phases, etc. We're asked to believe uncritically that the goal of equal opportunity is equal outcome, and commanded to pursue equal outcome at all costs lest we are labeled racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist; de-platformed from all social media and made infamous and unemployable so we can't work to support our families. Equality is the American civil rights movement, equity is literally communism.
There’s a lot of nonsense to unpack in that comment.
Equity is not “literally communism”, it’s the pretty simple understanding that if you always start 40 meters ahead of someone in a 100 meter race, you’re likely to always finish first and they won’t have a chance.
So we put more (and therefore unequal) resources into helping the competitor who’s having to run 40 more meters than you.
That's incorrect. The goal or schema of communism is not "equal outcomes". That might be the crude rubric of some state capitalist societies of the past, e.g. equal wages regardless of rank, but in true communism the abundance of resources permits anyone to have their needs met and for anyone to realize their full abilities.
One can criticize its naivety. But please do not conflate it with the mean and frankly misanthropic world view of the woke crowd, in which large swathes of humanity are condemned to endless self flagellation.
Don't worry, they are pretty interchangeable, depending upon context. The dictionary definitions show both can be used for the same meaning, say for equal rights and for actual equal carving out of resources and means. Or something specific in the case of finance or law. And the woke crowd evidently have their own stricter definitions of both.
I'd avoid using either in any polemic for a better world, and stick to the original words of the communist manifesto, which have not been bettered: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need!
Is it really a conspiracy when we're watching exactly what the theorists said would happen, happen?
An earnest, good-hearted, and well-cited author and scientist is removing himself from academia because of the ever-accelerating creep of DEI influence into entirely unrelated work. This sounds like exactly what the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' were trying to warn us about back in 2012 or so.
If anything, your comment really just solidified to me that maybe we should have taken those folks a bit more seriously, and encouraged folks like you to quiet down. :)
The way I read it was he was removing himself from an organization, not from academia entirely.
This particular organization wants to follow the antiracist line of thinking, and they probably feel that strengthens their community. He's perfectly entitled to leave it and complain about it. But, the organizations reasons for making people who join the organization align with this values statement seems like it should be their prerogative.
Maybe they feel like to grow as an organization, they need to ask their community to that line of thinking. If they have done the work to understand that's what they should do, isn't it correct, even if they lose a researcher like Haidt?
Something of almost no significance to freedom of speech.
Universities are advising their staff not to council in favour of abortion or offer condoms for the purposes of birth control (but OK for purposes of diseas prevenion). Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.
This is what an attack on freedom of speech looks like. And the consequences are of far more significance in this case.
Being fired for bringing the university in to disrepute barely even registers.
So if you want to know whether someone's position on free speech is hysterical posturing, or whether it's genuine, you can compare their reaction on these two paired issues.
I'm confused, you think adding restrictions to what someone is and isn't allowed to publish has no significance to freedom of speech?
> Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.
Can you provide us with an example of a university prof being given a felony sentencing for providing counsel related to abortion? It was a bizarre thing to bring up and admittedly just sort of reads like American fear-mongering. You're coming at this from a very strange angle, you're gonna need a better formed argument if you want to change any minds here.
Pro-tip: being a "toxic toss-pot" should not be a reason for getting fired. People should not be fired for any non-criminal behavior outside of their workplace, even if it's racist.
Employers who fire people over non-criminal supposedly "racist" behavior should be sued and made to pay big bucks.
Being a toxic toss-pot should very much be a reason to be fired. Toxic people are notoriously destructive to the work environment, almost always in a greater degree to what they add -- even if they are top performers. Removing them can result in a more productive/creative team who can now thrive in their absence.
Are they more destructive than woke activists? I very much doubt that.
Your employer has no business judging you for how you (non-criminally) behave outside your working time. Firing over any such non-criminal behavior should be punishable severely.
I agree they shouldn't if its outside working time, but they can and should fire you for being an asshat at work.
Also, sounds like you think all 'woke activists' everywhere are always destructive. Which is an interesting take. At what point does someone cross the line to become an inherently destructive 'woke' person?
a) call/protest for firing people for said outside-of-work activities
b) protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way
c) protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies
d) protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)
I have question, because some of these would result in 'woke activists' on the right as well as the left.
> protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way
There are conservative politicians, florida in particular, that have passed legislation banning CRT and gender studies. Is this not a restriction of free speech?
Toby Price was fired for reading a popular children's book to children. Was this not a form of censorship?
> protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies
Does this mean that that discrimination based on race/gender be allowed or not allowed? Should bakers in an open market be permitted to say no to gay wedding cakes? Should banks be able to say no to non-white loan applicants?
> protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)
Does uneven enforcement count as a factor? White suburban teens smoke pot (in states where its still illegal) at rates the same as non-white urban teens, but enforcement is highly disprortionate. So what's the solution to that?
CRT and gender studies should not be part of the high school curriculum in public schools and should not receive any sort of government funding in universities because at best they are pseudoscience. Private institutions not receiving government funding should teach whatever they like, including white nationalism.
Discrimination based on race should either be allowed in all circumstances or disallowed in all circumstances. Affirmative action is discrimination based on race so it's hypocritical to have this as government policy while explicitly prohibiting discrimination against minorities.
Uneven enforcement calls for punishing those not enforced against, not letting guilty minorities walk.
Any further attempts of sealioning will be ignored.
so "restricting freedom of speech in any way" really means it can be restricted in some cases. This was your definition, not mine.
Again interesting that you consider discrimination based on race in all cases as an acceptable position equal to no discrimination based on race.
The unequal enforcement bit would mean that white neighborhoods should be given the same level of enforcement as minority ones. Is that really what you want? Where literally everyone is treated by the police exactly how they treat minorities?
I consider "restrictions of freedom of speech" justified only in the context of employment, during work hours, where said restriction directly influences your working output. If public school teachers want to teach woke pseudoscience on their own premises, during their off hours, using their own money, that's OK.
I have absolutely no problem with increasing policing in white neighborhoods. The risk to people who are not criminal lowlifes is not zero, but is negligible. And I place 0 weight on the lives and well-being of criminal lowlifes.
So, "restricting freedom of speech in any way" is actually "restricting freedom of speech in any way unless during working hours and influences working output". This revised definition now supports the use of DEI in the OP article.
I will take your word that you'd be happy with increased policing even if it affected you personally, but I doubt that if you actually experienced it that you would be happy with the outcome.
It's actually not consistent (and the example is compelled speech not restricting speech). But then again, I shouldn't be breaking what I said earlier about responding to sealioning.
It didn't take long for my point to be proven in a dramatic act of unaware self-parody. Thanks for making it perfectly clear to OP (I mean, original question asker) - if OP was indeed, genuinely unaware of what far right wing narcissistic rage looks like, which i kind of doubt.
I can be racist (teach white nationalism), you can't call me racist (that's the dread cultural cultural marxism again!). I should be subject to no laws (that restrict fascist propagandisation or mobilisation), but laws that restrict the rights of women, blacks, degenerate leftists etc. should be enforced presumably to the point of street execution (it's your own fault! gotta obey those laws!)
Reading comprehension lacking again. As I stated clearly in a comment above, I support banning employers from firing anyone over anything non-criminal they are doing during off-hours.
Also, I don't know exactly how far this is from the "opinion" of the so-called "labor movement" given that something closer to this than to anglosphere practice is the reality in most of continental Europe currently.
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." - Kendi
Kendi is a key promoter of "anti-racism", which is described in the above quote.
Many institutions are signing on to this agenda, which requires people to view everything through this ideological (social justice) lens and to participate in discriminatory activity as described above. This lens ensures that instead of seeking truth, you will just find more social injustice. A demon under every rock, if you will.
Did you notice that that promotes an eternal cycle of hatred? Because present day discrimination would mean discriminating against yesterday's powerful, and thus future discrimination will be the opposite. That someone, who seriously wrote something like that, has got influence is not a good sign.
Let's apply this to a material, concrete condition that exists in our world.
We can all hopefully agree that:
A) Redlining existed
B) Redlining was explicitly racist
C) Redlining has impacts that are still felt today
Let's use an antiracist lens to talk about it and compare to a modern, liberal "just don't be racist" lens.
The standard liberal response is, "well, redlining is over, and we know now not to do that. So, problem solved, right?"
The antiracist lens might be, "there are still people suffering from the impact of Redlining. The people who benefited from it should be helping those who suffered from it." In this case, wealthy white folks explicitly benefited from Redlining. Maaaaaybe we should tap on the shoulders of wealthy white folks and say, "hey, there was a major injustice done very recently, we want to fix it, and since you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it."
That wasn't reparations, that was retribution for slave labor for those forced to work in German factories. It's a start, but also about two orders of magnitude less than what Germany should pay, given the atrocities they committed in Poland. About 2-3 millions of civilians were killed during the whole war (and I mean ethnic Poles, not the Jews living in Poland, which are additional 3 millions victims)
We're getting now to one of the bigger problems with the philosophy you're describing: What's "you" here? Is "you" people in the same genetic category as the people who benefited from redlining. Those who happen to look like these people, but share actual no genetic ancestry (say, because they were immigrants) or perhaps do not share the privilege (say, because they were born poor or had other disadvantages) might take exception. Push them too hard, you become the oppressor.
There's then a Kafkaesque attitude that manifests that says, "I don't care what your protestations are on this topic, nor will I hear your case, you belong to X [ where X is social group, economic class, identity group, race, or whatever ] and you should accept sacrifices for the great good. Full stop. If you deny it you're the enemy."
That's one reason why many people view highly "corrective" actions in the realm of social relations or economic re-organizations with a strong amount of terror. We certainly have strong examples of terror manifesting in the 20th century in completely separate parts of the world and at massive scale - always for the greater good.
It's totally fair to say, "wait, this person busted ass and bought in, having come from nothing. Maybe they shouldn't have to pay more." But also, the neighborhood has benefited, and that's reflected in better schools, better amenities, etc. Maybe we should find ways to ensure those better off areas help lift up the less fortunate ones.
Regarding your second point, that you belong to X, so you are the enemy. I agree. Except on economic class. For context, I made roughly $850k last year, and my taxes were paltry. It is because of people in my economic class and above they we have a lot of the problems we do.
If you make a million a year, you can absolutely afford to give more.
(I do this by spending my money on mutual aid projects, bail funds, debt relief, community owned housing, forest conservation, etc. I put about $350k into community projects that had little to no direct benefit for me. I say this only to deal with the inevitable, "why don't you put your money where your mouth is" comments I receive when I say we wealthy folks should be taxed much more.)
> standard liberal response is, [...] So, problem solved, right?
Well, there's the problem. You can't declare something fixed, and you have to have standards to check against. Those people just aren't trying and you can't write every "standard liberal" off because you personally know lazy ones.
But yes, the race-blind answer would be to help people still experiencing those first-order (lack of ownership) and second-order (lack of generational equity) problems by tackling obstacles to low-end ownership and invest in wealth and estate planning classes, assisting with secondary education, etc.
A multitude of strategies and a goal of trying those and other things until the original victims are helped, while trying not the name those victims explicitly. In doing so, helping anyone similarly disadvantaged.
> antiracist lens might be, [...] wealthy white folks [...] you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it.
The anti-racist lens mentions race a lot. I'm not just saying that to be snarky but because I believe that's harmful. Like the news reporting thoughtlessly about suicides.
But I don't see in that view is any concern for finding the unfair beneficiaries - merely all white people. This is where it goes from looking racist to being racist.
Most damningly, anti-racists don't have any consistent or desirable ideas on what the problems are or how the funds would go to help. It's all about race, categorizing and separating and stigmatizing by race, and confiscating by race, but barely if ever about defining and planning to fix the problems for people of any race, let alone all.
> people in my economic class [from another post]
I feel that this class-based analysis is much more useful and less counter-productive.
The key quote is this: "most academic work has nothing to do with diversity, so these mandatory statements force many academics to betray their quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth by spinning, twisting, or otherwise inventing some tenuous connection to diversity."
In other words a researcher studying a topic unrelated to diversity will need to lie by claiming that there is a link.
"Our lab specializes in developing hypergraph analysis techniques with applications in cybersecurity. The success of these techniques will force threat actors to innovate in order to survive. As more diverse organizations are more innovative [1][5][26] and threat actors are rational and well-informed [9][10], we expect our efforts to encourage threat actors to become more diverse as more effective cybersecurity techniques pressure them to adapt and innovate.
As threat actors account for a non-trivial fraction of global economic activity [6], we expect our research to play an active role in the co-creation of a more inclusive and diverse lifeworld for the people of earth."
This is a bad example: local knowledge (popular scams, exploits, software, etc) does play a nontrivial role in determining what the population of threats looks like; this activity is in part socially determined. So having a more diverse crowd of researchers -- with all else equal -- can improve your research group's understanding of what threats are out there. Diversity gives you edge here. Unless of course, the graph analysis research isn't really about the applications and that was just some bullshit to drum up funding.
It was a satirical example of "bullshit" application writing. I personally don't dispute the relevance of diversity (variously operationalized) within human knowledge production institutions.
I do - I think reasonably - dispute the applicability of the outputs of many of our knowledge production institutions to social justice questions. (Just as I don't dispute that there are, conversely many which are).
If we find ourselves in a situation where we can't make a useful distinction between research that is and isn't relavent to social justice, I think we're at risk of our language seeming vaccuous and nonsensical.
I didn't claim I agree or disagree with this. I answered GP's question on Haidt's argument, especially because I found the other reponses didn't do justice to Haidt by focusing on research that would contradict the dominant narrative. As far as I could tell from the article he didn't allude to that.
The question that triggered his reaction is (quoting from the article) 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.' Indeed in principle they could just answer that it doesn't. What is left out here is why they are asking this. If the purpose of the question is unclear then researchers may feel incentivised to lie to 'fit' the requirements.
My personal view is that this is much ado about nothing. More likely than not most people will ignore the answers. There will, however, be reviewers who use that to reject papers.
One way to look at it: this is like requiring all Maths research to be applied mathematics, because we demand to get the social benefits right now and it is your job to find it. I don't know if they actually verify what you wrote in your declaration and how.
Haidt gave a lecture on the topic at Duke in 2016. It's titled, "Two incompatible sacred values in American universities." It's on the YouTube channel of Duke's political science department.
It's been a while since I've watched the lecture, but what I remember is that Haidt sees the academy seeking truth as (potentially?) incompatible with the academy seeking social justice. As such, he anticipates a day when universities will have to choose individually which path they will follow.
I suspect that's the context in which Haidt is making this decision.
The loyalty oaths are, as noted in the article, quite common. This isn't just the way NYU operates. It's also, for example, the way the entire University of California system operates.
It is good to go to the sources - but the obvious source I found appears to be [0] a recursive link so that isn't too helpful. Throwing babies out with the bathwater is bad and doing studies with diverse participants seems like a good idea. The statement can say "this research doesn't further the SPSP's goals" So I don't see why the statement itself would be objectionable.
The objection would be if the statement is used as a tool to discriminate against good research. So this resignation should probably be treated as a vote of no confidence in the people and goals of the specific institution. I can see why the sort of people who would demand this statement would be a problem as ironically the DIE crowd seems to sometimes attract a weird sort of modern racist. Something that is always a risk when developing a race-obsessed ideology.
The source doesn't actually say whether submissions not advancing "SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion and anti-racism" would be accepted though.
They would pass the reviewing process where they would receive the lowest score on the "3-point rating scale".
It would also mean by negation that the submission did not employ "diverse research participants", "diverse research methods (e.g., methodology that promotes equity)", or "diverse members of the research team", which basically would be viewed as a self-indictment in our political climate. Nobody with an interest to succeed would willingly arrive at this conclusion, they would view it as necessary to avoid it (like by making up reasons as to why the submission advances anti-racism).
In other words, the requirement to include the statement is a way of enforcing the stated goals and policing the researchers' conformity.
I'm not sure that this is really a problem. The sample of "57 college students that we forced to participate" is a bane of psychology research even if we ignore the racism angle. So what's wrong with writing a paragraph about how you took pains to get a representative sample?
> I personally think it’s disgusting Democrats are trying to revive institutional racism — but they’ve been doing that for 150 years, so I’m not surprised.
Any ideology that discriminates against one race or ethnic group vs. any other is racist. Trying to make elaborate arguments as to why some types of discrimination are acceptable because historical or societal reason X or Y is a form of rationalization.
Could it be affirmative action is sometimes rational?
After decades of apartheid would you prefer the South African government stop all consideration of race across the board, despite the profits of inequity having already been partitioned?
Depends. If you believe discrimination by race is wrong you should not discriminate by race. If you disagree with how discrimination was done but have no objection to racial discrimination as such you should discriminate in the way your values suggest you do.
That's because diversity is a stand-in term for Marxism. You either belong to the proletariat class, or you renounce your position in the bourgeoisie and join a work camp to repent for your crimes, which were completely unknown to you before your great awakening.
>"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
It just shows the power of ideology to crush dissent, when obviously poisonous and destructive statements like these are accepted.
If more people thought like that, then Jews would still be shovelling Germans into ovens.
Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other (1992) [1] is a good read on how we got to a point where our ability to communicate across ideologies appears to be broken in many ways.
For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' arguments. To some, Yale appeared censorious. As Jonathan Rauch describes [2], that's not good for your case. Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers. Wallace ran for president in 1968 and nearly forced a plurality which would have given him significantly more influence [3].
Early episodes of the podcast So to Speak [4] by FIRE can inform the direction that can get us talking again. Basically, open and civil discourse is the way. The podcast demonstrates, through interviews with free speech advocates, a bunch of examples showing why that is a good target to shoot for, and how to achieve it.
I think this is exactly what they’re talking about. In no way did the grandparent endorse or glorify Wallace; his implication was that Wallace would have been less popular had he and therefore his opponents been heard. But in this environment, merely suggesting a person should be heard is taken as a strident endorsement.
Another more extreme example would be the Nazis. They went through early political suppression and existed in an environment where organized political street violence was already common. Who knows what the counterfactual was, but censoring and punching Nazis did not stop their rise. The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans is a good book on this. It certainly seems that extremism is fostered by such environments.
> censoring and punching Nazis did not stop their rise.
Precisely. Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU board from 1991-2008, argues that censorship helped the Nazis [1]
> "In the Weimar Republic there were laws very similar to the anti hate speech laws that still exist in Germany today. And they were very strictly enforced, there was an umbrella of Jewish organizations in the Weimar Republic, the head of which did a study. They said that these laws are by and large being strictly enforced, the prosecutions are being capably handled, there were many convictions, including of Nazis, and the Nazis loved the propaganda. They got far more attention than they otherwise would have, became free speech martyrs, actually had posters saying, 'In all of Germany why is this one man silenced?' They gained sympathy and attention that they otherwise never would have."
A written version of their (by which I mean Strossen and other's like Haidt involved in FIRE movement) "anti-hate laws helped the Nazis" argument is found here:
> Considering the Nazi movement’s core ideology, as espoused by Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” rested on an alleged conspiracy between Jews and their sympathizers in government to politically disempower Aryan Germans, it is not surprising that the Nazis were able to spin government censorship into propaganda victories and seeming confirmation of their claims that they were speaking truth to power, and that power was aligned against them.
I don't find it particularly convincing, but it does explain the strategy of complaining about free speech and censorship by "the jews" has a long history of success, with Nazis. Everyone else thinks, "oh these people are Nazis". But Nazis think, "It's a Jewish Conspiracy to silence the truth", because they are Nazis.
Suggesting that anti-hate speech laws are worth bringing up in this context is like mentioning Hitler was a vegetarian or banned smoking and seems to be sourced to a cartoonist, rather than a historian.
Hitler went to jail for 'high treason' after an attempted coup.
> Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to the Nazi Party, along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the Nazi Party from the city on 5 May 1927.[65][66] Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets.[62] Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban until the end of October.[67]
Goebbels, the victim of oppressive laws that stop you from randomly attacking people in the street. Why have we not learned this lesson from history? If you stop them attacking people violently in the streets, and removing the government, then it's your own fault what happens next.
I mentioned Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich because it’s critical for understanding what happened here to know the historical context. Those measures were not targeted at the Nazis specifically, nor were the tactics developed by the Nazis in a vacuum.. Organized political street violence was already normal in Weimar Germany before the Nazis had more than a dozen members. They came into existence at a time when violence was a socially acceptable method to shut people up. They faced political/legal repression, censorship, and arrests before the coup.
I don’t know if it helped them amass the numbers/backing and cement the ideology that led to the attempted coup, but it definitely didn’t stop it. You can definitely see how pre-existing political street gangs made it easier to justify forming their own street gangs.
The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work. Countering speech with more speech is better. Roger Baldwin, founder of the now gone-astray ACLU, may have put it best [1],
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
Regarding your claim that this is only "faintly" related to free speech, you should know that Jonathan Haidt is very near to that issue. He co-authored a book [2] with the current president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Greg Lukianoff. See also: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives [3]
> That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us.
With the small difference being that those groups did not suppress speech by refusing to invite speakers to an event. Let's not put academia memberships and pogroms in the same category.
I wasn't comparing academia to nazis. Rather, I was saying that even in the most extreme situations e.g. nazis and communists, open and civil discourse is still better than censorship.
It's also worth noting that FIRE was expressly founded to deal with free speech violations in higher education. FIRE's president often discusses this, for example in a recent interview with Nick Gillespie [1]. FIRE recently expanded to cover all free speech issues, but that is where they got started. They've taken over a role that the ACLU has largely abandoned, since they now construe rights to be in conflict with each other, as former Executive Director Ira Glasser mentions [2] with the ACLU's new guidelines [3]:
> "The guidelines are designed to assist in consideration of the competing interests that may arise when such conflicts emerge. The guidelines do not seek to resolve the conflicts, because resolution will virtually always turn on factors specific to each case."
> "The potential conflict between advocacy for free speech and for equal justice in the fight against white supremacy is especially salient, but by no means unique in presenting tensions between ACLU values."
But you're not supposed to construe rights as being in conflict with each other, as implied by the 9th amendment [4]:
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people
Like balancing form and function, one should not take away from another.
He may be right with the general idea, but the point was that his phrasing needs some serious work. The classic argument is really that they should be censored so they can't easily organise and kill us. If he doesn't say that, I don't know if he realises what stakes he's talking about. (he probably does, but... say it)
I'm annoyed, because there are lots of people who don't realise this is literally about survival for others, not just about free speech ideas.
> some serious work. The classic argument is really that they should be censored so they can't easily organise and kill us.
There's a difference between words and actions. Words fo not kill. No, words are not violence no matter how much people try to claim otherwise.
Furthermore, censoring people does nothing to reduce a groups ability to kill. Taking away someone's public voice does not take away their capacity to carry out violence. Disinviting a speaker or banning a book does not magically make people's guns disappear.
Seems like it's worked well? Wikipedia tells me that he's "one of the most cited scholars alive" and "has influenced a broad array of academic fields"; I'm not personally familiar with his academic work, but most of my friends strongly endorse his perspectives on capitalism and foreign policy. It's hard to see how compromising on free speech could have led his ideas to be more successful.
It's worked incredibly well. The United States - the country with easily some of the most well protected free speech laws - continues to be one of the most diverse and welcoming countries in the world. It's one of the most desired places for people to immigrate to, and continues to have a large foreign born population. By comparison, look at how a single digit percentage influx of foreigners rattled Europe. When racists do gather it usually results in plummetting support for their causes. This was the case with the Unite the Right rally: following the rally support for the movement dropped considerably.
By what metric has Chomsky's strategy failed? You seem to be postulating this as fact, without anything backing it up.
"By comparison, look at how a single digit percentage influx of foreigners rattled Europe."
Islam played a role in that. Europe and Islam have been on mostly fighting terms since around 700 AD. There is much smaller cultural difference between the mostly Hispanic immigration into the US and the mainstream American culture than there is between the mostly secular European cultures and people from, say, Afghanistan, who express significant support for things such as Shari'a law.
> The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work.
This is the core of your argument, and if true, it’s unassailable. However, I don’t believe it’s true. Do you have evidence that it is? I don’t mean well-crafted arguments by respected people, but actual evidence.
For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit. I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated. The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it. (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
> This is the core of your argument, and if true, it’s unassailable. However, I don’t believe it’s true. Do you have evidence that it is? I don’t mean well-crafted arguments by respected people, but actual evidence.
> For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit.
I'm familiar with that study and I'm pretty sure they acknowledged that they only measured activity of individuals who remained on Reddit. It's really hard to definitively say what happens when groups move to private forums where you can no longer track their conversations. Also, what people say in public vs. private can be different [1] [2], and I think periods when that is true (such as right now) should be cause for consideration about whether or not censorship contributes to that. I'd argue that state or widespread cultural censorship does contribute to self-censorship by chilling conversations, and that people's views don't change when you block them from view. It's like sending someone to prison vs. rehabilitation. You might still argue that the views can't spread as easily, and I would argue against that too.
When groups are deplatformed, they find their own ways to communicate, either by joining private groups on services like Telegram or by creating their own platforms.
Then they are outside your sphere of influence and harder to reach. We are pushing them in this direction and I think we will end up regarding that as a mistake. But it's not like this is the first time that's happened.
You can join my talk next Wednesday, October 12th [3] to learn more about what I think with sources. It's the first one listed. This particular question is not the focus, but it is related. I'd also recommend listening to free speech defenders such as Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, and Jonathan Rauch, to name a few [4]. They've all spoken at length about this via many forms of media, books, podcasts, conferences, etc. Anyone interviewed on the So to Speak podcast is also great, particularly the earlier episodes where they bring in the older generations who've been defending free speech for their entire lives.
The evidence is there, but every time there is a new technology it takes time to collect. You can instead consider a principled approach based on what you know works between individuals. Jonathan Rauch makes a great case for this in his books and speaking.
> I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated.
I think this is true! Yet, the more we censor, the more concentrated the echo chambers become, both the ones you agree with and the ones with whom you disagree. So IMO we must stop regarding "ugly" forums as a bad thing to be avoided. We all have difficult conversations in the real world, and I think curating the online world to look nice and pretty only provides more evidence to the idea that our current "solution" to online disagreements isn't working and appears to be infecting the real world.
> The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it.
That is evidence that it's popular, not that it is a good idea.
> (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
I agree, and I think that has the unfortunate side effect of hiding some useful rebuttals, as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread [5].
> So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
I'd say the jury's out on how to effectively moderate fora. We're ju...
This is my understanding of their analysis, based on a fairly shallow read:
> Are accounts being created on an alternative platform after being suspended?
A: Yes, 59% of Twitter users and 76% of Reddit users moved to Gab.
> Do suspended users become more toxic if they move to another platform?
A: Reddit users became more toxic on Gab. 60% of Twitter users became less toxic and 20% became much more toxic, although the most toxic posts
contained hatred against Twitter and complaints that their free speech and rights had been denied. (Toxicity was determined using Google's Perspective API.)
> Do suspended users become more active if they move to another platform?
A: Yes. A manual inspection determines that at least some of that increased activity is complaints about being suspended.
> Do suspended users gain more followers on the other platform?
A: Although users tend to become more toxic and more active after they move to the alternative platform, their audience decreases.
I think you could read this either way. Deplatforming is ineffective because it "radicalizes" those have been deplatformed. Or; deplatforming is effective because it reduces the spread of toxicity. Your post above is mainly focusing on the former; my post focused mainly on the latter.
The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
> You didn't actually answer my request for evidence, though
I agree with the NYT that censorship is rooted in fear [1].
Evidence is aplenty of the benefits of open discourse. In real-world places where open discourse is encouraged, people and ideas thrive. Also, saying "you need to be protected from other people's words" is not a winning argument in the public sphere. People want to be trusted to make their own decisions about how to feel, not have the importance of speech dictated to them.
It's really only a small minority who seek protection against certain viewpoints, and they too want to be able to express themselves. Unfortunately, censorship is also used against them, often with prejudice and without their knowledge [2]. History has shown how this has happened over and over, for example in "Don't Be a Sucker" (1947) [3]. If you choose to ignore it, that is your prerogative. History is evidence.
> I think is the study we've been discussing
Thanks for linking it, that's not the one I had in mind. To expand on my previous comment about how we should accept "ugly" forums, I think measuring toxicity is problematic. For one thing, it's a subjective measure. One man's trash is another's treasure. For example, here's an article from someone making a case in favor of Kiwi Farms [4]. But also, censorship can chill what people state publicly. I already shared Axios's write-up of a recent study that shows that these days, what people say publicly does not align with what they say privately [5].
> The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
FWIW, I think moderation is fine if the author is informed of actions taken against their content. That is not happening consistently on any of the platforms though, and hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of users are impacted. Load 10 tabs of randomly selected active Reddit users on Reveddit [6]. Five or more will have had a comment removed within their first page of recent history. Almost none of these will have been notified, and all of their removed comments are shown to them as if they're not removed. I just did it and got 7. Reddit last reported 450 million monthly active users. And, Facebook moderators have a "Hide comment" button that does the same thing:
> "Hiding the Facebook comment will keep it hidden from everyone except that person and their friends. They won’t know that the comment is hidden, so you can avoid potential fallout." [7]
It's hard for me to believe that this has had no negative impact on discourse, particularly when our recent difficulties communicating across ideologies seem to align quite well with the introduction of social media. Things like this 1998 Firing Line episode [8] simply are not happening today. The depth of conversations these days is shallow and combative.
> I'll let you have the last word. Best wishes.
I will reject (graciously, I hope) your offer. I think continued discussion is the way forward.
So, I like the voting system on social media because it surfaces good comments.
But I don't like when the vote ranks stifle good retorts, which is what has now happened here. Logged out users won't see this entire thread of replies because the comment to which you are replying is marked "dead".
Thanks, I did so in this case, though in general I'm wary of that button. The system could count against me if I "vouch" for something that people later downvote. We don't knowfor sure what happens because they don't tell us how it works.
> When one group wants to eliminate open society and civility, how is possible to have an open and civil debate with them?
Roger Baldwin, founder of the now gone-astray ACLU, said this [1],
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
There is no nuance in this debate. Roger made those statements in 1982. The only access to broad public announcement was via TV, controlled by private companies for the most part.
Today platforms have the same choices about what to air or not. Free Speech is also about not forcing people to say things they do not want, it is also about not forcing platforms to broadcast lies.
Where we pretend that groups like the ACLU didn't have to go to court for that, and that it's always allowed for everyone and it's never a huge problem.
Yes. Imagine complaining about not being able to sit at a particular lunch counter, or getting the seat on the bus you want. I mean, dude, there are other seats and better places to eat. Why are you eating at diners anyway?
We have always made a distinction between things that are not the fault of the individual (skin color, gender, ethnicity) and things that are (speech and actions). Which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
As usual, this stops the conversation cold, because it doesn't fit anyone's narrative. Free speech advocates want to claim that the marketplace of ideas will lead people to good ideas, while people for restricting speech want to claim that it's possible to restrict speech without going full-on totalitarian dystopia. The case of religion shows quite starkly that both narratives completely fail to describe a central example with great historical and current relevance.
Free speech is a good idea for game-theoretic reasons. That's it. Free speech lets people fight it out with only the occasional riot and attempted overthrow of the republic. That's better than the alternative.
This one is in flux, I suspect. In the past, people were born into their religion, and today, at least in the west, it is becoming more common for people to choose their religion. So I guess this is the exception that proves the rule.
When people with the wrong opinions (on who knows what, frankly, the list keeps changing) get banned from banking systems the very same people will be in the thread defending the sanctions and censorship action.
“Just build your own bank.”
“Just build your own currency.”
It's like the tech tree from the Civ games in reverse.
To develop 'Social Network' or 'Digital Currencies', you need 'Server Farm', 'Internet', and 'Power Grid', and to have those you need everything from 'Intercontintental Data Cables' to 'Semiconductor Manufacturing', and way back to extraction and refining of raw materials..
They do it to regular people every day, I was banned countless times from websites when I was a stupid kid, and more than a few times as an adult. No one cares until it happens to famous racists. I wonder why.
I'm (still) strongly sympathetic to Baldwin's point of view, but the GP also has a valid point, in that liars have gained most of the benefit of the civil-libertarian point of view since the rise of the Internet. These days, a lie can literally travel around the world before the truth makes it out past the firewall.
There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
> I'm (still) strongly sympathetic to Baldwin's point of view, but the GP also has a valid point, in that liars have gained most of the benefit of the civil-libertarian point of view since the rise of the Internet. These days, a lie can literally travel around the world before the truth makes it out past the firewall.
That's largely made possible by censorship. When you counter such views in groups that support them, you are likely to be silenced without your knowledge. Social media sites have built a whole suite of tools to aid in the removal of such content [1], and such tools are available to people from all ideologies. You might think that evens things out, but the secretive nature of the tools means that only a handful of people, relatively speaking, know how it all works. That creates a new "us vs. them" mentality, and we need to find our way back to a concept of shared humanity.
> There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
Social media today, like the printing press in its infancy, is understood and managed by a small number of people. In that environment you can still take a principled stance to argue against censorship and for transparency.
>"That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it.""Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
I'm not aware of any group intending to overthrow a government or otherwise do harm which was allowed to recruit and spread their propaganda as aggressively and freely as possible, and which was thwarted in their aims by nothing more than civil discourse. I don't know what experience he believes to be contrary to that classic argument, but that of the Nazis and Communists ain't it.
It certainly doesn't seem to work with modern propaganda or conspiracy theory. I'm certain QAnon and anti-vaxxers have been presented with arguments contrary to their claims, and those of white supremacists and anti-semites have been litigated for a century or more, and yet not only do they persist, but are experiencing a modern renaissance.
Show me an example where this proposition that "letting them all talk" is the best way to prevent organized violence and mayhem at scale. I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.
> I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.
Yes, the famous events that come from letting everyone speak: book burnings and death camps. If we could just burn enough books, we could keep books from being burned forever. If we silence enough people, we can keep people from being silenced.
Elaborate on your examples of how the powerful allowing the weak to speak leads to book burnings and death camps, and I'll give you something more detailed than a clear, concise response.
The argument is for deplatforming, so it would be more accurate to say, “in order to prevent book burnings, we must not give them any assistance in publicizing their thoughts.”
Deplatforming doesn’t forcibly prevent speech, it just pushes it to the margins. You can still publish your book in favor of book burnings, but, in a deplatforming world, no major publisher would publish it, so you’d have to do a small independent print run that would likely be ignored.
This is the way the world has always worked. Publishers (including TV channels, newspapers, etc.) have always exercised discretion over what they thought was worthy to publish. What’s different today is that the human content moderation has largely disappeared, which has allowed the marginal voices (antivax on both left and right, QAnon, etc.) to flourish.
Edit: That’s not to say this content moderation has been perfect. It allows small communities to exercise behavior that the larger society finds abhorrent, such as refusing service to people of color. And so laws are passed regulating what small communities can do, which understandably pisses them off. Human systems are messy; there’s no absolutist answer that works, either in unbridled control or unbridled tolerance.
> > "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
There's a much shorter version of this sentiment that people loved to use during the 2020 riots: "violence is the language of the unheard"
This has been the rule throughout human history, and it’s unfortunate that people (some in this thread even) are discovering the first principles for the first time for why we strive to apply the same standards to everyone, and not do carve outs. Unfortunately, politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from power. When elite opinion makers decide that certain things are okay, those things are okay … like mass protests and rioting during a pandemic.
>When one group wants to eliminate open society and civility, how is it possible to have an open and civil debate with them?
In the US, there is not one group trying to do that, but a multitude of groups, some who are in power and some who are not, most of whom deny that they are trying to do what you charge them with.
One group also set alight many businesses, destroyed property, incited violence, and destroyed the lives of countless individuals in the last two years. The point remains: there are a multitude of groups. Focusing on a single one only shows a blatant and ignorant bias.
There are a multitude of groups doing that, but they're not equally dangerous now. The problem is that the hard right has control of the Republican Party. The hard left does not have control of the Democratic Party. If US democracy falls in the next few years, it's almost guaranteed to be because of the hard right.
I'm not surprised, but continually amazed that people actually and truly think this way; that there's only one insidious group that are the problem, and only they will be the cause of disaster. Take the blinders off, there's more at work here that petty tribalism.
Sometimes there is only one truly insidious group, and to suggest otherwise is the false balance fallacy. That group's supporters will think of themselves as just, and even see themselves as victims. It's always like that with authoritarian movements.
Can you pleas explain how that bothersiderism logic would not be equally valid for defending the Nazi party in the 30s? You must believe it’s not valid because it being valid means the comment is gas lighting.
The only thing surer than debates on the internet eventually leading to nazi comparisons is that some commenter will then cite godwins law.
It’s actually godwins second law of nature. how pertinent nazis are to the topic is not relevant, Godwin’s law will be brought up and very often inappropriately as even Godwin himself has noted.
“Godwin's law itself can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, when fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.[12]”
“Godwin himself has also criticized the overapplication of the law, claiming that it does not articulate a fallacy, but rather is intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate and hyperbolic comparisons“
And yet it doesn't make it any less true. The correlation exists, just as tides to moon phase, and doesn't negate the existence of either. HN has turned into that one site where any remotely ideological topic, any minutely political (cue the "everything is political crowd") will invariably bring out the "BUT NAZIS" replies. It's insufferable.
A. I wasn’t the one who broached the topic of nazis
B. This is a comment page about censorship and this thread in particular is about one party trying to end open society
So nazis are a natural comparison, and the valid comparison was attempted to be censored and avoided by bringing up an internet meme in exactly the way the originator has criticized. But hey knowing the meme is a get out of jail free card, no civil discourse needed!
Just admit that the comment would have been a valid defense of the nazi party in its ramp up. No meme-ing out of that and there’s been no attempt to deny it, just distract from it.
The problems often start historically when one group comes to believe that some other group wants to “eliminate open society and civility” (or so some other evil thing), and thus feel justified in using any means to oppose them. Never forget the bad guys almost always think they are good guys fighting evil.
I mean the commonly understood contextual meanings of those words. Dictionaries are useful when you're unfamiliar with the words in context. I trust that you, being a native Anglophone, know what those words mean in the contexts they're used. However, if you're thinking of specific examples where you expect our understood meanings of those words to differ, I'll entertain those examples.
Also, violence isn't the only bad thing people do which justifies some sort of retribution.
I agree with you if you mean that the individuals that first do the targeted group violence are the bad guys. But not if you generalize blame to the group.
Just about any large group of people, whether defined by by race, religion, nationality, or creed, will have bad individuals in it. And so the bad guys can almost always point to people from the other group that "started it".
When someone from the out-group commits an atrocity, it is just more proof of how bad that group is. When someone from the in-group commits an atrocity, it is an exception.
Sure, and those groups almost always believe they are the good guys, fighting against some group that does and exists to do bad things.
The point is, if you are going to write of a group (presumably, the other political party) as bad beyond redemption, you better have a damn good reason to think that you are the historical exception.
100% except perhaps we don't agree on who is doing that.
Look at marjorie taylor green's most recent insanity.
"accusation in a mirror."
and it goes far beyond a handful of loud extremists who are given megaphones from the 'less-extreme' in their party (are they really the minority then?)
the Fox news led contingent have been screaming this 'under attack' narrative.
and they are openly setting the conditions for IRL violence.
Othering trans & queer people. freaking attacking drag queens which is SO silly..
claiming we are pedo groomers who give out hormones to tweens like candy. saying your identity will no longer be people like you in the future, straight & cis.
child abusers seem to be the one class that it's still acceptable to openly wish violence upon.
telling their audience to 'take a stand' or else lose their entire existence & identity produces extremism and prods armed extremists to show up in real life.
they are bringing guns to shut down libraries, ban books, pile into vans to go attack pride, passing discriminatory laws.
not even touching on poc, immigrants, & attacks on democracy/jan 6; i'm focusing on my identity since I can better speak to it. which btw funny how there is always an eminent caravan invasion (a specifically chosen word) right before the election.
we have always been victims of violence.
but this is a much bigger boiling kettle and one group is stoking the fire.
i clearly see this fear in the eyes of a large & heavily armed group.
they think they are under attack. what will they do to 'protect themselves and save our country'? what happens when the kettle boils over?
Once one realizes that tolerance follows the model of a peace treaty rather than a moral precept, these apparent dilemmas resolve themselves. Treaties only protect parties who abide by their terms. There is no contradiction in being intolerant of intolerance.
I am becoming more sympathetic to this, too. Real liberals (not necessarily leftists, although perhaps so) need to start punching back, hard. Slippery slopes are real and we're on one.
To reinforce the peace treaty of civil society everyone needs to push back against these “defections from peace.” It’s social contract stuff, too.
The alternative looks like a replay of all the worst stuff from social repression to actual nuclear war-given the misinformation propping up the Russian invasion of Ukraine and nuclear threats.
> There is no contradiction in being intolerant of intolerance.
There is, because literally every viewpoint is an implicit repudiation of some set of values, ie. aka intolerance. The whole point of tolerance is the recognition of this fact and that resolving such differences requires dialogue (edit: resolving them without violence that is).
As Popper said, only those views that directly incite violence or cannot be kept in check by public opinion should be silenced, otherwise you put the whole enterprise of tolerance in jeopardy.
> In its application to statements about groups, the German law of insult
had a development very similar to the Anglo-American law of libel.1 The
Supreme Court had decided at an early date that statements about a class
of people were punishable only if it could clearly be established that they
were directed against definite individuals. An insulting remark about "Jews
generally" was not considered within the statute. This view was reaffirmed
in 1931 in a case in which a general attack on the Jews was held to be "not
directed in a sufficiently recognizable manner against individual Jews."
Similarly, an attack against the "German Jews" was held not to be suffi-
ciently restricted, although in a few instances persons were convicted for
insulting the Jewish inhabitants of small communities
Even known extremists, posting lies about people who were targetted for being Jewish, were let off, where the same lie about any random person could have led to a year in prison:
> In one of several cases
against Julius Streicher, the editor of the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer,
a fine of 400 marks (then less than $100) was levied for an article which
stated that a Jewish attorney, Dr. Wassertriidinger of Nuremberg, had
committed perjury. The opinion of the court was that in spite of the seri-
ousness of the libel and of a prior conviction of Streicher, no prison sentence
be inflicted because "the defendant is a fanatic whose statements cannot
be taken too seriously." Similar tenderness in meting out punishment was
frequently explained by the characterization of the defendants as zealots.
> Furthermore,
the immunity of the members of the Reichstag often protected Nazi depu-
ties against criminal prosecution. Those deputies became the so-called re-
sponsible editors of many newspapers—frequently one deputy was the
editor of several newspapers—and thus made criminal prosecution for
many libelous publications impossible. Although the Reichstag could waive
the immunity of its members, it did so infrequently and then only after
long delays.
So it looks like we tried not censoring them, and suprisingly, it didn't work.
That's not what I wrote. I said he was already a popular figure whose views should be publicly refuted. The fact that he later became a presidential contender isn't Yale's fault, but rather the unfortunate result of a lack of willingness to let the bad ideas see themselves out the door.
> "Haters in the end bury themselves if you let them talk" - Jonathan Rauch
He was challenged by most, but not all, newspapers. It clearly didn't work as we're still dealing with the same BS 60 years later.
But sure, the real problem is Psychologists trying to adress systematic racism in their field. That's worth resigning about. Because they're trying to hide the truth, but also we should let them speak, in our academic Psychological publications, because it's obvious nonsense.
Just want to point out that you became unilaterally unhinged over the course of this exchange while. the other commenter wrote calmly.
Also, how do you propose to convince people of this clearly-objective “truth” that you know, if you silence them from questioning and debating it? Do you think that’s ever worked?
> Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers.
No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values. Those value-based disputes cannot be resolved by open and civil discourse alone, and we know that racists have a tendency to abuse such spaces through techniques such as emotional rhetoric and Gish galloping.
> No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Otherwise, as in the real world until now, people find each other and network. You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values who could speak to people who want to listen to them.
Doesn't freedom of association also entail freedom of non-association? If an organisation doesn't want to provide an individual with a platform, then they are executing their freedom of association.
I'm not advocating for some global censorship entity.
Freedom of (non) association does not extend to protected groups in public spaces. Businesses can no longer exclusively serve white people, for example, since their stores are considered public accomodations.
Ideology is not a protected class, however. In the case of Haidt, they are free to not present any research at conferences unless it advances their definition of equity, and he has no choice but to go along with it or walk away.
It's worth pointing out that they are not explicitly turning down non-equity-focused research, but that the existence of the question is his interpretation of an ideological pressure to conform.
That freedom of public accommodation is under attack.
If it even existed in the first place; there are plenty of laws that expressly allow discrimination in deference to 'religious beliefs.'
Courts, & the Supreme Court in particular, are giving far more weight to 'christian freedom' at the expense of the rest of us.
Cases include recent PrEP ruling, insane football prayer ruling that willfully ignored facts, bathroom & sports laws targeting kids. crazy ruling on prayers in court.
Adoption discrimination (de-facto govt by transitive property. we have to stop outsourcing government to contractors, especially when it makes religious orgs the only avenue).
Upcoming ruling from CO which will probably allow even more queer discrimination.
that 'pressure to conform' is and has historically been one way, giving one class the legal go ahead to discriminate in the name of some skewed idea of christian ideals
I'm referencing the many other classes that are perfectly legal to discriminate against. and the allowable discrimination is becoming broader.
But this disagreement highlights this major problem the US faces.
We live in two increasingly separate realities with different 'facts', where obvious is totally different based on your identity.
the one religious non-belief class example I gave is the football coach prayer case.
to me it's an obvious overreach and clearly breaks secular education norms (and past scotus rulings).
to such an obvious degree that the minority (on the court, majority in public opinion) broke precedence and put photos directly refuting the 'facts' the majority claim are truth.
that's also a bit spurious. i don't think anyone is arguing that churches must be forced to interview (or hire) other religions.
but the majority does believe that the state & courts shouldn't create laws that expressly allows someone to discriminate or refuse to provide service to someone else just because they are gay or trans or use different pronouns. or deny an adoption. or disallow kids from playing incredibly low states high school sports. or ban books. or not talk about gender & sexuality. i keep using queer-centric issues because that's my identity and I can speak to it better than race/trans issues. there are plenty of examples there too.
it's minority religion dictating laws that affect our lives and explicitly allowing those beliefs to take away rights from the rest of us.
>Ideas, especially those that stoke resentments, are like viruses.
The problem is that people make statements like this but apply them selectively. E.g., platforms like major news networks are happy to give airtime to the claim that people alive today, who never owned slaves and are very likely not descended from anyone who did, must pay reparations to others alive today who were never enslaved and may well not be descended from slaves. These same platforms also give airtime to those claiming all societal ills stem from one ethnic group or another (as long as it's the "right" ethnic group being blamed).
This incredibly skewed double standard isn't fooling anyone.
Another measure might be the extent to which it leads to an unequal distribution of knowledge. Censorship can be seen as means of preventing misinformation, and sometimes quite effective at that, but a potential negative byproduct is limiting the output of (interpretable) factual information.
>I'm not saying that censorship is just or desirable. Just that it works.
Does it though? Ideas are hard to kill. Just because you stop people from saying something in public, does not mean they aren't talking about it in private. In fact, oftentimes people even assume the thing you can't talk about must be really important or else they'd let you talk about it. And in turn, it holds more powerful and spreads further. I don't think censorship is really effective at stopping ideas
You say ideas are like viruses. Since when has trying to stop viruses worked?
One common characteristic amongst the people involved in today's standard angry mobs is a total inability to defend their opinion, and a total unwillingness to engage. Instead, they snipe by repeating things they sort of remember someone else saying and post memes, then disappear when engaged. A kind of personal deplatforming, where they don't allow contrary opinions to have access to their ears.
The way you learn how to defend your opinion is to engage with people who have different opinions, not having affirmation parties with people who are predisposed to agree with you about everything.
With the beneficial side effect of sometimes revealing that you are in fact wrong, thereby allowing you to improve your understanding. It’s sad and telling that people don’t seem to consider this possibility.
He's a black guy who went out of his way to befriend KKK members, and many of them ended up leaving the KKK when they realized he didn't fit what they were told about black people.
Censorship would not have helped, they had to be shown that they were wrong. That's what "sunlight is the best disinfectant" means.
From what I can tell most racists are either born into it (grew up surrounded by it) or fall into it looking for a place to fit in. Mere exposure to an idea is insufficient. I propose you test this 'idea virus' theory yourself. Go find a racist podcast and see how many episodes it takes for you to start thinking that jews and black people are inferior. I'm going to go ahead and guess that no amount of hate speech will cause you to think that way, but feel free to try to prove me wrong.
Exposure is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition. But exposure increases the propagation. You have this realization yourself when you say "grew up surrounded by", which is one way people get exposed.
There are many case studies in the real world.
"Go find a racist podcast and see how many episodes it takes for you to start thinking that jews and black people are inferior."
That is what happens, though. Not with probability one, but with a probability decently above zero.
Rwandan genocide being incited over radio, 1930s/1940s Germany being incited by the press and speeches, same with 1930s Japan.
Many mass shooters that targeted specific ethnicities were radicalized online. Dylan Roof. Also the recent guy that wrote the N word on his gun. These were white nationalists. The latter said it wasn't his offline world, it was purely online where he got radicalized.
You're just making assertions that it's not like this but our best understanding of ideas that they are social and contagious.
You say 'exposure' but then you discuss powerful orators and crowd dynamics. These aren't the same at all.
Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics, and I don't think that people who study genetic factors of IQ are more likely to be Nazi-sympathetic. It's not like the Nazis were scientific racists, they were pseudo-scientific racists - they started out racist and went on a quest for the appearance of proof.
The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway and then prove that "deplatforming" works to reduce overall belief in or following of that path. Censorship tends to have a whiplash effect to those who notice it which is rarely taken into account by those who preach censorship. (Which is what you'd expect if the people who were doing the censoring didn't care about the issues and were simply using them to bolster their control of the censoring mechanism...)
Yes, racism is bad for the believer and for society but there is no evidence censorship could help and a ton of evidence that it is ruinous to democracies.
> You say 'exposure' but then you discuss powerful orators and crowd dynamics. These aren't the same at all.
I didn't just discuss that. I also discussed mass shooters who were radicalized by these ideas that they read in online forums. No orators.
> Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics
Scientific racism is just one instantiation of it. Not every bad outcome of racism is going to be traced back to scientific racism.
But I will say that scientific racism was a part of Nazi thought. And the mass shooter who wrote the N word on his barrel, and Dylan Roof, were inspired by scientific racism. You can read his manifesto for yourself, or you can see Dylan Roof's interview on Youtube.
> The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway
I really don't see the point of this. I'm not even talking about science or exclusively about scientific racism. You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
> [scientific racism] You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
The whole article is about a professor being forced to politicize and limit his research, presumably because it would be used to justify wrong-think.
To restate more generally though, the censoring side needs to prove the 'reading viewpoints -> copying actions' pipeline. Would a plainly written description of Hitler's beliefs create nazis of those who read it or is it the oration and the cult tactics that do that? If a nazi quotes a book in support of their views does that mean the book would cause someone without those views to become a nazi?
Sun Tzu counsels to know your enemy, how would this work if they were censored?
If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
Researchers and activists spend countless hours doing exactly that, listening to what racists are saying, lurking in their online communities, and analyzing their rhetoric and membership. It doesn't turn them into racists. How is it you think that they don't become radicalized? It's not because they have some kind of power that makes them immune to idea viruses.
If you're too afraid to dive deep into racist speech why not start with something a little less unpleasant and attend a religious service of a faith you don't belong to. It's fascinating to do, most places of worship are very welcoming to newcomers, and again, you really won't be magically converted.
Yes, some people who walk into a church do end up becoming members, just like some people who stumble onto racist online communities do end up joining, but in both cases it's not because exposure to the message has infected them. The actual message itself (in both cases) generally isn't terribly convincing, logical, or consistent. It's very often because they offer people who feel alone and lost a place to be accepted, something besides themselves to blame for their troubles, a clear and narrow path for how to move forward, and a comforting narrative and identity.
If you're happy with who you are and how your life is going, have friends/family who support you, and strong convictions you have nothing to fear from listening to people whose views you strongly disagree with and often you'll have a lot to gain from it.
> If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
I just gave you evidence that it does by pointing to specific case studies throughout history. You then proceed with an assertion that it doesn't, backed up by you saying that less than 100% of people who view racist material become racists (well, of course, not everyone that's exposed to a virus becomes infected). This discussion is going nowhere.
> I'm not saying that censorship is just or desirable. Just that it works.
But it doesn't, unless it is extensive/complete. It just seems like it does because censored media is constantly reassuring us that the censorship is working, and that all reasonable people enjoy it.
You can't destroy ideas by censoring them from the largest outlets, you have to perpetually search out the smallest outlets (e.g. open everyone's mail) to make sure that these ideas aren't still infecting people, multiplying exponentially. You can't relax anywhere, for a moment. The only surefire way to kill or silence ideas is to kill or silence the people who hold them. That means you have to have systems in place to detect stray ideas, and processes in place to eliminate them.
It does. Look at Alex Jones and Trump. Their reach was significantly cut after deplatforming.
It's not about surefire ways to silence someone. You're setting up a burden that's too high for no good reason. It's about whether it works in practice to an extent.
this is the rather discomforting truth of it - consensus (therefore social change) is achieved through eliminating alternative views, something which can be achieved by the hammer and anvil of relentless repetition of the approved view and de-platforming / silencing of the disapproved view. It is certainly not achieved through some sort honourable battle of ideas
In both cases the application thereof, while it will not assist at all with getting to the truth of any issue, will certainly allow you to manipulate those you subject to it to tell you whatever you want to hear.
Of course, as soon as they are removed the subject will typically recant, and often overcorrect in the exact opposite direction, in light of the exposure to loathed coerced manipulative strategies.
Sunlight doesn't have that problem. People may make mistakes and come to the wrong conclusion, but at least they won't double down on their erroneous position as a retributive strategy for the coercive manipulation to which they have been subjected.
But hey, maybe some ends are just so awful they justify any means in pursuit of their prevention, be it torture, censorship or whatever. Certainly lots of people these days clearly seem to think so.
yes, but the persons point wasn't that its good/bad but wether its the best disinfectant (in my interpretation that means effectiveness)
so, censorship may be morally bad or wrong and also very effective, and its the fact that it is effective and working is why there is a very loud objection to it
Censorship is not the best disinfectant at all;it had a fundamental issue: who decides what should be censored.
Now you and I, hey we know what’s good and morale so that’d be fine. But when it’s someone else who is in control, as it will be, then the “wrong” things get censored.
This is an excellent example of public discourse during a moral panic. We seem to be prone to them as a society, and every generation has its own. Today racism, before that, Satanism, Communism, and alcohol.
> You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values
We all have a strong moral obligation to root out "reprehensible people with the wrong values." If you think otherwise then you don't understand what the word "reprehensible" means.
That's an excuse to dehumanize people. Labeling people rather than deeds is simply an announcement that you're willing to compromise your own ethics in order to attack that person. It's what's really happening when we label people as terrorists.
As pharrington points out, your words imply that you agree with me that terrorists are reprehensible people, or you are trying to argue that terrorists don't actually exist. Which is it?
Would you call someone who's primary goal is to due good deeds a "good person"? Would you call someone who's primary goal is to due reprehensible deeds a "reprehensible person"?
People certainly can change over time, but someone's state at a given time is what that person actually is at the time.
It's not about shaming anyone since most of the people targeted don't give a crap about the opinions of the wokes and the woke-adjacent.
Right now the target is to deprive them of employment. You can at the very least be honest about it.
That only works when you have mob behind you. What will you do when you find yourself disagreeing with the majority and they apply this technique to you?
Shame them for their bad behavior. It does not matter how many of them there are. It does not matter if I am the only person in the world who knows what right behavior is, I still must follow my conscience.
That's not how shaming works. If you try to shame someone who doesn't think they've done anything wrong, which will be case in this hypothetical scenario, they will not feel shame. They'll just think you are wrong. If a mob of people engages in public shaming, you probably still won't make that person feel shame, but you can cause them to feel humiliated and isolated and so likely silence them, along with others who might have otherwise agreed with them publicly.
Shaming is a way of silencing people who disagree with you and that only works if you do it as a mob. Otherwise you're just making yourself feel good by expressing your disapproval. Mob shaming at least accomplishes something, individual shaming is just a lazy substitute for persuasion.
>The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Not true! Just being banned from significant swaths of social media has frequently forced many prominent Nazis/alt-righters out of business. Before Kiwifarms recently had all of their major issues, they were already finding it difficult to keep the site running as a result of continued pressure on every host they switched to.
Regardless of the accuracy of your classification of KiwiFarms, they aren't gone, just moved into the onion. And for conspiracy-minded people that's not a negative sign.
It also introduces readers to the entirety of the uncensored internet all at once, the most 4-chan thing imaginable, which is somewhat counter to the "limit exposure to disinformation" goal being claimed by the original deplatformers.
To your point, IIRC, the impact of deplatforming has been studied. Like when that troll Milo got bounced. It greatly diminished their reach and impact.
Sadly, some trolls (Alex Jones) have enough juice to spin off their own bespoke hate machines.
> Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values.
On one hand, you are acknowledging that some values are not based on rationality, and on the other hand you think they should be imposed upon those who don't share them by censorship?
It's not a problem if someone with a big audience advocates for and does not use rational arguments, as long as that thing is relatively harmless. (Let's say Bono advocates for peace, or a local group wants a new playground because it would warm their hearts. Or a group wants lower taxes, or a different group wants to tax the rich more. Even this last one, while advocates discrimination, it's not against a disadvantaged group, it's not judging something unchangeable like skin color, IQ, etc.)
Of course it's never good to allow bad arguments into the "marketplace of ideas", because then they'll take over the market, but unfortunately that ship has sailed, or likely never arrived.
> It's not a problem if someone with a big audience advocates for and does not use rational arguments, as long as that thing is relatively harmless. (Let's say Bono advocates for peace [..]
Q: Who gets to define "relatively harmless"?
"Advocating for peace" sounds pretty harmless, yet if you dare to mention any specifics - at least this year - it seems supporting it is deemed anything but harmless. Before my time, but seems the same applied in 1964 – 1973.
Descriptively history, normatively society through whatever mechanisms it comes up with. (Eg. in the US it's done through an "by default everything is allowed, and SCOTUS can make exceptions" mechanism.)
I don't think there's anything wrong with advocating for peace, from a free speech aspect, especially if someone is sincere. (Even if someone is completely brainwashed by whatever propaganda. And even if peace itself is a super meaningless term. After all wouldn't a totalitarian world government bring peace? Etc, etc.)
All we need to do to end piracy or pornography is "no-platform" it, right?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Rational or not, it's better for bad ideas (ignoring the even more pernicious question of who decides which ideas are "bad") to be examined than have them fester in dark corners.
I suspect that the answer is "it depends on the culture". China seems to have a lot more control over the spread of anti-CCP ideas than Iran has over the spread of anti-regime ideas, and it isn't because of Iranian censors trying less or having worse tools. But the Iranian population seems to be much less conforming and more ready to rebel.
It's still somewhat effective in Iran, it's just not sufficiently effective to prevent protests.
The US has a number of natural experiments that show that censorship is effective at silencing someone. Look at what happened to Trump and Alex Jones after they were deplatformed. Their reach was cut a lot and that wasn't even state censorship.
Russia had a natural experiment after Gorbachev lifted speech codes. People described the renaissance of new ideas being spoken that were previously stifled. Censorship worked.
It makes sense that it works given our understanding of social contagion. People aren't designed to believe facts. They're designed to join a team and believe whatever stuff their team believes in. Things like taboos or censorship or blacklists are effective, however repellent they may be.
The Christian right could make identical arguments, and a few decades ago had the political power to deplatform” those who disagreed with them. Why is your argument different?
Because in a liberal democracy - or anywhere for that matter - not all ideas are of equal value. The same goes for Putin's Russia as it does for, say, Finland. You have to decide what you stand for, a culture has to decide what it wants to value.
Some ideas and actions are quite obviously, objectively anti-life, pro-misery.
Two people saying the same thing or doing the same thing are not inherently achieving the same outcome, pursuing the same end goal, arriving at their ideas from the same place, and so on. All of that matters in a big way.
A liberal, human rights respecting democracy with a constitution is objectively better if human well-being is your standard, than a theocracy. We have many centuries of experimentation and result at this point, no guessing is required.
Which is to say, deplatforming two very different people that are saying entirely different things and attempting to accomplish very different end goals, is not the same thing just because they're both the act of deplatforming.
Shooting and killing an innocent person at random on the street is not the same as shooting and killing a robber that has broken into your home and is intent on harming your family, despite the fact that they both involve you shooting and killing someone. The same exact moral principle is involved in the deplatforming premise.
“I’m right and they’re wrong” is a unpersuasive argument, and doesn’t provide a foundation for deciding the rules in a pluralistic democracy. What best serves “human well being” is highly disputed. How do you create a framework for groups to cooperate democratically without agreeing in advance who is right?
The problem is that you’re begging the question. You’re assuming that maximizing individual freedom is what serves well being. Most humans disagree with that premise. Studies show, for example, that Christian conservatives are both happier and have more children than other Americans. Those are “objective” measures of “human well being.” Indeed, zooming out, nearly every highly individualistic, secular western society is in decline—to the point where they can’t even take care of their elderly population without importing religious Catholics from Latin America (in the US) or Muslims (Europe). “Ability to propagate one’s culture sustainably” certainly seems like at least one measure of success at serving human well being, no? And on that measure, modern "liberal democracies" are failing.
Now of course there are other ways to measure human well being, and liberal democracies do quite well on those measures. My point is that by 2022, it should be clear that people disagree on what constitutes a good life, and societal progress. In the last two decades, we've seen country after country reject secular liberal democracy. And even in the west, reaction is on the rise. A majority of Hindus, Afghans, and Iowans agree that San Francisco isn't their dream for the future of their own society. And if you want to dismiss that as "they're wrong and we're right," what you're advocating for looks more like a holy war than "liberal democracy."
I find that all groups including non-racist groups use emotional rhetoric to attract and maintain group bonds. An anti racist group cannot exist without racist groups and racist groups have little reason to exist without non-racist groups. Deplatforming one side kills the other side and without that balance they go hunting for people in the middle.
That is assuming everyone else is too stupid to make that decision for themselves.
Who gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't?
Our/society's rights and wrongs has greatly changed over time and that is only possible because of both good and bad ideas being heard.
No one person should be deciding what's acceptable for the whole of soceity. Every individual should hear different ideas, good, bad and terrible, and decide for themselves what/who they agree with.
>No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour.
They were doing this long before the Internet if that is what you mean! If you mean a platform as in showing up at a prestigious place, well being denied entrance is just as good, you just have your group stand outside and ask "What are they so afraid of? If our ideas are so bad/crazy/etc. can't they just easily shoot them down with social discourse?" and you get all the awareness and revision of the ideas that you want!
> The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience
If they were invited to speak then they already have an audience. Censoring them is working against the cause of fighting their ideas.
Protest or debate them if you consider their views reprehensible.
> "The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible..."
Uh...reprehensible by whom?
You do realize that what's "reprehensible" is extremely subjective, right? And the same tactics and standards that you are using to silence opinions you don't like can therefore just as easily be used against you and yours by people who find your opinions reprehensible.
That's the whole point of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas, it protects everyone's ability to speak freely. And then individuals can make up their own minds about what is "reprehensible" and choose whether THEY want to listen to it or not. In other words, people don't need you to be an arbiter of what is reprehensible for other adults.
> The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
Exactly. No platforming is a naked display of power without any pretence at principle. If you can keep the power forever, great. You win. If not, well, turnabout is fair play and if you have no attachment to free speech or the marketplace of ideas yourself and you couldn’t maintain power with the benefit of censorship you’re probably in for a bad time.
This specific institution claimed to have high academic credentials. One of the historical bonifides was the ability to hear an opposing view. It was thought that one could then argue back. Yale bouncing his presentation showed that they weren’t living up to their claimed standards.
Yale in the 1960s still had a secret Jewish Quota to limit the number of Jewish students they would enrol, as they had done for decades.
I'm not sure them inviting popular racists to speak against human rights is really a good look for them in that situation, nor an instant solution to centuries of systemic racism in America at that time, even if they made some really good points in the debate.
` Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south` Wow that's crazy, why was this Wallace figure so popular in the deep south? I vaguely remember there being some minor political movement around the 50s and 60s but I can't quite place my finger on it.
I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true. I regret not being more skeptical. I am fail. Please accept my most humble apology.
TLDR: Yale Political Union invites Wallace. President Kingman Brewster Jr blocks. Much drama. Including local black leaders and civil rights activists, who defended Wallace's appearance per principles of free speech and academic stuff. Brewster removes block. Two student groups reinvite Wallace. Wallace declines, though he did speak at other Ivy League schools.
Described more fully p104-106 in Hentoff's book "Free speech for me--but not for thee", which you cited.
Here's 4 more articles, to round out the reality-based version of that incident:
"Free Speech, Personified" NYT [2017] https://archive.ph/LvAHn About the 1963 incident, how Pauli Murray appealed to Brewster to let the white supremacist speak, and how Yale recommitted towards and continues to uphold free speech.
FWIW, I now don't understand your other cites. [2] Is just common sense. [3] Unrelated. [4] Might be broken.
Though I do agree with Jack Newfield that mocking racists and neoreactionaries should be avoided. We now know that right wing partisans are personally insulted when their leader is criticized or mocked. (Probably something about having their identity wrapped up in the demagogue. Who knows.) So mockery just drives those partisans further away.
For what? I don't think we conversed yet in this thread.
> I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true.
I can see that the context changed the meaning for you. Good thing I cited the source. For me, my original comment still rings true as a summary. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not speak at Yale.
There are a few errors in your TLDR. Kingman was provost at the time, not president, and it was reported that two groups of law students reinvited him, not two student groups.
> Donald Kagan reported that “two groups of law students issued another invitation to Wallace, reaffirming ‘the right of students to hear speakers of their own choosing without restraint or interference from those who would like to limit the right of free expression to those whose views coincide with theirs.’
It's not clear that Provost Brewster would've allowed Wallace to speak had he accepted the new invitation from these students. Also, the book describes how Brewster, later as president, accused an established student group of "playing games" with free speech. So it's not like he had a change of heart on the subject:
> "The occasion does not warrant departure from Yale’s principles of free speech. However, the use of free speech as a game, the lack of sensitivity to others, the lack of consideration for the community, and the lack of responsible concern for the university as an institution seem to me reprehensible..."
Regardless, it does not substantially change what happened. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not attend. Human relations aren't so easily Ctrl-Z'ed. It doesn't surprise me that some tried to reinvite him after the backlash. As you said, many in the community stood against Brewster's decision.
These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers, so it's interesting to look back at when this practice may have began. For awhile, the University of Chicago was a place where such debates were encouraged. A group of Harvard students jokingly ranked it as the least fun school, less fun than West Point, for that reason [1].
> FIRE is just another dark money funded group working on the reactionary project to roll back civil rights, assert corporate rule. and end democracy.
Wow. Just going to slip that in at the end there huh? That's quite a take down. What do you think is dark about it? They're a non-profit which makes them subject to much more scrutiny than private organizations.
As for "asserting corporate rule" and "ending democracy", I think that's a ridiculous claim. They exist to defend the free speech rights that the ACLU now declines to do, as I mentioned elsewhere [2]. If anything, they're responsible upholding democracy by encouraging people to choose words over violence.
> [4] Might be broken.
Works for me. It's the last page of their podcast listing as of now.
> Kingman was provost at the time, not president...
Oops. I initially wrote "Provost" and then changed it. I gotta learn to trust my gut more.
I stand by the rest of my reply.
> These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers...
And speakers show up to be shouted down. I think all the clapping and pwnage is lame.
But what do I know?
Remember when Bernie got shouted down in Seattle? As a Bernie fan, I was confused. Why would those kids mess with the candidate closest to their own views?
I actually know one of the persons who climbed onto the stage. Afterwards, I asked the Gen Z and Y people I know, and that person on stage, about the incident.
A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
But clearly something has changed. Direct action and confrontation are the norms again. For better or worse.
That's right. It can be a political win for you when people don't let you speak. The audience wants to hear both sides. Anyone who acts censoriously comes off as afraid of words, as if words are violence. And that's the exact argument that many (but not all) protesters today are using, that words are violence. We can instead draw a distinction between words and violence in order to encourage civil discourse. When you don't do that, the majority naturally suppresses minority views.
> A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
What happened with Bernie [1] was not as bad as other cases where violence occurred, but preventing a speaker from talking is still against free speech principles.
> I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
You don't think those protesters are genuinely expressing themselves?
I can understand how it's hard for some of them to see why blocking speakers is not a good idea. It is a bit similar to what the likes of MLK Jr. and John Lewis supported, direct action by standing in the way, as was done at the lunch counters. But I don't think either of those civil rights defenders would have supported the current movements that seek to displace speakers. They wanted their ideological opponents to speak so that they could respond with reason and win more followers.
Nonviolent direct action, in itself, is not a bad thing, but it's problematic when you use that method to prevent someone from speaking. Words are not violence, so speech should be acceptable. If it's not, then we need more speech to discover where the disconnect is. Free speech is an old idea, not a new one, and it's been proven to work. It takes some effort to understand, and I would argue that such challenging issues are the very ones worth taking the time to learn.
It’s an insightful critique that a mandated statement does force many academics to lie.
This is by grasping at straws trying to find a relationship between their decades-long research thrust and a shiny new requirement popular among the administrative class that is now in charge.
"most academic work has nothing to do with diversity, so these mandatory statements force many academics to betray their quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth by spinning, twisting, or otherwise inventing some tenuous connection to diversity."
> This is by grasping at straws trying to find a relationship between their decades-long research thrust and a shiny new requirement popular among the administrative class that is now in charge.
That's my biggest problem with it. It's not a bad idea by itself, but what makes it such a bad idea is that it seemingly gets shoved on top of everything. The idea that everything has to advance DEI is crazy, because some things just aren't related.
This is a classic boy who cried wolf problem. I'm sure there is racism in the US and we can certainly do a better job in advancing DEI in _some_ places. But when you go around yelling that everything has a DEI problem, you focus on the bullshit and miss the real issues.
> because of a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."
Wow and I thought psychology was a pseudo-science before!
Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter."
Such a great generalized insight. I’ve added the other criteria is winner take all conditions. The infighting over a small pie grows in intensity when only one person gets to take it home.
It's not. Instead, the infinitives of "cut" and "heal" are being used as noun phrases. The grammar is correct, and the switch if anything makes the sentence more punchy.
I would have preferred and opted for "to teach" instead, or probably the more emphatic yet more problematic "to teach the truth" but the sentence structure seems sound to me grammatically speaking.
We have laws for separation of church and state, they should be applied to this as any other. This is a religion.
It's the same as any religious group trying to impose their morality and beliefs on everyone else. To be a good person use the correct words and correct ideas as defined by us, the good people. If you disagree you are a bad person. Sinful, evil.
How can you disagree with the Holy Words, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity? You're either with us or against us. Sign here on the dotted line to confirm membership.
Private academic institutions (in the US-sense / not-government-funded) have no blanket obligation to separate from church, because they aren't the state.
> We have laws for separation of church and state, they should be applied to this as any other. This is a religion.
I'd say this about any sort of psychological theories that get intertwined into the justifications of power structures. The government should not be speculating about or creating rules about people's inner states. A government trying to change the minds of the population undermines democracy. An administration, fine, but not the government itself, with regulations paid for with tax money.
People should change governments. Governments shouldn't change people.
Like most religious analogies in this area, I completely agree with it as a framework but don't really follow the conclusions. If it's a religion, surely part of living in a secular society is allowing people to practice it freely, even if that means that some conferences (or professors, or schools) adopt explicit creeds. I do worry, because I think this particular religion is factually wrong in ways that matter a lot, but the idea that academics should never let their core beliefs impact their work isn't really realistic.
> the idea that academics should never let their core beliefs impact their work isn't really realistic.
I wanted to explore this a bit. Let's hypothesize that the academic is in some ISIL dominated region and the caliphate says that all research must further the goals of caliphate expansion and the spread of the religion. If an academic were to write an equivalent statement - is it their core belief, or are they simply saying the Emperor's clothes are beautiful?
Given the ideal role of academia in society, isn't the latter possibility quite harmful?
As Haidt says, it's harmful to the extent that it contradicts the core telos of academic research, but I don't think it's so harmful that research becomes impossible. Quite a lot of foundational scientific work comes from medieval Christian and Muslim sources whose religious authorities executed people for heresy.
In terms of some outcomes, yes, the research can continue unhindered if they say "Hallowed are the Ori".
Personally I feel like it makes for a very poor work environment, so I sympathize with many who are put in that position. I would prefer it if they did not feel constrained by this type of environment, so that their best work would emerge.
It would mean, however, that the state should not be explicitly backing the 'religion' in e.g. public universities, even though that's not the immediate issue at hand in the article.
The current events aren't really new though. Universities have been getting steadily more left wing over time, and there's no clear waterline at which point it became 'religion'.
So this can easily be taken as an argument that governments should be divorced from academia. No grants, no student loans, no degree requirements in public sector jobs. Which would be fine, I think. The arguments for why governments should fund academia look very weak these days. It was supposed to be about long range research that the private sector wouldn't fund, but what we see in practice is the private sector funding ultra-long-range research like self driving cars, AI, etc whilst public funding gets guzzled by oceans of non-replicable P-hacked ideology driven pseudo-science. And as for education, well, researchers often don't make the best teachers anyway.
What's kosher or not has different interpretations depending on which group (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform) you're talking to. The situation w/ Cheese and source of rennet is a frequent one where you'll see different groups following different rules.
There might be disagreement on some details between groups, but at least within a group the agreed standard is both clear upfront and objective.
This DEI standard currently sounds totally subjective with no guidance on what will pass muster, which is ideal substrate for the worst forms of corruption, nepotism, and abuses of power. You know, the very things academia is thought to fundamentally oppose.
Indian immigrant here who’s also not religious nor Christian. I don’t want either of them to be in schools or academia. DEI is a religion nowadays.
I personally find a lot of this DEI stuff repulsive and even racist. It seems like soft bigotry of low expectations. Also, forced inorganic ideology (in this case DEI) makes people develop disdain for the very groups who are supposed to be included while keeping it hidden. It creates a toxic environment.
It also makes me, a minority, wonder if I got an opportunity because of my skin color or because of my qualification.
Also, we live in a world of interracial marriages and families. Such DEI policies create friction in such families where the minority family member may get some opportunity while the non minority family member gets their opportunity taken away.
Also, DEI policies simply don’t make logical sense to me. Indians, Asians and Nigerian immigrants are excelling in high paying jobs. Tons of tech CEOs are Indians. It doesn’t make logical sense to push for it even more.
It seems to me that most people just want everything to be rational. It's just that the most idealogical on both sides are the ones that are always speaking.
However, if I may use the old allegory, in the deep darkness of this dei temple, there is light of the inner life. While the priests of the temple further their goals, power over others in particular, they, in fact, unknowingly implement the will above them, that's pushing our society away from individualism and towards some basic form of unity. Individualism has been necessary to develop intelligence, and now that we have it sufficiently developed, it's time to move on to the next milestone - a form of distributed mind. Once the transition is over, the priests of ignorance that thought themselves powerful will be overrun by the crowd.
In a recent example, the California ballot measure that would have legalized racial preferences in the state failed overwhelmingly, including in every majority Hispanic county in the state.
But explicit racial preferences are at the core of anti racism as Kendi formulates it:
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
Why does this hold so much appeal? Because the audience of Kendi’s book isn’t minorities, it’s white people. And white people who dominate university faculties and professional organizations love this because it empowers them.
For one thing, it empowers them to use race as a club against other white people.
For another, it gives them tremendous power to shape minority culture. They have the power to select the brown people who will “represent” their whole group. Want a Muslim American professor, but don’t like what Islam has to say about women or homosexuality? Easily handled. The white faculty in charge can just pick a Muslim who agrees with white people about those things instead of other Muslims. And for good measure they can be made to sign a diversity statement. No wonder it’s the dream for Elizabeth Warren types.
> In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.
IMO it's all because of virtue signaling. I would say the majority of people that push this stuff don't really care about DEI, they only care because it makes then seem righteous and virtuous, and it's a feedback loop. They do the thing, they post about it on social media, and they then get praise for the thing they are doing.
When you start looking it from the lens of "these people just want to be popular and get likes", it all starts making sense.
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[ 20.2 ms ] story [ 1100 ms ] thread“Anti-racism” is actually about racism against Asians.
“Equity” is actually about lowering the standards and destroying meritocracy.
“Inclusion” is actually about excluding people that have different political or moral opinions (e.g. that don’t want to be racist against Asians or that support meritocracy).
But a) wouldn't that apply to other demographics too? and b) All Asians? Are Hmong, for example, over-represented in college enrollments?
I'm just trying to understand why it's specifically anti-Asian.
A bunch of pro-diversity people see white people do well and get successful. They see the same in Asians. They see the opposite for black and latino. They conclude "we must give black and latino preferential treatment to catch up". It is a bit more elaborate, but not much more than that.
>All Asians?
Yes. Despite their fronts, diversity initiatives don't look much further beyond sex, gender and skin color. You're already one level deeper than most of these politics go.
The consequences of this are easy to illustrate in orchestras. Orchestras have always been heavily dominated by white and Asian musicians. When it was argued that this was due to discrimination in hiring, the solution was quite simple and tasteful - swap to blind auditions. And that is something few would oppose. So they did.
The problem is that not only did it fail to create more diverse orchestras, in many cases they became even less diverse than they were prior. So now the 'anti-racist' view is that orchestras need to begin being racist against white and Asian applicants, and start biasing selection by race. [1] Groups that disproportionately overperform become acceptable targets for racism.
Incidentally this is not entirely different than the motivation for some of the darkest moments in our history. Alas people never seem to appreciate that the "evil" groups in times past never saw themselves as evil, but simply as people engaging in temporarily distasteful action for a greater future. That greater future never comes, but the distasteful actions certainly do. Of course, "this time it'll be different."
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...
Then yeah, when someone fired up some anti-Semitic hyperbole, well, great way to get out of that debt you owed, right?
IIRC Edward I of England expelled the Jews primarily to confiscate their property after years of taxing them superhard, but it also gave the Crown ownership of debts owed to the Jews, so he was playing the populist hand, and getting funds at the same time.
"Anti-racism", which in American academia usually comes about in the form of blacks and latinos receiving preferential treatment at the cost of whites and asians, is indeed racism.
Racism is not acceptable, no matter how benevolent the intent or goal.
And while we're here, since it's part of the bigger, main discussion anyway:
"Equity" is the anti-thesis of equality, because "equity" mandates that all individuals arrive (and stay!) at the same place in life no matter who they are. It throws out individual ambitions and efforts towards obtaining a better silver plate in lieu of society handing everyone the same steel plate.
Naturally, lots of non-native people considered that racist.
Except it was done to try to correct a very real problem - that the native people have disproportionately worse outcomes in our health system. And likewise, due to about 150 years of deliberate policy that marginalised the native people, they were disproportionately less likely to enter medical school.
And there's now, after some years of this policy, an emerging body of evidence that this "racist" policy around medical school spots is making a difference around health system outcomes for native people.
So yes, the policy is, on the surface racist, but it's slowly combating a systemic racism that was baked into all of our government institutions by previous racist policies. (E.g., native people experience a higher conviction rate and harsher sentencing for the same crimes as white people)
There's still a long way to go for us, but yeah, it gets damn complicated when you're trying to undo the damage of previous racism by introducing positive discrimination.
The articles in sep deal with the origins of these in depth
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/
The "meritocracy" that includes your rich parents into your "merit".
By the way, this is the meritocratic way because we're looking for best people, which includes identifying unrealized talent and then nurturing it.
Instead, the SJW/woke way is "reduce standards until everybody passes", literally https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-leftists-try-to-canc... (a.k.a. everybody equal, everybody stupid akin to Communism's everybody equal, everybody poor)
After all, people with advantages rise to the top, whether that's upbringing, talent, or gene.
But even with the same starting conditions/talent/upbringing/genes, some people will climb further than others. Effort, creativity, etc. We as society should encourage that and reward people who achieve more, for the common benefit of all.
Exceptional people have a chance of pushing society forward (i.e. creating more resources for the future... exponentially).
(But yeah in general I oppose age-segregated schooling, I think education should have "tracks" (math, physics, sports, music, etc.) and people should attend whatever "level" they're at in each track, in mixed-age groups. And make mostly free (but guided) choices regarding which tracks to put most effort in.)
Low inheritance tax has had that covered for a while.
How can people put up with this filth? It repulses and disgusts me so much when kindness, compassion and even justice are absorbed by this bureaucratic ideological machine where people say and do things out if insincerity, just as lip service to fall in line politically. How do people feel comfortable living lies and forcing others to live and practice falsehoods?
No matter how much I agree with the statement, when you force it, it becomes an insincere compelled speech.
Suppose the SPSS (the professional society Haidt left in protest) had instead made a rule that they would play the national anthem at the start of every conference and anyone who didn’t stand wouldn’t be allowed to present their research.
If he had left in protest of that, would you assume he’s an unpatriotic asshole who hates America or that he’s standing up for free speech?
A private organization like the NFL or the SPSS might not let you be a member if you don’t follow their rules. That’s within the bounds of free speech.
We only have freedoms by continually asserting them and sometimes sacrificing some social capital to use them.
I love america and will defend her if we ever get attacked for the record.
Only companies that have a lot of HR,legal and management people that were indoctrinated with this stuff in college seem to have this cultural component.
He’s quite right that not every academic paper need directly concern itself with the very specific set of ideologies contained within contemporary anti-rascist texts.
Diversity is fine. But every single piece of research has to be related to diversity? Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues?
This is not a statement about promoting diversity, this is a statement that identity issues are the only thing that matters and only research that has to do with identity will be considered (for presentation at this conference)
An ideological monoculture is not a healthy intellectual environment.
If the research is poorly done, exclude it for that reason.
If not, maybe re-examine what your cause is in light of the research.
Copernicus's research into the Earth revolving around the Sun hurt the Catcholic church's cause of being the ultimate source of truth for all humanity. They wanted to put a stop to that...
Starting with the answer and rejecting anything that doesn't support it is not how research is supposed to work.
I wish people would stop dropping it as the de facto example of interference with science when there are so many better ones (and also current ones). It's a bad analogy, evokes emotion, and ultimately it typically does a disservice to the argument intended.
Could you provide some examples of better stories to use instead?
The banned book list was compiled and maintained by the Church. We can split words whether Copernicus or Galileo were harangued in person and to what degree, but nascent modern astronomy was very much in the scope of Catholic censorship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_and_works_on_t...
I’m not sure why it has suddenly become so popular to claim that every single historical fact is a myth. Galileo’s prosecution by the Church is not only well-documented, John Paul II. officially apologized for it in 1992. He might have looked into their archives before doing that.
I swear, going around smugly claiming “Only sheeple still believe that theory” about random facts doesn’t make a person seem nearly as smart as they might think it does.
Could you link some example of those many, many times?
Demagogues will use any factoid for their own goals, and racists will use things to promote racism, but that's not an argument to stop research into biology, sociology, psychology, behavioral econ, etc.
The good ones do often hurt the DEI cause though.
This might be the most potentially fascinating comment in the thread. In what way is the research of much of social psychology hurting DEI?
As far as I know, based on my limited understanding of the field, there's not a lot of research that's performed/approved/funded in that field where people know that the research could yield some "politically incorrect" data or conclusions.
It's the Society for Personality and Social Psychology ...
You may as well ask is not possible to submit to the Association for Computing Machinery a piece of research unrelated to computing.
That seems pretty racist.
Quoting from the HN guidelines [1]: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The punishment culture for not being part of the crowd has gotten too much here.
At any rate, I've learned that my commentary here is considered inappropriate, so I should probably drop it.
Boom. Submit.
Back then, it was advisable to stuff quotes by Marx or Lenin into everything, even an article discussing milk production.
Swedes will proudly claim to be capitalists with healthy social welfare programs.
The tax rates of New Yorkers and Californians are very similar to those across Scandinavia except that the Americans are getting way way less bang for their buck in services for that tax money due to state and local governments that are woefully ineffective. That and Norway/Sweden/Denmark have close to 1/3 public sector employment.
2. haidt is clearly protesting the requirement to describe how any research further's the associations "anti-racism goals". there's plenty of knowledge to be uncovered that has nothing to do with it and targeting all your work to uphold a specific viewpoint offends the general idea of "academia" as a tool for broadly and impartially adcancing knowledge.
It also appears that Haidt is taking SPSP's new direction literally - whereas you appear to be taking it figuratively. That SPSP's direction is a requirement for all members, not an interpretive statement that all members can come to terms with on their own accord. I think being compelled to a specific viewpoint by an institution is antithesis of freedom. Your comment seems like a huge dismissal of Haidt's view with this regard.
That is, if we are to trust that you looked at the linked article as you claim.
Further equality is good however it would be helpful to do so in a constructive manner.
What often happens is that SJWs just shut down debates and discussions.. because they disagree. This kills freedom of speech and ideas. This goes exactly to your last point. Are you threatened by others who disagree with you?
Your last paragraph points towards some internalized racial stereotypes.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s anything else by some people that manipulate language.
This is surprisingly close.
The issue at stake is more abstract than American racism. This is a dangerous precedent.
And it requires some itchy mental gymnastics. Thinking about and encouraging diversity and inclusion through action is great. Forcing people to do it seems specifically contrary to the abstract goals of diversity and inclusion! Said another way: Is the point of these statements to increase or decrease the intellectual diversity of discourse?
Agreed. And the whole style, wording, method is dumb.
> intellectual diversity of discourse
The goal is clearly to reduce a certain part of the "thought space" (intellectual diversity), in particular the goal is to weed out anti-racist thoughts.
I guess they think of this as public health thinks of pathogens. Diversity of species is great but we still want less of pathogens.
What these people seemingly have no idea about, is that populist xenophobic movements can start, spread and become popular at no time. And obviously (?) the way to contain them is not with preemptive firebombing of academia, but by strengthening the ideals of equity, and the institutions themselves that implement those ideals. Make them shining beacons of good. The first criterion for that is efficiency, transparency, etc.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Incorrect, this statement was not directed to members' conduct. The diversity statement was to pledge that members' research submissions are advancing anti-racism, equity, and inclusion. This would, for example, prohibit a psychologist studying something like memory retention. This has no reasonable link to advancing equal racial outcomes. How does measuring the amount of time it takes to memorize a paragraph advance racial justice? Thus such research would thus fail to live up to this pledge, and be ineligible for submission - if this pledge were actually enforced, that is.
Of course, I doubt the people making this pledge actually intend to have every piece of their research connected to an anti-racist goal. This is just performance and naval-gazing.
wat? how? why?
real social justice doesn't work that way. (contrary, it needs to know deficiencies so it can help those who are in need, so people have equal opportunities for self-actualization.)
If you look at the quote in the article, it illustrates that "anti-racist" actually means supporting discrimination:
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
This "friendly fascist" form of discrimination festers under the cover of cheap political expediency.
It is abhorrent, at least to any society that supports liberal values.
> "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
Can you reply to my comment with the anti-racist and supportive of diversity and inclusion phrase "it's OK to be White"?
>I'm from the american south. It was full of racists when I lived there, who were all against diversity, hated the idea of needing to hire minorities to be teachers, things like that. There was no need to hire them, everything was fine. It didn't matter that all the school principals were white men, there was no point to a kid seeing a black man or woman as the principal I heard.
I'm from the american west. It was full of racists when I lived there, who were all against diversity, hated the idea of needing to hire whites to be teachers, things like that. There was no need to hire them, everything was fine. It didn't matter that all the school principals were women of color, there was no point to a kid seeing a white man or woman as the principal I heard.
>That's all I can take way from the usually white men who see some incredible threat from saying there's a benefit in including more voices. I can only see this as people threatened by including other voices that might disagree with their own.
That's all I can take way from the usually women of color who see some incredible threat from saying there's a benefit in including more voices. I can only see this as people threatened by including other voices that might disagree with their own.
The strange part to me in comments similar to yours is how you have chosen to interpret his actions and completely ignore his explanation or the context around it.
I will not be surprised if this sort of incendiary kneejerk where you deliberately misrepresent a person is becoming pervasive, and causing people to leave.
Regarding your experiences in the American South, all I can say is two wrongs don't make a right. This is hardly about including more voices, this is about opposing a policy that prescibes the acceptable Overton window of research, it's clearly about limiting the acceptable range of discourse.
We are literally maybe a quarter of a century towards whites becoming a plurality, and not much longer after that until they become an actual minority. You can't just think about the past, think about the future, making publishing scientific racism an ideological goal because a group is politically powerful NOW when they won't be in the future is bound to have unintended consequences.
Isn't forcing left/right political views counter productive? I've seen this in the industry (people rant) and local politics (e.g. my country swings between left and right every few years after they get fed with one PoV).
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The question is just if it is reprehensible to do so. Or if there are times when it is more or less reprehensible.
This argument is hilarious but this is not a turn I expected it to take.
The important thing is establishing that one group has too many resources which rightfully belong to some other group. The rest is implementation detail.
I understand the arguments, but I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with the police taking someone's house from them because they're white.
Sounds racist. I’m not comfortable with that.
True like creationism more like.
Here's some other perspectives:
- Things in the past can't be fixed. We can't "fix" past discrimination any more than we can fix 9/11 or retroactively fix the holocaust.
- Are you trying to decrease discrimination or racially biased life outcomes? If you want less discrimination, adding more discrimination is obviously counterproductive. If what you want is more wealthy black people, why don't you say that?
- There's lots of ways to help people of color without discriminating against white people. Like introducing better social support for single parent families, reducing prison sentences for non-violent offenders, etc.
- Having discriminatory hiring quotas misunderstands how wealth creation works. Promoting people in companies based on skin tone or gender instead of their skills makes companies weaker, and in turn rusts the engine of capitalism. That makes everyone more poor.
- Discrimination like this causes new problems. For example, I know several female programmers who worry that they were only hired / promoted as "diversity candidates". That sucks. As a white dude, I know the only thing keeping me employed is my capacity to add value to the business. So in some ways I'm actively supported more because I'm white and male.
- The research shows that diversity of background makes teams stronger, and diversity of values makes teams weaker. Where is this nuance in the political conversation?
There's plenty more ways to think about this issue. Fixing past racism against black people with modern racism against white people is an obviously controversial policy. (This thread alone is proof enough). Shutting that conversation down is censorious and utterly unbecoming of the academy.
You're right -- fix is not the right word. But you can dampen the impact of the event. For example, I think we provided various types of relief to different classes of victims of 9/11.
> - Are you trying to decrease discrimination or racially biased life outcomes? If you want less discrimination, adding more discrimination is obviously counterproductive. If what you want is more wealthy black people, why don't you say that?
I want people to not be impacted by discriminatory practices. The problem is that there are many practices that exist, for which their reduction in the name of this cause would be noted as discriminatory in themselves. At any given point in time you often must choose between which discriminatory practice to continue. For example, giving admissions benefits to legacies. Or tax breaks for estate taxes. Or property tax based funding of schools. Etc...
> - Having discriminatory hiring quotas misunderstands how wealth creation works. Promoting people in companies based on skin tone or gender instead of their skills makes companies weaker, and in turn rusts the engine of capitalism. That makes everyone more poor.
This is an example of a practice that only looks like it helps underreresented minorities, but is actually long-term discriminatory against them. I don't support such policies. In fact as you note, this actually helps you as a white male even more -- and I actually do believe this.
> - There's lots of ways to help people of color without discriminating against white people. Like introducing better social support for single parent families, reducing prison sentences for non-violent offenders, etc.
This is where it gets interesting and where anti-racism comes into play. There are things that can reduce the gap, and based on anti-racism principles these policies are indeed anti-racist, and discriminatory against whites. Again, it's about being results driven and not intent driven. These practices can reduce discrimination aginst minorities in outcomes -- but the mere fact of doing so increases discrimination against whites in outcome (at least relatively so). I don't think you can do one w/o the other. This is why the only way to counter past discrimination is future discrimination, even if not intended to discriminate.
And what anti-racism asks is to look at all policies through this lens. As I noted in another thread, unfortunately, this tenant of anti-racism itself is racist (usings its own definition). Not because of "reverse-racism", but simply because once things are cast as beneficial to minority groups, their support amongst the general population reduces. In essence the most effective way to reduce discrimination is to discriminate, but w/o intent.
I don’t think the best policies are racist. Providing more financial support for single parent households helps poor, struggling single parents of every race. It doesn’t discriminate.
And nor should it - poor white children deserve support just as much as poor black children do. No child deserves to be homeless.
2) Evolution was not blindly accepted as "truth" the way you seem to expect this so-called "principle" to be accepted simply on your say-so (or prophet Kendi's?). Quite the contrary, it was not accepted at all and evidence had to provided. Lots and lots of evidence. Overwhelming evidence. And it is not accepted as truth by faith now either.
3) The mere claim "you can model [this] quite nicely mathematically" is not evidence for the claim. It is only evidence for you making that claim.
4) Even an actual mathematical model, should one actually be presented rather than just claimed, is not evidence for the claim. There are infinite mathematical models that are consistent with themselves yet inconsistent with the real world.
5) Yet, there are mountains of evidence that identity politics lead to bad outcomes.
6) And yes, racism (which this so-called "anti-racism" clearly is) is clearly reprehensible. This is something we fortunately figured out a while ago, and the fact that we figured it out was a major step up in our societal evolution. Quite frankly I am shocked and dismayed that we are even having a discussion about this. No. NO. Doing away with this nonsense was a major achievement for humanity, we can't give it up this easily.
6) Also: two wrongs never make a right.
Identity politics does lead to bad outcomes, yet here we are. Unfortunately we've gotten ourselves to the point that now acting like there are no identities is just another form of identity politics. E.g., saying "lets stop talking about gender -- we have male and female and lets just stop there and move on" seems less appealing to those that feel currently disenfranchised by the status quo.
On 6, anti-racism is racist, but not for the reason that most people assume. It is because white people tend to double down when confronted with anti-racist data. For example, when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more. By anti-racisms very definition of being strictly results, and not intent, oriented -- it itself is racist.
On your second 6 -- the second wrong can dampen the impact of the first wrong. I also notice that the beneficiaries of the first wrong, do love this quote. A tad convenient?
Hmm...
> most people find it obviously true
Reminds me of the rental manager at my London flat justifying a raise in my rent with "well, rents are rising". When I confronted him with his own organisation's web site, which unambiguously said that rents were flat or falling, he countered with "Statistics aside, rents are rising".
But I see the problem. Previously you claimed that these things actually were true. That people may believe they are "obviously" true is an entirely different matter, and probably the crux of the problem.
Because people believe in false things as "obviously true" all the time. For example, people used to believe that the sun obviously revolves around the earth, and many still do (and our language certainly still does: sunrise, sunset etc.)
And these things are just as false.
> that now acting like there are no identities is just another form of identity politics.
No it's not, and that's also a false dichotomy. Repudiating identity politics does not require claiming that (or acting like) there are no identities. But group identities don't define us, and certainly not to the exclusion of everything else. I am an individual first, and a member of various groups second. This isn't hard.
> anti-racism is racist
Glad we agree.
> It is because white people tend to double down when confronted with anti-racist data.
That's both untrue and also even if it were true it would not mean that "anti-racism" is racist. "Anti-racism" is racist all by itself without any external help required.
> when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more.
This is not true.
However, speaking of doubling down on the false (and inconsistent) things people believe: the same people who believe that blacks are discriminated against, and use the legal system bias to justify their belief, also fervently believe that males are privileged. Yet the bias against males in the criminal justice system has been shown to be 6x larger than the bias against blacks. When confronted with these facts, do they ever double down!
But thanks for clarifying that what you are talking about is the not actual facts, but all the various false beliefs that people in fact do have.
My experience has been that it is better to base policy based on actual facts, not on things that feel truthy, though of course policy based on the latter is easier to sell.
https://www.vox.com/2014/8/7/5978551/study-racism-criminal-j...
I know it doesn’t sell well, but most whites do, at some level, prefer blacks not to do well. Not because they necessarily hate blacks, but in aggregate it means they’ll do less well (in aggregate).
So you talk about facts, but the data shows that whites will choose to enact policy they think hurts blacks. Those are the facts.
No there's not. And you're perfect at the old Russian tactic of "accuse the other side of the thing that you are doing".
You've been proven wrong at just about every turn, but you can't admit it, and then you ... drumroll ... double down.
And if it's Vox, it is almost certainly misrepresented. Which, drumroll, it is. From the original study:
"We found that exposing people to extreme racial disparities in the prison population heightened their fear of crime ..."
So it wasn't racism. It was fear of crime. Doh.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976145403...
And of course the claim that this is "intrinsic" is both unproven and almost certainly false, which you would know if you looked at the actual data.
Which you obviously will not.
'nuff said. Have a good one.
Edit: what’s your point about gender bias? That’s a reasonable point to raise — in a different discussion. Maybe you can next talk about biases due to height and looks too? Also irrelevant.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/677255
Gender bias leads to 60% longer sentences:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002
60% / 10% = 6x.
Edit: the quote is right on. Your statement that it wasn’t racism missed the point of the authors quote. Try again and see if you can see where you missed.
Of course Vox didn't report that.
"According to the FBI, African-Americans accounted for 39.6% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 29.1%, and "Other" 3.0%".[1]
So 14% of the population, but almost 40% of the homicides[2]. That's a rate almost 3x higher than you would expect from the population numbers. And whites are 61.6% of the population, so their share of homicides is slightly less than 1/2 of the expected rate. If you combine these two figures, you find that blacks have a 6x higher per/capita share of homicide offenders than whites.
Now this is all very unfortunate, problematic etc. But unconsciously associating blackness more strongly with crime than whiteness is not racism, but sound statistical reasoning based on the real world[3]. And humans are generally very good natural unconscious statisticians, particularly when it comes to assessing personal danger.
And please note that I am not in any way claiming that this association is "intrinsic" or that it is fair, or saying anything about the causes of the disparity in crime rates whatsoever[4]. I am just showing the unambiguous fact that the association is based on reality.
Also note that even if, in spite of the facts, you still hold that associating blackness with crime is solely or primarily due to racism, it would still not support your original assertion that "For example, when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more." and certainly not your assertion that "most whites do, at some level, prefer blacks not to do well." That's just complete BS you made up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
[2] Homicides tend to be a good indicator because they are fairly unambiguous (there's a dead person) and also tend to have less chance of inconsistent investigation than other crimes.
[3] Note that this only applies to such unconscious associations as was the case here. It does not justify other sorts of inferences, particularly on an individual level.
[4] Except that, particularly for homicides, it isn't the result of unfair policing practices in any way that comes close to explaining the actual disparity, see [2] as well as the research on racial disparities in the criminal justice system, which came to more a 10% divergence, so nowhere near the 6x difference we see here.
it's not the result of discrimination that's immoral, it's the discrimination
the "fix" is to stop discriminating
Discriminating against already well off groups to help chronically not well-off groups (affirmative action) is of course discrimination but the consequence is very unlikely to cause the well-off groups to suddenly find themselves at the other end of the spectrum. (Mostly because they have a lot of other opportunities... that's why they're well-off. Of course it's not that simple, because there's stratification of these groups themselves, so it's very important to look at people individually, and don't simply give them plus/minus points just because of an external trait. Eg. skin color.)
You’re viewing people as defined by their race, not their individual attributes and histories.
Kendi provoked controversy when he tweeted about the relationship between Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, and two of her seven children, who had been adopted from an orphanage in Haiti. Kendi said:
His remarks were interpreted as criticizing interracial adoption. A substantial backlash against Kendi ensued. He later said his comments were taken out of context and that he does not believe that white parents of black children are inherently racist.I can't really say much about this. It's typical vague bullshit. Kendi projects everything onto white people. (This argument/rant that "white person does X and now they think racism is no more" or "white person does X and now white person is automatically a hypocrite" is typical in radical social justice texts. Here he hedges it with "too many" white people have this belief.)
That said, I don't see where they say that fuck poor Asians, or where they say that being black entitles someone to more social help/justice than being a poor Asian.
It isn't just Asians, any racial minority that is "too" successful, like Jews, Indians, Asians, Persians, etc, would be hurt by Kendi's ideas because they are essentially just the same philosophy that is mocked in the story Harrison Bergeron. Kendi thinks any difference in outcome between racial groups proves racism and thus must be fixed.
that's a bold claim, if Kendi is as explicit about this as you say, can you please find a quote on this?
this whole thread is about radicalist dude is radical, because ABC; okay, please show me where in his radical writings he says ABC; and then nothing.
If we train our focus on outcomes and victims, Kendi said, “intention will become irrelevant.”
https://news.yale.edu/2020/12/07/kendi-racism-about-power-an...
The book presents 5 questions to settle the question of "Am I racist?"
__always giving primacy to the individual over the collective, or group;
__always embracing the concept of individual rights to help me judge problematic social interactions;
__never assessing quantities of stuff in gauging whether a policy is racist;
__always attempting to embrace the “color-blind rule” when making choices;
__always maintaining awareness of the distinctions between equity and equality; never compromizing equality of rights in order to bring about equity of stuff.
the central idea of antiracism seems to be that all racial groups are equal, and therefore, any inequality is proof of racism, and any policy that arguably contributed to that inequality is also racist. This too, does not make sense. If inequality is due to racism, how can we explain inequality within racial groups? Why do white people in one state make more money than in another state? Why do chlidren from two parent households generally do better academically than children from single parent households of the same race? Racism can't be the answer. And Kendi rarely offers any proof that racism is the primary source of inequality between groups, let alone the only source. The book also feels overly long and highly repetitive, with Kendi driving home the same handful of points/ideas over and over again.
You said exactly that.
I did not say that it's okay, I stated a simple fact, that positive discrimination is discrimination too.
Then I tried to explain the likely consequence of one usual version of that, and then I explicitly said that it's not that simple, because looking at ethnic groups and deciding the fate of individuals, just because they belong to that ethnic group, is almost textbook racism, as you also pointed out.
For my team we pretty much can only hire experienced, senior candidates with specialized skillsets. We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively. Anyway, women and minority candidates do apply (and get hired) for our positions but at much lower percentages.
To meet DEI goals though, our internal recruiters shove completely inexperienced/unqualified candidates into our pipeline and then put internal pressure on us to hire their candidate (one time there was a complaint from HR to a few exceutives claiming we were sabotaging their DEI efforts...the executives had to explain to the HR team how difficult and specialized the job that we do is and how important it is for us to have a pipeline of the best candidates...) even though they can't succeed in the role at that experience level.
They've even gone so far as to modify resumes of people we interview to inflate the experience level and immediately get caught out by the candidate who tells us that isn't the resume they submitted...and these are our _internal_ recruiters fucking with us like this. They even pushed through a candidate once who didn't speak any of the same languages as anyone else on our team. We only found out at the in-person interview stage...
now that's what i call diversity!
My team has huge demands put on it as a result of product development and most of the time we need to hire entirely self-sufficient people. That's simply not possible without a significant amount of in-field experience. Having inexperienced people shoveled into our pipeline is a complete counter-productive waste of time.
OTOH it also takes like two years of dedicated peformance coaching in my org to fire anyone so the DEI folks are getting exactly what they want in the end anyway.
serious question: what do they want exactly? give money to disadvantaged folks? give them training? check quota boxes? do they personally care?
More eloquently put by this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33053801
How does this allegiance manifests in these "diversity hires"? Do you have some experience with this? Could you explain this somehow?
I've seen a considerable number of people hired who seemed to have no productivity but the idea that they might have a reporting function outside the usual "chain-of-command" (e.g., like communist party political officers in the military) never occurred to me.
> We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively.
If DEI is a real goal then ... training has to be a real priority, not just "when big enough" and "when have time".
So if the company doesn't want to spend resources on it then it'll get strictly worse results. (Ie. it'll either find itself unable to hire people, it'll be chronically understaffed, and/or it'll end up with a lot of internal conflicts about skills/competence.)
Part of the thesis of that book is that you are a racist if you treat people as individuals. To be Anti-Racist, you must treat people as part of their collective and then treat them well or badly based on membership of that collective in the name of equity. Thus whites and asians must be treated poorly because of their race and other minorities treated positively because of their race.
Basically you fight racism with racial discrimination.
It seems at least that zoomers are somewhat more critical, or at least 50-50 on the topic. It's going to take many, many decades to unravel the harm this is causing.
Do not underestimate these people and how insane they are.
The book presents 5 questions to settle the question of "Am I racist?"
__always giving primacy to the individual over the collective, or group;
__always embracing the concept of individual rights to help me judge problematic social interactions;
__never assessing quantities of stuff in gauging whether a policy is racist;
__always attempting to embrace the “color-blind rule” when making choices;
__always maintaining awareness of the distinctions between equity and equality; never compromizing equality of rights in order to bring about equity of stuff.
> "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The book makes its point of view as plain as day. I haven't made any kinds of leap whatsoever.
Haidt only drew the line at his work being compelled to promote anti-racism because that's contradictory to the aim for truth and why we do research in the first place.
Life isn't and will never be fair. The fairness you seem to be seeking is "eye for an eye". You know what does make life fair though? We're all headed for worms and dirt eventually. None of us escape that. That's how you square the inequalities of what happens in between.
I can't engage with you any more on this. The doublethink required to accept your argument is off the charts.
Yes, and that includes letting bygones be bygones when we all have terrible injustices in our collective past. This is what a generalized amnesty is all about. The only alternative is a destructive war of all against all, as indeed is often seen in "honor-bound" societies where "the duty of righting wrongs" is taken as an absolute.
Unlike unions, these external political movements do not care about the organizations their members are embedded in, but have other goals which is why they are unconcerned with merit. Unions at least wanted the organizations their members belonged to to survive and employees to have some level of competence.
I then investigated to see if my suppositions were correct.
That they are helps me make judgements with insufficient data in the future. If they are not it helps me broaden my model.
I’m going to add Reason to the sites I unilaterally ignore next to WaPo, NYT, and FOX.
But I ignore the emotive language or opinion dressed as reporting.
Which is something I noted while staying in LA recently - all the news shows I had access to on the hotel TV were "here's something that happened", which typically ran for 30 - 60 seconds, followed by 15 minutes of people offering opinions on it. And the channels that wanted to present as unbiased would give a Democrat aligned commentator and a Republic aligned commentator equal "this is how you should interpret this" time.
But yeah, blew my mind that so much of the "news" was talking heads telling you what to think about the news.
If you are not simultaneously against bezos-funded propaganda or zuck-funded propaganda (he still funds fwd.us whose main goal is to lower tech salaries by increasing immigration), you are a hypocrite.
Hiding in plain sight, as they say xD
But maybe you're just acting the clown to highlight the very issue this comment thread is discussing: inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization.
And I like this phrase: "inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization". It is well-said. Many intersting intellectual discussions are about exploring shades of grey in a difficult topic.
If you feel you need to call out hypocrisy, why don't you complain that people are not allowed to carry guns into an NRA or Republican convention, or how security and supporters beat up people protesting at trump rallies. Or about senators family members getting abortions while the same senators are advocating for making abortions for any reason (including rape) illegal.
An example from the Barnes hoax <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/us/jazmine-barnes-arrest....>, which occurred just before the Smollett hoax:
>But to civil rights activists, including Shaun King, who received the tip that led to the arrest, the race of the suspect did not upend the meaning of the case — for Jazmine's family or for the country.
>"We live in a time where somebody could do something like this based purely on hate or race," he said on Sunday. "And that it turned out to not be the case I don't think changes the devastating conclusion that people had thought something like that was possible."
Politics is becoming more and more extremist too, with the extreme left lashing out and calling anyone who even questions the status quo an extreme rightist bigot, and the extreme right doing the equivalent. And the two are fueled by both one another, as well as increasing tensions due to national issues.
This is my main gripe with wokeness. Yes I dislike the illiberalism of quotas and the collectivist nature of its moral system (collective guilt and inherited guilt). But my main concern is the right wing backlash and the consequences of that on democracy and freedom.
But if you say that, some of them will tell you that they would do that if they earn the same as men, but that is already in law...if you ask them for proof they never have any...
> Appropriate measures aimed at achieving true equality are not regarded as discriminatory.
https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1996/1498_1498_1498/de#ar...
So since Men have a shorter lifespan (even in country's where alcohol and drugs are a nogo...if someone want to come with that argument) Men should not work as long as Woman's ;) excellent!!
BTW: What are Appropriate measures?....that's a typical Swiss law, it just say's nothing..and everything ;)
This is also the case in the United States.
Prop 209, passed in 1996, "amended the state constitution to prohibit government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education."
If Prop 16 had passed, it would have allowed government agencies to deliberately and explicitly discriminate against people based on immutable characteristics.
The wording from Prop 16's advocates seems to embrace Kendi's punitive stance on using active discrimination to reach some kind of equity goal:
"Despite living in the most diverse state in the nation, white men are still overrepresented in positions of wealth and power in California. Although women, and especially women of color, are on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, they are not rewarded for their sacrifices. Women should have the same chance of success as men.
Today, nearly all public contracts, and the jobs that go with them, go to large companies run by older white men. White women make 80¢ on the dollar. The wage disparity is even worse for women of color and single moms. As a result, an elite few are able to hoard wealth instead of investing it back into communities. Prop. 16 opens up contracting opportunities for women and people of color. "
In 2020 I tried to find data and studies backing the laundry list of assertions but came up empty-handed. The wording seemed very slanted... "older white men"... "single moms"... Certainly there are disparities in society, but we must always consider, objectively, what are the root causes.
Where does it end? Does anybody want an NBA where the makeup of the teams is based on the racial percentages in society, or do people want the best players playing? Do you want the best surgeon or pilot? Absolutely I bet 99% of people on HN want everyone to have equal opportunity; in my experience, in the vast majority of American tech companies (I don't work in healthcare of finanace, etc. so I can't speak to them), if you had 2 equally qualified candidates, and one was a white man and one was a woman or a racial minority or perhaps even not-straight, the white man will usually be the one not getting the job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16
But I wonder if they could do that sort of thing based of their existing limitations for academic freedom. If an institution funded by Volkswagen wants the professors to work on car related stuff to advance technological goals, couldn't they also require them to work towards social or political goals?
tbh i always found it contradictory we don't use those federal $ to require compliance with all constitutional rights, e.g. 1 and 2a.
Were they trying to advance equity, inclusion, and anti-racism?
But thanks for bringing your bullshit, unapplicable anglo concepts to the entire world. We really appreciate it every time.
Can someone ELI5 what is this conflict between truth and social justice Haidt refers to?
The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth.
Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)
Yes, and unavoidably so. That is why it is society's task to structure the universities in such a fashion that those goals align with society's goals.
This comment is also a bit odd given the context of the last 5 years of society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
This has been ongoing for ever. This happens because there's a big overlap between rich, powerful, and educated groups, and there's simply a fuckton of bad "us vs them" arguments that pick one easy to identify trait and attack anyone using that.
And of course the ongoing globalization led to a lot of job displacement. Whole regions suffered and continue to suffer heavily, and ... while the whole country reaps the benefits the affected areas only got a lip service. (And of course a lot of federal transfer payments.) This created a big group ripe for populist resentment, ready to project the drawbacks of free markets onto whatever Trump said. China. Mexico. Millenials. Green stuff. Welfare queens.
It completely taints your research and any results you might come to.
Attacking "Political Correctness" in a vague and non-specific way lets you sound noble.
As soon as you specify what that means in practice you just sound like a nasty bully (at best), so best leave that implied.
But a quick glance as the history of social science that these things are a direct response to, would reveal people "proving" that various groups are inferior in ways that mirror contemporary prejudices and reinforce right-wing politics that consistently builds hierarchical models to justify current social inequalities.
a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."
Those quotation marks would disagree...
should we stop large swathes of research into athletic performance? bc i guess it doesn't provide sufficiently "antiracist" outcomes?
They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though.
They still try to fit every new fact into their old model.
Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology?
Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth.
This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.
but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do?
also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.
You've read Haidt's take on it and have been misled, as intended.
here's the thing: "anti-racism" is being used as a motte-and-bailey argument. it's basically dogwhistling an intent to promote present discrimination (c.f. kendi) even if they're using a different definition that doesn't explicitly state that, because it's how that term has been widely used and understood. but when people take issue with it, they can be like "oh our definition doesn't say that." and ngl i find it pretty disingenuous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
The academic claim that "Race is not scientific" is really an overstatement of the case being made by people who are very optimistic but also fairly good at overlooking some fairly well understood science. It's not a universally held opinion but most people who disagree with it are fairly circumspect because it's very easy to get cancelled by talking about race and science in public.
Suppose you find out that the green people from East Arbitria are less productive. The immediate effect is that an innocent objective employer who being tried for discrimination or hated by a community no longer has to suffer- the cruelty of the universe is no longer being made anyone's fault. The secondary effect is that we now have grounds to investigate why Arbitrarians have that disadvantage. Maybe green people have a harder time metabolizing a nutrient; a non-issue with the diet/climate/lifestyle of Arbitria. An update to health recommendations later and millions of people's lives are improved.
The point is, there is a history of race-based discrimination in the world and researchers can't just pretend that it doesn't still exist when constructing these kinds of studies and how their outcomes could be used negatively by both benevolent and malevolent actors. It isn't just 'truth or not truth', also because lots of sociological studies aren't repeatable and many others suffer all sorts of issues with methods, populations, etc. Measuring people is crazy hard to do reliably. Anyway, my hot take is that its not a simple question and does not have a simple answer.
2. rarely is a piece of research only used for 1 thing, and even if someone uses it wrongly, maybe someone else uses it for good purpose or builds on it for an important discovery.
3. the correct answer is to address the person attempting to abuse the data when that person does it not to attempt to suppress that information by preventing the research or limiting how it's done.
4. are you saying we shouldn't do research on e.g. whether certain groups are better at lifting because it could be abused?
What I do see is a long history of race-based 'science' being used to justify some pretty terrible policies and laws.
The long lesson from the history of this research is that it produces garbage wrapped in a thin veneer of credibility, and becomes a weapon to justify or deepen real existing problems. It doesn't matter if it gets debunked eventually, the problem is how it is used now."
edit: (I don't know that I'm happy with either pole in this debate, but it seems like a good thing to worry about)
Becomes sometimes it's important. The efficacy of modern medicine is not uniform across ethnic groups. To deny this fact would effectively be to deliberately withhold treatment from some groups of people. Does that seem fair and just to you?
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2594139/
- https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/pharmacogenetics-p...
> Diverse research participants (e.g., understudied or underserved populations)
or in case it's due to the team they should also probably encourage:
> Diverse members of the research team (e.g., those from underrepresented sociodemographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages, from outside the United States, or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP such as predominately undergraduate serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, or outside academia)
Hopefully if thay do that won't be portrayed as a bad thing by anyone.
Instead it seems to be at best discounting that there is a conflct to explain or at worse is participating in the conflict by defending one side of it.
I think a stronger case could in theory be made that the conflict is non existent but it's a harder position to advocate.
It’s Galileo all over again.
So everything must be politicised. "How does your new caching algorithm promote social justice?". (If the same criteria were applied in CS).
And this will be here before you know it unless more people start calling bullshit.
The sheer irony of someone who's in favor of linguistic prescriptivism typing this out (when master record and master key have no linguistic relationship to master/slave) is astounding.
Don't forget that there were people like Rich Salz who took their ball and ran home crying[0] because of a freaking word. Was this just a fit of temporary 2020-insanity that was going around? Nope - apparently 1 year on, it's still intolerably reeecist to have a "master key" in cryptography.[1]
[0] https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1279190119703085057 [1] https://twitter.com/RichSalz/status/1435327330335997952
This is a funny anachronism and the very opposite of science.
E.g. if your research gets the "wrong" results regarding police shootings then anyone who defends your research will have to resign: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1
And anything regarding differences in crime numbers or IQ? Forget it.
I’d reflect on that.
I'd reflect on that.
Equity is equality of outcomes (done by explicitly redirecting resources as needed to get this result). As opposed to equal opportunity which is what is generally meant by "equality".
Or to ELI5 it's treating people differently to get them all to the same position, instead of treating everyone the same. The argument for "equity" is then that we aren't all starting from the same place. It's the same line of reasoning that justified affirmative action in the US.
- Equality: We are both free to operate in an open market to secure the best outcomes for ourselves
- Equity: You made $1000, I made $100, we both get $550
Wokes will bend over backwards to paint equality as an impossible project, claiming that it is doomed because of historical white supremacy, generational oppression, moon phases, etc. We're asked to believe uncritically that the goal of equal opportunity is equal outcome, and commanded to pursue equal outcome at all costs lest we are labeled racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist; de-platformed from all social media and made infamous and unemployable so we can't work to support our families. Equality is the American civil rights movement, equity is literally communism.
Equity is not “literally communism”, it’s the pretty simple understanding that if you always start 40 meters ahead of someone in a 100 meter race, you’re likely to always finish first and they won’t have a chance.
So we put more (and therefore unequal) resources into helping the competitor who’s having to run 40 more meters than you.
So, to each according to their needs, and from each according to their ability, more or less?
That's incorrect. The goal or schema of communism is not "equal outcomes". That might be the crude rubric of some state capitalist societies of the past, e.g. equal wages regardless of rank, but in true communism the abundance of resources permits anyone to have their needs met and for anyone to realize their full abilities.
One can criticize its naivety. But please do not conflate it with the mean and frankly misanthropic world view of the woke crowd, in which large swathes of humanity are condemned to endless self flagellation.
heh
I'd avoid using either in any polemic for a better world, and stick to the original words of the communist manifesto, which have not been bettered: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need!
An earnest, good-hearted, and well-cited author and scientist is removing himself from academia because of the ever-accelerating creep of DEI influence into entirely unrelated work. This sounds like exactly what the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' were trying to warn us about back in 2012 or so.
If anything, your comment really just solidified to me that maybe we should have taken those folks a bit more seriously, and encouraged folks like you to quiet down. :)
This particular organization wants to follow the antiracist line of thinking, and they probably feel that strengthens their community. He's perfectly entitled to leave it and complain about it. But, the organizations reasons for making people who join the organization align with this values statement seems like it should be their prerogative.
Maybe they feel like to grow as an organization, they need to ask their community to that line of thinking. If they have done the work to understand that's what they should do, isn't it correct, even if they lose a researcher like Haidt?
Universities are advising their staff not to council in favour of abortion or offer condoms for the purposes of birth control (but OK for purposes of diseas prevenion). Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.
This is what an attack on freedom of speech looks like. And the consequences are of far more significance in this case.
Being fired for bringing the university in to disrepute barely even registers.
So if you want to know whether someone's position on free speech is hysterical posturing, or whether it's genuine, you can compare their reaction on these two paired issues.
> Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.
Can you provide us with an example of a university prof being given a felony sentencing for providing counsel related to abortion? It was a bizarre thing to bring up and admittedly just sort of reads like American fear-mongering. You're coming at this from a very strange angle, you're gonna need a better formed argument if you want to change any minds here.
Employers who fire people over non-criminal supposedly "racist" behavior should be sued and made to pay big bucks.
Your employer has no business judging you for how you (non-criminally) behave outside your working time. Firing over any such non-criminal behavior should be punishable severely.
Also, sounds like you think all 'woke activists' everywhere are always destructive. Which is an interesting take. At what point does someone cross the line to become an inherently destructive 'woke' person?
a) call/protest for firing people for said outside-of-work activities
b) protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way
c) protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies
d) protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)
> protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way
There are conservative politicians, florida in particular, that have passed legislation banning CRT and gender studies. Is this not a restriction of free speech?
Toby Price was fired for reading a popular children's book to children. Was this not a form of censorship?
> protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies
Does this mean that that discrimination based on race/gender be allowed or not allowed? Should bakers in an open market be permitted to say no to gay wedding cakes? Should banks be able to say no to non-white loan applicants?
> protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)
Does uneven enforcement count as a factor? White suburban teens smoke pot (in states where its still illegal) at rates the same as non-white urban teens, but enforcement is highly disprortionate. So what's the solution to that?
Discrimination based on race should either be allowed in all circumstances or disallowed in all circumstances. Affirmative action is discrimination based on race so it's hypocritical to have this as government policy while explicitly prohibiting discrimination against minorities.
Uneven enforcement calls for punishing those not enforced against, not letting guilty minorities walk.
Any further attempts of sealioning will be ignored.
Again interesting that you consider discrimination based on race in all cases as an acceptable position equal to no discrimination based on race.
The unequal enforcement bit would mean that white neighborhoods should be given the same level of enforcement as minority ones. Is that really what you want? Where literally everyone is treated by the police exactly how they treat minorities?
I have absolutely no problem with increasing policing in white neighborhoods. The risk to people who are not criminal lowlifes is not zero, but is negligible. And I place 0 weight on the lives and well-being of criminal lowlifes.
I will take your word that you'd be happy with increased policing even if it affected you personally, but I doubt that if you actually experienced it that you would be happy with the outcome.
I can be racist (teach white nationalism), you can't call me racist (that's the dread cultural cultural marxism again!). I should be subject to no laws (that restrict fascist propagandisation or mobilisation), but laws that restrict the rights of women, blacks, degenerate leftists etc. should be enforced presumably to the point of street execution (it's your own fault! gotta obey those laws!)
And so it goes..
But let me guess, only in the case of fascists?
Also, I don't know exactly how far this is from the "opinion" of the so-called "labor movement" given that something closer to this than to anglosphere practice is the reality in most of continental Europe currently.
Kendi is a key promoter of "anti-racism", which is described in the above quote.
Many institutions are signing on to this agenda, which requires people to view everything through this ideological (social justice) lens and to participate in discriminatory activity as described above. This lens ensures that instead of seeking truth, you will just find more social injustice. A demon under every rock, if you will.
Of course they want the blood feuds to continue forever.
We can all hopefully agree that:
A) Redlining existed
B) Redlining was explicitly racist
C) Redlining has impacts that are still felt today
Let's use an antiracist lens to talk about it and compare to a modern, liberal "just don't be racist" lens.
The standard liberal response is, "well, redlining is over, and we know now not to do that. So, problem solved, right?"
The antiracist lens might be, "there are still people suffering from the impact of Redlining. The people who benefited from it should be helping those who suffered from it." In this case, wealthy white folks explicitly benefited from Redlining. Maaaaaybe we should tap on the shoulders of wealthy white folks and say, "hey, there was a major injustice done very recently, we want to fix it, and since you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it."
My heritage is Polish. How much do the Germans owe me?
This is true for historical systematic oppression of any kind.
We're getting now to one of the bigger problems with the philosophy you're describing: What's "you" here? Is "you" people in the same genetic category as the people who benefited from redlining. Those who happen to look like these people, but share actual no genetic ancestry (say, because they were immigrants) or perhaps do not share the privilege (say, because they were born poor or had other disadvantages) might take exception. Push them too hard, you become the oppressor.
There's then a Kafkaesque attitude that manifests that says, "I don't care what your protestations are on this topic, nor will I hear your case, you belong to X [ where X is social group, economic class, identity group, race, or whatever ] and you should accept sacrifices for the great good. Full stop. If you deny it you're the enemy."
That's one reason why many people view highly "corrective" actions in the realm of social relations or economic re-organizations with a strong amount of terror. We certainly have strong examples of terror manifesting in the 20th century in completely separate parts of the world and at massive scale - always for the greater good.
Regarding your second point, that you belong to X, so you are the enemy. I agree. Except on economic class. For context, I made roughly $850k last year, and my taxes were paltry. It is because of people in my economic class and above they we have a lot of the problems we do.
If you make a million a year, you can absolutely afford to give more.
(I do this by spending my money on mutual aid projects, bail funds, debt relief, community owned housing, forest conservation, etc. I put about $350k into community projects that had little to no direct benefit for me. I say this only to deal with the inevitable, "why don't you put your money where your mouth is" comments I receive when I say we wealthy folks should be taxed much more.)
Well, there's the problem. You can't declare something fixed, and you have to have standards to check against. Those people just aren't trying and you can't write every "standard liberal" off because you personally know lazy ones.
But yes, the race-blind answer would be to help people still experiencing those first-order (lack of ownership) and second-order (lack of generational equity) problems by tackling obstacles to low-end ownership and invest in wealth and estate planning classes, assisting with secondary education, etc.
A multitude of strategies and a goal of trying those and other things until the original victims are helped, while trying not the name those victims explicitly. In doing so, helping anyone similarly disadvantaged.
> antiracist lens might be, [...] wealthy white folks [...] you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it.
The anti-racist lens mentions race a lot. I'm not just saying that to be snarky but because I believe that's harmful. Like the news reporting thoughtlessly about suicides.
But I don't see in that view is any concern for finding the unfair beneficiaries - merely all white people. This is where it goes from looking racist to being racist.
Most damningly, anti-racists don't have any consistent or desirable ideas on what the problems are or how the funds would go to help. It's all about race, categorizing and separating and stigmatizing by race, and confiscating by race, but barely if ever about defining and planning to fix the problems for people of any race, let alone all.
> people in my economic class [from another post]
I feel that this class-based analysis is much more useful and less counter-productive.
In other words a researcher studying a topic unrelated to diversity will need to lie by claiming that there is a link.
As threat actors account for a non-trivial fraction of global economic activity [6], we expect our research to play an active role in the co-creation of a more inclusive and diverse lifeworld for the people of earth."
I do - I think reasonably - dispute the applicability of the outputs of many of our knowledge production institutions to social justice questions. (Just as I don't dispute that there are, conversely many which are).
If we find ourselves in a situation where we can't make a useful distinction between research that is and isn't relavent to social justice, I think we're at risk of our language seeming vaccuous and nonsensical.
The question that triggered his reaction is (quoting from the article) 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.' Indeed in principle they could just answer that it doesn't. What is left out here is why they are asking this. If the purpose of the question is unclear then researchers may feel incentivised to lie to 'fit' the requirements.
My personal view is that this is much ado about nothing. More likely than not most people will ignore the answers. There will, however, be reviewers who use that to reject papers.
It's been a while since I've watched the lecture, but what I remember is that Haidt sees the academy seeking truth as (potentially?) incompatible with the academy seeking social justice. As such, he anticipates a day when universities will have to choose individually which path they will follow.
I suspect that's the context in which Haidt is making this decision.
If this is the way NYU operates, it is no longer a university.
The objection would be if the statement is used as a tool to discriminate against good research. So this resignation should probably be treated as a vote of no confidence in the people and goals of the specific institution. I can see why the sort of people who would demand this statement would be a problem as ironically the DIE crowd seems to sometimes attract a weird sort of modern racist. Something that is always a risk when developing a race-obsessed ideology.
[0] https://spsp.org/events/demonstrating-our-commitment-anti-ra... - the "We requested the submitters to please explain whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP" link leads to the same page for me.
They would pass the reviewing process where they would receive the lowest score on the "3-point rating scale".
It would also mean by negation that the submission did not employ "diverse research participants", "diverse research methods (e.g., methodology that promotes equity)", or "diverse members of the research team", which basically would be viewed as a self-indictment in our political climate. Nobody with an interest to succeed would willingly arrive at this conclusion, they would view it as necessary to avoid it (like by making up reasons as to why the submission advances anti-racism).
In other words, the requirement to include the statement is a way of enforcing the stated goals and policing the researchers' conformity.
How so? Affirmative action?
Any ideology that discriminates against one race or ethnic group vs. any other is racist. Trying to make elaborate arguments as to why some types of discrimination are acceptable because historical or societal reason X or Y is a form of rationalization.
After decades of apartheid would you prefer the South African government stop all consideration of race across the board, despite the profits of inequity having already been partitioned?
It just shows the power of ideology to crush dissent, when obviously poisonous and destructive statements like these are accepted.
If more people thought like that, then Jews would still be shovelling Germans into ovens.
For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' arguments. To some, Yale appeared censorious. As Jonathan Rauch describes [2], that's not good for your case. Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers. Wallace ran for president in 1968 and nearly forced a plurality which would have given him significantly more influence [3].
Early episodes of the podcast So to Speak [4] by FIRE can inform the direction that can get us talking again. Basically, open and civil discourse is the way. The podcast demonstrates, through interviews with free speech advocates, a bunch of examples showing why that is a good target to shoot for, and how to achieve it.
[1] https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace_1968_presidenti...
[4] https://www.thefire.org/category/newsdesk/so-to-speak/page/1...
Another more extreme example would be the Nazis. They went through early political suppression and existed in an environment where organized political street violence was already common. Who knows what the counterfactual was, but censoring and punching Nazis did not stop their rise. The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans is a good book on this. It certainly seems that extremism is fostered by such environments.
Precisely. Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU board from 1991-2008, argues that censorship helped the Nazis [1]
> "In the Weimar Republic there were laws very similar to the anti hate speech laws that still exist in Germany today. And they were very strictly enforced, there was an umbrella of Jewish organizations in the Weimar Republic, the head of which did a study. They said that these laws are by and large being strictly enforced, the prosecutions are being capably handled, there were many convictions, including of Nazis, and the Nazis loved the propaganda. They got far more attention than they otherwise would have, became free speech martyrs, actually had posters saying, 'In all of Germany why is this one man silenced?' They gained sympathy and attention that they otherwise never would have."
[1] https://youtu.be/J1iZffRFs8s?t=2838
https://www.thefire.org/would-censorship-have-stopped-the-ri...
> Considering the Nazi movement’s core ideology, as espoused by Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” rested on an alleged conspiracy between Jews and their sympathizers in government to politically disempower Aryan Germans, it is not surprising that the Nazis were able to spin government censorship into propaganda victories and seeming confirmation of their claims that they were speaking truth to power, and that power was aligned against them.
I don't find it particularly convincing, but it does explain the strategy of complaining about free speech and censorship by "the jews" has a long history of success, with Nazis. Everyone else thinks, "oh these people are Nazis". But Nazis think, "It's a Jewish Conspiracy to silence the truth", because they are Nazis.
Can you elaborate on what you find unconvincing about appeals to open discourse? Are you saying you think censorship is more effective?
Suggesting that anti-hate speech laws are worth bringing up in this context is like mentioning Hitler was a vegetarian or banned smoking and seems to be sourced to a cartoonist, rather than a historian.
Hitler went to jail for 'high treason' after an attempted coup.
> Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to the Nazi Party, along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the Nazi Party from the city on 5 May 1927.[65][66] Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets.[62] Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban until the end of October.[67]
Goebbels, the victim of oppressive laws that stop you from randomly attacking people in the street. Why have we not learned this lesson from history? If you stop them attacking people violently in the streets, and removing the government, then it's your own fault what happens next.
I don’t know if it helped them amass the numbers/backing and cement the ideology that led to the attempted coup, but it definitely didn’t stop it. You can definitely see how pre-existing political street gangs made it easier to justify forming their own street gangs.
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
Regarding your claim that this is only "faintly" related to free speech, you should know that Jonathan Haidt is very near to that issue. He co-authored a book [2] with the current president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Greg Lukianoff. See also: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives [3]
[1] https://youtu.be/ND_uY_KXGgY?t=1225
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Gen...
[3] https://vimeo.com/27861464
With the small difference being that those groups did not suppress speech by refusing to invite speakers to an event. Let's not put academia memberships and pogroms in the same category.
It's also worth noting that FIRE was expressly founded to deal with free speech violations in higher education. FIRE's president often discusses this, for example in a recent interview with Nick Gillespie [1]. FIRE recently expanded to cover all free speech issues, but that is where they got started. They've taken over a role that the ACLU has largely abandoned, since they now construe rights to be in conflict with each other, as former Executive Director Ira Glasser mentions [2] with the ACLU's new guidelines [3]:
> "The guidelines are designed to assist in consideration of the competing interests that may arise when such conflicts emerge. The guidelines do not seek to resolve the conflicts, because resolution will virtually always turn on factors specific to each case."
> "The potential conflict between advocacy for free speech and for equal justice in the fight against white supremacy is especially salient, but by no means unique in presenting tensions between ACLU values."
But you're not supposed to construe rights as being in conflict with each other, as implied by the 9th amendment [4]:
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people
Like balancing form and function, one should not take away from another.
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greg-lukianoff-saving-...
[2] https://youtu.be/x0Lc5b8Flto?t=87
[3] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/aclu...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
I'm annoyed, because there are lots of people who don't realise this is literally about survival for others, not just about free speech ideas.
There's a difference between words and actions. Words fo not kill. No, words are not violence no matter how much people try to claim otherwise.
Furthermore, censoring people does nothing to reduce a groups ability to kill. Taking away someone's public voice does not take away their capacity to carry out violence. Disinviting a speaker or banning a book does not magically make people's guns disappear.
It's worked incredibly well. The United States - the country with easily some of the most well protected free speech laws - continues to be one of the most diverse and welcoming countries in the world. It's one of the most desired places for people to immigrate to, and continues to have a large foreign born population. By comparison, look at how a single digit percentage influx of foreigners rattled Europe. When racists do gather it usually results in plummetting support for their causes. This was the case with the Unite the Right rally: following the rally support for the movement dropped considerably.
By what metric has Chomsky's strategy failed? You seem to be postulating this as fact, without anything backing it up.
Islam played a role in that. Europe and Islam have been on mostly fighting terms since around 700 AD. There is much smaller cultural difference between the mostly Hispanic immigration into the US and the mainstream American culture than there is between the mostly secular European cultures and people from, say, Afghanistan, who express significant support for things such as Shari'a law.
Did it?
This is the core of your argument, and if true, it’s unassailable. However, I don’t believe it’s true. Do you have evidence that it is? I don’t mean well-crafted arguments by respected people, but actual evidence.
For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit. I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated. The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it. (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
> For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit.
I'm familiar with that study and I'm pretty sure they acknowledged that they only measured activity of individuals who remained on Reddit. It's really hard to definitively say what happens when groups move to private forums where you can no longer track their conversations. Also, what people say in public vs. private can be different [1] [2], and I think periods when that is true (such as right now) should be cause for consideration about whether or not censorship contributes to that. I'd argue that state or widespread cultural censorship does contribute to self-censorship by chilling conversations, and that people's views don't change when you block them from view. It's like sending someone to prison vs. rehabilitation. You might still argue that the views can't spread as easily, and I would argue against that too.
When groups are deplatformed, they find their own ways to communicate, either by joining private groups on services like Telegram or by creating their own platforms.
Then they are outside your sphere of influence and harder to reach. We are pushing them in this direction and I think we will end up regarding that as a mistake. But it's not like this is the first time that's happened.
You can join my talk next Wednesday, October 12th [3] to learn more about what I think with sources. It's the first one listed. This particular question is not the focus, but it is related. I'd also recommend listening to free speech defenders such as Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, and Jonathan Rauch, to name a few [4]. They've all spoken at length about this via many forms of media, books, podcasts, conferences, etc. Anyone interviewed on the So to Speak podcast is also great, particularly the earlier episodes where they bring in the older generations who've been defending free speech for their entire lives.
The evidence is there, but every time there is a new technology it takes time to collect. You can instead consider a principled approach based on what you know works between individuals. Jonathan Rauch makes a great case for this in his books and speaking.
> I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated.
I think this is true! Yet, the more we censor, the more concentrated the echo chambers become, both the ones you agree with and the ones with whom you disagree. So IMO we must stop regarding "ugly" forums as a bad thing to be avoided. We all have difficult conversations in the real world, and I think curating the online world to look nice and pretty only provides more evidence to the idea that our current "solution" to online disagreements isn't working and appears to be infecting the real world.
> The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it.
That is evidence that it's popular, not that it is a good idea.
> (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
I agree, and I think that has the unfortunate side effect of hiding some useful rebuttals, as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread [5].
> So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
I'd say the jury's out on how to effectively moderate fora. We're ju...
I think is the study we've been discussing: https://seclab.bu.edu/people/gianluca/papers/deplatforming-w...
This is my understanding of their analysis, based on a fairly shallow read:
> Are accounts being created on an alternative platform after being suspended?
A: Yes, 59% of Twitter users and 76% of Reddit users moved to Gab.
> Do suspended users become more toxic if they move to another platform?
A: Reddit users became more toxic on Gab. 60% of Twitter users became less toxic and 20% became much more toxic, although the most toxic posts contained hatred against Twitter and complaints that their free speech and rights had been denied. (Toxicity was determined using Google's Perspective API.)
> Do suspended users become more active if they move to another platform?
A: Yes. A manual inspection determines that at least some of that increased activity is complaints about being suspended.
> Do suspended users gain more followers on the other platform?
A: Although users tend to become more toxic and more active after they move to the alternative platform, their audience decreases.
I think you could read this either way. Deplatforming is ineffective because it "radicalizes" those have been deplatformed. Or; deplatforming is effective because it reduces the spread of toxicity. Your post above is mainly focusing on the former; my post focused mainly on the latter.
The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
I'll let you have the last word. Best wishes.
I agree with the NYT that censorship is rooted in fear [1].
Evidence is aplenty of the benefits of open discourse. In real-world places where open discourse is encouraged, people and ideas thrive. Also, saying "you need to be protected from other people's words" is not a winning argument in the public sphere. People want to be trusted to make their own decisions about how to feel, not have the importance of speech dictated to them.
It's really only a small minority who seek protection against certain viewpoints, and they too want to be able to express themselves. Unfortunately, censorship is also used against them, often with prejudice and without their knowledge [2]. History has shown how this has happened over and over, for example in "Don't Be a Sucker" (1947) [3]. If you choose to ignore it, that is your prerogative. History is evidence.
> I think is the study we've been discussing
Thanks for linking it, that's not the one I had in mind. To expand on my previous comment about how we should accept "ugly" forums, I think measuring toxicity is problematic. For one thing, it's a subjective measure. One man's trash is another's treasure. For example, here's an article from someone making a case in favor of Kiwi Farms [4]. But also, censorship can chill what people state publicly. I already shared Axios's write-up of a recent study that shows that these days, what people say publicly does not align with what they say privately [5].
> The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
FWIW, I think moderation is fine if the author is informed of actions taken against their content. That is not happening consistently on any of the platforms though, and hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of users are impacted. Load 10 tabs of randomly selected active Reddit users on Reveddit [6]. Five or more will have had a comment removed within their first page of recent history. Almost none of these will have been notified, and all of their removed comments are shown to them as if they're not removed. I just did it and got 7. Reddit last reported 450 million monthly active users. And, Facebook moderators have a "Hide comment" button that does the same thing:
> "Hiding the Facebook comment will keep it hidden from everyone except that person and their friends. They won’t know that the comment is hidden, so you can avoid potential fallout." [7]
It's hard for me to believe that this has had no negative impact on discourse, particularly when our recent difficulties communicating across ideologies seem to align quite well with the introduction of social media. Things like this 1998 Firing Line episode [8] simply are not happening today. The depth of conversations these days is shallow and combative.
> I'll let you have the last word. Best wishes.
I will reject (graciously, I hope) your offer. I think continued discussion is the way forward.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/opinion/schools-banned-bo...
[2] https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq/#need
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23X14HS4gLk
[4]...
But I don't like when the vote ranks stifle good retorts, which is what has now happened here. Logged out users won't see this entire thread of replies because the comment to which you are replying is marked "dead".
What's the solution?
Roger Baldwin, founder of the now gone-astray ACLU, said this [1],
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
[1] https://youtu.be/ND_uY_KXGgY?t=1225
Today platforms have the same choices about what to air or not. Free Speech is also about not forcing people to say things they do not want, it is also about not forcing platforms to broadcast lies.
These are not the same thing.
https://www.vox.com/2017/8/20/16167870/aclu-hate-speech-nazi...
Free speech is a good idea for game-theoretic reasons. That's it. Free speech lets people fight it out with only the occasional riot and attempted overthrow of the republic. That's better than the alternative.
It might not have happened yet, but I suspect we're heading in that direction. We've seen 'speech related' bans from Paypal and crowdfunding sites.
Paypal even deplatformed the (UK-based) Free Speech Union (although they reverted that decision after the backlash)
“Just build your own bank.” “Just build your own currency.”
To develop 'Social Network' or 'Digital Currencies', you need 'Server Farm', 'Internet', and 'Power Grid', and to have those you need everything from 'Intercontintental Data Cables' to 'Semiconductor Manufacturing', and way back to extraction and refining of raw materials..
There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
That's largely made possible by censorship. When you counter such views in groups that support them, you are likely to be silenced without your knowledge. Social media sites have built a whole suite of tools to aid in the removal of such content [1], and such tools are available to people from all ideologies. You might think that evens things out, but the secretive nature of the tools means that only a handful of people, relatively speaking, know how it all works. That creates a new "us vs. them" mentality, and we need to find our way back to a concept of shared humanity.
> There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
Social media today, like the printing press in its infancy, is understood and managed by a small number of people. In that environment you can still take a principled stance to argue against censorship and for transparency.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reveddit/comments/sxpk15/fyi_my_tho...
I'm not aware of any group intending to overthrow a government or otherwise do harm which was allowed to recruit and spread their propaganda as aggressively and freely as possible, and which was thwarted in their aims by nothing more than civil discourse. I don't know what experience he believes to be contrary to that classic argument, but that of the Nazis and Communists ain't it.
It certainly doesn't seem to work with modern propaganda or conspiracy theory. I'm certain QAnon and anti-vaxxers have been presented with arguments contrary to their claims, and those of white supremacists and anti-semites have been litigated for a century or more, and yet not only do they persist, but are experiencing a modern renaissance.
Show me an example where this proposition that "letting them all talk" is the best way to prevent organized violence and mayhem at scale. I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.
Yes, the famous events that come from letting everyone speak: book burnings and death camps. If we could just burn enough books, we could keep books from being burned forever. If we silence enough people, we can keep people from being silenced.
Deplatforming doesn’t forcibly prevent speech, it just pushes it to the margins. You can still publish your book in favor of book burnings, but, in a deplatforming world, no major publisher would publish it, so you’d have to do a small independent print run that would likely be ignored.
This is the way the world has always worked. Publishers (including TV channels, newspapers, etc.) have always exercised discretion over what they thought was worthy to publish. What’s different today is that the human content moderation has largely disappeared, which has allowed the marginal voices (antivax on both left and right, QAnon, etc.) to flourish.
Edit: That’s not to say this content moderation has been perfect. It allows small communities to exercise behavior that the larger society finds abhorrent, such as refusing service to people of color. And so laws are passed regulating what small communities can do, which understandably pisses them off. Human systems are messy; there’s no absolutist answer that works, either in unbridled control or unbridled tolerance.
There's a much shorter version of this sentiment that people loved to use during the 2020 riots: "violence is the language of the unheard"
I guess it only applies to groups they like?
This has been the rule throughout human history, and it’s unfortunate that people (some in this thread even) are discovering the first principles for the first time for why we strive to apply the same standards to everyone, and not do carve outs. Unfortunately, politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from power. When elite opinion makers decide that certain things are okay, those things are okay … like mass protests and rioting during a pandemic.
So you beat them to it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
In the US, there is not one group trying to do that, but a multitude of groups, some who are in power and some who are not, most of whom deny that they are trying to do what you charge them with.
It’s actually godwins second law of nature. how pertinent nazis are to the topic is not relevant, Godwin’s law will be brought up and very often inappropriately as even Godwin himself has noted.
“Godwin's law itself can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, when fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.[12]”
“Godwin himself has also criticized the overapplication of the law, claiming that it does not articulate a fallacy, but rather is intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate and hyperbolic comparisons“
B. This is a comment page about censorship and this thread in particular is about one party trying to end open society
So nazis are a natural comparison, and the valid comparison was attempted to be censored and avoided by bringing up an internet meme in exactly the way the originator has criticized. But hey knowing the meme is a get out of jail free card, no civil discourse needed!
Just admit that the comment would have been a valid defense of the nazi party in its ramp up. No meme-ing out of that and there’s been no attempt to deny it, just distract from it.
Also, violence isn't the only bad thing people do which justifies some sort of retribution.
Just about any large group of people, whether defined by by race, religion, nationality, or creed, will have bad individuals in it. And so the bad guys can almost always point to people from the other group that "started it".
When someone from the out-group commits an atrocity, it is just more proof of how bad that group is. When someone from the in-group commits an atrocity, it is an exception.
The point is, if you are going to write of a group (presumably, the other political party) as bad beyond redemption, you better have a damn good reason to think that you are the historical exception.
Look at marjorie taylor green's most recent insanity.
"accusation in a mirror."
and it goes far beyond a handful of loud extremists who are given megaphones from the 'less-extreme' in their party (are they really the minority then?)
the Fox news led contingent have been screaming this 'under attack' narrative.
and they are openly setting the conditions for IRL violence.
Othering trans & queer people. freaking attacking drag queens which is SO silly..
claiming we are pedo groomers who give out hormones to tweens like candy. saying your identity will no longer be people like you in the future, straight & cis.
child abusers seem to be the one class that it's still acceptable to openly wish violence upon.
telling their audience to 'take a stand' or else lose their entire existence & identity produces extremism and prods armed extremists to show up in real life.
they are bringing guns to shut down libraries, ban books, pile into vans to go attack pride, passing discriminatory laws.
not even touching on poc, immigrants, & attacks on democracy/jan 6; i'm focusing on my identity since I can better speak to it. which btw funny how there is always an eminent caravan invasion (a specifically chosen word) right before the election.
we have always been victims of violence.
but this is a much bigger boiling kettle and one group is stoking the fire.
i clearly see this fear in the eyes of a large & heavily armed group.
they think they are under attack. what will they do to 'protect themselves and save our country'? what happens when the kettle boils over?
they're pointing those guns at me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/xtbx7t/marjorie_t...
https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1576377501424975872
The alternative looks like a replay of all the worst stuff from social repression to actual nuclear war-given the misinformation propping up the Russian invasion of Ukraine and nuclear threats.
Leftists are 100% part of the problem here in the US, I'm not sure what you would need to be smoking to think otherwise.
There is, because literally every viewpoint is an implicit repudiation of some set of values, ie. aka intolerance. The whole point of tolerance is the recognition of this fact and that resolving such differences requires dialogue (edit: resolving them without violence that is).
As Popper said, only those views that directly incite violence or cannot be kept in check by public opinion should be silenced, otherwise you put the whole enterprise of tolerance in jeopardy.
But these days, it's become commonplace to equate words (or sometimes even silence) with violence.
Well you're thinking wrong.
1930s Germany actually had hate speech laws.
Didn't help.
https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/4_an/4_Anti-Semitis...
Turns out they didn't have hate speech laws:
> In its application to statements about groups, the German law of insult had a development very similar to the Anglo-American law of libel.1 The Supreme Court had decided at an early date that statements about a class of people were punishable only if it could clearly be established that they were directed against definite individuals. An insulting remark about "Jews generally" was not considered within the statute. This view was reaffirmed in 1931 in a case in which a general attack on the Jews was held to be "not directed in a sufficiently recognizable manner against individual Jews." Similarly, an attack against the "German Jews" was held not to be suffi- ciently restricted, although in a few instances persons were convicted for insulting the Jewish inhabitants of small communities
Even known extremists, posting lies about people who were targetted for being Jewish, were let off, where the same lie about any random person could have led to a year in prison:
> In one of several cases against Julius Streicher, the editor of the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, a fine of 400 marks (then less than $100) was levied for an article which stated that a Jewish attorney, Dr. Wassertriidinger of Nuremberg, had committed perjury. The opinion of the court was that in spite of the seri- ousness of the libel and of a prior conviction of Streicher, no prison sentence be inflicted because "the defendant is a fanatic whose statements cannot be taken too seriously." Similar tenderness in meting out punishment was frequently explained by the characterization of the defendants as zealots.
> Furthermore, the immunity of the members of the Reichstag often protected Nazi depu- ties against criminal prosecution. Those deputies became the so-called re- sponsible editors of many newspapers—frequently one deputy was the editor of several newspapers—and thus made criminal prosecution for many libelous publications impossible. Although the Reichstag could waive the immunity of its members, it did so infrequently and then only after long delays.
So it looks like we tried not censoring them, and suprisingly, it didn't work.
> "Haters in the end bury themselves if you let them talk" - Jonathan Rauch
https://youtu.be/E0T9XSG73kY?t=3083
But sure, the real problem is Psychologists trying to adress systematic racism in their field. That's worth resigning about. Because they're trying to hide the truth, but also we should let them speak, in our academic Psychological publications, because it's obvious nonsense.
Also, how do you propose to convince people of this clearly-objective “truth” that you know, if you silence them from questioning and debating it? Do you think that’s ever worked?
No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values. Those value-based disputes cannot be resolved by open and civil discourse alone, and we know that racists have a tendency to abuse such spaces through techniques such as emotional rhetoric and Gish galloping.
The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Otherwise, as in the real world until now, people find each other and network. You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values who could speak to people who want to listen to them.
I'm not advocating for some global censorship entity.
Ideology is not a protected class, however. In the case of Haidt, they are free to not present any research at conferences unless it advances their definition of equity, and he has no choice but to go along with it or walk away.
It's worth pointing out that they are not explicitly turning down non-equity-focused research, but that the existence of the question is his interpretation of an ideological pressure to conform.
If it even existed in the first place; there are plenty of laws that expressly allow discrimination in deference to 'religious beliefs.'
Courts, & the Supreme Court in particular, are giving far more weight to 'christian freedom' at the expense of the rest of us.
Cases include recent PrEP ruling, insane football prayer ruling that willfully ignored facts, bathroom & sports laws targeting kids. crazy ruling on prayers in court.
Adoption discrimination (de-facto govt by transitive property. we have to stop outsourcing government to contractors, especially when it makes religious orgs the only avenue).
Upcoming ruling from CO which will probably allow even more queer discrimination.
that 'pressure to conform' is and has historically been one way, giving one class the legal go ahead to discriminate in the name of some skewed idea of christian ideals
If it were not, mosques would be legally compelled to hire rabbis and churches would have to consider hiring druids for services.
Where the line ought to be drawn is nowhere near as obvious as you seem to think it should be.
But this disagreement highlights this major problem the US faces.
We live in two increasingly separate realities with different 'facts', where obvious is totally different based on your identity.
the one religious non-belief class example I gave is the football coach prayer case.
to me it's an obvious overreach and clearly breaks secular education norms (and past scotus rulings).
to such an obvious degree that the minority (on the court, majority in public opinion) broke precedence and put photos directly refuting the 'facts' the majority claim are truth.
that's also a bit spurious. i don't think anyone is arguing that churches must be forced to interview (or hire) other religions.
but the majority does believe that the state & courts shouldn't create laws that expressly allows someone to discriminate or refuse to provide service to someone else just because they are gay or trans or use different pronouns. or deny an adoption. or disallow kids from playing incredibly low states high school sports. or ban books. or not talk about gender & sexuality. i keep using queer-centric issues because that's my identity and I can speak to it better than race/trans issues. there are plenty of examples there too.
it's minority religion dictating laws that affect our lives and explicitly allowing those beliefs to take away rights from the rest of us.
The problem is that people make statements like this but apply them selectively. E.g., platforms like major news networks are happy to give airtime to the claim that people alive today, who never owned slaves and are very likely not descended from anyone who did, must pay reparations to others alive today who were never enslaved and may well not be descended from slaves. These same platforms also give airtime to those claiming all societal ills stem from one ethnic group or another (as long as it's the "right" ethnic group being blamed).
This incredibly skewed double standard isn't fooling anyone.
Does it though? Ideas are hard to kill. Just because you stop people from saying something in public, does not mean they aren't talking about it in private. In fact, oftentimes people even assume the thing you can't talk about must be really important or else they'd let you talk about it. And in turn, it holds more powerful and spreads further. I don't think censorship is really effective at stopping ideas
You say ideas are like viruses. Since when has trying to stop viruses worked?
It also makes sense that it works given our understanding of social contagion.
You're not trying to completely kill the idea. Just reduce its prevalence.
Also we have stopped viruses before, like SARS and Ebola
The way you learn how to defend your opinion is to engage with people who have different opinions, not having affirmation parties with people who are predisposed to agree with you about everything.
He's a black guy who went out of his way to befriend KKK members, and many of them ended up leaving the KKK when they realized he didn't fit what they were told about black people.
Censorship would not have helped, they had to be shown that they were wrong. That's what "sunlight is the best disinfectant" means.
There are many case studies in the real world.
That is what happens, though. Not with probability one, but with a probability decently above zero.Rwandan genocide being incited over radio, 1930s/1940s Germany being incited by the press and speeches, same with 1930s Japan.
Many mass shooters that targeted specific ethnicities were radicalized online. Dylan Roof. Also the recent guy that wrote the N word on his gun. These were white nationalists. The latter said it wasn't his offline world, it was purely online where he got radicalized.
You're just making assertions that it's not like this but our best understanding of ideas that they are social and contagious.
Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics, and I don't think that people who study genetic factors of IQ are more likely to be Nazi-sympathetic. It's not like the Nazis were scientific racists, they were pseudo-scientific racists - they started out racist and went on a quest for the appearance of proof.
The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway and then prove that "deplatforming" works to reduce overall belief in or following of that path. Censorship tends to have a whiplash effect to those who notice it which is rarely taken into account by those who preach censorship. (Which is what you'd expect if the people who were doing the censoring didn't care about the issues and were simply using them to bolster their control of the censoring mechanism...)
Yes, racism is bad for the believer and for society but there is no evidence censorship could help and a ton of evidence that it is ruinous to democracies.
I didn't just discuss that. I also discussed mass shooters who were radicalized by these ideas that they read in online forums. No orators.
> Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics
Scientific racism is just one instantiation of it. Not every bad outcome of racism is going to be traced back to scientific racism.
But I will say that scientific racism was a part of Nazi thought. And the mass shooter who wrote the N word on his barrel, and Dylan Roof, were inspired by scientific racism. You can read his manifesto for yourself, or you can see Dylan Roof's interview on Youtube.
> The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway
I really don't see the point of this. I'm not even talking about science or exclusively about scientific racism. You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
The whole article is about a professor being forced to politicize and limit his research, presumably because it would be used to justify wrong-think.
To restate more generally though, the censoring side needs to prove the 'reading viewpoints -> copying actions' pipeline. Would a plainly written description of Hitler's beliefs create nazis of those who read it or is it the oration and the cult tactics that do that? If a nazi quotes a book in support of their views does that mean the book would cause someone without those views to become a nazi?
Sun Tzu counsels to know your enemy, how would this work if they were censored?
If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
Researchers and activists spend countless hours doing exactly that, listening to what racists are saying, lurking in their online communities, and analyzing their rhetoric and membership. It doesn't turn them into racists. How is it you think that they don't become radicalized? It's not because they have some kind of power that makes them immune to idea viruses.
If you're too afraid to dive deep into racist speech why not start with something a little less unpleasant and attend a religious service of a faith you don't belong to. It's fascinating to do, most places of worship are very welcoming to newcomers, and again, you really won't be magically converted.
Yes, some people who walk into a church do end up becoming members, just like some people who stumble onto racist online communities do end up joining, but in both cases it's not because exposure to the message has infected them. The actual message itself (in both cases) generally isn't terribly convincing, logical, or consistent. It's very often because they offer people who feel alone and lost a place to be accepted, something besides themselves to blame for their troubles, a clear and narrow path for how to move forward, and a comforting narrative and identity.
If you're happy with who you are and how your life is going, have friends/family who support you, and strong convictions you have nothing to fear from listening to people whose views you strongly disagree with and often you'll have a lot to gain from it.
I just gave you evidence that it does by pointing to specific case studies throughout history. You then proceed with an assertion that it doesn't, backed up by you saying that less than 100% of people who view racist material become racists (well, of course, not everyone that's exposed to a virus becomes infected). This discussion is going nowhere.
But it doesn't, unless it is extensive/complete. It just seems like it does because censored media is constantly reassuring us that the censorship is working, and that all reasonable people enjoy it.
You can't destroy ideas by censoring them from the largest outlets, you have to perpetually search out the smallest outlets (e.g. open everyone's mail) to make sure that these ideas aren't still infecting people, multiplying exponentially. You can't relax anywhere, for a moment. The only surefire way to kill or silence ideas is to kill or silence the people who hold them. That means you have to have systems in place to detect stray ideas, and processes in place to eliminate them.
It's not about surefire ways to silence someone. You're setting up a burden that's too high for no good reason. It's about whether it works in practice to an extent.
In both cases the application thereof, while it will not assist at all with getting to the truth of any issue, will certainly allow you to manipulate those you subject to it to tell you whatever you want to hear.
Of course, as soon as they are removed the subject will typically recant, and often overcorrect in the exact opposite direction, in light of the exposure to loathed coerced manipulative strategies.
Sunlight doesn't have that problem. People may make mistakes and come to the wrong conclusion, but at least they won't double down on their erroneous position as a retributive strategy for the coercive manipulation to which they have been subjected.
But hey, maybe some ends are just so awful they justify any means in pursuit of their prevention, be it torture, censorship or whatever. Certainly lots of people these days clearly seem to think so.
Prove it.
is it just a grift?
so, censorship may be morally bad or wrong and also very effective, and its the fact that it is effective and working is why there is a very loud objection to it
thats all im pointing out
sorry if maybe we are talking past each other!
And my point is, people can make a big deal about something because they think it's wrong, regardless of whether it ultimately works.
Now you and I, hey we know what’s good and morale so that’d be fine. But when it’s someone else who is in control, as it will be, then the “wrong” things get censored.
We all have a strong moral obligation to root out "reprehensible people with the wrong values." If you think otherwise then you don't understand what the word "reprehensible" means.
People certainly can change over time, but someone's state at a given time is what that person actually is at the time.
Shaming is a way of silencing people who disagree with you and that only works if you do it as a mob. Otherwise you're just making yourself feel good by expressing your disapproval. Mob shaming at least accomplishes something, individual shaming is just a lazy substitute for persuasion.
Not true! Just being banned from significant swaths of social media has frequently forced many prominent Nazis/alt-righters out of business. Before Kiwifarms recently had all of their major issues, they were already finding it difficult to keep the site running as a result of continued pressure on every host they switched to.
It also introduces readers to the entirety of the uncensored internet all at once, the most 4-chan thing imaginable, which is somewhat counter to the "limit exposure to disinformation" goal being claimed by the original deplatformers.
And that substantially reduces their reach and ability to disseminate their garbage. It's good.
And yes, they're a bunch of Nazi stooges.
To your point, IIRC, the impact of deplatforming has been studied. Like when that troll Milo got bounced. It greatly diminished their reach and impact.
Sadly, some trolls (Alex Jones) have enough juice to spin off their own bespoke hate machines.
On one hand, you are acknowledging that some values are not based on rationality, and on the other hand you think they should be imposed upon those who don't share them by censorship?
In the spirit of fairness, should one actually no-platform everyone using emotional rhetoric?
Your favourite media outlet will almost certainly have a lot less to say if we do. Depending on your PoV, this may or may not be a bad thing.
Of course it's never good to allow bad arguments into the "marketplace of ideas", because then they'll take over the market, but unfortunately that ship has sailed, or likely never arrived.
Q: Who gets to define "relatively harmless"?
"Advocating for peace" sounds pretty harmless, yet if you dare to mention any specifics - at least this year - it seems supporting it is deemed anything but harmless. Before my time, but seems the same applied in 1964 – 1973.
Each of us defines this for ourselves, using our own moral compass.
I don't think there's anything wrong with advocating for peace, from a free speech aspect, especially if someone is sincere. (Even if someone is completely brainwashed by whatever propaganda. And even if peace itself is a super meaningless term. After all wouldn't a totalitarian world government bring peace? Etc, etc.)
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Rational or not, it's better for bad ideas (ignoring the even more pernicious question of who decides which ideas are "bad") to be examined than have them fester in dark corners.
You're talking about whether censorship is a good idea.
Separate discussion.
I suspect that the answer is "it depends on the culture". China seems to have a lot more control over the spread of anti-CCP ideas than Iran has over the spread of anti-regime ideas, and it isn't because of Iranian censors trying less or having worse tools. But the Iranian population seems to be much less conforming and more ready to rebel.
The US has a number of natural experiments that show that censorship is effective at silencing someone. Look at what happened to Trump and Alex Jones after they were deplatformed. Their reach was cut a lot and that wasn't even state censorship.
Russia had a natural experiment after Gorbachev lifted speech codes. People described the renaissance of new ideas being spoken that were previously stifled. Censorship worked.
It makes sense that it works given our understanding of social contagion. People aren't designed to believe facts. They're designed to join a team and believe whatever stuff their team believes in. Things like taboos or censorship or blacklists are effective, however repellent they may be.
Because in a liberal democracy - or anywhere for that matter - not all ideas are of equal value. The same goes for Putin's Russia as it does for, say, Finland. You have to decide what you stand for, a culture has to decide what it wants to value.
Some ideas and actions are quite obviously, objectively anti-life, pro-misery.
Two people saying the same thing or doing the same thing are not inherently achieving the same outcome, pursuing the same end goal, arriving at their ideas from the same place, and so on. All of that matters in a big way.
A liberal, human rights respecting democracy with a constitution is objectively better if human well-being is your standard, than a theocracy. We have many centuries of experimentation and result at this point, no guessing is required.
Which is to say, deplatforming two very different people that are saying entirely different things and attempting to accomplish very different end goals, is not the same thing just because they're both the act of deplatforming.
Shooting and killing an innocent person at random on the street is not the same as shooting and killing a robber that has broken into your home and is intent on harming your family, despite the fact that they both involve you shooting and killing someone. The same exact moral principle is involved in the deplatforming premise.
The problem is that you’re begging the question. You’re assuming that maximizing individual freedom is what serves well being. Most humans disagree with that premise. Studies show, for example, that Christian conservatives are both happier and have more children than other Americans. Those are “objective” measures of “human well being.” Indeed, zooming out, nearly every highly individualistic, secular western society is in decline—to the point where they can’t even take care of their elderly population without importing religious Catholics from Latin America (in the US) or Muslims (Europe). “Ability to propagate one’s culture sustainably” certainly seems like at least one measure of success at serving human well being, no? And on that measure, modern "liberal democracies" are failing.
Now of course there are other ways to measure human well being, and liberal democracies do quite well on those measures. My point is that by 2022, it should be clear that people disagree on what constitutes a good life, and societal progress. In the last two decades, we've seen country after country reject secular liberal democracy. And even in the west, reaction is on the rise. A majority of Hindus, Afghans, and Iowans agree that San Francisco isn't their dream for the future of their own society. And if you want to dismiss that as "they're wrong and we're right," what you're advocating for looks more like a holy war than "liberal democracy."
Who gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't?
Our/society's rights and wrongs has greatly changed over time and that is only possible because of both good and bad ideas being heard.
No one person should be deciding what's acceptable for the whole of soceity. Every individual should hear different ideas, good, bad and terrible, and decide for themselves what/who they agree with.
They were doing this long before the Internet if that is what you mean! If you mean a platform as in showing up at a prestigious place, well being denied entrance is just as good, you just have your group stand outside and ask "What are they so afraid of? If our ideas are so bad/crazy/etc. can't they just easily shoot them down with social discourse?" and you get all the awareness and revision of the ideas that you want!
If they were invited to speak then they already have an audience. Censoring them is working against the cause of fighting their ideas.
Protest or debate them if you consider their views reprehensible.
Uh...reprehensible by whom?
You do realize that what's "reprehensible" is extremely subjective, right? And the same tactics and standards that you are using to silence opinions you don't like can therefore just as easily be used against you and yours by people who find your opinions reprehensible.
That's the whole point of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas, it protects everyone's ability to speak freely. And then individuals can make up their own minds about what is "reprehensible" and choose whether THEY want to listen to it or not. In other words, people don't need you to be an arbiter of what is reprehensible for other adults.
Exactly. No platforming is a naked display of power without any pretence at principle. If you can keep the power forever, great. You win. If not, well, turnabout is fair play and if you have no attachment to free speech or the marketplace of ideas yourself and you couldn’t maintain power with the benefit of censorship you’re probably in for a bad time.
Have y'all considered that this is what the "talking" looks like?
I see a whole bunch of noise about "CENSORSHIP IS RAMPANT!" and I'm kind of like, no silly -- this noise IS the signal.
In 1963, was there anyone in America left unaware of George Wallace's project to preserve white supremacy?
Why is a private institution obligated to signal boost a national leader who openly defies the law?
I'm not sure them inviting popular racists to speak against human rights is really a good look for them in that situation, nor an instant solution to centuries of systemic racism in America at that time, even if they made some really good points in the debate.
I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true. I regret not being more skeptical. I am fail. Please accept my most humble apology.
TLDR: Yale Political Union invites Wallace. President Kingman Brewster Jr blocks. Much drama. Including local black leaders and civil rights activists, who defended Wallace's appearance per principles of free speech and academic stuff. Brewster removes block. Two student groups reinvite Wallace. Wallace declines, though he did speak at other Ivy League schools.
Described more fully p104-106 in Hentoff's book "Free speech for me--but not for thee", which you cited.
Here's 4 more articles, to round out the reality-based version of that incident:
https://yalecollege.yale.edu/get-know-yale-college/office-de...
"Free Speech, Personified" NYT [2017] https://archive.ph/LvAHn About the 1963 incident, how Pauli Murray appealed to Brewster to let the white supremacist speak, and how Yale recommitted towards and continues to uphold free speech.
Blurb from 1963 about the incident. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/9/27/yale-provost-br...
Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale [1974?] https://yalecollege.yale.edu/get-know-yale-college/office-de...
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FWIW, I now don't understand your other cites. [2] Is just common sense. [3] Unrelated. [4] Might be broken.
Though I do agree with Jack Newfield that mocking racists and neoreactionaries should be avoided. We now know that right wing partisans are personally insulted when their leader is criticized or mocked. (Probably something about having their identity wrapped up in the demagogue. Who knows.) So mockery just drives those partisans further away.
For what? I don't think we conversed yet in this thread.
> I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true.
I can see that the context changed the meaning for you. Good thing I cited the source. For me, my original comment still rings true as a summary. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not speak at Yale.
There are a few errors in your TLDR. Kingman was provost at the time, not president, and it was reported that two groups of law students reinvited him, not two student groups.
> Donald Kagan reported that “two groups of law students issued another invitation to Wallace, reaffirming ‘the right of students to hear speakers of their own choosing without restraint or interference from those who would like to limit the right of free expression to those whose views coincide with theirs.’
It's not clear that Provost Brewster would've allowed Wallace to speak had he accepted the new invitation from these students. Also, the book describes how Brewster, later as president, accused an established student group of "playing games" with free speech. So it's not like he had a change of heart on the subject:
> "The occasion does not warrant departure from Yale’s principles of free speech. However, the use of free speech as a game, the lack of sensitivity to others, the lack of consideration for the community, and the lack of responsible concern for the university as an institution seem to me reprehensible..."
Regardless, it does not substantially change what happened. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not attend. Human relations aren't so easily Ctrl-Z'ed. It doesn't surprise me that some tried to reinvite him after the backlash. As you said, many in the community stood against Brewster's decision.
These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers, so it's interesting to look back at when this practice may have began. For awhile, the University of Chicago was a place where such debates were encouraged. A group of Harvard students jokingly ranked it as the least fun school, less fun than West Point, for that reason [1].
> FIRE is just another dark money funded group working on the reactionary project to roll back civil rights, assert corporate rule. and end democracy.
Wow. Just going to slip that in at the end there huh? That's quite a take down. What do you think is dark about it? They're a non-profit which makes them subject to much more scrutiny than private organizations.
As for "asserting corporate rule" and "ending democracy", I think that's a ridiculous claim. They exist to defend the free speech rights that the ACLU now declines to do, as I mentioned elsewhere [2]. If anything, they're responsible upholding democracy by encouraging people to choose words over violence.
> [4] Might be broken.
Works for me. It's the last page of their podcast listing as of now.
[1] https://youtu.be/XFShZMJhdOA?t=180
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33055579
Oops. I initially wrote "Provost" and then changed it. I gotta learn to trust my gut more.
I stand by the rest of my reply.
> These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers...
And speakers show up to be shouted down. I think all the clapping and pwnage is lame.
But what do I know?
Remember when Bernie got shouted down in Seattle? As a Bernie fan, I was confused. Why would those kids mess with the candidate closest to their own views?
I actually know one of the persons who climbed onto the stage. Afterwards, I asked the Gen Z and Y people I know, and that person on stage, about the incident.
A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
But clearly something has changed. Direct action and confrontation are the norms again. For better or worse.
That's right. It can be a political win for you when people don't let you speak. The audience wants to hear both sides. Anyone who acts censoriously comes off as afraid of words, as if words are violence. And that's the exact argument that many (but not all) protesters today are using, that words are violence. We can instead draw a distinction between words and violence in order to encourage civil discourse. When you don't do that, the majority naturally suppresses minority views.
> A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
What happened with Bernie [1] was not as bad as other cases where violence occurred, but preventing a speaker from talking is still against free speech principles.
> I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
You don't think those protesters are genuinely expressing themselves?
I can understand how it's hard for some of them to see why blocking speakers is not a good idea. It is a bit similar to what the likes of MLK Jr. and John Lewis supported, direct action by standing in the way, as was done at the lunch counters. But I don't think either of those civil rights defenders would have supported the current movements that seek to displace speakers. They wanted their ideological opponents to speak so that they could respond with reason and win more followers.
Nonviolent direct action, in itself, is not a bad thing, but it's problematic when you use that method to prevent someone from speaking. Words are not violence, so speech should be acceptable. If it's not, then we need more speech to discover where the disconnect is. Free speech is an old idea, not a new one, and it's been proven to work. It takes some effort to understand, and I would argue that such challenging issues are the very ones worth taking the time to learn.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWOuCfdJYMM
This is by grasping at straws trying to find a relationship between their decades-long research thrust and a shiny new requirement popular among the administrative class that is now in charge.
That's my biggest problem with it. It's not a bad idea by itself, but what makes it such a bad idea is that it seemingly gets shoved on top of everything. The idea that everything has to advance DEI is crazy, because some things just aren't related.
This is a classic boy who cried wolf problem. I'm sure there is racism in the US and we can certainly do a better job in advancing DEI in _some_ places. But when you go around yelling that everything has a DEI problem, you focus on the bullshit and miss the real issues.
There you have it. And will remain popular as long as it's a ticket to career advancement. Or, in plainer terms, to power.
From the mid-20th century, a satire in allegorical form:
https://mathematicalcrap.com/2022/08/14/the-great-loyalty-oa...
There’s a large scale pushback against this new religion and it’s happening fast.
Wow and I thought psychology was a pseudo-science before!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
> "The telos of a knife is to cut, the telos of medicine is to heal, and the telos of a university is truth."
Since when is "truth" a verb?
Is there much of a difference between this and halal/kosher certification?
It's the same as any religious group trying to impose their morality and beliefs on everyone else. To be a good person use the correct words and correct ideas as defined by us, the good people. If you disagree you are a bad person. Sinful, evil.
How can you disagree with the Holy Words, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity? You're either with us or against us. Sign here on the dotted line to confirm membership.
http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html
I assume at least some of this research is funded with public grants. That might be from where pressure can be exerted.
I'd say this about any sort of psychological theories that get intertwined into the justifications of power structures. The government should not be speculating about or creating rules about people's inner states. A government trying to change the minds of the population undermines democracy. An administration, fine, but not the government itself, with regulations paid for with tax money.
People should change governments. Governments shouldn't change people.
I wanted to explore this a bit. Let's hypothesize that the academic is in some ISIL dominated region and the caliphate says that all research must further the goals of caliphate expansion and the spread of the religion. If an academic were to write an equivalent statement - is it their core belief, or are they simply saying the Emperor's clothes are beautiful?
Given the ideal role of academia in society, isn't the latter possibility quite harmful?
Personally I feel like it makes for a very poor work environment, so I sympathize with many who are put in that position. I would prefer it if they did not feel constrained by this type of environment, so that their best work would emerge.
Ironically, DEI damages what are ostensibly its objectives.
So this can easily be taken as an argument that governments should be divorced from academia. No grants, no student loans, no degree requirements in public sector jobs. Which would be fine, I think. The arguments for why governments should fund academia look very weak these days. It was supposed to be about long range research that the private sector wouldn't fund, but what we see in practice is the private sector funding ultra-long-range research like self driving cars, AI, etc whilst public funding gets guzzled by oceans of non-replicable P-hacked ideology driven pseudo-science. And as for education, well, researchers often don't make the best teachers anyway.
Also gelatin is another one.
This DEI standard currently sounds totally subjective with no guidance on what will pass muster, which is ideal substrate for the worst forms of corruption, nepotism, and abuses of power. You know, the very things academia is thought to fundamentally oppose.
Let’s be clear: most minorities oppose explicit racial preferences, including Black people: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/america...
In a recent example, the California ballot measure that would have legalized racial preferences in the state failed overwhelmingly, including in every majority Hispanic county in the state.
But explicit racial preferences are at the core of anti racism as Kendi formulates it:
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
Why does this hold so much appeal? Because the audience of Kendi’s book isn’t minorities, it’s white people. And white people who dominate university faculties and professional organizations love this because it empowers them.
For one thing, it empowers them to use race as a club against other white people.
For another, it gives them tremendous power to shape minority culture. They have the power to select the brown people who will “represent” their whole group. Want a Muslim American professor, but don’t like what Islam has to say about women or homosexuality? Easily handled. The white faculty in charge can just pick a Muslim who agrees with white people about those things instead of other Muslims. And for good measure they can be made to sign a diversity statement. No wonder it’s the dream for Elizabeth Warren types.
> In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.
IMO it's all because of virtue signaling. I would say the majority of people that push this stuff don't really care about DEI, they only care because it makes then seem righteous and virtuous, and it's a feedback loop. They do the thing, they post about it on social media, and they then get praise for the thing they are doing.
When you start looking it from the lens of "these people just want to be popular and get likes", it all starts making sense.