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The Yale Problem Begins in High School

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Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#351

Post by mc32 »

nickbauman wrote: post #127
jseliger wrote: post #12

I've taught at two colleges and based on my (purely) anecdotal experiences and attention to the climate, I'd say that the number of students and faculty interested in stifling or censoring ideas is small but also very, very noisy. They also have no sense of humor and college administrators as a group have no sense of humor or perspective, and they're chronically worried about accusations of indifference or insensitiv…

The problem with "balancing viewpoints" argument is that it isn't based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a "balanced viewpoint" and still have debates about "whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not." There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion. It s…

The problem with focusing on the focus of balanced viewpoints is that it focuses on obvious chaff. People will say, well, we don't want to give holocaust/climate/secondamendment/etc. deniers equal voices, or rather equal imprimatur, the problem is actually the censoring of thoughts so that people feel compelled to toe the received and accepted thought on a given topic.

So, in effect, investigating root causes or nuance is denied because any of that could, in some people's minds, undermine the larger issue(s).

It's sad and unfortunate that discussing things must become personal attacks rather than being viewed as inquiry.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#352

Post by cortesoft »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #326
cortesoft wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about someone who argues "Rape victims don't matter because they are just women, and women's feelings are not important" That isn't something that can be argued against with facts. You can't present evidence to counter this, because they didn't use facts to come to the opinion. As the saying goes, "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" There are a certain class of opinion…

>That isn't something that can be argued against with facts. Oh, and now you want to argue meta-ethics and meta-philosophy :-p?

Yes! Finally put my Philosophy degree to use!

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#353

Post by rmxt »

caseysoftware wrote: post #289
warfangle wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between discussing much a person hates a group of people and discussing why people hate people; There's a difference between discussing why racist halloween costumes are offensive (and perpetuate subconscious hate) and discussing whether or not hate speech has a place on college campuses.

The line I quoted says "doesn't like" not "hate" but by equating the two and then banning "hate speech" you are succeeding in your goal of shutting down ideas and discussion. Well done.

Distilling one's "like" of a person down to their sexual preference [or skin color/religion/take on abortion/etc.] isn't exactly the best way to promote ideas and discussion, either. I am not sure if someone saying "I don't like gay people" is the best person to defend in the debate of "what is free speech?", which is what it seems like you are trying to sarcastically do here.

Note, this coworker in question didn't say "I don't think gay marriage should be an institution of the state" or some other impersonal statement that can actually be evaluated through logic. There is a distinct difference between those two types of statements. Do you think it's reasonable to defend people who say "I don't like gay people."?

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#354

Post by flopto »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #333
flopto wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poor whites and poor blacks are both subject to mass incarceration; though poor blacks are incarcerated at even higher rates. Yes, good to point that out. My argument (implicitly) was that this is a really huge factor which gives poor whites a "net advantage."

An aggregate advantage maybe, however the individual who decides to not put themselves in the position to be incarcerated is confused why you are calling them privileged.

Well some people have to work much harder to avoid incarceration.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#355

Post by ps4fanboy »

nostromo wrote: post #340
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. No, they shouldn't, and I'll follow-up as to why below. >Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. Given sufficient rhetorical skill and sufficiently many appeals to "open thought" or "questioning assumptions" or "viewpoint diversit…

Who gets to decide which ideas are off limits?

The group with the most power evidently.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#356

Post by ps4fanboy »

flopto wrote: post #354
ps4fanboy wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An aggregate advantage maybe, however the individual who decides to not put themselves in the position to be incarcerated is confused why you are calling them privileged.

Well some people have to work much harder to avoid incarceration.

I concede that point to you, however certain types of violent crime are easier to avoid.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#357

Post by jimbokun »

Jtsummers wrote: post #280
1812Overture wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a history class that can't make a strong argument that the holocaust wasn't a hoax and a law class that can't make the argument that rape victims exist are in VERY serious trouble. Being able to debunk such looney claims is very valuable for students so they should develop these skills not be shielded from exposure to them.

In general I agree with you, but having dealt with (less severe) examples of this with some coworkers, it's really, really annoying. When someone simply states their (contrary or contrarian) viewpoint and refuses to admit any evidence presented is valid, you can't win. It's an exercise in futility. I had a guy simply insisting that evolution wasn't real. "Ok", I say, "what about (found some reports demonstrating obse…

If it's an academic setting and you are the instructor, you can

* Flunk them for not learning or engaging with the material.

* Limit their time in class discussions if they are not engaging constructively.

* Have the administration remove them from the class if they become belligerent.

Of course, the third item is the crucial one. It seems at many universities these days, administrations are taking the side of the customer, er, I mean, student, in every dispute, regardless of the merits.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#358

Post by Nadya »

marknutter wrote: post #321
aeturnum wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why aren't we as interested in getting, say, more men into nursing I take it from this comment that you don't work in nursing or know anyone who does. There is an active movement to get more men into nursing, though I don't follow nursing statistics closely enough to characterize its success.

> I take it from this comment that you don't work in nursing Correct > or know anyone who does Incorrect > There is an active movement to get more men into nursing, though I don't follow nursing statistics closely enough to characterize its success. Enlighten me.

They're probably talking about "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" which briefly grabbed attention over a decade ago.

Want more men in nursing? Discourage them from being competitive and choosing to become doctors. Male doctors outnumber female doctors nearly 2 to 1. Men become physicians and surgeons. Women become obstetrics and pediatrics. As a general rule of thumb, most fields that show a gender difference lean heavily towards social bias and differences between gender preferences than discrimination against anyone. I don't know when it became so socially unacceptable to have different preferences than someone else.

Disclaimer:

I don't work in nursing. My grandmother was a nurse for 35 years. I'd hardly call it an "active movement". I don't closely follow the statistics (frankly, I don't care) but it is easy to see that it has not been successful by any significant margin.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#359

Post by saint_fiasco »

kafkaesq wrote: post #100
tosseraccount wrote: post #13

Look how Silicon Valley folks treated Brandon Eich when he made a donation to the majority side in a California proposition. It's not just academia where you can't speak freely.

Ugh. The Brendan Eich issue was about freedom of association -- in particular, the right of Mozilla employees and stakeholders not to be associated with the bigoted groups (and their hateful TV ads) Eich was supporting -- rather than freedom of speech. If you're still not clear as to the distinction, please see: https://xkcd.com/1357/

I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending your actions by citing freedom of association is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for what you do is that it's not literally illegal to do so.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#360

Post by lukeschlather »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #234
flopto wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor blacks, unlike poor whites, are subject to mass incarceration. Edit: this is technically incorrect, see dragonwriter below.

Because (at least in part) they commit crime at far higher rates per capita. Black men commit about half of all murders in the USA, despite being about 13% of the population. The statistics are similar for many other crimes. 39% of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black from 2011-2013 per FBI statistics [1] [3]. In 2010, 62,593 blacks were victims of white violence,…

It's important to note the distinction between "blacks commit 50% of the murders in the US" and "50% of the murder convictions in the US are black people." It's well-documented that 40 years ago a white person could openly kill a black person and they would not be convicted. I've read a lot of studies, reviews of court cases, and court judgements about the subject, and it is clear that prosecutors are far less likely to charge a white person with a crime than a black person.

Prosecution figures are simply unreliable as a metric for judging how many crimes are committed by whites vs. blacks. There are many interesting cases that show this. The most interesting one is McCleskey v. Kemp. It's not my favorite in terms of the specifics of the case, but it is my favorite because in the intervening years it has become pretty clearly a bad ruling, to the point that the justice who wrote the majority opinion wishes he could reverse his own vote. The unfortunate thing being that he cannot, and his vote has made it effectively impossible to detect and address racial bias in prosecution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCleskey_v._Kemp

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