Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

okwu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 707 posts

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#371

Post by merpnderp »

afarrell wrote: post #315
merpnderp wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning only happens when there are consequences for being wrong. Aside from being ridiculed by people they disagree with and thus don't care about being ridiculed by, they have faced no consequences.

> Learning only happens when there are consequences for being wrong If I'm writing a toy project to teach myself WebGL, what are the consequences for doing something incorrectly and later having to debug it?

Aren't the bugs the consequence? Or it not working correctly? The framerate being to low? I taught myself WebGL by making planet sized spherical terrains. There were consequences just about every single moment I was doing this.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#372

Post by yummyfajitas »

afarrell wrote: post #333
talmand wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common tactic, attack the source of data to avoid discussing the data.

In theory, we should all be able to evaluate the validity data on our own, so this tactic is dumb. In reality, we have no practical way of doing this. So, whenever we cite a source of data, we are implicitly saying "This is a credible source for the statement is making. You can trust that they have done the work to make sure they aren't just repeating their own biases." And in the case of some organizations and peopl…

In reality we have no practical way to take the DOJ's data table to find the number of black on white crimes?

Let me introduce you to data science. First I'll read the numnbers in row 2 column 2 and row 2 column 5. Then I'll plug them into ipython:

    $ ipython
    ...
    In [4]: 4091971*0.137
    Out[4]: 560600.027
Do the same for row 3 col 2 and row 3 col 4:

    In [6]: 955800 * 0.104
    Out[6]: 99403.2
Looks like the article was right after all.

Whew, that was hard. Took all the skills I learned in my math Ph.D. to finish the job. Just lucky I didn't have to break out Hadoop. If I wasn't a professional statistician I wouldn't have had a prayer.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#373

Post by unprepare »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #343
unprepare wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm sure most of us agree that his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem. So why aren't the irrational fears held by various student groups treated the same way? Oh, so you think being 4 times more likely to be killed by another white person, means that you have a similar cultural experience to the subjugated minorities who are complaining across university campuses. And because you have a whit…

...similar cultural experience... No one besides you is discussing a cultural experience. The rest of us are discussing irrational reasons for fearing for one's physical safety. ...white supremacy blog that tells you that you have it just as bad as everyone else... The blog doesn't claim this, nor does the DOJ data table which it reproduces. Its really a fascinating argument. You have indeed invented an interesting a…

>No one besides you is discussing a cultural experience.

Oh sorry, is that a trigger word for you? Let me instead say you are mistakenly claiming that the dangers faced by straight while christian males is of equivalent or greater danger than those faced by minorities.

>The blog doesn't claim this, nor does the DOJ data table which it reproduces.

No, but you are using that blog entry as evidence to support that claim.

Heres how the conversation went:

maaku said:

> The concern is not feelings getting hurt, but rather physical security as a person of minority status.

>This is something that a white heterosexual middle-class male (such as myself) can probably never fully appreciate, but I try to sympathize.

To which you responded:

>Actually white heterosexual middle class males can totally appreciate these things.

Using the source you linked as your evidence for that fact that straight white males have the same concern for physical security as minorities. You further explained that whites, asians, and christians are in a position to be equally fearful for their safety as blacks, women, and other minorities.

Using this evidence, you closed your argument by saying:

>I'm sure most of us agree that his feelings are completely irrational and entirely his problem. So why aren't the irrational fears held by various student groups treated the same way?

A dismissal of the complaints of minorities which you have written off by attempting to make an argument that straight white males have it just as bad as minorities, and thus if straight white males arent complaining, minorities have nothing more to complain about and should therefore shut up.

If you have a different argument to make, i would love to hear it.

EDIT: I see you instead decided to downvote each of these comments, so i'll just assume you indeed did not have a different argument to make. Thanks for the discussion anyways, have a good one!

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#374

Post by ideonexus »

lghh wrote: post #199

I have a friend who attended OKWU a few years ago. She shared this piece on Facebook in approval. From what I know from her education there, this place is essentially a "safe-space" for Christians. If you say anything negative about the religion or its teachings, you are kicked out. If you don't follow its rules, you are kicked out. If you drink, smoke, have premarital sex, are lgbtq, don't follow their strict ethics…

Agreed. There is a certain irony in the online outrage about "safe spaces" coming from so many people who live in bubbles of their own. How many of these people are raging from the comfort of their homes and are only exposed to ideas and opinions from news sources of which they approve? I confess that Hackernews has become my bubble, but I appreciate the challenges to my thinking I find here.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#375

Post by thwarted »

asift wrote: post #242
sago wrote: post #6

I think the world would be better if, before you're allowed to respond to someone being wrong, you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view. Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue. I'd be surprised, perhaps even amazed, if Dr Piper had represented the complaint in any way…

Because mobs like these are totally open to intellectual discourse and reason. If only the professor had done more to be courteous and empathize with the students' desired ends /s http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-... But to your point, passing the Ideological Turing Test is something that I think is worth aspiring to. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test

The Ideological Turing Test is inteinteresting. I wonder how applying it to the content of The Colbert Report, and the character Colbert played on the show, would result. IIRC, someone had done some impromptu, unscientific person-on-the-street interviews to determine his political affiliation, and he came off as sincere to those who self-identified as conservative and mocking conservatives to self-identified liberals.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#376

Post by programmarchy »

afarrell wrote: post #315
merpnderp wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning only happens when there are consequences for being wrong. Aside from being ridiculed by people they disagree with and thus don't care about being ridiculed by, they have faced no consequences.

> Learning only happens when there are consequences for being wrong If I'm writing a toy project to teach myself WebGL, what are the consequences for doing something incorrectly and later having to debug it?

The consequence is your toy project won't work, and you'll have to find a solution. In doing so, you probably won't make the same mistake again, hopefully having learned something.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#377

Post by JoeAltmaier »

bovermyer wrote: post #370

Ignoring everything else about this article, its context, and my personal feelings about Christian "education," I can't help but feel like the author is not terribly professional. Universities frequently forget that their instructors and their students have entered into a business transaction with them. Students expect to receive a useful education, and instructors expect to have their research and publication subsid…

Perhaps that missive will succeed tangentially, in making students think about why they are there. That's education too.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#379

Post by nightspirit »

lghh wrote: post #267
kelukelugames wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend adding a /s tag. The other poster didn't catch the sarcasm.

Oh, it's sarcasm? I really didn't know. That's an opinion I see pretty much everywhere so I just assumed it was serious, haha.

The beauty of Internet flamewars is that half of the people who voted this comment to the top voted out of agreement with the literal interpretation and the other half voted because they read "you missed /s" and took it for sarcastic.

What the original poster intended you never know...

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#380

Post by edc117 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #314
lghh wrote: post #199

I have a friend who attended OKWU a few years ago. She shared this piece on Facebook in approval. From what I know from her education there, this place is essentially a "safe-space" for Christians. If you say anything negative about the religion or its teachings, you are kicked out. If you don't follow its rules, you are kicked out. If you drink, smoke, have premarital sex, are lgbtq, don't follow their strict ethics…

Is HackerNews a safe-space for programmers? If you say anything negative about PG or silicon valley, you are downvoted. If you don't follow its rules, you are banned. If you don't have the same opinion as everyone else, don't follow the strict posting guidelines you are kicked out. It's philosophy is all fund raising capitialism, if you try something crazy you don't get funded. Isn't HackerNews just an extreme safe-s…

When you throw terms like 'the liberal left' into the discussion, it really derails any point you're trying to make. I'll be the first to admit I don't really watch much political discourse, but I've seen plenty of this behavior from pretty much everyone. IMO maybe, but stay objective.
Post reply on HN