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

okwu.edu

531–540 of 707 posts

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

#531
post #526
post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said that someone shouldn't have been fired for what they said, and you've said they can get another job. That is not reassuring. You've also turned a defense of a person into a defense of their views. You've turned "someone shouldn't be fired for bigotry" into "bigotry is okay". That is not reassuring either.

No one should ever be fired for saying anything? Or just "bigotry is OK, leave this bigot alone" is something someone should not be fired for?

Again, you've turned "someone shouldn't be fired for bigotry" into "bigotry is okay". You've turned "someone shouldn't be fired for saying someone shouldn't be fired for bigotry" into "no one should ever be fired for anything".

As it happens, I'm okay with Donald Sterling being fired. I'm not okay with Josh Olin being fired for saying Donald Sterling shouldn't have been fired.

Would you support me being fired, for saying Josh Olin shouldn't have been fired?

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

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand - a white supremacist took a quantity from the DOJ, then took a percentage from the DOJ, and multiplied them together to get a new quantity. Does multiplication become invalid when a white supremacist does it? Or do DOJ stats become false when a racist cites them? Please, I would like to understand your logic. I do find it a bit scary that when I google "black on white crime", only racist sites sho…

White on white crimes are 5x common than black on white crimes. It's obvious cherry-picking.

>White on white crimes are 5x common than black on white crimes. It's obvious cherry-picking.

If there are twice as many whites as blacks or 10 times as many whites as blacks would vastly change how your figure could be interpreted.

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

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually white heterosexual middle class males can totally appreciate these things. Imagine what it is like to be white/asian in a country where a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by black men and where black on white crimes are 5.6 times more common than white on black crimes [1]. Imagine what it is like to be Christian when a disproportionate number of terror attacks are committed by Islamic types. M…

From your link: >These data cover all violent crimes except murder, but the number of murders is tiny compared to other violent crimes. So, we've started by cherry picking our data, a really strong start. Next we go on by comparing apples and oranges. You've reached the conclusion that as a white male you should be afraid of black people, but the data you linked shows otherwise. While 13.7% of violent crimes against…

And you're doubling down by comparing whole apples to orange sections.

If I'm going to use statistics to rationally calibrate my fear emotion, I should ensure that I am using the appropriate statistic.

I'd start off with the assumption that most violent crimes against me will be committed by another person that is both aware of my presence and able to make a credible threat of force against me. I'm probably not going to get punched in the face by anyone who cannot reach my face with their fists.

And I can further break that down by the fraction of time any given person presents me with the threat of violence. I may, perhaps, use risk of violence per minute of exposure as my metric.

It immediately becomes obvious that the publicly-available published crime statistics are useless for my purposes. They do not contain sufficient information to allow me to determine how much more or less likely I am to be attacked by a person of a given skin color for each minute of exposure to that person in public. I would have to know detailed social habits for everyone within the crime statistic reporting area.

It may be that for every 100000 opportunities to punch someone in the face, the conversion rate is higher for one skin color than for another, and I should therefore rationally calibrate my fear accordingly. But I really have no way of accurately determining that useful statistic from published crime data.

But even with that hanging over us, I still have to object to your misuse of statistics. You said:

  > You are 4 times more likely to be violently attacked by
  > a white person than a black person, if you are a white person.
And this does not follow from the previous paragraph. Given a randomly selected white person who was attacked in the last year, it is 4 times more likely that the attacker was white than black. Manipulating that conditional probability to find the ratio of probabilities that a randomly selected white person was attacked by a white person compared with a randomly selected white person being attacked by a black person requires additional Bayesian calculations that you did not perform. You would also need to know population sizes and overall violent crime rates.

But really, this is all moot, because fear is not rational.

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

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a stark difference between a free and voluntary association of like-minded people and a so-called "safe space", which uses a pretext of "victimization" to capriciously thought control others who simply committed the offense of disagreeing or criticizing. If you hate Christianity, why would you go to this school? If you aren't willing to follow behavioral rules, why would you go to this school? If you think ph…

> Really? Citation please; I simply don't believe this. Most Christian universities that I have any knowledge of invite (or at least aren't averse to it) tough discussion, and allow for a pretty wide range of critical thought about interpretations of the Bible, how Christianity should relate to politics, culture, science, and many other subjects. You have missed out on the wave of evangelical schools that market to p…

All universities (and for that matter, employers) have a code of conduct or ethics that defines standards of behavior and expectations. How is that babysitting?

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

#535

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…

There's a difference between showing data or its interpretation is possibly incorrect versus just saying we don't need to inspect the data because of who referred to it. Being skeptical is one thing I can agree with, but not wholesale dismissal of the data because one is skeptical of the source.

Besides, often times the source isn't really the source. For example, if a publicly devout racist quoted FBI crime statistics, does that mean we can ignore the data because we heard it from the racist and not the FBI?

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

#536
I don't live in the states, and this whole trigger warnings, safe-place and extreme sensitivity politically correct or otherwise that is being talked about all of a sudden was/is surprising to me. I didn't think The US is where something like this would take hold.

I've spoken to a few people who experience universities in the US recently and heard very different views. One was that young americans are more political than they had ever been. Another thought it was us peering into the world of internet thought bubble generations, people who "grew up" within one. Another thought it was plain intolerance in a literal sense, very little ability to tolerate others that they find in any way offensive..

Not sure what to make of it. Curious.

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

#537
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…

No, HN is not a safe space. There's bias and there's hell-banning, but they usually tolerate dissenters. And that's a good thing, because I'm often one myself.

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

#538
post #92
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…

A little research will produce a vast number of examples of political correctness with real consequences and not just "straw-manning". Here is a recent example: A Canadian university cancels a yoga class because yoga comes "from a culture that “experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy,” In a world that can do that, I don't find it surprising that a student could…

I think you misread sago's point:

> Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue.

I don't think they were saying that political correctness was straw-manning, but that it was straw-manning that was the cancer at the heart of social politics.

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

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a stark difference between a free and voluntary association of like-minded people and a so-called "safe space", which uses a pretext of "victimization" to capriciously thought control others who simply committed the offense of disagreeing or criticizing. If you hate Christianity, why would you go to this school? If you aren't willing to follow behavioral rules, why would you go to this school? If you think ph…

> Really? Citation please; I simply don't believe this. Most Christian universities that I have any knowledge of invite (or at least aren't averse to it) tough discussion, and allow for a pretty wide range of critical thought about interpretations of the Bible, how Christianity should relate to politics, culture, science, and many other subjects. You have missed out on the wave of evangelical schools that market to p…

So, this has everything to do with you not liking how this school runs itself, and not a thing to do with the claim "If you say anything negative about the religion or its teachings, you are kicked out," and not a thing to do with "safe spaces".

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

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this just an extreme safe-space for Christianity? But isn't that expected? OKWU's institution is as an evangelical Christian university - http://www.okwu.edu/about/ If you did not want Christian indoc then why would you go to a christian evangelical school?

There is nothing in Christian Evangelism that inherently implies that University teachers are right about everything and have no need to engage with students' understanding of Christianity.

If you take the article's anecdote at face values, the student wasn't discussing Christian theology; he was scolding the speaker for making him feel bad. The passage in question (1 Cor. 13) is one of the most inoffensive passages in the bible, widely recited at even secular weddings for example.

Distilled down, the school is saying that if a lesson on how we should selflessly love others makes you feel bad about yourself, the lesson you should take away is that you have some improvements to make in yourself -- not that you've been emotionally raped.

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