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I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

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Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#331

Post by tangled_zans »

cglace wrote: post #328
tangled_zans wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that was indeed the case. Surely if I made a factual error on something that you were knowledgeable on - say, NodeJS - and you corrected me, you'd be slightly peeved - or at least see my behavior as odd - if I replied to you claiming that your friendly input was "outrage".

It wasn't that you pointed out a factual inaccuracy. It was how you did it. You assumed you needed to "teach me some respect" instead of just saying "It's actually Caitlyn Jenner".

The initial comment was just a joke, mate (clearly you're the one choosing to be outraged over my tone?) which came out of my assumption that it's impossible to both know that she is transgender and that she does not want to be called Bruce.

If that was indeed an honest error then you could have elaborated on how it was possible for you to hold both of these contradicting views simultaneously, and I would have admitted that I was wrong to assume that you were a prick.

Since instead of doing that you've decided to deflect with "STOP WITH THE OUTRAGE THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!", I did surmise that you are simply not aware of what 'respect' is. Hence while it was wrong of me to take on that role of 'teaching' it to you (what a waste of effort), I stand by my implication that someone should have done that by now.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#332

Post by tangled_zans »

zo1 wrote: post #296
tangled_zans wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Well, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that it's probably some other aspect of libertarianism that offended them. Just saying. Unless they're actually offended by non-violence, in which case they probably did you a favor.

>" Unless they're actually offended by non-violence, in which case they probably did you a favor. " Most would not say they are offended by non-violence, and most would actually advocate non-violence. The problem comes in when you start pointing out that logical and consistent definitions of violence/aggression preclude a lot of the things people value and think noble. To some, mentioning you are Libertarian inherent…

I acknowledge that this is how libertarians see themselves, but it is inherently dishonest to assume that just because someone disagrees with you then they're doing it out of a misunderstanding and overreaction about you "trying to dismantle all of their 'noble' ideas".

Their values can simply be different, and it is valid for them to disagree with you based on the conclusions they get from those values.

Aggression is defined differently by different groups after all, so the set of actions that a libertarian objects to based on their understanding of "aggression" would be different to a set of actions that someone else would object to based on a different understanding of "aggression".

Obviously you disagree with their conclusion of dismissing libertarianism and blocking libertarians, and that's fine. What's less fine - in my eyes - is to imply that the disagreement comes from the fact that you are the only one who understands some basic Truth about the world and those that disagree are foolish and cliche for disagreeing with you.

That's the sort of thing that I associate with religion, rather than an honest intellectual discussion of political merits of an ideology.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#333

Post by rdancer »

droidist2 wrote: post #270
merpnderp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More progressive stance on abortion, higher government transfers of wealth to the poor than many Western European countries, high degree of state involvement in many industries, highest corporate tax rate (although effective tax rate is on par with Western Countries), and the only thing missing from the US to make it European style left wing is socialized health care.

>the only thing missing from the US to make it European style left wing is socialized health care And most European countries don't even have socialized health care, just basically the UK.

France does[1], Germany does[2], and so does the whole rest of the EU. So does Russia[3]. Is there any country in Europe that doesn't?

[1] http://france.angloinfo.com/healthcare/health-system/health-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany#Public_i... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Russia

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#334

Post by Yen »

hackuser wrote: post #327
Yen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the article, under the header "The original post from July, 2014", he describes his experience. In summary: 1. In 2007, 14 Jewish Members resign from the advisory board of the Carter Center, due to disagreements over statements in Carter's book. 2. OP blogged about this, apparently in support of their statement. (The original original blog post is not linked to) 3. Some undetermined amount of time later…

Thanks. Based on what you wrote, all we have his uncorroborated hearsay about one conversation (#4). While discrimination certainly takes place in the world, I think we're blowing this article out of proportion; we don't know what happened here.

For my own opinion, outside of just the article -

Sure, the contents of that conversation are uncorroborated, but I don't think it's fair to the author to deny his experience on that basis. Denying that is, implicitly, accusing him of either being dishonest, or at the very least exaggerating and misinterpreting the event. And, to do so is hypocritical for a supposedly liberal person - recognizing and acknowledging the individual experience before demanding systemic evidence in one case, but not this case.

(Not that you, necessarily hold that as a valid method of understanding the world, but many people supposedly do - it's the basis of a lot of popular identity politics)

You might want to actually read the article in detail - the majority of it concerns widespread bias in academic social science, and provides what's arguably concrete evidence of that. His personal anecdote is just a reinforcement of his main point, not the entirety of the article.

We don't know what happened during one particular phone call, but we do know what questions (and what results were drawn) on several social science surveys.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#335

Post by Yen »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #308
Yen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the article, under the header "The original post from July, 2014", he describes his experience. In summary: 1. In 2007, 14 Jewish Members resign from the advisory board of the Carter Center, due to disagreements over statements in Carter's book. 2. OP blogged about this, apparently in support of their statement. (The original original blog post is not linked to) 3. Some undetermined amount of time later…

Wow; its amazing that the school called him back and confronted OP on his political views. OP mentions that HR people would never do that for fear of being sued, has the university some form of immunity against being sued? Is industry a more liberal place than academia? Also what exactly was the keyword that put him into the 'enemy camp' - was it support of Israel, criticism of Carter or both of them that raised the…

From the article:

> She also asked if I "really" felt that way about Jimmy Carter.

and

> During the call, I got the impression that they thought / were worried that I was a conservative. The horror.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#336

Post by cglace »

tangled_zans wrote: post #331
cglace wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't that you pointed out a factual inaccuracy. It was how you did it. You assumed you needed to "teach me some respect" instead of just saying "It's actually Caitlyn Jenner".

The initial comment was just a joke, mate (clearly you're the one choosing to be outraged over my tone?) which came out of my assumption that it's impossible to both know that she is transgender and that she does not want to be called Bruce. If that was indeed an honest error then you could have elaborated on how it was possible for you to hold both of these contradicting views simultaneously, and I would have admitt…

Why should I have to explain why I accidentally called someone by the name they went by for 65 years. It's not a contradictory view. It's a slip up. My response was literally a 5 second google search, went with the name in the title, and posted.

No malice, no motives, just a mistake. Stop reading so far into it.

The way you worded your response was basically, "If it was an error why are you a bigot?"

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#337

Post by tangled_zans »

cglace wrote: post #336
tangled_zans wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The initial comment was just a joke, mate (clearly you're the one choosing to be outraged over my tone?) which came out of my assumption that it's impossible to both know that she is transgender and that she does not want to be called Bruce. If that was indeed an honest error then you could have elaborated on how it was possible for you to hold both of these contradicting views simultaneously, and I would have admitt…

Why should I have to explain why I accidentally called someone by the name they went by for 65 years. It's not a contradictory view. It's a slip up. My response was literally a 5 second google search, went with the name in the title, and posted. No malice, no motives, just a mistake. Stop reading so far into it. The way you worded your response was basically, "If it was an error why are you a bigot?"

Hmm, you are right, I read into it a bit too much.

Like I said, I felt insulted by you labelling my off-hand comment as "outrage", especially after you agreed that I was factually correct.

In hindsight I can see why you took offence to my original comment, but there is a massive difference in connotation between saying "I am offended" and "you are outraged". [0]

As I am a big proponent of free speech online, your implication of what I should and should not be able to say has been quite vexing to me, hence my annoyance. But I shouldn't have conflated that with whatever your views on trans women are.

[0] http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2164

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#338

Post by druddha »

xupybd wrote: post #205
druddha wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being brilliant doesn't necessarily make you a good scientist. Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist. Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical. Thus, believing in god or Elvis are anti-scientific beliefs.

I'm pretty sure there is overwhelming evidence that Elvis did exist. Edit (you edited the post, now my joke makes no sense :( )

No I didn't! The joke is valid. You must have been reading the King James version of my comment.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#339

Post by 13thLetter »

jolux wrote: post #151

"Why would they? There's been lots of noise lately about how conservatives don't respect science or the intellectual sphere. Why would they? They know we're politically biased." This is where it took a turn for me. I'm basically in agreement with everything else, and it's personally eye opening to gain a greater understanding of these kinds of biases, but when you take a few bad apples in the social sciences (literal…

"point blank denial of facts"

...such as the relative safety of nuclear power and GMO foods? Or the potential effectiveness of missile defense?

Ideology of all stripes can, and does, frequently come hand-in-hand with flat denial of inconvenient facts.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#340

Post by isleyaardvark »

BellsOnSunday wrote: post #93
e40 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

walk into any Reddit discussion and tell everyone you're a devout Christian and watch the pseudo intellectuals exercise their "openness." I think that's your problem. Walking into a discussing and announcing that is a fairly odd thing to do. I've never entered a discussion on reddit and announced I'm an devout atheist. I think people generally bristle at people staking out positions via broad categories.

It depends on the topic of the discussion, I'd have thought - it might be Hands up who believes in God .

If the discussion is actually about belief in God, it's ridiculous to label those who criticize that belief as not being "open". Otherwise it's not a discussion, it's "let's discuss belief in god and you atheists keep quiet".
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