Beware of Brazilians. The de facto rule here is "fuck everybody not in my circle".
In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
241–248 of 248 posts
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Don't be a jerk" doesn't seem draconian to me. And who gets to decide what is acceptable? My college had an atheist club that hung up a banner saying "Religion is for the feeble minded" - that's offensive to billions of people. Can we shut them down and boot them off campus? My college also had communist clubs with communist slogans - many of my extended family were killed by communists so that's obviously offensi…
That's a bad comparison. Clubs like those, especially at a public college actually ARE protected by the 1st amendment. You can choose not to join, but cannot prevent them from meeting. The only thing the school can do is limit the non-student guests a club brings, and even that power is typically limited to in cases of security concerns, which can often be remedied if the club helps foot the costs for increased secur…
I feel like we have our wires crossed - the parent was talking about university/college policy and not social media.
I'm saying if universities/colleges want to police speech for any offensive content then they need to apply the policy uniformly and ban the atheist and communist clubs.
> but it's not as prominent as you might think, at least on the public college level.
I think the crazy preachers are a bad example - a normal person who just wants to give an interesting talk does not want to put up with screaming protestors. They don't want the stress. They don't have a security detail. Etc.
The people who don't mind are the crazy preachers and the people who get paid for controversy like Milo.
The moderates have already been de-platformed.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must be American. People have laid out how this "free" services, like education or healthcare, can lead to a more productive, fairer society (e.g. less people off work sick, because they go and get treatment sooner, and recover sooner). Or why do you think tech companies offer good health care? Out of the kindness of their heart? No, because having people worry about basic needs and not get medical treatment when…
> You must be American. I'm Danish :-) > People have laid out how this "free" services, like education or healthcare, can lead to a more productive, fairer society (e.g. less people off work sick, because they go and get treatment sooner, and recover sooner). I can point you to countless articles, anecdotes and videos showing the exact opposite. > Or why do you think tech companies offer good health care? Out of the…
And yet...
> I care about the taxes everyone pays. It seems paradoxical to me to claim, for example, to care about the poor and at the same time make everything expensive through taxation.
Yes, because everybody pays the same absolute amount of income tax, and there's no provision for how much somebody earns, how well off they are, deductions for kids. Oh no, wait...
> these can be served by the private sector.
If you're dependent on your employer for health care, that's kind of servitude. Generally, that's frowned upon if you value human rights. Sure, you can always switch companies (until you get older, and then maybe you can't). And see how long your coverage lasts once you get ill. Not to mention all the co-pays.
> But the reason most companies in the US offer healthcare to their employees goes back to the time of FDR, when it was illegal for a while to compete on wages but not on benefits (if I remember correctly).
So then that's not true any more, see the "gig economy".
If you really want to save money, you could just move to the US and take the same gamble as 12% of Americans (used to be ~18% before "Obamacare"), and hope that you, your partner, and your children don't get seriously ill.
It's easy to talk shit and reason about these things if you're well off, and have never experienced these things yourself - being Danish and all.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read it, you'll know.
Yeah, I tried, it started with gushing over James Dobson - the man who believes that beating children is a good thing (this is personal; my parents used his books for parenting advice) - and C.S. Lewis. Eg, it complains about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as being a "deeply incoherent work", and praises Lewis. But the Narnia series is also a deeply incoherent work. It describes the book as a narcissistic fant…
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Don't be a jerk" doesn't seem draconian to me. And who gets to decide what is acceptable? My college had an atheist club that hung up a banner saying "Religion is for the feeble minded" - that's offensive to billions of people. Can we shut them down and boot them off campus? My college also had communist clubs with communist slogans - many of my extended family were killed by communists so that's obviously offensi…
That's a bad comparison. Clubs like those, especially at a public college actually ARE protected by the 1st amendment. You can choose not to join, but cannot prevent them from meeting. The only thing the school can do is limit the non-student guests a club brings, and even that power is typically limited to in cases of security concerns, which can often be remedied if the club helps foot the costs for increased secur…
In UK universities they have no such protection, and similar clubs have been shut down.
My alma mater, University College London, banned the Nietzsche Society: https://thetab.com/2014/06/03/thus-spake-the-su-14611
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes no sense. It seems to me it is an elitist view that when you provide a service to the unwashed masses, it must be of lower quality. I believe it is false. Curricula don't have to be easier if you have a large student body, and graduation requirements don't have to be lower. Taking in more students does not inhibit service quality, up to the capacity of the school, which can be easily scaled by hiring more…
It seems to me it is an elitist view that when you provide a service to the unwashed masses, it must be of lower quality But it must be. An institution with AAA A-level students can teach more advanced material at a faster pace than one that admits EEEs. This is surely obvious, no? It doesn’t mean anyone is better or worse in a moral sense, it just means more or less academically able.
Yes, politically, it turns out, that universities were chopped up into research institutions (or research institutions were spun off from universities) and diploma mills, because even that shit level 2-3 years that people take to earn a Bachelor's degree means a lot on the job market.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I tried, it started with gushing over James Dobson - the man who believes that beating children is a good thing (this is personal; my parents used his books for parenting advice) - and C.S. Lewis. Eg, it complains about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as being a "deeply incoherent work", and praises Lewis. But the Narnia series is also a deeply incoherent work. It describes the book as a narcissistic fant…
You're not going to make it.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
>amoral self-referential quantitative utility framework My goodness, that's quite a phrase. What do you actually mean?
Which part is confusing you?
What is this framework? Or which one is this?