How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals • Hacker News Board

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#61

Post by blfr » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

madez wrote: post #50

chewz wrote: post #36

We had something like this in 1968 in Poland with communist propaganda condemning intelectuals and cosmpolitans and workers activists beating students on the streets (like they do in HK these days). Sztoptanski called that Dictatorship of Dishrags. Generally the best weapon against such times is irony and a sense of humor and grotesque. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Szpota%C5%84ski

After reading that article, I'm happy for the polish to live in a better state now, and I immediately started to think where people are now oppressed by their government whenever they are deemed 'harmful to the nation', and China came to my mind, and not just for the Chinese state cooperating with the organized crimes triads to attack protesters in Hong Kong. The situation there is different for now, because China is…

We weren't really oppressed by our government. The March events, as they're know here, were mostly homegrown commies pushing out the Jewish wing of the party with decent people getting caught in the purge and following protests.

But it was all happening with two hundred thousand Soviet soldiers stationed in the country. The communist government wouldn't have lasted a month without the Soviet support. The situation is different because China is not being occupied by a foreign power. Neither is Turkey.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#62

Post by Excel_Wizard » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #52

thaumaturgy wrote: post #44

Turkey's GDP peaked at $950 billion in 2013, just before Erdogan became president. By 2017, it had slid to $850 billion, and after the intellectual purges, slid to just $766 billion in 2018. [1] People may argue from ideology for or against politics like these, but I can think of no clearer indication of these policies' failure than the impoverishing of a country. [1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/gdp

GDP is not a north star metric. GDP in the US is high and we have more suicides than ever. Many authoritarian (or especially populist) governments KNOW they will lower the GDP because by limiting low-wage labor immigration or focusing on nurturing a native culture or preserving the environment and not buying into a soulless consumerism/globalization they are creating a GDP cap. "growth for the sake of growth is the i…

Would you say that you agree with GP's point though? It's not as if there are other things that are getting better in Turkey to counterbalance this particular measure.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#63

Post by duxup » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #58

mhh__ wrote: post #7

"People have had enough of experts" - Michael Gove God help us

I really dislike people bringing that quote up, because the full sentence was "People have had enough of experts (...) who are consistently getting it wrong". [1] It's still not necessarily true, but by taking just part of that quote is misrepresenting what he said. Just thought that'd be good to keep in mind next time you might consider digging it up. [1] https://youtu.be/GGgiGtJk7MA?t=71

I wonder if for most folks that it matters.

I'll give the speaker the benefit of the doubt just for the sake of argument, but I have my doubt most people voting for folks decrying "experts" or "the establishment" have paid the least bit attention to what experts actually say.

The end results seems to be the same sort of "oh man those jokers" argument in favor of ... some folks who seem like bigger jokes / less knowledgeable.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#64

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #29

monksy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now there are people who have stated criticism of political bias (pro-conservative, conservative-leaning speakers, center-left, etc) that are being punished in the US academic world.

I'd be curious about some substantive examples. I have seen that assertion frequently made, and even have attended multiple seminars on the topic (I have some friends very worried about this issue) as well as some FIRE meetings and fundraisers. Yet I typically see the same few examples repeated and amplified. FIRE loves to talk about the cases it has challenged under Title IX -- and it always wins, because the law co…

[deleted]

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#65

Post by hogFeast » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #42

mhh__ wrote: post #7

"People have had enough of experts" - Michael Gove God help us

Many experts are just preachers in different attire. Honestly, should we really listen to scientist who gets labeled experts based non replicable studies? The problem is that all of them gets the same doctors titles but only some of them are doing honest research, and our current society has no good way to deal with this. As a result laymen notice that significant parts of science is pure bullshit, no wonder there ar…

An important distinction. I studied history and international relations to postgrad level at an "elite" institution. As much as anyone, I see value in this research (having done it myself). But it is also important to understand the propensity for humans to make bombastic claims about their own work (which ends up saying, justifiably, that is all total bullshit).

Btw, I think this is equally true of research outside the social sciences...but there is just far more scope to engage in puffery within the social sciences and, unfortunately, people are often far too lazy to counteract it.

It isn't even about data or the distinction between hard and soft...if you can make a solid argument that is justified and you have no data (which is sometimes the case) then fine. The issue is that, in most areas, the evidence doesn't justify any clear conclusion. Again, you see this in harder sciences where the title is eye-catching, the data less so (often in proportion to the nonsense in the title).

Areas like "peace building" and "conflict resolution", mentioned in the article, are deeply political areas. In my opinion, they rarely do much to advance human knowledge. For example, as the article inadvertently shows, peace building is explicitly based on the idea that democracies are best because they don't attack each other. Sounds great...but there is no data to support this conclusion.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#66

Post by madez » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #61

madez wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading that article, I'm happy for the polish to live in a better state now, and I immediately started to think where people are now oppressed by their government whenever they are deemed 'harmful to the nation', and China came to my mind, and not just for the Chinese state cooperating with the organized crimes triads to attack protesters in Hong Kong. The situation there is different for now, because China is…

We weren't really oppressed by our government. The March events, as they're know here, were mostly homegrown commies pushing out the Jewish wing of the party with decent people getting caught in the purge and following protests. But it was all happening with two hundred thousand Soviet soldiers stationed in the country. The communist government wouldn't have lasted a month without the Soviet support. The situation is…

Given that history, are there common opinions and feelings in Poland regarding Russias ongoing war with Ukraine?

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#67

Post by duxup » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

meshr wrote: post #28

Intellectuals should stop sharing their knowledge/skills with obscurantists. They should allow obscurantists to fail or at least to make obscurantists to depend on intellectuals. The motto should be "first control then money gaining or sharing"

>Intellectuals should stop sharing their knowledge/skills with obscurantists.

What does this mean?

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#68

Post by Dumblydorr » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #59

My favorite concept right now is the “meritocracy of ideas” - a fancy way of saying that the best ideas win. Somehow I feel that this is a core driver for success, in an organization, small or big. So by excluding smart people and their ideas you may significantly limit yourself and the futures your organization.

How do you define meritocracy? Ideas are infectious and they clearly do not need truthful or academic merit to spread like wildfire.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#69

Post by zajd » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

monksy wrote: post #55

gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious about some substantive examples. I have seen that assertion frequently made, and even have attended multiple seminars on the topic (I have some friends very worried about this issue) as well as some FIRE meetings and fundraisers. Yet I typically see the same few examples repeated and amplified. FIRE loves to talk about the cases it has challenged under Title IX -- and it always wins, because the law co…

Note I'm not the best one to provide you with numerous examples because I don't know where the document is that has detailed all of the examples in the last few years. But hearing about this is fairly frequently. 1. There have been protests about conservative speakers at campuses and universities whom have pulled shady stuff on trying to prevent the speakers from coming. (there was a Dave Rubin one where he was magic…

I think this is his point. You keep hearing about "There have been punishments against professors who question the progressive/extreme-left movement. (losing tenure, being brought up that they're "violence-inciting", etc)" or "Diversity offices have created trouble" but these "examples" are basically non-existent when you actually look for them.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#70

Post by p1necone » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #52

thaumaturgy wrote: post #44

Turkey's GDP peaked at $950 billion in 2013, just before Erdogan became president. By 2017, it had slid to $850 billion, and after the intellectual purges, slid to just $766 billion in 2018. [1] People may argue from ideology for or against politics like these, but I can think of no clearer indication of these policies' failure than the impoverishing of a country. [1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/gdp

GDP is not a north star metric. GDP in the US is high and we have more suicides than ever. Many authoritarian (or especially populist) governments KNOW they will lower the GDP because by limiting low-wage labor immigration or focusing on nurturing a native culture or preserving the environment and not buying into a soulless consumerism/globalization they are creating a GDP cap. "growth for the sake of growth is the i…

I'd like some kind of standard metric that adjusts gdp to spending power on food, housing etc, and weights based on standard deviation amongst the populace (lower being better).

Unadjusted gdp seems like an entirely pointless metric when as you point out you can look at places like the USA where despite having high gdp there's still widespread poverty.