HN is the only place I've seen people outright defending the PRC's human rights abuses. Something about HN really brings out the ultra-nationalists.
How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
121–130 of 224 posts
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#122So firing 6,000 academics and restructuring and a single major university counts as a purge? I mean a great many places are laying off professors with Liberal Arts Degrees many more than 6,000. In modern day the focus is shifting away from those careers. Even if that is a bad thing it is still the truth of the matter. This just seems like its trying to push a ham-fisted narrative. I'm no fan of Erdogan but this seems…
At least 100 000 people lost their jobs. 6000 is only the number of academics. We are talking about Stanford/MIT grad, >40 h-index young academics (at least in science which is not the focus of the article) Some of these high-achieving people couldn't even leave the country even though there were a lot of positions waiting for them. Some people tried to go to Greece on boats which many of them died on the way.
It sounds like someone needs to organize some good, seaworthy boats to come pick these people up and take them someplace better, and help them get set up. After all, if they're intellectuals, they should be a huge asset to any country that takes them in. There's a reason we have the term "brain drain": countries that get the brains usually benefit greatly, while the countries losing them suffer economically.
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean why use any metrics at all of you're going to try to correlate them with something seemingly unrelated with no context like # of suicides?
I was saying that US has high suicides despite a high GDP. Not that there is a correlation. Actually # of suicides would be a good metric for a country’s health.
Only if you take in the affect of geography. And by that I really mean the amount of sunlight available during the different seasons of the year.
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#124I don't really know what is so special about the school which they decided to base the entire article on. This is just a small sample of the ongoing intellectual purge in Turkey. Every university rector is appointed by Erdogan, most professors in STEM, if they haven't fled, avoid any kind of political stance to continue teaching with the hopes of raising intellectuals who will help save the country. This is the unive…
Turkish mythology refers to the tribes of Central Asia, children in elementary schools are taught about their tribal ancestors' history and how they eventually settled in what is today called Turkey. Being Turkish means having ancestors coming from one of those tribes, so how do Kurds and Greeks fit into this picture? Turkish is most definitely an ethnicity and all Turks are taught about it from an early age.
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#125Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? Evicting professors and others from universities. Blocking access to social media. Closing down newspapers and other new outlets. And it doesn't matter who's doing it. Erdogan. Carlos Maza. Antifa. None of them are doing anything constructive.
You cannot have freedom of speech without freedom of association. When it comes to deplatforming it does matter who's doing it, because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence). The government shutting down your youtube channel; that's a problematic infringement on speech; Google shutting down your channel, that's wi…
Russia buying few ads which could have some effect on election results is considered serious issue. Google influencing elections by shadow-banning channels is a much more serious issue.
Currently google is treated as a platform, and does not take responsibility for the content users post to it, but that means that google also must have fair rules by which it treats everyones content. If google wants to decide which channel to shut down and which one to keep, it should not be treated as a platform, but as a publisher.
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any sources for this purge of US intelectuals?
The subservience of intellectualism to politics seems obvious to me. Typical public online discourse is shackled. Goodhart's law is a big mechanic purging intellectual discussion. If you're in a right leaning, 'non political' forum and you post about potential impacts of climate change, you'll almost certainly be put on blast. If you're in a left leaning, 'non political' forum and someone posts 'climate change is goi…
So you don't have sources or citations for your viewpoint, just handwaving about "obvious to me", "Typical".
You should just come right out and say it, I think.
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#127HN is the only place I've seen people outright defending the PRC's human rights abuses. Something about HN really brings out the ultra-nationalists.
Over the past few years, it seems to me, that HN is suffering a bit from the eternal september effect. It seems (again, to me) that many HN commentators are very technically knowledgeable, but are sorely lacking in understanding politics, social sciences, liberal arts, etc.
It also seems (again, to me) that there has been a lot more authoritarian beliefs expressed by the comments. Take my opinion and observations for what you will.
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#128The takeaway for those in the US: To detect nascent authoritarianism, look at who in particular is getting persecuted in academia. Another good heuristic: Look at who's over-serious and who is best wielding ridicule.
This makes no sense. Why should those be the heuristics we pay attention to?
Saul Alinsky
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#129Earlier 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…
Read about the Evergreen State College protests that happened in 2017. Also in 2017, read about all the property damage that Berkeley students did to the town because they couldn't stop a speaker who had different political beliefs from talking at the school. Edit: And what a surprise, the downvotes come in from all the inveterate Bay Area cocksuckers that get offended from facts. I hope the next earthquake sends all…
1st line: Good. It's something which bears repeating and needs to be brought to people's attention.
2nd line: Good. Same as the 1st line.
The Edit line: Manages to undo a lot of the progress made by the 1st two lines.
It pays to keep your cool and let facts speak for themselves. If it's worth speaking out about, it's worth losing some imaginary internet points over.
Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals
#130The takeaway for those in the US: To detect nascent authoritarianism, look at who in particular is getting persecuted in academia. Another good heuristic: Look at who's over-serious and who is best wielding ridicule.
Just come out and say what you mean instead of slimy implications. It's obvious you believe in the false narrative that conservatives are somehow being "persecuted" in academia. This is a disengenous lie spread by right wing propaganda networks like fox news from a few cherry-picked examples. And even if it were true, people disagreeing with your position and calling you out on it is not "persecution."
Power corrupts. No one is immune, no matter how high the ideals the wielders of power would hew to. Since professors are those anointed to speak their mind about difficult issues, it's especially telling when they start to be persecuted. It doesn't matter from what political direction it comes from.