The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech • Hacker News Board

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#161

Post by Retra » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #95

coryrc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one raises and kills cows for the leather; the leather is a byproduct.

The leather is a product, not a byproduct, just not the sole product. I fail to see the logic that killing a mink for its fur is wrong, but killing a cow is okay because we get meat along with the leather. You can also make arguments about how it’s okay because cows are raised specifically to be killed, but the fact remains that we kill orders of magnitude more cows than we ever have minks. My previous argument stand…

So you're not really protesting unless you light yourself on fire? You understand that if everybody who protested the "big stuff" did so by doing extremely risky things, you're going to end up with nobody left with the will to protest?

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#162

Post by jgalt212 » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #147

I went to an English boarding school long enough ago for the intent of that system to still be to train the officer class of the British Empire. But not so long ago that it was actually practical for any of us to realistically be colonial administrators. This piece reminds me of that education. We were in the middle of the feminist and multi-cultural ideological revolutions. Being culturally aware; not insisting that…

> unshakably confident that its values, its culture, are superior to the everyone else's. Now... not so much?

I feel the same way about American values that Churchill felt about democracy.

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#163

Post by rossdavidh » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #57

rossdavidh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) rebellious teenagers no doubt always want to establish independence, but they haven't always done it this way, so that can't be the explanation. 2) if there is any place on Earth where you should not have to pretend to be poor in order to have friends, it would be the Ivy League. Also, again, if this were the explanation it would always have been this way.

Teenage rebellion is not a universal, it tends to be found in the so called WEIRD countries the most

Perhaps (though I've seen disputes of that), but since we're talking about a Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democracy country's history, it still is not an explanation for why this generation's elite's children would be pretending they're poor, instead of showing off their status with conspicuous consumption (as many previous generations have).

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#164

Post by heymijo » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

kd5bjo wrote: post #140

willmoss1000 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read the article first I found the summary to be helpful. You are suggesting we remove the summary to prevent people coming to false conclusions? I think actually these summaries help us to have more structured discussions?

It’s not so much about false conclusions as it is enabling tribalism by helping people avoid opposing viewpoints. It’s certainly a trap I’ve fallen into myself a few times: commenting on the general topic without reading the article and arguing against the usual counterpoint instead of the one that was actually made. I haven’t come to any firm conclusions on this matter, so I certainly wouldn’t recommend banning or r…

An investing analogy. Warren Buffett doesn't read analyst reports. He reads each company's own reports (primary sources) instead to make up his own mind.

Summary here = analyst report Article from author = primary source

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#165

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

I'm fascinated by this sub-genre of "political correctness has gone too far" on campus. Parts of this could have come from a script to generate these.

In particular the bit about how some elderly academic was a liberal, and therefore anyone who disagreed with them must be some dangerous extremist.

Always seems more likely that as a youth they would have been similarly distant from a "reasonable" moderate of a similar age.

A couple of years ago the big trope was that this this was the new face of fascist authoritarianism, that republicans were reasonable moderates and people trying to push veganism, or fight climate change or whatever were crazy extremists. The rise of Trump seems to have muted that a little and rendered most of it ridiculous in hindsight. (Well, it was ridiculous at the time too, but got carried by the same media that would then support Trump).

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#166

Post by gaze » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #124

The Problem at Yale, based on the length of this essay, seems to be Too Much Speech. This is an extended complaint about annoying people one might have brunched with at a few elite institutions, dressed up as cultural analysis. I am minded of McAdoo on President Harding: “His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words wou…

Author wrote a pro-Jordan Peterson piece for the weekly standard. We both know exactly where this plays well.

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#167

Post by TomMckenny » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #128

TomMckenny wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>4. Interprets the battles in 3 as at best insignificant and at worst a distraction from real problems of class disparity in America. Note however that there is nothing in the article describing economic disparity as a problem. There are laments about social position and altering or eliminating traditions but no hint of criticism of economic inequality. So the claims aren't about inequality, they're about the "wrong"…

> they should act rich instead to become more worthy of respect No, the point is that "if you put on a façade for long enough, you end up forgetting that it is a façade"

No, the point is an anti-race equality rant which is intentionally blurring a few anti-elite and anti-dysfunction sounds so it would get published. If it were genuinely anti-dysfunction, it would include much lower hanging fruit like admittance practices focusing on wealth and wrongful terminations. If it were anti-privilege it would focus on that privilege and not on race protest or fads.

So yes, in abstraction, if you put on a facade long enough you forget you're wearing it. But that is not remotely the theme of the article. The one and only theme is that racial equality activism should stop on the grounds that it is being done by rich kids

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#168

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

kd5bjo wrote: post #119

alexandercrohde wrote: post #61

I find this piece fascinating. To honor it I offer a tl; dr 1. Author recounts experiences of people lying about their class/wealth at Yale, often feigning less wealth. 2. Explains behavior 1 as style, safety, loss-of-perspective, and avoiding social responsibility 3. Retells several incidents where a vocal minority of students at Yale picked and won battles over verbiage (e.g. emails, Calhoun, "Master of college").…

> All that said, I recommend reading the whole thing if you can find the time. This distillation has only a fraction of the value of the whole piece. Many tangential points are very interesting. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate all of the little things that get left out of summaries like this to the point that I wonder if they might be harmful. In the time it takes to read a summary, it is also possible to read the…

I'm returning to this discussion having read (well, most of) the essay, and finding it far better than the HN discussion was at the time I'd first encountered it.

There's a cost to informational complexity, but also a value. The problem is that complex ideas require complex exposition, but complex exposition discourages exploration.

There are a few classic ways around this. One is the Hollywood Film / Bestselling Book blurb, often a brief sentence, if not a single word, supposedly capturing the gist of a work (or at least enticing someone to drop a dime on seeing/reading it).

Another is the in-depth review. See various London / New York / Los Angeles book review articles, some of which have graced HN. These can give an entry point, but are often themselves complex.

There's offering a few choice samples of quoted text from the work. If there's a concise and sufficient lede 'graph, that can work, though much contemporary writing seems to actively avoid this. Otherwise, a few exemplary sentences pulled from the piece may work (I'm curating a few for posting to Mastodon as I write this).

Or you can highlight the key structure of the article. alexandercrohde's comment is of this sort.

I liken this to the barker ("See the Amazing Thing!"), cracking the coconut -- making the hard-to-get-at bits immediately available, sampling, much as a grocer might provide tastes of fruit or cheese to give a preview of wares, and of providing a roadmap -- not revealing all the delights of a trip, but at least preparing the reader for the journey ahead. That's what the parent comment of this thread does, and pretty well.

There's a place for each of these, and a value in matching the appropriate preview mechanism to the corresponding form of content. Given the complexity of marketing information, it's a necessity. The sample is not the product, but it can help in deciding which products you choose to spend time on.

I'm finding the article fascinating, myself.

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#169

Post by Barrin92 » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #124

The Problem at Yale, based on the length of this essay, seems to be Too Much Speech. This is an extended complaint about annoying people one might have brunched with at a few elite institutions, dressed up as cultural analysis. I am minded of McAdoo on President Harding: “His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words wou…

fully agreed. the piece exists in some weird space where it suffers from the exact sort of superiority / inferiority role playing anxiety that it's supposed to be about which makes it difficult to draw anything from it.

Re: The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech

#170

Post by sangnoir » Sun, Aug 11, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #47

buboard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, middle class struggle makes life more meaningful.

That is the first time I’ve ever seen those words used together in that order.

Isn't it just a rewording of the Calvinist/Protestant work ethic, though? Weird how the US is getting less religious on the surface, but holds on to the rituals - like some societal TSR.