71–80 of 171 posts
Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book: In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our a…
Paglia is a force of nature. It's so exhilarating to come across such a passionate yet clear-sighted academic, battle scarred by exposure of her past misconceptions to the brutality of testing in the real world, and with such a stronger voice for it. I know he's just as much of a divisive figure, but there's a great video of a conversation between Paglia and Jordan Peterson on Youtube.
I recommend reading fools fraud and firebands on the matter by Roger Scruton as long as Taleb on the dictatorship of the minority https://link.medium.com/P6JRZtgtuZ I’m deeply worried about the evolution of the universities it looks more and more like a cult is taking over instead of science debate and rationalism over emotions...
What, this Roger Scruton, tobacco industry shill? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1122192/ I'm not sure he's in a position to lecture anyone on science, let alone fraud. Or this Roger Scruton? https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/apr/10/roger-scruto...
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2019/07/sir-roge...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No. But we can do in depth economic analysis. And in fact, we can explain unequal pay quite well, and it has very little to do with discrimination. Because I'm really interested in this and have been unable to find something convincing, could you point me towards any such studies?
Fair warning, this topic has been beaten to death and is now radioactive and everyone has settled in their tranches. But just Google around and you'll find tons of resources, though the wikipedia page[1] has a good overview of some of the subtleties, and some good examples (the recent Uber study is referenced on the page). And the fact that there are deep, nuanced, subtleties that require context to properly digest s…
That used to be the case until the equal pay laws came in, though. And that change was historically recently - within Paglia's lifetime, for example. It has hardly been eradicated from thought simply because the law changed.
“These minor French theorists have had a disastrous effect on American education. Lacan encourages pompous bombast and Foucault teaches cheap cynicism, while Derrida’s aggressive method, called deconstruction, systematically trashes high culture by reducing everything to language and then making language destroy itself.” She's right, but it really upsets many academics for someone to say that. Good.
And anyone who wants to know a bit more about some of these theorists might want to read 'Intellectual Impostures' by the Left-leaning physicist Alan Sokal.
There is some truth about their writing being too obtuse, but this is (was ?) unfortunately a requirement in some circles in Paris. Also, culturally, being pedant in French has been for a long time a sign of sophistication culturally speaking (http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/jean_searle_on_foucault_a...). I find French more "overfit" for pedantism than English, but that could just be because French is my native language / culture.
[edit] the link above in openculture.com actually links to a video when Chomsky and Foucault discuss about social organizations. Foucault is as clear, if not clearer than Chomsky. I find Chomsky's language extremely dry, to a point where it is difficult for me to stay engaged.
Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book: In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yes you can: men have testosterone, so they're more aggressive, which turns out to translate to asking for more pay raises more often and changing jobs more quickly if unhappy with their pay. Hey presto, a biological basis for unequal pay. Now obviously this doesn't explain everything about unequal pay -- but it would be foolish to ignore entirely, no?
Nurture can trump nature, though: There are matrilineal societies where competitiveness is considered a feminine trait. As is often the case, it's not simply either/or.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair warning, this topic has been beaten to death and is now radioactive and everyone has settled in their tranches. But just Google around and you'll find tons of resources, though the wikipedia page[1] has a good overview of some of the subtleties, and some good examples (the recent Uber study is referenced on the page). And the fact that there are deep, nuanced, subtleties that require context to properly digest s…
> It is almost never the case that someone just decided that Jane should make less than Bob because he's a man and she's a woman That used to be the case until the equal pay laws came in, though. And that change was historically recently - within Paglia's lifetime, for example. It has hardly been eradicated from thought simply because the law changed.
Right. As a society, we should pat ourselves on the back. It was the right thing to do.
Having said that, nobody actually disputes that there was active, direct, and systemic discrimination against women in the past. Or even that it doesn't exist today in some isolated cases (the recent case in Japan where female applicants were denied medical school admission solely due to their gender is one such example).
That's not the same as saying this is broadly the case today.
>It has hardly been eradicated from thought simply because the law changed.
You're right. It wasn't eradicated because the law changed. It was eradicated because society changed which enabled the law to change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you disregard a person's all opinions only because he took a selfie with bunch of people and a cartoon character and the 90% of the said cartoon character's memes you have seen are racist and horrible.
Ah well if you see the selfie you might change your mind. But yes. The main thing for me was I rarely if ever see Peterson smile. And in this photo he’s grinning ear to ear.
I hope you hold yourself to the same standard.