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Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

471–480 of 540 posts

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#471
post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Continuing from bottom of original thread.) If you are finally willing to accept an explanation of what I originally meant, instead of once again claiming that my immediate and complete repudiation of things I never said is just further evidence that I believe— checks notes —some different things I never said, then I guess that's good enough. But I'm merely restating something I already said, so I trust that anyone…

I actually already addressed this argument: claiming that to be tolerant you must be tolerant of people you are intolerant of is a circular argument. The LGBT community is an outgroup in society, and by being more open to said societal outgroups, the left is more open minded in general. To rephrase, your assumption that to demonstrate open mindedness, one must act a certain way towards the outgroup is a self defeatin…

> As soon as you provide the requisite amount of acceptance to the outgroup, they are no longer the outgroup, so you are no longer being open minded.

This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right (e.g., my family, Chick-fil-a) then we would (counterfactually) have to conclude that LGBT is an ingroup of the right. This contradicts your claim that "The LGBT community is an outgroup in society". It cannot simultaneously be true that LGBT is an outgroup of the right (surely a subset of society), that treating someone with respect and acceptance makes them an ingroup, and that LGBT are treated with respect and acceptance by at least some people on the right. How do you explain this contradiction?

An argument based on the definitions of "progressive" and "conservative" is no better than saying North Korea is a democracy. In the past twenty years the left has had a shocking reversion to moral puritanism, such as by policing speech. This again contradicts the definitions, so unless we claim that it's reality which is wrong, then we must abandon the original meaning of the words.

Finally, I frankly don't know how to respond to the notion that open-mindedness in the sense we're using it here, or the sense I thought we were using it here (viz. as a rough synonym of "tolerance"), has anything to do with the age of ideas. Moreover I dispute the claim that the left's ideas are primarily new, because they again seem to be a reversion to older ideas; for example, socialism (late 18th century) and the idea that society and history can only be properly be viewed through the lens of race (early to mid 20th century Germany).

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Wikipedia: > Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioural indignities, whether intentional or unintentional It’s the unintentional part that I take issue with, which means that it’s not on you to understand the context of my statement, it’s on me to imagine the infinite variety of ways you might interpret my statement and vet them for possible insensitivity before making i…

I think at some level this comes down to the age old argument of Ignorance vs the Common Good. An extreme but relevant example: If a person is ignorant of the harmfulness of bleach, and injects their children with it with intent to cure an ailment, are they guilty of a crime? If so, is it the crime of being ignorant? So from that lens, can a person act aggressively without intending to? In a technical sense, I think…

I don't think emotional offence should be treated exactly like physical harm. Different people may take offence from different actions, and it's not fair to require everyone to judge accurately what is and what is not offensive to all the other people they're going to interact with, especially in a society that is aiming for diversity. In East Asia, where most people think alike, it's easier to guess people's reaction, but it's definitely not so in other parts of the world.

For physical harm, however, ignorance should not be an excuse. It may reduce the responsibility, but it should not completely remove it. Not knowing something can kill doesn't change the fact that one had actually killed.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#473
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually already addressed this argument: claiming that to be tolerant you must be tolerant of people you are intolerant of is a circular argument. The LGBT community is an outgroup in society, and by being more open to said societal outgroups, the left is more open minded in general. To rephrase, your assumption that to demonstrate open mindedness, one must act a certain way towards the outgroup is a self defeatin…

> As soon as you provide the requisite amount of acceptance to the outgroup, they are no longer the outgroup, so you are no longer being open minded. This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right (e.g., my family, Chick-fil-a) then we would (counterfactually) have to conclude that LGBT is an ingroup of the…

> This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right

This doesn't follow. The existence of a continuum of levels of acceptance within the right doesn't mean that the right, as a whole is accepting. Consider if we took this to the extreme: I am accepting of LGBT people, therefore society is. Your parents, as individuals, being accepting of LGBT people does not make the whole of "the right" accepting of LGBT people any more than me, as an individual, makes society accepting.

> It cannot simultaneously be true that LGBT is an outgroup of the right (surely a subset of society), that treating someone with respect and acceptance makes them an ingroup, and that LGBT are treated with respect and acceptance by at least some people on the right. How do you explain this contradiction.

You're using absolute terms when I used relative ones. And when dealing with people, who are fuzzy, relative terms are more correct. I can be more to the right of someone else. Not all right wing people share exactly the same views.

I don't consider supporting politicians who wish to remove your rights to be "accepting". You seem to consider "personal politeness" to be "accepting". If your parents identify as "the right" they presumably support Republican candidates. The republican party wishes to remove the right of lgbt individuals to marry. I don't think that is accepting. Perhaps they don't support those right wing policies, but then by the same token I'd argue that they are not paragons of right-wing ideology, so to bundle them into "the right" is to include moderates under the right wing umbrella. That's why I'm not talking about individuals, but the republican party platform, which is I think as close as well get to an official statement of the beliefs of the right wing.

> Chick-fil-a

I'm lost.

> In the past twenty years the left has had a shocking reversion to moral puritanism, such as by policing speech.

It hasn't though. This is an invention of people on the right. The internet has made it easier for us to see examples of people disagreeing, and the right has done a good job of branding individuals exercising their first amendment rights to criticise as an attack on "free speech". I'll warn that were running headlong into paradox of tolerance territory.

But the right is no stranger to policing speech. Consider that the most commonly banned books in the us schools are the handmaid's tale (sexual themes), harry potter (witchcraft), and 8 books about lgbtq topics. The right likes to shift the focus to cancel culture, but...

> This again contradicts the definitions, so unless we claim that it's reality which is wrong, then we must abandon the original meaning of the words.

This does not follow. I'll also note that someone did go to the effort of explaining why progressive and conservative are fitting (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24402840), and you ignored the body of the response.

> Moreover I dispute the claim that the left's ideas are primarily new, because they again seem to be a reversion to older ideas; for example, socialism (late 18th century) and the idea that society and history can only be properly be viewed through the lens of race (early to mid 20th century Germany).

Compare to the right, which gets it's ideas from the Bible and enlightenment philosophers, both of which predate leftist philosophy by decades or centuries ;). You're also greatly oversimplifying critical theory to the point of parody. Perhaps remove the "only" from your sentence.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#474
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This essay provides a highly thought-provoking answer: https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/ The argument is sophisticated and hard to summarise, but essentially, the author argues that "enlightenment liberalism" (i.e. the sort of philosophy that dominates universities) has a flaw at its centre that both creates Marxists and causes "enlightenment liberals" to constantly give in to the demands of…

I'm not necessarily against this but I don't think it goes deep enough. I think a better societal/psychological explanation can be found in the first third of Industrial Society and its Future. [0] [0] Free read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...

Agreed.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#475
post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leftists are trying to change the Spanish language because all nouns are gendered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_Spanish

this "leftists are doing that" bullshit is usually an extreme right way of dismissing everything

I've just linked proof of this, what do you think the whole Latinx phenomena is? I'm not saying fluoride in the water is a Leftist conspiracy.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Wikipedia: > Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioural indignities, whether intentional or unintentional It’s the unintentional part that I take issue with, which means that it’s not on you to understand the context of my statement, it’s on me to imagine the infinite variety of ways you might interpret my statement and vet them for possible insensitivity before making i…

I think at some level this comes down to the age old argument of Ignorance vs the Common Good. An extreme but relevant example: If a person is ignorant of the harmfulness of bleach, and injects their children with it with intent to cure an ailment, are they guilty of a crime? If so, is it the crime of being ignorant? So from that lens, can a person act aggressively without intending to? In a technical sense, I think…

You’re right and that’s the crux of it really: intent. That’s why framing someone as being in the wrong regardless of intent is dangerous.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#477
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marxist is WESTERN ideas and it came from Enlightenment. Where do you think Marx was born?

Kingdom of Prussia, 5 May 1818. Prussia was an absolute monarchy, and in 1818 I would opine that was certainly NOT Western ideas.

LOL.

Marx itself praised the American and French revolutions, as a good steep on human progressiveness.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#478
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As soon as you provide the requisite amount of acceptance to the outgroup, they are no longer the outgroup, so you are no longer being open minded. This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right (e.g., my family, Chick-fil-a) then we would (counterfactually) have to conclude that LGBT is an ingroup of the…

> This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right This doesn't follow. The existence of a continuum of levels of acceptance within the right doesn't mean that the right, as a whole is accepting. Consider if we took this to the extreme: I am accepting of LGBT people, therefore society is. Your parents, as ind…

> The existence of a continuum

... can be used as an apparent counter-argument to literally anything, and is meaningless. I don't believe the contradiction has been addressed at all.

> I'm lost.

Ah yes, a brilliant response to any concrete example I might bring up of leftist intolerance, such as the widespread informal boycott of Chick-fil-a. (This is called an example.)

> I'll warn that were running headlong into paradox of tolerance territory.

The so-called "paradox of tolerance" is literally an admission that the left does not tolerate those with whom they disagree; i.e., they are not open-minded. I'm not sure why you want to bring that up now. The left has twisted the definition of "tolerance" until it means the exact opposite. This is presumably why you can't get past "claiming that to be tolerant you must be tolerant of people you are intolerant of". Of course if the word has been twisted to mean two opposite things, but you still try to use the word to shape your understanding of the world, you will inevitably conclude that acceptance of those with whom you disagree is impossible. It's baked right into the meaning of the word (for you, as it seems to me)! The word has been used to mean both "acceptance" and "agreeing", to the point where disagreement is declared intolerance, which is absurd. I urge you to reject "tolerance" as a notion altogether due to how it's been mistreated, and use more precise concepts for more accurate reasoning.

> Compare to the right, which gets it's ideas from the Bible and enlightenment philosophers, both of which predate leftist philosophy by decades or centuries.

I really don't see much similarity between the protestant Bible (I assume that's the one you mean) and the philosophy of the right. But you have correctly identified enlightenment philosophy as a prominent influence.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#479
post #335
post #28

Again, context is everything. What an utterly spineless, pathetic response from a risk averse management type - to throw their colleague under the bus.

I did some Chinese courses last year and "na ge" is something that will get repeated frequently because of how Chinese make their sentences. There is another one "nei ge". They are an important part of the Chinese language. Edit: just watched the video. He was not teaching a chinese course. A bit of a suspicious example he picked if you ask me.

On the other hand, if you're an African American doing a business deal in China, it is also almost certainly the best example, and might genuinely be the most valuable thing that you take away from that class. Specifically, "sometimes people speaking Mandarin say something that sounds like 'ni__er'. It is not actually 'ni__er', and is completely unrelated to my race."

That could easily be the difference between "deal" and "end of relationship".

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#480
post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right This doesn't follow. The existence of a continuum of levels of acceptance within the right doesn't mean that the right, as a whole is accepting. Consider if we took this to the extreme: I am accepting of LGBT people, therefore society is. Your parents, as ind…

> The existence of a continuum ... can be used as an apparent counter-argument to literally anything, and is meaningless. I don't believe the contradiction has been addressed at all. > I'm lost. Ah yes, a brilliant response to any concrete example I might bring up of leftist intolerance, such as the widespread informal boycott of Chick-fil-a. (This is called an example .) > I'll warn that were running headlong into p…

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