Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

president.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#71

Post by tlear »

yucky wrote: post #39
tablespoon wrote: post #19

> We saw this last fall with the wide range of views around the Carlson lecture. If anyone else was wondering what was being referenced above, I'm guessing it's this: https://thetech.com/2021/10/14/carlson-lecture-cancellation : > Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) Department Head Robert van der Hilst canceled the department’s annual John Carlson Lecture due to controversy surrounding the invited speak…

I don't understand, if he wrote an op-ed uncovering racial discrimination in academia, why would people who are (presumably) against racial discrimination want to cancel his lecture?

That would be because they are in fact racists.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#72

Post by superb-owl »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #65
superb-owl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false equivalence. Galileo was concerned with physical fact, whereas this professor's controversial opinions are sociological and fairly subjective--they boil down to a value judgement. That's not to condemn (or defend) the professor. This just isn't a fair characterization of the debate.

A fact not yet widely verified and an opinion cannot, in general, be distinguished

I disagree. We can judge the falsifiability of statements without knowing whether or not they're false.

E.g. "red is a better color than blue" is obviously a subjective opinion, where as "ʻOumuamua is made of frozen nitrogen" is obviously a falsifiable statement.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#73

Post by redeux »

jaywalk wrote: post #63
redeux wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're speaking of what is, and I'm speaking of what I believe should be. These two things are not in contradiction. Laws can and do change. There was no individual right to bear arms in the United States until the 2008[1], changing establish law for the past 200+ years at the time. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

The DC v. Heller decision meant that there always had been an individual right to bear arms in the US, and that laws against it were unconstitutional. It's an important distinction.

That’s a revisionist perspective, even if it’s one that’s held by the court to justify their decision and set a new precedent. Previous SCOTUS rulings found that there was a collective, not individual right to bear arms. That means despite the court insisting that it didn’t just create a right from thin air, history disagrees.

By the logic you proposed, in any decision SCOTUS makes they can state that this is the way it’s always been and history is rewritten. Of course that can’t be the case. New precedent can be set but the historic record shows what the facts of the time were.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#74

Post by superb-owl »

panarky wrote: post #70
akomtu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

"The MIT statement on free expression states that in order to encourage provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, the university will protect all speech within the boundaries of the First Amendment." "Therefore, as a junior member of the Flat Earth Society, I demand MIT provide me an auditorium and a microphone to legitimize and amplify my nonconformist opinion about the shape of the Earth."

This is also a false equivalence.

MIT is obviously only going to consider inviting speakers that would appeal to some subset of its community. The statement doesn't give anyone a right to demand an audience at MIT, it gives the MIT community license to invite controversial speakers.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#75

Post by superb-owl »

foobarian wrote: post #67
superb-owl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false equivalence. Galileo was concerned with physical fact, whereas this professor's controversial opinions are sociological and fairly subjective--they boil down to a value judgement. That's not to condemn (or defend) the professor. This just isn't a fair characterization of the debate.

I'm not so sure, even the helio/geocentrism is a matter of opinion due to relativity of motion.

Hah this is a really good point. IIRC the Catholic Church was actually OK with using heliocentric mathematical models, just not with interpreting them as factual.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#76

Post by Manuel_D »

customkitchen wrote: post #69
Manuel_D wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If by "the DEI people" you mean "students who were only able to be there because someone made a conscious effort to do diversity outreach" then yes. They would be opposed to someone suggesting that they should stop the outreach so that people like them could no longer be there. This is only half the equation. There's another group of people who excluded on account of their race and gender as part of this "diversity…

No, it is not the opposite. That suggestion is just restating the question. They already tried to build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone, and the complaint is how doing that has led to extremely biased results. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing on how the decision is made, but the piece itself is poorly written, intentionally inflammatory, and insulting. There are maybe two valid suggestions bu…

I think you're still not not getting the point Abbot is making.

> They already tried to build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone, and the complaint is how doing that has led to extremely biased results.

How did it produce "extremely biased results"? You're being vague here, but I suspect by "biased results" you mean they produced a racial (and perhaps gender) makeup you don't like. Abbot rejects the idea that a non-discriminatory admissions process is biased because it produces student body with the "wrong" racial makeup. His view is that picking a "right" racial makeup and utilizing discrimination to achieve it, is a form of bias.

Also how is it "intentionally inflammatory and insulting"? Are you aware that 62% of African Americans do not support the use of race in admissions?[1] Perhaps what's insulting is and admission process that looks like this: https://www.economist.com/img/b/1280/1482/90/sites/default/f...

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#77

Post by foobarian »

superb-owl wrote: post #75
foobarian wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure, even the helio/geocentrism is a matter of opinion due to relativity of motion.

Hah this is a really good point. IIRC the Catholic Church was actually OK with using heliocentric mathematical models, just not with interpreting them as factual.

I wonder what really happened. I'm guessing Galileo was one of those vocal people that just can't help poking the bear.

Edit: reading up a bit more it seems Galileo had a bit of a Linus T. streak, with gratuitous insults and ad hominems against authority. Makes me want to read the source documents now :-)

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#78

Post by naasking »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #6

One, perhaps the only, problem with freedom of speech in academia is that can be very actively exploited by bad faith actors, i.e., people who are not interested at all in truth and merely abuse the university system as a platform for furthering political goals and "whitewashing" their position. These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. They often come from a non-academic background, have a party or "th…

> The problem is that these people use events to give their name and their agenda some credibility and make it easier for the public to confuse their opinions with science.

Then this is a failure of public education and science journalism. Science journalism has indeed been failing the public for decades now, and have arguably been a big factor in the public's distrust of scientific institutions, so that's not surprising.

You don't solve this problem by banning speakers or restricting speech, you solve it by improving journalism and public education.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#79

Post by prottog »

RHSeeger wrote: post #58
stickyricky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When are you going to be affected by this theory? Are you swayed by lies and misinformation? Do you cling to beliefs in the face of fact and evidence? Are you undeserving of the right to speak because of it?

I am generally not affected by this type of lie/misinformation, because I specifically look for it. That's not to say I'm never affected by it, just that I keep an eye out for that type of thing. But I know for a fact that people I know and care about _are_ affected by it, and on a regular basis. Plus it's used to sway people I don't know, and those people vote. And I find it concerning that they will base their vote…

Being worried that they will base their vote on incorrect information is really, really close to being worried that they will vote incorrectly, period. Very few things in politics are so cut and dry that there's one "correct" fact.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#80

Post by customkitchen »

Manuel_D wrote: post #76
customkitchen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is not the opposite. That suggestion is just restating the question. They already tried to build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone, and the complaint is how doing that has led to extremely biased results. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing on how the decision is made, but the piece itself is poorly written, intentionally inflammatory, and insulting. There are maybe two valid suggestions bu…

I think you're still not not getting the point Abbot is making. > They already tried to build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone, and the complaint is how doing that has led to extremely biased results. How did it produce "extremely biased results"? You're being vague here, but I suspect by "biased results" you mean they produced a racial (and perhaps gender) makeup you don't like. Abbot rejects the id…

>You're being vague here, but I suspect by "biased results" you mean they produced a racial (and perhaps gender) makeup you don't like.

No, you are completely and utterly wrong on that. This is more of the same intellectually lazy assumptions, please stop this.

And I get his point perfectly, it is still insulting and dismissive. When someone starts talking about school vouchers and "merit" in the context of this then it's mostly an admission that they don't know what they're talking about. It has absolutely nothing to do with the problems faced by a school like MIT that already has an extremely low acceptance rate anyway. They know how to test students on academic rigor, that isn't the issue. The fact is, they already cannot accepts all students who pass based on academic merit alone. Your chart even demonstrates that is the case with Harvard, the issue is explicitly not that racial makeup is being considered over academic achievement.

Post reply on HN