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The Yale Problem Begins in High School

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Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#361

Post by 7402 »

mrtron wrote: post #61
douche wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that parallels my experience pretty closely, as an undergraduate at an Ivy League college that was in the news recently. There might have been about a hundred people on campus that were actively interested in protesting things (what things?, all the things ). For the most part, everybody else is there to go to class, learn, do their own thing, and drink too much beer on the weekends/Wednesdays/Mondays, etc. This…

This might be the first time I have seen someone from an Ivy league college not mention the name (intentionally). Why not just say X/Y/Z?

It's not uncommon for people who went to Harvard to avoid mentioning it right away, because of the way it can derail conversations or create weird expectations. (It's sometimes referrred to as, "Dropping the H-bomb.")

[1] http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012...

[2] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-who-went-to-Harvard-some...

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#362

Post by jimbokun »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #323
nostromo wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. The problem today is that students and faculty are self-censoring. This doesn't expand erudition.

> But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. No, they shouldn't, and I'll follow-up as to why below. >Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. Given sufficient rhetorical skill and sufficiently many appeals to "open thought" or "questioning assumptions" or "viewpoint diversit…

But I think you have indirectly hit upon the solution.

The rules of good arguments, good logic, and relevant evidence are the points to emphasize and enforce.

So disallow any and all appeals to social proof, and you eliminate the ability for these people to waste everyone else's time.

If someone wants to argue the Earth is 6,000 years old, let them take a couple of cracks at it. But once it's clear they are deviating from the rules of scientific reasoning in science class, make it clear that is the reason for disallowing their arguments and move on.

"We cannot allow academia to be consumed with discussions over whether gravity is a social construction, especially not because right-wing partisans feel that only mostly owning the field of economics means that academia is engaged in conspiracy against them."

Take this sentence, for example. It's not clear at all how the second clause logically follows from the first.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#363

Post by dragonwriter »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #356
flopto wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well some people have to work much harder to avoid incarceration.

I concede that point to you, however certain types of violent crime are easier to avoid.

Avoiding committing crime and avoiding being incarcerated for crime are not the same thing.

(The first may help in the second, but just as committing a crime is neither necessary nor sufficient to assure incarceration for it, avoiding committing a crime is neither necessary nor sufficient to avoid incarceration for it. It is frequently argued that it is both more necessary and less sufficient for blacks to avoid crime in order to avoid incarceration as compared to whites, for instance.)

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#364

Post by karmacondon »

rthomas6 wrote: post #128
kelukelugames wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ideas do they want to censor? Edit: I'm looking for specific examples. Otherwise we are just feigning outrage. I had an ex co-worker who confided in me that he doesn't like gay people. I was very happy that he couldn't say that in public.

Here are some. Note that I do not necessarily believe these ideas, just that they are considered taboo to the point that they cannot be tolerated or seriously discussed in certain circles. * The USA is a moral country. * The USA is morally superior to most/all other countries. * A specific member of an in-power "preferred" group can experience unjustified prejudice, oppression, and bullying from members of an out-of-…

There are just tenants of liberal vs conservative philosophy. If you hang out with a certain group of people, half of those things will be unspeakably taboo. If you hang out with the Young Republicans, the other half will be just as unthinkable. That's just culture and world view, not censorship.

If someone says something unpopular on hackernews, ie "Edward Snowden is a traitor" they will be downvoted into oblivion. You could say that hackernewws censored the person's ideas, but I think the reality is that what they said wasn't very popular with the people they said it to. I think this effect is just as relevant and predictable with online communities as it is with college campuses.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#365

Post by iamsohungry »

forgottenpass wrote: post #145
richard_mcp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally if I read an article about the men's right movement, it ends up being slightly malicious or dismissive of other movements like feminism. I don't disagree with a lot of their points, but there often seems to be a thread of misogyny just under the surface which makes me less likely to take them seriously.

When disagreeing with a particular popular liberal thought is so taboo, the people who want to vocalize their dissent will find strange bedfellows. In this case the unabashedly misogynistic. Without carefully measured responses, the larger moment will steamroll the dissent with guilt by association (the last many years) until it becomes unavoidable (the last year-ish?) when the ideas are presented in non-hitpeices by…

> When disagreeing with a particular popular liberal thought is so taboo, the people who want to vocalize their dissent will find strange bedfellows. In this case the unabashedly misogynistic.

That's not something I'm going to do. I don't subscribe to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and I want nothing to do with misogyny. We're not doing ourselves any favors by associating with terrible people just because they agree with us on some issues.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#366

Post by ctlby »

slapshot wrote: post #320
lern_too_spel wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secular morals. Owning slaves obviously doesn't pass the test. As a secular person, your main purpose is to live a long healthy life because that's all there is -- secular people don't get brownie points in the afterlife for the bodycount of heathens they've racked up. You will live a longer life if you live in a society of educated people who can do the science to keep you healthy and don't want to kill you (because…

> Owning slaves obviously doesn't pass the test. You're at best begging the question here. In the South there were (horribly wrong) people who honestly and truly believed (incorrectly) that not only was it morally permissible to own slaves, but that it was morally necessary. They (wrongly, racistly) believed that the only way the "African race" could be saved from "savagery" was to be in captivity. This argument is c…

Well said. Crude majoritarian morality has hole after hole that even its most thoughtful adherents can do nothing to defend. Why people continue to invoke it is beyond me.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#367

Post by wildmusings »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #343
wildmusings wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most interesting part of the whole phenomenon. I think the answer is that everyone is scared to confront them. The modus operandi of this movement is to personally attack the character of anyone who disagrees with them. They've toppled university presidents, CEOs, and politicians. They got Rolling Stone to publish a completely unsubstantiated article falsely accusing a bunch of young men of a vicious gang…

I think they're winning because the overall premise is just correct. Black death and torture is one of the most serious moral issues the U.S. faces today. There are some people with poor impulse control who get in the news a lot. The opposition promotes the hell out of those people (as we are doing right now) in order to try to discredit the leaders. The fact that the movement is still winning despite the countercamp…

Generational poverty and crime are definitely serious issues, but that's not the movement's "overall premise". The movement's philosophical underpinning is a complete abdication of personal agency and responsibility. They perceive themselves to be part of a powerless and oppressed group (which is false, especially for some of these 'victims' that are Ivy League students with many open doors). To support that, they've built a revisionist narrative of Western civilization, espoused in works like "A People's History of the United States", that centers on oppression of these out-groups and on the evils on capitalism. They have a paranoid sense that everything is an act of oppression, see "microaggressions" and "cultural appropriation". They are hostile to freedom because their goals of changing how individuals relate to each other socially cannot be achieved without coercion.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#368

Post by snowwrestler »

BurningFrog wrote: post #112
lumberjack wrote: post #25

These people act this way because they are elitist. They think they know what should be better than anyone else and therefore there is no need for debate or for rights like free speech. I find that quite ironic because presumably, these people subscribe to left leaning ideologies. But maybe there isn't so much of a contradiction. They are simply more elitist than they are anything else. They don't really stand for eq…

The interesting part is not why these people do this, but why they are winning.

They're winning because, while their tactics can be terrible, immature, and oppressive, their moral thrust is correct. Most women and minorities do face obstacles in American society--even today--that most white men don't. This is evidenced in a wide variety of population statistics, at confidence levels that would be high enough to make headlines if they were risks in a medical study.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#369

Post by jimbokun »

jon-wood wrote: post #140
nickbauman wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "balancing viewpoints" argument is that it isn't based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a "balanced viewpoint" and still have debates about "whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not." There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion. It s…

Thank you, you've summed up the question of balanced journalism far better than I ever could. The current approach of sticking someone with an opposite opinion on the news, even if that opinion is clearly utter horseshit, really gets to me, but I wasn't able to properly describe why.

However, I think the approach of sticking someone with an opposite opinion, then tearing their argument apart with debate, insightful questions, or merciless satire are wonderful approaches to dealing with this problem. Stewart and Colbert, of course, mastered this art in the U.S., and many British journalists seem to have a knack for it as well.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#370

Post by masterleep »

nostromo wrote: post #340
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. No, they shouldn't, and I'll follow-up as to why below. >Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. Given sufficient rhetorical skill and sufficiently many appeals to "open thought" or "questioning assumptions" or "viewpoint diversit…

Who gets to decide which ideas are off limits?

The right-thinking people.
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