The Yale Problem Begins in High School • Hacker News Board

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#381

Post by iamsohungry » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 9:58 PM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #127

jseliger wrote: post #12

I've taught at two colleges and based on my (purely) anecdotal experiences and attention to the climate, I'd say that the number of students and faculty interested in stifling or censoring ideas is small but also very, very noisy. They also have no sense of humor and college administrators as a group have no sense of humor or perspective, and they're chronically worried about accusations of indifference or insensitiv…

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…

I don't think the comparison of balancing viewpoints in a classroom is really comparable to the fair and balanced media argument. In a classroom, you're dealing with a classroom full of a limited number of people who need to be able to state and defend their ideas. It's unlikely that someone in such a classroom will bring up whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster, but if they do, students should be able to make a reasonable decision on how to respond (in that case, it requires little response beyond polite derision).

Dismissing something as a red herring without even bringing it up in a classroom avoids a key responsibility of an educator: students need to be able to recognize red herrings and respond to them as such. Red herrings occur in the real world. The role of the educator is not to dictate accurate information, it's to teach people how to critically process information.

The news, on the other hand, does have the responsibility to dictate accurate information. As such, the only opinions that matter are the opinions of experts, and those should be subservient to data. "Fair and balanced" doesn't often matter because if there are really two sides to the issue, the "information" isn't accurate enough to be presenting to an inexpert public anyway. Debates should happen between experts based on the data, without politicization, and news should report the results.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#382

Post by saint_fiasco » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #297

rm999 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussing nursing isn't relevant, and even if it is two wrongs don't make a right , which is the logical fallacy you keep making here. But if you want to hear me say it: there's a shortage of nurses and the fact that men aren't going into it due to social pressures is an issue. >You know what we need more of in tech? People Lowest hanging fruit: actively do something about the fact that half the population isn't goi…

> Discussing nursing isn't relevant, and even if it is two wrongs don't make a right, which is the logical fallacy you keep making here. But if you want to hear me say it: there's a shortage of nurses and the fact that men aren't going into it due to social pressures is an issue. As long as we're pointing out fallacies, you're attacking a straw man here. I'm not saying two wrongs make a right; I'm saying neither wron…

You are wrong that there is a shortage of nurses and possibly programmers, but maybe the shortage of nurses is because men who would be good nurses don't want to become nurses for whatever reason.

Convincing more people who have good nurse-aptitudes that becoming a nurse is worthwhile is a legitimate strategy for increasing the number of nurses. Same for people who have good programmer-aptitudes and have been discouraged from playing with computers and stuff because of their gender.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#383

Post by nickbauman » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

frotak wrote: post #319

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…

You're missing the thrust of the argument entirely. The author does not advocate validating factually invalid statements - see his anecdote in the second article linked in GP regarding "whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people": "I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn't it…

>Viewpoint diversity is entirely about bringing different perspectives and experiences to bear on a subject.

Yes this is what I understand, too. Let me say, for the record, I think diversity (race, creed, gender, color, tint or hue) is important. And bias on those things doesn't belong on campus. But campus isn't group therapy, either. It's a place like no other where we're supposed probe the universe and try to find the answers. Diversity in that context should be in the service of that mission, not in the service of balancing faction which is what the OP is all about. Balancing faction is a slippery slope, set it aside.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#384

Post by remarkEon » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

flopto wrote: post #213

econnors wrote: post #111

As a student at Dartmouth, I find this article to be extremely accurate and representative of the culture I've encountered amongst the protests here and (through conversations with friends) at other places across the country. As a white male, my friends and I are too intimidated by the Black Lives Matter protesters and their actions to try to initiate any sort of discussion on the matter in fear that we'll only provo…

If people are angry about X and you go up to them and try to tell them how much you like/support X, isn't that what you'd expect? To make people want to engage you in a thoughtful discussion, it's important to demonstrate humility and open-mindedness to their opinions.

I recently tried to engage a BLM protester about the issues, hoping to have a thoughtful discussion about some policies and ways forward to improve the situation. 3 paragraphs latter, I was being told that my white privilege should exclude me from even participating in the discussion, let alone informing decisions about policy - ostensibly because I do not have a shared experience of discrimination.

Disclaimer: I'm a white male from the midwest.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#385

Post by vlehto » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

1812Overture wrote: post #302

One thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is that this sort of walking on eggshells culture tends to build higher walls around the privileged and powerful group. How often do you think these privileged rich white boys go on to become employers and refuse to higher someone from an out group (consciously or unconsciously) due to fear that the slightest misinterpreted off hand remark could bring hell down on them, bu…

I'm pretty sure some leftist SJW really can't see this as counter productive. It's not just employment, this shit cuts through everything. I can't imagine how this crowd could side with the white supremacists knowingly.

But then there is Slavoj Zizek, who agrees with you and me. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nd6rg

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#386

Post by lern_too_spel » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #330

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…

You have no idea what secular means do you? Admit it. The Eastern Bloc was extremely secular. That doesn't prevented it from being quite oppressive.

Nobody is saying that the Eastern Bloc was secularly moral.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#387

Post by pasquinelli » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #75

The one thing that perplexes me more than anything is nobody ever thought free speech allows us to monitor the people who have radical ideologies and ideas that threaten our country. When you silence opposition simply because it offends somebody or some group, you lose the opportunity to monitor these people and their ideas. I want to know if there's skinheads who want to start a race war or the black panther party l…

"The one thing that perplexes me more than anything is nobody ever thought free speech allows us to monitor the people who have radical ideologies and ideas that threaten our country."

you really are perplexed if you think no one's ever thought of that. i remember john stossel making that case, oh, 15 years ago. i'm sure it wasn't an original thought then either.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#388

Post by iamsohungry » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

rewqfdsa wrote: post #108

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.

> it ends up being slightly malicious or dismissive of other movements like feminism When feminiism has become a movement against truth and against half the population, what do you expect?

When that happens, I'll be malicious and dismissive toward feminism. But that hasn't happened yet. There are more feminists who are reasonable people than there are vocal crazies.

Some things said by feminists:

* "Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill." -- Betty Friedan

* "Women and men communicate differently, often on entirely different planes. But just as men have failed us, we have failed them. It has been one of our great collective female shortcomings to presume that whatever we do not perceive simply isn't there, or that whatever is not communicated in our language is not intelligible speech." ― Norah Vincent

* I can't find the reference, but I seem to remember that the first person to widely spread the idea that it's possible for men to be raped was a feminist.

Remember that the college kids at Yale are exactly that: kids. I remember a time shortly after I became an atheist where I was angry at everyone religious for wronging me. It took me a while to realize that many religious people weren't horrible people, they were just humans, who were doing the wrong thing while trying their best to do the right thing. College students who are newly finding their voices are defining the conversation here, but they're not bad people, they just haven't realized yet that the people who they're attacking are just humans, too.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#389

Post by CM30 » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

asift wrote: post #248

redthrowaway wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "vanguardist" is a better term than "elitist". "Elitist" connotes a passive enjoyment of privilege, whereas these people see themselves much more as the enlightened few bringing the orthodox[1] to the unwashed masses by any means necessary. They share far more in common with Communists who viewed it as their duty to shepherd the proletariat towards social consciousness than with the Oxbridge set who merely ta…

>"Elitist" connotes a passive enjoyment of privilege Any student on an Ivy League campus is among the most privileged human beings in the world (regardless of where they came from).

Exactly. The people often complaining about 'privilege' are some of the most privileged individuals out there, yet they don't see that their huge class based advantages kind of make the others a tad moot. But hey, got to complain about the attitudes of those from a worse background, because otherwise they'd have to see their own issues and the holes in their own belief systems.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#390

Post by Retric » Wed, Nov 25, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #336

Retric wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing it lowers the bar before people think your indigent. Depending on industry it can often make it harder to find a job. On the whole it's generally viewed as a low status symbol. Granted this is mostly from the east coast of the US (DC). And having a styled bearded seems to make a large difference.

> For one thing it lowers the bar before people think your indigent. Have you considered keeping your facial hair washed and groomed.

It's not just a question of grooming. Short but sparse beards can look unkempt. This is probably self selecting as men who have issues growing a thick beard are more likely to shave if there well off.