Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches • Hacker News Board

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#51

Post by recuter » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

jchw wrote: post #47

recuter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said East! East! haha. The person I responded to phrased it in a soul revealing manner: > you chose to flagrantly violate the rules, thinking that you were special Therefore the snitch will punish you and vengefully cut you down to size. You will be equally unspecial and unhappy compared to the snitch, don't you see? We aren't talking some rule about borrowing red staplers. We're talking about private…

The whole reason why it’s difficult to empathize is not about whether someone snitches or not, or the mentality of the person who snitches. It’s already clear that the incentives for rule enforcement is screwy. But the rule is there for a reason, a good reason, and everybody else had to follow it. I’ve heard of people leaving companies and having to effectively be demoted due to interpersonal relationships; that’s th…

My friend, you may very well be right, you may be wrong, completely besides the point.

Hypotheticals aside, and with all due respect, what godly business is it of yours?

"Rules are there for a good reason and must be followed" is also called fascism under certain circumstances. The old soviet ladies watching like hawks from balconies the goings on in the hood were all about power trips and exploiting the situation.

If you wish to explore how one well intentioned rule building on another leads to atrocities I recommend you read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

What is "maximally romantic" for other people to do is truly none of your concern. Other peoples affairs are their own, who knows if you even understand the situation properly and yet you rush to become their self appointed judge, jury, and executioner... why? For the greater good? Take a long honest look in the mirror.

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#52

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #21

giraffe_lady wrote: post #9

I'm having a serious "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" moment on this one: I don't think that representation of the Ewell paper is quite accurate, though admittedly it's been over a year since I read it. Despite being Jewish (would have had different significance later than during his time!) Schenker was a proud german nationalist and in his own words considered his method one of the ways german people could assert their su…

Do you view anything hierarchical as racist via associated Whiteness? I'm confused how the origins were an "explicitly racist project". Was Schenker promoting a race that he didn't even belong to? Is it possible to think American culture is superior over other cultures, without thinking that white people are superior to black people?

Schenkerian analysis is literally the idea of taking out all the "hierarchically inferior" black notes from a piece of music and showing only a handful of hierarchically dominant, big, important "white notes". Of course this basic idea has nothing to do with modern notions of race, but it turns out that the visual contrast of "colors" describes the idea quite precisely. So I'm quite OK with conceding that one point to Ewell.

(It's worth noting the flip side of that argument, too - we literally have historical sources telling us "when you see a composition made of big, white notes, that will sound a lot better if the performer improvises on them melodically on the spot, keeping the overall meter of the white note" (Lorenzo Penna, Li primi albori musicali). And of course, on-the-spot improvisation has been mastered to an unprecedented degree in the modern day by the "black" tradition of Jazz!)

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#53

Post by humanistbot » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

recuter wrote: post #42

jchw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we’ve blown past Godwin’s law already. That was fast. If the rule is so bad… shouldn’t they fix the rule ? But it’s there for a reason, so they shouldn’t fix it. It’s not broken.

I specifically said East! East! haha. The person I responded to phrased it in a soul revealing manner: > you chose to flagrantly violate the rules, thinking that you were special Therefore the snitch will punish you and vengefully cut you down to size. You will be equally unspecial and unhappy compared to the snitch, don't you see? We aren't talking some rule about borrowing red staplers. We're talking about private…

> We're talking about private affairs between adults. Could be a perfectly happy couple.

Sexual relationships between bosses and subordinates are seen a bad idea by many organizations. For the subordinate, is difficult to have a consensual sexual relationship with someone who is managing you, who is in charge of what you do on a day-to-day basis, and can decide whether you are fired or promoted. The power imbalance seeps in to everything. And then even if that was possible and there are no consent issue, there is the other looming accusations of preferential treatment. Did the subordinate get that promotion or that more lucrative assignment because they are sleeping with the boss? Finally, if these office relationships break-up (and many, many of them do), the resulting fallout can be devastating to the organization's productivity and legal liability.

For these reasons, many organizations make it a policy to require that these kinds of relationships be disclosed and prohibited. If a boss and a subordinate truly fall in love and want to live a life together more than anything else, then they can try to find alternative roles in the organization where one person in the relationship doesn't report to each other.

So that is the rationale. Agree or disagree if you want, but many organizations choose to have this policy. The second-order problem is what do you do if someone who is in a position of authority flagrantly violates an official, explicit policy? What other policies are the violating? Do they also think it is OK to charge personal expenses to a work account? People who are in power and who think the rules are meant to be broken often find their way into rationales to break all kinds of rules. They are a liability to the organization.

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#54

Post by oh_sigh » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #40

oh_sigh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you view anything hierarchical as racist via associated Whiteness? I'm confused how the origins were an "explicitly racist project". Was Schenker promoting a race that he didn't even belong to? Is it possible to think American culture is superior over other cultures, without thinking that white people are superior to black people?

So first off I'm familiar with schenkerian analysis but I am not an expert on schenker the person, though I did at one point read some of his writings in translation to verify Ewell's claims. Nor am I trying to argue, right now, that his works are inherently racist. If you're looking for those things you should just read Ewell, who is a Schenker expert, and is making that argument. > Was Schenker promoting a race tha…

> I think this is an error, trying to map our understanding of race onto the past like this.

Isn't that what Ewell is doing, by declaring that a 19th-century Jew born in modern-day Ukraine is actually a white German?

And Ewell isn't a Schenker expert - he focuses on Russian and modern music. He does self describe as: "I am an activist for racial, gender, and social justice in the field of music theory."

And he writes stuff like:

> Beethoven occupies the place he does because he has been propped up by whiteness and maleness for two hundred years, and we have been told by whiteness and maleness that his greatness has nothing to do with whiteness and maleness, in race-neutral and gender-neutral fashion. Thus music theory’s white-male frame obfuscates race and gender, one of its main goals….

Has there ever been a worthy white/male composer, or have they all been problematic racists because of their demographic information?

This guy is, basically, a clown. He, like many social-justice minded people, epitomizes Maslow's hammer. Writing in an academic style or in journals doesn't mean you have anything interesting to say. I did not agree with the author of the original article one bit, but I don't think they did any kind of disservice in their brief take on Ewell's paper(they even linked to it, which is at least a sign of good faith in my opinion).

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#55

Post by vector_spaces » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

It might be helpful to know that the author, Laura Kipnis, has made a career out of critiquing sexual harassment policies on American university campuses and the broader #MeToo movement. Her 2017 book titled "Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus" compared the Title IX process against philosopher Peter Ludlow a "witch trial". The book also offers an anecdote of an undergraduate student woke up next to a male student after blacking out, and then laughing off any suggestions that what happened amounted to rape -- Kipnis frames this as how female students should ideally react in such situations, and argues against the idea that men alone are responsible for rape when it happens, arguing that modern feminism "enables stupidity".

Personally, I find these arguments objectionable for various reasons I don't care to get into, but either way I think it's probably a good idea to be aware of where people are coming from when engaging with pieces like this

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#56

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #32

oh_sigh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you view anything hierarchical as racist via associated Whiteness? I'm confused how the origins were an "explicitly racist project". Was Schenker promoting a race that he didn't even belong to? Is it possible to think American culture is superior over other cultures, without thinking that white people are superior to black people?

It's probably because German Nationalism (especially of that time) was "Ethnic" Nationalism ? Which I have gotten the impression has been distinctly racist even long before the Nazis ?

It's not like the Germans had any monopoly on casual racism back then - consider the Dreyfus Affair, which occurred at the peak of La Belle Époque France. Of course Germany was where these attitudes had been festering for a long time due to a generally authoritarian social environment (which went hand-in-hand with opposition to bourgeois modernity), and where they were taken to extremes.

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#57

Post by humanistbot » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

recuter wrote: post #51

jchw wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole reason why it’s difficult to empathize is not about whether someone snitches or not, or the mentality of the person who snitches. It’s already clear that the incentives for rule enforcement is screwy. But the rule is there for a reason, a good reason, and everybody else had to follow it. I’ve heard of people leaving companies and having to effectively be demoted due to interpersonal relationships; that’s th…

My friend, you may very well be right, you may be wrong, completely besides the point. Hypotheticals aside, and with all due respect, what godly business is it of yours? "Rules are there for a good reason and must be followed" is also called fascism under certain circumstances. The old soviet ladies watching like hawks from balconies the goings on in the hood were all about power trips and exploiting the situation. I…

> "Rules are there for a good reason and must be followed" is also called fascism under certain circumstances.

We are too far apart in our assumptions and definitions to have a meaningful discussion.

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#58

Post by recuter » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

humanistbot wrote: post #53

recuter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said East! East! haha. The person I responded to phrased it in a soul revealing manner: > you chose to flagrantly violate the rules, thinking that you were special Therefore the snitch will punish you and vengefully cut you down to size. You will be equally unspecial and unhappy compared to the snitch, don't you see? We aren't talking some rule about borrowing red staplers. We're talking about private…

> We're talking about private affairs between adults. Could be a perfectly happy couple. Sexual relationships between bosses and subordinates are seen a bad idea by many organizations. For the subordinate, is difficult to have a consensual sexual relationship with someone who is managing you, who is in charge of what you do on a day-to-day basis, and can decide whether you are fired or promoted. The power imbalance s…

You yourself are the biggest liability to the organization. People like you is how we ended up in this HR power mad world to begin with.

You don't need to laborousoly explain to me office romance, yet another obvious power trip.

These policies can hypothetically make sense, sure. You want to talk about a power imbalance, contemplate by whom and how these things are enforced and whether false positives are possible.

Are we dealing with subjective or objective things? And sweetness, this is a rhetorical question, I know your answer. I'll ask another one, have you yourself been in many successful relationships? Any?

Tell me, are you the HR lady human person in this situation or just some random busybody?

Is this not a whole profession that supposedly requires training?

> If a boss and a subordinate truly fall in love and want to live a life together more than anything else, then they can try to find alternative roles in the organization where one person in the relationship doesn't report to each other.

Gee, thanks for your permission, and what and who are you in all of this? Is this point really flying over your head? Suppose they, as human people, are in this process of figuring it all out.

Or that they aren't a couple at all and you misread.

And there you go and parachute in with your nonsense and force the issue for them on explicitly your personal terms, not some company policy.

Hero vigilantly rescuing the office from these ne'er-do-wells who no doubt are bad immoral people who no doubt also charge personal expenses to the work account and stole your lunch probably.

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#59

Post by MattGaiser » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

msgilligan wrote: post #16

MattGaiser wrote: post #14

> for either minor or nonexistent offenses On the one hand, society institutes these rules and we supposedly claim to be rule following people. On the other hand, people who try to have the rules enforced are labelled as "snitches." Your answer to why tragedies occur but even when people knew, nobody did anything. Do the rules matter or not?

If the rules are regularly applied to persecute people over nonexistent offenses, they will very soon cease to matter.

It was severe enough an offense that it cost him his job when found out.

Re: Academe is a hotbed of craven snitches

#60

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

lbarrow wrote: post #49

giraffe_lady wrote: post #9

I'm having a serious "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" moment on this one: I don't think that representation of the Ewell paper is quite accurate, though admittedly it's been over a year since I read it. Despite being Jewish (would have had different significance later than during his time!) Schenker was a proud german nationalist and in his own words considered his method one of the ways german people could assert their su…

Kipnis clearly doesn't think much of the Ewell paper, but I don't think her point centers on its contents; it's more that someone collected and published scholarly responses to the paper, and the social media pushback against these responses led to a grad student narcing on his professor and the professor losing funding, the journal, etc. That, to me, is not a healthy dynamic for a university to run on. edit: Actuall…

AIUI, a lot of the pushback on those responses was due to how they were collected and published. The call for responses was mostly circulated privately among pro-Schenkerian scholars, and the broader profession only got to know about it at the last minute. And the author of the original paper was given no opportunity to provide a rejoinder.

I'm not even sure that the actual written paper had even been published at that time: the basic arguments of the paper were first summarized in a conference presentation, and of course it is terrible form to publish a purported critique of something that hasn't even been fully presented in full detail! The whole thing has really reflected pretty badly on the authors of these 'critiques', for very good reasons overall.