In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#61

Post by anon4 » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 12:51 PM UTC

scintill76 wrote: post #16

bufordsharkley wrote: post #5

"Ms. El Rhazoui replied, somewhat irritably, “Being Charlie Hebdo means to die because of a drawing,” and not everyone has the guts to do that (although she didn’t use the word guts)." Amusing that the NYT's fusty policy for censoring profanity pokes its nose into THIS quote, of all things.

I'm reminded of the time I elided repeated profanity from a Fahrenheit 451 passage I quoted in a high-school paper about the book. I found the profanity unnecessary and felt it sort of obscured the point, but I did not realize the irony of censoring "451" until the teacher pointed it out. Well, at least I didn't burn the parts I didn't like, I just editorialized them...

What irony? Fahrenheit 451 isn't about censorship.

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#62

Post by fennecfoxen » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:04 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #24

Negitivefrags wrote: post #19

The more I see this kind of thing the more I am starting to fear that this is an unintended consequence of the internet. Similarly to being raised in a cult, the internet gives people the ability to spend most of their time in a community that reinforces their world view while forcing out any dissenting view points. Subcultures on the internet tend to trend towards the more and more extreme as anybody expressing an o…

> Is it any wonder that now all the young adults entering university raised in this manner now behave this way? I think you're painting too broad a brush. The problem isn't that the majority of college students think this way, it's that the majority don't care much either way and a vocal minority works hard to institute punishments for anyone who opposes them.

I'd go so far as to say that the problem isn't these students, it's the faculty/staff enabling them.

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#63

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:10 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #18

littletimmy wrote: post #11

This is the end result of a culture that treats children like dainty chinadolls that are going to shatter at the first fracture. These kids are coddled since they are born to make sure they are "safe" and ferried endlessly from one constructive activity to another so they don't take any risk. Of course it will also be that they need "safe spaces" in college (basically extended high school) whenever they hear somethin…

I've always rolled my eyes at complaints about the "trophy generation" (Adam Carolla had a particularly brain-deadening rant about it), but this article honestly did get me wondering about how people like that would be able to cope with actual professional atmospheres after college. On the other hand, this article is an editorial that doesn't really try to quantify the problem, so maybe "people like that" aren't real…

[deleted]

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#64

Post by fennecfoxen » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:16 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #57

logn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link, I think the author nailed it. The fear is that the current leftist ideas are tomorrow's mainstream ideas and tomorrow's left will be more extreme. The reality is that tomorrow's left will have opinions like the NYT writer. You can see the inverse of this on the right, too: Rand Paul has surpassed Sarah Palin; Alex Jones surpassed Glenn Beck. Edit to add: So the progression of political trends isn't li…

> The fear is that the current leftist ideas are tomorrow's mainstream ideas and tomorrow's left will be more extreme. I see a lot of evidence on the right but not much on the left. E.g. The people saying they support gays but are against gay marriage are the same ones helping African governments pass laws enacting the death penalty for homosexuality. But I don't really see any evidence that, say, what the folks lobb…

> The people saying they support gays but are against gay marriage are the same ones helping African governments pass laws enacting the death penalty for homosexuality.

I'm curious what this alleged political process actually looks like -- are people writing checks to re-elect Robert Mugabe? -- and the extent to which "people saying they support gays [etc]" here in America actually are participate in that sort of process. When I hear those words, I think of some of the people behind SB 296 in Utah, the antidiscrimination legislation which has received praise from both the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Also, way to go easy on the left. "High speed trains" is the worst you could do? Ha! You could at least apply the "help African governments" standard and start digging through their support of various leftist / Marxist regimes for convenient atrocities, I'm sure there's something :P

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#65

Post by ObviousScience » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

oulipo wrote: post #52

littletimmy wrote: post #11

This is the end result of a culture that treats children like dainty chinadolls that are going to shatter at the first fracture. These kids are coddled since they are born to make sure they are "safe" and ferried endlessly from one constructive activity to another so they don't take any risk. Of course it will also be that they need "safe spaces" in college (basically extended high school) whenever they hear somethin…

I'm not sure it is the problem of a culture treating children particularly -- I think it has much more to do with the fact that: - in America you can sue someone for almost anything - universities in the US made students pay so much for their educations, that basically they got fucked up because students now ask to be the boss since Universities would be at a loss without them, so they must comply to their every dema…

Then why did several examples come from UK universities?

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#66

Post by oulipo » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:27 PM UTC

ObviousScience wrote: post #65

oulipo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it is the problem of a culture treating children particularly -- I think it has much more to do with the fact that: - in America you can sue someone for almost anything - universities in the US made students pay so much for their educations, that basically they got fucked up because students now ask to be the boss since Universities would be at a loss without them, so they must comply to their every dema…

Then why did several examples come from UK universities?

I'm not aware of those, but there may be some indeed -- I'd say the culture is close between US & UK so it can permeate, but how I see it, the problem is rather that University deans do not play their roles (they should protect teachers except in the case of a mistake from the teacher's part) and explain to students they have to be open to debate opinions, but in practice they are so scared of lawsuits or losing students who pay so much that they'd rather fire the teacher than make students become better citizens

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#67

Post by chernevik » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:29 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #8

It wasn't so long ago that "trigger warning" wasn't even a common phrase. I remember thinking about this in college, though, because I was in a relationship with someone who would get angry at people for expressing input that was too closely related to recent private trauma she had been through. I didn't really understand it because I had always trained myself to judge the producer of input by the intent of the produ…

This "education" has proceeded from a mission of politeness and courtesy to a culture of prohibition.

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#68

Post by Alex3917 » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:30 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #64

Alex3917 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fear is that the current leftist ideas are tomorrow's mainstream ideas and tomorrow's left will be more extreme. I see a lot of evidence on the right but not much on the left. E.g. The people saying they support gays but are against gay marriage are the same ones helping African governments pass laws enacting the death penalty for homosexuality. But I don't really see any evidence that, say, what the folks lobb…

> The people saying they support gays but are against gay marriage are the same ones helping African governments pass laws enacting the death penalty for homosexuality. I'm curious what this alleged political process actually looks like -- are people writing checks to re-elect Robert Mugabe? -- and the extent to which "people saying they support gays [etc]" here in America actually are participate in that sort of pro…

> are people writing checks to re-elect Robert Mugabe?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-peron/whos-helping-finan...

> Also, way to go easy on the left.

I mean if you actually read DailyKos or whatever it's clear that a lot of the people there are batshit crazy. But as far as I can tell it's one level of crazy, I'm sure there are exceptions but for the vast majority of people I don't think it goes 10 levels deep. Whereas on the right it seems to be the rule that when people are fighting against the public option for healthcare what really want is to genocide minorities, rather than the exception.

Whereas when people on the left have historically supported genocidal regimes, as far as I can tell it's been because they (perhaps naively) did so unknowingly rather than because supporting genocide was their intended outcome.

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#69

Post by throwaway9324 » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:30 PM UTC

This is a pretty bad opinion piece using scare quotes, personal attacks and anecdotal commentary. It's disappointing to see this up-voted since people here aren't interested in a debate, but just to affirming there own views on the subject.

I pretty glad I got out of the mainstream tech industry when I had the chance.

Edit: And yes please reaffirm what cowards you are by down-voting instead of replying.

Re: In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

#70

Post by s_kilk » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 1:32 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #18

littletimmy wrote: post #11

This is the end result of a culture that treats children like dainty chinadolls that are going to shatter at the first fracture. These kids are coddled since they are born to make sure they are "safe" and ferried endlessly from one constructive activity to another so they don't take any risk. Of course it will also be that they need "safe spaces" in college (basically extended high school) whenever they hear somethin…

I've always rolled my eyes at complaints about the "trophy generation" (Adam Carolla had a particularly brain-deadening rant about it), but this article honestly did get me wondering about how people like that would be able to cope with actual professional atmospheres after college. On the other hand, this article is an editorial that doesn't really try to quantify the problem, so maybe "people like that" aren't real…

> how people like that would be able to cope with actual professional atmospheres after college.

From my own experience, I tend to agree with this passage from the article:

""" Shield them from unfamiliar ideas, and they’ll never learn the discipline of seeing the world as other people see it. They’ll be unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses whose climates they have so carefully controlled. What will they do when they hear opinions they’ve learned to shrink from? If they want to change the world, how will they learn to persuade people to join them? """