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The Yale Problem Begins in High School

heterodoxacademy.org

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Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

sliverstorm wrote: post #57
dragonwriter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that other people are free to speak against you does not mean that you can't speak freely. Free speech does not mean freedom from having your speech acts criticized (quite the opposite; it includes freedom of others to criticize your speech acts.) And, yes, it means that your speech acts may affect your ability to hold a job where you are one of the major public faces of an organization (such as its CEO) and…

I'm not a master enough of this subject to form a detailed argument, but I hope we can agree there is a line somewhere between civil criticism and a lynching. Especially, IMO, in the case of a ballot issue. Are we trying to coerce people to vote the way we want them to? That's unconscionable to me.

> I'm not a master enough of this subject to form a detailed argument, but I hope we can agree there is a line somewhere between civil criticism and a lynching.

Yes, there is, and what Eich experienced was not only not a lynching [0], it was quite far from the line that separates criticism from lynching.

[0] in case there is a lack of clarity, this is a lynching: http://abhmuseum.org/2012/01/an-iconic-lynching-in-the-north...

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#92

Post by maratd »

DrJokepu wrote: post #24
dragonwriter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that other people are free to speak against you does not mean that you can't speak freely. Free speech does not mean freedom from having your speech acts criticized (quite the opposite; it includes freedom of others to criticize your speech acts.) And, yes, it means that your speech acts may affect your ability to hold a job where you are one of the major public faces of an organization (such as its CEO) and…

This is a frequently repeated argument and I find it less and less convincing. It is true that America's constitution only guarantees the congress will not abridge the freedom of speech. However, an argument could be made that in a free society there's a fundamental right to have a dissenting opinion or voice; a right that is not codified by the constitution because it's simply irrelevant to a constitution. It seems…

> However, an argument could be made that in a free society there's a fundamental right to have a dissenting opinion or voice

Since we're not talking about the constitution, which strictly relates to government and public property, then we're talking about private entities and private property.

You do not have the right to speak on my property. Forcing that is in direct contradiction to a free society that has a concept of private property.

I am all for fostering tolerance to offensive speech, but not at the expensive of destroying the concept of private ownership. It is absolutely not a fundamental right. It should be a social norm, but that's all it should be.

> It seems to me that it's up to all of us to tolerate non-extreme dissenting voices

Who gets to define what is and is not extreme?

Freedom of expression means tolerating something offensive by definition. If it's not offensive, it doesn't need to be tolerated.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#94

Post by holmak »

The concept presented here of "seeking justice by appeal to the majority" reminds me of the Twitter phenomenon in which people learned that the only way to get customer service from Google/Ubisoft/Bank of America/(insert giant faceless company) was to tweet a grievance publicly. It seems to work well, at least in a few high-profile cases. At least, it worked a few times when private requests failed. Perhaps people are learning by example?

The old-fashioned ("culture of honor/dignity"?) style of one-on-one negotiation is often futile when you are dealing with a company.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#95

Post by henshao »

ccernaf wrote: post #85
bmelton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not affiliated (except that I follow him on Twitter), but the author, Jonathan Haidt, is one of America's pre-eminent social psychologists. He is (or at least was) a liberal who has engaged in some very serious social psychology that gives massive insight into how people tick, especially where those ticks are related to or concerning political party affiliations. If the idea is to dismiss him as an anti-SJW, or anti-…

I don't doubt at all Haidt is qualified. My complaint was more to your second point, that "If the complaint is that his work is spreading to, or being adopted by the anti-SJW crowd, that's hardly his fault." I do see a problem with how one-sided the comments on the page (Heterodox Academy) are, and I do think that he should have stepped in. Then, when I came to Hacker News, I saw similar comments, and that was dishea…

The commentators are self selecting - if they strongly agree, they comment, which they have. You're still trying to dismiss the article based on people having opinions different than yours, rather than critiquing the article itself.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#96

Post by roymurdock »

tosseraccount wrote: post #13

Look how Silicon Valley folks treated Brandon Eich when he made a donation to the majority side in a California proposition. It's not just academia where you can't speak freely.

As an individual you are free to say whatever you please.

As the CEO of a large organization, you are not. You are the face and voice of an organization. You speak for its employees and you are accountable to its shareholders. You are held to a higher standard and your every word/action is scrutinized. If your shareholders are afraid that your speech/actions will hurt the bottom line of the company, you will be removed from your position.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#97

Post by dibujante »

ccernaf wrote: post #18
zekkius wrote: post #11

I find the underlying premise of this article and the claim that there is a "war on boys" absurd. It's a old argument from the same old set of people who have the same old intolerant (and dying) paradigm. Not sure why it is on HN at all as the content has nothing to do with tech...

I'm pretty disappointed in the article and the comments, and how like Reddit this website is turning out to be. I'm not going to make any judgements (though I really really am), but this same article has been posted to 10 subreddits, among them such gems as: SJWsAtWork, ThisIsNotASafeSpace, sjsucks, and sjwhate.

That's a logical fallacy. I could repost anything you like to a subreddit you don't like; would that change the value of the thing you like?

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#98

Post by ElComradio »

dragonwriter wrote: post #58
ElComradio wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A way to address this might be to add "political opinions" to the list of protected classes. It is undeniably bad for a democracy (I know I know, we aren't technically a democracy) where people aren't free in practice to discuss contentious issues. As currently stands, you can stand in the town square and promote affirmative action it would be very risky legally to fire you. But if you get up and argue for the repeal…

> As currently stands, you can stand in the town square and promote affirmative action it would be very risky legally to fire you. But if you get up and argue for the repeal of some affirmative action legislation you can be safely fired with no objection from legal. Legally , promoting either of those opinions is subject to exactly the same degree of protection. The willingness of a particular employer to accept the…

That in practice it does not work as intended means it is bad law and needs tweaked. One way would be to say that all behavior "off the clock" and all attributes of a person not related to the job are protected. Another way would be to say nothing is protected. Right now we have a middle ground that plays favorites.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#99

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
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…

> these people subscribe to left leaning ideologies. Might as well call them extreme-left, which is just as bad as extreme-right and the extreme ideologies that come with it. The left / right spectrum aren't polar opposites either, but it tends to be horseshoe-shaped, so you'll find some ideas that are dangerously close to those on the other side (#KillAll(White)Men is literally calling for ethnic / gender purging. S…

Still recommended reading:

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians...

The key takeaway isn't so much that the left/right spectrum is a horse shoe, but that in fact there are (at least) two independent axes, and authoritarian attitudes don't necessarily correspond neatly to left/right distinctions.

Although the book spends a lot of time looking at authoritarians on the far right, there's an interesting and useful coda about left wing authoritarians.

I've found it much more useful to ignore the traditional spectrum and look instead at the degree of scorn, hatred, support for social violence and exclusion, and/or support for direct physical violence.

Non-authoritarians don't support harm of others. Even revenge is uncomfortable.

Authoritarians make a point of conspicuous identification with power and authority - however defined - and reliably support verbal, social, emotional, and physical violence.

Self-identified political groupings are much less relevant than tone and behaviour.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#100

Post by kafkaesq »

tosseraccount wrote: post #13

Look how Silicon Valley folks treated Brandon Eich when he made a donation to the majority side in a California proposition. It's not just academia where you can't speak freely.

Ugh. The Brendan Eich issue was about freedom of association -- in particular, the right of Mozilla employees and stakeholders not to be associated with the bigoted groups (and their hateful TV ads) Eich was supporting -- rather than freedom of speech.

If you're still not clear as to the distinction, please see: https://xkcd.com/1357/

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