Yes, humans are inclined to form tribes and to fear the other, just like our primitive ancestors. It's little reason to justify such division today, and especially not to participate in mass murder to achieve it.
> It's little reason to justify such division today, and especially not to participate in mass murder to achieve it.
Not at all! To use my Bangladesh example. Bangladesh was founded in 1971 as a secular republic. Pakistan thereafter veered towards theocracy, e.g. adopting Sharia law for criminal proceedings in 1976. Subsequent events have slowly chipped away at Bangladeshi secularism over the years, but had they remained with Pakistan it would have been a lost hope. And as for tribalism being obsolete, I don't agree. There are hundreds of millions of people who think I should be executed for leaving the religion I was born into: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01.... Do you want those folks voting on the laws that govern you? If not, you're not arguing against "tribalism," you're just arguing about where the tribal lines should be drawn.
I would like to agree with you but there is not evidence that humans have not changed and that
>humans are inclined to form tribes and to fear the other
remains true.
Rather we should accept we are tribal and work to ensure our collaborations, alliances and policies have that in mind. To assume that we, by virtue of just living in the present day with more technology, are more advanced and that we have progressed is a big big error.
Progress is not something that just happens. Progress is not inevitable. Societies do not naturally become more civilised. People need to work to ensure civilisation doesn't fall apart. Progress was made by people, it is the result of actions made.
the whole point of delineating societal groups is to provide ring-fences for cultural groups that may otherwise be at each other's throats. Just look at the continuous fighting between Shi'ite and Sunni muslims that could arguably be traced back to the Sykes-Picot agreement drawing up borders that did not respect the locations of mutually-unfriendly groups.
Slight nitpick: The Shia-Sunni divide has plagued the Islamic world ever since the succession of Muhammad. Sure, Sykes-Picot aggravated it greatly, but it did not cause it.
This post wholly ignores why Berkshire Hathaway is successful. The company is not successful because they make selling companies to them easy. They are successful because they buy good, cash rich businesses and find excellent management to run them.
The post isn't about why Berkshire Hathaway is successful, it's about why their acquisition process is successful. Totally understandable to focus on the latter and gloss over the former in that case.
I appreciate Aral's general issues with Facebook. Privacy rights in the digital age are issues we face not just with SV, but with every corporation we interact with. I appreciate the EU's interest in this sphere and I worry the rights of US citizens will be co-opted by corporate lobbying, not to mention other parts of the world.
The EU's interest in this sphere is bizarre to say the least. It's very much a fan of surveillance. It pays lipservice to privacy, while actively engaging in dragnet surveillance.
Yes, that's my feeling too. It's inappropriate to even wonder if the person complaining was in fact harassed.
And that leads to a country where every manager is absolutely terrified to be accused because they know they'll be automatically guilty.
In the OP case, the manager clearly behaved completely foolishly, but i have actually met people in some offices that were into open relationships, and talked extremely freely about sex, just like any other subject ( though he did have some weird behaviors, but it didn't prevent people at the office from working with him). I wonder if that Uber guy wasn't like that.
95% is absolutely not accurate. Amzn's latest annual report (put out April 6th 2016) states ”close to 50% of units sold on Amazon are sold by third-party sellers."
As mentioned, Amazon tends to list the top 10 products in most categories, so naturally they'll get a lot of units sold, but the overwhelming majority of all products listed on Amazon.com are 3rd party sellers.
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...
The school (teachers and students together) recognizes an ideology (patriarchy) that they see as a problem and responds by creating a culture that opposes that ideology, in order to reduce the power of that ideology. I don't see any way to take a neutral stance on this issue, as ``doing nothing'' is supporting the status quo (patriarchy), so if you agree that patriarchy is a problem, then the school should be celebrated for picking the right side of the issue. If you like patriarchy, that's a different issue.
In isolate, this is an absurd sentence. If I said "I don't think we should [do horrible thing to group x]", then you could easily retort with "yeah, but if I disagree with you I'm against group x?" in a "screw you" sort of way, and, well, it'd be true, wouldn't it?
I'm not saying anything either way about the GP, but I'd suggest it'd be better to tackle the point, rather than have such a knee-jerk reaction.
Well, if racism and sexism are real (they are) and person A believes that these are bad, then if person B disagrees with person A, that means person B believes racism and/or sexism are not bad.
Language like "racist/sexist" suggests that it's a binary, that each person is either racist or not racist. It's more useful to recognize that the dominant culture in the US is racist and that people benefit from/support that culture to varying degrees. Person B supports it.
Perhaps the premise that the school's actions successfully (does the policy work?), appropriately (is the policy ethical?), and accurately (does the policy have negative side effects?) counters that ideology.
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.
If you've progressed to the point where you can dismiss that guy without a thought, given his credentials and accomplishments, I submit to you that alarm bells ought to be going off in your head that you might have epistemologically closed yourself too far.
I'm not saying you're obligated to agree with him. I'm saying if you can't even engage with his arguments, it may be you that has the problem.
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-free speech, then I would posit that you're simply inclined to dismiss no matter what. If the complaint is that his work is spreading to, or being adopted by the anti-SJW crowd, that's hardly his fault.
He may not be right, or he may not have done appropriate research, or he may be based (his own studies would suggest that it's inevitable that he is), but any dismissal predicated in part on that he's trolling is almost certainly knee-jerk.
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 disheartening.
My distaste really came from comments like these, on the main page: "My white male sons are now 30 and 28. I’m so happy they escaped public high school relatively unscathed, but I could see the beginnings of the nonsense, led by a faculty of activist females and male eunuchs. Public schooling in this country may have begun with noble intent; kids are now truly being inculcated rather than educated." and "You state this like it is an article of faith that women would be totally rad in STEM if only men would stop holding them back. What makes this “sketchy”? There is an abundance of evidence that men and women are different and think differently. There is almost no evidence that women will change that position based on upbringing." and then on hnews itself: "#KillAll(White)Men is literally calling for ethnic / gender purging." (though it was downvoted).
It would be great to have a conversation with Dr. Haidt, but I was turned off by how both Heterodox and Hacker News turned into "amen" forums. There were two students who posted on Heterodox, and they had some interesting points, some of which disagreed with Dr. Haidt.
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.
Would you agree with me in saying that the comments are at least disappointing?
In terms of the article itself, I agreed with this part, "High schools and colleges that lack viewpoint diversity should make it their top priority" which seems like a pretty progressive viewpoint. Let's make sure everybody's voice is heard, and let's make sure that voices that are usually silenced outside the classroom have equal footing inside. But a sentence later, bam - "Schools that value freedom of thought should therefore actively seek out non-leftist faculty."
I'm not sure how exactly that flows, and that's what led me to be disappointed. Moreover, the idea that students and faculty are living in "fear" and we have to accommodate their fears is also just a tad hypocritical.
I also have a problem with victimhood culture being a thing, but that's a whole different argument.
> "Schools that value freedom of thought should therefore actively seek out non-leftist faculty."
Any argument that can be made in favor of cultural diversity should necessarily extend to left-right diversity as well.
FWIW, as I stated earlier, Haidt is leftist. Perhaps less so now than 7-8 years ago, but he is indeed a leftist, but one who appreciates that non-leftists are not evil, but who have different gradients of right/wrong, and different associations with which to be entrenched.
If you want children to have freedom of thought, then you should try to accurately present a range of ideas to students wherever possible. Students learn that 2+2=4, at least in some small part, because teachers say that it does. They later learn how and why 2+2=4, which mitigates the need for teacher acceptance as canon, but regardless, they learn that teachers ideas are to be given weight at the least, and that their expressions, even not necessarily strictly academic ones, are right.
Would you find fault with your children's education if every teacher were a Rush Limbaugh clone, or would you prefer them be exposed to a variety of thoughts and given the tools and knowledge to inform themselves and form their own viewpoints? If the answer is the latter, then you should reject the notion of your children being subscribed to any narrow ideological view, and adding non-leftist ideologies can only broaden it.
Edit: And yes, I would agree that if the comments are as you say they are, that is disappointing. I caught this article shortly after it was posted, and there weren't any other comments at the time, so I thankfully did not have those comments color my opinion of the article itself.
There are a lot more comments now than when you first looked, and I think the viewpoints expressed there go both ways now, so I don't see any issue there.
Non-leftist faculty would bring their own different worldview and perspective, increasing viewpoint diversity. I think it's a fairly logical statement.
And yes, we are accommodating their "fears". Rightfully so. They "fear" overzealous pushback for expressing their dissenting opinions. We should not accommodate those who "fear" opinions that differ from their own. That is not accommodation, that is censorship.
But the core of the article is about how there is a problem about polarized opinions: the core problems with the Mizzou, Yale and al. situations are not related to the opinions expressed themselves: the initial email was that opinion (in the specific case discussed in the article) and the administrator wanted to meet with that student to discuss it.
The problem is that the conversation is not about the concerns expressed in that email anymore, but about the use of one word in the response.
Is that the more important conversion you talk about wanting to have?
Glad I could accommodate. His research impacted me pretty profoundly too, quantifying with study a lot of what I'd felt, but been extremely uncertain of. I've since followed him around the net like a puppy consuming everything he puts out.
Since you enjoyed it so much, here are some more of his links:
How is the fact that the article has been posted to less than agreeable subreddits an indication of it's quality or the validity of the arguments and opinion in it?
The extreme of both sides of this debate, as illustrated in your post and in the actions of the most egregious student complaints at Yale, lack the nuance needed to find a healthy compromise. Those subreddits are "less than agreeable" because they advocate outlandish responses to perhaps slightly less outlandish beliefs.
> Those subreddits are "less than agreeable" because they advocate outlandish responses
Do they? What "outlandish responses" might those be? You're smearing by implication. What specifically do you find so "outlandish"? As far as I can tell, people making claims like yours think that creating a consistent set of rules for all, promoting free expression of all views, and countering group libel are thoughtcrimes. What's "disagreeable" is countering the idea that I might be guilty of something because of my gender and ancestry.
I don't have to do much "smearing by implication" when the upvoted comments speak for themselves. I think there are people that do this sort of "bullying" and unproductive rabble-rousing on both sides of the debate. I personally agree with the principles of "a consistent set of rules for all, etc.," but I don't think that the road to productive debate begins with including "hate," "sucks", "fuck them", etc., as a means to evoke an emotional response.
Specific instances of outlandishness:
SJWsAtWork -- low comment traffic, a bit more agreeable than the rest.
Perfectly appropriate informal language that means "You won the argument convincingly"
> It's sad that a bunch of raving lunatic SJWs can have this effect. Useless self-absorbed maniacs with no purpose in life but to pester those that have.
Many SJWs are, in fact, saving lunatics who have no purpose in life but to heckle and protest everything
> Fuck that piece of shit
Very common language when talking about public figures --- and I'd be willing to bet you used similar language about Bush, or Cameron, or Harper, or anyone else on the wrong side.
You're demonstrating exactly the kind of militarized hypersensitivity and craven hypocrisy that's turned colleges (and increasingly, workplaces) into zones for political indoctrination.
I'm not demanding hypersensitivity, I'm simply claiming that the path towards better debate is one where emotional invective is left off the table. If you can clearly explain why classifying people as "raving lunatics" adds insight on how to mediate the state of open ("free") college campus discourse, then I'll keep an open ear as to the value of such comments.
Also, I find it hard to believe that "fuck that piece of shit" was ever acceptable as college-level discourse. In fact, I think that even high school level L-D style debate shies away from that tone and temperament.
If you sincerely believe that using language that appeals to emotion, over logic and evidence, is a means to an end, then we probably will not get much further on this topic. (And I really don't see how this stance is hypocritical, or indoctrinated/pushing a doctrine in any way. It applies equally to both ends of the spectrum.)
> I'm not demanding hypersensitivity, I'm simply claiming that the path towards better debate is one where emotional invective is left off the table.
You're taking the standards of a debate hall, applying them to an internet community, and then using the predictable and inevitable discrepancy to call the internet community hateful when, in fact, that's the normal level of discourse for _any_ internet community.
> I really don't see how this stance is hypocritical
Do you excuse the other side's casual use of "kill all men"? What about explicit statements that I am literally unqualified to hold an opinion because of my chromosomal makeup and the color of my skin? Those come across as equally hateful to me.
Calling /r/SJWhate and /r/SJSucks hateful are calling spades, spades. I've said nothing about the moral compass of the movement as a whole. To go way back upthread, I was responding strictly to the point that "those subreddits are disagreeable" and I've evaluated that claim for all of the instances provided. However, If you want your points to be taken seriously, I'd suggest that you not make /r/SJWhate the cross that you hang on. Likewise, I would hope that people espousing pro-[women's/minority/abortion/etc.] rights viewpoints wouldn't make "kill all [men/cops/priests/etc.]" their rallying cry.
I wouldn't and don't excuse "kill all men," and I personally think that opinions should be evaluated on their own merits, and not by [x] feature possessed by they who come up with it. You're projecting these beliefs on to me because I've called out certain subreddits as being stomping grounds for emotionally charged, rather than fact based, content. I think both sides of this debate have salient points, but neither side benefits from the content coming out of /r/*hate subreddits.
Calling something or someone "disappointing" or "problematic" is how these people evade enumerating arguments while still attempting to establish themselves as intellectually superior to those they are criticizing. They assume to have the correct position and condescend to anyone who demurs.
Any sort of work should always be judged based on the actual content, not who likes it or where it has been shared.
To reduce this argument to absurdity, let's say I create a recipe for pecan pie. People love it, including the people at stormfront or other white power sites. Let's say I created this recipe back in the 1920s, and it happens to be Hitler's favorite pie.
Is there anything wrong with that pie?
People with extreme viewpoints will often like things that are a more moderate version of their own viewpoints. Just because you don't agree with the extremists doesn't mean that you should also disagree with the moderates.
This guy works for iFixit and is unaware that using a large amount of thermal paste is a terrible idea? Large amounts make heat transfer worse, not better. I guess you can't expect too much from a site that hawks its tools/repair over accurate reporting...
