Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

This is an interesting wrinkle - no student ever actually complained: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/wilfrid-laurier-university-exonerates-ta-lindsay-shepherd/article37377602/

The President is making the right call tbh: https://wlu.ca/news/spotlights/2017/dec/president-statement-re-independent-fact-finder-report.html

"As much as people criticize students for being snowflakes, it turns out it was the professors."

i mean no shit right where do we think the students are learning this from

creepy conservatism

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-trolls-of-academe-making-safe-spaces-into-brave-spaces/#!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/social-media-dumber-steven-pinker.html

who gives a shit about Steven Pinker

I guess I could've clicked first but Steven Pinker is still a bore

i read How the Mind Works in college and remember it being enlightening (and extremely long). i think The Better Angels of Our Nature was an important intervention into commonly held beliefs about the prevalence of violence. the problem is you view everything through the prism of the culture war.

I'm not posting it as a PZ Myers endorsement, although I think he's mostly OK, but here's his rebuttal:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/01/12/steven-pinker-and-the-new-york-times-are-making-us-dumber/

I think Pinker probably just made a dumb argument and instead of acknowledging that, people are going out of their way to explain around the words he said to "add context"

also the main problem with the political correctness argument isn't that people outright deny statistics (the rate of homicide is higher among black men) it's that such statements on their own aren't useful, as Singal points out further down the piece without rebutting the idea that these twisted liberals aren't acknowledging real facts

Liberals DENY that BLACK MEN are MORE VIOLENT is a fun distortion of both the actual facts and the position of most people

the problem is you view everything through the prism of the culture war.

I think the key paragraph in that piece on pinker is this one: "That’s because the pernicious social dynamics of these online spaces hammer home the idea that anyone who disagrees with you on any controversial subject, even a little bit, is incorrigibly dumb or evil or suspect. On a wide and expanding range of issues, there’s no such thing as good-faith disagreement."

you can occasionally see that around these parts as well but I think more of that is because we get sick and tired of each other because ilx is a village of maybe 100 people tops (73 donated to the last fundraiser). Anyway on the "no such thing as a good-faith disagreement" tip, here's a guy I met one time who - oh, just read it

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/engineer-says-he-quit-google-after-order-to-stop-pro-diversity-posts/

After posting a handful of additional posts about diversity issues, Altheide was summoned to an urgent meeting with Hölzle. Hölzle is one of Google's most senior managers, with thousands of engineers reporting to him, directly or indirectly. There were several layers of management between the two men, and Altheide says those middle managers weren't involved in the meeting.

Hölzle asked Altheide to explain why he had been making these postings. "I don't think anything I will say right now will be a sufficient answer for you," Altheide said. When Hölzle insisted, Altheide said he wanted to "point out that blanket assumptions of good faith in diversity topics aren't data driven, given that the data shows not everyone is acting from a position of good faith."

Altheide says Hölzle told him that "if the majority of your coworkers are Nazis, it is better if you don't know about it." Altheide adds: "This I remembered verbatim because I thought it was a savagely tactless analogy for a Swiss man to be making."

"From now on I request that you avoid posting on controversial topics," Hölzle wrote in a post-meeting email. "I believe your intention is to make Google better; nevertheless I ask you to refrain from such posts since they are prone to inciting others to comment in a way which violates our policies."

I think this is the key:

Mr. Pinker goes on to argue that when members of this group encounter, for the first time, ideas that he believes to be frowned upon or suppressed in liberal circles — that most suicide bombers are Muslim or that members of different racial groups commit crimes at different rates — they are “immediately infected with both the feeling of outrage that these truths are unsayable” and are provided with “no defense against taking them to what we might consider to be rather repellent conclusions.”

That’s unfortunate, Mr. Pinker argues, because while someone might use these facts to support bigoted views, that needn’t be the case, because “for each one of these facts, there are very powerful counterarguments for why they don’t license racism and sexism and anarcho-capitalism and so on.”

and this goes directly to your comment, mh

since that seems to be literally your point ("it's that such statements on their own aren't useful") i think the context is probably extremely important in this case

I was concentrating more on "immediately infected with both the feeling of outrage that these truths are unsayable" in the first paragraph

it's not that they're unsayable, it's that (this is where I go rant on about context, in the same way someone might say one of those statements and then rant on about how context is key)

it's introducing the idea that people deny starting conversations with things that are useless without context, because people tune out when you go into context

it's creating a strawman of the liberal who actively suppresses facts, rather than people who avoid them as a starting point because they're an end result

i think it depends. you're right that some ppl are not receptive to contextualizing controversial facts but i think many people are.

I think Tom's right to link it to the idea of bad faith discussions -- if I want to talk about how violence in a demographic is a problem and I am speaking in good faith, I won't be shy about acknowledging it, but I'll start the discussion with my perception of why this is the case

People arguing in bad faith see such statements as ends in themselves. These people are violent because... these people are violent. They see that as a conclusion, not a data point. The solution is either facilitating a way to have a discussion in good faith, or if you're incapable of facilitating or moderation (hi google) just blacklisting the topic

I don't think that you are arguing in good faith for people arguing in bad faith

there are very powerful counterarguments for why they don’t license racism and sexism and anarcho-capitalism and so on.

This gets us right back to the core problem of how few people create mental maps of remote reality that allow adequate complexity and do not immediately lapse into binary thinking. People seem able to develop complex thoughts in regard to facts they encounter frequently in real life, but the more remote the subject becomes from their immediate reality, the more simplified their ideas become and the fewer shades of gray are allowed, until it is all stark black & white thinking.

iow, powerful counterarguments don't avail against binary thinking.

I was curious and decided to come at this from complete ignorance

Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is double mindedness or double heartedness in duplicity, fraud, or deception. It may involve intentional deceit of others, or self-deception.

I think there's a case for people thinking they're making good faith arguments but aren't, and I'm willing to extend an olive branch only so far tbh

imho false consciousness arguments are bad faith. the least amount of faith you can lend your interlocutor is that they can represent themselves in an discussion.

haha i mean it's one thing to accuse your intelocutor of having false consciousness it's another to posit its existence or its position in a chain of causality

but this doesn't work either way. even if the chain of causality is "bad faith put this idea into the world / guy picks up on bad faith idea in good faith" you don't gain anything from "it's poison at the root so don't touch it" bc it means you're leaving good faith ppl believing the bad faith idea with no context or pushback. and this is ignoring the fact that a lot of these "bad faith ideas" are true or at least true to some extent (which is why they require the mitigating contextual information).

honestly, you get to a point where some people don't care about causality or w/e and why don't people in 2018 just make better lives for themselves. it's not my problem

even if the chain of causality is "bad faith put this idea into the world / guy picks up on bad faith idea in good faith" you don't gain anything from "it's poison at the root so don't touch it" bc it means you're leaving good faith ppl believing the bad faith idea with no context or pushback. and this is ignoring the fact that a lot of these "bad faith ideas" are true or at least true to some extent (which is why they require the mitigating contextual information).

― Mordy, Friday, January 12, 2018 8:32 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but again, you're talking about talking _to_ 'bad faith' people. i'm talking about talking _about_ them.

if i'm talking to somebody really committed to an incorrect idea then i go looking for a value we share, figure out why it matters to them, and then build on the shared value to a sense of communion at a final point

_arguing_ is so unpleasant

People arguing in bad faith see such statements as ends in themselves. These people are violent because... these people are violent. They see that as a conclusion, not a data point.

^ I think this is a good point

Like almost always when I've seen the FACT about homicide rates being higher among black men FACT it's been in internet postings that weren't looking for a reasoned response or discussion, by people who weren't really interested in facts, but liked the idea of rhetorically appending FACT after their statements

Obviously there's a kind of intellectual nobility to that work which take these FACTS and analyses them and digs deep into the context to get us readers of their thinkpiece or blog post a fuller, truer picture. Good on those who take up this work.

... but the difficulty of doing that work full-time, these days, is the difference between engaging constructively with opinions you don't agree with, as our better selves do in an idealised philosophical life, and engaging with an outpouring of sheer toxic sludge, as it often is in real life. We notice that, with the big contemporary right-wing positions - pro-Trump, pro-Brexit, things of that sort - very often, when you're out in the wild, and you meet someone who holds the position, you also meet someone who has a problem. Very often their position is really just an expression of their problem; making it a smoky, draining thing to engage with, and meanwhile, unless qualified, you'll struggle to help with their problem, and there it will sit, even if you 'win' about the position. People who have a problem are much easier to talk about than to. And sometimes it feels more useful, to talk about, rather than to them?

well put

Capitalist societies are better than communist ones.

I'd rather live in West Germany than East Germany, especially during the heydays of the Darmstadt School or krautrock, but, come on, this is not an objective statement of fact. It's hard to take Pinker's argument very seriously.

Fair cop
― The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby)

jumbo shrimp

xp really? think it's pretty obvious when even china has moved to a market economy

"Better" is p obviously not an objective measurement of anything factual. Nor does Pinker support it with anything other than subjective preferences, which is probably why it is "unsayable" in academic discussions. A statement such as "capitalist societies have higher per capita GDPs on average than communist societies" would be a factual claim (assuming it's true, which I haven't actually checked but assume to be the case) and I really don't think that would be unsayable in academia.

This one could run and run but basically, saying 'X is better than Y' implies 'come on people, let's just forget about Y already! X is just better!' which is not a propitious start to a full and frank discussion of the merits and demerits of X

Maybe I'm splitting a hair but I think it's important for his argument to carry any weight that his examples not be strawmen. xp

sund4r otm.

Matthew Yglesias and Jonathan Chait are arguing on Twitter about students at Brown protesting Guy Benson's appearance.

(I didn't know Benson, a frequent FOX guest, is gay)

No matter how many times someone says it, this is not what the “right to free speech” is. https://t.co/AH1XxqwyWK

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 14, 2018

It comes down to three points:
- Is it worth protesting against speakers who make arguments that are not in good faith?
- Is your protest in good faith, according to the accepted evidence and what you view as reasonable?
- Do you malign people who doing the latter, against people who are doing the former, because you don't believe their premises?

Even if you think Benson is making arguments that you disagree with but are fine to make, why would you say that someone criticizing his arguments, in good faith, is against free speech? Chait is aligning himself with Benson implicitly by saying his arguments have merit, but people saying his arguments are malicious are inherently in the wrong. Protest doesn't need to be perfect, it needs only to criticize power.

Chait's a cop

Is that or is any of that a quote or is it all you

sadly the latter, sorry

the real me only wrote the last sentence

tbh feel free to delete all but the last bit, mods

Wait I'm confused

Is someone trying to arrest Guy Benson for his opinions and throw him in jail? Or are people just insisting that he ought not be invited to speak at a particular institution which they pay large amounts of money to, because they think that what he says is actively harmful? Cuz, only the first of those scenarios touches on "the right to free speech".

this guy is on to something

Brown University -- a private university, unbound by the First Amendment like, say, mine is -- hasn't yet rescinded the invitation either. It's 18 students and one Jonathan Chait causing the trouble.

tbh it's funnier if the speaker shows up and no one is there but it's hard to get that situation in play

http://jmrphy.net/blog/2018/02/16/who-is-afraid-of-free-speech/

That is interesting and I read the entire thing but could have guessed the outcome