ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
3d ago
"Right and wrong"? What's that? I keep hearing here that those things don't real. Naive meta-ethical relativism, you see. Best you can do is something something game theory (don't ask how that's supposed to work). And best as I can see, assassination is a strategy in the strategy set. Ergo, there's nothing "wrong" about it.
ControlsFreak
4d ago
SPLC
This seems pretty apart from a core problem within academia.
harassment
Uh, likewise? That's sort of just a general phenomenon that exists in a variety of places?
which they can then use to their advantage in future fights (any other university considering work with SEGM will either come across the scandal when vetting the organization and get cold feet, or in the event they don't, activists can forward it to them once any such future relationship is discovered.
Yeah, uh, the same?
I'm really struggling to see how any of this is actually about academia qua academia. There's almost nothing here about the typical workings of academia, interactions with the federal government, levers that could be pulled, specific goals to be accomplished.
Big picture, it seems like most of this is that there is some influence on academia's decision-making, and that influence is political in nature and bad. ISTM that the goal would be some form of reducing that influence or the effectiveness thereof, rather than detonating all of academia, itself. Would that at least be a reasonable statement of a plausible goal?
ControlsFreak
4d ago
I find this to be, frankly, borne of ignorance and lack of creativity. That is, similar to what I wrote here, it scans to me like "Joe Sixpack" bloviating on Middle East politics. Perhaps some of that is epistemic helplessness, seeing for example the classic hapax legomenon about Afghanistan, then just casually coming to the conclusion that all is hopeless and we should just nuke 'em all and turn the sand into glass. There's no sense of theory of war/politics involved, no understanding of the concepts behind consolidating gains, just shooting from the hip without much thought.
Even here in your latest comment, you seem to grasping for something to 'work' (you don't use the word, but ISTM that it's what you're going for), but there's no sense of what 'working' is. There's not even really a well-formed goal. Just a vague sense of these people seem bad, and it seems complicated, and I don't know what to do, so I'll just go in blastin'.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
This also touches on Trump's dreaded funding cuts. We've had a number of people here complaining about them, claiming that Trump should have used a more precise approach. It can't be done. Any presumption-of-innocence approach would yield no significant outcome, as institutions could hire activists faster than you could get them fired.
This is, like, just a non sequitur, no? Something something, list of grievances, declaration that $Thing can't be done, because something something, the other side can recruit or something? Is the implication here just the @gattsuru comment? No bother firing (upon) them one-by-one; no bother even considering any other possible pathway either; really gotta just go for a mass casualty event?
ControlsFreak
5d ago
I think the slightly easier steelman would be riffing off your phrase "much-bigger news than a murder". That is, one might think that this is "just a murder". Murders happen all the time. They're often not Paper of Record material. So the steelman view could be something like, "This wouldn't be Paper of Record news if it wasn't for Republicans Pouncing to try to make it news."
Of course, this still exposes some significant premises. One could have taken a similar view for several other cases that became cause celebres mostly due to the left "pouncing". It takes more time and effort to work through some reasoning for why any given incident is "legitimately" newsworthy versus primarily being pushed for political concerns. Nevertheless, the most basic observation that is difficult to explain away is that I can't really remember any incident being reported with the opposite valence. That is, I don't think there are stories presented in the form, "This wouldn't really be news if it wasn't for the fact that the left is 'pouncing'." Their concerns just are; they're inherently just and true; there is no intermediate agent actively choosing to pump up the situation for political purposes.
But all these sorts of observations require realizing the possibility and then having sufficient time/exposure to realize what's happening, which is more sophisticated than most observers are likely to be.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
What stood out to me the most in that article was that it was, "Republicans Pounce". The style guide is dumb, but that's sort of baked in at this point. It's almost mechanical, like if someone changed their spellchecker. Whereas making the affirmative choice to headline with "Republicans Pounce" requires more in-the-moment intent.
ControlsFreak
6d ago
Yeah, I basically haven't meaningfully read any of these, but every time I skim one, I kick myself more and more for not commenting what I thought when the very first one was posted: "I wonder whether they'll do Jews or Blacks first when they get around to it."
#HlynkaWasRight
Perhaps this was all just a bit of confusion. I was responding to your bit:
where the internal link was to funding cuts to academia, with the context being whether or not there were goal-oriented, somewhat tailored ways of approaching it compared to what I've perceived in these fora as calls for 'indiscriminate chemotherapy'. So, I guess, I'm not really sure what you're meaning or going for.
I think I already linked it, but it might not have been worth the time to read it before, but here is some context, with links to prior discussions where I was pushing back against the 'indiscriminate chemo' calls, culminating in the more recent cuts being targeted and linked to institutional behavior.
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