Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being an insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
Except of course that there aren't many subcontinentals coming here
There are. 'Many' is a wiggle-word, but there are enough coming that their presence is notable, even if more recent arrivals are just more proximal / visible examples of the broader trend of other migrants coming in and replacing cultural symbols rather than adopting them.
EU institutions and bureaucrats are unironically proud of EU being regulatory superpower, some of them really believe in how they are essential for regulating the whole world.
It's practically dark humor that EU efforts to be a regulatory superpower abroad are fuel to the EU-US divorce, which in turn justifies further strengthening the EU institutions. It may be all according to keikaku to some EU advocates, but I've heard many express incredulity about how various US political leaders might take issues with attempts to fine American companies with great political influence into compliance with European Union political interests.
The sort of default Atlanticism that might view continental political propaganda as unobjectionable but Russian political propaganda as toxic is passing away with the Boomers. The emerging generations filling the bureaucracies are increasingly likely to see it either from a neutral principle lens, in which case either European propaganda is just as bad or Russian propaganda is just as harmless as the other, or through a partisan friend-foe lens. The later case is just as bad in its own way, as it means the European-Russian axis only matters in so much that it provides a stick to beat the opponent with, regardless of from which direction.
Geopolitical alliances crack when one party is seen as the partisan partner of one's own domestic political opponents. Sometimes that crack can be overcome by sufficient time, see the South Korean left's political evolution regarding views on the US following the dictatorship period. But actively pursuing it unprompted is somewhere between feckless, malpractice, or a deliberate tradeoff for shorter-term priorities considered more important.
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
Have you ever heard of a major French arms deal that fell through that the French admitted to being the cause of its failure?
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
Also, there are tons of groups that caused very limited friction when they immigrated and it has limited correlation with how "familiar" the group is.
Which, in turn, is sidestepping the point of 'critical mass' and 'displacing local culture with their own.'
The uncanny valley effect applies as much to cultural trappings as human faces. An english-speaker in a city full of english-language signs can feel comfortable, even if there are the occasional oddities of atypical roofings or words. An english-speaker in a city of completely unfamiliar languages may not feel completely at home, but accept it as categorically foreign. It is when the city is in the process of the halfway transition between one or the other, and particularly when moving from the familiar to the alien, that unease rises.
In Sweden, in 1980 7% of the population was foreign-born. In 2000, it was about 11%. In 2020, it is roughly 20%. It is historical circumstance that that later growth was more from sub-continentals than less familiar continentals. Unease and opposition to the foreigner would still be on the rise if it was Russians or French driving that demographic change.
You don't even have to reach into alternate history to find examples of dislike of French or Russian culture following from the French or Russian leaving their borders into others and their new hosts having to deal with it.
Dean
Flairless
11hr ago
I think most here would be fine with reading slightly worse grammar and spelling along with the certainly that they aren't reading AI stuff.
Tank heaven for that.
Dean
Flairless
11hr ago
I have heard variations of '[X group] is the worst, and the more people are exposed the more they agree' of just about every variation of [X group] that has been a critical mass growing minority elsewhere.
The process of being distinct and displacing the familiar is itself what is unpleasant and unadmirable to many host nations, regardless of what continent the arrival comes from.
Dean
Flairless
12hr ago
In the 1950s the United States had quite recently literally destroyed the infrastructure of its major European competitors
...as opposed to the Germans, Russians, British, French, and other Europeans doing so with the second generation-ruining war in a lifetime?
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
Are you making a positive claim that academic evaluations do not, or ought not, incorporate normative expectations of domain relevancy?
No. I am making the claim I actually made. Since you quoted it, I'll spare you the re-citation.
Welcome to the Motte, by the way. I am flattered you made your first comment of this account to engage with me in particular. I look forward to your long and consistent posting record going forward.
This feels like an untenable position; can you point to another equivalent domain of human interaction where such a positive claim would be supported?
The point I did make on it being unreasonable to punish people for a standard not established? Trivially- as should you.
If you want to make any appeal to normative expectations, a bedrock principle of conflict resolution and the application of rules is an odd one to feign ignorance of.
I can't imagine a high school calculus teacher accepting "because my mom told me so" as an acceptable answer in a proof whether or not the syllabus explicitly stipulated mathematical reasoning as a grading requirement. Most people don't begin asking a stranger on the street for directions with an explicit enumeration of acceptable sources of knowledge yet would be unnerved if informed the source came from a dream.
Possibly you cannot imagine it because these are non-equivalent scenarios deliberately framed to be ridiculous. There is a reason you start with a scenario in which there is an objective correct position to have such that a deviation is a failure, just as there is a reason that neither scenario reflects the format of an open-ended position-agnostic assignment that is grading for structure.
Arguing about the biblical implications of a psychological claim does not provide any evidence of the students learning or growth in the field of psychology and consequently does not satisfy the academic integrity requirements of the university.
The later does not follow from the former, particularly when the former rests on false premises.
By its nature, being able to argue about the biblical implications of a psychological claim already demonstrates that the student has learned enough about the psychological claim to link it to a major social / cultural / societal effect influencing the psychology of billions of people. This, in turn, demonstrates growth in the field of psychology, as someone without such growth would not have been able to identify, apply, and discuss the link.
You may dismiss the link, you may deny the link, but growth in understanding in the field of psychology does not depend on your approval of the link.
Students are obligated to read, understand, and agree to the terms in the handbook every year by the way.
Hence why the graduate grader appealed to other factors to justify their arbitrary decision to ignore the rubric they were supposed to grade by. A standard which they agree to apply every time they agree to take on the course and issue it to their students.
I am as familiar with the practice of searching for another excuse to justify the abuse as you. I am also familiar with its limitations towards the misdeeds of the adjudicator.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
Trauma reactions, both health and suppressed, can support this.
Healthy trauma survivors may be changed, but they don't think on it because they're trying to move on and focus on the rest of their lives instead. They can be physically / mentally scarred, but scar tissue isn't something you necessarily pick at.
Suppressed trauma survivors are also changed, and also don't think about it because avoidance is easier than the void in the sense of self/control/understanding. So they bottle it up and do not think about the bottle as much as possible.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
Are we to believe that microcenter retained CCTV footage of every cash register for over a year?
...were you under the impression that they didn't?
The cost of CCTV footage is in installing the CCTV, not in retaining the footage. Once you actually have any sort of retention system, the marginal costs are pretty cheap, and can be compelled by regulation.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
It's somewhat common-sense within the profession and I'm not sure I could even find an explicit statement of it in an academic text.
Then the profession's common-sense may far less imbued with beneficent academic rigor than commonly perceived, and so be less deserving of public trust and deference. The social sciences do struggle with this, and deservedly so with the replication crisis of the things that do find their ways into academic texts.
On the other hand, I could find explicit statements in academic texts of how arbitrary and even retroactive application of rules is unjust in an ethical sense and bad policy from a professional sense. I could also find academic texts of how professional gain public trust and deference from being self-regulating, and how efforts to circle the wagons around a colleague who abuses their position from within the profession loses that public trust and deference that separates a profession from a mere line of work.
If you disagree then I would rather hear your counterargument, affirmatively stated, instead of continued needling.
I already have, and you continue to evade and excuse rather than address: it is unreasonable to punish people according to a standard which is not established.
If you will not stand by or take the time to defend the opposite from first principles, or even second, why should others give you yet another argument to to pick at tertiary principles? The first were already more than enough to cause you to flee both the motte and the bailey.
It is true that institutions fail students and play "culture warrior" at times, but I suppose I would have rather Fulnecky started by going to her school instead of immediately escalating. For every controversy we hear about, there are many more cases that go successfully resolved.
That you would prefer the victim to play by the preferred rules of the abuser is clear, but not a compelling reason to defer to. Particularly when you started your OP with rather unsubtle contempt for the victim in question, and used it to make an outgroup swipe for a lack of deference you've avoided every challenge to justify deserving it.
That you are attempting to smuggle in an appeal to an unfalsifiable majority is of no consequence. I could just as easily say 'for every case that goes successfully resolved, there are even more that go unsuccessfully resolved where the abuse stands.' You might challenge it, and I might raise the decline of conservatives in academia over time and the admissions of ideological discrimination as supporting evidence, but it would remain just as fallacious an appeal.
Especially because the instructor is an untenured grad student, it is reasonable that the school could've sided with Fulnecky. Graduate students are not gods in academia the way tenured profs are.
And they are not gods because when they try to play as such by imposing their own personal politics in lieu of objective standards, they find they can be crucified in the court of public and political opinion and not be the beneficiaries of higher intervention.
It is a salutary lesson for untenured grad students everywhere, and more likely need to learn it if they are to overcome the institutional rot and collapse of professional reputation their tenured professors have cultivated for them to inherit.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
Unfortunately, I don't have the bandwidth or time to argue in the didactic, premise-driven way you'd like me to.
Unreasonable and arbitrary standards are usually trotted out for convenience, true.
Let's use the "reasonable person" standard here. Do you think the final paragraph of the essay is reasonably in accordance with the standards of writing in undergraduate academic psychology? My answer is no. If you share your thoughts on that paragraph, perhaps we can inch closer to a shared vocabulary here.
Sure. My answer is 'you have not provided an established standard by which it is not in accordance.' It is also exceedingly unreasonable to use a position of authority to formally punish people for something that is not against the rules. The actual material of the paragraph is immaterial- if it is not forbidden, it is unreasonable to punish it as if it were forbidden.
I think going to the institutional office would be effective in getting the grade changed, or at least bring more clarity and consistency, yes.
Why should you think that, given the plethora of examples of the American culture war in universities including open discrimination by institutional offices against red-tribe-coded faculty and students?
I suppose I have trust in that sort of thing.
Should neutral observers believe your trust in that sort of thing is warranted or indicative of good judgement, given the last decades of American culture war observations and admissions in American academia?
It would be corrective to the extent that the graduate student would be more responsible going forward and likely illustrate to Fulnecky where her writing could improve.
Why do you believe the graduate student would be more responsible going forward under a course of action with a long and contemporary history of American academic institutions discriminating in favor of the graduate student's preferences and practices?
To try and address as many of your pointed rhetorical questions as possible in one fell swoop,
They were not rhetorical. Sharp, yes, but not rhetorical. Your answers, please, because your comments below avoided rather than answered them.
my view is that Fulnecky should have known better than to submit an assignment with this sort of argumentation, especially as a junior.
By what standard?
This is not a rhetorical question- this is a crux of the issue. If there is no agreed upon or mutually acceptable standard by which Fulnecky should be judged, there is no reason to not dismiss or act against those who would try to impose one at the expense of her or others who might find themselves at odds with it. There is no scissor statement involved with opposing a who-whom abuse, nor
The methods used in the field of academic psychology are specific and any deviation from them, especially a major one like this, requires some justification.
Again, by what standard?
You have not made the argument that her methods would self-evidently fail in the field, let alone by the standards of the course work. You have assumed a conclusion without justifying it, and used that to blame a victim by no clear standard.
Learning to work in a field involves learning to speak its language, to participate in the academic community. Perhaps other professors have let it slide but I do not fault this instructor for not doing so.
For a third time- by what standard?
Whether you do not fault the graduate student may only an indication of your inclination to side with politically favorable punishments along a who-whom axis. A way to demonstrate against that is a consistent standard, and to not arbitrarily punish people for violating the standards you wish were established but do not violate standards that are established.
For someone to break a rule, there must actually be a rule.
The rubric, especially for such a small potatoes assignment like this, need not state every single possibility nor are there really objective criteria.
It does and there are, or else it is not a rubric nor a reason to detract points.
Plenty of professors give out zeroes for less,
Please identify the plenty of professors at the university in question who do. American universities are notorious for their grade inflation, not their grade negation.
and my quickly jotted belief that she deserves "some points" is just because I hate to see any student get a zero for an assignment they at least submitted. They hurt. But that doesn't mean a 0 wasn't deserved.
It absolutely does, unless there is a standard by which a 0 would have been deserved.
I am speaking of this event as suspicious because there are ways it could have been handled other than immediately rushing to a political advocacy group.
Would they have been as effective, timely, and as deterring against future political prejudice as going to a political advocacy group who could be trusted to not bury it?
Most universities have mechanisms for reporting or investigating grading issues. I find it questionable that Fulnecky didn't, say, send an email, offer to discuss it in office hours, or speak to the U of O's office of institutional standards, or whatever they call it there.
Is there a non-motivated reason to believe that is a good question to have?
By your own account, Fulnecky was subject to an arbitrary retaliation by the official representative of that institution, who in turn felt confident enough in her position to do so and provide a publicly-releasable justification. That institution in turn would have many incentives to try to downplay, hide, and otherwise minimize any public awareness of the incident, as demonstrated by many other downplays/dismissals/etc. over the last quarter century.
It may well be in an abuser's interest to have the institution they are a part of investigate itself, and even in the interest of those more sympathetic of the abuser than the abused, but there is no obligation of a target of abuse to put the abuser's interests above their own.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
It's yesterday's news at this point, but the recent University of Oklahoma essay controversy has continued to fester in my brain for the sheer incongruence of reactions. In case you haven't heard, Samantha Fulnecky, a junior studying Psychology, received a 0 for submitting an essay whose central argument was essentially a blunt appeal to Biblical inerrancy. While I find this a suspect choice in even most religious studies courses, the assignment tasked her with reviewing a journal article about the effects of social pressures on adolescent gender presentation and identification - hardly something the Bible addresses directly. In response, the graduate student instructor, who is trans, gave her a zero. Fulnecky, in her (apparent) indignance, complained to the local chapter of TPUSA that this is an act of religious discrimination, and sparks flew. And they've kept flying. Fulnecky received an honorary award from the Oklahoma state Congress and has been speaking about her situation on Fox News. The university has sided with Fulnecky, placing the instructor on indefinite administrative leave until...the situation blows over? It's unclear how much "investigation" this really requires, but it is clear that Fulnecky has won the battle.
Was the grading rubric's scoring criteria such that biblical inerrancy merited a 0? If so, why have you not provided that? If not, what is the confusion?
It's a rather standard practice in teaching environments that scores are generally a cumulation of different aspects. Are you unfamiliar with it?
This is not a case where a student submitted a carefully argued theological analysis, but instead appealed to the most straightforward of scriptural arguments and didn't even cite the verses in question!
And? What about this merits a 0% according to the assignment rubric?
While the resulting grade of 0 seems slightly punitive and I don't doubt it was motivated by some level of personal offense, the professor's response hardly could be considered discriminatory.
Why not?
Why is this not consistent with a punitive, discriminatory intent by someone who would have reason to believe their response would be posted on social media, and thus might want to coach their response to garner sympathy/support/credulity from people like yourself?
I think Fulnecky deserved some points, but not many.
Why not by what grading rubric?
She lacks one of the most foundational skills a college-level writer needs: adapting your ideas to your audience.
Who is her audience supposed to be?
If her audience is supposed to be the sort of graduate student who would assign a 0 over personal offense, then this indeed might be a failure on her part. On the other hand, if her graduate student grader was not supposed to be that sort of graduate student, then it was the graduate student who failed her.
I don't blame the gymnasts - this case has been elevated to levels that are suspiciously unjustified, in my view.
What, in your view, is suspiciously unjustified about this, as opposed to straightforwardly unjustified? Is your opinion that the state legislature should at least have taken a few more days / weeks to take notice, absent some sort of duplicitous informing of the media? Would a more honest or sincere media have buried the story?
But is that really all it takes?
Petty tyrants being exposed and taken down has been a popular format for millennia. What more is required?
Read the essay and let me know what you think. I don't want to be mistaken for consensus-building here, and I would welcome any and all steelmans for the pro-Fulnecky position. Maybe I've been cut by yet another scissor statement (in this case, essay).
Well, you've provided no objective grounds by which she objectively deserved a 0, but you seem to be taking offense that there's pushback. I don't see why there's any need for a steelman for the pro-Fulnecky position, when the position that seems far less justified is the anti-Fulnecky stance.
This is further evidence to me that red-tribers have completely abandoned most institutes of higher education.
A woman voluntarily in an institution of higher learning is apparently arbitrarily and excessively punished for her dissent in a fashion you have taken greater offense to the objection of than to the punishment itself... and you take this case as evidence that red-tribers have 'abandoned' higher education?
All this to say: I think universities are really going to have it rough under this administration. They've already been sued to hell and back. If the red tribe couldn't turn the university system around by playing nice, they're going to do it by force - social, legal, or otherwise.
As well they should, since they are a considerable part of the population base paying a considerable part of the expense. Any institution that depends on consistent taxpayer support in social, legal, and other forms is well advised to self-regulate itself to maintain that support, and not to antagonize large parts of the electorate to the degree that they withdraw or even invert those critical factors against the institution.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
It's no more bizare a cope than the idea that refinery repairs are a trifling expense in the midst of a war that was draining reserves even before primary income sources started going boom, or that progressively smaller relative material advantages negate manpower limits.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
Checkbook diplomacy is the primary, with all the proxy influence dynamics that can imply.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
As flattering as it is for all things to be a consequence of American decisions, this kind of neglects the context of Saddam's invasion of Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, the economic straights that left the military dictatorship in, the profit motive of not just protecting 'their' oil but getting the rest of the Kuwaiti oil fields, Saddam's geopolitical calculations of how his control of so much of the oil market would lead to it being a fait accompli, and the implications of how that 'how I could get more' and 'why I would get to keep more' could combine with moving further.
One of these days, I'm tempted to do a sort of review-post of the sort of trends seem to go into getting into the AAQC. A sort of 'So You Want To Write An AAQC...' tips / tricks / observations effort post.
My incredibly selfish ulterior motive would be to encourage people towards the sort of posting styles I enjoy, regardless of any statistical rigor.
Dean
Flairless
11d ago
Schilling fences are a recognised term going back to the Great Scott himself:
Title of your linked article
Schelling fences on slippery slopes
You are being teased for a typo, Count.
Dean
Flairless
11d ago
It's not that people don't 'understand.' It's that it's not itself a complete argument. It is merely preference sharing ('wouldn't it be nice if'), no different than if you said 'wouldn't it be nice if people valued peace more and didn't have wars?' People don't value peace more, for reasons related to the stark differences in preferences compared to you. Therefore, the policy fails to persuade when it rests on a flawed premise- and when a premise is 'everyone should go along with my preferences,' blaming the audience for not getting your genius says more about you than them.
If your argument is merely preferences, it has no weight over other people's preferences, i.e. to make more money or advance projects that require prolonged effort. And without some other mechanism- who is to bring this about, by what means, with what coercive authority against dissidents- it fails as a social policy. There is a reason that Count has to appeal to emergent cultural evolution as an analogy for a deliberate cultural engineering, and it's related to the reason he avoids addressing the factors that actually were involved for that past shift that are not applicable to the current. Like, for example, that there was no centralized policy shift that initiated the change from the top down.
Dean
Flairless
11d ago
The OP is raising a question of a policy. That policy questions rests on a premise, but the premise itself can be faulty.
Dean
Flairless
11d ago
And this in turn comes down to whether AI have fundamental limits of their own, which is a matter of some contention not worth typing too much on here.
You actually cannot in most of the white collar world, it's extremely inflexible.
Working in the white collar world is a choice, primarily done for money. If you don't care about the money, you can already go to a different sector with less rigid hours. If you do care about the money, it's not clear how a four day work week will make as much as a five day work week absent fiat government transfers, such as UBI.
Also, it's supposed to increase human flourishing and give us more time to spend on things we want to do! Ideally help people grow.
This is an evergreen argument that has always been made regardless of the tech level. Why was it not compelling enough before, aside from the need/desire for more money?
Imagine this attitude back when work was 7 days a week, 12 hour days. Work is a necessity, ideally we live as well or perhaps work on projects more aligned to our souls when we have more free time.
Note the lack of limiting factor here. What [necessity] makes four days a week of drudgery any more reasonable than seven days, beyond current attitudes? Why should it not be viewed as soul-crushing and the [necessity] of work be paired back to 3 days of work a week?
I do agree that there's always more work to do. I think our modern economy doesn't value the type of work left to be done very well, namely spiritual / emotional / community work.
And rightly so. People terribly interested in other how other people organize their spiritual / emotional / community affairs tend to be petty tyrants on how others should value such things if they themselves are not preoccupied.
Dean
Flairless
11d ago
What I'm surprised by is why nobody has so far mentioned what, to me, seems the obvious compromise - we just shorten the work week! As our forefathers did forcing a 5 day, 8 hour work week, why don't we continue there? Go down to a 4 day work week, and/or shorten standard working hours to 6 per day?
What is this actually supposed to do? If you want to work 4 days a week, 6 hours a day, you already can.
Well, the real problem is that there isn't a finite amount of work to be done. The AI taking over a lot of human work because they can do the work of a bajillion people doesn't mean there's no longer work for humans to do.
There are entire volumes of 'self'-critiques of the problems in American foreign military sales practices that undercut American competitiveness below what it 'could' be. The American arms deal failures tend to be in the form of 'the other party went elsewhere rather than sign a deal' rather than 'the deal fell apart after being signed,' but there's no shortage of Americans placing the blame on the American side for partners making arms deals with countries like China.
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