ebrso
1yr ago
"Characterizing X as detestable" is just far, far too much cognition to attribute to someone this drunk.
If I say that Martin Shkreli is an asshole, I'm probably not exercising too much cognition. I'm certainly not consciously/explicitly characterizing anuses as bad. Indeed, there's a reasonable case that assholes (anuses) are good - after all, what's the alternative? Still, in context, there's some clear background knowledge: assholes are detestable.
What bothers me is the idea of expelling students because they said a naughty word (yes, even if they said it 200 times). If the line between expulsion and not-expulsion is "did you say a racial slur," that violates my intuitions regarding the importance of freedom of speech, thought, and inquiry in institutions of higher education.
So you're suggesting that broad principles of free speech require public colleges to treat student speech in a content-neutral way, with no special treatment for the communication of ideas we find abhorrent, including racial slurs? That seems fine, although it's not the position most public American colleges seem to take (certainly not in practice). It's hard to imagine how this would even function if implemented literally. How could student work possibly be evaluated in this context?
ebrso
6mo ago
hockey has long had a culture of policing things that aren't quite illegal, but considered excessive via player-based enforcement in fights.
Why are fights between athletes considered just part of the game, rather than serious crimes? I assume that if I were to take a swing at someone in my office, in front of a million spectators and filmed from fifty angles, I would (quite appropriately) face jail time. But this doesn't seem to hold for, e.g., baseball players.
ebrso
1yr ago
Using suboptimal methods because it just feels good is perhaps the most common failure mode for everything in all of history.
I think this quip is question-begging, and just serves to muddy the waters by conflating several distinct phenomena:
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Conflict between a society's short-term and long-term preferences.
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Conflict between the preferences of distinct groups in a society.
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How individuals/groups establish preferences, and how they understand and express these preferences.
There are important questions of fact involved:
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Are whole-language approaches more effective for teaching students literacy?
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Should effectiveness in teaching students literacy be the unique factor determining instructional approach?
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Are teachers well-positioned to evaluate the effectiveness of various instructional approaches?
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Do teachers have insight into how they arrive at their own preferences?
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Do teachers misrepresent the justifications for their preferences? Do they do so knowingly?
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Are whole-language approaches easier/more fun for teachers?
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Do teachers prefer whole-language approaches because they're more pleasant for teachers?
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Do students have effective political advocates for their interests?
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Etc.
ebrso
6mo ago
You ignore the DNA evidence that Palestinians are the direct ancestors of ancient Canaanite and Levantine inhabitants of the land, and doubly ignore that Ashkenazim — the chief instigators of Zionism — are half-European in DNA.
How are Ashkenazim "the chief instigators of Zionism"? Mizrahi Jews in Israel make up over 60% of the nation's Jewish population, and their politics are to the right relative to the country.
ebrso
10mo ago
The money is meant to compensate [Black and Hispanic members of the class]. Why would white applicants have a claim on the money?
I never suggested White applicants should have a claim to anything, I only suggested that this outcome potentially invites an equal protection challenge. If a Black guy and a White guy sit for the same test, and both fail, but legal recourse is available to the Black guy alone, based exclusively on immutable racial characteristics, then it seems to me (a non-lawyer, but a member of the educated laity) that the White guy has clearly been denied equal protection of the laws.
"Four teachers in 1996 first filed a suit over the test. . . . The test was ruled discriminatory in 2012 by the third Manhattan federal judge to handle the case — which included a two-month nonjury trial and repeated trips to an appeals court."
That sounds like a vigorous defense to me.
I don't see what bearing the length of the process has on the vigor of the procedure.
The plaintiffs were not paid not to work. Presumably most of them worked at other jobs since 1996 (when the lawsuit was originally filed). They are being compensated for the damages incurred as a result of the ostensible discrimination. If I dropped a hammer on your head while working on a roof, and as a result you had to quit your job as an accountant and work retail, would you frame a lawsuit settlement as paying you not to work?
I don't stand by my characterization of the lawsuit as paying teachers "to not work," although incidentally, NYC has done just this before. But certainly the plaintiffs were paid in return for nothing. If the settlement is intended merely to compensate for damages (i.e., make the plaintiffs "whole," i.e., to leave them in a similar state to where they might have been had the injury never occurred), then why wouldn't class members be eligible solely for the difference between what they actually earned and what they would have earned as NYC teachers (with adjustments for factors like difficulty of position)? If a hammer falls on my head at the fault of my employer, and I go and take another paid job while continuing to receive a paycheck from my original employer, then it's even better for me than payment explicitly for not working!
Did you change the link?
I haven't edited the original post since publishing.
ebrso
4mo ago
Let's accept at face value that White jocks / cheerleaders support Trump. Then I still think there's a category confusion hiding in the insistence that analogies should "resemble observable reality."
I'll give an example. Say my friend were deciding between studying Russian and studying Hindi. Now say I tell him he should study Hindi because, per Wayne Gretzky, great hockey players "skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."
Would it really undermine my argument to learn that more great hockey players study Russian than Hindi?
ebrso
1yr ago
No. In my hypothetical and in the real-life event, a drunk person chooses the word that seems most likely to offend the person they are confronting.
In the same way that kids telling their little brother that he's adopted don't hate orphans, they just like teasing their little brother.
I think this example supports my position. Yes, the older brother is trying to rile the younger brother. But there's also common knowledge across the participants that the older brother holds that it's undesirable to be adopted.
Yeah, I think in ice hockey especially, fights aren't seen as pathological, but rather as an important part of a self-policing culture. I can understand that. What I don't understand is why the local district attorney would take that stance (and not prosecute offenders).
Baseball doesn't have the same opportunities to deliberately inflict injury within the standard ruleset of the game, so the same sort of culture never developed.
Interestingly, and consistent with your theory, my sense is that the proximate cause for most professional baseball fights is a perception of inappropriately aggressive play on the part of the opponent: high-and-inside fastball, sliding into 2nd base with spikes up, and so on. It's also interesting to me that in both baseball and ice hockey, the culture broadly prohibits using weapons in fights. The first thing a hockey / baseball player will do at the start of his fight is throw down his stick / bat. Again, this is consistent with the theory that fights serve to self-police / enforce expectations for conduct.
ebrso
9mo ago
I think a major problem is that there’s a lot of wiggle room for motte and Bailey around the issue. When people want sympathy they talk about a guy just down on his luck. When they want to remove them, they’re drug using street shitters.
I agree that people describe homeless populations (indeed, all populations) as more or less sympathetic depending on their own sympathies. But I hardly see how that (alone) has anything to do with mottes / baileys. Not every form of intellectual dishonesty should be shoehorned into a motte-and-bailey framework.
So the motte-and-bailey doctrine is when you make a bold, controversial statement. Then when somebody challenges you, you retreat to an obvious, uncontroversial statement, and say that was what you meant all along, so you’re clearly right and they’re silly for challenging you. Then when the argument is over you go back to making the bold, controversial statement.
ebrso
9mo ago
[America has] 330 million people. A million [drug overdose] deaths in 10 years isn't even coming close to affecting the median.
Of course the median American didn't die from a drug overdose in the last decade. But if knowing a drug addict is to be affected, then I suspect the median American has indeed been affected by drug abuse.
ebrso
7mo ago
I think this nicely acknowledges some of the individual variation / tradeoffs involved. I've noticed a trend in life-advice-giving where people are often wrong, but never in doubt. So, you'll have someone ask whether he should pursue his dream of quitting accounting to become a painter, and one person will write back that he definitely, 100% should, and the next person will respond that he definitely, 100% shouldn't.
I don't understand the "clashing rocks" comparison. I understand (from Google) that it's a reference to the Symplegades from Greek myth, but what the relevance is of that story is lost on me.
ebrso
7mo ago
Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.
I'm still struggling to understand what claim you're making about the nature of alcoholism. You stress that wants and needs are (imperative) emotional components. So is it just that people stop being alcoholics when they stop wanting/needing to drink alcohol? But that's almost tautological.
ebrso
7mo ago
Thanks. I think it's interesting that your husband would share this concern with you before marriage. I have what I believe to be a fairly honest-and-open relationship with my girlfriend, but this isn't something I would consider sharing (partly for fear of hurting her, but partly out of concern for how it might affect her conception of me - and the impact that could have on our relation).
ebrso
9mo ago
Once you're in the real world, it's all about results, and if you can't hang, you aren't going to go anywhere.
The claim that professional promotion requires concrete accomplishments in a role is wrong or vacuous.
Plenty of people get promoted for "bad" reasons. Often they're just in the right place at the right time. Or they market themselves and their mediocre achievements effectively. Sometimes they sequester special knowledge, which makes them seem useful, even if they're not useful in any kind of wins above replacement sense. Sometimes they get credit for others' achievements, either because they take credit unethically, or because they're just kinda near an achievement and it falls on them by osmosis. Sometimes they've been in a role for a long time, and they're butting-up against the top of the compensation window for that level, so it's easier to promote them than not. Sometimes the panel making the promotion decision is sympathetic to them for various reasons. And on and on.
ebrso
2mo ago
Thanks. The Inca Trail seems interesting - I'll look into that tomorrow. I make $240K/yr. leading a team of ~15 engineers.
ebrso
7mo ago
I like how this response emphasizes tradeoffs. Sometimes (or often, or always) the best realistic outcome isn't a perfect one.
ebrso
7mo ago
Thank you. I think this is very helpful. I look at various of the married guys I work with and it's hard to tell whether their boring-seeming (to me) lives are actually full of these hidden, rich wellsprings of "beauty and intensity," or whether it's all a lie I should run from without looking back. A lot depends on the person, I guess.
ebrso
7mo ago
Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.
I find this claim appealing, but it's so poorly-defined as to be impossible to test. "Emotional component" is a placeholder - it might just as well be phlogiston or black bile.
ebrso
1yr ago
I agree that Ashton Kutcher's a strong actor. His capabilities are underestimated because he's so handsome (Brad Pitt, James Franco, and perhaps Leonardo Dicaprio have a similar "problem").
I don't doubt he made some good investments, mainly in tech (sane choices, at least with hindsight). But academic credentials? Wikipedia says he dropped out of the University of Iowa to pursue professional modeling - surely the best academic decision he could have made.
ebrso
6mo ago
Hamas is backed, formally or tacitly, by a host of Middle Eastern nations, at least one of which (Iran) is a nuclear power.
I don't think Iran is known to be a nuclear power, at least as I understand the phrase (possessing nuclear weaponry).
ebrso
1yr ago
American midterm election predictions?
Does anyone wish to use this space to register predictions for outcomes in tomorrow's American midterm elections?
Personally, I take a kind of efficient markets approach to this stuff, so I'll defer to the betting consensus. But if you want your time-stamped judgment registered as part of the official Motte record, here's your chance!
Mods - please feel free to remove if you don't think this is a good fit for the space.
In your hypothetical, the student is characterizing being a Nazi as detestable. In the real-life event, the student is characterizing being Black as detestable.
I'm skeptical of widespread American anti-Black racism narratives, and I don't think this case supports them (except weakly at the margin). I think it's possible (although unlikely) that the White girl doesn't harbor meaningful animus towards Black people, and that she was just grasping clumsily for an epithet that carried a powerful valence. I also assume the White girl has some fairly serious emotional problems (as do many people, such as myself) which were exacerbated by alcohol use.
Nevertheless, the White girl's behavior was grotesque. I have no objections at all to expelling her from school.
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