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VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1m ago
While it is important to consider the strongest ideas of a movement, so as not to be knocking down straw or weak men, the insistence on that coupled with the lack of disavowal on their end makes for an insidious motte and bailey.
Doubly so because Science™ claims to be the process by which we find "strongest ideas" generally. It's both a direct and a meta-level failure.
Throwaway05
4m ago
The "left" ran a profoundly successful multi-decade propaganda campaign to convince the entire country that racism is quite close to the worst possible sin. Obviously not everyone has bitten, but overwhelmingly the general population on the left AND right buy it. Now the left doesn't think what they are doing is racist, but a good chunk of the middle and the right do - and they've been trained to tear down people and institutions that support racism by the left.
This some combination of not accepting immoral behavior, being held to your own standards becoming a problem, and inevitable consequences of your decisions.
If someone believes that anyone who holds the belief that an ethic group is scum deserves what's coming to them and believes an ethnic group is scum....you are doing what they asked when you come for them.
Add in the meta game aspect of tanking trust for authority leading to bad outcomes in society? These people deserve what is happening to them, and more.
Corvos
7m ago
They're... otherwise occupied. And indoors.
(The jokes are usually about Wales rather than Scotland, and of course not fair in either place, but occasionally I can't resist proving the hinterlands right about how oppressed they are.)
07mk
9m ago
Signing an open letter and writing an article that attacks Trump is pretty innocuous behavior, in my opinion.
Surely the contents of the open letter would matter, wouldn't it? Would signing an open letter committing oneself to help the 4th Reich take over the United States also be pretty innocuous?
Of course, this letter isn't that. Rather, it's an open letter espousing an ideology that's specifically anti-logic, which I don't think is innocuous for a mathematician. The most innocuous and, IMHO quite likely, explanation for his behavior is that he unthinkingly followed sociopolitical pressure to sign that document. And caring so little about what he puts his signature on that he's willing to sign off on a belief system that rejects the very basis of what he's studying is at least as concerning as it is innocuous. If a bus driver was known to openly support an ideology that rejected the notion of left and right or red and green, the bus company would be justified in not considering that all that innocuous, even if the bus driver was merely doing it to look cool for his peers.
Tanista
17m ago
Now, you could argue that all the democracy-bombing was window dressing and each instance was actually motivated by hard geopolitical and economic interest, but then how do you disprove the same statement about the Commies?
You can't. But this is a realist argument so the out is that international and domestic politics are different beasts.
JTarrou
24m ago
All professors contribute to and derive their living from participating in a fundamentally hostile institution, and the financial indenture of the student body and taxpayers which fund it.
A lot of plumbers and housewives and kindergarten teachers died in Dresden. They were all the enemy. Those who can't grasp this basic concept have no business in war.
Discrimination in sports? Like 73% of the NBA players being black? There are no level playing fields in sports. You can compensate for some genetic advantages (like high testosterone), but then the people who win will simply win through other genetic advantages.
Precisely. If we let everyone play, women would simply be shut out.
Which is why women's sports gives women a place to play that they otherwise wouldn't have, society has decided that 50% of the population being mostly locked out is bad. There are critiques of Title IX and how it's interpreted wrt what counts as a "sport" but the plain purpose was not to facilitate males destroying the whole point of having female sports.
There's no point in trying to even have a philosophical discussion about which biological advantages society decides counts: what they're doing is just against the law. There's already a law passed to protect women's sports and many universities are simply acting against those rules. That they may feel coerced by a past administration to do it simply says that that administration was also wrong.
If you want to have that discussion push for another law and we can have a real discussion on the merits of mixing sports instead of skin-suiting Title IX and then pushing the burden of explaining this violation of intent unto the opposing side.
And the "endangering women" thing is even worse. Are there credible accusations of people abusing their trans status to rape or grope women in their protected spaces, above the base rate?
Can you explain your thought process here? Like...why is it that people always go to "a trans person wouldn't abuse their trans status"?
Besides the obvious problems with this, it's a bit akin to saying there's no problem waving through Orthodox Jews in airport security because Jews aren't as likely to do suicide bombings. The point is obviously that weakening the standard allows any bad actor to exploit the situation because trans status isn't exactly based on having completed surgeries now.
This seems self-evident to me. But it is not to a whole swath of people, the question is why we have a gap here.
I was going to say that it's caused by priming but OP did say "men in women's spaces" not "transwomen in women's spaces" so I don't even have that explanation.
gattsuru
30m ago
And a number of other caveats: there’s reason that one of the big Darwin blowups was over a ‘physics’ paper.
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
35m ago
As an aside, Irigaray is someone I have mentioned to progressives in private discussion, and asked them to answer for her. The response I get is universally that that her fluid mechanics quote is crazy, and it doesn't really represent the feminist or progressive movements.
I went and read the "The 'Mechanics' of Fluids" chapter in Irigaray's This Sex Which Is Not One to make sure I wasn't misrepresenting her. I believe that it can be steelmanned (or at least, one thread of thought within it can be steelmanned).
The critical passage seems to be this:
[...] Certainly these “theoretical” fluids have enabled the technical—also mathematical—form of analysis to progress, while losing a certain relationship to the reality of bodies in the process.
What consequences does this have for “science” and psychoanalytic practice?
And if anyone objects that the question, put this way, relies too heavily on metaphors, it is easy to reply that the question in fact impugns the privilege granted to metaphor (a quasi solid) over metonymy (which is much more closely allied to fluids). Or—suspending the status of truth accorded to these essentially metalinguistic “categories” and “dichotomous oppositions” — to reply that in any event all language is (also) metaphorical, and that, by denying this, language fails to recognize the “‘subject” of the unconscious and precludes inquiry into the subjection, still in force, of that subject to a symbolization that grants precedence to solids.
It is philosophically contentious whether anything like a "solid object" even exists at all. Arguably, our fundamental ontological presuppositions are not given to us, but are instead the result of choices we make (or, perhaps, choices made for us by society and the structure of language). Science, by its own admission, makes use of idealized theoretical models that are one step removed from actual "reality" (spherical cows in a vacuum and such). We can imagine an alternative isomorphic description of the same physical model that keeps all the math exactly intact, but uses different linguistic imagery. Why a "spherical" cow "rolling" down an incline? Why not a "viscous" cow "flowing" down an incline?
Because the metaphorical imagery employed by science is fundamentally arbitrary, Irigaray's contention is that the fundamental choice of which parts of physics to label as "solid" mechanics and "fluid" mechanics in the first place reveals something sociologically and psychologically about the people doing the labeling (obviously, she would say that it reveals a fundamental aversion to or discomfort with fluid imagery and feminine imagery in general).
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
36m ago
Absolutely, you step into the ring you should expect to get hit back. Stay the fuck out of politics if you're not a political figure.
07mk
37m ago
And the "endangering women" thing is even worse. Are there credible accusations of people abusing their trans status to rape or grope women in their protected spaces, above the base rate? This seems to be a moral panic like the D&D satanism thing.
It's actually a physics thing. The nature of most common team sports in America is such that, if college aged trained athletes attempted to play at the best of their abilities in mixed-sex format, the odds of the women being injured due to inevitable contact with men who are far bigger and faster than them skyrockets relative to just women-only. If we decided to mix the NBA and WNBA and have them play in mixed format, that would also endanger women, ie the WNBA players. No rape or groping required or implied.
quiet_NaN
48m ago
- UCLA engages in racism, in the form of illegal race-based preferences in admissions practices;
Affirmative action is a bad thing. One might argue that forcing universities to adjust admission rules through threats of withholding research funding is also bad. OTOH, this is something I could have seen the Obama administration doing as well if the admission rules were against their ideology.
- UCLA fails to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias;
"bias" seem extreme weak-sauce. Everyone is biased. Of course, sometimes biases are bad, but that would require going very much into the specifics.
The antisemitism thing is more plausible. Of course, for Nethanyahu, anyone who criticizes him is an antisemite, which is a great way to get people not to care about antisemitism.
Personally, I think that if the UCLA does not want to deal with Israeli institutions, that is ok. If they want to allow students to burn Israeli flags, that is also defendable. However, they do have a duty to protect their students and staff from verbal or physical attacks. If they turned a blind eye to Jews or Israeli citizens getting singled out and attacked, that would be bad.
- UCLA discriminates against and endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces
Discrimination in sports? Like 73% of the NBA players being black? There are no level playing fields in sports. You can compensate for some genetic advantages (like high testosterone), but then the people who win will simply win through other genetic advantages. That does not mean that trans women in women's sports are necessarily good, but just that yelling "help, help, I am being oppressed" is just not a thing you do in sports. Are transwomen even winning most competitions?
And the "endangering women" thing is even worse. Are there credible accusations of people abusing their trans status to rape or grope women in their protected spaces, above the base rate? This seems to be a moral panic like the D&D satanism thing.
thejdizzler
57m ago
What do you mean by bad epistemics exactly?
Thanks for the other article. I am much more the triathlete body type so it makes sense that I'm breaking down every time I do 70+ miles. 60+ loads of cross training worked way better for me: I ran 16:10 off the bike once in a tri and I don't think I could even do that now just running.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
57m ago
I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1hr ago
I've got niche tastes (I used to be an omnviorous reader, but I prefer hard scifi these days), and I regularly exhaust the list of books I want to read. At that point, what's the harm in re-reading something? Especially when it's been so long that memories have faded.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1hr ago
I did, but I think the other suggestion, namely that I ended up googling HIV stats is the more likely one.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1hr ago
I'm aware, I just don't use it often enough to justify doing this. The free tier isn't great, but it does the job when I need quick answers.
JTarrou
1hr ago
Not literally everyone in academia is your enemy.
I'll be the judge of who my enemies are. Literally every single person in that status hierarchy is my enemy. They belong to a heretical cult of a now-dead social religion and nothing short of full destruction will slow their war on science, reason and western civ. In the same manner that a hostile military must be broken before peace terms can be decided, so must academia be levelled before the social contract can be redrawn.
My advice is not to go down with such a leaky, corrupt and evil ship. Academia declared war on society. Society has started to notice. And people like me are just waiting for the right time to hole this bitch below the waterline, sling the grappling hooks and raise the Jolly Roger.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
This. Very much this. It's why I can't stand listening to Eric Weinstein's nonsense about "new physics" and string theory being a government plot. There's not really much room left for the sort of radical revolutionary outcomes the UFOlogist types insist on.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
The ones who will increase their hatred are the ones who need to be punished more. The ones who recognize the danger of DEI will be satisfied knowing that they’ve made a noble sacrifice for the holistic health of civilization and its progress. The thing about deterrence is that it’s better to do it quickly and harshly, as then you never have to inflict it again out of fear.
TT doesn’t have to be personally interested or personally engaged in the politics. He simply needs to voice his opinion on new department heads in an email, or apply to a school without DEI, or ask about it in the interview, or ask a grad student to keep an eye out for DEI words. This is enough pressure to curb DEI.
The reason DEI was able to spiral is because the spiral did not affect the academics’ social status, but actually increased it. One way to lower the status of DEI is to make it associated with defunded and destroyed institutions. If it weren’t for the threat of China, I would say the deterrence should have been much stronger.
Tanista
1hr ago
People understand it's political. That's why the claim is often that science is always political so you're either for good things or for bad things.
But simply stating "I thought we were on the verge of a thousand year woke reich and would never face consequences (but I certainly would if I defected)" is unflattering.
It's not where they stop as regards the world is general, but it's the only demand that's relevant to a researcher who's already got a job in academia.
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