The Heterodox Academy is not “outraged conservatives.” It is, well…heterodox.
Category Archives: Education
Twitter’s War On The Right
Ed Driscoll has a roundup of links. Ken White (no fan of Stacy’s) is enraged. And more from Allum Bokhari.
I find it outrageous that Twitter has put Anita Sarkeesian (among others) in charge of policing speech. I won’t be surprised if I get suspended at some point.
As I’ve been tweeting occasionally as Twitter seems to be determined to reinvent itself into irrelevance, they are opening up a market opportunity for a social medium that allows everyone short posts of 140 characters, shown in chronological order.
[Early afternoon update]
From the Harvard Business Review, why Twitter is losing users:
Abuse has become something like a systematized feature of life as we know it, in this age of discontent — and maybe that’s why it is an age of discontent. We expect to be mistreated by our bosses, ripped off by contracts we can’t read, swindled by fine print and hidden clauses, deceived by our politicians, and misrepresented by our representatives… and now, on the medium where we spend the majority of our waking lives, heckled and bullied by complete strangers.
In turn, we internalize the lessons of abuse, becoming little abusers ourselves. We expect to have to mistreat our customers, exploit our communities, bully our peers, cut corners, manipulate our colleagues, bail on our obligations, package the lowest common denominator at the highest possible price as a miracle-in-a-can… not just if we want to get ahead, but merely to anxiously tread water. And though it takes different forms, abuse is essentially what’s being piped through the tubes of the internet, or through the headquarters of VW, and into the water of Flint, Michigan.
The tech industry turns a blind eye to it. Courts excuse it. And abuse stops being the exception, and becomes the rule. We grow accustomed not just to the abuse itself, but to the fact that nothing’s going to be done about it. It’s treated as a customer service problem, or a PR crisis, not a core business issue.
Note that nowhere in this word salad is what constitutes “abuse” actually described. Which is what allows the Social Justice League to shut down dissent.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related: Rutgers students melt down after hearing a conservative speak.
Concealed Carry On Texas Campuses
An “embarrassingly stupid” argument against it.
These people aren’t capable of being embarrassed at the stupidity of their arguments.
Explaining Trump’s Appeal
A timely essay on the current state of the nation from Charles Murray.
[Sunday-morning update]
A bridge too far: I agree with Ace that Trump finally damaged himself last night, at least with actual Republicans. It’s one thing to say we had bad intel; it’s entirely another to say that Bush deliberately lied us into war. That’s the ravings of the left, not a leading Republican candidate.
The Death Of Academia
This is a few weeks old, but I missed it at the time: a disturbing interview with Jonathan Haidt:
JONATHAN HAIDT: The big thing that really worries me – the reason why I think things are going to get much, much worse – is that one of the causal factors here is the change in child-rearing that happened in America in the 1980s. With the rise in crime, amplified by the rise of cable TV, we saw much more protective, fearful parenting. Children since the 1980s have been raised very differently–protected as fragile. The key psychological idea, which should be mentioned in everything written about this, is Nassim Taleb’s concept of anti-fragility.
JOHN LEO: What’s the theory?
JONATHAN HAIDT: That children are anti-fragile. Bone is anti-fragile. If you treat it gently, it will get brittle and break. Bone actually needs to get banged around to toughen up. And so do children. I’m not saying they need to be spanked or beaten, but they need to have a lot of unsupervised time, to get in over their heads and get themselves out. And that greatly decreased in the 1980s. Anxiety, fragility and psychological weakness have skyrocketed in the last 15-20 years. So, I think millennials come to college with much thinner skins. And therefore, until that changes, I think we’re going to keep seeing these demands to never hear anything offensive.
They won’t survive the real world.
The Science-Correction Process
It’s as broken as peer review.
As with civil (and military) space, we have a 20th-century system in place for the 21st century.
Update a few minutes later]
Related: Why scientists hide their doubts about global warming from the media.
[Update a cuple minutes later]
Sorry, HTML was broken for first link, should be fixed now.
Violating The Norms And Ethos Of Science
A roundup of links and discussion of the latest in scientific “transparency.”
In my opinion, science that has any policy implications (I’m looking at you, climate and nutrition) has gone completely off the rails.
“Literally”
They are figuratively all Joe Biden now.
Asking For Permission
“…is the biggest turn-off ever.” Ashe Schow, on how feminism is ruining sex.
The Campus Turmoil
…the discussion began, and it was the most unremittingly hostile questioning I’ve ever had. I don’t mind when people ask hard or critical questions, but I was surprised that I had misread the audience so thoroughly. My talk had little to do with gender, but the second question was “So you think rape is OK?”
Like most of the questions, it was backed up by a sea of finger snaps — the sort you can hear in the infamous Yale video, where a student screams at Prof. Christakis to “be quiet” and tells him that he is “disgusting.” I had never heard the snapping before. When it happens in a large auditorium it is disconcerting. It makes you feel that you are facing an angry and unified mob — a feeling I have never had in 25 years of teaching and public speaking.
After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male. I began to search the sea of hands asking to be called on and I did find one boy, who asked a question that indicated that he too was critical of my talk. But other than him, the 200 or so boys in the audience sat silently.
After the Q&A, I got a half-standing ovation: almost all of the boys in the room stood up to cheer. And after the crowd broke up, a line of boys came up to me to thank me and shake my hand. Not a single girl came up to me afterward.
This is almost Orwellian. OK, not “almost.”