If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

Lengthy but excellent. Could have easily put this in the Education thread.

Haidt is a reserved and fair speaker, so it makes it easier to watch him despite what I think are meta-descriptive issues with his talk. Also, I'm not sure that we can still categorize the telos of scholarship as "truth." I understand the rhetorical move of that association, but to me it raises some quite serious implications relating to a hierarchy of social fields. This isn't really a major concern because I'm willing to grant Haidt the benefit of the doubt; but claiming that the telos of scholarship is truth seems, in my opinion, to privilege scholarship on the social hierarchy. After all, "truth" (whatever it is) has to apply equally to all other fields, and would also seem to govern their actions. I can't square his sense of truth. But anyway, that's another issue.

My bigger problem is with his self-admitted objectivity (for lack of a better word), which he states when showing his stats on left-wing academics in psychology departments. "I'm a centrist" he says. Haidt's entire shtick rests upon his ability to distance himself from ideological engagement. In order to maintain a position, he says, you need to understand the opposition and be able to defend your beliefs against it; and he establishes himself on the basis that he understands not only his own position, but those of liberals and conservatives. In fact, he has a better view of the antagonism because he's outside of it, so to speak.

This whole lecture would be way more interesting and convincing if he took his own position into account. The "truth," since it's already been brought up, is that Haidt is as ideologically and politically inflected as any liberal or conservative. He elides the way his politics influence his scholarship, and that strikes me as disingenuous. If I missed that somehow, then I apologize; but based on my viewing, this seems like a simplistic and somewhat non-reflexive critique of the two contradictory positions.

The fact that he's also generalizing and (nearly) universalizing various humanities fields is really troubling. His evidence would seem to be popular media coverage of academic departments, not any engagement with them himself. For instance, he insinuates that most academics in, let's say, gender and women's studies would claim that engineering is sexist because it employs fewer women. This is an outrageous claim that you might indeed find on certain particularly radical campuses and in certain departments on those campuses, but I find it extremely hard to believe that it is a widespread opinion among humanities departments throughout the country.

I really don't mind Haidt, I think he's fine; but I don't find his work very engaging.

Also, what's with the J.S. Mill vs. Karl Marx dichotomy at the beginning? How does he derive any opposition from the two quotes he selected? (not that there isn't opposition there, but he did a horrible job of explaining Marx's quote)

 

[Dak]

Haidt is a reserved and fair speaker, so it makes it easier to watch him despite what I think are meta-descriptive issues with his talk. Also, I'm not sure that we can still categorize the telos of scholarship as "truth." I understand the rhetorical move of that association, but to me it raises some quite serious implications relating to a hierarchy of social fields. This isn't really a major concern because I'm willing to grant Haidt the benefit of the doubt; but claiming that the telos of scholarship is truth seems, in my opinion, to privilege scholarship on the social hierarchy. After all, "truth" (whatever it is) has to apply equally to all other fields, and would also seem to govern their actions. I can't square his sense of truth. But anyway, that's another issue.


Also, what's with the J.S. Mill vs. Karl Marx dichotomy at the beginning? How does he derive any opposition from the two quotes he selected? (not that there isn't opposition there, but he did a horrible job of explaining Marx's quote)

Marx's quote may or may not be out of context, I am not familiar with the context. The larger point is that, and I would agree to a significant degree with Haidt that the "atmosphere" if you will, that I have experienced in a public university revolves much more around "making a difference" and "being active" than being broadly learned and critically evaluating all sides. I'm sure this is less pronounced in the engineering and science wings than in the humanities but it pervades the campus.

My bigger problem is with his self-admitted objectivity (for lack of a better word), which he states when showing his stats on left-wing academics in psychology departments. "I'm a centrist" he says. Haidt's entire shtick rests upon his ability to distance himself from ideological engagement. In order to maintain a position, he says, you need to understand the opposition and be able to defend your beliefs against it; and he establishes himself on the basis that he understands not only his own position, but those of liberals and conservatives. In fact, he has a better view of the antagonism because he's outside of it, so to speak.

As far as I can tell he's still a liberal, but he is not so taken with the "no enemies to the left" mantra that he is unmoored from a more classical take on what it means to be a liberal. His point about the limited and specific benefit of "diversity" needs to be on repeat for people like Mort.
I think he recognizes that the identity politics version of "diversity" threatens itself in the long run.

This whole lecture would be way more interesting and convincing if he took his own position into account. The "truth," since it's already been brought up, is that Haidt is as ideologically and politically inflected as any liberal or conservative. He elides the way his politics influence his scholarship, and that strikes me as disingenuous. If I missed that somehow, then I apologize; but based on my viewing, this seems like a simplistic and somewhat non-reflexive critique of the two contradictory positions.

I really don't mind Haidt, I think he's fine; but I don't find his work very engaging.

He's pretty open in general about being a liberal, but his personally developed area of interest in human psychology combined with his respect for meaningful diversity has provided him a platform to push an agenda of political inclusion/diversity that is, frankly, not to be found generally on the right or left, but most definitely not on the left in this the current year.

The fact that he's also generalizing and (nearly) universalizing various humanities fields is really troubling. His evidence would seem to be popular media coverage of academic departments, not any engagement with them himself. For instance, he insinuates that most academics in, let's say, gender and women's studies would claim that engineering is sexist because it employs fewer women. This is an outrageous claim that you might indeed find on certain particularly radical campuses and in certain departments on those campuses, but I find it extremely hard to believe that it is a widespread opinion among humanities departments throughout the country.

Those radical campuses, such as the Ivy Leagues or Oberlin etc drive the ideology.

@rms Only the first half is lecture, the latter half is Q&A.

 

[rms]

I was messin around

I thought Haidt was a conservative though? i've seen vids before but it's been awhile. I also thought that centrist part was a joke but idk

 

[Einherjar86]

@Dak thanks for the responses. I only have a question on this comment:

Those radical campuses, such as the Ivy Leagues or Oberlin etc drive the ideology.

What do you mean by this? I know for a fact that, while plenty of grad students in the humanities lean left at schools like BU, Brandeis, Tufts, UMass, MIT, etc., we don't measure our left-ness against Harvard. Compare curricula across Boston-area colleges and you'll find plenty of crossover. I attend plenty of events hosted by BU and Harvard (there's a series at a place called the Mahindra Center at Harvard where faculty from schools all over Boston work together on various events), and there isn't any waving of radical flags to see whose safe spaces are bigger.

There's this impression of humanities departments (which I've encountered in my own family) that all we do is sit in rooms reading leftist treatises and chanting Marxist dicta to one another. It's really frustrating because this is not at all what the average English department is like, in the Ivy Leagues or elsewhere.

Every grad student I've conversed with about "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" thinks the media debate deals in excesses that don't correspond to the reality. And I'm not talking about grad students at BU - I've talked with people at other schools around Boston and around the country at conferences like MLA. The general consensus usually admits to informing students about sensitive content (I'm talking either American Psycho level brutality, or potentially personal thematic material like suicide a la Infinite Jest), but doesn't condone the alteration or excising of content. No teacher wants to cut from the syllabus or make concessions based purely on a student's reception of the material. If a student has issues with certain content it's up to the teacher to deal with it, either by making the issue into a discussion (if appropriate), or speaking with the student one-on-one.

I honestly think the whole issue is colored by media portrayals of particularly extreme cases in academia and by cherry-picked samples from student protests (after all, we've discussed the misleading news elsewhere - how come it's suddenly accurate when it deals with radical academia?). The experience of teaching, based on my experience at BU and what I've heard from others, generally falls into an acceptable middle range.

 

[arg]

Don't all lefty and ivy league universities want to be sanctuaries for illegal students? Blow public funding on them and give them scholarships? While increasing tuition on paying students? Fucking disgraceful

 

[Einherjar86]

No, because most "foreign" students that you're referring to didn't come here illegally - their parents or grandparents did.

Plenty of American universities host undocumented students legally - they apply as "international." You don't need to be an American citizen to go to school here, there's nothing illegal about it.

The majority of scholarship funding goes to American-born whites.

 

[CiG]

The majority of scholarship funding goes to American-born whites.

For some reason I thought it would be Asians, but I guess whites are the majority by raw numbers.

 

[arg]

Well we need to get rid of DACA, and then require universities to only enroll international students that have legal residence, and make them pay for themselves, or have -private- sponsors.

 

[Dak]

@Dak thanks for the responses. I only have a question on this comment:

What do you mean by this? I know for a fact that, while plenty of grad students in the humanities lean left at schools like BU, Brandeis, Tufts, UMass, MIT, etc., we don't measure our left-ness against Harvard.
.....
There's this impression of humanities departments (which I've encountered in my own family) that all we do is sit in rooms reading leftist treatises and chanting Marxist dicta to one another. It's really frustrating because this is not at all what the average English department is like, in the Ivy Leagues or elsewhere.

I'm not saying there's a checklist or scale of leftist virtue signaling being circulated via listserv or anything of that nature. But advancing a particular idea or ideology involves breaking new ground, and this is most likely done at leading institutions in that area. For general progressiveness, this is going to either be at what is a general leading institution, or a niche place like Oberlin. These are the institutions putting out the most novel or groundbreaking ideas and/or graduating the most influential people.

Graduate English programs I'm sure have much more to cover than Marx, but the ideological threads that are woven throughout Marxist literature also weave through much of the influential literature and theory in the arts, even if not explicitly so. Obviously it's more of an undergraduate stereotype to be walking around with either a copy of Atlas Shrugged or the Communist Manifesto and quoting from them at length in response to any even obliquely related query.

No teacher wants to cut from the syllabus or make concessions based purely on a student's reception of the material. If a student has issues with certain content it's up to the teacher to deal with it, either by making the issue into a discussion (if appropriate), or speaking with the student one-on-one.

I honestly think the whole issue is colored by media portrayals of particularly extreme cases in academia and by cherry-picked samples from student protests (after all, we've discussed the misleading news elsewhere - how come it's suddenly accurate when it deals with radical academia?). The experience of teaching, based on my experience at BU and what I've heard from others, generally falls into an acceptable middle range.

Of course only the most extreme or novel situations are going to get the bulk of the relevant coverage. There aren't enough media or viewer resources to cover every nuanced situation. I do think that professors engaging in xyz activity are more telling about the state of liberal academia than Richard Spencer's statements are about pretty much anything not within his little sphere. Yet the latter received far more media coverage from any media outlet not named Fox or Breitbart than did xyz "extremist" professor.

 

[Dak]

 

[rms]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/...DB8C29030CA4682BA111BE28595E48BE&gwt=pay&_r=0

some of the quotes are whacky but I guess i'm a republican after reading this?

 

[Dak]

My experience supports my perception (or vice versa!) that most people are self-absorbed assholes. I think women are necessarily doubly so, but they are or at least more refined about it than men. Feminism has disallowed the social refining of this gross self-absorption, while encouraging the natural male acquiescence. These sex based inclinations are natural and necessary for the perpetuation of the species. I also think the original societal developments were, in general, necessary for the improvement of the species. Feminism may have originally been in reaction to excesses in the developments towards improvements, but has long since overstayed its welcome or benefit in its organized format.

 

[rms]

I didn't think of this at first, but the article only talks about one kind of inequality, gender based harassment largely in the workplace. Slight mentions of abortion (body freedom I guess they call it now) and 'catcalls' -- like that's all the difference between the two

zzz

 

[CiG]

It's a dangerous time right now because leftist politics like the things rms mentioned are becoming more and more boring and stale, whereas Trumpian/alt. right politics are looking more and more exciting and edgy.

I've been noticing a lot of switching among people I mingle with, nationalism for example is definitely on the rise here in Australia.

 

[Einherjar86]

These sex based inclinations are natural and necessary for the perpetuation of the species.

I can't with this, haha. It could be argued that feminist efforts and movements contributed indirectly to scientific developments in birth control, alternative fertilization, hormone therapy, stem cell research, etc. Sex-based inclinations, as you describe them, were almost certainly derived from more basic tendencies that at one point were evolutionarily important; but that doesn't make them natural or necessary for the perpetuation of the species.

Additionally, the perpetuation of the species doesn't mean halting evolutionary development at the human moment because now all of the sudden we have values that we're in fear of losing. Humans are just one transit point on the way to something else.

 

[Dak]

I can't with this, haha. It could be argued that feminist efforts and movements contributed indirectly to scientific developments in birth control, alternative fertilization, hormone therapy, stem cell research, etc. Sex-based inclinations, as you describe them, were almost certainly derived from more basic tendencies that at one point were evolutionarily important; but that doesn't make them natural or necessary for the perpetuation of the species.

I fail to see how any of that relates to the perpetuation of the species. If anything some of it works against.

Additionally, the perpetuation of the species doesn't mean halting evolutionary development at the human moment because now all of the sudden we have values that we're in fear of losing. Humans are just one transit point on the way to something else.

And yet we laud the resilience of animals that have shown the ability to persevere and shake our heads at the dinosaurs. I see no reason to prefer some thing in the future purely because it's later along a timeline. There's no guarantee of improvement, only change.

 

[Einherjar86]

I fail to see how any of that relates to the perpetuation of the species. If anything some of it works against.

That's because I don't agree with the way you define "perpetuation of the species." The vast majority of species don't perpetuate. They adapt and evolve, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And yet we laud the resilience of animals that have shown the ability to persevere and shake our heads at the dinosaurs. I see no reason to prefer some thing in the future purely because it's later along a timeline. There's no guarantee of improvement, only change.

I'm not preferring something in the future; but you are preferring something in the past. And it's equally invalid to prefer the past simply because it's earlier on the timeline.

I don't know who this "we" is you're talking about. Who lauds resilient animals like cockroaches or ants? And who shakes their heads at the dinosaurs? What's the point in even framing the issue in this way?

 

[Dak]

That's because I don't agree with the way you define "perpetuation of the species." The vast majority of species don't perpetuate. They adapt and evolve

Or die out.

I'm not preferring something in the future; but you are preferring something in the past. And it's equally invalid to prefer the past simply because it's earlier on the timeline.

I think I was clear that it's not just because of a different point in time.

I don't know who this "we" is you're talking about. Who lauds resilient animals like cockroaches or ants? And who shakes their heads at the dinosaurs? What's the point in even framing the issue in this way?

Um, biologists? Documentaries?

I frame it this way because of my addendum at the beginning. Dying out is the most common future for any given species. Avoiding dying out is mostly luck. We have via consciousness at the least, some ability to avoid that end.

 

[Einherjar86]

Or die out.

When expansive, long-term species die out dramatically, it isn't because they're maladapted to their environment; it's usually because of a radical and disruptive intrusion into their environment - hence the dinosaurs.

But, alternatively, you can also say that the dinosaurs didn't die out, in your very black and white terminology. They evolved into birds.

I think I was clear that it's not just because of a different point in time.

But that's actually all it is. You don't like contemporary developments and want to go back to a "simpler time" when you know things worked. But there's no reason to assume that those things haven't already changed along with the technological developments of the past century or so.

Um, biologists? Documentaries?

I'm not following the rhetorical point of juxtaposing animals that have survived with the dinosaurs. I don't think contemporary biologists lament the passing of the dinosaurs.

I frame it this way because of my addendum at the beginning. Dying out is the most common future for any given species. Avoiding dying out is mostly luck. We have via consciousness at the least, some ability to avoid that end.

And some might argue that consciousness will contribute to that end.

My resistance here is to your cordoning off the human as a stable and consistent biological entity aside from technological and scientific intervention. Technological and scientific interventions can, in and of themselves, be construed as evolutionary developments. It's not logical to assume that archaic sexual tendencies will continue to work when technological interventions are rendering them obsolete; and it's additionally illogical to assume that technological developments and interventions aren't actively changing the parameters for survival. These parameters might not coincide with dated notions of human survival, but then there's also no reason to assume that humanity won't evolve along with these new interventions.

I just don't think your position is realistic or practical.

 

[Dak]

Reliance on technogical substitutions for natural processes increases potential for catastrophic failure and general fragility. Basic physiological functioning and time tested social arrangements are much less vulnerable to various threats than complex technology that demands and energy and infrastructure that cannot be depended on.