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What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not "conservatism" in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called "the Gods of the Market Place." We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.
As I think about it, I'm not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn't a "teaching" with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.
To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.
It's what used to be called a liberal education.
The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.
Bret Stephens's speech warrants a full read. It makes valuable points that we all need to hear, even on SN.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by moondrake on Wednesday September 27 2017, @11:21AM (25 children)
Interesting article. And I agree to some extent.
The question I would like to as him however is:
It is clear that intelligent opinions should be protected, and should be listened to, and, if we disagree, we can do so after fully understanding them.
But he also mentions hate speech. Now I am too lazy to look up what exactly is the definition. But I am going to assume that hate speech not necessarily is a very intelligent opinion. What about this. Should we really protect the speech of individuals or organizations who set out to on purpose spread a lot of emotional ("populist pap" as he calls it himself). I feel his speech is left intentionally vague on this subject, and since this is exactly where the problems come from.
In the past, there were far fewer people engaging into intelligent debate. Populist speeches with intellectuals do not get you very far. But these days, everything some people say and do is seen an heard by the majority of the population. And they will sometimes act on it (or at least vote on it). I think disinviting people has more to do with a concern about the effect that the speaker (and your apparent endorsement) would have on society, than with doubting your own ability to engage in an intelligent discourse.
But perhaps I am just being elitist again.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @11:47AM
You should. Because otherwise, you just end up granting a monopoly on it (also known as "propagand") to the powers that be.
And when counter-propagand is forbidden by law, as "hate speech" or whatever, they will easily drum up popular support for absolutely any kind of atrocity. Modern history is littered by examples.
(Score: 5, Disagree) by VLM on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:37PM (9 children)
That's a huge mistake in that regardless of what something IS, NAMING and calling out something as hate speech is a mere propaganda tactic to censor speech regardless of what it IS.
In practice a democrat calling republican ideas "hate speech" doesn't mean its hate speech, in fact it has nothing to do with what the speech is, it merely means they have enough government and media control to have the government forcibly censor the speaker. Historically that always backfires and results in guillotines, showers and gas chambers, etc.
There's also the big lie effect. If I'm claiming the world will end for biblical numerical code reasons tomorrow, no one will believe me, thats dumb. It doesn't need censorship. Or even crazier, VIM is superior to EMACS or systemd is great, those ideas don't NEED state sponsored violence to censor them. On the other hand take a political movement from the 60s (although going back much further) and it no longer usefully models or predicts reality yet it controls the government and media. You have to violently censor opposition to shut opposition down, because, after all, the opposition is currently correct. Nothing says an idea is true, its fundamentally verified and proven and useful, like the only remaining weapon against it being violence, or even worse, state sponsored violence. Nothing admits the death of left wing political opinion like its demand that the only defense it has against modern right wing thought is state violence. It no longer has a moral or ethical justification, its no longer useful predicatively, the general public has lost its faith other than the occasional social striver types... The left demanding state supported violence as its only remaining argument means they're done, obsolete, stick a fork in them, kaput. All the left wing has anymore as an argument is a boot stomping on a human face forever. No remaining moral or ethical arguments, mere violence. Which of course will eventually be responded back to in kind times a hundred, which of course leads to eye for eye stuff which never turns out well. Calls for violence are intellectually cowardice of a dying belief system. The right doesn't need violence to be wildly popular, that is what terrifies the left into demanding violence against them.
There's also the truly weird meta observation that its somehow seen as good to have the state use violence against non-violent speech, and the state should use violence against stupid opinions. The first problem is it eliminates non-violent civil disobedience as an option. Bye Bye Ghandi, hello assassins and death squads. The wheel always turns and now that the precedent has been set to violently punish non-violent right wing people, after the wheel rotates some more, we have precedence to give antifa people free helicopter rides, or send them to death camps. An eye for an eye, like that ever works. What would someone gain by cranking up the volume control on political violence for no really good reason? The second issue is even weirder big brother like. If its good for the government to use violence against dumb opinions, then we have a world where football sportscaster commentators and economists will be dragged out on live TV and beheaded by our own police when their predictions are wrong. That cooking recipe on the TV show has the wrong ratio of liquid fats for an ideal chocolate chip cookie? The police will blow her head off on national TV. Again it just seems idiotic to increase the level of political / police violence for no apparent good reason.
There's also the dog whistle effect that leftism, being intellectually bankrupt, is merely racist and sexist anti-white-male ranting in the modern era. Calling for violence against the right is "really" just genocidal calling for violence against a race and gender. That will be responded to in kind; note who has historically brutally ruled the earth. It wasn't Somalians and feminist lesbians setting up gas chambers in Germany. Go ahead, if you're brave, go tickle the dragon and see what the response is. Its not gonna be fun, but its gonna be ... effective ... In that way, calling for racist oriented violence against historically the worlds strongest and most ruthless race of warriors is somewhat suicidal.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 27 2017, @02:20PM (3 children)
Score 4:disagree - that's impressive, in and of itself.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:04PM (2 children)
Your post really should be modded Disagree.
An infinite amount of Disagree mods can be applied because they don't change the score. The comment gets labeled with the mod reason with the highest number of occurrences. In the case of a tie, the last mod reason of the tied reasons get applied. So a comment that gets modded Disagree, Insightful, Insightful, Disagree, and Funny in that order should be labeled Disagree. If it then gets modded with Funny again, it will be labeled Funny.
4 Disagree beats 2 Insightful on VLM's comment.
The only exceptions appear to be Underrated and Overrated. No comments can get labeled that. You can't even mod a comment as Underrated or Overrated unless some other mod has been applied first (including Disagree, oddly enough).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:20PM (1 child)
Doh! Bug.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:09PM
Which part? I think I have mentioned the Disagree + Underrated/Overrated combo before but I never filed a bug on it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Disagree) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 27 2017, @05:51PM (3 children)
So basically your entire post boils down to "Don't fuck with the worst of us, it'll go badly for you. Don't use our methods against us. We're bigger assholes than you." Lovely. I really like how people like you just utterly spill your guts unintentionally when you say things like this. Just come out and say you want to be a big man in your new right-wing utopia already. We get it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:43PM
It really is eye opening. I tend to give people too much benefit of the doubt, it really REALLY helps me to see the unfiltered bullshit people believe in. "Why yes, there are evil fuckers who would throw you into a concentration camp if they could." I wonder how much is from their persecution complex, maybe in the 1830's VLM would be regarded as a sophisticated intellectual with quite the liberal sensibility.
I couldn't even read his rant, but apparently they are learning from us liberals and trying to coopt "dog whistle" like we did with snowflake. Little late to the game, typical beta.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:34AM (1 child)
So what exactly is your point, holocaust denial, or some kind of moral argument against "beware of dog" signs?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 28 2017, @04:10AM
My point, VLM, is that you have repeatedly on this site, and more blatantly as time goes on, shown yourself to be an ally and fellow-traveler of fascists. You essentially just said "hey lefties, don't try to out-Nazi us, we do it better 'cause we're the originals."
And you're right about that, in a way: very few liberals I've ever met are anything like the staring, wild-eyed, twitching genocidal fanatics all too many right-wingers I've seen turn out to be. You've just added yourself to that list. Go (back?) to whatever Hell you want, just leave us decent humans alone.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @06:46PM
Oh Noes! Not the "White Genocide"? Actually, VLM, it is more just about you, not whites in general. So not really genocide in any coherent sense.
(Score: 4, Disagree) by choose another one on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:58PM (2 children)
I agree with essentially all the article, my only fear is that in doing this I have missed the point...
Who defines which opinions are "intelligent" and therefore protected and which are not, and therefore not?
How can you even _begin_ to decide unless all opinions can be heard and are therefore protected?
There isn't one, or at least not a single agreed one. That is part of the problem, in fact it is arguably central to it - the idea that you can ban something when there is no agreement on what the something actually is.
Absolutely not, once we have a universal consensus on a definition of "populist pap" it should definitely be banned. I started on a working definition, the bible and the koran are obviously out due to being hate speech, as is anything that criticises them because that is anti-religious hate speech, young earth creationism is obviously pap, but then I got stuck at the "flat earth" guys because I cannot figure out if they are actually satire...
One wonders how we ever had civilised debate and disagreement when hosting a speaker is "apparent endorsement". Presumably anyone who hosts two speakers with opposing views should be locked up and forcibly treated for schizophrenia...
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Wednesday September 27 2017, @02:43PM (1 child)
> I agree with essentially all the article, my only fear is that in doing this I have missed the point...
+1 Funny. But perhaps you might have missed my point as well.
I wrote my post like that because I feel the author is inconsistent on these issues. He does (presumably on purpose) talks about intelligent debate. So he is not that convinced by his own idea and added this subjective adjective.
I am very aware of the silliness of trying to decide where to put the line between good and bad opinions (should have made that clear). But, at the same time, I can perfectly understand people that ban speakers because they fear what they are going to say. And I did indicate why: there are consequences attached to having some people give their opinion. And I am not prepared to say free speech is better than a riot (not saying it is the other way round either. I just do not know).
What I disagree with is that I do not think people have lost their ability to disagree but that the ones that did int he past are in the minority now. And I do not think that is fixable in the short term.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 28 2017, @03:20AM
I suspect the speaker would be fine with your pointing out inconsistencies of his. It's part of the ethos he subscribes to (i do, too, as a fellow alumnus of his). Be ready for him to come back at you with sharper reasoning than before, though. It's the beautiful dialectic that can arise when we do not let each other get away with mental laziness; everyone gets smarter.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @03:11PM (10 children)
People rarely hold beliefs they find to be stupid. We always consider our opinions to be the intelligent opinions.
And our opinions are more often than not a result of our culture, which changes constantly. For instance in many Muslims countries the vast majority of the population believes it is perfectly moral and ethical to kill individuals for not believing in the right god. It's part of formal law in a variety of countries, notably including the head of the UN Human Right's Council - Saudi Arabia. Our notion is that people ought be free to worship whatever they choose and so we view that as the 'intelligent' view. I think the natural defense is to say well we support freedom - and freedom is naturally intelligent, so therefore we are right. People ought be free to do things that are in no way directly harming others. It's intelligent - it's logical. So a man should be free to masturbate in public? Any harm there is a product of people's own imagining, much in the same way that these Islamic countries find not believing in the right religion to be an unbelievable assault on common decency. Pointing out such contradictions exposes the fact that our views are hardly based in some rock solid foundation. We're just another culture that defines what's right and just (and intelligent) as "what we think."
Or for instance I do certainly agree that there is likely a different distribution of intelligence among racists and non racists. To suggest otherwise would be rather denying reality. On the other hand I also would agree that there is a different distribution of intelligence among whites and blacks. Again, to suggest otherwise would be rather denying reality (and substantial data). It's interesting that though both statements are little more than an acceptance of data, one is considered progressive and enlightened and the other is considered borderline hate speech -- certainly racist at the minimum. And I'm certainly no racist nor 'hater', but again just illustrating that what we define as culturally acceptable or 'socially intelligent speech' is really quite arbitrary. And so defining what is or is not allowed to be said on moral level (e.g. the reason you cannot yell fire in a theater is rather different than what we're discussing) is something that can only lead to abuse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 27 2017, @05:57PM (9 children)
Regarding those last two (differing intelligence in racists/non-racists vs. different intelligence in whites and blacks), it is entirely possible to accept both...but in order not to have it make you a racist, you have to look at the second one and NOT jump to the "obvious" conclusion "therefore blacks are inherently, genetically, less intelligent."
Two things about that: 1) a fair amount of intelligence is environmental. One of my friends from my old high school got into Cooper Union on his own merits, and since that school was Bronx Science, he got into THAT purely on mental muscle too. He was about the color of recording tape. But his parents were also rich, and he lived in (what was at the time...) a nice part of Brooklyn. And 2) Even if it turns out some group *is* genetically less intelligent as a whole, SO WHAT? Does that make them less human?
This is the problem with most people and statistics: they think statistics are moral judgments. No. They're just facts; they're dead, inert spreadsheets of data. They tell the what, not the why or the how.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:14PM (8 children)
Very off topic, but I do think this is an interesting though somewhat depressing tangent. I used to plan to adopt. My wife is in her mid thirties and enjoys her career. As a child I was part of the 'Big Brothers and Big Sisters' program and it changed my life, radically, for the better. So I've always wanted to give something back. We likely would have adopted a black child. I think people like Morgan Freeman, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, etc have done a phenomenal good in this world. Anyhow it'd be easier for him to get a full ride as well! ;-) But seriously black children are mostly unwanted and this perpetuates a cycle that I also felt primarily a result of poor environments (and certainly a bit of poor culture as well). Genuinely give something back to the world, and help raise a child that could give even more back? What more could one want?
Then I bumped into this [wikipedia.org] study. It's a longterm study of upper class intelligent whites, in Minnesota, adopting minority children. It followed the children for their prime early schooling years - age 7 to 17. The results are terribly depressing. The racial background of the children has an extremely strong and apparently causal link to their educational performance and IQ. A good early age environment can help mask genetic issues, but a recurring theme with IQ is that while our early IQ is driven by environment - our later age IQ is more and more driven by genetics. Even an incredibly privileged upbringing, as these children all had, is insufficient to overcome this. By age 17 the children who had two black biological parents were already about a standard deviation under the median. If you're not aware of how IQ works, it is population relative. The median is set, by definition to 100, with a standard deviation of 15 points.
I think there's a pretty natural objection here. It could still be culture. Especially as the child grows older, the influence of the parents is going to diminish and if the child chooses to adopt a culture that doesn't put education first (to put it one way) then it'd be natural to expect that their performance would decline - regardless of genetics. And this is where it gets more depressing. The study, completely inadvertently, had a phenomenal control group for this. 12 of the children who had one white and one black parent were misidentified by the adopters (and themselves no doubt) as being completely black. They thus would have a more or less identical environmental/cultural drive as the other children who were genuinely from two black parents. Their performance was the same as the children who were identified and aware they were half black and half white. That is... depressing.
I expect that study is a large part of the reason that organized and well planned studies on IQ and various groups has somewhat gone by the wayside. I'm certain the intended goal was to put a nail in the coffin of prejudice, but instead they told us precisely the opposite of what we all felt and wanted to be true.
----
Regardless of course I do agree that this does not make anybody less human. At the same time, I think our increasingly politically correct culture is doing a great disservice to people. Imagine you were 5'9" and told you could make it in the NBA, anybody can if they just try hard. Here we'll even give make it just a little bit easier for you to get recruited. You'll see, all you need is some encouragement and role models! Muggsby Bogues did after all and he was just 5'3"! Of course he was also an absolutely outlier freak of nature in practically every other trait related to basketball. If he was born a normal height, let alone tall, he would have gone down a Michael Jordan instead of a trivia factoid. But let's not mention that! I don't know what the solution is, but telling everybody to just try harder is simply disingenuous when viewing things at a population level granularity. I can't imagine the anger and frustration that must build in the individuals who are born into a competitive world where genetic characteristics, completely outside of their control, hold them back, like a man trying to win a race with a weight wrapped around his foot and everybody keeps trying to explain why he's not winning without ever mentioning that weight - simply because the thought of that unfair and inherent inequity is something that's discomforting to even consider.
But if you start with the assumption that people are inequal, then I think there is a much stronger case to be made for having a strong social safety net and a general overall improvement in the quality of life for people of all 'classes.' It's the paradox of politics today. Conservatives believe individuals are inherently unequal, and then argue anybody can improve their position in life if they just 'pulls themselves up by their bootstraps.' That makes no sense. And similarly liberals propose that people are all inherently equal, but we need programs to help the less privileged. That also makes no sense. If everybody is equal then the only difference between the various stories of homeless to Harvard is a matter of people putting their mind to the task at hand. That is most certainly not true. Fundamentally, I think the right path forward is always the truth - even when the truth is something that is painful to seriously consider.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:42PM (6 children)
That was looking very close to a troll post until the last couple sentences, and I'm still undecided. The fallacy there is the "...liberals propose that people are all inherently equal, but we need programs to help the less privileged" bit. Specifically, you're equivocating; inherent equal worth is not the same thing as having equal intellects, strength, talents, etc.
Don't confuse the two; it's precisely that conflation that leads to the racist-arguments-from-statistics problem I pointed out above.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:46PM
But mehhhhh logic is haaaaaard!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:28AM
The greatest lies ever told:
1) The check's in the mail.
2) I won't cum in your mouth.
3) All men are created equal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @05:35AM (3 children)
How, precisely, would you define an individual's worth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @10:25AM
as being equal to all other individuals.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 28 2017, @04:50PM (1 child)
We're talking about innate humanity here. Human? Worth 1 human. There are other dimensions, but they have nothing to do with basic humanity.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @06:52PM
Right, I think you're more or less obligated to answer this way following your last comment - though I did not want to make assumptions. Let me explain why this belief might be hampering progress. I think my views are relatively typical in that I've always understood that there are biological differences between individuals, but felt that these differences are mostly irrelevant - and largely supplanted by environmental factors. If we're using a scoring system then people might start on a range of 0-10 where genetics adds or removes a point or two, but then environmental factors add or remove 5 or 6 points.
Because of this I've always been hugely in favor of systems for helping to improve the education, opportunity, and access for groups for disadvantaged groups to rise to their full potential. As mentioned, the 'Big Brothers and Big Sisters' certainly 'worked' for me. However, at the same time I've always looked a bit dubiously on things that work to provide comfort. I worked my way out of the 'hood' in large part because it was awful. I did not want to be stuck there for the rest of my life and the only out I saw was education - my state university, which is also very highly ranked, had guaranteed enrollment for anybody in the top x% of their class. So it set a clear target.
In hindsight, and particularly as I've learned more - I didn't actually achieve much of anything at the time. I never really had to try to get into the top 10% or even 1%. Until I got older I thought my achievements were mine. They weren't. I was a lazy and bad student. It was purely thanks to things entirely outside of my control that made it easy for me to achieve things that others would struggle with. Seeing that study was kind of the epiphany in what this all meant. And it also completely changed my views. I still do believe that we need to provide every opportunity to disadvantaged groups, but that is more for the outliers. The reality is that the vast majority of these individuals will never be able to effectively compete in society today, regardless of what we do. The data from that adoption study show the individuals who genetically had two black parents as falling about 1.2 standard deviations away from those who had two white parents. 1.2 sigmas translates to about 89% of that group having a lower IQ in spite of the fact that they were given the same privileged upbringing. Pretending these two groups can compete or perform against one another is just a lie that makes us feel good, but in reality is borderline sadistic. Can you even imagine being encouraged to do something that no matter how hard you try is always for some inexplicable reason just outside your reach? Can you imagine the frustration, the anger that would build inside of you? It's cruel!
For some data to support my proposal that most people do not believe people are inherently unequal, 69% [rasmussenreports.com] of individuals oppose government efforts to expand food stamps, 56% [rasmussenreports.com] of Americans believe "too many" people receive welfare, and so on. These numbers obviously transcend politics. I think the only way forward for our society is to begin being truthful. On the other hand it is absolutely crucial that we always distinguish between the individual and the population. We need to ensure the Neil DeGrasse Tysons have a way to reach their potential, but we also need to stop pretending that everybody can be Neil degrasse Tyson if they just put their mind to it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:20PM
According to you blacks are statistically dumber than whites, but they are taller and more athletic.
Superior white intelligence created the atomic bomb, rockets, and many horrible diseases and chemical weapons. These will be used to destroy civilization, leaving us with a world where physical strength once again rules supreme. People of color will assume their rightful roles as rulers of the Earth, and natural selection will add new traits to adapt to the changed climate. Eventually new intelligent subgroups will arise from this species.
The movie came out in 1968.