In defence of Trump

[DrZoidberg]

So they hire a leading expert in a field and then people who are less experts in that field tell the expert how to do their job. What could possibly go wrong? Why not just fire the expert and just have a poll where students get to vote on what they want to be true?

NO! The administration should back the fuck off and not tell the professor how to do their job. That's a very important factor in keeping universities relevant.

And it's not a minor thing. Universities are increasingly becoming irrelevant. Skills are increasingly taught via on-line courses. But these are very specialized courses that don't give students a well rounded generally scientific training. But they do make the universities to lose income, which impacts teaching. This is not the time to fuck around with the standards of the education.

I think it's a good idea to sit back and let your people do their jobs. But they still work for you; you are responsible for getting the best out of them, and you are responsible if they underperform. A hands-off management approach does not mean that you can abdicate responsibility.

I don't think administrators should tell professors "how to do their job". But they sure as shit should step in when a professor does their job badly. If university administrators can figure out that a professor is an expert in their field, then they can also figure out whether or not the professor is doing a good job, whether that be teaching people or doing research.

No, they can't. How isn't that the Dunning-Kruger paradox. And I think you are wrong. The administrators getting involved is just undermining the authority of the lecturer. Especially when they getting involved is the result of pressure from students. Which is what the problem has been all along.

If I were a university administrator and one of my professors invited Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, or Ann Coulter to give a guest lecture, I'd want a pretty compelling explanation as to why.

But what are you afraid of? What's the problem with having these as guest lecturers. That's what I don't understand. You said that it risks given them credibility. Well, they are famous and influential. It is interesting to hear them speak. Especially to people who think they are incarnations of evil. What I hear you say is that you wished they were less influential and that you think that deplatforming them will make them less influential. Nope. It just forces them into their ideological echo-chambers where their signals is boosted to infinity. Who benefits from that? We're always better off with having our laundry hung to dry in public. If you think these are as evil as you do, isn't it more important to invite them to speak? And give students the chance to ask them poignant questions? Isn't this exactly what universities are for?

I do think you also need to separate the humanities (soft sciences) from hard sciences. The hard sciences have none of the problems the softer sciences do. They're still free from the influence of PC cancel culture. For obvious reasons. But is is coming. Watson was booed out of his world speaking tour because he made the true statement that there's no scientific data to either deny or affirm the existence of racial differences on behaviour. It should have been an uncontroversial statement. Anybody with access to scientific databases could confirm the statement. Yet he was forced to cancel his tour.

This is a huge problem right now

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And then you should be accused of being against free speech. It would be an accurate accusation. I don't think you are with the good guys here.

You seem to be mistaken here. There is a difference between free speech and free venue to speak.Those three people aren't in jail for the bullshit they say and propagate. That is the free speech part of the Bill of Rights.

There is nothing in the Bill of Rights guaranteeing a venue to blather such bullshit. IE, schools shouldn't be forced to allow such people to speak because they allow others to speak there. Forcing schools to let such people talk provides their message with a legitimacy. They are free to speak elsewhere.

Who's to decide what messages are legitimate? A school is about helping people figure that out for themselves.

Schools grade messages all the time, so this idea schools are paralyzed from being able to tell the difference between a right-wing intellectual speaking on whatever subject from a web board troll is just ridiculous.

These people protesting weren't going to go to the lecture anyway. So why are they piping up?

Because it is soiling the venue.

They come across as these moral majority religious lunatics picketing outside movies they find immoral, or those pro-life morons outside abortion clinics.

Yeah, that is so false equivalency it doesn't really warrant much additional thought.

How about letting other people run their own lives. They don't need your help. I've seen Milo Yanopolis videos. I didn't take any damage.

So why do you feel compelled to tell colleges they must give Milo the SJW a venue to speak?

You're not the good guy here.

I'm not taking a moral stand here. I also don't think we should "teach the controversy" of creationism in schools. "I've read AiG's site, I'm not a creationist". When you provide a venue, you are providing a legitimacy. Plenty of conservatives out there to talk conservative policy. People that are actually part of the world, not merely a professional book publisher or blogger that haven't actually done anything.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Who's to decide what messages are legitimate? A school is about helping people figure that out for themselves.

Schools grade messages all the time, so this idea schools are paralyzed from being able to tell the difference between a right-wing intellectual speaking on whatever subject from a web board troll is just ridiculous.

It's not that they aren't able. It's that they shouldn't. It would be wrong, since it violates the whole point of having the school. It's actually important that the board doesn't get involved and have a say, since they're under the sway of the student body. In higher educational levels it's important the professor is independent.

You are defending an authoritarian trend in society. It is a threat to democracy. I'm not the dramatic type. But it's reached a point that it calls for being dramatic about it. Kids today are swerving into anti-democratic mindsets and it's a problem. Because they might succeed, and wouldn't that suck?

These people protesting weren't going to go to the lecture anyway. So why are they piping up?

Because it is soiling the venue.

Come on. Ideas soil nothing. This is a morality based opinion. Right now you come across as the leftist equivalent of an Evangelical Christian.

But you put your finger with what the problem of these BLM/AFA/wokesters. It's moral purity movement.

They come across as these moral majority religious lunatics picketing outside movies they find immoral, or those pro-life morons outside abortion clinics.

Yeah, that is so false equivalency it doesn't really warrant much additional thought.

I don't think it is, and if your attitude is widespread, that is dangerous for democracy.

How about letting other people run their own lives. They don't need your help. I've seen Milo Yanopolis videos. I didn't take any damage.

So why do you feel compelled to tell colleges they must give Milo the SJW a venue to speak?

I'm on the side of free speech. I'm against deplatforming. I see it as one of the greatest threat to democracy right now. That's why I feel compelled to defend them when they are deplatformed.

You're not the good guy here.

I'm not taking a moral stand here. I also don't think we should "teach the controversy" of creationism in schools. "I've read AiG's site, I'm not a creationist". When you provide a venue, you are providing a legitimacy. Plenty of conservatives out there to talk conservative policy. People that are actually part of the world, not merely a professional book publisher or blogger that haven't actually done anything.

If your argument isn't one of morality, then what is it based on?

"Teach the controversy" refers to teaching creationism is science class. Where it doesn't belong. Since it's a religious argument. The controversy should be taught in religion class. Since it's quite the task to find a biology professor who doesn't believe in ToE I think we're pretty safe from this in our universities. It's more a problem in lower education, where it's perfectly fine for the board to kick out teachers who misbehave.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

"Teach the controversy" refers to teaching creationism is science class. Where it doesn't belong.

Woah... woah... slow down there. Why are you saying what can be said in science class? You are part of the problem.

 

[DrZoidberg]

"Teach the controversy" refers to teaching creationism is science class. Where it doesn't belong.

Woah... woah... slow down there. Why are you saying what can be said in science class? You are part of the problem.

I notice you failed to quote the rest of the paragraph. Lifting sentences out of context and treating it like the only thing said is something we associate with Evangelicals and conspiracy theorists. Are you sure you'll be sticking with that reply?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

"Teach the controversy" refers to teaching creationism is science class. Where it doesn't belong.

Woah... woah... slow down there. Why are you saying what can be said in science class? You are part of the problem.

I notice you failed to quote the rest of the paragraph.

Well, it was in stark contrast to your silencing of speech in the science classroom. So it seemed important to point out how you are the problem and the bad guy to keeping a dialog open in science, because science is about the free exchange of data. Teaching the controversy will vindicate the truth after all... right?

Lifting sentences out of context and treating it like the only thing said is something we associate with Evangelicals and conspiracy theorists. Are you sure you'll be sticking with that reply?

Don't blame me for your perpendicular opinions on the same subject regarding speech and venue.

 

[TomC]

"Teach the controversy" refers to teaching creationism is science class. Where it doesn't belong.

Woah... woah... slow down there. Why are you saying what can be said in science class? You are part of the problem.

Here's the thing.
A competent biology teacher could explain creationism and the supporting evidence in the first half of the first class of the school year.
Then get on with the real business of teaching science.
Tom

 

[DrZoidberg]

I notice you failed to quote the rest of the paragraph.

Well, it was in stark contrast to your silencing of speech in the science classroom. So it seemed important to point out how you are the problem and the bad guy to keeping a dialog open in science, because science is about the free exchange of data. Teaching the controversy will vindicate the truth after all... right?

Lifting sentences out of context and treating it like the only thing said is something we associate with Evangelicals and conspiracy theorists. Are you sure you'll be sticking with that reply?

Don't blame me for your perpendicular opinions on the same subject regarding speech and venue.

I was talking about higher education in particular. Which is why I've kept referencing universities and not high-schools. Just to make it super clear. Further down the ladder the teachers might need more monitoring. But it has to be monitoring by a body that knows what they are teaching. It's not sure school administration are the right people. Science class has to be guided by science. School administrators aren't necessarily science experts. Probably not, right? I don't know how it is in the USA. But school administration in Scandinavia are teachers who have climbed the hierarchy. Not necessarily science teachers. The whole point is to prevent ideological tampering. Scandinavian schools are very good at this. Teacher discipline is tight.

University professors on the other hand are leaders in their fields. Or should be. They aren't supposed to have any superior experts. That's the difference.

The goal is to teach the students as correct information as possible, and to minimize political tampering. Swedish schools are right now failing in this regard. Danish and Finish universities are still having high standards and have kept ideological tampering out.

 

[jab]

"Teach the controversy" refers to teaching creationism is science class. Where it doesn't belong.

Woah... woah... slow down there. Why are you saying what can be said in science class? You are part of the problem.

good point

 

[Elixir]

"Teach the controversy" refers to teaching creationism is science class. Where it doesn't belong.

Woah... woah... slow down there. Why are you saying what can be said in science class? You are part of the problem.

good point

When creationism has been brought up and debunked in science classrooms, creationists have made the same claim of censorship. They don't like being debunked.
If I was a student I wouldn't like my time being wasted by religious morons trying to interject their superstitions into serious subject matter I was trying to learn.
If I was a science professor I'd be extremely pissed, having spent years or decades learning my subject and how to teach it, then having my mission (and job) hijacked by deluded creationists.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

good point

When creationism has been brought up and debunked in science classrooms, creationists have made the same claim of censorship. They don't like being debunked.

"Let the students decide".

 

[blastula]

I haven't heard his podcast. I've only seen the comedy videos. I would never say he's an intellectual. He's just a jokester. He's funny though. I do not promote him as an intellectual. Anyhoo, I didn't know he had a podcast. All I know is from his videos. So I can't really speak about his opinions apart from the videos. But he is a hippie. That's obvious and I dislike hippie culture in general.

As I said, it doesn't matter that you haven't heard the podcast, the video you picked by itself damns him as a worthless source.

From the video here I agree with him that the left is fed a false story about how perfect and impeccable anybody on the left is and how bad everybody on the right is.

I missed that point, can you give a timestamp? The video is called, "Big Tech Cleans House! - Everything We Want You To Think" and he does say in the first minute, "Here's what we want you to think so we can control you." That's as close to it as I remember from the video. But that's a ludicrous point coming from him, since he's as guilty as anyone of telling people what to think.

A recurring tactic of his is to put a news headline on the screen, and then to falsely interpret it for the audience to give his propaganda about it. He's a fucking liar, he maliciously drenches his audience in fake news. He's a "bad guy."

And if you can't see it from just that video, then the problem is you don't know what you're talking about.

And the left doesn't seem to spend any time thinking that's a problem. Since mainstream news is increasingly leftist. It's a huge problem. I agree that the right does the same thing. Nobody benefits from a situation where everybody is deluded about their own side. Which is the situation now. So he has a point there and I believe was the punchline of this joke.

I don't know about media in Sweden, but that's not how it is in the US. Again, reporting true facts that correctly show Trump in a bad light is not bias nor is it leftist.

Here's an example. Take any feminist conference. They typically have plenty of speakers on who are extreme. While she was alive Andrea Dworkin was invited to so many conferences as a speaker she did nothing else with her time. She was a lunatic. There's no mechanism within the left to sort out loons on our own side.

You mean Dvorkin should have been deplatformed? Try to be consistent from one post to the next.

We spend all our efforts attacking the other side. The right does the same thing. That was perfectly fine in the 80'ies. But the mainstream press today is increasingly leftist which means we on the left aren't getting the rights viewpoints and criticism. It's very hard for us to be informed about the problems on our own side. That's dangerous. That's a situation that will lead to increased extremism. On both sides. It'll lead to a destablisation of the whole system. Which is exactly what has been the trend the last 20 years.

I do agree all political tribes should self police or call out their own with intellectual consistency, but in no way is JP Sears a credible source for that message.

But a far bigger problem in media right now is the proliferation of fake news, deliberately false content. And there is far from any equivalence between the guilt of the left and right on that score.

 

[Deepak]

What if your professor wants to do 52 weeks of Andrea Dworkin for guest appearances, or you have a political science professor who wants to invite cdesign proponentists?

Openness is an important quality of any school - to a point. If your university becomes open to everything, there’s a point where the quality will drop off a cliff.

I’m all for a professor recommending whatever speakers they want, but if the university is the venue then the people who pay multiple thousands of dollars to attend should have some say, even if their opinion is wrong.

 

[blastula]

Watson was booed out of his world speaking tour because he made the true statement that there's no scientific data to either deny or affirm the existence of racial differences on behaviour. It should have been an uncontroversial statement. Anybody with access to scientific databases could confirm the statement. Yet he was forced to cancel his tour.

You really mangled this one. James Watson was stripped of some honorary titles, not booed. And you got his quote that led to that action completely wrong. He said on a documentary, "There’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on I.Q. tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic." It was one comment in his long history of similar comments on race.

 

[DrZoidberg]

good point

When creationism has been brought up and debunked in science classrooms, creationists have made the same claim of censorship. They don't like being debunked.

"Let the students decide".

They shouldn't. The teacher, or more precisely the scientific body in charge of deciding what they should be taught should decide. The whole point with this is to remove politics, ideology and idiotic student trends from scientific knowledge being taught. Everything I have said has been in service of this, including letting Milo Yanopoulis talk in school.

 

[DrZoidberg]

And if you can't see it from just that video, then the problem is you don't know what you're talking about.

I don't buy it. I can see a video from someobody who says things I agree with and then share it. It doesn't matter that he also holds other opinions that I don't agree with and says it in other videos. That doesn't make the first video I shared less true or less representative of my opinions. The main reason for sharing videos (or anything on social media) is simply that we find something which has formulated something better than we could. I still think he is funny and what I've seen from what he has posted he's accurate. That doesn't mean he hasn't also posted things that are wrong.

And the left doesn't seem to spend any time thinking that's a problem. Since mainstream news is increasingly leftist. It's a huge problem. I agree that the right does the same thing. Nobody benefits from a situation where everybody is deluded about their own side. Which is the situation now. So he has a point there and I believe was the punchline of this joke.

I don't know about media in Sweden, but that's not how it is in the US. Again, reporting true facts that correctly show Trump in a bad light is not bias nor is it leftist.

In Sweden it's a complete fucking disaster. I live in Denmark. A country with a very sensible media. The cultures are quite similar, but diverge in this respect. Comparing Swedish and Danish news reporting you'd think these two countries were on different planets.

Public service in Sweden is completely taken over by extreme leftwing gender study lunatics. News from Swedish public service is nothing but a never ending stream of leftist propaganda. While I am a lefty. I have a problem with this. I know the UK with their BBC is on a similar trajectory.

Since I'm living over here it is of course hard to make a accurate picture of how things are in the USA since everything is filtered through our news sources.

I do suspect that news reporting in USA also is problematic considering all the trouble over there.

Here's an example. Take any feminist conference. They typically have plenty of speakers on who are extreme. While she was alive Andrea Dworkin was invited to so many conferences as a speaker she did nothing else with her time. She was a lunatic. There's no mechanism within the left to sort out loons on our own side.

You mean Dvorkin should have been deplatformed? Try to be consistent from one post to the next.

Now you're comparing quite different things.

The right wing speakers at American universities were deplatformed by people who didn't want to hear the talk. Ignoring those who wanted to hear it. That's the deplatorming I have a problem with.

I have no problem with people being univited by their own fanclub. It's up to each speaker to stay relevant and interesting. If right wing nutcases tried to get Dworkin deplatformed, I'd be on Dworkins side.

Milo Yanopoulis wasn't denied speaking because nobody was interested. He got denied speaking for the wrong reasons.

I do agree all political tribes should self police or call out their own with intellectual consistency

It's not happening. So how do you propose we start making it happen?

But a far bigger problem in media right now is the proliferation of fake news, deliberately false content. And there is far from any equivalence between the guilt of the left and right on that score.

I think the fake news is a symptom, rather than the cause. Since there's barely any quality conservative press anymore. None not paywalled the conservatives reject all news, making them vulnerable to fake news. If the right solves that problem, I'm pretty sure fake news will be less of a problem.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/right-center/

It's been tested many times that fake news has more of an impact on conservatives than leftists. I don't think it's because we're geniuses. I think it's because our side is served by sensible news. There's isn't.

 

[DrZoidberg]

https://pca.st/episode/ea715694-01cd-45c5-a99f-45af3bc22c07

Here's another Weinstein bit. It's a great piece, hard to sum up.

But he manages to combine a vitriolic attack on Trump, while managing to to pinpoint what Trump does well.

I like these kind of nuanced arguments. He also explains what Trump probably means with his critique of high immigration. But fails to communicate it. Weinstein basically says that Trump was good at bringing up topics that should be discussed, great at getting attention for them, but absolutely useless at saying what needed to be said in a way people could understand. Like an actor on stage, with the wings full of great advisors feeding him lines, and him not managing to say anything useful and just looking like a clown. On top of that of course, he had a lot of useless advisors as well as bringing up idiotic topics.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Trump was good at bringing up topics that should be discussed.... On top of that of course, he had a lot of useless advisors as well as bringing up idiotic topics.

I will certainly agree with the second part of that assertion.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Trump was good at bringing up topics that should be discussed.

Can you cite one example?

I mean, this seems to me like saying people with tourette's syndrome are good at saying things in public that most people won't.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Trump was good at bringing up topics that should be discussed.

Can you cite one example?

I mean, this seems to me like saying people with tourette's syndrome are good at saying things in public that most people won't.

Well, there's, "Can the president pardon himself?"
The answer, fuck no, that would put him above the law.

There. Discussed.