Safe spaces for truth

[DrZoidberg]

In the discussion about safe spaces and political correctness I just came to think of that universities... or any school should primarily be safe spaces for the truth. Everything else should be subordinate.

To me houses of learning are temples of truth. Sacred ground where uncomfortable opinions and unorthodox views should be able to be freely expressed without fear of reprisals. They may of course be challenged. But that's something different. Teachers and professors are the priests and bishops of these temples. Holders of an authority because they've earned it in true meritocratic fashion.

We need to uphold learning as more sacred as I think we are today.

 

[Speakpigeon]

In the discussion about safe spaces and political correctness I just came to think of that universities... or any school should primarily be safe spaces for the truth.

I don't see why other places shouldn't be also safe spaces for truth. That's usually the view taken by the legislative bodies in most democratic countries. Schools need to be protected more specifically but not specifically as safe spaces for truth. They need to be protected as safe places full stop.

Everything else should be subordinate.

That's not how social life works. We have to prioritise and schools don't usually come first in our priorities.

To me houses of learning are temples of truth.

And fortunately it's not usually the view taken by legislative bodies in democratic countries. Instead, the idea is that schools should achieve results.

Sacred ground where uncomfortable opinions and unorthodox views should be able to be freely expressed without fear of reprisals.

Which makes them rather temples of falsehood, which is not so far from what they are.

They may of course be challenged. But that's something different.

Good but not to the point that expected results are not reached.

Teachers and professors are the priests and bishops of these temples.

That's fortunately not how most people see it. These people are paid professional and they should deliver. If they don't, fire them.

Holders of an authority because they've earned it in true meritocratic fashion.

That often not even true. Many people cheat their exams, get their jobs through bribery or by pulling strings. They've earned nothing. You judge people on what you can objectively see that they do, not on what you cannot see that they are supposed to have done.

We need to uphold learning as more sacred as I think we are today.

We need to moralise social life generally. Society is an organic body. Mending one area won't be enough. Parents are the first to cheat. They give the clue of how to behave to their own children. The disconnect between what we say we want and what we achieve is just too bad to think about.
EB

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't see why other places shouldn't be also safe spaces for truth. That's usually the view taken by the legislative bodies in most democratic countries. Schools need to be protected more specifically but not specifically as safe spaces for truth. They need to be protected as safe places full stop.

"Hello, I've got leukemia"
"You're probably going to die"

I can see plenty of reasons why society in general shouldn't be safe spaces for truth. What I mean is that for places of learning there should be no other consideration. In society in general we do have other considerations.

Hurting feelings in universities = always ok.
Hurting feelings outside universities = not always ok.

Everything else should be subordinate.

That's not how social life works. We have to prioritise and schools don't usually come first in our priorities.

I was thinking of priorities in schools. Not in life in general.

To me houses of learning are temples of truth.

And fortunately it's not usually the view taken by legislative bodies in democratic countries. Instead, the idea is that schools should achieve results.

Here's an apt quote. "If you don't know where you're going, no wind is favourable". If truth, and truth alone isn't our main guide in schools results will suffer.

Sacred ground where uncomfortable opinions and unorthodox views should be able to be freely expressed without fear of reprisals.

Which makes them rather temples of falsehood, which is not so far from what they are.

I see what you mean. But in the absence of any ultimate authority. This is the best we can do to achieve truth.

Teachers and professors are the priests and bishops of these temples.

That's fortunately not how most people see it. These people are paid professional and they should deliver. If they don't, fire them.

So are priests. Priests who don't deliver are fired. Bishops who fuck up are demoted. Usually by beheading.

Holders of an authority because they've earned it in true meritocratic fashion.

That often not even true. Many people cheat their exams, get their jobs through bribery or by pulling strings. They've earned nothing. You judge people on what you can objectively see that they do, not on what you cannot see that they are supposed to have done.

Lol... what? I'm pretty sure you didn't Snope-check that article. You're talking shit.

We need to uphold learning as more sacred as I think we are today.

We need to moralise social life generally. Society is an organic body. Mending one area won't be enough. Parents are the first to cheat. They give the clue of how to behave to their own children. The disconnect between what we say we want and what we achieve is just too bad to think about.

Sure. But all the more reason to treat academia as something separate and above. Today universities are more seen as experiment workshops where young people can play around pretending to be adult, before they get thrown out into the world. The university is supposed to mirror society. While good in some regards. I think it's dangerous. The reason I created this OP was because a literature professor candidate in Sweden was denied his professorship because he wasn't a feminist. Everybody agreed he was the best qualified. He still didn't get it. Politicians were worried that he wouldn't insert feminist theory into every damn course.

 

[untermensche]

In the discussion about safe spaces and political correctness I just came to think of that universities... or any school should primarily be safe spaces for the truth. Everything else should be subordinate.

To me houses of learning are temples of truth. Sacred ground where uncomfortable opinions and unorthodox views should be able to be freely expressed without fear of reprisals. They may of course be challenged. But that's something different. Teachers and professors are the priests and bishops of these temples. Holders of an authority because they've earned it in true meritocratic fashion.

We need to uphold learning as more sacred as I think we are today.

What specific speech are you defending?

Give an example of some widespread persistent problem.

Not any problem isolated to one campus for a brief moment in time, meaning in the minds of a handful of people.

 

[fromderinside]

In the discussion about safe spaces and political correctness I just came to think of that universities... or any school should primarily be safe spaces for the truth. Everything else should be subordinate.

To me houses of learning are temples of truth. Sacred ground where uncomfortable opinions and unorthodox views should be able to be freely expressed without fear of reprisals. They may of course be challenged. But that's something different. Teachers and professors are the priests and bishops of these temples. Holders of an authority because they've earned it in true meritocratic fashion.

We need to uphold learning as more sacred as I think we are today.

Equating places where learning is the objective with temples makes them religious by definition. Learning is about gaining understanding of the world occupied by men in all their aspects. Unknowns and beliefs are but a few of those aspects. We attribute the term knowledge to the possession of any of these aspects. Those who attend these places need feel free to explore all aspects of public human nature, a few of which are labeling, naming, shaming and other public sanctioning and effects. Making them safe from such as these takes away from the purpose for which these places exist which is a more informed and alert citizenry. Opening Pandora's box comes without guarantees and we must live and adjust to that.

 

[Lion IRC]

What 'truth' is so feeble and cowardly that it cannot withstand exposure
to the occasional unsafe space?

Not tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, or nakedness, peril, sword…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature…

 

[DrZoidberg]

What 'truth' is so feeble and cowardly that it cannot withstand exposure
to the occasional unsafe space?

Not tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, or nakedness, peril, sword…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature…

Ok, here's one. You're going to die. You're not going to live forever in heaven, or any other afterlife. When your life is up, that's it. All available evidence points to that conclusion. This is a strong argument.

Most people believe in an afterlife. So the idea that we just die and stop existing at the end of this is aparently a truth "so feeble and cowardly that it cannot withstand exposure to the occasional unsafe space".

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sure. But all the more reason to treat academia as something separate and above. Today universities are more seen as experiment workshops where young people can play around pretending to be adult, before they get thrown out into the world. The university is supposed to mirror society. While good in some regards. I think it's dangerous.

I'm sure any school or university can be improved but I fail to see how the claim that they should be safe spaces for truth could do anything to achieve that goal.

Maybe be you want to say that they should enforce free speech policies?

And then you'd have like in America extremists free to peddle their pet theories about Jews, Muslims, homosexuality, foreigners, Mexicans. That's a democratic choice but maybe not everybody agrees with it and maybe not a majority, especially if the majority is made of many minorities.

The reason I created this OP was because a literature professor candidate in Sweden was denied his professorship because he wasn't a feminist. Everybody agreed he was the best qualified. He still didn't get it. Politicians were worried that he wouldn't insert feminist theory into every damn course.

People in Sweden, i.e. everybody according to you, can presumably vote their politicians out in accordance with their outrage over this incident.

Democratic countries are bad but still better than non-democratic countries. You seem to be suggesting we should get rid of our democratic principles.

Or, you just want to ignore that the people of Sweden may be inconsistent in its voting decisions.

Or that only a few people are effectively responsible in the case you report, namely those politicians who did something bad.

Presumably you have a justice system in Sweden where the victim could sue the government and win damages. If not, then you should worry more about that than about the truth as principle in universities.

There's also the European Court of Justice, can't a Swede use it?
EB

 

[DrZoidberg]

I'm sure any school or university can be improved but I fail to see how the claim that they should be safe spaces for truth could do anything to achieve that goal.

Maybe be you want to say that they should enforce free speech policies?

And then you'd have like in America extremists free to peddle their pet theories about Jews, Muslims, homosexuality, foreigners, Mexicans. That's a democratic choice but maybe not everybody agrees with it and maybe not a majority, especially if the majority is made of many minorities.

No. Free speech and the pursuit of truth are different things. Truth is a constraint on freedom. True speech, is NOT free speach. There is a conflict.

There has be be an accepted hierarchy of knowledge. The claims from people higher on the academic ladder has more weight than those further down the ladder. The higher up on the ladder the more freedom of speech. Well... not in practice. Since the higher up on the academic ladder, the more eyes and attention they have on them. So truth itself becomes a greater constraint the higher up they are.

Sophistry can decide who wins an argument. But not necessarily who is correct.

A good example is Watsons true statement that we can't say that all races are as intelligent, since there's no non-pseudo-scientific research in that field. His career was destroyed because of it. Still true. That's what I'm talking about.

The reason I created this OP was because a literature professor candidate in Sweden was denied his professorship because he wasn't a feminist. Everybody agreed he was the best qualified. He still didn't get it. Politicians were worried that he wouldn't insert feminist theory into every damn course.

People in Sweden, i.e. everybody according to you, can presumably vote their politicians out in accordance with their outrage over this incident.

Democratic countries are bad but still better than non-democratic countries. You seem to be suggesting we should get rid of our democratic principles.

No. I want us to vote for this. Increased autonomy for universities.

Or, you just want to ignore that the people of Sweden may be inconsistent in its voting decisions.

Or that only a few people are effectively responsible in the case you report, namely those politicians who did something bad.

Presumably you have a justice system in Sweden where the victim could sue the government and win damages. If not, then you should worry more about that than about the truth as principle in universities.

There's also the European Court of Justice, can't a Swede use it?
EB

There's no regulation about this. Universities are whatever it's governing body wants it to be. Swedish universities are all state run. So they're all open to political meddling.

 

[Lion IRC]

Ok, here's one. You're going to die. You're not going to live forever in heaven, or any other afterlife.

Says you.

...When your life is up, that's it.

Says you.

..All available evidence points to that conclusion.

No it doesn't.
There's no such thing as evidence that the afterlife doesn't exist.
Just because YOU haven't seen evidence doesn't mean that nobody else has.
#myopia

..This is a strong argument.

What argument?
You're just claiming that your belief is hopefully true.
*yawn*

...Most people believe in an afterlife.

Yes. They do.
And many/most of them probably don't care if you hold a different belief.
But FWIW - when it comes to opinions/beliefs, the afterlife is the wrong thing to be wrong about.

...So the idea that we just die and stop existing at the end of this is aparently a truth "so feeble and cowardly that it cannot withstand exposure to the occasional unsafe space".

WUT?
If you don't want to believe in parallel (or higher) planes of existence, discarnate conscious awareness, the soul, that's your business. It doesn't redound on me. I'm not begging for you to validate my truth. That would make my truth nebulous if I needed others to endorse it. Seriously! I'm not phased by your "don't worry" billboards on the sides of buses telling us to chillax because there's (probably) no God.

 

[untermensche]

All this discussion about a non-existent problem.

There are scattered individuals on individual campuses that from time to time push issues of speech into the spotlight.

None of these random individual events constitute a movement or a problem.

This is how progress is made in terms of human understanding. It is messy. There are starts and stops and setbacks.

But there is also progress. We do not believe what we believed 50 years ago.

All these cries of "Political Correctness" are merely people crying about progress.

They do not want the world to change. They have a privileged place in it.

So any of the normal efforts that bring about changing of ideas are opposed as if they are some horrific nightmare.

To fall for the claims is to be an idiot.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Says you.

As well as all available evidence. We don't have a shred of evidence to support, or even suggest any of the multitude of afterlife theories put forward. Just with that we can deduce that there's no reason to believe in the afterlife.

Add to that the known psychological human bias to want to be alive, and be afraid of death. This just adds to the strength of the idea that the afterlife is 100% wishful thinking.

Believing in the afterlife is just wrong, and it's not just me. It's reality.

No it doesn't.
There's no such thing as evidence that the afterlife doesn't exist.
Just because YOU haven't seen evidence doesn't mean that nobody else has.
#myopia

We know that nobody has managed to produce any evidence. It's still zero. And it's not for lack of trying. If you think that somebody has managed to produce evidence for an afterlife they are wrong.

..This is a strong argument.

What argument?
You're just claiming that your belief is hopefully true.
*yawn*

How could the argument against an afterlife be any stronger? Let's speculate a bit. I can't think of a way.

Or turn it around. If you would try to make the case for an afterlife any weaker... how could you do it? It's indistinguishable from any other nonsense you could produce.

The afterlife is a good example of a crap theory. It's not even a theory. It's just nonsense. It's on the level of:

"But I want a unicorn"
"sure, honey. But later"

...Most people believe in an afterlife.

Yes. They do.
And many/most of them probably don't care if you hold a different belief.
But FWIW - when it comes to opinions/beliefs, the afterlife is the wrong thing to be wrong about.

Which is my point. What is true has to be above opinion in a place of learning, like a univerisity. It doesn't matter how many people believe something. If it's wrong, it should be wrong to teach it in a university. And teachers should have a mandate to shut it down.

...So the idea that we just die and stop existing at the end of this is aparently a truth "so feeble and cowardly that it cannot withstand exposure to the occasional unsafe space".

WUT?
If you don't want to believe in parallel (or higher) planes of existence, discarnate conscious awareness, the soul, that's your business. It doesn't redound on me. I'm not begging for you to validate my truth. That would make my truth nebulous if I needed others to endorse it. Seriously! I'm not phased by your "don't worry" billboards on the sides of buses telling us to chillax because there's (probably) no God.

You're free to believe what garbage you want. I just don't want things that are wrong, to be taught as truth in universities. Or even to be held up as a reasonable theory we're supposed to ponder about. That's how we breed generations of idiots. I'm a big fan of free speech. Feel free to say what you want. I just want university lecture halls to be safe spaces free from nonsense. Students are of course free to wander off outside the lectures halls and partake in whatever bullshit they want. It's important that they do. That's how you train the mind. But university proffessors should be above having to care about what idiots think about anything. In my view, their only concern should be with the truth, and how to teach it.

 

[Kharakov]

I'm not begging for you to validate my truth. That would make my truth nebulous if I needed others to endorse it.

lol. "my truth"

If your truth doesn't include "consciousness generated by a brain after every sleep, that would not exist if brain did not generate it", it's not a truth. Unless you propose that the whole natural world is an extravagant deception....

 

[DrZoidberg]

I'm not begging for you to validate my truth. That would make my truth nebulous if I needed others to endorse it.

lol. "my truth"

If your truth doesn't include "consciousness generated by a brain after every sleep, that would not exist if brain did not generate it", it's not a truth. Unless you propose that the whole natural world is an extravagant deception....

The whole idea that we can all have our own truth, is so dumb. How would that reality even function? Would it function?

 

[bigfield]

lol. "my truth"

If your truth doesn't include "consciousness generated by a brain after every sleep, that would not exist if brain did not generate it", it's not a truth. Unless you propose that the whole natural world is an extravagant deception....

The whole idea that we can all have our own truth, is so dumb. How would that reality even function? Would it function?

According to some, including many some university academics, what is real is a matter of opinion. See postmodernism:

[Postmodernism] asserts to varying degrees that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations, and are therefore contextual or socially constructed.

On the upside, it is very easy to write essays for these professors: you just have to figure out what they believe is true and repeat it back to them.

 

[fromderinside]

'some' fine. 'many' whoa babe.

 

[Speakpigeon]

No. Free speech and the pursuit of truth are different things. Truth is a constraint on freedom. True speech, is NOT free speach. There is a conflict.

There has be be an accepted hierarchy of knowledge. The claims from people higher on the academic ladder has more weight than those further down the ladder. The higher up on the ladder the more freedom of speech. Well... not in practice. Since the higher up on the academic ladder, the more eyes and attention they have on them. So truth itself becomes a greater constraint the higher up they are.

So 'truth' is the wrong word. To me it's clear that what universities teach is not necessarily the truth. Rather, it's something like operational beliefs. Beliefs that seem to work.

Also, if you give the power to teaching institutions to decide what qualifies as truths you create ipso facto the conditions for abuse of that power. For example, an independent faculty can decide what is taught according to their personal beliefs, according to some collective ideology, or according to who pay them. Business concerns will invest in these institutions in every which way they find useful, including by bribing the faculty, the heads and even the students themselves as already happens.

At best, what is taught can only be what the faculty has come to believe is the truth. Whether it is the truth, when it is the truth, or even if it can at all be the truth is a matter of debate. I know of one area where what is taught, and it is taught the same throughout the world, is not true, and yet it will continue being taught possibly for many generations still after I'm dead and in Heaven.

That being said, I'm all for teaching to be based on expertise of the subject taught and for competition between institutions. There's no reason, however, to exclude state-supported institutions if it is so decided by democratic mandate. There is also no reason to exclude religious teaching or religious institutions, as long as they teach what they are expert about, namely religious views. And they will have religious views on evolution I'm sure. They could for example teach the truth that for all we know, evolution may well have been the means by which God decided to create modern man. If it is done well, you could teach these things while sticking to the truth, although usually they don't bother because they don't need to.

Sophistry can decide who wins an argument. But not necessarily who is correct.

A good example is Watsons true statement that we can't say that all races are as intelligent, since there's no non-pseudo-scientific research in that field. His career was destroyed because of it. Still true. That's what I'm talking about.

But that's sophistry. This subject is not a scientific one. From a scientific point of view, there would be a clear bias in having an Indo-European dominated science, in an Indo-European dominated economy and geopolitics, concluding that Indo-Europeans are more intelligent. Ask Trump who is more intelligent.

Watsons himself would probably have refused to admit that Indo-Europeans are less intelligent if it had been the conclusion of a scientific study conducted by African, Japanese or Chinese scientists.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

On the upside, it is very easy to write essays for these professors: you just have to figure out what they believe is true and repeat it back to them.

But that's true of any professor. Just repeat back to them what they believe and they will give you a pass.
EB

 

[bigfield]

'some' fine. 'many' whoa babe.

Made sense in my head when I wrote it.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm not begging for you to validate my truth. That would make my truth nebulous if I needed others to endorse it.

lol. "my truth"

If your truth doesn't include "consciousness generated by a brain after every sleep, that would not exist if brain did not generate it", it's not a truth. Unless you propose that the whole natural world is an extravagant deception....

It doesn't need to be extravagant. Nor properly a deception.

Just so that you believe pretty pictures are the truth. Not particularly difficult to achieve.

In fact, come to think of it, more likely than not.
EB

- - - Updated - - -

'some' fine. 'many' whoa babe.

Made sense in my head when I wrote it.

Exactly.
EB