DrZoidberg
Contributor
I think this is a good topic for this forum.
My old logic professor (who I am now friends with) has gotten into trouble because of the cover of the book he has written. It's the standard logic book used in Swedish universities.
https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789197845045/logic-basics-and-beyond/
On the cover is a white woman (the proffessors wife, who is also the CEO of a major Swedish company) and a black man (the CEO of a major corporation in Botswana) pointing at her back covered in predicate logic terms. He's just a friend of the professor. The colours have been inverted. So his wife looks black, and the man looks white. The thinking behind it is that logic is free from morality and politics. It operates in its own domain. It's clever, but is it apropriate?
But the controversy comes because some teachers in Sweden think that it looks like a white man pointing to a objectified black woman. And they think it's inapropriate in an age of #MeToo and BLM.
I know the guy. He's 100% aspie and wouldn't know social codes if it hit him in the face (which it is doing now). He couldn't be politically correct even if he tried. So there's just no way for him to win this. He just doesn't get what he's done wrong (if anything) and will never get it. He doesn't really care if they stop using his book. It's a very small income for him. Initially he wrote it just because the old one sucked so much and he wanted better teaching material. There's nothing preventing teachers to go back to the old book. It's just harder work, because it's so godawfully written. I've read and used both books. So he's cool either way.
This brings to questions:
1) Is the cover appropriate?
2) Is it fair to demand from aspies to be politically correct? This is the aspie handicap. They'll never get it and isn't it unreasonable to demand it from them?
My old logic professor (who I am now friends with) has gotten into trouble because of the cover of the book he has written. It's the standard logic book used in Swedish universities.
https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789197845045/logic-basics-and-beyond/
On the cover is a white woman (the proffessors wife, who is also the CEO of a major Swedish company) and a black man (the CEO of a major corporation in Botswana) pointing at her back covered in predicate logic terms. He's just a friend of the professor. The colours have been inverted. So his wife looks black, and the man looks white. The thinking behind it is that logic is free from morality and politics. It operates in its own domain. It's clever, but is it apropriate?
But the controversy comes because some teachers in Sweden think that it looks like a white man pointing to a objectified black woman. And they think it's inapropriate in an age of #MeToo and BLM.
I know the guy. He's 100% aspie and wouldn't know social codes if it hit him in the face (which it is doing now). He couldn't be politically correct even if he tried. So there's just no way for him to win this. He just doesn't get what he's done wrong (if anything) and will never get it. He doesn't really care if they stop using his book. It's a very small income for him. Initially he wrote it just because the old one sucked so much and he wanted better teaching material. There's nothing preventing teachers to go back to the old book. It's just harder work, because it's so godawfully written. I've read and used both books. So he's cool either way.
This brings to questions:
1) Is the cover appropriate?
2) Is it fair to demand from aspies to be politically correct? This is the aspie handicap. They'll never get it and isn't it unreasonable to demand it from them?