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Manfred comments on Link: 50% effective malaria vaccine developed - Less Wrong
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Comments (8)
From a social perspective, your email was problematic because it labels your students ("no friend of mankind") in a way that they would disagree with, which should be avoided because it puts the reader on the defensive and pulls your message closer to all the bad pieces of writing out there than to the good ones. Less obvious but probably more disruptive to your class environment is the tone - you generalize very quickly, using language that leads people to think in the paths of politics, not rational discourse.
From a factual perspective, read this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hu/the_third_alternative/
teachers often talk to their students in ways that would be "generally frowned upon" if it took place outside of teacher-student interactions.
To the best of my knowledge none of my students were involved in Occupy Wall Street.
the generalization came after we had a long class discussion (which students' initiated) about Occupy Wall Street.
Please explain what you mean by this.
I've explained more what I meant above. But yes, generally frowned upon even for teachers, especially since the label is not education-related.
The quickly does not refer to you not thinking about it. It means "quickly, within the structure of your argument," which gives an accusatory feel often used in political polemics.
Is there literally no possible agent you an imagine that you would call "a friend of humankind" that would "push{} for radical reform of Wall Street without considering how possible reforms will impact {} GlaxoSmithKline?" I suppose if you really want to stick to your guns on that one, the problem becomes one of you wanting to use a different definition than your students, and so you should play rationalist taboo.