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Konkvistador comments on [Link] Why the kids don’t know no algebra - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: GLaDOS 04 July 2012 10:29AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 03:36:57PM * 13 points [-]

Charles Murray wrote an excellent book title "Real Education" where he explores such issues rather closely and in particular what can be done to improve education systems in light of this information. I found it well written and meticulously researched, I very much recommend it to fellow LWers.

In relation to his book he also did this talk which is a ok overview off his key points.

Comment author: Multiheaded comment score below threshold [+] (11 children)

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 07:57:01PM * 31 points [-]

You should calm down Murray isn't reactionary he's just a smart and data conscious moderate conservative thinker. He wants to give poor people enough free money so they can live decently with or without a job. I mean he doesn't even think democracy is a bad idea! Weak sauce! ;)

Damn, if I had the patience and the time, I'd have put a liberal spin on those same ideas to see how it would look

We're on good terms and I know you said this with good intent and I hope you realize I was just citing a relevant well researched book (which I think you really should read before judging) not pushing an agenda. Also remember LessWrong readers are smart, tolerant and sane enough to read material written by people with different politics without risking spontaneous combustion. If they want liberal spin I'm sure they can do it for themselves. And if reading relevant research on stuff can turn them "non-liberal" on that issue... well aren't you ok with people discovering their informed preferences or changing their ideas about how the world works?

The reason I'm writing out this comment is because what your wrote unfortunately seems a lot like a purely political take. I don't think that's cool since we don't see this sort of stuff for moderately left wing leaning authors, why should we for moderately right wing ones? The reason why I think this isn't ok is that just by mentioning the guy is blue instead of green you've reduced the probability of green people reading him. Especially since you exaggerated his blueness. And you are smart enough to know this.

Remember LessWrong is 3% conservative and ~30% socialist and another ~30% "Liberal"! People say "Wow" when they see someone being socially conservative.

Do we really need majority ideological biases and group feelings reinforced and further privileged?

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 July 2012 08:04:41PM * 14 points [-]

You're very correct! And I'm just having a cranky evening, unfortunately. Some days I just seem to take so much issue with people's tone, to the detriment of addressing their point! And I want to seek out and challenge contrarianism, too... My intellectual behavior is very insecure, I'd say.

Also, when it comes to you personally, I'm very open to the darndest things you link and wouldn't take much issue if you showed me someone's endorsement of baby-eating (oops, you did actually propose a policy of baby-eating); I was trying to defuse a perceived bias only for the public's benefit.

Remember LessWrong is 3% conservative and ~30% socialist and another ~30% "Liberal"! People say "Wow" when they see someone being socially conservative.

But it's like I said before - it might be the wisest and most truth-seeking 3% (Vladimir_M alone has more life experience and practical wisdom than many other folks here combined, I'd say), the rest of us might be lagging behind in the race of ideas! I wouldn't have gotten so worked up if I didn't fear that might be the case.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 08:21:00PM * 13 points [-]

(oops, you did actually propose a policy of baby-eating)

It was just a modest proposal!

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 July 2012 08:24:32PM 1 point [-]

Ba-dum-tssh!

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 08:38:15PM 0 points [-]

Damn, if I had the patience and the time, I'd have put a liberal spin on those same ideas to see how it would look

Do you mean that you'd rephrase the same ideas in a way that fewer people would bristle at? That doesn't have to be called "liberal." It's just good sense.

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 July 2012 08:50:54PM 0 points [-]

That doesn't have to be called "liberal." It's just good sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 08:53:21PM 0 points [-]

I don't know what you want me to take away from that link. Will you copy and paste a relevant passage?

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 July 2012 09:00:53PM 1 point [-]

Here:

a culturally diverse society can be dominated (ruled) by one social class, whose dominance is achieved by manipulating the societal culture (beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, mores) so that its ruling-class worldview (Weltanschauung) is imposed as the societal norm, which every social class then perceives as a universally valid ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo — as natural, inevitable, and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class

So when you're off-handedly saying that something is "good sense", the long Western educational and cultural tradition of left-liberalism, which is undoubtedly the most influential one around, might have something to do with your implicit thought process. It's not an agency fiction because I'm not suggesting that there's a cackling university professor somewhere who plotted molding your idea of "good sense" to include a degree of PC-ness, but merely that it's mostly the memes that don't go against the intellectual classes' convictions and preferences which tend to survive, so ideas kind of flow towards an intellectual-dominated consensus.

Again, I'm not even sure that this is a bad thing.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 09:07:31PM * 1 point [-]

My bad for perpetually erring on the side of brevity.

By "good sense" I mean it's fundamentally wise to account for how people might react to what you're saying when you're figuring out how to say it. That can go either way. For example, if your audience has evaporatively cooled to the point that they'll only tolerate virulently anti-PC or PC views, then you probably won't have much incentive to "reach across the aisle," as it were.

EDIT: This is irrespective of the facts, of course. The anti-PC crowd may have greater access to the facts by virtue of their comfort with prickly ideas, but of what use is that advantage if the people who need those same facts most refuse to listen? It's a truism, I know, but operative aspect of that word here is true.

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 July 2012 09:13:42PM * 0 points [-]

I see, I see, but how much of that is mere pragmatism and how much is you rationalizing the virtue of politeness, which we've been raised with among other such ideology-related memes?

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 09:15:26PM 1 point [-]

If politeness = effectiveness, then where does the rationalization come into play?

And I don't mean politeness as a Trojan horse for avoidance and euphemism.

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