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sunflowers comments on [Link] Diversity and Academic Open Mindedness - Less Wrong Discussion
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For more good examples of many of your points, see Hitchens e.g. 4:30. If you feel like reading something taboo today, I would recommend the old apologetics for American slavery. Some of them are really good: will black people be better off as somebody's valuable property or as a competing source of poor labor? Who here really likes black people? How do you think they'll do when they are "free"? We can give a half-shrug to the paternalistic crap, but we can't shrug away what happened after Reconstruction ended.
All that said, David Friedman is disastrously wrong.
Should we never hire a slavery apologist for a professor? No, we should still require ourselves to think. Should it be counted against an applicant? Yes, and heavily. I promise to explain, but first, "diversity".
If you can't recognize the distinction between "let's not fill the room with old white dudes" and "any diversity is good for its own sake", I can't help you. (If you really need me to, I will argue why the examples of diversity in the first paragraph here matter.) Not all representation is good. We all know it isn't good to have "both sides" present. It's perfectly reasonable to marginalize viewpoints that are really, really stupid or really, really abhorrent. Yes, we have all sorts of biases that make such assessments risky, but that doesn't make such assessments worthless.
Sometimes going far out of one's way to really understand the opposition makes you much better than never trying the exercise. Since we typically do too little of this, we should emphasize it. But it is almost always a complete waste of time. I would be better if I could articulate the arguments for 911 truth as well as any truther could. I would be better if I had memorized James Randi's library of quacks and cranks. But not much.
Modern diversity efforts do lead to unwarranted censorship. Duh. But if anyone here thinks that academia is less open and diverse now than it was 50 years ago, please recommend a source.
Saying terrible and false things should count against you. I don't like racism. Racism is bad. Marginalization in media, social life, and institutions is effective against it.
Like there's no God, and mankind wasn't a special creation of the Lord, but shares common ancestry with chimps, rodents, and slime mold. How abhorrent!
Hitchens had it right in his comments that you point to, and you'd do better to attempt to refute them than ignore them. Hitchens in other venues has defended David Irving as "probably one of the 3 or 4 necessary historians of the Third Reich". People who question your fundamental premises are extremely useful for helping to clarify why you believe what you do.
Having the state disqualify people for employment based on the moral repugnance of their ideas is the mark of theocracy. Out with the blasphemers!
And you'd do better to pay attention. You'll notice I never argued against Hitchens. Step back, breathe, and come back to me with some thoughts. Trust me, I've read more of his work than you have.
An exercise for the reader: how did you get from "really bad/stupid views - our judgment of which being flawed - are a negative that should count against a potential faculty member" to theocracy?
Some people will say anything.
Breathing just fine. You may have read more of Hitchens than I have. I've likely watched more than you. I guess we could play whose got the biggest swinging Hitchens phallus, but I don't see the point.
I note that you left out the relevant part of what you originally wrote:
Yes, those with ideas you "abhor" shouldn't be hired. In what way do you find this materially different from shunning blasphemers?
Well you notice that I put the two different things side by side in the same sentence to make it really really easy for you. Let's do it again with "theocracy" and "shunning blasphemers." You're shifting.
Here's a hint: at no point have I said that faculty who come out with horrible views should be fired. I also haven't said that people with horrible views should be fined, imprisoned, or banned from publishing. I just don't think they should have an easy time finding a major publisher to air their horrible views or a major newspaper willing to run a holocaust-denying opinion column, a state of affairs which it is left to the owners and editors of such outlets to induce - not the state.
I think being nasty and stupid should cost you. I think we should minimize the nastiness and stupidity and time wasted by such people.
I think what you are saying here is "We should not precommit to not hiring slavery apologists." Is that right?
Rather, the commitment to not hiring slavery apologists isn't absolute. It should be treated like a real decision with costs and benefits, with the slavery apologetics considered a serious cost. If you could hire Bob or Steve, where Bob is politically "usual" and Steve is holocaust denialist, you should hire Steve only if he is a considerably better choice than Bob on "usual" grounds.
Edit: I would also add that hiring a slavery apologist when you already have one is a heavier cost still. These are not vacuum decisions. Similarly, if every one of your faculty has political views acceptable to either liberals or conservatives, you should reduce the "nasty cost" of hiring a fascist or a Stalinist.
The thing is current universities are perfectly willing to hire Stalinists.
Yeah, current universities are dominated by Stalinism. Obviously.
"dominated by X" is not the same as "willing to hire X"
Most universities in my country would be perfectly OK to hire a Stalinist, as long as the person does not spend their whole day speaking about it. (Your country may be different.)
What is your evidence for this?
I certainly encountered at least one Stalin apologist in my college years, but that's hardly evidence of an institutional permissiveness, particularly towards Stalinist, which would be somebody who supports Stalin's tactics.
Anybody have any ideas on how to test the theory? Google seems utterly useless; all it comes up with is somebody named Grover Furr. Which may be proof that is can happen, but since AFAICT he was tenured -before- he caused controversy (in 2012), it's at best weak evidence that universities would in fact -hire- a Stalinist. Additionally, I'm not sure his claim qualifies as Stalinism, per se, as it is, in effect, denying that -Stalin- was a Stalinist, but rather a Neo-Stalinist.
Well, not quite a Stalinist, but look at all the eulogies for Soviet apologeticist Eric Hobsbawm by "mainstream" papers and accademics.
Who was almost universally recognized as a great historian and exactly the sort of person I would encourage universities to hire, despite his apologetics for Soviet communism.
I know, Viliam. I was responding to the obvious implication. I've been seeing a lot of signs of the sketchy Right in here.
How do you know the thing is false if you systematically censor any arguments for it?
Taboo "racism".
How do you know the thing is true if you would have promoted anybody that would say it?
Do you know all the arguments for marginalized positions with which you disagree? If not, would you say you do not know that some of them are really false?
Internet people are weird. I read Mill and Orwell all day and have no idea where they get their ideas of liberty from. They might talk like liberals when it comes to beating up gay kids. Ok, obviously good stuff is obvious. But then they start saying they same things about kids who beat up gay kids...
They'll talk like liberals when it comes to Klansmen and fascists and other nasty folk, and they'll talk like conservatives when it comes to black people and women. That makes sense: the principle is inexpensive when we're talking about the genuinely, completely marginal. But "other" groups that have a real shot at having a decent share of power...
I don't think anyone is calling for promoting anyone merely for being willing to say controversial things.
Here's an idea: try looking at the logic of their argument and not simply whether the conclusion feels repugnant to you for not.
You may want to start by figuring out what you mean by "racism", here are some questions (from one of my comments in another thread) to help guide the process:
I can repeat myself all day, but I'll do it just this once: I want administrators and faculty to think. I want them to think of Mr. Tilbert's white-robed weekends as a real cost before they make him Dr. Tilbert. Mr. Tilbert could be a perfectly decent economist. Don't hire him. Or he could be really good. Then hire him.
We could talk about what's been important here all along. Or I can restart by carefully explaining what I mean by "racism". But then, I'm not your pet monkey.
What do you think is important here? Shunning people whose opinions you abhour or aquiring true beliefs.
People tend to mean different things by "racism". I what to know what you mean by it.
I thought sticking to the original topic would be important, and I don't shun people whose opinions I abhor. I live in the South, and that would be a lonely life. With relevance in mind, we move onto
I'm not a university administrator or faculty member or newspaper editor. We're talking about those people. On this topic, those people are the ones responsible for recognizing false and nasty beliefs, e.g. racism. It's important to know how they evaluate it. And they will evaluate it, even if you want them to pretend that they aren't doing it. They'll notice what David Irving has done even if you very politely ask them to not do so. (I'll put this out there: I would hire Irving, assuming he was only to teach advanced students, were it not for his history of suing critics.)
As for what I mean by "racism", I suppose I wasn't clear before, so here it is: you're not Socrates, and I am not your pet monkey.
Addendum: If you want people to answer your questions, I suggest answering theirs.
So you won't say what you mean by "racism" but insist that it's false and nasty. I've heard different definitions of "racism", a number of those definitions wind up including making certain statements that are in fact true, or at least likely to be true.
Which question in particular were you refering to?
Ok, I can do give and take. First, an inadequately answered question:
To which you said
Where the opening paragraph of the article in this thread states a defender of Apartheid should given diversity have an increased likelihood of being hired by that virtue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I somehow believe that telling our prestigious institutions to select for cranks will make it even harder for laymen to sort out the truth than it is already and undermine trust in those same institutions. It will also skew scientific consensus even when that consensus is deserved.
Second, a far more important and entirely unanswered question:
Give these items a good effort, and I will return in kind.
I'm looking forward to the give and take, so out of impatience I'm going to add another question. In return I'll give a rough idea of where I am concerning racism. From a different area of the comments:
You can change the "and" to an "or", if you like. I'm interested if you would say something like, "no, but significantly less open than it would have been were it not for X." We might agree.
Racism: I'd make some boilerplate noises about inherent tribalism and group psychology as general background. Then I'd make some more boilerplate noises about the particulars of racial history in America. For the conceptual work, I would avoid any bother with necessary and sufficient conditions and go straight to fuzzy categories and representatives, along with some type distinctions. As a Less Wrong resident, you should know why I'd prefer this approach to what non-nerds typically do when asked what they mean by something: try to give a precise definition. If you try to do that, you'll probably include some true things that should be believed and doesn't make you a racist in any significant sense. For example, "judging people by the color of their skin." That's a terrible definition, but I bet it's a common answer. I can very accurately infer quite a lot about a person using skin color. When I meet a Korean or American-Korean, I've met something locally rare: somebody who knows what I mean when I say I watch professional Starcraft.
I use several heuristics to decide which ones are worth my time. Most of them are the ones mentioned by Paul Graham in his essay What you can't say.
Mission accomplished!
Your comment could be read two ways: it could mean that it is now taboo to actually practice racism, or it could mean that it is now taboo to accuse someone of doing so.