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Eugine_Nier comments on [Link] Diversity and Academic Open Mindedness - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (148)
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.
So which elements of this fuzzy category do you consider "false and nasty". For example, what do you think of John Derbyshire?
I think Derbyshire is partly right, partly silly, and would have a lot less reason to be nervous around black people if he learned "how to act", as those scary strange black folks say. If you want my opinion on any of his itemized points, feel free to ask, but responding to them all would be a novel - and I didn't disagree with them all. And I think his question is weak-to-moderate evidence for false-and-nasty racism.
But Derbyshire doesn't really work as a general signal flag for racism. Racial essentialism is one obvious answer: the idea that races are essential categories like species. Racism is also correlated with predictable, relatively negative across-the-board outcomes based on race. Racism is realtors directing black people to poor black neighborhoods and white people to relatively affluent neighborhoods. Racism is calling for the prohibition of any attention to racial disparities while pretending that you and everybody else can pretend to be "colorblind."
Some of these are stronger indicators than others, and there are a lot more I could list. The "colorblind" folks aren't always nasty - see e.g. Morgan Freeman before he saw some of the reactions to Obama's election - but they are wrong.
What do you mean by "how to act"? If you mean it's necessary to adopt a different set of behaviors when around blacks, this is precisely Derbyshire's point.
What do you mean by "essentialism"? After all the distinction between species isn't always clear either.
What specific statements of theirs do you believe to be wrong.
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.
Ok, now use those heuristics to establish the following proposition as a university administrator: we should hire Graham instead of Robert, because Graham is a Stalinist.
Probably not since the far left is already over-represented on campuses.
Ok, so to state the obvious, all this has nothing to do with intellectual diversity, but hatred of the left?