Since at this point we probably regard each other as fully mindkilled on the subject (at least I can vouch for one half of that statement), we should probably stop. I shall leave you the last word.
My reply would be along the lines of
The pedophile hysteria is a distinct problem which is not in general related
Pedophile hysteria is part of the problem in the same vein as rape hysteria and sexual harassment hysteria in general.
No. A thousands times no. As should pretty obvious since I made zero comment about your gender.
Ok then: why would you even question my personal experiences if not to discount my opinion on that basis, since if you're not facetious you know I'm male and probably haven't received unwanted sexual chat messages from female professors. It's an obvious set-up to an ad hom. Otherwise explain the question.
So who are you talking about?
Entitlement culture and a loss of the ability to concentrate and exhibit mental discipline have become endemic (take obesity as one marker), my 'fragile flower' comment was meant to apply stochastically across the board, not to the student in question specifically obviously. You must think me to be some crazy misanthrope or somesuch. It seems like the familiar "enemy detected"-pattern of political discourse.
And in your view they coordinate that how
It seems like we're regressing ... didn't we already cover that? But since you ask ... again ... let me quote ... a comment like 5 ancestors up:
I'm not saying this particular outbreak of hysteria (and all the other nonsense we spend our hysteria on) is all some sinister plot/smokescreen from the powers-that-be to keep (part of) the bottom 99% busy. More like a happy coincidence, for them.
It's easy to paint people who disagree as conspiracy nuts. Don't fall into that temptation.
Please reread what I said without trying to make it the stupidest argument you can.
I did. I have no idea what you were trying to say there, if it apparently was neither "if it is a significant causal link on its own, it is a significant causal link on its own" nor "even if the difference was minor, combined with other factors the overall impact can be large". Both are apparently the stupidest argument I can make up? Which is why I asked if I understood you correctly?
In general, politically involved topics lead to toxic climate. There's nothing special about the topic in question.
This is where I expected some sort of troll face following the quote. We seem to live in different slices of society, I can't explain why our perception would differ so fundamentally otherwise. Except the very first line of this comment, that is. Even Robin Hanson, of all people, became a target of part of the roving mob!
If weak examples of A cause some amount of X, then one should expect that more extreme amounts of A cause more of X
Look, you really need to read up on the noncentral fallacy. I really mean it. Grouping it all as "shades of A" is precisely the trap when putting disparate things into a common artificial bracket ("sexual harassment"). Violent rape is not "a more extreme amount of A on some scale where on the lower end there's 'men staring at you', ergo we can surmise that the effects can be extrapolated up". That would be the most ridiculous statement I've read this week, sorry to say. And I frequent Reddit. A study on men staring, then women doing worse at math test has near-precisely 0 bearing, and that's not because I don't look for a study showing that "men staring at women, women doing the same at the math test". It is because it's irrelevant to the topic. Wouldn't that be some bizarre slippery sloping from "men staring leads to worse math tests" to the topic of sexual harassment in toto, a bracket including rape as a central component?
I assume you've read the abstract. Shall I link it and ask you to show, precisely, how it translates to either the specific case, or "sexual harassment and STEM enrollment" in general? Is it that "women fail at math tests because men stared at them, ergo there are less women in STEM"?
I have an idea: We need some policy about "things that start with the letter A". It should be: contain all those things, since there's an atom bomb in there!
And on a final note: It would have been nice if you addressed my sources (the two Time articles), which I used as evidence that the public attention devoted to the topic doesn't fit the severity of the problem (or the lack thereof). Maybe you could choose to do so in your closing remarks?
ETA: Typos, tone.
Since at this point we probably regard each other as fully mindkilled on the subject (at least I can vouch for one half of that statement), we should probably stop. I shall leave you the last word
That's a fascinatingly passive-aggressive way of saying "I think you're hopelessly mindkilled". To be blunt, while I do certainly have suspicions in that direction, the outside view suggests that neither of us is mind-killed as much as we think the other person to be since both of us have taken positions with some degree of nuance.
...Pedophile hysteria
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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