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The problem with "balancing viewpoints" argument is that it isn't based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a "bal

The problem with "balancing viewpoints" argument is that it isn't based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a "balanced viewpoint" and still have debates about "whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not." There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion. It similar to the bogus fair and balanced media argument. News reporting is about reporting the facts as they lead logically so that if anyone would perform the work of the journalist they would arrive at similar conclusions regardless of their perspective or polity. It's very much like the scientific method. Focusing on opinion diversity is a red herring.

jon-wood 11y ago
Thank you, you've summed up the question of balanced journalism far better than I ever could. The current approach of sticking someone with an opposite opinion on the news, even if that opinion is clearly utter horseshit, really gets to me, but I wasn't able to properly describe why.
- cespare 11y ago
  BTW the name for this is "false balance". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
  - jgord 11y ago
    ..thanks, this thought anti-pattern has become a cultural virus - having a name helps combat it.
- jimbokun 11y ago
  However, I think the approach of sticking someone with an opposite opinion, then tearing their argument apart with debate, insightful questions, or merciless satire are wonderful approaches to dealing with this problem. Stewart and Colbert, of course, mastered this art in the U.S., and many British journalists seem to have a knack for it as well.
deleted 11y ago
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twelfthnight 11y ago
Agreed. It strikes me that "balanced viewpoints" are actually antithetical to the anti-fragile philosophy Haidt promotes. We need to be malleable in our viewpoints so that we are both free to express them and should be expected to change them when we encounter evidence against them. A "balanced viewpoint" means keeping viewpoints safe from the world (a "fragile" viewpoint!). It's also worth noting that humans respond better to praise and work more efficiently when we feel safe. So we obviously can't be completely "anti-fragile".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ploxiln 11y ago
Indeed. Some stuff is really clearly not true, and we shouldn't need to work to make space and provide representation for it in schools and such. But how do we avoid the problem where if I suggest that maybe the moon isn't all Vince Foster all the time, I'm an evil person? (a racist, and oppressor of women?) Can we get to a place, not where we agree that the moon could be made of Vince Foster, but where one can suggest it's not Vince Foster without being literally ostracized, from schools and jobs?
- RodericDay 11y ago
  How do you think a history class should handle a student who wants to discuss Holocaust as a hoax? How about a law student who thinks rape is a victim-less crime? My answer used to be "why, if you have the truth on your side, just prove 'em wrong and move on! so much the better for your standpoint!". However, it can get extremely tedious. A stubborn student can "plausible deniability" his way into extremely metaphysical arguments, about historical revisionism and psychology, and ultimately about epistemology itself. I think it's important to phrase the argument not as "the students want these topics to not be discussed", but instead as "the students want these topics to be included in the actually already existing list of topics we don't discuss". And then take it topic-by-topic. This idea that student-activism is largely composed of completely irrational anti-logic zealots is a caricature.
  - 1812Overture 11y ago
    I think a history class that can't make a strong argument that the holocaust wasn't a hoax and a law class that can't make the argument that rape victims exist are in VERY serious trouble. Being able to debunk such looney claims is very valuable for students so they should develop these skills not be shielded from exposure to them.
    - Jtsummers 11y ago
      In general I agree with you, but having dealt with (less severe) examples of this with some coworkers, it's really, really annoying. When someone simply states their (contrary or contrarian) viewpoint and refuses to admit any evidence presented is valid, you can't win. It's an exercise in futility. I had a guy simply insisting that evolution wasn't real. "Ok", I say, "what about (found some reports demonstrating observable changes in a species over time)?". "Oh, well sure, microevolution is real, but big things can't change, like humans." And around we go again and again. (Same guy believes that we can't actually analyze someone's genome and that people become resistant to antibiotics, not diseases, and 9/11 was an inside job.) Show them video, show them photographs, bring in first-person witnesses, and they'll find a way to dismiss all of it. Either because they truly believe what they're saying, or, like a current coworker, they're just a contrarian asshole. That doesn't mean we shield people from these views, but we have to, at some point, accept that not all viewpoints are equal, some simply have no merit and aren't worth discussing beyond acknowledging that some people believe them (would you really want to engage with a flat-earth believer? I mean, it was fun once, but that was enough for me).
nostromo 11y ago
But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. The problem today is that students and faculty are self-censoring. This doesn't expand erudition.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  > But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. No, they shouldn't, and I'll follow-up as to why below. >Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. Given sufficient rhetorical skill and sufficiently many appeals to "open thought" or "questioning assumptions" or "viewpoint diversity" - in short, various forms of postmodern denial of the external world and the strict rules for reasoning about it - a sufficiently motivated student or professor will manage to make "the moon is made of Vince Foster" the center of attention. We are living in the same world, with the same academic institutions, which was fooled by the Sokal Hoax, and we are also dealing with the human psychology of social proof, in which giving time and energy to considering an idea in-detail is considered evidence for the idea's truth (rather than evidence for its vagueness or logical complexity). We cannot allow academia to be consumed with discussions over whether gravity is a social construction, especially not because right-wing partisans feel that only mostly owning the field of economics means that academia is engaged in conspiracy against them.
  - nostromo 11y ago
    Who gets to decide which ideas are off limits?
    - ps4fanboy 11y ago
      The group with the most power evidently.
    - masterleep 11y ago
      The right-thinking people.
srum 11y ago
I agree that artificially imposing a "fair and balanced" framework onto news/discourse is a bogus concept as, like you say, the centre of gravity can be shifted in favour of nonsense ideas just by posing the question. But in your second paragraph, you seem to imply (maybe I'm wrong here) that there is a sense of objectivity inherent in news reporting, because the reporting leads logically from the facts. However, the facts are hand-picked, meaning bias is unavoidably baked into the premise. In which case we are no closer to avoiding "focussing on opinion diversity", as the same opinion diversity arguments apply to choosing the facts on which to report. edit: RTFA
hagmonk 11y ago
This is perceptive. As a society we must tolerate a diversity of opinions. Everything must be open to question and debate. But after questioning and debate, there must be a final disposition that lets us move on to other challenges. How we reached that disposition should be so clear that it invites renewed debate only in circumstances where new insights have been made. I feel like we already use this pattern in a variety of settings. The legal system comes to mind, where we build this collective body of decisions that either prove useful and are built on, or modified and removed if not. But there is not a sense of anything being "inappropriate" to question. The very core of the legal system is challenged on a regular basis and we don't feel the need to censor those who challenge it. We have a general level of confidence that the system has checks and balances that let justice prevail. Two observations. One is that this reminds me of eventually consistent systems. The law lags slightly behind reality but we know it catches up eventually. Reality is always changing and so we don't expect the law to always be up to the minute perfect. Perhaps we can embrace this notion of imperfection as a reason to keep discourse constantly open. Second is that the law is effectively the source code for running society. It has procedures set up around it very similar to how we'd run a successful open source project. Integrators, reviewers, unit testers, engineers, project managers, pull requests … Perhaps in the case of Yale and other institutions, what is needed is the same level of transparency we have in a well run source repo or legal system. 1) everything is written down somewhere, is properly attributed, and openly discussed. 2) systems are in place to propose changes, understand the impact of those changes, and integrate or reject those changes. 3) there is an understanding that this is an evolving system, it has a past, present, and a future. 4) history is recorded so that present and future discussions can be made with the appropriate context in place. I feel like this is the solution for incorporating dissenting views, converging on the set of beliefs that identify the underlying priorities and preferences of the participants, and making it clear why certain things are the way they are. It is entirely possible that institutions may converge around policies that are abhorrent to some, but being clear and transparent about that at least makes people know what they're getting in to. It's possible that a system like this at Yale would result in some students or faculty deciding that their views would not be welcome there, which is better than discovering that after the fact.
frotak 11y ago
You're missing the thrust of the argument entirely. The author does not advocate validating factually invalid statements - see his anecdote in the second article linked in GP regarding "whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people": "I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn't it good that someone made the video we just watched to try to clear things up? And, hey, let's talk about whether that was effective, okay? If you don't think it was, how could it have been?" In other words - in the case of "bunk" it can be summarily dismissed with a proper basis. Which is entirely different from vilifying and personally attacking a person for their beliefs or thoughts which are doing no actual harm to anyone else. People can have bogus ideas and those bogus ideas can be completely harmless no matter how much you might find them distasteful. Viewpoint diversity is entirely about bringing different perspectives and experiences to bear on a subject. It works in the hard sciences: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151124-kadison-singer-math-problem/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151124-kadison-singer-math-... Why shouldn't it similarly be applied in areas of morality, ethics, social science, etc?
- masterleep 11y ago
  Look, are you trying to help the bad people spread their bad ideas? You must be on the side of the bad people!
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  I think the parent is on to something about the implications of the argument, although it is not how the post's author would look at it, of course. To really understand an argument, one has to start with its subject. Are we talking about viewpoints or people? What the blog post author focuses on is people: > Me: Now lets try it for politics. How many of you would say you are on the right politically, or that you are conservative or Republican? This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how discourse is conducted and should be conducted. People are not on the right politically, conservative, or Republican. People are people, and each might hold or articulate viewpoints or opinions that are on the right politically or conservative. They might be a member of the Republican Party. All of these are elective and potentially temporary. The whole point of discourse is that viewpoints, opinions, and memberships can change. So to start by framing those as elements of identity needing protection, feeds directly into a framework for discussion that is conflicted. If a discussion must validate and protect all viewpoints (conservative or liberal), then what is going to be discussed? IMO the right way to approach this situation is to explore the potential consequences of voicing an unpopular opinion. Often, they are far less scary than teenagers might suppose. We should focus on how to give each individual student the mental tools to effectively evaluate arguments, and to manage their anxiety about going against perceived social norms. Teaching kids to be brave in speaking up against prevailing opinion can help create positive outcomes throughout their lives. We want citizens who will speak up for what they know is right, even if they know they will face trouble.
jimbokun 11y ago
"There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion." I'm sure all of the students getting faculty and administrators dismissed right now would describe the opposing ideas as "bunk" not worthy of consideration. I see a few reasons to explicitly address "bunk" ideas. * Students have already been exposed to the ideas, and many already believe them. Having a discussion explaining why they are bunk might be critical to moving on to more interesting topics. * Appeals to authority make for bad pedagogy. Sure, evolution is the scientific consensus. But students who just accept it at face value without asking to be shown the evidence are not students capable of scientific thought. * Ideas you thought were bunk might turn out to have more merit or nuance than you expected, once you start digging deeper. It's easy to see other people's deeply held bunk ideas. But how do you force yourself to see your own?
mc32 11y ago
The problem with focusing on the focus of balanced viewpoints is that it focuses on obvious chaff. People will say, well, we don't want to give holocaust/climate/secondamendment/etc. deniers equal voices, or rather equal imprimatur, the problem is actually the censoring of thoughts so that people feel compelled to toe the received and accepted thought on a given topic. So, in effect, investigating root causes or nuance is denied because any of that could, in some people's minds, undermine the larger issue(s). It's sad and unfortunate that discussing things must become personal attacks rather than being viewed as inquiry.
iamsohungry 11y ago
I don't think the comparison of balancing viewpoints in a classroom is really comparable to the fair and balanced media argument. In a classroom, you're dealing with a classroom full of a limited number of people who need to be able to state and defend their ideas. It's unlikely that someone in such a classroom will bring up whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster, but if they do, students should be able to make a reasonable decision on how to respond (in that case, it requires little response beyond polite derision). Dismissing something as a red herring without even bringing it up in a classroom avoids a key responsibility of an educator: students need to be able to recognize red herrings and respond to them as such. Red herrings occur in the real world. The role of the educator is not to dictate accurate information, it's to teach people how to critically process information. The news, on the other hand, does have the responsibility to dictate accurate information. As such, the only opinions that matter are the opinions of experts, and those should be subservient to data. "Fair and balanced" doesn't often matter because if there are really two sides to the issue, the "information" isn't accurate enough to be presenting to an inexpert public anyway. Debates should happen between experts based on the data, without politicization, and news should report the results.
wbsgrepit 11y ago
The issue with this stance is that history has shown many times that unpopular views and lively debate leads to growth, understanding and knowledge. You can have a "balanced viewpoint" and still have debates about "whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not." There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion. IMHO this concept falls on its own sword. What harm is there debating about the moon being made of Vince's body if there is a question in the forum? Does it harm the people that have solidified beliefs about it being false? The person who believes it to be possible? What is learning beyond discussing the possibilities, informing each other about beliefs, viewpoints and deductive reasoning leading to growth/questioning what is true and false and constructing and reconstructing your closely held beliefs. Uniform thought begets uniform thought and does not foster growth. I shiver thinking about wonders/discoveries would have been lost if people in our history were afraid to discuss unpopular ideas and constructs; as it stands too many already have been.
mreiland 11y ago
I wish more people understood this. I like it frame it in a less politically correct way and simply ask people if they're up for debating whether or not pedophilia should be legal. If the answer is no, then they necessarily must agree that there are things for which a reasonable person can have a closed mind about and still remain reasonable.

jon-wood 11y ago

Thank you, you've summed up the question of balanced journalism far better than I ever could. The current approach of sticking someone with an opposite opinion on the news, even if that opinion is clearly utter horseshit, really gets to me, but I wasn't able to properly describe why.

cespare 11y ago
BTW the name for this is "false balance". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
- jgord 11y ago
  ..thanks, this thought anti-pattern has become a cultural virus - having a name helps combat it.
jimbokun 11y ago
However, I think the approach of sticking someone with an opposite opinion, then tearing their argument apart with debate, insightful questions, or merciless satire are wonderful approaches to dealing with this problem. Stewart and Colbert, of course, mastered this art in the U.S., and many British journalists seem to have a knack for it as well.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

twelfthnight 11y ago

Agreed. It strikes me that "balanced viewpoints" are actually antithetical to the anti-fragile philosophy Haidt promotes. We need to be malleable in our viewpoints so that we are both free to express them and should be expected to change them when we encounter evidence against them. A "balanced viewpoint" means keeping viewpoints safe from the world (a "fragile" viewpoint!). It's also worth noting that humans respond better to praise and work more efficiently when we feel safe. So we obviously can't be completely "anti-fragile".

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ploxiln 11y ago

Indeed. Some stuff is really clearly not true, and we shouldn't need to work to make space and provide representation for it in schools and such. But how do we avoid the problem where if I suggest that maybe the moon isn't all Vince Foster all the time, I'm an evil person? (a racist, and oppressor of women?) Can we get to a place, not where we agree that the moon could be made of Vince Foster, but where one can suggest it's not Vince Foster without being literally ostracized, from schools and jobs?

RodericDay 11y ago
How do you think a history class should handle a student who wants to discuss Holocaust as a hoax? How about a law student who thinks rape is a victim-less crime? My answer used to be "why, if you have the truth on your side, just prove 'em wrong and move on! so much the better for your standpoint!". However, it can get extremely tedious. A stubborn student can "plausible deniability" his way into extremely metaphysical arguments, about historical revisionism and psychology, and ultimately about epistemology itself. I think it's important to phrase the argument not as "the students want these topics to not be discussed", but instead as "the students want these topics to be included in the actually already existing list of topics we don't discuss". And then take it topic-by-topic. This idea that student-activism is largely composed of completely irrational anti-logic zealots is a caricature.
- 1812Overture 11y ago
  I think a history class that can't make a strong argument that the holocaust wasn't a hoax and a law class that can't make the argument that rape victims exist are in VERY serious trouble. Being able to debunk such looney claims is very valuable for students so they should develop these skills not be shielded from exposure to them.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    In general I agree with you, but having dealt with (less severe) examples of this with some coworkers, it's really, really annoying. When someone simply states their (contrary or contrarian) viewpoint and refuses to admit any evidence presented is valid, you can't win. It's an exercise in futility. I had a guy simply insisting that evolution wasn't real. "Ok", I say, "what about (found some reports demonstrating observable changes in a species over time)?". "Oh, well sure, microevolution is real, but big things can't change, like humans." And around we go again and again. (Same guy believes that we can't actually analyze someone's genome and that people become resistant to antibiotics, not diseases, and 9/11 was an inside job.) Show them video, show them photographs, bring in first-person witnesses, and they'll find a way to dismiss all of it. Either because they truly believe what they're saying, or, like a current coworker, they're just a contrarian asshole. That doesn't mean we shield people from these views, but we have to, at some point, accept that not all viewpoints are equal, some simply have no merit and aren't worth discussing beyond acknowledging that some people believe them (would you really want to engage with a flat-earth believer? I mean, it was fun once, but that was enough for me).

nostromo 11y ago

But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. The problem today is that students and faculty are self-censoring. This doesn't expand erudition.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
> But in a classroom setting, the students should feel free to debate the composition of the moon. No, they shouldn't, and I'll follow-up as to why below. >Very quickly, the proposal that the moon is made of Vince Foster would be dismissed as false. This is critical thinking in action. Given sufficient rhetorical skill and sufficiently many appeals to "open thought" or "questioning assumptions" or "viewpoint diversity" - in short, various forms of postmodern denial of the external world and the strict rules for reasoning about it - a sufficiently motivated student or professor will manage to make "the moon is made of Vince Foster" the center of attention. We are living in the same world, with the same academic institutions, which was fooled by the Sokal Hoax, and we are also dealing with the human psychology of social proof, in which giving time and energy to considering an idea in-detail is considered evidence for the idea's truth (rather than evidence for its vagueness or logical complexity). We cannot allow academia to be consumed with discussions over whether gravity is a social construction, especially not because right-wing partisans feel that only mostly owning the field of economics means that academia is engaged in conspiracy against them.
- nostromo 11y ago
  Who gets to decide which ideas are off limits?
  - ps4fanboy 11y ago
    The group with the most power evidently.
  - masterleep 11y ago
    The right-thinking people.

srum 11y ago

I agree that artificially imposing a "fair and balanced" framework onto news/discourse is a bogus concept as, like you say, the centre of gravity can be shifted in favour of nonsense ideas just by posing the question. But in your second paragraph, you seem to imply (maybe I'm wrong here) that there is a sense of objectivity inherent in news reporting, because the reporting leads logically from the facts. However, the facts are hand-picked, meaning bias is unavoidably baked into the premise. In which case we are no closer to avoiding "focussing on opinion diversity", as the same opinion diversity arguments apply to choosing the facts on which to report. edit: RTFA

hagmonk 11y ago

This is perceptive. As a society we must tolerate a diversity of opinions. Everything must be open to question and debate. But after questioning and debate, there must be a final disposition that lets us move on to other challenges. How we reached that disposition should be so clear that it invites renewed debate only in circumstances where new insights have been made. I feel like we already use this pattern in a variety of settings. The legal system comes to mind, where we build this collective body of decisions that either prove useful and are built on, or modified and removed if not. But there is not a sense of anything being "inappropriate" to question. The very core of the legal system is challenged on a regular basis and we don't feel the need to censor those who challenge it. We have a general level of confidence that the system has checks and balances that let justice prevail. Two observations. One is that this reminds me of eventually consistent systems. The law lags slightly behind reality but we know it catches up eventually. Reality is always changing and so we don't expect the law to always be up to the minute perfect. Perhaps we can embrace this notion of imperfection as a reason to keep discourse constantly open. Second is that the law is effectively the source code for running society. It has procedures set up around it very similar to how we'd run a successful open source project. Integrators, reviewers, unit testers, engineers, project managers, pull requests … Perhaps in the case of Yale and other institutions, what is needed is the same level of transparency we have in a well run source repo or legal system. 1) everything is written down somewhere, is properly attributed, and openly discussed. 2) systems are in place to propose changes, understand the impact of those changes, and integrate or reject those changes. 3) there is an understanding that this is an evolving system, it has a past, present, and a future. 4) history is recorded so that present and future discussions can be made with the appropriate context in place. I feel like this is the solution for incorporating dissenting views, converging on the set of beliefs that identify the underlying priorities and preferences of the participants, and making it clear why certain things are the way they are. It is entirely possible that institutions may converge around policies that are abhorrent to some, but being clear and transparent about that at least makes people know what they're getting in to. It's possible that a system like this at Yale would result in some students or faculty deciding that their views would not be welcome there, which is better than discovering that after the fact.

frotak 11y ago

You're missing the thrust of the argument entirely. The author does not advocate validating factually invalid statements - see his anecdote in the second article linked in GP regarding "whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people": "I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn't it good that someone made the video we just watched to try to clear things up? And, hey, let's talk about whether that was effective, okay? If you don't think it was, how could it have been?" In other words - in the case of "bunk" it can be summarily dismissed with a proper basis. Which is entirely different from vilifying and personally attacking a person for their beliefs or thoughts which are doing no actual harm to anyone else. People can have bogus ideas and those bogus ideas can be completely harmless no matter how much you might find them distasteful. Viewpoint diversity is entirely about bringing different perspectives and experiences to bear on a subject. It works in the hard sciences: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151124-kadison-singer-math-problem/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151124-kadison-singer-math-... Why shouldn't it similarly be applied in areas of morality, ethics, social science, etc?

masterleep 11y ago
Look, are you trying to help the bad people spread their bad ideas? You must be on the side of the bad people!
snowwrestler 11y ago
I think the parent is on to something about the implications of the argument, although it is not how the post's author would look at it, of course. To really understand an argument, one has to start with its subject. Are we talking about viewpoints or people? What the blog post author focuses on is people: > Me: Now lets try it for politics. How many of you would say you are on the right politically, or that you are conservative or Republican? This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how discourse is conducted and should be conducted. People are not on the right politically, conservative, or Republican. People are people, and each might hold or articulate viewpoints or opinions that are on the right politically or conservative. They might be a member of the Republican Party. All of these are elective and potentially temporary. The whole point of discourse is that viewpoints, opinions, and memberships can change. So to start by framing those as elements of identity needing protection, feeds directly into a framework for discussion that is conflicted. If a discussion must validate and protect all viewpoints (conservative or liberal), then what is going to be discussed? IMO the right way to approach this situation is to explore the potential consequences of voicing an unpopular opinion. Often, they are far less scary than teenagers might suppose. We should focus on how to give each individual student the mental tools to effectively evaluate arguments, and to manage their anxiety about going against perceived social norms. Teaching kids to be brave in speaking up against prevailing opinion can help create positive outcomes throughout their lives. We want citizens who will speak up for what they know is right, even if they know they will face trouble.

jimbokun 11y ago

"There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion." I'm sure all of the students getting faculty and administrators dismissed right now would describe the opposing ideas as "bunk" not worthy of consideration. I see a few reasons to explicitly address "bunk" ideas. * Students have already been exposed to the ideas, and many already believe them. Having a discussion explaining why they are bunk might be critical to moving on to more interesting topics. * Appeals to authority make for bad pedagogy. Sure, evolution is the scientific consensus. But students who just accept it at face value without asking to be shown the evidence are not students capable of scientific thought. * Ideas you thought were bunk might turn out to have more merit or nuance than you expected, once you start digging deeper. It's easy to see other people's deeply held bunk ideas. But how do you force yourself to see your own?

mc32 11y ago

The problem with focusing on the focus of balanced viewpoints is that it focuses on obvious chaff. People will say, well, we don't want to give holocaust/climate/secondamendment/etc. deniers equal voices, or rather equal imprimatur, the problem is actually the censoring of thoughts so that people feel compelled to toe the received and accepted thought on a given topic. So, in effect, investigating root causes or nuance is denied because any of that could, in some people's minds, undermine the larger issue(s). It's sad and unfortunate that discussing things must become personal attacks rather than being viewed as inquiry.

iamsohungry 11y ago

I don't think the comparison of balancing viewpoints in a classroom is really comparable to the fair and balanced media argument. In a classroom, you're dealing with a classroom full of a limited number of people who need to be able to state and defend their ideas. It's unlikely that someone in such a classroom will bring up whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster, but if they do, students should be able to make a reasonable decision on how to respond (in that case, it requires little response beyond polite derision). Dismissing something as a red herring without even bringing it up in a classroom avoids a key responsibility of an educator: students need to be able to recognize red herrings and respond to them as such. Red herrings occur in the real world. The role of the educator is not to dictate accurate information, it's to teach people how to critically process information. The news, on the other hand, does have the responsibility to dictate accurate information. As such, the only opinions that matter are the opinions of experts, and those should be subservient to data. "Fair and balanced" doesn't often matter because if there are really two sides to the issue, the "information" isn't accurate enough to be presenting to an inexpert public anyway. Debates should happen between experts based on the data, without politicization, and news should report the results.

wbsgrepit 11y ago

The issue with this stance is that history has shown many times that unpopular views and lively debate leads to growth, understanding and knowledge. You can have a "balanced viewpoint" and still have debates about "whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not." There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion. IMHO this concept falls on its own sword. What harm is there debating about the moon being made of Vince's body if there is a question in the forum? Does it harm the people that have solidified beliefs about it being false? The person who believes it to be possible? What is learning beyond discussing the possibilities, informing each other about beliefs, viewpoints and deductive reasoning leading to growth/questioning what is true and false and constructing and reconstructing your closely held beliefs. Uniform thought begets uniform thought and does not foster growth. I shiver thinking about wonders/discoveries would have been lost if people in our history were afraid to discuss unpopular ideas and constructs; as it stands too many already have been.

mreiland 11y ago

I wish more people understood this. I like it frame it in a less politically correct way and simply ask people if they're up for debating whether or not pedophilia should be legal. If the answer is no, then they necessarily must agree that there are things for which a reasonable person can have a closed mind about and still remain reasonable.