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To start off, "liberal" is hard to define, really. I identify as "classically liberal," but that can greatly differ from modern liberal, progressive, etc. Frie

To start off, "liberal" is hard to define, really. I identify as "classically liberal," but that can greatly differ from modern liberal, progressive, etc. Friedrich Hayek tried to answer this in the 40s, when "intellectuals" were into communism and eugenics (this video is not from the 40s obviously.) http://cafehayek.com/2014/10/hayek-on-intellectuals-and-socialism.html http://cafehayek.com/2014/10/hayek-on-intellectuals-and-soci... To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking. In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. I do think there is a bit of a shift happening and that's many professors, etc standing up against "safe spaces" on campus. The irony of course is that many young people vouching for these areas often identify as liberal, but yet suppressing the ideas of others is anything but. So...you really have to be careful in how you define "liberal," as it appears the title is shifting a bit due to millennial deposition.

SolaceQuantum 10y ago
I admit I don't understand the protesting against safe spaces. My university is probably one of the largest of my state and we have a safe space called the "wellness office". It gives out free tea, lip balm, hand sanitizer, and fruits. In the evenings it lets specific people from the LGBTQA+ spectrum come and talk about things. E.g. "Bisexual and pan sexualities" or "Queer men" or "LGBTQ People of color" would all have their own weekly schedule to meet. I've actually been to a few to see what exactly is going on and what I found was that those meetings tended to talk about issues that are very specific to those groups and therefore there couldn't be much in the way of discussion for people not in those groups. It's not too dissimilar from a meetup of people who want to discuss specific algorithmic proofs in that it's a "safe space" for people in that field and in that education and the quality of conversation would be less productive for the people there if someone not in that field or education arrived and joined in with a bunch of confusion or lack of education about what algorithms are. I really am confused because I've yet to encounter a "safe space" in which I felt that there was a plan to censor people or order people that they can't say certain things. Meetings hosted by the "safe space" at my university have come off to me as a space to intellectually discuss topics more or less pertaining to a demographic who would otherwise not have as productive a conversation if they had to explain what sexuality is. I've also experienced similar environments in editor's meetups in literature and research groups in STEM. Could you provide me with a study or article regarding how the existence of an isolated space for the discussion of topics is wrong or bad? I don't mean to attack you or say that "safe spaces" are a good thing. I just don't see the difference between "safe spaces" for minorities differs from spaces of intellectual discussion in STEM.
- sremani 10y ago
  In a meet-up I can actually call out the BS of the presenter or at least thoroughly ask honest questions. In a safe space, even if my question is honest and to the point, its validity is determined by the state of mind of the responder. So, that is there. The concept of safe space is nothing new, people usually call it home or club. But to impose safe space in the center of town square is the problem. edit: also safe spaces promote acceptance of dogma over free thinking, which Universities claim to be centers of.
  - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
    Interestingly enough at the safe space I went to, there was heavy discussion over whether BDSM should be allowed to be considered an alternative sexuality comparable to homo/bi/pansexuality. There was heavy disagreement and productive debate over this topic in a "safe space" for bi/pansexuals at the university. I don't understand how there was dogma over free thinking in this context. I keep trying to understand where my experiences with things labeled "safe space" align with a rather big voice on the internet and within my peers that "safe space" meetups are somehow oppressive or regressive to ideals and communication. I wouldn't be offended that there exists literary workshops that I cannot attend or that there are physics conferences I wouldn't be welcome in because I know nothing of physics. Could you suggest a "safe space" for me to enter and observe for myself that would better align with this issue? I understand there aren't any serious surveys or academic study listing experiences of "safe space" and their repercussions so I've been trying to seek out and gather my own data.
  - 467568985476 10y ago
    Have you ever been to a safe space and tried to participate in discussion? I think the grandparent comment is spot on. Honest questions in good faith are honored, even when they come from ignorance. What's not honored is people looking for a debate that involves "calling out BS". It's not the safe space's responsibility to educate you on social issues. The whole point is to exclude people who deliberately lack context and understanding so that the discussion can be had on more complex topics. Also, as a straight, white person myself, I understand that there are some discussions where my opinions are irrelevant and unwanted because I simply haven't experienced what others have and am unable to understand and empathize as intimately. Excluding my opinion isn't a slight against free thinking, it's a shortcut because I have nothing to contribute.
tbrownaw 10y ago
To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking. I'd say it's more that they think they know better than tradition. They have the best reasoning skills and the most formalized evidence, which are of course better than generations of trial-and-error and heuristics and stacked biases. In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. With the history of things like women having to write under male pseudonyms and people with the wrong opinions getting shut out ("scientific progress happens one funeral at a time"), this probably comes from somewhere else. I'd say it got fashionable somehow and then got stuck in a positive feedback loop.
srtjstjsj 10y ago
> In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. or it comes from being smart enough to see the illogic of religious belief and to hold more complex thoughts than simple prejudices.
- themartorana 10y ago
  This probably has something to do with it. I'd think, although perhaps I'm wrong, that the note highly educated, the less likely to be very religious (on average).
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  smart enough to see the illogic of religious belief A lot of religious people don't take their beliefs literally. It's more stories that they know are just stories (or just don't care if they're literally true or not), but that illustrate some important point and provide a shared context for talking about it. Like how it doesn't matter if the "640k should be enough for anybody" quote is actually true or not, or Paul Bunyan and John Henry and the rest of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion , or the Story of Mel the Real Programmer, or the 500 mile email, etc. They illustrate important principles and shared cultural values, and strict historical accuracy isn't actually that important to their usefulness. . hold more complex thoughts than simple prejudices. The annoying thing about prejudices, is they're often not so much flat wrong as deliberately under-fitting the data for performance reasons or bootstrapping a model for a new environment with data from an old environment. For example, there's a lovely article about how affirmative action quotas encourage racism here: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-prophecy/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-prop... .
- catawbasam 10y ago
  So Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell and Tolstoy weren't smart enough? I don't find this credible.
chr15p 10y ago
>To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking. At a general level is that not the point of education? If people who have studied economics dont understand economics, the benefits and perils of different economic policies and activities, better then those who have never thought about it, then surely there's something seriously wrong? > In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. This is actually testable, physics, maths and other "hard" sciences gain nothing from including minority opinions (or any opinions) so by your logic science academics should be less liberal then social scientists or liberal arts professors. I doubt that's true though. I suspect that the better educated a person is the wider their experience or people from other backgrounds and the wider the experience the more the acceptance. But that's just an educated guess ;-)
- partiallypro 10y ago
  > At a general level is that not the point of education? If people who have studied economics dont understand economics, the benefits and perils of different economic policies and activities, better then those who have never thought about it, then surely there's something seriously wrong? Yes, but the people who are are often for "progressive/liberal" economic policies (not to be confused with neoliberal economic policies) are often not in the field of economics. Krugman and most in the Keynesian school, a "left leaning" school, knows the value of free trade. Yet if you go to other intellectuals in other subjects, such as Philosophy, etc, you will find little tolerance for the ideas of free trade. Honestly, I don't know if Krugman or even Galbraith fit under the "liberal" spectrum anymore, economically speaking, because the rise of Warren and Bernie are not inline the universally accepted ideas of 99% of economists. Really outside of the school of business on campuses, you will find that everyone completely disagrees with everyone in the school of business about economics. So no, it isn't because people are "specialized" in a subject and believe they can leverage that on other people's lives or policies. I'm pretty sure that's not quite what Smith had in mind when he spoke of specialization. I believe it is an elitist mindset they the educated are -better- people and -should- run the lives of others, etc through "progressive" policies. That doesn't mean they know anything about the subject of economics or know anything about other people's lives. Do I agree with some of those policies? Sure, but if you talk to some people on campus their world view is completely paternalistic and illogical.

SolaceQuantum 10y ago

I admit I don't understand the protesting against safe spaces. My university is probably one of the largest of my state and we have a safe space called the "wellness office". It gives out free tea, lip balm, hand sanitizer, and fruits. In the evenings it lets specific people from the LGBTQA+ spectrum come and talk about things. E.g. "Bisexual and pan sexualities" or "Queer men" or "LGBTQ People of color" would all have their own weekly schedule to meet. I've actually been to a few to see what exactly is going on and what I found was that those meetings tended to talk about issues that are very specific to those groups and therefore there couldn't be much in the way of discussion for people not in those groups. It's not too dissimilar from a meetup of people who want to discuss specific algorithmic proofs in that it's a "safe space" for people in that field and in that education and the quality of conversation would be less productive for the people there if someone not in that field or education arrived and joined in with a bunch of confusion or lack of education about what algorithms are. I really am confused because I've yet to encounter a "safe space" in which I felt that there was a plan to censor people or order people that they can't say certain things. Meetings hosted by the "safe space" at my university have come off to me as a space to intellectually discuss topics more or less pertaining to a demographic who would otherwise not have as productive a conversation if they had to explain what sexuality is. I've also experienced similar environments in editor's meetups in literature and research groups in STEM. Could you provide me with a study or article regarding how the existence of an isolated space for the discussion of topics is wrong or bad? I don't mean to attack you or say that "safe spaces" are a good thing. I just don't see the difference between "safe spaces" for minorities differs from spaces of intellectual discussion in STEM.

sremani 10y ago
In a meet-up I can actually call out the BS of the presenter or at least thoroughly ask honest questions. In a safe space, even if my question is honest and to the point, its validity is determined by the state of mind of the responder. So, that is there. The concept of safe space is nothing new, people usually call it home or club. But to impose safe space in the center of town square is the problem. edit: also safe spaces promote acceptance of dogma over free thinking, which Universities claim to be centers of.
- SolaceQuantum 10y ago
  Interestingly enough at the safe space I went to, there was heavy discussion over whether BDSM should be allowed to be considered an alternative sexuality comparable to homo/bi/pansexuality. There was heavy disagreement and productive debate over this topic in a "safe space" for bi/pansexuals at the university. I don't understand how there was dogma over free thinking in this context. I keep trying to understand where my experiences with things labeled "safe space" align with a rather big voice on the internet and within my peers that "safe space" meetups are somehow oppressive or regressive to ideals and communication. I wouldn't be offended that there exists literary workshops that I cannot attend or that there are physics conferences I wouldn't be welcome in because I know nothing of physics. Could you suggest a "safe space" for me to enter and observe for myself that would better align with this issue? I understand there aren't any serious surveys or academic study listing experiences of "safe space" and their repercussions so I've been trying to seek out and gather my own data.
- 467568985476 10y ago
  Have you ever been to a safe space and tried to participate in discussion? I think the grandparent comment is spot on. Honest questions in good faith are honored, even when they come from ignorance. What's not honored is people looking for a debate that involves "calling out BS". It's not the safe space's responsibility to educate you on social issues. The whole point is to exclude people who deliberately lack context and understanding so that the discussion can be had on more complex topics. Also, as a straight, white person myself, I understand that there are some discussions where my opinions are irrelevant and unwanted because I simply haven't experienced what others have and am unable to understand and empathize as intimately. Excluding my opinion isn't a slight against free thinking, it's a shortcut because I have nothing to contribute.

tbrownaw 10y ago

To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking. I'd say it's more that they think they know better than tradition. They have the best reasoning skills and the most formalized evidence, which are of course better than generations of trial-and-error and heuristics and stacked biases. In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. With the history of things like women having to write under male pseudonyms and people with the wrong opinions getting shut out ("scientific progress happens one funeral at a time"), this probably comes from somewhere else. I'd say it got fashionable somehow and then got stuck in a positive feedback loop.

srtjstjsj 10y ago

> In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. or it comes from being smart enough to see the illogic of religious belief and to hold more complex thoughts than simple prejudices.

themartorana 10y ago
This probably has something to do with it. I'd think, although perhaps I'm wrong, that the note highly educated, the less likely to be very religious (on average).
tbrownaw 10y ago
smart enough to see the illogic of religious belief A lot of religious people don't take their beliefs literally. It's more stories that they know are just stories (or just don't care if they're literally true or not), but that illustrate some important point and provide a shared context for talking about it. Like how it doesn't matter if the "640k should be enough for anybody" quote is actually true or not, or Paul Bunyan and John Henry and the rest of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion , or the Story of Mel the Real Programmer, or the 500 mile email, etc. They illustrate important principles and shared cultural values, and strict historical accuracy isn't actually that important to their usefulness. . hold more complex thoughts than simple prejudices. The annoying thing about prejudices, is they're often not so much flat wrong as deliberately under-fitting the data for performance reasons or bootstrapping a model for a new environment with data from an old environment. For example, there's a lovely article about how affirmative action quotas encourage racism here: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-prophecy/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-prop... .
catawbasam 10y ago
So Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell and Tolstoy weren't smart enough? I don't find this credible.

chr15p 10y ago

>To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking. At a general level is that not the point of education? If people who have studied economics dont understand economics, the benefits and perils of different economic policies and activities, better then those who have never thought about it, then surely there's something seriously wrong? > In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. This is actually testable, physics, maths and other "hard" sciences gain nothing from including minority opinions (or any opinions) so by your logic science academics should be less liberal then social scientists or liberal arts professors. I doubt that's true though. I suspect that the better educated a person is the wider their experience or people from other backgrounds and the wider the experience the more the acceptance. But that's just an educated guess ;-)

partiallypro 10y ago
> At a general level is that not the point of education? If people who have studied economics dont understand economics, the benefits and perils of different economic policies and activities, better then those who have never thought about it, then surely there's something seriously wrong? Yes, but the people who are are often for "progressive/liberal" economic policies (not to be confused with neoliberal economic policies) are often not in the field of economics. Krugman and most in the Keynesian school, a "left leaning" school, knows the value of free trade. Yet if you go to other intellectuals in other subjects, such as Philosophy, etc, you will find little tolerance for the ideas of free trade. Honestly, I don't know if Krugman or even Galbraith fit under the "liberal" spectrum anymore, economically speaking, because the rise of Warren and Bernie are not inline the universally accepted ideas of 99% of economists. Really outside of the school of business on campuses, you will find that everyone completely disagrees with everyone in the school of business about economics. So no, it isn't because people are "specialized" in a subject and believe they can leverage that on other people's lives or policies. I'm pretty sure that's not quite what Smith had in mind when he spoke of specialization. I believe it is an elitist mindset they the educated are -better- people and -should- run the lives of others, etc through "progressive" policies. That doesn't mean they know anything about the subject of economics or know anything about other people's lives. Do I agree with some of those policies? Sure, but if you talk to some people on campus their world view is completely paternalistic and illogical.