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I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be

I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. I don't mean this as a criticism of liberals or liberalism specifically here, since I realize many conservatives would do the same about issues they care about if they had the power and numbers to.

api 9y ago
At the meta level this is a symptom of the fact that the polarization of our culture is extremely deep. We are polarized on epistemology, metaphysics, and what it means to be human, with the left favoring various forms of scientific or empirical epistemology and a mutable model of human nature and the right favoring revelatory or traditionalist epistemology and an immutable model of human nature. The latter is true of the secular right as well. Just substitute "evolution" and "history" for God and mystical revelation. The secular right believes that human inborn characteristics are immutable and culture is a product of evolutionary processes that cannot or should not be rationally understood or modified. All the Neo-racists and HBD types are basically evolutionary-historical conservatives or reactionaries who see inequality as a revealed result of a process that is beyond human understanding. It's getting to the point that it is not even possible for the two sides to communicate because they do not agree on language, logic, or basic rules of discourse. The left and the right are cognitively inhabiting different universes. Humans subjectively experience extreme cognitive dissonance as actual discomfort. I think this explains the intolerance. People are emotionally reacting to the level of cognitive dissonance this divide generates as if ideas from the opposing side are physical attacks. I agree that the right is no different. Go into one of their bubbles and voice liberal ideas and you'll get the same reaction Milo gets on a Berkeley college campus.
- alien_at_work 9y ago
  >with the left favoring various forms of scientific or empirical epistemology What is scientific or empirical about safe spaces and identity politics?
  - api 9y ago
    Those things are part of the reaction I describe. The right is also creating its own enclaves. I would not be surprised to see the United States physically fragment and balkanize in the next 10-20 years. I get the sense that some on the hard-right and possibly also the hard-left have that as a goal.
ak_yo 9y ago
In what world are these opinions not voiced? I don't think this argument stands up to empirical scrutiny -- there's an incredibly robust network of vocally conservative student organizations.
- workthrowaway27 9y ago
  See this list and go to the most recent years: https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/ https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/ When the list started it was fairly evenly distributed between right and left leaning speakers being disinvited. Now it's much more commonly right leaning speakers.
  - geofft 9y ago
    That's about speakers being disinvited from campus, not views not being represented. There are a number of problems with that analysis: 1. Several speakers are overrepresented (I see a bunch of Milo invitations), which could well just reflect their aggressiveness at getting themselves invited / the strength of their own PR team. If one political side wants to make persecution their thing, they'll show up more commonly in that database. 2. In recent years, we've had a bunch of new forums for dissemination of ideas, which is a good thing. Twitter didn't exist in 2002. YouTube didn't exist in 2002. Podcasts didn't exist in 2002. Smartphones in people's pockets didn't exist in 2002. Today, anyone who wants to know what any of these speakers' opinions are can find out, easily, what they are, without needing them invited to campus. (And anyone who doesn't will just skip the talk anyway.) 3. In Milo's case specifically, he wanted to out a bunch of undocumented students on-stage. That I think doesn't fit the profile of political views being censored. (I agree that preventing him from speaking technically counts as censorship, but it's a very different discussion.) 4. Fundamentally, this list and the original article here both suffer from a blind belief in the "Great Man" theory. If person X doesn't express an opinion, or publicize their idea, or something, chances are absurdly high that someone else will have the same opinion or idea, too. If Newton were imprisoned for his alchemy, however unjust that might have been for Newton as a person, Leibniz would still have invented calculus. What I'd like to see is if certain types of ideas are being censored, not whether certain individuals who happen to hold those ideas are being censored.
geofft 9y ago
> I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. This does not seem to match the reality at university campuses - only the caricature by people who find it politically expedient to be seen as persecuted.
- dominotw 9y ago
  Results of this debate disagree with you https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-threatened-campus https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-th...
  - geofft 9y ago
    ... pardon my assumption, but those four people don't look like college students. Are they?
  - pmyteh 9y ago
    The results of a straw poll after a debate are not evidence for anything beyond what the people who saw the debate thought of the debaters. People vote for all kinds of reasons - the underlying merits of the case, the impressiveness of the speakers that they've found to present it, even sympathy for someone who got obviously crushed by their opponent. When I was a debater I've seen some truly outrageous motions get passed simply because one side was funnier.
    - dominotw 9y ago
      I understand. I was responding to comment that said its totally baseless caricature. I think debaters did a good job of presenting evidence for their case. Why not give it a chance instead of saying its "staw poll", isn't any poll "straw poll" by that account? Also I never said it evidence of anything. What is an example of "evidence" in this particular case for you?
      - pmyteh 9y ago
slantyyz 9y ago
Maybe I'm old and grumpy, but things seem pretty crazy these days on campuses. When I entered university in 1989, there was an extremely controversial professor at my school [1]. There was outrage accompanied with generally peaceful protests. How it was handled at my school back then was that they organized a live TV debate with someone to argue the side against the professor's position. In other words, we the students (and the public for that matter) were treated like adults and we were expected to be able to hear and process ideas we may not agree with without overreacting or having our heads explode. IIRC, the whole notion of going to university, among other things, was to further develop our critical thinking skills. That seems to be hard to do in an echo chamber. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton
blindwatchmaker 9y ago
> since I realize many conservatives would do the same about issues they care about if they had the power and numbers This, in fact, happens as the move to criminalize speech against Israel on campuses and eslwhere shows.
nostromo 9y ago
It's interesting that the word "liberal" has morphed so much in America to mean the opposite of its original meaning. Liberalism is rooted in liberty and freedom, and yet here we are in 2017 discussing how non-"liberal" ideas cannot be freely expressed in the most "liberal" cities. I say we stop calling these people liberal, because they're anything but.

api 9y ago

At the meta level this is a symptom of the fact that the polarization of our culture is extremely deep. We are polarized on epistemology, metaphysics, and what it means to be human, with the left favoring various forms of scientific or empirical epistemology and a mutable model of human nature and the right favoring revelatory or traditionalist epistemology and an immutable model of human nature. The latter is true of the secular right as well. Just substitute "evolution" and "history" for God and mystical revelation. The secular right believes that human inborn characteristics are immutable and culture is a product of evolutionary processes that cannot or should not be rationally understood or modified. All the Neo-racists and HBD types are basically evolutionary-historical conservatives or reactionaries who see inequality as a revealed result of a process that is beyond human understanding. It's getting to the point that it is not even possible for the two sides to communicate because they do not agree on language, logic, or basic rules of discourse. The left and the right are cognitively inhabiting different universes. Humans subjectively experience extreme cognitive dissonance as actual discomfort. I think this explains the intolerance. People are emotionally reacting to the level of cognitive dissonance this divide generates as if ideas from the opposing side are physical attacks. I agree that the right is no different. Go into one of their bubbles and voice liberal ideas and you'll get the same reaction Milo gets on a Berkeley college campus.

alien_at_work 9y ago
>with the left favoring various forms of scientific or empirical epistemology What is scientific or empirical about safe spaces and identity politics?
- api 9y ago
  Those things are part of the reaction I describe. The right is also creating its own enclaves. I would not be surprised to see the United States physically fragment and balkanize in the next 10-20 years. I get the sense that some on the hard-right and possibly also the hard-left have that as a goal.

ak_yo 9y ago

In what world are these opinions not voiced? I don't think this argument stands up to empirical scrutiny -- there's an incredibly robust network of vocally conservative student organizations.

workthrowaway27 9y ago
See this list and go to the most recent years: https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/ https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/ When the list started it was fairly evenly distributed between right and left leaning speakers being disinvited. Now it's much more commonly right leaning speakers.
- geofft 9y ago
  That's about speakers being disinvited from campus, not views not being represented. There are a number of problems with that analysis: 1. Several speakers are overrepresented (I see a bunch of Milo invitations), which could well just reflect their aggressiveness at getting themselves invited / the strength of their own PR team. If one political side wants to make persecution their thing, they'll show up more commonly in that database. 2. In recent years, we've had a bunch of new forums for dissemination of ideas, which is a good thing. Twitter didn't exist in 2002. YouTube didn't exist in 2002. Podcasts didn't exist in 2002. Smartphones in people's pockets didn't exist in 2002. Today, anyone who wants to know what any of these speakers' opinions are can find out, easily, what they are, without needing them invited to campus. (And anyone who doesn't will just skip the talk anyway.) 3. In Milo's case specifically, he wanted to out a bunch of undocumented students on-stage. That I think doesn't fit the profile of political views being censored. (I agree that preventing him from speaking technically counts as censorship, but it's a very different discussion.) 4. Fundamentally, this list and the original article here both suffer from a blind belief in the "Great Man" theory. If person X doesn't express an opinion, or publicize their idea, or something, chances are absurdly high that someone else will have the same opinion or idea, too. If Newton were imprisoned for his alchemy, however unjust that might have been for Newton as a person, Leibniz would still have invented calculus. What I'd like to see is if certain types of ideas are being censored, not whether certain individuals who happen to hold those ideas are being censored.

geofft 9y ago

> I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. This does not seem to match the reality at university campuses - only the caricature by people who find it politically expedient to be seen as persecuted.

dominotw 9y ago
Results of this debate disagree with you https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-threatened-campus https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-th...
- geofft 9y ago
  ... pardon my assumption, but those four people don't look like college students. Are they?
- pmyteh 9y ago
  The results of a straw poll after a debate are not evidence for anything beyond what the people who saw the debate thought of the debaters. People vote for all kinds of reasons - the underlying merits of the case, the impressiveness of the speakers that they've found to present it, even sympathy for someone who got obviously crushed by their opponent. When I was a debater I've seen some truly outrageous motions get passed simply because one side was funnier.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    I understand. I was responding to comment that said its totally baseless caricature. I think debaters did a good job of presenting evidence for their case. Why not give it a chance instead of saying its "staw poll", isn't any poll "straw poll" by that account? Also I never said it evidence of anything. What is an example of "evidence" in this particular case for you?
    - pmyteh 9y ago

slantyyz 9y ago

Maybe I'm old and grumpy, but things seem pretty crazy these days on campuses. When I entered university in 1989, there was an extremely controversial professor at my school [1]. There was outrage accompanied with generally peaceful protests. How it was handled at my school back then was that they organized a live TV debate with someone to argue the side against the professor's position. In other words, we the students (and the public for that matter) were treated like adults and we were expected to be able to hear and process ideas we may not agree with without overreacting or having our heads explode. IIRC, the whole notion of going to university, among other things, was to further develop our critical thinking skills. That seems to be hard to do in an echo chamber. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton

blindwatchmaker 9y ago

> since I realize many conservatives would do the same about issues they care about if they had the power and numbers This, in fact, happens as the move to criminalize speech against Israel on campuses and eslwhere shows.

nostromo 9y ago

It's interesting that the word "liberal" has morphed so much in America to mean the opposite of its original meaning. Liberalism is rooted in liberty and freedom, and yet here we are in 2017 discussing how non-"liberal" ideas cannot be freely expressed in the most "liberal" cities. I say we stop calling these people liberal, because they're anything but.