4 ms·

I wonder if the progressive left realize that the inevitable reaction to sacrificing all reason at the altar of progress, is a rise to the right PS. Sorry for

by Knufen 9y ago

I wonder if the progressive left realize that the inevitable reaction to sacrificing all reason at the altar of progress, is a rise to the right PS. Sorry for the poor sentencing structure, not as fluid in English as I used to be

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
What? You think the right is more reasoned than the left? Come on. Besides you don't think there are workplaces where it's a blackmark to be a progressive? Why don't you come over to some finance jobs?
- Knufen 9y ago
  I never said the right is more reasoned than the left. I said that currently the progressive-left is sacrificing reason and that it will lead to a rise to the right. This is just natural action-reaction. You are putting quite a lot of meaning into my sentence that isn't there, projecting is never useful in a discussion.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >You are putting quite a lot of meaning into my sentence that isn't there, projecting is never useful in a discussion. Okay. >I said that currently the progressive-left is sacrificing reason and that it will lead to a rise to the right. No they're not. How is it that you think the 'progressive-left' is sacrificing reason?
    - Knufen 9y ago
      By sharing black lists of employees with 'wrong' political opinions. This I consider a sacrifice of reason. To broaden the discussion a bit, I think that generally there is a trend of the 'progressive-left' censoring things they don't agree on.
      - otakucode 9y ago
        That was what I was going to point out. I understand peoples problems with colleges and what is painted as a rise of postmodernist thought in those arenas (which is really a fairly meaningless farce, many in college are still establishing their identity due to being prevented from doing so in adolescence by modern schooling and parenting styles, so they're doing the typical thing of seeing how far they can push ideas). Postmodernist thought has its place but is fundamentally flawed as a tool for addressing reality generally (to such a degree that if someone adopted it as a lifestyle honestly they would find themselves incapable of being certain whether they actually need to breathe or eat and they would swiftly die out). But, reason supports freedom of speech and of ideas. It does not support censorship. It supports even the free expression of even the most odious ideas, so that they may be addressed rationally. The only exceptions to this are very few and involve our human weakness of certain speech in close physical quarters or when packed into physically close groups being able to rise above speech to reach the level of overriding the rational faculties of the listener. That's where things like not shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater lie. It results in a biological disabling of the forebrain when immediate physical mortal danger is at play. That can never, ever, ever happen when a statement is read. Not from a poster, paper, book, pamphlet, and certainly not from a screen. There is an interesting argument to be made, though it is not really being made by any significant number that I've encountered, that the psychological manipulations of social media - the intentional things they do to optimize driving people to more extreme opinions and inundating people with false information in order to maximize engagement at the expense of absolutely anything else - might need to be treated differently, but even there the issue is not the speech. It's the manipulative analysis and other practices. I don't even think the real primary motivation of most censorship of repugnant ideas online is motivated by a belief like "these ideas are wrong and we must not expose people to them, else they may adopt them". I think the mindset is more along the lines of "these ideas are wrong... I feel. But I cannot actually justify. And I fear if someone challenges me to dispute them, I will fail." Reason also supports an absolute hard line distinction between the real and the fictional, a line which is increasingly ignored, though I chalk that up to factors that mostly go across political divisions. Both sides attribute the negative traits and consequences of real examples of things to images of those things without a second thought, conflating imagery and reality to a degree that it really makes me wonder if they could even explain what the difference is... or if they believe there is any difference.
    - Helmet 9y ago
      > No they're not. How is it that you think the 'progressive-left' is sacrificing reason? Where do you want to start? - They actively contributed to an increased homicide rate and made neighborhoods more dangerous for minorities by pushing a false anti-police narrative, engaged in anti-police protests, sentiment, and actions. Their actions resulted in a pullback in policing in dangerous neighborhoods and massive spikes in crime rates. This is a view shared by many minorities, who wish for the police to return to their neighborhoods, so that they can feel safe. Source? How about the right-wing rag NPR: https://www.npr.org/2017/12/31/574824963/baltimore-residents-blame-record-high-murder-rate-on-lower-police-presence https://www.npr.org/2017/12/31/574824963/baltimore-residents... - They actively push pseudo-social science into fields where rigor, exactness, and soundness is most important, such as engineering, where errors can have catastrophic consequences: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19378629.2017.1408631 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19378629.2017.14... - They viciously attack on ideological grounds any attempts at objective assessment when the statistics do not fit their narrative. Examples? There are hundreds, but how about professor David Gillhorn at the University of Birmingham, who says math serves "white interests" and: “frequently encode racist perspectives beneath the facade of supposed quantitative objectivity.” - They have, particularly on college campuses, collectively lost their minds. Please see the Evergreen State College incident, along with dozens of others. - Most of their social science experiments are absolute junk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis Do you want me to keep going?
      - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
        >Do you want me to keep going? Yes, I'd really like to gather all this up and look into it.
  - ng12 9y ago
    I think that's a very real thing to consider. I'm very much a classical liberal and if this election has shown me anything it's that I'm not a Democrat anymore.
    - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      I see the phrase "classical liberal" a lot these days, is there an accepted definition of what the modern usage of "classical liberal" means? Do they believe in climate change? Do they vote for Trump? Do they think universal health coverage is more efficient? etc. What kind of concrete things do they support/oppose?
      - ng12 9y ago
        When I use the term to describe myself I mean that I care most about economic issues and less about social issues. Regulating banks, fixing healthcare, worker's rights, stabilizing the working and middle class, limiting the negative affects of globalization, etc. This election made it very clear to me that establishment democrats have largely dropped those ideals (except for a few I still admire like Warren) in favor of pushing social change.
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        I have to admit that's not the contex I've seen it used elsewhere, where I'd mostly roughly translate it as libertarian. The word "Liberal" and it's various derivations are all over the place generally though for weird historical reasons.
        ng12 9y ago
        Oh, I may be fudging the terminology. Want I want to say is a pre-Obama (maybe even pre-Clinton) Democrat.
        frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
        You mean Classical Liberal to be FDR types? Usually I see it used by conservatives who don't mind gays or weed.
- Helmet 9y ago
  The "right" isn't any more or less "reasoned" than the left. You can make arguments either way. Also, this idea that finance is a cult of old stodgy conservatives is hilarious and patently untrue. Finance folks are usually comprised of wealthy and well-educated people living in major urban areas, particularly NYC, inline with the demographics of coastal liberals. Most are some form of libertarian, and generally progressive on most social issues. Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs) is a registered Democrat, Jamie Dimon (CEO of JP Morgan) is a democrat, James Gorman (CEO of Morgan Stanley) regulrarly gives money to democrats and contributed to Hillary Clinton (1), as does Michael Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup. (1) https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/james-gorman.asp?cycle=08 https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/james-... (2)https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/michael-corbat.asp?cycle=14 https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/michae...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Asooka 9y ago
  No, it's just that the rise of Hitler was in part a reaction to the Communists that were throwing reason away in the name of "social progress" much as today's left is. An unreasonable reaction to an unreasonable action, both impossible to restrain with reason...
- leroy_masochist 9y ago
  > you don't think there are workplaces where it's a blackmark to be a progressive? Why don't you come over to some finance jobs? Former Goldman banker here, I'm calling bullshit on this point. In mainstream Wall Street you can be super left-wing and do just fine with office politics. Sure, "some finance jobs" are at small funds run by cranky old rightwing baby boomers who get their news from Drudge, but it's a real stretch to say that having strong leftwing views would be a meaningful impediment to a great career on the Street. I can think of many specific examples both at GS and elsewhere.
  - gadders 9y ago
    I also work in Banks (in the UK) and would agree with this. I think people don't tend to wear their politics on their sleeve - i.e. most people wouldn't say in conversation who they are voting for - but you can tend to spot that some people trend more left wing than right. The team I was working with during Brexit was very pro-remain, for instance, and that tends to be largely (but not exclusively) a position more popular on the left.
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
What kind of reason do you think has been sacrificed? This is interesting to me as one of the underdiscussed parts of the Google-Damore memo is the part where he says "yes, the right-wing are stupid and irrational about climate change, which is obviously true, but the left-wing are also anti-science about this stuff". He supported this both-sides-are-the-same type argument (at least in an earlier version, I noticed the link seems to not be there in all of them) with a link to a piece by John Tierny, in which half the word count was dedicated to supporting climate change denial, and building a case that the left-wing was stupid for thinking it occured. So even within the (broadly defined) right, you have disagreements on basic facts and reason.
spamizbad 9y ago
I disagree. I think the left has been on a killer run of cultural victories (as opposed to political and economic) in recent years . In my view, this lawsuit in particular is a "heads I win, tails you lose" for the left. Labor protections are a major plank of the left and should Damore win it would further help enshrine those labor protections in tort and give the left firepower to say "Look, these laws protect conservatives too! Just look at Damore!" The right, historically, prefers an environment where employment is fully at-will and at the discretion of the employer: this lawsuit undercuts that view. I think some see this as the left being "hoisted by one's own petard" but it's not like liberals are going to turn around and abandon labor rights as a reaction to Damore... quite the contrary. I see Damore's lawsuit as a byproduct of the diminished political conviction of the contemporary right. As a self-described classical liberal, Damore should, in theory, treat his employment as at-will as that is consistent with his stated political ideology. This is in large part why the left continues to win, and why the right acts more and more like the left: When faced with adversity, the right adopts left-wing views to score modest Pyrrhic victories, thus normalizing left-wing views. The one area where the right isn't doing this stuff is abortion: an area where the right seems to be gaining ground. Women's access to abortion has been declining (unfortunately, IMO) in many states. I wish Mr. Damore the best of luck in his endeavours. Employment discrimination lawsuits are really difficult to win in court, even if it seems "open and shut" to a layperson. Complicating matters, it looks like Google's lawyers are raring for a fight... many businesses just settle even if they feel they'll be cleared in court.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > the left has been on a killer run of cultural victories in recent years That's hard to see in the U.S., with the Republican's shift far to the right and overwhelming political domination (control of the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and in over 30 state both houses and the Governor's mansion), and with neo-fascism and white nationalism, once way beyond the pale, now trendy. Also it's hard to see in Europe, where neo-fascist and white nationalist parties actually have seats in national legislatures, even run some executive branches, and include the Foreign Minister of the UK.
  - 9y ago
hsod 9y ago
I wonder if the "centrists" and "classical liberals" realize that the inevitable result of abandoning policies that help people in order to make an abstract point about reason is that the weak will continue to be abused by the powerful.

by Knufen 9y ago

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

What? You think the right is more reasoned than the left? Come on. Besides you don't think there are workplaces where it's a blackmark to be a progressive? Why don't you come over to some finance jobs?

Knufen 9y ago
I never said the right is more reasoned than the left. I said that currently the progressive-left is sacrificing reason and that it will lead to a rise to the right. This is just natural action-reaction. You are putting quite a lot of meaning into my sentence that isn't there, projecting is never useful in a discussion.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >You are putting quite a lot of meaning into my sentence that isn't there, projecting is never useful in a discussion. Okay. >I said that currently the progressive-left is sacrificing reason and that it will lead to a rise to the right. No they're not. How is it that you think the 'progressive-left' is sacrificing reason?
  - Knufen 9y ago
    By sharing black lists of employees with 'wrong' political opinions. This I consider a sacrifice of reason. To broaden the discussion a bit, I think that generally there is a trend of the 'progressive-left' censoring things they don't agree on.
    - otakucode 9y ago
      That was what I was going to point out. I understand peoples problems with colleges and what is painted as a rise of postmodernist thought in those arenas (which is really a fairly meaningless farce, many in college are still establishing their identity due to being prevented from doing so in adolescence by modern schooling and parenting styles, so they're doing the typical thing of seeing how far they can push ideas). Postmodernist thought has its place but is fundamentally flawed as a tool for addressing reality generally (to such a degree that if someone adopted it as a lifestyle honestly they would find themselves incapable of being certain whether they actually need to breathe or eat and they would swiftly die out). But, reason supports freedom of speech and of ideas. It does not support censorship. It supports even the free expression of even the most odious ideas, so that they may be addressed rationally. The only exceptions to this are very few and involve our human weakness of certain speech in close physical quarters or when packed into physically close groups being able to rise above speech to reach the level of overriding the rational faculties of the listener. That's where things like not shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater lie. It results in a biological disabling of the forebrain when immediate physical mortal danger is at play. That can never, ever, ever happen when a statement is read. Not from a poster, paper, book, pamphlet, and certainly not from a screen. There is an interesting argument to be made, though it is not really being made by any significant number that I've encountered, that the psychological manipulations of social media - the intentional things they do to optimize driving people to more extreme opinions and inundating people with false information in order to maximize engagement at the expense of absolutely anything else - might need to be treated differently, but even there the issue is not the speech. It's the manipulative analysis and other practices. I don't even think the real primary motivation of most censorship of repugnant ideas online is motivated by a belief like "these ideas are wrong and we must not expose people to them, else they may adopt them". I think the mindset is more along the lines of "these ideas are wrong... I feel. But I cannot actually justify. And I fear if someone challenges me to dispute them, I will fail." Reason also supports an absolute hard line distinction between the real and the fictional, a line which is increasingly ignored, though I chalk that up to factors that mostly go across political divisions. Both sides attribute the negative traits and consequences of real examples of things to images of those things without a second thought, conflating imagery and reality to a degree that it really makes me wonder if they could even explain what the difference is... or if they believe there is any difference.
  - Helmet 9y ago
    > No they're not. How is it that you think the 'progressive-left' is sacrificing reason? Where do you want to start? - They actively contributed to an increased homicide rate and made neighborhoods more dangerous for minorities by pushing a false anti-police narrative, engaged in anti-police protests, sentiment, and actions. Their actions resulted in a pullback in policing in dangerous neighborhoods and massive spikes in crime rates. This is a view shared by many minorities, who wish for the police to return to their neighborhoods, so that they can feel safe. Source? How about the right-wing rag NPR: https://www.npr.org/2017/12/31/574824963/baltimore-residents-blame-record-high-murder-rate-on-lower-police-presence https://www.npr.org/2017/12/31/574824963/baltimore-residents... - They actively push pseudo-social science into fields where rigor, exactness, and soundness is most important, such as engineering, where errors can have catastrophic consequences: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19378629.2017.1408631 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19378629.2017.14... - They viciously attack on ideological grounds any attempts at objective assessment when the statistics do not fit their narrative. Examples? There are hundreds, but how about professor David Gillhorn at the University of Birmingham, who says math serves "white interests" and: “frequently encode racist perspectives beneath the facade of supposed quantitative objectivity.” - They have, particularly on college campuses, collectively lost their minds. Please see the Evergreen State College incident, along with dozens of others. - Most of their social science experiments are absolute junk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis Do you want me to keep going?
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      >Do you want me to keep going? Yes, I'd really like to gather all this up and look into it.
- ng12 9y ago
  I think that's a very real thing to consider. I'm very much a classical liberal and if this election has shown me anything it's that I'm not a Democrat anymore.
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    I see the phrase "classical liberal" a lot these days, is there an accepted definition of what the modern usage of "classical liberal" means? Do they believe in climate change? Do they vote for Trump? Do they think universal health coverage is more efficient? etc. What kind of concrete things do they support/oppose?
    - ng12 9y ago
      When I use the term to describe myself I mean that I care most about economic issues and less about social issues. Regulating banks, fixing healthcare, worker's rights, stabilizing the working and middle class, limiting the negative affects of globalization, etc. This election made it very clear to me that establishment democrats have largely dropped those ideals (except for a few I still admire like Warren) in favor of pushing social change.
      - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        I have to admit that's not the contex I've seen it used elsewhere, where I'd mostly roughly translate it as libertarian. The word "Liberal" and it's various derivations are all over the place generally though for weird historical reasons.
        ng12 9y ago
        Oh, I may be fudging the terminology. Want I want to say is a pre-Obama (maybe even pre-Clinton) Democrat.
        frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
        You mean Classical Liberal to be FDR types? Usually I see it used by conservatives who don't mind gays or weed.
Helmet 9y ago
The "right" isn't any more or less "reasoned" than the left. You can make arguments either way. Also, this idea that finance is a cult of old stodgy conservatives is hilarious and patently untrue. Finance folks are usually comprised of wealthy and well-educated people living in major urban areas, particularly NYC, inline with the demographics of coastal liberals. Most are some form of libertarian, and generally progressive on most social issues. Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs) is a registered Democrat, Jamie Dimon (CEO of JP Morgan) is a democrat, James Gorman (CEO of Morgan Stanley) regulrarly gives money to democrats and contributed to Hillary Clinton (1), as does Michael Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup. (1) https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/james-gorman.asp?cycle=08 https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/james-... (2)https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/michael-corbat.asp?cycle=14 https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/michae...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Asooka 9y ago
No, it's just that the rise of Hitler was in part a reaction to the Communists that were throwing reason away in the name of "social progress" much as today's left is. An unreasonable reaction to an unreasonable action, both impossible to restrain with reason...
leroy_masochist 9y ago
> you don't think there are workplaces where it's a blackmark to be a progressive? Why don't you come over to some finance jobs? Former Goldman banker here, I'm calling bullshit on this point. In mainstream Wall Street you can be super left-wing and do just fine with office politics. Sure, "some finance jobs" are at small funds run by cranky old rightwing baby boomers who get their news from Drudge, but it's a real stretch to say that having strong leftwing views would be a meaningful impediment to a great career on the Street. I can think of many specific examples both at GS and elsewhere.
- gadders 9y ago
  I also work in Banks (in the UK) and would agree with this. I think people don't tend to wear their politics on their sleeve - i.e. most people wouldn't say in conversation who they are voting for - but you can tend to spot that some people trend more left wing than right. The team I was working with during Brexit was very pro-remain, for instance, and that tends to be largely (but not exclusively) a position more popular on the left.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

What kind of reason do you think has been sacrificed? This is interesting to me as one of the underdiscussed parts of the Google-Damore memo is the part where he says "yes, the right-wing are stupid and irrational about climate change, which is obviously true, but the left-wing are also anti-science about this stuff". He supported this both-sides-are-the-same type argument (at least in an earlier version, I noticed the link seems to not be there in all of them) with a link to a piece by John Tierny, in which half the word count was dedicated to supporting climate change denial, and building a case that the left-wing was stupid for thinking it occured. So even within the (broadly defined) right, you have disagreements on basic facts and reason.

spamizbad 9y ago

I disagree. I think the left has been on a killer run of cultural victories (as opposed to political and economic) in recent years . In my view, this lawsuit in particular is a "heads I win, tails you lose" for the left. Labor protections are a major plank of the left and should Damore win it would further help enshrine those labor protections in tort and give the left firepower to say "Look, these laws protect conservatives too! Just look at Damore!" The right, historically, prefers an environment where employment is fully at-will and at the discretion of the employer: this lawsuit undercuts that view. I think some see this as the left being "hoisted by one's own petard" but it's not like liberals are going to turn around and abandon labor rights as a reaction to Damore... quite the contrary. I see Damore's lawsuit as a byproduct of the diminished political conviction of the contemporary right. As a self-described classical liberal, Damore should, in theory, treat his employment as at-will as that is consistent with his stated political ideology. This is in large part why the left continues to win, and why the right acts more and more like the left: When faced with adversity, the right adopts left-wing views to score modest Pyrrhic victories, thus normalizing left-wing views. The one area where the right isn't doing this stuff is abortion: an area where the right seems to be gaining ground. Women's access to abortion has been declining (unfortunately, IMO) in many states. I wish Mr. Damore the best of luck in his endeavours. Employment discrimination lawsuits are really difficult to win in court, even if it seems "open and shut" to a layperson. Complicating matters, it looks like Google's lawyers are raring for a fight... many businesses just settle even if they feel they'll be cleared in court.

forapurpose 9y ago
> the left has been on a killer run of cultural victories in recent years That's hard to see in the U.S., with the Republican's shift far to the right and overwhelming political domination (control of the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and in over 30 state both houses and the Governor's mansion), and with neo-fascism and white nationalism, once way beyond the pale, now trendy. Also it's hard to see in Europe, where neo-fascist and white nationalist parties actually have seats in national legislatures, even run some executive branches, and include the Foreign Minister of the UK.
- 9y ago

hsod 9y ago

I wonder if the "centrists" and "classical liberals" realize that the inevitable result of abandoning policies that help people in order to make an abstract point about reason is that the weak will continue to be abused by the powerful.