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Well-Meaning Bad Ideas Spoiling a Generation

143 points by dnetesn 8y ago

DiseasedBadger 8y ago
Hahaha. No one is going to expose themselves to criticism. This article is just going to either be a bucket of virtue signaling, or ignored. I think it's interesting, though.
- zepto 8y ago
  Did you read it?
- fierro 8y ago
  this could be a comment generated by a HN troll bot
Areading314 8y ago
The writing is very long-winded, lots of words with little content.
- ratsmack 8y ago
  This is a hallmark of modern journalism.
  - iheartpotatoes 8y ago
    Tell me more about your studies in modern journalism. You sound enlightened.
    - dang 8y ago
      Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
AftHurrahWinch 8y ago
I remember this ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind It is interesting to know that he's decided that "the Republican Party is no longer the social conservative party", and so Haidt believes that his previous research on the distinction between conservatives and progressives doesn't apply to existing Republicans. > You’ve written that Republicans understand moral psychology better than Democrats. Do you think that’s still true in the age of Donald Trump? "...what we were able to show is that conservatives can pretend to be progressives and they can accurately fill it out as though they were one. But progressives can’t pretend to be a conservative and fill it out accurately because they don’t really get the group loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity or purity. They don’t really get those so they kind of dismiss those and they assume that conservatives just like to kill puppies and things like that. That was the case for a number of decades. Trump has shifted a lot of things around. The Republican Party is no longer the social conservative party. I believe, in other research I’ve published with Karen Stenner, a political scientist in Australia, Trump is appealing to more authoritarian tendencies. It’s very hard to see how Donald Trump is a conservative. So the psychology that I just described a moment ago no longer quite applies. The Republican Party, I don’t know what’s happening to it, but it is bringing in elements that are overtly racist. It is bringing in desires for rapid change, which is not a conservative virtue, generally. So I think we’re in a time of chaos in which both parties are in flux. What might come out is we might get ever further away from having a center-left Democratic Party and a center-right Republican Party, which is what we had for a number of decades. We might have two much more polarized or ideologically disparate parties and it could make for some very interesting politics and even less cooperation than we have now."
- echlebek 8y ago
  You may think you have had a center left democratic party and center right democratic party in the past, but that's not how other western nations perceive you - many would say that the democratic party is center right, and the republican party is far right. Even before Trump.
  - int_19h 8y ago
wccrawford 8y ago
I read a fair bit of it, and then started skimming. It seems to me that they think the 'bad idea' is how people are classified. They think that young people are learning that the underdog is always good and the people in power are always bad. Instead, I think they hit on the real problem accidentally: Binary choices aren't real. Life isn't just black and white, good and bad, wrong and right. It's all grey area with almost nothing falling into the very extremes. Being unable to recognize that people are complex is what people today are lacking, I think.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Ah, It's not that. Haidt's hypothesis in The Coddling of the American Mind is that by trying to ensure we never see disagreement or unpleasantness, and by attributing any such thing that we do see to a societal oppressive phenomenon, we are making ourselves fragile. The other bits are concessions he's making wrt his thesis. I usually like his hypotheses. Quite thought provoking.
- autokad 8y ago
  I think the article hit on that a lot "To take 18-year-olds, and rather than try to turn that down and say “okay hold on, don’t be so moralistic. Let’s try to give people a chance. Let’s judge people as individuals.” That was the great achievement of the 20th century—to make progress there. Instead in the 21st century to say, “okay welcome to campus. Here are five or six dimensions; we’re going to teach you to see men, maleness, masculinity as bad, everyone else is good. White is bad, everyone else is good. Straight is bad, everyone else is good.” This is Manicheism. This is ramping up our tendency to dualistic thinking."
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Sure that's the rhetoric. Most people don't take that completely seriously, however. (Lots of people make an exception when it benefits them to do so.) Those who take this rhetoric seriously most of the time, can be mostly avoided.
- shkkmo 8y ago
  The headline doesn't do a great job of summarizing the content and ideas in the interview. You seem to have skimmed past many of the interesting ideas and missed the other points that might be referred to by the poor headline. Other bad ideas that might arguably be the referents of that headline. 1) Making kids safer is always good and we should teach them that the world is a dangerous place so they protect themselves. 2) winning the culture war (vs discovering truth through dissent) can lead to better social justice. 3) That striving for equality of outcomes naturally leads to equality of opportunities. 4) That you can teach people a class that will make them behave ethically, rather than teaching them how designing social structures that encourage ethical behavior leads to better efficiency. (That last one doesn't really fit but is an example of the interesting ideas in this interview that don't cleanly fit within the thesis of the headline)
throwaway123x2 8y ago
I really like his ideas, if not his writing (or speaking?) style. I especially liked the bit about how society today is more rational (better?) because of guaranteed dissent that was part of the scientific revolution, and we're taking that away with safe spaces and the like.
- Latty 8y ago
  I don't see how safe spaces are at odds with that. Just because people want to have some space where they can relax doesn't mean that disagreement is impossible. There are just less private spaces now, and we have more of an understanding that some people find it extremely hard to find those spaces, so actively ensuring they exist is important for them. The idea that we have to let people show "dissent" about someone's identity and life by harassing people literally all the time seems obviously wrong to me.
  - benj111 8y ago
    You understand that theres talk of Universities in general being safe spaces. Edit: For example http://theconversation.com/why-safe-spaces-at-universities-are-a-threat-to-free-speech-94547 http://theconversation.com/why-safe-spaces-at-universities-a...
  - mrfredward 8y ago
    Safe spaces sound benign, if you agree with the people setting it up. If a group you disagree with declares a safe space, it sounds malicious. It probably has a lot to do with those tribal instincts the article talks about. Note that I'm only commenting on how it sounds, not making any claims of how it is.
  - theorique 8y ago
    No one is arguing that people should be harassed "literally all the time" (or ever). Some of the more egregious deployments of "safe spaces" in universities happened in response to controversial campus speakers who were deemed to have views that were threatening to some students. According to some campus radical leftists, the very presence of such speakers was "violence" and a literal "threat" to marginalized students. Of course, the students could simply refuse to attend the talks of speakers they didn't like, but that wouldn't make as dramatic a statement as creating an explicit "safe space" where they could congregate.
voidhorse 8y ago
What's up with all these psychologists lately trying to play philosopher, turning back to the ancients and commenting on normative concepts (particularly related to morality and politics)? I'm not against psychologists contributing to discussions on these topics but sometimes the amount of hubris they seem to have in their approach is a bit baffling—they all seem utterly convinced their opinion on the topic is correct and impenetrable—I feel like I rarely see philosophers or political scientists associated with these moralizing titles, it's always "Psychologist discovers everything wrong with the world" or "Psychologist claims our morals are a wreck" etc. etc. Of course, I'm sure my experience is skewed, but it's a weird phenomenon (perhaps its just the coattails of Jordan Peterson's meteoric rise and notoriety). Edit: to clarify, I'm more so against this notion that the American mind is "coddled". I don't think it's constructive. I think it's an invective meant to produce division and build allegiances, not to intelligently adjust the path we're going down. To say the deployment of particular concepts is the result of "coddling" is of a different nature than calling for increased criticism and scrutiny in our society.
- lm28469 8y ago
  > trying to play philosopher, It doesn't have much to do with philosophy though, it's mostly a psycho/socio/historical analysis. If the people studying these fields can't comment on modern events I'm not sure who you think should do it.
dcre 8y ago
For a counterpoint, read this scathing review by Moira Weigel of his book The Coddling of the American Mind: Like Trump, the authors romanticise a past before “identity” but get fuzzy and impatient when history itself comes up. “Most of these schools once excluded women and people of colour,” they reflect. “But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence. They don’t. They leave it as a rhetorical question for “common sense” to answer. Their narrow perception of history severely limits the explanations Lukianoff and Haidt can offer for the real problems they identify. Can you understand the “paranoia” middle-class parents have about college admissions without considering how many of their children are now downwardly mobile? How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-o...
- moosey 8y ago
  I have never been thoughtful enough to realize that the exclusions mentioned (women, POC) throughout US history fit the definition of 'identity' or 'identity politics' so well. I'm always impressed when someone comes up with such a rock solid example that points out _specific_ hypocrisies. Normally, using hypocrisy to counter someones argument is a logical fallacy, but the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account when discussing these issues philosophically, especially when dealing with those who suggest that this is only a contemporary issue. This issue is only contemporary in the fact that we are still burning far too much energy knocking down these doors in the first place, or trying to keep them open, when it comes to women's rights, and the issues present in "The Color of Law". I'm impressed.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son. As was mentioned in the Watergate scandal, always "follow the money." (Or eyeballs. Or fame. Or votes.) Who benefits from disadvantaged neighborhoods? Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?
jkingsbery 8y ago
I thought this was a pretty well-written article. One hopefully useful nitpick: > this social institution that began developing in Europe in the 17th century, a community of people who would read scientific treatises and letters and then critique each other—that’s what science is. It’s institutionalized critique. It’s guaranteed dissent. That makes people smarter. It's certainly true that science started doing this in the 17th century, but if you look at how Aquinas in the 13th century did his much of his writing it was laid out similarly: what is the question? What are all the objections, stated as strongly as possible? How does the author respond? From what I've heard/read, writing was of that format, because Aquinas and other university professors at the time would have a lecture revolve around a question or hypothesis, and he would have students announce what are the best objections to the hypothesis, and they would lecture for the remaining time refuting the best objections raised (and sometimes adding their own). One might disagree with many of the conclusions that Scholastics came to, or whether the questions merited such an approach, but the process has been in place for a while.
temp-dude-87844 8y ago
These movements come in waves, and it's a mistake to suggest that the recent developments are troubling or unnatural. All ideas are ultimately interpreted according to the norms of the time the interpretation is voiced, so perhaps in a few decades of this, it won't seem so aberrant and counterproductive to a class of privileged intellectuals anymore. But the unintended consequences will shape out future. Escalations typically hollow out the middle, where people with little investment in the topic might find themselves having to choose sides, and angering the other. Different people have different priorities. Many are more concerned about their immediate families and their careers, and they will try to conform to localized expectations to avoid conflict. Corporations and bureaucracies readily adopted outward signs of support for this movement, and people are doing the same. Their true beliefs are made known privately, or at the ballot box. People of conviction, on the other hand, will have no such qualms. Savvy nationalists and ethnic supremacists will find it easy to pivot their platform towards a broader vision of societal norms, and some will branch out into economic policy as we've already seen in Europe. They may find a receptive audience among younger members of groups that have been told that their group is problematic, and who may want no part in a movement that has left no place for them.
- 0815test 8y ago
  > These movements come in waves, and it's a mistake to suggest that the recent developments are troubling or unnatural. ... You're probably right, but it's not Haidt that's describing any ideologies or worldviews as "troubling" or "unnatural", other than perhaps wrt. Trumpism at the close of this interview. If anything, he repeatedly stresses just how natural it might feel, for example, to demand ideological "safe spaces" in order to preserve one's quasi-religious worldview and sense of identity from what's perceived as a very personal attack from outsiders and enemies. What arguably is "troubling" and indeed outright toxic, is the consequences of these developments on the workings of our institutions (such as academia and policy-making) as well as on social cohesion more generally. But these consequences are far from unavoidable, and Haidt's book is mostly about trying to avert them.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
I graduated college around the time safe spaces and the like were starting to become "a thing". I'm glad I went to a state school in BFE. We (and some of our professors) at least were able to openly mock a lot of the less than ideal "cultural developments" that have happened at universities and colleges that the author has to take seriously in his workplace.
lgleason 8y ago
At some point I really hope that data, science, facts and reason can prevail over the craziness that has taken over university campuses and society as a whole. Most reasonable people believe in the spirit of social justice etc., but the activists have turned it into a zero sum power grab that has very little to do with the stated mission. The irony is that the level of hypocrisy on that side is at the same levels as the religious person who commits all sorts of horrible acts while fervently preaching against people who are engaged those horrible acts.
- psweber 8y ago
  I find is surprising that this stuff gets discussed on HN at all, and then I'm more surprised that comments like your own aren't the highest voted. Every reasonable person agrees that (lower case) social justice is our goal. Let's use a scientific approach to get closer to making it a reality.
  - Joe-Z 8y ago
    One of the author's points is that it's a fallacy to believe people can be explained / lead purely by rational thinking or facts. Emotions play a huge part in human life and realities like this will always need to be taken into consideration when deciding on policy. I agree, proper research needs to be done and unbiased facts need to be found, but thinking once you have this you will get everybody on board with your new idea because it's "scientific" is unrealistic. EDIT: to clarify, by "the author" I meant the author of the book, not the Nautilus-article
    - psweber 8y ago
      Totally agree. The goal part isn't scientific. Our emotions lead us to decide the kind of world we want to live in. I think there is more agreement there than conventional and social media are leading us to believe.
  - WillPostForFood 8y ago
    Science doesn't justify current Social Justice (capitalized) beliefs and methods, so science gets tossed aside.
tomohawk 8y ago
Equality of outcome is the most destructive idea ever. All those tens of millions who died at the hands of the communists for this one terrible idea. That we can remake society and people to force a certain outcome. So many injustices have been excused, because the ends somehow justify the means to achieve equal outcomes. Equality of opportunity has done so much good, but the mob is easily swayed by the siren call of equal outcomes for all.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  It's worth noting that the concept of pure equality of opportunity has been served a very wide range of critique: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/#Cri https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/#Cri
sonnyblarney 8y ago
" in every bathroom at NYU, there are signs telling students how to report me anonymously if I say something that they find offensive" How can people not be up in arms over this?
- lm28469 8y ago
  Most European countries ignored Hitler breaking every rules of the treaty of Versailles years before shit hit the fan. I'm of course not saying this is equivalent to the nazi ideology. Sometimes you don't see things coming or you ignore them until it's too late.
skywhopper 8y ago
It's not surprising when you see a book title that includes the word "coddling" what the subject matter is going to end up being. But this psychologist has a very carefully crafted approach to get you to think you agree with most of what he says. If you check out the answers, the subject of the interview always follows a very specific pattern: given a question "what about <this "liberal" idea>?" He starts by saying, "oh, it's a great insight, and based on something entirely true", then he moves onto "but of course it gets oversimplified and misapplied", and then he starts throwing out blatantly false strawmen like "then you get to 'men are bad' and 'whites are bad'" as if that's just another fact that proves that the original idea being discussed is actually a terrible one. Of course, the fact is not true, but if it were true it would be a bad thing, but by that point in the answer you are primed to go along with his until-that-point entirely reasonable rhetoric. It's impressive, really, but it's ultimately the same toxic BS that the ideas he's talking about are trying to fight against. This is just twisted logic to provide a false path to help you conclude that the privileged are actually the oppressed. It's disturbing, but alas it's nothing unique. This sort of argument has been getting more and more refined very quickly. There's some interesting psychology going on here, but it's not what this person wants you to believe.
- gizmo686 8y ago
  Are you saying that the ideas aren't getting oversimplified as they spread out from experts who spent a lot of time thinking about them to the general population (even restricted to on campus)? Let alone when the ideas spread into the realm of politics or activism. What other subject does this hold true for?
  - ggggtez 8y ago
    I think this is trying to be a leading question but I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say.
    - gizmo686 8y ago
      I would catagorized it as a rhetorical question instead of a leading question, but yes. My point is that, across all domains of significant public inteterest, a simmilar pattern arises. The actual beliefs of the less informed members of the public actually mirror what experts would view as a strawman of those beliefs. Doubly so on political topics where even proponents of the idea spread a sumplified version. Maybe this issue is somehow special, and everyone who thinks they understand it actually do. Or maybe the author, who actually studied what people think, is correct and therr is a significant population that actually buys into the strawman.
twotwotwo 8y ago
For the author's summary of the book's thesis, Ctrl-F "six intersecting or interacting threads." If you're trying to explain what's different about this generation, and you do _not_ spend much time thinking about the rising costs of housing, higher education, and healthcare and the erosion of job security and benefits that many folks had in previous generations, you missed something. Weigel makes a lot of good broader points but I feel like that's an especially painful omission given the empirical and social-science gloss Haidt and his co-author are putting on their book. This is like explaining the past few generations in the US without mentioning the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II... Stories about how the younger generation is worse go back forever, and seem to be easy sells for various reasons--the world's always changing in ways that can be confusing and hard to keep up with, so a relatively tidy explanation that says the older generation's right and the kids are full of silly ideas can be comforting to some.
undoware 8y ago
As a non-American who has spent some years in the U.S., it fascinates me that you could subject your youth to so many horrors -- student debt, school shootings, not to mention the present administration -- and yet there is this profound thirst for psychological explanations other than 'plenty of young folks are scared of homelessness and hunger'. The shearing force between the reality of American life and the receding American dream has become just this enormous. Big hugs all around. I have a lot of compassion for even the wrong among you. <3
- EdSharkey 8y ago
  We've all got problems; overall life's super good if you don't believe the hype. Hugs back.
exabrial 8y ago
> Let’s try to give people a chance. Let’s judge people as individuals.” That was the great achievement of the 20th century—to make progress there. Instead in the 21st century to say, “okay welcome to campus. Here are five or six dimensions; we’re going to teach you to see men, maleness, masculinity as bad, everyone else is good. White is bad, everyone else is good. Straight is bad, everyone else is good.” Incredible.
lambdasquirrel 8y ago
> In fact, just today, The New York Times announced that it’s going to commit to publishing an equal number of letters from men and women, even though 75 percent of the letter writers are men. Men like to put themselves out in public and show off. But The New York Times has committed to this equal outcomes social justice, which says we’re gonna treat people unequally in order to attain equal outcomes. > That I think is unfair. Um, no, it's not unfair. The very idea is that you have a group that is used to getting its ideas out there, and there is another group that won't open its mouth because to do so would be a nail sticking out. From a strictly statistical standpoint, the NYTimes is trying to sample more effectively. > Most Americans think it’s unfair. Source? And, this is not an acceptable standard of good conduct.
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  In your defense, if it could be shown that the most thoughtful female writers strongly tended to be those most likely to show that off by sending a letter to the Times, you'd be right. I couldn't say, but I suspect that instead, extroverts of either sex are most likely to write in. Re unfair, making doubly sure that women's views were presented about issues where their perspective is distinct seems fair to me. So your viewpoint could still go through.
Proven 8y ago
SJWs have ruined a generation but statism has made that possible. Had the government not subsidized and enabled such behavior which made it viable and even profitable, the impact of said SJWs would have been much smaller. Like Nazi sympathizers without monopoly on the use of uninitiated force, they could be safely ignored. (This now isn't possible because - as the prof said - SJWs can now employ state to act violently on their behalf) Anti-social, coercive behavior can't be profitable in a free market economy.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
shmooth 8y ago
god - most stuff i listen to from this site has _some_ quality about it - something i can learn, but this is just garbage. 15 minutes, one quarter of the way thru -- done. i didn't know it was just some right-wing psychobabble.

143 points by dnetesn 8y ago

Hahaha. No one is going to expose themselves to criticism. This article is just going to either be a bucket of virtue signaling, or ignored. I think it's interesting, though.

zepto 8y ago
Did you read it?
fierro 8y ago
this could be a comment generated by a HN troll bot

Areading314 8y ago

The writing is very long-winded, lots of words with little content.

ratsmack 8y ago
This is a hallmark of modern journalism.
- iheartpotatoes 8y ago
  Tell me more about your studies in modern journalism. You sound enlightened.
  - dang 8y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

AftHurrahWinch 8y ago

I remember this ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind It is interesting to know that he's decided that "the Republican Party is no longer the social conservative party", and so Haidt believes that his previous research on the distinction between conservatives and progressives doesn't apply to existing Republicans. > You’ve written that Republicans understand moral psychology better than Democrats. Do you think that’s still true in the age of Donald Trump? "...what we were able to show is that conservatives can pretend to be progressives and they can accurately fill it out as though they were one. But progressives can’t pretend to be a conservative and fill it out accurately because they don’t really get the group loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity or purity. They don’t really get those so they kind of dismiss those and they assume that conservatives just like to kill puppies and things like that. That was the case for a number of decades. Trump has shifted a lot of things around. The Republican Party is no longer the social conservative party. I believe, in other research I’ve published with Karen Stenner, a political scientist in Australia, Trump is appealing to more authoritarian tendencies. It’s very hard to see how Donald Trump is a conservative. So the psychology that I just described a moment ago no longer quite applies. The Republican Party, I don’t know what’s happening to it, but it is bringing in elements that are overtly racist. It is bringing in desires for rapid change, which is not a conservative virtue, generally. So I think we’re in a time of chaos in which both parties are in flux. What might come out is we might get ever further away from having a center-left Democratic Party and a center-right Republican Party, which is what we had for a number of decades. We might have two much more polarized or ideologically disparate parties and it could make for some very interesting politics and even less cooperation than we have now."

echlebek 8y ago
You may think you have had a center left democratic party and center right democratic party in the past, but that's not how other western nations perceive you - many would say that the democratic party is center right, and the republican party is far right. Even before Trump.
- int_19h 8y ago

wccrawford 8y ago

I read a fair bit of it, and then started skimming. It seems to me that they think the 'bad idea' is how people are classified. They think that young people are learning that the underdog is always good and the people in power are always bad. Instead, I think they hit on the real problem accidentally: Binary choices aren't real. Life isn't just black and white, good and bad, wrong and right. It's all grey area with almost nothing falling into the very extremes. Being unable to recognize that people are complex is what people today are lacking, I think.

scarejunba 8y ago
Ah, It's not that. Haidt's hypothesis in The Coddling of the American Mind is that by trying to ensure we never see disagreement or unpleasantness, and by attributing any such thing that we do see to a societal oppressive phenomenon, we are making ourselves fragile. The other bits are concessions he's making wrt his thesis. I usually like his hypotheses. Quite thought provoking.
autokad 8y ago
I think the article hit on that a lot "To take 18-year-olds, and rather than try to turn that down and say “okay hold on, don’t be so moralistic. Let’s try to give people a chance. Let’s judge people as individuals.” That was the great achievement of the 20th century—to make progress there. Instead in the 21st century to say, “okay welcome to campus. Here are five or six dimensions; we’re going to teach you to see men, maleness, masculinity as bad, everyone else is good. White is bad, everyone else is good. Straight is bad, everyone else is good.” This is Manicheism. This is ramping up our tendency to dualistic thinking."
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Sure that's the rhetoric. Most people don't take that completely seriously, however. (Lots of people make an exception when it benefits them to do so.) Those who take this rhetoric seriously most of the time, can be mostly avoided.
shkkmo 8y ago
The headline doesn't do a great job of summarizing the content and ideas in the interview. You seem to have skimmed past many of the interesting ideas and missed the other points that might be referred to by the poor headline. Other bad ideas that might arguably be the referents of that headline. 1) Making kids safer is always good and we should teach them that the world is a dangerous place so they protect themselves. 2) winning the culture war (vs discovering truth through dissent) can lead to better social justice. 3) That striving for equality of outcomes naturally leads to equality of opportunities. 4) That you can teach people a class that will make them behave ethically, rather than teaching them how designing social structures that encourage ethical behavior leads to better efficiency. (That last one doesn't really fit but is an example of the interesting ideas in this interview that don't cleanly fit within the thesis of the headline)

throwaway123x2 8y ago

I really like his ideas, if not his writing (or speaking?) style. I especially liked the bit about how society today is more rational (better?) because of guaranteed dissent that was part of the scientific revolution, and we're taking that away with safe spaces and the like.

Latty 8y ago
I don't see how safe spaces are at odds with that. Just because people want to have some space where they can relax doesn't mean that disagreement is impossible. There are just less private spaces now, and we have more of an understanding that some people find it extremely hard to find those spaces, so actively ensuring they exist is important for them. The idea that we have to let people show "dissent" about someone's identity and life by harassing people literally all the time seems obviously wrong to me.
- benj111 8y ago
  You understand that theres talk of Universities in general being safe spaces. Edit: For example http://theconversation.com/why-safe-spaces-at-universities-are-a-threat-to-free-speech-94547 http://theconversation.com/why-safe-spaces-at-universities-a...
- mrfredward 8y ago
  Safe spaces sound benign, if you agree with the people setting it up. If a group you disagree with declares a safe space, it sounds malicious. It probably has a lot to do with those tribal instincts the article talks about. Note that I'm only commenting on how it sounds, not making any claims of how it is.
- theorique 8y ago
  No one is arguing that people should be harassed "literally all the time" (or ever). Some of the more egregious deployments of "safe spaces" in universities happened in response to controversial campus speakers who were deemed to have views that were threatening to some students. According to some campus radical leftists, the very presence of such speakers was "violence" and a literal "threat" to marginalized students. Of course, the students could simply refuse to attend the talks of speakers they didn't like, but that wouldn't make as dramatic a statement as creating an explicit "safe space" where they could congregate.

voidhorse 8y ago

What's up with all these psychologists lately trying to play philosopher, turning back to the ancients and commenting on normative concepts (particularly related to morality and politics)? I'm not against psychologists contributing to discussions on these topics but sometimes the amount of hubris they seem to have in their approach is a bit baffling—they all seem utterly convinced their opinion on the topic is correct and impenetrable—I feel like I rarely see philosophers or political scientists associated with these moralizing titles, it's always "Psychologist discovers everything wrong with the world" or "Psychologist claims our morals are a wreck" etc. etc. Of course, I'm sure my experience is skewed, but it's a weird phenomenon (perhaps its just the coattails of Jordan Peterson's meteoric rise and notoriety). Edit: to clarify, I'm more so against this notion that the American mind is "coddled". I don't think it's constructive. I think it's an invective meant to produce division and build allegiances, not to intelligently adjust the path we're going down. To say the deployment of particular concepts is the result of "coddling" is of a different nature than calling for increased criticism and scrutiny in our society.

lm28469 8y ago
> trying to play philosopher, It doesn't have much to do with philosophy though, it's mostly a psycho/socio/historical analysis. If the people studying these fields can't comment on modern events I'm not sure who you think should do it.

dcre 8y ago

For a counterpoint, read this scathing review by Moira Weigel of his book The Coddling of the American Mind: Like Trump, the authors romanticise a past before “identity” but get fuzzy and impatient when history itself comes up. “Most of these schools once excluded women and people of colour,” they reflect. “But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence. They don’t. They leave it as a rhetorical question for “common sense” to answer. Their narrow perception of history severely limits the explanations Lukianoff and Haidt can offer for the real problems they identify. Can you understand the “paranoia” middle-class parents have about college admissions without considering how many of their children are now downwardly mobile? How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-o...

moosey 8y ago
I have never been thoughtful enough to realize that the exclusions mentioned (women, POC) throughout US history fit the definition of 'identity' or 'identity politics' so well. I'm always impressed when someone comes up with such a rock solid example that points out _specific_ hypocrisies. Normally, using hypocrisy to counter someones argument is a logical fallacy, but the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account when discussing these issues philosophically, especially when dealing with those who suggest that this is only a contemporary issue. This issue is only contemporary in the fact that we are still burning far too much energy knocking down these doors in the first place, or trying to keep them open, when it comes to women's rights, and the issues present in "The Color of Law". I'm impressed.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son. As was mentioned in the Watergate scandal, always "follow the money." (Or eyeballs. Or fame. Or votes.) Who benefits from disadvantaged neighborhoods? Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?

jkingsbery 8y ago

I thought this was a pretty well-written article. One hopefully useful nitpick: > this social institution that began developing in Europe in the 17th century, a community of people who would read scientific treatises and letters and then critique each other—that’s what science is. It’s institutionalized critique. It’s guaranteed dissent. That makes people smarter. It's certainly true that science started doing this in the 17th century, but if you look at how Aquinas in the 13th century did his much of his writing it was laid out similarly: what is the question? What are all the objections, stated as strongly as possible? How does the author respond? From what I've heard/read, writing was of that format, because Aquinas and other university professors at the time would have a lecture revolve around a question or hypothesis, and he would have students announce what are the best objections to the hypothesis, and they would lecture for the remaining time refuting the best objections raised (and sometimes adding their own). One might disagree with many of the conclusions that Scholastics came to, or whether the questions merited such an approach, but the process has been in place for a while.

temp-dude-87844 8y ago

These movements come in waves, and it's a mistake to suggest that the recent developments are troubling or unnatural. All ideas are ultimately interpreted according to the norms of the time the interpretation is voiced, so perhaps in a few decades of this, it won't seem so aberrant and counterproductive to a class of privileged intellectuals anymore. But the unintended consequences will shape out future. Escalations typically hollow out the middle, where people with little investment in the topic might find themselves having to choose sides, and angering the other. Different people have different priorities. Many are more concerned about their immediate families and their careers, and they will try to conform to localized expectations to avoid conflict. Corporations and bureaucracies readily adopted outward signs of support for this movement, and people are doing the same. Their true beliefs are made known privately, or at the ballot box. People of conviction, on the other hand, will have no such qualms. Savvy nationalists and ethnic supremacists will find it easy to pivot their platform towards a broader vision of societal norms, and some will branch out into economic policy as we've already seen in Europe. They may find a receptive audience among younger members of groups that have been told that their group is problematic, and who may want no part in a movement that has left no place for them.

0815test 8y ago
> These movements come in waves, and it's a mistake to suggest that the recent developments are troubling or unnatural. ... You're probably right, but it's not Haidt that's describing any ideologies or worldviews as "troubling" or "unnatural", other than perhaps wrt. Trumpism at the close of this interview. If anything, he repeatedly stresses just how natural it might feel, for example, to demand ideological "safe spaces" in order to preserve one's quasi-religious worldview and sense of identity from what's perceived as a very personal attack from outsiders and enemies. What arguably is "troubling" and indeed outright toxic, is the consequences of these developments on the workings of our institutions (such as academia and policy-making) as well as on social cohesion more generally. But these consequences are far from unavoidable, and Haidt's book is mostly about trying to avert them.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

I graduated college around the time safe spaces and the like were starting to become "a thing". I'm glad I went to a state school in BFE. We (and some of our professors) at least were able to openly mock a lot of the less than ideal "cultural developments" that have happened at universities and colleges that the author has to take seriously in his workplace.

lgleason 8y ago

At some point I really hope that data, science, facts and reason can prevail over the craziness that has taken over university campuses and society as a whole. Most reasonable people believe in the spirit of social justice etc., but the activists have turned it into a zero sum power grab that has very little to do with the stated mission. The irony is that the level of hypocrisy on that side is at the same levels as the religious person who commits all sorts of horrible acts while fervently preaching against people who are engaged those horrible acts.

psweber 8y ago
I find is surprising that this stuff gets discussed on HN at all, and then I'm more surprised that comments like your own aren't the highest voted. Every reasonable person agrees that (lower case) social justice is our goal. Let's use a scientific approach to get closer to making it a reality.
- Joe-Z 8y ago
  One of the author's points is that it's a fallacy to believe people can be explained / lead purely by rational thinking or facts. Emotions play a huge part in human life and realities like this will always need to be taken into consideration when deciding on policy. I agree, proper research needs to be done and unbiased facts need to be found, but thinking once you have this you will get everybody on board with your new idea because it's "scientific" is unrealistic. EDIT: to clarify, by "the author" I meant the author of the book, not the Nautilus-article
  - psweber 8y ago
    Totally agree. The goal part isn't scientific. Our emotions lead us to decide the kind of world we want to live in. I think there is more agreement there than conventional and social media are leading us to believe.
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  Science doesn't justify current Social Justice (capitalized) beliefs and methods, so science gets tossed aside.

tomohawk 8y ago

Equality of outcome is the most destructive idea ever. All those tens of millions who died at the hands of the communists for this one terrible idea. That we can remake society and people to force a certain outcome. So many injustices have been excused, because the ends somehow justify the means to achieve equal outcomes. Equality of opportunity has done so much good, but the mob is easily swayed by the siren call of equal outcomes for all.

claudiawerner 8y ago
It's worth noting that the concept of pure equality of opportunity has been served a very wide range of critique: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/#Cri https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/#Cri

sonnyblarney 8y ago

" in every bathroom at NYU, there are signs telling students how to report me anonymously if I say something that they find offensive" How can people not be up in arms over this?

lm28469 8y ago
Most European countries ignored Hitler breaking every rules of the treaty of Versailles years before shit hit the fan. I'm of course not saying this is equivalent to the nazi ideology. Sometimes you don't see things coming or you ignore them until it's too late.

skywhopper 8y ago

It's not surprising when you see a book title that includes the word "coddling" what the subject matter is going to end up being. But this psychologist has a very carefully crafted approach to get you to think you agree with most of what he says. If you check out the answers, the subject of the interview always follows a very specific pattern: given a question "what about <this "liberal" idea>?" He starts by saying, "oh, it's a great insight, and based on something entirely true", then he moves onto "but of course it gets oversimplified and misapplied", and then he starts throwing out blatantly false strawmen like "then you get to 'men are bad' and 'whites are bad'" as if that's just another fact that proves that the original idea being discussed is actually a terrible one. Of course, the fact is not true, but if it were true it would be a bad thing, but by that point in the answer you are primed to go along with his until-that-point entirely reasonable rhetoric. It's impressive, really, but it's ultimately the same toxic BS that the ideas he's talking about are trying to fight against. This is just twisted logic to provide a false path to help you conclude that the privileged are actually the oppressed. It's disturbing, but alas it's nothing unique. This sort of argument has been getting more and more refined very quickly. There's some interesting psychology going on here, but it's not what this person wants you to believe.

gizmo686 8y ago
Are you saying that the ideas aren't getting oversimplified as they spread out from experts who spent a lot of time thinking about them to the general population (even restricted to on campus)? Let alone when the ideas spread into the realm of politics or activism. What other subject does this hold true for?
- ggggtez 8y ago
  I think this is trying to be a leading question but I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say.
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    I would catagorized it as a rhetorical question instead of a leading question, but yes. My point is that, across all domains of significant public inteterest, a simmilar pattern arises. The actual beliefs of the less informed members of the public actually mirror what experts would view as a strawman of those beliefs. Doubly so on political topics where even proponents of the idea spread a sumplified version. Maybe this issue is somehow special, and everyone who thinks they understand it actually do. Or maybe the author, who actually studied what people think, is correct and therr is a significant population that actually buys into the strawman.

twotwotwo 8y ago

For the author's summary of the book's thesis, Ctrl-F "six intersecting or interacting threads." If you're trying to explain what's different about this generation, and you do _not_ spend much time thinking about the rising costs of housing, higher education, and healthcare and the erosion of job security and benefits that many folks had in previous generations, you missed something. Weigel makes a lot of good broader points but I feel like that's an especially painful omission given the empirical and social-science gloss Haidt and his co-author are putting on their book. This is like explaining the past few generations in the US without mentioning the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II... Stories about how the younger generation is worse go back forever, and seem to be easy sells for various reasons--the world's always changing in ways that can be confusing and hard to keep up with, so a relatively tidy explanation that says the older generation's right and the kids are full of silly ideas can be comforting to some.

undoware 8y ago

As a non-American who has spent some years in the U.S., it fascinates me that you could subject your youth to so many horrors -- student debt, school shootings, not to mention the present administration -- and yet there is this profound thirst for psychological explanations other than 'plenty of young folks are scared of homelessness and hunger'. The shearing force between the reality of American life and the receding American dream has become just this enormous. Big hugs all around. I have a lot of compassion for even the wrong among you. <3

EdSharkey 8y ago
We've all got problems; overall life's super good if you don't believe the hype. Hugs back.

exabrial 8y ago

> Let’s try to give people a chance. Let’s judge people as individuals.” That was the great achievement of the 20th century—to make progress there. Instead in the 21st century to say, “okay welcome to campus. Here are five or six dimensions; we’re going to teach you to see men, maleness, masculinity as bad, everyone else is good. White is bad, everyone else is good. Straight is bad, everyone else is good.” Incredible.

lambdasquirrel 8y ago

> In fact, just today, The New York Times announced that it’s going to commit to publishing an equal number of letters from men and women, even though 75 percent of the letter writers are men. Men like to put themselves out in public and show off. But The New York Times has committed to this equal outcomes social justice, which says we’re gonna treat people unequally in order to attain equal outcomes. > That I think is unfair. Um, no, it's not unfair. The very idea is that you have a group that is used to getting its ideas out there, and there is another group that won't open its mouth because to do so would be a nail sticking out. From a strictly statistical standpoint, the NYTimes is trying to sample more effectively. > Most Americans think it’s unfair. Source? And, this is not an acceptable standard of good conduct.

Nomentatus 8y ago
In your defense, if it could be shown that the most thoughtful female writers strongly tended to be those most likely to show that off by sending a letter to the Times, you'd be right. I couldn't say, but I suspect that instead, extroverts of either sex are most likely to write in. Re unfair, making doubly sure that women's views were presented about issues where their perspective is distinct seems fair to me. So your viewpoint could still go through.

Proven 8y ago

SJWs have ruined a generation but statism has made that possible. Had the government not subsidized and enabled such behavior which made it viable and even profitable, the impact of said SJWs would have been much smaller. Like Nazi sympathizers without monopoly on the use of uninitiated force, they could be safely ignored. (This now isn't possible because - as the prof said - SJWs can now employ state to act violently on their behalf) Anti-social, coercive behavior can't be profitable in a free market economy.

deleted 8y ago

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shmooth 8y ago

god - most stuff i listen to from this site has _some_ quality about it - something i can learn, but this is just garbage. 15 minutes, one quarter of the way thru -- done. i didn't know it was just some right-wing psychobabble.