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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 ve

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.
kryogen1c 8y ago
>and then he starts throwing out blatantly false strawmen like "then you get to 'men are bad' and 'whites are bad'" These are sincerely held beliefs increasing in popularity around the world. Take, for example, the evergreen state college controversy in the USA where black people decided white people shouldnt come to college one day. Governmental and corporate boards are increasingly forcefully including women to achieve "equal" representation, regardless of measured abilities.
- krapp 8y ago
  >Take, for example, the evergreen state college controversy in the USA where black people decided white people shouldnt come to college one day. That's not exactly what happened[0], and it wasn't because "black people" believed "whites are bad." And... attempting to extrapolate from a single data point into some global anti-white belief is absurd to say the least. If anything, the global rise in populism, anti-feminist and anti immigrant sentiment points to the opposite trend. >Governmental and corporate boards are increasingly forcefully including women to achieve "equal" representation, regardless of measured abilities. Attempting to correct systemic gender bias is not an expression of a belief that "men are bad". One can argue about the effectiveness or fairness of such programs but you're being purposely disingenuous as to their nature and rationale. [0]https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/22/evergreen-state-cancels-day-absence-set-series-protests-and-controversies https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/22/evergreen-sta...
  - chihuahua 8y ago
    The article you cite says that's exactly what happened: > Last year, organizers said that on the Day of Absence, they wanted white people to stay off campus.
    - krapp 8y ago
      >The article you cite says that's exactly what happened: Nowhere in that article does it claim that black people wanted white people off campus because they hate white people.
0815test 8y ago
> This is just twisted logic to provide a false path to help you conclude that the privileged are actually the oppressed. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. There are a whole lot of people who make all sorts of claims about who the "privileged" and the "oppressed" might be; some of them arguably with more care than others. By way of example, a certain high-profile figure in our administration seemingly likes to portray eirself as being 'just an average guy' who has been somewhat successful thanks to eir outstanding smarts and saviness in 'making deals', but is now being 'oppressed' by the fake-news-peddling mainstream media. I don't think these claims should be taken seriously, and I regard this notable individual as plausibly being, by and large, quite privileged. But of course it's possible that I am wrong, and that ey's really being oppressed, even though I might regard em as privileged. Is this what you're getting at? More generally, I think words like "privilege" and "oppression" obscure a lot more than what they might seem to reveal; they're the kind of claim that should always come with some sort of explanation or qualification.
belorn 8y ago
I have a rather simple test that I use to verify my view of the political climate. I take news and replace the word men with immigrant and woman with nationalist, and vice verse. Hate being hate it should then not matter if I change the targeted demographic. Immigrant free concert, nationalist exclusive events, people writing that all immigrants are lazy, toxic, violent and dangerous. That immigrant culture is medically defined as harmful. The filter even picked some extreme cases like a suggestion by the national political party that we should have reeducation camps for immigrants, and a wish to reduce the immigrant population down to 10% through genetic modification. It a rather scary filter.

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.

kryogen1c 8y ago

>and then he starts throwing out blatantly false strawmen like "then you get to 'men are bad' and 'whites are bad'" These are sincerely held beliefs increasing in popularity around the world. Take, for example, the evergreen state college controversy in the USA where black people decided white people shouldnt come to college one day. Governmental and corporate boards are increasingly forcefully including women to achieve "equal" representation, regardless of measured abilities.

krapp 8y ago
>Take, for example, the evergreen state college controversy in the USA where black people decided white people shouldnt come to college one day. That's not exactly what happened[0], and it wasn't because "black people" believed "whites are bad." And... attempting to extrapolate from a single data point into some global anti-white belief is absurd to say the least. If anything, the global rise in populism, anti-feminist and anti immigrant sentiment points to the opposite trend. >Governmental and corporate boards are increasingly forcefully including women to achieve "equal" representation, regardless of measured abilities. Attempting to correct systemic gender bias is not an expression of a belief that "men are bad". One can argue about the effectiveness or fairness of such programs but you're being purposely disingenuous as to their nature and rationale. [0]https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/22/evergreen-state-cancels-day-absence-set-series-protests-and-controversies https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/22/evergreen-sta...
- chihuahua 8y ago
  The article you cite says that's exactly what happened: > Last year, organizers said that on the Day of Absence, they wanted white people to stay off campus.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >The article you cite says that's exactly what happened: Nowhere in that article does it claim that black people wanted white people off campus because they hate white people.

0815test 8y ago

> This is just twisted logic to provide a false path to help you conclude that the privileged are actually the oppressed. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. There are a whole lot of people who make all sorts of claims about who the "privileged" and the "oppressed" might be; some of them arguably with more care than others. By way of example, a certain high-profile figure in our administration seemingly likes to portray eirself as being 'just an average guy' who has been somewhat successful thanks to eir outstanding smarts and saviness in 'making deals', but is now being 'oppressed' by the fake-news-peddling mainstream media. I don't think these claims should be taken seriously, and I regard this notable individual as plausibly being, by and large, quite privileged. But of course it's possible that I am wrong, and that ey's really being oppressed, even though I might regard em as privileged. Is this what you're getting at? More generally, I think words like "privilege" and "oppression" obscure a lot more than what they might seem to reveal; they're the kind of claim that should always come with some sort of explanation or qualification.

belorn 8y ago

I have a rather simple test that I use to verify my view of the political climate. I take news and replace the word men with immigrant and woman with nationalist, and vice verse. Hate being hate it should then not matter if I change the targeted demographic. Immigrant free concert, nationalist exclusive events, people writing that all immigrants are lazy, toxic, violent and dangerous. That immigrant culture is medically defined as harmful. The filter even picked some extreme cases like a suggestion by the national political party that we should have reeducation camps for immigrants, and a wish to reduce the immigrant population down to 10% through genetic modification. It a rather scary filter.