7 ms·

The High Priest of Heterodoxy

41 points by jseliger 7y ago

danharaj 7y ago
> Jonathan Haidt’s early work attempted to explain the origins of our political differences. His new Heterodox Academy is looking for ways to move past them. (By pushing the same old narrative you've heard from exactly one side)
jseliger 7y ago
I've admired all of the Haidt books I've read, including Coddling: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/27/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-jonathan-haidt-and-greg-lukianoff/ https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/27/the-coddling-of-the-ameri.... His earlier book The Happiness Hypothesis is underrated and highly recommended: https://sivers.org/book/HappinessHypothesis https://sivers.org/book/HappinessHypothesis
whatshisface 7y ago
>“The recent spike in students’ anxiety and depression is like nothing else in history,” Haidt added, because they grew up exposed to online bullying and know they could be the next victim. Every now and then the mental health epidemic comes up on HN and I see ten or twenty different theories about what's causing it. If nothing else, it's galvanized me against believing any one explanation just because someone says it. Has Haidt really cracked the case? It would be nice to see some evidence one way or another.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  Haidt talks about it in detail in his "The Coddling...". He cites other studies. I can't say that that he's "cracked" it, but if you're interested in why he says that, that's the place to start looking.
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BryantD 7y ago
There's a thoughtful examination of Haidt's claims here (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-speech-crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/ https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-spee...), which agrees in part and disagrees in part. Worth reading before passing judgement.
komali2 7y ago
I first saw this as potentially a great possibility. Like, awesome, someone is actually sitting down and researching how to undivided the red/blue divided America? But then... > The fledgling academy now occupies a position within America’s tumultuous culture wars as advocates for free speech and the values of the “open society” and against political correctness and the millennial fervor of social justice activism. "Political correctness" is so thoroughly abused as an alt-right general accusation as to be meaningless. All it does here is make me question the institution as just another alt-right organization hiding their beliefs behind the shield of "rationality" and "free speech." > Of course, the researchers will be labeled white supremacists by those who fear that more knowledge might interfere with their ideologically pure claim that American racism is the root cause of every social problem. Sure, it's annoying to be called a white supremacist by verified Twitter trolls, but we've got equally, if not more so, absurd accusations of anti-Semitism flying all over the fucking place right now, and the correct solution is to leave Twitter to the Twitter trolls.
- lliamander 7y ago
  > "Political correctness" is so thoroughly abused as an alt-right general accusation as to be meaningless. All it does here is make me question the institution as just another alt-right organization hiding their beliefs behind the shield of "rationality" and "free speech." "Racism", "bigotry", etc. are so thoroughly abused as left-wing general accusation as to be meaningless. All it does is make me question the institution as just another Marxist organization hiding their beliefs behind the shield of "compassion" and "fairness". Btw, what makes someone alt-right? Just curious.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    Alt right is broadly a split faction from traditional conservatives towards ethno-centric populism and anti-liberal values.
    - lliamander 7y ago
      Thank you for answering the question. If I may probe further, what is the distinction between traditional conservatism and ethno-centric populism? Do traditional conservatives also hold anti-liberal values, or is there a substrate of liberal values shared by both traditional conservatives and progressives that does not include the alt-right?
b_tterc_p 7y ago
At a glance this looks like just lengthy prose trying to position conservative ideas as the intellectual middle ground.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  I am not sure why it is downvoted - it is a commonly used tactic of the right dating back at least to "teach the controversy" for creationists and climate change deniers to try to legitimize themselves through a golden mean fallacy.
  - lliamander 7y ago
    Why is it downvoted? * because it's a low-effort comment that contains crass generalizations. * because Haidt et. al. are not right-wing partisan hacks, but bona fide liberals.
    - b_tterc_p 7y ago
      I don’t see where I was crass. Nor do I think it’s especially low effort relative to the quality of the content. Much of the post is a recurring tactic of: stating a fairly tame conservative view, extrapolating that since liberals shut down some conservative views that they will shut down even the most nuanced ones, implying that therefore the ones trying to be reasonable are the conservatives. It’s... bad. I don’t know or care who Haidt is it what his rep is
gringoDan 7y ago
There are some great quotes in this piece. In particular, discussion on the tradeoff between feeling safe and intellectual honesty (which requires some discomfort). > Haidt and Lukianoff quote Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard law professor who says that discussing rape law in the classroom “has become so difficult that teachers are starting to give up on the subject.” She adds that if law professors stop mentioning sexual assault, that “would be a tremendous loss—above all to victims of sexual assault.” Reminds me of this clip from Van Jones re: safe spaces on college campuses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zms3EqGbFOk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zms3EqGbFOk
hirundo 7y ago
"A candle flame is easily blown out. A candle flame is fragile. If you have a candle flame you have to protect it with a glass sleeve because any puff of wind will extinguish it. But once it reaches the stage of a roaring fire, the more wind the better. So what Taleb said is that you want to be the fire and wish for the wind" -- Jonathan Haidt paraphrasing Nassim Taleb Haidt convincingly expands on this metaphor in terms of how we treat children in this Penn State lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E This summarizes his overall case neatly: We're increasingly handling our kids like fragile objects, stunting their maturity and reshaping western civilization in their image.
neaden 7y ago
I'm tired of articles that talk about young people today and then only give out examples that happen at small elite liberal arts universities. What that generally tells you is that the author only interacts with a small slice of young people and assumes everyone else in their generation is the same.
- insickness 7y ago
  Haidt's thesis in 'Coddling' is about what is happening at universities and how their influence spreads to the general population. So some examples of what is happening at universities is appropriate.
  - neaden 7y ago
    But it's always very specific universities that attract a small and specific subset of students. Where are the examples of this happening at community colleges, or rural land grant schools? As I said it comes off as the only college students the author actually meets are people who go to small elite schools and get an internship in journalism.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
youdontknowtho 7y ago
If you already think this is a problem then this guy will reinforce you belief. It's too pat of an answer and to wide of a subject to think that it explains these conditions.
pgcj_poster 7y ago
If anyone's still reading this thread, the article cited a tweet from an account that just today wrote: > When you bring in a population that is less skilled & from nations w/ lower average IQs, you are “baking in” socioeconomic inequality & fueling resentment among those less successful groups. This resentment can be successfully exploited by the identity politics of the left. The person who wrote this, like Haidt, calls himself a "centrist," which makes me find it hard to take anything these people say about "dialogue" and "bringing people together" at face value.
- lliamander 7y ago
  Disqualifying an argument using unstated, inscrutable and ambiguous rules, and then implying guilt by association. Top form there mate.

41 points by jseliger 7y ago

> Jonathan Haidt’s early work attempted to explain the origins of our political differences. His new Heterodox Academy is looking for ways to move past them. (By pushing the same old narrative you've heard from exactly one side)

jseliger 7y ago

I've admired all of the Haidt books I've read, including Coddling: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/27/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-jonathan-haidt-and-greg-lukianoff/ https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/27/the-coddling-of-the-ameri.... His earlier book The Happiness Hypothesis is underrated and highly recommended: https://sivers.org/book/HappinessHypothesis https://sivers.org/book/HappinessHypothesis

whatshisface 7y ago

>“The recent spike in students’ anxiety and depression is like nothing else in history,” Haidt added, because they grew up exposed to online bullying and know they could be the next victim. Every now and then the mental health epidemic comes up on HN and I see ten or twenty different theories about what's causing it. If nothing else, it's galvanized me against believing any one explanation just because someone says it. Has Haidt really cracked the case? It would be nice to see some evidence one way or another.

xyzzyz 7y ago
Haidt talks about it in detail in his "The Coddling...". He cites other studies. I can't say that that he's "cracked" it, but if you're interested in why he says that, that's the place to start looking.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

BryantD 7y ago

There's a thoughtful examination of Haidt's claims here (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-speech-crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/ https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-spee...), which agrees in part and disagrees in part. Worth reading before passing judgement.

komali2 7y ago

I first saw this as potentially a great possibility. Like, awesome, someone is actually sitting down and researching how to undivided the red/blue divided America? But then... > The fledgling academy now occupies a position within America’s tumultuous culture wars as advocates for free speech and the values of the “open society” and against political correctness and the millennial fervor of social justice activism. "Political correctness" is so thoroughly abused as an alt-right general accusation as to be meaningless. All it does here is make me question the institution as just another alt-right organization hiding their beliefs behind the shield of "rationality" and "free speech." > Of course, the researchers will be labeled white supremacists by those who fear that more knowledge might interfere with their ideologically pure claim that American racism is the root cause of every social problem. Sure, it's annoying to be called a white supremacist by verified Twitter trolls, but we've got equally, if not more so, absurd accusations of anti-Semitism flying all over the fucking place right now, and the correct solution is to leave Twitter to the Twitter trolls.

lliamander 7y ago
> "Political correctness" is so thoroughly abused as an alt-right general accusation as to be meaningless. All it does here is make me question the institution as just another alt-right organization hiding their beliefs behind the shield of "rationality" and "free speech." "Racism", "bigotry", etc. are so thoroughly abused as left-wing general accusation as to be meaningless. All it does is make me question the institution as just another Marxist organization hiding their beliefs behind the shield of "compassion" and "fairness". Btw, what makes someone alt-right? Just curious.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  Alt right is broadly a split faction from traditional conservatives towards ethno-centric populism and anti-liberal values.
  - lliamander 7y ago
    Thank you for answering the question. If I may probe further, what is the distinction between traditional conservatism and ethno-centric populism? Do traditional conservatives also hold anti-liberal values, or is there a substrate of liberal values shared by both traditional conservatives and progressives that does not include the alt-right?

b_tterc_p 7y ago

At a glance this looks like just lengthy prose trying to position conservative ideas as the intellectual middle ground.

Nasrudith 7y ago
I am not sure why it is downvoted - it is a commonly used tactic of the right dating back at least to "teach the controversy" for creationists and climate change deniers to try to legitimize themselves through a golden mean fallacy.
- lliamander 7y ago
  Why is it downvoted? * because it's a low-effort comment that contains crass generalizations. * because Haidt et. al. are not right-wing partisan hacks, but bona fide liberals.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    I don’t see where I was crass. Nor do I think it’s especially low effort relative to the quality of the content. Much of the post is a recurring tactic of: stating a fairly tame conservative view, extrapolating that since liberals shut down some conservative views that they will shut down even the most nuanced ones, implying that therefore the ones trying to be reasonable are the conservatives. It’s... bad. I don’t know or care who Haidt is it what his rep is

gringoDan 7y ago

There are some great quotes in this piece. In particular, discussion on the tradeoff between feeling safe and intellectual honesty (which requires some discomfort). > Haidt and Lukianoff quote Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard law professor who says that discussing rape law in the classroom “has become so difficult that teachers are starting to give up on the subject.” She adds that if law professors stop mentioning sexual assault, that “would be a tremendous loss—above all to victims of sexual assault.” Reminds me of this clip from Van Jones re: safe spaces on college campuses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zms3EqGbFOk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zms3EqGbFOk

hirundo 7y ago

"A candle flame is easily blown out. A candle flame is fragile. If you have a candle flame you have to protect it with a glass sleeve because any puff of wind will extinguish it. But once it reaches the stage of a roaring fire, the more wind the better. So what Taleb said is that you want to be the fire and wish for the wind" -- Jonathan Haidt paraphrasing Nassim Taleb Haidt convincingly expands on this metaphor in terms of how we treat children in this Penn State lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E This summarizes his overall case neatly: We're increasingly handling our kids like fragile objects, stunting their maturity and reshaping western civilization in their image.

neaden 7y ago

I'm tired of articles that talk about young people today and then only give out examples that happen at small elite liberal arts universities. What that generally tells you is that the author only interacts with a small slice of young people and assumes everyone else in their generation is the same.

insickness 7y ago
Haidt's thesis in 'Coddling' is about what is happening at universities and how their influence spreads to the general population. So some examples of what is happening at universities is appropriate.
- neaden 7y ago
  But it's always very specific universities that attract a small and specific subset of students. Where are the examples of this happening at community colleges, or rural land grant schools? As I said it comes off as the only college students the author actually meets are people who go to small elite schools and get an internship in journalism.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

youdontknowtho 7y ago

If you already think this is a problem then this guy will reinforce you belief. It's too pat of an answer and to wide of a subject to think that it explains these conditions.

pgcj_poster 7y ago

If anyone's still reading this thread, the article cited a tweet from an account that just today wrote: > When you bring in a population that is less skilled & from nations w/ lower average IQs, you are “baking in” socioeconomic inequality & fueling resentment among those less successful groups. This resentment can be successfully exploited by the identity politics of the left. The person who wrote this, like Haidt, calls himself a "centrist," which makes me find it hard to take anything these people say about "dialogue" and "bringing people together" at face value.

lliamander 7y ago
Disqualifying an argument using unstated, inscrutable and ambiguous rules, and then implying guilt by association. Top form there mate.