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Steven Pinker Wants to Repair Campus Culture
- api 6y agoHe had me until he threw in Charles Murray. I want to believe these bold defenders of classical liberalism and enlightenment values, but I am not oblivious enough to the subtext. I can see what they're trying to wedge into the discussion. It reminds me of the old 2000s intelligent design "wedge strategy" to sneak literalist creationism into schools and academia, only now it's biological racism that's got to be wedged in there. If you don't like over-zealous woke-ism, stop making them look reasonable by trying to sneak ideological racism in the back door. It reminds me of the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9SMUzj-_4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9SMUzj-_4Q "We're not racists... we're... pining!" If they wanted to talk about the biological basis of human behavior, there are a million better researchers in this area than Charles Murray that do not have the baggage. Try one of these people: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C36&as_ylo=2021&q=ethnic+differences+in+brain+structure&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C36&as_yl... Oooh look, "ethnic differences in brain structure" returns 10+ pages of papers by people who apparently are not being "cancelled." That's strange for a topic that you're supposedly not allowed to study. Maybe they're not being cancelled because they are just doing science and not trying to soft pill people on ideological racism. These people think blacks are intellectually inferior to other races. That's what they think and they need to admit it or shut the fuck up. That is a dead parrot.
- soared 6y agoThe article pitches Pinker as a man who sees the bright side of things and that liberalism is going too far on college campuses by practicing their beliefs. While he may have a point, he’s not remotely the unbiased good hearted guy the article intros him as. From Wikipedia: In 2020, an open letter to the Linguistic Society of America requesting the removal of Pinker from its list of LSA Fellows and its list of media experts was signed by hundreds of academics.[96][97] The letter accused Pinker of a "pattern of drowning out the voices of people suffering from racist and sexist violence, in particular in the immediate aftermath of violent acts and/or protests against the systems that created them", citing as examples six tweets and a phrase used in his 2011 book.[98] Pinker said that through this letter he was being threatened by "a regime of intimidation that constricts the theatre of ideas".[99][100][101] Several academics criticized the letter and expressed strong support for Pinker
- joshuaissac 6y agoThe article is criticising what it calls a "wave of illiberalism", which would be the opposite of liberalism going too far.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xyzzyz 6y ago> The overall trends on crime and life expectancy haven’t all of a sudden reversed. They very much have, though, at least in the US.
- Out_of_Characte 6y agoSources? Googling both only disproves both your claims.
- qsort 6y agoTo parent's credit, the CDC did report a decline in life expectancy at birth from 2014 to 2017, but the decline was of of a couple decimal points total, which is well within standard error. Claiming "trends are reversing" is, in fact, FUD.
- User23 6y agoMurders certainly increased markedly in major cities in 2020.
- ojnabieoot 6y agoRegardless of the extent that the increase is due to statistical noise or socio-political factors: it is obviously incorrect to look at one deeply unusual year and proclaim the trend is “reversed.”
- tehjoker 6y agoIsn't he the Epstein guy? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinkers-aid-jeffrey-epsteins-legal-defense-renews-criticism-increasingly https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
- andyxor 6y agoCancel Steven Pinker now?
- tehjoker 6y agoI am fairly skeptical of all the Harvard social science crowd. Most of them just say things are great, the youth are ruining things, and cover for state crimes.
- sudosysgen 6y agoCancelling is only a problem because it got out of hand and started targeting people for things that weren't completely inacceptable. Providing legal aid to a known pedophile is a step beyond, though. That would get you "canceled" pretty much anywhere, anytime. Having flown on the Lolita Express isn't any better. Lying about your relationship with that person is the cherry on top. Plus, as the commenter said, the Harvard social science crowd is very shady, and it's most prominent members were often involved in various atrocities.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- root_axis 6y agoI don't see any calls for cancellation in the parent comment. It seems that you presume his association with Epstein implicitly merits cancellation. I don't see the problem in pointing out this association.
- azinman2 6y agoIt’s irrelevant to the topic at hand.
- tptacek 6y agoPinker is the wrong person to do it. A lot of baggage. If this is a story you're generally enthusiastic about, a better person to pay attention to is probably John McWhorter (also a linguist!). I don't cosign all that much of what McWhorter has to say about this topic, but he has much better bona fides.
- andyxor 6y agowho's the right person to do it, with no 'baggage'?
- tptacek 6y agoIt really is a lot of baggage. Another person who would strongly agree with the idea that campus culture has become corrupted is Charles Murray. But you can see immediately why Charles Murray couldn't be the figure that reform unified behind! Pinker is, like, 650-750 milliMurrays. He gave a statement that had the intended effect of getting Epstein his sweetheart sentence! Just fatally compromised, for a bunch of reasons. Beyond the Epstein stuff, and to calibrate the Murrayometer, I'd suggest searches like [Pinker Hsu], [Pinker Bell Curve], [Pinker "Groups and Genes"], [Pinker UCSB shooting], [Pinker "Richard Haier"]. You might be fine with all these search results! I'm saying: you're not going to be building a lot of bridges with this resume.
- andyxor 6y agoI'm not sure how ad-hominem personal attacks suddenly became the primary way of debate. Attack the speaker and undermine his credibility instead of arguing about what he has to say. I see it time after time in online and offline discussions. Which kind of illustrates his point.
- tptacek 6y agoI'm arguing substantively with you. The argument is about the trustworthiness of someone else. The concept of the ad hominem fallacy does not mean it is impossible to discuss someone else's credibility. Perhaps we've had our wires crossed, and you think I'm arguing "because Pinker says campus culture is corrupted, campus culture must be fine, because Pinker is corrupted". That is not my argument. A good resource on this is the "Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy" post, and I recommend it to you heartily.
- Analemma_ 6y ago> The other explanation is that this new wave of illiberalism “is just the cumulative effect of several generations” of professors having indoctrinated their students in an ideological mixture of postmodernism and Marxist critical theory. Unfortunately, we have just reached the tipping point. A friend of mine quipped recently that you can always tell who is behind the curve on their critiques of colleges when they say things like this. For several years now the actual dynamic has been that the undergraduates arrive and tell the professors what to think. In other words, whether you agree with the students or not, Pinker isn't going to have any success here because this culture is formed long before anyone gets to college.
- mushbino 6y agoTo be fair, times change and professors tend to be from a much different generation than the students. During the Vietnam war many professors thought the students were going too far in protesting. Professors can teach the students HOW to think and the students can teach the professors WHAT is important to them. Ideally, it's a two way street. If not then the professors are being left behind by the times.
- soared 6y agoIm very liberally biased but when college students are getting into politics it’s tough to just say hundreds of thousands of students are wrong. I don’t think culture on college campuses can “slide downhill”. These are the people who are educated and the most invested in the future. If they don’t like something, we may want to listen.
- leetcrew 6y agothe idealism that is common among college students is admirable, but I don't think it's at all tough to say thousands of students are wrong. about half of college students came straight from high school and have had little experience of the world outside of controlled environments designed, for better or for worse, specifically for them. many are at the very cusp of realizing just how much they don't know. I cringe to think of the simplistic and absurd positions I and my fellow students held and advocated for in college.
- baumy 6y ago> it’s tough to just say hundreds of thousands of students are wrong Can you share your reasoning behind this statement? I don't find it remotely tough. If anything, it seems like the most sensible default position. At risk of sounding glib - have you met many 18-20 year old college students?
- throwaw4ybio 6y ago>Pinker traces the origins of this dynamic all the way back to 1975 and the publication of E.O. Wilson’s “Sociobiology,” when Wilson and other biologists “would get shouted down” for expressing the view that genetic and other evolutionary considerations determine, in part, social organization. Two things that might serve as food for thought: 1) I guarantee that know-it-all, newly-minted young adults getting mad at professors didn't start in 1975, though simultaneous social shifts (e.g. things like the anti-Vietnam-War movement) might have made it more socially acceptable for the youngins to speak up in those places. 2) People complaining about being oppressed on campus because of their ideas frequently seem to have the same weird idea. Whereas, no one goes and yells at Lee Smolin when he bags on string theory.
- Out_of_Characte 6y agoOn your second point. It does seem interesting that any publication or statement that can be cancelled must be rooted in a certain field where morality can be injected. String theory or astronomy, although complex, is completely abstracted from human society. Genetics, IQ and Psychology all share parts of their work with things that are intrinsically connected to human society. IQ specifically is also designed to remove any bias to any particular group, culture, language or schooling. and even then the field does not escape the 'cancel culture' with countless articles having been written about discrimination that author of the bell curve supposedly displayed. Speaking out against discrimination and immorality has always been a virtue but the burden of proof has disappeared and there is no apparent consequence against defaming/cancelling someone innocent. I've never been a fan of libel laws because it can be used to silence opposition but I dont see many other ways to prevent the creation of these authorities by mob rule without proof.
- hellomyguys 6y agoHolding powerful people accountable isn't a bad thing. Attacking people who have little power over relatively small things and not allowing them room for growth and reflection is a bad thing. And even for the people with little power who did pretty bad things, we must allow them to be forgiven too. You can't have criminal justice reform without this. We need to discuss this issue with the nuance of the above.
- azinman2 6y agoI think the bigger issue here is the scale provided by the internet. That combined with the lack of investigation or skepticism means people read a tweet and assume that’s all they need to know.
- lamontcg 6y agoYeah this is very obviously punching down on 18 year olds who have simplistic ways of expressing their politics and who don't actually have a lot of power.
- altcognito 6y agoPinker: 1. People are claiming victimhood to seize power 2. I am a victim of censorship! 3. You must listen to me! That's pretty awesome to fit that in one paper.
- bhouston 6y agoThis is a discussion about the Overton Window moving in ways that one disagrees with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window There was always an Overton Window and it has always been moving around. And often people (usually older people) do not like when they have opinions which are being excluded from the Overton Window when previously they were acceptable. I find that it is best to be specific about what should be in and what should not be in the Overton Window rather than being general. Why? Discussions of "cancel culture" seems to me to pretend to be meta discussions on whether the Overton Window should exist, but usually they are actually about whether certain topics should be within it. I find that this is a bit of a deception and used to disavow that you are unhappy with the current position of the Overton Window with regards to very specific issues, usually because if they discussed the specifics of their concern, it would actually fall outside of most people's Overton Window - thus the need to argue the meta route.
- krona 6y ago> There was always an Overton Window and it has always been moving around. Has it always been getting narrower, though? That seems to be what's changed more than anything. What happens when nothing can be discussed?
- sudosysgen 6y agoHas it been getting narrower, or do you feel as if it does as you slide closer to the edge, relatively? I don't know, both are possible. But there are a lot of people that claim it's getting smaller but really it's that they're failing to cover up ideas that were always unacceptable.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway894345 6y agoConsidering left-wing cancellation only, I'm guessing the enforced views are favored by less than 30% of the population. I don't think virtually any conservatives or many moderate liberals agree with the enforced viewpoint. Surely that means the Overton Window is narrowing. When have the views of 70+% of the population ever fell outside the OW? If it excludes the views of 70+%, is it even an "Overton Window" by definition? What's the difference between enforcing an extremely narrow window on the whole population and cultural authoritarianism (or perhaps just "authoritarianism"--I'm not exactly sure on the terminology?)? The other question is that, while rarer, right-wing cancellation is a thing. Notable examples are Dixie Chicks and Colin Kaepernick. While I could believe that the Dixie Chicks were a matter of an OW shift a few years in the making, and while I can believe that the window shifted gradually leftward from there, I can't believe that it shifted to the extreme left, then abruptly back to the right in just a week's time for the Kaepernick cancellation, and then a week later back to the far left for various left-wing cancellations. Even if it is the Overton Window, is it eminently desirable that people's livelihoods and healthcare should be subject to expressing views within the OW? EDIT: Downvoters, I would be very interested in your feedback, genuinely; where am I wrong?
- camdenlock 6y agoIt’s pretty amazing how much time and effort is being spent on discrediting Pinker himself without even engaging with his ideas. Go read some of his books and then debate the contents.
- sudosysgen 6y agoIf you want to debate his ideas, state them and you can get a debate. Otherwise, the argument is mostly if he's in a position to "repair campus culture", and he isn't, as well as if it needs to be "repaired" at all.
- Comevius 6y agoI always found Pinker to be a wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle kind of thinker. His simplistic views are eloquent, but flawed, however somewhat easy to communicate, which makes him popular. A true celebrity intellectual.