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Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. They have been taught the

Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. They have been taught the magnitude of their outrage makes them righteous. And their outrage is never satiated. These people are toxic and sometimes evil. They'll eventually come for you too no matter how much you generally agree with them. Some of them are certainly sincere. But as Milton Friedman once said, "sincerity is an overrated virtue". The damage they cause is the same irrespective of how sincere they might be.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
And as Thomas Sowell said, "The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  My other favorite Sowell: "Intellect is not wisdom." My hope is that Sowell's work will see a groundswell of support and he'll finally be appreciated for what he has contributed. My fear is that we won't be on this earth when it happens.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Then one of his other famous quotes will apply: “there are only two ways of telling the complete truth — anonymously and posthumously.”
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    Hilariously from the pov of this forum, Sowell is pretty much a hero of the right wing, having been formally trained as a Marxist at UofChicago only to reason his way out of that position back to sanity and then make a career of trying to educate the rest of the world to do the same.
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      >Hilariously from the pov of this forum, Sowell is pretty much a hero of the right wing, having been formally trained as a Marxist at UofChicago only to reason his way out of that position back to sanity and then make a career of trying to educate the rest of the world to do the same. A big contributor to said reasoning out was his observing the antics of late-1960s black Cornell students (mostly admitted via affirmative action and, Sowell said, unqualified for the university's rigors), their takeover of university buildings, and their justifying doing so by claiming various outrages against themselves that were foreign to the day-to-day life that Sowell, a fellow Cornellian and Ithaca resident, experienced.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Sowell is truly great. His theory of conflicting visions was the first time I felt I truly understood the deep nature of political disagreement.
xroche 5y ago
> They'll eventually come for you too no matter how much you generally agree with them. Reminds of the Maoism movement in European universities (such as in France) a few decades ago, where people critical of Mao were harassed and treated as fascists. With some universities would make Maoism a de-facto precondition to be accepted as researcher. This seems to share the same mechanism: very few righteous people having no longer any morale compass due to ideology, and cowardliness of the rest of the herd (including the administration) that refuse to stand for reason and logic.
- oolonthegreat 5y ago
  I'm asking as an outsider who wants to learn: do you mean people in european universities got harassed because they were against Mao? do you have any articles about this that I can read?
  - xroche 5y ago
    This really depended on the university. Some of them were not affected at all, some other had sections where you could not do any research or teaching without being from the "right obedience" (communist, Maoist, etc.) The most extreme being (in French - https://www.deepl.com/fr/translator https://www.deepl.com/fr/translator) the Vincennes university: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_universitaire_de_Vincennes https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_universitaire_de_Vincen... [ TL;Dr: The most Maoist university at that time, with communists fighting (with violence) against Maoists inside the university ] Note that this was a more "experimental" university, aimed to attract the most radical teachers (!) There are plenty of research for the years between 65-75
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gorwell 5y ago
  We're getting way too close to struggle sessions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
antisthenes 5y ago
I've heard this phenomenon being called a "purity spiral". It makes sense intuitively - nothing productive is really being done when a group just engages in ever-escalating virtue signalling. But since I'm not an expert, is there more material about this that one can access? Would love to read/hear someone who studies this.
- trentnix 5y ago
  Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C. S. Lewis
  - pope_meat 5y ago
    >his cupidity may at some point be satiated Will it, though?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Bill Gates is giving away a lot of money. Warren Buffet, too. And a lot of billionaires aren't. So, yes, it may.
      - pope_meat 5y ago
        Check their net worth. It's only going up. To a cynic like me it just seems like they're buying good PR, and it's relatively cheap.
        goatlover 5y ago
        It’s possible for both to be true. Humans are complex. Motivations are often a mix of factors. Why would billionaires be different?
jfengel 5y ago
The author appears to me to be one of the contributors to that lesson. His posts consist exclusively of him being outraged about something or other.
- momdad420 5y ago
  Your comment reminds me of the rhetoric from people against gay marriage. "Well you're not tolerating my position. That's not very tolerant of you!"
- washadjeffmad 5y ago
  Edit: sorry, thought you were talking about Bari. Your statement proves their point. The defining of ideas can be contentious, difficult, jarring, and uncomfortable. That they are to one but not another doesn't disqualify them as debatable topics or make the arguer less qualified to make them. Defending yourself rigorously with evidence and rhetoric was a skill people went to good colleges to learn. Bari argues that universities now reinforce not engaging in debate with or challenging the ideas of anyone who doesn't already believe what you believe (or their signals) but toeing an unspoken line, and that there's no room for nuanced discussion of the ideologies. It's like a loyalty test where recognizing it openly for what it is is an instant fail.
- native_samples 5y ago
  How so? His story is one in which he was relentlessly harassed, and in which his attempts to tolerate and reason with his opposition resulted in him being illegitimately forced out of the university. Despite that, his "outrage", if you can call it that, is hard to spot: his letter describing the reasons for his resignation explains why he's doing it, but is low on invective.
908B64B197 5y ago
At this point it's a protection racket; agree with them or get brutally cancelled. Few years ago it was contained to humanities but as of recently, it started spreading in technical fields. See how AI researchers got cancelled [0] [0] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago

And as Thomas Sowell said, "The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."

brodouevencode 5y ago
My other favorite Sowell: "Intellect is not wisdom." My hope is that Sowell's work will see a groundswell of support and he'll finally be appreciated for what he has contributed. My fear is that we won't be on this earth when it happens.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Then one of his other famous quotes will apply: “there are only two ways of telling the complete truth — anonymously and posthumously.”
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Hilariously from the pov of this forum, Sowell is pretty much a hero of the right wing, having been formally trained as a Marxist at UofChicago only to reason his way out of that position back to sanity and then make a career of trying to educate the rest of the world to do the same.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    >Hilariously from the pov of this forum, Sowell is pretty much a hero of the right wing, having been formally trained as a Marxist at UofChicago only to reason his way out of that position back to sanity and then make a career of trying to educate the rest of the world to do the same. A big contributor to said reasoning out was his observing the antics of late-1960s black Cornell students (mostly admitted via affirmative action and, Sowell said, unqualified for the university's rigors), their takeover of university buildings, and their justifying doing so by claiming various outrages against themselves that were foreign to the day-to-day life that Sowell, a fellow Cornellian and Ithaca resident, experienced.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Sowell is truly great. His theory of conflicting visions was the first time I felt I truly understood the deep nature of political disagreement.

xroche 5y ago

> They'll eventually come for you too no matter how much you generally agree with them. Reminds of the Maoism movement in European universities (such as in France) a few decades ago, where people critical of Mao were harassed and treated as fascists. With some universities would make Maoism a de-facto precondition to be accepted as researcher. This seems to share the same mechanism: very few righteous people having no longer any morale compass due to ideology, and cowardliness of the rest of the herd (including the administration) that refuse to stand for reason and logic.

oolonthegreat 5y ago
I'm asking as an outsider who wants to learn: do you mean people in european universities got harassed because they were against Mao? do you have any articles about this that I can read?
- xroche 5y ago
  This really depended on the university. Some of them were not affected at all, some other had sections where you could not do any research or teaching without being from the "right obedience" (communist, Maoist, etc.) The most extreme being (in French - https://www.deepl.com/fr/translator https://www.deepl.com/fr/translator) the Vincennes university: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_universitaire_de_Vincennes https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_universitaire_de_Vincen... [ TL;Dr: The most Maoist university at that time, with communists fighting (with violence) against Maoists inside the university ] Note that this was a more "experimental" university, aimed to attract the most radical teachers (!) There are plenty of research for the years between 65-75
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gorwell 5y ago
We're getting way too close to struggle sessions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

antisthenes 5y ago

I've heard this phenomenon being called a "purity spiral". It makes sense intuitively - nothing productive is really being done when a group just engages in ever-escalating virtue signalling. But since I'm not an expert, is there more material about this that one can access? Would love to read/hear someone who studies this.

trentnix 5y ago
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C. S. Lewis
- pope_meat 5y ago
  >his cupidity may at some point be satiated Will it, though?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Bill Gates is giving away a lot of money. Warren Buffet, too. And a lot of billionaires aren't. So, yes, it may.
    - pope_meat 5y ago
      Check their net worth. It's only going up. To a cynic like me it just seems like they're buying good PR, and it's relatively cheap.
      - goatlover 5y ago
        It’s possible for both to be true. Humans are complex. Motivations are often a mix of factors. Why would billionaires be different?

jfengel 5y ago

The author appears to me to be one of the contributors to that lesson. His posts consist exclusively of him being outraged about something or other.

momdad420 5y ago
Your comment reminds me of the rhetoric from people against gay marriage. "Well you're not tolerating my position. That's not very tolerant of you!"
washadjeffmad 5y ago
Edit: sorry, thought you were talking about Bari. Your statement proves their point. The defining of ideas can be contentious, difficult, jarring, and uncomfortable. That they are to one but not another doesn't disqualify them as debatable topics or make the arguer less qualified to make them. Defending yourself rigorously with evidence and rhetoric was a skill people went to good colleges to learn. Bari argues that universities now reinforce not engaging in debate with or challenging the ideas of anyone who doesn't already believe what you believe (or their signals) but toeing an unspoken line, and that there's no room for nuanced discussion of the ideologies. It's like a loyalty test where recognizing it openly for what it is is an instant fail.
native_samples 5y ago
How so? His story is one in which he was relentlessly harassed, and in which his attempts to tolerate and reason with his opposition resulted in him being illegitimately forced out of the university. Despite that, his "outrage", if you can call it that, is hard to spot: his letter describing the reasons for his resignation explains why he's doing it, but is low on invective.

908B64B197 5y ago

At this point it's a protection racket; agree with them or get brutally cancelled. Few years ago it was contained to humanities but as of recently, it started spreading in technical fields. See how AI researchers got cancelled [0] [0] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...