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Funny how this post got flagged in half an hour.
by imback 5y ago
Funny how this post got flagged in half an hour.
- kvee 5y agoI am curious to understand - why was it flagged?
- dekhn 5y agothere's a bunch of liberal progressives on HN who flag stuff like this.
- AustinDev 5y agoI prefer the term 'illiberal progressives' as it does a good job of explaining their position and doesn't confuse them with 'classical liberals'.
- codezero 5y agoI wonder if it's someone else. I'm a liberal progressive and found this story interesting and worth the read.
- dekhn 5y agoProbably. I don't think all progressive liberals downvote things like this.
- MrZongle2 5y agoThere's nothing "liberal" or "progressive" about that kind of activity, though. I'd choose another term, but those seem to all be used (and abused) by those kind of people when they talk about their ideological opponents.
- dekhn 5y agoWithin the unversity cluster that Boghossian worked, this activity is predominantly progressive liberal because that describes the makeup of the campus. There is a very different orthodoxy if you visit conservative colleges.
- washadjeffmad 5y agoSorry, got a chuckle at that. Liberal Progressive is a pretty big oxymoron. Neoliberals downvote anything that disagrees with their superior worldview and are identity politics proponents because it's an effective way to disrupt class and labor movements. Progressives are the ones who want things like universal healthcare, a federal voting holiday, an end to private prisons, and for their taxes to go towards safety nets for their neighbors and communities instead of corporate bailouts and forever wars. Neolibs want global trade agreements, stable monopsonies, and to have wage workers pay for their own healthcare, benefits and retirement on top of all of their taxes out of the same paycheck. They're largely coastal elites and other class signalers that punch hard left against any platform that might benefit their idea of a "deplorable" even if it helps other people.
- the_third_wave 5y agoFor the same reasons that people like Boghossian and anyone else who dares to speak outside of the desired narrative gets harassed by the mob: to quell dissent. It is an oddity of the current crop of authoritarians that they in one breath manage to claim that there is no absolute truth but a multitude of 'lived experiences' while at the same time decrying anyone who dares to speak outside of the desired narrative. Of course the same people deny the validity of logic by calling it an example of 'white supremacy' so its application to their behaviour is a losing proposition. Once enough people have been pushed out of those parts of academia which have been infected by critical theory it stands to reason that they will end up creating new venues for academic research structured in such a way that they can not be taken over - as to what this structure would look like is still up for grabs. Given that those new institutions can be assumed to be based on meritocracy where identity politics and 'diversity initiatives' are driving factors in their previous institutions it is likely that the former will end up producing higher-quality research than the latter - which will promptly be labelled as the result of some combination of *-isms/*-phobias by the authoritarians.
- edmundsauto 5y agoPersonally, I find it rather uninteresting and not the kind of article that raises the standard of HN comments, which are the reason I visit. I perceive these types of threads as not-useful flame wars supported by opinions presented as insights. The amount of projection in this thread regarding the collective motivations of the HN Hive Mind is fascinating.
- the_third_wave 5y agoThe subject is dear to heart for many, if not most people who frequent HN. Boghossian is a well-known author in this context who was instrumental in bringing these issues up for discussion outside of academia. He was the last of the authors of the grievance studies hoax articles who was still employed in academia so his resignation is sort of a milestone, in what direction remains to be seen. The discussions around these issues often do end up in polarised factional disputes but that is part and parcel of the problem and not something which can be avoided by not discussing it in the first place. For me the desired outcome of these discussions is that those who have been supportive of the introduction of indentitarian policies in academia realise the deleterious effects these have on institutional and, lately, societal cohesion - more or less in the same way that Marxists in the 20's of the previous century started to realise that the Soviet Union did not develop into the workers and farmers paradise they were told it would. This can only happen if the subject can be discussed in those places where it matters, in other words in places frequented by people who have been part of or are still part of academia. HN is one of those places.