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I was somewhat disappointed by this because I think the thesis seems to be going in a reasonable direction. But then the argument veered into a not very excitin

I was somewhat disappointed by this because I think the thesis seems to be going in a reasonable direction. But then the argument veered into a not very exciting deconstrunction of the overarching Haidt bullet points that didn't seem at all compelling so much as oversimplified (smashing through a crowd hardly seems the same as bumping someone, and neither apparently has considered that giving the benefit of the doubt is variable). I'm quite willing to buy that those with more power than students have a big role: just like with YouTube I'm sure there's a connection between bland banality and corporate money. And that the timeline is suspect. But it also seems clear that students do have some kind of role in things like the recent Hamline lecture controversy. So this wasn't really as interesting as I'd hoped it'd be. I think the onset of Trumpism and COVID denialism has also added some new wrinkles to the whole business, where there are now significant groups of people who are just tired of being subject to relative lunacy.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
I think it misses the nature of America Offence Culture, which very much defines both sides rather than just one. There are some underlying processes which allow both (supposed) progressive academics and conservative critics to advance their careers by covertly agreeing that - for example - the battle is going to be over race and gender issues. When in fact there's a whole lot more going on. This is very obvious with the Timnit Gebru controversy. We're supposed to agree that the ethical problems with AI come down to race/gender bias in training sets and a lack of diversity among researchers. This is a very fashionable but also extremely superficial take. The ethical issues around AI are much, much wider than that. Fixing bias in training is like sticking a band-aid on an incoming asteroid. So IMO both sides have agreed on comfortable terms of debate, and neither is going to dig deeper into the underlying generators of power imbalances and social injustice. And is certainly not going to investigate the problem of consistently self-harming limited-scope decision making in academia, business, politics, technology, and media.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

I think it misses the nature of America Offence Culture, which very much defines both sides rather than just one. There are some underlying processes which allow both (supposed) progressive academics and conservative critics to advance their careers by covertly agreeing that - for example - the battle is going to be over race and gender issues. When in fact there's a whole lot more going on. This is very obvious with the Timnit Gebru controversy. We're supposed to agree that the ethical problems with AI come down to race/gender bias in training sets and a lack of diversity among researchers. This is a very fashionable but also extremely superficial take. The ethical issues around AI are much, much wider than that. Fixing bias in training is like sticking a band-aid on an incoming asteroid. So IMO both sides have agreed on comfortable terms of debate, and neither is going to dig deeper into the underlying generators of power imbalances and social injustice. And is certainly not going to investigate the problem of consistently self-harming limited-scope decision making in academia, business, politics, technology, and media.