9 ms·

Will UT Austin and Texas A&M survive beyond this week?

28 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

hindsightbias 4y ago
[flagged]
082349872349872 4y ago
If all else fails, the Atlantic Ocean has been observed to have more than one side: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF
quantified 4y ago
Lifting for those who don't read the comments in the post: > Scott Says: Comment #12 April 17th, 2023 at 11:26 pm So, why shouldn’t I cheer the destruction of universities, if they’re full of woke ideologues who hate me? One might just as well ask: why shouldn’t I cheer the destruction of the earth, if it’s full of assholes, and morons, and antisemites who’d probably kill me if they got a chance, and wild animals that would rip me to shreds? In both cases, the answer is simply: because this is my world, and nearly everything I love and cherish is here along with nearly everything I hate, and I believe that the former ultimately outweighs the latter, and if people don’t mind, I’d like to continue living in this world.
- Spivak 4y ago
  I would be curious what kind of person feels like they're on the receiving end of hate from "woke" people. Such a thing is practically the anthesis of what it even means to be part of that group. I'm in no way saying this means they're good people or that their legislative direction is good public policy but the only time hippie liberals push back at all is when someone tries to hurt one of their own. Liberals for the past decade have been entirely on the defensive. In my state there are 14 bills right now in the state legislature that explicitly target vulnerable populations. The democrats and our chapter of the ACLU can barely do anything but try to stop them.
  - a3n 4y ago
    "what kind of person feels like" It's a quest for victimhood to justify hate.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Maybe, there is plenty of fodder out there for #persecutionfetish but someone who is calmly like, "yeah they might hate me but I still don't wish them ill" feels pretty good faith. They can still be wrong but I don't believe for a second this person in particular would be like "and because they hate me I'm justified in x, y, z."
  - localplume 4y ago
    [dead]
  - iosono88 4y ago
    [dead]
  - quantified 4y ago
    Regular people. I've been, long ago, at college, before "woke" was coined I believe. To be honest the vitriol was over the top, I found it funny. Just my experience, not proxy for anyone else's.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      What was your experience? Genuinely curious. I've definitely experienced the "economic" prejudice since college was when I found out the hard way that my family was poor. I had a friend who had to deal with insecure butthurt white folks being mad that the kid from China swept them in exams. I was not at his level but we bonded because I was the only girl in class. Dude is legit gonna be one of those mathematicians where every other theorem is named after him. Oh god and the computer science shit. Fuck that "make me a sandwich" nonsense. That was the subject where I had the upper hand but you'd never know come project time when nobody wanted to work with me because they thought I wouldn't pull my weight.
stuckinhell 4y ago
Honestly I don't care, I've been using ChatGPT (+ open source variants to get uncensored truth) to learn new concepts radically fast. I think ChatGPT + khan academy is going to be the greatest paradigm shift for anyone self motivated. I'm half debating introducing CHATGPT based education to my home schooling pod. I really wonder if Universities will survive the "woke", the "reaction", and the "paradigm shift.
rhaway84773 4y ago
I like the term “Social Justice Fundamentalism”. I’m a fan of social Justice. I’m also a fan of feminism and liberalism. But some of what we are seeing today isn’t that, and I think using the term fundamentalism to describe it, which, I suspect deliberately, draws a parallel between the efforts to force everyone to adopt these moral views with the attempts by religious fundamentalists to force everyone to adopt their views, makes a lot of sense.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  If you mean fundamentalism in the strict sense of rigid adherence to a core principle, religious fundamentalists act as they do because the core they follow, scripture, has claims over all aspects of personal and private life and makes assurances about the absolute correctness and necessity of its followers bringing everyone under its mantle. I don't see that "social justice fundamentalists" would have any such requirement imposed by their core principle. I'm pretty sure their core principle would be one of or some set of the things we already acknowledge, that we claim our society values: equality, personal freedom absent harm to others, justice yes. The difference isn't what they believe or even maybe how strongly. It's that they're calling our bluff on what we believe. These things are more social norms than moral necessities: you don't need to believe everyone is equal but you need to act as if you do. A liberal would say the right way to fight bigotry is to convert the bigots, a social justice-oriented leftist would say it's to limit the impact of their bigotry. I think history is in their favor too. If we had waited until every racist was on board before ending segregation we'd still have segregation.
  - skissane 4y ago
    > If you mean fundamentalism in the strict sense of rigid adherence to a core principle, religious fundamentalists act as they do because the core they follow, scripture I don't like the way many people use the term "fundamentalism". It started out to describe an early 20th century movement in American Protestantism. And indeed, they were all about following scripture–or at least what they claimed it was saying, since other Christians have always disagreed with their interpretations of it. And I don't have a problem with calling them "Fundamentalists", since that is their own term they chose to describe themselves. Nor do I have a problem using the term to describe (ultra-)conservative Protestants who consciously continue the same approach today, and look back on the early 20th century Fundamentalists in admiration. The problem is when the term "fundamentalism" gets extended to (ultra-)conservative factions within other religions such as Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, etc. None of those belief systems shares the Protestant belief in "Scripture Alone" (sola scriptura). All three believe in the binding nature of extra-scriptural/post-scriptural traditions. So while "the core they follow, scripture" is an accurate description of the basis of the original Protestant fundamentalism, it ends up misrepresenting "fundamentalism" in other religions, and distorting them through a Protestant-coloured lens. Which is why a lot of scholars of religion object to using the term "fundamentalist", and instead advocate using customised terminology for each religious tradition. Hence people speak of "Islamism" or "jihadist Salafism" or "Khomeinism" rather than "Islamic fundamentalism", for example. Instead of "Catholic fundamentalism", people speak of "Feeneyism" or "radical traditionalism" or "integralism" or so on. Instead of "Jewish fundamentalism", we have terms like "Kahanism". Instead of "Hindu fundamentalism", "Hindutva". And I know by trying to talk about a "core principle", maybe you are acknowledging that for "non-Protestant fundamentalism", the core might not be "scripture". But, just because Protestant Fundamentalists might be said to have a single core principle, doesn't mean every other religion does. Sometimes there is no single core principle, just an assortment of views. People use "fundamentalism" to describe religious views which have a rather hostile attitude towards what we might call "modern scientific liberalism", and whether you have a single core principle or an amorphous blur of many principles is irrelevant to whether you have such a hostile attitude or not
CraigRo 4y ago
There's no shortage of people willing to be professors. It isn't clear that the incumbents are dramatically better than those who narrowly miss the cut. It might be that even better people are drawn to the profession (even in STEM) if there was an easier exchange between academia and industry. The challenge is actually that 'moonshot' or fairly theoretical stuff with long-term payoffs may be hard to evaluate.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> or tell us what we’re allowed to say or publish Is this really the case on any college campus for any faculty member? It seems like this hasn't been true regardless of tenure for a few decades now - there are a lot of things that you don't dare speak, no matter who you are.

28 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

[flagged]

If all else fails, the Atlantic Ocean has been observed to have more than one side: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF

quantified 4y ago

Lifting for those who don't read the comments in the post: > Scott Says: Comment #12 April 17th, 2023 at 11:26 pm So, why shouldn’t I cheer the destruction of universities, if they’re full of woke ideologues who hate me? One might just as well ask: why shouldn’t I cheer the destruction of the earth, if it’s full of assholes, and morons, and antisemites who’d probably kill me if they got a chance, and wild animals that would rip me to shreds? In both cases, the answer is simply: because this is my world, and nearly everything I love and cherish is here along with nearly everything I hate, and I believe that the former ultimately outweighs the latter, and if people don’t mind, I’d like to continue living in this world.

Spivak 4y ago
I would be curious what kind of person feels like they're on the receiving end of hate from "woke" people. Such a thing is practically the anthesis of what it even means to be part of that group. I'm in no way saying this means they're good people or that their legislative direction is good public policy but the only time hippie liberals push back at all is when someone tries to hurt one of their own. Liberals for the past decade have been entirely on the defensive. In my state there are 14 bills right now in the state legislature that explicitly target vulnerable populations. The democrats and our chapter of the ACLU can barely do anything but try to stop them.
- a3n 4y ago
  "what kind of person feels like" It's a quest for victimhood to justify hate.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Maybe, there is plenty of fodder out there for #persecutionfetish but someone who is calmly like, "yeah they might hate me but I still don't wish them ill" feels pretty good faith. They can still be wrong but I don't believe for a second this person in particular would be like "and because they hate me I'm justified in x, y, z."
- localplume 4y ago
  [dead]
- iosono88 4y ago
  [dead]
- quantified 4y ago
  Regular people. I've been, long ago, at college, before "woke" was coined I believe. To be honest the vitriol was over the top, I found it funny. Just my experience, not proxy for anyone else's.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    What was your experience? Genuinely curious. I've definitely experienced the "economic" prejudice since college was when I found out the hard way that my family was poor. I had a friend who had to deal with insecure butthurt white folks being mad that the kid from China swept them in exams. I was not at his level but we bonded because I was the only girl in class. Dude is legit gonna be one of those mathematicians where every other theorem is named after him. Oh god and the computer science shit. Fuck that "make me a sandwich" nonsense. That was the subject where I had the upper hand but you'd never know come project time when nobody wanted to work with me because they thought I wouldn't pull my weight.

stuckinhell 4y ago

Honestly I don't care, I've been using ChatGPT (+ open source variants to get uncensored truth) to learn new concepts radically fast. I think ChatGPT + khan academy is going to be the greatest paradigm shift for anyone self motivated. I'm half debating introducing CHATGPT based education to my home schooling pod. I really wonder if Universities will survive the "woke", the "reaction", and the "paradigm shift.

rhaway84773 4y ago

I like the term “Social Justice Fundamentalism”. I’m a fan of social Justice. I’m also a fan of feminism and liberalism. But some of what we are seeing today isn’t that, and I think using the term fundamentalism to describe it, which, I suspect deliberately, draws a parallel between the efforts to force everyone to adopt these moral views with the attempts by religious fundamentalists to force everyone to adopt their views, makes a lot of sense.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
If you mean fundamentalism in the strict sense of rigid adherence to a core principle, religious fundamentalists act as they do because the core they follow, scripture, has claims over all aspects of personal and private life and makes assurances about the absolute correctness and necessity of its followers bringing everyone under its mantle. I don't see that "social justice fundamentalists" would have any such requirement imposed by their core principle. I'm pretty sure their core principle would be one of or some set of the things we already acknowledge, that we claim our society values: equality, personal freedom absent harm to others, justice yes. The difference isn't what they believe or even maybe how strongly. It's that they're calling our bluff on what we believe. These things are more social norms than moral necessities: you don't need to believe everyone is equal but you need to act as if you do. A liberal would say the right way to fight bigotry is to convert the bigots, a social justice-oriented leftist would say it's to limit the impact of their bigotry. I think history is in their favor too. If we had waited until every racist was on board before ending segregation we'd still have segregation.
- skissane 4y ago
  > If you mean fundamentalism in the strict sense of rigid adherence to a core principle, religious fundamentalists act as they do because the core they follow, scripture I don't like the way many people use the term "fundamentalism". It started out to describe an early 20th century movement in American Protestantism. And indeed, they were all about following scripture–or at least what they claimed it was saying, since other Christians have always disagreed with their interpretations of it. And I don't have a problem with calling them "Fundamentalists", since that is their own term they chose to describe themselves. Nor do I have a problem using the term to describe (ultra-)conservative Protestants who consciously continue the same approach today, and look back on the early 20th century Fundamentalists in admiration. The problem is when the term "fundamentalism" gets extended to (ultra-)conservative factions within other religions such as Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, etc. None of those belief systems shares the Protestant belief in "Scripture Alone" (sola scriptura). All three believe in the binding nature of extra-scriptural/post-scriptural traditions. So while "the core they follow, scripture" is an accurate description of the basis of the original Protestant fundamentalism, it ends up misrepresenting "fundamentalism" in other religions, and distorting them through a Protestant-coloured lens. Which is why a lot of scholars of religion object to using the term "fundamentalist", and instead advocate using customised terminology for each religious tradition. Hence people speak of "Islamism" or "jihadist Salafism" or "Khomeinism" rather than "Islamic fundamentalism", for example. Instead of "Catholic fundamentalism", people speak of "Feeneyism" or "radical traditionalism" or "integralism" or so on. Instead of "Jewish fundamentalism", we have terms like "Kahanism". Instead of "Hindu fundamentalism", "Hindutva". And I know by trying to talk about a "core principle", maybe you are acknowledging that for "non-Protestant fundamentalism", the core might not be "scripture". But, just because Protestant Fundamentalists might be said to have a single core principle, doesn't mean every other religion does. Sometimes there is no single core principle, just an assortment of views. People use "fundamentalism" to describe religious views which have a rather hostile attitude towards what we might call "modern scientific liberalism", and whether you have a single core principle or an amorphous blur of many principles is irrelevant to whether you have such a hostile attitude or not

CraigRo 4y ago

There's no shortage of people willing to be professors. It isn't clear that the incumbents are dramatically better than those who narrowly miss the cut. It might be that even better people are drawn to the profession (even in STEM) if there was an easier exchange between academia and industry. The challenge is actually that 'moonshot' or fairly theoretical stuff with long-term payoffs may be hard to evaluate.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> or tell us what we’re allowed to say or publish Is this really the case on any college campus for any faculty member? It seems like this hasn't been true regardless of tenure for a few decades now - there are a lot of things that you don't dare speak, no matter who you are.