4 ms·

You're being discriminatory in a sense, but then being discriminatory is normal. It's just what people do, and the large-scale consequences can be trivial or im

You're being discriminatory in a sense, but then being discriminatory is normal. It's just what people do, and the large-scale consequences can be trivial or important depending on any number of things. Whether or not it's worth intervening through policy (or simply through culture or collective intent) varies case by case, but I think there's a case to be made here.

tomlock 12y ago
But why? What tangible impact has it had on conservatives?
- m-photonic 12y ago
  I don't care about the harm done to conservatives, I care about the harm done to liberals. Of course people like to hang out with people who see things their way, and there's nothing wrong with that, but when everyone agrees, the culture turns into a circlejerk prone to groupthink and lower standards of reasoning. When people have to answer to those with different opinions, backgrounds, perspectives, and allegiances, they're forced to develop their viewpoints in a much more robust way. This is just common sense, but studies seem to back it up (as the blog post goes into).
- wmil 12y ago
  The issue is that theories start with liberal values and assumptions and conservative ideas aren't fairly evaluated. This creates blind spots in the field. There are examples in the draft paper. Moreover it taints policy recommendations and causes Republicans to distrust calls for "evidence based policy". Read the draft paper linked in the article. [http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Duarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Du...]
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    I think considering the massive policy advantages - if not the total lockdown - given to conservative ideas in government, especially in economics and banking, that's not quite the problem it might seem to be. The real problem with left-wing academia is that it has been persuaded to believe that ritualised criticisms of conservative public policy are a substitute for political influence. The academic left has almost exactly no political influence at this time. As for evidence-based policy - when conservatives stop promoting frankly kooky positions like climate change denial or an insistence that raising the minimum wage kills jobs it's going to be easier to accept that conservatives have an interest in evidence-based rational policy.
    - wmil 12y ago
      You can't get a senior job at the DOE without a PhD in Education, and you can't get an PhD Education without publishing a thesis the academic left supports... At least in education the academic left has had a complete stranglehold on policy for 50+ years. Saying that conservatives have a total lockdown on policy is just silly. The deeper problem that Haidt is found is that people on the left can't actually answer a survey as a conservative would. Libertarians and conservatives can answer surveys as a liberal would when asked to, but liberals are too insular and only have a caricature of conservatives in their mind. Your statement about economics and banking illustrates that. Wall St has power and influence in DC because it has a lot of money, not because it has ideological support from conservatives.

tomlock 12y ago

But why? What tangible impact has it had on conservatives?

m-photonic 12y ago
I don't care about the harm done to conservatives, I care about the harm done to liberals. Of course people like to hang out with people who see things their way, and there's nothing wrong with that, but when everyone agrees, the culture turns into a circlejerk prone to groupthink and lower standards of reasoning. When people have to answer to those with different opinions, backgrounds, perspectives, and allegiances, they're forced to develop their viewpoints in a much more robust way. This is just common sense, but studies seem to back it up (as the blog post goes into).
wmil 12y ago
The issue is that theories start with liberal values and assumptions and conservative ideas aren't fairly evaluated. This creates blind spots in the field. There are examples in the draft paper. Moreover it taints policy recommendations and causes Republicans to distrust calls for "evidence based policy". Read the draft paper linked in the article. [http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Duarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Du...]
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  I think considering the massive policy advantages - if not the total lockdown - given to conservative ideas in government, especially in economics and banking, that's not quite the problem it might seem to be. The real problem with left-wing academia is that it has been persuaded to believe that ritualised criticisms of conservative public policy are a substitute for political influence. The academic left has almost exactly no political influence at this time. As for evidence-based policy - when conservatives stop promoting frankly kooky positions like climate change denial or an insistence that raising the minimum wage kills jobs it's going to be easier to accept that conservatives have an interest in evidence-based rational policy.
  - wmil 12y ago
    You can't get a senior job at the DOE without a PhD in Education, and you can't get an PhD Education without publishing a thesis the academic left supports... At least in education the academic left has had a complete stranglehold on policy for 50+ years. Saying that conservatives have a total lockdown on policy is just silly. The deeper problem that Haidt is found is that people on the left can't actually answer a survey as a conservative would. Libertarians and conservatives can answer surveys as a liberal would when asked to, but liberals are too insular and only have a caricature of conservatives in their mind. Your statement about economics and banking illustrates that. Wall St has power and influence in DC because it has a lot of money, not because it has ideological support from conservatives.