posted on December 02, 2022 03:26 PM by
u/fuck_your_diploma
72
u/Soyweiser25 pointsat 1669996840.000000
Jesus wtf is up with the color choices in that font, makes it hard to
read for me. (Also makes me wonder how readable it is for various
colorblind people)
E: took me a few takes to read, but god what a dumb take. Just
ignoring that these things are already politicized. And demanding a lot
of work from actual experts (he should put his money where his mouth
is)
Somebody dared to ask him this live on this talk.
He reminded the guy that font colors were suited to match his latest book, Rationality. In a talk about rationality I think this was kinda of a based answer.
Yeah that makes no sense, you would expect Rationality people to be better communicators (because well, rationally, you should realize that people all listen to different kinds of things and you want to spread your message to the widest amounts of people and not to a small subset of gullible rubes who are already primed to belie... oh wait think I realized something)
Anyway, I just can't get over how annoying this font is, it seems to move while I look at it (more so than normal text at times does, I should stop posting in sneerclub while driving)
The resemblance to comic sans sorta makes me irrationally mad too. Everything about it reeks boomer aesthetic and makes me wanna go full Tyrion Lannister about it, Gator's gonna whoop some hoes tonite.
Pinker! You made an enemy out of Clan UI this day! This slight will not be forgiven lightly, we curse your family to know what [bad kerning](https://xkcd.com/1015/) (\*) is for the next seven generations! They will RUE this day!
\*: If you don't know best not to click.
I'd definitely sneer at this even if I didn't know that Pinker wrote it. First of all, using that many words on a presentation slide is just admitting that this lecture could have been an e-mail. Second, the formatting is painful. Third, it's vacuous, self-satisfied, preening centrism *at best.* It is flagrant in how it ignores responsibility. It uses the banal (gosh, wouldn't it be nice if experts showed their work?!) to cloak the toxic (accepting the framing that the right wing is fighting for "academic freedom" in any meaningful sense). Beshrew the foetid lot of it.
I like how he thinks that if they avoid talking about issues in a
political context then that political context will just stop existing.
Like, “academic freedom” is a right-wing issue in the states.
That’s just how the battle lines have been drawn in the wider political
culture, and pretending otherwise in the name of “rationality” isn’t
going to make it so.
The academic freedom to “exchange in sexual banter” with the students, mind you, just to point out what Pinker means by academic freedom. See Pinker’s letter in defense of McGinn.
You betcha Pinker would prefer that there was bipartisan support for sexual harassment, but there isn’t. One party supports it, and the other does not, or at least, when they do it is a scandal.
Edit: Also when he says “academic freedoms”, you might mistakenly think he’s talking about freedoms to do some skull shape caliper stuff. Nope. Nothing as high brow as that, let me assure you. Philosophers sexting students.
Moreover, "cancel culture" (of which the "academic freedom issue" is part), like "the war on Christmas", was never shown to actually exist, and so the rational default position must be that it doesn't; if he doesn't want it to be left vs. right, he should first consider real vs. not.
There's no doubt that there have been specific events at which professors suffered some professional repercussions for promoting certain views, but just as some mall in Illinois switching from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays doesn't signify a "war on Christmas", the existence of events of "censorship" doesn't mean cancel culture exist. Rather, one would need to show that, overall, fewer scientific/scholarly views are disseminated in academia today than before and that most of the contribution to that effect is due to censorship of right wing views on illegitimate, non-scientific grounds.
That has not been shown. Moreover, while it is harder to prove something doesn't exist than proving it does, when the particularly contested issue of race and intelligence [was examined, such censorship was shown to *not* exist](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1089268020953622). So it's a political issue because it is currently nothing more than a belief of those of a particular political inclination.
Absolutely true. Cultural shifts don’t require a “war on *anything*” as a catalyst. Often times the motive is just a general desire for inclusiveness in an evolving society that is becoming increasingly culturally faceted.
I find that the outcry about “radical cultural change” are rooted more in fear of change and nostalgia than in fact that old ways and traditions are being deliberately persecuted.
It won't magically make it go away, but it is often possible to convince people (especially at the individual level) if you don't just hammer on the politics of it. Money in politics is a good example of this, with basic proposals getting broad support as long as you don't describe them as "this will make politics move left", even if that is all but certain to be the result.
There's some truth to that, but it still relies on the opposing viewpoint not playing the "but that's *socialism*" card, which if it's politically advantageous they absolutely will. At which point you're still having to deal with it.
So you think that "Stanford Classical Liberalism Initiative" is calling for a curtailment of its own power? Shouldn't they simply dissolve the group if they were being honest about that goal?
If the idea is political restraint they should probably disband their classical liberalism group. Steven Pinker's work is now tainted by politics (classical liberalism)
He's endorsing classical liberalism, that's a very clear political position. It really bothers me to hear about classical liberalism all the time when most people just want to work and study and not have Liberals like Pinker and his group politicize everything
I'm simply following Pinker's argument to its rational conclusion. Why is he associating with Classical Liberals if he's serious about avoiding gratuitous politicization?
Then you agree with me that the Classical Liberal group should disband, or at the very least Pinker should not associate with political activists like the Stanford Classical Liberalism Initiative
Surely the group pushing for depoliticization should disband or depoliticize first as a signal that they're acting in good faith and aren't simple hypocrites.
Do you honestly find them hypocritical for doing so? When one's political aim is to restrain politics outside of government, one cannot espouse for this without running afoul of your definition of hypocrisy?
Yes, Pinker is associating with a group that is pushing classical liberalism. If he was serious about his goals he would not do such a thing. He's gratuitously politicized his own work.
He could simply advocate for science without associating with political activists. I really don't understand what's so difficult about that. Like he could simply say 'no' to the Stanford Classical Liberalism Initiative.
The issue is that Pinker's overall message is confused because he preaches for avoiding gratuitous political content while constantly advocating for a very specific and narrow politics.
I think scientists should probably make an effort to study political theory and history more deeply so that they aren't led around by their noses by politicians.
The problem is that a scientific community that has access to better political education may be decried as *more* political because they'll be seen as less pliable by the standard political institutions. Let's take the military for example; what if a large number of scientists and engineers were more wary about working with political actors as part of a war effort?
But if scientists were refusing to work for political groups like the military would you interpret that as a gratuitous political decision or a decision to *avoid* gratuitous politicization?
I think an inoculation also involves being a bit sceptical about the aims of groups like Stanford Classical Liberalism Initiative.
I guess the insinuation is that politics is reality? I feel strongly that I need to deprioritize politics with my family and friends, with my colleagues at work, with my business partners. Politics is underhanded and powerful. Wherever they mix, no scientific endeavor will ever bring politics to heel. Politics will always make a puppet of science.
For an example, see lysenkoism.
Politics is the analysis and treatment of social relationships through the lens of power. All social relationships can be treated this way, from who publishes scientific journals to who gets a promotion at work (office politics, if you will).
It isn't only limited to state institutions or democratic partisan issues.
OK, but it's there and they're probably not being paid enough for a crappy demeaning job. The fact that they are there and you are not is political and ignoring it doesn't change it.
It's perfectly fine to say that we shouldn't focus on the political aspects of science, but who gets funding, who is in a position to get an education, which disciplines are considered important etc is still political even if you stop writing about it.
They are making you a sandwich because they will starve and die on the street if they refuse. It's worth at least considering the nature of this relationship and how to challenge it. That doesn't mean you don't order the sandwich but goddamn, at least think about the fact that an entire system has been designed to coerce people into making you cheap sandwiches on demand. If doing that mental work makes you decide to treat a Subway worker a little nicer the next time you see them, congrats, you just made a political decision.
With few exceptions, we all must labor for our own survival. How could it be otherwise?
Also, what if someone treated the subway worker nicely prior to running political calculations? Sounds like that's a nicer person than me.
>With few exceptions, we all must labor for our own survival. How could it be otherwise?
This is just a rhetorical hand wave. It doesn't actually address anything I said. Please respond to my actual points if you want to continue this conversation.
>Also, what if someone treated the subway worker nicely prior to running political calculations? Sounds like that's a nicer person than me.
It's a transactional relationship, you are inherently making a political decision simply by engaging in it. That's the point, dingus.
You can just order a sandwich.
The issue starts if the subway workers start striking over their low-wages, and then you vote for a politician that wants to keep their wages the same, and then when one of them asks you if you understand what you just did, you say "stop making subway political".
This is why Pinker's stance is do bad. You can't take politics out of academia. The two are intrinsically linked. What are climate change scientists supposed to do - not point out how right-wing politicians keep trying to discredit their work? Climate change scientists can't "make their work non-political", because it wasn't them that politicized their science in the first place - it was the right-wing.
Or at least that's how I see it. Calls to make academia "less political" are ultimately unfounded - it is up to the political class (right or left) to decide how they want to deal with academia. It isn't academia's fault that reality has a noted left-wing bias.
Yeah that's the insinuation, at least in so far as reality is full of people and everything people do is political.
What does deprioritisation look like for you? Avoiding talking about it? Isn't that an inherently political position?
Walk me through a successful marriage, where politics is central. I don’t think it’s impossible, but it doesn’t seem to be a proposition I would enjoy.
Any marriage, any relationship, is going to have a political dimension. The people involved will have their own ideas, and the collision between these and the social context will inform how the relationship functions.
That doesn't mean sitting around talking about it all day is conducive to happiness.
"having a political dimension" and "political" are synonymous. Things aren't political, people are.
I am interested in this conversation, I would still like to know what "deprioritising politics" means irl for you.
Which ones specifically? The dot points in OP about branding causes?
I'm not sure that that's something anyone really sets out to do, it's a result of how marketing and advertising have become the lens by which many people understand the world. And sure, that's political, but consciously rejecting that paradigm is also a political choice. You don't escape politics by choosing different politics.
I argue that there's scientific and societal benefit when:
* Experts "show their work"
* Fallibility is acknowledged
* Gratuitous politicization is avoided, for instance
* Not branding climate change, vaccines, public health measures as left-wing causes, and
* Not branding academic freedom as a right-wing cause
Now, I may be practicing a politics (I'd disagree, but whatever) by saying I like these ideas, but that doesn't change the fact that I like these ideas.
I like those ideas too, although I think the branding stuff is not very clear.
But asserting that they are not political or somehow antipolitical is, at best, a massive blind spot imo.
There's a leftist refrain, that "everything is political," that I buck against because it tends to be used as a justification as to why equivalent actions by people from 2 different political camps merit inequivalent response. Often in a manner that seems really unfair.
I'd be more willing to consider everything as political if that notion wasn't also being weaponized.
Careful, wouldn't want to politicise the idea of everything being political by calling it a "leftist refrain". /s
Sure, I've seen the idea misused that way, it's not great. The most common application though in my experience is to push back against people like Pinker, who disingenuously claim to be non/antipolitical as a way to smuggle their very political ideas into the discourse.
Publish non reproducible surveys of people's opinion about something and call it psychology. Assure it is full of self reported metrics and make sure race is involved somehow.
I’d love to see some actual numbers for academics who have lost their jobs due to expressing views associated with one side or the other, though that is likely difficult to quantify. Still, I’m seriously skeptical that right wingers face more actual, material consequences than lefties. Maybe they have more students yelling at them though.
You know there is a paradox in arguing for rationality in that what
are you using to argue for it, if not rationality?
On the other hand that cuts both ways and that is if anyone casts any
doubt on rationality, you can always say well is what you just said
rational and if it isn’t why should I believe it why should you expect
us to believe it?
So rationality is kind of, it’s as soon as you say anything about
anything and hope to persuade or argue you’ve already lost any argument
against rationality, you’re already committed to it now how do you make
that more intuitive, how do you make it so that it’s more cool or or
hip, or another way of putting it is how do you make it so that it’s
embarrassing to commit a statistical or a logical fallacy?
This is what the so-called rationality community tries to do at least
among themselves.
Now the rationality community itself the problem with it is not the
rationality the problem is the community and they’ve developed their own
local morals and norms, that sometimes are dubiously rational, but the
original idea that there should be um just a tacit understanding,
standards of what you do and you don’t do, of what earns you brownie
points within your group and they should include things like being
epistemically humble, having some Bayesian intuitions, you know if we
could export that to the culture at large that would probably be a good
thing for everyone, but you know but I don’t have a recipe for doing
that.
> You know there is a paradox in arguing for rationality in that what are you using to argue for it, if not rationality?
> On the other hand that cuts both ways and that is if anyone casts any doubt on rationality, you can always say well is what you just said rational and if it isn't why should I believe it why should you expect us to believe it?
Is he still on that tiresome shtick? "My learned colleague fails to consider the dictum that I am rubber and he is glue."
I feel like this is really only getting traction because people here
like to sneer at Pinker (and not without reason), and not really for the
substance of the slide.
Maybe I’m just secretly a reactionary or something, but as a
scientist in a biomedical field, I’m generally in favor of most of
these.
A huge part of the push for more replicable and honest
science is the push to make data freely available, as well as all of the
Python/MATLAB/R scripts used to analyze said data and build the
presented figures. Also the push for open access journals and the use of
open source coding packages (rather than proprietary, closed source
ones) when doing specialized analysis. What is that if not showing your
work?
Fallibility is another big one. Right now, retracting a paper,
even for an honest mistake is considered career suicide and there are
huge incentives against acknowledging our failures. The scientific
literature should be more of a “living literature”, where papers are
revisited, critiqued and (sometimes) retracted if genuine errors
occurred. If we were more understanding of basic human failings, the
literature would be healthier, and scientists would probably be happier
as well (which would be nice given how terrible mental health among
scientists in academia is).
As for the last point…yeah, that’s definitely Pinker doing his
usual “Enlightened Centrist” schtick, but also, we’d probably all be
better off if vaccines and masks hadn’t been politicized by the Right.
Of course, there’s not much we can do about it (again, it’s the fault of
the Right), but we should at least be able to acknowledge that maybe it
would be nice if it weren’t this way. I’d certainly feel happy living in
Midwest-College-Town, USA if my conservative neighbors hadn’t gotten it
in their heads that that vaccines caused turbo-transgender-autism or
whatever it is they believe.
And yeah, academic freedom shouldn’t be a right-wing thing. All
you have to do is see how DeSantis has been leaning on institutes of
Higher Ed in Florida to see why progressives probably want to help
maintain a wall between the State and the production/dissemination of
knowledge. Because sometimes the State is fascist and
homo/trans/queerphobic. Sometimes the State doesn’t believe in climate
change or COVID and leans on scientists and researchers to suppress the
truth (also happening in Florida). What is that if not some notion of a
“apolitical academic freedom?”
It’s a big dissapointing that so many people here just jumped to
“Lol. Pinker bad” without actually thinking about the slide. Pinker IS
bad, for many, many, many (sometimes Epstein related) reasons. But this
slide isn’t one of them.
I don't think "reactionary," maybe overly credulous towards a disingenuous person's rhetoric at worst.
There's a reason why the areas on the Left he wants to be depoliticized are actual specialities, and the area on the Right is a vague euphemism that can encompass whatever the speaker wants.
I think the sub is less saying: "yeah the idea of Academic Freedom is good, but Pinker is just so grating that I don't want to hear him say it," and more "he's a member of the crowd that launders bigotry, right-wing fringe belief, sexual misconduct and general malfeasance under the guise of 'Academic Freedom.'"
>As for the last point...yeah, that's definitely Pinker doing his usual "Enlightened Centrist" schtick, but also, we'd probably all be better off if vaccines and masks hadn't been politicized by the Right. Of course, there's not much we can do about it (again, it's the fault of the Right), but we should at least be able to acknowledge that maybe it would be nice if it weren't this way.
"Should" is doing a lot of work here. Right-wingers don't believe those things, and you're not going to convince them without jumping into the realm of politics.
He's also making a lot of weird assumptions about the "credibility and objectivity of rationality-promoting institutions".
I don’t think you or /u/JosephRohrback are reactionaries or whatever, perhaps you are, but I think you’re missing the point that *Steven Pinker did actually present this*
The incredible thing about context is that everything happens in one. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but there’s actually nothing at all *anywhere in existence* which happens outside a context! We don’t actually have to give Pinker credit for saying something so banal that we can agree with the most decontextualised version of it possible: we can interpret it in the context of the fact that it’s Pinker saying it!
So I struggle to find it “disappointing” that people would fail to decontextualise the things Pinker says from other things that Pinker says, and I wonder what the epistemology is that would make such a habit reliably good at delivering what we actually want to know about where Pinker takes his thoughts.
Yeah. I think this is one of those things people are sneering at because Pinker's name has been attached to it more than anything else. Without that context I bet people would be confused as to what there is to sneer about! A lot of the takes on the depoliticization thing are a bit bad faith, I think, assuming he means that science/etc. can be perfectly removed from political implications of any kind, rather than that attacking what scientists say about science for purely political reasons is bad.
But maybe I'm a reactionary too.
He’s an intolerable dishonest ass, but the bullet point about climate
change not being a left wing cause is a sentiment I’m glad to hear him
spreading to the Stephen crowder audience
I think your giving him too much credit. His complaint is likely that climate scientists are "politicizing" their work by calling for concrete actions to mitigate global warming
No I think for Pinker this is pretty track record “climate change happens to conservatives too” stuff
I’m surprised he’s punching left less here, but I assume he makes up for it in whatever spoken part goes with the slide
I want to grant your basic intuition though! I would not be remotely surprised if his verbal complaint takes the form “climate change happens to conservatives too, and they should be more aware of that, which is why it’s so harmful when climate scientists blah blah blah”
Jesus wtf is up with the color choices in that font, makes it hard to read for me. (Also makes me wonder how readable it is for various colorblind people)
E: took me a few takes to read, but god what a dumb take. Just ignoring that these things are already politicized. And demanding a lot of work from actual experts (he should put his money where his mouth is)
I like how he thinks that if they avoid talking about issues in a political context then that political context will just stop existing. Like, “academic freedom” is a right-wing issue in the states. That’s just how the battle lines have been drawn in the wider political culture, and pretending otherwise in the name of “rationality” isn’t going to make it so.
Freedom to do what exactly, Steve?
Academic Freedom is a right wing cause huh? Academic Freedom to what, Steve?
I kinda liked Pinker closing remarks:
I feel like this is really only getting traction because people here like to sneer at Pinker (and not without reason), and not really for the substance of the slide.
Maybe I’m just secretly a reactionary or something, but as a scientist in a biomedical field, I’m generally in favor of most of these.
A huge part of the push for more replicable and honest science is the push to make data freely available, as well as all of the Python/MATLAB/R scripts used to analyze said data and build the presented figures. Also the push for open access journals and the use of open source coding packages (rather than proprietary, closed source ones) when doing specialized analysis. What is that if not showing your work?
Fallibility is another big one. Right now, retracting a paper, even for an honest mistake is considered career suicide and there are huge incentives against acknowledging our failures. The scientific literature should be more of a “living literature”, where papers are revisited, critiqued and (sometimes) retracted if genuine errors occurred. If we were more understanding of basic human failings, the literature would be healthier, and scientists would probably be happier as well (which would be nice given how terrible mental health among scientists in academia is).
As for the last point…yeah, that’s definitely Pinker doing his usual “Enlightened Centrist” schtick, but also, we’d probably all be better off if vaccines and masks hadn’t been politicized by the Right. Of course, there’s not much we can do about it (again, it’s the fault of the Right), but we should at least be able to acknowledge that maybe it would be nice if it weren’t this way. I’d certainly feel happy living in Midwest-College-Town, USA if my conservative neighbors hadn’t gotten it in their heads that that vaccines caused turbo-transgender-autism or whatever it is they believe.
And yeah, academic freedom shouldn’t be a right-wing thing. All you have to do is see how DeSantis has been leaning on institutes of Higher Ed in Florida to see why progressives probably want to help maintain a wall between the State and the production/dissemination of knowledge. Because sometimes the State is fascist and homo/trans/queerphobic. Sometimes the State doesn’t believe in climate change or COVID and leans on scientists and researchers to suppress the truth (also happening in Florida). What is that if not some notion of a “apolitical academic freedom?”
It’s a big dissapointing that so many people here just jumped to “Lol. Pinker bad” without actually thinking about the slide. Pinker IS bad, for many, many, many (sometimes Epstein related) reasons. But this slide isn’t one of them.
He’s an intolerable dishonest ass, but the bullet point about climate change not being a left wing cause is a sentiment I’m glad to hear him spreading to the Stephen crowder audience
Source: Rationality and Academic Freedom with Steven Pinker on YouTube
Where does one draw the line on what level of politicization is gratuitous?
Based
Are you a rational person?
Maybe his decision to sell NFTs will promote new institutions? Lol.