Not sure why it is on HN at all as the content has nothing to do with tech...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's not good that large parts of the thread have erupted into low-rent flamewars, though.
I'm not saying anything either way about the GP, but I'd suggest it'd be better to tackle the point, rather than have such a knee-jerk reaction.
Language like "racist/sexist" suggests that it's a binary, that each person is either racist or not racist. It's more useful to recognize that the dominant culture in the US is racist and that people benefit from/support that culture to varying degrees. Person B supports it.
If you've progressed to the point where you can dismiss that guy without a thought, given his credentials and accomplishments, I submit to you that alarm bells ought to be going off in your head that you might have epistemologically closed yourself too far.
I'm not saying you're obligated to agree with him. I'm saying if you can't even engage with his arguments, it may be you that has the problem.
I can also recommend:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUM4akzLGE "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion"
If the idea is to dismiss him as an anti-SJW, or anti-free speech, then I would posit that you're simply inclined to dismiss no matter what. If the complaint is that his work is spreading to, or being adopted by the anti-SJW crowd, that's hardly his fault.
He may not be right, or he may not have done appropriate research, or he may be based (his own studies would suggest that it's inevitable that he is), but any dismissal predicated in part on that he's trolling is almost certainly knee-jerk.
My complaint was more to your second point, that "If the complaint is that his work is spreading to, or being adopted by the anti-SJW crowd, that's hardly his fault." I do see a problem with how one-sided the comments on the page (Heterodox Academy) are, and I do think that he should have stepped in. Then, when I came to Hacker News, I saw similar comments, and that was disheartening.
My distaste really came from comments like these, on the main page: "My white male sons are now 30 and 28. I’m so happy they escaped public high school relatively unscathed, but I could see the beginnings of the nonsense, led by a faculty of activist females and male eunuchs. Public schooling in this country may have begun with noble intent; kids are now truly being inculcated rather than educated." and "You state this like it is an article of faith that women would be totally rad in STEM if only men would stop holding them back. What makes this “sketchy”? There is an abundance of evidence that men and women are different and think differently. There is almost no evidence that women will change that position based on upbringing." and then on hnews itself: "#KillAll(White)Men is literally calling for ethnic / gender purging." (though it was downvoted).
It would be great to have a conversation with Dr. Haidt, but I was turned off by how both Heterodox and Hacker News turned into "amen" forums. There were two students who posted on Heterodox, and they had some interesting points, some of which disagreed with Dr. Haidt.
In terms of the article itself, I agreed with this part, "High schools and colleges that lack viewpoint diversity should make it their top priority" which seems like a pretty progressive viewpoint. Let's make sure everybody's voice is heard, and let's make sure that voices that are usually silenced outside the classroom have equal footing inside. But a sentence later, bam - "Schools that value freedom of thought should therefore actively seek out non-leftist faculty."
I'm not sure how exactly that flows, and that's what led me to be disappointed. Moreover, the idea that students and faculty are living in "fear" and we have to accommodate their fears is also just a tad hypocritical.
I also have a problem with victimhood culture being a thing, but that's a whole different argument.
Any argument that can be made in favor of cultural diversity should necessarily extend to left-right diversity as well.
FWIW, as I stated earlier, Haidt is leftist. Perhaps less so now than 7-8 years ago, but he is indeed a leftist, but one who appreciates that non-leftists are not evil, but who have different gradients of right/wrong, and different associations with which to be entrenched.
If you want children to have freedom of thought, then you should try to accurately present a range of ideas to students wherever possible. Students learn that 2+2=4, at least in some small part, because teachers say that it does. They later learn how and why 2+2=4, which mitigates the need for teacher acceptance as canon, but regardless, they learn that teachers ideas are to be given weight at the least, and that their expressions, even not necessarily strictly academic ones, are right.
Would you find fault with your children's education if every teacher were a Rush Limbaugh clone, or would you prefer them be exposed to a variety of thoughts and given the tools and knowledge to inform themselves and form their own viewpoints? If the answer is the latter, then you should reject the notion of your children being subscribed to any narrow ideological view, and adding non-leftist ideologies can only broaden it.
Edit: And yes, I would agree that if the comments are as you say they are, that is disappointing. I caught this article shortly after it was posted, and there weren't any other comments at the time, so I thankfully did not have those comments color my opinion of the article itself.
Non-leftist faculty would bring their own different worldview and perspective, increasing viewpoint diversity. I think it's a fairly logical statement.
And yes, we are accommodating their "fears". Rightfully so. They "fear" overzealous pushback for expressing their dissenting opinions. We should not accommodate those who "fear" opinions that differ from their own. That is not accommodation, that is censorship.
But the core of the article is about how there is a problem about polarized opinions: the core problems with the Mizzou, Yale and al. situations are not related to the opinions expressed themselves: the initial email was that opinion (in the specific case discussed in the article) and the administrator wanted to meet with that student to discuss it.
The problem is that the conversation is not about the concerns expressed in that email anymore, but about the use of one word in the response.
Is that the more important conversion you talk about wanting to have?
Ironically enough, Jonathan Haidt, the author of this article contributed greatly to the insights on the effects of such bias.
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/jhaidt-819710-haidt...
I can't thank you enough for linking this.
Since you enjoyed it so much, here are some more of his links:
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?l...
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_humanity_s_stairway...
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_how_common_threats_...
http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/disgustscale.html
And, the one I consider to be the most deeply insightful (and also one upon which a lot of his other research relies):
Do they? What "outlandish responses" might those be? You're smearing by implication. What specifically do you find so "outlandish"? As far as I can tell, people making claims like yours think that creating a consistent set of rules for all, promoting free expression of all views, and countering group libel are thoughtcrimes. What's "disagreeable" is countering the idea that I might be guilty of something because of my gender and ancestry.
Specific instances of outlandishness:
SJWsAtWork -- low comment traffic, a bit more agreeable than the rest.
ThisIsNotASafeSpace -- top comment on the top all time submission, very high quality discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThisIsNotASafeSpace/comments/3t6awz...
SJSucks -- highly upvoted comment (relatively speaking) on top all time post, again, some very high quality discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/sjsucks/comments/1vs4kj/watchmen_co...
SJWhate -- this one speaks for itself, I hope:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sjwhate/comments/3u0t33/ahmed_moham...
> Fucking demolished
Perfectly appropriate informal language that means "You won the argument convincingly"
> It's sad that a bunch of raving lunatic SJWs can have this effect. Useless self-absorbed maniacs with no purpose in life but to pester those that have.
Many SJWs are, in fact, saving lunatics who have no purpose in life but to heckle and protest everything
> Fuck that piece of shit
Very common language when talking about public figures --- and I'd be willing to bet you used similar language about Bush, or Cameron, or Harper, or anyone else on the wrong side.
You're demonstrating exactly the kind of militarized hypersensitivity and craven hypocrisy that's turned colleges (and increasingly, workplaces) into zones for political indoctrination.
Also, I find it hard to believe that "fuck that piece of shit" was ever acceptable as college-level discourse. In fact, I think that even high school level L-D style debate shies away from that tone and temperament.
If you sincerely believe that using language that appeals to emotion, over logic and evidence, is a means to an end, then we probably will not get much further on this topic. (And I really don't see how this stance is hypocritical, or indoctrinated/pushing a doctrine in any way. It applies equally to both ends of the spectrum.)
You're taking the standards of a debate hall, applying them to an internet community, and then using the predictable and inevitable discrepancy to call the internet community hateful when, in fact, that's the normal level of discourse for _any_ internet community.
> I really don't see how this stance is hypocritical
Do you excuse the other side's casual use of "kill all men"? What about explicit statements that I am literally unqualified to hold an opinion because of my chromosomal makeup and the color of my skin? Those come across as equally hateful to me.
I wouldn't and don't excuse "kill all men," and I personally think that opinions should be evaluated on their own merits, and not by [x] feature possessed by they who come up with it. You're projecting these beliefs on to me because I've called out certain subreddits as being stomping grounds for emotionally charged, rather than fact based, content. I think both sides of this debate have salient points, but neither side benefits from the content coming out of /r/*hate subreddits.
To reduce this argument to absurdity, let's say I create a recipe for pecan pie. People love it, including the people at stormfront or other white power sites. Let's say I created this recipe back in the 1920s, and it happens to be Hitler's favorite pie.
Is there anything wrong with that pie?
People with extreme viewpoints will often like things that are a more moderate version of their own viewpoints. Just because you don't agree with the extremists doesn't mean that you should also disagree with the moderates.