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Comment by RodericDay | Hacker News Reader

How do you think a history class should handle a student who wants to discuss Holocaust as a hoax? How about a law student who thinks rape is a victim-less crime?

My answer used to be "why, if you have the truth on your side, just prove 'em wrong and move on! so much the better for your standpoint!". However, it can get extremely tedious. A stubborn student can "plausible deniability" his way into extremely metaphysical arguments, about historical revisionism and psychology, and ultimately about epistemology itself.

I think it's important to phrase the argument not as "the students want these topics to not be discussed", but instead as "the students want these topics to be included in the actually already existing list of topics we don't discuss". And then take it topic-by-topic.

This idea that student-activism is largely composed of completely irrational anti-logic zealots is a caricature.

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I think a history class that can't make a strong argument that the holocaust wasn't a hoax and a law class that can't make the argument that rape victims exist are in VERY serious trouble.

Being able to debunk such looney claims is very valuable for students so they should develop these skills not be shielded from exposure to them.

In general I agree with you, but having dealt with (less severe) examples of this with some coworkers, it's really, really annoying. When someone simply states their (contrary or contrarian) viewpoint and refuses to admit any evidence presented is valid, you can't win. It's an exercise in futility.

I had a guy simply insisting that evolution wasn't real. "Ok", I say, "what about (found some reports demonstrating observable changes in a species over time)?". "Oh, well sure, microevolution is real, but big things can't change, like humans." And around we go again and again. (Same guy believes that we can't actually analyze someone's genome and that people become resistant to antibiotics, not diseases, and 9/11 was an inside job.)

Show them video, show them photographs, bring in first-person witnesses, and they'll find a way to dismiss all of it. Either because they truly believe what they're saying, or, like a current coworker, they're just a contrarian asshole. That doesn't mean we shield people from these views, but we have to, at some point, accept that not all viewpoints are equal, some simply have no merit and aren't worth discussing beyond acknowledging that some people believe them (would you really want to engage with a flat-earth believer? I mean, it was fun once, but that was enough for me).

"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

You're not going to convince everyone to agree with you, or even just with what you think is most important. That's ok. You can agree to disagree. Especially if this is an acquaintance at a party, or a coworker, and the topic is not at all related to what you're doing.

If it's an academic setting and you are the instructor, you can

* Flunk them for not learning or engaging with the material.

* Limit their time in class discussions if they are not engaging constructively.

* Have the administration remove them from the class if they become belligerent.

Of course, the third item is the crucial one. It seems at many universities these days, administrations are taking the side of the customer, er, I mean, student, in every dispute, regardless of the merits.

Run your meetings / classes according to Roberts rules, move to set out a time limit for each person to make their point, limit each person to 1 rebuttal, and then vote on the issue.

Whenever I had to deal with contentious issues as a chair of a meeting this is exactly how I proceeded, much to the dismay of the people who wanted to argue all day.

The people who cause the most issues usually take their rebuttal early and then the debate can proceed amongst the more reasonable people.

At one point in our history, it was contrary to known and upheld belief that the world was round. Given your position would we have ever had the debate and changed popular belief considering it was absurd by its very nature?

What about someone who argues "Rape victims don't matter because they are just women, and women's feelings are not important"

That isn't something that can be argued against with facts. You can't present evidence to counter this, because they didn't use facts to come to the opinion. As the saying goes, "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into"

There are a certain class of opinions that we need to be able to dismiss with just a "that is just not worthy of even talking about." While I believe this list of things should be very small, it DOES exist.

>That isn't something that can be argued against with facts.

Oh, and now you want to argue meta-ethics and meta-philosophy :-p?

Yes! Finally put my Philosophy degree to use!

>That isn't something that can be argued against with facts.

Yes it can. In the context of a law class, there's tons of laws which clearly state that rape is a crime, so it clearly does matter. That's just as factually incorrect as saying "Fraud does not matter because suckers aren't important." You can't just say: "_______ isn't important." in a law class.

If I were a history professor and someone tried to bring up Holocaust denial in my class, I'd first explain why it's absurd to try and argue that all that evidence is somehow fake, which then shows that anyone who tries to defend this position either:

1. Has legitimately no idea what they're talking about.

2. Has willfully taken up the agenda of bending the truth to support Nazi-ism.

I wouldn't shout them down though. That's counter-productive.

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