Comment by jpfed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpfed | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

The point of extending the courtesy of trigger warnings isn't that you will, with 100% certainty, prevent anyone from entering a state of psychological distress. That's obviously not attainable.

But let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There's really obvious stuff that instructors could warn about, but aren't. After I posted a similar sentiment on Facebook, a TA told me about their professor showing porn (featuring torture) in class. Who could have known that the majority-female class she was showing this to would contain some rape victims that left the classroom in tears?! Totally out of the blue, that.

Now, I don't expect anyone to know that aging wood with thin brown flaking paint is evocative of the assault I experienced; that would be ridiculous. But of course descriptions of assaults themselves are going to be evocative.

In short, there's really easy low-hanging fruit here, and I hope people aren't so turned off by the unattainable goals of safe spaces and 100% trigger coverage that they don't extend the courtesy of warning for really obvious, foreseeable triggers.

I think that many of the arguments again safe spaces, trigger warnings, and actually most things are subject to the Nirvana Fallacy [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

First, the very act of learning can cause psychological distress. It may involve being forced to consider that some of your long-cherished ideas are wrong. This creates a crisis since either you abandon the wrong idea you've held or you ignore the new information you've acquired.

One of the most effective ways of learning is to hear and consider ideas opposed to the ones you currently hold. But these kinds of things (trigger warnings and safe spaces) act to prevent this. It inhibits learning. Sheltering people's preconceptions is the perfect way to prevent them from learning to think independently, which is opposite to the reason for going to school. Or at least, used to be.

Second, what the hell kind of professor shows porn to their class!? The warning required in that case is that the professor is unfit to teach, and/or the course offered is unworthy of any curriculum. I'm not a prude, and I can imagine perhaps some sort of graduate criminal psychology class where that might be justifiable, but it seems some sort of written description would do just fine even then.

In my grandparent post, I advocate treating trigger warnings and safe spaces separately. I have no intention of defending safe spaces in a university context.

Trigger warnings do not prevent the consideration of any particular idea. They help students choose the best time to engage with the material in question. If you've been warned that a particular piece of content is potentially disturbing, you can schedule your reading (or viewing) for when you're ready- so afterwards you can actually think about it instead of attending to your screaming autonomic nervous system.

Your post is an amazing contradiction, all within about 20 seconds. An incredible read!

< One of the most effective ways of learning is to hear and consider ideas opposed to the ones you currently hold.

< Second, what the hell kind of professor shows porn to their class!?

Am I missing some joke or sarcasm? I'm normally pretty good at detecting it in text. How can you advocate for learning to explore all ideas, even if they may seem opposite to what you (or others) may hold and at the same time say its repugnant that a teacher would show a taboo idea in video form?

No joke or sarcasm. While I advocate being exposed to different ideas and opinions, I still think there are some subjects that are not worthy of rational consideration as academic subjects, especially for undergrads.

I recognize this is an unpopular view. To go even further down the unpopular path, I also maintain that many of our colleges and universities have failed in their evaluation of what a formal education should include and exclude. For example, I have had the unhappy experience of hiring many new graduates who cannot write complete sentences, let alone organize their thoughts into some coherent whole with a beginning, middle, and end. I'm told that kind of thing doesn't matter any more, but I disagree. It reflects their thought process, which affects their ability to make good business decisions.

Also, parent post was about the trauma caused when rape victims were exposed to same without warning. Apparently it's not that uncommon to think this subject is taboo for a reason.

I'm confused. Did she spring the porn on them? Did she just hit play as soon as everyone sat down without preamble or context? The students had no opportunity to object or excuse themselves beforehand? If that's how that actually played out, then that professor is either tone-deaf, or used to students with more...mettle?

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