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Comment by brighteyes | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with 100% of the article, but overall it is convincing. I've been worrying about this stuff for a while, the article puts it into words fairly well.

A lot of people don't trust "experts" anymore. The article touches on that, in relation to climate change denial, etc. But I think there is also something more specific there regarding science. Universities and colleges have become very liberal, with hardly any conservatives left. The public is aware of this, and constantly sees on the news the actions of progressives on campus (demonstrations, censorship, etc.), while conservatives are in the closet there. The downside to this liberal success is that the public image of "scientist" is now tied to "liberal". When half the population does not trust liberals, they won't trust scientists.

If scientists were as politically balanced as the general public, the general public might trust them more. We might also have more conservative scientists say "climate change isn't a partisan issue, I'm a conservative like you." With the liberal dominance of academia, we've lost those things.

View on HN

What is there to suggest that the arrow of causality is going in the way that you imply?

Personally, I am fairly convinced that academia and science being "liberal" is, I think, much more a characteristic of the underlying philosophies involved than some externally-imposed groupthink. "Conservatism", at least the modern variant, and "exploring and expanding knowledge for a greater good, while entertaining ideas that you don't necessarily agree with" are literally antithetical. I thought of myself as a conservative before I went to college and realized that, hey, American conservatism is not only railing against stuff like observational science, but "morally" against the existence of these fellow human beings who have done nothing wrong and deserve to exist.

So, yeah, maybe "the public" would trust academia and the whole "science" thing more if it was More Conservative, but who's to say that it'd actually work as well? It's not like this stuff exists to tell people what they want to hear--and the epistemic closure of the American conservative is such an ideological purity test that if you're not telling them what they want to hear, you're not conservative. It's not on "science and academia" to break itself for such a warped thing, is it?

I read The_Donald on reddit and they believe they are the only ones willing to entertain ideas.

First, and most notably, they believe that being liberal means full embracement of leftist group think like the USSR had during its communist days. That is the most fundamental problem with reaching them since you can't unmoor the thought of leftism from liberalism with them.

They believe the scientific community has become strangled by this leftist/liberal ideology.

I'm not sure what happens next but I think it's bad for humanity. If half the population needs a reminder on why science is good I guess they'll get it. Usually that's mass death.

Your read jibes with my own when I've studied that community (and washed afterwards). I'll give what passes for a "left" in this country a lot of flak on a lot of things, but a fundamental unwillingness to work with people who disagree with them on some things but are willing to find common ground on others is not one of them. Often to their, and our, detriment.

>fundamental unwillingness to work with people who disagree

Identity politics is even worse than this. From what I can see, among people not totally ideologically driven, this discredits the left very much, and liberal values will be caught in the backlash.

That's a can of worms, huh?

I mean, yes, I would definitely say that that identity politics/bloc voting is problematic, from the perspective of "how do we best run a government?". It is also in many cases understandable, especially in the face of extant threats to a given polity. (In such a case, however, it is important to stress that "identity politics" is not the problem--the threat and disenfranchisement that led to the formation of an identity bloc is. Even for Trump voters, who I'll touch on momentarily.)

But from a social/messaging perspective, I think that it is less that identity politics discredits the left and more that white people (and it's mostly white people who have an axe to grind about identity politics) feel threatened by identity politics and thus by the left. The reactionary clumping of the Trumpist bloc of whites (as evidenced both by voting patterns and the frankly shameless xenophobic pandering by Trump and his surrogates in the campaign) is no less "identity politics", and is arguably more aggressive than the identity-focused blocs that have formed prior (it's a lot less aggressive to say "we should be able to get married" than it is to say "you should not be able to get married", get me?). But that's not castigated as "identity politics". I would submit that that's because white people don't think white is an identity, but the default.

Identity politics are fine, so goes the thinking, when it's your identity. In a society overwhelmingly dominated by white interests, fairness is gonna feel like you're losing. (This is the genesis of the notion of "privilege" in the first place, as I understand it.)

Couple of thoughts and questions:

- The difference between discredited and threatening is academic, since both lead to the same mindset and course of action

- A large swing towards Trump was noticeable amongst minority voters, the poor, and whites without a degree[0], groups who would be expected to be harmed by competition from illegal immigration

- A large swing towards Hillary was observable in the rich, retirees, and whites with college degrees, groups which are generally believed to be well-to-do

- If fairness feels like losing, and losing feels like losing, then how can we tell which is which?

- If white people implicitly pursue identity politics even when they try not to, will making them aware of this lead to them laying aside identity, or actively pursuing it?

- If race-blindness/"I don't see colour" is a myth, is it a useful myth for the purposes of causing people to get along?

- Is it possible for any action taken against a group that is winning to be unfair? If yes, when might this occur? If no, are you really sure that winning justifies literally any action against you?

Note that I'm not American, so I'm looking at this with an outsider's perspective.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/el...

> A large swing towards Trump was noticeable amongst minority voters, the poor, and whites without a degree ... A large swing towards Hillary was observable in the rich, retirees, and whites with college degrees

There's a pretty big argument in the data communities that I follow about whether this was a "swing towards Clinton/Trump" or a (minor) normalization away from the Obama state. I don't think there's enough data to say either way. There are also a lot of rhetorical/conflating factors with regard to stuff like illegal immigration that make drawing conclusions out of this, in a vacuum, probably pretty questionable.

> If fairness feels like losing, and losing feels like losing, then how can we tell which is which?

Tough, but fair, question. I think it requires divorcing oneself from one's own position and trying, at least, to be objective about it. I was born with pretty much every genetic-lottery benefit there is in the United States: straight, white, male, reasonably affluent (though not rich) family. I am able to bite back the instinctive urge to be defensive about "what I've got" (and it is instinctive, and it does come up reflexively) to realize that, hey, not only do I have it pretty great, but a lot of it wasn't because of anything I did either way to make it happen. So maybe I should pay it forward.

If I can do it, I believe others should do likewise.

> If white people implicitly pursue identity politics even when they try not to

Mu? I think most people pursue identity politics. It's what outward pressures pushed you in what direction that ultimately defines what that identity is. I don't particularly worry about the concerns of white straight males, despite being one, because there are no serious threats to any of those qualities that I identify with.

I don't think making identity politics a topic of discussion will swing people who are strongly affected by the pull of it in either direction. I don't think people who are voting along identity lines care about whether or not they are.

> If race-blindness/"I don't see colour" is a myth, is it a useful myth for the purposes of causing people to get along?

This is a good question. My intuitive answer is no, if only because it provides a good excuse through which systemic, race-focused effects can be marginalized. "I don't see race, so it's not a problem that cops disproportionately shoot black people." Not saying this is a logical chain of reasoning in quotes, but rather that I've seen it, and "I don't see race" being used to buttress the moral credentials of the claim.

> Is it possible for any action taken against a group that is winning to be unfair? If yes, when might this occur?

Sure. I think lynching the 1% is a damned sight too far, and if that were a serious concern I'd definitely be on the yeah-let's-not-do-this side of the ledger. On the other hand, I don't think asking them to pay more for the benefits they reap from living in the country they share with everybody else, and disproportionately benefit from, is unfair.

> If half the population needs a reminder on why science is good I guess they'll get it.

I don't know if you looked at science lately, but the majority of the science published is actually not-that-great, if not bad. The public SHOULD distrust scientists - as well as most else.

OK, I'll bite: who should the public trust when it comes to science then, if not scientists?

The question is whether they should trust scientists about policy decisions, not whenther they should trust scientists about science. Political/ideological decisions don't have to rely on science, this "political scientism" is a very recent thing. The entire 60s revolutions for example were primarily anti-technology, anti-corporatism and anti-established science. Part of progress is breaking up with established ideas, and that includes bad science (e.g. the neoliberal economic approaches). This applies of course mostly to social sciences, it's pretty pointless to fight the laws of physics

Examples?

too many to list. see here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2014/01/09/the-l...

On the one hand, those are fair points - maybe conservatism is just not consistent with good science. We can't just rule that out.

But on the other hand, I think we can. The percentage of conservatives has declined rapidly in recent decades. We haven't seen an increase in scientific productivity because of that. Science worked just as well back when there were more conservatives doing it.

And we also see conservatives talking about how hard it is for them to be themselves on campuses. It isn't that their politics interfere with them doing science. It is that they are a hated minority.

I think your definition of "conservative" is cheating around to suit your argument (that's not a slight against you, most people make this mistake). In "prior decades", conservatism was a different thing. It wasn't a refusal to acknowledge that there are aspects of reality that will not move just because you want them to. We are very, very far afield from an intellectually respectable conservative movement that resembles the one where a conservative academia existed. For example: never mind that Richard Milhouse Dirtbag Nixon created the EPA--the idea of clean air and clean water being a social good that should be available to all people is a liberal idea now. That is a pretty big swing.

The conservative movement that attacks facts because facts refuse to coexist with their ideology was a Pat Buchanan minority before about 1990 and didn't exist in the mainstream of political thought before about 1970. Do you realize that the modern conservative movement defined "reality-based community" as a pejorative because they believed they could simply create their own realities[1]?

Turns out that when you fight reality, reality fights back. It's not really a surprise that burning effort on that struggle is not conducive to scientific pursuits.

> And we also see conservatives talking about how hard it is for them to be themselves on campuses. It isn't that their politics interfere with them doing science. It is that they are a hated minority.

When your belief system is predicated upon what modern conservatism is predicated upon, yes, you're going to be disliked. It is a very dislikable system of belief! And I mean, I'm speaking from experience. It wasn't that long ago when I was one of those Campus Conservatives, speaking truth to the Liberal Elites. I delighted in being the gadfly. I got shit because I acted like a little shit. (And I regret it now, because my desire to be Loudly and Emphatically Conservative actually hurt people; I was never so broken as to fall in with the racists and the homophobes, but I had no problem with the very morally upright hang-the-poors ideology and saw nothing wrong with "well, why don't they just work harder?".) So pardon me for being real skeptical about how very oppressed they are.

[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a... (the puncher quote there is largely believed to be from Karl Rove)

I've seen almost exactly symmetrical characterizations of the left from the right. What are the chances that a country divides 50-50 into two groups, one of which is right about everything and the other of which is entirely deceived? Is it more likely that that is the case, or that the population splitting into two highly ideologically coherent groups is a natural equilibrium when you have factions competing for power (democracy)? Even if it's true, how can you be sure you're on the side that really has the truth? How do you break the symmetry?

Minor thing: the country doesn't divide "50-50" into two groups. The people who vote divide into those groups. Once you expand to the population as a whole, it's more of a two-thirds "recognizable permutation of reality" to one-third "I don't even know" split. Important distinction. (Non-voters lean pretty heavily left. Getting them off their couches...is a challenge.)

But to the main thrust of your post, I've seen those characterizations of the left, too. I made those characterizations of the left. I was wrong then, and I was wrong precisely because I was evaluating the left positions based on postulates that were horseshit. Not that I would ever make criticisms based on those postulates, 'cause I knew those were loser arguments. It was not until I was able to broaden my horizons and learn a certain structural courage to challenge them that I realized that they were not just loser arguments because those principles were not well-shared but loser arguments because those principles were gross.

Even Reagan (who I view as kind of the beginning of this ideological rot in conservatism) was able to talk about fundamental principles of his conservatism. Whatever Trump's fundamental principles are, he speaks not to them. Nor does a Paul Ryan, for a more establishment conservative. My conclusion is that either those principles don't exist or they are repugnant enough that someone with savvy knows to run from them.

YM, of course, MV. You don't have to agree with me. But I believe, and believe strongly, that someone who does not have or does not speak to their principles, towards the points that orient their moral compass, knows that they are wrong.

>What are the chances that a country divides 50-50 into two groups, one of which is right about everything and the other of which is entirely deceived?

There is no symmetry. 37% identify as conservatives, 35% as moderates, and 24% as liberals[1]. That leaves 4% for "other". So we're actually talking about 63% of the country being "non-crazy" or "non-propagandized", although I suspect that many self-identified conservatives despise what the Republican Party has become.

[1] -- http://www.gallup.com/poll/188129/conservatives-hang-ideolog...

You have very negative opinions about conservative people. I guess I can't be sure they are wrong, but they seem wrong based on the conservatives I know, follow on Twitter, etc.

I have very negative opinions of conservative ideology because, having been inculcated in it and having refined my ability to think enough that I was able to reject my priors and escape from it--well, I feel like I damned well should, it's hard to find something misleading and epistemically dangerous and not feel "negative" about it.

On the other hand, I am mostly sympathetic towards conservative people. Most have been sold a bill of goods and were never fortunate enough to stumble across, or have delivered unto them, the structural education necessary to evaluate it one way or another. (This includes functionally-trade-schooled "engineers". The best thing that ever happened to me in my fundamental learning was having to take economics, philosophy, and sociology classes. The idea that a "Bachelor's of Science" can be granted with only minimal exposure to the humanities is near-criminal.)

Where my sympathy fails is when the proponents of that ideology wish to use it to harm other people. That is the chilly response that conservatism gets in academia and it must not be ignored: when you are the self-appointed standard-bearer of a worldview where women, gays, and minorities are second-class citizens, when you are the representative of a worldview that wants fewer people to be able to vote so you can win, when "root, hog or die" is accompanied by no end of policies to ensure that Those People don't get that middle option and only sometimes get the first--of course people are going to react poorly to you. Don't actively shit on other people and they won't shit on you back.

>they seem wrong based on the conservatives I know, follow on Twitter, etc.

I think the problem is that you need to define what conservatism is to you. Otherwise it's hard to really have a discussion about the label.

He's defined at least partially what it is to him ("conservative movement that attacks facts because facts refuse to coexist with their ideology") and frankly it's a group I can see many rational people being negative about.

But if conservatism to you is just slightly right of center on most things, I don't think people would be very negative about them and I definitely can't see them having any more trouble than usual on a college campus. Their views are going to be challenged there but that's kind of the point of college. And if being challenged is too high a mountain for them, a career in science isn't going to work out.

There is a certain resistance to challenge that you characterize amongst even more moderate "conservatives". Despite the notion of conservatism being...y'know, conservative, there's a very post-modern, all-narratives-are-valid notion that I think (circling back to the OP of this discussion) fuels the "fake news" thing more aggressively on the right than it does the left. The left encourages you to find your own truth about yourself; the right encourages you to generate your own truths about things external to you.

When you believe a minority viewpoint, you're going to be challenged more often than the mainstream--and you can refine your viewpoint under fire and make it better (the inability to make it better because there was no better to be made was a large part of what pushed me away from conservatism), or you can adopt a siege mentality and hide from it. I find that cowardice endemic to the modern right and its fragility the centerpiece of the hatred of even mild challenges.

> I think the problem is that you need to define what conservatism is to you.

I'm not a conservative, so I don't think I should be the one to define what it means? Instead, I listen to people that self-identify as conservative.

But anyone can label themselves whatever they like and there's no way extract the "true" viewpoint of that group.

Without something resembling a common definition, you're going to have a hell of time having a sane, productive discussion.

Conservatives, doubtlessly conservatives that you know, just elected Donald Trump President of the United States.

Let that sink in for a moment and then reflect on what conservatism even means.

I dislike Trump and voted for Clinton obviously. I'm sad they won. But why should I be surprised that the right-leaning half of the US voted for the Republican candidate?

>But why should I be surprised that the right-leaning half of the US voted for the Republican candidate?

Because the Republican candidate deeply disagreed with most Republican ideas. For instance, he openly wants his government to "pick winners" in the marketplace and has repeatedly said he won't cut Social Security.

For the Party to fall in behind him on personality alone, while he speaks one heresy after another against their purported ideology, shows that they no longer have an ideology they preach in good-faith. They've become a bad-faith party, distinct from conservative parties in other countries, who just seek power, connections, and wealth for themselves, and say whatever's necessary to get it.

That's not at all what I hear from conservative people.

First, yes, Trump disagreed with a bunch of typical Republican ideas. But those turned out to be things that Republican voters wanted, even if the Republican party members didn't. Like his stance on trade.

Second, Trump loudly championed a lot of typical Republican causes, like the "Repeal and Replace Obamacare" mantra, being "pro-life", etc. Those seem like terrible ideas/policies to me and probably you, but Trump is a typical conservative on those.

So no, it wasn't on "personality alone."

>Second, Trump loudly championed a lot of typical Republican causes, like the "Repeal and Replace Obamacare" mantra, being "pro-life", etc.

He also disagreed loudly with those same positions at other times. He just doesn't consistently toe the conservative ideological line handed down by Republican Party leaders and intellectuals.

Now, that's definitely part of why his voter base like him, but it also means that he's still not an ideological conservative of the typical kind.

The specifics should surprise you. For example, the fact that evangelicals voted for a guy who publicly bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, was accused of raping a minor, and bought beauty pageants for the sole purpose of being able to walk in unannounced on the contestants naked in the backstage, should have reviled anyone who considers themselves a devout Christian. But it didn't, apparently, because... I don't know.

You are normalizing Trump as the Republican candidate. No.

I'm afraid that you are only fooling yourself.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/19/politics/donald-trump-republic...

No one is fooling anyone.

http://mitchellarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/hitle...

"The Republican candidate" is, as regrettable as that is, correct. Question of fact, not of norms. Normalizing as "the conservative candidate" would get my dander up, because he's not.

If you were to then suggest that Republicans are not conservative--well, duh. ;)

What's wrong with this? He ran and was endorsed on the GOP ticket.

You should ask yourself the Falsifiability question:

  What could possibly be wrong with this if he ran
  and was endorsed on the GOP ticket?

Does the mere act of running on the GOP ticket absolve Trump of everything and anything? That appears to be the case for his supporters. Less so for the rest of us and when I refuse to accept Trump as normal, that is what I'm saying.

You don't make headway by crowing that the other guy's "not normal". He was elected because he's "not normal." You win by demonstrating that he is bad for the people who elected him. Wasting time and effort with "oh, not normal" doesn't help your (our) cause.

Dude, we're saying the same thing only differently aka violent agreement.

> The percentage of conservatives has declined rapidly in recent decades. We haven't seen an increase in scientific productivity because of that. Science worked just as well back when there were more conservatives doing it.

Is there really data showing the proportion of scientists who are "conservative"? In what fields?

Yes, see for example the data discussed in this recent article,

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2016/12/20/libera...

This isn't new, it's been known for decades that academia leaned left, and in particular certain areas of it (humanities and social sciences).

> it's been known for decades that academia leaned left

Yes, but the question here is different: Has the proportion of conservatives diminished significantly? (tl;dr: Among 4-year colleges and universities in the U.S., according to one study, there has been a big change in New England but only a little elsewhere.)

And thanks for adding some actual facts to that discussion! Some thoughts on it, and a summary so that everyone doesn't have to read it:

The analysis is from Samuel Abrams, an apparently conservative[0] political science professor at Sarah Lawrence and the Hoover Institution. In looking up Abrams, I found an article that addresses his study plus other useful research and in a less biased way (the Boston Magazine article is titled "How Liberal Professors Are Ruining College" and mostly is anecdotes about persecution):

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/05/new-analysis-...

the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, ... conducts periodic surveys of faculty members and asks them, among other things, about their political views. Recent surveys have shown that faculty members are moving more to the left than has been the case in the past.

Abrams analysis is of the above data, and shows that the ratios are holding mostly constant in most of the country but in New England the ratio of liberal-to-conservative has shot up from around 5:1 to 28:1:

http://cdn1.bostonmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/li...

He found that region was the most significant factor, even controlling for institution type of discipline of faculty members.

Also of interest: The HERI data are on four-year college and university faculty members, and much research suggests that community college faculty members are more centrist than are their four-year colleagues. Remember that very many people attend community colleges, regardless of their relative prominence.

Still open is how much of that change is due to the country moving right and the definition of conservative changing; for example, much of Ronald Reagan's politics would be anathema to current "conservative" leaders. But again, many thanks; the research definitely informs the conversation.

----

[0] Abrams is identified as centrist in one article and conservative in another. The Hoover Institution is conservative, AFAIK.

I don't think this is true. Significant numbers of liberals tend to be just as anti-science when it serves their agenda. Some examples: "Monsanto is evil", "GMO's are destroying our planet", GreenPeace (just in general), "geo-engineering is horrible", "nuclear is too dangerous", etc. If you count economics as a science, liberals tend to discount/avoid even the basic principles of that as well. Liberals just tend to have a few more prominent things on their agenda (primarily climate science related) than conservatives so it makes one side look less-uninformed than the other, when in reality they are both willfully ignorant.

Ehhhh. The difference, to me, is that the conservative moment defines rigidly what is Acceptable Thought in a way that I really do not think is true on the other side of the fence. I don't have to agree that nuclear power is dangerous (it's not!) to be a "liberal in good standing". I don't have to agree that GMOs are dangerous (they're not!). I don't have to think positively of GreenPeace (and boy, do I not!). We are able to have a dialogue about these things internal to our own camp and even disagree with each other with at least some assumption of good faith. And that's really super-duper important.

On the other hand, a Republican Congressman in Ohio who went on record as acknowledging that climate change is real and is happening would be primaried by his own party. There are things about which a Democrat would be primaried by his or her own party...but I think they'd be more like "attending a Klan rally" than "accepts that scientific consensus means things," and so we're talking differences in kind here, not merely degree.

Here is James Hansen being called a 'Denier' by Naomi Oreskes in Gurandiad. That's good faith?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/16/new-fo...

Nuclear Power advocates on the left are frequently attacked by Greenpeace and many others.

As far as Acceptable Thought goes the practice of 'no platforming' and restricting free speech at Universities is not something that the Right originated. Again, that isn't debating with any assumption of good faith. That's just trying to block out views that the Left doesn't like.

Greenpeace is not a mainstream leftist organization. A Congressman in favor of nuclear power, or openly critical of Greenpeace as a thing, is going to get, at most, an emoji shrug by anyone in that mainstream. What Greenpeace Thinks is almost wholly irrelevant to the discourse of the left.

The Family Research Council is a mainstream right-wing organization. A Republican who runs afoul of the FRC in a solidly Republican state is in danger of being challenged internal to the party. What The FRC Thinks matters a great deal to the discourse of the right.

Hell, I'll go one further: that I can criticize the insularity of parts of the left to hearing things they don't like is something that I could not do when I was of the right because then I was a RINO or a "bad Republican". I'm not a "bad liberal" because I make that criticism. I'm pretty normal. So there's a difference, and it's a difference of kind, and the conflation you're attempting to pawn off strikes me as mendacious.

It's easy to paint conservatism as reactionary -- in particular, a reaction to the progressive movement which drives most new policy changes (both good and bad), with conservatives resisting and slowly giving in over time.

So that's one theory, but it's difficult to really know because I (and probably most of the readers here) live in a blue city in a blue state, not a major city in the south where conservative ideas would be more likely to be intellectually fostered and furthered. Their strongest ideas tend to be related to economics and individual liberty, but they tend to just copy those ideas from libertarians and morph them in with other things that are not intellectually consistent (like being against regulation of non-localized forms of pollution). In general, both sides appear pretty consistently stubborn to accept anything that originated from the other side. Not HN intellectuals, but the layman (which makes up 95+% of both the Democrats' and the Republicans' voter base).

We aren't talking about a movement with room for intellectual development, though. I took the classes of one of the harder-core Straussian political philosophers currently operating while I was in school. I'm comfortable in my understanding of intellectual conservatism as the people who actually "further and foster" those ideas understand it, but I also realize that those people are without a shred of respect in the American conservative political movement.

Depends on who you pick to represent the side, sure. If you throw on Fox News, or ask the average Trump voter, your initial point would very much be verified. But the same is true about denying or not knowing basic economic principles (again, counting economics as a science), if I threw on MSNBC or interviewed participants at a Bernie Sanders rally (or Bernie himself. Or Clinton for that matter.) And some of the other points would stick as well, like the anti-GMO junk science. Be careful not to confuse your circle of relatively well-educated, reasonable people for the politicians/political movement you feel you best align with.

""Conservatism", at least the modern variant, and "exploring and expanding knowledge for a greater good, while entertaining ideas that you don't necessarily agree with" are literally antithetical."

This is completely not true.

I think you might confusing 'popular' liberalism (i.e. progressivism) and 'popular' conservatism (i.e. evangelicals, social conservatism, small government etc.) - with actual liberalism and conservatism.

Universities were always fairly Conservative, it started to change in the 1940s-1960s.

The 'liberals' in University that people are complaining about are progressives - not liberals: 1) There is a lot of 'social justice ideology' that is not particularly scientific and more perversely 2) a lot of ideas are openly suppressed because they don't promote the ideological narrative of many academics.

The banishment of speakers, not allowing profs to talk about certain things because of potential 'trigger warnings', historical revisionism, and the shaping of courses to meet ideological narratives (CLASS Montreal protestors demanded a 'feminization' of the entire course material etc..) - none of this is remotely liberal by any definition.

In short: Universities liberal arts faculties are are illiberal institutions.

On the whole - I think it has much more to do with the admins and Uni culture - as defined by a vocal subgroup of students - than the course material itself.

The student unions are more than 50% of the problem.

> Universities and colleges have become very liberal, with hardly any conservatives left.

Have they become more liberal? Academia has long been called liberal; I don't know that it has become more or less that way. Also, liberal is a matter of definition and is relative to a degree; perhaps society has become more conservative.

> The downside to this liberal success is that the public image of "scientist" is now tied to "liberal".

That's not a downside to "liberal success", IMHO; it's an intended outcome of a propaganda campaign. The perpetrators want to discredit any opposition to their ideology, whether Democrats, whose voters and politicians are called frauds (voters, Obama), demonized (voters, Obama, Clinton, etc.), and criminalized (voters, Clinton, etc.); "liberals" (made a word of ridicule rather than a valid but differing point of view); groups that provide services to the poor (ACORN, Planned Parenthood, etc.); scientists, other academics, experts of any sort, even theories of science (evolution, climate change), etc.

Purported legitimacy is another big thing that troubles me. I remember "not my President" getting some nontrivial shit when liberals employed it about George W. Bush. (I threw some of it.) I do not remember the same sort of "unpatriotic", "treasonous" rhetoric employed when the Republicans did the same thing in 2008. I do not remember birtherism being considered unpatriotic, either.

"The only legitimate government is a Republican government" is reason enough to fear.

Exactly. This is equivocation nonsense that the right trots out. We did it therefore you must have done it. The two sides are not mirror images of one another.

" I don't know that it has become more or less that way. "

Universities were mostly founded by Churches - and they were for the Upper Class. They were bastions of conservatism in the classical sense.

In the 1930's it started to change.

Many profs in the 1930's were card carrying Communists. Unlike today, wherein nobody would care, and many would be sympathetic - they would be destroyed in that era if it were found out.

Put more simply: Universities were not leftists until the middle of last century. It was the 1960's when things really flipped.

There is no 'propaganda' needed: open discussion is suppressed on campus and this is a fact. Banned speakers, profs not allowed to speak of certain issues due to 'trigger warnigs' etc..

All of your comments about 'ACORN' and 'Obama' etc. have nothing to do with academia - those are completely political issues.

And FYI it is progressives who are against GMO's - and science indicates they are completely safe.

The 'anti vaxxers' are definitely 'anti science' and those groups lean left.

Those supporting Chinese medicine, herbal therapy etc. - that's fairly 'anti science' - and those people tend way left. (I have hippie family members who practice Chinese medicine and some of the stuff they do should be illegal. They don't actually diagnose patients with illnesses, but they truly believe they can, by looking at your tongue etc.)

I don't support any political ideal, but I would say that 'leftist / progressive' populism on campus is seriously a problem. I think it's mostly the culture and the students, not so much the course material.

To respond to my own first question:

> Have they become more liberal? Academia has long been called liberal; I don't know that it has become more or less that way. Also, liberal is a matter of definition and is relative to a degree; perhaps society has become more conservative.

See here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13352697

An interesting source of data on this point is scientific fraud. Let's take a look at scientific work which has been proven to be fake. That tells us what scientists would like to publish to advance their careers, without regard to whether it's true or not. Thus any bias in faked research is evidence for political bias in science beyond what is justified by the truth.

A good place to start is with the name Diederik Stapel in social psychology.

There are countries with lots of conservative scientists. Usually, in those countries, the conservative parties don't deny science.

As conservative ideology becomes more and more unmoored from reality how do you propose we keep conservatives participating in academia? I'm not just being snarky - it seems to me the increasing liberalization of colleges is inextricable from the increasing non-fiction of conservative thinking.

Get rid of these catch all groups. Reality is not binary.

There's nothing stopping a climate change scientist from being fiscally conservative or religiously oriented, there's plenty of room in America for pro-gun pro-choice advocates, or other amalgamations of thought...

Similarly, there are plenty of pro-gun rights liberals, Christian pro-choice activists, and anti-globalist pro-spending liberals...

Americans need to focus on policies, not parties.

The problem isn't liberal colleges or disconnected rural districts... it's the simplified "us vs them" mentality, the complete disregard for policy nuance and critical thinking.

> the simplified "us vs them" mentality, the complete disregard for policy nuance and critical thinking

Pray tell, to what extent would the median-intelligence US citizen understand the words "nuance" and "critical thinking", let alone possess, to a nontrivial extent, the virtues named by those words?

After all, the "us vs them" mental data-structure suffices for many things that many people enjoy, such as spectator sports. (And in expressing how HN discussions are in a bubble insofar as participants mostly possess undergraduate educations and/or jobs that normally require such; simply put, that's not a microcosm of the entire US population.)

(I'm not saying your suggestion isn't what must happen; I'm saying it isn't in the realm of what can happen.)

You're being extremely condescending, everyone is capable of free thinking. Prisoners of Plato's allegorical cave are blind through a lack of opportunity, not a lack of ability.

Critically-minded citizens should act as Socratic teachers. Our job is to ask the right questions, gently probing until we've disassembled their chains and lead them to the light.

It's a slow path, taken one question at a time.

In a vacuum, I would applaud your thinking.

Unfortunately, the nature of a country of three hundred million people means that you've got to scale, and Socratic dialogue doesn't scale.

Of course, we've had our educational system trashed, so I'm not sure that's an answer, either...

Unscalable, perhaps, but also battle tested by thousands of years of history. What is the alternative?

If the problem reduces to our crippled education system, what else can we do besides individual citizen engagement and education?

This is a problem that's been building up over decades. It will take at least as long to fix... if not longer, given our political disadvantage.

> Unscalable, perhaps, but also battle tested by thousands of years of history. What is the alternative?

I dunno. It's a hard problem. Plato liked philosopher kings. Maybe we try that. (Disclaimer: this is a joke. A joke is here. Do not well-actually me, humorless internet denizen. Thanks in advance.)

That's my point. Sometimes solutions simply aren't scalable... I think democracy is one of them.

That's not a bad thing. We have a solution, we know we can implement it. It's unscalable but still very easy on the individual level.

In a way, I agree. In another--activating the people to actually do it is not very easy, and thinking retail when the problem is wholesale seems to be a pretty good way to keep having things go to pot.

I have some ideas on this, I'm working on one at the moment in my spare time, but...well. We'll see. ;)

Well, I'm curious to see what you're thinking is better.

History has shown us the two sides of this coin... broadcasted dogmatic thinking (audience > 100), and empowering critical thinking at a smaller scale (audience ~ 10). The former tends to infect societies that have failed at the latter. We've yet to see anyone achieve broadcasted critical thinking.

Exactly. Not to mention, that not everyone is within reach of a critically-minded citizen; after all, population-density outside of urban areas is very low.

And one square-mile at a time.

The Southeast alone has acres upon acres of rural settlements (okay, fine, towns) with low population-density; it would take a significant expedition to spread "opportunity" to a noticeable portion of that population.

I wouldn't suggest "critical thinking" missions - change must come from within.

It's not like rural areas are completely red washed... most areas are below a 70/30 split, and the middle third are on the fence. We just need to help the 30% talk with the middle 30%.

The idea that conservatives should be represented in academia is a kind of a affirmative action, ironically - but for a group that has great power in the nation and world, not an oppressed one.

The test in academia should be not ideology, but whether your theories withstand scrutiny. Should environmental science departments hire climate change deniers, for ideological diversity? Should biology departments hire creationists? Should political science and history departments hire people who say Saddam Hussein had WMD and Obama is Kenyan?

>Should environmental science departments hire climate change deniers, for ideological diversity?

No, but part of the issue is actually embedded in this question. The description "climate change deniers" has become the accepted way to describe dissenters of certain climate theory.

Name what other scientific theories in which dissenters are labeled as such? Big bang deniers? standard model deniers? The anti-science string theorists? Of course critics of all these theories exist and we consider them still scientists. If valid critics don't exist, then something is very wrong.

The "anti-science", "denier" and from the opposing side "climate change hoax" memes are intended to shutdown discussion resulting in no information exchanging groups of different viewpoints and perpetuating the divergence of their views. Education on such subjects stalls when there can not exist a discussion where opposing sides have respect.

> critics of all these theories exist and we consider them still scientists.

That's not true; many are called "crackpots" and the like, and are excluded and ignored; the difference here is that these non-scientists are funded and backed by ideologues and the fossil fuel industry.

Not all ideas are valid or scientific; in fact, most are not. The standards for being taken seriously, especially by scientists, are clear.

>That's not true; many are called "crackpots" and the like

Not a term that is regularly circulated in scientific discussion. More typically these are labels around subjects in which politics has involved itself. When politics becomes involved, the stakes become much higher as money and power are involved and it becomes in ones best interest to silence opposition often by any means because the opposing opinion now is a direct threat to your career, business etc. Whereas beforehand opposing opinion was just that, an opinion with no more power to influence change and not threatening.

We can see this precisely unfold with climate change. Prior to 1997 conservative and liberal views were more closely inline. However, 1997 was the first time a political solution was proposed that favored political world views of liberal vs conservative. All of a sudden now opinion matters and critics became more involved and vocal. I would suspect if the political solution favored conservative world views then the terms 'climate change deniers' would be originating from the right as opposed to the left. The left would have become critical if they felt the solution was an impact to their political world views.

http://www.livescience.com/56396-americans-misinformed-on-cl...

The policy and political solution most widely proposed is a conservative one: Let the free market work out the solution, by pricing GHGs based on their true costs.

1) Conservatives view the solution as a tax and method of wealth distribution. Couldn't be more anti-conservative from this view point.

2) Typical conservatives are free market only in their rhetoric. Most are crony capitalist and will intervene in the market as they see fit.

3) A true free market solution could only be based on property rights. True cost can't be calculated from damage done as in this case it is too abstract. But based on property rights companies could be required to be carbon neutral and in that sense what ever cost is required to achieve that would be required of the company.

> The idea that conservatives should be represented in academia is a kind of a affirmative action, ironically

No, it would be affirmative action if they were given preferential treatment in order to increase their numbers. If instead just existing discrimination against them were removed, that would not be affirmative action.

> Should environmental science departments hire climate change deniers, for ideological diversity?

Strawman - no one is suggesting that.

Historically, many great scientists have been conservative as well as religious. Many people that fall into those groups accept evolution, climate change, and so forth - for example, the Catholic church accepts both of those.

Science isn't a partisan issue. But on college campuses, it looks that way with conservatives a shrinking minority.

I agree that people should not be discriminated against on college campuses for the ideology, only for bad ideas. But I don't know that conservatives are discriminated against or that their numbers are shrinking.

I've seen no data, and I've only heard those stories as part of the propaganda campaign to discredit anyone who might oppose the ideologues' movement.

EDIT: For some data, see the parent's other post here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13352697

E.g. the Boston Magazine link that was posted in this discussion tells the story of a few students that are afraid to "come out" as conservative.

That's very common, if you talk to conservatives on campus.

Now, this isn't necessarily focused, intentional discrimination. It might just be the usual "it's hard to be a small minority" issue. The majority might be "only" as guilty as it is when it doesn't accomomodate other minorities.

But there is more - just look at what people say about conservatives in this very thread. They are a hated minority. Some of their peers are even open enough as to admit their bias in surveys,

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/08/survey-finds-...

> a few students that are afraid to "come out" as conservative.

> That's very common, if you talk to conservatives on campus.

This is the kind of situation where I feel the need is great for real data and not anecdotes. There are just too many tropes and rumors. And even if the data bears it out, it could very well be that the people who are "afraid" are responding to false information, the same as people are afraid of terrorism.

> just look at what people say about conservatives in this very thread. They are a hated minority.

I haven't noticed anyone expressing hate in this thread. Also, we need to avoid conflating the concept "conservative" with the ideological movement that has appropriated it.

Finally, the idea of being a 'persecuted majority' is a staple of many propaganda campaigns. The Germans were told they were persecuted by the Jewish people, for example. People in the current ideological movement (we need a name for it besides "conservative") say the "MSM" persecutes them, though Fox News dominates cable news, the Wall Street Journal is the leading newspaper in the business world and one of the leaders otherwise, News Corp is very powerful in UK media, and talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, etc.) is almost all conservative - they aren't persecuted, they are the people in power. Similarly, the GOP is the dominant political party in the U.S.; the "conservatives" are the persecutors, if anything.

>The test in academia should be not ideology, but whether your theories withstand scrutiny.

Any what do you do, hypothetically speaking, if this requirement keeps out a large proportion of a specific ideological group, or if the process of science changes the views of individuals of that group, to the point where they leave it? And, what if, said ideological group is unwilling to accept that?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Why should people be included based on ideology? Put plainly, we want people who are factually right. Who wants otherwise?

The Middle Ages were defined, in a sense, by the priority of ideology over rationality. The enlightenment was a rejection of ideology in favor of factual accuracy about the world. The ideology may say the Sun revolves around the Earth, but the facts say otherwise. The ideology may say that that climate change isn't happening, but the facts say otherwise.

I'm not saying people should be excluded based on ideology, I'm asking what you do if a particular ideology is incompatible with seeking and holding "theories that withstand scrutiny".

Tbh, I think that is ultimately what we are dealing with - a very popular culture and ideology that eschews reason in favour of conformity.

I would argue that at least in the US the people who call themselves conservative are not really conservative. They are hard right wing ideologues. What they did right was to raise the abortion issue so a lot of people vote for them no matter what else they say. Their positions on climate change , the environment, health care and economics (more tax cuts for the highest incomes) are simply not accessible to rational investigation. I have never heard anything coming from the Republicans party that would indicate deep thoughts about these issues. Either they don't want to hear about it (climate change) or they flat out lie (health care in other countries).

I bet a lot of people who used to be called conservative are now called liberal because the Republicans have moved so far to the right .

I have to repeat what I said above. What you say about conservatives does not match up with the conservatives I know and listen to.

I admit my sample may be not representative. So I can't be sure. But how many of your friends are conservatives, and how many of them have you talked to in depth about this stuff?

I've seen plenty of research saying the Republican Party has moved far to the right.

Personally, having talked to people who are Trump supporters and fellow travelers, my experience matches the GP. It's an ideological movement: ideology - not facts, democracy, national welfare, global welfare, humanitarianism, morality or other normal considerations - seems to predict what they support: Climate change denial, Trump, racial and religious discrimination, etc.

It is a shame your reasonable conservative friends don't seem to be getting prominent positions in the party. A look at Trump's cabinet nominations shows ample evidence for these criticisms, and a few more can be found scattered through the senate.

If it's just a few in the entire senate, then that sounds like it's just a small minority that is extreme? Like every group has.

"Every group" is not led, part and parcel, by its extremist minority. The Republicans have normed theirs to the degree that questioning extremism might as well get you thrown out.

I mean...you know what "RINO" is, right?

I'd add that it's also trending to be less and less of a minority.

I don't agree with 100% of the article

Me neither, but it's a really good start. Something that we hadn't yet seen good writing on anywhere regarded as even remotely serious.

The problem with discussing "fake news" isn't to say inaccurate information hasn't been taking on a life of it's own, but the current "fake news" narrative is a slight of hand trick. In appearing to debate conclusions, it's tricking you into accepting the form of the argument.

Could this be a reason people don't trust "experts" any more?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/07/18/how-this-g...

Experts are increasingly politicized. News reports and political groups pick whoever will support (or sell out) their lies and delusions... credentials and background don't matter when consumers refuse to do their own research and hold the news accountable for the truth.

Interesting claims, but what are they based on?

It's bizarre that you try to force things into a conservative/"liberal" linear continuum. These are not real categories, these are media categories, "liberal" as Americans use it is simply a made-up word, and many right-wing traditionalist nationalists all over the world tend towards socialism.

This is about power, and how sovereignty has moved from the sovereign to the populace, but now to the powerful. The sovereign was expected to be ruling on behalf of the deity (or as the deity) and had a responsibility to tend and care for its creation. With popular sovereignty, representatives of the people were supposed to focus the people's will in order to accomplish the people's goals. Under neoliberal capitalism, the wielders of power are specifically admonished to only be concerned about their own interests, so as not to break the forces that automagically put everything to right. To the extent that our governments are controlled by the wealthy, we live in a laissez-faire system, with laws as assets to be manipulated.

When the wielders of power have no moral obligation to anyone but themselves, they are untrusted, and untrustworthy. When the system recognizes no moral obligation, being caught in deception doesn't disqualify you from being rehired, it shows that you are willing to do what needs to be done to win.

People recognize this, and use what's left of their control of government to disrupt the current consensus as much as possible. Without Brexit or Trump, they would simply start murdering each other and the particular wielders of power who they feel hurt them the most.

Of course, I'm pretty much restating the article in a different way.

The reason people don't trust scientists is because they shouldn't.

-----

edit:

To make it personal, the reason I believe in global warming is because the profit motive tends to point in the other direction, and because my naive understanding of the mechanism sounds plausible. The fact that it remains the dominant theory when the dominant financing all goes in the other direction makes me attribute that dominance to a residual dedication to truth over self-interest in many scientists. It is not because scientific consensus is truth, which is a form of vulgar market-worship. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it turns out to be horseshit, and in retrospect should always have been seen as horseshit. It would surprise me if that happened, and there weren't also some other competing channel to self-interest that I wasn't aware of. I think that many suspect that the academic hierarchy represents that channel, and that's why they are suspicious of global warming.

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