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Comment by lgleason | Hacker News Reader

At some point I really hope that data, science, facts and reason can prevail over the craziness that has taken over university campuses and society as a whole. Most reasonable people believe in the spirit of social justice etc., but the activists have turned it into a zero sum power grab that has very little to do with the stated mission. The irony is that the level of hypocrisy on that side is at the same levels as the religious person who commits all sorts of horrible acts while fervently preaching against people who are engaged those horrible acts.

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I find is surprising that this stuff gets discussed on HN at all, and then I'm more surprised that comments like your own aren't the highest voted.

Every reasonable person agrees that (lower case) social justice is our goal. Let's use a scientific approach to get closer to making it a reality.

One of the author's points is that it's a fallacy to believe people can be explained / lead purely by rational thinking or facts. Emotions play a huge part in human life and realities like this will always need to be taken into consideration when deciding on policy.

I agree, proper research needs to be done and unbiased facts need to be found, but thinking once you have this you will get everybody on board with your new idea because it's "scientific" is unrealistic.

EDIT: to clarify, by "the author" I meant the author of the book, not the Nautilus-article

Totally agree. The goal part isn't scientific. Our emotions lead us to decide the kind of world we want to live in. I think there is more agreement there than conventional and social media are leading us to believe.

Science doesn't justify current Social Justice (capitalized) beliefs and methods, so science gets tossed aside.

>> The irony is that the level of hypocrisy on that side is at the same levels as the religious person who commits all sorts of horrible acts while fervently preaching against people who are engaged those horrible acts.

Really? Asking to consider think in non-binary terms is the same as religious terrorism?

That's a highly uneducated analogy.

But this told me what I'm up against:

>> At some point I really hope that data, science, facts and reason

Did you ever think that maybe you just don't understand facts and reason when they conflict with your beliefs? That's usually the case when a someone (almost always a boy/man) please for reasoned debate. It means they are losing and are calling the refs.

The intent with my statement was more around religious leaders who would give fire and brimstone sermons about sexual immorality while they were having affairs, molesting kids etc... With that being said it has reached a level of violence, IE: Evergreen, Berkeley etc. and many are concerned that it will escalate.

On college campuses today (and many parts of society) there is no longer room for a debate to lose etc.. You either buy into the ideology being sold or face significant backlash...IE: being black listed, having someone go after your job, physically attacked, being labelled as a (pick your favorite ad hominem), banned from campus, banned from events etc.. All for daring to express a view that goes against the orthodoxy.

Many people are open to new ideas being presented to them even if they go against their current world view....and well reasoned people will consider them. But, when people try to force those ideas on you with severe threats if you don't believe, those well reasoned people will also, rightfully, be skeptical.

>At some point I really hope that data, science, facts and reason can prevail over the craziness that has taken over university campuses and society as a whole.

This statement assumes that traditional (pre-today) notions of data, science and facts were (and are) inherently unbiased and pure, the product of a time before "unreasonable" people tried to change them and modify the standard. I see no reason to think this is true, other than in the sense that their subjectivity was one you preferred to the current one. By presenting your own case as "data, science, facts" you're ignoring the heated debate since about the 60s (such as the Positivism Dispute[0]) and what science really is, and even the possibility that it is inherently gendered[1] and the theory of falsification as expounded by the likes of Popper can't even stand up as he himself explained it[2]. In that sense, it is a naive view driven by the false presumption that the collection, access and presentation of such data is disconnected from both the institutions that produce them (science with its methodological and metaphysical systems) and from the society that must suffer them (subjectivity being presented as objectivity).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism_dispute

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-science/

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/#KarPop

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