https://newdiscourses.com/2020/09/first-amendment-case-freed...
Each belief is to some extent unfalsifiable. There's no scientific or first-principles reasoning that tells us which value should take precedence in a given situation.
The actual nonbelievers are the ones who have no interest in the war, and will go along with whichever position their social circles deem acceptable.
For example, You can believe that structural inequality is real and very bad while still holding academic freedom and freedom of speech as more important (its not like they are even conflicting views. Entrenched power structures hinder the abilities of the descriminated to effectively exercise their freedoms). Or you can believe that there are power structures (invisble and visible) that reenforce inequity, but blindly tearing them down in a revolutionary fashion will just replace them with an even worse systems, just like how in politics most revolutions against oppression result in a new government that is even more oppressive. I'm sure there are even more views then that.
I think that the two sides come into conflict when each believes theirs is the supreme ideal. There are some who believe that destroying inequitable power structures justifies overriding freedom of speech[0]. Many feel strongly that no cause is worth sacrificing that freedom. Most of us may have a more nuanced view, but the war is mostly fought between the absolutists.
> most revolutions against oppression result in a new government that is even more oppressive
A lot of freedoms were also won through rebellious or revolutionary action. "Revolutions usually aren't worth it" could be a valid reading of history, but it's not the takeaway from my (admittedly limited) reading.
[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-mille...
yeah, i dont mind losing freedom of speech, i never had any. why should everyone else have freedom?
except it didnt work. "freedom of speech" was narrowly defined and limited to only some groups which had real freedom. meanwhile, other topics were taboo either explicitly with laws, through threads, or by blacklisting in newsmedia.
consider black rights. the BLM movement didnt start now because it just happened now, it started now because we finally got to a point where more people stood up to demand rights. in the 1980s and 1990s, if you had a black criminal on a tv show or movie, it was "artistic freedom" but if you had a jewish villain, it was "anti-semitism"
for decades, those with power decided what freedom was allowed (criticizing arabs) and which would be legally disallowed (boycotting israel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
except now people got smart, basically now no one has freedom of speech because everyone can cancel everyone. is it productive? no, but it is more fair than only some groups getting freedom of speech and pretending the country was fair
For what it's worth, the "woke" people that I know in the real world (not twitter) are in fact advocating the sorts of "actual solutions" you mentioned. I know some people pushing hard for police reform but not dismantling or defunding of police. Actually none of those ideas strike me as very controversial. The more controversial "real-world" woke ideas I've seen are around affirmative action, forced pay equality, etc. And yes, I understand the arguments against those things.
For example: https://www.mpd150.com/faq/
Not really, just more of the same. Sounds completely delusional.
Defensive violence (or a credible ability to project it) is the best cure for offensive violence. It exists in every society, either officially (cops) or unofficially (gangs, mafia, warlords, private guards, ...).
All these "no police" proposals fail when trying to answer the most basic question, "what do I do when someone steals my car with my kid in it". Mind you - they're fully aware that the only possible answer is "violence" - either cops or private guns - which is why they're desperately trying to avoid having to answer this question. But this also makes all these proposals completely unworkable in reality.
It's basically the same as idealistic communes - yeah, you can "peacefully coexist" in a "free for all, cooperative, no ownership, no conflict" society - as long as you outsource enough of the essentials (military, police, social security, emergency medical & fire services, ...) to the rest of the society. But there's no examples (and plenty of counter-examples) of an actual society (large, post-industrialized one) existing in this way.
> The root cause of people wanting to steal cars is not a lack of police
If your idea takes as preconditions solving greed, poverty and mental illnesses, you're better of finding a different idea, one that's even remotely possible.
"Defund the police" is accomplishing nothing other than making mainstream voters deeply suspicious that any "reforms" are actually designed to benefit gang members. You are creating a political climate which makes the problems nearly impossible to "take on" effectively.
Core values can't be falsified, but a belief system built atop these values can be shown to be inconsistent, meaning it can essentially be used to argue for anything. Like in mathematics, an ideal system would pick core axioms/values that don't lead to inconsistency.
since the principle of falsibiability itself is unfalsifiable, I can't accept it on the basis of hypocrisy.
[Disclaimer: The following is a description of my current thoughts on the topic. I could very well be wrong, but I thought sharing them might make for an interesting discussion.]
That said, I have an anti-PC view on this topic that AFAICT is somewhat a-religious. My perception (i.e., I very well may be wrong) has been that the pro-PC arguments I've heard contain some logical inconsistencies that I've been unable to resolve. And that some organizations with pro-PC policies use ad baculum or ad hominem attacks to avoid serious debate about their position's weaknesses. I think it's obnoxious to force others to obey their moralizing while refusing to submit their views to serious debate.
I agree, but it is even more obnoxious than that. Watching from the sidelines of Twitter, anyone who challenges a 'canceller' just gets bombarded with name calling (racism, sexism, phobic, etc) even if they're not and even if the comments were well intention ed
The non-believers are just unlucky enough to be within the blast radius.
Could not find that part of the letter—mind quoting the passage supporting this claim?
If they were really for free speech, period, that's what they would say. But they don't say that. They say they are for "the free and unfettered conduct of scientific research and debate". But who gets to decide what counts as "scientific research and debate" and what doesn't? They do.
Also: who says they do decide what’s scientific research and debate?
Do you think that these same scientists would claim that researching, say, eugenics, is an acceptable use of an academic institution's resources and brand name? If not, who's drawing the line and what is the line?
Because that is how academia works. And they're all academics.
No, they're not. Scientific research and debate are not the only topics that get discussed at academic institutions; in fact no topic should be off limits for discussion at academic institutions. Nor should the institutions themselves have any privileged position in deciding what counts as relevant for a particular topic, whether it's scientific research and debate or anything else.
Once you see it as a religious war it's by far the best analogy to understand the dynamics, at least to me. It's also potentially more than an analogy to the point where the underlying belief system ought to be treated as a religion from a legal standpoint, for the benefit of everyone involved, including the believers.
If "religious war" means a sectarian war, in which both sides are believers, just believers in different sects (often different only in details so minor that outsiders can't even see what the fuss is about), then I agree. I'm not aware, historically, of anything called a "religious war" that wasn't a sectarian war in that sense.
This might just be a difference in terminology. However, it might not. If you think one of the sides in the "religious war" we are talking about is "unbelievers", then we disagree on something of substance. "Unbelievers" in this context would mean people who just think we should have free speech, period; that nobody should be suppressed simply because of what they are saying. But, as I said in my previous comment, I don't think either side in the current "religious war" meets this criterion; both sides agree that some speech should be suppressed, they just disagree on exactly which speech.
Note that this applies not just to the particular "dustup" referenced in the open letter, but to the larger "cold war" you describe. Nobody is fighting for free speech, period. The different sides are just fighting for different rules about what can be suppressed. One side's rules currently seem a lot more draconian than the other's, but both sides want some such rules.
In this specific back-and-forth in academia, the underlying difference once you get past superficialities and rhetorical tricks to pull people into one side or the other by glossing over fundamental premises, is not about what speech is permissible or not. Both sides have their views on that claim emerge from their underlying worldviews around how racism, discrimination, gender stereotypes, and things inject themselves into human interactions and what levers exist for affecting those influences.
My use of 'sects' in this example was a bit of a misnomer, I consider the situation going on here to just be a conflict that's emerging due to these divergent worldviews that is localized around a specific community and domain, and the rift is cast in stark relief when situations like this finally manifest.
"Scientific work should be judged on the basis of scientific merit, independent of the researcher's identity or personal views"
This stands in direct opposition to the (increasingly common) belief that scientific merit is at best just one aspect, at worst a complete myth, and that the "lived experience" of the author (particularly through their racial and gender experience) contributes as much, if not more, to the validity and weight one ought to give to their scientific contributions and the conclusions they draw from them.
This may sound ridiculous and you may think "surely they don't actually mean what it sounds like they are saying" but indeed they do, strongly. This is why it ought to be treated as a religion.
The reason it ties back to the worldview I mentioned is if you believe that all human experience is merely an expression of oppressive forces and cultural constructs then "lived experience" ought to be the primary determinant of truth, since the scientific method itself is one such cultural construct, and likely a tool of oppression at that given its Euro-centric origins, and hence deeply flawed and broken in comparison to the "truth" of the collective experiences of diverse people.
Yes, I get what the writers of the letter say they are arguing for. I'm just not buying it.
What is this "scientific merit"? What it turns out to mean, on closer inspection, is "consensus of people who have scientific credentials in the applicable fields". Which is just as much of an "artificial social construct" as the BS they are complaining about.
In other words, the problem is actually much worse than these letter writers realize. As I said: the problem is not that a bunch of "unbelievers" who just want to decide things rationally are fighting against religious zealots. The problem is that all of the sides who are fighting are religious zealots--just of different religious sects. In science, for example, nobody is fighting for "scientific merit is judged by predictive track record, and nothing else--if your theory makes wrong predictions it is wrong, period, no matter how many credentials you have or how many papers you have published or how many other scientists agree with you".
Note that this is not directly articulated in the letter either; but if you look at how science is being done today, including the science these letter writers are doing, that's what you'll see. At least, that's what I see.
Which science as an institution is supposed to help protect us against, yes. But science as an institution as it currently exists, which is the institution that all these academics are working in, does not do that. And these academics are simply not talking about that at all; I doubt if they even realize it.
It's interesting that the "lived experience" of artists is fully factored into the personal branding and marketing of those artists. I wonder if academics just have an expectation that this is what diversity inclusion looks like.
The ranking is simply a comparison of that number.
So you’d first have to define the relevant part of the population, which is hopeless. And then you have debates about who should be part of the debate, which is not much better than what we have now.
Did I suggest otherwise?
It may be hard to do accurately, but that doesn't make it hopeless. If both sides want to exclude "crackpots" and people who's contributions lack technical quality, that is simply accounted for in the estimate. Whether you think that's fair to therefore characterize everyone as "intolerant" is another matter . I certainly wouldn't characterize them that way, though I get the impression the parent poster might, though perhaps only as a way to claim moral equivalence between all sides. I would expect there to remain quantifiable differences between those who claim they want a "healthy debate from all sides" and those who want to achieve social progress by limiting access to the debate.