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Comment by Invictus0 | Hacker News Reader

The Ivy leagues today are anything but diverse in thought, this should be obvious. What actually exists is a repressive liberal orthodoxy, and no dissent is tolerated.

I ought to expand on this since this comment will surely be controversial. I make no comment on which view is right or wrong; but suppose the conservative view were favored, and any disagreement with the ideology got your fired from your job, publicly shamed, made a pariah, etc.? Would you feel comfortable sharing dissenting opinions? There is no open debate, no sense that truer speech will naturally win out over disfavored speech, no sense that people have the right to say and think unorthodox beliefs.

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This is pretty far removed from my direct experience with Ivy League alumni and professors (coauthors, colleagues, coworkers). It is a common refrain though. Elements of conservatism are sometimes viewed as being eschewed when they are ideologically based and the evidence doesn't support claims. But this is true generally and a consequence of the academic incentive structure where there are never enough resources to fund.

On the other hand, academic malfeasance does occur (e.g. Alzheimers research in recent decades), so the system is far from perfect, but the risky/rewarding incentive is to absolutely decry the current state as being completely wrong. Consider Nassim Taleb's popularization after the Great Recession as a great example, or earlier Paul Krugman's transaction cost theories.

It is not at all removed from my direct experience. (And I am, in fact, an Ivy League alumnus.)

See https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.ht... for the shocking level of acceptance of Marxist ideas in the social sciences, despite a lack of anything resembling evidence for it. And a tremendous amount of evidence that attempts at implementing Marxism have done insane amounts of damage to the world.

How is 18% Marxists in the social sciences evidence for "a repressive liberal orthodoxy, and no dissent is tolerated"?

Personal experience can be source of bias in evaluation, News @ 10! /s :)

It is evidence that academia doesn't require evidence for left-wing claims. So to the extent that they do that, insisting on evidence from conservatives is discrimination. (I'd prefer that everyone's claims require evidence.)

But https://www.johnlocke.org/academics-support-discrimination-a... speaks more directly to your question. Conservatives are discriminated against in academia for being conservative.

Doesn't this just mean that conservatives believe Marxism is an unacceptable worldview, since it exists?

Why would we police evidence-based thought in academia?

If the thought in academia which leads to Marxism was actually evidence-based, then it should be easy to cite evidence for Marxism. You'd just have to read what they say and quote their arguments.

But it is not. Evidence for Marxism that I've seen boils down to rhetoric. Evidence against Marxism involves mass famines, low economic productivity, failed predictions, and so on. Therefore a significant fraction of Marxists in academia must support it for reasons other than the evidence.

"Marxism" is a tricky term to use in an discussion because it means such different things to different people. The commonly understood meaning of "Marxism" differs significantly from the socioeconomic theories and models that Marx wrote about.

Even among academics, there are many different schools of Marxist thought.

The evidence against Marx's theories isn't "mass famines, low economic productivity" but his failed predictions of worldwide revolutions.

This may not be fair, but I am going to hazard a guess that you haven't read much of Marx's work and are instead operating off a pop cultural background understanding. That's not a bad thing, that's true of most people. One possible reason for the prevalence of "Marxism" in the social sciences is that I would suspect that they are more likely to have read his work and are probably self identifying as "Marxist" under a pretty different definition of the term than the one used in pop culture.

First, please note that "failed predictions" in my list of arguments against Marxism. My list was, "Evidence against Marxism involves mass famines, low economic productivity, failed predictions, and so on." In other words people who have attempted to apply Marx's theories have created disasters, places which follow his theories do poorly, academics who apply his theories to predicting stuff, get it wrong, and so on. As far as I can tell, any evidence-based assessment of Marxism comes up with a big fat zero.

Second, I wouldn't call myself particularly well-educated on Marxism, but I know somewhat more than the average person. And you're right that a Maoist is different than someone who studies Critical Race Theory, even though both may self-identify as Marxists. (And conversely both may NOT self-identify as Marxists even though Marxist thought has a deep impact on both.) However the "big fat zero" for Marxism includes, as far as I know, all derivative theories as well. But there are enough of them that I know little enough about that I won't recommend being particularly confident of that stronger statement.

Can’t you say the same for capitalism? Much of the support is rhetorical mentioning freedom and rational decision-making while the evidence against capitalism involves mass homelessness, poverty, poor healthcare, imperialism, militarism, bad predictions, and huge imbalances in the distribution of wealth and opportunity.

I'm reminded of https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526975113597489154:

Yale is the epicenter of the woke mind virus attempting to destroy civilization.

Paul Graham's immediate chime of support shows it isn't just a piece of random silliness on Elon Musk's part. And other things I've seen (eg the harassment of Amy Chua) certainly fit.

This amicus brief speaking up for racism and discrimination (as long as it is against those funny looking Asians) is a minor piece of the general pattern.

How exactly does Amicus entail racism and discrimination against Asians?

The lawsuit that they are filing an Amicus in was brought by an Asian-American organization for the purpose of getting Harvard to stop specifically discriminating against Asian-Americans.

Therefore the brief is arguing for racism and discrimination against Asians.

What is particularly galling is that the argument in the brief is defending the university's ability to pick students who have been affected by their race. Thereby implicitly arguing that Asian-Americans have NOT been affected by their race.

Meanwhile, back in reality, hate crimes against Asian-Americans are up over 300% nationwide: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-c....

The purpose of affirmative action policies is to help under-represented groups. Asians aren't under-represented at Yale, they are 19 percent of the student population, while only 6 percent of the American population.

So asian students are being punished because other asian students did too well? Back in the early-to-mid 20th century, universities had limits to how many jewish students could join each year, with the argument that if they didn't, jews would make up the entire university population. Are you in favor of bringing back that policy, as well?

There are other policies universities have established to create a student body that is somewhat reflective of America -- they discriminate based on geography(multi-regional), on socio-economics (first generation students preferred), on sex (males preferred), athletic ability (the strong and fast preferred), age (youth preferred), and on veteran status (veterans preferred). Conservatives, being who they are, chose to focus on race.

I will answer your question with a question:

If the Supreme Court requires universities select their student based solely on standardized tests, and consequently this results in our top universities being made up of primarily of foreign nationals (there are billions of Chinese and Indians, and it is illegal to discriminate based on national origin), would you favor that inevitable outcome?

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