Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

> We saw this last fall with the wide range of views around the Carlson lecture.

If anyone else was wondering what was being referenced above, I'm guessing it's this:

https://thetech.com/2021/10/14/carlson-lecture-cancellation:

> Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) Department Head Robert van der Hilst canceled the department’s annual John Carlson Lecture due to controversy surrounding the invited speaker, Professor Dorian Abbot of the University of Chicago, and his views on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts within academia....

> In a Newsweek op-ed titled “The Diversity Problem on Campus,” published August 2021, co-authors Abbot and Stanford Professor Iván Marinovic wrote that DEI in academia seeks to increase the representation of some groups through discrimination against members of other groups, violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment, compromises the university’s mission, and undermines the public's trust in universities and their graduates.

I don't understand, if he wrote an op-ed uncovering racial discrimination in academia, why would people who are (presumably) against racial discrimination want to cancel his lecture?

> why would people who are (presumably) against racial discrimination want to cancel his lecture?

Because they are not against racial discrimination.

In 1984, there is a scene at the end where O'Brien (a party member) interrogates and tortures Winston (the main character). He asks him political questions and demands truthful answers, and if he spots that Winston lies to avoid pain, but knows the truth, O'Brien still electrocutes him. At the end O'Brien shows him 4 fingers and asks how many fingers Winston sees. He says 4! And gets electrocuted. Then he says 5, and gets electrocuted again. After many attempts, Winstom cries "wtf it matters how many fingers are there! it's whatever number you want!" O'Brien, pleased finally, releases Winston. O'Brien wanted to teach that truth shall not be appealed to in presence of authority, for the only truth is the will of the authority, and when the will changes on a whim, the truth does too.

That would be because they are in fact racists.

Because they redefined the meaning of word "racism" such that their views are no longer considered racist. Unsurprisingly, that also redefined the meaning of "against racial discrimination". Tl,dr: We no longer understand each other.

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

This is a false equivalence. Galileo was concerned with physical fact, whereas this professor's controversial opinions are sociological and fairly subjective--they boil down to a value judgement.

That's not to condemn (or defend) the professor. This just isn't a fair characterization of the debate.

A fact not yet widely verified and an opinion cannot, in general, be distinguished

I disagree. We can judge the falsifiability of statements without knowing whether or not they're false.

E.g. "red is a better color than blue" is obviously a subjective opinion, where as "ʻOumuamua is made of frozen nitrogen" is obviously a falsifiable statement.

Right, there are specific instances of opinions which cannot be verifiable facts, but the verifiability of a fact is not, in general, itself verifiable!

True! I like this formulation of your statement

I'm not so sure, even the helio/geocentrism is a matter of opinion due to relativity of motion.

Hah this is a really good point. IIRC the Catholic Church was actually OK with using heliocentric mathematical models, just not with interpreting them as factual.

I wonder what really happened. I'm guessing Galileo was one of those vocal people that just can't help poking the bear.

Edit: reading up a bit more it seems Galileo had a bit of a Linus T. streak, with gratuitous insults and ad hominems against authority. Makes me want to read the source documents now :-)

This isn't true, because one frame is an inertial frame and the other is not (i.e. not real).

"The MIT statement on free expression states that in order to encourage provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, the university will protect all speech within the boundaries of the First Amendment."

"Therefore, as a junior member of the Flat Earth Society, I demand MIT provide me an auditorium and a microphone to legitimize and amplify my nonconformist opinion about the shape of the Earth."

This is also a false equivalence.

MIT is obviously only going to consider inviting speakers that would appeal to some subset of its community. The statement doesn't give anyone a right to demand an audience at MIT, it gives the MIT community license to invite controversial speakers.

Which gives the lie to all the sanctimonious talk about protecting all speech that's legal under the First Amendment.

MIT isn't protecting all legal speech, they're amplifying speech the MIT community wants to hear, and suppressing speech the community doesn't want to hear.

If the MIT community wants to legitimize and amplify speech about perpetuating the current hierarchy of elites, and suppress protest speech aiming to open up and overturn that hierarchy, it's up to the community.

It has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

Contrary to all the feel-good language about platforming nonconformity, the goal is not to provide an equal platform to all viewpoints, because that would be ridiculous.

Free speech isn't about giving all ideas an equal footing. It's about letting any individual speak their mind without fear of repercussions. And that is exactly what MIT appears to be pledging to do here.

Ideas are still subject to the marketplace, and the MIT community is a very discriminating market.

Are there many members of the community at MIT that would be eager to see such a talk?

You might be surprised. The MIT Lecture Series Committee (a student club which now mostly screens movies) invited Gene "Time Cube" Ray to give a talk: https://web.mit.edu/iap/www/iap02/searchiap/iap-4330.html

AIUI this was controversial, but not for the reasons you might think: people were concerned that the guy wasn't well and that encouraging him wasn't kind.

If someone wants to try to promote flat earth ideas let them. I think it's condescending to MIT students to think this is somehow harming them.

People are free to promote whatever crackpot ideas they wish. The question is whether MIT should provide a platform for everyone.

Since there are infinite crackpot ideas but only one Kresge Auditorium, the MIT community must make value judgments about what speakers and ideas are worthy, and which ones are not.

No institution should be compelled to provide a platform for all speakers and ideas. Some speakers and ideas are worthy of MIT, and many are not.

MIT faculty and leadership should embrace their fiduciary duty to make these hard judgments. They should grapple with what it means for speakers and ideas to be worthy, and what speech should not receive MIT legitimacy and amplification.

Instead this statement evades all of that by pretending to support all speech as long as it's legal.

> Since there are infinite crackpot ideas but only one Kresge Auditorium, the MIT community must make value judgments about what speakers and ideas are worthy, and which ones are not

But this is the key thing: Abbot was giving a talk on environmental studies, and confirmed affirmative action was not part of the talk he was giving. The push to exclude him was on the basis of something other the science of his talk.

Here's a better analogy: would it be appropriate to cancel musician'd concert because he's a flat earther? The argument that we have only one auditorium and we should allocate it to a better musician does not make sense unless there's a compelling reason to say that his musical performance abilities are affected by a belief in a flat earth.

Sounds good to me. Bring on the debate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com