Can someone ELI5 what is this conflict between truth and social justice Haidt refers to?
E.g. if your research gets the "wrong" results regarding police shootings then anyone who defends your research will have to resign: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1
And anything regarding differences in crime numbers or IQ? Forget it.
I’d reflect on that.
I'd reflect on that.
Equity is equality of outcomes (done by explicitly redirecting resources as needed to get this result). As opposed to equal opportunity which is what is generally meant by "equality".
Or to ELI5 it's treating people differently to get them all to the same position, instead of treating everyone the same. The argument for "equity" is then that we aren't all starting from the same place. It's the same line of reasoning that justified affirmative action in the US.
- Equality: We are both free to operate in an open market to secure the best outcomes for ourselves
- Equity: You made $1000, I made $100, we both get $550
Wokes will bend over backwards to paint equality as an impossible project, claiming that it is doomed because of historical white supremacy, generational oppression, moon phases, etc. We're asked to believe uncritically that the goal of equal opportunity is equal outcome, and commanded to pursue equal outcome at all costs lest we are labeled racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist; de-platformed from all social media and made infamous and unemployable so we can't work to support our families. Equality is the American civil rights movement, equity is literally communism.
Equity is not “literally communism”, it’s the pretty simple understanding that if you always start 40 meters ahead of someone in a 100 meter race, you’re likely to always finish first and they won’t have a chance.
So we put more (and therefore unequal) resources into helping the competitor who’s having to run 40 more meters than you.
So, to each according to their needs, and from each according to their ability, more or less?
That's incorrect. The goal or schema of communism is not "equal outcomes". That might be the crude rubric of some state capitalist societies of the past, e.g. equal wages regardless of rank, but in true communism the abundance of resources permits anyone to have their needs met and for anyone to realize their full abilities.
One can criticize its naivety. But please do not conflate it with the mean and frankly misanthropic world view of the woke crowd, in which large swathes of humanity are condemned to endless self flagellation.
heh
I'd avoid using either in any polemic for a better world, and stick to the original words of the communist manifesto, which have not been bettered: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need!
In other words a researcher studying a topic unrelated to diversity will need to lie by claiming that there is a link.
As threat actors account for a non-trivial fraction of global economic activity [6], we expect our research to play an active role in the co-creation of a more inclusive and diverse lifeworld for the people of earth."
I do - I think reasonably - dispute the applicability of the outputs of many of our knowledge production institutions to social justice questions. (Just as I don't dispute that there are, conversely many which are).
If we find ourselves in a situation where we can't make a useful distinction between research that is and isn't relavent to social justice, I think we're at risk of our language seeming vaccuous and nonsensical.
The question that triggered his reaction is (quoting from the article) 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.' Indeed in principle they could just answer that it doesn't. What is left out here is why they are asking this. If the purpose of the question is unclear then researchers may feel incentivised to lie to 'fit' the requirements.
My personal view is that this is much ado about nothing. More likely than not most people will ignore the answers. There will, however, be reviewers who use that to reject papers.
It’s Galileo all over again.
So everything must be politicised. "How does your new caching algorithm promote social justice?". (If the same criteria were applied in CS).
And this will be here before you know it unless more people start calling bullshit.
This is a funny anachronism and the very opposite of science.
Kendi is a key promoter of "anti-racism", which is described in the above quote.
Many institutions are signing on to this agenda, which requires people to view everything through this ideological (social justice) lens and to participate in discriminatory activity as described above. This lens ensures that instead of seeking truth, you will just find more social injustice. A demon under every rock, if you will.
Of course they want the blood feuds to continue forever.
We can all hopefully agree that:
A) Redlining existed
B) Redlining was explicitly racist
C) Redlining has impacts that are still felt today
Let's use an antiracist lens to talk about it and compare to a modern, liberal "just don't be racist" lens.
The standard liberal response is, "well, redlining is over, and we know now not to do that. So, problem solved, right?"
The antiracist lens might be, "there are still people suffering from the impact of Redlining. The people who benefited from it should be helping those who suffered from it." In this case, wealthy white folks explicitly benefited from Redlining. Maaaaaybe we should tap on the shoulders of wealthy white folks and say, "hey, there was a major injustice done very recently, we want to fix it, and since you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it."
My heritage is Polish. How much do the Germans owe me?
This is true for historical systematic oppression of any kind.
We're getting now to one of the bigger problems with the philosophy you're describing: What's "you" here? Is "you" people in the same genetic category as the people who benefited from redlining. Those who happen to look like these people, but share actual no genetic ancestry (say, because they were immigrants) or perhaps do not share the privilege (say, because they were born poor or had other disadvantages) might take exception. Push them too hard, you become the oppressor.
There's then a Kafkaesque attitude that manifests that says, "I don't care what your protestations are on this topic, nor will I hear your case, you belong to X [ where X is social group, economic class, identity group, race, or whatever ] and you should accept sacrifices for the great good. Full stop. If you deny it you're the enemy."
That's one reason why many people view highly "corrective" actions in the realm of social relations or economic re-organizations with a strong amount of terror. We certainly have strong examples of terror manifesting in the 20th century in completely separate parts of the world and at massive scale - always for the greater good.
Regarding your second point, that you belong to X, so you are the enemy. I agree. Except on economic class. For context, I made roughly $850k last year, and my taxes were paltry. It is because of people in my economic class and above they we have a lot of the problems we do.
If you make a million a year, you can absolutely afford to give more.
(I do this by spending my money on mutual aid projects, bail funds, debt relief, community owned housing, forest conservation, etc. I put about $350k into community projects that had little to no direct benefit for me. I say this only to deal with the inevitable, "why don't you put your money where your mouth is" comments I receive when I say we wealthy folks should be taxed much more.)
Well, there's the problem. You can't declare something fixed, and you have to have standards to check against. Those people just aren't trying and you can't write every "standard liberal" off because you personally know lazy ones.
But yes, the race-blind answer would be to help people still experiencing those first-order (lack of ownership) and second-order (lack of generational equity) problems by tackling obstacles to low-end ownership and invest in wealth and estate planning classes, assisting with secondary education, etc.
A multitude of strategies and a goal of trying those and other things until the original victims are helped, while trying not the name those victims explicitly. In doing so, helping anyone similarly disadvantaged.
> antiracist lens might be, [...] wealthy white folks [...] you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it.
The anti-racist lens mentions race a lot. I'm not just saying that to be snarky but because I believe that's harmful. Like the news reporting thoughtlessly about suicides.
But I don't see in that view is any concern for finding the unfair beneficiaries - merely all white people. This is where it goes from looking racist to being racist.
Most damningly, anti-racists don't have any consistent or desirable ideas on what the problems are or how the funds would go to help. It's all about race, categorizing and separating and stigmatizing by race, and confiscating by race, but barely if ever about defining and planning to fix the problems for people of any race, let alone all.
> people in my economic class [from another post]
I feel that this class-based analysis is much more useful and less counter-productive.
It's been a while since I've watched the lecture, but what I remember is that Haidt sees the academy seeking truth as (potentially?) incompatible with the academy seeking social justice. As such, he anticipates a day when universities will have to choose individually which path they will follow.
I suspect that's the context in which Haidt is making this decision.
It completely taints your research and any results you might come to.
The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth.
Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)
Yes, and unavoidably so. That is why it is society's task to structure the universities in such a fashion that those goals align with society's goals.
This comment is also a bit odd given the context of the last 5 years of society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
This has been ongoing for ever. This happens because there's a big overlap between rich, powerful, and educated groups, and there's simply a fuckton of bad "us vs them" arguments that pick one easy to identify trait and attack anyone using that.
And of course the ongoing globalization led to a lot of job displacement. Whole regions suffered and continue to suffer heavily, and ... while the whole country reaps the benefits the affected areas only got a lip service. (And of course a lot of federal transfer payments.) This created a big group ripe for populist resentment, ready to project the drawbacks of free markets onto whatever Trump said. China. Mexico. Millenials. Green stuff. Welfare queens.
Attacking "Political Correctness" in a vague and non-specific way lets you sound noble.
As soon as you specify what that means in practice you just sound like a nasty bully (at best), so best leave that implied.
But a quick glance as the history of social science that these things are a direct response to, would reveal people "proving" that various groups are inferior in ways that mirror contemporary prejudices and reinforce right-wing politics that consistently builds hierarchical models to justify current social inequalities.
Instead it seems to be at best discounting that there is a conflct to explain or at worse is participating in the conflict by defending one side of it.
I think a stronger case could in theory be made that the conflict is non existent but it's a harder position to advocate.