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Comment by fareesh | Hacker News Reader

This is now firmly in religious territory.

Is there much of a difference between this and halal/kosher certification?

We have laws for separation of church and state, they should be applied to this as any other. This is a religion.

It's the same as any religious group trying to impose their morality and beliefs on everyone else. To be a good person use the correct words and correct ideas as defined by us, the good people. If you disagree you are a bad person. Sinful, evil.

How can you disagree with the Holy Words, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity? You're either with us or against us. Sign here on the dotted line to confirm membership.

http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html

Private academic institutions (in the US-sense / not-government-funded) have no blanket obligation to separate from church, because they aren't the state.

> Private academic institutions

I assume at least some of this research is funded with public grants. That might be from where pressure can be exerted.

I wonder how private universities really are, given the reliance on government backed loan structures and NSF grants.

> We have laws for separation of church and state, they should be applied to this as any other. This is a religion.

I'd say this about any sort of psychological theories that get intertwined into the justifications of power structures. The government should not be speculating about or creating rules about people's inner states. A government trying to change the minds of the population undermines democracy. An administration, fine, but not the government itself, with regulations paid for with tax money.

People should change governments. Governments shouldn't change people.

Like most religious analogies in this area, I completely agree with it as a framework but don't really follow the conclusions. If it's a religion, surely part of living in a secular society is allowing people to practice it freely, even if that means that some conferences (or professors, or schools) adopt explicit creeds. I do worry, because I think this particular religion is factually wrong in ways that matter a lot, but the idea that academics should never let their core beliefs impact their work isn't really realistic.

> the idea that academics should never let their core beliefs impact their work isn't really realistic.

I wanted to explore this a bit. Let's hypothesize that the academic is in some ISIL dominated region and the caliphate says that all research must further the goals of caliphate expansion and the spread of the religion. If an academic were to write an equivalent statement - is it their core belief, or are they simply saying the Emperor's clothes are beautiful?

Given the ideal role of academia in society, isn't the latter possibility quite harmful?

As Haidt says, it's harmful to the extent that it contradicts the core telos of academic research, but I don't think it's so harmful that research becomes impossible. Quite a lot of foundational scientific work comes from medieval Christian and Muslim sources whose religious authorities executed people for heresy.

In terms of some outcomes, yes, the research can continue unhindered if they say "Hallowed are the Ori".

Personally I feel like it makes for a very poor work environment, so I sympathize with many who are put in that position. I would prefer it if they did not feel constrained by this type of environment, so that their best work would emerge.

For the most part, DEI is groupthink but there are some that are so passionate you might describe that passion as religious fervor.

Ironically, DEI damages what are ostensibly its objectives.

It would mean, however, that the state should not be explicitly backing the 'religion' in e.g. public universities, even though that's not the immediate issue at hand in the article.

The current events aren't really new though. Universities have been getting steadily more left wing over time, and there's no clear waterline at which point it became 'religion'.

So this can easily be taken as an argument that governments should be divorced from academia. No grants, no student loans, no degree requirements in public sector jobs. Which would be fine, I think. The arguments for why governments should fund academia look very weak these days. It was supposed to be about long range research that the private sector wouldn't fund, but what we see in practice is the private sector funding ultra-long-range research like self driving cars, AI, etc whilst public funding gets guzzled by oceans of non-replicable P-hacked ideology driven pseudo-science. And as for education, well, researchers often don't make the best teachers anyway.

Halal and kosher have very specific rules that must be abided by in order to fit, which do not change.

What's kosher or not has different interpretations depending on which group (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform) you're talking to. The situation w/ Cheese and source of rennet is a frequent one where you'll see different groups following different rules.

Also gelatin is another one.

There might be disagreement on some details between groups, but at least within a group the agreed standard is both clear upfront and objective.

This DEI standard currently sounds totally subjective with no guidance on what will pass muster, which is ideal substrate for the worst forms of corruption, nepotism, and abuses of power. You know, the very things academia is thought to fundamentally oppose.

However, if I may use the old allegory, in the deep darkness of this dei temple, there is light of the inner life. While the priests of the temple further their goals, power over others in particular, they, in fact, unknowingly implement the will above them, that's pushing our society away from individualism and towards some basic form of unity. Individualism has been necessary to develop intelligence, and now that we have it sufficiently developed, it's time to move on to the next milestone - a form of distributed mind. Once the transition is over, the priests of ignorance that thought themselves powerful will be overrun by the crowd.

s/religion/ideology/

Ironically, most of the people against DEI are also likely people who would be AOK with more Christianity in schools and academics.

I think both are worth fighting against, and I would ally with either camp for that purpose

Actual liberalism is when you think both are bad and worth stopping

Indian immigrant here who’s also not religious nor Christian. I don’t want either of them to be in schools or academia. DEI is a religion nowadays. I personally find a lot of this DEI stuff repulsive and even racist. It seems like soft bigotry of low expectations. Also, forced inorganic ideology (in this case DEI) makes people develop disdain for the very groups who are supposed to be included while keeping it hidden. It creates a toxic environment. It also makes me, a minority, wonder if I got an opportunity because of my skin color or because of my qualification. Also, we live in a world of interracial marriages and families. Such DEI policies create friction in such families where the minority family member may get some opportunity while the non minority family member gets their opportunity taken away. Also, DEI policies simply don’t make logical sense to me. Indians, Asians and Nigerian immigrants are excelling in high paying jobs. Tons of tech CEOs are Indians. It doesn’t make logical sense to push for it even more.

It seems to me that most people just want everything to be rational. It's just that the most idealogical on both sides are the ones that are always speaking.

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