Hacker News Reader

Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

I had the impression the consensus was that Hamas are terrorists and the Israel government consists of right-wing nutjobs.

Being on the side of the people, not on the side of warmongers, etc.

View on HN

Your impression of a consensus is shaped by lopsided censorship and suppression of the other side.

98% of assistant professors say they self-censor, and 81% of those say they're self-censoring views critical of Israel. That's 79% of assistant professors who would be voicing opinions against Israel if not for the pressure they perceive to silence themselves. If anything, your perception of consensus is completely backwards.

> If anything, your perception of consensus is completely backwards.

But the suggested consensus was the roughly symmetric “Hamas are terrorists and the Israel government consists of right-wing nutjobs.”

If its backwards, the actual consensus would be “The Israeli government are terrorists and Hamas consists of right-wing nutjobs", which doesn't really change much. (Since right-wing nutjobs and terrorists are overlapping group, its even compatible with the original form.)

And, bonus, consensus or not, both forms are true.

I'd be pretty surprised if less than 90% of those who are suppressing their own views didn't agree with the relatively bland and descriptive statement "Hamas are terrorists and the Israel government consists of right-wing nutjobs."

I don't know, a decent proportion might quibble with the political assumptions embedded in the term "terrorist," while others might accept the term itself but argue that some forms of terrorism, like that used by Mandela's ANC, are justified in certain contexts.

I would certainly hope they distinguish between Hamas's attack and the attacks by the ANC, which, to my knowledge, generally targeted infrastructural or military targets, and not civilians.

> 98% of assistant professors say they self-censor, and 81% of those say they're self-censoring views critical of Israel. That's 79% of assistant professors who would be voicing opinions against Israel if not for the pressure they perceive to silence themselves.

That's not how reality works.

First, you magically turn "could" into "would".

Also, you also ignore the fact that "self-censoring" does not mean "I want to speak out but I can't". It means something as innocuous as not speaking out regarding topics that aren't related to their field of expertise and thus, as smart people do, they don't just blabber on about things that they don't have a solid and well-formed opinion and don't concern them.

Moreover, your percentages don't really add up, nor do you spend any moment considering why 98% (virtually all) claim to self-censor but a far lower number feels they need to put a focus on Israel. I mean what other topics do they consider worthy of self censoring? That would be helpful to gain insight on the phenomena, but it seems the goal was to shoehorn a prejudiced point.

Don't you agree that your comment sounds like a conspiracy theory to justify why your pet scapegoat isn't being attacked enough?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com