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Comment by aredox | Hacker News Reader

>A large number of academics express a willingness to discriminate against conservatives when it comes to hiring, publications, grants, and promotions.

Why would anyone hire or promote people who have an outspoken bias towards despising the very topic they pretend they want to study?

I mean, how could anyone who thinks black people are inferior be put in charge of any ethnographic study?

Basic curiosity for the very subject one studies means one can't have "conservative" views - because the meaning of the word itself is that you have a set understanding of the topic!

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Your ignorance is showing and it is precisely what is wrong with the current generation of academics.

Your ignorance of the failures of conservatism in science is showing.

Many cultures don't have a nuclear family. Conservative "scientists" decreeted that was proof of their backwardness.

Homosexuality was a core facet of antiquity. Conservative scholars and translators have completely erased any mention of it, rewriting whole parts of the Iliad even in the XXth century.

The conservative bias in biology and medicine is so extensive and so damaging to women that there isn't enough room here to list all its malfeasance.

Conservatives pretend to already know what is "natural", what is "human nature" (which is what white rich Anglo-Saxon believe in, of course). Why would anyone let any conservative do research when they are fundamentally uninterested in having an open mind?

Seethe and cope, seethe and cope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Your comment perfectly captures what's wrong. Address the ideas, directly, with data. That is science. Ad hominem has no place.

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Conservative views are helpful to verify theories. Conservatism does not 'despise' science in contrary to your (rather biased) opinion but it does not put it on an altar either. The basic tenet of conservatism is to only change what needs to be changed while keeping that which has been proven to work intact. In other words, conservatism strives towards evolution instead of revolution. This is contrary to the progressive approach of 'throw it at the wall and see what sticks' when it comes to change, progressivism aims towards change for change's sake in the assumption that such is needed to stave off decline. Where conservatism aims towards an evolutionary approach to change, progressivism aims towards a revolutionary approach. There is a place for both in society as well as science.

Quite the stretch to describe conservatives as "progressives" when they are the exact opposite

You might want to read the post again since I did not describe conservatives as progressives, quite the opposite. What I do say is that both philosophies have a role to play in society. Too much conservatism leads to stagnation while too much progressivism leads to chaos. Both scenarios have played out in history for your perusal.

You have an extremely inaccurate and flawed understanding of conservativism. It's like you have concocted a view based on stereotypes and MSNBC editorials. Or are you deliberately misrepresenting?

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