Peter Boghossian: our institutions are unsalvageable

[DragoonKain]

Peter Boghossian was on a podcast with Andrew Doyle(Titania McGrath). It's pretty good, you should check it out, it's called Culture Wars. He said something I found interesting.

He thinks our institutions are too far gone and aren't salvageable. He thinks not only will they get continue to get more woke as time goes on, but people already aren't learning anything and the more woke they get and more woke people get into academia, it will just corrupt it all beyond repair. He said not only are kids not learning anything, but they're coming out worse off, because they're being taught factual falsities that can easily be disproven by data, and it's making them dumber.

He likened it to someone learning how to fight and learning the least effective method to prevent a punch, you are going to be worse off knowing that method that doesn't work than if you learned nothing at all.

He thinks the only way to fix it is to entirely reimagine the way we handle our universities and education in this country, which obviously is no small task.

Just curious on if you agree with him and what your take on this topic is.

 

[pel1300]

Peter Boghossian was on a podcast with Andrew Doyle(Titania McGrath). It's pretty good, you should check it out, it's called Culture Wars. He said something I found interesting.

He thinks our institutions are too far gone and aren't salvageable. He thinks not only will they get continue to get more woke as time goes on, but people already aren't learning anything and the more woke they get and more woke people get into academia, it will just corrupt it all beyond repair. He said not only are kids not learning anything, but they're coming out worse off, because they're being taught factual falsities that can easily be disproven by data, and it's making them dumber.

He likened it to someone learning how to fight and learning the least effective method to prevent a punch, you are going to be worse off knowing that method that doesn't work than if you learned nothing at all.

He thinks the only way to fix it is to entirely reimagine the way we handle our universities and education in this country, which obviously is no small task.

Just curious on if you agree with him and what your take on this topic is.

Douglas Murray already gave me enough doom and gloom.

 

[Tesseract]

i've been wanting the analogue world to burn for some time

 

[evanft]

Who?

 

[Cunth]

These dudes need to unhook from the internet for a bit for their sanity

 

[Papa]

Who?

He did the Grievance Studies Hoax with James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose

 

[whattheduck]

At least the good news is that women's desire for conservative men will shoot up like crazy. There will be no better time to be a money-making, gym-going chad who isn't a weirdo socialist cucklord.

 

[ramuh]

Idiocracy GIF

 

[Vow of Silence]

I agree.

I'm basically an accelerationist now.

 

[eot]

Who?

One of the most vocal critics of intersectionality and critical theory

 

[QSD]

I dunno, there have been some more positive developments recently
- Jordan Petersons new book was not canceled
- Abilgail Shrier's book was re-listed
- A paper about everyone in the IDW being 'far right' was retracted

I worry sometimes that the anti-woke spokespeople aren't going to fall into the same trap as the intersectional feminists. Their fame and livelihood depends on there being a crisis, so they've got a perverse incentive to keep saying that it's getting worse, even if the tide may be turning.

 

[whattheduck]

I dunno, there have been some more positive developments recently
- Jordan Petersons new book was not canceled
- Abilgail Shrier's book was re-listed
- A paper about everyone in the IDW being 'far right' was retracted

I worry sometimes that the anti-woke spokespeople aren't going to fall into the same trap as the intersectional feminists. Their fame and livelihood depends on there being a crisis, so they've got a perverse incentive to keep saying that it's getting worse, even if the tide may be turning.

Definitely. Without grievance, left wing politics is deadweight.

 

[QSD]

Definitely. Without grievance, left wing politics is deadweight.

Yeah, that's not what I said at all. I've made a topic about the sense and nonsense of using terms like "left wing" and you are welcome to contribute there. Other than that, there is always going to be a need for a kind of 'labour' movement that guards against corporate power and that is the proper concern of what I would call "the left wing"

 

[whattheduck]

Yeah, that's not what I said at all. I've made a topic about the sense and nonsense of using terms like "left wing" and you are welcome to contribute there. Other than that, there is always going to be a need for a kind of 'labour' movement that guards against corporate power and that is the proper concern of what I would call "the left wing"

I agree with your last point, but my other comment is still valid too. I think it is an obvious trait of left wing activists - and therefore the left in a broad sense - that their demands for action depend on things being, as you say, in a state of crisis. It's what Douglas Murray calls their supply and demand problem - for instance, they want more fascists than there are, because then their own brand of radicalism would be more viable in the eyes of the public. So they continuously exaggerate the "problem" to enormous degrees in order to justify pushing the needle in more and more ridiculous ways. (Such as implying American institutions are irredeemably racist, and that white people are irredeemably racist, and getting mainstream support for these claims all the while. 2020 says hello)

This isn't as strong a feature on the right because a lot of Western nations values are principally linked with conservative ideas, such as the structure of a republic, monarchies (like the UK), capitalism, individual liberty, and so on. The political left represent the oppositional force to these embedded ideals, and so they keep pushing the extreme narratives to brute force in their own political desires (in other words, continued grievance- mongering despite progress).

 

[QSD]

I agree with your last point, but my other comment is still valid too. I think it is an obvious trait of left wing activists - and therefore the left in a broad sense - that their demands for action depend on things being, as you say, in a state of crisis. It's what Douglas Murray calls their supply and demand problem - for instance, they want more fascists than there are, because then their own brand of radicalism would be more viable in the eyes of the public. So they continuously exaggerate the "problem" to enormous degrees in order to justify pushing the needle in more and more ridiculous ways. (Such as implying American institutions are irredeemably racist, and that white people are irredeemably racist, and getting mainstream support for these claims all the while. 2020 says hello)

This isn't as strong a feature on the right because a lot of Western nations values are principally linked with conservative ideas, such as the structure of a republic, monarchies (like the UK), capitalism, individual liberty, and so on. The political left represent the oppositional force to these embedded ideals, and so they keep pushing the extreme narratives to brute force in their own political desires (in other words, continued grievance- mongering despite progress).

I get that first paragraph, manufactured outrage is a serious problem that is damaging our societies. I would, however, caution against lionizing people like Murray. There was recently a clip of him on Dave Rubin's show posted here, where he was going off about the staff at Penguin protesting Peterson's new book. He basically just said they should all be fired. Which (if you ask me) is the same kind of "canceling" that he so vigorously opposes in other cases. I sometimes doubt whether he is an honest actor, or whether he's just the mirror image of the wokesters.

On the second paragraph: here's the problem that I was trying to discuss in the other thread. To you 'the left" obviously means a lot more than to me. An example: here in Holland we still have a king/monarchy. But none of the 'left-wing' parties really oppose this. There's only 1 political party that voices any opposition to the monarchy and that's the 'centrer-right' D66 (democrats '66). So, no, left-wing doesn't mean anti-tradition, that's what you've made it out to mean in America because of your 2 party system. It is true that the left criticizes "capitalism' but like I said in my previous post, there is a necessity for such a political stance in any modern country with large corporations. I doesn't mean that 'left-wing' parties want to usher in a communist revolution. I'd be happy to talk more, you're welcome in the "LeftCreep" thread.

 

[whattheduck]

I get that first paragraph, manufactured outrage is a serious problem that is damaging our societies. I would, however, caution against lionizing people like Murray. There was recently a clip of him on Dave Rubin's show posted here, where he was going off about the staff at Penguin protesting Peterson's new book. He basically just said they should all be fired. Which (if you ask me) is the same kind of "canceling" that he so vigorously opposes in other cases. I sometimes doubt whether he is an honest actor, or whether he's just the mirror image of the wokesters.

On the second paragraph: here's the problem that I was trying to discuss in the other thread. To you 'the left" obviously means a lot more than to me. An example: here in Holland we still have a king/monarchy. But none of the 'left-wing' parties really oppose this. There's only 1 political party that voices any opposition to the monarchy and that's the 'centrer-right' D66 (democrats '66). So, no, left-wing doesn't mean anti-tradition, that's what you've made it out to mean in America because of your 2 party system. It is true that the left criticizes "capitalism' but like I said in my previous post, there is a necessity for such a political stance in any modern country with large corporations. I doesn't mean that 'left-wing' parties want to usher in a communist revolution. I'd be happy to talk more, you're welcome in the "LeftCreep" thread.

Murray is right to say that. You don't get to work for a major book publisher if you have a preference for suppressing certain books. That's an authoritarian slant that shouldn't be tolerated by any serious person working in that industry. Especially considering Peterson is a mainstream figure, not even some fringe nutjob writing books covered in his own shit. And equivocating that with "cancelling" is asinine. Cancelling has an underlying moral values that someone ought not to be allowed a platform to speak or air their views due to a supposed transgression. In the case with this book publisher, we are simply talking about a mismatch of values between the employer and the employed. That is, if the publisher does indeed value free speech and the right to dissent - if it doesn't, they deserve similar ire. Either way, it's a big mistake to think of these two things as the same. Would you want to appoint a judge whose mission statement was to disavow the law? No.

Secondly, I understand your point but it's not really as relevant as you're suggesting. For one thing, this thread is directly about US institutions, so the comments made will obviously be in reference to US institutions. I think that's pretty obvious. Also, I'm not saying there's always total agreement on every political or social issue with any one political side - but there are absolutely overlapping areas they all exhibit around the world. It just depends on the context at any given point of history in time. And a lot of this is because people's inclinations towards being right of left is based on psychological traits steering them in those directions, on top of social reinforcement. So yes there's differences around the margins, but there are generalaties you can rely on to make the sort of arguments I am making here. For instance, I highly doubt there's ever been a major right wing party in any country that has advocated for communism. Such a thing would betray the foundational principles of the entire political side.

 

[Catphish]

Universities are bloated, self-serving money pits. Like good Will Hunting said, “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

Unfortunately, if you want a career in the liberal arts or sciences, you all but need a degree. So fuck em. Pursue an industrial vocation instead, and go to trade school or get a tech cert.

 

[Teletraan1]

This guy propagated fake studies so how can you believe anything he says for the rest of his existence. - left wing chud

 

[QSD]

Murray is right to say that. You don't get to work for a major book publisher if you have a preference for suppressing certain books. That's an authoritarian slant that shouldn't be tolerated by any serious person working in that industry. Especially considering Peterson is a mainstream figure, not even some fringe nutjob writing books covered in his own shit. And equivocating that with "cancelling" is asinine. Cancelling has an underlying moral values that someone ought not to be allowed a platform to speak or air their views due to a supposed transgression. In the case with this book publisher, we are simply talking about a mismatch of values between the employer and the employed. That is, if the publisher does indeed value free speech and the right to dissent - if it doesn't, they deserve similar ire. Either way, it's a big mistake to think of these two things as the same. Would you want to appoint a judge whose mission statement was to disavow the law? No.

So I don't really understand how equivocating these 2 cases is so bad... If the publisher does indeed value free speech and the right to dissent, there should not be a problem with a number of employees voicing their concern about the publication of a specific book. Generally I believe that people should be able to speak their conscience without fear of reprisal or termination, as long as they do so respectfully. I think that is what it means to promote free speech and combat "cancel culture". Calling for people to be fired seems pretty sketchy to me for someone like Murray. I think he's letting his "outrage' get the better of him.

The judge metaphor doesn't fly in my book because the judge would have to be opposed to one specific law (which I'm sure many of them are privately) and not laws in general.

Secondly, I understand your point but it's not really as relevant as you're suggesting. For one thing, this thread is directly about US institutions, so the comments made will obviously be in reference to US institutions. I think that's pretty obvious. Also, I'm not saying there's always total agreement on every political or social issue with any one political side - but there are absolutely overlapping areas they all exhibit around the world. It just depends on the context at any given point of history in time. And a lot of this is because people's inclinations towards being right of left is based on psychological traits steering them in those directions, on top of social reinforcement. So yes there's differences around the margins, but there are generalaties you can rely on to make the sort of arguments I am making here. For instance, I highly doubt there's ever been a major right wing party in any country that has advocated for communism. Such a thing would betray the foundational principles of the entire political side.

You're right about the US institutions. The point I'm making is more about the meaning of "left-wing". Narrowly defined it just means a certain type of economic stance. There's nothing inherently 'left-wing' about wokeness or cancel culture as far as I can see. I mean, at least, I would consider myself economically on the left but I loathe all that politically correct nonsense. I just see it as a cultural phenomenon.

 

[Super Mario]

It is all a powerful political tool. The white man colonized and built America. They have developed many of the biggest companies. They are overall successful.

So along come some people to say hey women, people of color, and every other "victim group" you need us. It is for control. It is easier to fool someone than to convince them they are being fooled. The powers that enforce this wokeness, really don't believe in it. They know the power. Especially when you are not allowed to even question it

 

[Sign]

Red states need to just start banning all liberal propaganda from being taught on threat of pulled funding/ accreditation/ etc.

Force students to pay out of pocket for their brainwashing (out of state).

Won’t solve the problem but will help. Red states need to start setting up parallel systems now with values that are productive and stable. No reason to allow the same mistakes to be repeated when this country falls apart.

 

[whattheduck]

So I don't really understand how equivocating these 2 cases is so bad... If the publisher does indeed value free speech and the right to dissent, there should not be a problem with a number of employees voicing their concern about the publication of a specific book. Generally I believe that people should be able to speak their conscience without fear of reprisal or termination, as long as they do so respectfully. I think that is what it means to promote free speech and combat "cancel culture". Calling for people to be fired seems pretty sketchy to me for someone like Murray. I think he's letting his "outrage' get the better of him.

The judge metaphor doesn't fly in my book because the judge would have to be opposed to one specific law (which I'm sure many of them are privately) and not laws in general.



You're right about the US institutions. The point I'm making is more about the meaning of "left-wing". Narrowly defined it just means a certain type of economic stance. There's nothing inherently 'left-wing' about wokeness or cancel culture as far as I can see. I mean, at least, I would consider myself economically on the left but I loathe all that politically correct nonsense. I just see it as a cultural phenomenon.

Anyone who works for a big book publisher is sure to find that they publish ideas and authors who they disagree with. However, I think it would be in your best interest as an employee to limit your emotional response. The reason why that story got so much traction in these circles is because some employees were so distressed about Peterson's book that they were actually crying about it. As I said before, Peterson is not Hitler 2.0. Crying in response to your company publishing his book is not what an adult does. If you want to work in the domain of ideas and speech, you have to be a bit more resilient than this. The reality is that they clearly want to work in the domain of ideas and speech that is better aligned with their own politics. For some publishers, that may well be fine. But if this publisher is committed to publishing ideas which it's employees do not all find agreeable, its not the publishers duty to placate them and let them get away with their hissy fits. In other words, it's less to do with speech, more about employment compatibility. In that line of work, political tolerance is more of an expectation that it would be in a supermarket, for instance. If I was a supermarket manager, I wouldn't hire or fire someone merely based on political opinions either. But in the case of a book publisher, it's a different ball game entirely. Imagine hiring bar staff at a rock club and then listening to them complain they can't work with such loud noise in the background. Think you might have doubts about their suitability?

Plus, Douglas Murray is a major contributor to The Spectator and has been for years. They publish opinions who don't always agree with the orthodoxy of right wing politics at any given time, and he doesn't grumble about that. Because he very clearly has time and respect for civil disagreement, so I think your analysis on him is dead wrong.

Lastly, there are no such thing as "woke" right ringers. It's a bit of a dumb term, as is cancelling etc, but the term explicitly refers to the grievances of modern idpol left wing politics. It has been that way for at least 5 years. If you can't identify this correctly, I'm not sure your point about generalizations is really that wise or productive in this particular conversation.

 

[diffusionx]

Yea sounds about right, but it's not just schools it is government and corporations too.

You cannot reimagine or restructure these organizations, they will continue to behave in this way until they totally collapse. Our university system churning out hundreds of thousands of functionally illiterate and incompetent imbeciles every year who do nothing but reflexively regurgitate what CNN tells them is very bad for this country but we will have to live with it and all the consequences.

 

[FreedomOfSpeech]

It can only fail.

The colleges are delivering activists with big debts. How will this do anything other than spiral out of control?

USA has been sleeping on the education of its future generations. Epic fail.

 

[Ricky_Bee]

You cannot reimagine or restructure these organizations, they will continue to behave in this way until they totally collapse.

Don’t think they will collapse. Just grind on, maybe a bit less efficient that before. Maybe with a bit less joy around them. Maybe.

 

[joe_zazen]

I agree.

I'm basically an accelerationist now.

I am almost there, but as long as the supreme court and the constitution/bill of rights stand, there is room to work. The competing ideas need to be made more competitive and have to be weaponised in order to prevail.

The universities are infested with racist hate where it matters: HR and the bureaucracy. We still have some strong institutions, but the barbarians are at the gate.

 

[poppabk]

Peter Boghossian was on a podcast with Andrew Doyle(Titania McGrath). It's pretty good, you should check it out, it's called Culture Wars. He said something I found interesting.

He thinks our institutions are too far gone and aren't salvageable. He thinks not only will they get continue to get more woke as time goes on, but people already aren't learning anything and the more woke they get and more woke people get into academia, it will just corrupt it all beyond repair. He said not only are kids not learning anything, but they're coming out worse off, because they're being taught factual falsities that can easily be disproven by data, and it's making them dumber.

He likened it to someone learning how to fight and learning the least effective method to prevent a punch, you are going to be worse off knowing that method that doesn't work than if you learned nothing at all.

He thinks the only way to fix it is to entirely reimagine the way we handle our universities and education in this country, which obviously is no small task.

Just curious on if you agree with him and what your take on this topic is.

Just great, now the right are getting in on the 'defund this, abolish that' train.

 

[Ricky_Bee]

Just great, now the right are getting in on the 'defund this, abolish that' train.

There just isn’t anything left to conserve, you know

 

[joe_zazen]

these are the people that will soon be staffing the most powerful org in America, the federal bureaucracy .

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-rules-hate-speech-employees-leaving

all center/right of centre speech is hate speech and must be banned say facebook employees. Land of the free, lol.

 

[INCUBASE]

Home school then

 

[Mista K]

tech/trade schools are where it's at. Universities are a scam

 

[FreedomOfSpeech]

Is it this one?

 

[DragoonKain]

It is all a powerful political tool. The white man colonized and built America. They have developed many of the biggest companies. They are overall successful.

So along come some people to say hey women, people of color, and every other "victim group" you need us. It is for control. It is easier to fool someone than to convince them they are being fooled. The powers that enforce this wokeness, really don't believe in it. They know the power. Especially when you are not allowed to even question it

Peter actually made a good point and he said if these people who are pushing this diversity obsessive stuff actually believed it, they’d resign from their own jobs and give them to lesser privileged people. However, none of them are doing this.

They only care about virtue signaling.

It can only fail.

The colleges are delivering activists with big debts. How will this do anything other than spiral out of control?

USA has been sleeping on the education of its future generations. Epic fail.

He said something I agree with and I think I’ve said before on here is that it’s not sustainable. Eventually if this stuff is allowed to continue to fester in this country, the country will collapse. Economically and otherwise. Because you’re going to breed less qualified, less talented people in the work forces in the name or diversity and inclusion, which means you’re going to be less productive because you passed on better qualified people to fill arbitrary quotas. Do enough of that over time and you get less and less production and the entire system will collapse on itself.

Is it this one?

Yep

 

[Woo-Fu]

He's right in that they're not salvageable via direct intervention. The only thing that will fix it is wasting an entire generation figuring out that it doesn't work in practice.

Once the economy crumbles under the burden of implementing their utopia people will forget all about getting woke and focus a lot more on getting fed.

 

[QSD]

Anyone who works for a big book publisher is sure to find that they publish ideas and authors who they disagree with. However, I think it would be in your best interest as an employee to limit your emotional response. The reason why that story got so much traction in these circles is because some employees were so distressed about Peterson's book that they were actually crying about it. As I said before, Peterson is not Hitler 2.0. Crying in response to your company publishing his book is not what an adult does. If you want to work in the domain of ideas and speech, you have to be a bit more resilient than this. The reality is that they clearly want to work in the domain of ideas and speech that is better aligned with their own politics. For some publishers, that may well be fine. But if this publisher is committed to publishing ideas which it's employees do not all find agreeable, its not the publishers duty to placate them and let them get away with their hissy fits.

Agree with everything up to this point. I'd just like to interject here that there's another variable at play in this case and that's whether the employees are actually that emotional/angry or whether they are cynically feigning or amplifying outrage and despair in order to get their way. (I think this is what you imply with "hissy fits") I loathe this kind of behaviour and often suspect SJW's of it.
I'm arguing under the assumption that there are at least some employees who honestly feel that Peterson's book is a bridge too far (however nonsensical that seems to me) and they want to voice their concerns in an adult, non-manipulative way.

In other words, it's less to do with speech, more about employment compatibility. In that line of work, political tolerance is more of an expectation that it would be in a supermarket, for instance. If I was a supermarket manager, I wouldn't hire or fire someone merely based on political opinions either. But in the case of a book publisher, it's a different ball game entirely.

I think that there is also an underlying assumption here, and that is that the publisher is honestly concerned with the value of 'political tolerance'. Because let's be honest, of course Peterson's book is going to be published. It's going to sell millions of copies. Ask yourself whether the publisher would also push ahead with publication if Peterson's book had been a niche work, good to sell maybe 1000 copies. Oftentimes when people on the "right wing" complain about SJW's petitioning companies, they don't acknowledge that the SJW's are only 50% of the problem, the other 50% are the businesses that will cynically clothe themselves in SJW values when it suits their bottom line to do so. So in a roundabout way they're actually complaining about the hollow, value-free nature of capitalism.

Imagine hiring bar staff at a rock club and then listening to them complain they can't work with such loud noise in the background. Think you might have doubts about their suitability?

You're making the same mistaken analogy here. The staff generally don't complain. But now you've booked Slayer, and everybody knows their soundman turns the volume up to dangerous levels. So they complain. Do you fire them for that?

Lastly, there are no such thing as "woke" right ringers. It's a bit of a dumb term, as is cancelling etc, but the term explicitly refers to the grievances of modern idpol left wing politics. It has been that way for at least 5 years. If you can't identify this correctly, I'm not sure your point about generalizations is really that wise or productive in this particular conversation.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm 41 and I still remember the 80s and 90s when almost all the attempts at censorship or cancelling came from religious conservatives. Dungeons and Dragons is devilworship, video games are turning our kids into killers, etc etc. To give you a specific example, religious conservative influencing basically 'cancelled' all research into psychological therapies using psychedelics for decades, purely on the grounds that it does not align with their worldview. It took up till the 2010's and the advent of motherfucking Joe Rogan before it was even acceptable to talk about psychedelics in that context. And we're not talking some hippie bullcrap here, we're talking actual therapy that could help people with PTSD for example. So yeah, 'cancel culture' and 'virtue signalling' are not just 'left-wing' phenomena

 

[Papa]

I get that first paragraph, manufactured outrage is a serious problem that is damaging our societies. I would, however, caution against lionizing people like Murray. There was recently a clip of him on Dave Rubin's show posted here, where he was going off about the staff at Penguin protesting Peterson's new book. He basically just said they should all be fired. Which (if you ask me) is the same kind of "canceling" that he so vigorously opposes in other cases. I sometimes doubt whether he is an honest actor, or whether he's just the mirror image of the wokesters.

On the second paragraph: here's the problem that I was trying to discuss in the other thread. To you 'the left" obviously means a lot more than to me. An example: here in Holland we still have a king/monarchy. But none of the 'left-wing' parties really oppose this. There's only 1 political party that voices any opposition to the monarchy and that's the 'centrer-right' D66 (democrats '66). So, no, left-wing doesn't mean anti-tradition, that's what you've made it out to mean in America because of your 2 party system. It is true that the left criticizes "capitalism' but like I said in my previous post, there is a necessity for such a political stance in any modern country with large corporations. I doesn't mean that 'left-wing' parties want to usher in a communist revolution. I'd be happy to talk more, you're welcome in the "LeftCreep" thread.

I agree with Murray. Staff at a publishing house should not be engaging in activism at their employer’s expense. It is particularly egregious when they are effectively gatekeepers for free speech and they are trying to close the gate. They are misusing their platform, so to speak. When Murray says they should be fired, I don’t think he is asking for government intervention. If he were, your point would be valid. I think when he says that, he is doing it from the position of the employer; he is saying that if he owned the publishing house, he would not want his employees engaging in activism to attempt to cancel authors and written speech they disagree with. I wouldn’t consider that the mirror image of left wing cancelling like you suggest.

 

[Papa]

Red states need to just start banning all liberal propaganda from being taught on threat of pulled funding/ accreditation/ etc.

Force students to pay out of pocket for their brainwashing (out of state).

Won’t solve the problem but will help. Red states need to start setting up parallel systems now with values that are productive and stable. No reason to allow the same mistakes to be repeated when this country falls apart.

Not saying I necessarily disagree but how would you define “liberal propaganda”? That would be the crux of the issue.

I think our current federal government in Australia is approaching it in the right way. Rather than targeting specific ideas and banning them and subsequently Streisand Effecting them into cultural relevance, they’re prioritising particular fields of study and subsidising them. Humanities degrees will now cost as much as medicine degrees while the cost of maths, agriculture, teaching, psychology, English, STEM degrees will reduce by between 20 and 62%. Imagine being the dunce who paid 120k for a Gender Studies degree when you could’ve done psychology or teaching, if not something in STEM, for 30k. You would be the laughing stock of your peers.

One of the most dangerous things that Biden is proposing is cancellation of student debt. There need to be consequences for choosing to go into an unproductive field of study. Taking away the consequences removes the incentive to do something productive. Why do STEM and pay back your debt when you can do something much easier and offload the cost to the taxpayer when you can’t find a job? Then if the left manage to somehow get their universal free education garbage through, there’s even less incentive to do something productive. This kind of equalising will be the downfall of Western society.

I recall Jordan Peterson suggesting that universities should not be treated as free enterprises because then they act as businesses. When universities act as businesses, they will inevitably undercut academic standards in pursuit of the almighty dollar. This corrupts the pursuit of truth and science itself. In practice, it means opening up the university market to people who have no place in higher education. The kind of people who would be drawn to critical race and gender studies. These people cannot survive in genuine academia, so they end up in Participation Studies. Because the demand is so high, universities promote development of these fields to the detriment of real science. Then their garbage ideas get published in garbage journals, but the media don’t know the difference/don’t care, so the bad ideas get laundered into mainstream culture. Now you have intersectional theory being equalised with real academic theory under the pop culture umbrella of Science™. People with an IQ higher than their shoe size can see that the intersectional nonsense being pushed into the cultural zeitgeist is corrupt but they get harangued by smoothbrains for questioning the religion of Science™.

Then we have the perverse incentives to open up Western higher education to shithole countries like China that have an economy built on slave labour and IP theft. China has the money, so the institutions will adapt to appeal more to Chinese interests. It shouldn’t take too many brain cells to see how grotesque it is that Western academia is now funded by slavery. Just because it’s not in our backyard doesn’t mean it’s not happening or that we’re not affected by or contributing to it.

 

[QSD]

I agree with Murray. Staff at a publishing house should not be engaging in activism at their employer’s expense. It is particularly egregious when they are effectively gatekeepers for free speech and they are trying to close the gate. They are misusing their platform, so to speak. When Murray says they should be fired, I don’t think he is asking for government intervention. If he were, your point would be valid. I think when he says that, he is doing it from the position of the employer; he is saying that if he owned the publishing house, he would not want his employees engaging in activism to attempt to cancel authors and written speech they disagree with. I wouldn’t consider that the mirror image of left wing cancelling like you suggest.

Hmmm I don't get the remark about the "government intervention". Both the employees and Murray are basically 'petitioning' the publisher. There is no government involvement at all.

Other than that there is the underlying assumption here that employees are 'engaging in activism' which implies a pattern of behaviour rather than a single incident. Like I said above, I'm arguing under the assumption that there are at least some employees who sincerely feel that Peterson's book is a bridge too far (however nonsensical that seems to me) and they want to voice their concerns in an adult, non-manipulative way. Obviously I'm not privy to the actual situation inside that publishing house. If this kind of protest is a common occurrence then sure, they might not be very suitable employees.
But assuming that this is highly exceptional, I think that firing them for it would be draconian, and I think Murray should probably not advocate for it.

 

[Sign]

Not saying I necessarily disagree but how would you define “liberal propaganda”? That would be the crux of the issue.

I think our current federal government in Australia is approaching it in the right way. Rather than targeting specific ideas and banning them and subsequently Streisand Effecting them into cultural relevance, they’re prioritising particular fields of study and subsidising them. Humanities degrees will now cost as much as medicine degrees while the cost of maths, agriculture, teaching, psychology, English, STEM degrees will reduce by between 20 and 62%. Imagine being the dunce who paid 120k for a Gender Studies degree when you could’ve done psychology or teaching, if not something in STEM, for 30k. You would be the laughing stock of your peers.

One of the most dangerous things that Biden is proposing is cancellation of student debt. There need to be consequences for choosing to go into an unproductive field of study. Taking away the consequences removes the incentive to do something productive. Why do STEM and pay back your debt when you can do something much easier and offload the cost to the taxpayer when you can’t find a job? Then if the left manage to somehow get their universal free education garbage through, there’s even less incentive to do something productive. This kind of equalising will be the downfall of Western society.

I recall Jordan Peterson suggesting that universities should not be treated as free enterprises because then they act as businesses. When universities act as businesses, they will inevitably undercut academic standards in pursuit of the almighty dollar. This corrupts the pursuit of truth and science itself. In practice, it means opening up the university market to people who have no place in higher education. The kind of people who would be drawn to critical race and gender studies. These people cannot survive in genuine academia, so they end up in Participation Studies. Because the demand is so high, universities promote development of these fields to the detriment of real science. Then their garbage ideas get published in garbage journals, but the media don’t know the difference/don’t care, so the bad ideas get laundered into mainstream culture. Now you have intersectional theory being equalised with real academic theory under the pop culture umbrella of Science™. People with an IQ higher than their shoe size can see that the intersectional nonsense being pushed into the cultural zeitgeist is corrupt but they get harangued by smoothbrains for questioning the religion of Science™.

Then we have the perverse incentives to open up Western higher education to shithole countries like China that have an economy built on slave labour and IP theft. China has the money, so the institutions will adapt to appeal more to Chinese interests. It shouldn’t take too many brain cells to see how grotesque it is that Western academia is now funded by slavery. Just because it’s not in our backyard doesn’t mean it’s not happening or that we’re not affected by or contributing to it.

I mostly mean things like grievance studies.

Teach STEM, and anything needed for Medicine. People can go to private institutions / pay out of pocket for anything else.

We need fewer people going to college. Those that go should be for things that cannot be reasonably learned on the job. Everything else should come from apprenticeships / on the job training.

 

[Papa]

Hmmm I don't get the remark about the "government intervention". Both the employees and Murray are basically 'petitioning' the publisher. There is no government involvement at all.

Other than that there is the underlying assumption here that employees are 'engaging in activism' which implies a pattern of behaviour rather than a single incident. Like I said above, I'm arguing under the assumption that there are at least some employees who sincerely feel that Peterson's book is a bridge too far (however nonsensical that seems to me) and they want to voice their concerns in an adult, non-manipulative way. Obviously I'm not privy to the actual situation inside that publishing house. If this kind of protest is a common occurrence then sure, they might not be very suitable employees.
But assuming that this is highly exceptional, I think that firing them for it would be draconian, and I think Murray should probably not advocate for it.

Murray isn't petitioning anyone. I listened to the podcast -- he was simply saying what he thinks should be done from the perspective of the publisher. When you say cancelling, what you actually mean is censorship. It is only censorship when it is done by the government. An employer is free to fire employees who damage their business or reputation, which is what Murray is arguing these activists are doing. The workplace is not the platform for your activism. You are there to make money for your employer. Damaging the employer's brand does not make them money. Same reason that Colin Kaepernick's activism had no place on a football field. He's free to engage in activism in his free time, but when his employer hires him to play football, win games, and make them money, it doesn't mean that the football field is now a platform for his activism.

Now, before some smoothbrain chimes in and cries about conservatives wanting government intervention with respect to Big Tech, the issue there isn't censorship of Big Tech. The issue is that the spirit of the First Amendment isn't being met because the public square has been co-opted by Big Tech. It is equivalent to the government intervening to break up telecoms in the 1980s.

Handwave dismissing a pattern of behaviour versus a single incident as a way of claiming it isn't activism is dishonest. If I go and murder someone, I can't then claim in court that I'm not a murderer because I only did it once.

 

[Papa]

I mostly mean things like grievance studies.

Teach STEM, and anything needed for Medicine. People can go to private institutions / pay out of pocket for anything else.

We need fewer people going to college. Those that go should be for things that cannot be reasonably learned on the job. Everything else should come from apprenticeships / on the job training.

So... basically what the Australian government is doing? Target federal funding at fields with demonstrably better job prospects and the situation resolves itself without giving brainlets justification to cry censorship of grievance studies, no matter how justified it would be.

 

[QSD]

Murray isn't petitioning anyone. I listened to the podcast

I'll grant you this. He didn't email the publisher (at least there is no 100% evidence that he did) But he did express the opinion that they should be fired on a very public platform. Which in my eyes is kind of analogous to SJW's petitioning companies to fire people on twitter.

-- he was simply saying what he thinks should be done from the perspective of the publisher. When you say cancelling, what you actually mean is censorship. It is only censorship when it is done by the government.

I don't get this point about government again. Does it follow from this statement that if an SJW petitions a company to fire somebody on complaints of X-phobia, they are not engaging in censorship? As long as the government is not involved, it's ok? Because I would take a less strict definition and judge the censoriousness of an action more according with actual stifling effect it has on speech

An employer is free to fire employees who damage their business or reputation, which is what Murray is arguing these activists are doing. The workplace is not the platform for your activism. You are there to make money for your employer. Damaging the employer's brand does not make them money. Same reason that Colin Kaepernick's activism had no place on a football field. He's free to engage in activism in his free time, but when his employer hires him to play football, win games, and make them money, it doesn't mean that the football field is now a platform for his activism.

There are 2 assumptions here that I don't agree with - again 'activism' which implies a pattern of behaviour rather than a single incident. And second 'damaging the brand' when from the viewpoint of the SJWs they are actually un-damaging the brand which makes the situation more ambiguous.
Other than that, yeah, you're seem to be advocating for a totalitarian way of running a company, which I would argue is immoral. As the actual facts of the matter bear out, it's also unrealistic.

 

[Papa]

I'll grant you this. He didn't email the publisher (at least there is no 100% evidence that he did) But he did express the opinion that they should be fired on a very public platform. Which in my eyes is kind of analogous to SJW's petitioning companies to fire people on twitter.



I don't get this point about government again. Does it follow from this statement that if an SJW petitions a company to fire somebody on complaints of X-phobia, they are not engaging in censorship? As long as the government is not involved, it's ok? Because I would take a less strict definition and judge the censoriousness of an action more according with actual stifling effect it has on speech



There are 2 assumptions here that I don't agree with - again 'activism' which implies a pattern of behaviour rather than a single incident. And second 'damaging the brand' when from the viewpoint of the SJWs they are actually un-damaging the brand which makes the situation more ambiguous.
Other than that, yeah, you're seem to be advocating for a totalitarian way of running a company, which I would argue is immoral. As the actual facts of the matter bear out, it's also unrealistic.

I don't think there's really much to engage with if you are going to suggest that a business firing employees who seek to undermine its profitability is "totalitarian".

 

[QSD]

I don't think there's really much to engage with if you are going to suggest that a business firing employees who seek to undermine its profitability is "totalitarian".

I'm suggesting that a business firing employees who voice their concern about a certain product or policy is totalitarian. Or maybe just draconian. Either way, it's not generally accepted.

 

[The Pleasure]

At least the good news is that women's desire for conservative men will shoot up like crazy. There will be no better time to be a money-making, gym-going chad who isn't a weirdo socialist cucklord.

 

[Sign]

So... basically what the Australian government is doing? Target federal funding at fields with demonstrably better job prospects and the situation resolves itself without giving brainlets justification to cry censorship of grievance studies, no matter how justified it would be.

I’m kinda over playing games with the left at this point and would prefer to just push them out of all areas of power. I fully expect Balkanization out of the US so that is coloring my opinion on this.

With that said, Australia seems sensible.

 

[Papa]

I'm suggesting that a business firing employees who voice their concern about a certain product or policy is totalitarian. Or maybe just draconian. Either way, it's not generally accepted.

“voice their concern”

lol such dishonest handwaving

 

[QSD]

“voice their concern”

lol such dishonest handwaving

Why dishonest?
This is actually the point I've argued all along.

If the employees are engaged in some cynical pattern of behaviour, fine, away with them
I'm assuming that there are at least some who honestly believe what they are arguing.

Imagine if Peterson still was an unknown quantity, and the situation were reversed. EG: the company is declining to publish Peterson because of his supposed alt-right connections, and a group of employees stand up to voice their support for publication. Should the company just be able to fire them for supposed "alt-right sympathies' or should they be able to speak their conscience without fear of termination?

 

[Papa]

Why dishonest?
This is actually the point I've argued all along.

If the employees are engaged in some cynical pattern of behaviour, fine, away with them
I'm assuming that there are at least some who honestly believe what they are arguing.

Imagine if Peterson still was an unknown quantity, and the situation were reversed. EG: the company is declining to publish Peterson because of his supposed alt-right connections, and a group of employees stand up to voice their support for publication. Should the company just be able to fire them for supposed "alt-right sympathies' or should they be able to speak their conscience without fear of termination?

Worktime is not for activism. That is an extra-curricular activity. If you cannot/won't understand this, there's nothing else to discuss.

 

[QSD]

Worktime is not for activism. That is an extra-curricular activity. If you cannot/won't understand this, there's nothing else to discuss.

I'm not arguing about activism, as I've tried to explain already numerous times, I'm arguing for possibility for people to speak their minds at the workplace without fear of termination. I don't know what the accusation of dishonesty is for. I think I've argued my point in good faith.