Political Correctness running amuck....

thought i'd create a thread where I (and others) could post & discuss all things regarding the renewed instances of Political Correctness rampaging through society....

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probably the best place to start is US college campuses, where PC bullshit is going full on nuclear :

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/can-we-take-political-correctness-seriously-now.html#

https://www.thefire.org/yale-students-demand-resignations-from-faculty-members-over-halloween-email/

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a long, but really great discussion with Greg Lukianoff - president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) about PCness and it's effect on free speech :

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Not sure if you follow Conor Freidersdorf on this Vuvu?

Would say this has been a long-running focus for him so visiting his blog regularly may be worth it given your penchant for this issue, this was a good piece:

The New Intolerance of Student Activism
A fight over Halloween costumes at Yale has devolved into an effort to censor dissenting views.

 

What about the good things we get from Political Correctness?

Political correctness really works! Sorry, conservatives, but science just said so | Oliver Burkeman | Comment is free | The Guardian

It’s Time To Get Real About Political Correctness

 

the study is a joke.

how could one ever possibly hope to empirically measure how "novel" an idea is?

the study used a panel to judge those ideas that were divergent from the norm. however that's an entirely subjective judgment.

This is a problem across the board with all "soft" sciences. Not sure if you saw this :

Study delivers bleak verdict on validity of psychology experiment results | Science | The Guardian

these studies may be interesting, and ultimately may lead to some real science down the line, but to claim they are empirical evidence or hard science demonstrates a breathtaking lack of critical thinking.

quote from the article :

wtf??????????????????????

holy straw man argument.

 

You like the conor article?

I find myself more bemused by these issues than anything else - I'd say I like Conor's approach more than someone like Bill Maher.

And part of me wonders if all the anti-PC brigade's antics are letting us forget about the good things political correctness did for us!

Because of this I truly find myself in the middle on these issues - the most egregious examples of PC-ness are silly, but then so are some of the most egregious arguments used by the Anti-PC brigade - there's foolishness a-plenty to go around...

But at the end of the day, PC-ness must be a double edged sword, innit? Giving as it takes away?

Giving us "chilling effects" on speech - but then also working away at and eroding artefacts in our speech from bygone eras of discrimination (ie the n-word)

 

yes, it was one of of several i read in the past few days regarding the recent college insanity.

i suppose it depends on how one defines political correctness. i would define it as trying to suppress dissenting opinion and speech, and i would strongly affirm that it does no good.

people still use the n-word all the time.

here's a great article on offensive language through out modern times :

How Dare You Say That! The Evolution of Profanity - WSJ

ultimately we should challenge taboos. that's how we can re-examine things and evolve our views when needed.

 

Interesting, no "golden mean" here then for you!

I am more in the grey area....

 

an excellent article related to the madness that has engulfed us :

Microaggressions and the Rise of Victimhood Culture - The Atlantic

 

^^ yes this one was also excellent - Conor goes so deep on these...

 

What we are seeing are both sides of the political spectrum eating themselves. Terfs vs. trannies, unionists vs. open-border types, neocons vs. alt-rights, hispanic-courting republicans vs. white nationalists, it goes on. Whatever minutiae you hold onto you can find a someone online and form a group. This is part and parcel of the topic at hand because everyone is so offended nowadays.

Attorneys: Katy-area teacher fired for refusing to address girl, 6, as transgender boy This story have everything for the aggrieved. Middle-agedness, women, religion, transgender issues, 6-year old with gender dysphoria and race (edited to add). Throw in an MRA and sweet uncircumcised non-gender conformist baby Jesus we've got a winner.

 

The study framers measured a) number of unique ideas generated, and b) novelty of those ideas. Their measurement vs political correctness incorporated both measures (so even if you disagree with the novelty result, you will need to find fault with the volume result as well to disregard the study entirely).

To assign novelty they had two people, who were blind to the experiment, independently go through the list of ideas and code them (1 to 5) for novelty. The framers of the study note that the correlation between the novelty ratings was high, which would point to the codings being non-arbitrary.

I'm sure there were other mechanisms introduced to take care of confounding variables (Cornell isn't exactly Mickey Mouse university), but i'm not about to go through the article with a fine tooth comb. I've linked it so you can if you care to.

Off tangent, but on the thread topic, I noticed this while quickly skimming through:

And it is true. While it is fine and healthy to have a discourse on where we draw the line on cultural/moral norms, too often the concept of "PC run amok" is actually a banner used by racists, misogynists, and the intellectually lazy to justify conduct they know is wrong. Ie: the worst kind of shitheadery (which is why it isn't surprising that Dershowitz and Summers are the stars of the paradigm in the quote above.)

 

Douche-o-witz!!

 

again, this a problem with "soft" science.

You can not control the variables in any legitimate way. The individual people in one group are going to be vastly different from people in another group.

If you haven't looked at the article on the failure to replicate psychological studies please do.

These studies still have some worth, but they are not the hard science that the Guardian article that Prakitk linked was so eager to portray it as.

I would definitely categorize the Summers incident as PC run amuck. The idea that someone can't even suggest that there are differences between the sexes without people demanding a resignation is shocking. (even more so when someone see the full context of his speech).

 

Boy you get fightey eh? I just googled "what about the good things Political Correctness has done" and posted the first few links I found. This does not mean I support all the words contained in those links - however I think there were things worth considering in both links. I was eager to make a counterpoint, not "portray" these as dispositive on the issue.

also, as someone who actually enjoys matters of science and replicability quite a bit - not unfamiliar with the latest PLOS One study that failed to reproduce a huge amount of psychology papers.

I would caution against "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" - especially if doing so means you are disparaging a study's conclusion you'd rather not accept (hallmark of motivated reasoning).

This: Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS123 - Daniel Lakens on P-Hacking and Other Problems in PsychologyResearch

was an excellent discussion with people well placed to discuss these issues - and they were very keen to point out that this doesn't mean "you can't trust psychological research at all" - its a little more complex than that. However, I think one would be prudent to take your appeal as a cautious note of skepticism - to dig deep on any study's conclusion and verify some of the study parameters, if you're able to - validate how it's landing in the scholarly community in the peer review/journal process...

More here:



"p-hacking" is endemic to a lot of science actually, especially in medical areas where alternative treatments can be found to "work" through similar analytical pitfalls (conscious and unconscious)

More here: PLOS ONE: Excess Success for Psychology Articles in the Journal Science

NeuroLogica Blog » The Reproducibility Problem

 

I think if you re-read my post the wording implied that the article's author from the Guardian (and not you) was trying to portray the study as conclusive hard science (i.e - the "science just said so" headline)

Again, I invite you to re-read my posts. I am not saying that all "soft" science research is worthless (although there is still an awful lot that is), but i am saying that one can't view the data as "hard" or empirical, and certainly not as settled or conclusive science.

 

Noted, "fightey" charge withdrawn!

 

Well, it's interesting that you're happy to link to popular magazines (and label them 'excellent') while waving away academic papers because their discipline is 'soft'. Except academic papers that appear to support your current viewpoint at whatever time.

This is the President of Harvard University speculating that women are innately worse at STEM subjects. He was in a position of power and responsibility. His statement directly falls within the sphere of responsibility that his position conveyed. It is likely to offend and/or influence current and prospective students. It is likely to bring his institution into disrepute. Worse still, the fact that he is speculating removes any possible compelling reason for him to be saying these things.

Steve, who does accounts wouldn't lose his job for saying stuff like this. His views on genetics don't affect company accounts, but everyone probably thinks he is an asshole. But do you seriously not see the problem with the President of a University speculating that low female uptake in STEM is rooted in innate ability?

 

One thing's for sure - there's silly people out there saying silly things!!

Controversy Over Christmas Patterns on Starbucks's Cups Is Damaging

Some sanity:

"Political correctness, as Feuerstein calls it in his video, is a straw-man enemy. Starbucks’s decision to make plain red cups is less an erasure of Christian values than a neutral design choice that also happens to reflect a solid understanding of the company’s diverse audience. "

 

southpark s19e01 is pretty good on this subject.

 

Conor has another feature-length article on this topic, this time defending his good name from The New Yorker:

Free Speech Is No Diversion - The Atlantic

 

I don't understand how in 2015 on a college campus where you can't eat a pancake without it appearing on social media within minutes how the faeces-swastika was not photographed.

 

Isn't this thread supposed to be about the bizarre *controversy* concerning them Starbuck's cups?

In other news, I would never use the *N* word in reference to Black People.

(but I totally use it in reference to whiteTrash idiot types, and ISIS supporter types)

 

In fact, the last college girl I ever dated, Morgane (she was from the UK, going to Concordia U), around, um, 8 years ago (fuck I'm getting old), I remember one conversation:
"Oh yeah, that job, I totally quit that job. It was just a bunch of N*gger shit".
Morgane: *giving me the the glaring death stare*

Me: " What? oh no. I don't mean *N*gger* in the Black sense! What I mean more is "Yes masta yes Masta" type of ultra-conformist Retard Job!

Morgane: *Still glaring at me*

Me: "Hey, I have black friends! Ok, one. BUT I'VE KNOWN HIM FOR A LONG TIME!" *pointing*

Morgane: *still glaring*

Me: "But it's true. I need more Black friends. Hmmmm.

Morgane: *giving me the WTF look*

She didn't invite me to her next party, and we parted ways soon after that.

FUCK YOU POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!

(btw this was a total real-time Seinfeld moment)

 

Yes, i called an article "excellent" because that was my opinion of it. There are countless articles out there, most bad, but some good, and a few even "excellent".

Articles generally report on news, summarize events, offer analysis, or present an argument, and that was how it was presented. It was not presented as settled science.

You of course are free to differ on your opinion of the article.

I'd suggest that same course of action should also be applied to research & academic papers. There are many bad ones, and a few good ones. I'm absolutely going to judge them on the merits as i see them, and if a scientific study has low sample sizes, poor methodology and questionable interpretations of the data than that's more than enough reason to label it a "joke" IMO.

Are you suggesting that people should accept every research paper as the gospel truth?

You're presenting things out of context, and in this case context if very important. Here's a reasonable summary from wiki (emphasis mine) :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes

So to be clear, he was offering 3 different hypothesis for why women are underrepresented in STEM at tenured positions at top universities (of which Harvard would surely be one). The "innate ability" hypothesis was not presented as settled science, only that there is research that supports the theory and it would be up to us if one accepts it, and he also offered the 3rd hypothesis that it's because of social structures (which no one had a problem with, even though the science on that hypothesis is certainly not settled either).

His best guess was the largest factor was "the high powered job hypothesis", and NOT innate ability, and he also suggested that he would liked to be proven wrong because it would be an easier problem to fix.

yes, i seriously DO NOT see a problem with it. As the president he was actively trying to create a discourse on why women are under represented in STEM, and more importantly how to improve those numbers at his institution. That seems will with in the responsibilities of his post.

are you seriously suggesting that we should try to solve problems without first trying to understand why these problems occur? Should we ignore reasons simply because some may be offended by them, even if the intent is to ultimately improve the situation?

Steven Pinker had a brilliant quote about this incident that perfectly applies to this argument :