The unimportant news thread

[Ken B]

An excellent post by Jerry Coyne on a recent bit of academic mau-mauing. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-professor-demonized-for-criticizing-required-diversity-statements-for-academic-jobs/

[Florestan]

Today we had presidential elections in Romania.

Klaus Iohannis, the incumbent center-right president mopped the floor with his competitor, the former Social-Democratic prime-minister Viorica Dăncilă, winning 65% of the votes.

In a single year, the Social-Democratic Party lost the elections for the European Parliament, lost the government following a no-confidence vote and today lost the presidential elections too (actually, the last time they won a presidential election was in 2000). They are groggy. And I am extrermely pleased.

Yay!

[dissily Mordentroge]

An excellent post by Jerry Coyne on a recent bit of academic mau-mauing. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-professor-demonized-for-criticizing-required-diversity-statements-for-academic-jobs/

"We should continue to do all we can to reduce barriers to participation in this most beautiful of fields." Well she did open a can of worms with that assertion.
Has it ever occurred to mathematicians, nuclear physicists et al that the underlying reality of the space we find ourselves in could be very ugly?

[drogulus]

"We should continue to do all we can to reduce barriers to participation in this most beautiful of fields." Well she did open a can of worms with that assertion.
Has it ever occurred to mathematicians, nuclear physicists et al that the underlying reality of the space we find ourselves in could be very ugly?

     I'm with Coyne on this.

     As a dedicated Sokal-ist I know how the war is fought. It's kind of like this. An Evil Crab wants to attack the bastion of liberal thought, higher education, with a right claw and a left claw. Sometimes the right one is bigger, sometimes the left one. From the Crab perspective anything that can kill liberalism in favor of overmighty ideology (rightist/theist/leftist) is good, victory for belief over discovery.

     Those of us in the liberal center rely on the discovery processes to counter self authorizing belief. We want education to be about how to think and not only what to think. We resist being pure "sideists".

     You know what they say about liberals, that they are the people who won't take their own side in an argument. That's not exactly right, I think liberals don't want to live in a world that's all claw.

[JBS]

     Those of us in the liberal center rely on the discovery processes to counter self authorizing belief. We want education to be about how to think and not only what to think. We resist being pure "sideists".

Which is itself an ideology.  Rejecting the claws requires using them. You may not like the Claw, but you can't live without it. 

[Ken B]

Which is itself an ideology.  Rejecting the claws requires using them. You may not like the Claw, but you can't live without it.

No. Having the mental discipline to insist on evidence is not the same thing "the party, right or wrong ". Nor is respecting the rights of all others comparable to insisting that only our side has rights.

[drogulus]

Which is itself an ideology.  Rejecting the claws requires using them. You may not like the Claw, but you can't live without it. 

     The use value of an ideology of discovery is clear. It does work of high value. Students should learn the tools of thought that allow them to escape from belief systems. They need a belief system that allows for the possibility, one that is highly self-critical. Crab claws are all about disabling this powerful tool.

     We all have beliefs. You can't do anything without a minimum set of them. Even that set, though, must be subject to critical scrutiny that allows for falsification at a future time. This is central to the liberal concept of education, why it is at bottom a liberal enterprise.

[Ken B]

Bloomberg News, so called, will no longer investigate Democrats, only Trump.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-bloomberg-news/bloomberg-news-will-not-investigate-michael-bloomberg-or-democratic-rivals-idUSKBN1XY0MP

[drogulus]

     Charles Schwab to buy TD Ameritrade in a $26 billion all-stock deal

     Oh boy, now we get to watch horrible commercials for Schwabamerica. As long as they get rid of that guy with a beard it's a plus.

     

     To my delight I find that everyone hates this guy.

     The TD Ameritrade website is pretty good. I've used it since the TD Waterhouse days in the '90s. I still get calls from time to time to get me to, you know, do stuff. I hope the new company will not inundate me with "offers".

[JBS]

No. Having the mental discipline to insist on evidence is not the same thing "the party, right or wrong ". Nor is respecting the rights of all others comparable to insisting that only our side has rights.

Mental discipline is an ideology. Respecting the rights of all is (part of) an ideology. Ideologies are not limited to politics.

Communism is an ideology, but so is the scientific method.

[JBS]

     Charles Schwab to buy TD Ameritrade in a $26 billion all-stock deal

     Oh boy, now we get to watch horrible commercials for Schwabamerica. As long as they get rid of that guy with a beard it's a plus.

     

     To my delight I find that everyone hates this guy.

     The TD Ameritrade website is pretty good. I've used it since the TD Waterhouse days in the '90s. I still get calls from time to time to get me to, you know, do stuff. I hope the new company will not inundate me with "offers".

I don't hate him. But that's because I don't pay attention to brokerage commercials and the like, so I have to the best of my memory never seen him.

[Ken B]

Mental discipline is an ideology. Respecting the rights of all is (part of) an ideology. Ideologies are not limited to politics.

Communism is an ideology, but so is the scientific method.

Well that is wrong in general, but it is especially wrong in the context of this discussion since the original claim referred to a political ideology. It's like if we were debating the proposition "in politics all parties are bad" and you said "what about karaoke?"

[JBS]

Well that is wrong in general, but it is especially wrong in the context of this discussion since the original claim referred to a political ideology. It's like if we were debating the proposition "in politics all parties are bad" and you said "what about karaoke?"

I should call you Humpty Dumpty. You like to claim words mean what you say they mean even when they don't mean what you say they mean.

The comment by Drogulus I was responding to was not limited to political ideas.

[drogulus]

Which is itself an ideology.  Rejecting the claws requires using them. You may not like the Claw, but you can't live without it. 

     Ideas in favor of freedom and against freedom are ideas about freedom. The claws are absolutist claims for truth, and relativist claims against the truth of anything, in favor of the Will (to believe, for power). The open society and the freedom of inquiry do have a supporting ideology, liberalism.

     Calling the advocates of freedom and the destruction of it ideologues is true in a trivial way. No one has to use absolutism to fight relativism, or vice versa. It's better to reject both and it's an ideology to reject both. What's wrong with that?
   

[drogulus]

I don't hate him. But that's because I don't pay attention to brokerage commercials and the like, so I have to the best of my memory never seen him.

     It's not just this guy, it's also what the commercials say about how investors are viewed, as simpletons. You have the one with two marks sitting with "advisors" hovering over them. One is unhappy with the bad advisor and scuttles over towards the benign supervision of the good one. It's one of the most merciless depictions of financial predation you'll ever see.
     
     https://www.youtube.com/v/G3b5U_zNQXY

     I know people like the ones sitting meekly in the chairs. I was trying to pound sense into one last night. She wants someone to help plan her retirement. I keep telling her she can do it all herself with some research into how to make the most of what she has. She's way too smart to be as passive as she is. I've has some effect, but not as much as I should.

[Ken B]

I should call you Humpty Dumpty. You like to claim words mean what you say they mean even when they don't mean what you say they mean.

Well we were discussing what sort of thing leads people to commit murders by the tens of thousands. Suggestions included communism and nazism. You know, dogmatic ideologies about society should be organized that confer upon their adherents special rights. If you want to add the scientific method to that list go right ahead.

I don't think even Edwin Everett Horton ever fractured a fairy tale quite so badly as your Humpty in Wonderland
!

[amw]

I'm sure the millions of enslaved Africans, Native Americans/First Nations, Aboriginal Australians, etc (it's a long list) who were killed in order for liberalism to exist are glad to hear about how non-dogmatic and self-critical it is.

[Ken B]

I'm sure the millions of enslaved Africans, Native Americans/First Nations, Aboriginal Australians, etc (it's a long list) who were killed in order for liberalism to exist are glad to hear about how non-dogmatic and self-critical it is.

Dodgy and dishonest wording. Liberalism rejects imperialism. 
Perhaps it might not have existed in a world without imperialism but that does not make it the cause of imperialism.

[amw]

I'm sure George Washington would have agreed with you as soon as he was done throwing smallpox-infected blankets into Native American villages.

[Florestan]

I'm sure George Washington would have agreed with you as soon as he was done throwing smallpox-infected blankets into Native American villages.

George Washington did nothing of the sort.

https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets

https://www.historynet.com/smallpox-in-the-blankets.htm