Pseudonyms are good for joint contributions, position papers, summarizing/expanding the available criticisms, fundamentally new research. Anything else get you get dox'ed: too many references to a set of authors can lead in the direction of one of this set being the author.
We are in a sad state where we can't even discuss ideas.
My choice of internet handle (my real name) reflects my position on the topic.
Anonymity has a place, but people need to become more comfortable with attaching their identities to their ideas. (and we need more protections or enforcement for the consequesnces so people can actually feel safer)
I use pseudonymous accounts (such as this one) for things I can't say.[1] I work at a very progressive tech company, and I certainly would be fired if my true beliefs were known by my coworkers.
For uncontroversial stuff, I use my real name. That way I can get credit for useful technical ideas while avoiding having my career ruined. If you don't believe that can happen, I don't know what to tell you. There are plenty of low profile cases that don't make the news, but I'm sure everyone's heard of James Damore.
Edit: I'd also like to pat myself on the back for recognizing this trend toward intolerance back in 2010 (when this account was created). Finally, my cynicism and pessimism pay off! And if you're wondering why my comments aren't always controversial, it's because I also use this account when I'm drunk and/or high.
> I certainly would be fired if my true beliefs were known
I've gone into work some days and there's been lines of cocaine railed up ready to go. (I haven't taken any drugs in over a month, for perspective). I sometimes hate my job, but I'm terrified of moving company to a culture I can't stand.
That's easy when your views are within the Overton window, but unless you are retired or live comfortably enough the reality is you probably shouldn't discuss controversial ideas on the internet using a real name, especially for younger people, this stuff can come back to haunt you employment wise.
Seen talented hardworking people fired because of tweets and our government contracts.
I'd argue this even extends to mundane topics like city planning, you never know who you can piss off. There's always someone to offend.
A thought experiment.
I am an academic.
I post the material below on the internet using my real name.
"there are more male geniuses in society than women because men are subject to more variability in terms of IQ. In other words, while men had more people at the tail ends of the IQ bell curve, women were more likely to have average IQ scores."
What will happen to my career ?
Larry Summers did that.
Within 13 months, he was forced to resign from his job....
a more interesting thought experiment is what would happen if you described the same phenomenon, framed in a way which superficial and reactive people would agree with rather than disagree with:
"there are more male dunces in society . . . in other words, women were less likely to be dunces."
my guess is that it wouldn't be very destructive to your career at all -- but maybe i'm wrong on that point. of course, if i'm right, this effect would be entirely a result of incomplete or incorrect interpretation of the principles by the readers.
I would suggest a look at Excellence Without a Soul by Harry Lewis (sometime dean of Harvard College) before you conclude that it was only those comments that lost Summers his job.
Actually, I think that makes it even worse. That is, Summers was unpopular with particular groups for a bunch of different reasons, so he was eventually fired for the pretense of having the audacity to say that the possibility that innate gender differences could account for an imbalance in the sciences should be studied.
Regardless of what you think of Summers, read the exact transcript of what he actually said at that conference. The fact that he was fired for what he said should be incredibly shameful for Harvard.
What does this have to do with being an academic? Does this change if you're a notable employee of a company? I don't think so. If you are in a situation where your personal reputation effects the reputation of your employer then you need to take that into consideration when you speak publicly.
Heh, and my internet handle shows my position. I originally created this handle years ago because I wanted to comment on a gender-related issue in technology, and I felt that doing so under my real name would only be a net negative for my career (software management). It's not that I felt I would be pilloried for my views, but I certainly didn't think (and still don't) that it would be anything but a neutral-to-net-negative impact, so why risk that just for the edification of making a random internet comment?
> but people need to become more comfortable with attaching their identities to their ideas.
You give no reason why that should be the case. Holding a controversial opinion and not being on your toes how you phrase things can easily provoke bans/deplatforming in many environments. It's a lot easier to just let another account bite the dust than tiptoe around things all the time just to maintain a persistent identity.
I feel like this is really easy to say when you are a ~mature adult~.
People change and grow up, the new generation(s) aren't given an opportunity to fuck up or express shitty opinions and learn from them because the internet never forgets.
Some stupid social media post or whatever can forever be attributed to them and be dug up later in life.
I'm just glad I'm in my 30's and don't have to go through puberty in a world with social media.
It doesn't matter if you're 30 or 50 or 60, there's all sorts of controversial opinions these days that are verboten. No, they're not all "shitty opinions".
it sounds like you don't agree with any ideas that anyone with power over you and the will to exercise it finds objectionable -- which is great for you, but does not apply to many, many people all over the world.
I've had the same handle for so long, it's almost like my real name. The two are now so entwined that it would be hard for me to be anonymous as Jaruzel. So much so that a few years ago I just gave in and openly linked the two.
I rarely have a need to be anonymous online, and when I do, I do create a throwaway alias. i.e. i'm active on Twitter, but not as me. That place is WAY too toxic to openly tweet under your real name.
you can't experiment with new ideas if there are severe social consequences for experimentation.
because experimentation often fails. and public failures lead to getting discredited and kicked out of the discourse. people who experiment while using their real identities probably can't get back in.
1. Tenure alone does not get one soft benefits. Even these guys want power and money. So, they wanna become deans, then vice provost, provost, eventually President of some wealthy college. This soft power can get tenure jobs for one's girl friends.
2. Even if one gets a tenure, your students' won't get any jobs if you don't toe the line of the dominant themes in social sciences--identity politics, political correctness, knowledge/power, etc.
3. Intellectual honesty and integrity, core virtues of being an intellectual, is missing in the picture.
>But it does mean that the worst that can happen to you is that you stop being invited to the cool parties. In particular, when all is said and done, you'll have a stable job.
As a tenured professor, one wants more than a stable job and being invited to cool parties. One wants to attract student researchers, get grants, even find them post doctoral fellowships in other research groups, and in other countries, finally get them jobs. Otherwise, there is no intellectual legacy for one's research program, which is different from the dominant themes in social sciences. That's one way of destroying intellectual competitors in the academic arena.
But it does mean that the worst that can happen to you is that you stop being invited to the cool parties. In particular, when all is said and done, you'll have a stable job.
Until the law is changed where I am protected from my current and future employers' adverse reactions against me for plainly stating "Hitler did nothing wrong," anonymity is here to stay.
Now if we can just get around to fixing why we need such anonymity in an academic journal in the first place... It's absurd that there's such danger in saying something that doesn't entirely align with either the left or the right (at least in the US). It feels quite a lot like McCarthyism to me (or what I imagine it was like at that time, since I'm not that old).
1. There are lots of other cases where we would agree there’s some form of silencing going on, even as a group has many supporters and rich, famous spokespeople
2. In fact, taboo opinions seem to promote a culture of celebrity
3. Fame lets people avoid social repercussions, but that doesn’t mean those repercussions don’t exist for ordinary people
4. If you spend decades inventing a powerful decentralized network to allow unpopular voices to be heard, sometimes you end up with unpopular voices being heard
5. When the IDW claims they are threatened, harassed, and blacklisted, people should at least consider that they are referring to the actual well-known incidents of threats, harassment, and blacklisting against them rather than imagining this is code for “they demand to be universally liked”
6. The IDW probably still censor themselves
7. Nobody in this discussion seems to really understand how silencing works.
I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms.
Because liberalism is a religion and people that expose the flaws in the ideology are modern-day heretics. Fortunately heretics are no longer burned at the stake. Instead you just get fired, socially ostracized, your career ruined, etc.
It's more than that though. Liberalism is a religion, sure, but there's a right wing equivalent too that's just as fervent. (No, it's not Nazism, though that isn't to say that's not a threat too.) I think it's just the polarization of the parties. Both of the main sociopolitical parties in the US have become so vehemently polarized that they view each other as the greatest threat to the country. In turn, you're either entirely 100% with them, or your clearly someone from the other party and you're the enemy.
As a non-US person with zero interest in the US at all, the whole Left vs Right thing over there looks EXACTLY like a religious war from here.
Both sides are violently trying to force their beliefs on everyone else, and both sides think they're right and anyone who doesn't believe the same things as them is outright wrong and deserves to be destroyed.
Anyone who doesn't take a side, is basically considered to be worth nothing, and either mocked or considered as bad as the enemy.
The sheer amount of HATE that flows out of the US is mind boggling.
I feel like a religious war is the wrong model for the US, mostly because I've never heard of a place with a pair of religions that both have roughly half of the followers, and are just fighting over the allegiance of the last one-to-five percent; and especially a place where this is somehow a long-term equilibrium state.
Campaigning actually involves fairly little persuasion; very little fighting over that last one-to-five percent. It's mostly identifying which half of the people are already your side's followers, and encouraging/motivating them to show up and vote.
Except I think the model has very recently changed. In the past it used to be about “chasing the centre”, and as a result, parties tended not to stray too far from centrist policy positions, because when polled on actual policies, most people tend to be remarkably closely bunched.
However, recent events have proven that (short term) political success can be attained by pushing the edges. Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people, they are actively pushing more extreme agendas, pulling people away from the centre (using various propaganda techniques), and locking large blocks of voters in behind positions quite distant and clearly distinct from those of their opponents. The success of this approach seems to be predicated on creating ambiguities, obfuscation and false dichotomies. I’d suggest that many fervent followers would be unable to correctly articulate actual policies of their parties vs repeating glib partisan mantras.
> Except I think the model has very recently changed.
It hasn't, at least in the way you describe.
> In the past it used to be about “chasing the centre”
It wasn't, at least not anything like recently; that turnout determines elections and even unaffiliated voters are just as consistently partisan in how they vote as party loyalists has been well known by both political scientists and political campaigners for decades, and deeply integrated into political strategy; it's he reason behind both GOTV efforts and selective voter suppression, neither of which are new elements of the political playbook.
> Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people
They don't do that because there is no such thing. Distribution of political opinion doesn't have a central peak.
> Distribution of political opinion doesn't have a central peak.
But I'm not talking about "political opinion". I'm talking about "common sense" (reflective of things that may lie at the core of policies devoid of partisan spin). For example, according to a recent poll [0], a significant majority of Americans support immigration. A visiting alien might think that a consensus policy position could be achieved based on a result like that. Clearly however, that's not the case in reality. Similarly for background checks on gun buyers [1], yet, like immigration, it seems that when couched in absolutist, us-vs-them rhetoric, bipartisan policy is totally out of reach.
It isn’t a long term equilibrium state. Eventually it’ll either die down, one side will be crushed, or there’ll be extensive violence that could end up in a civil war. See the European wars or religion or the Dutch Revolt. For a less violent result see pillarisation, where different religious or political groups have parallel institutions.
The amount of hate in the us political discord is a feature. A beautiful result of convincing one side that the other needs to be killed (and that is darkly literal). At its core it's all about distracting the populace and getting every last dollar to the top.
The SF libertarians that always show up for these threads think they'll get swept up with the tide of the elite despite not comprehending that even with their wealth the majority of them are orders of magnitude off from the even most basic of antes.
Its Russia, and others too probably. No not that "They haxed our election!" but that they are stoking the fire. Right wing discussion is filled with cartoon-style representations of the left, and the left is vice-versa. I feel that I've seen communities of too high an overall intelligence become overtaken by the lowest quality stuff. People who attempt to discuss nuance get shouted at as being from the other side.
I guess it is possible that genuine consensus in these groups has lowered in quality, but I personally can't believe that, communities I've been in for awhile changed and got very intense within the last 3 years. It's unfortunate to see.
The political battle lines in the United States are about things so elemental and fundamental that no compromise is possible and none should be considered. One 'side' is perfectly content to pillory people of color at every opportunity, demonize desperate refugees from a conflict the United States itself caused, send armed thugs into people's homes to kidnap their children, protect a law enforcement apparatus that brutalizes with impunity, push racist pseudoscience, and shelter out-and-out white supremacists.
When one side fundamentally rejects your humanity, you naturally don't have any room to compromise, and you don't have any time for the smug, ignorant centrism of people who are isolated from the consequences of the political struggle.
That seems to be a pretty good example of the hysterical position of the radical left. Checks all the emotional boxes: People of color, law enforcement, refugees, children, and the perennial favorite boogeymen: racists, and now white supremacists. (You forgot "literal Nazis.") Even down to putting quotes around 'side' - presumably to punctuate your point that those who disagree with you don't have a legitimate perspective.
The right has plenty of problems (plenty!) but the what seems to be unique to the left (or at least much more prevalent/vocal) is this Sith-like perspective that anyone who disagrees (or even just agrees less than 110%) is some kind of immoral/evil opponent for whom no type or amount of righteous retaliation is undeserved.
But of course that might just be be how it looks from the perspective of a "smug, ignorant centris[t]."
I'm not sure how you can claim this attitude is somehow unique to the left when there's a president who does this exact thing on a daily basis. You would have to be deliberately ignoring the things that he says and supports (along with the party that enables him) which, well, I guess would support your tagline after all.
> Even down to putting quotes around 'side' - presumably to punctuate your point that those who disagree with you don't have a legitimate perspective.
Yes, of course. That's the entire point. Modern Republican ideology and policy is a fundamental, existential threat to myself, my friends and family, and the safety and security of people like me. Why on earth would I consider their perspective to be legitimate? Why on earth would I consider trite 'both-sides'ism to be legitimate?
The idea that the citizens of the United States are somehow responsible for what their illegitimate government does is ridiculous. The people who actually will have to physically coexist with the refugees and the people responsible for their plight in the first place are not the same, the refugees will live around normal poor or middle class people who do not make major foreign policy decisions and the latter will live in rich gated neighborhoods in expensive houses and will probably never set eyes on a refugee in their lives. Whether it's in the interests of the natives to let in so many people who have a legitimate reason to hate the country they are moving to is also something to consider, this being supposedly the only real concern of government after all.
What is the right-wing ideological equivalent where its adherents would attempt to deplatform, smear, etc. someone for violating its dogma, and what is the dogma?
There's plenty of extreme harassment, attacks, and "shouting down" coming from the right in response to any ideological disagreement from the left. Worse, explicit calls to violence (that have been answered) and encouragement of hatred from people all the way up and down the chain, from anonymous internet posters to the president. I'm not saying this is worse than the equivalent from the left, but to say it's not there is naive. Additionally, as far as I can tell, nearly all of the major instances of deplatforming of "the right" have really been deplatforming of meaningless hateful garbage or calls to violence that violate terms of service, but have been framed as attacks on the right, which seems like a really awful mischaracterization of the right.
The controversy over abortion rights is way beyond deplatforming and smearing, there's actual murders by self-described anti-abortionists. In George Tiller's case, his clinic was firebombed("deplatforming"?) and O'Reilly had criticized("smearing"?) him heavily, before the assassination.
Gee. The US spent most of the 20th C invading countries, mostly for 'violating its dogma' - for being too democratic, for not being subservient enough, in the service of US business interests, mainly. Supporting dictators, giving a lot of weapons, training torturers, subverting democracy, assisting/staging coups, etc etc from Guatemala to Iran. It's a long and well-known story.[0] Millions died.
[0] Although not well-known enough. Good starting points might be the Chomsky's political books (they're extensively referenced - don't just take his word for things, read his sources too), and Scott Noble's documentaries: http://metanoia-films.org/
Anita Sarkeesian is an example. She received a barrage of violent threats over her feminist critique of video game stories. The threats basically destroyed any hope of a rational conversation.
The president is the leader of a right-wing ideology and he attempted to deplatform and smear kneeling players in the NFL. He explicitly asked the NFL to fire kneeling players and smeared them by deliberately misrepresenting their stated position (that they are kneeling to protest police violence).
You're making a vague, sweeping claim here without any evidence to back it up.
Also, I think you're misusing the term "liberalism" here. Liberalism is an ideology that supports freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints. The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism (the issue is that liberalism and the political left tend to get conflated in American usage).
> The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism
I actually think it's incredibly telling that a group that used to identify themselves as "liberal" have renamed themselves "progressive". Rather than freedom of expression and ideology, they now espouse a mandated direction "forward" and no longer value freedom.
s/liberalism/progressivism if you care that much about labels. In my opinion they are rather fluid, and 19th century / early 20th century liberalism is not present day liberalism, which I find to be perhaps only a slightly milder form of progressivism.
And as far as providing an argument or evidence goes, I think the essay "How Dawkins Got Pwnd" [1] makes the case better than I could, so I'll simply refer you there.
This reminds of the that NY Times "intellectual dark web" article, with such obscure figures as Joe Rogan.
The man has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, but still can get the times to write an article about how he's some underground thinker.
If you dig deeper into these kinds of complaints from these kinds of people, it usually turns into "The people _I_ want to like me do not". They expect universal admiration, and when they don't they yell about some sort of conspiracy.
The fact that everyone even knows about the popular people making these complaints disproves the thesis that they can't get out there and make their arguments.
It just turns out that none of these alternative thinkers can handle any sort of criticism against their ideas, and think there's a mass conspiracy. Ocamm's razor suggests otherwise
Uh, people have their livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined for having unpopular views all the time. James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize because he was destitute, Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop, to name two examples. Another example of the difficulty people have in going against the status quo is this article, which was on HN several months ago: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p... .
The problem is not that they can't accept criticism, the problem is other people disenfranchising them for their opinions.
Being disinvited from a conference is the least of it. If he wasn’t the founder of his own company, he would have lost his job. In 2016, security escorted him off the SF Google campus when he visited a friend for lunch. Apparently his name is on a blacklist (along with other conservative & neoreactionary people).
When I met Curtis Yarvin, he told me about some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his family. I disagree with him on pretty much everything, but it saddened me that he had to worry about that.
Oh, you again? This time crying about a neo reactionary who has consequences for his actions? You poor, poor put apon white men. We should all hold a protest so your marginalized voices can be heard.
They’re not being disenfranchised for their opinions. It’s nobodys right to give a talk at a conference. It’s just that people don’t want to be friends with bigots.
If you spout bad opinions people like you less. If you show bad judgement people won’t want to hire you.
If you preach an ideology that implicitly concludes that a certain set of people are biologically inferior, it’s not a surprise that people who disagree will fight you about it. What else do you expect? What other outcome? “Oh cool yeah you think I’m subhuman. awesome. Let’s get to work.” In what universe does _that_ align with free association?
Joe Rogan is rare and important because he'll sit down and have an authentic conversation with anyone. Over a span of hours without talking points or a sequence of established rhetoric.
These sorts of conversations contrast mainstream media (TV and headline news) because the participants are free to speak for hours, not minutes, and are not put on their heels the entire time.
What about examples like this? [1] A researcher wanted to do research on gender reassignment reversals and was turned down by his ethics committee. I think is more what the new journal was created for.
Ethics committees generally do not turn down research because they think it's a bad idea, but because the processes in place to protect the subject are sub-standard. In the example linked, that would probably be a heavy-duty human subject study subject to rigorous controls. An MA student has perhaps six months to research, write up and hand in, which (together with being an inexperienced researcher) would certainly raise warning flags.
Also, Bath Spa University is a relatively small, relatively new university with a less established research tradition than most of the UK's universities. It wouldn't surprise me if its ethics committees were less confident too.
None of which is to say that the student isn't right, just that we currently only have his word for it and the university is quite correctly saying nothing. But I'm pretty sceptical.
To reuse and expand upon a comment of mine from elsewhere:
I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) I'm not really sure why a few different people thought my comment was relevant specifically to that NY Times IDW article.
The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms. This is a far more serious issue than celebrities feeling unloved and blaming a conspiracy.
For instance I've personally seen multiple people ostracized from their predominantly-left-leaning friend groups for saying something mildly positive about something Trump has done in office, or for arguing that not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. I'm not sure how rational political discussion can be held when saying such innocuous things as I've mentioned can result in instant ostracization. Fortunately I noticed this happening before I too said something that would end the same way for me. (I already learned not to discuss politics with my very right-leaning dad, so adding "most of my friends" to the do-not-discuss-politics-with-them list was fairly easy.) Although I'm in a very liberal area so I see this primarily happening in fervently left-leaning circles, I understand that similar happens in fervently right-leaning circles as well. I can only imagine how much one has to censor themselves when publishing something that shouldn't be controversial at all in an academic journal! This is seriously not good.
It’ll last about five minutes. The first issue will see the reviewers and editorial board subject to a hail of condemnation that will threaten or end their careers. Even if the authors are anonymous, everyone identifiable will be attacked for having the gall to give them a platform. All this does is invite people to shoot the messenger, and they will.
* You can't put it in your resume. And that is importante because many academics need a minimal amount of publication each year. Perhaps someone with a tenure can have the luxury of a hidden article, but most of them have some graduate student or postdoc that is a coauthor and wants to increase the total count of papers by any mean.
* If the article is controversial enough, the authors will be identified using a text analysis. Most papers reuse a lot of parts of the previous papers of the authors, so it is not so difficult.
* Each controversial article will get the offended side (right/left/whatever) asking for an exemption of the anonymity and/xor deplataforming the journal.
Text analysis is like a polygraph, it's not really conclusive in and of itself and it's not really grounds to convict someone. It might help point you in the right direction if you ask the right questions, which may help lead you to something more conclusive.
I don't think the standards of evidence demanded by those that authors of controversial articles fear are stringent enough that "equivalent to a polygraph" fails them.
I think that looking at the reference section will detect 99% of the time who is the author or at least reduce the possibilities to a small group. People usually have a lot of citations of their previous amazing papers and the papers of the advisors and papers of friendly groups. It's possible to avoid this, but there is a strong bias. (It's more evident if you remove the common citations that everyone in the are is using in all the papers.)
I'm not sure I agree. It's possible that some people will publish anonymously here and then later, if their work is sufficiently accepted by a large enough chunk of academia/society, they would come out from the shadows and claim ownership.
I agree that untenured academics need to publish papers they can put on their resume, but it's not a fatal flaw if most of the early articles are penned by tenured professors.
I'm not an expert in text analysis, but I think that if someone is trying to obfuscate their authorship they could probably do so.
I think your first point (can't put it in your resume) is your strongest, and the most likely issue this publication will have. I'm not sure if it'll be enough of an issue to kill the journal though.
The reason I don't think your second and third point are too big a deal is because they seem to be predicated on the assumption that the articles published in this journal will be wildly controversial. I don't think that's necessarily true. Presumably, the people running the journal will still decide what they want to publish and they won't be giving a free pass to every single submission. If someone decides to submit a study that is an unrigorous veiled attempt at justifying racism, I expect those reviewing the submissions will reject it. There are all kinds of things academics are likely afraid to publish with their names on it in the current sociopolitical climate out of fear of _potential_ blowback, without even getting into the things they won't publish due to _certain_ blowback.
So in summation, I think it could potentially succeed if A) there are enough submissions even though people can't put it on their resumes, and B) the journal publishes enough not-so-controversial studies.
Who will contribute to this? Would institutions sign off on their staff spending time on controversial work that brings them no immediate recognition? Maybe this gets used as a staging area where institutions measure public response and take credit if it looks like it's to their advantage?
I agree. The intention appears to be that if an Org funds a biased study, then the funded academic can secretly publish a counter point to themselves. That's the best case, and it means the academic published one paper that they thought was false. So, this is a paper that accepts liars, as long as they promise to tell the truth this time?
The worst case is that the Org just cuts out the middle-man and writes the paper themselves and publishes the BS study in this journal too.
What incentive other than your reputation is even available to ensure it's not just filled with junk science?
We've seen in journals on social sciences, for example, that peer reviewers can be fooled relatively easily. By setting up the incentives like this, won't this just become a bastion of crackpots and frauds?
I've got to say, I can't actually call to mind any instances of controversial peer-reviewed papers. I can point to the Bell Curve- that was controversial, but it was a also a book written by a conservative political operative that made specific governmental policy recommendations. That seems like an entirely different topic to me. Or for another example let's take Jordan Peterson, he's quite clearly written lots of academic papers. But are those controversial?
Not really, he's widely regarded as a fine professor of psychology. But does that really wave a magic wand over his head and grant him immunity from being judged for the self-help books he publishes? I don't think anyone reasonable person would agree with that. Also, what protection does pseudonymous authorship afford him? He's literally making a career out of touring different countries giving speeches about the moral decay of western culture.
Here's my question: Does this problem actually exist? Or is this misplaced fear about a different issue that actually does exist.
Somebody posted another article on threats to academic freedom today[1]. Specific examples are cited in its links. The general idea is basically this:
> I have heard too many stories from my China-based colleagues about rights infringements to list. Common problems include: universities and publishers demanding that research questions and conclusions are in line with the current political orthodoxy, restrictions on traveling abroad for professional conferences, and incessant invitations to “have tea” with security agents.
> Political repression is shutting down many more areas of academic inquiry than just labor scholarship. As the Chinese state cracks down on an increasing array of social actors, including rights lawyers, feminists, ethnic minorities, and religious minorities—both Muslim and Christian—the related topics become off-limits to academic researchers.
It sounds exactly like the sort of thing the journal in this article is for:
> An international group of university researchers is planning a new journal which will allow articles on sensitive debates to be written under pseudonyms. They feel free intellectual discussion on tough issues is being hampered by a culture of fear and self-censorship.
Sorry but you're going to have cite some real sources, not right wing propaganda. I mean, I read the entire article and I still for the life of me can't actually understand on what basis the academic paper was 'erased'. I assume that's because this 'article' is written by the person who is pushing an agenda rather than an actual reporter reporting on the facts of an incident. Frankly the whole thing reads as 'Those nasty people are idiots and dont want people hearing how amazing my work is because then everyone will know how stupid they are!'. I mean really, it's very difficult to actually get any factual information about what happened. It's kind of difficult for me to have sympathy if the only reports of this happening are far right blogs where the author themselves is reporting what happened.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the whole thing is a right-wing propaganda piece. Isn't the result the same? The fear is real regardless of whether it's proper or baseless.
If you want to ensure that academics don't self-censor out of fear of reprasials, you could prove to potential authors that their fears are baseless, or you could provide mitigations for their fears. Or, you could do both.
I would've thought it's self-evident that if the problem isn't real then you're never going to fix it. If the reason this problem exists is a political tool for the right wing then the way to stop it won't be to pander to it.
This is a terrible idea. When factual writing becomes anonymous, truth goes out the window.
Having articles and papers peer-reviewed also does not solve the greater issue of a lack of free speech. If it's inside academia, then it wouldn't be hard to figure out who the peers are, and if it's outside academia, then there's no way to trust the peers, since they could simply be anybody.
The only solution is to strongly enforce the right of free speech and personal protection. Going underground just invites fascism.
What harm do such articles being put out do? If the general population can't think for themselves to individually dismiss such articles, and instead needs someone to do it for them for protection from their own gullibility...I don't think I want to be part of that population.
No, but not reading a paper doesn't mean you have to trust it; you can simply default to a skeptical stance of "I am not sure of the quality of this paper, so I can't really trust its results". Given the amount of crap already put out, I think that's a reasonable stance.
The common faults include:
- paper is good quality, but results are inflated/misunderstood by reporter
- paper examines correlation, misses (seemingly obvious) other explanations. This can get so bad that you get "wet streets cause rain" results.
- paper uses statistics incorrectly or in a misleading manner(example: Data says A is true 8% of the time, false 2% of the time, unknown 90% of the time. Paper concludes that "A is only determined false 2% of the time, which is technically true, but misleading")
- paper uses unexpected definitions - words in common parlance but redefined for its field, definition is localized(legal, cultural), etc. A prime example is rape statistics, where the legal status of rape is different between countries, and many papers examining rape rates also use their own definition.
To go back to the original point - if someone is telling you certain people are inferior because of their genetic makeup, as proven by paper X, this can be wrong on all 4 counts I mentioned - the definition of "inferior" might not match mine, the statistics might be misleading, the correlation may be spurious(especially when generalizing such complex phenomenon!), or the reports might be wildly inflated. Why would you even begin to trust such a paper, before verifying it?
Because sub-segments of the population isolate themselves, and then selectively use mainstream articles to reinforce their views to the point where they promote and act on violence.
Take for example the incel communities, where they selectively quote parts of research articles to support their views, and use them to reinforce calls to violence which members of that community act on.
I think part of the problem is that we're not making sure everyone understands how to think critically. This is to some extent a failure of the early education system and the society around it.
Many of these people are relatively well educated. It’s the reinforcement of bad aspects of their belief system which is bad.
That’s one of the reasons I keep posting here, despite the negative reaction. People need to realise that free speech absolutitivness isn’t universally accepted.
Your comment actually is a perfect example of why this anonymity is needed.
I read the article, I thought it was an interesting idea. On the other hand, you (presumably) read the article, came to the conclusion that Nazis must be behind it, and have now voiced your concern that it's a Nazi scheme publicly on the internet for everyone to see. Some people prefer not to have such accusations thrown at them for merely suggesting innocuous not-politically-motivated things.
Pseudonyms are good for joint contributions, position papers, summarizing/expanding the available criticisms, fundamentally new research. Anything else get you get dox'ed: too many references to a set of authors can lead in the direction of one of this set being the author.
We are in a sad state where we can't even discuss ideas.
My choice of internet handle (my real name) reflects my position on the topic.
Anonymity has a place, but people need to become more comfortable with attaching their identities to their ideas. (and we need more protections or enforcement for the consequesnces so people can actually feel safer)
I use pseudonymous accounts (such as this one) for things I can't say.[1] I work at a very progressive tech company, and I certainly would be fired if my true beliefs were known by my coworkers.
For uncontroversial stuff, I use my real name. That way I can get credit for useful technical ideas while avoiding having my career ruined. If you don't believe that can happen, I don't know what to tell you. There are plenty of low profile cases that don't make the news, but I'm sure everyone's heard of James Damore.
1. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
Edit: I'd also like to pat myself on the back for recognizing this trend toward intolerance back in 2010 (when this account was created). Finally, my cynicism and pessimism pay off! And if you're wondering why my comments aren't always controversial, it's because I also use this account when I'm drunk and/or high.
> I certainly would be fired if my true beliefs were known
I've gone into work some days and there's been lines of cocaine railed up ready to go. (I haven't taken any drugs in over a month, for perspective). I sometimes hate my job, but I'm terrified of moving company to a culture I can't stand.
I made a throwaway account, for the future.
"I made a throwaway account, for the future."
Yeah, well, you're not fooling anyone around these parts, Brian.
To whom should I send my resume?
Oh, poor baby. Social consequences for sexist or racist behavior? You poor poor thing. Such oppression you face.
That's easy when your views are within the Overton window, but unless you are retired or live comfortably enough the reality is you probably shouldn't discuss controversial ideas on the internet using a real name, especially for younger people, this stuff can come back to haunt you employment wise.
Seen talented hardworking people fired because of tweets and our government contracts.
I'd argue this even extends to mundane topics like city planning, you never know who you can piss off. There's always someone to offend.
A thought experiment. I am an academic. I post the material below on the internet using my real name.
"there are more male geniuses in society than women because men are subject to more variability in terms of IQ. In other words, while men had more people at the tail ends of the IQ bell curve, women were more likely to have average IQ scores."
What will happen to my career ?
Larry Summers did that. Within 13 months, he was forced to resign from his job....
a more interesting thought experiment is what would happen if you described the same phenomenon, framed in a way which superficial and reactive people would agree with rather than disagree with:
"there are more male dunces in society . . . in other words, women were less likely to be dunces."
my guess is that it wouldn't be very destructive to your career at all -- but maybe i'm wrong on that point. of course, if i'm right, this effect would be entirely a result of incomplete or incorrect interpretation of the principles by the readers.
I would suggest a look at Excellence Without a Soul by Harry Lewis (sometime dean of Harvard College) before you conclude that it was only those comments that lost Summers his job.
Actually, I think that makes it even worse. That is, Summers was unpopular with particular groups for a bunch of different reasons, so he was eventually fired for the pretense of having the audacity to say that the possibility that innate gender differences could account for an imbalance in the sciences should be studied.
Regardless of what you think of Summers, read the exact transcript of what he actually said at that conference. The fact that he was fired for what he said should be incredibly shameful for Harvard.
What does this have to do with being an academic? Does this change if you're a notable employee of a company? I don't think so. If you are in a situation where your personal reputation effects the reputation of your employer then you need to take that into consideration when you speak publicly.
It's specifically about being an academic because this is the comment thread discussing: https://www.bbc.com/news/education-46146766
So far, J. Peterson (who's famously reported similarly) has retained his academic position.
Even the wording of your comment proves the parent's point.
Heh, and my internet handle shows my position. I originally created this handle years ago because I wanted to comment on a gender-related issue in technology, and I felt that doing so under my real name would only be a net negative for my career (software management). It's not that I felt I would be pilloried for my views, but I certainly didn't think (and still don't) that it would be anything but a neutral-to-net-negative impact, so why risk that just for the edification of making a random internet comment?
> but people need to become more comfortable with attaching their identities to their ideas.
You give no reason why that should be the case. Holding a controversial opinion and not being on your toes how you phrase things can easily provoke bans/deplatforming in many environments. It's a lot easier to just let another account bite the dust than tiptoe around things all the time just to maintain a persistent identity.
I feel like this is really easy to say when you are a ~mature adult~.
People change and grow up, the new generation(s) aren't given an opportunity to fuck up or express shitty opinions and learn from them because the internet never forgets.
Some stupid social media post or whatever can forever be attributed to them and be dug up later in life.
I'm just glad I'm in my 30's and don't have to go through puberty in a world with social media.
It doesn't matter if you're 30 or 50 or 60, there's all sorts of controversial opinions these days that are verboten. No, they're not all "shitty opinions".
What do you think your top couple most controversial opinions are? Anything outside what's generally accepted?
it sounds like you don't agree with any ideas that anyone with power over you and the will to exercise it finds objectionable -- which is great for you, but does not apply to many, many people all over the world.
I've had the same handle for so long, it's almost like my real name. The two are now so entwined that it would be hard for me to be anonymous as Jaruzel. So much so that a few years ago I just gave in and openly linked the two.
I rarely have a need to be anonymous online, and when I do, I do create a throwaway alias. i.e. i'm active on Twitter, but not as me. That place is WAY too toxic to openly tweet under your real name.
you can't experiment with new ideas if there are severe social consequences for experimentation.
because experimentation often fails. and public failures lead to getting discredited and kicked out of the discourse. people who experiment while using their real identities probably can't get back in.
see the appeal of pseudoanonymity?
Me too, but I consciously don't comment on many threads.
Tell that to many women who receive death threats for posting pretty much anything on the internet.
Times have changed a lot in the last 10 years. 10 years ago, I would have agreed with you.
Ostensibly this is what tenure is for.
1. Tenure alone does not get one soft benefits. Even these guys want power and money. So, they wanna become deans, then vice provost, provost, eventually President of some wealthy college. This soft power can get tenure jobs for one's girl friends.
2. Even if one gets a tenure, your students' won't get any jobs if you don't toe the line of the dominant themes in social sciences--identity politics, political correctness, knowledge/power, etc.
3. Intellectual honesty and integrity, core virtues of being an intellectual, is missing in the picture.
>But it does mean that the worst that can happen to you is that you stop being invited to the cool parties. In particular, when all is said and done, you'll have a stable job.
As a tenured professor, one wants more than a stable job and being invited to cool parties. One wants to attract student researchers, get grants, even find them post doctoral fellowships in other research groups, and in other countries, finally get them jobs. Otherwise, there is no intellectual legacy for one's research program, which is different from the dominant themes in social sciences. That's one way of destroying intellectual competitors in the academic arena.
But it does mean that the worst that can happen to you is that you stop being invited to the cool parties. In particular, when all is said and done, you'll have a stable job.
Until the law is changed where I am protected from my current and future employers' adverse reactions against me for plainly stating "Hitler did nothing wrong," anonymity is here to stay.
Forensic analysis would also reveal the authors...
Now if we can just get around to fixing why we need such anonymity in an academic journal in the first place... It's absurd that there's such danger in saying something that doesn't entirely align with either the left or the right (at least in the US). It feels quite a lot like McCarthyism to me (or what I imagine it was like at that time, since I'm not that old).
http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popu...
1. There are lots of other cases where we would agree there’s some form of silencing going on, even as a group has many supporters and rich, famous spokespeople
2. In fact, taboo opinions seem to promote a culture of celebrity
3. Fame lets people avoid social repercussions, but that doesn’t mean those repercussions don’t exist for ordinary people
4. If you spend decades inventing a powerful decentralized network to allow unpopular voices to be heard, sometimes you end up with unpopular voices being heard
5. When the IDW claims they are threatened, harassed, and blacklisted, people should at least consider that they are referring to the actual well-known incidents of threats, harassment, and blacklisting against them rather than imagining this is code for “they demand to be universally liked”
6. The IDW probably still censor themselves
7. Nobody in this discussion seems to really understand how silencing works.
I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms.
Because liberalism is a religion and people that expose the flaws in the ideology are modern-day heretics. Fortunately heretics are no longer burned at the stake. Instead you just get fired, socially ostracized, your career ruined, etc.
It's more than that though. Liberalism is a religion, sure, but there's a right wing equivalent too that's just as fervent. (No, it's not Nazism, though that isn't to say that's not a threat too.) I think it's just the polarization of the parties. Both of the main sociopolitical parties in the US have become so vehemently polarized that they view each other as the greatest threat to the country. In turn, you're either entirely 100% with them, or your clearly someone from the other party and you're the enemy.
As a non-US person with zero interest in the US at all, the whole Left vs Right thing over there looks EXACTLY like a religious war from here.
Both sides are violently trying to force their beliefs on everyone else, and both sides think they're right and anyone who doesn't believe the same things as them is outright wrong and deserves to be destroyed.
Anyone who doesn't take a side, is basically considered to be worth nothing, and either mocked or considered as bad as the enemy.
The sheer amount of HATE that flows out of the US is mind boggling.
I feel like a religious war is the wrong model for the US, mostly because I've never heard of a place with a pair of religions that both have roughly half of the followers, and are just fighting over the allegiance of the last one-to-five percent; and especially a place where this is somehow a long-term equilibrium state.
Campaigning actually involves fairly little persuasion; very little fighting over that last one-to-five percent. It's mostly identifying which half of the people are already your side's followers, and encouraging/motivating them to show up and vote.
Except I think the model has very recently changed. In the past it used to be about “chasing the centre”, and as a result, parties tended not to stray too far from centrist policy positions, because when polled on actual policies, most people tend to be remarkably closely bunched.
However, recent events have proven that (short term) political success can be attained by pushing the edges. Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people, they are actively pushing more extreme agendas, pulling people away from the centre (using various propaganda techniques), and locking large blocks of voters in behind positions quite distant and clearly distinct from those of their opponents. The success of this approach seems to be predicated on creating ambiguities, obfuscation and false dichotomies. I’d suggest that many fervent followers would be unable to correctly articulate actual policies of their parties vs repeating glib partisan mantras.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me.
> Except I think the model has very recently changed.
It hasn't, at least in the way you describe.
> In the past it used to be about “chasing the centre”
It wasn't, at least not anything like recently; that turnout determines elections and even unaffiliated voters are just as consistently partisan in how they vote as party loyalists has been well known by both political scientists and political campaigners for decades, and deeply integrated into political strategy; it's he reason behind both GOTV efforts and selective voter suppression, neither of which are new elements of the political playbook.
> Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people
They don't do that because there is no such thing. Distribution of political opinion doesn't have a central peak.
> Distribution of political opinion doesn't have a central peak.
But I'm not talking about "political opinion". I'm talking about "common sense" (reflective of things that may lie at the core of policies devoid of partisan spin). For example, according to a recent poll [0], a significant majority of Americans support immigration. A visiting alien might think that a consensus policy position could be achieved based on a result like that. Clearly however, that's not the case in reality. Similarly for background checks on gun buyers [1], yet, like immigration, it seems that when couched in absolutist, us-vs-them rhetoric, bipartisan policy is totally out of reach.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/immigration-polls-dona... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-poll/over-90-per...
Aren't there countries with compulsory voting? Don't those countries still have politicians that campaign?
I should have said "in the USA".
It isn’t a long term equilibrium state. Eventually it’ll either die down, one side will be crushed, or there’ll be extensive violence that could end up in a civil war. See the European wars or religion or the Dutch Revolt. For a less violent result see pillarisation, where different religious or political groups have parallel institutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation
Munster's (Germany) Rebellion comes close? As far as a moment in history, I mean.
The amount of hate in the us political discord is a feature. A beautiful result of convincing one side that the other needs to be killed (and that is darkly literal). At its core it's all about distracting the populace and getting every last dollar to the top.
The SF libertarians that always show up for these threads think they'll get swept up with the tide of the elite despite not comprehending that even with their wealth the majority of them are orders of magnitude off from the even most basic of antes.
Its Russia, and others too probably. No not that "They haxed our election!" but that they are stoking the fire. Right wing discussion is filled with cartoon-style representations of the left, and the left is vice-versa. I feel that I've seen communities of too high an overall intelligence become overtaken by the lowest quality stuff. People who attempt to discuss nuance get shouted at as being from the other side.
I guess it is possible that genuine consensus in these groups has lowered in quality, but I personally can't believe that, communities I've been in for awhile changed and got very intense within the last 3 years. It's unfortunate to see.
The political battle lines in the United States are about things so elemental and fundamental that no compromise is possible and none should be considered. One 'side' is perfectly content to pillory people of color at every opportunity, demonize desperate refugees from a conflict the United States itself caused, send armed thugs into people's homes to kidnap their children, protect a law enforcement apparatus that brutalizes with impunity, push racist pseudoscience, and shelter out-and-out white supremacists.
When one side fundamentally rejects your humanity, you naturally don't have any room to compromise, and you don't have any time for the smug, ignorant centrism of people who are isolated from the consequences of the political struggle.
That seems to be a pretty good example of the hysterical position of the radical left. Checks all the emotional boxes: People of color, law enforcement, refugees, children, and the perennial favorite boogeymen: racists, and now white supremacists. (You forgot "literal Nazis.") Even down to putting quotes around 'side' - presumably to punctuate your point that those who disagree with you don't have a legitimate perspective.
The right has plenty of problems (plenty!) but the what seems to be unique to the left (or at least much more prevalent/vocal) is this Sith-like perspective that anyone who disagrees (or even just agrees less than 110%) is some kind of immoral/evil opponent for whom no type or amount of righteous retaliation is undeserved.
But of course that might just be be how it looks from the perspective of a "smug, ignorant centris[t]."
I'm not sure how you can claim this attitude is somehow unique to the left when there's a president who does this exact thing on a daily basis. You would have to be deliberately ignoring the things that he says and supports (along with the party that enables him) which, well, I guess would support your tagline after all.
> Even down to putting quotes around 'side' - presumably to punctuate your point that those who disagree with you don't have a legitimate perspective.
Yes, of course. That's the entire point. Modern Republican ideology and policy is a fundamental, existential threat to myself, my friends and family, and the safety and security of people like me. Why on earth would I consider their perspective to be legitimate? Why on earth would I consider trite 'both-sides'ism to be legitimate?
The idea that the citizens of the United States are somehow responsible for what their illegitimate government does is ridiculous. The people who actually will have to physically coexist with the refugees and the people responsible for their plight in the first place are not the same, the refugees will live around normal poor or middle class people who do not make major foreign policy decisions and the latter will live in rich gated neighborhoods in expensive houses and will probably never set eyes on a refugee in their lives. Whether it's in the interests of the natives to let in so many people who have a legitimate reason to hate the country they are moving to is also something to consider, this being supposedly the only real concern of government after all.
What is the right-wing ideological equivalent where its adherents would attempt to deplatform, smear, etc. someone for violating its dogma, and what is the dogma?
There's plenty of extreme harassment, attacks, and "shouting down" coming from the right in response to any ideological disagreement from the left. Worse, explicit calls to violence (that have been answered) and encouragement of hatred from people all the way up and down the chain, from anonymous internet posters to the president. I'm not saying this is worse than the equivalent from the left, but to say it's not there is naive. Additionally, as far as I can tell, nearly all of the major instances of deplatforming of "the right" have really been deplatforming of meaningless hateful garbage or calls to violence that violate terms of service, but have been framed as attacks on the right, which seems like a really awful mischaracterization of the right.
The controversy over abortion rights is way beyond deplatforming and smearing, there's actual murders by self-described anti-abortionists. In George Tiller's case, his clinic was firebombed("deplatforming"?) and O'Reilly had criticized("smearing"?) him heavily, before the assassination.
Gee. The US spent most of the 20th C invading countries, mostly for 'violating its dogma' - for being too democratic, for not being subservient enough, in the service of US business interests, mainly. Supporting dictators, giving a lot of weapons, training torturers, subverting democracy, assisting/staging coups, etc etc from Guatemala to Iran. It's a long and well-known story.[0] Millions died.
[0] Although not well-known enough. Good starting points might be the Chomsky's political books (they're extensively referenced - don't just take his word for things, read his sources too), and Scott Noble's documentaries: http://metanoia-films.org/
"patriotism"
Anita Sarkeesian is an example. She received a barrage of violent threats over her feminist critique of video game stories. The threats basically destroyed any hope of a rational conversation.
The president is the leader of a right-wing ideology and he attempted to deplatform and smear kneeling players in the NFL. He explicitly asked the NFL to fire kneeling players and smeared them by deliberately misrepresenting their stated position (that they are kneeling to protest police violence).
Put simply: Pretty much most of what Trump stands for. In a way, he's even the "religious leader".
You're making a vague, sweeping claim here without any evidence to back it up.
Also, I think you're misusing the term "liberalism" here. Liberalism is an ideology that supports freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints. The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism (the issue is that liberalism and the political left tend to get conflated in American usage).
> The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism
I actually think it's incredibly telling that a group that used to identify themselves as "liberal" have renamed themselves "progressive". Rather than freedom of expression and ideology, they now espouse a mandated direction "forward" and no longer value freedom.
s/liberalism/progressivism if you care that much about labels. In my opinion they are rather fluid, and 19th century / early 20th century liberalism is not present day liberalism, which I find to be perhaps only a slightly milder form of progressivism.
And as far as providing an argument or evidence goes, I think the essay "How Dawkins Got Pwnd" [1] makes the case better than I could, so I'll simply refer you there.
[1] https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0
This reminds of the that NY Times "intellectual dark web" article, with such obscure figures as Joe Rogan.
The man has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, but still can get the times to write an article about how he's some underground thinker.
If you dig deeper into these kinds of complaints from these kinds of people, it usually turns into "The people _I_ want to like me do not". They expect universal admiration, and when they don't they yell about some sort of conspiracy.
The fact that everyone even knows about the popular people making these complaints disproves the thesis that they can't get out there and make their arguments.
It just turns out that none of these alternative thinkers can handle any sort of criticism against their ideas, and think there's a mass conspiracy. Ocamm's razor suggests otherwise
Uh, people have their livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined for having unpopular views all the time. James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize because he was destitute, Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop, to name two examples. Another example of the difficulty people have in going against the status quo is this article, which was on HN several months ago: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p... .
The problem is not that they can't accept criticism, the problem is other people disenfranchising them for their opinions.
> unpopular views > James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize
He's a fairly blatant racist - I think that's a bit more than "unpopular" when it comes to views.
> livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined > Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop
In what way did "not being invited to speak at a conference" destroy his livelihood or ruin his life?
Being disinvited from a conference is the least of it. If he wasn’t the founder of his own company, he would have lost his job. In 2016, security escorted him off the SF Google campus when he visited a friend for lunch. Apparently his name is on a blacklist (along with other conservative & neoreactionary people).
When I met Curtis Yarvin, he told me about some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his family. I disagree with him on pretty much everything, but it saddened me that he had to worry about that.
> security escorted him off the SF Google campus when he visited a friend for lunch
I mean, sure, that's inconvenient but it's really nothing in the grand scheme of things.
> some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his family
If people have threatened him or his family, that definitely sucks and I cannot condone or support those people.
Oh, you again? This time crying about a neo reactionary who has consequences for his actions? You poor, poor put apon white men. We should all hold a protest so your marginalized voices can be heard.
They’re not being disenfranchised for their opinions. It’s nobodys right to give a talk at a conference. It’s just that people don’t want to be friends with bigots.
If you spout bad opinions people like you less. If you show bad judgement people won’t want to hire you.
If you preach an ideology that implicitly concludes that a certain set of people are biologically inferior, it’s not a surprise that people who disagree will fight you about it. What else do you expect? What other outcome? “Oh cool yeah you think I’m subhuman. awesome. Let’s get to work.” In what universe does _that_ align with free association?
Joe Rogan is rare and important because he'll sit down and have an authentic conversation with anyone. Over a span of hours without talking points or a sequence of established rhetoric.
These sorts of conversations contrast mainstream media (TV and headline news) because the participants are free to speak for hours, not minutes, and are not put on their heels the entire time.
What about examples like this? [1] A researcher wanted to do research on gender reassignment reversals and was turned down by his ethics committee. I think is more what the new journal was created for.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/25/bath-spa-u...
Ethics committees generally do not turn down research because they think it's a bad idea, but because the processes in place to protect the subject are sub-standard. In the example linked, that would probably be a heavy-duty human subject study subject to rigorous controls. An MA student has perhaps six months to research, write up and hand in, which (together with being an inexperienced researcher) would certainly raise warning flags.
Also, Bath Spa University is a relatively small, relatively new university with a less established research tradition than most of the UK's universities. It wouldn't surprise me if its ethics committees were less confident too.
None of which is to say that the student isn't right, just that we currently only have his word for it and the university is quite correctly saying nothing. But I'm pretty sceptical.
To reuse and expand upon a comment of mine from elsewhere:
I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) I'm not really sure why a few different people thought my comment was relevant specifically to that NY Times IDW article.
The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms. This is a far more serious issue than celebrities feeling unloved and blaming a conspiracy.
For instance I've personally seen multiple people ostracized from their predominantly-left-leaning friend groups for saying something mildly positive about something Trump has done in office, or for arguing that not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. I'm not sure how rational political discussion can be held when saying such innocuous things as I've mentioned can result in instant ostracization. Fortunately I noticed this happening before I too said something that would end the same way for me. (I already learned not to discuss politics with my very right-leaning dad, so adding "most of my friends" to the do-not-discuss-politics-with-them list was fairly easy.) Although I'm in a very liberal area so I see this primarily happening in fervently left-leaning circles, I understand that similar happens in fervently right-leaning circles as well. I can only imagine how much one has to censor themselves when publishing something that shouldn't be controversial at all in an academic journal! This is seriously not good.
It’ll last about five minutes. The first issue will see the reviewers and editorial board subject to a hail of condemnation that will threaten or end their careers. Even if the authors are anonymous, everyone identifiable will be attacked for having the gall to give them a platform. All this does is invite people to shoot the messenger, and they will.
This won't fly because:
* You can't put it in your resume. And that is importante because many academics need a minimal amount of publication each year. Perhaps someone with a tenure can have the luxury of a hidden article, but most of them have some graduate student or postdoc that is a coauthor and wants to increase the total count of papers by any mean.
* If the article is controversial enough, the authors will be identified using a text analysis. Most papers reuse a lot of parts of the previous papers of the authors, so it is not so difficult.
* Each controversial article will get the offended side (right/left/whatever) asking for an exemption of the anonymity and/xor deplataforming the journal.
Text analysis is like a polygraph, it's not really conclusive in and of itself and it's not really grounds to convict someone. It might help point you in the right direction if you ask the right questions, which may help lead you to something more conclusive.
I don't think the standards of evidence demanded by those that authors of controversial articles fear are stringent enough that "equivalent to a polygraph" fails them.
I think that looking at the reference section will detect 99% of the time who is the author or at least reduce the possibilities to a small group. People usually have a lot of citations of their previous amazing papers and the papers of the advisors and papers of friendly groups. It's possible to avoid this, but there is a strong bias. (It's more evident if you remove the common citations that everyone in the are is using in all the papers.)
I'm not sure I agree. It's possible that some people will publish anonymously here and then later, if their work is sufficiently accepted by a large enough chunk of academia/society, they would come out from the shadows and claim ownership.
I agree that untenured academics need to publish papers they can put on their resume, but it's not a fatal flaw if most of the early articles are penned by tenured professors.
I'm not an expert in text analysis, but I think that if someone is trying to obfuscate their authorship they could probably do so.
I think your first point (can't put it in your resume) is your strongest, and the most likely issue this publication will have. I'm not sure if it'll be enough of an issue to kill the journal though.
The reason I don't think your second and third point are too big a deal is because they seem to be predicated on the assumption that the articles published in this journal will be wildly controversial. I don't think that's necessarily true. Presumably, the people running the journal will still decide what they want to publish and they won't be giving a free pass to every single submission. If someone decides to submit a study that is an unrigorous veiled attempt at justifying racism, I expect those reviewing the submissions will reject it. There are all kinds of things academics are likely afraid to publish with their names on it in the current sociopolitical climate out of fear of _potential_ blowback, without even getting into the things they won't publish due to _certain_ blowback.
So in summation, I think it could potentially succeed if A) there are enough submissions even though people can't put it on their resumes, and B) the journal publishes enough not-so-controversial studies.
Who will contribute to this? Would institutions sign off on their staff spending time on controversial work that brings them no immediate recognition? Maybe this gets used as a staging area where institutions measure public response and take credit if it looks like it's to their advantage?
I agree. The intention appears to be that if an Org funds a biased study, then the funded academic can secretly publish a counter point to themselves. That's the best case, and it means the academic published one paper that they thought was false. So, this is a paper that accepts liars, as long as they promise to tell the truth this time?
The worst case is that the Org just cuts out the middle-man and writes the paper themselves and publishes the BS study in this journal too.
> Academics who are frightened to explore controversial topics, in case it provokes a backlash, will soon have a safer route to publish such work.
Assuming any of this is happening in the US, it's an indictment of the whole system. This is what tenure is for.
EDIT: Oops, avani beat me to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437414
What incentive other than your reputation is even available to ensure it's not just filled with junk science?
We've seen in journals on social sciences, for example, that peer reviewers can be fooled relatively easily. By setting up the incentives like this, won't this just become a bastion of crackpots and frauds?
I've got to say, I can't actually call to mind any instances of controversial peer-reviewed papers. I can point to the Bell Curve- that was controversial, but it was a also a book written by a conservative political operative that made specific governmental policy recommendations. That seems like an entirely different topic to me. Or for another example let's take Jordan Peterson, he's quite clearly written lots of academic papers. But are those controversial?
Not really, he's widely regarded as a fine professor of psychology. But does that really wave a magic wand over his head and grant him immunity from being judged for the self-help books he publishes? I don't think anyone reasonable person would agree with that. Also, what protection does pseudonymous authorship afford him? He's literally making a career out of touring different countries giving speeches about the moral decay of western culture.
Here's my question: Does this problem actually exist? Or is this misplaced fear about a different issue that actually does exist.
Somebody posted another article on threats to academic freedom today[1]. Specific examples are cited in its links. The general idea is basically this:
> I have heard too many stories from my China-based colleagues about rights infringements to list. Common problems include: universities and publishers demanding that research questions and conclusions are in line with the current political orthodoxy, restrictions on traveling abroad for professional conferences, and incessant invitations to “have tea” with security agents.
> Political repression is shutting down many more areas of academic inquiry than just labor scholarship. As the Chinese state cracks down on an increasing array of social actors, including rights lawyers, feminists, ethnic minorities, and religious minorities—both Muslim and Christian—the related topics become off-limits to academic researchers.
It sounds exactly like the sort of thing the journal in this article is for:
> An international group of university researchers is planning a new journal which will allow articles on sensitive debates to be written under pseudonyms. They feel free intellectual discussion on tough issues is being hampered by a culture of fear and self-censorship.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18445470
There was a recent article about an academic paper that was so controversial that it was erased after publication. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318
Sorry but you're going to have cite some real sources, not right wing propaganda. I mean, I read the entire article and I still for the life of me can't actually understand on what basis the academic paper was 'erased'. I assume that's because this 'article' is written by the person who is pushing an agenda rather than an actual reporter reporting on the facts of an incident. Frankly the whole thing reads as 'Those nasty people are idiots and dont want people hearing how amazing my work is because then everyone will know how stupid they are!'. I mean really, it's very difficult to actually get any factual information about what happened. It's kind of difficult for me to have sympathy if the only reports of this happening are far right blogs where the author themselves is reporting what happened.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the whole thing is a right-wing propaganda piece. Isn't the result the same? The fear is real regardless of whether it's proper or baseless.
If you want to ensure that academics don't self-censor out of fear of reprasials, you could prove to potential authors that their fears are baseless, or you could provide mitigations for their fears. Or, you could do both.
I would've thought it's self-evident that if the problem isn't real then you're never going to fix it. If the reason this problem exists is a political tool for the right wing then the way to stop it won't be to pander to it.
This is a terrible idea. When factual writing becomes anonymous, truth goes out the window.
Having articles and papers peer-reviewed also does not solve the greater issue of a lack of free speech. If it's inside academia, then it wouldn't be hard to figure out who the peers are, and if it's outside academia, then there's no way to trust the peers, since they could simply be anybody.
The only solution is to strongly enforce the right of free speech and personal protection. Going underground just invites fascism.
"But right now in current conditions something like this is needed."
This just seems like a scheme for closeted nazis to publish eugenics articles without criticism. That's never needed, and particularly not right now.
What harm do such articles being put out do? If the general population can't think for themselves to individually dismiss such articles, and instead needs someone to do it for them for protection from their own gullibility...I don't think I want to be part of that population.
Ah, you read every paper that you hear mentioned, to make sure it's accurate?
No, but not reading a paper doesn't mean you have to trust it; you can simply default to a skeptical stance of "I am not sure of the quality of this paper, so I can't really trust its results". Given the amount of crap already put out, I think that's a reasonable stance.
The common faults include:
- paper is good quality, but results are inflated/misunderstood by reporter
- paper examines correlation, misses (seemingly obvious) other explanations. This can get so bad that you get "wet streets cause rain" results.
- paper uses statistics incorrectly or in a misleading manner(example: Data says A is true 8% of the time, false 2% of the time, unknown 90% of the time. Paper concludes that "A is only determined false 2% of the time, which is technically true, but misleading")
- paper uses unexpected definitions - words in common parlance but redefined for its field, definition is localized(legal, cultural), etc. A prime example is rape statistics, where the legal status of rape is different between countries, and many papers examining rape rates also use their own definition.
To go back to the original point - if someone is telling you certain people are inferior because of their genetic makeup, as proven by paper X, this can be wrong on all 4 counts I mentioned - the definition of "inferior" might not match mine, the statistics might be misleading, the correlation may be spurious(especially when generalizing such complex phenomenon!), or the reports might be wildly inflated. Why would you even begin to trust such a paper, before verifying it?
Because sub-segments of the population isolate themselves, and then selectively use mainstream articles to reinforce their views to the point where they promote and act on violence.
Take for example the incel communities, where they selectively quote parts of research articles to support their views, and use them to reinforce calls to violence which members of that community act on.
I think part of the problem is that we're not making sure everyone understands how to think critically. This is to some extent a failure of the early education system and the society around it.
I simply don’t think that’s sufficient.
Many of these people are relatively well educated. It’s the reinforcement of bad aspects of their belief system which is bad.
That’s one of the reasons I keep posting here, despite the negative reaction. People need to realise that free speech absolutitivness isn’t universally accepted.
To be fair, it's entirely possible to criticize an anonymous article.
Your comment actually is a perfect example of why this anonymity is needed.
I read the article, I thought it was an interesting idea. On the other hand, you (presumably) read the article, came to the conclusion that Nazis must be behind it, and have now voiced your concern that it's a Nazi scheme publicly on the internet for everyone to see. Some people prefer not to have such accusations thrown at them for merely suggesting innocuous not-politically-motivated things.
Your reaction is actually a perfect example of the reason this is needed right now.
And you didn’t do it ironically (AFAICT).
“Oh they need true freedom of speech? They are probably Nazi’s”