Председник Америке, Доналд Џ Трамп

[Аурор]

Why Universities Must Choose One Telos: Truth or Social Justice

by Jonathan Haidt | Oct 21, 2016 | Benefits of heterodoxy, education, Students, video | 77 comments

Aristotle often evaluated a thing with respect to its “telos” – its purpose, end, or goal. The telos of a knife is to cut. The telos of a physician is health or healing. What is the telos of university?

The most obvious answer is “truth” –- the word appears on so many university crests. But increasingly, many of America’s top universities are embracing social justice as their telos, or as a second and equal telos. But can any institution or profession have two teloses (or teloi)? What happens if they conflict?

As a social psychologist who studies morality, I have watched these two teloses come into conflict increasingly often during my 30 years in the academy. The conflicts seemed manageable in the 1990s. But the intensity of conflict has grown since then, at the same time as the political diversity of the professoriate was plummeting, and at the same time as American cross-partisan hostility was rising. I believe the conflict reached its boiling point in the fall of 2015 when student protesters at 80 universities demanded that their universities make much greater and more explicit commitments to social justice, often including mandatory courses and training for everyone in social justice perspectives and content.

Now that many university presidents have agreed to implement many of the demands, I believe that the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to become unmanageable.  Universities will have to choose, and be explicit about their choice, so that potential students and faculty recruits can make an informed choice. Universities that try to honor both will face increasing incoherence and internal conflict.

[Please note: I am not saying that an individual student cannot pursue both goals. In the talk below I urge students to embrace truth as the only way that they can pursue activism that will effectively enhance social justice. But an institution such as a university must have one and only one highest and inviolable good. I am also not denying that many students encounter indignities, insults, and systemic obstacles because of their race, gender, or sexual identity. They do, and I favor some sort of norm setting or preparation for diversity for incoming students and faculty. But as I have argued elsewhere, many of the most common demands the protesters have made are likely to backfire and make experiences of marginalization more frequent and painful, not less. Why? Because they are not based on evidence of effectiveness; the demands are not constrained by an absolute commitment to truth.]

As I watched events unfold on campus over the past year, I began formulating an account of what has been happening, told from the perspective of moral and social psychology. I was invited to give several talks on campus this fall, and I took those invitations as opportunities to tell the story to current college students, at Wellesley, at SUNY New Paltz, and at Duke. By the time of the Duke talk I think I got the story worked out well enough to send it out into the world, in the hope that it will be shown on many college campuses.  It’s long (66 minutes). But it is as short as I can make it. There are many pieces to the puzzle, and I had to present each one in order.

Here is the talk. An outline and additional materials are below the talk.

Here is a link to download the powerpoint slides i showed in the talk. Teachers and professors may borrow freely from them. (Right-click and then “save link as”)

OUTLINE OF THE TALK

Introduction:

I begin with two quotations:

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” –Karl Marx, 1845

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…” –John Stuart Mill, 1859

Marx is the patron saint of what I’ll call “Social Justice U,” which is oriented around changing the world in part by overthrowing power structures and privilege. It sees political diversity as an obstacle to action. Mill is the patron saint of what I’ll call “Truth U,” which sees truth as a process in which flawed individuals challenge each other’s biased and incomplete reasoning. In the process, all become smarter. Truth U dies when it becomes intellectually uniform or politically orthodox.

1. Telos

Each profession or field has a telos. Fields interact constructively when members of one field use their skills to help members of another field achieve their telos. Example: Amazon, Google, and Apple are businesses that I love because they help me achieve my telos (finding truth) as a scholar. But fields can also interact destructively when they inject their telos into other fields. Example: Business infects medicine when doctors become businesspeople who view patients as opportunities for profit. I will argue that social justice sometimes injects its telos of achieving racial equality (and other kinds) into other professions, and when it does, those professionals betray their telos.

2. Motivated Reasoning

A consistent finding about human reasoning: If we WANT to believe X, we ask ourselves: “Can-I-Believe-It?” But when we DON’T want to believe a proposition, we ask: “Must-I-Believe-It?” This holds for scholars too, with these results:

• Scholarship undertaken to support a political agenda almost always “succeeds.”
• A scholar rarely believes she was biased
• Motivated scholarship often propagates pleasing falsehoods that cannot be removed from circulation, even after they are debunked.
• Damage is contained if we can count on “institutionalized disconfirmation” – the certainty that other scholars, who do not share our motives, will do us the favor of trying to disconfirm our claims.

But we can’t count on “institutionalized disconfirmation” anymore because there are hardly any more conservatives or libertarians in the humanities and social sciences (with the exception of economics, which has merely a 3-to-1 left-right ratio). This is why Heterodox Academy was founded—to call for the kind of diversity that would most improve the quality of scholarship (at least, if you embrace Mill rather than Marx).

3. Sacredness

Humanity evolved for tribal conflict. Along the way we evolved a neat trick: Our ability to forge a team by circling around sacred objects & principles. In the academy we traditionally circled around truth (at least in the 20^thcentury, and not perfectly).  But in the 21^st century we increasingly circle around a few victim groups. We want to protect them and help them and wipe out prejudice against them. We want to change the world with our scholarship. This is an admirable goal, but this new secular form of “worship” of victims has intersected with other sociological trends to give rise to a “culture of victimhood” on many campuses, particularly those that are the most egalitarian and politically uniform. Victimhood culture breeds “moral dependency” in the very students it is trying to help – students learn to appeal to 3^rd parties (administrators) to resolve their conflicts rather than learning to handle conflicts on their own.

4. Anti-Fragility

“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Nietzsche was right, and Nasim Taleb’s book “Antifragile” explains why. Kids need thousands of hours of unsupervised play and thousands of conflicts and challenges that they resolve without adult help, in order to become independently functioning adults. But because of changes in American childrearing that began in the 1980s, and especially because of the helicopter parenting that took off in the 1990s for middle class and wealthy kids, they no longer get those experiences.

Instead they are enmeshed in a “safety culture” that begins when they are young and that is now carried all the way through college. Books and words and visiting speakers are seen as “dangerous” and even as forms of “violence.” Trigger warnings and safe spaces are necessary to protect fragile young people from danger and violence. But such a culture is incompatible with political diversity, since many conservative ideas and speakers are labeled as threatening and banned from campus and the curriculum. Students who question the dominant political ethos are worn down by hostile reactions in the classroom. This is one of the core reasons why universities must choose one telos. Any institution that embraces safety culture cannot have the kind of viewpoint diversity that Mill advocated as essential in the search for truth.

5. Blasphemy

At Truth U, there is no such thing as blasphemy. Bad ideas get refuted, not punished. But at SJU, there are many blasphemy laws – there are ideas, theories, facts, and authors that one cannot use. This makes it difficult to do good social science about politically valenced topics. Social science is hard enough as it is, with big complicated problems resulting from many interacting causal forces. But at SJU, many of the most powerful tools are simply banned.

6. Correlation

All social scientists know that correlation does not imply causation. But what if there is a correlation between a demographic category (e.g., race or gender) and a real world outcome (e.g., employment in tech companies, or on the faculty of STEM departments)? At SJU, they teach you to infer causality: systemic racism or sexism. I show an example in which this teaching leads to demonstrably erroneous conclusions. At Truth U, in contrast, they teach you that “disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatment.” (Disparate outcomes are an invitation to look closely for disparate treatment, which is sometimes the cause of the disparity).

7. Justice

There seem to be two major kinds of justice that activists are seeking: finding and eradicating disparate treatment(which is always a good thing to do, and which never conflicts with truth), and finding and eradicating disparate outcomes, without regard for disparate inputs or third variables. It is this latter part which causes all of the problems, all of the conflicts with truth. I work through an example of how the attempt to eliminate outcome disparities can force people to disregard both truth and justice.

8. Schism

Given the arguments made in sections 1-7, I think it is clear that no university can have Truth and Social Justice as dual teloses. Each university must pick one. I show that Brown University has staked out the leadership position for SJU, and the University of Chicago has staked out the leadership position for Truth U. (This has been confirmed by their rankings in the new Heterodox Academy Guide to Colleges.)

I close by urging students on every campus in America to raise the question among themselves: which way do we want our university to go? I offer a specific tool to raise the question: the Heterodox University Initiative. If students on every campus would propose these three specific resolutions to their student government, perhaps as the basis of a campus-wide referendum, then students could make their choice known to the faculty and administration. The students would send a clear signal as to whether they want more or less viewpoint diversity on campus. At very least, a campus-wide discussion of Marx versus Mill would be a constructive conversation to have.

---

 

http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/10/21/one-telos-truth-or-social-justice/

[GeniusAtWork]

21 minutes ago, uros рече

Svidja mi se ovaj rezime cenjenog g. Spikera sa TR, a buduci da se radi o javnom postu siguran sam da nece zameriti na citatu ovde

Цењени господин је на Б92 писао да треба побити неколико стотина хиљада Севернокорејаца да би се срушио режим, забранити студирање хуманистичких наука, да свака земља која хоће просперитет треба дa "окрвави гаће" и да иде да осваја и убија по свету (и да је НАТО зато много кул), да треба подићи споменик Хилари Клинтон у центру Београда јер нас је спасила од Косова, да је ћирилица азијатски шкрабопис, да су Руси азијатски варвари које треба уништити, укинути све облике социјалне помоћи, и тако то. Е, да - када је овде у Нишу оскрнављен споменик Шабану Бајрамовићу, да не разуме фрку око тога што је "неком Рому" неко исписао нешто и да се сада диже галама око тога

Најгори SJW и (стварни) комунисти су светлосним годинама изнад дотичног господина. Стварно сте много јаднији него што сам мислио ако вам такви бране ствар... 

[Grizzly Adams]

BREAKING NEWS: The Winner of the Presidential Popular Vote? None of the Above

 

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/americas-favorite-candidate-nobody/

Ако ћемо поштено - људи су изабрали "никога за прецедника"!

[Аурор]

Нико ништа не сме да каже из страха да не испадне расиста...

[Pancakes]

10 hours ago, RYLAH рече

А ко је твоју бабу и осталих једно 200.000 - 300.000 људи протерао са Косова? Тад Милошевић више није владао на КиМ, ваљда је тад стигла демократија после повлачења војске и полиције Србије, од чега су онда бежали?

Nice try, ali kao sto sukobima prethodi minimun decenija dizanja tenzija i populisticke politike, tako i nakon 'zvanicnog' povlacenja, posto jelte nemamo magicne stapice, treba minimun decenija da se tenzije smire. Zamisli to kao kad bi zakuvao corbu pa nestao iz kuhinje...

izgleda da je tvoja slabost zapravo vrlo jednostavna, ti mislis da se stvari kod ovakvih sukoba i  dogadjaja, desavaju u nekim ekstremno niskim vremenskim intrevalima, sto prestavlja lenjost a kasnije i nemogucnost da se povezu uzroci i posldice.

zakljucak: bjezali su od horora koji je zakuvao SM.

[RYLAH]

1 minute ago, Pancakes рече

Nice try, ali kao sto sukobima prethodi minimun decenija dizanja tenzija i populisticke politike, tako i nakon 'zvanicnog' povlacenja, posto jelte nemamo magicne stapice, treba minimun decenija da se tenzije smire. Zamisli to kao kad bi zakuvao corbu pa nestao iz kuhinje...

izgleda da je tvoja slabost zapravo vrlo jednostavna, ti mislis da se stvari kod ovakvih sukoba i  dogadjaja, desavaju u nekim ekstremno niskim vremenskim intrevalima, sto prestavlja lenjost a kasnije i nemogucnost da se povezu uzroci i posldice.

 

Значи твоја баба побегла јер је схватила да је деценију једну била у криву па је демокрацки Албанцима дала простор за живот...?

Пошто је немогуће по твојој причи да су је они, демократе по вокацији вазда,  протерали.

[Paradoksologija]

What Now?

BY SEAN PATRICK HUGHES ON NOVEMBER 12, 2016

I’m not here to argue the legitimacy of the results. And I don’t get to pick and choose whether I support democracy because of the outcomes. I won’t tell you that you are a racist or a bigot if you voted for Donald Trump. I won’t even tell you that you personally are indecent. But I will tell you what you just bought with your choice. You bought a very vigilant, sensitive and loud American majority who will cry foul at the drop of a hat for anything that resembles attacks on those we have fought so hard for these last fifty years. Because what you showed us with his nomination and your vote in the election, is that you can’t be trusted to do it without us.

Many of my devout conservative friends were remarkably quiet when their candidate trashed their personal values. And they were remarkably quiet when their candidate made inexcusable first hand remarks about minorities, women and disabled Americans. And they were remarkably quiet when the dark forces of white supremacists aligned themselves in support of their candidate. I understand why. You couldn’t live with the alternative. So you rationalized out of fear that speaking up would enable it. Well, that risk is gone now. You avoided the end you couldn’t live with. That excuse is gone. And now it’s fair to say that tolerance of that behavior from here on can only be seen as an endorsement of it. So when there’s a KKK rally in North Carolina to celebrate the election of the candidate you support, you no longer have any excuse not to condemn it with the same uncompromising vigor that you condemned Hillary. Let’s see the memes. Let’s see the Facebook posts. Let’s see the outrage.

Perhaps the rest of America can trust you to hold the leader of our government to the change you so uncompromisingly sought. But we won’t trust you to look out for our fellow Americans who are different. So get ready for four years of vocal, loud, peaceful I pray, dissent. If you thought the core Trump supporters would be loud if Hillary Clinton won, what do you think is going to happen now that you’ve  marginalized a group that has much more to lose than freedom from background checks for guns and a ten percent lag in wage growth? At stake for them, is participation in our society. And if their vocal insistence on it is something you aren’t willing to tolerate, then perhaps you might consider a different path in thirty months when you get to choose your next leader without the looming evil of Hillary excusing your choice. You can’t point to her any more as cause.

If insistence on decent treatment of all Americans makes me a liberal in the eyes of conservatives, then maybe we should take some time to reflect on who our modern conservatives actually are. The world is watching.

[Pancakes]

1 minute ago, RYLAH рече

Пошто је немогуће по твојој причи да су је они, демократе по вокацији вазда,  протерали.

nije to nemoguce ali to su samo posledice u jednom opstem scenariju*. 

*spoiler > SM je scenarista.

[Grizzly Adams]

14 minutes ago, Paradoksologija рече

I won’t tell you that you are a racist or a bigot if you voted for Donald Trump. I won’t even tell you that you personally are indecent.

He/she/zhee/dhee is so f***g generous...

[Срђан Шијакињић]

On 11/14/2016 at 21:29, Pancakes рече

Diktatura (Authoritarian regime) je nesto sto svoje okvire i definiciju ima u politickim teorijama odavno. Tako da kada se govori o diktatorskim rezimima, svakome ko iole misli i promislja je kristalno jasno o cemu se tu radi. I tu se ja i ti razilazimo, cini mi se. Ja iskreno ne znam u kojem pravcu bih mogao dalje da vodim diskusju sa nekim kome su neki ocigledni diktatorski rezimi 'mozda'  diktatorski:

Dakle, to su skolski primjeri diktatura. Znaci, to je nesto sto se u civilizovanom slobodnom svijetu prepoznaje iz aviona. A to omiljeno postmoderno kukanje o stanju i funkcionalnosti nakon intervencije, za nijedan nanomentar ne mijenja niti moze da umanji ugrozenost ljudskih prava i sloboda, politicke kulture, izbornog procesa i pluralizma, politickog ucesca i funkcionisanja vlade koju su drzave imale pod diktaturom.

Niko nije pominjao demokratiju 'zapadnog tipa'. Sta ce biti posle pada diktatura da li ce se okrenuti demokratiji, anarahiji, ili necem drugom to je upitno, ostavljen je prostor za izgradnju bolje budunosti. Tolerisati diktaturu je zlo po sebi, jer to je jedini proces koji u ovoj prici ima svoje dalekosezne posledice na napredak, institucije, ljude, kulturu i sve ostalo. Strasno je kada dodje trenutak za upotrebu sile, ali kada dodje do toga - ako smo ista naucili iz 20v. jeste da sa diktaturama nema sa diplomatije niti igre.

Da, samo sto ti ovdje podrazumijeavas da je navodno Obama? kriv za gradjanski rat, a to je tipicno buncanje lokalnih patrijota. Ovaj zadnji dio recenice 'Asadova diktatura' prebaci u prvi red i dobices ishod njegove diktature.

Neuspjeh Obame da srusi Asada, recimo, je samo jedan od velikih neuspjeha za civilizovani svijet. U svome tome, identicne ideologije se u medjuvremenu prepoznaju i udruzuju, krpa nalazi zakrpu, kao sto se Putin nasao sa Asadom. Po demokratskom indexu, Rusija spada u diktatorske rezime (da li je neko mislio drugacije?) tako da ne treba da cudi taj tiranski relationship. (russia overall score 3.31, u drustvu sa angolom, katarom, egiptom, obalom slonovace http://www.yabiladi.com/img/content/EIU-Democracy-Index-2015.pdf) 

Нисам се тачно изразио, тим "можда" нисам хтео да доводим у питање да ли Гадафијев режим диктаторски, него да ставим то зло у перспективу зла које је настало рушењем Гадафија.

Да скратимо, ако верујеш да је мотивација спољне политике САД увођење демократије да би људи у Либији, Сирији итд. живели боље, стварно не видим чему настављати овај разговор (узгред, занимљиви случај америчке подршке Сауди Арабији ниси ни прокоментарисао).

Ниједно друштвено уређење не би требало да је циљ самом себи, већ само да служи срећи људи који живе у том уређењу. Рушити диктатуру (која јесте зло по себи), знајући при том, да ће то зло заменити још веће зло, односно рат и безнађе, је просто погрешно. А како можемо да претпоставимо са великом сигурношћу да рушење диктатуре у земљама као што су Либија и Сирија, и на начин на који је то урадила САД, повлачи веће зло? Једноставно тако што погледамо какве људе су западне државе користиле за те циљеве - људе који ни почему нису бољи од оних које су рушили, и који нису учествовали у свему да би затим расписали изборе, већ да би увели своју диктатуру.

Да се разумемо, идеје на којима је изграђена Америка су у сваком погледу супериорне од идеја на којима је изграђена Северна Кореја или Садамов Ирак, и то је супер за амерички народ. Али, то не значи да Америка идеје унутрашње политике верно пресликава на спољно-политичком плану, већ напротив, узима на себе улогу светског полицајца (да, израбљена али тачна метафора) и гура људе у смрт, само да би друга половина, како каже Гризли, "уживала у демократији", која дође можда некад а можда и никад. Без да те људе пита да ли би радије живели тако како живе, или погинули.

[Golub]

Овај поштени Хрват награбусио од плаћеника:

Посланик Живог зида у Хрватском сабору Иван Пернар који је говорио против хрватског чланства у ЕУ и НАТО-у истиче да добија претње и да није пожељан на Јавном сервису.

ЕКСКЛУЗИВНО Хрватски посланик: НАТО као Хитлерова Немачка

 

 У Интервјуу за хрватски портал „Индекс“, Пернар каже да претње није пријавио полицији, као и да му је ХДЗ нудио новац, те да им је у Живом зиду запрећено да ће бити осуђени без суда. „Нису они мени директно запретили, претио ми је представник Слободних зидара кад сам био у Чешкој пре пет година. Моја борба је почела пре пет година. Рекао ми је: ’Ми имамо власт и дајемо је коме хоћемо. Имамо и медије. Ако си уз нас, даћемо ти новац и простор‘“, навео је Пернар. Објашњава да човек који му је претио није јавна особа, те да не зна ко је то био. „То звучи као теорија завере. Међутим, кад би ушли у полусвет политике… Рецимо, након избора мене су приказивали као највећег криминалца. Покушали су мене и Синчића да макну из Живог зида, овај злочиначки састав предвођен ХДЗ је то покушао. ХДЗ стоји иза овога с Рунтићем, они контролишу и државну телевизију“, казао је Пернар.

Незаинтересованост ХРТ за његове ставове Пернар тумачи тако што каже да се не дозвољава истини да изађе на видело. Иван Пернар © Фото: јутјуб Хит на интернету: Хрватски посланик оштро напао САД, НАТО и ЕУ (видео)

„Мени су хадезеовци рекли да постоје три методе. Или ће те покушати поткупити, уценити, или убити. Прва два су покушали. Слободни зидари су ми нудили новац под условом да не говорим о протоку новца. ХДЗ је покушао да ме поткупи.

Рекли су да ће нас осудити без суда“, казао је Пернар. Он је ХДЗ оптужио да одлучује о томе ко ће гостовати на Јавном сервису ХРТ, те да у хрватским странкама лобирају страни интереси с циљем да подржавају америчку пропаганду. У Хрватској, каже, страни интереси лобирају у овдашњим странкама да подржавају америчку пропаганду. „Оно што се нама сервира као чињеница је Си-Ен-Енова пропаганда“, рекао је Пернар.

Даље: https://rs.sputniknews.com/regioni/201610271108635419-Pernar-Nato-EU-pretnje-masoni-HDZ/

 

 

 

[Golub]

21 hours ago, Golub рече

 

Није овај сео на јежа, него се преиграо у У крајини, па кад су Руси, ономад, ованули на К(р)иМу, овако му је изгледало лажљиво НАТА лице... само тренутак искрености, који се није могао сакрити...

[Аурор]

President-elect je pravi s**t-poster. 

'Ultimativni trol', neko rekao...

 

 

[Зосима]

Један оф топик,али вредан пажње!

Зашто се форсирају линкови на енглеском језику,па чак се и почело причати,мислим да постоји подфорум за друге језике,па тамо вежбајте енглески...

Ја знам да сте ви паметни и интелигентни људи,пуни знања и говорите неколико језика,али се курчите негде другде...

хвала на пажњи...

 

[Ћириличар]

11 minutes ago, Зосима рече

Један оф топик,али вредан пажње!

Зашто се форсирају линкови на енглеском језику,па чак се и почело причати,мислим да постоји подфорум за друге језике,па тамо вежбајте енглески...

Ја знам да сте ви паметни и интелигентни људи,пуни знања и говорите неколико језика,али се курчите негде другде...

хвала на пажњи...

 

Зато што је тема везана за државу у којој се говори енглески језик. Нико се овдје не прави паметан, једноставно су најрелевантнији чланци на енглеском.

Ево још један:

Dang it, even Obamer gets it and dem SJW libtards dont.