modern-day galileos facing inquisitions? i suppose there are some but i don’t think they abound (yet).

also i don’t know that gender issues are merely an issue of “wokeness” though. let’s not make a mishmash of the issues.

eg., see: https://www.newscientist.com/article...on-brain-scan/

or

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0213112317.htm

[eta] or: https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0524112351.htm

the problem i have with peterson is—i like him as a psychologist. i like him as an intellectual even, for some things. but i don’t take him as someone who knows everything about everything.

just because he studied one neurotransmitter in a lobster tank, or wrote a book about meaning in christianity and buddhism, it does not follow that he can extrapolate knowledgeably about transgender human brains. he makes gross generalizations and is arrogant.

yes, biology is important—but he’s not an expert on transgender biology. yes, the grammar can be a pain in the ass. and yes, maybe there shouldn’t be a law in canada banning people from insulting others with the wrong pronouns—and that’s his “hot” issue, not that of gender, but one of the wrongness of legally policing speech.

but wishing away what we can’t comfortably understand or accept, or rejecting it on the basis of coarse pseudoscientific overgeneralization is neither scientific nor honest. “biology is important.” exactly! so take it seriously.

and then the extrapolations that his followers make... into all manner of dumb atrocity (just read the comments under his youtube videos... wow....)

[eta] part of the problem of course is that almost nobody debates him on scientific terms, but shake placards in front of his face instead. it’s, again, religion that defines the terms: faith or heresy, dogma or anathema, tesring of clothes and much gnashing of teeth. but to me, his problem is simply that lobster serotonin is interesting, but it is not the key to the whole universe amd range of human experience.


oh yeah that is fucked up. tenure was created PRECISELY for those reasons.

if harvard law wants to become a joke then someone else will be waiting in the wings to replace them though.

eta: he wasn’t let go from the law school, he was let go as “faculty dean” of an “undergraduate house” because of “the climate.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/u...n-harvard.html

some kind of babysitting job looks like

their term ends june 30, and theyre not renewing them that is all.

he’s still a professor im assuming, but will find out more...

eta: this is the cattle barn known as “winthrop house”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winthrop_House

where he will no longer be a babysitter for the mentally afflicted

and this is his faculty page in harvard law school website:

https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/dire...10870/Sullivan

where he’s still a professor.

he”s also director of the criminal law institute at harvard law school

https://clinics.law.harvard.edu/cji/staff/

nobody has taken away his tenure nor threatened to do so

he’s just no longer in charge of the daycare facility

a university that sees itself as a customer-service business instead of a proving ground for intellectual training shares the blame


oh don’t worry, it’s coming

they already know how to get an A by crying/protesting that it’s unfair/everyone should get an A/ etc.

the rest is just heady sophistication

tango cambalache — as old as time!

so i wanted to see if the idea of peterson’s intellectual arrogance resonated with someone else and searched the term

this little gem popped up:

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/20...er-of-science/

some of his epithets i find a bit unqualified, but i agree with the general thesis of the guy: peterson makes some good videos, then gets carried away with himself (or by his audience)

the REAL good part though are the actual scientific criticisms of his pronouncements. namely the ones by actual neuroscientists and climate scientists. they tear him to pieces.

i understand that the author of that article has an agenda of his own, i do. but his sources— *that’s the real meat*. also, regardless of his agenda, and just for laughs after all—his skewering seems accurate to me. the audience he’s summoned through the youtubes is... wow...

anyway, gonna read the sources later.

I'm no more interested in tearing down Peterson's claims about climate or lobsters than I am in building them up. I'm not particularly interested in them at all. However his points about how an intolerant strain of liberalism is impacting on universities do interest and resonate with me. He has his own agenda around stuff like social hierarchy that I could care less about and on certain other issues I'd say he's flat out wrong, but I stand by much of what he's saying about campus politics. Although even there, on certain points, I think he's also wrong (his over-emphasis on the marxian roots of postmodernism, for example) but not in a way that I believe undermines his basic observation about attacks on free-speech within universities.

I'd say the bulk of his online fanbase (bordering on a cult) relates more to his stuff on masculinity, which I don't really have an interest in, than to what he's saying about universities. I was actually disappointed with his 12 Rules book because it was pretty much just a self help guide, when I was hoping for more on the one area he's associated with (censorship within universities) that I find him very good on and have an interest in, but which is really only a small part of what he does - and an increasingly insignificant one, compared with the other stuff I tend to ignore.

Of course they're not. What I was saying is it's becoming increasingly difficult to talk about them outside of those parameters on a university campus.

but that is part and parcel of his whole cult. “lobsters therefore hierarchies therefore gender is binary and simple therefore i know it all”. and his arbitrary dismissals of climate change disqualify his “love of science” claims.




well ok, but let’s address two things here

one, he’s not talking about liberalism. he claims he himself is a liberal (even though he’s really a conservative. “classical liberal” they call themselves). his purported enemy is neo-marxist postmodernism.

two, picking him as a champion of free speech is like picking hitler as a champion of environmentalism. sure, the nazis had some great conservation laws, but their example is tainted by the spirit of the whole enterprise. i can understand why he gets picketed.



because he knows everything, he sees a connection between totalitarian marxist governments of the XX century and current strains of postmodern activism. don’t argue with him! this is ridiculous! (satire, satire...)

that is the problem with the guy. he’s a dry drunk: the alcoholic who doesn’t drink. sure, he stays away from the bottle, but he’s still driven by the maniacal need to avoid shame by being right all the time. same as donnie the narcissist, another dry drunk.

you need a better champion. this one is like a dog covered in wet shit: when he shakes himself off to dry up he sprays everyone around him


yeah but he’s a bit of a package deal. not that the ideas can’t be sorted out. they can be. he has some good ideas (not very original ones). but the association with him diminishes from the argument at this point.



actually it’s a decent guide in some regards—get your shit together, put your house in order, have a healthy routine, work your way up the chain, etc. over the past few months i’ve been corresponding with a friend who was going through some tough times. i basically suggested some steps culled from those ideas (without mentioning the source) and she’s doing tons better. peterson would not be a bad shrink to have for some people. most shrinks are crazy anyway, you just need the crazy that is right for you at a particular juncture. of course, he has limits.


right. instead he’s threatened to blacklist people lmao. targets for the psychotics who follow him.

i would not tie myself to his bandagon. it’s bound to go off a cliff.

yes yes, mussolini made the trains run on time and everyone could get a free haircut in the piazza... i’ve heard that before.

you need better allies.

But I'm not part of his cult.


Yes, and I've said I have issues with that


I can understand why people disagree with him but not attempts to silence him within academia.


He has a tendency to overreach, I agree.



I never adopted him or anyone else as a champion.He says some interesting things, some of which I agree with.


I agree, but it wasn't what I was looking for.



Nor would I.

yeah i never said nor implied that you were part of his cult. i know you have one specific issue where you happen to coincide with him, and that is not a crime. i coincide with him on some issues as well, and i don’t think that’s a crime either.

but he’s not even a good source on free speech. i mean he’s been made a temporary representative of it in his campaign to advance his more wrongheaded agenda, and he has made himself a magnet for the sort of tactic you despise—yes. but all he does is yell and boost his sense of self-righteousness. he’s in the news, but there are better defenders of free speech.

my point is that making him a part of your argument for free speech on campus even as an example of the issues you care about is a bad tactic, because the stink of the guy is a huge distraction. he’s bound to conflate your particular issue with his other conflations, and make you look like an ass, even if your specific cause and logic are correct.

so yes, i get your nuance, but no mob will. and audiences... are mobs.

Most of the student protests are not about stopping "free" speech, but about the university or an affiliated entity using money gathered up from student tuition and fees, to pay some racist fuck to come spout off his racist shit on campus.

I sincerely applaud any and all efforts to stop hateful, racist fucks from speaking at public universities while being paid from public funds.

is gud

(I'm surprised cause her essay collection was.. meh. only liked one essay)

e.g. i find the aclu more interesting and knowledgeable than jordan f. peterson on the subject of free speech on campus:

https://www.aclu.org/other/speech-campus

of course this is only applicable in the context of american law. how this works out in canada or britain i have no fucking idea.

for example, here we don’t fine racists for saying racist shit. we may socially shun them, but that’s private not governmental action.

here some samples from the link above:

Q: Aren’t restrictions on speech an effective and appropriate way to combat white supremacy, misogyny, and discrimination against LGBT people?


A: Historically, restrictions on speech have proven at best ineffective, and at worst counter-productive, in the fight against bigotry. Although drafted with the best intentions, these restrictions are often interpreted and enforced to oppose social change. Why? Because they place the power to decide whether speech is offensive and should be restrained with authority figures — the government or a college administration — rather than with those seeking to question or dismantle existing power structures.

For example, under a speech code in effect at the University of Michigan for 18 months, there were 20 cases in which white students charged Black students with offensive speech. One of the cases resulted in the punishment of a Black student for using the term “white trash” in conversation with a white student. The code was struck down as unconstitutional in 1989.

To take another example, public schools throughout the country have attempted to censor pro-LGBT messages because the government thought they were controversial, inappropriate for minors, or just wrong. Heather Gillman’s school district banned her from wearing a shirt that said “I Support My Gay Cousin.” The principal maintained that her T-shirt and other speech supporting LGBT equality, such as “I Support Marriage Equality,” were divisive and inappropriate for impressionable students. The ACLU sued the school district and won, because the First Amendment prevents the government from making LGBT people and LGBT-related issues disappear.

These examples demonstrate that restrictions on speech don’t really serve the interests of marginalized groups. The First Amendment does.

Q: But don’t restrictions on speech send a strong message against bigotry on campus?

A: Bigoted speech is symptomatic of a huge problem in our country. Our schools, colleges, and universities must prepare students to combat this problem. That means being an advocate: speaking out and convincing others. Confronting, hearing, and countering offensive speech is an important skill, and it should be considered a core requirement at any school worth its salt.

When schools shut down speakers who espouse bigoted views, they deprive their students of the opportunity to confront those views themselves. Such incidents do not shut down a single bad idea, nor do they protect students from the harsh realities of an often unjust world. Silencing a bigot accomplishes nothing except turning them into a martyr for the principle of free expression. The better approach, and the one more consistent with our constitutional tradition, is to respond to ideas we hate with the ideals we cherish.

[cont.]

Q: Why does the ACLU use its resources to defend the free speech rights of white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, and other bigots?

A: Free speech rights are indivisible. Restricting the speech of one group or individual jeopardizes everyone’s rights because the same laws or regulations used to silence bigots can be used to silence you. Conversely, laws that defend free speech for bigots can be used to defend civil rights workers, anti-war protestors, LGBT activists, and others fighting for justice. For example, in the 1949 case of Terminiello v. City of Chicago, the ACLU successfully defended an ex-Catholic priest who had delivered a racist and anti-Semitic speech. The precedent set in that case became the basis for the ACLU’s defense of civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s and 1970s.

Q: How does the ACLU propose to ensure equal opportunity in education?

A: Universities are obligated to create an environment that fosters tolerance and mutual respect among members of the campus community, an environment in which all students can exercise their right to participate meaningfully in campus life without being subject to discrimination. To advance these values, campus administrators should:

* speak out loudly and clearly against expressions of racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic speech, as well as other instances of discrimination against marginalized individuals or groups;
* react promptly and firmly to counter acts of discriminatory harassment, intimidation, or invasion of privacy;
* create forums and workshops to raise awareness and promote dialogue on issues of race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity;
* intensify their efforts to ensure broad diversity among the student body, throughout the faculty, and within the college administration;
* vigilantly defend the equal rights of all speakers and all ideas to be heard, and promote a climate of robust and uninhibited dialogue and debate open to all views, no matter how controversial.

not reading yourcenar at the moment, but just found that there is a statue of her at hadrian’s villa. wow!



she’s so amazing...

That ACLU statement is of course fundamentally correct in terms of universities, although it unnecessarily complicates the issue by drawing on examples from children's education. Even I believe there are limits to what's appropriate for discussion in a school. However universities are a different matter, or at least should be. Within adult higher education, no ideas should be considered off limits based on their potential to offend, so long as they're discussed in a responsible, adult manner.

any campus group can bring anyone to talk about anything, but WHEN THEY PAY THEM FROM STUDENT FEES I can see why students would protest. In that case it is not about free speech as much as it is the students demanding their money not be used to spread lies/hate/prejudice/and ignorance.

I support them wholeheartedly in that effort.

every time the weather is nice at U of H a small group of fanatical evangelists show up screaming how everyone is going to hell and that they are all sinners and shit. every nice day. (never on a rainy day!). No one asks them to leave. They are allowed their vitriol, but packs of students will confront them, and argue with them, and point out their idiocy.

However, if the school-funded organization uses student fees to pay these people to come to campus and talk? Fuck that shit.

If students are arguing that there's no intellectual relevance to what someone's there to talk about, or that the speaker lacks the intellect necessary to make it, then yes, there's a case. But not if the only grounds given are that they find the topic or them offensive.

what’s wrong with the kid’s gay cousin? he can’t be mentioned? marriage equality can’t be mentioned? we’re talking about civil liberties, not pornography.

i think the problem you’re facing is that your country is more comfortable with censoring speech as a whole, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

e.g., i understand your libel laws are much stronger. here in america defamation lawsuits are much harder to bring forward because of the first amendment.

you also have laws against racist speech, yes? i remember for example that when suárez was going to be fined for some purported racist statements, some english boardies were okay with that. i was surprised.

melly i think was also in favor of banning someone here for political reasons, i remember. the americans said fuck no, let’s best them with words.

when i asked for the curbing of the mentally ill gast on the board it was on the basis that he impeded the functioning of the board. he clogged up the works with endless nonsense and buried every thread. it was outright spam. but the shit only hit the fan with him when his imbecilities veered toward the racist/homophobic spectrum. i’d rather he had kept his ignorant dribbles in a single thread.

loco tesla seems to have been banned, i am not sure why. he used to cry about himself being “bullied” and his free speech rights, but we only ever countered his speech with speech. nobody ever threatened him with a beating or anything of that sort. he was just full of shit. not sure why the ban happened.

then again of course this board is a private concern, not a government entity, so first amendment does not apply here, and owners can make whatever rules they see fit—i’m just pointing out apparent cultural differences, even though they’re just drawn from anecdotal observation.

now let’s talk about guns... :D :D :D

haahaaa, but for real, i don’t know how free speech works (or doesn’t) in your country, or what legal protections it has, nor in what contexts. i don’t know shit about canadian law either.

i know you can’t have your cake and eat it too, though.

and that’s what i’m talking about, the schrödinger cake. that’s a slippery slope right there.

if you support an authority deciding what is/isn’t intellectually relevant or who is/isn’t smart enough to have an opinion, then you don’t really support free speech.

you have to take the good with the bad to uphold that freedom.

otherwise any censor can just deem anything they want to suppress “intellectually irrelevant” or “low i.q.”

i’d rather let imbeciles speak and call them imbeciles afterwards. actually, i often do, lmao—see my posts in the trump thread. i’ve called illiterates by their name. but that’s speech vs. speech, not censorship.

first amendment ftw

I'm not a free speech absolutist. I just think certain freedoms that I consider necessary for a university to function properly are being eroded.

yeah, it makes perfect sense to me the way you put it, but i’m sure the opposing party makes perfect sense to themselves as well, and i’m sure they feel justified by their own arguments also.

i can imagine some yokel in alabammy in the 60s saying that mlk lacked intellectual caliber and his speeches should be banned. i’d rather not have that. i’d rather support the expansion of free speech to its limit. i’m with the aclu on this one.

anyway, in your case, since you’re lacking a legal firewall, what is acceptable becomes a power contest between perspectives, and it seems that the maoists are beating you at the moment.

i just read that some dude in england was thrown in jail for teaching his dog to make a nazi salute and posting it on youtube as a joke. is that true or bullshit? looks true but... what am i missing?

Yeah, Count Dankula, 100% true. He did it to piss off his girlfriend who thought the dog could do no wrong so he wanted it to look as evil as possible. So it wasn't even a pro-Nazi thing. Quite the opposite.

Then you have the teenaged girl, Chelsea Russell, who paid a tribute to her friend who'd died in a car crash by posting lyrics to his favourite song on Instagram. It was a Snoop Dogg song, which included the N-word. This was classed as a hate crime for which she got a £500 fine, was placed under an 8 week curfew and given a criminal record.

Scary, ah?

you guys are fucked.

can you call the queen names, like we do with the vile fucking orange dotard?

Yeah, the queen's fair game. She represents everything that those promoting these laws hate, so she gets no protection at all.

Here's a graphic breakdown of how it works, from the government's own website ...



So violence and damage to property is pretty easy to establish, but how to you properly legislate for hostility, harassment or intimidation? Especially when you're talking about stuff posted on social media, when the person reporting it doesn't even have to be the person or persons it was intended for. All they have to have done is read it. And it doesn't matter if the person posting it never meant to offend or be hostile to anyone. So long as the person who reads it is offended, that's enough. Which was exactly what happened to Chelsea Russell.

but how does the... don’t you guys have... why don’t the tories... how in the fuck?

when did this shit start? new labo(u)r?

Here's the police's official definition of a hate crime:

Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity.

The key words there are 'perceived' and 'or any other person'.

how the fuck does one...

im not even...

PERCEIVED

fucks sakes!

yeah i got that immediately. it’s fucking absurd. how is it even legal?

It get's better. Here's their definition of hostility:

There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike.

So anyone who's a vocal atheist and shows contempt for a religion is essentially a criminal. Just as anyone who adheres to core tenets of their religion and thinks that, say, homosexuality is a sin, is also a criminal. And you may as well throw every comedian in jail, just to save time.

You tell me.

And in case you think I'm making all this up, here's a link to the page all that came from

https://www.cps.gov.uk/hate-crime

yeah i believe ya, i saw the web address. fucked uuuuuuup.

then i went looking into wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_s...United_Kingdom

says the first hate speech legislation is from 1986. thatcher?? how in the world??

continued in 94–john major?

finished in 2006 by blair on his way out

how does this work??

was that intended to stop the skinheads?

i don’t understand

The amendments have expanded the amount of groups protected and types of 'speech', which now includes social media. Before that it was difficult to police because spoken words are hard to prove in court, but a statement on social media, even if it's just a 'like' on facebook, is concrete evidence. That was the point when it started getting really scary.

Dunno about skinheads but I read somewhere it had something to do with football fans so, in a roundabout way maybe. But I wouldn't say it was a motivatig factor. More a way of getting it through parliament. Heysel happened the year before and football fans were easy law and order scapegoats.

social media is the pits and should be dismantled lol.

anyway i watched the nazi dog video, which has been mirrored for posterity.

the “sieg heil” bit actually made me laugh, it was so silly, but the repetition of “gas the jews” was insensitive and in terrible taste and not funny at all.

however, failed humor and insensitivity and bad taste should not be a crime. i would rather call him a stupid motherfucker or satirize him than arrest and fine him. but that’s how your legal system operates.


i see.

well i suppose that protesting about universities is a bit short sighted here. you have a much bigger problem, which is the social acquiescence to limit the marketplace of ideas “for the greater good” or whatever.

the fact that this limitation has now reached the universities is just one effect of those larger currents. by protesting it in isolation you’re now trying to cover the sun with one finger. too late if you ask me.

first they came for the football fans and i said nothing...

so, do you have any non-nazi politicians trying to protect free speech and free thought? or are your free speech advocates just nazis trying to get a platform?

None of the actual politicians appeal but everything's focused on Brexit right now and they're all positioning themselves in relation to that, so it's anyone's guess where most of them stand on anything else.

i went to search for “uk liberal democrats free speech” assuming they’d espouse some sort of platform and found this

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-21194991

then they came for david ward and i didn’t say anything because i wasn’t david ward...

you guys are fuuuuuuucked fucked fucked

i had not realized this before

damn. you’re fucked.

i don’t know what to tell you. honestly. don’t even know where to begin.

but how come you haven’t become a “free speech absolutist” at this point? (our first amendment is not “absolute” btw, but that’s for another day).

I know some people can be really literal when it comes to 'absolutes'. Generally I'd say anything goes unless there's a really good common sense reason why it shouldn't.

i perceive this to be offensive against my person. i ask that you be taken away in handcuffs


common sense? my sense is anything but common. so another person has perceived this as discriminatory. we ask that you be levied a fine.

==

lmao. insane.

im still trying to wrap my head about the bullshit condition of your laws. am i insulting the honor of your past parliaments when i say this? is this offensive? are you offended?

holy fucking shit. my mind is blown.

i think you need to become radicalized lmao. this is beyond your universities i swear. you’re all being muzzled and anyone can claim control of the leash by proclaiming themselves a victim. you’re going to muzzle each other into irrelevancy.

Picked up:


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
Girl In A Band - Kim Gordon
The Time Machine/The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson


Reading:
Horns - Joe Hill

Excerpts from Ulysses for Bloomsday.