Political correctness is always win at last (even it is the truth)!

[terencec]

Yesterday, I posted a thread about XNTX and none XNTX, there are a lot of arguments. A guy keeps accusing me how wrong I am without good reasons IMO!

Now, I question if we cannot discuss/research/think any subject that will hurt other people feelings.

Here is an example of Harvard president resign To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Some faculty members were further infuriated last year, after Summers suggested in a speech that "intrinsic aptitude" could explain why fewer women have excelled in science and math. Summers apologized several times for the remarks, but his brusque personality and top-down management style continued to rankle detractors. The remarks prompted a public vote of no confidence from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last March, a stunning rebuke that Summers was, nonetheless, able to survive...

Here is another example:
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This man, this Nobel prize winner, resigned after immense pressure to do so after he said that black people where less intelligent than white people.

Another Nobel prizer winner William Shockley said it long time ago the same thing!
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People could not even say what they find/research/discuss (in academic!). If they do, they will be punished by the public. The results are slow down the academic research.

I really don't think they are discriminated the women and black people on purpose. However, others believe that way.

I think if Einstein were alive today, he might have big troubles too!
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Do they deserve the outcome? I would like to see your view!

[Monte314]

Einstein did have big trouble, in his own day. He left Germany for the United States during the ascendence of the Nazis.

There are some things that are "off limits" in academia, some of which you've mentioned. There are others, for example, if you are in the soft sciences, you can't openly question evolutionary dogma and survive academically. As a mathematician, of course, I am immune to that form of political correctness.

This is what happens when you found a "meritocracy" on subjective measures of merit, as is the case in academia. It will not change. And I dare say, if any of us was "in charge", we would each have our own form of the same thing, and probably not even recognize it as anything but "love of the truth".

[HeterodoxRobot]

I agreed with everything that Summers said in his infamous speech.

[Valiyn]

You also have impraticality playing a role in this. For example, gays openly in and a unisex military. In war, you don't care what color skin the guy (or gal, but male pronoun for lack of a unisex pronoun) protecting your back has, what name he calls god, where he comes from, his sexuality, his hair and eye color, his intelligence, his personality type....none of it matters at all. All that you and him are fighting for, is eachother. With that being said, why is the military not unisex or "gay-friendly". Answer is how impratical it is. We tried it in the gulf war (unisex), and what happened is most of the women the feminist were fighting for began to resent the movement with a strong push to how it used to be. It's mostly logistical. It's not that straight men are better for the military, it's that unisex barrackes are much harder to set up in a way that keeps morale up and promote good comradeship. You throw men and women togeather across the military, your going to get a good amount of rape done unfortunately. Human nature... and commanders have enough to deal with and resources spread out dangerously thin on every operation to deal with the possiblity daily. Much easier to have a good amount of seperation, and just not mass mix the groups. For gay and lesbians, don't ask don't tell. Why? Cause there is no way to perfectly handle that logical situation without risk.

I've mentioned this before, and the responsese are how offensive I am. How insensative. That i'm a homophobe and a sexist..... *shakes head*
War is not an equal oppertunity deathdealer, the less prepared you are the more likely you and your buddy are going to die. You lower the standard of training so women can make it and they have a more likely chance of dieing. You keep the standard the same as it is for men and usually only 1% of women make the cut. Those 1% I don't mind watching my back, but not any of the other ones.

Political correctness is something that is very dangerous. Equal oppertunity doesn't exsist in nature, not a single place in nature. Never has. Nature has been around far longer then we have....so why are we doing something so drastically different from a proven way to survive?

Intelligence is also in how you look at it. Lt. General Hal Moore ((most famous for Operation Silver Bayonet)) used to say he graduated westpoint in the top half of the last 1/3rd of his class. I myself have done horrible in traditional school all the way up to highschool.....yet I spend my days playing wargames and studying military theory with some quickthinking minds of our day. Intelligence is not about if you have it or not, but how you measure it. Sure a black person may do a worse job on a test, but you give them a different test and he'll do better because it test something different. Say the first test is math and reading, and the second is more about how fast and how accurate can you find a solution. Given infinate time, an xSTx will almost always do better on the first. Put them understress, and an NT will prevail in the second by far. Make it a social problem and an E will pounce the I almost everytime. Make the problem one of troop moral and you want to find an EF to solve the problem. So on and so forth. The idea a black person is not as intelligent depends on the test. I've noticed they almost always do better under pressure then others, and assest problems much better. As such, standard testing often doesn't apply.

[TheLastMohican]

I agreed with everything that Summers said in his infamous speech.

*Gasp* How can you agree with such boorish sexism? You are dragging the advances of feminism back to the dark ages!

*Jumps off bridge in despair*

[terencec]

Not many people think in academic, freedom of speech is necessary? I don't care if he said that black was intelligent or not. The point is ideally the researcher should be able to publish what the results are or discuss any subject without punishment even they hurt some groups feelings. That is what I want to hear. I am not looking for people to agree the statements or not. I don't care the statements they made. Maybe black is the most intelligent group in the world! They are all wrong. Unless there are enough evident they try to put down some group or make false statements, they should have freedom of speech on almost any subject.

But it seems nobody says it!

[mkay]

Professors should have academic freedom. But Summers was the head of a powerhouse university, which puts his statements in a different light. Pissing off people isn't good for recruiting, fundraising and such. And it sounds like he'd already PO'd a lot of people with his leadership style.

[PreyingMantis]

Yes, there is an element of truth to what you are saying.

However, there are many other issues.

For example, academia is still male dominated, so that means that biassed male attitudes are going to predominate from it. This is unfair because the male domination is an unfair power imbalance. Their ideas will appear to be the "right" ones to the general public, due to their perceived status, and the other side of the story will not be as likely to be heard. That's still how it is. So, if people get upset, it's not just about the dicussion, but about the likely imbalance of power that will bias the ideas that prevail.

Conditioning has a HUGE influence on how people behave. If women are still not at the top of academia, of course it could be due to things such as the fact that women are still not "supposed" to be as intelligent or as powerful as men, no matter how people sometimes try to package their opinions otherwise. People's actions speak louder than words sometimes, and their biases come out unconsciously. This is in general society and for instance when the girls are growing up they are under HUGE pressure to conform - in many ways people are not even conscious of. Of course, that would affect anyone, and it does - profoundly. I know because i've been there and come out the other side. That might be why many women leave academia until later in life, which is what i've seen, when they are psychologically able to deal with all the pressure. Or perhaps women feel like doing other things for a while because they are not into the environment enough to stay there all their life. Academia is getting more flexible, which women with kids need, but this is a recent development. The reduced time in academia also means they don't do as much work in total , so they may be viewed as less successful (because they haven't written as many papers) or not get as far. Also, the system rewards quantity rather than quality of research, and i suspect many women are just not into the raw ego of it enough to dip their integrity so low as to do anything just to win points rather than to finish a job properly.

What's more, academia is a very unpleasant environment sometimes, where the powerless are completely unprotected against the powerful and the unfair. Women are not supposed to be as competitive and are even actively prevented from behaving as assertively as men, so how can they be expected to compete in an environment like academia where egos rule and dominate and favouritism is free to run rampant if someone powerful wants it to. Academics are at least as biassed as anyone else in their perceptions of who to employ, which ultimately decides someone's career. For example, if your boss doesn't like you in your early career, for example if he doesn't view you as "feminine" or whatever, and pretends you are disagreeable, he can give you a mediocre reference even if you deserve a brilliant one, and then you may not get another academic job - a career stopped in its tracks. He could tell anyone that you are "difficult" - and i've seen this happening! You are not ALLOWED by some academics to have the qualities needed to succeed because it is not "feminine" and they are not conscious of their biases. But you have to have "masculine" characteristics because it is still a very old fashioned male-dominated environment and they will call you weak or bully you otherwise, and laugh at you. These are just examples of how "objective" academia is. It really is a zoo sometimes!!! For that famous high-up man to state that a lack of success in research or academia must be due to lack of ability is pure stupidity. It is so obvious if you are actually in that environment and know what goes on that there are so many other very strong influences that ability doesn't need to even come into the question. He must have been making that statement for a reason of very dubious integrity.

You can't know what someone is capable of until you give them enough time and enough good enough opportunities in the right environment. It is not instant. Anyone in a position of power who will not give someone a fair chance to see what they can do is just a bully. If they bully women one day, they'll put down blacks another day, and call orangutans completely unable to think another day (that is diverging a little ...). It is the whole mindset of might is right. If i can bash you over the head and you become unconscious, then you are too stupid to argue or thik. Yeah, right, pull the other one.

Also, intelligence tests can be altered to make different groups equal, depending on the weighting of different types of question. Even in intelligence tests where one sex does better than the other, differences are not huge, so why not make the average outcomes equal?!

People's unconsciously acquired attitudes also have a big influence on how people perceive intelligence. If a woman has female qualities, people may SAY they are intelligent, but they won't have the qualities that people perceive as being the most intelligent. People also still do not want to treat a woman as a leader, and actually hate and put down many women that act as such. I know because i am one and i notice other women who are leaders of all sorts of different styles. How is that not going to affect someone in their work??? Particularly if women are really more sensitive than men - that means women haven't on average reached anywhere near the status in academia that they can be in the future. Having said all that, it's not always so bad, and things are changing for the better, if slowly. Let's just keep striving for equal status - justice will win in the end!

[Jakalwarrior]

Devils advocate here, I will playing the role of the censoror :D

The problem isn't so much the data, it is what stupid people would do with the truth. Most intelligent people will agree that the ideal world would be one in which everyone has an equal chance to play their hand to the best of their ability. The problem is that the same stupid people who would incorrectly interpret the truth also warp the idea of equality into compensation when told everyone is biologically equal.
In the end though, the system we have now seems to give the best possible conditions. Certainly better than the alternative.

*personal opinion*
We dont know if there are any racial differences. Real wide scale testing on the subject is taboo and peoples personal opinions on the subject - no matter their qualifications - are open to bias and still nothing but opinion. Testing it is also near impossible. How would one remove all of the variables in a large enough test group? So africans are dumber than americans! Yes that is true!. Their eduaction system is often crap or non-existant, their living conditions are often crap, and their lifestyle is often crap.
If you want to start blaming it on genes you need to raise a very large group of them devoid of culture, bias, etc... and do the same for a control group with random racial selection. At the end you test the groups and see which scores highest. Good luck with that ;) Might as well go ahead and segregate the genders too while you are at it. Better use robot teachers too so the instructors dont try harder or put social expectations on any of the children.

That said, I am a very strong believer in genetics governing potential intelligence... I just dont believe there is any data to apply it beyond the individual since culture is still such a massive confounding variable.

[terencec]

Devils advocate here, I will playing the role of the censoror :D

The problem isn't so much the data, it is what stupid people would do with the truth. Most intelligent people will agree that the ideal world would be one in which everyone has an equal chance to play their hand to the best of their ability. The problem is that the same stupid people who would incorrectly interpret the truth also warp the idea of equality into compensation when told everyone is biologically equal.
In the end though, the system we have now seems to give the best possible conditions. Certainly better than the alternative.
.

Wow, this is what I think. But my English is not that good to put it in words!

[Erika Redmark]

Conditioning has a HUGE influence on how people behave.

To which Summers responded with the anecdote about giving his daughters trucks to play with instead of dolls, but how they nevertheless played with them almost as though they were dolls–saying stuff like "the daddy truck is carrying the baby truck" or something. Nobody had taught them that–it looks like their parents had been trying to do the opposite, lending support to the idea that these differences in behaviour (one might even go so far as to call them instincts) aren't just learned.

[PHS Philip]

Political correctness is stupid. Sadly, those who rally against it are rarely really against it because they oppose putting taboos on legitimate topics. Most (not all, by any means, but most) are against it because they are sexist/racist/whatever other form of discrimination you can think of. I think that's part of why people who raise legitimate points about it are treated with such revulsion.

[HeterodoxRobot]

Political correctness is stupid. Sadly, those who rally against it are rarely really against it because they oppose putting taboos on legitimate topics. Most (not all, by any means, but most) are against it because they are sexist/racist/whatever other form of discrimination you can think of. I think that's part of why people who raise legitimate points about it are treated with such revulsion.
QFT!!

:bow:

[Jgib5328]

Professors should have academic freedom. But Summers was the head of a powerhouse university, which puts his statements in a different light. Pissing off people isn't good for recruiting, fundraising and such. And it sounds like he'd already PO'd a lot of people with his leadership style.

You could have a Ku Klux Klan member as the head of Harvard, and it'd still be the most desirable university in the world.

I hate people being politically correct, well I don't hate them being it, but I hate the pressure society puts on people to be politically correct. As soon as a public figure makes a comment remotely 'racist' or 'sexist' you have at least one watch dog group on your ass. It's ridiculous, people are WAY too sensitive. Sometimes it's funny to make fun of stereotypes, "Women are terrible drivers", "Jews are cheap", etc. As long as it isn't too offensive and is said without malice, then who cares? People should be able to say whatever they want. I hate how you have to tip toe around everything in our society.

[mkay]

You can say whatever you want. You just have to deal with the consequences if there are any. The higher profile you are, the bigger the consequences. That's just in general in life. I personally don't care what Summers said, whether he lost his job or not.

[Erika Redmark]

Especially since he made those remarks informally and extemporaneously, and wasn't giving a "speech" in his official capacity.

[Lrigyttiw]

*personal opinion*
We dont know if there are any racial differences. Real wide scale testing on the subject is taboo and peoples personal opinions on the subject - no matter their qualifications - are open to bias and still nothing but opinion. Testing it is also near impossible. How would one remove all of the variables in a large enough test group? So africans are dumber than americans! Yes that is true!. Their eduaction system is often crap or non-existant, their living conditions are often crap, and their lifestyle is often crap.
If you want to start blaming it on genes you need to raise a very large group of them devoid of culture, bias, etc... and do the same for a control group with random racial selection. At the end you test the groups and see which scores highest. Good luck with that ;) Might as well go ahead and segregate the genders too while you are at it. Better use robot teachers too so the instructors dont try harder or put social expectations on any of the children.

That said, I am a very strong believer in genetics governing potential intelligence... I just dont believe there is any data to apply it beyond the individual since culture is still such a massive confounding variable.

Not ALL black people grew up in a "ghetto", had a less than crap education, are dumb, and have a crappy lifestyle. Generalizations like that may get you in trouble. Careful.

Have you read Brave New World yet?

[Jakalwarrior]

Not ALL black people grew up in a "ghetto", had a less than crap education, are dumb, and have a crappy lifestyle. Generalizations like that may get you in trouble. Careful.

Have you read Brave New World yet?

I'm not talking about African Americans, I am talking about Africans in Africa. I was referring to the guys comment in one of tha articles about us not being able to make good political choices for Africa because they are dumber. I dont know squat about African politics so I was just addressing the intelligence part. He insinuated that it was genes, I was just pointing out that the country of African taken as a whole, isn't exactly ideal for producing the best and brightest minds.

[Apathy]

Not ALL black people grew up in a "ghetto", had a less than crap education, are dumb, and have a crappy lifestyle. Generalizations like that may get you in trouble. Careful.

Have you read Brave New World yet?

Why is it that always someone has to point that out? Can't everyone just assume he is talking about averages? I think it is a well known fact that black people have on average a lower socio-economic status...

Well, basicly my point is: Can't we have a consensus that people who make such statements are talking about averages unless expressly stated otherwise?