"stay in your office, nerd"
Has political correctness actually gone mad?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
With that, plus his actual field (pol sci) vs his chosen topic (race/IQ), Charles Murray would run afoul of your rules...
You need to study an issue without knowing which answer you want when you begin.
He's an activist on subjects that he's not an academic in... it don't know if that makes him innocent or more guilty.
(He's actually innocent, by my standard)
To be fair, Chomsky has had that criticism for years and it doesn't really work with him. He's bothered to do his homework on matters even if Linguistics was his area and while he's got his slant on things - you can't accuse him of not knowing what he's talking about when it comes to the facts. Most just disagree about how he interprets things (i.e. The US has acted as a terrorist state). He puts out long essays on these matters which detail his arguments.
Bit different than some attention-seeking, troll going on a 'Dangerous Faggot Tour' just to wind people up.
No, my point wasn't about lanes. That's why Chomsky is "ok" (I'm the arbiter of all things now), because his violation would have been to set out with some political view and built a whole linguistic theory to prove it (would that even be possible?).
Its similar to what we discussed in the Shapiro thread of the difference between an expert and just a political commentator. If you know what the person is going to say before they open their mouth / write a paper on a subject that's new to them because of any vocal politics of theirs, then its not of that much value.
And not that social scientists are creatures immune to politics, or that they should stay out of it. My point is just that it is in the spirit of the profession to be open to finding evidence/arguments that contradict what you might have thought before.
Like above, I'm never thinking of him when arguing this. His linguistics aren't political, and his politics are his right (I disagree, but he's neither uninformed nor disingenuous).
Paul Krugman would be a closer example, whose best days as an academic economist are probably behind him (in part natural, because they do their hardest work when they're young and hungry). These days on any given subject I can probably guess what Krugman's opinion is.
I find it baffling you think academics don't do this.
Lol I think this guy is now more indistinguishable from parody than Peter Sweden.
I tried to think hard but I mainly just saw women in bikinis... Am I supposed to be intrigued that google had one woman that wasn't skinny?
Unrelated - if you have anymore decent suggestions for youtube vids to check out I have a lot of time on my hands, at present, and you haven't failed me yet. My inbox is yours.
It's funny cuz I'm not a member of twitter, and in all honesty, the most whining I read is from people whinging about political correctness gone mad.
Maybe if I joined twitter or whatever I'd see the other side, but from my point of view, the 'precious snowflake' types that always seem up in arms about something utterly trivial (mainly other people's opinions) are the 'Political Correctness Gone Mad' brigade.
Ironic.
Maybe if I joined twitter or whatever I'd see the other side, but from my point of view, the 'precious snowflake' types that always seem up in arms about something utterly trivial (mainly other people's opinions) are the 'Political Correctness Gone Mad' brigade.
Ironic.
Yes. My memory of this thread thus far is that half my posts are just longer versions of 'No, it's you'.
I did as he asked. Main difference seems to be that Bing has practically only thin, white women pop up near the top, while Google has mostly white women, but also a few PoC, and a handful of pictures of plus size model Ashley Graham (who is, quite frankly, hot as hell).
So his issue seems to be that that minorities and chubby people come up in a Google search. This, to him, proves that Google has caved to the PC agenda, because everyone knows that overweight women and minorities aren't attractive.
A bit back, one of our resident Jordan Peterson fans/anti-PC posters talked about how there are tons of idiots who have managed to get to the top of the academic world, referring primarily to those with a leftist slant. Ironically, I think Jordan Peterson is a perfect example of an idiot who has done so.
I salute Peterson for turning his jack-off session into meme-worthy """political""" content. Also I'm amazed how Microsoft has escaped, people should do a study on this island of defiance.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...be-free-hit-on-women-harvey-weinstein-scandal
I've been trying to say this for months. Problem was, I'm not 100 French women..
I've been trying to say this for months. Problem was, I'm not 100 French women..
Yeah, I think at its core it's a good thing. It's basically about not being a dick. However every now and again an example will come along of it going too far, and I don't think recognising that makes you a part of the Brexit crew.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...ic-problematic-millenials-watch-a8154626.html
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
When you've made some tasteless jokes about your Dad
And people think you're queer....
Totally messed up, alluding to the possibility that a child might struggle with his father dressing up as a woman. Thank god we wouldn't talk about that anymore.
What's that article supposed to be based on exactly? It's filled with expressions like some millennials found, new audiences claimed, received criticism for etc., but the only actual substance to back it up are a couple of random tweets and a feminist blog post.
Tweets with single digit likes/retweets. This literally would have had the global impact of a private conversation over dinner.
It is almost as if they want to create a cycle of outrage (at the millennials quoted in the article) and counter-outrage (at the over-the-top abuse which will be hurled at those millennials), and make 3 stories appear from absolutely nothing real. Culminating in an opinion column explaining how 1 of these outraged sides is the end of the world.
A more accurate headline would have been "Some random people think certain things in Friends seem a bit out of place today."
It's frustrating but also fascinating.
I haven’t seen that much backlash against friends other than the one during its run itself about lack of diversity in the cast.
Chandler storyline was somewhat homophobic by current standards but men being averse to be mistaken as gay was common in 90s. Seinfeld captured this conflict beautifully in an episode too where jerry and George don’t want to be labellled homosexuals all the while insisting “not that there is anything wrong with it”.
Singer Ginuwine is 'under fire' for refusing to let a Transgender kiss him on some big brother show thing, apparently he's transphobic.
Yeah I'd say for a 90s show Friends stands up relatively well in that regard. Ross' wife who leaves him for another woman is portrayed in a relatively positive light insofar as she's not just reduced to a stereotype. Seems like any offence/uncomfortable feeling people have has been overblown though. As per usual.
You still have a bit of figuring out to do. Start with ethics. Then look at framing research questions. You will find you don’t have to put your (ethical) car in neutral. You can leave it in gear ‘till the lights go green. Now if you drive an automatic...You need to study an issue without knowing which answer you want when you begin.
He's an activist on subjects that he's not an academic in... it don't know if that makes him innocent or more guilty
(He's actually innocent, by my standard)
Just read the guy's twitter. He seems to be a total lunatic, sharing things like this.
Peterson is a bit of a moron.
If you've ever watched the Joe Rogan Experience, in at least two episodes he has talked about the atrocities that the USSR committed against its own people under Stalin, and he subscribes to the hilariously wrong figure of 50-60 million Soviet citizens murdered by the communist regime.
This is a number that is out of touch with reality almost by a magnitude of 10. How can you take a guy seriously that speaks with authority about something he hasn't got a fecking clue about, and is basing his position on figures that were debunked 20-30 years ago as flat out wrong and in some cases intentionally inflated propaganda. He might be an expert on whatever the feck he is supposed to be an expert on. However, when he is so wrong on something that he speaks as though he is an authority on, in a demonstrably way, that's suspect. The guy is driven by motivations and biases just like the people he rants against are. Dude is a twat. Now, I'm not defending the USSR or Stalin, 7+ million is still a heinous death toll, but 7+ million isn't 60 million. 60 million doesn't even pass a fecking logic test based on the demographics of the USSR. When you combine the supposed 50-60 million the USSR killed on their own, with the 27~ million that died in WW2, you're talking about 80-90 million people dying in a single generation, out of a total fecking population of 170 million. LOLWUT.
I think there's still a lot of debate around the accurate figure. But just doing a bit of googling myself it seems to be in the order of about 15m, between 1917 and 1953.
I'm not sure if inflated figures detract from his points though, perhaps they make it slightly more shocking, but once you get into the millions does it really matter that much which figure you use? I think he's said as much himself.
I quite like Peterson but having watched a lot of his lectures and talks I find that a lot of the same ground is covered over and over again, but he's no doubt a very intelligent man and there's a lot that can be taken from what he says. He's not the messiah though.
I think hes good in his own field. I'm quite skeptical of anything he says outside of it though.
Hes definitely partial to a bit of hyperbole and propaganda
Hes definitely partial to a bit of hyperbole and propaganda
And he somehow tries to connect this to university students as well. It's all very odd.
He would probably be better off focusing on the meaning of what Solzhenitsyn and others have written of, and has come across to me in a few unrelated readings of Soviet history: the murderous nature of the pre-Khrushchev USSR is pretty unmatched in history. I've to this date not read about a state that intentionally killed so much of its own population.
The profile of some of the people murdered is also bizarre, and leaves it hard to find a purpose to the actions. Guys like Mikhail Tukhachevsky who was the main military theorist of the Red Army's modernization in the 20s and 30s, executed in 1937. Along with a large part of the general staff, that left the USSR in a precarious position when the Germans invaded in 1941. It seems to serve no purpose, unless there was indeed mass conspiracy to overthrow Stalin.
I don't have deep knowledge on this issue, but I guess escalating paranoia might be a good enough 'purpose' to explain this, fueled by a political system that induced a quasi-Darwinist dynamic of denunciation for one's own survival. That would at least be in line with the nonsensical and tendentially auto-destructive character of the purges you speak of.
On Peterson: the notions that he should cut out the hyperbolic/propagandistic elements for his own sake miss the point for me. From what I've heard of him so far, I rather take them as the core of his perspective on certain issues, not a dispensable supplement. He comes across as a populist and political paranoiac himself, after all.
At certain point it just comes to Stalin's personal preference, I think I'm right in saying certain musicians where put into labour camps simply because Stalin didn't like their stuff.
The number of civilians deliberately killed under Stalinism is actually about 6-7 million as per the latest work on the subject.
Yea, it actually does matter what number you use, because, you know, accuracy and credibility. There is a rather large difference between 6-7 million and 60 million. I could say, the US is responsible indirectly for half a million Iraqi's that died as a result of the over throw of Saddam, or I could say, they are indirectly responsible for 5 million dead Iraqi's.
I just think that when you make a statement like that, that is so wrong, it raises some flags. Either you know and you don't care, or you are talking about something you don't know with authority. Either way, that should raise flags. What is motivating him if he is willing to willfully lie about something. What can we believe if he thinks he knows what he is talking about, but is so hilariously off the mark?
The Chinese killed more.
Stalin killed a lot of Soviet citizens. Hitler killed more civilians in general. Mao killed more than both of them. Hitler killed around 11 million citizens deliberately, around 1 million of which (off the to of my head) were technically German citizens.
A couple countries are responsible for killing a larger percentage of civilians as a function of the population of the country. Cambodia is one, under Pol Pot, over 10% of the population was killed. Under Stalinism, if you take the highest end of the most accurate number, it's less than 5% of the total population. Anyways, let's not derail this. These people were all mass murderers, the point is, when someone killed 7 million people, and saying they killed 50-60 million people.
I think, in fact, the purges ultimately helped the USSR repulse Germany. We're actually getting into more of anti Soviet propaganda here that has become sort of enshrined in the popular western understanding of the Eastern Front. Yes, some brilliant minds were lost in the military purges, but a lot of dead wood for lack of a better term was removed. What happened in the Red Army following the initial disastrous opening 6 months of the war, was Stalin largely taking his hands off the reigns of military control, and trusting his best Generals to do the job.
It's absolutely true that if you were a feck up in command and you fecked up in a big way, you could expect to get shot. However, the purges opened the Red Army up to meritocracy. Some of the most brilliant military minds in human history rapidly rose through the ranks to ultimately command the Red Army, and that would have been massively complicated had the purges not happened. Was it an accident that Stalin killed off a bunch of guys who were dogmatically stuck in the 19th century in terms of military strategy? Maybe.
The guy was a brutal pragmatist, willing to do whatever it took to make the USSR strong. The chaos of the first 5-6 months of Barbarossa before the Soviets stabilized the front, and ultimately took a giant steamer on the Germans on the outskirts of Moscow, may have lasted much longer as more and more incompetent Generals failed to effect command and control or to even come to terms with the rapidity of modern mobile warfare which the Germans kind of thrust down their throat.
I think we can make this about political correctness, because, as horrible as a person I think Stalin was, I also think he is probably directly responsible for saving more lives in human history than anyone else and that is definitely not politically correct! If you look at Hitlers plan for eastern europe, his goal was to conquer the USSR right up to the Urals. His ultimate goal was to enslave and eventually reduce the population of Slavic peoples and other ethnic groups down to a very small number to operate as slaves on the German villas that would begin to Teutonize the USSR. That's over 100 million people who would have ultimately been killed by Hitler. Stalin brutalized the USSR into being capable of resisting and ultimately defeating that. NOT politically correct to say this!
I'm only up to Jan '42 in Absolute War by Chris Bellamy, so yet to see the Red Army have much in the way of victories. But its already been explained that Rokossovsky was one of the most successful generals... and he was almost killed in the purges too. Its also clear so far that it took about one thing going wrong for a general to be relieved from his command, only in several cases to be reassigned later. Not sure there was that much of a method to the madness.
Agree on what defeat of the USSR would have meant for the population of the country.
The main difference between Stalin's & Hitler's command was Stalin's intrinsic low self-esteem meant that he knew his lack of military expertise would cost the USSR the war...and so he allowed the experts more of a free hand.
Let's remember some of the purges were due to the initial failure of the Soviet invasion of Finland nor forget how Stalin went beyond appeasement to actually siding with Hitler in carving up Poland (including killing large numbers of Polish troops after they surrendered). Neither was about trying to stop Hitler it was about gaining land and power for himself and the USSR.
Of course if not for the purges the red army might have been in better shape to face the initial onslaught. It did not help that Stalin had a near nervous breakdown in the opening week or two led to a level of paralysis in leadership. His generals had expected the initial push to be towards Moscow, Stalin over ruled them and moved more forces to the South. Had those troops been where his Generals wanted them they might have done better in the opening months. Uncle Joe also refused to let his forces take many actions to prepare for the invasion everyone but him expected. This led to troops being under armed, supplied, the red Air Force having large numbers of aircraft destroyed on the ground, etc.
Bottom line he deserves a good amount of blame for the early failures of the Red Army in WW2 and deserves a huge amount of credit for the turn around and victory.
Had it not been for WW2 and Hitler there's little doubt he'd not be viewed favorably by history. Let's not pretend his brutality was all about making the Soviet Union ready to defeat Hitler's.
Of course if not for the purges the red army might have been in better shape to face the initial onslaught. It did not help that Stalin had a near nervous breakdown in the opening week or two led to a level of paralysis in leadership. His generals had expected the initial push to be towards Moscow, Stalin over ruled them and moved more forces to the South. Had those troops been where his Generals wanted them they might have done better in the opening months. Uncle Joe also refused to let his forces take many actions to prepare for the invasion everyone but him expected. This led to troops being under armed, supplied, the red Air Force having large numbers of aircraft destroyed on the ground, etc.
Bottom line he deserves a good amount of blame for the early failures of the Red Army in WW2 and deserves a huge amount of credit for the turn around and victory.
Had it not been for WW2 and Hitler there's little doubt he'd not be viewed favorably by history. Let's not pretend his brutality was all about making the Soviet Union ready to defeat Hitler's.
I saw someone suggest that all these liberal Marxist college students should be sent to countries that are under the political system they want in the US, then afterwards they can tell us if that's really what they want for the US. This person was obviously thinking they'd be sent to Cuba, China or North Korea, but only loonies out on the fringes actually look at those countries and go, "yeah, I'd like that". The average liberal college student (or Marxist, as Peterson likes to call them) want something like what we have here in Norway. Social safety nets, free healthcare, free education all the way through university (to be fair, you have to buy your own books and pay an administrative fee of about £20 every semester, so not completely free). And I think that if you were to send all the students to Norway to see if that's what they really want, the majority would, upon return, say "yes, that's exactly what I want."
I agree that most young people want something similar to the Norway model(Also I'm not sure what a liberal marxist is ?). Although I have to disagree about these's ''marxist'' countries you are talking about, mainly because they are in fact not very marxists. Example being China at the moment is looking like global capitalism best friend.
Another problem with Peterson is he doesn't seem to have looked at the works of Karl Marx.
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