This is certainly a popular bit of political propaganda at the moment, spread by the dominant political forces in 2025, with a goal of crushing our universities and of making them ideologically subservient to state power and state beliefs.
The reality on the ground is rather different. If you actually sit in the median university lecture, you will be extremely hard-pressed to find any professors promoting violence. Typically, you will find professors promoting the importance of differential equations, or if you lean towards the humanities, the joys of ancient Aegean art. If you search more deeply, every university can produce a handful of oddball radicals who argue for revolution (or counter-revolution) in the abstract. This has always been the case. Every university needs a few faculty cranks, if only to teach students to recognize the species and to check the course catalog more carefully in the future. (My alma mater had a notorious right-wing crank, and one very radical feminist, plus several more esoteric sorts of cranks.) You can also, of course, find a great many 19-year-olds who believe strange things, and who occasionally dream of revolutionizing society. But such is the nature of 19-year-olds who have recently discovered that society is frequently awful, but who have not yet realized quite how fragile civilization can be. But honestly, there is no dignity in 50-year-olds getting worked up about the fact that 19-year-olds have terrible ideas for reforming society.
But this does leave a more specific and pressing issue: the tolerance of mass-protest “encampments”, especially those with significant numbers of university outsiders. Typically, these protests are not especially popular among the student body as a whole. University administrators do not enjoy dealing with mass protests, and they are often quite bad it. They do realize that handling protests poorly often leads to larger protests, and they are reluctant to punish students for exercising their First Amendment rights to say awful things while waving signs. (This is true, in my experience, even when the people saying awful things are conservative. For a well-known US example, The Dartmouth Review was disliked by administrators for decades, but it was still permitted to litter copies all over campus.)
But at the same time, protests should never be allowed to threaten students or to disrupt the educational mission of the university. And yes, this has happened a number of times in recent years, and not every university dealt with it well. This was also true in the 60s; there were protests which nearly became angry mobs, and there were people dragged into Maoist “consciousness-raising” sessions, and all sorts of other unpleasantness.
Still, if you actually visit a university, walk around, and talk with the students, it is exceptionally hard to walk away with the impression that “universities promote violence.” You can, if you are determined enough, perhaps find a professor who promotes Marxist revolution in the abstract. And it isn’t hard to find administrators who’ve bungled a protest. But if you look at what universities do promote and teach on a day-to-day basis, you would really need to stretch to find “violence” even in the top 100.
I was a professor, so I know that universities promote violence, so don’t even try that bullshit on me. People hate universities because universities are absolutely horrendous and extremely unprofessional. Until universities apologize for their extremely low standards and horrible behavior, we should MOCK all people with degrees from universities and regard them as evil worthless people. People hate me for bringing this up because most people with college degrees are scumbags who are afraid to admit that they are far stupider (and more evil too) than people who did not waste their money and time in college.
I DO NOT NEED TO VISIT A UNIVERSITY TO KNOW HOW IT IS LIKE SINCE I WAS A PROFESSOR, YOU BLOODTHIRSTY SCUMBAG!
P.S. I knew people would downvote me. The reason people hate me for talking about this is that most people with college degrees are bloodthirsty piles garbage who need to be punished for their evil. You all probably think that barbaric practices like ECT are healthy because you just fucking trust medical professionals trained by universities along with all other university graduates. You all have the morals of Jeffrey Dahmer.
I am striking this out because it is better if I instead made only mathematics posts on this site relevant to AI safety.
I just wrote a comment defending sneering recently on LessWrong, and I think this is a good time to put my beliefs into action.
You may feel smart, but your comment does not convey any of that intelligence, if you have it. You may be very confident in your opinions, but you are doing nothing to confer that confidence to anyone else. If you want me to believe what you believe, you’ll have to be convincing. A digital temper tantrum won’t do it.
This is fascinating- I’ve been a fan of Joseph’s youtube channel for years, but I’ve never seen him comment on lesswrong. A while ago in that setting, we got into a back and forth about eigenvalues of anti-linear operators, which was object level fascinating, but also ended up requiring both Joseph and me to notice that we were wrong, which we did with little difficulty. What I’m trying to say is that Joseph is actually smart and open minded on technical questions, but is also definitely not respecting community norms here. If we can successfully not scare him off while discouraging quite this level of vitriol, there is definitely potential for him to contribute.
You are siding with evil because you yourself are evil. My anger against people like you is righteous. If you are not convinced, it is simply because you have been completely consumed by your own evil. Universities promote violence. I know. I was a professor. But you just want me to be violently attacked and injured or killed.
UNIVERSITIES MUST BE REJECTED FOR PROMOTING VIOLENCE!
P.S. Only commenting and responding to my non-technical posts where I call out universities for their problem just proves my point. Face it. You are stupid, and universities only pretended to educate you.
I am striking this out because it is better if I instead made only mathematics posts on this site relevant to AI safety.
This is certainly a popular bit of political propaganda at the moment, spread by the dominant political forces in 2025, with a goal of crushing our universities and of making them ideologically subservient to state power and state beliefs.
The reality on the ground is rather different. If you actually sit in the median university lecture, you will be extremely hard-pressed to find any professors promoting violence. Typically, you will find professors promoting the importance of differential equations, or if you lean towards the humanities, the joys of ancient Aegean art. If you search more deeply, every university can produce a handful of oddball radicals who argue for revolution (or counter-revolution) in the abstract. This has always been the case. Every university needs a few faculty cranks, if only to teach students to recognize the species and to check the course catalog more carefully in the future. (My alma mater had a notorious right-wing crank, and one very radical feminist, plus several more esoteric sorts of cranks.) You can also, of course, find a great many 19-year-olds who believe strange things, and who occasionally dream of revolutionizing society. But such is the nature of 19-year-olds who have recently discovered that society is frequently awful, but who have not yet realized quite how fragile civilization can be. But honestly, there is no dignity in 50-year-olds getting worked up about the fact that 19-year-olds have terrible ideas for reforming society.
But this does leave a more specific and pressing issue: the tolerance of mass-protest “encampments”, especially those with significant numbers of university outsiders. Typically, these protests are not especially popular among the student body as a whole. University administrators do not enjoy dealing with mass protests, and they are often quite bad it. They do realize that handling protests poorly often leads to larger protests, and they are reluctant to punish students for exercising their First Amendment rights to say awful things while waving signs. (This is true, in my experience, even when the people saying awful things are conservative. For a well-known US example, The Dartmouth Review was disliked by administrators for decades, but it was still permitted to litter copies all over campus.)
But at the same time, protests should never be allowed to threaten students or to disrupt the educational mission of the university. And yes, this has happened a number of times in recent years, and not every university dealt with it well. This was also true in the 60s; there were protests which nearly became angry mobs, and there were people dragged into Maoist “consciousness-raising” sessions, and all sorts of other unpleasantness.
Still, if you actually visit a university, walk around, and talk with the students, it is exceptionally hard to walk away with the impression that “universities promote violence.” You can, if you are determined enough, perhaps find a professor who promotes Marxist revolution in the abstract. And it isn’t hard to find administrators who’ve bungled a protest. But if you look at what universities do promote and teach on a day-to-day basis, you would really need to stretch to find “violence” even in the top 100.
I was a professor, so I know that universities promote violence, so don’t even try that bullshit on me. People hate universities because universities are absolutely horrendous and extremely unprofessional. Until universities apologize for their extremely low standards and horrible behavior, we should MOCK all people with degrees from universities and regard them as evil worthless people. People hate me for bringing this up because most people with college degrees are scumbags who are afraid to admit that they are far stupider (and more evil too) than people who did not waste their money and time in college.I DO NOT NEED TO VISIT A UNIVERSITY TO KNOW HOW IT IS LIKE SINCE I WAS A PROFESSOR, YOU BLOODTHIRSTY SCUMBAG!P.S. I knew people would downvote me. The reason people hate me for talking about this is that most people with college degrees are bloodthirsty piles garbage who need to be punished for their evil. You all probably think that barbaric practices like ECT are healthy because you just fucking trust medical professionals trained by universities along with all other university graduates. You all have the morals of Jeffrey Dahmer.I am striking this out because it is better if I instead made only mathematics posts on this site relevant to AI safety.
Ok… I mean, this is very obviously against our moderation guidelines. This is a warning. Do expect a pretty immediate ban if you write more like this.
I just wrote a comment defending sneering recently on LessWrong, and I think this is a good time to put my beliefs into action.
You may feel smart, but your comment does not convey any of that intelligence, if you have it. You may be very confident in your opinions, but you are doing nothing to confer that confidence to anyone else. If you want me to believe what you believe, you’ll have to be convincing. A digital temper tantrum won’t do it.
This is fascinating- I’ve been a fan of Joseph’s youtube channel for years, but I’ve never seen him comment on lesswrong. A while ago in that setting, we got into a back and forth about eigenvalues of anti-linear operators, which was object level fascinating, but also ended up requiring both Joseph and me to notice that we were wrong, which we did with little difficulty. What I’m trying to say is that Joseph is actually smart and open minded on technical questions, but is also definitely not respecting community norms here. If we can successfully not scare him off while discouraging quite this level of vitriol, there is definitely potential for him to contribute.
You are siding with evil because you yourself are evil. My anger against people like you is righteous. If you are not convinced, it is simply because you have been completely consumed by your own evil. Universities promote violence. I know. I was a professor. But you just want me to be violently attacked and injured or killed.UNIVERSITIES MUST BE REJECTED FOR PROMOTING VIOLENCE!P.S. Only commenting and responding to my non-technical posts where I call out universities for their problem just proves my point. Face it. You are stupid, and universities only pretended to educate you.I am striking this out because it is better if I instead made only mathematics posts on this site relevant to AI safety.