It seems important to remember, like, I dunno man previously we just had Christianity et all telling us what to think, blacklisting communists, etc.
There are some changes re: attention span that seem real, and it’s a plausible hypothesis that the internet has interacted with tribalism in newly-bad ways, but I don’t see a strong reason to assume this is the case, and think the next step is “actually go do real empiricism” before trying to Do Something About It.
I didn’t forget about Christianity but think we’d have to go back pretty far to see as much influence from it in journalism, academia, K-12 education (our main epistemic institutions) as we see today from leftist ideology. Curious if you have a different take on this.
“blacklisting communists” was in response to a rather obvious real threat, and I’d be worried if the same or similar dynamics is now happening absent such a threat (as that implies the bad dynamics and epistemic conditions it imposes might never go away or might keep recurring for no good reason).
think the next step is “actually go do real empiricism” before trying to Do Something About It.
Sure, and I’m hoping that someone has ideas about how to do such empiricism, for people in our positions (i.e., not an academic who might be able to apply for a grant to study this).
My understanding is that Texas is still printing textbooks that do ‘evolution is just a theory’ and don’t mention the age of the universe (and that this has been consistent for the past few decades, and Texas is a large enough market that it distorts overall textbook trends)
Here’s the latest story I found about Texas schools and evolution. After reading it, I think the religious influence described is trivial compared to what’s happening in “progressive” school districts. (I’m not going to link to or describe in detail what I’m seeing, for fear of drawing unwanted attention, but I’ll send it to you via PM.)
The fundamental difference seems to be that most biology teachers have not signed up for teaching religious fundamentalism and their university training didn’t teach them that ideal but critical theory is deep in the university curriculum for teachers.
To be fair, ’ask questions and get bearings’ seems like what this post is doing, but since it’s harder to actually go check for things vs share hot takes I’m worried about where things‘d go by default
It seems important to remember, like, I dunno man previously we just had Christianity et all telling us what to think, blacklisting communists, etc.
There are some changes re: attention span that seem real, and it’s a plausible hypothesis that the internet has interacted with tribalism in newly-bad ways, but I don’t see a strong reason to assume this is the case, and think the next step is “actually go do real empiricism” before trying to Do Something About It.
I didn’t forget about Christianity but think we’d have to go back pretty far to see as much influence from it in journalism, academia, K-12 education (our main epistemic institutions) as we see today from leftist ideology. Curious if you have a different take on this.
“blacklisting communists” was in response to a rather obvious real threat, and I’d be worried if the same or similar dynamics is now happening absent such a threat (as that implies the bad dynamics and epistemic conditions it imposes might never go away or might keep recurring for no good reason).
Sure, and I’m hoping that someone has ideas about how to do such empiricism, for people in our positions (i.e., not an academic who might be able to apply for a grant to study this).
My understanding is that Texas is still printing textbooks that do ‘evolution is just a theory’ and don’t mention the age of the universe (and that this has been consistent for the past few decades, and Texas is a large enough market that it distorts overall textbook trends)
Here’s the latest story I found about Texas schools and evolution. After reading it, I think the religious influence described is trivial compared to what’s happening in “progressive” school districts. (I’m not going to link to or describe in detail what I’m seeing, for fear of drawing unwanted attention, but I’ll send it to you via PM.)
The fundamental difference seems to be that most biology teachers have not signed up for teaching religious fundamentalism and their university training didn’t teach them that ideal but critical theory is deep in the university curriculum for teachers.
To be fair, ’ask questions and get bearings’ seems like what this post is doing, but since it’s harder to actually go check for things vs share hot takes I’m worried about where things‘d go by default