Since at this point we probably regard each other as fully mindkilled on the subject (at least I can vouch for one half of that statement), we should probably stop. I shall leave you the last word.
My reply would be along the lines of
The pedophile hysteria is a distinct problem which is not in general related
Pedophile hysteria is part of the problem in the same vein as rape hysteria and sexual harassment hysteria in general.
No. A thousands times no. As should pretty obvious since I made zero comment about your gender.
Ok then: why would you even question my personal experiences if not to discount my opinion on that basis, since if you’re not facetious you know I’m male and probably haven’t received unwanted sexual chat messages from female professors. It’s an obvious set-up to an ad hom. Otherwise explain the question.
So who are you talking about?
Entitlement culture and a loss of the ability to concentrate and exhibit mental discipline have become endemic (take obesity as one marker), my ‘fragile flower’ comment was meant to apply stochastically across the board, not to the student in question specifically obviously. You must think me to be some crazy misanthrope or somesuch. It seems like the familiar “enemy detected”-pattern of political discourse.
And in your view they coordinate that how
It seems like we’re regressing … didn’t we already cover that? But since you ask … again … let me quote … a comment like 5 ancestors up:
I’m not saying this particular outbreak of hysteria (and all the other nonsense we spend our hysteria on) is all some sinister plot/smokescreen from the powers-that-be to keep (part of) the bottom 99% busy. More like a happy coincidence, for them.
It’s easy to paint people who disagree as conspiracy nuts. Don’t fall into that temptation.
Please reread what I said without trying to make it the stupidest argument you can.
I did. I have no idea what you were trying to say there, if it apparently was neither “if it is a significant causal link on its own, it is a significant causal link on its own” nor “even if the difference was minor, combined with other factors the overall impact can be large”. Both are apparently the stupidest argument I can make up? Which is why I asked if I understood you correctly?
In general, politically involved topics lead to toxic climate. There’s nothing special about the topic in question.
This is where I expected some sort of troll face following the quote. We seem to live in different slices of society, I can’t explain why our perception would differ so fundamentally otherwise. Except the very first line of this comment, that is. Even Robin Hanson, of all people, became a target of part of the roving mob!
If weak examples of A cause some amount of X, then one should expect that more extreme amounts of A cause more of X
Look, you really need to read up on the noncentral fallacy. I really mean it. Grouping it all as “shades of A” is precisely the trap when putting disparate things into a common artificial bracket (“sexual harassment”). Violent rape is not “a more extreme amount of A on some scale where on the lower end there’s ‘men staring at you’, ergo we can surmise that the effects can be extrapolated up”. That would be the most ridiculous statement I’ve read this week, sorry to say. And I frequent Reddit. A study on men staring, then women doing worse at math test has near-precisely 0 bearing, and that’s not because I don’t look for a study showing that “men staring at women, women doing the same at the math test”. It is because it’s irrelevant to the topic. Wouldn’t that be some bizarre slippery sloping from “men staring leads to worse math tests” to the topic of sexual harassment in toto, a bracket including rape as a central component?
I assume you’ve read the abstract. Shall I link it and ask you to show, precisely, how it translates to either the specific case, or “sexual harassment and STEM enrollment” in general? Is it that “women fail at math tests because men stared at them, ergo there are less women in STEM”?
I have an idea: We need some policy about “things that start with the letter A”. It should be: contain all those things, since there’s an atom bomb in there!
And on a final note: It would have been nice if you addressed my sources (the two Time articles), which I used as evidence that the public attention devoted to the topic doesn’t fit the severity of the problem (or the lack thereof). Maybe you could choose to do so in your closing remarks?
Since at this point we probably regard each other as fully mindkilled on the subject (at least I can vouch for one half of that statement), we should probably stop. I shall leave you the last word
That’s a fascinatingly passive-aggressive way of saying “I think you’re hopelessly mindkilled”. To be blunt, while I do certainly have suspicions in that direction, the outside view suggests that neither of us is mind-killed as much as we think the other person to be since both of us have taken positions with some degree of nuance.
Pedophile hysteria is part of the problem in the same vein as rape hysteria and sexual harassment hysteria in general.
Not really. They aren’t raised by the same people and they don’t even always occur in the same places. For example, much of the UK has massive pedophile hysteria but in many ways much less of a focus on sexual harassment issues than the US does.
why would you even question my personal experiences if not to discount my opinion on that basis, since if you’re not facetious you know I’m male and probably haven’t received unwanted sexual chat messages from female professors. It’s an obvious set-up to an ad hom. Otherwise explain the question.
I did explain it. Please reread what I wrote right after that sentence where I said ” it is really easy to label people as “fragile flowers” or the like when they’ve had bad experiences you have not.” The point is that it may be worth considering whether the labels and descriptions you are attaching are based on you not having been on the receicing end.
This is where I expected some sort of troll face following the quote. We seem to live in different slices of society, I can’t explain why our perception would differ so fundamentally otherwise.
And didn’t you just reference the idea that politics is the mind-killer? Sure, different political subjects will lead to different degrees of toxicity in different contexts but this is very much not the only one which can do so. Try to have a conversation with a random bunch of Americans about abortion or gun control.
Even Robin Hanson, of all people, became a target of part of the roving mob!
I don’t see why you see that as such an extreme thing. Robin is a borderline professional troll who trolled his way to tenure. He first became welll known for his fairly tone-deaf pushing for terrorism futures markets(pdf).
Look, you really need to read up on the noncentral fallacy.
I’m familiar with it, and you need to reread what I wrote since that’s not what is going on here and the fact that you brought up rape (which is genuinely distinct) if anything shows how that’s not what is going on. The point here is that actitivies which in an academic context can sexualize women make them perform more poorly. That’s the common connection between the staring and sexual harassment situations. It has nothing to do with rape at all—I agree that if one were trying to make such a connection that would be stupid.
I’m not going to responde to your “letter A” paragraph accept to note that it may be fun to write but has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
It would have been nice if you addressed my sources (the two Time articles), which I used as evidence that the public attention devoted to the topic doesn’t fit the severity of the problem (or the lack thereof)
There are real problems with aspects of how these issues are handled, and I’d point to Radicalizing the romanceless and Scott Aaaronson’s comments here (especially comment 171) as genuine examples of the problems that the current system causes. The Time piece is to some extent correct about what they are talking about. But as you observed, what we’re talking about is different. The issue at hand is not rape, and that’s running into an important value which is the need for a lack of censorship in a university setting. I was actually at BU when the Robin Thicke controversy occurred, and there were people advocating for “let him come, and we’ll protest outside the concert” which is a much more nuanced position than that which got essentially lost in the shuffle. But the primary problem here isn’t that these problems don’t exist on college campuses: they unquestionably do: the primary problem is that the current focus doesn’t do much to actually impact the people who really are likely to create problems. But it is worth noting that there’s also an inconsistency here in the Time piece- they note RAINN’s emphasis on promoting clearer education on what constitutes consent, which is exactly a major part of what the people who advocate dealing with “rape culture” are trying to do. And again, the fact that a handful of universities have gone overboard on specific issues really isn’t great evidence of a general problem, for reasons we’ve discussed earlier I think.
But neither of these pieces are terribly relevant to what we’re talking about. If we’re talking about sex harassment then we’re talking about that. If we’re talking about rape then we’re talking about that. But it is not helpful (and indeed quite strange) to a paragraph earlier accuse someone else of the non-central fallacy while you yourself are bringing up the matter of rape which wasn’t even what was being discussed.
Since at this point we probably regard each other as fully mindkilled on the subject (at least I can vouch for one half of that statement), we should probably stop. I shall leave you the last word.
My reply would be along the lines of
Pedophile hysteria is part of the problem in the same vein as rape hysteria and sexual harassment hysteria in general.
Ok then: why would you even question my personal experiences if not to discount my opinion on that basis, since if you’re not facetious you know I’m male and probably haven’t received unwanted sexual chat messages from female professors. It’s an obvious set-up to an ad hom. Otherwise explain the question.
Entitlement culture and a loss of the ability to concentrate and exhibit mental discipline have become endemic (take obesity as one marker), my ‘fragile flower’ comment was meant to apply stochastically across the board, not to the student in question specifically obviously. You must think me to be some crazy misanthrope or somesuch. It seems like the familiar “enemy detected”-pattern of political discourse.
It seems like we’re regressing … didn’t we already cover that? But since you ask … again … let me quote … a comment like 5 ancestors up:
It’s easy to paint people who disagree as conspiracy nuts. Don’t fall into that temptation.
I did. I have no idea what you were trying to say there, if it apparently was neither “if it is a significant causal link on its own, it is a significant causal link on its own” nor “even if the difference was minor, combined with other factors the overall impact can be large”. Both are apparently the stupidest argument I can make up? Which is why I asked if I understood you correctly?
This is where I expected some sort of troll face following the quote. We seem to live in different slices of society, I can’t explain why our perception would differ so fundamentally otherwise. Except the very first line of this comment, that is. Even Robin Hanson, of all people, became a target of part of the roving mob!
Look, you really need to read up on the noncentral fallacy. I really mean it. Grouping it all as “shades of A” is precisely the trap when putting disparate things into a common artificial bracket (“sexual harassment”). Violent rape is not “a more extreme amount of A on some scale where on the lower end there’s ‘men staring at you’, ergo we can surmise that the effects can be extrapolated up”. That would be the most ridiculous statement I’ve read this week, sorry to say. And I frequent Reddit. A study on men staring, then women doing worse at math test has near-precisely 0 bearing, and that’s not because I don’t look for a study showing that “men staring at women, women doing the same at the math test”. It is because it’s irrelevant to the topic. Wouldn’t that be some bizarre slippery sloping from “men staring leads to worse math tests” to the topic of sexual harassment in toto, a bracket including rape as a central component?
I assume you’ve read the abstract. Shall I link it and ask you to show, precisely, how it translates to either the specific case, or “sexual harassment and STEM enrollment” in general? Is it that “women fail at math tests because men stared at them, ergo there are less women in STEM”?
I have an idea: We need some policy about “things that start with the letter A”. It should be: contain all those things, since there’s an atom bomb in there!
And on a final note: It would have been nice if you addressed my sources (the two Time articles), which I used as evidence that the public attention devoted to the topic doesn’t fit the severity of the problem (or the lack thereof). Maybe you could choose to do so in your closing remarks?
ETA: Typos, tone.
That’s a fascinatingly passive-aggressive way of saying “I think you’re hopelessly mindkilled”. To be blunt, while I do certainly have suspicions in that direction, the outside view suggests that neither of us is mind-killed as much as we think the other person to be since both of us have taken positions with some degree of nuance.
Not really. They aren’t raised by the same people and they don’t even always occur in the same places. For example, much of the UK has massive pedophile hysteria but in many ways much less of a focus on sexual harassment issues than the US does.
I did explain it. Please reread what I wrote right after that sentence where I said ” it is really easy to label people as “fragile flowers” or the like when they’ve had bad experiences you have not.” The point is that it may be worth considering whether the labels and descriptions you are attaching are based on you not having been on the receicing end.
And didn’t you just reference the idea that politics is the mind-killer? Sure, different political subjects will lead to different degrees of toxicity in different contexts but this is very much not the only one which can do so. Try to have a conversation with a random bunch of Americans about abortion or gun control.
I don’t see why you see that as such an extreme thing. Robin is a borderline professional troll who trolled his way to tenure. He first became welll known for his fairly tone-deaf pushing for terrorism futures markets(pdf).
I’m familiar with it, and you need to reread what I wrote since that’s not what is going on here and the fact that you brought up rape (which is genuinely distinct) if anything shows how that’s not what is going on. The point here is that actitivies which in an academic context can sexualize women make them perform more poorly. That’s the common connection between the staring and sexual harassment situations. It has nothing to do with rape at all—I agree that if one were trying to make such a connection that would be stupid.
I’m not going to responde to your “letter A” paragraph accept to note that it may be fun to write but has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
There are real problems with aspects of how these issues are handled, and I’d point to Radicalizing the romanceless and Scott Aaaronson’s comments here (especially comment 171) as genuine examples of the problems that the current system causes. The Time piece is to some extent correct about what they are talking about. But as you observed, what we’re talking about is different. The issue at hand is not rape, and that’s running into an important value which is the need for a lack of censorship in a university setting. I was actually at BU when the Robin Thicke controversy occurred, and there were people advocating for “let him come, and we’ll protest outside the concert” which is a much more nuanced position than that which got essentially lost in the shuffle. But the primary problem here isn’t that these problems don’t exist on college campuses: they unquestionably do: the primary problem is that the current focus doesn’t do much to actually impact the people who really are likely to create problems. But it is worth noting that there’s also an inconsistency here in the Time piece- they note RAINN’s emphasis on promoting clearer education on what constitutes consent, which is exactly a major part of what the people who advocate dealing with “rape culture” are trying to do. And again, the fact that a handful of universities have gone overboard on specific issues really isn’t great evidence of a general problem, for reasons we’ve discussed earlier I think.
The second piece referring to what they say is a myth, I’ll refer to Scott Alexander’s piece here.
But neither of these pieces are terribly relevant to what we’re talking about. If we’re talking about sex harassment then we’re talking about that. If we’re talking about rape then we’re talking about that. But it is not helpful (and indeed quite strange) to a paragraph earlier accuse someone else of the non-central fallacy while you yourself are bringing up the matter of rape which wasn’t even what was being discussed.