TMPHBITEU
Scaldrew's best post so far. He's right, you know. The problem is that this shit is being legislated for us. We are being forced to care about it because the government is reacting, even though normal people do not.Originally Posted by Scaldrew
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It appears that Rep. Ilhan Omar has asked the Minnesota AG to investigate USA Powerlifting for barring the trans athlete from competing as a woman.
Rep. Ilhan Omar asks Minnesota AG to investigate USA Powerlifting for barring trans athlete | Fox News
TMPHBITEU
The end of women's sports
Read the thread, Dan.
Member
Ahh dammit. I failed to read the last paragraph of the letter and thought they were different news items from the same rep. I'll be standing in the corner of shame with my dunce hat on...
Member
Yes, we should just say "Fuck it" and abolish the majority of the research. The point is that the government is incredibly inefficient at managing this research and finds ways even to make science corrupt. The private funding model has historically worked much much better. I would rather have Elon Musk, Bill Gates etc. decide what they think is important to put money towards researching than the government seizing their money to put towards unnecessary administrative costs, political propoganda, kickbacks, faulty basic science research and irreproducible bioscience studies.
The universities would survive and thrive (Harvard and 40 other Unis certainly do not need Fed money directly or indirectly even now). They would be more efficient and accountable to their private donors and students. People seem to have forgotten the U.S. higher education/research systems were privately funded until a bit before WW2 and produced incredible results. I never hear people complain that what Thomas Edison really needed was the government to fund or control his research. The gov likely would have refused to fund him if the current system were in place back then. He thought too independently.
I really wish my experience was the same as yours. The conversations I have experienced have been in the real world. The consequences have been in the real world. You need to get out more if you haven't been criticized for holding open a door on several occasions or haven't been discriminated against for being the wrong race or gender or haven't been put in the back of the line because there were "victims" who deserved assistance. It is common to be attacked if you believe in the wrong things, like capitalism. There are numerous financial and social consequences that have been all too real for me.
No abolishing of the internet. That would require government intervention.
✓ Member
Thanks for writing this Barry. This is great.
Member
I guess you are not aware of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890
Member
Irrelevant. Look at aggregate funding data.
The creation of a perpetually dependent academic welfare class did not happen officially until about a decade after WWII.
Community Organizer (Administrator)
And it's about far more than dependency -- it's now a bureaucratized system (bad) with funding driven by politics (much worse).
Member
Any research I don't like is not real research. Not-real research should not be allowed.
Any speech I don't like is not real speech. Not-real speech should not be allowed.
Rip is right, though, this is a legislative battle, and this is a uniquely American problem. The crazy types you see on university campuses and in the classrooms are overwhelmingly American. Us lowly Europeans simply don't freak out about this sort of stuff on that large a scale. I've seen professors push, denigrate, assault, shout, swear, and exclude on campus and off it, and they've always been American. Every professor I've had here has been more than reserved on anything political, or even cultural. You have to wait 40 hours of lectures (little over 12 weeks) to hear a professor say he does or does not like Game of Thrones, and even then you're dealing with an exception. Everyone here just gets boners for their own field, because they know these extremes come and go, and because they understand that self-regulation is a more ideal situation.
The point of research needing to be "useful" is so wrong on its face so as to be antithetical to the idea and practice of research as a whole. Researching anything means asking more questions than providing answers. In that sense, it constitutes a perpetual open mind to new information. It's precisely the point to aim, shoot, and "miss" the mark 99% of the times so that the other 1% will be right on target. This is why answers, the "real research", is always built on traditions and foregoing research, that is previous attempts at answering questions. This is why every introductory class is one of semantics: what are we studying, what does it mean? To study matter, you first ask what matter is, and it's precisely this "pointless question" that leads you to atomic theory, which a field like quantum physics might reject. Now, I don't know anything on physics or quantum physics to make that determination; the point is that answers to questions exist in their specific paradigms. That is, a field of research is autonomous. The questions are specific, as are the answers to those questions. So to pull an answer, say the feminist conception of patriarchy, out of its paradigm and context to apply it to "white male society" is ridiculous, as any serious academic will tell you. Yes, non-serious academics will not, which is why serious academics don't care what they have to say.
Without this autonomy, you get private donors, as you say, which immediately introduces conflicts of interest that never get resolved. There's a reason we put asterisks in the margins of privately sponsored research, like fuel efficiency research funded by Shell for example: because it's always uncertain whether or not the research was parsed through a monetary lense. And it's this kind of funding that stifles research, truly. Anything a donor dislikes or doesn't care about isn't worth funding, is deemed not useful. And what do corporations find useful? Higher profit margins. It's research to churn into commercials, to sell more, and not to attempt to answer questions. Now, there's already a push from funding institutions for "useful" research. People just can't help but get easy answers to easy questions. "What's the use?" has to be answered in single words or sentences. As such, more volatile, more controversial research gets funded, like questions about "white male society" that are so ridiculous as to be comical. And then when one such a horrible paper gets published, hacks like our boy Jordan Peterson can jump on it and go "aha! You hate white men!" and rake in the millions of dollars his fans give him. And everyone forgets the paper is completely neglected in academia, that it will hardly be read, cited, or even remembered in 2 weeks time. But complaining online is such a lucrative business (how many million dollars a year, Peterson?!) that those papers can now exist in our minds for 2 more weeks before finally being relegated to the bin, or the cat's litterbox.
And everyone who doesn't care about the truth, about these facts, will just wave their hands at me, as you did, and say "no no, you're childlike and wrong and these researchers are destroying the fabric of our society". And assholes like me will just move on from conversations like these and scratch their redacted every once in a while to stave off boredom. Wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
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