Just read that letter. And damn, is it good. People nowadays have forgotten the lessons of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These basic philosophies need to be taught starting in grade school. No reason for them to be relegated only to higher education. They literally teach you how to examine ideas and think critically - the very basis of ALL useful knowledge. We've become a nation of knee jerkers.
The internet is the catalyst for that. You can get a better education absorbing all the free knowledge online than you do regurgitating all the useless shit they make you learn by rote
They don’t want students to think critically. The students that tend to get the beat grades around here are the ones that regurgitate everything the teacher tells them. The students that dare ask questions or have a different viewpoint do not do as well academically on their report card.
Many of the students in AP and honors classes at my son’s high school are the ones out “protesting” with dyed hair, piercings, etc. They are also posting on the internet a list of boys that are “rapists” because even though they said it was fine to have sex with them, they later decided they changed their mind (they actually wrote this) and that is rape. These are our supposed best and brightest.
Yeah I always said this, ever since high school...the best students are not the smartest, they are just the ones who kiss ass and color inside all the lines
I’m reading Henry Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience right now. Deepen your thinking on these issues, friends! If it’s an issue that matters to you, read the heavy hitters on the topic and train your brain to think about it in a complex fashion. Yes, it’s hard reading. Good. It builds your mental muscles to experience that mental struggle.
I love that they brought the hammer down on them. I was fairly indifferent about DeVos early on - some things I liked, some I didn’t - but if this is her doing she’s quickly winning me over.
I still can't understand why the DoE has 10,000 employees and a budget in the billions.
What the fuck are they doing. I can't imagine work for more than 100 people at the federal level in education.
I don't think it needs to be gutted, but it needs to stop being blanket subsidized. Loans should be offered for degrees that fulfill labor pool requirements. If there aren't job postings for "gender studies degree preferred", then there shouldn't be any loans available for it.
When the money dries up for degrees in victimhood, I think most of the problems will sort themselves out.
Harder to uproot a corrupt organization that has 10000 people than one that has 100 people. It’s not a coincidence that government always makes itself bigger if allowed to.
What they teach in K-12 is mostly worthless. You get a surface level understanding of things and little else. Kids are not taught how to think for themselves. They are taught to memorize information that has little application in the real world. It's boring as hell and its no wonder a lot of kids hate being there. You could inoculate kids against the weapons of the leftists with the right education. By 18 they need to be able to go out into the world and not become prey to the vultures in the private and public sector.
I'm personally of the belief that government loans should not be allowed to go to non-STEM, law, or medicine degrees, as well as financial aid for those going to trade school. That way if you want a useless degree like theater or 12th century transgender lesbian poetry from feudal West Ghana, you better get a scholarship or you get your ass to something useful. I would add teaching to the list but teachers have enough student loan forgiveness programs in place as is.
Essentially yes - if you want some basket degree you gotta pay market price, or find someone to fund you privately.
Stem (hard sciences), law, medicine, business, accounting, and almost all trade schools should have a fixed loan amount that correlates to 1x expected yearly salary 5 years into industry. I think the loans should not have interest attached beyond inflation. 100% of money paid to the loan can be applied to a tax credit without ability to use it to get a refund. Why tax people for money they already owe you, and not use it to pay that loan? Ridiculous. If you refuse to pay they reserve the right to garnish your wage.
Essentially it should be driven by forecasted demand. If we need digital artists, then loans for graphic design will be granted.
It's very important that conservatives find ways to bring the hammer down on crazies within Academia when they crossed the line. There are a ton of professors who yes are very liberal, but who aren't crazy to the level of the woke crowd. In particular they still actually believe in freedom of speech and thought, but they are also prideful and cowardly at the same time. Because of their fear, they do not speak out against the woke crowd when they suppress debate and even hard data, and because they are prideful they can't admit that they are just afraid, instead they have to rationalize why the woke crowd is actually justified, and how there isn't actually a larger threat to freedom of speech and thought occurring here.
If at the very least, the education department could consistently provide protection to dissenters against the woke crowd, you will see more and more dissenters come forward. At first, it will only be a few here and there. But there is a lot of pressure on the other end of the dam, a lot of professors who are sick of tiptoeing around everything and who are sick of having to rationalize like this. Every professor who gets away with speaking the truth that everybody secretly agrees with is a crack in the dam that is holding back a huge reservoir of resentment against the woke crowd that is currently suppressing research and ideas in academia. Once that dam breaks there will be a flood. I've already seen it break on isolated issues within committees.
Yes you will see a seemingly uniform outcry against the Trump Administration within acadamia if he starts taking meaningful action to protect dissenters from retribution. He will never get credit for it publicly at least not while he's alive. Nevertheless I think it would save the education system and put a stop to a lot of this madness over the next decade. But dissenters need to be protected.
Also most of the humanities and soft Sciences just need to be defunded, no grants they need to be relegated to positions of financial unimportance within the academy, they need to lose their clout. Because they are the source of the cancer.
Honestly why? The university system is fucked top to bottom. We gave up on the whole notion of a classical education long ago. Best to replace these "adult" day-care centers with dedicated trade schools and business-funded training programs. There's no reason to force kids who want to be surgeons into art history.
I disagree on your last point and think soft sciences play an important role and have (most of the time) decent information and research. I study economics now but studied chemistry (and conducted published research) as an undergrad. I can tell you first hand that the level of math I use right now and the degree to which I use it absolutely dwarfs anything I encountered in Thermodynamics or Quantum Chemistry - the field (Econ) is actually pretty mathematically rigorous in a lot of areas and relies a lot more on statistics than people like to admit. If I’m in a time series analysis course, I’d bet everyone around me is either going for a degree in Math (with an emphasis on statistics) or going for a degree in Economics with maybe one or two people from Physics joining in.
This circlejerk that anything beyond the natural sciences is just a pointless waste and that all other fields are half-baked thought experiments needs to die already. I’ll be the first to admit that the professors in these fields (especially as you stray further and further from a reliance on real world data) can be extreme, opinionated, and outspoken, but I feel like that just comes with the territory and that the best way to handle it isn’t to cut funding but instead to be more vigilant on how these professors act in the classroom. Intentionally defunding this stuff because there are a few shitty professors seems very similar to wanting to defund the police just because there have been shitty officers.
I'm a mathematician myself so I love math, but I'm not impressed with the way it is used in the soft sciences. Big clunky models with a bunch of abstract parameters that are ill defined and wiggled around to match the observed data. Then wiggled around more when the model fails to fit the observed data. It's all just window dressing, a kind of religious ritual for high IQ people that casts a spell on them. But the fact that your model is highly complex does not mean it will be a better predictor of reality, it just gives you more little knobs to twist so that you can match the data while also telling the story you want to tell. Honestly I trust back-of-the-napkin calculations far more than fancy models that are implemented in computer programs whose code is just a big black box that researchers themselves don't even understand.
This is not to say that I don't like economics as a field. Friedrich Hayek was a freaking genius and he himself had something to say about the mathematical perversion that is brought about by this kind of modeling.
Hayek (and Buchanan) were a dying breed and I completely stand with you in thinking that Hayek was a titan of his field (along with a few others that are loosely connected to Economics). I saw that his personal copy of “On The Wealth of Nations” was being auctioned not too long ago and was incredibly tempted to throw a few bids out.
I think we actually agree a lot more than we initially think. I do believe that modeling has a significant role that can’t be overlooked - even if complex - but also believe that it’s important to ground everything in a “foundational” setting with some common sense style approaches. I guess maybe I’d be described as a weird cross between Chicago and Austrian in that regards. But let’s also be honest, complex modeling that contorts information to match what the researcher/publisher wants is nothing new in any science. P-hacking is a very serious problem that plagues near all fields and the only one I’d say that is completely immune to it would be something like mathematics.
It's not just p-hacking that bothers me. Is there a method of generating data can introduce biases, and the design of an experiment can be purposely set up to introduce a confounding variable into the situation in a sneaky way which is then ignored in the paper itself.
So for example in gender studies there's the classic move they do where they ask a bunch of professors to rate CVs of job candidates, and they'll leave everything the same except for the name at the top, which for some is female and others is male. But they filter out CVS which don't produce the desired results. So for example in order to find a gender disparity, they don't use a strong CV, because a woman with a strong CV can get hired anywhere. Instead they use a week CV, and they have to select it very carefully, to make it look like the person had some kind of psychological struggle in the middle of their studies. Then they notice that women are slightly less likely to be hired than men with such CVs (although in reality neither gender is really likely to be hired with such weakness). And the way they explain their choice of CV is to say that with other kinds of CVs the disparity is hidden. Which is an open admission that they are just fishing for a predetermined result, and it is also dishonest, because with most CVS women do far better then men.
Then you read another paper which refers to the previous paper and states flatly that women are discriminated against still in the job market in academia, as though it is "scientifically established." And all of this garbage gets published in good journals.
Psychology and sociology are likewise poison for similar reasons. Even if they perform a proper statistical analysis of the data they have collected, the very means by which the data is collected is biased in a pre mathematical way.
The truth is it's very very difficult to establish a causal link even when you have some level of control and you are collecting objective data ( like weather data, or indeed raw economic data) instead of inherently subjective data. The proof of this is the way everyone in a given field turns their brains back on when a study produces undesirable results. For example IQ race studies are always panned and their results are declared unscientific. But if all of soft sciences were held to the same standard, nothing would be left.
In general I think what really bothers me is the way that people worship the soft sciences to the degree that they will ignore their own experience and basic reason about a subject if some hack publishes a study that goes against it. Because then "the data" has proven you wrong. I've had arguments with libtards who argued that Ubi will work and then they point to a bunch of " scientific" studies which prove it, as though that ends the argument. Then you actually read the things and the underlying reasoning which supposedly leads to the desired conclusion is just as weak as what the liberal is telling me in the first place. But the fact that there is data gathered in a little table of numbers makes the reasoning magic all the sudden. One example was that they looked at a program in Africa we're a charity provided food and housing to a village in Africa, and they discovered that the health and well-being of the villagers increased over the next 6 months. And there was data to prove it! But of course I don't dispute the idea that if you give people food they'll be more well-fed then if you don't, I just don't think that this implies that Ubi is a good idea.
Even when you aren't dealing with partisan hacks methods of the soft sciences are not strong enough to overcome common sense and practical experience, they're not like Einstein's theory of relativity which has the epistemic strength to overcome our common sense intuition about space and time.
It's important to review the actual data to make sure there are no big holes in your understanding of the world, but work in these fields should be driven by human intuition and reasoning, and their limits should be acknowledged openly. Instead people pretend like every little fad that develops in these fields is as solid as hamiltonian mechanics.
So yeah I think we do agree that there could be some value to these fields if they were humble and acknowledged their limits, instead of clothing themselves in magical numbers to give the illusion of epistemic strength, but given the state of acadamia today and the agenda is trying to push, they need to be defunded. Whatever is of value will not be lost forever, and honestly I prefer we have fewer experts who are more intelligent and who focus on important problems than an army of mediocre ideological hacks who study a thousand meaningless things and always always try to come to some bizarre left wing conclusion.
Researchers intentionally utilizing flawed methodology (whether consciously or subconsciously) is sadly nothing new - regardless of field. During a research position interview years ago I remember the two PhDs that were sitting across from me asked me about proper ethics when it comes to reporting and cited how a fairly large name in their field (Electrical Engineering) had essentially demolished his status and name when it was revealed that many of his larger name publications utilized intentionally skewed methods and omitted undesired results. I could even just point to the pure rarity of articles being published showing that the study being undertaken proved the null - regardless of journal or field (though I’d even go so far as to argue journals like Science and Nature will be incredibly less inclined to publish this sort of article).
From your explanation, it sounds like a lot of your [justifiable] distrust stems from an overuse of flawed methodology but I would suggest that despite the heavy influence these articles may have in “mainstream” eyes - more consumer based media, online discussions, basically any sort of talk that is discussed outside of normal academic rigor - that they aren’t as heavily lauded as you may believe them to be. You mentioned gender studies and wage gap but I’ll just say that there’s a good reason Feminist Economics (research and approach that emphasizes the role of gender in a society and attempts to meld the two fields) is considered “tinfoil” and not really taken all that seriously by large name groups or researchers. You’ve mentioned UBI and outside of Yang throwing it into the public forum and sparking debate, I guarantee it’s been talked about and debated heavily already and studies you suggested wouldn’t be so quickly held up as some sort of axiomatic truth. A very big name economist I spoke with awhile back (won’t name names for fear of doxxing but will say that they’re on the national stage and I’d be willing to bet strong money that they’d have served as an economic advisor to Hillary Clinton had she won) immediately scoffed at the idea of UBI when someone posed the idea and went into a few minute speech about how little noteworthy evidence there’s been that it’d be beneficial and that it’s be basically rolling the dice on our entire nation’s budget.
I agree with you that there are a lot of people that see their fields (and their respective role in those fields) as ways to voice their opinion or belief on something like political philosophy or policy approaches because both are more palpable to them - they, in many ways, can be directly affected by the ripples stemming from their “research”. But then I’d just suggest that more strict and stringent measures need to be taken for research to be considered publishable and worthy of building from. If there’s a loose belt in the engine, I tighten it - not scrap the whole thing. Removing access to grants will fuel these individuals (who we both have already admitted to potentially having strong personal thoughts that influence their work) to seek third party funds and these parties will only provide funding if the research being conducted matches what they like to see. You’ve only exacerbated the problem. The Southern Poverty Law Center relies heavily on private fundraising and has shown very clear bias with their reporting of findings, but there’s no shortage of citations or reverence still (they were even cited during Gorsuch’s/Kavanaugh’s (can’t remember which) hearings). This is something I believe we’d see more of if you stripped the soft sciences of grant funding. Instead, increase the standards they need to meet to be published.
Well the problem is gender studies and things like this do have practical clout in academia even if there are few True Believers behind closed doors. The whole reason I even looked into that tripe was to try and stop certain measures from getting through committee at my University. I was only partially successful even after demonstrating the total vacuousness of these studies. I would go into more detail but I also am trying to avoid getting doxxed. I'm actually more effective I think if people don't realize I'm a full-blown Trump supporter. I tried to stick narrowly to individual issues and argue them precisely without getting political, and this allows liberals who agree with me to actually support me publicly without being traitors to the tribe.
I was a fan of her because she made all the pro-government school sheep at my college cry like little bitches and she was the only member of his cabinet that did. I figured if she can make them seethe for being in a B-list position, then she's gotta be good.
Notice how King used air-scare quotes. They exist for a reason, to allow people to precisely illustrate things they are not party to or language they do not agree with. This is an essential part of narrative history.
This breaks my heart,
"... when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people..."
Imagine some surreal future where a 4chan historian troll re-introduces the "N-word that shall not be written or spoken" as a black op and succeeds to inject it back into culture -- say, a word meaning dark sunglasses -- among kids who had never seen the word unmasked.
[King] "In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?"
Someone put a black man in my head so that they can read this for me in MLK's voice. I don't want to be racist. (the black voice I used was kinda weak and had a slight asian accent).
The same people screaming to fire that professor protect Biden even though he read that same word aloud twice during Senate hearings. He didn’t need to read it aloud. He enjoyed it.
When you speak the Forbidden Word aloud, you're supposed to drop your notes onto the floor so you can raise both empty hands with two fingers extended and make an "air quote" twisting motion. You are expected to grimace also.
Or better yet, why not carry a Benedictine leather whip and raise welts on your own back with a little of that 'mortification of the flesh' action?
I was thinking about this the other day on how fear of certain words is worse than saying them out loud. Obviously it’s offensive to call someone the n word, but use in conversation about it should be allowed and even encouraged.
typical... We have Joe Biden on video saying "N-word Mayor" and nothing happens, the left defends him and makes him the nominee, professor losing job over the exact same thing.
Just read that letter. And damn, is it good. People nowadays have forgotten the lessons of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These basic philosophies need to be taught starting in grade school. No reason for them to be relegated only to higher education. They literally teach you how to examine ideas and think critically - the very basis of ALL useful knowledge. We've become a nation of knee jerkers.
By design...
They don't teach you how to think, they teach you what to think
The liberals took over education in the 1960s. They had a long term plan, and we're seeing the results.
The internet is the catalyst for that. You can get a better education absorbing all the free knowledge online than you do regurgitating all the useless shit they make you learn by rote
They don’t want students to think critically. The students that tend to get the beat grades around here are the ones that regurgitate everything the teacher tells them. The students that dare ask questions or have a different viewpoint do not do as well academically on their report card.
Many of the students in AP and honors classes at my son’s high school are the ones out “protesting” with dyed hair, piercings, etc. They are also posting on the internet a list of boys that are “rapists” because even though they said it was fine to have sex with them, they later decided they changed their mind (they actually wrote this) and that is rape. These are our supposed best and brightest.
Yeah I always said this, ever since high school...the best students are not the smartest, they are just the ones who kiss ass and color inside all the lines
I’m reading Henry Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience right now. Deepen your thinking on these issues, friends! If it’s an issue that matters to you, read the heavy hitters on the topic and train your brain to think about it in a complex fashion. Yes, it’s hard reading. Good. It builds your mental muscles to experience that mental struggle.
It was required reading back when I was in grade school... not gonna say how many decades ago that was.
Can't be 'that' long, unless you got into Magic the Gathering at an advanced age :)
I love that they brought the hammer down on them. I was fairly indifferent about DeVos early on - some things I liked, some I didn’t - but if this is her doing she’s quickly winning me over.
I liked her early because she rolled back ridiculous Obama era "guilty upon accusation", but beyond that I haven't hear about her doing anything.
I really wanted her to roll back federal lending for non productive degrees.
With all that's going on It's hard to tell what all they've been doing. They need to gut the entire education system and start from scratch.
That might be possible with school choice in full force.
I still can't understand why the DoE has 10,000 employees and a budget in the billions.
What the fuck are they doing. I can't imagine work for more than 100 people at the federal level in education.
I don't think it needs to be gutted, but it needs to stop being blanket subsidized. Loans should be offered for degrees that fulfill labor pool requirements. If there aren't job postings for "gender studies degree preferred", then there shouldn't be any loans available for it.
When the money dries up for degrees in victimhood, I think most of the problems will sort themselves out.
Harder to uproot a corrupt organization that has 10000 people than one that has 100 people. It’s not a coincidence that government always makes itself bigger if allowed to.
What they teach in K-12 is mostly worthless. You get a surface level understanding of things and little else. Kids are not taught how to think for themselves. They are taught to memorize information that has little application in the real world. It's boring as hell and its no wonder a lot of kids hate being there. You could inoculate kids against the weapons of the leftists with the right education. By 18 they need to be able to go out into the world and not become prey to the vultures in the private and public sector.
She should have plenty to do as of late. No kids in school...so get some laws and policies past to turn this liberal-garbage education system around.
I'm personally of the belief that government loans should not be allowed to go to non-STEM, law, or medicine degrees, as well as financial aid for those going to trade school. That way if you want a useless degree like theater or 12th century transgender lesbian poetry from feudal West Ghana, you better get a scholarship or you get your ass to something useful. I would add teaching to the list but teachers have enough student loan forgiveness programs in place as is.
Essentially yes - if you want some basket degree you gotta pay market price, or find someone to fund you privately.
Stem (hard sciences), law, medicine, business, accounting, and almost all trade schools should have a fixed loan amount that correlates to 1x expected yearly salary 5 years into industry. I think the loans should not have interest attached beyond inflation. 100% of money paid to the loan can be applied to a tax credit without ability to use it to get a refund. Why tax people for money they already owe you, and not use it to pay that loan? Ridiculous. If you refuse to pay they reserve the right to garnish your wage.
Essentially it should be driven by forecasted demand. If we need digital artists, then loans for graphic design will be granted.
It's very important that conservatives find ways to bring the hammer down on crazies within Academia when they crossed the line. There are a ton of professors who yes are very liberal, but who aren't crazy to the level of the woke crowd. In particular they still actually believe in freedom of speech and thought, but they are also prideful and cowardly at the same time. Because of their fear, they do not speak out against the woke crowd when they suppress debate and even hard data, and because they are prideful they can't admit that they are just afraid, instead they have to rationalize why the woke crowd is actually justified, and how there isn't actually a larger threat to freedom of speech and thought occurring here.
If at the very least, the education department could consistently provide protection to dissenters against the woke crowd, you will see more and more dissenters come forward. At first, it will only be a few here and there. But there is a lot of pressure on the other end of the dam, a lot of professors who are sick of tiptoeing around everything and who are sick of having to rationalize like this. Every professor who gets away with speaking the truth that everybody secretly agrees with is a crack in the dam that is holding back a huge reservoir of resentment against the woke crowd that is currently suppressing research and ideas in academia. Once that dam breaks there will be a flood. I've already seen it break on isolated issues within committees.
Yes you will see a seemingly uniform outcry against the Trump Administration within acadamia if he starts taking meaningful action to protect dissenters from retribution. He will never get credit for it publicly at least not while he's alive. Nevertheless I think it would save the education system and put a stop to a lot of this madness over the next decade. But dissenters need to be protected.
Also most of the humanities and soft Sciences just need to be defunded, no grants they need to be relegated to positions of financial unimportance within the academy, they need to lose their clout. Because they are the source of the cancer.
Honestly why? The university system is fucked top to bottom. We gave up on the whole notion of a classical education long ago. Best to replace these "adult" day-care centers with dedicated trade schools and business-funded training programs. There's no reason to force kids who want to be surgeons into art history.
I disagree on your last point and think soft sciences play an important role and have (most of the time) decent information and research. I study economics now but studied chemistry (and conducted published research) as an undergrad. I can tell you first hand that the level of math I use right now and the degree to which I use it absolutely dwarfs anything I encountered in Thermodynamics or Quantum Chemistry - the field (Econ) is actually pretty mathematically rigorous in a lot of areas and relies a lot more on statistics than people like to admit. If I’m in a time series analysis course, I’d bet everyone around me is either going for a degree in Math (with an emphasis on statistics) or going for a degree in Economics with maybe one or two people from Physics joining in.
This circlejerk that anything beyond the natural sciences is just a pointless waste and that all other fields are half-baked thought experiments needs to die already. I’ll be the first to admit that the professors in these fields (especially as you stray further and further from a reliance on real world data) can be extreme, opinionated, and outspoken, but I feel like that just comes with the territory and that the best way to handle it isn’t to cut funding but instead to be more vigilant on how these professors act in the classroom. Intentionally defunding this stuff because there are a few shitty professors seems very similar to wanting to defund the police just because there have been shitty officers.
I'm a mathematician myself so I love math, but I'm not impressed with the way it is used in the soft sciences. Big clunky models with a bunch of abstract parameters that are ill defined and wiggled around to match the observed data. Then wiggled around more when the model fails to fit the observed data. It's all just window dressing, a kind of religious ritual for high IQ people that casts a spell on them. But the fact that your model is highly complex does not mean it will be a better predictor of reality, it just gives you more little knobs to twist so that you can match the data while also telling the story you want to tell. Honestly I trust back-of-the-napkin calculations far more than fancy models that are implemented in computer programs whose code is just a big black box that researchers themselves don't even understand.
This is not to say that I don't like economics as a field. Friedrich Hayek was a freaking genius and he himself had something to say about the mathematical perversion that is brought about by this kind of modeling.
Hayek (and Buchanan) were a dying breed and I completely stand with you in thinking that Hayek was a titan of his field (along with a few others that are loosely connected to Economics). I saw that his personal copy of “On The Wealth of Nations” was being auctioned not too long ago and was incredibly tempted to throw a few bids out.
I think we actually agree a lot more than we initially think. I do believe that modeling has a significant role that can’t be overlooked - even if complex - but also believe that it’s important to ground everything in a “foundational” setting with some common sense style approaches. I guess maybe I’d be described as a weird cross between Chicago and Austrian in that regards. But let’s also be honest, complex modeling that contorts information to match what the researcher/publisher wants is nothing new in any science. P-hacking is a very serious problem that plagues near all fields and the only one I’d say that is completely immune to it would be something like mathematics.
It's not just p-hacking that bothers me. Is there a method of generating data can introduce biases, and the design of an experiment can be purposely set up to introduce a confounding variable into the situation in a sneaky way which is then ignored in the paper itself.
So for example in gender studies there's the classic move they do where they ask a bunch of professors to rate CVs of job candidates, and they'll leave everything the same except for the name at the top, which for some is female and others is male. But they filter out CVS which don't produce the desired results. So for example in order to find a gender disparity, they don't use a strong CV, because a woman with a strong CV can get hired anywhere. Instead they use a week CV, and they have to select it very carefully, to make it look like the person had some kind of psychological struggle in the middle of their studies. Then they notice that women are slightly less likely to be hired than men with such CVs (although in reality neither gender is really likely to be hired with such weakness). And the way they explain their choice of CV is to say that with other kinds of CVs the disparity is hidden. Which is an open admission that they are just fishing for a predetermined result, and it is also dishonest, because with most CVS women do far better then men.
Then you read another paper which refers to the previous paper and states flatly that women are discriminated against still in the job market in academia, as though it is "scientifically established." And all of this garbage gets published in good journals.
Psychology and sociology are likewise poison for similar reasons. Even if they perform a proper statistical analysis of the data they have collected, the very means by which the data is collected is biased in a pre mathematical way.
The truth is it's very very difficult to establish a causal link even when you have some level of control and you are collecting objective data ( like weather data, or indeed raw economic data) instead of inherently subjective data. The proof of this is the way everyone in a given field turns their brains back on when a study produces undesirable results. For example IQ race studies are always panned and their results are declared unscientific. But if all of soft sciences were held to the same standard, nothing would be left.
In general I think what really bothers me is the way that people worship the soft sciences to the degree that they will ignore their own experience and basic reason about a subject if some hack publishes a study that goes against it. Because then "the data" has proven you wrong. I've had arguments with libtards who argued that Ubi will work and then they point to a bunch of " scientific" studies which prove it, as though that ends the argument. Then you actually read the things and the underlying reasoning which supposedly leads to the desired conclusion is just as weak as what the liberal is telling me in the first place. But the fact that there is data gathered in a little table of numbers makes the reasoning magic all the sudden. One example was that they looked at a program in Africa we're a charity provided food and housing to a village in Africa, and they discovered that the health and well-being of the villagers increased over the next 6 months. And there was data to prove it! But of course I don't dispute the idea that if you give people food they'll be more well-fed then if you don't, I just don't think that this implies that Ubi is a good idea.
Even when you aren't dealing with partisan hacks methods of the soft sciences are not strong enough to overcome common sense and practical experience, they're not like Einstein's theory of relativity which has the epistemic strength to overcome our common sense intuition about space and time.
It's important to review the actual data to make sure there are no big holes in your understanding of the world, but work in these fields should be driven by human intuition and reasoning, and their limits should be acknowledged openly. Instead people pretend like every little fad that develops in these fields is as solid as hamiltonian mechanics.
So yeah I think we do agree that there could be some value to these fields if they were humble and acknowledged their limits, instead of clothing themselves in magical numbers to give the illusion of epistemic strength, but given the state of acadamia today and the agenda is trying to push, they need to be defunded. Whatever is of value will not be lost forever, and honestly I prefer we have fewer experts who are more intelligent and who focus on important problems than an army of mediocre ideological hacks who study a thousand meaningless things and always always try to come to some bizarre left wing conclusion.
Researchers intentionally utilizing flawed methodology (whether consciously or subconsciously) is sadly nothing new - regardless of field. During a research position interview years ago I remember the two PhDs that were sitting across from me asked me about proper ethics when it comes to reporting and cited how a fairly large name in their field (Electrical Engineering) had essentially demolished his status and name when it was revealed that many of his larger name publications utilized intentionally skewed methods and omitted undesired results. I could even just point to the pure rarity of articles being published showing that the study being undertaken proved the null - regardless of journal or field (though I’d even go so far as to argue journals like Science and Nature will be incredibly less inclined to publish this sort of article).
From your explanation, it sounds like a lot of your [justifiable] distrust stems from an overuse of flawed methodology but I would suggest that despite the heavy influence these articles may have in “mainstream” eyes - more consumer based media, online discussions, basically any sort of talk that is discussed outside of normal academic rigor - that they aren’t as heavily lauded as you may believe them to be. You mentioned gender studies and wage gap but I’ll just say that there’s a good reason Feminist Economics (research and approach that emphasizes the role of gender in a society and attempts to meld the two fields) is considered “tinfoil” and not really taken all that seriously by large name groups or researchers. You’ve mentioned UBI and outside of Yang throwing it into the public forum and sparking debate, I guarantee it’s been talked about and debated heavily already and studies you suggested wouldn’t be so quickly held up as some sort of axiomatic truth. A very big name economist I spoke with awhile back (won’t name names for fear of doxxing but will say that they’re on the national stage and I’d be willing to bet strong money that they’d have served as an economic advisor to Hillary Clinton had she won) immediately scoffed at the idea of UBI when someone posed the idea and went into a few minute speech about how little noteworthy evidence there’s been that it’d be beneficial and that it’s be basically rolling the dice on our entire nation’s budget.
I agree with you that there are a lot of people that see their fields (and their respective role in those fields) as ways to voice their opinion or belief on something like political philosophy or policy approaches because both are more palpable to them - they, in many ways, can be directly affected by the ripples stemming from their “research”. But then I’d just suggest that more strict and stringent measures need to be taken for research to be considered publishable and worthy of building from. If there’s a loose belt in the engine, I tighten it - not scrap the whole thing. Removing access to grants will fuel these individuals (who we both have already admitted to potentially having strong personal thoughts that influence their work) to seek third party funds and these parties will only provide funding if the research being conducted matches what they like to see. You’ve only exacerbated the problem. The Southern Poverty Law Center relies heavily on private fundraising and has shown very clear bias with their reporting of findings, but there’s no shortage of citations or reverence still (they were even cited during Gorsuch’s/Kavanaugh’s (can’t remember which) hearings). This is something I believe we’d see more of if you stripped the soft sciences of grant funding. Instead, increase the standards they need to meet to be published.
Well the problem is gender studies and things like this do have practical clout in academia even if there are few True Believers behind closed doors. The whole reason I even looked into that tripe was to try and stop certain measures from getting through committee at my University. I was only partially successful even after demonstrating the total vacuousness of these studies. I would go into more detail but I also am trying to avoid getting doxxed. I'm actually more effective I think if people don't realize I'm a full-blown Trump supporter. I tried to stick narrowly to individual issues and argue them precisely without getting political, and this allows liberals who agree with me to actually support me publicly without being traitors to the tribe.
I was a fan of her because she made all the pro-government school sheep at my college cry like little bitches and she was the only member of his cabinet that did. I figured if she can make them seethe for being in a B-list position, then she's gotta be good.
She’s been doing a lot. Check out her twitter page (Comments are, as expected, cancer). I’ve been a big fan.
It's supposed to be the universities defending academic freedom, not the federal government
Here is text of Letter from a Birmingham Jail, archived in case the fucks at UPenn want to fuck with it.
Notice how King used air-scare quotes. They exist for a reason, to allow people to precisely illustrate things they are not party to or language they do not agree with. This is an essential part of narrative history.
This breaks my heart,
Imagine some surreal future where a 4chan historian troll re-introduces the "N-word that shall not be written or spoken" as a black op and succeeds to inject it back into culture -- say, a word meaning dark sunglasses -- among kids who had never seen the word unmasked.
MLK vs. Collectivism: The Boss Fight.
Is it racist for me to read this letter in his voice? Very powerful.
A black man has to do the voice acting for it not to be racist.
Someone put a black man in my head so that they can read this for me in MLK's voice. I don't want to be racist. (the black voice I used was kinda weak and had a slight asian accent).
The same people screaming to fire that professor protect Biden even though he read that same word aloud twice during Senate hearings. He didn’t need to read it aloud. He enjoyed it.
When you speak the Forbidden Word aloud, you're supposed to drop your notes onto the floor so you can raise both empty hands with two fingers extended and make an "air quote" twisting motion. You are expected to grimace also.
Or better yet, why not carry a Benedictine leather whip and raise welts on your own back with a little of that 'mortification of the flesh' action?
The left hates MLK and everything he stood for, these people would lock blacks in cages if it were legal to do so.
You cant say nigger?
Not without getting deplatformed on most places, or mobbed irl.
That was my school. It was bad then, even worse now.
Another steller reason to kick the Communists out of office.
Nutella?
Just pull their funding already!
Looks like those safe spaces are finally starting bite them in the ass.
So UCLA is opposed to reading of actual historical documents because they might offend some snowflakes. Got it.
I was thinking about this the other day on how fear of certain words is worse than saying them out loud. Obviously it’s offensive to call someone the n word, but use in conversation about it should be allowed and even encouraged.
typical... We have Joe Biden on video saying "N-word Mayor" and nothing happens, the left defends him and makes him the nominee, professor losing job over the exact same thing.