Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

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Note I'm not the best one to provide you with numerous examples because I don't know where the document is that has detailed all of the examples in the last few years. But hearing about this is fairly frequently.

1. There have been protests about conservative speakers at campuses and universities whom have pulled shady stuff on trying to prevent the speakers from coming. (there was a Dave Rubin one where he was magically moved from a theater to a hockey arena). Substantially high costs on security. (Also video cases of where the security isn't actually enforced [Milo at the Depaul thing.. ]

2. There have been punishments against professors who question the progressive/extreme-left movement. (losing tenure, being brought up that they're "violence-inciting", etc)

3. A Portland professor being brought up on disciplinary actions for doing a POC on how you can get a paper with outrageously false claims published without question. (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/08/author-recent... This was a team of three that was involved one in the UK)

4. "Diversity offices" - I don't know direct examples here, but from what I've heard they've created trouble.

I think this is his point. You keep hearing about "There have been punishments against professors who question the progressive/extreme-left movement. (losing tenure, being brought up that they're "violence-inciting", etc)" or "Diversity offices have created trouble" but these "examples" are basically non-existent when you actually look for them.

So a lot of the argument about how "right wing commenters" are unfairly, well, whatevered, is based on some very serious anecdotes. And you know what we say to those - not today.

A few things:

- Protests are valid free speech expressions.

- Holding an entire protest as invalid due to a small number of individual's actions is unfair.

- Many of those conservative speakers aren't trying to spread discourse, but trying to create an outrage and play off of that (evidence exists of the malignant intent). While perhaps being protected by the 1st amendment, that's academic dishonesty. And we should not accept prima facie the arguments they're being oppressed.

- The portland professor was being brought up based on academic dishonesty, human experimentation, process, and ethics. We're going to need better evidence not to take the disciplinary board at face value.

Basically "I hear about this frequently" and "there have been..." is pretty weak evidence. It's mainly relying upon the recency bias, availability cascade, base rate neglect, and our inability to assess large events.

For example, the Berkeley campus protest is constantly referred to. The problem is this is a splashy example which distorts people's thinking. People rarely talk about the thousands and thousands of conservative speakers that hold events without a hitch. We cannot talk about a systematic risk by only referring to events that are so rare that we keep on referring to the same one for the last several years! That is _by definition_ the opposite of a systematic bias/risk.

Basically I call serious BS. Lack of data, cherrypicking stark examples, and the reuse of the same events over and over again while appealing to the impression that there should be more events like this, when there are not, is garbage.

...aren't trying to spread discourse, but trying to create an outrage and play off of that (evidence exists of the malignant intent).

Playing off of outrage is heavily rewarded by our current societal systems. It happens at all points of the political spectrum, but happens more at the extremes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

The portland professor was being brought up based on academic dishonesty, human experimentation, process, and ethics

It's a hoax. It's a time honored means of expression, particularly when the subject heavily deserves ridicule.

Lack of data, cherrypicking stark examples, and the reuse of the same events over and over again

There's a list of well over 600 incidents of violence, vandalism, and threats, instigated by the far left. If you do some searching, you'll find over a hundred with just a bit of sincere effort, and in pretty short order. There's also the father and son republicans who were chased down by black block demonstrators. There's the time when a mob was calling for Tim Pool to be chased down and beaten. There's the Florida local news video crew attacked, his smartphone knocked out of his hand. The bike lock professor. That's all just off the top of my head. True, such things are also done by elements of the far right. All of it is bad.

In any case, it's certainly not the case that there are only a few cherry picked examples from the Far Left. There's an epidemic of political harassment and assault in 2019, and a majority of the incidents up to the level of vandalism and minor assault comes from the Left. If anything, there's a bias against talking about that in the media.

> So a lot of the argument about how "right wing commenters" are unfairly, well, whatevered, is based on some very serious anecdotes. And you know what we say to those - not today.

For what I meant by right-wing, I meant the popular definition that is used today: Anything right of extreme left.

> not today

Lol. Good luck with trying to suppress others based on their beliefs or opinions.

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