10-27-2021, 11:36 PM
(10-18-2021, 01:51 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 18-Oct-2021 World View: At MIT, woke Twitter mob clashes with academic values
This controversy at MIT is of interest to me because I used to be an
MIT student, and because I live on the edge of the MIT campus. I
became aware of this controversy because MIT's president, L. Rafael
Reif, sent a letter to the entire MIT community, apologizing for the
controversy.
Professor Dorian Abbot of the University of Chicago had been invited
to give a lecture at MIT on October 21 on his research, titled
"Climate and the Potential for Life on Other Planets." And of course
anything to do with climate change, even on other planets, is
particularly important to the woke crowd since, after all, we're going
to die in nine years if we don't do as AOC and Biden demand.
To make a long story short, ocean planets are the most precarious abodes for life because the difference in temperature (a consequence of the thermal flux from the host star) between a freeze-over and a moist greenhouse is incredibly narrow. About two billion years ago and about 700 million years ago the Earth, which has never quite been an ocean world, froze from the poles to the equator rapidly. The average temperature in one case was about 15C just before the nearly-complete freeze-over as methane was depleted from the atmosphere, and in another case the earth had a similar average temperature before oxygen (not a greenhouse gas) replaced carbon dioxide and rusted exposed iron in the sea. The Earth went from a rust-like red to icy white. Ferric oxide is bright red, and as it forms from the rusting of iron, atmospheric oxygen vanishes, and atmospheric pressure plummets. Carbon dioxide is itself sequestered by plants (which is a partial loss of atmospheric pressure) and the oxygen (which comes from water) replaces oxygen in the atmosphere and dissolves in the seas. As it combines with iron the atmospheric pressure also drops, and so does the absolute temperature (based on absolute zero). Reduce the pressure in an insulated container and the temperature falls unless the container shrinks. Raise the pressure in the same container, and if the container does not expand the container gets hotter. On an ocean planet or one with a largely-oceanic surface like ours, the first place to go below the freezing point of water ices over, and nearly-white ice and snow reflect more warming radiation and the frozen zones expand. As those enter the middle latitudes, the icing accelerates. That's the cold end. The Earth is not far away from the average of 15C at the start of some of the nastiest ice ages. On the other side of temperature, an average temperature of about 30C is enough to initiate a dangerous wet greenhouse. 30C doesn't sound that bad, as it is just short of being a warm bath... but figuring that the laws of biological evolution are much the same on inhabited planets, 30C is a temperature at which oxygen-dependent creatures (like fish) die off because oxygen isn't so soluble in warm water. 30C is also the temperature of the hottest parts of the Earth's oceans, and those warm oceans have the high evaporation that fosters hurricanes. Hurricanes can dissipate much heat, but water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide.
Because the Earth has significant land masses and oceans in the tropical regions, something like the last Ice Age did not quite engulf the world. What wasn't iced up heavily became a sere desert planet, and there wasn't enough moisture in the atmosphere to expand the ice sheets into the subtropical regions. The tropical oceans themselves shrank, and being cooler they evaporated less moisture. Desert planets like those favored in science-fiction "space Westerns"... deserts and steppes make cinematography easy, which explains why most John Wayne westerns are filmed in the American Southwest and many scenes from Star Wars were filmed in Tunisia. Desert planets have greater ranges of temperature, but humidity is generally low, so both icing over and a wet greenhouse can happen only at more extreme temperatures worldwide.
OK. I'm done with some speculations on planetary conditions.
Quote:However, in August, Abbot co-authored an opinion piece for Newsweek in
which they wrote that the "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)"
agenda in academia seeks to increase the representation of some groups
through discrimination against members of other groups, violates the
ethical and legal principle of equal treatment, compromises the
university’s mission, and undermines the public's trust in
universities and their graduates.
Because they can? Because the minority groups that used to be hyper-disadvantaged aren't so disadvantaged as they used to be? Because affirmative action is no longer certain to cause an organization to end up with large numbers of incompetent people who cripple such an organization? Far more blacks and Hispanics have high-quality education, and a high-quality education usually suggests a work ethic. Lazy people are much less likely to graduate from college, including even mediocre-to-poor ones. Intellectual brilliance may be more relevant in STEM activities in deciding competence, but in bureaucratic organizations in which getting along with others and not stepping on the toes of co-workers matters far more. Bureaucracies are great places for giving jobs to people that a government agency or highly-regulated company that hires masses of employees yet cannot quite fire people who are marginally productive but personally pleasant.
When President Trump claims that blacks are doing better while he was President, then such is not the result so much of policies that make getting ahead easier for blacks, but instead because blacks are more likely to get the chances that blacks rarely got as late as 55 years ago in "Ku Kluxistan". I notice that black families in Michigan are often moving out of Dreadful -- excuse me, Detroit -- to rural areas where the educational standards are more rigorous and more of the funding goes into honest-to-Horace-Mann education and less into graft. K-12 education outside of Michigan's worst cities is horrible (I am sure that you can name plenty of examples), but in rural areas it is much more effective. Maybe building costs and maintenance aren't so expensive. Maybe the teachers don't have so many opportunities to do something more lucrative. K-12 teaching if any good is more salesmanship than anything else, and selling cars or real estate in a giant city can pay extremely well in a giant city, but not quite so well in a small town. If you have a well-paying (by local standards) job as a teacher, then cashiering in a convenience or box store, working in a motel or restaurant off Exit 23 off Interstate 60 (or is it Exit 60 off Interstate 23?), being a teller in a bank or credit union, or doing work on a farm or ranch might be the alternatives. It is easier for two black parents or a "mixed" couple (their kids will be black) to insist that their kids not drown their talents in watching the Idiot Screen or playing video games instead of doing homework as they might more easily get away with in "Detritus, Michigan".
As for Hispanics... it might be surprising that many Hispanics are more imitating Asian-Americans than white Americans as a whole (there certainly are plenty of white losers who trivialize education, endure habits of meth and opiates, and move about aimlessly in life once a local mass-employer shuts down locally). Many are starting businesses.
OK, we have plenty of ways of judging people. A degree from a highly-selective university (Harvard, the University of California system) means more than one from a not-so-selective place (the University of Southern Illinois, which churns out a disproportionate number of "education" majors), and then even more than some questionable Bible School that does not challenge the values of the students who attend it or a questionable "technical institute" that promises to train people for careers. Such a college may advertise (and a college that advertises is suspect; MIT doesn't need to advertise, but a bunch of colleges that died when Obama was President because their graduates ended up with huge debt and no possibility of a paying career that they could not have gotten out of high school) does. Degrees from diploma mills are worthless except for temporarily bamboozling people. The effect rarely lasts, as the recipient of a degree from a diploma does nothing to prepare one for the complexities of a competitive world:
Quote:Many people receive advertisements for "colleges" offering the opportunity to earn college degrees (usually for personal advancement) with little or no work.<ref group=note>[[Ben Goldacre]] managed to get a degree for his cat, who had been dead for a few years at the time.</ref> These degrees, of course, typically do not represent a substantial learning opportunity and do not give the "students" the knowledge and skills represented by a traditional degree. The dedication of four academic years to achieving a bachelor's degree at a genuine college or university is also a life-changing experience whose effects are difficult to replicate with other experiences, which explains why a bachelor's degree from even a mediocre college or university suggests virtues that many employers cherish (such as recognizing that there is more to life than "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll"), and a degree from a diploma mill is worthless.
Earning a real degree implies a dedication of time, effort, and often great cost at some rigorous study at an institution at which one can flunk for inadequate performance or academic misconduct and receive no recognition of achievement. To be sure, many vocational schools that offer a certificate in a desirable trade never claim that their degrees are comparable to academic degrees, so such schools are not diploma mills.
What gives a real qualification or degree its power is the fact that it is recognised by other institutions or authorities worldwide.<ref group=note>So in case you don't learn anything, at least it gets you qualified for job(s). Not that it would get you hired, just "qualified".</ref> Anyone can sign a piece of paper saying that they have a qualification in "being a badass," but unless the "Departments of Badass" at "Badass Universities" all over the world recognise that piece of paper as meaning something, it means ''precisely nothing''. ''Real'' educational institutions that are recognised as being able to give degrees and qualifications are ''accredited''; meaning that their curriculum and standards have been examined and approved by an appropriate board of experts and we can be reasonably sure that the person holding the piece of paper can do what that piece of paper says they can.
America is still largely a capitalist society, and when bureaucratic behemoths fail because society deems them more Too Corrupt to Save or Contemptibly Obsolete instead of Too Big to Fail there will be niches for small businesses to take over where the corporation failed. When such happens on a large scale we will have another Great Depression. Ironically the Great Depression was a time in which many people started new businesses. For a paleontological model, I once saw "Sue" at the Natural History Museum of Chicago "Sue", the best fossil reconstruction of a T. Rex, was placed next to a mock-up against an African elephant. The elephant would have never had a chance. A modern creature arguably as bloodthirsty as any cinematic depiction of T. Rex (Meow!) is an absolute terror to any creature smaller than itself aside from perhaps a small dog... then again, small dogs are very cat-like. Prey for the mini-tigers prowling about the suburban shrubbery as if those were the Sunderbans of the Ganges Delta typically have rapid reproduction rates and large litters, so the mouse, sparrow, and lizard populations are not in danger. Elephants and humans get along with small litters, long gestation periods, and long childhoods -- and neither could get along in the presence of T. Rex. OK, we might get an edge over T. Rex if we had Katusha rockets, but those are not the sorts of things that hunter-gatherers can make.
In retailing, Sears and K-Mart are dying and JC Penney is on life support. I am tempted to believe that small businesses could start clothing stores in small towns that JC Penney left thirty years ago... and don't let me get started on the bloated, exorbitant, and now dull enclosed shopping malls. People will shop where the selection and quality are good and prices are fair, and they will not concern themselves with the religion, ethnicity, educational level, or even sexual preference of the owners. The chains became excessively rigid and unimaginative. OK, Wal*Mart thrives in part because it jumped onto the IT bandwagon when other retailers thought such incomprehensible. I'm not so sure that Wal*Mart will be able to fit an America that is less white and rural over the years.
Quote:Here are some excerpts from the Newsweek article:
Quote: "American universities are undergoing a profound
transformation that threatens to derail their primary mission: the
production and dissemination of knowledge. The new regime is
titled "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" or DEI, and is enforced
by a large bureaucracy of administrators. Nearly every decision
taken on campus, from admissions, to faculty hiring, to course
content, to teaching methods, is made through the lens of
DEI. This regime was imposed from the top and has never been
adequately debated. In the current climate it cannot be openly
debated: the emotions around DEI are so strong that
self-censorship among dissenting faculty is nearly universal.
The words "diversity, equity and inclusion" sound just, and are
often supported by well-intentioned people, but their effects are
the opposite of noble sentiments. Most importantly, "equity" does
not mean fair and equal treatment. DEI seeks to increase the
representation of some groups through discrimination against
members of other groups. The underlying premise of DEI is that any
statistical difference between group representation on campus and
national averages reflects systemic injustice and discrimination
by the university itself. The magnitude of the distortions is
significant: for some job searches discrimination rises to the
level of implicitly or explicitly excluding applicants from
certain groups.
DEI violates the ethical and legal principle of equal
treatment. It entails treating people as members of a group rather
than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the
atrocities of the 20th century. It requires being willing to tell
an applicant "I will ignore your merits and qualifications and
deny you admission because you belong to the wrong group, and I
have defined a more important social objective that justifies
doing so." It treats persons as merely means to an end, giving
primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human
being. ...
Viewed objectively, American universities already are incredibly
diverse. They feature people from all countries, races and
ethnicities (for example, one of us was born and raised in Chile,
and is classified as Hispanic by his university). This is in stark
contrast with most universities in Europe, Asia and South
America. American universities are diverse not because of DEI, but
because they have been extremely competitive at attracting talent
from all over the world. Ninety years ago Germany had the best
universities in the world. Then an ideological regime obsessed
with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars out,
gutting the faculties and leading to sustained decay that German
universities never fully recovered from. We should view this as a
warning of the consequences of viewing group membership as more
important than merit, and correct our course before it is too
late."
The last paragraph, comparing to DEI activists to Nazis, must have
been particularly infuriating to the woke crowd.
Pedagogic fads come and go, and "woke" will be one of them. The "woke" crowd will sink or swim depending on how they can achieve desirable results. Should they mess up the colleges, then there will be alternatives in the private sector. College students do not themselves cluster around educational fads such as the "value-free learning" that I recall being touted in the 1970's. No values? Then colleges might as well be playgrounds for "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll". Big deal! One can wallow in "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll" without attending college. Wallowing in "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll" while attending the University of Michigan is one sure way to both get nothing from the educational experience and never graduate. The more recent fad that reflects 3T values (It's all about the money") that has made people look to college more as a means of getting ahead in life irrespective of the harm that one does to others.
All in all, what matters most in an undergraduate education? It's the same old objective of the medieval university: to improve the student as a person. Obviously the necessary improvements deemed necessary at the University of Bologna over 900 years ago are different from those appropriate now because the technology and institutions of our time are no longer medieval, and the great lore of essential learning is mostly from later -- much later. Moral standards of a millennium ago (heretics and witches deserve to be burned at the stake) would now be abominable.
Quote:So the lecture was canceled, thanks to attacks by what Abbot describes
as a "Twitter mob."
Here's my prediction on social media: social media will clean up their acts or they will die for being asocial.
Quote:What's interesting is that Abbot has apparently received a great deal
of support, perhaps even more supporters than people in the Twitter
mob. My guess is that this is true because the controversy is a
conflict between two woke programs -- climate change and
Stalinism/Fascism. I gather that Abbot's work on climate change is so
advanced that the climate change side had an advantage over the
Stalinist/Fascist side.
It is possible to be a fascist or Stalinist and recognize the hazard of climate change. A fascist or Stalinist would see climate change as an opportunity to exterminate people to create a supposedly-better world. A liberal or libertarian would cavil at such... and rightly so. The rules that begin "Thou Shalt Not" can be terribly inconvenient. Just try living without them.
Quote:The result is that Abbot has been invited to give his lecture
internally at MIT, and also Princeton University has invited him to
gave the same lecture over Zoom. According to news reports, thousands
of people have signed up to watch the Princeton lecture. Who wouldn't
want to see a lecture on climate change on other planets?
Got a link?
Quote:I do believe that the loony trend is reversing. It's been going on at
least since the 2000s, when Obama and Biden started using the
"teabagger" epithet to refer to political enemies, so it won't reverse
overnight, though Biden's presidency has been and is so thoroughly and
incredibly disastrous, that the reversal is occurring more rapidly
than might otherwise have been expected.
Do you truly believe that someone who has the "Tea Party" or its derivative "MAGA" agenda typically overflows with new ideas or can well expound old virtues that we need to rediscover the hard way at times? Vices and blunders must both seduce by exaggerating their attractiveness and denying their harm. Given a second chance, the Confederacy would have not repeated the insane thrust to Gettysburg, and the Nazis would have withdrawn from Stalingrad. I've known plenty of people who regretted such habits as alcoholism, smoking, drugs, and bed-hopping when those wrecked their lives. Those vices are blunders.
I rarely see the word "teabagger" any more. Indeed it does not pass spell-check, which not only finds spelling errors but also warns people of triviality and irrelevance. Juan Crisostomo Arriaga was one of the most promising young composers to have ever lived (he wrote some works suggesting that he might be on par with Beethoven when he died around age 20), but spellcheck suggests that such is largely irrellavunt to most people. "Irrelllavunt" is simply a misspelling. "Teabagger" is largely irrelevant to contemporary discussion of politics.
Donald Trump has done as much as any President to demonize opponents and rivals as any President in history. Not even Lincoln could say as much against the Confederacy as Trump has said about harmless, honest people. If you are going to demonize someone, then make sure that that person is thoroughly vile and lacking in moral virtues.
Quote:MIT is debating academic values versus loony woke policies. It's a
good debate because there is some value to the loony work policies.
However, the fact that there's a debate at all is a sign that the
reversal is in progress.
College grads have an unpleasant habit of abandoning academic fads that do them no good. The only ones who continue those are the ones who maintain those in academia. Just think of "value-free education. Egad!
[/quote]
College grads have an unpleasant habit (at least as their professors see it) of abandoning academic fads that do them no good. The only ones who continue those are the ones who maintain those in academia. Just think of "value-free education. Egad!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
