Merged Arday life and death

[Rolfe]

That's more or less what I took the degrees to imply.

Tangential comment, not an attempt to derail.

I hadn't appreciated the meaning of the word "degree" until recently, when in a Gaelic language seminar I queried the use of the word "ceum" on signposts to indicate a path, whereas I had expected the word "slighe". I was familiar with "ceum" as the word for a university degree. We discussed the step-by-step nature of academic progression in more or less these terms, to understand why the same word was both a footpath and a stage of an academic career. Then I said something like, "and then on graduation..." and stopped dead, saying "just shoot me now". Graduation. The step to the next degree.

Jason Arday was somehow airlifted to the summit of the pass without having set foot on the steps that are normally required to get that high. And he was by then so high that he couldn't survive the fall.

 

[Rolfe]

The more we look into this, the more I'm inclined to think that the entire field of "sociology of education" is a hoax.

A quote from That Hideous Strength

There are no sciences like Sociology. And if I found chemistry beginning to fit in with a secret police run by a middle-aged virago who doesn’t wear cors...

www.goodreads.com

 

[theprestige]

A quote from That Hideous Strength

There are no sciences like Sociology. And if I found chemistry beginning to fit in with a secret police run by a middle-aged virago who doesn’t wear cors...

www.goodreads.com

That Hideous Strength is not a citation I was expecting.

Though I have wondering a bit lately, if I should give the book another read. I read it once, as a teenager. Recently it's occurred to me that the UK may in fact be a lot closer to that world than it used to be.

 

[Steve]

But that's exactly the point of the statement. You aren't supposed to actually examine it rigorously. You're supposed to take anecdotes as proof.

Liberals are right and conservatives are wrong. That's what it means. It isn't deep.

When one looks at the conservative bias, in the current USA specifically, reality is not a concept that comes to mind.

 

[Rolfe]

That Hideous Strength is not a citation I was expecting.

Though I have wondering a bit lately, if I should give the book another read. I read it once, as a teenager. Recently it's occurred to me that the UK may in fact be a lot closer to that world than it used to be.

You and me both, pal.

 

[theprestige]

At this point I would not be surprised if somewhere in Oxbridge there's a student or faculty group that gets together to trample on crucifixes and utter obscenities, in the service of dissociating from cultural norms and values.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm more concerned with the transhumanist agenda.

 

[d4m10n]

Explain more.

If you pick a handful of factual issues and then look at public policy polling, you will find that self-identified conservatives tend to get scientific questions wrong much more often than self-identified liberals. This is most obviously the case when holy writ is somehow in play (e.g. Darwin vs. Genesis). Because liberals (including liberal Christians and liberal Jews) don't feel the need to conserve ancient worldviews, they allow themselves to believe scientific findings. I'd go into this further, but cannot think of any way to relate it back to Arday's body of work.

 

[Ziggurat]

If you pick a handful of factual issues and then look at public policy polling, you will find that self-identified conservatives tend to get scientific questions wrong much more often than self-identified liberals.

I wonder how this might possibly go wrong.

 

[theprestige]

If you pick a handful of factual issues and then look at public policy polling, you will find that self-identified conservatives tend to get scientific questions wrong much more often than self-identified liberals. This is most obviously the case when holy writ is somehow in play (e.g. Darwin vs. Genesis). Because liberals (including liberal Christians and liberal Jews) don't feel the need to conserve ancient worldviews, they allow themselves to believe scientific findings. I'd go into this further, but cannot think of any way to relate it back to Arday's body of work.

It probably depends on the way the handful of factual issues are picked. I can think of at least on area of science where Arday was pretty much guaranteed to always get the politically correct answer, while being obscenely ignorant and anti-science about the topic.

Ask him about young Earth creationism, and of course he's going to give the right. Not because he actually knows or understands any of the science, but because he knows and understands what's expected. As him about That Thing, and he'll give all the right answers, same as before, and for the same reason: He doesn't know or understand any of the science, he just knows and understands what's expected.

It's pretty much the same conundrum that ultimately left him dead. He was supposed to present a handful of factual issues about his background and CV. Instead, he presented a narrative that was not factual. So it's clear that public polling on a handful of factual issues doesn't tell the whole story of whether conservatives or progressives are more factually challenged.

 

[theprestige]

I wonder how this might possibly go wrong.

"For today's polling, we've picked a handful of factual issues relating to human biology."

 

[d4m10n]

I'd love to see that happen, but it's nothing to do with Arday.

 

[smartcooky]

I find this whole 'DEI hire' thing so weird to begin with. I mean, I don't, I understand it's a dog whistle for wanting workplaces and positions of power to be only for straight white men...

Pay attention - its not that at all.

Its a "dog-whistle" for wanting workplaces and positions of power to be filled by the best person qualified for the job... be they man or woman, black or white or brown or yellow, gay or straight, fully able or disabled.

This is especially so for places of higher learning, where nothing less than excellence should be minimum standard.

 

[theprestige]

Rational people: Elevating Arday because of his race is a serious failure mode in diversity-based hiring, and people who care about it should lead the charge against Cambridge.

Safe-Keeper: Shut up, racists.

Some accusations...

 

[Emily's Cat]

Liberals are right and conservatives are wrong. That's what it means. It isn't deep.

I know your view on it I want Safe-Keeper to explain what they intended by it.

What is inferred and what is intended sometimes don't match. I can only address the intention if I know what it actually is. It's all well and good for me to agree with you - but all that means is that you and I agree on what we infer, and how we perceive the comment to be used. It doesn't actually provide the information I'm looking for - which is what @Safe-Keeper intended to imply.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The more we look into this, the more I'm inclined to think that the entire field of "sociology of education" is a hoax.

I'm inclined to say that Sociology is not a hoax... but Sociology of {something not sociological in nature} is BS.

 

[Emily's Cat]

When one looks at the conservative bias, in the current USA specifically, reality is not a concept that comes to mind.

Can you elaborate? In what way is reality less aligned with conservative bias than with liberal bias?

*Setting aside for the moment that I don't think conservative and liberal are opposites, but more likely orthoganal. I think conservative is the opposite of progressive, and refers to the speed of change within a society; liberal is the opposite of authoritarian, and refers to the degree of control a government exerts over the social lives of its citizens.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If you pick a handful of factual issues and then look at public policy polling, you will find that self-identified conservatives tend to get scientific questions wrong much more often than self-identified liberals. This is most obviously the case when holy writ is somehow in play (e.g. Darwin vs. Genesis). Because liberals (including liberal Christians and liberal Jews) don't feel the need to conserve ancient worldviews, they allow themselves to believe scientific findings. I'd go into this further, but cannot think of any way to relate it back to Arday's body of work.

I have a variety of challenges to your assumptions... but they aren't for this thread. I suspect you can identify at least one glaring counterexample all by yourself.

 

[d4m10n]

I have a variety of challenges to your assumptions... but they aren't for this thread. I suspect you can identify at least one glaring counterexample all by yourself.

It's not a counter-example, because claiming that a process is statistically biased doesn't mean it is wholly determined. If a coin comes up heads only 30% of the time, it is biased towards tails even when you happen to observe heads.

 

[d4m10n]

In what way is reality less aligned with conservative bias than with liberal bias?

See fig 1A

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1234