Jonathan Haidt on the extreme importance of opinion diversity to challenge motivated reasoning
Brilliant talk by Haidt:
I’ve become more and more impressed with Haidt over time. Fearless, clear, supported by evidence, he keeps churning out these videos and giving these talks. He started as a liberal—I don’t know where he’s at politically at this point, and it really doesn’t matter to me. He’s doing such good work on the problems at universities, and the chilling effect of SJWs on the pursuit of truth.
It is extremely disappointing, however, that that video has only about 85K views. That’s almost nothing in the world of YouTube.
It’s also interesting to me that two psychology professors who are not on the right or of the right (or who at least didn’t used to be), Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, are doing such fine work in countering the anti-free-speech tyranny that has taken hold at universities.
Why are they psychologists? Where are the Constitutional scholars, the historians, the clergy, the military, the common (forgotten) man? Obama not being one of any of these, of course.
This is about liberty, free speech, basic human rights granted by God under Natural Law, and we get two psychologists?
That they are speaking up “courageously” is fine, but where are the voices that should matter? Why is courage required? To go against the mob of liberal fascists is why.
Frog:
People like Dershowitz are also doing it, but in the law arena.
In academia, I’m not sure why it’s psychologists.
Wow! I’ll bet or at least hope that Heterodox Academy has an impact. My alma mater Brown made the bottom of the list. Well deserved!
I recall enjoying the campus life with my friends who were studying physics, math, applied math, econ, pre-med, psych, and engineering. We universally treated those SJW people we bumped into like they had two heads. Walk the other way.
Haidt mentions the donor alums as a silver bullet of sorts. But there are many aspects that matter. Faculty selection and the tenure process matter. Parents that pay tuition should be aware.
Parents and students are motivated by academic prestige which can impact job opportunities. Prestige attracts the best students and having the best students increases prestige. Maybe that can be affected, but changing that is likely difficult and slow.
The really pernicious angle is the DOJ (& DOE??) forcing this stuff on universities.
Very encouraging.
Trump can stop the DOJ & DOE arm twisting. In fact, it’s my understanding that he has already begun to do so.
Frog,
Half of the American public does not believe in God given rights, much less in natural law.
I joined HxA about 7 months ago and have found a pleasing collection of conservatives and classic liberals. The real problem HxA is grappling with at present is how to affect the change we all see as needed. Changing such an imbedded culture as exists in the academy is very difficult. Like the massive cargo ship where the rudder is moved and two miles later the ship begins to change its heading.
As far as Haidt being a psychologist, I believe his area is evolutionary psych, which automatically puts him at odds with the SJW majority of psychologists. For Peterson , I think it’s just his high level of personal integrity.
After Trump won the election, Haidt’s wife, Jayne Riew, also did a pretty brave thing — she created the “She’s With Him” photo essay (https://www.sheswithhim.com/About):
The women who took part included one who graduated from Yale in 2016, a restaurant owner, a financial analyst, a university professor, a hedge fund VP, a small business owner, and a graphic designer. Really interesting to read what they had to say.
I have five children, from age 53 to 28. There are leftists and two are conservative. The one son who is conservative owns his own house and does not have a college degree.
He is the only one of my kids to not have a bachelors and the only one to own nice home.
Your site is acting like Chicagoboyz and not saving ID. Are you using also using WordPress?
Haidt is doing great work.
Having a ranking is a great way to tell the public, and the schools, how bad they are and who is the worst.
I think calling them Bullies instead of Warriors would be more accurate.
Psychology is looking to be more of a science — using data gathered from experiments. With experiments roughly repeatable (or exactly). To find out more about the Truth of how humans are.
The Social Justice Bullies believe in many things that are not true. Anybody looking more for truth finds out that the PC believers support policies based on their false beliefs.
Neo, your title should use ” extreme importance”, not “important”.
http://www.neoneocon.com/2018/05/25/jonathan-haidt-on-the-extreme-important-of-opinion-diversity-to-challenge-motivated-reasoning/
I believe his area is evolutionary psych,
No, social psychology.
Linked at Chicago Boyz:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57265.html
Professor Bret Weisnstein, formerly of Evergreen University becoming red-pilled (48:00).:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np9yc7hp0vc
At work I mentioned Jordan Peterson to a 20 year old that has discovered me as a common sense, free market, whatever people like us should call ourselves these days.
HE LIT UP! I mean he became so animated and talked about how important he was.
I didn’t expect this because I thought Jordan was somebody that spoke to our generation (I am very close to 50).
I see so many now who called themselves liberal (Weinstein, Dave Rubin, etc) who are helping everyone understand the difference between truth and enlightenment and science versus post modernism and Marxism and what is that thing called – oh yeah – intersectionality…. it hurt to type the word.
Anyways, my coworker saw the Munk debates and thought Michael Eric Dyson ensured a loss basically by taking the tactic he took of calling Jordan Peterson a meean white man. It only served to help him lose the debate.
I’ve been thinking about Neo’s closing comment, and there may be great significance to the fact that we have two psych profs. taking a stand. (A very small data set, of course.) I caught a brief Peterson interview some weeks ago, and he said that it all began for him, when he decided that he wasn’t going to tell himself or others lies anymore. (I hope that is roughly accurate.)
Motivated by my basic history discovery that Pres. McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, I did a fairly deep internet dive on the anarcho-syndicalist movement, in 2005 or so. Most of that material is gone now, but I came away with the feeling that the underlying tenets of the movement was just a huge confidence scam.
What is the connection between modern politics (maybe ancient too) and deception. Deceiving others and oneself? Who better to understand than a psych professional?
This is a noble effort but my observation is that once the Left takes over an institution they will destroy it before they allow anyone else to take over. Examples abound:
Newspapers have seen their business shrink but make no effort to reach out to the their potential conservative readers.
Television networks allow their late night “comics” to preach to their audience and literally tell conservatives who do not like it to take a hike.
Science fiction’s Hugo awards committee got their leftist members to vote no award when hugely popular non-SJW books were nominated (see the Sad Puppies affair).
The Boy Scouts have destroyed their hundred year old institution by first allowing openly homosexual men to be scout masters and now allowing girls to join.