
The High Priest of Heterodoxy - jseliger
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/288293/the-high-priest-of-heterodoxy
======
gringoDan
There are some great quotes in this piece. In particular, discussion on the
tradeoff between feeling safe and intellectual honesty (which requires some
discomfort).

> _Haidt and Lukianoff quote Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard law professor who
> says that discussing rape law in the classroom “has become so difficult that
> teachers are starting to give up on the subject.” She adds that if law
> professors stop mentioning sexual assault, that “would be a tremendous
> loss—above all to victims of sexual assault.”_

Reminds me of this clip from Van Jones re: safe spaces on college campuses:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zms3EqGbFOk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zms3EqGbFOk)

------
hirundo
"A candle flame is easily blown out. A candle flame is fragile. If you have a
candle flame you have to protect it with a glass sleeve because any puff of
wind will extinguish it. But once it reaches the stage of a roaring fire, the
more wind the better. So what Taleb said is that you want to be the fire and
wish for the wind" \-- Jonathan Haidt paraphrasing Nassim Taleb

Haidt convincingly expands on this metaphor in terms of how we treat children
in this Penn State lecture:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E)

This summarizes his overall case neatly: We're increasingly handling our kids
like fragile objects, stunting their maturity and reshaping western
civilization in their image.

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whatshisface
> _“The recent spike in students’ anxiety and depression is like nothing else
> in history,” Haidt added, because they grew up exposed to online bullying
> and know they could be the next victim._

Every now and then the mental health epidemic comes up on HN and I see ten or
twenty different theories about what's causing it. If nothing else, it's
galvanized me against believing any one explanation just because someone says
it. Has Haidt really cracked the case? It would be nice to see some evidence
one way or another.

~~~
xyzzyz
Haidt talks about it in detail in his "The Coddling...". He cites other
studies. I can't say that that he's "cracked" it, but if you're interested in
why he says that, that's the place to start looking.

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danharaj
> Jonathan Haidt’s early work attempted to explain the origins of our
> political differences. His new Heterodox Academy is looking for ways to move
> past them.

(By pushing the same old narrative you've heard from exactly one side)

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neaden
I'm tired of articles that talk about young people today and then only give
out examples that happen at small elite liberal arts universities. What that
generally tells you is that the author only interacts with a small slice of
young people and assumes everyone else in their generation is the same.

~~~
insickness
Haidt's thesis in 'Coddling' is about what is happening at universities and
how their influence spreads to the general population. So some examples of
what is happening at universities is appropriate.

~~~
neaden
But it's always very specific universities that attract a small and specific
subset of students. Where are the examples of this happening at community
colleges, or rural land grant schools? As I said it comes off as the only
college students the author actually meets are people who go to small elite
schools and get an internship in journalism.

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BryantD
There's a thoughtful examination of Haidt's claims here
([https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-
spee...](https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-speech-
crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/)), which agrees in part and disagrees in
part. Worth reading before passing judgement.

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jseliger
I've admired all of the Haidt books I've read, including _Coddling_ :
[https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/27/the-coddling-of-the-
ameri...](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/27/the-coddling-of-the-american-
mind-jonathan-haidt-and-greg-lukianoff/). His earlier book _The Happiness
Hypothesis_ is underrated and highly recommended:
[https://sivers.org/book/HappinessHypothesis](https://sivers.org/book/HappinessHypothesis)

------
pgcj_poster
If anyone's still reading this thread, the article cited a tweet from an
account that just today wrote:

> When you bring in a population that is less skilled & from nations w/ lower
> average IQs, you are “baking in” socioeconomic inequality & fueling
> resentment among those less successful groups. This resentment can be
> successfully exploited by the identity politics of the left.

The person who wrote this, like Haidt, calls himself a "centrist," which makes
me find it hard to take anything these people say about "dialogue" and
"bringing people together" at face value.

~~~
lliamander
Disqualifying an argument using unstated, inscrutable and ambiguous rules, and
then implying guilt by association. Top form there mate.

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youdontknowtho
If you already think this is a problem then this guy will reinforce you
belief.

It's too pat of an answer and to wide of a subject to think that it explains
these conditions.

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komali2
I first saw this as potentially a great possibility. Like, awesome, someone is
actually sitting down and researching how to undivided the red/blue divided
America?

But then...

> The fledgling academy now occupies a position within America’s tumultuous
> culture wars as advocates for free speech and the values of the “open
> society” and against political correctness and the millennial fervor of
> social justice activism.

"Political correctness" is so thoroughly abused as an alt-right general
accusation as to be meaningless. All it does here is make me question the
institution as just another alt-right organization hiding their beliefs behind
the shield of "rationality" and "free speech."

> Of course, the researchers will be labeled white supremacists by those who
> fear that more knowledge might interfere with their ideologically pure claim
> that American racism is the root cause of every social problem.

Sure, it's annoying to be called a white supremacist by verified Twitter
trolls, but we've got equally, if not more so, absurd accusations of anti-
Semitism flying all over the fucking place right now, and the correct solution
is to leave Twitter to the Twitter trolls.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
So it turns out that being in favor of allowing multiple points of view to
coexist puts you in conflict with people who only want to allow one point of
view to be heard. That's... rather unsurprising.

It is my perception that the left is doing better at shutting down opposing
speech than the right, and has been since the 90s. If you're going to address
the problem that it's happening _at all_ , you have to address the side that's
doing it _more and better_.

~~~
neaden
Do you think all view points should be heard? Should Jewish and gay students
have to debate Nazi's about whether or not they should be murdered? Should
black and women students have to debate if they should count as property?

~~~
insickness
Those are some extreme examples. What about the not so extreme cases? Who
would decide which topics are acceptable? A slippery slope.

~~~
neaden
I think extreme examples are useful. The Neo-Nazi's marching in Skokie is an
extreme example of Free Speech, and the ACLU fought to allow it because the
First Amendment is extreme. On the other hand, I believe that when you are
dealing with a quasi-public space like a university we shouldn't be as
absolutist with free speech claims. The question then becomes on where we draw
the line. If on the other hand you believe that we should be extreme on free
speech when it comes to universities and let the Nazi's march at University of
Chicago as well as Skokie then clearly you would disagree.

~~~
insickness
You think Nazis shouldn't be allowed to march? What about communists? Why one
and not the other? Communists killed far more people in the 20th century.

~~~
neaden
That is not what I said, I think you have to read a bit more carefully.

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b_tterc_p
At a glance this looks like just lengthy prose trying to position conservative
ideas as the intellectual middle ground.

~~~
Nasrudith
I am not sure why it is downvoted - it is a commonly used tactic of the right
dating back at least to "teach the controversy" for creationists and climate
change deniers to try to legitimize themselves through a golden mean fallacy.

~~~
lliamander
Why is it downvoted?

* because it's a low-effort comment that contains crass generalizations.

* because Haidt et. al. are not right-wing partisan hacks, but bona fide liberals.

~~~
b_tterc_p
I don’t see where I was crass. Nor do I think it’s especially low effort
relative to the quality of the content. Much of the post is a recurring tactic
of: stating a fairly tame conservative view, extrapolating that since liberals
shut down some conservative views that they will shut down even the most
nuanced ones, implying that therefore the ones trying to be reasonable are the
conservatives.

It’s... bad.

I don’t know or care who Haidt is it what his rep is

