
Academic Culture Wars - robg
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=q4n6v4sdvxr3xpyjcmsqcx3dfz3cjcg8
======
TomOfTTB
I’ll be the first to admit that we’re seeing way too much political rhetoric
on Hacker News lately but I’d like to defend this article. The point of this
article isn’t that one side is right and the other is wrong it’s that people
who are thoroughly entrenched in their positions refuse to listen to each
other.

When we at Hacker News or out in the blogosphere discuss issues we tend to
believe that logic will win out but that isn’t always the case. Knowing that
is important and seeing it in a field that’s supposed to revere logic
(academia) makes that point very powerfully.

So let me give just one example of how this could be considered technology
related. Much of the tech surrounding "web 2.0" companies relies on the wisdom
of the crowd and the idea that the crowd will be impartial and judge things on
their merits. The question about motivations, biases, etc... is never brought
up even though it’s a huge flaw in that system and something that should be
discussed.

This article’s powerful statement on that subject might serve to open some
eyes on that.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Real quick follow up point. How many times have you seen two educated, well
thought out comments on a Hacker News item but one has 27 points and the other
has 3 because the 27-point item is the one everyone agreed with?

I vote items up when I think they're smart whether I agree with them or not
and I think others should do the same. That's the point this article makes and
that's why I think it should be on Hacker News.

~~~
diN0bot
I like the "vote up smart comments regardless of agreement" approach. My
Kantian nature then expects to see interesting comments at the top.

I also like the "vote to agree or disagree with the 'poll' (aka comment)".
This prevents dozens of "I agree/I disagree" responses.

The second approach is my first instinct. They're voting triangles, right?
Like a poll?

The first approach yields less answer-based statistics but more interesting
reading material.

One button fits all v too many buttons problem.

------
nir
Maybe there's _some_ HN value here - I've been thinking for some time the next
great establishment to lose most of its influence due to the Web will be
academia.

Universities seem like record companies ca. 1996, or media companies ca 2000 -
too confident and self absorbed to realize reality is routing around them
right now, making most of them obsolete with a few years.

~~~
gaius
I don't the university's role as "the place to meet smart people" diminishing
anytime soon. Where else is there? IRC?

------
tome
Not quite sure what this is doing on Hacker News.

~~~
smanek
I was fairly interested in the article. It was a little short on context but,
from what I gathered, Horowitz et al. posit that college professors lean
dramatically left and pressure their students to do so as well.

Based on my experience, this seems to hold pretty true, with a few notable
exceptions (miron and pinker jump to mind) in most 'softer' departments
(english/theology/psych/etc). In an english course I took last semester
(ostensibly about democracy/law), papers I wrote that were critical of
traditional liberal/socialist thought were critiqued more harshly than papers
were more in line with the orthodoxy. Nothing flagrant enough to be improper
(and I actually enjoyed the class), but the bias was definitely there.

Even in some of the harder sciences (chomsky and krugman, as two obvious
examples) this seems to hold true.

Of course, professors should hold whatever political view they like, but I
think the real question is if they are using their power to
improperly/abusively coerce their students.

Personally, I haven't seen anything that rises to that level in college (but
there was a horrible and grossly inappropriate bias at my high school), but I
think that it is definitely worth investigating.

I don't want my professors preaching their politics any more than I want them
preaching their religion.

~~~
xiaoma
I agree with your point. Far too many teachers in the humanities use their
position to push their political views on their students.

For the record, neither Chomsky nor Krugman are in the harder sciences.
Chomsky is a linguist and Krugman is an economist.

~~~
smanek
I guess it's a matter of definitions. The kind of linguistics Chomsky worked
on were rather mathematical, for example, see the Chomsky Hierarchy
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy>) which is used extensively
in Computer Science.

And Krugman's actual papers are basically pure math. I'm having trouble
finding many of his papers that aren't behind a pay wall, but see
<http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/scale_econ.pdf> or
<http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/geography.pdf>. And if memory serves,
didn't he also write a paper on the effects of special relativity on the time
value of capital? (I can't seem to find a copy ...). I know econ is only a
'dismal science,' but don't be too hard on it ;-)

~~~
gjm11
"The theory of interstellar trade":
<http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf>

"This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of
course the opposite of what is usual in economics." Although he calls it
"serious", it's full of little jokes, some of them very good.

~~~
eru
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=331284>

