E.g. if your research gets the "wrong" results regarding police shootings then anyone who defends your research will have to resign: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1

And anything regarding differences in crime numbers or IQ? Forget it.

Equity is equality of outcomes (done by explicitly redirecting resources as needed to get this result). As opposed to equal opportunity which is what is generally meant by "equality".

Or to ELI5 it's treating people differently to get them all to the same position, instead of treating everyone the same. The argument for "equity" is then that we aren't all starting from the same place. It's the same line of reasoning that justified affirmative action in the US.

- Equality: We are both free to operate in an open market to secure the best outcomes for ourselves

- Equity: You made $1000, I made $100, we both get $550

Wokes will bend over backwards to paint equality as an impossible project, claiming that it is doomed because of historical white supremacy, generational oppression, moon phases, etc. We're asked to believe uncritically that the goal of equal opportunity is equal outcome, and commanded to pursue equal outcome at all costs lest we are labeled racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist; de-platformed from all social media and made infamous and unemployable so we can't work to support our families. Equality is the American civil rights movement, equity is literally communism.

Equity is not “literally communism”, it’s the pretty simple understanding that if you always start 40 meters ahead of someone in a 100 meter race, you’re likely to always finish first and they won’t have a chance.

So we put more (and therefore unequal) resources into helping the competitor who’s having to run 40 more meters than you.

So, to each according to their needs, and from each according to their ability, more or less?

That's incorrect. The goal or schema of communism is not "equal outcomes". That might be the crude rubric of some state capitalist societies of the past, e.g. equal wages regardless of rank, but in true communism the abundance of resources permits anyone to have their needs met and for anyone to realize their full abilities.

One can criticize its naivety. But please do not conflate it with the mean and frankly misanthropic world view of the woke crowd, in which large swathes of humanity are condemned to endless self flagellation.

heh

I'd avoid using either in any polemic for a better world, and stick to the original words of the communist manifesto, which have not been bettered: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need!

I’d reflect on that.

I'd reflect on that.

In other words a researcher studying a topic unrelated to diversity will need to lie by claiming that there is a link.

As threat actors account for a non-trivial fraction of global economic activity [6], we expect our research to play an active role in the co-creation of a more inclusive and diverse lifeworld for the people of earth."

I do - I think reasonably - dispute the applicability of the outputs of many of our knowledge production institutions to social justice questions. (Just as I don't dispute that there are, conversely many which are).

If we find ourselves in a situation where we can't make a useful distinction between research that is and isn't relavent to social justice, I think we're at risk of our language seeming vaccuous and nonsensical.

The question that triggered his reaction is (quoting from the article) 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.' Indeed in principle they could just answer that it doesn't. What is left out here is why they are asking this. If the purpose of the question is unclear then researchers may feel incentivised to lie to 'fit' the requirements.

My personal view is that this is much ado about nothing. More likely than not most people will ignore the answers. There will, however, be reviewers who use that to reject papers.

It’s Galileo all over again.

So everything must be politicised. "How does your new caching algorithm promote social justice?". (If the same criteria were applied in CS).

And this will be here before you know it unless more people start calling bullshit.

The sheer irony of someone who's in favor of linguistic prescriptivism typing this out (when master record and master key have no linguistic relationship to master/slave) is astounding.

Don't forget that there were people like Rich Salz who took their ball and ran home crying[0] because of a freaking word. Was this just a fit of temporary 2020-insanity that was going around? Nope - apparently 1 year on, it's still intolerably reeecist to have a "master key" in cryptography.[1]

[0] https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1279190119703085057 [1] https://twitter.com/RichSalz/status/1435327330335997952

This is a funny anachronism and the very opposite of science.

Kendi is a key promoter of "anti-racism", which is described in the above quote.

Many institutions are signing on to this agenda, which requires people to view everything through this ideological (social justice) lens and to participate in discriminatory activity as described above. This lens ensures that instead of seeking truth, you will just find more social injustice. A demon under every rock, if you will.

Of course they want the blood feuds to continue forever.

We can all hopefully agree that:

A) Redlining existed

B) Redlining was explicitly racist

C) Redlining has impacts that are still felt today

Let's use an antiracist lens to talk about it and compare to a modern, liberal "just don't be racist" lens.

The standard liberal response is, "well, redlining is over, and we know now not to do that. So, problem solved, right?"

The antiracist lens might be, "there are still people suffering from the impact of Redlining. The people who benefited from it should be helping those who suffered from it." In this case, wealthy white folks explicitly benefited from Redlining. Maaaaaybe we should tap on the shoulders of wealthy white folks and say, "hey, there was a major injustice done very recently, we want to fix it, and since you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it."

We're getting now to one of the bigger problems with the philosophy you're describing: What's "you" here? Is "you" people in the same genetic category as the people who benefited from redlining. Those who happen to look like these people, but share actual no genetic ancestry (say, because they were immigrants) or perhaps do not share the privilege (say, because they were born poor or had other disadvantages) might take exception. Push them too hard, you become the oppressor.

There's then a Kafkaesque attitude that manifests that says, "I don't care what your protestations are on this topic, nor will I hear your case, you belong to X [ where X is social group, economic class, identity group, race, or whatever ] and you should accept sacrifices for the great good. Full stop. If you deny it you're the enemy."

That's one reason why many people view highly "corrective" actions in the realm of social relations or economic re-organizations with a strong amount of terror. We certainly have strong examples of terror manifesting in the 20th century in completely separate parts of the world and at massive scale - always for the greater good.

Regarding your second point, that you belong to X, so you are the enemy. I agree. Except on economic class. For context, I made roughly $850k last year, and my taxes were paltry. It is because of people in my economic class and above they we have a lot of the problems we do.

If you make a million a year, you can absolutely afford to give more.

(I do this by spending my money on mutual aid projects, bail funds, debt relief, community owned housing, forest conservation, etc. I put about $350k into community projects that had little to no direct benefit for me. I say this only to deal with the inevitable, "why don't you put your money where your mouth is" comments I receive when I say we wealthy folks should be taxed much more.)

My heritage is Polish. How much do the Germans owe me?

This is true for historical systematic oppression of any kind.

Well, there's the problem. You can't declare something fixed, and you have to have standards to check against. Those people just aren't trying and you can't write every "standard liberal" off because you personally know lazy ones.

But yes, the race-blind answer would be to help people still experiencing those first-order (lack of ownership) and second-order (lack of generational equity) problems by tackling obstacles to low-end ownership and invest in wealth and estate planning classes, assisting with secondary education, etc.

A multitude of strategies and a goal of trying those and other things until the original victims are helped, while trying not the name those victims explicitly. In doing so, helping anyone similarly disadvantaged.

> antiracist lens might be, [...] wealthy white folks [...] you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it.

The anti-racist lens mentions race a lot. I'm not just saying that to be snarky but because I believe that's harmful. Like the news reporting thoughtlessly about suicides.

But I don't see in that view is any concern for finding the unfair beneficiaries - merely all white people. This is where it goes from looking racist to being racist.

Most damningly, anti-racists don't have any consistent or desirable ideas on what the problems are or how the funds would go to help. It's all about race, categorizing and separating and stigmatizing by race, and confiscating by race, but barely if ever about defining and planning to fix the problems for people of any race, let alone all.

> people in my economic class [from another post]

I feel that this class-based analysis is much more useful and less counter-productive.

It's been a while since I've watched the lecture, but what I remember is that Haidt sees the academy seeking truth as (potentially?) incompatible with the academy seeking social justice. As such, he anticipates a day when universities will have to choose individually which path they will follow.

I suspect that's the context in which Haidt is making this decision.

It completely taints your research and any results you might come to.

The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth.

Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)

Yes, and unavoidably so. That is why it is society's task to structure the universities in such a fashion that those goals align with society's goals.

This comment is also a bit odd given the context of the last 5 years of society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.

This has been ongoing for ever. This happens because there's a big overlap between rich, powerful, and educated groups, and there's simply a fuckton of bad "us vs them" arguments that pick one easy to identify trait and attack anyone using that.

And of course the ongoing globalization led to a lot of job displacement. Whole regions suffered and continue to suffer heavily, and ... while the whole country reaps the benefits the affected areas only got a lip service. (And of course a lot of federal transfer payments.) This created a big group ripe for populist resentment, ready to project the drawbacks of free markets onto whatever Trump said. China. Mexico. Millenials. Green stuff. Welfare queens.

An earnest, good-hearted, and well-cited author and scientist is removing himself from academia because of the ever-accelerating creep of DEI influence into entirely unrelated work. This sounds like exactly what the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' were trying to warn us about back in 2012 or so.

If anything, your comment really just solidified to me that maybe we should have taken those folks a bit more seriously, and encouraged folks like you to quiet down. :)

Universities are advising their staff not to council in favour of abortion or offer condoms for the purposes of birth control (but OK for purposes of diseas prevenion). Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.

This is what an attack on freedom of speech looks like. And the consequences are of far more significance in this case.

Being fired for bringing the university in to disrepute barely even registers.

So if you want to know whether someone's position on free speech is hysterical posturing, or whether it's genuine, you can compare their reaction on these two paired issues.

> Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.

Can you provide us with an example of a university prof being given a felony sentencing for providing counsel related to abortion? It was a bizarre thing to bring up and admittedly just sort of reads like American fear-mongering. You're coming at this from a very strange angle, you're gonna need a better formed argument if you want to change any minds here.

This particular organization wants to follow the antiracist line of thinking, and they probably feel that strengthens their community. He's perfectly entitled to leave it and complain about it. But, the organizations reasons for making people who join the organization align with this values statement seems like it should be their prerogative.

Maybe they feel like to grow as an organization, they need to ask their community to that line of thinking. If they have done the work to understand that's what they should do, isn't it correct, even if they lose a researcher like Haidt?

Employers who fire people over non-criminal supposedly "racist" behavior should be sued and made to pay big bucks.

Your employer has no business judging you for how you (non-criminally) behave outside your working time. Firing over any such non-criminal behavior should be punishable severely.

Also, sounds like you think all 'woke activists' everywhere are always destructive. Which is an interesting take. At what point does someone cross the line to become an inherently destructive 'woke' person?

a) call/protest for firing people for said outside-of-work activities

b) protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way

c) protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies

d) protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)

> protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way

There are conservative politicians, florida in particular, that have passed legislation banning CRT and gender studies. Is this not a restriction of free speech?

Toby Price was fired for reading a popular children's book to children. Was this not a form of censorship?

> protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies

Does this mean that that discrimination based on race/gender be allowed or not allowed? Should bakers in an open market be permitted to say no to gay wedding cakes? Should banks be able to say no to non-white loan applicants?

> protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)

Does uneven enforcement count as a factor? White suburban teens smoke pot (in states where its still illegal) at rates the same as non-white urban teens, but enforcement is highly disprortionate. So what's the solution to that?

Discrimination based on race should either be allowed in all circumstances or disallowed in all circumstances. Affirmative action is discrimination based on race so it's hypocritical to have this as government policy while explicitly prohibiting discrimination against minorities.

Uneven enforcement calls for punishing those not enforced against, not letting guilty minorities walk.

Any further attempts of sealioning will be ignored.

Again interesting that you consider discrimination based on race in all cases as an acceptable position equal to no discrimination based on race.

The unequal enforcement bit would mean that white neighborhoods should be given the same level of enforcement as minority ones. Is that really what you want? Where literally everyone is treated by the police exactly how they treat minorities?

I have absolutely no problem with increasing policing in white neighborhoods. The risk to people who are not criminal lowlifes is not zero, but is negligible. And I place 0 weight on the lives and well-being of criminal lowlifes.

I will take your word that you'd be happy with increased policing even if it affected you personally, but I doubt that if you actually experienced it that you would be happy with the outcome.

I can be racist (teach white nationalism), you can't call me racist (that's the dread cultural cultural marxism again!). I should be subject to no laws (that restrict fascist propagandisation or mobilisation), but laws that restrict the rights of women, blacks, degenerate leftists etc. should be enforced presumably to the point of street execution (it's your own fault! gotta obey those laws!)

And so it goes..

But let me guess, only in the case of fascists?

Also, I don't know exactly how far this is from the "opinion" of the so-called "labor movement" given that something closer to this than to anglosphere practice is the reality in most of continental Europe currently.

Attacking "Political Correctness" in a vague and non-specific way lets you sound noble.

As soon as you specify what that means in practice you just sound like a nasty bully (at best), so best leave that implied.

But a quick glance as the history of social science that these things are a direct response to, would reveal people "proving" that various groups are inferior in ways that mirror contemporary prejudices and reinforce right-wing politics that consistently builds hierarchical models to justify current social inequalities.

a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."

Those quotation marks would disagree...

Instead it seems to be at best discounting that there is a conflct to explain or at worse is participating in the conflict by defending one side of it.

I think a stronger case could in theory be made that the conflict is non existent but it's a harder position to advocate.

should we stop large swathes of research into athletic performance? bc i guess it doesn't provide sufficiently "antiracist" outcomes?

They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though.

They still try to fit every new fact into their old model.

Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology?

Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth.

This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.

but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do?

also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.

You've read Haidt's take on it and have been misled, as intended.

here's the thing: "anti-racism" is being used as a motte-and-bailey argument. it's basically dogwhistling an intent to promote present discrimination (c.f. kendi) even if they're using a different definition that doesn't explicitly state that, because it's how that term has been widely used and understood. but when people take issue with it, they can be like "oh our definition doesn't say that." and ngl i find it pretty disingenuous.

The academic claim that "Race is not scientific" is really an overstatement of the case being made by people who are very optimistic but also fairly good at overlooking some fairly well understood science. It's not a universally held opinion but most people who disagree with it are fairly circumspect because it's very easy to get cancelled by talking about race and science in public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)

Suppose you find out that the green people from East Arbitria are less productive. The immediate effect is that an innocent objective employer who being tried for discrimination or hated by a community no longer has to suffer- the cruelty of the universe is no longer being made anyone's fault. The secondary effect is that we now have grounds to investigate why Arbitrarians have that disadvantage. Maybe green people have a harder time metabolizing a nutrient; a non-issue with the diet/climate/lifestyle of Arbitria. An update to health recommendations later and millions of people's lives are improved.

The point is, there is a history of race-based discrimination in the world and researchers can't just pretend that it doesn't still exist when constructing these kinds of studies and how their outcomes could be used negatively by both benevolent and malevolent actors. It isn't just 'truth or not truth', also because lots of sociological studies aren't repeatable and many others suffer all sorts of issues with methods, populations, etc. Measuring people is crazy hard to do reliably. Anyway, my hot take is that its not a simple question and does not have a simple answer.

2. rarely is a piece of research only used for 1 thing, and even if someone uses it wrongly, maybe someone else uses it for good purpose or builds on it for an important discovery.

3. the correct answer is to address the person attempting to abuse the data when that person does it not to attempt to suppress that information by preventing the research or limiting how it's done.

4. are you saying we shouldn't do research on e.g. whether certain groups are better at lifting because it could be abused?

What I do see is a long history of race-based 'science' being used to justify some pretty terrible policies and laws.

The long lesson from the history of this research is that it produces garbage wrapped in a thin veneer of credibility, and becomes a weapon to justify or deepen real existing problems. It doesn't matter if it gets debunked eventually, the problem is how it is used now."

edit: (I don't know that I'm happy with either pole in this debate, but it seems like a good thing to worry about)

Becomes sometimes it's important. The efficacy of modern medicine is not uniform across ethnic groups. To deny this fact would effectively be to deliberately withhold treatment from some groups of people. Does that seem fair and just to you?

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2594139/

- https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/pharmacogenetics-p...

> Diverse research participants (e.g., understudied or underserved populations)

or in case it's due to the team they should also probably encourage:

> Diverse members of the research team (e.g., those from underrepresented sociodemographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages, from outside the United States, or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP such as predominately undergraduate serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, or outside academia)

Hopefully if thay do that won't be portrayed as a bad thing by anyone.