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Would you agree with me in saying that the comments are at least disappointing?

In terms of the article itself, I agreed with this part, "High schools and colleges that lack viewpoint diversity should make it their top priority" which seems like a pretty progressive viewpoint. Let's make sure everybody's voice is heard, and let's make sure that voices that are usually silenced outside the classroom have equal footing inside. But a sentence later, bam - "Schools that value freedom of thought should therefore actively seek out non-leftist faculty."

I'm not sure how exactly that flows, and that's what led me to be disappointed. Moreover, the idea that students and faculty are living in "fear" and we have to accommodate their fears is also just a tad hypocritical.

I also have a problem with victimhood culture being a thing, but that's a whole different argument.

I don't doubt at all Haidt is qualified.

My complaint was more to your second point, that "If the complaint is that his work is spreading to, or being adopted by the anti-SJW crowd, that's hardly his fault." I do see a problem with how one-sided the comments on the page (Heterodox Academy) are, and I do think that he should have stepped in. Then, when I came to Hacker News, I saw similar comments, and that was disheartening.

My distaste really came from comments like these, on the main page: "My white male sons are now 30 and 28. I’m so happy they escaped public high school relatively unscathed, but I could see the beginnings of the nonsense, led by a faculty of activist females and male eunuchs. Public schooling in this country may have begun with noble intent; kids are now truly being inculcated rather than educated." and "You state this like it is an article of faith that women would be totally rad in STEM if only men would stop holding them back. What makes this “sketchy”? There is an abundance of evidence that men and women are different and think differently. There is almost no evidence that women will change that position based on upbringing." and then on hnews itself: "#KillAll(White)Men is literally calling for ethnic / gender purging." (though it was downvoted).

It would be great to have a conversation with Dr. Haidt, but I was turned off by how both Heterodox and Hacker News turned into "amen" forums. There were two students who posted on Heterodox, and they had some interesting points, some of which disagreed with Dr. Haidt.

I'm pretty disappointed in the article and the comments, and how like Reddit this website is turning out to be. I'm not going to make any judgements (though I really really am), but this same article has been posted to 10 subreddits, among them such gems as: SJWsAtWork, ThisIsNotASafeSpace, sjsucks, and sjwhate.

I never claimed that you needed only privilege to gain skill, or that you didn't need sweat to gain skill. What I said was that even those who work hard were able to do so (able to work hard) because of some privilege that they had.

You're ignoring the systematic factors that lead to one person being able to attain car-repairing skills over the other.

"Al, in fact, was a former Lamborghini tech. What’s that training worth? Do most poor people have it?"

No one is denying that Al probably put in a lot of hard work, but that he was able to get to that point is a part of privilege too.

It's not even that any person is better than another... Classes at elite public schools like Berkeley, UCLA, UMich, etc. are more demanding than at any but a few private colleges.

I'm surprised at Winston and Franklin - I'm pretty confident that the bump/spike was due to Churchill and Roosevelt. Barack unfortunately was not in the list, so we can't compare that. But compare that to Joseph (Stalin), also a common name, which didn't experience a dip. But then again, neither did Adolph.

Is there a name that experienced a dip, and then became popular again, due to a significant person?

There really are many other apps that are useful besides just Google Maps though. It's great to have a phone that can play music for the gym, have an app like venmo for small transactions when you forget cash, or a portable e-reader for the bus or train, or uber for just-in-case situations... and many more. All of these aren't indispensable, but they just make life so much easier and better.

I definitely agree with you that removing social network apps is a great way to improve productivity a bit. And of course, if you don't need the apps listed above, then, yes, there isn't much point in paying extra for a smartphone. But please realize that many people are willing to pay for the significant convenience that a smartphone affords them.

Not using a smartphone just because of the battery life or durability though is silly. A specialized case will nearly solve both problems. There are privacy concerns and productivity concerns and price concerns, sure. But this is the future - and we should be trying to address those concerns and change them for the better, not fight smartphones altogether.

Why do you think that you would have to explain to your parents every single link you visit? Surely parents will use their discretion, just as they do with every other decision their child makes.

There is a difference between the government-citizen surveillance and parent-child surveillance.

I very much agree. It's totally okay to be unprofessional by being yourself: if you truly feel strongly about a subject, then by all means showcase that opinion.

However, what made me a bit upset was the last line in the second-to-last paragraph: "... while still being ourselves." Is hating Nickelback really you/your team? So much that you exclude that particular music artist, and not anybody else?

Of course, the 'feature' is a silly easter egg, and no one needs to call each other names over it. Still, stuff like this makes your app seem incredibly childish (not just unprofessional). If it was a clever insertion of your team's opinions, then including something unprofessional is fine. A teenage-old joke however is not remotely clever or funny.

Disclaimer: I actually enjoy a few of Nickelback's songs.

Maps are just visualizations that focus on one attribute almost everything has: a spatial location. They don't need to show rivers or other physical features. A map of voting patterns for instance doesn't really have physical features. If you distort it to reflect population, you have an even looser map whose only tie to the world is the relative location of one area to another.

Physical maps like those that the USGS provide are just a tiny sample of the breadth of maps out there in the world. There are many, many really cool, non-traditional maps out there.

Who was the first Catholic president? Sure JFK did several other important things, and there were other events that transpired that made him famous.

Still, I think it's pretty important that Obama was at least partly black - it showed that it could be done, and I'm sure he inspired millions of people (black and otherwise).

Agreed. If the headline was "NSA refuses to comment on the Restore the Fourth protests", people would just comment that the NSA wasn't recognizing the protests, and that protesting would be useless, as the NSA would stick to their current attitude. I really don't know how the NSA could have responded better, besides actually promising to listen to the arguments of the protesters. It seems like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't"-type situation for the NSA. If one accepts that the NSA is /fundamentally/ flawed, which I doubt it is, nothing it says can change ones mind, including a public statement of it respecting people's rights to protest. The fact that it even has to release a statement though is good - it means that the NSA has realized that there is a backlash against their tactics.

I would like of course for the NSA to change some of its practices... but the amount of hate it is getting on HN is ridiculous.