Monday 27 January 2020

Academic Standards

Again, it's the remarkable hegemony. People of all political persuasions (un)thinking the same way, saying, the same idiot thing.

"Anti-Science". Keep your eye on what that's supposed to be referring to. Quoting from the linked post,
Acknowledge the University of Washington campus is on land stolen from Native Americans. Use gender-neutral, culturally diverse names in examples. Stop believing being overweight is unhealthy.
Then,
I understand how you can acknowledge and use. But I very sincerely don’t understand how you can stop believing. 
I of course, sincerely believe in that sincerity.

I can't always be of service, so I tentatively offer a reversal the advice of Journey-Do stop believin'......let go of that feeling, no-wha-o....

Then,
I especially don’t understand how you can stop believing something that’s demonstrably true on orders from your employer.
If it is demonstrably true, why does it require belief? Belief is assertion in the absence of evidence or conclusive proof otherwise. If you don't believe in what is true, then you are the same as those who peddle 'obesity' cultism who do not believe inducing weight loss using calorie restriction has failed, even though their complaining, nagging and crisis-mongering is premised on that very failure.

Success would have stopped the crusade for 'obesity' from getting this far and would end it now.
I still remember being proud of supporting the party of science and facts. And now we are all about bullying people into believing ridiculous, unscientific crap. It’s embarrassing.
Umm, I don't know about proud. I have never thought of science as partisan or identitarian, science is just science, it can unhand anyone at any time. That's why we cannot vaingloriously think we are on its "side", it can pull the rug from those trying to pal up to it, just as well as those trying to fight it. Which we probably all are in some way or t'other.

People fighting it is often about identity, but, science itself, isn't, or shouldn't be one.

We're still looking for the precise application of 'anti-science'. So let's try the link itself; "Profs at UW Seattle Asked to Push Progressive Causes in School’s Diversity Guide",
...the administration seems willing to placate a group of hypersensitive, progressive activist-students and faculty seeking to purge opposing political viewpoints from campus
'Kay, so we're also looking for, "hypersensitive", "progressive" and evidence of "purging opposing political viewpoints". Remembering that, manipulating body mass is an issue of physiology, not politics nor belief.

It says emphasis on diversity is the promotion of progressive politics, whilst I would not want to present myself as the progressive-whisperer, diversity seems to me to be an endeavour that easily lends itself to plus ca change, or appearing to change whilst staying the same through, in this case, window-dressing.

File under- evidence for assertion-inconclusive, to put it mildly.
But then it gets legitimate crazy. Writing for Quillette, Reges broke down one recommendation:
Can't wait, few things are more tantalising than the prospect of finding out what people think of as cray.
Review of all course materials for inclusiveness. For instance, of a lecture that involves calculating body mass index (BMI) using guidelines from the National Institutes of Health, the report noted that it ‘seems insensitive to present students with a program that would point out that some of them are ‘obese’ while others are ‘normal.’
Incidentally, I like that detail of "..using guidelines from the National Institutes of Health,". Still pocket billiards.

Recap; anti-science, demonstrably true, hypersensitive, progressive, [indicative of] purging opposing viewpoints, refers to not the questioning of why the true nature of metabolic function has entered the status of belief system, political viewpoint, but suggesting that vested interests' insertion of sci-fi should not be jettisoned, but merely stop short of seeking to divide students into its irrelevant categorisation.

These three things mentioned as a trio; the genocidal dispossession of indigenous people, widening the references in illustrative examples and whether to hold off on yet more divisive categorisation of students, have nothing to do with each other.

I'm sure all concerned know this. Such is the desire to keep people in the same place as themselves, that, the words don't matter, they're just there to carry the tune.

Suffice it to say, I don't care who you are, what or who's "side" you are on or think you're on, what you stand for, what you think you stand for, who you are, or think you are, your rank, sex, class or race....

On this, if you continue to allow yourself to be used as a bot to police obedience in others, whilst not engaging the most primitive of your critical faculties, on your own, without being told by those puppeteering you, with your big boy-girl panties on, you're going to have to take an "L".

No matter how safe and secure you feel right now.

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