Author Topic: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering  (Read 55377 times)

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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #225 on: September 10, 2017, 08:22:20 pm »

GO back and read it again.  Somehow you took my post and attributed it to HowardLong.

You are right.  It doesn't seem that you can do things by yourself.  You need someone to correct your work.

Yup, my bad, I stuffed up the quoting. No need to be abusive though, the only thing it does is make your argument look even weaker than it already is. What I said still stands - you didn't say "mostly" at all, and you did say:

Quote
Books, plays, art works etc. are done by one person.

Which has no qualification whatsoever.
I made a simple statement.  If your level of reading comprehension can't understand what I wrote, then please don't comment. 
Also learn how to quote.

Like I said, when you get all ad hominem rather than addressing the point, we all know that you've lost the argument.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Naguissa

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #226 on: September 10, 2017, 09:12:11 pm »
My opinion is like Google fired person: all this "positive discrimination" only breaks real talent because shitty quotas.

Enviado desde mi Jolla mediante Tapatalk


Offline jhalar

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #227 on: September 11, 2017, 12:03:31 am »
This kind of crap has been spreading through universities for years now. It started with all the bullshit degrees (anything ending in "studies") and soft subjects, then into science, and has now reached engineering.
The crap has been at the university I attended in the late 80's. When I did my degree back then my EE 3rd and final years had to include one humanity subject each year from the "Science and Technology Studies" department, part of the Faculty of Arts.
A bunch of us managed to convince the EE dept dean that the "Studies" subjects were utterly useless for EEs that it was better to take the "Introduction to Management" subject than the wishy washy "Studies" subjects for our final year.
Electronics and Network Engineer. Working in both worlds.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #228 on: September 11, 2017, 01:11:35 am »
It seems to me that there may be more to this situation than meets the eye.

What is being done is REALLY dishonest.  Divisions are being deliberately sown in the US and the EU and Australia by professional spin organizations in order to alienate groups against one another who would need to unite against a global attack on all decent paying jobs with the intent of using them as sort of bargaining chips to use to keep the most unequal and corrupt developing world governments in power. Why unite? People may not see this now, but you will eventually see that the treaties being used to hijack democracy  are so restrictive and have all the angles locked up such that one of the only arguments which has any chance of saving literally millions of jobs in the expensive developed countries is the loss of diversity that will occur. 

They are very slick.

People need to know however that their economics are BS. You don't help the poor in Myopia by helping the richest Myopian billionaires, with internship-like guest worker jobs which have been compared to slavery that their body shop MNCs can give away to the children of the well connected. Nor do cross border data flows help people, they just ruin any chance of communities having decent local employment for workers and move good jobs away to new foreign workplaces that become places of misery and despair because people have no time to spend with children, often having to work in the middle of their night. These deals are also trickle down economics which has been repeatedly discredited.

It makes no sense to turn technology's gifts into misery - which impacts the whole planet negatively, for everybody except owners just because thats what capitalism "is supposed to do". We can change that. Its not just about making sure the poorest starve more efficiently either, A lot can be said for the value of slack, redundancy which makes societies resilient. We should not worship efficiency and global value chains are chains of oppression. We should not give up millions of good jobs just to increase profits which likely will never come because owners elsewhere are unlikely to share them. Jobs there wont suddenly create a middle class. Those "gains" to them are really losses to all of us, that will trigger a global economic implosion. And as said, its not helping anybody, certainly not those in poor countries, except keeping them poor by keeping the worst and most corrupt leaders in power and unaccountable to anybody. Any deal that is irreversible needs to be voided as against the public interest. This is why we have to get together.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2017, 04:48:16 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #229 on: September 11, 2017, 01:53:23 am »
It seems to me that there may be more to this situation than meets the eye.

This thread is about social justice in engineering and the Prudue thing, please keep it on topic.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #230 on: September 11, 2017, 02:09:13 am »
Okay, I'll condense it down into a very short argument that encapsulates what I am trying to say.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline A Hellene

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #231 on: September 11, 2017, 08:59:57 am »
I think that almost every participant in this discussion thread agrees that these clowns (the SJW) are hurting Engineering --and not only...

Another strange thing is that, since WWII, those in power recruited every bright mind in Academia in order to make advancements in technology. Well, the strange thing about this is the fate of some of these bright minds that made technological advancements: A great deal of them died unexpectedly after presenting their work (see: Dead Scientists And Microbiologists List). While these scientists have disappeared (one way or the other) from the face of the Earth, where is their work that left behind? Well, a great deal of it is still being 'protected' by 'classified patents', remaining far from the reach of today's university students --with some exceptions maybe... Is this why those clowns are pushing non-scientific education as Engineering? The technological knowledge for much better quality education standards is already there.

Are we there yet?
Calm down, take some Soma.
I am sorry I overlooked your message; I thought it was a caustic joke in reply to mine about 'Idiocracy'...

Apparently, it is not:
-Oxytocin-enforced norm compliance reduces xenophobic outgroup rejection
-Study: Doping Western Cultures With Oxytocin Will Cure Hatred Of Refugees
-Oxytocin and social norms reduce xenophobia
-Giving people the 'cuddle hormone' oxytocin can increase kindness towards refugees
-Oxytocin And Social Norms Reduce Xenophobia
-The Dark Side of Oxytocin
... et cetera...
[...]
Just see the information of that (highest authority) 'scientific publication' abomination above (full of sentimental buzzwords), which was published by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America is the official scientific journal of the National Academy of Sciences, published since 1915):
'Edited by Bruce S. McEwen, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, and approved July 10, 2017 (received for review April 7, 2017)'

Additionally, these links above seem to be a sequence of acts of the same unfortunate theatrical play, we are participants of (with or without our consent), that was introduced in 1925 by one of them, in honour of whom they created yet another of those shiny prizes they have for their minions.

Here is one of their plans that is still in motion:
- Ideological and Geopolitical Origins of the EU, by Clare Ellis: Part 1 and Part 2,
and, without chewing their words,
- The Coudenhove Kalergi Plan, by The Occidental Observer: Part 1 and Part 2.

Quoting The Occidental Observer article above, 'It was Count Richard Eljiro von Coudenhove-Kalergi who in 1950 won the first Coudenhove-Kalergi prize, now better known as the Charlemagne Prize.'
I really hate quoting Wikipedia as a source: 'The first Charlemagne Prize was awarded to Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-European Movement, and the founder of the Coudenhove-Kalergi plan.'

A few words about Charlemagne Prize, by François Asselineau:


According to his own literature, this is Coudenhove Kalergi's plan that dictates those Marxist clowns what to be doing, not only to the education sector but to the whole global society:
Praktischer Idealismus (Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove Kalergi, 1925)
Practical Idealism ('Praktischer Idealismus' English translation)

Epitomising, there have always been and there will always be creatures of that pathetic mindset, being filled with hatred to mankind, that will be trying anything they can in order to eliminate everyone they hate, while sugarcoating their actions by using Cultural Marxism (or Political Correctness, as it is widely known) crafty communication methods...


-George
« Last Edit: September 11, 2017, 09:11:01 am by A Hellene »
Hi! This is George; and I am three and a half years old!
(This was one of my latest realisations, now in my early fifties!...)
 
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Offline Assafl

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #232 on: September 12, 2017, 06:06:59 pm »
I actually disagree that social justice warriors are hurting engineering.

Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.

Engineering can't be hurt because as much as one wants (and as much vitriol and silly ness that they can expostulate) a zener diode will stay a zener diode, an inverting opamp will continue to invert, and the GCC compiler will continue to issue error messages when they get creative.

You can direct racial justice vitriol at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain or Afrikaners.

But last I verbally abused a zener for being reddish with a black band -  it continued to zen.

Take the DPRK. Awful social justice Juche studies. But the engineers that are building their missiles and a-bombs? The fact that they seem to be working Is a sure bet that Juche is only a tiny portion of their studies (if at all).

I'd even propose that funding problems are a substantially greater risk to engineering department relevancy and quality than any social warrior.
« Last Edit: September 12, 2017, 06:10:01 pm by Assafl »
 

Offline 691175002

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #233 on: September 12, 2017, 06:35:13 pm »
I actually disagree that social justice warriors are hurting engineering.

Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.

This is only true in the long run.  Politics and motivated reasoning can still do massive damage to science and engineering - a notable historical example being the church.  Its harder to kill or jail scientists we disagree with, but getting them fired serves a similar purpose.

Scientists observe the enviornment and adjust their studies accordingly, so the damage is more widespread than it might appear.

Writers have been very vocal about this issue.  It is no longer acceptable for a white person to write from the perspective of another race (among many other potential faux-pas), so authors and publishers are limiting their creativity to avoid potential blowback.
 

Offline Assafl

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #234 on: September 12, 2017, 07:59:49 pm »
I actually disagree that social justice warriors are hurting engineering.

Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.

This is only true in the long run.  Politics and motivated reasoning can still do massive damage to science and engineering - a notable historical example being the church.  Its harder to kill or jail scientists we disagree with, but getting them fired serves a similar purpose.

Scientists observe the enviornment and adjust their studies accordingly, so the damage is more widespread than it might appear.

Writers have been very vocal about this issue.  It is no longer acceptable for a white person to write from the perspective of another race (among many other potential faux-pas), so authors and publishers are limiting their creativity to avoid potential blowback.

That happens between the world and science - and inside the scientific world.

The scientific world has a long history of fighting inconvenient observations. From Darwin, to Oliver Heaviside, to Tesla, to Shechtman's quasi periodic crystals to ....

Interests corrupt - always

It is true that interest groups have interests. But they are not alone: governments have interests (e.g. The fight for or against global warming), industry as well (lead poisoning and the petrol industry), religion (obviously the fight against reality), guilds and unions (doctors and lawyers fighting progress and new business models)., and quack groups (e.g. The anti vaccination quacks)...

We all know engineering has had its share of interests represented by guilds and nepotism and monopolistic practices.

.
 

Offline John B

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #235 on: September 12, 2017, 11:39:01 pm »
I actually disagree that social justice warriors are hurting engineering.

Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.

Engineering can't be hurt because as much as one wants (and as much vitriol and silly ness that they can expostulate) a zener diode will stay a zener diode, an inverting opamp will continue to invert, and the GCC compiler will continue to issue error messages when they get creative.

You can direct racial justice vitriol at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain or Afrikaners.

But last I verbally abused a zener for being reddish with a black band -  it continued to zen.

Take the DPRK. Awful social justice Juche studies. But the engineers that are building their missiles and a-bombs? The fact that they seem to be working Is a sure bet that Juche is only a tiny portion of their studies (if at all).

I'd even propose that funding problems are a substantially greater risk to engineering department relevancy and quality than any social warrior.

I think you run the risk of anthropomorphising the field of study. It's very easy to say the principles of a field are going to stand strong, however the people comprising that field may not. Is there any scientist or engineer who doesn't know that they need to watch what they say and do, often to an absurd degree? Look at Tim Hunt, Lawrence Summers, Matt Taylor etc... the knowledge that a political mob can sabotage your career on a whim is bound to have a chilling effect. The self-censorship only gives more room for authoritarians to seize more control and tighten the cycle.
 
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #236 on: September 12, 2017, 11:53:32 pm »
I actually disagree that social justice warriors are hurting engineering.
Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.
Engineering can't be hurt because as much as one wants (and as much vitriol and silly ness that they can expostulate) a zener diode will stay a zener diode, an inverting opamp will continue to invert, and the GCC compiler will continue to issue error messages when they get creative.
You can direct racial justice vitriol at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain or Afrikaners.
But last I verbally abused a zener for being reddish with a black band -  it continued to zen.
Take the DPRK. Awful social justice Juche studies. But the engineers that are building their missiles and a-bombs? The fact that they seem to be working Is a sure bet that Juche is only a tiny portion of their studies (if at all).
I'd even propose that funding problems are a substantially greater risk to engineering department relevancy and quality than any social warrior.

Good point, engineering will always ultimately win, but it's possible for engineering education to suffer.
 

Offline Circlotron

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #237 on: September 13, 2017, 12:56:50 am »
You can direct racial justice vitriol at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain or Afrikaners.

But last I verbally abused a zener for being reddish with a black band -  it continued to zen.
The day will come when a zener diode is part of a self-aware machine that has rights.
That may complicate things.
 
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #238 on: September 13, 2017, 12:57:33 am »
You can direct racial justice vitriol at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain or Afrikaners.

But last I verbally abused a zener for being reddish with a black band -  it continued to zen.
The day will come when a zener diode is part of a self-aware machine that has rights.
That may complicate things.

All diodes matter.
 
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Offline Circlotron

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #239 on: September 13, 2017, 01:47:47 am »
All diodes matter.
So a cat's whisker detector in a crystal set would have the same rights as a synchronous rectifier?
Another layer in the stratification of society occurs...
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #240 on: September 13, 2017, 02:02:27 am »
All diodes matter.

No, diode left behind!

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Assafl

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #241 on: September 13, 2017, 07:26:55 am »
I actually disagree that social justice warriors are hurting engineering.

Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.

Engineering can't be hurt because as much as one wants (and as much vitriol and silly ness that they can expostulate) a zener diode will stay a zener diode, an inverting opamp will continue to invert, and the GCC compiler will continue to issue error messages when they get creative.

You can direct racial justice vitriol at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain or Afrikaners.

But last I verbally abused a zener for being reddish with a black band -  it continued to zen.

Take the DPRK. Awful social justice Juche studies. But the engineers that are building their missiles and a-bombs? The fact that they seem to be working Is a sure bet that Juche is only a tiny portion of their studies (if at all).

I'd even propose that funding problems are a substantially greater risk to engineering department relevancy and quality than any social warrior.

I think you run the risk of anthropomorphising the field of study. It's very easy to say the principles of a field are going to stand strong, however the people comprising that field may not. Is there any scientist or engineer who doesn't know that they need to watch what they say and do, often to an absurd degree? Look at Tim Hunt, Lawrence Summers, Matt Taylor etc... the knowledge that a political mob can sabotage your career on a whim is bound to have a chilling effect. The self-censorship only gives more room for authoritarians to seize more control and tighten the cycle.

But that is not new! We all know the sad story of Edwin Armstrong inventor of the Superheterodyne receiver who got to enjoy the sharper side of David Sarnoff's business savvy.

Business (like Sarnoff and RCA), as anyone, can be a bitch to science and scientists.

But the worst are other scientists: While it is annoying that the poor and ignorant don't understand - there is nothing quite like discovering that the department head, or a world renowned professor - is gunning after your discoveries; and that the scientific community is so unable to cope with it - that they are turning their backs are on you.

Dan Shechtman (from Wikipedia):
From the day Shechtman published his findings on quasicrystals in 1984 to the day Linus Pauling died (1994), Shechtman experienced hostility from him toward the non-periodic interpretation. "For a long time it was me against the world," he said. "I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, 'til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong."[citation needed]

Linus Pauling is noted saying "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."[15] Pauling was apparently unaware of a paper in 1981 by H. Kleinert and K. Maki which had pointed out the possibility of a non-periodic Icosahedral Phase in quasicrystals[16] (see the historical notes). The head of Shechtman's research group told him to "go back and read the textbook" and a couple of days later "asked him to leave for 'bringing disgrace' on the team."[17] Shechtman felt dejected.[15] On publication of his paper, other scientists began to confirm and accept empirical findings of the existence of quasicrystals.[18][19]

But it isn't new: One of the best examples relevant to EEVBLOG is Oliver Heaviside. 

Oliver Heaviside was one of the first AC theory warriors. And he paid an unimaginable price and died poor... Even AT&T tried to give him a stipend (which he refused).

He battled the last of a DC world. Where transmitting a character transatlantic took many minutes. They resented anyone who came in with an AC theory.

Oliver Heaviside developed the transmission line theory, reduced the 12 Maxwell's equation to 4 (by innovating using Vector representation), coined the terms admittance and conductance and electret and impedance and permeability, discovered the Poynting Vector (albeit he was beat to that by Poynting), invented the coaxial cable for transmission, impulse response, etc.

He lived on 40 pounds a year writing for a magazine after having upset the powers to be in the post office (inventors of the British telephone). From Wikipedia:

"In 1887, Heaviside worked with his brother Arthur on a paper entitled "The Bridge System of Telephony". However the paper was blocked by Arthur's superior, William Henry Preece of the Post Office, because part of the proposal was that loading coils (inductors) should be added to telephone and telegraph lines to increase their self-induction and correct the distortion which they suffered. Preece had recently declared self-inductance to be the great enemy of clear transmission. Heaviside was also convinced that Preece was behind the sacking of the editor of The Electrician which brought his long-running series of articles to a halt (until 1891).[12] There was a long history of animosity between Preece and Heaviside. Heaviside considered Preece to be mathematically incompetent; an assessment supported by the biographer Paul J. Nahin: "Preece was a powerful government official, enormously ambitious, and in some remarkable ways, an utter blockhead." Preece's motivations in suppressing Heaviside's work were more to do with protecting Preece's own reputation and avoiding having to admit error than any perceived faults in Heaviside's work.[3]: xi–xvii, 162–183 "



But always remember: Even the ISIS creeps used Facebook, sold Petrol, stole cash, paid salaries, and stole missiles and weapons. God is nice. But even the Allah version of god ends up needing an Arduino to time the explosion needed to blow up a Shiite mosque or Facebook to get in touch with a disgruntled convert in Louisiana (whatever happened to a talking burning bush or popping up in their dreams I don't know).
 

Offline Assafl

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #242 on: September 13, 2017, 07:38:43 am »
You can direct racial justice vitriol at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain or Afrikaners.

But last I verbally abused a zener for being reddish with a black band -  it continued to zen.
The day will come when a zener diode is part of a self-aware machine that has rights.
That may complicate things.

All diodes matter.

Forget diodes. There is a special place in EE hell for those that purposefully used tantalum caps as squibs.

For agents of the dark lord await those with a sinister device: polystyrene capacitors purposefully dipped in epoxy to make them look like tantalums. Upon arrival they are given a challenge upon which they'd go through the silkscreened gates: blow up these "tantalums" with a 12v battery.

Obviously they fail, upon which they are corralled to hell to clean up PCBs with used toothbrushes or solder ground planes with underpowered irons.

 

Offline Marco

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #243 on: September 13, 2017, 03:02:10 pm »
Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.
Rigor won't protect you from Title IX.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #244 on: September 13, 2017, 04:25:28 pm »
Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.
Rigor won't protect you from Title IX.

Rigour however will protect you from failing to state your assumptions, like "Title IX" of what.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Assafl

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #245 on: September 13, 2017, 04:34:49 pm »
Rigor prevents engineering (or math, or chemistry, or biology) from being prone to whimsical thought or social warrior noise.
Rigor won't protect you from Title IX.

Ah - title IX.

>10 year before Title IX was making its way in congress Tom Lehrer said the following: “The Army has carried the American ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability.”



Rigour however will protect you from failing to state your assumptions, like "Title IX" of what.

Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.
 
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #246 on: September 13, 2017, 06:57:33 pm »

Rigour however will protect you from failing to state your assumptions, like "Title IX" of what.

Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.

You do know what that Latin tag means, don't you - usually rendered "ignorance of the law is no defence". Quite what is the relevance here?

Or are you one of those strange norte-americanos who thinks that everybody in the world is subject to your laws and are accusing me of some inexcusable ignorance of US domestic law for not automatically recognising "Title XI" as one of your laws?
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Assafl

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #247 on: September 13, 2017, 08:11:14 pm »
Quote
Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.

You do know what that Latin tag means, don't you - usually rendered "ignorance of the law is no defence". Quite what is the relevance here?

Or are you one of those strange norte-americanos who thinks that everybody in the world is subject to your laws and are accusing me of some inexcusable ignorance of US domestic law for not automatically recognising "Title XI" as one of your laws?

LOL - I am not Norte Americano... I am located in the Mediterranean. However unfortunate, that does not imply I am not strange. Indeed I probably am.

Anyway, it was a joke and I apologize. Here it is hot and humid and dusty and people are rude and therefore Latin amuses us (i.e. it was a joke).

In the spirit of good will - Title IX is the god daddy of affirmative action. But over many years it has backfired due to the test the court apply: proportionality (are the number of participant proportional to their representation in the student body); growth (are barriers in the process of being removed) and last - interest from the student body (is there sufficient interest in the student body to say - have a female or Hispanic team). Obviously this can - and has been - abused.

 
« Last Edit: September 14, 2017, 07:21:17 am by Assafl »
 

Offline TimNJ

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #248 on: September 13, 2017, 10:13:50 pm »
Maybe I'm missing the point here..but..an undergraduate engineering degree was never intended to teach you everything in your field. That's physically impossible. Hell, when you die, you still won't know everything.

The attitude here seems to be "arts/humanities classes are eating away at engineering education!", as if the 3 or 4 humanities classes you take will genuinely make you a less competent engineer in the long run. An undergraduate degree is just the start of your education; You have your entire career to continue learning, and you will have to.

Yes, I love engineering, with all my heart, but that doesn't mean I can't also be interested in society, human behavior, history, art etc. I went to a liberal-arts college and studied EE. Yes, sometimes my required liberal arts classes were a pain in the ass, but do I really wish I hadn't taken them? No! Many engineers who graduated with me would tell you the same thing. There's nothing wrong with gaining a little perspective, challenging your worldview, etc.

And, if you are a person who doesn't want this kind of education, then don't go to a liberal arts school!
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering
« Reply #249 on: September 14, 2017, 01:39:25 am »
I see a lot of people who seem to be really threatened by anything they cant buy off. Right now in our society, pretty much all of the institutions that are supposed to help us find our way are "captured" meaning varying degrees of corrupt and dishonest.

For example, the media now is largely intentionally, systematically omitting all important key facts or context from the news, such as to make whats reported varying degrees of deceptive at best (and quite oftentimes its intentionally spun so as to be quite wrong.)

 Not so coincidentally, there is a huge outcry in that same media about "fake news" - which sometimes is true, and their protests are really protests that the people who used to believe every word they said, now are starting to figure out they are being manipulated.

Only a very few media outlets are willing to admit when they made a mistake and even fewer make an effort to find out what the truth is when some fact emerges showing that their take on something is really wrong, when "news" or spin is wrong. A glitch in the Matrix.. so to speak.

Instead of fighting for the truth, more and more media's first reaction is anger at being exposed as dishonest.. Rather than correct themselves,  media are grasping at various means and appeals to authority in various ways to spin themselves as the accurate ones. What was it Shakespeare said, the lady she doth protest too much.

Similarly with politics, often the political discussion is engineered to be a distraction from whats really going on, not reflect or God forbid govern or regulate it. If it did, corporations would go beserk, and lacking any context to understand what was happening, many peoples heads would explode.

Why is this being done? Its a form of sophisticated theft.

There is a concept in law called "Adverse possession" - it basically says that you can steal anything from anybody by taking it notoriously - basically you are challenging them to stop you, they are supposed to go to court in some manner. Of course, thats an illusion, the courts are closed to that kind of case, also, people have to know the planet is being taken from them, they have to realize they own something. In an abuse scenario people have been brainwashed into silence and disempowerment.

There I said it, thats what these alleged "social justice warriors" (people with common sense) are saying to would be engineering EDUCATORS.. not engineering students, teachers of engineering, who likely are already engineers or close to it. But of course, thats not what people repeating the story are assuming.  No as they are spinning it, young people are being forced to pay for content they dont want -an argument that speaks to a great many people, because money is being used as a costly screen to keep a great many people from pursuing an education. Dnying more and more people a voice that can be heard. Large numbers ofpeople are being disempowered.  And we need some way to re-empower people to speak. thats true.

Those social justice warriors are right, and its easy to prove to a logically minded person.

The big theft could also be stopped by these logically minded people.

I think the point should be recognized that the big losers when technology is abused are the common people, you and I, all of us, and that families and society often pay a huge price for decisions made by corporations knowing that they could likely get away with it.

They make a conscious decision to steal, secure in the knowledge that they are not alone, other thieves will prevent their ever being held accountable .

This is getting worse and worse and the cost in monetary sense is already astronomical and growing exponentially due to things like pollution and shifting of innumerable costs of disinvestment to society while profits are being concentrated in fewer and fewer people. Its like a curve thats going from horizontal to vertical very rapidly. And people always underestimate the rate of change because they base it on the past. Not the future. At the same time, scientists know whats happening, that the future is rapidly growing more and more unpredictable, ad the only logical response to that rising level of risk if bad decisons are made is precaution. Its been spelled out formally in something called the precautionary principle.  Nothing is more under attack today than policies which reflect the precautionary principle. Whats being forced on us is every person atomized and alone against a united front of bad actor corporations and politicians who all have a vested interest in ever increasing dishonesty. ans elimination of any accountability. A case in point is the pressure thats being put on professionals by the harmonization of all regulations to their lowest common denominator, even when they should be harmonized upward. Only professionals have a voice to speak. So they must speak or society loses its one opportunity to save itself.

Many people now make the point that some (I think its a minority of corporations, still but the institutions driving this are pushing to make them worse) bad actor corporations (all corporations have been mistakenly given the same rights as people) are out of control. Around 1995 there was a legal shift and they now regulate countries, and not the other way around. But were being consciously deceived into thinking nothing has changed, when legally, things have a great deal. The effect is to try to make it impossible to get any accountability, ever.

Ever see "the old shell game" its a gambling game where people are asked to visually track money and guess what shell its under. A skilled shell game master will always have the people guess the wrong hand and they win a lot of money. Well, the same thing is being done to everything of value in the world. And its a huge social injustice that if left to continue has only one possible end, one so unspeakable I wont go into it. But, its totally wrong, and backwards. They dont own the world, we do. But they are so skillfully convincing us that they do because they intend to steal it, they are in fact stealing it. Because people have been dropping the ball, exhausted as they are by the fight for survival.

Technology is making it so nobody has to work, we often say.

the benefits of technology really should be shared with everybody in the work-less future.  But of course thats the oposite of capitalism which says that the investors get it all.   And there is no accountability. Its as if the whole world is being stolen by use of a straw man transaction, in order to insulate the illegitimate "owners" from the crime. But to pull this theft off requires society's consent, and to steal democracy requires them to be told its happening. So, those who steal it create unusual sets of circumstances that coincidentally, end up with them owning teh world. Our big mistake was putting trust in people who arent even people, they are legal fictions. Corporations.

corporations are designed so that the officers of the corporations are insulated from any responsibility for their actions.

This has turned out to be a huge disaster and now we're headed towards an environmental apocalypse in a number of terrifying ways. Understanding them requires an understanding of science. Speaking about them (and having the media or any public entity listen to you, especially in a formal setting requires credentials at a higher than undergraduate level, usually a doctorate in some field. Occasionally a masters degree. Engineers seem to be the sole exception, a profession that may be instantiated with some level of authority after only six or perhaps even four years. The era of the self taught expert in any field who is actually quoted in the media or respected as such, is being hastened to a close "on principle" globally even when there are no academic experts in a field because its so new.   That should scare people.

So, increasingly, the only people entrusted by society with the authority to speak are those with formal academic credentials in a field. Nobody else is allowed to speak. So they want those people with voices to be controllable, which often means misinformed.  They also want to make their jobs precarious. Like so many others. People in a state of economic fear are more amenable to "reason" as they put it.. (which in that context means corruption) Play the game and you'll be rewarded, stand up for the truth as you see it and you'll be ostracized or lose your job.

After all, in a factless scienceless world, money is everything.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2017, 10:39:12 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
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