"A sort of anti-woke summer camp."
February 20, 2024 10:07 AM Subscribe
"An alluring name, Forbidden Courses. I decided to take a look. Although my spleen is not inflamed by the culture wars, although my heart is not lifted by calls like Bari Weiss’s for a “coalition” comprised of “trads, whigs, normies,” I was curious. How plausible was their project? What ideas would they discuss? I applied to UATX last March. There was the cover letter, and the three essay questions, and the writing sample. I speckled them with Harold Bloom and Nietzsche. “Exploitation … belongs to the essence of what lives,” that sort of thing. April 6th, the letter arrived in my email inbox: “Congratulations! … UATX is extending you an offer of admission to Session I of this year's Forbidden Courses.” I flew south in June. " [Web Archive link]
Inside the "Forbidden Courses" at the billionaire-backed University of Austin, the campus of the "anti woke" commentariat. Previously on Metafilter.
Inside the "Forbidden Courses" at the billionaire-backed University of Austin, the campus of the "anti woke" commentariat. Previously on Metafilter.
“You gotta get into jiu-jitsu, man. I’m telling you.” Peter did jiu-jitsu. It’d changed his life. He spun around in his seat, scanned the rest of the bus, then whipped back to laser his eyes on me. “I could murder everybody on this bus and nobody could stop me. It’s a superpower.”
there is a type of person
posted by elkevelvet at 10:26 AM on February 20 [88 favorites]
there is a type of person
posted by elkevelvet at 10:26 AM on February 20 [88 favorites]
I think they're called sociopaths
posted by kokaku at 10:33 AM on February 20 [51 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 10:33 AM on February 20 [51 favorites]
Wonder what these people are going to do once they exhaust their half dozen topics to be edgy about.
One of the attendees asked why Weiss didn't have a liberal punching bag available, and she had no real answer.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:35 AM on February 20 [3 favorites]
One of the attendees asked why Weiss didn't have a liberal punching bag available, and she had no real answer.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:35 AM on February 20 [3 favorites]
It doesn’t get any better as you go on.
Nor do they hit on any subject that isn’t basic ass internet contrarian dressed up bigotry shit.
posted by Artw at 10:35 AM on February 20 [10 favorites]
Nor do they hit on any subject that isn’t basic ass internet contrarian dressed up bigotry shit.
posted by Artw at 10:35 AM on February 20 [10 favorites]
Oh, and they all love AI. No surprises.
posted by Artw at 10:37 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 10:37 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
I mean, it's Liberty University meets Y Combinator. That just screams "epic shit show".
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:40 AM on February 20 [25 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:40 AM on February 20 [25 favorites]
For all of UATX’s supposed concern about “the culture,” the soul, the ethic of America, what at last constituted its core was this limitless faith in the goodness of the free market and entrepreneurship, of accumulating capital by endlessly making new products. Integral to this faith was a conviction about who merited such wealth and the political power that accompanied it. This who came into focus toward the close of the entrepreneurs’ talk. “There’s something very scary in our society—where this idea of a natural aristocracy,” Lonsdale said at the end, “has like really fallen out of favor.” Here it was, for a flash unconcealed by euphemism: “a natural aristocracy.”
THE ARISTOCRATS
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on February 20 [98 favorites]
THE ARISTOCRATS
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on February 20 [98 favorites]
This sounds exactly like an Amway retreat, another multi-day performative grift for the ultra-stupid.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:45 AM on February 20 [13 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:45 AM on February 20 [13 favorites]
“I could murder everybody on this bus and nobody could stop me. It’s a superpower.”
"Peter flips out all the time! I heard there was this one time he was on a bus and somebody dropped a spoon and he murdered the whole bus. That's ultimate jiu-jitsu power!"
posted by SPrintF at 10:45 AM on February 20 [21 favorites]
"Peter flips out all the time! I heard there was this one time he was on a bus and somebody dropped a spoon and he murdered the whole bus. That's ultimate jiu-jitsu power!"
posted by SPrintF at 10:45 AM on February 20 [21 favorites]
This reminds me of the Nerd character in Infocom's Lurking Horror, which was set on a fictionalised version of the MIT campus.
At some point, if you antagonise him enough, he raises his hands and screeches "I know KERODDY!!!"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:54 AM on February 20 [13 favorites]
At some point, if you antagonise him enough, he raises his hands and screeches "I know KERODDY!!!"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:54 AM on February 20 [13 favorites]
I imagine this is what it would be like to go to a university on Ferenginar.
posted by tittergrrl at 10:57 AM on February 20 [55 favorites]
posted by tittergrrl at 10:57 AM on February 20 [55 favorites]
On the other hand the staggering amounts of money involved are distinctly unfunny.
These people’s attempts to buy themselves intellectual credibility for their fascism project may be stumbling and incoherent, and many of the millions of dollars will leak away as grift, but you have to worry that with just so much billionaire cash thrown at a project something is going to stick.
posted by Artw at 10:58 AM on February 20 [22 favorites]
These people’s attempts to buy themselves intellectual credibility for their fascism project may be stumbling and incoherent, and many of the millions of dollars will leak away as grift, but you have to worry that with just so much billionaire cash thrown at a project something is going to stick.
posted by Artw at 10:58 AM on February 20 [22 favorites]
Google Translate renders the (presumably fictitious) motto on the article's lead graphic, "aliter veritates," as "otherwise the truths," which I presume could be more colloquially rendered as "alternate facts." Or perhaps just "Contrariansim!"
posted by Gelatin at 10:59 AM on February 20 [6 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 10:59 AM on February 20 [6 favorites]
What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooism?
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:08 AM on February 20 [12 favorites]
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:08 AM on February 20 [12 favorites]
I looked at the earliest half-dozen comments on today's Hacker News thread about an article headlined "Faculty group calls on Yale to make teaching 'distinct from activism'" and just....
The comments were "all campuses are lefty indoctrination camps!" kind of stupid, and I sighed, and decided to stop looking at HN so much.
Is there no cure for the deadly nexus of "engineer's disease plus libertarianism plus whiteness plus maleness"?
posted by wenestvedt at 11:09 AM on February 20 [27 favorites]
The comments were "all campuses are lefty indoctrination camps!" kind of stupid, and I sighed, and decided to stop looking at HN so much.
Is there no cure for the deadly nexus of "engineer's disease plus libertarianism plus whiteness plus maleness"?
posted by wenestvedt at 11:09 AM on February 20 [27 favorites]
drewbage1847: What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooism?
I work in IT, and for years I have been saying that almost everyone is in the business because they liked computers better than people.
You flee social contact and spend time with your buddy the PC, and after enough years of that you get to college and study CS. Once you graduate... There you are, I guess.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:12 AM on February 20 [13 favorites]
I work in IT, and for years I have been saying that almost everyone is in the business because they liked computers better than people.
You flee social contact and spend time with your buddy the PC, and after enough years of that you get to college and study CS. Once you graduate... There you are, I guess.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:12 AM on February 20 [13 favorites]
Is there no cure for the deadly nexus of "engineer's disease plus libertarianism plus whiteness plus maleness"?
Depends - do we have access to a time machine or nah?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:13 AM on February 20 [3 favorites]
Depends - do we have access to a time machine or nah?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:13 AM on February 20 [3 favorites]
and for years I have been saying that almost everyone is in the business because they liked computers better than people.
not sure if this contributes or challenges the perception, but the two guys in my IT who specifically work with people re: onboarding (setting up new offices) or providing tech support for meetings etc. are lovely people. I wonder if they are an anomaly in my IT, for their level of exposure to people and their general decency
posted by elkevelvet at 11:19 AM on February 20 [4 favorites]
not sure if this contributes or challenges the perception, but the two guys in my IT who specifically work with people re: onboarding (setting up new offices) or providing tech support for meetings etc. are lovely people. I wonder if they are an anomaly in my IT, for their level of exposure to people and their general decency
posted by elkevelvet at 11:19 AM on February 20 [4 favorites]
"The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor. The man who has struck it rich in minerals, oil, or other bounties of nature is found explaining the debilitating effect of unearned income from the state. The corporate executive who is a superlative success as an organization man weighs in on the evils of bureaucracy. Federal aid to education is feared by those who live in suburbs that could easily forgo this danger, and by people whose children are in public schools. Socialized medicine is condemned by men emerging from Walter Reed Hospital. Social Security is viewed with alarm by those who have the comfortable cushion of an inherited income. Those who are immediately threatened by public efforts to meet their needs — whether widows, small farmers, hospitalized veterans, or the unemployed — are almost always oblivious to the danger."posted by mhoye at 11:22 AM on February 20 [181 favorites]
- John Kenneth Galbraith, "Wealth And Poverty", 1963
My experience working in the field has always been that most people I run into are pretty normal, if a bit lefty, but those are people with normal jobs and outside concerns - not your average Hacker News person.
Also there’s a difference between having a job and having some weird lifestyle/ideological commitment, and the various investment freakshows of the ZIRP period have been full of attractors for those, crypto and AI being the two most recent.
I would not actually assume any of these people knows what they are doing as relates to computers or has competence in any field except bullshit.
posted by Artw at 11:23 AM on February 20 [16 favorites]
Also there’s a difference between having a job and having some weird lifestyle/ideological commitment, and the various investment freakshows of the ZIRP period have been full of attractors for those, crypto and AI being the two most recent.
I would not actually assume any of these people knows what they are doing as relates to computers or has competence in any field except bullshit.
posted by Artw at 11:23 AM on February 20 [16 favorites]
but you have to worry that with just so much billionaire cash thrown at a project something is going to stick.
I do not, in fact, have to worry about this.
The Galbraith quote that mhoye posted above captures it pretty well: People like this have been doing stuff like this for a very long time... and it never works all that well.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:33 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
I do not, in fact, have to worry about this.
The Galbraith quote that mhoye posted above captures it pretty well: People like this have been doing stuff like this for a very long time... and it never works all that well.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:33 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
I am suddenly consumed with a desire to see if I can get a tour and see that George Bush 9-11 painting.
posted by emjaybee at 11:38 AM on February 20 [5 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 11:38 AM on February 20 [5 favorites]
I'm definitely in the realm of "I prefer animals and computers than people who aren't characters in a book" and have been in the computer realm since I was 4 and I bounced hard off the libertarian point of view, ironically, while practicing competitive shooting because it's just no way to live.
But even back in the early days of being a new pimply faced proto-engineer, there were the truly weird guys who were either ex-military or way out there conspiracy theorists who were whole hog about this stuff.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:44 AM on February 20 [7 favorites]
But even back in the early days of being a new pimply faced proto-engineer, there were the truly weird guys who were either ex-military or way out there conspiracy theorists who were whole hog about this stuff.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:44 AM on February 20 [7 favorites]
Wonder what these people are going to do once they exhaust their half dozen topics to be edgy about.
Organize politically, unfortunately. And organize economically.
posted by clawsoon at 11:53 AM on February 20 [7 favorites]
Organize politically, unfortunately. And organize economically.
posted by clawsoon at 11:53 AM on February 20 [7 favorites]
What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooism?
It's less the field itself, and more that a) it's attracted a lot of ideological cruft like the Californian Ideology that b) is allowed to fester because it appeals to a certain mindset. It also doesn't help that there's this ongoing idea that "you must give your life to code to be good at it" that also helps encourage this sort of thinking.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:53 AM on February 20 [3 favorites]
It's less the field itself, and more that a) it's attracted a lot of ideological cruft like the Californian Ideology that b) is allowed to fester because it appeals to a certain mindset. It also doesn't help that there's this ongoing idea that "you must give your life to code to be good at it" that also helps encourage this sort of thinking.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:53 AM on February 20 [3 favorites]
I think any sufficiently specialized field held in high esteem enables people with a perspective that since they understand one niche of knowledge better than most people, they must understand everything better than everyone else. Medicine, economics, hard sciences, business, and law all have people just like this. It's just that, in my opinion, the gap between how hard people think programming is versus how hard it actually is is currently the most exaggerated. I know I've caused great offense by saying that I believe one day programming will be a skill just like writing in that it will be part of nearly everyone's job and that programmers today are like the scribes of old.
Elon rather succinctly expressed this exaggerated view,
“If you look at the topography of technology awareness,” Musk said. “It's mostly flat with a few short buildings and some very tall spires. Unless you're on that tall spire it's not obvious what the topology is.”
It's not surprising that the guest speakers would include Musk boot lickers.
posted by betaray at 11:58 AM on February 20 [14 favorites]
Elon rather succinctly expressed this exaggerated view,
“If you look at the topography of technology awareness,” Musk said. “It's mostly flat with a few short buildings and some very tall spires. Unless you're on that tall spire it's not obvious what the topology is.”
It's not surprising that the guest speakers would include Musk boot lickers.
posted by betaray at 11:58 AM on February 20 [14 favorites]
Musk himself being a perfect example of bullshit pretend expertise. Thinks he’s some kind of computer genius because he wrote some extremely mediocre code in the late 90s, now spouts utter nonsense and expects adulation.
posted by Artw at 12:03 PM on February 20 [21 favorites]
posted by Artw at 12:03 PM on February 20 [21 favorites]
What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooism?First, it’s a big field and heavily promoted for the last couple of decades so I wouldn’t overweight this too much. That said, I think there are two factors skewing things: it’s offered an above-average income without high barriers to entry and at least the dream of riches without needing to be good with people or a skilled leader, so you get more people driven by those factors than many other careers. Not everyone by any means is a dude who thinks that earning low six figures should entitle you to a hot spouse regardless of their actual appeal, but a lot of the guys who think that way got into IT.
The other is which is shared with fields like business, economics, physics, etc. is a little deeper: you’re building orderly abstractions for the real world, and it’s easy to confuse them with being some kind of deeper reality rather than approximations which are more comfortable to work with. You won’t find many biologists who think there are two innate genders with simple definitions but someone whose day job is doing something like OOP class hierarchies or reducing complex situations to a number in a spreadsheet might not have studied enough biology to override that instinct for simple absolutes. (Again, there are many people in IT who do know better, I’m only saying that people drawn to absolutes seem to gravitate to fields where that’s common.)
posted by adamsc at 12:06 PM on February 20 [50 favorites]
a natural aristocracy.
This is what I hear whenever people say "meritocracy"
posted by srboisvert at 12:25 PM on February 20 [16 favorites]
This is what I hear whenever people say "meritocracy"
posted by srboisvert at 12:25 PM on February 20 [16 favorites]
I dropped out of a Computer Science programme in San Francisco in the mid-90s, specifically because my classmates were less interested in the interesting puzzles to be explored in the world of Computation, and more interested in daydreaming about how rich Bill Gates was. I was fortunate that I dropped right into a dot-com boom of Linux companies that let me revel in the Mutual Aid world of Free Software, and unfortunate that it quickly got overtaken by the people who would go on to build spaces like HN.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:27 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:27 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
It’s also the case that there isn’t really an academic identity around “regional car dealership owner”, the archetypical middle class chud profession.
posted by Artw at 12:27 PM on February 20 [16 favorites]
posted by Artw at 12:27 PM on February 20 [16 favorites]
srboisvert: that was actually the original meaning of the term, as coined. Sadly Young's son has become a Brexiteer eugenicist spiv, and I had to deal with the man occasionally when I lived in Hammersmith.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:29 PM on February 20 [8 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:29 PM on February 20 [8 favorites]
My experience working in the field has always been that most people I run into are pretty normal, if a bit lefty, but those are people with normal jobs and outside concerns - not your average Hacker News person.
I’ve been on a programming kick lately and going to Hacker News more often than I used to and frankly my impression of the average commenter isn’t that bad, either. I mean, there are more center-left Californians with predictable upper class biases (i.e. the same kind of people I encounter as coworkers) than techno-monarchists. But obviously some topics tend to bring out more of the uglier side.
posted by atoxyl at 12:31 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
I’ve been on a programming kick lately and going to Hacker News more often than I used to and frankly my impression of the average commenter isn’t that bad, either. I mean, there are more center-left Californians with predictable upper class biases (i.e. the same kind of people I encounter as coworkers) than techno-monarchists. But obviously some topics tend to bring out more of the uglier side.
posted by atoxyl at 12:31 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
I remember years ago seeing some place a critique of the programmer mindset. It emphasized that for some the computer is a very logical device, and the programmer can control it and make it do whatever they want. That is, it’s not a messy, illogical person or an impossible to fully control reality. In other words, control and predictability are requirements for some people.
posted by njohnson23 at 1:03 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 1:03 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
Control and predictability are requirements for everyone, I should think. People who live without those things end up traumatized.
posted by eruonna at 1:22 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
posted by eruonna at 1:22 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
Surprised to see people here focusing on the computer science angle, which was a bit of a throwaway in the article, rather than the Harlan Crow angle, which wasn't.
posted by Gadarene at 1:30 PM on February 20 [20 favorites]
posted by Gadarene at 1:30 PM on February 20 [20 favorites]
I guess what always occurs to me when I see this kind of colossal bullshit is, "hey dude" - its nearly always a dude - "why do you think you're NOT going to end up as one of the serfs", cause unless you're a billionaire, odds are you're going to be one of the serfs.
WTF - why can't these asswipes just be decently human for one fucking minute....
posted by WatTylerJr at 1:40 PM on February 20 [9 favorites]
WTF - why can't these asswipes just be decently human for one fucking minute....
posted by WatTylerJr at 1:40 PM on February 20 [9 favorites]
Surprised to see people here focusing on the computer science angle, which was a bit of a throwaway in the article, rather than the Harlan Crow angle, which wasn't.
Notably Crow is from old fashioned slumlord/robber baron money, none of this new fangled tech stuff.
posted by Artw at 1:47 PM on February 20 [10 favorites]
Notably Crow is from old fashioned slumlord/robber baron money, none of this new fangled tech stuff.
posted by Artw at 1:47 PM on February 20 [10 favorites]
Pano is the former president of St. John’s in Annapolis, a liberal arts college known for its Great Books curriculum. He left to found UATX in 2021, writing that “our education system has become illiberal” on Bari Weiss’s Substack in November of that year.
I fucking can't wait for that to disappear from his bio. Kanelos left an entirely discussion-based curriculum based on reading primary sources because he hates independent thought. He went for apparently a curriculum that is just lectures like any other institution in the country, with the big difference from the typical university that the instructors don't seem to have actual sources for their lectures and indeed "UATX" doesn't seem to require any readings at all. This "school" doesn't seem to even require them to do homework or exercise any thought at all on their own except for the stupid ass "Street Epistomology".
posted by hydropsyche at 1:56 PM on February 20 [18 favorites]
I fucking can't wait for that to disappear from his bio. Kanelos left an entirely discussion-based curriculum based on reading primary sources because he hates independent thought. He went for apparently a curriculum that is just lectures like any other institution in the country, with the big difference from the typical university that the instructors don't seem to have actual sources for their lectures and indeed "UATX" doesn't seem to require any readings at all. This "school" doesn't seem to even require them to do homework or exercise any thought at all on their own except for the stupid ass "Street Epistomology".
posted by hydropsyche at 1:56 PM on February 20 [18 favorites]
soon, AI will be able to "solve" all sorts of social and economics programs - and guess what people with what political philosophy are going to be doing the programming?
you know, to do the logical thing ...
posted by pyramid termite at 2:12 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
you know, to do the logical thing ...
posted by pyramid termite at 2:12 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooism?
It became a go-to field for people who are primarily and only interested in earning lots and lots of money.
A whole lot of people who once would have majored in business now major in CS, which carries the cachet that comes with an engineering degree and opens the door to a bunch of jobs in finance.
Are there still students out there who are excited about programming in and of itself? Sure. But they aren't always the dominant culture in CS departments, which are home to an increasing number of students who aren't interested in programming for its own sake, but as a means toward getting rich, becoming an entrepreneur, or working at a venture capital or private equity firm.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 2:18 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
It became a go-to field for people who are primarily and only interested in earning lots and lots of money.
A whole lot of people who once would have majored in business now major in CS, which carries the cachet that comes with an engineering degree and opens the door to a bunch of jobs in finance.
Are there still students out there who are excited about programming in and of itself? Sure. But they aren't always the dominant culture in CS departments, which are home to an increasing number of students who aren't interested in programming for its own sake, but as a means toward getting rich, becoming an entrepreneur, or working at a venture capital or private equity firm.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 2:18 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
Surprised to see people here focusing on the computer science angle, which was a bit of a throwaway in the article, rather than the Harlan Crow angle, which wasn't.
Idk. I'm kind of grateful that more people on this site relate to majoring in computer science than relate to being Harlan Crow.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 2:22 PM on February 20 [11 favorites]
Idk. I'm kind of grateful that more people on this site relate to majoring in computer science than relate to being Harlan Crow.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 2:22 PM on February 20 [11 favorites]
Courses so forbidden anyone can sign up for them. That's about as forbidden as the "special occasions only" cookies in my cabinet.
posted by praemunire at 2:25 PM on February 20 [35 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 2:25 PM on February 20 [35 favorites]
Kanelos left an entirely discussion-based curriculum based on reading primary sources because he hates independent thought.
Yes, this is bizarre. If anything represents the confused-but-modestly-good-faith conservative view of education, it's a bunch of dudes sitting around arguing about what the Greeks said. Is he mad they wouldn't let him assign papers on why Plato would've been totally down with using the n-word?
posted by praemunire at 2:27 PM on February 20 [4 favorites]
Yes, this is bizarre. If anything represents the confused-but-modestly-good-faith conservative view of education, it's a bunch of dudes sitting around arguing about what the Greeks said. Is he mad they wouldn't let him assign papers on why Plato would've been totally down with using the n-word?
posted by praemunire at 2:27 PM on February 20 [4 favorites]
Forbidden as I’m the “oh you know the ones” cancelled for conservative thoughts meme.
posted by Artw at 2:29 PM on February 20 [6 favorites]
posted by Artw at 2:29 PM on February 20 [6 favorites]
The Internet: Hey. I just wanted you to know that you can't just say the word "
UATX : I didn't say it. I declared it.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:41 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
a natural aristocracy.
This is what I hear whenever people say "meritocracy"
Interestingly this is exactly right for these group of people. There is a right-wing philosopher named Nick Land who laid the foundation ~10 years ago for the "Dark Englightenment" (a term he coined in a series of essays in 2013)/neo-reactionary movement that these people represent (the article doesn't mention these terms specifically but I guarantee a good chunk of the people involve explicitly identify with them). His views are VERY influential in this crowd.
He is a hardcore free-marketeer and believes that the world is inherently un-egalitarian, and since the free market naturally leads to small concentrations of wealth and power, the right and natural order of things is a corporate-government "capitalist monarchy" ruled by an aristocracy of the "best" who will naturally and inevitably rise to the top of society in a truly free market via their merit. Democracy is a lie created by the inferior masses that can only destroy freedom and create chaos by denying the true reality of things. He also advocates for eugenics and "scientific racism" which he calls "hyper-racism" (yes, really) which is one more thing that the market will naturally shake out if only it were left alone to let the cream rise to the top.
So this is what these people are talking about when they speak of the "natural aristocracy".
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:45 PM on February 20 [23 favorites]
This is what I hear whenever people say "meritocracy"
Interestingly this is exactly right for these group of people. There is a right-wing philosopher named Nick Land who laid the foundation ~10 years ago for the "Dark Englightenment" (a term he coined in a series of essays in 2013)/neo-reactionary movement that these people represent (the article doesn't mention these terms specifically but I guarantee a good chunk of the people involve explicitly identify with them). His views are VERY influential in this crowd.
He is a hardcore free-marketeer and believes that the world is inherently un-egalitarian, and since the free market naturally leads to small concentrations of wealth and power, the right and natural order of things is a corporate-government "capitalist monarchy" ruled by an aristocracy of the "best" who will naturally and inevitably rise to the top of society in a truly free market via their merit. Democracy is a lie created by the inferior masses that can only destroy freedom and create chaos by denying the true reality of things. He also advocates for eugenics and "scientific racism" which he calls "hyper-racism" (yes, really) which is one more thing that the market will naturally shake out if only it were left alone to let the cream rise to the top.
So this is what these people are talking about when they speak of the "natural aristocracy".
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:45 PM on February 20 [23 favorites]
The fact that the term "meritocracy" was first used pejoratively by its inventor always amuses me.
posted by signal at 2:50 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
posted by signal at 2:50 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
“Rise to the top vis their merit.”
I have a problem with this idea, because I can’t really fathom what their merit is, given the caliber of the people who appear to occupy the top. Musk? Trump? Bezos? Zuckerberg? Etc. I agree that aristocracies are shit, but these dudes are really enshittifying the concept of an aristocracy. The root problem here, seems to be to me, the whole idea of just getting rich, coupled with idea that they deserve to be rich. If someone came up with a real cure for cancer and just happened to get loads of money as a result doesn’t seem to be bad if they wanted first to cure cancer. All these idols worshipped now didn’t cure anything, they just lucked out making a ton of money based on both the gullibility and the herd nature of a lot of people. It’s like white supremacy. The people who promote it don’t seem to be anything close to being supreme over anything including 💩.
posted by njohnson23 at 3:06 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
I have a problem with this idea, because I can’t really fathom what their merit is, given the caliber of the people who appear to occupy the top. Musk? Trump? Bezos? Zuckerberg? Etc. I agree that aristocracies are shit, but these dudes are really enshittifying the concept of an aristocracy. The root problem here, seems to be to me, the whole idea of just getting rich, coupled with idea that they deserve to be rich. If someone came up with a real cure for cancer and just happened to get loads of money as a result doesn’t seem to be bad if they wanted first to cure cancer. All these idols worshipped now didn’t cure anything, they just lucked out making a ton of money based on both the gullibility and the herd nature of a lot of people. It’s like white supremacy. The people who promote it don’t seem to be anything close to being supreme over anything including 💩.
posted by njohnson23 at 3:06 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
Not to drag us back to the "my superpower is killing everyone on this bus" thing but did anyone else very much read it as "everyone on [The School] bus" or is that just me?
posted by stet at 3:07 PM on February 20 [4 favorites]
posted by stet at 3:07 PM on February 20 [4 favorites]
but these dudes are really enshittifying the concept of an aristocracy
what is the concept of an aristocracy? I'm no historian, but any rationalization for The Ruling Class falls apart if you stare at it long and hard enough
your observation comes across as a sort of tautology, is what I'm saying
posted by elkevelvet at 3:12 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
what is the concept of an aristocracy? I'm no historian, but any rationalization for The Ruling Class falls apart if you stare at it long and hard enough
your observation comes across as a sort of tautology, is what I'm saying
posted by elkevelvet at 3:12 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
Computer sciencey types wishing to avoid the anarcho-capitalist pit of Hacker News may wish to consider Lobsters. Memail if you want an invite, but consider lurking first to get the tone. Most MeFiers will feel reasonably at home.
posted by echo target at 3:17 PM on February 20 [10 favorites]
posted by echo target at 3:17 PM on February 20 [10 favorites]
For an aristocracy to be enshitified they would have had to have lead with some kind of meaningful service which then turned bad after they gained market capture, and really all of them have been parasitic jackasses for the whole of history so it doesn’t really apply.
posted by Artw at 3:29 PM on February 20 [11 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:29 PM on February 20 [11 favorites]
In the old days, the aristocracy ruled by the grace of god, they were ordained by god to rule over us. The divine right of kings, and all that. But us modern types know from reading history that they were all just a bunch of wankers with various levels of evil and didn’t deserve any respect. But still there exists some notion of the deservedly respected and admired that we all must bow down to. Granted, the notion only exists in the minds of such people I mentioned above and those who think they can be just like them, the pseudo-aristocracy of rich bastards and those who jealously admire them.
posted by njohnson23 at 3:42 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 3:42 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
Bootlickers are always gonna have a bunch of retvrn fantasies.
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
The other is which is shared with fields like business, economics, physics, etc. is a little deeper: you’re building orderly abstractions for the real world, and it’s easy to confuse them with being some kind of deeper reality rather than approximations which are more comfortable to work with.
Aha! This is key! One should constantly be filled with tension and unease when deciding the abstractions to shoehorn the problem domain into- with the knowledge that there are cases outside your awareness that you may be called on to adapt to.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 4:15 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
Aha! This is key! One should constantly be filled with tension and unease when deciding the abstractions to shoehorn the problem domain into- with the knowledge that there are cases outside your awareness that you may be called on to adapt to.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 4:15 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
“You gotta get into jiu-jitsu, man. I’m telling you.” Peter did jiu-jitsu. It’d changed his life. He spun around in his seat, scanned the rest of the bus, then whipped back to laser his eyes on me. “I could murder everybody on this bus and nobody could stop me. It’s a superpower.”
Was that Dwight Schrute on the bus??
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:28 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
Was that Dwight Schrute on the bus??
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:28 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
and for years I have been saying that almost everyone is in the business because they liked computers better than people.
not sure if this contributes or challenges the perception, but the two guys in my IT who specifically work with people re: onboarding (setting up new offices) or providing tech support for meetings etc. are lovely people. I wonder if they are an anomaly in my IT, for their level of exposure to people and their general decency
For me, every help-desk set-up-your-equipment, employee facing IT person I've worked with has been one of the coolest people in the office and not some right-wing asshole. I do think its the fact that they have to interact with us normies all the time that keeps them sane.
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:49 PM on February 20 [8 favorites]
not sure if this contributes or challenges the perception, but the two guys in my IT who specifically work with people re: onboarding (setting up new offices) or providing tech support for meetings etc. are lovely people. I wonder if they are an anomaly in my IT, for their level of exposure to people and their general decency
For me, every help-desk set-up-your-equipment, employee facing IT person I've worked with has been one of the coolest people in the office and not some right-wing asshole. I do think its the fact that they have to interact with us normies all the time that keeps them sane.
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:49 PM on February 20 [8 favorites]
“You gotta get into jiu-jitsu, man. I’m telling you. (...) I could murder everybody on this bus and nobody could stop me. It’s a superpower.”
I can only hear this in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:19 PM on February 20 [8 favorites]
I can only hear this in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:19 PM on February 20 [8 favorites]
People working the help desk aren't people who studied computer science at a university. It's important to realize that the kind of people who fall for this kind of thinking are, in fact, slightly smarter than average, but think they are examples of the smartest human beings ever produced. That's why the eugenics thing is so popular among them, they really think they are the best.
posted by betaray at 6:32 PM on February 20 [12 favorites]
posted by betaray at 6:32 PM on February 20 [12 favorites]
People who live without those things end up traumatized.
Or you do enough hard drugs that you realize you never had any control, you’ll never get any control, and worrying about control is a waste of time in the end. You are being swept down a river; avoid the rocks.
posted by aramaic at 6:55 PM on February 20 [12 favorites]
Or you do enough hard drugs that you realize you never had any control, you’ll never get any control, and worrying about control is a waste of time in the end. You are being swept down a river; avoid the rocks.
posted by aramaic at 6:55 PM on February 20 [12 favorites]
Control and predictability are requirements for everyone, I should think. People who live without those things end up traumatized.
To a certain degree yes, but the notion that you can have full control, full understanding, full predictability in the real world is a pathological delusion that can lead you to some pretty anti-social behavior. If that's how the world works, than everyone who has something bad happens to them deserves it, by dint of not controlling things correctly, and any reckless disregard for risk that works out is obviously a Good Decision, because you obviously Predicted and Controlled things successfully!
posted by aubilenon at 7:44 PM on February 20 [12 favorites]
To a certain degree yes, but the notion that you can have full control, full understanding, full predictability in the real world is a pathological delusion that can lead you to some pretty anti-social behavior. If that's how the world works, than everyone who has something bad happens to them deserves it, by dint of not controlling things correctly, and any reckless disregard for risk that works out is obviously a Good Decision, because you obviously Predicted and Controlled things successfully!
posted by aubilenon at 7:44 PM on February 20 [12 favorites]
I'm not sure what people are really saying here. I've a kid who is doing well in a CS program at a decent school, and who also has problems interacting with other people thanks to ASD/ADHD. Maybe be careful of what you're implying?
posted by mollweide at 8:03 PM on February 20 [11 favorites]
posted by mollweide at 8:03 PM on February 20 [11 favorites]
I mean this program is shit, but let's be careful where we aim our ire, okay?
posted by mollweide at 8:16 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
posted by mollweide at 8:16 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooism?
My two cents on this is that it’s not just that it attracts them, but that the advantages of having someone, anyone, who can work the technology has been enough to mean a lot of people are willing to tolerate a bunch of pricks who might not survive in a field with more competition.
I think the overlap with incel types is no accident: these are people who’ve never been properly socialized, but who are tolerated all the same because of their role in society.
While I’m hoping that increasing technology understanding, or simplification to the point that less understanding is required, will put a lot of them out of work, the downside a la incels is that this doesn’t seem to translate into them actually become better people.
posted by pulposus at 9:08 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
My two cents on this is that it’s not just that it attracts them, but that the advantages of having someone, anyone, who can work the technology has been enough to mean a lot of people are willing to tolerate a bunch of pricks who might not survive in a field with more competition.
I think the overlap with incel types is no accident: these are people who’ve never been properly socialized, but who are tolerated all the same because of their role in society.
While I’m hoping that increasing technology understanding, or simplification to the point that less understanding is required, will put a lot of them out of work, the downside a la incels is that this doesn’t seem to translate into them actually become better people.
posted by pulposus at 9:08 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
I suspect this is like one of those counterintuitive Bayes theorem examples that they give you for medical diagnosis false positives. It can be simultaneously true that most computer scientists don't believe dumb right-wing shit, but also that most of the people who came to these dumb right-wing shit classes are computer scientists. This is able to happen because the total number of computer scientists is much, much larger than the number of computer scientists who showed up to these classes.
It's kinda like the Salem hypothesis: Most electrical engineers aren't creationists, but if you're in an argument with a creationist and they say "I have a scientific background" they're probably an electrical engineer.
posted by clawsoon at 9:10 PM on February 20 [28 favorites]
It's kinda like the Salem hypothesis: Most electrical engineers aren't creationists, but if you're in an argument with a creationist and they say "I have a scientific background" they're probably an electrical engineer.
posted by clawsoon at 9:10 PM on February 20 [28 favorites]
I'm not sure what it was about this program that attracted computer scientists susceptible to this line of thinking, but to be clear, this kind of thought is found in many different professions. The individual who prescribed Ivermectin to Joe Rogan is a physician.
posted by betaray at 9:54 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
posted by betaray at 9:54 PM on February 20 [5 favorites]
For better or worse I also spend time on Slashdot which has a huge contingent of right wing trolls. Some are of the pseudo-rational libertarian stripe but the range goes all the way to hard core Nazi/racist/misogynists. One thing I've noticed is that their claimed mastery of software technology is used to justify the assumption they are experts on everything. Even the slightest effort to fact check shows how clueless they are, but pointing that out is completely useless.
There are a lot of software people who are not formally trained academically but picked it up on their own. I have often wondered if that is a factor in their blind faith in their self proclaimed superiority.
By the way, when it comes to being anti-woke, the opposite of being woke is being comatose, or as I like to think of it brain dead.
posted by Metacircular at 10:52 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
There are a lot of software people who are not formally trained academically but picked it up on their own. I have often wondered if that is a factor in their blind faith in their self proclaimed superiority.
By the way, when it comes to being anti-woke, the opposite of being woke is being comatose, or as I like to think of it brain dead.
posted by Metacircular at 10:52 PM on February 20 [7 favorites]
Thanks for posting this. I've forwarded it to a friend of mine, an unworldly English academic blessedly ignorant of American culture wars, who was approached by a recruiter for the University of Austin and, last I heard, was seriously considering a position there.
posted by verstegan at 2:21 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
posted by verstegan at 2:21 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
I am suddenly consumed with a desire to see if I can get a tour and see that George Bush 9-11 painting.
I did a quick search and came up empty. Harlan Crow probably wants AI to succeed so he can cut out the middleman and quickly produce whatever he considers to be art to hang in the halls of this hallowed campus.
posted by LostInUbe at 3:26 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]
I did a quick search and came up empty. Harlan Crow probably wants AI to succeed so he can cut out the middleman and quickly produce whatever he considers to be art to hang in the halls of this hallowed campus.
posted by LostInUbe at 3:26 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]
I think it’s less CS than applied science fields — CS, engineering, medicine, etc — where you interact with science, but you don’t do it. All of them evolve understanding when to apply principles but not so much testing or analyzing those principles. There’s also a lot of memorizing and internalizing technique and imagining that that equals mastery of the related field as well. It’s not like any of these programs are super-noted for their critical thinking.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:51 AM on February 21 [7 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:51 AM on February 21 [7 favorites]
Also, those fields are more male-dominated, have social status, attract students who want “a good job” (i.e. more money and status), value “rationality” so assume that they and their opinions are “rational,” and, in general, are trying to “win” in the current system, so they inevitably will side with that system and make excuses for it.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:59 AM on February 21 [6 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:59 AM on February 21 [6 favorites]
There's nothing about computer science as a subject that attracts these types of people, any more than there's something about medicine or advertising or real estate or stand-up comedy.
It's just where money and privilege happen to be focused currently.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:24 AM on February 21 [9 favorites]
It's just where money and privilege happen to be focused currently.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:24 AM on February 21 [9 favorites]
It's also like the fact that atheists are the group most likely to support trans rights, with the asshole atheists outnumbered 3-or-4 to 1, but somehow every atheist with a big podcast is an anti-trans asshole.
posted by clawsoon at 5:24 AM on February 21 [12 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 5:24 AM on February 21 [12 favorites]
Google Translate renders the (presumably fictitious) motto on the article's lead graphic, "aliter veritates," as "otherwise the truths," which I presume could be more colloquially rendered as "alternate facts." Or perhaps just "Contrariansim!"
The crest and motto were created for the article, not the school, so yes, fictitious. The only question is, was the bad Latin intentional? And was the plurilized veritas a jab at Harvard's motto? (Google Translate, by the way, should never be allowed near certain languages, Latin among them.)
It's not surprising that the guest speakers would include Musk boot lickers.
I went to the site (.org, not .edu, fwiw) and the first face I see is former ACLU president and Free Speech Activist Nadine Strossen. (She has elsewhere expressed her thoughts on Musk and the first amendment).
The joint's curriculum seems more of a Hillsdale College / St John's sort of thing than Techno U. Could use some language instruction.
posted by BWA at 5:35 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
The crest and motto were created for the article, not the school, so yes, fictitious. The only question is, was the bad Latin intentional? And was the plurilized veritas a jab at Harvard's motto? (Google Translate, by the way, should never be allowed near certain languages, Latin among them.)
It's not surprising that the guest speakers would include Musk boot lickers.
I went to the site (.org, not .edu, fwiw) and the first face I see is former ACLU president and Free Speech Activist Nadine Strossen. (She has elsewhere expressed her thoughts on Musk and the first amendment).
The joint's curriculum seems more of a Hillsdale College / St John's sort of thing than Techno U. Could use some language instruction.
posted by BWA at 5:35 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
Forbidden Courses
Meanwhile, University of North Texas Libraries cancel Pride events to comply with Texas DEI ban. Other Pride events might be next
posted by AlSweigart at 5:38 AM on February 21 [8 favorites]
Meanwhile, University of North Texas Libraries cancel Pride events to comply with Texas DEI ban. Other Pride events might be next
posted by AlSweigart at 5:38 AM on February 21 [8 favorites]
That article was a corker. Well deserved mockery from start to finish.
posted by Gelatin at 5:53 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 5:53 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
It emphasized that for some the computer is a very logical device, and the programmer can control it and make it do whatever they want.
Most scientists write tons of code but that doesn't make them assholes.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:18 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]
Most scientists write tons of code but that doesn't make them assholes.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:18 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]
a natural aristocracy.
This is what I hear whenever people say "meritocracy"
That's the fun part! Meritocracy is hybrid Latin/Greek for "rule by the deserving", and aristocracy is all Greek for... "rule by the deserving"!
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:29 AM on February 21 [10 favorites]
This is what I hear whenever people say "meritocracy"
That's the fun part! Meritocracy is hybrid Latin/Greek for "rule by the deserving", and aristocracy is all Greek for... "rule by the deserving"!
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:29 AM on February 21 [10 favorites]
On reread, the articl is just chock full of gems. This bit stood out:
It happened to be Father’s Day, so when Peter, in between lauding UATX’s rigorous admission standards, mentioned a son, I wished him a happy one.
“Oh thanks,” he said. “I got jack and shit.” Muzak dribbled out of the hotel sound system.
It's hilarious that someone pivots from loudly touting meritocracy to complaining that he didn't get recognized for just existing without missing a beat.
posted by Gelatin at 6:45 AM on February 21 [10 favorites]
It happened to be Father’s Day, so when Peter, in between lauding UATX’s rigorous admission standards, mentioned a son, I wished him a happy one.
“Oh thanks,” he said. “I got jack and shit.” Muzak dribbled out of the hotel sound system.
It's hilarious that someone pivots from loudly touting meritocracy to complaining that he didn't get recognized for just existing without missing a beat.
posted by Gelatin at 6:45 AM on February 21 [10 favorites]
Meanwhile, University of North Texas Libraries cancel Pride events to comply with Texas DEI ban. Other Pride events might be next
I wonder if Black History Month events were cancelled as well; it certainly seems the law could be interpreted that way. As well as prohibiting events commemorating any specific group of people; Native Americans, women, Irish, Latin, and so on.
posted by TedW at 7:01 AM on February 21
I wonder if Black History Month events were cancelled as well; it certainly seems the law could be interpreted that way. As well as prohibiting events commemorating any specific group of people; Native Americans, women, Irish, Latin, and so on.
posted by TedW at 7:01 AM on February 21
Katie Roiphe! I haven't heard that name in years.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:24 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:24 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]
Meanwhile this guy gets to dismantle the regular academic world.
Last month a “manifesto” written by Rufo – The New Right Activism – ran in the online and print versions of IM-1776, and Rufo has publicly urged his audience to buy and subscribe to the outlet. He has also co-hosted a series of Twitter spaces with the magazine’s editors, beginning in July last year.
posted by Artw at 7:29 AM on February 21
Last month a “manifesto” written by Rufo – The New Right Activism – ran in the online and print versions of IM-1776, and Rufo has publicly urged his audience to buy and subscribe to the outlet. He has also co-hosted a series of Twitter spaces with the magazine’s editors, beginning in July last year.
posted by Artw at 7:29 AM on February 21
Katie Roiphe! I haven't heard that name in years.
Me either, but I am glad when any mention of her points out, as this article does, how terrible her ideas are.
posted by Gelatin at 7:34 AM on February 21 [6 favorites]
Me either, but I am glad when any mention of her points out, as this article does, how terrible her ideas are.
posted by Gelatin at 7:34 AM on February 21 [6 favorites]
I wonder what on earth happens on their high school tour.
Poking around their website is a mix of entertaining and disturbing. In the FAQs:
WILL ACCREDITATION APPLY RETROACTIVELY TO UATX’S FIRST GRADUATING CLASS?
We are working with the accreditors to maximize the chances that our students will graduate with a degree from an accredited institution. If our official accreditation happens shortly after graduation, there are paths possible wherein it would apply retroactively to include the graduation date of the first class. The degrees that our students will earn will meet the high standards demanded by accreditors. In addition, we are also working on articulation agreements with other universities, so that our graduates are recognized as having met high academic standards upon matriculation and would be eligible to apply to graduate school at these universities.
Make accreditation great again?
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:51 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
Poking around their website is a mix of entertaining and disturbing. In the FAQs:
WILL ACCREDITATION APPLY RETROACTIVELY TO UATX’S FIRST GRADUATING CLASS?
We are working with the accreditors to maximize the chances that our students will graduate with a degree from an accredited institution. If our official accreditation happens shortly after graduation, there are paths possible wherein it would apply retroactively to include the graduation date of the first class. The degrees that our students will earn will meet the high standards demanded by accreditors. In addition, we are also working on articulation agreements with other universities, so that our graduates are recognized as having met high academic standards upon matriculation and would be eligible to apply to graduate school at these universities.
Make accreditation great again?
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:51 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
The degrees that our students will earn will meet the high standards demanded by accreditors.
That claim sounds fishy, since the technique for defending their ideas from other, more credible points of view mostly seems to be a Gish Gallop of "Are you SURE?!?!"
posted by Gelatin at 8:10 AM on February 21 [5 favorites]
That claim sounds fishy, since the technique for defending their ideas from other, more credible points of view mostly seems to be a Gish Gallop of "Are you SURE?!?!"
posted by Gelatin at 8:10 AM on February 21 [5 favorites]
“You gotta get into jiu-jitsu, man. I’m telling you. (...) I could murder everybody on this bus and nobody could stop me. It’s a superpower.”
I can only hear this in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite.
Rex Kwon Do.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:21 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
I can only hear this in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite.
Rex Kwon Do.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:21 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
BOW TO YOUR SENSEI!
posted by grubi at 8:32 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
posted by grubi at 8:32 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
i gotta learn how to gish gallop good cause i think galloping on them right at the start of the conversation would wrong-foot them so badly they wouldn't be able to recover, particularly if one were to diligently keep the gallop going no matter what.
like does anyone know of good references / training tools on learning to gish gallop well? are there debate team kids here who can help me out?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:37 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
like does anyone know of good references / training tools on learning to gish gallop well? are there debate team kids here who can help me out?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:37 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
WILL ACCREDITATION APPLY RETROACTIVELY TO UATX’S FIRST GRADUATING CLASS?
glad you raised the question, corpse in library
in terms of transfer credit agreements, the credible institutions I know of would scrutiny credit hours and/or credit weight of courses. what is described here sounds more like a series of seminars (at best).. like getting credit for attending a TedTalk? I don't think so
posted by elkevelvet at 8:44 AM on February 21 [5 favorites]
glad you raised the question, corpse in library
in terms of transfer credit agreements, the credible institutions I know of would scrutiny credit hours and/or credit weight of courses. what is described here sounds more like a series of seminars (at best).. like getting credit for attending a TedTalk? I don't think so
posted by elkevelvet at 8:44 AM on February 21 [5 favorites]
Control and predictability are requirements for everyone, I should think. People who live without those things end up traumatized.
Uh, no.
There are people who thrive on getting thrown into chaotic situations without warning and setting them straight. They are entrepreneurs, doctors, firefighters, and social workers to name a few. They are energized by problems and often bored by routine.
Not saying that is for everyone at all, but generalizing like this doesn't help anyone either.
posted by bonehead at 8:55 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
Uh, no.
There are people who thrive on getting thrown into chaotic situations without warning and setting them straight. They are entrepreneurs, doctors, firefighters, and social workers to name a few. They are energized by problems and often bored by routine.
Not saying that is for everyone at all, but generalizing like this doesn't help anyone either.
posted by bonehead at 8:55 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
UATX is to be pronounced "You Attacks", I presume?
posted by heatherlogan at 8:56 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
posted by heatherlogan at 8:56 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
mollweide: I've a kid who is doing well in a CS program at a decent school, and who also has problems interacting with other people thanks to ASD/ADHD. Maybe be careful of what you're implying?
Not sure if you were addressing me, but I also have a kid who's doing well in a CS program. Good job, kids!
I am saying that programming is a career that can allow you to be successful while limiting your person-to-person interactions. Allowing this tendency to go unchecked can let your interpersonal skills atrophy -- which is especially dangerous if they weren't strong to begin with. So I often talk to all of my kids about being mindful of everyone's limitations, and being kind & patient, and not being too impatient with others' lack of technical knowledge, and remembering that everyone has a weakness. In other words, being aware of this danger helps you avoid it. Good job, parents!
I came to IT (in higher ed) from a literature background: I'm an English major, the butt of almost as many jokes as philosophy majors. As an inveterate reader, I am on the border of the same introversion tendency. It puts me in a good position between "leave me alone" technicians and "let's workshop this" educators & admin staff. At the risk of referencing another FPP, "I have people skills, I talk to the customers so the engineers don't have to" -- and that skill is actually a valuable one, for both parties.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on February 21 [8 favorites]
Not sure if you were addressing me, but I also have a kid who's doing well in a CS program. Good job, kids!
I am saying that programming is a career that can allow you to be successful while limiting your person-to-person interactions. Allowing this tendency to go unchecked can let your interpersonal skills atrophy -- which is especially dangerous if they weren't strong to begin with. So I often talk to all of my kids about being mindful of everyone's limitations, and being kind & patient, and not being too impatient with others' lack of technical knowledge, and remembering that everyone has a weakness. In other words, being aware of this danger helps you avoid it. Good job, parents!
I came to IT (in higher ed) from a literature background: I'm an English major, the butt of almost as many jokes as philosophy majors. As an inveterate reader, I am on the border of the same introversion tendency. It puts me in a good position between "leave me alone" technicians and "let's workshop this" educators & admin staff. At the risk of referencing another FPP, "I have people skills, I talk to the customers so the engineers don't have to" -- and that skill is actually a valuable one, for both parties.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on February 21 [8 favorites]
F. Scott Fitzgerald had guys like this figured out in The Great Gadsby:
“Civilization is going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of un-thoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them.”
posted by jonp72 at 9:31 AM on February 21 [18 favorites]
“Civilization is going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of un-thoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them.”
posted by jonp72 at 9:31 AM on February 21 [18 favorites]
There are people who thrive on getting thrown into chaotic situations without warning and setting them straight.
Ability to set things straight is having control, no?
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 9:43 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
Ability to set things straight is having control, no?
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 9:43 AM on February 21 [3 favorites]
WILL ACCREDITATION APPLY RETROACTIVELY TO UATX’S FIRST GRADUATING CLASS?
Between the for-profit colleges, the evangelicals, and the creationists, I imagine they'll find someone to accredit them.
posted by box at 10:04 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
Between the for-profit colleges, the evangelicals, and the creationists, I imagine they'll find someone to accredit them.
posted by box at 10:04 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]
There are people who thrive on getting thrown into chaotic situations without warning and setting them straight.
And then there are people, like Mao and Trump, who thrive in chaos and like to create as much of it for other people as possible.
posted by clawsoon at 10:15 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
And then there are people, like Mao and Trump, who thrive in chaos and like to create as much of it for other people as possible.
posted by clawsoon at 10:15 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
I wonder if Black History Month events were cancelled as well; it certainly seems the law could be interpreted that way. As well as prohibiting events commemorating any specific group of people; Native Americans, women, Irish, Latin, and so on.
Would that also put a tribute to the Founding Fathers on the chopping block? Or would they just say "no of course we didn't mean that!" like they do when a book ban applies to the Bible?
posted by clawsoon at 10:17 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
Would that also put a tribute to the Founding Fathers on the chopping block? Or would they just say "no of course we didn't mean that!" like they do when a book ban applies to the Bible?
posted by clawsoon at 10:17 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]
In a camp full of bullies, who is picked on? The most gay looking one? The one who drew something? Someone who hums a little ditty in joy? Who is going to find their first queer love at the anti-woke camp, I wonder, and what a story that kid is going to tell.
posted by symbioid at 10:36 AM on February 21 [6 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 10:36 AM on February 21 [6 favorites]
I have to admit, the first thing I wondered on reading this was if they were intentionally seeding in Piggies into their little Lord of the Flies scenario, and if those positions were paid or simply unwilling and unwitting victims.
posted by bonehead at 11:53 AM on February 21
posted by bonehead at 11:53 AM on February 21
He wheels around and stalks forward and slings his index finger out toward a student, demands of him whether climate change is real?! and how certain is he?! and why?!—BOP! He points at another student, asks whether gender is a social construct, whether trans women are women?!
Just checking here, the purpose of this is intimidation, right? Because these are not hard questions. If I was 20 would I be impressed by this?
posted by bq at 12:38 PM on February 21 [3 favorites]
Just checking here, the purpose of this is intimidation, right? Because these are not hard questions. If I was 20 would I be impressed by this?
posted by bq at 12:38 PM on February 21 [3 favorites]
I know the CS thing is a slight derail, but I thought I should clarify a few things here*. First, computer science as a discipline is really closer to maths (and a CS professor once said that maths is a branch of CS). It's fundamentally about understanding the nature of computation and abstraction. The more applied branches of CS are more engineering-like (given a problem, how do we engineer a solution to solve the problem?), but there's still a focus on doing lots of hypothesis testing and analyzing results to determine truth, i.e. science.
A lot of people tend to confound CS with "programming", though, and in particular with the whole Silicon Valley startup culture. There's lots of CS majors who are studying CS because they see it as a way of getting rich quick. But all that is really quite orthogonal to CS, like the difference between being a mathematician and an economist. So like evidenceofabsence said upthread, its not about CS, but about people who are attracted to money. I'd imagine a century ago those types of people might all be studying chemical engineering or something because of all the money in oil and plastics.
* I was a CS major in a US college in the '00s, so perhaps things have changed a lot since then. My own experience as a CS major was that many tended to be more lefty, and more likely to be anarchist really. Maybe that is less true now.
posted by destrius at 8:54 PM on February 21 [3 favorites]
A lot of people tend to confound CS with "programming", though, and in particular with the whole Silicon Valley startup culture. There's lots of CS majors who are studying CS because they see it as a way of getting rich quick. But all that is really quite orthogonal to CS, like the difference between being a mathematician and an economist. So like evidenceofabsence said upthread, its not about CS, but about people who are attracted to money. I'd imagine a century ago those types of people might all be studying chemical engineering or something because of all the money in oil and plastics.
* I was a CS major in a US college in the '00s, so perhaps things have changed a lot since then. My own experience as a CS major was that many tended to be more lefty, and more likely to be anarchist really. Maybe that is less true now.
posted by destrius at 8:54 PM on February 21 [3 favorites]
You won’t find many biologists who think there are two innate genders with simple definitions but someone whose day job is doing something like OOP class hierarchies or reducing complex situations to a number in a spreadsheet might not have studied enough biology to override that instinct for simple absolutes
Honestly, anybody who has built enough big systems would know that nothing is simple, everything is complicated. And if you use enough OOP, you will realise very acutely that your abstraction is inaccurate and incomplete, and in danger of breaking the moment you add a new feature to the system. And it probably was refactored hundreds of times so the class Animal is now the interface NonHumanMovingObjectThatCanDieSometimes.
So if some coder smugly says that oh there are just two genders, its simple... then they're probably not very good coders.
posted by destrius at 9:05 PM on February 21 [6 favorites]
Honestly, anybody who has built enough big systems would know that nothing is simple, everything is complicated. And if you use enough OOP, you will realise very acutely that your abstraction is inaccurate and incomplete, and in danger of breaking the moment you add a new feature to the system. And it probably was refactored hundreds of times so the class Animal is now the interface NonHumanMovingObjectThatCanDieSometimes.
So if some coder smugly says that oh there are just two genders, its simple... then they're probably not very good coders.
posted by destrius at 9:05 PM on February 21 [6 favorites]
destrius: oh, trust me, I know but there are so many people who haven’t accepted that. The “falsehoods programmers believe about…” genre exists because there have been so many painful lessons about brittle modeling and yet it’s so easy to find people repeating those mistakes.
Some of that is simple inexperience – the Accentures of the world are all too happy to bill anyone who completed a Java boot camp out as a senior application developer at $250/hour – but some of the worst cases I’ve seen were architects with many years of experience, who just didn’t want to accept that they couldn’t fit the world into a simplistic model. I’ve noticed that those people tend to fit a pattern – male, life on easy mode, prone to reactionary thinking, etc. – and I think that’s because they may never really have been forced to deal with not being covered by a default choice, and they probably moved on before some poor grunt had to refactor it to
posted by adamsc at 6:22 AM on February 22 [3 favorites]
Some of that is simple inexperience – the Accentures of the world are all too happy to bill anyone who completed a Java boot camp out as a senior application developer at $250/hour – but some of the worst cases I’ve seen were architects with many years of experience, who just didn’t want to accept that they couldn’t fit the world into a simplistic model. I’ve noticed that those people tend to fit a pattern – male, life on easy mode, prone to reactionary thinking, etc. – and I think that’s because they may never really have been forced to deal with not being covered by a default choice, and they probably moved on before some poor grunt had to refactor it to
NonHumanMovingObjectThatCanDieSometimes and duct tape everything which broke.posted by adamsc at 6:22 AM on February 22 [3 favorites]
The programmers are all the marks- the leaders are literally members of the elite - private college professors, attended elite colleges, NY Times editor and writers. That's sad and the real affirmative action. It does feel like half is missing though - how long are the sessions - just long enough to shout a bunch of buzzwords and phrases and move on? What was the actual 'discussion'? Was there any?
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:56 AM on February 22
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:56 AM on February 22
What was the actual 'discussion'? Was there any?
Apparently one discussion was Katie Roiphe arguing "isn't a rape victim who drank too much responsible for their rape?"
That's not a joke.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:07 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]
Apparently one discussion was Katie Roiphe arguing "isn't a rape victim who drank too much responsible for their rape?"
That's not a joke.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:07 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]
What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooism?
People are mostly suggesting that there's something inherent to the work of a person in computer science that's responsible, but let me also suggest culture.
Computer science culture, as basically anyone knows, is deeply shitty, for various social and economic and historical reasons that aren't necessarily about the process or skills required for programming, or the type of personality that makes for a good coder—even granting that such a personality actually exists. (There are better and more recent previouslies than this, but search is failing me.)
CS is one of gatekeepiest disciplines that exists, and as people get screened out because of their identities, you naturally lose a lot of people who would fight against the yahoos. Even if they can overcome the barriers and get into the field, people who are repelled by the going brand of brogrammery can get pushed out because they can't stand working neck-deep in toxic slime.
So it's a very easy for the pockets of yahooism to survive without being challenged, and yahoos attract (and hire, and promote) more yahoos.
posted by BrashTech at 10:09 AM on February 22 [5 favorites]
People are mostly suggesting that there's something inherent to the work of a person in computer science that's responsible, but let me also suggest culture.
Computer science culture, as basically anyone knows, is deeply shitty, for various social and economic and historical reasons that aren't necessarily about the process or skills required for programming, or the type of personality that makes for a good coder—even granting that such a personality actually exists. (There are better and more recent previouslies than this, but search is failing me.)
CS is one of gatekeepiest disciplines that exists, and as people get screened out because of their identities, you naturally lose a lot of people who would fight against the yahoos. Even if they can overcome the barriers and get into the field, people who are repelled by the going brand of brogrammery can get pushed out because they can't stand working neck-deep in toxic slime.
So it's a very easy for the pockets of yahooism to survive without being challenged, and yahoos attract (and hire, and promote) more yahoos.
posted by BrashTech at 10:09 AM on February 22 [5 favorites]
Apparently one discussion was Katie Roiphe arguing "isn't a rape victim who drank too much responsible for their rape?"
Yeah, I saw that, and the " demands of him whether climate change is real?! and how certain is he?! and why?!—BOP! He points at another student, asks whether gender is a social construct, whether trans women are women?! ".... part, but that's like just shouting talking points.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:53 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I saw that, and the " demands of him whether climate change is real?! and how certain is he?! and why?!—BOP! He points at another student, asks whether gender is a social construct, whether trans women are women?! ".... part, but that's like just shouting talking points.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:53 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]
Which is why Weiss created this egowank of an institution - because all of these people have, in the real world where the "right to monologue" isn't a thing, been rightfully laughed out of the discussion. Not to mention their abuses, like Joshua Katz being an abusive studentfucker who got fired when his abuse came fully to light.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:10 AM on February 22 [7 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:10 AM on February 22 [7 favorites]
i gotta learn how to gish gallop good cause i think galloping on them right at the start of the conversation would wrong-foot them so badly they wouldn't be able to recover, particularly if one were to diligently keep the gallop going no matter what.
like does anyone know of good references / training tools on learning to gish gallop well? are there debate team kids here who can help me out?
In my experience--and speaking as someone who has certainly been accused of gish galloping a time or three--the best response to someone trying that kind of confidence-as-correctness bullshit is to simply lean back and laugh in their face. These fuckos are literally confidence men. Their entire schtick relies on performing certainty in their shit so aggressively that the audience questions what reality actually is. Performing amused derision right back, picking out an obvious failure in their structure, and digging in on it, giggling while they get mad, is the most likely tactic to fuck with them in the moment.
Here's a kid pulling that technique off spectacularly on an alt-right kid trying to make him choose between LGBTQ rights and economic stability (a false equivalency) simply by grinning and saying "I refuse the question. Those things aren't linked." You can watch the alt-right kid getting angrier and angrier as ponytail kid grins at him and continues to repeat the same point: those things aren't inherently linked. "You can't say that!" "But I did."
Basically, you wrongfoot these fuckos by refusing to follow their trains of thought. They work by being super confident acting, moving fast, and spitting talking points as quickly as possible--which is of course the standard debate team kid playbook. You don't win that by playing to their strengths and dumping all the facts on them. That shit is slow, it takes time, and doing it well involves acknowledging that you're not totally sure about absolutely everything. These fucks depend on the sense that they are so confident that surely they must know things. So instead of trying to figure out how to get faster than them on a playing field and a game that they build, what you do is you get stubborn and you force them to zoom in on one detail they are definitely very wrong about, and you just keep on insisting that you talk about that.
Then you keep laughing incredulously while they get mad or try to drag you off on something else. You can go "Well, I care more about interrogating a premise than--what, are you trying to win a conversation? Oh, dude." When you're good and ready, you giggle and go "Okay, man. Can't believe you can't even figure out how social rights and economic growth works/that financial interest exists/that dressmaking involves math/whatever the detail is." Then you saunter off. You ain't gonna convince them in the moment, but you are going to make talking to you real unpleasant and you are also going to make them look like an idiot to any onlookers. In the end, isn't that the real win?
posted by sciatrix at 2:21 PM on February 22 [17 favorites]
like does anyone know of good references / training tools on learning to gish gallop well? are there debate team kids here who can help me out?
In my experience--and speaking as someone who has certainly been accused of gish galloping a time or three--the best response to someone trying that kind of confidence-as-correctness bullshit is to simply lean back and laugh in their face. These fuckos are literally confidence men. Their entire schtick relies on performing certainty in their shit so aggressively that the audience questions what reality actually is. Performing amused derision right back, picking out an obvious failure in their structure, and digging in on it, giggling while they get mad, is the most likely tactic to fuck with them in the moment.
Here's a kid pulling that technique off spectacularly on an alt-right kid trying to make him choose between LGBTQ rights and economic stability (a false equivalency) simply by grinning and saying "I refuse the question. Those things aren't linked." You can watch the alt-right kid getting angrier and angrier as ponytail kid grins at him and continues to repeat the same point: those things aren't inherently linked. "You can't say that!" "But I did."
Basically, you wrongfoot these fuckos by refusing to follow their trains of thought. They work by being super confident acting, moving fast, and spitting talking points as quickly as possible--which is of course the standard debate team kid playbook. You don't win that by playing to their strengths and dumping all the facts on them. That shit is slow, it takes time, and doing it well involves acknowledging that you're not totally sure about absolutely everything. These fucks depend on the sense that they are so confident that surely they must know things. So instead of trying to figure out how to get faster than them on a playing field and a game that they build, what you do is you get stubborn and you force them to zoom in on one detail they are definitely very wrong about, and you just keep on insisting that you talk about that.
Then you keep laughing incredulously while they get mad or try to drag you off on something else. You can go "Well, I care more about interrogating a premise than--what, are you trying to win a conversation? Oh, dude." When you're good and ready, you giggle and go "Okay, man. Can't believe you can't even figure out how social rights and economic growth works/that financial interest exists/that dressmaking involves math/whatever the detail is." Then you saunter off. You ain't gonna convince them in the moment, but you are going to make talking to you real unpleasant and you are also going to make them look like an idiot to any onlookers. In the end, isn't that the real win?
posted by sciatrix at 2:21 PM on February 22 [17 favorites]
My god that video was amazing - it was hilarious how the right wing troll could not respond to "I am not obliged to accept your framing, and I reject it outright."
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:44 PM on February 22 [3 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:44 PM on February 22 [3 favorites]
CS is one of gatekeepiest disciplines that exists
CS meaning “software development and IT” as I think it’s sort of implied to mean here has far less formal gatekeeping than, say, law or medicine, but a certain level of informal gatekeeping by self-made sorts. Historically it’s had a lot of smart autodidacts with chips on their shoulders, which I think does partially explain the prevalence of certain varieties of crank. Nowadays, though, as others have said, it’s also just one of the most popular “practical” fields, where “practical” means “for people who want to get shit done and make money and not get caught up in woke bs blah blah” so I suspect the bulk of causation comes down to - if you are right of center and you are going to college, what else are you going to major in?
posted by atoxyl at 2:52 PM on February 22 [2 favorites]
CS meaning “software development and IT” as I think it’s sort of implied to mean here has far less formal gatekeeping than, say, law or medicine, but a certain level of informal gatekeeping by self-made sorts. Historically it’s had a lot of smart autodidacts with chips on their shoulders, which I think does partially explain the prevalence of certain varieties of crank. Nowadays, though, as others have said, it’s also just one of the most popular “practical” fields, where “practical” means “for people who want to get shit done and make money and not get caught up in woke bs blah blah” so I suspect the bulk of causation comes down to - if you are right of center and you are going to college, what else are you going to major in?
posted by atoxyl at 2:52 PM on February 22 [2 favorites]
- if you are right of center and you are going to college, what else are you going to major in?
Right, and I’m saying, also pay attention to who isn’t in the room. If every class means walking into a room of peacocking, negging cis white men who vocally regard you as a sex object, an inferior, and/or an abomination, you will have to really, really love coding and computers if you want to stick with that major.
posted by BrashTech at 11:37 AM on February 23 [2 favorites]
Right, and I’m saying, also pay attention to who isn’t in the room. If every class means walking into a room of peacocking, negging cis white men who vocally regard you as a sex object, an inferior, and/or an abomination, you will have to really, really love coding and computers if you want to stick with that major.
posted by BrashTech at 11:37 AM on February 23 [2 favorites]
(and a CS professor once said that maths is a branch of CS)
(Is this maybe a slight misremembering or just mixed-up mistyping? Computer science started out as a branch of math, and parts of it still are, or overlap strongly. But the opposite is not true.)
posted by eviemath at 5:06 PM on February 23
(Is this maybe a slight misremembering or just mixed-up mistyping? Computer science started out as a branch of math, and parts of it still are, or overlap strongly. But the opposite is not true.)
posted by eviemath at 5:06 PM on February 23
Regarding the bus jiu jitsu mass murder: Napoleon Dynamite would never! Yes he was all about the skills, but very much not about the murder. Quite the opposite.
No, the accurate referent is Bob Odenkirk’s character in Toxic Masculinity: The Movie, aka “Nobody”.
posted by eviemath at 5:11 PM on February 23
No, the accurate referent is Bob Odenkirk’s character in Toxic Masculinity: The Movie, aka “Nobody”.
posted by eviemath at 5:11 PM on February 23
(Is this maybe a slight misremembering or just mixed-up mistyping? Computer science started out as a branch of math, and parts of it still are, or overlap strongly. But the opposite is not true.)
It was slightly tongue in cheek, but he was referring to how set theory forms the foundation of mathematics, but understanding computation (in the form of type theory) requires category theory, which is a "superset" of set theory.
posted by destrius at 10:19 PM on February 23
It was slightly tongue in cheek, but he was referring to how set theory forms the foundation of mathematics, but understanding computation (in the form of type theory) requires category theory, which is a "superset" of set theory.
posted by destrius at 10:19 PM on February 23
Regarding the bus jiu jitsu mass murder: Napoleon Dynamite would never! Yes he was all about the skills, but very much not about the murder. Quite the opposite.
I didn't imagine Napoleon saying it in a truly threatening sense, like he would gladly murder everybody on the bus, but more as a boast about his secret badass-itude. Something he'd say to try and impress Pedro, probably not long after some jock had beaten him up. "I couldn't fight back... these hands are registered as lethal weapons!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:21 PM on February 23 [1 favorite]
I didn't imagine Napoleon saying it in a truly threatening sense, like he would gladly murder everybody on the bus, but more as a boast about his secret badass-itude. Something he'd say to try and impress Pedro, probably not long after some jock had beaten him up. "I couldn't fight back... these hands are registered as lethal weapons!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:21 PM on February 23 [1 favorite]
It made me think of Crispin Glover showing off his strength on the David Letterman show.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:16 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:16 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]
It was slightly tongue in cheek, but he was referring to how set theory forms the foundation of mathematics, but understanding computation (in the form of type theory) requires category theory, which is a "superset" of set theory.
Theory of computation and set theory are part of mathematical logic, which is math; and category theory is kind of at the intersection of logic and abstract algebra but developed originally from algebraic topology - also math, at any rate. That is certainly some cheeky intellectual-historical revisionism.
posted by eviemath at 6:25 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]
Theory of computation and set theory are part of mathematical logic, which is math; and category theory is kind of at the intersection of logic and abstract algebra but developed originally from algebraic topology - also math, at any rate. That is certainly some cheeky intellectual-historical revisionism.
posted by eviemath at 6:25 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]
"I'm, I'm strong. I can kick"
posted by Windopaene at 7:27 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]
posted by Windopaene at 7:27 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]
What is it about computer science/programming that attracts so much of this yahooismVenture capital startups are in the business of looking around at our current societies and think of ways it could be different with them making a lot of money. Question everything. It's to be expected that they start questioning non commercial things as well: healthcare, democracy, ...
posted by jouke at 9:00 AM on February 24 [1 favorite]
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BAM! He wheels around and stalks forward and slings his index finger out toward a student, demands of him whether climate change is real?! and how certain is he?! and why?!—BOP! He points at another student, asks whether gender is a social construct, whether trans women are women?!
This is basically just very expensive Hacker News.
Wonder what these people are going to do once they exhaust their half dozen topics to be edgy about.
posted by Artw at 10:21 AM on February 20 [64 favorites]