Lying Away Cancel Culture

[Res Ipsa]

Technicality: associate professors normally have tenure, and can expect to be promoted to professor, with the pay raise that goes with the title change, if they keep up their performance for another six or eight years or so. Assistant professors normally don’t have tenure but can expect to get it, and be promoted to associate professor, if they keep up the performance that got them hired for six years or so.

The problem rank for North American academia is Adjunct Professor. In Law or Medicine these people are usually just successful lawyers or doctors who are also doing some teaching, but in most disciplines they don’t have any shot at tenure, teach a lot, and get paid by the course.

To put bread on the table at their pay rate, adjuncts usually have to teach too much to have any time for the research and publication they would need to get a tenure-track job, so it’s a professional trap. Sometimes it can be not so bad all round, with fair pay and good support from the department, and good teaching delivered. Sometimes it can be a sad joke. Overall, it’s a worrisome trend that more university teaching is being done by adjuncts.

The North American system is not universal. In other countries there are different ranks and different procedures for tenure. In Germany for instance most academic jobs at any rank, like most jobs of any kind, come with job security.

Thanks for the correction. I don't remember hearing the term adjunct back in the '80s. I think those who were "auditioning" for a spot on the faculty were called "visiting" professors at that time. And "Assistant Professors" being on a tenure track sounds familiar.

I have a friend from high school who is an adjunct professor at Arizona State, and she describes it along the lines you do.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I just learned that Fox News Entertainment showman Jesse Waters used pretty inflammatory rhetorical language toward Dr. Fauci:

https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/ ... fired.html

Watters said that Fauci should be confronted on the subject of whether the National Institute of Health funded research at a lab in Wuhan, China, the city where the COVID-19 virus originated. He said an interviewer should suggest he lied about the topic — something Fauci has disputed.

“Now you go in for the kill shot, the kill shot with an ambush, deadly, because he doesn’t see it coming,” Watters said.

He suggested an interviewer say, “you know why people don’t trust you, don’t you?’ Oh, he is dead. He’s dead. He’s done.”

The interviewer should make sure the encounter is filmed and the footage given to conservative media, Watters said. It’s a confrontation technique that has been used elsewhere in conservative politics by the group Project Veritas.

“Just make sure it’s legal,” Watters said.

If he had been fired by Fox News Entertainment droves of people would scream, “cAnCeL cUlTuRe!!!” Yet, what do we do with that? Dr. Fauci has a security detail because of death threats. If someone takes the above statement as a wink and a nod, as we’ve seen many do thanks to the January 6th insurrection, where do we go from there? Hell, where do we go with this, what I would call, veiled threat? Granted we have the power not to watch Fox News Entertainment, and they have the right to keep that particular entertainer employed, but accountability is absent either way. Do we need Dr. Fauci murdered by someone who’s been waiting for a reason to smoke a demonrat in order to do anything? It appears so.

- Doc

[Kishkumen]

If that principle's true, it must still have some limits, somewhere far short of reeducation camps. And if there is some responsibility of all citizens to pay attention to some things, which things those are is definitely up for debate. The things which have had a free pass to public attention until now—the big statues on pedestals in public places, the talking heads on TV—I don't think they've all earned their attention legitimately. A lot have just been grandfathered in, it seems to me, on the strength of old privilege. The public attention they get is a precious resource that we should be spending more wisely than that.

This is the funny thing. We may be discovering that things getting attention get attention for a reason, and by figuring out the why and dealing with it in practical terms we may not need to block people at all. This is how I view the LDS Church's current crisis of hemorrhaging members. If they had paid any attention to what makes people enjoy being Mormon, instead of making the Church into a dreary obligation, they might not be having the problems they have. If they were at all responsive to change, change wouldn't be whipping their asses. But they aren't, and it does.

Identitarian politics are a losing game. They have been for a very, very long time. They didn't work so well in Nazi Germany, at the end of the day. I am guessing there are a host of reasons why this is the case. One of them is probably that splitting people into granular identities is no way to build coalitions of consensus or bring about any kind of equality. Why would any rational person want to buy into being the loser in the new hierarchy of identities? They will just go off and make up new identities and find their little click of people who identify in that way only to hang around and dwindle in irrelevance as people wake up to discover their new identity got them nowhere.

How ironic that Leftists, of anyone, should embrace such a strategy! Identitarian politics are very effective in the short term, but in the long term they will be an utter disaster. The Democratic Party finds them a useful rallying point while they put ineffective bandaids on our economic problems. They fear the economic Left of their party gathering real steam, so Identitarian politics are a handy distraction from economic issues. Hypothetically, a billionaire who doesn't want to pay taxes can metaphorically join hands with the poor, gay Black teenager over issues of identity without the billionaire having to do a damned thing about the economic plight of that teen. The billionaire will still pay that kid crap and refuse to pay anymore taxes that might give that kid a social safety net, all the while being praised for being "Woke."

I say we stop thinking that we must make rules against being an asshole and just let the assholes shoot themselves in the foot. If your friend says I am now a woman and you behave like an asshole in response, then karma is a bitch and you will get yours for being an asshole. The kind and good thing to do, in my opinion, is to respect people's choices. If we have to get down to the level of making everything a matter for the law to intervene in, the backlash is clear: you are going to have a large swath of the electorate telling you to eff off. Similarly, let Nazis and pedophiles have the podium, and they will shoot themselves in the foot every time. What makes being a Nazi repugnant is Nazism. You can't put lipstick on that pig. No parent is ever going to tolerate the legalization of pedophilia. It just ain't gonna happen.

[Physics Guy]

Maybe giving as much airtime to Nazis as to the UNHCR would be fine because it would only give the Nazis rope to hang themselves in public opinion. I'm not convinced of that. Here in Germany it is still actually illegal even to display Nazi symbols. People don't want to trust pure laissez-faire on this issue. Even if the strategy were in principle sound, though, there are just too many voices for us to give ear to all of them.

There is only enough bandwidth for N speakers to get attention this year, and if we let the Nazis be one of those N then we are saying loudly and clearly—and no amount of protestation will unsay it—that Nazism is more worthy of attention than whatever thing number N+1 was, that did not make the cut. That's a degree of endorsement of Nazism; a weak degree, to be sure, if N is large, but a non-zero degree of legitimation it is.

The bandwidth limit N is some finite limit and the days of bandwidth going begging are past. Attention is the scarce resource now. Some kind of cut will be made; some channels will be "canceled". Refusing to accept that cuts should be made on some kind of principle is merely giving away our scarce resource of attention to whomever can seize it.

[Kishkumen]

Maybe giving as much airtime to Nazis as to the UNHCR would be fine because it would only give the Nazis rope to hang themselves in public opinion. I'm not convinced of that. Here in Germany it is still actually illegal even to display Nazi symbols. People don't want to trust pure laissez-faire on this issue. Even if the strategy were in principle sound, though, there are just too many voices for us to give ear to all of them.

So perhaps the smart thing to do is figure out the underlying need that prompts people to give something attention, address that need, and steal the thunder of bad ideas.

There is only enough bandwidth for N speakers to get attention this year, and if we let the Nazis be one of those N then we are saying loudly and clearly—and no amount of protestation will unsay it—that Nazism is more worthy of attention than whatever thing number N+1 was, that did not make the cut. That's a degree of endorsement of Nazism; a weak degree, to be sure, if N is large, but a non-zero degree of legitimation it is.

I don't think so at all. Instead, I think it reveals our cowardice and lack of ability to make a good argument (and one can be made, surely) that we need to keep something from being said. Again, find the underlying need and address it. That which drives people to extremely stupid ideas shrivels up and dies. Problem solved. Will there ever be a time when everyone is of sound mind? Probably not, but the number of crazies can be greatly reduced. Nothing can stop people from seeking to satisfy their needs. If a Nazi hands someone a reason to live, then shame on us for not providing a better reason. It shouldn't be that difficult.

The bandwidth limit N is some finite limit and the days of bandwidth going begging are past. Attention is the scarce resource now. Some kind of cut will be made; some channels will be "canceled". Refusing to accept that cuts should be made on some kind of principle is merely giving away our scarce resource of attention to whomever can seize it.

I agree that attention is a scarce resource, and so it should be much easier to offer good places for it to travel when so many of the options are unworthy of attention. I hold it as an indictment of our civilization that we have to shut down "bad words." We get there because we have littered our attention with absolute garbage for so long, that people are starving for good mental sustenance. We whine about white supremacists while we are buried in a deluge of garbage and nonsense. Spam. Junk mail. False advertising. People make a living selling our personal information. No wonder people are prey to absolute garbage. Our lives are choked by it.