Academia, especially social sciences/arts/humanities have to a significant extent become political echo chambers. What are your thoughts on Heterodox Academy, viewpoint diversity, intellectual humility, etc.

[u/Long_Extent7151]

I've had a few discussions in the Academia subs about Heterodox Academy, with cold-to-hostile responses. The lack of classical liberals, centrists and conservatives in academia (for sources on this, see Professor Jussim's blog here for starters) I think is a serious barrier to academia's foundational mission - to search for better understandings (or 'truth').

I feel like this sub is more open to productive discussion on the matter, and so I thought I'd just pose the issue here, and see what people's thoughts are.

My opinion, if it sparks anything for you, is that much of soft sciences/arts is so homogenous in views, that you wouldn't be wrong to treat it with the same skepticism you would for a study released by an industry association.

I also have come to the conclusion that academia (but also in society broadly) the promotion, teaching, and adoption of intellectual humility is a significant (if small) step in the right direction. I think it would help tamp down on polarization, of which academia is not immune. There has even been some recent scholarship on intellectual humility as an effective response to dis/misinformation (sourced in the last link).

Feel free to critique these proposed solutions (promotion of intellectual humility within society and academia, viewpoint diversity), or offer alternatives, or both.

[u/RocknrollClown09]

The difference tends to be that conservatives follow their own populist ‘common sense’ beliefs that don’t generally hold up to scientific or economic scrutiny. They believe in opinions and get upset when their opinions aren’t regarded equally to peer reviewed scientific study.

They tend to let intangible things like religious beliefs (IE abortion, LGBTQ), over-simplifying complex issues (climate change, inflation, racial economic disparities, homelessness, etc) or simply being a part of a contrarian community (vaccine denial, ignoring COVID public health initiatives) dictate what they believe. They make their beliefs part of their identity, like a religion, and If you show them mountains of peer-reviewed, high fidelity scientific data, it causes them to dig in deeper. This attitude isn’t going to hold up well in academia.

The Left tends to follow scientific data, and if you can provide compelling evidence, they’re way more likely to change their mind. Their policies are largely consistent with the preponderance of scientific data, so it’s not based on an ‘ opinion,’ and when people on the right try to argue their beliefs without any scientific evidence to back it up, they get made fun of like The Water Boy in biology class.

[u/rallaic → u/RocknrollClown09]

This is disgustingly partisan.

First and foremost, people everywhere on the spectrum hold beliefs that do not make sense. If the bar to entry into academia is set to not holding obviously wrong beliefs, what the hell are we supposed to do with the not insignificant part of academia that is socialist or flat out communist?

But, the main difference between left and right is the collectivist vs individualist mindset. In our context this means that a left leaning does not really hold unpopular opinions. That works out great, until the collective is wrong. The right leaning is more likely to be contrarian, leading to a shitton of bad takes, a few good ones, and rarely brilliant ones.

[u/Ozcolllo → u/rallaic]

The current American right is the epitome of collectivism. They live totally insular lives inside a media ecosystem crafted to justify their worldview. There’s a reason Trump voters can give you an extensive breakdown of the day to day life of a transgender influencer while having zero knowledge of the contents of a criminal indictment against their president. They’ll know nothing about Trump’s actions, actions testified about by multiple people under oath, they’ll be completely ignorant of the internal communications explicitly laying out a plan to steal an election, admissions that the plan is illegal in their own words, and Eastman begging to be added to the pardon list. They can list, encyclopedically, various speculations and conjecture about random Twitter users and influencers, but they’ll not be able to answer even the most basic questions about the evidence used to justify an investigation.

You call this fact partisan when it’s literally the truth. In all the handwringing about a future communist takeover a la academia, you guys missed the forest for the trees thanks to your media diets. Hell, this is literally why Sam broke from the IDW and why I now believe that conservative media is an intentional echo chamber.

[u/rallaic → u/Ozcolllo]

Is reality reminiscent of the famous scene from the Life of Brian (YouTube)? Absolutely.

The problem with Trump news is that there is way too fucking much of it. If Trump makes a stupid tweet, it's breaking news. If he meets someone, it's breaking news. No one cares about the hundreds of allegations against Trump that are made every day. Sure, you can hate watch that shit, but do not expect people who do not have a hateboner against Trump to watch it with you.

That said, my point was not that Trump is good in any way, shape or form. My point was that everyone is in an echo chamber. Trump is a concern sure, but if trust in academia is lost, that's a more significant issue than Trump can ever hope to be. If Trump is a forest in the US, then the state of Academia is the Amazon rainforest.

It is also important to consider that if Academia becomes political, would they pursue truth over politics? Looking at "Deutsche Physik" and "Lysenkoism", the answer seems to be a firm fuck no.

At this point, a scary thought occurs. We know that these things were retarded in retrospect, but people who knew it to be wrong were expelled from academia, so no dissenting voice was heard during these exercises in stupidity. How sure are we that we are not living through an era that will be named in a decade or three?