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Wisconsin Plan to eliminate Liberal Arts at the University of Wisconsin


Ser Scot A Ellison

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33 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

 

Do they? Anti-vaccers, Climate change deniers, creationists, flat earthers, homeopathy, GMO-scare mongers, etc. None of those things seem very respectful to me. 

Eh, anti-vaccers, flat earthers, homeopathy, and GMO- scare mongers represent such a minuscule percent of the population it’s not worth noting. A lot of people believe in climate change, as it has happened for millions of years; what they question is if CO2 emissions have any significant impact.  Is there any definitive proof in that area?

Creationists, okay.  You talk like non-believers, atheists, evolutionists, have some kind of proof of creation.  The Big Bang theory is just as much of a leap of faith and dismissal of logic as believing in a God.  Just because you believe something, or even a large swathe of people believe something, doesn’t make it true.  I’d think the left would understand the concept, as it’s a core principle of how they attack Christianity (not Islam, mind you), because reasons.

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There's a real semantical problem here. Either I use academia (as in the product of research by academics), or I use science (as in, research produced using the scientific method) but in both cases I'm referring to research.
Could we agree on the term we're using to begin with?

10 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Not really. Science has very little to say about most of the issues in the long post where you quote me (i.e. the traditional family, religion, etc.)

Actually it has tons of stuff to say about the traditional family and religion. There's sociology, history, anthropology, psychology... Religion or family have been studied inside out using different approaches in a dozen fields or sub-fields.
To claim otherwise is quite bizarre.

10 minutes ago, Altherion said:

 and can be used by practically any ideology to further its own ends.

The point I'm making is precisely that it really can't. Not when it's free of methodological bias.

Now, you could claim that research done by liberal academics is biased, and I would agree that it sometimes is. My point is that there remains a wealth of objective findings that don't square with what you and I might view as "conservative family values."
Heck, we most certainly don't even have the same "conservative family values" to begin with.
And don't even get me started on religion...

I typed a few random words in google and here are the first two papers vaguely related to the matter at hand I found:
https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/sites/default/files/publication-documents/cfca25.pdf
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/umi-okstate-1649.pdf

In the first paper, I find this interesting extract (bear in mind it's a completely random paper I selected):

Quote

The definition of a “family” is subject to a range of economic, political and social complexities (Corbet, 2004; Qu & Weston, 2013; Robinson, 2009). In Australia, the concept of family is often examined using data from the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS), where family is defined as:

Quote

a group of two or more people that are related by blood, marriage (registered or de facto), adoption, step or fostering, and who usually live together in the same household. This includes newlyweds without children, gay partners, couples with dependants, single mothers or fathers with children, and siblings living together. At least one person in the family has to be 15 years or over. A household may contain more than one family. (ABS, 2012)

Some authors argue that any conception of family that is limited to physical connections alone (i.e., living in the same household) does not adequately reflect the reality of many families living in contemporary societies (Corbet, 2004; Harris, 1983; Morphy, 2006; Qu & Weston, 2013; Robinson, 2009). This is particularly the case for Aboriginal families living within in a complex system of social relations (Corbet, 2004; Robinson, 2009).

The traditional social structure of Aboriginal communities is based around kinship systems that adopt an entirely different terminology to that of an “Anglo-Celtic” system (Morphy, 2006; Peters-Little, 2000). Especially in remote areas, households of Aboriginal people tend to be complex and fluid in their composition, with kinship networks overlapping, and adults and children often moving between households (ABS & AIHW, 2011; Qu & Weston, 2013).

So you see, we run into a huge problem right off the bat: well-documented research has shown that "family" in human cultures is actually rather hard to define (anthropology and history at least tell us that). Which makes "conservative family values" a very relative thing, as what people mean by that is relative to one's own culture and era in the first place and shouldn't be taken as an absolute.

See, this is what I call academia, or science. Of course it can be used to further ideological purposes, but generally speaking it's not very good at supporting conservatism. Now, you can dispute the methods or the findings I guess, but you'll still be left with a lot of inconvenient facts, Here would be the fact that the "nuclear family" we tend to see as "traditional" is by and large a fairly specific and -dare I say- recent creation.

10 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Science and its applications (technology, medicine, etc.) have routinely been held up as reasons why given ideological positions are how the world should be and even more often enabled certain ways of life, but in fact they are nearly silent on most questions which are still debated today. For example, electronics and machine learning are enabling China to build the most surveilled state the world has ever seen, but science says nothing about whether or not this is a good idea.

Funny, 'cause a bit of google reminds me of Michel Foucault, Emile Durkheim, Pierre Bourdieu, Edward Herman or Max Weber to cite a few classics, and way too many new books and articles on the subject to list them.

So is it academia, science, or both?
Or do you mean to tell me that all this research is just "liberal propaganda" or something? Is there an "ideological opposition" in there that I'm not seeing?

 

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1 minute ago, King Ned Stark said:

A lot of people believe in climate change, as it has happened for millions of years; what they question is if CO2 emissions have any significant impact.  Is there any definitive proof in that area?

Creationists, okay.  You talk like non-believers, atheists, evolutionists, have some kind of proof of creation.  The Big Bang theory is just as much as a leap of faith and dismissal of logic as believing in a God.  Just because you believe something, or even a large swathe of people believe something, doesn’t make it true.  I’d think the left would understand the concept, as it’s a core principle of how they attack Christianity (not Islam, mind you), because reasons.

For the first part, yes. It's extremely easy to prove the link between carbon dioxide and global warming.

For the second part, the Big Bang Theory is not an event, as such, like you'd think of it. It's a best fit model based on the current evidence. And I'm not sure why you wrote "evolutionists" as a thing that would be lumped in here: it's not related to the Big Bang theory. Almost no sane person disputes evolution - it was even known in antiquity! The dispute is to the root cause of it: is it a planned process? A random one? One where external triggers have an effect? Current evidence says that it's a random process, with mutations caused by external factors speeding it up, and environmental pressures making it more or less likely within a given population depending on the conditions.

Returning to the Big Bang: There are some things that can be measured in our universe: the residual heat, which appears to be close to uniform despite the fact that the universe at its widest point is too large for light to have crossed yet. This implies it was once much smaller. The background radiation, which implies the aftermath of a reaction that led to decay of some kind. The continued expansion of the universe, which implies an initial stimulus that triggered its expansion. And so on - these are all things we've measured, observed, and catalogued.

Based on what we know, there is a model created that best fits the available data. The Big Bang is not treated as a factual event, but as the best explanation based on what we know. If evidence is found that throws it into jeopardy as a model, a new one will be made to suit the new evidence. It has stood up to more than a few decades of close scrutiny so far, though, and at this stage evidence tends to keep supporting it as a plausible (but not certain) possibility.

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18 minutes ago, Yukle said:

For the first part, yes. It's extremely easy to prove the link between carbon dioxide and global warming.

For the second part, the Big Bang Theory is not an event, as such, like you'd think of it. It's a best fit model based on the current evidence. And I'm not sure why you wrote "evolutionists" as a thing that would be lumped in here: it's not related to the Big Bang theory. Almost no sane person disputes evolution - it was even known in antiquity! The dispute is to the root cause of it: is it a planned process? A random one? One where external triggers have an effect? Current evidence says that it's a random process, with mutations caused by external factors speeding it up, and environmental pressures making it more or less likely within a given population depending on the conditions.

Returning to the Big Bang: There are some things that can be measured in our universe: the residual heat, which appears to be close to uniform despite the fact that the universe at its widest point is too large for light to have crossed yet. This implies it was once much smaller. The background radiation, which implies the aftermath of a reaction that led to decay of some kind. The continued expansion of the universe, which implies an initial stimulus that triggered its expansion. And so on - these are all things we've measured, observed, and catalogued.

Based on what we know, there is a model created that best fits the available data. The Big Bang is not treated as a factual event, but as the best explanation based on what we know. If evidence is found that throws it into jeopardy as a model, a new one will be made to suit the new evidence. It has stood up to more than a few decades of close scrutiny so far, though, and at this stage evidence tends to keep supporting it as a plausible (but not certain) possibility.

I’ll grant that CO2 emissions affect the climate, that’s fine, but the lefts answer to it is farcical.

I believe in evolution, admittedly it was a mistake to throw that in there.  “A model that best fits the available data”, I understand, and I apologize if what I say offends you, as you seem to be a very nice person.  However, I believe the process of the universe (after creation) could expand or whatever and be measured or whatnot; what I don’t understand, and have never seen any good argument for (from creationists or atheists), is how did that hot and dense matter come into being.  Where was the spark?  There is either nothing; or something.  In my experience, people who mock God, or the existence of God, tend to stay away from how matter was here to begin with; what started it all.  They may wax poetic about abiogenesis or some other heady subject; not so much the actual beginning.

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4 hours ago, Altherion said:

As several people have pointed out, this is not the case unless "time immemorial" means something quite different from what most people usually take it to. Furthermore, even given the fact that there was indeed an interval of time when academia was opposed to the right, this still does not mean that it can sustain this indefinitely. The reason is fairly simple: money. It has grown much faster than the economy and is now so huge that it cannot afford to antagonize large parts of society.

Ugh.  Get.  A.  Life.  Please?   You're right, you can whine about things as long as you want.  Until you realize you're pretty stupid and whining like a little girl.  That's pretty funny, keep on keeping on!

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3 hours ago, King Ned Stark said:

I’ll grant that CO2 emissions affect the climate, that’s fine, but the lefts answer to it is farcical.

I believe in evolution, admittedly it was a mistake to throw that in there.  “A model that best fits the available data”, I understand, and I apologize if what I say offends you, as you seem to be a very nice person.  However, I believe the process of the universe (after creation) could expand or whatever and be measured or whatnot; what I don’t understand, and have never seen any good argument for (from creationists or atheists), is how did that hot and dense matter come into being.  Where was the spark?  There is either nothing; or something.  In my experience, people who mock God, or the existence of God, tend to stay away from how matter was here to begin with; what started it all.  They may wax poetic about abiogenesis or some other heady subject; not so much the actual beginning.

The left’s answer to carbon dioxide... ? I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t ever heard a consistent opinion of how to combat global warming. There are many ideas, and it feels as though none are being enacted. :(

 

The Big Bang model doesn’t know the original genesis, nor does it claim to. It is as estimate of whatever followed that initial moment of extreme mass and density, beginning less than nanoseconds afterward.

A suggestion I read while still studying was that perhaps the universe is an infinite repeating cycle; bang, expansion, collapse and bang - BUT no evidence has been found of this, so it is just a thought.

For me, since I’m catholic, I assume that the initial burst was created divinely, although I also understand that this isn’t much of an explanation for those who are either non-religious or don’t believe in a creator type god..

33 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

LUntil you realize you're pretty stupid and whining like a little girl.  

Or boy. ;)

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7 hours ago, King Ned Stark said:

Eh, anti-vaccers, flat earthers, homeopathy, and GMO- scare mongers represent such a minuscule percent of the population it’s not worth noting. A lot of people believe in climate change, as it has happened for millions of years; what they question is if CO2 emissions have any significant impact.  Is there any definitive proof in that area?

Creationists, okay.  You talk like non-believers, atheists, evolutionists, have some kind of proof of creation.  The Big Bang theory is just as much of a leap of faith and dismissal of logic as believing in a God.  Just because you believe something, or even a large swathe of people believe something, doesn’t make it true.  I’d think the left would understand the concept, as it’s a core principle of how they attack Christianity (not Islam, mind you), because reasons.

Don't you just love it when someone comes along and proves your point for you?

Okay first, anti-vaccers, flat earthers, homeopathy, and GMO- scare mongers may be a small percent overall but they do have a large effect. People are dying because of anti-vaccers, homeopaths, and Anti-GMO groups. But yeah "not worth noting." Suppose at least flat-earthers haven't caused any deaths that I am aware of.

Second CO2 impact on climate is the most basic of physics and has been established for well over 100 years. And when I say basic I mean "I was able to put together an experiment to show CO2's effect on warming in 4th grade" basic.

Third the Big Bang model fits every piece of evidence we currently have. There is no other model that even comes close. There is no leap of faith, but a myriad number of predictions that have proven themselves accurate with none currently being falsified.

Not that this is actually relevant to creationists, cause even if the big bang theory was proven 100% wrong tomorrow creationism would still be 100% wrong.

See this is the type of "respect" science gets from the general population. People can't bother to do the most basic research on a subject then spew like they know what they're talking about, often while bringing up the irrelevant like it's an actual point.

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From what I gather, new students wouldn't enroll some programs and those programs are being cut.

Isn't that normal? What would you prefer, forcing a bunch of kids to study musical literature against their will?

And this:

Quote

A broad, liberal arts education continues to be critical, UW-Stevens Point Chancellor Bernie Patterson said in messages to students, faculty and staff today. “Importantly, we remain committed to ensuring every student who graduates from UW-Stevens Point is thoroughly grounded in the liberal arts, as well as prepared for a successful career path. It is critical our students learn to communicate well, solve problems, think critically and creatively, be analytical and innovative, and work well in teams. This is the value of earning a bachelor’s degree.”

is a load of bullshit as big as I've ever seen.

How is communicating well, solving problems, thinking critically and creatively, being analytical and innovative and working well in teams something that one can learn in liberal arts alone? Hell, you can learn some of those things just by hanging out with friends.

And what exactly makes liberal arts education so critical? Why is knowing history and sociology (using those two since they're on the list of programs that are recommended to be discontinued) important if you want to be considered well-educated and knowing chemistry or physics is not? I mean, I'm pretty sure an average physicist or chemical engineer know a lot more about history and sociology than average historian or sociologist know about physics and chemistry.

Why doesn't this Patterson guy say that UW remains committed to ensuring every student who graduates from this university is thoroughly grounded in STEM?

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Ripponuet,

I’ve never seen History as a science.  I was always taught that it is part of the Humanities.

Well, I was trying to use another, less controversial, term initially, but that didn't work out. :rolleyes:
Anyway, for the purpose of this discussion you can always replace "history" with "archeology."
I think English is a bit unfair with history, but that's a debate for another day.

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6 hours ago, Yukle said:

Or boy. ;)

I have no memory of that post.  Gonna be an interesting day.

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’ve never seen History as a science.  I was always taught that it is part of the Humanities.

I agree, but Gunnell is a good medium to look into in this respect.  He documents the history of political philosophy, which really preceded political "science" until the 50s and the behaviorist movement.

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11 hours ago, King Ned Stark said:

 “A model that best fits the available data”, I understand, and I apologize if what I say offends you, as you seem to be a very nice person.  However, I believe the process of the universe (after creation) could expand or whatever and be measured or whatnot; what I don’t understand, and have never seen any good argument for (from creationists or atheists), is how did that hot and dense matter come into being.  Where was the spark?  There is either nothing; or something.  In my experience, people who mock God, or the existence of God, tend to stay away from how matter was here to begin with; what started it all.  They may wax poetic about abiogenesis or some other heady subject; not so much the actual beginning.

Hey, no one said that belief in the big bang and belief in God were mutually exclusive.
Generally speaking, science hasn't disproved the existence of God. That's not what science is for anyway. What science has done is disprove a number of religious myths, thus putting religious belief in serious perspective, and making a literal reading of the texts pretty much impossible.
The same goes for social sciences and conservative family values. Social sciences are not liberal or anti-conservative by nature, they just put all values and principles in perspective. It's far harder to claim your value system must be followed by society when you know for a fact that it's one among many.
Which is why I'm reacting to Altherion in the first place. All too often, the accusation of "liberal bias" levelled at academia is a way to dismiss its findings and the perspective that they bring.
A random example to illustrate... Homophobia is often based on the idea that the West's acceptation of homosexuality is somehow "new," that it's a dangerous experiment, a deviancy to be corrected, blablabla... But of course, history and anthropology show that many human societies have been rather open about homosexuality (and the LGBTQ community generally speaking, I'll daresay) since antiquity. Thus, academia (or social sciences, or humanities... Whichever term you want to use) shed a rather bad light on conservative viewpoints. The research itself is quite neutral and fact-based though ; conceivably, some of it could be carried out by conservative academics even. But the accusation of liberal bias is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle and claim that the West's newfound tolerance is somehow new and undesirable. It's a means to shut down universities and dismiss inconvenient facts, analyses and perspectives.
'tis what I was trying to say last night at least.

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3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Well, I was trying to use another, less controversial, term initially, but that didn't work out. :rolleyes:
Anyway, for the purpose of this discussion you can always replace "history" with "archeology."
I think English is a bit unfair with history, but that's a debate for another day.

The Science of History is only one of the multi-form approaches of historiography.

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15 hours ago, King Ned Stark said:

As someone who went through kindergarten-college (and didn’t get brainwashed into thinking that somehow makes me superior) it seems to me that a goodly portion of what is taught in school is completely unnecessary.

The ability of smart people to believe they did it all themselves by their own bootstraps and raw talent and didn’t need all the help they got along the way (education) and therefore all the help they got was unnecessary never ceases to amaze me.

i suppose it is why so many smart people adore myths about super-smart super -capable  misunderstood “heroes” who can do everything and know everything all while putting in zero effort or time in the pursuit of the mastery they allegedly possess. Genius is -not- knowing without learning, such a thing does not even exist.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Hey, no one said that belief in the big bang and belief in God were mutually exclusive.
Generally speaking, science hasn't disproved the existence of God. That's not what science is for anyway. What science has done is disprove a number of religious myths, thus putting religious belief in serious perspective, and making a literal reading of the texts pretty much impossible.
The same goes for social sciences and conservative family values. Social sciences are not liberal or anti-conservative by nature, they just put all values and principles in perspective. It's far harder to claim your value system must be followed by society when you know for a fact that it's one among many.
Which is why I'm reacting to Altherion in the first place. All too often, the accusation of "liberal bias" levelled at academia is a way to dismiss its findings and the perspective that they bring.
A random example to illustrate... Homophobia is often based on the idea that the West's acceptation of homosexuality is somehow "new," that it's a dangerous experiment, a deviancy to be corrected, blablabla... But of course, history and anthropology show that many human societies have been rather open about homosexuality (and the LGBTQ community generally speaking, I'll daresay) since antiquity. Thus, academia (or social sciences, or humanities... Whichever term you want to use) shed a rather bad light on conservative viewpoints. The research itself is quite neutral and fact-based though ; conceivably, some of it could be carried out by conservative academics even. But the accusation of liberal bias is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle and claim that the West's newfound tolerance is somehow new and undesirable. It's a means to shut down universities and dismiss inconvenient facts, analyses and perspectives.
'tis what I was trying to say last night at least.

This is what every extreme movement has done or tries to do -- whether fascists or or white supremacists or the Khmer Rouge or radical religious-political groups calling themselves Dominionists, or Boko Haram, or Zealots, or Breitbart, etc.  They are not only book-burning nazis, they actively hate science and facts and the arts and humanities (and women, too, of course, particularly women who do these things).  They hate the people who practice science and the arts, who are intellectuals and care about education because educated people know things, about the past, the present and the future and that's a threat to their dreams of a single uniform state that controls everything, in which all have to be the same and do the same and think the same or be removed. This is why genocide, hatred of gay people and women and migrants and refugees-- and those who were born with physical problems or develop them later in life, goes along with authoritarianism everywhere.

Hating the educated is always part and parcel of white supremacy and genocide.

There's a reason then that educational institutions often are where begins protest to the norms presented by those who hate educated people and everyone else who isn't a dumb thug.

 

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3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Not placing history in science is what allows assholes like Ken Ham to claim there's a difference between "historical" science and "observational" science.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say history is not a science. :blink:

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