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Hili dialogue – Why Evolution Is True

Posted on by Vaseline
Hili dialogue – Why Evolution Is True

Welcome to Sunday, September 15, 2024: sabbath for goyishe cats. And it’s National Double Cheeseburger Day. The ultimate double cheeseburger, said to be the best in the world (I’ve never tried it) is from Hodad’s in San Diego. Here the owner describes how it’s made:

It’s also Butterscotch Cinnamon Pie Day (never had it), National Caregivers Day, National Cheese Toast Day, National Linguine Day, National Women’s Friendship Day, and National Brunch Day (remember, Anthony Bourdain told us never to eat brunch out). 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Columnist Jennifer Schuessler has an op-ed in the NYT called “Should a more ‘diverse’ campust mean more conservatives?” (It’s archived here.) The issue. framed as a “Republican” one, is whether “diversity” should go beyond ethnic diversity or even socioeconomic diversity to include “viewpoint diversity”, which on today’s hyperliberal campuses means “get more conservatives”.

Criticism of universities as hotbeds of liberal elitists and tenured radicals is nothing new. But more than a decade after conservatives turned “free speech” into a rallying cry, they are increasingly championing another concept: “viewpoint diversity.”

The innocuous, bureaucratic-sounding term has its origins within academia itself. But as battles over higher education heat up, it has been taken up by politicians who promote it as a counterpart — some would say a counterpunch — to efforts to promote racial and ethnic diversity.

Calls for viewpoint diversity have been written into education laws proposed or passed in at least seven states, including Florida and Texas. In March, Indiana passed a law that curtailed diversity, equity and inclusion programs, while mandating that professors be regularly evaluated on whether their courses promote “intellectual diversity.” Failure to do so can be a firing offense, even for tenured faculty.

At first glance, calls for viewpoint diversity would seem to be hard to object to. The idea that the pursuit of knowledge rests on the unfettered exchange of a broad range of ideas is a bedrock principle of the university. It has also undergirded arguments for race-based affirmative action, which under the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was permissible if it enriched the overall learning environment for everyone.

But for many who advocate it — and certainly for many who are wary — viewpoint diversity boils down to one thing: the need for more conservatives on syllabuses, in the classroom and, perhaps most important, on the faculty.

Schuessler points out that some people—and this includes me—are worried about how a “progressive” ideology could itself impede the search for truth, the major theme of the paper that Luana and I wrote about the ideological subversion of evolutionary biology.  There’s more:

Some prominent scholars have argued for the need to actively counter ideological imbalances. In a widely noted 2011 speech at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that social psychology had become a “tribal moral community that actively discourages conservatives from entering,” and called on the society to commit to having conservatives make up 10 percent of its membership by 2020.

That didn’t happen. And the field, Haidt said in an interview, has only gotten “more politicized.”

In the meantime, Haidt has moved from concerns with research to ones about the broader campus climate. In 2015, Haidt, with two colleagues, founded Heterodox Academy, a cross-campus group that promotes “open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.” In their 2018 book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Haidt and Greg Lukianoff connected the narrowing of campus discourse with broader shifts in American culture that have encouraged students to see themselves as fragile, easily traumatized people who need “safe spaces.”

That book became a New York Times best seller, and turned Haidt in to a leading public voice in debates about politics and higher education. But for years, he said, convincing liberal colleagues there was a problem felt like a losing battle. “We were seen as apologists for the right,” he said.

In the meantime, as recent surveys have shown, trust in higher education has plummeted across the political spectrum over the past decade. “When universities have lost the trust of centrists and moderates,” Haidt said, “you can’t blame it on the right.”

I am in favor of expanding the diversity of viewpoints on campus. after all, that’s been one rationale for expanding the diversity of ethnic groups on campus. If colleges are not going to become echo chambers of progressive, extreme Leftism, which is a real danger, then we need more than just a few token conservatives to balance the mix. It’s time for some affirmative action for conservatives (n.b., I am not one of them, but appreciate their presence on our campus).

*My hearing has always been substandard: when I had my draft physical in 1970, the hearing test put me pretty far below par. It’s getting worse as I get older, and I’m sometimes unable to hear low voices.  But I’ve resisted getting a hearing aid, and that’s out of pure vanity, which is dumb. However, Apple has now converted its latest earbuds into a medical hearing device, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

When the world’s most valuable company held its latest glitzy event this week, Apple AAPL -0.12%decrease; red down pointing triangle offered a peek at its highly anticipated AI tools and the next iPhone.

And one more thing that could quietly turn out to be the most important release of them all.

It wasn’t a new product. In fact, it’s a product you might already own. The company showed off a feature that will transform the most popular wireless earbuds into something else altogether—something that Apple believes will meaningfully, almost magically improve the lives of millions of people.

A hearing aid.

As soon as it rolls out the software update this fall, Apple will instantly make the AirPods Pro 2 into a medical device, essentially turning every pair of the company’s top-selling headphones into over-the-counter hearing aids.

Audiologists expect it will be the best low-cost option for most Americans who need hearing aids but don’t wear them.

It’s meant for people with perceived mild to moderate levels of hearing loss. And those are exactly the people who might never otherwise get a hearing aid.

Whether it’s because of price, stigma or their refusal to admit they’re getting older, people with the least severe hearing problems are the ones most reluctant to seek help. Most feel it’s not worth their money, time and energy to find a solution. Some don’t even know they have a problem.

Audiologists say they can be helpful:

AirPods might not be as good as prescription hearing aids for people with profound hearing loss. But for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, they are plenty good enough. And there are lots of those people.

There are roughly 30 million Americans who could benefit from hearing aids, according to the U.S. government, and the World Health Organization says 1.5 billion people globally are living with hearing loss.

And the only thing more surprising than how many people could use a hearing aid is how many of those people don’t actually have one.

In fact, 75% of people with hearing loss let it go untreated, according to the Apple Hearing Study, a project run with the University of Michigan. In case you don’t trust medical statistics from a trillion-dollar company trying to sell you something, the audiologists I consulted told me that number sounded right.

. . . Today, prescription hearing aids still cost thousands of dollars. OTC devices cost significantly less. The generic preset ones sell for roughly $100 and the more personalized self-fitting ones around $1,000. The hearing aid from Apple will essentially perform like the expensive devices for the price of the cheaper ones at $249. And for those who already own the AirPods Pro 2, it won’t cost anything extra.

Now that you can buy hearing aids of all stripes over the counter, this may be a good option. However, don’t those things look like big white devices sticking out of your ears? Probably not appropriate for a panel discussion or a lecture!

*The WaPo reports that conversations between people with opposing political opinions—conversations that are unguided and unmoderated—lead to comity far more often than people think.  This was an experiment conducted at Stanford University.

When it comes to politics, many Americans feel increasing contempt for the other side. The problem lies not only in how we feel but also with errors in our thinking. Recognizing this reality offers a key to how we might rediscover common ground and de-escalate conflict.

Consider Ben and Emily. They live in the same state and belong to the same race, economic class and generation. Yet they don’t agree on much.

Ben is a Republican who owns two guns. “There are a lot of crazies out there,” he explained to Emily in a video conversation our Stanford laboratory facilitated. “A lot of crazy people own guns,” countered Emily, a Democrat who despises firearms.

Their fraught conversation resembled so many in this polarized moment — until it didn’t. Within minutes, with no prompting from our staff, the two began opening up about their stories. Emily’s husband once had a gun pulled on him in an argument. Ben is a gay man living in a conservative town; after receiving threatening messages, he felt he needed protection.

Ben and Emily (whose names have been changed to preserve their privacy) were among more than 160 Americans who spoke about their opposing political views as part of an experiment we ran at Stanford. Over and over, we observed as participants with rival opinions came to these conversations ready for combat — and left feeling changed. Afterward, they reported feeling less hostile toward the other party and more humble in their own views. When asked to rate the pleasantness of these dialogues, the most common response was 100 on a 100-point scale.

The article uses these results to boost cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of therapy that tries to help people with psychological problems by getting rid of cognitive distortions.  And these distortions, so the article maintains, can be dispelled by conversation:

Like cognitive distortions in depression, political misperceptions bleed into our actions and make things worse, in at least two ways.

The first is unpopular escalation. In our study, participants who believed that rivals would bend democratic rules for their own gain thought their own party should do the same. Why honor rules of engagement if the enemy won’t? Likewise, people who overestimate the other side’s hatred and violence grow more willing to hate and harm, as well.

The second is consensus neglect. Yes, there are violent extremists who actually threaten our nation. But they are a tiny minority. In our lab, we’ve found that more than 80 percent of Americans regret the country’s division and wish for greater cooperation. In recent surveys, Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on other core values, such as voting rights and freedom of religion, as well as several policies, such as facilitating immigration for skilled workers, upholding Medicare and tightening gun laws.

. . . In CBT, people are challenged to think differently and act differently by collecting new data themselves. In a divided America, this could mean braving conversations across difference, the way Ben and Emily did.

It also means getting rid of those “conflict entrepreneurs” who benefit by fostering divisiveness (the DEI enterprise comes to mind). This idea that civil conversations could reduce the divisions between people is an old one, but is demonstrated here with evidence. I guess I’m just a bit cynical about this. Would it really be the case that putting a pro-Hamas and a pro-Israeli in a room together would bring their views closer together? How would that work? What about a rabid Trump fan versus someone for whom Kamala Harris brings joy? There seem to be certain fundamental values that wouldn’t be abandoned in such circumstances, and although people might understand where others are coming from better, or not hate somebody so much, it’s the difference in values that’s causing the problems. But of course I may be wrong.

*An op-ed in the WSJ, “The debate’s inadvertent Israel lesson,” echoes my criticisms of Harris’s confused (indeed, conflicting) response in the debate when asked about the war between Israel and Hamas.

If you hoped to learn about Israel policy, the presidential debate didn’t disappoint. It was a perfect demonstration of all that’s wrong with the way we talk about it.

ABC’s Linsey Davis began: “Vice President Harris, in December you said, ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’ but you added, ‘It matters how.’ You said, ‘International humanitarian law must be respected.’ ‘Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.’ You said that nine months ago. Now an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead. Nearly 100 hostages remain. Just last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there’s not a deal in the making. President Biden has not been able to break through the stalemate. How would you do it?”

Like most media coverage, the question begins not with Oct. 7 but with Israel’s response. Hamas barely exists in the telling, except in the uncredited citation of its propaganda, “40,000 Palestinians are dead.” This passes off slain terrorists—more than 17,000, Israel says—as civilians. That’s how Ms. Davis posed the 40,000, as giving the lie to statements about protecting civilians. She left out that the figure is supplied by Hamas, whose strategy is to encourage the deaths of civilians, or that it includes some 10,000 deaths attested only by Hamas’s media sources.

Ms. Harris dodged the question about negotiations, which might have implicated Mr. Biden’s failure. Instead she tried to please everyone.

“Let’s understand how we got here,” she started. “On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis.” Then came Israel’s “right to defend itself,” in theory, but not like this and never quite now: “It is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end,” immediately, with a “cease-fire deal.” She closed by urging “a two-state solution.”

Ms. Harris treated the war only as a humanitarian crisis. Oct. 7 was horrible, Israel’s response was horrible, so end it now. Absent is any strategic objective. If the war ends now, Hamas will be left to rearm, restore its rule and start the next war. Hers is the same logic that has failed in each previous round of fighting.

Harris also plumped strongly for a two-state solution, which anybody with neurons that connect know is simply not viable now, and won’t be for aeons.  But Trump takes his lumps, too:

Would Mr. Trump challenge this  (the idea that Netanyahu should negotiate with Hamas) or expose the Biden strategy to which Ms. Harris clings?

Nope. “If I were president, it would have never started,” he said. “She hates Israel. If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.” By the time he explained—Biden sanctions relief enriches Iran and its proxies (sic)—who was paying attention?

Israel won’t exist in two years? Take that seriously but not literally; still, it gives succor to terrorists. On the war, Mr. Trump concluded, “I will get that settled and fast.” We are left to guess whether that means pressuring Israel to wrap it up or unleashing Israel to wrap it up. I think it’s the latter, but why isn’t it clear?

“Vice President Harris,” the moderator picked up, “he says you hate Israel.” “That’s absolutely not true,” she replied. Enlightening? No. Instructive? Bigly.

I think it’s clear that Trump means the latter, given his behavior when he was President. I don’t think Harris hates Israel, but nor do I think she’s thinking clearly about the war.  Although Trump wasn’t clear, either, I’d guess that his approach to the conflict would please me more than Harris’s. I’m also guessing that Harris, if elected, would quickly move to the “squad” side of the Left, and you know what they think about Israel.  In other words, I see a fair amount of Harris’s newfound “centrism” as a ruse.

*And this is one of the best pieces I’ve read recently, distressing at it is. It’s from the Free Press, and if you don’t subscribe or can’t access it by clicking below, you’ll find it archived here. Ten years ago I highlighted a related story by Matti Friedman, who worked as an AP correspondent in Israel for five years.  His earlier article was largely about deliberate misreporting about Israel caused by pressure from the AP;  the present article, while mentioning the Gaza conflict, is more about the ideological biases that cause reporters to lie:

A few excerpts:

The most important thing I saw during my time as a correspondent in the American press, it seemed to me, was happening among my colleagues. The practice of journalism—that is, knowledgeable analysis of messy events on Planet Earth—was being replaced by a kind of aggressive activism that left little room for dissent. The new goal was not to describe reality, but to usher readers to the correct political conclusion, and if this sounds familiar now, it was both new and surprising to the younger version of myself who was lucky to get a job with the AP’s Jerusalem bureau in 2006.

. . .Looking back at my essays ten years later, it’s clear that what I saw in Israel wasn’t limited to Israel. Starting out as a journalist, I knew the fundamental question to ask when reporting a story. It was: What is going on?

When I left the AP after nearly six years, I’d learned that the question was different. It was: Who does this serve?

You may think that a news story is meant to serve readers, by conveying reality. I thought so. What I found, however, was that the story was more often meant to serve the ideological allies of the people in the press. If your ideology dictates that Israeli Jews are symbols of racism and colonialism, and Palestinians symbols of third-world innocence, then a story that makes Israelis seem constructive and Palestinians obstructive must be avoided even if it’s true, because it serves the wrong people.

. . . Asking “Who does this serve?” instead of “What is going on?” explains why a true story about a laptop belonging to the president’s son was dismissed as false: This story would help the wrong people. It explains the reticence in reporting the real effects of gender medicine, or the origins of Covid—stories that could help the wrong people and hurt the right ones. It explains why much of the staff of The New York Times demanded the ouster of talented editors for publishing an op-ed by the wrong person, a conservative senator. It explains why a story about an opposition candidate colluding with Russia was reported as fact—the story wasn’t true, but it helped the right people. It explains why President Biden’s cognitive decline, a story of obvious importance to people of any political affiliation, was avoided until it became impossible to ignore. And it explains why journalists rarely pay any price for these shortcomings. If the goal is ideological more than analytic, these aren’t shortcomings. They are the point.

This thinking also explains why the growing fear of violence perpetrated by Muslim extremists, a fact of life throughout much of the Middle East, Africa, and increasingly the West, has to be presented whenever possible as a figment of racist imagination—a fictionalization that requires intense mental efforts and serves as one the key forces warping coverage of global reality in 2024. In the strange world of the doctrinaire left, adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism are the wrong people, while adherents of Islam have a point.

The ideas I saw shape Israel coverage, in other words, have spread through the press and tamed the formerly independent and unruly world of journalists—a world where we may have been wrong most of the time, but not all the time, and never all in the same way.

. . . When I began working for the American press in 2006, someone with my center-left Israeli opinions may have been someone to disagree with, like a conservative Democrat or moderate Republican. In 2024, someone like me is a suspected racist who probably wouldn’t be hired. With some exceptions, the institutions have sunk into the Manichaean fantasy world they helped create.

It took me several years at the AP, and then a few more after I left, to grasp the change and put it into words. What was true of the Israel story ten years ago is now true of almost everything. Most journalists have abandoned “What’s going on?” for “Who does this serve?” The result is that huge swaths of the public know what they’re sup

In other words, cui bono?  I think about this when I read any of the MSM, but especially venues like the NYT, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and all the liberal MSM that used to be my sole source of news and opinion (the Wall Street Journal is harder, at least for the news section). You might have a look at Friedman’s Atlantic article from 2014, which is archived here.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s calling for a presser:

Hili: Let’s start.

A: Start what?

Hili: A press conference about the current situation.

In Polish:

Hili: Zaczynamy.

Ja: Co zaczynamy?

Hili: Konferencję prasową na temat sytuacji.

*******************

From David, another church sign:

From Cat Memes; spot the moggie!

From Jesus of the Day:

 

Masih notes that Iranian women who supported her, often removing their hijabs and calling out male harassers, are being forced to publicly “confess” and demonize Masih:

From Barry, a reworking of Ceiling Cat:

Hamas is firing rockets at Israel (and conducting its terrorist operations) from within humanitarian areas of Gaza. (Hamas fired two more rockets there yesterday.)  Clearly Hamas’s strategy is to get Israel to strike humanitarian areas and kill Gazan civilians. How much more evil can you get? (The IDF now has to evacuate those who were already evacuated.)

This happened to me once and it was plenty scary (and wound up in a 5-car collision in which nobody, thank Ceiling Cat, was hurt. I stopped my car by running it into the dirt shoulder. I think it’s useful to know

Do you know this breed of sheep?

Here’s the one with his tongue out, 13 seconds in:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one who survived and is still with us! Today is her 95th birthday.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first one is for those who know cricket. Matthew called it “the best tweet he’s seen,” and added, in response to my puzzlement, “The ball is hitting the wicket – the catcher is just sitting there. Warne was a spin bowler so even these talented batsmen could not keep their eye on the ball and hit it – it nipped in and knocked the bails off each time.”  I still don’t understand, of course. . .

One I retweeted. LOOK AT THAT FLOWER!