I’ll be the first to admit that we’re seeing way too much political rhetoric on Hacker News lately but I’d like to defend this article. The point of this article isn’t that one side is right and the other is wrong it’s that people who are thoroughly entrenched in their positions refuse to listen to each other.
When we at Hacker News or out in the blogosphere discuss issues we tend to believe that logic will win out but that isn’t always the case. Knowing that is important and seeing it in a field that’s supposed to revere logic (academia) makes that point very powerfully.
So let me give just one example of how this could be considered technology related. Much of the tech surrounding "web 2.0" companies relies on the wisdom of the crowd and the idea that the crowd will be impartial and judge things on their merits. The question about motivations, biases, etc... is never brought up even though it’s a huge flaw in that system and something that should be discussed.
This article’s powerful statement on that subject might serve to open some eyes on that.
Real quick follow up point. How many times have you seen two educated, well thought out comments on a Hacker News item but one has 27 points and the other has 3 because the 27-point item is the one everyone agreed with?
I vote items up when I think they're smart whether I agree with them or not and I think others should do the same. That's the point this article makes and that's why I think it should be on Hacker News.
Maybe there's some HN value here - I've been thinking for some time the next great establishment to lose most of its influence due to the Web will be academia.
Universities seem like record companies ca. 1996, or media companies ca 2000 - too confident and self absorbed to realize reality is routing around them right now, making most of them obsolete with a few years.
I was fairly interested in the article. It was a little short on context but, from what I gathered, Horowitz et al. posit that college professors lean dramatically left and pressure their students to do so as well.
Based on my experience, this seems to hold pretty true, with a few notable exceptions (miron and pinker jump to mind) in most 'softer' departments (english/theology/psych/etc). In an english course I took last semester (ostensibly about democracy/law), papers I wrote that were critical of traditional liberal/socialist thought were critiqued more harshly than papers were more in line with the orthodoxy. Nothing flagrant enough to be improper (and I actually enjoyed the class), but the bias was definitely there.
Even in some of the harder sciences (chomsky and krugman, as two obvious examples) this seems to hold true.
Of course, professors should hold whatever political view they like, but I think the real question is if they are using their power to improperly/abusively coerce their students.
Personally, I haven't seen anything that rises to that level in college (but there was a horrible and grossly inappropriate bias at my high school), but I think that it is definitely worth investigating.
I don't want my professors preaching their politics any more than I want them preaching their religion.
I guess it's a matter of definitions. The kind of linguistics Chomsky worked on were rather mathematical, for example, see the Chomsky Hierarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy) which is used extensively in Computer Science.
And Krugman's actual papers are basically pure math. I'm having trouble finding many of his papers that aren't behind a pay wall, but see http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/scale_econ.pdf or http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/geography.pdf. And if memory serves, didn't he also write a paper on the effects of special relativity on the time value of capital? (I can't seem to find a copy ...). I know econ is only a 'dismal science,' but don't be too hard on it ;-)
"This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics." Although he calls it "serious", it's full of little jokes, some of them very good.
It is a matter of definitions. They aren't in the harder sciences. Try reading Chomsky's language books. (The Chomsky hierarchy is an exception.)
Both have a large body of work based on sound mathematical models with tenuous connections to reality (hence, soft science). Both have also been full-time pushers of a certain intellectual orthodoxies for as long as anyone can remember.
I've seen Horowitz on a news show and I couldn't forget how inflammatory he was and he didn't sound any different than any other right-wing pundit I've seen.
What is the criteria for left-wing bias anyways? Any criticism of any right-wing person or policy? Not being "fair and balanced" on each issue when in fact one side IS right and the other side IS wrong? Not allowing the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology classes?
Has anyone looked at "right-wing" bias in universities? Maybe the left isn't shouting as loudly as the right.
I would contend that bias has to do more with interpretation of facts, than of facts themselves (although, obviously, you can create bias through selective presentation of facts as well). Basically, it reduces to which side of the is-ought dichotomy (Hume) a statement falls on. Anything on the 'is' side is fair game. Anything on the ought side is opinion (which is fine), but should not be enforced.
An example of bias might be a professor positing (outside an econ class) that we should bail out the auto industry. That statement, while on its face reasonable, implicitly assumes a number of 'positive rights' that most conservatives don't grant. It further assumes that a bailout is the best way to guarantee those positive rights, which is outside the purview of anything but an economics class.
Improper bias may be the teacher grading assignments disagreeing with his thesis (and its implicit liberal assumptions) more harshly than papers agreeing with his thesis. Obviously, this would be very hard to show - but if it is happening, it would be extremely bad.
In terms of article content, academics and education seem to be of interest to the HN community, both because it tends to be a college-age and college-going crowd and because change often starts with education.
In terms of article quality, I found it confusing and almost unreadable.
When we at Hacker News or out in the blogosphere discuss issues we tend to believe that logic will win out but that isn’t always the case. Knowing that is important and seeing it in a field that’s supposed to revere logic (academia) makes that point very powerfully.
So let me give just one example of how this could be considered technology related. Much of the tech surrounding "web 2.0" companies relies on the wisdom of the crowd and the idea that the crowd will be impartial and judge things on their merits. The question about motivations, biases, etc... is never brought up even though it’s a huge flaw in that system and something that should be discussed.
This article’s powerful statement on that subject might serve to open some eyes on that.