Timeline for Questions, answers, comments or discussions on aspects of politics relevant to mathematicians on MathOverflow (main or meta)
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 27, 2020 at 16:23 | comment | added | Tim Campion | @user2520938 Thanks for the advice. I understand that I've come across that way, and I'm working to understand why. My current understanding is that (1) Any comment with the potential to prolong the discussion was bound to be seen as "antagonistic" in the current context, (2) my long and distracting parenthetical to my initial comment, which was meant to address (1), only exacerbated the problem, (3) I expressed my confusions about Hailong's reddit suggestion in a suboptimal way. I'm grateful to Hailong for looking past these infelicities and providing the clarification I requested. | |
| Aug 27, 2020 at 11:04 | comment | added | user2520938 | @TimCampion You should just not constantly be on the lookout for drama and you shouldn't try to read bad intention into everything someone says. It is precisely this attitude that makes it impossible to discuss politics anymore in universities. | |
| Aug 24, 2020 at 17:12 | comment | added | Tim Campion | @HailongDao I appreciate the example. I think it clarifies your answer, as I requested initially. I'm sorry for distracting from my request for clarity with the long parenthetical in that comment. Now that you have clarified the somewhat nebulous fears you expressed in your answer, I do want to express an opinion: I feel that to some degree this line of thought allows the fear of trolls to control us, and that this is undesireable. | |
| Aug 24, 2020 at 4:21 | comment | added | Hailong Dao | @TimCampion: I was just being consistent with my point that a detailed discussion of a topic like culture wars in social science should be much better carried out on reddit than MO. You seem to be troubled a bit easily, so I no longer feel like a long conversation would be fun for either of us. Here is one example of things that I don't want to see in our community, you can probably found many other examples, and lively discussions about them, online: buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/…. | |
| Aug 24, 2020 at 2:41 | comment | added | Tim Campion | It's unclear what to me what you mean by "moving the conversation to reddit", but if it helps I am /u/tcampion there. I'm troubled by the implication that if you were to be more precise about what you mean in your answer, additional moderation would be required. | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 16:55 | comment | added | Hailong Dao | In fact, I just Googled and found a thread on culture war there. This post shows that the admins there have much more experience dealing with such topic: reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/bdcc84/… | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 16:48 | comment | added | Hailong Dao | @TimCampion: I would be happy to talk more about that, but I would prefer we move the conversation to reddit (don't have an account yet, but should be easy to open one). | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 16:27 | comment | added | Tim Campion | Could you also clarify the allusion to "what happened in the social sciences"? Are we to infer something like "many social sciences have become politicized by a US-style culture war"? Is there a specific example you have in mind? | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 16:27 | comment | added | Tim Campion | @HailongDao Thanks for your response. Is your distinction that "'politicization' means 'open discussion of politics' while 'political' also encompasses more implicit things"? | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 15:48 | comment | added | Hailong Dao | @TimCampion: yes, I am aware that most thing we do and say have political meaning. The mere fact that we are talking about what MathOverflow should allow while billions of people are suffering from neo-colonialism, genocide, political oppression, poverty, human trafficking, etc is a political statement too. But my point is precisely that we should keep MathOverflow, a tiny insignificant corner of the internet, from being politicized (not political, as we can agree, the existence and population of MO are already results of political and social forces). | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 14:01 | comment | added | Tim Campion | I'm confused by the vague and sweeping allusion "what happened in the social sciences". What did happen? (I've been conflicted about making this comment because I'm afraid it may come across as political in nature. But ultimately I think if that's the case, then the "political-ness" originates in Hailong's answer. Which may underscore the point that any position of "apoliticality" is itself a political position, often a position favoring the status quo, or else making some compromise among different political positions.) | |
| Aug 22, 2020 at 15:17 | history | edited | Rodrigo de Azevedo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 20, 2020 at 0:37 | comment | added | Hailong Dao | @YemonChoi: yes, we need to add a certain amount of privilege. | |
| Aug 20, 2020 at 0:02 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | Hailong and @Lucia : speaking as a Brit, I think extensive trialling of this idea has shown that it may be necessary but it isn't sufficient :) | |
| Aug 19, 2020 at 17:11 | comment | added | Hailong Dao | @Lucia: I think being slightly pessimistic is the key to happiness! (-: | |
| Aug 19, 2020 at 16:59 | comment | added | Lucia | A little pessimistic, but I concede that I have similar fears, and would like MO to walk back from this. | |
| Aug 19, 2020 at 16:45 | history | answered | Hailong Dao | CC BY-SA 4.0 |