(01-18-2020 08:15 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(01-18-2020 03:34 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(01-17-2020 11:54 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Big,
You lean left, so a prof who puts a leftward slant on things sounds to you like he/she is right down the middle. When 90% of the faculty lean left, you are going to get a leftward slant on things, whether there is a conspiracy or not. I see it all the time at my place, and we are a relatively conservative school.

Yes, because I am an idiot and can't identify when someone is providing me with their opinion or take on a topic, rather than just providing the facts? Do you not recognize right-wing slants and so you are projecting that onto others? I can recognize and separate an individual's opinion from the underlying facts (thanks). So at least as this applies to me, you are completely incorrect. But if you somehow know me better than I know myself, please let me know how...
Also, I can no longer even remember why we are discussing this. I don't think it matters, I really don't care about it, and we obviously aren't going to have some epiphinal meeting of the minds. Perhaps we should move on to other things that are just as pointless but don't feel quite as stale to discuss?
Also also, still waiting for that objective evidence.

No, because you lean left, so when somebody provides you with option or facts cherrypicked from a leftist point of view, that take probably agrees with yours so you don't question it. As for your comment about separating opinion from facts, what if you get those facts from only one point of view. In many cases, feeding only a one-sided view of facts can promote more bias than giving opinions.

And yes, I recognize right-wing slants, so I'm not projecting anything. For example I almost quit watching/listening to Fox because they have become so right-wing that it annoys me. But every other news source is so left-wing that I decided I need a little Fox for balance. My problem now is that comparing Fox to the others, they do not appear to be describing the same reality from two different viewpoints, which would be helpful, but rather more to be describing two different realities. I don't trust anything from any of them any more. Hence BBC World Service, from which I at least get an idea about what is going on across the rest of the planet.

Suppose you were sitting in a class and your professor offered that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. Do you take that as fact, or as that prof's opinion? Suppose you have ten different profs over two semesters and nine of them offer that comment and the tenth says that it was investigated thoroughly and not proved. What do you then believe?

Well, if i was a committed left-winger, I would certainly think that last prof was a part of the vast right-wing conspiracy and dismiss his inputs immediately, if not sooner. If the source is not one you trust, they must be wrong.

I think the disconnect here is that Big was probably a committed left-winger when he entered college, so anything he heard was just, to him, common sense being repeated. I think of the students in Pyongyang and Havana, and what they hear and believe. They get their beliefs reinforced every day, all day long.

But a lot of students here are still malleable and seeking. I was. And at one point, when mapping out my future, I decided to do anything but business, since businessmen were just evil exploiters of the workers, greedy for profit and uncaring about the workers. It took getting out of the ivory tower into the real world to change my mind. But what if i had stayed in the ivory tower/ What if I had become a professor of Sociology? Would my views have changed? Would I have become one of those Marxist professors Obama was so proud of having hung out with?

I don't remember much in the way of politics being brought up when I was in school. One of my roomies took a job with Dow and was castigated as baby killer. Another went to Viet Nam and was castigated as a baby killer. This was a decade before RVW, so the irony is delicious.