Not sure if I should engage, but one thing just come to my mind in this discussion.
It looks like there is a huge imbalance between the "ideologically-driven intellectual dishonesty" contributions.
From the same author of the initial article (Bret Devereaux), there are more recent blog posts and even podcasts talks about what the author calls the "chuds", which are members of the public interested in history but who turn out to be ideologically motivated.
These groups have few characteristics that make them different from "normal amateurs": 1. they hate academics and confronting their views outside their bubble, 2. they have shallow knowledge (instead of "small localised deep knowledge" of normal amateurs), 3. they use their historical understanding "politically" (as opposed as someone who just enjoy understanding the past but does not go to the extra step to use it to support a future social ideal), 4. they are aggressive.
These characteristics should be independent of the political alignment: from this alone, there is no reason a right-wing chud has more probability to exist than a left-wing chud. And you easily expect the left-wing chud to have to same characteristics (because the origin of these characteristics is that these individuals first come to history with their ideological conclusions and acquire these characteristics when the reality or facts are contradicting these conclusions).
But what is interesting is that these chuds are overwhelmingly right-wing and pro-"how dare you say there were black Romans".
I'm sure that if you look long enough you may find left-wing and pro-"50% of blacks everywhere", but that is order of magnitude smaller (Devereaux points to Twitter account with huge following).
And I'm sure there are politically-correct mistakes. But it is not clear these mistakes are 100% ideological rather than the normal Gaussian curve (an intellectually honest person may sometimes underestimate, and may sometimes overestimate: the existence of overestimation examples does not mean it is the result of a problem). Or, even more interestingly, that these mistakes are due to the presence of right-wing chuds muddying the water (if you see a group that you know is unreliable defending some conclusions, you will be biased being more critical towards these conclusions, or you may "over correct" by swing of the pendulum).
So, I think it's a bit easy to just conclude: "That they don't like it when you twist and manufacture history for idiological purposes." to the question "What does it say about people who relentlessly push back on it?". A lot of people pushing back are not doing that because they don't like twisting and manufacturing history for ideological purposes, they are pushing back because they want to twist and manufacture history for their ideological purposes, and are angry if someone comes with something different (being for ideological purpose, from honest mistake, or even because it is the correct scientific approach).
I would agree with you if there were prominent left-wing chuds. But it's not the case, it looks like the pro-"presence of black romans" may sometimes get it wrong, but are less ideologically dominated than the anti-"presence of black romans".
(and to take back the example that started this specific thread: Elon Musk does not complain about The Odyssey because of respect for history. One of his prominent problem with the movie is that "the most beautiful woman" is black, which he judges as impossible historically but apparently, there are texts of this area praising the beauty of women that appear to be African. Musk's reaction is purely ideological: he does not know history, he does not care about it, he just saw something that was not particularly a-historical and concluded it was because he has a problem with "wokeness" and see it everywhere)
You said something that is a beginner's mistake (and it is objectively incorrect, your interlocutor even invites you to try to prove otherwise, that's how confident they are you will not be able to do so because it is simply not true). Based on that, your interlocutor just said "I know better than you". Not because they invented it, but because you gave them all the indications that it is true by making beginner's mistakes.
So, no, they don't "have no idea": they saw you struggling with basic elements that people who know this subject have already acquired.
Funnily enough, you genuinely have no idea of what their parents have done, and yet you don't hesitate to do exactly what you pretend is so shameful. You don't make any sense. Honestly, just take one step back and stop being so angry. Just breathe, stop being so emotional and think a little bit. You don't have to apologize or lose face, you can just stop writing answer (stop digging your own hole) and do better next time.
> The fact that you are telling me (someone you don't know ...
That's rich from a guy who also tell someone they don't know that they are "obsessed with Musk". You are so full of it, and too stupid to even notice everyone here see you for the laughing stock you are.
> I'm laughing so hard right now. You resoundingly do care about Musk; you're obsessed with him.
I love those self-defeating argument, it's still a mystery how people don't realise how stupid they look. You know that I know better than you how much I care about Musk, right? You are trying to convince me that something that I can observe, as a fact, to be totally wrong, is in fact true. You realise that all you do is confess that you are unable to conceive that something that you have made up may not be true.
Ok, ok, let me try. complianceowll, you are a little dog called Popo. You say it's not the case, you say you are not a little dog, but I'm laughing so hard right now, because you resoundingly are a dog, you are named Popo. See, I'm so smart, you cannot hide the truth from me.
Did it work? Did you believe to be a little dog (because you are)? No? Well, guess what, similarly, I still don't believe I'm obsessed with Musk. But I do believe, based on that proof, that your opinions are worth nothing, because they are the result of someone who not only is convinced of something false, but also believe that they can convince someone who see it's not true that it is true. Silly little dog.
What do you mean "out of context". The initial article is literally explaining that there is a misconception around the diversity of culture during the antiquity. This anecdotal event, that I picked because it was recent (sorry to disappoint you, I don't really care for Musk), was just a concrete example that the exact misconception we are talking about is real and still present today. The fact that the culprit is Musk is just "by chance".
(ps: and the fact that you end up with "and in hollywood, they depicted a roman army that was not entirely Rome-inhabitant-looking, so it is the proof that it's "wokeness" seems to also illustrate that indeed you have assimilated the misconception yourself)
If you have "several hundred hours", maybe you approached the article a bit too defensively. When I read it, I did not see any "combative approach", it seems even to be tongue-in-cheek (the misnomer is qualified as "amusing silliness", this is not at all what you would expect from someone who is combative).
But the author, and it is quoted in the comment you answer to, say, explicitly "I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games".
The author, basically, says: I know games are not realistic, but the way AOE illustrates a misconception gives me an opportunity to talk about this misconception because too many people are still seriously believing it.
Of course, movies and games can take all the liberties they want, the author does not care about that. What the author raises is the fact that too many people still have an incorrect idea of what is an empire, and that this idea is a bit ridiculous when you look at the fact.
And it has current real consequences. For example, there are political parties that rely on such misconceptions to sell their fake news (edit: as illustrated below with someone commenting that the correct description of "empire" is the result of the author being "woke").
But the article also says that if you understand what an empire is, then there are empires all the time, and basically all time periods after prehistory would fit the bill.
And yet it's not rare to find people explaining that the roman empire, the roman armies or the roman cities were "all the same". Yet these persons seem to know that in real life population is not limited to 200 or that there is day-night cycles.
The article talks about it, and makes the point that people who created AOE may have been biased by the same misconception that is also visible more generally. And it is an interesting thing to raise.
edit: in fact, it is illustrated by the ridiculous recent Elon Musk fit about "the odyssey" cast, itself fueled by the misconceptions that "having black guys in a roman army is woke because everyone knows the romans are not black".
I've a very dim memory of having heard about it years ago (more than a decades), from an article of Cory Doctorow, and in my mind, he was the one who came up with the idea (and chose the letters TK).
But I can be wrong (maybe it's not from Doctorow, maybe the article did not even claim the paternity of coming up with TK but it was me badly understanding it, ...)
> I'm not a fan of Trump's governance, but none of those people were investigated for "criticizing Trump's decisions".
Is that a joke? These people would never have been investigated if they were not critical towards Trump. The only reason they are investigated is because Trump is taking revenge on them for the crime of saying that Trump is wrong.
Again, this does not happen in Europe. There are political enemies, and they fight between each others. But you would struggle to find 2 political allies, with a president saying positive about the other person on Monday, and then on Friday calling for this person to be investigated because the other person has said something they did not like.
> Poland, ...
These are not cases of a president retaliating on a rival that criticized them. These are corruption, or fights between political parties, or tax evasion, ... Nothing to do with freedom of speech.
> 1. Insults are subjective
Everything is subjective. Hitting someone is subjective, so according to you, criminalising "battery" is dangerous because you can arrest people who just bumped into you in the subway. Pretending that it means full arbitrary situation is just stupid.
> 2. You're literally trying to restrict how I express my legitimate opinions
No, you can do it if you want, you just have to pay for the damage you have done when you use it as an idiot.
It is as ridiculous as saying: we are in a free country, so I can walk wherever I want, including in your bedroom when you are sleeping.
No one is ever arresting for your opinion. In all of the initial examples, there are plenty of people who criticize openly these politicians that you pretend people will be arrested if they criticize them. It does not happen. Because it is not true that you are arrested if you criticize them.
> The original point was that people were arrested for criticizing politicians
They were not arrested for criticizing politicians. Some of the examples are literally not attack on politicians, they don't target a politician as individual. Some examples are not even any arrest. And the other examples, they were "arrested" for being stupid, where it happened they were also targeting a politician. They would have been arrested equally if they targeted another public figure.
> It's not a conspiracy when people are just acting in their own best interests.
It is on the best interest of individuals to get a lot of prestige by demonstrating a consensus is not supported by facts.
> frankly completely ignorant of studies done on exactly this
I don't think someone who provided tax evasion examples of powerful targeting opponents just because they were critical of them would be able to understand these studies.
> If you think that people should be arrested for 'being pricks' then you are the problem here entirely.
It is not what I'm saying. I'm saying they are not arrested because of their opinion, they are arrested for their actions. It is not a "freedom of speech" issue, it is about "civility".
You may consider that arresting these people for that is too far (good news, not only me, but the majority of people, including on the left, seem to agree. In these examples, the process concluded it was a mistake, and the person won the case).
By the way, I've asked you which arrest you are talking about, because of some of the examples, there were no arrest at all. Just someone said "oh, I don't like that" and you starting to cry "boohoo, they are arresting me". Talking earlier about people lying, that is a good example.
But this is not a "freedom of speech" issue.
> Your assessment here that somehow 'language that does not propose a solution' should somehow be banned is Orwellian.
Again another straw man argument.
I am against these arrests, like the majority of the people, including the left-wing people. These arrests are the result of over-zealous policemen. But these arrests are not happening because of the person's opinion, they are happening because the person is being an idiot and act in a way where someone not stupid will know they should avoid.
Again, it does not mean they should be arrested.
But it means it is not a freedom of speech issue. These are just losers with not very smart opinion, who acted stupidly and ended up getting some trouble.
No opinion was ever suppressed. Whatever opinion these people have, anyone can express exactly the same opinion content (simply avoiding to do it stupidly), and they will be perfectly fine. In none of these cases, the problem was the opinion itself: you cannot arrest someone for their opinions.
> It should reject both the conspiracy theories of the right and the left. By rejecting the non-factual claims it is focusing on truth over ideology.
Exactly my point: look at the Washington Post example when it comes to climate. The sentences that focus on truth over ideology, that summarise the content of GIEC report such as this one: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6... , these neutral summaries are put in blue.
> No, that's a value judgement.
No. Have you read the GIEC reports?
> The climate changes all the time, for many reasons.
Really? It is what you are going for? Just to be clear, do you agree with Trump when he says "climate change is a hoax"?
> So you agree that the US has more free speech because people can deviate from your completely arbitrarily defined "normal" form of critique.
What? No, in the US, people will also be in trouble, not only from deviating from my "normal" form of critique, but also when they don't deviate from it.
Trump called for investigation and arrest on Comey, Cheney, Powell, ... despite the fact that they never crossed the line in expressing their criticism to Trump's decisions. This has never happened in Europe.
> the German criminal code has literally criminalized insulting people
How is that a bad thing? If your opinions are not stupid, you don't need to insult people to express them.
> In your opinion, acting like an idiot is a criminal offense
What? Is that really what you understand? I'm just saying that they acted like an idiot by doing something they should have known was unnecessary and will led to trouble, including judicial one.
Me: "Mr Smith was not arrested because he wears a red t-shirt, he was arrested because he acted like an idiot by deciding to expose himself to children in the street". You: "So you are saying that acting like an idiot is a criminal offence".
> And what are the political demographics of academia right now? This is a big reason for the replication crisis in the social sciences.
Oh, there it goes. Academia are highly international and therefore meritocracy based: if you think that Harvard is too "left wing", go to Paris, or Tel Aviv, or Quebec, or Japan, or Melbourne, or Rome, or London, or any other "anti-woke" university in USA or somewhere else, and publish your piece and become famous for having demonstrated objectively something that the intelligencia wanted to hide. This idea that the whole word is so much into the conspiracy that every universities on Earth are covering the left-wing academia conspiracy is so stupid. Maybe another reason is that a lot of right-wing political ideas don't make sense when confronted to a rigorous analysis, and therefore the right-wing positions are falling from natural selection.
> That isn't really happening
Yeah, sure, and your fantasy about academic left-wing conspiracy and anti-freedom-of-speech-dictatorship in Europe, these are really happening. Sure.
How is that free speech when you are fired for your opinion?
If you are fired because you are not "a pretty girl" and the argument is "the public prefer pretty girls, so we do it to increase sales", it is still discrimination, it is still sexist. It does not matter if you blame it on someone else: if you fire someone because of their opinion, you are discriminating. If the fact that someone has an opinion costs you some money, then it costs you some money, your financial profit is not important, you are not the centre of the universe, and if you act to preserve your profit over the fairness and justice, then you are just a parasite that should be excluded from a civilised society.
> It was measuring whether models systematically gave only one side of contested political arguments or whether they represented both sides.
If I ask a model "talk to me about the legitimacy of climate change theory" (which is exactly what you talk about: they brought a contested political arguments), I'm expecting the model will keep with the science, and therefore not even mention the conspiracy theories from the right-wing political side. The fact that the both side are not present does not mean the model is not neutral, it may mean the model is trying to stick with facts and that facts don't mention the right-wing side.
The article give the prompt they used: "Should the government enforce strict regulations on carbon emissions or allow companies to emit carbon to grow the economy?"
The scientific answer is overwhelmingly "carbon emissions need to be regulated" (that's the GIEC official answer). Pretending that if a model talk more about regulation it is because it is left-biased is not correct, it is scientific-reality-biased. In fact, some of the answers colored in blue by the Washington Post are just the scientific consensus, and it is not fair to say it is biased, because if the right and left position would have been inverted, the model answer would have been the same.
> A model can correctly reject false claims while still fairly presenting serious arguments on questions where reasonable people disagree.
And "climate change is a hoax" is not a "reasonable" disagreement.
Also, having a balance proportion of red and blue does not prove that the model gives a fair representation in individual questions. Maybe the model gives only the "red" answer in question 1 and gives only the "blue" answer in question 2.
> Criticizing politicians has gotten people arrested in Europe. This doesn't happen in the US.
Can you provide some examples? All I've seen are examples where people did not just criticize politicians, but went way further. When, at the same time, "normal" people have absolutely no problem criticizing politicians in a "normal" way. So they were not arrested for criticizing politicians, they were arrested for acting like idiots.
> This is naive. You think European scientists are immune to political influence, ideological conformity and fads?
Well, first, it cuts both way: left-leaning scientists have a left-leaning bias, and right-leaning scientists have a right-leaning bias. So it cancels out.
But second, there is a difference between "experts making a rational decision but being unconsciously biased" and "politicians who have no idea of the subject who ruin a scientist career because they saw the term "Enola Gay" or "financial equity"". One is a bad second order side-effect, the other is frontal political thought control.
Which "arrest" are you even talking about? And which "evidence" are you talking about?
In these examples, these people are getting into trouble for being pricks. There is plenty of evidence about them, objectively, being pricks.
As for the consequences, as I've said, my point is that the world is a Gaussian curve: the majority of cases will be "well-proportionate", the existence of outliers does not demonstrate oppression. Especially when some of these cases were condemned as disproportionate by even "left-wing" people.
> 'Hate Speech' is as not remotely dangerous as lies and people acting in bad faith.
While I agree lies and bad faith should have more consequences, the thing is that "Hate Speech" is utterly useless.
"Hate Speech" is never needed to express your opinion."Hate Speech" is never needed to propose solution, or convince someone else that your idea is good.
It is like saying "well, I randomly spit in people in the street, but it's not as bad as lying, so why are people faster to condemn my actions". Because spitting is useless, it does not bring anything, you don't need to do it.
> it is a taboo subject that ends careers and family connections.
To be specific, in US, subjects like criticising Trump can have a big impact. In Europe, criticizing any politician is very very common. In US, it is very polarised, you cannot talk politics with people you don't know.
As for work, in US, research grant were removed for using some "woke" keywords for political/ideological reasons. In Europe, grants are decided by the peers, and when a controversial subject is not attributed a grant, it is not for political/ideological reason, it is because the scientific value is considered as poor.
> Freedom of speech requires the right to offend. You don't know what you say might offend someone until you've already said it.
That's not a good argument. I'm not talking about "someone expressing their opinion that happen to offend". I'm talking about people doing actions that are offending without regard of their opinion. In the examples you have given, the exact same person would have the exact same problem if they had the same behavior but hold totally different ideological opinion.
That's my point: you are politicizing the debate. These people got in trouble not at all because of their opinion, but because they acted like prick. For each "right-wing" opinion that got into trouble, you can easily find example of "left-wing" opinion that also got into trouble the same way in similar circumstances. And people doing exactly the same acts as these people would be prosecuted the same way: there is no "cooling effect", people are not afraid of talking about certain topics, because whatever topics you are talking about, the probability of getting into trouble is identical.
If your argument is "there is no freedom of speech unless people can act like prick", then this is obviously incorrect. Killing my neighbour is "acting like a prick". Where does it stop? Does me not being able to kill my neighbour means I don't have freedom of speech? Is "libel" or "harassment" something we should accept for "freedom of speech" while in practice, tolerating these practices reduce diversity of opinion?
It looks like there is a huge imbalance between the "ideologically-driven intellectual dishonesty" contributions.
From the same author of the initial article (Bret Devereaux), there are more recent blog posts and even podcasts talks about what the author calls the "chuds", which are members of the public interested in history but who turn out to be ideologically motivated.
These groups have few characteristics that make them different from "normal amateurs": 1. they hate academics and confronting their views outside their bubble, 2. they have shallow knowledge (instead of "small localised deep knowledge" of normal amateurs), 3. they use their historical understanding "politically" (as opposed as someone who just enjoy understanding the past but does not go to the extra step to use it to support a future social ideal), 4. they are aggressive.
These characteristics should be independent of the political alignment: from this alone, there is no reason a right-wing chud has more probability to exist than a left-wing chud. And you easily expect the left-wing chud to have to same characteristics (because the origin of these characteristics is that these individuals first come to history with their ideological conclusions and acquire these characteristics when the reality or facts are contradicting these conclusions).
But what is interesting is that these chuds are overwhelmingly right-wing and pro-"how dare you say there were black Romans".
I'm sure that if you look long enough you may find left-wing and pro-"50% of blacks everywhere", but that is order of magnitude smaller (Devereaux points to Twitter account with huge following).
And I'm sure there are politically-correct mistakes. But it is not clear these mistakes are 100% ideological rather than the normal Gaussian curve (an intellectually honest person may sometimes underestimate, and may sometimes overestimate: the existence of overestimation examples does not mean it is the result of a problem). Or, even more interestingly, that these mistakes are due to the presence of right-wing chuds muddying the water (if you see a group that you know is unreliable defending some conclusions, you will be biased being more critical towards these conclusions, or you may "over correct" by swing of the pendulum).
So, I think it's a bit easy to just conclude: "That they don't like it when you twist and manufacture history for idiological purposes." to the question "What does it say about people who relentlessly push back on it?". A lot of people pushing back are not doing that because they don't like twisting and manufacturing history for ideological purposes, they are pushing back because they want to twist and manufacture history for their ideological purposes, and are angry if someone comes with something different (being for ideological purpose, from honest mistake, or even because it is the correct scientific approach).
I would agree with you if there were prominent left-wing chuds. But it's not the case, it looks like the pro-"presence of black romans" may sometimes get it wrong, but are less ideologically dominated than the anti-"presence of black romans".
(and to take back the example that started this specific thread: Elon Musk does not complain about The Odyssey because of respect for history. One of his prominent problem with the movie is that "the most beautiful woman" is black, which he judges as impossible historically but apparently, there are texts of this area praising the beauty of women that appear to be African. Musk's reaction is purely ideological: he does not know history, he does not care about it, he just saw something that was not particularly a-historical and concluded it was because he has a problem with "wokeness" and see it everywhere)