On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
... what were you trying to achieve by starting this thread?
My intention was to illustrate the kinds of problems that can come from an excessive reliance on ideology as a source of knowledge. The fact that the particular ideologies involved came from some of the more extreme feminists was incidental. If any woman felt unwelcome as a result of my post, I am sorry for that. I could perhaps have chosen examples from other areas such as the economic policies of Hugo Chavez and his followers. The trouble is that mostly the examples are extremely sad and tragic - as with Lysenkoism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism. I went through a long and painful process of trying to shed my ideological preconceptions - as best I could - as a result of my experiences as an investor over several decades. Illusions are costly when you are putting your own money on the line. Instead I try to think of the world as a system with human beings participating in it and take it from there. Ideologically based illusions are costly in other ways too. They can stop you from listening to good advice. One example might be George W Bush's statement that you are with us or you are with the terrorists (paraphrasing here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You're_either_with_us,_or_against_us) Anyone with concerns about the implications of the policy was branded an enemy and not listened to. They can stop you from updating your beliefs when new information comes in. The US seems to have a chronic failure to learn in regard to its foreign policy for example, as seen with the latest mess in Ukraine. They can make you think you know the answers when perhaps you do not. I read an article about global warming in Quadrant in the newsagent a while ago. What I found was that I could have written the article myself based solely on knowing their (right wing) ideology. Given the complete absence of novel information in the article, it had little information value for me. Additionally, all of this interferes with discussion and debate. If you view opinions as simple markers of whether someone is on the right or wrong 'side', and use that to make assumptions about their beliefs, you are likely to miss a lot. For example, several times people observed that I believe that we should discourage people from getting into leaky boats to come here, and assumed that I was against our taking refugees in. In fact I had repeatedly advocated increasing the refugee quota (ie allocation of visas to come in by air) to 100,000, a massive increase. I was repeatedly astonished by this apparent inability to see what was there in black and white. Similarly making fun of extremist views of some feminists (that things would run a lot better without men) seems to have been taken by some as a marker of misogyny. As if a person is either a fully committed feminist, or they hate women. Recently Cardinal Pell observed that one reason the church was slow to respond to the issue of sexual abuse by priests was the assumption that anyone making such accusations was an enemy out to get the church and they were therefore ignored. Again we see this simplistic division of people into us and them and ignoring those on the outer. There has been some speculation as to my feminist credentials. I was very committed to feminism early on. I remember feeling outraged when a talented female classmate was taken out of school at 15 years of age because she was a girl. Later I participated in pro-feminist demonstrations and rallies and a strike at my university which led to what I believe was the first university women's studies course in Australia. These days I would class myself more as an egalitarian and in the middle ground. I think people should have the freedom to pursue their dreams regardless of race or sex/gender/sexual orientation or religion without the government getting in their way, as it used to. I don't think the world would be better of without men, or that it would be better off without women. I don't think we should presume to tell people where their own decisions should lead. I don't want to participate in or exacerbate pointless drama on the list so I am bowing out of these discussions. I accept responsibility for my contribution to the problem. I hope I have learned something from this. I am not sure I know a way to have a good discussion about some of these fraught issues, which is very sad. [Although I am working on a possible technical solution. As they say, if there is a technical solution it's the best solution - as opposed to a solution involving people changing their behaviour.] The only exception to my bowing out is that if someone wants to work cooperatively on a detailed refugee policy and an analysis of the implications I would be interested in that. My own proposal sent to the list a while back was unsatisfactory in a number of ways such as political feasibility. Tim