The implosion of intellectual honesty – AL.com

The current state of rhetoric is deeply troubling considering all thats at stake. We clearly need police reform. It may be time to rethink some laws. We need to reexamine aspects of crime, punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation.

There is progress to pursue and George Floyds unjust, atrocious killing has ushered its urgency front and center.

But real progress is impossible if discussions we have, and decisions we make, are detached from reality and shaped by fear.

Many once-credible professionals from journalists to academics to CEOs are eagerly showing support for an organization calling for policies that most would privately admit would be catastrophic for all people, such as the absurd idea that we should defund police departments.

Even epidemiologists have lost credibility by saying that gathering to protest in large groups during a pandemic is tantamount to mass murder one week, but just fine even morally mandatory the next.

One rightly wonders how, within a span of weeks, we went from shaming people for being out in the streets to shaming those who wont join the crowd, wrote Anthony Dimauro in The American Conservative. The virus is either unmanageable or manageable. Thats it.

Id like to assume the best -- that scientists who changed their tune arent politically motivated or alarmingly hypocritical.

More likely, perhaps theyre afraid to publicly challenge any message of the current movement, however harmful, considering the fate that has befallen many who have.

Their fear would be well-warranted.

In just one recent example of financial and reputational destruction, a politically progressive data scientist named David Shor lost his job with a research firm after tweeting the 2017 research of an African-American Princeton scholar whose work explored the electoral implications of peaceful protest vs. violence.

The offending tweet? Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests *increase* Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage.

Those are academic findings. And the principle conclusion one could draw from such research isnt that surprising or all that controversial its incorporated into the heart of the strategies employed by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

But apparently, mentioning such research is wrong these days, and college presidents, editors, CEOs and a host of other industry leaders are taking the easy way out giving social media its next victim rather than standing up for free speech or believing the best about their employees attempts to add to the discussion.

In this case, it didnt matter that the fired scientist is a social democrat who worked for President Obamas reelection campaign, according to New York Magazines Jonathan Chait or that the research he shared was conducted by someone who ...majored in Race & Ethnic Relations, co-founded BlackPlanet, got a Ph.D in African-American studies, and is black, according to the scholars wife who tweeted her astonishment that Shor was accused of anti-blackness.

This reckoning seems happy to destroy anyone even members of its own political party and would-be allies who clearly arent racists.

It is fairly disorienting out there, said Sam Harris, a liberal atheist philosopher and neuroscientist whose podcast Making Sense is one of the last bastions of intellectual honesty, free speech and reason I know of, and my go-to for understanding complex problems, regardless of my disagreement with Harris on some issues.

All information has been weaponized, Harris said in his latest episode about current social unrest that should be required listening for anyone who cares about fact-based reform.

All communication has become performative, and on the most important topics, it now seems to be fury and sanctimony and bad faith almost all of the time. We appear to be driving ourselves actually crazy. As in, incapable of coming into contact with reality, unable to distinguish fact from fiction. And then becoming totally destabilized by our own powers of imagination and confirmation bias and then lashing out at one another on that basis.

We want justice -- and truth -- to prevail, right?

Or do we?

Rachel Bryars is an opinion columnist for AL.com.

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The implosion of intellectual honesty - AL.com