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Reposted by Itai Sher

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 16h

Just rounding people up. A US citizen who says he had his birth certificate with him (!) was still thrown in the back of a truck and detained.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 16h

Someday this could be you or someone you love

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 16h

What if the unidentified masked men with guns don't accept the validity of your papers?

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 22h

Do you want to live in a "papers, please" country?

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 1d

The problem is not respect for people with right wing views, it’s that some people with left wing views don’t have boundaries and allow it to creep into their scholarship and are intolerant about having it challenged.

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 1d

On a personal level you have to decide how to allocate your attention but institutions should be alert to dangers of monoculture and the arrogance of thinking we already have all the answers.

Maintaining diversity of perspectives in a discipline or intellectual community is essential to progress.

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 1d

It’s not realistic that we’ll ever outgrow the need for it

And there’s a tendency for people to want to shut out views that challenge their beliefs and the beliefs of their tribe so the bias tends to be in favor of having too little

Of course you should be judicious in what views you attend to

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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 1d

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to economists Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.

Nobel economics prize recognizes creative destruction in innovation, growth

The Nobel Prize was awarded to economists Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, who study the effects of creative destruction and innovation on growth.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 1d

Sometimes you hear the argument that pursuing truth amounts to ruling out possibilities which is inconsistent with viewpoint diversity

Hard to take seriously

No one is calling for hiring astrologists but we haven’t gotten anywhere near the point where we wouldn’t benefit from diverse perspectives

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 1d

She’s opposed to the strawman

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 1d

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Lee Drutman @leedrutman.bsky.social · 1d

Thermostatic public opinion, reacting against the governing regime, like old faithful.
globalaffairs.org/research/pub...

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 2d

People continue to underappreciate how much their ideas are not challenged or tested (and the costs of not doing so) when they never hear arguments related to X because X sounds like something that disfavored figures or groups say.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 2d

Both can be true:
1. Many bad faith actors are trying to impose conservative viewpoints on academia and should be resisted as threats to academic freedom
2. Viewpoint diversity (broadly defined) is good for free inquiry scatter.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/t... eternallyradicalidea.com/p/is-higher-...

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 1d

Talk about doubling down and attacking a strawman.

Is it incoherent and an anathema to academic freedom to want a reasonable diversity of views?

Certainly if you are seeking the truth, you want to be open to different perspectives.

www.aaup.org/seven-theses...

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 2d

The awkwardness of that question seems to point to an asymmetry

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 2d

The problem with treating the question "is it useful?" as more basic than the question "is it true?" is that there is the follow up question "it is true that it is useful?"

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 2d

Quite an achievement by Jets standards

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laurentfranckx.bsky.social @laurentfranckx.bsky.social · 3d

quite different cases before and after lunch. Which just shows the importance of identifying all relevant possible explanatory variables, which shows the importance of in-depth understanding of the context- something at which, AFAIK, humans are still much better at than AI.

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laurentfranckx.bsky.social @laurentfranckx.bsky.social · 3d

In an otherwise very interesting discussion with Paul Krugman on the economic consequences of AI, Martin Wolf refers to the research that showed that judges in the morning behave quite differently from judges in the afternoon. The problem is that new research has shown that these judges treated/

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 3d

Oops

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 3d

An excellent response by MIT’s President Sally Kornbluf rejecting the Trump compact.

Other universities should do the same.

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Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 12d

Somebody actually sat down and wrote these two sentences, one after another. www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/u...

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 4d

Seems like a mistake that is specifically made by game theorists.

Kevin needs to be careful.

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Itai Sher @itaisher.bsky.social · 4d

Declare yourself Dean.

Puts off the problem but you can cross that bridge when you come to it.

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