That would be an amazing class. Even dropping the "offensiveness" billing and just advertising it as a class that would expose you to as many new and unconventional ideas as possible would be pretty neat.
While we're asking for the impossible, I'd kind of like to scrap the entire current primary/secondary school curriculum and replace it entirely with rationality. You'd learn math on the way to being able to use Bayes' Theorem. You'd learn English while writing counter-attitudinal essays. You'd learn history because your assignment is to point out what cognitive biases led Napoleon to make the mistake of invading Russia, and how you would have done better in his shoes. And then you'll play a game of Diplomacy (or Civilization IV, or whatever) to prove it. All exams are calibration tests.
People will complain that it might not give people the same breadth of knowledge. But our current curriculum is entirely about signaling breadth of knowledge. I learned about Sargon of Akkad in sixth grade and I have >90% confidence I'm the only person in the class who remembers his name, and that entirely because I'm the sort of person who would read about people like Sargon anyway outs...
I'm supportive of this idea, but I wonder if people (including me) who make proposals such as "let's scrap the primary school curriculum and fill it with learning that's actually useful" underestimate the amount of useful things that they've learned in primary school, because they no longer remember the origins of that knowledge and have filed it under "those obvious things that everyone knows".
Yesterday I was thinking about how expensive education is, and why human capital seems to be so important, as I knelt down to tie my shoes and I suddenly thought - "I had to be taught how to tie my shoes! In school, for that matter, we had little shoe boards we could practice tying laces on. Wow, how did I forget that?"
The same universities where speakers with certain types of controversial ideas are routinely shouted down if they try to speak, the same universities with campus speech codes against offensive ideas, are now supposed to make studying those ideas part of the curriculum? If that had a snow ball's chance in hell, it wouldn't be so desperately needed in the first place.
He should start small and give the Pope a call to suggest that he make an honest discussion of the Koran part of Mass.
I've just noticed that Daniel Dennett proposed mandatory courses in World Religions, but not World Ideologies. Funny how that works out.
I'm pretty sure the words "a modest proposal" indicate that he is aware this is not a realistic suggestion. But if an adventurous (and well-regarded) professor seriously proposed teaching such a course as an experiment, I am not sure it would be rejected out of hand at all universities. (IMO it would work better with more advanced students than freshmen--they need to be preacquainted with the academic style of reading and arguing.)
My old economics professor ran an experimental class where everyone was forced to defend only those opinions they disagreed with. At the beginning of the class, he said, people would issue lots of caveats ("obviously this is ridiculous, but since I'm being forced to defend this anyway..."). By the end, this no longer happened. Also, apparently it was very common for students to change their political orientation, sometimes radically, in the course of taking the class.
I think this could fly in at least some universities. But I'm also sure it'd be tremendously controversial -- not just for its content, though I'm sure "students made to defend Nazism" would make a wonderful headline, but for its goals.
A preference for emotionally unentangled discussion of controversial issues is not itself uncontroversial, even if we're not talking about sacred values. It now seems fashionable in some circles to believe that offense carries an irreplaceable contribution to the ecosystem of ideas: the theory seems to be that ce...
A preference for unbiased discussion of controversial issues is not itself uncontroversial
Exactly.
Once my students started a discussion about religion, so for the sake of discussion I told them that this discussion is allowed to continue only if both of them agree to switch their roles and defend the other position best they can.
The religious student said that this manner of discussion would be interesting generally, with a different topic; but specifically when speaking about religion, defending the other position, even jokingly, would be a sin or at least something dangerously close to a sin.
I had no good answer to that; mostly because I realized that even if I could come with some clever explanation that would convince the student, there is a good chance their parents would see it otherwise, and I did not wish this kind of a conflict.
This idea would have a chance if universities were actually detached, disinterested, apolitical promoters of objective truth. But in fact they are just as partisan and political as any other organization or special interest; perhaps more so.
As my father, a professor, remarks, it's hard enough fitting enough material into a four year engineering curriculum already...
I am worried that for someone who might not hold very strong beliefs, you may have to ask them to engage anti-natalism or nihilism or some such really strong memeplex. I do wonder if someone who has not done this kind of thing before, may stare too long at the abyss and break.
How about Offending People 101?
No, not what you think; rather ...
It seems to me that some folks highly value a self-image of not offending others — to the extent that when they are informed that they have offended someone, they respond as if a scandalous accusation has been made against their honor, for which they are entitled to demand satisfaction. And so they react by complaining about being censored, and political correctness, and "you're wrong, that word isn't offensive because so-and-so says it isn't!" as if offense were a one-place functio...
Taking a well-implemented "Offense 101" course would have clear positive externalities, because it would create a more informed citizenry, but is such study instrumentally useful to the individual? If so, how?
In other words, what sub-optimal actions are people likely to take because the alternative offends them?
This sounds like a great idea, but that is because we value honest discussion and truth-seeking highly. Most people, if they participated in such a class, would end up offending half the other students, and maybe the teacher and graders too. It would expose deep rifts between students and they would distrust and dislike each other in the future.
I think national politics in the US has gotten disgusting enough that this is a great idea. I'd like to see it in high school as part of the civics or history curriculum. The US has already tried to address some of the issues embedded here: we do have freedom of religion and speech embedded in about the most prominent place possible in our founding documents (the first rebuttal, so to speak). However, the connection between tolerance of people who disagree with you, and actually FEELING some respect for the intelligence of the people you disagree with s...
Would be useful if someone create a rationality training curriculum who could be taught in a elementary school. Normally, critical thinking classes are taught to undergraduates. But critical thinking makes people disbelief weird things, and I suppose don't have a "instrumental rationality module".
I feel uneasy when someone suggests that people should (for practice or whatever) argue for something that they don't believe. If you can argue for anything your words mean nothing.
There are two opposing effects of "devil's advocacy":
a negative effect that you point: it makes you good at becoming a "clever arguer", good at rationalizing any position, and does not substitute for genuine open-minded curiosity, as Eliezer argues.
a positive effect: for high-profile, genuinely controversial in society issues that raise emotional reactions, like the ones Sanchez discusses, the practice of devil advocacy can make you less prone to mind-killing, better at seeing that (two quote two LW memes) your enemies are not intrinsically evil and policy debates are not one-sided.
I think the benefit from the second effect outweighs the harm of the first one. But anyway, I think the main feature of the course Sanchez imagines is to force students to engage with "offensive" viewpoints in a cool, intellectual way, to reduce their propensity for mind-killing reactions. The specific mechanism of making them actively argue for the offensive viewpoints is not essential and could be easily modified.
From Julian Sanchez, a brilliant idea unlikely to be implemented:
American politics sometimes seems like a contest to see which group of partisans can take greater umbrage at the most recent outrageous remark from a member of the opposing tribe. As a mild countermeasure, I offer a modest proposal for American universities. All freshmen should be required to take a course called “Offense 101,” where the readings will consist of arguments from across the political and philosophical spectrum that some substantial proportion of the student body is likely to find offensive. Selections from The Bell Curve. Essays from one of the New Atheists and one of their opponents, and from hardcore pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Ward Churchill’s “little Eichmanns” monograph. Defenses of eugenics, torture, violent revolution, authoritarianism, aggressive censorship, and absolute free speech. Positive reviews of the Star Wars prequels. Assemble your own curriculum—there’s no shortage of material.
For each reading, students will have to make a good faith, unironic effort to reconstruct the offensive argument in its most persuasive form, marshaling additional supporting evidence and amending weak arguments to better support the author’s conclusion. Points deducted if an observer can tell the student doesn’t really agree with the position they’re defending.
Only after this phase is complete will students be allowed to begin rebutting the arguments. Anyone who thinks it’s relevant to point out that the argument is offensive (or bigoted, sexist, unpatriotic, fascistic, communistic, whatever) will receive a patronizing look from the professor that says: “Yes, obviously, did you not read the course title? Let’s move on.” Insofar as these labels are shorthand for an argument that certain categories of views are wrong and can be rejected as a class, the actual argument will have to be presented.