Depressing reading: The Coddling of the American Mind

@MassimoOrtolano in my experience, the prevalence/impact of this sort of thing is wildly overstated by media reports.

@ff524 Maybe, but, mutatis mutandis, that is something we experience everyday on the SE network, isn't it? From people suggesting avoiding talking about politics and sex on the workplace, to people complaining about controversial questions appearing on the HNQ list. After all, it's all about avoiding going out of the comfort zone.

@MassimoOrtolano I think people complain about HNQ because it's annoying that those questions get lots of eyeballs and thus lots of votes, not in proportion to how useful they really are.

I find it similarly annoying that "crazy" instances of "political correctness" make the news and get lots of eyeballs, and then people think that incidents like that go on daily in every university classroom

In my experience, the university setting is more tolerant of controversial opinions and discussions of uncomfortable things than most other settings.

@ff524 Well, what drove the recent turmoil on the main Meta about the HNQ was not something related to votes, but something related to apparently disturbing titles. When I was 16 or 18, so more than 30 years ago, I read an article from Asimov alarming about the growth of creationism in the US. At the time, I thought he was kidding: after all, I had never heard about creationism outside of certain religious circles.

Some ten years forward, during my PhD, a former PhD mate of mine started working in a telecommunication company in the US. One day he called me and told me: "Hey, you won't believe it, but here virtually all the engineers are creationists!!". I read now the linked article with a word of caution, like you suggest, but I also fear that is too much real, like the Asimov's article.

@ff524 Note also that being more tolerant of controversial opinions and discussions of uncomfortable things than most other settings, doesn't mean being sufficiently tolerant.