https://www.aaup.org/academe/issues/fall-2025/seven-theses-against-viewpoint-diversity
OK. I admit I've been a bit guilty in my emphasis on diversity. But I am aware of Goodhart's Law. And given thesis 2, here, I think I'm going to stop calling myself a "methodological pluralist" and use "instrumental pluralist" instead. But 1) what Siraganian says here is simply wrong: "To promote viewpoint diversity is to be thrilled to have my views in the mix, even if you think they are wrong, because either (a) they contribute to more viewpoint diversity (the more views you have, the more viewpoint diversity there is), or (b) they provide more views to choose from to figure out which view is the most true. In the first position, you end up not caring about whether a particular view is true or good, because you care about viewpoint diversity intrinsically: What matters is having the greatest possible variety of views. In the second position, you instrumentally value a diversity of views; having viewpoint diversity only matters until you can figure out which view is the best or most true, at which point all the other views can be rejected." If the "best" or "most true" is relatively smooth from the 1st best to the 2nd best, 3rd best, etc., then NO, you do not reject "all the others". Such smooth grading has to remain contingent, defeasible. And my guess is the gradation isn't smooth everywhere. It may be smooth for the first 2 or 3 distinguishable ideas, but #4 might be batsh¡t. (cf. SynthID<https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09263>) 2) Diversity remains a useful measure of the crosstrophic nature of complex systems, circularity, industrial symbiosis, etc. So even in light of Goodhart's Law, diversity is a reasonable *outcome*, even if it's dangerous to optimize to that sole outcome. There are issues with all the theses she lays out. But persnickety nits aside, her gist seems right. And you can't overlook the blatant hypocrisy of objecting to DEI initiatives, but then arguing for "intellectual pluralism", pointed out in thesis 7. This post is too long already. But I know many, here, have succumbed to Haidt glazing. So I offer this as further demonstration of Bad Faith rhetoric: https://assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/jonathan-haidt-social-contagion-rogd-pbs/, only peripherally about instrumental pluralism. -- 8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
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