Bryan Gentry

Civil discourse, education, faith + constructive disagreement. Writer + editor. Family man. Pun lover. University comms director.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

@RaminNasibov There are a lot, but Encarta Mindmaze is like a surreal memory. Like, as a middle schooler I actually set my alarm for 4 a.m. so I could was dishes (to earn computer time), eat Cheerios and navigate a castle while answering trivia questions.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

Good thread. He who defines the terms (or sets the discussion agenda) controls the debate.

[@ijbailey @ijbailey]

A quick communication lesson for Talarico. Don’t answer the vegan attacks with “Actually, I eat barbecue.” It leaves the exchange on grounds Paxson wants. So does the “I’ve been eating barbecue since before his first indictment.” Cute line. But it’s still Paxson’s framing. 1/

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

But certainly we want the public to have more confidence in the research coming out of universities. That confidence needs to be earned, but it also needs to be given. Universities need to repair relationships and regain trust.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

Check this out: in 2000, about 60% of the population reported a high level of trust in university research centers for data about pollution.

There were almost no political differences. Extreme liberals & extreme conservatives had nearly the same level of trust.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

Of course it's worth asking, "What is the right amount of trust for someone to have in a research center?" Scientists are suppoed to treat each other with enough skepticism to check each others' results. Blind faith may not be what we want from the public.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

Is it suddenly weird or wild that churches sometimes have theatrical productions?
Not weighing in on the politics of these Texas candidates, but just on the idea of implying a Christmas pageant is weird. Theatre runs deep in religious traditions.

[Ashley @AshleyTXBurner]

Mind you - this is the actual church that Ken actually attends.

And NO, this is not fake. This is not a Druski bit. This is Prestonwood Baptist and this is very real.

The flying angels, the camels, this is all very real.

[McKay Coppins @mckaycoppins]

Mitt Romney to Harvard Business School graduates: "There's more to a country than its economy. To be a great nation, it must also be a good nation. The world needs good men. It needs good women. Good leaders. Good parents raising good children. There is no national success that could compensate for failure to be a good and noble people."

[Charlotte Alter @CharlotteAlter]

The Pope's humanist manifesto does something really interesting; not only does he call for new regulations and guardrails, but he also calls out what he describes as the "anti-human vision" pervasive in the tech world.

Human limitations, he argues, are not bugs in our code to be fixed or optimized. They're at the core of love, wonder, community, the shared vulnerability of being human.

https://t.co/nkS6v8gYnA

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

Always remember it is difficult to distinguish between "they agree with me so I feel good" and "gosh darn it, they're so smart that they see the truth."

We all need intellectual humility.

Shouting this from the rooftops.

[Jesse Smith @jessesmithsoc]

Shout this from the rooftops. Also applies more broadly. General research programs on the mechanisms of polarization (dehumanization, us vs. them thinking, apocalyptic rhetoric) should also be approached symmetrically, although empirical work involves additional considerations.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

Someone tell Yale that I'm available to help them improve their share of honrary degrees going to unaffiliateds.

[Robert P. George @McCormickProf]

What the Buckley Institute documents in its report on Yale's honorary degree recipients reveals a measure of ideological and political partisanship--over many, many years--that is truly scandalous. Reform--real reform, not just tokenism--is long overdue.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

@NathanielGivens I think it relates to this idea expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Better to suffer a bad government while you can than to destory government "for light and transient causes."
Those who destroy a government willy nilly may replace it with anarchy or worse government.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

If the Pope issued a statement on digital payment systems would it be a Paypal Encyclical?

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

@zdeborova Can we trust people to make new discoveries and be honest about them if they cannot be honest about works they are citing? And can a person be honest about about a work they are citing when they cannot attest that it says what they say it says?

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

@JimDMiller @mattbencole @zdeborova @giffmana Copying citations (which you haven't read) from other papers (which you maybe have partly read) in order to meet some citation quota is dishonest.

We need the public to trust what we do in academia. Actions like this betray that trust.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

This shouldn't need to be said, but it did.
We should not sign our names to things we cannot stand by. And we cannot stand by something we have not produced and/or verified ourselves.

[Thomas G. Dietterich @tdietterich]

Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

@KintsugiJin Once, my dad interrupted some YM who were picking on a kid they'd caught smoking in the church bathroom. I'm sure he asked that kid not to smoke at church, but he told us that church was the best place to smell smoke because it meant someone who needed the gospel was there.

[Bryan Gentry @brygentry]

@KintsugiJin So you don't remove standards, but you don't let someone's lack of meeting standards prevent outreach, invitation and involvement.