Social Justice Bullies: The Authoritarianism of Millennial Social Justice
medium.com
medium.com
Beyond that, you don't have to be poor, or female, or black, or... etc., to understand empathy. In a world where empathy didn't exist, maybe they would have a point. But humans can and do empathize, and can bring in elements from that divergent background to improve the overall situation. But only if the discussion isn't cut off with, "STFU, what do you know!?"
This is the worst kind of rhetoric. Probably all groups who were ever oppressed suffered a little bit more than just people criticizing them. I guess your empathy did not go far enough to realize that?
take this example - while a lot of str8 men may now be worried someone will falsely accuse them of being sexist or homophobes, I literally do not know a single gay person (I'm gay, I know a few gay people) that did not experience physical or verbal violence at least once.
http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/aboutus/ runs some of what he is using as "evidence". They are pretty clearly a political organization with an agenda. If the author wasn't in the same vein, he'd have disclosed that or used someone else.
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EDIT:
For example this guy:
> Your post feels eerily reminiscent of pro-industry conservatives pointing at snow and saying,"Global Climate Shift is a fallacy!" Maybe he used a poor source (though i think you'd have a hard time finding any data aggregator that does not have some political lean), but amongst how many credible ones? In my industry, the last day on the job is all that matters. On a 50 day job, 49 perfects mean nothing if the one bad one is on the last day. I always hated this; IMO it has no place in logical debate/discussion.
Since I'm rate limited and people are making various claims I'm going to point this out:
It isn't a "data aggregator with a political leaning", it is literally owned by an institution founded exclusively to further a single political party.
http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/campus/activism.cfm?Idea=...
> Over 30,000 scientists have signed a petition, publicly voicing their dissent over the consensus regarding climate change. - See more at: http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/campus/activism.cfm?Idea=...
If you actually look at the list you find a bunch of people like these folks:
> Donald R. Buechel, MD, Walter R. Buerger, MD
They strongly imply its "climate scientists" when in reality its anyone they can claim has a Phd.
These are trained liars who lie through omission regularly. That isn't anywhere near "the same" as a newspaper with a political leaning.
To hold them up as a source when you claim you are being intellectually honest [and not disclosing what they are] really is dishonest.
This article isn't nearly as bad as the "pro-feminist" stuff I see all the time.
So I think we have different experiences. But regardless, I'm just pointing out the author's biases since he didn't disclose them.
EDIT due to rate limit:
> How can you say that? So much of the prose in the article is caveats, disclaimers, and admissions of existence. Indeed, these days one cannot state an opinion with out declaring political ties, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, shoe size and height. If this trend continues, disclaimers will make up 90% of any blogpost. If he had admitted/disclosed the nature of the one source you have mentioned, would your opinion of the article change?
[1] Republican Source
That isn't a huge change in the article. Its basically three words.
> If he had admitted/disclosed the nature of the one source you have mentioned, would your opinion of the article change?
I'd have believed some of the claims he made about caring about intellectual honesty. So yes, it would have changed my opinion. Blatant hypocrisy in the very article lambasting "the other side" for engaging in the behavior you are engaging in pretty much places you in category of "Oh, another fundamentally dishonest opinion by a biased source" in my mind.
You've got an author in a mainstream newspaper who can write that due process shouldn't exist, and this is taken seriously in the current political climate.
You've got an ideology that asserts your identity is more important than the content of your character, and this is taken seriously.
You've got an ideology that states literally any dissent is at least bad, at most hateful, and this is taken seriously.
The example you link to is not dishonest because it is not meant to be an example of "everyday" thoughts by everyday people, it is meant to be an example of radicalism becoming mainstream.
It is IDENTICAL to me going to a SJW and using her as a source without fact checking it. Or the Rolling Stone article. He literally did that. It isn't a fact you can wave away and say "Well, conservative republican views are becoming mainstream so its okay."
All he had to do was add a footnote saying "Hey look at these Republican political operatives".
Maybe you do, somewhere, but the author of the cited article makes it clear she isn't arguing for a change to the legal system: "This is not a legal argument about what standards we should use in the courts; it’s a moral one, about what happens outside the legal system."
And "Conservatism" in its hard-right, Koch-and-Paul incarnation is already mainstream. It has been mainstream ever since Ronald Reagan -- not just mainstream but the mainstream, in the sense that it keeps winning elections, no matter what the San Francisco digerati think of it.
(And for reference, I'm very hard-left. I don't like that the Republican Party wins elections; I just also don't pretend it doesn't happen and then claim the Tumblr Left is somehow mainstream!)
>Nobody outside the internet takes seriously the idea that due process shouldn't exist. The Internet is made of people. Do these people (you and I and everyone ITT) not exist in the real world?
>...ever since Ronald Reagan. Do you honestly believe a Golden Age actor invented Conservatism? Crazy town banana pants
>...the Tumblr left is somehow mainstream. main·stream ˈmānˌstrēm/ noun noun: mainstream
1.
the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.
I am not trying to hate, i just disagree with what you said, and i am sorry if you feel offended by anything i wrote, but i am not sorry for anything i have written.
The internet is mostly made of a strict subset of people who exist in the real world, and the people who make up The Internet, in the sense of internet-centered subcultures, are a very small subset of all real people.
The fact that an idea or ideology is loud, or even possibly dominant, within our subculture is not even evidence of its being dominant within society as a whole. Most of society are nothing like us net-folk.
>Do you honestly believe a Golden Age actor invented Conservatism? Crazy town banana pants
What I said is that he brought it to mainstream electoral dominance, particularly after the social-democratic Postwar Consensus.
> Isn't mainstream more of a reflection of Common Knowledge then ubiquity throughout subgroups?
Right, hence why we need to check to make sure that what we think is common to think among our friends and cliques is actually common among the population as a whole -- because our friends and cliques are not representative samples.
>Regardless, the idea that leftishness is somehow an underground thing is CTBP.
Don't be silly. It's not underground, it's just a comparatively small minority of the total population. In the United States, for instance, if I recall the numbers correctly, I believe that roughly 40% of the population self-report as conservative or conservative-leaning, 10% as independent/undecided, 20% as liberal or leftist, and 30% as moderate/centrist. So in total, there are fewer devoted leftists than devoted rightists, and fewer devoted anything-ists than self-declared non-ideologues.
And of the people who self-declare as leftists, only a minority will be Tumblr leftists.
So yeah: a tempest in the internet's teacup doesn't mean that a bunch of authoritarian identity-politicking liberals are taking over the world.
Since and excluding Reagan, Republicans (whether of the "hard-right, Koch-and-Paul" wing or not) have one three Presidential elections, Democrats four; even if you include both of Reagan's elections, Republicans are 5-4; In the 18 Congresses since 1980, Democrats and Republicans have evenly split control of both houses, each party controlling each chamber for 9 of the 18 Congresses.
So, while the Republican Party wins some elections, and the Koch-and-Paul wing may be a factor in that, that wing -- or the Republican Party as a whole -- hasn't since Reagan won such a dominant share of elections to be considered the mainstream by itself.
What your approach doesn't acknowledge is the historical inequality, and the system by which that inequality is maintained. Just by virtue of being a comfortable white dude, I already get listened to way more than somebody less historically favored. And if I want, I can use that power to harm discussion of the systemic problems that give me that power.
Anybody in a disfavored group has experience that misuse of power about a zillion times. It's such a popular activity that there are mocking how-to guides for the powerful, like Derailing for Dummies.
So when people pop in to a discussion saying, "Hold on there, ladies; you seem hysterical. Let's calm down and listen to the white men for once," it's infuriating, because a) they are pretty familiar with the dominant perspective, and b) it is an exhibition of the unearned power that they are directly working against.
As a white dude, I get that this sucks. I am used to being heard, so not being heard feels unfair. But because I want real equality, I put on my big boy pants, shut my opinion-hole, and listen to people who are different than me. And in doing that, I've come to a much better understanding of what real equality means and how much hard work it will take us all to get there.
That you come in arguing is likely part of the problem.
There is no such thing as an idea that is above criticism.
The problem here, the one highlighted by the article, is that the radicals being complained about disagree with both of these concepts - things which are the cornerstone of an open dialogue, which is the cornerstone of a healthy society.
With that in mind, how can you simultaneously hold the dissonant beliefs that rationality is important, and that one of its primary tenets should be ignored?
This is all. Either you understand arguments stand for themselves, or you are a relativist that thinks arguments vary in validity depending on whose mouth they're coming from.
If I find out someone is a relativist I never discuss anything with them ever again. Those people are sophists without knowing - they just think "if I talk a lot I must be having a debate!". They have much reading in front of them, which they usually don't get to ever do. Those are the people that had rather die than think. I ignore them but I make sure they know it's because they are a relativist. If we all ostracized relativists we would be able to better tell the extremists from those that have something to say.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-wh...
Note that the content of the idea hasn't changed, but the evaluation has. Look in particular at the second graph, where black people came to the now-correct answer long before white people. Black people on average had it right 25 years before white people.
So it would seem to me that on topics of race, identity of speaker can be helpful in evaluating views.
As for the example you've given - a Gallup poll - there is no right or wrong answer to a poll. Nobody ever "got it right". If people are simply expressing an opinion, there isn't any right or wrong answer. Opinions are what they are, and they change over time.
Most of what is discussed falls into the latter category, opinion. That includes things very relevant to people's lives, like who enjoys equal protection under the law. Approaching a conversation about a topic of social justice as if it's as simple, clear, and verifiable as Newtonian mechanics is the wrong approach. XKCD lampooned that here:
I'd add that even science isn't as clear as you make it out to be. Newtonian mechanics weren't really true; they were just an approximation adequate to the time. As Box writes, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." It took us a few hundred years to understand their limits. Out that struggle came quantum mechanics and relativity. Of that transition, Max Planck wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
So as much as we'd like to pretend that science proceeds differently, it is also a social process. Kuhn's, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is the standard place to start reading about that, but there's now a large body of literature on the anthropology of science.
Going back to your opinion poll example, there is no opinion about mixed marriages which is more "true" than any other. Even if scientific facts are approximative, they are at least rooted in physical reality; whereas opinions and norms simply relate to preferences and conventions. So I continue to maintain the truth of any assertion is independent of the identity of whoever formulates it, or more generally of the psychological and social context within which it arises. To deny this would be to deny that such a thing as truth exists. In which case any position, your own included, becomes indefensible.
E.g., when a programmer and a manager both make statements about the technical merit of a particular approach, I will in practice be more likely to trust the programmer. Or if a real scientist and a bible-thumping young-earth creationist make assertions about the history of life on earth, I'm more likely to trust the scientist. This is a necessary heuristic for getting much done in the real world; we just don't each have time for evaluating all claims from first principles.
But again, social policy is mainly determined by things that, in your construction, are opinion, not fact. So it would seem by your own model the sort of scientific give and take we are both fond of is mainly irrelevant to how mere opinions, and therefore our societies, get shaped with regard to social justice for groups who are currently disfavored by majority opinion.
I would certainly agree that matters of social policy fall firmly into the realm of what I would call opinion (doxa, to use Plato's terminology). But then our language should reflect that. Let's not talk about true and false, or even right and wrong. We can set up some kind of goal (for example, the utilitarian goal of the greatest happiness for the greatest number), and define good or bad, just or unjust, in relation to that predefined goal. But there is no epistemological basis here for truth.
I have no objection to people using opinion as a basis for public policy - it could hardly go otherwise in a democracy - but then, let's recognize opinions for what they are and avoid turning certain currents of opinion into moral crusading that shuts down debate. If we are in a democracy, in the realm of pure opinion, then all opinions deserve a hearing, however much they clash with what seems obvious to us and to the group we identify with. To deny one group the right to articulate their opinion undermines the foundations of democracy.
> all opinions deserve a hearing
If you believe that, then I'm sure you're out working for making sure the voiceless and downtrodden get their opinions heard. In addition to your time here arguing to make sure socially dominant groups get their already-familiar opinions heard yet more.
I don't believe it, though. Here are some people expressing opinions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eckford#/media/File:L...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WBC_20051202_sacco-to...
I don't think racist or homophobic opinions need to be heard more. That is not to suggest taking away their right to speak or publish. But their rights do not override the rights of other people to speak in response, or their right to freely assemble.
To think otherwise is to confuse the standards of a particular kind of academic discourse with a much broader set of dialog. Major social change doesn't happen only through polite disagreement. That's especially true when the social changes are about the relative power of groups, and the way powerful groups maintain dominance through silencing people they don't like.
America isn't free because we petitioned the king and he said, "Gosh, your points are reasonable." We fought. The slaves aren't free because the American South said, "Oh, now we see that these folks are equal." We fought. Women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement: all of it involved a lot of shouting and major social unrest.
Whatever you intend by it, applying your argument to any of these would have aided the continuance of oppression. And that's exactly how many people apply your argument today. So you can keep making it, but it's not going to convince me; as much as I like civil dialogue, I like civil rights more.
This: as much as I like civil dialogue, I like civil rights more.
If that's the way you actually think, to the letter, if this wasn't just a turn of phrase or perhaps not worded correctly on accident, you've very well scared the hell out of me.
You've described your mindset as it's people on your side in one corner, and "civil dialogue" in the other, with the latter given short shrift because, as you well know, you are In the Right, and all of those people who want civil dialogue must therefore necessarily be In The Wrong because they are necessarily against $good_thing.
This is fundamentally irrational, and the fact that you treat that as a badge of honor is hardly admirable.
I'm archiving this thread.. perhaps someone else will be able to respond to this line of reasoning, because it's fundamentally alien to me.
Given that, the rest of your comments don't seem to apply.
Also, the "I am seizing the final word" thing is kinda lame.
If you like civil dialog more than civil rights, then you're basically saying people should be oppressed so you don't have to deal with unpleasantness.
On the other hand, you could be saying that the two are never in conflict. But that's an empirical claim that under every possible circumstance civil dialog is the absolute best way to achieve civil rights. That is bold claim for which you've presented no evidence. I've given plenty of historical examples that suggest otherwise.
Is there some other construction you could possibly mean?
Society does not work that way.
And you again dodge the hard questions: How much oppression are you willing to tolerate so that dominant groups never have to feel uncomfortable? On the other hand, if you believe that civil rights are always achievable through polite dialog, where are you examples? Where is the demonstration that the US's revolutionary war was just a big stupid mistake?
I believe you don't have them because you don't actually have a functioning theory of social change or a big interest in ending oppression. Whether you like it or not, the only real effect of your behavior is to maintain oppressive social structures. You may say that you want something else, but the first rule of working therapists is that when words and behavior conflict, always believe the behavior. Why shouldn't I believe your behavior here?
You seem to have fallen into your own trap. You've assumed that I belong to a particular social group (wrongly, as it happens, but that's irrelevant), and consequently dismissed my argumentation out of hand, without effectively countering it.
And regarding your historical arguments, they rely on a somewhat naïve view of the process of history, as driven by exceptional individuals such as civil rights campaigners, rather than by large-scale currents. It would be just as easy to argue that such movements as enfranchisement and feminism succeeded when they did (after failing so many times in the past) because the social and ideological climate was ripe for change. Which would mean that social action movements are a lot less relevant than you would like to believe.
You're in the domain of irrationality. You "know" you're right, and I should just shut up because I'm affiliated to the "wrong" social group, while your own group can shout down and bully into submission everybody else. You're taking democracy for granted, and undermining the very system that is giving you the freedom to express yourself. Do you think that the slavers of the past thought that they were wrong? No; they "knew" they were right, and it was "obvious" that the white man was superior. Beware of the obvious; common sense is not your friend.
I'm talking about your behavior. You could be an AI or an uplifted dog for all I know. But an argument that demands that change only happen through meek, polite statements is in effect arguing for the status quo.
I also disagree that my view of historical change requires exceptional actors. I think it happens mainly on the individual-to-individual level. But I don't think it can happen politely.
That's a caricature. Change should happen through dialogue between the various parties involved, and that dialogue should be based on rational argument, until some kind of consensus or majority decision can be reached. Nothing revolutionary here; I'm describing how democracies work. I didn't say anything about the tone of the dialogue itself.
What you seem to be arguing for is that certain parties be shut out of the dialogue altogether, because their opinions deviate too far from those of your group; and also that your opinion does not necessarily require rational underpinnings, so long as you feel certain enough of the righteousness of your cause.
> What you seem to be arguing for is that certain parties be shut out of the dialogue altogether, because their opinions deviate too far from those of your group
Mostly incorrect. It's not mainly about opinion for me; it's about behavior and intent. For example, the Westboro Baptist Church and the Aryan Brotherhood aren't writing carefully reasoned position papers. I'm ok with other people using their right of free speech to shout down their garbage. The problem is not their deviance from mainstream opinion, but the dangerousness of their propaganda and their drive to intimidate vulnerable groups. But if I discovered that a young cousin had come across some of their propaganda and wanted to talk it through, I'd be perfectly happy to do so, because it would be an actual discussion.
The problem you're not acknowledging is that speech has other purposes than carefully reasoned dialog. To the extent that people come open-minded to a topic and truly seek the truth, I think that's great. But that's a pretty small percentage of actual dialog.
I also think this objection is a little rich in that one of the major ways social injustice happens is by dominant groups suppressing minority voices. If you're all that concerned about people not being heard, it's not the voices of dominant groups that need such dogged protection from you.
> your opinion does not necessarily require rational underpinnings, so long as you feel certain enough of the righteousness of your cause.
Also mostly incorrect. I'd agree a bit in that our moral sense is prerational (see, e.g., deWaal's work on moral sense in animals), and values can't be established through pure reason. But I think it's important to have a reasoned understanding of those values and how to make them happen in the world. That said, I also don't think it's necessary to have a complete understanding before taking action; when someone is bleeding, the paramedics don't wait for the detectives to finish their work.
What I am saying (over and over) is that rational discussion is not enough to change unjust social structures. It would be nice, sure, but we are made out of meat, and we have to deal with our consequent lack of conformance to ideals.
I think you should also note the false objectivity in the "you seem" phrase. Unless you've shown what I wrote to a few thousand people and carefully measured responses, then I think you mean, "I interpret you as saying". That's not a minor nit here; a lot of the way social injustice happens is false conflation of personal or dominant-group views with objective truths.
You don't have a comprehensive theory of the nature and uses of discourse. You have a cobbled-together collection of experiences and values and notions, just like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, because of your personal experience, you know some things more than others. That's just the nature of the beast. Identity informs understanding; understanding shapes identity. Because I spend every day dealing with computers I have a better understanding of computers than people who don't. Because I don't spend every day dealing with racism, I have a poorer understanding of racism than people who do.
> There is no such thing as an idea that is above criticism.
Sure. And in the privacy of your own home, you can criticize any idea you want. But when you are talking to other people, you have no right to be heard. Freedom of speech is important, but it does not trump freedom of association.
That doesn't imply the non-existence of objective reality. A fact is a fact regardless of the identity of the speaker.
> Because I don't spend every day dealing with racism, I have a poorer understanding of racism than people who do.
It is possible for a PhD to learn something from an undergrad. Moreover, it isn't strictly less understanding anyway, it's a different perspective. Which is all the more reason why people should try to hear each other.
> But when you are talking to other people, you have no right to be heard. Freedom of speech is important, but it does not trump freedom of association.
Not listening to someone (i.e. ignoring them) is not the same thing as attacking them because they said something you don't want to hear.
Sure. And facts are extremely hard things to find. With all the money we spend on science, we have a relatively small number of them. What individuals have is mainly opinions about facts.
That's why discussions seeking truth are such hard and subtle work. It's also why facts are frequently irrelevant to people's behaviors in this realm. See, for example, this graph:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/record-high-approve-black-...
It isn't a graph of people coming to reasoned understanding on a topic. It's a graph of people with old opinions dying off.
> It is possible for a PhD to learn something from an undergrad. Moreover, it isn't strictly less understanding anyway, it's a different perspective. Which is all the more reason why people should try to hear each other.
I strongly believe it is less understanding. As a member of various dominant groups, my understanding of things like race and gender was very coarse. That's because I didn't have to pay any attention to those things; they almost always worked in my favor. When that's not the case, people are forced to pay more attention.
If you want to argue that generally attention does not lead to better understanding, you're really arguing that discussion is futile, because a major function of discussion is to turn people's attention to a topic.
> Not listening to someone (i.e. ignoring them) is not the same thing as attacking them because they said something you don't want to hear.
I agree with that, but don't see its relevance to the discussion. Could you say more?
I don't think talking about "opinions" is interesting. That word lumps so many things together that it doesn't mean anything useful. People have facts, logic, assumptions and priorities. The last two aren't objective. You can prove or disprove an assumption but it's commonly expensive to do it, and until somebody does, it remains something that reasonable people can disagree about.
But the real trouble is priorities. Should we imprison an innocent man or let ten guilty people go free? The answer to that question has objective consequences but they aren't uniformly distributed, so those more likely to be victims of criminals who go unpunished and those more likely to be innocent people falsely convicted will rationally prioritize different things without either of them being wrong in any objective sense. But that's politics. People have to come to terms with each other without attacking each other or we end up in a civil war.
> I strongly believe it is less understanding. As a member of various dominant groups, my understanding of things like race and gender was very coarse. That's because I didn't have to pay any attention to those things; they almost always worked in my favor. When that's not the case, people are forced to pay more attention.
But now you're talking about generalities when we're dealing with individuals. Using the color of someone's skin to make stereotypical assumptions about them is the thing we're supposed to be doing away with. You can't tell by looking at someone how much thought they've put into something.
And even if the stereotype is often correct, perspective is still a different axis than quantity. It is useful to know when and to what degree proposals will create a backlash and resentment that may do more harm than good, especially when there are less adversarial paths to the same result.
None of which addresses the original point in the article, which is that many of the statistics driving headlines (women are paid 77 cents on the dollar, one in six women are sexually assaulted) are misleading or false, and people have been unjustifiably attacked for pointing that out.
> I agree with that, but don't see its relevance to the discussion. Could you say more?
The context of the discussion is that people are attacking speakers for saying true things inconvenient to the attackers' causes, even to the point of trying (and sometimes succeeding) to destroy their careers and reputations. Your counterargument seems to be that people have no obligation to listen to the speaker; but the speakers' complaint is not that they're being ignored, it's that they're being unjustifiably attacked.
Are you talking about physical attacks or mere vigorous disagreement? If the former, I agree, but that seems off topic. If the latter, then could you please name some major societal changes that happened without disagreement so vigorous that people felt attacked?
I also think that for topics of social justice, your standard is one-sided. Historically oppressed groups are attacked, and not just verbally. Look at America's long history of lynching, for example. Or gay bashing, both physical and verbal. A standard that requires people pursuing social justice to be forever meek but doesn't as vigorously require that of those sustaining injustice is in effect a standard that helps maintain injustice.
> But now you're talking about generalities when we're dealing with individuals.
The article is about general patterns, so perhaps our best compromise is that we are talking about general patterns of individuals. If you want to talk about an individual case, we could certainly do that. But that would be a change of topic.
> Your counterargument seems
I was addressing the discussion here. If it appears to relate to one of the many points in that article, I apologize; that was not my intention.
There is a distinction to be drawn between vigorous disagreement and intentionally causing harm to the other party. Trying to get someone fired or similar is not a "physical" attack but it is certainly an attack.
> I also think that for topics of social justice, your standard is one-sided. Historically oppressed groups are attacked, and not just verbally. Look at America's long history of lynching, for example. Or gay bashing, both physical and verbal. A standard that requires people pursuing social justice to be forever meek but doesn't as vigorously require that of those sustaining injustice is in effect a standard that helps maintain injustice.
It isn't a double standard. Neither side should be engaged in any such thing and anyone who does is wrong regardless of which side they're on.
> The article is about general patterns, so perhaps our best compromise is that we are talking about general patterns of individuals. If you want to talk about an individual case, we could certainly do that. But that would be a change of topic.
It's not about a specific individual case, it's about the concept of applying generalizations to individuals. "There is more variation within a race than between races."
My point isn't about the standard. It's about selective enforcement. That is, the people I see telling people interested in social justice that they're just too darned strident don't obviously demonstrate an equal desire to police the people causing the injustice.
> It's not about a specific individual case, it's about the concept of applying generalizations to individuals.
I think that can be done poorly, but I think it's a generally useful first-pass heuristic. Especially so the way I'm applying it here, which is to say that my fellow white dudes should spend more time listening to voices they would not otherwise hear before holding for on topics which they are much more likely to be ignorant. Those who have already done the listening are not harmed by that.
Then you're trying to fix the end that isn't broken. The problem is not that people are objecting to bad behavior in the one case, it's that they're not objecting in the other.
> I think that can be done poorly, but I think it's a generally useful first-pass heuristic.
So is not interviewing black job applicants because they are more likely to have received a poor education. But we ought not to do that because the heuristic is often wrong and the individuals have no ability to control what box you put them in when it is.
>So is not interviewing black job applicants because they are more likely to have received a poor education. But we ought not to do that because the heuristic is often wrong and the individuals have no ability to control what box you put them in when it is.
No, we ought not to do that because it reinforces a major societal oppression of black people. If you've ever run a hiring process, you'll know you use all sorts of possibly-unfair heuristics. The point of hiring isn't to be maximally fair to every individual; it's to get good people while not contributing to negative externalities like, say, America's centuries-long history of being shitty to various minority groups.
E.g., all people have opinions on race. But as a white person I try to recognize that my opinions have been shaped by a system that unfairly favors me, and part of the way it does that by limiting the amount I hear about the experience of non-white people with respect to race. (By the way, I don't think this involves much conscious malice; it's just one of the bugs you get when primates have to build a civilization from scratch.) So to the extent that I want to have informed opinions on race, I have a lot of work to do.
I'd add that even accounting for the learning value of listening, I think there's another value to it. Black people are already generally aware of what white people think about racial issues; they have to be. So I try to separate when I want to be heard from when I think I have something to say that is actually helpful to the people I'm talking with. In the former case, I try to favor silence. There are other ways I can feel heard, and helping other people feel fully heard is a great way to create some willingness for them to listen when I actually do have something possibly helpful to say.
I see. Thanks for the explanation.
If you don't mind I have a follow-up question -- actually two related ones. The approach you are suggesting is essentially about ethics and epistemology at an individual level. What I wonder is, how, if at all, should it extrapolate to government action? I.e., to what degree should government decisions about aiding people who are at a disadvantage be informed by listening to them versus dispassionate observation and statistics?
I ask because "listening" is inherently hard to "scale" to a national level in a large nation. In a Western liberal democracy the usual answer on how to do this seems to be "voting." In practice besides voting the supposed public voice of any disadvantaged group is also shaped by self-appointed spokesmen for the disadvantaged, typically journalists and academics. Personally, I have little faith in either doing more good than harm.
My second question is, how should it be determined who is considered advantaged and who is considered disadvantaged?
I think that both people and governments should work from both stories and statistics. Statistics help us understand one way. As narrative creatures, stories help us differently. In particular, I think empathy is much easier to find with stories than raw data, and empathy is vital for functioning societies.
As to noticing privilege, I think we have good ways to measure some sorts of privilege. E.g.:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474
But I think it's incumbent on all of us to understand what power we have and use it wisely. For me, both stats and stories have been useful. The stats are widely available, but here are some collections of stories:
http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/
And I also really benefited from Project Implicit, which helped me understand how my own subconscious biases were contributing to various societal problems:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
For me, privilege checklists have been helpful in seeing how I got lucky, what advantages I happen to have:
http://danilocampos.com/2013/02/unpacking-my-knapsack-the-pr...
http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html
I also really benefited from seeing these issues as the tail end of long historical imbalance. E.g.:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case...
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/042519...
I definitely agree with your point that spokespeople and media gatekeepers are often part of the problem. That's what makes me hopeful about things like Twitter. There I can make a decision to seek out individual voices and add them to the mix of what I see every day.
Is that helpful?
One thing that is still unclear to me is how the government should work from stories. If you mean a write-your-congressperson kind of approach I am very sympathetic to that. However, nearly all other means of aggregating stories I think are prone to distortion by the middleman is involved (not necessarily deliberate).
I'm not sure I understand your question about government. To my mind, a government isn't really a coherent actor. The individuals within it should have a good understanding of the problems they're working on, and for me that should include a personal, empathetic understanding of the individuals affected. Which I think is mostly what happens. I think a lot of our problems happen where government actors (officials and staff alike) are not representative with respect to the problem. E.g., Ferguson was such a mess because there was a strong race/class differential between the government and the governed. That not only created problems, but kept them from getting solved and prevented an effective response when things boiled over.
So if I understand the question correctly, I think that everybody should collect stories and that the aggregation should mainly be internal and via trust relationships. E.g., a congressperson can't meet everybody, and they'll have a particular set of biases depending on how they grew up. But their can cultivate a diverse selection of staff and advisors, and they can encourage those people to seek out broad contact with society.
That said, I think statistics-driven checks on things can help point out holes in that aggregation of stories. I recently heard about a city that was working on their long-term housing plan. Their main means for citizen contact was through public meetings about the plan. But a little looking at stats showed that the people at the public meetings were all homeowners, while the city was half renters. I'm sure city officials were disproportionately homeowners as well, and also more likely to know homeowners.
I'm also excited to see to what extent the Internet lets us avoid the various filtering biases. Even today a St. Louis politician could have manually used Twitter to get a semi-random sampling of stories as a check on what they were learning officially. I have a lot of hope for how technology shifts can help us transform citizen engagement in government.
Since you mention Ferguson, the theory I currently hold is that tensions between the police and the policed are, in practice, inevitable if the two differ in race, ethnicity, language or religion. Through their sheer visibility these differences have more weight than any difference that otherwise exists between the government and those it governs. The only plausible way to resolve this tension that I see is by ensuring the police force of a community is recruited from that community and represents its ethnic and cultural makeup.
I agree that the truth isn't influenced by race or gender. But one's perception of truth is influenced by one's experiences, and those experiences currently have heavy race and gender components. So if getting at the truth is the true goal, then one must be enormously careful to discover and work against one's own biases.
If you're looking for a way to get started on that, try Harvard's Project Implicit: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/index.jsp
I used to think that I wasn't biased. But instead I just didn't want to be biased. There's a big difference, and seeing that helped me see how wrong I was to think that my experiences didn't influence my opinions.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/record-high-approve-black-...
Is that a graph of people being convinced by rational argument? No, it's mainly people with old ideas dying off. It would be great if the world worked like you say, but it doesn't. Even science doesn't. Max Planck wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Please don't post drive-by insults to HN.
One is when open dialogue is used as a cloak for social control. The extreme example here is the Westboro Baptist Church, which pickets with signs that say, "God Hates Fags". A historical example is all the people picketing during school integration in the US. But there are a zillion subtle examples where people today, often unconsciously, say and do things that act to maintain historical imbalances.
Another is when discussion participants aren't acting responsibly. I forever see dudes sea-lioning their way into some advanced discussion on feminism, saying ignorant and/or harmful things, and then getting upset when they're called out. Real dialogue requires new participants to approach with humility and respect. Nobody expects it to be ok to for somebody off the street to barge into a graduate physics seminar and start opining. Those people will promptly get bounced, and surely go away complaining. But topics like feminism and race relations also have long histories. People jumping in to serious discussions should know something; they are not entitled to an on-the-spot education that stops the advanced discussion from progressing.
I'd also add that as I have come to better understand the experience of other people, I'm a lot more forgiving of possibly misdirected anger from marginalized people. A (white) sysadmin pal has a permanent, visceral dislike of cops because he was once assaulted by a cop who mistook him for somebody who had just shot a brother officer. Intellectually he knows that most cops are fine, but if somebody puts you in the ER, intellect only takes you so far. He just now doesn't trust cops in general; each individual officer has to demonstrate that they are safe before he feels safe.
Knowing how much bullshit has been perpetrated by people who look like me, I just accept that some people are going to initially see me as a probable threat. I am just always going to be Schrodinger's rapist [1] to a lot of women. I'm going to be Schrodinger's racist to a lot of black people. So if in a discussion on sensitive topics I am mistaken for an asshole, I try to let that slide. Heck, they could be right. And if not, their reaction to me may be wrong, but I think it's understandably and forgivably wrong.
[1] http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-sch...
P.S. I am up against my noprocrast limit, but I'll try to come back this evening.
I just want to be considerate of people, and have them reciprocate. That is what I mean by honest, open dialogue.
It is a way of creating conflict, not resolving it.
QED. Thanks for proving this entire conversation chain was not in vain.
The parent didn't call ladies hysterical or misuse his power - you accusing him of such is disingenuous and derailing the conversation.
It is also not a straw man response, and it is not pasted. Hi! I'm a real person, writing under my real name. These are things I believe. Would care to engage with the actual substance?
I've got news for you: People don't listen because you're a white male, they listen because you're privileged.
I've never met a "SJW" that actually knows what it's like to be poor, it's all well-off, college educated, mostly white people.
I think most poor people who make their way to the top don't actually get any help, so they end up forming conservative view points, whereas the rich white people just can't understand why poor people don't just stop being poor. It must be because they're black! Congratulations you're a racist.
Whiteness is one kind of privilege in US society. So is male-ness. So yes, I'm privileged. And yes, people listen to me better because of that.
The sad truth is that they are damaging the very movements that they claim to support: legitimate victims of discrimination are voiceless against the deafening noise of "wolf! Wolf!"
In general, I doubt it's realistically possible to keep a list of names off the internet.
Edit: Mystery downvotes are always appreciated, but I would be interested in an answer as well.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/03/20/bbc-featured-bloc...
http://www.notpauciloquent.net/2015/03/20/theblockbot-is-bei...
I haven't followed it closely enough to know the status of any suits.
Casey's answer is what I was on about. A good amount of employers in a specific industry (will not name it, as that could result in a fight) will not employ based on whether you appear in those lists.
A lot of people would dismiss it as a conspiracy theory, it's certainly not as elaborate as that: it is merely human nature doing the worst that it possibly can. These people genuinely believe that they are in the right. That's the most progress I have made: I'm still uncertain as to how to re-educate them.
Feels a bit like political news, just waiting for a gaffe to report on, or something to take out of context.
The scary outcome of that is a continued chokehold on the narrative and conversation by these extreme fringes, and no change for the better because nobody is willing or able to engage in a reasonable discussion or take reasonable action.
If someone can direct the wrath of the lunatic fringe at you with utmost impunity, can it really be claimed that they have no voice?
Because they're claiming they don't, while still exercising that exclusive privilege.
For example, look at the speed with which gay rights have happened, and how quickly society changed. In my view, that's because the Internet has drastically increased the ability of people with minority viewpoints to be heard.
What does that feel like for somebody with the old opinions? It has to be hard. For their whole lives, something they didn't like was actively hidden from them out of fear. They just never had to accept that gay people were real humans. So now they have a whole reservoir of views and habits and comments that are no longer appropriate. Many surely feel uncomfortable enough that they just shut up in public.
And I think that's fine. Their views and habits and comments were part of the social structure that oppressed gay people. Nobody wants to hear them anymore. I think it's best for everybody if they say nothing in public. They should instead take some time listening to the gay people whose voices they previously ignored. To the extent that they need help working through their opinions, they should do that privately, with people already sympathetic to them, rather than demanding that the world help them process things.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/record-high-approve-black-...
For a long time, it was the near-universal opinion that it was wrong. Now it's the near-universal opinion that it is fine.
When opposition was the dominant opinion, nobody thought that was supporting bigotry and inequality. Then there was a long period where one side believed it was bigotry and one side didn't. Now everybody sees it as bigotry.
For a long time, opponents of interracial marriage were comfortable sharing their views. Supporters were afraid of speaking up. Eventually supporters started speaking up energetically. Opponents did the same:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Little_Rock_integrati...
Eventually, the tide turned. Opponents generally didn't lose their opinions, but they became afraid to speak up because of possible social consequences. And eventually a generation grew up that doesn't even question the topic.
Why does this matter? Well, either A) all racism, sexism, etc, have now been eliminated from society in this manner, or B) most of us harbor some bigoted, erroneous views that we haven't collectively recognized as wrong.
I believe it's the latter. That's certainly been my personal experience as I've come to learn about these topics.
> So now they have a whole reservoir of views and habits
> and comments that are no longer appropriate.
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/labels.html
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
I think this attitude is evident in your following statement:
> Many surely feel uncomfortable enough that they just shut up in public.
> ...
> And I think that's fine. Their views and habits
> and comments were part of the social structure
> that oppressed gay people.
The article makes the point that the solution to hate is not hate in the opposite direction. Yet that's exactly what it seems like you advocate when you say that the Internet has drastically increased the ability of people with minority viewpoints to be heard, and then turn around and say you're glad that people who hold "old opinions" are not comfortable enough to share their viewpoints in public. Which is it, a more open or more closed marketplace of ideas?
> they should [work through their opinions] privately
At the risk of offending Godwin, I'd just like to point out that Hitler did not take over Germany with "old opinions" held by the establishment[2], but by some of the most highly educated moral philosophers of his day. Smart, progressive, socially-minded people who are asking good questions can still come to drastically wrong answers.
Here I mean "wrong and recognized as so by a broad segment of society". For example, the inappropriateness of overtly racist statements has become greater over time, while their wrongness hasn't.
> You can't be oppressed by an idea, viewpoint, or comment. That's not oppression, that's disagreement in a free society.
You can definitely be oppressed by expressions of ideas. See, for example, these white people shouting at a 15-year-old black girl because they objected to her attending a white school: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eckford#/media/File:L...
> [...] hate in the opposite direction. Yet that's exactly what it seems like you advocate [...]
That is not in fact what I advocate. But I don't think freedom of speech means freedom from vociferous criticism or social consequences: https://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/
However, the fact that it is on HN and has received quite a bit of support let's me know I'm certainly not alone in my frustration with the modern social justice movement, their antics, and its creep into the "tech media".
It is an incredibly divisive, hate-fueled movement based on flawed, debunked statistics and what amounts to a game of oppression olympics. Where once the type of person to spout their hateful rhetoric would be simply ignored, through social media they have been enabled, given a voice to, and been able to form an echo-chamber with other similarly deluded, hate-fueled people.
Through their network they have wielded an undue amount of power and we have unfortunately witnessed the result of it in real life, as a man who landed a probe on a comet millions of miles away had his team's achievement pushed to the back in favour of the furor over the shirt he wore while doing so, and who then wept on TV as a result of the sheer level of hate he received.
We have seen GitHub shamed for its rug championing unity in meritocracy, who then quickly moved to throw the "problematic" rug into the trash amidst the furor from these online "feminists".
We saw two people lose their jobs and have their names ran into the ground online by these "feminists" over a bad joke at a tech convention.
And the list goes on.
They have become simply too large to ignore. Their presence, and their narrative, drives so many clicks that we now see the "tech media" latch onto it, give their toxic views air and promote their narrative in the name of gaining clicks.
Facts no longer matter when it comes to these people, only the narrative. It doesn't matter that Ellen Pao was proven to have no case against Kleiner Perkins and was exposed as an incredibly shady person while doing so, you wouldn't tell she lost as the media driving this narrative cherry picked that which was convenient to the narrative and brushed over everything which was not.
I could go on about this, but all I will say is that I'm glad to see backlash against this movement increasing. I'm glad to see more speaking out against it. I'm glad to see their hashtags on Twitter being used against them, and I'm extremely glad to see some of their champions like Sarah Noble being held accountable in real life for the hate they spew online.
And as for Pycon 2013, most feminists I know argued that Adria had done enough by complaining to staff and had no right to post the employees' names and pictures on Instagram/Twitter/whatever, and that the individuals involved did not deserve to lose their jobs. But being a jerk isn't a prerequisite for being a voice for a traditionally oppressed group. It's just a result of being impassioned and hopelessly misguided, both traits that are indicative of naïveté rather than malice.
Well, doesn't that sum up the modern West in a nutshell. War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.
The entire political discourse lies between the authoritarian center (Democrats) or the authoritarian far right (Republican). There are no real libertarians. There were a few fringe candidates in the past (e.g. Ralph Nader, Ron Paul) who were basically unelectable, and there are a few fringe candidates now (e.g. Rand Paul) who have begun singing the tune of authoritarian government to get elected.
http://squid314.livejournal.com/329171.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/329561.html
I enjoyed reading the contrarian comments attached to the article, because they were revealingly thin on argumentation. My favourite one was "this is not a good article", closely followed by the inscrutable "you need to come to terms with the idea that you're more libertarian than left-wing."
- Huey Long
- Huey Lewis
-Huey, Dewey, and Louis
Would any staff care to chime in? It seems as if this posting was penalized.
There is (used to be?) a flamewar detection algorithm built into the larger ranking algorithm that would penalize stories which sparked rapid discussion accompanied by frequent downvoting.
The Medium piece conflates social justice and legal justice. Slavery was legal, so forcibly returning slaves to their owners was legally just. However, we came to recognize it as a moral wrong, something socially unjust. Eventually, we changed the laws, but the cultural change had to happen first.
The legal system is supposed to be a reflection of society's morals. If you challenge the moral framework, by asserting that an accusation should never be questioned, you challenge the legal framework by extension.
https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/a-usef...
It is that aspect of the moral framework that people are attempting to change. Like it or not, society has collectively acted to excuse rapists for millennia. That has been gradually declining; at least now it's a crime that is taken somewhat seriously.
>we changed the laws, but the cultural change had to happen first
>This is not a legal argument about what standards we should use in the courts; it’s a moral one, about what happens outside the legal system
So basically you are describing the very means that will be used to change the laws to remove due process. "Morality" will be used change the legal environment.
Due process is a legal situation, and it matters after an arrest and during the investigation of a crime. Listening to rape victims at face value is not a violation of due process.
In the Washington Post, Zerlina Maxwell argued that “we should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser [of rape] says,” for “the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.”
(Which is another quote in of itself)
Is there another way to read these words that I am aware of?
>There's no discussion to be had
That's the problem. SJWs don't want to discuss anything, just point fingers while sitting atop their high-horse.
>a refusal to listen to reason and instead substitute your own perception of how the world works.
It sounds to me like you're using the same exact rhetoric that the "MRAs" use against the SJWs.
Personally I think the article is very well thought out and I've seen first hand how self described "social justice warriors" can be completely authoritarian, racist, and bigoted.
First of all, authoritarian leftism isn't new. The ex-leftist neoconservatives of 2003 who got us into the Iraq War? They weren't the civil rights activists or the hippies. They weren't the ones fighting for desegreation or womens' or gay rights activists. Rather, those people were the communists, Stalin-defenders in the 60s, the left-wing authoritarians who swung right when they were older and richer. It's not really a loss that they went from left to right in the Reagan Era, as they were assholes the whole time.
Anyway, someone being a jerk on Twitter is not the same thing as what the Weather Underground was up to. For good and bad, we're pretty moderate in comparison to the Baby Boomers.
I stopped hating Millennials when I realized that the worst of us are products created by the worst of the exiting generations. You can find anything in any generation, so one bad apple (or few) says little about the generation and much more about those who endeavored to find it. And a young generation will be defined, when it is young, based on the uses that older generations find for it. Evan Spiegel? Lucas Duplan? Miley Cyrus? Justin Bieber? Lena Dunham? They're detestable, but they reflect on their producers, the ones who made their careers, and not on "our generation" in any meaningful way. If you look at the currently small-- and it's small not because we suck but because we're still young and most of us haven't had a chance to get started yet-- percentage (in the arts and business) of prominent Millennials who are actually self-made, the picture is a lot more flattering.
I'm with you otherwise but this line of reasoning is pretty dubious, a sort of counting the hits and not the misses approach.
It doesn't reduce well. If we blame the boomers for "producing" millennials why can't we just turn around and blame the prehistoric Madison Avenue types that produced the boomers[0], and so on and so forth.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Conquest-Cool-Counterculture-Consu...
Right now, the oldest Millennials are 33. In 15 years, it will be different.
I think you'll find a lot of them were rather Trotsyists rather than Stalinists[1] which made the leap to the right during Reagan's early anti-USSR years somewhat easier as they had a long term hatred of the (post-Stalin) Soviet Union.
But yes, they were still assholes.
Author's premise that feminism is a propagandistic response to actual sexism faced by men is offensive to all my experience with the facts and the people involved. Thus my conclusion is, this tries to be a high-minded sounding article but it is a hit piece.
It's very telling (and actually directly proves the author's point) that the best criticism you can come up with is the author's identity (i.e. a personal attack, i.e. an adhom) rather than a concrete problem with his ideas.
Pretty much all of those who use the derogatory term "SJW" turn out to be misogynistic right-wing bullies for whom feminism equals evil, and who think rape threats are free speech. The whole gamergate movement is utterly disgusting and spreading. (For instance, the right-wing bullies are now terrorizing the Hugo awards.)
It's a movement towards intolerant extremism from both sides.
> The fact of the matter is, this particular brand of millennial social justice advocacy is destructive to academia, intellectual honesty, and true critical thinking and open mindedness. We see it already having a profound impact on the way universities act and how they approach curriculum.
The first link in this paragraph is:
> http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6356
Student petitions, not actual changes. That entire site is backed and run by people with an agenda:
http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/aboutus/
The mere fact political propaganda from a known biased source would be used as "evidence", honestly, shows the OP has the same biases as the SJW but from a different direction.
Intellectually honesty isn't repeating stories from a well known political organization that solely exists to train future conservatives to spread their message as fact [without disclosing that is what they are].
---
Since I'm rate limited I'll reply to the accusation below here:
> Your argument is simply ad hominem. Either the ideas themselves are wrong, or they're not. It doesn't matter where the information came from. If Hitler told me about gravity that doesn't mean there is no gravity just because I learned about it from him.
Hitler in a clown mask coming to tell you about how the Jews are ruining society. The author knows its Hitler, but he doesn't tell you. All the while claiming he is a paragon of intellectual honesty and the opposition is not.
That is the actual comparison and why him doing this is a problem.