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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!
NOTE: People have speculated that both of the previous posts were written by Scott Alexander. Sadly, Scott is not participating in the Intellectual Turing Test, and thus no posts are written by him.
1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?
I err on the side of not commenting on issues I don’t think I could make a good contribution to, and when I make a serious contribution, as opposed to venting or telling jokes, I try to do it in a calm and charitable manner. Both of these things have to do with my non-confrontational personality, and do not necessarily generalize to everyone. I’m not even sure how productive the task of trying to come up with a fully general set of abstract “norms” for “discourse” is. It really depends on whether you think you or some interlocutor will change their minds during the course of discussion, whether you think your audience will, how sensitive your interlocutors and audience are, how sensitive you want to portray yourself as being, etc.
2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?
I believe that there is a recurring pattern, which plays out in a lot of different ways, where some group of people has power over another and social structures are set up to advantage the powerful and disadvantage the less powerful, and I believe that a society . I believe this because the idea of oppressive power structures seems like the best way to model both things I’ve observed in my own life as an autistic trans woman and things I’ve heard of from others who experience other forms of oppression, as well as statistical disparities in life outcomes between different groups of people. If someone proposes a better model which is radically different to the point where someone following it would no longer be grouped into the category of “social justice”, and it is shown that it more parsimoniously explains what I’ve heard and seen, I’ll believe it. Conversely, if a large body of strong statistical evidence were presented that these patterns do not exist, along with a plausible reason why they would appear to exist in spite of this, I would definitely reconsider my position. Finally, if someone found some way of convincing me that explicitly striving for a more just society, with respect to various systems of oppression, is counterproductive, naturally I would stop advocating for social justice ideas.
3. Explain Gamergate.
Okay, without looking anything up, Eron Gjoni makes a post about his ex-girlfriend Zoe Quinn who cheated on him and did to him what some people have recognized as abuse, though he didn’t call it abuse in the post. That’s about to become irrelevant really fast. So after gathering dust for a bit, the post gets posted to 4chan or something and people start harassing Quinn, hanging onto one kind of misogynist line in the “Zoepost” where, when he finds out she slept with five other men, references the fast food chain “five guys burgers and fries”. They also latch on to the fact that she slept with a gaming journalist once, which, while it probably didn’t influence the reviews of her games much, was viewed as an example of corruption in the games journalism industry. So Gaming Youtuber Anita Sarkeesian also becomes a target of harassment because she, uhh, makes videos slowly?, a lot of people support the newly-christened #gamergate movement because they have grievences about ethics in gaming journalism, completely forgetting Gjoni and Quinn. A lot of female game people become targets, feminists take notice and defend them, now people who don’t even care that much about game reviews are supporting #gamergate because they oppose the feminist backlash against it, and feminists have a backlash against that, and the whole thing escalates until it gets taken as emblematic of online harrassment in general and Quinn and Sarkeesian speak before the UN about it.
Thing of Things 
Too plausible . I say it’s a very sophisticated fake!
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Yesterday and the day before’s comments: “too unsophisticated and implausible, fake”
Today’s comments: “too sophisticated and plausible, fake”
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Actually, I guessed it was true, but I thought it was funnier the other way. The other funny thing is that if Arthur Chu or Mencius Moldbug entered, they would be rejected instantly as rediculous caricatures.
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Out of curiosity, how many entrants are there?
Kudos to being able to fill 2n days worth of content 🙂
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22, not all of whom have yet sent in their submissions.
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Wait, some are looking at the competition first? And more importantly looking at the comments? That’s… kind of cheating?
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What is the point of cheating on this sort of thing? It is not like it will help you win the millions of dollars of nonexistent cash prizes I have on hand.
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I agree that it’s not cheating, but I would expect late submissions to hit closer to the mark thanks to all the feedback in the comments of what readers look for when judging a submission. I’m still interested to see them, for whatever that’s worth.
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For the first time, I voted pro-SJ.
To the writer of the submission: if you are actually anti-SJ posing as pro-SJ, impressive work.
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If you are actually pro-SJ, impressive worldview.
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This makes me want to be friends with OP.
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Man, I’m really too split on this to tell. I slightly lean towards it being a fake, for a couple of reasons. The first answer weasels out of actually answering the question, and instead describes the answerer’s own behavior while admitting that it’s not a moral ideal, just a personal decision. The missing words in the second answer seem like a more likely mistake to make while trying to synthesize an opposing argument than when writing one’s own argument. The third answer is a total draw – on the one hand, I think that the charity and lack of moralizing is more likely when describing one’s own position than when faking another’s, but it could easily be a clever trick intended to elicit that exact reaction. Fake, but would be least surprised so far by this one being real.
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I lean towards it being genuine, because if someone is faking, then identifying themselves as “autistic trans woman” is taking verisimilitude to the uttermost. I suppose they could be an autistic trans woman who is not pro-SJ,but then they might not include that identifying detail to use as proof of their bona fides.
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Wait, I don’t get it, are you saying that it would be against the rules to identify as an autistic trans woman if they weren’t one? Given the medium and the fact we have no way to check, it seems fair game to me to claim things like that id they aren’t true.
However if there is an expectation of not lying on such identifications highly correlated with being pro-SJ, then that’s a very easy way for some authors to signal that they are true pro-SJ… So it seems that in the interest of this game, it should be allowed to lie about everything (at least when faking, maybe when defending your own position you could be expected to only tell the truth).
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I think someone who would go as far as “faking credentials” would also use more SJ shibboleths like “oppression”, “patriarchy”, and so on (the last two submissions put them on a bit too thick for my taste).
Part one seems a bit vague, but not having a clear position makes it look more honest.
On the whole, I’d say this is either the real deal (a well thought-out pro-SJ position), or a very, very, very good fake.
The style reminded me a lot of Ozy, so it could have been someone who read this blog really well, has impressive memory and a knack for imitating styles. But declining entries because they are “too good” is kinda against the idea of an ITT – and it would be hard enough to do that I’d judge it as rather unlikely anyway.
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Putting my wager down on “Real SJ.” I mean, it could be a fake so good that it has no features to distinguish it from the real thing…I’m very prepared to believe that some of the people who hang around here could produce such a thing…but trying to think around that possibility devolves into throwing oracle bones. If it’s a fake, I’ve been successfully fooled, bravo author.
The answer to #2 is exactly what I’d expect a smart rationalist-adjacent SJ-er to think.
(Only thing even vaguely resembling an oddity is the characterization of GamerGate: I’m surprised to see an SJ-er putting any credence in the idea that anyone has sincere concerns about ethics in video games journalism. But I’m inclined to chalk that up to epistemic charity, of a kind that even most highbrow anti-SJ-ers probably wouldn’t be inclined to extend.)
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That’s kind of the point, right? Like, shrewd people should be able to pass this test. It isn’t supposed to be everyone gets caught.
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I have sincere concerns about ethics in video games journalism. But I never thought the GamerGate crowd did, because the alleged problems they talked about never seemed to me to be anywhere near the enormous, genuine problems in that area (which I see as primarily the corrupt financial links between the game reviewers and the game developers).
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The thing that most jumps out at me about this post is that the author doesn’t seem to have put a lot of effort into it, initially made me think “real”, because a faker would put in more effort. But what if a faker realized that appearing to not put in effort would be a good way to look real?
In particular, I think it’s noteworthy that (1) and (3) both could be written sincerely by someone who’s pro-SJ or anti-SJ. Which makes me think they are sincere. And I’d expect a faker to put more effort into creating a character distinct from themselves. But… [readers can fill in the rest].
Ended up voting “fake” mainly because of all the rationalist-adjacent autistic transwomen I know, I’m not sure any of them identify with the social justice movement.
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Veronica?
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Dammit. I was trying to think of someone in the Bay Area who could of written this, so I didn’t even consider her.
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Of the regular posters here, that would probably be my strongest guess as well. Though I’d hedge my bets with the theory Ozy could have smuggled in their own entry.
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My best guess would definitely be Veronica. The main argument against it is that I don’t recognize the style of writing as distinctively hers (I would expect slightly saltier language, for one thing), but that could be because she was going out of her way not to be overly recognizable.
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This is the first one I’ve voting “sincere” on.
I will say, this is the mildest I’ve ever seen someone with her point of view describe gamergate.
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Dammit, good point. I shouldn’t have limited myself to mentally cycling through people on the west coast.
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Related: it’s kind of hard to write one of these truly anonymously since one’s personal demographics are often so related to one’s thoughts on this topic! Examples from one’s life become basically unusable, which is a shame. (Though this is probably more true for less-represented demographics.)
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This person’s ideology looks too complex and nuanced to fit into either label comfortably. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re probably anti-SJ, but very weakly, and effectively took their anti-SJ positions and reversed the poles. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they were weakly pro-SJ, either.
Abstaining from voting because I don’t think either category correctly fits the author, in any case.
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IMHO, the sincere pieces written by actual people expressing their actual opinions are probably going to be nuanced and likely to be conflicted here and there, (assuming that Arthur Chu and Mencius Moldbug aren’t participating), so the better fakes will be too.
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People with nuanced opinions tend to get uncomfortable grouping themselves with an un-nuanced broadly-defined group position (they might describe themselves as SJ or anti-SJ “with reservations”, which is approximately what I mean by weakly one or the other), and an un-nuanced person is going to have trouble emulating a nuanced opinion.
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This one was hard, but the more I read it the less convinced I am.
Problems:
1) With all the answers, it’s written using a lot of long Latinate words. I realize some people really talk like that, but it comes across to me as someone trying to cover up their lack of SJ knowledge by making their post hard to understand.
2) Related to that, the answer uses almost no SJ jargon at all. I don’t expect SJs to lay it on too heavily, but this is weirdly free of it.
3) In 1, they phrase their discourse norms in terms of sensitivity. This strikes me as clearly un-SJ-like. Antis tend to accuse us of “being too sensitive” but ideology-internally that’s actually completely irrelevant.
4) 2 seems too utilitarian to me. SJ is a moral position; I would expect people to reconsider it with roughly the ease they’d reconsider “eating puppies is wrong” or “women should have the right to vote”. (That being said, since this is happening here, this is actually the point which concerns me the least.)
5) The history of GG is way too anti friendly. The motivations of the supporters are “ethics in gaming journalism” and “because they oppose the feminist backlash against it”. It also makes mention of Quinn and Sarkeesian appearing before the UN, which I’m not convinced an SJ would be familiar with to the point of mentioning it unprompted. More than anything the GG answer feels very off to me.
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First of all, utilitarianism is also a moral position!
Second of all, SJ is really a mix of empirical & moral positions. Typical SJ beliefs include not only that e.g. women should have equal societal positions to men but also that they currently don’t.
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I mean, it’s sent in as an essay. It seems perfectly likely that someone (especially a rationalist) would write it fairly formally.
Personally I would say the GG answer is actually one of the things that most convinced me it was real – someone who is emulating SJ wouldn’t be nearly that friendly, while someone who is pro-SJ would have more leeway.
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This is what I mean by how writing from a “neutral ground” has a very different style to when writing a post to make a specific point. Trying to explain your personal beliefs is less about sticking to the gospel, than when you’re preaching to either the choir or to the infidels. I voted pro-SJ.
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This being the third of these posts I doubt I’m the first to say it, but: woah, how uncomfortable does it make you to vote “anti-SJ” on one of these? If the person wasn’t faking, it feels like you’re telling them that they’re explaining their beliefs wrong.
I think this one is Pro, and if it isn’t the gamergate side is a superb double-bluff and I applaud.
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The fact that the author seems to know much more about how Gamergate originated on 4chan than about Sarkeesian’s videos or her and Quinn’s UN speech points to anti imo.
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I was going to make the same point. I’m surprised so many people are going pro because the understanding of GG is completely at odds with how most SJ people frame the issue. They tend to foreground the harassment of female and feminist devs and commentators much more than this person does, and treat the “ethics in gaming journalism” aspect as either a joke or a blatant rationalization. And they very rarely have anything but the most cartoonish understanding of what pro-GG people actually believe. I’d expect a real SJ person to *either* have a much less nuanced answer to question 3, *or* (perhaps more likely in this space) at least highlight that their answer is unusual and not necessarily representative of SJ people. I’d think an SJer who failed to strongly condemn Gamergate would be made painfully aware of the latter fact in short order.
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But remember, whoever wrote it is someone rationalist-adjacent who very likely interacts with anti-SJers pretty often, perhaps more than they interact with SJers. And they knew they were writing for an audience with a lot of anti-SJers and without many of the strident, less rationalistic variety of SJer.
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Just wanna throw in my perspective here: I frequented multiple strongly pro-SJ sites as GG unfolded, and all of them had a strong grasp on the ZQ/EG origins of the thing, especially bringing up how NotYourShield was a tactic 4ch had utilized previously, even before ZQ revealed her logs.
I had a friend who is not into gaming, or the same sites I frequent, and she still found plenty of pro-SJ primers on the topic that included the 4ch origins.
It’s these sort of assumptions of what the other side does or doesn’t know (different from what they prioritize, mind you) that lead to failures of the ITT.
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It’s not being aware of the origins that I was responding to (where did I say anything to suggest it was?). If anything I think SJ people tend to emphasize 4chan more than non-SJ ones because in those circles putting down 4chan is pretty much an applause light. It’s several other details, the biggest of which, as mentioned, is taking the “ethics in journalism” aspect at all seriously.
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Either real, or doing a creepily thorough job of impersonating a specific person.
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This is fun – I’m glad we get to vote.
That said, shouldn’t a proper ITT only be voted on by the ideology they’re trying to fake? If anti-SJ people vote, doesn’t it just show that anti-SJ people can’t tell the difference between a fake and a real response?
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Not only is this probably the only convincing pro-SJ post so far (#2 could’ve been a very green one, but I don’t think such people would be likely to participate in this), it’s also incredibly purple to the extent that I immediately thought of a specific person this seemed very characteristic of. If this is anti, then I really want to hear that person’s arguments for being anti.
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Pro-SJ, rationalist-adjacent. Approaches social justice as broad, long-term coalition building over the fancy of the day (GG) or partisan point-scoring. Plus, the ability to write in a somewhat detached, if-only-everyone-would-think-rationally way convinces me that the author is indeed neurodiverse.
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I voted real, but I hope I’m wrong. Like the audience in The Prestige, I want to be fooled. If this is an act, it is very, very impressive.
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I see this one as likely somebody who sincerely identifies as pro-SJ, but might not be accepted as such by other SJ types; they’re very rationalist-adjacent and epistemologically fair, and their views are probably just a slight leaning toward the SJ side rather than a fervent tribal identification; they’re not inclined to call the other side ugly names and dismiss their concerns as entirely irrelevant.
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This is actual real pro-SJ for sure.
By the way, I’m pro-SJ and I would describe Gamergate just about exactly the same.
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It’s a good, calm, sensible capsule description of the history of that flap, from a pro-social-justice side, sure. On the other hand, the descriptions I’m used to seeing from real SJ types are much more strident and angry and dismissive of the other side having any point at all other than to harass women, while this one sees the whole thing as an unfortunate mess, with lots of harassment involved, but leaves the possibility that there may be a few actual debatable points in there somewhere. (Maybe I’m too inclined to conflate pro-SJ beliefs with the nasty types pejoratively labeled “SJWs”, and that’s a flaw in my own personality rather than in the essays I’m commenting on.)
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One thing to keep in mind here is that the people you see talking about Gamergate on the Internet are people who want to be talking about Gamergate, whereas people in this ITT are required to talk about Gamergate in order to participate. Lots of pro-SJ-but-not-extremely-SJ-Internet-active people stayed mostly out of the mess.
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I guessed anti-SJ here, but pro-SJ on the first two (before reading any comments). The part about GamerGate just feels like someone who is pro-GG trying to criticize it.
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Are you anti-SJ? I ask because I’m pro-SJ and I voted the exact opposite of you and I’m kind of baffled at your choices.
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I am mildly pro, although I don’t believe cultural appropriation is a major issue.
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Oh interesting, sorry for the wrong assumption! I’d be interested in knowing why you guessed the way you did, if you don’t mind sharing.
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I voted Pro. Nothing about this seemed insincere or ‘off’ to me. But I’m much less sure than I was about #2. This post would be a blue card in Magic, and normally SJ comes across as Black/Red.
Weirdly enough, all through reading the first response I didn’t know what position they were even presenting. They just kind of nope out of the question.
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I like the card color analogy.
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voted anti-SJ mainly because i think the GG explanation was very charitable to the pro-GG position and i tend not to see pro-SJers do that. The mention of the UN thing makes me think it’s an anti-SJer. OTOH i think i may have made the wrong decision because i can easily see ozy writing something like that as the GG explanation. And it could fit with a pro-SJ but doesn’t really follow GG person who interacts with pro-GGers enough to get their side of the story by osmosis.
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That’s kind of what I said, but perhaps that just means that both of us are being uncharitable to the pro-SJ position, expecting (perhaps due to exposure to some of the more toxic elements there, in places like campuses or Tumblr) that they would be uncharitable to the other side. It may be that the “rationalist-adjacent” sort of SJ person, the type most likely to emerge in this exercise due to the sample space of recruitment, is in fact more inclined to be charitable in this way.
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The pro- and anti-SJ people who entered this are unlikely to be either the average member of either, or the stereotypical member of either.
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Wait a minute – the writer claims to be able to spell Eron Gjoni “without looking anything up.” I’m still voting true, but I’m significantly less confident.
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I don’t know, some people are just good at spelling names. I’m garbage with remembering people so far as putting names to faces, but I rarely screw up with spelling people’s names, even if I’ve never seen them spelled.
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This comes off to me as someone who is pro-SJ doing a good job of explaining their position in a … whatever the “from inside” version of charitable is … fashion. Reading this I actually updated my opinions in such a way that the needle moved towards the author’s position/the author’s pretend position. So either it’s someone pro-SJ who’s good at explaining their position in a productive way, or someone passing the ITT hard.
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Also, as someone who wasn’t involved in GG and doesn’t really identify with either side, but ended up reading a bunch about it, the Cliff’s version of GG given looks pretty factually accurate. To put it another way: just because a historian thinks the good guys won [war], doesn’t mean they’ll be inaccurate in describing the history of the war.
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I’d say it’s technically accurate, but wrong in that it misses the essence of the thing. Explaining GG in terms of Gjoni/ZQ is like explaining WWI in terms of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Doesn’t tip it in either direction though, sj/anti-sj can be equally disinterested in GG.
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It explains it as “it started over G/ZQ then metastatized into something else entirely due to preexisting divisions”, which seems fairly accurate.
“Somebody shoots an archduke and his wife, preexisting tensions in Europe come to the fore as everybody starts calling in their allies, and then millions of people die, the original 2 who got shot largely forgotten” is a pretty accurate description of WWI.
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Pro
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