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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!
1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?
A lot of the talk about discourse norms doesn’t sufficiently challenge the assumption that SJ doesn’t care about truthseeking. In fact, SJ concerns are vitally important to truthseeking, because people’s perspectives are shaped by their experiences, and SJ pushes for greater inclusion of those that would’ve otherwise been overlooked. While being told that one has privilege is interpreted as hostile by many on the anti-SJ side, it only means that one’s claim of epistemic authority is unwarranted given their level of knowledge, and also that their lack of knowledge is an unknown unknown to them. Of course, some people take it poorly when their lack of knowledge is revealed, but I think that given anti-SJ’s claim of the mantle of STEM, they can make an effort to be more welcome to accepting information, once they understand that this is what’s happening. Given the inferential distances, it’s understandable that this gap has been hard to bridge.
It’s also important to keep in mind the demographic effects imposed by rationalists’ favored discourse norms. Imagine that being athletic were a prerequisite for participating in conversations about whether wheelchair ramps should be built. While there are many athletic physically disabled people, this requirement would still select against people with disabilities in general and reduce their ability to advocate for their interests. Something similar applies to these discourse norms – growing up poor, being kicked out of the house because you’re gay and/or trans, and countless other life circumstances make it more difficult for less privileged groups to have learned these norms, and as a result, the conversations are tilted in favor of middle-class (or above) cisgender straight white men. That’s why we should take into account the voices of those who, for various reasons, can’t or don’t participate in these norms. So while some people in the rationalist community (and elsewhere) are made uncomfortable by what they consider to be emotional displays, they come from a certain perspective that we may lack, and shouldn’t be ignored when we build our models of the world.
Finally, and more particularly to rationalists, there’s a tendency to overestimate the good faith of many on the anti-SJ side. While I know some anti-SJ people who take us seriously and engage with us honestly, there are many more who mimic them, whose facade falls apart when challenged. The pattern is familiar – the conversation starts out promisingly, but then they turn to belittling their interlocutor, dismissing their words or insulting them outright. Then they go to their co-ideologists and talk about how they’re truthseekers beset by dishonest and/or emotional “SJWs”. While we’d prefer to have honest conversations, when that isn’t possible, we have to turn to other means of protecting ourselves. If we can’t open minds, we can at least show that we won’t take it sitting down when we’re wronged. If we’re not respected for our humanity, we can at least make ourselves respected for what we can do to some of those who do us harm. I emphasize that this is not our first choice, but sometimes it can be necessary.
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?
Anti-SJ people often say that racism/sexism are no longer major concerns because relatively few people seriously say that whites are superior to blacks or that women belong in the kitchen, and that everyone supports a universal right to vote, own property, and so on. Unfortunately, while it’s true that it’s uncommon to express those kinds of beliefs so explicitly, that kind of hardcore bigotry still exists. But even that aside, more pervasive problems are caused by people not generally considered bigoted. Many of us have seen or heard of a guy getting mad at his girlfriend because she did something he considers unfeminine or held her to a double standard about her sexual past. Many people claim that they believe that blacks are equal to whites, but still treat blacks as somewhat suspect. And so on – police, the media, social expectations… While some individual cases are relatively low-impact on their own, together even they add up to a system of oppression because there’s no reliable escape. It’s also hard to persuade people that this system is a problem, because describing any particular instance of it doesn’t get the point across – and many of them can be dismissed relatively easily by motivated reasoners.
There are also more blatant and severe manifestations of bigotry, such as against LGBT people, especially the T, or against minorities by the police.
I think most people, whatever they believe, would find it difficult to imagine what would change their minds, and I’m no exception. I guess that if there were some vast body of evidence that groups I consider oppressed are basically treated fairly, and that I’ve been unlucky to only see the exceptions, I’d change my mind, but this kind of evidence would be extremely unlikely. More absurdly, if I were persuaded that oppression isn’t bad, I’d stop advocating SJ, but this is as likely as me being convinced that up is down.
3. Explain Gamergate.
Sexism has long been prevalent in gaming communities. Go to any message board and you’ll see them treating women like an alien species, strategizing about how to trick women into sleeping with them, complaining about how they’ve been treated “unfairly”, or just making sexist jokes. So it’s no surprise that many of them are upset at the gaming market and norms within communities shifting to be more welcoming to women. It’s further aggravated by criticism of existing gaming media – people generally don’t like being told that things they like contain morally problematic themes, because they feel that it’s next door to being accused of holding those attitudes themselves. Some of them rose in opposition to SJ in gaming, and started harassing and doxing its advocates.
Fisher said:
Absolutely everything here has been said in sincerity in another piece of writing…
…and yet I’m voting fake. I’m not sure why. Possibly because it seems very similar to #5, and I think it’s more likely that two very similar pieces are fakes, built around talking points, than there are ideological clones.
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Donbas said:
When do we start the anti-SJ posts?
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Fisher said:
Ozy had mentioned that they had received 22 notices of intent, but that not all of them had sent in their writings yet.
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Toggle said:
There are 22 contestants, I believe. Anti-SJ posts will begin November 2nd, if there are no gaps.
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Nah said:
Yeah, no way does a pro-SJ writer honestly think the biggest problems caused by modern sexism and racism are “treating black people as a bit suspect” and “double standard about one’s girlfriend’s sexual past.” That’s redpill territory.
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Toggle said:
This is the first pro-SJ essay that has made me genuinely want to argue with it, so I’m going to vote sincere. Well-developed voice, reflexively partisan in familiar ways. It does spend an awful lot of time responding to an imagined ASJ reader, which allows it to spend most of its time on the forward-facing arguments that you’d hear if you were arguing from the other side, so that gives me a bit of uncertainty, but within that scope it seems indistinguishable from the genuine article.
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Anon. said:
>It does spend an awful lot of time responding to an imagined ASJ reader, which allows it to spend most of its time on the forward-facing arguments that you’d hear if you were arguing from the other side
This is exactly why I voted Anti.
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pansnarrans said:
Interesting. I’m voting anti *because* I want to argue with it. I’m pro, but this article does things that annoy me about the pro-SJ side (e.g. I want to ask the author if women never hold their boyfriends to double standards, and whether they really assume gamers are like the worst stereotype of themselves). I reckon things that annoy me about my side are exactly the things that an anti- would have front-of-mind when writing an ITT.
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jossedley said:
I think it’s a good try, but fake. IMHO, it lacks conviction. I could see a person whose views lead to some moderate SJ conclusions rounding up, but this seems to lack conviction. (My apologies if it’s sincere!)
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Susebron said:
I’m extremely unclear about which one this is, but I voted pro to be charitable.
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liskantope said:
I voted anti, out of wishful thinking that an anti-SJ author writing a pro-SJ submission would make an effort to portray SJ ideas charitably, but the author could well be pro. Of all the entries so far, this one may express the views I feel most able to get behind. Whichever side of the issues this author is done, kudos to them.
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Walter said:
In the wild I’d unhesitatingly call this one out as a fake. It is bloodless where Social Justice is vibrant, and bites far more bullets than the genuine article.
BUT, it seems like that is exactly the sort of change I should look for in someone told that they were writing for this particular audience. Like, being more analytical and making double sure to bite every bullet might be precisely what someone does when they are told that a bunch of folks are going to be pouring through their work with a fine toothed comb.
Ultimately, though after reading this a couple of times, I’m going to come down on the side of this being an ASJ.
The part in #1 where they explain that oppressed folks are prevented by their oppressors from developing the norms that they need to participate in ASJ-standards communication doesn’t strike me as genuine. Like, this is, ultimately, still a “ladies tees” kind of expression, conceding that oppressed folks are measurably worse at something and pleading for compensation. The SJ I’m familiar with would point out that the oppressed folks have had the experience of being oppressed, while their oppressors have not, and thus extra belief should be assigned the perspectives of those who have suffered in these ways, vs those attempting to mansplain it away.
The next paragraph, where #14 explains that sometimes SJ hit back (if that’s what , “won’t take it sitting down” and “make ourselves respected for what we can do to” boil down to) but it is because the other party was not operating in good faith strikes me as a “bags of sand” moment. SJ simply does not see itself in that manner.
Walter Picks:
1: ASJ, certain
2: SJ, certain
3: SJ, unsure
4: SJ, unsure
5: ASJ, unsure
6: ASJ certain
7: SJ, certain
8: SJ, unsure
9: SJ, certain
10: SJ, certain
11: SJ, certain
12: ASJ, unsure
13: ASJ, certain
14: ASJ, certain
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Deiseach said:
It is bloodless where Social Justice is vibrant, and bites far more bullets than the genuine article.
One person’s “vibrant” is another person’s “screeching demagogue”, so that tailoring your response to your audience is a good idea. I voted pro, but I can see why some would think this was anti.
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Walter said:
Yeah, I had that thought, talked about it a bit in the next paragraph. It was a tough call.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
what’s a “bags of sand” moment?
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Walter said:
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Walter said:
Sorry, just meant to leave link, did not realize blog would put the video there. Doesn’t seem like I can edit.
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itsabeast said:
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
lol 😂
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itsabeast said:
I don’t know how I missed the previous one. Sorry.
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memeticengineer said:
I voted anti on this one mainly because I *hope* it’s fake. It is kind of scary if real. A lot of people seem to be voting Pro though.
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dantobias (@dantobias) said:
I thought it had the ring of sincerity, so I voted Pro.
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flockoflambs said:
It reads as the cogent logic someone would come up with if… you were an anti-SJ trying to think up strong arguments for SJ on your own. Good job on that! But unlikely to be genuine.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
“there’s a tendency to overestimate the good faith of many on the anti-SJ side. …… If we can’t open minds, we can at least show that we won’t take it sitting down when we’re wronged. If we’re not respected for our humanity, we can at least make ourselves respected for what we can do to some of those who do us harm. I emphasize that this is not our first choice, but sometimes it can be necessary.”
Oh my god that’s rich.
Discourse is fine as long as we’re winning, but never forget that the other side is really a bunch of disingenuous bastards. If conversation doesn’t “open their minds”, use force. The fact that someone, somewhere doesn’t respect us is inherently harmful, and we have the right to strike back against their harmful opinions any way we can get away with. We will force them to respect us.
This is rank intolerance and illiberalism. It reminds me of the kind of chauvinistic Islamic supremacism that imagines its being tolerant of other religions because they’re allowed to practice their religion in private, accept second class status, pay the Jizya, and if they ever draw Muhammad (peace be upon him) they’ve got to die.
Yes, the differences is Islamists will kill you and SJ intolerance plays out in the form of McCarthy-like blacklisting, but the structure of hypocrisy and double-standard is the same.
It could be an ASJ, but I have met people that think like this and it rings true. I think this one is real.
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pansnarrans said:
Nearly everyone thinks like this, I think. I rolled my eyes at that section, but it doesn’t really help me work out which way to vote as plenty of people don’t see anything wrong with believing this, but it would also be a great way to signal “SJs are rubbish” on a rationalist blog.
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Anthusiasm said:
I can’t quite picture a pro-SJ person talking about “blacks”.
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Protagoras said:
Hmmm? In the interest of saving syllables (as well as the fact that it is far from unheard of for me to have occasion to refer to Africans, or people of recent African descent in places other than America), I say “black” a lot more often than I say things like “African American.” Nobody’s tried to revoke my SJ card yet. Well, OK, nobody’s issued me one, since that’s not a thing that exists, but I seem to get along fine in SJ circles.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
I think the point is “blacks” vs “black people”, not “blacks” vs “African Americans”. Using “black” as a collective noun instead of an adjective makes it sound a little more like they are a collective rather than individual people who share a trait.
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Protagoras said:
I thought of that, and I suppose I have some tendency to say “black people” rather than “blacks,” but it’s not as if I never say the latter, and I note that the two places I saw “blacks” it was in the same sentence with “whites.” So I still don’t think it’s particularly revealing.
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jdbreck said:
I voted pro, but I’m uncertain. Parts of numbers 2 and 3 gave me some doubt, but the part about inferential distance in number 1 made me think this is a rationalist first and a SJ person second.
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dantobias (@dantobias) said:
Probably a lot of the participants (pro and anti SJ) are rationalists or at least rationalist-adjacent, due to the selection bias of where the challenge was made, and some will be rationalist first.
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Treblato said:
Voted pro, came across as condescending to the point of making me a tad mad, while it’s usually amusing if it’s too over-the-top. Total gut feel, though.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
I just want to say I really like the phrase “a tad mad” 😀
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Protagoras said:
This was one of my rare anti votes, and the first time I don’t seem to be in the majority. I can’t point to any decisive specifics, but it just overall felt wrong, like a (not terrible) effort to put together a lot of “this is what I’ve heard SJ people say,” but not quite managing to end up sounding like a real person in the final result.
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Katelyn Ailuros said:
Another close call. This really could go either way in my onion. But in the end i voted anti.
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Jsfik Xujrfg said:
I think a big problem here is that, despite how it seems on the internet, most people are not cleanly separated into pro and anti SJ. Most are somewhere in between, and agree with some aspects of SJ, but do not fit the stereotype of a radical pro or anti.
This all makes it really hard to tell is someone is honest but only mildly pro-SJ or slightly anti and intentionally describing the parts of SJ they agree with.
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dantobias (@dantobias) said:
Yes, like myself; I put myself in the “anti-SJ” side because I’m individualist rather than collectivist, and dislike a lot of the Tumblr-and-campus-style SJ activism, but I’m not in the “alt-right” camp either, and agree with quite a few of the substantive issues SJ activists care about. Whatever I ended up writing, if I had participated in this, would probably be hard to peg into one camp or the other… and that’s what I’d write for my own honest opinion; I have no idea what I’d write for trying to imitate the “other side”. My GamerGate answer would likely come out as “a pox on both houses”, acknowledging there are a few decent points to each side, but lots of stupid ugliness, and basically the whole thing is a big clusterfuck to be avoided by all sane people.
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Jsfik Xujrfg said:
Indeed, I count myself a mildly “pro-SJ”, but probably only because the websites I read mean I encounter more really annoying alt-righters than SJWs.
But why are the extremes are so much more visible in the general debate? I suppose part of it is the usual “Toxoplasma Of Rage”, but I think there is something more to it.
My theory is that extremism is positively correlated with posing a lot of comments. A person who writes a hundred posts per day on various forums is as visible as a hundred people who each write one. In this experiment Ozy gives each person the same amount of space, so we see a more accurate cross section of the commenter population.
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dndnrsn said:
I think it’s authentic. It comes off like someone with mild SJ beliefs, rationalist-adjacent, explaining their beliefs to a particular audience. Plus, it passes the “doesn’t say they know nothing about GG then talk about GG for 3x the length of the other 2 put together” smell test.
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argleblarglebarglebah said:
I voted anti, because the first answer struck me very strongly as using long Latinate words to disguise their lack of SJ knowledge. They also despite this use several LW jargon terms like “inferential distance” which sort of give away some of their honest beliefs, which based on personal experience make it less likely this author is pro-SJ.
I’ve also very rarely heard SJers ever openly defend intimidating people. And even when I do hear it it’s generally in the context of intimidating cops or neo-nazis. This person seems to be taking a quite extreme SJ position while appearing to be very strongly rationalist identifying, which would make them a very odd person.
There are also stronger arguments in 2 which I think most SJs would be aware of (but I could be wrong), and the analysis of GG in 3 seems pretty shallow. Overall I don’t see many indications that this is real, and I do see many indications that it’s fake.
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Autolykos said:
I have occasionally said of entries that I would have bought them if I saw them on tumblr, but they seem like a caricature here. This is the exact opposite.
Out in the wild, this would look suspiciously like someone trying to sneak Anti-SJ assumptions into the Pro side to water down the arguments and the conclusion. Here, it looks like a rather charitable and rationalist-adjacent Pro-SJ position. I could imagine some readers of this blog to think like this and self-identify as Pro-SJ. Possibly a recent convert, since there isn’t much slang/jargon in there.
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Glen Raphael said:
I voted pro, and most wanted to argue with #2:
“I guess that if there were some vast body of evidence that groups I consider oppressed are basically treated fairly, and that I’ve been unlucky to only see the exceptions, I’d change my mind, but this kind of evidence would be extremely unlikely. More absurdly, if I were persuaded that oppression isn’t bad, I’d stop advocating SJ, but this is as likely as me being convinced that up is down.”
Nobody wants to persuade you that oppression isn’t bad. Oppression IS bad; the relevant question is whether SJ tactics produce MORE of it. There is an argument to be made that being hyper-aware of identity factors, pushing people into labeled boxes and demanding they stay in those boxes and communicate in ways appropriate for people with those labels, perpetuates differential treatment which perpetuates differential outcome.
Colorblindness and inclusion and unrestricted “cultural appropriation” can’t necessarily eliminate ALL oppression – utopia is not an option – but they seem like a decent start whereas an “identity” focus seems like a huge step in the wrong direction.
We’re all against oppression and we all agree some oppression exists – the real question is whether SJ is the right treatment for the disease, or if it’s more like applying leeches.
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