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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!
What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?
I make a point of being polite; I want to keep lines of communication open, because people who disagree with me can be really valuable. Someone who is skeptical of my conclusions will try harder to poke holes in my logic and might point out something I’ve missed.
There are limits, though. If someone’s just attacking me, or is making genuinely ridiculous demands on me or on society in general, I might decide it’s better to roll my eyes at them or snicker, rather than argue politely.
I do think the world would be a better place if everyone followed the same norms I do; although I of course would never approve of those norms being forced on anyone.
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?
My family immigrated to the US from a Soviet-sphere country when I was young. (I’m dating myself, I know.) I think that experience, and hearing the experiences of my family members, has made me appreciate the importance of liberty. Social Justice, by attacking people who don’t march in lockstep with SJ beliefs, effectively limits people’s liberty. When people see a fan artist bullied into a suicide attempt by SJWs because she drew a fat character as thin, that inevitably has a chilling effect on speech.
Short of divine intervention, I can’t think of anything that would convince me that my foundational belief in liberty is wrong. But I’m open to changing my mind about less foundational things. At one time, I was pro-life, because although I wasn’t sure if a fetus was a person in morally important ways, I felt it was wrong to risk murdering a lot of people unjustly. Over time, however, I became convinced that a fetus cannot meaningfully be a full person (although it is biologically human tissue), and I now believe abortion should be legal in most cases. In that case, it was reading careful arguments by philosophers that changed my mind.
Explain Gamergate.
The roots of Gamergate are deeper than “The Zoe Post.”
SJWs have been taking over a lot of culture – not with armed force, but with social pressure and unfair accusations of racism and misogyny (and other kinds of bigotry), designed to make all but the most stubborn opponents give in. In the case of gaming, this was shown in unfair reviews that paid more attention to social justice issues than to if the gameplay was actually, you know, good. It showed in awards giving to undeserving, uninteresting games because they checked off the right social justice boxes. And it showed in people – not just fans but also game designers – being afraid of setting off a social justice mob just because a pose was “too sexy” or a game’s avatars were not the SJ-approved race or color.
There were other issues, of course – SJWs make fun of people saying this, but there were (and still are) problems with ethics in gaming journalism. But even more than that, SJW overreach, and people resenting SJW mob tactics, had pushed a lot of people until they were ready to push back. The result, eventually, was GamerGate. (And, in science fiction, Sad Puppies.)
Thing of Things 
this is another one that’s so short and inoffensive that it’s hard to tell, but I’ll guess it’s real.
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I think it may be really hard to spot fake ASJ essays. Really, any sincere-sounding criticism of SJ will do it, unless there’s some inconsistency.
Also, I hadn’t realized until now that SJ was acting to make sure that Steven Universe fan art is not problematic. I blame the EverythingIsProblematic author for shutting down.
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This is true. SJ is a worldview far more than anti-SJ is. People who are for it will probably have similar reasons, while people who are against it are likely to have their own reasons.
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Another realistic one… I’ll vote “real anti-SJ” again.
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This is either a specific person or someone doing an impression of a specific person; the details on the second question are too precise to be pulled out of thin air. There are some weird anomalies, but I’m inclined to vote anti.
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What’s the point of the “pro-life” anecdote?
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I guess the point was to give an example of how the author arrives at certain views and changes them in response to “philosophical evidence”.
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Since the question includes a section on what kind of evidence might make the author change their mind, I think it was an example of a prior change of mind and the process that led to it.
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I voted genuine anti on this one. That’s three out of three that I’ve voted are genuine anti, which either means that the randomizer has put three real ones in a row or I don’t know how to tell the real from the fake on the anti side. Or both of those things could be true.
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I’m pretty sure some people have been fooling me, for similar reasons. But the discussion in these threads has been interesting, and it will also be interesting to see in the end which answers pair with which and who wrote them.
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Well, that would be a delightful example of realistic randomness (as opposed to the locally balanced patterns that feel “properly” random to human brains).
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Again no mention of religion which seems to imply fake but… Mischaracterization of social justice in a realistic way (conflating teens on tumblr with social justice seems more like anti-SJ thinking than the strawman argument of “SJWs are against white people rah rah!”).
Side note: On the subject of games journalism and ethics, why does gamergate focus on Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian etc. instead of, idk, the fact that AAA games companies bribe/threaten reviewers to get good reviews and force out bad ones? IGN seems far more of a problem than a single Kotaku post.
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Do you think religion is really that common a concern? I’ve encountered dozens of antis and pros alike who don’t care a whit about determining the truth of religion. For that matter most other essays here haven’t mentioned it either. They seem to consider the question of theism almost settled (Jefferson’s watchmaker at best if God does exist, but SJs consider it rude to tell people this) and focus more on religion as a sociopolitical identity group (Muslims as foreigners in America, etc).
Besides, a Soviet upbringing would be even more consistent with personal irreligion.
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It has been my anecdotal experience that the majority of people who I talk to who are against social justice principles have been conservative Muslim, Hindu or Christian (this is partially due to having grown up in a Muslim family).
In addition, the majority of the US is religious and Pew research suggests that all major evangelical denominations (with the exception of Seventh Day Adventists) lean Republican. Two correlations together does not necessarily a correlation make so anything further is just speculation. Given Muslim and evangelical teachings about queer people, it seems likely that a substantial number of evangelicals would be against social justice principles. Most of this is anecdotal from the evangelicals I have seen on the news and met in real life.
On further examination, my beliefs were not very well-supported there, so I will accept that I am likely wrong about the extent to which religion is a motivating factor. Especially given your point about Soviet upbringing.
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Once again, I’ll vote genuine. Judging ASJ may be a task I’m ill equipped for. There are just too many kinds of ASJ. Everything sounds like one flavor or another. Rude? I know rude ASJ’s. Overly formal/analytical? I know that guy. Flat out bigoted? Sad to say, we’ve got some. Hard to imagine what will make me vote imitation.
#1: ASJ, unsure
#2: ASJ, certain
#3: ASJ, certain
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I’m almost certain this one is anti. The gamergate section didn’t have any mistakes an ASJ wouldn’t make, but it was short so it could just be that it didn’t go on long enough to have the opportunity to. Didn’t see anything that screamed fake in the first two parts either.
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The first Anti I’m unsure about. It’s vague to the point of barely even attempting to justify an Anti-SJ position, which makes me lean towards fake. And making the point about journalistic integrity, and comparing it to “Sad Puppies” also seems somewhat off to me, since the problem with integrity in video game journalism has IMO very little to do with SJ influence and a lot with publisher influence – which is pretty much the exact opposite case in SciFi literature. I’ve always seen the “journalistic integrity” claim more as a strawman (or an excuse to harass Zoe Quinn and her allies) than a serious argument.
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Do you think that all of the GGers see it as a cover? My read is that some GGers think that the gaming press sees part of its function as advancing SJ values in gaming, and some enjoyed harassing SJ people, but that there were substantial non-overlapping segments of each type.
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I’m not deep enough inside the whole GG affair to have a definite opinion on who claims what, but the actual reviews in the gaming press (that I’ve read) rarely if ever make any SJ points. They are often poorly disguised advertising, but far more often for the triple-A publishers whose games the SJ side most loves to hate, not for artsy indie games.
There may just be a lot of hostile media bias at work, or the gaming press in the US is radically different than in Europe, but I kind of assumed the “journalistic integrity” statement not being serious just because the observations don’t fit the narrative of either side.
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The first ASJ seems like a highly non-neurotypical person who may also have been influenced by Rand. Although it’s really hard for me to relate to (even on the same supposed “side”), it seems like how certain friends and acquaintances across my lifetime have expressed themselves, and most of those people would probably self-describe as ASJ.
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Full disclosure: I myself am somewhat suspicious that Tom the Robot on Cartoon Network seems to bottom out his scoring at “Some flaws but still pretty fun – 8/10,” but I don’t harass him.
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I’m voting sincere.
Just like the purportedly pro-SJ (which I believe I voted sincere on also) which was written by someone stating that they were trans, a person from the other side of the iron curtain being anti-SJ seems to be a thing.
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Meanwhile, on this “other” side of the curtain, pro-liberty and pro-SJ people tend to be allies.
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Really? Because being pro-liberty is one of the most common reasons I see for being *anti*-SJ. SJ is defined by viewing group membership as more important than individual identity, being pro-liberty (at least in the forms most likely to be encountered here) consists in large part of viewing individual identity as more important than group membership. That doesn’t make the two implacably opposed by definition or anything, but I certainly don’t view them as natural allies.
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@philosoraptorjeff
I think your claim only makes sense in the relatively small filter bubble where everyone agrees on core SJ values. When you have lots of, like, actual religious conservatives and actual racists (and places like Russia certainly do), the ideological dividing lines are really different.
Also I would argue that much of SJ is about granting marginalized people the ability to be seen as individuals more than they currently are, while also acknowledging the way people’s views are often shaped by their experiences which in turn are in part shaped by their demographics.
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@tcheasdfjkl
What are “core SJ values”? Humanism and equality? Something more? Something less?
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@Larry
Well, what I meant was like, opposing bigotry and accepting LGBT people and liking equality.
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Also not sure what you mean by “core SJ values”. If you’re claiming that something like anti-racism makes you SJ I’m going to want to push back on that *really* hard. That’s almost as much of a strawman as “anyone who believes women are people is a feminist”. It’s 100% possible, and in this corner of the ‘net, at least, very often actual, for someone to be as anti-racist as the day is long and still oppose SJ.
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All anti-racists need not be pro-SJ for anti-racism to be a core SJ value. Compare: monotheism is a core value of Islam, even though not all monotheists are Muslim.
Anyway, what I meant to say was: if you imagine you can somehow plot everyone’s views on a graph, which clusters make sense is gonna depend on the overall distribution. In the rationalistsphere, it makes sense to put you in one cluster and me in another. But if we were both transported into mainstream Russian society, we would probably be in the same cluster.
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‘Anti-racism’ is a label under which pretty racist things are advocated, so I would distinguish between anti-racism as a SJ label vs being against racism.
I’m the latter, but don’t want to be considered part of the ‘anti-racist’ movement.
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@philosoraptorjeff
Although things have been heading in a liberal direction for a while, the most common view in this part of the world (and also, most likely, on planet Earth as a whole) still is that every person has a duty to act “normal” and fit into the role assigned to them by society on the basis on their sexual anatomy, ethnic group, abilities etc. If playing your role comes naturally to you, that’s great, if not — sucks to be you, but don’t you dare stop trying.
To mention just a few of such social duties, men* have to be masculine, women* have to be feminine, and everybody has to be heterosexual, support “family values” and value “their” people above others.
* as you can imagine, “men” doesn’t mean “people who identify as men” here, and the same goes for “women”
Both seriously valuing individual freedom and advocacy for the rights of minority groups go against this view. Additionally, they overlap to some extent — e.g., prejudice against a group curtails the individual freedom of those who belong to this group. So, this coalition makes sense wherever “shut up and act normal” is still a popular position.
(To be honest, it’s oddly refreshing to come online and read about “SJWs” taking over university campuses and such. These stories are so far from my everyday experience that they barely register as reality. Of course, I don’t think such excesses actually benefit anyone in the long run, but hearing about them is a good counterweight that helps me become less bitter about local issues.)
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I think that social pressure and the (strongly related) desire by people to fit in are key human features that allow us to live together without murdering each other. So despite the obvious downsides of the conformism that this results in, it will surely never disappear.
IMO, liberals* also tend to have very strong views on how people should act, they just don’t want to enforce this by ‘negative freedom’ laws as often, but they do tend to make laws that strongly incentivize certain behavior, which means that through ‘positive freedom’ laws, they still tend to force people to act certain ways.
* In the European/correct definition of the word
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@Nita,
Another story about SJW-culture on campus:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/my-halloween-email-led-to-a-campus-firestorm–and-a-troubling-lesson-about-self-censorship/2016/10/28/70e55732-9b97-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html
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@ Aapje
You seem to come from one of those rare places where liberal values have truly become integrated in society, and now the major controversies lie elsewhere. Perhaps Denmark?
See, you think of social norms as an instrumental thing — something worth upholding because it actually benefits individuals.
This is very important, because it allows us to amend cultural norms when we discover that some of them result in harms instead of benefits.
But this is not (yet?) how most people think. Living according to the customs of your ancestors is good, having faith is good, murder is bad, theft is bad, being “a fag” or “pussy-whipped” is bad, cracking antisemitic jokes is OK — not for any pragmatic reasons, but just because. It’s a big blob of (possibly contradictory) ideas that you either accept or reject as a whole, because rejecting any one would make you weird — and being weird, of course, is bad.
Does harassing gay people actually benefit families in some way? Not really. But gay people are not part of the traditional picture, so it gets included under the umbrella of “family values”.
The more reflective folks justify it with religious beliefs (it’s good to be good, God is the only source of morality, the Bible says X is not good, QED), and the rest feel vaguely satisfied that this justification exists.
Various social justice movements have their issues (sometimes major ones), but at least they do care about consequences, in terms of the experience of individuals. That makes their adherents amenable to discussion, at least in theory.
“Because it is the best way to enhance well-being / protect freedom / correct an injustice” is something I can work with. “Just because” and “because God says so” are not. That, to me, is the main difference between traditional and liberal norms.
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@Nita
Not far off, The Netherlands actually.
You are correct that real conservatism is very marginalized here, but of course any society will internally disagree on the extent to which negative and positive freedom ought to exist. But I doubt that there is another country where the government proposed a law to legalize assisted suicide for elderly who are tired of living.
Yes, but to do so, you also need these norms to uphold a culture. If one group in society believes in 100% free speech and another group believes that hearing unpleasant things causes major psychological damage, these groups cannot coexist peacefully. There need to be shared values, some of which are arbitrary, subjective and/or otherwise debatable, but without them, society falls apart.
Yes, the ones that are important are mixed with things that are unimportant. Furthermore, humans are partially irrational, so some of the things that are important look unimportant and vice versa (for example, shared cultural artifacts, like holidays, create shared experiences which makes people accept each other as the ‘in group’ that they are willing to sacrifice for).
As most people don’t understand this and in many cases, are unwilling to believe it is true (one of the downsides of human irrationality is that it often makes us deny our flaws), we cannot abandon custom. Most people will never adopt the necessary beliefs on their own. However, we can of course improve custom…although we must be very careful not to take one step forward and two steps back.
Or patriarchy (supporting it beyond biological necessity or exaggerating it’s existence, for traditionalists or mainstream feminists respectively) or globalism or neoliberalism, etc. There is not one source of justification based on dogma.
I see very little difference in this regard between the noxious parts of the SJ movements and the noxious religious people. Both have dogma & deny inconvenient facts, are willing to sacrifice individuals for the collective, are fine with oppression for the greater good, etc, etc. Both are inherently dangerous, although in my country, only one of these groups really has power (and it is increasing).
A conservative Christian who opposes practicing homosexuality is honestly concerned with the individual, who he seeks to save from eternal damnation. It’s not fair to say that the Christian does not care about consequences, in terms of the experience of individuals. The issue is not the intent, but rather, the inconsistency with human rights as well as the poor argumentation (‘God says so’ is a poor argument when one cannot even prove that God exists).
Arguably, one of the things that separates us as people is that you are fighting a war that for me is in the past. In my society, the main anti-liberal threat is from the ‘regressive left,’ IMO.
PS. It’s not so easy to guess your country, your concern with both religion and anti-semitism suggests either Eastern Europe or the Middle East.
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Wow, put me in the minority of the minority!
At the end of the day, I had trouble believing that someone this milquetoast about SJW cultishness and bullying would, in this community, even describe themself as “anti-SJ” rather than “a nice, non-aggressive pro-SJ” or some such. There really wasn’t a single specific criticism that hadn’t already been acknowledged very nicely by several of the purportedly pro-SJ responses. It had the tone of an imitator going for the charitable angle.
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I haven’t voted; too close.
With that said, I’m suspicious of the “there are limits” part. No-one in the SJ essays defended rudeness in their response to #1, IIRC. But all three of the anti-SJ essays have so far.
There’s no particular reason why anti-SJ people should be more likely to endorse and defend meanness. This is an abstract thing; I don’t think any of the answers to #1 have endorsed anything that was noticeably anti- or pro-SJ. Heck, “punching upward” and “tone policing” are standard SJ concepts.
But the polls seem to suggest there are more genuine Pro than Anti answers, and assuming that the Other Side needs to defend meanness seems like the sort of thing an uncharitable person might think. Y’know, if they were challenged to write the “discourse norms” of an imaginary persona from the other side.
It’s far from a surefire tell – hell, it might be chance, or a result of antis being genuinely more likely to argue – but … suspicious.
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I don’t know that snickering and eye rolling is “meanness”, especially when it’s directed at publications or media figures. How else should antis respond to Anita Sarkesian other than satire? How should democrats respond to Bill O’Reilly? I think the important norm here is not to lie about what they say, not to misrepresent their views. It’s not that you shouldn’t make fun of them.
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In the case of politicians or celebrities, sure, after making sure they’re not actually saying something worthwhile. Unless I misread or am misremembering, I don’t think any of these responses made it clear that’s what they meant, though. And in an interpersonal context snickering and eyerolling is generally pretty mean.
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Well, it’s more the trend of people explicitly arguing for uncharitableness that I noticed. I agree that you don’t have to be All Charity All The Time, but I didn’t see many people arguing for their right to be rude.
Who said anything about public figures? This was an alternative to “being polite”, triggered by “attacking me, or … ridiculous demands”. That sounds more like they’re defending getting into internet flamewars than anything.
(Is Anita Sarkesian really impossible to respond to with substantive criticism? I’ve never gotten why people freak out about her, she seems really boring.)
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@MugaSofer
I wouldn’t say she’s impossible to respond to with substantive criticism. But maybe she is impossible to respond to without laughter, satire or sarcasm. Ridicule can be substantive.
As long as you’re not lying about what they said, I don’t see a problem with laughing at demagogues and calling them idiots.
I guess you’re probably right though that OP was talking about flame wars not public figures.
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Vote anti, am pro-SJ, especially the migrated-from-leftie-dictatorship sold it for me because I’ve seen it from time to time with SJ critics, but not so often that it would be staple for an imitation.
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I’m amazed that this was voted real so overwhelmingly, as I’m pretty certain that it is fake (so I voted pro and I’m anti).
The first answer is the least revealing, as usual, but the ending feels very obligatory. It feels like ‘Oh right, the anti-SJs tend to be anti-PC, so lets oppose PC laws/rules.’
The second answer is very shallow. A generic pro-liberty argument with one mediocre example. The example is more typical of one used by pro-SJ people (bullying a single person into self-harm) than anti-SJ. It was an outlier in SJ behavior and an example that an anti-SJ person might use during an in person argument in a ‘you guys do it too’ exchange (as a reactive argument). But it’s not something that an anti-SJ person who is even just slightly charitable or wants to convince people will use in a general argument like this. So it feels like an example copied from a discussion elsewhere to mimic anti-SJ.
The ex pro-life bit feels like the person had difficulty defending their fake argument, so they just gave an example of how they imagine a conservative person may change their mind.
The GamerGate stuff is again very shallow and not what I can see a pro-GG person argue. The bit about ‘awards giv[en] to undeserving, uninteresting games because they checked off the right social justice boxes’ sticks out like a sore thumb. Using the term ‘ethics in gaming journalism’ is also way on the nose. The term has been made so much fun off, that an actual pro-GGer wouldn’t be that likely to use it anymore.
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Voted genuine anti, because it just feels very genuine. Some of the pro ones gave a real sense of heartfeltness, and this one was the first anti that did.
That being said, I have to admit it also felt to me like it might seem like that to me because it was a pro writer who failed to get far enough from SJ values to make me uncomfortable.
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Pingback: SJ and Anti-SJ ITT: The Results! | Thing of Things
Reblogged this on Autism Candles.
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