I think this is still too logical to work. Each step of an argument is another place that can be attacked. And because attacks are allowed to be illogical, even the most logical step has maybe 50% chance of breaking the chain. The shortest, and therefore the most powerful argument, is simply “X offends me!” (But to use this argument, you must belong to a group whose feelings are included in the social justice utility function.)
Now that I think about it, this probably explains why in this kind of debates you never get an explanation, only an angry “It’s not my job to educate you!” when you ask about something. Using arguments and explanations is a losing strategy. (Also, it is what the bad guys do. You don’t want to be pattern-matched to them.) Which is why people skilled in playing the game never provide explanations.
I hope your rationalist toucan is signed up for cryonics. :P
In the linked article the author mentions that there are multiple definitions of racism and people often aren’t clear about which one they use; and then decides to use the one without ”..., but only when white people do it” as a default. And says that it is okay if white authors decide to write only white characters, but if they write also non-white characters they should describe their experiences realistically. (Then in the comments someone asks whether saying that every human being is racist doesn’t render the word meaningless, and there is no outrage afterwards. Other people mention that calling someone racist is usually used just to silence or insult them.)
I am not sure whether this even should be called “social justice”. It just seems like a common sense to me. (This specific article; I haven’t read more from the same author yet.)
Somewhat related—writing this comment I realized that I am kinda judging the sanity of the author by how much I agree with her. When I put it this way, it seems horrible. (“You are sane if and only if you agree with me.”) But I admit it is a part of the algorithm I use. Is that a reason to worry? But then I remembered the parable that all correct maps of the same city are necessarily similar to each, although finding a set of similar maps does not guarantee their correctness (they could be copies of the same original wrong map). So, if you spend some time trying to make a map that reflects the territory better, and you believe you are sane enough, you should expect the maps of other sane people to be similar to yours. Of course this shouldn’t be your only criterium. But, uhm, extraordinary maps require extraordinary evidence; or at least some evidence.
I am not sure whether this even should be called “social justice”. It just seems like common sense to me.
Perhaps social justice done right should just seem like common sense (to reasonable people). I mean, what’s the alternative? Social injustice?
It would be a pity to use the term “social justice” to describe only facepalming irrationality. I mean, you then get this No True Scotsman sort of thing (maybe we should call it No True Nazi or something) where you refuse to say that someone’s engaged in “social justice” even though what they’re doing is crusading against sexism, racism, patriarchy, etc., simply because no True Social Justice Warror would engage in rational debate or respond to disagreement with sensible engagement rather than outrage.
(Minor vested interest disclosure: I happen to know some people who are both quite social-justice-y and quite rational, and I would find it unfortunate to be unable to say that on account of “social justice” and “rationality” getting gratuitously exclusive definitions.)
even though what they’re doing is crusading against sexism, racism, patriarchy, etc., simply because no True Social Justice Warror would engage in rational debate or respond to disagreement with sensible engagement rather than outrage.
Slightly off topic, but can I ask why patriarchy is assumed to be obviously bad?
I can certainly see the negative aspects of even moderate patriarchy, and wouldn’t endorse extreme patriarchy or all forms of it, but its positive aspect seems to be civilization as we know it. It makes monogamy viable, reduces the time preferences of the people in a society, makes men invested in society by encouraging them to become fathers and husbands, boosts fertility rates to above replacement, likely makes the average man more attractive to the average woman improving many relationships, results in a political system of easily scalable hierarchy, etc.
So, like with “rationality” and “Hollywood rationality”, we could have “social justice” and, uhm, “tumblr social justice”? Maybe this would work.
My main objection would be that words “social justice” already feel like a weird way to express “equality” or something like that. It’s already a word that meant something (“justice”) with an adjective that allowes you to remove or redefine its parts, and make it a flexible applause light.
Historical note, as I understand things—the emotionally abusive power grab aspects didn’t happen by coincidence. A good many people said that if they were polite and reasonable, what they said got ignored, so they started dumping rage.
I propose an alternative explanation. Some people are just born psychopaths; they love to hurt other people.
Whatever nice cause you start, if it gains just a little power, sooner or later one of them will notice it and decide they like it. Then they will try to join it and optimize it for their own purposes. You will recognize that this happened when people around you start repeating memes that hurting other people is actually good for your cause. Now, in such environment people most skilled in hurting others can quickly rise to the top.
(Actually, both our explanations can be true at the same time. Maybe any movement that doesn’t open its doors to psychopaths it doomed in the long term, because other people simply don’t have enough power to change the society.)
I’d expect rage to be better at converting people already predisposed to belief into True Believers, but worse at making believers of the undecided, and much worse at winning over those predisposed to opposition.
The rage level actually drives away some of the people who would be inclined to help them, and has produced something that looks a lot like PTSD in some of the people in the movement who got hit by opposition from others who were somewhat on the same side..
Still, they’ve gained a certain amount of ground on the average. I have no idea what the outcome will be.
As far as I can tell, there’s very little in the way of physical threats, but (most) people are very vulnerable to emotional attacks.
As I understand it, that’s part of what’s powering SJWs—they felt (and I’d say rightly) that they were and are subject to pervasive emotional attack both from the culture and from individuals, and are trying to make a world they can be comfortable in.
That “as I understand it” is not boilerplate—I read a fair amount of SJ material and (obviously) spent a lot of time thinking and obsessing about it, but this is a huge subject (and isn’t the same in all times, places, and sub-cultures), and I’ve never been an insider.
That would be one option. Or (this is different because “Hollywood rationality” is not actually a variety of rationality) we could say that both those things really are varieties of social justice, but one of them is social justice plus a bunch of crazy ideas and attitudes that unfortunately happen to have come along for the ride in various social-justice-valuing venues.
I don’t think “social justice” is just a weirdly contorted way to say “equality”. The addition of an adjective is necessary because “justice” simpliciter covers things like imprisoning criminals rather than innocent bystanders, and not having kleptocratic laws; “social justice” means something like “justice in people’s social interactions”. In some cases that’s roughly the same thing as equality, but in others equality might be the wrong thing (because different groups want different things, or because some historical injustice is best dealt with by a temporary compensating inequality in the other direction). -- Whether such inequality ever is a good approach, and how often if so, is a separate matter, but unless it’s inconceivable “equality” can’t be the right word.
Still, I’m not greatly enamoured of the term “social justice”. But it’s there, and it seems like it means something potentially useful, and it would be a shame if it ended up only being applicable where there’s a whole lot of craziness alongside the concern for allegedly marginalized groups.
I realized that I am kinda judging the sanity of the author by how much I agree with her.
That doesn’t seem horrible to me. There are many ways of being insane, but one of them is having a very wrong map (and you can express the one of standard criteria for clinical-grade mental illness—interferes with functioning in normal life—as “your map is so wrong you can’t traverse the territory well”).
I think the critical difference here is whether you disagree about facts (which are, hopefully, empirically observable and statements about them falsifiable) or whether you disagree about values, opinions, and forecasts. Major disagreement about facts is a good reason to doubt someone’s sanity, but about values and predictions is not.
Since I’d have to overcome a really strong ugh field to read it again, I’d like to check on whether my memory of it is correct—the one thing I didn’t like about it was Mohanraj saying (implying?) that if you behave decently you won’t be attacked. She was making promises about people who aren’t as rational as she is.
Why an ugh field? Those essays came out when racefail was going on, and came with the added info that it took Mohanraj two and a half weeks to write them, and (at least as I read it) I should feel really guilty that a woman of color had to do the work. I just couldn’t deal. I’m pretty sure the guilt trip wasn’t from Mohanraj.
I read them later, and thought they were good except for the caveat mentioned above.
I think this is still too logical to work. Each step of an argument is another place that can be attacked. And because attacks are allowed to be illogical, even the most logical step has maybe 50% chance of breaking the chain. The shortest, and therefore the most powerful argument, is simply “X offends me!” (But to use this argument, you must belong to a group whose feelings are included in the social justice utility function.)
Now that I think about it, this probably explains why in this kind of debates you never get an explanation, only an angry “It’s not my job to educate you!” when you ask about something. Using arguments and explanations is a losing strategy. (Also, it is what the bad guys do. You don’t want to be pattern-matched to them.) Which is why people skilled in playing the game never provide explanations.
I hope your rationalist toucan is signed up for cryonics. :P
I’m sure it depends on where you hang out, but I’ve seen plenty of explanations from social justice people. A sample
Impressive.
In the linked article the author mentions that there are multiple definitions of racism and people often aren’t clear about which one they use; and then decides to use the one without ”..., but only when white people do it” as a default. And says that it is okay if white authors decide to write only white characters, but if they write also non-white characters they should describe their experiences realistically. (Then in the comments someone asks whether saying that every human being is racist doesn’t render the word meaningless, and there is no outrage afterwards. Other people mention that calling someone racist is usually used just to silence or insult them.)
I am not sure whether this even should be called “social justice”. It just seems like a common sense to me. (This specific article; I haven’t read more from the same author yet.)
Somewhat related—writing this comment I realized that I am kinda judging the sanity of the author by how much I agree with her. When I put it this way, it seems horrible. (“You are sane if and only if you agree with me.”) But I admit it is a part of the algorithm I use. Is that a reason to worry? But then I remembered the parable that all correct maps of the same city are necessarily similar to each, although finding a set of similar maps does not guarantee their correctness (they could be copies of the same original wrong map). So, if you spend some time trying to make a map that reflects the territory better, and you believe you are sane enough, you should expect the maps of other sane people to be similar to yours. Of course this shouldn’t be your only criterium. But, uhm, extraordinary maps require extraordinary evidence; or at least some evidence.
Perhaps social justice done right should just seem like common sense (to reasonable people). I mean, what’s the alternative? Social injustice?
It would be a pity to use the term “social justice” to describe only facepalming irrationality. I mean, you then get this No True Scotsman sort of thing (maybe we should call it No True Nazi or something) where you refuse to say that someone’s engaged in “social justice” even though what they’re doing is crusading against sexism, racism, patriarchy, etc., simply because no True Social Justice Warror would engage in rational debate or respond to disagreement with sensible engagement rather than outrage.
(Minor vested interest disclosure: I happen to know some people who are both quite social-justice-y and quite rational, and I would find it unfortunate to be unable to say that on account of “social justice” and “rationality” getting gratuitously exclusive definitions.)
Slightly off topic, but can I ask why patriarchy is assumed to be obviously bad?
I can certainly see the negative aspects of even moderate patriarchy, and wouldn’t endorse extreme patriarchy or all forms of it, but its positive aspect seems to be civilization as we know it. It makes monogamy viable, reduces the time preferences of the people in a society, makes men invested in society by encouraging them to become fathers and husbands, boosts fertility rates to above replacement, likely makes the average man more attractive to the average woman improving many relationships, results in a political system of easily scalable hierarchy, etc.
I wasn’t assuming it’s obviously bad, I was describing it as a thing social-justice types characteristically crusade against.
As to whether moderate patriarchy is good or bad or mixed or neutral—I imagine it depends enormously on how you define the term.
The post reads very much like you are implying they are bad, but I’ll update on your response that you didn’t.
So, like with “rationality” and “Hollywood rationality”, we could have “social justice” and, uhm, “tumblr social justice”? Maybe this would work.
My main objection would be that words “social justice” already feel like a weird way to express “equality” or something like that. It’s already a word that meant something (“justice”) with an adjective that allowes you to remove or redefine its parts, and make it a flexible applause light.
Historical note, as I understand things—the emotionally abusive power grab aspects didn’t happen by coincidence. A good many people said that if they were polite and reasonable, what they said got ignored, so they started dumping rage.
I propose an alternative explanation. Some people are just born psychopaths; they love to hurt other people.
Whatever nice cause you start, if it gains just a little power, sooner or later one of them will notice it and decide they like it. Then they will try to join it and optimize it for their own purposes. You will recognize that this happened when people around you start repeating memes that hurting other people is actually good for your cause. Now, in such environment people most skilled in hurting others can quickly rise to the top.
(Actually, both our explanations can be true at the same time. Maybe any movement that doesn’t open its doors to psychopaths it doomed in the long term, because other people simply don’t have enough power to change the society.)
And then they complain when anybody else is ‘uncivil’.
I called it an emotionally abusive power grab because that’s how I see it.
Nonetheless, I still think they’re right about some of their issues.
I’d expect rage to be better at converting people already predisposed to belief into True Believers, but worse at making believers of the undecided, and much worse at winning over those predisposed to opposition.
The rage level actually drives away some of the people who would be inclined to help them, and has produced something that looks a lot like PTSD in some of the people in the movement who got hit by opposition from others who were somewhat on the same side..
Still, they’ve gained a certain amount of ground on the average. I have no idea what the outcome will be.
Well, if you can vaguely imply that it might be physically dangerous to disagree, a little rage can work wonders.
As far as I can tell, there’s very little in the way of physical threats, but (most) people are very vulnerable to emotional attacks.
As I understand it, that’s part of what’s powering SJWs—they felt (and I’d say rightly) that they were and are subject to pervasive emotional attack both from the culture and from individuals, and are trying to make a world they can be comfortable in.
That “as I understand it” is not boilerplate—I read a fair amount of SJ material and (obviously) spent a lot of time thinking and obsessing about it, but this is a huge subject (and isn’t the same in all times, places, and sub-cultures), and I’ve never been an insider.
That would be one option. Or (this is different because “Hollywood rationality” is not actually a variety of rationality) we could say that both those things really are varieties of social justice, but one of them is social justice plus a bunch of crazy ideas and attitudes that unfortunately happen to have come along for the ride in various social-justice-valuing venues.
I don’t think “social justice” is just a weirdly contorted way to say “equality”. The addition of an adjective is necessary because “justice” simpliciter covers things like imprisoning criminals rather than innocent bystanders, and not having kleptocratic laws; “social justice” means something like “justice in people’s social interactions”. In some cases that’s roughly the same thing as equality, but in others equality might be the wrong thing (because different groups want different things, or because some historical injustice is best dealt with by a temporary compensating inequality in the other direction). -- Whether such inequality ever is a good approach, and how often if so, is a separate matter, but unless it’s inconceivable “equality” can’t be the right word.
Still, I’m not greatly enamoured of the term “social justice”. But it’s there, and it seems like it means something potentially useful, and it would be a shame if it ended up only being applicable where there’s a whole lot of craziness alongside the concern for allegedly marginalized groups.
That doesn’t seem horrible to me. There are many ways of being insane, but one of them is having a very wrong map (and you can express the one of standard criteria for clinical-grade mental illness—interferes with functioning in normal life—as “your map is so wrong you can’t traverse the territory well”).
I think the critical difference here is whether you disagree about facts (which are, hopefully, empirically observable and statements about them falsifiable) or whether you disagree about values, opinions, and forecasts. Major disagreement about facts is a good reason to doubt someone’s sanity, but about values and predictions is not.
I’m glad you liked it.
Since I’d have to overcome a really strong ugh field to read it again, I’d like to check on whether my memory of it is correct—the one thing I didn’t like about it was Mohanraj saying (implying?) that if you behave decently you won’t be attacked. She was making promises about people who aren’t as rational as she is.
Why an ugh field? Those essays came out when racefail was going on, and came with the added info that it took Mohanraj two and a half weeks to write them, and (at least as I read it) I should feel really guilty that a woman of color had to do the work. I just couldn’t deal. I’m pretty sure the guilt trip wasn’t from Mohanraj.
I read them later, and thought they were good except for the caveat mentioned above.