I found that quite hard to read. Even if poor impulse control were the sole cause of obesity, there would be no reason to attack the obese so nastily, instead of, for instance, suggesting ways that they might improve their impulse control. I find the way he relishes attacking them incredibly unpleasant.
In fact, the internet has quite a lot to say about improving impulse control.
I reckon there’s special pleading going on with the obese. Way more anger & snottiness gets directed at them (at least on the parts of the Internet I see) than at, say, smokers, even though smoking is at least as bad in every relevant way I can think of.
Hint hint: it matters less to some people whether the group they are trying to subjugate is delineated by economic class, race, gender, sexuality or body issues… as long as they get to impose their hegemony and see the “deviants” suffer. It’s scary to see such a desire to dominate, control and punish.
Perhaps we should dominate, control and punish those evil people who use the available Bayesian evidence when dealing with individuals.
Not nearly all such people are outright sadistic and power-hungry, but those who are can spin complex ideological rationalizations that push the “overton window” and allow the “good” bourgeois to be complicit with a cruel and unjust system.
See e.g. the “Reagan revolution” in America and the myth of the “welfare queen” that’s a 3-for-1 package of racism, classism and sexism. I’ve read a bit about how it has been fuelling a “fuck you, got mine” attitude in poor people one step above the underclass; the system hasn’t actually been kind to a white/male/lower-middle-class stratum, but it has given them someone to feel superior to. It’s very similar to how the ideologues of the Confederacy explicitly advocated giving poor white men supreme rule over their household as a means of racial solidarity across the class divide.
I also predict that a lot of those evil people will be white, male, and wealthy, so we should focus on members of those groups.
False equivalence. Of course, any movement can degrade into an authoritarian-populist, four-legs-good-two-legs-bad version, given a vicious political atmosphere and polarized underlying worldviews, but… it happens to dominant/conservative ideologies, too! The dominant group just doesn’t notice the resulting violence and victimization because from its privileged position it can afford an illusion of social peace.
If we agree that it’s a danger of political processes in general rather than of specific movements, could we stop sneaking in implicit arguments that a particular ideology is safe from viciousness and indiscriminatory aggression?
Various processes of hierarchical discrimination are driven by legitimizing myths (Sidanius, 1992), which are beliefs justifying social dominance, such as paternalistic myths (hegemony serves society, looks after incapable minorities), reciprocal myths (suggestions that hegemonic groups and outgroups are actually equal), and sacred myths (the divine right of kings, as a religion-approved mandate for hegemony to govern). Pratto et al. (1994) suggest the Western idea of meritocracy and individual achievement as an example of a legitimizing myth, and argues that meritocracy produces only an illusion of fairness. SDT draws on social identity theory, suggesting that social-comparison processes drive individual discrimination (ingroup favouritism). Discriminatory acts (such as insulting remarks about minorities) are performed because they increase the actors’ self-esteem.
People of all kinds of political opinions are able to use myths to support their opinions. People of all kinds of political opinions can be power-hungry. People of all kinds of political opinions can declare other people evil and use hate against them for their own political advantage.
Can we agree on this, or can you tell me an example of a major political movement that does not do that? (Because you provided some specific examples, and I am too lazy to counter that with specific examples in the other direction, unless that really is necessary. I suppose we could just skip this part and agree that it is not necessary.)
My assumption is that SJs are good at finding faults of everyone else, and completely blind to their own. (Which is actually my assumption for all political movements.) I don’t consider SJs more untrustworthy that any other group of mindkilled people explaining why they are the good guys and their enemies are the bad guys.
Their amateur psychoanalysis lacks self-reflection. Those other people, they want to dominate, control and punish. That would obviously never happen to us! Now let me explain again why everyone who disagrees with us is evil and must be stopped...
I found that quite hard to read. Even if poor impulse control were the sole cause of obesity, there would be no reason to attack the obese so nastily, instead of, for instance, suggesting ways that they might improve their impulse control. I find the way he relishes attacking them incredibly unpleasant.
In fact, the internet has quite a lot to say about improving impulse control.
I reckon there’s special pleading going on with the obese. Way more anger & snottiness gets directed at them (at least on the parts of the Internet I see) than at, say, smokers, even though smoking is at least as bad in every relevant way I can think of.
(Here’re some obvious examples. At an individual level, smoking is associated with shorter life at least as much as obesity. At a global level, smoking kills more and reduces DALYs far more than high BMI. Like obesity, smoking is associated with lower IQ & lower conscientiousness. And so on.)
Hint hint: it matters less to some people whether the group they are trying to subjugate is delineated by economic class, race, gender, sexuality or body issues… as long as they get to impose their hegemony and see the “deviants” suffer. It’s scary to see such a desire to dominate, control and punish.
(Related: check out the pingback on that post.)
Perhaps we should dominate, control and punish those evil people who use the available Bayesian evidence when dealing with individuals.
I also predict that a lot of those evil people will be white, male, and wealthy, so we should focus on members of those groups.
It’s not scary if the good people are doing it, right? And, of course, by “good” I mean members of our tribe.
Not nearly all such people are outright sadistic and power-hungry, but those who are can spin complex ideological rationalizations that push the “overton window” and allow the “good” bourgeois to be complicit with a cruel and unjust system.
See e.g. the “Reagan revolution” in America and the myth of the “welfare queen” that’s a 3-for-1 package of racism, classism and sexism. I’ve read a bit about how it has been fuelling a “fuck you, got mine” attitude in poor people one step above the underclass; the system hasn’t actually been kind to a white/male/lower-middle-class stratum, but it has given them someone to feel superior to. It’s very similar to how the ideologues of the Confederacy explicitly advocated giving poor white men supreme rule over their household as a means of racial solidarity across the class divide.
False equivalence. Of course, any movement can degrade into an authoritarian-populist, four-legs-good-two-legs-bad version, given a vicious political atmosphere and polarized underlying worldviews, but… it happens to dominant/conservative ideologies, too! The dominant group just doesn’t notice the resulting violence and victimization because from its privileged position it can afford an illusion of social peace.
If we agree that it’s a danger of political processes in general rather than of specific movements, could we stop sneaking in implicit arguments that a particular ideology is safe from viciousness and indiscriminatory aggression?
See also: social dominance theory.
(More on SDT)
People of all kinds of political opinions are able to use myths to support their opinions. People of all kinds of political opinions can be power-hungry. People of all kinds of political opinions can declare other people evil and use hate against them for their own political advantage.
Can we agree on this, or can you tell me an example of a major political movement that does not do that? (Because you provided some specific examples, and I am too lazy to counter that with specific examples in the other direction, unless that really is necessary. I suppose we could just skip this part and agree that it is not necessary.)
???
Is your assumption that any effort to limit cruelty will necessarily be cruel? Or that SJs in particular are especially untrustworthy? Something else?
My assumption is that SJs are good at finding faults of everyone else, and completely blind to their own. (Which is actually my assumption for all political movements.) I don’t consider SJs more untrustworthy that any other group of mindkilled people explaining why they are the good guys and their enemies are the bad guys.
Their amateur psychoanalysis lacks self-reflection. Those other people, they want to dominate, control and punish. That would obviously never happen to us! Now let me explain again why everyone who disagrees with us is evil and must be stopped...