The social justice wars

Discussion of science, technology, politics, and other topics that aren't strictly philosophical.
Locked
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

The social justice wars

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

It's really a recurring topic here and everywhere, the SJW, political correctness, equivalence enforcing for gender and sexual orientations, racial perceptions and so on. For now I'll just post one recent case which has currently some traction, the case of Google engineer James Damore who put out a memo on evolutionary psychology and gender in the Google workplace (as people are there encouraged to put out their ideas internally) only to get fired for suggesting a rational basis for what could be seen as a structural, non-curable inequality at Google.

Detailed summary of the case by Luboš Motl Pilsen, a theoretical physicist.
User avatar
jupiviv
Posts: 2282
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by jupiviv »

How interesting that this always happens in these precious, ridiculously overvalued tech companies that can draw from a large pool of skilled, young, male workers dying to work for them. Not so much in Raytheon, GM, Boeing, or mining and farming! SJW-ism/hyper-social-democrat-ism is tied to and mutually dependent upon cornucopia.
User avatar
Eric Schiedler
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:13 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Eric Schiedler »

What all of these explanations overlook about Damore's firing is the real reason he was fired.

Modern business theory states that branding is the irreplaceable component in generating premium stock value. This theory may or may not be valid, but it is the theory in widespread practice, and dictates that all subordinate functions and systems in a company, including the search for "truth" in generating profits, be subsumed to the supremacy of brand enhancement and protection.

Whether he intentionally or accidentally attacked the brand, Damore generated an influence on the brand outside his purvey. For that reason and that reason alone, he gave sufficient reason to be fired. The company may later implement everything he recommended, but in the interim, he had to be fired. Whether the legal process will ultimately generate a cash settlement for Damore is also irrelevant - in the manager's eyes, in the irrational quest for infinite growth for Google as one of it's core brand concepts, he caused more damage to the brand than any potential cash settlement.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Hi Eric,
Whether he intentionally or accidentally attacked the brand, Damore generated an influence on the brand...
What you suggest I've seen being discussed quite a lot actually. For sure some image is being protected but the question remains open if that's the actual Google branding. Some argue that Google is fact busy slowly destroying their "household name" considering the living and talking dissident of their new-found correctness has received a majority of votes in the last presidential election or at least that proved a near majority of the population might not just care enough about it. And it's not that different abroad, perhaps even less googly! Google embraces simply a minority, radical, "elite" form of liberalism to "set the example". But for such projects they might be simply too big and could lose cohesion and credibility along the way. Besides that, indications are that Damore's views have also way broader support inside Google than they might have assumed. It's just that this type of people generally go quiet and let the fashionable come and go. It's in this silence the erroneous has grown.

There's another thing about the gender gap not being mentioned. The biggest irony might be that it's not simply biology but the amount of stress, struggle, self-denial and "foolishness" which is important to get ahead in this field. Or any typical masculine field. And by making a job easier to have and to get is exactly the opposite of encouraging talent, for any gender. Like wisdom comes with pain, a skill or talent is shaped through life-denial, obsession, making lots of mistakes and being half-assed. So men simply had the edge here so far. It's nice working at Google of course and when the "hardened" nerds and experts populated the buildings, great things happened in this relaxed climate. But the same positive, lose climate is now a hindrance to the next generation joining who do have the degrees and intelligence but just will not deliver on average.

The gender issue is only a smaller part of this Google problem as masculinity is a mind set and shaped a certain way. Their best have moved on years ago to do other, tougher, harder, more fun stuff like starting your own business (and they had now the money). Google is simply becoming infrastructure for others to play on. And they will increasingly stop playing and incubating. In a pure socialist country their services could be easily run by government. Perhaps they will become a bit like some global energy company. There's no other future: they'll get simply pancaked. Perhaps it's the denial of this which opened the door to the promotion of void and empty values, even defending these to the bitter end! Decadence & annihilation.
User avatar
Eric Schiedler
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:13 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Eric Schiedler »

Diebert,
For sure some image is being protected but the question remains open if that's the actual Google branding.
"Brand goodwill" is a catch-all phrase for the premium placed on a stock for which there is no consensus explanation. No accounting practice thoroughly explains goodwill. This phrase appears in official corporate documents and literally, it could be an accumulation of anything from irrational consumer behavior to an as-yet-unknown rational process.

Furthermore, there is no proven method for changing consumer brand loyalty or perception, consciously or unconsciously. In interviews, corporate leaders will sometimes admit they do not know why brand phenomena appear in particular ways.

Thus, corporate management has a belief in brands as a coherent concept, despite their demonstrably ephemeral and incomplete nature. Among the few statements about brands that can be true, is that enormous amounts of capital will flow to brands with success in the market and that corporate career reputations will be made and broken in relation to brand management performance. The result is that a brand is a narrative, and some would say a gestalt. It's unclear if it is more than a story with arbitrary abstract symbols - arbitrary because the narrative must first fit the company (a self-reference if you will), and not necessarily any archetypes found elsewhere in civilization. Any set of symbols or concepts used by the company to promote itself or its products can, in time, become part of the brand, but that doesn't mean that the company can make the brand have the qualities it prefers. Notice that the brand as narrative does not have to be a clear, fixed, or consistent concept, simply that a belief that it is the key to profits demands that it be "managed."

This employee was not authorized by the company to address the narrative and that was why he was fired. Any reference to truth is irrelevant, as Google was never organized as a hierarchical process to uncover and promote truth. Had his document touched on anything relevant to business practice but at the same time stayed well short of addressing the brand, he would likely not be infamous and still employed.
Like wisdom comes with pain, a skill or talent is shaped through life-denial, obsession, making lots of mistakes and being half-assed. So men simply have an edge here.
The orientation to wisdom is, perhaps, a dissatisfaction with incompleteness - focus on and passion for the truth is admission of this incompleteness in thought, and a dissatisfaction with one's character. If boddhicitta is anything at all, it can't contain the enlightened mind itself. But a striving for excellence (a pursuit of status) is not boddhicitta and that is partially what is meant when it is said that Buddha minds and sentient minds do not affect each other in any way; to think that they do is to fall out of enlightenment and into dualistic thinking.
Their best have moved on years ago to do other, tougher, harder, more fun stuff like starting your own business (and they had now the money).
I think Kurtzweil and his ilk promoting the Singularity are part of a technology cult in California. Also, I know of a multi-millionaire from the early Google days who is an incompetent business man and spends his days trolling people online with Libertarian ideas - he does nothing with his fortune which he earned by being in the lucky position to have been an early employee. Today he would be a well-paid but average employee who would not make millions.

I am not sure that the best have left. Perhaps Google's best are some of the new employees walking in the door.
JohnJAu
Posts: 108
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 12:20 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by JohnJAu »

Diebert's "progress":

http://imgur.com/URCyvhg

?

The SJW:

http://imgur.com/fzrN4ES

?
Glostik91
Posts: 347
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2009 6:13 am
Location: Iowa

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Glostik91 »

I saw this in the news recently. What kind of person is intelligent enough to secure a job at google but lack the awareness to keep controversial discussions outside of the workplace? He is either a dunce (not likely), or this was planned out. He must have planned this to move himself into the spotlight.

In hindsight it seems to have worked. Was a risky move though, that's for sure. You wouldn't see me risking a cozy job at google, for what? expressing an opinion I can easily express in my free time on the seemingly unlimited outlets available these days.
a gutter rat looking at stars
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Glostik91 wrote:You wouldn't see me risking a cozy job at google, for what?
You mean you're like those girls they prefer to hire: risk-minimizing and cohesion-prioritizing? Perhaps you're illustrating the issue. No doubt there's stupidity involved, a bit of theatre, a bit of calculated risk with uncertainty how it will end. This is a sign of masculinity, something Google prefers to eject. Actually I'd suggest every "super-structure" will tend to eject it because of concerns of stability, image and keeping the nest clean.
JohnJAu wrote:Diebert's "progress":

http://imgur.com/URCyvhg
Hey, that's from left to right Alex, me and Jupiviv during last year's get together! But the one photo bombing in the back I don't recognize. You?
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Google Abruptly Cancels Town Hall About That Memo

Not really understanding the phrase: "some employees feared for their safety if they were 'outed publicly' for asking a question". Is this about people criticizing Google or PC and fearing SJW backlash? Or the other way around? And what about all employees fearing for their job when writing their thoughts out on company policy and future when invited to do so?

It looks like a chilling culture. It would be like fearing for a ban at this forum just for questioning people's underlying philosophy or life style. But wait a minute! We had a discussion like that a few times here as well. Hmm, so we do have to open up for the possibility Damore was, in fact, trolling and disrupting excessively and not actually discussing anything with the proper intention at all? There are some phrases in the original memo which made me wonder about intention.

It's no secret that truth is a sword and its value is all about intent. It can attract a certain "type" to wield it but not for truth's sake.
JohnJAu
Posts: 108
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 12:20 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by JohnJAu »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
http://imgur.com/URCyvhg

Hey, that's from left to right Alex, me and Jupiviv during last year's get together! But the one photo bombing in the back I don't recognize. You?
For some reason I get the vibe that on the left is a biological female, it's probably impossible to tell tho considering, but in the case that I'm correct, it's a bit unfair that Alex gets to be the female. He'll have all the mate selection in the world compared to us three. Have you heard of what's been dubbed the 'manosphere' and their premise that the modern west is an extremely gynocentric society? This definitely relates to the SJW.
Glostik91
Posts: 347
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2009 6:13 am
Location: Iowa

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Glostik91 »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: You mean you're like those girls they prefer to hire: risk-minimizing and cohesion-prioritizing? Perhaps you're illustrating the issue. No doubt there's stupidity involved, a bit of theatre, a bit of calculated risk with uncertainty how it will end. This is a sign of masculinity, something Google prefers to eject. Actually I'd suggest every "super-structure" will tend to eject it because of concerns of stability, image and keeping the nest clean.
He was hired to work, not talk about his feelings or try to divide people which would hinder work getting done. If I'm working with a fundamentalist muslim, I'm not going to try to challenge his beliefs while he's working with me (especially if he's operating heavy machinery or something) even though his beliefs are insane. Why? Because I essentially would be stealing money from my employer. If I want to talk to him, I'll do it in the parking lot when someone's not paying me to work.
a gutter rat looking at stars
JohnJAu
Posts: 108
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 12:20 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by JohnJAu »

Glostik91 wrote: He was hired to work, not talk about his feelings or try to divide people which would hinder work getting done. If I'm working with a fundamentalist muslim, I'm not going to try to challenge his beliefs while he's working with me (especially if he's operating heavy machinery or something) even though his beliefs are insane. Why? Because I essentially would be stealing money from my employer. If I want to talk to him, I'll do it in the parking lot when someone's not paying me to work.
1. The employees were reportedly encouraged to share their suggestions on any topics, if his suggestions or beliefs no matter the relevance were 'pro-feminism', he wouldn't have been fired.

2. You sound like a perfect little worker bee. Talking is stealing from your employer. Moral genius we have here. How do you feel about running a worker bee indoctrination camp?
Glostik91
Posts: 347
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2009 6:13 am
Location: Iowa

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Glostik91 »

JohnJAu wrote:
1. The employees were reportedly encouraged to share their suggestions on any topics, if his suggestions or beliefs no matter the relevance were 'pro-feminism', he wouldn't have been fired.

2. You sound like a perfect little worker bee. Talking is stealing from your employer. Moral genius we have here. How do you feel about running a worker bee indoctrination camp?
I hold myself to the same standards I hold for other people. If I hire someone to fix my plumbing, I expect him to fix my plumbing, not write an essay on sexual dimorphism in the workplace. There's a time and place to work, and there's a time and place to debate. I'm not against talking at work, but work is not a place for conducive debate.

If they were encouraged to talk about controversial ideas, which after looking into it a bit more seems to be the case, then I had a wrong impression of the situation. I was under the impression that his memo was unprodded, that he just wrote this up and sent it to everyone. If his intention is to stir public discourse (which I still suspect given the risk he put himself under by releasing the essay) I wonder if he will take this to court.
a gutter rat looking at stars
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Kevin Solway »

Manipulation of information?

Search the following in GOOGLE IMAGES:

American inventors
White couple
White woman with children
European history people
Happy American couple
European people art
White man and white woman
JohnJAu
Posts: 108
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 12:20 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by JohnJAu »

Kevin Solway wrote:Manipulation of information?

Search the following in GOOGLE IMAGES:

American inventors
White couple
White woman with children
European history people
Happy American couple
European people art
White man and white woman
Lol, tried it, I agree, there is a conspiracy. Seems blatantly obvious to me since one side of these 'ideological wars' is perfectly A okay (See the Netflix show titled "Sense8". I.e, cutting off your own penis is A okay.) But the other side of the ideology is being equated with terrorism/ illegal speech/nazism, not just by opinion but with the backing of the law, and not just in one country.

Also, I still link around Poison For The Heart often.
Only disagreement is with what I see as materialist atomism in founders philosophy and how that relates to an understanding of the 'afterlife'/consciousness.
Last edited by JohnJAu on Sun Aug 13, 2017 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Hi Kevin,

I'm a bit hesitating here to suspect manipulation of algorithms. It would be a crime many engineers would be knowingly engage in simply because in many cases Google avoided the law because of their claims on how their algorithms worked. If thousands of maintainers would be working internally on influencing results or have awareness of it being done, many would go to jail if it ever were leaked. Do you really think they'd risk that?

If I look at Google Trends for white couple it shows a bit of this issue as related topics and queries can skew results, at least partly. One other alternative which doesn't need conspiracy, and as such should always be preferred, would point to popular internet sites including social media which are using these terms on pages with various racial topics. So it might reflect just the massive interest from activists, racists, artists, and conspiracy theorists! Personally I consider that to be a sufficient explanation but it's not comforting in any way.

As a more personal anecdote, when I was working long ago with Dutch historians on a few projects, there was this strange revisionist who was day and night active, trying to roll out his alternative views on how many "white" people in history were actually black. He had many sites, forums, images and tried to somehow insert his story inside academia by contacting us. And I can only assume people like him are still going at it. It means Google might not be perpetrator but as well victim here!
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Kevin Solway »

It's a strange thing. The same phenomena happens on the Bing search engine.

Further investigation shows that "american inventors" returns black people because of the tag "african-american inventors".
Similarly "white couple" returns black couples through the use of the text "black and white couple". It's probably the same for the other search terms. It's difficult to know whether it's intentional or not.

It's very amusing given recent events at Google, or should I say "Goolag".
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

JohnJAu wrote:See the Netflix show titled "Sense8"
I remember looking at the first episode, mostly out of curiosity what the Wachowski brothers/sisters would go for this time and because it was science fiction. It truly horrified me even not counting the emphasis on LGBTQIXYZ. All ideas seemed so castrated, each and every dialog confusing and the imagery overbearing and needless. Perhaps the hormone therapies of the makers are really paying off? But then again, many other series would have the same effect if I even bothered. There's this idea that media is a reflection of what people are or at least crave, as visual, in modern society. Yet at the same time normalization certainly has been a goal as well. Viewers take it in anyway with little standard. Investors and producers are the elites here.
User avatar
Eric Schiedler
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:13 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Eric Schiedler »

I'm in the non-conspiracy camp on this for the following reasons:

a) searches with common terms give rather poor results anyway.
b) google doesn't have algorithims that understand meaning, only statistical combinations, so there are bound to be coincidences.
c) people are biased to find coincidences
d) other common terms that are similar don't return biased results.

I typed in couple and got 90% white and 10% Hispanic people. No black people but there was one with dwarfism.
I tried Black and English and got black and white photos of bulldogs and graphic type and got no people.
I tried English couple and got 100% white people and one gay couple until one black person at photo 50.
I tried English people and got 100% white people.
I tried American people at political rallies with flags and presidential candidates, which meant virtually no black people except Obama. (Edit: about 5% black people, I first overlooked some.)

If anything was biased, is that the results tend to "clump" into images with common "artistic" themes, so you don't get enough variety if you are using common words, in fact, really poor variety.

On the other hand, Google has biases, so you never know, but so does the data they use generated by others.

This took about 10 minutes.
User avatar
Russell Parr
Posts: 854
Joined: Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:44 am

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Russell Parr »

Google's goal is to gather data and give people what they are looking for based on that data. Because they do this so well is why they are as big as they are. The results are a reflection of the sentiments of society, which is heavily progressing towards feminine values.

It's fitting that Google's employees largely reflect the values of society, because they are in the business of representing society. The political correctness problem that Google has as a company is a microcosmic representation of the greater trends.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:I remember looking at the first episode, mostly out of curiosity what the Wachowski brothers/sisters would go for this time and because it was science fiction. It truly horrified me even not counting the emphasis on LGBTQIXYZ. All ideas seemed so castrated, each and every dialog confusing and the imagery overbearing and needless. Perhaps the hormone therapies of the makers are really paying off? But then again, many other series would have the same effect if I even bothered. There's this idea that media is a reflection of what people are or at least crave, as visual, in modern society. Yet at the same time normalization certainly has been a goal as well. Viewers take it in anyway with little standard. Investors and producers are the elites here.
I couldn't watch more than the first episode. Too bizarre. It's odd and amusing; they did so well exploring profound philosophical themes with the Matrix, then whiplashed a complete 180 degrees towards an obsession with sex and homogeneity.
User avatar
jupiviv
Posts: 2282
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by jupiviv »

Wow, flurry of activity. Hopefully David and Dan will contribute as well!

Anyway, I just tested those terms on Google and Duckduckgo (the latter is what I mostly use) via Tor. Interestingly, only a few of the terms Kevin posted worked for me. They came up with *exactly* the same results in two different sessions though, which is extremely unusual both for Tor. Also, Duckduckgo doesn't track users and therefore shouldn't be able to modify queries by user. It's giving the same results as Google, and theoretically for all instances of that search unlike Google, even though in other cases the results almost always differ from Google (and also the same for all instances of that search unlike Google).

Like Eric said, if you play around with the terms the results are often valid, like replacing "white men and women" with just "white men" or "white women". It seems "European history" + xyz always gives the same gallery of 100% images of 18th/19th c. black people. Why is the coincidence of poor results so specific and drastic?

Who knows. Maybe all the search engines got together and decided to leave some SJW-friendly algorithms out there to preempt any issue being made out of the search results for those terms being too race realist. Alternatively, alt rightists may have done it as a false flag.

To expand on my earlier point though - any company that benefits from a post-industrial environment would act like Google. There is no reason why Google should be valued higher than, say, Exxon. Not unless they've figured out a way to power self-driving EVs with data or something. 99% of their current value is unadulterated crap. It's like 3d printers. 99% of thingverse seems to be "you need a 3d printer to print parts for your 3d printer to keep working/ work better” or "you need a 3d printer to make models that you wouldn’t buy if they were 99c and free shipping on amazon prime".

Post-purchase self-justification in other words. I bought a creality so I can make a cable support bracket for the creality that didn't come with a cable support bracket, even though most of the parts are 3d printed. For people that haven't bought a creality, or don't use Facebook or Twitter, or use a different search engine than Google, 99% of their functionality is just noise. Any valid signal has long since been drowned out.

Lets look at youtube. I saw it in the early years, and sure enough fucking cat videos were amongst the first things uploaded, then Google bought it, then a handful of whack jobs made obscene amounts of money on it, then "because the advertisers rebelled" Google/youtube clamped down on the monetisation side.

I think this is what *really* happened:

1>> Google found out youtube was a money pit, and not even the kind of money pit you can write off for tax purposes as a loss leader and still be happy to run.

2>> Google found out that big business’s love affair with all things digital when it comes to advertising was heading for the divorce courts. P&G alone are cutting 500 million from their future digital advertising budget.

3>> People like me found out that no matter what we did to prevent crap vids from popping up, it doesn't matter. Google cannot detect the 947th time an identical video has been uploaded by some asshole, and can't detect that despite telling them 999 time by clicking "I don't want to see this crap".

Basically google can't recommend anything except the same old same old zero content clickbait. And that is 99% of the content. The 1% of decent content is drowned out to the point you'll never find it unless you know exactly what to look for. Enter Gamergate and alt right vs SJW wars and suddenly there's a flood of "meaningful content" whose creators "deserve" all the ad revenue in the eyes of their respective fanbases. Guess who also uses google to search for "cute xyz" or "Game of thrones spoilers" (apart from me of course)?

The overall point I'm trying to make is that companies like Google and Amazon have to create the illusion that they are a whole world unto themselves, and one that is good or perhaps even necessary to exist in. It's the only way they will continue to be used by billions of people despite availability of easily accessible and even better alternatives. Amazon for example is killing retail because they're selling cupcakes, cruise ships, sporting goods and grocery now. Here in India we have Flipkart, Naaptol and Snapchat, er, Snapdeal doing the same thing for consumers who got dial-ups in 2012 and switched to Chinese 4g smartphones in 2015.

Anyway, the dependence on a huge number of users must be hidden from the users themselves, since everyone has to think they are getting a unique experience (=something extra for doing nothing more than looking at pictures/text on a screen). Ideology makes that a little bit easier to simulate.
User avatar
Russell Parr
Posts: 854
Joined: Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:44 am

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Russell Parr »

Hey Jup! While you could perhaps argue that Alphabet's market cap is inflated, I doubt that its revenue and profit numbers from wikipedia are far off. Adwords and adsense are huge money makers. Check out this and this. I agree that YouTube is likely a money pit for them in itself, but worth it overall for the massive amounts of user data gathered and used to improve their algorithms.

On a more related note, I came across this decent article yesterday

http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/23/how ... tionalism/

This SJW vs alt-right war is merely just the far left vs the far right. What many people seem to miss is that far leftism even exists. I think it was Stefan Molyneux that said that America has become so far left that regular, ordinary conservatism has become demonized and offensive. I think he caters too heavily towards the far right but he's right about that.
User avatar
David Quinn
Posts: 5708
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 6:56 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: The social justice wars

Post by David Quinn »

When I typed "philosopher" into Google images, there was no Kierkegaard, no Nietzsche, no Weininger, no Chuang Tzu, no Huang Po, no Hakuin. Plenty of scientists and useless academics, though.

It's a conspiracy, I tell ya. There has to be some kind of evil cabal behind it all. Has to be. Otherwise my life has no purpose.

I really want to join a herd and start abusing another herd. It looks like fun.
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Kevin Solway »

Russell Parr wrote:This SJW vs alt-right war is merely just the far left vs the far right.
There's a lot more people fighting against the SJWs than the far right. I'm a left-leaning person, and I'm fully against the SJWs. Others, like Jordan Peterson, or the Google memo writer, are centrist.

Of course, to people on the far left, everyone else is "right wing".

Google has serious problems when they are firing their top employees for the crime of speaking the truth. And their policy of hiding information they don't agree with will probably spell the end of Google.

As someone has pointed out, Google may just be trying to satisfy what they perceive to be the needs of the general public. If they believe that the general public are crying out for bullshit and lies, then they see it as their duty to provide it.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: The social justice wars

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

David Quinn wrote:When I typed "philosopher" into Google images, there was no Kierkegaard, no Nietzsche, no Weininger, no Chuang Tzu, no Huang Po, no Hakuin. Plenty of scientists and useless academics, though.

It's a conspiracy, I tell ya. There has to be some kind of evil cabal behind it all. Has to be. Otherwise my life has no purpose
There's this human tendency to assign a "willful force" or some intent to certain affairs as to worship or to fear. But technically, if a population does start desiring things to be certain way and creates an echo chamber to "will" this, to the effect of isolating further any opposition, to make it into a finable offense or resulting into social action to get opponents removed from whatever social position, then this would quality for something organized and also secret in the sense people not knowing really what they're doing or why. In the case of Damore it's staggering how many vocal opponents clearly didn't read the memo at all!

Mind you in the Google case it was publicly said the viewpoint needed destruction, like some removal from the face of the Earth. And yet some leading scientists in the field came forward, one after the other, to voice support for the science and also the memo overall. This points as well to a schism in science, as you well know, gender studies started developing this divide on nature or nurture quite some time ago and it has not been resolved in any way.

When trying to understand the forces at work on the level of society, group think and media, it's not unusual to think in terms of cabals. And there certainly are, make no mistake: delusional cabals or spiritually dead cabals who are desiring to make the world into their own image, as humans tend to desire. And I do believe Genius type of philosophers, like yourself, have a role to play since they have the background, experience and the understanding to provide a healthier philosophical base than the "new right" can ever do with their race identities or hallowing of a fading set of traditions.

So I'd suggest to write your next blog entry on gender and its relevance and irrelevance to a true philosophy of life :-)
Locked