Define PC and SJW!

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I'd probably have to reiterate the same list I gave jrjones earlier and perhaps even add a few - Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Dave Rubin, Gad Saad, Sargon of Akkad, Computing Forever, TJKirk (Amazing Atheist), Armoured Skeptic, Blair White, Theron Meyer, MundaneMatt, SomeBlackGuy, ThatGuyT, Gary Orsum, and probably five times as many that I'm less familiar with. Their organized battle for the last several years has been against the social justice crowd.

It really boggles my mind when people go on about being pro social-justice and seem to have zero familiarity with either the skeptic community's position or, sometimes even, the existence that that there's such a 'thing' let alone that the skeptics are coming out decidedly against SJW's, Antifa and the authoritarian ranks within the social justice movement.

Okay, that's useful. I think some of the points that Sam Harris, for example, makes are useful positions for discussion, even if I don't always agree with him. I would point out to him that things like new gender pronouns matter (not least to many in the autie community: http://network.autism.org.uk/knowledge/ ... ally-powis), but I do agree that there are those who have become too strident in defence of a position on it (the whole thing about failure to make eye contact as microaggression being a case in point). That's been counterproductive, and has damaged potentially valuable alliances against common enemies who just hate anyone who is different, and I think he has a point that requires a close look.

Others fall solidly into the "a**ehole" category, and may be hiding behind rationalism in order to defend a political viewpoint.

I'm sorry to still harp on this but - can you give names?

I listened to the first half, up through where the psychologist was trying to pair insect and flower names and then trying to turn that to positive traits and race.

The thing that bothers me about the program is they talked about current states of instinct or ingrained ideology in people as blunt facts, as if they were arbitrary faults in human wiring that we needed to resolve. Things like they were discussing will always be an utter mystery so long as people believe that it's all socially programmed or even in other cases that contradictory evaluations come from real and challenging circumstances that we have to face regarding how we evaluate threats in our environments.

The one guy's example of seeing a guy dressed 'street' walking toward a woman at a bus stop could be a father, could be a mugger. What does a father or a mugger look like? Would his alarm radar been racist if it were a black woman in a business suit and a white guy who resembled a heroin addict? From the sound of 'Frank' I was somewhat afraid that if he ever gets mugged and the mugger happens to be black he might be on his way to a mental institution - he seemed to be moralizing to himself about as badly as the right hand of the lady in the first part of the show.

I get the impression that a lot of people could cry from frustration, their moral thermometers demand better from them than what they are now, and the world is complicated enough that the data they'll get on establishing a better moral state will always be acutely contradictory. There's almost nowhere you can sit morally or ethically and not have your moral radar deeply challenge by some, likely valid, indictment on something you either did or didn't do based on your moral framework. I think of times when I was really getting pushed toward a new-agey view of spirituality, that it was all about being as 'good' and harmless as you can be, until I realized that if not once a day at least once a week you will - no matter what - be the poster-boy or poster-girl for someone that you meet of everything that's wrong with the world. You might accidentally cut someone off in traffic, you might no say 'thank you' to someone who opens a door for you loud enough and that person had some type of obsession over the issue. You could find yourself in a chaotic situation where the people around you aren't watching what they're doing, you could get bumped, trip, fall, and land on a stroller - killing a baby! Then you'd one of the worst kinds of moral monsters and it wouldn't even be your fault! What I learned is that, beyond concrete self-improvements in the way you see the world about all you can do is negate yourself right out of any faith in your ability to make decisions. No matter how good of a person you'll try to be you'll never be free of being called a monster by someone and its an unfortunate side effect of living in a world that has such a myriad of subjective measurements for such things.

I think the chaos of life really makes people uncomfortable and unfortunately I don't think that villanizing our alarm-detectors or moral frameworks is the way to go. You have to try and build a penetrating level of insight into why they work the way they work, why you don't want bugs or mice in your house, why the odd connection of something like the color black symbolizing decay or other toxic natural processes might have somehow bridged circuits that really have no relation. The responsible thing to do then, once you understand your own alarm system, is deal with it as rationally as you can. Where it makes irrational jumps, say on race or gender, deconstruct the faulty bridge with logic and reason! Where there is no threat dismantle it. If you find yourself watching out because someone looks dangerous its probably also important not to beat yourself up too roundly for it because that threat detector also keeps you out of very real harm and if you embarrass it enough you very well could run into a truly dangerous person and be too steeped in denial to save your own life.

Late in the program, they have a segment from On The Media addressing some of those points. People have to figure out their own way out of implicit bias, and we don't fully understand the mechanism.

I'm hesitant to do so because it would seem to skim the edge of violating the ToS.

I don't mean members.

What I'm trying to sort out is how you're qualifying the difference between valid and invalid criticism. I may have misunderstood what you were saying it sounded like you were referring to that list I gave you and saying 'Yeah, Sam's cool otherwise but he should really work on learning about sensitivity - everyone else on that list yeah, that's who I'm talking about'. I wanted to know if there were any names on that list I gave you that you were comfortable, based on what you know about them, adding to the Trump and Milo pile.

Bear in mind a lot of these people are from the US and I'm not familiar with several of them.

I'd put Sam Harris towards one end of a scale where I think he has points worth discussing. I've made several of Harris's points in other fora. I don't always agree with him, and in some cases I'd like to see his evidence, but he does make points entirely consistent with anti-SJW comments made in this thread.

I'd put the guy who calls himself Sargon of Akkad at the other. He just seems to be a hater of anything that looks like feminism, and will censor in the name of opposing censorship. I think he's hiding behind rationalism.

Rationalwiki seems to enjoy poking this Sargon guy: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad

Not sure how accurate those quotes are (I'm not really familiar with his videos), but he sounds pretty bigoted and very hateful of women based on them. He doesn't sound like a rationalist to me, he sounds very emotionally reactive and angry.

Sargon is so easy to poke fun at. He's such a lolcow when he starts screaming at whatever thing has offended him.

I particularly enjoyed his debate with the feminist. He was clearly expecting a stereotypical first year student SJW trigglypuff type but he got a serious academic feminist researcher who had proper sources to back up her claims yet he didn't change any of his tactics that were designed to work against a stereotypical first year student SJW type.

His rebuttals were clearly written before the debate took place as they didn't address any of the arguments the feminist made. He just treated his rebuttals like they were parts 2 and 3 of his opening statement. I wonder if Sargon knows what the purpose of a rebuttal is.

While the feminist had a much stronger academic background she wasn't perfect. She made mistakes and left him openings. Openings that Sargon failed to notice or take advantage of.

It was quite amusing to watch Sargon become increasingly emotional as the video went on while the feminist remained calm. Towards the end of the debate when it became clear even to him that he was losing, he actually held back a piece of evidence that could have helped him out of spite for his opponent. That's like trying to express spite for the opposing soccer team by intentionally kicking a home goal when they're already winning.

The people calling themselves the "sceptic community" are engaging in their own brand of identity politics, and shouldn't be considered representative of the "sceptic movement" or of a wider "sceptic community". They don't have a monopoly on scepticism.



What aspects of social justice are you sceptical of? What parts of it do you question?



I've just quoted you claiming to base your opinions on rational scepticism, so can you provide an example of 'Sargon of Akkad' censoring people? I'd also be interested in the process by which you arrived at the conclusion he "hates anything that looks like feminism", especially considering his positive comments towards many feminists - the most recent example of which is the support he showed to Laci Green, who has become a pariah to her former allies for the crime of engaging with 'the enemy'.

There are many valid criticisms of his work - the nonsense about Japan in his conversation with Baldwin is a great example, as is his seeming obliviousness to the fact his reach and perspectives are bound to the subculture he's (an admittedly significant) part of - but blanket statements about his motivations don't qualify as such.



The article explicitly conflates "left wing" with "progressive". On that basis alone, I highly recommend you familiarise yourself with his videos and draw your own conclusions. He's certainly nowhere near perfect, but if you've formed the conclusion he's an angry, emotional, bigoted misogynist on the basis of a rationalwiki article, you're in no position to question anyone's reasoning.

He's completely out of his depth when it comes to politics, and an incredibly weak debater. He should stick to being an entertainer, which is the main reason for his popularity in my opinion.

He's been kind of a mixed bag at my end. On some of his shows he's said some things that I thought were particularly insightful, on others - especially when the material starts getting thin - the podcasts can get a bit vapid. I actually got particularly annoyed listening to the Joe Rogan podcast on several occasions, really by both of them and some of how the topics were getting handled. It really seemed like he went off on the Anita Sarkeesian thing to a pernicious degree and in such a way that it didn't reflect well on him. That said I'd have to fully agree with people who'd suggest that her calling him a 'garbage human' was the pot calling the kettle black - ie. that she's a deceitful human being and that her general behavior is emblematic of the authoritarian left. You really want to avoid - especially if you're criticizing someone whose fully earned that criticism - dropping to their level, otherwise in most people's eyes you void your valid points.

Likewise, I find him to be a mixed bag. I should also add that he's not a political scholar, that he genuinely seems to be trying to educate himself, but that he often fills the gaps in his knowledge with supposition and misses the mark by a fair bit.



The podcast also highlighted how niche his perspective is. His audience is large at 650k or so subscribers, but not especially broad. Rogan had to point out several times that he was using unfamiliar vernacular and referencing people who weren't exactly household names. It's a great example of how people can be blind to their own tribalism, despite actively associating themselves with a given tribe or identifying as a member of one - even (and perhaps especially) if said tribe is parodical or defined by its opposition to something.



Aye. You could argue that he let the occasion get to him, that he was under time constraints, etc, but it's his responsibility to prepare himself appropriately before addressing an audience the size of Rogan's, regardless of how fresh the incident was. He also should have packed up and caught his original flight, as that additional 2 hours was mostly akin to watching a pair of incoherent drunks rambling at each other in a bar.

I tried watching a video where he was "taking apart" a video of a young black feminist, and I couldn't get past the yelling and name-calling he was doing in his whiny petulant voice. That's why I said he sounds angry and emotional to me, not like a rationalist. His arguments are weak, like others have said here, from what I have seen. I don't think I need to waste any more of my time listening to them, I have better things to do and better debaters to listen to.

ETA: I also watched part of the Joe Rogan podcast he was on. He sounded ill-prepared and like someone who had received a middling education and has a middling-to-below-middling intellect but is insecure and needs to feel like he is more intelligent than he is. It's what renders his arguments emotional and irrational, that need to sound more intelligent than he actually is. He just sounds like a very bitter angry person who shrouds himself in rationalism but can't actually argue from a rationalist perspective.

I like that JP made it clear from the outset that his analysis did not limit itself to the text of the bill, but included his studied interpretation of the application in context. Fair play. I thought maybe I had gotten his personality entirely wrong, but the more I watched, the more I saw a deeply unpleasant person, very serious about science. I wanted to get that out of the way before I start on the law itself. I can easily imagine how his troubles escalated. He has to live out his well-reasoned ideas, and I feel that. The look of personal distaste he showed when he talked about being forced by university policy to use precise-sounding language of which he firmly disputed the scientific basis was priceless. I would love to try to befriend him. I don't care that lots of people really hate him. I can see why they would, if he lives up to my expectations. It sounds fun to me.

I don't foresee an epidemic of people getting the treatment he got. He's exceptional in so many ways, including the distance he will go before admitting it's time to stop. I respect that.

Now, I'll find out what kind of lawyer we have up next. This part has more context for me.