It appears to me that all kinds of things are believed among people highly invested in one side or other
True for many political debates in general. Both sides start with different sets of “facts”. In worse case, some of those “facts” are factually wrong. In better case, those facts are true, but were selected from the set of all possible facts to support a specific conclusion.
Thus a rational debate would have to start by establishing a base of mutually accepted facts. If you skip this step and go ahead, it will catch you later at some moment.
(For example, we might agree that Jonathan McIntosh is involved in Feminist Frequency, and that his name is usually not mentioned; someone who does not do a background research might easily come to a conclusion that Anita Sarkeesian is doing this alone. -- Of course whether this is a trivial technical detail or a damning evidence, that depends on many other assumptions.)
I’m having trouble figuring out what you think is actually going on here.
I think (p = 0.9) that McIntosh and Sarkeesian are following the “Guide To Exploiting Social Justice People”. I think (p = 0.6) that Chu is not aware of this, and that he believes they are simply doing the right thing. And, being a good person, he wants to do the right thing, too. (But he fails precisely because he is not following the Guide.) I do not have an opinion on Drucker yet, as I have almost no data about him.
making a cute rich white girl the central character … would have made little difference to the success of the Kickstarter unless it happened to get noticed by a lot of people who enjoy looking at cute white girls so much they’ll fund anything with one in it
It’s not about cuteness and enjoying, but about saving the damsel in distress (but of course if the damsel is white and high-status, saving her is a higher priority). The cute central character would be described as struggling with barbaric hordes of low-status men in STEM fields. Arthur Chu would pose as an expert on STEM fields and on nerds, using Jeopardy as credentials. He would also profess that the damsel is at least 10× smarter than him; she just didn’t have a chance to prove it (because we all know how the society oppresses women). Chu would be the knight defending the damsel. But the real hero who can fix the world by the power of her awesomeness, that would be the damsel. Next step is to generate a controversy, and use the backlash as a proof that the forces of evil have united against this awesome damsel, but you can still send your money to make the good side win. Also, it will serve as a convenient excuse if the project fails.
This is what my Guide To Exploiting Social Justice People would recommend. It also requires having allies in media, who will cover the story from the correct angle, and will refuse to give a platform to opponents or competing projects.
So what conclusion am I supposed to draw from that plus the fact (assuming it is one) that he never happens to have defended a poor black woman by name in his writings online?
My guess (p = 0.6) is that Arthur Chu is trying to do the right thing, but by being mindkilled he sacrificed his ability to notice that he may be doing it wrong.
What is the base probability that if one tries to become “a spokesperson for social justice”, their best cause will be publicly defending an abusive rich white American woman with powerful friends? So if you happen to find yourself in such situation, you may want to slow down and reflect on what happened. You probably didn’t plan it this way, but your brain had an evolutionary adaptation to do it for you.
True for many political debates in general. Both sides start with different sets of “facts”. In worse case, some of those “facts” are factually wrong. In better case, those facts are true, but were selected from the set of all possible facts to support a specific conclusion.
Thus a rational debate would have to start by establishing a base of mutually accepted facts. If you skip this step and go ahead, it will catch you later at some moment.
(For example, we might agree that Jonathan McIntosh is involved in Feminist Frequency, and that his name is usually not mentioned; someone who does not do a background research might easily come to a conclusion that Anita Sarkeesian is doing this alone. -- Of course whether this is a trivial technical detail or a damning evidence, that depends on many other assumptions.)
I think (p = 0.9) that McIntosh and Sarkeesian are following the “Guide To Exploiting Social Justice People”. I think (p = 0.6) that Chu is not aware of this, and that he believes they are simply doing the right thing. And, being a good person, he wants to do the right thing, too. (But he fails precisely because he is not following the Guide.) I do not have an opinion on Drucker yet, as I have almost no data about him.
It’s not about cuteness and enjoying, but about saving the damsel in distress (but of course if the damsel is white and high-status, saving her is a higher priority). The cute central character would be described as struggling with barbaric hordes of low-status men in STEM fields. Arthur Chu would pose as an expert on STEM fields and on nerds, using Jeopardy as credentials. He would also profess that the damsel is at least 10× smarter than him; she just didn’t have a chance to prove it (because we all know how the society oppresses women). Chu would be the knight defending the damsel. But the real hero who can fix the world by the power of her awesomeness, that would be the damsel. Next step is to generate a controversy, and use the backlash as a proof that the forces of evil have united against this awesome damsel, but you can still send your money to make the good side win. Also, it will serve as a convenient excuse if the project fails.
This is what my Guide To Exploiting Social Justice People would recommend. It also requires having allies in media, who will cover the story from the correct angle, and will refuse to give a platform to opponents or competing projects.
My guess (p = 0.6) is that Arthur Chu is trying to do the right thing, but by being mindkilled he sacrificed his ability to notice that he may be doing it wrong.
What is the base probability that if one tries to become “a spokesperson for social justice”, their best cause will be publicly defending an abusive rich white American woman with powerful friends? So if you happen to find yourself in such situation, you may want to slow down and reflect on what happened. You probably didn’t plan it this way, but your brain had an evolutionary adaptation to do it for you.