the current state of behavioral patterns and rate of improvement in gender-fairness of “my” (for lack of a better label) subculture (and, if I may presume, many other subcultures made of smarter-than-average people) is currently right before the line whether spending more to eradicate Patriarchy becomes more damaging than the amount of patriarchy it would remove currently does.
If this is true of your subgroup, your subgroup is wonderfully exceptional. It certainly isn’t true of most smarter-than-average subcultures.
One can argue about whether video gamer culture is above average intelligence (I suspect yes), but here is strong evidence it is nowhere near the marginal benefit line for gender relations. If video game culture were closer to the line, I would expect the described behavior (which is ridiculously unacceptable) would receive far more disparagement than it does receive.
The concept of fan service (particularly the way it is currently gendered) is similar evidence in the anime/manga subculture.
the current state of behavioral patterns and rate of improvement in gender-fairness of “my” (for lack of a better label) subculture (and, if I may presume, many other subcultures made of smarter-than-average people) is currently right before the line whether spending more to eradicate Patriarchy becomes more damaging than the amount of patriarchy it would remove currently does.
If this is true of your subgroup, your subgroup is wonderfully exceptional. It certainly isn’t true of most smarter-than-average subcultures.
Have you counted opportunity costs? Maybe there is some action his subgroup could take which would have a net positive effect towards eradicating patriarchy, but that would mean they could spend less time taking some other action which could have a larger positive effect towards some other goal.
Such an argument may not be as “dumb or straw-mannish” as all that, depending on your approach to prioritizing problems to solve.
For example, if you believed that destroying the patriarchy was possible given our current limited resources, and that doing so would ameliorate or eliminate a host of other problems, you might focus on it as the low-hanging fruit. Sure, building an FAI and ushering in the Singularity (just for example) would net you a much larger gain, but the amount of effort you’d have to spend on it, as well as the lower probability of success, makes it a less attractive goal overall.
If this is true of your subgroup, your subgroup is wonderfully exceptional. It certainly isn’t true of most smarter-than-average subcultures.
One can argue about whether video gamer culture is above average intelligence (I suspect yes), but here is strong evidence it is nowhere near the marginal benefit line for gender relations. If video game culture were closer to the line, I would expect the described behavior (which is ridiculously unacceptable) would receive far more disparagement than it does receive.
The concept of fan service (particularly the way it is currently gendered) is similar evidence in the anime/manga subculture.
Have you counted opportunity costs? Maybe there is some action his subgroup could take which would have a net positive effect towards eradicating patriarchy, but that would mean they could spend less time taking some other action which could have a larger positive effect towards some other goal.
(This assumes that patriarchy is not the only problem in the world (nor the only problem worth trying to solve). I don’t expect anyone to disagree with that, but I’m afraid to “underestimate the universality of the law that there is no argument so dumb or straw-mannish that someone somewhere has not made it”.)
Such an argument may not be as “dumb or straw-mannish” as all that, depending on your approach to prioritizing problems to solve.
For example, if you believed that destroying the patriarchy was possible given our current limited resources, and that doing so would ameliorate or eliminate a host of other problems, you might focus on it as the low-hanging fruit. Sure, building an FAI and ushering in the Singularity (just for example) would net you a much larger gain, but the amount of effort you’d have to spend on it, as well as the lower probability of success, makes it a less attractive goal overall.
Yes.
That’s why I quoted that part of DaFranker’s post as opposed to some other part.
I explicitly mention marginal benefit in my first substantive example.
The post DaFranker is responding to concludes with the point that improving society need not include any activity directed at patriarchy.
I’m well aware of the concepts of opportunity cost, cost-benefit analysis, and diminishing returns.