7 ms·

I'm always intrigued by this critique - are you really, actually against the concept of social justice? If so, why?

dawhizkid 8y ago
No, I'm not. But there is a real difference between actual social justice and "social justice warriors" that can't engage in objective debate/truth seeking about issues they claim to be so knowledgable about.
- drugme 8y ago
  No, I'm not. The way you paint Google's (nominal) pro-justice stance as inherently negative suggests otherwise.
- komali2 8y ago
  What, specifically, about the protests are Google have made you believe the participants can't engage in objective debate or truth about issues? What, specifically, have led you to believe the Google engineers assigned to weaponized AI projects are not knowledgeable in the subject?
  - lokidokiro 8y ago
    Damore getting fired after employees completely mischaracterized his position by saying he thinks women are inherently inferior to men is one example. Googlers don't participate in debate. They lie about their enemies and demand leadership censor them.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SkyBelow 8y ago
Isn't this kinda like asking someone who disapproves of the PATRIOT Act "Are you really, actually against stopping terrorist?"
- adamsea 8y ago
  The PATRIOT act was named by the people who concocted it. The term "social justice warrior" was not created by activists or people involved in organizations working for justice in our society. So, no. One is self-branding. The other is other-branding.
  - closedgrave 8y ago
    So, I'm curious where this narrative comes from, because I first met "social justice warrior"s in the 90's and they where very much claiming that brand. I mean, they where made fun of but that seemed to validate the "warrior" part in their mind. Now it seems the brand is being dropped but, not because it was never the brand in the first place. Edit: for context I don't think of the people who got the military work stopped as Social justice warriors. This may be because I tend to avoid the term. I'm still curious about this dropping of the brand thing though.
pkghost 8y ago
I think you'll get more traction from looking into criticism of identity politics. Maybe start w/Slavo Zizek
BurningFrog 8y ago
Are you one of these people who have never met an actual conservative and have doubts they really exist?
hirundo 8y ago
To the extent that social justice is about collective justice rather than individual justice, it is unjust. Sometimes those things coincide and social justice is just when they do. But as a casual observer, social justice seems to emphasize collective justice and collective guilt, which are often hard to distinguish from bigotry.
- shaki-dora 8y ago
  So please tie this back to the case on hand. Because I see little nexus between employees advocating against AI arms sales to some „individual“ or „collective“ right, unless it’s the individual war lord‘s right to aerially decimate the collective. Alternatively, maybe „SJW“ is just a pleasantly blank canvas, pliant to change meaning to whatever is currently needed when one is unwilling to argue the actual case? With the added benefit of inverting the usual moral framework, because arguing for what’s considered „good“ now becomes the meat of the charge against the speaker.
erentz 8y ago
I don’t know that it’s so much being against the idea of a fair and just society as much as being against SJWism. Where SJWism seems to now be about dividing up people into groups. Refusing to engage honestly. Labeling anyone who disagrees or has different ideas the enemy and forcing them out. Problematizing things that aren’t problems. So on.
- 0815test 8y ago
  We really need a better term than 'SJW' these days for those crypto-Maoists. It's been taken over by the alt-right, who use it for anyone who might object to their "based", "redpilled" (or so they say) toxic crap.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    I agree that we need a better term, but I don't perceive it as being co-opted by the alt-right so much as a pejorative that gives the user an air of bad faith. I want a neutral label for people who advocate for race/gender caste systems in the name of "equality" and who override standard terms (like "racism", "equality", "white supremacy", etc) with opposite meanings. It would be really useful for advancing the conversation.
- komali2 8y ago
  >Where SJWism seems to now be about dividing up people into groups. Refusing to engage honestly. Labeling anyone who disagrees I want to have a spirited genuine conversation about this, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around arguments like this - isn't your comment doing exactly as you have described, dividing and labelling people?
  - erentz 8y ago
    No. I believe I’ve described the behaviors that I suspected dawhizkid was referring to when using the SJW label. There are many behaviors that have many labels. If you want to substitute SJWism for something else you may, but it happens to be that people are increasingly associating this collection of behaviors with that term now. I’m not one to battle too hard with the English language when it doesn’t seem necessary (the SJW term has always been pejorative in one way or another so it’s hardly one to protect).
pacala 8y ago
What do you mean by "social justice"?
terryschiavo22 8y ago
"Social justice" doesn't mean anything. It's, at best, a metaphor. Those words don't mean anything apart from the movement because otherwise, there would be a social government and a canonical social code. It's like "ethnic cleansing". It doesn't mean anything unless you interpret it as a metaphor.
- adamsea 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice "Social justice is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society. This is measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity, and social privileges. In Western as well as in older Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive what was their due from society.[1][2][3] In the current global grassroots movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets and economic justice." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing "Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous.[1][page needed] The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer), intimidation, as well as genocide and genocidal rape."
- diminoten 8y ago
  Why compare social justice to ethnic cleansing, 'terryschiavo22?
luckylion 8y ago
Social justice equals individual injustice.
fourstar 8y ago
SJWs are lip-service virtue signalers who ironically preach unity from their watch towers.
weberc2 8y ago
Can't speak for OP, but Social Justice (tm) is mutually incompatible with social justice. The former is roughly a movement to establish identity-based hierarchies while the latter opposes these hierarchies. So when people say they're "opposed to SJWs", chances are they mean they "support social justice".

No, I'm not. But there is a real difference between actual social justice and "social justice warriors" that can't engage in objective debate/truth seeking about issues they claim to be so knowledgable about.

drugme 8y ago
No, I'm not. The way you paint Google's (nominal) pro-justice stance as inherently negative suggests otherwise.
komali2 8y ago
What, specifically, about the protests are Google have made you believe the participants can't engage in objective debate or truth about issues? What, specifically, have led you to believe the Google engineers assigned to weaponized AI projects are not knowledgeable in the subject?
- lokidokiro 8y ago
  Damore getting fired after employees completely mischaracterized his position by saying he thinks women are inherently inferior to men is one example. Googlers don't participate in debate. They lie about their enemies and demand leadership censor them.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

SkyBelow 8y ago

Isn't this kinda like asking someone who disapproves of the PATRIOT Act "Are you really, actually against stopping terrorist?"

adamsea 8y ago
The PATRIOT act was named by the people who concocted it. The term "social justice warrior" was not created by activists or people involved in organizations working for justice in our society. So, no. One is self-branding. The other is other-branding.
- closedgrave 8y ago
  So, I'm curious where this narrative comes from, because I first met "social justice warrior"s in the 90's and they where very much claiming that brand. I mean, they where made fun of but that seemed to validate the "warrior" part in their mind. Now it seems the brand is being dropped but, not because it was never the brand in the first place. Edit: for context I don't think of the people who got the military work stopped as Social justice warriors. This may be because I tend to avoid the term. I'm still curious about this dropping of the brand thing though.

pkghost 8y ago

I think you'll get more traction from looking into criticism of identity politics. Maybe start w/Slavo Zizek

BurningFrog 8y ago

Are you one of these people who have never met an actual conservative and have doubts they really exist?

hirundo 8y ago

To the extent that social justice is about collective justice rather than individual justice, it is unjust. Sometimes those things coincide and social justice is just when they do. But as a casual observer, social justice seems to emphasize collective justice and collective guilt, which are often hard to distinguish from bigotry.

shaki-dora 8y ago
So please tie this back to the case on hand. Because I see little nexus between employees advocating against AI arms sales to some „individual“ or „collective“ right, unless it’s the individual war lord‘s right to aerially decimate the collective. Alternatively, maybe „SJW“ is just a pleasantly blank canvas, pliant to change meaning to whatever is currently needed when one is unwilling to argue the actual case? With the added benefit of inverting the usual moral framework, because arguing for what’s considered „good“ now becomes the meat of the charge against the speaker.

erentz 8y ago

I don’t know that it’s so much being against the idea of a fair and just society as much as being against SJWism. Where SJWism seems to now be about dividing up people into groups. Refusing to engage honestly. Labeling anyone who disagrees or has different ideas the enemy and forcing them out. Problematizing things that aren’t problems. So on.

0815test 8y ago
We really need a better term than 'SJW' these days for those crypto-Maoists. It's been taken over by the alt-right, who use it for anyone who might object to their "based", "redpilled" (or so they say) toxic crap.
- weberc2 8y ago
  I agree that we need a better term, but I don't perceive it as being co-opted by the alt-right so much as a pejorative that gives the user an air of bad faith. I want a neutral label for people who advocate for race/gender caste systems in the name of "equality" and who override standard terms (like "racism", "equality", "white supremacy", etc) with opposite meanings. It would be really useful for advancing the conversation.
komali2 8y ago
>Where SJWism seems to now be about dividing up people into groups. Refusing to engage honestly. Labeling anyone who disagrees I want to have a spirited genuine conversation about this, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around arguments like this - isn't your comment doing exactly as you have described, dividing and labelling people?
- erentz 8y ago
  No. I believe I’ve described the behaviors that I suspected dawhizkid was referring to when using the SJW label. There are many behaviors that have many labels. If you want to substitute SJWism for something else you may, but it happens to be that people are increasingly associating this collection of behaviors with that term now. I’m not one to battle too hard with the English language when it doesn’t seem necessary (the SJW term has always been pejorative in one way or another so it’s hardly one to protect).

pacala 8y ago

What do you mean by "social justice"?

terryschiavo22 8y ago

"Social justice" doesn't mean anything. It's, at best, a metaphor. Those words don't mean anything apart from the movement because otherwise, there would be a social government and a canonical social code. It's like "ethnic cleansing". It doesn't mean anything unless you interpret it as a metaphor.

adamsea 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice "Social justice is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society. This is measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity, and social privileges. In Western as well as in older Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive what was their due from society.[1][2][3] In the current global grassroots movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets and economic justice." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing "Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous.[1][page needed] The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer), intimidation, as well as genocide and genocidal rape."
diminoten 8y ago
Why compare social justice to ethnic cleansing, 'terryschiavo22?

luckylion 8y ago

Social justice equals individual injustice.

fourstar 8y ago

SJWs are lip-service virtue signalers who ironically preach unity from their watch towers.

weberc2 8y ago

Can't speak for OP, but Social Justice (tm) is mutually incompatible with social justice. The former is roughly a movement to establish identity-based hierarchies while the latter opposes these hierarchies. So when people say they're "opposed to SJWs", chances are they mean they "support social justice".