Social justice was originally an ideology from the early 19th century, a competitor to Marxism. Like Marxists, they were biological/social determinists, believing that no one, ever, did anything that wasn't dictated by his circumstances. Like Marxists (and any sane people) they agreed that the living conditions of Britain's urban, working poor were an affront to humanity. Like the Marxists, they were atheists (at least at first, SJ later caught on with Catholics as an alternative to Marxism - and arguably, Quaker and nonconformist religious industrialists were the proto-SJ's until Robert Owen came along).

But where Marxists saw the revolution of the workers as the way out of that mess, SJ people said that's bullshit. The workers are living from hand to mouth, they are slaves of their circumstances, they can't change society, with violence or not. It's up to us, the rich factory owners, to change the social circumstances so that workers can escape poverty, misery and crime. So they built model villages and factory communes. Marx derided that as utopian socialism, which was easy enough as there were plenty of failed efforts to highlight.

Modern "social justice" has almost nothing to do with this. Catholic social justice activists were still primarily fans of paternalistic factories, where the factory owner has a moral responsibility to care for his workers' material and spiritual well-being, but they did do a bit to promote the idea of privilege, i.e. that it can be hard to see things from the disadvantaged's perspective. Modern SJWs, aided by some upper middle-class academics, took that concept and twisted it into unrecognizability, and made it the centerpiece. In their world, privilege means that you're bad and I'm good, and you are totally unable to grasp that with your reason due to your privilege, so you must take it on blind faith and do as I tell you.

If you aren't, go follow a couple of the high-profile ones on twitter and tumblr for a couple of months. That might adjust your view of the world a little.

A social justice warrior is someone who thinks:

1. Has a very particular and narrow view of "social justice" where groups, not individuals, are the only relevant actors, and where there is a set additive hierarchy of oppressed groups.

2. that "we are at war", in other words, that anything is permissible to win.

They think of themselves as the heirs to the civil rights movement and the anti-slavery movement and every righteous movement ever. But those movements tended to reject both 1 and 2. Note that the historical users of the phrase "social justice", mostly catholic activists and positive to paternalistic industry ("utopian socialism", model villages, worker communes etc. etc.), have especially little in common with modern SJWs

Now you're repeating exactly what I replied to with comment #48863757. No, it was not a falsehood, because the media rallied around Quinn largely to protect their own nepotistic behinds. Yes, there were no reviews, but that wasn't the allegation. Yes, the guy wrote many articles giving Zoe and the game publicity.

Do you think you're "drawing fire" by persisting to waste people's time or something? In that case, I'd like to inform you I haven't harassed anyone. So Zoe Quinn is going to get exactly as much (or as little) harassment as she otherwise would, regardless of whether you keep up this nonsense.

Now you jump from one argument (that the central allegation of "corrupt media" in GG was a falsehood) to an entirely different one, without acknowledging any errors.

I did not even say that gamergate is "truly" about ethics in journalism. Gamergate is about many things, for different people. But the supposed disparity you point out is nothing nefarious about. It's easily explained by the other things people have done - both the things they have done in the past (e.g. having an encyclopedia dramatica track record) and the things they currently are doing.

If you ask me, I think it's far worse for people to have an affair with someone whose career they can make or break (whether they do so or not), than the opposite. But I also think that Zoe is cynical, attention seeking and abusive, from reading the Zoe post and the accounts of people who've worked with her. And it's really alarming that the gaming media circled the wagons to defend someone like that, just because the case made them look bad too.

You've got a couple of small things wrong. Eron Gjoni never said she slept with a journalist "in order to get a good review". Go and read the post yourself. Even the job Quinn got (from a guy she was having an affair with), Gjoni said she probably would have gotten anyway, and certainly was qualified for.

You're right there's no review involved, but that was never the allegation. You are, however, wrong that there is no article involved. Depression Quest (and Zoe Quinn personally) got lots of positive press from Nathan Grayson.

No, slashdot are fricking amateurs in the clickbait business, and I've seen no evidence it gains them much. Even when they tried to pump unbreakablecoin yesterday (lol!), it barely made a dent in its price.

Oh, I'm sure he does that too. And when he does, he probably listen and cares about what they want rather than view it as a PR opportunity.

Oh to hell with "class and dignity". It would be nice if this was actually what it pretends to be, but here are some questions Obama will never be asked:

- Mr. President, you've prosecuted more people under the espionage act than all previous presidents combined. Why do you think that is?

- Mr. President, the only person in jail over torture at the CIA is the person who blew the whistle on it, John Kiriakou. Why is that?

He never answers such questions in person, only if he absolutely has to does he even let his PR people defend him. When he's going so "folksy" and talking to youtube hosts now, it's because he wants to invite those too into the sphere respectability - the sphere where such questions aren't asked.

Right now youtube is a sphere of the media with a huge audience, but where the media's notions of respectability doesn't exist, the regular rules you have to follow to get ahead don't really apply. They want to nip that in the bud, with a carrot rather than a stick. Want to play with the big guys? Then fall in line!

That means they're confident. So confident about these youtubers' ambition and personalities that Obama will never hear any word that might potentially upset him, such as "Kiriakou", "torture", "drone", "kill list", "accountability" or "war criminal".

The British-Indian comedians of Goodness Gracious Me had a recurring sketch about "Mr. Everything comes from India", who would argue (mostly with his son that) everything came from India. Not only the things that actually are from India, like shampoo and verandas, but Shakespeare, the Mona Lisa ("Son, this is Mina Losa, a Gujarati washerwoman from Bhavnagar!"), John Travolta, Superman and the British royal family.

I think all nationalisms have some people like that.

Gritty people sometimes exhibit what psychologists call "nonproductive persistence": They try, try again, says Dean MacFarlin though the result may be either unremitting failure or "a costly or inefficient success that could have been easily surpassed by alternative courses of action."

Well, maybe blaming them for that is just like blaming people for buying non-winning lottery tickets. Why didn't they do like that guy over there, and buy a winning ticket instead?

You quickly run into decidability problems when deciding on optimal strategies of inquiry in the general case. The only time you know with 100% certainty whether persistence will pay off, or whether it's time to give up and look around for other solutions, is when you basically already know the answer.

There's no way good solutions can be found without "wasting" a lot of effort on fruitless paths - and whether the waste and success happens in the same person, or over a large group of people, what difference does it make?

Here's the problem. We can't make the body match the mind. We literally cannot do it. We don't have the technology.

As long as transsexuals are well-informed about what can and cannot be done, I don't see a problem.

I see SRS as one of many possible ways of addressing gender dysphoria at the individual level. Like most other treatments, it may fail to succeed at this aim. That's not a reason to rule it out.

I also think it can and should be addressed at the societal level, by making it more "normal". But I think LGBT activists in general overestimate how much of the T's pains can be alleviated this way.

"These guys? Already on the US no fly list. Already known to French authorities for extremist sympathies. At least one already had been in trouble with police for violent crimes."

Yeah, but it looks like they also checked all the flags for troubled kids. You'll find lots and lots of foster home boys(which those were) who are kind of attention-seekers, kind of flirting with various radical political cults, kind of narcissistic, kind of sociopathic/antisocial. What are you going to do?

There are tons, tons of people who fit your 1 and 2. And much as they may be personality-fucked up people who go on to cause a lot of suffering for people they encounter, the vast majority of them are not terrorists. Surveilling them is not free, and is not without consequences in itself.

Just like every business in the world is licensed and regulated right? Except it's not.

Where are you running a business? Yes, every business in the world is regulated, and for businesses where there is high competition and temptation to cut corners, there are regularly domain-specific rules or licensing requirements in place. A highly competitive industry is by default a corrupt industry, because the more bitter the fight, the harder it is to survive without playing dirty. In many countries and many domains, regulation evidently helps with that, but if the industry is sufficiently capital-intensive, regulation itself becomes an arena for dirty fighting.

Taxi drivers are usually poor immigrants. Given sufficient desperation they will play dirty by cheating on their taxes, scamming their customers, or working with criminal organizations (to do e.g. money laundering). They do not, however, have the resources to play regulatory capture dirty game. Uber does.

The problem can solve itself with open information.

Only it didn't when they tried. Taxis are often selected in situations where you can't meaningfully discriminate between them (from a queue, or hailing). They're also heavily used by people ill-equipped to discriminate between them (tourists and drunk people). Throwing more information on them doesn't help.

The major negative impact from TG people is only that which society places on them and thus an unnatural impact.

I've heard a transperson dispute that, saying that even where people are 100% cool with them, they still feel awful about the mind/body mismatch, to the point of depression, self-harming etc. Gender dysphoria can still be a mental illness even if transsexualism per se isn't.

Though of course, not in any sane jurisdiction should that prevent you from driving.