#wokish

[pazodetrasalba]

Weapons of Math Destruction

Dear Caroline:

Cathy O'Neil probably came under the limelight a year before the publication of this article, didn't she? In 2016 she was the winner of the Euler Book Prize for Weapons of Math Destruction, a very critical left-wing take on the misuse of algorithms. I haven't actually read her book, as I got a similar selection of contents and ideas from Hannah Fry's Hello World, and I suspect she is probably a bit too wokish for my taste.

In this post of yours I think you make an admirably balanced reading of an article you disagree with, and I haven't find any flaws in your logic. Cathy O'Neil probably does want socialized medicine, which is something that as a European I can empathize and agree with (from our perspective, just the idea non a non-socialized medicine feels like a horrible and damning dystopia and a terrible unfairness. Our system comes at a cost, though -and not a cheap one: besides the higher taxes, our public medicine is really inefficient and slow unless you are about to die, and brings to mind the bad aspects of socialism). Still, I'd say that the honest thing to do would be to state her cause directly, and not equivocate, even if it comes at the cost of being unheard. Then again, as you well know, I am a non-utilitarian with deontological inclinations, which means I am ready to underscore the unheeded Voices of Righteousness Crying in the Desert: Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Reality is messy and complicated, and we should care to minimize to the extent of our powers underserved the all too many underserved injustices that abound. And there has to be a way of doing this without 'trying as a society to be as bad about making predictions (...) as possible'.

(Oh, btw, happy 4th July, Caroline!)

Quote:

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.

Walter Cronkite

[shawnjuanbailey]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Social Justice Usage

Source: Wikipedia, “Autoethnography” entry.

Autoethnography is a form of qualitative research in which an author uses self-reflection and writing to explore anecdotal and personal experience and connect this autobiographical story to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. Autoethnography is a self-reflective form of writing used across various disciplines such as communication studies, performance studies, education, English literature, anthropology, social work, sociology, history, psychology, theology and religious studies, marketing, business and educational administration, arts education, nursing and physiotherapy.

According to Maréchal (2010), “autoethnography is a form or method of research that involves self-observation and reflexive investigation in the context of ethnographic field work and writing” (p. 43). A well-known autoethnographer, Carolyn Ellis (2004) defines it as “research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political” (p. xix). However, it is not easy to reach a consensus on the term’s definition. For instance, in the 1970s, autoethnography was more narrowly defined as “insider ethnography”, referring to studies of the (culture of) a group of which the researcher is a member (Hayano, 1979). Nowadays, however, as Ellingson and Ellis (2008) point out, “the meanings and applications of autoethnography have evolved in a manner that makes precise definition difficult” (p. 449).

According to Adams, Jones, and Ellis in Autoethnography: Understanding Qualitative Research, “Autoethnography is a research method that: Uses a researcher’s personal experience to describe and critique cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences. Acknowledges and values a researcher’s relationships with others…. Shows ‘people in the process of figuring out what to do, how to live, and the meaning of their struggles'” (Adams, 2015). “Social life is messy, uncertain, and emotional. If our desire to research social life, then we must embrace a research method that, to the best of its/our ability, acknowledges and accommodates mess and chaos, uncertainty and emotion” (Adams, 2015).

New Discourses Commentary

“Autoethnography” refers to a form of research (if we must) in which one’s own reflections upon life, often written in autobiographical form, are treated as authoritative analyses of broader society. More specifically, these self-reflective observations are utilized to do an ethnographic study of the culture in which one finds oneself. The approach has therefore been, for rather good reasons, referred to by its critics as “me-search.” Autoethnography is now a fairly well-established form of qualitative methods research throughout the theoretical humanities, and it is, perhaps, most commonly utilized in the various fields of studies that can be categorized as the Theory of Critical Social Justice. The approach is often rooted in narrative and storytelling (see also, counterstory).

Because autoethnography combines autobiography and ethnography, the process of compiling and composing an autoethnography tends to involve reflecting upon one’s own experiences within a particular cultural context and extrapolating from this lived experience to attempt to make more general statements about the culture and its features in which the exploration took place. These would then be considered “knowledges” derived from that lived experience. This kind of thing is treated as research because lived experience is considered the most authoritative form of insight about the “true” nature (or “realities”) of systemic oppression.

For example, a woman might write an autoethnography (utilizing a lot of personal storytelling) about her trip around town with something like a love interest to visit various stores in the attempt to find a Wonder Woman action figure and finding it difficult, despite the high availability of male superhero action figures. From this, she might conclude that the cultural milieu in which she is embedded has certain biases toward men and against women, particularly in the context of being viewed as a superhero/heroine. This would then be used, in turn, to make commentary about what it means to be and to grow up as a woman in such a culture, including various symbolic meanings of the phrase “wonder woman” that become more relevant because of the existence of the symbol juxtaposed with the difficulty in finding tangible representations of that symbolism. This example of an autoethnography is not, in fact, hypothetical. This paper exists in a feminist social work journal.

There are, of course, rather serious issues to be had, in general, with the notion that an autoethnography is likely to (or even can) constitute a serious and rigorous form of ethnographic (or sociological, or anthropological) research. It obviously suffers an overwhelming limitation in that the relevant sample is the researcher herself (and, perhaps, her friends), and it seems reasonable to observe that it would be hopelessly fraught with bias and interpretation (in place of rigor). This serious problem with the capacity for autoethnographic research is the reason that the method appears almost exclusively in fields classifiable as Critical Social Justice (including gender studies, masculinity studies, women’s studies, fat studies, disability studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, media studies, and so on).

This point about autoethnography’s utilization in “Grievance Studies” fields and almost nowhere else is no accident, and the reasons for its acceptance in those fields is rather deep and indicative of their relationship with intellectualism, objectivity, and scholarly rigor (they reject these things as racist, sexist, misogynistic, patriarchal, and all the rest). Those “Critical” disciplines tend to favor “counterstories” that challenge the dominant narratives to rigorous research (especially avant garde stories). Usually, the point of a counterstory is to deconstruct dominant narratives by revealing their absurdity, often by revealing hidden assumptions (see also, Critical Theory) or by highlighting exceptions that prove the rule by presenting them as though they do not prove the rule.

To draw out an important point, the Theory of Critical Social Justice, perhaps almost alone among scholarly endeavors, forwards lived experience as a particularly valid and insightful way of knowing. More than that, it seeks to challenge “dominant” ways of knowing with alternatives, which it deems as having been unjustly marginalized and excluded. Because lived experience (of systemic oppression) forms the backbone of the positive side of the Critical Social Justice epistemology (forwarding new ideas or hypotheses about the world), autoethnographical investigation would be seen from the Critical Social Justice perspective as wholly positive in all regards. It forwards new knowledges in a way that accords with the Critical Social Justice epistemology; it proceeds in a way that blends narrative-making and counterstory-telling alongside making sociocultural claims (which is consonant with critical race Theory, in particular); and it challenges, disrupts, and even dismantles the dominant view of epistemology that would regard it as hopelessly biased and limited in its abilities to draw any meaningful conclusions without significant further research (see also, hegemony; epistemic justice, research justice, epistemic oppression, and epistemic violence).

==

Just in case you were wondering what the exact opposite of science was, this is it.

It uses nothing that could be construed as actual data, depends solely on interpretation and anecdote, demonstrates no testing in its formulation, is untestable by anyone else, seeks no disconfirmation, is unfalsifiable anyway.

The most terrifying thing about this narcissistic navel-gazing self-importance isn’t just that people are apparently sitting in their offices writing about their subjective, unreliable - and probably under-medicated - feelings as a form of academic intellectual output. It isn’t even that they’re being paid to do so. It’s that this is regarded as a legitimate form of knowledge production, and once published in a journal, can be cited as “research says” in the creation of public policy.

Imagine public policy being created in which the cited research justifying the new policies are a Xtian’s reflections of “I feel it in my heart”.

For reference, much of Robin DiAngelo’s cursed White Fragility is this form of “research”, in which she simply relates a story of someone she met, then proceeds to mind-read everyone involved, project her own racism onto them or into the situation, and then draws her conclusion. Based on what she already presupposed and read into it in the first place. And this constitutes the “data” for which she wholesale invents her concepts out of thin air.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

I'd like to share/point out/slightly promote a website dealing with SJ bullshit. It's by the people involved in the Grievance Studies expose as they help to explain what's going on in the SJW/applied postmodernism domain, and why it's a messed up way of thinking. They even have a page called "Translations from the Wokish" to explain the (stupid) terminology of the field. The site is called "New Discourses", mostly helmed by James Lindsay. I'm not affiliated with them, just think it's neat.

Nice, thank you :) xx 

[jackpavarotti]

#HappyMothersDay real hero right here #MothersofLGBT. Those who hate must stop 🛑 interfering when others are trying to educate themselves. Whatever your son is, he’s your son and you love them. I love ❤️ my #mama for her efforts. She’s so #woke or #wokish therefore no hateful people needed to mess with such. Love and love coz we all need love 💕. 🌺🌸🌹

[nathanmmctague]

Pronouns! Wokish folx often wonder about my pronouns. These bright and tender souls see our panoply of current pronoun options as real progress and want to be sure to honour each other and our preferences. 😘 And I so appreciate that! Sincerely. Thank you for attempting to see people as they want to be seen. 😘 I imagine these allies see the colorful menu of options in the first slide above. And I celebrate that with them! It’s beautiful!! ✨ And, it just so happens, that I see those same options more like they appear in the next slide. Just more words in more boxes. ☑️ “Keep the words and the boxes coming! As long as we have a box and a label to stick on you, you get to belong, and be witnessed, and be represented!” ✅ But here’s the thing with all the latest and greatest identifiers and all the affinity groups and all the holidays and memorial months and all the other topical addresses we stick on dis-inclusion, and marginalization, and oppression — just like “BIPOC” risks erasing actual bodies of actual humans — these assimilations and innovations we make to undo oppression are themselves rooted in oppressive structures. 😳 The American-English third person pronoun system is broken y’all. And while I appreciate the attempt to bolster it with new additions, we need to recognize that the whole thing is built on assumptions we can no longer make about each other at a distance. And just asking those of us who aren’t included in the broken system to wear a tertiary moniker in order to pretend the system isn’t broken is ineffective, further oppressive, and emblematic of the short-sided thinking that has gotten us into most of our historical trouble. 💥 I will not call myself a they. I appreciate and love those who do! And I will honour you for the courage it takes to do that. 💛 But for me personally — until everyone we don’t know is first referred to as “they”, unless we are asked to use something else by them — I will continue to see it as our consolation, *not* our inclusion… 🤟 […] Cont’d in comments https://www.instagram.com/p/CUf7fSglWX2/?utm_medium=tumblr

[lueminous]

I wonder if antis are like how they are in real life. Fake activism, fake wokish, hateful, etc. like do they literally talk like that in real life. Bc idk its just me but pretty sure most people in real life don't talk like that Bc outside of the Tumblr echo chamber you have rational people, all kinds of people so I wonder if they're just weird af and out of touch with reality on tumblr only. Maybe it's their place to get validation for being "woke". Bc I'd laugh the hell out of them irl

They definitely are weirdos in real life but probably not as vocal with their shittiness because that shit would actually get them decked in the face.

[lower-coast-times]

This is yet another post in my ongoing series: Do you really want to live in a Marxist-Lenonist/Maoist/Communist country?

This time it's an article. Because in order for you to understand how we got to this point you need to understand who and or what is behind the change that has been made in American culture. Part of this is called Critical Theory:

The term “Critical Theory” commonly causes confusion because it can refer to the Frankfurt School of Marxist critics, including György Lukács, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse (see also, neo-Marxism and New Left), or it can refer to the use of other similar—but distinct—critical social theories, such as those that have their roots in postmodernism, such as postcolonial Theory, queer Theory, critical race Theory, intersectional feminism, disability studies, and fat studies (see also, Theory and post-Marxism). Sometimes this confusion is expressed disingenuously by academics who dislike criticism of critical theories, and sometimes it is expressed sincerely by those whose fields of philosophy have not kept up with the fast development of Social Justice scholarship.

The Critical Theory of the “Institute for Social Research,” which is better known as the Frankfurt School, focused on power analyses that began from a Marxist (or Marxian) perspective with an aim to understand why Marxism wasn’t proving successful in Western contexts. It rapidly developed a “post-Marxist” position that criticized Marx’s primary focus on economics and expanded his views on power, alienation, and exploitation into all aspects of post-Enlightenment Western culture. These theorists sometimes referred to themselves as “cultural Marxists,” and were referred to that way by others, but the term “cultural Marxism” is now more commonly used to describe (a misconception of) postmodernism (see also, neo-Marxism) or a certain anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. The big-picture agenda of the Frankfurt School was to marry Marxian economic theory to Freudian psychoanalytic theory in order to explain both the rise of fascism and the reasons that the communist revolutions were not taking place in Western democracies as had been predicted.

Source:

[cultml]

The Critical Social Justice folks are pushing revolution right now, and language is one of the means they are using.  I thought it would be interesting to look at some specific words that have been warped by these folks to mean something that most people would not suspect they mean.  

RACISM, SYSTEMIC

The Translations from the Wokish found at New Discourses are invaluable.  I am using them heavily today.  Please read the entire entries, as they are much more detailed than what you see here.  They start with actual "woke" references, then follow up with commentary.  Racism, Systemic: 

CIVICS 

DIVERSITY 

INCLUSION 

EQUITY

ONE SUGGESTION FOR MONITORING "THE PROBLEMATIC FOLK"

RealClearEducation seems to be keeping pretty good track of new developments with regard to the campaign to overwhelm schools with Critical Social Justice.  

There is an "American Civics" section below the top news feed.  In the left side bar are "Engaging The 1619 Project", "The 1776 Series" and "Free Speech on Campus".