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Viliam comments on Open Thread April 11 - April 17, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Clarity 10 April 2016 09:01PM

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Comment author: gjm 13 April 2016 01:25:11PM 1 point [-]

I gravely doubt that anyone has that expression permanently stuck on their face. The image you linked to was obviously created in order to show "SJWs" in a bad light, and I can't imagine that anyone wanting to do that would use typical photos rather than particularly bad-looking photos for that purpose.

(The SJWiest people I know do not generally wear that sort of expression.)

I'm sure you're right that treating impurity and disgustingness as moral is not confined to the political right.

I suspect that the things treated as disgustingly wrong in "social justice" circles tend not to be ones that arouse feelings of disgust, as such, in most people, whereas things treated as disgustingly wrong among traditionalist social conservatives are often more widely felt to be disgusting. To put it differently: I suspect that "moral disgust" takes different forms on the left and on the right: on the left it's usually moral disapproval that has engendered disgust, and on the right it's usually disgust that has engendered moral disapproval.

Comment author: Viliam 14 April 2016 08:23:41AM -2 points [-]

Well, there was more than just one photo; I have seen a few videos of one of them, that's why I said the expression is stuck. The photo was merely most convenient to share to illustrate the point.

But of course the same argument could be applied here, that the videos were selected for displaying the person in bad light.

Comment author: gjm 14 April 2016 11:01:10AM 7 points [-]

And the people were probably selected for being easily displayed in a bad light.

I just did a totally scientific experiment. I determined a perfectly fair and unbiased sample of leading names in social justice by (1) thinking what names come to mind when I think about "SJ" or "feminism" and (2) putting "leading advocate of social justice" into Google. I then looked for pictures of the resulting people (once again, Google is my friend).

In the resulting images, there were maybe one or two wearing something a bit like that sourly-disapproving expression, and none anywhere near as bad as in the image you linked to. Which, by the way, doesn't seem to name the people whose pictures it's showing; are they in fact prominent SJ people?

So I don't know how much is selection of people and how much is selection of photos, but I'm pretty sure that that facial expression is not in fact "The Face of Social Justice" in any useful sense.