100% Your Responsibility

Seen on Twitter:

Let's translated that into English:

"Don't tell us YOU'RE good, because we don't want YOU. We're attracted to the toxic guys. So be a good little pathetic loser and explain to the really hot, dangerous, attractive guy how to be non-toxically hot, since we ourselves haven't the slightest clue as to what that actually means. YOU'RE the nerd... YOU figure it out. Then go way, creep."

Seriously, that's how this comes across to the audience for which it's intended. We've seen it a million times before: women who make poor choices and then complain about their poor choices to the better choices they will never choose. This meme is a silly, puerile demand, and putting it in all caps does not make it so. Let's be clear: no one is compelled to be your Knight in Shining Armor, and your vocal pronouncement of such an onus is an embarrassment to the Feminism you claim to embrace.

We have many thousands of years of experience with a singular Human truth: the only person uniquely qualified to turn a man into a good man is a good woman. As uncomfortable as you may find it, there are differences between men and women. The vast majority of men and women are both cognizant of and comfortable with those differences. If you are not, the fault lies not with the differences themselves: it lies within you.

There are people who have trained themselves to believe that simply because our technology has changed, we have changed as well. Humans of millenia past have written on subjects that we ourselves find relevant and fresh today. They were by no means even the slightest bit less intelligent, emotional, logical, or insightful than we are now. In the meantime, our technology has progressed to the point where many of the divisions of labor that were created in prehistory are no longer applicable. It does not follow that our brains have changed apace. A bird, without instruction, is capable of weaving a nest. Very complicated behaviors are hard-wired into the complex meat-computer in their skulls. Do you think that you were spared that? Why? If you have any genuine respect for the science of Biology whatsoever, you must surely realize that the chance of your position being true is infinitesimally small.

The mere fact that a man is a man doesn't make him "toxic". Or, put another way, the fact that you're not a man doesn't make your selfish demands that the world bend to your will any less toxic.  Fair treatment is for everyone. But fair is fair. It is the sole responsibility of each of us to look at ourselves and our surroundings; to objectively assess what and where we are; and to know our own desires. In so doing, sometimes we find that what we want just isn't out there. But that doesn't mean that it's someone else's responsibility to fashion it for you. Just like the inventor who creates according to his or her need, you have the tools and responsibility to create what you need... or to make do. Is that fair...? Yes, because we're all in that boat. It's called being Human.

A Strange Game...

To repurpose a quote from WOPPER (War Games, 1983), Social Outrage is "A STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY."

From HotAir.com:

Wil Wheaton Driven Off Social Media By ‘Very, Very Angry’ Social Justice Warriors

How about a nice game of Chess, Wil?

And in your downtime, you might consider whether all of the people you've attacked and/or supported the attack of were any more fairly treated than you feel yourself to be now.

Scalzi's Logical Fallacy

I'm going to take just a bit of time to illustrate for you a particularly prevalent celebrity logical fallacy.

If you're old enough, you may remember commercials like this:



"I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV..."

This is called a false appeal to authority. It's when someone presents an opinion by someone else who is in turn presented as a "trusted source"... a source who by education, training, and/or experience can give accurate information. In the advertisement above, Peter Bergman is not a doctor. Whatever the benefits of the product are, he's no more qualified to expound on them than any other paid spokesman or consumer. The qualifications he assert ("I play [a doctor] on TV") are irrelevant.

In the Vicks 44 commercial, Peter Bergman did not make that false appeal: the ad writers did. They chose a spokesman that many people in the audience would have seen in a medical setting, acting like a competent doctor. Bergman is there to gain the trust and acceptance of the audience due to this familiarity. Fundamentally, a false appeal to authority is an emotional appeal, not a logical one.

More and more, we've seen celebrities set themselves up as "authorities" on various subjects upon which they are no more competent than any interested amateur. This is a bit distressing, as it's one thing to point to a false authority, and quite another to set yourself up as one. You should, at the very least, know your own limitations...

...which brings me to John Scalzi:

Now, what he says about healthcare and a space force may or may not be true. It's not the purpose of this essay to determine that. What I am addressing is the fact that Scalzi is no more qualified to say it than you are.  The only part of this statement upon which he's an authority is "I FEEL".

Scalzi is indeed a science fiction writer. He has indeed won a Hugo award. It is not my purpose here to criticize his writing skills. But those skills do not translate into real-world expertise in either healthcare or military matters. Nor does his non-fiction writing give a hint of any hidden qualifications in these matters. And if he'd stuck to his qualifications and simply said, "I feel that the United States needs quality health care for its people far more than it needs a 'Space Force'", I wouldn't be writing this post.

So how can a presumably intelligent human being make such a mistake? I can speculate about two reasons. One is subliminally disingenuous. He is trying to persuade, and if a reader is balancing on the fence, perhaps adopting a false air of authority will pull the reader to his side. The second is that he may actually believe himself to be an authority. Reality can be a dangerous thing for fiction writers. It's not their stock in trade. They make up the technologies they write about. They make up the aliens, the politics, the conflicts, the resolutions. They may write on behalf of characters who are flawed but the authors themselves control those flaws... and strengths. A fictional character achieves what the author wants him to achieve because the author wants him to achieve it. Even the physics of science fiction bend to the will of the author. Whenever a science fiction writer utilizes "technologies" such as faster-than-light travel, he or she displays a willingness to set aside reality for the purpose of telling a story.

That's a lot of control. It's a lot of power. It's certainly seductive to imagine that one has as much control and power over the real world. Unfortunately the real world is not as accommodating as a word processor.

Scalzi does correctly state that his actual qualifications are that he writes science fiction. We know that this indicates a willingness to set aside reality for the purpose of telling a story. We also know that a false appeal to authority is an emotional appeal. And we know that intelligent people know their limits. I'm giving Scalzi the benefit of the doubt when I assume that he chose to step outside those limits. Whether what he says here is correct or not, such "qualifications" cannot gain him non-skeptical agreement on logical grounds.

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By the way, this isn't the only logical fallacy present in this tweet, but I leave it as an exercise to the reader to identify the others. You shouldn't need an expert, as logic is something that can be practiced by any competent human brain.

Trayvon Martin: What You Won't Learn from Jay-Z

I'm going to leave this right here:

American Thinker: Paramount Owes America an Apology for Jay-Z's Trayvon Series