It's hard to not view this as whining about the failed gentrification of Reddit (especially with the biker bar analogy).
I'm struggling to think of any successful social network sites that are heavy-handed with moderation. Certainly twitter, facebook, ect. get the same accusations of harboring "unethical" groups.
There's probably not a good way to succinctly prove my capacity for empathy to you, but I think trying to link social grace and empathy is also incorrect in general.
Assume for the sake of argument that, as you suggested, you've identified a statement in the course of conversation that someone else might find offensive. What's your recourse and how does it benefit society?
If you've simply misinterpreted the person's meaning (which I'd argue is more often than not the case), you probably force them to spend time clarifying and maybe they endeavor to spend more time and effort to avoid similar misunderstanding in the future - all to avoid the hypothetical situation where they might have actually offended someone (who could have just asked for similar clarification).
Perhaps instead you've actually identified some unintentionally disclosed socially unacceptable bias that the person holds. The offense you've taken is still imaginary (I guess you'd argue it's actually empathetic) so chances are you're not in a good position to reshape that person's belief system - especially since hiding the belief in the first place suggests they know it's socially unacceptable. Rather, you're more likely just teaching the person to hide their bias more convincingly. I think most people find hidden bias much more insidious.
The best case, I suppose, is shaming some intentionally offensive statement. This one seems reasonable to me. However, if the statement was intentionally offensive, you probably didn't need the mental gymnastics to identify it in the first place.
I'm open to any counter-arguments you might have; I just thought I'd clarify my own stance since your accusation seemed a little harsh.
The arguments to keep building it were almost as stupid as the arguments to stop building it.
I recall hateful accusations of "mismanagement" that boiled down to supplying liquor at a Christmas party. Drunk physicists... the horror. Oh, and the fact that our contribution to the ISS had roughly the same cost estimate meant... for some reason, that it was prudent to choose between to the two.
The consistent trend going all the way back to the Payne Fund Studies is that someone somewhere thinks they can show some alarmist correlation between media and behavior.
However, the trend always disappears once you've accounted for shoddy research and disregarded short-term effects (i.e. hormone responses). I could cherry-pick you some recent results; the most popular lately seem to be video games and violence or video games and sexism. It wouldn't be very convincing since you can ostensibly find a variety of papers that say exactly the opposite. I urge you to browse through the google scholar results and draw your own conclusions.
Please do note: I'm arguing a subtle distinction here between subconscious subversion and conscious consideration. After seeing a horrifying documentary about war, I might consciously change my philosophy on death because the source is reliable and the information is believable/consistent. However, seeing silly deaths in a video game can't influence me in the opposite way because the source is dismissible and the conclusion is fantastical.
So, to answer your second question in an unsatisfying way: I think it's clear that people change their own philosophies.
When are we going to accept the scientific evidence that video games (and movies before them (and books before them)) don't fundamentally change a person's philosophy? Books in particular are really good at helping you explore ideas and challenge your preconceived notions, but the subconscious effect is akin to hypnosis, completely incapable of making you do or believe something that you ordinarily wouldn't have.
Concern trolling makes for a good read I guess. People are wired to always be on the lookout for the next good thing to be concerned about.
As someone who fancies libertarianism but who's wary of its effectiveness in practice, I'm hoping we get to see this impromptu social experiment play out long enough to gather some useful statistics.
Stop buying bullshit narratives against state funded science.
Rocket test stands are not limited to a single rocket model. The choice in 2010 was to spend $57m finishing a project that will undoubtedly see future use, or to abandon a $292m investment with 0 return.
Look for SpaceX to jump on this opportunity since they already lease testing facilities from Stennis.
I sure hope the Feynman lectures from Caltech aren't next.
People seem really quick to forget that fundamental science endures and political correctness is fleeting. I wonder what the next world threatening catastrophe to make people remember will be.
I read it differently; "this stunt" is ambiguous in context.
In any case, I think you're misunderstanding the nature of the problem. The danger of "doxxing" is that people get overwhelmed by a flood of negative attention from many different people. In most cases, none of the "harassing" individuals actually do enough individual harassment to make the action illegal. You can't go after the doxxer because releasing the information was completely legal, and you can't go after the mob because none of the individuals have done enough to constitute a crime.
You could certainly go after a guy who sends a knife; pretty sure just mailing a knife is illegal in most places.
If I unwittingly hurled innuendo I sincerely apologize and ask you to point it out so I can avoid doing so in the future.
However, your other contentions don't make any sense to me. Everyone is entitled to their identity; rather, the contention was that devaluing her internet identity wasn't worth the financial gain. The internet makes new identities trivial to acquire and Sarkeesian's wasn't of any particular value before the controversy so I don't think there's any logic there.
Similarly, no one suggested that you should find credibility in anonymity. I tried very hard to make my argument stand on its own by excluding any evidence not verifiable through third parties.
Seems like a pretty decent chunk of change (especially considering that she's still taking donations on http://www.feministfrequency.com/ and getting paid for speaking - both hinging on her continued relevance in the media)
I also think you're forgetting that she can simply change identities online if she wishes (anonymity protects the good guys too!).
Anonymous death threats made against celebrities aren't new (twitter is just a new, highly public, medium). No one can say with certainty she's not in physical danger, but no one can say with certainty she's not going to be struck by lightning either.
I don't care to conjecture about the frequency or origination of the threats because I don't think there's enough information and, frankly, it's not that important.
I can tell you I'd happily endure electronic harassment for that much money, especially with experts telling me there's no risk of physical harm.
I know these are polarizing issues, but please take a moment to consider the credibility of the individuals involved and their respective economic incentives. I think that, given objective consideration of the facts, it's clear that Anita Sarkeesian is intentionally fueling controversy for financial gain.
Her claims of life-threatening danger have been repeatedly refuted by law enforcement officials. From the article,
"USU police, in conjunction with several teams of state and federal law enforcement experts, determined that there was no threat to students, staff or the speaker, so no alert was issued."
"If you are able to insert in a publication the name of a nonexistent author in a publication, who will guarantee that even the scientific contents have been examined with care?"
Reviewers are typically asked to disregard the authors of a submission,
"Your review should be directed at the paper, not the author"
- Jay Smith, "The Task of the Referee", 1990
Scientists can get away with not considering the authors precisely because they base their evaluation on careful examination of the contents. This is a better example of selective attention than it is of lapses in scientific review.
I don't think I've ever misread that style (usually the function being called makes it obvious), but it relies on short-circuit evaluation which doesn't carry over to a lot of languages - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-circuit_evaluation
C is particularly dangerous because it will normally short-circuit, but the standard doesn't require it and in rare cases the compiler will optimize it out.
I'm struggling to think of any successful social network sites that are heavy-handed with moderation. Certainly twitter, facebook, ect. get the same accusations of harboring "unethical" groups.