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As an old, I don't really play video games. But it's weird to me that the video game industry is so woke considering that the user base is so anti-woke. Why aren't there anti-woke game publishers?
Proposed answer: Political selection of devs.
Video games companies need developers who are competent, willing to work for low wages, and willing to tolerate long working hours. This is a tough sell. Competent devs in the US can easily earn 200-500k with cushy working conditions. Why get paid less than half as much and be subjected to semiannual death marches?
As a result of this rotten bargain, the men who choose this field will tend to be young, not have families, and be fixated on video games. Frankly, this is going to select for autists. To the extent that autism and MtF trans are correlated, I would expect that video game developers are trans at a rate at least far above the norm. This might explain a lot of the soy-type politics espoused by major game studios.
There's clearly a market opportunity for non-woke game publishers. But could they get devs? Conservative men tend to work in the field that pays them the best, allowing them to support their family. They aren't out there making children's toys.
Does this explanation make sense? Or is this just a $20 bill sitting on the sidewalk?
I mean, it's the political orientation of devs.
From personal experience, the vast majority of competent and brilliant software engineers are either progressive or turbo-liberals. It's an unfortunate truth, but conservatives have to face reality here -- there is no hidden trove of right-leaning engineers waiting in the wings to take over.
Yeah, the defenestration of Brendan Eich was one of the first big moves of the Awokening. High level devs just tend to be lefties, it doesn't have to be all of them just enough to make it SEEM like its all of them and keep righties in the closet (and Damore the ones who don't), and the unaligned will mostly go along with whichever group seems to be in the majority.
At the time of
EichgateEichpot DomeEich MobilierLet's go Brendanwhatever we're calling the matter, I was just beginning to follow the rationalist sphere; the wokists, then called 'social justice warriors' or 'SJWs', had not yet burned all their credibility, and I still looked with favour on the movement, despite dis-agreeing with it when I felt it was wrong.I thus held the following Views on their actions:
You made a version of this argument when we were discussing immigration. It seems that you have a strong belief that there is no acceptable reason (without animus) to treat one group of people separately from another. Is this correct?
Heterosexual and homosexual people cannot be regarded as literally exactly the same. There is a clear characteristic that distinguishes them: having intercourse with members of the same sex vs the opposite sex. Likewise, a heterosexual marriage is not literally exactly the same as a homosexual marriage: in one, two people of the same sex are marrying, in the other, two members of the opposite sex.
Anyone can regard this distinction as being relevant or as being irrelevant. Someone who believes that marriage is primarily about financial cooperation, or about publicly celebrating subjective affection, may regard the distinction as irrelevant. Equally, someone who regards marriage as being the joining of two complementary sexes to form a well-rounded whole, or as the basis for the creation and nurturing of genetic offspring, will see the homosexual / heterosexual distinction as highly relevant. No animus is required, though of course it may be present.
And this applies in all sorts of cases. Consider paraplegic sports. There is a distinction between an able-bodied person pedalling a bicycle, and a paraplegic operating an electrically powered bicycle. Depending on what you think sports are for, one might regard this difference as important, and split these cases into separate leagues, or one might not. Discrimination between them would not necessarily indicate animus against the disabled, but instead, say, a belief in the importance of fair competition as opposed to the importance of building community spirit.
In short, I do not believe it is sensible to maintain a moral system that regards evidence of discrimination as evidence of animus or unfairness, because people differ on so many axes that a reasonable person may find relevant.
I believe that right and wrong consist in how one treats individual human beings; 'committing a wrong against a group' is an abstraction of wrongs committed against individual members of that group. Thus I would phrase it more as "Membership in a group is not an acceptable reason to treat one person worse than another."
The distinction is irrelevant with regard to the State. For legitimate government purposes, 'same/different genital configuration' of the persons marrying is approximately as relevant as 'same/different astrological sign', or 'same/different final digit in Social Security Number'.
The government's interests in marriage largely involve 'financial cooperation', along with things like 'this person is in hospital, unconscious; whom do we ask about their wishes: the person with whom they have lived for two decades, or their parents who kicked them out when they were 16?'.
'The joining of two complementary sexes to form a well-rounded whole', being, if not a religious belief per se, at least religion-adjacent, is not a legitimate foundation for government policy. 'Nurturing of genetic offspring' is also, while easily pattern-matched to the legitimate government interest in ensuring that children are cared for by someone, not a valid argument against same-sex marriage, as a same-sex couple can adopt children or conceive via surrogacy or gamete donation, and opposite-sex couples in which one or both members are infertile are not excluded from government marriage.
This applies to civil marriage; a church which teaches the doctrine of 'complementary sexes forming a well-rounded whole' and thus only solemnising opposite-sex marriages is a different matter. There were proposals made that the State withdraw from the business of marriage entirely, issue 'civil unions' to couples without regard to gender, and leave 'marriage' to religious organisations, which could set whatever criteria they darn well pleased.
If such a proposal had been on the ballot, support thereof would not constitute animus against gay people.
Everything about this is wrong by the standards of any civilization in western history. The government has always had a sacral function and the sacred rites aren’t always theological in nature but always have a foundation in ideas of right ordering. Every western government has been very concerned with the legitimate propagation of citizen children. Etc, etc.
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I don't believe "group membership" was ever a significant factor of the issue. It was always the characteristics of the specific individuals involved. E.g., nobody ever campaigned against allowing a gay man to get married to a woman.
This is only true if you take for granted a very modern libertine view of the role of government. In reality, "religion-adjacent" concepts like morality, justice, and the promotion of human flourishing have more or less always been the proper aim of law, since prehistory. The movement for gay marriage won not by persuading some people that these are illegitimate ends but by persuading them that gay marriage does not in fact have any negative consequences along those lines. However, not everyone was persuaded by that judgment, and it is not an act of hatred to be skeptical, a mere handful of years hence, that that foretold negative consequences will never manifest.
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That's simply not the case. The state has a vested interest in stable family configurations that produce children that grow up to be healthy citizens, and that's exactly why marriage is a recognized concept in the first place.
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But worse ceteris paribus, yes? I’m saying that the ceteris are not necessarily paribus, and which ceteris you consider relevant is a matter of judgement and of individual conscience.
From where I am standing, you have asserted a set of conditions for what the government’s legitimate interests are, and what information it may or may not consider when dealing with people. On what basis do you make these assertions, and why should I consider them compelling? Do you truly believe that nobody could disagree with you on any of them them except through hatred of those involved?
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