Scott Aaronson: Difference between revisions

{{quote|My recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man, or best of all, completely asexual, so that I could simply devote my life to math, like my hero Paul Erdös did. Anything, really, other than the curse of having been born a heterosexual male, which for me, meant being consumed by desires that one couldn’t act on or even admit without running the risk of becoming an objectifier or a stalker or a harasser or some other creature of the darkness.|Scott Aaronson}}

 

{{quote|All this time, I faced constant reminders that the males who didn’t spend months reading and reflecting about [[feminism]] and their own shortcomings—even the ones who went to the opposite extreme, who engaged in what you called “good old-fashioned ass-grabbery”—actually had success that way. The same girls who I was terrified would pepper-spray me and call the police if I looked in their direction, often responded to the crudest advances of the most Neanderthal of men by accepting those advances. Yet it was I, the nerd, and not the Neanderthals, who needed to check his privilege and examine his hidden entitlement!|Scott Aaronson}}

{{quote|But let me draw your attention to one difference: the number of academics who study problems like the one I had is approximately zero. There are no task forces devoted to it, no campus rallies in support of the sufferers, no therapists or activists to tell you that you’re not alone or it isn’t your fault. There are only therapists and activists to deliver the opposite message: that you are alone and it is your privileged, entitled, male fault.|Scott Aaronson}}

{{quote|Still, on the merits, is there any relevant difference between the two cases beyond: “undesirability” of the disabled, fat, and trans should be critically examined and interrogated, because those people are objects of progressive sympathy; whereas “undesirability” of nerdy white and Asian males should be taken as a brute fact or even celebrated, because those people are objects of progressive contempt?|Scott Aaronson<ref>https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3766</ref>}}

{{quote|Here’s the central point that I think Robin failed to understand: society, today, is not on board even with the minimal claim that the suicidal suffering of men left behind by the [[sexual revolution]] really exists—or, if it does, that it matters in the slightest or deserves any sympathy or acknowledgment whatsoever.|Scott Aaronson}}

{{quote|And I think the answer is simply that no one ever hears from “moderate incels.”  And the reason, in turn, becomes obvious the instant you think about it.  Would you volunteer to march at the front of the Lifelong Celibacy Awareness Parade?  Or to be identified by name as the Vice President of the League of Peaceful and Moderate Incels?  Would you accept such a social death warrant?  It takes an individual with extraordinary moral courage, such as Scott Alexander, even to write anything whatsoever about this issue that tries to understand or help the sufferers rather than condemn them.  For this reason—i.e., purely, 100% a selection effect, nothing more—the only times the wider world ever hears anything about “incels” is when some despicable lunatic like Rodger or Minassian snaps and murders the innocent.  You might call this the worst PR problem in the history of the world.|Scott Aaronson}}

{{quote|People of conscience will need to be extremely vigilant against motte-and-bailey tactics—wherein society’s opinion-makers will express their desire for all “incels” to be silenced or fired or removed from the gene pool or whatever, obviously having in mind all romantically frustrated male nerds (all of whom they despise), and will fall back when challenged (and only when challenged) on the defense that they only meant the violence-loving misogynists.|Scott Aaronson}}