Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Explaining Quote Mining to Idiots

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Feb. 16, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

14:31

Explaining Quote Mining to Idiots

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	Recently, Thunderfoot and I have been accused of quote mining certain feminists by idiots and individuals I know who are not idiots and in fact should know better.
	So I thought I'd take the time to explain what quote mining is and categorically refute these claims.
	As usual the sources for this video will be in the description with timestamps where applicable.
	Please feel free to double check my work for yourself.
	The most common definition I've seen for quote mining can be found on Wikipedia.
	The practice of quoting out of context is an informal fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
	Now this is pretty straightforward.
	It's the act of taking something someone has said out of context in order to make it seem to your audience that they are saying something they are actually not.
	So this is the accusation that's being laid against me.
	Have you seen the Troop Hooka pretty much busting out Sargon for fabricating and misquoting Aaron Ra last month?
	I haven't, no, but it doesn't surprise me.
	One of the tactics he seems to have picked up from Thunderfott is quote mining to fuck.
	Well he basically freaking quote lined the hell out of Aaron Raw, completely distorting the meaning of the speech.
	And I have a clip here that exposes it and I'm going to be playing it right now.
	So I have been accused of completely distorting Aaron Ra's view.
	Let's see what the clip is.
	I almost did comment on the last video sent to me by someone that was from this content provider.
	The video had no content of any real substance, so I was going to take a pass, but then I saw this clip and I said, aha!
	that the best place to find the guilty male feminist is in the atheism plus movement.
	If you are not a feminist, you are a sexist, by definition.
	That was atheism plus heavyweight, Aaron Ra, attempting to just simply...
	This content provider had just either outright lied for profit or he was being so grossly negligent in his research that he didn't even bother to get his facts straight on something this straightforward.
	Everyone knows Aaron Ra and myself for that matter spoke out against the Atheism Plus movement when it first came out.
	We'd probably still speak out against it to this day if it still existed.
	So I pulled together the evidence showing that this was the case and using a due journalistic diligence that's rare to see in this world today I contacted Aaron and LaLandra and asked him for a quote.
	Due journalistic diligence indeed.
	He's absolutely right.
	I was under the mistaken impression that Aaron Raw was a supporter of Atheism Plus.
	I was wrong.
	Which is why I posted a correction in the video description shortly after the video went live and I found this new information.
	This is what I always do with an update.
	So when people look in their subscription box and they've seen one of my videos, they would also see the word update in capitals in the description.
	To be fair, I could probably go and find the timestamp of the place where the update is taking place and put it on as an annotation, but I'm fucking lazy.
	Just because this chap didn't see it doesn't mean it wasn't there.
	But that wasn't The issue I was responding to.
	The issue, the accusation was that I had quote-mined Aaron Ra.
	If you're willing to comment on Ken Hovind, then you should be willing to comment on this.
	Well, I agree with you.
	So let me explain why you're wrong.
	Racists assume limitations on someone's potential based on their ethnicity, and they impose restrictions when they can to enforce that.
	Sexists do the same thing, this time applying double standards according to gender.
	That's why women have traditionally been denied certain jobs, been denied equal pay when they can do those jobs, why there are double standards for women's social behavior as opposed to men, and why there is a glass ceiling preventing women and minorities from reaching the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.
	There is one significant way that racism and sexism are different.
	There is no word for a non-racist, but there is a word for a non-sexist.
	And what do we think that Aaron Ra thinks the word for a non-sexist is?
	A couple weeks ago on an atheist podcast, someone told me that the reason was there's so many different definitions, and that I'm using the wrong one.
	That just because you're not a feminist doesn't mean that you're a sexist.
	My friend DPR Jones jumped on that comment, like the lawyer that he is, and pulled up a half a dozen different dictionaries, all of which gave the exact same one and only definition that I use.
	A feminist is one who advocates equal rights and treatment for women.
	That's it.
	That's the only definition there is or ever was.
	Although there is a colloquialism that feminism is the radical idea that women are equal to.
	Now, if you look at the actual definition in the negative, you'll see that a non-feminist is someone who does not advocate gender equality, meaning that they won't accept gender inequality, which is exactly what sexism is, and I'm right again.
	If you are not a feminist, you are a sexist by definition.
	I don't see how I can make it any more clear that Aaron Ra actually believes that if you are not a feminist, you're a sexist, and he has laid out his rationale for it.
	So if I just take the end quote.
	If you are not a feminist, you are a sexist by definition.
	This is not a misrepresentation of Aaron Ra's views.
	He went into great detail explaining why he holds this view.
	To claim I misrepresented him is intellectually dishonest.
	But I do agree with this chap in one regard.
	They were coming from a position that there was absolutely no point in addressing what this content provider said because there's no reasoning with someone like this or his fan base.
	And I agreed with them.
	I knew that going into the conversation.
	But I was coming from the position that, like with the creationists or snake handlers or the House of Representatives, you know, people who hold irrational beliefs with a dogmatic certainty, it's our duty as those who pursue the goals of the adoption of reason, critical thinking, and the pursuit of knowledge by everyone that we expose ignorance and corruption wherever we see it.
	I couldn't agree more.
	Every word really is projection, isn't it?
	The desperate, desperate attempt to protect these dogmatic beliefs leads to these levels of self-delusion.
	And I definitely think that the very brave feminists in the atheist movement, who were so quick to call out creationism but won't have their own dogmas challenged should keep running.
	So the second accusation was against Thunderfoot for quote mining an ethosian when he used this short clip in one of his videos.
	Everything is sexist.
	Everything is racist.
	Everything is homophobic.
	You have to point it all out.
	He used this quote in a satirical way in a video lambasting Anita Sarkeesian.
	Here's the quote in its full context.
	Each video in this new series will be between 10 and 20 minutes long with well-researched, in-depth analysis.
	And you'll see study after study showing that I'm not just making this up out of thin air.
	After all, because everything is sexist.
	Everything is sexist.
	Everything is racist.
	Everything is homophobic.
	And you have to point it all out.
	Yes, that's right.
	If everything is sexist, then the United Nations and Google IPs.
	The allegation is that Anita Sarkeesian does not actually hold these views.
	And they go on to prove this by playing the clip in its wider context.
	I'm intrigued by Anita.
	I'll come back to you, Jamaica.
	I'm intrigued by Anita saying she had to learn about systems.
	You had to learn about the sociology of systems and structural change.
	And it was obviously quite a journey for you.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I sort of joke about how it was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me and also the most frustrating for everyone around me.
	Because when you start learning about systems, everything is sexist.
	Everything is racist.
	Everything is homophobic.
	And you have to point it all out to everyone all the time.
	So there's a good year of my life.
	There's a good year of my life where it was just I was the most obnoxious person to be around.
	And then you settle into it.
	You start to understand like, oh, people have been living within these systems and it was just sort of a liberating moment for me.
	That clip absolutely proves that Thunderfoot was not, quote, mining Anita Sarkeesian.
	She literally thinks we are living in these systems and went around pointing it out to everyone for a year until she realized that people have been living within these systems and therefore and do not see them.
	They do not think everything is racist and sexist and her pointing it out at every given opportunity was turning her into a giant fucking downer.
	She was acting towards them as if there was some kind of imminent danger they needed to be warned about by virtue of these systems being apparently racist and sexist.
	It's not that she doesn't think they aren't, it's that it's not worth losing friendships over her being insufferable.
	And while she may have been being hyperbolic for effect, she does still think that everything is racist and everything is sexist.
	At least within the sphere of gender relations, which is what we're discussing when we're discussing feminism.
	The video we've just watched was mirrored by a chap called Zenistrad because he agreed with the points made in it.
	And he then went on to make this defense of said video.
	Recently, however, I did get a bunch of comments saying that it wasn't a quote mine because the original context still left the original meaning intact.
	Now, for those of you who don't realize what it was, what Thunderfoot was doing was basically he was taking a clip of Anita Sarkeesian of saying everything is racist, everything is sexist, everything is homophobic, and you have to point it all out and presenting that as though it was proof that she actually believes that everything is racist, sexist, or homophobic, etc.
	The full context of the quote, if you actually look at the clip, was her talking about how she behaved when she initially started learning about social systems and how this was the attitude that she initially took.
	But then she realized that taking that attitude made her really, really obnoxious.
	And of course, why wouldn't it make you obnoxious?
	Everyone's going to think that you're kind of obnoxious if you go around thinking that literally everything in the world is sexist.
	And that she kind of had to learn that she had to pick her battles, so to speak.
	And basically, after that, she also said that she kind of settled into that, whatever that means, and realized that people live in these social systems.
	So they're naturally going to be hostile.
	Now, people took this to mean that she still actually believed that everything is racist and everything is sexist and everything is homophobic, and are saying that the full context of the quote where she admitted that she still acknowledged the existence of these social systems means that she still thinks that everything is racist or sexist or homophobic, etc.
	Which she literally does think she made it abundantly clear and you accurately represented and it still is abundantly clear.
	But I really like the next part of the video where Zenistrad explains that that can't be what she thinks because that would be really fucking stupid.
	And he goes into great detail about this to show why people are in opposition to Anita Sarkeesian.
	When you're talking about social systems, you're talking about generalities.
	A social system is a broad pattern of interrelationships and institutions.
	And when you're talking about broad patterns, it's something that will be useful in predicting certain behaviors or certain social interactions, but it's never going to be 100% able to predict every single person's behavior.
	So right away, if you're talking about a social system, it is not something that you can be used.
	A social system is not something that can be used to predict patterns 100%.
	It is not something that can be used to claim that everything is sexist if you're talking about a social system that perpetuates sexism.
	Because if you do that, then you are taking something that is by definition a generality, a broad observation, and applying it to be universal.
	You're applying it universally to every single thing individually.
	And that's not how social systems work.
	And I think anyone who has studied social systems would know that.
	Yes, that is exactly why she is wrong, Zenistrat.
	You...
	You have hit the nail on the head.
	It would be stupid to do this.
	She is an ideologue.
	She doesn't really understand the things she's talking about, and she is misapplying them constantly.
	It's just like Lacey Green saying everything is problematic.
	Truth is, literally everyone and everything is problematic.
	And the feminist ideologue solution to this is that the systems must change.
	It's important to acknowledge problematic aspects and not make excuses for them, then initiate the discussion about what could and should change.
	This is precisely what Anita Sarkeesian was at the UN advocating for.
	Sexism and misogyny did not start with the internet, right?
	It's been around for a long time.
	And feminists for decades have been challenging these male-dominated systems.
	So what we're seeing is that the internet is providing new ways to commit the same types of violence.
	And so understanding that this is a cultural, that we really need to see a big cultural shift in how we deal with this.
	Creating a cultural shift, I think, takes a great number of approaches.
	And we've been hearing a lot about systemic change, and that makes me really happy because I think that that's really how we have to do this.
	Zenistrad, these feminist ideologues literally think that these systems are sexist and need to change.
	These are their literal opinions.
	Nothing is being misrepresented.
	These people are stupid and wrong.

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