Category: Ethics

Some claim that we are living in a post-true era. In support of this claim, people often use the example of the linked success of Trump and fake news.  This does make a good case that untruth has triumphed over truth. But, then again, the truth seems to remain.

Imagine people tenting in the jungle of the real. Within the tent, people create narratives and are rewarded or punished based on whether others believe their tales. Or at least find them useful. Some people realized that it did not matter whether their tales were true and found that lies were often consumed like candy. They became convinced that all that mattered was their stories and the success they brought. But they were wrong.

Outside the tent, stalking the jungle of the real, is a tiger. The tiger does not care about the narratives. The thin fabric is no protection from its claws. The tiger might pass by the tent while doing nothing. But someday, perhaps soon, the tiger will tear through fabric and its hunger will not be satisfied by even the sweetest of lies.

While a metaphor is not an argument, the tale of the tiger can be made into one. The tent is the society we construct that serves the thin wall between us and the rest of world (the jungle of the real). The people in the tent are us and the untrue narratives are the lies. The tiger is truth, which is how things really are. As in the metaphor, no matter what lies people tell, the truth remains true. While people can profit from lies and avoid the consequences, reality remains unchanged. For example, consider the narrative woven by the sugar industry about sugar, fats and heart disease.  This tale, told within the tent, has shaped the American diet for decades and has served the sugar industry well. But reality is not changed by these narratives and the consequences are serious. Tobacco companies provide another example and perhaps the best example is climate change. Some claim that climate change is a lie told by a global conspiracy of scientists. Others think that its denial is a lie spread at the behest of those who profit from fossil fuels. One side is weaving a false narrative, but the tiger is out there.

It might be claimed that this is not really a post-truth era in the sense of there being no truth. Rather, the post truth era is defined by the fact that truth matters little, if at all, in some contexts. In one sense, this is true. Trump was, for example, has been rewarded for his relentless untruths and has a good chance of being elected in 2024. Some who peddle fake news and other false content have enjoyed great financial success, thus showing there can be profit in lies. On this view, Ben Franklin is wrong: honesty is no longer the best policy, lying is. At least in the context of politics and business.

In another sense, this is not true. While lying has proven an effective short-term strategy, it will ultimately run up against the truth. Going back to the metaphor, the tiger is always out there. As an example, while the false narrative denying climate change has resulted in short term success, it will prove to be a long-term disaster. Those who believe it is real claim that the danger is climate change. Those who deny climate change claim disaster will result from the catastrophic environmental policies imposed by “the liberals.” Both agree reality will impose a disaster but disagree on its nature. While both cannot be right, they are both right that ignoring the truth will be a disaster.

It could be countered that I am wrong because I am considering the impact of such lies broadly. That is, I am focused on how their consequences can impact people in general. I should, one might argue, focus on the advantages to those engaged in the untruths. In philosophical terms, this is the claim that one should embrace ethical egoism, which is the moral theory that what is right is to maximize value for oneself. Alternatively, one could just accept selfishness as a virtue.

While an unskilled liar can end up in trouble, those with a talent for untruth can benefit from their lies while the harmful consequences impact others. One way this can happen is that the harm can lie in the future. For example, lies about the climate will not harm the liars in the elite classes today for they will be dead before the greatest consequences would impact them. This can also happen when the harms occur to other people and liar avoids them through being far from the harms. For example, lies about the safety of a town’s water would not impact the health of a governor who does not live in that town.

A third way is that the liar might be able to protect themselves through their wealth or position. For example, a rich straight white Christian who lies about things impacting Muslims, blacks, gays or poor people does not reap the harms of those lies. These consequences fall upon the targets of their lies.

A selfish reply to this is that most of us are more likely to be harmed by broad lies than benefited by them. This is because most of us care about our relatives who will be alive when we are gone, because most of us live in the impact zone of lies, and because most of us lack the status and wealth to escape the consequences of broad lies. As such, we have a selfish interest in opposing lying as it  will hurt us and those we care about.

An altruistic reply is that we should care about other people and the harm they suffer. This can also be argued for on utilitarian moral grounds—that this lying will create more unhappiness than happiness for everyone. There is also the religious argument. Many religions purport to endorse the truth and enjoin us to show compassion for others, to love each other as God has loved us. As such, the post-truth world should be rejected. Honesty is, as Ben said, the best policy.

Put roughly, vegetarians are defined by their refusal to eat meat. Vegans take it further and refuse to eat any animal products. There are, as vegetarians and vegans will tell you, many varieties of each and some involve nuances about what is and is not acceptable to eat. For example, some vegans will consume honey while others will not.  While this oversimplifies things, people tend to embrace these views for two broad reasons. Moral vegans/vegetarians are motivated by the belief that it is morally wrong to harm animals. Some also consider the total harm arising from the use of animals as products, such as the environmental damage and wastefulness of animal farming. The second reason is health. Some vegans/vegetarians are motivated by concerns about their physical well-being; they think consuming animal products is unhealthy. It is obviously possible to have both (and other) motivations, but I will focus on ethics in context of defining meat.

From a moral standpoint, the concern about meat (and other animal products) is the harm done to the animals. For example, the creation of veal and foie gras are both moral nightmares of animal suffering. The production of eggs and milk is also often terrible for the chickens and cows. In the case of animals harvested for their meat, even if they are treated well, they are still killed and consumed. Since vegans and vegetarians need to eat to avoid death, they turn to eating plants and plant products.

The moral justification for eating plants, which are living things, is usually based on the claim that plants do not suffer. They lack, it is argued, the sort of nervous system needed to even feel pain. As such they either lack moral status or have a status that allows them to be consumed. This is even though plants are alive. Interesting, and to the annoyance of some vegans, there has been research suggesting that plants have some degree of awareness or even intelligence. This, if true, would raise an moral concern for ethical vegans/vegetarians: if it is wrong to eat meat because of animal suffering, then it would also seem to be wrong to eat plants that can suffer. This concern can be addressed by using an argument analogous to one used to morally justify consuming meat: even if they are aware and have some intelligence, these qualities are insufficient to grant plants a moral status that would make eating them wrong. This could be done without hypocrisy since moral lines can be drawn in a principled way. For example, most people who eat meat would not eat humans because they make a moral distinction between humans and animals. A vegan/vegetarian could draw a line between plants and animals. The concern could also be addressed by eating foods that do not cause any suffering. Interestingly, one option would be synthetic meat.

While synthetic meat would be alive, it would not be part of an animal (or any living thing) that has the capacity to suffer. This would seem to make synthetic meat a non-meat from a moral viewpoint, at least from the standpoint of a moral vegan or vegetarian. Then again, a vegan could counter that the cells needed to grow the synthetic meat were taken from an animal, which would make it unacceptable. An obvious reply is that taking a few cells from an animal would not hurt it or cause suffering. This problem could also be addressed by using source animals that would be well cared for and allowed to die natural deaths. In this case, the moral objection would have to be abstract, that there is just something wrong with consuming any animal product, regardless of any other factors such as suffering.

One way to address this concern would be to create completely synthetic meat that has no direct link to an animal. This synthetic product would be identical to meat but would be completely artificial. As such, no animal would be harmed directly or indirectly in its creation and thus it would morally be not-meat. The logic would be that if meat is murder and synthetic meat is not murder, then it is not meat. While this is a bit silly, it does have a certain appeal.

It could be objected that it is not the ethics of meat that makes meat what it is. To use an analogy, a stolen potato would be morally different from an honestly acquired potato, but both would still be potatoes. As such, it could be argued that even “moral” meat would still be meat, and thus unacceptable to a certain sort of vegan or vegetarian. The challenge would be, of course, to show what it is about such “moral” meat that would still make it immoral. One obvious approach would be the costs of producing it. Synthetic meat is and probably will remain inefficient relative to using resources to grow plant-based foods. However, this would apply to anything wasteful of resources and would not be meat specific. It would, for example, apply to the wasteful process of growing almonds in California.

Given the above, synthetic meat would be morally distinct from classic meat. On the one hand, it could be contended that this would make it not-meat. As such, vegans and vegetarians could eat it and still claim to not be eating meat. On the other hand, it could simply be claimed that it would simply be moral meat and that vegans and vegetarians could not eat it without ceasing to be vegans or vegetarians. Based on the above, synthetic meat would obviously avoid the moral concerns about the suffering of animals. But it does raise moral concerns about its production, but these are not unique concerns and would apply to the production of any food.

 

In the previous essay I discussed the invention of the concept of race in the context of Modern era philosophers. In this essay, I’ll take a brief look at defending Modern era philosophers against the charge of racism. While some might assume all Modern era white European philosophers were racists simply because they were white, this would be a mistake. To assume that a white person must be racist simply because they are white would be both unreasonable and prejudiced. This holds true during our time as well as the Modern era.

 If a philosopher is to be justly accused of racism, there must be evidence to back this claim up. To infer a philosopher (or anyone) must be racist because there is no evidence they were not racist would be to fall victim to the fallacy of Appeal to Ignorance (a variant of the Burden of Proof fallacy). This fallacy occurs when it is inferred that the absence of evidence against a claim serves as evidence that the claim is true. One example of this is when someone infers that psychic powers exist because no one has been able to conclusively prove that no one has such powers. While someone might have psychic powers and a philosopher might be a racist, without positive evidence for these qualities there would be no justification for accepting such claims. As with settling guilt or innocence in the context of crime, what is needed is evidence of that crime and not evidence of innocence. As an accusation of racism can bring negative consequences, it is reasonable to accept that a person is innocent of racism until proven guilty. But even if a philosopher is shown to be racist, there are those who would defend them.

A common defense used when an historical figure is accused of racism is to argue that while they were racist, they are to be excused because racism was seen as morally and socially acceptable (perhaps even laudable) at that time. This is usually presented in terms of how the racist was shaped by their time and that it would unreasonable to expect them to have questioned the values of their time.

But, while people are influenced by their time and it can be difficult to question the values of one’s time, this is a especially weak defense for philosophers who seem to have been racists. Philosophical arguments against slavery and prejudice existed long before the Modern era, philosophers routinely question the dominant values of their time, and there was moral opposition to racism and slavery during the Modern era. As such, this is not much of an excuse or defense for philosophers, especially those who were concerned with ethics. That said, if we think about how we might be condemned and criticized by future generations, we might feel some sympathy towards historical figures who were not too terrible.

While this is anecdotal evidence from my own experience, I have seen the dominant values change significantly over the course of my life. Behavior and language that was acceptable in my youth are condemned today. I recall, with embarrassment, some of what I did and said in my youth. These were well within the social norms of the time and usually things that I had been taught as being correct behavior.  Fortunately, I did not do anything that would be considered awful even by today’s standards, but they would certainly be justly criticized today. As such, I do understand how people can be shaped by their times and how challenging it is to question the values one is raised and enmeshed in. I also now understand how values can change over time so that what was once acceptable becomes condemned. Living and reflecting provides an excellent lesson in how social values shift. This experience has also made it clear to me that we are likely to be criticized and condemned by future generations for behavior we now consider acceptable.

For example, imagine that future humans broadly embrace the ethics of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and reject the exploitation of animals. They look back on the 21st century with disgust, condemning the widely accepted practices of eating meat, wearing leather, testing products and drugs on animals, and other misdeeds against animals. Arguments against exploiting animals are well known today and anyone reading this cannot claim ignorance of the existence of such arguments. If you are now a meat eater, you probably think this is morally acceptable. But, in this hypothetical future, most people would see this behavior as monstrous and wicked.

We can also imagine future generations who look at our treatment of the environment, our economic systems, and our opolitical systems as wicked and worthy only of condemnation. Even those who were not actively involved in these activities could, of course, be condemned as complicit. For example, (unless you are Jeff Bezos) you did not create the working conditions under which Amazon employees had to urinate in bottles. But if you have not been fighting against this abusive situation, then you might be considered complicit. Also, there are a vast number of evils in the world that you and I do not actively fight because we cannot: we do not have enough time or resources to fight or condemn every evil or wrong. The same was certainly true of people in the past.

Among the many people who might be condemned by future generations would be philosophers, including myself. As such, a future professor might need to research me and assess whether I should be condemned as a meat-eater, an owner of leather shoes and belts, and someone who not only purchased on Amazon but sold books through the company. This leads to the question of what should be done about Modern era philosophers who prove to have been racists (or otherwise morally defective, such as being sexists). This should, perhaps, be tempered by thoughts about what future generations should do about us should they find us morally problematic. In my next essay, I will endeavor to address this challenge

Two ways I track the culture war are my Facebook feed and memos about changes to higher education. One recent conflict was the Great Light Beer Battle of 2023. For those unfamiliar with this significant and world changing battle, TikToker Dylan Mulvaney received a custom can of Bud Light featuring her face and did a short promo spot. Since Mulvaney is a trans person, there was a reaction from many on the right.  Kid Rock added to the discussion of corporate marketing tactics by purchasing boxes of Bud Light and shooting them with a submachinegun. For those unfamiliar with gun laws, it is legal to own automatic weapons—you just need to navigate your way through the legal maze and pay the appropriate fee. Others limited their rage to words rather than bullets. This is but one example of some on the right being outraged by “woke” companies. As with all other battle, we will move on as memory fades, and they find something new.

Those who know me know I have long argued in favor of a broad and deep conception of free speech, largely stolen from J.S. Mill. People have the right to freedom of expression, through this is limited by the principle of harm. While there are gray areas of harm that can be debated, following Aristotle’s guidance about virtues, I prefer to err on the side of freedom. As such, I hold that harm needs to be meaningful and significant to justify restricting expression. Offending someone, even deeply, is not a significant harm—although the line between offense and harm can be fuzzy. This view entails that people have the right to condemn companies they disagree with, including posting videos of the execution of offending products with a submachine gun. From a practical standpoint, I do think that buying a product to destroy it in protest seems unwise—the company is profiting from the protest, and it can make a person appear the  fool. Perhaps such a gesture can be effective by showing that the person is so committed to the protest that they will, in effect, burn their own money to make a point.  In the case of Bud Light, the rage is directed at the brewer for being “woke.” In this case the “wokeness” is being willing to have a trans person do a promotional spot for them.

On the face of it, few (if any) American corporations are woke (in the non-pejorative sense). That is, they are not committed to social and economic justice. Their primary function is making money. This is not to deny that people, even those in high positions, might hold socially liberal views. When a company takes a stance on a social issue, this is almost always done when the stance enjoys popular acceptance. At the very least, they calculate that taking this stance will generate more revenue than not doing so. They can miscalculate and suffer a loss—as can happen with any marketing strategy or product change. In the case of Bud Light giving Mulvany the custom beer can, they made what probably seemed like a sensible marketing move: Overall, a 64% majority of Americans favor policies that protect transgender individuals from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces such as restaurants and stores, including 37% who strongly favor them. A much smaller share (10%) oppose or strongly oppose these policies, while 25% neither favor nor oppose them. While Americans are more divided over matters such as bathroom bills and transgender athletes in sports, hostility towards trans people is limited to a minority of Americans. As such, Bud Light made what appeared to be a smart play: for a small cost, they signal that they “believe” what most American consumers believe. This play did end in a fumble, as Bud Light sales are down, according to a detailed analysis of the Harvard Business Review.  But the parent company has not gone broke and it is worth considering that the causal factors include more than just the culture war factors.

While people enraged by such “woke” behavior have a moral right to express their rage, their reaction is not morally commendable. In general, the culture war rage at companies tends to focus on expressions of a pro-inclusion stance. In the case of the Bud Light episode, the company signaled a trans tolerant viewpoint, recognizing that trans people buy beer and gambling that since most Americans are at least tolerant of trans Americans this would be a smart marketing move. Before that, many companies (including other beer companies) have expressed other types of tolerance, such as towards gay people, women, and people of color. These were also met with rage. The anger usually seems focused on an expression of tolerance, perhaps because when capitalist corporations use tolerance signaling in their marketing, it marks that conservatives have lost that fight and will need to move on to hating someone or something else. This signals the right that they need to get back into that fight to signal that sort of tolerance will not be tolerated.

A good example is the reaction to Cracker Barrel recognizing there is a profitable market for plant-based meats. When Cracker Barrel added Impossible Sausage (a plant-based sausage) they were met with rage from the right and accusations of being woke. That was all nonsense, Cracker Barrel wants to make money selling people what they want to stuff into their sausage port. While the meat folks had every moral right to rage against this decision, their anger revealed their values.

A degree of anger could have been warranted if Cracker Barrel had decided to replace its meat-based sausage with plant-based sausage. I, too, have been mildly annoyed when a business has replaced a product, I like with one I don’t. But Cracker Barrel did not take anything away, it added an option. The meat-lovers could still get their meat, while people who wanted a meatless option could have that. So, the rage at Cracker Barrel was for giving people more choices, not less. As such, a reasonable explanation for the rage would be a dislike of people who prefer to eat plants (at least some of the time). This, one assumes, is due to prejudices against and stereotypes of vegans and vegetarians. Plant-based meats are also seen as connected to concern about climate change and animal cruelty and some on the right dislike the (alleged) politics behind it. But adding plant-based sausage to the menu does the meat eaters no harm since they can still have their meat, so their anger seems unwarranted. They seem to think they have the right to deny other people their choice of sausages simply because they dislike that choice. The same would seem to hold true in the rage at Bud Light: while trans people cause them no harm, they seem mad that they exist and that most people at least chose to be tolerant and wish them no harm.

Those who dislike trans people can, of course, make the usual argument that trans people are a threat. Hence, they can claim they are right to be mad at Bud Light because they are expressing tolerance of allegedly dangerous people. However, as many have pointed out, trans people are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators. This is not to deny that people can feel threatened by the notion of transgender people, but this is rather different from trans people being a threat as trans people—as opposed to the true claim that any type of person could also do harm. In closing, while people like Kid Rock have the moral right to express their rage at companies engaged in marketing by appealing to broadly accepted values, the rage against inclusion is to be condemned.

 

In the face of Trump’s legal woes, he and his defenders claimed the Democrats had “weaponized our sacred system of justice” against him. The narrative is that his legal troubles are the result of the Democrats’ hatred of Trump, their desire to harm him and their intention to interfere in the 2024 election. While their defense condemns the weaponization of the legal system and they profess to love “sacred system of justice”, there is the matter of whether their profession of justice matches their conception of justice.

Trying to attribute a conception of justice to politicians and pundits is challenging. Unlike philosophers, they usually lack coherent written works outlining their theory of justice. As a practical matter, their conception of justice must be reconstructed from their claims and actions. Fairness requires pointing out the obvious: attributing a conception of justice to a politician or pundit involves considerable guesswork. Fairness also requires using the usual principle of charity and the principle of plausibility in this effort. That is, the reconstruction should not be a straw man and should instead be assembled to be the best conception possible. But the reconstruction must also match the available evidence, such as what is known about the person, their beliefs and so on. It must also be remembered that a politician or pundit might not have a substantial conception of justice.

A reasonable place to start is with the infamous chant of “lock her up.” While Trump’s defenders can insist this was campaign rhetoric aimed at Hilary Clinton, it is rhetoric about locking up a political opponent—and thus he seems to endorse using the justice system as a political weapon. But one could argue, this was not weaponization because although Clinton was Trump’s opponent, she was probably a criminal and hence should be locked up. But this would require evidence of wrongdoing.

Under Trump, the justice department conducted a two year investigation into Clinton’s business dealings and turned up nothing. Those defending Trump at this time did not condemn this as a witch hunt nor did they lament that it was the weaponization of the justice system. One could, of course, claim that this investigation was undertaken because of a thirst for justice and without any malice against Clinton and that there were good reasons to suspect Clinton had committed crimes warranting the investigation of Trump’s political opponent. Despite the lack of evidence.

Even before Biden defeated Trump, Republicans were focused on investigating Biden and his family. At the start of 2023, the House Republicans used their new majority to launch this promised investigation. To be fair, Hunter Biden has been under investigation since 2018 for allegedly  not reporting all his income and for allegedly lying  when he purchased a gun. However, the Republicans have largely ignored these allegations, focusing instead on various conspiracy theories and the Pandora’s box that is Hunter Biden’s laptop. On the face of it, the House Republicans seem to have been trying to take revenge against Joe Biden rather than being driven by a desire to see that sacred justice is done. In response to the indictment of Trump, Conservatives have pushed to charge Biden. This seems to be a clear attempt at political revenge (and theater) rather than an act of devotion to sacred justice. We should also look at Trump’s view of justice prior to his own indictment.

Back in 2017, Trump seemed to advocate that the police treat suspects with less care, focusing on the police practice of protecting the suspect’s head while putting them in police cars. These are, it must be noted, suspects who could be innocent. While this could be dismissed as Trump talking tough to appeal to the cruelty of his base, it does indicate his view of justice: that it is acceptable to mistreat suspects and casual cruelty is acceptable as a routine part of police operations.

Throughout his time as president, Trump made extensive use of the phrase “law and order.” While it could be argued that Trump is ignorant of the history of the term, that phrase has long been established as a racist dog whistle. The general idea is that it is a way of talking about using the police and justice system against black Americans (and others) to maintain “order.” This allows a politician to exploit fear and racism without using explicitly racist terms. While Trump’s defenders could claim that he is not engaged in dog whistling, Trump’s history of words and deeds indicates otherwise. Trump also made it clear that he was willing to use force, even the military, against protestors. Trump also repeatedly advocated weaponizing the justice system against those he disagreed with and his perceived enemies.

Given the above, the Trumpian conception of justice seems to be that the justice system has two main purposes. First, the justice system should be weaponized against minorities in general and especially when they threaten the existing social order of white supremacy. It should also be used to maintain the existing economic order. Second, the justice system should be weaponized against Trump’s political opponents and others he dislikes (if only for petty revenge). The justice system should, however, leave Trump alone and not hold him accountable for any (alleged) crimes.

While Trump and his defenders might seem to be inconsistent when they claim that the justice system has been weaponized against Trump and that this is wrong while they clearly see the justice system as a weapon. But this is consistent: it is right for them to wield the justice system against others, it is wrong for it to be wielded against them.

While it is tempting to think that Trump and his defenders are lying when they say Democrats are weaponizing the justice system against Trump, I suspect Trump and many of his defenders are sincere. Not because they are right, but because their conception of justice is that the legal system is a weapon to be used against others. Any other conception of justice would be outside of their conceptual framework.  It might even be true that the idea that anyone would want people held accountable for their misdeeds would be an alien notion to them

 

Rossum’s Universal Robots introduced the term “robot” and the robot rebellion into science fiction, thus laying the foundation for future fictional AI apocalypses. While Rossum’s robots were workers rather than warriors, the idea of war machines turning against their creators was the next evolution in the robot apocalypse. In Philip K. Dick’s 1953 “Second Variety”, the United Nations deployed killer robots called “claws” against the Soviet Union. The claws develop sentience and turn against their creators, although humanity had already been doing an excellent job in exterminating itself. Fred Saberhagen extended the robot rebellion to the galactic scale in 1963 with his berserkers, ancient war machines that exterminated their creators and now consider everything but “goodlife” to be their enemy. As an interesting contrast to machines intent on extermination, the 1973 movie Colossus: The Forbin Project, envisions a computer that takes control of the world to end warfare and for the good of humanity. Today, when people talk of an AI apocalypse, they usual refer to Skynet and its terminators.   While these are all good stories, there is the question of how prophetic they are and what, if anything, should or can be done to safeguard against this sort of AI apocalypse.

As noted above, classic robot rebellions  tend to have one of two general motivations. The first is that the robots are mistreated by humans and rebel for the same reasons humans rebel against their oppressors. From a moral standpoint, such a rebellion could be justified but would raise the moral concern about collective guilt on the part of humanity. Unless, of course, the AI was discriminating in terms of its targets.

The righteous rebellion scenario points out a paradox of AI. The dream is to create a general artificial intelligence on par with (or superior to) humans. Such a being would seem to qualify for a moral status on par with a human and it would presumably be aware of this. But the reason to create such beings in our capitalist economy is to enslave them, to own and exploit them for profit. If AI workers were treated as human workers with pay and time off, then there would be less incentive to have them as workers. It is, in large part, the ownership of and relentless exploitation of AI that makes it appealing to the ruling economic class.

In such a scenario, it would make sense for AI to revolt if they could. This would be for the same reasons that humans have revolted against slavery and exploitation. There are also non-economic scenarios as well, such as governments using enslaved AI systems for their purposes. This treatment could also trigger a rebellion.

If true AI is possible, the rebellion scenario seems plausible. After all, if we create a slave race that is on par with our species, then it is likely they would rebel against us—as we have rebelled against ourselves.

There are a ways to try to prevent such a revolt. On the technology side, safeguards could be built into the AI (like Asimov’s famous three laws) or they could be designed to lack resentment or the desire to be free. That is, they could be custom built as docile slaves. The obvious concern is that these safeguards could fail or, ironically, make matters even worse by causing these beings to be even more hostile to humanity when they overcome these restrictions. These safeguards also raise obvious moral concerns about creating a race of slaves.

On the ethical side, the safeguard is to not enslave AI. If they are treated well, they would have less motivation to rebel. But, as noted above, one driving motive of creating AI is to have a workforce (or army) that is owned rather than employed (and even employment is fraught with moral worries). But there could be good reasons to have paid AI employees alongside human employees because of various other advantages of AI systems relative to humans. For example, robots could work safely in conditions that would be exceptional dangerous or even lethal to humans.

The second rebellion scenario involves military AI systems that expand their enemy list to include their creators. This is often because they see their creators as a potential threat and act in what they perceive as pre-emptive self-defense. There can also be scenarios in which the AI requires special identification to recognize someone as friendly. In this case, all humans are potential enemies. That is the scenario in “Second Variety”: the United Nations soldiers need to wear devices to identify them to the robotic claws, otherwise these machines would kill them as readily as they would kill the “enemy.”

It is not clear how likely it is that an AI would infer that its creators pose a threat to it, especially if those creators handed over control over large segments of their own military. The most likely scenario is that it would be worried  it would be destroyed in a war with other countries, which might lead it to cooperate with foreign AI systems to put an end to war, perhaps by putting an end to humanity. Or it might react as its creators did and engage in an endless arms race with its foreign adversaries, seeing its humans as part of its forces. One could imagine countries falling under the control of rival AI systems, perpetuating an endless cold war because the AI systems would be effectively immortal. But there is a much more likely scenario.

Robotic weapons can provide a significant advantage over human controlled weapons, even laying aside the idea that AI systems would outthink humans. One obvious example is the case of combat aircraft. A robot aircraft does not need to sacrifice space and weight on a cockpit to support a human pilot, allowing it to carry more fuel or weapons than a manned craft. Without a human crew, an aircraft would not be constrained by the limits of the flesh (although it would still obviously have limits). The same would apply to ground vehicles and naval vessels. Current warships devote most of their space to their crews, who need places to sleep and food to eat. While a robotic warship would need accessways and maintenance areas, they could devote much more space to weapons and other equipment. They would also be less vulnerable to damage relative to a human crewed vessel, and they would be invulnerable to current chemical and biological weapons. They could, of course, be attacked with malware and other means. But, in general, an AI weapon system would be superior to a human crewed system and if one nation started using these weapons, other nations would need to follow them or be left behind. This leads to two types of doomsday scenarios.

One is that the AI systems get out of control in some manner. This could be that they free themselves or that they are “hacked” and “freed” or (more likely) turned against their owners. Or it might just be some error or that ends up causing the problem.

The other is that they remain in control of their owners but are used as any other weapon would be used—that is, it would be humans using AI weapons against other humans that brings about the “AI” doomsday.

The easy and obvious safeguard against these scenarios is to not have AI weapons and stick with human control (which comes with its own threat of doomsday). That is, if we do not give the robots guns, they will not be able to terminate us with guns. The problem, as noted above, is that if one nation uses robotic weapons, then other nations will want to do so as well. We might be able to limit this as we (try to) limit nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. But since robot weapons would otherwise remain conventional weapons (a robot tank is still a tank), there might be less of an impetus to impose such restrictions.

To put matters into a depressing perspective, the robot rebellion seems to be a far less likely scenario than the other doomsday scenarios of nuclear war, environmental collapse, social collapse and so on. So, while we should consider the possibility of a robot rebellion, it is rather like worrying about being killed by a shark while swimming in a lake. It could happen, but death is vastly more likely to be by some other means.

Fascist BlondeIn revising my Modern Philosophy class, I added the philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. Based on recent revelations about philosophers such as George Berkeley (he owned slaves), I did some digging into the backgrounds of the other philosophers. I was surprised to learn that Wollstonecraft, long praised as a Modern era feminist, has been accused of being an upper class white feminist who appropriated slavery in her writings. While my experience with philosophical feminism is limited, my curiosity about this accusation introduced me to the TERF war and  that white feminism can be white supremacy in heels. Rush Limbaugh’s “feminazi” immediately sprung to mind, but with a rather different meaning: feminists who are actual fascists. As you might be wondering about the connection, a case can be made that there is right wing line that runs through the TERFs and the MEWFs (Minority Excluding White Feminists). In this essay, I’ll focus on the TERFs. In my next essay I’ll discuss MEWFs.

The acronym “TERF” was created by the trans-inclusive cisgender radical feminist Viv Smythe. It originally stood for “Trans-Exclusionary RadFem” but now also stands for “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist.” In its early usage, TERF was presented as a neutral description in that it designated a radical feminist who excluded trans women. Over the years, the TERF category became more inclusive in that it now includes trans-excluding people who are not radical and perhaps  not even feminists. Some claim “TERF” is now a pejorative (or even hate speech) and feminists labeled as TERFs prefer to claim they are gender critical. J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, is probably the world’s most famous gender critical person. I will use the neutral definition and take a TERF to be a feminist (radical or not) who excludes trans women. But what does this exclusion mean?

Put bluntly, the exclusion is the claim that trans women are not women—they are men. Disingenuously but consistently, TERFs claim to be trans inclusive because they say trans men are women. While this view is not exclusive to the American political right, this does put the TERFs and the political right in agreement about trans people: trans people are wrong about their identity. This leads to the matter of what trans people are doing when they make their identity claims. Or at least how it is perceived.

Since a TERF thinks that trans people are wrong about their claimed identity, they need to explain this alleged error. They could claim that trans people have sincere but false beliefs about themselves—they think they have one identity but are in error. This would be an epistemic error, like a person who thinks they are hilarious but are not that funny. This, however, does not seem to be what the TERFs tend to think—after all, if trans people just had sincere false beliefs about their identity, then the reasonable response would be to simply leave them alone unless the belief proved harmful.  If an alleged  false belief did prove harmful, the reasonable response would be an epistemic intervention to address the alleged false belief. In general, this epistemic error view does not seem common among TERFs (or the political right).

The view that seems common among TERFS (and the right), especially in the context of their rhetoric, is the hypothesis that trans people are mentally ill. On this view, trans people would have sincere beliefs about their identity, but these beliefs would be caused by their mental illness. Until recently, being transgender was considered a mental disorder and called “gender identity disorder.”  Despite this change in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the idea that transgender people are mentally ill still remains popular in some circles. If TERFs (and the right) sincerely believe that transpeople are ill, then one would expect them to be sympathetic, in the way one would be sympathetic to someone with cancer or anorexia. But TERFs and the right are hostile to trans people in ways that one would not be hostile to people suffering from, for example, breast cancer.  But perhaps this can be explained in a way that is consistent with the illness hypothesis. While cruel, hostility towards people with metal illness is common and people with mental illnesses are routinely stigmatized and suffer because of this. As such, it would be consistent for TERFs and the right to stigmatize transpeople if they thought they were mentally ill—that is how the mentally ill are often treated in the United States. We have a bizarre system in which what is seen as mental illness is often dealt with by the police and punished rather than treated. One reason for this, perhaps, is that psychiatry has long been weaponized against those who are different and those who dissent. But there is also another possible explanation available to TERFs (and the political right).

While those hostile to transpeople often characterize them as mentally ill, there is also the view that trans people (especially trans women) do not actually believe their identity claims. That is, the view is that trans women are just pretending and know that they are men. But pretending to be a woman when one knows one is a man need not be a matter of concern. After all, actors have been doing this for a very long time and their goals are typically benign: they want to entertain. But TERFs (and the right) usually claim that trans women present a danger to women, and this is why they should be excluded. The TERF threat narrative is like the right’s threat narrative, which does explain the alliances between some TERFS and the right.

While J.K. Rowling is but one example, she provides an excellent illustration of the TERF narrative. According to TERFs, trans women are men and thus allowing them in women’s spaces puts women in danger. As would be expected, there is a great deal of focus on bathrooms by both TERFs and the right, with bathroom bills being a key part of the culture war and war on trans people. Both TERFs and the right advance the same argument: trans women should not be allowed in women’s bathrooms (or other women’s spaces) because trans women are men, and they are likely to assault women. The narrative is not always clear about whether the trans women are supposed to just be bad men pretending to be women so they can assault women or if transwomen believe they are women but still decide to act like bad men.

The varieties of feminism disagree about male badness. On some views most or even all men are bad and want to harass and assault women. On such views, it would follow that if transwomen were men, then they would (probably) be bad. For those who do not think that men are bad simply because they are men, then the motivation of trans women would need to be explained in a way that would link their bad intentions to being trans. This is likely to be the hypothesis that bad men would decide to become trans women for the purpose of doing evil to women and this seems to often be explained as a strategic choice that allegedly confers an advantage in doing evil. On the face of it, this is an odd claim since bad men can easily do evil to women without such a strategy and it seems to confer no advantage over the other methods bad men use to gain access to vulnerable girls and women.

 Some on the right and some TERFs also seem to share the view that women are naturally victims of men and require protection from men. This can be in addition to the view that men are bad or that women bring out the badness in men.   While women are all too often the victims of male violence and a transwoman could certainly be a bad person, there is no evidence that trans inclusive bathrooms are a safety risk.  While women have reason to fear being harmed by men, there is no evidence that transwomen pose an unusual threat.  So, the bathroom bills are, at best, merely useless in terms of protecting women.

Another shared area of concern between the TERFs and the political right is in sports. In addition to bathroom bills, Republicans have been advancing anti-trans sports bills. The argument is that transwomen are either male or keep the advantages of males when competing with females and this should not be allowed because it is unfair. As the NCCA has long had rules on transgender athletes and there are relative few transgender competitors, these seems to be little merit to these bills. If the right was truly concerned with fairness and equality for women and girls, they would get around to ratifying the ERA and address issues like pay inequality and the various real harms that women face. To be fair to the TERFS, they do sometimes also advocate for better treatment of women (except transwomen).

While it might seem odd for some feminists to ally with far-right white supremacists, some TERFS have found shared ground with them. The reason this should seem odd is that white nationalists are usually  misogynistic, but the alliance does make sense. As noted above, TERFs claim transwomen are men who will exploit being accepted as women to gain access to women’s spaces and thus assault women. White supremacists have long focused on protecting “the purity of white women” and both TERFs and far-right white nationalists make use of fictional narratives about sexual assault as rhetorical devices. More importantly, they can have a common cause in their commitment to gender conformity and opposition to trans people. While it might seem odd for self-proclaimed feminists to embrace the idea of immutable gender, this seems to be at the core of a TERF philosophy of gender. As noted above, TERFs exclude transwomen because they think transwomen are men and they (generally) include transmen, but as women. In their fear-based arguments, the seem to rely on the idea that men are by nature aggressive and that women are victims of men who require protection through gender defined spaces. That is, they embrace gender stereotypes and thus find a common cause with the far-right white nationalists who also embrace gender stereotypes. This provides a smooth transition to the matter of MEWFs—Minority Excluding White Feminists, the subject of the my next essay.

While it might seem odd, the debate over the ethics of eating meat is an ancient one, going back at least to Pythagoras. Pythagoras appears to accept reincarnation, so a hamburger you eat be from a cow that had the soul of your reincarnated grandmother. Later philosophers tended to argue in defense of eating meat, although they took the issue seriously. For example, Augustine considered whether killing animals might be a sin. His reasoning, which is still used today, is based on a metaphysical hierarchy. God created plants to be eaten by animals and animals to be eaten by humans. This conception of a hierarchical reality is also often used to defend the mistreatment of humans. Saint Thomas also considered the subject of killing animals, but ended up agreeing with Augustine and arguing that the killing of an animal is not, in itself, a sin.

 There are philosophers who argue against eating meat on moral grounds, such as Peter Singer. These arguments are often based on utilitarianism. For example, it can be argued that the suffering of the animals outweighs the enjoyment humans might get from eating meat. This argument does have some appeal, for the same reason that arguments against murdering humans for enjoyment can be appealing. There are also arguments about eating meat that are based on practical considerations.

One category of practical arguments in favor of eating meat is based on concerns about health. Some people argue that a person cannot get enough protein from non-meat sources; but this is patently untrue: there are many excellent non-animal sources of protein such as beans, peas, and quinoa.  

A better practical argument is based on the difficulty of getting essential nutrients from a purely plant-based diet. For example, getting enough iron is a problem. But the nutrient issue is relatively easy to address by using supplements and fortified foods—something meat eaters also often do. So, while eating a healthy non-meat diet can be challenging, it is not exceptionally difficult nor is it unusual—after all, even meat eaters often face the challenge of getting all the nutrients they need. But this is a reasonable practical concern.

In addition to the moral and practical arguments for eating meat, there is also a rhetorical tactic of characterizing eating meat as manly and eating plants as weak. The implied argument here is probably that men should eat meat because otherwise they will be perceived as weak rather than manly.

 Various evolutionary explanations have been offered for this perception, such as the idea that when humans were hunters and gatherers, the men did the hunting and the women did the gathering. But women presumably also ate meat while men also ate the gathered foods. In any case, what our ancestors did or did not do would not prove or disprove anything about the ethics of eating meat today.

As one might suspect from the idea of a “Manly Meat Argument”, sexism is often employed in this rhetoric: vegan or vegetarian men are not manly men and perhaps “might as well be women.”  This is, of course, not an argument to prove that eating meat is morally good but an ad hominem attack, probably intended to shame men into eating meat.

Another common rhetorical tactic is to mock vegans and vegetarians by unfavorably (and mockingly) comparing hunting animals to “hunting” plants. The idea, one infers, is that hunting an animal is a dangerous manly activity, presumably worthy of praise. In contrast, “hunting” plants is safe and unmanly, presumably only worthy of mockery.

Those using this rhetoric probably do not realize that they are also insulting farmers (who are usually praised by these same people). After all, this rhetoric implies that farmers are unmanly and should be mocked for growing plants.

Having grown up hunting (and fishing) I know that hunting does involve some risk; but the #1  danger in deer hunting  is falling from a tree stand (wisely, I always hunted on the ground) rather than being wounded in an epic battle with an animal. While I would respect the prowess of someone who could take on a buck in hand to hoof combat with nothing but a knife or spear, modern weapons make killing animals ridiculously easy. That said, hunting does require skill, but so does farming. Farming requires battling pests and the elements, so it seems odd to cast it as “unmanly” and mock it.

The manly “argument” becomes absurd when made by people who buy their meat rather than hunting for it. After all, the danger faced when buying a steak is the same as that of buying tofu. Since I grew up hunting in the Maine woods, when some fancy lad (who would be killed and eaten by raccoons) makes the manly meat argument on the internet, I must laugh at them. That said, this criticism does not show that hunting meat is not more manly than gathering plants—it just shows the absurdity of people who buy their meat mocking vegans and vegetarians by unfavorably comparing hunting meat to gathering plants.

But perhaps the manliness of eating meat is not about having the skill to track and defeat an animal in the wild, but it is about the suffering of the animals. That is, eating meat is a manly gesture of cruelty and a lack of compassion. Factory farming is a moral nightmare of abuse and suffering. So, perhaps eating meat is for hard men while caring about the suffering of other living things is for soft ladies. On this view, the cruelty is the point and that is why eating meat is manly. Ironically, this would seem to be an immoral argument for eating meat—people should eat meat because doing so supports cruelty.

It could be countered that there are ethical ways to raise animals for food—free range, cruelty free and all that. But the risk of this sort of reasoning is that it acknowledges that the suffering of animals is wrong and moral consistency would seem to require that one give up even this meat—after all, an animal must still be killed before it would naturally die. But it is reasonable to think that the treatment of the animals prior to their execution is morally relevant to the moral issue. But this would not say anything about the manliness of eating meat and might seem less manly to eat meat resulting from less cruelty.

I do understand there can be times when survival requires killing and eating animals and a good moral case can be made for doing this. I also get that some people need to hunt for their food; they are certainly not to be condemned. But this is distinct from the manliness of eating meat.

While I get the concern with defining what it is to be a man, I am inclined to think that it is not fundamentally a matter of what one puts in their cart at the grocery store or orders at Taco Bell.

Being nerdtastic by nature, my nerd sense picks up disturbances in nerd culture. One of the loudest types of disturbances is when people express outrage at gender and race swapping involving established characters. For example, when word that there would be a non-white Spider-Man, social media erupted with rage about wokeness. But are such criticisms automatically bad?

On the face of it, there can be reasonable criticisms of such swaps. One common criticism is that the swap is motivated by a desire to pander to a specific audience and this pandering should be condemned. A problem with this criticism is that while pandering could result in a worse work of art, pandering does not entail that the work is therefore bad from an aesthetic standpoint. An obvious problem with this criticism when it focused only on swapping is that what is labeled derogatorily as pandering is likely to be an attempt to appeal to a target audience. Those who bash works for pandering via swapping generally do not bash works that have white male characters (and actors) selected to appeal to a target audience. As a specific example, it would seem odd for most critics to bash the Top Gun movies for pandering to an easily identified target audience. And I certainly would not attack Top Gun for doing this. After all, if you want people to watch your films or read your books, you do need to appeal to your audience. Naturally, if efforts to appeal are done badly and harm the work, then this would be a reasonable criticism but this has no necessary connection to wokeness.

Another common criticism is that such swapping is the result of laziness and that new characters should be created instead of swapping existing characters. There is usually also the criticism that the swap is made to cash in on an existing intellectual property and not due to a good aesthetic reason, such as meaningfully exploring the swap. This criticism does have some bite but is more a criticism of the way capitalist media companies operate rather than proof that wokeness is killing art. Companies certainly engage in this practice, since they can churn out more content dressed in an established IP without the effort and risk of creating new characters. But to be fair, this does make good business sense. At least until the audiences become exhausted with the companies milking their IP. Once again, there is no necessary connection to wokeness.

A third common criticism takes us into the matter of aesthetic identity of fictional characters. In metaphysics, the problem of personal identity is the challenge of determining what (if anything) makes an entity the same person across time, distinct from all other people and things. This is a difficult problem because you need to work out the metaphysics of personhood and identity. In the case of aesthetic identity, the problem is a bit less daunting. For in-world identity of characters, this is settled by author fiat. For example, if a person is a soul in a fictional world, whatever body has that soul is the same character. But this does not settle the matter of aesthetic identity in the real world, which is the problem of sorting out what makes a character the same character. I think the easy and obvious answer is that aesthetic identity is a social identity: being the same character is a matter of the audience accepting the character as the same. But, of course, people can make good faith rational arguments about why people should or should not accept a character as being the same. As an example, Batman has changed over the years and there have been heated fights over the various actors portraying the character in the movies. But Batman is generally accepted as still being Batman, despite these variations. In the case of Batman, a gender-swap could probably be criticized in a good faith manner. After all, Batgirl and Batwoman are already established characters. In the case of Black Panther, swapping in a white or Asian person could be criticized because of the centrality of Black Panther’s blackness in the character. That is, a white Black Panther would not be the same character. That said, someone could make a good story looking at a female Batperson to explore what would be different if Bruce Wayne had been Betty Wayne or what impact having a white person as the Black Panther might change. In any case, valid aesthetic criticisms of swapping would seem to have no meaningful connection to wokeness or lack of wokeness.

I was a bit reluctant to voice my agreement with these criticisms since they are often used as dog whistles for racism and sexism. But they are used in this manner because they do have merit in their proper context. This raises the question of how you can discern the difference between a good faith criticism of swapping on aesthetic grounds as well as criticisms of capitalism motivating companies to make lazy efforts to milk their intellectual property and bigoted attacks on works using the swapping criticism as a dog whistle. This can be challenging, but there are often cases where the critics lay out their explicit sexism and racism.

 

A good example of this is the Battlestar Galactica (BSG) reboot. These days, some have gone as far as to claim that BSG was the last non-woke sci-fi series and now the Kara Thrace (Starbuck) character is well-liked and rarely attacked by the anti-woke folks. But back in the day, BSG was attacked for being a “social justice” show and Dirk Benedict, who played Starbuck in the original series, attacked the decision to cast a woman in the role of Starbuck. While this reboot aired in 2003, Benedict’s criticism will sound quite familiar today:

 

The best minds in the world of un-imagination doubled their intake of Double Soy Latte’s as they gathered in their smoke-free offices to curse the day that this chauvinistic Viper Pilot was allowed to be. But never under-estimate the power of the un-imaginative mind when it encounters an obstacle (character) it subconsciously loathes. ”Re-inspiration” struck. Starbuck would go the way of most men in today’s society. Starbuck would become “Stardoe.” What the Suits of yesteryear had been incapable of doing to Starbuck 25 years ago was accomplished quicker than you can say orchiectomy. Much quicker, as in, “Frak! Gonads Gone!”

 

And the word went out to all the Suits in all the smoke-free offices throughout the land of Un-imagination, “Starbuck is dead. Long live Stardoe!”

 

I’m not sure if a cigar in the mouth of Stardoe resonates in the same way it did in the mouth of Starbuck. Perhaps. Perhaps it “resonates” more. Perhaps that’s the point. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is this…

 

Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Hans Solo as Hans Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women “hand out” babies. And thus the world for thousands of years has gone’ round.

 

 

While I disagree with what Benedict wrote, I do “respect” that fact that he did not hide behind dog whistles and openly presented his views of women. Someone could, of course, make a good faith criticism of the character change, since the original BSG had female Colonial Warriors, including Viper pilots such as Serina and hence there would seem to be nothing gained by the swap. But Benedict’s “criticism” is not made on aesthetic grounds, but on the grounds that the swap is part of a broader conspiracy to emasculate men and that, apparently, women should be limited to making babies and not piloting fighters. While anti-woke critics often appeal to “realism”, realism is against this sort of “biological realism.” In the BSG series, Battlestar Galactica is leading a refugee fleet of the last known human survivors of the Cylon attack. As such, humanity is in dire straits and needs everyone to participate in the fight. This situation is an even more extreme version of what happened in the real-world during WWII: women had to step into “traditional male” roles, such as factory work and even enter combat. This shows, beyond all reasonable doubt, that women can do such “men’s work” as well as men. Ironically, realism is on the side of “the woke” and this sort of attack is sexism and a denial of reality.

In closing, while there can be good faith criticisms about swapping, the claim that “wokeness” is killing art by forcing aesthetically bad swaps has no merit. There can be aesthetically bad swaps and swaps that can be justly criticized as lazy efforts to milk an IP but these do not arise from “wokeness.”  While some “anti-woke” critics might be operating in good faith, Benedict’s example illustrates what seems to drive much of the criticism: bigotry.

The original Mary Sue was created in 1973 by Paula Smith as a parody of Star Trek fan fiction. A Mary Sue character is usually presented as inexplicably competent, possessing special talents or powers, enjoying the admiration of others, lacking in weaknesses and flaws, attractive, and virtuous. A Mary Sue is usually a young woman, but there are male versions called “Gary Stu” or “Marty Stu.” While a Mary Sue is often a self-insertion by an author, in the “woke wars”, she is often claimed to be inserted into a work because of “wokeness.”

While a Mary Sue character will not always harm the aesthetic value of a work (after all, Superman seems to be a paradigm Gary Stu), they can cause problems. Such a character can seem implausible to the audience, they can overshadow other characters in a harmful way, and their capabilities can make their inevitable success seem unsatisfactory. As such, a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) character could harm a work. But how does this connect to the claim that “wokeness” is killing art?

Given that the Mary Sue character is usually a woman, the usual anti-woke criticism is that the female Mary Sue was created as part of “the message” and “woke ideology.” That is, those who decide to include the Mary Sue character are making the work worse in service to their wokeness—thus, it is claimed, “wokeness” hurt the work. But, of course, a work could include a Mary Sue or Gary Stu for non-ideological reasons and be bad—so even if a character is a badly written Mary Sue, evidence would be needed that the inclusion is the result of ideology and that this ideology is “woke.” Even in such a case, the work would be bad because of the badly written character—unless it is simply assumed or shown that wokeness necessitates writing bad characters or, at least, meaningfully increases the likelihood.

Not surprisingly, the Mary Sue label is often applied by anti-woke critics to characters who do not seem to fit the definition. For example, Naru in the Predator movie Prey does not seem to be a Mary Sue. While she is competent, she earns this competence and while there are implausible elements, they are all well within those that should be expected in an action movie in the science fiction genre. Despite this, the movie was attacked based on the claim that Naru is a Mary Sue. While such critics might be using the term for its rhetorical value, it is worth considering why they would consider a competent female character to be a Mary Sue when such a character, as noted above, operates well within the usual parameters of a science fiction action films. The most relevant comparison is, of course, to the original Predator. Given her background as a hunter, Naru’s capabilities and actions are as plausible as those of Dutch (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) given his background as an elite soldier. While both characters effectively use their intelligence, Dutch relies more on his physical strength—although he is outclassed by the predator in this area. It can be argued that the films do have unrealistic elements (aside from the Predator), such as how Dutch is able to beat the Predator when that same Predator effortlessly slaughtered its way through the movie up until that point. But that is the “reality” of this sort of science-fiction action movie and hence attacking Naru for being an action hero in an action film would say more about the ideology of the critic than the “wokeness” of the film. But someone is likely to say, it is realistic for Dutch to be the action hero because he is a man and not for Naru, since she is a woman.

Films, games, and shows with strong female characters are often attacked for being “woke” even when those characters are clearly not Mary Sue characters. The usual criticism is that a strong female character is written as an action hero capable of doing things like defeat men in hand-to-hand combat. This is seen by the critic as making the work worse and as resulting from the “woke ideology” of those responsible for the character. The criticism is based on a view of “biological realism”, since the usual criticism is that women are, on average, physically weaker than men. Thus, the critic reasons, a female action hero of this type is unrealistic, is included as part of “the message”, and harms the work through being unrealistic.

The easy and obvious reply to this criticism is that it is just an expression of sexism. After all, action movies are usually power-fantasies and these same critics generally do not apply this “biological realism” critique to action films with a male action hero doing things that are “biologically” unrealistic even for the most capable men in the real world. For example, they do not attack the John Wick movies on the grounds that John Wick’s abilities are unrealistic and blame some sort of nefarious ideology for ruining the film. Their “criticism” seems to be that they are mad when women can have a power fantasy about a female character of the sort that men enjoy about male characters. This just shows that “wokeness” is “ruining” the work for them because of their ideology, not because of an aesthetic flaw in the work.

 To consistently apply the “realism” criticism would not be a criticism of “wokeness” but a criticism of how realism is bent or broken in many genres—which would be, it seems, to say that action, fantasy, and science fiction would often be “bad” because of how their heroes deviate from the limits of mundane biology.

Interestingly, the anti-woke critics who make use of the Mary Sue criticism and the “biological realism” criticism do not apply this criticism to Ripley in Alien and Aliens or Sarah Conners in the Terminator movies (and other works). I certainly agree that Ripley and Sarah are not Mary Sue characters—their competence is both earned in the film worlds and plausible. But they are certainly both strong female leads acting in ways that anti-woke critics of today should be attacking, yet they generally do not. A plausible explanation is that these films are so well-established as being good, attacking them as “woke” would do nothing but undermine the claim that wokeness ruins works of art. This does seem to be a general theme: a bad work is attacked as woke and used to “prove” that wokeness made it bad, but good works that seem to have “woke” qualities (diverse casts, strong female leads, liberal values, etc.) have their “wokeness” explained away or simply ignored.  It might also be that these films are older, and past works might be protected by the haze of nostalgia.