Ali AbdulKarim

“Instead of science, Social Justice scholarship advocates for “other ways of knowing,” derived from Theoretical interpretations of deeply felt lived experience. It argues that reason and evidence-based knowledge are unfairly favored over tradition, folklore, interpretation, and emotion because of the power imbalances baked into them. Without the slightest awareness of the racist and sexist implications, Theory views evidence and reason to be the cultural property of white Western men.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why this Harms Everybody

“The postmodern approach to ethically driven social critique is intangible and unfalsifiable. As the idea of radical skepticism shows, postmodern thought relies upon Theoretical principles and ways of seeing the world, rather than truth claims. Because of its rejection of objective truth and reason, postmodernism refuses to substantiate itself and cannot, therefore, be argued with. The postmodern perception, Lyotard writes, makes no claim to be true: “Our hypotheses, therefore, should not be accorded predictive value in relation to reality, but strategic value in relation to the question raised.”33 In other words, postmodern Theory seeks not to be factually true but to be strategically useful: in order to bring about its own aims, morally virtuous and politically useful by its own definitions. This generalized skepticism about the objectivity of truth and knowledge—and commitment to regarding both as culturally constructed—leads to a preoccupation with four main themes: the blurring of boundaries, the power of language, cultural relativism, and the loss of the individual and the universal in favor of group identity.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why this Harms Everybody

“Plainly, gender studies is no longer about gender expectations of women as determined by reproductive function, but a sprawling field of study tackling a much more complex and unruly collection of identities—all essentially in the same way, by looking for “problematics” to complain about until they find them.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why this Harms Everybody

“Intersectional Theory provided an entirely new, “increasingly sophisticated” way to understand power dynamics in society, allowing them to repurpose their failing theoretical models into something more diffuse and less falsifiable.23 We often observe this kind of shift to a more “sophisticated” and nebulous model when people are highly personally and ideologically committed to a theoretical approach that is clearly failing. This phenomenon was first described by Leon Festinger, in his study of UFO cults, and led to the development of the concept of cognitive dissonance.24 Festinger observed that highly committed cultists did not abandon their beliefs when the predictions of the cult failed to manifest—when the UFO never came. Instead, cultists resolved this undeniable contradiction by claiming the event had occurred, but in some unfalsifiable way (specifically, they claimed God decided to spare the planet as a result of the faith of the cultists).”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why this Harms Everybody