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Dodo Theory: straight cis white men from nice families are the worst at threat assessment because they are subject to fewer threats than everybody else. They’re flightless island birds who are vulnerable to unexpected rats. Unfortunately, most US government intelligence specialists are dodos.

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Yes, as a rather intersectional 'guy' I agree. My oldest friend who white, cis, and rather posh (v. nice, which is why he's a friend) got mugged several times in East End mainly because of this. I'm small, wary and have been through some very tough times awarding me some extra street wisdom.

it also makes them (and by them I mean us, I'm them) incredibly blind to threats from within bob would never plot against the gov haha he's just a character, I play golf with his dad, he's a good kid really see also : UK intel agencies being 90% staffed by Oxbridge graduates from Good Families

Even if you put rights and ethics aside, you’d be a fool to mostly hire straight white cis Christian men to assess general threats - you need a very diverse group with a diverse set of experiences

you absolutely want trans people and furries and racial minorities on your team because they have been forced to get very good at threat assessment to survive

meanwhile, an upper middle class Mormon white boy from Sandy, Utah has been subject to the threat of, what, his favorite ice cream sundae place closing too early on Sunday

Fun fact: on Second Life, the cybersecurity teams would often lurk in the furry sections, because we were frequently targets of attack bu griefers. A lot of new techniques that would have ruined vast swaths of the game were thwarted because the attackers jumped the gun in order to hit us first.

Heh, there was so much wildly exploitable shit in that server that no one outside Linden ever saw. Recurrig region crash ultimately traces to failed DMCA takedowns on object inventory, bugged in a way that takes cubic time and adds more on each attempt? Sure, why not? (Been there, fixed that)

Oh absolutely. I have never seen so many "smart" people of my acquaintance reveal that they have no self-preservation instincts. They absolutely cannot see a threat when its literally telling them to their face that its going to kill them.

This was a discussion for a long time in Twitter (*spit*), particularly in the context of Black women ringing alarm bells for years, and getting louder about it when Gamergate started. They are the inverse to this: their bullshit-detection is unparalleled, because they hear it all day, every day.