ShariaHeap
1yr ago
It's worth bearing in mind we know little about brain development in puberty, ergo we know little about the effects of bypassing puberty.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Thanks for Hoffer tip.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes I remember Jesse advocating the 'in the middle' political compromise of 'let's only treat the true-trans using the Dutch protocol.' Those initial experimental studies have been shown to have serious methodological flaws and so ceased to be the centrist bargaining chip. No, it's probably apparent to even Jesse that there actually is no true-trans but that some children, for a range of contingent factors, including whether they are autistic or grew up in a foster home, are put on a medical conveyer belt.
Among the true believers, charitably you have trans activist who mistakenly view every child through the lens of their own experiences growing up.
Yes, I've seen that - I wonder if that kind of epistemological narcissism, also known as lacking humility, is related to their trans identity?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I agree with the religious void idea, still not heeding Nietzsche's warning.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Fair play, sounds like a perfectly normal scenario in that lens, which of course is where our media is broken.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I don't think the number being relatively rare is especially relevant to the ethics of it. Even under a consequentialist frame, it's better to have fewer people having unnecessary surgeries. Are you arguing that rare things should be dealt with any old how because more people die in other ways?
I think that truscum, while I prefer it to transtrender (trans as a human right/existential lifestyle choice), still just begs the question of whether that is the best way to treat dysphoria. Ive noticed its being talked about less in any case these days with a preference for trans rights or existential transcendence narratives.
The low regret rates apply to a different cohort, being studies on older adults, mainly MtF and we don't know the rates for the recent so-called ROGD cohort. We know from one study that most of those with gender dysphoria who do not transition, desist from having dysphoria, with most of those turning out to be gay and in a recent study it was found that 30% of those prescribed hormones were found to have stopped them within 4 years.
Clearly we don't know enough to identify 'true trans', or 'true truscum' and given that early treatment with puberty blockers followed by hormones will result in infertility we have a high ethical bar, even for research. We know rates of mental illness are increasing rapidly in this cohort also and that there is frequently overlap with other conditions such as autism, OCD, anorexia/eating disorders, self harm, generalised anxiety etc.
I don't see why dysphoria is able to claim special status when it may only be a component of the actual condition the individual is caught in. Autism could easily involve a distorted self concept at its root, as well as a fastidious compulsiveness, and gender dysphoria be just the culture-bound manifestation of this for autistic people. Similarly we could think of the desire to be something different as resulting from some underlying OCD mechanism, with the gender content available to be the focus.
As I've said before, the rationale you raise for younger transition, indicates already that attempts to appear as the opposite sex are not necessarily effective in resolving dysphoria, especially when there are any cosmetic concerns. We don't know if some degree of persistent dysphoria, or dis-ease might be apparent in later in life, even for good-passers.
After all there is something existentially fragile about the reliance on passing in the first instance and I would speculate a fear perhaps of not being authentic could always be a risk.
As I've said before, this wish for young transition starts to fall into a transhumanism paradigm, as you acknowledge with your queering of the normative of puberty in human development. It's obviously better to treat somebody while causing the least harm. This is a normative claim we could all agree on surely. The big question beg is what's to say there won't be better treatments that don't involve risks to fertility or altering body parts? Lobotomy was also justified on their being no good alternative but then they discovered antidepressants/anti-psychotics.
The transhumanist desire for transcendence through technology along with anti-natalism is part of the broader frame of understanding the culture bound syndrome we are seeing expressed. We need to understand the cultural level if we are to remedy peoples distress in this regard as it's more and more apparent to me we are all stuck in a lack of meaning.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes, I've looked into Walter Freeman and how he'd casually deliver lobotomies during an afternoon first-time visit, true evil I think and unrepentant to his dying day as far as I can tell. Obviously Monaz won a Noble prize at the time, which shows how unaware science was of what is patently a grotesque 'treatment'.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
In some ways trans, at least in adults, is peripheral - an increasing number of trans, or for that matter lesbian, gays, intersex people share the feeling something is awry.
Rareness doesn't exonerate wrongness. And the enabling environment and other ideas (pregnant people, pride months for LGBT though actually mainly T these days) are ubiquitous, or haven't you noticed?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes exactly - I think it's a sure sign of a mania when we abandon long-established understandings about child development without any reason. If anything neuroscience has shown development (particularly frontal cortex, critical for being able to make judgements with long term consequences) goes on much longer than we had though.
This new thinking goes against known understandings and norms in child development psychology, medical ethics, education and culture broadly. Its a huge clue we're in a mania.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
You should look into the individual cases. The three I looked at via podcasts, docos all had the same characteristics: no real evidence beyond child's testimony, leading and irresponsible questioning techniques (now considered disreputable), widespread parental panic -eg active and suggestive questioning of them now considered a process of suggestion and false-memory creation, shonky experts, escalating numbers of children reporting over the period with outrageous child testimony (drinking blood, murders enacted, ritualistic abuse, macabre acts that would have entailed serious physical injury where none was present, large groups of people involved, impossible sequences of events etc.). These events were all supposed to have gone on repeatedly with multiple children over long periods of time in a public daycare with staff, parents oblivious and no reports of any concern prior to the initial satanic panic event that blew up. Sometimes unrelated people were caught up in it, in one case a policeman who happened to be there.
The police and prosecution for their part formed their view from day one and bought entirely into the thinking of the times (believe the child) in the US McMartin case completely relying on one untrained, unlicensed counselor who with puppets and leading questions would forcefully get testimony from the children.
For all the cases I looked at the defendants were ultimately exonerated, though after lengthy battles. Often children involved have recanted their evidence.
This doesn't rule out that some children were abused in a more typical sense - the Canadian CBC documentary points to one likely case. But there's little doubt that the vast majority of charges are created from a condition of social mania.
The interesting thing is that many of these children do believe they were abused even when it's most likely they weren't. It is actually possible to implant memories through suggestion. And so in a very real way these children were abused by a failed system.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I have plenty of generalised anxiety of the future myself though now that I'm in deep with kids of my own, the immediacy of their care reduces that background. I do feel a bit bad for them sometimes with the uncertainty in the world but of course other generations had their thing and the characteristics I hope to instill are removed from time. Resilience will always be useful.
While I have probably always wanted kids or thought I'd have them eventually it was my partners ticking biological clock that got me over the line :) Are biological clocks no longer ticking?
My parents had us young and warned us against doing the same with some of their thwarted ambitions. But then I've gone the other way and wish I'd started earlier.
Just to add that the payoff for children for me has been meaning, I get connection to meaning.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Well that's sad to me but I sense it, and it becomes reinforcing- as less people are having children society seems to have also become less accommodating of having children. I have to say it's a stressful business in the current age.
How much is fear of global catastrophe? I wonder if all the environmentalism has curbed the instinct, or is it that we've become more online and less physically connected.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Makes sense, I too am more circumspect in wider circles
Yes, this feels right. My focus has always been on what is true, or what can I learn and I've always been willing to entertain, if not actively share, ideas that are taboo.
The adaptation of knowing which way the wind blows and avoiding going against the ruling elite makes a lot of sense of course. Perhaps I have just been fooled by the 'end of history', of modern liberalism founded on enlightenment values.
I have a friend who literally never shares his political persuasion even when prompted. I assume this must be some hidden trauma in his genes that makes good sense over long timescales.
Of course it's frustrating because all it takes for the counter ideas to be made normal is the mass of people in the middle expressing them, as they used to only a blink of an eye prior.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Trust me, I'm in the same boat professionally speaking. But in private with friends I'm happy to share. But perhaps that's they're reservation and just more cautious?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
That would seem to somewhere marginalise the concept of child development, which we have consistently taken into account in applying other restrictions on choice as a society, alcohol, driving, joining the army.
But I can see the framing as being sufficient at a first, say libertarian, brush.
The problem of course, as you point to, is that the systems of trust advising on these matters are captured and are being grossly negligent in providing accurate information.
I kind of see myself at a privileged place in history, in that it's actually really easy to get information. 10 hours of reading on substack will get you all you need to know to have a visceral experience of concern. In the past, the systems of trust were limited. Also we understand biases and self deception much better than previous generations.
I met the parent of a three year old who told me their child gets to decide every day if she is a boy or a girl. Schools are responding to this Manchausens by proxy parental abuse by... obliging them... Surely an average person would look at this and say, hmmmm, that's not right? Are three year olds now masters of their own destiny?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Will read in detail but that looks like a particularly craven reversal. I think maintaining status is probably a big motivator for such people, who are already in the public eye and don't want to lose what they have. It's why you'll never see an episode on the gender cult, or gender gurus on Conspirituality or DTG.
But the people who I am interested in are people like my friend or brother in law. People who when you explain some of the concern, end up with 'its complicated' and don't want to go further even in their own minds. I mean I get blue tribe v red tribe tribalism, but shouldn't there be some curiosity of the issue at hand?
I know it's all speculation but I really want to know, are people actually not concerned with fidelity to actual reality? Is my mind one of say 20% and there's like another 50-60% that appear like me but actually have a fundamentally different mind?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
The gender ideology movement sort of feels out of the news cycle where I live, but remains very top of mind for me.
As I see it, the whole umbrella is actually multiple, almost unrelated strands, queerying category activists, social engineering progressives, AGPs, internet cults, all underpinned by unthinking legal activism and of course corporate profiteering. Did I mention an overtly political and enabling media environment bereft of any journalistic values?
I am fascinated by all these things but mainly I want to talk about the social mania aspect. I'm very interested in how smart people, who would inevitably class themselves as above-average in rationality and morality, are able to brush off child-safeguarding concerns, discarding the previous medical ethics consensus (first do no harm, evidence based medicine) in favour of ideas that barely existed even 15-20 years ago.
I have been looking into previous social manias such as the satanic panic and the child care workers given wrongful convictions and it's shocking how difficult it is to reverse the tide of mania once it's begun. Parents, police, the justice system, and media all fall into lockstep and condemn innocent people to terrible fates they and their families bear in almost total isolation, with only a few supporters able to parse the information in front of them and figure out what is going on.
I mean this is just human behaviour - we make movies about the Salem witch trials, we are modern people and have access to perspectives of humans across evolutionary time. Is it really true that people still don't know who we are, how we behave in herds?
I understand apathy, I understand things moving out of the news cycles, but I can't understand how people can maintain a neutral view on unnecessary surgeries on minors. When institutions such as medical bodies fail in their basic safeguarding responsibilities, suppressing dissent within their ranks, it is not hard to work out what is going on. How many manias does history need to present before people learn what we are?
A failure of courage I understand in any given context but the neutral middle doesn't even seem curious in private.
Can anybody enlighten me why people aren't more curious, why they're happy for children to be groomed into lifelong medicalisation, with their life choices pre-emptively narrowed before they even understand what consent means? The true-believers I understand, it's supposedly smart, moral people that aren't engaged that I'm confused about. Are they secretly true believers but just don't want to say?
Plain old cognitive dissonance?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Ah ha good ol pong ..
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
It wasn't an intent, merely an afterthought and in the spirit of trying to demonstrate sovereignty I'll do it myself thanks.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I left gaming at Tekken 2 or 3, which gives clues to my age and ongoing interests.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Well, I've put more sauce around it in a reply, but fair comment. I'm actually looking for an escape out of my internet habits at present so I might try a voluntary ban for a period once Ive addressed any comments that arise.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Well I have no idea of that scenario obviously, not having been in it. I've done some minor karate/Kung Fu sparring to know my skills and strength are negligible on the curve and on the street I've come off second best in several encounters though usually extremely drunk and in my youth. I suppose I have a quiet confidence that trained and with weaponry I would stand my own under fire but it's completely hypothetical. My theory is there's some advantage to calibrating your actual skills and courage to reality, rather than some wishful ego conception, so that way when it comes to crunch you don't find yourself unable to bridge to reality.
Now of course, instigating war doesn't require the instigators to have courage, they can pass that on to others, as well as the moral torments of having directly killed innocent people.
I just think I'm tired of the over-confident manner of mottizens in general. Talk is so cheap, and real thinking so expensive. So little on here has any relevance, interesting as it may be, because there is no reality test. As far as I can tell a lot of commentary just reinforces the position and ego of the commenter without persuading anyone else one way or another. On average people just like the friction of their position relative to others rather than being willing to actually adjust their position or acknowledge epistemic deficits. I'm worried that the tendency for over confident takes is actually psychological compensation and that the motte is actually riddled with a bunch of right brain autists metaphorically jerking off in their parents garage.
I think if you advocate genocide in a hot take you need to justify your bona fides. ie you should have murdered someone, or been a war veteran, or had your family murdered or something.
This site is resembling Reddit with the confident geopolitical hottakes.
Isn't this a contradiction? On the one hand, you bemoan the dilution of some truer, nobler Christianity of the past, presumably sullied in your view by forces such as the reformation and liberalism. Instead you would seem to want Christians to behave as they did in the Crusades and fight back against the intrusion of those with a foreign religion.
But then that would surely bring you closer in your Christianity to Islam, undermining your Muslim exceptionalism claim.
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