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ShariaHeap


				

				

				

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ShariaHeap


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think you understand what the CW thread is, or apparently the toggles.


It's not a broad brush "trans bad", there's content to engage with here. If you choose not to engage with it that's fine but don't do the whole 'deplorables' routine thanks


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Could well be, there may be something underlying it, say extreme anxiety. It's not necessarily psychosomatic as it were. The culture bound syndrome gives expression to the underlying symptoms and as you note, the expression/diagnosis can change. I argue that gender dysphoria is potentially like that, something actually experienced by the self, but reified into a particular form. I'm also combining this with the idea of social contagion.


As for social contagion, it is well known that for adolescents in particular, conditions can spread among peer groups, including suicide, anorexia, and antisocial behaviour. I mean we aren't surprised by the positive side of this phenomenon re fashion, musical tastes etc so we shouldn't really be surprised about the negative side.


Another potential clue is that for young people, other mental health indicators such as self-harm and suicide have been increasing rapidly at the same time that gender dysphoria has been rising, again particularly for young adolescent girls, and corresponding to the use of social media. Along with anecdotal reports by teachers and parents of people in the same class coming out as trans around the same time and Lisa Littman's survey of parents showing that internet use was a precursor to coming out and I think you are seeing a pretty strong case for social contagion.


Just do a search of the number of trans/rainbow groups on discord. These internet spaces in addition are perfect in creating cult-like dynamics of conformity. This helps explain how gender clinicians at the Tavistock observed people's narratives to be almost scripted.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think a useful frame for thinking about trans identification is as a culture bound syndrome. Some conditions obviously have a plain physical aetiology but other conditions are given shape by the culture of the time. For example, hysteria was a common diagnosis of a previous era but no-one suffers from it today. Similarly while people have always starved themselves historically for various reasons, ie religious martyrs, the modern form of anorexia as self-harm among mainly female adolescents is a recent culture bound syndrome - in a sense the cultural availability of the syndrome within the medical context of the time combines with the experience of the individual to give rise to the condition. This culture bound syndrome is hen active and in the modern age can be easily exported as happened with Korea which experienced a sudden arrival of anorexia as essentially a new condition. Note this means it's still very real.


Over time the experiences and language of how people to describe their state spreads and this is what I think is happening with trans. In adolescence significant anxiety and transition to the social world from childhood create a space of confusion and sometimes extreme anxiety in the self-space. The experience of feeling different from everyone else, not fitting in, is actually really common. Additionally some people have additional challenges around sexuality or gender non-conformity, or they may have dysfunctional family or have experienced abuse. In the past, people may have experienced this as more generalised anxiety, deep depression, self-destructive behaviours etc, in more recent times it has become expressed in new modes such as anorexia and direct self-harm. Because gender has become so salient it is now being expressed as gender dysphoria - the language and experience are given to the person by the culture and this reifies their self-experience in these terms.


Combined with the social contagion of the internet and in-group cult dynamics that give short term alleviation of the sense of difference and alienation then we see how the culture bound syndrome can spread.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Please post some sources as I've not read anything about this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I see what you mean about national identity and the national consciousness of it - that can be a different thing from racism for sure. I'm encouraged by your comments as the line I get from media in my country is about things like the popularity of the One Nation party and suggestions that Australia had quite an underbelly of racism.


Not that my concern is that people can't be racist per se - people can have their own views, it just seems like a poor marker for liberal democracy if there is a lot of racial tension. It sounds like this isn't particularly the case in Australia.


I was aware of the dysfunction in Aboriginal communities - I think the racist element that can arise is if that's overgeneralised suggesting an inherent genetic lack and the counter examples are never mentioned. I know there are systemic and difficult to resolve issues though as with other indigenous peoples under colonisation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This reads like hagiography to me. I'm not Australian but I've visited a few times and engages with Australians abroad and I couldn't help noticing how racist some people were. "Don't get me started on the Lebos", "Abos are just paint sniffers etc". Mind you this was from a second generation Indian migrant so perhaps assimilation in Australia is to become racist?


Perhaps in Australia racism is at a casual and non-consequential level and that's healthier than a deeper racism of other countries who have a pretence of non-racism.


Or might you be in a liberal well-off bubble where people are genuinely getting on fine racially - ignoring the ugly racism that to me seemed to occur fairly regularly throughout my travels...?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Credit to all, I would say.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's truth in that of course, but your rebuttal somewhat proves the point as it's very reductive and misses a lot of what religion also is. Religion in addition to the creedal beliefs is also pointing beyond as it is about engaging with that which is greater. The Christianity of different times, say Meister Eckhart or Thomas Aquinas, is not sufficiently countered by Jesus never did miracles or was the son of God because it would be scientifically impossible.


The point is that atheism is lacking also, it is floundering on the rocks of reductive materialism. Religion points to some of what it's missing. What we do next is not theism as we've done, and it's not atheism, hence the idea of non-theism.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not able to help with the new atheism internet history but if you've read Dawkins that's probably enough to get the gist of the general sense of the righteousness of the atheist tribe and of course the rational points raised against faith beliefs.


But as you mention agnosticism and seeing the limitations of physicalism I really want to point you to the idea of non-theism. This is the idea that contemporary framings of religion and atheism share the same modal mistake in the focus on propositional beliefs, with say a literalist creed asserting that everything in the bible being literally true, and an atheist refuting those beliefs.


But in many ways, while the rationalist critique of atheism is valid, it is also a straw man. Religion has also always been about participating in relationship with a phenomenological reality that is beyond oneself. Atheism, mired in a reductive physicalism is not able to engage with this and so ignores it, also reducing religion to this limited frame.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's a potentially narrow, fairly  homogeneous grouping at least for some of history. It's more tractable for study. 'Black people', which at that level, not so much-it would include a plethora of overlapping lineages.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Apologies, environmental, I mean, though culture overlaps with environmental.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yep, I stand by my prior post up the chain, there's very little information or science to engage with in the last 10 posts, just sweeping generalisations and opinion among people that agree with each other.


Now that may be because you've all 'done the work' already, but a post needs something more than back-slappimg surely?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Smarts can be hereditable for sure, but in daily life there's lots of types of smarts in terms of success for environment, and there's not just genetics, there's epigenetics - culture can affect genetic expression.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It was provocative I admit and I welcome harsh criticism of such a lazy post. But I have read some of the posts here and I stand by my gut feeling of a lack of sufficient nuance for the topic.


As far as I can tell it traverses the full complexity of human complexity - genetics, epigenetics, phenotypics, brain science, interaction of culture with genetics, study design, statistics, intelligence measurement, long history, short history, local history, global history, evolutionary biology, education, development...


Ie, partitioning off causal effects based on aggregate numbers on IQ across partly socially constructed population categories feels 'fraught'. I'd engage with it more (currently reading Charles Murray) if it wasn't for the fact that most posts don't seem to show the slightest glimpse of epistemic humility or acknowledgement of the gaps, difficulties in causal analysis.


But it's an intuition - I could be way off, can you point me to something enlightening and I'll make a start on the topic. I'm picking this would need about 1000 hours of research /thinking as a starter given it's complexity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My guess is hereditary biological determinism...


I admidettly only scan over this material but the best examples are Askhenazi Jews are inherently smart, in it's worst guise Black people are inherently stupid.


As far as I can tell, the low-IQ version of this argument starts with a racist mindset that then uses a naive attribution of IQ to genetics, and constructs an elaborate just-so story to justify any inequality of black people as a natural consequence of the world.


My guess is that the high-iq version has better arguments and data but is just another elaborate just-so story like evolutionary psychology or blank-slate cultural constructionism or marxism or whatever other thought system that lacks sufficient epistemic humility and likes to draw long-bows.


The inquiry is fine and there may be the beginnings of a genuine science taking shape but easy answers are a lot more fun to post than the complexity of the real world.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Classy


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yep it's a good example of an idea that needs to show it's value.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In This House, We Believe in Gender Stereotypes
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for your response and no worries about delay. My response is rather long and a bit ranty. Apologies if it seems didactic but was exploring some ideas.


I actually agree with quite a lot of your framing. In terms of treatment I view it largely as a medical issue, or more broadly, public health. I accept there is a proportion of people with gender dysphoria who very persistently want to identify as the opposite sex and that one of the options available for such people will be transitioning.


But although I agree with the open-ended treatment model you propose I am skeptical that it's possible to reliably identify 'true-trans', especially when you shift the diagnosis to younger people.  I just don't think it's possible to reliably determine prior to puberty, or even in adolescence for that matter, what the life outcomes of that child are, and the ethical bar for early puberty intervention is so high (infertility and loss of sexual function) that I favour a ban (with exceptions in rare cases) on puberty blockers in the interests of public health. They are after all being used experimentally as an off label treatment. Broadly it might be possible to score for transition suitability on a risk-based assessment but there also needs to be enough history to determine that transition is the best option and so it can't be rushed in my view.


The argument to push treatment to pre-puberty would make sense if it were definitively diagnosible like heart disease but it's actually a poor idea with our current lack of understanding because it doubles down on treatment consequences while at the same time forestalling the window for diagnosis and therapeutic alternatives.


Also, the rationale to aid passing is an implicit acknowledgement that people who transition and don't pass don't actually resolve their dysphoria. I have a speculative suspicion that part of the drive towards early use of puberty blockers are reports from those who transitioned but still haven't resolved their dysphoria--"If only I had passed, then I wouldn't be dysphoric still"?


Anyway aside from this suspicion, the limited research on treatment with puberty blockers shows mixed outcomes so I don't think it's the silver bullet. I think this end of treatment under a passing rationale also segues from a medicalist to a trans-humanist paradigm.


Overall there needs to be much greater research into this issue. As you've alluded it's actually a grouping of different types under the umbrella 'trans' yet we talk as if it's all the same. As you acknowledge the transcum/ transtrender split isn't sufficient. Transvestites, transsexuals prominent in the past is a different thing than the modern gender dysphoria (as we've seen with the change in gender ratio). Transexuals as studied by Blanchard, which included autogynephiles (undeniable fetishism at play here in my view, whether you like the term) and androphilic men are a different beast to a young girl feeling gender dysphoric or a vulnerable, terminally online person imbibing trans messaging from a young age.


In addition to the medical frame and trying to identify any biological differences around gender non-conformity (being an effeminate gay male for example), we need to have two other frames to understand this issue in my view.


The first (articulated by Helen Joyce) is that trans is best thought of as a culture bound syndrome, that is, the experience of a set of internal experiences and suffering is mediated and interpreted within the current cultural settings. Gender dysphoria is at heart the description of an internal sense, but unavoidably the way we describe our experiences has cultural input. You can chart the rise and fall of many conditions (not just psychological), where what changed wasn't the underlying aetiology but the cultural setting where 'symptoms' are expressed. So hysteria was a notable condition of the past but doesn't exist now, carpal tunnel syndrome seems to have been largely a fad. It's possible that for some people the underlying cognitive complex of conditions like anorexia and ocd (to be sure longstanding behaviors over history) are being reinterpreted within the lens of gender dysphoria. It's clear that there is some overlap in these conditions for people who present at gender clinics. Similarly generalized anxiety around puberty may manifest as GD. Many different mental health  indicators (self harm, depression) have shown a sharp rise for young people in recent years, particularly young women. Is it really hard to believe that this isn't some manifestation of a social unease of the moment but exhibiting in different forms due to the complex of interactive effects?


This brings us to the second frame which is really just a wider view of the previous point. This is trans as a sociogenic meme, or social contagion. This is where we are now. Culture has created an idea of trans, as a progressive, transcendent human rights issue and the cultural forces now permeate sufficiently that we may just be sending kids down the trans train without there needing to be any careful medical scrutiny. Some people may start choose trans, ie a lifestyle option. Parents may influence their child to actualise themselves as progressives


Anyway Ive blathered long enough. I only put in the more general, speculative points to show that trans may indicate a particular cultural moment, as part of a broader meaning crisis and so solutions will have to be at that level also.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, I agree with a lot of what you say. There's no especial reason to invoke an egregore unless it adds something. We already have an understanding of networks, feedbacks, contingent causes etc.


The agency is a bit misleading as well as there's no intention or teleology necessarily. But to rescue the parts that I like I'd say it's not just a metaphor. The world actually is a distributed network of agents and culture is a collective intelligence where there can be causal action from the higher level entity down onto the agents. There's something about understanding things as a dynamical system that mixes in a variety of factors and agents to give us events that's actually closer to the truth than what I might call traditional history narratives, though the latter has the advantage of talking about tangible things. But I think there's a tendency still to overemphasize individual agents and to neglect the distributed milleu.


The question that you ask stands, what explanatory power does it actually have.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I disagree that emergent agency is a metaphor. I acknowledge it's somewhat vague in the sense of agency and it's a sketch of a theory but it's helpful in understanding. I guess the bar it needs to meet is being different from other types of causal analysis.


But I think something genuinely emergent can happen where the distributed network of actors and other factors (variation in fundamental institutional, system constraints, technologies etc) adds up to something more than the sum of its parts and that acts back down on the agents. Perhaps a rich causal analysis picks up on this, but the key explanatory power is the phase transition, where the contingent agents and background factors suddenly shift to a kind of hegemony that then whips up large sections of the community into a coordinated hive mind.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I might be misreading you, and I'm addressing your parenthetical point, but I don't think your post gives sufficient acknowledgement of the importance of mimesis/memetics.


Perhaps you're focused on strategy rather than ontology but I'm inclined to think mimesis and esoteric ideas like hyperagents are the critical ideas we need to think about to understand current issues.


The reality is we have agency and can aspire to individual rationality (which also requires wisdom, not just formal logic). But we are also subjects to 'interpellation' from the top down, which helps shape our reality. We are mimetic creatures and look to others to know what to think and care about. We can't avoid the cognitive necessity of 'framing', which necessarily narrows our perception and understanding of reality.


So what, you might say-how does this relate to the culture wars?


My contention is that some people are more able, whether due to upbringing or inherent personality inclination, as well as training, to either orient to truth or to occupy contrariwise positions. Others are more susceptible to going along. So there's that dimension-not everyone will act in the same way in what I will outline here..


Our moment sees postmodernism arise with the internet and institutional decay. This gives rise to mimetic possibilities that draw from culture but then proliferate as a dynamical system and operate back down on the culture. This level of hyperagency, or the egregore, explains qanon and the current gender ideology. It needs to be understood at this level because it's spontaneous, contingent and also not rational - it's the old, 'you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into'. People need to see that we are mimetic creatures that are prey to mass delusions and we should normalise talking at this level.


Other facets of the problem are more mundane, ie good faith vs bad faith, politics, cognitive biases that prevent people appreciating contextual factors in current world problems, conservative vs progressive preferences etc. They feed in, interact with, the culture war issues but aren't enough to explain the phenomenon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Should we then be intolerant of the intolerance of the intolerant...?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In This House, We Believe in Gender Stereotypes
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
NB and gender fluid mean a range of things to different people but in addition to change do sometimes imply a choice (choose to identity with etc). At the queer theory end gender is just a performance and so people can choose to transgress their assigned gender etc. (Eg genderqueer) I would argue this filters down through a lot of 'folk' sentiment around this issue. But in any case, just the change element is problematic when thinking about the construct of gender identity.


Yes, 'internal brain construct', which is implied in the born in the wrong body narrative (alternatively it is spoken about as a kind of Cartesian 'soul', part of someone, but not part of their body).  This is the justification for serious medical intervention. Gender identity theory implicitly posits a construct within us that we can know about, and that can differ from the gender ascribed to our sex. A lot of the self-ID gender as you call it, easily fits within our prior understanding of gender as a biopsychosocial complex that may vary widely among individuals, is dependent on cultural context and that may change over time. This kind of gender does not justify radical intervention/surgeries because other modalities could be brought to bear in treatment, and subjective self-awareness may easily shift over time (e.g. tomboys may always have non-conforming elements but they don't always eschew all aspects of femininity and many end up having children/being mothers). So it become a kind of motte and bailey with the strong argument justifying intervention, but when pressed around a lack of scientific evidence for this 'blue brain/pink brain' retreating to gender identity simply being a self awareness of one's gender. Actually commonly gender is discussed almost as a lifestyle option these days.


I'm also very skeptical of nb and gender-fluid narratives because I think they betray a fundamental misunderstanding of gender in relation to the self.  Speaking of myself, my experience is commonly very non-binary, I would describe it as the default self-space we all occupy -- I think much of the current moment is an over-identification with identity (and related obsessive psychologies) brought about by the disembodied internet.   By the by, basing categorisation on biological sex, ironically, allows for more flexible gender expression because the category is not tied to the expression -- no social proof is required of sex, manly women are women though they may trigger some confusion in the gender space due to our correlated markers of appearance.  Gender identity on the other hand, ties identity to expression, appearance and sex stereotypes -- people experience dissonance with their gendered expression and appearance in relation to sex norms and stereotypes.  You can see this by the stereo-typical androgenous appearance of non-binary -- the social proof is androgenous hair cuts, piercing, etc.


As to 'I see little need for metaphysical discussion of what it means to be a certain gender. If someone identifies as trans and it makes them happy, I'll respect their wishes', I don't honestly know how to respond to that.  I don't want to impute onto you, but this just reeks of a kind of lazy philosophical relativism which will lead us to 'no good place'. The rationale of course is that these ideas are now being spread in schools as 'truth' and that a rapidly rising number of children and adolescents with confused ideas about gender are altering their bodies. Many of these people, who have gender dysphoria, would have desisted if allowed to go through natal puberty, many of them would have turned out to be gay.  Yes I get adults should be able to do things to their own bodies, but the issue has long since passed that.  The philosophical issues are in some ways side-tracks (gender is complex after all and philosophy is hard), but we follow them because there are actual activists spreading inconsistent ideas that create confusion around sex and gender. Can I provoke you into putting your ideas down -- I'm curious how people square the circle of child-safeguarding and the risk of social contagion/sociogenic trans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I hadn't appreciated the broader context, as I said was judging off the post itself, not 'pot-stirring'.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, was referring to original mod post. I guess I'm curious as to what happens if you have a very low ban bar, it could all go to shit quickly of course, particularly if the community population changes, but if the community is broad-based and stable it's just on the margins might it just get ignored or rebutted.