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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10593 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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I don't believe that men can be women either. I get where it comes from - the left believes in reality being socially constructed and in wise experts -, the more they freak out the normies the wiser. Trans stuff is amplified for depopulation purposes, to make money in the medical industrial complex, to give more power for government to intrude in the family, etc. Demons inventing nukes, now that's an interesting new delusion.

I don't believe that men can be women either

That's not an axiomatic belief, it's a derived belief based on your definitions of "man" and "woman," which in turn descend from your beliefs about the duties and privileges a society should afford to members of each sex, which in turn descend from your beliefs about the optimal way to organize society, which in turn descend from... and so on and so forth.

I hate to make this a bravery debate, but that statement doesn't actually convey anything concrete about your beliefs, it just marks you as part of a particular ingroup. If you taboo'd the words 'man,' 'woman,' 'male,' and 'female,' you could actually have a productive discussion with leftists about whether people should be empowerd to advertise their sexual preferences via their mode of dress... about how we should create divisions within sporting leagues to balance inter-competitor fairness, the enjoyment of the audience, the marketability of particular sports... about the minimum physical capabilities we want in our soldiers... and so on.

I doubt you'd change your mind, or the liberal's mind, but "men can't be women" and "everyone is valid" are both equivalently vacuous statements that boil down to, "my view on the ideal distribution of responsibility and privilege is correct."

That's not an axiomatic belief, it's a derived belief based on your definitions of "man" and "woman," which in turn descend from your beliefs about the duties and privileges a society should afford to members of each sex,

This is false. My definition of "man" and "woman" has nothing to do with duties and privileges a society should afford to members of each sex, and believing that it does already effectively means believing that men can be women relative to my definitions.

you could actually have a productive discussion with leftists about

To the extent you could have a reasonable exchange of ideas with a person like that, those ideas would not be representative of what is actually being pushed by their political establishment. This person would not acknowledge what the establishment is actually doing, instead they would constantly sane-wash it into something palatable. If you provide evidence that the sane-washed version ins't what's being pushed, and the version you're objecting to is, two things might happen depending on the temperament of the person: conversion ends, or they'll the thing they just swore isn't happening is actually good. I don't think that's a productive conversation.

You're assuming people here are siloed off in an echo-chamber. Please consider the possibility that we've been having these conversations for a long time, and what you claim simply does not fit our experience.

discussion with leftists

I doubt you'd change your mind, or the liberal's mind

Why are you conflating liberals with leftists?

That's a bunch of postmodern second-hand lesswrong rhetoric meant to let the camel's nose into the tent. Now the camel is halfway in and kids are being sterilised and/or taken away from parents who "don't affirm their gender". Let's get the camel back out.

I believe none of those are the reasons, though they're close.

for depopulation purposes

It's not "in order to depopulate", it's "because we don't hold population as a virtue, it fails to apply as an argument to prevent this".

to make money in the medical industry

You think the average leftist cares about making big medical companies money?

to give more power for government to intrude in the family

I think this is a general mistake with attributing intentions to other people. Leftists don't think trans is good because it lets them strengthen the government's intrusion, they think the government being able to intrude is good because it lets them support trans kids.

If X has the result of "Y", while you think "anti-Y", it's common to say "they're doing X to support Y." But those disagreements are very often a question of relative ranking of X and Y; it's usually "they think X is more important than Y, so that they will accept an anti-Y result to bolster X". Compare pro-life vs anti-life, pro-choice vs anti-choice.

There are both true believers and cynical actors pushing any particular policy, like bootleggers and baptists both being pro prohibition as a classical example.

Well sure, but it's still wrong to say that baptists are pro-smuggling.

Fundamentalist Christian memes being used as explanations by people who may not 100% practice fundamentalist Christianity is not that odd. These are elites but not part of respectable society, after all.

Again, do you laugh at Simulation Theory? It used to be a reasonably high-status talking point in the rationalist community.

No.

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