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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33387 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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Evolutionary biology arguments might be convincing to you, they are not going to convince the majority of people. This might be better as a Wellness Wednesday thing.

I think maybe this article and this video interview from a mother who transitioned her child at a young age and regrets it, would at least help plant the seed of doubt.

Focusing on sex, reproduction, and medicalization for a five year old is probably not going to convince your friend. I don't think you should consider it your job to convince your friend. Offer the alternative view point, share someone else's experience, and then choose to either let it alone or destroy your friendship.

Let's not fool ourselves. The huge majority of average people believe in and practice evo psych, even if they don't admit it to themselves, or don't consciously realize it.

In what sense do you mean that they "believe in" evo psych, such that "believe in" and "practice" are different? If you mean "believe in evo psych" in the "beliefs should pay rent in anticipated experiences" sense, I think you're just factually wrong. I suspect most people couldn't even elaborate what claims evolutionary psychology makes in enough detail for it to inform their expected everyday experiences. And even if they could, my experience is that the majority of average people don't actually predict what things they will experience in the future on the basis of extrapolation from scientific theories, but instead base their expectations on some combination of extrapolating their past experiences and extrapolating the stories they know about people "like them".

Which I suspect you realize, but I am not sure what it would even mean to "believe in" a certain scientific hypothesis "without consciously realizing it". Maybe you mean "the behavior of a huge majority of average people is driven by instincts and patterns of thought burned into them by evolution", but that pattern-matches better to "evo psych can predict the behavior of those people" than to "those people believe in evo psych".

They believe in it in the sense that they hold it to be true i.e. they consider it a social reality that inexorably asserts itself. It's just like the fact that women are capable of lying about rape and domestic violence. 98 out of 100 people actually believe that, but 78 out of those 98 would never admit that even to themselves.

So if I'm understanding correctly, your claim is that, for most things that evolutionarily psychology predicts, most people would make the same predictions?

If so, I think I buy that for a lot of things (e.g. "people intuitively value their immediate family more than their distant family, and people who look like them more than people who don't) though definitely not all of them (e.g. I expect evolutionary psychologists to have very different views on infanticide than the general population).

I imagine there's probably one particular claim that evo psych makes that you're thinking of here, but I'm actually not sure which one. Evo psych makes kind of a lot of claims and many of them are outside the Overton window.

Because "women are capable of lying about rape and domestic violence" is not actually a claim evo psych makes (except in the very general sense of "strategies that involve deception are adaptive sometimes"). Most people won't agree to that in an internet argument because they expect that "are capable of" will be treated as "mostly do" or some other similar "gotcha". But that's not a matter of not admitting it to themselves, it's a matter of not admitting it to a hostile internet rando.

That doesn't mean you're going to have a lot of success using it's theoretical version to persuade people.

Probably not. But people will comprehend what you're talking about, and that you have a point.

That is a great article and video, it was already going to include in my email and tell him if he didn't want to listen to me, please please listen to that mom.

I don't think that's the right tactic either. I think you get one paragraph before he stops reading. That one paragraph can be a link to the article and video, with a brief explanatory statement - "I know it can be hard to get a balanced look on the topic. Here's another parent's experience. It could be useful to see what someone else wished she'd known before transitioning her younger child." Something casual.

It seems like you are really, really invested in convincing this friend. I understand, I have had a similar experience. But right now, the most useful thing you can be doing is maintaining the friendship so that you can slowly, carefully, provide an alternative view and a means of escape once he realizes he's in a cult. If you push too much he will cut ties with you and there will be nothing left. Be honest about your beliefs but don't be the one to bring them up.

It's not a friend, it's very close relatives, my kids and their kids play together all the time, and while I was quiet for a while, it's at a point where they are pushing false beliefs onto my kids and so the issue is becoming more critical. I added some more context here: https://www.themotte.org/post/454/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/89837?context=8#context

All the more reason for you not to botch your one shot. Everyone here is telling you that this is too long. Pick one argument, the best one that is the most applicable to your relative. One focused directly on socially transitioning a kid. Then if he seemed to have a good response, then pick the next argument. Go through one at a time.

Also you should be talking with your kids about what is happening, what you think about it. Be prepared for the play dates to slow down.

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