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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4403 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 30, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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We are kind of a circlejerk but it's not nearly as bad as it could be. Any time one of the main issues comes up - race and immigration, trans, women, AI - there are always people arguing for multiple competing viewpoints. There's never total unanimity.

Every political forum will have a certain slant, it's unavoidable. I don't know of any community that's a true 50/50 split.

The motte is not contrarian enough or only on few or surface topics. I continuously see ad-nauseam people here be blind to many mainstream mental attractors that trap their mind and either distort their thinking process or even make them incousiously abandon the thinking process altogether, like a brain deactivation.

Besides the level of effort, caring, cognitive flexibility and most importantly intellectual genuine curiosity is appaling, I once wished this website to be the only place on the internet where I could meet my peers but alas I am long past this delusion.

Which mainstream mental attractors would those be?

Any time one of the main issues comes up - race and immigration, trans, women, AI - there are always people arguing for multiple competing viewpoints. There's never total unanimity.

The Trans Question has 2 camps on this site, and the dominant one is "trans bad". There's a smaller camp of "trans not necessarily bad, but I don't agree with X, Y, or Z".

Ok the opinions on the TQ are pretty unanimous. I know we have at least one trans person here who takes up the opposing side. I feel like there were at least one or two others who were pro-trans but maybe I'm misremembering.

There are a number of pro-bodily-autonomy-including-trans people on this site, myself included. There are a lot more people here who hold the position "body dysmorphia is bad" than "body dysmorphia is good", but that's because "body dysmorphia is good" is the straw "pro-trans" position [1]. I actually suspect that the following is a scissor statement here:

If medical technology advanced to the point that it was possible to functionally and reversibly change your sex, that would be a good thing. People changing their sex in that situation would be perfectly fine.

[1] Yes, I know that it is possible to find people who say something that approximates this. This is because, for any position, particularly about something political, it is possible to find at least one person who will support that position.

This was discussed a few weeks back. Myself and a couple other folks agreed even though we are generally not pro trans at the moment.

I put it in the same realm as “if women could have a fetus of any age moved from her womb to an artificial womb, and it has little to no negative effect on the child, I’d be fine with that kind of abortion.”

Are you referring to this giant 300 comment thread, or was there a more specific one?

Yep I believe that’s the one. It has come up multiple times since the move offsite though.

I tend to find it interesting to get down to irreconcilable value differences, and to me the question you posed is a great way to get there on trans issues.

I'm one of the pro-trans people on this site, along with a few others. We generally try to push back on the bad arguments even if we agree with the conclusion. At least, that's what I try to do, but I'm bad about being consistent on this site. It's just boring after a while.

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