A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
gen.medium.com
gen.medium.com
"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
- Henry James
This sounds exceptionally dismissive at first read — what’s the point you’re trying to make?
Two things should be noted, however. First, that this is one person's account, not an examination of broader trends. For a broader, data-supported survey of anti-free-speech trends on campus and why it harms students, "The Coddling of the American Mind" is a fantastic and enlightening book. (Incidentally it cites causes from right & left wing extremists, on and off campus, it's not a story of "snowflakes bad".)
Second, it's not necessary for authoritarian/illiberal activists to be in the majority in order to have a profound impact on the culture. "A small group of dedicated individuals" can affect great change even if they're in the extreme minority. If 1% of people on campus are willing to publicly condemn you and do everything they can to destroy your reputation or get you fired, and 4% are willing to go along with it, that can be enough to convince the the other 95% to keep their mouths shut.
None of this is to take away from the fact that this is a refreshing narrative of unity, openness & cultural exchange in the Ivies.
Nassim Taleb explores this exact concept in his essay titled "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority" https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
While I didn't serve, I did grow up with and had close family and friends that were part of navy, army and air force special forces.
The clown you describe does not last long in special forces unless he's a modern day Audie Murphy, Roy Benavidez or Chesty Puller.
I'm a graduate of Columbia's School of General Studies, alongside many veterans and other non-traditional students. I'm not a veteran, but I had many friends that had served. We had classes with younger students from Columbia College and Barnard and I felt like we brought a different perspective to the classes. I learned a lot from my fellow classmates and I feel so fortunate that I had the opportunity.
In the UK you'd either do college (university) first, or you wouldn't be planning on doing it at all. Some people do in-service degrees but I don't think it's common for large number of people to do a normal undergraduate degree after a military career.
As a result many Americans join the military with their primary intention being to go to school after they complete their service. I believe 4 years is required for the G.I. Bill, but I could be incorrect.
"Documentary" makes it sound sterile or clinical, but in fact it's pretty badass.
Kind of dispels the illusion that we're not pampered.
It's so good I'll probably watch it again today. The diving section is the best, IMO. Imagine someone spinning you around underwater and ripping off parts of your dive gear then having to reassemble it basically blind.
Imagine a junior code review that starts like this (https://youtu.be/AGvvNKBGgUw?t=230): "This entire codebase has been a joke. There hasn't been a single module that you've written during the course of this project that has even remotely resembled perfection. Everything has been sad, weak, and unreadable. And it's all because you're inside your tiny little brain, self-defeating yourself."
Admittedly that only happens during the training phase, though.
There is also the concept of being rolled back due to injury. If you sprain your ankle, for example, you can’t keep going. It’s a persistent fear of all candidates, since it’s a big setback. But the flipside is that apparently you only get rolled back to when the next class catches up to where you’re at right now in training. It’s one of the cooler parts in my opinion, since you can see they truly value the candidates rather than thinking of them as disposable tools (which you occasionally feel like as a programmer...)
But, ultimately, you’re correct: it’s inherently dangerous. Everyone signs up knowing the risks.
EDIT: Found the timestamp: https://youtu.be/AGvvNKBGgUw?t=2266
The emotional impact of going through the training will not be the same the second time around, so they won't take you back for another try.
A story I heard was that the trainers were total arseholes saying he was weak, saying he couldn't finish, and so on - then as soon as he realised he had to stop (broken leg or something) their attitudes completely changed to supportive and caring. Going through that and seeing the other side would definitely ruin the experience if they let you back in.
You'll get what I mean if you watch this documentary.
A different breed.
Impressive that he's taking it, but he's also seeing a somewhat more serious class of students who, by extension, are less likely to be snowflakes.
what does that mean ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_(slang)#Unique_or_sp...
The "Other Uses" section is interesting; I didn't know about its (now historical) use by abolitionists in a different meaning.
I've talked to more ordinary college students and they're pretty reasonable, normal people too.
Perhaps what's more likely is a tiny fraction of toxic people who use the social justice toolbox illegitimately are amplified disproportionately.
The world has always had toxic annoying people. There's always been that lady at church that pretends to be into Jesus but secretly just likes to dominate and bully others. Most people you meet though are pretty reasonable and nice.
Try to see the humanity in people who aren't like you.
What group is that? Where can I find such a group that only has toxic members interested in social justice?
> do not believe that the work of dead white males
Does everyone in that group believe that specific thing as well?
> self-select out of classes with an emphasis on the western canon
What percentage of those people outright reject the Western cannon as not worth learning? Do some of them think it's worthwhile to learn, but also want to get other perspectives as well so don't take quite so many of those classes?
I'm not trying to nitpick or go line-by-line, but just asking you to question your judgments about people. I find people are overwhelmingly more nuanced and reasonable than is often assumed.
It's like when people talk about "the south" as if it were one thing. I'm from the south, and if you get two random people who live in the southern US (or any part of the world) they will both be individuals with a complex system of beliefs. I mean, even when you start generalizing about people, different neighborhoods in Houston contain very different people of different viewpoints and circumstances. And then there are rural areas, different socioeconomic spectrums, etc. etc. etc.
Don't lump people together. And I'm not trying to hand wave all analysis of people as "too complex to understand," but just to realize that people might be quite a bit different than you think if you give them the benefit of the doubt.
Well, there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yvzBFESqZs
>It's like when people talk about "the south" as if it were one thing. I'm from the south, and if you get two random people who live in the southern US (or any part of the world) they will both be individuals with a complex system of beliefs
It's about aggregate behavior and prevalent norms, not about any two random people being the same as each other.
If those people's ideas where vectors, they'd be closer together and pointing towards a more similar direction, than from another group (say, Californians).
That doesn't mean you wont find vectors of millions of individual persons in the South pointing even the total opposite way for this or that matter typically associated with the South.
Again, there is such thing as aggregate behavior, but break it apart. How much of it is toxic, and how much of it do you just find weird/not quite your taste?
Going back to the video, you might think all that focus on triggers and anxiety is indicative of a greater toxic culture (evidence of aggregate behavior as you say) -- but were you there for the whole thing? Did you try to understand what they were coming from, and why they take that approach? Did you try to first discover with an open mind what you have in common and what your values fundamentally disagree with?
I'm sure in a moment of carelessness or stress you've probably done something stupid in traffic, but it would be unfair for someone to categorize you as a negligent or inept person without talking to you first.
I am kind of harping on this because I used to be pretty judgmental, but since breaking out of that mindset I've become a kinder and frankly much smarter person.
It's easy to treat someone like the "other" and project a lot of unfavorable traits onto them, because it's human nature. But it's important to try not to other-ize people.
People as individuals of course deserve for us to listen to them. Anybody. But it's OK to mock groups that go into aggregate stupid behavior - which also means mocking their members, but as members, not necessarily as whole human beings.
>Again, there is such thing as aggregate behavior, but break it apart. How much of it is toxic, and how much of it do you just find weird/not quite your taste?
Depends. If you're trying to judge an individual judge them on a case by case basis, despite whatever group(s) they might belong to. After all, their group affiliation doesn't define somebody totally. There can be jerk Democrats and wonderful Republicans for example, and vice versa. In fact, there can be great people that are otherwise (and for their own life-history reasons) bigots, and hideous hypocritical people who are otherwise humanitarians. People are complex.
That said, it's also helpful to judge movements in aggregate, when trying to trace historical contours, affect change, etc.
MLK could simply throw his hands up and say "everybody is different, I can't assume there is racism in the country" and try to access everybody individually -- and that would have gotten nowhere. Or, as he did, he could say there are very strong racist currents in the country, especially in the South, and I need to march there, and do so and so to change those people, as he did.
One has to think at several levels of abstraction, not just individual people.
>It's easy to treat someone like the "other" and project a lot of unfavorable traits onto them, because it's human nature. But it's important to try not to other-ize people.
If anything, I have another problem, I'm heavily contrarian. I see some things as basically correct, but if you push towards -X in a discussion (or if many people do) I will push towards X (even if in another disucssion I will push towards -X if somebody pushes to X) to restore balance. I also tend to pick things I agree with with both sides of a debate, even things they'll never themselves agree with ever. I basically hate group conformity. E.g. I can see the truth in some alt-right points, and I can see hardline leftist points. Not merely from a centrist way though (a compromise between them) but even hardcore tenets of one or the other side.
It's like I didn't understand blues music very well until I realized that they put a lot of feeling into how they placed each specific note, more so than other genres I've heard. But if you don't know to listen to that, you don't understand what they're trying to say.
Groups of people talk in different ways like that, too. It's easy to listen to them and assume they're saying nothing of value, but perhaps they're communicating something you haven't learned to listen to yet.
You try to understand people at the individual level not "at first", but always -- when dealing with them individually.
For any other type of dealing (social, political, organizational, etc) you must try to understand people at various aggregate levels.
Here's a company analogy. If you do customer support, treat customers as individual people. But if you plan your next releases features, you need to think about demographics and what different user categories want. And if you plan to open a store, you need to think of the aggregate patterns in the area (average spending, shopping behaviors, etc).
And of course, it is often important to group and categorize people to think about them. I'm not disagreeing with that. I don't think anyone reasonably intelligent could disagree with that.
Let me put it this way: I'm a classic overanalyzer and I've found while I'm very good at analyzing and theorizing, if I do not have a rock-solid foundation for my premises my theories can be shockingly wrong. If someone snubs me in public I can create quite elaborate theories about why they are the way they are, but if I simply check with them to see if my premises are true I find that maybe they just didn't see me.
of course, that's kind of a silly example, but the same goes for any kind of analysis.
That's why you talk to people -- to test out your premises to see if they're really true. Because otherwise, when you analyze people, what are you really basing it on? A completely neutral, objective assessment based on data with an understanding that it paints multiple pictures? Or is it a passing value judgement when the data can be interpreted many different ways?
To understand a subculture, you have to first understand that subculture. You don't only have to talk to people -- you can also read and think about their beliefs in good faith.
But if you don't do either, you are essentially arguing with the title of the news article without reading the explanation!
The two fractions are almost indistinguishable from the outside.
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/548196/touching-the...
Developing the humility and truly believing that we are all snowflakes and willingness to learn from the diversity around us is a big step forward.
I loved the analogy between leaders and bridge builders. I always considered leaders as those who build a pedestal or platform or ladder for the rest to use and grow. Very similar.
It gives me confidence and courage to take up a few courses myself and enjoy learning and not just go after grades.
To have you ass kicked every day, in every way imaginable (mentally, physically, athletically, motivational, trivially, lack of sleep and food, academically) while still doing a full course load is really a great start on adult life which can be just as hard and you are always prepared. I doubt the academics are anything like an ivy, just sharing another option that reminded me of the bridging of two worlds of physicality and academic pursuit.
As an undergrad, I got to spend a semester in the ROTC capstone for second semester seniors called “Leadership and Ethics.” I remember walking in on my first day in cargo shorts and flip flops as the only civilian and non-senior student. Everyone else was in full uniform. The class was taught by a Marine Officer.
As a business student, I realized how similar the military and business can be. Most of the theory of leadership and management aims to address a fundamental goal: how do you get people to do something they may not necessarily want to do. Whether that’s making widgets or killing someone, the underlying theories are quite similar.
The main difference I noticed between the two fields was the military’s emphasis on trust. You were to respect a chain of command because you could trust your commanding officer. You were expected to perform your best because you could trust your teammates to do the same. The reason soldiers could rely on this trust was because their superiors had gone through the bullshit and could manage from a seat of positional and experiential authority.
In the business world, they taught management as if having positional authority would automatically create trust and inspire subordinates. MBA students graduate and come into supervisory roles without any prior experience in the underlying work and get mixed results. Part of me wonders whether this is due to ineptitude or simply inexperience.
I remember finishing that course and thinking I really should study engineering because I knew that wanted to play a role in managing and leading technical teams working on innovative problems.
Fast forward a few years and I left my role in public accounting to go into industry, but instead of going into finance or internal accounting I chose to learn development and spend a few years experiencing what it’s like to be a developer, so that one day when I’m managing a technical team I can actually know when they’re giving me a legitimate justification for something, and when they’re just bullshitting me.
Having been a developer for a couple years now, I don’t know how I could have managed a technical team without this experience. I think back to my “career plan” before I took that class and remember thinking that I’d not only be able to find a managerial position upon graduation, but that I’d be able to lead effectively as a 22 year old. What a foolish 20 year old I was!
Anyway, this is really just a roundabout way of saying I loved my class and have tremendous respect for military leadership. I would have loved to have more classes with officers and veterans, and hope my kids get that opportunity someday.
Strongly.
Meeting a SEAL is like getting struck by lightning because there are so many phonies out there stealing valor. I hope it’s not the case.
No link.
Smart people should be able to deal with subjects outside their comfort zone
"Smart" is a cognitive trait; dealing with what is outside one's comfort zone is a different developmental axis altogether. Smart people are no better able to do this than anyone else, and may even have a harder time.
Cooperation and diversity are both optimal so being complex social creatures we go to lenghts to communicate as widely as we may. I think it all works out quite nicely, thankfully.
I would like to see just less dependence on cars, but I have no way of foisting that on people either.
You could be like me and grow up a weird liberal in a red state, but that will give you a complex and I don't recommend it.
Most university students are in their late teens and early 20's and once they graduate they never go back. Churches and other social institutions are more lifelong.
"What she meant by “safe space” was that she was happy to be in an environment where difficult subjects can be discussed openly, without the risk of disrespect or harsh judgement. This works both ways."
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/24/651052970/how-a-rising-star-o...
I often find the people that make this case are in their own bubbles, they aren't aware about. Like the notion LA and NYC are bubbles, and the midwest is "real America." Even though LA and NYC contain huge amounts of economic, racial, and LGTBQ+ diversity, and what many politicians consider "real America" to be a homogenous group.
> What she meant by “safe space” was that she was happy to be in an environment where difficult subjects can be discussed openly, without the risk of disrespect or harsh judgement.
If that's actually how safe spaces were implemented in practice, there'd be little backlash against them. The primary criticism against safe spaces is that they are an excuse to censor dissenting opinions. A common example is that people opposed to sex-reassignment surgery are not allowed into discussions about trangenderism because their opinions are considered "disrespectful" or even "violent" to transgender people.
I would point out that "being opposed to sex-reassignment surgery" is not so much an opinion as it is an ideology. I suspect many safe spaces would be far more open to including people who subscribe to that ideology if those people entered those discussions with a willingness to learn, a desire to honestly explore the pros and cons of that surgery, and a desire to share their own experiences of gender while also learning about other experiences of gender.
That is not any easy thing to do and it is especially difficult to do for cisgender people who have little knowledge of the emotional land mines they can trigger by simply relying on the "common sense" they have learned over a lifetime. If there is an honest desire to be included in these discussions, I would highly recommend taking the time to listen and learn before you start sharing your viewpoint so you can understand the effects that your words will have.
Here I'm trying to make distinctions between things like a gay person's human right to marry and a male's ability to identify as a woman and sue female oriented genital grooming places for discrimination on the basis that they have male parts. In one case that human right was denied arbitrarily based on the ideology of doctrine imbued culture and law.
What if these pros and cons were subjective, and someone decided that in the end, the cons outweighed the pros? Would you cast them as an evil person and exile them from your safe space? Would you accept their opinion, respectfully disagree, and move on?
It seems that you must either abide by the ideology, censor yourself, or be exiled and called a nazi. This goes against everything that a university is about: free speech and open discussion.
> cisgender people who have little knowledge of the emotional land mines they can trigger by simply relying on the "common sense" they have learned over a lifetime.
Correct. Cisgendered people represent the majority of the population. Personally I have had maybe one or two opportunities to interact with a transgender person because they make up a tiny percentage of the population. That is not to say that I refuse to be respectful towards them, it shows that the majority of people don't get the chance to interact and learn what to avoid saying. Is everyone really required to learn all these new words / triggers / etc. in order to appease a tiny tiny fraction of the population? Genuinely curious to know your thoughts.
Every person you meet is a minority of 1 in 7 billion. Is it so hard for you to learn how to understand people? Do you have trouble with new words and concepts?
The trouble comes when a tiny minority (i) decides that the accepted meaning of common terms no longer suits their personal preference — I refer here to the use of they as a generic singular pronoun in formal language — and (ii) insists loudly that anyone who fails to conform to their new preference is being hurtful and disrespectful instead of merely precise.
I think it would be hurtful and disrespectful to die on such a mole hill instead of just accommodating people over something so simple.
This is disrespectful. You might think that this disrespect is warranted- that's fine; one must make judgment calls about what to respect and what not to respect. It's still disrespect. Be yourself: own it :)
You've calibrated your disrespect alarm to an awfully low setpoint.
Really? If you were to ask me to address you as Your Imperial Majesty, you should not hold your breath waiting for me to comply.
Language evolves; in formal English, singular they has long been unacceptable. (Informal English is another story.)
EDIT:
>You don't have to harbor cruel feelings about it.
You're proving my point in assuming I "harbor cruel feelings" about trans people.
That's super interesting to me, because in my experience in any social group I participate in greater than, say, 50 or 100(anything from gamer rooms to code-a-thons), chances are good that at least one person will not be cis. I may not know they aren't cis, but in spaces that ask for preferred pronouns, it's quite common for they/them to be taken up as an accepted pronoun.
Of course the pros and cons can be subjective, relative and individual. Among the trans and non-binary community, sexual reassignment surgery is not ubiquitous.
> Would you cast them as an evil person and exile them from your safe space? Would you accept their opinion, respectfully disagree, and move on?
You seem to be missing the distinction between sharing your opinions kindly and respectfully and self-censoring. My point is that people without much experience on this topic will likely have no clue about they ways they are being cruel, disrespectful or ignorant.
> Is everyone really required to learn all these new words / triggers / etc. in order to appease a tiny tiny fraction of the population? Genuinely curious to know your thoughts.
If you would like to act respectful towards (and be taken seriously by) any population, you must make an effort to learn their volcabulary and desired forms of respectful communication. This applies to any cultural group and isn't anything new or an audacious request.
What a strange example! What is the "dissenting opinion" about sex-reassignment surgery and transgenderism? Is it not for individuals to decided? Why would this even be an issue in the public space. If you're not transgender, does it impact you in any way?
Can you cite numbers on where and how often this is occurring?
Even this is seen as an extreme step and typically only done with multiple doctors signing off.
There are appear to be rare outliers and technicalities, but these are single digit exceptions rather than representative of some new norm.
https://www.quora.com/What-age-can-children-have-sexual-reas...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/oregon-teen-sex-change-law...
It's increasingly become an issue in the public space because local governments are increasingly getting involved with this issue. Dissidents may believe that governmental power is being misused to further a harmful ideology and to push unproven and ill-advised treatments on children.
I think you'll find that the mainstream public policy about trans people is whether they should have access to facilities or recourse to anti-discrimination laws when they're fired from jobs.
You'll have to address those policy debates on the merits, without appeals to some hypothetical future horror.
But more to the point: the public policy debate about trans people is about whether they can use the bathroom or be fired from jobs.
If that's true, then that's fine! But I was under the impression that there were still significant concerns about the long term safety of those drugs. (And other allegations besides safety - I've heard that many/most people who identify as the opposite gender prior to puberty begin to identify as their birth gender following puberty, but I don't have a source there)
And it sure seems to me like the debate is about more than just bathrooms. "Can there be legal repercussions for misgendering someone", for instance.
With that said: the resources I found strongly suggest that puberty blockers are, especially for patients with strong dysphoria (which is dangerous in its own right!) safe and present no meaningful long-term consequences.
The more powerful argument here would be that the people who do have the most authority in this subject --- medical professionals --- appear to have achieved a consensus on this topic, and that most of the push-back on it seems to be from laypeople second-guessing them. If those laypeople themselves can generate powerful arguments, more power to them, but I don't see what they are. So far, I'm inclined to trust the doctors.
Outside of the Jordan Peterverse, I don't see "legal consequences for misgendering people" as a live issue, but I'll say right now that I'm only familiar with and interested in the debate in the US, where the story we're commenting on takes place, and which is the most important venue for the "snowflakes and safe spaces" debate.
The potential benefit of puberty blockers is that it potentially makes children who transition to the opposite sex more aesthetically similar to that sex. But since the majority of people who identify as transgender as children desist [2] (they eventually identify as their sex at birth) many are going to endure the risks of puberty blockers for no benefit.
1. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/4/e201821...
2. https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/441784/the-controversial-re...
> Pubertal suppression is not without risks. Delaying puberty beyond one’s peers can also be stressful and can lead to lower self-esteem and increased risk taking. Some experts believe that genital underdevelopment may limit some potential reconstructive options. Research on long-term risks, particularly in terms of bone metabolism and fertility, is currently limited and provides varied results.
Not only are there health risks, some of the potential damage is irreversible. Your above comment is completely dismissive of the health risks of puberty blockers.
Whether or not the user puberty blockers is ethical is a question of whether compromising the health of the majority of children that display gender dysphoria but eventually identify with their birth sex versus blocking secondary sex characteristics to provide a more aesthetically pleasing body for the minority that do follow through with gender reassignment. While the study does ultimately support the use of puberty blockers it does so in an environment where highlighting that the majority of transgender children desist is socially unacceptable - to the point where many categorically deny that any transgender youth desist.
(The "irreversability" of effects from puberty blockers is itself contentious; TGD patients given puberty blockers apparently tend not to desist, and puberty delay is followed up with cross-sex hormone treatment that can theoretically reverse bone mineralization issues; the age at which the drugs are administered is also a major variable in these studies).
I've read something like 9-10 studies on this issue this afternoon and haven't found one that couldn't reasonably be described as "strong support" for GnRHa-type treatment. Can you find a credible study that isn't? All I found were things by people like Michael Laidlaw, a private practice doctor and tort expert witness who is cited more frequently in places like The Daily Wire and The Federalist than in medical journals. You can probably do better! And you need to do better than a single sentence from a long report that appears to straightforwardly and directly disagree with the thrust of your argument.
And lastly, while you purport to have read many studies and have asked that I provide references you have not provided a single source to support the claims you're making. Link me to a study that categorically denies the existence of adverse consequences of puberty blockers. This is what you claimed above. Finding studies that support the use of puberty blockers is not support for your claim that "All a puberty blocker does is delay the onset of puberty" and that they "have no permanent effects".
This is a complex subject and you're entitled to your opinion, but please don't misrepresent facts. The kid and the mother want the treatment, but the father is trying to block it.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/06/trans-teenager...
> Dissidents may believe that governmental power is being misused to further a harmful ideology and to push unproven and ill-advised treatments on children.
This is the exact same argument that was used in the past against gay marriage. There is no scientific basis behind this argument, just an appeal to fear and irrationality.
I suppose the study of the humanities is supposed to lead us out of this dark and terrifying labyrinth of misconceptions.
That's the public perception based on news media. Sure, there may be a minority of "safe spaces" that are how you depicted, but if you include AA, group therapy, and other things of that nature, I think your perception is wrong.
>A common example is that people opposed to sex-reassignment surgery are not allowed into discussions about trangenderism because their opinions are considered "disrespectful" or even "violent" to transgender people.
When almost 50% of trans male teens have attempted suicide [1], almost half of all trans people report being verbally or physically harassed [2], and the American Medical Association calling violence against trans people an "epidemic" [3], then yes, I think there is a fair case to be made anti-trans sentiment contributes to violence towards the trans community, just like how anti-black sentiment in the US contributed to violence against black people.
Is going into spaces where trans people feel comfortable, to make your case against sex-reassignment surgery something you feel that needs to happen?
[1]https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/4/e201742...
[2]https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/comedian-s-death-und...
[3]https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2019/06/15/amer...
What does "being opposed to sex-reassignment surgery" even mean? I see two options:
1. Being opposed to others having the possibility of undergoing such a surgery.
2. Being opposed to undergoing such a surgery.
In the first case, I do believe it's disrespectful of the freedom to do with one's body as one pleases. In the second case, AFAIK nobody forces anybody to undergo such a surgery, so I doubt that anybody understands this position this way.
Disclaimer: I also don't like the idea of "safe spaces", however this particular criticism seems ill-founded.
You aren’t allowed to harm yourself. You could argue that you should but under current laws we protect people from that, mostly.
Also doctors have to perform these surgeries in which case their oath would mandate we are certain this procedure isn’t causing harm.
And finally and perhaps most importantly. These surgeries can be performed before the age of 18.
Can you cite numbers as to where, and how often, this is happening?
There is a law against committing suicide, but there aren't any laws about harming yourself. If there were, sugar intake would be regulated and alcohol would be banned. You also don't get arrested if you intentionally cut yourself.
> their oath would mandate we are certain this procedure isn’t causing harm
That's not what the oath means, and you can see plenty examples of this in practice. Many procedures cause harm and the question is whether or not the harm caused by the procedure outweighs the harm done by not doing the surgery.
The vast majority of Western countries (at least) no longer have laws against committing suicide.
What they do have is laws that allow the basic rights of people who are considered "a danger to themselves", such as the right to refuse treatment, to be set aside. In my view such laws, unless limited to people with specifically diagnosable and treatable conditions, are an unwarranted invasion of government into an individual's private affairs.
I don't understand your reply. Perhaps you meant to reply to a different comment?
> 'Disclaimer: I also don't like the idea of "safe spaces"...'
The article defines a safe space as "...an environment where difficult subjects can be discussed openly, without the risk of disrespect or harsh judgement."
I suppose I'm really asking you if you read TFA.
It always seem that the only people complaining about systems designed to respect others is the people that are doing the dis-respecting, haven't seen much proof of the contrary so far.
If the membership and topics are exclusive based on comfort then it is, by definition, not a safe space for any kind of difficult conversation. It's just a private club.
Are also you saying difficult conversations cannot be had by people sharing similar interests or beliefs? And since when are all private clubs bad?
> "Are also you saying difficult conversations cannot be had by people sharing similar interests or beliefs?"
No, but freedom for difficult conversations are the qualifier for a "safe space", not the identity of the individuals and their comfort which would be antithetical to free discussion by all.
> "And since when are all private clubs bad?"
Nobody said that. The point is that a safe-space as defined in the article is not the same as a private club with limited identities and discussions.
The quote literally says difficult subjects (read conversations) can be had within this space. Obviously we have different interpretations and my comment is adding my own perspective to it.
The flipside of your statement is "I'm starting to think that only the people whose opinions aren't silenced are the ones who like safe spaces"
Would you have also advocated that people shouldn't say "mold cures disease"? How would we have then come to a consensus that in fact this mold does cure bacterial infections if we couldn't discuss it because it was considered "too dangerous to ever discuss"?
First, that it doesn't get us anywhere to declare some statements as "facts" or "objective truth", because whether or not something is or isn't a "fact" is in effect the entire debate; it begs the question.
Second, I'm pointing out that we already draw lines between colorable arguments and disqualified nonsense. For instance, if you attended Yale Medicine and started preaching that vaccines were poison and bleach was medicine, you would probably not last long there; Yale Medicine classes are (I presume) a "safe space" against "drink bleach" --- which, again, is an actual thing.
For the most part, you're allowed to tell people that bleach is medicine. You shouldn't, but you won't get arrested for it. Similarly: people who want other kinds of "safe spaces" aren't going to achieve a public policy outcome where transphobia and other forms of bigotry are outlawed; rather, they're aiming for something similar, in specific settings, to what top-tier medical schools do to disqualify laetrile advocacy. That doesn't sound crazy to me.
All this stuff is fraught, of course; I follow and endorse FIRE, who seem to have interesting things to say about this and come at it from a fairly hard-line 1A set of principles. Also, if you pay attention to FIRE, you'll see that this kind of campus free speech stuff comes from all sides of the political spectrum. Everyone overreaches; we're human.
"Drink bleach to cure diseases" is not a fact. I'm not sure what that example is supposed to mean. Obviously people making stuff up is a problem but isn't that the complete opposite of facts?
Now people can still discuss and debate anything based on the facts as a narrative and reason for other topics and scenarios, but if you're debating the facts themselves then we're not going to get very far unless you bring evidence.
The point isn't that they're right; the point is that you can't simply declare one side of an argument "factual" and the other not and then walk away from it without acknowledging that some exogenous authority is what's allowing you to do that, and while we're probably all going to agree about the right authority for basic medicine, we're likely to disagree about the authorities on other issues.
Coherence is not understanding. Not applying the scientific method and saying there's a bunch of anecdotal evidence does not override the scientific foundations. At that point then there's no discussion to start because you don't agree with others on the premise of reality based on common consensus. It's like trying to talk about math when you believe 2 + 2 = 5 instead.
Now if you're talking about metaphysical "what is real" conversations then there are no facts or a "safe space" logical boundary to be worried about since you can say literally anything and it can, and must, be accepted for such a discussion to occur.
The problem isn't that it's invariably hard to come to reasonable conclusions. Obviously, I think vaccines are very good, and that climate change is real. The problem is that "science!" isn't a Konami Code that automatically wins arguments.
The thread here is about TGD people. The comment to which I responded implied that there were "legitimate facts" that should end the dispute. I doubt that commenter's "legitimate facts" are coterminous with my own. Why should I accept them? That disparity doesn't make me right or wrong; rather, it just demonstrates what I keep saying, which is the "but facts" argument doesn't actually say anything or move the conversation forward.
Science does move it forward because it's the foundation. The issue you're describing is someone not understanding science. Again this is like trying to use math when you don't understand it, or trying to talk if you don't understand the language. The basics must be agreed on for progress to be made.
As for the rest of your comment, you're delving into the "question reality" philosophical aspect. And like I said, at that point, in regards to this HN thread, there is no need for a safe space because anything and everything is up for a debate.
> "science has conclusively shown something that TGD safe-space people don't want to hear"
This plays out in every single HN thread when controversial subjects come up. We just had one a few days ago about male and female brains.
> "I think it's likely that it's you that misunderstands what science is and how it works, not me."
That's interesting because I've said that understanding science is a prerequisite to understanding the consensus of objective truths while explaining how those truths are derived from the scientific method and proofs, yet you argue that it's irrelevant in your prior comments since it can all be questioned endlessly.
So which is it? Either you understand it and there are objective truths or you question it all. Claiming that someone else doesn't understand it is doing exactly what you say can't be done as an argument.
Or, perhaps, I do know what science is and how it works, and having a consistent argument shows the power of using science in discussions where both parties agree on the same principles of reality? Anyways, this seems to have run its course so I'll end it there.
As a Jew, hearing the words of neo-nazis absolutely disgusts me to my core but it does not "hurt" me. If words hurt you, that is your fault, not the words' fault.
The OP is merely pointing out how so-called "safe spaces" today are just echo chambers. If you consider topics that you disagree with as uncomfortable, or even harmful, and exclude them from discussion, then what exactly is the difficult non-judgemental conversation to be had in that space?
Do you have a source for why this specific example is common?