The Truth Matters and Secular Humanists Should Defend It
secularhumanism.org
secularhumanism.org
I feel genuine relief reading again things like:
<<<We cannot have differing rules based on the speaker’s skin color, gender, or political affiliation. No one has a higher claim to the truth because of their group identity. “Who you are does not count;” Rauch says, “the rules apply to everybody and persons are interchangeable.”>>>
Something that over the last few years has been heavily contested and went from being one of the most obvious values to one that triggers the most vitriol.
This implies there was a truth era. When was that?
"an era of increased skepticism towards the idea of objective truth" is the idea.
The people who dislike it the most tend to be either those who've been effectively manipulated by power interests, or those who find reckoning with the difficulty of finding the truth inconvenient.
Down the nihilistic rabbit hole we go!
That's this layman's understanding of where postmodernism almost invariably ends up.
No one will be able to tell if we’re serious, trolling ourselves, trolling each other, or trolling the audience.
The essence of postmodernism is actually plausible deniability.
Excellent way to avoid engaging with an idea you might find disagreeable, a tip of a straw hat to you
Which is fine for "claims to truth", but it's not fine when people think this entails that there is no such thing as truth, or sometimes that all claims to truth are equally valid.
Modernism was a shakeup and rejection of "realism"; post-modernism took it a step further by rejecting the notion of a universal truth entirely; the replacement idea is that what is true can only be discerned based on an individual's experience as we can only gain knowledge through imperfect means.
The big idea in 20th century science, philosophy of science, and mathematics was that the truth is fundamentally unreachable. We got quantum mechanics as the foundation of reality. We got the idea that experiments can only rule out explanations but not establish the truth. We got used to probabilistic estimates based on data. We got all those uncomfortable results about the incompleteness and undecidability of formal systems.
Science became a social construct. We got evidence instead of facts; we got explanations, predictions, and interpretations instead of the truth. Science became a system of best practices for building and updating consensus based on empirical evidence.
I am not an experimental scientist or philosopher, but I am a mathematician, and I thoroughly reject the claim that the big idea of 20th-century mathematics is that the truth is fundamentally unreachable. To be sure, we found that one can speak meaningfully, and rigorously, of the limits of decidability; but only an algorithmic view of mathematics will lead one to conclude that this makes the truth unreachable. Perhaps one could advance the claim that certain truths are unreachable (I do not, and find the claim woolly), but that is quite different from saying that truth itself is unreachable.
What I mean is that some theories have been corroborated to the point that they can be regarded as "truth" for all intents and purposes, and despite known limitations in some cases. Examples might include electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, gravitation, and biological evolution.
Regarding those theories, we can still say that we accept them on a tentative basis, but it would not be irrational to assign a vanishingly low likelihood that any of them will be radically overturned.
But, that was a period of material scarcity. Only a relatively small wealthy upper class had access to that kind of education. That was a period of time still rife with superstition... literal witch-hunts.
P.S. - Bravo for volunteering a reply.
What is the utility of empirical evidence to building consensus if it does not reflect some underlying truth?
I disagree with your characterization of science and math of the 20th century. To start, quantum mechanics does not entail lack of realism. The 20th century also saw two deterministic interpretations of QM emerge (many worlds and Bohmian mechanics).
The fact that experiments can only rule out explanations can be used to establish a process that provably converges on truth (Solomonoff Induction).
Incompleteness and undecidability are provably true propositions. Cold, hard truth.
In other words, there are counterparts to all of your points that supposedly undermine the concept of truth.
There is no epistemic value to empirical evidence if the empirical evidence were not proxy to some truth.
> When you say something is the truth, you are saying no evidence can change your mind
No, "truth" is the proposition that will agree with all conceivable robust evidence.
> Maybe there is some underlying truth, but it seems to be out of our reach.
I disagree, and I already mentioned Solomonoff Induction that I think disproves this.
> The utility does not come from some metaphysical ponderings but from models that can explain phenomena and make reliable predictions.
I disagree as well. Plenty of empirical evidence is useful without a model. For instance, taxonomy in biology was very useful before we knew of genes or even evolution.
The actual utility here is clearly truth, whether that be individual facts or whole theories.
The experiment could simply be measuring photon counts at a pre-agreed location after a pre-agreed duration, where the elapsed time is measured by a local clock. (Probably it is reasonable to argue that this is not a "reasonable" experiment, but it's beyond me to make rigorous the sense in which it should be excluded.)
For example, someone could never logically claim the photons they perceived indicted someone wasn't in front of their gun when they pulled the trigger, while everyone else in the vicinity states they clearly saw the person in front of the gun. There is not enough uncertainty around the behavior of photons for us to consider their explanation as truth.
Postmodernists believe that it is more important to have the "right" political impact than to be correct.
For example, the idea that you can "be violent" toward someone by not affirming them is a profoundly online idea, because everybody here is only as real as they can convince us they are. If I told you I am an 80 y/o woman from Iceland there is not much you can do to verify that. Thus we end up in a culture where you HAVE to believe me, otherwise you are "literally erasing" me from existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_68
Postmodernism wasn't a problem. "Applied Postmodernism" is (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeXfV0tAxtE).
To actually be open-minded, you have to sacrifice your idealism, which is a lot harder than it seems. Especially since many of our prejudices are hidden to us, and we could spend a lifetime preoccupied with identifying what's true and what's prejudice.
Perhaps it is just me, but I view idealism as a state of mind and ideals as what one values. It would be truly sad to sacrifice the former, yet the latter can evolve to reflect the truth.
Many on the left have painful experiences of accepting truths that cause them to cast aside deeply held traditions and cultures, or that tear apart relationships with friends and family.
Social conservatives are all about rejecting any truth that might disrupt old traditions or social hierarchies.
> Social conservatives are all about rejecting any truth that might disrupt old traditions or social hierarchies.
You need to continue to be idealistic by making sure each of your ideals is ideal.
This isn't a back-and-forth between two real people who mutually respect each other. If I was talking to Robyn in real life, over coffee, for 2 or 3 hours, we'd probably get something productive done.
But online, it's a hit-and-run dumpster where the truth matters a little, and humor and presentation matter _much more._
Robyn writes their wounded-gazelle piece whining about the woke cancel mob, and I try to 'clap back' without 'seething'. Wittgenstein would roll in his grave to see the level of MLG language gamers we have online these days.
Nuance gets buried online. I am not gonna sit here and write a boring screen-long essay expressing my nuanced thoughts on the rights of trans adults and trans children, to an audience that might literally be reading this on the shitter.
It works fine for less-controversial topics like Rust vs C. It just doesn't work for gender.
They who write on shit-house walls...
P.S. - If you have 2 hours to spare for nuance, I highly recommend the Contrapoints video about J. K. Rowling. This is a good, calm, nuanced discussion about why LGBTQ people and our allies don't like Rowling as much as we used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us
If you don't have 2 hours to spare, then you aren't gonna get nuance, sorry to tell you.
I wouldn't necessary recomment ContraPoints as a "calm, nuanced discussion" when it comes to these issues when Natalie Wynn (who portrays various characters as Contrapoints) takes issue with gender-neutral language (invalidating non-binary people), entertains and employs transphobic views, and fails to even understand gender properly[1].
[1] https://alyesque.medium.com/how-contrapoints-misunderstands-...
The nuance involved takes a lot more than a ContraPoints video to go through, and would be better served with both a different source and topic than the video you linked.
I can't find the specific discussion, but searching on the domain is probably a good summary:
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=whyevolutionistrue.co...
The conclusion in that thread, as I recall, and apparently coming from people in NZ, seemed to be that he was mostly misrepresnting it to generate rage bait, similar to Critical Race Theory discussions.
In the last week my friend who is a physics teacher told me that the most recent offence of the ministry of education is that they will be removing the “data gathering” and “data analysis” parts of the science curriculum.
This hasn’t hit the news yet because it’s very fresh and they haven’t actually published the new curriculum yet.
It’s also getting a lot of push back from teachers, and so it’s possible that it gets walked back, but the fact that people in control there even think that such a thing is on the table tells you something about the current views of people in charge at the ministry.
Many experienced and excellent teachers are resigning because they have had enough.
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%2520of%...
I wish people were more honest about the inherent contradiction in that assertion. Isn’t the point of “supernatural” that it will exist outside of empiricism (depending on how you define that)?
Um, no? "Supernatural" just implies that there's something outside the "natural". To the NPCs in World of Warcraft, you are supernatural, since you exist outside the rules of their system.
There are certainly some Christians who say that faith requires the absence of evidence; "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed." But if you actually read the New Testament, that's not what the early Christians taught; on the contrary, they were all about evidence. None of the original disciples had the blessedness of believing without seeing, so it clearly cannot be a requirement for a genuine faith.
"This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." (Hebrews 2:3b-4)
Here he presents three types of evidence which are meant to corroborate Jesus' words:
1. The eyewitness testimony of the original disciples
2. Testimony from God, in the form of signs, wonders, and various miracles
3. Evidence of the Holy Spirit in the early Christians.
I don't personally see that the world is round; or that microbes and viruses exist and make me sick; or any number of other things which modern science tells us. Yet I have assurance that they are true. That's the kind of faith the authors of the New Testament are recommending (including the author which you quote).
[EDIT] Christianity is certainly about belief in the unseen. My claim was simply that it was belief in the unseen based on sufficient evidence, as opposed to belief in the unseen specifically without evidence.
I wouldn't expect a self-aware NPC from within World of Warcraft to be able to prove the existence of humans by doing repeated tests; by definition whatever tests he does will be mostly following the rules of the system that he's in. Such an NPC could ask for specific things to be done by an "alleged" human, which would provide evidence. Whether that sort of non-repeatable evidence counts as "empirical" in the philosophy of science, I don't know.
Either observation can include stuff that was observed and recorded a long time ago, and we therefore have evidence of the supernatural, or it’s meaning something more like observation in a more “scientific method” sense, which automatically excludes certain categories of potential reality.
> Um, no? "Supernatural" just implies that there's something outside the "natural". To the NPCs in World of Warcraft, you are supernatural, since you exist outside the rules of their system.
I suppose so, but I don’t think that’s how most people define supernatural. Regardless, this is a great illustration! I don’t think the WoW characters know anything about C++, yet it is the basis of their reality…
Consider the story of Gideon. He has a spiritual experience, where he's told to go do something very dangerous. So he prays, "I'm going to put this wool out overnight; if that was really you talking to me, make the wool wet and the ground dry." Next morning, the wool is wet and the ground is dry. So he prays, "I'm going to put this wool out; if that was really you talking to me, make the ground wet and the wool dry." Next morning, the ground is wet and the wool is dry. So, he goes ahead and does the dangerous thing.
Assuming for the sake of argument that Gideon's experience was as described, does that count as empirical evidence (from Gideon's perspective anyway)?
I mean yeah, it's not something you can replicate 100 times, and then someone else can independently replicate, for the same reason "Will my brother pass me the salt when I ask him" isn't something you can replicate 100 times: people can choose to behave differently, and typically do when you start to treat them like a law of nature rather than a person. (Which, as you say, excludes this potential reality from that kind of empirical verification.)
Of course, if the priests of Baal had the equivalent of a modern Christian apologist in their ranks, things might have been a little different: http://apastasea.blogspot.com/2014/10/elijah-and-apologist-o...
In this case most people use the word "supernatural" as some vague stand in for ideas found outside of the scientific consensus [1]. Meanwhile, scientists and philosophers use it as a precise category that lets them wash their hands of the topic completely.
[1] Or whatever the speaker believes the consensus to be, which is its own messy topic
Unfortunately that leaves quite a bit of reality up in the air that isn't subject to being empirically tested...
I define "the scientific method" as a process with four steps. 1: Systematic observation. 2: Looking for regularities in the observations. 3: Forming hypotheses to explain the regularities. 4: Experimentally testing the hypotheses.
(This isn't just me. Wikipedia describes the scientific method very similarly. This isn't me trying to cook the definition to make a point.)
Now assume, for purposes of argument, that God exists. And since lots of people use the word "God" to mean lots of different things, I'm going to define what I mean. By "God" I mean a being with personality - someone, not just something. Someone who existed before the physical universe, and exists independently of it - "outside" it in some sense, though I don't mean in a geometric way. Someone who created the physical universe, and who can, at his sole discretion, reach into the physical universe and change things. (You can think of this kind of like using a debugger - you can stop the program and change the value of a variable, with no antecedent in the flow of execution of the program.) And if and when he does, things actually change - it's not just a change in our perception; things actually physically change.
All this I ask you to assume for the sake of this argument. You don't have to believe it, but it's there for the argument to make sense.
And one more assumption: Assume that this God actually does change something, and that science observes it at step 1. The question is, what's science going to do with it?
They're going to throw it out at step 2, because there is no regularity. There's no pattern, unless God does this a lot.
But if they don't throw it out at step 2, the next problem comes at step 3 - forming a hypothesis. The way science currently is, "God" is very much out of favor as a hypothesis. But in our thought experiment, God actually is the explanation. Science is never going to propose the correct explanation for such an event.
But even if science proposes God as the hypothesis at step 3, the next problem comes at step 4: how are you going to test it? "Um, God, could you do that again? And, um, sign it this time?" You can't run the experiment. I don't see how you could run the experiment even in principle.
So in that sense, the supernatural exists outside of empiricism. This doesn't tell us anything about the supernatural; it only tells us that science is the wrong tool for investigating that.
But if God actually did reach in from outside and change things, even if we can't see it with science, we might see it with history. We might find historical record of God doing something. And when I mention that, one of the things that should come to mind is the resurrection of Jesus. It's like a giant flashing neon sign that says "Look over here. God did something."
You may say that the resurrection is impossible, and you'd be right. But therefore... what? What is your next statement? "Therefore it didn't happen"? I think that's the wrong position. It's impossible, but did it happen? Because the impossible happening is exactly the signature that we'd be looking for, if God actually did something.
And I think that, once you stop saying "impossible, therefore it didn't happen" and start actually, objectively looking at the data, the evidence is quite good. Not bulletproof, but quite good.
So in that sense, I think you can say that there is empirical evidence.
Then you should check your Bible ;-) because 1 Kings 18 describes just such an experiment. There's always a Less Wrong article, and this one's is https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fAuWLS7RKWD2npBFR/religion-s...
There have also been things like experiments on the efficacy of healing prayers whose negative results lend credence to the idea that a god who answers prayers does not exist. https://www.noctua.org.uk/blog/2010/07/08/healing-prayer-exp... discusses that (the links to the Premier Radio forums are dead, alas).
> even if we can't see it with science, we might see it with history. We might find historical record of God doing something.
"It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages."
Well, time to start work, and it turns out it isn't as straightforward as I thought. This social media campaign involved creating fake Twitter accounts with AI-generated photos as profile pictures and pushing stories supporting the politician. I've always hated social media and wasn't too familiar, so I thought, does this even work?
Well, yeah, it worked. We pushed frankly bogus stories and overtly biased posts and many of them got to the Twitter front page for users in my country. Even I was shocked how those posts had a considerable impact, and the politician ended up winning the election.
This work thought me a great lesson; quit social media because you're being manipulated everywhere. Mind you, this was a small operation with less than two dozen persons. Imagine what someone with a massive budget, let's say Putin or MBS, could achieve by building a propaganda farm employing thousands...It's definitely hard to discern truth when everyone is being fed a large stream of propaganda at every second.
As for me, I quit social media or any type of news...I'm not confident in my abilities to discern truth when there are dedicated teams of psy-op operators trying to manipulate me. If you think you're smart enough to counter such efforts, good luck to you, but as for me, I think the human brain did not evolve to handle mass media positively.
But after reading this I can't help but think what if this comment is a psy-op operation.
Very meta and inside my own head. Which can be a goal in of itself.
CA was active in both the Brexit campaign and the American presidential campaign. They set up fake websites, interviews, social media posts and even fake coffee shop meetings so people could see that they are working with "real" others who shared their beliefs. Astounding!
https://www.amazon.com/Mindf-Cambridge-Analytica-Break-Ameri...
It takes courage to do so.
As a self-described secular humanist, I think part of the reason the philosophy has remained so cloistered is BECAUSE it only tries to be "calm and rational" -- which the overwhelming majority of humans don't respond to on an emotional level. Evolution didn't give us the tools to readily make value judgments from careful analysis.
It's its own kind of echo chamber, heavily intellectual but not very charismatic or viral and limited to its own tiny bubble. Truth in a snowglobe.
"It was relatively easy for most of us to condemn the allergic-to-truth rantings of former President Donald Trump. His lies were so transparent and prodigious that anyone outside the MAGA-verse could easily see through them. Many of us collectively recoiled at the reality-distortions he spun and how they were lapped up with religious-like zeal by his followers."
This is "calmly and rationally" to you? To immediately start a persuasive article by launching into a political rant? Your "rationality" is demonstrated by emotional rantings of somehow who's obviously pretty much as hard to one end of the political spectrum as one can be? Who defines their political beliefs as "the truth", and anyone who believes anything different than them as a evil moronic heathen?
Humanist secularism is supposed to be about decrying and dismantling religious dogma, and keeping church and state separate -- and only one of the points above is relevant -- the others are simply personal views of the author, and not actually relevant to secularism or humanism at all.
This gets more complex when you start talking about local maxima versus global maxima, and even comparing local maxima from different locations.
Truth is not simplicity and this leads to a lot of social problems between different groups.
Most really bad ideas take incorrect facts, and use them to draw tenuous conclusions. The examples in the blog are precisely that, the puberty blockers and the Maori traditional knowledge.
The elegance of stating "truths" is that the definition of "truth" has always been wishy-washy, to the point it is the vast majority of most philosophy 101 classes.
You can have whatever "truth" you like, but you can't choose your facts, and if your conclusions are predicated on bad or simply false facts, your conclusion can be ignored.
“The atomic number of helium is 2” is an objective truth. “The best flavor of ice cream is chocolate” is a subjective truth. It might be my truth, but not yours. Maybe your truth is that strawberry is best.
For a more relevant example (not saying you are disagreeing, just that it’s a topic of the article), the fact that someone experiences gender dysphoria may be, in this sense, their truth. It is a question of the individual’s subjective experience.
Everyone acknowledges that people have different subjective experiences, but for some reason, when it comes to this specific issue, acknowledging subjective experience is treated as tantamount to declaring that everybody gets to pick their own atomic number for helium.
> The best flavor of ice cream is chocolate
This is not a subjective truth. It is an opinion. And an opinion is not testable because it is subjective. Thus it cannot be judged on its truthfulness => ergo it is not a truth. Putting subjective in front of truth is making the truth part invalid.
A subjective truth is an opinion.
Now you want to make that a bit more testable, you need to add something that can be tested:
> The best ice cream for people with Alzheimer is chocolate ice cream
This is the trick that actually makes us debate. It wants to sound like the truth, but it is still a type of opinion: until this gets tested, this has a name - it is a hypothesis. That is kinda like a testable opinion. Still, opinion until tested.
But observe that the phrase has changed: from "best flavor," which is subjective, to "best for <group X>" which now can be tested.
I think we let ourselves too easy to talk about opinions as facts or having a truthy-like value.
G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
What if this societal rejection of Truth that we are witnessing (and is summarized well by the article) is the direct result of the success of secular humanism?
I think this is the elephant in the room.
People don't believe what the government is telling them. Our governments are too big and not transparent enough.
News media sacrificed their authority and trust when they decided to choose a side rather than say neutral.
Reporting "the truth" is a for profit business where making slight adjustments to your perception of the truth results in more profit.
If you don't trust the church, the government, or the news, where are you supposed to get your truth?
Science != policy
Science ~= policy
You’re asking why we ought to value truth and why we ought to not judge by the color of one’s skin. Don’t those things have obvious value over their alternative. That’s why I prefer them.
Yea... I almost tuned out right then.
It would have been a FAR stronger article if it took some actual stance on truth, like "If truth actually matters, here are all the times Trump was right and the media lied or kneejerked the other way, so did we go along with it?". I don't like Trump, but that article would have convinced me the author actually cared about objective truth.
Instead, it was "You need to follow the truth I agree with!" which is just more post-modernism in the name of something else.
When you care about truth, bullshit is the opposite of what you celebrate, regardless of whether it’s accidentally true or not.
[1] The difference between bullshit and lies is that the person who lies tries to cover up of fabricate truth, but the bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth-value of the statements that are made.
No one had to bring up Trump, but the author chose to. It makes his argument weaker by saying "WE NEED THE TRUTH!!" but then just talks like someone who spent years with their screen saying "IT'S ALL LIES, HE IS HITLER".
As much as I don't like him, it's plain as day that it wasn't "all lies" or "academic bullshit". I work in an industry that was drastically albeit temporarily changed for the better by a couple policy decisions the last admin made, they were shit on endless by the media that was dead-wrong. Seeing it first hand was a noticeable moment for me.
Both you and the author can't even take a moment to see past yourself, but that's what the point of the article is about. How bizarre.
But he's still lying about the 2020 election being stolen 2 years after leaving office.
Are you advocating for a world where no one is allowed to be opinionated, hold contrasting views or even have some cognitive dissonance?
If one won't entertain other ideas or include additional facts/data into their world view, discussion about the universe, our place in it and compromise become impossible.
But that's not to say there's no such thing as objective facts (note I said "facts" not truth). There absolutely are. Truth is (often) something else altogether.
But many ideas aren't fact-based. Rather they are based on religious/philosophical/social doctrines which are often reduced to a sentence or a soundbite. Which is a ridiculous thing to do as most ideas are more nuanced and complicated than a single statement can elucidate.
E.g., "BLM members are Marxists" or "all Republicans are racists", etc. are all just tropes used to signal membership in a tribe.
But reality is much more nuanced. I wish more folks would look at the world through the lens that a variety of view are critical to the human condition -- as long as those views can be investigated/discussed/addressed in a reasoned way.
Holding beliefs that differ from that of others is the human condition. That you disagree with the author's stance doesn't mean that they need to change their stance, rather it means that there are discussions to be had to arrive at both understanding (which doesn't imply agreement) and, hopefully, the ability to either agree or agree to disagree.
That's not always possible, but the humanity is in making the effort to do so.
If one is unwilling to modify their beliefs based on new information and synthesis of that information with their own knowledge/understanding, that's sad.
Lip service on the other hand, is cheap and ubiqutious. Perfect for the limited lifespan of the average stakeholder.
Education does not check self-interest, nor does wealth. "History" is cherrypicked and spun to useless effect. "Chip Wars" a case in point.
That leaves a single useful guide: Biology of life on this moonmeld. That record is full of interesting studies and lessons. Also highly inconvenient.
Portents poor for all sects of Humanists :(
The only way that makes sense is when viewed with a cynical eye: people are spooked by "not normal", and spooked people are more easily manipulated.
It's disgusting on so many levels.
> The trans debate would be much less heated if it did not involve other people's children.
Oh really? What about bathrooms? I hear that trans people love to go to bathrooms and molest children.
If so, these are rare, and aren't the main reason why most people want to keep certain spaces as sex-segregated.
If you're reading this, you've probably been in a bathroom with a trans person, or someone you know has, and they've been absolutely fine. Trans people by and large want to get in, pee, and get out, same as everyone else -- but perhaps moreso, given the risk of transphobic rhetoric and abuse if they were to be "clocked" (identified) as a trans person.
The primary abusers of women and children are men, followed by (cis) women. Trans women make up an exceedingly small portion of that particular criminal element, but they're vilified and used as boogeymen so much more, to attempt to deny trans women's existence under "think of the children" handwaving.
> The truth is, hormone therapy saves lives. Some of those lives will be teenage lives.
The truth is - the current research about that is lacking, we know that there are serious (and good faith) arguments against claiming that puberty blockers are reversible, and we know that many clinics simply don't collect data about people post transition or distort whatever data they do collect:
"For those late to this: In April I published a very long post laying out the severe flaws in a study about puberty blockers and hormones University of Washington researchers published in JAMA Network Open, and how they exaggerated the results when describing them to the media and to UW’s own PR apparatus. The very short version is that the study has so many flaws that it does not provide us with any evidence whatsoever supporting the idea that kids who went on gender-affirming medicine (GAM) experienced beneficial outcomes relative to the kids who did not.
In fact, any genuine comparison between the GAM and no-GAM kids 12 months out is impossible, because 80% of the kids who didn’t go on GAM had dropped out of study by the final wave of data collection, leaving just six remaining. That is far too small a sample to draw any conclusions from. (The paper gave no explanation as to why some kids went on GAM and others didn’t, making it impossible to know whether this was an otherwise apples-to-apples comparison, so even in the absence of this attrition issue, the results would have been difficult to interpret.)"
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-university-of-washing... https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-swedish-investigative-j...
One thing that sticks in my mind about this issue is the implicit blackmail. "Your kid will kill themselves if you don't do X!" is a jarring and terrifying framework for any parent to deal with, but I'm not aware of it existing anywhere in healthcare except in trans issues.
Consider for example if my teenager told me they'd kill themselves if they're not allowed to watch TV. MAYBE unlimited TV is the only way to ensure they don't carry out their threat, but if so this only reveals a deeply dysfunctional mindset that should be further investigated.
This inquiry seems to be completely missing from the trans discourse as far as I can tell. I find it genuinely alarming how little curiosity there is from the trans-affirming side as to what exactly causes someone to be feel dysphoria. The inquiry almost doesn't seem to matter, with the prognosis basically taking the form of "don't worry about why, just make sure they get cutting-edge plastic surgery and experimental hormonal treatments or else they'll kill themselves."
The current state of "gender affirming care" seems like a band-aid solution that papers over a much deeper problem, and I don't understand how we are helping trans people by turning a blind eye to the root cause of their suffering.
I know we literally don’t know the specific reasons why they dropped out, as they are lost to followup, but is it plausible that they dropped out while remaining dysphoric? The rate would be in-line with previous studies of desistance rates.
Are you saying the cause of their suffering isn't being forced to live in a body/identity contrary to how they feel?
Your first point is disingenuous. HRT for trans people does save lives. Whether its blockers in minors, or HRT to help with fat redistribution, secondary sexual characteristics, etc. in informed and consenting adults, it goes a long way to helping trans people live as themselves -- indeed, many trans people report feeling significantly better just from taking it, describing it as if their bodies were running on the "wrong fuel" beforehand.
Have you considered that data isn't gathered post-transition because trans people are simply going about and living their lives successfully? Assuming they've transitioned and their HRT regiment (if they have one) is stable, there is no clinical need to continue "collecting data" afterwards -- especially when this is done by services which are chronically underfunded as it is.
As for the distorted data claim, please show evidence of deliberate distortion -- it's not the fault of those doing studies if subjects drop out of their own accord, and certainly doesn't mean they "distort whatever data they do collect."
Another boogeyman, doctors aren't running around telling parents their kids will kill themselves without puberty blockers. Certainly if a doctor were to bring up a feeling of suicidality within a child, it would be within the context of sufficient psychological assessment, which would have to have begun with the parents or child themselves either raising trans or suicidality issues previously. If that claim were made by a medical professional, it wouldn't be out of nowhere, and it wouldn't be without basis.
What's actually terrifying is the idea that your child is so uncomfortable and/or unhappy that they question their ability to live their live without the intervention they need, in a day where access to those services are both drastically underfunded, and being outlawed by Conservatives in the western world.
The fact that you try and equate hypothetical feelings of suicidality with a transgender child facing the inability to access appropriate medical care, with not being allowed to watch TV, is much more of a "deeply dysfunctional mindset" than your proposed hypothetical.
Your brash and baseless claims seem to show a lack of understanding or knowledge of the "trans discourse" as you put it, and seemingly you don't actually care or want to know, since your final sentence is claiming that gender-affirming care covers a "deeper problem," which is just ignorant and attempts to deny trans existence as being valid in itself, as opposed to being a symptom of some other "much deeper problem."
"Are you saying the cause of their suffering isn't being forced to live in a body/identity contrary to how they feel?"
That's literally pointing out the cause of suffering is being forced to live in a body/identity contrary to how they feel... which is literally the cause, rather than the "deep problems" the other commenter baselessly claimed.
I didn't mention the solution at all there, but it should be rather obvious :)
In a time where psychology was a relatively novel field[2], and homosexuality was illegal in many places, the IfS was groundbreaking, This of course ignores many historical examples of trans people[3][4] existing, who didn't have access to the same medical care (including psychological, endocrinological, and surgical) that we have today.
I'm not sure why you're confused -- you seem to be working of the basis that being transgender is some "feeling" that needs some intervention other than... allowing a trans person to exist?
The feeling is the target of intervention, and the intervention -- more frequently than not -- is transitioning. Frequently that has to begin without changes afforded by HRT or surgery, which tend to come substantially later on.
The feeling is the cause, the solution is often to exist how you feel -- so I'm unsure what you're confused about?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaf... [2] "Psychology as a field of experimental study began in 1854 in Leipzig, Germany when Gustav Fechner created the first theory of how judgments about sensory experiences are made and how to experiment on them." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_transgender_histor...
Anorectic people (those with anorexia) frequently are underweight, and are hyper-focussed on concerns regarding weight gain, so would generally absolutely not be candidates for liposuction.
If you're referring to those who /take/ anorectics, there are plenty people (for example, those deemed clinically obese, or those whose cormorbidities necessitate weight loss) who may be given anorexic drugs -- the prevalence of such medications and liposuction, etc. is much higher than "addressing "the feeling"" as you put it.
When a person with anorexia goes to the doctor and say: "Doctor, when I look in the mirror I can't stand my body, I feel too fat", the doctor doesn't say: "Here, take those pills to make your body leaner and come to me later I will remove some fat from you". He says: "Okay, let's treat the image of your body that you have in your head, as it is incorrect".
I just wonder how that differs from a person claiming to be of the opposite sex.
Don't make a false equivalence then. This isn't the proper forum to educate you on the psychological nuances between body dysmorphic elements of anorexia nervosa, and gender dysphoria -- suffice to say that (a) they are not remotely the same thing, and (b) trans people aren't saying they are "too fat."
They're entirely different feelings. One is concerned around the perceived appearance of one particular aspect, the other is centred in their inherent existence and integration within society and the social construct that is gender. They are not the same.
"Truths about the universe don’t depend on which country you are in"
Facts about the universe don't care where you're at. Truth which imposes meaning and perspective on facts very much does. By neglecting culture, myth and narrative which are central to how humans make sense of the world this secular perspective becomes completely unappealing, and that's not the fault of the non-enlightened masses but because that worldview is superficial. It also has the tendency to end up with a scientific fatalism that conflates what is and what ought to be.
This is usually where secular humanism suddenly turns a little bit dark, and not-so-very-humanist. Also on display in the article when "behavioral genetics" is elevated from something that ought to provide us with tools to increase human agency to something that apparently "determines life outcomes" ("genetic lottery"). That's the point where it's obvious that really the belief system is something closer to scientism, that is to say using science to impose values on people.
A belief system that ignored human cultural and religious experience and reduces individuals to a collection of genes is many things, but certainly not humanistic.
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/3/e20220...
"Our findings from a national sample of adolescents across 16 states reveal that the sex assigned at birth ratio of transgender adolescents does not favor transgender adolescents assigned female sex at birth."
The claims of social contagion and so on have been examined and they just aren't true. It is also wrong to represent that level of uncertainty about puberty blockers, which have been and continue to be used by cis children for years without a peep or a poop from those currently in a panic about trans kids on puberty blockers. It is also paternalistic and authoritarian to say that weighing risks and benefits of puberty blockers should be done by culture warrior politicians rather than a conversation between a patient and a doctor.
The data are in, the debate is settled: it's simply a moral panic and it harms real people to pretend there are enough open questions to merit further discussion. You're just being a bigot who refuses to acknowledge empirical reality at that point, not a secular humanist.
1 out of 4 stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty_blocker#Legal_and_poli...
Puberty blockers are not a settled matter in the medical community.
> It is also wrong to represent that level of uncertainty about puberty blockers, which have been and continue to be used by cis children for years without a peep or a poop from those currently in a panic about trans kids on puberty blockers.
the effects of blocking early puberty might be very different that those of blocking "in time" puberty
I wonder if it was me... If I was trans, would I be desperate, and pissed about people trying to dispassionately discuss issues that would greatly affect my life. Maybe... But it seems like a general rule: to get to a good decision, we always need dispassionate discussion. Usually for much a greater time than the passionate people would give us.
As I continued reading the article, it seemed less "secular humanist" and more "religious Conservative pearl-clutching," with all the ignorant bigoted claims of "think of the children!" Christians decrying the existence of trans people.
4 out of 4 start for your comment.
Perhaps you should read more carefully, and not be so quick to make baseless assumptions and accusations? You could also go look at the secular humanists in the comments who are decrying this as actually being secular humanism to begin with.
Try sticking to facts, not assumptions and hypocrisy.
This is such a transparently silly concept. Human beings do not mate randomly or even remotely close to randomly. The genes that you inherit are a product of your parents’ choice of mate, not some lottery. Those choices are informed by both biological and cultural factors.
It's unambiguously true that no one chose their genes or their childhood environment. That statement doesn't require a metaphysical chooser who might have made the choice.
What's the underlying point you're trying to get across? It doesn't seem like a productive thing to go on about.
> Modern twin studies have concluded that almost all traits are partly influenced by genetic differences.
You seem to be missing the point that we are stuck with who we are. Our mental and physical faculties are handed down to us. We receive them, even though they define us. We experience ourselves.
But seriously though, something that happens randomly to you (you don't get to choose your parents) seems similar-enough to a lottery to be used as a metaphor.
You have no understanding of basic genetics, why do you think you're in a position to speculate on silliness of metaphors for genetic outcomes?
I don't think there's any evidence of humans ever having actually stood up for any idea in large numbers, other than in religious settings. So to use the articles own insistence against them... What time evidence do they have that their philosophy is motivating enough to make anyone actually do what they want?
Atheism is basically the result of an inability to read spiritual cues just as typical autistic behavior stems from an inability to read social cues. I feel for people who are spiritually blind, but I’m really not interested in their opinions on religion anymore than I am in a tone deaf person’s opinions on music.
I'm spiritual as fuck, and while I may have my issues, autism is not one of them.
That’s not a reason, it’s just the definition of atheism. Why are you an atheist?
> I'm spiritual as fuck, and while I may have my issues, autism is not one of them.
I’m not sure we mean the same thing by spiritual. For example I believe, as St Augustine explains so marvelously in his Confessions, that God is a purely spiritual being.
Do you believe that a spiritual reality exists independently of the material one and that human beings are both material and spiritual creatures? If not then you aren’t as spiritual as any vulgarity because you don’t actually believe yourself to be spiritual at all.
I don’t want to impute beliefs to you that aren’t truly yours though, so unless you choose to clarify I’ll just consider that one possibility.
Because every single religion I'm aware of so far has seemed like made up stories meant to control people. I've seen no evidence of a God who is as actively engaged as those stories purport.
My definition of spirituality is "one's connection with the universe; seeing the magic in our creation". I don't need a holy tract for that.
Speaking of such, the story I like the most in this regard is here: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
I'm too lazy/distracted to start a church around that but the appeal of that idea has not faded.
Let me try speaking more slowly so you get it. An example might be taking in a sunset and the scenery therein and feeling happy to be present for it, and to feel like one is part of that picture.
If you read The Egg and think that I literally believe its true then you are projecting yourself and any further conversation is pointless.
The Egg is a wonderful story and if I was forced to choose one and "believe it", I'd take it over any of the official offerings.
I can conceptualize what a social cue is even if i miss them sometimes, but you seem to be describing an entirely new thing that doesn't map onto that concept in any obvious way.
What does "woke" mean in this context? I'm not being snarky here, I'm just curious how you're defining the term.
Especially since I've heard so many conflicting definitions that It's not clear what someone means by "woke" in most contexts except as a counterpoint to "asleep."
Does it mean a belief in equal rights/treatment/opportunities for all sentient beings?
Does it mean a belief that all those of European extraction are racist, slave-mongering monsters?
Does it mean a belief that Marxism is the only acceptable political ideology?
I've heard all of the above (and more) as "definitions" of "woke," with so much variation as to make the term useless.
So if you wouldn't mind, please provide your definition of the term so I actually have some idea what the hell you're going on about. Thanks!
It's possible that they are trying to communicate something you are demonstrating as a practice?
Offense? Not sure how you got from confusion about defining terms to "offense."
>It's possible that they are trying to communicate something you are demonstrating as a practice?
My concern here is a lack of clear definition of the term. Which is required in order to have a reasonable discussion.
What, exactly, do you believe I'm "demonstrating as a practice"? Critical thinking?
Edit: Fixed prose.
I go by the initial Webster's definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke -- "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)"
By that definition I consider myself to be woke. Aware and care. Easy peasy.
I've seen this game played before, and it was called "politically correct": take well intended movement, find egregious examples of it being applied, and then make those examples the definition of the movement.
It looks like you're doing exactly that (the word soup of your wiki link at least implies that).
The fact that accusing you of caring about society and intersectional justice is supposedly insulting to some people, is really quite remarkable. It's not insulting to be "woke," but it's certainly telling with folk like the commenter above use it as a slur.
It's one thing to be ignorant by virtue of an absence of information, but to remain willingly so in the face of obvious evidence is shameful.
This is basically what people do to the Christian religion. Find egregious preachers who buy luxury yachts and sportscars; ignore all the good work; and use the worst examples as emblematic of the whole thing.
Or what happened with Islam and the terrorism stuff in the 2000s.
That said, there's plenty of not so nice versions out there -- enough to matter. I'd buy you a tee shirt that said "I hate Jesus" and have you walk around some small town in Idaho and see how well that plays out for you.
I mention Idaho because they're actively working to create a Christian state, e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/02/christ-church-...
There's millions of Americans believe that the US should be a Christian Country, and they have guns.
Thought experiment: imagine if the Muslims took power in the US. And they wanted us to live as "God intended". How chill would you be about that?
Realistically, it would depend. There are a large varieties of muslim states. Historically, some have been quite nice to live in. If by 'muslim state' and as 'God intended', they mean a good social safety net, minimal interference in religious liberty, open celebrations of non-muslim worship, but also a return to a more traditional social structure (re-emphasis on married parents, which is in the minority today; stricter rules on divorce; stricter rules on working hours; public acknowledgement that God exists; etc). I would actually think that's fine. Realistically, I don't see how it's substantially different than the civil authority today, which holds plenty of beliefs I disagree with and forces me to pay for them / go along with them.
I honestly don't understand the attempt to scare Christians about Islam. While I am not a Muslim and think it's wrong-headed, the muslims are substantially closer to Christian beliefs (esp when only considering moraolity) than the majority of atheists. I don't see why that's even controversial.
Their religion is to eschew yours. They worship, just differently. They see no hypocrisy in being critical of your beliefs, but demand you fall in line with theirs.
Its inside humans to contain something that is commonly satiated with religion. We can fill it with something else, just can't pretend to be a better person for doing so. It's the same flaw.
Seems like you already made up your mind. That doesn't come across as someone interested in truth at all.
As a piece of anecdata I am deeply confident in my agnostic doubts and I lie pretty consistently.
Not heard in hospice homes around Florida: "May god forgive me for voting for Bush"
Do people really believe this though?
I get your point in general though: religion works.
Yes.
Might come as a surprise, but some people really believe the world is round. /s
Any good manager will tell you the answer is as long as it is varied.
That is an insightful comment and I agree with you - for the proof, just look at all our successful political leaders around the world. Rarely does a politician who advocates for atheism while disparaging all religion win. On the contrary, there are great politicians, like Moses, Muhammad and Gandhi, who really become leaders because of how they embrace religious as part and parcel of their very identity, in a very spiritual manner that earns them respect of many.
The problem is not with religion or religious people, but with fundamentalism. To accept any new truth, you need to be able to let go of the earlier truths. And that's not really easy to do as we age. That is why it often takes a generational shift for new ideas, and new truths, to emerge.