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Thanks for summarizing. Note that the article specifically observes:

> Professors strongly disagreed on the truth status of 10 candidate taboo conclusions: For each conclusion, some professors reported 100% certainty in its veracity and others 100% certainty in its falsehood.

So it's worth contextualizing these with the note that there's _disagreement_ about whether or not any of these statements is actually correct or not. But it's not 50/50: Some of the statements had higher overall belief ("Biological sex is binary for most people" being the most widely-believed among survey participants, with 66%), and some had much lower belief ("demographic diversity .. worse performance" being the lowest, at 21%).

(Table 2 in the article, about 1/3 of the way down)

> 10. “Demographic diversity (race, gender) in the workplace often leads to worse performance.”`

This is an interesting one. Diversity is definitely beneficial to large international corporations, so the main question here is "at what granularity should we apply diversity". Small team level is probably not the right place to apply diversity.

> so the main question here is "at what granularity should we apply diversity".

Or it could be "what should we sacrifice (if anything) to obtain diversity", or "how fast should we try to obtain diversity".

(Or even: "what kinds of diversity matter? Race and gender -- or ideas, values, and experiences?")

For everything genetic, biology and evolution related, I'd rather prefer psychologists to shut up. Unless the publish together with researchers in those fields. If they don't, it resembles more the BS "evolutionary psychology" than actual science.

ITT: biology has no impact on psychology. guess all those anti-depressants need to get tossed out the. Pretty sure schizophrenia is heavily genetic / predisposed, too...

To be fair, almost every new college student (exaggerating) starts off wanting to join the mysterious field of psychology. As they continue to learn and grow most of those students use their critical thinking abilities to conclude:

* There is no cushy job waiting on the other side of a Psychology degree for most people, but more likely a job in an unrelated field.

* Psychology is about the softest science we have, to the point that it eschews the general rigor of the scientific process in favor of what can only be described as pathological bike-shedding. Can you remember the last thing that came out of this field that wasn’t just some form of moving labels around?

* Feelings are unfalsifiable, and humans are known liars and drug addicts. Some people will absolutely lie every chance they can to get what they want, and will even make a living out of doing that (for instance, illegally selling prescription medication on the streets that never should have been prescribed in the first place). Dishonest people like this will inevitably be the same people providing the “evidence” for some of these studies. And so an already soft science becomes even softer because professional grifters have an incentive to taint the samples by lying (even if they are misguided and ultimately wrong about gaining any benefit).

The students whose critical thinking abilities did not make them aware of these things, or worse, did inform them but they didn’t care… those are the people who end up publishing Psychology papers.

I notice that some of those questions are pretty vague.

I can see why that's okay for the purposes of this study, but I hope it's not indicative of the field's typical rigor.

So .. this seems to reflect the problem of a set of very carefully hedged statements that touch controversial topics, but people are aware that if they give a yes/no agreement to the qualified version, it will be turned into a declaration that they agree with a whole bunch of qualifier-removed or indirect-consequence versions of the statement. So it's dangerous to answer honestly because your answer will be used against you.

For example:

> “Transgender identity is sometimes the product of social influence.”

I think you could find trans people themselves who might to some extent agree with that - I've more than once heard of people who knew themselves to be deeply miserable before ever hearing about transness, then discovering it, finding it "clicked", transitioning, and becoming much happier as a result. Does that qualify as "social influence"? They might not have transitioned if they hadn't known it was a possibility.

There are then two political views derived from this:

- the rightwing view that people should be prevented from knowing about the possibility of transness, especially as children, in order to discourage them from transitioning

- the leftwing view that, as part of the totality of the human experience, it is useful to include a description of it in the education given to children to help them understand their own process of puberty

But all sorts of things could be said to be "social influence". "Eating healthily is sometimes the product of social influence". "Turning up to events on time is sometimes the product of social influence". "High income is sometimes the product of social influence" (there are entire books sold on this thesis!)

The statement on its own is a semantic trap for assuming a whole bunch of things follow from that statement which can then be used to condemn people who agree/disagree with it.

> I think you could find trans people themselves who might to some extent agree with that - I've more than once heard of people who knew themselves to be deeply miserable before ever hearing about transness, then discovering it, finding it "clicked", transitioning, and becoming much happier as a result. Does that qualify as "social influence"? They might not have transitioned if they hadn't known it was a possibility.

I don't think that is what is meant with the statement, but rather, that they mean the people are identifying as trans due to their peers, rather than actually being dysphoric.

As an anecdote, for me that's almost what happened, but I was just miserable for other reasons (depression). In todays climate of affirmation being seemingly the only socially acceptable choice, I likely would've started transitioning and become even more miserable.

This is one of the reasons why I REALLY dislike the current paradigm of affirmation first, rather than actually checking whether the problems are caused by dysphoria or something else.

Isn’t that something that should happen between the unhappy person and their psychologist/psychiatrist/medical doctor though, rather than the rest of us?

Yes. Sadly, these days there is a ton of social pressure to affirm first and foremost. For example, a parent who doesn't affirm a child can easily get into hot water [1]

Along with that, the constantly repeated claim of puberty blockers being totally reversible (They are only in the medical sense, as in hormone production goes back to normal, but that claim still misses the fact that the time spent with reduced hormones has a measureable effect on the development of the child, as in, you won't "catch up" on puberty) is leading to more and more kids being treated with puberty blockers without a proper evaluation, because "there is no harm in it".

Yes it ought to happen between a professional and the person. And the real world is still a messy place where you can be influenced by non-professionals.

[1] https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/02/11/new-canadian-law-coul...

> the current paradigm of affirmation first

I think this is massively overstating how widespread affirmation is, at all, and also lacking any assessment of what proportion of people is "some".

I understand where you're coming from, but I think that strict reading of the statement, that the identity is the result of the influence is materially different to what you're talking about. That is, I think "authentic" transness is popularly considered an innate characteristic, you are born this way even if you don't realize it until later in life. If the identity is the product of social influence then the implication is that it is not entirely innate, that you are claiming to have been born a particular way, but only because you have been misled by outside forces. Put another way, you can be told about transness online and realise you were always that way, but then the identity isn't the "product" of the social influence. (I know this comes down to fiddly definitions, and reasonable people may differ.)

Number 3 is not like the others.

Is there much point in enumerating them, considering the paper makes it clear these are just potentially “taboo” polarizing issues for which no actual conclusions or consensus exist?

Yep I also find it off-putting, it seems there had been a thesis to be confirmed.

Whose (and what) thesis, specifically?

The point is to highlight topics that people would be inclined not to research, or not to publish if their conclusions did not support their perception of the majority view.

It would have been more interesting if in addition to capturing the professor’s position they captured the professor’s perception of the majority position, to see if the professor believed they were part of a silent majority or in the minority, but if they did I skimmed past that part.

Yes. But unfortunately the conclusion that many people take home is that if something has been censured it must be true.

It's not how logic works, but it's how human psychology seems to work. Or perhaps that's taboo too? I don't know. IANAP

I think the point is that if such conclusions existed, they'd have to come from trained researchers undergoing peer review who exist only in academia. If the academic environment has moral taboos on their mere discussion, then the inconclusive polarization is not necessarily reality- it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

I understand the point of the paper, just not the point of enumerating those points here without any of its context.

1. Only to the extend that this also benefits the the genes of a coerced female.

2. Maybe it is, but not sure if that needs to be a problem.

3. No, at least admittance rate of blacks vs asians would make one believe the opposite is true

4. Yes for the vast majority.

5. Probably, but most conservative philosophy is boring and backwards anyway.

6. Are we counting a history of oppression as part of racial biases here?

7. Euh yeah, how is this even controversial?

8. I don't/can't know, but it would surprise me if it was higher then 10%.

9. I would not classify epigenetic as a social influence, so no. (maybe use the word environmental here)

10. No, but unit cohesion can help performance a lot.

I hope this helps

The point wasn't the answers themselves. It was whether providing any answer at all would get you cancelled.

>It was whether ~~providing any answer~~ asking the question at all at all would get you cancelled.

FTFY

If someone were so uncouth to ask the question, there is a prescribed "correct" answer for others to immediately repeat, mantra-like, that will avoid social and professional opprobrium.

This is the opposite of a: scientific b: the point of the study

I know, but that doesn't mean that I am not helping

To be honest, you're not answering a lot of the questions.

That's not a criticism. That was the point of the post. That a lot of people read a question, and allow emotion to get the better of them. (I would argue that nearly all people do this.)

Just as a for instance, you answered "no" to 3. This was based on, again, according to you, "admittance rates of blacks vs asians". But if you read the question, it was about discrimination in "academia". Point being, you had your preconceived narrative, which would be confirmed if you took "academia" to mean undergraduate admissions. And people who answer "yes" have their preconceived narrative, which would be confirmed if you took "academia" to mean, say, hiring into academia from a pool of people who already received a PhD. (Even those receiving a PhD from the same department in the same school.)

The question as posed, is not answerable in an objective manner without qualifications. But you gave an answer, which will be taken as an answer without qualifications. Which evokes claims of bias and on and on and on. For instance, will you sit on a hiring panel for your department after such an answer? And, at root, the trouble is only due to the question being an unfocused question, calibrated to evoke an emotional reaction and an almost instinctual deviation from scientific rigor. Not really due to the biases or baser instincts of people offering an answer of yes or no to said question.

My recommendation:

We should stop with all the sensitivity training, and instead have yearly reinforcement training on the principles of scientific rigor. Training where we work through just these sorts of exercises so that people can see how easily they can be moved away from the scientific method if they're not paying attention.

Thanks for your help, we appreciated it a ton?

the fact it is getting considerable downvotes lends credence to one of the main points of the study. we're seeing that happen in real-time, via downvotes.

the point of the study is that there may be some -- emphasis on some -- evidence in favor of those controversial views, but attempting to air or even attempting a discussion about them leads to immediate backlashes.

> 1. “The tendency to engage in sexually coercive behavior likely evolved because it conferred some evolutionary advantages on men who engaged in such behavior.”

I once tried to have a discussion about whether opposable thumbs were partly successful because they make survivable rape easier. It didn't go well. We never did make it to the merits or demerits of the actual argument.

I'm not really surprised that got an immediate "what the fuck" from your interlocutor.

Yeah, it's not like the utility of opposable thumbs is exactly a mystery

Is the fitness value of grasping tools greater than that of grasping wrists? I don't know. Is either behavior an exaptation of the other? I don't know. Does rape and slavery precede or follow tool use? I don't know. Either way the answers don't seem trivial. We may descend from tool users who also rape and enslave, or rapist slavers who also use tools. Understanding more of that should inform our social engineering.

There is nothing wrong to say WTF and try to persuade the interlocutor that their idea is wrong. You can also argue that some ideas are not only wrong but if believed can lead to antisocial behaviors etc etc.

But unfortunately very often people don't have the patience to do this with a civil discussion and instead they cut the discussion short by just painting the interlocutor as somebody who must be a monster to even bring up such a topic in the first place.

And I understand why that's the case. Sometimes (often?) that's actually true. Sometimes we're just tired of bullshit flooding and rebuttal asymmetry.

But often I just think we're shutting down interesting explorations and we're ill-equipped as a society to have discussions which are truly hypothetical and neutral genuine devil-advocacy. Probably we're so much used to the abuse of those genuine techniques by people who just want to flood the scene with true bullshit.

So you see the main benefit of thumbs is rape? that's honestly insane and I might offer some advice to keep that thought to yourself because you will be judged harshly for it

How did you get from "partly successful because" to "the main benefit of thumbs"? How did you get from "tried to have a discussion" to "you see the main benefit"?

I think those leaps underline how taboo the topic is.

Let's put it this way. Opposable thumbs are such a massive fitness advantage, in so many ways that are obviously massively more impactful, that such a factor, if it even exists, would be utterly negligible.

So the only conceivable reasons to raise such a bizarre topic all involve you being a very unpleasant person to converse with -- the most generous I can think of being an unearned sense of intellectual superiority simply by the fact of raising an idea you see as taboo.

If you don't like discussing weird ideas or ideas that are unpopular or devil's advocacy, you would most probably find it unpleasant to converse with me. If you prefer glibly dismissing such ideas it would probably be mutual.

What are you hoping to achieve? Convince people thumbs are great rape tools? You act like glib dismissal is inappropriate as if you have some great insight to share. You do sound very unpleasant to talk to so at least you're self aware.

The extent to which aggression differences between sexes is the result of nature or nurture seems to have policy implications. For instance it would change the balance between the effectiveness of re-training versus more physical interventions. If men indeed have a hard-wired tendency toward sexual violence, it gives cultural interventions a lower return on investment and incarceration a relatively higher one.

For instance there has recently been a lot of controversy around the claim by J.K. Rowling that studies show that transgender males have the same rates of sexual predation as other males. Understanding of the balance of biological versus social influence informs that debate.

To improve our selves we must know our selves.

>opposable thumbs were partly successful because they make survivable rape easier

????