Comment by robswc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robswc | Hacker News Reader

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This is one of the problems I have with modern discourse.

We're suppose to trust institutions based on the idea that institutions are inherently trustworthy.

Having dealt with a few I honestly think they're marginally more trustworthy _but_ are better at hiding and obscuring their biases... which is worse in some ways.

Best example in the article:

> “They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

> That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.

Also this study is funded by the government (our taxes) and has received almost $10 million. Not releasing the results is wild and the reasoning is worse. I have almost no faith that this team won't try some sort of p-hacking to get the results they wanted to see.

The issue is that none of this stuff is objective but everyone has to pretend that it is.

You have to say that people are depressed because they can’t transition, because the alternative would be to say that people who are depressed or otherwise mentally ill are more likely to do crazy things, and that’s taboo, so instead you make up a series of bizarre non sequiturs because using logic would lead to saying “banned” things.

It’s like some sort of weird Soviet Union joke, 2+3=6 because we have to report that we have made 6 units of grain, even if we only made 2 in one field and 3 in another, we made 6 units of grain, it doesn’t make sense because it can’t.

Same as in COVID. Masks have an effect, but we originally said they didn’t because we wanted to avoid shortages. It wasn’t factual, it was a narrative with a goal, if you look at it like a logic problem and assume that every statement is truthful you’re going to have issues.

>We're suppose to trust institutions based on the idea that institutions are inherently trustworthy.

Trust-based systems and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

That only works with a web of independent and constant verification.

These days no one checks their sources, and whole networks of people make decision to benefit their views and wants, and not to disclose facts no matter the findings.

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