iffish

There is nothing here, really. this interface where your own face looms suddenly from dark patches of the screen some fragment of cheek, lip, eye startled recollection of the self I had imagined I was in a stream of other voices, false-familiar strangers

@SilentSkyZero @glukianoff Lol. Are you really this stupid? Wow, one of the researchers once got paid an honorarium to give a talk to SEGM, amongst many other institutions. Do you think that means they work for them? Do you think they got cooties?

@iffishX @glukianoff

In my career defending academic freedom and free speech, I never saw anything become as immediately radioactive as views that ran counter to the narrative on trans issues. Papers were retracted, compelled speech was treated as normal, and people were canceled for saying things that would have sounded like common sense just a few years earlier. It seemed to become a kind of secular blasphemy overnight. And usually, that is a sign that the true believers know, at some level, that they are on shaky ground. @hoovlet

@SilentSkyZero @glukianoff You seem to be pushing misinformation yourself. The study being discussed wasn't produced by SEGM, they're just reporting on it. You can read the study here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ap…

@glukianoff The issue is groups like SEGM who's entire purpose is to misrepresent facts and create flimsy studies to manufacture confirmation bias. If you constantly ignore the facts to push a narrative and then cry when people push back on you, that's a you problem

@just_james_r @Laterzaeta @timurkuran And I'm also not suggesting that a therapist should be trying to get someone to align themselves with some 'social construct', but they should be trying to get them to arrive at a realistic assessment of their situation and the realities they are embedded in.

@just_james_r @Laterzaeta @timurkuran ... you are right that the patient should not be made to feel pathologised. But it is absurd to say that person whose mind is at odds with its own body is not in a disordered state. If that's not disordered then there's no such thing as mental disorders.

The promoters of “gender-affirming care” tried to quash scientific debate on its effects through name-calling and by designating as “settled science” the claim that it improves the mental health of dysphoric kids. It’s now clear why they feared open scientific inquiry.

@ofreacharound @glukianoff @wesyang Think you also need to factor in that for both the trans-identified and the 'allies', this blew up in a generation that grew up consuming a media diet that was 99% fantasy and that they were constantly bombarded with the message that 'you can be whatever you want to be'.

@glukianoff @wesyang It’s fascinating that they accepted this one group suffering with mental illness (as they were seen immediately prior to the shift) into a “protected class” with immutable attributes Even disability rights have been unable to enact the same shift

@IamamishTv @timurkuran "there is a general presumption that giving people what they want (ceteris paribus) is a good thing" Is there? It's not a presumption I share and I'm very doubtful it's particularly widely held. Since it's trivially easy to find contradicting information.

@timurkuran The thing we should keep in mind is that there is a reason people pursue these types of transitions, and there is a general presumption that giving people what they want (ceteris paribus) is a good thing. People must believe they benefit from these treatments.

@just_james_r @Laterzaeta @timurkuran of your material realities, your memory, your embedded social relations & much more. It is not some fixed thing that can be introspected or sought, but a constantly changing experience of being. What you are recommending is constructing a falsehood into someone's sense of self.

@just_james_r @Laterzaeta @timurkuran ... runs right through this kind of thinking. Because there is no 'who you really are', it's a meaningless construction, a will-o-the-wisp, a shimmering illusion that can never be grasped. Who you really are is an unfixable, endlessly accumulating melange ...

@just_james_r @timurkuran Letting a child inhabit a state of unreality may be good in the short term, but very bad in the long term.

@just_james_r @timurkuran That's a bit like saying that 'The benefits of playing pretend with your toddler are very much confirmed and well supported. May be trivially true but everything depends on to what extent.

@VesperAegis @thepairodocs @timurkuran That argument might have some traction if you were talking about a cohort of young people in a deep red US state. But it seems extremely doubtful that it would apply to very liberal Finland.

This study looks at all psychiatric morbidity, however, and not whether each individual was satisfied with the transition process and was compelled that their mind and body aligned, and that they were satisfied that they had self-actualized their gender identity while feeling comfortable in their own body. The most likely explanation here is that when patients fully realize their gender identity, in a world where xenophobia and transphobia are increasingly common, they feel even more like outcasts as a result of discrimination and people telling them they do not exist. There is no greater psychological incongruity than being fully self-actualized, but being told that that self-actualization itself is the very reason that you are discriminated against.

@prosochesati @PAHoyeck The only way your primary premise can be made true is in a world that also includes spherical cows.

@prosochesati @PAHoyeck Your primary premise is that "Richer people are better than you". The existence of inherited wealth (and frankly a whole host of other things like theft, corruption, drug dealing, extortion, fraud etc.) contradict the reasoning in your secondary premise at 1).

What's everyone's most elitist opinion?

@KirkegaardEmil @RichardHanania Majority I'd guess. And the remainder down to changing patterns of youth sociability - video games, social media, being housebound and not hanging out with other youth etc.

@RichardHanania More interesting is trying to get an age corrected homicide rate estimate. USA has a lot more people now than in 1960s so there must be a large decline in the rate, but how much is due to having proportionally fewer young people?

2025 likely had the lowest *absolute* number of murders since 1968. Think about how big of a new story the rise in murder was. Nobody cares about an even more remarkable decline. Pessimism has won regardless of what's happening in reality. richardhanania.com/p/coups-in-afr…

@prosochesati @PAHoyeck Your starting premise, if left uncaveated, has to be taken as a factual one. Now if you want to rewrite it as "In an ideal world, where there is no inherited wealth ..." then you might have an argument.

@iffishX @PAHoyeck Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to have counterfactual premises, for example.

@prosochesati @PAHoyeck Your primary one. Since it's propped up by your 1) which is negated by the existence of widespread inherited wealth.

@iffishX @PAHoyeck Which premise is that?