ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I have shifted the vibes, pray I do not shift them any further...
And it does not stop the fascists from rallying if they simply pick a different symbol or color.
Please don't tell me none of them came up with the idea to use the Quadruple Progress Flag.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I dunno, man. I think it's quite likely, unless the market gods decide it's time for line go down.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
while the Left as the collectivist, bottom-up side
Debatable. Collectivist maybe, but "trust the experts" is not the slogan of of a non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian, bottom-up movement, and ideas like "the working class is mired in false consciousness" are indicative of someone who believes minorities and individuals can be more representative of a group, even as they contradict the majority opinion.
I find this to be, frankly, borne of ignorance and lack of creativity.
Sure, guilty as charged. Academia is not my world, and to the extent I'm familiar with it, the system I know is not even located in your country. There very well may be effective tools that have more subtlety than a megaton bomb. I'd love to be educated on what they are, and how they work.
I'm a little bit hurt by the second charge, but sure, you're a smart guy, and I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest, if you could come up with something that would blow my idea out of the water.
There's not even really a well-formed goal. Just a vague sense of these people seem bad, and it seems complicated, and I don't know what to do, so I'll just go in blastin'.
Not quite.
It's not "just a vague sense of these people seem bad". It's a very specific sense of these people using deliberate infiltration (the response in BMJ citing the SPLC designating SEGM as a "hate group") and harrasment (activists accosting Guyatt and his staff at their place of work, and online) tactics to yield concessions from institutions (cutting off the working relationship with SEGM), that contradict their stated principles (McMaster's statement claiming transgender care is medically necessary), which they can then use to their advantage in future fights (any other university considering work with SEGM will either come across the scandal when vetting the organization and get cold feet, or in the event they don't, activists can forward it to them once any such future relationship is discovered. The "medically necessary" statement can also be used to persuade and/or sue any healthcare insurer or provider refusing these treatments). This isn't a singular case, it's a blueprint they worked off for years. I'd say that's quite specific, and not vague at all.
Something needs to be done to break that chain, and ideally roll back their previous victories. Is it complicated? I don't know, if I was the King of Academia, I think I could solve the issue effectively, and without resorting to nuclear fire, but I'm not, and such a position doesn't seem to exist to begin with. Again, I'm all ears if there's a clean, subtle, and effective solution. I won't even insist on it's quick results, if I can be reasonably assured of it's effectiveness.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Supporting rioters is par for the course for either side, he seems to have been talking about murders.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
That's not a celebration.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I'm... happy I could make your day. I suppose it is important to enjoy the small pleasures.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Guys, I think I found the suspect.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Well, it's not really a logical proof, just a statement on how I see no other practical way to do any of this.
Even if I put my mind to it, it doesn't seem trivial. Is opening fire on anyone who ever published and/or signed one of these statements be acceptable? Between online journals, scholarly databases, and LLMs this could probably automated, but does Trump have levers to pull that target with this level of precision? Would it hold up in court? Wouldn't the backlash / objections to it nbe effectively the same, as people like Guyatt start crying that theybjust wanted to do science, and didn't even read what they were signing?
Reddit is a mainstream, corporate-owned forum. They purged all sorts of subfora and people on the grounds of how offensive they were, how advertisers might pull out, etc. etc. They don't get to pull the "teehee, we're just a bunch of shitposters" card now.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
Well, I would argue that mouthing along to incorrect arguments for something which you would have more principled reasons to support anyway
This assumes the primary objective of the SBM people is to defend transgender care, rather than their actually stated one of informing the piblic about which medical treatments are scientifically backed.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
Well, I've long argued that transgenderism is just a facet of transhumanism (much to tje chagrin of self_made_human), but that's beside the point. The SBM people weren't defending it on transhumanist grounds.
Is Science-Based Medicine opposed to the likes of elective plastic surgery? I think there's a great deal of difference between "opposing patient autonomy" in the sense of being against allowing patients too much discretion to pick quack treatments that they can cure them of a particular ailment, vs "opposing patient autonomy" in the sense of being against patients undergoing elective procedures for reasons other than medical need, but whose efficacy to do the things they physically achieve is not in scientific doubt.
Sure, I can concede the difference, but transgender care gets dinged either way. The signed-but-not-read statement says it's "medically necessary", activists say it's "life-saving", "do you want a happy little girl, or a dead little boy?", etc. What do you think is the drama around these systematic reviews, if it isn't about showing that they're ineffective treatments.
This is quack medicine, no two ways about it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
in the US, the absolute number of black and white murderers is about the same and the percentage of people logged as black is somewhere over 10%, it's basically a wash between black women and white men
...why would you say any of these things as though they favored your point?
Evidence Based Medicine, Science Based Medicine... I just want Based Medicine
In 2021 the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) contracted McMaster University to do a series of systematic reviews of gender medicine, and what better place than McMaster, home to Dr. Gordon Guyatt, the father of Evidence Based Medicine himself? For quite a while the working relationship seems to have indeed been working, perhaps not completely without a hitch as Dr. Guyatt will later tell us, but 3 systematic reviews, assessing the evidence for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and bilateral mastectomies, have been published earlier this year. Their results are consistent with all other systematic reviews published to date: the evidence for various forms of gender affirming care is of low to very low quality.
In February 2025 The BMJ published an article titled Medical journal editors must resist CDC order and anti-gender ideology. This was a response to the much-criticized Trump CTRL+F grant cuts, dataset changes, and orders for CDC scientists to remove themselves from studies that so much as mention "gender" or any other 2SLGBTQIA+ related terminology. The BMJ swears up and down that such terms are "medically relevant" and therefore "evidence based", and so the Trump administration has no place in dictating how science is conducted.
One of the responses to the article praises the BMJ for it's "anti-gender ideology" stance, but declares that this is just an empty gesture, as the journal has published the studies sponsored by SEGM, which has been designated as an "anti-LGBT hate group" by the SPLC. On top of that, Dr. Guyatt and his staff faced direct activist pressure of various sorts.
In August, McMaster University published a stetement about their systematic reviews, expressing concern that their studies are being misused to pass policy which takes away autonomy from the patient, something that goes against the principles of Evidence Based Medicine, as they understand it. They announced that they will not be working with SEGM anymore, and that they will be donating Egale Canada to help fund their efforts to prevent gender affirming care bans.
Following the publishing of the statement, there is now an open letter demanding an apology, and a retraction of the SEGM-funded studies.
...A renowned institution, a respected leader, some activist pressure, and a repudiation of their previous work: a story that we're quite familiar with by now... or is it?
Earlier this week Dr. Guyatt was interviewed on the Beyond Gender podcast about his work with SEGM and his statement about the systematic reviews. Throughout the conversation it becomes clear that there is no evidence-based argument against SEGM and their work, rather it's a disagreement of values. As already noted in the his statement, Dr. Guyatt holds patient autonomy in extremely high regard, and his main issue is with his work being used to justify blanket bans. This mirrors the shift in the discourse that I talked about before. Not being able to argue that The Science Is Settled, activists have to retreat to a more defensible position and settled on autonomy with a sprinkling of Trust The Experts, although they're kind of trying to have it both ways...
During the interview Dr. Guyatt is asked how he would define "medical necessity", at first he's confused, and then rejects the very concept outright, which is interesting in the light of the following exchange taking place at the end of the episode:
Mia Hughes: Someone very recently said that the very fact that you have signed this statement that says (...) "this is medically necessary"...
Gordon Guyatt: WHAT?! How ridiculous! We never said anything... I told you that I would never use the term "medically necessary", I would never use it. The fact that you said I used it is completely wrong.
MH: Well then, I will fact-check myself...
(...)
GG: Yeah, see if you can find "medically necessary" in my statement. I would have to jump off a bridge if I said that.
(Co-host asks another question to prevent dead-air)
MH: I did fact-check myself this is your statement:
We will no longer accept funding from SEGM. As recommended by community advocates, we have also personally made a donation to Egale Canada’s legal and justice work, noting their litigation efforts aimed at preventing the denial of medically necessary care for gender-diverse youth.
GG: Okay... that was not my paragraph, and I didn't read carefully...
Narrator: To date, Dr. Guyatt has not yet jumped off a bridge. He noticed no irony in the contrast between his complaint about his studies, that to date he still stands behind, being used to justify policy he disagrees with, and his downplaying of how his signature, on a statement he vehemently disagrees with, could be used.
Credit to Mia Hughes, not just for the interview, but for already collecting most of the links.
Ok, some extra thoughts.
This isn't the first time we got a politically charged statement from a suppesedly neutral political institution. Off the top of my head there was the AMA declaring gun violence to be a public health crisis, or similar statements from the American College of Physicians, complete with a trendy hashtag, and of course, who can forget "Racism is an ongoing public health crisis"? This is, however, the first time someone from any of these institutions was publically cross-examined, and the results were devastating. Do the other statements have better backing? I personally doubt it, we can always quibble about it and construct elaborate "steelmen", but it doesn't matter. My opinion is that all these statements should be rejected by default, and and treated as political, and not based on science or their understanding of the public good, at least until similar cross-examinations take place.
This also touches on Trump's dreaded funding cuts. We've had a number of people here complaining about them, claiming that Trump should have used a more precise approach. It can't be done. Any presumption-of-innocence approach would yield no significant outcome, as institutions could hire activists faster than you could get them fired. If you want people to stop cheering as he torches your institutions, do something to save them yourself. Show people that they're self-correcting and can be trusted by the public, and if they aren't then make them become self-correcting.
Finally, on a different topic, it's interesting to compare Guyatt's autonomy-valuing approach to the results of other people's non-autonomy-respecting approaches. Though I'm Rat-adjacent, I've never been a proper Rat. Rather, I hail from the "Skeptic" community - Sagan, James Randi, those sorts of people. Randi himself, and many of his followers, spent a lot of their time debunking evidence-free treatments, often calling for their banning and/or strict regulation. One of them, Dr Steven Novella, even formulated a broader criticism of the entire Evidence Based Medicine framework, and founded his own blog Science Based Medicine blog in response. The issue he and his collegues identified, is that EBM can be hacked as it focuses too much on clinical trials, rather than the entirety of evidence, and prior plausibility. For the curious here's his introduction post explaining their approach, and here's a post series about some spat about cancer treatments which provides a more specific example (and extra links outlining the differences between the approaches).
Given the direct contrast to EBM, and the opposition to patient autonomy when the treatment is not grounded in sound science, what do you think would be their response to the transgender care phenomenon? Oh, that's right, a complete caving to the trans activists in violation of all their principles. Credit where credit is due, I suppose, AJ Eckart, the pro-trans author they hired after dropping Harriet Hall, has been awfully quiet ever since the Cass Review dropped, so someone must have decided they backed the wrong horse.
The sad conclusion of all this seems to be: the romantic notion that Science™ can be trusted as a process seems to completely wrong. Science is only as a good as the people doing, and the people doing it at the moment don't seem much good. If a conflict between their scientific principles, and their political principles arises, scientists seem to reliably choose politics.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
and with intent to, or knowing or having reason to know,1 such activity would likely, derail, disable, or wreck a mass transportation vehicle used, operated, or employed by a mass transportation provider;
This makes it sound like it has to be more than just a murder on a transportation system? Although I guess the earlier point says "any person who is on property described". I'm going to take a wild guess and say the defense is going to be about whether the law applies, rather than guilt/innocence.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
What would be the justification for making this a federal matter?
They literally abandoned her and followed the killer out of the bus. Two people from the front of the bus later come over to help her, but the ones closest to her just noped out.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
Would be hard to pull off with people sharing "George Floyd vs. Iryna Zarutska search result hits" memes.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
It sure would have been nice to hear all these sorts of justifications for why things ain't quite so bad as they appear, oh I don't know, 5 years ago...
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
Based.
Also, you did approximately nothing all winter.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
It does, you pointed it out yourself.
Would they really try that one so soon?
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