Tarnstellung
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User ID: 553
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
Why wouldn't you be able to walk to a park in a dense urban area? Or go kayaking or shooting (presumably at a range, not in your backyard)? Gardening is a bit more difficult, depending on how dense the city is exactly. On the other hand, in an urban area, you could be 3 minutes away from shops without even needing to drive.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
America is better for the middle class (and for doctors), but I’d rather be rich in London than be rich anywhere else in the world (and so, seemingly, would quite a lot of people).
Why? Not doubting, just curious. You didn't really explain your claim.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
It seems you have rediscovered the principle pushed by Ibram X. Kendi and company that there is no such thing as being neutral and by being neutral you are siding with the oppressor.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
\21. “We should deregulate construction completely.” Pro
Completely? This is how you get shoddily-built buildings collapsing en masse and killing tens of thousands of people, as in the recent earthquake in Turkey or the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. (Regulations existed but were not enforced due to corruption, but we would expect similar outcomes if there were simply no regulations at all.)
You are presumably some kind of libertarian, so you might prefer a more market-based system. Instead of the government creating and enforcing regulations, for example, it could require construction companies to buy insurance in case their buildings collapse. This would allow the market to discover what regulations are necessary or cost-effective. But it still requires some degree of government regulation and enforcement.
\45. “It’s morally wrong for the average voter to vote; we should try to decrease voter turnout.” Pro
\51. “Equality of opportunity is morally undesirable.” Pro
I would like you to elaborate on these two. They are far from the only points I disagree with, but these are very unusual positions and I would like to hear why you believe in them.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
The only reason they had to do that is that their product wasn't much much much better than what existed in the market.
So if your product is only slightly better than what's already available, you're not allowed to sell it, and if you try, you get executed?
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
Nope. You can't suddenly declare yourself Japanese and be taken seriously.
I believe this is what the "group" in "group self-identification" was referring to: you have to be accepted by other members of the group. The Japanese are stingy about Japaneseness, but other nations are more generous. You can move to the US and declare yourself an American and you will generally be accepted. (This is my understanding, at least. I am not American.) In general, considering yourself part of a nation (meaning an ethnic group, not a nation in the sense of a legally constituted country) and being accepted by others as part of that nation is what being part of a nation is. Nations (ethnic groups) are entirely socially constructed, formed by social consensus.
This is sophistry. What this actually means is that you don't have to be a rape victim to get access to counseling services.
It's pragmatism. They are acknowledging that their goal is to provide rape counseling and not to explore complicated ethical or legal questions about sex and consent.
So can you tell me how can I find out whether or not I am a woman? (...) So let's say I'm supposed to be a player in this game, how am I supposed to pick a team if you won't tell me a non-selfID definition of "girl" or "boy"?
No one is actually confused in the way you are pretending to be here.
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
Yes, the evidence is weak. That is precisely what the authors of the meta-analysis meant by:
The strength of evidence for these conclusions is low due to methodological limitations
If you look at the "Discussion" section, you will note that most of it is dedicated to pointing out problems with the studies under review. The article also notes that de Vries, 2014 has a "serious" risk of bias and the other three adolescent studies have a "moderate" risk of bias, and of the 20 studies they looked at, only three have a "low" risk. All of this means that further research is needed (it always is), but based on the evidence we have now I think it's perfectly reasonable to adopt a working hypothesis that puberty blockers and hormone therapy are beneficial.
Your points about self-selection among participants only imply that doctors should exercise care when choosing which treatments to administer to whom. Clearly some patients do benefit from hormone therapy, therefore the therapy should not be banned.
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
Stefan Löfven, a welder, was Prime Minister of Sweden from 2014 to 2021. He has no university degree and got his start in politics as a union official.
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
What about the Irish?
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
Oh what do you know, it's actually biased in whites' favour somehow. You know, unless you are in the armed forces, or the police, or the media, or working for the royals, and so on.
The first article is about a case where an employment tribunal ruled the discrimination was unlawful and awarded compensation to the victim. The third article, unless I am misreading it, doesn't quite support your point, either.
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
How did Trump "get back" at the military-industrial complex? Some of his campaign rhetoric suggested he would, but I thought any hopes were dashed when he ordered the Syria airstrikes in 2017, which resulted in an increase in the stock price of Raytheon and other defence companies and 2017 ended up being "a Year to Remember for Raytheon" and the defence sector. He kept this up with the constant sabre rattling at Iran and the assassination of Soleimani.
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
I haven't given much thought to the idea, but I would probably be against mass involuntary sterilization of people with undesirable characteristics. A method of implementing eugenics which I find far more defensible, and I think many people would agree with me, would be to sterilize criminals. There is a lot of overlap between criminals and people who a eugenicist would want to prevent from reproducing. Objections that it's involuntary are inapplicable, because we already do horrible things to criminals like imprisoning them, or even, depending on time and place, executing them. You could frame it as just another punishment, or to prevent children being raised in abusive households, etc., without publicizing the eugenic effects.
In America, Black people would of course be disproportionately affected by this, which would upset some on the left, but it would also mean that the difference between Blacks and Whites would narrow over time. (And Whites would be affected more than Asians, and so on. All the racial differences would narrow.)
If this had been implemented, say, two generations ago, in the 1970s, we would already be seeing huge results. As is, however, it seems kind of pointless because by the time we start seeing results, genetic engineering will likely already be widespread.
Tarnstellung
11mo ago
Is there no real difference between these two invasions? Something that might make it nonsensical to use the word "invasion" to describe both? Like the fact that Bush invaded using tanks and missiles and the Mexicans are "invading" by getting jobs?
Tarnstellung
2mo ago
I was not trying to create any kind of general debate about the history of the conflict. I was only making a very narrow point: that "remote Middle-Eastern squabbles" have been causing political controversy in the UK since long before any significant Muslim immigration.
Tarnstellung
2mo ago
The fate of the newly liberated Arab lands after World War I was most certainly a political issue in the UK. There was much debate both among politicians and in the public. The British public was apparently very sympathetic due to the Arabs' contribution to the victory so official British support for Zionism was in fact very controversial, as was the Anglo-French partition and occupation. All this with the number of Muslims actually living in the UK being a rounding error.
Tarnstellung
5mo ago
Are Iranians white? Are they Aryan? What about North Indians? Pashtuns?
I'm trying to understand your racial taxonomy.
Tarnstellung
9mo ago
Again, not relevant, the whole point is any dude can put on a dress and go into female toilets.
I would expect the dude to at least have to declare that he is trans before being allowed.
To be fair, the thing being pre-arrenged means it's not an example of what people were worried about, but I don't understand your fixation of the victim being random. If someone targets a friend or a co-worker and abuses the trans-policy to get access, then suddenly everything is fine?
No, of course that changes nothing. The point is that the perpetrator didn't specifically select the bathroom. The debate is focused on bathrooms because they're enclosed spaces where a victim may be alone, which makes them uniquely dangerous.
The other issue is that other people gave you examples that fit better, and your response was only to nitpick further. Another attacker who did identify as trans also doesn't count according to you, because they didn't take hormones or get surgeries, even though the entire point of critics was that anyone can say they identify as anything.
I assume you are referring to the 2014 California case. In another comment, I said that:
The article notes that the perpetrator had not yet transitioned at the time of the crime, so he would not have been allowed in the bathroom anyway.
The point was not that he hadn't taken hormones or had surgeries, but that he didn't even identify as trans when he committed the crime. He only started identifying as trans afterwards. Therefore the case is completely irrelevant.
And you didn't even respond to the Oklahoma one.
I hadn't responded because it hadn't been posted yet when I was responding to the others. I have now addressed it here.
Admittedly I have no access to a parallel universe where different policies are in place, but the fact that the school was trying to cover the story up, indicates they are feeling guilty about it somehow.
They obviously have a strong incentive to cover up or downplay the occurrence of such a serious crime at their school regardless of the specific circumstances and regardless of whether it pertains to a current national political controversy.
I suppose it's possible he was showing up in a skirt for a completely unrelated reason, but come on, at the very least it screams "dude trying to take advantage of a loophole", no?
Maybe he just liked wearing a skirt? It's a thing.
I guess that's exactly the thing under dispute. Aren't all these women protesting precisely because they feel they're being made worse off?
What protests are you referring to specifically?
Yeah, I agree. Look, if we went from self-ID to medical-gatekeeping, that would definitely be better, but I don't like how all my concerns with self-ID were dismissed with "it will never happen", and after it did happen people like you are still trying to dismiss my concerns, after taking a step back to a minimally defensible position.
You say it would be better, but presumably it still wouldn't be ideal? If so, why not? Using this as an argument in favour of the position that "trans people should not be allowed into opposite-sex facilities" (under any circumstances) proves too much.
Tarnstellung
9mo ago
This technically qualifies as "a trans woman assaulting a woman in a women's bathroom", but it is nothing like the hypothetical situation anti-trans activists warned about. For one, it was not a sexual assault. My comment said "assaulting" rather than "sexually assaulting", but the claim has always been that women would be sexually assaulted, by a pervert who is or claims to be trans.
More importantly, the fact that it happened in a bathroom isn't relevant because it had none of the characteristics of the stereotypical bathroom assault. The debate is focused on bathrooms because they're enclosed spaces where a victim may be alone, which makes them uniquely dangerous. The typical hypothetical bathroom assault scenario involves a woman, usually understood to be a random woman unknown to the assailant, who is alone in the bathroom with the assailant, who has followed her in or was waiting for her. This is dangerous because she can be cornered with no way to escape and no way to call for help.
But this case is nothing like that. The victim was with a group of friends who saw the entire thing. The fight was presumably stopped as soon as possible (apparently the friends tried to intervene but were unable to stop the fight; presumably they called someone who could). The perpetrator and the victim already knew each other, and the incident started as a verbal altercation when the perpetrator approached the victim and escalated into a fight. This exact scenario could have played out anywhere. It had nothing to do with the reasons why bathrooms are claimed to be uniquely dangerous and why bathroom bills are claimed to be necessary.
Tarnstellung
9mo ago
Is it really? It's people having consistent principles. Which, I can agree is strange, but on TheMotte I don't think is that strange.
My point is that it is entirely possible to have consistent principles that result in treating trans people as their preferred gender in most cases, but not when it comes to women's sports. An example of such principles would be the basic liberal/libertarian maxim "let people do what they want as long as they're not harming anyone".
It's a standard mistake to say "this never happens", because it's happened quite a lot. For example, this case.
The article notes that the perpetrator had not yet transitioned at the time of the crime, so he would not have been allowed in the bathroom anyway. So no, this doesn't count.
Any sources that it was consensual?
I was referring to this case:
Two inmates serving time in New Jersey’s only state prison for women became pregnant after they had sex with a transgender inmate, according to a report Wednesday.
The unidentified jailbirds became pregnant at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility after engaging in “consensual sexual relationships with another incarcerated person,” the state Department of Corrections told NJ.com.
Tarnstellung
9mo ago
The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.
He was right that it would turn Russia against the West; he was wrong that it would be "the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era". He was expecting a new Cold War that might possibly escalate into WW3, while the US has barely been affected by the current war. Kennan, having spent most of his career with Russia as a peer of the US, could not conceive how much Russia would degenerate and how little of a threat it would pose.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
If you select a specific subgroup from a certain ethnic group as immigrants, their descendants will regress to the mean of that subgroup and not their entire ethnic group.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
I was under the impression that carbon monoxide poisoning is extremely unpleasant and not at all painless. Nitrogen is the way to go, in my opinion. You don't even need the benzos.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
This is too low-effort for the main thread. You should have either added a more detailed explanation or posted this in the Sunday thread. I'd suggest a better explanation in any case, because I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
Tarnstellung
10mo ago
In what sense? To me, from a Catholic background, what stands out the most about Mormons is the addition of the Book of Mormon to the canon. Quranists, as I understand, don't add anything, they just reject the hadiths. In this sense they are very similar to sola scriptura Protestants. Did you mean that all the other Muslims think they're weird?
There are clear genetic differences between Germans and Italians, yet both have been successfully integrated into American society.
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