Voyager
13d ago
It's not really possible to make a definition based on biology, since one of the core tenets of modern transgenderism is inclusivity of anyone with dysphoria.
That's my point: If it's not possible to build a meaningful steelman that satisfies the tenets of transgenderism, transgenderism is indefensible.
It depends what you mean by "valid"? I think this philosophy clearly captures a desire, and way to manifest this desire into reality (whilst still constrained by reality)
That's not a philosophy, that's a tactic. A meaningful philosophy would contain some object level claims with a truth value, not just a manipulation of rhetoric to achieve a goal.
At the very least, this will make it impossible to refer to someone's sex (which is helpful if someone dislikes their sex)
So it's about stopping people from talking about inconvenient reality
and in cases of low information, people might just be forced to assume a man is actually a male
advancing falsehoods by hiding relevant information
And also some people might just have trouble adjusting to the new defintiions, and start confusing map for territory and thinking of "men" as males. Or at least retain associations of the word "man" to the old concept of "man".
and deliberately confusing people through rhetorical tricks. I suspected from the beginning it was a rhetorical shell game, but it's starting to look more like an Orwellian propaganda framework.
The concept of sex would have to be a cognitohazard threating to wipe out humanity for me to even consider this. And even then it couldn't be meaningfully said to be "true". Some people will be less sad" (but others more sad) is not a sufficient justification.
Voyager
14d ago
Precisely - I'm trying to give a formulation that doesn't require lies or logical inconsistency.
At the cost of not having any substance beyond semantics. Your difficulties offering a steelman that is both consistent and meaningful might be indicative of the validity of the philosophy.
It makes people with gender dysphoria less sad.
But does it really? If your redefinition succeeds - as the transparent redefinition it's advertised at - all that happens is that "father" now means "parent who wishes to be a man", and the birth certificate will change its terminology in response to the redefinition, using a new term with quite possibly the same implications, which won't satisfy the person from the OP. Because it's not about the word, it's about the meaning behind it.
Meanwhile, forcibly changing the language will make other people unhappy.
Voyager
15d ago
Now let's make binary transgender ideology (just 2 genders for now):
- I define a new sort of identity marker (next to stuff like race, sex, age, etc) called "gender identity" (or "gender" for short)
- This is a redefinition of the old concept of gender. We will still keep the word "sex" to refer to the old-fashioned thing above.
- I also redefine "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" to now refer to gender identity, instead of sex
- Same for any other gendered (pro)nouns (fireman, mother, lesbian, etc) - we can only refer to sex by male/female (and references to sex should be avoided where possible)
- Being a man/woman means sincerely wanting to be male/female (this, but unironically)
Taken at face value, this seems bad on its merits, because why? There aren't any substantial actual claims in there, just a demand for changing language, so what benefit does this redefinition offer? This isn't even a steelman, because it involves no object level position. It's just a proposal for changing words without a justification.
Redefining terms is bad, because it leads to confusion. So where is the justification for paying that price, over creating new terms?
Aside from allowing for rhetorical shell games, of course?
Correct, she is not a father. She is a woman, and fathers are men.
The document isn't using the new definition under which this is true. If you honestly just want to change definitions, you can argue "the term 'father' should be replaced with 'male parent' (or similar) to reflect that 'father' now means something different". You can't argue the meaning/content of the document should change alongside a definition change of kne word it was using.
Your "steelman" framework doesn't give an argument here. It only appears to give one because it equivocates between the two meanings of "father".
There may different schools of thought and laws, but there aren't different schools of biology.
But the disagreements are about tactis and laws, not biology.
Almost no violence is truly "safe". The judgment of different options on the risk-of-death/efficacy ratio is a matter of tradeoffs and cutoffs. "The risk of death in a shot to the leg is x" is biology. "The risk is so high compared to the likelihood of stopping a threat that there is no situation where it is justified over a center-of-mass shot" is not biology, and that's where the schools of though differ.
If someone competent tells you that they are shooting at the legs to warn rather than kill
No one said that. (Edit to clarify: warning shots, shots at the legs and shots at tires are three different things. When I wrote "police are taught to shoot for warning, at the leg or at tires", the comma could be replaced with another "or".
Voyager
1mo ago
This isn't as universal as you make it sound. In Germany, and to my knowledge other european countries as well, police are taught to shoot for warning, at the leg or at tires, so there exist competing schools at thought and differing laws.
As a matter of American tactical and legal doctrine though, which is relevant to the case in question, you are correct.
Voyager
1mo ago
Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt.
Not all of these are mutually exclusive. I'm pretty sure some careful planning went into the Maduro extraction at least from the professionals in the Armed Forces. That's why it was so quick and successful.
Quick and decisive execution doesn't have anything to do with rash decisionmaking. A well-prepared operation is more likely to go smoothly and achieve your goals with the minimum amount of action.
Voyager
3mo ago
Is declining rates of violent death adjusted for 1) rising average ages
I don't think that adjustion should be done. 1. Rising average ages means people live longer, and that longer life means more opportunities to encounter violence. An old man might be less likely do get into violence, but before he was old, he was a young man for as long as his ancestors were, so all else being equal, he should get into more violence over his longer lifespan.
If there's a positive effect, it's probably from the effects on society from having more older people around too cool down and dilute young hotheads - but why would you control away social structure?
Also, people who didn't die violently live longer, so there's causality in the other direction (declining rates of violence cause rising average ages) and you're controlling away what you're testing for.
Voyager
9mo ago
This isn't a steelman. A steelman defends a position on its object level merits and makes no claim on the actual motivations of the supporters. But this is "they oppose this because they suspect bad motives from Trump", explicitly framed in terms of motivations.
A steelman would be "here are some arguments for a principled immigration policy that would reject Afrikaners and allow [groups the episcopalians had no objection to]". But after all, this discussion isn't primarily about the object level policy, it's about double standards/racism. "They are actually objecting to perceived double standards/racism" on the other side is a defense of the people involved.
Voyager
9mo ago
I'm a man, I would consider myself having high libido, and still I have noticed more than once that a female acquaintance becomes more sexually attractive as I get to know her better as a person. And from what I've heard, men in general are attracted to women they love.
Perhaps "romantic/personal attraction enhances sexual attraction" is somewhat universal for humans, and a lower baseline libido just makes the effect more pronounced.
Voyager
9mo ago
I wasn't really intending it as a steelman. I was trying to describe what I think are the actual motivations and mindsets of the donators.
Yes, it's emotive. They want to defend someone who's being attacked and stand up to "bullies". If my post gave you the idea it was a coordinated strategy motivated by cold calculations about cost-effective activism, that wasn't my intention.
Imagine them less like western leaders approving budgets and shipments and more like the people who donated to ukrainian forces to get custom messages written on grenades. (Notice the similarity to people leaving spicy messages with their donations?) It's about wanting to support the fight.
How do you prevent the people to get into similar situations just for the payout?
The desired outcome for the donators is that leftists see that trying to cancel people as racists no longer destroys them when the victim instead get lots of money, stop doing so, and therefore no one gets into those situations anymore (i.e. no viral shitstorm happens when people say "nigger"). Similar to how, althouth it strains the comparison, the West is hoping that Putin realizes that invading another country is not worth it because of the support they'll be getting.
Whether that outcome is achievable is of course a different question.
Voyager
9mo ago
No, you "deserve" wages for doing your job. Which is roughly ("deserve" still hides a lot of complexity here) the modal case for giving money to someone: You pay them for something you want.
My point is that this is a different situation: Hendrix isn't being paid to say this, she is being supported against an attack.
Voyager
9mo ago
DoDA works on everyone; as I think Sluggy Freelance points out, levitate someone out a high window (perhaps after disarming them) and they're as dead as if you used the killing curse.
This is even made explicit in the books themselves at one point: Harry defends his use of Expelliarmus in a broom chase by pointing out that Stunning them will make them fall from their brooms and kill them just as well.
"Harry, the time for Disarming is past! These people are trying to capture and kill you! At least Stun if you aren’t prepared to kill!"
"We were hundreds of feet up! Stan’s not himself, and if I Stunned him and he’d fallen, he’d have died the same as if I’d used Avada Kedavra!"
Voyager
9mo ago
It's a proxy war, and the donations are foreign military aid.
No one thinks Ukraine "deserves" billions worth of military equipment on their own merits. Western supporters believe that they deserve their independence or Russia's invasion deserves to be opposed (either idealistically, to take a stand against offensive wars, or pragmatically, to weaken the geopolitical rival Russia) and weapons shipments are the way to achieve this.
Shiloh Hendrix isn't being given $750,000 as a reward for saying a bad word, she is being given money to defend against the attack on her, which is perceived as unjust and/or as the frontline of a war between tribes. This is both practical ("if we give her money, they can't ruin her life") and symbolic (actual money is a credible signal of support against the moral accusation on her.)
The previous fundraiser for Karmelo Anthony is also revelant here as an initial escalation. If the Evil Empire sends weapons to the Evilist regime in Proxystan, the Coalition of Good needs to match that in support for the Goodist rebels.
Voyager
10mo ago
Wouldn't surprise me if lives were already lost from black parents losing trust in white doctors or similar effects, just not in a legible way.
If you are longer exposed to something (including an architectural style), it makes you feel better about it
That might be a true factor, but if it were the entire reason, it would predict that people make no distinction between buildings that were built before they were born - after all, can't be exposed longer than your life.
That would surprise me and doesn't appear to be in evidence.
An architectural example is the Eiffel Tower that was extremely controversial and hated by many when it was built. Now, it is perceived as an iconic and inseparable part of Paris.
The Eiffel Tower might an icon of Paris - but do Parisians actually consider it beautiful? Compared to, say, the towers of Notre Dame? Or may its impressive and skyline-dominating size, the imposing construction, and the utility as a vantage point more relevant to its popularity?
Voyager
11mo ago
It’s practically axiomatic that civilization requires (and arguably is) the control of young men.
Fundamentally, civilization is the control of violence.
Which naturally requires control of young men, both in that they're likely to use uncontrolled violence otherwise and that they're main tools for controlled violence.
I think the kernel of truth behind "Decadence" is simply selective pressure or lack thereof.
Hard times make strong men less because hardship is good for the spirit, but because hard times mean weak men perish. Effective strategies will outcompete ineffective ones. Weak men will either figure out how to stop being weak or be replace by those who do. Men who already are strong will rise to the top because they can deliver success - if you're not meritocratic, you will be outcompeted.
But once you grow to enough success, this changes, because your prosperity introduces slack that cushions inefficiency. You will no longer be immediately punished for operating inefficiently, because the system runs well enough and has enough inertia it can handle some inefficiency. The best way to power is longer to create it, but to politick society into giving it to you. You no longer need to invest wealth in that which promises progress, you can afford to spend it on practically useless, but beautiful art. When previously ensuring success for your son requires raising him into a strong man, because a weak man would quickly fail, you can now pass on the existing wealth and power to him and let him coast on it. If the army has better equipment and more numbers than any enemies, and a solid structure of professional staff officers and NCOs, even a nepo baby general can win.
So the structures ossify into something that serves a different purpose, and over time, such issues accumulate, the staff officers also become nepo babies, the NCOs and civil servants grow corrupt, the tactics grow obsolete, and the wealthy show off by employing armies of artisans instead of doing anything of practical value, all while your inertia prevents them from failing visibly. Meanwhile, your enemies still face incentives to become strong, and will eventually be able challenge you, and then the nepo babies, the corrupt viziers, and the artisans won't be able to effectively fight back. Your empire falls, your wealth gets looted, and your art either destroyed or left for later generations look at and wonder what happened to the civilization that created something as impressive as this.
The core mechanic isn't hardship as such, but lack of competition. It's the Great Empire with mostly barbarians on its borders that falls to this, because they have no actual peers who can outcompete them. Meanwhile, the european powers of early modernity always were surrounded by multiple equally strong rivals. So as soon as decadence started creeping in, one of those rivals would quickly pounce and deliver a humiliating but not fatal defeat, exposing everything that went wrong and leaving you to scramble to fix it, before your problems could ossify.
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