ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
The Saga of Jaime Reed continues
For those who haven't followed it:
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Part one was Jaime Reed blowing the whistle on the St. Louis Children's Hospital by submitting an affidavit, and Bari Weiss' Free Press publishing an article about it.
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Part two was the aftermath, Missouri Independent's and the St.Louis Post Dispatch doing an investigation that contradicted Reed's statements, summed up by @PmMeClassicMemes, focusing in no small part on the ridiculousness of the claim that one of the patients identified as an attack helicopter.
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Part three was Jesse Singal doing an investigation of his own, pointing out the statements contradicting Reed were made by members of a group called TransParents, some of who actually co-founded the clinic in question. He also got documentation from her about the attack helicopter kid. I summarized it here.
Now the New York Times has also investigated the issue. As someone following trans issues for a while I found it to be a bit of a slog, but it could be interesting to someone out of the loop. The short of it is they've corroborated many of Jaime Reed's claims, though they claim to have contradicted one of them:
It’s clear the St. Louis clinic benefited many adolescents: Eighteen patients and parents said that their experiences there were overwhelmingly positive, and they refuted Ms. Reed’s depiction of it. For example, her affidavit claimed that the clinic’s doctors did not inform parents or children of the serious side effects of puberty blockers and hormones. But emails show that Ms. Reed herself provided parents with fliers outlining possible risks.
For what it's worth Reed responded to it on Twitter:
I provided parents fliers, no disputing that. And I emailed these. I also made many of them (I am not a doctor). Getting a flier emailed does not equal informed consent. Getting a copy of a flier handed by a doctor also does not equal informed consent.
The question of NYT's bias is an interesting one. A lot of people from the "anti-trans" side of the issue are praising the article as very nuanced. I'm also firmly on that side, and personally I feel like they're pulling a lot of their punches, if an "anti-trans" version Cade Metz wrote that article they'd have many opportunities to go wild on this particular subject, to the point that the article on Scott would appear like a fluff piece. On the other hand I do recognize they're constrained by their audience, and even writing the article in it's present form is probably about as much as they can get away with at the moment.
Indeed, GLAAD got maad, and unleashed The Truck. This is actually the second time they did this, the first was after NYT published a profile on detransitioners. I think this might a strategic mistake on their part. The first time they protested the NYT, their action carried some energy, even if it didn't result in anything. The problem is that doing the same thing again after their original protest had no effect, makes this one feel rather impotent. With responses turned off it's hard to gauge people's reactions, but it feels like they aren't having it anymore, at least on this particular issue.
At the beginning of the year I made a prediction that something's up with the trans issue. The debate rages on, and we're probably still years away from a resolution, but I'm growing increasingly confident that this year is a turning point.
I think there's a lot to be learned here about how organizations like twitter act as central authorities to prevent or abet purity spirals, allowing incredibly "diverse" groups to avoid infighting as they torture a common victim, while keeping the moderate wing sufficiently in fear of the radicals to make them obedient.
That's a very interesting theory.
Back when I was but a wee lad, I read some amount of Forgotten Realms books. There was this one following the adventures of some Drow priestess, which delved into the details of how their society was run. It was a long time ago, and I don't remember that much, but the TL;DR is that there was a lot of rat-racing, ladder-climbing, and backstabbing, all to get the favor of their goddess so she would grant you superpowers and status.
At the time I found it a bit ridiculous, how could a society like that be stable enough to create a marvelous city-state like the one being described? I remembered that a few months ago when someone or another was getting cancelled, and thought "huh, actually maybe a society of backstabbers is more stable than I thought", but I think you zeroed in on exactly what makes it stable. If it's a backstabber free-for-all, it's probably just a question of time before it collapses, but if there's, say, an evil spider-goddess of chaos, who's favor you can fall into and out of, the system might be more stable than you'd expect at first glance.
Funny how a silly fantasy book for teens ends up having so much insight.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.
I find that framing disingenuous. If you take away the children from their parents, because you don't like the way they're raising them, you're not respecting the child's rights and actual personhood, you're merely transferring the right to mold them on to a bunch of bureaucrats.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I'm curious as to what makes you so passionate about this issue
I don't know if that's his motivation, but come on, it's just fun to plant a flag and defend a spot against superior numbers, when you feel confident enough you can pull it off.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
We haven't drifted from the high-decoupling crowd, the crowd has drifted away from high-decoupling. I used to love these sorts of thought experiments, now I roll my eyes at them at best.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
29d ago
Is it because so many people have lost faith in both liberalism and liberal Christianity that they no longer care.
Speaking only for myself: yes. I'll take the Taliban over the current batch of western elites.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
Is it surprising that people who think sodomy should be legal also think gay marriage should be legal?
The way she framed it conservatives in Singapore made a deal: "ok, we'll give you decriminalization, but we want to make sure it doesn't go further than that" (to that end they even "fortified" marriage in law). She makes it sound like it's an obstacle to overcome, not a compromise to be honored.
Is it nefarious to express preferences about the laws and rules of other countries?
Yes, it's like expressing a preference on what kind of food your neighbor eats, or how often they have sex. It's none of your business, and it's creepy to poke your nose into it.
Do you see some creepy aspect in the story about American Evangelicals spreading their views on homosexuality in Ghana? Or is your only problem with it that you disagree with them?
It's also not clear to me how Singapore was not "allowed to experiment with" laws against gay marriage or sodomy.
There was a literal international conspiracy to get them to stop. It didn't not involve direct force, but these people did not recognize they're putting their nose somewhere it doesn't belong. Also, keep in mind when I brought up experimenting with different setups, I explicitly mentioned marriage, not sodomy laws.
it seems to me driven by changing sentiment within the country
They explicitly talk about coordinating to change sentiments within countries as well. This is something they should not be allowed to do, in my opinion.
Should countries be obliged to maintain laws they think are bad for the purpose of maintaining some kind of global viewpoint diversity?
The countries themselves can make whatever decisions they want.
Is it wrong to try and convince countries to change their laws by reason and argument if not many countries have similar laws?
Mostly yes. Especially if it involves conspiring to use corporations, NGOs, the country's own youth, infiltrating their media, in order to "convince" those countries to change their laws.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
What evidence would it take to convince you that the "cycle of poverty" hypothesis is true / explains a large portion of the black/everyone else disparity across a number of different life outcomes?
They'd have to address the other side of the equation - groups of immigrants that came with nothing to their name, but ended up doing ok, or even above average within a generation or two, or lottery winners who reverted back to their old socio-economic class within a generation or less.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
There is something hellishly dystopian about fleeing to another country, possibly even across the ocean, and your country of birth is still trying to pull you back. Particularly because women are given a free pass.
No there isn't. The idea that people have duties and obligations to their nation was considered so normal you could mistake it for the air we breathe until, like, yesterday. That women get a "free pass" from violent conflict is basic common sense, a conclusion reached by any society that isn't actively suicidal.
What there is something hellishly dystopian about, is that the very same people who demand you fulfill your duties to the nation, are working tirelessly to abolish the very idea of there being a nation to start with. That they're demanding you fight and die for the privilege of having your replacement shipped in in an Amazon package, from the country of the lowest bidders, and for your children - if you have any, and they make it through the war - to be raised with the values of Californian progressives.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
Fertility has been dropping steadily since the early 19th century across the developed world. The sexual revolution at worst accelerated an ongoing trend, but if you look at the graph even that doesn't seem to be true, since the rate of decline since the 60s is actually lower than it was prior to the 40s - 50s baby boom
On the other hand we still have subgroups that maintain above replacement fertility, and they tend to not be the ones that leaned into the sexual revolution.
Were people less depressed in 1932? 1832? Obviously most people would have said 'no'
I don't like self-reports either. If they're dropped from all of sociology, we can dismiss them when discussing the sexual revolution as well, but not before.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
7mo ago
It's not that we need more of these kinds of posts, but you have to admit the phrasing was unfortunate. It's hard to square it with all the "don't even look in my general direction" complaints you see all over the internets.
You might need to hurry up, because there's not a lot of them left, but talk to anyone who lived on territories that over the course of the years were occupied by Germans as well as Russians, and ask them their relative opinion of the Wehrmacht vs. the Red Army.
Complete misunderstanding of my point: It doesn’t matter if I’m a decent person as long as I serve an evil cause.
You're the one misunderstanding him. The point is that people like you are known to turn non-evil causes into evil ones.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
I am sure they would disagree but they are wrong.
No U.
Seriously, I'm happy to debate this but, you're not really putting forward much of an argument. No, "u guyz r so dum" does not count (and if you insist it does, again so does the counterargument of "no u").
I'm pretty sure it's popularity is attributable to Scott. Even if people using it don't read him, there's probably some community overlap that causes it to end up spreading to Youtube influencer communities, and then to influencers themselves, which is when it explodes.
In any case "motte/bailey" is one thing, I've started seing "assabiah". I swear, a year or two from now we'll start seeing manosphere types talking about "the Hock".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
makes me adjust my likelihoods around what, excuse the cliche, I see as the pendulum swinging back away from leftist authoritarianism.
I wouldn't get my hopes up, but I also get the feeling there's something in the air.
I have no idea what it's swinging towards, especially since in reality the pendulum is a 4d object zigzagging through multiple political dimensions.
If life taught me anything, it's that when it comes to Culture War, things only get worse. Since I'm not even sure we are moving away from wokeness, it's even harder to predict where we're going, but let's say it wouldn't surprise me if the next thing on the menu is Climate Lockdowns / Social Credit Scores / Digital Surveillance and the rest of the Klaus Schwab memeplex.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
Aaand this is exactly the kind of response that makes me lose faith political debate in good faith can ever happen.
Nope, if your boss fires you, we can assume it's not because you weren't doing your job the way he wanted you to. The burden of proof is now on you that Baker was actually doing everything as was expected of him.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
It's hard to find good numbers, but this article claims around 2% of Gen Z and 1% of Millenials identify as trans
I don't understand how this is supposed to be a counter argument. There weren't that many more gay people than that, and we were asked to rearrenge society for them, and were assured that any claim there will be further demands was a fallacy. We now have further demands just as predicted, therefore the slipperyslope claim was correct.
Also, if the low numbers of trans people mean their demands aren't a big deal, does that mean you'd be ok with rejecting them entirely?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
Turing-testing random pseudonymous accounts
That's not really what his question is about.
Well who doesn’t love the germans. Those slavs could have taken solace in the fact that they would have starved to death in a very orderly manner.
Who's opinion do you think I'm asking you to ask for, if not Slavs'?
Which causes, slavery, nazism?
Nazism seems to fit nicely into the "would not have happened were it not for people deeply convinced they're on the Right Side Of History" template.
It’s like Scott’s ‘asymmetric weapons’ concept. Obedience, or, say, loyalty to your home community, helps both Hitler and Roosevelt, it’s a symmetric weapon. Otoh, disobedience, ie, asking the question ‘am I really doing the right thing here, should I give my loyalty to this guy?” is asymmetric, it is more likely to help the good guy and harm the bad guy.
A quick glance at the modern progressive movement says otherwise.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
The excess deaths are probably caused by the after effects of Corona. Myocarditis and other heart issues are moderately common in people who didn't even have severe cases.
If that was the explanation, shouldn't we see a pretty big difference between current excess deaths in mostly vaxxed vs. mostly unvaxxed countries? Do we see it?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3mo ago
Yes, it's amazing what you can prove by assuming the group you're arguing against consists primarily of inbred redneck hicks. I too can prove amazing things by assuming the establishment is ran by satanic pedophile 72-gendered purple hairs.
Aww, you poor things, incapable of standing up in absolute terms, let's make a nice carveout for you so that you can say you tried.
This but unpatronisingly.
I'm far from an athlete, the only sports I do is for health, I never liked competing, and yet I find myself wanting to smack the living hell out fellow nerds who completely miss the point of sports. It is the least surprising thing in the universe, that the person saying the above is also a transhumanist.
In sports, the actual physical achievement is just the cherry on top, a certificate of accomplishment, a badge you can wear and show off, but which you only get for putting in the work, but the actual thing is about the work itself. It's about showing up for training every day, and persisting throughout all the failures. Virtually all benefits of sports, to the individual as well as society, come from the latter not the former, and it's blindingly obvious it should be encouraged in everyone, regardless of their level of achievement. But some people seem to be indeed blinded by it.
Almost no one here believes in the strong stolen election hypothesis.
Yeah I agree, and it's been one of my frustrations with ymeshkout. I think there's lots of things that are reasonable to believe / valid to discuss without having ironclad evidence one way or the other, but with him everything turns into a trial where you have to prove everything beyond reasonable doubt.
We've also got the neo-luddites like @ArjinFerman who just hate AI entirely and presumably want us to go back to the mid 90s with the fun decentralized internet. Not sure, I haven't actually discussed with him. I can actually agree with some of the Ludditism, but I'd argue we need to go back to 1920 or so and ban all sorts of propaganda, mass media and advertising.
I didn't really make up my mind how far back to turn the clock to, but I like the way you think.
If RETVRNING is not an option, I do have a general principle in mind on how to proceed, but I don't have a name for it. Techno-optimists often point out that this isn't the first time us Luddites have their gripes about machines making us dumb, and takin' ar jerbs, but here we are, and the world doesn't seem so horrible. Aside from the arguments that, in some ways, yes it is, I think technology should be developed in a way that helps us grow as people, rather than makes us succumb to naked consumerism. As you semi-correctly guessed I already have this issue with what IT promised vs what it delivered. Computers and the Internet disrupted how we do a lot of things, but they could have conceivably given us decentralization and climbing rates of technological literacy. We got the opposite on both fronts. The fact that we ended up with even more centralization is not even that surprising when you think about it, as the forces pushing towards it were on open display all this time, but what happened to tech-literacy came as a bit of shock to me. X-ers and Millenials probably all had the childhood experience of their parents buying a new device, and us being able to figure out how it works through mere trial and error, before our parents could find their way through the manual. For years I assumed the same will happen to me, but it just hasn't, and reportedly there are now kids who don't even know what a file is, because the way we design software is hiding the fundamentals of how computers work. On one hand that's a relief - it doesn't look like a young whippersnapper is about to take my jerb anytime soon - but it's also depressing. This, more then anything else, is what worries me the most about the advent of AI, and if anyone has any ideas how to avoid it, I'm all ears.
There was this old TNG episode about kids getting abducted from the Enterprise to live on a planet where all their needs are catered to by a planetary AI, so they can do art and stuff. Well, what I'm saying is: Both the Federation and Aldea has AI technology, but they choose to use it in different ways. Give me the 8 year olds of the Enterprise, who are forced to master basic calculus so they can grow up - and may Allah forgive me for using this phrase - as well rounded citizens, who actually can maintain the technology they depend on, over the children of Aldea, who for that matter don't even master art, they just have their thoughts and emotions translated into it by the AI.
The final thing that is driving me up the wall, is the utter state of the discourse. EAs, for all the talk of "alignment", never mention either of these issues because, as far as I can tell, they don't want the common people to have an understanding of AI, so they can have total control over it for themselves. As for E/Accs the closest thing I ever got to an acknowledgement of the problems with centralization and dumbing down was "Yeah that worries me too, but what can you do? Anyway, look - ChatGPT go brrr!". For that reason I'm inclined to just disconnect from technological society, and join the Amish.
Which is precisely why parents should have the right to veto propaganda taught in schools - it amounts to the state indoctrinating their children.
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