ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
It sounds like the argument is that the pro-diversity people think the metrics are measuring the wrong thing.
What metric would the pro-diversity people accept as showing them that they're just wrong? Seeing these sorts of arguments unfold in every conversation from the gender wage gap to racist policing, I get the feeling it's turtles all the way down.
utterly inoffensive but also completely soulless.
no one wants to be part of a designed-by-committee production.
But then why are all the pro-diversity productions soulless designed-by-committee schlock?
Is The Washington University Transgender Center whistleblower a troll or a crank?
Last week @PmMeClassicMemes posted about the whistleblower Jaime Reed, and the Missouri Independent's and the St.Louis Post Dispatch investigation into Washington University Transgender Center:
The afffadavit should be sufficient to dismiss Reed as a troll or a crank. Choice quotes, paragraphs 15 & 59:
15. One patient came to the Center identifying as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non binary.”
59. Children come into the clinic using pronouns of inanimate objects like “mushroom,” “rock,” or “helicopter.”
Many journalists as well as state officials took seriously the allegations that children Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter, in a breathtaking display of credulity.
Back when TracingWoodgrains posted about his hoax op against Libs Of TikTok one of the arguments for her credulity, or failure to do due diligence, was that somewhere in the made up documents they sent her was an “obvious” joke. The other argument boiled down to “Haha! How could you believe schools would teach kids about furries?”. Now, as it happens the joke was only obvious if you happened to be terminally online dramanaut, and Poe's Law is a thing, but if there's a group taking credit for a hoax, then yeah, it's safe to assume it was a hoax.
ClassicMemes' criticism follows the same pattern, which is why my original response was “well played”, but the more I thought about it, and the more I looked into it, the less sense it made. For one, for it to hold water, Reed would have to be a pro-trans troll trying to discredit trans-sceptics like Bari Weiss, right? And yet, that's not the approach that was taken, the story is somehow supposed to discredit Weiss, Singal, as well as Reed. Weiss, and Singal should have recognized another “obvious joke”, and Reed is supposed to be a vile transphobe making things up to discredit the clinic, without any regard for believability. Well, no one said she's a smart troll, or like ClassicMemes said, she could also just be a crank. Still, if we're leaning on the existence of cranks to explain the whole story, isn't it weird how it's never considered that a troubled kid might have actually been saying some crazy shit?
Originally I wanted to look into the whole thing myself, but it turns out it's hard to compete with experienced journalists who can do this sort of thing full time, and who's reputations are on the line. Jesse Singal got in touch with Jaime Reed, and asked about the incident. She gave the names of the specific people involved in the incidents, and described it in detail:
Lofquest explained that the patient was reporting that their mental health had worsened since starting hormones. The patient also couldn’t clearly define their gender identity. That prompted Reed to pull up their chart on her computer to try to figure out what was going on. The clinic uses Epic, a popular program for keeping track of patient records. Included in this patient’s Epic chart, in the “Media” tab where additional information can be added, was the letter of support from an outside therapist that had apparently been used to justify the decision to immediately start them on hormones upon their arrival at the clinic.
The patient was quoted in the letter as saying they identified as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non binary.” The therapist also wrote that the patient reported that they “hope for the transition to feel better in my body and no longer just in a flesh box.”
She also sent Jesse her Google Doc with notes about her situation, last modified on Jan 5th, where the attack helicopter incident is mentioned. Now, the doc itself is just her private notes, and at this point she cannot give the actual Epic notes, only recount the incident, so it's not proven, but that's some amount of doubling down. One thing to consider is that of all the people involved, she's currently the only one who has anything to lose by lying. Everyone disagreeing with her claims just gave a few statements to the newspapers, at the moment she's the only one with an affidavit that can get her dinged for perjury. If she's a crank, she's absolutely batshit insane.
Mainstream Media Investigation
On the other hand, there are some questions about the credibility of the Missouri Independent's and the St.Louis Post Dispatch investigations. In another article Jesse Singal writes:
There are far too many allegations in these stories to cover them all, and verifying many of them will require both time and access to the patients and parents in question, their children’s medical records, or both. For now, I simply want to draw attention to two major omissions from the coverage so far: the first has to do with Kim Hutton, who is presented by the Post-Dispatch as a “baffled” parent of a patient at The Washington University Transgender Center who fervently disagrees with Reed’s assessment of the Center’s services; the second has to do with Jess Jones, a former staffer who has been quoted bashing Reed at length and expressing confidence in the quality of care delivered by the clinic.
...
The “baffled” line was compelling enough that it was integrated into the article’s headline. But Colleen Schrappen, the article’s author, doesn’t note that Kim Hutton is the cofounder of TransParent, a group that advocates for trans kids and their access to medical treatment.
...
But in this case, the undisclosed conflicts are even more severe: not only is Hutton the cofounder of TransParent, but she actually helped create the very gender center being scrutinized.
Another issue is that both articles lean heavily on the statements of Jess Jones an ex-coworker of the whistleblower Reed, who quit working in the clinic because Reed was just so toxic, and who "feels like she could go line by line to her affidavit and debunk it all”. Well, it turns out this goes both ways:
Reed vehemently denied just about everything Jones claimed about her here and elsewhere in these articles.
...
At the most basic factual level, Reed told me that it was simply false that Jones chose to resign in 2020, let alone that they did so “primarily” because of Reed herself. Rather, she said, Jones was furloughed in April 2020 as the pandemic spiraled out of control
...
Reed explained that whenever the clinic got a referral from a potential new patient, there was a process in place to make sure the education liaison — Jones, for a period of time — engaged in the necessary follow-up communication to offer the family educational resources, a discussion around any issues they were having with their school or school district, and so forth. Reed said Jones “did not do the necessary follow-up often, or document it,” and that she “was seeing that they were not closing the loop back or documenting in the electronic medical record the work that they were supposed to be doing.” Reed shared a spreadsheet she kept at the time tracking new referrals. The spreadsheet, which has personal information about patients redacted, appears to contain many instances of Jones failing to complete their follow-up duties, as demonstrated in this screenshot of the top of it
There's more and I'm not going to quote the entire article, but I do want to note how Reed's statements are accompanied by screenshots of actual documents, in contrast to the statements given to he Missouri Independent's and the St.Louis Post Dispatch. As a humble contribution from me I'd also like to address this part from the Missouri Independent:
“When [lawmakers] do their job, what happens to the transgender center you used to work at?” Free Press journalist Emily Yoffe asked.
“I do not believe it can continue to function,” said Reed, who is married to a transgender man.
“You want it closed down,” Yoffe inquired.
“I believe it’s the only way to stop hurting more kids,” Reed said.
This is your run-of-the-mill journalistic context-cutting. From this exchange what is the impression you get? That she's ideologically against transition? Here's the relevant exchange from the town hall, and here's a follow up on the statement. She believes that the current view is based on a false picture given by the transgender care providers, and that there needs to be a moratorium, and an investigation to get the whole thing sorted out before transition services for minors can be resumed.
All in all, I'm leaning in the direction of these being coordinated hit-pieces than an actual investigation, but time will tell.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Well, someone has to, if this forum is going to be anything other than a complete echo chamber.
Also 'reflexively' and 'intentionally, as an intellectual exercise' are different things.
Please don't. A sincere conversation with someone who actually believes different things than myself is interesting. Disagreement for the sake of disagreeing as an "intellectual exercise" is not, and when it involved inflammatory comments about your outgroup, and repeating deliberate lies, it's indistinguishable from trolling.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Something about reading school vouchers as far-right just rubs me the wrong way. Though I agree it comes from people generally associated with the right the actual policy feels very liberal to me. Politics have strange coalitions I guess where certain policies become coded to a tribe.
It's not even so much about coalitions, as it is about assets. Public schools are a center of power for progressives, a voucher system would upset the structures this center is built on, it might even let the conservatives build a few forts of their own. Politics is not about policy as it relates to various philosophies, as nice as that would have been.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
Their performance was especially frustrating because they were taking a position that I basically support: that the University will not police opinions, even terribly offensive ones, but will police conduct and harassment. It's not that difficult a position to explain or defend on basic Millian principles, but they couldn't or wouldn't do it.
Because that's not their position, they do want to police opinions. If they state what you want them to, they'll open themselves to further questions about having policed non-progressive opinions, and tolerated harassment when the target was someone they didn't like.
No, Alexis. The actual person who dated a guy for a few years, and was stalked by an aspiring writer who took the details of her relationship and twisted them into a dark mirror-universe version of reality. The story became viral, and so acclaimed that it ended up making her doubt her own memories at times.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
The way I remember the drama was that the guy asked her out, in pretty polite way IIRC, she said "no", the guy said "ok" and went on his merry way. Later on she brought that up as an example of "sexual objectification", and it was something the skeptic community was supposed to self-flagellate about.
If anything, comparing it to EA's low-key pressure to participate in drug fueled poly-orgies is unfair to the elevator guy. From today's perspective it's like watching a guy in the 19th century get slapped in the face for a misstep in obscure Victorian etiquette.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
If you come out with a statement like that while the issue is hot, you'll get flooded with counterarguments and ridicule. If you wait, people who would argue against you will forget, or stop caring.
This is so bizarre to me. Ukrainian women are... people? They are not the property of Ukrainian men. They are not obliged to restrain from forming relationships or otherwise trying to live their lives because they happen to be refugees.
Are the men the property of the Ukrainian government? Dase recently got in trouble for lashing out against this kind of "innocent" "shucks! I don't know what you could possibly mean" debate tactics, and while I don't want to be as aggressive as he was, I do share his frustration. This kind of clap-on / clap-off - we're just individuals pursuing happiness / we're part of a larger whole and you have to fulfill your duty to society, is somewhat maddening.
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".
In the abstract there's room for nuance in this discussion, but in the context of the year of our lord 2023, it will never not be funny that an actual member of the Waffen-SS got a standing ovation from the very people who claim "honk honk" is code for "heil Hitler".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
I'm pretty far from OPs worldview, and I don't know how to judge which is more insidious, but "Hey little girl, you like playing with trucks? Have you considered a double mastectomy?" feels like it's playing in the same league as "Doesn't the president of the local bank have a funny nose?".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11mo ago
For a while they were at the very least acting like all they wanted is apolitical treatment, if they never believed it, why should I take them at their word regarding anything?
but the people who bemoan politics being everywhere now are people who haven't been paying attention for all that long.
That's flatly wrong. It was indeed possible to participate in hobby groups and focus on the hobby instead of any politics for many, many years prior to the awokening.
On one hand, I recognize this as following the long standing rationalist-ish tradition of finding some obscure idea and going "Wow! If more people knew that it could change everything!". It's cute, I suppose there's a reason the quokka meme strikes a chord. On the other hand, I'm getting too old for this, can we just skip to the part where the idea blows up in our faces in extremely predictable ways, becomes an elaborate but empty ritual, or is overused to the point it loses all meaning?
Instead of saying, "Your biological sex is still male though", to a transwoman, you could instead say, "Your sex signalment is 'male, orchiectomy, testosterone blockers and estrogen for 5 years.'"
Does this actually help anyone? The latter literally contains the former, so why would someone upset at hearing "Your biological sex is still male though", feel better about hearing "Your biological sex is still male though" + a list of medical procedures they went through?
So, how will the people in that scenario think of this time? What story will they tell?
They won't. Soon enough all of it will be forgotten, and all that remains will be a giant gaping hole where mobs whipping themselves into frenzies on Twitter used to be, terse Wikipedia pages that may mention the more memorable incidents, but will be very cryptic about the who, how, and why, and a bunch of mainstream media articles that should, in theory be indicting, but mysteriously people will care about it as much as they do about the NYT Holodomor denial article that won the Pulitzer. If you still manage to make enough stink about it, someone will dig out some statistics showing that you're blowing everything out of proportion, the problem was tiny, and no one was really taking it seriously.
There's a lot of historical precedent for that. How much are common people aware of eugenics' popularity with progressives? How many know Sweden had an active eugenics program until the 70's? You may have heard about lobotomies, but have you heard about their sequel? Did you know the Cultural Marxism was/is an actual intellectual movement, and not a crazy Nazi conspiracy theory?
The rule is pretty simple - excesses of traditionalism must never be forgotten, excesses of progressivism must never be remembered.
P.S.: This ended up sounding a lot more pessimistic than I actually feel about it. The point is that historical memory requires active maintenance. If Reds / Greys / whoever manage to set up parallel institutions that will maintain their version of the story, it will survive, and the Blues will be forced to take it into account.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
7mo ago
Yeah, people are acting like he drove a truck to Toronto, or something.
I was very sympathetic when you wrote your first post, now I'm rather bemused. If you like it here, stay, if you don't, go. If you want to write a farewell post, that's fair enough, but I think you should only get one of those. This ain't an airport, as they say.
I think I also disagree with your main thesis. I can understand the Culture War bumming you out, I've been there, but my impression is that it wound down. This is not the Summer of Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests, we're not in lockdown, MeToo is not claiming a scalp every day, and it's a far cry from the fever pitch of The Trumpening. Sure, there's plenty of horrible stuff going on that you can complain about, the ground lost during these peaks of the Culture War is not going to be won back easily, if ever, but the bad juju itself seems to be fading. If I had to zero in on where you have a point, it would be this:
There have been several posts in our history (one very recent) by women interested in the motte, begging for other women who also like discussing controversial ideas to show themselves, please. I suspect the contrarianness, and closely related firmness of opinion and argumentativeness makes it difficult for women to find it enjoyable here. It's not that women don't have controversial or interesting ideas, but that, like me, they are on average higher in neuroticism, and the sort of intense argumentativeness and debate culture you find here can be incredibly off-putting. I know women in my life who enjoy highly motte-like conversations, but who have always found this community off-putting for that very reason.
Ages ago I'd have these sort of political discussions with my brother. One time his wife told me that every time we start she has to leave the room, because she feels like we're about to kill each other. We were just having fun.
I get it, it's not for everyone, and it's certainly no foul that it's not for you. But why do you have to shit on me for enjoying it?
The standard response, and the correct one, is that the people who used to get them fired and beaten and marginalised are suddenly uncommonly invested in a tolerance they never believed in.
That may be the standard response, but no honest person can claim it's correct. For example, you are not talking to a person who tried to get them fired, beaten, and marginalized, you are talking to a person who tried to protect the from getting fired, beaten, and marginalized, and tried talking extremely bigoted and aggressive people into acceptence.
The correct response is that people who were arguing for broad principles of acceptance and free speech are suddenly uncommonly invested in intolerance. I'm not going to say that they never believed in it, because it's starting to look like they always did, and were just hiding it.
Not for gay people, it wasn't.
Yes it was. No one cared what you were doing outside the hobby group.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
He decides he's going to work out, dress better, and put himself in social situations to improve his lot in the dating market, and he's aiming a little high. Would he be the target of derision here? Of course not.
I don't particularly like where this thread went either, but what are you talking about? Where's the part where she hit the gym, started dressing better, and practicing social skills that will make her attractive to men?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
The implication being that women are less likely to be in authentic friend groups.
You're telling on yourself. The implication is that authentic friend groups are more likely to be same sex.
Who is doing the manipulating?
YouTube is doing heavy manipulation of comments, search results, recommended feeds, trending feeds, and even user subscriptions.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
An update on the Twitter Censorship saga.
The original thread contained the following exchange:
And Taibbi confirmed that the federal government, FBI, CIA, etc., did at no time, for any purpose, contact Twitter directly regarding the laptop story, or tell them what to do about it?
That's not accurate. He said he did not see anything like this in this subset of emails. He has no way of knowing anything that happened outside of these emails. This is like saying, "He confirmed God doesn't exist and has never existed," because there is no mention of God in these emails.
Now, as much as I sympathize with the response, I have to admit it's rather high on copium. As we all know from our Internet Atheist days, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim, and how would confirming that the federal government did not contact Twitter directly to censor stories look like anyway? An Email saying "we totally were not asked to delete this by the federal government"? That would seem even more suspicious. No, I believe that it's unreasonable to expect your opponents to prove a negative, and sometimes you just have to admit when your theory comes up short on evidence.
Anyway, onto the update:
On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay.
We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.
In it's own right this is also an interesting follow up to a thread from the old place about ex-CIA people getting new jobs at Facebook moderation, and how "extremely inflammatory and uncharitable" it was to claim they might care more about CIA than Facebook interests.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
Growing up in the UK, our pro-free speech tradition has tended to rely on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for the moral (not legal) limits of free speech in contexts that look like incitement.
Sit down. You lot are literally siccing police on people for saying men aren't women on Twitter.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6mo ago
My opinion of Musk is very low, I think he's essentially a fraud, so I don't have much hopes for his ability to improve Twitter.
Even if he does end up being a competent leader, I worry he will simply be unable to do much. It turns out Dorsey was a libertarian-leaning idealist all along, and he was unable to push his own company in that direction, and had to wait until retirement to actually start making idealistic noises again. If Musk does do anything, we're going to see another round of "No Clicks For Hate" or that WSJ article about Youtube that triggered the Adpocalypse.
I think the best case scenario we can realistically hope for is that he drives Twitter into the ground.
Too blackpilled, I thought the change of ownership wouldn't amount to anything tangible, but he is facing some of the pressures I predicted. The ADL led advertiser boycott happened, and though not perfect, he's holding on surprisingly well.
Some things I didn't predict, that stood out over the year:
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Community Notes was a great idea, and for all the whining about misinformation from the powers that be, it actually does more to address the issue than anything I've seen from them.
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Who would have thunk it, making tweets editable isn't actually rocket science.
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Dropping, what was it, 80% of his workforce? Ballsy move, it's simultaneously crazy how well it worked out, and not surprising at all
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Cutting off Substack was lame.
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Sealing off access without a login was also lame. Reddit followed his steps by shutting off the APIs, and YouTube is trying to block the adblockers. Combined with the previous point it feels like it marks the beginning of the "cyberpunk" era of the internet. Open access is no longer a given.
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I don't think the rebranding hurt the company, but I have no idea what was the point of that.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6mo ago
So I also noticed how the Slate article is actually from 2021, and wanted to thank you for posting it here, I'd probably never hear of it otherwise, and it's profoundly whitepilling to me.
As I've said before the thing that bothers me the most about SocJus is not the collective judgement, not the censoriousness, or the way it makes it into every aspect of our lives, but how, at least for some people, it ends up reframing things, experiences, and people that they loved or enjoyed as something evil, harmful, or dangerous. Making you love Big Brother, and rejecting all other loyalties, grand or trivial. Judging by their politics, Alexis and Charles are exactly the kind of people I'd be extremely on guard against if I ever met them IRL, but that doesn't mean they deserve to have their brains messed with in this way.
This story involves a tragedy, but it's very uplifting to hear about someone who was tempted, but ultimately found her courage and decided to fight for the memory of the man she was with. Earlier I quipped that it's this story that would make a great thriller, and I unironically believe Alexis deserves to have a movie made about her.
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.
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