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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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For the folks here who talk heatedly about trans issues - I want to pose a thought experiment. Let's say it's the year 2300, and people can quickly, cheaply and painlessly switch their sex from male to female, and vice versa. There are no long term side effects, and it's as simple as going to buy a pill from the corner store.

On top of that, fertility issues have been handled, babies are grown/raised by artificial wombs and many different types of family structures are available with parents being able to choose what works best for their preference. Gender and sex can play a role if needed, but only for those who wish to have traditional families. It is not socially stigmatized to raise a family with two women, or two men, etc.

If this all were the case, would you have issues with people transitioning genders/sex still? If not, at what point along the line do you think it becomes okay to freely switch?

See, I know that people in the rationalist sphere like to believe that thought experiments such as this one are very useful and compelling, but personally I see no value in entertaining something like this. You’re asking what would happen if humans were entirely different than they actually are, in a fundamental way, and if we had access to magic. Why is this worth spending time thinking about? Your hypothetical scenario is wildly implausible. We don’t have technology even remotely close to what you’re proposing. Do you have any concrete reasons, aside from general techno-optimism, to believe that anything like this will be possible, let alone affordable for the great mass of humanity? If not, you might as well ask, “If everyone woke up tomorrow with the ability to read minds, what would be the legal and philosophical ramifications of that?” Answer: They won’t, next question.

“If everyone woke up tomorrow with the ability to read minds, what would be the legal and philosophical ramifications of that?”

I would actually be curious to hear people's takes on this. Unfortunately it's not super salient to the culture war so may be off topic here. If I remember I'll post it in the Friday fun thread.

The very first episode of the anime Kino's Journey explored this topic. I highly recommend the show, though its exploration of the various scifi concepts in each episode tends to be mostly pretty banal.

Sadly, the original anime was better than the remake.

That said, I'll point out that actually, we can communicate mind-to-mind in limited capacities- that's what internetworking computers and VT-100s that fit in your pocket enable. And... well, I don't really see much inconsistent with the state of that nation in the first episode with the world of today; people just can't stand to speak to each other any more.

The trick is that actually having full mind-to-mind access would necessarily mean people would instantly be able to tell good faith from bad faith; and at that point the point becomes more or less moot since you actually could objectively cleave between those that actually require special treatment and, well, the fakers. (But then again, the truth of the matter probably doesn't actually matter anyway since we're still unable to reject the obvious fakes for unrelated reasons.)

if we had access to magic. Why is this worth spending time thinking about?

You're asking this of me via a glowing crystal I can hold in my hand that brings me images from around the globe.

I don't think I'd agree - I think there's an interesting question there, and I think I've already learned something from the answers given.

The point of such questions is not predicated on it actually happening, but on creating hypotheticals that identify why people might object to things by removing one of them. Personally, I actually thought more people would be fine with this - that the real objection was, ultimately, the falseness of claims: that people were pretending to be something they're not, and others were being forced to go along with their "delusions" on pain of social punishment. I've seen this objection frequently made, and it always seemed the most reasonable position in trans opposition: that they were redefining words and demanding obedience to falsehood: being asked to call someone they don't consider a man by their definition a man.

As such, I expected a lot more responses to be along the lines of this being fine - that it would indeed solve the main aspect of the objections, even if there may be some other issues In practice, this doesn't seem to be the case: virtually every response I've seen from those who already object to trans identification has been that this wouldn't be sufficient, and brought up different ones (often ones that seem weird to me: predicated on things like static gender being inextricably linked to self, or even humanness, or that it was important to stigmatize non-standard

As such, I do think this thought experiment has been useful and compelling, in that I've genuinely learned something I didn't know before, and have re-evaluated my perspective on how much the "performative truth" aspect is the real objection vs a stalking-horse / side issue for many. That alone has answered "Why is this worth spending time thinking about?" for me.

As I said, in a society where you can totally change your biological sex due to a pill you can buy in the corner shop, then the very concept of being transgender is meaningless because the old roles of sex and gender are so changed. Your mother and father may not even be biologically related to you since you were grown in an artificial womb so no human ever was pregnant with you, and if not pregnant, why be the donor of the ova or sperm to create you, and your mother can be your father every other Tuesday by popping a pill. Being a boy or a girl is just temporary until you are old enough yourself to take that pill, and 'things girls like/things boys like' as signifiers of gender (as is often used in trans advocacy, e.g. "I always wanted to wear a Wendy Darling nightgown instead of my boy pyjamas when I was a child" as in one article by a trans person I read) are now meaningless. Sue-Bob liked playing with trucks when ze was eight? Now Bob-Sue can be a supermodel with F size boobs whenever ze wants. Does ze still like trucks? That has no bearing on is Sue-Bob a girl or Bob-Sue a boy.

Take it even further: mix'n'match elements of both or all sexes. Chick with a dick? Man with a pussy? Neuter with no external genitalia or secondary sex characteristics? Hermaphrodite? Androgynous? Six dicks instead of one? Chick who started off as natal female, now with six dicks? Can still be a woman. Half male on one side of your body, half female on the other? Still can be legally a man. The sky is the limit!

Because if we genuinely can transform the physical body and brain to be perfectly male or perfectly female, and all child-bearing is done by IVF and artificial wombs, then we are not limited to "switch from having boobs to having a dick" or vice versa. If you like your dick, you can keep your dick! But now have those honkin' great bazongas you always found erotic as well!

But people have no fully fledged worldviews to probe. It's a mistaken assumption. We have heuristics and generally try to adapt when new situations arise, by watching the consequences of things, discussing with others etc.

I mean, I personally like to think I have built out some worldviews through argumentation. I am pretty anti-trans at the moment, but that view has changed from being pro-trans when it was the easy default. Most of that change in stance has been from reading things here on the Motte.

I certainly don't claim to have a 100% fully fledged worldview with no logical contradictions. I do have strong feelings about something I find it an interesting exercise to examine my own thoughts and see why I feel that way. I would like to think at least some of my views I've arrived at or changed via argumentation, although I suppose you could just invoke causal determinism and say that it's all unconscious processes. I find that possibility boring to discuss.

Whats the gain if someone says "Under that hypothetical my stance would be X", if the hypothetical is "just a hypothetical"? Clearly there must be some planned rhetorical comeback like "ha! Then your stance is not rational!" or something.

If I ever come out swinging and actually say "ha! your stance is not rational!" without providing counterexamples and countering logic I hope I'd get a warning at least. To me the whole point of this forum is to discuss culture war talking points with logic and reason, instead of actually waging the culture war.

I intuit that when there's pressure to not know man from woman, there's corresponding pressure not to know evil from good.

Yeah, I would agree with the pressure not to know evil from good. That's one of the most negative, and maybe the only seriously negative, aspects of modernity. It is very difficult to know you are living a righteous, moral life, and are a good person.

Although the existence of philosophy as a school of thought makes it so we know for sure people in the past also thought about what a good life is made up of, it seems that in modernity that question is spreading to the common masses. Everyday people now have pressures pulling them in a million different directions, flailing around like marionettes between ideologies and religions. It's a shame.

Benefit from 2,000 years of idiot proofing, because clearly the big brain method can’t handle it.

I’ve had the thought process before, I’ve just never been an atheist, and it’s honestly interesting to me that it occurs to atheists. So thank you for posting it, because it is a reasonable data point for looking at my biases.

Why is this worth spending time thinking about?

Regardless of whether it's a possibility or not, thought experiments are useful because they help us pinpoint exactly where along a spectrum we disagree with something. I'm curious why most people on the Motte disagree with trans, so I thought this type of question would help me figure that out.

For instance, I'm of the opinion that it's disruptive to physical and mental health, so I am not a fan of trans as a social movement at the moment. But in the admittedly potential future I outlined (making no claims about probability) I would be morally fine with it.

Maybe some other people agree with me, or maybe they just have a fundamental moral commitment to the nuclear family, biological gender roles, etc. I'm curious, and I'd also like to argue with these folks refine my understanding of my own view.

They help people think they e pinpointed something. But when the facts are just so different how do we know?

I'm confused by this response... could you restate what you mean?

Exactly what pigeon said. Once the facts are so divorced from reality, you may think “this is the principle I am deriving from this thought experiment.” But because the thought experiment smuggles in numerous faulty assumptions, that principle may not be relevant.

I think what @zeke5123 meant is that the thought experiment is so divorced from the on-the-ground reality right now that it’s not a very useful thought experiment.