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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15573 thread views

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?

It becomes okay at the point it isn't an objection to the continued existence and expansion of human or trans-human happiness. In the world we are in all people are similar and their nature is catered to best when they are more straight and traditional, even as human biology starts to shift because of endocrine disrupting chemicals and bondage to alien machines.

I broadly agree with your position. I think we are in a relatively precarious spot right now, and should keep developing tech but maybe cool it with the social experimentation. Once we have expanded through the solar system and hopefully solved a lot more problems in medicine I'm open to more experimenting.

No, it’s not ok. We should stigmatize options other than traditional families, because other options make a shitty default and seem unable to just coexist without being supremely annoying and whining about how their near-constant promotion isn’t good enough.

Preliminary: I'm assuming (this being a gender discussion) that by "options other than traditional families", you mean gay/lesbian/trans parents, not single-parent households, which are obviously fucked.

Trans parents may be at higher risk of suicide, but that's covered by "let's not have parents who are suicide risks", and not related to them being trans specifically.

So we're left with "gay/lesbian/trans-not-a-suicide-risk parents". I claim they're just as fine. I offer two citations from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=LGBT_parenting&oldid=1126262442#Research: this Australian Psychological Society literature review that cites a shitload of papers, and this amici in Obergefell. I find it unlikely that all of the papers cited therein are shit, but happy to spot-check a few.

Anyway, you also say the stigma is justified due to them being annoying. I am unaware of any ethical system that supports stigmatizing people because you find them annoying. Stigmatizing someone clearly does them more harm than any amount of "whining" could balance out. What's wrong with stigmatizing whining itself? Whining is pretty annoying. Also, you don't have to listen to them!

Moreover, I concur with @drmanhattan16 that you have no evidence that they have to whine. It is not an analytic truth. So, you have to demonstrate that there's something innate to the collective existence of non-traditional families that creates whining. I can't see any. But that's besides the point, because I've already established that whining isn't severe enough to justify stigmatizing them.

We should stigmatize options other than traditional families, because other options make a shitty default and seem unable to just coexist without being supremely annoying and whining about how their near-constant promotion isn’t good enough.

What's your proof that non-traditional-family advocates are unable to exist without "whining"?

This being a negative claim, I think the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that they indeed possess such an ability.

What's your proof that full-communism won't happen if we stack a few more million bodies? That Jesus Christ is not God? That there isn't a teapot orbiting Saturn?

Nope, the default assumption is that we don't know if they are unable to exist without whining. Anyone who wants to come down on either side of it has to prove it either way.

It never ceases to amaze me how quick people are to join me in radical skepticism if their assumptions are pressed. But surely if you hold to such high standards you must know that nothing at all can be proven, right? As Pyrro, you must realize in the wisdom of this logic that knowledge is impossible. Because it ultimately always could be that what has been deemed true could be invalidated, and that forever remains this possibility. Therefore the default assumption should be that we don't know that anything is true.

But then, let's assume for practical purposes that we're not stabbing at the truth but at a practical empirical model that would allow us to make predictions. One that holds to, among other principles, parsimony.

Would you agree that such a model must consider all negative claims to be false by default?

It never ceases to amaze me how quick people are to join me in radical skepticism if their assumptions are pressed.

I'm not jumping to radical skepticism because my assumptions are pressed, the person I was responding to was making a positive claim without proof. I think I can have my own assumptions and also note the lack of evidence being offered by the other person.

you must realize in the wisdom of this logic that knowledge is impossible. Because it ultimately always could be that what has been deemed true could be invalidated, and that forever remains this possibility

I think Phoebe said the same to Ross in Friends at one point when it came to the dinosaurs, but even I understood at that age that Ross should have responded that both of them had an obligation to believe whatever the evidence said at this time. That we might update our knowledge doesn't mean we can't have it, as far as I know.

But then, let's assume for practical purposes that we're not stabbing at the truth but at a practical empirical model that would allow us to make predictions.

I don't understand how you wouldn't be approximating truth by doing that.

the person I was responding to was making a positive claim without proof

Incorrect. They were making a negative claim. That is a statement about the nonexistence or exclusion of something. Saying something is impossible is not a positive claim, it is a negative one. By definition.

Ross should have responded that both of them had an obligation to believe whatever the evidence said at this time.

And Ross would be mistaken, clearly, as being wrong in a context that gave you good reasons to think your error was the truth is still being wrong. At least in the absolute terms we speak of here.

What Ross should have said is that this is our best approximation of the truth. And that operating under one's best guess is reasonable.

That we might update our knowledge doesn't mean we can't have it, as far as I know.

Oh but it does mean just that. What you think is knowledge isn't knowledge. It's a model. The map is not the territory.

I don't understand how you wouldn't be approximating truth by doing that.

You would, but there is no other possible thing you can do.

Incorrect. They were making a negative claim. That is a statement about the nonexistence or exclusion of something. Saying something is impossible is not a positive claim, it is a negative one. By definition.

Okay, fine. They were making a claim without evidence. There you go. I don't know what the point of this philosophical discussion is, it seems to be fairly trivial.

More comments

Well, note, what I actually said was ‘seem unable to just coexist without being supremely annoying and whining about how their near-constant promotion isn’t good enough.’

This is, notably, not a strong ontological claim. It’s an epistemic claim(they come off as unable to stop being annoying and cease complaining about needing to be promoted more).

It’s factually true that non-traditional family advocates spend a lot of time complaining about how broader society needs to further reorient itself towards validating them and promoting their lifestyles, in spite of everything society is already doing along that line. Them being annoying isn’t a claim that can be objective; it’s inherently a subjective value judgement. And my lived experiences and preferences are as valid as theirs are.

It’s factually true that non-traditional family advocates spend a lot of time complaining about how broader society needs to further reorient itself towards validating them and promoting their lifestyles, in spite of everything society is already doing along that line. Them being annoying isn’t a claim that can be objective

It can be to an extent. We already defined the word "annoying", so we can presumably show cases of them fitting the definition. If you're going to say that they spend a lot of time complaining about how society isn't good enough for them, I'd like to see proof of them doing this.

We should stigmatize options other than traditional families, because other options make a shitty default

I tend to agree. Traditional family structures and especially living contiguously around a small group of people your whole life seems to be the best way to have everyone be mentally stable, happy etc. Unfortunately not possible in the modern world, so my thought is that we need to find some good alternatives, or at least ways to emulate that in light of modern economics and the large geographical span of our societies.

seem unable to just coexist without being supremely annoying and whining about how their near-constant promotion isn’t good enough.

Eh, I know some trans people who are okay with not being promoted everywhere. They just kind of want to do their thing. Problem is these types of people tend to just cut out all their social connections except a few, anecdotally, so you don't hear about them as much. Sort of a selection effect. Sadly we have collectively decided to give credence to the loud ones, instead of shutting them down like we would a nerd who railed about how people need to treat him like a saint because he's great at Magic the Gathering.

If we have the technology to easily switch sexes, it seems likely we'd have enough control over other things, including biology, to discover new happy living arrangements that aren't currently technically possible.

That is the thing. The person who transitions socially and acts and dresses appropriately, even if they don't pass perfectly, and just wants to live an ordinary life? Yeah, we can get along. Calling them "Sally" and using "she/her" is courtesy. I'm not even going to get hot under the collar about sharing a bathroom. The Darren Merager kind of person? Barricade the doors.

What is aggravating is the loudmouth activists who don't even try to pass, or who try to pass as strippers from a hentai anime, or have loud theoretical demands about society totally changing the entire understanding of sex and gender and who have a bingo card of 'neurodivergency' or 'disabilities' along with being trans so you have to accommodate all their demands and requirements, you bigot!

It's Rachel Levine versus Sam Brinton (though I'm still unsure if Brinton is trans or not; they are described as bisexual and gender fluid or non-binary, but in that Instagram they describe themselves by implication as trans). Levine may be open to criticism that they only started wearing the uniform, even though technically they're in a civilian role, after their promotion, but they're old-school trans who do try to act and look as female as they can. Brinton is a show-off looking for attention. (Levine may have a touch of that going on, too, but it's nowhere near the level of Brinton).

The 'Rachel Levine' kind of trans is someone you can live with, even if you disagree. The 'Sam Brinton' kind you can't, because the whole point is to get up in your face and make demands and keep making more and more limit-pushing demands.

Men and women are useful phenotypes that exist for the purpose of reproduction. That 'cheap and painless' technology would have useful applications far beyond 'changing sex' - it'd correspond to - at least - artificial reproduction being easy, meaning 10k von neumann clones would be 'too simple' - rapid and sample-efficient exploration of genetic possibilities leading to incredibly smart people, and 'making your brain female' = technological integration with the nervous system leading to significantly more technically powerful individuals. All of that's not going to happen though because AI will be more versatile, powerful, scalable than it. Changing gender is bad because it prevents reproduction & perverts desires and attributes made in the context of, and only meaningful in the service of, mating and reproduction and many other complex phenomena related to human success. In that future, gender is physically outmoded - it doesn't matter anymore, and neither do many other things people assume are fixed but are merely eddies in the current of a large-scale struggle for growth and power! The question is like "If we had fusion power, should we replace grain windmills with it"? or "If we had superhuman AGI, should it respect the constitution?". We're not quite there yet though, and male/female still serves a reproductive purpose although we're working on that.

Never, and I think the only purpose of these constantly raised hypotheticals* is as a foot in the door to make people accept in principle what they can then be conditioned to accept in practice.

*Seriously, isn't this the same as yesterday's prompt?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.)

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!

Under those circumstances, transitioning to become asexual and genderless would be the optimal choice. I would have issues with anybody who transitioned to become anything other than asexual and genderless.

Woah, interesting answer. What makes you think that's optimal under these circumstances?

When you say the ability to change sex, to me that implies the ability change a person's brain from a male brain to a female brain. Any technology that can do that can do a lot more as well. Male brain and female brain are two options among millions, and those other options are likely to be better. The fact that babies are being grown in artificial wombs, to me that means gender and sexuality are obsolete and should just be discarded.

Sure, the other options may be better along some axes, but do those axes really have much to do with gender? Just be a male or a female with the qualities that you want. All of this talk of gender is utterly confused. Gender is how we treat males and females.

If this all were the case, would you have issues with people transitioning genders/sex still?

No, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

If not, at what point along the line do you think it becomes okay to freely switch?

What do you mean by "okay"? I think it's okay for them to switch already in that I don't think they should be stopped, but I'm not going to treat them as having truly transitioned and I'm going to feel uncomfortable around them.

If they can pass well enough that there aren't jarringly inconsistent signals about which sex they are, then I would feel comfortable around them. If they can pass and reproduce sexually, then I would feel comfortable dating them and would be okay with my children transitioning. If they can transition without risking severe negative health effects, then I would feel comfortable with society condoning it in cases other those where the gender dysphoria is causing severe psychological distress that can't be treated by other means.

I think a more interesting question is what happens in a world where sex truly is a spectrum because people can adopt whatever biological traits they want.

I think a more interesting question is what happens in a world where sex truly is a spectrum because people can adopt whatever biological traits they want.

Including, one assumes, the 'biological trait' of being completely comfortable and content with the body one has lived in since birth and feeling no desire to transition whatsoever.

Imagine if it became widespread consensual practice to engineer ourselves to just never want to transition and to stick largely to the gender binary, aside from like 2% of the 'weirdos' of the population who just enjoy flouting norms, and are permitted to do so. Seems, arguably, just as plausible as OP's suggestion.

If you can freely biologically alter your preferences, that opens a whole can of worms. Can one legitimately complain about poverty or slavery if one can have a medical procedure causes one to not mind living in the gutter or being enslaved? What if one person engineers himself to be sadistic while another could engineer himself to enjoy being tortured? Who should be required to change his preferences?

I think this gets towards the importance of having some grounding in tradition and culture as some kind of guardrail against falling into inescapable pits like that.

We may have a varied and complex set of values, but there are some values that MAYBE we can agree to intentionally minimize since for reasons that may not be understood they simply did not survive through our own evolutionary history.

Which can likely be done whilst still recognizing the individual's freedom to dissent.

Ah yes, the Culture scenario.

The problem with such hypotheticals is that they by design brush away all the concrete criticisms of modernity. It never is that easy to fuck with nature and get away with it. The magic pill always has side effects, and in practice what is being advocated is to hide them or make a new pill to fix them and create new ones. To just gobble the drug cocktail that makes what is ostensibly a miserable life not even worth living acceptable. And be under ever more control.

I don't want to live in this world that you describe. It is inhuman. I don't want people to be designer laboratory product, I don't want to be under control, I don't want to be liberated from our condition. I just want to be a human, same as my father before me, and his father before him. And if people can't be satisfied with that, I want them far away from me and my children.

And I predict that by 2300 people will either have been disillusioned with these fanciful delusions and chosen new ones or have been long destroyed.

design brush away all the concrete criticisms of modernity.

Seems reasonable to assume based on what I've seen here that people have different reasons for not liking trans as an ideology or action. We've already had people espouse different views on this thread like @gog vs @omfalos.

I don't want to live in this world that you describe. It is inhuman. I don't want people to be designer laboratory product, I don't want to be under control, I don't want to be liberated from our condition.

I don't want any of those things either, and I still don't think increasing our technology is inhuman. Maybe 2300 is too early, if you prefer a slower pace of technological change. Do you think that, barring a massive drop in technology, it would be fair to say we'd still be human if we developed this tech in 23,000? Theoretically your children would be long gone, and your distance ancestors so dispersed in the gene pool as to be extremely common.

And I predict that by 2300 people will either have been disillusioned with these fanciful delusions and chosen new ones or have been long destroyed.

I doubt the 'fanciful delusions' that technology gives us increasing power over our environment, including our bodies, is going to go away any time soon my friend. Unless you're arguing there's some hard cap on technological progress outside of the laws of physics, I think your prediction is going to fail.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that no technology increases human power over nature- it only increases the powers of SOME humans over nature, with the rest of the humans making up part of that nature. Whatever happens with technological progress, the delusion is that we will all share equally in it.

I don't want any of those things either

And yet that is exactly what is contained in the hypothetical?

I still don't think increasing our technology is inhuman

It's not a question of time. "Nothing human escapes the near future."

Someone with that technology I do not recognize as human. They're something else.

I doubt the 'fanciful delusions' that technology gives us increasing power over our environment, including our bodies, is going to go away any time soon my friend.

More is a question of metric. There are things we can do that we couldn't in the past. There are things we could do in the past that we no longer can. History is not linear.

But to the point, It's not just physics we're limited by. It is also economics, sociology, mathematics, and generally reality as it is. You can't change nature. It's categorically impossible. You can negotiate with it by being a clever engineer of the outcomes you want, but you can't change what is.

Liberation from reality itself and specifically the realities of sex is a common feature of decadent empires. My prediction would have held if made about Elagabalus, I wager it will again.

Wrote a long reply but accidentally hit cancel... sigh.

I don't want people to be designer laboratory product, I don't want to be under control, I don't want to be liberated from our condition.

And yet that is exactly what is contained in the hypothetical?

Strong disagree. Think you're lumping me in with your outgroup here. We already have a ton of drugs and medicine to radically change our biology, I don't think there's anything meaningfully different in changing sex.

More is a question of metric. There are things we can do that we couldn't in the past. There are things we could do in the past that we no longer can. History is not linear.

I'm a techno-optimist. I'd argue we're more likely to go extinct than stop progressing tech. It's too damn useful.

Liberation from reality itself and specifically the realities of sex is a common feature of decadent empires. My prediction would have held if made about Elagabalus, I wager it will again.

Cute nickname for Aurelius he was a great guy. Too bad we have far better technology than the Romans dreamed of and are progressing far faster.

accidentally hit cancel

Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

We already have a ton of drugs and medicine to radically change our biology, I don't think there's anything meaningfully different in changing sex.

Oh it is more of the same for modernity, on that we agree. But I refuse to abandon trying to convince people to stop subjugating themselves.

I'm a techno-optimist. I'd argue we're more likely to go extinct than stop progressing tech. It's too damn useful.

I'm a naturalist, I don't believe there is such a thing as progress. The very idea is silly, and to be honest it seems to be the core flaw in the worldview you describe here. You think you're any better than the Romans. But you're not.

All ages are equal before God.

I don't want to live in this world that you describe. It is inhuman. I don't want people to be designer laboratory product, I don't want to be under control, I don't want to be liberated from our condition. I just want to be a human, same as my father before me, and his father before him. And if people can't be satisfied with that, I want them far away from me and my children.

This! I would want to join the village commune where we proclaim the outside world as evil and shun it and patrol the borders with tanks.

This appears to be an invitation to engage in the sorites paradox. Declined.

Not sure I understand the value of the paradox? Humans use intuition/heuristics because we don't have a perfect grasp of logic. Are you saying we should only ever use terms we have a 100% precise meaning for?

I'm saying that while thought experiments like "what if you can perfectly transition" are useful, once you start trying to talk about "at what point along the line" you're muddying the water rather than clarifying it. Or perhaps trying to obtain agreement in principle that there's some point along the line that transitioning would be OK, and then trying to arbitrarily move the point.

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?

Existence of a button which magically alters one in every concievable aspect to the member of the opposite sex, won't solve the present trans issues. The era of "There are two sexes, I was just unlocky to be born in body of the opposite one." is gone. Current frontier is "enbies", ie that there are more than two genders, and postulation of more than two sexes.

A decade ago, sure, this would be a cure for transgenderism. But if it can't be assumed there can be such a thing as a target "sex", as some trans activists do when employing people with chromosomal and genetic abnormalities to attack the notion that there are two sexes, the aforementioned button vanishes in a puff of logic.

For anyone that abhors the future you describe, this is a bit like asking "If your house was burning down, would you still have issues with my dog shitting on your lawn?"

I think you misunderstand the objection. It’s not that people “have issues” with changing sex, they way they might disapprove of gay sex or pirating movies or something. The contention is that, since they think sex is innate, and “gender” is such a motte-and-bailey of a concept as to be useless, changing your sex is totally, categorically impossible and any claim/affirmation that it has happened is at best an error and at worst a lie. You might as well ask “If there was an immortality pill, how far back along the line from that point would you accept someone’s claim that they will never die?”

The contention is that, since they think sex is innate, and “gender” is such a motte-and-bailey of a concept as to be useless, changing your sex is totally, categorically impossible and any claim/affirmation that it has happened is at best an error and at worst a lie.

Okay so you're saying folks think that there is never any way we could possible change sexual organs from one species to another (even though there are multiple examples in nature) regardless of the level of technology we achieve?

You might as well ask “If there was an immortality pill, how far back along the line from that point would you accept someone’s claim that they will never die?”

I don't understand the comparison here.

-I’m saying that people believe sex is innate, so they believe that whatever happens to you later is irrelevant. At best you would gain the “power of menstruation” or something, just as if you had functional wings grafted on you would gain the power of flight, but still not be a bird.

-My immortality thing is trying to point out that your question amounts to “does an imaginary world where something impossible is possible cause you to reconsider that possibility of the impossible thing in the actual world?”

there are multiple examples in nature

No there are not. Not of what you are describing in the first place anyways.

It takes a whole series of leaps and assumptions to transform the cases we do see in nature into something relevant to this conversation, and eliding those leaps is dishonest.

I'm not trying to say that sex changes would be outside of status or dominance hierarchies. Most of the examples I've read like clownfish change sex once they reach the top of the hierarchy.

I could I suppose imagine something like that happening with humans, although personally I think that world would be horrendous. I still think it shows that changing sex is a characteristic of some life forms, and outside of intelligence I don't see why humans are in a separate special class biologically. If @gog's main objection is that changing your sex is impossible, I think it's a good counterargument.

I don't see why humans are in a separate special class biologically

It's because they are mammals. There are no hermaphroditic mammals or birds.

The leap here is to pretend that clownfish and humans are anywhere close enough evolutionary that this would make sense. Which I find about as convincing as saying that we could maybe make humans live for centuries because turtles do.

I wouldn't want to live in a world like that in the first place. The trans-humanist undertone of transgenderism is precisely why it makes me so uncomfortable. In a way I oppose it because it has the possibility of becoming the world in which you describe.

This isn't even the first time we've done this hypothetical in this week's thread but I suppose it wasn't a top level so here we go again. The major impact it would have isn't probably the direction you would naively expect and that impact isn't really possible until we get the whole instant easy safe complete 100% magic transition. My largest problem with trans theory is the epistemics. Currently, and until we have this magical transformation tech there is no way to actually know the qualia of the other sex/gender. Because of this it is impossible for a theory of mind to differentiate between the internal states of "I have man/male qualia despite having a woman/female body" and "I am a woman/female having a particular subset of the woman/female qualia that I am incorrectly interpreting as the man/male qualia". It's impossible, no human has ever genuinely experienced both to compare and contrast.

So in comes your treatment. I'm going to skip a giant problems with it in that given the above problems there actually really isn't any way for us to conclusively test that this procedure works and just assume that the black box AI that is never wrong told us that it works and we believe it implicitly. It actually does solve my problem, but not because it would make the trans people pass better but because it would actually genuinely let us run the experiment. I think a lot of people would run that experiment and come out of it thinking "Man, I was really really wrong about what it would be like to genuinely be the opposite sex". Hell, I'd definitely run the experiment, it's be fascinating.

Finally I want to be clear that I don't think this hypothetical is actually realistic. I doubt there'd really be any meaningful continuity in this magical transition, No longer having any of your previous chromosomes or nervous system is colloquially referred to as dying. You will probably not meaningfully be distinguishable from a fresh clone with your implanted memories afterwards.

If not, at what point along the line do you think it becomes okay to freely switch?

I actually think it is ok now for adults to freely switch despite thinking it's probably stupid. If an adult thinks they'll be more happy being an imitation of the opposite sex so long as they don't bring me into it in any way, and I mean any way, then more power to them. Definitely do not proselytize to children. Definitely do not demand exceptions be made for you. Definitely do try to force me to use preferred pronouns with threat of repercussions and I actually am perfectly happy to use preferred pronouns. But it's an act and everyone should be allowed to know it's an act. No one gets to force me to pretend reality is different than it is, that is tyranny.

Dang, I missed the follow up to that question. The direct link is this comment in case people are curious.

I know I looked at the post earlier, but when I saw it it hadn't gotten nearly as much discussion at it has now. I wish there was a way to jump to the comments downthread you haven't read.

You're essentially describing a society without sex, composed of organisms so far divorced from humanity as we understand and experience it that I have no 'issues' with it, in the same way I have no issues with the way eusocial insects reproduce.

In our world, it is fundamentally impossible to change your sex quickly, cheaply, and painlessly because sex is not a field set in a cosmic database, it's a very strongly bimodal cluster of traits. Male and Female are the names we give to two distinct ways of being, which affect your biology, mentality, and socialization, and which in turn influence how you grow up, and who you are. If I had been female in my early childhood and teen years, I'd have had vastly different experiences than I did, in addition to physically and mentally developing in the specific testosterone-driven ways I did. And even if you can pretend that you could meaningfully simulate who I would have been if an identical-to-early-me double-X-bearing gamete had been implanted, there is no way you can say what I would and would not have done differently in my life, and you absolutely can't say what everyone else would have done.

If you live in a society with gender and gender roles, you cannot change sex as easily as you change clothes, because part of gender and gender roles is the ongoing process of socialization and gender-specific experiences which further define who you are. In the above-described world, sex doesn't exist any more than "People wearing T-shirts" exists as a meaningful category. In a virtual world, where biology is cosmetic only and doesn't drive meaningful outcomes, you can swap sex with the push of a button, because sex only means what your avatar presents as.

I'd also like to bring up another question, which I agree is considerably more inflammatory than yours, but I feel shows you where some people are in terms of fighting the hypothetical. It's the year 2022. People can quickly, cheaply, and painlessly change their race. There are no long-term side effects of the paperwork. If that were the case, would you have a problem with trans-black people using the N-word (or, to be specific, would you have more of a problem with it than cis-black people using it)?

The answer to this question is not strictly relevant; what I'm trying to demonstrate here is that some hypotheticals are kind of inherently suspicious. If someone asks "If hypothetically <the reason for this thing we've agreed is bad isn't true> were different, would not be bad?", and they don't have an actual strong hypothetical other than the bad thing not being bad, then their question is vacuous, and it is likely that the asker is not asking in good faith, but instead is just trying to thinking of the bad thing as not that bad. In the specific case of gender transition, we've seen what that bad thing looks like when we put trans-female prisoners in prisons with cis-female prisoners; the reason that we sex-segregate prisons rears its head, and we see that if we want to avoid rape and pregnancy in prison, we should treat trans-female and cis-male the same way. And, in the hypothetical universe you mention, if we can look at the behaviors of the people who take the pill, and note that people who were natally male consistently act differently than people who were natally born female and both differ from the vat-born, then it makes absolute sense to discriminate based on birth sex and type, no matter how well the trans individuals in that society pass.

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?

I don't have any issues with people transitioning now. I think it's a bad idea, I'd recommend against it to friends and family, but it's your life. What I have issues with is people trying to impose their worldview on me.

As for your hypothetical, if all of this were the case, transgenderism would be such a small issue I would not bother with it. I'm an anti-transhumanist, the world you're describing is one my nightmares. One of the reasons I think transgenderism is an issue today, is because I think it's the thin end of a wedge to bring this horrifying dystopian vision into reality.

What makes transhumanism a nightmare for you?

Mostly the part about transcending the limits of our biology to the point where being anything even resembling a human is optional.

I could make a consequentialist argument in the line of: if we didn't last a full decade between laughing at the clueless conservatives worrying about slippery slopes, and demanding that they allow their children to inject themselves with hormones, or surgically change their secondary sex characteristics, what chances do we have to stop the slide towards being assimilated into the Borg Collective or becoming Umgah Blobs the moment that becomes a realistic option?

But the truth is I find the idea ontologically wrong. It's a bit like asking someone why is harm wrong.

So basically we would no longer be human in any real sense? We evolved for gender roles to facilitate procreation with quite distinct personality traits.

The world you describe gender becomes completely non-existent. A female and male me could not be the same person. At that point we have just eliminated gender and at that point I think we have evolved past humanity and are some other kind of intelligent algorithm.

at that point I think we have evolved past humanity and are some other kind of intelligent algorithm.

I feel like the term algorithm is odd here since we'd still have biological bodies and flesh etc... just swapping genders. This has happened before, certain species evolve into other species that are able to swap genders, be hermaphrodites etc. The only difference is intentional evolution vs natural evolution. Life always changes its form, staying static is the opposite of what living beings do.

We evolved for gender roles to facilitate procreation with quite distinct personality traits.

This kind of reasoning strikes me as odd. Is evolution and change in life only valid when it's supposed to help procreation? If so, what is the point of art, or enjoying life, or anything besides procreation?

Is changing our gender roles actually enough to make us die out as a species, and be outcompeted? I am highly skeptical of that.

Is evolution and change in life only valid when it's supposed to help procreation?

Yes. Survival is the terminal goal of all life. Existence has to be sustained or it stops.

what is the point of art, or enjoying life

In material terms the reason for all these behaviors is procreation and facilitation thereof. How art in particular does so is a deep topic (my take is that it is the best way to communicate predictive heuristics), but ultimately it still serves that purpose or is a temporary waste of energy.

You can of course imagine that this is or isn't the "point", but that's entirely immaterial to why it exists.

Is changing our gender roles actually enough to make us die out as a species, and be outcompeted?

Given all (modulo a handful of contested sociologist fakes) known human societies prior to modernity shared them, it's unknown if human societies are sustainable at all without. The trends in birth rates in the modern Western experiment make me skeptical that this can be achieved.

if procreation is so important then why do so many people not want to procreate? I think you are just projecting your opinion on everyone else and think they are misguided if they don't act accordingly.

What people want or claim to want is completely irrelevant to the sustainability of their actual behavior.

If you don't do what is necessary to keep existing you stop doing so. The popularity or ethics of suicide do not change this reality. Antinatalism is doomed to irrelevance by construction.

Note that none of these claims are normative. I haven't even expressed my "opinion" on this matter.

Birthrate trends are probably selecting the middle classes of modern countries for clannishness, natality, and dogmatism, and the underclasses for impulsivity and promiscuity, in part due to the breakdown in gender roles. Feel like it should be pointed out as a side effect.

Isn’t gender just the software that controls your flesh - basically an algorithm. Like the matrix touched on this where they could see the processes in the human mind to see the decisions being made.

This view of humanity seems exactly like an algorithm.

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?

I probably wouldn't have problems with it. The one dimension where this might still be - may Allah forgive me for using this word - problematic is the following: I do believe that current trans discourse gives mentally troubled individuals a socially approved way to externalise their issues. "It's not me! The reason I am unhappy is because I was born in the wrong body and society oppresses me. The only way I should change is by having surgery done."

On the other hand, if someone like that pops a pill and that wasn't it, perhaps that would alleviate the issue.

Now, would I date a transitioner in 2300? I am not sure. I don't have a rational reason for saying no, given that you all hypothesized them away, but romance and sex is not rational.

That’s a good way to put it, externalization of mental health issues. I feel the same way… but boy do you get in trouble trying to argue that line with anyone remotely trans sympathetic lol.

Personally, I don't have any objection to what another individual chooses to do with his or her own body. However, even in this hypothetical future, I would have a problem with someone else telling me what I can and can't say. If I want to refer to someone using the pronouns they were born with, that's my right as an independent being. Just as getting whatever sci-fi surgery you want is your right as an independent being.

If there's some kind of punishment for calling a him a him or a her a her, or calling anyone anything, that's where I start to have a problem. Because at that point I feel like it's not about an individual's freedom to exercise control over his or her own body - at that point it's about power. The power to force someone to say something they don't believe in.

You don't even have to go into the future for that. Just look back to ancient Rome, when they forced people to make the libation and acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor as part of the suppression of Christianity. Note how they never bothered to force people to make the libation until they had a heathen religion to suppress. That's what I think of modern trans ideology, with its demands that everyone go around the circle and announce their pronouns - a libation. A forced conversion. A compulsory pledge of allegiance. Havel's Greengrocer. There's a fresh example in every generation.

To borrow a phrase: Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.

First of all, bear in mind that if you could freely transition like this, that would contradict current trans standards. Right now, you're supposed to accept someone's claim that they're a woman regardless of what, if any, physical transition they've had. A society where any man could step into a machine and become a woman would be one where trans people would be considered weirdos, because everyone else would say "I'm a woman" when they have a female body, and trans women claim to be women independently of their body. A trans person in this hypothetical world would be like someone who has hair a meter long and insists they are short-haired whether they cut their hair or not.

Second, people's issues about sex changing are based on the typical case. In our world, the typical case is someone who imperfectly transitions, who has such strong feelings about the matter that they are willing to imperfectly transition, who claims to be "really" the opposite sex, and who makes demands that must be obeyed on the pain of being considered a bigot. In your hypothetical world, the typical case would be a perfect transition, who doesn't have any particular emotional ties to femininity, who makes no claims about their body, and who makes no demands. It might be more acceptable to date someone who changed sex, but it would also be more acceptable to refuse to date one as well. (And related to that point, one of the reasons sex changes horrify people is that they're irreversible. The rhetoric about getting your son to cut off his dick will disappear if it's painless and can be grown back in ten seconds anyway.)

There's also the question of how the transition affects your mind. If it doesn't affect your mind, it's quite possible that men changed into women will act differently from born women, and that trans women will resemble men in this regard; in this situation it might still matter what you were born as. If it does affect your mind, it's possible that trans people could change sex and actually discover they were mistaken about thinking they were a woman in a man's body, now that they know what an actual woman is like.

Second, people's issues about sex changing are based on the typical case.

Some people's. I believe there are multiple coherent directions to approach dismantling it and I really find this one to be the weakest.

I'm not one of those folks, but I'd like to answer anyway.

When the transition is good enough to be unrecognisable, there would be no dissonance required to refer to trans people as the sex they appear to be.

But I'm not resistant to demands that I refer to trans people, without mistake, as they want me to, or even demands that I pretend this is my natural reaction, because of a little mental dissonance (being polite requires lots of that), I'm resistant because I suspect that the demand comes from an Orwellian (if often subconscious) urge to demonstrate and maintain domination over social inferiors by forcing them to declare that which they know to be false. The value of language policing comes from the harm you can cause to your social inferiors. It's the exact impulse that drives a bully to make his victim say something humiliating.

If this suspicion is correct, in your bodyswapping future, there would be no value in demanding (with the accompanying threat of punishment) that we use all the correct pronouns and declare all the correct dogmas on this issue because it wouldn't cause us any dissonance to do so.

I'm resistant because I suspect that the demand comes from an Orwellian (if often subconscious) urge to demonstrate and maintain domination over social inferiors by forcing them to declare that which they know to be false. The value of language policing comes from the harm you can cause to your social inferiors. It's the exact impulse that drives a bully to make his victim say something humiliating.

Wow, this is extremely well put. I find myself in the same camp, now that I think about it. When I see a trans person who is blatantly trans, I feel like I'm being stifled by having to play along with their social reality without causing a scene. The relation to authority figures abusing power or bullies forcing you to say something seems especially true to me.

Maybe that's why I wouldn't care if we were in that future.

If this all were the case, would you have issues with people transitioning genders/sex still?

A) No I'd have no 'issues.' As long as you get proper, informed consent from a person capable of consenting then whatever they do is their business. I think some persons would still be mentally incapable of true consent and thus safeguards of some kind should exist.

B) Caveat. You may have created actual obligations (usually contractual in nature) to other persons that could be violated by transitioning. There may be persons who have an interest in you remaining a particular sex for the time being. You don't get to ignore those or assume them away, but it becomes an economic matter rather than a moral one.

C) In such a scenario, pretty much everything is on the table, no? Incest is fine since genetic defects are not a risk, STDs are presumably a thing of the past.

There is no reason for bestiality to be taboo as long as there's no 'cruelty' to the animal involved.

Pedophilia on two levels: because a grown adult can transition to look like a child and consent to sex, or because the purported 'harms' of sex with minors are obviated. No unwanted pregnancy, diseases, or lasting trauma just because a child has sex at an early age.

And even, I'll say this carefully, sexual assault would be a trivial concern, since forcing someone to have sex will not, in fact, cause them lasting trauma. So the rapist can get a slap on the wrist, the victim can take a pill to forget the worst parts of the experience, and everyone moves on.

So you can craft this elaborate scenario but you don't get to ignore the necessary implications of it. I put it to you. Is it a fair trade if people can transition freely and without stigma BUT rapists also walk free with minimal punishment? As long as we're challenging moral intuitions, that is.

D) How would you feel about the existence of a pharmaceutical drug that had zero side effects, was available over the counter, was non-addictive, and had one (1) and only one lasting effect: it makes the user identify extremely strongly as a hetero, cis, strict binary version of whatever their biological sex (at the genetic level) is?

That is, it made them feel so comfortable with the gender/sexual identity bestowed upon them at birth that it removed any and all motivation to transition, and they were well and truly content to remain as they are.

Because with the level of technology you're implying, we would ALSO have the means to 'cure' the trans issue once and for all by providing everyone with drugs that instantly and permanently resolve any gender identity issues they may be experiencing in favor of being happy to stick with their standard biological hardware and only deviate from it for cognizable and pressing medical/health reasons.

And if people make an informed, consensual decision to take this drug, and once they've taken it 99.99999% of them will never actually want to transition again, then eventually almost the whole population will end up composed of CisHets who are happy with their biological sex, and can't even 'imagine' a reason for wanting to change it. A STABLE equilibrium, in other words.

I daresay, under your described tech level, there is no possible medical necessity for transitioning, so trans issues are pretty much relegated to the same level of social importance as breast implants, liposuction, and other 'vanity' types of procedures, and not the 'lifesaving healthcare' type.

So seriously, even if we admit that transitioning freely would be 'allowed' if the technology reaches that fabled level, how could you argue that is a superior world compared to one where we used that same tech level to make it such that nobody wants to transition?

If we're to be the gods of our own destiny, you probably should try to make the convincing case why YOUR vision of society is the one we should go with when we have virtually unlimited ones to choose from.

In my honest view, a society where all of humanity has engineered themselves to fully accept their biological sex (assuming other issues like aging are also solved for) and to prefer committed monogamous relationships doesn't sound any worse than one where transitioning is common and accepted practice if not 'expected' and the majority of relationships are polyamorous and orgies are considered normal. And on a personal level, I might even be happier in the former society, although I could easily tolerate the latter.

E) I think even in your scenario there'd be actual value in keeping a population of baseline, heteronormative humans around as a, for lack of a better term, 'failsafe' where if we manage to engineer ourselves into genetic dead ends and screw up royally due to unforeseen implications of the technology, we aren't doomed to extinction (absent other X-risks arising). So I would still be VERY wary of 'social pressure' to transition, since you're not really free if the choice to NOT do the thing isn't looked upon favorably.

Feel free to contest or otherwise engage with any of the points above individually and ignore the rest.

Great question! Although I don’t agree with your reasoning about rape being okay in this theoretical world.

Your point about how with this level of technology we could go either way on trans issues is exactly why I posted this! I’m curious if people are against it for social reasons (aka being forced to submit socially to pronouns), health reasons (dangerous to kids, fertility, mental health), or if it’s a fundamental moral attachment to the two biological genders. I think it has actually been quite illuminating in that people here have a wide range of reasons for not liking trans ideology.

Great question! Although I don’t agree with your reasoning about rape being okay in this theoretical world.

It's not 'okay,' it's just no longer the heinous and irreversible crime that (rightfully!) justifies massive punishment that it is now.

Indeed, the main reason we consider rape such a horrible crime is because it's typically big, strong, aggressive men perpetrating it against weaker, vulnerable women, and this warrants making said strong, aggressive men fear the consequences of exploiting the strength/size differential in this way.

If women are capable of defending themselves from rapists, that would present it's own deterrent.

In a world where one can switch between male and female at will, this justification falls flat. A male rapist could transition to female and suddenly she's much less of a danger. Or they choose to be a female 99% of the time, only switching to male to indulge in his penchant for the old Ultraviolence (Clockwork Orange Style). Things would just be weird, is what I'm saying.

Indeed, maybe the standard 'punishment' for the crime of rape in the high tech world is to force the rapist to switch genders and endure the same thing they inflicted on the victim. Eye for an eye and all that.

I’m curious if people are against it for social reasons (aka being forced to submit socially to pronouns), health reasons (dangerous to kids, fertility, mental health), or if it’s a fundamental moral attachment to the two biological genders. I think it has actually been quite illuminating in that people here have a wide range of reasons for not liking trans ideology.

I think you hit on it, though. There's a difference between having something against trans people and being against trans ideology (i.e. wokism).

Similar to how someone who has utterly no problem with black people might oppose the BLM movement, if only on the grounds that it is deceptive, socially corrosive, and ultimately fails it's own objectives.

If the goal is to allow whomever wants to transition to be permitted to do so (again, with actual consent) I think you find much less resistance than if the goal is to undermine the very basic assumption of society that men and women are different, and that's okay, and it is normal to accept your birth sex and to be monogamous and heterosexual.

The trans ideology seems to suggest that the very concept of a gender binary, a traditional family, and heteronormativity are a danger to them, rather than simply admiting that there's nothing wrong with being cishet.

A male rapist could transition to female and suddenly she's much less of a danger.

Funny you should say that. There's a real red-hot Culture War case of someone on death row appealing their sentence right now.

"It is extremely unusual for a woman to commit a capital offense, such as a brutal murder, and even more unusual for a women to, as was the case with McLaughlin, rape and murder a woman," Pojmann said.

What grinds my teeth about that sentence? McLaughlin was not a 'woman' when he raped and murdered his victim. I'm not even willing to give ground that he is a woman now, even if he has 'transitioned' and is wearing hair clips just like a Real Girl.

There's the usual defence pleading of mental incapacity due to childhood abuse, and I hate being cynical enough to wonder if that is all bullshit. But say that it's true - say that McLaughlin should not be held guilty due to mental incapacity? Then how the hell is he capable of deciding that he is really trans? If he is a victim of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, how is his brain not damaged sufficiently that thinking he's really a woman is just evidence of more mental damage? If he can't be held responsible for murder because his brain is so traumatised, how can he be mentally capable enough of deciding about his gender?

Make your damn minds up: is the guy mentally together enough to know, decide and consent to changing his gender, or is he so deficient he isn't capable of understanding the full gravity of his crimes or of controlling his impulses? Because you can't have it both ways.

“The lead investigating officer contemporaneously noted McLaughlin’s genuine remorse, as has every expert to evaluate McLaughlin in the years since the trial,” the application filed by her attorneys states, adding that McLaughlin has been “consistently diagnosed with borderline intellectual disability,” and “universally diagnosed with brain damage as well as fetal alcohol syndrome.”

But by comparison with another transgender Real Woman, McLaughlin looks good (what the hell is going on in Canada?) McLaughlin is in Missouri, this shining example is in Ontario:

A 68-year-old biological male that identifies as a woman who is serving a life sentence for murdering a woman and then raping her corpse has been approved for transfer to a women’s prison in Ontario, Canada, according to Heather Mason.

The individual's name at the time of the crime has not been confirmed but is named on the parole document as Catherine Lynn.

According to Lynn’s parole document, there have been a number of incidents in prison related to inappropriate sexual behavior with others, and Lynn wanted to transfer to a women’s prison to "look at how women walked, talked, and acted," said Mason.

The newly-minted Real Woman is 68 years of age and going to have sex reassignment surgery (or gender affirming, or whatever they're calling it this minute), so that means it should be just fine to put him in with other women, right? I mean, just because their offence was murdering and raping a woman, it isn't that big of a risk?

What "in the future a male rapist could transition to female and be considered less of a danger"? We're living that right now. Maybe the solution is to build special transgender prisons so all the New Real Women can be housed together, away from those dangerous and violent biological males in the men's prisons. Just because they tend to be sex offenders, surely they won't pose a risk to one another? (England and Wales prison figures for 2018 - 63 sex offenders out of 139 transgender prisoners = 45%. Male prison population in general: "As at 31 March 2020 there were 12,774 prisoners serving sentences for sexual offences, which represented 18% of the sentenced prison population.")

McLaughlin, now 48, was convicted of killing 45-year-old (ex-girlfriend) Beverly Guenther on Nov. 20, 2003. She was raped and stabbed to death outside of her workplace in St. Louis County.

And yet not a word about the victim or the crime in the article written after the perp put a wig on. "Intimate partner violence by men" vanishes from the narrative the second it runs up against a more powerful group. Incredible.

Also re. the death penalty discussion from the other day:

In 2006 in St. Louis County Circuit Court, McLaughlin’s trial lawyers made a strategic decision not to have a psychiatrist testify. They had discovered during the penalty phase that one of their expert witnesses had falsified data in a lab report 17 years earlier.

"Our own expert witness being a fraud should invalidate the trial and get our client off the hook" is one hell of an argument.

You can change your body by a pill bought in the corner store? Feck changing my gender (or is it my sex? still unclear as to which is meant), I want to be several inches taller, a heck of a lot thinner, much smarter, and with some other changes to my physiology and brain state (my life would have been a lot more successful if I were less cripplingly introverted and did not abhor social interaction, for instance). Just switching from "short dumpy female" to "short dumpy male" isn't at the races if I can have the Perfect Body and Perfect Brain merely with some simple chemical assistance!

You go do it! Why not?! I'm in the same exact damn boat.

But I am curious about your answer to the question.

If there were a perfect, consequence-free, totally reversible, easy method to switch sex, then the very notion of "transgender" could no longer exist, unless you got some hardcore theorists/activists who still insisted that this new method was about transexualism and not transgenderism, since gender is a construct of society, gendered roles, gender performance, yadda yadda yadda.

The interview with the Wi Spa person is fascinating in this light, since this is clearly a guy larping as a woman and yet he is insistent that he's some different kind of thing. I would ask you, in turn, suppose this perfect easy pill existed, but someone who claimed to be transgender refused to take it since they are already a woman (even if they still have a dick, etc)? Imagine trying to persuade "Ms." Merager here that he should take the pill and really be a woman, when he insists he already is and changing his body is transexual, not transgender:

Let’s back up a second. Should we be using male or female pronouns with you? How do you identify?

I’m very neutral, like non-binary, although I don’t like that word. I’m legally female. But I have facial hair. I have a penis. I have no breasts. I don’t have a feminine voice. I don’t wear makeup or dress up like a female. So imagine you’re a grocery store [clerk] and you’re bagging my groceries and you say, “Excuse me, sir . . . ” I mean, am I supposed to be offended? That’d be ridiculous. How would this person know? But technically, for legal terms, I am she/her. I put “female” on my driver’s license. But I’ve had to struggle my whole life fitting into traditional society.

And you sleep with women? You’re a female who has heterosexual sex with females?

I have heterosexual sex because my penis fits in a vagina. I don’t tell women I’m with that I’m transgender because that’s not my sex. So I’m not faking anything. Gender is internal, sex is external.

You mean Bamby Salcedo, president and CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition, the largest trans-led organization in L.A.? She said in the story, “You’d think after getting arrested a bunch of times, she’d just change clothes in a stall.”

Right. So, in the article, she says she goes to Wi Spa three times a year and she gets naked in there and she never has a problem. So I spoke to Bamby Salcedo on the phone before the story came out. She admitted to me that she has boobs and she takes off her top but that she does not take off her bottoms because she has a penis. Nobody knows she’s transgender.

Nobody knows you’re transgender and you have a penis. What’s the difference? And why do you call Bamby a “supposed” transgender person?

We can go into that, but if she’s surgically [altered] parts of her body, that’s transsexual. I know that’s a controversy in and of itself, but I can explain that.

Are you saying that transitioning either hormonally or physically somehow disqualifies someone from being authentically transgender?

You have to understand gender identity. Everybody’s confusing your internal with your external. All these external people are doing what is being called transitioning. There’s no transition. That’s called deviation. I’m tired of that word, “transitioning.” It’s a fake word that people like Bamby use. The whole point is this is how you are born.

I also get the impression that our boy Darren figured out that doing time in a woman's prison instead of a man's prison would be way easier, and since all he had to do to legally become female was fill out a piece of paper (no need for hormones or surgery!), then why not?:

When did you get your driver’s license changed?

The license came in January 2019 [the month that the California Gender Recognition Act took effect]. But there’s a discrepancy in California, you can go through your doctor. But it’s very easy to get it. You can go in and sign a piece of paper. So I just waited until January to do it. And that was the first month that it was available. Basically, anybody could walk in and get one.

Was that something that was discussed with your therapist? How did you come to the decision to make the appointment to go in to get the driver’s license changed?

Our discussion basically started around April 2017. Between April 2017 and 2019, I had figured that … evaluating how I fit and how I had problems in prison….you come to the conclusion that makes more sense, where you’re gonna fit better in life.

And it makes sense, looking back throughout all years of your life. It’s not like we’re born and people try to indoctrinate you. Once you evaluate your life, it makes a lot of sense. Especially when you’re autistic and things are non-traditional anyway.

See? It's not his fault he's been wrongfully classed as a criminal, since he can't be expected to fit in with society's expectations about not masturbating in public or exposing himself around kids because he's autistic and transgender. In a sane society, grifters like this wouldn't be entitled to protected status as a persecuted minority, they would be recognised as opportunists and criminals. But then again, we're talking about California, not anyplace sane.

As an aside, if you're a trans activist who calls yourself Precious Child, then it's about mentally ill attention seeking. I'm so fed-up of the entire hot mess that I am now going to be blunt about that. Special snowflake pronouns, non-binary when it's very damn evident you're female (or male, see Sam Brinton) and fancy names like "Euphoria" or "Precious" while trying to dress like an anime character is not about "I am a woman in the wrong body", it's about "I am so desperate for any kind of attention that I will make an exhibition of myself to force a reaction, because even negative attention is better than none".

So, leaving all that insanity aside, and ignoring the religious angle: if there were this kind of easy, harm-free, reversible transition, then sure. Now you really can be a woman in a woman's body, or a man in a man's body, and I hope to God this will finally explode the notion that "being a woman is tight short dresses, high-heeled shoes, make-up, long hair, sparkles and pink, girly-girly stuff, and that horrible fake voice they use". Now that you're female down to your very chromosomes, you don't have to slap on makeup and hooker gear. Parents who groom their own kids into "oh yes she was always trans since she was a baby" won't have a lasting effect, as the kid can go back to their natal sex once old enough to get out from under Mommy's stage-mom thumb.

And the weirdoes who currently shelter under the trans umbrella will stand out even more, and finally may indeed be identified as people with mental disorders that need treatment, not "valid identity, deny this and you're committing violence, 41% suicide rate!"

Good write up. I wish I could engage I'm just mentally exhausted with this post at the moment hah.

To be fair, reading between the lines of the article, Merager may just be a very...unique outlier. The article points out that even the president of LA's biggest trans activism group, who you'd think would be The Most Trans To Ever Be, advocates for not acting the fool and hiding your nether regions to avoid trouble.

I had a good discussion regarding the case of Sam Brinton, buried deep in last week's thread. I am reposting here so that more people can see it and possibly participate. I hope this is appropriate and doesn't constitute self-promotion.

I wrote:

What would even constitute evidence that Brinton was hired based solely or primarily on his identity? He has a master's degree in the relevant field (from MIT, though other comments are telling me that doesn't really matter) and has co-authored several research papers. To me it looks like he's about as qualified as anyone.

@Astranagant replied:

Well this is the problem with identity hiring, isn't it? How does anyone know you didn't get the edge over your competitors because of that? Unless he was literally the only applicant for the job, I'd find it hard to swallow that the topic of his... presentation... never came up. Meaning the department most likely consciously chose him, and whether this is in spite of or because of his affectations would largely come down to whether he was wildly head-and-shoulders better than his competition. Employers will overlook some affectation for a genuine rockstar employee, but there's a limit proportionate to how irreplaceable you are.

So either Brinton is hyper-competent and got the job in spite of his affectations, which according to the rest of the thread -- and your own comment "as qualified as anyone" -- his education history and performance on the job doesn't bear out. So if it's not that, can we then assume that the affectations served the purpose of the administration somehow? This is a government job, it's impossible... alright, improbable to believe they didn't do their due diligence.

To which I replied:

If the employer has whittled down the list of applicants to a group of people with similar qualifications, and more detailed information that might help the decision is impossible or infeasible to attain, then the choice of whom to hire will be arbitrary. In this case, I don't see how hiring Brinton because of his unusual presentation is any worse than rolling a die or flipping a coin to make the final choice.

To me, the phrase "hired for your identity" implies that standards have been lowered and the candidate was picked over someone more qualified but with a less-favoured identity. As far as I can tell, this is not true in Brinton's case.

One form of affirmative action that I've heard about is that, when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen. As I said above, when it comes down to this kind of decision, the choice is arbitrary, and I don't see any harm in the affirmative action method. Indeed, if the group to which the candidate belongs really does face some kind of disadvantage, picking them is the rational choice for the self-interested employer, as it indicates that the candidate has achieved the same qualifications despite more difficult circumstances. Of course, simply considering a few categories such as race and gender can never provide the full picture: for example, among two candidates there may be a woman from a rich family and a man whose family was poor growing up; overall, the man had it worse, but an application generally includes gender but not family circumstances, so applying the method here would lead to the wrong choice. It is just a heuristic, and no heuristic is perfect, but as I said, at some point acquiring more information about the candidates becomes impossible or infeasible; except for some very specific positions, an employer won't hire a personal investigator to carefully investigate the candidate's past: this is where heuristics come in.

The above method is very different from lowered standards for different groups, or straight-up quotas, both of which I vehemently oppose. Finally, it must be noted that:

  1. In the real world, "historically marginalized" groups have been granted various advantages, which might reduce the method's accuracy.
  1. Situations where several candidates are, in fact, equally qualified, and only one belongs to a historically marginalized group, are not actually that common.
  1. The heuristic requires that the candidates' identity not be considered until the final choice: a woman must be just as good as a man, without considering the fact that she is a woman. Otherwise, we would be adjusting for identity twice, which would result in a lower standard for women.

One form of affirmative action that I've heard about is that, when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen

If racial and sex disparities were small enough for this to compensate for, they would already be incredibly small - and if this was the only mode of affirmative action, it'd have little effect. If US's history of slavery and racism was a total of 50 black people being enslaved, and it was actually a consensual fetish TPE thing, then slavery would've been fine and progressive, but it isn't!

In this case, I don't see how hiring Brinton because of his unusual presentation is any worse than rolling a die or flipping a coin to make the final choice.

Brinton specifically? I think it's obviously worse because his unusual presentation is an excellent marker for being the sort of person that loves to antagonize others. This isn't a trans person that has a difficult mental condition that they're doing their best with, it's a fetishist that conscripts everyone around them into playing along with their fetish. That Brinton would behave badly and do things that would embarrass the employer seems like an obvious lock, right from the start.

In the real world, the kind of affirmative action you describe is not that common, in part because of your second explanation. To the specific case of Brinton, they almost certainly don’t apply, given that although he was minimally qualified the majority of his recent work experience appeared to be in LGBT orgs; one has to imagine that there were people already working for the government on that particular problem who could have been promoted instead of hiring a non-binary drag queen whose actual work experience is mostly in sex Ed. Indeed, from what I know of government hiring, aren’t internal candidates normally supposed to be privileged over outside hires?

According to Wikipedia, "In 2016, Brinton was a senior policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center, lobbying for updated regulations so nuclear waste can be used to power advanced nuclear reactors.[21] In February 2020, the website of Deep Isolation, a Berkeley, California, nuclear waste storage and disposal company,[22] listed them as its Director of Legislative Affairs[23] and in May 2022 they were its Director of Global Political Strategy.[24] In 2022, Brinton's profile at the Department of Energy (DOE) indicated their previous work with the Breakthrough Institute, the Clean Air Task Force, and Third Way." Seems a reasonable background for a job with the DOE Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition.

Re hiring outsiders, Wikipedia says that deputy assistant secretaries are Senior Executive Service (SES) officials, and that "up to 10% of SES positions can be filled as political appointments rather than by career employees."

That type of position is usually outside career civil service ladders. They're often filled by people in their first government job.

when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen

Just like how euthanasia is only ever used for 95 year-olds with terminal brain cancer and Alzheimer’s, right? The reality is that black students get the equivalent of over 300 bonus points on the SAT last I checked.

Just like how euthanasia is only ever used for 95 year-olds with terminal brain cancer and Alzheimer’s, right?

The snark combined with the strong claim without a source makes me dubious you're actually trying to 'argue to understand.' At least mention what you're referencing with the 300 bonus points metric?

"Historically Marginalized" is and will be useful to refuse AA to white men (or whites and men) when they are drastically underrepresented in academia and work sectors that are seen as important by those in power. Men are already moderately underrepresented in university attendance, yet very few are giving men AA, as they are not "historically marginalized". So all the current is against them, despite them already being underrepresented.

By their fruit you will know them, the bible says.

I've seen a lot of affirmative action hires, and not one single instance of it made me more positive on affirmative action.

then the choice of whom to hire will be arbitrary. In this case, I don't see how hiring Brinton because of his unusual presentation is any worse than rolling a die or flipping a coin to make the final choice.

As an exercise, you have two candidates. Both are 40-something white men. They're identical in capabilities and expertise.

Candidate 1 has arrived to the interview dressed well, without being overboard in terms of stuffiness or luxury.

Candidate 2 arrives with greasy, unwashed hair and a mangled beard. His shoes are worn through with enough mysterious stains that you're unsure of their original color. A crumpled and frayed jacket covers a shirt that's deeply dark from various oils, never washed. He's eloquent and equally qualified to candidate 1, but does express that he'll never bathe more than once a month.

Many of your peers express admiration that he's rejected the societal norms that have led to widespread animal testing and a psychotic cycle of shampoo - condition - shampoo - condition when human hair naturally supports itself through the body's oils.

Would you flip a coin for these candidates?

The "unusual presentation" is the message. It is the qualifications. Sam Brinton can't be bothered to inconvenience himself with even the furthest edges of the Overton window. He's too special, too important to consider other people.

That alone should be factored into a hiring decision where he loses to someone equally qualified. It's that simple.

I was going to say that candidate 2's poor hygiene makes him less qualified, in the broad sense, but then you did it for me! Our disagreement here seems to be on how bad not bathing is as compared to wearing unconventional clothing.

I think the convention that men mustn't wear dresses is arbitrary and pointless and a man should be allowed to wear a dress if he so wishes. Very dress-like garments have been normal for men to wear in many cultures, so there is nothing inherently wrong with it. Even if you consider it ugly, that's just a personal preference; I consider leather jackets ugly, yet I don't think this justifies discrimination against people who like wearing them. Brinton is only inconveniencing people if they let themselves be inconvenienced, like a wokeist who chooses to be offended at everything.

Poor hygiene, however, should not be socially accepted, in my opinion. Of course that depends on what "poor hygiene" is: someone may say that, yes, poor hygiene should be unacceptable but only bathing once a month isn't poor hygiene. For the purpose of this discussion, I am using "poor hygiene" to refer specifically to what candidate 2 is doing.

It sounds like you have no principles and standards then, just gut feelings that you've substituted instead.

You think one convention is arbitrary and another is obvious. You're just trying to reach the conclusion you already have ready.

My view might be summarized as "clothing is personal preference, hygiene is non-negotiable".

What are your principles and standards? Anything unusual is automatically bad? I guess that is less subjective.

Although, if your political beliefs are close to those of the average Mottizen, consider how unusual they are in universities, big companies and other significant employers in the current year.

What are your principles and standards? Anything unusual is automatically bad? I guess that is less subjective.

They're the same as yours. Disgust, of course. Your view can be summarized by, "I find one thing disgusting but not another." I find both unwashed people and cross-dressers to be physically disgusting, and react accordingly. Not much of a standard really, but honest if not principled.

This is also why I say you're not demonstrating principles, you're rationalizing your instincts.

This is also why I say you're not demonstrating principles, you're rationalizing your instincts.

Apart from like, half a dozen nerds (who are all posting here, love you <3 ), don't we all?

as compared to wearing unconventional clothing.

This is the maximally charitable framing of the issue. More realistically this person has a fetish or an aggressive mental condition. If he simply wore dresses, sure. He does far more outrageous fashion things that take extreme levels of effort, and does other aggressive things in media.

a man should be allowed to wear a dress if he so wishes

This is arguable and there is a case to be made for it. However, Brinton seems capable of dressing conventionally (not alone for the court appearance, which may indeed have been their lawyer telling them to cool it on the freak show if they wanted to get bail, but also on the plane trips where they stole the luggage and where, from the CCTV images, they were dressed as male-presenting. Pro tip: do not wear easily identifiable clothing that you have just posted on social media if you're going to boost stuff).

So there is also an arguable case that Brinton is being controversial for the sake of it, and indeed almost flaunting it. 'Yes, I can wear a dress and heels even though I'm male and working in a government office, suck that up straights and normies!' Now, would I be less censorious if (1) Brinton dressed more conservatively (2) they actually looked good in red lipstick, stilettos, yellow sweetheart neckline gowns and the rest of it?

I am forced to admit that I am shallow enough that if they looked hot, instead of having the Balok head, I probably might be more sympathetic on those grounds. As it is, I think Brinton has an unfortunate potato head (can't help your genetics) and really should stick to "nerd T-shirts".

As it is, I think Brinton has an unfortunate potato head (can't help your genetics) and really should stick to "nerd T-shirts".

No. I'm sorry, but you Americans have a disastrous sense of fashion. I'm German and even we barbarian huns know how to dress better. Would it kill you to throw on a shirt every once in a while and wear something other than blue jeans?

Hell, even the suit Brinton put on for his court date looked ridiculous.

Sam Brinton did not dress like a typical transwoman or like a ‘normal’ gender nonconformity type. He very specifically dressed like an oddball, albeit in ways that are often coded female.

This is the sign of someone who loves to be the center of attention.

As I said above, when it comes down to this kind of decision, the choice is arbitrary, and I don't see any harm in the affirmative action method.

You don't see the harm? You're saying you'd actively choosing to discriminate against someone for their skin colour or whatever, and you don't see the harm? Someone who, in all likelihood, has never actually received any benefits from their skin colour or whatever? Disregarding the harm, I could comprehend, but outright not seeing it?

The above method is very different from lowered standards for different groups, or straight-up quotas, both of which I vehemently oppose.

Not really. The victim won't really care why exactly he was discriminated against, only that he was. Whatever pretty justifications you dress it up in, you need to own what you're advocating for.

One form of affirmative action that I've heard about is that, when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen. As I said above, when it comes down to this kind of decision, the choice is arbitrary, and I don't see any harm in the affirmative action method.

Let's play a game. We both roll dice. If your number is higher, I give you money. If my number is higher, you give me money. If we both roll the same number, you also give me money. Let's go for 100 rolls at 100$ a roll. Fair?

The assumptions are:

  1. The marginalized groups really are marginalized. In your example, this would mean you have a significantly larger amount of money than me.

  2. We're looking at this dispassionately, from behind a veil of ignorance. Of course the group that benefits from inequality would support inequality. I usually cringe at this saying because it's so frequently abused by the left, but it does apply in this case: when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Is it mean of me to say that right now it looks like the marginalised and under-represented groups as represented by Brinton are "gender-fluid kleptomaniacs"? The "white and cis and male" parts of their identity, even as a bisexual, would normally be held to be totems of privilege, were it not for the "gender-fluid/non-binary" thing.

"All ties go to the marginalized group" in fact gives privilege to the marginalized group. It certainly isn't equality.

All I wanted to get at with that post is for you to admit that tie-breakers are discriminatory. Once we have common ground there, we can discuss whether that discrimination is justified.

when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression

That goes both ways. The root of the privilege here is of course the unassailable and unfalsifiable assumption of oppression that calls for never-ending special treatment. Become accustomed to that and equal opportunity starts to feel like oppression.

The problem with your argument is that the premise is faulty. Especially 1). First of all, we are more and more dealing with an "adversity of the gaps", where unequal treatment is nowhere to be found but outcome disparities are taken as sufficient proof of a lack of procedural fairness. Which is then countered with tampering of the procedure in the favour of the "oppressed", often with unintended consequences. Of course, the medicine not working is proof that we need more medicine and round it goes.

But even if you disagree with me on this one, the fact remains that membership of protected identity groups is a really bad proxy for adversity where others are readily available. Once you get to the point where you are considered for a high-level government position, chances are that you did not struggle in the same way other identity group members are (ostensibly) struggling. At that point it becomes rich kid #1 with accidental characteristics P vs. rich kid #2 with accidental characteristics Q. P means rich kid #1 must have faced adversity, therefore we need to stack the deck in her favour. I would have much, much less trouble with quotas for people growing up poor.

I just want to add the usual switcheroo between marginalized people and historically marginalized people. As other people say, women now have 50% higher college enrolment compared to men. But if one grants argument that they were historically marginalized, this remains the same even if women are 100% of enrollment and no men are allowed.

The marginalized groups really are marginalized. In your example, this would mean you have a significantly larger amount of money than me.

No. Your modification to the example is flawed. The correct modification would be, "this would mean that you belong to a demographic group that, on average, has a significantly larger amount of money than the demographic group that I belong to."

when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

This is just a call to epistemic humility, it implies one cannot actually know for certain where they sit on the oppression scale which also applies to those who are currently receiving affirmative action. If we're being epistemically humble then innaction and thus not placing a thumb on the scale is the prudent move. If you want to claim you know who is oppressed you cannot use this tactic.

Yeah, relying on the whole "oppressed groups have epistemic advantage" argument in order to substantiate a claim of oppression always leads to some variant of the following horror: "I'm oppressed and you're privileged, thus I have a superior knowledge which allows me to tell you that I'm oppressed and you're privileged and you have no such standing. How can I be sure that I'm oppressed and you're privileged? Because I'm oppressed and you're privileged".

The fact that people genuinely use this circular argument and see no problem with the foundational logic behind it is shocking.

The fact that people genuinely use this circular argument and see no problem with the foundational logic behind it is shocking.

I have tried to get this exact point across to a group of ostensibly smart academics for months now. To very little avail.

You cannot logic people out of believing something they haven't been logicked into. Or something. As long as a belief is socially beneficial to have, people will revert to it almost immediately. It sometimes does feel like talking to an NPC.

People are never exactly the same. Standards are lowered. As the pressure rises on recruiters, the scales are pushed on ever harder. And typically, for the good jobs, you're punishing people who didn't benefit from their 'privilege' (more than their peers) and rewarding people who never suffered.

Competence matters, and it's hurting.

And really, come on -- you've seen the 300 pts on the SAT and the 80% of Berkeley professors being pitched on the diversity statement. Hell, we had the supreme court justice primarily selected on her identity. Apparently the question wasn't if a black woman would be taken, it was which one. It's not just tie-breakers, it's nowhere close, even if that were meaningful.

In a sense, it really is a motte and bailey, to harken back to the sub/site's name -- the motte is "when things are exactly equal, it's a small tie-breaker to help out" and the bailey is 300 points on the SAT and men being on 40% of college graduates, but women are the victims because there are still a few majors where there are more men.

Hell, we had the supreme court justice primarily selected on her identity

This is always the worst example people who dislike affirmative action bring up. First, the idea that there are specific seats for various ethnic groups or genders or whatever has been true of the Supreme Court since the early 20th century when there was a Jewish seat. In addition, there's no actual way to determine whose the best qualified person to be a Supreme Court Justice, outside of personal political beliefs, and if there are a few dozen people who'd basically vote the same, there's no reason to not try to diversify things.

In addition, there's no actual way to determine whose the best qualified person to be a Supreme Court Justice, outside of personal political beliefs

I find this to be a pretty dubious claim. There are particular skills required of a SC justice. They need a deep knowledge of constitutional law, they need to be able to understand and elucidate complex logical arguments, etc. It's certainly possible to evaluate these skills in a candidate (even if not with perfect precision or inter-annotator agreement). You might say that of the many candidates with the appropriate baseline level of experience, their respective competencies are just too close to distinguish, but that doesn't seem right to me.

Listening to SCOTUS oral arguments and reading decisions, I get the distinct sense that some justices are just a lot better at their jobs than others. Some consistently come up with incisive hypotheticals and clear, eloquent lines of reasoning, and some waste the court's time with meandering, muddled questions. Occasionally, some make even egregiously elementary errors. In one of the recent affirmative action cases, Sotomayor confused de jure and de facto segregation. (I'd ordinarily be happy to give the benefit of the doubt and say this was just a slip of the tongue, but if you look at the full context, it doesn't seem possible that this was the case. She repeats it a few times, and even when sort of given an opportunity to correct herself by Alito, she seems to double down on her misunderstanding.)

I mean, yes, I agree, and I think every Justice on the Court, even the ones I think are terrible and are making the country worse are well-qualified in that they know the law, etc. Like, I think Clarence Thomas has done irreparable harm, but I'm also sure he's smart enough to figure out arguments to get what he wants in an opinion.

If you go through the arguments and opinions of every single Justice in history, they all make mistakes or get caught up in a bad argument, because they're not robots.

if anything, due to the bias toward judges w/ elite credentials, the Supreme Court today has far more well-qualified people than when it was explicitly a place for political favors, whether it was former Congressman who were never judges, or anything else. It wasn't until the Nixon era the idea that the Supreme Court was a place for elite legal minds to put down judgement was even something thought of by many people at all, considering even Eisenhower named Earl Warren to the Court, basically to get his support at the RNC in 1952.

Some Supreme Court justices are better than others in some abstract sense, but in practice, the main consideration is that the appointee should reliably take the appointing party's side while being creative and erudite enough to avoid looking like too much of a hack while doing it.

No, the not looking like a political hack thing is optional.

This is the unfortunate reality but the institution does stand for something symbolic and it's worth preserving that symbol. People learn what to expect by what happens at the high profile appointments, if race is such an important characteristic as to be the deciding factor in appointing someone to one of the most powerful positions in the country what does that say to the common man? Race is hyper important and if your race is not getting favors then you should agitate. You can only broadcast this message so loudly and so long before you start getting whites to internalize it and wake up a racial consciousness and that has traditionally catalyzed the stuff on nightmares.

First, the idea that there are specific seats for various ethnic groups or genders or whatever has been true of the Supreme Court since the early 20th century when there was a Jewish seat.

And it's been an abominable affront to liberalism this whole time. Even if it goes back to the very founding, so did slavery.

Why is it affront to liberalism to name a well-qualified person to the Court who also happens to make sure the Court better reflects what the nation looks like? Like, I'm pretty sure for the entirety of it's existence, there existed Jewish judges that were qualified enough to be on the Court, because, the idea there is a most-qualified person to be on the Court just isn't true.

  • -10

Pretty much false. Jewish dominance of the upper end law schools/firms dates only from around the early 20th century in America. It wasn't until the mid to late 1800s that Jews even arrived in the USA in significant quantities, earlier examples have been magnified by the combined effects on historical fiction of Jewish writers dominating early Hollywood and of efforts towards mild easy diversity lessons.

Meant to add 'once a Jewish seat' was added, which was in 1916.

better reflects what the nation looks like?

1/9 of the US population isn't Jewish.

Sure, but they are a significant part of the nation, and more importantly, a significant minority that could get a seat on the Court in 1916. As opposed to other minorities. After all, 8 out of the other 9 seats were made up of white men, who even then, were less than half of the nation.

Because emphasizing our differences fractures what should be a cohesive society. Without checking what is the hair color representation on the court? Height representation? Blood type representation? Would it be better if we arbitrarily tried to balance the court on these factors as well? And what about the 10th largest minority? The solution doesn't scale, isn't necesary and causes obvious and justified resentment in those overlooked because of the color of their skin. The idea that everyone is and should be responsible for looking after the interests of their coethnics over other groups is not just deeply unfair but dangerous.

If the employer has whittled down the list of applicants to a group of people with similar qualifications, and more detailed information that might help the decision is impossible or infeasible to attain, then the choice of whom to hire will be arbitrary. In this case, I don't see how hiring Brinton because of his unusual presentation is any worse than rolling a die or flipping a coin to make the final choice.

It's worse in the very trivial way that it leaves a whole lot of the population fighting dice that are incapable of rolling in their favor. Yes, it actually feels quite bad to know that you automatically lose any tiebreaker no matter what for something you have no control over to fight a disparity you had no hand in.

edit: and of course there is the other factor which is that I have literally zero faith that the people making these choices are actually not rounding everything down as to what counts for qualifications for people with my phenotype and rounding everything up for qualifications that count for people like Brinton before they declare that several candidates are of equal qualifications. I have seen the faces of this kind of person when they see an unrepresented minority in a prestigious position.

It's worse in the very trivial way that it leaves a whole lot of the population fighting dice that are incapable of rolling in their favor. Yes, it actually feels quite bad to know that you automatically lose any tiebreaker no matter what for something you have no control over to fight a disparity you had no hand in.

I thought of this, but given that these situations are very rare, I don't think it really matters that much.

Besides, if the "marginalized" groups really do face a disadvantage, then they themselves may "feel quite bad" about their their own chances. If members of both the overrepresented and underrepresented groups adjust their beliefs rationally, the total amount of "feeling quite bad" should remain the same (that is, of course, an enormous if). It really is just levelling the playing field, unlike quotas or double standards.

and of course there is the other factor which is that I have literally zero faith that the people making these choices are actually not rounding everything down as to what counts for qualifications for people with my phenotype and rounding everything up for qualifications that count for people like Brinton before they declare that several candidates are of equal qualifications. I have seen the faces of this kind of person when they see an unrepresented minority in a prestigious position.

The current ideology does support affirmative action beyond what I consider justified, but they are pretty explicit about this. They're not pretending to only use identity as a tiebreaker and then secretly adjusting twice. If (another tremendous if) the belief that affirmative action is only justified in the narrow circumstances outlined above became widespread, I would expect people to implement it fairly.

I will admit that, given the magnitude of the ifs, this is mostly an intellectual exercise. Maybe I would be better off just supporting total identity-blindness, lest narrow affirmative action slip down the slope into wokeism. Not that it matters much, given that the world is already well past that point.

I thought of this, but given that these situations are very rare, I don't think it really matters that much.

Are they really? I've seen the thumb on the scale even in my relatively low stakes white collar office when I was told we were either getting a white/asian/male senior engineer or junior URM/woman with the same budget. Unsurprisingly we got a woman, who is absolutely fine and I don't blame at all but it's an unsettling thing to see a process that would have rejected you for no reason in the wild. If it doesn't matter much, how about we just don't do it? Save everyone the controversy, bring on the dice, hell record it's rolling publicly, hash the candidate names for privacy.

Besides, if the "marginalized" groups really do face a disadvantage

This is just shifting the power to whomever gets to decide which disadvantages count as you mention elsewhere. I put forward that by the time you get to applying for this position all the other legs up given to underrepresented minorities means white candidates have a disadvantage, please propose a way to determine who is correct.

If members of both the overrepresented and underrepresented groups adjust their beliefs rationally, the total amount of "feeling quite bad" should remain the same (that is, of course, an enormous if).

There is a reason this originally unironic comic is referred to as "bike cuck". It's even worse to expect other people to unwilling make their peace with their discrimination. It is hard to quantify exactly what effect this kind of resentment will have but Trump is not as bad as things can get when people move past wanting to show the establishment a middle finger to other displays of disapproval. Scott put it best here but replace "liberalism" with "identity blindness"

People talk about “liberalism” as if it’s just another word for capitalism, or libertarianism, or vague center-left-Democratic Clintonism. Liberalism is none of these things. Liberalism is a technology for preventing civil war. It was forged in the fires of Hell – the horrors of the endless seventeenth century religious wars. For a hundred years, Europe tore itself apart in some of the most brutal ways imaginable – until finally, from the burning wreckage, we drew forth this amazing piece of alien machinery. A machine that, when tuned just right, let people live together peacefully without doing the “kill people for being Protestant” thing. Popular historical strategies for dealing with differences have included: brutally enforced conformity, brutally efficient genocide, and making sure to keep the alien machine tuned really really carefully.

I think people on your side of this debate do not understand just how much rage bubbles under the surface when people see things like this going on and it's a pressure cooker that discussing and venting about this is a career endingly dangerous thing to do with your name attached. Some people tried to overthrow an election on behalf of the frankly embarrassing figure that is Trump, the democrats seem hellbent on forging the weapons of tyrants such as speech control and normalizing broad executive overreach. Someone is going to come along and show us all how to wield them. I do not like this path, I do not want to go where it leads. What you think we're getting out of this, it's not worth it.

I think people on your side of this debate do not understand just how much rage bubbles under the surface when people see things like this going on and it's a pressure cooker that discussing and venting about this is a career endingly dangerous thing to do with your name attached.

I can attest to that. I have been dealing with being discriminated against in my career for over a decade now, nearing two. That is rather dismaying. But the rage-inducing thing is that I get gaslighted every single week, via department emails, university events, comments by colleagues or bosses, that, actually, it is people who look like me who are being advantaged and only a misogynist fascist would complain about the treatment I have been getting (which doesn't exist anyway, you're paranoid).

I have turned rather bitter as a consequence and developed quite a bit of resentment against the type of person who would profit from, or engage in, this gaslighting. The only thing keeping me from kiplingposting(1) is my commitment to liberalism, which so far seems to be a non-depletable resource. But I doubt it is the same for others.

(1) It was not suddently bred. It will not swiftly abate and all that.

The strongest affirmative action seems confined, for the moment, to places like universities, where whites are probably more liberal(in the technical sense of the word) than average.

If this was a major issue the red tribe elite was dealing with, the picture would be rather different.

The strongest affirmative action seems confined, for the moment, to places like universities, where whites are probably more liberal(in the technical sense of the word) than average.

Explicit AA maybe. Implicit AA (because someone has to report how his dep. is doing on diversity metrics or because he wants to boast about diversity hires at his next job interview - or because he's a true believer) is much more widespread.

If this was a major issue the red tribe elite was dealing with, the picture would be rather different.

As soon as men are in positions of power, they are not affected by diversity hiring as much anymore. And they don't give a rat's ass about the men coming up behind them. To the contrary, they're their competition. I've recently been to a consortium meeting where the tenured professors clutched pearls about how there are too many men among them. No worries though, we'll just have preferential hiring for the post-docs and doctoral students! This is what feminists don't get (or don't want to get) about the "patriarchy". There is no male solidarity.

And they don't give a rat's ass about the men coming up behind them. To the contrary, they're their competition.

Have you considered that this is an effect of your bubble? Red tribers do not think or behave like this. If AA blatantly affects them and theirs, they will get upset about it. It very rarely does, however, because the blue tribe mostly implements it in places where there are few red tribers to begin with.

That is very possible. On the other hand, I have never seen a republican politician do anything against anti-male discrimination.

but given that these situations are very rare, I don't think it really matters that much

Well, given that these perfectly equivalent candidates are so vanishingly rare that any effects of such decisions are trivial, how about we just not do any affirmative action? It’s so rare it doesn’t really matter after all, right?

We move inexorably yet imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can't be ended because the beneficiaries are too weak to one in which it can't be ended because they are too strong.

Which was always the point.

A very similar line of argument came up in the recent SCOTUS affirmative action cases. Harvard/UNC really tried to characterize their use of race in a minimal way. I.e. we're not picking students on race alone, it's just one of many factors in a holistic process, there are no quotas, no "points" for being a certain race, not a single specific applicant has been identified who was rejected because of their race, etc. The conservative justices seized on this to say something like "well then you wouldn't have any problem with us issuing a ruling saying you can't discriminate on race, right?"

In practice, true underrepresentation-as-tiebreaker practices are just not that big a deal for over- or proportionally represented candidates. The reason certain groups are underrepresented in certain positions is that they're underrepresented among qualified applicants, often dramatically. There just aren't that many to compete with, relative to the slots to be filled.

I guess one exception might be US Asians competing against whites, because we outnumber them so much. Tech companies aren't using race as a tiebreaker between Asians and whites, but universities probably are.

The bigger issue, as you say, is the bailey, where "tie" is defined loosely enough for a half-sigma difference to count as a tie.

The heuristic requires that the candidates' identity not be considered until the final choice

University systems now screen out 80% of faculty hires on "diversity" scoring before even passing the remaining resumes on to the hiring committee to be judged on merit.

Just so we're clear that this hypothetical is entirely theoretical and has no bearing on diversity hiring as practiced, since it started by defending a real world example.

University systems now screen out 80% of faculty hires on "diversity" scoring before even passing the remaining resumes on to the hiring committee to be judged on merit.

This may be true for universities – I'm not sure about the exact numbers but I accept your overall point – but do we have any reason to believe this was also the case for Brinton? As I said, Brinton seems to be well qualified for the position. Does the US government regularly do this kind of screening? Do we know about other more qualified people who were automatically rejected for not being diverse enough? Someone with a PhD in nuclear waste management instead of just a master's degree? Without evidence, this is just assuming your outgroup did something bad and then getting angry about it.

That said, you brought up hiring at universities. In another comment, I dismissed concerns that narrow affirmative action would have a significant negative effect on the ability of members of the majority group to get hired, because situations where it may apply are exceedingly rare. However, this has made me reconsider. It is my understanding that, outside a few specific fields, getting an academic job is extremely difficult, and it is often the case that a large number of applicants are equally qualified. Narrow affirmative action could then make it straight-up impossible for some people to get hired. Honestly, as of writing this, I haven't quite made up my mind. But if we had deltas here, you'd definitely get one.

University systems now screen out 80% of faculty hires on "diversity" scoring before even passing the remaining resumes on to the hiring committee to be judged on merit.

Source?

My favorite part of the UC site you linked to is this: "As a reminder, candidates do not need to belong to a particular group or demographic, or to hold particular viewpoints, to be successful in this [getting a diversity score]."

I went through the first couple the sections of the evaluation and scoring rules, and a college administrator employed in a U.C. DEI office qualified for the highest possible score in both.

Yep. Only the top 20% most politically compliant people even being eligible for jobs is a huge coup for them. It chokes off the last possibility that some dissenter could earn a place through merit, since the quality of their work has no bearing on the DEI pre-screening.

Rejecting people for saying "minority" instead of this week's "minoritized persons" is the most effective shibboleth check since the original.

University systems now screen out 80% of faculty hires on "diversity" scoring before even passing the remaining resumes on to the hiring committee to be judged on merit.

Just so we're clear that this hypothetical is entirely theoretical and has no bearing on diversity hiring as practiced, since it started by defending a real world example.

In this particular case, then, wouldn't white man Sam Brinton fail at the first hurdle and never make it to the committee -- unless, he had some other identity trump card to see him through to the next phase? If so, then one could easily argue that his identity enabled him to get hired, even if he wasn't hired "only" because of his identity.

One could, but the government is not a university system, so this is a hypothetical Sam Brinton rather than a real one.

when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen

I feel like whoever came up with this policy was trying to pull a fast one. To the extent that it has any "affirmative" effect, it is unjust. If it is non-discriminatory as its advocates claim... it does nothing. Just like Google's 2nd-chance interview thing called out in Damore's famous memo.

2. Situations where several candidates are, in fact, equally qualified, and only one belongs to a historically marginalized group, are not actually that common.

Much less than uncommon, I think. Rather, nonexistent. Skill is continuous, not discrete. What "equally qualified" actually means is that it would cost more than it's worth to measure qualification finely enough to differentiate.

So the mechanism of this kind of affirmative action is to make mistakes favor historically marginalized groups, which might be worse for those groups' reputation than naked quotas. This kind of thumb on the scales means you'll more often meet surprisingly incompetent "marginalized" co-workers, and surprisingly competent "non-marginalized" ones. Eventually this will stop being a surprise. Quotas, one hopes, are satisfied by overpaying "marginalized" employees, which invites resentment, but at least it doesn't seed FUD.

Yeah, whatever about Brinton's real qualifications, there is no way that their previous advocacy for LGBT causes didn't come up, even on the application as to "So what were you working at for the past few years?" While they did do work in the field of nuclear waste disposal, they were also out and about in LGBT affairs:

Calling themselves a "survivor" of conversion therapy, Brinton was the first such individual to testify before the United Nations Convention against Torture regarding their experience in November 2014, as the advisory committee co-chair of the National Center for Lesbian Rights' #BornPerfect campaign. Brinton held the position until at least September 2015.

Brinton, on December 1, 2016, founded the #50Bills50States campaign with the goal of prohibiting the pseudoscientific practice of conversion therapy throughout the U.S.

In 2016 and 2018, Brinton was the principal officer for the Washington DC chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an LGBTQ charity and human rights group.

From 2017 to 2019, Brinton was the head of advocacy and government affairs at the non-profit LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project.

Work they did in the field:

In 2016, Brinton was a senior policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center, lobbying for updated regulations so nuclear waste can be used to power advanced nuclear reactors. In February 2020, the website of Deep Isolation, a Berkeley, California, nuclear waste storage and disposal company, listed them as its Director of Legislative Affairs and in May 2022 they were its Director of Global Political Strategy. In 2022, Brinton's profile at the Department of Energy (DOE) indicated their previous work with the Breakthrough Institute, the Clean Air Task Force, and Third Way.

2022, Brinton became a deputy assistant secretary at DOE, serving in the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition.

In February 2022, an unidentified Department of Energy employee filed allegations of hiring malpractice with the Office of the Inspector General due to concern regarding Brinton's qualifications for a Senior Executive Service (SES) level position, i.e. "the class of federal career officials who rank just below top presidential appointees in seniority".

So they were indeed qualified for the job, but. And it's that "but" which is causing all the queries. Would Brinton have been hired if they had been "Samuel Otis Brinton, cis white bisexual man, he/him pronouns"? Maybe. But what about "Samuel Otis Brinton, cis white straight man, he/him pronouns"? All the publicity about "first non-binary gender-fluid person in federal government leadership" does mean that the question of "is this a diversity hire first and foremost?" will be asked. And then we have the two charges of stealing luggage, which only muddies the water even further. Sexual fetish? Impulse control disorder like kleptomania? Any more shoes to drop (as it were) when it comes to sticky fingers or other misdeeds?

One form of affirmative action that I've heard about is that, when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen. As I said above, when it comes down to this kind of decision, the choice is arbitrary, and I don't see any harm in the affirmative action method.

Yeah, but that does rely on them not blotting their copybook, like having little habits such as robbing other people's property. "We hired this stunning brave and valid token representation" looks like a bad decision when it becomes "and they're a thief/other criminal behaviour" because then you don't have the cover of "but they were really, really qualified!", so the rejoinder is "Well maybe you should have picked the equally qualified boring conventional type, there might be a chance they wouldn't turn out to be a whacko".

In the real world, "historically marginalized" groups have been granted various advantages, which might reduce the method's accuracy.

Reduce? Its completely swamped the effects such that the heuristic is nearly always wrong.

Except it is often the case that job postings may state that special characteristic holders will get shortlisted. This brings up the idea that it isn't a random choice between a final shortlist, but that a person is on the shortlist not because they are equally qualified and able but explicitly because of the special characteristic.

Menorahs on Public Lands

The Windows OS has a new feature that displays a small icon in the Desktop search bar. The icon rotates every few days based on the calendar, similar to Google's tradition of customizing their search page. I never paid attention to it until I noticed a Menorah displayed on my Desktop. Presumably subsequent icons would show presents or a Christmas Tree. Certainly, though, it will never display a Nativity or Christian Cross.

I learned recently that Allegheny v. ACLU ruled that a Nativity on public land, as a religious symbol, violates the Establishment Clause but a Menorah on public land does not. According to the logic of the ruling, the Menorah and Christmas Tree are secular symbols of the winter holidays and do not constitute the endorsement of a religion while the Nativity does so. The logic is on its face patently absurd as the Menorah is not a secular symbol in any sense. It is a sacred symbol honoring a miracle upon the successful Jewish revolt against the Hellenists. Reading various opinions from Jewish publications, it is clear that many Jews continue to interpret the public lighting of the Menorah from an adversarial perspective:

The policy argument against public menorah lightings is that we, as Jews, are a tiny minority, surrounded by a dominant religion with a missionary agenda. If the majority religion were given free reign to display its symbols publicly, the results could be disastrous. At best, we would be made to feel like outsiders, a tolerated minority. At worst, we would find ourselves victims of overt proselytization or even anti-semitic attacks...

The dominant religion surrounds us with its symbols anyway. Our children see it and are inevitably affected. The gentile "holiday spirit" touches almost every Jew's life.

We, as Jews, can react one of two ways. We can ignore it, hoping that this yearly bombardment goes away. Or we can affirmatively counter in a positive, Jewish manner. Public menorahs are the Jewish answer to the gap felt by many Jews during the holiday season. The dominant religion will display its decorations anyway, whether we light our menorahs or not. Why not give a Jewish child the opportunity to feel some pride about his or her holiday, when his Gentile friends are doing the same?

The Establishment of Religion Takes Many Forms

The concept of the Establishment of Religion is tenuous and arbitrary. What is religion except for a unique collection of symbols, rituals, and myths that have an, often consciously-designed, psychological effect on intended flocks? That psychological effect influences our behavior: it affects our loyalties and our behavior towards the ingroup/outgroup, our code of conduct in society, our mate selection and reproductive behaviors, our politics, our community rituals, and much more.

Myth, Religion, art, politics, and culture all belong under the same umbrella. Religion is everywhere and most people today do not consume their religious messaging through a church but through mass media. Many here have interpreted the BLM movement and protests as a Religious movement, often with the intent to dismiss it or ridicule it. This power of mass media was envisioned by Richard Wagner:

The text is fed into the throat of a singer; the output of this throat is fed into an amplifier named orchestra, the output of this orchestra is fed into a light show, and the whole thing, finally, is fed into the nervous system of the audience.

In other words, Wagner's acoustics is posited as a media invention that employed a large, yet hidden orchestra to produce "acoustic hallucinations" and immerse the audience in a reverberant sound. This account thus determines a "total world" of hearing in the vocal and musical content of Wagnerian music-drama... its sensory overwhelming created an aesthetic experience that we may now see as a "prehistory" for present-day cinema.

Wagner's conception of proto mass-media as Gesamtkunstwerk was preempted by Plato, who two thousand years earlier envisioned the psychological power of the cinematic projection of light. Today, our consumption of Myth: those projections which intelligently orient our view of the world in understanding right and wrong, heroes and villain, are increasingly delivered through mass media rather than traditional religious institutions.

Earlier this week at the lighting of the Menorah inside the White House, not to be confused with the giant Menorah on the White House Lawn, President Biden remarked "Together, we must stand up against the disturbing rise in antisemitism" while touting the December 12th formation of the Inter-Agency Group to Counter Antisemitism, which will be "led by Domestic Policy Council staff and National Security Council staff to increase and better coordinate U.S. Government efforts to counter antisemitism":

The President has tasked the inter-agency group, as its first order of business, to develop a national strategy to counter antisemitism. This strategy will raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans, address antisemitic harassment and abuse both online and offline, seek to prevent antisemitic attacks and incidents, and encourage whole-of-society efforts to counter antisemitism and build a more inclusive nation.

At the ceremony, also emphasized was "securing the largest-ever increase in federal funding for the physical security of nonprofits, including synagogues and Jewish Community Centers".

Likewise, in the recently passed 2023 budget, in addition to at least $4 billion for Israel, over $65 million in federal funds was allocated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum which, combined with the abundant support from private funds, amounted to a whopping $245 million in support for that museum in 2022. That makes it apparently, and by far, the most well-funded museum in the Nation's capital with well over 3x the funding of the National WWII Museum.

In contrast, the National Museum of American History had a 2018 budget of $40 million despite the fact it received 3.8M visitors in 2016, in comparison to the Holocaust Museum's 1.6 million for that year.

Which of the above should be considered the establishment of religion? All of it.

Christmas is Never Secular

In the same vein, Christmas is fundamentally a Religious festival even in its most non-Christian expression. It's the time of year where the masses practice a form of religious observance that is more comparable to a pagan, pre-Christian form of worship.

We ritualistically build our household lararium next to the hearth. We set out milk and cookies as an offering to a benevolent god who lives in a mystical Hyperborean realm, judges our behavior, and leaves us gifts. We honor his image in our films, songs, and Myth, especially to the delight of women and children. We carry on quirky household traditions which are transmitted ancestrally. Our celebration of Christmas and observance of Santa Claus would be more similar to the way the Romans, for example, worshipped their ancestral or household gods.

In this sense a "secular Christmas symbol" is an oxymoron. There is no such thing, which is acknowledged by the Jewish perspective which remarked on the foreignness and inescapability of the gentile "Holiday Spirit". The reality is that both the Menorah and Christmas Tree are religious symbols, and the government is constructively establishing religion with its display of both.

The "War on Christmas"

The Christians, in a way, get the short end of the stick for not being allowed to display their sacred symbols on public land. But who do they have to blame for that? They have allowed, without much protest, the designation of their own religion as second-class to the financial and legal privileges granted to Judaism. Christians tilt at windmills while sacred symbols of Jewish Victory tower over them during the Christmas holiday at the White House and Central Park, while their own sacred symbols are outlawed on the same land.

To reverse course, Christians would need to adopt the adversarial perspective that motivates Jews to light the Menorahs in these spaces. But given Christian doctrine it is not clear that the religion is capable of asserting itself in that way.

what's the problem? That Christians weren't allowed both the tree and the nativity display? Or that the tree is pagan, and therefore 'technically' Christians got nothing?

The Christmas Tree is not a Christian symbol. Every atheist I know has a Christmas Tree in his house. I live in a heavily Hindu area, and they are participating in Christmas lights and decorations with about as high participation as my white neighbors. The Nativity, though is a Christian symbol.

Jews are allowed to have their sacred religious symbol, which does have a deeply religious and symbolically important purpose. Whereas Christians are denied a Nativity in these same, symbolically-important public spaces.

This is very meaningful, as meaningful as Jews would interpret it if the Menorah in front of the White House were removed and replaced with a giant Nativity Scene. They would, rightfully, attribute important meaning to that act. All I am doing is calling attention to the fact that the status quo is also deeply meaningful and indicative of cultural power and influence.

Yeah, labeling a menorah as secular is bizarre. Someone’s playing with a motte and bailey for the first amendment. Now why does it demand a wall of text again?

SecureSignals

Oh. Right.

There’s an argument to be made the angels and star affiliated with Christmas trees make them just as referential as the menorah. Of course, plenty of Christmas trees lack those elements; I’m not clear on whether the case law allowing them specifies the decorations. On the balance, this looks like a weird exploit of the categorization, and menorahs should probably not be allowed anywhere that a cross wouldn’t.

Out of curiosity, what other icons show up in that position? On Easter, in particular.

At the ceremony, also emphasized was "securing the largest-ever increase in federal funding for the physical security of nonprofits, including synagogues and Jewish Community Centers".

Likewise, in the recently passed 2023 budget, in addition to at least $4 billion for Israel, over $65 million in federal funds was allocated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum which, combined with the abundant support from private funds, amounted to a whopping $245 million in support for that museum in 2022. That makes it apparently, and by far, the most well-funded museum in the Nation's capital with well over 3x the funding of the National WWII Museum.

In contrast, the National Museum of American History had a 2018 budget of $40 million despite the fact it received 3.8M visitors in 2016, in comparison to the Holocaust Museum's 1.6 million for that year.

Which of the above should be considered the establishment of religion? All of it.

None of it.

So this is a typical example of how you try to sneak a lot of assertions past hoping people won't examine them too closely.

First of all, support for Israel is certainly a topic of foreign policy worthy of discussion and debate, but it is not de facto "establishment of religion." Israel and Judaism may be closely coupled, but the U.S. has vested interests in Israel that go far beyond an affection for Jews. We aren't supporting Israel to support Judaism, any more than we are supporting Egypt to support Islam.

Moving on to another little factoid you tried to trot past us without scrutiny: yes, the Holocaust Memorial Museum has a larger total budget than the National Museum of American History. However, the National Museum of American History is one of sixteen Smithsonian museums. Comparing the budget of 1/16 of the Smithsonian with the budget of a single non-Smithsonian museum is disingenuous.

Given that you don't think the National Holocaust Museum should exist at all, I can see why it wouldn't be a compelling argument if you drilled down to the details and just complained about the National Holocaust Museum getting $65M in federal funds vs. $25M for the National Museum of American History, $20M for the American Museum of Natural History, $136M (!!) for the National Art Gallery, $54M for the National Portrait Gallery, $43M for the Air and Space Museum, etc. Likewise, arguing that the Holocaust Museum shouldn't exist because the Holocaust didn't happen obviously wouldn't get you much traction except among fellow true believers. But for the majority of people who believe that the Holocaust (a) happened and (b) was bad enough to warrant commemorating with a museum, calling it a "religious establishment" is a ridiculous argument. It's commemorated because people actually believe the Holocaust happened and should be remembered, not because Jews Jews Jews. You can of course try (as you do) to persuade people that the Holocaust was fake, but "recognizing the Holocaust violates the Establishment Clause" is sophistry. Even if the Holocaust were fake and we're all commemorating a hoax, the Holocaust Museum should be defunded on that basis, not on the basis that it's a Jewish religious institution, which it is not.

Given that you don't think the National Holocaust Museum should exist at all

Woah there, that's an extremely uncharitable assertion. SS might be perfectly supportive of the museum existing, just with some of the numbers changed. Or the dates.

Woah there, that's an extremely uncharitable assertion. SS might be perfectly supportive of the museum existing, just with some of the numbers changed. Or the dates.

Given that SS's history has made his position on the Holocaust and Jews very clear, I don't think it's uncharitable to conclude that he does not think the National Holocaust Museum should exist. That seems to be the thrust, in fact, of the post I responded to. But if this is not true, I'll accept correction and would be fascinated to hear what form he believes the National Holocaust Museum should take.

The USHMM should exist if it presents an accurate historical account, to the best of its abilities, of what transpired, and it should not exist if it does not do so due to malice and gross negligence. It should exist if it is trying to preserve and present history, it should not exist for the primary purpose of psychologically influencing the American public for the benefit of international Jewry. Do you think that's a fair position?

But the purpose of my post was not to argue whether the museum should or should not exist. My point was that the massive level of funding available to that USHMM from both public and private sources, which stands head and shoulders above all other museums, indicates a level of prioritization in the subject matter we consider sacred. To call this "secular" is just absurd. Being a "Holocaust Denier" is an infinitely more grave charge than being called an infidel or atheist. That is a Religious phenomenon.

"Religion" is not just what you hear when you go to church. It's transmitted through the symbols we display on public land, the museums we build and provide the most funding for, and the esoteric messaging that is embedded in mass media. Symbols matter, this is deeply understood by Jews themselves who have worked very hard to achieve the prevailing status quo. Meanwhile, Christians are not even operating in the same arena and it's not clear if they are able to do so.

The USHMM should exist if it presents an accurate historical account, to the best of its abilities, of what transpired, and it should not exist if it does not do so due to malice and gross negligence. It should exist if it is trying to preserve and present history, it should not exist for the primary purpose of psychologically influencing the American public for the benefit of international Jewry. Do you think that's a fair position?

Sure. Of course that's kind of like saying "The Air and Space Museum should not exist if its purpose is to perpetuate the hoax of NASA's faked moon landings." And "the Museum of Natural History should not exist if its purpose is for atheists to psychologically influence the American public to turn them away from God and the reality of Biblical creation."

But the purpose of my post was not to argue whether the museum should or should not exist. My point was that the massive level of funding available to that USHMM from both public and private sources, which stands head and shoulders above all other museums,

I gave a list of funding for other museums. The USHMM is arguably above average, but hardly "head and shoulders" above all other museums. Complain about them getting too much money if you wish, but they're still just one of many museums that receives federal funding and their level of funding is not so much greater as you claim.

To call this "secular" is just absurd. Being a "Holocaust Denier" is an infinitely more grave charge than being called an infidel or atheist. That is a Religious phenomenon.

You believing this does not make it true. There are also deniers of other atrocities, such as the Armenian genocides and the Rape of Nanking. Is it a "religious" phenomenon to believe those events happen, or only if you happen to disagree about whether they did?

Religion" is not just what you hear when you go to church. Its transmitted through the symbols we display on public land, the museums we build and provide the most funding for, and the esoteric messaging that is embedded in mass media. Symbols matter, this is deeply understood by Jews themselves who have worked very hard to achieve the prevailing status quo.

Again, accepting your premises, yes, the Elders of Zion have created a religion and indoctrinated us all in its arcane symbols and articles of faith.

But that requires accepting your premises. If one doesn't accept your premises, your argument is nonsense.

First of all, support for Israel is certainly a topic of foreign policy worthy of discussion and debate, but it is not de facto "establishment of religion." Israel and Judaism may be closely coupled, but the U.S. has vested interests in Israel that go far beyond an affection for Jews. We aren't supporting Israel to support Judaism, any more than we are supporting Egypt to support Islam.

America is supporting Egypt to support Israel!

It's pretty clear. As soon as Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel they got a flood of US aid. They got $5.9 billion in US aid in 1979, when the treaty was signed, up from about $1 billion in 1975 when they were signing disengagement treaties over the Sinai. Before, in 1974 they were getting $70 million. When Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, they got $700 million in debt relief from the US and about half a billion in annual aid since, 10x what it was before.

The fact of the matter is that there are enormously wealthy and powerful Jewish billionaires and lobby groups who generously donate to candidates and encourage them to be pro-Israeli. Adelson on the Republican side for example. He gave Trump at least a hundred million dollars, possibly more. Besides funding pro-Israel political candidates, he funds Jewish-Israeli institutes at universities to improve its image and discourse power there.

one of the key goals of Adelson and other advocates of the Jewish center is to moderate the Arab presence at the university." The program's first director, Yossi Shain (who also heads the Hartog School of Government at Tel Aviv University), said it was important to set up such a program at Georgetown "because it's a Jesuit school, because it's in Washington, because it's in the foreign service school."

Besides Adelson (and many other billionaires funding other pro-Israeli candidates who I've left out for conciseness), there's AIPAC which is tremendously powerful.

Former Congressman Mervyn Dymally (D-CA) once called AIPAC "without question the most effective lobby in Congress," and the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Lee Hamilton, who served in Congress for thirty-four years, said in 1991, "There's no lobby group that matches it . . . They're in a class by themselves

And there are many other Jewish slavishly pro-Israel groups.

Albert Chernin, the executive director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC, later renamed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs), expressed this perspective in 1978 when he said that our "first priority is Israel, of course, reflecting the complete identity of views of the American Jewish leadership with the concerns of the rank and file." The historian Jack Wertheimer terms this comment a "stunning admission that political efforts to shore up Israel superseded all other concerns of Jewish community relations organizations in the United States."

as Hyman Bookbinder, a high-ranking official of the American Jewish Committee, once admitted, "Unless something is terribly pressing, really critical or fundamental, you parrot Israel's line in order to retain American support. As American Jews, we don't go around saying Israel is wrong about its policies.

US support for Israel is primarily motivated by this wealthy and influential band of lobby groups and billionaires, who are predominantly made up of Jews supporting their coethnics/religious brethren. There are also Christian Zionists and more dovish Jewish groups but they are in the minority.

Israel gets away with so much - they bomb/invade their neighbors, sell US technology to China, spy flagrantly on the US, supply misleading intelligence about the Iraqi nuclear program, bomb a US ship. They never join in US wars and yet get the most aid, despite being a rich country. The US suffers hundreds of billions in economic damage due to the Arab oil embargo - because they resupply Israel during the Yom Kippur war. Israel delegitimizes the non-proliferation treaty, they motivate Iranian nuclearization. They're a massive strategic deadweight. Only the lobbying can explain such ongoing US support.

America is supporting Egypt to support Israel!

I don't know who this Adelson person is that you're talking about, but if you were even vaguely familiar the last 100 years or so of middle eastern history/politics you'd recognize how just how absurd that claim is. Egypt has been one of Israel's chief adversaries/rivals since it's founding. We support Egypt not because it helps Israel (just the opposite in fact) we support Egypt to keep a lid on North Africa and because over 10% of the world's shipping passes through the Suez Canal. Meanwhile we support the Israeli's because "democracy" and as a counterweight against the Iranians. We paid the Egyptians off because it's a bit awkward to have two ostensible US allies fighting each other.

Now if you had chosen the Saudis as your example you might have been able to make a case, but you didn't because you don't know middle eastern history/politics.

Did you miss the part where I described how US aid went up an order of magnitude as they signed treaties with Israel?

Why would the US not care about Egypt in 1974, like them 10x more in 1975 and then even more in 1979? If you were right about the shipping, you'd expect aid to be consistent through that whole Cold War period. Or at least it would rise when they open the Suez canal, which it did in 1975. Your theory explains only the 1975 surge but not 1979. And then there's Jordan too, a country not known for its shipping lanes.

If it's just Egypt and just 1975, maybe they're buying the shipping lanes. But Egypt and Jordan, just after they sign treaties with Israel? The common denominator is Israel.

Don't say I don't understand Middle Eastern history when you haven't even understood my post.

Did you miss the part where I described how US aid went up an order of magnitude as they signed treaties with Israel?

Did you not understand my post? What do you think the "Pay off" I was referring to was?

The Egyptian-Israeli talks at Camp David happen in the context of a long simmering border conflict between Egypt and Israel punctuated by three shooting wars in as many decades. Despite the pro-West Egyptian monarchy being overthrown in '52, the US had formally recognized the new government and supported them against against the French and British. The US thinking at the time being that a stable and "neutral" and Islamist government in Egypt would be vastly preferable to a Communist one aligned with the Soviet Union. The countries that are now Syria and Iraq had already started cozying up to the Soviets and there were concerns that the whole region might "go red". This put the US in the awkward position of supporting both Egypt and Israel even while Egypt and Israel were at war with each other. As such, any support for one naturally viewed as a betrayal by the other. I can't help but notice that as much as Reddit-Nazis and the BDS crowd both like to talk about the USS Liberty and similar incidents they never talk about why tensions between the US and Israel were so strained through the 60s and 70s. Anyway, in an effort to resolve this awkwardness the US put pressure on Israel to relinquish Gaza and the Sinai to Egypt while simultaneously offering the Egyptians a security pact and generous financial incentives to walk away from the conflict. The rest as they say is history. Israel relinquished the Sinai and Egypt got paid.

My point is that it's not just Egypt and it's not just '79, nor is it just Israel, it's a whole tangled mess going back to first world war.

  1. If the US wanted to gain favor with the Arabs, they could simply not support Israel, their number one enemy.

  2. Syria and Egypt started cozying up to the Soviets precisely because the US was extremely reluctant to provide them weapons that might be used against Israel. The region was going red because of US support for Israel.

  3. Tensions between the US and Israel were hardly strained through the 60s and 70s. They were improving, despite Israel's best efforts. Israel nuclearized, making the NPT into an even bigger joke and successfully got massive US miiltary aid in the '67 and '73 wars, bringing down the Arab oil embargo that cost the US hundreds of billions.

This put the US in the awkward position of supporting both Egypt and Israel even while Egypt and Israel were at war with each other

The US might have wanted Egypt onside but clearly not at the cost of dumping Israel, otherwise they would have. There's nothing messy about it, the situation is quite clear. The US clearly weighs Israeli security very highly, they were and are willing to sacrifice relations with the Arabs, oil security (quite literally when it comes to the deal where Israel gets a guaranteed US-supplied oil reserve), nuclear-nonproliferation and considerable amounts of money for this goal.

If the US was so concerned with Egyptian security, why not provide them military aid? Why not fly in billions worth of armaments if they look like they're losing a war? Because the US did not want them to defeat Israel, Israel was valued higher.

And there's US aid for Jordan too, as I keep mentioning.

The countries that are now Syria and Iraq

??? You are surely aware that Syria got its independence from France in 1946, that the shortlived United Arab Republic was between Syria and Egypt, not Syria and Iraq?

America is supporting Egypt to support Israel!

Even if that were true (which I don't really know to be true or false), that would still prove the very point @Amadan was making. Because if we were supporting Egypt to support Israel, then we aren't doing it to support Islam, much like Amadan said.

Well no the US isn't supporting Islam. But he was saying it's 'not supporting the establishment of religion' generally. I'm saying US support for Israel is motivated by the Israel lobby in the US, who is primarily motivated by religious feeling.

That isn't how I understood it. He was using the support of Egypt to establish a point: that support for a country is not because one supports its religion. Nothing to do with establishment of religion more generally, simply saying that if you support a country it can be for reasons other than because you support its religion. And in that light, even support for Egypt in order to support Israel would prove his point. Which having proven that point, goes to show that US support for Israel is not necessarily due to support for Judaism, but could be for other reasons as well.

First of all, support for Israel is certainly a topic of foreign policy worthy of discussion and debate, but it is not de facto "establishment of religion." Israel and Judaism may be closely coupled, but the U.S. has vested interests in Israel that go far beyond an affection for Jews. We aren't supporting Israel to support Judaism, any more than we are supporting Egypt to support Islam.

We aren't supporting Israel to support Judaism

He was arguing, in contrast to OP, that US support for Israel was for broader strategic reasons, not religious reasons.

I'm saying that US support for Egypt is to support Israel, which is motivated by religion. Thus US support for Egypt is due to religion, albeit not Egypt's religion.

The strategic reasons to support Israel don't merit the enormous amount of leeway and aid it recieves, compared to the amount of harm the alliance causes the US, as I said above.

Comparing the budget of 1/16 of the Smithsonian with the budget of a single non-Smithsonian museum is disingenuous.

It's makes way more sense to me to compare the budget of one museum to another museum. Not to compare one museum to a system of 16 other museums. The fact that the Holocaust Museum, which focuses almost exclusively on Jews, gets twice as much federal funding as the museum for all of the rest of American history combined looks unfair to me. It's not like we just really care about genocides in the abstract, there's no Armenian genocide museum or one for the Tutsi or the Kurds or any of the other thousands of ethnicities that have been mass murdered at some point in history.

It's makes way more sense to me to compare the budget of one museum to another museum. Not to compare one museum to a system of 16 other museums.

The point is that if you look at one museum among seventeen and note that it receives more funding than some and less than others, it looks a lot less outrageous than SS's cherry-picked comparison of the USHH with one of those other seventeen museums. He chose the National Museum of American History specifically because he wanted to imply "We elevate Jews above American history." When you consider the National Museum of American History is just 1/16 of the Smithsonian, individual museum budgets look a lot less like the Elders of Zion deciding what gets priority and more like Congress parceling out money according to standard funding requests and budget wrangling.

You can of course make an argument that USHH should not exist, or should not receive federal funding, if you wish, but "the USHH receiving slightly more money than the National Museum of American History is evidence of Jewish cultural domination" is a dumb argument that makes no sense in context. The relative funding of all museums getting federal grants is not racked and stacked according to how "important" we think each museum is compared to one another.

The point is that if you look at one museum among seventeen and note that it receives more funding than some and less than others

As I've said, it received $244 million from public and private sources. That is not "more than some and less than others", that is vastly more than all others. I have also said that this fact indicates a prioritization of the subject matter we consider sacred.

If the museum to the Victims of Communism had a $244 million dollar budget in combined public and private support, and the USHMM had a $1 million budget in combined public and private support, I would not say, like you do, "Oh well, that's just due to the way the government processes budget requests." I would also attribute that to a meaningful difference in the cultural narratives we consider sacred compared to the present reality.

In this alternate universe where the Victims of Communism museum had $244 million in support and the USHMM had $1 million support, how could you see that happening without a major cultural change in this alternate world?

As I've said, it received $244 million from public and private sources. That is not "more than some and less than others", that is vastly more than all others. I have also said that this fact indicates a prioritization of the subject matter we consider sacred.

Even assuming this is true (I haven't actually looked at the balance sheet for every Smithsonian, let alone every museum in the country), you are intentionally conflating public and private funding.

If you want to make an argument that Jews and Israel (I assume those are the main sources of private contributions) contribute a lot of money to the Holocaust Museum, make that argument, but it's hardly surprising, and would not be surprising or nefarious but completely understandable if you allow, for the sake of argument, that the Holocaust actually happened. Therefore it is not good evidence that the Holocaust didn't happen and is only being propped up as a "sacred symbol" pushed upon us by Jews.

If the museum to the Victims of Communism had a $244 million dollar budget in combined public and private support, and the USHMM had a $1 million budget in combined public and private support, I would not say, like you do, "Oh well, that's just due to the way the government processes budget requests."

I see that little switcheroo you did again. If we talk about how the government processes budget requests, we are talking specifically about what we (the American taxpayers) are paying for.

If you want to compare every single private institution in the country and how much money they receive from various private sources, we can do that, but it doesn't quite fit the narrative you are trying to construct here, does it?

I would assume victims of communism would be more likely to contribute money to a museum to the Victims of Communism, and victims of the Holocaust would be more likely to contribute money to a museum to victims of the Holocaust. You have to make several leaps of logic that you are studiously trying to keep us from scrutinizing too closely to go from "The Holocaust Museum gets a lot of money" to "Jews control the narrative and our priorities."

I learned recently that Allegheny v. ACLU ruled that a Nativity on public land, as a religious symbol, violates the Establishment Clause but a Menorah on public land does not. According to the logic of the ruling, the Menorah and Christmas Tree are secular symbols of the winter holidays and do not constitute the endorsement of a religion while the Nativity does so. The logic is on its face patently absurd as the Menorah is not a secular symbol in any sense.

  1. No, only two justices voted that the nativity scene violated the Establishment Clause while the menorah did not. Three judges voted that both violated the Establishment Clause and four voted that neither did.

  2. The argument was not so much that a menorah per se is a secular symbol, but rather only that that particular menorah was, in large part because it was part of a larger display which included a Christmas tree and a celebration of liberty, all of whuch they deemed secular.

  3. The Court actually remanded the case to determine whether the menorah violated the Establishment Clause for reasons not addressed in the appeal.

  4. The Court okayed the display of a creche in 1984 in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668. The difference in Allegheny, in the view of the five justices who voted that the creche was NG, was that "Here, unlike in Lynch, nothing in the context of the display detracts from the creche's religious message. The Lynch display composed a series of figures and objects, each group of which had its own focal point. Santa's house and his reindeer were objects of attention separate from the creche, and had their specific visual story to tell. Similarly, whatever a "talking" wishing well may be, it obviously was a center of attention separate from the creche. Here, in contrast, the creche stands alone: it is the single element of the display on the Grand Staircase." Note that this analysis is the same as that applied to the menorah.

  5. The creche also included the phrase, "Glory to God in the Highest!"

  6. And here is how Justice Gorsuch summarized the case law, just last May: "May a State or local government display a Christmas nativity scene? Some courts said yes, others no. How about a menorah? Again, the answers ran both ways."

So, your example doesn’t work.

No, only two justices voted that the nativity scene violated the Establishment Clause while the menorah did not. Three judges voted that both violated the Establishment Clause and four voted that neither did.

Why are you saying "No" when you are just restating the verdict as I've described?

The argument was not so much that a menorah per se is a secular symbol, but rather only that that particular menorah was

Obviously that is how judicial precedent works. But that particular menorah was not a secular symbol, that is an absurd claim. It was a sacred Jewish symbol, including that particular menorah.

Here, in contrast, the creche stands alone: it is the single element of the display on the Grand Staircase." Note that this analysis is the same as that applied to the menorah.

Where exactly are the elements distracting the menorah outside the White House or the world's largest menorah in Central Park? Menorah lighting is clearly privileged well beyond the display of the Nativity scene, both in case law and in just using your eyes to see which of the two towers over the White House and Central Park. Gorsuch may be hinting that this will be revisited, which would be a good win for Christians and interesting Culture War moment. But the status quo obviously privileges the menorah above the Nativity.

I know I'm wasting my time, but:

Why are you saying "No" when you are just restating the verdict as I've described?

Please read more carefully.

Obviously that is how judicial precedent works. But that particular menorah was not a secular symbol, that is an absurd claim. It was a sacred Jewish symbol, including that particular menorah.

  1. What I said has nothing to do with "how judicial precedent works"

  2. A creche is far more of a sacred religious symbol than is a menorah, given how what a trivial part of Judaism Hannukah is, and how central Xmas is to Christianity. Yet, as Justice Gorsuch notes, sometimes creches are OK, and sometimes not. It depends on the particular creche, same as re menorahs.

Where exactly are the elements distracting the menorah outside the White House or the world's largest menorah in Central Park?

Both appear to be privately funded. When government has a policy of opening public spaces to privately funded displays, it cannot exclude religious displays

Part of your confusion is that you seem to be under the misapprehension that simply displaying a religious symbol is an Establishment Clause violation, but the Courts has never so held. Rather, under the Lemon test, used in the cases you complain about, the display is OK if 1) it has a secular purpose; 2) it has a principal or primary effect that does not advance or inhibit religion; and 3) it does not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. Re #1, that doesn't mean that the law's purpose must be unrelated to religion. Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327 (1987). Most importantly, it is the purpose of the particular decision to exhibit the creche, not the nature of creches in general, which is the ultimate question.

Note that the Lemon test has been criticized for years, and most commentators (and Justice Kagan) considers it to have been effectively overruled this year in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. But that widely misunderstood case is a topic for another day.

A creche is far more of a sacred religious symbol than is a menorah

This is just a totally absurd statement. They are both sacred religious symbols. A menorah is not a secular symbol. Saying "one is more sacred than the other" is just trying to rationalize privileging one religious symbol over the other. Today I saw this Fox News article by Dennis Prager: Hanukkah made western civilization possible:

Holiday celebrates Jewish victory but really preserved the idea of one God instead of pagan beliefs

I also stated, to the annoyance of some here, that the menorah is a symbol of Jewish victory. And Prager affirms that interpretation verbatim. It is obviously a sacred religious symbol. The Talmud says:

Our Rabbis taught: It is incumbent to place the Hanukkah lamp… at the window nearest the street. [Shabbat 21b] Rava asked: [If there is a choice between lighting] the Hanukkah lights and saying kiddush over the wine [for the Sanctification of Shabbat], is 3 [kiddush] more important, because it is a more frequent obligation? [Shabbat is weekly, whereas Hanukkah is only annual.] Or are the Hanukkah lights preferable, on account of publicizing the miracle? Afterasking, he himself answered it: The Hanukkah lights are preferable, because they publicize the miracle.

So the Talmud mandates the display of the menorah to "publicize the miracle." That is a sacred religious symbol.

the display is OK if 1) it has a secular purpose

The menorah lighting at the White House and Central Park does not have a secular purpose. It has a deeply religious and symbolically important purpose. Jews themselves understand this. I know you are going to say it has a secular purpose, because you want to privilege Jewish sacred symbols over Christian symbols. But it doesn't make that position any more rational than it is.

As is always the case when people criticize legal decisions, I would suggest that when smart people with access to all the facts who have thought at great length about the issues involved, and who have had their arguments and conclusions scrutinized by other smart people with access to all the facts who have thought at great length about the issues involved, reach a conclusion, you might be a tad less sure of yourself when you think they are obviously wrong.

I would also suggest that the fact that you use Prager's claim re the historical significance of the battle that Hannukah celebrates as evidence of the religious significance of the holiday, you aren't thinking very rigorous about the claim you are making. Ditto if you think that my observation that "a creche is far more of a sacred religious symbol than is a menorah" is a claim that a menorah is not a sacred religious symbol at all. Obviously, both a creche and a menorah have [edit: I meant "can have" -- see my initial post re the Court talking about the particular menorah in question, not menorahs in general] both secular and religious meaning, as courts have repeatedly recognized.

Finally, the claim that menorahs in public places have no secular purpose is inane; they have the obvious purpose of reinforcing the idea that people of all faiths are members of the polity, which is clear to anyone who is familiar with the history of such displays, religious and otherwise.

Anyhow, as I said, I know I'm wasting my time.

Obviously, both a creche and a menorah have both secular and religious meaning, as courts have repeatedly recognized.

They also made the Roe vs. Wade debacle and upheld it for a number of decades, and how is it faring now huh?. Taking whatever the courts says as a description of reality is insane in my opinion, no less a dereliction of your duty as a thinking and reasoning individual as those that take activist words as gospel.

Bye the bye, you may want to cool it with the consensus building there, as it's not obvious that those symbols have secular meanings.

the idea that people of all faiths are members of the polity, which is clear to anyone who is familiar with the history of such displays

ah yes, all correct thinking people, of course. Because when you see a menorah, you inmediatelly think about your non-jewish family and friends united in a common goal.

They also made the Roe vs. Wade debacle and upheld it for a number of decades, and how is it faring now huh?. Taking whatever the courts says as a description of reality is insane in my opinion, no less a dereliction of your duty as a thinking and reasoning individual as those that take activist words as gospel.

  1. I had a typo; I meant that both "can have" both meanings. See my original post, where I said, " The argument was not so much that a menorah per se is a secular symbol, but rather only that that particular menorah was." Similarly, Xmas symbols can be used as purely religious symbols, or as symbols of more secular values ("Peace on Earth and goodwill to Men"), or as both.

  2. The point is not whether the decisions are correct. It is that they happened. OP claimed that the courts have treated creches and menorahs differently. That certainly appears to be incorrect, at least according to Justice Gorsuch's interpretation of the case law, cited above. When I said "as courts have repeatedly recognized" I did not mean that that made it true, but rather that, when applying the law to these issues, the courts have treated both symbols as sometimes having both meanings.

ah yes, all correct thinking people, of course. Because when you see a menorah, you inmediatelly think about your non-jewish family and friends united in a common goal.

Please read more carefully.

First, I said that, historically, the PURPOSE of govt putting up the symbols or permitting the symbols to be displayed on public grounds was to communicate the idea that people of all faiths are members of the polity. I did NOT say that anyone should, or even does, interpret it that way, so your reference to "correct thinking people" and to how people respond when seeing such menorah is irrelevant.

Second, you seem to think that I meant that it symbolizes that everyone is part of the Jewish community, but I didn't: These are symbols placed in public space, and I said that placing such symbols in public places symbolizes that all groups are members of the polity -- I said that it is a message by the govt to non-Christians. It is not a message from Jewish people to non-Jewish people.

Finally, I don't know where you get "united in a common goal." In Dred Scott, the Court answered "no" to the question, "can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States[?]" The Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause was intended to reject that conclusion, but it certainly says noting about "uniting in a common goal." They are too different things; obviously, members of a community often work on their own independent, frequently opposing goals, particularly in a liberal democracy, given that the right of each person to determine their own "conception of the good" is a foundation of liberalism.* Yet they are all members of the community nonetheless.

*I hope I don't have to explain which meaning of "liberalism" I refer to here

What I said was this:

A creche is far more of a sacred religious symbol than is a menorah, given how what a trivial part of Judaism Hannukah is, and how central Xmas is to Christianity.

That's the standard. And please don't embarrass yourself by saying "how do we know that Hanukkah is trivial?" -- businesses don't close in Israel for Hanukkah, the National Library stays open, and it is not mentioned in the Bible.

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It's a rationalization, but probably not the one you think it is. The courts don't want to ban Christmas trees because it would make them very unpopular, so they came up with this rationalization that they've become secularized. Then to paper over this and look like they were favoring Christianity, they accepted the menorah too, on the dubious but not groundless idea that Haunakkah has become secularized as a Jewish substitute for secularized Christmas.

As is always the case when people criticize legal decisions

The legal decision should be criticized for regarding a sacred Jewish symbol as secular when it is not secular. Jews themselves, the ones who sponsor the menorahs, do not regard them as secular. The decision relied on that logic which is clearly wrong.

What matters, at the end of the day, is that there are giant menorahs in front of the White House and many other public spaces where elected officials pay respect and promise support to Jews, and in those spaces there is no similar regard for Christianity. It's the largest menorah in the world at Central Park, not the largest Nativity scene in the world at Central Park. Allegheny helps explain the development status quo, but I am talking about the meaning of the status quo rather than simply criticizing the legal decision. So your hairsplitting really does not change the fact of the matter.

I would also suggest that the fact that you use Prager's claim re the historical significance of the battle that Hannukah celebrates as evidence of the religious significance of the holiday, you aren't thinking very rigorous about the claim you are making.

All religion has historical significance. The birth of Jesus, whether you regard it as history or myth, is itself a historically important story.

Prager regards the menorah as a symbol of Jewish victory, like many of the Jews I read who weighed in on their interpretation of why it's important to light the menorah in public spaces. "It's a symbol of Jewish victory, and it's historically important" does not make it secular any more than saying "The Cross is a symbol of Christianity, and it's a historically important symbol" makes it secular.

If the menorah were replaced with a Cross (relates to historically important developments, so it's secular!), and Joe Biden attended ceremonies for its dedication, and promised support to the Christian people and federal handouts to Churches and Christian community centers, and created a task force in the National Security apparatus to "counter anti-Christianity", would you regard that as the establishment of religion?

Today I saw this Fox News article by Dennis Prager: Hanukkah made western civilization possible

Yes, but this article is historically absurd, and Dennis Prager is a mind-killed political ideologue. Hannukah is, historically, an incredibly minor festival in judaism. It only took off in the 50's in the U.S., when nice assimilated secular jews wanted their kids to have something to celebrate and get presents for while all the other kids were doing Christmas. The prominence of Hannukah today is entirely a product of Jews not being separate or apart from, or antagonistic to Christianity, but of them trying to blend in and become more like the secularized-Christianity of the American consumer religion.

For that reason, I would suggest not taking what Mr. Prager has to say too seriously.

The menorah lighting at the White House and Central Park does not have a secular purpose

It absolutely does - it affirms that Jews are a welcome part of the community, in the same way that the St. Patrick's Day parade did for the Irish and Columbus Day celebrations used to for the Italians. It's just not only that secular purpose, because the menorah is also a religious symbol for many jews. However, there are many assimilated, reform, and secular jews for whom the menorah does not have a special theological meaning, and who, when pressed, would say that the "miracle" is absolute hogwash.

Source: am half jewish, was raised jewish, but am non-practicing.

Why are you saying "No" when you are just restating the verdict as I've described?

Because what @Gdanning said is in no way what you described.

Here is the first sentence under "Opinion of the Court" in the article I linked:

The majority holding of the Court found that the crèche display violated the Establishment Clause while the menorah did not

The breakdown of the votes between the two sides of the majority is not at all relevant. I even linked the article where anyone could see the vote breakdown between the two sides. But the opinion was as I described.

The key point is that the articles are doing a lot of work here. Notice that it's "the" display and "the" menorah, not "a" display and "a" menorah. In other words, this wasn't a blanket decision saying that menorah's are okay but nativity scenes aren't; it's saying that given the specific context of each display one violated the Establishment Clause while one didn't, and provided some guidance for making such determinations in the future. Given the rhetoric of the actual decision, it's likely that if a menorah were displayed on the courthouse steps in the same manner as the nativity scene, it would likewise be a violation. It's also worth noting that there's nothing about the decision to suggest that it's any evidence of some kind of inappropriate Jewish influence. There weren't any Jews on the court at the time, and the organization that brought the suit, which was arguing that both displays were violations, was the ACLU, which, to put it mildly, doesn't exactly have a reputation for being devois of Jewish influence itself.

Yes, certain parts of the legal establishment have a blatant double standard against Christianity. I’m not exactly philosemitic, but it certainly to me doesn’t seem to be an example of Jewish domination and victory over Christianity or whatever. No doubt a Diwali or Ramadan display would be allowed to, because the relevant variable is certain parts of the blue tribe having a distaste for public expressions of Christian faith, not Jewish privilege.

I’m not exactly philosemitic, but it certainly to me doesn’t seem to be an example of Jewish domination and victory over Christianity or whatever.

If the Christian cross were permitted to be displayed on public land but Jewish religious symbols were banned, would you interpret that as symbolically meaningful? If so, how?

There’s really three possible explanations for that scenario- the people making the decisions have an animus against jews or Judaism, the people making that decision want to promote Christianity over other religions, and some combination thereof(eg the people making that decision want to promote Christianity over Judaism because they have an animus against Judaism). And you’d need to think about which explanation is likely correct based on the available evidence.

Well, we know that large portions of the blue tribe seem incredibly uncomfortable with the religious aspects of Christianity, and don’t share that discomfort with other religions(eg, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism). So banning nativity sets in public fits with that pattern, and forcing blue tribe preferences on people who seem like they might be red tribe sympathetic, while ignoring similar behavior that doesn’t have the same connotations, is fairly common and normal.

The "red tribe" and "blue tribe" heuristic is way overused, there are other types of tribes. The "Blue Tribe" dislike of Christianity has little to do with the driving forces behind the emergence of Public Menorah lightings. Joe Biden has now done two separate Menorah lightings at the White House where he's promised the Jewish People major financial handouts to Israel, Jewish causes, synagogues and Jewish community centers, as well as only this month created a task force to use the National Security apparatus to organize a government response against anti-Semitism.

Does any of this strike you as symbolically demonstrating the political and cultural power of Judaism in the United States government? You think it really reduces to a "blue tribe" dislike of Christianity?

You think it really reduces to a "blue tribe" dislike of Christianity?

I'm not @hydroacetylene, but stated bluntly, yes. I really do think it reduces down to that.

I think that Jews as a group have lots of power in the US and that they're generally not interested in using this power to promote the Jewish religion, for the simple reason that they mostly don't believe in it themselves.

I also think that 'dislike of the religious aspects of christianity' is a real thing that really explains a lot of blue tribe behavior and hypocritical-seeming behavior of institutions under substantial blue tribe sway, and that rounding it all off to Judaism or whatever is dumb because almost none of these people are themselves religious Jews, and that even if a disproportionate number of them are ethnically Jewish it's still a very large majority of them that are gentiles.

I think that Jews as a group have lots of power in the US and that they're generally not interested in using this power to promote the Jewish religion, for the simple reason that they mostly don't believe in it themselves.

Their religion is themselves, and they are their religion. Their religion is a matrilieanly-inherited status to the Chosen people, and that membership is often extremely important even to "non-religious" Jews. Their influence to give themselves special financial and legal privileges as members of that group, handouts of federal funds to their synagogues and community centers, billions of dollars of taxpayer money to their ethnostate, and now a "task force" which will use the national security apparatus to "counter" people who dare to criticize them... That is all promoting their religion, even if "promoting their religion" does not involve great effort to convert gentiles.

You don't necessarily promote a religion by trying to convert others. You can promote it by giving it special status and privileges and protections, or by lighting giant menorahs in symbolically important spaces where Christians are denied a Nativity during the Christian's own very import holiday.

In addition to this, it's focused around the specific parts of Christianity those complaining have unhappy memories of. There are Day of the Dead alters in public schools and libraries.

I'm less certain about Ramadan -- there would be endless complaints in Red areas, and it would probably be forbidden in places like schools and libraries, other than as a statement that it exists. I have not seen Passover celebrated in public institutions, despite most Christians feeling neutral to positive about it.

You may have a point about Ramadan, although it seems to me to also be relevant that Ramadan is usually not timed near a major Christian religious holiday, hence it doesn’t feature very often in diversity lessons.

And I have seen public institutions celebrate Passover, albeit less often than Hanukkah. I think this has to do with the time of year involved; Easter is just less of a big deal to nonreligious people than Christmas.

Ramadan is usually not timed near a major Christian religious holiday

Ramadan is set based on a lunar calendar and moves about ten days earlier every year. This may be true the last few years, but it'll start before Easter within the next decade.


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