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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28328 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-ubc-covers-for-bad-science-in-homeless-cash-transfer-study

A major university (in Canada) published another one of those studies where they give homeless people money and see if they spend it on crack or job applications. Mostly this was met with admiration and joy by the journalist class. The more right-leaning publication I posted above is more skeptical, pointing out of some of the potential problems with the study:

Unfortunately, putting a thumb on the scale was almost the first thing the researchers did. 732 possible participants in the study were screened. The UBC folk didn’t want their sample to include the long-term homeless, so to be eligible, participants had to have been homeless for less than two years. Also, they rejected severe drug and alcohol abusers and the mentally ill.

...

Note that the researchers didn’t even consider including the tent-dwelling, park-occupying homeless: merely by working with shelters, and with the people who prefer to sleep indoors despite some filth and danger, they were giving themselves an enormous implicit advantage. The study, having kinda announced at the outset that it’s garbage, goes on to describe how 229 people were chosen from the screening sample to provide the experimental group for the study. Alas, of the 229 people who took $7,500 payments, half (114) of them disappeared from view and didn’t complete the series of questionnaires and tests they had supposedly undertaken.

This isn't that interesting, it's just a bad study done in Vancouver, what I found interesting was the writer starts with a brief summary of the replication crisis, to an audience that is presumably not intimately familiar with it:

You ever hear of a guy named Daryl Bem? Bem is a social psychologist from Cornell University, now retired at age 85. In the ‘90s, after a long conventional career as an experimenter, he took up the cause of establishing evidence for human extrasensory precognition, and did some studies that seemed to confirm it exists. This set off a war in psychology as critics descended on Bem to nitpick the flaws in his studies and citations of psychic phenomena. Article content

In the end, the consensus about Bem’s research was mostly not that he used mainstream tools of statistical analytics improperly. He had mostly coloured within long-established scientific lines and followed his training in hypothesis tests — everyone’s training. Article content

Bem is now widely regarded as a weird sort of antihero who inadvertently demonstrated flaws in classic hypothesis testing, and whose late work was ground zero for the current “replication crisis” in psychology. It is not that humans are psychic: it is that you can prove the absurd proposition “humans are psychic” by very lightly abusing the received 20th-century scientific method.

There has been and is lots of discussion here about relaying rationalist concepts or ideas to outsiders or average random people in Mottizen's day-to-day lives. With the rise of culture war divisions, and especially the political rhetoric surrounding the Coronavirus Lockdowns and other policies, I'm wondering what approach if any you use when talking to acquaintances or friends who skew liberal, who broadly are happy to have the inertia of universities or the intelligentsia on their side, that you often reject social science research or findings unless personally having vetted them, without sounding to them like a low-IQ backwater hick redneck science denying flat-earther. I suspect that this is impossible.

I think there is an emergent strategy bubbling with dissidents who are not neck deep in grifting.

Ryan Faulk of the Alternative Hypothesis mused a lot on how to influence people into believing 'race realism' or HBD. One of the key points he raised was that it seemed like distrust of the mainstream was a prerequisite for belief in HBD. The important part here is that the 'mainstream' doesn't necessarily refer to academia, but news media. As soon as people associate the mainstream press with horseshit, you, as a dissident, have more inroads with them.

It looks like more people are finding their way towards this mechanism. It wouldn't be the first time the more respectable and socialized 'dissidents' find their way to the path trodden by white nationalists. Now we can wait for the respectable dissidents to utilize this mechanism and ride it victoriously to crush all the fake mainstream narratives, gain popular support and save the West!... Or maybe not.

A key element that keeps people from going all the way is right wing media. Ultimately their cause is based on the same environmentalist priors that fuel the 'left'. And it's guarded just as religiously. Not only that, there is an added weight of getting scolded by ones own side when going too far outside the bounds of the mainstream. On top of that there is a self congratulatory perception that you are proving your side to be good to the outgroup when you toss your own into the fire for any racist heresy. A sort of sacrificial lamb that you hope will quench the hate directed your way.

In any case, the gate that holds truth at bay isn't locked by what right wingers in general perceive to be the outgroup. If that were the case there is no way it could remain locked. The key to the gate is held firmly by a trusted member of the ingroup. And it will stay that way.

Definitely not impossible.

It helps to have more science cred then they do, and just generally not fitting the low-IQ backwater hick stereotype. It also helps if you reject science for scientific reasons, by doing things like citing science on the failures of science, or making specific critiques about how they used the wrong statistical test or whatever.

It's also useful to note that there are many aspects of science that these people reject themselves. Off the top of my head, there's the science relating to IQ, homosexuality, most of the COVID stuff if you pick the right point in time. Plenty more if you're willing to pick and choose bits that they will disagree with. "Science quickly becomes unscientific pseudoscience when touching on political hot topics, for example ".

What is the science related to homosexuality?

Twin studies show that it is primarily not genetic which the "born this way" crowd hates to hear

Twin studies demolish the whole "born this way" thing, and show that it's only "born half way there". Even less for lesbians.

The "scientific consensus" is very against conversion therapy, but the science itself is a similarly mixed bag as that on therapy for something like alcoholism. Few people go from alcoholics to never touching a drink again, and a lot of people end up "relatively unrecovered", but nonetheless therapy is considered "effective" for alcoholism because a good portion of people end up drinking less. The science on conversion therapy also shows some people showing complete success, and a lot showing meaningful-but-incomplete success, and also a lot of failure -- and a lot of the failure is in the over the top terrible attempts at therapy which would fail at any therapeutic target. Yet conversion therapy gets touted as not only "difficult and likely to fail" but blanket "ineffective" because "you can't change what you're born with" as if it's an immutable fact, even though the science flat out contradicts this.

The science also says that homosexual men are higher in narcissism, which isn't very flattering and people probably won't like to admit. And in diseases, which is sometimes admitted but often gets shoved away too.

There might be more, this is just what comes to mind off the top of my head. The point is that as a topic, this is not one where truth is welcome so the science regularly gets avoided or branded "not REAL science". Imagine a study comes out tomorrow showing that 80% of gay people left in charge of children rape them, and it's bombproof. Do you see people saying "Oh, shit, I guess we need to stop letting gays watch kids", or do you see people screeching and revolting against the potential truth being suggested? That's the test for whether people are actually doing science or science denial. If a new paper came out in physics suggesting perpetual motion was possible, and actually demonstrated it, physicists wouldn't screech they'd update.

There are probably some good heuristics to cut through dubious social science publications, from simply ignoring it, to ignoring journalism about specific studies while perusing the study yourself. It seems the op-ed writer didn't understand some basic points about the study. He seemed critical of the (not unusual) large amounts of screening/filtering of participants. This only means that it isn't a study about homelessness in general, which isn't necessarily good or bad. The NP author also seemed to imply a (not unusual) about 50% loss to follow up. This didn't happen. The half of people they lost contact with were never enrolled in the first place. They did exclude people with severe drug and mental problems for ethical issues, fearing overdose. Nevertheless, ~15% of the participants had moderate drug problems, and about 50% had mental health diagnoses. So this seems to make the case for ignoring journalists. The study results seemed to indicated that giving a well screened subset of homeless reduces the State and saves money. Its one study. And I'm reminded of this Oren Cass article on "Policy Based Evidence Making". So while I'm optimistic, I'm only about 2% swayed. More study is needed.

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/policy-based-evidence-making

that you often reject social science research or findings unless personally having vetted them

Well, the easiest person to fool is myself, so I'm generally skeptical of unreplicated social science (there have been some fantastic, salacious recent scandals!). Plenty of liberals write books and papers making the case for skepticism of social science, so I just mention those books, the reproducibility crisis, the math behind it, things like Bem (iirc there is also a study that proves you can age one year backwards), the recent scandals, etc, and the conversations are pretty normal.

without sounding to them like a low-IQ backwater hick redneck science denying flat-earther. I suspect that this is impossible.

It is in fact impossible because for a given value of denying science you are denying science. Remember Fauci saying "I am science"?

I'm wondering what approach if any you use when talking to acquaintances or friends who skew liberal, who broadly are happy to have the inertia of universities or the intelligentsia on their side

I do not, because all the motte has taught me is that it's pointless. You don't convince people, you shift the ground under the feet and they go along with it.

I think your best appeal is to basically say that what they think of as 'science' is actually popular media summaries and partisan officials/profit-driven corporate PR/etc selling their interpretation of the actual science, and there's lots of reasons not to trust those summaries and wait till you can read the original papers.

I don't really see the objection to the original study? Sure if they claimed to be testing all homeless then they're lying, and probably some popular media outlets reported on it that way and were lying, but it's pretty normal to restrict your sample in various ways to reduce noise or just study a specific thing in depth. You just have to be upfront with what question you're actually answering, this seems like a good question to answer still.

High subject mortality is definitely a source of potential bias, if you have a reason to think that the dropouts are different from the continuers in an important way; but again, that's a caveat you should be putting in the results section and discussing the implications of, not a failure of the methodology or an invalidation of the findings.

As usual, I find it helpful to refer back to Debunked and Well-refuted. Yes, lots of science is done poorly, but lots of it is done well, or still gather relevant data that you can learn true things from despite the flaws. It's fun and easy to nitpick flaws in any paper because practical restrictions prevent anything from being perfect, and it's hugely useful to do that preferentially to the papers that don't support your positions, but it's a dangerous game to play.

Yes, lots of science is done poorly, but lots of it is done well, or still gather relevant data that you can learn true things from despite the flaws.

We agree that some science is done well, meaning that it illuminates new technology that actually works.

We agree that some science is done... "poorly", meaning that the technology it purports to reveal does not actually exist.

The current norm is that all claims of new technology propagated through "official" channels are treated as true unless arbitrary standards of proof can be met to discount them. This norm is asinine, and examples overflow of claims of "new" "technology" propagating for decades, perhaps even for centuries without the slightest shred of actual function, even in the teeth of explicit and overwhelming disproof.

This junk science has massively reshaped our entire civilization, and much of it serves as the foundation of our social order. The people who produce it divert vast amounts of resources to themselves from the rest of us, use them to secure completely unjustified amounts of power over the rest of us, and suffer zero accountability for this behavior.

It is imperative that they be stripped of their resources and positions, permanently excluded from all influence over our society, and the changes they made be rolled back.

The current norm is that all claims of new technology propagated through "official" channels are treated as true unless arbitrary standards of proof can be met to discount them. This norm is asinine,

Sure, but we're not talking about popular media summaries or government agencies or w/e, we're talking about critiquing the original publication directly here.

The researchers are not "putting their thumb on the scale" when designing their study to address a certain subset of the homeless population that actually wants to leave their condition of homelessness by explicitly excluding the long-term homeless from its cohort (who presumably are more content with that lifestyle, having been in that situation for longer).

Correct, it's more like both hands, both feet, and possibly a small elephant on the scale.

They excluded the homeless who are the biggest problem, then when half their study population disappeared with the money that didn't count against their claim that the results were good.

I suppose that PNAS then has utterly lost all ability to critique experimental design and question the results of papers in the peer review process?

Yes, or they never had it in the first place.

You can shout about the replication crisis all you like

Consider it shouted.

but this critique of the paper precedes any attempt at replication and is targeted towards the very design of the study itself, as well as the conclusions drawn from its methodology.

It would be a bad idea to try to replicate this study with the flawed methodology, because such a "replication" would be pointless. "We gave money to a bunch of short-term homeless people who didn't have any of the serious problems associated with homelessness. We didn't hear from about half of them again, but of those we heard from, they're doing better" is just pointless; it demonstrates little.

The purpose of this "study" was to manufacture evidence for programs to give cash to homeless people. It wasn't intended to be actually valid.

I don't think the design was fraudulent or the researchers stooges, but the reporting of anything will become trivial if you add enough conditions and disclaimers. Obviously if you give some people thousands of dollars, /some/ of them will be /some/ degree of better off. But the bridge between the magnitude of that benefit from the study to "And that's why this would be a good policy for governments to implement" is weakened by every one of those conditions and disclaimers which reduce the level of generality the study is good for.

No, but the design is so obviously flawed before the data was gathered and further ignoring those they lost track of should have been more than enough for any reputable journal to reject the paper. I’m personally suspicious even of the good faith of the team here, these flaws are so large and obvious to outsiders that it seems impossible that people doing professional research could just accidentally make them.

I think the opposite is true, though, in this case. You don't need a well-designed study to tell you that drug addicts and the mentally ill and people who prefer sleeping on the street when shelter beds are available probably aren't going make the wisest decisions when given large sums of money. We already know that; the more interesting question is what happens if we give people who don't have all these problems large sums of money, because homeless people are usually lumped together into one homogeneous mass of derelicts.

When you've seen enough of the sausage being made at academic journals, you're not surprised about the occasional bullshit thing that happens. I could see being that reviewer, thinking, "Whelp, their study design is pretty bullshit, but there's not really a way to say that it's wrong, especially if they've detailed it and are careful with the way they write their conclusions." Of course, just because they didn't write a totally bullshit conclusion in the article itself doesn't mean that there is anything stopping a mountain of journalists from filling in that work for them in the popular media. Like, what are the actual words that the reviewer is supposed to say to recommend rejection? And even if we could come up with some good ones, what good would they actually do in the face of a politicized editor who is willing to handpick reviewers who are sympathetic to the cause (so such good words would never be spoken) or to just run roughshod over one complaining reviewer (if one existed)?

But how about this:

Those people will eventually die, and stop being a problem.

Whereas, if we lived in a world that gave everyone money as soon as they became homeless, then in that world there would be no such thing as people who have been homeless for 5 years without getting that money.

In a world where the policy is 'people get money to help recover as soon as they become homeless', there would only be people who got money as soon as they became homeless, so those are the people you'd want to study to understand how a world with that policy would look.

Those people will eventually die, and stop being a problem.

So will we all.

Whereas, if we lived in a world that gave everyone money as soon as they became homeless, then in that world there would be no such thing as people who have been homeless for 5 years without getting that money.

You're assuming that if you gave money to everyone as soon as they became homeless, this would solve the problem, and trying to avoid that objection by technically qualifying your statement to not actually imply that.

You're assuming that if you gave money to everyone as soon as they became homeless, this would solve the problem, and trying to avoid that objection by technically qualifying your statement to not actually imply that.

I am not sure how this statement is any different from 'you are secretly making a different argument than the one you actually said, and that secret argument is wrong, so you are wrong despite the thing you actually said being true'.

I have no idea how to respond to that other than saying 'no, I'm not'.

The argument you're implying is that that if we gave people money as soon as they became homeless, there would be far fewer 5-year homeless; that is, we'd prevent long-term homelessness by giving money to the short-term homeless.

The argument you stated is a tautology -- if we gave people money as soon as they become homeless, there'd be no long-term homeless who hadn't gotten the money.

The point is that this study is precisely what we would do to find out what would happen in that world.

That's the reason you do studies.

Those people will eventually die, and stop being a problem.

Emphasis on "eventually". These people would in a less functional society just die from their numerous public drug overdoses, or freeze to death in winter, or choke to death on their own vomit drunk off their asses under a bridge, or just starve. I suspect this is what happens to them in China or the third world. In the USA or Canada, however, they are rescued from the brink time and again at either taxpayer expense or by private charities.

Yeah. I feel like what we now call the homeless should be split up into two groups: "those down on their luck" and vagrants. People in the first group need help and helping them is the economically (forget morally) right thing to do. With some money these people will get back on their feet and continue contributing to society. I'd wager they make up 80%+ of the current homeless, but they're not very visible. Group 2 is the vagrants, no amount of money etc. will help them and they are the group that make the lives of ordinary citizens worse on a day to day basis. we should be a lot more strict and come down on their ass like a ton of bricks the moment they start doing stuff that makes society worse off.

Conflating the two groups helps nobody except these vagrants and those who want to virtue signal about how good they are to these vagrants.

Further, it's very easy to lose contact with the homeless, who obviously will not have regular access to Internet or cellular connection, due to lack of affordability of a mobile plan, let alone a mobile phone.

This is super wrong. Overwhelming majority of the homeless have mobile phones, with surveys ranging between 80% and 95% penetration. This is because the Feds, local municipalities and charities have special programs to equip them with phones.

Given the above, why would I put any stock in your critique of the critique of scientific paper?

Is your response really “sure, the overwhelming majority of homeless might indeed have mobile phones, but large fraction of them just carry non-functional phones with no plan or data, for no useful purpose”? Is this really the point you are trying to make here?

Yes, only majority of homeless have on-demand internet access wherever they go, it is no longer overwhelming. That’s why many of them hang out around free wi-fi, yes. But so what? What does it have to do with the argument you were making? Here, let me helpfully quote you:

who obviously will not have regular access to Internet or cellular connection, due to lack of affordability of a mobile plan, let alone a mobile phone.

Observe that the quote from the study you just gave clearly and explicitly contradicts what you said earlier, and supports what I replied to you with.

As a bonus point, observe that out of the homeless who are interested in using internet at all (66%, I assume that the third which didn’t use internet at all within past 3 months simply does not want to do it), more than three quarters do have it on their phone on demand.

Yeah, the critique felt a little weak. Specifically because the primary critique is noted in the study itself:

These findings are based on exploratory analyses in a modestly sized sample that represents a high-functioning subset (e.g., 31% screen-in rate) of the total homeless population in Vancouver. Thus, our results may not extend to people who are chronically homeless or experience higher severity of substance use, alcohol use, or psychiatric symptoms.

What would have been a more convincing approach would be instead focusing on this statement found in both the news story and press release, but missing from the study itself:

The study did not include participants with severe levels of substance use, alcohol use or mental health symptoms, but Dr. Zhao pointed out that most homeless people do not fit these common stereotypes. Rather, they are largely invisible. They sleep in cars or on friends’ couches, and do not abuse substances or alcohol.

This statement does a lot of work in justifying the policy implications of cash infusions because if 31% of the homeless passed their entrance requirements, and it's a representative sample, then 31% or more of the homeless at-large could be conceivably impacted.

I have no idea if his assertion is true or not, but that seems the most potentially dubious framing.

Specifically because the primary critique is noted in the study itself...

I think that's a bit of a fig leaf: the authors knew or should have known that the paper would be portrayed without full disclosure as to its limitations, including in its own abstract and in the UBC piece itself (which does only mentions that the study excluded "severe levels of substance use, alcohol use or mental health symptoms", but not that it excluded the long-term homeless). Neither mentions the further filtering to only the sheltered homeless, nor the loss to followups.

Summaries by nature can't include all details, but people writing studies know what will get left out, and should recognize when that's going to be highly dishonest.

((There are other problems: the use of two preregistered analysis that are the weakest for predictive power and least repeated in the news coverage ("subjective well-being and cognitive outcomes") followed by a mass of 'exploratory' analysis that are repeated heavily but also scream garden of forking paths, especially combined with the condition grouping and when the study power looks like this. In addition to the attrition before study criteria were applied, the cash group had vastly lower response rates (74% vs 95%) on the 1-month survey than the control group did, which probably didn't have a huge impact in the statistical analysis but doesn't seem to get mentioned in the main paper proper at all just in the appendix. I also don't have a good mental model for the impact of "In the main analyses, participants in the cash group were included in the final sample if they received the cash, while participants in the control group were only included if they completed at least one follow-up survey." but my gut check's that it's not a good sign combined with that extra 21% dropout rate for the 1-mo survey.))

Look at the other two portions of the study: the authors did a couple survey-style efforts specifically to form approaches to "frame the benefits of the cash transfer to make it more palatable to the public, with the goal of improving public support for a cash transfer policy". Which, in turn, again only mentions filtering for "severe level of substance use, alcohol use, or mental health challenges", without mentioning excluding the long-term homeless.

This is pretty standard! For a different sort of culture war issue, I'd point to this recent discussion about eating beef. There are, if you dig into it far enough, quite a lot of disclaimers about how this is really talking about 24-hour recall rather than any more holistic analysis of consumption, and inconveniently the study didn't actually ask about meat at all so instead the analysis was filtered through one database to make predictions for likely meat portion of self-reported food intake which still didn't say anything specific about beef so the authors further just cut everything that wasn't explicitly spelled out as one type of meat or another in half. It's all there, and unlike most bad actors in this space it's not even paywalled!

But ultimately, this study methodology still requires the author to look at (trash-quality) data claiming that X people consumed Y ounces of meat that the authors believed (for some reason?) was 50% beef, and that this was equivalent to X people consuming Y/2 ounces of beef individually. And while st_rev was responding to the NYPost, which one could quite plausibly expect to be unusually useless even by popsci standards, it's not like the popsci groups are doing any better.

These social scientists aren't morons, despite their best efforts. The people actively studying how best to frame the benefits of an intervention have to at least considered how they're going to describe the intervention. This doesn't even mean that the general thrust of these studies are wrong; they're all too underpowered to tell us that they're even lying, once you move the fig leaf. But that's pretty damning for the broader field of science.

Did you look at the "randomized" cohort breakdown of the ~half of the already heavily screened applicants from a pool of already screened applicants (homeless shelters) they were able to contact for the length of the study? There are a few blazing red flags of confounded and polluted data, e.g., gender split, first time homeless, "want to be employed," annual income, receiving income assistance, receiving disability assistance, and more.

If you did a "randomized cohort controlled" study and your demo breakdown in the participants who lasted to the end of it were this different even after you have heavily pre-screened an already screened group from which you recruited participants, you should go back and try again because your randomization process either didn't work or your methodology influenced the results to such an extent as to confound the effect you were "studying," especially given the statistical power were talking about.

As far as I can tell, they're using individual participant outcomes while randomizing at the cluster level using an already small sample size and calculating the stat sig based on the participant n instead of adjusting downwards due to likely correlative effects from the clustering itself. They have different inclusion data for control/cash groups, i.e., control group had to complete a post-survey whereas the cash group were included if they simply received the cash, which is troubling because the groups had 20% different response rates which makes me think if they had the same inclusion criteria the left-over numbers either didn't produce significance even with their p games or a result they didn't like. They fiddle with a bunch of other stuff in odd ways which make me suspicious they're fiddling with an agenda, but I'm not diving into the appendix info, and I'm not going to request raw data they claim they will give out.

This study has an obvious agenda, the purpose of this study is to affect public policy, every methodology decision will bias the results in a certain way the authors want, and the abstract is written for journalists who share that agenda to push it likely glossing over all of the caveats which the authors littered throughout the paper rendering its application to policy all-but worthless even if that data wasn't poor (and it is).

It's a made-for-journalists "study" designed to create evidence to push an agenda. The study is very underpowered even if they didn't expect high attrition rates. These people aren't morons; they know what they're doing and it's high time we stop pretending they don't.

particularly when that journalist has no formal training in the sciences themselves. It's precisely these kind of low-brow takes that throw the humanities into question, not reputable scientific researched published in (of all journals!) PNAS.

no, the humanities and "reputable scientific research" published in "reputable" journals earned skepticism if not outright hostility all on their own with this published study being yet another example of why

arguing that this study is roughly up to the standards of this area of research and writing isn't a defense of the study, but a condemnation of it, its authors, and the journal which published it

A psychologist himself, Adam Mastroianni proclaims: I'm sorry for psychology's loss, whatever it is.

I found this post on the slatestarcodex subreddit. The main article discusses how the replication crisis really isn't as bad as most people think, because:

Gino's work has been cited over 33,000 times, and Ariely's work has been cited over 66,000 times. They both got tenured professorships at elite universities. They wrote books, some of which became bestsellers. They gave big TED talks and lots of people watched them. By every conventional metric of success, these folks were killing it.

Now let's imagine every allegation of fraud is true, and everything Ariely and Gino ever did gets removed from the scientific record, It's a Wonderful Life-style. (We are, I can't stress this enough, imagining this. Buzz buzz, I’m bees.) What would change?

Not much.

Basically this idea can be boiled down to 'well most modern psychologists don't do anything that's even remotely important, so why do we care if these studies don't replicate?' I'm very wary of buying this type of argument. One reason is that over $2 billion dollars went into psychology research, in the US alone, way back in 2016. I'm sure it has increased since then.

On top of that, as psychologists themselves have acknowledged, many public policies get based on psychological research. In the light of the replication crisis, this is perhaps the largest and most under-discussed mistake of the 21st century. The majority of our politicians are basing their decisions, and public justifications, on a field of science that has been proven to be mostly fake. To me, that's not something we can just throw up our hands at and say is trivial.

Another interesting point, which I won't go too far into, is that many of the replicable studies in psychology are just completely ignored. Here's a highly-upvoted comment on the SSC subreddit:

Psychology has nothing interesting left because all of the rock-solid empirical results with tremendous real-world consequences were buried due to being politically awkward.

Psychometrics, heredity of various personality traits, innate gender differences, etc.

So you're naturally left with irrelevancies (monkey prostitutes) and lies (growth mindset, power posing, priming, multiple intelligences).

It's almost enough to make me empathize with Gino and Ariely. The modern discipline is all about garbing feel-good falsehoods with vestments of science. Their only crime was taking the more direct path to that end, rather than undertaking the standard rituals of plausibly innocent methodological infirmities (p-hacking etc.)

I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not Psychology deserves an equal place among the rest of the sciences.

It should feel disheartening to see this sort of brazen nihilism when it comes to error and wrong thinking. But where else can these people go? Most of them have locked themselves away from anything relevant, like the SSC comment described.

I think this sort of nihilism should be recognized for the ultimate cowardice that it is. These things, heredity, psychometrics and all the rest aren't meaningless. They are incredibly meaningful. And these people wallowing in nihilism aren't powerless, they are in fact quite powerful. But when they've already decided they wont do anything because the truth rests outside the Overton Window, the nihilism is entirely predictable and entirely self serving.

The article and the person who writes it are hiding. Cowering. Running away. Psychology's loss is the field itself and everything it impacts. The lives of tens of thousands of people who kill themselves every year after useless morons who are following 'the research' fail to help them. Millions of lives directly made worse due to policy based on fraudulent research.

It's not just that the author of the article is responsible; every social network of people who really should know better but pretend they don't due to whatever personal reasons they have are directly causing this to happen every single time they reinforce the status quo.

To see these people, the sorry state of the field and for them to shrug their shoulders as if this all just fell from the sky... What assholes. Take some responsibility. The fight for sanity has been ongoing for decades. There was nothing stopping these creatures from joining the losing side of truth to try and turn the tide. But they didn't. Instead they actively fight against it and then wonder why people laugh at them at parties when they say they're a psychologist.

No, you are not even remotely close to being a Rennaissance fair actor. They are a lot less embarrassing than you.

In all, 3.2 percent of the nation's $66.2 billion in federal research funding went to psychological research in 20161,2 (approximately $2.1 billion).

2 billion is still way too much but it's at least better than 66 billion!

I agree with your premise though. Psychology is important and it's done badly. Mental health is getting worse.

“I agree with your premise though. Psychology is important and it's done badly. Mental health is getting worse.”

Interested way to word this. It’s also the standard I have for complete abandonment of an idea. Sounds a lot like communism has never been tried etc.

You think understanding the human mind is not important? Clearly there's a lot wrong with academic psychology but the very notion of understanding human behavior is not wrong.

"Psychology" is not analogous to "communism"; it's analogous to "politics". It doesn't make sense to say that because X theory about Y phenomenon is wrong and harmful, Y phenomenon isn't worth studying.

LMAO. Thanks for the correction. Will edit.

66b is way too much.

I think that’s a poor way of measuring impact. Given that Arely has gotten his ideas into the mainstream is a huge problem. TBH it’s my problem with the entire field (which I suspect is mostly pseudoscience). We’re using it to help people, we’re making policy decisions based on psychology. And as far as I’m concerned the obvious mental health declines in our therapeutic cultures have proven disastrous. We have more and more people, including fairly young kids, on psychiatric drugs. We have more anxiety, depression and suicide than we did 100 years ago. We have more drug use as well.

In the past, things like religion and stoic philosophy had a much better track record. They weren’t committing suicide, they weren’t too anxious and depressed to function, they didn’t do drugs to numb themselves.

I personally find therapeutic culture revolting. It seems overwhelmingly coddling and feminine to me. So I am presupposed to believe it leads to bad outcomes. And from that predisposition I could make arguments that adversity leads to growth and therapy is used as an excuse to avoid adversity (eg difficult thing is bad for my mental health) thereby stunting growth making people miserable in the long run.

But is it true? Are there cultures that haven’t gone headfirst into therapy culture that haven’t seen the same deleterious outcome?

I’m not sure about any current culture, though I’d point out that there is some research on mental disorders manifesting differently or even just not existing in a given culture until widespread access to western ideas (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html). I think it’s possible and even probable that the way we talk about these illnesses, and treat everyday problems as traumatic, upsetting, and likely to cause a mental illness might very well be causing people to get these mental illnesses and making those who do get them malinger when in a “blind” state where those messages weren’t telling them that long lasting sadness is depression, depression is a brain disease that can only be treated by a psychiatrist issuing an antidepressant drug. Or when they suggest that trauma causes anxiety and then go on to tell people that everything up to and including stubbing your toe is traumatic, they might well cause anxiety simply because the public has been taught this.

I’m a bit more knowledgeable of Stoicism. And really, it’s a bit different in approach. They say that bad stuff will happen, and thus it’s better to not get attached to things being how they are right now. You might lose that house, car, even a child. You cannot control nature. Or to put it in the the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson “the universe excels at finding ways to kill you”. But what you can control is the mind. The universe is free to smash your house with an asteroid. But you are free to not let that negative even control your mind. You can accept it, you can choose to rebuild the house or move away, you can choose to build telescopes and map asteroids so that it doesn’t happen to other people. You choose your thoughts and to some degree your emotions, and as such you don’t have to be traumatized by adverse events. It just do be like that sometimes. And beyond that, you can even without the asteroid hitting the house, choose to be a moral upstanding human and be a good person. This was a pretty standard way of living for quite a long time.

Whether or not you can modernize it, I mean, probably. It was a Greco Roman Philosophy. It also sort of exists in Buddhism. There are parts of the Bible that echo the same ideas. I don’t see it as complicated to adapt, nor does the core idea need that much updating.

I’m assuming in the Biblical tradition you are referencing Job?

Also how do we disentangle western ideas from western modernism?

Doubtful on Job. He endured his first few trials without much complaint, but then had a lot of understandable anguish and despair.

I’d say stoicism is more compatible with the gospels and epistles of the New Testament. There’s just a wealth of verses about enduring suffering, exercising self control, and reasoning.

Christ himself set a stoic example in voluntarily submitting to the cross. Even as he asked God the Father to spare him that trial, he accepted his role and did not engage in self pity.

Romans 5:3-5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 - Test everything; hold on to what is good.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 - “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

Titus 2:11-12 - “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.”

2 Peter 1:5-7 - “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”

James 1:2-4 - “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 - “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Timothy 2:3 - “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”

Hebrews 12:1-3 - “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

There are parts of the Bible that echo the same ideas. I don’t see it as complicated to adapt, nor does the core idea need that much updating.

I think the problem is that we don't have as much real suffering as we did in the past. It's hard to get people to follow Stoic teachings etc when their lives are relatively cushy.

You can introduce little suffering to prepare yourself. Try camping with minimal technology for a week. Take a cold shower, play a sport or work out. Sleep without a blanket in the winter. I don’t think that’s going to completely overcome our easy lifestyle, but I think it does teach you that you can actually do that and still be okay.

In the past, things like smartphones and all-encompassing corporate ads weren't yet around. People lived in spaces that were their own and that of their community; insofar they didn't, they lived in bad times that nobody wants to go back to either. I have as much contempt for psychologists insisting we listen to them despite their inability to seek the truth, but I don't know that we can attribute the current state of mental health to them. Our environment is sufficiently different from our ancestors' that things are just irrevocably different.

In the past, things like religion and stoic philosophy had a much better track record.

Agreed. While @Nantafiria makes a good point that things have changed and we may need different answers to give people spiritual and mental health, I don't think humans have really changed all that much.

Before the last century or so, we just took the religious traditions we had and interpreted them in a new way to accomodate new environments. If that didn't work, then a messiah would come along and bring in a new religion to help cope with the societal issues of the day.

Unfortunately, the discovery of Newtonian mechanics gave us far too much hubris. We, well really a small intellectual elite, decided that humanity had learned so much we were as Gods. We no longer needed the wisdom of these ancient traditions, we didn't need any tradition of wisdom whatsover; who needs wisdom when you have 'unfathomable' power?

And now us, the descendants of these fools, are trying to pick up the pieces. I hope we can weave back together some sort of wisdom-conferring tapestry from the broken pieces before we kill ourselves on the alter of Moloch. Only time will tell.

Humanity has equated itself with the Gods since the time we've had Gods; even the Christians have to make up saints now and then when someone particularly impressive comes along. Oppenheimer famously invented power as in the Mahabharata; Borlaug shall be our Demeter, for making grain sprout where it never had before; Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, and modern man has since driven out so many predators that the list is larger than I'd know to guess at; no more women pray to Hera to save themselves and their children from gruesome death in labour, for we have usurped her power too. If we had still believed in most these Gods, we would do well to rank ourselves among them in terrible power and might. We have genuinely gotten so far that to what few people still do live in premodern conditions, we might as well be that.

But (I think) no Gods exist or have ever existed, and people still run off the same hardware that we did in the days of Cyrus and Alkibiades. And even in those ancient days, people had their upheavals! As Europe went from being ruled by freeholding farmers in tribes and city-states to being ruled by larger landowners yet, we invented Nicene Christianity. When a middle class later emerged, many countries became protestant. And now, with more changes than I care to note, many people are choosing to reject Christianity wholesale.

People in the past weren't stupid. The traditions from their day that survive by and large served them very well and don't deserve the universal scorn they receive in some atheist spaces, though even that is out of fashion. They are, even so, dated. You don't need to be Uncle Ted to notice how much industrialisation has changed society, and you don't need a fedora to wonder if a book dating to Roman times is the best we can do any more. I absolutely believe we are due a new prophet. And when he pops up, I pray we see him for what he is, too.

Incredibly well articulated. I agree with pretty much everything here, although I do hold some reservations about:

But (I think) no Gods exist or have ever existed,

Nor sure how to articulate a rebuttal myself, but personal experience has convinced me to seriously question this denial. Guess that's faith.

Perhaps when I say we don't need a new prophet, a clearer distillation of my point is that we have a lot of work to do preparing our society we recognizing and accepting a new prophets message. As we are now I fear scientific rationalism is too powerful to defeat unless we chip away at it's grip on the world.

There is nothing to defeat. The social excesses of our world are a problem, but no unprecedented one. Scientific rationalism works. It precedes the problems talked about upthread - suicide, depression, drug abuse - and it will survive them, too. @HlynkaCG has noted before that an innovation of the Enlightenment's is a general rejection of mystery, and that seems about right. I do not believe there is meaningful knowledge beyond comprehension, and I don't think people are soon going back to believing that in a world where we know what is past the sky, below the earth, down the seas, and even on the surface of the sun. We aren't going back to a world where religion is what we turn to for an explanation on these things, now or ever. That bridge has been burned, and we need to live with a world where we must solve our problems ourselves.

Yes, of course.

More comments

I'd like to post about the Spanish soccer kiss and some developments. Another commenter below posted a take decrying it as a case of classic excessive modern SJW-type media cancel culture crusades gone too far. This is not just a wrong take, it's a flagrantly wrong take and a significant misunderstanding of the "read between the lines" of everyone's statements. Also, the TIMELINE is very crucial to understanding this whole thing. In fact, the opposite is true, this is almost a perfect example of how people in power can't help themselves but to manipulate everyone around them. Below I will explain the exact timeline. (For length I'm making it its own comment, hope that's OK).

Interestingly, our understanding of the facts is very similar. As a background, it's worth noting that Rubiales has VERY extensive list of baggage and accusations from the last five years, including clashes with other officials and organizations, firings, lawsuits, leaked recordings, allegations of everything from sex parties to fraud to assault, and conflict with and within the women's team and their coach too. Regarding the kiss, the Spanish are very physically prone to displays of at times excessive physical affection. This is mostly just cultural, but it's important to note that there IS at least some smaller element of sexism that is baked in. The kiss appears to be one of joy during a massive medal celebration, but of course he's grabbing her whole head and planting it right on the lips, a bit too far. That same night, Hermoso laughs it off but also, critically, says she didn't really like it, "but what can I do?".

People online start to go to war about it, and people within the Spanish soccer community too don't really like the look or the attention. The very next day, which is Monday, a few things happen. According to this article, virtually all 300 people are on the same flight home to Spain, including the team, the coaches, federation people, family, etc. On said flight people obviously notice the growing online criticism. They left that morning, had a two hour layover in Doha, Qatar, and arrived that night in Spain (it's like 22 hours of flight time but going backwards so same calendar day). What happened on that flight?

According to Spanish media, once on the plane - and before the party began - Rubiales approached Jenni Hermoso and asked her to record a video with him apologising and explaining what had happened. This video would be later posted on social media. He said his job was on the line and that he needed her help, but Hermoso refused. Relevo.com reported that both Rubiales and Spain coach Jorge Vilda had spoken to the player and her family in an attempt to resolve the crisis. The incident tarnished the players' victory and they wanted to put an end to the controversy.

So they pressure her to defend him but she basically says no. They record a video with Rubiales ONLY in their Doha layover, which goes out later that night, but only after a statement goes out to a news agency (EFE) seemingly quoting her that basically goes "we were all just really happy and it was natural and no hard feelings". This comes out first and the video after (a bit of difficulty pinning down exact timeline but definitely in this order). Of note is that some media outlets are now alleging that the statement may have NOT in fact been a direct quote from her and the federation made it up (this is not certain however).

What's in the video? I speak Spanish pretty decently, thanks to living in Miami a while, so listening and watching it directly is pretty interesting. This is a horrible apology. I'm going to roughly thought for thought translate the whole video because it's worth noting the tone and words used:

We're in a proud moment for the federation for winning our second world cup, we're very proud, But as well, there's something that I have to be sorry for, which is of course something that happened between a player and myself. There's a great relationship between us both, as well as me and others, and where surely I did wrong and have to recognize it. Because in a big emotional moment, without any bad intention, without any bad faith, well, what happened, happened, it was very spontaneous, without bad faith from either of us. Okay, we understood each other because it was something natural, normal, no big deal, I repeat there was no bad faith; but then it became a big deal and people have felt hurt because of it, so I have to apologize, there's nothing else for it. And moreover, I have to learn that when I am in such an important position like president of a federation, when I participate in ceremonies and things like that, I have to be more careful. [Jump cut]. I also have to make a statement, in this response in front of you all, [unintelligible to me]. I also want to apologize before this person if I did it any other way they will have their reason [?]. [Jump cut] Lastly, yes I'm embarrassed because after one of the best times in women's soccer and in general too, our second world cup, it's hurt the celebration. I think we have to give credit to these women, this victorious team, we have to celebrate it most of all.

Commentary: Note how he focuses on how he's almost forced to apologize, how he created a distraction, and how he minimizes everything that happened. He doesn't even say what he did, he just says "what happened, happened". No big deal, no big deal. It's all about the consequences of his actions and nothing about how it could have made her feel or if he truly made a mistake. No, it's an apology that he "has to" make. This is, IMO, extra clear in the original Spanish and with intact voice inflections, etc. and I've tried to render the overall "vibe" of his comments accurately, though Spain-Spanish isn't my forte.

Tuesday rolls around, it's a big story still, and many people including the prime minister feel that the apology was inadequate.

Wednesday Hermoso releases a statement with her player's union and agency here which basically (and vaguely) says that the federation should take action to prevent bad things and make sure bad things aren't unpunished. It's not very specific but clearly is referring to the kiss, though the whole content is basically just urging better player rights.

Thursday FIFA begins to investigate and step in. Clearly pressure is building to fire him, suspend him, or have him resign.

Earlyish on Friday is a big federation meeting, where Rubiales makes a speech. I haven't been able to iron out exactly who called the meeting and for what exact purpose.

Do you really think I deserve this hunt? People demanding my resignation? Is this so serious for me to resign, having done the best management of Spanish football? Do you think I need to resign? Let me tell you something: I'm not going to resign! I'M NOT GOING TO RESIGN! I'm NOT going to resign! I'm not going to resign! [pause] I'm not going to resign!

Notable is that a very big portion of the audience is clapping loudly throughout. He the goes on to say that though he can't remember clearly it was Hermoso who lifted him up, they almost fell down and then they hugged. He emphasized it was her that picked him up so close, he told her not to worry about a missed penalty, told him he's great, then he asked "A kiss"? and she said OK. He says it wasn't something of desire nor forced and just like kissing his daughters and everyone gets that, even though they are saying the opposite when talking to the media. He says it's fake feminism and people who are all for his rivals. He calls it character assassination. He says that it suddenly ballooned from "no big deal" and then Hermoso didn't defend him and "a statement that I don't understand". He says that people making a big deal about it are hurting victims of real assault.

This ignites quite the firestorm that same day. (The next day, Satudary, FIFA suspended him. Since then, he's been pulled into at least one other avenue of potential firing/suspension as well). Note that Rubiales is not just adding detail but arguably changing the story. The importance of this is made clear when Hermoso finally and directly breaks her own silence, later on Friday FOLLOWING the speech, which in my opinion adds a TON of context to everything. Much as I want to summarize, this would take out the read-between-the-lines as well.

After obtaining one of the most desired achievements of my sporting career and after a few days of reflection, I want to thank, with all my heart, my teammates, fans, followers, media and everyone who has made this dream a reality; your work and unconditional support has been a fundamental part to be able to win the World Cup. In reference to what has happened today [Rubiales’ speech] and while I don’t want to interfere with the multiple ongoing legal procedures, I feel obligated to say that the words of Mr Luis Rubiales explaining the unfortunate event are categorically false and part of the manipulative culture he has created.

I want to make clear that not in any moment did the conversation occur that Mr Luis Rubiales references, and much less that his kiss was consensual. In the same way I want to reiterate how I did in that moment that what happened was not enjoyable.

The situation left me in shock because of the context of the celebration, and with the time passed, and those initial feelings being able to sink, I feel the need to denounce this as I feel that no one, in no work space, sporting or social, should be a victim to this time of nonconsensual behavior. I felt vulnerable and a victim of aggression, an impulsive act, sexist, out of place and without any type of consent from my part. In short, I wasn’t respected.

I was asked to released a joint statement to relieve the pressure off the president, but in those moments, in my head I only had being able to celebrate the historic achievement I accomplished with my teammates. That’s why, in that moment I communicated with the RFEF … and the same with media and people I trust, that I would not be releasing an individual statement nor a joint statement about the matter, as I understood that, by doing it, I would take away the spotlight from a very special moment for my teammates and I.

Despite my decision I have to state that I have been under constant pressure to come out with some sort of statement that would justify the acts of Mr Luis Rubiales. Not only that, but also, via different ways and different people, the RFEF has pressured my close circle (family, friends, teammates, etc) so I would give a statement that had little or nothing to do with how I felt.

It’s not my place to evaluate communication practices or integrity, but I am sure that as world champions we do not deserve a culture so manipulative, hostile and controlling. These types of incidents are added to a long list of situations that us, the players, have been [enduring] for the last few years, for what has been done, for what I have experienced, this is only a drop in a full glass and only what the whole world has been able to see. Acts like these have been part of daily life in our national team for years.

This statement almost perfectly describes how a normal person would react to the situation. Personally, although it sort of has devolved into in some ways a he said/she said, I find her account by far the most credible. The things that stand out, to me:

  • Rubiales outright is lying when he's adding the detail about how it was literally consensual because she said yes to a kiss, that he's making the whole exchange up. She basically says this is why she's speaking now because of him doubling down and indeed adding falsehoods.

  • She was silent because she was genuinely celebrating, didn't want to hurt the celebration, and also needed to process things. Personally, I think we can all relate to this, often our behavior psychologically right after something big doesn't always line up with our true feelings. Fun fact: Once someone threatened to kill me! It wasn't until later that my heartbeat could slow a bit down and despite sort of laughing it off at the time I realized it was actually a bit more serious. This jives with psychological research about how we react to unexpected and even unwanted events, including genuine sexual assault of various kinds. I might add that she might still feel that this isn't a big deal but was more offended by Rubiales' lies and/or general attitude than the actual event.

  • This kind of bad behavior, rather than being a one-off kind of thing, is actually endemic to how the women's team and players are treated.

  • She's been subject to a very significant pressure campaign to generate good PR even if it means lying. This pressure campaign has targeted a lot of people around her, too, which also seems to cross a line.

Ladies and gentlemen, this statement demonstrates almost exactly what feminists have been saying for years.

My take is that the kiss itself, not really that bad, but also something that does reflect on power dynamics, both men/women but also boss/employee. It deserved a real apology which was not given, instead the apology was not only extremely insincere, but also a result of behind the scenes pressure to sweep it under the rug and downplay. Rubiales doubling down was awful and it is kind of dystopian to see so much applause. He's the one playing a victimhood narrative, not Hermoso. Which is crazy! She didn't even talk about victimhood AT ALL until AFTER Rubiales basically lied about the kiss. I might add that Rubiales' version of events is in my opinion not supported by the video of the kiss, where they don't seem to have much of a conversation at all.

This is the key point behind why I bothered digging in to the whole timeline of things and making a whole effortpost. If you look at it all as the same big story, sure you might be inclined to say, yes this is just the media deciding to pillory someone with no due process and demanding blood for a minor infraction. But no, looking at her statement and the timeline, with the background of things not being very sunny within the Spanish federation and the players, it actually and fairly becomes a case of people in power trying to remain in power, especially in the world of soccer, which is well known to be an old boys club as well as infested with corruption on many levels, including FIFA. Far from victimhood being asserted by Hermoso, disproportionate to the actual harm or intent, it's Rubiales first trying to be a victim of persecution, as well as self-aggrandizing (note how many times he gives credit and glory to the federation and organization, rather than the players). Instead, Hermoso is only a reluctant participant in the whole debate who might have though it also wasn't a big deal and wanted to move on herself, until pressure and slander essentially forced her hand.

I appreciate the writeup, but I can't help thinking you are just 'reading the phonebook' and not supporting your point. You go from:

Another commenter below posted a take decrying it as a case of classic excessive modern SJW-type media cancel culture crusades gone too far. This is not just a wrong take, it's a flagrantly wrong take and a significant misunderstanding of the "read between the lines" of everyone's statements.

To:

Ladies and gentlemen, this statement demonstrates almost exactly what feminists have been saying for years.

It seems your actual argument is not that SJW's have gone too far, but that they clearly have not gone far enough.

To that end I don't think you are playing a game all that different to the likes of Rubiales. As feminists in general have managed to poison their own position and ideology quite heavily. I can only have so much sympathy for people decrying men and their 'old boys clubs' when their alternative is just the inverse of that and worse.

Recognizing the beast he is dealing with, Rubiales could choose to fight or get eaten. He chose to fight. Telling everyone how good he would taste doesn't change anything.

The timeline is important because there's little evidence that Rubiales is actually a "victim" of anything, nor is actually in danger of losing his job, until he decides that angry confrontation is the way to go. It's only after that moment that he actually faces real attempts to remove him. Before that, it's all speculation, online noise, and "we'll look into it". Stuff we've all heard before and often leads to not much at all. It's only after his speech on Friday (which could have had more detail but I chose to skip) that we start seeing petitions getting passed around, that FIFA gets serious, that the Spanish government starts announcing inquiries, that other Spanish players start making comments or talking about boycotts.

The true story is not in the media recycling the same content and punishing a man for a minor infraction, but in the behind the scenes pressure campaigns and PR attempts that seem to sidestep the actual human relationships involved. Note that Monday morning during the flight, Rubiales is already focused on saving his job rather than making real apologies, and he hasn't even been subject to a full media cycle yet! It's been like 6 hours.

Him deciding to fight was not protecting "real victims of assault". It was not an innocent man trying to keep his job from an online mob. It was an in-your-face political stump speech about how great, infallible, and perfect he was. It's the self-important, self-dealing soccer establishment applauding themselves for a job well done while making zero attempt to help the actual players who actually won the damn trophy.

I never called him a "victim" so I don't know who you are quoting. I would appreciate if you didn't construct your paragraphs around 'quotes' that I didn't write.

Regardless of that, reciting the timeline accurately does nothing to change the fact that your original point is not in any way affected by it since the conclusion you reach is close to antithetical to it. So how it is important is still a mystery. Unless, of course, my original assumption was just accurate. In which case I would like to ask you to be more plain with what you are advocating for, rather than trying to hide it under the guise that it's something other than SJW activism.

nor is actually in danger of losing his job, until he decides that angry confrontation is the way to go.

This is a really annoying argument. We only have the timeline of events as they transpired. That timeline is not proof that if he had done something differently that things would have gone better for him. Citing it as if it were is, again, annoying. There are plenty of examples of people who gave a heartfelt sincere apology to the beast and where then immediately eaten.

As far as I can tell Rubiales is just as emotionally intelligent and socially savvy as the people who want to get him. He is also just as hungry for power and cognizant of appearances. On that front he seems to be playing the game as well as you can. Asking such a person for a sincere apology is about as smart as expecting the SJW mob to forgive him.

After all, if he were really sorry, he would resign, right? ;)

Just want to second the use of "quotes" to emphasize words with heavy connotation or specific contextual meaning, this (along with parathesis for snippets of slightly tangential information or ideas) are writing habits I picked up from commenting on SSC, probably copying some smarter/cooler person I read there (the / thing is another one).

I do that too but I don't use quotations, I either use italics or 'apostrophes'. It's not that I don't understand this practice, it's that I can't engage with a person without making it clear that what they are quoting isn't actually a quote.

It's doubly important when the person is using the quotation as a springboard to make an argument when that argument isn't relevant to anything I've actually said. But it sure does look that way when they are using quotes to start off their spiel.

Not all quote marks are really quotes, even if people in the forum like calling people out with them a lot. I like using them to draw attention to phrases or words that people use (or I am about to use knowingly) with particular baggage or specific connotations. In this case, I'm referring to Rubiales' own word in his Friday speech.

I read the news a lot and could watch things sort of develop. The furor got absolutely worse Friday after the statement. Want at least some evidence? Look at Google Trends and you can see things start to die down on Wednesday/Thursday, and spike Friday and double Saturday when he's actually suspended by FIFA, an action that to me seemed to be rushed out to satisfy public outcry (considering it had only been Thursday they announced a look into it). The search interest clearly indicates that traffic about the topic actually surpasses the original news bump Friday/Saturday. This is true for most all phrases I plug in having to do with the news. The curve can even be more dramatic. I know that Google Trends isn't a perfect examination method but it does reflect a bit how much people care.

This isn't the result of an "SJW mob" out to fire him (to use an actual quote of yours), and coopted by internal enemies. It's real people being upset about Rubiales, for example, alleging that anyone upset about the kiss is actually a (another actual quote from Rubiales) "fake feminist", and an implicit allegation that he blames Hermoso for not supporting him more, and the fact that people are fucking applauding someone who is showing zero contrition and instead going on the attack. Why is he being applauded?? Actually why? This guy just brought an absolutely massive embarrassment on the entire organization singlehandedly, even if it was totally innocent, so how on earth is he somehow a hero? Those things rightfully triggered disgust and though I cannot prove it, I can certainly make a valid claim that his post-kiss behavior is a worse problem than the kiss.

Now, does all that imply that I'd be happy with FIFA or the government or someone else giving him a harsher punishment because of his post-kiss behavior and lack of contrition? That's a harder question to answer. I'm not really sure, to be quite honest. On its face, that does seem to be an unequal application of justice. But practically, it would make sense. That's partly why I brought up the point about how there are apparently lots of other problems and mistreatment that has been swept under the rug that he might deserve to lose his job for.

If these are not my supposed to be quotes from me then I am at a loss as to what the relevance of the paragraphs is.

Doubling down on your annoying argument won't make it any stronger. How would Google Trends look if he had made a public apology? Don't know. All I can tell is that the media gave Rubiales another cycle and made it a big news story. People heard the news and googled Rubiales.

On that front what Rubiales did might make a bigger media splash than doing one of those pathetic apologies that never help the one who makes them. But how that is making things "worse" is still a mystery. People got more angry and that's bad because people being angry is bad? OK, but from the perspective of Rubiales who wants to keep his job, I don't think he made things worse for himself. That is unless you are assuming that people would just accept the apology. Which, in light of how much he was apparently disliked, I'm doubtful of. And considering how poorly apologizing has worked when the SJW mob comes knocking, I'm even more doubtful.

This isn't the result of an "SJW mob" out to fire him

Yes it is. None of the arguments you give following your statement in any way impact the truth value of it so I'm just not going to bother with more.

Why is he being applauded?? Actually why? This guy just brought an absolutely massive embarrassment on the entire organization singlehandedly, even if it was totally innocent, so how on earth is he somehow a hero?

How can he be an embarrassment if he is being applauded? Maybe SJW's think he is embarrassing, but their worldview is rather distorted as compared to some dude listening to the news. I know from listening to my colleagues that the more they hear about his antics and the more he sticks to his guns, the more they like him.

Very much appreciate all the information and commentary.

I don't think this addresses the concerns of the commenters. It's reasonable to imagine that the kiss, itself, just isn't a severe offense. It made her uncomfortable - how bad, exactly, is it to cause someone some level of discomfort? What specifically about the context of male/female, him being a boss, it being a kiss makes this worth firing someone over? To whatever extent he he misrepresented what happened in an attempt to save his career, that's bad, but it dodges this point - and if he's being unfairly persecuted, one might see that as understandable but misguided.

How much of her severe discomfort was contingent on culturally transmitted ideas that 'nonconsensual' things like this are really bad, as opposed to just 'somewhat bad'? Consider as an analogy Aella's post about trauma - where, supposedly, much of the negative feelings one has about childhood trauma come from how your culture interprets it. You justify Hermoso's response by claiming it is 'normal' - and, yeah, this particular cultural mode is winning, it is normal now, what one might contest is if it's correct, or the best approach.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not really about the kiss and what's an appropriate punishment. It's more about the culture surrounding it and how it's dealt with that is highly problematic. The first instinct of the federation and of Rubiales is to lean on Hermoso to make a situation that Rubiales caused go away, and to try to guilt trip her and her friends and family into doing so (the coach apparently tried no less than three times on the plane trip). The second backup plan is to make the bare minimum apology, where the subtext is extremely loudly insisting that not only is the infraction so small, but also that people are just being jerks to insist on ruining the moment, and that his only true crime was being "too good at his job" or something. He likes to talk about the moment having "bad faith", but that's bad faith right there. At no point does Rubiales say something like "I made her uncomfortable", or talk about respect, or display any remorse. It's all "oops I guess I was caught". And then the Friday speech. Oh boy, the speech. It's throwing water onto a grease fire. I cannot understate how shocked I am that he's being applauded loudly by so many people in the room. At this point he has faced honestly very little actual repression. It's mostly online. People (rightly) think he's insincere.

But making such a fiery speech and claiming his own victimhood as more important and real than the victimhood of someone else, while behind the scenes him and his bureaucratic, domineering friends are the ones laying it on? Hypocrisy. He's the one that worsened the situation again further. The situation looks even worse for him if they did in fact fake the Monday quote from Hermoso (source here) which seems more likely than not. Hermoso herself and her family didn't seem to want it to be such a big deal based on Monday alone, or even during the week, refusing to be baited out by reporters on multiple occasions. Now of course the media might have been making things worse, but the only official action was FIFA beginning to look into it. It's important to note again that he's only actually suspended on Saturday, after he ignites the firestorm. I don't think that's a coincidence.

And of course the thing underlying it all: As Hermoso alludes to, and apparently a LOT of other players on the women's team believe, there were and are actual big issues going on behind the scenes in Spanish soccer that mean that it's not actually a given that Rubiales deserves to have his current job. The tip of the iceberg, as it were. In particular, there was a whole heavyhanded incident back in September where a group letter from 15 players resulted in the federation going public first and accusing the players of blackmail and trying to pull a coup on the coach, with bad feelings all around. For what it's worth, those tensions didn't appear to involve assault or anything like that.

My take is that the kiss itself, not really that bad, but also something that does reflect on power dynamics, both men/women but also boss/employee. It deserved a real apology which was not given, instead the apology was not only extremely insincere, but also a result of behind the scenes pressure to sweep it under the rug and downplay. Rubiales doubling down was awful and it is kind of dystopian to see so much applause. He's the one playing a victimhood narrative, not Hermoso. Which is crazy! She didn't even talk about victimhood AT ALL until AFTER Rubiales basically lied about the kiss. I might add that Rubiales' version of events is in my opinion not supported by the video of the kiss, where they don't seem to have much of a conversation at all.

Yeah, sorry chum but I don't see anything in your post that changes this from the he said she said nonsense I thought it was in the first place. She says he lied about asking for a kiss. Why is she more credible than him? Because you empathise with her more. Anyone who feels the opposite will find Rubiales more credible. But we didn't record that exchange so we'll never know. What we did record has Rubiales mouth blocked by Hermoso's head while they hugged, which would also be a good way to say a few things in a roaring stadium.

Also

Commentary: Note how he focuses on how he's almost forced to apologize, how he created a distraction, and how he minimizes everything that happened. He doesn't even say what he did, he just says "what happened, happened". No big deal, no big deal. It's all about the consequences of his actions and nothing about how it could have made her feel or if he truly made a mistake. No, it's an apology that he "has to" make. This is, IMO, extra clear in the original Spanish and with intact voice inflections, etc. and I've tried to render the overall "vibe" of his comments accurately, though Spain-Spanish isn't my forte.

This is how every public facing representative apologises. Minimise everything that happened. Nobody was hurt by it, it was just a mistake. And yet, he does own up to his mistakes. He calls them his mistakes, he says he is embarrassed for distracting from the team's victory. Should he have busted out a whip and struck his sin away? Obviously Rubiales desperately needs some pr person by his side to slap the side of his head every time he opens his mouth, but once again it feels like we are razing the countryside over a minor interpersonal conflict, which is what nearly every msm cancel culture crusade turns out to be.

Instead, Hermoso is only a reluctant participant in the whole debate who might have though it also wasn't a big deal and wanted to move on herself, until pressure and slander essentially forced her hand.

Say what. So you think she didn't think it was a big deal except he said she said yes and that made it a big deal, because she was ok with the non consensual kiss but not ok with him claiming it was consensual, so after days of silence she released a statement denouncing the nonconsensual kiss?

Also why did this need a new thread?

I like the new thread, he collected a lot more relevant information into one place where more people will see it.

Yeah but aside from this being a he said she said situation that can only end with everyone disappointed in everyone else (so I think we should talk about it less), any time we get multiple threads on a current hot topic I can't help but wonder what we might have talked about if everything had remained in one thread.

That said, I was pretty keen to read the new posts in that thread this morning myself, I understand the allure and the desire to get engagement you are unlikely to get in an older thread. And I agree this was a good op, whatever I think of the conclusions.

It could have been an error on my part. I just reached like 14k characters and was like, is this big enough to be its own thing? Certainly I put the effort in (translating sucks). I'm not sure that pure length + effort is a great heuristic for a top level comment but it seemed acceptable at the time to me, especially considering my point is more about the reaction to the kiss, rather than the dynamics of the kiss itself, though that might get lost in discussion.

why is she more credible than him

Who politely asks for a kiss as a celebration?

Far more likely that he made a snap judgment that she wouldn’t mind and went for it. Which is the story she’s telling.

I’d find her less credible if she’d been righteously wading into the culture war side, but she’s been pretty reluctant.

She says he lied about asking for a kiss. Why is she more credible than him?

have you ever won anything and celebrated ? You can barely hear you own voice. Now imagine that at WC scale in the greatest moment of your life.

You think in that moment, he went : "May I kiss you on the lips, deeply while shoving your face into mine mademoiselle ?" Ofc not. I would doubt his statement even if she corroborated it.

I haven't won a world cup, but I have been in roaring stadiums and arenas before. It reminds me of a Slayer concert I went to when I was young, because it was packed full of giant hairy angry dudes. But because nobody could hear anything over the music, people were having to talk right in each other's ears. And the way it evolved was incredible. At the start of the night it was awkward, and you'd watch the angry giants flinch constantly whenever they came close to contact with another angry giant. But as the alcohol flowed and the haze bloomed people got more comfortable, and by the end of the night everyone was hugging everyone. Sometimes to speak about something, but sometimes they just felt like a hug. It was beautiful. I hate the idea of throwing that away.

But back to this shit, if you watch the video there is a beat between the hug and the kiss where he appears to say two or three syllables. From what I'd heard he wasn't alleged to have said "May I kiss you on the lips, deeply while shoving your face into mine mademoiselle ?", he said "un beso?" and she smiled and nodded assent. I assumed this was going to come down to "he was holding her head and the movement of his hands made it look like she was nodding but she wasn't", but either way we will never know what exactly went down, and in situations like that I default to 'then it's none of my business'.

Well, if I'm honest part of my judgement is based on simply my experience of watching firsthand the Spanish-language videos, and my personal judgement of who to believe, but also there are two videos of different angles (which I saw but now can't find clean zoomed out links of because googling for original videos is a fucking horrible experience) that don't seem to support any real conversation between them. But it's also possible they had the conversation he claimed but she thought it would be a cheek kiss or a head kiss or something so it's not like any reasonable person is going to expect grabbing your whole head and planting a full on kiss on the lips in that situation?

I don't know how it comes across in my clumsy translation but all of his apologies were basically linked grammatically with some other excuse or with a connotation of "I have to" rather than "I want to". It's kind of the apology equivalent of being passive-aggressive.

So you think she didn't think it was a big deal except he said she said yes and that made it a big deal, because she was ok with the non consensual kiss but not ok with him claiming it was consensual, so after days of silence she released a statement denouncing the nonconsensual kiss?

That's pretty much right. She was fine being like, a little mistreated for the sake of not distracting from an awesome victory and celebrations. But when it morphed into a huge and deliberate misrepresentation, and him being so belligerent about it all, she felt she had to say something. My reading of her comments focuses on how she thinks it's more about him lacking respect for others than the actual vulnerability or any harm from the act itself. That Rubiales has created a "manipulative culture". And she realized that staying silent, rather than being a noble act, is in fact sending a message of impunity for bad actors to other women who might find themselves in similar situations. That's perfectly in keeping with for example the Wednesday release with the union, where she seems more interested in improving overall player conditions and a general sense of justice and being respected than an extraction of a specific punishment.

Because if there were true respect between the players and Rubiales, a kiss like that would be unthinkable.

Because if there were true respect between the players and Rubiales, a kiss like that would be unthinkable.

I know next to nothing about the situation or the people involved. For all I know you're absolutely right about Rubiales, and he's an absolute creep. I'm actually quite inclined to believe that, as my opinion on people in elite positions tends to be rather low, but this single sentence made me do a hard-format and wipe everything you said prior to it from my mind.

To say that I disagree would be the understatement of the year, it's stuff like this that makes me believe progressivism is downright inhumane, and it's goal is to maximize human misery. Even granting you every other premise, and accepting your version of the events, this sentence is completely wrong. There's nothing unthinkable about a kiss like that, and there's no way it contradicts respect, even if it was unwanted and was the wrong thing to do. If there's warm blood running through your veins, you should at least be able to see a possible non-disrespectful reason for his actions.

There is an axiom in certain strains of Western feminism that male lust is inherently dehumanizing. That the male (lustful) gaze objectifies any and all women towards whom it is directed.

This academic paradigm has filtered out to the masses in various forms. Young men have all been exposed to the message that their sexual desires are in some way problematic and expressing them to women is in some way harmful to those women. "It is disrespectful to have any sexual desire for your female colleagues." is an unsurprising belief to come out of that environment. It obviously isn't a true belief, sexual desire and respect aren't actually linked in our psyche that way, but it's probably a useful belief in the post metoo era.

I don't know anything about the people involved. For me how we should assess this event basically comes down to the answers to a couple of questions:

  • Did he offer the kiss in a way that gave her the opportunity to accept or decline, or just go ahead and do it without waiting for her permission?
  • Had the two of them previously established that this level of physical intimacy was normal and accepted in their relationship?
  • Did he have any sexual or romantic intentions, or was it a purely platonic gesture?
  • Would he have done the same to a male player in the same position?
  • Does he have any pre-existing record of sexual misconduct?

To add to this, the Spanish women's team was already very unhappy with the Spanish federation.
They were in open protest before the world cup, and won by ignoring their coach's instructions and with half the 1st team 'exiled' from the squad.

Vilda and the federation have been under fire for nearly a year over failing to create a professional environment for the team. A group of 15 players sent individual but identical emails in September 2022 asking not to be called up until certain changes were made, including Golden Ball winner Aitana Bonmati. The players' complaints reportedly included insufficient preparation for matches, including travel arrangements and a limited amount of staff, as well as coaches who restricted their freedom during camps.

The federation and players held discussions last winter and spring over improving conditions, which led three of the 15, plus three who publicly supported them but did not send the emails, to eventually be included in the World Cup squad.

The federation continues to back Vilda despite the complaints, with president Luis Rubiales saying on Thursday that the coach has "forgotten the people … who wanted to destroy him." The official account for Spain's women's national team also posted a photo of Vilda kissing the World Cup trophy after Sunday's final with the caption "Vilda in."

They won despite Rubiales (who put his weight behind the coach). He was the villain in the story even before the kiss. (Yes, the team was that absurdly strong. Sort of like a USA NBA team)

The previous post annoyed me. It was written by someone who went looking for a culture war angle, and came out with the least charitable interpretation of the whole thing, just so it looked like SJWs had gone too far.

Some men deserve to cancelled. (or at least fired for gross incompetence)

This post and OP annoy me since they accuse others of looking for a culture war angle when they are doing the same thing.

I mean, I don't actually care about the Spanish womens national team. Like, at all. Never spared them a thought or wondered if their bureaucracy is efficient. It might as well not exist. But I am sure that if it were a mens team being retarded by some women in positions of power that I could muster up some ingroup bias to care. At least enough to add it as another mark against an outgroup. Hell, my carefree disposition of indifference towards this is all a product of my biases.

Point here being that I'm not here pretending that I'm not on a side even if this thing isn't emotionally animating. And I think it would do a lot of 'rational' minded people a lot of good to recognize how their indifference is not indifference at all.

If Rubiales was incompetent he should be removed on those grounds. But that's not what's going on. Instead the public incident is being used as a weapon to oust him. On that front, how can you say, from a culture war neutral perspective, that Rubiales isn't just playing an optimal power game? If his detractors wanted him gone, why not go after the actual substantive stuff? Instead they hand him this publicity stunt to play around with. Now they can't remove him without perceptions being that it's because of a kiss.

Yes, the entire chain of reasoning is "this dog is vicious: it bites when you kick it"

Removing people on purely substantive grounds is difficult even when you're right. Ousting power requires some level of opportunism.

Unilateral disarmament would be a noble if naive goal, but if you can excuse Rubiales' blatant lies you can just as well excuse an opportunistic ousting. Otherwise it's pure who-whom, and no point discussing further.

I'm not advocating for disarmament or lamenting the actions of Rubiales or the people who want him gone. I am lamenting the posturing of people here who are acting like they are just on the side of reason and common sense as opposed to the people 'waging a culture war' when in reality they are just waging a culture war from a different angle.

You can't call out the actions of Rubiales as being nefarious or less sympathetic, like was done by OP, because he is transparently playing out some power game when you then admit that the whole thing is a power play to begin with designed to get the guy fired.

You also can't point to some mild opportunism and say it delegitimizes all other complaints. That leads to pure who-whom, which sucks.

Your protest is like asking why the USG went after Al Capone for tax evasion instead of his actual crimes. The answer is obvious and it doesn't make him innocent.

You also can't point to some mild opportunism and say it delegitimizes all other complaints. That leads to pure who-whom, which sucks.

That's not what is being done. You can be a SJW or an anti-corruption advocate or whatever thing it is in the culture war that animates you, just say that's what you are. Don't pretend to be one to pursue the other or some variation thereof.

Your protest is like asking why the USG went after Al Capone for tax evasion instead of his actual crimes. The answer is obvious and it doesn't make him innocent.

It's not but whatever. If we know the witch floats why bother throwing her in the water? Maybe, if you can't oust a corrupt president or prosecute a guilty criminal for his actual crimes, the issue is broader than those specific individuals and throwing them to the dogs won't do much to solve it. In either case I am not impressed by people who insinuate they are acting better than others when they are transparently not.

[...] just say that's what you are.

This is disarmament. So you are advocating unilateral disarmament then? Unless your demand is only for your enemies, in which case yes they will of course ignore it.

Maybe, if you can't oust a corrupt president or prosecute a guilty criminal for his actual crimes,

They should just get off without any charges? If your commitment to due process and the impartial hand of justice is that great, you can't turn around later and defend Rubiales' because he's on your team.

I'm not advocating for lawless vigilantism or witch burning. I'm pointing out that one party engaging in power politics doesn't necessarily disqualify their legitimate complaints.

You need to explain what you mean by "disarmament". I don't understand what you mean.

They should just get off without any charges?

That's the opposite of what I am saying. My point is that if your legal framework can't work itself around an obvious criminal then the problem might be with the legal framework.

I'm not advocating for lawless vigilantism or witch burning. I'm pointing out that one party engaging in power politics doesn't necessarily disqualify their legitimate complaints.

And I'm saying there are two parties engaging in power politics and that makes it a fair game for both. I don't understand what you want here. I am very sure Rubiales thinks he has legitimate complaints as well.

If Rubiales was incompetent he should be removed on those grounds. But that's not what's going on. Instead the public incident is being used as a weapon to oust him. On that front, how can you say, from a culture war neutral perspective, that Rubiales isn't just playing an optimal power game? If his detractors wanted him gone, why not go after the actual substantive stuff? Instead they hand him this publicity stunt to play around with. Now they can't remove him without perceptions being that it's because of a kiss.

I don't think you realized how entrenched in corruption the various heads of FAs are and how widely they're despised by everyone. This is the perfect opportunity because his misdeeds are dragged into the limelight; nobody cares about Rubiales siphoning off millions for sex orgies or cocaine, this kiss made national news, and it's easier to pressure FIFA to remove him if it's on the front page of all Western media.

I can tell you don't follow football at all, this isn't a culture war issue at all. This is mainly about corruption within the RFEF and this is the perfect opportunity to get rid of Rubiales.

Casillas (the captain of the 2010 men's team who won the WC) has spoken out against him. Xavi has as well. Sergio Ramos has hated Rubiales when he was still captain. Florentino Perez absolutely fucking despises the man and despite being one of the most powerful people in Spain, he can't do shit to Rubiales.

Again, if you don't follow the sport, you may not realize how absolutely hated the heads of the FAs are across all nations. Fans and players will gladly use any excuse as a way to get rid of them. Argentina has just won the fucking WC, and people still hate Chiqui Tapia (he's even called "Chiqui Mafia" because of how corrupt he is).

The corruption is seriously disgusting and impossible to get rid of. You have shit like a 79 member body producing an anonymous 40-40 split of votes for the head of the FA.

I don't think you realized how entrenched in corruption the various heads of FAs are and how widely they're despised by everyone.

Followed by

This is the perfect opportunity because his misdeeds are dragged into the limelight; nobody cares about Rubiales siphoning off millions for sex orgies or cocaine

It can't be both. Either everyone knows and cares enough to despise them, or they don't.

I can tell you don't follow football at all

Your comment sucks.

I know, from playing and watching plenty of football, that most people who watch don't care at all about corruption. They 'know' about it, sure, but they are not activists in any sense. Events like the Calciopoli corruption scandal in 2004 don't mean anything. People still show up to watch the next game and cheer for their side because it's a hobby. Every event is just more entertainment. And what else can you expect? Football is not a democratic thing.

You just don't have an argument. Which is why you need to leverage your culture warring with the appearance of being in the know, when all you are doing is projecting your own opinion into the world and trying to mold it around it.

But maybe that view of mine is wrong. To help me understand your position here: Do you not care about womens rights at all? Is this all just a shadow campaign to fight corruption?

FINLAND MOVES TO CRIMINALIZE HOLOCAUST DENIAL

I've been making some updates previously here on the new right-wing government including a nationalist party, Finns Party, and the ongoing racism scandal after it turned out that some of the ministers from that party had a history of racist comments, even playing around with Nazi implications. You can read this, this or this for more context.

For some time now, the actual survival of the government has been predicated on an "anti-racist statement" demanded by Swedish People's Party, the most liberal and pro-minority (chiefly their own Swedish-speaking minority but also all other ones, in some way) party in the government.

The statement was published yesterday and mostly just contained platitudes, basic repetition of already-existing laws and government program parts and promises to "launch programmes", "improve dialogue", "support the work done" etc that basically amount to very little. The actual actions also contains parts obviously intended to placate Finns Party, such as new campaigns against honor violence, gang violence and so on, as well as a promise to look into banning Communist symbols alongside with Nazi ones.

You can read it here if you wish. Its main purpose, of course, has been to allow everyone to save face sufficiently to keep the government going on, so that it can get on to doing the other tasks that the parties it consists of wish it to do, ie. implement a pro-business economic policy and limit immigration.

However, the one concrete detail that has aroused some attention abroad has been a promise to criminalize Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial has not been formally criminalized in Finland and before this Finnish governments have actually resisted proposals and demands by institutions like EU to do so, chiefly on the basis that antisemitic acts could already be charged under ethnic agitation laws if need be.

In practice Holocaust denial is very rare in Finland and there's been only a couple of cases that have seen court action, mainly since Holocaust in general is not as important in Finnish discourses as in many other countries. Finland has had a tiny Jewish community, maybe a few thousand at any given era, and during the actual event Finland deported eight Jewish refugees to Germany but otherwise did not follow German demands to relinquish the country's small Jewish community, and Jewish soldiers fought on the front while Finland participated in Operation Barbarossa, with three Jewish Finnish soldiers even being offered the Iron Cross by Germans, who had troops in Lapland.

In general, it might be said that one reason for the comparatively less attention being paid to Holocaust than in many other countries is that Soviet crimes against humanity loom so large. Thus far, for instance, while other European countries have commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day, Finland has had a “Remembrance Day for the Victims of Persecutions", and the local press often uses this day to talk about Soviet persecutions, like the Soviet ethnic campaign against Finns in the 1930s. (This is one of the things that the anti-racist statement also promises to change.)

I have sometimes seen local Nazis post Holocaust denial stuff, but even this happens in a very perfunctory way and is clearly not a top concern in comparison to immigration or, say, GLBTQ+ stuff. Maybe that is because internationally a popular antisemitic argument has always been blaming the Jews for communism, socialism, feminism and the New Left, and Finland as had plenty of all of those (a socialist revolution, one of the largest Communist parties in Western Europe per capita etc.) with barely any Jewish participation.

One of the few actual instances to have actively demanded Holocaust denial criminalization and generally stronger actions against antisemitism are the Christian Democrats, a small socially conservative Christian party, which is firmly pro-Israel and based on evangelical movements that subscribe to dispensationalist theology, which is currently also in gobernment. As such, it's very likely that this was one of their demands. However, it doesn't seem to have been one that has caused particular troubles for the Finns Party to accept, since it's not related to their true concern - immigration - and the party also has some history of giving soft support to Israel simply on the basis that the Finnish Left is firmly pro-Palestinian.

As such, I don't expect this to be particularly consequential, since it basically criminalizes something that has very rarely happened anyway and which would arguably often already be banned under other laws. If anything I'd expect it to increase Holocaust denial, simply since there's already a conspiracy theory community suspicious of anything the government does and who might be expected to go "If it's banned there must be some truth to it, eh?"

Imagine someone was raised in a country where the Holocaust is officially denied, and then goes to college in a country such as Finland or Germany in which denying the Holocaust is a crime. This student is genuinely uncertain if the Holocaust occurred, and starts conversations about the Holocaust with his classmates and presents arguments he was given as a child about why the Holocaust was faked by powerful interests. He is sternly told that it is a criminal offense to bring up such arguments. If he is a good Bayesian, how should this criminality cause him to update? (Of course, I don't think the Holocaust was faked.)

An Iranian student in Finland would then be deciding which government is lying to him, and he presumably has strong priors in that regard already.

Presumably, in case of Finland, that would depend on the actual formulation and application of the law, which doesn’t actually exist yet (expect as a proposal).

Is weeding out those who have trouble with resolving the confusion towards "whatever the overwhelming societal consensus backed by the local monopoly on violence wants me to believe" a bug or a feature? Society's wheels are greased with a million falsehoods, oversimplifications and truths that are too hard to verify for the vast majority of people, and not all of them are as memetically reinforced as this one. Perhaps having a conspicuous honeypot (which I'd also estimate to be in the third category, even if some cosmetic details may be fudged, which only serves to raise its attractiveness) is better than letting the compulsive contrarians advance through society and wind up somewhere where they can do real damage.

Society's wheels are greased with a million falsehoods, oversimplifications and truths that are too hard to verify for the vast majority of people, and not all of them are as memetically reinforced as this one.

Is... is one allowed to ask where said society is heading when the wheels are being greased so readily but it appears you can't switch which direction you're traveling?

better than letting the compulsive contrarians advance through society and wind up somewhere where they can do real damage.

I am fundamentally unconvinced that 'compulsive contrarians' are more likely to cause damage than any other person who seeks out and obtains power.

Is weeding out those who have trouble with resolving the confusion towards "whatever the overwhelming societal consensus backed by the local monopoly on violence wants me to believe" a bug or a feature?

Feels like a feature to rulers, but is a bug.

People bred for compliance tend to get conquered.

I don't know about that. If I try to think of particularly low-agreeableness/insubordinate peoples, the ones that come to mind are marginal ethnic groups like Chechens and Borderers, who historically tended to be brought to heel by adjacent empires with superior state capacity enabled by having access to a deep pool of soldiers and bureaucrats.

You've inverted the criterion. You should look at societies that have successfully eliminated dissent, not societies that are entirely made of dissenters.

What happened to China, the perpetually great Empire that invested significant cultural, technological and political capital to make its population as docile as possible? What happened to the Ottomans, who had comparable technology to Europeeans and then banned the printing press? What happened to the Soviet Union, whose dissenters turned a backwater laggard into a superpower but enforced strict ideological conformity?

State capacity is only useful if you can wield it effectively, and eliminating dissent eventually prevents this.

What happened to China, the perpetually great Empire that invested significant cultural, technological and political capital to make its population as docile as possible?

If it did, it failed. Chinese history is history of endless revolts, urprisings and civil wars, revolts that sometimes succeeded.

Traditional China based on "mandate of heaven" ideology effectively justified and encouraged revolt, Christian Europe based of "noble blood" and "divine right to rule" made revolt blasphemy and effectively eliminated dissent from the lower classes. In China, common peasant overthrowing Son of Heaven and stepping on his place was SOP, in Europe peasant becoming king was something unthinkable.

In China, every peasant boy knew he could be emperor when he grows up (and finds few friends to help him). In Europe, every peasant knew that God made peasant a peasant and king a king, and dispute it was to dispute God himself.

No surprise that European history was history of stable society where kings and nobles ruled undisputed for millenia, while Chinese history was chaotic one where everything was burned down regularly every two or three centuries.

No surprise that European history was history of stable society where kings and nobles ruled undisputed for millenia

This is not a particularly accurate summation of events. European feudal monarchies in the sense that we understand them crystalized in the breakup of the Carolingian empire, where might most definitely made right rather than strict blood claims making right. The history of the middle ages is then one of near constant warfare over who ruled what, resolved generally by might makes right, with blood claims added as a legitimizing principle. And then of course with the wars of the protestant reformation the whole system gets overturned, absolutism only lasts for a few centuries(a century in England, two in France and most of the rest of the continent, and it never took hold in the Netherlands) and was never a particularly stable equilibrium anyways.

Christian Europe based of "noble blood" and "divine right to rule" made revolt blasphemy and effectively eliminated dissent from the lower classes.

People say this, but the person I associate most with divine right is not Charles I, but Oliver Cromwell - who genuinely believed that God had ordained him as ruler of England. The strong religious beliefs in Europe did not lead to peace and unity, but the opposite - to decades of war as men sought to topple ungodly or heretical princes. And far from crushing dissent, the early modern period saw the birth of liberalism. John Locke and John Lilburne were the contemporaries to Oliver Cromwell.

No surprise that European history was history of stable society where kings and nobles ruled undisputed for millenia

When/where in Europe are you thinking about, specifically?

He is sternly told that it is a criminal offense to bring up such arguments.

The Netherlands has laws on the books as-is, and this doesn't happen. So much so that I've seen your precise exact situation play out in university, and the resulting answer not being 'WRONGTHINK BAD' but 'here you go, you can look at these things.'

If one were to point someone to incontrovertible evidence that the Third Reich tried to systematically murder every Jew in Europe, what would that be?

It'd be the subject of any-odd number of boring history classes university students go through to get their education.

Maybe I asked the wrong question since you chose to answer a different one, do you need me to rephrase?

I'm not a Dutch legal expert, and neither are you. All I know is that these things are discussed without anyone being jailed, prosecuted, or even told this'll invite legal trouble.

I'm not a Dutch legal expert, and neither are you. All I know is that these things are discussed without anyone being jailed, prosecuted, or even told this'll invite legal trouble.

Not any more.

Netherlands Adopts New Law Banning Denial and Trivialization of Holocaust and Other War Crimes

The government of the Netherlands has adopted a landmark decision to explicitly prohibit the denial, trivialization, and justification of the Holocaust, as well as other war crimes. This move, implemented by the outgoing government led by Mark Rutte, aims to strengthen existing legislation against discrimination and racism. The new law introduces penalties, including potential prison sentences of up to one year, for those who engage in such offensive forms of speech.

This has effectively been law since at least 1995, when the courts ruled that holocaust denial is a crime; the recent addendum is effectively codifying legal principles that have been around for a generation. I'm not a fan, either, but the chilling effect on honest discourse isn't there.

What’s with the recent wave of Holocaust Denial legislation? Has it been some kind of hot topic recently? I mean Kanye gave an interview in a gimp suit to Alex Jones but it just made him look crazy even to the antisemitic conspiracy theory community(and, to note, Jones pushed back against Kanye’s praise of Hitler). As far as I know there hasn’t been other examples of prominent Holocaust denial or even antisemitism(well, maybe a basketball player, but he also came off as a general loon) recently. And yet pushing for Holocaust denial criminalization seems to be a major push as of late, even in countries that the holocaust shouldn’t by all rights be much of a topic in(Canada, Finland).

It's a political cudgel to wield against your enemies.

Politician A: Let's ban holocaust denial

Politician B: Let's not restrict free speech

Policitan A: Politician B is a Nazi

Its inconceivable that Holocaust denial would be a a top priority in 2023 unless there were political points to be scored. Any time spent discussing this nonsense could conceivably be spent on real problems.

Good example of this: Every year for a decade or more, there has been a UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. Back in 2017, an old friend of mine—a single, middle-aged Seattle woman with all the political attitudes that implies—shared a link to this article about the US, fuming about how "shameful" it was that the US stood nearly alone in voting against it. I pointed out that the Obama administration had voted against it as well, which took a bit of the wind out of her sails, but she was already committed, so she said that was shameful, too.

The rest of the story:

  1. While only the US and two other countries voted against it, (almost?) every advanced democracy abstained.
  2. The other two countries voting against? Ukraine and Palau.
  3. The country sponsoring the resolution every year? Russia.

This looks a an interesting piece of evidence for the relative weakness of the US Deep State. The UK (and, as far as I can see, most other western democracies) has a “policy” of abstaining rather than voting against these bullshit resolutions if they are going to pass anyway (which they usually are, because the slightly evil bloc of third world dictatorships that look to Russia and China for leadership is a majority). The reason for this is that it doesn’t affect anything, and voting against generates friction for the career diplomats whose day job is making nice to slightly evil countries. The elected government, on the other hand, would be better off with the positive media attention it would get for public ally opposing slightly evil UN resolutions. There is a Yes Minister episode about how the UK Deep State pulls this off.

The reason why the US votes against these resolutions is that the multiple layers of political appointees at the top of the State Department are, in this case, able to overrule the Deep State in a way Jim Hacker was not.

I don't know. I'm not sure that US politicians get credit for consistently voting against this resolution. My perception that it's mostly ignored, and when people pay attention to it, it's "OMG, the [current] administration doesn't want to condemn Nazis! I'm so ashamed to be American!"

I mean I guess the question is why not vote for? These resolutions don’t do anything, after all. Is it just to stick it to Russia?

In this case, it is specifically due to domestic policy concerns, and the most obvious reason is precisely because it's not much of a topic here and largely inconsequential. Ie. in a situation where the government is, on the other hand, pushed by one party to make a face-saving anti-racist statement and, on the other hand, pushed by another to not have that statement have any particular teeth since they fear a consequential statement might limit their desired policies, it offers a way to do something that's visible and attention-grabbing enough to score the image points the first party wants and, on the other hand, not really limit the other party's desired policies (which are related to things other than Holocaust or similar questions) all that much.

Btw, as in Italy, another example of how any right-wing party in the West is going to adopt liberal policies at the end.

In this case, it’s a policy explicitly rejected by a number of left/liberal govts and mainly advocated by one (small) conservative party.

Holocaust denial is a factually incorrect position to take that bears an implicit threat against Jewish people. Given the fact that threatening statements are already acceptably considered 'beyond the pale' I don't see this as a free speech issue. It is instead explicitly codifying the idea that 'yes we know what you're doing, so cut it out' -- the venn diagram of people who deny the holocaust and hold anti-semitic views is practically a circle. Since it simply builds off of an already acceptable principle, why does it matter if a specific type of factually incorrect statement is explicitly legislated against?

  • -30

The importance of freedom of speech has to do with the fact that censorship is prone to abuse, and truth is not reliably obtained by censorship. The statement "But this time, the thing being censored is actually false" comes with a "according to me and my allies" qualifier, and even if I agree with you that in this case you're correct that doesn't mean that censorship isn't a political maneuver. It is still a use of force by the strong to silence the weak (or else it wouldn't work) and being strong is not sufficient proof that the use of force is just (or else there would have been no holocaust to deny).

The whole point of the freedom of speech is that the free market place of ideas is a more reliable path to good outcomes than is oppressing the weak when you feel really convinced that they're in the wrong. That's exactly what the Nazis did, and no amount of "But that's different because they were wrong [according to us]!" will change the fact that it's the same reasoning and the same justification.

In other words, if holocaust denial is clearly false and evil, then it won't need to be censored because anyone denying the holocaust will come off as clearly delusional and evil. If it's not so clear, then it actually needs to be hashed out, or else there will be unintegrated resentment and distrust building and the regime would have actually earned this distrust by choosing to close the path to feedback.

Abiding by the principle of free speech means voluntarily refusing to censor what you can censor, because you place more faith in the free expression of ideas to reach good conclusions than you do in your own ideology if it cannot sustain free expression of ideas. It's saying "Hey, maybe my head is up my own ass, and so to be appropriately humble I will refrain from oppressing the weak just because I think they're wrong and evil, and make sure that they stay uninfluential on their own merits".

And it works. While I'm sure they exist, I have never actually heard anyone deny the holocaust and I'm not even sure I've even met someone who wouldn't judge a person negatively for daring to suggest it didn't happen. This is an easy case, and if we can't even refrain from thumbing the scale when our ideological enemies are so easily defeated by pointing to the truth, we have no chance on anything remotely hard.

I would push even further than Nybbler and assert that "the Holocaust should happen" is not specific and concrete enough to be a candidate for "call to violence" exception.

Given the very special treatment of the holocaust in comparison to other genocides one could make a good case that the holocaust legislation amounts to little more than anti-blasphemy laws.

Agreed.

If you can say "Maybe it's true though?", no matter how abhorrent, it is speech that needs to be protected. In fact, the more abhorrent the more it needs the protection.

You can't "Maybe it's true" a call to violence like "Shoot this bastard".

"Maybe it's true this bastard should be shot"?

That would apply if the person said "This bastard should be shot", instead of the statement they hypothetically said.

Which does bring in the complication of how you deal with mafia threats like "Nice place you got there. Would be a shame if something happened to it". But again, the principle is clear: you're allowed to express that people have nice things, and you're allowed to argue that this bastard should be shot, you're not allowed to threaten.

So the burden is on you to make the case that "this bastard should be shot" or "nice place, would be a shame" is actually a threat, because the statement it is pretending to be is absolutely protected speech.

This is simply a specific implementation of 'anti inciting to violence' provisions of speech, clearly defined and accepted within constitutional law consistantly around the world in most democratic countries, in order to make it easier to specifically target a clearly delineated type of person -- neo-nazis.

Which part do you have a problem with?

A. Laws restricting speech with respect to things like inciting or the promotion of violence etc exist? B. Holocaust denial is automatically considered to be 'hate speech'; whether by means of common law/case precedence or explicit laws to that effect? C. Censorship exists?

This isn't about preventing some 'unpopular truth' from coming out, it's a specific mechanism being used to target a specific hateful counter-culture.

A. Laws restricting speech with respect to things like inciting or the promotion of violence etc exist? B. Holocaust denial is automatically considered to be 'hate speech'; whether by means of common law/case precedence or explicit laws to that effect? C. Censorship exists?

Once you're defining things to be "inciting or promotion of violence etc" when by plain language they aren't, the you're just implementing arbitrary censorship with a figleaf. You can replace B with "support of the Social Democratic Party is automatically considered to be 'hate speech'" to see why.

This is simply a specific implementation of 'anti inciting to violence' provisions of speech, clearly defined and accepted within constitutional law consistantly around the world in most democratic countries, in order to make it easier to specifically target a clearly delineated type of person -- neo-nazis.

Simply put, no it is not.

The "call to violence" exception isn't really an exception because you're not actually punishing speech.

If I kill Betty and bury her body under the old church, then if I'm ever caught saying the words "I killed Betty and buried her under the old church", I'm likely to go to jail because I said those words. But it's not "punishing speech", it's punishing violence -- murder, specifically. And in the same vein, if I say "Give me your money or I will kill you", it is not "speech", it's the counterfactual violence which I am using to extort you. Speech is needed to communicate the evidence of guilt, or convey the threats, but it's the violence itself that calls for punishment -- and that's why I can say the words "Give me your money or I will kill you" here, or "I killed betty and buried her under the old church" without getting or deserving punishment for it.

If you are actively attempting to coordinate unjust and illegal violence, then again, it's the violence that's a problem. But it has to be unjust and illegal violence. Making the case that parking tickets should be given in a certain case is not "advocating for violence" just because their policy, if accepted, would ultimately lead to violence against anyone refusing to pay the parking tickets. It's the illegal parker's "resisting arrest" that will be deemed violence. And that's fine and good, because if we as a society decide that it makes sense to enact new parking rules, we as a society agree that people parking there are defecting and doing the wrong thing -- even though this "bears an implicit threat" against people who like to park there.

Saying "The holocaust should happen" is vague as fuck. What's that even mean? "The jews are vermin, which we should exterminate"? That's absolutely a threat of 'unpopular truth' to the people who want to ban it, even though I don't feel particularly threatened myself because I'm solid in the fact that it's not true. But that also means I don't feel a need to censor in order to stop the ideas from spreading.

"Show up by the old church wearing swastikas, and round up any jew in sight" is a call to violence, and you should arrest those people for attempting violence -- if you have sufficient evidence that the violence is real, that is. If someone is merely arguing -- even incorrectly -- the factual case that we'd be better off if jews were genocided, then that is factual speech and absolutely 100% speech that needs to be protected.

The bottom line is this:

If it were true, would it be important to know?

If we'd really be better off exterminating jews, because jews really are so parasitic as to be more comparable to tapeworms than productive members of society (and therefore "the holocaust should happen"), then that would be very important to know.

If we just disagree that it's true, then we use our words like grown ups instead of having tantrums at ideas that upset us to think about.

Applying "If it were true, would it be important to know?" to "Show up and round up the jews", we immediately find that it is not applicable, because there is no truth value to be found. If the statement has no truth value because it isn't a proposition but an actual call to violence, then respond to the actual threat of violence accordingly.

Holocaust denial is a factually incorrect position to take

Well, how do you know that? Presumably you weren't there. Did you see it? Did you go into the lab in history class and measure it? Did you receive a vision from God whereby you were commanded to write seven comments to the seven forums of rationalism? No, you believe the Holocaust because you read about it or watched some YouTube videos (I hope you aren't relying on personal instruction from public schoolteachers for your epistemology). Why do you believe those sources? Was it eyewitness testimony from someone claiming to be a Holocaust survivor? You can watch interviews with people claiming to be abducted by aliens. Did they cite documents from the time period? Documents can be forged, important documents, documents which change the course of history because people believe them.

The reason I believe the Holocaust is because of bounded distrust. There are enough eyewitness accounts that make sense considered together, enough plausible-seeming documents that match up with everything else we know well enough, and perhaps most importantly, there is a small army of people dedicated to poking holes in all of this who have come up mostly empty. They are the mechanism by which distrust is bounded. It is vital for a healthy information ecosystem that people be allowed to question everything.

and perhaps most importantly, there is a small army of people dedicated to poking holes in all of this who have come up mostly empty.

This is not true at all. There are many examples, but one of the most significant that comes to mind is the revisions to the alleged Majdanek "extermination camp". The Soviet prosecution submitted into evidence the claim that 1.5 million were murdered in a "Huge Death Factory of Gas Chambers and Crematories." Official Soviet-Polish investigation concluded there were seven gas chambers, a claim which stood as "history" for decades.

In the 1990s Revisionist scholars including Carlo Mattogno visited the archives and discovered original construction documents and work orders proving the hygienic purposes of the facilities which were allegedly homicidal gas chambers- including real shower rooms, laundry facilities, and delousing facilities. They disproved the technical possibility that the alleged structures could have operated as homicidal gas chambers. They also concluded a tragic but more realistic death toll of around 42,000 at the camp mostly due to catastrophic hygienic conditions and disease like epidemic typhus.

In 2005 the Majdanek Museum conceded most of the revisions pressed by Revisionist scholars, including revising the claim that 5 out of 7 of the alleged "gas chambers" served that purpose and revising the claimed death toll to 78,000, a 95% decline from the figure reported at Nuremberg by Soviet investigators.

The Revisionist research and methodology has proven to be true for Majdanek, and most sources including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum no longer even consider Majdanek an "extermination" camp after these recent revisions. The position of Holocaust Deniers is that a similar revision is needed at several other camps, where nearly identical claims of "factories of death" have been made with wildly exaggerated death tolls by Soviet investigators and eyewitnesses based on very thin evidence.

This revision is especially significant since Majdanek was the very first alleged "extermination camp" conquered and investigated by the Soviets in late 1944. The Soviets lied about a grand factory of death, crematories, and gas chambers in 1944 well before they liberated Auschwitz where they made precisely identical claims including the exact same accusation of the method of mass murder. The disproven claim made by the Soviets that the SS men climbed onto the roof to drop Zyklon B through the ceiling in fact made a public debut at Majdanek in 1944, and the same claim was later made at Auschwitz in 1945. The fact that the 1944 "investigations" have been disproven by Revisionists, even conceded by mainstream sources, shows that suspicion should be cast on identical claims made by identical investigators after Majdanek, which includes every camp.

Majdanek proves it is possible for an extermination camp to be "proven" by courts, witnesses, and historians, only for Revisionists to debunk the consensus with a proper historical and scientific methodology. The only question that remains is, were Revisionists only right about Majdanek, or are they also right about the other alleged camps? My position is that the revisions which they forced at Majdanek are also required at several other camps, where identical claims have been made by identical investigators and witnesses. But it's not correct to say they have "come up empty." They have disproven an entire "extermination camp".

That's an argument for revising the death toll downwards. That's not an argument that the holocaust never happened.

Yes, politically correct brigade pretends they are the same thing, but we don't have to accept their framing. At least some mass killings of racial undesirables, mostly Jews, were carried out by the Nazis during WWII, which is the definition of the holocaust.

It is not simply a matter of revising the death toll downwards, it's a demonstration that Revisionists are correct about the fallibility of the body evidence that has been used to "prove" the extraordinary claim that millions of people were murdered inside makeshift gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Revisionists contend that this narrative was psychological warfare, similar to the psych warfare that produced the most infamous propaganda in WWI about the German "corpse factories".

The Holocaust is not simply the claim that there were some killings of Jews, as that is a claim Revisionists do not contest. The Holocaust includes the claim that there was an official policy to exterminate the Jews and that millions were murdered in makeshift gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Those are the claims Revisionists contest, and Majdanek is not simply a revision of the death toll, it's a demonstrated case of the Revisionist model of the narrative being proven true for one of the 6 alleged "extermination camps." It's a case where, as Revisionists say, Soviet investigators, witnesses, courts, and historians all colluded to perpetuate an entirely false narrative that became "history" for decades, until Revisionists did the archival research and proved their case such that even the Majdanek museum could no longer hold the narrative together without abandoning the vast majority of it.

I’m assuming that as a revisionist you acknowledge that at least some Jewish communities were exterminated deliberately by the axis powers?

Because yes, obviously gas chambers is besides the point and the specific death toll doesn’t actually change the valence of the events. I don’t think you can dispute say, the crimes of the iron guard, or that the Nazis did wipe out plenty of Jewish communities.

Gas chambers are not "besides the point", the claim is that about half of all the Jews killed were murdered in these makeshift contraptions. There is no mainstream authority whatsoever that allows you to affirm "the Holocaust" without also affirming the gas chamber story, that story is an indispensable pillar of what constitutes "the Holocaust".

Yes there were communities that were killed, i.e. there were widespread reprisals against Jewish civilians in response to partisan activity, which was tragic but considered legal at the time. There were likewise Russian and Ukrainian and Polish and German communities that were wiped out and ethnically cleansed before, during, and after the war. We are told Jewish suffering is special because there was a specific policy to secretly exterminate them all, a claim which Revisionists refute, and that millions of them were herded into shower rooms and then gassed. "The Holocaust" as such absolutely depends on the truth of those claims, if those claims are false then the Holocaust narrative is also false by the definition put forward by all of its proponents.

Yes, politically correct brigade pretends they are the same thing, but we don't have to accept their framing.

You don't have to accept their framing in the same way that a sovereign citizen doesn't have to accept the framing of a cop writing him a traffic ticket. If you don't want to go to prison (in many countries) or be fired from your job (in the US) then you do have to accept the common definition.

On the motte we can use the literal definitions of words.

Thank you for proving my point. You can take potshots at which specific events happened at which specific locations. You can point out places where the initial investigators were wrong. What I have never seen is an explanation for what happened to all the Jews? Were the pre-war censuses wrong? Were the post-war censuses wrong? Where did they go? Pretty much every Jew can tell you about family members who died in the Holocaust. Are they all wrong?

I mean the obvious explanation for the censuses, and this is coming from someone who's pretty sure the Nazis exterminated at least some Jewish populations in WWII for no wartime reason, is "they don't tell us anything because they occurred before and after the most destructive war in human history, and Jews lived disproportionately along the battlefront between two major armies with pretty bad records for noncombatants and which was experiencing a wartime famine". Even if there weren't deliberate mass killings you'd expect the numbers of Jews to decline.

You can point out places where the initial investigators were wrong

Of course this is not a case of initial investigators being wrong, this is a case of investigators, courts, witnesses, and historians being systematically and insistently wrong for decades upon decades, including to this day. It's not a "potshot" to point to precedent for Revisionists being proven correct, especially since you have claimed they "came up with nothing". There is precedent for their case against the "gas chamber" narrative being proven correct at a formerly alleged "extermination camp", and the very first one in the historical timeline at that.

Census data is noisy, especially in the context of this topic. But if you are claiming that something specific happened, like a million people were brought to this exact area, killed, and then buried, it's pretty disingenuous to accuse Revisionists of taking "potshots" for critically analyzing the veracity of those claims.

This position relies on the definition of "holocaust".

If I come out tomorrow with a book saying that really, six hundred billion jews died in the Holocaust, are those who claim only six million deniers? What if people do some serious research and say that while six million is possible, a more likely number is some figure in the mid-five millions. Is that "holocaust denial"? Are the claims of victimhood so sacred that no factual investigation can be brooked? Is the truth so fragile that it can't stand up to the intellectual onslaught of some rando cousin-fuckers and the race-hate of the middle east?

Obviously the holocaust happened, but that is exactly why we should allow investigation, questioning, even rampant racist lying. A lot of bad things have happened in history, and they are all fair game for study and criticism. The moment you privilege one particular atrocity, you lay all history fair game for partisan groups to wall off sections sensitive to their ingroup.

Holocaust denial is a factually incorrect position to take that bears an implicit threat against Jewish people.

"The Holocaust didn't happen but it should have" is a threat. "The Holocaust didn't happen" is a marker for neo-Nazis and other unsavory sorts but is in no way itself a threat.

Edit: The first isn't really a "threat" (certainly not in the sense the US takes it), but it is vaguely threatening. The second simply is not.

Sure, in the same way that criticizing the Emperor is not a free speech issue.

Given the fact that threatening statements are already acceptably considered 'beyond the pale' I don't see this as a free speech issue.

I don't understand this. So anything deemed 'beyond the pale' is no longer speech? Let's examine this logic.

It's a given god exists and blasphemy is implicitly harmful and causes violence (looking at you charlie hebdo).

Therefore, speaking against god isn't a free speech issue.

Joe Biden apparently has been using at least three pseudonyms in email communications that mixed family & government business. A legal nonprofit group filed a FOIA request more than a year ago and the National Archives said it found potentially 5,400 emails but has yet to release them.

The closest scenario I can think of was Mitt Romney using the name "Pierre Delecto" in order to maintain a lurker Twitter account, which seems whatever. Trump is also quite fond of pseudonyms. Is there any possible innocent explanation for why Biden would use a pseudonym when discussing government business? I can't think of one. Obama defended the practice when members of his administration got caught doing it but it seems very unconvincing with the existence of email filtering:

The Obama administration defended using alternate government email addresses as necessary for high-level political appointees since the flood of emails to their public inboxes made those accounts unreasonable to manage.

At a 2013 press conference, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney assured reporters that "this is a practice consistent with prior administrations of both parties, and, as the story itself made clear, any FOIA request or congressional inquiry includes a search in all of the email accounts used by any political appointee."

My favorite politician pseudonym is “Carlos Danger,” to the extent that I can recall it faster than “Anthony Weiner” (which already sounds like a pseudonym in itself). It’s so cheesy yet awesome and memorable; I love it.

My favorite pseudonym was Mike Vick’s “Ron Mexico” for checking in a hospital for if I recall an STD.

I’ll throw in “Joey Freshwater,” Ole Miss HC Lane Kiffin’s coed-chasing alter ego.

At a 2013 press conference, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney assured reporters that "this is a practice consistent with prior administrations of both parties, and, as the story itself made clear, any FOIA request or congressional inquiry includes a search in all of the email accounts used by any political appointee."

It's one thing if it's a .gov address with a non-obvious local part -- joe.biden@whitehouse.gov is not something I'd expect the president himself to monitor, so obviously he needs some other one.

But the use of a plausibly fake name combined with a gmail account does look much more like an attempt to deceive -- as it is, the Archives will only have emails to/from .gov addresses, not from (say) foreign government contacts who know about the alt. And if Hunter weren't such a bozo, a pretty close audit of (say) the usgov's interactions with Burisma would not have turned up Biden (Sr)'s involvement -- since nobody would know who Robert Peters (or whatever others) is.

Also, Hillary BTFO -- she said she couldn't manage to juggle even two phones/emails, so she needed the server; now here's old 'Sleepy' Joe with four+!

That and, if the conversations in question are of any sort of sensitivity (if not necessarily "classified" under one of DOD or some other agency's Top Secret/Secret/etc. schemes, just something you'd like to keep quiet), you probably don't want to leave those emails lying about on systems admined by a third party (Google, in the case of gmail). While I gather Google/gmail is somewhat better than average as ISP goes when it comes to admin access controls and keeping audit trails on admin access to user data, there's still the possibility of such admin-snooping happening. If the President really needs a second email account under an assumed name, he should probably be doing this on an account somewhere on a system run by .gov IT.

There are innocent contexts, but the problem for Biden is that he is associated with repeated, consistent, and public denials that he was involved in any for Hunter Biden's business deals. Any emails to that will be another albatross to Biden among non-Democratic voters, in much the same way that Hillary had her own email scandal that just sapped over time.

If Biden has said from the start that he did personal business with Hunter, the Republicans would have pounced but voters wouldn't have cared as much unless there's something actually disreputable. The bigger issue is the contrast in insisting there was no business overlap, and now even the more sympathetic media are acknowledging that family and business mix, even as they avoid directly addressing questions about Hunter. It's probably meant to mitigate, but it's a context where the innuendo (false deniale, followed by non-denials) are damaging in their own right.

It depends. The mainstream media isn’t reporting this, so it’s unlikely that the average NPC or low information voter will know about the issue at all, and among those who do, most as dismissive of the Hunter Biden stuff. So it’s unlikely that most of the people will feel strongly enough to not vote for Biden.

Another problem for him is that about 1,000 emails (where he used aliases) reference Rosemont Seneca. So much for “I don’t discuss business with my son.” Also 200 of them evidently are subject to executive privilege which begs a lot of questions.

Also, some of the emails copy Hunter and set up calls with say Burisma.

None of those are individually smoking guns but when you look at the mosaic and pattern Biden doesn’t really have a good defense.

We have three witnesses alleging he was involved in the scheme. We have a fourth say so in an email.

We have these emails you reference.

We have the twenty shell companies.

We have the meetings at Cafe Milano followed by cash payments.

We have the boast about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired while have contemporary state department documents praising the efforts of the prosecutor.

We know from Devon Archer the prosecutor actually had harmed Burisma persons.

We know the money for Hunter’s work was spread to the entire Biden family.

We know banks published numerous suspicious activity reports.

We have Hunter saying his dad takes half of his money and other records where they clearly co mingle funds.

We have the Biden estates yet they never came from money and didn’t make that kind of money as a Senator.

We have the years of shady business from Jim Biden.

We have the DOJ stopping appropriate inquiries/ evidence gathering that might further prove the story.

The source documents in things like the Hunter laptop have been cross checked with unrelated sources and check out.

There doesn’t seem to be a hole in the story. At the absolute best, Joe Biden was aware what his son was doing and participated in it without changing American policy. That is he “sold” his office but didn’t give anything of value. That still cannot stand and be much be removed from office.

Using an "alternate email" can be legitimate for the reason Jay Carney lays out, but that's different entirely from using a full pseudonym to avoid FOIA and its implications.

It seems undeniable at this point that Biden was involved in crooked dealings, for which Hunter was the frontman, from which Biden and family profited enormously. It would absolutely fot the pattern of Obama admin officials breaking the rules for their own convenience, but with enough complicating layers that they can argue the rules were merely bended. (Several commenters have already noted the similarity to Hillary's emails.) This behavior probably includes breaking several laws (and not just Logan Act trivialities that everyone breaks).

I don't think it's unfair to think that, if Hillary was doing it, and Joe was doing it, then Obama probably knew. Why not? He had to have known about the FBI spying on the Trump campaign. And speculating further, there are some of Feinstein's business deals, Pelosi's stock trades, McConnell's wealth, etc. There's definitely a bigger culture of profiteering at the top level of American government going on, with some room for disagreement about whether it has been merely unethical, technically illegal, or knowingly and deliberately illegal. Joe has definitely participated.

Obama defended the practice when members of his administration got caught doing it but it seems very unconvincing with the existence of email filtering:

Filtering is very lackluster, especially if you're trying to provide it to high-publicity people who aren't very tech-aware and especially where you're not just filtering between "useful" and "spam" but between several different tiers of importance and some junk that an intern still needs to go through. I wish plus-addressing was the right solution, but 95%+ of users will eventually just strip it out and e-mail to the top level instead.

That said, there's a difference between firstname.lastname.projectname and sooners7. The first does anything conventional filtering can not reliably do; the only real benefit to the latter is to avoid grepping. Political appointees are free (and required!) to keep private e-mails off of their public accounts and are free to go full Publicus for their private discussions, but the opportunity for problems are severe.

It's not the worst FOIA-evasion I've seen recently, but it's definitely going to add more reason to suspect fuckery going around.

On the flip side, it's not like anything's going to happen because of it. Even if this action 'violated the law' for NARA or whatever, it's not exactly something that gets enforced; the SLF may get some cash back for the clear violation of FOIA's statutory required response timeline, but even if they do it could well be after the 2024 election at this rate. It probably won't get anyone working in the government in actual trouble rather than just bilking some tax money.

Filtering is no less lackluster than a secret email address. A "promote anything from a source on this allowlist" rule hardly requires AI, but is already strictly superior to "tell the secret address to everyone on this allowlist and hope nobody leaks it".

"Promote anything from a source on this allowlist" requires the person to have and maintain a list of accepted sources. That works for some small projects, but a very typical use case is just "I want to pass this e-mail around to anyone who needs it, even if I don't know them, and not have it get mixed into the 1k+ emails I get already".

There can be many legit reasons for a public person to use several email accounts. For example, you want one account that you give to random people you have to contact, and another high-pririty one which you give only to trusted confidantes and where you won't encounter all kinds of spam and begging for money/attention, etc. There's little legit reason that I can see to use a fake name in email. In Twitter profile - sure. If you're a public person and want to subscribe to people's feeds without people going "OMG, Public Person subscribed to me!!! Public Person liked my tweet!!!" then you use a pseudonymous account. But email doesn't work this way. Especially not when you in a public office. Then I see only one reason - to hide one's identity and to avoid disclosure, whether FOIA or otherwise, if your name somehow ends up in a communication that leaks outside. I can't see how it won't be shady.

How do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret? I have no idea, but I hope that someone can explain a reliable strategy because this story makes no sense in its absence.

EDIT: link to the policy in question.

TL;DR: The government of Saskatchewan just enacted a new policy that affects "preferred names" and pronouns for younger students (along with some other changes, which I'll skip over). It requires that teachers obtain parental consent before using new names/pronouns for students under 16 years old. The criticism is focused on two claims: First, being "out" is important. Second, it can be unsafe if a parent learns that their child is transgender.

The first claim has already been argued to death, and there's nothing new in this story.

The second claim is just bizarre in this context. What do they expect would happen in the absence of the new policy? Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years?

If I knew that a child had information that could be dangerous if it got into the wrong hands, I wouldn't encourage them to spread it far and wide. In fact, I'd direct them to a professional that would help them to develop a strategy that minimized the damage from its release, or else cope with maintaining the burden of secrecy.

But maybe I'm missing something, so I'll repeat my question: how do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret?

Ahhh the Schrödinger parents - always knows what's best for their child if they decide to transition it, have absolutely no clue what's best for their child if there is any chance to oppose transition ...

Are you aware that psychologists and doctors are involved in this process?

The #1 institution in the world for convincing people not to transition is gender care clinics. Only a tiny fraction of people who come in for an initial consultation end up medically transitioning; most are dissuaded after talking to psychologists and doctors about whether it's actually the best path for them.

  • -26

Only a tiny fraction of people who come in for an initial consultation end up medically transitioning; most are dissuaded after talking to psychologists and doctors about whether it's actually the best path for them.

Do you have a citation to back this up? I haven't found any direct numbers, but there are some damning quotes from seemingly-reasonable sources. For example, the Interim Cass Review of the Tavistock clinic includes:

1.14. Primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters

Honestly, I can't even find anecdotes of anyone and their doctor deciding that no treatment was the right course of action. I'm sure it's happened, but I'm having trouble believing "most" here.

Admittedly, this assertion is based on stuff I was reading at least a year ago and don't remember the exact providence of, and the SEO around anything trans related is so incredibly fucked by the culture war that now I can't find those sources in 3 minutes of google.

I did find numbers saying that over a 5 year period, 120k minors were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and 17k were put on puberty blockers or pills, suggesting that even among those who get a dysphoria diagnosis, the rates for going on to medical transition are very low, around 1/8th. But my claim is more that most people who go for a first consultation never get any diagnosis at all, so it's not exactly the same thing.

I remain confident that my claim is correct, but won't expect others to take my word for it if they have different intuitions. Based on my knowledge of how the diagnostic pipeline works in general it would seem very surprising to me if it weren't true just on priors, but meh.

120k minors were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and 17k were put on puberty blockers or pills, suggesting that even among those who get a dysphoria diagnosis, the rates for going on to medical transition are very low, around 1/8th

A null hypothesis for this is that puberty blockers are generally dangerous drugs and that many doctors do not want to deal with the liability.

Sure, that doesn't conflict with my central claim here.

The #1 institution in the world for convincing people not to transition is gender care clinics

What evidence do you have for this, and can you give specific examples about the manner in which they are being convinced to not transition? Even the "gender exploratory" approach is currently demonized as transphobic.

Only a tiny fraction of people who come in for an initial consultation end up medically transitioning;

I'd be interested in the data you have on this, but even if correct, that doesn't imply this is thanks to, rather than despite, the efforts of the clinics.

The parents can only bring the kid to the gender care clinic if they know what is going on; the school conspiring to keep this all a secret from them means they don't know.

How long do we expect this to be true? The obvious continuation of the logic is for schools to provide sex changes gender care behind parents’ backs. They already do it with abortion.

They already do it with abortion.

How's this now?

If you are covered under someone else's medical plan (like your parents) and you don't want them to find out, information on abortions for teenagers is always kept confidential by the BC Ministry of Health.

I guess it’s not technically the school providing it. But if a pregnant student walks into the school counselor‘s office, what do you think happens next?

Right, and the kid should certainly tell their parents if they think it's reasonably safe to do so.

Teachers should certainly talk to kids about telling their parents and help them determine whether it's safe and encourage them to do so if it is.

But having the state step in front of that individual judgement and make a blanket policy for everyone will cause a lot of problems. As per usual for state overreach into personal lives.

Then again, teaching kids postmodernist theories of identity in compulsory schools is an even bigger overreach into personal lives. Arguably compulsory schooling itself is. Given that we already live in a world where both of these things happen as a matter of course, what is the argument for stopping the overreach at informing the parents about their children's behavior in school?

Then again, teaching kids postmodernist theories of identity in compulsory schools is an even bigger overreach into personal lives.

First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

Second, what exactly is it that you imagine is happening in schools? I'm sure schools in California have library books that talk about gender, and maybe as many as some kids have ever read them, but it's not going to be in the curriculum or on a test or anything.

what is the argument for stopping the overreach at informing the parents about their children's behavior in school?

Two wrongs don't make a right, I guess?

Doing a bad thing doesn't become good just because you're also doing a second bad thing. I'm not sure what argument you're really trying to make here.

  • -16

First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

It absolutely can be a hostile act. To go with your religion example, teaching the idea "Jesus Christ is Lord" to Jewish or Muslim students would be a hostile act. By contrast teaching "there are people who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord" would not be, or at least most parents would agree that their kids are going to run into Christians sooner or later, and learning what they believe might help them navigate these interactions. On the other hand sometimes even teaching about an idea would be considered a hostile act. For example, I'm pretty sure many parents would be against having their children be told about the relationship between genetics, race, and IQ (myself included, funnily enough).

Second, what exactly is it that you imagine is happening in schools? I'm sure schools in California have library books that talk about gender, and maybe as many as some kids have ever read them, but it's not going to be in the curriculum or on a test or anything.

I imagine there are many schools draped in the progress flag, with walls covered in progressive slogans. I imagine that even if it's not officially in the curriculum, many teachers take the time to teach that we all have gender identity, and that it's possible for it to not fit your body, and combine that with lessons on privilege. And I imagine, like we discussed in the other thread, that some schools hide from the parents the fact that their children want to transition.

Two wrongs don't make a right, I guess?

Doing a bad thing doesn't become good just because you're also doing a second bad thing. I'm not sure what argument you're really trying to make here.

I think they can. Chemotherapy sans cancer is wrong, but is right when you do have it. The point I'm trying to make is that regulations forcing teachers to inform parents about their children's behavior in school is likely making the best of a bad situation, and there's no way to oppose them on "overreach" grounds.

If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

I, too, remember the popular political refrain of "it's like ramming your dick down my kid's throat" of 2010.

Of course, the same thing applies to other newly-protected characteristics like, well, sexuality; said dick-ramming happens to be a bit more literal these days.

A government that protects characteristics is, by the reasoning behind protective characteristics, not to then start "affirming" some characteristics over others. The Progress flag and the Christian cross belong in equal measure in government: completely absent.

Oh being cis and straight is absolutely affirmed by schools every minute of every day.

Like a fish in water, it's so common that you don't notice it until it's absent for a moment.

  • -14
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Second, what exactly is it that you imagine is happening in schools? I'm sure schools in California have library books that talk about gender, and maybe as many as some kids have ever read them, but it's not going to be in the curriculum or on a test or anything.

My district uses FLASH to teach sex ed. Here's a sample lesson plan: https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/dph/documents/health-safety/health-programs-services/sexual-health-education/elementary/es02-family.pdf

Here's a relevant snippet:

Gender identity refers to whether a person feels like a boy, a girl, both, neither or somewhere in between. A person knows their gender identity because of how they feel, not because of their body parts. Some gender identities include boy, girl, trans, and non-binary. You can’t know what a person’s gender identity is by looking at them, or by how they dress. When a person’s gender identity is different from what the doctor said when they were born, that person might say they are transgender, or just trans. When a person’s gender identity is the same as what the doctor said when they were born, that’s called being cisgender.

Every person has a sexual orientation and a gender identity, and kids’ families are made up of people who are of all different sexual orientations and gender identities.

This lesson is something that 41% of Americans, including 18% of Democrats, think shouldn't be taught in public schools: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/

First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

If this is actually your position, would you object to courses teaching about the importance of white identity, the countless benefits ADOS received from being brought to America as opposed to kept in Africa, the science behind HBD theories and the pivotal role played by the republican party in ending slavery?

Teaching certain ideas is, in my opinion at least, absolutely a hostile act.

There's a big difference between 'I might object to this as stupid' and 'This is not literally worse than child abuse.'

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First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

Some ideas are sufficiently terrible that teaching them to impressionable children is a hostile act. For a nonpartisan example, let’s imagine that schools were teaching time cube(it does, after all, have about the same evidence as modern gender theory, albeit more poorly written). This would be recognized as a hostile act worth getting upset about even though as far as I know the only person who ever ruined his life over believing in time cube was Dr Gene Ray, the cubic and wisest human himself.

Trans is like that, except true believers have a strong tendency to mutilate themselves instead of just declaring themselves the wisest human and naming their personal website ‘abovegod.com’.

Yes, if a primary school curriculum ever has a unit test on the contents of abovegod.org, you will indeed have a valid point.

Until then, I still think you're crying wolf.

Partially by equivocating between very banal and anodyne discussion of what some people believe about gender being social and sex being biological vs the most extreme weird views of niche online trans content providers, and partially by massively overstating how common and central even that banal anodyne discussion is in schools.

And, again: if schools were teaching timecube, that would certainly be very stupid and something we'd want to fix. But it wouldn't be the same type of aggressive and dangerous action as creating a situation where your expected outcome is for a child to be abused by their parents. Violence is worse than speech even if the speech is bad.

I love that you have a different opinion from most folks here. HOWEVER....

On just the basic face of it, why would a clinic whose entire existence revolves around providing medical procedures emphasize not doing those procedures?

There's culture war examples that are obvious. Planned Parenthood isn't going to tell you to have the baby. In a more pedestrian context, a "pain management" clinic isn't going to call you a pussy and push you out the door, and a laser eye specialist isn't going to say your eyesight is fine unless it's extremely good.

As others have mentioned I've personally seen zero evidence that gender clinics are operating with any reasonableness or rigor, and plenty that they aren't. With some exceptions for Nordic countries who have already swung around the horeshoe bend of going through aggressive pro-trans social changes a few years ago.

Planned Parenthood isn't going to tell you to have the baby. In a more pedestrian context, a "pain management" clinic isn't going to call you a pussy and push you out the door, and a laser eye specialist isn't going to say your eyesight is fine unless it's extremely good.

All of these organizations do all of these things all the time, though.

All medical providers have intake interviews where they see whether you are a good candidate for a given treatment. All of them turn people away when appropriate. Most of them have long batteries of screening institutions and specialists that make sure you're likely to be a good candidate before you ever get a referral to the actual care provider, which is precisely what the years of working with psychologists at gender care clinics before transitioning are for.

The unsafe part makes little sense to me, because the argument is that the parents are inclined to be abusive, so if the child comes out as transgender this would trigger abuse. But then what about the rest of the time? Is the child not at risk of abuse for other reasons (parents are neglectful, parents put too much pressure on to achieve academic or sporting success, parents are emotionally cruel)?

It only makes sense in the context of "the parents are fine except that they will be upset to learn this and will deny that the child is transgender and will use the deadname and try and force the child to conform to natal gender", and that "not affirming that Johnny is now Susie" is abuse of a serious kind.

Then you're asking the child and everybody else to hide this for however many years (from the age of 12 to 18 until Susie is legally an adult? that will never have any slip-up about it or it won't come out some other way) and I don't think that's workable.

It's difficult because yeah, probably are some genuinely transgender kids out there and yeah, parents who would lose it and try and force the kid to be Johnny not Susie, so you have to do what is in the best interests of the child. But on the other hand - the school committing to lie to the parents that 'Johnny' is doing okay in 'his' maths class, while at school they refer to Susie as 'she' and 'her' and help her change into her girl clothes and use the girls' bathroom - like I said, some kid is going to mention this to their parents and then the cat is out of the bag and now the parents can't trust a word from the school ever again because what else were they doing? Were they going to hook Susie up with a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers without parental knowledge or consent? What?

There is the obligation on teachers to be mandatory reporters if they suspect child abuse; I don't think you can manage to have "I think the parents would be abusive so we'll keep it all hush-hush but we won't report to the authorities as we are supposed to do, either" as a workable solution.

It's difficult because yeah, probably are some genuinely transgender kids out there

I strenuously deny this assertion. There are gender non-conforming children, gay children, those who struggle to develop a gendered identity in a social world, and ultimately those who struggle with body or gender dysphoria but there is no evidence that there are 'trans-children'.

The blind acceptance of this frame by both sides is something we need to challenge if we want medical professionals to start caring about child-safeguarding.

The idea of a trans child was unknown 20 years ago when trans(sexual) identification was the domain of adult males with autogynephilia

Who is providing the language and ideas for these children to use?

There are gender non-conforming children, gay children, those who struggle to develop a gendered identity in a social world, and ultimately those who struggle with body or gender dysphoria but there is no evidence that there are 'trans-children'.

I'm confused by this. Would you mind elaborating a bit?

Are you saying trans adults exist? If so, when does the transition from non-trans child to trans adult occur?

Even if you argue that being transexual is a mental illness - why would only adults have this illness?

Yes, happy to. I think 'trans' is an umbrella term that covers a lot of interrelated issues, so I also don't believe in the 'trans' adult as a distinct thing either. I think the best frame is that of a culture bound syndrome (Helen Joyce's position), as I've outlined previously.

https://www.themotte.org/post/587/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/120789?context=8#context

To inquires into trans means we need to differentiate the different component parts - applying a label trans child/trans adult is already question begging. It locks us into a particular metaphysical frame where it's very easy to assume, 'people are born like that'.

I don't preclude biological or genetic aspects or some mechanism like hormones in natal development on the brain for some portion of trans identification, but even then I don't jump to 'trans person' as a response but 'person who may find difficulties with the assumed gender roles and presentation that is normative for their sex', ie gender dysphoria and gender non-conforming. Mental illness is a broad, unhelpful term but there a host of psychological conditions that could impact someones social identity formation and self-concept that don't have any need for the creation of a 'trans person'. OCD, autism, body dysmorphia.

For children the assumption (by adults on the child's behalf) is even more egregious. Part of gender is obviously socially constructed and we learn in development language, customs around gender. To answer my earlier question, this means it is adults supplying the children with concepts and language to talk about gender. The current iteration of ideas in my view is clearly a social contagion drawing from all sorts of problematic and contingent elements such as queer theory and an ideological fervour from progressives.

While children learn early about sex categories our awareness of our sexed nature's and social identity doesn't really take off until early adolescence and in particular puberty. Society, through child development, is shaping ideas around gender expression and what it is to be a self. Why are we shaping it in such a way that we are allowing some children to take drugs with serious side-effects and surgeries as well as foregoing puberty without a strong evidence base, is shocking. For many children we are foreclosing the rite of passage to adulthood, surely limiting their integration as a social being.

It's because of activists, and a big blob of people that aren't treating this as a public health issue, so are complicit in unethical medical harms.

Are you saying trans adults exist? If so, when does the transition from non-trans child to trans adult occur?

You can argue that the trans status only materialises when puberty finishes and the feelings of dysphoria haven't desisted -- since the majority of children expressing that they feel dysphoria successfully desist by going through puberty, only those who endure can be said to be truly transgender, and this cannot happen before adulthood.

Again, why use the term 'truly transgender', and not trans identified due to body dysphoria, or autogynephilic if they fulfil that criteria. They can be known as trans people but why the metaphysical backstory of 'truly trans'?

There is the obligation on teachers to be mandatory reporters if they suspect child abuse; I don't think you can manage to have "I think the parents would be abusive so we'll keep it all hush-hush but we won't report to the authorities as we are supposed to do, either" as a workable solution.

Yeah, this dichotomy makes no sense. If teachers genuinely suspect that a parent is abusive, whatever info used to establish this suspicion (hunger, neglect, sexual abuse, etc etc) should be of much higher urgency than the kid's preferred pronouns.

The only explanation that makes sense to me here is that the education institutions are aware that the 'trans kids' issue is an unpopular political hot potato and know that parents are most prone to have the knowledge, motivation, and legal authority to intervene in their kid's lives. And so the school's solution is to keep the parents in the dark in order to avoid any potential interference or vexing questions.

I think they would see it as either that, or avoiding providing ammunition to already abusive parents. But from that point of view they might as well keep grades secret because abusive parents can be triggered by those too.

I think that mode lines up more with the common cultural meme which is to basically assume abuse until proven otherwise along certain power differentials. The "raised by narcissists" worldview that looks at this on the parent-child angle hasn't really gone mainstream but I think is guiding a lot of the left-wing agenda around kids under the surface.

Is the child not at risk of abuse for other reasons (parents are neglectful, parents put too much pressure on to achieve academic or sporting success, parents are emotionally cruel)?

I mean, yes, children are at risk of those things all the time, and that's why we have an entire government agency (child protective services) dedicated to finding those cases and protecting kids from them, as well as training and vigilance from all other government agents and many types of professionals that interact with kids.

It is 100% true that we as a society know that some parents are abusive to their kids and those kids sometimes need unusual interventions to protect them form their parents. Not revealing gender exploration when a kid says they don't think they would be safe if the parents knew is an example of that type of action, though not one that currently goes through the normal CPS pipeline.

If your question is 'isn't being dangerous for a trans kid highly correlated with being dangerous for any other kid', then I would think the answer is just no? It's generally an ideological commitment rather than a personality trait that would generalize to all those other cases.

I don't think you can manage to have "I think the parents would be abusive so we'll keep it all hush-hush but we won't report to the authorities as we are supposed to do, either" as a workable solution.

I mean the current situation is just 'this isn't something I'm required to report on, any more than I'm required to report if I see two teens kissing each other or reading the communist manifesto or anything else that some parents might object to'. There's no conspiracy to conceal information, there's just no duty to report on any of this stuff generally.

The law is intended to change that.

There's no conspiracy to conceal information, there's just no duty to report on any of this stuff generally.

The law is intended to change that.

I had to get my parents' permission to watch a couple of movies, go on any field trip, or add/drop classes. In addition, they were informed about any disciplinary actions, some course content, and general impressions of my time at school.

Even if that wasn't true wherever you grew up, teachers having a duty to inform parents about the goings on in the classroom is nothing new here.

There's a line in the West Wing, talking about the State of teh Union address by the president:

He's required to give Congress information on the State of the Union. If he buys Congress a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, he's fulfilled his constitutional obligation.

Sure, part of the job of being a teacher is to give parents information about how their kids are doing in school and what's happening there, and there are specific pieces of information that they're required to disclose.

That doesn't actually mean they are required to disclose everything that happens, or that they have zero discretion in what to talk about.

Those are in fact two hugely different things.

The law is intended to change that.

The law does no such thing. What this law actually does, and in fact the only thing it changes, is prevent either student or teacher from unilaterally invoking/imposing transgender status.

The major implications of this change will be:

  • Suggested transitions aren't unilaterally the domain of the school. A progressive early elementary school teacher or guidance counselor is not allowed to just up and change little Timmy's name or gender because he keeps playing female roles when it's center time, and if she keeps doing it it's punishable. They're still allowed to suggest it to the parents, or even confidentially to the student, but they can't start doing it until they get parental sign-off.

  • Transitions aren't unilaterally the domain of the student. A student who just wants to use the girls' bathroom or to get some of that sweet, sweet social clout (instant attention, just add water) is no longer allowed to do that without parental consent. This doesn't stop students with progressive parents who would rubber-stamp any request (good faith or otherwise), and the policy makes this explicitly clear- but it does provide a higher activation energy for non-progressive parents who would (probably rightfully) tell their kid "no, because you're attention-whoring, and that's not fair to others". Again, the school isn't allowed to just decide the parents are wrong, do it anyway, and start punishing other students who refuse to tell/accept the lie (which, from the the non-progressive perspective, it is). Parents of students that get punished in this way now have official recourse.

  • Students may still request the use of preferred identification from their peer groups or special accommodation from teachers (for general discomfort with dressing rooms). This is, in essence, a nickname; the name peers use for a student and the name teachers use for a student need not be the same thing. Students may request individual teachers not disclose this nickname or accommodation, and teachers may or may not honor that request.

  • Parents who refuse to use the student's preferred identification at home are a bit less in conflict with the State. The fact that this form and process even exists in the first place signals the SK government's position is "refusal to give consent is not child abuse"- while this might still contradict with other official Provincial policies on the matter, it locks down this front at the very least.

The compromise made was:

Progressive parents get some of what they want- if they think their kid is trans at 6 the district will still honor and enforce it (and must punish other students who fail to use the student's preferred identification)- but they (and progressive students) lose when it comes to the power grab that is "students of non-progressive parents should be allowed to exercise the social power we believe claiming to be trans deserves and everyone else can suck it".

Progressive teachers get some of what they want- they can still suggest the student talk to a guidance counselor as desired and they're not mandated to say anything about GNC behavior at school at all- but they lose when it comes to the power grab that is "we know your kid better than you do, so we'll do what we/your kid wants, and if you try to resist we'll take them out of your house at gunpoint like we did to those backwards Indian savages".

Non-progressive parents get some of what they want- they don't have to worry the school is transitioning their kid behind their back- but they still lose when it comes to the power to stop progressive faculty from ever talking about a speculative diagnosis of transgenderism, discussing what the other students call their kid, or forcing other students to call their kid by their preferred identification (the "neutral" in "neutral vs. conservative").

Non-progressive teachers get some of what they want- unless a students' parents are on board they're actually mandated to refuse the student's request (which, naturally, they'll have no problem doing)- but they lose and still have to [enforce the] lie should the parents agree the lie be treated as if it were true.
Non-progressive students suffer the same loss, but may refuse similarly refuse their peers' request for them to lie and the school can't punish them for it (because, naturally, that's the name the teachers [have to] call them).

Trans students, be they in good faith or bad, get some of what they want- there are no constraints on their individual social power to get other students to treat them certain ways and there's no mandate for sympathetic teachers to mention anything about unusual gender behavior at school- but they lose by being completely and utterly unable to wield the powers of transgenderism if their parents and/or teachers aren't on board with it and they don't get power over their peers for the crime of not agreeing with the progressive program.

Or... maybe I'm not reading the same pages? I'd really like to know what the law you're reading says, because as far as I can tell this law doesn't do even half of what you claim it does.

I was reading the top-level comment in this thread, which did not have a link to the actual policy at the time I responded to it. My responses so far have only been related to how OP described the situation.

If I have time after work, I'll look at the actual policy and see if that changes any of my positions. Until then, consider my position to be in response to the hypothetical scenario suggested in the original post, which may or may not actually exist.

I would wager that more children are beaten for bringing home bad grades than for telling their parents they're transgender.

Should schools not share grades with parents?

Should schools not share grades with parents?

Schools don't even share grades with the students any more; some of them have abandoned percentages and letter grades entirely and just go with a more nebulous "Exceeds/Meets/Improving/Unsatisfactory" for all courses below grade 10 (translation: "we don't give actual grades until universities require us to").

Exceeding/Meets/Improving/Unsatisfactory isn't nebulous at all. Do you think the average person (or a random teacher with a degree in Gym Class who lives in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan) can explain to me the nuance between a 78% and an 84, or why the average should be 75 vs 50 and if it should follow a bell curve or be splined with respect to year over year outcomes? Great/Good/Not Good/Bad are perfectly fine and not obfuscatory

can explain to me the nuance between a 78% and an 84

Easy: it's math, science, or (to a lesser extent) language/history class, and you got questions wrong on the test.

While I'm fine with the courses that don't matter in the grand scheme of things depend a lot more on subjective judgments having this system, it's not appropriate for ones whose questions have verifiable you-knew-it-or-didn't answers.

You may not remember grade school, but they don't give euphemistic grades for tests, if you got 9/10 right that's 90%, nobody is pretending to hide that percentage and say you 'Exceeded'. The majority of the curriculum is like painting a diorama or collecting bugs on a hike or whatever the fuck. Most classwork a 9 year old does will not translate meaningfully to a percent or number grade

The second claim is just bizarre in this context. What do they expect would happen in the absence of the new policy? Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years?

Some parents won't. But, once everyone is using it and the identity is set, the parent that objects in any way can immediately be considered abusive or "unsafe". What good parent would?

I guess you can see it as a tripwire, if you're really charitable.

My impression is that the idea of being "out" to some groups of people and not others is pretty common in the LGBT community. For example, you might be "out" to your friends (or some subset of friends) that you are trans but not "out" at work (maybe because you're afraid of some kind of discrimination). The way this works in practice is that people who know you are trans use your preferred name and pronouns only if you all are in mutual company that's aware you're trans. If you're with people who don't know that you're trans, the people who do know are supposed to treat you as if you weren't.

Applied to this situation I'm thinking the idea is that teachers and other students would use a trans students preferred name and pronouns in interpersonal interactions (which are largely invisible to parents) but not in official reports and communications. The students in question are "out" to their teachers and peers, but not their parents.

I'll also add that I don't think has to be a specifically trans thing (though obviously it is in the OP). I can imagine some student named "Robert" who prefers to go by "Bob" for whatever reason. Said student prefers to be addressed as Bob but is aware their parents hate the nickname "Bob" so they'd prefer teachers and reports use their given name so as to avoid parental ire.

The students in question are "out" to their teachers and peers

Yes; the whole problem is that the teachers will punish the peers of that student based on how seriously they take being "out". This is the "I'm forced to tell a lie" problem non-progressives have with trans folks except (from the peers' point of view) they're literally forced to tell the lie (children don't have the experience to simply disregard teachers' punishments, and parents' jobs generally get more difficult when they start telling their own children to use their own judgment when dealing with authority figures, so reinforcing a child's tendency to obey teachers is completely defensible).

Just avoiding interacting with the problem or moving away from it is simply not possible in kid jail; it's even policy that the teacher is forced to punish the peer that won't tell the lie! (regardless of that teacher's personal politics).

By ensuring that students can't invoke that power unilaterally, and have to get their parents to let them do it, it doesn't stop the student from actually being able to be trans (and it's still backed up with force of law- the conservatives are just driving the speed limit here, and progressive parents are still free to grant their child access to the State power their faction currently enjoys).

But it does prevent 2 things: first, it makes sure a 7 year old boy does not need to insist that My Name Is Not Odessa Yarker if he displays some GNC behaviors and a progressive teacher overfits that into "clearly, trans with stupid parents", and second, prevents a student in a conservative household from tasting the trappings of progressive power if their parents also think the only reason their kid wants to do that is to have an excuse to bully others (and since conservatives think, not unfairly, that 'excuse to bully others' and 'out as transgender' are synonyms...)

A lot of heat in this discussion, so I will just go ahead and throw in a cut-the-Gordian-knot style solution here: complete separation of education and state. Negotiations as to who has a right and duty to what are held between the parents and the school before enrolling. Minute details like whether it's completely privatized or funded by the government in a roundabout way like charters don't matter here, so insert your preferred arrangement.

Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years

You should listen to stories from educators who deal with these issues in reality.

Yes absolutely kids ask teachers to use different names/pronouns in class and the parents never find out.

Yes absolutely kids ask if they can use the gender-neutral single-stall bathroom next to the teacher's lounge, or change in bathroom stall instead of in front of the other kids, and parents never find out.

You can't 'ensure' that the parents never find out, but you can maximize your odds.

And even if they find out eventually, buying 6 months or a year or three years of time can be very important for a kid trying to build a secondary support network.

And even if they find out eventually, buying 6 months or a year or three years of time can be very important for a kid trying to build a secondary support network.

Six months or three years can also be exceptionally damaging to a kid who is confused or being taking advantage of by others, be they teachers, peers, or otherwise. The idea that government employees would conceal information from parents about children is so horrifying to me. To talk casually about "buying" time for children to deceive their parents strikes me as deeply misguided.

There is good reason why people sometimes call this "grooming": because the most common kind of adult who keeps secrets about a child from that child's parents is someone who is taking advantage of that child for their own purposes, "grooming" them to some role. If I ever had a child whose teacher presumed to know better than me what was best for my child, that would not be a problem to lightly overlook. If this involved core aspects of my child's identity, I would seek that teacher's dismissal. If it involved my child's sex and sexuality, I would be willing to burn through substantial personal resources to impose serious and lasting costs beyond mere dismissal. I cannot imagine a reasonable and loving parent feeling otherwise. There is nothing so special about transsexual activism as to exempt it from these feelings, and that is why transsexual activism continues to be a catastrophically losing issue for Democrats who swing at that particular tar baby.

I understand that some parents are wrong about what is best for their children, and that some parents are abusive, and so on. But this does not meaningfully distinguish them from teachers, who are also often wrong, abusive, and so on--and teachers have less reason to love children and see to their best interests. As Aristotle notes in the Politics--"how much better it is to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato's fashion!"

I have seen enough cases of ROGD, as well as the results of decisive parental action against ongoing ROGD, to believe that the evidence of my own eyes is that schools should absolutely never conceal relevant facts from parents. Not for six months; not for six days. Better that a few children face harsh discipline at home, than many be subjected, with the aid of government actors, to the (often, lifelong) suffering brought on by politically popular social contagions.

You seem to just be imagining teachers to be some type of demonic criminal bent on destroying children's lives, and the children (re: teenagers old enough to be considered adults in most human cultures throughout society) to be these entirely non-agentic dolls with no sense of their own life and no knowledge about what is actually best for themselves. This seems entirely alien to me and it's unlikely we will be able to agree on much when our priors about how the world works are this far apart.

In particular:

If I ever had a child whose teacher presumed to know better than me what was best for my child, that would not be a problem to lightly overlook.

That is not what we are talking about. Teachers are not assigning children new pronouns against their will.

We are talking about children (again, primarily teens) knowing what is best for themselves, including what is best for their own safety.

It's an open question whether children do know better than their parents in any particular case, but the teacher isn't making any decisions here.

The idea that government employees would conceal information from parents about children is so horrifying to me.

What is the difference between 'concealing information about' and 'not informing on'? Because it's not like we're talking about a law preventing teachers from giving parents information, even when the teacher wants to; we're talking about a law forcing teachers to give parents information, even when they don't want to.

So what is the line about which information teachers should be forced to notify parents about? Is it horrifying for teachers not to notify parents if they find out a student is gay? Is it horrifying for teachers not to inform parents if a teen starts dating someone? Is it horrifying for teachers not to inform parents if a teen is flirting with someone? Is it horrifying for teachers not to inform parents if a teen gets an erection in class?

My feeling is that their is no line, it is not a teacher's duty to be informants on the personal lives of their students. It is a teacher's duty to teach them, and being an informant for the state to their parents makes that harder to do. If a parent cares about their child's life then it is their job to find out about it, and if they've scared their child into thinking it is literally not physically safe to tell them something then that is the parent's fuck-up and they're not entitled to state-sponsored spy operations.

You seem to just be imagining teachers to be some type of demonic criminal bent on destroying children's lives

I don't know how you could possibly take that from what I wrote. All I said was that there's no reason to think that teachers, as a class, are in a better position to decide what is good for children than are their parents.

Teachers are not assigning children new pronouns against their will.

I never suggested as much. Teachers and administrators are deciding to hide information about children from parents, selectively and based on politically popular but empirically dubious notions of sex and gender. When my children were young, I was in communication with teachers about basically every aspect of my child's schooling--if they got a nosebleed, if they were struggling in math, who their friends were, basically anything that dealt either with my child's welfare, the quality of their education, or even just things it seemed like I might want to know.

What is the difference between 'concealing information about' and 'not informing on'? Because it's not like we're talking about a law preventing teachers from giving parents information

In the Saskatchewan case from the OP, yes, but trans activists make policies, too.

If a parent cares about their child's life then it is their job to find out about it, and if they've scared their child into thinking it is literally not physically safe to tell them something then that is the parent's fuck-up and they're not entitled to state-sponsored spy operations.

It is absurd to suggest that open communication between parents and teachers constitutes "spying" just so long as a child wishes to keep something from his or her parents. Many people entertain irrational fears. But even if those fears are rational, I can't imagine a child confiding their sexuality or gender confusion in a teacher, and then not confiding abuse to that teacher, at which point mandatory reporting laws kick in (there are many things teachers must tell the government; why wouldn't there be many things teachers must tell parents?). It is not always the case, but in my experience it is almost always the case that teenagers who keep things from their parents tend to endanger themselves as a result, even if only in the sense that they expose themselves to manipulation and exploitation. Google "sextortion suicide" if you want to read more about the effects of teens "confiding" in people who aren't their parents.

I don't know how you could possibly take that from what I wrote.

There is good reason why people sometimes call this "grooming": because the most common kind of adult who keeps secrets about a child from that child's parents is someone who is taking advantage of that child for their own purposes, "grooming" them to some role.

'Groomers' colloquially refers to offending pedophiles. Bringing up the term is the same type of blood libel as calling your opponents nazis, except with a more dangerous edge since offending pedophiles still exist today.

If I misunderstood you and you were just bringing up groomers in some much broader sense, in that way that a priest 'grooms' a child to be a good catholic or whatever, then to me that's a surprising implementation of the term but I apologize for misrepresenting you. Much of my response would then be based on this misunderstanding of your position and can be ignored.

When my children were young, I was in communication with teachers about basically every aspect of my child's schooling--if they got a nosebleed, if they were struggling in math, who their friends were,

What age was this? A common disagreement in these conversations about trans stuff is, I think, that one side is thinking about 7 year olds and the other is thinking about 16 year olds.

I'm surprised if you got this level of information for kids in highschool, if so maybe it a rural/urban thing or something because it's not been my experience.

But either way, I still think there's importantly a difference between what teachers choose to volunteer and what they don't. I don't think teachers can do their job effectively if they don't have some discretion there, they need to be figures of at least some trust for kids. I think making all teachers into forced informants with no discretion about what they inform on would make highschool even more of a nightmarish prison sentence than it already is for a lot of kids.

In the Saskatchewan case from the OP, yes, but trans activists make policies, too.

I agree that trans activists can also propose bad policies, absolutely.

That said, this seems to be talking about unofficial policies (which are 'not always written down') and offering very little evidence about what they actually are or entail or that they even exist. They claim that Biden wants to make them law under Title IX, but they don't link to anything from the administration saying that and I haven't been able to find anything even remotely like that with google. Let me know if you have a source on that claim, but overall, none of this feels comparable to an actual law being passed.

But even if those fears are rational, I can't imagine a child confiding their sexuality or gender confusion in a teacher, and then not confiding abuse to that teacher, at which point mandatory reporting laws kick in

Yes, but getting abused and then placed into the foster care system by CPS is much much worse than just... not getting abused and living a normal happy life with your family?

It is not always the case, but in my experience it is almost always the case that teenagers who keep things from their parents tend to endanger themselves as a result,

I completely agree with you, I just think that the 'almost' is important here, and want to give kids and teachers some lattitude in deciding whether they're in one of those cases.

Again, I'm not, like, saying parents should never know whether their kid is trans. No one is arguing that, you need a parent's participation to get any form of gender affirming care so obviously the goal is for parents to know whenever that's safe. We're already talking about the rare cases where kids think they are in danger and the school agrees.

Also, I'd like to point out that yes, if a kid goes to a single adult for advice and keeps it secret from everyone else, they are often at danger for manipulation and exploitation. But what we're talking about is a case where a kid wants to use different name/pronouns in school, meaning that every teacher and administrator that interacts with them and every kid in any of their classes will know what is going on; there's much less room for manipulation with that many eyes on the situation, and any one of those dozen/hundreds of people has the authority and power to tell the parents at any time if they think something hinky is going on.

If I misunderstood you and you were just bringing up groomers in some much broader sense, in that way that a priest 'grooms' a child to be a good catholic or whatever, then to me that's a surprising implementation of the term

That's what the term actually means, though, so you shouldn't be surprised at all. Setting aside the suspicion people might naturally develop when high-profile people belonging to such a tiny minority of the population keep getting outed as offending pedophiles (since for all I know this could be a Chinese Cardiologist problem), many people regard the inundation of children with confusing gender revisionism as per se abusive. The overwhelming weight of evidence available to me currently suggests that, at least for young girls, becoming transgendered is far more often than not a social contagion which, if indulged by peers and educational authorities, can do substantial lasting harm.

In other words, it's not about accusing anyone of being an offending pedophile, it's about accusing people of per se harming children (or "grooming" them to receive such harm) by deliberately exposing them to memetic hazards--functionally, grooming them into becoming front line culture warriors for gender revisionists. No one would be confused if I complained that 4chan was "grooming" my child to become a Nazi, and yet the moment someone says "don't groom my child to advance your gender ideology" suddenly it's "blood libel?" I just can't take that objection seriously. I don't strongly mind tabooing "groomer" when it gets in the way of clear communication, but I do have concerns about the way certain ideologies insist on obfuscating their manifest faults by forcing me onto the euphemism treadmill. If your ideology leads to mucking about in a child's sexual development--whether through hormones or surgeries or psychology or whatever--for no medical reason, but for purely gender-political or dubious "psychological" reasons, then please tell me what word I should use instead to summarize my perception that your ideology gives cover to child abuse (and of an inescapably sexual nature!).

Now, I assume that no one who thinks transsexuality is not in any way worth worrying about on any level is going to find any of that persuasive, of course. But neither do I think it's even remotely crazy to worry, based on the sweeping comorbidity of psychiatric malfunction that attends transgenderism, that this is not a healthy ideology and that kids should not be exposed to it.

I don't think teachers can do their job effectively if they don't have some discretion there, they need to be figures of at least some trust for kids. I think making all teachers into forced informants with no discretion about what they inform on would make highschool even more of a nightmarish prison sentence than it already is for a lot of kids.

First, the idea that this is somehow the information teachers need to be empowered to keep from parents to win student trust seems very suspicious to me. Second, the problems with public education are far too vast for me to respond to adequately here, but I just don't see any plausible way for teacher transparency on potentially serious psychiatric developments to be the straw that breaks the hellscape's back. It seems, rather, transparently political--treating a single tiny issue as so important it demands federal governance in a tug-of-war over who really has children's best interests in hand. Parents saying "it's us" are being shouted down by politicians and teacher's unions and trans activists saying "it's us," and there's just no question in my mind that in all but the edgiest of edge cases, it's definitely actually the parents.

They claim that Biden wants to make them law under Title IX, but they don't link to anything from the administration saying that and I haven't been able to find anything even remotely like that with google.

What--like, this?

Because this new Title IX frames gender ideology as an anti-discrimination issue, schools won’t have to seek parental permission for children to participate in lessons on choosing and changing one’s sex. Indeed, schools will very likely use Title IX’s anti-discrimination mandate to justify denying parental opt-outs from these controversial lessons.

The rules will also grant children an absolute right to use school facilities and participate in activities “consistent with their gender identity,” regardless of whether their parents agree or are even aware of said identity.

Is that "remotely like" what you're thinking?

Yes, but getting abused and then placed into the foster care system by CPS is much much worse than just... not getting abused and living a normal happy life with your family?

As with public education, I can't exactly solve all the problems with CPS in response here. But children who spend their school days pretending to be a different sex and then go home and pretend they aren't spending their days pretending are not, in my experience, living a life that anyone could reasonably call either normal or happy.

It is not always the case, but in my experience it is almost always the case that teenagers who keep things from their parents tend to endanger themselves as a result,

I completely agree with you, I just think that the 'almost' is important here, and want to give kids and teachers some lattitude in deciding whether they're in one of those cases.

I am actually quite sympathetic to the idea of giving people latitude, but I don't think that's a politically realistic outcome. Because the issue is a culture war issue and the poles have been set at "require disclosure" and "forbid disclosure," even in those places where teachers do technically have "latitude" they are already under tremendous social pressure to behave in ways that are not actually so nuanced. Speaking of which:

But what we're talking about is a case where a kid wants to use different name/pronouns in school, meaning that every teacher and administrator that interacts with them and every kid in any of their classes will know what is going on; there's much less room for manipulation with that many eyes on the situation, and any one of those dozen/hundreds of people has the authority and power to tell the parents at any time if they think something hinky is going on.

Much of the concern, though, is that children are not just being manipulated and exploited by individual abusers, as in the case of offending pedophiles, but that children are being actively enlisted into ideological warfare not of their own choosing, at substantial personal cost. This appears to be how FtM detransitioners (basically, the poster children for ROGD) come to perceive themselves. When every teacher and administrator subscribes to the Successor Ideology, when every kid is inundated with it, when otherwise responsible adults are cowed into silence through emotional blackmail, "everyone knows it's happening" is an incredibly weak response.

For all that: it's entirely possible that there is, actually, nothing at all harmful about gender revisionism. As an armchair transhumanist I think that at some point in our species' future, we're overwhemlingly likely to transcend sex and gender entirely--but by the time we are actually able to do that, we will be unquestionably transhuman--and not, I think, human. If that day ever comes at all, I expect it will be long, long after I'm gone. But in the meantime, I have seen no evidence at all that allowing teachers to conceal presumably important psychological information from their students' parents is meaningfully beneficial, and much evidence that allowing such concealment is in fact actively harmful to children and families, so--how could I conclude anything but that such concealment should be forbidden?

Much of the concern, though, is that children are not just being manipulated and exploited by individual abusers, as in the case of offending pedophiles, but that children are being actively enlisted into ideological warfare not of their own choosing, at substantial personal cost. This appears to be how FtM detransitioners (basically, the poster children for ROGD) come to perceive themselves. When every teacher and administrator subscribes to the Successor Ideology, when every kid is inundated with it, when otherwise responsible adults are cowed into silence through emotional blackmail, "everyone knows it's happening" is an incredibly weak response.

Again I think we just massively disagree about the empirical state of the world here.

Maybe there are a few schools in the Bay area like this, but by and large Republicans still exist and become teachers/administrators and send their kids to school with their values, kids still pick out anyone who is different or awkward in any way and torment them for it, and having one blue-haired art teacher that pushes for awareness and flags sometimes does not make an entire school active culture war zealots.

I'm sure you can find lots of anecdotes for your belief here, and I can find lots of anecdotes for mine, and I don't know how we could actually settle it statistically.

But I do think the fact that you're proposing what feels like a grand unified movement where everyone is on the same page with a specific interpretation of the culture war and zealously pushing for it by manipulating kids in ways that end up being harmful to them, and I'm saying that the world is just pretty normal place where different people believe different things and everyone follows their personal incentives and are mostly lazy and noncommital about doing praxis in their own lives, argues in favor of my interpretation just in terms of priors.

I think an organization like a church is capable of being as ideologically motivated and consistent as what you describe here.

I think maybe a school is capable of doing that for a few years, if the top-level administrators are super duper committed to it and are willing to put their career on the line by firing people over it and are in a super duper progressive city where they won't be immediately fired when conservative parents find out and raise a fuss.

I really don't think something as large and complex as a school district could do that, not for long anyway. And certainly not that most schools would do that, when only a few tiny areas of the country are super duper progressive bastions.

I am actually quite sympathetic to the idea of giving people latitude, but I don't think that's a politically realistic outcome. Because the issue is a culture war issue and the poles have been set at "require disclosure" and "forbid disclosure," even in those places where teachers do technically have "latitude" they are already under tremendous social pressure to behave in ways that are not actually so nuanced.

This remains an empirical disagreement for us, I just don't think is as true as you do, am not very convinced by the source you provided on it, and still believe that if we all just stop meddling we can maintain the ideal situation where teachers have latitude and generally use it well.

If I am wrong about that empirical claim, then I am wrong about some of my arguments here.

But, keep in mind that even in the world where schools are blanket 'prohibited' from telling parents, that doesn't mean that no parents ever find out, it means that the only parents who don't find out are the ones where teh students don't feel safe telling them, and the school cannot persuade the student to tell their parents (which they're still welcome to do and would certainly prefer for liability reasons), and no other students or parents of other students ho heard about it or etc. ever tell them.

So even if the world where telling parents is prohibited, I still expect parents would know 95+% of the time, and the cases where they don't know would still be very highly correlated with the cases where they shouldn't know.

This is a general point to several parts of your response: 'Teachers aren't forced to tell parents' is not at all the same as 'parent's don't know'. Parents can still learn from dozens of other sources, hopefully just their child trusting and telling them, also (in the situation I'm arguing for) just a teacher choosing to tell them without being forced, and many others.

What--like, this?

Yes, unless I am missing something, that story - like all the stories I could find making this claim - does not actually link to the text of the Title IX guidance that is being interpreted to say this, or any Biden officials saying they intend for it to be used this way, or anything other than people on their side claiming or speculating that this is happening.

What I really want to see is just the plain text of the part of Title IX that says this, or statements from the administration saying they are doing this. Those would all be part of the public record and I haven;t been able to find any evidence of them, but let me know if you do.

Going to break this into separate responses to hopefully aid legibility.

If your ideology leads to mucking about in a child's sexual development--whether through hormones or surgeries or psychology or whatever--for no medical reason, but for purely gender-political or dubious "psychological" reasons, then please tell me what word I should use instead to summarize my perception that your ideology gives cover to child abuse (and of an inescapably sexual nature!).

'Mistaken'.

You think my side is harming children, I think your side is harming children. You can call me a groomer and I can call you a crazy fundy or an evil terf or whatever, and the discussion can be about whose motives are secretly more sinister and how much innuendo we can pile into our descriptions of each other. We can do that all day if you want.

But we won't help any children that way.

I absolutely think you are well intentioned and want to help kids and are empirically mistaken about how to do that.

I think if you acknowledged the same thing about the teachers in these situations, that would do a lot more to help children than calling them groomers does.

But children who spend their school days pretending to be a different sex and then go home and pretend they aren't spending their days pretending are not, in my experience, living a life that anyone could reasonably call either normal or happy.

I agree, but it's probably better than being taken away by CPS.

Obviously the ideal situation is that parents find out and do not become abusive. I think that is currently what already happens 95% of the time, or maybe 99%.

We're just talking about what to do in the tiny fraction of cases (which is already from a tiny fraction of students) where the students fear it would not go this well and the school agrees.

First, the idea that this is somehow the information teachers need to be empowered to keep from parents to win student trust seems very suspicious to me. Second, the problems with public education are far too vast for me to respond to adequately here, but I just don't see any plausible way for teacher transparency on potentially serious psychiatric developments to be the straw that breaks the hellscape's back. It seems, rather, transparently political--treating a single tiny issue as so important it demands federal governance i

  1. Again, the situation is not my side passing laws that teachers should be allowed to keep this from parents, it's your side passing laws saying that teachers should not be allowed to keep this from parents.

Yes, informing parents of things that will help them raise their child is a part of teacher's jobs, but they are not currently and have not in the past been obligated to tell parents everything and have been allowed to use their discretion for most things. I again state that in the case we're talking about here, it's your side suspiciously focused on this one tiny issue and trying to change things for ideological reasons.

And I agree that in the reverse case, if my side tries to pass laws prohibiting teachers from telling this to parents, then I'm also suspicious of that.

  1. It is not only this case where that discretion is important to teachers being able to do their jobs. I think it is important the teachers have broad discretion about what to disclose to who, so that students can feel they are a safe ally to come to with all kinds of issues they are struggling with, and do not develop an adversarial relationship where teachers are understood as merely spies who will publicize any secrets they can catch you in.

For instance, if a student of strictly devout LDS parents is questioning the existence of God, I think they should be able to talk to a trusted teacher about this without the teacher having to tell the parents and potentially get the student excommunicated.

For instance, if a student has traditional parents (lets say muslim or indian or something) who would not let them date outside their race or religion and they are doing so but feel conflicted about it and want to get advice from a trusted teacher on what to do, the teacher should not be forced to immediately tell the parents so they can end the relationship and maybe pull the child out of school and restrict their ability to leave the house unsupervised so it can't happen again.

For instance, if a student is worried that a friend is being pressured into sex by their boyfriend, I think they should be able to ask a teacher for advice on what to tell them without the teacher immediately calling the other student's parents so they can end that relationship or call the cops.

Etc. etc. etc. All of these cases and a million more are the same as the one we're talking about here.

There are just some times when it's actually not a good idea for parents to be immediately informed of something going on in a student life.

And there are many many more times than that where it would be good for the parents to know, but the student doesn't want the parent to know, and so if there is a blanket law require the teacher to disclose then the student will never come forward for advice at all, and it will remain a secret until something explodes, to everyone's detriment.

And there are many many more cases than that where teachers need to build rapport with students and make the students feel like they are on the same side and can cooperate with each other in order to be an effective educator and mentor, and if kids know that they are basically paid informants who will tell all their secrets to their parents immediately, they will instead view them as hostile antagonists who must be eluded and resisted at all turns. Even for the kids with zero real secrets, I think this is likely to happen and worsen their educational experience.

That's my model of how schools work, anyway (lets specify highschool for sake of argument, though I think it applies largely to middle school too).

Leaving aside the question of trans anything, just talking about how students relate to teachers and what is important about that relationship: do you think that is wrong? In what ways?

Or do you think that's broadly right, and the trans thing is just dangerous enough that we should pass a blanket disclosure requirement anyway?

  1. I don't know that this alone is enough to 'break the camel's back' for all students.

It would certainly break it for trans students, who would end up being even more closeted and receiving even less adult supervision over what they're going through, if they are not safe to talk to teachers about it.

Which feels like it should matter to you, right - the options here are not really just between students talking to teachers and then teachers telling the parents vs students talking to teachers and teachers not telling the parents.

In many many cases where students don't want parents to find out yet, it would be students talking to teachers and teachers not telling their parents vs students not talking to teachers because that's not safe and continuing to deal with the issue on their own with zero supervision.

And yes, I do think that it makes the camel groan and buckle a bit more for all students. Every time there's a political fight or news story about teachers informing to parents about something against the student's wishes, it reinforces the overall suspicion that tachers are not on their side and cannot be trusted, no matter what the issue is talking about.

For example, certainly the fact that teachers are obligated to report suspicions of abuse and assault means that there are many cases where students do not come to teachers for advice or help when they don't want to be separated from their family or don't want their uncle to go to jail or etc. We make them mandatory reporters anyway because we expect that on balance that still helps more kids than it hurts. But it would be wrong to imagine there are no downsides to that policy, policy debates should not appear one-sided.

I don’t think they’re automatons, but children are orders of magnitude more short-sighted and naive about the world.

Most kids, at least until puberty, are largely working from the assumption that adults don’t have agendas, and that any adults offering advice or help are doing so only to help them. They don’t think about an adult pushing them to believe in or act in a certain way because it benefits the adult at the expense of the child. In a lot of ways I think this is based in evolutionary psychology— children are born relatively helpless compared to other animals, and couldn’t survive long without accepting the advice and help of adults in the tribe.

The naïveté comes from a simple lack of life experiences. To a ten year old, the idea of someday being 20, let alone 40 is simply incomprehensible. They’ve never thought about it, and really can’t understand being an adult. And because in most cases, the choices kids make are either trivial or temporary, they can’t really understand the idea that a decision they make today will have implications for their lives forever. The biggest decision a kid under 12 makes is likely what kinds of after-school activities they would like to participate in. Except that these choices are temporary (baseball season is just a summer) and easily reversed (you can just quit and not play baseball anymore if you don’t like it). At ten, l liked tennis. I don’t anymore, but it was fun as a kid. But if you somehow reorganized society such that everyone picks a sport or activity or career at that age (I wanted to be a paleontologist, which I don’t do now and don’t even remember having an interest in), most people would be miserable.

The thing about this hiding things and having parents kept out of the loop is that these decisions are pretty permanent, and children do not understand permanency. They cannot really understand that once they “transition” they can never ever go back. They cannot understand the urges to procreate and have children, or that their lives will change drastically between 14-16 and 40. And because of that, kids need parents in the loop to keep them from making decisions they don’t understand without serious guidance.

I still feel like you're equivocating between 'teachers pushing transition onto kids' and 'teachers supporting kids in their own decisions more strongly than a kid's decisions deserve'. Which is a dangerous equivocation because it spans the motte and bailey between 'being careful to help kids make good decisions' and 'all democrats are groomers', so it's the type of thing I wish we were more careful about.

But whatever, let's focus on the latter question, kids making good decisions.

Kids cannot get irreversible medical treatments without their parent being made aware. They cannot get them without their parent's approval and very active participation, so long as they are in their parent's custody. That is never on the table with regards to the types of situations covered by this law.

What's on the table is social transitioning, ie people calling you a different name/pronouns and not beating you up for wearing nonconforming clothes. Maybe at most being allowed to use a gender neutral bathroom and being allowed to change in a bathroom stall or locked classroom instead of the locker room.

Nothing about this is irreversible. Nothing about this is permanent.

But there is a cascade from social transition that makes it much more likely they get puberty blockers and progress on to cross-sex hormones. Social transition is a powerful psychological intervention.

Except for all the stories (ironically popular among the anti-trans side) of gender psychologists of the past trying to assign children different genders and raise them that way and the children rebelling and reasserting their 'natural' gender.

All the evidence I'm aware of is that this is how things actually work. People who ask to socially transition and then medically transition later do both because they are actually trans. People who are not trans are very very resistant to both measures and will not go along with it of their own will forever.

You are making a separate prediction, which is that you can convince someone that they're trans for their entire life, strongly enough that they'll fight for years to get long-term life-altering medical interventions and surgeries, just by calling them a different name and pronouns when they're in middle school/highschool.

That seems shockingly unlikely to me given everything else I know about human psychology, and I wonder whether you really think that human gender is that mutable (which would put you a million miles closer to the trans activist side on how gender works than most people), or if this is just a convenient argument for your bottom line.

I think you might be some distance from what I meant but I can't parse what you've said to know where we departed shared understanding. I don't understand what your saying and am not making any of the claims you are stating as far as I can tell.

I was referencing this research:

https://segm.org/early-social-gender-transition-persistence

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You seem to just be imagining teachers to be some type of demonic criminal bent on destroying children's lives

No, he isn’t. He’s arguing that teachers are no less likely to be wrong/abusive than parents. And they aren’t.

Read the rest of the comment though. Teachers aren't doing anything or making any decisions here, the children decide what they want and some teachers humor them to some degree if they are particularly indulgent or supportive.

The only question is whether the state should force teachers to inform on their kids to parents.

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Sure, but early teens are idiots. The question is whether the teacher should decide whether to believe them or have to involve the parents, and the argument for the former rests on teachers being less likely to be wrong/abusive than parents.

I can buy that teachers in inner city schools catering to lowest common denominators are in that situation, but it just does not pass the smell test that this is the case for the average teacher vs average parent. And you’ll notice trans kids is not a phenomenon among the LCD’s, it’s an upper middle class contagion.

and the argument for the former rests on teachers being less likely to be wrong/abusive than parents.

This seems like an odd equivocation.

There's no discussion of whether the parents or teachers are more likely to be abusive. If a teacher is abusive in the classroom they get fired, and besides the only teacher we're talking about here are the supportive ones who want to be good allies. The only abuse that is at question here is from the parents.

Similarly, we're not talking about who is more likely to be wrong here. The only concern is about abusive parents, not incorrect parents. We're trying to prevent abuse.

but it just does not pass the smell test that this is the case for the average teacher vs average parent.

yes, in teh average case the student has already told their parents everything long before coming to the school with it.

In the average case, the parents are the ones making the request, because their child asked them to and convinced them it was the right thing to do.

We're not talking about the average case, we're talking about the case where a child is begging their school not to tell their parents because they think they'll be abused, and the school finds this plausible enough to go along with them.

Do you think that in those rare cases, it's still more likely that the student is wrong and the best thing for the student is for their parent to know?

I can buy that teachers in inner city schools catering to lowest common denominators are in that situation... And you’ll notice trans kids is not a phenomenon among the LCD’s, it’s an upper middle class contagion.

'Among the demographic where parents are most likely to abuse their kids for coming out as trans, very few kids come out as trans' is maybe not the ringing endorsement of your position that you think it is.

We're trying to prevent abuse.

No, you aren't. Even granting your premise that transgenderism is real, 99.9999999% of adolescent cases are just psychosomatic angst best treated with a stern "honey, you're wrong about this. Go look at yourself naked in the bathroom mirror to check your gender" and the goal is to prevent that approach.

We're not talking about the average case, we're talking about the case where a child is begging their school not to tell their parents because they think they'll be abused, and the school finds this plausible enough to go along with them.

Do you think that in those rare cases, it's still more likely that the student is wrong and the best thing for the student is for their parent to know?

Yes. Kids are stupid, transgenderism is made up, and the definition of 'abuse' in this case is just "calling mentally ill teens on their bullshit instead of letting them seriously harm themselves".

'Among the demographic where parents are most likely to abuse their kids for coming out as trans, very few kids come out as trans' is maybe not the ringing endorsement of your position that you think it is.

Few among demographics that have real problems come out as trans, yes.

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I feel that a part of the disconnect you specifically are having is when you call teachers teachers instead of government agents. Maybe you've never thought about them in that manner, or maybe you think that's silly, or possibly even unhinged. But the poster you're responding to calls then government agents in this context for a reason.

we're talking about a law preventing teachers from giving parents information, even when the teacher wants to

This is the policy in my district, with a narrow exception for FERPA-compelled production of student records.

I’m sure that’s what the educators say and believe but it doesn’t follow that is good for the kids. The whole debate is who is in the best position to make an intelligent decision: the kid, the educator, or the parent.

The kid is young, dumb and subject to peer pressure with limited long term thinking.

The educator has little skin in the game.

The parent has a ton of skin in the game and likely can be a bit more long term thinking.

The question is not whether parents should ever be informed that a child is experiencing gender dysphoria; ideally, the child should tell them immediately.

The question is what happens in the rare cases where the child feels that it would not be safe to do this.

Child protective services does exist; some parents are bad parents, and the state is aware of this and has policies that acknowledge it.

Acknowledging that some parents are bad and need to be treated differently from other parents is in no way at odds with saying parents should generally be trusted to make good decisions for their children. It's just that every rule has exceptions.

The question here is what to do about exceptions. So far it has been up to the student and teacher's best judgement about what to do in each case, based on their local precise knowledge of the situation.

The proposal here is for the state to override that local judgement and regulate that all parents be treated the same no matter what, ignoring the possibility of legitimately dangerous exceptions.

This is big government overreach into people's private lives, in a way that's legitimately dangerous as well as onerous. And it's being done for clear culture war reasons, there's a reason we have 50 high-profile bills about trans kids in school and few to none about school funding or other things with much bigger impact.

K-12 teachers and administrators are not empowered to provide therapy or other significant psychosocial interventions to the kids in their care. Not even the school counselor can diagnose or provide therapy. They need parental consent to initiate any of that.

That used to be the norm at least. Not so much any more.

Many states, including Washington, allow schools to give out prescriptions to any minor over age 13 without getting permission from a parent if they are seeking treatment for mental health services.

Perhaps the teacher is simply rescuing the innocent child from an evil GSM-bashing family. (Perhaps the teacher is simply rescuing five innocent children from five evil GSM-bashing families.)

And perhaps the shoplifter is simply a Jean Valjean, stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. (And that he's stealing cigarettes could perhaps be explained by his family having tastes like Fat Tony's.)

And perhaps the pet in the no-pets-allowed zone is simply a seeing-eye guide dog for a poor blind man. (Perhaps that the guide dog is actually two "American Bully XLs" is just because his problems are really tough and need special treatment.)

And perhaps the maniac tearing down the highway at thrice the speed limit is simply hurrying a medical emergency to the hospital and can't afford the ambulance fees. (Perhaps the several other cars who seem to be racing him just don't want to miss a moment by their loved one's bedside.)

And perhaps the email in the spam filter really did come from a Nigerian prince who needs your help moving his money. And perhaps the candidate really does mean to keep his campaign promises. Perhaps perhaps perhaps.

Of course, all of these are theoretically possible (maybe not the cigarettes one, though. Or the campaign promises.) but living on edge cases is not a safe or sustainable way to live. (For every one with a Legitimate Excuse, there are x who are taking advantage of the grace afforded, where x is proportional to the ease of faking and the magnitude of the benefit divided by the costs and probability of getting caught - something like that.) So one has to think each case through, if one really does want to be careful.

Because breaks from plain-sense like these are typically justified on utilitarian grounds. I mean, the deontological way would seem to be against them: stealing is wrong, breaking rules because one pleases is wrong, driving unsafely is wrong - but even the utilitarian argument often fails. Tolerating theft probably pushes more families towards poverty than it saves Valjeans. Tolerating reckless driving probably causes more medical emergencies than it saves.

In my experience, the argument at this point tends towards demands for perfection, I suppose: "in order to save both the center and the edge cases, we must make this massive change, and nothing less will do." No traffic safety without universal healthcare, I suppose. No punishment of theft before ending poverty. No trust in parents before total acceptance of everything LGBTQ+, perhaps. Often this feels to me like an attempt to hold a problem hostage until something much bigger and more ambitious can be granted instead. Usually it doesn't happen; often the bigger goal is utopic and can't happen.

But erring on the side of saving the edge cases, heedless of false positives, can ultimately be bad for those edge cases, too, come the next turn of the cultural wheel. Soft-on-crime light-handedness get followed by tough-on-crime crackdowns, and, well, pardonnez-nous, Monsieur Valjean. And perhaps here's where we're headed in this case.

In my experience, the argument at this point tends towards demands for perfection, I suppose: "in order to save both the center and the edge cases, we must make this massive change, and nothing less will do."... Often this feels to me like an attempt to hold a problem hostage until something much bigger and more ambitious can be granted instead. Usually it doesn't happen; often the bigger goal is utopic and can't happen.

I agree with you that no major change is needed. People can use their common sense to navigate their individual situations and do better than any massive externally imposed rule could hope to do.

Again, that is already how it works. What we are discussing here is a proposed law to force teachers to report.

The thing you're against in the abstract is also the thing I'm against in the specific. Because it turns out that in this specific case, the side you seem to be on is the one doing the thing you seem to be against.

Your speaking of "big government overreach" in the context of public schools seems to me like "get your government hands off my Medicare." Unless this is a situation where, in Canada, the meaning of "public school" is reversed from America, as in Britain (I think.) - it seems to me like that Rubicon has been crossed already. I'm reminded of objections (though not applicable north of the border) to state curriculum mandates on the grounds of teachers' First Amendment rights. Truly so, if their ability to speak as private citizens to private citizens was what was being curtailed - but as agents of the state to their captive audience? Not so much.

And particularly in Canada, one might suppose that a takeaway from the latest hullabaloo involving the legacy of residential schools would be that having schools usurp parental authority, no matter how backwards those parents are considered, should be something they might want to be more shy about. But maybe that's not the lesson they want to learn.

I disagree about 'crossing the Rubicon', if I'm understanding what you mean. Just because the government has overreached some, does not mean the seal is broken and they may as well overreach more. Every additional violation still causes additional damage and should be avoided.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and so forth.

As far as 'they are acting as government agents, not expressing their freedom of speech', I totally agree with that. We're not talking about what teachers should have the right to do as citizens, we're talking about how they should be instructed to behave as government agents.

In this case, I am arguing that our instructions to them as government agents should be to use their discretion to do what they think is best for the safety and wellbeing of the child.

This is a fairly normal thing to tell government agents to do, it's not like they're automatons where every word spoken and every movement taken is precisely and deterministically proscribed by strict policy. They're not Chinese Rooms. Working for the government ussually entails having a goal, and working at your discretion within broad guidelines to achieve it.

In this case, I think more children would be harmed if we took away the school's ability to exercise their own discretion as to what is best for the individual students in their care, and instead laid out a centralized blanket policy of universal disclosure. Yes, a government agent is involved either way; I'm talking about which set of rules for that government agent would lead to better outcomes.

And, yes, I do think that you can fairly describe leaving it to their discretion as 'less government overreach' than mandated disclosure. In the same way that 'CPS must take all children away from their parents if there is a report of suspected abuse' would be more government overreach than ' CPS must investigate all reports of suspected abuse and have the discretion to take the child away if they think they are in danger'.

I might be misunderstanding something, but it seems to me like this does not, in fact, mandate disclosure. It mandates disclosure iff social transition is to happen. There is an out here of "the kid withdraws the request for social transition upon realising this is going to involve disclosure to parents" (note the requirement for the school to "work with" the kid to plan the disclosure, so the kid will know this). Thus, this is not equivalent to "CPS must take the kids", because "do nothing" is still in fact an option. The only option closed off is "a government organisation socially transitions the kid without the parent's knowledge or consent".

Just disagree. Yes there are bad parents. There are of course bad teachers as well. The question is who gets to decide who is a bad teacher or a bad parent. I don’t think it should be within the teacher’s discretion to make that decision because well teachers can be both bad and they lack skin in the game (despite wanting to do good they may have ideological motivations that cause them to do bad).

That is, allowing teachers to keep secrets is also “dangerous.”

Also it is bad form to complain that there aren’t high profile bills about funding schools but are about the trans issue. Funding schools is a relative normal issue for the last hundred years. Trans issuers are new. Of course there will be high profile bills there when there won’t be for discussing a 1% increase in funding etc.

Acknowledging that some parents are bad and need to be treated differently from other parents is in no way at odds with saying parents should generally be trusted to make good decisions for their children. It's just that every rule has exceptions.

And how do we decide if the parents are bad in any given case? On this issue, the progressive answer seems to be "if the child says so". That is pretty close to just letting the child make the decisions in the first place. You cant really claim to agree that "parents should make the decisions in most cases", if you support overriding this default at the childs asking.

In the vast majority of cases, everyone involved agrees what to do. Saying "well in those cases we let the parents decide" does not count as parents deciding most of the time.

And even if they find out eventually, buying 6 months or a year or three years of time can be very important for a kid trying to build a secondary support network.

Doesn't that sound suspiciously like grooming?

Add me as a person who is creeped out by the words "secondary support network". How many of us, at age 30, are still in touch with teachers from high school? The idea that they could, or should, replace parents is farcical.

Absolutely, teachers should provide support where appropriate, but never as a replacement to parents, only in addition to.

This is where allegations of grooming come from. Why are these teachers so interested in my child's sexuality? Why are they using my child to fight their culture wars? And who will bear the cost for the consequences?

No?

This feels like you are verging into 'Hitler was a vegetarian so all vegetarians hate Jews' territory here.

It seems closer to "scientologists secretly setting up a 'secondary support network' for children of 'suppressive persons' is deeply suspicious" territory.

Not to me.

If you have an argument, you'll have to make it. I don't share enough of your cultural signifiers for innuendo alone to carry the message.

I don't think it's about cultural signifiers, the analogy is pretty 1:1. Both scientologists, and gender affirming teachers are secretly making an end run around the parents. This behavior is wrong, both inherently, and because it puts children at risk.

It only sounds suspicious because you chose a group that you expect everyone here to be suspicious of, scientologists. This is what I was talking about with the 'Hitler was a vegetarian' thing. You are carrying the suspicion based on the person you chose to include in the example, not the actual structure of the situation which the analogy is to.

For instance, if I said 'a student whose parents are LDS is questioning the existence of god, and the LDS church would require the parents to kick them out of the house and stop all contact with them if they came out as atheist, and when the student talks to a teacher about this for support the teacher decides to not immediately tell the parents but instead help the student find other resources they could make use of if they do end up kicked out of the house', then the atheist portion of our audience here would probably think that is not a hugely suspicious and monstrous thing for the teacher to do.

Again, you are choosing objectionable examples for you analogies to make it seem bad, I can use sympathetic analogies to make it seem good. Both of these tactics are misleading and prey on cognitive biases around affect.

It only sounds suspicious because you chose a group that you expect everyone here to be suspicious of, scientologists.

Quite the opposite. I don't find their actions suspicious because they're committed by scientologists, I find scientologists suspicious because of their actions.

Again, you are choosing objectionable examples for you analogies to make it seem bad, I can use sympathetic analogies to make it seem good.

It might work if you stayed within the parameters of the original hypothetical. Not immediately telling the parents might be defensible in certain situations, but we were talking about "6 months or a year or three years".

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You should listen to stories from educators who deal with these issues in reality.

I should! Do you have any links handy? Preferably about the exact scenario I outlined (Attempting to keep it public+secret was positive over the long term, regardless of whether or not it succeeded), but I'd take anything short of a human-interest fluff piece. The ones I've seen have been mostly split between "I was scared for nothing, I should've come out to my parents sooner" and "I was not ready for what happened. I should've had a better plan before coming out in public."

And even if they find out eventually, buying 6 months or a year or three years of time can be very important for a kid trying to build a secondary support network.

Coming back to the policy rather than abstract questions, do you think that 15-year-olds are mature enough to decide to cut ties with their home (even if the plan would culminate at 18ish)? Granted, they might be correct. In that case, the appropriate response is a call to CPS and/or the police to deal with the serious situation.

do you think that 15-year-olds are mature enough to decide to cut ties with their home (even if the plan would culminate at 18ish)? Granted, they might be correct. In that case, the appropriate response is a call to CPS and/or the police to deal with the serious situation.

To go to the ad absurdum, if a 15 year old were being raped and beaten by their parents every night, I think most could correctly identify that this is a bad situation they should leave.

And at the other end, many 15 year olds incorrectly believe that not being allowed to go to a party with drugs and alcohol is a major injustice and that they should run away form home over it.

Like every other human in every other situation in the world, some 15 year olds are smart or are in obvious cases and will make the correct call, and some 15 year olds will be stupid or in ambiguous cases and make the wrong call.

This is an inconvenient fact about the human condition, and is why blanket statements of the type you're trying to inquire about here basically never work, and we have to actually look at the specific situation and apply our best judgement instead.

However, that's not what we're talking about here.

Deciding not to tell your parents that you're trans - or gay, or atheist, or dating outside your race, or any of a million other things that might upset them - is not breaking ties with them. It is in fact the opposite, trying to maintain the family bond in the face of awkward information that you fear might strain or break it.

Should kids keep secrets like that from their parents? Ideally they're in a good situation where they don't have to, but for those who think they're in a bad situation I wouldn't want the government to override their judgement and force them to disclose. Especially since the consequences of keeping the secret are very minor - they remain a stable family unit, nothing changes - while the worst potential consequences of disclosure are very bad (why are so many trans teens prostitutes? Because they were kicked out of their homes and forced to live on the streets!).

Which also gets to your CPS point - if they don't disclose and therefore aren't being abused over it, there's nothing to report to CPS and everything is fine. I don't think 'there is a potential situation under which this loving family would instead abuse their child, we should try to ring that circumstance about so that they will abuse them, so that CPS can take them away' is in any way a sane approach to take to such situations?

And, importantly, the current situation is not just on the recognizance of the student, the school can decide to tell the parents if they want to. Right now the parents don't learn about it only if both the student and the school think they'd be in danger. I trust that combination of judgement a fairly high amount, again especially given the asymmetric dangers involved here.

I was vehemently agreeing with this comment, until the unfortunate conclusion:

I trust that combination of judgement [the student's and school's] a fairly high amount, again especially given the asymmetric dangers involved here

This idealized view of educational personnel doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It's mired in the present conflict and lacks perspective: institutions have a long history of abusing the trust of children and do not deserve this level of confidence or deference.

It's tawdry to quote myself, but I don't think I can put it better than I did before:

I agree that this is an old phenomenon with a long history: courageous teachers becoming involved with a child's welfare at some risk to themselves. But institutionalizing it changes everything. Guaranteeing state support dramatically reduces the risk to the teacher, which destroys the balance of incentives.

I'm sympathetic to kids trapped in a hellish adversarial relationship with their own parents, but predict that solving their problems by substituting state-approved parental figures will create a different series of problems that will probably affect a much larger number of children. Attempting to solve a tiny minority of problem cases, these laws create a new vector for neglect and abuse, because they cut parents out of the loop, when they are, in most cases, the people most committed to a child's well-being by many orders of magnitude.

I had a lot of great teachers, people that encouraged and supported me, but I also had egomaniacs and narcissists who took great pleasure in driving a wedge between kids and their parents (with no long-term concern for the children). I saw more than a handful of teachers happy to sexually exploit their students*. And I saw a substantial minority of lazy, time-serving clock-punchers.

* And a few relationships that I wouldn't call exploitative, but imagine most would.

how do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret?

Secrets can be open, like that one kid in class that everyone knows has an eating disorder/is gay/is cutting themselves, but no good would come from formally acknowledging that fact for sociopolitical climate reasons. It's a local version of "someone calls it out intentionally -> outs themselves as not being able to read the room" and "mocking the classmate with suicidal ideation is not actually going to improve their life", which are both things most people understand.

The second claim is just bizarre in this context.

Factions prefer canned responses and buzzphrases when they have no other valid arguments. The first claim is similarly invalid.

Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years?

Not necessarily official reports. The student knows their situation better than everyone else, naturally, and will take countermeasures if their nickname would show in a report to hostile parents- but really, this isn't really the issue here. In fact, all else being equal, this policy actually (some might say ironically) means a better ability for the student to keep this secret whether it be open or closed because they don't have to worry a particularly progressive faculty member will proactively change their name or gender in the reports.

Transgender names are, at their core, nicknames. Thus, lacking any formal policy, we should expect them to act like nicknames do- maybe some local social sanction follows for not using it, but that sanction does not extend to what the faculty/government is allowed to do. Every public-school-educated person knows at least one classmate that went by such a middle name/nickname, but you'd never be sent to detention by a teacher for not using it, and the student would be maximally free to not use the nickname if they felt it ceased to suit them.

Under the earlier environment, faction-adhering teachers were able to unilaterally sanction students for refusing to use nicknames like these, and while personnel remains policy they're not officially allowed to do that any more (so motivated traditionalist parents have a codified leg to stand on). With this policy in place, [traditionalist/liberal] students are more protected from [progressive] teachers, and attacking the official use of nicknames means arguments that students who choose cross-gender nicknames should have special accommodations/protections because of that will have a bit more difficulty finding traction in the future.

It's worth noting that this still gives progressive parents significant latitude; if they approve the use of the nickname/nick-pronoun then it still has force of law in the classroom even if the student happens to be 7 or 8 (so this doesn't fix the "he wore a dress today so he can add '-ina' to his name and gets to change with the girls" problem). At the same time, however, it also means that traditionalist parents regain control over nickname use, is a public repudiation of "not using your child's nickname is abuse and unsafe", and means a student isn't allowed to use the existing progressive power structure as their own personal army Cartman-style so it will damage progressive prestige among students many years down the line.

Transgender names are, at their core, nicknames. Thus, lacking any formal policy, we should expect them to act like nicknames do

The first rule of nicknames is you don't get to choose your own nickname.

Kobe chose his own nickname

Kobe "bean" bryant

His real nickname apparently is "Showboat".


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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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