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Notes -
At a Q&A I asked Scott Alexander if he was going to circumcise his kid and said he was in favor of it and his wife was against it. I'll be honest, I'm kind of shaken. I'm sometimes able to argue persuasively against male genital mutilation, but I wasn't on that day. I sort of made a fool of myself, I guess. It's a painful subject for me.
It's also just kind of shocking and dismaying, because I think that noticing that male genital mutilation is bad is something almost anyone with basic rationality skills should probably be able to notice, and he didn't. Now I want to ask Yudkowsky. I'll choose my words more carefully.
He mentioned the adversarial collaboration on SSC on the subject, which to me had a lot of obvious holes and flaws in it.
Purposes of the foreskin:
Prevents the covered skin from contacting clothing. Clothing contact desensitizes the penis through a process called keratinization. If you're circumcised, you'll notice that the circumcision scar and the places below the scar are what's sensitive, and everything above that isn't very sensitive. That's not normal.
The foreskin has densely packed nerve endings.
The foreskin provides lubrication, both through natural lubricant and through a gliding motion.
Protective against health conditions including meatal stenosis.
I can also rebut the purported positive outcomes of circumcision, and talk about the risks of the procedure. I have videos of men with botched circumcisions talking about their suffering.
I don't really want to get into a debate about circumcision here. I just wanted to provide an example of what someone arguing the point looks like.
My question is this: Is anyone else shocked/saddened that Scott is pro-cutting?
Not really shocked or saddened. Scott may put his rationalist persona in the foreground, but in the end he's a human like any other - unreasonable to the extreme in any area he's not actively dedicated to reasoning his way through. And people usually avoid reasoning out anything if the process would be painful to them, which I guess it would be for someone who is likely circumcised himself and has a strong cultural attachment to the practice.
This doesn't really change anything. I'd never circumcise my child, advise anyone to do it or even condone it...but it's one of those little atrocities that people commit daily that's also just not significant enough to not tolerate. As long as they only do it to their own children I can live with it, and hope that they get a ton of value out of it. Any pro-circumcision propaganda is detestable though. Since Scott doesn't seem to be doing that - correct me if I'm wrong here, as if that weren't the whole purpose of the Motte - I'd say consider the man on those merits of his that are actually relevant to our interests.
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