domain:philippelemoine.com
Rosencrantz2
2m ago
I don't know if you're describing an actual or hypothetical sculpture, but yes, it does sound workmanlike from your description (although, if we're evaluating comparative newness alone, we can note that it is at least in a relatively new genre compared to a representational religious painting, and potentially expresses emotion about a breaking situation rather than depicting the motifs of an ancient faith).
I also think a lot of the artworld would agree that abstract political sculptures genuinely were a lot more exciting back when there was something innovative about them as a form. In other words I suspect artworld people often really are interested in newness and I am not convinced by your suggestion that it's a pretense. (Of course within that story, loads of art is totally boring and not innovative and exists only for reasons of business, personal ambition and to rally political causes.)
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
3m ago
Oh, it's easy enough to tell if somebody's been taking hormones against your instructions. That just doesn't solve the problem.
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If you count defiant transitioners as part of your control group, it biases your study in favour of transition, because defiant transitioners amount to "transition with a bunch of extra annoyance" and as such are near-guaranteed to do worse than the transition group regardless of how good or bad transition is.
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If you kick defiant transitioners out of the control group, it biases your study against transition, because desisters will stop trying to defy you at some point, and as such success stories will make up a larger chunk of your control group than they would have if you'd successfully prevented the defiant transitioners from transitioning.
If the trans activists manage to subvert enough of your control group (which is pretty likely without the extreme measures I mentioned), these two effects will destroy the study's value; it will give the "do transitions!" answer with one set of rules and the "don't do transitions!" answer with the other. Whoops, looks like the clear liquid you poured on that fire was petrol instead of water.
Oh, and this is assuming that you picked outcome measures that don't allow for easy lying; it's not like people can't go on Twitter and yell "hey everybody, put down that you're ecstatic if you were in the transition group and suicidal if in the control group; it's for the sake of all the other transfolk". As Scott said, "sometimes people might just be actively working to corrupt your data".
07mk
5m ago
They didn't, because 1) They don't in general see a DEI statement as being analagous to supporting Trump or a wall. They see being anti-racist as something any decent person should do.
This just seems like describing the how, rather than contradicting the notion that they metaphorically put up walls and man the gates against conservatives so firmly: they do so by genuinely believing that being anti-racist (by their conception of anti-racism) is something any decent person should do and rejecting the contention that this belief is due to their partisanship rather than due to it being true. It's particularly a severe failure for academia, where one of the ostensible main themes is the inescapability of individual bias and the need to correct for it through multiple contrasting perspectives.
oats_son
13m ago
Great post and actually reverses my opinion. You've Singal-pilled me. I don't understand how any of those studies can be taken seriously by anyone else, but I guess it is important we get anything at all to satiate the people pushing this before axing it. Though I will point out that there are still plenty of communists, even though the communist experiment has failed several times over now.
I guess I'm Singal-pilled in that I see the utility in continuing experiments. I don't actually care if they're government funded or not. Certainly, if I was cutting research, research into something I despise would be one of the first things I cut. But, more nuanced than what I thought, I guess.
oats_son
30m ago
What's cookin' this weekend, The Motte?
Ever since I restarted intermittent fasting, my passion for creating and eating exotic foods has increased quite dramatically, since I'm thinking about food nearly constantly in the latter half of the workday. It is probably for the same reason that I am torn about what I should be doing: creating new exotic foods with ingredients from the Asian grocery store? Eating old food that I don't even know exists yet? Or maybe I should be going cheap and cooking up old beans in the cabinet or roasting/boiling some chicken leg quarters?
Yesterday I went with a compromise option, maki sushi with slightly old frozen fish that had been taking up space for a while, along with some taberu rayu (Japanese spicy chili oil) I had never been brave enough to actually use. It was great. Now there seem to be plans for going to a new wings place tomorrow, which really throws a wrench in the rest of the dinner plans, if you ask me, but I also have been craving wings recently, too, so not the worst thing in the world.
SSCReader
30m ago
The problem is there can be no permanent victory. For you or for them. You tried, they tried, there is no reason to think it will work better than last time. And I agree there is no reason for either you or them to concede defeat and see your values lose.
So now we've agreed on that, and setting aside heat if we can, what does that tell us? If neither of you should surrender, and neither can win, are there any other options?
And the answer may be no! An ongoing pendulum swinging so we kind of average out over time to moderation may be the best we can hope for. But we can at least think around the topic, without committing to unilateral disarmament.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
31m ago
Correct, still didin't look if I'll find the reviews (and am leaning pessimistic, I'm guessing the Alabama's AG who wrote that document would already have them, if they were uncoverable). Sorry if there was any confusion.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
32m ago
It’s a generations long project because the liberals have long been in charge of the hiring and are looking specifically for signs or being insufficiently progressive. That’s one thing that the DEI and Land Statements and Pronouns in Signature are meant to do — weed out those who aren’t actively progressive by forcing them under threat of losing their jobs to make performative progressive statements. And until you have at least non-progressives in those hiring positions, it’s going to be really hard to get conservatives into those positions and other high powered positions.
Near term, I think it’s best to also build parallel institutions where the conservative opinion can be put out in publi.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
33m ago
Good news, with your attitude, you are not alone.
Sure, because this includes most people. Pretty sure it even includes you (I dunno, would you teach your children to be transphobic if someone came up with some galaxy-brained study that it adds a few QALYs to their life?).
Of course, if you want to convince the grey tribe specifically, just stating that obviously blood is sacred or puberty blockers are evil.
Funnily enough, it's the pro trans side that fits better with the groups you mentioned. They have - by their own admission - no evidence that puberty blockers improve the outcomes for children / adolescents.
SkoomaDentist
38m ago
I have to say that carrying 50 lbs sacks of dirt for my mom's gardening projects when I was a teenager did infinitely more to drive that home than any sex I had a couple of years later. Not that I needed any of that given that "men are stronger than women" was and still is a universally accepted fact here the same way as "men are taller than women" is.
I still don't see how bringing having sex into it is anything other than a way to make fun of nerdy guys for not being lucky with girls.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
38m ago
The "there we go" is in regard to the "dozen", not the buried reviews?
SSCReader
46m ago
To be clear the anti-racist stuff was certainly the reason those particular gangs were able to last longer than they should.
Though I'll note cops in the 80s and 90s were not running cover and it still happened thats why it isn't the whole picture.
The problem is no-one actually wants to hang around the schools these girls go to and protect them from Pakistanis or anyone else. Are you going to hang out in schools and care homes in Stoke on Trent? In run down city centres with drug addicts shooting up around the corner and breaking into your car? And the local alkies shambling around? You're going to be there all day everyday? You won't and nor will anyone else, is the point. Regardless of Pakistani grooming gangs, no-one cares enough to start vigilante gangs. The odd attempt to burn down a mosque is the best you're going to get.
I want to be really clear, I worked in city government in the Midlands and large numbers of Pakistani immigrants are a huge problem for multiple reasons, over-representation in child prostiution gangs being one among many. But class attitudes towards lower and underclass girls are a huge part of why they are victims all across the country and people don't care.
You ask why the average Brit won't riot to protect these girls? Because to most of them they are just as much the outgroup as Pakistanis. Worse even because they should know better. Even with the cops blessing there aren't going to be lynch mobs over this. Not until most of the victims are nice middle class girls.
FistfullOfCrows
47m ago
The "social transitioning" (ie teachers and staff hiding from the parents whats going on) is also an absolute shit show and a major own goal by the coalition of the ascendant.
SkoomaDentist
50m ago
But there's an identifiable cluster there, where a Cajun and an eastern Oregon rancher and a UAW worker and a snake-handler all would rather socialize with each of each other rather than a professor of gender studies, despite their vast differences.
Would this apply also to socializing with an academic in a field that is more neutral but still without practical applications, such as for example a professor of theoretical astrophysics? I suspect it very much would but I'm not an American so I won't outright make such a claim.
Here in Finland there is a similar contingent who see non-practical work as "useless" but it's smaller due to historical reasons (education was seen as an important factor in increasing national consciousness in the 19th century as well as a way to improve the next generation's social standing). More importantly the lack of a two party system means it never got coupled to the broader left vs right political orientation. It's easy to see the difference even in looking at who people consider to be academic compared to the discussions here on The Motte where The Motte definition of an "academic" has a large bias towards social sciences and other left dominated fields (whereas locally people would consider a professor of Electrical Engineering very much an academic).
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
51m ago
The near-complete alignment of the tribes with politics is a result of the culture war. The progressive long march through the institutions not only threw conservatives out of the institutions but out of Blue Tribe itself. Much of this is conversion -- your devout Christian who goes to progressive college will likely lose his faith. Some is oppression -- your devout Christian who doesn't lose his faith but remains in the progressive environment will conceal it out of self-preservation, and so be invisible. Some is reverse-conversion -- your political conservative who is driven out of Blue Tribe will adopt at least some of the tribal markers of the tribe that DOES accept his politics.
quiet_NaN
53m ago
Good news, with your attitude, you are not alone.
- Jehova's Witnesses believe are opposed to blood transfusion for reasons which are orthogonal to the experimental method.
- Many religions are opposed to most forms of sexuality and/or contraception without any evidence that it leads to bad outcomes.
- Likewise, dietary restrictions.
- Some people believe that various forms of genital mutilation are beneficial or required not as a matter of empirical evidence, but for inscrutable cultural reasons.
Of course, if you want to convince the grey tribe specifically, just stating that obviously blood is sacred or puberty blockers are evil or pigs should not be eaten is not going to convince anyone.
Edit: I wrote that taking "gender transitioning prepubescent children" as a straw man for puberty blockers, but on further reflection I think that I would even cover gender affirming surgery. Sure, I think that operating on the genitals of ten-year-olds is a terrible idea, but that is contingent on empirical observations about the state of medicine, and if our tech level was higher, I would be open to evidence that it is beneficial for kids to change their gender a few time, or that placing a brain in a robot body increases QALYs for that matter.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
58m ago
Driving cars is among the later capabilities you'd expect to fall, if you switch off human conceit and take the far view. You're asking to beat billions of years of evolution in a data-poor domain (navigating the real world) rather than some thousands (written) or at most hundreds of thousands (spoken) in a well-databased one (words and symbolic reasoning).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
58m ago
I think that there are plenty of medical interventions which can not be opted out after the fact.
Sure. No one is saying you cannot do irreversible medical procedures, just that their effects have to be justified by the effects on the patient's health, and that the patient has to be aware of their irreversibility, and the effects. None of these conditions are met for puberty blockers. Their use was so far justified by their supposed reversibility, and sold as "buying time to think".
Generally, it is fine to study such interventions -- even randomized -- if you keep within the overton window of standard practices or have good reason to believe that your treatment will lead to a better outcome for patients.
I don't think "overton window" is a valid argument, it just means a bunch of people agreed it's a good idea. In my opinion they should have good reasons to think something is a good idea, so that leaves us only with the last criterion you cited, which currently is unfulfilled.
In a world where the blockers exist, a doctor who withholds them is taking the responsibility for letting puberty happen -- just as a doctor who withholds antibiotics to let an infection kill a MAID patient is not very different from one who uses barbiturates instead.
The difference here is that in the case of an infection, you're dealing with an unhealthy body, one that is veritably under assault by foreign organisms. In the case of puberty blockers you're intervening in a perfectly healthy body, hoping to achieve purely psychological benefits. I don't think we do that very often in medicine, especially for minors.
Both puberty blockers and puberty have failure modes such as suicides.
I don't think puberty causes suicide, and I'm pretty sure neither do puberty blockers for that matter.
If and when they can be used to gain QALYs is an empirical question
It was in this case as well, but somehow the doctor had his license suspended. None of the defenders of trans medicine were bothered, some even actively campaigned for it.
Grant_us_eyes
1hr ago
The majority of your examples cut their teeth on writing novels over 30 years ago, exempting Larry Corerria, who seems to thrive on controversy and culture war, and is a relatively newcomer, putting out his first book in the 2008.
That we're discussing the current state of conservatives producing cultural content and how we got here and the writers you point to are a bunch of giants in their field nearly three decades old does not make the argument you think it does.
SSCReader
1hr ago
Theres always reasons why it is different. But there are reasons why the Democrat coalition looks like it does. In the US for example being black or gay is very predictive of political persuasion at somewhere around 90% voting Democrat. That can change over time but currently it is not orthogonal to political persuasion.
comicsansstein
1hr ago
The frustration I think everyone's feeling with this discussion is that while what you're saying is true in a certain way and for certain sample of people, it applies to almost no one here. A bad faith poster in this forum may cherrypick sources and cite only the studies already favorable the their viewpoint, but they're still citing and searching for and reading [abstracts of] studies - which puts them miles ahead of a median person, who gets their entire memeplex wholesale from a medium of their choice.
Now I'll give you, this leaves "regular" red tribers in a worse position - Fox et al just has a worse quality of journalism than NYT or WaPo, or whatever you thing the "default" blue tv station is. Or so I've heard, I'm not an American and I've seen <15m of Fox News material in my life (I try to never watch it, just so I can angle-shoot someone who would accuse me of getting my viewpoints from there).
But yeah, if I may be a bit self-indulgent, you arrive at a space where people are in the top ~5-2% of striving to be up to date on the news and research, and proclaim that a core tenet of their affiliates is "proud, resentful ignorance". People are taking it personally, even if they probably shouldn't.
A perfect microcosm of different faction's approach to knowledge would be 2020. In the beginning, you get grays and "high reds" freaking out about approaching epidemic, while the mainstream and progs are mocking them for being weird techbros, telling people to celebrate freely in the streets, and "justtheflu"ing it. Then the epidemic arrives, and suddenly everyone's got an opinion. The reds get locked in the "low" mode, so they inherit the "just the flu, bro" position and insist on folk medicine, evidence be damned. This is the source of the supposed March-April switch of the positions - there was hardly a switch, it's mainly different demographics. The blues find themselves in a more truth-aligned position, until they too err catastrophically for ideological reasons (telling people to go out and protest in June).
tl;dr As i/o on twitter put it, the worst of the right are retarded, the worst of the left are mentally ill.
SSCReader
1hr ago
They didn't, because 1) They don't in general see a DEI statement as being analagous to supporting Trump or a wall.They see being anti-racist as something any decent person should do. They would see the fact conservatives won't do that as evidence they hold sexist or racist attitudes. They do not see that as being left wing and thus filtering out conservatives. They see it as being decent people and if conservatives aren't decent people that says more about conservatives and not them. That is the of power of "its just the right thing to do" framing.
- DEI statements aren't as common as you might think, I am a straight white man in academia and i've never had to write one. We have a couple of "out" Trump voters (admittedly in the economics department which is the most conservative in general I think), and while it does skew left overall, there isn't a lot of antipathy to the Red Tribe, because they don't really think of them at all. We're in a Blue city so its not like they come across that many in any case. They are steeped in Blue culture and Blue ideas. They're not even thinking about building walls to keep them out. Too busy fighting for grant money or hating dumb students of today and their short attention spans.
Now I don't work for an an Ivy League school or indeed any of the top ranked schools so maybe its more common and problematic there. But I think people have skewed ideas about academia as a whole, by looking at say Harvard or Columbia.
As for farmers, they have their own ways of enforcing social pressure. Its just not going to be a written statement. A Catholic farmer back home might find all of his neighbors equipment is mysteriously not available for him to rent come harvest time. Or an ex neighbor of mine in rural PA talked about how they charged hippies more for calves because they didn't know any better and were just going to go under anyway.
All communities enforce behaviors and beliefs, they just do it in different ways.
aaa
1hr ago
The Waymo in California thing is such a small experiment and the upside of fudging with it is so high that if it turned out in 5 years that actually it was mostly indians in a warehouse doing the driving I wouldn't even be surprised
I'm dying to cook up a batch of shortbread cookies this weekend. Or maybe cheddar and chive scones.
It's funny you say that about intermittent fasting. How are you managing it? I try to restrict all my eating to an 8 hour window or less each day, but I see other people skip entire days. I try to give myself a cheat day a week, and that goes OK I guess. I donno. Starting to think I should drop it down to every other week. Whatever changes in body composition I was seeing seemed to have dropped off, though my energy levels are more consistent throughout the day which is nice.
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