Substitution as a Lazy Narrative-Preserving Technique (Using Gays Against Groomers as an Example)

What are the policy positions of Gays Against Groomers? Many people won’t know because corporate media on the left (I checked the NYT and WaPo) refuse to mention the organization. I recently asked someone who considers herself to be on the political left. She cringed and responded by saying that it sounds like a Republican or conservative group and that there is no grooming going on in America’s schools.

That seems like an answer to the question, but it isn’t. What just happened is subtle, but it is critically important. The person I was talking to completely failed to answer my question. Her answer illustrates Daniel Kahneman’s principle of “substitution,” which he discussed at length in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011).

[W]hen faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

(p. 12).

In my experience, this is a go-to technique in the culture war conversations. Quite often, when people are asked factual questions about a person or organization they don’t like (or they assume they don’t like), they will substitute an easy question for the more difficult question of detailing the facts. The substituted easy question will often be something like “Do you like this person/organization,” even though that was clearly not the question asked. As Kahneman describes, the new simple question will be unconsciously inserted. With the new simple question substituted in, the answer is also simple. In culture war discussions, it often takes the form of an ad hominem attack. Consider this example:

Q: “What are the policy position of [a particular person/group]?”

This is a factual question that should either be “I don’t know” or it should be a listing of the policy positions of the person/group. If the is about an organization and the answer is anything other than “I don’t know,” it should fairly track the “About Us” page of the website the person or organization.

However, the hard question is often unconsciously brushed to the side and a new easy question is inserted. In my example, if the person thinks they don’t like the person or organization, they could be expected to substitute in a new simple question like this:

“Do you like [the person or group] and what detrimental things can your emotionally generate (e.g., what deplorable person/affiliation/ad hominem label can you reflexively pull out) to express your emotions?”

For people politically on the Left, the answer will often be something like: “That [person/group] is like Hitler, Republicans, Satan, etc.

On this topic of Substitution, here is another excerpt from Kahneman book (p. 101):

The idea of substitution came up early in my work with Amos [Tversky], and it was the core of what became the heuristics and biases approach. We asked ourselves how people manage to make judgments of probability without knowing precisely what probability is. We concluded that people must somehow simplify that impossible task, and we set out to find how they do it. Our answer was that when called upon to judge probability, people actually judge something else and believe they have judged probability. System 1 often makes this move when faced with difficult target questions, if the an¬swer to a related and easier heuristic question comes readily to mind.
Consider the questions listed in the left-hand column of Table 1.

These are difficult questions, and before you can produce a reasoned answer to any of them you must deal with other difficult issues. What is the meaning of happiness? What are the likely political developments in the next six months? What are the standard sentences for other financial crimes? How strong is the competition that the candidate faces? What other environmental or other causes should be considered? Dealing with these questions seriously is completely impractical. But you are not limited to perfectly reasoned answers to questions. There is a heuristic alternative to careful reasoning, which sometimes works fairly well and sometimes leads to serious errors.

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Does Psychotherapy Work?

Does psychotherapy work?

Millions of Americans engage in psychotherapy, women receiving treatment at approximately twice the rate of men. At Aporia, Bo and Ben Winegard discuss whether psychotherapy really works. They are extremely skeptical, based on a detailed analysis of the topic in search of reliable metrics. Their article is titled: "The Psychotherapy Myth: Contrary to the claims of the psychotherapy myth, humans can be resilient and tough-minded; they can suffer the slings and arrows of life without expensive interventions from “experts.”

Here is an excerpt from their conclusions:

Contrary to the claims of the psychotherapy myth, humans can be resilient and tough-minded; they can suffer the slings and arrows of life without expensive interventions from “experts.” . . .

Thus, a healthy culture should teach that life is often full of misery, dashed hopes, and thwarted desires; it should teach that agony, anguish, and despair are ineradicable parts of the human experience, not aberrant or fleeting intrusions; it should encourage more stoicism, more discipline, more sacrifice; and it should discourage cossetting, indulgence, and morbid contemplation. Reflecting obsessively upon grievances and hardships, like constantly fiddling with a wound, is unwholesome.

Furthermore, the idea that understanding the cause of one’s suffering is the key to curing it is dubious ...Often, the disease is not in the head, but in the society. And thus, even if psychotherapy were highly effective, it might be a dangerous distraction.

The idea that the good therapist is a highly skilled mental engineer who knows how to manipulate the complicated machinery of the human psyche has been memorably promoted in movies such as “Ordinary People,” and, if it were true, it might justify the exorbitant salary some therapists command. But alas, it is no truer than the Freudianism that spawned it; and despite its veneer of sophistication and scientism, psychotherapy ultimately remains a human interaction, purchased at great expense to the patient and perhaps to society.

People will always want to talk to other people about their miseries and insecurities, flaws and failures, hopes and dreams; and counselors and therapists will remain employed into the foreseeable future. Some may even do considerable good. But we hope they will drop the pernicious mythology, the exorbitant prices, and the complicated and often unnecessary licensing system and recognize the simple but tragic fact that many people are desperate for sympathetic social partners and will pay a lot of money for them. What is needed is not more expensively trained experts, but more real social relationships.

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Specialist at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles Advises That Doctors Can Cut off Girls’ Breasts and Simply Restore Them if they Change their Mind

At the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy urges that "adolescent" girls "have the capacity to make a reasoned and logical decision" to cut off their breasts. No problem if they later have regrets: "“Here’s the other thing about chest surgery. If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them!” In the meantime, 45,000 young women and girls are currently attempting to raise money to cut off their breasts on GoFundMe.

Billboard Chris has worked tirelessly for several years to get the word out about Transgender Ideology, suffering at least two hospitalizations for being attacked while doing so.

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Whistle-Blower Speaks Out at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital

In November, 2022, Jamie Reed quit her job at the The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital because she came to the conclusion that the way the Center treated its young patients was "morally and medically appalling." Here are the opening paragraphs of her detailed story at The Free Press: "I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle."

I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor.

For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt.

All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier.

The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus. During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager—I was responsible for patient intake and oversight—around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors. The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences—including sterility.

I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.”

Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care. Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.

Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.

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The Most Dangerous Lies

Sahil Bloom most warns that the most damning lie is the lie you tell to yourself. He then offers a list of the most dangerous lies, including these:

"When I get [X], then I'll be happy" "This is just who I am" "I don't have time for [X]" "I'm not capable of [X]" "I know exactly what I'm doing" "They just got lucky"

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