Reason as a Social Tool More than an Intellectual Tool

I've been trying to collect information on the idea that we over-estimate the ability of human reason to tell us what is true, and that is because reason highest function is social, not intellectual. Here are a few things I have found:

Douglas Murray:

When people with an incorrect view were introduced to the correct view, a vast proportion doubled down on their wrong opinion and thenceforth refused to budge. I am slightly haunted by this study because of how much it says about us human beings. We like to think of ourselves as reasonable, rational types. After all, you rarely meet someone who confesses to being unreasonable and irrational. But we do not really know ourselves, and if reason and rationalism alone drove us then we would be something else entirely. While we are sometimes motivated by reason, we are also fueled by pride, jealousy and much more.

In describing Enigma of Reason, by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, this webpage indicates:

[R]eason is an adaptive mechanism designed to help humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment – and that it has nothing to do with facts at all.

Reason, say Mercier and Sperber, evolved to help us justify ourselves and to convince others, which is essential for cooperation and communication. According to the two scientists, “the normal conditions for the use of reason are social, and more specifically dialogic. Outside of this environment, there is no guarantee that reasoning acts for the benefits of the reasoner.”

According Mercier and Sperber, habits of mind that seem irrational from an “intellectualist” point of view, prove shrewd when seen from a social “inter-actionist” perspective.

From Goodreads, which offers excerpts from The Enigma of Reason:

“The fact that people are good at evaluating others’ reasons is the nail in the coffin of the intellectualist approach. It means that people have the ability to reason objectively, rejecting weak arguments and accepting strong ones, but that they do not use these skills on the reasons they produce. The apparent weaknesses of reason production are not cognitive failures; they are cognitive features.”

“[T]wo major features of the production of reasons: it is biased— people overwhelmingly find reasons that support their previous beliefs— and it is lazy— people do not carefully scrutinize their own reasons. Combined, these two traits spell disaster for the lone reasoner. As she reasons, she finds more and more arguments for her views, most of them judged to be good enough. These reasons increase her confidence and lead her to extreme positions.”

“It is based, however, on a convenient fiction: most reasons are after-the-fact rationalizations. Still, this fictional use of reasons plays a central role in human interactions, from the most trivial to the most dramatic.”

“As Popper put it, “In searching for the truth, it may be our best plan to start by criticizing our most cherished beliefs.”

Whereas reason is commonly viewed as the use of logic, or at least some system of rules to expand and improve our knowledge and our decisions, we argue that reason is much more opportunistic and eclectic and is not bound to formal norms. The main role of logic in reasoning, we suggest, may well be a rhetorical one: logic helps simplify and schematize intuitive arguments, highlighting and often exaggerating their force. So, why did reason evolve? What does it provide, over and above what is provided by more ordinary forms of inference, that could have been of special value to humans and to humans alone? To answer, we adopt a much broader perspective. Reason, we argue, has two main functions: that of producing reasons for justifying oneself, and that of producing arguments to convince others. These two functions rely on the same kinds of reasons and are closely related.”

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate

Descartes was the most forceful of reason’s many advocates. Reason has also had many, often passionate, detractors. Its efficacy has been questioned. Its arrogance has been denounced. The religious reformer Martin Luther was particularly scathing: “Reason is by nature a harmful whore. But she shall not harm me, if only I resist her. Ah, but she is so comely and glittering.… See to it that you hold reason in check and do not follow her beautiful cogitations. Throw dirt in her face and make her ugly.”

We began this book with a double enigma, the second part of which was: How come humans are not better at reasoning, not able to come, through reasoning, to nearly universal agreement among themselves? It looks like now we might have overexplained why different people’s reasons should fail to converge on the same conclusion and ended up with the opposite problem: If the reason module is geared to the retrospective use of reasons for justification, how can it be used prospectively to reason? How come humans are capable of reasoning at all, and, at times, quite well?”

A speaker typically wants not only to be understood but also to be believed (or obeyed), to have, in other terms, some influence on her audience. A hearer typically wants not just to understand what the speaker means but, in so doing, to learn something about the world.”

Humans reason when they are trying to convince others or when others are trying to convince them. Solitary reasoning occurs, it seems, in anticipation or rehashing of discussions with others and perhaps also when one finds oneself holding incompatible ideas and engages in a kind of discussion with oneself.”

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”

Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, who suggest that people are generally content with the first reason they stumble upon,5 or David Perkins, who asserts that many arguments make only “superficial sense.

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Jesse Singal: Transgender Puberty Blocker and Hormone Research Fails to Justify Their Use

Jesse Singal analyzes new research regarding puberty blockers and hormones used by researchers to promote their use. He concerned that the researchers have been dishonest. Here is an excerpt from his article: "Researchers Found Puberty Blockers And Hormones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health At Their Clinic. Then They Published A Study Claiming The Opposite.". Here is an excerpt:

All the publicity materials the university released tell a very straightforward, exciting story: The kids in this study who accessed puberty blockers or hormones (henceforth GAM, for “gender-affirming medicine”) had better mental health outcomes at the end of the study than they did at its beginning.

The headline of the emailed version of the press release, for example, reads, “Gender-affirming care dramatically reduces depression for transgender teens, study finds.” The first sentence reads, “UW Medicine researchers recently found that gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary adolescents caused rates of depression to plummet.” All of this is straightforwardly causal language, with “dramatically reduces” and “caused rates… to plummet” clearly communicating improvement over time.

. . .

What’s surprising, in light of all these quotes, is that the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false.

It’s hard even to figure this out from reading the study, which omits some very basic statistics one would expect to find, but the non-result is pretty clear from eTable 3 in the supplementary materials, which shows what percentage of study participants met the researchers’ thresholds for depression, anxiety, and self-harm or suicidal thoughts during each of the four waves of the study:

Among the kids who went on hormones, there isn’t genuine statistical improvement here from baseline to the final wave of data collection. At baseline, 59% of the treatment-naive kids experienced moderate to severe depression. Twelve months later, 56% of the kids on GAM experienced moderate to severe depression. At baseline, 45% of the treatment-naive kids experienced self-harm or suicidal thoughts. Twelve months later, 37% of the kids on GAM did. These are not meaningful differences: The kids in the study arrived with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems, many of them went on blockers or hormones, and they exited the study with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems.

. . .

Despite the fact that two of the authors worked at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where the gender clinic is based, the paper doesn’t include a single word of even informed speculation attempting to explain why some kids accessed GAM and others did not. Nor do the authors seem to notice that by the end of the study, the no-GAM group has dwindled to a grand total of six kids who reported mental health data, as compared to 57 in the group receiving treatment.

Adding intrigue to this situation, the researchers are refusing to release their raw data. Singal does a deep-dive the substantiate his conclusion that the conclusions of the researchers are not substantiated by this research. The problems with this "research" are overwhelming and Jesse Singal offers line and verse on the many questions, lack of questions and holes. Too bad many legacy media outlets lap up unsubstantiated results on this topic produced by so many biased "researchers."

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Legislation Proposed to Clarify the Rights of Parents of Gender Dysphoric Children Attending Public Schools

Attorney Luke Berg is asking state legislatures to clarify the rights of parents, especially in cases where public schools are secretly affirming a child's transition while at school. Here is some background and the key points Berg is proposing:

In the past few years, school districts nationwide have quietly adopted policies requiring staff to facilitate and “affirm” gender identity transitions at school without parental notice or consent—and even in secret from parents. Certain groups are telling school boards and administrators that excluding parents from the decision about whether staff will treat their child as the opposite sex is not only best practice but required by law. Neither is true. Such policies fly in the face of how schools treat every other decision of similar significance.

From a legal perspective, these policies violate parents’ constitutional rights to raise their children. They also conflict with science. Many professionals in the field believe that transitioning at a young age can become self-reinforcing and do long-term harm. And these policies divide children against parents, communicating to kids that their parents’ decisions should not be respected.

Key Points

• Schools have a long-standing tradition and legal obligation to inform parents of their children’s medical and behavioral issues and to honor their decisions about what’s best for their kids. Yet, prompted by a well-organized lobby, many school districts have decided that minor students can change gender identity at school without any parental involvement.

• A gender identity transition is a major event in a child’s life. It can have long-term effects on a child’s psyche and sense of identity, and, as a result, many mental health professionals recommend a more cautious approach, first helping children process what they are feeling and why.

• The increasingly common practice of rushing to “affirm”and facilitate a transition at school without informing parents, and even refusing to follow their wishes, runs directly against a strong body of case law recognizing parents’ constitutional right to raise their children.

• State lawmakers can and should clarify that school districts must defer to parents when children struggle with gender identity issues.

. . .

Even if political pressure fails, these policies are vulnerable to lawsuits. As discussed briefly above, a long line of cases from the United States Supreme Court holds that parents have a fundamental right, under the 14th Amendment, to “direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” This is “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by” the Court.

. . .

To be clear, such a bill would not, as some will likely argue, require teachers to immediately “out” to parents any student who has questions about these issues and confides in a teacher (though teachers must be permitted to communicate openly with parents about this, because this can be a serious mental health issue). But if a student wants to take the major step to transition, asking all teach- ers and staff to treat him or her as the opposite sex while at school, that should require parental per- mission, just as taking medication at school does, because—as noted above—social affirmation is a medical intervention. Teachers can still be a safe space for students to process these issues while gently explaining to students who want to transition that this is a big decision and that they need to involve their parents if they want to do so at school with the support of staff.

No parents should go through what Jay Keck58 went through, suddenly discovering one day that his daughter had changed gender identity at school, with the school’s active participation and affirmation but without any notice to him. No parents should go through what the Kettle Moraine parents went through, being forced to withdraw their daughter from public school just to protect her and preserve their parental role.

A bill to prevent this should find broad support among parents and constituents. Most parents are outraged when they learn that school districts are excluding parents from this major decision. Even parents who ultimately would allow an immediate transition should want and expect to be involved. Those who support these policies should be forced to defend them publicly and explain why they believe it’s ever appropriate to hide such a serious issue from parents or to subvert the parents’ decision about what’s best for their child. These poli- cies have been implemented quietly for a reason. A public debate that brings them to light may be all that’s needed to start eliminating them.

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Dark Triad Personality Characteristics Tied to Weaponized Victimhood

From PsyPost:

New research provides evidence that narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism — maladaptive personality traits known as the “Dark Triad” — are associated with overt displays of virtue and victimhood. The study suggests that people with dark personalities use these signals of “virtuous victimhood” to deceptively extract resources from others. The findings have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Fortune and human imperfection assure that at some point in life everyone will experience suffering, disadvantage, or mistreatment,” wrote the authors of the new study. “When this happens, there will be some who face their burdens in silence, treating it as a private matter they must work out for themselves, and there will others who make a public spectacle of their sufferings, label themselves as victims, and demand compensation for their pain. This latter response is what interests us.”

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