Jordan Peterson Interviews Chloe Cole

Fascinating in-depth conversation between psychologist Jordan Peterson and Chloe Cole. Chloe got caught up in transgender ideology as a teenager. After becoming convinced that she was a trans boy at 12, she started puberty blockers at 13, testosterone a month later, received a double mastectomy a month before she turned 16, and detransitioned at 17.

I saw this conversation last month, but was reminded of it when I read an article by Dr. Peter McCullough, who also watched this video and had this reaction:

I will limit my commentary to a fundamental question:

Why would ANY reasonable and responsible adult believe that an unhappy and confused 13-year-old child has a clear understanding of her “true” gender and sexual identity?

Adolescence (from Latin: adolescere “grow to maturity”) is, by definition, and unstable time of transition. The word shares a common root with dolor—the Latin word for pain. As everyone with a shred a common sense knows, growing up is an awkward and painful experience, fundamentally characterized by instability.

In recent years we’ve witnessed a steady train of mind-bogglingly stupid ideas and beliefs presented on a mass scale, but the mere thought—never mind the execution—of “transitioning” a 13-year-old child to the opposite sex may be the most criminally insane notion that ever sprang from the disordered mind of man.

When, in the entire history of civilization, have adults allowed 13-15-year-olds to make irrevocable, fundamentally life-changing decisions about ANYTHING, much less the decision to undergo a double mastectomy surgery?

Continue ReadingJordan Peterson Interviews Chloe Cole

About Stupidity and Related Concepts

I've sometimes written about Hannah Arendt's idea of the "banality of evil," the idea that the lack of thought can be far more dangerous than evil intentions. And see here. BTW, it turns out that Adolf Eichmann, Arendt's Exhibit 1, was not a good example of this alleged lack of evil intentions, based on recent revelations.*

Here's a related idea: the problem with stupidity. I am bit uneasy with that word, because it is often used as a pejorative and connotes willful ignorance, ignorance for which someone has made conscious choices to put themselves into that state of ignorance. I would have preferred to simply use "ignorance" to express the idea that someone lacks the necessary information to make decisions that further human flourishing. Another related idea is the Dunning-Kruger effect:

a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. Some researchers also include in their definition the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills.
But back to "stupidity." As described by Dr. Peter McCullough in a recent article, Dietrich Bonhoeffer discussed individual and social damage caused by stupidity. First, McCullough's description of Bonhoeffer:

In 1943, the Lutheran pastor and member of the German resistance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was arrested and incarcerated in Tegel Prison. There he meditated on the question of why the German people—in spite of their vast education, culture, and intellectual achievements—had fallen so far from reason and morality. He concluded that they, as a people, had been afflicted with collective stupidity (German: Dummheit).

He was not being flippant or sarcastic, and he made it clear that stupidity is not the opposite of native intellect. On the contrary, the events in Germany between 1933 and 1943 had shown him that perfectly intelligent people were, under the pressure of political power and propaganda, rendered stupid—that is, incapable of critical reasoning.

What follows are a few excerpts from Bonhoeffer's writings on stupidity:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than wickedness. Evil can be protested against, exposed, and, if necessary, it can be prevented by force. Evil always harbors the germ of self-destruction by inducing at least some uneasiness in people. We are defenseless against stupidity. Nothing can be done to oppose it, neither with protests nor with violence. Reasons cannot prevail. Facts that contradict one's prejudice simply don't need to be believed, and when they are inescapable, they can simply be brushed aside as meaningless, isolated cases.

In contrast to evil, the stupid person is completely satisfied with itself. When irritated, he becomes dangerous and may even go on the attack. More caution is therefore required when dealing with the stupid than with the wicked. Never try to convince the stupid with reasons; it's pointless and dangerous.

To understand how to deal with stupidity, we must try to understand its nature. This much is certain: it is not essentially an intellectual, but a human defect. There are people who are intellectually agile who are stupid, while intellectually inept people may be anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in certain situations.

Continue ReadingAbout Stupidity and Related Concepts

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.

[More . . . .]

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

Action in the Absence of Evidence: The Case of Compelled Masking and COVID

The Cochrane Review recently declared that there is no evidence supporting the use of masks to prevent COVID. Dr. Vinay Prasad took that Review seriously and uses this finding as an example of a commonly occurring dysfunction in modern public health:

In medicine, when we give therapies without RCT support, at least we know our limitations. We spend time with patients counseling them about the pros and cons. We don’t straight up lie to patients, and say this drug will lower your risk of death 85% (without good data that is true). Kiss them on the forehead and say “shhhh question time is over”, “why don’t you trust me. TrUSt DoCTorS. We don’t want the mis-information police to come get you.”

No, we are honest about what we don’t know. And furthermore, as much as possible, we design and conduct RCTs to reduce our uncertainty. Some of us are more conservative than others, and refrain, in so far as is possible, from prescribing unproven costly drug combinations knowing the unknown risks may exceed unknown benefits. But even the most exuberant prescribers tell patients, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t know for sure this will work”

And yet, public health is actively engaged in a campaign of lies. Cochrane reviewed masking RCTs and it is profoundly negative. In response has been a steady stream of excuses that frankly are inconsistent with how we interpret evidence.

In Public Health, the US government (CDC and NIAID) and WHO literally ran ZERO trials of community masking— for 3 years— while recommending it AGAINST pre-pandemic guidance based on NO NEW data, and then incorporated it into future guidelines. All they while they denied the data from dozens of RCTs. If you did that to a patient, they would remove your license.

Furthermore, if anything, Public Health has a greater obligation to generate data than the cancer doctor. Our interventions are done with the consent of the person, often someone dying. Each day, they feel their body weaken. Our patients are willing to take risks, after all they know what happens if you do nothing.

Public health is for average people. Many are healthy. We impose upon these people and promise them we can make them better off. We need the very best evidence before boosting a 20 year old man who had 3 doses and covid twice, and yet we get worse evidence than a drug for a terminally ill penta-refractory cancer patient. It’s entirely backwards.

Continue ReadingAction in the Absence of Evidence: The Case of Compelled Masking and COVID

On the Importance of Computer Backups – My iMac Adventure Co-Starring Time Machine and Dropbox Professional

My iMac is now fully restored. Hundreds of files started disappearing in many folders. I restored a few missing files and they disappeared again in the next few hours. These spontaneous mass deletions were happening for 2 days before I noticed it. An anti-virus program said no viruses. An apple rep and a friend who repairs Apple computers said beware of problems stemming from the use of iCloud Drive. I am using auto-update on OS, but the latest (Ventura 13.2) hadn't kicked in yet..

Bottom line is that I am perfectly good now and the problem has stopped. I rotate 3 separate external drives for my backups. I also put all of my data into Dropbox Professional which has an excellent "rewind" feature that comes with diagnostic charts that let you see where and when activity is happening, also allowing selective or global restore. To make sure there were no remaining vestiges of the problem, I ended up tearing down my machine to bare metal and building it back with brand new OS, manually updating the most recent safe-seeming backup, then restoring 2.5TB of data. Then the tedious task of installing and configuring a dozen apps. I also disabled iCloud Drive. Take-aways: A) Big problems can occasionally happen even with an Apple computer. B) This was a major problem and I was prepared with ample backups, C) Dropbox Professional is worth every penny, and D) Constantly back up your computer with Time Machine, an incredibly sophisticated and easy to use program!

Continue ReadingOn the Importance of Computer Backups – My iMac Adventure Co-Starring Time Machine and Dropbox Professional