William Shatner: Not a Cisgendered Man or a Cis Man

In the past Facebook exchange, I was called a "cis" man.  I objected and indicated that I should be referred to as simply as a "man." Several people in that group refused, continuing to refer to me as a "cisgendered man." I found this insulting, not only because there is a perfectly good word already existing to describe me, but also because of the way "cis" and "cisgendered" are most often used. In my experience, "cis" and "cisgendered" are used as terms of disparagement.  I have found it odd that someone would claim that they need to relabel me in order to define themselves.

With that background, I noticed a recent series of Tweets by William Shatner (or Star Trek fame).  Shatner has drawn a line in the sand on this same issue. He does not want to be referred to as a "cis" or "cisgendered" man. Why? Because calling someone "cis" or cisgendered is a "slur." Shatner argues that it is debasing and often used as a term of hate.  This is my experience too.  Shatner spelled out his concerns in a long series of Tweets.  Here are some excerpts (in reverse chronological order):

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More About the Woke Version of 2 + 2

More on 2 + 2.   Whether you want to make it add up to 4 is, indeed, "a choice," as we are hearing from Woke-land. That choice, however, has the vast power Dan Dennett ascribed to his concept of "universal acid." That power can be either constructive or destructive. To the extent that we choose to teach (in classrooms and elsewhere) that 2 +2 ≠ 4, this creative choice would permeate everything. not only math. This fanciful and proudly rebellious choice would keep spreading to encompass everything else we believe too, because the explosive power of knowledge depends upon compounding. Our big impressive truths are exapted from our simplest of truths, even truths so simple that we verify them by counting fingers. This ability to compound our know-how from little grounded truths to much bigger truths allows us to discover vaccines and to design aircraft.

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Yes, it's a choice, but it's a choice with ramifications. We can fuck around, acting like we can individually conjure up entirely new inert mental axioms willy-nilly each day, intentionally oblivious to verifiability, and oblivious to what anyone else is doing. Or we can collaborate in a mentally disciplined way using principles hard-gained from Enlightenment thinkers and others, such that there are correct and incorrect answers to many things based on A) whether those things actually function in predictable and meaningful ways and B) whether they further human flourishing.

I tend to see morality in terms of a personal aesthetic deeply tied to my vision for human flourishing. What does your personal sense of aesthetics (or morality) demand? A world where 2 + 2 equals 4? Or a world unhinged from any ability to collaborate with other sentient beings, a world where we pass the time organizing under rival warlords and throwing rocks at each other?

Continue ReadingMore About the Woke Version of 2 + 2

Science Re-Takes the Stage in the Gender Debate at NHS and BBC

From Julian Vigo's Aug 5, 2020 article at Quillette: "At the NHS and BBC, Important Steps Toward Restoring Balance in the Gender Debate." Politicians in the UK have regained their footing, relying upon the scientific method. They are moving forward based on the idea that they should "Do no harm.  Here is an excerpt:

BBC Woman’s Hour has reported that much of the language on the NHS website referring to gender dysphoria was removed or entirely reworded last week, so as to more accurately reflect science instead of ideology. Crucially, the NHS no longer repeats the fiction that puberty blockers such as Lupron are “reversible,” since there are few studies on the physical or psychological effects. (It has been known since 2017 that trials of peripubertal GnRHa-treatment, i.e., hormone blockers, in sheep reveal “permanent changes in brain development [and] raises particular concerns about the cognitive changes associated with the prolonged use of GnRHa-treatment in children and adolescents.”) Also removed from the NHS site: Emotionally loaded references to suicide, which had previously served to terrify parents into seeking rapid treatment, lest any delay lead a child to end their lives. The association of “gender identity” with regressive stereotypes also is gone. And the website no longer suggests that sex itself can be changed. Instead, we get more accurate language to the effect that “some people may decide to have surgery to permanently alter body parts associated with their biological sex.” That the NHS now uses the term “biological sex” at all is itself a huge win, even if such language is obviously appropriate on the level of science and medicine. . . .

As with so many other things, the campaign for trans rights began with good intentions. For some people, dysphoria is very real—the feeling of being in the wrong body. It’s a problem that has to be managed, and people who suffer from this condition should get the help they need. But rather than urge that dysphoria be treated in a humane and realistic way, many activists prefer to cast it as a vestige of an invented inner spirit called “gender identity,” which universally suffuses us all, like a spark of the divine.

Such fantasies are the basis of religion, and it is fine for people to believe in them. But over the last decade, this particular fantasy has been encoded into law—which is very much not fine. And it was only a matter of time before ordinary people realized that a fraud had been perpetrated on them under cover of human rights. . .

Of course, it’s taken too long, and much damage has been done in the interim. But for the sake of the many women and children who remain at risk, better late than never.

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Bad Math: The Story of 2 + 2 = 4

I have two questions about the many recently vocal people who are questioning that 2 + 2 = 4:

A) Are they insincere? If they are pranksters or math anarchists, why are they spending all of this time and effort digging in? Thus, it seems unlikely that they are consciously being disruptive for the hell of it.

B) If they are sincere, the analysis becomes far more interesting, but also dangerous to society at large.  2 + 2 = 5 is not the sort of math that cures viruses or puts sophisticated robotic probes on the surface of Mars. Consider this overwhelming push back to the claim that "2+2 = 4," where many of these by people pushing back claim to be mathematicians or math teachers:

If they are sincerely concerned that 2 + 2 =  4, they might be A) Consciously motivated to pull down math standards in order that low performing students pass even though these students lack math proficiency. If that is the case, they should confess up that this is their motive and we can then have an open debate about whether this is a good idea. But consider option B) Their motives might be unconscious, which means that they are infected by social conflagration (the power of which was demonstrated in 1956 by Soloman Asch), and their math gymnastics are being driven by what Jonathan Haidt terms social intuitionism:

Haidt distrusts the reasons people give for their moral decisions. See, for example, his article: “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment.”

Intuitionism in philosophy refers to the view that there are moral truths, and that when people grasp these truths they do so not by a process of ratiocination and reflection, but rather by a process more akin to perception, in which one just sees without argument that they are and must be true . . . Moral reasoning is usually an ex-post facto process used to influence the intuitions (and hence judgments) of other people . . . [In sum], 1) the reasoning process has been overemphasized; 2) reasoning is often motivated; 3) the reasoning process constructs post-hoc justifications, yet we experience the illusion of objective reasoning.

Does 2 + 2 = 4? It's too bad that we distrust each other so much that we need to meticulously lock down the parameters before proceeding. Apparently we need to argue about whether "2" = 2, and whether "+" means simple addition and then we need to decide whether "=" means equals exactly, more or less or "in some worlds." And the real shame is that these math protesters are clearly hypocritical. When they stand up and walk away from their toxic keyboards, they might walk into a grocery store where they put two apples on the counter, then go back and get two more apples. Then, when they are charged for FIVE apples (by a math-challenged store clerk or, perhaps, a mathematically Woke clerk), they will speak up with moral-mathematical clarity that they should be charged for only FOUR apples, because 2 + 2 = [drum roll . . . ] 4.

If you think this explanation is tedious or self-evident or time-wasting, I highly recommend that you review the already-too-long sad story of this math dispute published recently at New Discourses by Anti-Woke Warrior (and Ph.D mathematician), James Lindsay: "2+2 Never Equals 5." The intensity of this "math" dispute leads to one other possibility that loops back to top of this paragraph. Perhaps the anti 2 + 2 = 4 mob is digging in so deeply because they hate James Lindsay because Lindsay, co-founder of New Discourses, is actively decimating the claims of the Woke. For more on Lindsay, check out his new book (co-authored with Helen Pluckrose), Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody. Also see his recent discussion with Joe Rogan:

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ACLU Announcement About Sex

For eons, "sex" has meant something simple and specific, as set out by Wikipedia:

Organisms of many species are specialized into male and female varieties, each known as a sex.[1][2] Sexual reproduction involves the combining and mixing of genetic traits: specialized cells known as gametes combine to form offspring that inherit traits from each parent. The gametes produced by an organism define its sex: males produce small gametes (e.g. spermatozoa, or sperm, in animals) while females produce large gametes (ova, or egg cells).

Breaking news by the ACLU!

Let's look more closely at the first of the four graphics:

This is part of a trendy effort to redefine the word "sex" and it is fundamentally and objectively incorrect. The ACLU is as wrong here as if it were proclaiming that "The Earth is flat" or that that oxygen and hydrogen combine to make water.

"Sex" is binary. This is uncontroversial when we are discussing the sex of any animals other than human animals. Every successful farmer knows firsthand about the fact that sex is binary, and it would be a tragedy to meet a farmer who follows the ACLU advice. Any advice that claims to be about scientific facts, where human animals are given special rules, should send up numerous red flags.  The ACLU is now officially in the business of religion, apparently, at least in that part of fundamentalist religion that disparages core findings of science.

I will happily abide by any person's sincere request that I call them a "man" or a "woman." This is their choice as how they want to present themselves as to gender. On the other hand, the "Myth" in the ACLU announcement is a myth.  Trans activists will never be satisfied that they have changed their gender. They want more. Their strategy is to bully the rest of us into saying that hundreds of years of biology is false.  They are insisting that the rest of us chant with them that it inappropriate to call a baby boy (a baby with testicles and a penis) a "boy." It is apparently not enough to say that the baby's sex is male and that there is a 1% chance that this child might someday identify as a girl or a woman, that it's gender might someday be that of a girl or a woman.

We are in the midst of a language war and society will need to decide whether they are going to allow well-established word meanings crumble because a tiny minority of people claim that their are being "damaged" or "erased."  I sometimes think of a friend of mine who has no hands.  In a room filled people, he would never have claimed that he was being "erased" or "damaged" or "injured" or that his "civil rights" were being violated to the extent that people in the room might use the word "hand" when he did not have hands.  If they said, "raise your hand," or even "I've got to hand it to you," my friend would never have assumed that they were disparaging him in any way.  That's because 99% of the people in the room had hands (he once did too).  The 99% should not be expected to change their ways with regard to common language for the benefit of tiny minorities that have worked very hard to make themselves hyper-sensitive to ordinary experiences.

I'm certain that the trans activists would refuse to substitute the word "sex" (above) for gender.  The linguistics war will thus continue . . .

BTW, the ACLU is doubling down on the trans agenda, including the "right" of male athletes who switch to female at the age of 25, after having a lifetime benefit of testosterone including an extra 8 inches in height and 10% more muscle, complete with penis and testicles, to compete against women, meaning those born and raised female.

There is more from the ACLU.  They make it look so simple, when it this is being hotly contested by women athletes. 

These issues present a mismatch.  One side is presenting facts, while the other side is presenting highly distorted facts, combined with accusations and bullying.  In my previous article about 2 +2, I cited to James Lindsay, I will cite to him again, as follows:

[P]ostmodernism, particularly in the hands of the ideology of Critical Social Justice, is not at all interested in truth. It is only interested in power, which it will establish through its attempted revolution, which it in turn knows it can only achieve by turning otherwise intelligent, well-meaning people into “accomplices” by manipulating their good will, charity, fear of being disliked or ostracized, and, especially, unawareness of what is actually going on beneath the rhetorical tricks they’re being served up with intentionally limited context."

Time will tell where this will go.

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