Split Thread Philosophical musings about trans rights

[Myriad]

Uniquely, perhaps not, I'm not sure I said that. However, we have had sexual reproduction for 2 billion years. There can't be many features that differentiate us one from another that are as old, and as thoroughly baked in to us. What are the core things that a human needs to do to survive? Eat, find shelter, and have sex. Recognising, and finding important, the difference between men and women has been critically important, and has been critically important for millions and millions of years. It is very clearly baked into brains across the animal world from penguins to elephants. Very frequently you see differences in behaviour, and differences in role in the animal world, just as you see it with us. This again is not surprising because for one thing there is a function that only females can perform. For another, in times of threat, the value of the sexes is not remotely the same as one another.

What other cultural architypes are you thinking of that are remotely as significant? Are there any that you can detect the differences between in the behaviour of new born babies, that we have different hormones and so forth to steer? Thinking that society can make these differences inconsequential is like thinking society could regard food as optional. Sure there are cultural rituals around food, but they are build upon a basic physical reality and necessity, just as gender is.

Believing all this stuff is optional, and arbitrary is like believing in breatharianism.

There is a saying you see going around on the dissident right that comes from Spengler:
“When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard 'having children' as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning point has come.”
He is saying that when having children isn't just something you assume you are going to do, the civilisation is doomed to collapse. I think that pretty easily extends to people acting as if they don't know what men and women are. There are core tasks that civilisations need to do to survive, and we seem to have decided that one of them is optional.

Sure, we live in a decadent age where people have ridiculous beliefs that in harsher times would have got them slapped round the head and made to do something useful. Trans stuff is just an even more silly, decadent belief on top of previous only marginally more sensible ones. They are peacocks tails. These things aren't so bad when it's just a fringe aristocratic fad. If it spills out though, it's like if the Chinese had decided they were going to normalise foot binding, and you'd had peasants tottering about the fields.

What we haven't evolved to do is live in a vacuum. We've evolved to adapt to environments and environmental factors. Factors such as, for instance, population.

Did Spengler happen to notice that if your highly developed culture is overpopulated well beyond the carrying capacity of the environment, having more children doesn't help? Unless, of course, you plan to arm those children and send them off to fight for some other region's resources, which will either obtain said resources or kill off the children (or both), momentarily relieving the population pressure. Is that the natural non-decadent evolved system we should be preferring over "marxist" theories that defy "nature" by making having children optional? If so, those advocates might not have taken into account the current capabilities of weapons (another aspect of the current environment) and their side effects on infrastructure. Infrastructure that has elevated the carrying capacity of the environment. See the problem there? The "natural" consequence of breeding more hungry soldiers in that case is not temporary relief of population pressure, it's fueling collapse.

If alternate lifestyles that stop people from having children are unnatural and contrary to evolution, why are they ubiquitous in various forms (eunuch classes, monastic religious celibates, all-male pursuits with low survival rates) throughout known history? Why is it any surprise that extreme forms of them would arise at a time when both population and the success rate of attempted reproduction (survival of pregnancy and infancy) are unprecedentedly high?

tl, dr: I see the dissident right's Marx and Spengler and raise them a Malthus and a Darwin.

 

[shuttlt]

Did Spengler happen to notice that if your highly developed culture is overpopulated well beyond the carrying capacity of the environment, having more children doesn't help?

Sure, but we are actively importing people. If are importing people, so presumably local resources aren't the issue, or if they are, the non-imported population aren't the reason they are running low. Competing for resources and space is as old as time. If a people decides that it is not going to have children, and instead focus on the individual, any limits on resources are the problem of whoever replaces them. Maybe ending your own culture so that other people can expand is noble, in a suicidal kind of way... but there does seem to be something rather nihilistic and self defeating about it.

Unless, of course, you plan to arm those children and send them off to fight for some other region's resources, which will either obtain said resources or kill off the children (or both), momentarily relieving the population pressure.

This does seem to be drifting a little way off trans rights. Be that as it may, it is always possible to avoid difficult problems by committing suicide. Then the difficult problems become problems for other, less suicidal inclined people to solve. Stopping having children, and then importing people from other cultures who do have children fixes nothing. At best it kicks the can an inconsequential way down the road.

Is that the natural non-decadent evolved system we should be preferring over "marxist" theories that defy "nature" by making having children optional? If so, those advocates might not have taken into account the current capabilities of weapons (another aspect of the current environment) and their side effects on infrastructure. Infrastructure that has elevated the carrying capacity of the environment. See the problem there? The "natural" consequence of breeding more hungry soldiers in that case is not temporary relief of population pressure, it's fueling collapse.

There are many different problems. This looks a bit like the new left in the UK of the early 60s backing unilateral disarmament. You don't fix any of these problems by stopping having children and then importing replacements from different cultures who do have children. All you've done is handed the problem to them to fix while slitting your throat. Again, this is very far away from trans stuff.

If alternate lifestyles that stop people from having children are unnatural and contrary to evolution, why are they ubiquitous in various forms (eunuch classes, monastic religious celibates, all-male pursuits with low survival rates) throughout known history? Why is it any surprise that extreme forms of them would arise at a time when both population and the success rate of attempted reproduction (survival of pregnancy and infancy) are unprecedentedly high?

None of these have been normalised like this. You didn't have peasant children in the middle ages being encouraged in large numbers to put off children until their 30s, never have children, check out to sit at home masturbating or castrate themselves. You've always had degenerate aristocrats and religious mystics, but their numbers were necessarily small because physical necessity kept their numbers small. A society that acted like that would have collapsed and starved.

tl, dr: I see the dissident right's Marx and Spengler and raise them a Malthus and a Darwin.

I don't see how Spengler and Malthus contradict. Having your people/civilisation/culture extinguish itself doesn't defeat Malthus, it just makes him somebody else's problem.

 

[shuttlt]

As Leumas points out, it has only been a handful of decades since womens’ opportunities were severely limited due to broad assumptions and cultural momentum about what women were supposed to do and what they were capable of. To you, it seems, changing this was all downside, because it was part of culture changing to the point we are at now where raising kids has a lot more basic hurdles like how to take care of the lil tyke when we are a two person household and we both have to go to work. To you, it would be better if we had never let that genie out of the bottle, because it seems you want to operate on a rose colored glasses & numbers game. Many women were happy that way and the rest were stuck, and among the stuck, those who were abjectly miserable were a perfectly acceptable sacrifice to the smooth running of the system for the people it worked well for. (And a few really bullheaded women made their own way anyway so anyone who didn’t just didn’t try hard enough or something.)

Right, so now we have rearranged society around the needs of the minority who were abjectly miserable, and female happiness has declined. You can not have society moulded to the needs of all people.

But one of the human nature things is also empathy, and when the happy women learn about the unhappy ones, the beaten ones, etc, who are constrained into their situations by those prewar, pre-genie assumptions, they feel like changing the system even if it works ok for them.

And now women are less happy..... One can be empathic and wrong and make things worse.

(But it seems to me that wishing we were still in the women-can’t-have-bank-accounts era ignores the idea that we as a society could find ways to make having kids attractive again. After all most people do actually want to do this, so talk to them, do studies, figure out exactly why the ones who aren’t doing it aren’t doing it and address those issues.)

You can't have 60 years of advertising, and consumerism directed at you and then ask what people want. That's like asking my son whether he wants his XBox, the answer is clearly "yes" since he's addicted to the dopamine. Whether it's made him happier and more fulfilled either in the short or long term is a different question. For myself, I regret buying it. As to choice and what people would choose, were women actually asked 60 years ago whether they would like change the world so that it is harder to get married and have children, but in compensation they could have a mundane office job? I'm not sure what has been delivered is what was promised. Too late to go back now though.

Anyway, it's not a question of going back to anything or reintroducing some specific custom or law. The question is, are we wrong about the nature of men and women, what is good for them, and what makes them happy. The trans-liberation stuff comes from the same grab bag of ideas that feminism came from.

Again, it’s been such a staggeringly short time since all this began to change that I’m not shocked it’s all still shaking out, that some things go too far and other things not far enough.

That's not how these things work. You release ideas into the world and they have momentum. This isn't an engineering problem, or a science experiment. You can't flip society like this and think you are in control of the process. It's like releasing a tsunami and then saying "well, it's going great across the pacific, but it's going a bit too far with those islands it swamped".

But you did miss a third basic assumption about humans. Basically good, basically bad? You forgot “everyone has the potential for both,” which is observably drastically true.

I'm talking in the sense of Rousseau, Locke and the foundations of their theories.

But if you want to numbers game it because the big part of the curve is the only important one? When we’re looking one another in the eye we are basically all altruistic until we are starving to actual death. Sure some of us aren’t but like you said if it’s only 2.5 percent then it would be foolish to construct society as if they existed at all.

It's not a question of being altruistic. Very often we are cowards and want to avoid making hard decisions. We want to pretend there are easy answers where we can just be nice to everybody. Frequently the question is picking who gets screwed over.

Anyway as far as what I actually think. I think it’s foolish to construct society to expect women to be as physically strong as men. I think it’s also foolish to construct society to ignore it when women are as physically strong as men, and conversely to ignore it when men are not as physically strong as the mean.

Society isn't neutral. You necessarily make some ways of living easier and some harder. There is no ideology free "fair" way of doing that. Over the past 60 years it has been made much harder for women to be housewives, and easier for them to have office jobs and delay having children, and that change has been supported by advertising and media. The society has to sell some vision of life to people. It's not a question of forcing women into the home, it's a question of what lifestyle society encourages and makes easy, and what it discourages and makes hard.

The result of the changes has been declining female happiness, and the need to import increasing numbers of immigrants to make up for the lack of births.

It can simultaneously be dumb to try to train all girls to be able to do 50 pull-ups and to tell the one girl who can already do 25 pull-ups not to bother trying to train. And it can also simultaneously be dumb not to try to train all the guys to be able to do 50 pull-ups and to keep on riding the ass of the one guy who can’t even do one.

Again, you can't have a neutral society that doesn't celebrate some things over others, or project some kind of ideology about what lifestyle people should be aspiring to. As to pull-ups, I'm pretty sure women generally find muscular men more attractive than is the case for men and muscular women. I'm not sure why one would expect the two to be equally encouraged.

I can buy the idea that you don’t build all of society expecting everyone to be an outlier. But I’m just not even slightly sold on the idea that it actually benefits society to tell outliers they might as well just **** off.

Again, it's not a question of telling people to **** off. You said earlier that driven women would just go ahead and do it anyway. However, you can't make it radically easier to not be a housewife without making it radically harder to be one. By making women in offices feel less isolated, you make housewives more isolated. These are hard choices. It's not just about being altruistic. Again, female happiness has actually declined since the 1970s.

We seem to be drifting away from trans.

 

[Myriad]

Sure, but we are actively importing people. If are importing people, so presumably local resources aren't the issue, or if they are, the non-imported population aren't the reason they are running low. Competing for resources and space is as old as time. If a people decides that it is not going to have children, and instead focus on the individual, any limits on resources are the problem of whoever replaces them. Maybe ending your own culture so that other people can expand is noble, in a suicidal kind of way... but there does seem to be something rather nihilistic and self defeating about it.

This does seem to be drifting a little way off trans rights. Be that as it may, it is always possible to avoid difficult problems by committing suicide. Then the difficult problems become problems for other, less suicidal inclined people to solve. Stopping having children, and then importing people from other cultures who do have children fixes nothing. At best it kicks the can an inconsequential way down the road.

There are many different problems. This looks a bit like the new left in the UK of the early 60s backing unilateral disarmament. You don't fix any of these problems by stopping having children and then importing replacements from different cultures who do have children. All you've done is handed the problem to them to fix while slitting your throat. Again, this is very far away from trans stuff.

None of these have been normalised like this. You didn't have peasant children in the middle ages being encouraged in large numbers to put off children until their 30s, never have children, check out to sit at home masturbating or castrate themselves. You've always had degenerate aristocrats and religious mystics, but their numbers were necessarily small because physical necessity kept their numbers small. A society that acted like that would have collapsed and starved.

I don't see how Spengler and Malthus contradict. Having your people/civilisation/culture extinguish itself doesn't defeat Malthus, it just makes him somebody else's problem.

Childless lifestyles have indeed often been normalized, and sometimes forced. What do you think happens when a large percentage of the young male population of a town marches away to war, and about half of them (on average; sometimes more, sometimes way less) come back? How many children do the women killed in infancy due to sex-preferential female infanticide bear? In the 1600s, about 1% of European women were nuns; how does that compare with the number of non-reproducing female-born trans men today?

Do you know who else besides trendy gender-atypical young people are having fewer children? Traditional conservative working families, who are finding it more and more difficult to afford to raise children in the manner our society increasingly demands they be raised, e.g. with constant supervision. If more native-born children is what you want, how about decreasing work hours, or repealing the laws that make it a crime to allow children to play outside unsupervised? ("We can only afford half as many kids that way, and most of them grow up neurotic, but fewer of them die in accidents or get abducted, so it's all good" is an insane tradeoff if more children is what you really want. Why not campaign to change that, instead of trying to throw the lesbians back in the closet?)

This is relevant to trans issues because you seem to be proposing "OMG some ethnic European's quiver's not full!" as a philosophically sound reason (whether you agree with it yourself or not) to oppose trans-accepting public policies.

Spengler and Malthus disagree basically on cause versus effect. Spengler says populations collapse because they get decadent and lose track of what's important like having lots and lots of children. Malthus says if you're over your environment's carrying capacity your population is going to collapse, and having more children won't help. (As you point out it's likely that having fewer children won't help either, but if there's no winning policy, why not let people do what they want?)

Darwin knew better than to equate lack of individual reproductive success with suicide. What an extreme false polarity. Here's a much better example of cultural suicide: instilling and maintaining the attitude throughout a culture that limits don't exist, and that the solution to every problem is more. More children, more construction, more wealth, more education, more technology. Eventually more won't fit on the planet, but that's okay because we'll climb aboard our starships and head for the skies. Because limits actually do exist, that culture is going to end, either by changing its premises or crashing and burning. It happens to be the culture I was raised in, participated enthusiastically in for most of my life, and still live in, so I'd prefer the former. I'm clearly very much in the minority on that point.

Of course its advocates call for more of that culture as the only solution, like an alcoholic calls for more alcohol, and just as suicidally. But adaptive change to conform to the realities of the environment isn't suicide, it's the avoidance of suicide.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The problem with street level utilitarianism as it is so often presented is that people can just lie or... be wrong in some sense about what makes them happy.

"50 Jews don't want to be put into the oven, 50 Germans say the only thing that will make them happy is putting Jews in the oven, there for the philsophicalbabble correct answer is for 25 Jews to be put into the oven" doesn't account for the fact that hurting other people in order to be happy IS ******* BAD.

"The thing that makes you happy is wrong" has to be in play here to at least some degree.

If we could measure trans acceptance and trans... resistance (or whatever) on some kind of scale and somehow metaphysically prove it was equal that still wouldn't, necessarily, put both sides on equal footing.

If I'm happy you're not punching me in the face and you're claiming (or hell honestly saying) that you won't be happy until you punch me in the face the moral thing for me to do is not to compromise with you.

 

[shuttlt]

Childless lifestyles have indeed often been normalized, and sometimes forced. What do you think happens when a large percentage of the young male population of a town marches away to war, and about half of them (on average; sometimes more, sometimes way less) come back?

Irrelevant. People considered that a bad thing, not something to embrace and made a cultural norm. They rightly considered that a catastrophe.

How many children do the women killed in infancy due to sex-preferential female infanticide bear?

Irrelevant, there are hard physical limits on how much of that can go on without the population and the culture collapsing. To the extent that that is so normal in a place that there are grossly insufficient women, I would imagine that it has some very significant consequences for the society. It does not sound like a happy state of affairs.

In the 1600s, about 1% of European women were nuns; how does that compare with the number of non-reproducing female-born trans men today?

And? That wasn't at the same time as the rest of the culture was being encouraged to delay having children until their mid 30s, and potentially not have children at all.

Do you know who else besides trendy gender-atypical young people are having fewer children? Traditional conservative working families, who are finding it more and more difficult to afford to raise children in the manner our society increasingly demands they be raised, e.g. with constant supervision.

Yes, there are many bad trends. Once the default stops being one bread winner, market competition naturally drops wages and the previously attainable lifestyle now requires two bread winners. As to constant supervision, we live in a managerial, therapeutic state where we are encourage to be risk averse, I'm not sure that that goes against what I have said.

If more native-born children is what you want, how about decreasing work hours, or repealing the laws that make it a crime to allow children to play outside unsupervised?

Sure. I doubt such things would be remotely sufficient, and it would require the dominant ideas in the culture to do a 180 to implement this, so I doubt it will happen any time soon. We have been actively messaging people about the need to have fewer children, and the individualist, materialist consumer lifestyle for a very long time now. You look at what groups still have above replacement natality.... Israel only has positive growth because of orthodox Jews, within Europe, it's typically immigrant communities with quite a traditional ethos. The change would have to be radical.

("We can only afford half as many kids that way, and most of them grow up neurotic, but fewer of them die in accidents or get abducted, so it's all good" is an insane tradeoff if more children is what you really want. Why not campaign to change that, instead of trying to throw the lesbians back in the closet?)

I agree with you that these other things are a problem. Both of them I think stem from our long term cultural trends of individualism and consumerism. Look at the groups who actually have positive natality. It's not something that can be fixed by some little tweak.

This is relevant to trans issues because you seem to be proposing "OMG some ethnic European's quiver's not full!" as a philosophically sound reason (whether you agree with it yourself or not) to oppose trans-accepting public policies.

I would say that a population that doesn't think reproducing itself is important is a sign of some deeper problem in that population, like if a man stops eating. Once the burden of proof is on the person who wants their family, or their culture etc to continue, or on the people who think the man shouldn't starve himself to death, things are pretty far gone.

Spengler and Malthus disagree basically on cause versus effect. Spengler says populations collapse because they get decadent and lose track of what's important like having lots and lots of children. Malthus says if you're over your environment's carrying capacity your population is going to collapse, and having more children won't help. (As you point out it's likely that having fewer children won't help either, but if there's no winning policy, why not let people do what they want?)

Neither one says that their model is the only reason why populations collapse. A tsunami destroying a civilisation is no more a disproof of Malthus than it is of Spengler. Spengler didn't deny the black death.

Darwin knew better than to equate lack of individual reproductive success with suicide.

I'm not aware of him dealing with a group of individuals within a population that got captivated by the idea of not breeding. If he did, I would imagine he would have thought it wasn't great for the survival of their genes.

What an extreme false polarity. Here's a much better example of cultural suicide: instilling and maintaining the attitude throughout a culture that limits don't exist, and that the solution to every problem is more.

I agree with you, that is decadence as well. I am not in favour of that either. There is an aspect of a treadmill to it though, in the globalised world, one can not just stop, again without effectively committing national suicide.

More children, more construction, more wealth, more education, more technology. Eventually more won't fit on the planet, but that's okay because we'll climb aboard our starships and head for the skies. Because limits actually do exist, that culture is going to end, either by changing its premises or crashing and burning. It happens to be the culture I was raised in, participated enthusiastically in for most of my life, and still live in, so I'd prefer the former. I'm clearly very much in the minority on that point.

I agree with you that such things can't go on for ever. None the less, if it's only some cultural groups that decide to wipe themselves out in this way, it seems like a rather futile gesture.

Of course its advocates call for more of that culture as the only solution, like an alcoholic calls for more alcohol, and just as suicidally. But adaptive change to conform to the realities of the environment isn't suicide, it's the avoidance of suicide.

It isn't adaptive change. We are importing more immigrants. Populations are booming in many of the places we are pulling immigrants from.

This seems to have gotten way, way off from the trans stuff.

 

[shuttlt]

The problem with street level utilitarianism as it is so often presented is that people can just lie or... be wrong in some sense about what makes them happy.

"50 Jews don't want to be put into the oven, 50 Germans say the only thing that will make them happy is putting Jews in the oven, there for the philsophicalbabble correct answer is for 25 Jews to be put into the oven" doesn't account for the fact that hurting other people in order to be happy IS ******* BAD.

"The thing that makes you happy is wrong" has to be in play here to at least some degree.

If we could measure trans acceptance and trans... resistance (or whatever) on some kind of scale and somehow metaphysically prove it was equal that still wouldn't, necessarily, put both sides on equal footing.

If I'm happy you're not punching me in the face and you're claiming (or hell honestly saying) that you won't be happy until you punch me in the face the moral thing for me to do is not to compromise with you.

You are free to frame it as if every man is an island and can live what ever their best life is and it doesn't effect other people. I disagree. Lot's of people disagree. This individualistic disconnected view of life isn't shared by everybody. You contributing to the ******* up of the society I have to live in is punching me in the face.

 

[Myriad]

Irrelevant. People considered that a bad thing, not something to embrace and made a cultural norm. They rightly considered that a catastrophe.

Irrelevant, there are hard physical limits on how much of that can go on without the population and the culture collapsing. To the extent that that is so normal in a place that there are grossly insufficient women, I would imagine that it has some very significant consequences for the society. It does not sound like a happy state of affairs.

And? That wasn't at the same time as the rest of the culture was being encouraged to delay having children until their mid 30s, and potentially not have children at all.

Yes, there are many bad trends. Once the default stops being one bread winner, market competition naturally drops wages and the previously attainable lifestyle now requires two bread winners. As to constant supervision, we live in a managerial, therapeutic state where we are encourage to be risk averse, I'm not sure that that goes against what I have said.

Sure. I doubt such things would be remotely sufficient, and it would require the dominant ideas in the culture to do a 180 to implement this, so I doubt it will happen any time soon. We have been actively messaging people about the need to have fewer children, and the individualist, materialist consumer lifestyle for a very long time now. You look at what groups still have above replacement natality.... Israel only has positive growth because of orthodox Jews, within Europe, it's typically immigrant communities with quite a traditional ethos. The change would have to be radical.

I agree with you that these other things are a problem. Both of them I think stem from our long term cultural trends of individualism and consumerism. Look at the groups who actually have positive natality. It's not something that can be fixed by some little tweak.

I would say that a population that doesn't think reproducing itself is important is a sign of some deeper problem in that population, like if a man stops eating. Once the burden of proof is on the person who wants their family, or their culture etc to continue, or on the people who think the man shouldn't starve himself to death, things are pretty far gone.

Neither one says that their model is the only reason why populations collapse. A tsunami destroying a civilisation is no more a disproof of Malthus than it is of Spengler. Spengler didn't deny the black death.

I'm not aware of him dealing with a group of individuals within a population that got captivated by the idea of not breeding. If he did, I would imagine he would have thought it wasn't great for the survival of their genes.

I agree with you, that is decadence as well. I am not in favour of that either. There is an aspect of a treadmill to it though, in the globalised world, one can not just stop, again without effectively committing national suicide.

I agree with you that such things can't go on for ever. None the less, if it's only some cultural groups that decide to wipe themselves out in this way, it seems like a rather futile gesture.

It isn't adaptive change. We are importing more immigrants. Populations are booming in many of the places we are pulling immigrants from.

This seems to have gotten way, way off from the trans stuff.

Might it be possible to apprehend one another's arguments in their entirely, instead of responding individually to each sentence? The latter does not make for good discourse.

Yes it is adaptive change. A few centuries ago, if someone suggested that ninety percent of the population should live in cities leaving only ten percent to work the land, it would make sense to call that proposal suicidal. But change happened. It might eventually un-happen if we screw up badly enough, but right now we live in a world with combines instead of one with ox teams, so the answer to whether sending two hundred million people in the US out of the cities and towns to work the fields would make anyone better off or happier is no.

Similarly, we live in a world with obstetrics and vaccinations. So the answer to whether rolling back women's rights to increase the population that doesn't need increasing would make anyone better off or happier is also no.

 

[Paul2]

Right, so now we have rearranged society around the needs of the minority who were abjectly miserable, and female happiness has declined. You can not have society moulded to the needs of all people.

Didn't I and others refute the idea that there was some objective measurement that showed that women were less happy now in the other thread, months ago?

 

[Paul2]

Incidentally y don't see the problem with looking at an issue logically. Are we supposed to consider issues illogically?

Just like you should be against fairness.

 

[shuttlt]

Might it be possible to apprehend one another's arguments in their entirely, instead of responding individually to each sentence? The latter does not make for good discourse.

Yes it is adaptive change. A few centuries ago, if someone suggested that ninety percent of the population should live in cities leaving only ten percent to work the land, it would make sense to call that proposal suicidal. But change happened. It might eventually un-happen if we screw up badly enough, but right now we live in a world with combines instead of one with ox teams, so the answer to whether sending two hundred million people in the US out of the cities and towns to work the fields would make anyone better off or happier is no.

Similarly, we live in a world with obstetrics and vaccinations. So the answer to whether rolling back women's rights to increase the population that doesn't need increasing would make anyone better off or happier is also no.

The population is dropping precipitously amongst the groups that have adopted this world view. It is self limiting. Some groups seem to be able to resist this happening to their population growth. This is very off topic now.

 

[shuttlt]

Didn't I and others refute the idea that there was some objective measurement that showed that women were less happy now in the other thread, months ago?

You didn't refute it. You asserted it was false. The conversation then went down two paths. One was the assertion that there was no way to tell whether the various social changes since the 60s had improved anybody's life satisfaction. The other way, which I think Emily's Cat took, was to say that those social changes weren't about improving anybody's life satisfaction and were right even if they had made the supposed beneficiaries of them less happy. It all seems very unfalsifiable to me. For myself, that people are less happy and less satisfied with their lives makes sense.

 

[JoeMorgue]

You are free to frame it as if every man is an island and can live what ever their best life is and it doesn't effect other people. I disagree. Lot's of people disagree. This individualistic disconnected view of life isn't shared by everybody. You contributing to the ******* up of the society I have to live in is punching me in the face.

This is why people hate philosophy.

"Take all the ideas, regardless of quality, categorize them and give them all a name, and act like that puts them all on equal footing."

A person who thinks 2+2=4 is correct and a person who thinks 2+2=5 is wrong.

Philosophy always devolves into a game of labeling the former "Twoist" and the later "Fourist" and going "Well neither can be wrong, because both are following a valid philosophy."

Huff and puff and get angry and indignant all you want but all you've got is "I've gave my wrongness a name, now it's equal to your correctness, therefore I win."

YOU DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING. You just mushmouth mumbled something about "Well some people disagree."

 

[shuttlt]

This is why people hate philosophy.

"Take all the ideas, regardless of quality, categorize them and give them all a name, and act like that puts them all on equal footing."

A person who thinks 2+2=4 is correct and a person who thinks 2+2=5 is wrong.

Philosophy always devolves into a game of labeling the former "Twoist" and the later "Fourist" and going "Well neither can be wrong, because both are following a valid philosophy."

And what you seem to be doing is taking your moral assumptions and beliefs and mistaking them for some kind of neutral, no point of view position that should be acceptable to everybody.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And what you seem to be doing is taking your moral assumptions and beliefs and mistaking them for some kind of neutral, no point of view position that should be acceptable to everybody.

*Droll* Yes I'm suggesting that "Don't punch me in the face" is some sort of.... *pause for dramatic effect" MORAL TRUTH OMG PONIES!!!!

Your "Everything is an opinion, and nothing can ever be really meaningful or true" isn't deep, it's just intellectually cowardly.

People like you are 99% of the reason philosophy still exists outside of niche academia, people who so utterly and completely terrified of ever being wrong about anything that you argue that nothing can ever be right or wrong.

You're doing the intellectual equivalent of going to the roulette wheel and betting an equal amount on both red and black and acting like you win when you break even.

Facts (or Hell if "facts" scare you so much at least ideas which are better than others) exist, even in morality, no matter how scared of them you are.

 

[Myriad]

The population is dropping precipitously amongst the groups that have adopted this world view. It is self limiting. Some groups seem to be able to resist this happening to their population growth. This is very off topic now.

You introduced into the discussion the claim that traditional gender roles are rooted in adaptation to brute reality. I'm pointing out that all effective adaptation is contingent on the environment, which changes and has recently changed enormously. Granting that childless lifestyles (if widespread beyond some assumed threshold) would have been culturally maladaptive for a hunter-gatherer tribe, dynastic empire, or warring feudal kingdom, that still doesn't mean they are now.

 

[shuttlt]

*Drools* Yes I'm suggesting that "Don't punch me in the face" is some sort of.... *pause for dramatic effect" MORAL TRUTH OMG PONIES!!!!

Your "Everything is an opinion, and nothing can ever be really meaningful or true" isn't deep, it's just intellectually cowardly.

You think it's morally brave to have generic normie moral opinions which you articulate on the internet amongst other people who share those opinions, but morally cowardly to have moral opinions that are not widely accepted and to articulate them to people who almost universally disagree? Also, I am not saying that everything is an opinion and nothing is meaningfully true. I am saying that you can't prove morality, and your moral intuitions are profoundly unconvincing to anybody who does not share them. Your confidence in them resolves nothing.

First off, your example, as I explained to you is, when applied to the topic of this thread.... or pretty much anything contentious, radically too simplistic to be useful. People disagree about who is punching who in the head. You can't just assert your reading of the situation and think that resolves anything. The whole point of the trans thread, or anything contentious, is that people disagree about who is being disadvantaged, and who is being harmed, and by how much. You can't just wave that aside, reduce it down to an artificial example that throws out all the other sides concerns and call the whole thing obvious. Your moral certainty doesn't resolve anything.

People like you are 99% of the reason philosophy still exists outside of niche academia, people who so utterly and completely terrified of ever being wrong about anything that you argue that nothing can ever be right or wrong.

It exists because to understand these issues beyond mistaking our own cultural assumptions and moral instincts for obvious universal truths and then being baffled and shocked when people disagree with us, a lot more work is required.

You're doing the intellectual equivalent of going to the roulette wheel and betting an equal amount on both red and black and acting like you win when you break even.

Facts (or Hell if "facts scare you so much" at least ideas which are better than others) exists, even in morality, no matter how scared of them you are.

Again, you are mistaking your own moral intuitions for universal truths that other people should recognise. Why should I trust your moral intuitions in preference to mine? Welcome to multiculturalism.

 

[JoeMorgue]

You think it's morally brave to have generic normie moral opinions which you articulate on the internet amongst other people who share those opinions, but morally cowardly to have moral opinions that are not widely accepted and to articulate them to people who almost universally disagree? Also, I am not saying that everything is an opinion and nothing is meaningfully true. I am saying that you can't prove morality, and your moral intuitions are profoundly unconvincing to anybody who does not share them. Your confidence in them resolves nothing.

First off, your example, as I explained to you is, when applied to the topic of this thread.... or pretty much anything contentious, radically too simplistic to be useful. People disagree about who is punching who in the head. You can't just assert your reading of the situation and think that resolves anything. The whole point of the trans thread, or anything contentious, is that people disagree about who is being disadvantaged, and who is being harmed, and by how much. You can't just wave that aside, reduce it down to an artificial example that throws out all the other sides concerns and call the whole thing obvious. Your moral certainty doesn't resolve anything.


It exists because to understand these issues beyond mistaking our own cultural assumptions and moral instincts for obvious universal truths and then being baffled and shocked when people disagree with us, a lot more work is required.


Again, you are mistaking your own moral intuitions for universal truths that other people should recognise. Why should I trust your moral intuitions in preference to mine? Welcome to multiculturalism.

1. None of this true.
2. You don't believe any of this is true.

When you get your paycheck you don't go "Oh lordy lordy I can't accept this. Taking money from is just one valid philosophy, I must debate my boss for 37 years before I accept this." Your oh so very firm believe in the everything being questioned doesn't exist on that day, I feel safe in assuming.

But let there be an actual argument, a valid discussion where multiple sides have actual points to make and here you come, screeching about how we can't talk about anything because nothing is true and everything is just a shadow on a trolley problem on the wall of Plato's Cave.

Self serving nonsense.

 

[Robin]

It's a deep cover project then where the Right spent entire careers pretending to be leftists and publish books and papers about this stuff?

No, its a bunch of rightists making stuff up. The fact that they might mention books and papers written academic lefties does not alter my point.

They are alleging, for example, that gay activism was the product of cultural marxism. Dropping the names of a few left wing word salad merchants from academia will not help their case.

We know where gay activism came from and where its roots were and they certainly weren't in academia.

Have you actually read the authors the Right bang on about?

Well of course not, life is too short to read that sort of tripe. What relevance do they have to the issue under discussion?

I have been reading old books written by people on the Left because I am interested in the history of ideas! There are no end of Left authored histories where they talk about the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault etc...

As I say, academic navel gazers. Had nothing whatsoever to do with the way gay activism played out. I can't speak for anti-racist activism.

 

[Robin]

The problem with academia is that it can't handle simple concepts. Simple concepts can be explained in just a few words and academics have a career that depends on them producing many long documents. This doesn't matter so much in mathematics and science because the concepts they deal with are already complex.

But, given a simple concept, academics have to complicate it in order to get more words out of it.

Gay activism was motivated by very simple concepts and was nothing to do with oppression and victimhood and nothing to do with Marxism. I suspect the same is true of anti-racist activism.