Confused stan
This guy said these two things almost in the same breath.
Facts don’t care about your feelings. Ok, got it.
Very next tweet:
If you identify as a woman you are a woman. So, facts don’t care about your feelings, and if you feel you are a woman, it’s a fact that you are a woman.
What?
I would suggest that his inability to be consistent is entirely par for the whole ‘trans’ course.
Also, that
exists only in his imagination.
“If you identify as a woman, you ARE a woman” is a “scientific consensus?” I don’t think so.
The late great Skepdoc Harriet Hall noted a common practice in pseudoscience and came up with an apt analogy and descriptive term: Tooth Fairy Science.
It’s perfectly possible for scientists to do studies on how much money the ToothFairy leaves in different countries, and whether she values front teeth more than molars or pillows more than bedside tables. Elaborate surveys measuring the satisfaction level of the children who receive a visit vs those who don’t could be sent out and results put in tables and diagrams. A substantial body of Tooth Fairy Science could thus exist, and be proudly pointed to when Tooth Fairy skeptics raise objections. The scientific consensus is that there’s a Tooth Fairy.
Except there isn’t because the critical initial step was skipped. Does the Tooth Fairy exist? Without first establishing the primary claim, the scientific studies may be accurate on one level, but nevertheless fundamentally unscientific and misleading. Tooth Fairy Science is particularly common in Alternative medicine. It’s pointless to take careful notes on how a manipulated human energy field changes patient-reported pain levels if the laws of physics rule them out: it’s placebo.
I think the difference between the Tooth Fairy and the assertion that “If you identify as a woman, you are a woman” is that it’s easier to come up with what constitutes disproof of the former. That makes the Tooth Fairy a more scientific style of hypothesis. I would love to ask Walz Stan “ if identifying as a woman DOESN’T make someone a woman, what would therefore change your mind?” I imagine it would have to be good evidence that males who identify as transgender have now started to insist they’re not women. This is not testable science.
[…] a comment by Sastra on Confused […]
I think Stan wants to be remembered by way of one of those famous paradox thingies, this being a weird mashup of Epimenides and Zeno. Stan is talking out of both sides of his mouth at once, and he can never reach a logical conclusion.
So, that’s not the actual governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. It’s someone who “stans” him. That being said, Walz does go along with the gender woo stuff, as does the Lt Governor. He signed the bills making “affirmatiion only” treatment the law, allowing those who live in states that don’t provide transmogrifying medicine ot children to travel here with a shield agaisnt prosecution to get transmogrifying medicine, and would likely sign a trans hate crime bill if it passed his desk.
But this business of “scientific consensus” is a statement that frustrates me on a forum such as X. (I dont think we need to say “formerly known as” anymore.) A main reason that I am leaving it in a couple of days is that such posts are impossible to correct, and the more I try the more I realize that it takes a good bit of science education to go through and explain why it’s wrong. There is no “TL;dr” bersion that can be distilled into a single post, and it’s not long before we realize that the persvn wtih the anime avatar and pronouns in the bio is not really interested in understanding it.
As Sastra demonstrates, there is a whole lot of question-begging in this issue. I have read several science articles with the requisite peer review that rest on the presupposition of trans.
As a skeptic, I do not question the experiences that people have for not fitting into the gender expectations of their sex. Ellen Johnson, former President of the American Atheist, shared an image on Facebook of a description from someone who compares being trans to being left-handed and forced to write with their right hand. Okay, that’s an experience. Being left-handed was once punished, and we get the word “sinister” from the idea that left-handedness violated superstition. People seem to have bought into the idea that feeling like they have the wrong gender expression for their sex is prima facie evidence that their body is hosting the wrongly sexed mind. And they use the idea that sometimes the hormones that the mother transfers to the fetus overwrites the genetic hormones that the fetus produces in order to produce a feminine boy, or a masculine girl. (I have no clue what they think produces an NB.)
Feminine does not equal female. Masculine does not equal male. They are the gender expressions most commonly associated with a specific sex, but they are not evidence that anyone is really the “wrong sex for their gender identity.” If someone feels wrong for their assigned gender category, perhaps the idea of gender restrictions is wrong. It seems to me that this is the more likely explanation than somehow someone is “born into the wrong sex.”
And this is especially where the Professional Skeptics are frustrating. I know they know better. They write books that indicate that they know better. Harriet Hall knew better and her colleagues shot her down for it at SBM. So, really, the mystery is why are skeptics taking this path, and why do they denounce gender skeptics as bigots? It’s exposing those skepticism “stans” who just take what Steven Novella, PZ Myers, et al say on its face rather than follow on and do their own analysis of what they see and read and hear. Because Novella talks about scientific consensus, these disciples now don’t seem to have any idea what it is. It’s certainly not a definition published by the APA.
So that’s a photo of the governor? I was assuming it was the tweeter’s. I’ll add a note.
I guess not, doesn’t seem to resemble him much.
These statements can be reconciled easily.
-Facts don’t care about your feelings.
-Gender identity is entirely based on feelings.
:: Facts don’t care about your gender identity.
-Am I insane, or
-Is the scientific consensus that agrees with me insane?
:: Both.
[…] a comment by Mike Haubrich on Confused […]
This is a problem with modern communication in general. While X might be good for some things, like setting up a dinner party or passing on memes, it is not a good space to disseminate science. And many people now get their science from You Tube videos, short, sweet, and pithy.
X is also not a great tool for critical thinking. That takes time, energy, sources, and knowledge that X doesn’t offer.
I think the beams from the eyeballs may be ‘shopped, because when I met him he didn’t have them. But, underneath them, it’s Tim.
It’s like we value scoops more than actual investigated facts. It’s less important to get it right, than it is to get it first. Elon seems to think that “X” is the place to go now in order to be informed since stories that the MM don’t post are freely shared by everyone who thinks they have it right and people who disagree have “an agenda.” Or are communists, or fascists…
That’s what made early Twitter so wonderful, was the rare occasions when someone managed to produce a pithy well constructed thought in 125 characters. If it was funny all the better for bonus points. It’s a long time since I’ve observed that. I blame longer tweets and threads. When you could say more, intelligent people didn’t have to try so hard, and ignorant dumbasses could hide under verbiage.
When they stop using the twitter url, I’ll call it X.
Mike, I have seen several places (or heard in some cases when the person was speaking instead of writing) that the younger generation is better informed because they get their news off social media.
No matter that many studies continue to show the younger generation being less well informed, just like they always have, in every generation, because certain types of information take time to assimilate.
I saw a meme recently claiming that the people who absorb all sorts of misinformation via Fox News are the same people who complain that social media “grooms” people. The thing is, the various media do influence people, sometimes a lot, depending on specifics, and people shouldn’t be dismissive of such influence just because they like or agree with the message.
This is so important it needed to be said again. When teaching critical thinking, I found it necessary to explain to students that they were capable of being fooled, and that merely becoming educated would not immunize them against it. If I have areas where I do this (and I don’t doubt I do; I am human, last I checked the definition of human), I think it is helpful to have people point that out so I can at least attempt to rectify it. The problem is, most people are quite outraged if you suggest they are doing this.