Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you point to some more detail on this?
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And the reason is because you are lying, and you know you are lying.
Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
341–350 of 1001 posts
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#342Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the group demanding that is "over" what you would consider appropriate? How do their demands restrict your behavior? Personally I've never noticed trans people and their push for rights & recognition having any impact on my life whatsoever. And I say this as a devout member of a rigorous and conservative religious tradition.
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What's the gender of someone born with XX chromosomes, two ovaries, a penis, and develops male secondary sex characteristics like a beard? Intersex variants are 1% of the population, it's as common as red hair. The strict gender binary is the anti-science view I'm sorry to say.
And again I say this as someone who is a member of a rigorous religious tradition that does not have any real flexibility about this. Nonetheless I've had to come to accept it because, as you say, the science.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Cass report in the UK was pretty clear that there isn't enough evidence to base decisions on https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r... >>> While a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for child…
The report basically said that there wasn't a lot of evidence that the treatments in question make people happy in the long run, which is an unusual standard to apply. Usually we look for evidence that medical treatments achieve their medical goals, and leave judgments about what will or won't make someone happy to doctors or patients. (For example, it's questionable whether certain cancer treatments that extend life…
Given that the treatments are meant to address gender dysphoria which is unhappiness caused by a sense of misalignment with one's sexual characteristics I struggle to think of a better measure of success than long-term happiness.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#345I want to be sympathetic to Singal, whose writing always seems to generate shitstorms disproportionate to anything he's actually saying, and whose premise in this piece I tend to agree with (as someone whose politics largely line up with those of the outgoing editor in chief, I've found a lot of what SciAm has posted to be cringe-worthy and destructive). But what is he on about here? Or that the normal distribution—a…
What a minute, this sentence was literally in the SA piece: “First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.” Is that not a denunciation of the normal distribution?
I don't think so -- the comment in context was not about the "normal distribution of statistics" per se, because when we're talking about Bernoulli trials and the law of large numbers, it clearly is not necessary to assume anything about "default humans".
Rather the article is critiquing the specific use of the normal distribution in assessing population and sub-population statistics. I do think that this critique is kind of nonsensical because the normal distribution assumes nothing of the kind -- a person who is of average height, a "default height" human, is a concept utterly distinct from the concept of a person who is of average weight, a "default weight" human.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#346Does the author not understand the concept of "opinion piece"? Every "article" he takes issue with is NOT a scientific article, but an opinion piece.
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I wouldn't call them far right; for example, they consistently posted articles about the culture of US police brutality, cops killing people on a hair trigger long before it became mainstream a few years ago.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#347Does the author not understand the concept of "opinion piece"? Every "article" he takes issue with is NOT a scientific article, but an opinion piece.
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Here's a take on her resignation from the Guardian if you'd like some balance https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/16/scientific-ame...
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
The report basically said that there wasn't a lot of evidence that the treatments in question make people happy in the long run, which is an unusual standard to apply. Usually we look for evidence that medical treatments achieve their medical goals, and leave judgments about what will or won't make someone happy to doctors or patients. (For example, it's questionable whether certain cancer treatments that extend life…
Given that the treatments are meant to address gender dysphoria which is unhappiness caused by a sense of misalignment with one's sexual characteristics I struggle to think of a better measure of success than long-term happiness.
It's a good measure of success, but if we applied the same standard consistently, then all kinds of treatments for all kinds of partially psychological conditions would have to be thrown out.
Also, it's taking a particular position to characterise gender dysphoria as merely a subjective feeling of unhappiness. I do not have any fixed position on what exactly gender dysphoria is, but I believe many trans people see it as far more than just that.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
Libertarianism theoretically could go either way. Theoretically, do what you want with your bodies. However, libertarianias as they exist tend to be socially conservative - somehow they end up agreeing with GOP position on social issues. In this case, convervatives hate trans people, so libertarians too.
> exist tend to be socially conservative - somehow they end up agreeing with GOP position on social issues. In this case, convervatives hate trans people, so libertarians too Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think you're conflating a few groups that I see as distinct: Republicans vs. conservatives, and (Holding various views about the best public policies regarding transgender issues) vs. (hating transgender persons)
The anti-trans outrage was rather major aspect of public life in last two years or so. Manufactured from the conservative groups that set politicizes for GOP, the ones that set the agenda. As far as public political life goes, these things are quite related and quite large source of votes for republican party. And it is very consistent - range goes somewhere between "not talking about it at all" to "being vocal in the outrage". However, I have yet to see politicians or public intellectuals on that side of spectrum to defend trans people or defend policies that makes life easier for trans people.
And just about last thing that is productive is to play again the euphemism game where we pretend that side of political spectrum does not mean what they say when it sounds ugly. We played it with abortions and it turned out, yep, they wanted to make them illegal and actually succeeded.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#350Does the author not understand the concept of "opinion piece"? Every "article" he takes issue with is NOT a scientific article, but an opinion piece.
Scientific American isn't a social media platform; by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them. Would you be ok if they published an opinion piece bashing evolution and defending creationism?
> by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them
This would seem to be true if they tend to run opinion pieces that are all from one "side". If they ran pieces that espouse conflicting viewpoints, it would not imply that they support all of the opinion pieces they publish.
From the look of it, they stick to one team. They wouldn't be taking this heat if they had a broader diversity of thought.