What ever happened to the transhumanists? • Hacker News Board

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#421

Post by DanBC » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 9:42 AM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #389

jl6 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure hope you’re right, but the point is that we just don’t know. Reviews of that evidence have determined it to be low quality: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56601386.amp Read Cass for more details. I also 110% oppose circumcision.

The fact that the consensus differs so heavily between countries where this topic has become a political issue, and countries where it’s not yet become one (e.g., Germany), leads me to suspect these sources are biased. This applies especially to british sources on this topic. The NHS and BBC have become heavily influenced by the Tories in recent years, so I’ll have to question your sources.

Anti-trans campaigners misunderstand what's meant by "low quality evidence". It just means we don't yet have double blind randomised control trials of certain treatments. But that's to be expected: trans children are rare, we don't put anyone on puberty blockers without very good reason, and withholding PBs is not a neutral act. So running RCTs on this population group is very difficult.

See also masks: we're pretty sure that masks work, but the evidence for masking is low quality.

Anti-trans campaigners also misrepresent the Cass review. The review has said that taivstock (currently the only provider of specialist care to trans children) isn't very good. (Trans children and their families also say that the tavistock is pretty awful). They then say that this proves the anti-trans argument that no gender affirming care should be provided to trans children. But what Cass has said is that care should be taken out of tavistock and new given to new centres across England who will initiate care and then GPs can be allowed to continue that care -- this is a big expansion of gender affirming care for children, and trans people welcome it. It's what people have been asking for for years.

Cass does have some weird anti-trans aspects, but it's certainly not the win that anti-trans campaigners are claiming. And this is a core feature of UK anti-trans campaigning: they're fundamentally dishonest about everything all the time. You should always read the sources they're citing, because they always misrepresent those sources.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#422

Post by DanBC » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 9:44 AM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #387

kuschku wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> under-18s > children There’s a major difference between those terms. 16-year-olds are definitely not children anymore. They can get tattoos, piercings, get a driving license, drink alcohol, enter into contracts, and get jail time if they commit a crime. And cis and inter children at that age can also commit to bodily changing surgeries, e.g. mastectomy for children with gynecomastia is common and legal. The only le…

I sure hope you’re right, but the point is that we just don’t know. Reviews of that evidence have determined it to be low quality: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56601386.amp Read Cass for more details. I also 110% oppose circumcision.

This is untrue. Puberty blockers have been in use for trans children for over 40 years now, we have lots of evidence of benefit and lots of evidence that there's not much harm.

We don't have randomised controlled trials, but if you don't know why we don't have those maybe you should refrain from commenting until you understand the topic a bit more.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#423

Post by fzeroracer » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

blakebreeder wrote: post #409

fzeroracer wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the controversy around trans issues is made up nonsense being pushed by a propaganda machine pining to politicize an entire group of people. The same group of people that have turned towards trying to harass gay, lesbian etc individuals because they know they can harness a certain virulent part of their base to harass and antagonize people.

how convenient. relegating any concern for the modern trans movement to pure malevolence. I guess it makes it easier for you.

By all means, if you think you can come up with any issues or concerns that don't involve the typical political talking points then please, do so.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#424

Post by DanBC » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

JetSetWilly wrote: post #341

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denying puberty blockers, which are easily produced, known to be acceptably safe, and can prevent physical changes, is forcing teens through a harmful puberty against their will.

Allowing puberty blockers, allows children to make uninformed decisions with lasting and harmful consequences to their own body and future. That's why this issue has went to various courts, ascending the hierarchy, in England where it has been found illegal, legal etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_v_Tavistock and think how Keira Bell is likely to feel about your simplistic "it is safe" comments. It is a com…

Just checking you know that Kiera Bell lost.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#425

Post by agileAlligator » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

axblount wrote: post #220

agileAlligator wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre. There is a difference between messing with your body and augmenting it. Transhumanists generally believe in augmenting the human body with cybernetic parts, not changing the body's internal chemistry.

Then how do you explain common transhumanist ideas like nootropics and biohacking? I think the line you've drawn is a bit arbitrary.

>I think the line you've drawn is a bit arbitrary.

On second thought, what I should have said was "transhumanists focus on improving the human body". Transitioning may improve your mental health (debatably) but it does not improve your physiological capabilities, and in case of MTF transition arguably worsens your body (bone density, muscle mass, fat distribution and so on)

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#426

Post by yarg » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #402

yarg wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of your ancestors had lives that were free or fair, but every last one of them was fertile.

Every one of them also had kidneys, but that's not an objective argument for the pre-eminent moral value of kidneys. There is an inescapable choice in choosing the grounds from which to reason out to an ethical conclusion - there is no self-evident starting point, hence the riotous confusion of moral philosophy over the last two millennia.

If you go back far enough, no they didn't.

Kidneys evolved, mutative replication remains the source of life.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#427

Post by Emma_Goldman » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

yarg wrote: post #426

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every one of them also had kidneys, but that's not an objective argument for the pre-eminent moral value of kidneys. There is an inescapable choice in choosing the grounds from which to reason out to an ethical conclusion - there is no self-evident starting point, hence the riotous confusion of moral philosophy over the last two millennia.

If you go back far enough, no they didn't. Kidneys evolved, mutative replication remains the source of life.

There are lots of conditions of the possibility of life - biological, physical, chemical - but the real point is that there is no incontestable reason to think that the conditions of the possibility of life are the pre-eminent source of moral value. Kant argued from the conditions of the possibility of understanding to moral conclusions. Sarte reasons from the conditions of the possibility of existential personality to morality. Rawls reasons from the conditions of the possibility of morality to morality. My point is, lots of people make this move, in a much more sophisticated way than you, and none is obviously better than the other - or indeed any other form of moral argument. There is no self-grounding foundation from which to reason about morality. What incontrovertible reason can you give for starting from the conditions of the possibility of life, or indeed one particular condition, rather than any other place? You can't.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#428

Post by mlinksva » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

celdon25 wrote: post #181

mlinksva wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what 1980s attempt are you referring to?

Extropianism (talked about in the post I linked) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism#Introduction

Thanks. I'd forgotten that was started in the 1980s -- I encountered it in the early 1990s -- and don't think I realized how connected it was to prior transhumanist ideas, or as the post you linked says, an attempt to build a movement based on transhumanism. At the time I was young so everything seemed new, and stuff prior to extropians seemed "proto-" and unrealized -- surely how extropianism must seem to someone young now who encounters whatever the current transhumanist discourse is.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#429

Post by jl6 » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #421

kuschku wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the consensus differs so heavily between countries where this topic has become a political issue, and countries where it’s not yet become one (e.g., Germany), leads me to suspect these sources are biased. This applies especially to british sources on this topic. The NHS and BBC have become heavily influenced by the Tories in recent years, so I’ll have to question your sources.

Anti-trans campaigners misunderstand what's meant by "low quality evidence". It just means we don't yet have double blind randomised control trials of certain treatments. But that's to be expected: trans children are rare, we don't put anyone on puberty blockers without very good reason, and withholding PBs is not a neutral act. So running RCTs on this population group is very difficult. See also masks: we're pretty…

> Anti-trans campaigners misunderstand what's meant by "low quality evidence". It just means we don't yet have double blind randomised control trials of certain treatments.

No it doesn’t. The problems run far deeper. Read the interim report, pages 18-19[1]:

> 1.24. A lack of a conceptual agreement about the meaning of gender dysphoria hampers research, as well as NHS clinical service provision.

> 1.25. There has not been routine and consistent data collection within GIDS, which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.

> 1.26. Internationally as well as nationally, longer-term follow-up data on children and young people who have been seen by gender identity services is limited, including for those who have received physical interventions; who were transferred to adult services and/or accessed private services; or who desisted, experienced regret or detransitioned.

> 1.27. There has been research on the short-term mental health outcomes and physical side effects of puberty blockers for this cohort, but very limited research on the sexual, cognitive or broader developmental outcomes.

This is not about a lack of rigorously designed experiments. This is about very basic gaps in definitions, data collection, and followup. This is not a case of “we did some research and it’s basically fine but the science police won’t acknowledge the result because we didn’t fill the form out correctly”. We fundamentally do not have the evidence.

Additionally, the new UK regional centers are not an expansion of gender-affirming care, they are an expansion of care, period. The presumption of gender affirmation was explicitly criticized, and in the forthcoming service model there is a requirement to deal with the whole clinical presentation.

None of this has any bearing on being “pro-trans” or “anti-trans”. It is about uplifting treatment for gender dysphoria to the same standards of evidence-based medicine that we expect for any other clinical issue.

I agree, sources are frequently misrepresented.

[1] https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/0...

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#430

Post by fastball » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:35 AM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #332

fastball wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> undergo their AGAB puberty against their will It's also weird mental gymnastics like this that people are pushing against. For anyone who is not familiar with the acronym, AGAB means "Assigned Gender At Birth", and is push back against the fact that we broadly lump all people into either the male / female camp when they are born. It can be useful when talking about gender norms, etc – which are discussions worth ha…

> We are not saying "this is a boy" and then giving them testosterone when they hit 12 so that they match their "assigned" gender. That's literally what happens, especially to inter people, though. And sometimes even done for cis people if their natural hormone levels are too low, or rather their parents and doctors deem them too low (the child is never asked).

We literally do not give 99% of the population any sort of hormonal treatment in order to ensure they match their "assigned gender". For the overwhelming majority of people we say "wow this looks like a boy" and that person ends up a boy with no intervention and no gender identity issues.

Yes, there are intersex people and they are a special case that need to be handled differently than the rest of the population. And just "assigning" a gender to those people like we've been doing for most of medical history is probably not the right move. But the vast majority of trans people are not even intersex so injecting that into a conversation about trans issues is just muddying the waters.

When we do intervene, yes, of course the child is never asked. As far as I'm aware there isn't any medication/intervention we give to children where we ask for their permission. Because they are children. One of the main reasons we distinguish between children and adults in our society is because we have decided that children do not have the mental maturity to make such decisions of large import, so we place that responsibility on parents/guardians/doctors/etc.