posted on November 05, 2018 06:44 PM by
u/Hailanathema
21
u/Hailanathema53 pointsat 1541443587.000000
For those lazy people:
EDIT: A law of the /r/slatestarcodex culture war threads seem to be
that any link to a pro-trans article, no matter how well-sourced and
science-based, will be downvoted to hell and the comments absent of any
refutation but filled with derailing and other tactics low on Graham’s
Hierarchy of Disagreement
Actual commentary on the series of posted articles is almost entirely
absent in the linked thread. Actual responses range from ad-hominems on
the pieces author, to allegations that it’s ridiculous to refer to a
trans person as transphobic, to complaining about complaining about
downvotes.
Bless /u/ZinniaJones she’s actually attempting to engage with the CW
thread. She wrote a paragraph giving specific reasons for calling Blaire
White transphobic, and it was charitably
steelmanned reduced to “just because she disagrees.”
I'm really not sure how best to approach or engage with any of this. Sometimes it feels like I'm bringing my best effort to the table and then being met with a lot of people who seem to think "science" is just their instrument for some kind of ingroup signaling, and I'm not in their ingroup.
I'm impressed with their ability to completely avoid discussing the actual content of the article! Usually when I can't be bothered reading an article I just don't comment on it, but apparently I should be loudly announcing that I'm not reading it because I disagree with an early sentence...
It's something I often encounter with transphobes. They'll claim the mantle of science without bothering to be accountable to the substance of it or the responsibility to know these things before opining on them. There's a lot of talking the talk without walking the walk. I've hung around LW since the beginning and learned a lot from it, and from Scott as well. But the community really hasn't impressed me when so many of them fail to rise above the level of the average twitter transphobe.
Holy shit so the takeaway for the community is “the definition of
transphobia is not strong enough. We must masturbate over its true
meaning before we can even begin to approach the topic of whether or not
this science holds up. But first we’ll need to understand how the author
arrives at their premise via first principles or otherwise is too
wobbly”.
It’s finally clicked for me why those rationalist startup projects go
fucking nowhere. Before they can deliver a product they must first
arrive at the necessary and precise definitions of “deliver” and
“product”.
For those lazy people:
Actual commentary on the series of posted articles is almost entirely absent in the linked thread. Actual responses range from ad-hominems on the pieces author, to allegations that it’s ridiculous to refer to a trans person as transphobic, to complaining about complaining about downvotes.
Bless /u/ZinniaJones she’s actually attempting to engage with the CW thread. She wrote a paragraph giving specific reasons for calling Blaire White transphobic, and it was
charitably steelmannedreduced to “just because she disagrees.”Holy shit so the takeaway for the community is “the definition of transphobia is not strong enough. We must masturbate over its true meaning before we can even begin to approach the topic of whether or not this science holds up. But first we’ll need to understand how the author arrives at their premise via first principles or otherwise is too wobbly”.
It’s finally clicked for me why those rationalist startup projects go fucking nowhere. Before they can deliver a product they must first arrive at the necessary and precise definitions of “deliver” and “product”.
I really just want to scream. “bUt WhAt DoEs TrAnSpHoBiA mEaN” like seriously can we just delete all comment sections please
10 downvotes, 10 angry replies, and zero people making any attempt to criticize the science. Sounds rational to me.
If they got it they’d leave.