Right now, our society demands you be a Special Snowflake. Women who
aren’t quirky enough are “basic bitches”, men who aren’t quirky enough
are “yet another straight white dude”. Just today, I read some dating
advice saying that single men need to develop unusual hobbies or
interests, because (it asked, in all seriousness) why would a woman want
to date someone who doesn’t “stand out”?
This guy really, really needs to start talking to and interacting
with people outside of the Internet. Maybe just sign off for a while and
go on a long road trip or something.
Also, that whole “trans identities are contagious!” thing is so dumb
I don’t even want to sneer at it.
hahah I really love this read. Affirmational interpretations of horseshit IDW talking points are medicine for my soul and finding them is my new hobby.
You know, hippies in the mid-20th century *should* have had more access to psychiatric medical care -- it's a human right!
Maybe if they'd had better access to mental health resources for processing generational trauma re: the cold war, red scare, Vietnam, etc. they'd have been in a better position to actually build their better society rather than trying to secede from reality or whatever.
> Also, that whole "trans identities are contagious!" thing is so dumb I don't even want to sneer at it.
They were saying this in the 2000's about being gay, pretending it was just a trend and a bandwagon kids were hopping on to be "cool", ignoring the fact that being out as either gay then, or trans now, is putting a target on your back. There was even the whole "once you've done gay things or are thought of as gay, you can't go back and your life is ruined because you'll be gay forever" meme that was repurposed as a weapon against trans people transitioning in even the mildest of capacities. A lot of transphobia in the US is just recycled homophobia from a decade ago.
>There was even the whole "once you've done gay things or are thought of as gay, you can't go back and your life is ruined because you'll be gay forever"
Why do I vaguely remember this?
There was a long video from some conversion camp in the 2000's that went viral like 15+ years ago that I'm quoting from memory. One of the "ex-gay" participants went on a monologue about how much he regretted experimenting or something like that because it meant that he was forever tainted with the gay.
Ideas like this were often prevalent, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_homosexuality
I will never cease to be shocked that people much smarter than I took
so long to figure out that Scooter is a racist. Ignore that even
pre-2015 his blogroll had all sorts of links to Sailerites – the very
latest anyone should have had to see this was his Kolmogorov Complicity,
which came out five years ago, in which he out and out says that he’s a
big ol’ racist.
Wait what? Can you send me a link or something? Not that I don't believe you, with the circles he runs in, and some of the shit he says (his liberal-technocratic "let's just medicate everyone who disagrees with me while we optimize society and pretend to be evenhanded centrists" shtick makes me sick), but I just have to know
In addition to the email drop, there's also Kolmogorov Complicity ([link](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/)). It's his usually overly-verbose stuff, but starting with Part 3 he does the "though experiment" of a society that required you to believe something objectively false: he's clearly stage-whispering at this point. The Thing That You Can't Talk About is pretty clearly race science.
Did you miss the private email drop? (And he has always hinted at the race iq thing and how he doesnt believe that black people are treated worse by the cops etc) sorry no links because searching for this on my phone is pain.
And love how he would react if confronted 'look obviously I didnt mean it like that, some of it is just a joke, and I was only steelmanning the right. But it is curious that after racism ended after the civil rights era black people did worse, and the whole black people being shot is overblown not many *unarmed*[this rethorical trick should be obvious here] black people get killed, bla bla bla'.
For anyone wondering, here's a thread with the email drop and some other shit: https://mobile.twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001
It's extremely damning. It seems like the archetypal case of what Gould talks about in *The Mismeasure of Man* - someone being so convinced of their own rationality and objectivity that they make no effort to compensate for possible biases in their own thinking, and so enamored with numbers, as if they are the harbingers of Truth, because they are convinced that statistics can't lie, that they make no effort to look beyond the processed statistics and percentages to see what the methodological problems might be or what data might have been left out conveniently.
Honestly, this pretence of perfect objectivity and "sympathy to both sides," while somehow always "steelmanning" and "playing devil's advocate for" and "assuming, for the sake of argument" disgusting beliefs, as a way to deny your true beliefs while endorsing them, is a classic tactic of those who think they are more rational than everyone else and have the truth, or a perfect method for arriving at truth. Hell, it's practically a bargain basement tactic - one you see in YouTube comments more than anywhere else. "I'm just asking questions!"
This pretense of objectivity masks the fact that this cold, liberal-technocratic consequentialist calculus that he uses always seems to benefit him, and harm others, and lets him advocate for awful stuff while hiding behind "what's best for society."
> It's extremely damning. It seems like the archetypal case of what Gould talks about in The Mismeasure of Man - someone being so convinced of their own rationality and objectivity that they make no effort to compensate for possible biases in their own thinking, and so enamored with numbers, as if they are the harbingers of Truth, because they are convinced that statistics can't lie, that they make no effort to look beyond the processed statistics and percentages to see what the methodological problems might be or what data might have been left out conveniently.
I've slept on reading this forever, but this captures the folly so many people arrogantly fall into perfectly. Thanks for bringing it up.
I think these claims are false, but that’s exactly the point: they’re
the sorts of things no self-respecting psychiatrist would ever say.
Which means they’re good signals that the Movement isn’t just another
branch of the psychiatric establishment. Which means that chronically
mentally ill people can actually feel safe there and go listen to them.
This is a load-bearing part of their treatment model and their
community-building model, and GK Chesterton would like to have a word
with you before you tear it down.
I don’t even necessarily think he’s wrong, it’s just beautiful how
his mind regularly conjures up such reasoning as ‘the things they say
are incorrect, and this is good, actually, because of Chesterton’s
Fence’.
The part where he randomly starts talking about trans people is
infuriating, of course.
So what’s left for the people who believe transgender is a “social
contagion” or about “special snowflakeness”? If I had to steelman their
position . . .
Okay, but do you believe their position? What’s the point of
steelmanning it, here? What does it contribute to this argument?
If this were true, a maximally compassionate policy would involve . .
.
Oh, so we’re just talking hypothetically? We’re not making any
positive claims about the transphobe position, but just thinking about
what the world in which they’re correct would be like for some
reason?
I’ve never heard anyone explicitly advocate this policy, probably
because it’s really hard to get right
Or maybe because it’s dumb. There are more reasons to not support a
policy than ‘it’s hard to implement’. Maybe people just think it
wouldn’t help. Why are you not considering the possibility that people
just don’t like this idea, Scott?
There’s enough bad blood around this issue that I’m sure neither side
would trust the other to respect a compromise like this.
Oh yeah, because it’s a fucking compromise. Scott
specifically made sure that there was something for everyone in his
proposal!
The trans rights activists get to support the ‘real’ trans people,
and the transphobes get to make sure the transgender virus doesn’t
spread via social contagion.
There’s no way that people would disagree with that on
ideological grounds, it must be for practical reasons.
Note how Scott has somehow avoided explicitly endorsing the
transphobic position (by pretending we’re dealing in hypotheticals),
while at the same time assuming that it is the only reasonable way to
approach the issue.
Still, when I try to figure out how I personally should behave, I
give some weight to considerations like these. This is also how I feel
about hearing voices.
And then we blend seamlessly back into the original argument, despite
Scott never showing any evidence for believing that transgenderism is a
social contagion, which is what this whole fucking point is based
on.
I don’t think there’s anything remotely odd about that quote in your opening gambit, and to be honest I was surprised and pleased to see him say it
The rest is a wash, and the turn to gender stuff is egregious, but it’s not something I’d tack to sillying him for
It's not bad, but I do think it's odd.
It strikes me as similar to the logic he uses to justify some dumb traditionalist beliefs - yes it's not *true*, but have you considered the social benefits of stigmatising [minority group] anyway?
Maybe it was just the reference to Chesterton's Fence that set me off.
I’m viewing it through the lens of a holistic-therapeutic community model for dealing with chronic-but-liveable mental illness/divergence/diversity vs the (current) psychiatric model, so where he falls down on the side of the former - which in my experience and opinion, not to mention the clinical opinion of a few people I’ve come across, beats the latter hands down if done well - I don’t particularly mind if he gets there by treating the ontological claims of people pushing it as delusional but harmless and helpful
Chesterton’s Fence is one of his least bad heuristics, and a useful heuristic in lots of places, even though he uses it elsewhere to justify the sort of dumb traditionalism you point to
In this case, when it comes to stigmatising [minority group], he’s using the idea of Chesterton’s Fence to *counter* the stigmatisation and I’m in favour of it
>In this case, when it comes to stigmatising [minority group], he’s using the idea of Chesterton’s Fence to counter the stigmatisation
Given he's a habitual contrarian and trans rights have been smeared as anti-feminist by the kinds of nutjobs he listens to, I doubt it's nearly so laudable as that.
This is a brilliant analysis. This is the precise kind of wishy washy "let's just compromise" Sea-Lioning that extreme centrists like him use to promote oppression and bullshit.
He's literally just promoting the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria theory and calling it a "compromise"
Hint for Scooter: the reason people who believe that don't want acceptance of trans people in general is that they're transphobes
also they wouldn't accept his compromise anyway because they don't believe there are any 'real' trans people, or at least they think any acceptance of trans people whatsoever would be harmful
[In Partial, Grudging Defense of]
(https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/in-partial-grudging-defense-of-the?s=r)
Things which Scooter thinks:
People only have hobbies to be interesting, they don’t really
want to do them
About diagnosing hippies as psychotic and giving them psychiatric
medication: “This is probably the right response, and if someone had
been willing to do this to the original hippies we might have saved
ourselves several decades of weird art and dumb politic”
Scoodie claims to know better how to handle symptoms than the
people suffering from these who are lobbying for policy changes
The KKK is comparable to a Black Student Alliance (you are
saying that too loud; edited out)
“I pat myself on the back because I’m balanced and reasonable and
empathetic” - Skud
In the end, it is again an occasion to talk about gender
The hippy thing, wow wtf. I support drugging people because I don't agree with them. Which is a crazy thing to say for a psychiatrist, even worse for a Rationalist to say(\*) (He just assumes that all the weird stereotypes about hippies are correct, nice epistemology there).
\*: If you believe the Rationalist promotional material, and are not aware of the rightwing eugenic slant.
E: And don't get me wrong, not really a fan of hippies, esp not considering what they are more and more [morphing into](https://gen.medium.com/nazi-hippies-when-the-new-age-and-far-right-overlap-d1a6ddcd7be4) (or always have been).
Yeah I had an ex-girlfriend who, according to her (and I believe her) was diagnosed partly on the basis of "hypersexual behavior", and that hypersexual behavior was... she once cuddled naked with a friend. I was like "uh look I don't want to be an armchair psychologist but did you not maybe want to pry at that diagnosis a little?"
I meant this as aspirational (in the same way that liberals shout 'this is not America' after each school shooting) not a statement of fact of course. I know the field has a few powerhungry skull collectors in it. (See also the whole episode where they didnt believe women were full humans, and the period where they just locked away inconvenient people with the people with MH issues).
Really hate that this puts me on a similar line as the scientologists.
Well it is iirc also what they did to 'Hysterical women' when they no longer gave them vibrators, so as a radical centrist I must say, he is a capitalist communist, who clearly doesn't feel the spirit of communism as well as he should (E: this is a reference to Scott reading ~~Marx~~ [Singer on Marx](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/13/book-review-singer-on-marx/) and getting really really obsessed with the world-spirit (and angry that Marx didn't exactly plan out how to run a communist state (congrats on missing the point there)). And before somebody goes 'it was all just a joke', remember jokes are superweapons and you shouldn't just take them as jokes).
From Scott’s terrible article:
> Still, being transgender makes people worse off on net, so society should try to avoid flipping that switch.
Says who? Besides you could use this same logic about LGBT people to justify abhorrent laws like Don’t Say Gay in Florida. And in fact, that is exactly what’s happening. I’d argue that trying to prevent the switch from being flipped is far worse on net, leading to a host of concrete terrible outcomes for transgender and LGBT people. If a few guys who wouldn’t have become a girl, become a girl… that’s the price of freedom. Am I doing this right, conservatives? That’s what I’m told after every school shooting so gun nuts can keep their bizarre and deadly hobby. At least transgenders don’t massacre crowds of people on a regular basis, so on net I’d say the price they’re asking is a lot less than the gun freaks.
This is unfair, he is just steelmanning the rights argument there. Just ignore he actually makes their argument worse by now giving them additional ammo in the annorexia comparison. That he doesn't do so for the pro trans steelman position (or that he doesnt mention that transitioning isnt a net worse off) is just a conincidence im sure.
(And the meta level issue of 'is he steelmanning or is he a crypto transphobe' doesnt matter on the object level, where he is still a twat. Steelmanningis such an annoying concept, lets improve their arguments, like it is all a game and there arent any consequences to this stuff).
Slash rant.
Im ranting about the context of what you quoted and ranting against steelmanning. (I looked up the quote because I wanted the context and it is from a 'lets examine both arguments (and steelman the right one) and find a compromise' part). [Argh](https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/we-want-to-kill-black-people-vs-we-want-civil-rights-compromise.jpg)
>People only have hobbies to be interesting, they don't really want to do them
Really gives me American Psycho vibes - the scene where Patrick Bateman is just standing there quoting articles about popular albums because he knows people enjoy music but he doesn't understand why.
For once I’m reading this piece, and tbh you’ve flatly misinterpreted the hobbies one
He said there is *cultural pressure to have personal quirks such as certain hobbies*, not that people only take them up to be interesting, just that some people do so. Which is plainly true
> Which is plainly true
Scott is talking about "our society" in regards to "Special Snowflakes". Maybe this is alien to me because I am not American, but to me, this is absurd. There is no pressure to take up interesting hobbies or have weird quirks here, people do what they are interested in. Maybe it is a measure of self-confidence, of propping oneself up using external means.
I’m not American, but I know exactly the phenomenon he’s talking about, and it’s certainly more of a thing in some cultures, subcultures, less in others. Certainly I know more than one person in/from Germany for whom this is the case, but your experience may differ
like, yea, we know dude. you hate black people. most people who are
best friends with steve sailer do. i guess this is what substack boys
are paid to say
This guy really, really needs to start talking to and interacting with people outside of the Internet. Maybe just sign off for a while and go on a long road trip or something.
Also, that whole “trans identities are contagious!” thing is so dumb I don’t even want to sneer at it.
I will never cease to be shocked that people much smarter than I took so long to figure out that Scooter is a racist. Ignore that even pre-2015 his blogroll had all sorts of links to Sailerites – the very latest anyone should have had to see this was his Kolmogorov Complicity, which came out five years ago, in which he out and out says that he’s a big ol’ racist.
I don’t even necessarily think he’s wrong, it’s just beautiful how his mind regularly conjures up such reasoning as ‘the things they say are incorrect, and this is good, actually, because of Chesterton’s Fence’.
The part where he randomly starts talking about trans people is infuriating, of course.
Okay, but do you believe their position? What’s the point of steelmanning it, here? What does it contribute to this argument?
Oh, so we’re just talking hypothetically? We’re not making any positive claims about the transphobe position, but just thinking about what the world in which they’re correct would be like for some reason?
Or maybe because it’s dumb. There are more reasons to not support a policy than ‘it’s hard to implement’. Maybe people just think it wouldn’t help. Why are you not considering the possibility that people just don’t like this idea, Scott?
Oh yeah, because it’s a fucking compromise. Scott specifically made sure that there was something for everyone in his proposal!
The trans rights activists get to support the ‘real’ trans people, and the transphobes get to make sure the transgender virus doesn’t spread via social contagion.
There’s no way that people would disagree with that on ideological grounds, it must be for practical reasons.
Note how Scott has somehow avoided explicitly endorsing the transphobic position (by pretending we’re dealing in hypotheticals), while at the same time assuming that it is the only reasonable way to approach the issue.
And then we blend seamlessly back into the original argument, despite Scott never showing any evidence for believing that transgenderism is a social contagion, which is what this whole fucking point is based on.
[In Partial, Grudging Defense of] (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/in-partial-grudging-defense-of-the?s=r) Things which Scooter thinks:
People only have hobbies to be interesting, they don’t really want to do them
About diagnosing hippies as psychotic and giving them psychiatric medication: “This is probably the right response, and if someone had been willing to do this to the original hippies we might have saved ourselves several decades of weird art and dumb politic”
Scoodie claims to know better how to handle symptoms than the people suffering from these who are lobbying for policy changes
The KKK is comparable to a Black Student Alliance (you are saying that too loud; edited out)
“I pat myself on the back because I’m balanced and reasonable and empathetic” - Skud
In the end, it is again an occasion to talk about gender
Holy shit, do all of his articles now include a dozen superfluous reminders that he really hates the NYT? It was a while ago, sport, move on.
Here’s a direct link to the image: https://i.postimg.cc/RF6sjp8x/KKK.png
For whatever reason, the aspect ratio is fucked whenever I click the link in the OP.
like, yea, we know dude. you hate black people. most people who are best friends with steve sailer do. i guess this is what substack boys are paid to say
It’s a shame about the totally unsolicited racism and transphobia, because I thought the article was actually pretty good otherwise
(Well, the NYT-bashing is cringe too)