Elsewhere (310)
Ben Sixsmith on the blurring of identity and mental illness:
Of course, it is good to understand the choices people make. But is it always necessary to respect those choices? Some people who have sought out castration claim to be much happier and calmer for it. Yet auto-castration is well-known to be a sign of chronic paranoid schizophrenia. One study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine suggested that in others, the desire to castrate themselves was correlated with “abuse sustained during childhood, including parental threats of castration” and “religious condemnation of sexuality,” among other things. Would anyone insist that there are not healthier means of dealing with such traumas?
Leor Sapir on transgender swimmer Lia Thomas – and when politeness becomes unhinged:
The Human Rights Campaign warns that “contrasting transgender people with ‘real’ or ‘biological’ men and women is a false comparison” that “can contribute to the inaccurate perception that transgender people are being deceptive or less than equal, when, in fact, they are being authentic and courageous.” This is a strawman wrapped in a non sequitur. Critics of gender self-identification do not argue that people like Thomas are “being deceptive,” but rather that they are themselves deceived. HRC’s use of “authentic” here really means “sincere”: transgender women are being sincere, not deceptive, when they say they have a strong inner sense of being a woman. But that sincerity is irrelevant unless one first assumes that what makes a belief true is the fact that it is sincerely held, rather than its correspondence to objective reality.
Emil Kirkegaard on mental health and political leanings:
Back in May 2020, I published a paper provocatively titled Mental Illness and the Left. It was based on the common observation (stereotype!) that conservatives seem less prone to mental illness… Since my study was published, replications have come out. The fact that this replicates is not at all surprising because the samples were very large, representative, and results not p-hacked and with tiny p values. Here’s an overview of recent replications…
Statistical chomping ensues. And I’ll leave these items here for no reason whatsoever.
And Robert Stacy McCain on pretentious self-pity:
Taylor Lorenz has gone from the New York Times to the Washington Post, but she’s still peddling the same journalistic product, and still claiming that people saying mean things on Twitter have destroyed her life. MSNBC last week featured her on a segment in which she claimed to have “severe PTSD.” […] If we are to believe Taylor Lorenz, people saying mean things about her on Twitter is exactly like getting ambushed by the Vietcong. […] Nowhere in the mainstream media’s coverage of the so-called “harassment” directed at Lorenz does one find any useful description of what she has done over the years to attract criticism of her work… The possibility that Taylor Lorenz is a bad person — well, this never occurs to anybody in the liberal media.
Oh, and in other media news, this amused me. Particularly this.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
‘Cracker’? ‘Saltine-American’ if you please.
“trans and nonbinary are marginalized”–objection! Facts not in evidence! With all the horse shit being slung around the fertilizer shortage should soon be fixed.
I want to see sexual compensation for the ugly. It is only fair.
Just saw stats that in major cities like NYC, Chicago women in their 20s make more than men in their 20s. Because they oppressed. or something.
“trans and nonbinary are marginalized”–objection! Facts not in evidence!
Yep. Not only not marginalized but such declarations make such people minor celebrities.
As Ellen Page’s star power faded she first came out as lesbian then later lopped off her breasts and changed her name to Elliot and Hollywood swoons over how stunning and brave she is.
“Saltine-American”
Based on our esteemed host, I’ll go with “Ritz American”
How’d they miss this? “You’ll get the triumph if you have the will.”
Too obvious?
Leni Riefenshahl is turning in her grave.
Palm Springs is a resort town not exactly know for its impoverished residents…
Indeed. High average income & wealth.
…the $200K covers a whole 18.5 people which is only .04% of the population
But according to Wikipedia, Palm Springs is about one third gay/lesbian/etc. So presumably there are more than 18 trans people residing there.
But still, it seems highly likely that the local trans people are also wealthier than the average bear.
“which means they get a lower final average, even if they ultimately master the material”
How is that “mastery” of the material evaluated ? Is there some (gasp) grading involved ?. Or is it back to trophies for everyone ?
Related…
“What’s surprising, in light of all these quotes, is that the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false.”
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researchers-found-puberty-blockers?s=r
IOW, “students” who have no business being in college don’t do as well as those who do.
Solution: separate classes, separate educational institutions. Adults with anxieties about reading children’s books should be given the encouragement and support they need in a remedial literacy class. Not to mention that the place for children’s books is in schools for children.
The problem is that there’s true diversity in the classroom, where some students “get it” and other students never will, and there isn’t even consensus on “what exactly are we trying to achieve here”. She’s papering over the problems caused by that diversity by uprooting principles from a rarefied section of Western culture and pretending that they apply universally.
Her line of thought that students should be self-motivated and decide what they want out of a course rather than a grade: that’s a perfectly good attitude as long as there’s a common level of attainment and a shared culture within the classroom. If you’re out of your depth, intimidated by the “privilege” of students who can read without moving their lips, you need to walk before you can run. A student who can’t give the simple conventional answer to the simple conventional question is in no position to set their own goals or explore the diversity of approaches to the material.
If by “privileged” students she means those whose habits of reading and intellectual curiosity come from their home environment, those students probably already have an independent goal-setting attitude to their formal education. It’s an attitude rooted in European culture, Asians tending to believe that the teacher’s authority counts for more than the student’s self-evaluation, and Africans tending to have a magical belief in the certificate. And it’s probably comes easier to male students than female students not to sweat a bad grade on a quiz as long as you’re doing ok overall according to your own goals and self-evaluation.
I’m not sure that “Half these kids can’t even regurgitate the tired clichés I drone on about endlessly in class!” is the winning message this ‘educator’ believes it to be.
College: 100 yrs ago few went to college. Those who did either came from families with money or were quite smart. If your family had money and you did poorly in college, no big deal, they had a company you could run (and maybe ruin) or at least work at. The smart kids got useful degrees (law, med, engineering). Now, however, when more than 50% of kids go to college you by necessity are trying to educate the average IQ kid in a place that used to presume you were much smarter than average. IQ has a nonlinear effect. Someone who has 140 IQ can do classes (say in physics) that an IQ 100 can’t understand at all. You also have more kids who are not prepared and who are not motivated. I would feel bad for college profs but they are mostly woke so fuck em
Someone who has 140 IQ can
So these 140 IQ people…where they been lately? The last two years or so, have they been the ones promoting fear of COVID? Developing the vaccines? Writing the programs that predicted what the virus would do? Which side of the AGW argument are they on? Are any of them at all responsible for this idea of cutting the dicks off the little boys and sewing them onto the little girls? Personally, I have no idea what my IQ is though a couple of supposed “experts” have speculated. Fortunately(?) I don’t believe either of them. So what are the dummies of the world supposed to think about these issues that surely the smarty-smart-smart set have fathomed?
WTP: IQ does not protect one from believing the absurd, sadly enough. I was just talking about the ability to pass college level classes and master real skills. If you are unable to write a paragraph by the time you graduate, then you did not acquire minimal skills. Lawyers who can’t law will get clients put in jail or their corp clients to lose big $. Doctors who can’t doc will kill and maim people. Most scary of all is airlines saying they will start applying affirmative action to pilots. Please put that on the website when I am choosing my flight.
So IQ…what is it good for? Universities, what are they good for? Making dangerously egotistical people more dangerous? I don’t think we have a problem with stupid people in our colleges. We DO have a problem with educated and smarty-smart-smart people wasting years of young peoples’ lives with BS and burdening them with debt. Though…hahahahaha…as I’ve said here for years, they won’t be paying for it. You cannot get blood from a rock. The rest of us suckers will be paying.
Smart people…smaaaart…gave us the open classroom concept. Though I see from this article we blame you Brits for its origination. I am so bloody f’n sick of smart people. Idiots.
To my mind, there is a difference between “smart” and “intelligent”.
“Smart” people can remember and repeat things other “smart” people, or “experts” say, so that a “smart” person will say (and believe) that 2+2= 4, or 5, or whatever the answer has been decided on today. You can tell the smart people, because they are always right, and they will let you know it.
“Intelligent” people will work out 2+2 for themselves, using whatever method (objects first, probably, working up to higher math), and come up with 4. They will be able to replicate that answer, and have some fundamental understanding of why the answer is 4. Intelligent people may not appear very “smart” on the surface because they don’t have the quick, easy answer the “smart” people do. I guess I think of intelligence as the ability and willingness to learn. Some people can go farther than others, but most can figure out 2+2=4. You have to be very smart to think 2+2=5…
I think I am a fairly intelligent person. I don’t know what my IQ is, though. Stuff (be it words or numbers) doesn’t come easily to me, but if I beat my head against something long enough, I can gain some understanding of the underlying concepts. I don’t consider myself “smart”, though, and if I am agreeing with my buddy on how so super smart his wife and kids are, I’m not really meaning it as a compliment.
Intelligent
Smart
Bright*
Wise
Not all the same thing, though probably a good deal of overlap.
*Bright in the original meaning, not the meaning that some atheists tried to force it to mean a while back.
A sharp dressed teacher offers an opinion.
Cisladies, you’re in this together, this chap says so.
Smart, intelligent, bright people do all the things I described above. The math models, the COVID crap, the Frankenstein work on little children. ALL of it done by highly educated, intelligent, “reasoning” people. Cave men could not do any such things. Nor could your typical/average plumber, car salesman, nor educator. You have to be (insert any word for intelligence here) to do these things.
As for wisdom, my observations on that mostly come down to the simple rule of “just don’t do anything”. In the vast majority of situations, doing nothing is considered the “wise” thing to do. But if that doesn’t work out, just wait for someone to come along later, someone “wise”, who after the fact can tell you exactly what the wise thing was that wasn’t done.
Cave men could not do any such things. Nor could your typical/average plumber, car salesman, nor educator.
You seem to be conflating education and intelligence, and I think we have had more than enough examples here that those two are not the same.
And frankly, I’d trust the common sense of the average plumber or car salesman when it comes to balancing risks and benefits on, say, COVID lockdowns or the toxic hormonal treatment of prepubescent children.
So he just played himself in All of the Family. Once a meathead, now a tofuhead.
Wow. I appears that there aren’t remedial versions of said class nor are there advanced versions of the same in his college.
Or the overly worried “professor” couldn’t (for whatever reason) tell the low performing students to drop his class and take the lower level version as well as telling the overly high performing students to take the advanced version of his class or else he will fail them.
At this point, one is forced to believe that such colleges are simply there to fleece the student sheep of their money versus trying to maximize the amount of knowledge they can absorb during their stay.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10684927/Former-Archbishop-Canterbury-urges-ministers-include-trans-people-conversion-therapy-ban.html?login#readerCommentsCommand-message-field
“Sacred journey”??????????
Where are Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton when we need them?
On a related note, from That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis (Miss Hardcastle speaking to Mark Studdock):
The letter said: ‘To be trans is to enter a sacred journey of becoming whole.’
Hence the chemical poisoning, mutilation, lies, affirmation of derangement, etc.
Somewhat related:
Ace of Spades, here.
The opening quote, on comorbidities and how gender dysphoria can be a secondary effect, a symptom of something else, very often childhood abuse, is worth noting.
But hey, sacred journey.
No, I’m trying to fight the problem of conflating education and intelligence and whatever else.
And frankly, I’d trust the common sense of the average plumber or car salesman when it comes to balancing risks and benefits on, say, COVID lockdowns or the toxic hormonal treatment of prepubescent children.
This. Mostly. What is it about intelligence, or so many of its synonym shades, that pushes out common sense? I remember in college getting the idea/feeling from the general thought environment that “common sense” was for stupid people. Now that idea came more from the “smart” ones, the “educated” ones, yet I don’t recall any of the “intelligent” ones pushing back on it. Also, one could make a good argument in favor of COVID lockdowns as being common sense. An uneducated and probably stupid argument. Thus here we are. Also, wouldn’t it be simple “common sense” to trust experts? And again, here we are.
To solve WTP’s dilemna: we are herd/tribal animals. Through the past million years your survival depended on being a member in good standing of a small social group (30-100). To be cast out was to die. So the desire to belong is very very strong. All social madness results from this desire. For not so smart people, it is simple–just keep your head down and “belong” mainly based on supporting the local sports team. Cubs fans through decades of never winning for example. But intellectuals can build more elaborate concepts of belonging such as communism or vegetarianism or religion. There is a great book Intellectuals by Paul Johnson who showed how venal and contradictory many of the “great” intellectuals were.
There is a great book Intellectuals by Paul Johnson who showed how venal and contradictory many of the “great” intellectuals were.
The chapter on Marx is very good.
we are herd/tribal animals. Through the past million years your survival depended on being a member in good standing of a small social group (30-100). To be cast out was to die. So the desire to belong is very very strong.
Agree. Intelligence has value. My point being that these other factors you state have much, much greater value than we want to believe. I think…if I understand my point correctly…
Cubs fans through decades of never winning for example. But intellectuals can build more elaborate concepts of belonging such as communism or vegetarianism or religion.
A lot of intellectuals are Cubs fans, but yes a lot of idiots as well. George Will comes to mind. I’ve heard of Johnson’s book and, not that I’ve sought it out but I’m kinda afraid to read it. Some things about Isaac Newton that I’ve read about make me question why an apple falls from a tree.
…highly educated, intelligent, “reasoning” people.
“Highly educated” != intelligent, or even reasoning. In fact, depending on what subject your “highly educated” parchments are in, “highly educated” !== intelligent or reasoning at all. IMHO, “highly educated” = “very smart”, in the cases WTP is thinking of. I think dependence on computers, computer models, etc has actually made us less intelligent. The machines do the thinking, and the very smart people parrot whatever they spit out, unquestioningly. My biggest peeve with computer modelers is they often don’t question the results of their model. Fancy math went in to making the model, the calibrations – “tuning” – come out perfect, the p-values are tiny, et viola – the answer must be right! Highly educated, very smart people don’t have to think about the results or even understand them, because they know they are right, and they never question the orthodoxy. That’s how you get “Believe in Science” like I have to accept The Science as some sort of lord and savior. Superstitious and religious, but not reasoning. Intelligence is reasoning. The very smart people are not reasoning; they are parroting.
Now some very intelligent people are likely going along with the very smart people in the parroting, through cowardice, fear, self preservation, and whatnot. I agree that universities have become useless diploma factories, training mindless parrots. Even in STEM the rot has set in deep, but it will be a long time before the effects are seen. There’s a lot of ruin in a civilization, as someone said.
Now some very intelligent people are likely going along with the very smart people in the parroting, through cowardice, fear, self preservation, and whatnot.
And for “intelligent” people, how intelligent is that decision? Now throw the question of the ‘wisdom’ of it in there as well.
Another aspect of this is the silo. Many of these “smart”/”educated”/”intelligent” (note: I do not mean these as being synonymous) people, and not just the autistic (or whatever) types, do not have much breadth of knowledge nor responsibility. They are held in high esteem (maybe “esteemed people”) for their brainisms (worse word but I may go with it) because they haven’t been distracted by the numerous other factors in the world around them. They are generally not “well rounded” people, at least in the sense it was once meant. The engineer who has broad musical tastes but has never heard of Kant or Wittgenstein. Or perhaps knows them but has zero understanding of current events but for some reason has a Ukrainian flag on his desk. Substitute ‘doctor’ for ‘engineer’ then ‘banker’ for ‘doctor’, wash, rinse, repeat. And then, how many of those will step up and take some sense of responsibility, not necessarily in a crisis but ahead of time. Such that some crises do not ever happen?
Agree. Intelligence has value. My point being …
Being an idiot, I bargled that. Meant to state that I agree with ccscientist said but I felt I was going too far down the anti-intelligence road and didn’t want to be accused of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Also, my wife has a totally off topic question that I cannot explain…why do so many people with some degree of bank want to move to Costa Rica and start a yoga retreat? I mean, I think I know the answer but just thought I’d throw it out there. For some stupid reason.
WTP: another factor is that in much of academia these days you don’t even need to be smart (in the IQ sense) to get a Ph.D. Sure you do in pure math but not in anything liberal arts or education. Especially in “studies” programs. You just have to be willing to put in your time as a student, be conformist, and borrow enough money.
When I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons as a spotty youth, I had some difficulty right out of the gate with understanding what the six primary ability scores were supposed to represent. At first it made little difference, because we were just playing make-believe, having fun killing goblins and accumulating absurd amounts of gold and magic items.
As we got older and the campaigns grew a little more sophisticated, we stopped cheating on our ability rolls and started playing characters with actual weaknesses, because it was a new kind of fun. It was only then that I started looking at interesting contrasts in player abilities. The ‘Sickly Strongman’ (STR 17; CON 7) who could lift damn near anything one time but could barely climb up a flight of stairs without blacking out. The ‘Village Mayor’ who was utterly average except for a high Charisma score — people loved him, though they could never tell you why. But the one I actually played for quite some time was the Misguided Mage. Intelligence 18, Wisdom 7. Here was a guy who could put together the most elaborate plan for building a machine or breaking into a fortress, without giving the slightest thought to whether these plans were a good idea at all. (It helped that a friend played a manipulative little shit of a thief, and used to give our Dungeon Master fits by talking my character into pursuing the most absurd and misguided plots he could think of.)
Anyways, that’s my long-winded way of saying that even Gary Gygax understood the difference between intellect and wisdom, and did a decent job of trying to enlighten my generation on the concepts.
And now I see that WTP beat me to the punch on Wisdom anyway. *sigh*
And for “intelligent” people, how intelligent is that decision? Now throw the question of the ‘wisdom’ of it in there as well.
That reminds me of a meme on intelligence and wisdom I’ve seen where an large hound dog and a skunk are on the back porch of some rural dwelling, and the skunk is eating the dog’s food out of the bowl, while the dog sits there and watches.
I’m guessing that people will sit and watch the skunks eat their lunch in the hopes that the skunks will eventually fill up and go away, and that the people can then procure more for themselves. The skunks will inevitably overstep the bounds, though, and there are none so desperate as those who have nothing left to lose. But it could take a long time before enough people have been stripped of everything, have nothing left to lose, and fight back against the woke skunks.
…none so desperate as those who have nothing left to lose.
Separate from having nothing left to lose is the idea that the skunks have only one weapon, and once it’s been used they have nothing left in the arsenal. Once the dog has been sprayed, there’s no reason for him not to savage the skunk that’s taking over his space and eating his food.
How many normal people still cower in fear over being called ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ or ‘transphobe’ at this point? When the threat to ruin somebody’s reputation and professional life is no longer feared, what then?
When the threat to ruin somebody’s reputation and professional life is no longer feared, what then?
We got a hint of “what then” when normal, average people donated a few bucks to the trucker protest in Canada, and we discovered that the skunks have more than one weapon in the arsenal. With nebulous “emergency powers” still in place in many western countries, the skunks aren’t limited to spraying -ists and -isms and ruining professional lives. With woke corporate takeovers and current governments’ desire to squash opposition, they can take away your ability to pay for food, housing, and your ability to find another job, regardless of whatever Constitution, Bill of Rights, Charter, or whatever else is in place as protections on the citizenry. Oh eventually this new weapon may make it through the courts and be found to be illegal, but enough judges are skunks that I don’t trust that to happen in the slightest.
I agree – many normal people may no longer be cowering in fear of being called racist or losing their jobs over it, but I bet many more are definitely wondering if their bank accounts can be frozen if the skunks decide they are guilty of wrongthink. And I think the skunks know that their stink is not as feared anymore, since it seems everyone is racist or transphobe these days. Thus the introduction of a new, more potent weapon to threaten the masses with.
Heh. Penny Red is upset.
I think there are signs of people standing up to the mob, but when The Bee and Tucker Carlson and Trump can all get banned from Twitter and Canada can freeze bank accounts and parents can be called terrorists, we have not yet reached peak reign of terror.
Psychologically stable model citizen.
when The Bee and Tucker Carlson and Trump can all get banned from Twitter and Canada can freeze bank accounts
Those two aren’t even in the same spiral arm of the same moral universe.
Last I checked, Twitter does not have an armed cavalry division that tramples elderly women with impunity.
Now that Elon Musk has done a fairly trivial thing that will have little to no effect on anything[1], all of the “sOcIaL mEdIa Is A pUbLiC uTiLiTy” loons are shrieking again.
[1] I am reasonably certain it’s a pump and dump scam; he’s done them before
The whole issue of people like the swimmer Lia Thomas competing–unfairly I believe–against women is being carefully being ignored by the woke. For me, the fact that this person developed muscles and mass as a growing male and that gives him a huge advantage. He did not ‘transition’ as a small child and play with dolls and splash around in the shallow end: he was as a male competing as all athletes do from an early age against people of similar growth/development. As a male swimmer he trained and developed those muscles and honed his technique against equally competitive men. When he proved he was average to the required standard for medal success (and I note he was almost certainly a far better swimmer as a man than the majority of males, but not good enough to scoop many medals in a bigger pool) his decision to pretend he is a woman came late, having already given himself many years of male development and growth.
This is where to me it is all false. I will happily watch women compete against each other, but as soon as a fully developed male appears among them there is no point in continuing. I have seen games of football (soccer) in which talented girls have played against boys (one game I saw recently had a sensational 14 year-old girl playing in defence against similar age boys but what made her stand out was a tremendous ability to ‘read’ the game and organise her team), but for the most part their development levels do not seem to impact until their mid teens.