Thursday, October 29, 2015

Does Transgender make sense if Men and Women are the same?

The bottom line is that saying there are differences in male and female brains is just not true.

A neuroscientist has stepped forward to remind everyone that men and women have the same brains

sexes are not ‘hardwired’ in different ways

So are male and female brains naturally different?

One holy belief of the liberal tribe is that they aren't; men and women are born with brains indistinguishable from one another's. Gender differences are therefore explained entirely by culture, and differences in gender outcomes can therefore be explained entirely by culture and discrimination. If there are no natural differences, those are the only options left. Why is the liberal tribe so anxious to believe this?

The Haidtian explanation is that the liberal tribe bond with each other over the sacralization of victim groups. They're eager to accept any possible story involving the victimization of women, because the defense of those women makes them feel like a part of the good team. And if they defect by questioning their battle orders, they're pushed outward from the circle for betraying their tribe. 

Maybe this is why the above links get so much attention, even though as far I can tell the only evidence is that one neuroscientist said so. One.

What can we do about this? Well, if we really want to be provocative we can pit the victim stories against each other. So how can a transgender person identify mentally as one gender if there are no mental gender differences? I think the impulse of the liberal tribe will be to concoct any possible way to protect both victim groups; the transgender group and the female group. But that would be very hard if they've already committed to men and women having exactly the same brains.

Though in my experience if you point out the inconsistencies in the doctrines of these tribes you're more likely to incite more anger than introspection. 

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Are Trangender people God's Mistake?

I was Transsexual .Then Jesus came into my life

God doesn’t create a person with the genitals of a male and the consciousness and heart of a female.

His wonderful work leaves no room for mistakes; no one is born with the “wrong body.”

Sometimes the evangelical tribe says that trans-gender people can't exist; that those who say so are confused or have a disorder of some kind. 

I'm sometimes taken aback by how pervasive groupthink is, how it leaves us with the inability to entertain counter-arguments. Sometimes exposure to this kind of groupthink leaves others thinking that they're just stupid, rather than the truth that like most of us, they're not very good at practicing intellectual discipline when we're surrounded by people who hold the same beliefs that they do.

In the case of evangelicals protesting transgenderism because, "God doesn't make mistakes", the counter should be clear. There are tons of wrong things we are born with that we should fix if we are able:

-When a baby is born with one leg, we don't say, "God doesn't make mistakes, he can't have an artificial leg"

-When a baby is born not breathing we don't say, "God doesn't make mistakes, we can't give CPR"

-When a baby is born identifying intellectually as one gender and identifying bodily as the other gender...

This is one aspect of a broader trend in evangelicals to ignore natural evil completely. They, like the world that they're not supposed to conform to, believe that nature is perfect and all the terribleness in our experience can be traced naturally to human beings messing with things.

This is false. Nature is a mess; red in tooth and claw. The Problem of Natural Evil, is called a problem for a reason. And whatever solution the theist might have for it should be applies consistently. When someone says they were born transgender, you should not forget the reality of natural evil as an explanation and surgery or hormone pills a solution, no different from the many problems in nature and many solutions we've come up with.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

How Speculation Works and why the Prophets don't Speculate

There's nothing novel about what David Friedman believes about speculation, economists everywhere would give him a thumbs up for the following description. In Chapter 13 of Hidden Order he covers the issue as elegantly as one can.
It is difficult to read either newspapers or history books without occasionally coming across the villainous speculators. Speculators, it sometimes seems, are responsible for all the problems of the world - famines, currency crises, high prices. 
.How Speculation works 
 A speculator buys things when he thinks they are cheap and sells them when he thinks they are expensive. Imagine, for example, that you decide there is going to be a bad harvest this year.You buy grain now, while it is still cheap. If you are right, the harvest is bad, the price of grain goes up, and you sell at a large profit. 
There are several reasons why this way of making a profit gets so much bad press. For one thing, the speculator is profiting by other people's bad fortune, making money from, in Kipling's phrase, "man's belly pinch and need." Of course, the same might be said of farmers, who are usually considered good guys. For another the speculator's purchase of grain tends to drive up the price, making it look as though he is responsible for the scarcity.
But in order to make money, the speculator must sell as well as buy. If he buys when grain is plentiful, he does indeed tend to increase the price then; but if he sells when it is scarce (which is what he wants to do in order to make money), he increases the supply and decreases the price just when the additional grain is most useful. 
The speculator, acting for his own selfish motives, does almost exactly what a benevolent ruler would do. When he foresees a future famine he drives up the current price, encouraging consumers to economize on food (by slaughtering meat animals early, for example, to save their feed for human consumption), to import food from abroad, to produce other kinds of food (go fishing, dry fruit, ...), and in other ways to prepare for the anticipated shortage. He then stores the wheat and distributes it (for a price) at the peak of the famine. Not only does he not cause famines, he prevents them. 
Speculators, if successful, smooth out price movements, buying goods when they are below their long-run price and selling them when they are above it, raising the price toward equilibrium in the one case and lowering it toward equilibrium in the other. They do what governmental "price-stabilization" schemes claim to do - reduce short run fluctuations in prices. In the process, they frequently interfere with such price-stabilization schemes, most of which are fun by producing countries and designed to "stabilize" prices as high as possible.
Knowing this, prophets of bad harvests everywhere should not only believe that they have a financial incentive to speculate, but perhaps even a social obligation to do so. It is curious that predictors of peak-water, peak oil, the beepocalypse, and the rest rarely speculate on the resources they prophesy will be depleted. I believe it has something to do with putting your money where your mouth is, and how cheap talk is so... well cheap. Most importantly, it has to do with the fact that beliefs about stuff far away from you serve a social function. It isn't about finding out what the truth is, it is about bonding with other true believers and delusions of being a prophet of some kind.

It also should cause doubt in their minds because lots of profit seeking people aren't buying the relevant resource. How do we know? Because the price of the resource is still cheap. Colony Collapse Disorder, California draughts, and oil reserve numbers aren't secrets. But people who's money is actually at stake know that there's something wrong with the prophesies based on these "evidences". And they're the ones who's money is on the line. Meanwhile people who saw a documentary online once like to talk a good game... amid conversation of where their hair was styled, and what's with the new Walking Dead Episode.

Monday, October 5, 2015

A Short Defense of Generalizations

Some people have a problem with generalizations. But there is no logical fallacy called, "generalization", because in fact we can make true generalizations from particulars. All of social science is built on generalizations from particulars because we can't sample the entire population. But through the magic of statistics, especially the law of large numbers, we can make true generalizations, even about people, and still be on solid ground.