Letter to the BMJ re gender services

I agree it's a good letter. It concerns me that no paediatricians are signatories. Paeds doctors are stereotypically #bekind types and there is huge institutional capture, thank goodness for Dr Cass

What an excellent letter.

That’s an excellent point Dodopatrol I’m going to borrow that next time I hear this argument used.
If it’s all so very very complicated to understand nobody should have any medical or surgical intervention until they are over 25 when the brain is fully matured and then sit an exam on it just to make sure they do understand it….

she'd just say 'it's more complicated than that' with the strong implication that someone like me could never hope to understand.

So how do they expect a child, or a teenager barely beyond childhood, to understand the implications of removing some sexual characteristics while retaining others, and then taking permanent medication to make themselves artificially 'intersex'?

The desire to be kind and fair and what happens to those who are found guilty of wrongthink do affect these developments, in my view, not just how good individuals are in critical thinking.

But "thinking backward" (from desired outcomes to the evidence which might support that (and only that) conclusion) really is extremely common, especially in political arguments from all sides.

Starting from all evidence, and continuing with judging its quality and then considering it all before reaching a conclusion is not that common. I have been trained to do this and yet I still sometimes stumble.

Despite all this, I don't really forgive professionals who take the easy and socially currently approved route as that route will one day be seen as lined with all the horrible collateral damage of this ideological war.

Yes, it has, but something like that is necessary. Kathleen Stock had an interesting essay a few weeks ago about the softening of philosophy departments.

Frankly, even a good faith school is often better, because they explicitly teach from a set of first principles. Students can of course reject those, but the process itself involves recognizing a system you disagree with, articulating where you think it's gone wrong, and replacing it with something else. Knowing how to articulate even one coherent system goes a long way towards teaching how thought works. The recognition that first principles are usually not evidenced is important.

The reason that a consultant paediatrician can claim that biological sex is complicated and that mere mortals are too stupid and unsophisticated to understand that is because it's simply an intellectual game to them: they will never experience the consequences of muddying biological sex. They are never going to be locked up in prison with a violent male sex offender; they are never going to be in a domestic abuse refuge with a guy who walks round with his dick hanging out; they are never going to play a team sport against a 6 ft 6in tall 20 stone male-bodied person. They can let other women and girls suffer the consequences while they show off about how terribly clever and sophisticated they are.

My former friend the Consultant Paediatrician is a bit like that. She'd argue with me in a highly scientific way about the chemical make-up of the human body and hormones and when I countered with large gametes and small gametes and the human race (and all mammals) being binary she'd just say 'it's more complicated than that' with the strong implication that someone like me could never hope to understand.

That response isn't a "clever person" thing! TRAs without two brain cells to rub together do exactly the same condescending thing- it's more complicated than your basic biology knowledge, educate yourself. It seems to be something they learn at bullshit school.

Excellent letter.

It is interesting that castration was done on young boys to preserve their voice and Napoleon banned the practice on pain of death which caused the demise of the castrati. I find it amazing now that in our so-called ‘enlightened’ age such practices are still being carried out.

@pattihews

I was referring to the Thai ‘operation’ which was referenced earlier, which I believe did involve complete castration. Certainly the most prominent example of this practice in the West bears a striking physical similarity to engravings of famous castrati opera singers.

this is a very interesting thread, thank you for starting it.

@MangyInseam

totally agree👏🏻

I’m not sure that you need to look as deeply as that. ‘Very clever people’ have proved themselves in an educational system ( not arts*) which encourages them to argue for their point of view , and not to give it up ( My Nan would have said ‘like a dog with a bone ‘). The adversarial system seems to have crept out of our law courts into many other professions. And of course, our current societal mores don’t encourage anyone to change their mind or admit an error. You just have to double down or lose face. I think one could observe a similar mindset hindering our reaction to Covid: it didn’t seem to be acceptable to have an evolving view on disease or treatment, you had to stick to your corner.

This not how the great discoveries were made.

(* or at least not when I studied; now I suppose cancel culture has seen off enquiry and discussion there, too)

A few people do this naturally but most people need to be taught in some way to think it through, and probably taught what the options are in terms of starting places.

You make it sound like teaching philosophy might help! But philosophy as a discipline is captured. I don’t know what the answer might be but it doesn’t seem that’s enough.

This is very much what happens if you don't know the first principles you are starting from in any particular argument, or really the first principles you think underpin reality and the possibility of knowing anything.

The fact is that you can argue any position rationally if only you begin from the right first principles. And most of the time people unconsciously argue backwards - they know what feels right, and so they argue from a starting point that will get them there. This is part of the reason political tribalism is so entrenched. You learn from your "tribe" that you are supposed to support some idea, and you never really query that because you don't query the fundamentals.

The only way to avoid this is to know what your first principles are, and why you believe them as opposed to some other starting place (and typically this is not a question of evidence, it's about things like how you evaluate evidence.) A few people do this naturally but most people need to be taught in some way to think it through, and probably taught what the options are in terms of starting places.

But schools in most western countries, at least publicly funded ones, have largely given up on that. Partly because of secularism - you can't get too deep into the foundations of different epistemic systems without treading on toes. And that is compounded by the way social justice issues are now being taught as if they are themselves the first principles students should be using to judge claims.

It's really quite fucked, we have created a whole generation for whom thinking clearly is like trying to run a race with their feet cut off.

During the 1960s there were anarchists who were set on the breakup of society. They realised, however, that the British would not join a revolution so they infiltrated the higher echelons of learning with this sort of ‘progressive’ teaching which has a ‘drip drip’ effect to break up the normal family and normal relationships.

You'd need to ask a cleverer person than me about that 🤣

I'm starting to realise that very, very clever people who think in the kind of ways very clever people think (which I've started to think is often different to the ways ordinary fairly clever people like you and me think) can persuade themselves to believe in anything.

It seems to be the case that although we often sincerely believe that we base our beliefs in the facts, that's not how the human brain really works, and we instead marshal what facts we can find to build arguments to justify our beliefs. Very clever people have all the same cognitive setup as the rest of us, they're just better at putting the facts into arguments. Which is why some of the very clever people, when they noticed this, developed techniques which have been incorporated into the scientific method that bypass these cognitive biases (like double-blind controlled trials) so they could avoid being fooled by their own brains.