Person: I saw some puppies in a shop window - so I bought one! What did I buy?
Computer: a shop window!

Reimer's case is utterly tragic. But no less tragic, arguably, than confused kids - drinking in all this left wing gender politics propaganda, turning up at GIDS and getting fed puberty blockers by psychologists under politically correct pressure to 'affirm' their identity. Just recently, the UK High Court heard the case of Kiera Bell, and it's awaiting judgement.

In written submissions, Mr Hyam said: "That children are not capable of giving informed consent to undergo a type of medical intervention about which the evidence base is poor, the risks and potential side-effects are still largely unknown, and which is likely to set them on a path towards permanent and life-altering physical, psychological, emotional and developmental consequences... is the common-sense and obvious position."

But the social constructions don't care about people; they only care about the self righteous glow they feel when wagging their finger in someone's face! Someone's haunting androgynous face!

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/0D3D/production/_114798330_keira.png

How so? Would NOS happily go pick out a branch to hang himself from - when you waved vaguely in the direction of a forest? If you're gonna make a point, make it your point!

This is how you respond to a reasoned response. — frank

It wasn't a reasoned argument. You didn't make a point - you gave me homework, posting a link without picking out what you think is relevant.

The argument you are making, suggesting that girl and boys only have a “nature” because more of them behave in some way, is outright lying about what occurs empirically. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't lie. What would be the point? This has really snowballed from my comment that the left deny the biological fact of gender. Now we've got penises in jars sitting on the mantlepiece - the secret aim of every politically correct fifth wave feminist!

You misunderstand. I was not suggesting any people were claiming development was only nature or only nature, my point was that each influence was both nature and nature. So there is no opposition of nature effects and nurture effects at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Of course I do. How could I possibly understand and disagree at the same time? Oh, right - because it's not the left wing argument that gender has a basis in biology. They do not acknowledge that it's nature and nurture. They claim gender is socially constructed. But nice example of moving the gaol posts. Was that on purpose - or did you not realise you were doing it?

Anyhow, keep going, and now factor in how undermining gender roles in society influences childhood development, and then ask yourself - are people happier for not knowing what gender they are "supposed to be"? Suicide rates amongst trans people are significantly above the average!

I don't understand. You don't understand. We're like two blind men flailing at each other! I'm walking away. You keep flailing!

Being able to do anything does not mean one has done everything. God 'could' make it the case that he created the universe. He could take out of existence anything that is in it. But from this we can't, I think, reliably conclude that he did, in fact, create everything that exists. But perhaps he did, I am unsure in no small part because why my reason tells me about free will implies that God did not create us. Anyway, I am simply not sure. — Bartricks

Well, okay then. I had a go at your thought experiment, and I totally get your argument. It's "No, he's omnipotent. He can do anything" in response to everything put to you. It was fun - but as you are unable to define terms, and say whether this is an omnipotent, omniscience, benevolent "person" - or God, the Creator of the universe - and if you cannot understand why that distinction is important to the argument, then I'll just say thanks and bid you farewell. Before I go though, let me ask you this: can your omnipotent being, or God, or whatever - create a rock so big he cannot lift it?

One of the cheats in the gender discussion is the construction "gender assigned at birth". 999 times out of a 1000 gender is identified by glancing at the external genitals. The number of situations where sex organs are so ambiguous that a doctor would need to arbitrarily "assign" a sex is very small. Use of the verb "assigned" is a clever way of asserting that gender is arbitrary.

There is some validity to your observation. It could be extended to say "socially constructed gender" is a justification for men and women whose sexual orientation falls in the middle of the Kinsey scale to experiment with cross dressing, cross-role playing, changing pronouns, etc. Some males (no idea how many) may just find the female gender role more attractive (whether or not they are gay). (Sexual orientation is different than gender confusion.) — Bitter Crank

If by clever you mean dishonest, then yes, they're very clever! Did you read the case of David Reimer? Circumcision gone wrong; so they surgically turned him into a girl, and raised him as a girl in ignorance - and his maleness re-asserted itself in later life. Before then, however, the doctor involved had declared his genius, and the social constructionists ran with it. The idea gender is socially constructed remains the left wing, politically correct viewpoint, but the actual case upon which that assumption was built proved the exact opposite.

Interesting as the rest of your post is, I have nothing to contribute to the discussion.

Except maybe: "Oh! I see!"

What troubles me though, is the conflation of sexuality and gender - particularly in education.

"A BBC programme aimed at nine- to 12-year-olds includes the claim that there are 'over 100 gender identities'. The film, 'Identity – Understanding Sexual and Gender Identities', is being offered on the corporation's website as part of its relationships and sex education package."

The BBC are utterly consumed by political correctness; and they're piggy backing the idea of socially constructed gender, on the back of a spectrum of sexual orientation - and that comes far too close to grooming kids for my liking. I remember when the Labour Party were in bed with the paedophile information exchange (PIE) - and seeking to normalise paedophilia under the auspices of moral relativism. Now, they've got it so you can't dissent from this indoctrination - or it makes you a bigot.

This might help you understand how gender roles vary by culture. — frank

I don't think it does, partly because it's nothing I didn't already know, secondly because it's hunter-gatherer tribal culture, and lastly because I'm talking about my culture, which is under attack by an enemy within. Reds under the bed! A fifth column of post modernist, neo-Marxist political correctness bigots and bullies - hacking away at the very foundations of Western civilisation.

I think there's some biological basis for gender, just as I think there may be a biological basis for liberalism vs conservativism. Liberals are believed to be naturally more open to new experiences and that's could be the biological basis for being generally progressive rather than conservative. Nevertheless, it's obvious that culture plays a large role in how these propensities may develop. No one is born knowing gender role norms, for example. — praxis

Right so, if you say:

culture plays a large role in how these propensities may develop. — praxis

...what do you think the effect is of undermining gender norms by teaching primary school children there are 99 genders, and taking drag queens into schools, and school trips to gay pride - and so forth? The feminisation of men! Which is exactly what the right are complaining about. When I was a kid, boys were boys. We fought, played football and climbed trees. No-one was imposing gender stereotypes on us. We wanted to do those things. I didn't have any skin on my knees until I was 14. Girls didn't want to do those things. Boys did those things because we were allowed to be boys!

Whatever the case, on further reading of the topic I see that you brought up the issue of gender politics as "an example of how facts are disposable to the left" and therefore not distinguishable from what I'll call Trumpism. — praxis

And in doing so, you'd seek to dismiss the validity of the argument. But I'm not Trump. I'm not an American. I'm British, and as a straight white working class man - I find that suddenly I'm at the back of your politically correct queue, and that the queue is getting longer from the middle as supposed victims are getting put in line ahead of me, purely on the basis of their arbitrary characteristics. It's bait and switch. I was fine with don't discriminate on the basis of arbitrary characteristics. That's fair, but now it's positive discrimination on the basis of skin colour, sexuality, gender - and that creates perverse social incentives: i.e. the feminisation of men!

I can only assume that you either fail to appreciate the difference between institutional facts and empirical facts, or that you're deliberately presenting a weak argument in order to mislead. We don't need to look any further than the number of votes that Trump received in the 2020 election and the number of objectively false statements that he's made over his term in office to get a good indication of how much the American right values truth, and compare those numbers to left-wing administrations. — praxis

Of course you think that I don't understand, or am dishonest. How else could I possibly disagree with the politically correct dogma if there weren't something wrong with me? You say my arguments are weak?! You've used an appeal to the worst example, and now an ad hominem attack upon the clarity or honesty of my thought. That's weak.

I've read this several times and can't make sense out it. Can you rephrase the question? — praxis

No. Consider it rhetorical. I'm not that interested!

No. I'm heterosexual. My curiosity is purely intellectual!

Something I went through - as I grew up, was a very profound disenchantment and anger with religion, as I realised that I didn't believe in God, but had been indoctrinated with this stuff as a kid. I'm wondering if you are going through something similar.

Continued philosophical reflection has got me to the point where I'm agnostic on epistemological grounds. I don't know if there's a God or not. In fact, no-one does. And I've come to realise the significance of religion to civilisation over thousands of years.

Rationally, I think religion is an expression of the innate moral sense - fostered in the human animal as a consequence of evolution in a tribal content. Moral behaviour was an advantage to the individual within the tribe, and to the tribe made up of moral individuals - in competition with other tribes.

Religion occurred when hunter-gatherer tribes joined together to form multi-tribal social groups. They needed an objective authority for law and order, that applied equally to everyone - and didn't depend upon the alpha male hierarchy of the hunter gatherer tribe. So they invented God, and derived authority for social law and order from God. Think Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets - and uniting the tribes of Israel.

This is the inversion of values Nietzsche identified, but misunderstood. He believed the strong, amoral, self-serving individual - was fooled by the weak, and chained with a Christian morality that had inverted values, and turned virtue into vice. But there never was a strong, amoral, self serving individual - because human evolution wasn't brute competition and survival of the fittest.

Chimpanzees have morality of sorts; they defend the tribe, share food and groom each other, and remember who reciprocates, and withhold such favours accordingly. Similarly, human beings couldn't have survived if they were purely violent monsters of the will. We are moral creatures - imbued with a moral sense by evolution in a tribal context. Then, this implicit moral sense was made explicit when hunter gatherer tribes joined together - and that's religion.

Thinking about it in these terms has allowed me to get past the anger I felt at being deceived, and the revulsion I felt toward anyone suggesting religion was meaningful in any way. Whether Peterson believes in the supernatural elements of religion or not I don't know. He was asked once, and his answer was longer than the age of the universe!

When you describe Christianity as a shallow paradigm, what do you mean? It is derivative, that's true. But there's also something universal going on. Read this passage about Viracocha - or Kon Tiki as he's more popularly known:

"Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca during the time of darkness to bring forth light. He made the sun, moon, and the stars. He made mankind by breathing into stones, but his first creation were brainless giants that displeased him. So he destroyed it with a flood and made a new, better one from smaller stones.
Viracocha eventually disappeared across the Pacific Ocean by walking on the water, and never returned. He wandered the earth disguised as a beggar, teaching his new creations the basics of civilization, as well as working numerous miracles. He wept when he saw the plight of the creatures he had created. It was thought that Viracocha would re-appear in times of trouble."

This is the religious legend of the people's of South America - people who built pyramids at the same time Egyptians were building pyramids, half way around the world. There's something terribly familiar about it all. The pyramid is a symbol of hierarchy in multitribal civilisation - the eye of Ra, or God, at the top as divine authority for the laws applying to the many below. These are universal symbols that follow as a consequence of the human experience of reality - and that's logos, or Jungian archetypes to use the psychological lexicon.

Maybe you know better than I do whether Peterson is a believer or not. I'm not a believer. I'm agnostic, and to my mind all this is the consequence of evolution. But it's really there, and it's something Christianity describes. So I'd disagree with the term 'shallow' - and argue instead, that there are deeper, evolutionary mechanisms at work. If Peterson's belief prevents him digging deeper, that's a shame, because like you say - he's a brilliant speaker.

As far as I can tell from some quick googling - this supposed research is based on little more than a disparity in numbers, where an inequity is taken as evidence of unfairness. What I would like to see is some research into why "Black people are over four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act, relative to population."

I have great difficulty believing it's entirely due to racism - because that would imply a vast number of medically qualified professional people behaving in a completely unprofessional and unethical manner. But terrific example of the inadequacies of political correctness driven social science! Was it undergraduate level research?

The very nature of human understanding is heuristic, while the world is incredibly large and complex. To entirely overcome prejudice - in the literal sense of the term prejudice, you'd have to assume perfect information, and that's not possible.

But that's not what I think advocates of political correctness mean when they say prejudice. They don't really care if a politically incorrect opinion has a factual basis. Use of the term prejudice assumes that if someone were better informed, they wouldn't hold this view, but that's not necessarily the case.

This plays out in relation to things like stop and search, or profiling potential terrorists for searches at airports. It's decried as prejudice, but the facts are the facts; black people commit more crime, and middle eastern people commit more acts of terrorism. These may be completely inappropriate assumptions in respect of any particular individual, but we are not made safer by dispensing with heuristic assumptions.

What pisses me of is that big hedge fund investors tried to destroy this company, and profit from putting people out of work in the real economy. They sold short over 100% of the stock, and got caught with their pants down when the stock went up in value. Now they don't want to pay? Tough shit you disaster capitalist pricks! Pay up! Gamestop workers would have paid with their livelihoods had the hedge fund's market manipulation worked.

Perfectly true. But the point is, science was supposed to disclose the fundamental constituents of being. When LaPlace devised his 'daemon', then it was supposed that science for once and for all would show that all is determined by objectively-real forces. When Heisenberg torpedoed the very idea - well, let's say, the response was incommensurate with the the original claim. — Wayfarer

Okay, but I suppose you realise that LaPlace was a strict determinist, and Einstein proved determinism false a decade before Quantum Mechanics. Also, I suppose you know Einstein hated quantum mechanics. 'God does not play dice' he said, referring to probabilistic math used to make sense of quantum phenomena - that cannot be empirically designated a location and/or a velocity.

But what if that's because quantum objects don't posses those existential properties? Then the deterministic, or rather relativistic causal reality is preserved; and it's not an epistemic problem of establishing certain knowledge. Then Einstein's right. God does not play dice. I suppose you know he was hella smart!

I mentioned that above. It works - but we don’t necessarily understand the principles. ‘Spooky action at a distance’ is proven, in fact it’s now used for cyber security technologies. But nobody can explain why doing something here produces an immediate consequence there, without any intermediary or contact being possible. It just does. Hence, ‘shut up and calculate’. — Wayfarer

Right, but we're in the realm of QM again where (in my view) the possibility of objective knowledge may be hampered by the lack of existential properties. It's not possible to know the velocity and location of a quantum object if it doesn't have one (or the other) of those properties.

Spooky action a a distance, is really just the double slit experiment from another angle. The object passes through both slits at the same time because it's in two places at the same time; lacking the existential property of location conferred on objects by the focus of forces at the macroscopic causal nexus. "Doing something here produces an immediate consequence there" because the object is in both places - or rather, not quite present in either place, at the same time.

That's what I think anyway!!

More to the point, given the current understanding, the macroscopic and quantum realms are not reconciled; such that, it's philosophically unsound to draw implications for the possibility of knowledge on the macroscopic level, from observations on the quantum level. Just because we don't know the mechanisms of spooky action at a distance, doesn't invalidate our knowledge of the mechanisms of steam trains.

I have less disagreement with Khun's argument than the arguments the concept of incommensurability supports. I cannot count the number of times I've had it thrown in my face that "science doesn't know anything" - with Khun cited as the source. That's obviously not so.

Scientific principles can be applied to create technologies that work - and work better, the better the technology accounts for the underlying scientific principles. Like steam engines and thermodynamics. If the laws of thermodynamics were false - steam engines wouldn't work. It's not "just a theory."

There's a great deal of misunderstanding, and deliberate obfuscation around the truth value of scientific knowledge. And there's a concerted philosophical crusade to deny objective reality, and the possibility of objective knowledge. So, it may be wrong that:

Kuhn thought reality didn’t exist and science was merely a social power game, — Steve Poole

But there are plenty of people who do make exactly those claims, and cite Khun as a source.

Khun. Incommensurability. I get the idea, but I don't accept it. Even the Biblical version of planetary motion admits the fact there's an earth and a sun - and motion. Then Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein - each building upon the others work, and the basic perceptions that there are planets in relative motion, present from the beginning, remains throughout. There's no incommensurability, because there's an objective reality we learn to explain better over time. The continuity is an objective reality, refuted by Khun who is, ultimately - just another subjectivist philosopher talking pot shots at the possibility knowledge.

The Grunidad won't allow me to read it without registering. I don't want to register. I hate giving out personal information online. That said, I'd rather everyone had to operate in their own name on the internet - then maybe people would be as responsible in the virtual world as they are in the real world. But I'm not giving it up first, and having them sell my data to some phishing operation, and getting phonecalls telling me there's a problem with my internet connection, and we need your bank details! Any chance you could copy and paste?

Illuminating response! — Wayfarer

That's my job! I'm a philosopher! An objectivist philosopher!
I bring light to the darkness - not darkness to the light!

I do want to try and persuade you, so I'll give it a go. It occurs to me that subjectivist philosophy is disgusting. As an objectivist, at least I believe there's an objective reality that exists, and knowing what's true of reality matters to humankind. The subjectivist does not - but if they do not believe that, then why do philosophy? Why seek to stuff your subjective construction down my throat - making me unhappy, undermining the emotional accommodation with reality everyone has to make in order to get out of bed in the morning? I think truth is possible, and it matters - but what's your motivation? Do you just like contradicting people? Making them unhappy? Stuffing your ideas down people throats and watching them choke? A subjectivist philosopher? That's the lowest of the low.

Not. Two of the pioneering popular works of philosophy of science in postwar Britain were by James Jeans and Arthur Eddington and they both had a decidedly idealistic attitude. ‘The stuff of the world is mind stuff’, ‘the universe seems more a great mind than a great machine’. It was precisely the concept of the mind independence of reality that was called into question by the early discoveries. Is the probability wave objectively real or a sign of subjective uncertainty? Nobody knows. — Wayfarer

I don't buy it. There's an objective reality that exists independently of our experience; and this must necessarily be so, because of the age of the earth and the fact the experiencing intellect comes about as a consequence of evolution.

There is not, "some evil demon deceiving me to believe I have a body" to paraphrase Descartes. But there is a strong tradition of Cartesian, subjectivist philosophers - happy to leap at any scientific basis to refute the existence of an objective reality.

The term 'gender dysphoria' focuses on one's discomfort as the problem, not identity. The concepts of masculine and feminine, as well as our attitudes about transgenderism and homosexuality, are largely shaped by our culture. I'm not sure if I need to argue the point. Do I, or can you accept this? — praxis

I don't accept this. Was I being too subtle? If you can;t explain yourself - but can only assert your pre-programmed politically correct opinion, save yourself the effort. I already know what you think. My question is, why do you think that?

For the overwhelming majority of people biological sex and gender are the same thing. Gender is not socially constructed. Humans are not born blank slates - which then have a socially constructed gender imprinted on them. Boys and girls are biologically and psychologically different, and these differences manifest as gender roles.

Interesting that you import sexuality into this discussion. I didn't raise it, but now you have - I wonder to what degree the assumption of socially constructed gender is really an excuse for submissive gay men, to play the female role - without experiencing the psychological implications of submission?

Well, yeah, but then you’re of a generation where this has become evident. — Wayfarer

Sorry, what? What has become self evident? Gravity? Sure! The idea that QM is the science of the frayed edge of reality, based on a faulty assumption? Not so much!

QM continues to assume there's some fundamental stuff - strings, or loop quantum gravity, or whatever, at the basis of reality. What if that assumption is a mistake? Just as, the idea of an earth fixed in the heavens was mistaken. Their math would just be another elaborate celestial mechanics that doesn't make sense - while in reality, earth continues in its orbit.

That is why our life and times are called ‘post-modern’. I maintain that ‘modernity’ was the period between Newton and Einstein, and that when quantum physics came along, it knocked down all of the things modernity took for granted. Hence the sense that nothing has any real foundation or absolute reality which is very typical of postmodernism. — Wayfarer

This is quite insightful, and partly why I have problems with QM. But I dispute the coherence of post modern philosophy - with respect to special relativity and QM. As Feynman said "If you think you understand QM, you don't understand QM." But that didn't prevent post modern philosophers, latching on to relativism and quantum uncertainty - as a basis to throw out the "old certainties" with wanton abandon.

It's not so simple. Many great minds, Feynman's included, have been baffled by the discoveries of quantum physics, and it's still a great unsolved question. In fact there are many enormous baffling conundrums in modern science, generally. (I read a fair amount about it, but on the other hand, I'm not credentialled to talk about them, which requires a higher degree in mathematical physics.)

In any case, be assured that quantum mechanics is genuinely baffling, which is a source of great discomfort to many people, for different reasons. It would be far more comforting to scientific realists, and indeed realists of all stripes, were it not so, but Nature has not obliged. — Wayfarer

Exactly! But on the other hand, there's this great line from the Big Bang Theory where Sheldon says something like:

"I like to think gravity would have been self evident to me without an apple hitting me on the head."

Leonerd responds "You cannot be that arrogant."

Sheldon says "You continue to underestimate me, my good man."

All very funny, but there's a serious underlying point that gives us realists hope. Quantum Mechanics really could be a "looking down the wrong end of the telescope" type mistake. As undoubtedly brilliant as Feynman was, if Quantum Mechanics merely assumes the existence of some fundamental building block, they could be looking at it all wrong.

What if, instead - reality is the nexus of forces and properties, focused at the macroscopic level? QM could be trying to make sense of what becomes ever more blurred the closer they look. After all, there were plenty of brilliant minds before Newton, and gravity wasn't self evident to them - as obvious as it may seem to us now.

Same with Copernicus and Galileo. Many brilliant minds devised elaborate schemes of planetary motion - based on the assumption that the earth is fixed in the heavens, at the centre of everything. My guess is, if it doesn't make sense, try looking at it differently.

On the contrary, it tells us what goodness is - it is something like 'having a quality that God values you having" or some such. — Bartricks

I disagree. And not merely because, I don't know if God exists or not. We are assuming the existence of an omnipotent being. You said:

By 'God' I mean a person who is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient) and all-good (omnibenevolent). I take it that possession of those properties is sufficient to make one God. — Bartricks

But is this a God that designed the universe, and set it going? Because in that case - good and bad are aspects of that design? Or this this an omnipotent kid poking at an ant pile in no-space, deciding what is good or bad on an ad hoc basis?

If it's God the Creator, you're asking him to intervene in his design, and what I'm saying is, that if he's both all good and all knowing, he cannot - because any intervention would necessarily have implications that were not good, some way down the line. He's already decided what good and bad are - and set them in motion, as consequences of the design.

You say:

Incidentally, it would be metaphysically possible for, say, torture to be morally good regardless of who or what determines the content of morality. Make the source of morality a platonic form, or make it human conventions, or whatever....it still remains possible, for what stops a Platonic form from overnight valuing torture, or what stops human convention changing so that torture becomes valued? Nothing. — Bartricks

That's wrong. Reality is cause and effect, and organisms evolve in relation to a causal reality. They have pain and pleasure responses that guide the organism, within the environment, as the basis of a definition of what is good or bad. Humans evolve in relation to reality, but also in tribal groups. Their physiology, behaviour and intellect are all honed in relation to reality by the function or die out, algorithm of evolution. They have to be correct to reality to survive. Moral behaviour is rewarded; and is about pleasure and pain, and truth to reality, and from there, in a social context - about honesty and justice. These are not abstract intellectual concepts subject to redefinition. Good and bad, right and wrong are premised in the relation between the organism and Creation.

what 'being morally perfect' involves is determined by God. — Bartricks

If God could simply redefine what good is, to construe anything he chose to do as good, then benevolence has no meaning. God could rape, torture, kill and maim - and just say, it's all good. How can that be a good God? Having established a moral order, a good God has to live within it - and then he's snookered behind the 8- ball of knowing all the long term implications of anything he chose to do.

I gladly admit - my understanding of quantum mechanics is a layman's understanding, and the above is more instinct than comprehension. Maybe I just need to put it in a box marked "bollox" because I don't understand it, and it rather makes a mess of philosophy - which depends rather heavily on there being causes and effects.

The point is not omnipotence. But the sum of omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence. If an omnipotent and omniscient being were not benevolent - it could do anything, because it wouldn't need to care about the consequences of its actions. But any good thing one does, is bound to have undesirable ramifications at some remove. Far beyond the scope of humans, but the almighty would know if he saves a girl's life, for example, she has a kid, who has a kid, who has a kid, who grows up to be Hitler or something. The chain of cause and effect is bound to run into trouble eventually, so he cannot intervene - or would be responsible for all that follows from that intervention, and cannot because he's omnibenevolent.

I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics. — Richard Feynman, eminent physicist

I think that's true, but only because quantum mechanics is misconceived. I think the fundamental seat of reality is the causal, macroscopic reality we inhabit - and that quantum mechanics is a "science" of the frayed edge of reality, on the border between something and nothing.

Physicists assume that there's some fundamental building block - or base substance of reality to be discovered, but there's not.

The nexus of gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, electro-magnetism, matter and energy, all converge where we are, at this scale.

Quantum particles are very small things that don't quite exist; and the illogical behaviours observed:

EPR appears to be instantaneous communication at a distance. Quantum tunnelling - appears to be passing through solid objects. The double slit experiment - two places at the same time. Quantum indeterminacy - velocity or location, but not both.

...can only be explained in terms of possessing some, but not all of the existential properties conferred upon matter at the macroscopic scale. Hence, reality is where we are, and quantum physics is the frayed edge of reality, where existence bleeds into nothingness.

An omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being cannot do anything; which is to say they could not do anything at all - because they would understand the long term implications of their actions. Any intervention would necessarily imply further interventions, to account for the consequences of the first, and so on and on until they had to do everything.

You simply don't realize how dependent your concept of gender is culture, and that gender may be much more fluid than you realize. — praxis

If you assert that gender is culture dependent - how do you know? It's not enough to assert my ignorance - you need to demonstrate it by proving that what you say is true. The evidence for my position, that gender is a biological fact - and that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder is overwhelming. Almost everyone's gender is consistent with their sex, and denying that - imposing re-categorisation across the entirety of society, feeding puberty blockers to confused children, allowing male criminals into women's prisons, men into women's sports, changing rooms and bathrooms - to affirm and normalise what is more readily understood as a mental disorder, is unreasonable.

Your claim suggests an empirical falsehood: that a certains behaviours are exclusive performed by girls or boys, as some are done more often by one group or another. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I quote this line, but refer to all of your argument up to this point. You have misunderstood. Boys have tendencies toward physical spatial play - and girls toward social play. It's very well noted in the literature. These are not one-off experimental results. And it doesn't mean those behaviours are exclusive; but that there are distinct differences in patterns of play. Given a room full of toys, boys will instinctively go for the cars and footballs - whereas girls will go for the dolls. Piaget is not some left wing undergraduate psych student - he spent his life studying developmental psychology. Why impugn his professionalism?

The nature vs nurture opposition is not scientific: it ignores how both biology and an environment go into producing something we do. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That's just not correct; not least because it's not nature "vs" nurture. No-one with any education would see these as exclusive. It doesn't happen, and never has. It's always been that both nature and nurture influence development, but often one is more influential. Lefties want everything to be nurture - so they can subject it to their identity politics dogma. They construe gender as a social construction - but then, I think you should read the story of David Reimer. Dr Money's conclusions were premature to say the least - and yet still form the basis of left wing gender politics dogma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

The thing about biological states is well, they are biological states, regardless of how we categorise them under sex, gender or any other identity categories we might have. If we have someone who is classified as a woman, but has a penis, she still has a penis. The biological fact of her penis isn't dependent on being categorised as a man. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That is quite possibly the maddest paragraph ever written in the English language. Barring incredibly rare genetic abnormalities, a human being with a penis is a man. Not "categorized as a man." But as a matter of biological fact, the penis owner IS a man. Incredibly rare exceptions - such as hermaphrodites, do not invalidate the fact a human with a penis IS a man. That way madness lies - and that's precisely the intent of left wing, post modernist, neo marxist, political correctness bigots and bullies, regardless of the harm their crazy making causes.

There's only 70m citizens this side of the pond. And the politics and the philosophy are a little different - over there! But I place the blame for the polarisation we're seeing with the left. When the left adopted identity politics as the basis of a culture war, they turned politics into a zero sum game. The left abandoned a dynamic that had a general respect for a common truth, and the good of the country at its heart, and made it all about power. The left and right are no longer - colleagues across the aisle. Or the Honourable Member opposite - in British parlance. They are trying to destroy each other to get into power, and are careless of the consequences for the people and the country.

I had a feeling this is where your bullshit about truth in science was headed. — frank

Did you really? Wow. I myself had no idea. You must be psychic or something.

People are free to change gender. — frank

Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder according to the DSM-5. In young people, it's often a phase. Puberty blockers cause irreversible change.

You're free to whine about it. — frank

As is Dr Marcus Evans - one of the 30 or more psychologists who quit GIDS citing politically correct pressure to "affirm" this mental disorder, and proscribe puberty blockers to children. You can find him on twitter.

End of story. — frank

No. It's not the end of the story. The NHS is going to get sued big time. A test case has already gone through the courts. Expect a class action suit in the near future - and billions in taxpayers money paid out to people damaged by politically correct, medically unsound practice.

I thought we were talking about the traditional blind-spots of the right; based in religiosity and money, both of which are - as I said, matters of freedom; freedom of conscience and economic liberty. But no; now you seem to be talking about Trump - who was highly individual. Even then, you think his supporters were deceived? I don't. I think they knew he told whopping great obvious lies - like "biggest crowd ever" - and think it's funny watching the left wing media devote hours of coverage to Trump, to disprove something they already knew was a lie.

Well, yes and no. At the very least I think it's unfair to claim that facts just "don't matter" re: the left's views on gender, as TheWillowOfDarkness brings up. Plenty of leftists acknowledge the relationship between sex and gender, the influence of sex hormones on development, etc. A person born male is probably going to feel like, and present as, a man. The question is how we address those for whom sex and gender feel mismatched. — Rosie

I used gender politics as an example of how facts are disposable to the left.

"Postmodernism and critical theory commonly criticize universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress...and is characterized by rejection of the "universal validity" of binary oppositions..."

This relates to gender politics:

"In the last fifteen years it has become routine for many social and/or historical analyses to address the variables of gender, class, sexuality, race and ethnicity. Within each of these categories there is usually an unequal binary opposition..."

So, in relation to this philosophical background, political correctness seeks to deny, and/or undermine that binary opposition - and so denies, or disregards the biological fact.

I feel somewhat ambushed by your personal stake in the matter. I don't want to upset you. But there's real damage being done by left wing ideologues, teaching primary school children there are 99 genders, and then GIDS handing out puberty blockers like smarties; all compulsory under the dictatorship of political correctness.

1984 is way more apt to left wing authoritarianism than Brave New World. Winston Smith was a citizen. John Savage was an outsider; throwing the world into stark relief. Smith was oppressed - denied freedom of thought and speech by design. Savage was a natural man in an artificial world; but a lot of people were very happy in Huxley's utopia!

That's an interesting citation. I had thought my brand of ecological thinking was pitched solely against left wing anti-capitalist, misanthropic tree huggers, but a high energy, prosperous, sustainable future sinks the eco-Nazi battleship as well. Bonus!

Malthus was plain wrong. 200 years and 8 billion people, better fed than ever - prove him wrong. It's not a matter of how many people there are. Resources are a function of the energy available to create them.

For the past 200 years, that's been fossil fuel energy - and that's bad, because nature buries carbon to maintain a viable biosphere. We dug it up and burnt it; giving us the energy to develop land to feed 8bn people, at the cost of putting that carbon back into the atmosphere.

Carbon pollution isn't a necessary consequence of energy production. We can produce clean energy; but we need vastly more energy to secure the future, not less. In my view, wind and solar are not sufficient. The nearest large source of energy is the heat energy of the earth itself - magma power! There's a virtually limitless supply, and all we have to do is get at it!

Oh, bubble head, if you don't know why someone who expresses such disrespect for civilisation should be left naked in the woods, go back to your ghost stories. They must surely have some sort of meaning for you - even if you can't tell me what that is, or how it relates to the purpose of life.