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This weekly thread will focus on the sometimes painful art of being wrong.
I don’t mean not having an opinion and then forming one, I mean having an opinion, and then having that opinion changed with new or more accurate information.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- When was the last time you were wrong? What about something somewhat major?
- What was it regarding?
- How did it make you feel?
- What do you feel is the best way to correct someone with an ingrained opinion?
- Is it easier online or in person?
- When do you give up on talking to someone?
- Would you be open to a new thread type here where we create a Steelman post as a group? (eg. We start from questions and end up at THE post / article for finding information on a touchy subject)
This was actually the topic I wanted to bring out as the inaugural Steelman! I’m conflicted for a few reasons.
I’d like to know more on the subject, but there’s some conflicting science on the issue. I’ve seen papers that discuss brain differences saying both that there are no differences between male and female brains, but in other papers that there are. Similarly, I’ve read papers that talked about no differences in trans brains vs. their biological sex, and also ones that state there are. It’s kinda wild and I don’t know enough about brains to confidently decode the research properly.
In a similar vein, I also know studies are not being funded (and at least two that were actively shuttered) due to not researching the subject in a manor that was explicitly pro-trans, which I have a problem with. Not that I’m anti-trans by any means, but I don’t like “activist” research. Put another way, if neutral science and review doesn’t support an issue, maybe it’s not the science that’s wrong.
What changed your mind?
I’ve also noted that “yes it is, no it isn’t” research papers and have even gone down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out who funded the papers and if there was a pattern on each side. (Protip: I haven’t found one. It’s really weird.)
I think the problem is that we genuinely don’t know shit about the human brain except in isolated pieces and unfortunately there are things which exist which cannot be understood in a reductionist way: you understand the whole or you understand nothing. The brain is such a weird organ (which may even have quantum components!) that interacts in so many unexpected ways within itself that I think it will be a long time before we can say anything definitive about it.
As to what changed my mind:
The books Brainsex and How Brains Think together started waking me up to just how complicated and weird the brain is. The former also very specifically showed a model of how homosexuality develops and when combined with a few research papers also explained to me gender dysphoria.
I also came to realize that it doesn’t fucking impact me in the slightest if someone who is “male” feels uncomfortable in that designation and wants to be treated as female. A lot of my growing up over time boiled down to that: “True. False. It doesn’t fucking matter in any meaningful way to my life.”