Comment on Cass Review supposedly being debunked

By Mathew Goldstein

Transgender related medicine and government lawmaking policy is engulfed in a cesspit of misinformation and bad arguments. Unfortunately, sources of misinformation on this topic include Friendly Atheist, Science-Based Medicine, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and other fellow secularists that we generally agree with and support. Where there is misinformation there is a concomitant need to discuss and clarify.

Recently, FFRF welcomed, then erased, a reasonable post on their internet forum explaining and defending the concept of animal and vascular plant biological sex by biologist Jerry Coyne “Biology is not Bigotry” in reaction to a post that concluded the proper definition of a women is anyone who declares themself to be a women. That initial post was retained. Professor emeritus Coyne then resigned as an Honorary Board member. Richard Dawkins and Richard Pinker then also resigned in solidarity. FFRF then dismissed the entire Honorary Board, presumably to avoid the risk of such board members expressing opinions on their forum that they will opt to remove. 

Some of the content of Coyne’s post sounds questionable. In particular, I am not convinced that trans women should be disqualified from being rape counselors for women or from working in women’s shelters as he asserted. Transgender women should not be disqualified from any employment opportunities that employs men. In the U.S. about 15% of rape counselors are men and about 10% of rape victims are male. I am not aware that the male rape counselors are restricted to having only male clients. According to ChatGPT “In organizations offering rape crises services, efforts are usually made to match survivors with counselors who best meet their preferences and needs….” If FFRF had removed those claims but otherwise retained the post, or if they had disputed those claims, instead of completely removing the post, which otherwise has merit, there may have been no recriminations. Jerry Coyne has subsequently acknowledged that trans women can have female clients, the remaining issue here for him is that potential clients be told that the counselor is transgender.

Hemant Mehta labeled the three people who resigned from the FFRF Honorary Board bigots and also claimed that the Cass Review had been debunked. He is wrong on both counts. 

There is a distinction between the biological definition of sex, rooted in the empirically verified phenomena that there are two different types of gametes, one smaller (male) and the other larger (female), that merge to instantiate a new animal or vascular plant and gender. Gender identity is probably shaped by a complex interaction of genetic, hormonal and social influences. Some, but not all, transgender activists appear to be loathe to acknowledge that gender identity and biological sex sometimes conflict. They mistakenly assume if there is a conflict then the validity of transgender identity becomes suspect. They then reject, and attack, the biological definition of sex. Religiously motivated opponents of transgender medical procedures also refuse to recognize a distinction between biological sex and gender, insisting the latter must always match the former, thus denying gender is a distinct cognitive trait. The result is activism that is counter-factual, inconsistent, and counter-productive on both sides. That is a tragic mistake.

So let’s start with a few basics: That there are exactly two different gametes does not defame the biological definition of sex as being bigoted. People who defend the biological definition of sex are not thereby exhibiting or promoting bigotry. Human gender dysphoria coexists with there being exactly two different types of gametes. Transgender medical procedures as treatments for gender dysphoria are fully compatible with there being exactly two types of gametes. The three secularist former FFRF Honorary Board members who recently resigned favor granting adults the freedom to undergo transgender medical procedures. A birth certificate identifies biological sex, it does not identify gender. Biological sex is, unsurprisingly, positively correlated with gender identity, yet biology is complex and can be messy. An insistence that there must be a one to one mapping from biological sex to gender identity is primarily about defending ideology, it is not about reality, and does not merit being taken seriously.

Both biological sex and gender identity matter. For humans biological sex is about the presence of testes or ovaries prior to birth, which is fixed and unchangeable, while gender identity is a cognitive/psychological trait that could change after birth. There is some neurobiological evidence for gender identity residing in the hypothalamus and, as such, it may be somewhat immutable.  Which one should take priority when there is a conflict depends on the context and potentially on other related factors such as puberty, hormones, functional genitals, chromosomes, various physical traits that have different probability distributions (usually as a result of puberty), etc. There are privacy, time, effort, and cost/benefit tradeoffs to take into account. This complexity should not be denied or ignored. Both transgender activists who deny the reality of the role of conflicting biological sex, and religious conservatives who deny the reality of the role of conflicting gender identity, cannot be trusted to advocate for realistic and ethical transgender policies.

For example, Hemant Mehta says “if simply saying you’re trans gives you a competitive advantage, it’s downright bizarre we haven’t seen trans athletes winning every women’s sport in which they can play.” Notice how centering the “simply saying you׳re trans” disregards the underlying complexity of the conflicting biological sex component that is a common trait among transgender people, as if biological sex has no role, while also falsely asserting that it suffices to demonstrate there is no competitive advantage for men merely by observing some top tier athletic women routinely beat some lower tier athletic men, all in one sentence. Here is a list of over 100 trans women winners. The numbers of trans women medal winners are increasing every year. 

There are multiple examples of men performing within mid-range when competing against other men who promptly win a medal for the first time after declaring themselves to be a women and qualifying to compete instead in the women’s division where they invariably rank higher than they did when they competed against men. Look on the internet at the female and male results for various athletic competitions that list the rank and performance numbers. Merge the male and female lists and recalculate the rankings. Here is my prediction: At least nine times out of ten, for the combined list the male rankings as a percentage of the total population will go up and the female rankings will go down. This is an almost inevitable result of redefining a woman (or a man) as any person who declares themself to be a woman (or a man), full stop, as if biological sex has no relevance at all, which is fictional nonsense in the sports competition context. Biology, like the universe more generally, is unfortunately amoral, it does not always operate in harmony with social justice criteria and our ability to change its operation is limited.

Testosterone during puberty results in taller heights, wider shoulders and longer arm-spans, narrower hips, larger bones and hearts, greater lung capacity, muscles that are easier to build and harder to lose with more resistant connective tissues, leaner body mass and higher levels of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen within the blood. Post-puberty addition of testosterone will probably have some, but not all, of the same impacts. Post-puberty suppression of testosterone is slow to reverse the impact of male puberty and such post male puberty testosterone suppression cannot reverse many of the physical changes that advantage males in sports competition. So there is an asymmetry here that is relevant for policy in the sports competition context. And for perspective, the additional testosterone arguably merits being characterized as a little “toxic” because it may bear some responsibility for the tendencies of males overall to have a shorter lifespan, to be more prone to resorting to violence, and to be more likely to engage in criminal behavior than females. 

Hemant Mehta tends towards being a one-sided, pugilistic, partisan who starts with his conclusions, searches for any information that he can cite to argue in support of those conclusions, systematically and selectively tosses out the information that contradicts his preferred conclusion, and exhibits few scruples with regard to whether his arguments represent the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He is a propagandist for particular conclusions regardless of whether or not the overall available evidence actually favors those conclusions. Having said that, it also needs to be said that his blog is a good source of current event information. His blog is a welcome presence, I just wish the commentary on some topics, or at least this topic, was more thoughtful and more balanced.

Regarding the Cass Review supposedly being “debunked”, I recommend reading all three parts of Jessie Singal’s thorough debunking of the attempted but failed debunking of the Cass Review: “Yale’s “Integrity Project” Is Spreading Misinformation About The Cass Review And Youth Gender Medicine: Part 3”. Please keep in mind that the controversy among the experts here is confined to the treatment of minors. Here is his conclusion (which I agree with):

Maybe I spent too much time on this, but “An Evidence-Based Critique of ‘The Cass Review’ on Gender-affirming Care for Adolescent Gender Dysphoria” is a calumnious 30-car pileup of scientific misinformation. It offers an ugly, remarkably messy case study on what happens when highly credentialed, trusted experts simply stop caring about the truth, when they let the pull of political righteousness guide them instead. Legitimate  disagreement is one thing, but a paper this flawed and this dishonest should leave a mark on any institution or scientist who promotes it. It’s really that bad. Yale Law School should be exceptionally careful about promoting the work of “The Integrity Project” going forward.

It does no good to cover up, deny, and try to censor inconvenient arguments by declaring people who advance such arguments to be bigots. Ditto for accusing people who dare to try to unselectively and impartially side with the facts, regardless of who the facts favors or disfavors, as being guilty of siding with the enemy which is then somehow translated, via a leap over logic, all the way into their actually being the enemy. Nor should adults be given a veto over critical responses to their favored arguments for merely asserting that such criticism harms them, as if they are entitled to being coddled like immature children who are incapable of accepting criticism.

We should be willing to acknowledge that while religion is ideology, it does not automatically follow that all of the more secular opponents of religiously motivated social conservatism are automatically reliable advocates for best fit with the overall available relevant evidence conclusions. That can be a complex and difficult goal to achieve. It has a dependency on debate from a broad range of different perspectives. When a damaging anti-intellectual narrowness, intolerance, and reliance on censorship prevails the result is that bad arguments, ignorance, and misinformation are protected and proliferate.

My speculation is that transgender practitioners are understandably afraid of liability lawsuits. We know too little to accurately identify who will benefit and who will not benefit from transgender treatments in advance. IMO, to try to protect themselves, transgender practitioners have adopted a “gender affirming care” mantra, under which they claim their responsibility is limited to treating whoever requests treatment, in part as a way of escaping responsibility for carefully diagnosing and skeptically evaluating their patients need for the transgender treatments. Holding practitioners responsible for vetting their patients before treating them is not a “double standard”. There is a significant risk that pursuing such a policy of avoiding responsibility for what happens to their patients can eventually back-fire on some practitioners. Practitioners confront difficult choices, they can potentially also be subject to lawsuits for refusing to provide requested treatments. 

It appears to be likely that not only will some people lose out and be harmed by the gender affirming care policy, particularly when the patients include troubled minors, but also that some troubled minors have already been harmed. Individuals who identify as trans sometimes have wider confounding issues related to identity confusion. There is substantial evidence that within the cohort of minors who express gender discomfort are minors who exhibit multiple psychological symptoms and it appears some of them have been transitioned. Nevertheless, the Science Based Medicine web site withdrew and disavowed a post by one of their regular female contributors that reviewed Abigail Shrier’s controversial book “Irreversible Damage”, which focused on this important topic, presumably after overwrought complaints by transgender activists. The book’s contents may have some weaknesses and flaws that should be highlighted and criticized accordingly, see this book review. She goes too far by rejecting gender identity as being separable from biological sex, yet her book still contributes to the broader debate and should have been respected for its contribution. Instead, the book and its author were demonized and shunned. As humanists we should be concerned for the welfare of those vulnerable minors, be committed to not demonizing, slandering, and “shutting down” people we disagree with, and not be equating activism with censorship.

Review of Social Justice Fallacies

 By Mathew Goldstein

Thomas Sowell is an American economist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His economic orientation is libertarian, although he does not more generally hold the views of political libertarianism across the board. His recent book, Social Justice Fallacies, cites and/or quotes various other economists. Sowell favorably cites Friedrich August Hayek multiple times. He characterizes Hayek as ״a landmark figure in the development of an understanding of the crucial role of the distribution of knowledge in determining which kinds of policies and institutions were likely to produce what kinds of results”,  one of the themes of this book. Sowell also draws on the work of economist Milton Friedman, citing this quote: “A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.” Throughout his book Sowell cites empirical evidence that supports his conclusions. I found some of his arguments more convincing than others. 

His book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, “Equal Chances” fallacies, was the strongest, and I recommend it. He observes that “At the heart of the social justice vision is the assumption that, because economic and other disparities among human beings greatly exceed any differences in their innate capacities, these disparities are evidence or proof of the effects of such human vices as exploitation and discrimination.” He then proceeds to show why this conclusion is factually false. I think it is very clear that the premise, even insofar as it is true, does not suffice to reach that strong conclusion. We should acknowledge that disparities of outcomes are the result of many different factors, most of which have little or nothing to do with exploitation or discrimination. Ibram K. Kendi, et al., are wrong insofar as they argue otherwise.

The second chapter, Racial Fallacies, is also very good and again, I highly recommend it. Here he criticizes two tendencies that accompany the belief “that racism was the primary explanation of such group differences.“ which he identifies as : (1) the extent to which such beliefs prevail without being subjected to tests of either facts or logic, and (2) the extent to which people who present empirical evidence counter to prevailing beliefs are met with ad hominem denunciations and with efforts to suppress their evidence, by means ranging from censorship to violence, especially on academic campuses.”

The third chapter, Chess Pieces Fallacies, he discusses the tendency of social justice literature to advocate for various policies “on grounds of their desirability from a moral standpoint—but often with little or no attention to the practical question of whether those policies could in fact be carried out and produce the end results desired.” Sowell is concerned that governments compel, which is not the same as merely arranging. There are “dangers to be considered when expanding government compulsion for whatever seems desirable.” Also, “The exaltation of desirability and neglect of feasibility…” is a mistake the social justice vision tends to overlook. He focuses here on the impracticalities of wealth redistribution. He criticizes some of the ideologically driven assumptions built into the assertions of social justice advocates, some of whom like to target “millionaires and billionaires”, such as their “… implicit assumption that tax revenues automatically move in the same direction as tax rates seems impervious to factual evidence.” Again, this a good discussion overall and I recommend this chapter, but I also have some qualms.

Sowell discusses various complicated macro economic questions in this chapter. As a black economist it is not surprising that his discussion of social justice says nothing about trans women competing in women’s sports. He says Richard Nixon imposed price controls before the election to his second term because it was popular and helped him the win the election even though he knew it would be harmful in practice. 

He argues that the minimum wage counter-productively increases unemployment among disadvantage youth. This is where my skepticism over his cherry picking evidence advancing his conclusions came to the fore. His argument is strong, yet I still found his conclusion that the minimum wage should be eliminated unconvincing because his argument, as expressed in this book, was too simplistically one-sided. The overall impact of the minimum wage is clearly multi-dimensional. Yet he does not engage at all in identifying, and refuting, the best arguments for the minimum wage. Maybe he does that somewhere in his other publications. Nevertheless, he does succeed in explaining how a minimum wage risks imposing substantial negative costs. Whether the benefits exceed the costs is a valid concern that merits careful evaluation.

It is easy to agree with a theme repeated throughout this book, and a central focus of both Chapter four, Knowledge Fallacies, and Chapter five, Words, Deeds, and Dangers, that policy makers, experts, and commentators, need to try to avoid hubris and recognize the limits of both their knowledge and their ability to change the way the world functions for the better. He occasionally cites examples of a too common, over simplistic, stereotyping intolerance of views that the social justice oriented speaker/writer is disagreeing with. One example cited in this book is New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who depicted people who oppose increasing the minimum wage as people with “hostility” to “raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation” because of their “mean-spiritedness” or “at best, a lack of empathy toward those struggling.”

I am skeptical that a comprehensive evaluation of the overall history of government economic policies is as favorable to the hands-off libertarian economics approach that Sowell appears to favor. I am inclined to think the reality here is more complex in that this is ultimately context dependent. Whether any given government economic intervention is good or bad depends on the details.

We should always be considering that the existing, or proposed, government economic policies are misdirected, that government may be intervening too much, or too little. And while it is true that government exercising power is potentially dangerous, as libertarians correctly fear, government weakness is also potentially dangerous, so we should fear both. We can only hope that our governments act responsibly and wisely. And realistically we have to accept that no one, including our governments, fully understands everything they are doing.

Non-medical vaccination exemptions are increasing

By Mathew Goldstein

The rate of non-medical school vaccination exemptions granted to students in Maryland on parental request, based on the Maryland census as reported by the CDC, has been increasing. Here are the numbers:

2023-24  out of 63,224 students

Any Exemption 2.2% 1,393

Medical Exemption 0.7% 451

Non-Medical Exemption  1.5% 942

2022-23 out of 59,684 students:

Any Exemption 1.9% 1,143

Medical Exemption 0.5% 307

Non-Medical Exemption  1.4% 836

2021-22 out of 53,866 students

Any Exemption 1.5% 801

Medical Exemption 0.5% 258

Non-Medical Exemption  1.0% 543

2020-21 out of 65,764  students (census plus voluntary private responses)

Any Exemption 0.9% 610

Medical Exemption 0.2% 109

Non-Medical Exemption  0.8% 501

The non-medical exemption rate in 2018 was 1.1% and in 2019 was 1.0%, so the rate dropped suddenly in 2020 before increasing again. This could be an anomalous two year side effect of the COVID vaccination campaign. Disregarding the 2020-2021 pandemic years, the non-medical exemptions have still increased significantly from the 1.1% reached in 2018 to the most recent 1.5%. Non-medical exemptions are 2-4 times more frequent than medical exemptions.

The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. independent campaign for President that relied on foolish anti-vaccination rhetoric failed. Transactional, sycophant rewarding, self-serving, Trump praised Kennedy after Kennedy endorsed him, saying he would appoint Kennedy to be chair of a commission on vaccine safety and integrity if he moves into the White House. Allowing non-medical exemptions for contagious disease vaccinations that have been carefully empirically vetted for safety and effectiveness is so obviously counterproductive that no more effort should be needed to argue for this assertion than to argue for vehicle seat belts. A recent study found positive correlations between 22 virus infections, some of which can be avoided by vaccinations, and increased risk of experiencing subsequent neurological problems [Nueron, Volume 111, Issue 7P1086-1093.E2April 05, 2023] (reminder: get your annual flu shot). "The largest effect association was between viral encephalitis exposure [avoid with measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine] and Alzheimer’s disease," the researchers write in the study. "Influenza with pneumonia was significantly associated with five of the six neurodegenerative diseases studied. We also replicated the Epstein-Barr/multiple sclerosis association. Some of these exposures were associated with an increased risk of neurodegeneration up to 15 years after infection." Regardless of who is our next president, state laws that grant non-medical contagious disease vaccination exemptions should be retired. Maryland law should also make it mandatory for providers of the state mandated vaccinations to report all such vaccinations to the state vaccination database. 

Furthermore, insofar as state law nevertheless does permit contagious disease vaccination exemptions, or any other exemptions for anything that is by default legally mandated, both religious and non-religious individuals and families should be provided equal opportunity to qualify for that exemption. Laws which unnecessarily single out religious beliefs exclusively as the sole acceptable non-medical justification for obtaining contagious disease vaccination mandate exemptions, as is the case in Maryland (it is plausible that in practice non-religious exemption requests are being granted in Maryland, I do not know if the religious qualification restriction is actually being meaningfully enforced), are improperly biased against non-religious citizens. 

Our Supreme Court should be willing to acknowledge that laws exhibiting this bias against non-religious citizens are in conflict with the Establishment and Equal Protection Clauses of the constitution. As we know, the current Supreme Court majority is unfriendly towards those legal provisions, but we can still ask our state lawmakers to remove this bias from state laws. That these exemption laws are often restricted to religious believers may be a symptom of a desire to limit the harm by limiting the number of exemptions granted while avoiding acknowledging that granting such exemptions is bad policy.

Who are the moderates promoting reconciliation with Israel?

By Mathew Goldstein

Ismail Haniyeh, the former leader of Hamas who was assassinated by a bomb in Tehran, is claimed by some to have been a “moderate”. He was ‘pragmatic’ and ‘open to negotiation’, said the Guardian. CNBC at least had the decency to hedge, calling Haniyeh a ‘relatively moderate figure’. He was similarly depicted ‘as a moderate’, in comparison with ‘more hardline’ Hamas leaders by Reuters. 

Yet he openly and proudly celebrated the 7 October brutality, calling it a ‘victory’, agitating for a further ‘jihad of the swords’, predicting that the ‘army of Muhammad’ will be returning to wreak vengeance on Jews. 

What apparently made him a ‘moderate’ in the minds of some people is that he was open to talks with Israel. He was OK with having backdoor channels with Israeli officials. He would talk in secular language when talking to non-Muslims. Yet at the same time he was also OK with constructing underground tunnels from which Israel’s demise was plotted by fanatics. He cheered the spilling of Palestinian blood, too. ‘[The] blood of the women, children and elderly… we need this blood so that it will ignite with us the spirit of revolution’, he said, helpfully explaining that ‘donations to Gaza are not ‘Humanitarian Aid’ but ‘Financial Jihad’. His message to Muslims was that the battle is really all about ‘our Islamic Nation’. When speaking to his fellow Muslims he emphasized this ‘is not the battle of the Palestinian people, or Gaza, or the people in Gaza’.

Moderates are the people seeking peaceful reconciliation between Israel and Arab countries. Hamas (Islamic Resistance) is one of the groups in the region, together with Hezbollah (Party of God), the Houthi’s in Yemen, and Iran, that actively opposes such reconciliation and are working to try to stop it. Hamas attacked on October 7 with the goal of undermining and sabotaging the movement toward peaceful reconciliation that was advancing. Haniyeh and his movement deliberately escalated tensions in the Middle East when they green-lighted the rape, kidnap and murder of more than a thousand people in Israel on 7 October. Hamas, including Haniyeh when he was alive, are enemies of all genuine moderates.

Hamas justifies a continuous war against Israel with false claims that they are fighting in defense of Islam. Israel offers to end war and let the senior leadership, including Sinwar, leave if all hostages are freed and Gaza is disarmed. There is no need for Gaza to be armed. The use of Gaza as a staging ground for ongoing violent attacks against Israel is the root cause of this battle and all previous battles between Israel and Gaza since Hamas started ruling Gaza in 2007. November’s hostage-truce deal collapsed reportedly because Hamas proposed returning seven bodies and three living captives, who were two men and one woman, instead of the 10 living hostages it was supposed to release on the eighth day of the deal. The government of Israel claims it knew that the women among the seven purportedly dead hostages were alive and assessed that Hamas would immediately kill them if Israel accepted the changed terms.

Kamela Harris’ DNC speech

 By Mathew Goldstein

Kamela Harris’s DNC speech is worth spending the time  required to listen to (try 1.25x), IMO. One word in one short sentence in her approximately fifty minute speech was noteworthy for being odd, although we can anticipate it will generally be considered normal. She reassuringly said, while momentarily looking down, that she “knows” that her dead mother (who died in 2009) is watching her. Wishful magical thinking misrepresented as knowledge is not good. Her speech would have been somewhat saner if she had instead acknowledged that she imagines her mother is still watching her. We would all benefit from more sanity.

How about sex testing for female Olympic competitions?

By Mathew Goldstein

Richard Dawkins’s Facebook account was deleted after he posted on X that genetically male boxers should not fight women (he stated in a tweet on July 29, "Two men, pretending to be women, are being allowed to compete against real women in the Olympics"). The famous evolutionary biologist posted on X this morning about what he characterized to be censorship, writing that as of this morning [August 10] he was not provided with the reason for the sudden removal of his account. Dawkins’s tweet, quoted below, was reportedly viewed over 10 million times.

My entire @facebook account has been deleted, seemingly (no reason given) because I tweeted that genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics. Of course my opinion is open to civilised argument. But outright censorship?

While it is possible that there is some other reason for the deletions, it is not believable that a mass deletion of his entire account, or nearly his entire account (there is a rumor that two of his Facebook posts were retained), if deliberate and not accidental, is justifiable. Update: It has now been reported that Meta concluded his account was hacked and his account has been reinstated.

It is certainly reasonable to believe, and to accordingly assert, that biological males should be blocked from competing with biological females in Olympic boxing. Why have a separate female category in boxing, and various other athletic competitions, if not for the purpose of excluding biological males? 

I am inclined to agree that the International Olympic Committee (IOC)  should be vetting athletes competing as females and disqualify those athletes who are found to have XY chromosomes, testes, and male hormones. Such athletes are biological males. A non-invasive blood test can determine both chromosomes and hormones. That is what the International Boxing Association (IBA) claims it relied on when it decided to disqualify the two boxers, Imame Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan. The test was conducted in labs approved by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It has been widely reported that IBA has a history of financial, governance, and corruption problems, but the reputation of the IBA does not explain why the IOC opts to avoids sex testing (see “Are the Olympic Boxers’ XY DNA Test Results ‘Russian Disinformation’?” by Colin Wright).  It appears that IBA disqualifies anyone with XY chromosomes. A combination of XY with a male hormone profile would arguably be better because it would allow Swyer syndrome females who have XY chromosomes to compete with other females. Maybe additional testing could be required when needed to resolve remaining ambiguities. The details of what vetting methods are the most practical and effective can be hashed out by the experts. There may not be a method that is both practical to implement and 100% effective, so some compromises may be unavoidable. Meanwhile, as a non-expert observer, I am skeptical that avoiding such sex vetting altogether, as was the case for boxing at this Olympics, is the best approach.

Unfortunately, many news organizations are reporting an overly simplistic, one-sided perspective of two winning female boxers being unfairly smeared with spurious accusations that they are cheaters. Their perspective appears to be that when an athlete was identified as female at birth and continues to self-identify as female as an adult that it is somehow uncouth to question the integrity of their self-identification as it applies to the athletic competition context. This superficial perspective is unperceptive to differences/disorders of sex development (DSD) that manifest as males (they have internal testes, not ovaries) with genitals that resemble female genitals and/or to the impact of male puberty (triggered by the additional testosterone secreted from testes, ovaries secrete less testosterone) on athletic performance. 

Update: Khelif’s coach, Georges Cazorla, recently confirmed that Khelif has both a male karyotype and high testosterone, a combination consistent with being a male who has a DSD that contributed to his being misidentified as female at birth.

Coleman Hughes’ new book on race politics

 By Mathew Goldstein

Coleman Hughes has a BA in Philosophy at Columbia University.  His new book, “The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America”, is an exemplar of rational, evidence grounded advocacy, persuasively arguing against the popular “anti-racism” of DiAngelo, Kendi, Crenshaw, Coates, Hannah-Jones, etc. Hughes shows that their political philosophy and strategy is built on neoracist and counterfactual foundations. His argument here is particularly strong. He further argues that their political advocacy is all around counter-productive, it is bad for society and people of all races. This book is worth reading, it is thoughtful, concise, and well argued. 

He “very much” supports “affirmative action in the original sense of the term: aggressively recruiting minority candidates from less-privileged backgrounds and then judging them by race-neutral standards.” He argues that ”achieving equity simply by fiat—that is, by lowering standards of entry for underrepresented groups—does nothing to equip people with the knowledge, skills, and habits required to succeed. Equity by fiat is merely the illusion of equity.” Instead, we “need to recommit ourselves to the principle of race-neutral merit and work toward a society in which more and more disadvantaged people are able to clear meritocratic benchmarks as a result of actually possessing the skills required to compete in the economy.”

A big picture, empirically grounded, philosophy

 By Mathew Goldstein

In his 2016 book “The Big Picture: On the Origin of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself”, theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll skillfully elucidates a modern, empiricist anchored, philosophy of “poetic naturalism” that starts with, is guided by, and fully embraces, the relevant knowledge we have accumulated to date. Purely rationalistic philosophy is a subject without an object which is OK when the subject is mathematics but is otherwise mostly useless sophistry.  Sean Carroll, an empiricist who has studied philosophy in addition to physics, clearly recognizes this distinction.

A big picture philosophy starts with the Core Theory which is ekinological. The Core Theory consists of the Standard Model that describes quantum particles and fields plus the Theory of Relativity that adds non-quantum spacetime gravity. It can be operationally represented with a single equation for “the amplitude to undergo a transition from one configuration to another in the path-integral formalism of quantum mechanics”. The amplitude translates into a probability of transitioning to a particular next configuration. The causes and effects, reasons why, purposes, and goals of teleology are all absent from the ground level Core Theory. Yet causes and effects, reasons why, purposes, and goals have central roles in our day to day lives.  

Sean Carroll argues that we are rationally compelled on the available evidence to reconcile these discrepancies by adopting a pluralistic, multi-level, description of our universe. At the ground level is the Core Theory. The higher level phenomena emerge from, and can be mapped back to, the Core Theory. The emergent properties are distinct and real, their secondary status as higher level phenomena does not diminish the centrality of emergence as a substantial and important component of how the universe operates. The Core Theory does not by itself provide a complete description of reality. Higher level emergent properties are as essential to our understanding of the operation of our universe as the ground level Core Theory. 

Therefore, when we describe how our universe operates, the appropriate language to use depends on the “domain of applicability” where the topic being discussed resides. Terminology that describes the Core Theory ground level context should not be intermixed with language that describes the higher emergent level contexts. Nor, for example, is terminology that is applicable at the emergent levels of chemistry, or cellular biology, always appropriate when the context is the level of a multi-celled organism, etc. This overlaps with Daniel Dennett’s perspective: “First, materialism reigns, and the major philosophical problems of consciousness, meaning, and free will all have accounts that owe more to biology than to physics. The beginning of life is the beginning of reasons and meaning and information (in one of its most important senses);” [I Have Been Thinking, p. 390].

The conventional meanings and connotations of some commonly utilized words conflict with a poetic naturalism perspective. Therefore, to communicate accurately, we will sometimes be better off either avoiding some potentially misleading words or adding clarifications. In his book Sean Carroll includes clarifications, and selects words, to avoid miscommunication. Yet he does not directly discuss this general communication complication. This is a significant and unfortunate omission.

We need to be careful to ensure that our higher level context descriptions are consistent with the lower level context descriptions in the sense that we can map what happens at the higher levels back to the lower levels. At the same time, we should avoid mistakenly insisting on a one to one, bidirectional, mapping. There can be many lower level configurations that map to the same  higher level phenomena. Emergent properties that are absent at the lowest level, such as the arrow of time, can very much impact our experiences and interactions. The difference between past and future is an example of an emergent property that is too fundamental for us to ignore even though it is absent from the ground level Core Theory. 

It also needs to be said that not everyone is onboard to the notion that time is an emergent property. Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, while he recommends this book, disagrees with that and various other arguments found therein. It is worthwhile to read his counter-arguments in his review of this book https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/science-big-picture-mysteries-remain/. For example, Smolin argues that “We know exactly how to make a robot, but have no idea how to design or construct a human being (except the old fashioned way). How can we confidently claim that they are the same? The argument seems to be that the universe is a machine, so humans and robots — as subsystems of that universe — must be machines too. This begs the question, because different machines operate by different principles, and the principles needed to make our minds comprehensible remain unknown.” On this particular point I am inclined to agree with Smolin.

Unlike Smolin, Sean Carroll rejects David Chamber’s argument that unconscious zombies that are physically identical to conscious people and that mimic the behavior of conscious people are conceivable which Chambers then claims implies consciousness is a property of the universe. Sean Carroll says consciousness is an emergent property of particular physical systems and therefore is an inevitable property of such physical systems, so such philosophical zombies are inconceivable. I am inclined to agree with Carroll’s perspective here, along with most of what Carroll argues in his book. But to be fair, I have not read a book by Smolin, if I did then maybe he would convince me otherwise.

The central disagreement appears to be whether matter has additional, fundamental, irreducible properties beyond those described by the laws of physics as they are understood today. Smolin says yes, Carroll argues no. After reading Carroll’s book, it is my opinion that Carroll has compelling arguments that the known laws of physics are incompatible with the existence of such additional, fundamental, irreducible properties. Smolin is no doubt right to point out that our current understanding is still cloudy, giving us some reason to think we may be missing significant details which, if eventually found, could substantially revise our big picture understanding. However, citing such a possibility is not a particularly strong refutation of Carroll’s arguments.