Good news in the pronoun wars: $400k payout for professor

[Loren Pechtel]

She has talked about a RPG character, I expected her to recognize my joking about her dragon color. Black dragons are evil and have a breath weapon of acid--hence my pick of a strong base. White dragons are evil and have a breath weapon of cold.

I have only played D&D once in my entire life, and that was 20 years ago.

I mostly do book clubs. Lit is my life.

I figured someone who had done any RPG would be aware of D&D.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

She has talked about a RPG character, I expected her to recognize my joking about her dragon color. Black dragons are evil and have a breath weapon of acid--hence my pick of a strong base. White dragons are evil and have a breath weapon of cold.

I have only played D&D once in my entire life, and that was 20 years ago.

I mostly do book clubs. Lit is my life.

I figured someone who had done any RPG would be aware of D&D.

I have not played a video game in 15 years. I have been doing harmless bits of RP in chats since the late 1990's, though.

Everything that I do is live and spur of the moment, though. I never save logs, and I never plan anything. It is like jazz: you have to be there in the moment, or it is not the same.

I love jazz. A trip to New Orleans is worth it because a really good live jazz performance has a way of distorting the reality around you. It is not just the music, but it is the personal charisma of the performers.

Well, take the same effect, and apply it to completely off-the-cuff RP with some friends online. It is not just the RP, but it is the moment in the conversation where you start doing it. You don't plan on doing it, but that is just what you are doing, at some point, and you don't even think about it. Sometimes, you don't even think about it until the moment has passed. You just get into these moments of disinhibition, and your guard is completely down. You can't force it to happen. It just does. It is not the same as when I am inserting small pieces or RP into my posts, but it is more immersive. Things seem to happen on their own for a while.

@Jarhyn might understand.

Sometimes, I use it as a tool, in more serious conversations, to remind myself not to take myself too seriously. I often find middle-ground with people, more readily, when I let my guard down with them a little, and I open myself up to more of a personal connection. It helps me move away from extremist or all-or-nothing thinking.

The RP is just the gimmick that I personally use in order to fire up those particular neurons, though. There is no scientific reason why that particular device would work better than any other gimmick that you used to achieve the same effect. It is not the fact that you do it that is important, but what is important is that you are letting your guard down and distancing yourself from all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking. Whatever gimmick you use really does not matter. A parrot-size black dragon is just objectively more fun.

If I had to guess, I would think that the reason why it works is related to the default mode network. You might know about the DMN, but for review, the DMN just constitutes the parts of your brain that are at work when you are daydreaming or letting your mind wander. Some of these parts of your brain are also necessary for empathy, though.

Anyhow, I have never really thought out any particular system of rules that I should feel compelled to stick to because it has always been a thoroughly informal thing for me. I do not think that I could really enjoy a structured RPG if I wanted to.

I think that giving ourselves such moments of "further deponent sayeth naught" can really lead to us behaving more like adults.

 

[Jarhyn]

She has talked about a RPG character, I expected her to recognize my joking about her dragon color. Black dragons are evil and have a breath weapon of acid--hence my pick of a strong base. White dragons are evil and have a breath weapon of cold.

I have only played D&D once in my entire life, and that was 20 years ago.

I mostly do book clubs. Lit is my life.

I figured someone who had done any RPG would be aware of D&D.

I have not played a video game in 15 years. I have been doing harmless bits of RP in chats since the late 1990's, though.

Everything that I do is live and spur of the moment, though. I never save logs, and I never plan anything. It is like jazz: you have to be there in the moment, or it is not the same.

I love jazz. A trip to New Orleans is worth it because a really good live jazz performance has a way of distorting the reality around you. It is not just the music, but it is the personal charisma of the performers.

Well, take the same effect, and apply it to completely off-the-cuff RP with some friends online. It is not just the RP, but it is the moment in the conversation where you start doing it. You don't plan on doing it, but that is just what you are doing, at some point, and you don't even think about it. Sometimes, you don't even think about it until the moment has passed. You just get into these moments of disinhibition, and your guard is completely down. You can't force it to happen. It just does. It is not the same as when I am inserting small pieces or RP into my posts, but it is more immersive. Things seem to happen on their own for a while.

@Jarhyn might understand.

Sometimes, I use it as a tool, in more serious conversations, to remind myself not to take myself too seriously. I often find middle-ground with people, more readily, when I let my guard down with them a little, and I open myself up to more of a personal connection. It helps me move away from extremist or all-or-nothing thinking.

The RP is just the gimmick that I personally use in order to fire up those particular neurons, though. There is no scientific reason why that particular device would work better than any other gimmick that you used to achieve the same effect. It is not the fact that you do it that is important, but what is important is that you are letting your guard down and distancing yourself from all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking. Whatever gimmick you use really does not matter. A parrot-size black dragon is just objectively more fun.

If I had to guess, I would think that the reason why it works is related to the default mode network. You might know about the DMN, but for review, the DMN just constitutes the parts of your brain that are at work when you are daydreaming or letting your mind wander. Some of these parts of your brain are also necessary for empathy, though.

Anyhow, I have never really thought out any particular system of rules that I should feel compelled to stick to because it has always been a thoroughly informal thing for me. I do not think that I could really enjoy a structured RPG if I wanted to.

I think that giving ourselves such moments of "further deponent sayeth naught" can really lead to us behaving more like adults.

There's something about moments such as those.

Honestly D&D is the crappiest of all platforms. I would rather freeform storytelling, loosely structured around some D&D tropes, personally. When people have to roll dice, I am pretty sure I'm doing my job wrong as a DM/Storyteller.

Indeed moments such as those encompass a great deal of what makes life livable. What wonderful absurdities can be imagined? What absurd realities can be engineered from such imaginings?

This is what makes us "more", adding chaos to ourselves and using it to see further.

It is the key knocking off the tap of the leaky faucet of inspiration so that it becomes a gushing torrent.

To that end, I highly recommend watching "Everything Everywhere All at Once". There is a juicy metaphor for something amazing in that movie.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Then again, I am the same person that gets told, by psychedelic enthusiasts, "please, do not do psychedelics. You are already too much like that. If people take drugs to get how you just are, you should not take the same drugs."

 

[Bomb#20]

I already stated my positions upthread and if you'd read for content instead of reading for tirade triggers you wouldn't have found them unclear.

But on one point my position is pretty much the same as yours: that evidence is required to back up truth claims. You are not conscientious about not making truth claims without evidence. Over and over, you make claims you have no evidence for about what's going on in other people's minds. My position is that you ought to stop doing that.

Not everything that I say is specifically a response to your particular views. I have a lot to say on the subject, in general.

*snaps her tail with a loud crack*

Now, pay attention. There are others in this thread besides you and myself.

You pay attention, Meatlug. Not everything I say about your posts is specifically about me. There are a lot of people you make truth claims about that you have no evidence for.

There is at least one douche-flute here that claims that the fact that I am transgender is "just a thought in my head," regardless of the fact that I have offered evidence to the contrary.

Have you taken into account that "a thought in your head" may not carry the same implications to the so-called "douche-flute" as it carries to you? It sounds like you're assuming what he means is that there is no neurological basis for your transgenderism. That's not what he means.

There is at least one raving lunatic here that claims that I am trying to bring an end to civilization only by asking people around me to call me she/her, s'il vous plait, merci beaucoup.

Not sure which raving lunatic you have in mind; but have you considered the possibility that he or she was being sarcastic?

There were no babies in the studies you posted. How the heck do you figure anisotropy in diffusion in the brains observed in teenagers and adults says anything one way or the other about whether the anisotropy arose before they were born or during childhood?

In other words, you ask us to speculate that the brain has a degree of plasticity that it does not, as far as anyone knows, have.

Why do you do that? Why do you over and over ignore the plain meaning of the words people say to you and impute some completely different meaning to it? I didn't say a bloody thing about brain plasticity. Read it again, and this time read for content. I'm obviously talking about the timing of brain changes. You made a truth claim about when something happens, and you say empirical evidence is required for truth claims, but nothing you presented was evidence for when brain diffusion becomes anisotropic. What time a change happens has jack squat to do with how plastic anything is.

I find such naivette, regarding how the central nervous system develops, to be shocking. It is doubtful to me that such large differences in connectivity are amenable to changing readily during development. I assumed that most people possessed of any interest in science at all understood that the brain you have is, to a large extent, the brain you are stuck with. Besides subtle things you can do to guard yourself against cognitive degeneration later in life and weak evidence regarding the efficacy of nootropics like bacopa monnierri and hericium erinaceus, your ability to change how your brain is connected, throughout most of your lifetime, is actually a little bit limited. While you can slightly improve your general cognitive performance over long periods of time if you do a lot to exercise your brain every day, it is actually unusual and extraordinary if you can fundamentally change how your brain is put together. I tend to take this to be general knowledge.

See, this is what I'm on about. You don't listen! I talk about timing, you tell me I'm talking about plasticity, so I tell you I'm talking about timing and not plasticity, and then you bloody well lecture me about "your ability to change how your brain is connected", as though I hadn't said any of what I just said even though you just quoted it back to me.

Therefore, I was really shocked when you asked me when a person's brain becomes this way. As far as I know, the way that y our brain is fundamentally put together when you are a small child is a fairly good predictor of how it will be fundamentally put together when you are an adult.

Um, "when you are a small child" does not equal "when you are born".

If you want me to, I can cite a single study that specifically finds sex-atypical brain connectivity in transgender children. This article by a team including Nota, Kruekels, and several other highly educated doctors concludes that transgender children have sex-atypical brains. If you want to pull up the entire article on Sci-Hub, then be my guest. Here is the abstract.

Brain functional connectivity patterns in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Sex-atypical or not?​

Author links open overlay panelNienke M.NotaaBaudewijntje P.C.Kreukelsb
Martinden HeijeraDick J.VeltmancPeggy T.Cohen-KettenisbSarah M.Burked1JulieBakkerbe1

​

Various previous studies have reported that brains of people diagnosed with gender dysphoria (GD) show sex-atypical features. In addition, recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies found that several brain resting-state networks (RSNs) in adults with GD show functional connectivity (FC) patterns that are not sex-atypical, but specific for GD. In the current study we examined whether FC patterns are also altered in prepubertal children and adolescents with GD in comparison with non-gender dysphoric peers. We investigated FC patterns within RSNs that were previously examined in adults: visual networks (VNs), sensorimotor networks (SMNs), default mode network (DMN) and salience network. Thirty-one children (18 birth assigned males; 13 birth assigned females) and 40 adolescents with GD (19 birth assigned males or transgirls; 21 birth assigned females or transboys), and 39 cisgender children (21 boys; 18 girls) and 41 cisgender adolescents (20 boys; 21 girls) participated. We used independent component analysis to obtain the network maps of interest and compared these across groups. Within one of the three VNs (VN-I), adolescent transgirls showed stronger FC in the right cerebellum compared with all other adolescent groups. Sex differences in FC between the cisgender adolescent groups were observed in the right supplementary motor area within one of the two SMNs (SMN-II; girls > boys) and the right posterior cingulate gyrus within the posterior DMN (boys > girls). Within these networks adolescent transgirls showed FC patterns similar to their experienced gender (female). Also adolescent transboys showed a FC pattern similar to their experienced gender (male), but within the SMN-II only. The prepubertal children did not show any group differences in FC, suggesting that these emerge with aging and during puberty. Our findings provide evidence for the existence of both GD-specific and sex-atypical FC patterns in adolescents with GD.​

​

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.09.014​

For the love of god, do you even read the citations you quote? It says right there in the abstract you posted,

"The prepubertal children did not show any group differences in FC, suggesting that these emerge with aging and during puberty."​

How in the name of ever-loving Cthulhu do you figure their evidence favors the "from birth" hypothesis over the "from childhood" hypothesis?

I think that the chances that transgender children are not set on that course from birth are trivial. The science is still young, but I think that it will eventually be proved that transgender people literally are born as such, assuming it has not been already and I have merely failed to find the publication that proves it.

That is entirely plausible, but until somebody shows it can be predicted from birth, I shall remain agnostic on that question. You said it: truth claims require evidence.

*looks at you levelly with her absinthe-green eyes, and her white teeth flash against her scaly, jet muzzle as she speaks*

Sorry, I don't think I can help picturing you as Meatlug.

Unless current conclusions regarding the likely bounds of neural plasticity were to have changed, I suspect that you would engage in outright magical thinking rather than the simpler acknowledgement that a person's gender identity is set at least by childhood.

Of course you would. You don't have a reason to suspect such a thing of me. Right there in the text I wrote that you quoted back to me, I offered childhood as the obvious alternative to in-utero. But you wouldn't let that stop you from making up garbage about me. You're a dragon, and you don't care.

It constitutes a politically meaningless difference, except perhaps to a father that thinks he can stop his son from being transgender by teaching him to fish, skin a deer, and play football. You don't strike me as that stupid.

"It constitutes a politically meaningless difference", she says. That's a woke consideration. If you don't want to be perceived as woke, don't think like the woke. They tend to use three-valued logic: they vet hypotheses for political implications before they allow evidence for truth or falsehood in the door.

What made you tell me "good faith" required me to agree with you that it's fixed from birth? Surely it was because in your mind, the opposite of fixed-from-birth was "you can fundamentally change how your brain is put together". And that possibility is not "a politically meaningless difference", so you needed assurance that I was vetting such hypotheses for political implications like any good little three-valued-logic thinker. Sorry, no can do.

You said it: truth claims require evidence. I'm stuck with my binary-logic brain. Can't help it -- it's a neurological condition.

There is significantly more developmental plasticity, then. It requires less imagination than it takes to suggest that gender identity somehow forms during childhood.

True; but imagination is a poor substitute for evidence, and according to you, the researchers you cited found neural correlates of transgenderism in adolescents but not in prepubescents.

I suspect it requires less imagination to think characteristics are prenatal than to think they're postnatal simply because we humans are so much more familiar with humans than with other mammals that we haven't really grokked that all human babies are preemies.

For us to do otherwise is untenable, and to demand otherwise of us is deranged.

Please point out the post in which somebody here demanded otherwise of you.

Someone demanding that I should be called by male pronouns only because of my assigned sex at birth is deranged, and I think it's kind of crazy. Some of the more extreme anti-wokeists demand this. Maybe you haven't, but you would be surprised at how often I run into anti-wokeists that insist on that lunacy. That is without even going on Twitter. I'm not even sure what happens on there.

No, please, don't accuse me of projecting that onto you. I am complaining about it to you...

I think I mentioned that not everything I say about your posts is specifically about me. I haven't heard anyone demand that you should be called by male pronouns only, or demand that you stop asking to have female pronouns used for you, s'il vous plait. Maybe you've heard such demands; but then again, maybe you've heard something quite different, and you took it to mean they were making such demands because, as I think I mentioned, you don't listen.

What I have frequently heard others express is disinclination to call you by female pronouns themselves. That's about their own autonomy over their own speech; it's not a demand that the rest of us conform our speech to the terminological convention they're accustomed to. They are not pronoun busybodies, telling others what pronouns to use. They are pronoun anarchists. You of all people should sympathize with that perspective, Ms. Nestor Makhno fangirl.