Well, as it happens, the only example personally known to me at present of someone who contemplated getting a job and changed their mind because of the impact on benefits
Unless you regularly interact with the type of people who live in underclass ghettos, or the class of people sometimes called “white trash”, it’s not surprising that you personally haven’t met people like this.
(Famous examples: “Abstinence-only” sex ed in schools doesn’t stop kids having sex, but it does make them more likely to get pregnant when they do. Restricting the availability of contraception increases the incidence of abortion and single-parent families, both of which the opponents of contraception usually say they’re more strongly opposed to.)
Setting aside the validity of these examples, I note that none of them are actually examples of incentives.
Let’s continue that discussion when you’re prepared to engage seriously with what I’m saying.
I am engaging seriously. I merely applied your epistemology to a slightly different domain and suddenly it becomes clear how silly it is.
OK. So if a trans person’s brain structure, personality, behaviours, etc., were found to be nearer typical-female than typical-male, would you then consider them something other than deluded/hallucinating/bullshitting? What sort of differences in brain structure would be most relevant? (Brain structure is kinda hard to explore, beyond the very coarsest features; what if we couldn’t tell about brain structure but their personality and behaviours were “more female than male”?)
Frankly, I have a hard time believing that something would mess up the development of precisely the sexual characteristics expressed in the brain.
Could you briefly describe your own interactions with that segment of the population?
I note that none of them are actually examples of incentives.
I’d say they’re about as much so as your example of alleged-rape-victim policy. (E.g., if you teach teenagers that they must be sexually abstinent and make it clear that any sexual non-abstinence is disapproved of, you intend to give an incentive not to have sex, but you also give an incentive not to have contraceptives, and then when other deeper-rooted incentives lead them to have sex after all they do it unprotected.)
I merely applied your epistemology to a slightly different domain
Nope, you applied a straw-man version of my epistemology to a very different domain.
Frankly, I have a hard time believing [...]
Noted. I don’t see why that should make it impossible to answer my questions.
(It seems to me that all kinds of individual things in the brain can get messed up, so it would be rather unsurprising if individual things related to sex/gender did; and that since a lot of sex-related things are surely controlled together (after all, in typical men and typical women they go together) it would not be surprising if they could go wrong together.)
when they go wrong together, they affect both brain and body
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I was conjecturing that there may be single changes in brain development that affect multiple sex-related things in the brain; if so, it would be unsurprising for those things to go wrong together even without changes elsewhere in the body.
Should I take it that you don’t intend to answer the questions I asked at the end of the great-great-grandparent of this comment? Of course you’re under no sort of obligation to answer any questions at all, but I do find it quite interesting how consistently unwilling you are to clarify your statements and opinions in this discussion.
Unless you regularly interact with the type of people who live in underclass ghettos, or the class of people sometimes called “white trash”, it’s not surprising that you personally haven’t met people like this.
Setting aside the validity of these examples, I note that none of them are actually examples of incentives.
I am engaging seriously. I merely applied your epistemology to a slightly different domain and suddenly it becomes clear how silly it is.
Frankly, I have a hard time believing that something would mess up the development of precisely the sexual characteristics expressed in the brain.
Could you briefly describe your own interactions with that segment of the population?
I’d say they’re about as much so as your example of alleged-rape-victim policy. (E.g., if you teach teenagers that they must be sexually abstinent and make it clear that any sexual non-abstinence is disapproved of, you intend to give an incentive not to have sex, but you also give an incentive not to have contraceptives, and then when other deeper-rooted incentives lead them to have sex after all they do it unprotected.)
Nope, you applied a straw-man version of my epistemology to a very different domain.
Noted. I don’t see why that should make it impossible to answer my questions.
(It seems to me that all kinds of individual things in the brain can get messed up, so it would be rather unsurprising if individual things related to sex/gender did; and that since a lot of sex-related things are surely controlled together (after all, in typical men and typical women they go together) it would not be surprising if they could go wrong together.)
[EDITED to fix a trivial typo.]
Not much either, which is why I don’t cite my experience as evidence.
Agreed, and they sometimes do. However when they go wrong together, they effect both brain and body.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I was conjecturing that there may be single changes in brain development that affect multiple sex-related things in the brain; if so, it would be unsurprising for those things to go wrong together even without changes elsewhere in the body.
Should I take it that you don’t intend to answer the questions I asked at the end of the great-great-grandparent of this comment? Of course you’re under no sort of obligation to answer any questions at all, but I do find it quite interesting how consistently unwilling you are to clarify your statements and opinions in this discussion.