 We're very excited to start our second panel for the day on topics CRT as well as trans rights. Thanks to you all for being here. Thanks to our speakers and we're going to start with trans rights. I will start the first question in particular whether or not trans women should be in women's prisons was one of the questions that was submitted. So thanks so much to the panelists. The floor is all yours. We're asking whether or not trans women should be in the same prison systems as cis women. Exactly. The reason why we have them separated out is usually safety reasons why men and women don't occupy the same spaces in prison. So as weird as it sounds we could probably use Olympic standards or something to determine whether or not a trans woman should be in a cisgender women prison or with cis men I guess maybe. So like if you've been on hormones for one year or two years or something then maybe you should be able to or if you're in the process of transitioning maybe you should be able to. It's maybe something like that would be my guess but the problem you'd have to face on the other side though is that if you put somebody that's just beginning a transition into a cisgender prison that person probably actually I know they do it's like 13 times higher risk of facing some sort of violent action in prison as opposed to a cisgender person so I mean you have to face that as well. I would probably be okay with those types of standards. I think that the biggest fear that we are dealing with when we talk about these issues is whether biological women are going to be put into harm's way. I think we should at least address that. I think that going under hormone therapy, transitionary surgery and making sure that you have an accurate notation from a therapist I believe goes a long way in alleviating a lot of those fears for both biological and trans women. I would go with we should do whatever is required for the safety of each inmates which if that includes having different sexes or different weight classes of prison things like that's fine I mean whatever benefits the most safety I haven't looked at all into the evidence of what would benefit the most safety but whatever should more safety good. I think that prisons should be boring and not dangerous in the sense that you have your at risk that anybody is at risk from assault or whatever so maybe we should bring back some of like the asylum type prisons and maybe that would be the solution I don't know. You got another question that was submitted was whether or not or I should say what age trans children would be able to use hormone therapy. That is another hard question. We are dealing with people who can't consent themselves and so you need to follow the guidance of both your child on one hand and then the doctors and the people who have know what they're doing on the other. We are dealing with a feelings-based issue which tends to be very subjective and so when your child is coming to you and complaining and crying I assume it breaks your heart and so without jumping into anything without pushing anything on the children which I know is also another fear I believe that you could take them to a viable therapist that will eliminate if there are any other problems along the way and then I also think there is a sliding scale of how much you should actually do so we shouldn't be putting children on hormones because children don't produce hormones and so you want to actively look at how a puberty would go and try to mirror those effects. I think for when it comes to children's medical decisions I think it should be left to the doctors and the parents and ideally the children as well. The idea that we would play some state restriction on some types of health care for children when children should have access to all the health care they need I think is pretty silly. I think it should be that that should be a decision left to whatever team of counselors or psychologists are working with the child and the parents and I don't think there needs to be a state intervention there to determine that there needs to be some minimum age before somebody can access some sort of medical treatment. From my understanding on the topic of the people who do transition a very small percent regret the transition but of the people who feel dysboric and in some way desire a transition a very large percent have a remission rate of that desire when measured as kids so it seems like based on the science there is probably some age at which we should wait until they reach this age before we actually allow them to have a permanent surgery transition because there is such a high percent of people who initially want that who inevitably change their mind but at the same time because the surgery is so expensive right now it seems like of the people who do transition a very small percent of them regret it so it's a hard hard thing to assess but I'd leave it up to the scientists and I'd say yeah we probably should establish an age I'd probably go with age of consent 16 or something around there just as a easy baseline until we have a harder science on the topic. I first of all I take issue with the notion that it's hormone therapy because therapy is has connotations of helping people I think it's more like hormone synanigans and I think that definitely the the father frequently is left out or forced out of these decisions and the father is being called frequently like harmful to the kid when I think the the other way the opposite is happening the harm to the kid is pushed by the mother or whoever the doctors this the the people at schools with an agenda so and I see even in the media like I saw this headline from Yahoo News transgender children who start hormone treatment during adolescence experience better mental health than those who wait until adulthood according to some study so it makes me just leery that we're that people are differing more and more to scientists or so-called scientists and psychologists and all that stuff when at one point we we deferred to men fathers god pastors who in a in a way they've lost their authority because people are so weakened today but I don't think that it should be sort of I just don't think that it should be before 18 but definitely the fathers need to be involved. I just want to talk about this notion of it being pushed because I think it it is a fear that I think can be alleviated with conversation because I think there is a narrative out there that it is the it is the liberal mom trying to push the the gender theory on to their child I have found the complete opposite I understand that experience is anything else but hearsay but in my own experience I have found that it's coming out to both the parents sometimes especially as a male to female I think it's hard to come out to the father figure because you are leaving the male gender and yet I I think we can include the dad we can make sure that they are following the right procedures and making sure the child comes out as a healthy functioning adult you're saying that you've seen fathers pushing it on the kids no I have seen almost universally that it is the child being or whoever is transitioning very hesitant they're not excited to talk to the father yeah not like hey mom and dad I'm transgender generally you know it is a situation that you need to talk out that a lot of times I feel that a parent may be feeling like they're losing a child and so you need to have those conversations but I feel like I came the other way around to the point that I now have a better relationship with my parents than before question for hake yeah if it was proven beyond just the bias of the scientist but in reality that they did leave healthier lives if they did transition would you be for that I I still don't think I would honestly because I think that there are other ways because what we're addressing is like mental health of the person right so even I take issue with the term mental health really but I don't think that I would be for that because it seems like a false solution to a symptom rather than the root issue if that makes sense like the root issue you deal with it a lot of people get twisted in all kinds of different ways we all have our issues and many times we just don't overcome them but to prop this up as something right that we should go along with when honestly it just feels like insanity you know we question about that yeah when you say the real issue isn't the root issue quality of life and so if they have a lower quality of life whatever helps them to have a benefit of quality life is solving the root issue regardless of whether or not that ties into some kind of biology or not even if it's completely not connected to biology in any way like say they wanted to install a horn on their head or something if that improves their quality of life isn't that solving the root issue I don't say so because that's like a like the horn on the head it's a it's like a silly solution like we need to the solution is to be like at peace with reality you know where we have we all have our issues and we need to overcome them or just keep them within and just be quiet stay in the closet if you will with our issues and have have a have some shame and dignity show respect for others by hiding your issues that seems really immoral to me because it seems like you're saying that people should be enslaved to reality in the way that reality has forced whatever on them like if they're paraplegic whatever instead of using technology to overcome reality to better fit people's mental state so to me it seems like the moral thing to do would be to to change biology reality in whatever way we can in order to make it more comfortable for people like we do with all technology why would we defer to biology or reality and how is that not just an appeal to nature fallacy well the paraplegic thing is it's like a totally different issue clearly like because that's that's not a state of mind or a state of the soul or whatever well isn't that it's affecting the state of mind so the reason they would does affect them yeah well the reason they would not want to be paraplegic is because they'd be happier if they wouldn't so isn't it giving them the ability to not be paraplegic how is that any different from somebody giving them the ability to feel more comfortable with themselves by adding a horn or any other surgery but more important too like what I know that you know is like your state of mind is very powerful in changing your sense of sense of well-being even in a rough situation like we can look at somebody who's paraplegic and they can be happy and fulfilled and then we're feeling sorry for them but they're not mentally going through what we're what we're going through in looking at them for some but others not so much but that's that's what I mean is like that's those are some of the ways like healing the mind and the soul is much more important than addressing the physical things that can give you that can give you some make your life nicer but shouldn't that be up to them like because some people may want to find solace in their internal strife like monks did they gain from the suffering but some other people may like no I'd rather walk shouldn't they have the freedom to choose that isn't that the moral thing to do to give them that option yeah I'm not going to impose on somebody who's an adult wanting to do this but I do question the doctors who are doing this with with the transgender's I mean we're supposed to do no harm but yet they're they've they're justifying through these different studies that oh this is not doing harm but I think that it is well that's my question is if it improves their well-being that seems to be the opposite of doing harm but I don't believe that that's well-being really because that's a um that's propping up making them feel better for being wrong if that makes sense don't you think it's kind of like somebody basically has to be bought into your religious outlook otherwise they're going to totally disagree with you isn't that a problem but honestly this is it's not just a religious outlook it's also like a common sense okay so common sense if we having a disagreement of common sense then we need to appeal to something besides a common sense right I suppose so so if I'm not a religious person and I don't think that there's some fundamental good of the father or christ or god or whatever yeah you see somebody that is in distress right like I don't think t-jump is immoral because he wears glasses right making an adaptation to his body to better fit you know like the world we have right so could you not argue similarly for trans people that feel like their brain is miswired in some way it seems like it's really hard to move the brain over to the body like we haven't been able to do that in therapy yet and I believe a lot of people would like that I think most trans people would like it if they could just make their brain match their body and not have to worry about that right yeah so if it is the case that the only way to improve their outcomes which is what therapy is therapy is something where you have a treatment that improves the outcomes relative to the risk of the treatment so we do have something that we can use like either surgeries or hormones wouldn't it be good to have people have the option to pursue those I'm not standing in the way of them doing it if you I just question the wisdom and the and the decency of the doctors and the people who are purporting to be on their side when in reality I think that their wolves and sheep's clothing like even if they don't even if even if they're not aware of it because they are they're thinking that they're helping but in reality this a lot of this stuff is not actually helping can I ask do you believe that they are the psychiatrists and the medical health doctors in mass are conspiring to push this as the I don't think it's a conspiring because conspiracy means secretive when in reality they're just openly for it I think that that people in general all people are diluted we all have to overcome our delusions or don't most of the time we never overcome them and so I think that we have a culture where this is pushed and so like in a lot of ways there's pressure from their fellows it's kind of like the the emperor who had no clothes everybody was afraid to say the emperor has no clothes except for the little child so it's kind of that I feel like it's somewhat in that situation what is your standard for assessing what health is because to me it's mental well-being happiness you're saying that if even though it may give them greater mental well-being and happiness it's not what is what is the other way I don't know but but the same thing that we all have to go through we all have to we all have issues that we just can't overcome and we have to deal with them mitigate them hide them stuff like that but do you think that all forms of mental health are like fake diseases so like ADHD is fake and schizophrenia is fake and do you think that none of these are real that all of these can be overcome without any sort of like therapeutic assistance not necessarily okay but it sounds like you're saying you just need to take the burden I mean shouldn't we be trying to figure out how we overcome so an example I will give is that the diagnosis is gender dysphoria and yet in transitioning in being able to do all this I've become comfortable with my body I've actually lost my gender dysphoria I actually feel comfy I just love living life now and so isn't that the the best result isn't that what we're looking for in everyone I don't know if I don't know if it is because we all have like anger and evil within that we have to overcome still like I'm sure you have still dealing with some sometimes anger or some type of issue that you still have to overcome and I think that those maybe those are the root I just yeah I think that that's I think that I think that the root of anger and sin and evil can come can crop up in all sorts of different symptoms it sounds like what you're saying though is that you maybe pushed it down or the problems not over the problems never end I mean I would agree with you that I still deal with hardships and heartbreak and all of the things that we sorrow over and I you get angry and you do things that you regret and apologize for but I think that's just part of the human experience I think that to use a religious firm I think it transcends the biological and transgender what transcends the biological trying to become a functional member of society which I think is what transitioning does I think it has given me a method we're all depressed as teenagers but this was dark hole a start moment soul moment and after you reach that you start to dig up and it has been only up since there not saying that it's not like a you know up and down but I would say the trend I've never been more happy to be part of Western society than right now I guess I couldn't have been alive because I wasn't alive but I am very thankful that I was given the chance to make my inside match my outside and now I can just do whatever I want I'm not I mean I'm not taking the the right to to try to like I think we're all groping around in the darkness trying to find solutions to our inner issues I'm not taking that away from you I'm just saying that I don't think that it's right and I do question the people who are who are pushing this as something that we should be promoting and proud about and stuff like that but you would have it be illegal for children I yeah I would so then you are trying to take away the right of some people right but any but yes you're trying to take away the rights of the parents of the children of the children themselves and then of their right medical team okay yeah I think I would be for all of that what you just said okay yeah we'll jump into the next broad topic for the panel in particular CRT and the first question being whether or not it should be taught in public school I think that the CRT thing is like I think it's just a big red herring for whatever people want to argue about critical race theory proper is not really taught outside of college we can argue whether like ideas that are downstream from CRT have kind of permeated some forms of curriculum and I think that it's valid to have those conversations but rather than having good conversations about what extent do we teach you know the liability that we should have for things we've done in the past it becomes this weird dick-waving contest where I guess some people on the left want to say like white people are evil and they should be kissing the boots of black people and then people on the right are saying well actually you know the slaves were lucky to be here we didn't know wrong like you know Indians were savages fuck all that I don't know the whole CRT debate is like a brain rot debate where everybody can just kind of like smuggle in whatever issue they want to talk about and it seems like that's what that whole conversation has become I partially agree with what destiny said I think that CRT the debate about CRT has boiled down to more consequences of CRT rather than CRT itself I think that really the fundamental issues are that critical race theory employs faulty epistemologies that entails certain fallacious arguments like standpoint epistemology is a fundamental tenant of CRT in the promotional books which is the idea that we should allow the the victims of essentially racism and other categories to define what racism is which is like putting the defendant onto the the jury it's clearly counterproductive it's just an anecdotal fallacy so in order to if we adopted or promoted this kind of an ideology would give a heavy bias to this kind of fallacious reasoning which is scientifically inaccurate we've proven this is a bad way to do thinking secondly most of the policies that CRT promotes are policies which have been promoted by other non inherently fallacious ideologies and so you can still promote these things like teaching classes about the bad crap in American history there's lots of places that do that it's just mostly the Texas Board of Education that doesn't want that which seems racist but there are other ways to go about this other than adopting these lived experience storytelling counter storytelling methodologies that are inherently fallacious I think that critical race theory has become a buzzword and a focus they have wanted to try and go after something and I think that the fear once again is going after children and so you I I don't think that this is often taught in school I will say that critical race theory is trying to just trying to sess out if there was different damage to different groups I'm and trying to figure out their word is intersectionality between them I would like to put an addendum that I am critical of the theory of race and so I am skeptical of teaching anyone in the K through 12 system about I don't want to separate people I think we should teach them the general history the the real history because we have the United States has done both horrific and amazing things and it can't be one or the other and so we need to be able to have good conversations between what they all citizens so that we can continue to enjoy a pluralistic society and if there are people who are disenfranchised it doesn't matter who they are we should go and try to help them I think that this whole notion of social justice there is no such thing as social justice in practice like this like when they add this stuff it means not real justice they tend to reverse things and overcompensate for perceived past wrongs when I was growing up we were we learned that there were decent and harsh good and bad slave owners and we learned both things and we weren't taught that America was all perfect in everything but now I don't think that I do agree that the critical race theory is something that's latched on to by people who don't really have the parents and the children's best interests at heart a lot of rhinos will jump on border with this and they'll just I've I barely heard of this thing like this last year but I do believe that the notion of racism has been pushed in schools and in culture for decades really and it's like whites are the only ones primarily who've been accused of this racism thing when in reality everybody's everybody acts in this way that they call racist and it's most of the time it's not a big deal it's not anything that they're they should be punishing I think that we should be maybe teaching this notion this false notion and and also teach the truth we should teach about communism and anti-communism in America so that the children are not seduced by it by people who are who are like a lot liars we have like young women who are fresh out of college teaching anti-racism and black lives matter nonsense to young kids and that's that's a mistake if there's not any disagreement we've actually burned through the prepared questions or the submitted questions so this might be a good chance for an exploratory discussion I don't want to throw questions or topics especially at you guys that you hadn't been told would be on here so it might be a chance to ask each other questions in terms of things you might have comments about regarding other talks that they've given in the past things that you might object to whatever it might be I have one specifically on this topic destiny which of you on critical race theory uh for you with the term you use the real thing not the straw man so I think that it's important when we look through when we look through theories um especially when it comes to theories like critical theory critical race theory um or like critical legal theory I think it's important to understand that these things are just like tools that we can use through which to view society and when treated in that manner I'm generally okay with most of the uh from what I'm aware of most of the things that are being pushed by I see being pushed by some of the parameters of critical race theory so something that you brought up um was some people have a problem uh epistemically with this idea of a storyteller um being like the focus point of some critical race theory I can understand why people might be upset about that and I think that when it comes to drawing broad trends sociologically it's good to look at like numbers and data but I think it's important to understand that when we talk about sociology ultimately at the end of the day where we're analyzing the individual and how they act in large groups so I think it's good that we have a lens through which if we're going to say broadly speaking this is the story of um an average American an average working class person an average middle class person average black person we should be able to have a tool through which we can analyze qualitatively individual stories of these people as well and there should be some uh like congruence at the end of the day between these two things so to come back I would never say like oh CRT is the one way that we should view society through but rather maybe it's another lens that we can employ to gain some greater understanding of why some data is the way that it is basically from a waiting standpoint do you think that the weight of the storytelling should be greater than or equal to the actual data because from my perspective my understanding of CRT the standpoint of epistemology overly waits the storytelling and then uses that to overrule the statistical data in many cases do you think that that's an appropriate way to do as long as CRT is one science maybe maybe not but as long as that's just one tool that you're using to analyze something I think it's okay to overweight the stories there in relationship to the data um again I like I'm a data guy I'm a pretty cold guy when it comes to analyzing situations but most people don't work that way and I think it's possible sometimes that you can miss um you can miss what's going on sometimes if you only look at the data like numbers might tell a certain story but maybe when you start getting down to the unit of the individual maybe we start getting a different story if you're having an issue where when you're looking qualitatively at individual stories and none of them seem to be lining up or a lot of them to be contradicting the data maybe that could be a good reference point by which to go back and choose different data to analyze potentially so then um would it be valid too to also if this were I don't think that you're necessarily advocating that it be taught or not taught in schools but then would you be fine with like the um the Southerner's story on like the civil war and leading up to it in afterwards because they have a totally a quite different narrative to what the civil war was about and all that stuff if the narrative is real sure um I think that it's good to teach different perspectives I think that having different perspectives is important I think that a lot of people on the right have a really difficult time understanding the perspective of people on the left but I think a lot of people on the left also have a really big deal or a lot of trouble understanding the perspectives of the right because you'll get into these arguments where like if you're opposed to crt it's because you're a racist fast fascist hateful anti everything person is like well that's not always the case either so I think there is value in both ends of that yeah because although I was taught that there were like good and bad slave owners I I just thought of the south growing up from my childhood as like oh they were the they're the bad guys when learning other stuff I'm like oh okay that was there they had a they had an actual side that you could understand sure I mean you can have good and bad slave owners as possible but like the institution as a whole is probably but that's yeah that's yeah that's not my point so much is just what their what their their side of the story was you know what I mean yeah I understand there's going to be like there's going to be better like slave shop owners than other like for child labor some are going to be better than others but the institution of child labor is still probably not a good one right right no that's fine I have no so I think the issue sometimes you run into is when these arguments are brought out it might make people question the motivation for why the argument is brought out so somebody says slavery is a horrible institution we should rightfully condemn under the United States and then somebody counters that with well some slave owners were pretty nice then even if that's a defense of an individual or some group of people it almost comes off as a defense of the institution so I think you have to be really careful when you navigate those conversations my only my only point is not so much about this what the good and bad slave owners my point is um although I was taught that I didn't know what their complaint against the north was I was just taught they wanted slavery and they were racist I didn't know why they were racist or whatever if you will okay but can I ask can you what was the example of a good slave owner that you were given um they didn't really specify but I did I do know that like I think Thomas Jefferson Robert E. Lee um Robert E. Lee for example he he said that um slavery is a political and moral evil but he would he inherited this thing from his father-in-law I think but they're there no yeah he had his he inherited this thing from his father-in-law right he inherited this plantation and it was doing rough and so what are you supposed to do but you have to like have keep these slaves on I think eventually he wanted to get rid of them but he he wanted to keep these slaves on in order to save the um the property that he inherited from his father-in-law because otherwise it would have gone underwater and then the slaves would have been even worse off possibly who knows or free I don't know if you would just free them because you have to make some money off of I don't know it's a mess I had another question for destiny he mentioned that you said this would be okay as an epistemology to assess things now I other than standpoint epistemology the lived experience storytelling counter storytelling namely one's reality and the structural determinism are all very problematic when I look at this just accepting anything someone proposes as a alternative methodology to assess things and then calling it okay doesn't seem right to me unless there's some kind of evidential basis that they can actually accomplish something or has some kind of way to say that this is useful in some way rather than just saying well they're telling the story we're going to accept it why would this be an acceptable methodology is there any evidence that you've seen that this actually works to accomplish anything or give us other insights into reality more accurately than data or other scientific methods that don't have these fallacies um it's so I think that some stories can be better than others or some might be more relevant than others all I would use this for is that like I would imagine this is something that's going to tag alongside more heavily data driven empirical methods but that if we hear like certain stories over and over and over again maybe that's caused for it it's very hard to just like get a piece of data to capture everything of like the human mind like every human is an individual person all of us experience things sometimes in similar ways sometimes in different ways so I think it's really hard sometimes to just give people facts and say well this is the story this is what it is I think sometimes looking at like the the actual individual as a unit of analysis and then going by those stories I think that there is some value there now I would never come out and say something like um I can't even think of an example where there's like some heavily data driven thing like heart surgeries are successful 98 percent of the time and you get like the one or two percent where they're not successful and they're like oh well actually I think heart heart surgery sucks because my grandpa died from it I was like well it's an important story that should overrule the data um but rather like I think sometimes we get stories that don't always line up with the data and I think sometimes those stories are pretty important um because they can give us maybe something else to look at I think a really good example today um or maybe of all time would be economic situations right like the the way that the individual American sometimes feels about the economy doesn't map on neatly to unemployment it won't map on neatly to um inflation all the time it won't map on neatly to median wages um sometimes it might map on to like who's president sometimes it might map on to like uh what did Chris Tucker or Sean Hannity say yesterday night about the right or maybe don't map on to only gas prices so I think that there's sometimes there's a value where um people present data as being such such an easy way to tell a story it's very easy to look at data but it's very hard to select which data to look at so I think that there's some value in storytelling there and that like we can you know when you get like a full narrative to somebody maybe it'll give you a different point of reference to start investigating from well from what you just said that would be an argument against critical race theory that the people's feelings on the topic don't map on to the reality of how the economy is actually functioning and so we shouldn't trust their judgment on this but can you give any examples where critical race theory can give us a greater insight or has ever given us a greater insight other than the classical methods of science without critical race theories so um fuck my history so bad my understanding is that critical race theory um critical race theory I think sprung out when people were trying to use a critical legal theory lens to understand what changed in America that made it so that um I think it was so that we desegregated schools I think is what I think is when it started because um legislatively and legally I don't think anything had actually changed in the United States but it was um I don't know it was plus EV Ferguson or another case but something came up before the Supreme Court or Brown Reboard of Education um where all of a sudden we got a dramatically different ruling out of the Supreme Court but there wasn't really like a legal foundation or basis or precedent for why that happened it is my understanding and when you try to analyze it through like the critical theory critical legal theory people kind of didn't understand it as much and I think this was one of the big motivations for starting critical race theory we're like okay well let's try to take a different lens to look at it let's look at the culture of the US at the time let's look at race relations at the time and then through that lens there was a better understanding of like okay well with all these different pressures we can see why the supreme court maybe not from a strictly legal point of view but from like a cultural racial point of view might have made a different decision so that would be an example I think of where the prior critical theory failed to give a good analysis or something but feel like a critical race theory they felt like they had a better understanding of something is my understanding of where it's where it started from oh yeah it's totally right but we got to the same conclusion rather than rather than using critical theory or critical race theory we can just use basic philosophy and understanding of ethics and moral progress and analyzing these same things in social progress from a standpoint of a much more rigorous epistemology it seems like we get to the same answer or a better answer in the same topic so why would we ever trust this kind of epistemology specifically I think we're we had another debate recently where we're going to go back to the same uh foundation of our argument I would probably agree with you on most of these things like one on one but the problem is when you get into other people they're going to have disagreements on like what moral progress is or what these things are so again I think that when you graph data and look at it it's very easy to find like well this is a trend or this is a trend but the argument is going to be over well what points are we graphing how do we measure these particular things and I think that's where people are pointing towards narratives more to see if there's other things that can be measured essentially is is what I would imagine people would say with that we can if people well I do want to say if you have any like I mentioned I can add on one quick thing to that I'm sorry this is something I remember my psych class um I learned this in high school so it may or may not be true but I remember that um sometimes for psych experiments it's good to do debriefs to talk to people at the end to see why they did things because sometimes it's hard to understand um I want to say a long time ago there was an understanding that um like the amount of sleep that you got was like very very very big into playing how successful you were in school and when they actually had interviews with children that ever related to like how tired do you feel blah blah blah even though the data like very very cleanly lined up with more sleep meant more success in school and so we want to say there's like a causal link there and we can even explain biologically why sleeping is good when when it came down to like interviewing individual students um the interviews didn't line up some thought that it wasn't a big deal some didn't care how much sleep they got sometimes they you know it was hard to forget and then for the outliers um for some kids that didn't get much sleep at all and some kids that got way too much sleep they didn't feel like the sleep was helping or not helping at all and that was interesting but one thing that kept popping up again was a really dumb confound that they should have found was well a lot of the kids that were sleeping well were just from wealthier families and one of the big things is that there were like parents in the household that were making sure that they were sleeping but not only sleeping but things like doing school work attending extra curriculars etc and that when they started to look at like the family structure more and the support they were getting in the household that became you could fit a way cleaner line to that than you could by just looking at the sleep thing so that might be an example of where going down to the unit of the individual and getting people to tell stories that doesn't seem to like really line up with the data all the time or explain it gives us like a different thing to investigate and then we can go back to our more empirical tool and say okay well now that we've got these stories well let's investigate this thing and now we've got like a much cleaner line we can draw because we did like a qualitative analysis of the individual first I don't quite understand that because all the things you listed are all empirical data like metadata and confounding variables those don't come from stories those come from data so all of those things that you mentioned that were used to correct the data and find out it really wasn't the sleep it was all these other variables that's all classic psychology data empirical science stuff none of that was the storytelling we didn't get any of that from the storytelling so that I think the problem is there's I think there's a if I say the statement you agree to screw this there's a lot of normativity that precedes choosing data points do you agree that or disagree that do you want me to explain a little more I mean sort of so I think that there is definitely biases that are in like scientific ways of assessing data but I think that a lot of that a lot of science goes into trying to filter that out to the greatest extent for sure and I agree with that but I think there are still times when sometimes people can miss stories or miss like why people feel a certain way about something or miss how like different things can happen so that's like in a perfect world where we can just where we could crunch every single number and put it all in I don't think an individual story ever matters I think I would agree with that we could measure everything perfectly but it seems like sometimes starting from a different point of investigation or different using a different tool to investigate that we can take that back and say okay well actually let's look at this data point instead because we've talked to these people and I think even an even more rigorous science is like there there is value to this like you might have one person and their entire life they'll spend 20 years with like one tribe or somebody will spend 15 years researching just one political leader and then their life and how their life intersects with their political views and I think sometimes there's a value in that in that individual story there and then we can use that to either interpret data in a different way or look for different types of data even if maybe if we would have been smarter beforehand we could have avoided that whole story altogether potentially yeah I definitely agree with that that we could use stories as a basis to construct a new hypothesis but I don't think we could ever use the stories as hard evidence for the hypothesis I would I probably agree with that that's why I prefaced all of us were saying like I think CRT is a good tool but I think we have to be really careful not to say that it's the be all and end all much the same way that like somebody that only wants to throw graphs at you it's like well hold on like you know like the average the average person does not have 1.8 arms and 1.7 children right that we have to get a little bit more granular sometimes with our analysis so yeah I mean like I agree like you that shouldn't be the be all and end all it should be part of like a basket of tools that we used to analyze the society and I I'm kind of split on the notion because I do believe that there is still discrimination if you actually read what they're trying to say they say well the examples they will often give is a white woman is dealing with this issue a black man is dealing with this issue and then when you actually look at the finer lens black women are dealing with both of those struggles and increased rate I I think that that is useful I think that that like destiny was saying I think that could be part of a solution for how we end racism but I think that overall I will reiterate I am critical of the theory of race and so I do think while acknowledging that there is still racism discrimination and terrible things and while using those tools we should be moving toward a raceless society which I do think that we will get one day not from utopia not from legislation or you know the frankfort school which they're very all these types of buzzwords it'll happen through sex I don't think that's going to solve the hatred though people are always going to hate one another and so that's that's not the solution but anyway were there any other questions that you guys had for each other based on past talks that you might want to ask each other otherwise we can jump into the q&a we're at close to that time oh yeah um what could possibly be a better standard than human well-being and happiness um you said that that that shouldn't be the way doctors assess what's healthy what what could possibly be a better way than that I guess I don't know well if you don't know then why would you say it's wrong for doctors to prescribe things based off of that I'll say I don't know that I'm that's right I don't because I can't what's right the the the the the medical things that support someone turning in turning transitioning and stuff like that well do you think that scientists forgetting the transition do you think that scientists in general in psychology do make decisions based off of some metric to measure happiness of people like there's money they measure how much money it takes for people to make be happy and more money up to about 50 000 a year makes people more happier than going above that it's a diminished amount like do you think that's legitimate science it's it's an it's an interesting legitimate this is psychology is that what you're saying that that is and and statistics of it psychology sociology yeah I I think that it is a loosey goosey thing because people's sense of well-being can be misguided you know people get people get reinforcement positive reinforcement from things that aren't good for them or aren't right and although you you can go you can take a whole mission in life and have everybody around you supporting you and distract yourself from those quiet moments when you realize that you're wrong so that you have this sense of well-being but in reality it's gonna crumble at some point or it's just you're doing evil in the world well sure so I'd agree there's a gray area where like there's p values and say plus or minus or whatever but do you think that in general they get it probably right so they say that if you're lower than 50 000 a year in America because it's an American statistic that you're less happy and then once you get to that amount because you have like food and homes and all these things you're generally happy and then once you get more money than that you you can get slightly happier but it's not it's diminished like do you think that's an accurate statistic that does even though there's a gray area it probably is but I am strong on the gray area thing kind of like what destiny was brought I mean that Stephen was bringing up was that um there's other factors like they are working for yourself is like gratifying there's always other factors but you agree that this isn't just this can't be like completely wrong it's accurate to some extent yes and if they use the same metrics to measure happiness of trans people for example aren't the scientists to the same extent whatever extent this is correct the scientists and the doctors would be equally as justified in using these statistics on trans people since it's the exact same data they use on all the other measurements of happiness to whatever degree that is trustworthy I suppose that I suppose that it does really make them feel better for a time maybe even for a long time well my question is are the doctors justified in saying buy this data which works for the money index that they make people are happier with this amount of money and this data is correct and we trust this data are they also justified in trusting the data about trans people that giving them transitions make them happier because they're using the same kind of data I think I would become a critical religious theorist at that point and use anecdotes because the exceptions that there are very few people who really find their way in life you know and you're laughing or you're like because there are a few people who really find true peace so this all all these ways that we find a sense of well-being aren't necessarily right so is there a scientific I would still reject is there a scientific way to measure this true peace thing or is this kind of just your feeling because all I know is the best scientific data we have is here's how we measure happiness using all of the money index the psychology index if you can find the three people in the world who have true peace then I suppose you can make it scientifically sound but if you don't have that yet shouldn't we go with the thing we have the most evidence for which is the current happiness index I don't I don't think so I still reject it because I'm suspicious of it I mean just look look on the face of it does it seem right to you well so yeah to me it does but it's supposed to pose right to you to support the the transgender is turning transitioning yes because the vast majority of people who do transition are happy with the transition and don't regret it but how about your sense without knowing the data and all that stuff I'm a data person I'm like science says this science is right my feelings are stupid okay and it does bring up I common sense to me is kind of arbitrary like what is common sense to someone could be completely oblivious to another right and so if multiple people are coming to different conclusions using common sense doesn't that kind of mean that it's really not a great way to well people yeah there I mean there is an attack on common sense has been kind of lost amongst us because especially in a spoiled society where we can all do kind of what we want and not really suffer the consequences of it then yeah people lose their common sense in a lay I can understand the term in a lay sense like oh come on where's your common sense you forgot your keys but like once we're dealing with like who we are as human beings fundamentally I it goes much more to I would say the data that I say that good sense comes from from God and we we don't really have and we don't really have sense if you look at how most of us live we're not sensible can you give an example I don't I mean look at our issues we do stuff that is counter to our health frequently and just can't get can't get away from it see I would agree with you but I think using your metric was God I feel like sometimes that metric gets us to the anti science position not always not always because actually do want to paint with as thin a brush as possible there are many amazing fantastic theistic scientific skeptics out there but I do find that when you're using God is your your primary metric for not just yourself because we are we're dealing with politics and everyone and so to put this in a question form what would it take to convince you that transitioning actually is the proper with the therapist that have found the the answer what would it take to convince you the transitioning is the correct solution I don't think I could be convinced because it just I just inherently kind of know there's something off with it you know what I mean and so too the the reliance on science and data stuff we don't know what all to look for like what destiny Stephen was just talking about they were looking at they were looking at sleep in reality there was a whole lot of other things going on and people have an agenda when they come up with statistics and things like that let me just break apart that I feel like statistics can be manipulated in in in certain ways because you're looking for things nonetheless I'd break apart your first sense because I really do think that the best methodology for finding truth is science and so I can't help but put that as the primary guidance and then once again it goes back to it's not just like data can be very cold but a lot of these data points are from real people who have transitioned and found better lives are you an atheist I am I'm an agnostic atheist I break those apart see see what because you don't even believe in God so you don't have I agree no I agree that's our difference I think we're using different metrics though I think that many theists actually they maybe even put them on co-side maybe there's God and science and they're they're working together but it does seem like you are putting God above the science and then yes as as many but it's not just a God thing because just like I said at the common sense level like it's when you whether today or before you transitioned or whatever did you have any sense that something was off about what you were about to do or what you were there was fear but many of the fears were unfounded I thought that my pair I I knew that my parents were going to throw me out and yet they didn't I knew that I was going to lose all my friends but I did it I knew that my life was going to end and it didn't see that proves that your mind lies to you I see you're saying it's lying I think it's a vulnerable teenager in depression I think that that's not lying to you I think that you run through the most horrible situation in fact I'll relate this to you are as a parent or to anyone when you have it received a call from your child in a few hours or a day they were supposed to your mind just runs through the worst scenarios possible almost never true yeah nonetheless you can't help for your brain to run through the terrible scenarios but that's why you know to withhold rather than make a make a decision or a or come to a conclusion let's see if I withheld I would be staying if I was even alive I I in my opinion I'd be miserable I would be trying to live my life for other people and it's great to live your life in defense and to fight for other people but to just live day to day so that you're just moving through the motions that's not life but you but you are surmising that since you didn't do that you don't know what you would be going through well that's true I cannot predict the future I can only tell you from that event and I can also tell you that it was one of the best decisions in my life all right question I wish you well I got two more questions thank you hey you said you brought it up as a joke that you would go to critical religion theory well I'm half joking there's definitely truth to it that's that's my question is that it seems what is the difference between what you're doing and using your intuition in order to make a judgment than what critical race theory is doing and then using their intuition storytelling because it seems like the same problems with critical race theory exist in your critical religion theory well definitely um people who are religious in christian many if probably most are wrong and mistaken in our judgments that we make because we we're not god and so we don't really know right from wrong I think nobody really knows right from wrong well my question what is how is your methodology different from the critical race theory methodology it's uh it's different in that I am seeking for truth and withholding whereas those people are well do you think they're seeking false or they're like we want to we want to find what's false well I mean that woman who well okay I was going to say the 1619 project but that's not critical race theory um but those people are just dumb liberals you know what I mean that's that's that's the difference that is the fundamental fundamental difference all right uh second question destiny from our you mentioned that crt is a valid way to assess a new hypothesis to bring up our previous debate isn't how is that different from me using moral realism as a different way to come up with a different hypothesis um I think that there is a I guess it would depend I don't know hardcore on the epistemic philosophy of a crt person if a crt person is saying that an individual story is conveying some fundamental truth about reality I would hope they wouldn't say that but I would fight on that point as opposed to if a crt person says that a story is conveying a fundamental truth relative to that person or that person's story then I think that's I think that's okay so an individual can have a story and that story could be true for that individual but that might not necessarily map on to some things in the world in the way that they might think it does um so for example maybe to clarify isn't that exactly what they're doing they're saying that this story told by this person is a more correspondence to reality than the data or the scientific research and we can reject the scientific research because this story overrides that isn't that exactly if that if if a proponent of crt says that we ought to reject empirical data in favor of stories that's not good I wouldn't agree with that but I do think that stories are essential sometimes because the data won't capture all of it I don't remember I gave this or something else an example but like um I didn't specifically take this but like the inflation and how the economy is doing is a really good example because sometimes you can look at every data point and still not understand how a person feels about the economy because their experience of the economy might actually fall completely outside of the data um so for instance if you were trying to capture an infinite number of metrics for how a person feels about the economy you might miss it because how they feel about the economy is actually informed by what Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or um Cooper Anderson Cooper whatever somebody on the left the right tells them in which case all the data in the world isn't going to give you that person's story now that person's story they might say well actually the economy is doing really well and I feel very strongly about that now what I would hope a crt perspective well that person's story is true in so far as they're accurately conveying their experience but it might not map on to reality in such a way that well this guy says the economy's good well then screw the data we don't need the data we're just gonna go by that person's story um I would imagine there's probably some debate within the crt community or people in terms of like where do stories fit in in terms of with like quantitative data but I can't I can't pretend to tell you what every big crt scholar think or believes in terms of that with that we can jump into q and a so anybody who has a question please feel free to come on along this right side of the aisle and then on the other side of the aisle you'll be able to walk back that way you don't have to go over the cords all right hi it's me again I have another question for you so obviously you've seen very strong about transgenderism and whatnot and she brought her story and she seems very happy you even brought up an article saying that kids are happier when they earlier transition so and there's also you're saying that you're using religion in order to say that people shouldn't transition but there is nothing in the bible that says anything about it so I'm asking you what would change your mind because like there's got to be something in order to be able to change your mind about the transgenderism so what do you think that there's some I don't know if there is anything that would change my mind like if it said it in the bible like I don't have a sharpie you're right I don't even really base it in so much religion is like common sense which I feel is God given to us so there is no facts that would change your feelings yeah but it's but what's but what's funny is like you guys are putting feelings over facts too no no you just said that there's no facts that would change your feelings about transgenderism so but I don't have feelings about trends I have a sense I guess you could call that a feeling that's true I have a sense about that it's wrong but I don't have like a strong feeling for or against them personally so I'm not I'm not basing it on like an an emotion I don't think I think it's like a in some ways a question goes what I would hope is that any pro-trans person if we had perfect information of the brain and we cut into it and we realized actually there is no part of the brain that maps on to transgenderism it's all a social influence thing I think most people in the left would say oh okay well we should try to eliminate those social influences so that we don't have trans people that have a whole bunch of problems of life they could I would hope they would say I know I would say okay I've been convinced it's not trans whatever has is not a biological phenomenon it's more of a biology intersecting with environment phenomenon so I would make that concession but it sounds like for you let's say we could cut into a part of the brain and let's say we actually see that like some people's brains have the fucking letter T branded in on them and it's a it's a trans brain we know it and everybody can identify it you still wouldn't believe that that's a real thing though I don't think that I would yeah but didn't she can you restate just in brief what your question was he said something oh okay I think I'll repeat what I said in the prior debate where it's if it seems like you guys are seeing something wrong with me for seeing something wrong with what's going on in the world when I'm not the one who's wrong so if G if Jesus himself came down and told you trans people are real you're wrong would you believe Jesus I don't know if I would be like I've been on drugs or something thank you thank you doing well thank you talk about her well okay I'm going to talk about CRT right CRT is not being taught K through 5 K 5 to 12 it's not being taught at all it is a college of elected that's in graduate school which actually Dr. Richie he's in disputed he teaches as an elective course for the past what five years um CRT and itself like you said you haven't even heard it for the past year but it was highlighted in like 2017 when Trump highlighted it and once he highlighted it the media in and of itself they grabbed onto it and called it a very decisive thing and um and it's the same as as woke you know the word woke essentially has been deemed as as a highly divisive thing and in our community when woke then around 60s I mean state and because of this fear CRT here in Texas they created a SB3 a Senate Bill 3 and what that does is it basically takes away the um you can't teach the history of Native Americans in school you can't uh the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and 1850 um writing for Frederick Douglas Martin Luther King the 1619 project which is you know exam is a history of um slavery on America's soil which actually Black Slave here waiting for 1619 um the Women's Suffrage Act and most importantly what SB3 in Texas uh they basically uh takes takes away the history of white supremacy including but not including slavery and the eugenics movement um basically they're saying if you the the the subject of Ku Klux Klan come up in the same sex is yes I got you I got you um it's not considered more wrong now a lot of states now are now allowing Bible study to be taught in schools um and as an elective for children which is indoctrinated into a religion if CRT cannot be taught in school how is it right for religion to be taught in school when I mean religion get leaning on every day by science it's completely infactual but we're talking about facts and for our Black people how can't yeah I got you how can't I got you my friend um is it right for Bible study to be taught in school versus CRT um I do know that the like for example the people's history of the United States I forget what the name of that guy who came up with that thing was but I've heard more and more this notion of racism being taught in school so regardless of whether it was CRT specifically I don't like this push that this racism thing is real and we need to be addressing it um the stay woke thing I I started seeing that with um DeRay McKesson like he had that little weak fist and said stay woke um politicians I don't you're right I don't trust the Republicans necessarily to maybe they overcompensate or whatever but I don't think that a normal person would be against the right and wrong of what whites have done over history be taught but sometimes they call stuff wrong that wasn't necessarily wrong you know like there's a lot of lies and propaganda so and the and the truth and the Bible I don't think the Bible is then debunked by science or anything but um anyway yeah I actually think it's a really good point I wanted to bring it up that yes I think the reason CRT was criticized as being taught in K through 12 was because the teachers who had independently researched CRT had then found those things inspirational and then were teaching the consequences of CRT to kids namely about the stuff about American history and then the news picked up on this and said they were teaching kids in preschool CRT which wasn't exactly the case they weren't actually teaching college level CRT to the preschoolers but I think you're exactly right that it is exactly like teaching evolution in school and that they're taking their own biases and then imprinting them on children which they shouldn't be doing unless there is some kind of approval by the state to do this but you're right it's just as bad to try to indoctrinate kids towards a left ideology as is to try to indoctrinate them with evolution denial or young earth creationism and the right ideology one thing about the 1619 project I heard was that they they claimed that the real founding was 1619 rather than 1776 so I don't that seems a little off to me just because we have a lot yeah thank you hey nice to see you up there um quick question for all four of y'all just a quick uh I need to just get a clarification something you said in the last debate and I just want to uh if y'all can answer it as well I just really need to know what you mean when you say uh well is racism real is transphobia and racism real and the same question goes for y'all as well I say no um there is wrong done to like there's wrong done to whites there's wrong done to blacks and they say oh it's it's racism but it's not at heart racism it's because of some other issue that's going on and then you said about transphobia is trans I don't think so either I think that there are people are just evil to one another and then sometimes people just have a difference of opinion and then they're called transphobic so just because race is not a real concept at least biologically does not mean that racism does not still exist I would say that that it depends on all different countries all different areas where you're going to be I think in the United States we still deal with some of the remnants I'm not going to put a bias on either direction I don't if you doesn't matter if you consider yourself black if you consider yourself white we should be coming together to figure out how to make a better more functional society and if we could drop off a lot of the remnants of tribalism of a lot of our hair splitting over what color eyes someone has what skin they have just very arbitrary things that I think if the clock would would go back we may pick different lines it may not be black versus white might be blue eye versus brown eye or blue eye versus green eye and so we should be moving towards a more racist society uh yes race is definitely real we know this empirically because of in-group outward biases that have been proven to happen biologically it's like saying that there's no such thing as a sports rivalry sports rivalries aren't real yes they are we're in texas of course they are um so yes we know for a fact that race is real we know for a fact that there is an in-group outward group bias that humans innately find differences between groups and then classify some as better and some as worse and we can classify those differences under specific banners of where they happen most like race like religion so yes definitely race and transphobia is real yeah I mean I would say racism and transphobia is real maybe some people exaggerated maybe some people underplay but I mean I'd say they're both real yeah okay so my question is more so with uh trans people in sports and I mean I think it's probably gonna be more so towards destiny and maybe jj jumpers t-jump sorry I'm sorry yeah but okay so basically um so as we can see um trans women are starting to like outperform a lot of uh like actual women in the olympics like well in like some sports and we can see that trans men are being uh they're underperforming and sports that men usually usually are in right so should there be should trans people be able to like participate in the same sports as uh actual men and women or should there just be uh like should they just be like a whole division just for themselves right like should they just be on their own league right so kind of like sort of like an n w b a there should be an t b a or something like that right um what do you think about that um I think if there was a sufficient number of them where they could actually have their own league that'd be a great idea but I think that your rights that there is a spectrum of trans people and those who have not gone through hormone therapy do have a physical advantage and the hormone therapy can it affects people differently and so some people even after they've gone through it they still have a physical advantage so there is a difference between trans people and uh the other sex that they're transitioned into but I think that it should be up to these sports organizations to determine when someone does qualify as having gone through the transition and is physically equal because the people you mentioned who are trans but are winning all those sports aren't all the trans people who are competing there are trans people who go into the sports and do about average or do lower than average and so there's a spectrum just like there is with any group and we should let essentially the organizations and the people who are experts in the field determine when someone who has gone through enough trans hormonal therapy and if they've been affected enough to legitimately qualify as being as a part of that sport um I think that the trans people in sports I think uh kind of blows apart a lot of how we analyze fairness in sports I think um it's really really really hard to say that somebody that can train in one body and then compete in another is ever going to be fair for the people that they're transitioning to compete with um so for instance it's sad because we always talk about trans women but nobody ever addresses trans men um it seems like trans women can be very competitive against other cis women and we've seen this happen time and time again but I don't really know of any examples of trans men showing up and being very competitive with cis men uh the fact of the matter is is that like if you were allowed to say we'll use performance enhancing drugs or steroids and train for some number of years and then stop you're still going to inherit many of the advantages of being able to train in that environment before going into a competitive environment um much the same that if you are in a man's body and you're allowed to train for a certain amount of time and then you transition and as a trans woman you compete against cis women there's still going to be a lot of one inherited training time in in another type of body that you've got an advantage of and then two there's a lot of like physiological differences where on the spectrum of all man traits even though there's an overlap with women um the average male traits are quite a bit higher so like uh greater lung capacity broader bone structure these are things that don't go away with any amount of hormone therapy you can diminish some of the testosterone and some of the effects on the human physiology but you're not going to get rid of a lot of those structures that are rigidly in place and set uh during and post puberty and this is well known in the trans community as well and it's one of the reasons why they push so much for puberty blockers is because if you are going through puberty as a certain sex once you're done with that process it's really hard to undo a trans person to undo that damage um because there's so much that's set in that you can't really just shrug off or get rid of with hormone therapy it starts to get more expensive or costly past that point yeah i understand that um my question was that should they be in their own league should they i i think i think you kind of have to but once you put them in their own league it's going to be such a niche event that it almost feels like you're saying they can't compete at all so but but the problem is is that like we have to look at different worlds if we lived in a world where the top 10 female competitors were trans women no one's no one wins there right everybody is going to be pissed off there's going to be probably more hatred towards trans people cis women are going to feel like well what the fuck there's no point in me doing a sport anymore like that that would be like the worst possible world i think to be in probably worse than the one where we segregate sports based on um trans or intersex or cisgender people i would say so it seems like it probably needs to be its own thing or at the very least we draw the distinction like pre or post puberty transition i think i think i'm more more authoritarian than i let on then because oh no we all know you're very annoying because um i don't think that they should be allowed in the sports because it's it's promoting degeneracy right yeah visibility it plants something in the in young people's minds say that hey this is a possibility and then segan can whisper in their ears you you are this and you want to be like this so i don't it's part of that promoting wrong is right type of it long as not necessarily right but wrong is fine should atheists be allowed in sports as long as they keep their mouth shut i just want to say that i think sports of all of the trans rights issues is probably the most complicated because we are dealing with different type of activities that stress the body we are pushing it to limitations and a lot of times when we are dealing with things like the olympics we are dealing with the extreme so it is actually the one chance that we should pay attention to it i'm actually open to multiple ideas the joke i've always gone by it's that if you make a trans league i think we will absolutely be like the number one on cable like everyone will watch that whether you like sports or not so i'm actually open to that idea uh but you know the the metric here is fairness we want to be fair i do not want to pun intended transition biological women out of sports and so we need to figure out a way in which we could have them compete and transgender women aren't dominating i agree with destiny when he said if it was the top 10 i think it is over exaggerated how much they are dominating in sports nonetheless i do think that there are advantages that you gain during depending on when you start transitioning that is why like they were saying you you want to transition as early as possible when you know it when you actually know it and at puberty that it let's let's not try and push that but it can't just be that anyone just says well i transition i'm just this other gender today so you put me on that team we do need to make sure that these are actual transgender people we need to look at the actual sport because there are some sports in which there are major advantages and there are some sports in which there are no sexual dimorphic one way or the other and so it is in my opinion the most complicated of all of the trans issues i think like the the bathroom stuff and that is nonsense but when it actually comes to sports it's not clear cut we're going to have to dig down we're going to have to work to be fair thank you everybody this is a question for steven um steven you said that crt is a red herring for people on the right to group together uh similar to bill c16 in canada which was blown out of proportion all the way up to the popularity of jordan peterson uh in terms of over hyping certain topics to rally groups of people together how big of a problem is it and do you think that engaging in that discourse to a certain extent kind of further stokes that big plane i think it's a big problem but i think that people on the left watch those conversations hardcore too i think you need to be very clear about disavowing stupid shit and then very clear and engaging with people that have other types of ideas or misconceptions about what you maybe believe in so for instance like i think that there is value in different ways of looking through society but there was undeniably some garbage textbooks that were written that seemed to have maybe a few too many crt ideas in mind um i don't know if you've watched my stuff or not but like i remember we read through one of these math books on stream that basically said that like black kids are like too stupid to learn math with numbers so they need to run around in groups and ordered it was like a really out there way of like explain i'm not even exaggerating you can find this math book it's like unbelievable how they say like well black brains are wired to learn differently than white brains or there are some um oh man what there is a i don't know if this is a meme or this is posted um in the NAACP museum or something or whatever but it's this idea that like maintaining a schedule or whatever is a white person's concept and like black people can't do that i think you have to be quick on the left okay hold on there's actual some garbage here that it's fair to say this is like dumb this is stupid but it feels like people on the left sometimes get so caught up in in hearing something that somebody on the right says and then feeling like they have to defend the opposite of every single thing that you'll get people saying you know shit like january 6th is literally Hiroshima but you know seattle and minnesota and all these other or um minneapolis or all these other cities like you know it wasn't that bad you know it's like well hold on you you have to be able to say that like writing is bad and january six is bad or you have to be able to say that like yeah you know some of these ideas are done but we're going to defend these ideas like people have a really hard time picking and choosing what to defend they just it all ends up being like this big political uh team sport basically so given the state of the left like do you think that um they should probably just if you see something where it's like a big thing that's getting blown out important should your advice to people on the left should like let the plane die out or should they try to i think that you own one thing and then you quickly move the topic on so like if a republican wanted to date me on like mainstream tv and he's like we shouldn't teach our kids crt like my response is yeah i agree we probably shouldn't teach kids crt what like in specific do you think we shouldn't teach them and then you move on to that part of the conversation because we don't teach them crt and if you're saying that there's some like downstream topic that we teach them okay well let's talk about that should we not teach kids about slavery should we not teach kids about this like what do you want to talk about instead rather than getting hung up on defending the esoteric ideas of whatever weird shit you're being accused of so you also think that thank you for coming my question is primarily directed towards t-jump but i guess if anyone wants to jump in as well feel free um so you mentioned how you have an issue with crt because it primarily relies on counter storytelling which is fallacious however despite the fact that like over the centuries historians have like accumulated a ton of different data points when it comes to like i don't know population like the general state of the economy at the time etc etc the history that we learn in k through 12 as well as an upper education is primarily done through storytelling for example usually in history you will learn that like the war of roses or the hundred year war sorry between england and france is the primary thing that led towards their animosity for the next couple centuries or how the american revolution finishing uh was the main is one of the main drivers that led to the french revolution happening uh since history seems to engage in so much storytelling uh do you think that it is equally fallacious and shouldn't be taught in k through 12 courses or upper education or do you find some sort of distinction between the story telling it one or the other yes it wasn't the storytelling was the standpoint epistemology standpoint epistemology is fundamentally an anecdotal philosophy and then standpoint epistemology is when you use the stories to counter or to oppose the data if you're just using the stories as a basis to form a hypothesis perfectly fine but it can't be used as evidence to confirm the hypothesis you need independent data for that so my the my criticism of of crt isn't that storytelling itself is bad it's when you use the storytelling to contradict the data or to use it as a confirmation of a hypothesis without data the data itself always supersedes the storytelling and the fallacious part is when you revert that and use the storytelling to contradict the data would you get in line get get in line um my I have two questions very short um I didn't catch your name I'm Amy Newman nice to meet you hi um would you accept racism as a term uh or race as a term to as shorthand to mean a combination of nationality and and being a type I'll be honest with you race to me is a complicated term because I am the one no I'm not the one person but I view it as a catchall so some people mean different things for it so some people are just talking about their ethnicity they're saying I came from a certain place and this was my race some people try to attach it more to just what you're looking like in front of you if you are have light skin then you are white if you have dark skin then you are black and yet it gets much muddier than that and I'll give you the example it's the main driver for why is that I come from a Jewish background I'm no longer and I have found that people will look at me dead in the face and they will look at my skin color and they'll be like you ain't white I'm not considering you white at all and I think normal people I think almost getting into norm normativity I think many people lay people would find that strange because it gets into the territory of what do you mean skin type skin color has nothing to do with race because I think most people that would be their leading identifier and so I am almost in a position that depending on your political ideology that is what my race teens to lean towards that I become almost more of a minority depending on certain circles and I become more of the majority in certain circles and so I do not think that there is good empirical grounds for it and I think that it is a mix of those terms you really need to ask almost every person what they mean I think that you can find social niches but I don't think that you can find an empirical basis for the actual concept I think we would be better off if you have an ethnicity be proud of your ethnicity I'm not telling you to hate who you are who you come from in fact I'm saying the exact opposite be proud and happy of the accomplishments and the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants from our ancestors that being said I think that we should try to move away from that term I think it's divisive I don't think that it really adds anything and I think that the further we go on into this uh scientific based society we're going to move away from those concepts naturally with CRT um my problem with it is not that it's about storytelling it's about that the the supposition is put before the research so the idea that racism affects outcomes is put first before they go out and look for examples and so in my mind regardless of whether or not it's empirical or storytelling the fact that they put the cart before the horse in my mind should disqualify it immediately yeah I don't think that's unique to CRT or even necessarily a part of CRT I think there is an issue broadly speaking um where when people are looking at data they'll start with a bad assumption they'll start with bad priors that maybe need to be changed so if somebody sees a difference between male and female achievement or something they'll the default is their sexism and we need to try to find the sexism or if there's a difference between races and some outcome oh it must be this or that um and I agree that that can be a delicious way of thinking I don't think that's unique to CRT I think a lot of people can make errors like that in a lot of different parts of their lives though um or whether we're talking scientifically individually but I mean for people that would do that like it's presupposing that some gap must be explained by some variable would be a flaw in your thinking I think you're gonna miss potentially other problems by doing that I would agree with that Without being too heavy I mean without being too heavy I think that's what all of the CRT are going to be. I get really hard um no I don't get hard um I have a really hard time trying to say that like everybody in some academic discipline is committed to something because it always seems like when you tear into a lot of academic disciplines there's always like a ton of debate inside between how people are utilizing some tool and there's like the scholars will debate um like the most common example is like Jordan Peterson is very critical of postmodernism and he'll say like postmodernism like it's one coherent school of thought but like half the people that are considered postmodernists don't even like to be considered postmodernist so it's like it's always like a really difficult thing to say like everybody in this academic discipline believes this thing there's probably debate inside and I can always argue the ideas but um I get I have a hard time committing an entire class of people to like one particular thought or not. I apologize everybody for being rude I got too excited and I haven't asked my question so apologize to you that was rude to me so this is the follow-up question to the question that was before this gentleman was just before me uh you said that you don't like the fact that um data is being used in substitution or not data I'm sorry that stories are being used in substitution of data but data as a scientific discipline is actually fairly new and we like we'll say 1970s or so is when we actually got to a point where we could collect it in a scientific manner in a way that we know that it could be validated well so what would you say to people that are like hey the data before 1970s we can't really uh look to and we have to use these stories in a way to either one create the data either from a historical perspective or know where to go look for that data and how would you respond to something like that? Well data isn't new like this comes from the early philosophies of Plato and the empiricist versus the rashless thousands of years ago so when I when I use the term data I'm comparing it to anecdotes the anecdotal fallacy which originates in the philosophy of ancient Greece and their comparison to actual hard empirical data so if you prioritize the anecdotes over the data it's an anecdotal fallacy and so my comparison here isn't to modern scientific things in just the definition of data we've known when the anecdotal fallacy is for thousands of years and modern data is the best stuff we have and we know that if you are using anecdotes to overrun modern data that's even worse than using it to overrun past empirical data from the Greeks so if you try to use storytelling anecdotes to override modern scientific data it's complete crap but would you say that you have to start somewhere and these stories can be a starting position oh yeah absolutely so you you can use anything you want to build a hypothesis you can build you just shake a magic eight ball and build a hypothesis you can never use the hypothesis or the premise of the hypothesis as evidence of its truth you need the data the data always supersedes the hypothesis all right thank you very much folks we'll have our last panel for the day at 5 p.m looking forward to it and thanks to our speakers fantastic