The persistence and spread of psychological delusions explains how extremely irrational ideas such as conspiracy theories, even of them most ludicrous kind, can gain hold and even spread. If some people can believe that a dog bite will make a male pregnant with a puppy, and this irrational idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population, then even the most ridiculous idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population.
Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process, even if it's harmful to the person and their society.
I think that rational thought is a subset of human pattern recognition, which is the more fundamental process.
Some patterns are rational and some are not. But discerning the two takes special training beyond the basic human ability to notice correlations and infer causality from them.
Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm for how our brain operates. We operate more on intuition, reflex, and bias moreso than calculated, reasoned thought. It takes work and effort to be rational, in much the same way it takes work and effort to be good at any academic, professional, musical, athletic, or any other thing that we might have good latent ability, but not a well-developed natural ability.
Have we always needed this? Does it require more than the trivial rationality of a neural net?
At some point in our evolutionary history, we had the same capacity for rationality as many other species. What made that change, the non-(proto-) human part of environment, or the society created by the proto-humans? When it did emerge, did it emerge as an automatic behaviour, or as the capacity to learn that skill? And here I’m assuming it’s one skill rather than many — we do have many apparently irrational cognitive biases.
I suspect (but don’t know how to test the idea) that all our cognitive biases are necessary irrationalities to allow us to reach generally useful conclusions on far too little data.
When birds run into windows killing themselves, is that an expression of reflex or cognitive bias? Are birds capable of the rational thought to avoid running into windows or is their brain only wired for impulse? Clearly birds are smart enough (at least some species) to be able to mimic human voices and perform complex tasks (carrier pigeons). They learn where the food is and hang around boats or people (seagulls / pigeons).
So maybe this is not a solely-human characteristic?
I think both spear hunting wild animals and farming with stone age tech are both real hard problems that will weed out the dimwitted from the gene pool.
That said, the prevailing theory of how we evolved intelligence is that it was for handling the social dynamics of a 100+ people tribe.
I mean, it depends how you're defining rational thought, but there are some very basic irrational ways of thinking that seem to be the default (particularly around probability and risk; the classic one is that something randomish having happened recently makes it less likely to happen again soon). People tend to misapply those even in their own domain.
As this behavior is apparently universal amongst humans, if you are a darwinian then you must accept that this irrational behavior has some basis in the fitness of societies.
It may be rational, as a society, to be irrational.
Evolution doesn’t efficiently optimize everything. On a mechanical level every person has several mutations but failing to reproduce is a very weak signal to correct them.
Clearly beneficial or harmful mutations have significant pressure, neutral ones don’t.
Survival of the survivors is comically tautological. Surely there is still something that survivors have in common that makes them the fittest, or non-survivors have in common that makes them the not-fittest.
The point is more that the fitness occurs on a net-basis. The more-fit traits outweigh the unfit traits.
It is equally possible that humans as a species or sub-groups of humans are fit _despite_ irrationality as opposed to irrationality being adaptive.
I suspect, however, that irrationality is actually a collection of a wide variety of cognitive traits and heuristics, some helpful in some circumstance, some not helpful, and these are not only situational but also vary by degree.
I'm curious how tied these delusions are to unfulfilled narcissism. For the most part, I've only seen these wild claims in folks who... well... have nothing going on in their lives. I mean, take most bigfoot or aliens-abducted-me folks. If they didnt have that, they're incredibly boring people. Like, they dont even have a hobby they're mediocre at. Add a sudden urge for attention due to mild narcissism or mid life crisis, they'll leap to anything for a group to give then attention.
What makes this worse is mass media in general. One person gains attention, then the copycats get triggered to do the same thing. Hell, as an innocent parallel, we do the same with fashion. We see someone looks cool/beautiful wearing a certain outfit, people buy it to get the same looks/attention. Omega watches really only do well because of James Bond. Anyways, the whole thing snowballs. More and more people do it with each instance of successful attention gained.
Just an observation I think applies to like 80% of these people. Sure, 20% or 10% are true believers. I think the other 80-90% just need to take up painting or woodworking to get the attention they want from others. Fuck... I hope so at least... or I dont want to live on a planet where guys think they can have a litter of puppies. The amount of stupid in that is painful to comprehend.
Hmmm, totally related, I agree. But I feel like that's a, "give me attention because something is wrong with me". I think, and wtf do I know, conspiracy quacks are, "give me attention because I have special knowledge/I know the truth/I connected the dots". I might just be splitting hairs. Either way, thanks for the link.
The reality is many high ranking officials and professionals have seen things and gone on record. What you are commenting on is how something is protrayed in the media / film. That stereotype isn't accurate but it is accepted truth from late night talk show hosts.
> Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process
IMO it's human nature, we're inclined to an authority based mentality; either appeal to authority and defying authority.
Consider that I'm likely to take statements from my friends and family at face value because A. I've built trust with them and B. it's expensive to sit down and thoroughly verify every little detail. And vice-versa.
This is a feature not a bug! It's more pragmatic to have 1 person verify 1 thing than to have everyone trying to verify the same thing.
This is true at the scale of society as well, for ex. I'm not smart enough to understand how mRNA vaccines work, but I'll accept their word and the data at face value that it does what it's supposed to.
But the real question is what is straining our trust in society and each-other?
(Again IMO) due to technology, we live in an unprecedented era of illusion and fake-ness.
Our news is fake, internet celebrities cultivate fake lifestyles
deep-fakes
likes, upvotes, and ad-clicks are fake
the reviews are fake
the comments are fake
algorithms track and "select" our content
and on the flip-side, our entertainment, movies, and TV shows have never been more realistic
And to top it all off, now there are UFOs!
The line between real and fake has been totally blurred.
Automating disinformation is a new thing, and we've been totally saturated with noise and information.
We're in a transitional period and our old institutions are not equipped for what new technology is capable of.
And it's a feedback loop where as institutions decay, our leaders become increasingly corrupt.
Our politicians and scientists have incentive to be dishonest, and have admitted to giving false narratives that are "in the best interest of society".
Therefore there are many who no longer trust authority figures who were meant to be ambassadors of the truth.
Therefore some believe we can become pregnant with puppies.
So if a family member starts believing they will give birth to puppies, you will instantly give that credibility? How does this follow when irrationality is clearly at an extreme?
And what if your father believes in UFOs and your mother doesn't? There's something more than just giving credence due to authority, especially in these extreme circumstances.
I did not expect this paper to be about people believing they literally can become pregnant with a puppy from interaction (e.g. bite) with a dog. I was hoping it was a paper on the modern obsession in American culture with owning a dog as a pet. Dog ownership is a phenomenon that feels pervasive in my social circles but not one I feel that I can explain beyond “people like dogs”.
Do a search on "oldest dog burial" and you'll find that humans, from many different cultures and regions for thousands of years, have had dogs in such high esteem (pets) that burying them was important. Theres even some studies that claim humans and dogs evolved together in some respects due to the high prevalence of interaction for 40,000 some odd years. Dogs as pets or even family/tribe members ain't new, by a long shot.
As an American, yea, the USA is awesome, but we're not so awesome that we invented having pets.
People like dogs, and your dog at least appears to like you back. If they don't really like us, their behavior is enough of a facsimile that it doesn't even matter.
I spend more time with my dog than anyone except my wife and kids; and it is pretty close to the amount I spend with my teenagers given that they have their own interests and activities. With that much time together, there is just naturally a bond.
I think the OP might have been speaking more toward the people who feel the need to take their dog everywhere. Things like carrying them in purses or bags, sneaking them into stores where they're not allowed and having verbal or physical altercations when challenged, getting documents (fake or otherwise) certifying they're emotional support animals to take them on planes, and the overall making them a part of your identity.
It's not unlike the anti-maskers or anti-vaxx people presently during the pandemic. The difference being that current circumstances (i.e. the pandemic) are causing society to challenge those people and their behaviors but aside from Airlines banning emotional support animals, there really isn't anyone questioning the crazy dog people.
Dogs and humans have been working and living together for quite a bit longer than modern America has existed, so I don’t think you can chalk it up to that or really diagnose it as a disorder after several thousand years of evolving together the way we have.
Work around animals for a bit and you lean that a sweet critter that becomes pregnant or a new mother are often the nastiest things imaginable. Only to go back again after babies have moved on.
there was that time a woman walking her dog ran into a couple of giraffes protecting a baby and the male did a one-hit kill.
when i was a kid I never was able to hang out with a peer group of other kids but I did run with a pack of dogs and I realized that was why I was much better with dogs than my wife despite the fact that she is a professional animal handler (teaches people to ride horses.)
There was a time when I wasn't sure what it was I lived for and realized I get limitless joy from experiences with animals be it my pets or seeing birds, deer, battling with the beavers that try to plug our culvert pipe or otherwise.
Like all primates, we humans organize ourselves in social status hierarchies.
Your hierarchy position is very important, and though we may not talk or even think much about it, we crave being on top very much.
Of course this is a true Zero Sum Game. Half the people are by definition always in the bottom half.
I think part of the attraction of dogs is that they happily will join your social hierarchy below you. Get a dog, and you get to fulfill that primal craving of having someone admire, obey and worship you.
My former boss had an interesting explanation for this: it's sort of a safety valve.
Trying to control every aspect of your life leads to suffering, so in order to keep such tendencies at bay you introduce some unavoidable chaos - and dogs are chaos incarnate.
I was having a conversation about the pandemic with a friend who is a dog trainer, and she commented that the shelter she works with saw a lot of people get dogs during the pandemic when they were homebound, and now those dogs are starting to come back to the shelter.
Note that this is one anecdote, not well sourced data.
How would DSM-IV treat this delusion? Not too long ago, those with non-conventional or distored self-views and views of society would be put in mental institutions and treated as mental disorders. I'm referring to the puppy delusion above.
Funnily enough, I've read a blog of a psychiatrist, who shared a lot of anecdotes from his practice. And the was a pattern in his communications with his patients. Like "I see that aliens got almost total control over your brain, just like you've said, so I can give you this shiny pill that blocks alien EMI, it can free your brain from alien influences." Or "you should call me instantly, if demons returned and started to torment you again, we can increase a dose of this magic medication, making your poisonous to foul creatures".
From one hand, it seems like a manipulation or a direct lie, but from other hand it seems like a completely coherent explanation, just from completely screwed belief system.
I mean, that accepting beliefs of others is orthogonal to a medication.
I know this is a funny question to ask about people who believe that they're being mind-controlled by aliens, but would anyone believe that a psychiatrist would give them a pill that could block mind control waves? That is clearly not a part of the movie script, so to speak.
According to his anecdotes his patients believed him. I think that it not just "hey, take this pill", but a long hard work of becoming a trusted doctor for the patient.
I don't know. He is a Russian doctor working in Russia. The rules are different.
But as a psychologist I see it as a good practice. Maybe bad from organizational point of view (how to validate actions of doctor?), but (assuming a good will of a doctor) good for a doctor and a patient.
1. A doctor might talk to a patient without constant failed attempts to prove his patient that his delusions are not real. Such attempts just make trust impossible, the patient might jump to conclusions, like doctor is an alien controlled agent himself. What doctor would do then? Forced hospitalization? But it is important to talk, because doctor needs to know some properties of hallucinations to make a diagnosis. Like if hallucinations are true ones. Is they are "inner" (like voices in a head) or "outer" like a spider attacking feet? If there are external triggers for hallucinations? All this needs to talk a lot, it needs trust of a patient. How to get it while telling to a patient constantly, that all he feels is a lie?
2. The aliens are real in some sense. If a patient speaks about aliens, it means that there is some real process triggering his hallucinations, or maybe he is seeking attentions and consciously tell lies. But in any case, to find a reason for a patient behavior we need to talk with him about aliens. In some sense aliens are real thing, we just do not know a nature of it. Probably it is something physiological, but a patient doesn't know about physiology, and in any case a doctor would need to resort to some fiction, to explain the process to a patient. "It is not really so, but it is a damn good lie" tells Lu Tze a few times in Terry Pratchett novels in the same situations, when to explain properly means to spent several years talking.
3. Finally, when a patient gets a real way to get rid of aliens, it is a good thing. His aliens become grounded in reality for him. They are not just doing everything they want, they cannot do everything, they become a falsifiable phenomenon. I mean, we can form statements about them and to check them experimentally. It may become a first step to accept aliens as an artifact of physiology.
Gender describes a person's identities, expressions, socially constructed roles, and behaviors. It has nothing to do with biological sex. Choosing your gender is effectively equivalent to choosing what you want to wear: it's an expression.
The issue is: bring this up and you'll be hit with "being gay was considered a mental illness too" s.t. it's considered taboo to approach this viewpoint. Gay conversion therapy might also be brought up. Is not dissimilar to the argument "they all laughed at <famous inventor(s)> too!" to justify any crank idea. Problem with this argument is: where do you draw the line?
The obvious counterpoint is Rachel Dolezal who wasn't able to identify as black, an example that is usually dismissed by suggesting she had ulterior motives (a shocking concept in itself - acting black for the benefits!), but it ignores the crux; if you can identify female, why not black?
Gay conversion therapy is relevant, as what some people now call “gender affirming care” is considered by many to be a new, insidious form of this. One manifestation is parents who can’t tolerate the idea of a gay son, preferring to believe that their son is really a daughter. There is now a whole industry ready to cater to these parents.
Since I can't reply to the OP post which was quite reasonable but has been inexplicably flagged because we're apparently not mature enough to have a discussion about polarizing topics in good faith, I'm going to respond here.
OP post:
"In the U.S. we have an emerging cultural convention that someone who believes that they are a different gender should be treated as if they were that gender. I believe that is generally a positive thing, though it can be taken too far with biological males competing as females, and the removal of true female-only spaces.
Should we do the same with people who have the puppy pregnancy delusion? Accept their viewpoint and wish them luck, rather than attempting to dissuade them? I suppose in both situations it should be case by case, offering help where the psychological stresses become unmanageable."
I think its not hard to allow people to identify as whatever gender they desire. The difficult part is affording gender specific privileges. How "far" does a trans person have to go to be able to acquire these? (Bathrooms, sports inclusion, etc). Speaking in terms of changes they are willing to undergo (Srs, hormone replacement, presenting, etc)
A trans person doesn't believe they literally have the same body as the opposite sex, although admittedly the bumper sticker slogans surrounding this issue ("trans women are women") may create confusion. Trans people are acutely aware of their bodies - they just don't find comfort or pleasure in them. Since changing their bodies to the maximum current medical extent can be done safely and effectively, and this often yields good results, this is the standard of treatment.
"Trans women are women" doesn't acknowledge that the issue is a delusion, it is more of a rhetorical device that redefines what "woman" even is (similar to how "marriage" was redefined from its historical definition to be inclusive of gay people).
Subtly, someone who _did_ believe they had a natal opposite sex body would _not_ be classified as trans, but genuinely affected by a delusional disorder. Perhaps this would be the prime differentiator between the two.
Comparing it to "puppy pregnancy delusion" is like comparing apples and oranges and demonstrates that OP may have been confused by political rhetoric surrounding the issue.
> Since changing their bodies to the maximum current medical extent can be done safely and effectively, and this often yields good results
Basically true for middle-aged adults, but this becomes less and less true as age of intervention decreases.
At the lowest extreme in age, there are lots of kids and teenagers who are simply puzzled by the whole notion of gender roles, or the prospective changes of puberty, and will happily tell you that they kinda-sorta don't feel like they belong in their gender, especially if so influenced by unscrupulous trans-activists. One might think it obvious that pursuing transition in these cases is ethically unconscionable given that the vast majority of those kids will be totally fine as cis adults, but this is a surprisingly controversial POV in the 2020s.
BTW, it's entirely possible to "not find comfort or pleasure" in an arbitrary part of one's body that has nothing to do with primary/secondary sex characteristics, such as one's nose. This is known as body dysmorphic disorder and/or body integrity identity disorder. It tends to be a lot less politicized than gender-identity linked disorders/dysphorias, and the standards of treatment are correspondingly more inclined to watchful waiting.
> At the lowest extreme in age, there are lots of kids and teenagers who are simply puzzled by the whole notion of gender roles, or the prospective changes of puberty, and will happily tell you that they kinda-sorta don't feel like they belong in their gender, especially if so influenced by unscrupolous trans-activists.
While it is true that other maladies of adolescence can be miscategorised as gender dysphoria, it's also well-understood that gender dysphoria is something that is not absent in children and adolescents. When genuinely dysphoria, this is something that is strongly evidenced to occur absent any external influence. A simple example here is older adults reporting dysphoria extending back to childhood, in eras where the existence of the condition was simply unspeakable.
> One might think it obvious that pursuing transition in these cases is ethically unconscionable given that the vast majority of those kids will be totally fine afterwards, but this is a surprisingly controversial POV in the 2010s.
Because one must be careful not to be biased against inaction or toward natural design. The consequences for ignoring the issue in children can be as devastating as inappropriately treating the issue. Diagnosis here can admittedly be a serious challenge but thankfully there are options in-between "ignoring it" and "full permanent transition", which is why my personal opinion would lean toward reserving anything permanent for the most serious cases (i.e. ones involving self-harm), and allowing gender-dysphoric children to "socially" transition, which amounts to little more than allowing them to pick out their own easily-reversible name and clothing style.
> we're apparently not mature enough to have a discussion
It needn't be people participating in the discussion that are flagging or downvoting things. It's basically censorship from an offended 3rd party.
> How "far" does a trans person have to go
In discussion like these I ask "How willing/confident are [they] in their argument that they are willing to defend it?". The censorship of this thread aside, I often find the prime argument of these things is a tactic of dismissal; or censorship of the opposition. A good counterpoint is labelled offensive, and on that basis buried.
The obvious counterpoints are:
Jessica Yaniv, a toxic transwoman who pretty blatantly abuses the good-faith privileges enjoyed by many trans-people; specifically: labelling beauticians who refused to wax her testicles as transphobic.
Karen White, a violent trans-woman, who while legally male AND convicted paedophile and multiple-rapist, was put in a female prison where they managed to assault/rape female inmates.
If you can't answer to these (possibly-)worst case scenarios, then your worldview is missing something.
Violence and sports[0] are each way more than just gametes.
In the case of violence, trans women absolutely get victimised, a lot, both those who have had operations and pass as cis women, and those who have not had operations and get harmed specifically because someone takes offence at their bodies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_transgender_w...
In the case of sports leagues, the International Olympic Committee disagree with you. Testosterone makes an enormous difference to athletic performance, and it can be supplied externally for trans men and suppressed (including by gonadectomy, assuming I’ve understood that part right) in trans women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_sports
Treating it as “eggs = woman, sperm = man” is Highschool biology in the same way that as Newtonian mechanics is Highschool physics — it’s good enough for most people for most purposes, but also wrong in a lot of important ways.
[0] Edit: this word was previously “gametes”, how did I not notice this error?
I'm responding specifically to the parent's claim that only two sexes exist. You're projecting your own political anxiety into my comment. I'd rather you didn't do that.
I know a handful of intersex people and would rather they not be erased. They suffer a lot of collateral damage from the "trans discourse".
The existence of intersex people does not negate the fact that only two sexes exist. Every intersex person is either male or female. Intersex is an atypical development of male or female sexual characteristics, and males and females have distinct intersex conditions, specific to their sexes. A man with what appears to be female external anatomy is a man, although in some cases that might not be discovered until adulthood.
A category's a category if distinct items are in it. I think you are going for a more specific word than "a category." Perhaps, "social role that exists in the experience of most people?" That sounds like a good description of the two genders thing.
I think you gave a great example of how it's fuzzy at the boundaries, because infertile women are still women. I'm not saying this whole gender thing is made up, any alien would notice gender if they landed in central park, just that you can't get too metaphysical about it.
2. Thalidomide caused some humans to develop without all four complete limbs. These people are still humans.
Statements 1 and 2 aren't contradictory.
3. There are two human sexes.
4. Genetic anomalies cause some humans to develop without a complete set of the primary and secondary sexual characteristics of either sex. These people are still humans.
"there are only 2 human genders" does not contradict "Intersex people don't exist" because such a condition doesn't constitute a biological gender. If it did, it wouldn't be called a "disorder".
That said, we can just agree on what words mean, if if there are discrepancies, we can just label alternate definitions, to ensure they remain consistent.
Which still brings us to the question: why aren't men allowed in women's bathrooms? If it's just the physical possession of a penis, this would still disqualify many trans-women.
How did you come to know a handful of intersex people? Since this is unlikely to happen at random, any non-random grouping process might produce a bias that would relevant provide context to anything you said on their behalf.
I appreciate the points that you're making (sincerely; and I also get that it's an uphill battle to put it mildly) but your comments are unfortunately also crossing into the flamewar style. Can you please not do that, and in particular can you please omit the subtle personal swipes that are creeping into your comments? It makes the threads worse and it makes your arguments less persuasive to the neutral reader.
You're the one who used personal knowledge of intersex people a part of your argument, and authority on the topic - am I not allowed to interrogate that?
There are no complaints about downvoting in this comment. What about this comment do you believe breaks the guidelines.
I'm not sure how I could of asked the original question any differently:
If someone claimed to know several albinos, and in their experience found them to all wear purple sweaters - it might might be worth finding out that they met them at the purple-sweater-albinos meetup.
If someone knows a statistically unlikely group, they are unlikely to have been selected at random, so they are not necessarily a representative sample. That's why when you put forward some element in an argument, it should be possible to interrogate it.
I didn't express any doubt that they knew intersex people, nor did I say their argument invalid - in fact I explicitly said that it might produce a bias.
What reality do you think the existence of intersex people proves?
There are different conditions classed as "intersex", but they all represent real biological phenomenon, very often disorders, such as unusual genetics - so what does that have to do with the vast majority trans-men/women who aren't intersex, and have no physical or genetic disorder?
Also, many intersex conditions still have an effective "sex", further decreasing the population of intersex people whose sex is ambiguous.
> you rarely see "biological realists" advocating for intersex rights
The intersex population is very small, and consists of many different distinct conditions. What rights do you believe they all collectively need?
As I said in the sibling, I'm not putting forward an opinion on trans people here. The existence of intersex people proves the existence of intersex people.
Ironically, they need the same rights trans people would need, specifically, the freedom to exist in the gendered space that matches their presentation, regardless of their apparent biology.
One of my friends has Klinefelter, an additional X chromosome. He has serious trouble using locker rooms and restrooms, because he outwardly appears to be female. I'll spare you the details.
Why, in your opinion, aren't men allowed in a battered-woman's shelter?
We rarely address that point, but now we get the the crux of it; what does self-identification have to do with it? I'm sure most men don't identify as violent either.
EDIT: I don't know why I bother engage with these topics sometimes. People consider anything other than "softball" questions as bad faith.
Memes (ideas/beliefs) behaving like viruses is the subject of lots of prior material. Delusions fit in this category just like things like fashion/religion/culture/language do. They don't directly spread physically, but by others being exposed to the concept whether via social media, in-person contact, books, whatever.
I don't think you can extrapolate too much about physical/chemical mental illness aside from some people being more receptive to certain ideas/delusions than others (maybe from background/upbringing, or just personality).
Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process, even if it's harmful to the person and their society.