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How Fascists Construct Scientific Ignorance — Transcript

by Dr. Fatima · 10,882 words · 1,164 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00One of the most misunderstood ideas in science and technology
0:03studies is the social constructed myth of science,
0:06which doesn't mean that scientists just make shit up, but rather, that
0:10the knowledge they produce is influenced by social forces.
0:13For example, a lot of early
0:14kinematics was developed to aim cannons more accurately for military purposes.
0:18Research in quantum mechanics was driven in large part by desire
0:21for a nuclear weapon, and a big reason for all the investment in AI is...
0:27God damn it.
0:28I promise we sometimes do science for non war reasons.
0:31Today, though, I want to talk about the opposite of constructing science.
0:35What do I mean by that?
0:36Well, if social forces can dictate where we direct the resources and effort
0:40that make up science, thereby constructing our scientific reality,
0:44it stands to reason that those same forces can influence what science *isn't*
0:49directed at, and thereby, what knowledge remains scientifically undone.
0:54And just like in
0:55all those military examples where scientific knowledge was constructed
0:58to concentrate
0:59political power, scientific ignorance can be constructed to suppress it.
1:03Fortunately for the purposes of this lesson,
1:05but unfortunately for the state of our democracy,
1:07I have an extremely good example of this to show you what I mean.
1:34"Inquiry is always selective.
1:36We look here rather than there,
1:38and the decision to focus on this is therefore invariably a choice
1:42to ignore that.
1:43And the world is very big, much bigger than the world of Descartes and Bacon,
1:47with their hopes for an imminent finish to the project of science.
1:50A key question, then, is how should we regard
1:53the missing matter knowledge not yet known?"
1:58So that quote is from historian of science Robert
2:00Proctor, who's written a lot about the nature of scientific ignorance.
2:04And it sets up our key concept today: science's selectivity.
2:08Selectivity refers to the fact that the only things that get studied,
2:13and therefore the only things we generate scientific knowledge about,
2:17are what we as a society choose to study.
2:20And if we were to choose to study different things,
2:23our understanding of nature would be different in a way
2:26that reflects those choices.
2:28And while I think most people can get on board
2:30with that idea, there's less agreement on how consequential it is.
2:34A few years ago, I made a video about gravity
2:36being a social construct, where I explain how the subjective calls made
2:39in its study are why you probably think there's a thing called dark matter.
2:43And I got a lot of critical responses that went something like,
2:46"Sure, choices might affect where research starts,
2:49but because of the scientific method's infallible ability to arrive
2:53at the True Nature of Reality,
2:55it doesn't really matter because we'll get to the correct conclusion eventually."
2:59To show this belief goes beyond my comment section,
3:01here's Proctor describing the same perspective:
3:04"Selectivity is often conceived as transient, evanescent,
3:07a kind of noise in the system, or scatter about the line with bias.
3:11Slowly being rectified.
3:13Science is like mowing your lawn.
3:15You can choose any place to start,
3:17but things end up looking pretty much the same."
3:19The take here is that the subjective nature of selectivity is inconsequential.
3:24Yes, we had to decide to start mowing the lawn here,
3:27but we're going to get around to the rest of it,
3:28so chill with the critical theory.
3:30What I'd like to argue is, first that this is wrong,
3:33That what's left behind, even temporarily by science's selectivity
3:38can in fact impact the material conditions of our lives.
3:41Yet un-mowed areas of lawn do have consequences, so to speak.
3:45But even more importantly, I'm going to show you how that fact can be weaponized.
3:50Because, as it turns out, harmful ignorance can be manufactured.
3:54And science's
3:54selectivity can be leveraged to political ends.
3:58This is the key concept from proctors collection of essays
4:01"Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance".
4:04In it, he and other scholars explore instances of agnotology,
4:08or the process of creating a lack of knowledge.
4:11There are many forms agnotology can take.
4:14The classic example is the strategies
4:16used by the tobacco industry to obfuscate the dangers of smoking,
4:19despite clear evidence. Today, I want to focus on a different kind of allergy,
4:24and that is the suppression of science that aims to improve
4:27the lives of marginalized groups.
4:29And the case study we'll use to illustrate that is the phenomenon
4:32of research on trans healthcare being stymied by fascist regimes.
4:37Because, as specific as that sounds, it's happened more than once.
4:40We'll start our analysis by looking at a recent example,
4:43the sweeping cuts to research funding in the US last year that, while
4:47affecting many areas of study, came down disproportionately hard on this one.
4:52Next,
4:52we'll go back in time to learn about some historic events
4:55that were uncannily similar to what's going on now,
4:58that might help inform where we're headed. We'll then use the parallels between
5:02these two eras to analyze how fascists construct politically useful ignorance,
5:08and conclude by seeing what lessons we can take away from it.
5:11My hope is that by the end of this video, you'll be able to recognize
5:14when this agnotological strategy is being used,
5:17understand how it works,
5:18and be able to call bullshit with the resulting ignorance is weaponized.
5:22All my sources will be cited on screen and can be accessed via
5:24the document linked in the description below,
5:27where will also put any corrections I might need to make.
5:29and with that, let's get into a topic I never thought I'd have to talk about:
5:33Elon Musk's time as an American statesman.
5:36[this is the real audio i swear]
5:43In one of the many moments of shock and awe
5:45that characterized the first few months of his administration,
5:48freshly inaugurated U.S.
5:50President Donald Trump made a speech addressing
5:52what he saw as a rampant waste in the country's research efforts.
5:56"Just listen to some of the appalling waste
5:58we have already identified: $22 billion from HHS to provide free
6:04housing and cars for illegal aliens,
6:07$8 million for making mice transgender.
6:11Now $101 million for DEI contracts
6:14at the Department of Education. Under the Trump administration,
6:18all of these scams have been found out and exposed and swiftly terminated
6:22by a group of very intelligent, mostly young people headed up by Elon,
6:27and we appreciate it.
6:27We found hundreds of billions of dollars
6:31of fraud.
6:32This group of very intelligent mostly young people headed up by Elon was of course,
6:37the department of government efficiency, or DOGE.
6:40Because our government is memes now.
6:42DOGE was established by executive order on January 20th of last year,
6:46with the stated goal of reducing the federal deficit
6:48and the chosen strategy of absolutely decimating
6:52public funding in the United States.
6:54In the months that followed, almost every government agency
6:57you can think of experienced devastating budget cuts,
7:00with nearly 300,000 federally funded workers losing their jobs.
7:03Including yours truly! :D
7:05Ignoring the collateral damage of those livelihoods,
7:08as well as the literal death of hundreds of thousands of children,
7:11by its own measure, DOGE failed to achieve its goal.
7:15"Do you regret that people
7:16might have lost important outcomes or just to support their lives?" "No.
7:19I think it was more important
7:21to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero."
7:24"Did you reduce the federal deficit?"
7:26"No we didn't."
7:27"You didn't?"
7:28"No, I don't believe we did."
7:30So I got fired for no reason.
7:32Cool cool cool
7:32If we take Elon at al at their word,
7:35his attempt at government work was an utter failure.
7:37But if we start from the reasonable premise that he's a con man who's
7:40just lying to us and in fact achieved what he set out to do,
7:44what was the point of DOGE?
7:46Well, on the broadest scale,
7:47it progressed the privatization of this country's financial and labor
7:50resources, which is great for billionaires but horrible for normies like us.
7:55And there's a discussion of how that's ruining science in general,
7:57which Angela Collier covered in a recent video.
7:59But the angle my single minded STS brain is fixated on
8:03is the selective termination of ideologically misaligned research.
8:08For example, of the $600 million of cuts made to the National Science Foundation,
8:12the majority was from STEM education,
8:15which is where all the work to make science more diverse happens.
8:18But because Trump said DEI is wasteful and discriminatory towards "normal Americans",
8:23a lot of the people doing that kind of work have found ourselves out of a job.
8:27But, hey, at least we reduced the deficit, right?
8:29"No, I don't believe we did."
8:30FU--- The cuts extended to research on everything from climate change
8:33to misinformation,
8:35but of all the ideologically misaligned topics, probably the most
8:38aggressively targeted one was anything related to trans people.
8:42In "Defending Women from Gender Ideology, Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth
8:47to the Federal Government",
8:48our president decreed that in the United States,
8:51we have two genders, They're assigned at birth, and anyone saying
8:54otherwise is a science denier who's helping unsavory men gain access
8:58to women's spaces.
8:59Because as we all know, Donald Trump is extremely invested in women's safety.
9:04The material outcome of this executive order
9:06was DOGE systematically cutting funding for grants that contradicted it.
9:10Or rather, grants that ChatGPT said contradicted it.
9:13"So you used an LLM to screen
9:17the grant descriptions for certain terms?"
9:20"...Yes." Why is the tech takeover of society sooo dumb?
9:24Most of the cut grants that studied
9:25trans health care were funded by the National Institutes of Health,
9:29so I reviewed their list of terminated projects and found four relevant
9:32categories:
9:33Studies on the effects of hormone therapies on other aspects of health,
9:36like how taking estrogen affects the cardiovascular system,
9:39or how going on testosterone affects fertility;
9:41studies on HIV transmission and treatment in trans populations,
9:45attending to both the unique biological and social factors at play;
9:49studies on trans people's mental health, like this project on how
9:52gender affirming hormone therapy improves symptoms of depression;
9:55and studies on how to provide better health care to the trans community
9:58through things like training more competent healthcare providers
10:01and developing more effective diagnostic tools.
10:03These are all areas that if scientists put resources into them,
10:07would inevitably yield information that is helpful to the lives
10:10of many people in the trans community via things like making transition
10:13more safe and improving access to lifesaving services.
10:17And that's not me having biased expectations about any particular results,
10:20that's just how medical research works.
10:22Science effort in, life-helping information out.
10:25But we are no longer making that effort because our government---
10:29the same one that won't punish
10:30participants in an elite sex trafficking ring---needs to "protect women".
10:34So all that helpful knowledge that was going to be created won't be.
10:38We will remain ignorant of it.
10:40Now I do want to make the quick but important clarification
10:43that I don't think scientific legitimacy is the only kind of legitimacy
10:47that matters.
10:48Like, I don't think scientific evidence is required to accept trans people as valid.
10:52You just need some basic anecdotal information and a willingness
10:55to get over your own gender shit enough to not be a bigot.
10:58And relatedly, I don't want to give the impression
11:00that being trans is something that can only be understood
11:02as a debilitating medical condition requiring clinical intervention
11:06because it's not.
11:07There are plenty of trans people who don't medically transition at all, and those
11:10who do have a specific baseline biology worth understanding,
11:14just like cis people's.
11:15But assuming it's done in a not-dehumanizing way,
11:18scientific research has the potential to help with a lot.
11:21Besides generating clinically useful knowledge research on things like the
11:25sometimes life or death
11:26seriousness of gender dysphoria and how medical interventions can alleviate
11:30it can do a lot to legitimize the idea of transness as a human experience,
11:34and can be used as the basis to argue for more inclusive legislation,
11:38kind of like they did with same sex marriage.
11:40And like with same sex marriage,
11:42research shows that winning legal rights often improves public perception.
11:46Meaning the research DOGE cut
11:47would have provided not only tools for better medical care of trans people,
11:52but justification for their social acceptance.
11:54Those tools and justifications could have existed, but won't.
11:59And on the off chance someone's gotten this far
12:01and is thinking something like, well, maybe it's helpful, but it shouldn't
12:04fall on the average taxpayer to fund research on such a niche population.
12:08Bro, that's literally how medical research works.
12:10Celiac's disease and rheumatoid arthritis have similar incidence rates as transness,
12:15but no one would go
12:15after research in those areas on the basis of their target populations being small.
12:19This logic only makes sense if you're starting from the bullshit
12:22premise that transgender ideology is just a made up excuse
12:26to let trans women be predators, and that I guess trans men don't exist.
12:30It's also worth pointing out that these cuts took a lot out with them.
12:34One ridiculous example was studies using genetically modified
12:37mice getting cut because transgenic sounds too much like transgender.
12:41Completely unrelated, by the way.
12:43And beyond the semantic casualties,
12:45there's a lot of areas where trans healthcare overlaps with cis healthcare.
12:49Menopausal women benefit from similar hormone therapies to trans women,
12:52the puberty blockers that are often denied to trans youth have been
12:55uncontroversially prescribed to cis children with CPP for decades,
12:59and the vast majority of men's breast reductions aren't performed on trans men,
13:03but cis men.
13:05Because cis people
13:05are actually the most common recipients of gender affirming care.
13:09But all this is collateral damage--
13:11what's the real point?
13:12The point is that we as a nation have the resources, expertise
13:16and will to help trans people live happier, healthier lives.
13:21But because the slightly less fascistic candidate couldn't
13:24denounce a genocide, we don't do that anymore.
13:27Not that Kamala,
13:28the Dems were some kind of heroes to trans people, but like
13:31they weren't about to do all this.
13:33Because of how things shook out, the projects that were cut
13:36won't be completed,
13:37the corresponding knowledge won't be constructed,
13:39and those bits of useful science will be left selectively undone.
13:44Donald Trump spoke his bigoted interpretation of the world
13:47into existence the day he signed that executive order,
13:50and in the months that followed, Elon Musk sicced
13:53DOGE on our scientific institutions to help shepherd that world into reality.
13:58And as wild and dystopian as that sounds---as unnerving
14:01as it is to see this way science can function in our society---
14:05it's happened before.
14:13Between that sieg heil moment, calling his AI
14:15"mecha Hitler", and this haircut that can only be described as Führer-core,
14:20Elon Musk clearly doesn't have a problem taking cues from Nazis.
14:24Unfortunately, though,
14:25his imitations go beyond the asthetic because as it turns out,
14:29all this shit with stopping research on trans people's health?
14:31Yeah, they did that first.
14:33You probably already know about the book burnings under the Third Reich,
14:36where they famously destroyed
14:37mountains of work from all sorts of ideologically incompatible thinkers,
14:41from Marx's revolutionary socialism to Einstein's Jewish physics.
14:45And his socialism too, actually; turns out Einstein was a whole ass radical.
14:49While book burnings were a common occurrence in Germany
14:51the year Hitler came to power, those of May 10th stand out.
14:55That day, Nazi
14:56student groups organized burnings in some 20 cities throughout the country.
15:00They held rallies, marched through the streets and read fire oaths
15:04denouncing their targets as they incinerated tens of thousands of books.
15:08And of these events, the most significant was that of Berlin's Opernplatz.
15:1340,000 attendees, 20,000 books burned, and Joseph
15:16Goebbels himself giving the address, which was broadcast across the nation.
15:20And arguably the most highlighted target of the Opernplatz burning---
15:24the man whose bust was literally marched through the streets on a stake
15:27before being tossed upon the ritual pyre---was one Magnus Hirschfeld.
15:32Hirschfeld was a Jewish German physician and sexologist who, in short,
15:36leveraged his scientific expertise to become one
15:39of the most significant LGBTQ advocates in history.
15:42Based on his own experiences as a gay man, his time spent among gay subcultures
15:46around the world, and his clinical work with gay patients,
15:50he staunchly believed that scientifically understanding
15:53queer people would eliminate their social marginalization. In fact,
15:57when he founded the world's first LGBT rights organization,
16:01he gave it the motto "Through science, to justice."
16:04And while I don't think this reasoning is without its limitations, it was the basis
16:08for an immense amount of extremely impactful advocacy.
16:12In his capacity
16:13as a researcher, Hirschfeld championed a range of progressive stances.
16:17He argued for the naturalness of being gay to help discredit
16:20anti-homosexuality laws,
16:21campaigned to repeal Germany's abortion ban,
16:24supported the fight for women's suffrage, and most relevant for our topic today,
16:28did a whole lot to improve the social and medical experiences of trans people.
16:33To be clear, gender diversity, including trans and non-binary genders,
16:37has existed across cultures since time immemorial.
16:40But Hirschfeld was basically the guy to bring these ideas into European
16:44post-enlightenment awareness.
16:46And for better or worse, that matters a lot.
16:48His research proposed that rather than there just being normal people
16:51and sodomites, there existed 64 naturally occurring "sexual intermediaries".
16:57Weimar MOGAI, essentially.
16:58Among these categories where transvestite and transsexual, both terms
17:02he coined to describe what we today consider transgender,
17:06as well as intersex, which he recognized as distinct from the former.
17:09Besides doing research on people's experience with cross gender feelings,
17:13Hirschfeld worked with the Berlin police to create transvestite passes,
17:17which were issued to trans
17:18and cross-dressing people to stop the police from harassing them,
17:21allowing them to live openly and safely in their preferred expression.
17:25And at das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which he opened in 1919,
17:30his team pioneered modern gender affirming care, performing some of the first sex
17:34reassignment surgeries and offering some of the first hormone therapies.
17:38Hirschfeld's Institute was actually extremely far ranging
17:41in what it did. Besides the basic research that was going on in topics of gender
17:45and sexuality, it supported public education via interactive lectures
17:49and a museum; offered treatment for alcoholism, STIs and impotence;
17:53provided gynecological health services like exams and contraceptives;
17:57and even offered marital counseling.
17:58It was like the Kinsey Institute, Planned Parenthood, and the YMCA
18:02all rolled into one.
18:03The Institute also operated as something of an intermediary
18:06between science and society in a way that I absolutely love
18:09the sound of.
18:10Like, yes, there was a lot of rigorous scientific
18:12study and serious medical practice going on, but apparently it was
18:15also a place where queer people could just kind of be.
18:18The institute provided spaces for people to socialize or to organize politically,
18:22they hired trans women who couldn't get jobs elsewhere to their support staff,
18:26and they even put on fun community events like costume parties.
18:29And if queer costume parties at the place
18:31where the gay Jewish scientist does sex changes, sounds wildly progressive
18:35for 100 years ago, it turns out interwar Germany was actually pretty woke.
18:40The post-World War One Weimar
18:41Republic famously experienced an explosion of art and culture,
18:45including some pretty prominent queer subcultures, to the point
18:48that Berlin was known as the queer capital of the world.
18:51There were gay bars and organizations and magazines,
18:54and it truly seemed like the nation
18:56was coming around to the acceptance of queer people.
18:58But when the Nazis came to power in 1932, they made quick work
19:02of shutting all that down because, like fascists today, maintaining
19:06strictly traditional gender roles is pretty crucial to the whole
19:10'advancing the master race' project.
19:12Which brings us to the sacking of Hirschfeld's Institute.
19:16For context, by the time Hitler was cracking down on the queers,
19:20Hirschfeld had long been getting shit from right wing activists
19:23for his work to the point of having real reason to fear for his life.
19:27So in 1930, when he could already see the writing on the wall for people
19:30like him in Germany, he left the country for a world tour,
19:34and his institute operated in his absence until May 6th, 1932.
19:38That fateful morning, a group from the Nazi Students League stormed
19:42the institute, beating up staff, destroying the premises,
19:45and chanting "brenne Hirschfeld" to the accompaniment of a brass band.
19:49That afternoon, Nazi paramilitaries looted the institute's library, seizing
19:54some 20,000 books.
19:55In the evening, the police arrived to announce the institute closed forever.
19:59And four days later, the confiscated collection was burned
20:03at Opernplatz where Hirschfeld's bust sat atop his life's work set ablaze,
20:08while the Nazi minister of propaganda announced to the world:
20:19Hirschfeld would never return to Germany.
20:21Besides the existing threats to his safety that were exacerbated by his burning
20:24in effigy, the Nazi government would soon revoke his citizenship,
20:28and he would live out his exile in France with his gay polycule
20:32until his passing in 1935.
20:34And while the personal fate
20:35of this revolutionary scientist was a tragedy in its own right,
20:39the destruction of his work and institute
20:41changed the course of history for queer people in Europe.
20:45This wasn't just a symbolic loss, and it didn't just harm
20:48the people who relied on the institute's services.
20:51It quite literally prevented a generation of knowledge
20:54that would have further served people like them.
20:56It was a strategic effort to suppress scientific progress in a specific area
21:02that could have otherwise done a lot to advance the rights and well-being
21:06of a community whose existence was incompatible with far right ideology
21:11...and the same damn thing is happening today.
21:13I mean, there are differences.
21:15It's a series of government policy changes versus a more
21:18decentralized campaign of physical destruction.
21:21But it's the same logical strategy and the same victims.
21:25Trump and DOGE's targeting isn't based on some new fixation with trans people,
21:30it's not a reaction to some modern political conflict.
21:33It's an uncanny echo of the strategy Nazis used a century
21:36earlier to oppress gender and sexual minorities.
21:39And women, ironically.
21:41And honestly, men too, because patriarchy fucks us all.
21:44In fact, let's zoom out demographically a bit.
21:46The kind of knowledge suppression we saw in DOGE in the book
21:49burnings isn't limited to science about queer people.
21:52The strategic selection of which areas of research will decidedly
21:56not be developed has been used throughout history
21:59by repressive regimes to create certain realities, from the British Empire
22:03extracting all the useful knowledge from their Caribbean colonies
22:06except for the long tested natural abortion methods,
22:09to Western medical institutions.
22:11today being woefully unequipped to treat black patients
22:14with the same level of care as white patients.
22:16The justifications and methods vary, but the damage is consistent:
22:20maintain an ignorance that keeps undesirables at a disadvantage.
22:24So in service of learning from history so we don't repeat it,
22:27let's use our two data points to break down how this particular
22:31agnotological strategy works.
22:38Something I often find myself trying to explain
22:41when talking about things like science being a social construct
22:45is that in real life, science isn't some abstract ideal;
22:49it's a human practice.
22:50It's institutions, it's resources,
22:53it's people.
22:54And when talking about something like selectivity, about how what we know
22:57and what we don't know is in part shaped by social phenomena,
23:00it's important to understand that
23:02in terms of the material processes of how science is conducted,
23:06rather than some hypothetical ideal of what science should be.
23:10Like, no, what DOGE and the Nazis did
23:13doesn't make certain knowledge categorically unknowable,
23:16it would still be possible
23:17for people with the right expertise, tools and opportunity to uncover it.
23:21But those movements can make that possibility exceedingly unlikely
23:25by influencing the ecosystem of science.
23:28So what I want to do now is illustrate what that process looks like:
23:32what are the levers people with power pull to construct useful ignorance,
23:35and how do they function long term?
23:37To help ground this analysis and experience besides my own,
23:41I reached out to another researcher who lost a grant last year, Dr.
23:44Mandi Pratt-Chapman.
23:45"So I'm a professor of medicine and, prevention and community health at GW,
23:50George Washington University. Three days ago was my 18 year anniversary,
23:53I've been there a while.
23:54I've been in a lot of different roles there.
23:56My work has really been
23:57about access to care, quality of care, and intersectional health equity.
24:01Dr. Pratt-Chapman
24:02had been working on a project about how rural cancer centers
24:05collect data to improve quality of care for LGBTQ people,
24:08and after it got terminated, she started studying
24:11the impact of those funding cuts on researchers.
24:14So with all that, here is my internet friendly numbered
24:18list of how DOGE and the Nazis did agnotology.
24:21The five simple steps
24:22repressive regimes used to stop science,
24:25let's go.
24:31So in our
24:31historical example, this was probably the most obvious step:
24:35the Nazis publicly destroyed Hirschfeld's library in a ritualistic burning.
24:39Pretty straightforward.
24:40And it's worth noting that it wasn't just books that were destroyed.
24:42It was also journals, correspondences, photographs,
24:45medical records, even artistic works and historical artifacts.
24:49The destruction was so comprehensive that a comparably extensive archive
24:53of material on human sexuality wouldn't exist again
24:57until that of the Kinsey Institute, which would be founded 15 years later.
25:00In our current moment, the purging of ideologically unacceptable
25:03information wasn't made into as much of a spectacle,
25:06but it did happen. On January 29th of last year, the US
25:10Office of Personnel Management instructed agencies to scrub all outward
25:14facing media that "inculcate or promote gender ideology", and boy, did they deliver.
25:19Overnight, government websites with information on the health of LGBTQ
25:23youth, including suicide prevention and school safety, were taken down.
25:28The Department of Health and Human Services removed a page
25:30documenting LGBTQ people's rights and health care settings.
25:33And a range of federal databases and data sets that included LGBTQ people
25:37in their statistics completely disappeared. And these targeted
25:41removals took with them much broader resources.
25:44For example, data from a national survey on youth health that had been running for
25:4835 years was scrubbed because it tracked sexual orientation and gender identity.
25:53The American Psychological Association spoke to the dire consequences
25:57of these losses:
25:58"Many psychological studies
25:59rely on large scale data sets maintained by federal agencies.
26:03Losing access to these databases will significantly impede research
26:07progress, limiting the ability to conduct longitudinal studies,
26:11analyze population trends, and replicate existing findings.
26:14Some of the removed databases contain valuable historical data
26:17that may be difficult or impossible to recover if access is not restored."
26:22This is how the first step of the agnotology playbook works.
26:25Scientific knowledge compounds.
26:27We build new knowledge on top of old knowledge.
26:29We expand upon the things we've already learned.
26:32But while removing helpful
26:33resources on things like legal rights is harmful in and of itself,
26:37the destruction of databases and libraries resets the clock on scientific progress.
26:42We could be pushing new horizons of knowledge,
26:45but instead we're left in a state of scrambling
26:47to recreate what we've already done.
26:49If the fascists stopped here, they would have already wasted
26:52the time and energy needed to recreate what was lost.
26:55Unfortunately, they don't usually stop there.
27:04If step one was the big
27:05spectacle for the Nazis, step two was that for Trump's America.
27:09Like, what is this???
27:10"This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!!"
27:13Being American is so embarrassing.
27:15In the historical example, of course, the permanent
27:17closing of Hirschfeld's Institute
27:19function to prevent
27:19further research that might advance the well-being of LGBTQ people.
27:23It didn't necessarily stop things entirely,
27:26there were other people in Germany studying
27:28human sexuality and producing related work, but it did remove
27:32what was unquestionably the biggest hub in the world for this kind of research.
27:37Similarly, DOGE didn't block ALL possibility of research
27:40that might help trans people in the US,
27:42it just kneecapped the main places where it happens.
27:45For example, most of the research on trans health care that was cut
27:48was being funded
27:49by the National Institutes of Health, which is the single largest funder
27:53of basic biomedical research in American universities and the world.
27:57Sure,
27:57gutting the NIH doesn't get it literally every funding dollar,
28:01but it does bottleneck things.
28:03And the suppression of ongoing work is more than just grant terminations.
28:06On an organizational level, the office that the NIH had established
28:09to coordinate research on sexual and gender
28:11minorities was effectively disbanded, and the CDC announced
28:15it would no longer include information on gender identity in surveys.
28:19And all this is just the stuff you can read about in the news;
28:22the situation on the ground is even worse.
28:24"Cancer centers were previously told
28:27that we should work on science in order to influence policy
28:31so that policy is evidence based.
28:33And as of yesterday, I was told that we cannot use the word policy,
28:38we should not have a goal of having anything to do with policy.
28:42Which is crazy, because that's the reason you're doing science.
28:46You want things to be evidence based."
28:47"Especially in a field like medicine." "That's a huge shift from
28:51'we want you to do policy and systems change to benefit the health of people',
28:54to 'don't even go there, science isn't supposed to touch that.'"
28:58Across the board,
28:59the government has been dismantling infrastructure that could be supporting
29:03the creation of new knowledge about the health needs of trans people,
29:06but instead we have the modern equivalent of Hirschfeld's sacked institute:
29:10a loud and clear redefinition of the nation's research interests.
29:14But science isn't just physical institutions.
29:17It's also people.
29:19And you best believe the fascists will go for them too.
29:26Hirschfeld had long been a target of right-wing harassment.
29:30He'd experienced everything from beating to the point of being announced dead,
29:34to having his picture used as an example of undesirable
29:37Jewish influence in Hitler's campaign materials.
29:40He was even dropped by a company that was sponsoring him
29:43for fear of their ability to stay in the German market.
29:46They were selling aphrodisiac pills.
29:48Hirschfield was basically a YouTuber pushing Bellesa products.
29:51Or supplements? idk, there's an analogy there.
29:53I'm happy to report that I'm not aware of any researchers
29:56who have been physically assaulted by MAGA minions at time of recording.
29:59"So here we are at the American Diabetes Association scientific Sessions,
30:03and we're being threatened to be arrested because we were handing out
30:06an editorial published by Dr. Khan in the flagship
30:09journal of the American Diabetes Association.
30:11They physically grabbed us,
30:13forced us out of the conference center.
30:15And now they're telling us we can no longer attend this meeting."
30:17But there have been psychological elements to the attacks on research.
30:21Like, whether or not a particular scientist's work was impacted directly,
30:25people are picking up
30:26on the implication of the government saying this is no longer acceptable.
30:30"The rapid onslaught of just cancellation after cancellation
30:36and the lack of morale that colleagues of mine felt
30:39when they were like, okay, first, I'm trying to process that.
30:42My grant was canceled.
30:43Now I have to tell my staff.
30:45Now I don't know if I have future research and just the kind of escalating effects
30:50of that were just stunning, I think, and, you know, intentionally overwhelming.
30:55Our grant was cut,
30:56it was like $30,000.
30:58It wasn't saving DOGE
30:59like, anything dramatic.
31:01It was just it was a gesture to say, this is not important.
31:05We want you to stop.
31:06And we were given hours, like maybe two hours to close
31:09down the whole study, like the same day that we got the notice."
31:12"Same." "Right? So like, I mean, again, for me
31:17it was stunning getting that message, but it was even more as it sunk in.
31:22I was like, okay, well, can I never do LGBT research again?"
31:27Beyond the cuts themselves,
31:28there's been a lot of intimidation via public disparagement
31:31things like the DOGE website having a greatest hits list to document
31:35the most baffling grants they cut, or Ted Cruz publishing
31:39a list of research projects that feature, "far-left ideology".
31:43The latter pretty much functioned as the first step of a doxing campaign,
31:46and I actually know some people whose projects were included on that list
31:49that received online harassment from strangers because of it,
31:53and I've read about even more people who've taken various precautions
31:56for the same reason.
31:57And this suppression has had a clear impact on researchers.
32:00Dr. Pratt-Chapman's national survey found that of 193 respondents,
32:05108 had greater depression and 136 had increased anxiety.
32:10I wasn't in the survey, but me too. And accordingly, 72
32:14said they're considering a career change and five had already left
32:17their field entirely.
32:19So just like cutting material resources prevents certain knowledge
32:22from being produced, intimidating scientists has the same effect.
32:26And it doesn't stop with the researchers working today.
32:34As an international hub on the cutting edge of its field,
32:38Hirschfeld's Institute was a place of learning and training
32:41as much as it was research and clinical practice.
32:43People came from all over the world to study there, and Hirschfeld himself
32:47trained many young scientists and scholars.
32:49The Institute wasn't just producing knowledge, it was producing
32:53the people who would produce more knowledge in the future.
32:56So when considering the opportunity cost of shutting down an institution like this,
33:00we also have to consider the lost output of scientists
33:03who would have been trained to advance a field but weren't. See,
33:08the goal of academia is not just the research it produces, it's
33:12also the people it trains to keep the machine of research
33:14going in the future by providing work experience and mentorship.
33:18Meaning DOGE's cuts are affecting the research
33:21landscape on a generational level. "So I was part of a group
33:24that, our entire purpose of the project was to train
33:29junior investigators to do LGBT cancer research.
33:34These were people that very intentionally wanted to do LGBT related work.
33:38I think the incentives and the ability for someone to come in
33:42that doesn't have any past research in the space
33:45and try to make a difference in a, in a in an era where there's no federal funding...
33:51Yeah, I think a lot of people well, they have to live.
33:54They have to have a job, they have to pay their bills.
33:57So we won't have as many people going into research focused on LGBT health,
34:01for sure."
34:02So not only has DOGE
34:03eliminated opportunities for the training of future researchers,
34:06it's also created an environment where early career academics will self-select
34:11out of these targeted topics.
34:13Because of the understandable desire to have a career.
34:16And while this is achieved perfectly well by all the NIH cuts to healthcare
34:19research, it's made even worse by the parallel efforts
34:23to stifle future scholars through the cuts made at the National Science Foundation.
34:27Like I mentioned earlier, most of the cut NSF grants were meant to broaden
34:31participation in STEM among marginalized communities like LGBTQ people.
34:35And while historical figures like Alan Hart and James Barry illustrate
34:39the invaluable contributions trans people make to medicine in general,
34:44it's worth noting that the presence of queer people participating in science
34:47additionally affects how much interest there is in studying
34:51topics that impact them.
34:53Also, a paper that came out after I shot
34:55this video found that the NIH cuts to research on minoritized communities
34:59disproportionately affected the careers of minoritized researchers,
35:02so I guess I have a citation for my speculation now. Not to say all queer people study LGBTQ topics, or that all LGBTQ
35:09research is done by queer people, but like, if you keep trans people
35:13out of science, you can't be shocked when science ignores trans people.
35:17Or when scientists are unequipped to engage
35:19with trans communities to begin with, Which brings us to our final step.
35:28So this point
35:29doesn't apply to all kinds of research, like, a study
35:33using mice to understand the effects of some hormone thing
35:35doesn't really need human participation.
35:37But in general, research in an area like the health of a specific population
35:42does at some point require the participation of said population.
35:46And I can't think of many things more likely to decrease the appeal
35:49of participating in such research
35:51than fascist trying to shut it down.
35:53When Hirschfeld's library was seized, the looters didn't just take books.
35:57They also took the institute's list of patient names and addresses,
36:01which the Nazis later used to facilitate the arrest of thousands of people.
36:05So given the history of medical and research records
36:08literally being the basis for sending people to concentration camps,
36:12it tracks that people today might be a little wary
36:15of giving their information to researchers during a government crackdown
36:19on their work. "One pathway of my research was how do we ask these questions?
36:23And now all of that seems completely peripheral
36:26because I'm trying to figure out if it's even safe to ask these questions.
36:30So I've pivoted from advocating for data collection
36:34for better guideline development to talking--
36:36my next research study today is talking to community members affected,
36:40LGBT community members affected by cancer and asking if they feel safe.
36:45And even if they do, asking institutions,
36:47do they have confidentiality protections that will actually protect patients?
36:51And it's, it's heartbreaking."
36:53Since our interview, Dr. Pratt-Chapman let me know that the government has issued
36:56twenty civil subpoenas and three criminal subpoenas to health
37:00care providers to try to get sensitive medical information from patient records.
37:04She's pivoted to developing frameworks to apply to all patients
37:07that can meet the needs of LGBTQ patients without identifying them as such.
37:11But this is a serious blow to evidence based care for queer people,
37:14as well as a huge violation of basic patient privacy.
37:17And to make matters worse, this was a challenge even before DOGE
37:21came on the scene.
37:22In an article by two scientists
37:23who also had their study on trans health cut last year,
37:26they described the historic tension between researchers and subjects
37:29and how they've had to work to overcome it:
37:31"Trans and non-binary
37:33people have often been studied under opportunistic and demeaning circumstances.
37:37This includes when researchers collect data for their own gains,
37:40but return little to the communities they work with, or when they do research
37:43that perpetuates theories that pathologize these communities.
37:46As a result, many are often reluctant to participate in research
37:50To overcome this reluctance, we involved an advisory board
37:53composed of local trans and non-binary community members who help to inform
37:57how we conducted our study and measured our findings.
38:00Abruptly terminating projects like these can break down
38:03trust between researchers and the populations they study."
38:06The details of how research done on marginalized groups can, in fact,
38:10be quite dehumanizing is outside the scope of this video,
38:14but suffice to say, the relationship between researchers and subjects
38:18was already tenuous,
38:19and this wave of government oppression took a sledgehammer to it.
38:23Or more precisely, a chainsaw.
38:25“CHAIN SAWWW!”
38:26And like every other tactic we've discussed, this erosion of community
38:31trust will hold back progress for this kind of research
38:34for years to come.
38:36So now what?
38:37What do we do with this
38:38horrible guide to neutering the goodness of human ingenuity?
38:42I do have a few thoughts. But first,
38:44So losing my job to fascism definitely sucked.
38:46But honestly, I was one of the lucky ones, because I had this YouTube
38:50channel as a backup.
38:51I can keep learning and teaching things and also get paid for it.
38:54Maybe the government doesn't think my scholarship is worth funding anymore,
38:57but you know who does?
38:58My Patreon members!
38:59Patreon is a platform where viewers like you donate
39:01a few dollars a month to help me make these videos,
39:03and in exchange, they get to do cool things like
39:06participate in my book club.
39:08Our next reading is Karen Hao's Empire of AI,
39:10which will start reading a week after this video comes out.
39:12Contribute questions to my monthly office hours.
39:14I stream these on the YouTube channel and all the recordings are on Patreon.
39:18Access interviews I conduct with other content creators
39:20and academics, like the one I did with Dr. Chapman.
39:22And of course, Patreon members get to watch all my video essays without ad breaks.
39:26You get all that and more for as little as $3 a month.
39:29And if that's too steep for you, you can always join as a free member.
39:32They get some of the Patreon only content, as well as announcements for things
39:36like my YouTube live streams and IRL events.
39:39Which I'll be trying to do more of
39:40in the next few months, so definitely check it out,
39:42especially if you live in Mexico, Argentina or Brazil.
39:45Best believe I'm taking full advantage of being unemployed.
39:48What else does one do when the government comes for your livelihood?
39:50In all seriousness though, I am hugely grateful to the members of my Patreon.
39:55Almost everyone
39:55I know whose job got DOGEd last year had to transition to the private sector,
39:59but I get to continue doing public education for things I care about,
40:02and that's awesome.
40:03So if you're able and interested in supporting my work,
40:05check out the links in the description below.
40:07And if you're not, that's fine.
40:08I'm just glad you're here learning something. Knowledge is power, and all that.
40:11Speaking of,
40:18We've covered a lot of ground, so let's zoom out
40:21and try to make sense of what we've learned.
40:22Our first big takeaway is that, as Proctor says, "Ignorance can be made or unmade,
40:28and science can be complicit in that process."
40:30This is worth understanding
40:32because it lets you question why certain things remain unknown
40:36and who benefits from that ignorance.
40:38Think of like when conservative lawmakers defend bans on gender affirming
40:42care by saying the science is unsettled or there's not enough evidence---
40:46that's a tried and true
40:47rhetorical strategy the Republican Party has been using for decades:
40:51create or exaggerate doubt in the scientific community
40:54and blame the supposed lack of data for your regressive policies.
40:58"I have a colleague that calls that the 'no data, no problem' problem."
41:01The "no data, no problem" problem
41:04relies on the unstated assumption that if, say, gender affirming
41:08care was safe and useful, science would have proved that already,
41:12And as an aside, there is a non-zero amount of research to that effect.
41:16But as we've seen, the social nature of science's selectivity
41:19means that when we don't yet have unimpeachable evidence of something,
41:23it's not necessarily because people have looked for it and failed;
41:27it can also be because social forces are hindering the search.
41:30And politicians rhetorically weaponize constructed or overstated ignorance
41:34all the time.
41:35For example, climate change denial exists because in the 90s, a think tank paid
41:40some physicists to misrepresent the nature of scientific consensus to the public.
41:44It's a wild story,
41:45leave a comment if you want to see a video about it.
41:47Point is, understanding that ignorance isn't always a naturally occurring
41:52phenomenon is a useful tool for evaluating certain arguments.
41:56And to that end, I want to ask today's discussion question.
41:59For anyone new to the channel, I like to give viewers
42:01a prompt to share about in the comments.
42:03And today I want to know if you all have any other examples of agnotology.
42:07Do you know of other kinds of research that has been prevented from happening?
42:10Can you think of other organized campaigns to deny some knowledge to the public?
42:14Or have you seen the "no data, no problem" problem used in other contexts?
42:18Let me know what today's conversation inspired for you.
42:20In a comment with the keywords "discussion prompt",
42:23and I'll share some in the outro of my next video.
42:25And check out what other people are commenting,
42:27because the more examples you have of this kind of thing,
42:30the better you'll be at recognizing it in the real world.
42:33So our intellectual takeaway here is that agnotology is a thing.
42:37But what about the part where the Trump administration
42:39stopped funding anything that contradicts its ideology?
42:42Is there anything we can do besides watch them storm the figurative
42:46Hirschfeld Institute's of today?
42:47Well, when hostile forces are trying
42:49to destroy information, one way of fighting back is preserving it.
42:54Remember all those government websites and resources that were taken down?
42:57Well, when that happened, activists immediately started archiving
43:00what was removed and recreating scrubbed pages
43:03so that people could still access that information.
43:06If you're a researcher, I'd
43:07highly recommend checking out the APA's page on the removal of federal data sets,
43:11because there's a lot you can do about a section that talks all about data
43:15preservation and archiving that I think is really useful.
43:18There's also some more generic stuff on there about things like contacting
43:21elected officials.
43:22For a more specific way to make your voice heard,
43:24I just learned about a rule the OMB proposed that would
43:26solidify the non funding of grants not aligned with presidential priorities,
43:30and allow for immediate cancellation of any federal grants,
43:33making this whole problem even worse.
43:35They're accepting public comments until July 13th,
43:38so if you're watching this before then,
43:39go to this link in my references to leave your comment before they lock this in.
43:43But beyond the broader resistance to the current administration,
43:46I think this is a problem that's got to be tackled by people in research.
43:50And trust,
43:51some people are resisting.
43:53Despite the strong incentives, researchers like Dr. Pratt-Chapman
43:56are looking for ways to continue their work.
43:58"I will say this work has not completely stopped.
44:01Like, a group of us, that had grant cancellations came together,
44:05wrote a health equity center grant to the American Cancer Society that was funded,
44:10and we have a virtual LGBT Health Equity Center.
44:13And that's how I'm doing the current work around looking at
44:16do we need adaptive strategies to talk about SOGI?
44:19And maybe it doesn't, maybe it's not documented.
44:21Maybe it's looks different.
44:23So I don't want I don't want people to think, you know, nothing is happening.
44:27But certainly there's been intentional intimidation and intentional
44:30overwhelm, and the resources are significantly different
44:34to move this forward. Yeah."
44:35I wasn't all that surprised to hear this.
44:38After the project I was working on got terminated,
44:40the team members who weren't fired immediately
44:42began brainstorming ways to continue the work.
44:45It's absolutely going to be harder;
44:47there will be fewer resources,
44:49they'll have to volunteer their time,
44:51and it might attract further ire from the forces that be.
44:55But generally, the people who are already
44:57working on research that challenge systems of power are the kind
45:01of people who will continue doing that in the face of government suppression.
45:05And I am so moved by seeing the resilience and bravery
45:09of people like my former colleagues and Dr. Pratt-Chapman.
45:12But a less heartwarming similarity between our experiences
45:15was the reaction of colleagues whose research *wasn't* targeted.
45:19"I will say that early in 2025, I was discouraged by,
45:25and I still continue to be discouraged by, folks who feel less at risk,
45:30trying to not draw attention to themselves." "Yeah, I saw this too."
45:34"Yeah, I mean, as allies, I think if you're in a more secure position,
45:39stand up for people you know are smart and doing good work that needs to be done.
45:44You know, it's scary,
45:47I get that it's scary.
45:48But, I mean, if it's scary for you, imagine what it is for
45:51someone who has just had their legs cut off under them.
45:54You know, we've been taught as academics
45:58and as researchers, to kind of let the other people do the advocating.
46:03And I just really lean into,
46:05I'm a citizen as much as I'm a scientist. And,
46:10my voice deserves to be heard
46:12about things that I know about." To be fair, there were absolutely people
46:16that didn't immediately cave to the whims of DOGE
46:18and supported those of us who were watching our life's work evaporate.
46:22But I'd be lying if I said it didn't seem like most people
46:25who were directly affected reacted by keeping their heads down,
46:29not rocking the boat, and just following orders.
46:32Where have I heard that before?
46:34"The executive orders themselves require that every agency adhere to them,
46:38and we were there to help the agency leads implement EOs."
46:41“We were there to help enforce the executive orders that were signed.”
46:44“We were only following orders, nothing more.”
46:46Despite the many parallels
46:48between what happened a century ago and what's happening today,
46:52we are not yet at the point where trans
46:55people are being sent to concentration camps, and the people
46:58using science to advocate for them fear attacks on their lives.
47:02Actually that kind of depends on where you are,
47:04states have been passing laws invalidating driver's licenses
47:07with gender markers different than whatever was assigned at birth,
47:10and in the case of Mississippi, they're also trying to make it so
47:13that anyone caught with the wrong gender license gets referred to ICE,
47:18so we might actually be closer to this reality than you think.
47:22But if there's any message I could get to those in the greater
47:24research community whose reaction to seeing their peers work get targeted
47:28has been keeping their heads down and submitting to the administration,
47:31it would be to please learn some history,
47:35think about where this path we're on leads,
47:38and really consider what role you want to have had in it.
47:41I can't tell you what exactly you can do.
47:44As I explained in my video on systemic change, the details
47:47there are going to depend on who you are and what's happening
47:51in your immediate surroundings, and what specific forms of power you have.
47:55But what I can say is don't assume you're powerless,
47:59because while you're definitely not, the fascists are only able to get away
48:04with this shit if they can scare you into believing you are.
48:07So I urge all academics, scientists, and researchers to talk to your colleagues
48:13who have been affected by DOGE and the executive orders.
48:16Find out how things
48:17are playing out in your institution, what ways you can be an ally,
48:21try to see what little bit you can contribute
48:23to resisting this attack on our collective knowledge.
48:26Because, as the poet Heinrich Heine wrote in one of the many volumes
48:30incinerated by the Nazis:
48:33"Where they burn books,
48:34in the end,
48:35they will burn humans, too."
48:44So I hope you found this lesson about agnotology enlightening,
48:48it's always fun to learn more about how things like knowledge and science work.
48:51But there is kind of a second thesis to this video
48:53that I hope you've picked up on,
48:54so just to spell it out real clear: no matter who you are, you should be
48:59fucking worried about political movements that come for trans people.
49:03And like, a big part of why I think that is because I care about my trans friends
49:08well-being and stuff like that.
49:09Does that come off like, I can't be sexist because I have a mom?
49:12I have a black friend too! But regardless of what
49:14your relationship to the LGBTQ community is,
49:17I want you to understand how fundamental the vilification
49:21of sexual and gender minorities is to the project of fascism.
49:26It's not a coincidence that this is all happening again.
49:28It's a necessary outcome of people trying to enact the same ideology.
49:33I want to stress this because sometimes I get the impression
49:36that some people, even liberal or leftist people, seem
49:40to think that issues of trans liberation are some niche culture war thing
49:44that distracts from the more pressing, broader reaching political problems.
49:49Like Gavin Newsom a few months ago saying that if the Democrats want to be Trump,
49:53they need to be more "culturally normal" and stop talking about pronouns and shit.
49:58But trans people and their political interests aren't separate from us;
50:01they're just first in line.
50:03Them, disabled people,
50:04and immigrants are like, canaries in the coal mine for fascist takeovers.
50:09There's a whole lot more to be said about why the kind of ultra nationalism
50:13you see with the Nazis or Trump requires imposing cis-hetero standards
50:18on its population in terms of maintaining the patriarchal family model
50:22that sustains it, and protecting the cult of masculine strength
50:25that it's built around.
50:26But just based on what we've discussed here...
50:29isn't it patently terrifying to see so much effort
50:32being put into preventing, like 1% of the population from just self
50:37actualizing in peace??? The kinds of truths fascists use agnotological,
50:41strategies to deny, things as fundamental
50:45and undeniable as the verity of how people experience their own bodies,
50:49are some of the most profoundly personal aspects of being a human.
50:54And I don't know how anyone can look at these attempts
50:57to just write the way some people are out of reality
51:01and not recognize it as an imminent threat to their own personhood.
51:05Because if authoritarians are willing to manipulate knowledge and information
51:09to deny someone the right to their own existence, nothing is safe.
51:18Hello and welcome to the end of the video.
51:20Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed it.
51:22Can you hear the guy selling gas outside my window?
51:25"Benzinaaa". It's all day, every day.
51:28In just a moment, I'm going to share some comments
51:29I got in response to the discussion prompt in my last video,
51:32but before I do that, you know what I got to do.
51:35Please, hit the like button. Subscribe to the channel.
51:37Share the video. Leave a comment.
51:39Do algorithmic things that help me out because this is literally my livelihood
51:43now. And of course, if you're able to, a Patreon subscription would be real nice.
51:47You'd get to see your name at the end of my videos
51:49like all these wonderful people. And you know,
51:50there's the perks and extra stuff and free membership and all that stuff
51:53I said before, you know how this works. If you can, check it out, if you can't,
51:57no worries.
51:58Okay, so the comments from the last video.
52:00In case you haven't seen it, it was about AI.
52:03And while I spend a lot of the video talking about all the ways
52:06in which way the AI industry is currently playing out are, like wildly dangerous
52:12and harmful, from like, the environment to our individual mental health,
52:16my thesis is something like, the attitude towards shaming individual people
52:22for using things like LLMs, you know, saying people who do that
52:26are dumb and bad or whatever,
52:29is massively counterproductive because all it does is alienate people,
52:35which generally does not motivate people to stop what they're doing,
52:38and and in fact can make their usage much more harmful, and
52:41that if you're concerned about AI, you should direct your energy
52:44and anger towards the systems that are causing the problems
52:48and not the individual people who are like trying to get by.
52:51It's definitely more nuanced than that,
52:53so I do recommend you go check it out,
52:54but for now, I'm going to share some of what people had to say about it.
52:57So a couple different people had the same criticism,
53:00which was something along the lines
53:01of, if I think that individual users of AI deserve empathy rather than shame
53:04for their use, why shouldn't we think the same way about bigots?
53:08So for example, @goatjesus said, "Should this logic
53:11about shaming not working be applied to racism? Sexism?
53:14I'm not sure what your logical endpoint is here.
53:17Should we try and accommodate
53:18evil people and be gentle/reasonable when trying to deconstruct racist people?
53:22I think your research about shame is dubious.
53:24It's not exactly peer reviewed summaries you're bringing to our attention."
53:26Okay, so,
53:27besides the fact that I definitely cite peer reviewed sources and additionally had
53:32a researcher who is an expert in social psychology interviewed just to,
53:36you know, speak to the credentials, to actually speak to what you're saying.
53:40so first off, the comparison between a bigot
53:42and someone who does something with downstream harms is not valid.
53:46People don't use LLMs to stick it to exploited data workers
53:50or because they hate the environment,
53:52just like people who buy fast fashion aren't doing it
53:54because they want sweatshop workers to suffer, or people who use Amazon
53:58aren't trying to screw over overworked delivery drivers.
54:01People use LLMs or buy fast fashion or shop on Amazon
54:05to fulfill a material need they have.
54:07Harm is not the point.
54:08It's a side effect.
54:10So psychologically, which is what we're talking about
54:12when we are thinking about how to change people's behavior,
54:15the experience of using these things is just completely different than bigotry.
54:19That said, I do think this logic actually does apply to bigotry as well.
54:23That's not to say like, black people owe it
54:26to white supremacists to hold their hands as they gently talk them through
54:29why racism is bad.
54:30Of course, I don't think oppressed people owe their oppressors empathy.
54:33However, if someone was interested
54:36in changing the hearts and minds of bigoted people, then yeah, doing it in
54:41a non-judgmental way would absolutely be more effective than shaming them.
54:45I'll make the caveat that I think this is slightly different
54:47for normal people in your life than it is for, say, public figures and politicians.
54:52In my conversation with Devon Price on the topic,
54:54he discussed when he thinks social shame is useful.
54:58And basically it's only when directed at powerful people
55:00that you actually do want to alienate and make go away.
55:04But if we're talking about like, friends and family members and neighbors
55:08with problematic beliefs, I'd hope that your goal isn't to make them
55:11double down and cut themselves off from you, in which case
55:15empathy will 100% get you farther in, affecting them than shame.
55:20So to answer these comments like you don't have to, but yeah, kind of.
55:24Another kind of comment I saw a few times that feels related was something
55:28like, well, if we can't shame people, then what can we do?
55:31@le_wokeisme
55:33Is that French? @le_wokeisme
55:34I don't know, @le_wokeisme said:
55:36"How exactly are vegans supposed
55:38to convince other people that they should be vegan
55:40if they don't tell people that they should be vegan?"
55:43And then @nowayingrightnow actually jumped off @le_wokeisme's
55:48comment saying, "I'm very sympathetic to the concerns about shame
55:50because it's an ugly feeling, but I wonder if this is where thought breaks down.
55:54Practically, the difference between advocating your view and shaming
55:57those who don't is extremely shaky at best.
56:00These are two concepts we can generally point to and feel good
56:02about ourselves for,
56:03but not something we can really differentiate. As someone else here
56:07@le_wokeisme said before me,
56:09how exactly are vegans supposed
56:10to convince other people that they should be vegan
56:12if they don't tell people that they should be vegan??
56:15So first off, I don't think I agree that advocating
56:19your view and shaming people are that hard to distinguish.
56:22To me, advocating my view means sharing what I do and why,
56:26whereas shaming people is making judgments about other people's behavior.
56:29It's the difference between a vegan telling a meat eater,
56:32'I don't want to eat meat for XYZ reasons, so this is what I do instead',
56:36and 'you shouldn't eat meat for x, y, z reasons,
56:39and if you do, that means you are evil/
56:42uncaring/unethical/whatever.'
56:45Like, there's this channel
56:46I've gotten into recently, @sincereonmain,
56:48I don't know if she's vegan or vegetarian, but she doesn't eat meat.
56:51And she talks about it a lot,
56:52but it's never, you know, making judgments about people who eat meat.
56:56It's sharing why she's come to this conclusion.
57:00And then just tons of videos about how to, like, live that decision
57:05well, like a guide to make tofu better,
57:08and here's all the ways I cook with plant based things,
57:11and here's all these other meat substitutes
57:13sharing how to do it and showing what it means for her
57:17and how it's helped her and all this stuff.
57:18And it's so useful.
57:20Like, it's so good. It's so good.
57:22It's, I imagine, teaching people how she maintains her vegan diet,
57:28as somebody who I think does like powerlifting, is wildly
57:31more effective than telling people how evil they are for eating animals.
57:36So to that end, I can tell you have I've successfully changed
57:39people's minds in line with my own beliefs in the past.
57:42Basically, it's loudly living my own values
57:45in community with people who have different values.
57:48To revisit the fast fashion example,
57:50I've never told anyone they shouldn't buy clothes from H&M or SHEIN or whatever,
57:55even though I think doing so is extremely harmful to the environment and workers
57:59the industry exploits.
58:01What I do do is that whenever someone compliments or asks about something
58:04I'm wearing, I'm quick to talk about how I thrift almost everything
58:08and how much money that saves me, and how much fun it is,
58:11and how much more unique my wardrobe is because of it.
58:15And if they ask why, I'll share my problems with the fast fashion industry
58:19as my motivation, and give recommendations for good secondhand shops,
58:23or maybe even invite them to go thrifting with me.
58:25But I don't tell anyone what they should do,
58:27or that they're evil for doing something that's different than me.
58:30And in case people see this particular example as kind of frivolous,
58:34this is how I engage people with my political beliefs in general.
58:38I've changed people in my life's minds about things like Palestine
58:41or the MeToo movement in exactly the same way, sharing why
58:45I believe what I believe and why I do what I do.
58:49So basically, I've changed people's minds, not by criticizing
58:52their beliefs and actions, but excitedly sharing my own and offering
58:56them information and ways to engage differently if they're interested.
58:59I don't believe in forcing people to do what I do or believe what I believe.
59:03And if it's not already clear,
59:05this only works if I'm engaging with people
59:08who don't have all the same beliefs as me.
59:10You're only able to influence other people to the extent that you're interacting
59:14with people who behave and think differently than you,
59:16which is a big part of why I make an effort
59:18to be in politically diverse communities, even though socializing
59:21with just politically aligned people can be easier.
59:25And this is why I don't think
59:26cutting off people from your life for, say, using LLMs helps your goal
59:30if you're anti-AI; you're just removing yourself as
59:34what could have been a good example for them of how to be different.
59:37Idk, I don't want to extrapolate
59:38too much of the real world based on what I see online,
59:42but I do fear that a lot of people on the left
59:44need to learn how to interact with people that have different beliefs
59:47than them, because, know, the revolution doesn't happen by identifying
59:50who has the right beliefs and getting rid of everybody else, it's
59:54ultimately going to have to bring everyone along.
59:57Okay. I want to end on something light and silly.
59:59So of the thousands of comments this video got, one of the things that came up
1:00:04most often was people sharing that they use
1:00:07LLMs as a tool in tabletop role playing games like D&D.
1:00:11I'm not going to read them off. But here's a bunch of them.
1:00:14I got so many more comments like this to the effect of
1:00:18using them to create characters or write stories or whatever.
1:00:22Now, I don't want to make any kind of judgment on this use
1:00:24because like I've said, I don't think moral judgment is really my
1:00:27or anyone's role here. But,
1:00:28I am fascinated by this because of that whole ChatGPT goblin problem.
1:00:33If you haven't heard,
1:00:34apparently ChatGPT would reference things like gremlins and goblins and ogres
1:00:39so often that OpenAI had to go in and literally program it out.
1:00:44And before I was so confused as to why that would possibly be a thing,
1:00:49but now having seen just tons of people using it for D&D or whatever...
1:00:53Is that why???
1:00:54OpenAI has a different explanation for it, but I don't know.
1:00:57I like to think that the TTRPG folks overran it with mystical characters
1:01:00and storylines, to the point, that it just thinks that's what people want.
1:01:03Users yearn for the goblins!
1:01:05Man, AI would be hilarious if it wasn't this terrifying...
1:01:11Okay, bye.

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