A Controversial Opinion You Hold

[Brian Peacock]

Hey lak. How's it going?

Yeah I feel the same way. My cousin, rest her tortured soul, was a true transgender. She was, literally, born into the wrong body. She was as masculine as any SEAL team 6 dude. So those people DO exist. I miss her terribly. But some of these kids I see out there are, IMO, just confused children who have been deeply influenced by social media. Look, before you're in your 20s you don't have the mental maturity to decide on such an unalterable course. So yeah, I'm torn.

What would you have said in your 20s to a retired person telling you you didn't have the mental maturity to decide who you were and how you wanted to live?

If they're legal adults then they can do whatever they want, which would mean 18 in the US and most countries. I'm talking here about children, not adults. Personally I think you're not an adult until your in your mid-20s, but that's just, like, my opinion, man. We've decided, as a society, that at 18 you're an adult and can make your own decisions. Though the USA is a bit schizo about it, you can do anything at 18 other than buy a beer. That's ridiculous, either you're an adult or you're not. But then again, a LOT of what the US does is schizophrenic.

My opposition is to the "grooming", for lack of a better word, that has and still does happen to children. Once you're an adult you're free to chop off whatever you want, or get an addadicktomy.

To answer your question Id tell them to fuck off.

I'm doing Ok. I just quoted Fargo to Mrs. Lak the other night, "you know, Norm, we're doing alright". I'm aging like a fine wine, albeit a bit corky and vinegerish.

"Grooming" is a terrible word, for many reasons, but mostly because it frames this discussion in terms of abusive control and of imposing sex and gender identities on others by force.

Sure, we used to do that kind of thing to Teh Gays - invalidate the gay in them and try and impose a straight identity on them instead, and if they 'passed for normal' we might even accept them as equals as well! We still do that a lot of the time in a lot of places. "Don't ask, don't tell," anyone? If that's "grooming" it's social and cultural abuse rather than the work of (unspecified) people grooming others in order to service their own needs, desires, and lusts.

We also used to tell stories about how people were 'made gay' by too much motherly affection or by not having a proper manly influence in their lives as children, or not playing enough sports or by giving into to the temptations of the Devil etc, but we all know that's bunkum now - don't we?

Isn't the idea that people are made to be trans just as silly as the idea that people are made to be gay or made to be straight? If that's not a silly idea then who made you straight, how old were you when they made you like that, and given the chance would you rather have gone with gay, bi, trans, or furry?

[Sean Hayden]

Isn't the idea that people are made to be trans just as silly as the idea that people are made to be gay or made to be straight?

Well neither is silly, they’re perfectly ordinary intuitions. In fact, most people still seem to think environment is nearly everything.

Having your own kids should help with that, or even just gardening…

We could also argue over the validity of the comparison at all. I have a much clearer idea of sexuality than gender. When someone says they identify as a man, I don’t have to think about it. Yeah, okay, I’m a man too. But if I do stop to consider it, what it means to be a man, it’s a lot less obvious to me—as a man—what they’re saying, than if they shared something like: they like men/women.

—//—

For me, the smartest position to take from the outside is just empathy, and support for serious work in the field. That limits my concern and potential activism to protecting/establishing the rights of trans people, and the idea they’re just people. I don’t have to understand it, or more importantly, use politics to interfere with those who do.

[L'Emmerdeur]

There is no 'looking back in time' in astronomical observation. The speed of light is also the speed of reality. That is, what we see is what is going on now. Note that according to theories of relativity, time is not passing for a photon. In the same instant it leaves the Sun, it enters your eyeball. We say that it took about eight minutes to get from the Sun, but that's a product of our perspective and failure to properly grasp the nature of the Universe.

[pErvinalia]

I would think we are certainly looking back in time from our frame of reference. Can you expand (non-relativistically ) a bit?

[macdoc]

This may be the closest yet to getting an answer to Amelia Earharts fate.
I voted for bringing the plane up and back to either Purdue or The Smithsonian Aerospace Museum.

Personally after reading as much as I can find that is reasonable, I think they landed, survived for a while and the plane is still in the lagoon.
Next month we may find out.

[macdoc]

There is no 'looking back in time' in astronomical observation. The speed of light is also the speed of reality. That is, what we see is what is going on now. Note that according to theories of relativity, time is not passing for a photon. In the same instant it leaves the Sun, it enters your eyeball. We say that it took about eight minutes to get from the Sun, but that's a product of our perspective and failure to properly grasp the nature of the Universe.

The above is nonsense...I'm willing to be convinced otherwise but .....y'know "outrageous claims need......." etc etc

[L'Emmerdeur]

I would think we are certainly looking back in time from our frame of reference. Can you expand (non-relativistically ) a bit?

The sophomoric bullshitting hypothesis being written, it was promptly eaten by the site. Trying again offsite.

The speed of light appears to be a hard limit. Though nothing is indeed faster than light, that speedy nothing doesn't convey energy or information. We observe energy and/or information emanating or travelling across the Universe at a particular velocity. You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned 'our frame of reference.' We have minds though, and needn't be confined to one frame of reference.

No doubt it's old hat and maybe discarded as unproductive by physicists, but I find the idea of adopting the frame of reference of the photon intriguing. Combine that with presentism (only the present moment exists) and reality is travelling at the speed of light. Are we actually observing past events, or is that a matter of perspective?

In the photon's frame of reference it arrives at our eyes in the same instant that it was emitted from a star perhaps millions of light-years distant. No time having passed, that instant is the present moment. We think we're looking at the past but the past doesn't actually exist, the photon does.

We believe that we're observing the star as it was in the past, but in the photon's frame of reference the energy and information the photon conveys represent the star as it exists in the present moment, and that is what we're actually seeing. I thought that opinion might be considered controversial.

[JimC]

We can only process our frame of reference, while acknowledging that time moves differently for a photon...

[L'Emmerdeur]

We can only process our frame of reference, while acknowledging that time moves differently for a photon...

In thought experiments though, I think we're capable of processing many frames of reference.

[Brian Peacock]

I would think we are certainly looking back in time from our frame of reference. Can you expand (non-relativistically ) a bit?

The sophomoric bullshitting hypothesis being written, it was promptly eaten by the site. Trying again offsite.

The speed of light appears to be a hard limit. Though nothing is indeed faster than light, that speedy nothing doesn't convey energy or information. We observe energy and/or information emanating or travelling across the Universe at a particular velocity. You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned 'our frame of reference.' We have minds though, and needn't be confined to one frame of reference.

No doubt it's old hat and maybe discarded as unproductive by physicists, but I find the idea of adopting the frame of reference of the photon intriguing. Combine that with presentism (only the present moment exists) and reality is travelling at the speed of light. Are we actually observing past events, or is that a matter of perspective?

In the photon's frame of reference it arrives at our eyes in the same instant that it was emitted from a star perhaps millions of light-years distant. No time having passed, that instant is the present moment. We think we're looking at the past but the past doesn't actually exist, the photon does.

We believe that we're observing the star as it was in the past, but in the photon's frame of reference the energy and information the photon conveys represent the star as it exists in the present moment, and that is what we're actually seeing. I thought that opinion might be considered controversial.

The speed of light isn't just a speed limit, it's also a mathematical constant applied lije a ratio to represent the relationship between distance:time in relativistic calculations. Applying the constant ensured that both sides of the ratio add up to the same value.

In one sense, as speed increases the distance part of the equation gains what the time side loses, in proportion to the constant. When looking at something moving at 'the speed of light' the distance side becomes huge and the time side becomes virtually zero.

There's an energy element to the calculations as well, because it takes energy to move something with mass at the speed of light. For something with mass moving at the speed of light the energy part of the equations gain what the time and distance parts of the equations lose, in proportion to the constant. The energy part tends towards infinity the faster you go.

The same equations represent the same thing from different perspectives: from the perspective of watching the thing move and from the perspective of the thing moving.

This isn't just tidy maths, it reflects what actually happens in the physical world. It means that distance and time reduce the faster you go - or, the faster you go the shorter your rulers become and the slower your clocks run.


With distance and time bound together in this proportional way Einstein was able to show we can think of them and treat them as a single thing, which he called spacetime.