Postmodernism is not the foundational religion of the far left, whatever that means. To the extent that any philosophy is that, it is Marxism, a kind of modernism. Postmodernism is explicitly and inherently anti-Marxist.

I think postmodernism and post-structuralism have useful things to say around map-territory relationships, but the extreme "there is no objective reality" form of postmodernism is plainly false. And I share your concern about public perception of GMOs being wrong.

I'd recommend checking out Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. There are deep insights there about how society has replaced ground-level (i.e. objective) truths with symbols and signs, and there's a lot of discussion about map-territory relationships in there. You might enjoy it!

> To the extent that any philosophy is that, it is Marxism

I actually don't think that's the case at all. Post-modernism is far more prevalent today than Marxism and even more dangerous.

> Postmodernism is explicitly and inherently anti-Marxist.

Some post-modernists may claim that, but I don't think it's true in practice or even in theory. If anything, post-modernism is, in some ways or facets, an evolution of Marxism beyond economics: https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/postmodernism_does_it_have...

Would strongly recommend checking out Baudrillard's ideas.

I am the complete opposite of a relativist when it comes to the territory, but clearly the maps we make of that territory are influenced by social and cultural history. So they are worth questioning or "deconstructing".

The main way the right is unmoored from reality is in saying that the maps that have traditionally existed are the territory, or at least are indistinguishable from it. That is plainly incorrect, for the simple reason that a faithful model of reality must be as complicated as reality itself. And if you insist that your simplistic view is the right one, the inevitable result is that you'll violently reshape the territory to fit the map (which is what the current regime has been doing).

Thanks for the info. Can you give an example of someone on the right mistaking a symbol for reality? I've seen, I believe, the opposite in play. I've seen, for instance, thinkers like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau argue the exact opposite; that a symbol is an approximation but also that it's utility is tied to fidelity with reality. And, over-simplistic viewpoints are found in abundance on the left.

As an example, a leftist over-simplifies that all group disparities must be caused by systemic injustice. This is deeply untrue, and, for instance, Sowell's "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" is a treatise on the myriad of complexities that can result in group disparity that have nothing to do with social oppression or even occur in spite of it. But the SJW has a "map" of the territory, and it gives a seemingly univariate explanation for everything.

> Can you give an example of someone on the right mistaking a symbol for reality?

Gender. The observed behavior among humans is clearly very complex, but the right keeps insisting that its binary/immutable map is the territory. This leads to recent moves like the administration saying that trans people are inherently dishonest and saying false things -- which is a claim about objective reality, and specifically that the simplistic map they have is reality.

Note, I am not saying that gender is just a social construct. It isn't, there are clearly deep affinities and anti-affinities related to gender built into our brain wiring. But it's not as simple as the right makes it out to be either.

> As an example, a leftist over-simplifies that all group disparities must be caused by systemic injustice.

As someone on the left I don't believe this at all. I think systemic injustice explains a large part of disparities but not all of them. I'm not a fan of univariate or monocausal explanations in general.

> I think systemic injustice explains a large part of disparities but not all of them.

I appreciate your statement of nuance, However, most letists behave as if systemic injustice is the primary cause, and the only cause worth dealing with, regardless of whether evidence or research suggest otherwise. In fact, they are actively hostile to even attempting to find and compare other causes. And thinkers like Kendi outright say that all disparity is evidence of discrimination: https://dailycampus.com/2020/09/21/no-disparity-does-not-imp...

> Gender. The observed behavior among humans is clearly very complex, but the right keeps insisting that its binary/immutable map is the territory.

I have no problem believing a person can invent a definition of gender with complex meaning. Most conservatives, however, simply reject these formulations as a mixture of false, societally destructive, and causing far more harm than good. Before the 20th century gender was a word related to grammar only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

From Wikipedia: "The concept of gender, in the modern social science sense, is a recent invention in human history.[26] The ancient world had no basis of understanding gender as it has been understood in the humanities and social sciences for the past few decades.[26] The term gender had been associated with grammar for most of history and only started to move towards it being a malleable cultural construct in the 1950s and 1960s."

It was John Money and colleagues who lead the way with popularizing gender's redefinition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex%E2%80%93gender_distinction,

And, as we all know, Money proved a very evil human and poor scientist, as his seminal research was entirely and thoroughly debunked.

Conservatives argue that the best definition for gender is a synonym for biological sex, which for humans has two functional categories. I have yet to see an iota of real proof that a more complex definition is truer or better.

> I have no problem believing a person can invent a definition of gender which complex meaning.

No! I am not a relativist. Observed behavior is what it is, and a scientific mindset means creating the best possible models for it. Some models are objectively better than others.

(At a meta level, I also believe that the naturalistic/scientific way of looking at the world is objectively better than other ways. At an even more meta level, I believe what I believe because, modulo uncertainty, it is the objectively best set of beliefs; if I believed otherwise, I'd change my beliefs in that direction.)

> Most conservatives, however, simply reject these formulations as a mixture of false, societally destructive, and causing far more harm than good.

Exactly. Conservatives believe their simplistic map is the territory.

> Before the 20th century gender was not used to meaning anything beyond male/female.

Not the terms maybe. But there is existence beyond signs and signifiers, which is exactly what Baudrillard and others have said.

> It was John Money and colleagues who likely lead the way with its redefinition, and, as we all know, Money proved to be a twisted, despicable human being. His seminal research was also proven profoundly and completely false, making him an extremely poor scientist as well.

I care about reality, not some scientist being a fuckup. There are plenty of scientists who describe reality better than conservatives do and also have unimpeachable integrity.

> Conservatives argue that the best definition for gender is a synonym for biological sex, which for humans has two functional possibilities. I have yet to see an iota of real proof that something else is better.

Well, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. You have the simplistic belief that your binary/immutable map of an observably complex territory is the territory.

Reality is quite complex, so more complex models are in general going to describe reality better. That alone should make people be suspicious of simpler models when more complex models have greater explanatory power. (Occam's razor only applies when multiple explanations describe the world with equal predictive power. As a first cut, a maxim of going against Occam's razor will generally lead to better results.)

I edited my message while you were responding, and I think the edits make it more clear that the reinvention of gender was done by people with no scientific proof of what they were doing. They were instead acting as philosophers and theologians of their own atheist religion, which is also incidentally what post modernists tend to do. You speak about reality and yet all I see are a bunch of people denying reality as they try to reshape words to describe the fantasy in their heads.

Lastly, claiming that, if a model is more complex, therefore it is more true, is a logical fallacy. I hope you can see at least that. You've given zero backing to your assertions other than "your model is too simple." It's not enough to say that. You have to show that another model is more true or better in some way.

We've seen the fruits of gender theory: decline, suffering, and destruction. China won't let any of that on their Tik Tok equivalent, as we've learned recently, and we all know why. Its untrue, and it acts as deadly poison to civilization. The tension between conservatism and progressivism is to allow good new ideas to thrive but to reject the bad ones. It's becoming more and more clear that gender theory is the latter, and it should hopefully soon be left to the ash heap of history.

I am an actual trans person, you know. Unlike religion or higher powers, there is a great body of evidence that a model of gender which treats people like me as honest conveyors of our experiences is a much better description of reality than a model like yours.

The difference is that scientific models of gender are naturalistic (they follow typical scientific principles), and religious models are not. I think the naturalistic view of the world is objectively the best view of the world.

I believe that truth and true religion are one and the same. The founder of my church said:

"The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.”

I would like this to be my last response. I don't want to endlessly debate or make you feel like you need to endlessly respond. If you would like to respond with some links to the evidence that supports a complex model of gender as being more in line with reality, I'd be happy to take a look (without responding, of course, with my opinion on that evidence).

I'm glad you place a high value on the truth. I do as well, though I come at it from a proudly irreligious standpoint.

There is a vast amount of evidence about things like medical transition improving mental and physical health in trans people [1], as well as cisgender people experiencing gender dysphoria when they are misgendered (many cis men react quite badly if you call them a girl or a woman!) It all aligns far closer to the modern scientific view of gender than a traditional religious view.

But I would just like you to consider two things:

One, that I personally have gotten objectively measurable benefits from transitioning. You are welcome to check out my body of professional work and writing. Is there any point at which any of it suggests I am deluded about anything? I am generally quite a rigorous person, and my work is valued for its careful attention to detail. It would be quite strange if this is the one thing I was deluded about—that's not how such illnesses manifest.

So I am an honest conveyor of my experiences. But I'm not special! It would be quite strange if I were the only one.

Two, that the people who came up with the traditional view of gender were functionally illiterate. They didn't even have germ theory back then, let alone statistical modeling and Bayes' theorem! Basically everything we know from before the advent of modern science is subject to rigorous questioning, and is often plain wrong. Of course the modern scientific view of gender is a much better fit to reality—it is informed by studying actual lives through sophisticated means! Modern ways of knowing are better than pre-modern ones. That should be your prior.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/154t1qq/my_...