Richard Hanania Profile picture
Jan 26 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Circumcision is the only case in which our culture removes a healthy body part as a routine part of medicine.

As I explain in @QueerMajority, the evidence supposedly justifying such an extreme practice is laughable, and it needs to end. queermajority.com/essays-all/was…
You could of course find benefits. Cutting off your arm would have benefits. Imagine we dulled the sense of taste so people wouldn't eat fatty foods, and then used science to say this is a good thing.

The benefit has to be *extreme* to justify such a drastic change to the body. Image
One might compare circumcision to gender affirming care, but we don't do that to babies! The person has some say in what happens to them. How did we get to the point where we consider the human penis a mistake of evolution? Image
One study shows that circumcision is tied to a lower rate of urinary tract infections. But you need to slice 111 penises to prevent one infection, most of which are a minor problem. This is not how you make rational tradeoffs. Image
How did Christians start getting circumcised?

It was to prevent them from touching themselves.

Westerners look down on Muslims mutilating girls because they're afraid they might like sex.

We're not so different after all. Image
The foreskin exists among practically all mammalian species, which indicates it's doing something important. What is that? I don't know. Burden of proof is on those who think the whole thing is a mistake to prove their case. Again, we don't do this for any other body part. Image
Thankfully, immigrants are helping us move away from this barbaric practice.

And some states are cutting Medicaid funding, which research shows helps save penises.

This is one public policy area anti-circumcision activists can focus on. Image
Muslims will argue they have "reasons" for female circumcision too. We dismiss them, not even seeing whether they might have a point here or there. The only reason we don't do the same for male circumcision is because of our cultural bias.

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More from @RichardHanania

Jan 2
Are men and women equally intelligent? The standard line among people who accept the reality of heredity is yes, but men just have more variation. I looked into the question, and it doesn't appear to be true. Men are probably 2-4 IQ points smarter.🧵 richardhanania.com/p/are-men-smar…
The thing about the equality hypothesis is that it's been promoted by names like Arthur Jensen, Charles Murray, and Richard Herrnstein. Not ones you would expect to be cowed by political correctness! This makes the position credible. Richard Lynn has been the prominent dissenter Image
Lynn's argument is that the girls are smarter up to 4yo, the sexes are equal around 6-16, and then men pull away in adulthood. The basic evolutionary reasoning here is that men need more intelligence to climb hierarchies, attract women, etc. This accords with larger male brains.
Read 16 tweets
Dec 22, 2023
Most of my reading is of people who I politically disagree with. What makes someone potentially insightful? Traits include.

*No zero sum thinking
*Belief in processes that aggregate info
*Rejection of even "light" conspiracy thinking.

I explain here.
richardhanania.com/p/towards-an-e…
The smartest people on the right and left ended up agreeing on Covid. When there’s a new issue that doesn’t touch on ideological commitments, reasonable minds come to the correct position. Contrast to the Covid hysteria of the left and anti-vax on the right.
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The people I like to read might not agree with my politics but they think similarly at higher levels of abstraction. This means being able to think in statistical terms, use cost/benefit analysis, Bayesian reasoning, etc. Image
Read 7 tweets
Dec 13, 2023
People are missing the most important political story of the year.

It doesn't matter much if young people are turning against Israel.

Society is dominated by elites, and what is really going to reshape our politics is The Great Jewish Realignment.🧵richardhanania.com/p/the-great-je…
In analyzing political trends, people look at polls and say young people or the public or whatever are moving in a certain direction, and make predictions.

This is not completely useless, but the public will is thwarted by elites all the time. Especially on foreign policy. Image
What is there to know about American elites?

You probably know that they are disproprionately Jewish, but unless you spend time in the darker corners of the internet you have no idea just how Jewish.
Read 15 tweets
Nov 27, 2023
Some people say that Israel should fight a less aggressive war to avoid creating more terrorists.

This view reflects a deep misunderstanding of the conflict and Palestinian society. If anything the opposite is more likely to be true.

Here's why🧵richardhanania.com/p/israel-must-…
There are three models you can have of Palestinian hate of Israelis

1. Linear: Oppression goes up, hatred increases
2. Logarithmic: Same as 1 but rises more slowly after a certain level
3. "Lose Hope": It is hope of victory that inspires them.

Which is likely to be true here?
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Which model you adopt determines what you think a smart Israeli response to October 7 looks like. If you have a Linear Model, fighting an aggressive war is self-defeating. If you think Palestinian hatred can't get much worse, you might as well destroy their ability to make war.
Read 21 tweets
Nov 26, 2023
Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us is on how westerners exported our ideas about mental illness across the world.

Western psychiatry treats mental illness like physical illness, universal, but the human mind is influenced by memes. By talking about mental illnesses, you create them🧵
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A girl died of an eating disorder in Hong Kong. In response, the government and media went around "raising awareness" about the disease and relying on western experts to understand it. As a result, one study showed a 25x increase in eating disorders.
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After Sri Lanka was hit by a tsunami, western "trauma experts" came and told them to stop relying on their religious traditions and communities. The society dealt with a parent's passing by telling kids they moved away, westerners demanded they tell them their parents are dead.

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Read 11 tweets
Nov 19, 2023
Reminder that Nayib Bukele single handedly brought down the crime rate in #ElSalvador but instead of admitting it, the media made up a bunch of excuses: "it was going down anyway", "he made deals with the gangs," etc

Here's why that's all nonsense. richardhanania.com/p/the-invisibl…
"Vox complains that there aren’t enough public defenders in El Salvador to advocate on behalf of all the accused criminals. Should a country therefore let gangs roam free until it sets up a few more law schools and finds enough money in the budget to hire the new graduates?" Image
Yes it the muder rate was declining for a few years before Bukele took power. Note that should sometimes happen by chance! But going by recent history, it should've gone back up again. Bukele got the murder rate down to unthinkable levels. Image
Read 4 tweets

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