I'm not attacking your point on whether a lobotomy worked or not. Or whether transitioning works or not. I simply find your point that transitioning is not permanently changing the brain very silly.
Of course it's not like silicon, and that's why it's an analogy. Neither is a lobotomy anything like a sex change operation.
The basic structure of this particular analogy is highlighting that:
- Solution A: Literally destroys the machinery
- Solution B: Brings about changes in how the machinery operates by altering the processes running on that machinery
That these processes are further self-modifying is interesting, but irrelevant to the point.
The implications of these outcomes are meaningfully different whether we're talking about silicon or organic brains.
> I simply find your point that transitioning is not permanently changing the brain very silly.
This is not the point I was trying to make, and as I pointed out in the beginning of my comment, the entire point of any medical operation is to "change the brain", either directly or indirectly.
My point was more about the nature of the change, and how the literal destruction of a brain is a very different kind of change and is therefore an even more problematic comparison to make in the original comment.
Going on a road trip also permanently alters the brain.
> 2. The outcomes of these procedures are in different stratospheres, and gender surgery doesn’t involve changing the makeup of one’s brain and the fundamental structures through which one experiences subjective reality.
And transitioning for sure changes the makeup of one's brain. You can backpedal all you want now but your own words are very clear.
From my perspective, physical destruction was the primary point, and I was very specifically calling attention to how that destruction is meaningfully different from other kinds of changes.
That the brain is self-modifying was assumed, and self modification becomes a moot point when the brain is no longer capable of the traditional processes of self modification due to physical destruction.
> And transitioning for sure changes the makeup of one's brain.
A point that I acknowledged explicitly above. That doesn't mean that attacking a region of the brain with a metal spike and hammer is somehow the same thing.
> You can backpedal all you want now but your own words are very clear.
Obviously my words were not very clear since you've taken some meaning from them that I never intended.
Hopefully this comment clarifies the original intent sufficiently (which, incidentally is not back pedaling, since nothing about my position has changed).
That is true whether you're taking advil for your headache, anti-depressants to help you through PTSD, or the removal of body parts that have become toxic to your existence (e.g. your gall bladder).
That doesn't mean that all mind-altering treatments are created equal, and hormonal changes result in fundamentally different outcomes than changing (destroying) the underlying physical structures those treatments are operating on.
Put another way, lobotomies alter the hardware that all of these subjective experiences run on. Other forms of treatment are effectively modifications to software, or modifications to accommodate existing software. Drawing analogies between lobotomies and other forms of treatment is interesting as a thought experiment, but means little in practice.
But the real issue is that lobotomy just doesn't work. If lobotomy worked, it'd still be in the modern doctor's repertoire along with bloodletting and other practices. It's used here to represent a "Bad Idea", and we know far too little about gender dysphoria to relegate existing treatments to the same category.