Dawkins, Harari and I Solve America's Most Vexing Problem

or at least that's how it went in my fever dream.

I was lucky to get to see Richard Dawkins in person last week, in conversation with Michael Shermer in San Francisco: lucky because Dawkins has dubbed this tour “The Final Bow,” and he’s my favorite atheist, which is saying a lot!

On the drive home, I was percolating with ideas for the essay I would dazzle you with the next day; only the next day I woke up flattened by what could only have been Covid’s newest, most ambition-killing strain yet. I’m still coming out of the fog, vaguely curious about what those essay ideas might have been and whether I’ll ever find out. I did record one piece of video during the audience Q&A which will be germane to this essay — so let’s put a pin in that, as the kids say.

While flat on my back most of the last four days, reading wasn’t an option, much less writing. Instead, I listened to all of the English-language podcasts, except the Candace Owens one. Yesterday’s City Arts & Lectures pod¹ featured a conversation between Yuval Harari, who wrote Sapiens; and Kara Swisher, who really hates Elon Musk and who inserts “mm-hm” in a hurry-up-I’m-getting-bored tone I’m not okay with. People have differing opinions about Harari, but for me he’s DaVinci and Galileo blended into one nutritious smoothie, which was apparently just what the doctor ordered because today I’m like new! While idling sandwiched between the musings of Dawkins and Harari, my too-warm brain was not fit for purpose, but Reader: it has phoenixed triumphant and will soon favor you with the goods promised by the title of this post, so don’t go.

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First: what is America’s Most Vexing Problem? Answer: the breakdown of trust, without which the other problems grow more intractable.

The centrality of trust is baked into our origin story: if taxation, then representation. If representative government, then citizens with free access to news and information on which to base their votes. Freedom to worship as you like, to move around and congregate with whomever you choose and to say what you think, even if it’s critical of the state: every treasured liberty granted by the American ‘experiment’ consecrates the value of trust.

In Econ 101 we learned that trust is also the most important ingredient of a successful market economy. If you never took that class, listen to this episode of This American Life, ‘The Invention of Money,’ ideally while on a road trip with kids or grandkids. Actually, even if you have a PhD and an endowed chair in economics, give it a listen! It’s that good. Bottom line: American capitalism only thrives in an atmosphere of trust in the banking and credit systems, and trust among anonymous citizens in each other’s baseline good faith and honesty are helpful too.

So, both political and material stability rely on trust.

This idea featured in the Harari-Swisher talk, which, incidentally, was recorded at a live event just two days before the Dawkins talk, also in San Francisco. Quoting Harari:

“[D]emocracies work on trust — especially in institutions — where dictatorships work on terror….With one hand [dictators] try to spread propaganda, and with the other, they just seed distrust. [Pretty soon], every time somebody says something, we are taught to ask not ‘Is it true?’, but ‘Who stands to gain if we believe it?’”

And:

“When you look at information networks and at institutions throughout history, a key difference is whether they have strong or weak self-correcting mechanisms. A self-correcting mechanism is something within the institution itself that constantly works to identify, to expose the mistakes of the institution (or a member of the institution) and correct them.”

Based on these uncontroversial axioms, we Democrats have a problem. It’s a problem whose seriousness grows in proportion to the strength and regional power of our party, which is to say: nowhere is it a bigger problem than in California, where I live. When the Democratic Party dedicated itself to instantiating the unabridged wish list of ‘trans’ activism, it slowly backed its adherents into a corner where the conditions are incompatible with political survival.

With one hand it spread propaganda: The Genderbread Person, “trans women are women”, “gender-affirming care is lifesaving care,” “puberty blockers are 100% reversible,” and most unforgivably, the insinuation that public schools exist to shield children from recalcitrant parents who would deny them their human right to become (via ghoulish harms posing as ‘healthcare’) their ‘true selves.’

With the other hand, it seeded distrust, and not just in our ostensibly shared opponents. By dodging questions and accountability my party squandered the trust of its own voters. We have reached the point where an elected Democrat speaks and I ask not, “Is it true?” but ‘Who stands to gain if I buy what he’s selling?’

From my vantage point, the Presidential campaign has devolved to a junk text- messaging orgy, though I assume there’s also a robust social media component. The empty-of-substance campaign vibe is met by a reserved hush from ‘our’ institutions: the public-education infrastructure, the legacy press, the erstwhile ‘public-interest’ and ‘social-justice’ nonprofits, etc. (The first problem is that any of these are identified with a political party at all; the second is that it’s the Democratic Party.) Do these institutions possess ‘strong self-correcting mechanisms’? Is that what they’re busy doing? I have doubts.

What is there to do but while away the remainder of the election season with distractions like ‘Nobody Wants This’ on Netflix [highly recommend] and brisk fall hikes [also recommend]? There are worse prescriptions, I guess; but for what it’s worth, I had an idea during my recent convalescence that I thought I might workshop here. It’s raw and lacks sizzle, but there’s room to grow. Here it is:

1. America needs a good ombudsman.

Ombudsman: an official appointed to investigate individuals' complaints against maladministration, esp. that of public authorities.

2. The ombudsman will be an Artificial Intelligence bot.

Here’s how it will work:

A group of top programmers will build a prototype AI Ombudsman. I propose naming it “Sage.” Sage will have the ability to take in every input she’s given, describe the problem and render a verdict of fault (where applicable) together with a complete list of possible remedies for all victims and a prescription for policy changes to ensure similar faults are prevented from re-occurring.

Prototype Sage will be thoroughly and openly vetted by a committee inclusive of every interest group wishing to have a say in the topic being studied: political parties, doctors, activists, educators, WPATH, the Eunuch Archive — all groups are invited to register their preferences and submit their most compelling data, which will be input with all the other data, as with any systematic evidence review.

In forums anyone can view, the participants will consider every relevant question: e.g., should inputs be evidence based? What constitutes better and worse- quality evidence? Should low-quality evidence be considered? What constitutes “harm?” How should Sage weight the variation of harm, e.g., temporary vs. permanent, physical vs. psychological, extreme but with only a few victims vs. mild with many victims, etc. Catalog all stated benefits of sex trait modification and cross-sex presentation, assigning values to relevant data while distinguishing benefits and risks defined by individuals’ feelings versus benefits and risks attaching to groups (e.g., sex classes, children and other vulnerable populations) and families.

Once Sage has been refined to properly categorize every input to the satisfaction of all the interested parties, she will perform a public beta test whereupon mysteries of tortuous complexity will be solved through the marvel of quantum computing. Imagine these questions being definitively answered in our lifetimes:

Do male bodies really differ from female bodies? Can one sex be “stronger” and “faster” than the other? If so, which one is it?

Can a male human give birth?

Did Stone Age hominids possess ‘gender identities’ at odds with their sex? Would this discovery invalidate all or part of the fossil record, if true?

Should a child psychiatrist be judged “a criminal” if shown to have propagated fraudulent “research” for personal gain while contributing to the harm of children at scale? If journal editors preference such studies for publication and professors adopt them as fact-based pedagogy, are RICO statutes applicable? What are the pros and cons of this novel legal approach?

Sage’s conclusions don’t have to be legally binding, they just have to be spelled out for the world to see and discuss. Sage will be equipped to distill the whole universe of relevant data points into a paragraph, like human DNA evidence but faster and with citations. Her logic will challenge the hubris of judicial opinions now standing even though they are riddled with errors and spurious assumptions.² Lawyers who don’t like Sage can argue their specific objections on the merits, by parsing the algorithm in the open and on the record. The value of Sage as an AI rather than a software program will be her capacity to integrate new information and behave as a continually self-correcting institution would.

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America has systems in place to help us manage all manner of conflicts, complaints and crimes. We know the correct procedure for handling a fender-bender, a workplace dispute, a sudden toothache, a power outage, an Amber Alert. We know there’s a legal pathway to citizenship, divorce, and personal protective orders, even if we’ve been lucky enough not to need such knowledge.

I grew up understanding that if I play by society’s rules and go through the proper channels, I can expect to feel safe and protected from most threats. So can my children. We’re not always guaranteed the outcome we want, but there’s usually a process for being heard, and there’s no reason to think that process is wildly corrupt or out to get us.

The open hostility parents of gender-confused children receive from their schools, libraries, health clinics, family courts and other institutions of trust is shocking and destabilizing. The targeting of such parents with threats, fear and alienation by agents of government is worse than criminal. Recall these two stories, both set in California, from a previous post:

Ted Hudacko is a Bay Area father whose parental rights were permanently revoked by a family court judge over his reluctance to allow his suddenly-’trans’-identifying son, age 16, to undergo medical and surgical sex trait modification procedures. Hudacko’s wife had filed for divorce and was actively encouraging their son's medical ‘transition.’ The family-court judge who did the revoking, it later turned out, had enthusiastically supported her own son’s medical ‘transition’ a year before Hudacko’s case came before her. This fact went undisclosed during the hearings.

Abigail Martinez is a Los Angeles mother who lost custody of her 15 year old daughter Yaeli after Yaeli's school, in concert with county social workers and the activist group RISE, argued successfully for Yaeli’s removal from her family and into foster care. They asserted claims of abuse that were quickly disproved, yet Yaeli remained a ward of the state. California's foster care system supplied her with synthetic testosterone even over the objections of her own court-appointed attorney. While on the drug, Yaeli spiraled into a depression that culminated in her suicide kneeling before an oncoming train.

Sage is a word meaning ‘wise’ that also pays homage to one of the most grievously injured victims of the kinds of legal-institutional sadism described above. Her story, which involves trafficking of a minor for sexual abuse —twice— as well as the wrongful alienation of parental rights and affection by a US state in its maniacal zeal to control and possess a ‘transgender child’ is told here.

That none of these stories was reported by our news media is a moral stain on every outlet that looked away. That no harm or even mistake has been publicly acknowledged, no reparative gestures made to any of these parents, is obscene and unbefitting a civilized society. (I try to avoid sounding hyperbolic and overwrought, but these particular stories make it hard.)

If the highly educated leaders of the world’s only superpower can’t muster the courage and common sense to defend the facts of elementary human biology against a small army of asocial fetishists and sycophants — if this requires too much intellectual rigor, too much regard for women or concern for children — how can a thoughtfully designed AI bot fail to do better?

Though we as a nation repeatedly fail these simple tests of character and cognition, we continue to lead the world in technological innovation. So, I’m pinning what hope remains on Sage, the No-BS AI Ombudsman who can only tell the truth, to shut down this carnival of misery and madness and show us how we might best meet the needs of survivors, such as her namesake.

Here’s Richard Dawkins channeling Sage as he processes jibberish inputs while keeping his outputs grounded in material reality:

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Note to subscribers: I’m finding there’s a finite number of ways to argue the case I’ve been making here, which is why the time between written posts has expanded. I’m going to keep speaking out wherever I’m invited, and will definitely keep the podcast going, but I’ll only write a new essay when I have something new to say. I also think there is good material in the archive which 90% of my current readers haven’t seen, so I plan to update and republish some of that work in the coming months as it becomes relevant to events in the news and courts.

On the podcast, I have the honor of interviewing Meghan Daum for Episode 16 of UnMuted next week! Meghan is someone I’ve long admired as a writer and thinker, and her Unspeakable podcast is a model for mine to aspire to. I think it will be a great listen.

Soon the courtroom dramas will be front and center, and you’ll want to read all about ‘em. I recommend following Kara Dansky and Unyielding Bicyclist, two Substack lawyer/writers with intricate knowledge all the tentacles of gender crime. They will appear together on an X-Space hosted by DIAG later this month — a must-attend event! I’ll post details and updates in Substack Notes.

For coverage of female athletes struggling to rid their competitions and their locker rooms of males trying to appropriate their sex, subscribe to Sarah Barker’s Substack, TheFemaleCategory. It’s infuriating, eye-opening and important.

And thank you for supporting my work, too! I look forward to your comments on this one.

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2. https://jennypoyerackerman.substack.com/p/civil-rights-then-and-now