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Fusion scientists have solved a long-standing mystery inside tokamaks, the donut-shaped machines designed to harness fusion energy. For years, experiments showed that escaping plasma particles hit one side of the exhaust system far more than the other, but simulations couldn’t explain why. Now, researchers have discovered that the rotation of the plasma itself plays a crucial role—working together with sideways particle drift to create the imbalance.

A new era of lunar exploration has begun as NASA launches four astronauts on Artemis II—the first crewed mission to fly around the Moon in over 50 years. Riding aboard the powerful SLS rocket, the Orion spacecraft is now on a 10-day journey that will test critical systems, push human spaceflight farther than it’s gone in decades, and set the stage for future Moon landings and eventual missions to Mars.

I have long argued that free will, as understood by most people, is simply an illusion, and I recently criticized Shermer’s view that it is not. In response, Shermer says I’m mistaken, but concludes that the issue of free will versus determinism is “an insoluble problem because we may be ultimately talking past one another at different levels of causality.”

In fact, the problem is not one of levels of causality, but of semantics: Shermer has made up a new definition of free will that’s very different from the one most people hold, and different as well from definitions offered by other “compatibilists”—people who argue that yes, human decisions and behavior are determined by the laws of physics, but we still have free will anyway. Here, I argue that Shermer’s compatibilist definition of free will is incoherent and incapable of refutation. In contrast, my form of determinism, adhering to purely physical causation of thoughts and behaviors free from any human “will,” is scientifically testable—and, so far, supported by lots of evidence.  

But first let’s look at our respective definitions. I adhere to biochemist Anthony Cashmore’s definition of free will:

… I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature.

In this definition there’s a “will” that doesn’t involve physical processes but can alter decisions. Another way of saying this is the way most people understand free will: “If you could replay the tape of life and return to a moment of decision at which everything—every molecule—was in exactly the same position, you have free will if you could have decided differently—and that decision was up to you.” This in turn can be condensed to the view that “you could have done other than what you did.” This concept is called “libertarian free will” or “contra-causal free will.” 

Surveys in different countries show that most people indeed think we live in a world in which behavior is not deterministic, and our actions are controlled by an intangible, nonphysical “will.” The prevailing view is that we could have done other than what we did. 

The science suggests that our feeling that we could have acted differently is, pure and simple, an illusion. 

This concept is rejected by physical determinists like Shermer and me. Determinism does, however, allow different outcomes in a moment of decision, but only insofar as the laws of physics are non-deterministic and inherently unpredictable. The only physical laws with such unpredictability are those of quantum mechanics (some physicists suggest that quantum events are deterministic in a way we don’t yet understand). For example, it is possible that you ordered a steak rather than salmon because, somewhere in the neurons of your brain, a quantum event took place when you gave your order. But most physicists and biologists think that quantum effects don’t apply on the macro scale of human behavior, where classical mechanics probably rules. And, at any rate, quantum effects cannot buttress free will, for we cannot will the movement of electrons. Libertarianism says the decision must be up to you, not up to probabilistic movements of particles. 

Like most compatibilists, Shermer is a determinist, asserting that, “I agree with Jerry and Dan [Dennett] that we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature.” But he argues that this determinism still leaves us room for free will. 

How can that be? It’s because Shermer defines free will in such a way that even in a physics-determined universe we still have a “freedom to choose.” Although I find his definition somewhat confusing, here’s what he says:

So, while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen.

… Here, for example, is [Robert] Sapolsky defending his belief that free will does not exist because single neurons don’t have it: “Individual neurons don’t become causeless causes that defy gravity and help generate free will just because they’re interacting with lots of other neurons.” In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises.

Shermer adds that our behavior satisfies the three requirements for volition given by philosopher Christian List. We have:

1. “the capacity to form an intention to pursue different possibilities,”
2. “the capacity to consider several possibilities for this action (this is the ‘could have done otherwise’ element),” and
3. causal control, “the capacity to take action to move toward one of these possibilities.” 

Our brains, of course, are the meat computers that form intentions, weigh possibilities, and emit decisions.

All this is puzzling because if we live in a universe governed by the laws of nature, then of course our bodies and brains are part of that physical nexus. Our brains, of course, are the meat computers that form intentions, weigh possibilities, and emit decisions. But this doesn’t answer the critical question: At any moment, could we have done other than what we did? If so, then there is something spooky going on whereby our brains are somehow exempt from the laws of physics. This seems to reside in Shermer’s claim that we are “active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way.” What else can that mean but a form of dualism, or even magic?

This smuggled-in dualism becomes clear when Shermer claims that although the action of individual neurons may be determined, “billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises.” But how can one neuron be governed by the laws of physics but a group of interacting neurons not be governed by the laws of physics. If they are, then there is no freedom, no volition, no “willed” control of our behavior, and no ability to have done otherwise. Yet Shermer argues that when a group of neurons cooperates, some kind of “will” arises. This dilemma won’t be resolved until Shermer explains the relevant difference between the behavior of one neuron and of a group of neurons.

This is not a semantic distinction, for the definition of free will I gave is testable while Shermer’s is not. There are many experiments and phenomena showing that our sense of agency can be altered by physically manipulating the brain (a big group of neurons), observing human behavior, or performing psychological tricks. For example, neurological experiments show that predictable binary “choices” occur in the brain well before they are consciously made by an individual—up to ten seconds in advance. Such decisions cannot come from conscious “will.” Various lesions in the brain can remove the illusion that we can make real choices (e.g., alien hand syndrome), and doctors, by electrically stimulating parts of the brain can create intentions to do specific acts, like licking your lips or moving your arms. Given more electricity, patients report that they had indeed done those acts even when they didn’t. 

What we think of as choice is really a neuronal newsreel screened after the events have already happened.

Alternatively, computer games or Ouija boards show that humans can perform actions they attribute to external forces like spirits even though they’re actually, but unconsciously, moving their muscles. All of this suggests that our conscious intentions are not “free,” but are formed by the brain before we’re aware of them, and can be manipulated to either add or remove feelings of “intention.” “Will,” “volition,” or “agency” may well be post facto phenomena in which deterministic activity in the brain is brought into consciousness a bit later, so that what we think of as choice is really a neuronal newsreel screened after the events have already happened. To repeat, it’s useless to see freedom in groups of neurons if it doesn’t occur in single neurons. As Cashmore noted:

Some will argue that free will could be explained by emergent properties that may be associated with neural networks. This is almost certainly correct in reference to the phenomenon of consciousness. However, as admirably appreciated by Epicurus and Lucretius, in the absence of any hint of a mechanism that affects the activities of atoms in a manner that is not a direct and unavoidable consequence of the forces of GES [genes, environment, and stochastic processes], this line of thinking is not informative in reference to the question of free will.

The science suggests that our feeling that we could have acted differently is, pure and simple, an illusion. 

In contrast, Shermer’s definition of free will is untestable, precisely because he’s defined free will tautologically: because people feel and act like they have free will, they do have some form of it. We feel like we control our actions, weigh alternatives, and make “choices” among those alternatives. But if we couldn’t have done other than what we did—if, at bottom, all we think and do reflects physical law—then what exactly is “free” about our decisions and behaviors? 

As Shermer notes, 59 percent of surveyed philosophers are compatibilists while the rest are almost equally divided between libertarians, determinists, and those with no opinion. He deems philosophers the “most qualified people” to pronounce on the problem, but are philosophers more qualified than neuroscientists or physicists? As Sam Harris (a neuroscientist and a determinist) said: 

[Compatibilism] ignores the very source of our belief in free will: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.

… Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

Importantly, the “folk” conception of free will—the libertarian version—is what most people think they have. It is that version that permeates society, the legal system, and, of course, religion, and is therefore the most important version to discuss. 

Frankly, I’m puzzled by the eagerness of intellectuals to embrace various forms of compatibilism, and I’ve concluded—Dennett said this explicitly—that this comes largely from the view that without some idea that we have free will, society would fall apart, with nobody being “morally responsible” for their actions. I don’t have space to rebut that claim, except to say that it’s an untested assertion. Further, it’s clear that most determinists are not running amok by flouting morality and the law, nor are we nihilists who see no point in getting out of bed. I’ll add that while we are “responsible” for our actions in the sense that we performed them, under determinism the concept of moral responsibility is incoherent, for it assumes we could have made either a moral or an immoral choice.                                                                                   

Finally, Shermer poses what he sees as an unassailable challenge to my determinism: 

In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises. This is why I like to ask determinists: Where is inflation [of the monetary sort] in the laws and principles of physics, biology, or neuroscience? It’s not, because inflation is an emergent property arising from millions of individuals in economic exchange, a subject properly described by economists, not physicists, biologists, or neuroscientists.

That is a red herring. Like all phenomena in human society, you won’t find monetary inflation in the laws of physics. Nor will you find academics, music, sports, or any other human endeavor. The question is not whether these phenomena are in the laws of physics, but whether they result from the laws of physics as emergent phenomena wholly compatible with underlying naturalism. And Shermer himself said yes, they do: “we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature.”

The problem of free will is “insoluble” only insofar as Shermer, trying to retain an idea of self-control, and ignoring the massive body of data on affecting volition, has confected a new definition that simply redescribes human behavior. The important question is this: “Is there physical determinism of human behavior or not?” Both Shermer and I agree that there is. In the end, however, Shermer seems to argue that we have free will because we feel like it. One might as well say that there’s a God because we feel like there is one.

For some time, astronomers have theorized that there is a connection between planetary mass and rotation. Using the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawai'i, a team of astronomers confirmed this relationship by studying dozens of gas giants and brown dwarfs in distant star systems.

The ten-day around-the-Moon mision launches at 6:26 pm Eastern US time, about 26 minutes from when this is posted.  Actually, that is the start of a 2-hour launch window.  Stay tuned!

Watch the official NASA broadcast below.

Four astronauts have begun a 10-day journey around the moon and back again, the first crewed flight to the moon since 1972

Genetically engineering tobacco plants could enable a more sustainable production method for psychedelic drugs, which are increasingly in demand for research and medical uses

Photographer Lalo de Almeida has been documenting the industrialisation taking place in the Amazon rainforest after the Brazilian government relaxed environmental controls

Ducks with corkscrew penises, fish changing sex – what do we really know about sex and reproduction on Earth? Less than we think, reveals a mind-boggling new book. Elle Hunt explores

A psychedelic experience set author Michael Pollan on a quest to understand consciousness in his new book A World Appears. He tells Olivia Goldhill what he learned – and how it changed him

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Feedback is delighted to discover a study analysing the use of humour at scientific conferences – but disappointed to find a distinct lack of it

You can call me a curmudgeon for saying that rock and pop music today are dreadful compared to that of their years of apogee (yes, my teenage years!), but you’d have to call Rick Beato a curmudgeon as well. And he knows a ton about music, being a musician himself, a producer, a music analyst, and a teacher. So he surely has more musical cred than I. Nevertheless, we generally share opinions about music, in particular the view modern rock and pop is tedious, repetitive, and boring. And I’ll argue strenuously that it’s not just because I like the music of my youth, and other generations like the music of their youth. Nope, metrics like musical complexity, the frequency of autotuning, and so on support the decline of rock and pop.

In the ten-minute video below, Beato compares the Beatles with Taylor Swift, and you can guess who comes off worse. (The “kids” may disagree, but they also are largely ignorant of the Beatles.) I have to say that I’ve listened to a fair amount of Taylor Swift, trying arduously to find out what it is about her music that’s made her the world’s biggest pop sensation. It can’t be her tunes, which are unmemorable, so perhaps it’s her lyrics about the bad guys she’s been involved with—something that surely resonates with her (mostly) female fans.

In this video Beato reacts to a 2024 NYT article (archived here) that discussed whether Taylor Swift is bigger now than the Beatles were in the past. That article concludes that both were huge and, if you use the right metrics, Swift can be seen as even bigger than the Beatles:

The length of Swift’s career has allowed her into the Beatles’ vaunted ballpark by giving her the chance to evolve her sound, grow her loyal audience and take full advantage of technological advances.

Yet as wild as it is for the Beatles to have accomplished so much in so little time, Swift’s longevity might be considered equally impressive in pop music, which often overvalues the new and — especially among female artists — the young.

Swift is of course still active, so we can’t measure something that I consider important: will their music be listened to twenty years hence? And how will it be regarded several decades after Swift or the Beatles stopped making music? We’ll have to wait, of course, for the answers to those questions, and I’ll be underground.

However, in this video, Beato details his experiences with Swift, having attended a number of her concerts and having a deep acquaintance with her music, as he has with the Beatles. But Beato is concentrating on quality, not sales or chart position.  He notes that many of Taylor Swift’s melodies were written by a large number of people who change over time, compared to only three for the Beatles (Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison). And it shows in the lame melodies (Beato likes Swift’s lyrics better than “her” tunes.) Further, Swift’s instrumentation itself was largely produced and performed \ by people other than Swift—something that, says Beato, is simply “how pop music is made” these days.

Although one would think that the Beatles don’t need to be extolled by Beato, since he’s done it so many times before, but he does mention great melodies of Beatles songs like “Lady Madonna,” or “I am the Walrus.”  (I could mention a gazillion more.) In contrast to Swift, he argues, the Beatles did not repeat ideas, and “they came up with all those ideas themselves.” He winds up calling Swift a “content creator”, who picks the brains of other people when she wants to change her music.

Beato asks for comments on his opinion, and I welcome yours below. But I doubt I’ll change my opinion that rock and pop music peaked several decades ago, and has gone downhill ever since. Swift’s immense popularity only proves that.

I have never heard a Taylor Swift song that comes close to the quality of this Beatles classic, and it isn’t all that complex compared to their later work. George Martin’s interpolation at 1:42, however, is a piece of genius:

The song was recorded on 18 October 1965, and it was complete except for the instrumental bridge. At that time, Lennon had not decided what instrument to use, but he subsequently asked George Martin to play a piano solo, suggesting “something Baroque-sounding”. Martin wrote a Bach-influenced piece that he found he could not play at the song’s tempo. On 22 October, the solo was recorded with the tape running at half speed, so when played back at normal pace the piano was twice as fast and an octave higher, solving the performance challenge and also giving the solo a unique timbre, reminiscent of a harpsichord.

Traditional encryption methods have long been vulnerable to quantum computers, but two new analyses suggest a capable enough machine may be built much sooner than previously thought

New AI tool validates over 100 new planets, finds thousands of candidates, and gives our best estimate for how likely it is to find certain planets around Sun-like stars.

In a shift that is reshaping entire ecosystems, the open oceans are letting less light in. We don't fully understand the consequences yet, but there is still hope, says oceanographer Tim Smyth

Yesterday, by a rare vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” for minors (we’re talking about a ban on speech, not medical procedures).  Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, breaking from her two liberal colleagues.

The background: in 2019, Colorado passed a bill banning “conversion therapy for a minor” (HB19-1129), which you can see here.  it defined “conversion therapy” this way:

(5.5) (a) “CONVERSION THERAPY” MEANS ANY PRACTICE OR TREATMENT BY A LICENSED PHYSICIAN SPECIALIZING IN THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHIATRY THAT ATTEMPTS OR PURPORTS TO CHANGE AN INDIVIDUAL’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY, INCLUDING EFFORTS TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS OR GENDER EXPRESSIONS OR TO ELIMINATE OR REDUCE SEXUAL OR ROMANTIC ATTRACTION OR FEELINGS TOWARD INDIVIDUALS OF THE SAME SEX.

(b) “CONVERSION THERAPY” DOES NOT INCLUDE PRACTICES OR TREATMENTS THAT PROVIDE:

(I) ACCEPTANCE, SUPPORT, AND UNDERSTANDING FOR THE FACILITATION OF AN INDIVIDUAL’S COPING, SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND IDENTITY EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT, INCLUDING SEXUAL ORIENTATION-NEUTRAL INTERVENTIONS TO PREVENT OR ADDRESS UNLAWFUL CONDUCT OR UNSAFE SEXUAL PRACTICES, AS LONG AS THE COUNSELING DOES NOT SEEK TO CHANGE SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY; OR

(II) ASSISTANCE TO A PERSON UNDERGOING GENDER TRANSITION.

This is aimed only at minors—people under 18.  Conversion therapy was not characterized as a criminal offense, but as a violation of professional discipline—a form of “unprofessional conduct” that could be punished by licensing boards, including suspension of licenses and fines.

Note that although we hear a lot about the law banning “affirmative therapy,” most of us see that as a kind of therapy that urges children who are gender dysphoric to alter their gender or their sex. But the law as written also bans “gay conversion therapy”: attempts, once in vogue when homosexuality was seen as a mental illness, to prevent people from being gay—to keep them “straight.” There are laws in 27 states and the District of Colombia, as shown in the map below from the Measurement Advancement Project, prohibiting this kind of therapy.

As the SCOTUS blog reports (as does the Supreme Court’s decision, linked below), the ban was challenged by a therapist who wanted to help her clients transition the way they wanted:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sent a challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” – treatment intended to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity – for young people back to the lower courts for them to apply a new standard. By a vote of 8-1, the justices agreed with Kaley Chiles, the licensed counselor challenging the law, that the ban discriminates against her based on the views that she expresses in her talk therapy. A federal appeals court, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, should have applied a more stringent standard of review, known as strict scrutiny, to determine whether the law violates the First Amendment as applied to Chiles.

But the Supreme Court also strongly hinted that the ban would fail that test. In his 23-page opinion, Gorsuch stressed that in cases like Chiles’, Colorado’s ban “censors speech based on viewpoint.” Because the First Amendment “reflects … a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth,” Gorsuch continued, “any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter. She argued that the majority’s opinion “could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers.”

Chiles went to federal court in Colorado to challenge the constitutionality of the 2019 law and block Colorado from enforcing it against her. She contended that she did not attempt to “convert” her clients. Instead, she said, she merely tried to help them “with their stated desires and objectives in counseling, which sometimes includes clients seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit allowed the state to continue to enforce the law. The majority concluded that the conversion therapy ban simply regulated conduct – a licensed mental health professional’s treatment of a client – that also happened to involve speech. Therefore, the court of appeals concluded, it would review the ban using the least stringent test for constitutional challenges, known as the “rational basis” test – a relatively low bar, the court of appeals said, that the ban passed.

Chiles came to the Supreme Court in 2024, asking the justices to weigh in. On Tuesday, they reversed the 10th Circuit’s ruling and sent the case back to the lower courts for another look.

Curiously, Chiles apparently wasn’t trying to force her clients to adopt one course of action over another, but to achieve the course of action they wanted:

[Chiles] contended that she did not attempt to “convert” her clients. Instead, she said, she merely tried to help them “with their stated desires and objectives in counseling, which sometimes includes clients seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”

The issue here is that it’s still “affirmative” in that Chiles went along with what their (minor) patients wanted rather than examining what they wanted.

The grounds for the decision were narrow: banning conversion therapy violated the First Amendment’s provision for freedom of speech (my bold below):

Gorsuch characterized the question before the justices as “a narrow one”: whether Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy violates the First Amendment as applied to the talk therapy that Chiles provides, and in particular whether the 10th Circuit was correct in applying “rational basis review” to the ban.

The Supreme Court, Gorsuch observed, “has long held that laws regulating speech based on its subject matter or ‘communicative content’ are ‘presumptively unconstitutional’” and therefore trigger strict scrutiny, which requires the government to show that a restriction on speech is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. “Under that test,” Gorsuch added, “it is ‘“rare that a regulation . . . will ever be permissible.”’”

The court has also acknowledged, Gorsuch continued, “the even greater dangers associated with regulations that discriminate based on the speaker’s point of view. When the government seeks not just to restrict speech based on its subject matter, but also seeks to dictate what particular ‘opinion or perspective’ individuals may express on that subject, ‘the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant,’” Gorsuch stressed. “’Viewpoint discrimination,’” Gorsuch said, “represents ‘an egregious form’ of content regulation, and governments in this country must nearly always ‘abstain’ from it.”

“Applying these principles,” Gorsuch continued, “we conclude that the courts below failed to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny in this case.” First and foremost, Gorsuch wrote, although “the First Amendment protects many and varied forms of expression, the spoken word is perhaps the quintessential form of protected speech. And that is exactly the kind of expression in which Ms. Chiles seeks to engage.”

. . . The majority rejected the state’s contention that the conversion therapy ban targets conduct or medical treatments, rather than speech, and therefore should be subject to a more deferential standard of review. Although the ban “may address conduct—such as aversive physical interventions” – Gorsuch wrote, Chiles “seeks to engage only in speech, and as applied to her the law regulates what she may say,” as well as “what views she may and may not express.” “Colorado,” Gorsuch concluded, “does not regulate speech incident to conduct; it regulates ‘speech as speech.’”

Note as well that Colorado’s ban wasn’t fully negated, nor were similar bans throughout the U.S.. Rather, the case was sent back to the lower courts for reevaluation on these grounds (from Grok, with sources); the applicable appellate courts must:

• Apply strict scrutiny (the most demanding level of First Amendment review) to the law as it applies to Chiles’s talk therapy. Under this standard, Colorado bears the burden of proving that the restriction on Chiles’s speech is narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.
• Reconsider the case in light of the Court’s determination that the law engages in viewpoint discrimination (banning one set of views on sexual orientation/gender identity while expressly permitting the opposing “affirmative” views, such as acceptance, support, identity exploration, or assistance with gender transition).

The Court’s opinion, concurrences, and Justice Jackson’s dissent can be found by clicking on the screenshot below:

I’ll be brief here (I hope): the Court screwed up big time here, failing to recognize, as Justice Jackson said in her 35-page dissent (which she read from the bench in toto), that in the case of therapy, medical or psychological, talk is more than just speech, it’s treatment. From her dissent:

No one directly disputes that Colorado has the power to regulate the medical treatments that state-licensed professionals provide to patients. Nor is it asserted that, when doing so, a State always runs afoul of the Constitution. So, in my view, it cannot also be the case that Colorado’s decision to restrict a dangerous therapy modality that, incidentally, involves provider speech is presumptively unconstitutional. In concluding otherwise, the Court’s opinion misreads our precedents, is unprincipled and unworkable, and will eventually prove untenable for those who rely upon the long-recognized responsibility of States to regulate the medical profession for the protection of public health.

Remember that medical therapy uses speech as well. Any doctor who simply told a patient to go home and drink vinegar with herbs to treat their cancer would be guilty of professional misconduct. Note that here the doctor doesn’t do anything, but could still be punished for malpractice.  The doctor must adhere to reasonable and accepted forms of treatment, and that includes treatments suggested only through speech.

Brown notes that conversion therapy is “dangerous,” and nearly everyone would agree with that vis-à-vis gay conversion therapy. It’s long been recognized by therapists and their organizations that trying to force someone out of becoming gay, instead of simply talking over the issue, is acting unethically and, insofar as this causes stress and may change someone’s life in a negative way, i.e. causing harm.

We’re beginning to recognize that the same holds for “affirmative therapy” as well.  If it works, affirmative therapy puts young people on a one-way treadmill leading to to puberty blockers, then to adult hormones, and perhaps to surgery.  Britain’s Cass Review, as well as studies in Scandinavian countries, have already recognized that “affirmative therapy” that leads to blockers and hormones is of unproven efficacy and could be dangerous over the long term. Insofar as talk therapy promotes these actions, then, it too is dangerous—much like telling someone they should take vinegar for cancer. It seems only rational that when a minor has a psychological problem around gender or sexuality, the therapist should be giving objective treatment—helping the patient sort out their feelings—and not imposing some outside ideology on the therapy. For outside ideology is exactly what is polluting “conversion therapy”: you shouldn’t be gay on the one hand, and on the other your gender dysphoria should be roundly affirmed (e.g., you feel like a girl inhabiting a boy’s body, and thus should go that route) rather than examined.

Perhaps when this case is remanded to lower courts, they will clarify these issues, notably that talk therapy is equivalent to action.  But surely the Supreme Court could have said that, and, as far as I can see, they messed up big time. I’m especially disappointed that the other two liberal justices, Kagan and Sotomayor, deemed the Colorado law a case of “viewpoint discrimination.” It may have been that way for legislators, but the law as written doesn’t deal with motivations. It is trying to prevent harm to minors.

I disagree strongly with the Court’s decision, while at the same time remembering that the law it banned is aimed at minors, not adults.

The third right arm of male octopuses has a specialised role in mating, and the creatures take extra care to avoid damaging it or losing it to a predator

April has a lot to offer when it comes to popular science reading, promising to help us do everything from future-proof our brains courtesy of Hannah Critchlow, to get to grips with really big numbers, thanks to Richard Elwes

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “woe,” literally begs the question of whether he was the True Prophet.