I do recommend the book. Free will is a challenging question. Our minds are peculiarly arranged to see both sides: we predict how billiard balls will collide, yet we insist that we ourselves aren't billiard balls. FLUKE could serve as an engaging secular intro to the topic, or (as it was for me) a pleasant and thought-provoking revisit of the topic.
Every reader/writer brings their own self into their work, and here's my unique experience: I've tended to focus my articles on Medium on a particular topic, starting 2.5 years ago with my complaint about Richard Dawkins. I've discussed Rowling, Harris, and Burkeman too. Last month, I wrote four or five unhappy articles on Dawkins and declared that I'd finally wrapped up my series on him. To celebrate, I was looking forward to reading a book that had nothing whatsoever to do with Dawkins, Rowling, et al. I picked up FLUKE, which, it turns out, briefly name-dropped these people I was specifically resolving to avoid. Perhaps this is evidence that we don't have free will. We're all connected. I learned of Prof. Klaas's book for reasons, and if I dig into that chain of events, I'll find we're all connected to Richard Dawkins in some complicated way, right? Perhaps it's "only" a fluke. But the fluke is the real cause of what happens, and, though seemingly trivial or randomly generated itself, the fluke produces an outcome we care about.
In discussing FLUKE here, I felt obligated to mention Dawkins-Rowling-Harris-Burkeman as a trigger warning to my audience. That's because of who I am, who my audience is, and our covenant with each other. Anyone who is allergic to the character name Harry Potter in 2024 should consider themselves advised that FLUKE mentions it exactly once.
But those names aren't integral to the book; IMO, the author didn't "have" to name-drop them at all. Their disagreeable positions don't figure into the thesis—not even implicitly, as far as I can tell, despite my overactive pattern detection in this area. Most readers (who are not I) can easily "choose" to ignore these names.
"Choose," right? This is the trippy meta-experience I had reading this book. I don't choose who I am: I didn't choose to be born, I can't go back and change my past, I live in my gender, my well-being depends on people not doing what Dawkins and Rowling do, I am the person who woke up today with highly specific preconceptions about what I'd like to read (no Dawkins), so why do I believe I have some choice about picking up this book, how I contemplate it, how I react to it, and who I'll be tomorrow or next year?
Your finger is hovering on the "buy" link for FLUKE. You may not have a choice whether you press that button. Or, if you do have a choice about it, you're confronted with that choice right now due to the odd coincidence that you and I know each other, and you no longer have a choice about *that* (sorry!).
Everything we care about turns out to hinge on a fluke. That doesn't mean I can just go without mentioning the fluke (namely, "why am I seeing Dawkins's name again?"), because even if "it's not personal," the fluke contributes to the meaning I make in this world and in fact is the actual thing I care about. If I don't mention what I care about, I'm not telling my story, and then I may as well not be me in this interaction. We might as well have a chatbot generate a book review at that point. This is part of what I mean when I say we are trying to survive. We're human, and each of us is different and reads a book differently, and we don't need to force ourselves to conform because then we'd be robots and what would be the point of being conscious? We don't want professional agitators to take away our genders because we'd like to continue perceiving the world from our own perspectives, and as long as we do have our own perspectives, we'll continue to have opinions about the agitators who oppose our existence. That's how that works.
TL;DR: Cite trans people. Just one. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but in case a little bird is listening, I dare anyone to try it. Trans people also have PhDs. Substitute one trans or nonbinary person for the anti-trans PhD you were going to quote as an authority or inspiration. Or (this could also help) consult an explicitly trans-friendly cis person, of whom there are so many. Try it and see what happens. It may be the tiny shift that changes the rest of your life. It would be a fluke that you chose.
P.S. I read everything Brian Klaas writes because I like his style and generally agree with him and always learn something.
P.P.S. I hear the newly launched GenderIdentityToday.com is planning to be a general resource as well as an incubator for happy accidents involving brilliant trans people. You are doing the work. We are going to survive.
