+But what was in question wasn't the observations of Hans's performance, only the interpretation of what those observations implied about Hans's psychology. As Pfungst put it: "that was looked for in the animal which should have been sought in the man."
+
+Similarly, in the case of a reputedly transgender three-year-old, a skeptical family friend isn't questioning observations of what the child said, only the interpretation of what those observations imply about the child's psychology. From the family's perspective, the evidence is clear: the child claimed to be a girl on many occasions over a period of months, and expressed sadness about being a boy. Absent an irrational prejudice against the idea that a child could be transgender, what could make them doubt the obvious interpretation of their own intimately lived experience?
+
+From the skeptical family friend's perspective, there are a number of anomalies that cast serious doubt on what the family thinks is the obvious interpretation.
+
+(Or so I'm imagining how this might go, hypothetically. The following anecdotes are merely illustrative, and may not reflect real events.)
+
+For one thing, there may be evidence that the child's information environment did not provide instruction on some of the relevant facts. Suppose that, six months before the child's social transition went down, another friend had reportedly explained to the child that "Some people don't have penises." (Apparently, grown-ups in Berkeley in the current year don't see the need to be any more specific.) But if no one in the child's life has been willing to clarify that girls and women, specifically, are the ones who don't have penises, and that boys and men are the ones who do, the child's statements on the matter may reflect mere confusion rather than a deep-set need.
+
+[TODO—
+ * Skeptics and supporters are still split about the interpretation of this even after extended debate. The supporter protests that the kid was educated that gender and genitals customarily go together; the kid isn't ignorant that her body will make small gametes. From the skeptic's perspective, this still counts as the child being confused.
+ * Anecdote: caregiver says, Your parents named you this because they took a guess at your gender based on what parts you have
+ * "liking rainbows" response
+ * Ontology education three years later is laudable, but is still a contrast to the old world in which you expect a youth to understand the ontology before consenting to transition.
+]
+
+For another thing, from the skeptical family friend's perspective, it's striking how the family and other grown-ups in the child's life seem to treat the child's statements about gender starkly differently than the child's statements about everything else.
+
+Suppose that, around the time of the social transition, the child reportedly responded to "Hey kiddo, I love you" with, "I'm a girl and I'm a vegetarian." In the skeptic's view, both halves of that sentence were probably generated by the same cognitive algorithm—something like, "practice language and be cute to caregivers, making use of themes from the local cultural environment" (where grown-ups in Berkeley talk a lot about gender and animal welfare). In the skeptic's view, if you're not going to change the kid's diet on the basis of the second part, you shouldn't social transition the kid on the basis of the first part.
+
+It's not hard to imagine how differential treatment by grown-ups of gender-related utterances could unintentionally shape outcomes. This may be clearer if we imagine a non-gender case. Suppose the child's father's name is John Smith, and that after a grown-up explains ["Sr."/"Jr." generational suffixes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffix_(name)#Generational_titles) after it happened to come up in fiction, the child declares that his name is John Smith, Jr. now. Caregivers are likely to treat this as just a cute thing that the kid said, quickly forgotten by all. But if caregivers feared causing psychological harm by denying a declared name change, one could imagine them taking the child's statement as a prompt to ask followup questions. ("Oh, would you like me to call you _John_ or _John Jr._, or just _Junior_?") With enough followup, it seems entirely plausible that a name change to "Kevin Jr." would meet with the child's assent and "stick" socially. The initial suggestion would have come from the child, but most of the [optimization](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D7EcMhL26zFNbJ3ED/optimization)—the selection that this particular statement should be taken literally and reinforced as a social identity, while others are just treated as a cute thing the kid said—would have come from the adults.
+
+Finally, there is the matter of the child's behavior and personality. Suppose that, around the same time that the child's social transition was going down, the father reported the child being captivated by seeing a forklift at Costco. A few months later, another family friend remarked that maybe the child is very competitive, and that "she likes fighting so much because it's the main thing she knows of that you can _win_."
+
+I think people who are familiar with the relevant scientific literature or come from an older generation would look at observations like these and say, Well, yes, he's a boy; boys like vehicles (_d_ ≈ 2.44!) and boys like fighting. Some of them might suggest that these observations should be counterindicators for transition—that the cross-gender verbal self-reports are less decision-relevant than the fact of a male child behaving in male-typical ways. But that mode of thought is forbidden to nice smart liberal parents in the current year.
+
+Anyway, that's just a hypothesis that occurred to me in early 2020, about something that _could_ happen in the culture of the current year, hypothetically, as far as I know. I'm not a parent and I'm not an expert on child development. And even if the "Clever Hans" etiological pathway I conjectured is real, the extent to which it might apply to any particular case is complex; you could imagine a kid who _was_ "actually trans" whose social transition merely happened earlier than it otherwise would have due to these dynamics.
+
+For some reason, it seemed important that I draft a Document about it with lots of citations to send to a few friends. If I get around to it, I might clean it up and publish it as a public blog post (working title: "Trans Kids on the Margin; and, Harms from Misleading Training Data"), but for some reason, that didn't seem as pressing.
+
+I put an epigraph at the top:
+
+> If you love someone, tell them the truth.
+>
+> —Anonymous
+
+Given that I spent so many hours on this little research and writing project in May–July 2020, I think it makes sense for me to mention it at this point in my memoir, where it fits in chronologically. I have an inalienable right to talk about my own research interests, and talking about my research interests obviously doesn't violate any norm against leaking private information about someone else's family, or criticizing someone else's parenting decisions.
+
+(Only—[you two have such beautiful children](/2023/Nov/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress/)!)