+++ /dev/null
-Title: The Categories Were Made for Man in Order to Make Predictions
-Date: 2018-03-01 5:00
-Category: commentary
-Tags: epistemology, Scott Alexander
-Status: draft
-
-> I said, "The truth is whatever you can get away with."
->
-> "No, that's journalism. The truth is whatever you can't escape."
->
-> —_Distress_ by Greg Egan
-
-In ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](TODO: linky), the immortal Scott Alexander
-
-OUTLINE—
-
- * First, the basic point is obviously correct.
- * Things become muddier when we get to the section about national borders:
- it's true that countries may agree that their borders work in this
- noncontiguous way, and that matters for some purposes, but these legal
- fictions don't always capture what people actually mean when they talk about
- being in a country.
- * During my Facebook meltdown, an acquaintance of mine gave some really
- solid examples that I should ask him if I can borrow (with or without
- attribution).
- * An attempted clarification (Scott does address this, but I want to
- emphasize/rephrase it?): categories are value-laden because they're grouping
- things together on the basis of the predictions that are decision-relevant
- to what you care about. But this should be distinguished from the categories
- themselves being _arbitrarily_ value-laden.
- * Scott Alexander understands this, but the bottom 50% of _Slate Star
- Codex_ readers do not.
- * An important subtlety: in the case of countries and gender but _not_
- whales/fish, we're not just classifying things that exist, but also making a
- political decision of how we're going to organize ourselves. It's not that
- trans women and nonbinaries already exist in fixed proportions, and we're
- trying to decide how to parse them: that we have socially-recognized
- transition as a thing creates an affordance for people to make the choice to
- transition (linky ["Lesser Known..."](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/))
- * The argumentation in section IV is _uncharacteristically_ weak for Scott:
- basically just "We've established that categories are neither true nor
- false, so if you care about transgender people, then you should use their
- categories"?!
- * To do better: let's _discuss in detail_ the detailed consequences of
- different ways of drawing gender categories, and analyze the conflicts
- that different people have.
- * The case for using identified gender rather than biological sex is
- strongest for binary trans people who actually pass.
- * The tack where you show a picture of Buck Angel and say, "You're not
- really going to call this person a woman, are you?" makes a good point
- * It's less strong for ...
- * People who don't pass
- * Passing is a continuum rather than a binary and is also
- observer-dependent, which is inconvenient from the perspective of
- categorization, which tends to stick to bright-lines and Schelling
- points
- * Re observer dependence: quote Serano (do I rely/pick on Serano too
- much?) or someone about how it's actually _harder_ to pass in urban
- areas because people have a higher prior
- * Ref-to-rebut Zinnia Jones on "passing is subjective, therefore it's
- bullshit"
- * "nonbinary people"
- * Normies don't have nonbinary gender in their ontology; at least
- acknowledge that you're making a political demand when you want
- them to adapt
- * What are the decision criteria for nonbinary, anyway? People can
- still _tell_
- * Rundown of social consequences of different criteria—
- * When you have people who are _identifiably_ distinct from natal-sex
- people _and_ not drawn from the same psychological distribution, it
- becomes socially profitable for people to notice and adjust their
- expectations; you can't stop them from doing this
- * separate post "Stereotypes, Models, and Cognition"
- * People are making probabilistic inferences all the time whether
- they realize it or not
- * Being drawn from a different psychological distribution but _not_
- identifiably (AGPs who pass really well) doesn't hurt the dynamics
- as much
- * AGPs aren't drawn from the same psychological distribution as cis
- women. (Briefly explain the typology, but refer to external sources
- for justification. For a more hard-facts empirical justification of
- "not drawn from the same dist'n", cite data on sexual orientation (and
- [constrast](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/905572666332987392))
- and crime rates.)
- * Making it not-OK for people to _talk_ about the categories that they
- internally use to make sense of the world is bad
- * experiences in LWish spaces with lots of trans women: if you
- doctrinairely call everyone women, my brain rebels and wants to
- say, "That's not what I meant and _you fucking know it_." And
- honestly? (And I think they do, in fact, fucking know it.)
- * The inability to have women's clothing swaps is a _real loss_
- * Negotiation-structure: we've been using this word to refer to this
- thing for the past 200,000 years since the invention of language;
- if you want us to stop, you need to offer us something we value
- (and you have nothing to trade with); threatening to kill yourself
- is easily (if callously) countered with "We don't negotiate with
- terrorists"
- * For crime/medical statistics, you need natal sex or third-category.
-
- * The case of Emperor Norton looks cute at first glance, but
- ostensibly-benevolent gaslighting is still problematic (we call it
- _hugboxing_).
- * I've been crazy (link "Memoirs"), and I'm glad my friends patiently told
- me why I was wrong rather than saying "That's nice dear" (maybe quote
- care email).
- * Tell a story about what this could have been like for Norton beginning to
- doubt the reality of his reign.
- * Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
- ask her to put it back up again)
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