Tags: autogynephilia, epistemology, two-type taxonomy
Status: draft
-[This started out as a draft email to Scott, but I'm really unhappy with the way it's developing; I should try to sculpt it into a defensible public post instead—or make it a good email first, then a post]
-
-on parsimony intuitions (re autogenderphilia and developmental psychology)
-
> Why idly theorize when you can JUST CHECK and find out the ACTUAL ANSWER to a superficially similar-sounding question SCIENTIFICALLY?
>
> —[Steven Kaas](https://twitter.com/stevenkaas/status/148884531917766656)
-Explaining my view in a way that I think you'll understand turns out to be a surprisingly challenging writing task, because I suspect my actual crux comes down to a [Science _vs._ Bayescraft](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/viPPjojmChxLGPE2v/the-dilemma-science-or-bayes) thing, where I'm self-conscious about my answer [sounding weirdly overconfident on non-empirical grounds](https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/01/11/reality-is-very-weird-and-you-need-to-be-prepared-for-that/) to someone who doesn't already share my parsimony intuitions—but, frankly, I also expect my parsiony intuitions to actually get the right answer in the real world, and modesty/[Outside View](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FsfnDfADftGDYeG4c/outside-view-as-conversation-halter)/[Caution on Bias Arguments](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/17/caution-on-bias-arguments/) to get the wrong answer. So, self-consciousness aside, here goes—
+In ["Autogenderphilia Is Common And Not Especially Related To Transgender"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/), Scott Alexander, based on his eyeballing data from the 2020 _Slate Star Codex_ reader survey, proposes what he calls a "very boring" hypothesis of "autogenderphilia": "if you identify as a gender, and you're attracted to that gender, it's a natural leap to be attracted to yourself being that gender."
+
+Explaining my view on this "boring hypothesis" turns out to be a surprisingly challenging writing task,
-You suggest what you allege is a "very boring" hypothesis of "autogenderphilia": "if you identify as a gender, and you're attracted to that gender, it's a natural leap to be attracted to yourself being that gender."
+because I suspect my actual crux comes down to a [Science _vs._ Bayescraft](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/viPPjojmChxLGPE2v/the-dilemma-science-or-bayes) thing, where I'm self-conscious about my answer [sounding weirdly overconfident on non-empirical grounds](https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/01/11/reality-is-very-weird-and-you-need-to-be-prepared-for-that/) to someone who doesn't already share my parsimony intuitions—but, frankly, I also expect my parsiony intuitions to actually get the right answer in the real world, and modesty/[Outside View](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FsfnDfADftGDYeG4c/outside-view-as-conversation-halter)/[Caution on Bias Arguments](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/17/caution-on-bias-arguments/) to get the wrong answer.
-In my ontology of how-the-world-works, this is _not_ a boring hypothesis. In my ontology, this is a _shockingly weird_ hypothesis, where I can read the English words, but I actually have a lot of trouble parsing the English words into a model in my head, because the antecedent, "If you identify as a gender, and you're attracted to that gender, then ...", already takes a massive prior probability penalty, because that category is multiply disjunctive over the natural space of biological similarities: you're grouping together lesbians _and_ gay men _and_ heterosexual males with a female gender identity _and_ heterosexual females with a male gender identity, and trying to make claim about what members of this group are like.
+If we have a big causal graph with C at the root (E₂ ← E₁ ← C → E₃ ...) with real-valued variables, and someone proposes a theory about what happens to the E_i when C is between 2 and 3 or between 5 and 6 or above 12, that's very unparsimonious: why would such a discontinuous hodge-pause of values for the cause, have consistent effects?
+
+In my worldview, "gender" (as the thing trans women and cis women have in common) looks like a hodge-podge as far as biology is concerned. (It can be real socially to the extent that people believe it's real and act accordingly, which creates the relevant conditional indpendence structure in their social behavior—but sexuality looks more "biological" than "social".)
+
+In my ontology of how-the-world-works, this is _not_ a boring hypothesis. In my ontology, this is a shockingly weird hypothesis, where I can read the English words, but I have a lot of trouble parsing the English words into a model in my head, because the antecedent, "If you identify as a gender, and you're attracted to that gender, then ...", already takes a massive prior probability penalty, because that category is multiply disjunctive over the natural space of biological similarities: you're grouping together lesbians _and_ gay men _and_ heterosexual males with a female gender identity _and_ heterosexual females with a male gender identity, and trying to make claim about what members of this group are like.
What do lesbians, and gay men, and heterosexual males with a female gender identity, and heterosexual females with a male gender identity have in common, such that we expect to make useful inductive inferences about this group?
The _reason_ I believe autogynephlia (in males) "is a thing" and causally potent to transgenderedness in the first place, is not because trans women gave a mean Likert response of 3.4 on someone's survey, but as the output of my brain's inductive inference algorithms operating on a _massive_ confluence of a [real-life experiences](http://unremediatedgender.space/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) and observations in a naturalistic setting. (That's how people [locate](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MwQRucYo6BZZwjKE7/einstein-s-arrogance) survey questions are worth asking in the first place, out of the vastness of possible survey questions.)
-If you look at what trans women say _to each other_ when the general public isn't looking, you see the same stories (examples from /r/MtF: ["I get horny when I do 'girl things'. Is this a fetish?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/qy4ncb/i_get_horny_when_i_do_girl_things_is_this_a_fetish/), ["Is the 'body swap' fetish inherently pre-trans?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/q8k57y/is_the_body_swap_fetish_inherently_pretrans/), ["Could it be a sex fantasy?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/rd78kw/could_it_be_a_sex_fantasy/), _&c._, _ad infinitum_) _over and over and over_ again.
+If you look at what trans women say _to each other_ when the general public isn't looking, you see the same stories (examples from /r/MtF: ["I get horny when I do 'girl things'. Is this a fetish?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/qy4ncb/i_get_horny_when_i_do_girl_things_is_this_a_fetish/), ["Is the 'body swap' fetish inherently pre-trans?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/q8k57y/is_the_body_swap_fetish_inherently_pretrans/), ["Could it be a sex fantasy?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/rd78kw/could_it_be_a_sex_fantasy/), _&c._, _ad infinitum_) over and over and over again.
Without making any pretentions whatsoever to rigor or Science, but _just_ looking at the world and trying to describe it in words, I think there is clearly a _thing_ here. When I look at what women write, and when I look at what gay men write, I don't see the _same thing_.
-_After_ observing this kind of pattern in the world, it's a good idea to do surveys to get some numbers and data to help you learn more about what's going on with the pattern. There's clearly a thing here, but is the thing being generated by a _visible minority_, or is it actually a majority? When [82% of /r/MtF users say Yes to "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation "fetish" (or similar) before you realised you were trans?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/89nw0w/did_you_have_a_genderbody_swaptransformation/), that makes me think it's actually a majority.
+After observing this kind of pattern in the world, it's a good idea to do surveys to get some numbers and data to help you learn more about what's going on with the pattern. There's clearly a thing here, but is the thing being generated by a visible minority, or is it actually a majority? When [82% of /r/MtF users say Yes to "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation "fetish" (or similar) before you realised you were trans?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/89nw0w/did_you_have_a_genderbody_swaptransformation/), that makes me think it's a majority.
When you pose a vaguely similar question to a different group, are you measuring the same real-world phenomenon in that other group? Maybe, but I think this is very nonobvious.
I can't _prove_ that all these ***physiological males with male-typical interests whose female gender identities seem closely intertwined with their gynephilic (i.e. male-typical) sexuality*** (we _agree_ on all that!!) are men with a fetish rather than women in male bodies—for the same reason I can't prove there's not an [invisible inaudiable dragon that's permeable to flour](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief) in your garage. From my perspective, it looks like you just have a fundamentally broken epistemology; from your perspective, I probably look like I'm dogmatically making unexplained inferential leaps.
-Ozy has an old post about [how "the community" doesn't have a _gender_ gap; we merely have an _assigned sex at birth_ gap](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/lw-has-an-assigned-sex-at-birth-gap-not-a-gender-gap/). In my worldview, this should be _embarrassing_. (If you keep running into domains where "assigned" sex is a more useful predictor than "gender", that should be a clue that sex is real and gender identity is fake.) But if Ozy's mind hasn't been [created already in motion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuSTqHgeK4CMpWYTe/created-already-in-motion) to find it embarrassing even after it's been pointed out, then I'm not sure what else I can say?
-
If it were _just_ a matter of different priors (where my stronger [inductive bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_bias) lets me learn faster from less data, at the cost of [being wrong in universes that I think mostly don't exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization)), I would expect you to express more uncertainty. I would _totally_ respect it if you were merely _uncertain_ about the AGP→gender-ID _vs._ gender-ID→AGP causality. [I _agree_ that causality is _much harder_ to pin down than mere correlation.](http://unremediatedgender.space/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/)
-But on Discord, you said "it just seemed totally wrong"!! If you're _not_ playing a "does the evidence permit me to believe" game, I just don't see how you think the _SSC_ survey data is powerful enough to answer that question one way or the other! If I had a prior belief that invisible dragons were plausible, I would remain _agnostic_ about the no-dragon _vs._ invisible-dragon hypotheses upon seeing an apparently empty garage. But to say that the no-dragon hypothesis "just seems totally wrong" ... ?!?!
-
-------
-
-
-
-
-
-> We have a debate every year over whether 50% predictions are meaningful in this paradigm; feel free to continue it.
-
-Someone reading this who trusted Alexander as a general-purpose intellectual authority ("the best of us", the "rationalists") might walk away with the idea that it's an open problem whether 50% binary predictions are meaningful—perhaps reasoning, if the immortal Scott Alexander doesn't know, then who am I to know?
-
-But it's not. On this website, [Rafael Harth explains why 50% isn't special](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DAc4iuy4D3EiNBt9B/how-to-evaluate-50-predictions). I claim that this should actually be pretty obvious to competent quantitative thinkers, even if it's not obvious to the collective _SSC_/_ACX_ commentariat, and Alexander can't tell which of his commenters are competent quantitative thinkers.
-
-I don't particularly fault Scott for this: [by his own admission, he's not a math guy](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/). (And the vast majority of math people can't write as well or as fast as Scott. No one is the best at everything!) Rather, I'm saying that a culture that wants to _actually_ be right about everything would do better to _just_ focus on being right on the object level, without [wireheading on its own promises of being right about everything](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending/).
-
-(Incidentally, Scott himself is actually very good about [not trying to claim more authority than is actually justified by his performance](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/). His fans should try to be more like him along this dimension!)
-
-I doubt that's the same phenomenon? The thing about reports like, _e.g._, ||I have a female body in all my sexual fantasies (as reported by Anomaly above)|| is that there's an obvious explanation for that ||if you're _actually female_—namely, that your fantasy life is based on real life along this dimension—and that explanation is not present for people who are _not_ female||?
-
-||I think the way to think about this question is to imagine that if you'd _never heard_ of this stupid ideologically-charged debate—would you need to _spontaneously invent_ the term AGP (or a synonym like _eonism_ as coined by Ellis in 1920 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Ellis#Eonism>) _in order to make sense of your experience_? If your _serious_ answer is Yes, that's _really interesting_ and I want to hear more. (Omega seems to be claiming this about herself, which is _really_ fascinating and my model _definitely_ loses some points for predicting that she shouldn't exist.) But I think _most_ females saying "yeah, sure, cis women are AGP too; it's, like, getting turned on by imagining other people being attracted to you, right? Seems normal" _after having been presented with the term in an ideologically-charged context_ are not really understanding the phenomenon in males that the term was originally coined to point to.||
-
-A much better analogy is ||the thing where you, Linta, and Swimmer report fantasizing about being male sometimes. This is plausibly auto-_andro_-philia, and like AGP, it's actually _pretty common_—_e.g._, Person _et al._ 1989 Table 3 (<http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/person_et_al-gender_differences_in_sexual_behaviors.pdf>) found 10 percent of female and 13 percent of male college students reporting yes to "Fantasizing that you are of opposite sex".||
-
-S. (she doesn't get it):
-> I do also enjoy fantasizing from the perspective of a fictional very attractive woman and imagining the inner details of a hypothetical other person's attraction to her; this is maybe a form of autogynephilia? (Though it is a bit hard for me to distinguish autogenyphilia from just getting turned on by imagining other people being attracted to you / imagining how other people see you)
-
-
-https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8?sharing_token=jzX6q1NAJAY6-F_jSZ9wmfe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY4WOO91AGBPQEW4W5GA-5HjFFBOW6MbqFHl6iM4xVsaD3DHcIMra_eBV8WQP5ACn0suHGXlnXqqAYAmkbrYzfglseOmxogZQqQ9SymDk_KPLQTlCvTiA2MPLdV_k8lldyE%3D
-
-https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8
-
-https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2022/06/27/no-women-are-not-autogynephilic/
+-----
-https://aella.substack.com/p/everyone-has-autogynephilia
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff