Title: Link: "Blood Is Thicker Than Water 🐬"
Date: 2021-09-30 09:35
Category: other
-Tags: categorization, epistemology, linkpost
+Tags: categorization, epistemology, linkpost, whale metaphors
Ha ha, [those _Less Wrong_ guys sure love dolphins for whatever reason!](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vhp2sW6iBhNJwqcwP/blood-is-thicker-than-water) [(Alternative viewer.)](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/vhp2sW6iBhNJwqcwP/blood-is-thicker-than-water) Note that the "root of the causal graph" argument here for the relevance of phylogenetics is equivalent to [the case that sex chromosomes are a good way to operationalize _sex_ in humans](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#chromosomes)—it's not that anyone directly sees chromosomes on a day-to-day basis; it's that chromosomes are the "switch" upstream of the development of all other sex differences. Talking about the setting of the switch (which you don't _intrinsically_ care about) is a concise way to sum over the many, many high-dimensional details that you do care about.
And as it happened, on 7 May, Kelsey wrote [a Facebook comment displaying evidence of understanding my point](https://www.facebook.com/julia.galef/posts/pfbid0QjdD8kWAZJMiczeLdMioqmPkRhewcmGtQpXRBu2ruXq8SkKvw5yvvSH2cWVDghWRl?comment_id=10104430041947222&reply_comment_id=10104430059182682).
-These two datapoints led me to a psychological hypothesis (which was maybe "obvious", but I hadn't thought about it before): when people see someone wavering between their coalition and a rival coalition, they're motivated to offer a few concessions to keep the wavering person on their side. Kelsey could _afford_ (_pace_ Upton Sinclair) to not understand the thing about sex being a natural category ("I don't think 'people who'd get surgery to have the ideal female body' cuts anything at the joints"!!) when it was just me freaking out alone, but "got it" almost as soon as I could credibly threaten to _walk_ (defect to a coalition of people she dislikes) ... and maybe my "closing thoughts" email had a similar effect on Yudkowsky (assuming he otherwise wouldn't have spontaneously tweeted something about the univariate fallacy two weeks later)?? This probably wouldn't work if you repeated it (or tried to do it consciously)?
+These two datapoints led me to a psychological hypothesis (which was maybe "obvious", but I hadn't thought about it before): when people see someone wavering between their coalition and a rival coalition, they're motivated to offer a few concessions to keep the wavering person on their side. Kelsey could _afford_ (_pace_ [Upton Sinclair](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-get-a-man-to-understand-something)) to not understand the thing about sex being a natural category ("I don't think 'people who'd get surgery to have the ideal female body' cuts anything at the joints"!!) when it was just me freaking out alone, but "got it" almost as soon as I could credibly threaten to _walk_ (defect to a coalition of people she dislikes) ... and maybe my "closing thoughts" email had a similar effect on Yudkowsky (assuming he otherwise wouldn't have spontaneously tweeted something about the univariate fallacy two weeks later)?? This probably wouldn't work if you repeated it (or tried to do it consciously)?
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My "intent" to take a break from the religious war didn't take.
+I met with Anna on the UC Berkeley campus, and read her excerpts from some of Ben's emails.
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+
+
[TODO: tussle with Anna, was thinking of writing a public reply to her comment against Michael]
[TODO: tussle on "Yes Implies the Possibility of No" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WwTPSkNwC89g3Afnd/comment-section-from-05-19-2019 ]
Minor ready or almost-ready—
_ Interlude XXII
+Quickie time-sensitive—
+_ Racial Pseudoscience on the Faculty
+
Urgent/needed for healing—
_ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia
_ Pseudonym Misgivings