You might think that this is all due to socialization, but then it's hard to explain why the same differences show up in different cultures—and why (counterintuitively) the differences seem _larger_ in richer, more feminist countries. You might think that the "larger differences in rich countries" result is an artifact: maybe people in less-feminist countries implicitly make within-sex comparisons when answering personality questions (_e.g._, "I'm aggressive _for a woman_") whereas people in more-feminist countries use a less sexist standard of comparison, construing ratings as compared to people-in-general. Murray points out that this explanation still posits the existence of large sex differences in rich countries (while explaining away the unexpected cross-cultural difference-in-differences). Another possibility is that wealth increases sexual dimorphism _in general_, including, _e.g._, height and blood pressure, not just in personality.
-[TODO: tie into farmer/forager theory]
+[TODO: tie into farmer/forager theory: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/10/divide-forager-v-farmer.html ]
Women are better at verbal ability and social cognition, whereas men are better at visuospatial skills. The sexes achieve similar levels of overall performance via somewhat different mental "toolkits." Murray devotes a section to a 2007 result of Johnson and Bouchard, who report that ["_g_ masks the dimensions on which [sex differences in mental abilities] lie"](/papers/johnson-bouchard-sex_differences_in_mental_abilities_g_masks_the_dimensions.pdf): overall levels of mental well-functioning lead to underestimates of the effect sizes of specific mental abilities, which you want to statistically correct for. This result in particular is _super gratifying_ to me personally, because [I independently had a similar idea a few months back](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/)—it's _super validating_ as an amateur to find that the pros have been thinking along the same track!
Notably, Plomin and Turkheimer aren't actually disagreeing here: it's a difference in emphasis rather than facts. Polygenic scores _don't_ explain mechanisms—but might they end up being useful, and used, anyway? Murray's vision of social science is content to make predictions and "explain variance" while remaining ignorant of ultimate causality. Meanwhile, my cursory understanding (while kicking myself for [_still_](/2018/Dec/untitled-metablogging-26-december-2018/#daphne-koller-and-the-methods) not having put in the hours to get farther into [_Daphne Koller and the Methods of Rationality_](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/probabilistic-graphical-models)) was that you need to understand causality in order to predict what interventions will have what effects—maybe our feeble state of knowledge is _why_ we don't know how to find large-effect environmental interventions.
-There are also some appendicies at the back of the book! Appendix 1 (reproduced from one of Murray's earlier books) explains some basic statistics concepts. Appendix 2 ("Sexual Dimorphism in Humans") goes over the prevalence of intersex conditions and gays, and then—so much for this post broadening the [topic scope of this blog](/tag/two-type-taxonomy/)—transgender typology! Murray presents the Blanchard–Bailey–Lawrence–Littman view as fact, which I think is basically _correct_, but a more comprehensive treatment (which I concede may be too much too hope for from a mere Appendix) would have at least _mentioned_ alternative views ([Serano](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Intrinsic_Inclinations_Model)? [Veale](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf)?), if only to explain _why_ they're worth dismissing. (Contrast to the eight pages in the main text explaining why "But, but, epigenetics!" is worth dismissing.) Then Appendix 3 ("Sex Differences in Brain Volumes and Variance") has tables of brain-size data, and an explanation of the greater-male-variance hypothesis. Cool!
+There are also some appendicies at the back of the book! Appendix 1 (reproduced from one of Murray's earlier books) explains some basic statistics concepts. Appendix 2 ("Sexual Dimorphism in Humans") goes over the prevalence of intersex conditions and gays, and then—so much for this post broadening the [topic scope of this blog](/tag/two-type-taxonomy/)—transgender typology! Murray presents the Blanchard–Bailey–Lawrence–Littman view as fact, which I think is basically _correct_, but a more comprehensive treatment (which I concede may be too much too hope for from a mere Appendix) would have at least _mentioned_ alternative views ([Serano](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Intrinsic_Inclinations_Model)? [Veale](/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf)?), if only to explain _why_ they're worth dismissing. (Contrast to the eight pages in the main text explaining why "But, but, epigenetics!" is worth dismissing.) Then Appendix 3 ("Sex Differences in Brain Volumes and Variance") has tables of brain-size data, and an explanation of the greater-male-variance hypothesis. Cool!
-----
Title: If in Some Smothering Dreams You Too Could Pace
-Date: 2021-01-01
+Date: 2021-02-23
Category: other
Tags: cathartic, epistemic horror
Status: draft
Eugenics
-https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/discovery-institute-makes-hay-of-dawkins-tweet-and-a-geneticist-mistakenly-says-that-artificial-selection-wont-work-in-humans/
-
Footnote 4 to the introduction of Part III recaps the argument. If the black/white IQ gap in the U.S. were caused by racism, you'd predict that blacks would have higher IQs in countries where they're the ruling majority, like in Haiti or most of sub-Saharan Africa, but they don't. You might think racism affects IQ by means of its affect on socioeconomic status (SES), but adjusting for parental SES only diminishes the gap by a third.
Cognitive Enhancement and Network Effects: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11406-020-00189-3
-https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y4bkJTtG3s5d6v36k/stupidity-and-dishonesty-explain-each-other-away
\ No newline at end of file
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y4bkJTtG3s5d6v36k/stupidity-and-dishonesty-explain-each-other-away
https://www.reddit.com/r/GCdebatesQT/comments/dxtgh7/qt_do_you_encourage_other_trans_redditors_to_come/f7wng98/
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/dy7241/peak_trans_x_tell_your_story_here/filh1fn/
I'm also somewhat unnerved by the implication that the subconscious process by which the brain notices ppl's secondary sex characteristics is somehow illegitimate? I'm happy to use the indicated pronouns, but am I also supposed to override my perception of physical reality? 7/8
Although I happily concede that the pronoun stickers may be a useful stopgap while we're waiting for deep-learning powered surgery robots (written in @rustlang?!) to make facial feminization surgery affordable for everyone!! :sparkling_heart: :money_with_wings: END/8
+
+-----
+
+I was fantasizing about voting Trump out of spite (at "the libs" for trying to trick me into cutting my dick off independently of the facts that determine whether or not cutting my dick off is a good idea), but I probably won't actually go through with it. Probably. 1/6
+
+Like, if my choices are "pathologically lying serial-sexual-abuser con man", or the party of de-facto BIOLOGICAL SEX DENIALISM (!?!?!?!) ... you know, tough call, right? 2/6 https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1230577418559270913
+
+Okay, so it's a little bit subtler than that. There are very few out-and-out sex denialists; it's just this moral culture where it's implicitly considered incredibly gauche to refer to, or reason about, the concept of biological sex using language. 3/6
+
+It's SO DEPRESSING, because cross-sex hormone replacement therapy is actually a REALLY COOL transhumanist body-mod tech that I personally benefitted from trying out! I just wish we could talk about it AS body-mod luxury rather than playing these social-reality mind-control games 4/6
+
+I try not to talk about it too much under this name (I have a separate pen name specifically to try to avoid politics eating my life), but the situation is sufficiently dire that I'm at the point of Total Culture War (losing friends, thinking about fleeing Berkeley, &c.) 5/6
+
+Anyway, this is a terrible, soul-destroying website and I shouldn't be using it ... for this topic. Come back tomorrow for my commentary on the #RapunzelsTangledAdventure pre-finale! 6/6
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff