(I would later change my mind about which side of the tunnel is the correct one.)
-While I was waiting for internet service to be connected in my new apartment, I read a paper copy of _Nevada_ by Imogen Binnie. It's about a trans woman in New York City named Maria Griffiths who steals her girlfriend's car to go on a road trip, and ends up meeting an autogynephilic young man named James H. in a Wal-Mart in Star City, Nevada, whereupon she tries to convince James that _autogynephilia_ is a bogus concept and that he's actually trans.
+While I was waiting for internet service to be connected in my new apartment, I read a paper copy of _Nevada_ by Imogen Binnie. It's about a trans woman in who steals her girlfriend's car to go on a cross-country road trip, and ends up meeting an autogynephilic young man whom she tries to convince that _autogynephilia_ is a bogus concept and that he's actually trans.
-In Berkeley, I met some really interesting people who seemed similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along some other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life—much like how Maria and James immediately recognize each other as similar but different in _Nevada_. (I saw where the pattern-matching faculties in Yudkowsky's brain got that 20% figure from.)
+In Berkeley, I met interesting people who seemed similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life—much like how the characters in _Nevada_ immediately recognize each other as similar but different. (I saw where Yudkowsky got that 20% figure from.)
-This prompted me to do a little bit more reading in some corners of the literature that I had certainly _heard of_ (as mentioned above), but hadn't already mastered and taken seriously in the previous twelve years of reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych. (Kay Brown's blog, [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), was especially helpful.)
+This prompted me to do more reading in corners of the literature that I had heard of, but hadn't taken seriously in my twelve years of reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych. (Kay Brown's blog, [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), was especially helpful.)
-Between the reading, and a series of increasingly frustrating private conversations, I gradually became increasingly persuaded that Blanchard _wasn't_ dumb and wrong, that his taxonomy of male-to-female transsexualism is _basically_ correct, at least as a first approximation. So far this story has just been about _my_ experience, and not anyone's theory of transsexualism (which I had assumed for years couldn't possibly apply to me), so let me take a moment to explain the theory now.
+Between the reading, and a series of increasingly frustrating private conversations, I gradually became increasingly persuaded that Blanchard _wasn't_ dumb and wrong—that his taxonomy of male-to-female transsexuality is _basically_ correct, at least as a first approximation. So far this story has been about _my_ experience, not anyone's theory of transsexuality (which I had assumed for years couldn't possibly apply to me), so let me take a moment to explain the theory now.
(With the caveated understanding that psychology is complicated and there's [a lot to be said about what "as a first approximation" is even supposed to mean](/2022/Jul/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model/), but I need a few paragraphs to first talk about the _simple_ version of the theory that makes _pretty good_ predictions on _average_, as a prerequisite for more complicated theories that might make even better predictions including on cases that diverge from average.)
-The theory was put forth by Blanchard in a series of journal articles in the late 'eighties and early 'nineties, but notably popularized [(to some controversy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen#Negative_reactions) by J. Michael Bailey in the popular-level book _The Man Who Would Be Queen_ in 'aught-three. The idea is that male-to-female transsexualism isn't actually one phenomenon; it's two completely different phenomena that don't actually have anything to do with each other, except for the (perhaps) indicated treatments of hormone therapy, surgery, and social transition. (Compare to how different medical conditions might happen to respond to the same drug.)
+The theory was put forth by Blanchard in a series of journal articles in the late 'eighties and early 'nineties, and popularized [(to some controversy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen#Negative_reactions) by J. Michael Bailey in the popular-level book _The Man Who Would Be Queen_. The idea is that male-to-female transsexuality isn't one phenomenon; it's two completely different phenomena that don't have anything to do with each other, except for the potential treatments of hormone therapy, surgery, and social transition. (Compare to how different medical conditions might happen to respond to the same drug.)
-In one taxon, the "early-onset" type, you have same-sex-attracted males who have just been extremely feminine (in social behavior, interests, _&c._) their entire lives going back to early childhood, in a way that's salient to other people and causes big social problems for them—the far tail of effeminate gay men who end up fitting into Society better as straight women. (Blanchard called them "homosexual transsexuals", which is sometimes abbreviated as _HSTS_.) _That's_ where the "woman trapped inside a man's body" trope comes from. [This one probably _is_ a brain-intersex condition.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3180619/)
+In one taxon, the "early-onset" type, you have same-sex-attracted males who have been extremely feminine (in social behavior, interests, _&c._) since to early childhood, in a way that causes social problems for them—the far tail of effeminate gay men who end up fitting into Society better as straight women. Blanchard called them "homosexual transsexuals", which is sometimes abbreviated as _HSTS_. That's where the "woman trapped inside a man's body" trope comes from. [This one probably _is_ a brain-intersex condition.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3180619/)
-That story is pretty intuitive. Were an alien AI to be informed of the fact that, among humans, some fraction of males elect to undergo medical interventions to resemble females and be perceived as females socially, "brain-intersex condition such that they already behave like females" would probably be its top hypothesis for the cause of such a phenomenon, just on priors.
+That story is pretty intuitive. Were an alien AI to be informed that, among humans, some fraction of males elect to undergo medical interventions to resemble females and be perceived as females socially, "brain-intersex condition such that they already behave like females" would probably be its top hypothesis, just on priors.
-Then suppose our alien AI were to be informed that many of the human males seeking to become female (as far as the technology can manage) do _not_ fit the clinical profile of the early-onset type: it looks like there's a separate "late-onset" type or types, of males who didn't exhibit discordantly sex-atypical behavior in childhood, but still ended up reporting a desire to change sex later. If you [didn't have enough data to _prove_ anything, but you had to guess](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xTyuQ3cgsPjifr7oj/faster-than-science), what would be your _second_ hypothesis for how this desire might arise?
+But suppose our alien AI were to be informed that many of the human males seeking to become female do not fit the clinical profile of the early-onset type: it looks like there's a separate "late-onset" type or types, of males who didn't exhibit discordantly sex-atypical behavior in childhood, but later reported a desire to change sex. If you [didn't have enough data to _prove_ anything, but you had to guess](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xTyuQ3cgsPjifr7oj/faster-than-science), what would be your second hypothesis for how this desire might arise?
What's the _usual_ reason for males to be obsessed with female bodies?
-So, basically, I think a _substantial majority_ of trans women under modern conditions in Western countries are, essentially, guys like me who were _less self-aware about what the thing actually is_. It's not an innate gender identity; it's a sexual orientation that's _surprisingly easy to misinterpret_ as a gender identity.
+Basically, I think a substantial majority of trans women under modern conditions in Western countries are, essentially, guys like me who were _less self-aware about what the thing actually is_. It's not an innate gender identity; it's a sexual orientation that's _surprisingly easy to misinterpret_ as a gender identity.
-I realize this is an inflammatory and (far more importantly) _surprising_ claim. Obviously, I don't have introspective access into other people's minds. If someone claims to have an internal sense of her own gender that doesn't match her assigned sex at birth, on what evidence could I possibly, _possibly_ have the astounding arrogance to reply, "No, I think you're really just a perverted male like me"?
+I realize this is an inflammatory and (far more importantly) surprising claim. If someone claims to have an internal sense of her gender that doesn't match her assigned sex at birth, on what evidence could I possibly have the arrogance to reply, "No, I think you're really just a perverted male like me"?
-Actually, lots. To arbitrarily pick one exhibit, in April 2018, the [/r/MtF subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/) (which had over 28,000 subscribers at the time) [posted a link to a poll: "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation "fetish" (or similar) before you realized you were trans?"](https://archive.is/uswsz). The [results](https://archive.is/lm4ro): [_82%_ of over 2000 respondents said Yes](/images/did_you_have-reddit_poll.png). [Top comment in the thread](https://archive.is/c7YFG), with over 230 karma: "I spent a long time in the 'it's probably just a fetish' camp".
+Actually, lots. To arbitrarily pick one exhibit, in April 2018, the [/r/MtF subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/), which then had over 28,000 subscribers, [posted a link to a poll: "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation 'fetish' (or similar) before you realized you were trans?"](https://archive.is/uswsz). The [results](https://archive.is/lm4ro): [82% of over 2000 respondents said Yes](/images/did_you_have-reddit_poll.png). [Top comment in the thread](https://archive.is/c7YFG), with over 230 karma: "I spent a long time in the 'it's probably just a fetish' camp."
-Certainly, 82% is not 100%! (But 82% is evidence for my claim that a _substantial majority_ of trans women under modern conditions in Western countries are essentially guys like me.) Certainly, you could argue that Reddit has a sampling bias such that poll results and karma scores from /r/MtF fail to match the distribution of opinion among real-world MtFs. But if you don't take the gender-identity story as a _axiom_ and [_actually look_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SA79JMXKWke32A3hG/original-seeing) at the _details_ of what people say and do, these kinds of observations are _not hard to find_. You could [fill an entire subreddit with them](https://archive.is/ezENv) (and then move it to [independent](https://ovarit.com/o/ItsAFetish/) [platforms](https://saidit.net/s/itsafetish/) when the original gets [banned for "promoting hate"](https://www.reddit.com/r/itsafetish/)).
+Certainly, 82% is not 100%. Certainly, you could argue that Reddit has a sampling bias such that poll results and karma scores from /r/MtF fail to match the distribution of opinion among real-world MtFs. But if you don't take the gender-identity story as an axiom and [actually look](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SA79JMXKWke32A3hG/original-seeing) at what people say and do, these kinds of observations are not hard to find. You could [fill an entire subreddit with them](https://archive.is/ezENv) (and then move it to [independent](https://ovarit.com/o/ItsAFetish/) [platforms](https://saidit.net/s/itsafetish/) when the original gets [banned for "promoting hate"](https://www.reddit.com/r/itsafetish/)).
-Reddit isn't "scientific" enough for you? Fine. The scientific literature says the same thing. [Blanchard 1985](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf): 73% of non-exclusively-androphilic transsexuals acknowledged some history of erotic cross-dressing. (Unfortunately, a lot of the classic studies specifically asked about cross-_dressing_, but the underlying desire isn't about clothes; Jack Molay coined the term [_crossdreaming_](https://www.crossdreamers.com/), which seems more apt.) [Lawrence 2005](/papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf): of trans women who had female partners before sexual reassignment surgery, 90% reported a history of autogynephilic arousal. [Smith _et al._ 2005](/papers/smith_et_al-transsexual_subtypes_clinical_and_theoretical_significance.pdf): 64% of non-homosexual MtFs (excluding the "missing" and "N/A" responses) reported arousal while cross-dressing during adolescence. (A lot of the classic literature says "non-homosexual", which is with respect to natal sex; the idea is that self-identified bisexuals are still in the late-onset taxon.) [Nuttbrock _et al._ 2011](/papers/nuttbrock_et_al-a_further_assessment.pdf): lifetime prevalence of transvestic fetishism among non-homosexual MtFs was 69%. (For a more detailed literature review, see [Kay Brown's blog](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/), Phil Illy's book [_Autoheterosexual: Attracted to Being the Opposite Sex_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C62L2GJW), or the first two chapters of [Anne Lawrence's _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](https://surveyanon.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/men-trapped-in-mens-bodies_book.pdf).)
+Reddit isn't scientific enough for you? Fine. The scientific literature says the same thing. [Blanchard 1985](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf): 73% of not exclusively androphilic transsexuals acknowledged some history of erotic cross-dressing. (A lot of the classic studies specifically asked about cross-_dressing_, but the underlying desire isn't about clothes; Jack Molay coined the term [_crossdreaming_](https://www.crossdreamers.com/), which seems more apt.) [Lawrence 2005](/papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf): of trans women who had female partners before sexual reassignment surgery, 90% reported a history of autogynephilic arousal. [Smith _et al._ 2005](/papers/smith_et_al-transsexual_subtypes_clinical_and_theoretical_significance.pdf): 64% of non-homosexual MtFs (excluding the "missing" and "N/A" responses) reported arousal while cross-dressing during adolescence. (A lot of the classic literature says "non-homosexual", which is with respect to natal sex; the idea is that self-identified bisexuals are still in the late-onset taxon.) [Nuttbrock _et al._ 2011](/papers/nuttbrock_et_al-a_further_assessment.pdf): lifetime prevalence of transvestic fetishism among non-homosexual MtFs was 69%. (For a more detailed literature review, see [Kay Brown's blog](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/), Phil Illy's book [_Autoheterosexual: Attracted to Being the Opposite Sex_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C62L2GJW), or the first two chapters of [Anne Lawrence's _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](https://surveyanon.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/men-trapped-in-mens-bodies_book.pdf).)
-Peer-reviewed scientific papers aren't enough for you? (They could be cherry-picked; there are lots of scientific journals, and no doubt a lot of bad science slips through the cracks of the review process.) Want something more indicative of a consensus among practitioners? Fine. The [_Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5) (the definitive taxonomic handbook of the American Psychiatric Association) [says the same thing](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/american-psychiatric-association-supports-the-two-type-transsexual-taxonomy/) in [its section on gender dysphoria](/papers/DSM-V-gender_dysphoria_section.pdf) ([ICD-10-CM codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10-CM) F64.1 and F64.2):
+Peer-reviewed scientific papers aren't enough for you? (They could be cherry-picked; there are lots of scientific journals, and no doubt a lot of bad science slips through the cracks of the review process.) Want something more indicative of a consensus among practitioners? Fine. The [_Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5), the definitive taxonomic handbook of the American Psychiatric Association, [says the same thing](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/american-psychiatric-association-supports-the-two-type-transsexual-taxonomy/) in [its section on gender dysphoria](/papers/DSM-V-gender_dysphoria_section.pdf):
> In both adolescent and adult natal males, there are two broad trajectories for development of gender dysphoria: early onset and late onset. _Early-onset gender dysphoria_ starts in childhood and continues into adolescence and adulthood; or, there is an intermittent period in which the gender dysphoria desists and these individuals self-identify as gay or homosexual, followed by recurrence of gender dysphoria. _Late-onset gender dysphoria_ occurs around puberty or much later in life. Some of these individuals report having had a desire to be of the other gender in childhood that was not expressed verbally to others. Others do not recall any signs of childhood gender dysphoria. For adolescent males with late-onset gender dysphoria, parents often report surprise because they did not see signs of gender dysphoria in childhood. Adolescent and adult natal males with early-onset gender dysphoria are almost always sexually attracted to men (androphilic). Adolescents and adults with late-onset gender dysphoria **frequently engage in transvestic behavior with sexual excitement.**
Don't trust scientists or clinicians? Me neither! (Especially [not clinicians](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/).) Want first-person accounts from trans women themselves? Me too! And there's lots!
-Consider these excerpts from economist Deirdre McCloskey's memoir _Crossing_, writing in the third person about her decades identifying as a heterosexual crossdresser before transitioning at age 53 (bolding mine):
+Consider these excerpts from economist Deirdre McCloskey's memoir _Crossing_, written in the third person about her decades identifying as a heterosexual crossdresser before transitioning at age 53 (bolding mine):
> He had been doing it ten times a month through four decades, whenever possible, though in the closet. The quantifying economist made the calculation: _About five thousand episodes_. [...] At fifty-two Donald accepted crossdressing as part of who he was. True, if before the realization that he could cross all the way someone had offered a pill to stop the occasional cross-dressing, he would have accepted, since it was mildly distracting—though hardly time consuming. **Until the spring of 1995 each of the five thousand episodes was associated with quick, male sex.**
> There was also a period of time when I embraced the word "pervert" and viewed my desire to be female as some sort of sexual kink. But after exploring that path, it became obvious that explanation could not account for the vast majority of instances when I thought about being female in a nonsexual context.
-"It became obvious that explanation could not account." I don't doubt Serano's reporting of her own phenomenal experiences, but "that explanation could not account" is _not an experience_; it's a _hypothesis_ about psychology, about the _causes_ of the experience. I [don't _expect_ anyone to be able to get that sort of thing right from introspection alone!](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/).
+"It became obvious that explanation could not account." I don't doubt Serano's reporting of her own phenomenal experiences, but "that explanation could not account" is not an experience; it's a hypothesis about psychology, about the _causes_ of the experience. I [don't expect anyone to be able to get that sort of thing right from introspection alone!](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/).
-Or consider _Nevada_. This was a popular book, nominated for a 2014 Lambda Literary Award—and described by the author as an attempt to write a story about trans women for an audience of trans women. Part 2, Chapter 23 is our protagonist Maria's rant about the self-evident falsehood and injustice of autogynephilia theory. And she starts out by ... acknowledging the phenomenon which the theory is meant to explain:
+Or consider _Nevada_. This was a popular book, nominated for a 2014 Lambda Literary Award—and described by the author as an attempt to write a story about trans women for an audience of trans women. In Part 2, Chapter 23, our protagonist, Maria, rants about the self-evident falsehood and injustice of autogynephilia theory. And she starts out by ... acknowledging the phenomenon which the theory is meant to explain:
> But the only time I couldn't lie to myself about who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to be, and like, the way I needed to exist in the world if I was going to actually exist in the world, is when I was jacking off.
>
If the idea that most non-androphilic trans women are guys like me is so preposterous, then _why do people keep recommending this book?_
-I could go on ... but do I need to? After having seen enough of these _laughable_ denials of autogynephilia, the main question in my mind has become not, _Is the two-type androphilic/autogynephilic taxonomy of MtF transsexualism approximately true?_ (answer: yes, obviously) and more, _How dumb do you (proponents of gender-identity theories) think we (the general public) are?_ (answer: very, but this assessment is accurate).
+I could go on ... but do I need to? After having seen enough of these laughable denials of autogynephilia, the main question in my mind has become less, "Is the two-type androphilic/autogynephilic taxonomy of MtF transsexuality approximately true?" (answer: yes, obviously) and more, "How dumb do you (proponents of gender-identity theories) think we (the general public) are?" (answer: very, but you're right).
-An important caveat must be made: [different causal/etiological stories could be compatible with the same _descriptive_ taxonomy.](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/) You shouldn't confuse my mere ridicule with a rigorous critique of the strongest possible case for "gender expression deprivation anxiety" as a theoretical entity, which would be more work. But hopefully I've shown _enough_ work here, that the reader can perhaps empathize with the temptation to resort to ridicule?
+An important caveat: [different causal/etiological stories could be compatible with the same _descriptive_ taxonomy.](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/) You shouldn't confuse my mere ridicule with a rigorous critique of the strongest possible case for "gender expression deprivation anxiety" as a theoretical entity, which would be more work. But hopefully I've shown _enough_ work here, that the reader can empathize with the temptation to resort to ridicule?
-Everyone's experience is different, but the human mind still has a _design_. If I hurt my ankle while running and I (knowing nothing of physiology or sports medicine) think it might be a stress fracture, a competent doctor (who's studied the literature and seen many more cases) is going to ask followup questions about my experiences to pin down whether it's a stress fracture or a sprain. I can't be wrong about the fact _that_ my ankle hurts (which is a privileged first-person experience), but I can easily be wrong about my _theory about_ why my ankle hurts.
+Everyone's experience is different, but the human mind still has a _design_. If I hurt my ankle while running and I (knowing nothing of physiology or sports medicine) think it might be a stress fracture, a competent doctor is going to ask followup questions to pin down whether it's a stress fracture or a sprain. I can't be wrong about the fact _that_ my ankle hurts, but I can easily be wrong about _why_ my ankle hurts.
-Even if human brains vary more than human ankles, the basic epistemological principle applies to a mysterious desire to be female. The question I need to answer is, do the trans women whose reports I'm considering have a relevantly _different_ psychological condition than me, or do we have "the same" condition, and (at least) one of us is misdiagnosing it?
+Even if human brains vary more than human ankles, the basic epistemological principle applies to a mysterious desire to be female. The question I need to answer is, Do the trans women whose reports I'm considering have a relevantly different psychological condition than me, or do we have "the same" condition, but (at least) one of us is misdiagnosing it?
-The _safe_ answer—the answer that preserves everyone's current stories about themselves without any need for modification—is "different." That's what I thought before 2016. I think a lot of trans activists would say "the same". And on _that_ much, we can agree.
+The _safe_ answer—the answer that preserves everyone's current stories about themselves—is "different." That's what I thought before 2016. I think a lot of trans activists would say "the same". And on _that_ much, we can agree.
How weaselly am I being with these "approximately true" and "as a first approximation" qualifiers and hedges? I claim: not _more_ weaselly than anyone who tries to reason about psychology given the knowledge our civilization has managed to accumulate.
-Reality has a single level (physics), but [our models of reality have multiple levels](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gRa5cWWBsZqdFvmqu/reductive-reference). To get maximally precise predictions about everything, you would have to model the underlying quarks, _&c._, which is impossible. (As [it is](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tPqQdLCuxanjhoaNs/reductionism) [written](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y5MxoeacRKKM3KQth/fallacies-of-compression): the map is not the territory, but you can't roll up the territory and put in your glove compartment.)
+Psychology is complicated; every human is their own unique snowflake, but it would be impossible to navigate the world using the "every human is their own unique _maximum-entropy_ snowflake; you can't make _any_ probabilistic inferences about someone's mind based on your experiences with other humans" theory. Even if someone were to _verbally endorse_ something like that—and at age sixteen, I might have—their brain is still going to make predictions about people's behavior using some algorithm whose details aren't available to introspection. Much of this predictive machinery is instinct bequeathed by natural selection (because predicting the behavior of conspecifics was useful in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness), but some of it is the cultural accumulation of people's attempts to organize their experience into categories, clusters, diagnoses, taxons.
-Psychology is very complicated; every human is their own unique snowflake, but it would be impossible to navigate the world using the "every human is their own unique _maximum-entropy_ snowflake; you can't make _any_ probabilistic inferences about someone's mind based on your experiences with other humans" theory. Even if someone were to _verbally endorse_ something like that—and at age sixteen, I might have—their brain is still going to go on to make predictions about people's behavior using _some_ algorithm whose details aren't available to introspection. Much of this predictive machinery is going to be instinct bequeathed by natural selection (because predicting the behavior of conspecifics was very useful in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness), but some of it is the cultural accumulation of people's attempts to organize their experience into categories, clusters, diagnoses, taxons.
+There could be situations in psychology where a good theory (not perfect, but as good as our theories about how to engineer bridges) would be described by (say) a 70-node [causal graph](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hzuSDMx7pd2uxFc5w/causal-diagrams-and-causal-models), but that some of [the more important variables in the graph anti-correlate with each other](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/the-mathematical-consequences-of-a-toy-model-of-gender-transition/). Humans who don't know how to discover the correct 70-node graph, still manage to pattern-match their way to a two-type typology that actually is better, as a first approximation, than pretending not to have a theory. No one matches any particular clinical-profile stereotype exactly, but [the world makes more sense when you have language for theoretical abstractions](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ontology-of-psychiatric-conditions) like ["comas"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/11/does-the-glasgow-coma-scale-exist-do-comas/) or "depression" or "bipolar disorder"—or "autogynephilia".[^lucky-simplification]
-There could be situations in psychology where a good theory (not a perfect theory, but as good as our theories about how to engineer bridges) would be described by (say) a 70-node [causal graph](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hzuSDMx7pd2uxFc5w/causal-diagrams-and-causal-models), but it turns out that some of [the more "important" variables in the graph happen to anti-correlate with each other](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/the-mathematical-consequences-of-a-toy-model-of-gender-transition/), such that stupid humans who don't know how to discover the correct 70-node graph, do manage to pattern-match their way to a two-type typology that actually is better, as a first approximation, than pretending not to have a theory. No one matches any particular clinical-profile stereotype _exactly_, but [the world makes more sense when you have language for theoretical abstractions](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ontology-of-psychiatric-conditions) like ["comas"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/11/does-the-glasgow-coma-scale-exist-do-comas/) or "depression" or "bipolar disorder"—or "autogynephilia".[^lucky-simplification]
-
-[^lucky-simplification]: In some sense it's a matter of "luck" when the relevant structure in the world happens to simplify so much. For example, [friend of the blog](/tag/tailcalled/) Tailcalled argues that [there's no discrete typology for FtM](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2023/02/12/there-is-probably-no-ftm-typology/) as there is for the two types of MtF, because the various causes of gender problems in females vary more independently and aren't as stratified by age.
+[^lucky-simplification]: In some sense it's a matter of "luck" when the relevant structure in the world happens to simplify so much. For example, [friend of the blog](/tag/tailcalled/) Tailcalled argues that [there's no discrete typology for FtM](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2023/02/12/there-is-probably-no-ftm-typology/) as there is for the two types of MtF, because gender problems in females vary more independently and aren't as stratified by age.
[I claim that femininity and autogynephilia are two such anti-correlated nodes in the True Causal Graph](/2022/Jul/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model/). They're negatively correlated because they're both children of the sexual orientation node, whose value pushes them in _opposite directions_: gay men are more feminine than straight men,[^gay-femininity], and autogynephiles want to be women because we're straight.
[^gay-femininity]: [It's a stereotype for a reason!](/2022/May/gaydar-jamming/) If you're not satisfied with stereotypes and want Science, see [Lippa 2000](/papers/lippa-gender-related_traits_in_gays.pdf) or [Bailey and Zucker 1995](/papers/bailey-zucker-childhood_sex-typed_behavior_and_sexual_orientation.pdf).
-Sex-atypical behavior and the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought are two different _reasons why_ transition might genuinely seem like a good idea to someone—different paths through the causal graph leading the decision to transition. Maybe they're not mutually exclusive, and no doubt there are lots of other contributing factors, such that an overly strict interpretation of the two-type taxonomy is false. If some particular individual trans woman writes down her life story, and swears up and down that she doesn't match the feminine/early-onset type, but _also_ doesn't empathize at all with the experiences I've grouped under the concept of "autogynephilia", I don't have any definitive knockdown proof with which to accuse her of lying, because I don't _know_ her, and the true diversity of human psychology is no doubt richer and stranger than my fuzzy low-resolution model of it.
+Sex-atypical behavior and the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought are two different reasons why transition might seem like a good idea to someone—different paths through the causal graph leading the decision to transition. Maybe they're not mutually exclusive, and no doubt there are lots of other contributing factors, such that an overly strict interpretation of the two-type taxonomy is false. If an individual trans woman swears that she doesn't match the feminine/early-onset type, but _also_ doesn't empathize with the experiences I've grouped under "autogynephilia", I don't have any proof with which to accuse her of lying, and the true diversity of human psychology is no doubt richer and stranger than my fuzzy low-resolution model.
-But [the fuzzy low-resolution model is _way too good_](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/predictions-made-by-blanchards-typology/) not to be pointing to _some_ regularity in the real world, and I expect honest people who are exceptions that aren't well-predicted by the model, to at least notice how well it performs on all the _non_-exceptions. If you're a magical third type of trans woman (where [_magical_ is a term of art indicating phenomena not understood](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kpRSCH7ALLcb6ucWM/say-not-complexity)) who isn't super-feminine but whose identity definitely isn't ultimately rooted in a fetish, [you should be _confused_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5JDkW4MYXit2CquLs/your-strength-as-a-rationalist) by the 230 upvotes on that /r/MtF comment about the "it's probably just a fetish" camp—if the person who wrote that comment has experiences like yours, why did they ever single out "it's probably just a fetish" [as a hypothesis to pay attention to in the first place](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X2AD2LgtKgkRNPj2a/privileging-the-hypothesis)? And there's allegedly a whole "camp" of these people? What could _that_ possibly be about?!
+But [the fuzzy low-resolution model is _way too good_](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/predictions-made-by-blanchards-typology/) not to be pointing to _some_ regularity in the real world, and honest people who are exceptions that aren't well-predicted by the model, should notice how well it performs on the _non_-exceptions. If you're a magical third type of trans woman (where [_magical_ is a term of art indicating phenomena not understood](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kpRSCH7ALLcb6ucWM/say-not-complexity)) who isn't super-feminine but whose identity definitely isn't ultimately rooted in a fetish, [you should be confused](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5JDkW4MYXit2CquLs/your-strength-as-a-rationalist) by the 230 upvotes on that /r/MtF comment about the "it's probably just a fetish" camp. If the person who wrote that comment has experiences like yours, why did they single out "it's probably just a fetish" [as a hypothesis to pay attention to in the first place](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X2AD2LgtKgkRNPj2a/privileging-the-hypothesis)? And there's a whole "camp" of these people?!
-I _do_ have a _lot_ of uncertainty about what the True Causal Graph looks like, even if it seems obvious that the two-type taxonomy coarsely approximates it. Gay femininity and autogynephilia are obviously very important nodes in the True Graph, but there's going to be more detail to the whole story: what _other_ factors influence people's decision to transition, including [incentives](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) and cultural factors specific to a given place and time?
+I _do_ have a lot of uncertainty about what the True Causal Graph looks like, even if it seems obvious that the two-type taxonomy coarsely approximates it. Gay femininity and autogynephilia are important nodes in the True Graph, but there's going to be more detail to the whole story: what _other_ factors influence people's decision to transition, including [incentives](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) and cultural factors specific to a given place and time?
-In our feminist era, cultural attitudes towards men and maleness differ markedly from the overt patriarchy of our ancestors. It feels gauche to say so, but ... as a result, conscientious boys taught to disdain the crimes of men may pick up an internalized misandry? I remember one night at the University in Santa Cruz back in 'aught-seven, I had the insight that it was possible to make generalizations about groups of people while allowing for exceptions, in contrast to my previous stance that generalizations about people were _always morally wrong_—and immediately, eagerly proclaimed that _men are terrible_.
+In our feminist era, cultural attitudes towards men and maleness differ markedly from the overt patriarchy of our ancestors. It feels gauche to say so, but as a result, conscientious boys taught to disdain the crimes of men may pick up an internalized misandry. I remember one night at the University in Santa Cruz back in 'aught-seven, I had the insight that it was possible to make generalizations about groups of people while allowing for exceptions—in contrast to my previous stance that generalizations about people were _always morally wrong_—and immediately, eagerly proclaimed that _men are terrible_.
-Or consider computer scientist Scott Aaronson's account (in his infamous [Comment 171](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664)) that his "recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man [...] [a]nything, really, other than the curse of having been born a heterosexual male, which [...] meant being consumed by desires that one couldn't act on or even admit without running the risk of becoming an objectifier or a stalker or a harasser or some other creature of the darkness."
+Or consider computer scientist Scott Aaronson's [account](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664) that his "recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man [...] [a]nything, really, other than the curse of having been born a heterosexual male, which [...] meant being consumed by desires that one couldn't act on or even admit without running the risk of becoming an objectifier or a stalker or a harasser or some other creature of the darkness."
Or there's a piece that has made the rounds on social media more than once: ["I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out"](https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42), which (in part) discusses the author's frustration at being dismissed on account of being perceived as a cis male. "I hate that the only effective response I can give to 'boys are shit' is 'well I'm not a boy,'" the author laments. And: "Do I even _want_ to convince someone who will only listen to me when they're told by the rules that they have to see me as a girl?"
-(The "told by the rules that they have to see me" (!) phrasing in the current revision is _very_ telling; [the originally published version](https://archive.is/trslp) said "when they find out I'm a girl".)[^not-coming-out-revisions]
-
-[^not-coming-out-revisions]: The original version also says, "I begin to show an interest in programming, which might be the most obvious sign so far," alluding to popular stereotype of the trans woman programmer. But of course, software development _isn't_ a female-typical profession! [(5.17% of respondents to the 2022 Stack Overflow developer survey were women.)](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#developer-profile-demographics) It's almost as if ... people instinctively know that trans women are a type of man?
+(The "told by the rules that they have to see me" phrasing in the current revision is telling; [the originally published version](https://archive.is/trslp) said "when they find out I'm a girl".)[^not-coming-out-revisions]
-If boys are shit, and the rules say that you have to see someone as a girl if they _say_ they're a girl, that provides an incentive [on the margin](https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Marginalism.html) to disidentify with maleness. Like in another one of my teenage song-fragments—
+[^not-coming-out-revisions]: The original version also says, "I begin to show an interest in programming, which might be the most obvious sign so far," alluding to the popular stereotype of the trans woman programmer. But software development _isn't_ a female-typical profession! [(5.17% of respondents to the 2022 Stack Overflow developer survey were women.)](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#developer-profile-demographics) It's almost as if ... people instinctively know that trans women are a type of man?
-> _Look in the mirror
-> What's a_ white guy _doing there?
-> I'm just a spirit
-> I'm just a spirit
-> Floating in air, floating in air, floating in air!_
+If boys are shit, and the rules say that you have to see someone as a girl if they say they're a girl, that provides an incentive [on the margin](https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Marginalism.html) to disidentify with maleness.
-This culturally-transmitted attitude could intensify the interpretation of autogynephilic attraction as an [ego-syntonic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosyntonic_and_egodystonic) beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing (rather than an ego-dystonic sex thing to be ashamed of), or be a source of gender dysphoria in males who aren't autogynephilic at all.
+This culturally transmitted attitude could intensify the interpretation of autogynephilic attraction as an [ego-syntonic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosyntonic_and_egodystonic) beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing, and plausibly be a source of gender dysphoria in males who aren't autogynephilic at all.
-In one of my notebooks from 2008, I had written, "It bothers me that Richard Feynman went to strip clubs. _I wish Richard Feynman had been trans._" I guess the sentiment must have been (not in so many words) that male sexuality is inherently exploitative and Bad, but being _trans_ is morally pure and Good; I wanted Famous Science Raconteur to be Good rather than Bad.
+In one of my notebooks from 2008, I had written, "It bothers me that Richard Feynman went to strip clubs. _I wish Richard Feynman had been trans._" I guess the sentiment was that male sexuality is inherently exploitative and Bad, but being trans is morally pure and Good; I wanted Famous Science Raconteur to be Good rather than Bad.
-But the _reason_ strip clubs are considered Bad is the same as the reason single-sex locker rooms, hospital wards, _&c._ were, until recently, considered an obvious necessity: no woman should be forced to undergo the indignity of being exposed in the presence of men. It would have been _more_ scandalous if Feynman had violated the sanctity of women's spaces. Is it supposed to be an _improvement_ if physics-nerd incels who might have otherwise gone to strip clubs, instead declare themselves women? Why? Who is the misandry _helping_, exactly? Or rather, I could maybe see a case for the misandry serving some useful functions, but not if you're allowed to _self-identify out of it_.
+But the _reason_ strip clubs are considered Bad is the same as the reason single-sex locker rooms, hospital wards, _&c._ were, until recently, considered an obvious necessity: no woman should be forced to undergo the indignity of being exposed in the presence of men. It would have been _more_ scandalous if Feynman had violated the sanctity of women's spaces. Is it supposed to be an _improvement_ if physics-nerd incels who might have otherwise gone to strip clubs, instead declare themselves women? Why? Who is the misandry helping, exactly? Or rather, I could maybe see a case for the misandry serving some useful functions, but not if you're allowed to self-identify out of it.
-To the extent it's common (or has _become_ common) for "cognitive" things like internalized misandry to manifest as cross-gender identification, then maybe the two-type taxonomy isn't androphilic/autogynephilic so much as it is androphilic/"not-otherwise-specified": the early-onset type is very behaviorally distinct and has a very straightforward motive to transition (in some ways, it would be _more_ weird not to); in contrast, it might not be as easy to distinguish autogynephilia from _other_ sources of gender problems in the grab-bag of all males showing up to the gender clinic for any other reason.
+To the extent it's common for "cognitive" things like internalized misandry to manifest as cross-gender identification, then maybe the two-type taxonomy isn't androphilic/autogynephilic so much as it is androphilic/"not otherwise specified": the early-onset type is behaviorally distinct and has a straightforward motive to transition (in some ways, it would be _more_ weird not to). In contrast, it might not be as easy to distinguish autogynephilia from _other_ sources of gender problems in the grab-bag of all males showing up to the gender clinic for any other reason.
-Whatever the True Causal Graph looks like—however my remaining uncertainty turns out to resolve in the limit of sufficiently advanced psychological science, I think I _obviously_ have more than enough evidence to reject the mainstream ["inner sense of gender"](https://www.drmaciver.com/2019/05/the-inner-sense-of-gender/) story as _not adding up_.
+Whatever the True Causal Graph looks like, I think I have more than enough evidence to reject the mainstream ["inner sense of gender"](https://www.drmaciver.com/2019/05/the-inner-sense-of-gender/) story.
-Okay, so the public narrative about transness is obviously, _obviously_ false. That's a problem, because almost no matter what you want, true beliefs are more useful than false beliefs for making decisions that get you what you want.
+The public narrative about transness is obviously, _obviously_ false. That's a problem, because almost no matter what you want, true beliefs are more useful than false beliefs for making decisions that get you there.
-Fortunately, Yudkowsky's writing had brought together a whole community of brilliant people dedicated to refining the art of human rationality—the methods of acquiring true beliefs and using them to make decisions that get you what you want. So now that I _knew_ the public narrative was obviously false, and that I had the outlines of a better theory (even though I could use a lot of help pinning down the details, and [I didn't pretend to know what the social policy implications were](/2021/Sep/i-dont-do-policy/)), all I _should_ have had to do was carefully explain why the public narrative is delusional, and then because my arguments were so much better, all the intellectually serious people would either agree with me (in public), or at least be eager to _clarify_ (in public) exactly where they disagreed and what their alternative theory was, so that we could move the state of humanity's knowledge forward together, in order to advance the great common task of optimizing the universe in accordance with humane values.
+Fortunately, Yudkowsky's writing had brought together a whole community of brilliant people dedicated to refining the art of human rationality—the methods of acquiring true beliefs and using them to make decisions that get you what you want. Now I knew the public narrative was obviously false, and I had the outlines of a better theory, though [I didn't pretend to know what the social policy implications were](/2021/Sep/i-dont-do-policy/). All I _should_ have had to do was carefully explain why the public narrative is delusional, and then because my arguments were so much better, all the intellectually serious people would either agree with me (in public), or be eager to clarify (in public) exactly where they disagreed and what their alternative theory was so that we could move the state of humanity's knowledge forward together, in order to advance the great common task of optimizing the universe in accordance with humane values.
-Of course, this is a niche topic—if you're not a male with this psychological condition, or a woman who doesn't want to share all female-only spaces with them, you probably have no reason to care—but there are a _lot_ of males with this psychological condition around here! If this whole "rationality" subculture isn't completely fake, then we should be interested in getting the correct answers in public _for ourselves_.
+Of course, this is a niche topic—if you're not a male with this psychological condition, or a woman who doesn't want to share female-only spaces with them, you probably have no reason to care—but there are a lot of males with this psychological condition around here! If this whole "rationality" subculture isn't completely fake, then we should be interested in getting the correct answers in public _for ourselves_.
(It later turned out that this whole "rationality" subculture is completely fake, but I didn't realize this at the time.)
-Straight men who fantasize about being women do not particularly resemble actual women! We just—don't? This seems kind of obvious, really? _Telling the difference between fantasy and reality_ is kind of an important life skill?! Notwithstanding that some males might want to make use of medical interventions like surgery and hormone replacement therapy to become facsimiles of women as far as our existing technology can manage, and that a free and enlightened transhumanist Society should support that as an option—and notwithstanding that _she_ is obviously the correct pronoun for people who _look_ like women—it's probably going to be harder for people to figure out what the optimal decisions are if no one is ever allowed to use language like "actual women" that clearly distinguishes the original thing from imperfect facsimiles?!
+Straight men who fantasize about being women do not particularly resemble actual women! We just—don't? This seems kind of obvious, really? _Telling the difference between fantasy and reality_ is kind of an important life skill?! Notwithstanding that some males might want to use medical interventions like surgery and hormone replacement therapy to become facsimiles of women as far as our existing technology can manage, and that a free and enlightened transhumanist Society should support that as an option—and notwithstanding that _she_ is obviously the correct pronoun for people who _look_ like women—it's going to be harder for people to figure out what the optimal decisions are if no one is ever allowed to use language like "actual women" that clearly distinguishes the original thing from imperfect facsimiles?!
-I think most people in roughly my situation (of harboring these gender feelings for many years, but thinking that it's obviously not the same thing as being "actually trans", only to later discover that it's _not_ obviously not the same thing) tend to conclude that they _were_ "actually trans" all along, and sometimes express intense bitterness at Ray Blanchard and all the other cultural forces of cisnormativity that let them ever doubt.
+I think most people in roughly my situation (of harboring these gender feelings for many years, thinking that it's obviously not the same thing as being "actually trans", and later discovering that it's _not_ obviously not the same thing) tend to conclude that they were "actually trans" all along, and sometimes express intense bitterness at Ray Blanchard and all the other cultural forces of cisnormativity that let them ever doubt.
I ... [went the other direction](https://www.gwern.net/Modus). In slogan form: "Holy crap, _almost no one_ is actually trans!"
-Okay, that slogan isn't right. I'm a transhumanist. I believe in morphological freedom! If someone wants to change sex, that's a totally valid desire that Society should try to accommodate as much as feasible given currently-existing technology! In that sense, anyone can [_choose_ to](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/1327/) become trans.
+Okay, that slogan isn't right. I'm a transhumanist. I believe in morphological freedom. If someone wants to change sex, that's a valid desire that Society should try to accommodate as much as feasible given currently existing technology. In that sense, anyone can [_choose_ to](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/1327/) become trans.
-The _problem_ is that the public narrative of trans rights doesn't seem to be _about_ making a principled case for morphological freedom, or engaging with the complicated policy question of what accommodations are feasible given the imperfections of currently-existing technology. Instead, we're told that everyone has an internal sense of their own gender, which for some people (who "are trans") does not match their assigned sex at birth.
+The problem is that the public narrative of trans rights doesn't seem to be about making a principled case for morphological freedom, or engaging with the complicated policy question of what accommodations are feasible given the imperfections of currently existing technology. Instead, we're told that everyone has an internal sense of their own gender, which for some people (who "are trans") does not match their assigned sex at birth.
Okay, but what does that _mean_? Are the things about me that I've been attributing to autogynephilia actually an internal gender identity, or did I [get it right the first time](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/)? How could I tell? No one seems interested in clarifying!
My shift in belief, from thinking the standard narrative is true about other people but not me, to thinking that the narrative is just a lie, happened gradually over the course of 2016 as the evidence kept piling up—from my reading, from correspondence with the aforementioned [Kay Brown](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/)—and also as I kept initiating conversations with local trans women to try to figure out what was going on.
-Someone I met at the Berkeley _Less Wrong_ meetup who went by Ziz[^ziz-privacy] denied experiencing autogynephilia at all, and I believe her—but it seems worth noting that Ziz was unusual along a lot of dimensions; again, I don't think a psychological theory needs to predict _every_ case in order to be broadly useful for understanding the world.
+Someone I met at the Berkeley _Less Wrong_ meetup who went by Ziz[^ziz-privacy] denied experiencing autogynephilia at all, and I believe her—but it seems worth noting that Ziz was unusual along a lot of dimensions. Again, I don't think a psychological theory needs to predict _every_ case to be broadly useful for understanding the world.
-[^ziz-privacy]: Ziz [wrote about her interactions with me in _her_ memoir](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) and explicitly confirmed with me on 5 November 2019 that we weren't under any confidentiality agreements with each other, so it seems fine for me to name her here, in contrast to how I'm leaving other private individuals unnamed or assigning them pseudonyms.
+[^ziz-privacy]: Ziz [wrote about her interactions with me in _her_ memoir](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) and explicitly confirmed with me on 5 November 2019 that we weren't under any confidentiality agreements with each other, so it seems fine for me to name her here.
In contrast, many of the people I talked to seemed to report similar experiences to me—at least, to the low resolution of the conversation; talking about this stuff _at all_ was hard enough, that I wasn't going to press people for the specific details of their sexual fantasies—but seemed to me to be either pretty delusional, or privately pretty sane but (from my view) oddly indifferent to the state of public knowledge.
I replied that "obviously a man" was an unsophisticated form of trans-skepticism. I had been thinking of gendering in terms of [naïve Bayes models](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gDWvLicHhcMfGmwaK/conditional-independence-and-naive-bayes): you observe some features, use those to assign (probabilities of) category membership, and then use category membership to make predictions about whatever other features you might care about but can't immediately observe. Sure, it's possible for an attempted clocking to be mistaken, and you can have third-gender categories such that AGP trans women aren't "men"—but they're still not drawn from anything close to the same distribution as cis women.
-Sophia replied with an information-theoretic analysis of passing (which I would [later adapt into a guest post for this blog](/2018/Oct/the-information-theory-of-passing/)). If the base rate of AGP transsexualism in Portland was 0.1%, someone would need log<sub>2</sub>(99.9%/0.1%) ≈ 9.96 ≈ 10 bits of evidence to clock her as trans. If one's facial structure was of a kind four times more likely to be from a male than a female, that would only contribute 2 bits. Sophia was 5′7″, which is about where the female and male height distributions cross over, so she wasn't leaking any bits there. And so on—the prospect of passing in naturalistic settings is a different question from whether there exists evidence that a trans person is trans. There _is_ evidence—but as long as it's comfortably under 10 bits, it won't be a problem.
+Sophia replied with an information-theoretic analysis of passing (which I would [later adapt into a guest post for this blog](/2018/Oct/the-information-theory-of-passing/)). If the base rate of AGP transsexuality in Portland was 0.1%, someone would need log<sub>2</sub>(99.9%/0.1%) ≈ 9.96 ≈ 10 bits of evidence to clock her as trans. If one's facial structure was of a kind four times more likely to be from a male than a female, that would only contribute 2 bits. Sophia was 5′7″, which is about where the female and male height distributions cross over, so she wasn't leaking any bits there. And so on—the prospect of passing in naturalistic settings is a different question from whether there exists evidence that a trans person is trans. There _is_ evidence—but as long as it's comfortably under 10 bits, it won't be a problem.
I agreed that for most people in most everyday situations it probably didn't matter. _I_ cared because I was a computational philosophy of gender nerd, I said, [linking to a program I had written](https://github.com/zackmdavis/Persongen/blob/8fc03d3173/src/main.rs) to simulate sex classification based on personality, using data from [a paper by Weisberg _et al._ about sex differences in correlated "facets" underlying the Big Five personality traits](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/). (For example, studies had shown that women and men didn't differ in Big Five Extraversion, but if you split "Extraversion" into "Enthusiasm" and "Assertiveness", there were small sex differences pointing in opposite directions, with men being more assertive.) My program generated random examples of women's and men's personality stats according the Weisberg _et al._ data, and then tried to classify the "actual" sex of each example given only the personality stats—only reaching 63% accuracy, which was good news for androgyny fans like me.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff