Sunday redemption session 1: parallelism, Veale recap

I think the key to writing productivity is that you have to start
first thing in the morning (after showering). If you check Twitter,
email, Less Wrong, &c., first, that's a tacit admission that you don't
really care. But I care! I'm going to get breakfast, and then continue
writing through the morning, and then I will have earned the right to
live or go to the Valinor party.

diff --git a/content/drafts/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model.md b/content/drafts/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model.md
index 9390dbf..de59dd5 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model.md
+++ b/content/drafts/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model.md
@@ -18,20 +18,24 @@ What does this look like for psychological theories? In the crudest form, when w
 
 If we notice further patterns _within_ the group of cases that make up a category, we can spit it up into sub-categories: for example, a diagnosis of bipolar I requires a full-blown manic episode, but hypomania and a major depressive episode qualify one for bipolar II.
 
-Is the two-type typology of bipolar disorder a good theory? Are bipolar I and bipolar II "really" different conditions, or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition, part of a "bipolar spectrum" along with cyclothymia? In our current state of knowledge, this is debateable! But if our understanding of the etiology of bipolar disorder were to advance, and we were to find evidence that that bipolar I has a different underlying _causal structure_ from bipolar II (with decision-relevant consequences, like responding to different treatments), that would support a policy of thinking and talking about them as mostly separate things (even while they have enough in common to both be kinds of "bipolar").
+Is the two-type typology of bipolar disorder a good theory? Are bipolar I and bipolar II "really" different conditions, or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition, part of a "bipolar spectrum" along with cyclothymia? In our current state of knowledge, this is debateable, but if our understanding of the etiology of bipolar disorder were to advance, and we were to find evidence that that bipolar I has a different underlying _causal structure_ from bipolar II with decision-relevant consequences, like responding to different treatments, that would support a policy of thinking and talking about them as mostly separate things—even while they have enough in common to both be kinds of "bipolar". The simple high-level category ("bipolar disorder") is a useful approximation, in the absence of knowing the sub-category (bipolar I _vs._ II) and the subcategory is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the patient's detailed case history.
 
-With a _sufficiently_ detailed causal story, you could even dispense with the high-level categories altogether and directly talk about the consequences of different neurotransmitter counts or whatever—but lacking that supreme precise knowledge, it's useful to sum over the details into high-level categories, and meaningful to debate whether a one-type or two-type typology is a better statistical fit to the underlying reality whose fine details remain unknown.
+With a _sufficiently_ detailed causal story, you could even dispense with the high-level categories altogether and directly talk about the consequences of different neurotransmitter counts or whatever—but lacking that supreme precise knowledge, it's useful to sum over the details into high-level categories, and meaningful to debate whether a one-type or two-type typology is a better statistical fit to the underlying reality whose full details we don't know yet.
 
-In the case of male-to-female transsexualism, we notice a pattern where androphilic and non-androphilic trans women seem to be different from each other—not just in their sexuality, but also in their age of transition, interests, and personality. Many authors have noticed this clustering of traits, [while disagreeing about the underlying causality](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/).
+-----
+
+In the case of male-to-female transsexualism, we notice a pattern where androphilic and non-androphilic trans women seem to be different from each other—not just in their sexuality, but also in their age of dysphoria onset, interests, and personality. Many authors have noticed this clustering of traits, [while disagreeing about the underlying causality](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/).
 
-[Veale-Clarke-Lomax identity-defence]
-[Vitale]
-[Serano 2020]
 [Blanchard]
 
-How seriously should we take the two-type typology?
+[Veale, Clarke, and Lomax](/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf) attribute the differences to whether defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity.
+
+[Vitale] http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm
+
+[Serano 2020]
+
+Is a two type typology of male-to-female transsexualism a good theory? Is it "really" different conditions, or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition?
 
-the simple story is a useful approximation even if you don't know how to pin down the more detailed story
 
 I think I do have a pretty good guess at what's going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_graph ]