[TODO: theorizing about on the margin]
+[TODO: "Autogenderphilia Is Common"]
+
[TODO: help from Jessica for "Unnatural Categories"]
[TODO: "out of patience" email]
Embedded agency means that the AI shouldn't have to fundamentally reason differently about "rewriting code in some 'external' program" and "rewriting 'my own' code." In that light, it makes sense to regard "have accurate beliefs" as merely a convergent instrumental subgoal, rather than what rationality is about
somehow accuracy seems more fundamental than power or resources ... could that be formalized?
-
]
--- /dev/null
+Title: "ASL Is Not a Language"
+Date: 2022-10-01
+Category: commentary
+Tags: politics
+Status: draft
+
+On 11/23/19 8:41 AM, Michael Vassar wrote:
+> Absolutely, but the situation is analogous to that with trans people in most respects, so it does justify the claim that in the absence of people who have it out for trans people the much more numerous and Internet active trans activists would be able to enforce their position across the entire internet, which does mean that trans advocates have a good Bayesian prior on their expectation that anyone opposing their dogmas publicly has it out for them.
+>
+> On Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 11:32 AM Zack M. Davis <main@zackmdavis.net> wrote:
+>
+> Asymmetric incentives: deaf people and allies have reasons to push "ASL
+> is a language", but there's no coalition that has it out for deaf
+> people. Thus, any curious scholars who honestly think there are large
+> and important differences between sign and spoken languages probably
+> don't want to loudly summarize their position as "... is not a language."
+>
+>
+> On 11/23/19 8:00 AM, Michael Vassar wrote:
+> > Just discovering that as far as I can tell, the 'ASL is a language'
+> > ideology achieves literally perfect internet censorship.
+> > The internet makes constant reference to people claiming to refute the
+> > claim that ASL is not a language, but has no webpages from people
+> > arguing that it is not a language.
+> >
+> > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Linguistic_universal
+> >
+> > Is as close as it comes,
+> > Go down to "Impossibility to prove universals".
"What does it cost you to just say the dish name?"
-"Just a minute ago when you asked what we should eat, I suggested 'Italian' as a general food category, _before_ you narrowed it down to lasana in particular."
\ No newline at end of file
+"Just a minute ago when you asked what we should eat, I suggested 'Italian' as a general food category, _before_ you narrowed it down to lasagna in particular."
\ No newline at end of file
Erotic-target-location-erroneous is the _uniquely_ best sexual orientation for rationalists—I mean _intrinsically_, not just because everyone has it.
* it's abstract
- * it [requires effort](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_stronger/) to realize
- * without an unusual amount of [epistemic luck](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8bWbNwiSGbGi9jXPS/epistemic-luck) or an _enormous_ amount of map–territory-distinction skill, virtually everyone _wildly misinterprets_ what the underlying psychological phenomenon is ("That's clearly a mere _effect_ of my horrible, crippling gender dysphoria, not a _cause_—and besides, that's totally normal for cis women, too" _A-ha-ha-ha-ha!_ You delusional bastards!), thus providing essential training in the important life skill of [noticing that everything you've ever cared about is a lie](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/bayesomasochism/)
+ * it [requires effort](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DoLQN5ryZ9XkZjq5h/tsuyoku-naritai-i-want-to-become-stronger) to realize
+ * without an unusual amount of [epistemic luck](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8bWbNwiSGbGi9jXPS/epistemic-luck) or an _enormous_ amount of map–territory-distinction skill, virtually everyone _wildly misinterprets_ what the underlying psychological phenomenon is ("That's clearly a mere _effect_ of my horrible, crippling gender dysphoria, not a _cause_—and besides, that's totally normal for cis women, too" _A-ha-ha-ha-ha!_ You delusional bastards!), so the few people who do notice get essential training in the important life skill of [noticing that everything you've ever cared about is a lie](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/bayesomasochism/) and that everyone is in on it
But if you saw this person on the street or even slept in their bed, you wouldn't want to call them a woman, because everything about them that you can observe looks like that of an adult human male. If you're not a reproductive health lab tech and don't look at the photographs in biology textbooks, you'll never _see_ the gametes someone's body produces. (You can see male semen, but the individual spermatozoa are too small to look at without a microscope; people [didn't even know that ova and sperm _existed_ until the 17th century](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1439-0531.2012.02105.x).) Does that mean this common definition of _female_ isn't perfectly serviceable after all?
-No, because humans whose gonads produce eggs but appear male in every other aspect, are something I just made up out of thin air for the purposes of this blog post; they don't exist in the real world. What this really shows is that the cognitive technology of "words" having "definitions" doesn't work in _the world of the imagination_, because _the world of the imagination_ encompasses (at a minimum) _all possible configurations of matter_. Words are [short messages that compress information](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length), but what it _means_ for the world to contain information is that some things in the world are more probable than others.
+No, because humans whose gonads produce eggs but appear male in every other aspect, are something I just made up out of thin air for the purposes of this blog post; they don't exist in the real world. What this really shows is that the cognitive technology of "words" having "definitions" doesn't work in _the world of the imagination_, because _the world of the imagination_ encompasses (at a minimum) _all possible configurations of matter_. Words are [short messages that compress information about the world](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length), but what it _means_ for the world to contain compressible information is that some things in the world are more probable than others.
To see why, let's take a brief math detour and review some elementary information theory. Instead of the messy real world, take a restricted setting: the world of strings of 20 bits. Suppose you wanted to devise an efficient _code_ to represent elements of this world with _shorter_ strings, such that you could say (for example) `01100` (in the efficient code, using just 5 bits) and the people listening to you would know that what you actually saw in the world was (for example) `01100001110110000010`.
Then if you wanted an efficient encoding to talk about the two and only two _clusters_ of bitstrings—the mostly-zeros (a majority of `00000000000000000000` plus a few exceptions with a few bits flipped) and the mostly-ones (a majority of `11111111111111111111` plus a few exceptions with a few bits flipped)—you might want to use the first bit as the "definition" for your codewords—even if most of the various [probabilistic inferences that you wanted to make](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3nxs2WYDGzJbzcLMp/words-as-hidden-inferences) [on the basis of cluster-membership](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gDWvLicHhcMfGmwaK/conditional-independence-and-naive-bayes) concerned bits other than the first. The majoritarian first bit, even if you don't care about it in itself, is a [_simple_ membership test](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests) for the mostly-zeros/mostly-ones category system.
-Unfortunately—_deeply_ unfortunately—this is not a math blog. (I _wish_ this were a math blog—I wish I lived in a world where I could do math blogging for the greater glory of our collective understanding of reality, rather than being condemned to gender blogging in self-defense, hopelessly outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned [in a Total Culture War](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/) over the future of [my neurotype-demographic](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/).) So, having briefly explained the theory, let's get back to the dreary, how do you say—_application_.
+Unfortunately—_deeply_ unfortunately—this is not a math blog. (I _wish_ this were a math blog—I wish I lived in a world where I could do math blogging for the greater glory of our collective understanding of greater reality, rather than being condemned to gender blogging in self-defense, hopelessly outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned [in a Total Culture War](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/) over the future of [my neurotype-demographic](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/).) So, having briefly explained the theory, let's get back to the dreary, how do you say—_application_.
Defining sex in terms of gamete size or genitals or chromosomes is like the using the never-flipped first bit in our abstract example about the world of length-20 bitstrings. It's not that people _directly_ care about gametes or chromosomes or even gentials in most everyday situations. (You're probably not directly trying to mate with most of the people you meet in everyday situations, and sex chromosomes weren't discovered until the _20th_ century.) It's that that these are _discrete_ features that are entangled with everything _else_ that differs between females and males—including many [correlated](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu7YY7WdgJBs3DpmJ/the-univariate-fallacy-1) statistical differences of various [effect sizes](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/), and differences that are harder to articulate or measure, and differences that haven't even been discovered yet (as gametes and chromosomes hadn't respectively been discovered yet in the 16th and 19th centuries) but can be theorized to exist because _sex_ is a very robust abstraction that you need in order to understand the design of evolved biological creatures.
Discrete features make for better word _definitions_ than high-dimensional statistical regularities, even if most of the everyday inferential utility of _using_ the word comes from the high-dimensional statistical correlates. A dictionary definition is just a helpful pointer to help people pick out "the same" [natural abstraction](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cy3BhHrGinZCp3LXE/testing-the-natural-abstraction-hypothesis-project-intro) in their _own_ world-model.
-(Gamete size is a particularly good definition for the natural category of _sex_ because the concept of [anisogamy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisogamy) generalizes across species that have different sex determination systems or configurations or sexual anatomy. In birds, [the presence or absence of a _W_ chromosome determines whether an animal is _female_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system), in contrast [the _Y_ chromosome's determination of maleness in mammals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system), and some reptiles' sex is determined by [the temperature of an lain egg while it develops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature-dependent_sex_determination) (!). And let's not get started on the [cloaca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca).)
+(Gamete size is a particularly good definition for the natural category of _sex_ because the concept of [anisogamy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisogamy) generalizes across species that have different sex determination systems and sexual anatomy. In birds, [the presence or absence of a _W_ chromosome determines whether an animal is _female_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system), in contrast to [the _Y_ chromosome's determination of maleness in mammals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system), and some reptiles' sex is determined by [the temperature of an lain egg while it develops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature-dependent_sex_determination) (!). And let's not get started on the [cloaca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca).)
But because our brains are good at using sex-category words to simultaneously encode predictions about _both_ absolute discrete differences and high-dimensional statistical regularities of various effect sizes, without our being consciously aware of the cognitive work being done, it's easy to get confused by verbal gymnastics if you don't know the theory.
I sometimes regret that so many of my attempts to talk about trans issues end up focusing on psychological sex differences. I guess I'm used to it now, but at first, this was a very weird position for me to be in! (For a long time, I [really didn't want to believe in psychological sex differences](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#antisexism).) But it keeps happening because it's a natural thing to _disagree_ about: the anatomy of pre-op trans women is not really in _dispute_, so the sex realist's contextual reply to "Why do you care what genitals someone might or might not have under their clothes?" often ends up appealing to some psychological dimension or another, to which the trans advocate [can counterreply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/), "Oh, you want to define gender based on psychology, then? But then the logic of your position forces you to conclude that butch lesbians aren't women! _Reductio ad absurdum!_"
-This is a severe misreading of the sex-realist position. No one wants to _define_ "gender" based on psychology. Moreover, definitions aren't the kind of thing you should have preferences about: you can't coerce reality into changing by choosing different definitions! Rather, there's _already_ a multivariate distribution of bodies and minds in the world, and good definition choices help us coordinate the concepts in different people's heads into a _shared_ map of that territory.
+This is a severe misreading of the sex-realist position. No one wants to _define_ "gender" based on psychology. Mostly, definitions aren't the kind of thing you should have preferences about: you can't coerce reality into changing by choosing different definitions! Rather, there's _already_ a multivariate distribution of bodies and minds in the world, and good definition choices help us coordinate the concepts in different people's heads into a _shared_ map of that territory.
+
+_One_ of the _many_ distinctions people sometimes want to make when thinking about the multivariate distribution of bodies and minds in the world, is that between the sexes. But sex is by no means the only way in which people differ! In many situations, you might want to categorize or describe people in many different ways, some more or less discrete _versus_ categorical, or high- _versus_ low-dimensional: age or race or religion or subculture or social class or intelligence or agreeableness.
+
+
+
-_One_ of the _many_ distinctions people sometimes want to make when thinking about the multivariate distribution of bodies and minds in the world, is that between the sexes. Sex is by no means the only way in which people differ! In many situations you might want to categorize or describe people in many different ways, some more or less discrete _versus_ categorical, or high- _versus_ low-dimensional: age or race or religion or social class or intelligence or agreeableness or
-To deconfuse yourself,
------
The argument might be easier to understand if we can find other examples of "signaling hazard" dynamics. For example, well-read people in the current year are often aware of various facts that they're careful never to acknowledge in public for fear of being seen as right-wing (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, _&c._). In this context, the analogous dismissal, "Why do you care if someone isn't sure you're progressive? What's wrong with being right-wing?", doesn't seem compelling. _Of course_, we care; _of course_, there's something wrong with it.
-One person's _modus ponens_ is another's _modus tollens_; the implications of the analogy could be read in two ways. Maybe it's especially important that we repress right-wing ideologies, so that good progressive people can afford speak more freely among ourselves without being confused for one of the bad guys.
+[One person's _modus ponens_ is another's _modus tollens_](https://www.gwern.net/Modus); the implications of the analogy could be read in two ways. Maybe it's especially important that we repress right-wing ideologies, so that good progressive people can afford speak more freely among ourselves without being confused for one of the bad guys.
Or maybe being constrained by signals is this way is dumb and inefficient, and a smarter Society would figure out how to coordinate on a better equilibrium, with more freedom for everyone to speak or show affection without being confused for something they're not.
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/let-a-hundred-flowers-bloom
https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a41018711/sexplain-it-vagina-fetish-sex-bisexual/
+
+(stability_unsafe-0gZ54e7b) zmd@ReflectiveCoherence:~/Code/Misc/stability_unsafe$ python stability_sdk/src/stability_sdk/client.py "25-year-old Nana Visitor in the shower in 1996, full body shot, 4K digital photo" -n 4
-Enqueue—
+Minor ready or almost-ready—
+_ Interlude XXII
_ Friendship Practices of the Secret-Sharing Plain Speech Valley Squirrels
+_ The Signaling Hazard Objection
Comment: The Dunbar reference on the definition of "personality" is actually real! (_Primate Social Systems_, Ch. 11, "Mechanics of Exploitation")
-(stability_unsafe-0gZ54e7b) zmd@ReflectiveCoherence:~/Code/Misc/stability_unsafe$ python stability_sdk/src/stability_sdk/client.py "25-year-old Nana Visitor in the shower in 1996, full body shot, 4K digital photo" -n 4
-
-
Urgent/needed for healing—
_ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia
_ Pseudonym Misgivings
_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America
Minor—
+_ Happy Meal
+_ Subspatial Distribution Overlap and Cancellable Stereotypes
+_ Elision _vs_. Choice
+_ ASL Is Not a Language
+_ Book Review: Johnny the Walrus
+_ "But I'm Not Quite Sure What That Means"
+_ Gaussian Gender Issues
_ Timelines
_ Xpression Camera Is the Uniquely Best Piece of Software in the World
-_ ASL Is Not a Language
_ Hrunkner Unnerby and the Shallowness of Progress
-_ Book Review: Johnny the Walrus
+_ reinterpretting all of Hannah Montana album lyrics as an AGP narrative
_ my medianworld: https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1619639#reply-1619639
-_ Happy Meal
_ Rebecca Romijin
_ Link: "On Transitions, Freedom of Form, [...]"
-_ Interlude XXII
_ Excerpt from _Redefining Realness_
_ "Reducing" Bias and Improving "Safety"
-
_ Unicode adopt-a-character?? (would it be wrong to adopt "♀"?)
_ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WikzbCsFjpLTRQmXn/declustering-reclustering-and-filling-in-thingspace
-_ Subspatial Distribution Overlap and Cancellable Stereotypes
-_ "But I'm Not Quite Sure What That Means": Costs of Nonbinary Gender as a Social Technology
_ Four Clusters
-_ Elision _vs_. Choice
_ Karnofsky's presentism
_ motivation for positing meta-attraction
_ "Cis" is like "gentile"
_ The Sex/Gender Distinction Was a Mistake
_ Complicity (how do reasonable people cooperate with each other instead of dumb people in their own coalition)
-_ reinterpretting all of Hannah Montana album lyrics as an AGP narrative
+
_ Stereotypes are weak probabilistic inferences (Agreeableness d~0.5), category-membership is strong inference, the same word/signal hits both, but stereotypes are (or should be) easy to cancel; shifting default meaning onto stereotypes in order to suit trans (while still having the word attach to something) is a bad trade
_ Taxometrics and the Fallacy of the Insufficiently Relevant, Insufficiently Multivariate Experiment
_ Beyond the Binary
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff