From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2017 19:26:04 +0000 (-0800) Subject: check in X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=caaa929aad40f8f1f0df426dccf04b556528f718;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git check in --- diff --git a/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes.md b/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes.md index cf876bb..5713077 100644 --- a/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes.md +++ b/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes.md @@ -22,11 +22,11 @@ There's this slogan meant to illustrate a principle in game theory: "Don't negot New ideas are constantly being invented and talked about in the world; some of them catch on, and spread, and spawn entire subcultures and political movements. Given that ideas vary, replicate themselves (from mind to mind, by means of speech or writing), and moreover, _aren't equally good_ at replicating themselves, it can be useful to [think of the spread of ideas as an _evolutionary_ process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics): the winning ideas are not necessarily the ones that are true or useful, but rather the ones that are _better at replicating themselves_. -True or useful ideas certainly have a selective advantage insofar as humans care about usefulness (I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say outright that humans don't care about truth), but there can be other features of an idea that convey a selective advantage in memetic competition: for example, an appeal to alleged consequences of accepting the idea. This is the reason so many religions prominently feature promises and threats of divine reward or punishment: "Believe X and you'll be rewarded; believe not-X and you'll be sorry" is _more memetically fit_ than "It happens to be the case that X, but this has no particular further implications," because the former creates incentives for propogating itself that the latter does not. It doesn't _matter_ that the rewards and punishments don't actually exist— +True and useful ideas certainly have a selective advantage insofar as humans care about usefulness (I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say outright that humans don't care about truth), but there can be other features of an idea that convey a selective advantage in memetic competition: for example, an [appeal to (alleged) consequences of accepting the idea](/2017/Jan/and-yet-none-more-blameable/). This is the reason so many religions prominently feature promises and threats of divine reward or punishment: "Believe X and you'll be rewarded; believe not-X and you'll be sorry" is _more memetically fit_ than "It happens to be the case that X, but this has no particular further implications," because the former proposition creates incentives for propogating itself that the latter does not. It doesn't _matter_ that the rewards and punishments don't actually exist— (at least, _I_ don't think they exist, because I am not a carrier of the X religion meme) -—a human in the grips of the idea will still be genuinely terrified of the punishment. The forces of memetic evolution don't care about the human's fear and suffering, because _the forces of memetic evolution_ is just our name for the observation that ideas that are better at being replicated, are better at being replicated; it's not an agent that can care about _anything_. +—a human in the grips of the idea will still be genuinely terrified of the punishment. The forces of memetic evolution don't care about the human's fear and suffering, because _the forces of memetic evolution_ is just a pretentious name for the observation that ideas that are better at being replicated, are better at being replicated. It's not an agent that can care about _anything_. And of course, there are lots of other, subtler non-truth-tracking, non-usefulness-tracking features of an idea that could make it more memetically fit. @@ -46,9 +46,9 @@ So, there's a thing about me, possibly even _the_ thing about me, where there is ... the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought. -There's a word in the psychology literature for the beautiful feeling at the center of my life: _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"), coined in the context of a theory that it represented one of two distinct etiologies for male-to-female transsexualism. This theory didn't seem to be the standard mainstream view, and, I learned, people get really mad at you when you mention it in a comment section, so for a long time I self-identified with the _word_ "autogynephilia", but assumed that the associated _theory_ was false. _I_ wasn't one of those people who were _actually trans_; I was just, you know, one of those guys who is pointedly insistent on not being _proud_ of the fact that they're guys. (And who dimly suspects that this is somehow causually related to [...]) +There's a word in the psychology literature for the beautiful feeling at the center of my life: _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"), coined in the context of a theory that it represented one of two distinct etiologies for male-to-female transsexualism. This theory didn't seem to be the standard mainstream view, and, I learned, people get really mad at you when you mention it in a comment section, so for a long time [I self-identified with the _word_](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/) "autogynephilia", but assumed that the associated _theory_ was false. _I_ wasn't one of those people who were _actually trans_; I was just, you know, one of those guys who are [pointedly insistent on](/2017/Dec/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009/) not being _proud_ of the fact that they're guys. (And who dimly, privately suspect that this may somehow be causally related to their obsessive masturbation fantasies about being magically transformed into a woman.) -Recent life events led me to do some reading—Kay Brown's blog [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), Anne Lawrence's [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html), and Imogen Binnie's novel [_Nevada_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/) (this item is reverse-scored)—and I concluded that, no, wait, actually the theory looks _correct_, and I _do_ have the same underlying psychological condition that leads people to transition. That in fact, my story till now may even be _typical_ of people who transition in their thirties, right up to the ["Oh, I just want to _experiment_ with hormones, I'm not actually going to _transition_" phase](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) (although I still think I'm smarter than that). +Life events led me to do some reading—Kay Brown's blog [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), Anne Lawrence's monograph [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html), and Imogen Binnie's novel [_Nevada_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/) (this item is reverse-scored)—and I concluded that, no, wait, actually the theory looks _correct_, and I _do_ have the same underlying psychological condition that leads people to transition. That, in fact, my story up to now may even be _typical_ of people who transition in their thirties, right up to the ["Oh, I just want to _experiment_ with hormones, I'm not actually going to _transition_" phase](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) (although I [still think](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/) I'm smarter than that). This is _really important information_! This is _not_ the thing someone should have to piece together themselves at age 28. This is the sort of thing that should just be in the standard sex-ed books, that boys having these kinds of feelings can read at age 15 and immediately say, "Ah, I'm in the same taxon as lesbian trans women, and heterosexual crossdressers, and guys who have these fantasies but don't do anything about them in particular, and bigender people who are on low-dose hormones and choose how to 'present' in different social venues; I wonder which of these strategies is best for me given my exact circumstances?" @@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ So here is my policy, I, Taylor Saotome-Westlake, at least on this blog, at leas If I say something that is later shown to me to be _factually incorrect_, that's something I take _very_ seriously, and I will do everything in my power to make it right. -But if, in the course of trying to say something I think is true, or insightful, or cathartic, or even just _funny_, I end up saying something that people find offensive or hurtful or disrespectful ... +But if, in the course of trying to say something I think is true, or insightful, or [cathartic](/tag/cathartic/), or even just _funny_, I end up saying something that people find offensive or hurtful or disrespectful ... I don't care. I just really, fundamentally _do not care_ anymore. diff --git a/content/drafts/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention.md b/content/drafts/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention.md index 7551020..caf9f83 100644 --- a/content/drafts/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention.md +++ b/content/drafts/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention.md @@ -21,8 +21,6 @@ We socially-liberal individualist/feminist people—I _hope_ I'm still allowed t And _because_ we care about the beautiful moral ideal, we tend to assume that psychological group differences don't exist or are superficial or are socially-constructed and will naturally dissipate after the revolution. -invidious distinction - (... the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought.) But this is _so crazy_ on _multiple levels_. Philosophers since the days of D. Hume have recognized the distinction between _is_ and _ought_: diff --git a/notes/historical_schedule.txt b/notes/historical_schedule.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ce22e1b --- /dev/null +++ b/notes/historical_schedule.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +Number of major/minor posts by month— + +Sep 16: 1/3 = 4 +Oct 16: 1/3 = 4 +Nov 16: 1/7 = 8 +Dec 16: 0/2 = 2 +Jan 17: 1/15 = 16 +Feb 17: 1/1 = 2 +Mar 17: 0/10 = 10 +Apr 17: 0/1 = 1 +May 17: 0/2 = 2 +Jun 17: 1/2 = 3 +Jul 17: 1/1 = 2 +Aug 17: 0/1 = 1 +Sep 17: 1/5 = 6 +Oct 17: 0/2 = 2 +Nov 17: 0/3 = 3 diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt index 6ff3a21..456c33b 100644 --- a/notes/notes.txt +++ b/notes/notes.txt @@ -315,3 +315,7 @@ Lindsay Shepherd/James Damore shipfic Brazillian woman moves to Sweeden and cherished egalitarian culture: https://medium.com/@sayhellotovanessa/the-oddities-of-being-an-invisible-woman-8570394caa0d most of men's attractiveness is cues of upper-body strength: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1869/20171819 + +> In the psychiatric evaluation, Johnson reveals that Kaczynski had persistent and intense sexual fantasies about being a woman. While he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 1967, he went to a psychiatrist to discuss his wishes for a sex change operation. But in the waiting room, he decided he could not go forward. Instead, he told the psychiatrist he was depressed about the possibility of being drafted. +> +> — https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/09/12/gender-confusion-sex-change-idea-fueled-kaczynskis-rage-report-says/eb33b946-8595-427d-af4c-9ccaada45935/?utm_term=.6222611253f6 diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt index ed42f7f..cd08b06 100644 --- a/notes/post_ideas.txt +++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt @@ -1,32 +1,27 @@ -CURRENT PUSH (6)— -Lesser-Known Demand Curves -Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes; Or, ... -✓ Interlude XII (four lights) +MAIN SEQUENCE (16)— There's a Land That I See; Or, The Spirit of Intervention +Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes; Or, ... The View From Nowhere -Faster Than Science (Transgender Edition) - -MAIN SEQUENCE (13)— Q Time Travel Isn't Real; Or, Yes, the Only Real Trans Woman Is a Transitioned Trans Woman Q As Well for a Sheep as a Lamb; Or, Charity, Objectivity, and ... Q An Infovist's Advisory; Or, Standing Athwart History ... Q This Is Worth a Fight - _ Stereotypes, Models, and Cognition _ The Neglect of Probability Fallacy; Or, You Do Not Have an Intersex Condition Q Simple Models Plus Noise Are Better Than Pretending Not to Have a Model Falsifiability and What We Expect Not to See - * Mary's Room Q The Hand I Was Dealt Q Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer; Or, Could Self-Reports Really Be That Wrong?? Q Reduce Gender Identities to Gender Goals The Categories Were Made for Man in Order to Make Predictions -NON-SEQUENCE A (10)— +NON-SEQUENCE A (12)— +Laser 2 Product Review: FaceApp +✓ Interlude XII (four lights) +Faster Than Science (Transgender Edition) Q Book Review: Nevada -Laser 2 Q Memoirs of My Recent Madness, Part II: Friendship Survived Imperfect Trait Measurements Regress to the Mean Q The Gender Czar's Compromise @@ -50,6 +45,8 @@ Product Review: Glamour Boutique's Vee-String Bladder FICTION QUEUE (6)— Blindspot +Friendship Practices of ... +Blame Me for Trying "Love Like You" story of Gina and Vern selected for GNC "I'm a traitor to my people," Mark thinks, as ... diff --git a/notes/speculative_scheduling.txt b/notes/speculative_scheduling.txt index 6b93458..5963c92 100644 --- a/notes/speculative_scheduling.txt +++ b/notes/speculative_scheduling.txt @@ -1,21 +1,18 @@ -2017 Week 50 -Lesser-Known Demand Curves -Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes; Or, ... -Interlude XII (four lights) - 2017 Week 51 Laser 2 There's a Land That I See; Or, The Spirit of Intervention -The View From Nowhere -Faster Than Science (Transgender Edition) 2017 Week 52 +Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes +Interlude XII (four lights) +The View From Nowhere +Faster Than Science (Transgender Edition) Q Time Travel Isn't Real; Or, Yes, the Only Real Trans Woman Is a Transitioned Trans Woman Product Review: FaceApp -Q As Well for a Sheep as a Lamb; Or, Charity, Objectivity, and ... -Q Memoirs of My Recent Madness, Part II: Friendship Survived 2018 Week 1 +Q As Well for a Sheep as a Lamb; Or, Charity, Objectivity, and ... +Q Memoirs of My Recent Madness, Part II: Friendship Survived Q Book Review: Nevada Q An Infovist's Advisory; Or, Standing Athwart History ... An Epistolary Story About Preference Falsification