From 5d1a8978cd2f9749a5e4da6241f914563f484cd7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2023 19:10:57 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] memoir: "Autogenderphilia Is Common" I was imagining just dumping the text of my draft into the memoir, but it's too much of a digression; it does need to be a separate post. --- .../if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md | 12 ++++-- ...-to-scott-alexander-on-autogenderphilia.md | 41 ------------------- notes/memoir-sections.md | 7 ++-- notes/notes.txt | 30 ++++++++++++++ notes/post_ideas.txt | 2 +- 5 files changed, 44 insertions(+), 48 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md index 7f0f575..7a0153e 100644 --- a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md +++ b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md @@ -448,13 +448,19 @@ Secret posse member reassured me that finishing the memoir privately would be cl ------ -While visiting Valinor on 4 February 2020, I remember my nose dripping while I was holding Koios, the baby. Alicorn offered me a tissue. I asked if I shouldn't be holding the baby while my nose was dripping. She said it was fine. On the topic of possible sickness, I said that I hoped the novel coronavirus people were talking about didn't go pandemic. +While visiting Valinor on 4 February 2020, I remember my nose dripping while I was holding Koios, the baby. Alicorn offered me a tissue. I asked if I shouldn't be holding the baby while my nose was dripping and I therefore plausibly had a cold. She said it was fine. On the topic of possible sickness, I said that I hoped the novel coronavirus people were talking about didn't go pandemic. It did. The Berkeley rats took social distancing guidelines very seriously, so it would be a while before I could visit again. ------ -[TODO: "Autogenderphilia Is Common" https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/] +On 10 February 2020, Scott Alexander published ["Autogenderphilia Is Common and Not Especially Related to Transgender"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/), an analysis of the results of the autogynephilia/autoandrophilia questions on the recent _Slate Star Codex_ survey. + +I appreciated the gesture of getting real data, but I was deeply unimpressed with Alexander's analysis for reasons that I found difficult to write up in a timely manner. Three years later, I eventually got around to [polishing my draft and throwing it up as a standalone post](/2023/Feb/reply-to-scott-alexander-on-autogenderphilia/), rather than cluttering the present narrative with my explanation. + +Briefly, based on eyballing the survey data, Alexander proposes "if you identify as a gender, and you're attracted to that gender, it's a natural leap to be attracted to yourself being that gender" as a "very boring" theory, but on my worldview, a hypothesis that puts "gay people (cis and trans)" in the antecedent is _not_ boring and actually takes on a big complexity penalty: I just don't think the group of gay men _and_ lesbians _and_ straight males with female gender identities _and_ straight females with male gender identities have much in common with each other, except sociologically (being "queer"), and by being human. + +(I do like the hypernym _autogenderphilia_.) ------- @@ -532,7 +538,7 @@ Suppose the outcome space of _X_ is `{H, T}` and the outcome space of _Y_ is `{1 How could I make this rigorous? Did I want to be talking about the _variance_ of my features conditional on category-membership? Was "connectedness" intrinsically the what I wanted, or was connectedness only important because it cut down the number of possibilities? (There are 8!/(6!2!) = 28 ways to choose two elements from `{1..8}`, but only 7 ways to choose two contiguous elements.) I thought connectedness _was_ intrinsically important, because we didn't just want _few_ things, we wanted things that are _similar enough to make similar decisions about_. -I put the question to a few friends (Subject: "rubber duck philosophy"), and Jessica said that my identification of the variance as the key quantity sounded right: it amounted to the expected squared error of someone trying to guess the values of the features given the category. It was okay that this wasn't a purely information-theoretic criterion, because for problems involving guessing a numeric quantity, bits that get you closer to the right answer were more valuable than bits that didn't. +I put the question to a few friends in July 2020 (Subject: "rubber duck philosophy"), and Jessica said that my identification of the variance as the key quantity sounded right: it amounted to the expected squared error of someone trying to guess the values of the features given the category. It was okay that this wasn't a purely information-theoretic criterion, because for problems involving guessing a numeric quantity, bits that get you closer to the right answer were more valuable than bits that didn't. ------ diff --git a/content/drafts/reply-to-scott-alexander-on-autogenderphilia.md b/content/drafts/reply-to-scott-alexander-on-autogenderphilia.md index 0d59273..a143e92 100644 --- a/content/drafts/reply-to-scott-alexander-on-autogenderphilia.md +++ b/content/drafts/reply-to-scott-alexander-on-autogenderphilia.md @@ -4,10 +4,6 @@ Category: commentary Tags: autogynephilia, epistemology, two-type taxonomy Status: draft -[This started out as a draft email to Scott, but I'm really unhappy with the way it's developing; I should try to sculpt it into a defensible public post instead—or make it a good email first, then a post] - -on parsimony intuitions (re autogenderphilia and developmental psychology) - > Why idly theorize when you can JUST CHECK and find out the ACTUAL ANSWER to a superficially similar-sounding question SCIENTIFICALLY? > > —[Steven Kaas](https://twitter.com/stevenkaas/status/148884531917766656) @@ -99,40 +95,3 @@ Ozy has an old post about [how "the community" doesn't have a _gender_ gap; we m If it were _just_ a matter of different priors (where my stronger [inductive bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_bias) lets me learn faster from less data, at the cost of [being wrong in universes that I think mostly don't exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization)), I would expect you to express more uncertainty. I would _totally_ respect it if you were merely _uncertain_ about the AGP→gender-ID _vs._ gender-ID→AGP causality. [I _agree_ that causality is _much harder_ to pin down than mere correlation.](http://unremediatedgender.space/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/) But on Discord, you said "it just seemed totally wrong"!! If you're _not_ playing a "does the evidence permit me to believe" game, I just don't see how you think the _SSC_ survey data is powerful enough to answer that question one way or the other! If I had a prior belief that invisible dragons were plausible, I would remain _agnostic_ about the no-dragon _vs._ invisible-dragon hypotheses upon seeing an apparently empty garage. But to say that the no-dragon hypothesis "just seems totally wrong" ... ?!?! - ------- - - - - - -> We have a debate every year over whether 50% predictions are meaningful in this paradigm; feel free to continue it. - -Someone reading this who trusted Alexander as a general-purpose intellectual authority ("the best of us", the "rationalists") might walk away with the idea that it's an open problem whether 50% binary predictions are meaningful—perhaps reasoning, if the immortal Scott Alexander doesn't know, then who am I to know? - -But it's not. On this website, [Rafael Harth explains why 50% isn't special](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DAc4iuy4D3EiNBt9B/how-to-evaluate-50-predictions). I claim that this should actually be pretty obvious to competent quantitative thinkers, even if it's not obvious to the collective _SSC_/_ACX_ commentariat, and Alexander can't tell which of his commenters are competent quantitative thinkers. - -I don't particularly fault Scott for this: [by his own admission, he's not a math guy](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/). (And the vast majority of math people can't write as well or as fast as Scott. No one is the best at everything!) Rather, I'm saying that a culture that wants to _actually_ be right about everything would do better to _just_ focus on being right on the object level, without [wireheading on its own promises of being right about everything](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending/). - -(Incidentally, Scott himself is actually very good about [not trying to claim more authority than is actually justified by his performance](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/). His fans should try to be more like him along this dimension!) - -I doubt that's the same phenomenon? The thing about reports like, _e.g._, ||I have a female body in all my sexual fantasies (as reported by Anomaly above)|| is that there's an obvious explanation for that ||if you're _actually female_—namely, that your fantasy life is based on real life along this dimension—and that explanation is not present for people who are _not_ female||? - -||I think the way to think about this question is to imagine that if you'd _never heard_ of this stupid ideologically-charged debate—would you need to _spontaneously invent_ the term AGP (or a synonym like _eonism_ as coined by Ellis in 1920 ) _in order to make sense of your experience_? If your _serious_ answer is Yes, that's _really interesting_ and I want to hear more. (Omega seems to be claiming this about herself, which is _really_ fascinating and my model _definitely_ loses some points for predicting that she shouldn't exist.) But I think _most_ females saying "yeah, sure, cis women are AGP too; it's, like, getting turned on by imagining other people being attracted to you, right? Seems normal" _after having been presented with the term in an ideologically-charged context_ are not really understanding the phenomenon in males that the term was originally coined to point to.|| - -A much better analogy is ||the thing where you, Linta, and Swimmer report fantasizing about being male sometimes. This is plausibly auto-_andro_-philia, and like AGP, it's actually _pretty common_—_e.g._, Person _et al._ 1989 Table 3 () found 10 percent of female and 13 percent of male college students reporting yes to "Fantasizing that you are of opposite sex".|| - -S. (she doesn't get it): -> I do also enjoy fantasizing from the perspective of a fictional very attractive woman and imagining the inner details of a hypothetical other person's attraction to her; this is maybe a form of autogynephilia? (Though it is a bit hard for me to distinguish autogenyphilia from just getting turned on by imagining other people being attracted to you / imagining how other people see you) - - -https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8?sharing_token=jzX6q1NAJAY6-F_jSZ9wmfe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY4WOO91AGBPQEW4W5GA-5HjFFBOW6MbqFHl6iM4xVsaD3DHcIMra_eBV8WQP5ACn0suHGXlnXqqAYAmkbrYzfglseOmxogZQqQ9SymDk_KPLQTlCvTiA2MPLdV_k8lldyE%3D - -https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8 - -https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2022/06/27/no-women-are-not-autogynephilic/ - -https://aella.substack.com/p/everyone-has-autogynephilia - -testimony of female AGP -https://discord.com/channels/745684950417932323/803338278492307518/1047261753177813034 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/notes/memoir-sections.md b/notes/memoir-sections.md index 83d91b0..7bc9135 100644 --- a/notes/memoir-sections.md +++ b/notes/memoir-sections.md @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ marked TODO blocks— ✓ Boston [pt. 6] ✓ Jessica's experience at MIRI and CfAR [pt. 6] ✓ pandemic starts [pt. 4] -_ autogenderphilia (in-line section) [pt. 4] +✓ autogenderphilia (in-line section) [pt. 4] _ last email and not bothering him [pt. 6] _ New York [pt. 6] _ reaction to Ziz [pt. 4] @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ _ December 2019 winter blogging vacation [pt. 4] _ plan to reach out to Rick [pt. 4] _ complicity and friendship [pt. 4] _ out of patience email [pt. 4] -_ the hill he wants to die on [pt. 6] +_ the hill he wants to die on [pt. 6?] _ recap of crimes, cont'd [pt. 6] _ lead-in to Sept. 2021 Twitter altercation [pt. 6] _ regrets, wasted time, conclusion [pt. 6] @@ -48,10 +48,11 @@ _ the story of my Feb./Apr. 2017 recent madness [pt. 2] it was actually "wander onto the AGI mailing list wanting to build a really big semantic net" (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9HGR5qatMGoz4GhKj/above-average-ai-scientists) With internet available— +_ Michael Bailey's new AGP in women study _ what does "pervue" mean _ archive.is https://twitter.com/KirkegaardEmil/status/1425334398484983813 _ group yelling operation quotes -_ "Vassarite" +_ "Vassarite" coinage _ Nate would later admit that this was a mistake _ indulgence _ "gene drive" terminology diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt index 11c1ce7..de96759 100644 --- a/notes/notes.txt +++ b/notes/notes.txt @@ -3261,3 +3261,33 @@ https://archive.is/izSUn The ‘holy f***’ moment I knew something was wrong at the Tavistock: How Dr Anna Hutchinson, one of the whistleblowers, realised something was very wrong https://archive.ph/AKz2i + +> We have a debate every year over whether 50% predictions are meaningful in this paradigm; feel free to continue it. + +Someone reading this who trusted Alexander as a general-purpose intellectual authority ("the best of us", the "rationalists") might walk away with the idea that it's an open problem whether 50% binary predictions are meaningful—perhaps reasoning, if the immortal Scott Alexander doesn't know, then who am I to know? + +But it's not. On this website, [Rafael Harth explains why 50% isn't special](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DAc4iuy4D3EiNBt9B/how-to-evaluate-50-predictions). I claim that this should actually be pretty obvious to competent quantitative thinkers, even if it's not obvious to the collective _SSC_/_ACX_ commentariat, and Alexander can't tell which of his commenters are competent quantitative thinkers. + +I don't particularly fault Scott for this: [by his own admission, he's not a math guy](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/). (And the vast majority of math people can't write as well or as fast as Scott. No one is the best at everything!) Rather, I'm saying that a culture that wants to _actually_ be right about everything would do better to _just_ focus on being right on the object level, without [wireheading on its own promises of being right about everything](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending/). + +(Incidentally, Scott himself is actually very good about [not trying to claim more authority than is actually justified by his performance](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/). His fans should try to be more like him along this dimension!) + +I doubt that's the same phenomenon? The thing about reports like, _e.g._, ||I have a female body in all my sexual fantasies (as reported by Anomaly above)|| is that there's an obvious explanation for that ||if you're _actually female_—namely, that your fantasy life is based on real life along this dimension—and that explanation is not present for people who are _not_ female||? + +||I think the way to think about this question is to imagine that if you'd _never heard_ of this stupid ideologically-charged debate—would you need to _spontaneously invent_ the term AGP (or a synonym like _eonism_ as coined by Ellis in 1920 ) _in order to make sense of your experience_? If your _serious_ answer is Yes, that's _really interesting_ and I want to hear more. (Omega seems to be claiming this about herself, which is _really_ fascinating and my model _definitely_ loses some points for predicting that she shouldn't exist.) But I think _most_ females saying "yeah, sure, cis women are AGP too; it's, like, getting turned on by imagining other people being attracted to you, right? Seems normal" _after having been presented with the term in an ideologically-charged context_ are not really understanding the phenomenon in males that the term was originally coined to point to.|| + +A much better analogy is ||the thing where you, Linta, and Swimmer report fantasizing about being male sometimes. This is plausibly auto-_andro_-philia, and like AGP, it's actually _pretty common_—_e.g._, Person _et al._ 1989 Table 3 () found 10 percent of female and 13 percent of male college students reporting yes to "Fantasizing that you are of opposite sex".|| + +S. (she doesn't get it): +> I do also enjoy fantasizing from the perspective of a fictional very attractive woman and imagining the inner details of a hypothetical other person's attraction to her; this is maybe a form of autogynephilia? (Though it is a bit hard for me to distinguish autogenyphilia from just getting turned on by imagining other people being attracted to you / imagining how other people see you) + +https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8?sharing_token=jzX6q1NAJAY6-F_jSZ9wmfe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY4WOO91AGBPQEW4W5GA-5HjFFBOW6MbqFHl6iM4xVsaD3DHcIMra_eBV8WQP5ACn0suHGXlnXqqAYAmkbrYzfglseOmxogZQqQ9SymDk_KPLQTlCvTiA2MPLdV_k8lldyE%3D + +https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8 + +https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2022/06/27/no-women-are-not-autogynephilic/ + +https://aella.substack.com/p/everyone-has-autogynephilia + +testimony of female AGP +https://discord.com/channels/745684950417932323/803338278492307518/1047261753177813034 diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt index d247de0..f1a3dad 100644 --- a/notes/post_ideas.txt +++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt @@ -1,8 +1,8 @@ pre-memoir— +_ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia _ Book Review: Nevada (time permitting) _ Hrunkner Unnerby and the Shallowness of Progress (time permitting) _ I'm Dropping the Pseudonym From This Blog -_ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia (time permitting) _ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality (short version) memoir— -- 2.17.1