1 Title: Categories Were Made for Man in Order to Make Predictions
4 Tags: epistemology, Scott Alexander
9 * First, the basic point is obviously correct.
10 * Things become muddier when we get to the section about national borders:
11 it's true that countries may agree that their borders work in this
12 noncontiguous way, and that matters for some purposes, but these legal
13 fictions don't always capture what people actually mean when they talk about
15 * During my Facebook meltdown, an acquaintance of mine gave some really
16 solid examples that I should ask him if I can borrow (with or without
18 * An attempted clarification (Scott does address this, but I want to
19 emphasize/rephrase it?): categories are value-laden because they're grouping
20 things together on the basis of the predictions that are decision-relevant
21 to what you care about. But this should be distinguished from the categories
22 themselves being _arbitrarily_ value-laden.
23 * Scott Alexander understands this, but the bottom 50% of _Slate Star
24 Codex_ readers do not.
25 * An important subtlety: in the case of countries and gender but _not_
26 whales/fish, we're not just classifying things that exist, but also making a
27 political decision of how we're going to organize ourselves. It's not that
28 trans women and nonbinaries already exist in fixed proportions, and we're
29 trying to decide how to parse them: that we have socially-recognized
30 transition as a thing creates an affordance for people to make the choice to
31 transition (linky ["Lesser Known..."](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/))
32 * The argumentation in section IV is _uncharacteristically_ weak for Scott:
33 basically just "We've established that categories are neither true nor
34 false, so if you care about transgender people, then you should use their
36 * To do better: let's _discuss in detail_ the detailed consequences of
37 different ways of drawing gender categories, and analyze the conflicts
38 that different people have.
39 * The case for using identified gender rather than biological sex is
40 strongest for binary trans people who actually pass.
41 * The tack where you show a picture of Buck Angel and say, "You're not
42 really going to call this person a woman, are you?" makes a good point
43 * It's less strong for ...
44 * People who don't pass
45 * Passing is a continuum rather than a binary and is also
46 observer-dependent, which is inconvenient from the perspective of
47 categorization, which tends to stick to bright-lines and Schelling
49 * Re observer dependence: quote Serano (do I rely/pick on Serano too
50 much?) or someone about how it's actually _harder_ to pass in urban
51 areas because people have a higher prior
52 * Ref-to-rebut Zinnia Jones on "passing is subjective, therefore it's
55 * Normies don't have nonbinary gender in their ontology; at least
56 acknowledge that you're making a political demand when you want
58 * What are the decision criteria for nonbinary, anyway? People can
60 * Rundown of social consequences of different criteria—
61 * When you have people who are _identifiably_ distinct from natal-sex
62 people _and_ not drawn from the same psychological distribution, it
63 becomes socially profitable for people to notice and adjust their
64 expectations; you can't stop them from doing this
65 * separate post "Stereotypes, Models, and Cognition"
66 * People are making probabilistic inferences all the time whether
67 they realize it or not
68 * Being drawn from a different psychological distribution but _not_
69 identifiably (AGPs who pass really well) doesn't hurt the dynamics
71 * AGPs aren't drawn from the same psychological distribution as cis
72 women. (Briefly explain the typology, but refer to external sources
73 for justification. For a more hard-facts empirical justification of
74 "not drawn from the same dist'n", cite data on sexual orientation (and
75 [constrast](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/905572666332987392))
77 * Making it not-OK for people to _talk_ about the categories that they
78 internally use to make sense of the world is bad
79 * experiences in LWish spaces with lots of trans women: if you
80 doctrinairely call everyone women, my brain rebels and wants to
81 say, "That's not what I meant and _you fucking know it_." And
82 honestly? (And I think they do, in fact, fucking know it.)
83 * The inability to have women's clothing swaps is a _real loss_
84 * Negotiation-structure: we've been using this word to refer to this
85 thing for the past 200,000 years since the invention of language;
86 if you want us to stop, you need to offer us something we value
87 (and you have nothing to trade with); threatening to kill yourself
88 is easily (if callously) countered with "We don't negotiate with
90 * For crime/medical statistics, you need natal sex or third-category.
92 * The case of Emperor Norton looks cute at first glance, but
93 ostensibly-benevolent gaslighting is still problematic (we call it
95 * I've been crazy (link "Memoirs"), and I'm glad my friends patiently told
96 me why I was wrong rather than saying "That's nice dear" (maybe quote
98 * Tell a story about what this could have been like for Norton beginning to
99 doubt the reality of his reign.
100 * Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
101 ask her to put it back up again)