1 Title: The Categories Were Made for Man in Order to Make Predictions
4 Tags: epistemology, Scott Alexander
7 > I said, "The truth is whatever you can get away with."
9 > "No, that's journalism. The truth is whatever you can't escape."
11 > —_Distress_ by Greg Egan
13 In ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), the immortal Scott Alexander argues that proposed definitions of concepts aren't true or false in themselves, but rather can only be evaluated by their usefulness. Our finite minds being unable to cope with the unimaginable complexity of the raw physical universe, we group sufficiently similar things into the same category so that we can make similar predictions about them—but this requires not only a metric of "similarity", but also a notion of which predictions one cares about enough to notice, both of which are relative to some agent's perspective, rather than being inherent in the world itself.
15 And so, Alexander explains, the ancient Hebrews weren't _wrong_ to classify whales as a type of _dag_ (typically translated as _fish_), even though modern biologists classify whales as mammals and not fish, because the ancient Hebrews were more interested in distinguishing which animals live in the water rather than which animals are phylogenetically related. Similarly, borders between countries are agreed upon for a variety of pragmatic reasons, and can be quite convoluted—while there may often be some "obvious" geographic or cultural Schelling points anchoring these decisions, there's not going to be any instrinsic, eternal fact of the matter as to where one country starts and another begins.
17 All of this is entirely correct—and thus, an excellent [motte](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/) for the less honest half of _Slate Star Codex_ readers to appeal to when they want to obfuscate and disrupt discussions about empirical reality by insisting on bizarre redefinitions of everyday concepts.
19 Alexander goes on to attempt to use the categories-are-relative-to-goals insight to rebut skeptics of transgenderedness:
21 > I've seen one anti-transgender argument around that I take very seriously. The argument goes: we are rationalists. Our entire shtick is trying to believe what's actually true, not on what we wish were true, or what our culture tells us is true, or what it's popular to say is true. If a man thinks he's a woman, then we might (empathetically) wish he were a woman, other people might demand we call him a woman, and we might be much more popular if we say he's a woman. But if we're going to be rationalists who focus on believing what's actually true, then we've got to call him a man and take the consequences.
23 > Thus Abraham Lincoln's famous riddle: "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" And the answer: "Four—because a tail isn't a leg regardless of what you call it."
27 > I take this argument very seriously, because sticking to the truth really is important. But having taken it seriously, I think it’s seriously wrong.
29 > An alternative categorization system is not an error, and borders are not objectively true or false.
31 But this is just giving up _way_ too easily. The map is not the territory, and many very different kinds of maps can correspond to the territory in different ways (we have geographical maps, political maps, road maps, globes, _&c._), but that doesn't mean _no map is in error_. Rationalists can't insist on using the one true categorization system, because it turns out that—in all philosophical strictness—no such thing exists. But that doesn't release us from our sacred duty to describe what's actually true. It just leaves us faced with the _slightly more complicated_ task of describing the costs and benefits of different categorization systems with respect to different optimization criteria. If different political factions prefer different criteria, we describe that conflict. There's no objective answer to the question as to whether we should pay more attention to an animal's evolutionary history or its habitat—but given one criteria or the other, we can say definitively that whales _are_ mammals but they're also _dag_/water-dwellers. That there exists an element of subjectivity in what you choose to pay attention to, doesn't negate that there is a structured empirical reality to be described, and not all descriptions of it are equally compact.
33 In terms of the Lincoln riddle: you _can_ call a tail a leg, but you can't stop people from _noticing_ that out of a dog's five legs, one of them is different from the others. You can't stop people from inferring decision-relevant implications from what they notice. (_Most_ of a dog's legs touch the ground, such that you'd have to carry the dog to the vet if one of them got injured, but the dog can still walk without the other, different leg.) And if people who work and live with dogs every day find themselves habitually distinguishing between the bottom-walking-legs and the back-wagging-leg, they _just might_ want _different words_ in order to _talk_ about what everyone is thinking _anyway_.
35 The topic of exactly how to apply these philosophical insights to transgender identity claims is a deep and fascinating one of prime sociopolitical relevance in today's Society, a topic about which many things could be written in support of any number of views—which is why it's such a shame that Alexander doesn't apply his prodigious wit and eloquence to address the topic at all.
37 Okay, that's not quite true. Alexander has one, and apparently only one, argument to make—namely, that accepting transgender identity claims benefits transgender people:
39 > If I'm willing to accept an unexpected chunk of Turkey deep inside Syrian territory to honor some random dead guy—and I better, or else a platoon of Turkish special forces will want to have a word with me—then I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone's life. There's no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn't, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.
41 This is true in a tautological sense: if you deliberately define your category boundaries in order to get the answer you want, you can get the answer you want, which is great for people who want that answer, and people who don't want to hurt their feelings [(and who don't mind letting themselves get emotionally blackmailed)](/2017/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/).
43 But this isn't very interesting to people like rationalists—although apparently not all people who _self-identify_ as rationalists—who want to use concepts to _describe reality_.
45 It's important to stress that this should _not_ be taken to mean that transgender identity claims should necessarily be rejected! (Bad arguments can be made for true propositions just as easily as false ones.) A _serious_ argument for accepting trans people as their desired gender might look like this:
47 * *Claim*: [brain intersex theory]
48 * *Claim*: [transition actually works]
49 * *Claim*: [social gender is determined by secondary sex characteristics anyway; you don't usually see someone's genetalia, let alone chromosomes, _&c_.]
50 * *Conclusion*: [they actually are of their target gender]
52 Notice that this is an _empirical_ argument for why trans people fit into _existing_ concepts of (social) gender, not a redefinition of words by fiat in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings. To the extent that any of the claims _fail_ to be true of self-identified trans people or some subset thereof, the conclusion is correspondingly weakened. Note that these can change over time (_e.g._, if transition technology improves).
54 [explain two-type taxonomy; [single paper rec](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/lawrence-agp_and_typology.pdf)]
56 [caveats: take care to note that it's possible to believe in a weaker form of it: maybe you argree to the bimodality in the data, but don't think it's two discrete etiological types; or, maybe you [agree that there are two etiologies, but](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/against-blanchardianism/) don't buy that AGP is the cause]
58 [note that I'm focusing on MtF because of reasons; analyzing the situation with trans men is left as an exercise to the interested reader]
60 In less tolerant places and decades, where trans women were very rare and had to try very hard to pass as cis women out of dire necessity, the impact on the social order and how people think about gender was minimal—there were just too few trans people to make much of a difference.
62 Nowadays, in progressive enclaves of Western countries, this is no longer true, and in communities that form around [non-sex-balanced interests](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/), the numbers can be quite dramatic. For example, on the 2017 _Slate Star Codex_ reader survey, 9.4% responded _F (cisgender)_ to the gender question, compared to 1.4% responding _F (transgender m -> f)_. So, if trans women are women, _13.4%_ (!!) of female _Slate Star Codex_ readers are trans.
64 A cis woman friend of the blog, a member of the Berkeley, California rationalist community reports on recent changes in local social norms—
66 > There have been "all women" things, like clothing swaps or groups, that then pre-transitioned transwomen show up to. And it's hard, because it's weird and uncomfortable once three or four participants of twelve are trans women. I think the reality that's happening is women are having those spaces less—instead doing private things "for friends," with specific invite lists that are implicitly understood not to include men or trans women. This sucks because then we can't include women who aren't already in our social circle, and we all know it but no one wants to say it.
70 [Alexander cites Emperor Norton as a charming example of the power of kindness, but as fun as the story is to read about on Wikipedia, that kind of "benevolent" gaslighting is not something you would do to someone you actually _respected_; I'm glad my friends didn't lie to me when I was having delusions of grandeur]
72 [imagine you're Emperor Norton's best friend and he expresses doubt as to whether he's being hugboxed]
76 "What if—what if I'm not actually the Emperor?"
78 "The categories were made for man, not man for the categories, Your Highness," you say.
82 "Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down, ideas, strategies—battle plans?
84 "But," you caution, "I'd be lying if I told you it was going to be _easy_."
89 **on rewrite, need to clarify between two points**:
91 * if there are conflicts about what category to use, we can analyze the conflict without taking sides, but at the same time
92 * some categories really are unnatural
97 * The argumentation in section IV is _uncharacteristically_ weak for Scott:
98 basically just "We've established that categories are neither true nor
99 false, so if you care about transgender people, then you should use their
101 * To do better: let's _discuss in detail_ the detailed consequences of
102 different ways of drawing gender categories, and analyze the conflicts
103 that different people have.
104 * The case for using identified gender rather than biological sex is
105 strongest for binary trans people who actually pass.
106 * The tack where you show a picture of Buck Angel and say, "You're not
107 really going to call this person a woman, are you?" makes a good point
108 * It's less strong for ...
109 * People who don't pass
110 * Passing is a continuum rather than a binary and is also
111 observer-dependent, which is inconvenient from the perspective of
112 categorization, which tends to stick to bright-lines and Schelling
114 * Re observer dependence: quote Serano (do I rely/pick on Serano too
115 much?) or someone about how it's actually _harder_ to pass in urban
116 areas because people have a higher prior
117 * Ref-to-rebut Zinnia Jones on "passing is subjective, therefore it's
120 * Normies don't have nonbinary gender in their ontology; at least
121 acknowledge that you're making a political demand when you want
123 * What are the decision criteria for nonbinary, anyway? People can
125 * Rundown of social consequences of different criteria—
126 * When you have people who are _identifiably_ distinct from natal-sex
127 people _and_ not drawn from the same psychological distribution, it
128 becomes socially profitable for people to notice and adjust their
129 expectations; you can't stop them from doing this
130 * separate post "Stereotypes, Models, and Cognition"
131 * People are making probabilistic inferences all the time whether
132 they realize it or not
133 * Being drawn from a different psychological distribution but _not_
134 identifiably (AGPs who pass really well) doesn't hurt the dynamics
136 * AGPs aren't drawn from the same psychological distribution as cis
137 women. (Briefly explain the typology, but refer to external sources
138 for justification. For a more hard-facts empirical justification of
139 "not drawn from the same dist'n", cite data on sexual orientation (and
140 [constrast](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/905572666332987392))
142 * Making it not-OK for people to _talk_ about the categories that they
143 internally use to make sense of the world is bad
144 * experiences in LWish spaces with lots of trans women: if you
145 doctrinairely call everyone women, my brain rebels and wants to
146 say, "That's not what I meant and _you fucking know it_." And
147 honestly? (And I think they do, in fact, fucking know it.)
148 * The inability to have women's clothing swaps is a _real loss_
149 * Negotiation-structure: we've been using this word to refer to this
150 thing for the past 200,000 years since the invention of language;
151 if you want us to stop, you need to offer us something we value
152 (and you have nothing to trade with); threatening to kill yourself
153 is easily (if callously) countered with "We don't negotiate with
155 * For crime/medical statistics, you need natal sex or third-category.
157 * The case of Emperor Norton looks cute at first glance, but
158 ostensibly-benevolent gaslighting is still problematic (we call it
160 * I've been crazy (link "Memoirs"), and I'm glad my friends patiently told
161 me why I was wrong rather than saying "That's nice dear" (maybe quote
163 * Tell a story about what this could have been like for Norton beginning to
164 doubt the reality of his reign.
165 * Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
166 ask her to put it back up again)
168 re emphasis on predictions: dicuss how observations make you infer class membership, which lets you infer things about what you haven't observed
170 /2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/
172 Similarly, [discussion of borders]
174 [point out that legal fictions aren't always taken seriously by people who are trying to talk about the world, use "Europe" examples from acquaintance; Seeing Like a State]
176 [point out that Alexander agrees that some categories suck]
178 two-types are relevant to trans child debate
180 Buck Angel pic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Angel#/media/File:Buck_Angel_Headshot.jpg
182 "Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885 retained a male pattern re criminality
184 _Slate Star Codex_ 2017 survey: 6939 (87.2%) cis men, 733 (9.2%) cis women, trans women 114 (1.4%): 13.4% trans!!!!
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