2 * Scott says category boundaries aren't true or false; you can group whales with other sea-dwelling animals if you want
3 * Sure, this is a great motte
4 * But that doesn't mean no categorizations are wrong; whales actually do cluster with both mammals and fish in different subspaces of the configuration space
5 * Rationalists can at least map the details of boundary disputes
6 * Also, if a potential category is too gerrymandered, it won't be useful for people who want to map reality
8 * Scott definitely knows this, so it's weird that when the topic turns to transgender that he suddenly doesn't feel like he needs to make any arguments
9 * The hair dryer story isn't applicable when other people's interests are at stake, too
10 * Which isn't to say that trans isn't real: people can successfully socially transition
12 * Another factor affecting how natural trans identities are is how trans works
13 * Intersex brains are more legit than other causes
14 * But it could be more than one thing
15 * In fact, I claim it is more than one thing, and the second thing is not intesex-brain
21 * the reason it _matters_ that people already have a concept for male because of the high-dimensionality, which my diagram can't express, but intution can
23 * link http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail
24 * link http://lesswrong.com/lw/xe/changing_emotions/
25 * the mismatch gets _worse_ with less gatekeeping
26 * "gay" trans women are etiologically straight
27 * weird social taboos, stickers
28 * no matter what policy decision you ultimately decide on, you need to be
29 honest about the trade-offs, rather than appealing to the idiot sophistry
30 of "Trans women are women, by definition"
31 * address "This never happens"
32 * better phrasing: Most of the time when we say "X is an instance of Y", we're appealing to some sort of truth condition: something that can be observed to distinguish things that are Y from things that are not-Y. If the only such criterion is "X _says_ they're a Y", that at that point I struggle to understand what Y is or why anyone (including X themself) should care.
33 * link Ozy on "We don't have a gender gap, we have an _assigned sex at birth_ gap"
34 * call out the mendacity of "assigned at birth" language
35 * section about how this a question of what social norms we want to negotiate
36 * better phrasing: Is this too absolutist?—effectively equating "trans" with "passing", and even then marked as an [atypical case](http://lesswrong.com/lw/nk/typicality_and_asymmetrical_similarity/)? Would it really be so costly to grant an occasional isolated unprincipled exception to our usual category boundaries, for kindness's sake? Perhaps not—if we could trust that the exception to our normal ways of thinking and speaking would _stay_ isolated. But the goals of the modern transgender movement seem to be somewhat broader in scope.
37 * better phrasing: Unfortunately, helping people get the things that they want is a hard problem, because people are complicated and the world is complicated. That's why, when renegotiating social norms to apply to a historically unprecedented situation, [...]
38 * As a rationalist, I want to protect people's freedom to describe the world as it
39 * This is a question about what sort of social norms we want to establish, and different choices of social norms have different costs and benefits! In a world where trans isn't a thing, the standard is, "Pass as a natal woman, or be regarded as a man pretending to be a woman." This isn't good for autogynephilic transsexuals! Later, the standard became, "If if looks like you're sincerely trying to pass as a natal woman, we'll model you that way, even if you don't quite pass." This is a better deal for autogynephilic transsexuals!
40 * (Even if you're [not a fan of gender roles](/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/) and wish that people were less eager to distinguish humans by sex when it's not absolutely necessary, to the extent that not everyone shares this value or wants to apply it in _all_ areas of life, it matters how the categories are defined.)
41 * I'm glad [I was able to experiment with hormones](http://unremediatedgender.space/tag/hrt-diary/) on the basis of informed consent, rather than being gatekept.
45 * the one-sidedness is breathtaking—it's as if Alexander's UN inspector said, "These Palestinians are willing to commit suicide to get what they want, so let's just give all of Palestine to them"
47 * The case for using identified gender rather than biological sex is
48 strongest for binary trans people who actually pass.
49 * The tack where you show a picture of Buck Angel and say, "You're not
50 really going to call this person a woman, are you?" makes a good point
51 * It's less strong for ...
52 * People who don't pass
53 * Passing is a continuum rather than a binary and is also
54 observer-dependent, which is inconvenient from the perspective of
55 categorization, which tends to stick to bright-lines and Schelling
57 * Re observer dependence: quote Serano (do I rely/pick on Serano too
58 much?) or someone about how it's actually _harder_ to pass in urban
59 areas because people have a higher prior
60 * Ref-to-rebut Zinnia Jones on "passing is subjective, therefore it's
63 * Normies don't have nonbinary gender in their ontology; at least
64 acknowledge that you're making a political demand when you want
66 * What are the decision criteria for nonbinary, anyway? People can
68 * Rundown of social consequences of different criteria—
69 * When you have people who are _identifiably_ distinct from natal-sex
70 people _and_ not drawn from the same psychological distribution, it
71 becomes socially profitable for people to notice and adjust their
72 expectations; you can't stop them from doing this
73 * separate post "Stereotypes, Models, and Cognition"
74 * People are making probabilistic inferences all the time whether
75 they realize it or not
76 * Being drawn from a different psychological distribution but _not_
77 identifiably (AGPs who pass really well) doesn't hurt the dynamics
79 * AGPs aren't drawn from the same psychological distribution as cis
80 women. (Briefly explain the typology, but refer to external sources
81 for justification. For a more hard-facts empirical justification of
82 "not drawn from the same dist'n", cite data on sexual orientation (and
83 [contrast](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/905572666332987392))
85 * Making it not-OK for people to _talk_ about the categories that they
86 internally use to make sense of the world is bad
87 * experiences in LWish spaces with lots of trans women: if you
88 doctrinairely call everyone women, my brain rebels and wants to
89 say, "That's not what I meant and _you fucking know it_." And
90 honestly? (And I think they do, in fact, fucking know it.)
91 * The inability to have women's clothing swaps is a _real loss_
92 * Negotiation-structure: we've been using this word to refer to this
93 thing for the past 200,000 years since the invention of language;
94 if you want us to stop, you need to offer us something we value
95 (and you have nothing to trade with); threatening to kill yourself
96 is easily (if callously) countered with "We don't negotiate with
98 * For crime/medical statistics, you need natal sex or third-category.
100 * The case of Emperor Norton looks cute at first glance, but
101 ostensibly-benevolent gaslighting is still problematic (we call it
103 * I've been crazy (link "Memoirs"), and I'm glad my friends patiently told
104 me why I was wrong rather than saying "That's nice dear" (maybe quote
106 * Tell a story about what this could have been like for Norton beginning to
107 doubt the reality of his reign.
108 * Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
109 ask her to put it back up again)
111 /2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/
113 [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]
115 two-types are relevant to trans child debate
117 "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
119 _Slate Star Codex_ 2017 survey: 6939 (87.2%) cis men, 733 (9.2%) cis women, trans women 114 (1.4%): 13.4% trans!!!!
123 people are good at noticing patterns: if there's a statistical association in the world
125 from my SEXNET message—
127 At least, not yet. The current situation in (progressive enclaves of) Western countries, where the need to respect everyone's self-identified gender identity is held sacrosanct, doesn't seem sustainable to me. With decreased gatekeeping and increased acceptance, you don't only get more AGPs transitioning who wouldn't have in the previous cultural regime; we should also expect transitioners on the margin to be less "suitable" (passable) with respect to traditional gatekeeper standards. That's how you end up with scenarios like that recounted by Prof. Bailey's correspondent in the "bad trans behavior" thread: if there are only a very few AGP trans women who are (out of necessity) trying very hard to pass, the impact on the social order is minimal. But as you start to have a nontrivial population of natal males attempting to live as women who are simultaneously identifiable (usually or often not passing as natal females) and noticeably not drawn from the same distribution of psychological traits as natal females, and you inject too many of them into social spaces and roles that developed around the psychology of natal females, that's going to change the dynamics of those spaces in ways that the incumbent women might not be happy with.
129 "Development and Validation of the Transgender Inclusive Behavior Scale" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28406387
131 https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/when-i-was-raped-it-was-female-only-spaces-helped-me-recover
133 caveats to the "male pattern of criminality" study: https://medium.com/@notCursedE/do-trans-women-retain-male-pattern-violence-df67954373fd
137 Jenner transitioned at age 65
139 married to women three times, fathered six children
143 From my Reddit comment just now (the same point I've been aware of for a decade, but don't have in its own post anywhere; the "starting to look more like" phrasing may be new)—
145 Consider an illustrative diagram in which there is a hard line in the combined height–weight configuration space, but the line isn't describable in terms of height or weight alone. If there were sufficiently many more traits/dimensions, we could imagine "not describable in terms of some small number of variables n" starting to look more like "not explicitly describable by humans."
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