I guess I haven't made any new posts here in almost two months?—which is not great. It would make sense for a blog to not update in two months if the author really just didn't have anything to say worth reading during that time. But I still have _lots_ of things I want to say here, that I've wanted to say for a long time, even, that I just _somehow_ haven't gotten around to writing up ... even though the blog is more than two years old, _and_ I didn't even have a dayjob for twelve months of that. "Writer's block" doesn't even begin to cover this; it is [_criminal_](/2017/Nov/the-blockhead/). Here's just a _partial_ list of some of the post ideas that I haven't gotten around to finishing for you yet—
- * I still need to finish drafting my reply to [Ozy's reply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/) to [my reply](http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) to [the immortal Scott Alexander](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)
+<a id="post-ideas-list"></a>
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+ * I still need to finish drafting my reply to [Ozy's reply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/) to [my reply](http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) to [the immortal Scott Alexander](http://web.archive.org/web/20200610230130/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)
* I've got ~4800 words drafted, but it needs a _lot_ more work in order to make it a maximally clear and maximally defensible blog post
* A _brief_ (only ~350 words) summary—
* I hopefully-accurately summarize Ozy as trying to make a _reductio ad absurdum_ argument, claiming that my arguments relying on the relevance of psychological sex differences would imply that lesbians aren't women, which is absurd.
* I argue that this isn't always practical given the _far_-less-than-perfect information available in many social situations. Since not all traits can be cheaply, precisely, and verifiably measured, sometimes people might want to use (perceived) sex as a proxy, or as a [Schelling point](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-fences-on-slippery-slopes) for coordination.
* I hopefully-accurately summarize Ozy as arguing that gender, like money, is socially constructed by collective agreement. It's coherent to argue that gender should be fully consensual, attributed on the basis of self-identity.
* I argue that just as not all possible money systems are feasible (in particular, you couldn't run an economy in which anyone could arbitrarily declare what they thought other people should categorize as a _dollar_), not all possible gender systems are feasible. Fully consensual gender _sounds_ like a good idea when you phrase it like that (what kind of monster could possibly be against "consent"??), but doesn't reflect the structure of probabilistic inferences people actually make in the real world when they have some information about people's sex.
- * I need to write an in-depth post about the overlap-along-one-dimension-does-not-imply-overlap-in-the-entire-configuration-space statistical phenomenon ([standard diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pattern_classification_medium.JPG)) of which I have decided that ["univariate fallacy"](https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1071245692180578305) is a better name than ["Lewontin's fallacy"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewontin's_Fallacy) (working title: "High-Dimensional Social Science and the Conjunction of Small Effect Sizes")
+ * <a id="high-dimensional-social-science-and-the-conjunction-of-small-effect-sizes"></a>I need to write an in-depth post about the overlap-along-one-dimension-does-not-imply-overlap-in-the-entire-configuration-space statistical phenomenon ([standard diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pattern_classification_medium.JPG)) of which I have decided that ["univariate fallacy"](https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1071245692180578305) is a better name than ["Lewontin's fallacy"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewontin's_Fallacy) (working title: "High-Dimensional Social Science and the Conjunction of Small Effect Sizes")
* a technical post about how imperfect measurements are subject to [regression to the mean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean), which (unfortunately! _really genuinely_ unfortunately!) quantitatively weakens the standard reassurance of, "Oh, no one should feel threatened by discussion of group differences, because the statistics obviously don't apply to any one individual"
* I haven't done any serious math in a while and I'm afraid that learning and explaining the details here could take me _many_ hours
* a technical post about using [naïve Bayes models](http://lesswrong.com/lw/o8/conditional_independence_and_naive_bayes/) for sex categorization
- * I never got very far into [_Daphne Koller and the Methods of Rationality_](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/probabilistic-graphical-models) (I know; I like my title better), but I'd like to dig into it again if I can somehow find the time
+ * <a id="daphne-koller-and-the-methods"></a>I never got very far into [_Daphne Koller and the Methods of Rationality_](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/probabilistic-graphical-models) (I know; I like my title better), but I'd like to dig into it again if I can somehow find the time
* a post about how I'm nervous about Codes of Conduct in the open-source world being used as an ideological-conformity enforcement mechanism, in contrast to their laudable ostensible purpose of preventing harrassment, _&c._ (working title: "Codes of Convergence; Or, [Smile More](https://genius.com/7888863)")
* a critical appraisal of the social phenomenon of self-declared non-binary gender identities (working title: "'But I'm Not Quite Sure What That Means': Costs of Nonbinary Gender as a Social Technology")
* a post about the mechanisms of social change and how there might be a role for a _very narrowly-targeted_ form of political activism where you try to give people more accurate factual information, rather than lobbying for any particular concrete policy (working title: "An Infovist's Advisory; Or, Standing Athwart History Yelling, 'Wait! I Like the Idea, but the Execution Needs Work!'")
So, I'm an intellectual. I _realize_ very well that "It's obviously not true" isn't an argument that someone could engage with. So I do make arguments. I try very hard to be careful to explain the empirical claims I'm making and point to evidence, and try to anticipate and disclaim in advance the most probable misinterpretations of what I'm saying, and demonstrate that I understand that words can be used in many ways depending on context, but that I'm trying to use language to point to a particular empirical statistical structure in the world, and that becomes a lot more cumbersome to express if I'm not allowed to use this word with this widely-used definition/[extension](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HsznWM9A7NiuGsp28/extensions-and-intensions) ...
-I'm not perfect. Especially in real-time discussions (text or meatspace), I can often look back and point to things that I said that were wrong, and know that I have sinned: "Oh, that wasn't quite fair of me; oh, that was kind of [bravery-debatey](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debates/) of me; oh, I should have more carefully distinguished between those claims."
+I'm not perfect. Especially in real-time discussions (text or meatspace), I can often look back and point to things that I said that were wrong, and know that I have sinned: "Oh, that wasn't quite fair of me; oh, that was kind of [bravery-debatey](http://web.archive.org/web/20200618055932/https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debates/) of me; oh, I should have more carefully distinguished between those claims."
I'm not perfect, but I think I'm _pretty good_. Even if I don't agree with someone about the facts—even if I don't agree with someone about what [policy trade-offs](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided) to make, including policy trade-offs about how to use language—surely, _surely_ we can at least agree on my meta-level point about _cognitive_ costs being part of the policy trade-off about how to use language?
But that's not an argument, either. (It would also constitute toxic masculinity.)
-I don't know. I'm just venting here because I've been _very upset_. My venting is certainly not written in the most defensible possible way. (I can at least think of a few things that I've addressed in previous posts that I haven't addressed here, that someone reading this post could accuse me of neglecting.)
+I don't know. I'm just venting here because I've been _very upset_. My venting is certainly not written in the most defensible possible way. (I can at least think of a few things that I've addressed in previous posts that I haven't addressed here, that someone reading only this post could accuse me of neglecting.)
Maybe with more time and more effort I could find _exactly_ the right words to cover every possible caveat and nitpick and _finally_ be able to communicate the thing—
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff