New ideas are constantly being invented and talked about in the world; some of them catch on, and spread, and spawn entire subcultures and political movements. Given that ideas vary, replicate themselves (from mind to mind, by means of speech or writing), and moreover, _aren't equally good_ at replicating themselves, it can be useful to [think of the spread of ideas as an _evolutionary_ process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics): the winning ideas are not necessarily the ones that are true or useful, but rather the ones that are _better at replicating themselves_.
-True or useful ideas certainly have a selective advantage insofar as humans care about usefulness (I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say outright that humans don't care about truth), but there can be other features of an idea that convey a selective advantage in memetic competition: for example, an appeal to alleged consequences of accepting the idea. This is the reason so many religions prominently feature promises and threats of divine reward or punishment: "Believe X and you'll be rewarded; believe not-X and you'll be sorry" is _more memetically fit_ than "It happens to be the case that X, but this has no particular further implications," because the former creates incentives for propogating itself that the latter does not. It doesn't _matter_ that the rewards and punishments don't actually exist—
+True and useful ideas certainly have a selective advantage insofar as humans care about usefulness (I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say outright that humans don't care about truth), but there can be other features of an idea that convey a selective advantage in memetic competition: for example, an [appeal to (alleged) consequences of accepting the idea](/2017/Jan/and-yet-none-more-blameable/). This is the reason so many religions prominently feature promises and threats of divine reward or punishment: "Believe X and you'll be rewarded; believe not-X and you'll be sorry" is _more memetically fit_ than "It happens to be the case that X, but this has no particular further implications," because the former proposition creates incentives for propogating itself that the latter does not. It doesn't _matter_ that the rewards and punishments don't actually exist—
(at least, _I_ don't think they exist, because I am not a carrier of the X religion meme)
-—a human in the grips of the idea will still be genuinely terrified of the punishment. The forces of memetic evolution don't care about the human's fear and suffering, because _the forces of memetic evolution_ is just our name for the observation that ideas that are better at being replicated, are better at being replicated; it's not an agent that can care about _anything_.
+—a human in the grips of the idea will still be genuinely terrified of the punishment. The forces of memetic evolution don't care about the human's fear and suffering, because _the forces of memetic evolution_ is just a pretentious name for the observation that ideas that are better at being replicated, are better at being replicated. It's not an agent that can care about _anything_.
And of course, there are lots of other, subtler non-truth-tracking, non-usefulness-tracking features of an idea that could make it more memetically fit.
... the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought.
-There's a word in the psychology literature for the beautiful feeling at the center of my life: _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"), coined in the context of a theory that it represented one of two distinct etiologies for male-to-female transsexualism. This theory didn't seem to be the standard mainstream view, and, I learned, people get really mad at you when you mention it in a comment section, so for a long time I self-identified with the _word_ "autogynephilia", but assumed that the associated _theory_ was false. _I_ wasn't one of those people who were _actually trans_; I was just, you know, one of those guys who is pointedly insistent on not being _proud_ of the fact that they're guys. (And who dimly suspects that this is somehow causually related to [...])
+There's a word in the psychology literature for the beautiful feeling at the center of my life: _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"), coined in the context of a theory that it represented one of two distinct etiologies for male-to-female transsexualism. This theory didn't seem to be the standard mainstream view, and, I learned, people get really mad at you when you mention it in a comment section, so for a long time [I self-identified with the _word_](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/) "autogynephilia", but assumed that the associated _theory_ was false. _I_ wasn't one of those people who were _actually trans_; I was just, you know, one of those guys who are [pointedly insistent on](/2017/Dec/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009/) not being _proud_ of the fact that they're guys. (And who dimly, privately suspect that this may somehow be causally related to their obsessive masturbation fantasies about being magically transformed into a woman.)
-Recent life events led me to do some reading—Kay Brown's blog [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), Anne Lawrence's [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html), and Imogen Binnie's novel [_Nevada_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/) (this item is reverse-scored)—and I concluded that, no, wait, actually the theory looks _correct_, and I _do_ have the same underlying psychological condition that leads people to transition. That in fact, my story till now may even be _typical_ of people who transition in their thirties, right up to the ["Oh, I just want to _experiment_ with hormones, I'm not actually going to _transition_" phase](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) (although I still think I'm smarter than that).
+Life events led me to do some reading—Kay Brown's blog [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), Anne Lawrence's monograph [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html), and Imogen Binnie's novel [_Nevada_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/) (this item is reverse-scored)—and I concluded that, no, wait, actually the theory looks _correct_, and I _do_ have the same underlying psychological condition that leads people to transition. That, in fact, my story up to now may even be _typical_ of people who transition in their thirties, right up to the ["Oh, I just want to _experiment_ with hormones, I'm not actually going to _transition_" phase](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) (although I [still think](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/) I'm smarter than that).
This is _really important information_! This is _not_ the thing someone should have to piece together themselves at age 28. This is the sort of thing that should just be in the standard sex-ed books, that boys having these kinds of feelings can read at age 15 and immediately say, "Ah, I'm in the same taxon as lesbian trans women, and heterosexual crossdressers, and guys who have these fantasies but don't do anything about them in particular, and bigender people who are on low-dose hormones and choose how to 'present' in different social venues; I wonder which of these strategies is best for me given my exact circumstances?"
If I say something that is later shown to me to be _factually incorrect_, that's something I take _very_ seriously, and I will do everything in my power to make it right.
-But if, in the course of trying to say something I think is true, or insightful, or cathartic, or even just _funny_, I end up saying something that people find offensive or hurtful or disrespectful ...
+But if, in the course of trying to say something I think is true, or insightful, or [cathartic](/tag/cathartic/), or even just _funny_, I end up saying something that people find offensive or hurtful or disrespectful ...
I don't care. I just really, fundamentally _do not care_ anymore.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff