Naïvely, of course, you'd think it would be ideologically _validating_: L. and his manner and his handwriting were living proof that not all boys are masculine! But everyone—even the smart sexists—knew _that_. No, the disturbing part was that if "feminine" handwriting—potentially—indicated "feminine" behavior more generally, that implied that _"femininity" was a valid concept_, which was not a notion I was inclined to grant.
-Ideology isn't my style anymore—or rather, these days, my ideology is centered on the accuracy of my probabilistic predictions, rather than being indignant that some people think it's okay to make probabilistic predictions about humans.
+Ideology isn't my style anymore—or rather, these days, my ideology is about the accuracy of my probabilistic predictions, rather than denying the possibility or morality of making probabilistic predictions about humans. Looking back, I will not only unhesitatingly bite the bullet on femininity being a real thing, I'll also venture to make a bold and seemingly "unrelated" prediction: L. was gay.
-Looking back,
+I mean, I don't "know" that; I have no recollection of the kid ever _saying_ so in my presence. Nevertheless, between the reading (like about the [Cohen's _d_](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/) ≈ [1.3 effect size of childhood sex-typed behavior on sexual orientation](/papers/bailey-zucker-childhood_sex-typed_behavior_and_sexual_orientation.pdf)) and the ideological deprogramming I've done since, I feel pretty comfortable putting my weight on a prediction derived from the crudest stereotype insofar as I expect the stereotype to actually get the right answer, in contrast to my teenage ideological fever dream of not wanting that to be possible.
-[I had to have known]
+Something I still can't reconstruct from memory—or maybe [lack the exact concepts to express](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sXHQ9R5tahiaXEZhR/algorithmic-intent-a-hansonian-generalized-anti-zombie)—is to what extent I "sincerely" thought that stereotyping didn't _work_, and to what extent I was self-righteously "playing dumb". Though my notebooks bear no record of it, I must have known _about_ the stereotype.
+[...]
-very distinctive voice
+A few years later, in the early 'tens, while [slumming in community college](/2022/Apr/student-dysphoria-and-a-previous-lifes-war/#back-to-school)
-base rates
+he had very distinctive voice.
+
+I'm not even sure how to describe it in terms of lower-level precepts, but you know it when you hear it. And I wondered, on the basis of his voice, whether he was gay.
-"Calculus III"
+At the point in my ideological evolution,
+
+base rates
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff