Tags: politics
Status: draft
-Something about my writing that tends to confuse people, that I need to clarify briefly: people keep expecting me to come out with some sort of policy prescription, whereas I see myself as trying to _describe_ what's actually going on in the world without being delusional about how much control I have over it. I think my account of what's actually going on is potentially a _relevant input_ into someone's computation of deciding what to do, but almost everything I say is at least one meta level up from any actual decisions. (And the only decisions I can _control_ are my own.)
+Something about my writing that tends to confuse people, that I need to clarify briefly: people keep expecting me to come out with some sort of policy prescription, whereas I see myself as trying to _describe_ what's actually going on in the world without being delusional about how much control I have over it. I think my account of what's actually going on is potentially a _relevant input_ into someone's computation of deciding what _they_ should do, but almost everything I say is at least one meta level up from any actual decisions. (And the only decisions I can _control_ are my own.)
People will see something like my ["The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/), and ask, "Okay, but what's the _policy takeaway_ here? Are you saying we should refuse to use trans people's preferred pronouns? Are you saying non-well-passing trans people should detransition?"
I don't know what _you_ should do! Why would I know that? (Also, what does this "should" thing even _mean_, anyway?)
-I'm _saying_ that useful words correspond to predictively useful concepts, and that biological sex is a predictively useful concept, and that there are at least two distinct classes of psychological motivation for why some males wish they could change sex, one of which is not an intersex condition, and that our currently-existing hormonal and surgical interventions for approximating a sex change arex imperfect, such that there are some circumstances where someone making predictions or decisions about a trans person might want to base those predictions or decisions on their model of the person's [developmental sex](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/) rather than their target gender, and to use corresponding non-obfuscated language in the context of those circumstances.
+I'm _saying_ that useful words correspond to predictively useful concepts, and that biological sex is a predictively useful concept, and that there are at least two distinct classes of psychological motivation for why some males wish they could change sex, one of which is not an intersex condition, and that our currently-existing hormonal and surgical interventions for approximating a sex change are imperfect, such that there are some circumstances where someone making predictions or decisions about a trans person might want to base those predictions or decisions on their model of the person's [developmental sex](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/) rather than their target gender, and to use corresponding non-obfuscated language in the context of those circumstances.
That _doesn't_ mean that no one should transition (_i.e._, try to approximate changing sex with hormonal and surgical interventions)! A lot of people do it—I'm not, like, denying that they _exist_. It seems to work out pretty well for many of them! Maybe _more_ people should do it!
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff