>
> —"Hurricane", _Hamilton_
-So, as I sometimes allude to, I've spent basically my entire adult life in this insular intellectual subculture that was founded in the late 'aughts to promulgate an ideal of _systematically correct reasoning_—general methods of thought that result in true beliefs and successful plans—and, [incidentally](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4PPE6D635iBcGPGRy/rationality-common-interest-of-many-causes), to use these methods of systematically correct reasoning to prevent superintelligent machines from [destroying all value in the universe](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GNnHHmm8EzePmKzPk/value-is-fragile). Lately I've been calling it my "robot cult" (a phrase [due to Dale Carrico](https://amormundi.blogspot.com/2011/08/ten-reasons-to-take-seriously.html))—the pejorative is partially [ironically affectionate](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gBma88LH3CLQsqyfS/cultish-countercultishness), and partially an expression of betrayal-trauma acquired from that time almost everyone I [used to trust](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wustx45CPL5rZenuo/no-safe-defense-not-even-science) insisted on, on ...
+So, as I sometimes allude to, I've spent basically my entire adult life in this insular intellectual subculture that was founded in the late 'aughts to promulgate an ideal of _systematically correct reasoning_—general methods of thought that result in true beliefs and successful plans—and, [incidentally](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4PPE6D635iBcGPGRy/rationality-common-interest-of-many-causes), to use these methods of systematically correct reasoning to prevent superintelligent machines from [destroying all value in the universe](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GNnHHmm8EzePmKzPk/value-is-fragile).
+
+Lately I've been calling it my "robot cult" (a phrase [due to Dale Carrico](https://amormundi.blogspot.com/2011/08/ten-reasons-to-take-seriously.html))—the pejorative is partially [ironically affectionate](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gBma88LH3CLQsqyfS/cultish-countercultishness), and partially an expression of betrayal-trauma acquired from that time almost everyone I [used to trust](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wustx45CPL5rZenuo/no-safe-defense-not-even-science) insisted on, on ...
Well. That's a _long story_—for another time, perhaps. For _now_, I want to explain how my robot cult's foundational texts had an enormous influence on my self-concept in relation to sex and gender.
Looking back with the outlook later acquired from my robot cult, this is _abhorrent_. You don't _casually wish death_ on someone just because you disagree with their views on psychology! (Also, casually wishing death on a woman does not seem particularly pro-feminist?!) Even if it wasn't in a spirit of personal malice (this was a song I sung to myself, not an actual threat directed to Amy Alkon's inbox), the sentiment just _isn't done_. But at the time, I _didn't notice there was anything wrong with my song_. I hadn't yet been socialized into the refined ethos of "False ideas should be argued with, but heed that we too may have ideas that are false".
-[TODO: Me pretending to be dumb about someone not pretending to be dumb about my initials https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/inhuman-rationa.html ; contrast that incident (it's not an accident that he guessed right) to Yudkowsky: "I try to avoid criticizing people when they are right. If they genuinely deserve criticism, I will not need to wait long for an occasion where they are wrong." (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MwQRucYo6BZZwjKE7/einstein-s-arrogance)]
+[TODO: initials anecdote]
-[TODO Vassar slapping me down in June 2008 (on the same day that I crossdressed in front of Seanan and Katie!): https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/why-do-psychopa.html#comment-518267438]
+[TODO Vassar anecdote]
Sex differences would come up a couple more times in one of the last Sequences, on "Fun Theory"—speculations on how life could be truly _good_ if the world were superintelligently optimized for human values, in contrast to the cruelty and tragedy of our precarious existence [in a world shaped only by blind evolutionary forces](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god).
Still, the macaque–rasin anecdote is at least _suggestive_ of hypotheses in the _general area_ of, "The brain uses _shared_ representations for 'self' and others, in a way such that it's possible for the part of the brain that computes sexual attraction to 'get confused' about the self–other distinction in a way that manifests as sexual desire to _be_ the object of attraction." Or _something like that_.
-One interesting prediction of this story is that if the nature of the "confusion", this—["erotic target location error"](/papers/lawrence-etle_an_underappreciated.pdf)?—is agnostic to the object of sexual attraction, then you should see the same pattern in men with unusual sexual interests. ("Men" because I think we legitimately want to be [shy about generalizing across sexes](/papers/bailey-what_is_sexual_orientation_and_do_women_have_one.pdf) for sex differences in the parts of the mind that are specifically about mating.)
+More clues come in the form of the following trio of observations.
+
+One, I'm not particularly repulsed by my own body in real life. ("Vague disappointment, sometimes" isn't the same thing as "repulsion".)
+
+Two, my fantasies about having a female body aren't particularly, um, discriminating? On the contrary, if I had magical BodyApp tech, I would want to experiment with being different ages or races or body types of women.
+
+Three, the thought being transformed in a _different_ male body, other than my own, _is_ repulsive. Perhaps less so in the sense that thinking about it is horrifying, and more that I _can't_ think about it—my imagination "bounces off" the idea before any [Body Horror](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BodyHorror) emotions can kick in.
+
+These details seem hard to square with gender identity theories: why is my own male body, and _only_ my own male body, seem "okay"? Whereas this is exactly what you would expect from the "male sexuality getting confused about a self–other distinction" story: I want to be all different sorts of women (and not men) for the same reason ordinary straight guys [want to fuck all different sorts of women](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-020-01730-x) (and not men).
+
+An interesting prediction of this story is that if the nature of the "confusion", this—["erotic target location error"](/papers/lawrence-etle_an_underappreciated.pdf)?—is agnostic to the object of sexual attraction, then you should see the same pattern in men with unusual sexual interests. ("Men" because I think we legitimately want to be [shy about generalizing across sexes](/papers/bailey-what_is_sexual_orientation_and_do_women_have_one.pdf) for sex differences in the parts of the mind that are specifically about mating.)
And this is actually what we see. Most men are attracted to women, but some fraction of them get off on the idea of _being_ women—autogynephilia. So if some men are attracted to, say, amputees, we would expect some fraction of _them_ to [get off on the idea of _being_ amputees](/papers/lawrence-clinical_and_theoretical_paralells.pdf)—[_apotemnophilia_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria#History). Some men are, unfortunately, pedophiles, and [some fraction of them get off on the idea of being children](/papers/hsu-bailey-autopedophilia.pdf). Some men are interested in anthropomorphic animals, and [_being_ anthropomorphic animals](https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2019-hsu.pdf)—["furries"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom).
Anyway, that—briefly (I mean it)—is the story about my weird sexual obsession about being a woman and how I used to think that it was morally wrong to believe in psychological sex differences, but then I gradually changed my mind and decided that psychological sex differences are probably real after being deeply influenced by this robot-cult blog about the logic of Science.
-It's probably not that interesting? If we were still living in the socio-political environment of 2009, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be blogging about my weird sexual obsessions (as evidenced by the fact that, in 2009, I wasn't blogging about them). It would take some unfathomably bizarre twist of circumstances to induce me to write publicly about such deeply private and sensitive matters—circumstances like my weird sexual obsession ending up at the center of [one of the _defining political issues of our time_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights) But such an absurd scenario couldn't actually happen ... right?
+It's probably not that interesting? If we were still living in the socio-political environment of 2009, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be blogging about my weird sexual obsessions (as evidenced by the fact that, in 2009, I wasn't blogging about them). It would take some unfathomably bizarre twist of circumstances to induce me to write publicly about such deeply private and sensitive matters—circumstances like my weird sexual obsession ending up at the center of [one of the _defining political issues of our time_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights). But such an absurd scenario couldn't actually happen ... right?
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