poke at "Sexual Dimorphism"

[Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git] / content / drafts / sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md

diff --git a/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md b/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md
index 2f62eaa..ee635a8 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md
+++ b/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Well. That's a _long story_—for another time, perhaps. For _now_, I want to ex
 
 It all started in summer 2007 (I was nineteen years old), when I came across _Overcoming Bias_, a blog on the theme of how to achieve more accurate beliefs. (I don't remember exactly how I was referred, but I think it was likely to have been [a link from Megan McArdle](https://web.archive.org/web/20071129181942/http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009783.html), then writing as "Jane Galt" at _Asymmetrical Information_.)
 
 
 It all started in summer 2007 (I was nineteen years old), when I came across _Overcoming Bias_, a blog on the theme of how to achieve more accurate beliefs. (I don't remember exactly how I was referred, but I think it was likely to have been [a link from Megan McArdle](https://web.archive.org/web/20071129181942/http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009783.html), then writing as "Jane Galt" at _Asymmetrical Information_.)
 

-[Although](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/hal-finney) [technically](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/james-miller) [a](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/david-j-balan) [group](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/andrew) [blog](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/anders-sandberg), the vast majority of posts on _Overcoming Bias_ were by Robin Hanson or Eliezer Yudkowsky. I was previously acquainted in passing with Yudkowsky's [writing about future superintelligence](http://yudkowsky.net/obsolete/tmol-faq.html). (I had [mentioned him in my Diary once in 2005](/ancillary/diary/42/), albeit without spelling his name correctly.) Yudkowsky was now using _Overcoming Bias_ and the medium of blogging [to generate material for a future book about rationality](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vHPrTLnhrgAHA96ko/why-i-m-blooking). Hanson's posts I could take or leave, but Yudkowsky's sequences of posts about rationality (coming out almost-daily through early 2009, eventually totaling hundreds of thousands of words) were _amazingly great_, [drawing on fields](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tSgcorrgBnrCH8nL3/don-t-revere-the-bearer-of-good-info) from [cognitive](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ftJ38y9SRBCBsCzy/scope-insensitivity) [psychology](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/R8cpqD3NA4rZxRdQ4/availability) to [evolutionary biology](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MH2b8NfWv22dBtrs8) to explain the [mathematical](https://www.readthesequences.com/An-Intuitive-Explanation-Of-Bayess-Theorem) [principles](https://www.readthesequences.com/A-Technical-Explanation-Of-Technical-Explanation) [governing](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eY45uCCX7DdwJ4Jha/no-one-can-exempt-you-from-rationality-s-laws) _how intelligence works_—[the reduction of "thought"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/p7ftQ6acRkgo6hqHb/dreams-of-ai-design) to [_cognitive algorithms_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcCpvYLoSFP4iAqSz/rationality-appreciating-cognitive-algorithms). Intelligent systems that use [evidence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6s3xABaXKPdFwA3FS/what-is-evidence) to construct [predictive](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A/making-beliefs-pay-rent-in-anticipated-experiences) models of the world around them—that have "true" "beliefs"—can _use_ those models to compute which actions will best achieve their goals. You simply won't believe how much this blog will change your life; I would later frequently [joke](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ha_ha_only_serious) that Yudkowsky rewrote my personality over the internet.
+[Although](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/hal-finney) [technically](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/james-miller) [a](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/david-j-balan) [group](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/andrew) [blog](http://www.overcomingbias.com/author/anders-sandberg), the vast majority of posts on _Overcoming Bias_ were by Robin Hanson or Eliezer Yudkowsky. I was previously acquainted in passing with Yudkowsky's [writing about future superintelligence](https://web.archive.org/web/20200217171258/https://yudkowsky.net/obsolete/tmol-faq.html). (I had [mentioned him in my Diary once in 2005](/ancillary/diary/42/), albeit without spelling his name correctly.) Yudkowsky was now using _Overcoming Bias_ and the medium of blogging [to generate material for a future book about rationality](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vHPrTLnhrgAHA96ko/why-i-m-blooking). Hanson's posts I could take or leave, but Yudkowsky's sequences of posts about rationality (coming out almost-daily through early 2009, eventually totaling hundreds of thousands of words) were _amazingly great_, [drawing on fields](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tSgcorrgBnrCH8nL3/don-t-revere-the-bearer-of-good-info) from [cognitive](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ftJ38y9SRBCBsCzy/scope-insensitivity) [psychology](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/R8cpqD3NA4rZxRdQ4/availability) to [evolutionary biology](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MH2b8NfWv22dBtrs8) to explain the [mathematical](https://www.readthesequences.com/An-Intuitive-Explanation-Of-Bayess-Theorem) [principles](https://www.readthesequences.com/A-Technical-Explanation-Of-Technical-Explanation) [governing](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eY45uCCX7DdwJ4Jha/no-one-can-exempt-you-from-rationality-s-laws) _how intelligence works_—[the reduction of "thought"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/p7ftQ6acRkgo6hqHb/dreams-of-ai-design) to [_cognitive algorithms_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcCpvYLoSFP4iAqSz/rationality-appreciating-cognitive-algorithms). Intelligent systems that use [evidence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6s3xABaXKPdFwA3FS/what-is-evidence) to construct [predictive](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A/making-beliefs-pay-rent-in-anticipated-experiences) models of the world around them—that have "true" "beliefs"—can _use_ those models to compute which actions will best achieve their goals. You simply won't believe how much this blog will change your life; I would later frequently [joke](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ha_ha_only_serious) that Yudkowsky rewrote my personality over the internet.

 
 There are a few things about me that I need to explain before I get into the topic-specific impact the blog had on me.
 
 
 There are a few things about me that I need to explain before I get into the topic-specific impact the blog had on me.
 


@@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ But quasi-religious fervor aside, there was presumably a _reason_ I cared so muc
 
 Well. The reason I'm blogging this story at all is because I'm scared that in order to finish that sentence in the current year and be understood, I'd have to say, "because I was trans." And with respect to what the words mean in the current year, it's true. But that's not how I think of it, then or now.
 
 
 Well. The reason I'm blogging this story at all is because I'm scared that in order to finish that sentence in the current year and be understood, I'd have to say, "because I was trans." And with respect to what the words mean in the current year, it's true. But that's not how I think of it, then or now.
 

-It's because I was _straight_. Because I loved women, and wanted to do right by them—and wanted to _identify_ with them in some abstract sense that can only exist from the outside looking in.
+It's because I was _straight_. Because I loved women, and wanted to do right by them. It's an _identificatory_ kind of love, inseparable from my sense of self—but if it isn't _exactly_ the same thing that most straight men feel, it can only be a slight variation.

 
 Anyway, that's some background about where I was at, personally and ideologically, _before_ I fell in with this robot cult.
 
 
 Anyway, that's some background about where I was at, personally and ideologically, _before_ I fell in with this robot cult.
 


@@ -91,19 +91,19 @@ In this way (contrary to the uninformed suspicions of those still faithful to th
 
 This luck does not extend to antisexism. If the genome were a computer program, it would have `if female { /* ... */ } else if male { /* ... */ }` conditional blocks, and inside those blocks, you can have complex sex-specific functionality. By default, selection pressures on one sex tend to drag the other along for the ride—men have nipples because there's no particular reason for them not to—but in those cases where it was advantageous in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness for females and males to do things _differently_, sexual dimorphism can evolve (slowly—[more than one and half orders of magnitude slower than monomorphic adaptations](/papers/rogers-mukherjee-quantitative_genetics_of_sexual_dimorphism.pdf), in fact).
 
 
 This luck does not extend to antisexism. If the genome were a computer program, it would have `if female { /* ... */ } else if male { /* ... */ }` conditional blocks, and inside those blocks, you can have complex sex-specific functionality. By default, selection pressures on one sex tend to drag the other along for the ride—men have nipples because there's no particular reason for them not to—but in those cases where it was advantageous in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness for females and males to do things _differently_, sexual dimorphism can evolve (slowly—[more than one and half orders of magnitude slower than monomorphic adaptations](/papers/rogers-mukherjee-quantitative_genetics_of_sexual_dimorphism.pdf), in fact).
 

-Robert Trivers wrote, "One can, in effect, treat the sexes as if they were different species, the opposite sex being a resource relevant to producing maximum surviving offspring" (!!). There actually isn't one species-universal design—it's _two_ designs. _Similar_ designs, sure—but there's no particular reason for
+Robert Trivers wrote, "One can, in effect, treat the sexes as if they were different species, the opposite sex being a resource relevant to producing maximum surviving offspring" (!!). There actually isn't one species-universal design—it's _two_ designs.

 
 

-[TODO: the brain is not exempt, not just quantitative variation where the bell curves overlap, but complex machinery with a specific function]
-
-If you're willing to admit to the possibility of psychological sex differences _at all_, you have to admit that sex differences in the parts of the mind that are _specifically about mating_ are going to be a prime candidate. Even if there's a lot of "shared code" in how love-and-attachment works in general, there are also going to be specific differences that were [optimized for](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8vpf46nLMDYPC6wA4/optimization-and-the-intelligence-explosion) facilitating males impregnating females. In that sense, the claim that "the love of a man for a woman, and the love of a woman for a man, have not been cognitively derived from each other" just seems commonsensically _true_.
-
-[TODO: and it doesn't have to just be mating; different reproductive strategies have different life-history implications]
+If you're willing to admit to the possibility of psychological sex differences _at all_, you have to admit that sex differences in the parts of the mind that are _specifically about mating_ are going to be a prime candidate. (But by no means the only one—different means of reproductive have different implications for [life-history strategies](TODO: linky) far beyond the act of mating itself.) Even if there's a lot of "shared code" in how love-and-attachment works in general, there are also going to be specific differences that were [optimized for](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8vpf46nLMDYPC6wA4/optimization-and-the-intelligence-explosion) facilitating males impregnating females. In that sense, the claim that "the love of a man for a woman, and the love of a woman for a man, have not been cognitively derived from each other" just seems commonsensically _true_.

 
 I guess if you _didn't_ grow up with a quasi-religious fervor for psychological sex differences denialism, this theoretical line of argument about evolutionary psychology doesn't seem world-shatteringly impactful?—maybe it just looks like supplementary Science Details brushed over some basic facts of human existence that everyone knows. But if you _have_ built your identity around quasi-religious _denial_ of certain basic facts of human existence that everyone knows (if not everyone [knows that they know](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief)), getting forced out of it by sufficient weight of Science Details [can be a pretty rough experience](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/XM9SwdBGn8ATf8kq3/c/comment/Zv5mrMThBkkjDAqv9).
 
 [TODO: this denial was in the background in "The Opposite Sex" and the metaethics sequence, men should think of themselves as men]
 
 
 I guess if you _didn't_ grow up with a quasi-religious fervor for psychological sex differences denialism, this theoretical line of argument about evolutionary psychology doesn't seem world-shatteringly impactful?—maybe it just looks like supplementary Science Details brushed over some basic facts of human existence that everyone knows. But if you _have_ built your identity around quasi-religious _denial_ of certain basic facts of human existence that everyone knows (if not everyone [knows that they know](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief)), getting forced out of it by sufficient weight of Science Details [can be a pretty rough experience](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/XM9SwdBGn8ATf8kq3/c/comment/Zv5mrMThBkkjDAqv9).
 
 [TODO: this denial was in the background in "The Opposite Sex" and the metaethics sequence, men should think of themselves as men]
 

-[TODO: sex differences came up a few more times in the Fun Theory sequence]
+Sex differences would come up a couple more times in Yudkowsky's Sequence on Fun Theory—
+
+
+
+

 
 The short story ["Failed Utopia #4-2"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTKbmm6uRgC/failed-utopia-4-2) portrays an almost-aligned superintelligence constructing a happiness-maximizing utopia for humans—except that because [evolution didn't design women and men to be optimal partners for each other](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Py3uGnncqXuEfPtQp/interpersonal-entanglement), and the AI is prohibited from editing people's minds, the happiness-maximizing solution ends up splitting up the human species by sex and giving women and men their own _separate_ utopias, complete with artificially-synthesized romantic partners.
 
 
 The short story ["Failed Utopia #4-2"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTKbmm6uRgC/failed-utopia-4-2) portrays an almost-aligned superintelligence constructing a happiness-maximizing utopia for humans—except that because [evolution didn't design women and men to be optimal partners for each other](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Py3uGnncqXuEfPtQp/interpersonal-entanglement), and the AI is prohibited from editing people's minds, the happiness-maximizing solution ends up splitting up the human species by sex and giving women and men their own _separate_ utopias, complete with artificially-synthesized romantic partners.
 


@@ -129,7 +129,7 @@ In the comments, [I wrote](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/
 
 > Is it cheating if you deliberately define your personal identity such that the answer is _No_?
 
 
 > Is it cheating if you deliberately define your personal identity such that the answer is _No_?
 

-(To which I now realize the correct answer is: Yes, it's fucking cheating! The map is not the territory! You can't change the current _referent_ of "personal identity" with the semantic mind game of declaring that "personal identity" now refers to something else! How dumb do you think we are?! But more on this later.)
+(To which I now realize the correct answer is: Yes, it's cheating! The map is not the territory! You can't change the current _referent_ of "personal identity" with the semantic mind game of declaring that "personal identity" now refers to something else! How dumb do you think we are?! But more on this later.)

 
 
 people like me being incentivized to identify as part of a political pressure group that attempts to leverage claims of victimhood into claims on power
 
 
 people like me being incentivized to identify as part of a political pressure group that attempts to leverage claims of victimhood into claims on power