It's that that these are _discrete_ features that are entangled with everything _else_ that differs between females and males, including many [correlated](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu7YY7WdgJBs3DpmJ/the-univariate-fallacy-1) statistical differences of various [effect sizes](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/), and differences that are harder to articulate or measure, and differences that haven't even been discovered yet (as gametes and chromosomes hadn't respectively been discovered yet in the 16th and 20th centuries) but can be theorized to exist because _sex_ is a very robust abstraction that you need in order to understand the design of evolved biological creatures.
-Discrete features make for better word _definitions_ than high-dimensional statistical regularities, even if most of the everyday inferential utility of _using_ the word comes from the high-dimensional statistical stuff. A dictionary definition is just a helpful pointer to help people pick out "the same" concept in their _own_ world-model: in teaching a young child about sex (or "gender"), you only have to say "boys and men are the ones with a penis, examples include your Dad and Uncle Frank, non-examples include your Mom and Grandma Mary" and the child's brain's pattern-matching faculties will soak up the rest, [...]
+Discrete features make for better word _definitions_ than high-dimensional statistical regularities, even if most of the everyday inferential utility of _using_ the word comes from the high-dimensional statistical stuff. A dictionary definition is just a helpful pointer to help people pick out "the same" [natural abstraction](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cy3BhHrGinZCp3LXE/testing-the-natural-abstraction-hypothesis-project-intro) in their _own_ world-model. In teaching a young child about sex (or "gender"), you only have to say "boys and men are the ones with a penis, examples include your Dad and Uncle Frank, non-examples include your Mom and Grandma Mary" and the child's brain's pattern-matching faculties [...]
(Gamete size is a particularly good definition for the natural category of _sex_ because the concept of [anisogamy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisogamy) generalizes across species that have different sex determination systems or configurations of sexual anatomy. In birds, [the presence or absence of a _W_ chromosome determines whether an animal is _female_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system), in contrast [the _Y_ chromosome's determination of maleness in mammals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system), and some reptiles' sex is determined by [the temperature of an lain egg while it develops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature-dependent_sex_determination) (!). And let's not get started on the [cloaca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca).)
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff