If we notice further patterns _within_ the group of cases that make up a category, we can spit it up into sub-categories: for example, a diagnosis of bipolar I requires a full-blown manic episode, but hypomania and a major depressive episode qualify one for bipolar II.
-Is the two-type typology of bipolar disorder a good theory? Are bipolar I and bipolar II "really" different conditions, or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition, part of a "bipolar spectrum" along with cyclothymia? In our current state of knowledge, this is debateable, but if our understanding of the etiology of bipolar disorder were to advance, and we were to find evidence that that bipolar I has a different underlying _causal structure_ from bipolar II with decision-relevant consequences, like responding to different treatments, that would support a policy of thinking and talking about them as mostly separate things—even while they have enough in common to both be kinds of "bipolar". The simple high-level category ("bipolar disorder") is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the sub-category (bipolar I _vs._ II), and the subcategory is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the patient's detailed case history.
+Is the two-type typology of bipolar disorder a good theory? Are bipolar I and bipolar II "really" different conditions, or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition, part of a "bipolar spectrum" along with [cyclothymia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclothymia)? In our current state of knowledge, this is debateable, but if our understanding of the etiology of bipolar disorder were to advance, and we were to find evidence that that bipolar I has a different underlying _causal structure_ from bipolar II with decision-relevant consequences, like responding to different treatments, that would support a policy of thinking and talking about them as mostly separate things—even while they have enough in common to both be kinds of "bipolar". The simple high-level category ("bipolar disorder") is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the sub-category (bipolar I _vs._ II), and the subcategory is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the patient's detailed case history.
With a _sufficiently_ detailed causal story, you could even dispense with the high-level categories altogether and directly talk about the consequences of different neurotransmitter counts or whatever—but lacking that supreme precise knowledge, it's useful to sum over the details into high-level categories, and meaningful to debate whether a one-type or two-type taxonomy is a better statistical fit to the underlying reality whose full details we don't know yet.
In the case of male-to-female transsexualism, we notice a pattern where androphilic and non-androphilic trans women seem to be different from each other—not just in their sexuality, but also in their age of dysphoria onset, interests, and personality.
-[Blanchard](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf), [Bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen), and [Lawrence](http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html)
+This claim is most famously associated with the work of [Blanchard](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf), [Bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen), and [Lawrence](http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html), who argue that there are two discrete types of male-to-female transsexualism: an autogynephilic type (basically, [men who love women and want to become what they love](/papers/lawrence-becoming_what_we_love.pdf)), and an androphilic/homosexual type (basically, the extreme right tail of feminine gay males).
-But many authors have noticed this bimodal clustering of traits under various names, [while disagreeing about the underlying causality](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/).
-
-[Veale, Clarke, and Lomax](/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf) attribute the differences to whether defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity. [Anne Vitale](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm) identifies distinct groups (Group One and Group Three), and hypothesizes that the difference is due to degree of prenatal androgenization.
-
-[Serano 2020]
+But many authors have noticed the same bimodal clustering of traits under various names, [while disagreeing about the underlying causality](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/). [Veale, Clarke, and Lomax](/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf) attribute the differences to whether defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity. [Anne Vitale](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm) identifies distinct groups (Group One and Group Three), and hypothesizes that the difference is due to degree of prenatal androgenization. Julia Serano [concedes that "the correlations that Blanchard and other researchers prior to him described generally hold true"](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/serano-agp-a_scientific_review_feminist_analysis_and_alternative.pdf), but argues that [...]
Is a two type typology of male-to-female transsexualism a good theory? Is it "really" two different conditions (following Blanchard _et al._), or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition (following Veale _et al._)?
-At the high level of taxonomy—if I have to choose between a one-type and a two-type theory—then I think the two-type theory is superior. But I also think we can do better and say more about the underlying causal structure that the simple two-types story is approximating, and hopefully explain anomalous cases that look like "noise" to the simple theory.
+When the question is posed as such—if I have to choose between a one-type and a two-type theory—then I think the two-type theory is superior. But I also think we can do better and say more about the underlying causal structure that the simple two-types story is approximating, and hopefully explain anomalous cases that look like "noise" to the simple theory.
In the language of [causal graphs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_graph) (where the arrows point from cause to effect), here's what I think is going on:
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff