Sunday haul

[Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git] / notes / sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md

diff --git a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
index b2dd90a..68fdf8b 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
+++ b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
@@ -5,32 +5,56 @@ TODO for "Sexual Dimorphism"—
 
 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vjmw8tW6wZAtNJMKo/which-parts-are-me
 
 
 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vjmw8tW6wZAtNJMKo/which-parts-are-me
 

+-----
+
+A common trope in female transformation erotica (search for _tg caption blog_ if you want examples) is that sexuality "goes with the body": in these stories, men who have been magically swapped bodies with women, often express excitement or horror (depending on the story and the author) about the discovery that they're attracted to guys now—or alternatively, express gratitude that the woman he swapped with was a lesbian.
+
+But how would that work? The experience described by this trope would be something you'd predict if sexuality was implemented in a separate brain module that could stay with the rest of the body even while the "soul" (the implementation of someone's personality, memory, _&c._) gets swapped out. But if the brain isn't actually modularized that way, the magical transformation process would have to do a lot more custom engineering work (to "fit" the brainware-construed-as-"soul" with sexuality-brainware that matches the body) to get the particular outcome portrayed in the stories.
+
+_In principle_, it could be done, so you might think there's no _conceptual_ problem with the stories, in the same sense that there's nothing _conceptually_ wrong with Jules Verne's [pair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon) of [novels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_Moon) about flying around the moon. There are lots of technical rocket-science details that Verne didn't and couldn't have known about in the 1860s, but the _basic idea_ was sound, and [actually achieved a hundred years later](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8). So why is it in any way is it _relevant_ that making the magical transformation fantasy real would be technically complicated?
+
+The problem is that, in the real world, the guys who are jacking off to the _fantasy_ of knowing what it's like to be female, are being motivated by a variation in _male_ sexuality. If you were to _actually_ become neurologically female, it _wouldn't_ seem like the scintillating apotheosis of sexual desire and the most important thing in the world. It would just feel normal, in the way that actual women feel their own existence is normal.

 
 

-A common theme in female transformation erotica (search for _tg caption blog_ if you want examples) is that sexuality "goes with the body": in these stories, men who have been magically swapped bodies with women, often express excitement or horror (depending on the story and the author) about the discovery that they're attracted to guys now. But how would that work? That experience would be something you'd predict if sexuality was implemented in a separate brain module that could stay with the rest of the body even while the "soul" (the implementation of someone's personality, memory, _&c._) gets swapped out.
+In this way, autogynephilia is _intrinsically self-undermining_ in a way that fantasies of space flight are not. This doesn't in any way lessen the desire or make it go away—any more than [the guy who gets turned on by entropy decreasing a closed system](https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1049) would have his libido permanently vanish upon learning about the second law of thermodynamics. But it does, I suspect, change the way you think of it: it makes a difference whether you interpret the desire as a confused anomaly in male sexuality—the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought—or _take it literally_.
+
+-----
+
+Another clue comes in the form of the following conjunction 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 _that_ discriminating—on the contrary, if I had magical BodyApp tech, I would want to experiment with being different ages/races/builds. Three, the thought being transformed in a _different_ male body, other than my own, _is_ kind of repulsive—
+
+-----

 
 

-But if the brain isn't actually modularized in that particular way, the magical transformation would have to do a lot more engineering work
+Intuitively, when I imagine how I want transformation technology to work, I imagine speaking accents "going with the body".

 
 
 
 

-_ transformation details matter: accents and homonyms, sexual orientation changing emotions/accent fantasies: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/wAW4ENCSEHwYbrwtn/other-people-s-procedural-knowledge-gaps/comment/pheakgvLbFndXccXC 
+Native speakers of a language are more likely to confuse homophones, because 

 
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 _ morality and culturally-defined values
 
 
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 _ morality and culturally-defined values
 

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+-------

 
 

-_ Vassar clapback anecdote
+"The Opposite Sex" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130216025508/http://lesswrong.com/lw/rp/the_opposite_sex/),
+
+> until men start thinking of themselves as _men_ they will tend to regard women as defective humans.
+
+When I read the ["systematizing–empathizing"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathising%E2%80%93systemising_theory)/"men are interested in things, women are interested in people" line of research—which, to be clear, is [only a statistical difference at Cohen's _d_ ≈ 0.93](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/su_et_al-men_and_things_women_and_people.pdf)—my instinctive reaction is, "But, but that's not _fair_. People _are_ systems, because _everything_ is a system. [What kind of a lame power is empathy, anyway?](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway)"
+
+"Everything is a system" to "I _think_ everything is a system."
+
+I think everything is a system ... because I'm male??
+
+"I often wish some men/women would appreciate": https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/FBgozHEv7J72NCEPB/my-way/comment/AEZaakdcqySmKMJYj ] 

 
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 _ playing dumb initials anecdote
 
 
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 _ playing dumb initials anecdote
 

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-"The Opposite Sex" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130216025508/http://lesswrong.com/lw/rp/the_opposite_sex/), Yud on "men should think of themselves as men" / "I often wish some men/women would appreciate"]
+_ Vassar clapback anecdote

 
 

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+--------------

 
 
 _ AGPs dating each other is the analogue of "Failed Utopia 4-2" (but phrased in a way that's agnostic about 
 
 
 _ AGPs dating each other is the analogue of "Failed Utopia 4-2" (but phrased in a way that's agnostic about