(I would later change my mind about which side of the tunnel is the correct one.)
-In Berkeley, I met some really interesting people who seemed quite similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along some other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life! (I see where the pattern-matching facilities in Yudkowsky's brain got that 20% figure from.) This prompted me to do a little bit more reading in some corners of the literature that I had certainly _heard of_, but hadn't already mastered and taken seriously in the previous twelve years of reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych. (Kay Brown's blog, [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), was especially helpful.)
+In Berkeley, I met some really interesting people who seemed quite similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along some other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life! (I see where the pattern-matching faculties in Yudkowsky's brain got that 20% figure from.) This prompted me to do a little bit more reading in some corners of the literature that I had certainly _heard of_, but hadn't already mastered and taken seriously in the previous twelve years of reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych. (Kay Brown's blog, [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), was especially helpful.)
Between the reading, and a series of increasingly frustrating private conversations, I gradually became increasingly persuaded that Blanchard _wasn't_ dumb and wrong, that his taxonomy of male-to-female transsexualism is _basically_ correct, at least as a first approximation. So far this story has just been about _my_ experience, and not anyone's theory of transsexualism (which I had assumed for years couldn't possibly apply to me), so let me take a moment to explain the theory now.
"It became obvious that explanation could not account." I don't doubt Serano's reporting of her own phenomenal experiences, but "that explanation could not account" is _not an experience_; it's a _hypothesis_ about psychology, about the _causes_ of the experience.
-I could go on ... but do I need to? After having seen enough of these _laughable_ denials of autogynephilia, the main question in my mind has become not, _Is the two-type feminine–androphilic/autogynephilic taxonomy of MtF transsexualism approximately true?_ (answer: yes, obviously) and more, _How dumb do you (proponents of gender-identity theories) think we (the general public) are?_ (answer: very, but this assessment is accurate).
+I could go on ... but do I need to? After having seen enough of these _laughable_ denials of autogynephilia, the main question in my mind has become not, _Is the two-type androphilic/autogynephilic taxonomy of MtF transsexualism approximately true?_ (answer: yes, obviously) and more, _How dumb do you (proponents of gender-identity theories) think we (the general public) are?_ (answer: very, but this assessment is accurate).
An important caveat must be made: [different causal/etiological stories could be compatible with the same _descriptive_ taxonomy.](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/) You shouldn't confuse my mere ridicule with a serious and rigorous critique of the strongest possible case for "gender expression deprivation anxiety" as a theoretical entity, which would be more work. But hopefully I've shown _enough_ work here, that the reader can perhaps empathize with the temptation to resort to ridicule?
[TODO: proton concession]
-[TODO: "Blegg Mode", "Where to Draw the Boundaries?", and failure]
+[TODO: "Blegg Mode", "Where to Draw the Boundaries?", and failure /2019/May/hiatus/ ]
[TODO: more blogging (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5aqumaym7Jd2qhDcy/containment-thread-on-the-motivation-and-political-context), 2019 Christmas party, disclaimer on "Categories Were Made"]
[TODO: categories clarification from EY—victory?!]
+["Univariate fallacy" also a concession]
+
[TODO: "simplest and best" pronoun proposal, sometimes personally prudent]
[TODO: why you should care; no one should like Scott and Eliezer's proposals; knowledge should go forward, not back]
Moreover, if relativity hasn't been invented yet, it makes sense to stick with Newtonian gravity as the _best_ theory you have _so far_, even if there are a few anomalies [like the precession of Mercury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Perihelion_precession_of_Mercury) that it struggles to explain.
-The same general principles of reasoning apply to psychological theories, even though psychology is a much more difficult subject matter and our available theories are correspondingly much poorer and vaguer. There's no way to make precise quantitative predictions about a human's behavior the way we can about the movements of the planets, but we still know _some_ things about humans, which get expressed as high-level generalities that nevertheless admit many exceptions: if you don't have the complicated true theory that would account for everything, then simple theories plus noise are better than _pretending not to have a theory_. As you learn more, you can try to refine more complicated theories that explain some of the anomalies that looked like "noise" to the simpler theory.
+The same general principles of reasoning apply to psychological theories, even though psychology is a much more difficult subject matter and our available theories are correspondingly much poorer and vaguer. There's no way to make precise quantitative predictions about a human's behavior the way we can about the movements of the planets, but we still know _some_ things about humans, which get expressed as high-level generalities that nevertheless admit many exceptions: if you don't have the complicated true theory that would account for everything, then simple theories plus noise are better than _pretending not to have a theory_. As you learn more, you can try to pin down a more complicated theory that explains some of the anomalies that looked like "noise" to the simpler theory.
+
+What does this look like for psychological theories? In the crudest form, when we notice a pattern of traits that go together, we give it a name.
-What does this look like for psychological theories?
[If a category seems to come into types, you can reify those as separate sub-categories, like bipolar I and II. The idea that there's something to the idea that bipolar I and II are "different", is s]
Urgent/needed for healing—
+_ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data
_ The Two-Type Taxonomy Is a Useful Approximation for ...
_ A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning
Big posts—
_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America
-_ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data
+
Minor—
_ GPT-3 guest post
_ Elision _vs_. Choice
_ Karnofsky's presentism
_ motivation for positing meta-attraction
-_ HPMoR on the function of democracy vs. Yarvin's true election
-_ Dolezal (working title)
_ Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff