Sunday drafting "Sexual Dimorphism in the Sequences" 1

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 5e85d58..c0c8296 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
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ It all started in summer 2007 (I was nineteen years old), when I came across _Ov
 
 [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](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DXcezGmnBcAYL2Y2u/yes-a-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](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DXcezGmnBcAYL2Y2u/yes-a-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.
 

-(The blog posts later got edited and collected into a book, [_Rationality: From AI to Zombies_](https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2), but I continue to say "the Sequences" because I _hate_ the "AI to Zombies" subtitle—it makes it sound like a commercial book optimized to sell copies, rather to corrupt the youth.)
+(The blog posts later got edited and collected into a book, [_Rationality: From AI to Zombies_](https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2), but I continue to say "the Sequences" because I _hate_ the gimmicky "AI to Zombies" subtitle—it makes it sound like a commercial book optimized to sell copies, rather than something competing for the same niche as the Bible or the Koran—_the book_ that explains what your life should be about.)

 
 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.
 


@@ -146,37 +146,59 @@ Do I want the magical transformation technology to fix all that, too?
 
 Do I have _any idea_ what it would even _mean_ to fix all that, without spending multiple lifetimes studying neuroscience?
 
 
 Do I have _any idea_ what it would even _mean_ to fix all that, without spending multiple lifetimes studying neuroscience?
 

-I think I have just enough language to _start_ to talk about what it would mean. What makes it hard to think about is that humans don't really _know_ how our own minds work. Evolution endowed us with certain capacities for making sense of the world, in our own way, when making sense of the world increased fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, but this mostly doesn't extend to making sense of the _mechanisms by which_ we can make sense of the world. 
+I think I have just enough language to _start_ to talk about what it would mean.
+
+[...]

 
 People are [verifiably very good at recognizing sex from (hair covered, males clean-shaven) photographs of people's faces](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf) (96% accuracy, which is the equivalent of _d_ ≈ 3.5), but we don't have direct introspective access into what _specific_ features our brains are using to do it; we just look, and _somehow_ know. The differences are real, but it's not a matter of any single measurement: [covering up the nose makes people slower and slightly worse at sexing faces, but people don't do better than chance at guessing sex from photos of noses alone](/papers/roberts-bruce-feature_saliency_in_judging_the_sex_and_familiarity_of_faces.pdf).
 
 [TODO: Mathematically,  
 Joel et al. and response—maybe in next paragraph
 
 People are [verifiably very good at recognizing sex from (hair covered, males clean-shaven) photographs of people's faces](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf) (96% accuracy, which is the equivalent of _d_ ≈ 3.5), but we don't have direct introspective access into what _specific_ features our brains are using to do it; we just look, and _somehow_ know. The differences are real, but it's not a matter of any single measurement: [covering up the nose makes people slower and slightly worse at sexing faces, but people don't do better than chance at guessing sex from photos of noses alone](/papers/roberts-bruce-feature_saliency_in_judging_the_sex_and_familiarity_of_faces.pdf).
 
 [TODO: Mathematically,  
 Joel et al. and response—maybe in next paragraph

+Beyond the Binary: https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468
+http://cogprints.org/10046/1/Delgiudice_etal_critique_joel_2015.pdf
+

 http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/05/the-typical-set/
 > once you draw a boundary around a group, the mind starts trying to harvest similarities from the group. And unfortunately the human pattern-detectors seem to operate in such overdrive that we see patterns whether they're there or not; a weakly negative correlation can be mistaken for a strong positive one with a bit of selective memory.
 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/veN86cBhoe7mBxXLk/categorizing-has-consequences
 [a higher-dimensional statistical regularity in the _conjunction_ of many variables](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu7YY7WdgJBs3DpmJ/the-univariate-fallacy-1)
 96.8% classification from MRI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6374327/ 
 ]
 http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/05/the-typical-set/
 > once you draw a boundary around a group, the mind starts trying to harvest similarities from the group. And unfortunately the human pattern-detectors seem to operate in such overdrive that we see patterns whether they're there or not; a weakly negative correlation can be mistaken for a strong positive one with a bit of selective memory.
 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/veN86cBhoe7mBxXLk/categorizing-has-consequences
 [a higher-dimensional statistical regularity in the _conjunction_ of many variables](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu7YY7WdgJBs3DpmJ/the-univariate-fallacy-1)
 96.8% classification from MRI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6374327/ 
 ]

+[talk about mapping from one distribution to another: e.g. height]

 
 The same moral applies to sex differences in psychology. I'm a pretty weird guy, in more ways than one. I am not prototypically masculine. Most men are not like me. If I'm allowed to cherry-pick what measurements to take, I can name ways in which I'm more female-typical than male-typical. (For example, I'm _sure_ I'm above the female mean in [Big Five Neuroticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits).) But "weird" represents a much larger space of possibilities than "normal", much as [_nonapples_ are a less cohesive category than _apples_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2mLZiWxWKZyaRgcn7/selling-nonapples).
 
 
 The same moral applies to sex differences in psychology. I'm a pretty weird guy, in more ways than one. I am not prototypically masculine. Most men are not like me. If I'm allowed to cherry-pick what measurements to take, I can name ways in which I'm more female-typical than male-typical. (For example, I'm _sure_ I'm above the female mean in [Big Five Neuroticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits).) But "weird" represents a much larger space of possibilities than "normal", much as [_nonapples_ are a less cohesive category than _apples_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2mLZiWxWKZyaRgcn7/selling-nonapples).
 

-If you _sum over_ all of my traits, everything that makes me, _me_—it's going to be a point in the _male_ region of the existing, unremediated, genderspace. In principle, you could define a procedure that maps that point to the female region of configuration space in some appropriately structure-preserving way, to compute my female analogue who is as authentically _me_ as possible while also being authentically female, down to her ovaries, and the proportion of gray matter in her posterior lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and—the love of a woman for a man. 
+If you _sum over_ all of my traits, everything that makes me, _me_—it's going to be a point in the _male_ region of the existing, unremediated, genderspace. In principle, you could define a procedure that maps that point to the female region of configuration space in some appropriately structure-preserving way, to compute my female analogue who is as authentically _me_ as possible while also being authentically female, down to her bones, and the proportion of gray matter in her posterior lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and—the love of a woman for a man. 

 
 

-(Note that we can already basically do this for _images_ of female and male faces, using the [latent spaces found by generative adversarial networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10786) and [autoencoders](https://towardsdatascience.com/generating-images-with-autoencoders-77fd3a8dd368)!—as demonstrated by the likes of [FaceApp](https://www.faceapp.com/), the _uniquely best piece of software in the world_. Doing it for _actual whole people in the real world_ and not just flat images is a task for future superintelligences, not present-day GANs, but some of same basic principles should apply.)
+(Note that we can already basically do this for _images_ of female and male faces, using the [latent spaces found by generative adversarial networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10786) and [autoencoders](https://towardsdatascience.com/generating-images-with-autoencoders-77fd3a8dd368), as demonstrated by the likes of [FaceApp](https://www.faceapp.com/), the _uniquely best piece of software in the world_. Doing it for _actual whole people in the real world_ and not just flat images is a task for future superintelligences, not present-day GANs, but some of same basic principles should apply.)

 
 

+Okay. Having supplied just enough language to _start_ to talk about what it would mean to actually become female—is that what I _want_? I mean, I would definitely be extremely eager to _try_ it ...

 
 

+I had said we're assuming away engineering difficulties in order to make the thought experiment more informative about pure preferences, but let's add back one constraint to _force_ the thought experiment to be informative about preferences, and not allow the wishy-washy [stonewalling](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wqmmv6NraYv4Xoeyj/conversation-halters) of "I'm eager to _try_ it."
+
+What if I can't just "try" it? What if the machine can only be used once? Come up with whatever frame story you want for this: maybe the machine costs my life savings just to rent for two minutes, or maybe the transformation process is ever-so-slightly imperfect, such that you can't re-transform someone who's already been transformed once, like a photocopy being a perfectly acceptable substitute for an original document, but photocopies-of-photocopies rapidly losing quality.
+
+In that case, if I have to choose—I _don't_ think I want to be Actually Female. I _like_ who I am on the inside, and don't need to change it. So, I guess ... if I'm being honest ... I guess I _want_ to be a normal man wearing a female body like a suit of clothing.
+
+Is that weird? Is that wrong?
+
+(Okay, yes, it's _obviously_ weird and wrong, but should I care more about not being weird and wrong, than I do about my deepest most heartfelt desire that I've thought about every day for the last eighteen years?)
+
+This is probably counterintuitive if you haven't been living with it. People have _heard of_ the "born in the wrong body" narrative, which makes intuitive sense: if female souls are designed to work female bodies, and you have a female soul tethered to a male body, you can imagine the soul finding the mismatch distressing and wanting to fix it. But if, as I'm positing for my case, there _is no mismatch_ in any objective sense, then where does the desire come from? How do you make sense of wanting to change physiological sex, for reasons that _don't_ have anything to do with already neurologically resembling that sex? What's going on there, psychologically?

 
 

-[new constraint—the deeper changes can't be reversed]
-[so, I don't want the full sex change, but then—what is going on?]

 
 

-[phenomenology of not being very good at first-person visualization]

 
 

-[mirror neurons and confusion]

 
 

+
+
+[I'm certainly curious about what it feels like to be Actually Female, but I don't think that's what's actually going on during anatomic-AGP fantasy]
+[so, I don't want the full sex change, but then—what is going on?]
+[phenomenology of not being very good at first-person visualization]
+[mirror neurons and confusion]
+[in particular, being Actually Female would undermine my _reason_ for wanting a female body]

 [if I could get HRT without the psych effects, that would actually be an improvement]
 [the fact that I'm happy with my breasts is suggestive of body-mods still being positive, even if the desire is a confusion]
 
 [if I could get HRT without the psych effects, that would actually be an improvement]
 [the fact that I'm happy with my breasts is suggestive of body-mods still being positive, even if the desire is a confusion]
 

+

 (The scintillating but ultimately untrue thought.)
 
 [but if you haven't made all these fine mental distinctions, you might think that you want to "be a woman", or at least be attached to the idea even if you don't believe it]
 (The scintillating but ultimately untrue thought.)
 
 [but if you haven't made all these fine mental distinctions, you might think that you want to "be a woman", or at least be attached to the idea even if you don't believe it]


@@ -204,3 +226,11 @@ You can't change the current _referent_ of "personal identity" with the semantic
 
 
 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

+
+[fallacy of compression _ironed in to the culture_, that resists attempts to deconfuse]
+
+[TODO: two-types as a first approximation]
+
+[TODO: others like me, gender of the gaps]
+
+[TODO: the last sequence was "Craft and the Community", which has aged by far the worst—part of the robot cult's "common interest of many causes" was getting everything right, including reformulating trans ideology to be sane, which should benefit everyone because of dark-side-epistemology—but that's not realistic]

diff --git a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
index 7e0692f..c940501 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
+++ b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
@@ -63,6 +63,8 @@ inference by analogy—even if not all trans women are exactly like me, at least
 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XYCEB9roxEBfgjfxs/the-scales-of-justice-the-notebook-of-rationality
 writes down all the facts that aren't on anyone's side.
 
 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XYCEB9roxEBfgjfxs/the-scales-of-justice-the-notebook-of-rationality
 writes down all the facts that aren't on anyone's side.
 

+"gay and trans"
+

 -----
 
 _(content warning sexism)_  
 -----
 
 _(content warning sexism)_  


@@ -87,6 +89,16 @@ Just 'cause I'm butch and I'm a tranny girl
 
 ------
 
 
 ------
 

+ What makes it hard to think about is that humans don't really _know_ how our own minds work. Evolution endowed us with certain capacities for making sense of the world, in our own way, when making sense of the world increased fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, but this mostly doesn't extend to making sense of the _mechanisms by which_ we can make sense of the world. 
+
+-----
+
+
+
+I'm 5′11″, which [puts me at](https://dqydj.com/height-percentile-calculator-for-men-and-women/) the 73rd percentile for men, about 6/10ths of a standard deviation about the mean. So my female analogue at the 73rd percentile for women would be about 5′5½″.
+
+[sympathetic minds gay couples anecdote]

 Anne Lawrence described autogynephiles as ["men who love women and want to become what they love."](/papers/lawrence-becoming_what_we_love.pdf) But it's worse than that. We're men who love what we _wish_ women were, and want to become _that_.
 
 Anne Lawrence described autogynephiles as ["men who love women and want to become what they love."](/papers/lawrence-becoming_what_we_love.pdf) But it's worse than that. We're men who love what we _wish_ women were, and want to become _that_.
 

-[I have seen the destiny of my neurotype, and am putting forth a convulsive effort to wrench it off its path. My weapon is clear writing.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i8q4vXestDkGTFwsc/human-evil-and-muddled-thinking)
\ No newline at end of file
+[I have seen the destiny of my neurotype, and am putting forth a convulsive effort to wrench it off its path. My weapon is clear writing.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i8q4vXestDkGTFwsc/human-evil-and-muddled-thinking)
+