drafting "I Mean, Yes"

diff --git a/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md b/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md
index 0fa9d3f..f1e5007 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md
+++ b/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md
@@ -30,6 +30,8 @@ If that wasn't sufficiently clear, perhaps I have _failed as a writer_, and I ca
 
 I don't want to _define_ gender based on psychology. ([Definitions are overrated](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cFzC996D7Jjds3vS9/arguing-by-definition), anyway.)[ref]Also, on a personal note, can I remark on how _weird_ and _uncomfortable_ it is that defending psychological sex differences has now apparently become my thing? I'm an individualist/egalitarian androgyny fan, not a [complementarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarianism); I [_don't want_](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/) women and men to have incommensurable souls. But faced with an intellectual climate where brilliant, kind, otherwise-sane people seem to feel morally obligated to _destroy our collective ability to reason about sex using natural language_, I feel morally obligated to not let them get away with it. Not for love of the territory in its current state, but for the love of that property of maps that _reflect_ the territory.[/ref] I do think that biological sex is almost as close as you can get to being a _natural category_[ref]The [chemical elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements) would be an example of an even more robustly natural category. Atoms with more protons than nitrogen but fewer than oxygen _do not exist_, and thus there is no analogue in chemistry to the "Well, what about intersex conditions?" [challenge](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Derailment) to the concept of sex or the "Well, what about [ring species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)?" challenge to the concept of species.[/ref] in something like the following sense. If we imagine a distribution of artificial intelligences studying life on Earth and humans in particular, but lacking any preconceived concept of _sex_,[ref]It would be more traditional to put aliens rather than AIs in the observer role of this genre of thought experiment, but evolved aliens probably _would_ already know about sex![/ref] different AIs would each invent [different concepts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XeHYXXTGRuDrhk5XL/unnatural-categories) in order to model the aspects of reality relevant to their own individual values, but most of them would be forced to reinvent the category of _sex_ sooner or later, because sex category membership [makes predictions about _many_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans) different [dimensions of observation](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/the-cluster-structure-of-genderspace/)—although some with much larger [or smaller](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-606581.pdf) effect sizes than others—at least _some_ of which are likely to be relevant to the interests of any particular AI that's paying any attention to animal life at _all_.
 
 
 I don't want to _define_ gender based on psychology. ([Definitions are overrated](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cFzC996D7Jjds3vS9/arguing-by-definition), anyway.)[ref]Also, on a personal note, can I remark on how _weird_ and _uncomfortable_ it is that defending psychological sex differences has now apparently become my thing? I'm an individualist/egalitarian androgyny fan, not a [complementarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarianism); I [_don't want_](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/) women and men to have incommensurable souls. But faced with an intellectual climate where brilliant, kind, otherwise-sane people seem to feel morally obligated to _destroy our collective ability to reason about sex using natural language_, I feel morally obligated to not let them get away with it. Not for love of the territory in its current state, but for the love of that property of maps that _reflect_ the territory.[/ref] I do think that biological sex is almost as close as you can get to being a _natural category_[ref]The [chemical elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements) would be an example of an even more robustly natural category. Atoms with more protons than nitrogen but fewer than oxygen _do not exist_, and thus there is no analogue in chemistry to the "Well, what about intersex conditions?" [challenge](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Derailment) to the concept of sex or the "Well, what about [ring species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)?" challenge to the concept of species.[/ref] in something like the following sense. If we imagine a distribution of artificial intelligences studying life on Earth and humans in particular, but lacking any preconceived concept of _sex_,[ref]It would be more traditional to put aliens rather than AIs in the observer role of this genre of thought experiment, but evolved aliens probably _would_ already know about sex![/ref] different AIs would each invent [different concepts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XeHYXXTGRuDrhk5XL/unnatural-categories) in order to model the aspects of reality relevant to their own individual values, but most of them would be forced to reinvent the category of _sex_ sooner or later, because sex category membership [makes predictions about _many_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans) different [dimensions of observation](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/the-cluster-structure-of-genderspace/)—although some with much larger [or smaller](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-606581.pdf) effect sizes than others—at least _some_ of which are likely to be relevant to the interests of any particular AI that's paying any attention to animal life at _all_.
 

+[TODO: rephrase along the lines of, there might be situation where you might be quantitatively less surprised to see trans women behave in a way that is more common in males, than to see the same behavior in cis women, even if behavior never defines anyone's sex, because sex categories are attributed based on genetalia, secondary sex characteristics, &c.]
+

 That categories are clusters in a _high-dimensional_ space is relevant because of a statistical phenomenon perhaps most famously elucidated in [A. W. F. Edwards's critique of Richard Lewontin's critique of the concept of _race_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewontin's_Fallacy): groups that overlap along any _one_ particular measurement might be much more clearly distinguishable when you look at the conjunction of many different measurements.
 
 [TODO: the standard diagram]
 That categories are clusters in a _high-dimensional_ space is relevant because of a statistical phenomenon perhaps most famously elucidated in [A. W. F. Edwards's critique of Richard Lewontin's critique of the concept of _race_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewontin's_Fallacy): groups that overlap along any _one_ particular measurement might be much more clearly distinguishable when you look at the conjunction of many different measurements.
 
 [TODO: the standard diagram]


@@ -116,7 +118,7 @@ If the object of discussion is a large, undeniable, binary sex difference, you c
 
 And if the object of discussion is a small, statistical sex difference, you can always point out (correctly! importantly!), "Some cis people of that gender are like that, too!"
 
 
 And if the object of discussion is a small, statistical sex difference, you can always point out (correctly! importantly!), "Some cis people of that gender are like that, too!"
 

-Does the fact that it's possible to scrupulously rephrase any individual sentence to elide sex imply that the corresponding mental _representation_ of the concept of 'sex' is of no use? I don't think so, and I've tried, within the limits of my time and my writing ability, to explain why. But if some readers still aren't convinced—well, maybe I can live with that.
+Does the fact that it's possible to scrupulously rephrase any individual sentence to elide sex imply that the corresponding mental _representation_ of the concept of 'sex' is of little practical use? I don't think so, and I've tried, within the limits of my time and my writing ability, to explain why. But if some readers still aren't convinced—well, maybe I can live with that.

 
 "Winning" arguments is uninteresting, _especially_ arguments about definitions. Everyone knows that the same word can be used in many ways depending on context. What _matters_ is learning about reality, and finding concepts and representations that make reality _less_ confusing rather than _more_ confusing. If, after thousands of words of argument, someone _still_ thinks a concept that I find useful should not be used because I can't provide explicit necessary-and-sufficient conditions to classify a series of ever-more obscure and contrived edge cases and "gotcha"s—or because [it hurts someone's feelings](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/)—then I guess my response is to shrug and say, "Okay, whatever, I'll continue modeling reality using my concepts, and I wish you good luck trying to do the same with yours."
 
 
 "Winning" arguments is uninteresting, _especially_ arguments about definitions. Everyone knows that the same word can be used in many ways depending on context. What _matters_ is learning about reality, and finding concepts and representations that make reality _less_ confusing rather than _more_ confusing. If, after thousands of words of argument, someone _still_ thinks a concept that I find useful should not be used because I can't provide explicit necessary-and-sufficient conditions to classify a series of ever-more obscure and contrived edge cases and "gotcha"s—or because [it hurts someone's feelings](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/)—then I guess my response is to shrug and say, "Okay, whatever, I'll continue modeling reality using my concepts, and I wish you good luck trying to do the same with yours."
 


@@ -140,18 +142,24 @@ Economists have a name for this kind of situation. [Gresham's Law](https://en.wi
 
 _They will be lying_. In marketplaces governed by "trans American dollars _are_ American dollars" social norms, smart buyers will prefer to buy with defaced Canadian dollars, and smart sellers will try to find plausibly-deniable excuses to not accept them ("That'll be $5." "Here you go! A completely normal, definitely non-suspicious American $5 bill!" "_Ooh_, you know what, actually we _just_ sold out"), because everyone knows that when it comes time to interact with the larger banking system, the two types of dollars won't be regarded as being of equal value. Never doubting the value of other people's currency may be basic human decency, but if so, the market [interprets basic human decency as damage and routes around it](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore).
 
 
 _They will be lying_. In marketplaces governed by "trans American dollars _are_ American dollars" social norms, smart buyers will prefer to buy with defaced Canadian dollars, and smart sellers will try to find plausibly-deniable excuses to not accept them ("That'll be $5." "Here you go! A completely normal, definitely non-suspicious American $5 bill!" "_Ooh_, you know what, actually we _just_ sold out"), because everyone knows that when it comes time to interact with the larger banking system, the two types of dollars won't be regarded as being of equal value. Never doubting the value of other people's currency may be basic human decency, but if so, the market [interprets basic human decency as damage and routes around it](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore).
 

-Similarly, there seem to be increasingly large subsets of Society in which it's _incredibly rude_ to question someone's stated gender. But even if everyone _says_ "Trans women are women" and uses the right pronouns solely on the basis of self-reported self-identity with no questions asked and no one batting an eye, it's not clear that this constitutes successfully entering a "fully consensual gender" regime insofar as people following their own self-interest are likely to systematically make _decisions_ that treat non-well-passing trans women as if they were men, even if no one would dream of being so rude as to _admit out loud_ that that's what they're doing.
+Similarly, there seem to be increasingly large subsets of Society in which it's _incredibly rude_ to question someone's stated gender. But even if everyone _says_ "Trans women are women" and uses the right pronouns solely on the basis of self-reported self-identity with no questions asked and no one batting an eye, it's not clear that this constitutes successfully entering a "fully consensual gender" regime insofar as people following their own self-interest are likely to systematically make _decisions_ that treat non-well-passing trans women as if they were something more like men, even if no one would dream of being so rude as to _admit out loud_ that that's what they're doing.

 
 

-And how are you going to stop them? Every freedom-to implies the lack of a freedom-from somewhere else, and _vice versa_: as the cliché goes, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. "Fully consensual gender" _sounds_ like a good idea when you phrase it like that: what kind of monster could possibly be against consent, or for non-consent?
+And how are you going to stop them? Every freedom-to implies the lack of a freedom-from somewhere else, and _vice versa_: as the cliché goes, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. "Fully consensual gender" _sounds_ like a good idea when you _phrase_ it like that: what kind of monster could possibly be against consent, or for non-consent?

 
 But the word "consent" is usually used in contexts where an overwhelming asymmetry of interests makes us want to resolve conflicts in a particular direction every time: when we say that all sex should be consensual, we mean that a person's right to bodily autonomy _always_ takes precedence over someone else's mere horniness. Even pointing out that this is (technically, like everything else) a trade-off [feels creepy](/papers/tetlock_et_al-psychology_of_the_unthinkable.pdf).
 
 
 But the word "consent" is usually used in contexts where an overwhelming asymmetry of interests makes us want to resolve conflicts in a particular direction every time: when we say that all sex should be consensual, we mean that a person's right to bodily autonomy _always_ takes precedence over someone else's mere horniness. Even pointing out that this is (technically, like everything else) a trade-off [feels creepy](/papers/tetlock_et_al-psychology_of_the_unthinkable.pdf).
 

-Categorization really doesn't seem like this. If there's a conflict between one person's desire to be modeled as belonging to a particular gender and someone else's perception that they should be categorized as a different gender, then resolving the conflict in the direction of "consent of the modeled" would seem to imply the right to mind control.
+Categorization really doesn't seem like this. If there's a conflict between one person's desire to be modeled as belonging to a particular gender and someone else's perception that the person is more accurately modeled as belonging to a different gender, then what would it mean to resolve the conflict in the direction of "consent of the modeled"?
+
+Ozy gives a list of predictions you can make about someone on the basis of social gender, as distinct from sex, apparently meant to demonstrate the usefulness of the former concept. But a lot of the individual list items seem either superficial ("Whether they wear dresses, skirts, or makeup"—surely we don't want to go for "gender as clothing", do we??), or tied to other people's _perceptions_ of sex.[ref]The harrassment and expected-sacrifices example in particular are what radical feminists would call sex-based oppression.[/ref] [ref]Friend of the blog Ray Blanchard [recently proposed on Twitter](https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/1054743819206434816) that the term "subjective sex" might be more useful than "gender".[/ref]
+
+Take the "How many messages they get on a dating site" item. The _reason_ men send lots of messages to women on dating sites is because they want to date people with vaginas and female secondary sex characteristics, maybe father children with them, _&c._. [TODO: footnote about how this is predicted by evopsych]
+
+If one were to say to such a man, "Ah, I see you're sending lots of messages to women, by which I mean people who self-identify as women, in accordance with the utilitarian-desirable social policy of fully-consensual gender. Therefore, you should also send messages to these non-op trans women who aren't on HRT," I think he would reply "How _dumb_ do you think I am?"

 
 

-I know that sounds like a straw person (doesn't pass the intellectual Turing test; no one is actually _for_ "mind control" described as such)
+[TODO: how to react to the motivated misunderstanding, "Oh, well some cis women are also unattractive"]

 
 

-[TODO: no doubt the this implication would be disclaimed—oh, we don't want to control your thought; we just want to control your speech]
+[TODO: this isn't necessarily trans-exclusionary: a lot of guys would be happy to date post-HRT trans women, but that just gets us back to passing like I was trying to say thousands to words ago, not "fully consensual gender"]

 
 

-[is "money" mind control? No, there are incentives to play along with the socially enforced belief—but they don't apply in this case]
+I happily concede that fully consensual gender is a _coherent_ position. That doesn't make it feasible. _How_ are you going to maintain that social equilibrium without it being immediately destroyed by normal people who have eyes and don't care about clever philosophical definition-hacking games the way that readers of this blog do?

 
 

-Ozy gives a list of predictions you can make about someone on the basis of social gender, as distinct from sex, apparently meant to demonstrate the usefulness of the former concept. But a lot of the individual list items seem either superficial ("Whether they wear dresses, skirts, or makeup"—surely we don't want to go for "gender as clothing", do we??), or tied to other people's _perceptions_ of sex.[ref]The harrassment and expected-sacrifices example in particular are what radical feminists would call sex-based oppression.[/ref] [ref]Friend of the blog Ray Blanchard [recently proposed on Twitter](https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/1054743819206434816) that the term "subjective sex" might be more useful than "gender".[/ref] Take "How many messages they get on a dating site"—but the _reason_ men send lots of messages to women on dating sites is because they want to date people with vaginas and female secondary sex characteristics, and maybe have children with them.
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+[TODO: it's possible that I'm underestimating the social-engineering feats that might be possible—it's kind of surprising that fiat money equilibria aren't also destroyed by a "How dumb do you think we are?" faction—but fiat money equilibria evolved over a long time for complicated reasons; you need more of an actual argument than "maybe things would be better"]

diff --git a/notes/i-mean-yes-notes.md b/notes/i-mean-yes-notes.md
index 570e1b4..bbec328 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/i-mean-yes-notes.md
+++ b/notes/i-mean-yes-notes.md
@@ -91,3 +91,5 @@ But even if it's _possible_ to scrupulously rephrase any individual sentence to
 [TODO: kicker paragraph]
 
 Say something about female primates defending their kin against male aggression, about males competing to control access to females
 [TODO: kicker paragraph]
 
 Say something about female primates defending their kin against male aggression, about males competing to control access to females

+
+a male friend of the blog went through a period of dissassociating from his sexuality
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