"Dimorphism": incohate refinement of ending

diff --git a/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md b/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md
index 21c3272..b5067eb 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md
+++ b/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md
@@ -240,3 +240,5 @@ Anne Lawrence described autogynephiles as ["men who love women and want to becom
 Normal straight men also have positive-valence thoughts about women when they're not immediately horny.
 
 * The lie will rot, maybe ppl will be honest after the convention has set in??
 Normal straight men also have positive-valence thoughts about women when they're not immediately horny.
 
 * The lie will rot, maybe ppl will be honest after the convention has set in??

+
+Robert Heinlein

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 3bbc60d..211e437 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
@@ -260,6 +260,8 @@ I think everything is a system ... because I'm male??
 
 I could _assert_ that it's all down to socialization and stereotyping and self-fulfilling prophecies—and I know that _some_ of it is. (Self-fulfilling prophecies [are coordination equilibria](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/).) But I still want to speculate that the nature of my X factor—the things about my personality that let me write the _specific_ things I do even though I'm [objectively not that smart](/images/wisc-iii_result.jpg) compared to some of my robot-cult friends—is a pattern of mental illness that could realistically only occur in males. (Yudkowsky: ["It seems to me that male teenagers especially have something like a _higher cognitive temperature_, an ability to wander into strange places both good and bad."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xsyG7PkMekHud2DMK/of-gender-and-rationality))
 
 
 I could _assert_ that it's all down to socialization and stereotyping and self-fulfilling prophecies—and I know that _some_ of it is. (Self-fulfilling prophecies [are coordination equilibria](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/).) But I still want to speculate that the nature of my X factor—the things about my personality that let me write the _specific_ things I do even though I'm [objectively not that smart](/images/wisc-iii_result.jpg) compared to some of my robot-cult friends—is a pattern of mental illness that could realistically only occur in males. (Yudkowsky: ["It seems to me that male teenagers especially have something like a _higher cognitive temperature_, an ability to wander into strange places both good and bad."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xsyG7PkMekHud2DMK/of-gender-and-rationality))
 

+I'm sure there are women with an analogous story to tell about the nature of their own uniqueness—analogous along _some_ dimensions, if not others—but it's not _my_ story to tell.
+

 I can _imagine_ that all the gaps will vanish after the revolution. I can imagine it, but I can no longer _assert it with a straight face_ because _I've read the literature_ and can tell you several observations about chimps and [congenital adrenal hyperplasia](/images/cah_diffs_table.png) that make that seem _relatively unlikely_.
 
 I was once told by a very smart friend (who, unlike me, is not a religious fantatic), "Boys like games with challenges and points; girls like games with characters and stories."
 I can _imagine_ that all the gaps will vanish after the revolution. I can imagine it, but I can no longer _assert it with a straight face_ because _I've read the literature_ and can tell you several observations about chimps and [congenital adrenal hyperplasia](/images/cah_diffs_table.png) that make that seem _relatively unlikely_.
 
 I was once told by a very smart friend (who, unlike me, is not a religious fantatic), "Boys like games with challenges and points; girls like games with characters and stories."


@@ -444,11 +446,15 @@ The thing about Sorites problems is that they're _incredibly boring_. The map is
 
 That's why defining your personal identity to get the answer you want is cheating. If the answer you wanted was actually _true_, you could just say so without needing to _want_ it.
 
 
 That's why defining your personal identity to get the answer you want is cheating. If the answer you wanted was actually _true_, you could just say so without needing to _want_ it.
 

-When [Phineas Gage's](/2017/Dec/interlude-xi/) friends [said he was "no longer Gage"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage) after the railroad accident, what they were trying to say was that interacting with post-accident Gage was _more relevantly similar_ to interacting with a stranger than it was to interacting with pre-accident Gage, even if Gage-the-physical-organism was contiguous along the whole strech of space time.
+When [Phineas Gage's](/2017/Dec/interlude-xi/) friends [said he was "no longer Gage"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage) after the railroad accident, what they were trying to say was that interacting with post-accident Gage was _more relevantly similar_ to interacting with a stranger than it was to interacting with pre-accident Gage, even if Gage-the-physical-organism was contiguous along the whole strech of spacetime.

 
 Same principle when Yudkowsky wrote, "If I fell asleep and woke up as a true woman [...] I don't think I'd call her 'me'". The claim is that psychological sex differences are large enough to violate the Lipschitz condition imposed by our _ordinary_ concept of personal identity. Maybe he was wrong, but if so, that cashes out as being wrong _about_ how similar women and men actually are (which in principle could be operationalized and precisely computed, even if _we_ don't know how to make it precise), _not_ whether we prefer the "call her me" or "don't call her me" conclusion and want to _retroactively redefine the meaning of the words in order to make the claim come out "true."_
 
 
 Same principle when Yudkowsky wrote, "If I fell asleep and woke up as a true woman [...] I don't think I'd call her 'me'". The claim is that psychological sex differences are large enough to violate the Lipschitz condition imposed by our _ordinary_ concept of personal identity. Maybe he was wrong, but if so, that cashes out as being wrong _about_ how similar women and men actually are (which in principle could be operationalized and precisely computed, even if _we_ don't know how to make it precise), _not_ whether we prefer the "call her me" or "don't call her me" conclusion and want to _retroactively redefine the meaning of the words in order to make the claim come out "true."_
 

-Do people ever really recover from being religious? I still endorse the underlying psychological motivation that makes me prefer the "call her me" conclusion, the _intention_ that made me think I could get away with defining it to be true. Now that I don't believe that anymore—now that I can't take for granted that actual women aren't a somewhat unfathomable Other onto me—my world hasn't collapsed in the way religious people [tend to fear](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3XgYbghWruBMrPTAL/leave-a-line-of-retreat) when their most precious belief is threatened. It just means I have to do [a little more intellectual work](https://arbital.greaterwrong.com/p/rescue_utility) to figure out what's actually right. [People can stand what is true, for we are already doing so.](https://www.readthesequences.com/You-Can-Face-Reality)
+Do people ever really recover from being religious? I still endorse the underlying psychological motivation that makes me prefer the "call her me" conclusion, the _intention_ that made me think I could get away with defining it to be true. Now that I don't believe that anymore—
+
+[...]
+
+[People can stand what is true, for we are already doing so.](https://www.readthesequences.com/You-Can-Face-Reality)

 
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diff --git a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
index 34dda78..17715d9 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
+++ b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
@@ -6,9 +6,9 @@ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vjmw8tW6wZAtNJMKo/which-parts-are-me
 
 --------
 
 
 --------
 

-While [the Sequence explaining Yudkowsky's metaethics](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/metaethics-sequence) was being published (which a lot of people, including me, didn't quite "get" at the time; a [later précis](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zqwWicCLNBSA5Ssmn/by-which-it-may-be-judged) was perhaps more successful), I was put off by the extent to which Yudkowsky seemed to want to ground the specification of value in [the evolved design of the human brain](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cSXZpvqpa9vbGGLtG/thou-art-godshatter), as if culturally-defined values were irrelevant, to be wiped away by [the extrapolation of what people _would_ want if they knew more, thought faster, _&c._](https://arbital.com/p/normative_extrapolated_volition/).
+While [the Sequence explaining Yudkowsky's metaethics](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/metaethics-sequence) was being published (which a lot of people, including me, didn't quite "get" at the time; I found a [later précis](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zqwWicCLNBSA5Ssmn/by-which-it-may-be-judged) easier to understand), I was put off by the extent to which Yudkowsky seemed to want to ground the specification of value in [the evolved design of the human brain](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cSXZpvqpa9vbGGLtG/thou-art-godshatter), as if culturally-defined values were irrelevant, to be wiped away by [the extrapolation of what people _would_ want if they knew more, thought faster, _&c._](https://arbital.com/p/normative_extrapolated_volition/).

 
 

-And the _reason_ I felt that way was because I was aware of how much of a historical anomaly my sacred ideological value of antisexism was. Contrast to Yudkowsky's [casual sex-realist speculation in the comment section](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/BkkwXtaTf5LvbA6HB/moral-error-and-moral-disagreement/comment/vHNejGa6cRxh6kdnE):
+And the _reason_ I felt that way was because I was aware of how much of a historical anomaly my sacred ideological value of antisexism was. Contrast to Yudkowsky's [casually "sexist" speculation in the comment section](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/BkkwXtaTf5LvbA6HB/moral-error-and-moral-disagreement/comment/vHNejGa6cRxh6kdnE):

 
 > If there are distinct categories of human transpersonal values, I would expect them to look like "male and female babies", "male children", "male adults", "female children", "female adults", "neurological damage 1", "neurological damage 2", not "Muslims vs. Christians!"
 
 
 > If there are distinct categories of human transpersonal values, I would expect them to look like "male and female babies", "male children", "male adults", "female children", "female adults", "neurological damage 1", "neurological damage 2", not "Muslims vs. Christians!"
 


@@ -16,31 +16,41 @@ You can see why this view would be unappealing to an ideologue eager to fight a
 
 Looking back—I do think I had a point that culturally-inculcated values won't completely wash out under extrapolation, but I think I was vastly underestimating the extent to which your current sacred ideology _can_ be shown to be meaningfully "wrong" with better information—and, by design of the extrapolation procedure, this _shouldn't_ be threatening.
 
 
 Looking back—I do think I had a point that culturally-inculcated values won't completely wash out under extrapolation, but I think I was vastly underestimating the extent to which your current sacred ideology _can_ be shown to be meaningfully "wrong" with better information—and, by design of the extrapolation procedure, this _shouldn't_ be threatening.
 

+Your morality doesn't have to converge with that of your genetic twin who was raised in a culture with a different ideology/religion—maybe culturally learned values from childhood get "frozen" after reasoning ability kicks in, such that I would never see eye-to-eye with my genetic analogue who was raised with (say) a traditional Muslim view of relations between the sexes, no matter how much we debates and no matter how many new facts we learned.

 
 

+At the same time, while reflecting on one's own values and how to refine them in response to new information new situations, the question of what your genetic analogue raised in a different culture would think is _relevant_ information.

 
 

+["Anyone who gives a part of themselves to a[n ideology] discovers a sense of beauty in it."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LRKXuxLrnxx3nSESv/should-ethicists-be-inside-or-outside-a-profession)

 
 
 
 

-Suppose it _is_ true that female adults and male adults have distinct transpersonal values. At the time, I found the prospect horrifying—but that just shows that the design of male transpersonal values _contains within it_ the potential (under appropriate cultural conditions) to be horrified by sex differences in transpersonal values.
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3XgYbghWruBMrPTAL/leave-a-line-of-retreat
+https://arbital.greaterwrong.com/p/rescue_utility

 
 
 
 

+[...]

 
 

-The thing to be committed to is not any potentially flawed object-level ideology, like antisexism or Christianity, but [the features of human psychology that make the object-level ideology _seem like a good idea_](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/dreaming-of-political-bayescraft/).

 
 

-If, naïvely, [I don't _want_ it to be the case that women are a different thing that I don't understand](/2019/Jan/interlude-xvi/), but that preference _itself_ arises out of 
+When I introspect on the _causes_ of my gender problems, I see three parents in the causal graph: autogynephilia, being a sensitive boy rather than a macho guy, and my committment to antisexist ideology (wanting to treat feminism as a religion, as a special case of egalitarianism as our state religion). 

 
 

+[...]

 
 

-------
+If I want to be aligned with women in the sense of AI alignment, and genuinely do right by them, how to accomplish that _depends on_ the actual facts of the matter about sex differences and similarities. 

 
 

+[...]

 
 

-When I introspect on the _causes_ of my gender problems, I see three parents in the causal graph: autogynephilia, being a sensitive boy rather than a macho guy, and my committment to antisexist ideology (wanting to treat feminism as a religion, as a special case of egalitarianism as our state religion). 
+(During the vicissitudes of [my 2017 psychotic episode](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/), [I wrote a note](/images/cooperate_note.jpg): "cooperate with men who cooperate with women [who] cooperate with men who cooperate with women who cooperate with men".)

 
 

--------
+[...]

 
 

-If I want to be aligned with women in the sense of AI alignment, and genuinely do right by them, how to accomplish that _depends on_ the actual facts of the matter about sex differences and similarities. 
+Suppose it _is_ true that female adults and male adults have distinct transpersonal values. At the time, I found the prospect horrifying—but that just shows that the design of male transpersonal values _contains within it_ the potential (under appropriate cultural conditions) to be horrified by sex differences in transpersonal values.

 
 

------
+If, naïvely, [I don't _want_ it to be the case that women are a different thing that I don't understand](/2019/Jan/interlude-xvi/), but that preference _itself_ arises out of [...]

 
 

-(During the vicissitudes of [my 2017 psychotic episode](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/), [I wrote a note](/images/cooperate_note.jpg): "cooperate with men who cooperate with women [who] cooperate with men who cooperate with women who cooperate with men".)
+The thing to be committed to is not any potentially flawed object-level ideology, like antisexism or Christianity, but [the features of human psychology that make the object-level ideology _seem like a good idea_](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/dreaming-of-political-bayescraft/).
+
+-------
+
+Diary: never do drag

 
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@@ -525,5 +535,6 @@ A common trope in female transformation erotica (search for _tg caption blog_ if
 Intuitively, when I imagine how I want transformation technology to work, I imagine speaking accents "going with the body". Native speakers of a language are more likely to confuse homophones, because  https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/wAW4ENCSEHwYbrwtn/other-people-s-procedural-knowledge-gaps/comment/yTdJm7JjPJPynwS3a
 
 
 Intuitively, when I imagine how I want transformation technology to work, I imagine speaking accents "going with the body". Native speakers of a language are more likely to confuse homophones, because  https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/wAW4ENCSEHwYbrwtn/other-people-s-procedural-knowledge-gaps/comment/yTdJm7JjPJPynwS3a
 
 

-https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LRKXuxLrnxx3nSESv/should-ethicists-be-inside-or-outside-a-profession
-"Anyone who gives a part of themselves to a profession discovers a sense of beauty in it."
+
+
+, something you should be able to ["consider [...] open-mindedly and then steal only the good parts"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YicoiQurNBxSp7a65/is-clickbait-destroying-our-general-intelligence).
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