From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2021 23:17:53 +0000 (-0800) Subject: floundering with "Sexual Dimorphism" ... X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=24e6e476327ba9c86d1a22996c411eff07050b7e floundering with "Sexual Dimorphism" ... Why am I having so much trouble today?—running out of steam? I don't feel motivated to carefully summarize the Will Powers affair?—maybe that section is long enough. (I need to say more than I have previously about why I think everyone is lying about AGP, but maybe this post doesn't have to be super-exhaustive?) The function of a blog is to be able to split writing into smaller chunks that can be published in smaller units, rather than having to get a whole book right on the first try; a mini-book-like megapost might be making a bad trade-off. Pull it together. --- diff --git a/content/drafts/point-man.md b/content/drafts/point-man.md index 7a96826..da0ef46 100644 --- a/content/drafts/point-man.md +++ b/content/drafts/point-man.md @@ -48,9 +48,9 @@ The legal changes required for the twentieth-century doctors' innovation was spo But when the source of a coalition's power rests on the loyalty of the victims it protects, and of their allies, then those seeking to win more power for the coalition have an incentive to both create more victims, and distinguish loyal from fair-weather allies. -Aggressively marketing "being trans" as an atomic identity that everyone needs to celebrate on pain of being responsible for someone's suicide, serves both functions: a lot of autogynephilic young men and [quirky but impressionable teenage girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_onset_gender_dysphoria_controversy) get recruited to the victimhood coalition (who might have otherwise gotten married and joined the power base of the hegemonic social order), _and_ everyone who cares about having a public concept of biological sex gets "outed" as an insufficiently-loyal ally (who can't free-ride off the coalition's successes without contributing). [It works even better if](https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/09/real-meaning-of-diversity/) any group that doesn't have the necessary quota of trans people is marked for political attack on the grounds of being insufficiently inclusive. +Aggressively marketing "being trans" as an atomic identity that [everyone needs to celebrate on pain of being responsible for someone's suicide](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/), serves both functions: a lot of autogynephilic young men and [quirky but impressionable teenage girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_onset_gender_dysphoria_controversy) get recruited to the victimhood coalition (who might have otherwise gotten married and joined the power base of the hegemonic social order), _and_ everyone who cares about having a public concept of biological sex gets "outed" as an insufficiently-loyal ally (who can't free-ride off the coalition's successes without contributing). [It works even better if](https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/09/real-meaning-of-diversity/) any group that doesn't have the necessary quota of trans people is marked for political attack on the grounds of being insufficiently inclusive. -Again, [no individual mastermind is required](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/) for [the collective outcome to play out this way](/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/). Being proud of a political group identity and seeking to promote its strength and power is _normal_. Being suspicious of those who refuse to pay the cost of signaling loyalty to the group is _normal_. Wanting to change sex is—not "normal" exactly, but a _reasonably common and harmless fantasy_ (the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought) that a lot of people have without being in the homosexual extreme-right-tail-of-sex-atypical-behavior taxon that sex reassignment was invented for. ([A 1994 study found that](/papers/hsu_et_al-gender_differences_in_sexual_fantasy.pdf) among college students, 5.6% of males and 13.2% of females had fantasized about being the opposite sex.) +Again, no individual mastermind is required for [the collective outcome to play out this way](/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/). Being proud of a political group identity and seeking to promote its strength and power is _normal_. Being suspicious of those who refuse to pay the cost of signaling loyalty to the group is _normal_. Wanting to change sex is—not "normal" exactly, but a _reasonably common and harmless fantasy_ (the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought) that a lot of people have without being in the homosexual extreme-right-tail-of-sex-atypical-behavior taxon that sex reassignment was invented for. ([A 1994 study found that](/papers/hsu_et_al-gender_differences_in_sexual_fantasy.pdf) among college students, 5.6% of males and 13.2% of females had fantasized about being the opposite sex.) As a transhumanist, I believe that fantasies deserve to be fulfilled—but _actually_ fulfilled, fulfilled _for real_, not humored by everyone forcing everyone else to pretend in order to maintain the equilibrium in some idiot political game. 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 4f38c99..7234d97 100644 --- 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 @@ -480,9 +480,10 @@ Actually, lots. To arbitrarily pick one particularly vivid exhibition, in April Certainly, 82% is not 100%! (But 82% is evidence for my claim that a _substantial majority_ of trans women under modern conditions in Western countries are essentially guys like me.) Certainly, you could argue that Reddit has a sampling bias such that poll results and karma scores from /r/MtF fail to match the distribution of opinion among real-world MtFs. But if you don't take the gender-identity story as a _axiom_ and [_actually look_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SA79JMXKWke32A3hG/original-seeing) at the _details_ of what people say and do, these kinds of observations are _not hard to find_. You could [fill an entire subreddit with them](https://archive.is/ezENv) (and then move it to [independent](https://ovarit.com/o/ItsAFetish/) [platforms](https://saidit.net/s/itsafetish/) when the original gets [banned for "promoting hate"](https://www.reddit.com/r/itsafetish/)). -[TODO: Freaky Friday, differentiating between "my type" and transition goals anecdotes—maybe cis people can be fooled into not knowing what that means, but _I know what that means_] +Reddit isn't "scientific" enough for you? Fine. The scientific literature says the same thing. [Blanchard 1985](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf): 73% of non-exclusively-androphilic transsexuals acknowledged some history of erotic cross-dressing. (Unfortunately, a lot of the classic studies specifically asked about cross-_dressing_, but the underlying desire isn't about clothes.) [Lawrence 2005](/papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf): of trans women who had female partners before sexual reassignment surgery, 90% reported a history of autogynephilic arousal. [Smith _et al._ 2005](/papers/smith_et_al-transsexual_subtypes_clinical_and_theoretical_significance.pdf): 64% of non-homosexual MtFs (excluding the "missing" and "N/A" responses) reported arousal while cross-dressing during adolescence. (A lot of the classic literature says "non-homosexual" -Reddit isn't "scientific" enough for you? Fine. The scientific literature says the same thing. [Blanchard 1985](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf): 73% of non-exclusively androphilic transsexuals acknowledged some history of erotic cross-dressing. (Unfortunately, a lot of the classic studies specifically asked about cross-_dressing_ but the underlying desire isn't about clothes.) [Lawrence 2005](/papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf): of trans women who had female partners before sexual reassignment surgery, 90% reported a history of autogynephilic arousal. [Smith _et al._ 2005](/papers/smith_et_al-transsexual_subtypes_clinical_and_theoretical_significance.pdf): 64% of non-homosexual MtFs (excluding the "missing" and "N/A" responses) reported arousal while cross-dressing during adolescence. [Nuttbrock _et al._ 2011](/papers/nuttbrock_et_al-a_further_assessment.pdf): lifetime prevalence of transvestic fetishism among non-homosexual MtFs was 69%. (For a more detailed literature review, see [Kay Brown's blog](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/) or the first two chapters of [Anne Lawrence's _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](https://surveyanon.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/men-trapped-in-mens-bodies_book.pdf).) + +[Nuttbrock _et al._ 2011](/papers/nuttbrock_et_al-a_further_assessment.pdf): lifetime prevalence of transvestic fetishism among non-homosexual MtFs was 69%. (For a more detailed literature review, see [Kay Brown's blog](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/) or the first two chapters of [Anne Lawrence's _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](https://surveyanon.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/men-trapped-in-mens-bodies_book.pdf).) Peer-reviewed scientific papers aren't enough for you? (They could be cherry-picked; there are lots of scientific journals, and no doubt a lot of bad science slips through the cracks of the review process.) Want something more indicative of a consensus among practitioners? Fine. The [_Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5) (the definitive taxonomic handbook of the American Psychiatric Association) [says the same thing](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/american-psychiatric-association-supports-the-two-type-transsexual-taxonomy/) in [its section on gender dysphoria](/papers/DSM-V-gender_dysphoria_section.pdf) ([ICD-10-CM codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10-CM) F64.1 and F64.2): @@ -490,10 +491,6 @@ Peer-reviewed scientific papers aren't enough for you? (They could be cherry-pic (Bolding mine.) -[TODO: another clinical perspective: Dr. Will Powers] - -[TODO: Hirchfield and Ellis] - Or consider Anne Vitale's ["The Gender Variant Phenomenon—A Developmental Review"](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm), which makes the _same_ observations as Blanchard-and-friends and arrives at essentially the _same_ two-type taxonomy of MtF, but dressed up in socially-desirable language— > As sexual maturity advances, Group Three, cloistered gender dysphoric boys, often combine excessive masturbation (one individual reported masturbating up to 5 and even 6 times a day) with an increase in secret cross-dressing activity to release anxiety. @@ -512,6 +509,8 @@ Or consider this passage from Julia Serano's _Whipping Girl_ (I know I [keep](/2 "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. +... this is just a sample. Do I need to keep going though the mountains of public testimony? Is this post long enough? + 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). 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? @@ -572,7 +571,7 @@ The "discourse algorithm" (the collective generalization of "cognitive algorithm Or at least—even if there are things we can't talk about in public for consequentialist reasons and there's nothing to be done about it, you would hope that the censorship wouldn't distort our beliefs about the things we _can_ talk about (like, say, the role of Bayesian reasoning in the philosophy of language). Yudkowsky had written about the [dark side epistemology](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XTWkjCJScy2GFAgDt/dark-side-epistemology) and [contagious lies](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-truths-contagious-lies): trying to protect a false belief doesn't just mean being wrong about that one thing, it also gives you, on the object level, an incentive to be wrong about anything that would _imply_ the falsity of the protected belief—and, on the meta level, an incentive to be wrong _about epistemology itself_, about how "implying" and "falsity" work. -So, a striking thing about my series of increasingly frustrating private conversations and subsequent public Facebook meltdown (the stress from which soon landed me in psychiatric jail, but that's [another](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [story](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/)) was the tendency for some threads of conversation to get _derailed_ on some variation of, "Well, the word _woman_ doesn't necessarily mean that," often with a link to ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), a 2014 blog post by Scott Alexander, the _second_ most prominent writer in our robot cult. +So, a striking thing about my series of increasingly frustrating private conversations and subsequent public Facebook meltdown (the stress from which soon landed me in psychiatric jail, but that's [another](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [story](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/)) was the tendency for some threads of conversation to get _derailed_ on some variation of, "Well, the word _woman_ doesn't necessarily mean that," often with a link to ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), a 2014 post by Scott Alexander, the _second_ most prominent writer in our robot cult. So, this _really_ wasn't what I was trying to talk about; _I_ thought I was trying to talk about autogynephilia as an _empirical_ theory in psychology, the truth or falsity of which obviously cannot be altered by changing the meanings of words. Psychology is a complicated empirical science: no matter how "obvious" I might think something is, I have to admit that I could be wrong—not just as a formal profession of modesty, but _actually_ wrong in the real world. @@ -626,11 +625,9 @@ If you want to teach people about the philosophy of language, you should want to _Was_ it a "political" act for me to write about the cognitive function of categorization on the robot-cult blog with non-gender examples, when gender was secretly ("secretly") my _motivating_ example? In some sense, I guess? But if so, the thing you have to realize is— -_Everyone else shot first_. That's not just my subjective perspective; the timestamps back me up here: my ["... To Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) (February 2018) was a _response to_ Alexander's ["... Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/) (November 2014). My philosophy-of-language work on the robot-cult blog (April 2019–January 2021) was (stealthily) _in response to_ Yudkowsky's November 2018 Twitter thread. When I started trying to talk about autogynephilia with all my robot cult friends in 2016, I _did not expect_ to get dragged into a multi-year philosophy-of-language crusade! That was just _one branch_ of the argument-tree that, once begun, I thought should be easy to _definitively settle in public_ (within our robot cult, whatever the _general_ public thinks). +_Everyone else shot first_. The timestamps back me up here: my ["... To Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) (February 2018) was a _response to_ Alexander's ["... Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/) (November 2014). My philosophy-of-language work on the robot-cult blog (April 2019–January 2021) was (stealthily) _in response to_ Yudkowsky's November 2018 Twitter thread. When I started trying to talk about autogynephilia with all my robot cult friends in 2016, I _did not expect_ to get dragged into a multi-year philosophy-of-language crusade! That was just _one branch_ of the argument-tree that, once begun, I thought should be easy to _definitively settle in public_ (within our robot cult, whatever the _general_ public thinks). -I guess by now the branch is as close to settled as it's going to get? Alexander ended up [adding an edit note to the end of "... Not Man to the Categories" in December 2019](https://archive.is/1a4zV#selection-805.0-817.1), and Yudkowsky would [go on to clarify his position on the philosophy of language in September 2020](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10158853851009228). So, that's nice. - -[TODO: also, Yudkowsky's Feb. 2021 Facebook post] +I guess by now the branch is as close to settled as it's going to get? Alexander ended up [adding an edit note to the end of "... Not Man to the Categories" in December 2019](https://archive.is/1a4zV#selection-805.0-817.1), and Yudkowsky would go on to clarify his position on the philosophy of language in Facebook posts of [September 2020](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10158853851009228) and [February 2021](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228). So, that's nice. [TODO: although I think even with the note, in practice, people are going to keep citing "... Not Man for the Categories" in a way that doesn't understand how the note undermines the main point] @@ -650,7 +647,7 @@ If this "rationality" stuff is useful for _anything at all_, you would _expect_ In order to get the _right answer_ to that policy question (whatever the right answer turns out to be), you need to _at minimum_ be able to get the _right answer_ on related fact-questions like "Is late-onset gender dysphoria in males an intersex condition?" (answer: no) and related philosophy-questions like "Can we arbitrarily redefine words such as 'woman' without adverse effects on our cognition?" (answer: no). -At the cost of _wasting three years of my life_, we _did_ manage to get the philosophy question right! Again, that's nice. But compared to the [Sequences-era dreams of changing the world](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YdcF6WbBmJhaaDqoD/the-craft-and-the-community), it's too little, too slow, too late. If our public discourse is going to be this aggressively optimized for _tricking me into cutting my dick off_ (independently of the empirical cost–benefit trade-off determining whether or not I should cut my dick off), that kills the whole project for me. I don't think I'm setting [my price for joining](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining) particularly high here? +At the cost of _wasting three years of my life_, we _did_ manage to get the philosophy question mostly right! Again, that's nice. But compared to the [Sequences-era dreams of changing the world](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YdcF6WbBmJhaaDqoD/the-craft-and-the-community), it's too little, too slow, too late. If our public discourse is going to be this aggressively optimized for _tricking me into cutting my dick off_ (independently of the empirical cost–benefit trade-off determining whether or not I should cut my dick off), that kills the whole project for me. I don't think I'm setting [my price for joining](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining) particularly high here? Someone asked me: "Wouldn't it be embarrassing if the community solved Friendly AI and went down in history as the people who created Utopia forever, and you had rejected it because of gender stuff?" @@ -724,15 +721,19 @@ _It was a compliment!_ It seems overwhelmingly likely that that poor receptionis I want a shared cultural understanding that the _correct_ way to ameliorate the genuine sadness of people not being perceived the way they prefer is _better and cheaper facial feminization surgery_, not _emotionally blackmailing people out of their ability to report what they see_. -In a world where surgery is expensive, but people desperately want to change sex, there's an incentive gradient in the direction of re-engineering the culture to bind our shared concept of "gender" (the social perception of sex) onto things like [ornamental clothing](http://thetranswidow.com/2021/02/18/womens-clothing-is-always-drag-even-on-women/) that are easier to change than secondary sex characteristics. +In a world where surgery is expensive, but people desperately want to change sex, there's an incentive gradient in the direction of re-engineering the culture to bind our shared concept of "gender" onto things like [ornamental clothing](http://thetranswidow.com/2021/02/18/womens-clothing-is-always-drag-even-on-women/) that are easier to change than secondary sex characteristics. -But [_the utility function is not up for grabs._](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ddcsdA2c2XpNpE5x/newcomb-s-problem-and-regret-of-rationality) I don't _want_ to reliniqush my ability to notice what women's faces look like, even if that means noticing that mine isn't, even if that seems vaguely disappointing due to an idiosyncracy in my socio-sexual development; I don't want people to have to _doublethink around their perceptions of me_. +But [_the utility function is not up for grabs._](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ddcsdA2c2XpNpE5x/newcomb-s-problem-and-regret-of-rationality) I don't _want_ to reliniqush my ability to notice what women's faces look like, even if that means noticing that mine isn't, even if that seems vaguely disappointing due to an idiosyncracy in my psychosexual development; I don't want people to have to _doublethink around their perceptions of me_. If I sound angry, it's because I actually _do_ feel a lot of anger, but I wish I knew how to more reliably convey its target. Some trans people who see my writing tend to assume I'm self-hating, suffering from false consciousness, that my pious appeals to objectivity and reason are [just a facade](https://sinceriously.fyi/false-faces/) concealing my collaboration with a cissexist social order, that I'm in cowardly thrall to scapegoating instincts: "I'm one of the good, compliant ones—not one of those weird bad trans people who will demand their rights! _They're_ the witches, not me; burn them, not me!" I have [no grounds to fault anyone for not taking my self-report as unquestionable](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/)—the urge to scapegoat and submit to the dominant player is definitely a thing—but I really think this is reading me wrong? -I'm not at war with trans _people_—open, creative people who are just like me—I want to believe that even the natal females are "just like me" in some relevant abstract sense—but who read different books in a different order. I'm at war with an _ideology_ which I think is making a lot of philosophical and empirical claims that I think are _false_. +I'm not at war with trans _people_—open, creative people who are just like me—I want to believe that even the natal females are "just like me" in some relevant abstract sense—but who read different books in a different order. I'm at war with an _ideology_ + +[TODO: ideology] + +an ideology which I think is making a lot of philosophical and empirical claims that I think are _false_. Maybe that's not particularly reassuring, if people tend to identify with their ideology? (As I used to—as I _still_ do, even if my [revised ideology is much more meta](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/dreaming-of-political-bayescraft/).) When the prototypical Christian says "Hate the sin, love the sinner", does anyone actually buy it? diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt index 602411c..dbbc992 100644 --- a/notes/post_ideas.txt +++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt @@ -1,7 +1,6 @@ _ Point Man _ Link: "See Color" - Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences, in Relation to -_ E.Y. as case study on unconscious-lying and self-report 2021+ significant posts— _ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data (April?) @@ -15,6 +14,9 @@ _ Overlapping Distributions and Cancellable Stereotypes _ importance of getting the direction of causality right _ Multi-Level Moloch; Or, Technically, the Holocaust Was a Coordination Success +_ E.Y. as case study on unconscious-lying and self-report ("their verbal theories contradict their own datapoints" https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159408250519228?comment_id=10159411435619228&reply_comment_id=10159411567794228) + + philosophy-of-language replies, Marketing channels— diff --git a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md index 1ce38f3..70de157 100644 --- a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md +++ b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md @@ -1,19 +1,13 @@ -Sections I should be able to easily make progress-per-minute on— -* Dr. Will Powers - -Or consider Dr. Will Powers, [whose presentation on trans healthcare](https://powersfamilymedicine.com/s/Healthcare-of-the-Transgender-Patient-V60.pptx) was [praised by people from my robot cult on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/strohl89/posts/10157396578969598). I was disappointed by the the brief mention of autogynephilia [(on slide 29 of the v.6.0 presentation)](/images/powers_slide_on_agp.png): Powers says Blanchard has been disproven, but that autogynephilia does exist _very_ rarely: "[i]n my now almost 7 years of treating transgender patients, I have seen this paraphilia only once in a person requesting MtF therapy", Powers says, going on to describe the particularly delusional patient (who wanted "the largest breasts possible", and claimed he needed to become a woman to please a Russian Instagram model whom he implausibly claimed to be his girlfriend) whom he denied informed-consent treatment. - -You might ask, why am I citing Will Powers in support of my thesis, when Powers's testimony seems to contradict it?—only one case in seven years, he says. - -Because—surprise! _Powers was lying._ - +Method to finish— +_ fill in all the TODOs in the main text to get a gapless draft +_ work in the remaining points to work in +_ edit and cut * Moral Error and Moral Disagreement - * wipe culturally defined values: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/BkkwXtaTf5LvbA6HB/moral-error-and-moral-disagreement (this might have to go after Failed-Utopia #4-2) * 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." same thing with an ideology; http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/dreaming-of-political-bayescraft/ * the moment in October 2016 when I switched sides http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/ http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/brand-rust/ @@ -22,7 +16,6 @@ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jNAAZ9XNyt82CXosr/mirrors-and-paintings - * Scott Alexander Understands Language ----- @@ -34,6 +27,7 @@ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ndtb22KYBxpBsagpj/eliezer-yudkowsky-facts?commen Never go in against Eliezer Yudkowsky when anything is on the line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_facts +cooperate with men who cooperate with women Terminology/vocab to explain before use— * Singularity/paperclip/Methods/existential risk @@ -63,6 +57,8 @@ like the time I snuck a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Auto [AGP is used as a weapon, but I think it's an actual claim] +[TODO: Freaky Friday, differentiating between "my type" and transition goals anecdotes—maybe cis people can be fooled into not knowing what that means, but _I know what that means_] + https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/ @@ -76,6 +72,8 @@ What happens when every sensitive bookish male who thinks [it might be cool to b 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_. + + * EY was right about "men need to think about themselves _as men_" (find cite) * Superhappies empathic inference for not wanting to believe girls were different @@ -99,10 +97,10 @@ nothing left to lose https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/autogynephilia-is-vaguely-defined/ -https://carcinisation.com/2015/06/03/the-memetic-commons/ - ----- +https://carcinisation.com/2015/06/03/the-memetic-commons/ + "never advocate" https://graymirror.substack.com/p/glasnost-and-perestroika it's that I want culture to innovate in the direction of "achieving godlike understanding of objective reality and optimizing the hell out of it" rather than "playing mind games on each other to make it artificially harder to notice that we don't actually live in a Total Morphological Freedom tech regime." @@ -129,8 +127,6 @@ no safe defense https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wustx45CPL5rZenuo/no-safe-defens https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/r3NHPD3dLFNk9QE2Y/search-versus-design-1 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JBFHzfPkXHB2XfDGj/evolution-of-modularity -"Prenatal testosterone exposure is related to sexually dimorphic facial morphology in adulthood" -https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.1351 the [Sara Bareilles tune I chose as the breakup song](https://genius.com/Sara-bareilles-gonna-get-over-you-lyrics) is probably etched deeper into my auditory cortex than my mother's voice @@ -421,6 +417,7 @@ better than pretending not to have a theory but let me start with the simple story first.) + (Where psychology is complicated enough such that there's much more to be said about what , and what better approximations would look like, but simple theories that [explain a lot of our observations](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/predictions-made-by-blanchards-typology/) are .) Tail's criticism of the draft— @@ -459,7 +456,7 @@ EGS?? > First, it is not enough to learn something, and tell the world about it, to get the world to believe it. Not even if you can offer clear and solid evidence, and explain it so well that a child could understand. You need to instead convince each person in your audience that the other people who they see as their key audiences will soon be willing to endorse what you have learned. https://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/12/social-proof-but-of-what.html -cooperate with men who cooperate with women + Cross-gender identity is a virtually sustained or intermittently occurring wishful fantasy about being a person of the opposite sex.” Freund, K., Steiner, B.W. & Chan, S. Two types of cross-gender identity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 11, 49–63 (1982). DOI: 10.1007/BF01541365 @@ -487,3 +484,20 @@ I'm worried about the failure mode where bright young minds [lured in](http://be https://twitter.com/caraesten/status/1092472430465929216 > damn one extremely bad way to start my day is having the receptionist at slack say I look like a male celebrity > I'm so mad. wow. like. I look like this right now, how could anyone ever think that was an okay thing to say??? + +* Dr. Will Powers + +[TODO: another clinical perspective: Dr. Will Powers] + +Or consider Dr. Will Powers, [whose presentation on trans healthcare](https://powersfamilymedicine.com/s/Healthcare-of-the-Transgender-Patient-V60.pptx) was [praised by people from my robot cult on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/strohl89/posts/10157396578969598). I was disappointed by the the brief mention of autogynephilia [(on slide 29 of the v.6.0 presentation)](/images/powers_slide_on_agp.png): Powers says Blanchard has been disproven, but that autogynephilia does exist _very_ rarely: "[i]n my now almost 7 years of treating transgender patients, I have seen this paraphilia only once in a person requesting MtF therapy", Powers says, going on to describe the particularly delusional patient (who wanted "the largest breasts possible", and claimed he needed to become a woman to please a Russian Instagram model whom he implausibly claimed to be his girlfriend) whom he denied informed-consent treatment. + +You might ask, why am I citing Will Powers in support of my thesis, when Powers's testimony seems to contradict it? Only one case in seven years, he says. + +I cite it because—surprise! _Powers was lying._ [In a November 2020 post to his own subreddit, he opens up](https://www.reddit.com/r/DrWillPowers/comments/jx9io9/my_official_post_on_my_personal_opinion_on/): + +> Every time I try and speak on this, I get attacked. People discredit what I have to say, call it harmful, and hateful. [...] I've previously stated I had one of these in my practice. I stated that, because I didn't want to push the narrative that it was common because I get literally eviscerated every time I try and talk about it. In reality, I see it fairly often. Almost once a month. Probably at least 10 times a year. [...] Continuing to lie about it and act like it isn't happening is a disservice to transgender people as a whole. + +You might think, + +This comment is really something— +https://www.reddit.com/r/DrWillPowers/comments/jxh3mz/in_this_thread_help_me_and_this_community_come_up/gd0mytr/