From 16c96b290e1c87ce54c55b1da16776d6a634ef28 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2021 20:40:23 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] schedule "You Are Right and I Was Wrong" --- ...right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md | 5 ++--- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) rename content/{drafts => 2021}/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md (82%) diff --git a/content/drafts/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md b/content/2021/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md similarity index 82% rename from content/drafts/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md rename to content/2021/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md index fc0d532..1b471ae 100644 --- a/content/drafts/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md +++ b/content/2021/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md @@ -2,7 +2,6 @@ Title: You Are Right and I Was Wrong: Reply to Tailcalled on Causality Date: 2021-02-01 05:00 Category: commentary Tags: causality, Tailcalled, autogynephilia, two-type taxonomy -Status: draft Friend of the blog [Tailcalled responds to](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/causality-is-essential-reply-to-mtsw-on-autogynephilia/) my [2016 response to Ozy on autogynephilia](/2016/Oct/reply-to-ozy-on-agp/)! @@ -12,8 +11,8 @@ I was, and am, intensely skeptical that these are really three separate things. But as Tailcalled's response points out, this is just wrong! Different causal theories can generate the same correlations in a particular set of observations, while still making meaningfully and drastically different claims about the world. -As an illustrative example, suppose you observe that among professional athletes in Chicago, [basketball players wear red jerseys](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/185700267974/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2018-2019), but [gridiron football players wear navy-blue jerseys](http://www.gridiron-uniforms.com/GUD/images/2020_Chicago.png). Reifying these observations into a two-type "basketball/red" and "football/blue" taxonomy of professional athletes is not the _worst_ theory—it does [compress the length of the message needed to describe your observations](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length)—but it's definitely not a _good_ one, largely because it's so _fragile_: it completely breaks down the moment you leave Chicago, or [the Bulls unveil a new jersey](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/635656121361809408/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2020-2021), or you just look at what the _visiting_ team is wearing. And it's fragile _because_ it doesn't reflect what's "really going on" in the world: in fact, what color shirt you're wearing doesn't causally affect what games you can play, and _vice versa_. +As an illustrative example, suppose you observe that among professional athletes in Chicago, [basketball players wear red jerseys](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/185700267974/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2018-2019), but [gridiron football players wear navy-blue jerseys](http://www.gridiron-uniforms.com/GUD/images/2020_Chicago.png). Reifying these observations into a two-type "basketball/red" and "football/blue" taxonomy of professional athletes is perhaps not the _worst_ theory—it does [compress the length of the message needed to describe your observations](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length)—but it's definitely not a _good_ one, largely because it's so _fragile_: it completely breaks down the moment you leave Chicago, or [the Bulls unveil a new jersey](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/635656121361809408/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2020-2021), or you just look at what the _visiting_ team is wearing. And it's fragile _because_ it doesn't reflect what's "really going on" in the world: in fact, what color shirt you're wearing doesn't causally affect what games you can play, and _vice versa_. -In the case of sex dysphoria in [developmental males](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/), I think the documented correlations between age-of-onset, sexual orientation, history of female embodiment fantasies, _&c._, _do_ reflect distinct taxons in what's really going on in the world. (If I only get one table to showcase the correlational data, I'll pick [Table IV](/images/lawrence_table_vi.png) from Anne Lawrence's ["Sexuality Before and After Male-to-Female Sex Reassignment Surgery"](/papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf).) I think alternative theories that try to explain the same bimodality in the data, such as [Veale, Clarke, and Lomax's identity defense model](/papers/veale-clarke-lomax-identity-defense_model_of_gender-variance_development.pdf) (which chalks up the difference to whether or not defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity) are a stretch. +In the case of sex dysphoria in [developmental males](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/), I think the documented correlations between age-of-onset, sexual orientation, history of female embodiment fantasies, _&c._, _do_ reflect distinct taxons in what's really going on in the world. (If I only get one table to showcase the correlational data, I'll pick [Table VI](/images/lawrence_table_vi.png) from Anne Lawrence's ["Sexuality Before and After Male-to-Female Sex Reassignment Surgery"](/papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf).) I think alternative theories that try to explain the same bimodality in the data, such as [Veale, Clarke, and Lomax's identity defense model](/papers/veale-clarke-lomax-identity-defense_model_of_gender-variance_development.pdf) (which chalks up the difference to whether or not defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity) are a stretch. But I'm making that scientific judgment between theories based on my own parsimony intuitions applied to everything I've read and seen; _convincing_ someone else who doesn't already think the same the way is, and should be, a _lot_ more work. Trying to get away with "You agree to the bimodality, therefore you must agree to the taxonomy" would be both _lazy_ and _wrong_, and I thank Tailcalled for his vigilance. -- 2.17.1