On the other hand, if gender dysphoria is caused by something else, that would tend to weigh against accepting transgender identity claims: however strongly felt trans people's _subjective_ sense of gender identity might be, if the mechanism underlying that feeling actually has nothing in particular in common with anything people of the identified-with sex feel, it becomes relatively more tempting to classify the subjective sense of gender identity as an illusion, rather than the joint in reality around which everyone needs to carve their gender categories.
-Of course, the phrasing _If gender dysphoria is caused by ..._ implies that we're considering _gender dysphoria_ as one category to reason about homogenously. But different people might want to transition for very different underlying psychological reasons. What categories we use may not be a question of simple fact that we can get wrong, but if, empirically, there happens to be a sufficiently robust statistical structure to the simple facts of the cases—if some people want to transition for reason _A_ and tend to have traits _W_ and _X_, but others want to transition for reason _B_ and have traits _Y_ and _Z_—then aspiring epistemic rationalists may find it useful to distinguish multiple, distinct psychological conditions that all happen to cause gender dysphoria as a symptom.
+Of course, the phrasing _If gender dysphoria is caused by ..._ implies that we're considering _gender dysphoria_ as one category to reason about homogeneously. But different people might want to transition for very different underlying psychological reasons. What categories we use may not be a question of simple fact that we can get wrong, but if, empirically, there happens to be a sufficiently robust statistical structure to the simple facts of the cases—if some people want to transition for reason _A_ and tend to have traits _W_ and _X_, but others want to transition for reason _B_ and have traits _Y_ and _Z_—then aspiring epistemic rationalists may find it useful to distinguish multiple, distinct psychological conditions that all happen to cause gender dysphoria as a symptom.
Analogously, in medicine, many different pathogens can cause the same symptoms (_e.g._, sneezing, or fever), but doctors care about distinguishing different illnesses by etiology, not just symptoms, because distinct physical mechanisms can give rise to distinct treatment decisions, if not immediately, then at least in principle. (For example, a bacterial illness will respond to antibiotics, but a viral one won't—or today's treatments might be equally effective against two different species of bacteria, but future drugs might work better on one or the other.)
-_As it happens_, (I claim that) the evidence that gender dysphoria is more than one thing is quite stong. For reasons of personal interest, I'm going to focus on the male-to-female case for the rest of this post. (An analysis of the female-to-male situation would be similar in many respects but different in others, and is left to the interested reader.)
+_As it happens_, (I claim that) the evidence that gender dysphoria is more than one thing is quite strong. For reasons of personal interest, I'm going to focus on the male-to-female case for the rest of this post. (An analysis of the female-to-male situation would be similar in many respects but different in others, and is left to the interested reader.)
A minority of male-to-female transsexuals exhibit lifelong sex-atypical behavior and interests, are attracted to men, and transition early in life. Essentially, these are physiological males whose psychology is so far outside of the male normal range that they find themselves more comfortable and socially successful living as women rather than as extremely effeminate gay men. This likely _is_ a brain-intersex condition: [along with non-gender-dysphoric gay men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation), they [have a statistical preponderance of older brothers](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-011-9777-6) which is [theorized to be due to the mother's immune system response to male fetuses affecting the development of later pregnancies](http://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/302).
To avoid getting mired in _unnecessary_ controversy, for the purposes of this post, I'd like to emphasize that it's possible to reject the hypothesis that autogynephilia is the _cause_ of the second type, while [still agreeing that](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/against-blanchardianism/) there observationally seem to be _at least_ two types of trans women, with the late-onset/non-exclusively-androphilic type or types being less overtly feminine and not sharing the etiology of the early-onset/androphilic type. (Personally, I _do_ think autogynephilia has a causal role, but that's another post.)
-Note that we _are_ supposing that the late-onset type or types is not an intersex condition—or at most, a very mild one: we could perhaps imagine a gender identity "switch" in the brain that can get flipped around (explaining the eventual need to transition) without much affecting most other sexually-dimorphic parts of the brain (explaining how transition could be delayed so long, and come as such a surprise to others).
+Note that we _are_ supposing that the late-onset type or types is not an intersex condition—or at most, a very mild one: we could perhaps imagine a gender identity "switch" in the brain that can get flipped around (explaining the eventual need to transition) without much affecting other sexually-dimorphic parts of the brain (explaining how transition could be delayed so long, and come as such a surprise to others).
This hypothesis is weaker than the autogynephilia theory, but still has implications for the ways in which transgender identity claims might or might not be validated by natural, prediction-motivated categorization schemes. If most trans women's traits are noticeably _not drawn from the female distribution_, then it becomes less practical to insist that others categorize them as women.
To this it might be objected that there are many different types of women. Clusters can internally have many subclusters: Pureto Rican women (or married women, or young women, or lesbians, _&c_.) don't have the _same_ distribution of traits as women as a whole, and yet are still women. Why should "trans" be different from any other adjective one might use to specify a subcategory of women?
-The problem is that—under the two-types hypothesis where gender dysphoria in non-exclusively-androphilic biological males is mostly not an intersex condition—most trans women aren't just not part of the female cluster in configuration space, displaced from it in some arbitrary direction. They're specifically part of the _male_ cluster, which people _already_ have a concept for.
+The problem is that—under the two-types hypothesis where gender dysphoria in non-exclusively-androphilic biological males is mostly not an intersex condition—most trans women aren't just not part of the female cluster in configuration space, displaced from it in some arbitrary direction. They're specifically part of the _male_ cluster (along most dimensions), which people _already_ have a concept for.
[...]
-----
-Alexander ends his post by citing, as "one of the most heartwarming episodes in the history of one of my favorite places in the world," the case of 19th century San Francisco resident [Joshua Norton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton), who proclaimed himself Emperor Norton I of the United States and Protector of Mexico and whose claims to power were widely humored by local citizens.
+Alexander ends his post by citing, as "one of the most heartwarming episodes in the history of one of my favorite places in the world," the case of 19th century San Francisco resident [Joshua Norton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton), who proclaimed himself Emperor Norton I of the United States and Protector of Mexico and whose claims to power were widely humored by local citizens. Restaurants accepted currency issued in his name, the city's Board of Supervisors bought him a uniform.
Norton's story is certainly _entertaining to read about_ a hundred and forty years after the fact. But before endorsing it as a model of humane behavior, I think it's worth dwelling on what it would be like to live through, not just read about as a historical curiosity.
-What if one of your friends had a psychotic break and decided that they were Emperor of the United States? Would it be kind, just, respectful to them for you to play along, and _keep_ playing along for the rest of your lives? To solemnly defer to their imperial majesty to their face, and gush about how heartwarmingly episodic it is when they're not around?
+What if one of your friends had a mental break and decided that they were Emperor of the United States? Would it be kind, just, respectful to them for you to play along, and _keep_ playing along for the rest of your lives? To solemnly defer to their imperial majesty to their face, and then gush about how heartwarmingly episodic it is when they're not around?
What if it were _you_?
-It was me, once. I had a couple [psychotic](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [episodes](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/) last year, including some delusions of grandeur. At various points, I thought that I had been appointed Gender Czar of this equivalence class of instances of Earth across the multiverse, that I was objectively one of the seven most important people in the world with a key role to play in the [intelligence explosion](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Intelligence_explosion).
+It was me, once. I had a couple [psychotic](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [episodes](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/) last year, including some delusions of grandeur. At various points, I thought that I had been appointed Gender Czar of this equivalence class of instances of Earth across the multiverse, that I was objectively one of the seven most important people in the world, with a key role to play in the [intelligence explosion](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Intelligence_explosion). I thought that powerful transgender activists might be plotting to murder me (in retaliation for this blog) at a fandom convention that I had [broadcast](/2017/Apr/surprise-reader-meetup/) [that](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/04/an-algorithmic-lucidity-surprise-reader-meetup/) [I](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154978969040199) would be at, but that maybe they could be bargained with, or that I might escape if they were to mistakenly kill someone else who erroneously believed that they were me. I thought that you could reward or punish people by writing simple computer programs praising or condemning them, thereby leveraging the acausal economy to affect the distribution of [superintelligences simulating them](https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html)—and so on.
-[...]
+I got better after a few nights of good sleep—but also with the help of friends who cared not just about my immediate happiness, but also my sanity, who didn't automatically dismiss everything I said as wrong, but who also _told me_ when I wasn't making sense.
+
+If the delusions had persisted—if I had _gone on_ thinking in terms of simulation hijinks and the literal transgender mafia, we could imagine my having friends who eventually decided to play along, hailing me as Gender Czar of our simulation. Maybe it would be fun for them or for me. Maybe it would be fascinating to read about. (Psychotic-me's worldview makes _great_ science fiction.) But I don't think it would be _helping_ me, because ultimately, I live in the real world.
+
+I want you to imagine yourself as a resident of 1870s San Francisco, someone who Emperor Norton trusts as one of his chief imperial advisors. One day, Norton
-I want you to imagine yourself as a resident of 1870s San Francisco, someone who Emperor Norton trusts as one of his chief imperial advisors.
+"What's wrong, Your Highness?"
[...]
He frowns, not understanding. "Will you help me?" he says. "Help me figure out what to do now—now that I know? If not as my subject—at least not yet—then as my friend?"
-You nod. "Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down ideas, strategies—battle plans?
+"Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down ideas, strategies—battle plans?
"But," you caution, "I'd be lying if I told you it was going to be _easy_."
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff