From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake <ultimatelyuntruethought@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2018 06:00:17 +0000 (-0800)
Subject: drafting "The Categories ..."
X-Git-Url: http://534655.efjtl6rk.asia/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=d7d36ed165166f885b038b26d131c1d56cf93750;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git

drafting "The Categories ..."
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diff --git a/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md b/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md
index fd88243..4eb2ecc 100644
--- a/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md
+++ b/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md
@@ -10,11 +10,37 @@ Status: draft
 >
 > —_Distress_ by Greg Egan
 
-In ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), the immortal Scott Alexander eloquently and correctly explains that proposed definitions of concepts aren't true or false in themselves, but rather can only be evaluated by their usefulness. We group similar things into the same category so that we can make similar predictions about them, but this requires both a metric of "similarity," and a notion of which predictions one cares about enough to notice, both of which are relative to an agent's preferences, rather than inherent in the world itself.
+In ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), the immortal Scott Alexander eloquently argues that proposed definitions of concepts aren't true or false in themselves, but rather can only be evaluated by their usefulness. Our finite minds being unable to cope with the unimaginable complexity of the raw physical universe, we group sufficiently similar things into the same category so that we can make similar predictions about them—but this requires not only a metric of "similarity", but also a notion of which predictions one cares about enough to notice, both of which are relative to some agent's perspective, rather than being inherent in the world itself.
 
-And so, Alexander explains, the ancient Hebrews weren't _wrong_ to classify whales as a type of _dag_ (typically translated as _fish_), even though modern biologists classify whales as mammals and not fish, because the ancient Hebrews were more interested in distinguishing which animals live in the water rather than which animals were phylogenetically related.
+And so, Alexander explains, the ancient Hebrews weren't _wrong_ to classify whales as a type of _dag_ (typically translated as _fish_), even though modern biologists classify whales as mammals and not fish, because the ancient Hebrews were more interested in distinguishing which animals live in the water rather than which animals are phylogenetically related. Similarly, borders between countries are agreed upon for a variety of pragmatic reasons, and can be quite convoluted—while there may often be some "obvious" geographic or cultural Schelling points anchoring these decisions, there's not going to be any instrinsic, eternal fact of the matter as to where one country starts and another begins.
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+All of this is entirely correct—and thus, an excellent [motte](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/) for the less honest half of _Slate Star Codex_ readers to appeal to when they want to disrupt and obfuscate discussions about empirical reality by insisting on [...]
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+Alexander goes on to attempt to use the categories-are-relative insight to rebut skeptics of transgenderedness: referring to trans people as their desired gender is a category boundary 
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+Agreed so far—
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+We can at least discuss _in detail_
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+You can call a tail a leg, but you can't stop people from _noticing_ that of a dog's five legs, one of them is different from the others, so different that people habitually distinguish between the walking-legs and the wagging-leg.
 
-Similarly, 
 
 
 
@@ -115,3 +141,12 @@ OUTLINE—
       doubt the reality of his reign.
     * Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
       ask her to put it back up again)
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+/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/
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+Similarly, [discussion of borders]
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+[point out that legal fictions aren't always taken seriously by people who are trying to talk about the world, use "Europe" examples from acquaintance; Seeing Like a State]
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+[point out that Alexander agrees that some categories suck]