Some foundations for people who are not familiar with the topic: Autogynephilia is a sexual interest in being a woman, in a sense relatively analogous to other sexual interests, such as men’s usual sexual interest in women (gynephilia). That is, autogynephiles will have sexual fantasies about being women, will want to be women, and so on.
I argue that autogynephilia is not a natural abstraction because most autogynephiles keep their sexuality private, so people can’t tell who is autogynephilic and therefore develop a model of how autogynephilia works. (Which I take to be the “natural” criterion of “natural abstractions”.) When people talk about “autogynephilia”, they do so in certain specific contexts, but those contexts tend to mix “autogynephilia” together with other things. For example, in the context of trans women, they often mix together autogynephilia with gender progressivism, because gender progressive autogynephiles are more likely to transition genders than gender conservative autogynephiles are. (Since gender conservative ideology says that transition is bad.)
By my count (being about the only person in the world investigating this statistically with surveys, and therefore having the most birds-eye perspective on it out of all people), there’s on the order of 6 major factors that people mix together with autogynephilia: gender progressivism, masochism (masochistic autogynephilic sexuality looks more striking and abnormal than ordinary autogynephilic sexuality), unrestricted sociosexuality (leads to sexual exhibitionism which reduces the likelihood of keeping one’s sexuality private, and among trans women also leads to an interest in having more exaggerated feminine features and presenting oneself as sexually available), neuroticism (increases the likelihood of talking a lot about worrying about autogynephilia), autism (reasons are unclear but people associate it way more with autogynephilia than seems justified), and general antisocial tendencies (people mainly talk about autogynephilia because they have some issues with some trans women, and they share stories about problematic autogynephiles with each other, Chinese-Robber style).
Zack disagrees in the strongest terms with my claim that autogynephilia is not a natural abstraction, as he says that people being wrong about something because they don’t get data on it doesn’t make it not a natural abstraction. (I’d encourage him to explicate further on his argument here if he wants, as I’m not sure I can present it faithfully.) Since we’ve disagreed, I’ve been vaguely curious what @johnswentworth thinks about this, not empirically about autogynephilia but semantically about the meaning of the term “natural abstraction”.
Consider the consensus genome of some species of tree.
Long before we were able to sequence that genome, we were able to deduce that something-like-it existed. Something had to be carrying whatever information made these trees so similar (inter-breedable). Eventually people isolated DNA as the relevant information-carrier, but even then it was most of a century before we knew the sequence.
That sequence is a natural latent: most of the members of the tree’s species are ~independent of each other given the sequence (and some general background info about our world), and the sequence can be estimated pretty well from ~any moderate-sized sample of the trees. Furthermore, we could deduce the existence of that natural latent long before we knew the sequence.
Point of this example: there’s a distinction between realizing a certain natural latent variable exists, and knowing the value of that variable. To pick a simpler example: it’s the difference between realizing that (P, V, T) mediate between the state of a gas at one time and its state at a later time, vs actually measuring the values of pressure, volume and temperature for the gas.
Suppose that a lot of people don’t like krummholz and have taken to using the formal species name P. albicaulis as a disparaging term (even though a few other species can also grow as krummholz).
I think Tail is saying that “P. albicaulis” isn’t a natural abstraction, because most people you encounter using that term on Twitter are talking about krummholz, without realizing that other species can grow as krummholz or that many P. albicaulis grow as upright trees.
I’m saying it’s dumb to assert that P. albicaulis isn’t a natural abstraction just because most people are ignorant of dendrology and are only paying attention to the shrub vs. tree subspace: if I look at more features of vegetation than just broad shape, I end up needing to formulate P. albicaulis to explain the things some of these woody plants have in common despite their shape.
I’m saying it’s dumb to assert that P. albicaulis isn’t a natural abstraction just because most people are ignorant of dendrology and are only paying attention to the shrub vs. tree subspace: if I look at more features of vegetation than just broad shape, I end up needing to formulate P. albicaulis to explain the things some of these woody plants have in common despite their shape.
And I think this is fine if you’re one of the approximately 5 people (me, maybe Bailey, maybe Andura, maybe Hsu, maybe you—even this is generous since e.g. I think you naturally thought of autogynephilia and gender progressivism as being more closely related than they really are) in the world who do observe things this closely, but it also seems relevant to notice that the rest of the world doesn’t and can’t observe things this closely, and that therefore we really ought to refactor our abstractions such that they align better with what everyone else can think about.
Like if our autogynephilia discourse was mostly centered on talking with each other about it, it’d be a different story, but you mostly address the rationalist community, and Bailey mostly addresses GCs and HBDs, and so on. So “most people you encounter using that term on Twitter” doesn’t refer to irrelevant outsiders, it refers to the people you’re trying to have the conversation with.
And like a key part of my point is that they mostly couldn’t fix it if they wanted to. P. albicaulis has visible indicators that allows you to diagnose the species by looking at it, but autogynephiles don’t unless you get in private in a way that GCs and rationalists basically are never gonna do.
I agree with that, but I think it is complicated in the case of autogynephilia. My claim is that there are a handful of different conditions that people look at and go “something had to be carrying whatever information made these people so similar”, and the something is not simply autogynephilia in these sense that I talk about it, but rather varies from condition to condition (typically including autogynephilia as one of the causes, but often not the most relevant one).
This seems somewhat relevant to a disagreement I’ve been having with @Zack_M_Davis about whether autogynephilia is a natural abstraction.
Some foundations for people who are not familiar with the topic: Autogynephilia is a sexual interest in being a woman, in a sense relatively analogous to other sexual interests, such as men’s usual sexual interest in women (gynephilia). That is, autogynephiles will have sexual fantasies about being women, will want to be women, and so on.
I argue that autogynephilia is not a natural abstraction because most autogynephiles keep their sexuality private, so people can’t tell who is autogynephilic and therefore develop a model of how autogynephilia works. (Which I take to be the “natural” criterion of “natural abstractions”.) When people talk about “autogynephilia”, they do so in certain specific contexts, but those contexts tend to mix “autogynephilia” together with other things. For example, in the context of trans women, they often mix together autogynephilia with gender progressivism, because gender progressive autogynephiles are more likely to transition genders than gender conservative autogynephiles are. (Since gender conservative ideology says that transition is bad.)
By my count (being about the only person in the world investigating this statistically with surveys, and therefore having the most birds-eye perspective on it out of all people), there’s on the order of 6 major factors that people mix together with autogynephilia: gender progressivism, masochism (masochistic autogynephilic sexuality looks more striking and abnormal than ordinary autogynephilic sexuality), unrestricted sociosexuality (leads to sexual exhibitionism which reduces the likelihood of keeping one’s sexuality private, and among trans women also leads to an interest in having more exaggerated feminine features and presenting oneself as sexually available), neuroticism (increases the likelihood of talking a lot about worrying about autogynephilia), autism (reasons are unclear but people associate it way more with autogynephilia than seems justified), and general antisocial tendencies (people mainly talk about autogynephilia because they have some issues with some trans women, and they share stories about problematic autogynephiles with each other, Chinese-Robber style).
Zack disagrees in the strongest terms with my claim that autogynephilia is not a natural abstraction, as he says that people being wrong about something because they don’t get data on it doesn’t make it not a natural abstraction. (I’d encourage him to explicate further on his argument here if he wants, as I’m not sure I can present it faithfully.) Since we’ve disagreed, I’ve been vaguely curious what @johnswentworth thinks about this, not empirically about autogynephilia but semantically about the meaning of the term “natural abstraction”.
Consider the consensus genome of some species of tree.
Long before we were able to sequence that genome, we were able to deduce that something-like-it existed. Something had to be carrying whatever information made these trees so similar (inter-breedable). Eventually people isolated DNA as the relevant information-carrier, but even then it was most of a century before we knew the sequence.
That sequence is a natural latent: most of the members of the tree’s species are ~independent of each other given the sequence (and some general background info about our world), and the sequence can be estimated pretty well from ~any moderate-sized sample of the trees. Furthermore, we could deduce the existence of that natural latent long before we knew the sequence.
Point of this example: there’s a distinction between realizing a certain natural latent variable exists, and knowing the value of that variable. To pick a simpler example: it’s the difference between realizing that (P, V, T) mediate between the state of a gas at one time and its state at a later time, vs actually measuring the values of pressure, volume and temperature for the gas.
Let’s say the species is the whitebark pine P. albicaulis, which grows in a sprawling shrub-like form called krummholz in rough high-altitude environments, but looks like a conventional upright tree in more forgiving climates.
Suppose that a lot of people don’t like krummholz and have taken to using the formal species name P. albicaulis as a disparaging term (even though a few other species can also grow as krummholz).
I think Tail is saying that “P. albicaulis” isn’t a natural abstraction, because most people you encounter using that term on Twitter are talking about krummholz, without realizing that other species can grow as krummholz or that many P. albicaulis grow as upright trees.
I’m saying it’s dumb to assert that P. albicaulis isn’t a natural abstraction just because most people are ignorant of dendrology and are only paying attention to the shrub vs. tree subspace: if I look at more features of vegetation than just broad shape, I end up needing to formulate P. albicaulis to explain the things some of these woody plants have in common despite their shape.
And I think this is fine if you’re one of the approximately 5 people (me, maybe Bailey, maybe Andura, maybe Hsu, maybe you—even this is generous since e.g. I think you naturally thought of autogynephilia and gender progressivism as being more closely related than they really are) in the world who do observe things this closely, but it also seems relevant to notice that the rest of the world doesn’t and can’t observe things this closely, and that therefore we really ought to refactor our abstractions such that they align better with what everyone else can think about.
Like if our autogynephilia discourse was mostly centered on talking with each other about it, it’d be a different story, but you mostly address the rationalist community, and Bailey mostly addresses GCs and HBDs, and so on. So “most people you encounter using that term on Twitter” doesn’t refer to irrelevant outsiders, it refers to the people you’re trying to have the conversation with.
And like a key part of my point is that they mostly couldn’t fix it if they wanted to. P. albicaulis has visible indicators that allows you to diagnose the species by looking at it, but autogynephiles don’t unless you get in private in a way that GCs and rationalists basically are never gonna do.
(Continued in containment thread.)
I agree with that, but I think it is complicated in the case of autogynephilia. My claim is that there are a handful of different conditions that people look at and go “something had to be carrying whatever information made these people so similar”, and the something is not simply autogynephilia in these sense that I talk about it, but rather varies from condition to condition (typically including autogynephilia as one of the causes, but often not the most relevant one).