And now a bit closer to the object level of our previous discussion. Look at this mess about sex, gender, orientation and roles and whatnot. If it was about designing rules for an island where only smart people live, it would be fairly obvious: completely do away with terms like man, woman, feminine, masculine, straight, gay. Measure T levels and simply establish a hormonal gender based on that, a sliding scale, divided into maybe five quintiles or however you want to. Do away with straight or gay—people can date however they wish to, but expect that most people will choose a partner from the other end of the scale than themselves, because people naturally converge to dom-sub, top-bottom setups. Give high-T people more status because they really seem to crave it 1 while low-T people are comfortable enough with being deferential to them, in return make high-T people willing to risk their lives protecting low-T people who should have things safe and comfortable. Base everything on this—risky venture capital type stuff for the high end, predictable welfare/union job stuff for the low-end.
This would make sense, right? I must stress this hormonal scale would be independent of biological sex, social gender or orientation—those are abolished in this scenario. Why, I find it likely you would end up higher on the T-based gender scale than me although I am guy, but you seem to give out more aggressive vibes than I do (I don’t mean it in a bad way, your engines are just more fired up, that is good if you use it for good things). And of course this scenario was
made for an island populated by only smart people.
And then back to the real world. To have any chance of it working for sorry stupid species of humankind, it has to be dumbed down mercilessly. The average human’s cognitive level is about Orwell’s “two legs bad four legs good”. Of course by dumbing down we lose accuracy and efficiency. Of course by dumbing down quite some people won’t fit. Still it has to be done. And now you tell me, if you want to make it really, really primitive, if you want to dumb it down to the point where a blatantly obvious biological switch would determine if people are treated as belonging to the high end or the low end, what switch would that be? Which switch would be the
most obvious?
And then of course you end up with a system you don’t like, and most intellectuals don’t like—it is a really poor fit for intellectuals. At this point the choices are: sacrifice humankind for intellectuals? Sacrifice intellectuals for humankinds? Make the rules that fit for humankind official while let intellectuals bend the rules in private? Establish an aristocracy and make different rules for intellectuals? Archipelago?
Huh. This would be the meta arch of these things. If you still want we can return to stuff like if it is the WATW or whether a large number of people aggreeing with something makes it usually ethically correct and so on, because I would then interpret these objections in these light, but I hope I managed to resolve those with this article.
Then why do the linked researchers use it as a marker of that?
Maybe, it is about status of a different kind. Maybe this reduces to that it is not a well defined word and we always get into rather unresolvable debates because of that.
Let’s try this: there are two kinds of status, one is more like being a commanding officer or a schoolteacher towards kids, it is respect and deference and maybe a bit of fear (but does not 1:1 translate to dominance, although close), the other kind is being really popular and liked. Remember school. The difference between the teacher’s status and the really likeable kid’s status is key here. The CEO vs. the Louis CK type well liked comedian. The politician vs. the best ballet dancer.
To the linked article: being good at math does not make one liked. It makes one respected. Closer to the first type.
We don’t live in a world where low testosterone people want high testosterone people to have more power.
Yes I want policemen to have a certain kind of status but policemen don’t need to be high testosterone. Empathic policemen who are actually good at reading other people have advantages in a lot of police tasks.
Schoolteachers need respect but they don’t need to be high testosterone either. A teacher does a better job if he understands the student.
You should really think that over. For the police example, we have two conflicting requirements, first is to be so scary (or more like respect-commanding) that he rarely needs to get physical, that is always messy. The opposite requirement is the smiling, nice, service-oriented, positive community vibes stuff, like the policemen who visited me and told me I forgot to lock my car. (The reading people is more of an investigator level stuff, not street level.) The question is, which one is more important? If you have one optimal and one less optimal, which one is better? Similarly we want teachers to be kind and understanding with students with genuine difficulties, but be more scary to the kind of thuggish guys half my class was.
The point is really how pessimistic or cautious is your basic view. Do you see the police as a thin blue line separating barbarism from civilization? Do you see every generation of children as “barbarians needing to be civilized” (Hannah Arendt) Or you have a more optimistic view, seeing the vast majority of people behaving well and the vast majority of kids genuinely trying to do good work?
Furthermore—and this is even more important—would you rather get more pessimistic than things are and thus slow down progress, or more optimistic and risk systemic shocks?
I think you know my answers :) I have no problem with a slow and super-safe progress. I don’t exactly want to flee from the present or the past.
For the police example, we have two conflicting requirements, first is to be so scary
No, policemen don’t need to be scary to do their jobs.
A police that can be counted on doing a proper investigation that punishes criminals can deter crime even when the individual policmen aren’t scary.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
Similarly we want teachers to be kind and understanding with students with genuine difficulties
Being empathic is not simply about being “kind and understanding” it allows the teacher to have more information about the mental state of a student and more likely see when a student gets confused and react towards it. A smart student also profits when the teacher get’s that the student already understands what the teacher wants to tell him.
The point is really how pessimistic or cautious is your basic view. Do you see the police as a thin blue line separating barbarism from civilization? Do you see every generation of children as “barbarians needing to be civilized” (Hannah Arendt) Or you have a more optimistic view, seeing the vast majority of people behaving well and the vast majority of kids genuinely trying to do good work?
Neither. I rather care about the expected empiric result of a policy than about seeing people are inherently good or inherently evil. I think you think too much in categories like that and care too little about the empirical reality that we do have less crime than we had in the past.
It’s like discussing global warming not on the scientific data about temperature changes but on whether we are for the environment or for free enterprise. The nonscientific framing leads to bad thinking.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
It’s not clear how much of that is this and how much is them being more afraid of the kingpins of their ethnic mafias than they are of the police.
Continued form above
And now a bit closer to the object level of our previous discussion. Look at this mess about sex, gender, orientation and roles and whatnot. If it was about designing rules for an island where only smart people live, it would be fairly obvious: completely do away with terms like man, woman, feminine, masculine, straight, gay. Measure T levels and simply establish a hormonal gender based on that, a sliding scale, divided into maybe five quintiles or however you want to. Do away with straight or gay—people can date however they wish to, but expect that most people will choose a partner from the other end of the scale than themselves, because people naturally converge to dom-sub, top-bottom setups. Give high-T people more status because they really seem to crave it 1 while low-T people are comfortable enough with being deferential to them, in return make high-T people willing to risk their lives protecting low-T people who should have things safe and comfortable. Base everything on this—risky venture capital type stuff for the high end, predictable welfare/union job stuff for the low-end.
This would make sense, right? I must stress this hormonal scale would be independent of biological sex, social gender or orientation—those are abolished in this scenario. Why, I find it likely you would end up higher on the T-based gender scale than me although I am guy, but you seem to give out more aggressive vibes than I do (I don’t mean it in a bad way, your engines are just more fired up, that is good if you use it for good things). And of course this scenario was made for an island populated by only smart people.
And then back to the real world. To have any chance of it working for sorry stupid species of humankind, it has to be dumbed down mercilessly. The average human’s cognitive level is about Orwell’s “two legs bad four legs good”. Of course by dumbing down we lose accuracy and efficiency. Of course by dumbing down quite some people won’t fit. Still it has to be done. And now you tell me, if you want to make it really, really primitive, if you want to dumb it down to the point where a blatantly obvious biological switch would determine if people are treated as belonging to the high end or the low end, what switch would that be? Which switch would be the most obvious?
And then of course you end up with a system you don’t like, and most intellectuals don’t like—it is a really poor fit for intellectuals. At this point the choices are: sacrifice humankind for intellectuals? Sacrifice intellectuals for humankinds? Make the rules that fit for humankind official while let intellectuals bend the rules in private? Establish an aristocracy and make different rules for intellectuals? Archipelago?
Huh. This would be the meta arch of these things. If you still want we can return to stuff like if it is the WATW or whether a large number of people aggreeing with something makes it usually ethically correct and so on, because I would then interpret these objections in these light, but I hope I managed to resolve those with this article.
Low testosterone people also want status.
Then why do the linked researchers use it as a marker of that?
Maybe, it is about status of a different kind. Maybe this reduces to that it is not a well defined word and we always get into rather unresolvable debates because of that.
Let’s try this: there are two kinds of status, one is more like being a commanding officer or a schoolteacher towards kids, it is respect and deference and maybe a bit of fear (but does not 1:1 translate to dominance, although close), the other kind is being really popular and liked. Remember school. The difference between the teacher’s status and the really likeable kid’s status is key here. The CEO vs. the Louis CK type well liked comedian. The politician vs. the best ballet dancer.
To the linked article: being good at math does not make one liked. It makes one respected. Closer to the first type.
We don’t live in a world where low testosterone people want high testosterone people to have more power.
Yes I want policemen to have a certain kind of status but policemen don’t need to be high testosterone. Empathic policemen who are actually good at reading other people have advantages in a lot of police tasks.
Schoolteachers need respect but they don’t need to be high testosterone either. A teacher does a better job if he understands the student.
--
You should really think that over. For the police example, we have two conflicting requirements, first is to be so scary (or more like respect-commanding) that he rarely needs to get physical, that is always messy. The opposite requirement is the smiling, nice, service-oriented, positive community vibes stuff, like the policemen who visited me and told me I forgot to lock my car. (The reading people is more of an investigator level stuff, not street level.) The question is, which one is more important? If you have one optimal and one less optimal, which one is better? Similarly we want teachers to be kind and understanding with students with genuine difficulties, but be more scary to the kind of thuggish guys half my class was.
The point is really how pessimistic or cautious is your basic view. Do you see the police as a thin blue line separating barbarism from civilization? Do you see every generation of children as “barbarians needing to be civilized” (Hannah Arendt) Or you have a more optimistic view, seeing the vast majority of people behaving well and the vast majority of kids genuinely trying to do good work?
Furthermore—and this is even more important—would you rather get more pessimistic than things are and thus slow down progress, or more optimistic and risk systemic shocks?
I think you know my answers :) I have no problem with a slow and super-safe progress. I don’t exactly want to flee from the present or the past.
No, policemen don’t need to be scary to do their jobs. A police that can be counted on doing a proper investigation that punishes criminals can deter crime even when the individual policmen aren’t scary.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
Being empathic is not simply about being “kind and understanding” it allows the teacher to have more information about the mental state of a student and more likely see when a student gets confused and react towards it. A smart student also profits when the teacher get’s that the student already understands what the teacher wants to tell him.
Neither. I rather care about the expected empiric result of a policy than about seeing people are inherently good or inherently evil. I think you think too much in categories like that and care too little about the empirical reality that we do have less crime than we had in the past.
It’s like discussing global warming not on the scientific data about temperature changes but on whether we are for the environment or for free enterprise. The nonscientific framing leads to bad thinking.
It’s not clear how much of that is this and how much is them being more afraid of the kingpins of their ethnic mafias than they are of the police.