Skyler here, a 21 year old technology student. Born and raised in the backwoods of Vermont to ahem philosophically diverse parents, was encouraged to read pretty much every philosophical book the library had except for Ayn Rand. So naturally I gravitated towards that as soon as I became enough of a teenager, but apparently completely missed the antagonism towards non-geniuses and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I seriously disliked every objectivist I met.
About two years ago, I had a professor who introduced me to HPMoR, which I enjoyed immensely. It took me around a month to move to the sequences. They seem to have had the curious property of seeming perfectly obvious, like someone simply expressing what I already knew just in better words, and while a lot of them do fall close in broad subject to things I’d written about before, the only use I’d had for bayesian statistics prior to reading them was spam filters. (And then the author’s notes pointed me to Worm, which consumed a month or two.)
A couple of weeks ago however, I encountered a post on SlateStarCodex (which I’d been reading after stumbling upon it through unrelated browsing) about trans people, and somehow around the same time got linked to Alicorn’s Polyhacking article. My positions previously were similar to the authors (Thought of both transgender and polyamory as mildly wrong and not understandable) and both made a solid argument that actually changed my mind. This was not the “Oh, of course I knew that” of the sequences, but a “Huh. I thought that was wrong, but they have good points. Let me think for five minutes and see if there are any more arguments for or against I can think of now.” By the end of the respective days, I had a different opinion than I previously had, and was beginning to make changes in how I conducted myself because of one of them. In addition, they both seemed like interesting people I could relate to, and a community of such people could be really fun. (As opposed to Eliezer Y.- That is, I can imagine having a conversation with these people, whereas if I was in a conversation with Eliezer Y. I would feel compelled to take notes.)
So yeah. I’m here to see how many other topics require me to change my mind, and to hopefully have cool conversations with interesting people. Any recommendations on where to start?
Also, I don’t know if “Typical mind and gender identity” is the blog post that you stumbled across, but I am very glad to have read it, and especially to have read many of the comments. I think I had run into related ideas before (thank you, Internet subcultures!), but that made the idea that gender identity has a strength as well as a direction much clearer.
A combination of that post and What universal human experiences are you missing without realizing it? actually. I would say that I am strongly typed as male, strong enough that occasionally I’ve been known to get annoyed at my body not being male enough. (Larger muscle groups, more body hair, darker beard, etc.) Probably influencing this are the facts that Skyler is the feminine form of my name, and that puberty was downright cruel to me. As you say, it’s not common to think of being strongly or weakly identified with your own sex, rather than just a binary “fits/doesn’t fit” check.
Meatspace meetups sound like a good deal of fun, and possibly a faster route to being part of the community than commenting on articles that I think I have something to add. Downside is, I’m currently in Rochester New York, and unless I’m misusing the meetups page somehow, looks like the closest regular meetup is in Albany. That’s a long bike ride. :) If anybody is in Rochester, by all means let me know!
Skyler here, a 21 year old technology student. Born and raised in the backwoods of Vermont to ahem philosophically diverse parents, was encouraged to read pretty much every philosophical book the library had except for Ayn Rand. So naturally I gravitated towards that as soon as I became enough of a teenager, but apparently completely missed the antagonism towards non-geniuses and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I seriously disliked every objectivist I met.
About two years ago, I had a professor who introduced me to HPMoR, which I enjoyed immensely. It took me around a month to move to the sequences. They seem to have had the curious property of seeming perfectly obvious, like someone simply expressing what I already knew just in better words, and while a lot of them do fall close in broad subject to things I’d written about before, the only use I’d had for bayesian statistics prior to reading them was spam filters. (And then the author’s notes pointed me to Worm, which consumed a month or two.)
A couple of weeks ago however, I encountered a post on SlateStarCodex (which I’d been reading after stumbling upon it through unrelated browsing) about trans people, and somehow around the same time got linked to Alicorn’s Polyhacking article. My positions previously were similar to the authors (Thought of both transgender and polyamory as mildly wrong and not understandable) and both made a solid argument that actually changed my mind. This was not the “Oh, of course I knew that” of the sequences, but a “Huh. I thought that was wrong, but they have good points. Let me think for five minutes and see if there are any more arguments for or against I can think of now.” By the end of the respective days, I had a different opinion than I previously had, and was beginning to make changes in how I conducted myself because of one of them. In addition, they both seemed like interesting people I could relate to, and a community of such people could be really fun. (As opposed to Eliezer Y.- That is, I can imagine having a conversation with these people, whereas if I was in a conversation with Eliezer Y. I would feel compelled to take notes.)
So yeah. I’m here to see how many other topics require me to change my mind, and to hopefully have cool conversations with interesting people. Any recommendations on where to start?
Also, I don’t know if “Typical mind and gender identity” is the blog post that you stumbled across, but I am very glad to have read it, and especially to have read many of the comments. I think I had run into related ideas before (thank you, Internet subcultures!), but that made the idea that gender identity has a strength as well as a direction much clearer.
A combination of that post and What universal human experiences are you missing without realizing it? actually. I would say that I am strongly typed as male, strong enough that occasionally I’ve been known to get annoyed at my body not being male enough. (Larger muscle groups, more body hair, darker beard, etc.) Probably influencing this are the facts that Skyler is the feminine form of my name, and that puberty was downright cruel to me. As you say, it’s not common to think of being strongly or weakly identified with your own sex, rather than just a binary “fits/doesn’t fit” check.
I’m afraid I haven’t been active online recently, but if you live in an area with a regular in-person meetup, those can be seriously awesome. :)
Meatspace meetups sound like a good deal of fun, and possibly a faster route to being part of the community than commenting on articles that I think I have something to add. Downside is, I’m currently in Rochester New York, and unless I’m misusing the meetups page somehow, looks like the closest regular meetup is in Albany. That’s a long bike ride. :) If anybody is in Rochester, by all means let me know!