(This looks pretty old, but I decided it couldn’t hurt to be the Female with an Anecdote)
I’d found Less Wrong when I was already looking for a better understanding of rationality than could be found browsing through random atheist blogs, so I pounced on the sequences like a rabid kitten. When I went looking for how to actually apply the general principles of rationality, my mind naturally gravitated towards, well… Its own functioning. And the ways I wound up applying what I learned were substantially less about the ‘calibration’ and ‘winning’ that had first caught my eye.
I came for the dissent, like a good Intellectual Hipster, but I think I stayed for Luminosity.
It’s not true to say that I just don’t have a great personal interest in abstract epistemics, or winning, or making sure that my beliefs are correct, because I do. I really, really do. But as soon as I calmed down from Man-With-A-Hammer-Syndrome, I found that I don’t like straight-up arguing nearly as much as I thought I did, though I absolutely stand by the necessity of sharpening our minds against each other. I enjoy pieces on how fully rational people might interact with others more than I like the more abstract musings on the prisoner’s dilemna and newcomb’s box, as fun as they might be. And to me, being able to comprehend and influence your own mindstate has more obvious potential for benefit than the similar idea of improving your entanglement by knowing and correcting for your cognitive biases.
As Eliezer said, there’s no real distinction between “masculine” and “feminine” rationality. The examples I listed do not exist in a vacuum, they depend on or lead to, connect, and interweave with every other facet of rationality. I just highly suspect that Luminosity is a better perspective to form a basic grasp of Rationality from for those who tend towards {Social, Emotional, Passive} traits. I could be wrong or overgeneralizing, but it definitely feels like part of my femininity (or at least the traitset associated with the female gender) exerting itself. A Social, Emotional, and Passive leaning as opposed to Experimentative, Argumentative, and Dominant. Whether that really characterizes women in general is something I’m much less certain about.
(This looks pretty old, but I decided it couldn’t hurt to be the Female with an Anecdote)
I’d found Less Wrong when I was already looking for a better understanding of rationality than could be found browsing through random atheist blogs, so I pounced on the sequences like a rabid kitten. When I went looking for how to actually apply the general principles of rationality, my mind naturally gravitated towards, well… Its own functioning. And the ways I wound up applying what I learned were substantially less about the ‘calibration’ and ‘winning’ that had first caught my eye.
I came for the dissent, like a good Intellectual Hipster, but I think I stayed for Luminosity.
It’s not true to say that I just don’t have a great personal interest in abstract epistemics, or winning, or making sure that my beliefs are correct, because I do. I really, really do. But as soon as I calmed down from Man-With-A-Hammer-Syndrome, I found that I don’t like straight-up arguing nearly as much as I thought I did, though I absolutely stand by the necessity of sharpening our minds against each other. I enjoy pieces on how fully rational people might interact with others more than I like the more abstract musings on the prisoner’s dilemna and newcomb’s box, as fun as they might be. And to me, being able to comprehend and influence your own mindstate has more obvious potential for benefit than the similar idea of improving your entanglement by knowing and correcting for your cognitive biases.
As Eliezer said, there’s no real distinction between “masculine” and “feminine” rationality. The examples I listed do not exist in a vacuum, they depend on or lead to, connect, and interweave with every other facet of rationality. I just highly suspect that Luminosity is a better perspective to form a basic grasp of Rationality from for those who tend towards {Social, Emotional, Passive} traits. I could be wrong or overgeneralizing, but it definitely feels like part of my femininity (or at least the traitset associated with the female gender) exerting itself. A Social, Emotional, and Passive leaning as opposed to Experimentative, Argumentative, and Dominant. Whether that really characterizes women in general is something I’m much less certain about.