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I'm an openly trans person in the Rationalist community and I want to go on record here saying:
Writing a 21,000 word essay about how you've been suppressing your gender dysphoria since you were a kid and posting it on LessWrong is not a healthy way of addressing your gender dysphoria.
And btw in one of the blog posts Zach links in this post, they call their transgender impulses as "the beautiful feeling at the center of my life."
This essay has a lot of self-hate in it which is self-destructive and although I respect your Freedom of Speech and Bodily Autonomy I think it would be unwise for anyone to emulate Zach.
Jeez... this was, somehow relatable.
I wonder if autistics in general tend to experience this.
I've always thought saying that babies are atheists is like saying rocks are atheists.
This triad was missed:
"Muslims are terrorists!" / "Islam is a religion of peace." / "Religion is problematic in general but Islam is the worst and I can back that claim up with statistics I read on Sam Harris' blog."
You didn't say anything about technology not having "unwanted health effects" before.
That was supposed to be implied. Allow me to quote Facing The Intelligence Explosion by Luke Muehlhauser:
One day, my friend Niel asked his virtual assistant in India to find him a bike he could buy that day. She sent him a list of bikes for sale from all over the world. Niel said, “No, I need one I can buy in Oxford today; it has to be local.” So she sent him a long list of bikes available in Oxford, most of them expensive. Niel clarified that he wanted an inexpensive bike. So she sent him a list of children’s bikes. He clarified that he needed a local, inexpensive bike that fit an adult male. So she sent him a list of adult bikes in Oxford needing repair. Usually humans understand each other’s desires better than this. Our evolved psychological unity causes us to share a common sense and common desires. Ask me to find you a bike, and I’ll assume you want one in working condition, that fits your size, is not made of gold, etc.—even though you didn’t actually say any of that.
You appear to be acting like that virtual assistant. People's suggestions can only properly be understood in the context of common sense.
And generally it is considered okay for people to speculate by saying "hey, what if X happens, it might be a good idea" as long as X is possible and the speculator is not asserting X definitely can or will happen. It's pretty crazy to enforce a rule against speculation and brainstorming. You appear to be reacting as if I'm saying: "hey we will definitely be doing X in the future! There is no reason not to and no reason it could go wrong."
The difference between speculation and baseless assertion is the difference between making a tentative suggestion in what could happen and making an uninformed suggestion about what will happen.
Are you saying that technology to enhance the appearance of the male body without having unwanted health effects is so implausible that it will never happen? Because over the long term (200-1000 years from now) I prefer to avoid saying "technology X will never happen" unless there's an actual law of physics that says so. Remember that this is just speculation.
Yeah I know it's a shitty argument I admit it.
I fully understand what you are trying to say. The problem is that thinking about the issue that way is inproductive. You don't engage with the actual knowledge we have about making people more fit.
I see. But does this imply that we shouldn't use transhuman technology to make people more muscular? If we could use such technology, why wouldn't we?
When I was between the ages of 14 and 20 I was 135 pounds no matter what I ate, and I didn't watch my diet at all. I imagine I could have gained weight if I "tried hard enough" but it would have involved eating obscene amounts of sugary and fatty foods. We're talking about an "epic meal time" everyday style diet.
I'm not new to lesswrong. I'm active on the Facebook group and have read most of the sequences.
What makes you believe that's true? Leaving out people with real disabilities for the sake of the discussion.
My mom is a doctor, and she says genetics are the biggest factor in what people look like. I know that's not a perfect source but it's worth something EDIT: Yeah I know that's a really shitty argument, but it's not so much an argument as it is a clarification of where I got the idea. But anyway, doesn't it seem a bit far fetched to say that anybody can become muscular if they just work hard enough? That sound a lot like saying anyone can become rich if they just work hard enough, or anyone can learn calculus if they just study hard enough. In real life people have different levels of natural ability, different privileges and other advantages.
The gym does what you were talking about. It might not have been what you where thinking about.
That's one possible interpretation of my words. But what I'm intending to refer to. I'm talking about biotechnology / transhuman technology. Try listening to what I'm actually trying to say. The gym is irrelevant to my actual point.
Original comment edited to account for this objection.
The gym is not nearly as powerful as the technology I'm talking about. I'm talking about biotechnology / transhuman technology. Men given the genetic short end of the stick can't reasonably expect to look fit no matter how much they work out, unless they don't have a job or any time consuming responsibilities. And no I'm not a jealous fat guy. I'm not athlete, but I'm in decent shape.
And what I'm talking about here is upgrading the average man's attractiveness so that it's on par with the average woman's attractiveness. Nobody complains that all women look the same. In fact women look very diverse. I'm talking about a scenario where men look as diverse as women do.
Also due to supply and demand, there would be an incentive for men to look diverse to match the diversity of women's desires. A higher supply of Ryan Gosling clones than there is demand for Ryan Gosling clones would create incentives for men to look different from Ryan Gosling.
Are you suggesting that my scenario would make men look fake or make them all look the same? Because if you can't imagine what I suggested without that happening it implies at least one of two things:
- I described it poorly.
- You need a better imagination.
Well people dislike PUAs because they see them as emotionally manipulative and dishonest, (which is sometimes true) and I don't think problem would be present here.
Thought: Something we could do (eventually) to make the world a better place is to use technology to upgrade every man's body. Make most men taller, more muscular, leaner, etc. Men who currently have relatively less attractive bodies will get a larger upgrade than men who have relatively more attractive bodies to make it fair. But make sure there is still variety in what men's bodies look like.
Do this until the average man is as sexually attractive to the average women as the average woman is to the average man. That would solve a lot of problems. And I don't think either gender would be uncomfortable with that scenario.
Edit: We could also upgrade things like smell and voice timbre.
Edit2: The gym is not nearly as powerful as the technology I'm talking about. I'm talking about some kind of biotechnology or transhuman technology
Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence.
Slightly more than 5 words:
The facts don't know whose side their on.
Every cause wants to be a cult.
Yes I get the difference, but the deal with "no one knows what science doesn't know" is that someone could say there are exceptions we don't know about or things we overlooked, just like Newton overlooked things that Einstein discovered.
Can this article be used to defend to idea that one day we may do things we currently believe are "physically impossible" such as build perpetual motion machines or alter physical constants?
I upvoted this post simply because I appreciate the OP having the courage to touch on a taboo topic.
Also I love this paragraph:
When I say "A guy does D when G happens" please read: "There are statistically significant, or theoretically significant reasons from social endocrinology, or social and evolutionary psychology to believe that under circumstances broadly similar to G, human males, on average, will be inclined towards behaving in manners broadly similar to the D way. Also, most tests are made with western human males, tests are less than 40 years old, subject to publication bias, and sometimes done by people who don't understand math well enough to do their statistics homework, they have not been replicated several times, and they are less homogenous than physics, because psychology is more complex than physics."
Having said that I will not be incorporating his advice into my life. Why?
Well I learned social skills later in my childhood and adolescence than most other people, I also acquired them more deliberately and consciously than most people. Having said that, I eventually developed a social skills intuition. I've learned it's usually best to trust my intuition. Mating really is a situation where it's best to become a jedi and use the force rather then whip out the targeting computer.
For me, this post might actually be an epistemic/instrumental tradeoff. It is epistemically rational to believe this information, but it is instrumentally rational to ignore it.
I notice I'm confused.
I literally don't know what it means to say "The definition of words are not arbitrary." I suspect either that I lack the background knowledge to understand this sentence, or ironically Eliezer and I may have a different definition of the word arbitrary.
Furthermore, I don't know what the implications are of what he's trying to say. Is he saying that language is not a system of symbols? Is he saying that every word has a "correct" definition?
I've had intrusive thoughts too and I've wondered how common they are. Thank you for letting me know that they are something most people experience. I would share some on here, but they're pretty embarrassing.
I’m starting a new biotechnology university program in September. In order to prepare myself I want to get better at math. So far I know grade 12 level functions, vectors, calculus and statistics, but I have never taken a university level math course.
Problem is, most traditional math education focuses on increasing your math knowledge. I am more interested in increasing my math talent. Very different things. I want to be better at understanding math concepts quickly and figuring out the answers to questions I haven’t encountered before. I want to increase my mathematical problem solving ability. I currently estimate my natural math talent to be around the 75th percentile. Decent, but still low enough that I should have some trouble. I want to be in the 85th percentile or higher.
Does anybody have any tips, methods, or resources that they can suggest to me for increasing my math talent?
Well I know I won't be around a computer 24/7, and I'd like something to explain it if I'm out and about. Although I suppose I could use a couple examples that I can just memorize, like strawman arguments and ad hominum.
Does anyone have a simple, easily understood definition of "logical fallacy" that can be used to explain the concept to people who have never heard of it before?
I was trying to explain the idea to a friend a few days ago but since I didn't have a definition I had to show her www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com. She understood the concept quickly, but it would be much more reliable and eloquent to actually define it.
I believe this article illustrates the greatest cause of conflict on the internet.