magfrump comments on A Rational Education - Less Wrong

12 Post author: wedrifid 23 June 2010 05:48AM

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Comment author: magfrump 25 June 2010 04:21:34AM -1 points [-]

I meant to engage with that specific concept. You seem to agree with my usage with respect to linguistics, so I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies. I did reference that concept purposefully, please allow me to explain why.

The professor in my feminism course was a particle physicist, so she used quantum mechanics to draw metaphors for social circumstances.

For example, when establishing some idea such as "gender," we often consider only two options; male and female. These are unusually dense points in "genderspace," though by no means the only points, and they are bounded by our maps, not by the territory. Similarly, when dealing with Newtonian mechanics, we often refer to "position" and "momentum" as inherent properties of objects. This is not how things work, but it is helpful for our maps. Unfortunately, as we attempt to build smaller and smaller things, this ends up driving us crazy, because our maps have the wrong symbols written on them and don't make sense anymore. As our society becomes more diverse and more accepting, and as we attempt to raise the quality of life of its inhabitants, it becomes the case that the male/female dichotomy starts being harmful. Around 1% of the general population (I don't have a citation on me but I could find one) does not meet (every part of) the standard definition for male or female. Among other things, it may be difficult for these people to decide which bathroom to enter in a restaurant. By expanding our notions of gender, we can carve reality in more detail, but by studying gender we may find higher-definition joints.

If you can think of any other class in which that sort of analysis happens (and it almost certainly doesn't happen in every feminism class, although probably in more than you might expect), I would be very interested to hear about it.

Comment author: HughRistik 25 June 2010 09:25:48AM 7 points [-]

Around 1% of the general population (I don't have a citation on me but I could find one) does not meet (every part of) the standard definition for male or female.

You probably ran into Anne Fausto-Sterling's claim that 1.7% of human births are intersex. But it looks like Fausto-Sterling got the science wrong. Yet her work is widely cited by feminist academics.

Comment author: wedrifid 25 June 2010 04:36:26AM *  0 points [-]

I had to mostly disengage from this reply when you used "you must be hostile to X" as an excuse to not understand my comment. In fact, my point is completely irrelevant to feminism.

The definition you have declared for 'reality' is a completely incompatible with the 'carve reality at its joints' concept that you are appealing to.

Some of the other points that you make are ones that I would address in a different context (perhaps in reply to my other reply in this tree) and with a different introduction.

Comment author: Emile 25 June 2010 04:59:40PM *  3 points [-]

The definition you have declared for 'reality' is a completely incompatible with the 'carve reality at its joints' concept that you are appealing to.

Sorry, but I haven't seen that either. magfrump's concept ("situations you will encounter in life") seems quite compatible with "carve reality at its joints".

(I agree that saying "I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies" is not very useful at this point)

Comment author: magfrump 25 June 2010 09:47:31PM 1 point [-]

I am sorry about the hostility comment, I had a a lot of replies to sort through so I assumed you referred to the original comment rather than the later comment where I introduced the definition.

As Emile notes, however, I don't see any incompatibility between my definition and the concept outlined in the post he links.