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Lojban comments on My Way - Less Wrong
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The "S" word is banned until May, but may I bring up the "T" word? Transhumanism, and ultimately posthumanism, will not have the notion of gender--I am certain of that. I have been at varying levels of testosterone following castration, and I cannot say the difference leads to any insight. I prefer to be at low testosterone most of the time just like I prefer to be at low blood-alcohol level most of the time. OK, another short comment, but I can only hope I offered something insightful that most cannot.
No, I liked this one.
That sounds fascinating -- so you can choose your testosterone level on a daily basis, like choosing to get drunk or not. I can't imagine what that must be like.
On the other hand, I wonder if you're over-extending your own experience. Whatever you do, the historical fact is that your brain was built while washed in testosterone. I doubt that turning that testosterone level down now is the same as actually moving to the female architecture.
Eliezer talked about this at some length on OB.
You can do it. There are drugs that elevate your testosterone, and drugs that suppress it. I've tried both. I don't care for the suppression; it's like being tired. Elevation gives me insomnia. The effects of elevation probably depend largely on how quickly the drug you use is metabolized; androstenedione (the over-the-counter pro-testosterone in the US) breaks down quickly into DHT, and most of the bad effects of "testosterone" (baldness, aggression, prostate cancer) are directly caused by DHT.
Theoretically, a man could increase his health by taking an injectable synthetic anabolic steroid with a long half-life. This would suppress his natural testosterone, which has a half life around an hour, and replace it with something that gave him the benefits of testosterone without the harmful effects of DHT. AFAIK this is untested.
I've used androcur to reduce (a new one reducer was released recently) and androgel to increase. Removal of the testicles brought the level to near zero (adrenals produce some I think).