[SEQ RERUN] The Opposite Sex

MinibearRex

Today's post, The Opposite Sex was originally published on 28 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A few thoughts from Eliezer Yudkowsky about a discussion of sexism on Overcoming Bias.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was 2-Place and 1-Place Words, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, The Opposite Sex was originally published on 28 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A few thoughts from Eliezer Yudkowsky about a discussion of sexism on Overcoming Bias.

Maybe that's just my incompetence... but I am skeptical that any man fully understands women or vice versa

Does this include people who change gender?

I would say so, but then again I'm equally skeptical that any man fully understands men, or woman women, or person people.

5wedrifid14y

Probably. People who change gender are significantly outside the norm with respect to how their gender instincts are wired. This introduces similar other-mind modelling difficulties that those of the other sex have. Of course, most men don't fully understand men and most women don't fully understand women either so the question is mostly moot.