buybuydandavis comments on Stupid Questions May 2015 - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Gondolinian 01 May 2015 05:28PM

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Comment author: James_Miller 03 May 2015 03:44:41AM 2 points [-]

What is the LessWrong-like answer to whether someone born a male but who identifies as female is indeed female? Relevant to my life because of this. I'm likely to be asked about this if for no other reason than students seeing how I handle such a question.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 03 May 2015 11:50:43PM *  4 points [-]

'Whatever you might say something "is", it is not.' Whatever we might say belongs to the verbal level and not to the un-speakable, objective levels.

'what we see, hear, feel, speak about or infer, is never it, but only our human abstraction about 'it'

'A map is not the territory.'

'Identity is invariably false to facts.'

'Every identification is bound to be in some degree a misevaluation'

-- Korzybski