= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Most of the beliefs of the "I wouldn't defend it publically" are neither >0.999 credence or <0.001 and it's worthwhile to mentally categories them differently.
Again, people sometimes use idiomatic English to describe subjective states of high confidence that do not literally correspond to probabilities greater than 0.999! (Why that specific threshold, anyway?)
You know, I take it back; I actually can't see how this might be confusing.
"Wouldn't defend" is an interestingly ambiguous phrase!—it could mean "I don't think the thesis is true," or it could mean "I think the thesis is true, but I'm not going to argue for it here."
That sounds like "thesis is true" or "thesis is not true" are reasonable positions. Bayesian beliefs have probabilities attached to them.
There are also other reasons why one might not argue for giving a belief a high credence. I might hold my belief based on a variety of personal experiences that I can't condense into a post. I might also hold it based on confidential information that I'm not willing to share.
That sounds like "thesis is true" or "thesis is not true" are reasonable positions. Bayesian beliefs have probabilities attached to them.
Sometimes, even people who understand Bayesian reasoning use idiomatic phrases like "believe is true" as a convenient shorthand for "assign a high probability to"! I can see how that might be confusing!
In response to
Changing Emotions
Abigail, I don't think we actually disagree. I certainly wouldn't defend the strong Bailey/Blanchard thesis that transwomen can be neatly sorted into autogynephiles and gay men. However, I am confident that autogynephilia is a real phenomenon in at least some people, and that's all I was trying to refer to in my earlier comment--sorry I wasn't clearer.
I certainly wouldn't defend the [...] thesis
"Wouldn't defend" is an interestingly ambiguous phrase!—it could mean "I don't think the thesis is true," or it could mean "I think the thesis is true, but I'm not going to argue for it here." The thing to remember is that the ambiguity is meant for the listener, not the speaker; it's important not to let your sensible caution about what beliefs you're willing to argue for under your True Name distort your model of the true state of reality. And precisely because other people are also cautious about what they're willing to argue for, there could be all sorts of important truths—actionable information that you can use to make important life decisions better—that take special rationality skills to discover, that you won't automatically learn about just by reading what almost everyone says, because almost everyone is too cowardly to just say the Really Obvious Thing.
This, unfortunately, is why you probably won't understand what I'm talking about for another seven years and eight months.
the Constitution protects a right to gay marriage
The Constitution protects all rights that are originally retained by the people:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
If there is a natural right to gay marriage, the Constitution protects it. That is, the Constitution protects gay marriage to the extent that recognition of gay marriage is in some sense naturally required as a precondition of fostering "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; as are the rights to free speech and free exercise of religion, to self-defense and self-organized collective defense, and all of the other rights recognized in the U.S. Constitution. A natural right “is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” (United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876))
I like the Ninth Amendment too, but it's worth noting that the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges cited the due process and equal protection clauses, not natural rights: one could argue that the rationale was absurd even if the outcome was correct.
In response to
CFAR in 2014: Continuing to climb out of the startup pit, heading toward a full prototype
I donated $4,000 the other week (or I will have once the check clears).
In response to
Open thread, September 22-28, 2014
Rank the Greg Egan books from best to worst. I have read Permutation City, Quarantine, and Diaspora, loved them all, and am trying to decide which to read next.
No time to explain, but logged in to list
Distress
Axiomatic (story collection)
Luminous (story collection)
Permutation City
Quarantine
Diaspora
Zendegi
Teranesia
Orthogonal trilogy
Schild's Ladder
Incandescence
In response to
The Ten Commandments of Rationality
This niche has already been filled by the Twelve Virtues.
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Well obviously it is false as a matter of fact. Anyone who does the slightest bit of research about transition finds a zillion cis(-ish) people who question their gender for any person who commits to transitioning, gender fluidity, effects of socialization, and a mountain of doubts and steps backwards in every trans person but the most poster-childish. Anyone who digs a bit deeper will find heavy philosophizing and introspection about how there is no "deep down" for gender or any other identity, the social construction of gender, the weird hangups and questioning about each step of social or medical transition, the hard choices between ideal gender expression and social pressure that makes the notion of real identity meaningless, and a bunch of people who detransition and sometimes kill themselves.
But someone who does not want to the research, and would even prefer to stop thinking about the creepy stuff as quickly as possible, is going to need a simplistic caricature, preferably one that doesn't take apart the concept of little neat gender boxes at all. A mainstream one is "A man decides he'd rather be a woman, and becomes one". (Another is "A man decides he'd rather be a woman, but of course he can never be".) gwern basically seems to use that one. It's not a very good one - it casts trans people as inexplicably making a weird choice, it misrepresents pre-transition people even worse than mine, and in basically all instances it's too focused on physical sex. "A woman is misclassified as a man, finds out and corrects it" is a more useful approximation. It encourages approximately the right behaviors (e.g. shutting the fuck up about birth names), and is closer to the motivation of transpeople than the "choice to change" one.
I understand that some people don't model themselves as being sufficiently agentlike to admit that their major life choices were in fact choices; it's certainly politically convenient to claim to have an immutable innate identity that everyone needs to respect. But other people who do model themselves as agents---sometimes even genuinely dysphoric people who might partially understand a little bit of what you're going through!---might have an interest in defending social norms that let them describe their model of reality in non-contrived ways, even if that occasionally hurts some people's feelings. You can and should edit your body and social presentation if that's what you want to do. You cannot edit other people's models of reality, and people might push back if you try to shame them into doing so.