Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

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wtbob: I vouched for your comment to un-kill it so I can post this response here where it should be rather than in a descendent comment. First and foremost, I vehemently disagree with you. But I think you made your point in a civil manner and supported it with an argument, and for that reason alone you deserve to be heard and responded to with civil arguments rather than by censorship. I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the end of my karma your right to say it, even here, as long as you're civil and advance an actual argument.

So:

> Gender is an objective, physical, biological fact, not a subjective experience.

You are wrong about this. It is both a biological circumstance (though not nearly as crisp a dichotomy as most people think) and a subjective experience, and some people have a mismatch between their biology and their subjective experience. It is simple human decency to defer to how someone chooses to self-identify even if it does not conform to your prejudices about how the world ought to be.

> You are wrong about this. It is both a biological circumstance (though not nearly as crisp a dichotomy as most people think) and a subjective experience, and some people have a mismatch between their biology and their subjective experience. It is simple human decency to defer to how someone chooses to self-identify even if it does not conform to your prejudices about how the world ought to be.

You are dogmatic about this. You are stating things without supporting them with proper arguments, and this is what everyone who defends that position does, while claiming that everyone else is wrong. (Or, at least, I have yet to see the opposite.)

Wtbob has not denied that people have subjective experience of their gender, but has instead claimed that this experience does not match biological reality, which is a fact everyone agrees with. Whether it is "simple human decency" to designate someone in a way that does not match reality because of their subjective experience is, I think, very doubtful. This is not prejudices about how the world ought to be, it is facts about how the world is. However, if we were talking about the name change from Bradley to Chelsea, I would agree because name is not tied to a biological fact but is only what is used to refer to someone. As long as everyone can understand who Bradley and Chelsea refers to, there is no problem with using the one preferred by Chelsea.

No, I'm not being dogmatic. Like it or not, subjective experience is part of reality. By dismissing someone's subjective experience as a consideration you are ignoring part of reality for no good reason.

Yes, Chelsea Manning has a Y chromosome. Yes, most (but not all) people with Y chromosomes self-identify as male. So what? Why should the fact that Chelsea has a Y chromosome prevent you from referring to her as "her" if that's how she self-identifies?

That subjective experience is merely an identity based on cultural stereotypes of "man-ness" and "woman-ness".

> It is simple human decency to defer to how someone chooses to self-identify

If I decide to wear a fancy hat and call myself King of the World, should I expect everyone to call me that? No, because I'm not the King of the World.

It turns out people can be wrong about themselves, and we shouldn't pretend they are not. The idea that subjective experience is somehow sacred and immune from criticism is absurd and harmful.

> The subjective experience is merely an identity based on cultural stereotypes of "man-ness" and "woman-ness".

No, it runs much deeper than that. Gender roles are cross-cultural, and fundamentally rooted in the fact that females can get pregnant and males can't. That's why the stereotypes exist, because they are rooted in biological facts. But those facts aren't absolute. Most people who have male genitalia also have certain behavioral predispositions which we associate with "being a man." But not all people with male genitalia have those behavioral predispositions, and for those who don't there is no reason not to treat them according to how they feel rather than what happens to be between their legs. (For starters, if you want to cast your lot with "biological facts" and treat people according to what happens to be between their legs, then you have to deal with the fact that there are natural hermaphrodites.)

> If I decide to wear a fancy hat and call myself King of the World, should I expect everyone to call me that?

Sure, why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

> people can be wrong about themselves

They can't be wrong about their own subjective experiences. An individual is the ultimate authority on that by definition.

People absolutely can be wrong about their own subjective experiences: that's a big component to why religion exists. It's also why we have the concept of mental health.

When people say they have spoken to god, reasonable people think they might be deluded or have some sort of mental health problem.

I understand the desire to not hurt people feelings, but we do people a disservice by agreeing with their self-deception.

> When people say they have spoken to god, reasonable people think they might be deluded or have some sort of mental health problem.

Self righteous people who think they know it all might assume that. Reasonable people will think "that person experienced something I don't understand".

> we do people a disservice by agreeing with their self-deception

We do people a disservice by assuming we know more about them than they know about themselves.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If such evidence cannot be provided, I see no reason to just accept someone's claim at face-value.

I don't claim or believe I know it all, but I try to support any claims of knowledge with evidence.

> We do people a disservice by assuming we know more about them than they know about themselves.

Someone who knows more about human biology or human psychology than me may, in fact, know something more about myself than I do.

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If such evidence cannot be provided, I see no reason to just accept someone's claim at face-value.

I didn't say you should accept their claim at face value. I said you should not assume that the cause the the experience is mental illness, but rather accept that they had an experience that you don't understand. Was it god? Was it some sort of neuralogical event? Was it the onset of paranoid delusions? You don't know and assuming you do is arrogant.

> Someone who knows more about human biology or human psychology than me may, in fact, know something more about myself than I do.

Just because someone is an expert, or has more knowledge, doesn't mean they can't be wrong. When you dismiss someone's subjective experience because you think you know better (rather than just taking it with a grain of salt) you do them and yourself a disservice.

> People absolutely can be wrong about their own subjective experiences: that's a big component to why religion exists.

No, they can be wrong in their explanations of the cause of their subjective experiences, but they cannot be wrong about the experience. People who feel the presence of the Holy Spirit really do feel something. It's just that what they feel is most likely not caused by the Holy Spirit.

> we do people a disservice by agreeing with their self-deception.

And we do ourselves a disservice by dismissing spiritual experiences as mere delusion. See:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/n9y/is_spirituality_irrational/

particularly the resulting discussion.

>The subjective experience is merely an identity based on cultural stereotypes of "man-ness" and "woman-ness".

Why do you assume this to be the case? Why would you conclude that it is impossibility that someone's biological sex may not be the same as biological gender? It would be really surprising if this didn't happen given what we know about genetics and how sex is determined.

Subjective != not real:

Pain is a subjective experience, does this mean that anesthetic should not be given during surgery. What if only some percentage of the population could experience pain? Would that make their suffering less real?

> Why would you conclude that it is impossibility that someone's biological sex may not be the same as biological gender?

Because I have no reason to believe biological gender exists separate from biological sex. No one can point to it nor create a test for it.

So a non-insignificant number of people claiming it to be the case isn't a good enough reason to believe that it's a possibility? What is the threshold for you to consider this possibility? Do you not believe anything subjective then, because by definition "no one can point to it nor create a test for it"?

edit: It seems to me that it costs a person almost nothing to believe somebody about their subjective belief of their gender, yet it seems that a lot of people resist so strongly. Why is this?

I believe subjectivity exists, but not in its supremacy over objectivity.

My objections on the topic are fairly simple:

* We shouldn't create laws around activities or identities that cannot be objectively measured.

* Peoples personally held identities shouldn't be foisted up such that everyone must accept them unquestionably.

People should be free to love, fuck, marry whomever they want and express themselves in whatever degree of masculinity or femininity they are comfortable with. If we had widely known gender-neutral pronouns, I would use them.

Ah. Well it seems we agree almost entirely, to be clear, before I was not really talking within the context of forming laws, but more on individual interaction. I generally agree on the foisting of beliefs onto people, but have found that it is typically not much trouble (word choice mostly) to accommodate the beliefs that we were arguing over. I think your last sentence is very enlightening to your point of view and probably wouldn't have tried to pick an argument if I had interpreted that belief sooner.

> I think your last sentence is very enlightening to your point of view and probably wouldn't have tried to pick an argument if I had interpreted that belief sooner.

This is a big problem with the growing predominance of "virtue signaling" in such discussions. Few people actually want to read/listen and understand someone's point of view before jumping on them for having the "wrong opinion."

But don't we have to create those laws, sometimes? I'm thinking about the difference between homicide degrees, which include a subjective perspective: the intent of the accused.

We do develop standards for manslaughter versus murder 1, but my understanding is that the accused killer's mindset (their "intent") is an important distinction.

>Because I have no reason to believe biological gender exists separate for biological sex.

Most traits associated with sex are not universally determined by sex. One example in humans is males that have XX chromosomes[0]. For another example see AIS[1].

We observe more than two genders expressed in non-human animals:

>Side-blotched lizards are notable for having the highest number of distinct male and female morphs or "genders" within a species: three male and two female. [2]

It is extremely unlikely that given the diversity of phenotype expression we see in life there would be no cases in which sex does not match gender. A claim that sex and gender match perfectly in all cases requires enormous evidentary support as it contradicts much of current science and biology.

>No one can point to it nor create a test for it.

You can ask someone, that is generally how we determine how much pain someone is in.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrom...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-blotched_lizard#Genders

I don't think you've demonstrated the existence of biological gender as much as the well-known category of biological intersexuality.

I have no objection to the degree that someone wants to express themselves with stereotypical masculine or feminine traits. Elevating cultural stereotypes to the level of phenotype is not supported by anything you've linked to, though.

>> No one can point to it nor create a test for it.

> You can ask someone, that is generally how we determine how much pain someone is in.

This is true, but we don't create laws around someone's reported degree of pain. Doctors are also given then discretion to deny someone pain medication if they believe the patient is lying in order to get high (though I disagree with this on grounds of drug decriminalization).

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