The "science experiments" he ran to "support" his "theories" aren't quite Philip Zimbardo levels of unethical quackery, but I'm still not sure how attaching electrodes to people's genitals and making them watch porn is a sensible way to categorise anyone, even ignoring the fudging required to make his experiments show the "correct" results.
OT: What do you mean by that? I know Popper, I can guess what you mean, but what do you mean?
I'm pretty sure this is in The Open Society and Its Enemies, but I can't remember. I do know that it's in this webcomic: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/285
> If your theory is capable of "explaining" every possible piece of evidence, it's not a scientific theory.
Do you mean, if your theory is not falsifiable? If your falsifiable theory is not (yet) falsified, if you magically know it never will be falsified, isn't it still a theory?
(If it's just a matter of wording on an Internet comment, then sorry to bother you - I don't mean to play gotcha.)
However, that was itself me being lazy, because Blanchard's typology does make concrete predictions about what sorts of people exist. The assertion that people can be classified into "attracted to women" and "not attracted to women" is refuted by the Kinsey Reports (and many better studies besides); the assertion that being trans is a sex thing is refuted by the existence of certain ace trans people; the assertion that transition is about imitation is refuted by the existence of certain non-binary people…
Of course, Ray Blanchard himself bolts on new categories whenever he can't fudge the analysis to fit a pre-existing conclusion – last I checked, he had around 10 categories – but most adherents treat the original two categories as dogma. (The lengths to which people will go for a gender binary…)
Really, I should say that if you're cis and relying on thought experiments, Blanchard's typology is unfalsifiable: you will simply not be able to observe any evidence that refutes it. I myself (not then having much contact with out trans people (if we discount Reddit)) had to do a lot of introspection (could I rule out self-deception? wishful thinking? how?) before I concluded that either my internal subjective experience refuted the typology (and its variants), or I was too insane to be capable of reasoning. This tendency towards solipsism did not do me many favours (and was ultimately quite harmful, for reasons I will not discuss here), but it did at least prepare me for the many other academics who talk out of their arses about things they have no legitimate claim to expertise in, save for being among the first academics to study it. (Or, in Ray Blanchard's case, among the first academics to study it after the Nazi purge.)
Thought experiments, unless something provable like mathematics, are worse than useless, they are deceiving. There is an evil demon that deceives us, that we cannot overcome.
The only source of knowledge is to go out and ask, 'what do you mean?' Thanks for answering!
I wouldn't quite say that thought experiments are always deceiving (Albert Einstein found them quite useful, for example), but they are very parodiable. https://existentialcomics.com/comic/183
> "Did he just… not see any of us?" "Rationalists are terrible at seeing stuff. He probably just tried to deduce who was here from reason alone."
Really, purely curiosity. At first, one thing I was wondering was if some new theory might have caught hold in some corner of academia, for example. Then I wondered if I misunderstood falsification myself.
> Einstein found them quite useful, for example
He is why I made the exception for math. His 'experiment' used math (exclusively?) - and wasn't relied upon until confirmed empirically.
> the excruciating process of transition
I have only ever seen people describe transition with words like "excruciating" for two reasons:
• Social barriers, e.g. medical gatekeeping, transphobic bigotry.
• Believing in the Blanchard or 4chan classification systems, and constantly judging themselves accordingly.
Please don't hold onto this so tight. It's not healthy, and there's zero evidence that it's even remotely true.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you want to base your understanding of the world on data rather than anecdata, here.
Considering you've replied to 3 different threads starting the same flame war (and are apparently unwilling to accept actual data), I am very skeptical of your ability to move on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxPOuDvvKD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK1XI6-z0GE
Most HSTS aren't terminally online so you won't find as much content. They don't seek out the spotlight as activists and would rather live a normal life as women generally.
I'm not a conservative or right wing chud. This is important for the public to understand.
I think most cis women-who-love-women do like trans women, but they just have more options.
Trans people are part of biology. It's what happens when you are exposed to cross-sex hormones.
Personally, I tend to view (my own) transition as embracing an intersex condition with medical intervention.
Not implicating anything in particular, other than that biology is ridiculously complex. I can only speak from personal experience.
Before I transitioned, I noticed there was a pattern in my life where cis lesbians were interested in me, I've even dated a lesbian cis girl _as a boy_ when I was about 15 or something like that.
Biology is very strange.
I personally use the word "soul" for this kind of stuff. But that's nonsensical in the end.
False. The clinically accepted typology is 'Gender Dysphoria', as under the DSM-5. The only place AGP is referenced in the DSM is as a subtype of 'Transvestic Disorder' (Transvestic Disorder With Autogynephilia), which is marked explicitly as crossdressing and imagining oneself as a woman solely for sexual purposes. The two diagnoses (Gender Dysphoria and Transvestic Disorder) are distinct from one another and not related.