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.