161–170 of 261 posts
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In fairness, using different pronouns for different genders doesn't make a lot of sense in the first place.
My preferred pronoun is "the majestic one with no time for the nonsense of gendered pronouns". It cannot be combined in a plural; I stand alone.
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Autistic people can have trouble accessing emotions, but a lot of the reason for that stereotype is just that they communicate their emotions and emotional reactions differently and/or that their emotional reactions to certain situations are different to those of neurotypical people: not that they're not actually feeling emotions at all.
It might also be that Autistic traits would be a good solo or small tribe survival adaptation. Highly logical, no breaking down in a fit of misery, less susceptible to loneliness, very useful for times when you're stuck in a survival situation.
It takes a while to get to the point, but this is what the page is about: As we explained in a recent review paper, researchers have repeatedly found evidence that Autistic individuals are, on average, more consistent, less biased, and more rational than non-autistic individuals in a variety of contexts. Specifically, many Autistic people seem to be less susceptible to cognitive biases, and therefore better able to m…
E.g. Certain professions instill in you biases. Or force you to pick them. Examples: police officers, medical, politicians, social workers. And I bet those are professions that people with degrees of autism avoid.
I am curious if the lack of bias exists in other conditions that end up acting in a short of unempathetic way (for different reasons as noted).
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Sure it does. We're a sexually dimorphic species that can only reproduce with one XY and one XX. Differentiating between them is vital to the continued existence of the species. Talking with your buddies of the same gender about how you were hanging out alone with one of the opposite was a tribally significant thing in the early days of speech. It still today implies you might be mating! And babies might be forthcomi…
Maybe for some people? Most of my buddies are of the opposite gender, and me hanging out with one of them doesn’t imply anything different to me hanging out with someone of my own gender.
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> invokes images of a child that screams and shits themselves This is a generalized problem with the self-proclaimed neurodiversity/"autism rights" movement, though. They do very well at expressing the wishes of reasonably high-functioning folks with autistic traits , but don't seem to relate to the kids who can't speak intelligibly and spend their time banging their head against the wall any better than everyone els…
What is there to say about low vs. high functioning autism? People with low functioning autism can't be helped by social movements about recognizing human diversity, they can be helped by medical research and support for their parents. High functioning autism probably can't be helped by social movements either (what's the plan, to talk everybody out of using the subconscious screening system that makes them not like…
Many people in the "autism rights" movement oppose these things, often with strident rhetoric. They view any "medicalization" of the condition they happen to share with their lower-functioning fellows as inherently inhumane.
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As somebody who sits upon the autistic scale, I personally have a deep rooted ethic of fairness, even if it means I yield an advantage, I'm just as uncomfortable being unfairly treated as I am being over fairly treated and to empathize I just look at the others position as if that was mine and how would I feel about that, at least that is how I empathize. Also tend towards common sense slanted bluntness over diplomat…
Yup! One time during an exit interview I pointed out (some concrete feedback they could take action on, aaah, how naive of me) how bad the DevOps team had it (80+ hour weeks, constant weekend work, all hours on call, etc) as one of my reasons for leaving and the CEO could NOT understand why I would care about this at all. His response was about how our team (BI) had it so good, which we did, so why would that matter!…
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This is a strange one. I'd cancel the cheaper one because it'll be easier to go on that cheaper trip at a later date than the more expensive one. Choosing the one you'd rather go on right now shows a lack of planning. It seems less rational to me.
> it'll be easier to go on that cheaper trip at a later date than the more expensive one How can you infer that just from its price though? :P
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Rationality isn't whatever people do. Biases are whatever people don't do optimally that they would, if they were perfectly rational. Various subgroups can have different responses, but rationality is its own ideal, regardless of what people do.
In what sense!? From what god is Rationalty (TM) handed down? Which parts of society are Rational? Which of the sentences of mine is Rational? Ostensibly Rational just means “with reasons” or “calculated” but there are many different calculuses under which one could operate. I agree with GP. Economic rational agents are supposed to do things like maximize utility or minimize loss. I know that I for one do things like…
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I would argue exactly the contrary: the real world, the seasons and stars and seeds, is pitilessly rational. It cannot be tricked, pleaded with, or emotionally manipulated. It is harsh, but equally so to everyone, and according to an inexorable logic that cannot be altered but can be exploited. It is the special contexts the humans have created, like churches, courts, and tribes, where the laws of rationality can be…
Humans and other primates are social animals, and pretty much all aspects of personal success and ability to influence the external world - survival and safety, access to nutrition, mates and other resources, and general power - are mostly determined by social factors, so "winning" at the social factors has been more important than what a single individual can achieve by exploiting the "real world" even since before…
But everything in your second paragraph is incorrect. Even before the industrial revolution, it was commonplace for banished people to find a new place to live, either as hermits or as part of a new tribe; the outlawing and persecution of individual refugees and "stateless persons" is a Late Modern aberration. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, a subordinate position in a tribe like Japan that is very "dominant against the real world" gains larger benefits than a dominant position in a tribe like the Wola that is much less "dominant against the real world". For example, as a Japanese person, you live twice as long, you probably won't get raped, you are at no risk of being executed for witchcraft if you fall from favor, and if at some point the two tribes come into armed conflict, the Wola will be entirely at the mercy of the Japanese.
Even in the first paragraph, though, there is a significant error. You say, "Starving or not starving... procreation... [and] changing the world in various ways [mostly] depend on how many other people you can motivate to go along with your plans." But in fact they do not. These things depend jointly on whether you get teamwork on plans, a social question, and on whether the plans are any good in the first place, a rational question. This is what sunk the Great Leap Forward: Mao was suffering from the delusion that you so clearly expressed here. He evidently motivated people to go along with his plans to an almost unprecedented degree, but many objective, non-social aspects of the plans (notably backyard smelting, the Four Pests campaign, deep plowing, and close planting) were destined to produce catastrophe, especially if they were executed thoroughly. The greatest famine in human history was the predictable consequence, killing some 40 million people.
The industrial revolution was a consequence of Galileo's rebellion against this subjectivist view: he dared to look through his telescope at the real world and believe what he saw, despite its incompatibility with the socially constructed virtual reality of his time. It took some time, but Italy paid for its rejection of Galileo with centuries of penury and destitution. Ultimately Galileo influenced the external world, as you say, far more than the crabbed Inquisitors who persecuted him.
I stand with Galileo and against Mao. Will you join me?
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Obviously it depends on your goals and the context. Both specificity and generality are useful. To ban one is foolishness. They coalesced into short words for a reason: people use them, a lot.
We can exchange truisms all day ;) But that doesn't change the fact that in my experience specificity related to gender pronouns is needed (or even helpful) only in a very tiny minority of everyday contexts. For the record, my native tongue is much more gendered than English (it has gendered nouns, verbs and adjectives; not just pronouns) - I don't understand how it's useful at all, I don't miss it in English.
Personally I agree, for me gender holds little importance, if I'm being most true to myself I identify as non binary simply because I don't really identify with a gendered label. That motivation has also lead me to being ok with being gendered male, because it just doesn't matter to me.
I understand I need to look outside of my own experience to see the importance people place on gender though. You can say all you want that most people don't care, but I feel if you misgender people, a lot of them would be very upset. Trans people are very vulnerable to suicide because of this, to diminish the importance of gender (this includes the binary, of which many trans people want to fit into) to these people is to be at best lacking in empathy.
Now if you're approaching this from a gender abolitionist angle where you believe all this attachment to gender is socialized and that we should push to de-emphasize genders role in society, then I believe that's a far more defensible position, but I feel you need to at least recognize the importance gender has to people today (socialized or not) if you're to have any hope in bridging that gap with people.