I shan’t presume to answer for Eliezer, but for myself, I think it is valuable that in the course of a day, I encounter many people whose experiences are similar to mine along all these gender-related axes, and with whom I can discuss these commonalities, and that, at the same time, I encounter many people whose experiences are drastically unlike mine, whose ways of thinking I will have to exert effort in order to understand. Thus, having a few genders seems to me to be well-optimized for fun.
(It is, of course, possible that I’m just putting a happy gloss on the circumstances in which I already happen to exist)
Well, call me loony, but I (a) like the fact that women exist in the world (b) don’t mind being a man. Ergo, I prefer to live in a culture with at least two genders.
Personally, I just like the fact there are people in the world that are different from me.
I’m not clear on why gender (especially in the current, culturally-constructed and tied to physical sex, manner) serves this purpose particularly well vs. other types of people I don’t identify with but find interesting (such as, say, philosophers).
Seriously, intercourse, marriage, raising children, etc. give the two genders an objective reason to work hard to understand their differences. The challenge is more fun because it has a built-in reward.
Sex is a function of, well, physical sex. This is not the same thing as gender, or gender roles.
It’s not clear to what extent the two are directly connected instead of socially constructed, cf. comments such as this or ciphergoth’s comments about sexual politics.
ETA: One can obviously make the argument that value is gained from sexual attraction pushing people to connect with others who may differ from them, but given some non-isomorphism between gender and sex vs. arguably larger differences between people from different cultures vs. masculine vs. feminine individuals from the same culture this strikes me as hard to defend as making gender identity particularly useful.
ETA2: Also, I’m pretty sure my boss and his partner would be surprised if I told them that sex and gender differences are an integral or even major part of the fun in sex and romantic relationships.
Indeed, I think gender (and the way it is intertwined with hetero-normativity) is one of the factors causing us to have less sex than we could have.
For instance, suppose that there is some evolutionary-psychology reason which makes biologically male persons like short sexual encounters higher, and biologically female persons value long-term relationships. (This whole discussion is predicated on the existence of biological-sex based psychological traits, after all, so let’s go out on a limb). The expected outcome might be that men seek out men for casual hook-ups and women for longer-term relationships. But this is generally not what we are seeing.
Why not? One explanation might be that most people are not even a little interested in same-sex sex. But that does not seem to be the case, consider for example environments like single-sex prisons.
I would instead argue that the reasons is that “men do not have sex with men” and “women do not have sex with women” is a cornerstone of the socially constructed part of gender, and going against this would necessitating people to drop a big part of their identity, which is unpleasant.
On this view, the existence of gender is actually preventing us from optimally partaking of that obvious good, copious sex.
I would instead argue that the reasons is that “men do not have sex with men” and “women do not have sex with women” is a cornerstone of the socially constructed part of gender, and going against this would necessitating people to drop a big part of their identity, which is unpleasant.
I generally like being a heterosexual man. Though maybe I’d prefer to be an asexual man. Being a homosexual man might be fun too.
But not being a man, seems like something that would change my values significantly. That’s obviously not something I want.
I presume you consider a very large number of genders to be the same as zero/one gender.
I don’t see why. There are obvious differences between a cluster around one point, two points, n>2 points, or a random distribution in genderspace.
IIRC the case of n=2 comes from the evolutionary instability of n=1 in the prisoner’s dilemma of providing for the gamete and later for the infant. But with stem cell gametes etc, there is now no reason for humans to restrict n to 2.
IIRC the case of n=2 comes from the evolutionary instability of n=1 in the prisoner’s dilemma of providing for the gamete and later for the infant. But with stem cell gametes etc, there is now no reason for humans to restrict n to 2.
IIRC, if you start from equal sized gametes, cheaters can win by providing less, which requires the others to provide more. In the end you get stable sperm and egg gametes where one provides 100% and the other packs only the energy to swim. Hence n=1 decays into n=2.
A lot of other sex characteristics arise as consequences, including the relative huge numbers of male sperm to female eggs, the fact that the sperm usually swims and the egg doesn’t, the female becoming the site of internal fertilization, the female carrying and feeding the pregnancy, the female looking after live born young, and the consequent genetic pickiness of females versus male fire-and-forget.
As for the stem cell thing, one of the kinds of cells they can be made into is the kind that become gametes. In principle though not yet in practice you should be able to make either kind from either sex—they have already made female sperms in mice. Hence sexual reproduction will be available to anyone with anyone, or solo.
Would you mind explaining why? (I presume you consider a very large number of genders to be the same as zero/one gender.)
I shan’t presume to answer for Eliezer, but for myself, I think it is valuable that in the course of a day, I encounter many people whose experiences are similar to mine along all these gender-related axes, and with whom I can discuss these commonalities, and that, at the same time, I encounter many people whose experiences are drastically unlike mine, whose ways of thinking I will have to exert effort in order to understand. Thus, having a few genders seems to me to be well-optimized for fun.
(It is, of course, possible that I’m just putting a happy gloss on the circumstances in which I already happen to exist)
Well, call me loony, but I (a) like the fact that women exist in the world (b) don’t mind being a man. Ergo, I prefer to live in a culture with at least two genders.
Personally, I just like the fact there are people in the world that are different from me.
I’m not clear on why gender (especially in the current, culturally-constructed and tied to physical sex, manner) serves this purpose particularly well vs. other types of people I don’t identify with but find interesting (such as, say, philosophers).
The obvious reason.
Probably I’m being obtuse here, but I asked because it isn’t obvious to me.
Well, the having sex part is certainly nice =).
Seriously, intercourse, marriage, raising children, etc. give the two genders an objective reason to work hard to understand their differences. The challenge is more fun because it has a built-in reward.
Sex is a function of, well, physical sex. This is not the same thing as gender, or gender roles.
It’s not clear to what extent the two are directly connected instead of socially constructed, cf. comments such as this or ciphergoth’s comments about sexual politics.
ETA: One can obviously make the argument that value is gained from sexual attraction pushing people to connect with others who may differ from them, but given some non-isomorphism between gender and sex vs. arguably larger differences between people from different cultures vs. masculine vs. feminine individuals from the same culture this strikes me as hard to defend as making gender identity particularly useful.
ETA2: Also, I’m pretty sure my boss and his partner would be surprised if I told them that sex and gender differences are an integral or even major part of the fun in sex and romantic relationships.
Indeed, I think gender (and the way it is intertwined with hetero-normativity) is one of the factors causing us to have less sex than we could have.
For instance, suppose that there is some evolutionary-psychology reason which makes biologically male persons like short sexual encounters higher, and biologically female persons value long-term relationships. (This whole discussion is predicated on the existence of biological-sex based psychological traits, after all, so let’s go out on a limb). The expected outcome might be that men seek out men for casual hook-ups and women for longer-term relationships. But this is generally not what we are seeing.
Why not? One explanation might be that most people are not even a little interested in same-sex sex. But that does not seem to be the case, consider for example environments like single-sex prisons.
I would instead argue that the reasons is that “men do not have sex with men” and “women do not have sex with women” is a cornerstone of the socially constructed part of gender, and going against this would necessitating people to drop a big part of their identity, which is unpleasant.
On this view, the existence of gender is actually preventing us from optimally partaking of that obvious good, copious sex.
I generally like being a heterosexual man. Though maybe I’d prefer to be an asexual man. Being a homosexual man might be fun too.
But not being a man, seems like something that would change my values significantly. That’s obviously not something I want.
I don’t see why. There are obvious differences between a cluster around one point, two points, n>2 points, or a random distribution in genderspace.
IIRC the case of n=2 comes from the evolutionary instability of n=1 in the prisoner’s dilemma of providing for the gamete and later for the infant. But with stem cell gametes etc, there is now no reason for humans to restrict n to 2.
Too concise for me. Can you elaborate?
IIRC, if you start from equal sized gametes, cheaters can win by providing less, which requires the others to provide more. In the end you get stable sperm and egg gametes where one provides 100% and the other packs only the energy to swim. Hence n=1 decays into n=2.
A lot of other sex characteristics arise as consequences, including the relative huge numbers of male sperm to female eggs, the fact that the sperm usually swims and the egg doesn’t, the female becoming the site of internal fertilization, the female carrying and feeding the pregnancy, the female looking after live born young, and the consequent genetic pickiness of females versus male fire-and-forget.
As for the stem cell thing, one of the kinds of cells they can be made into is the kind that become gametes. In principle though not yet in practice you should be able to make either kind from either sex—they have already made female sperms in mice. Hence sexual reproduction will be available to anyone with anyone, or solo.