And I am also interested in a different hypothetical experiment: imagine a perfect genetic therapy that could fully change adults person sex, like growing true new reproductive organs, no need for hormonal supplements, etc.
Would this also be perceived as a threat? You know, in a way, if you can really truly perfectly change your sex, being trans doesn’t really mean anything anymore, or does it?
Being transgender is in some ways similar to an ethnicity or a culture. I think some of the intuitions about “eradication” are coming from the same place as for people who fear the end of their race, ethnicity, or culture. I think it’s a tribal intuition that evolution engraved deeply into us. I’ve never been deaf so I can’t really compare the two. I think it’s extremely difficult to discuss productively without a general theory. Otherwise we’ll be heavily biased by our priors on politics and whether we like deaf people, trans people, and so on.
imagine a perfect genetic therapy that could fully change adults person sex, like growing true new reproductive organs, no need for hormonal supplements, etc.
I’m sure some people would find it very threatening. “God doesn’t make mistakes”.
The thing is, I have a Y chromosome with an SRY gene. Even if we could make me XX in all my cells that wouldn’t regrow my anatomy. (I don’t know how it would affect my brain.) So there would have to be some kind of surgical step.
I would still consider this meaningfully “trans” since I would have the memories and experiences of living first in an XY body and then moving to an XX one. My brain would still have the neuroanatomy my confused XY genotype laid down during gestation. I doubt there would be a way to give me a “fully XX” brain without wiping out my identity.
But you’re right that this would hopefully solve a lot of problems.
That might not even be possible hypothetically. “Perfectly” changing sex would also change sex-related psychological properties. Interests would strongly change, especially along the things-vs-people axis, in which biological males are much more interested than biological females. So e.g. an MtF person who is strongly interested in LessWrong, math, programming, video games and sex, would, when “changed” into a biological woman, lose most of those male-typical interests. In which case it may no longer be possible to consider this the same person. Which would mean we didn’t hypothetically change the sex of a person, but instead that we removed one person and created a different one.
Yes, women as a group tend to have on average more “feminine interests”. But there are many individual women who have “masculine interests“ and many men with “feminine interests”, so I don’t think that the theoretical perfect transition should require change of interests per se.
If the “perfect” transition doesn’t include psychology, the result would still have the psychology of the original sex. That’s not a perfect transition.
There are countless physiological as well as psychological properties that form statistical family resemblance clusters for male and female. I already mentioned things-vs-people and interest in sex for male, but there are many others. Those clusters of properties are very unlikely to be significantly instantiated in the opposite sex, even if a few individual properties often deviate from the cluster. A “perfect” sex transition from male to female obviously wouldn’t be perfect if the resulting individual still had a male-typical bone structure, muscle structure, face shape, etc, and the same holds for psychological properties.
I guess I am interested in both.
And I am also interested in a different hypothetical experiment: imagine a perfect genetic therapy that could fully change adults person sex, like growing true new reproductive organs, no need for hormonal supplements, etc.
Would this also be perceived as a threat? You know, in a way, if you can really truly perfectly change your sex, being trans doesn’t really mean anything anymore, or does it?
Being transgender is in some ways similar to an ethnicity or a culture. I think some of the intuitions about “eradication” are coming from the same place as for people who fear the end of their race, ethnicity, or culture. I think it’s a tribal intuition that evolution engraved deeply into us. I’ve never been deaf so I can’t really compare the two. I think it’s extremely difficult to discuss productively without a general theory. Otherwise we’ll be heavily biased by our priors on politics and whether we like deaf people, trans people, and so on.
I’m sure some people would find it very threatening. “God doesn’t make mistakes”.
The thing is, I have a Y chromosome with an SRY gene. Even if we could make me XX in all my cells that wouldn’t regrow my anatomy. (I don’t know how it would affect my brain.) So there would have to be some kind of surgical step.
I would still consider this meaningfully “trans” since I would have the memories and experiences of living first in an XY body and then moving to an XX one. My brain would still have the neuroanatomy my confused XY genotype laid down during gestation. I doubt there would be a way to give me a “fully XX” brain without wiping out my identity.
But you’re right that this would hopefully solve a lot of problems.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insights.
That might not even be possible hypothetically. “Perfectly” changing sex would also change sex-related psychological properties. Interests would strongly change, especially along the things-vs-people axis, in which biological males are much more interested than biological females. So e.g. an MtF person who is strongly interested in LessWrong, math, programming, video games and sex, would, when “changed” into a biological woman, lose most of those male-typical interests. In which case it may no longer be possible to consider this the same person. Which would mean we didn’t hypothetically change the sex of a person, but instead that we removed one person and created a different one.
Yes, women as a group tend to have on average more “feminine interests”. But there are many individual women who have “masculine interests“ and many men with “feminine interests”, so I don’t think that the theoretical perfect transition should require change of interests per se.
If the “perfect” transition doesn’t include psychology, the result would still have the psychology of the original sex. That’s not a perfect transition.
What does it even mean “psychology of the original sex”?
Seems to me like calling every male with height below 165cm of height trans, because he has below female average height.
There are countless physiological as well as psychological properties that form statistical family resemblance clusters for male and female. I already mentioned things-vs-people and interest in sex for male, but there are many others. Those clusters of properties are very unlikely to be significantly instantiated in the opposite sex, even if a few individual properties often deviate from the cluster. A “perfect” sex transition from male to female obviously wouldn’t be perfect if the resulting individual still had a male-typical bone structure, muscle structure, face shape, etc, and the same holds for psychological properties.