It looks to me as if you may be mixing up being queer and preferring to be queer. It’s true that people tend to find themselves approving the way they actually are, but (as you actually acknowledge) there are queer people who would much prefer not to be queer, perhaps for very bad reasons, and I think there are also not-queer people who would prefer to be queer (I think I’ve seen, a few years ago on LW, a discussion of the possibility of hacking oneself to be bisexual).
I would say (in terms of the want/like/approve trichotomy already referenced) that what defines a person as queer is that they want and like sexual/romantic relationships that don’t fit the traditional heteronormative model. Approving or disapproving of such relationships is a separate matter. If tomorrow someone convinces Dave that fundamentalist Christianity is correct then he may start disapproving of queerness and wishing he weren’t queer, but he still will be.
It may well be, as you suggest, that approval is actually a more important part of your personality than wants and likes, but that doesn’t mean that everything needs to be understood in terms of approval rather than wants and likes.
But does not wanting to change indicate that Dave’s queerness is really more about approving than about wanting and liking? I don’t think so. If someone pointed a weird science-fiction-looking device at me and announced that it would rewire my brain to make me stop wanting-and-liking chocolate and start wanting-and-liking aubergines, I would want them not to do it—but I don’t (I’m pretty sure) approve of liking chocolate and disliking aubergine any more than I do of the reverse. It’s just that I don’t want someone rewiring my brain. It seems very plausible to me that Dave’s queerness might be like my liking for chocolate in this respect.
I also wonder whether we’re at risk of being confused by the variety of meanings of “approve”. Perhaps that trichotomy needs to be a tetrachotomy or something. In particular, I don’t think “affectively endorsing the idea of oneself having quality Q” is the same thing as, e.g., “intellectually endorsing the idea of people in general having quality Q”, and when we talk about something like “approving of being queer” with the first meaning—which I think is the only relevant one here—there’s a danger of sounding as if we intend the second.
I agree that preferring being deaf seems likely to be the result of confusion and affective death spirals and whatnot. But … It seems quite possible to me that the following things might be true of some deaf person (let’s call her Debbie): (1) Debbie gets great benefits from being part of the deaf community. (2) If Debbie ceased to be deaf—especially if she did so by her own choice—and other deaf people discovered this, it would be awkward and would impair her ability to fit into that community. (3) That impairment would harm her more than ceasing to be deaf would help her. (4) Ceasing to be deaf and hiding the fact from others in the community would be psychologically disturbing for her and involve the risk of even greater ructions if found out. (4) That risk would also be, for Debbie, worse than the benefit of ceasing to be deaf. Therefore (5) Debbie would be better off remaining deaf, even if some simple and effective treatment were available to her. None of that means that being deaf is better in the abstract; it means that one can get into a situation where it’s better to stay deaf. (If it seems absurd on general principles that having greater abilities could ever be harmful on net, then go and read e.g. The Strategy of Conflict by Thomas Schelling, which contains plenty of counterexamples.)
(3) That impairment would harm her more than ceasing to be deaf would help her.
That’s the core claim that leads to everything else and the first question that pops into my head is: How do you (or anyone) know? Notably, I am not sure that Debbie is going to be able to make a good judgement in this case, plus there is a self-fulfilling prophecy element in here, too.
Oh, and for a fun exercise in mindkilling try substituting “on welfare” for “is deaf” X-/
I don’t. That’s why all I said was that it seems possible that it (along with those other things) might be true of some people. Community is really important to many people. Finding a new community and getting well integrated into it can be difficult. That seems sufficient to make it likely that for some people staying part of an important community they’re in could be overwhelmingly important.
try substituting “on welfare”
I’m not sure what point you’re making, but for what it’s worth the people I know who are on welfare don’t appear to me to constitute a being-on-welfare community. Perhaps I know the wrong ones?
[EDITED to add:] Oh, wait, maybe you were making a less specific analogy and remarking that some people on welfare can be made worse off if, e.g., they get a job. True enough, but nothing about that seems terribly relevant to the present discussion.
It looks to me as if you may be mixing up being queer and preferring to be queer. It’s true that people tend to find themselves approving the way they actually are, but (as you actually acknowledge) there are queer people who would much prefer not to be queer, perhaps for very bad reasons, and I think there are also not-queer people who would prefer to be queer (I think I’ve seen, a few years ago on LW, a discussion of the possibility of hacking oneself to be bisexual).
I would say (in terms of the want/like/approve trichotomy already referenced) that what defines a person as queer is that they want and like sexual/romantic relationships that don’t fit the traditional heteronormative model. Approving or disapproving of such relationships is a separate matter. If tomorrow someone convinces Dave that fundamentalist Christianity is correct then he may start disapproving of queerness and wishing he weren’t queer, but he still will be.
It may well be, as you suggest, that approval is actually a more important part of your personality than wants and likes, but that doesn’t mean that everything needs to be understood in terms of approval rather than wants and likes.
But does not wanting to change indicate that Dave’s queerness is really more about approving than about wanting and liking? I don’t think so. If someone pointed a weird science-fiction-looking device at me and announced that it would rewire my brain to make me stop wanting-and-liking chocolate and start wanting-and-liking aubergines, I would want them not to do it—but I don’t (I’m pretty sure) approve of liking chocolate and disliking aubergine any more than I do of the reverse. It’s just that I don’t want someone rewiring my brain. It seems very plausible to me that Dave’s queerness might be like my liking for chocolate in this respect.
I also wonder whether we’re at risk of being confused by the variety of meanings of “approve”. Perhaps that trichotomy needs to be a tetrachotomy or something. In particular, I don’t think “affectively endorsing the idea of oneself having quality Q” is the same thing as, e.g., “intellectually endorsing the idea of people in general having quality Q”, and when we talk about something like “approving of being queer” with the first meaning—which I think is the only relevant one here—there’s a danger of sounding as if we intend the second.
I agree that preferring being deaf seems likely to be the result of confusion and affective death spirals and whatnot. But … It seems quite possible to me that the following things might be true of some deaf person (let’s call her Debbie): (1) Debbie gets great benefits from being part of the deaf community. (2) If Debbie ceased to be deaf—especially if she did so by her own choice—and other deaf people discovered this, it would be awkward and would impair her ability to fit into that community. (3) That impairment would harm her more than ceasing to be deaf would help her. (4) Ceasing to be deaf and hiding the fact from others in the community would be psychologically disturbing for her and involve the risk of even greater ructions if found out. (4) That risk would also be, for Debbie, worse than the benefit of ceasing to be deaf. Therefore (5) Debbie would be better off remaining deaf, even if some simple and effective treatment were available to her. None of that means that being deaf is better in the abstract; it means that one can get into a situation where it’s better to stay deaf. (If it seems absurd on general principles that having greater abilities could ever be harmful on net, then go and read e.g. The Strategy of Conflict by Thomas Schelling, which contains plenty of counterexamples.)
That’s the core claim that leads to everything else and the first question that pops into my head is: How do you (or anyone) know? Notably, I am not sure that Debbie is going to be able to make a good judgement in this case, plus there is a self-fulfilling prophecy element in here, too.
Oh, and for a fun exercise in mindkilling try substituting “on welfare” for “is deaf” X-/
I don’t. That’s why all I said was that it seems possible that it (along with those other things) might be true of some people. Community is really important to many people. Finding a new community and getting well integrated into it can be difficult. That seems sufficient to make it likely that for some people staying part of an important community they’re in could be overwhelmingly important.
I’m not sure what point you’re making, but for what it’s worth the people I know who are on welfare don’t appear to me to constitute a being-on-welfare community. Perhaps I know the wrong ones?
[EDITED to add:] Oh, wait, maybe you were making a less specific analogy and remarking that some people on welfare can be made worse off if, e.g., they get a job. True enough, but nothing about that seems terribly relevant to the present discussion.
Yes—or that they believe they’ll be made worse off. Not terribly relevant, true, that’s why it was a side remark.