From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Sep 03 1999 - 10:56:23 MDT
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> > As to discussions of non-sexual type, sexual equipment is irrelevant.
> > Those who assert the opposite remind me of the religious types who assert
> > that their god demands that their church indoctrinators possess a willie.
>
> Those who constantly avoid acknowledging the obvious undeniable reality
> that men and women are different kinds of beings mentally and emotionally
> as well as physically deserve equal ridicule. Individuals can always
> rise above the predispositions of their genetic heritage, but when
> dealing with groups of people /as a group/, it is most rational to know
> and understand what generalizations about them are true and which are
> just cultural stereotypes. There are generalizations that are true;
> knowing and understanding these will help you interact with people more
> effectively.
True. On the other hand, I think it deserves to be pointed out that
here, on Extropians, which is concentrated on one end of the bell curve,
the generalizations are less true, on the personality level, than in
other places. I think that almost all of us try to be more self-aware
and transcend those parts of ourselves we don't like. Just as (these
are guesses) rather more than 6% of Extropians have political
persuasions that differ from their parents, and just as we're less
likely agree with the conventional opinion in our native culture for
almost any given subject, I imagine that the effect of gender
differences is also diminished. Because we're rational people, we
converge to rational personalities, regardless of our initial state.
Of course, somebody ought to verify all that and publish it in the
Journal of Transhumanism, but it seems like a good bet. (If anyone
wants to dispute this, we can take it to the Foresight Exchange.)
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:01 MST