Thanks for giving me more ammunition against the chauvinistic male thinkers who we’re still supposed to revere as fathers of western thought ❤️ Also love hearing about how gender diversity has historically been integrated in Polynesian cultures, showing us a map out of our current exclusionary binary model. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
I really enjoyed this post, and I appreciate the amount of thought and research you put into it.
It's interesting that you say, "As humans, we’re drawn to models that put people into categories—the simpler, the better," because that, in itself, is cognitive shortcut: "All humans think like this."
I won't say that your claim isn't generally true as I've not studied every culture in the history of the world. I do see lots of people online making black and white assertions after jumping to wild conclusions, but I believe this is because algorithms distort our view of reality. We're all shown a slightly different version of it--one that's usually an echo-chamber that supports whatever we've already decided is true, making our claims and beliefs more and more rigid and and insulated. Is this human nature or is it merely another social construct? I feel like stubbornness, knee-jerk reactions, rigidity, close-mindedness, etc. are far more socially acceptable now than they used to be.
In real life, when people are thinking independently of algorithms, and when we're not living in fear (I think anxiety tends to exacerbate cognitive shortcuts) I believe a lot of us are willing to let complexity simply exist as it is.
Astute critique, and you’re absolutely right. I’m abstracting human cognition when I talk about what’s really a tendency to shortcut, not an imperative. There’s great internal variation among us and you’re right to point that out. Your point about algorithmic thinking, and especially decisioning under mental stress or fear, makes me think of the research concept of intolerance of uncertainty, which you might be interested in. I talk about that concept a bit here, though in the specific context of autism: https://www.strangeclarity.com/p/could-a-drive-for-certainty-be-key I think it’s an underexplored dimension of psychology and cognition.
As well, a problem for my broader argument about gender being overloaded is that sometimes we really do need categorical abstraction as a tool for discussion. We can’t always talk at the level of the individual. In a future essay in the series I’m going to propose a heuristic for when to organize by gender and when to not. I can’t claim my proposal will be free of problems, but I hope to offer a useful starting point.
And, in a final part, I’m going to propose an entirely different categorical dimension to use as our default instead of gender.
Thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing! A lot of work went into this for sure. I appreciate you noticing that.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply and for the link to your other post. I look forward to reading it.
I agree, sometimes we do need to categorize in order to have any kind of meaningful discussion about a social phenomena. However, I think you pointed out that we sometimes make assumptions about why something is generally true (is it nature or is it nurture?), which is what gets us in trouble.
As others have noted, this is a very well-researched essay and the arguments that spill forth are - to me! - very convincing. I especially loved the section on the different directions gender stereotyping has blown in over time. A favourite philosopher of mine said has a Montaigne quote above his writing desk, so I always thought he must have sound ideas, but his take on women and friendship is making me question that 😅 I look forward to more essays in this series.
Thanks for giving me more ammunition against the chauvinistic male thinkers who we’re still supposed to revere as fathers of western thought ❤️ Also love hearing about how gender diversity has historically been integrated in Polynesian cultures, showing us a map out of our current exclusionary binary model. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
Happy to oblige! Thanks for reading and commenting!
I really enjoyed this post, and I appreciate the amount of thought and research you put into it.
It's interesting that you say, "As humans, we’re drawn to models that put people into categories—the simpler, the better," because that, in itself, is cognitive shortcut: "All humans think like this."
I won't say that your claim isn't generally true as I've not studied every culture in the history of the world. I do see lots of people online making black and white assertions after jumping to wild conclusions, but I believe this is because algorithms distort our view of reality. We're all shown a slightly different version of it--one that's usually an echo-chamber that supports whatever we've already decided is true, making our claims and beliefs more and more rigid and and insulated. Is this human nature or is it merely another social construct? I feel like stubbornness, knee-jerk reactions, rigidity, close-mindedness, etc. are far more socially acceptable now than they used to be.
In real life, when people are thinking independently of algorithms, and when we're not living in fear (I think anxiety tends to exacerbate cognitive shortcuts) I believe a lot of us are willing to let complexity simply exist as it is.
Astute critique, and you’re absolutely right. I’m abstracting human cognition when I talk about what’s really a tendency to shortcut, not an imperative. There’s great internal variation among us and you’re right to point that out. Your point about algorithmic thinking, and especially decisioning under mental stress or fear, makes me think of the research concept of intolerance of uncertainty, which you might be interested in. I talk about that concept a bit here, though in the specific context of autism: https://www.strangeclarity.com/p/could-a-drive-for-certainty-be-key I think it’s an underexplored dimension of psychology and cognition.
As well, a problem for my broader argument about gender being overloaded is that sometimes we really do need categorical abstraction as a tool for discussion. We can’t always talk at the level of the individual. In a future essay in the series I’m going to propose a heuristic for when to organize by gender and when to not. I can’t claim my proposal will be free of problems, but I hope to offer a useful starting point.
And, in a final part, I’m going to propose an entirely different categorical dimension to use as our default instead of gender.
Thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing! A lot of work went into this for sure. I appreciate you noticing that.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply and for the link to your other post. I look forward to reading it.
I agree, sometimes we do need to categorize in order to have any kind of meaningful discussion about a social phenomena. However, I think you pointed out that we sometimes make assumptions about why something is generally true (is it nature or is it nurture?), which is what gets us in trouble.
As others have noted, this is a very well-researched essay and the arguments that spill forth are - to me! - very convincing. I especially loved the section on the different directions gender stereotyping has blown in over time. A favourite philosopher of mine said has a Montaigne quote above his writing desk, so I always thought he must have sound ideas, but his take on women and friendship is making me question that 😅 I look forward to more essays in this series.
Thanks for commenting Jayne!