Tortoise and Achilles discuss how you shouldn't be constrained by word types

[jack]

One day Achilles came running up excitedly to the Tortoise. "What blood type are you?" he asked.

"Um," said the Tortoise. "I'm not sure. How can I tell?"

Achilles paused in his enthusiasm for a moment. "Well, are you more workmanlike, or more passionate?"

"Um. Well, on balance I think I'm more workmanlike. I think you're passionate. But I don't like where this is going..."

"Oh, don't worry. My new guru told me all about it. If you're more workmanlike, you're probably type A. And you're right, I'm type B: impulsive and original!"

"Hold on a second." The Tortoise stretched slooowly inside her shell. "I just remembered. The last time I gave blood, the nurse mentioned it. My blood is actually type B."

"No, that can't be right. You're OBVIOUSLY a type A. Look at all of the evidence. You're cautious but creative. Methodical. Sensib..."

"Stop. Look, just because I have type B blood, doesn't mean I have a type B personality. Maybe I have type B blood cells and type A personality"

"That's not how it works!"

"How do you know? Just because we use the same word to mean both?"

"Of course not! It's like, if you're a square, you must have 90 degree corners and all sides the same length. It's just how it is."

"So you're saying, by definition, people with these proteins in the blood have these sorts of personality?"

"Well, not quite by definition. But they CAUSE the personality?"

"Are you sure? How do you know?"

"Well... everyone says so."

"And in your experience, are everyone usually right?"

"Well.. often. But no, I admit, depressingly often the popular consciousness doesn't really cite any peer reviewed studies at all..."

"So you admit that IN PRINCIPLE, it would be possible for the evidence, such as it is, to be incomplete, and there may a correlation, but it's less than 100%?"

"I suppose so."

"And if I were one of those exceptions, would it automatically make me a bad person? Should I try to live up to type B personality traits, even if they don't suit me?"

"No, darn it! I like lots the way you are, or the way you want to be. You're really a type A, even if you happen to look like a type B. And anyone who wants to say otherwise is wrong."

"Wait, hold on. I like you a lot too, and thank you ever so much for the vote of support! But it's like, some people use 'type A blood' to mean 'type A blood cells' and some people use 'type A blood' to mean 'type A personality'". As a putative Really-Type-A, I appreciate the politeness of using type-A to mean 'type A personality'."

"Right."

"Yes. But people who are still using 'type A' to mean 'type A blood cells' are not wrong, they're just rude, or possibly just ignorant, for not knowing that the natural physical interpretation is offensive to people who are Type-A but don't have Type-A blood cells."

"Ah, I see what you're saying," said Achilles. He began to sum up, counting points on his fingers. "So, we could either use 'type a' purely clinically for medical purposes, and come up with other names for the personalities. Or we could use 'type a' for the personalities, and say 'medically type a' for the blood types. Or we could come up with two, new different names and try not to say 'type a' at all, because we know everyone will think it means different things."

"Exactly. I'd prefer to come up with two new terms, really. But it's probably more practical for doctors to use the medical term and everyone else to use the personality term, even if it leads to misunderstandings."

"Right! But we should remember, if someone disagrees, they're just using the wrong word: it's bad, because it leads them to think you MUST have a type A personality or a type B blood type. But you're not disagreeing about facts unless they refuse to listen."

"Exactly. Thanks, achilles."

"Don't mention it."

"In fact, come to think of it, isn't it odd that type AB personalities are not a mix between A and B personalities?"

"Well, they sort of..."

"But it's not as direct a connection as the blood cell types?"

"No."

"In fact, I think I'm mostly type A personality. But I'm also very cerebral -- which is that?"

"My guru says that's AB."

"Right. So I'm A, with a lot of AB, and a bit of B too. But I couldn't have that as a physical blood type."

"No. Hm, I'd always wondered about that. Do we really have to be ONE OR THE OTHER?"

"Well, with physical blood types we're pretty much always O, A, B, or AB. But yes, I'd like to think personalities can come in any combination?"

"But is that really true? Maybe everyone is one or the other?"

"But does it matter, Achilles? Do we have a benefit from knowing in advance that people will be A or B? Or should we just wait, and if most people are A or B, treat them like they'd like to be treated, but if they're some strange combination, well, treat them like THEY'D like to be treated?"

"Surely you're not turning down knowledge?"

"Of course not! I'd be very happy to have some knowledge, as soon as there's a proper study. But if someone has physical blood type B and personality type A with a bit of B and some AB, the correct response is to realise that the blood types model of personality isn't as perfect as it was. Blaming THEM for providing contrary evidence is the OPPOSITE of knowledge."

"In fact, it's like... have you noticed how you were female in this dialogue?"

"Yes, I did, but I thought it was just a continuity error."

"No, not at all! I was chatting to the author earlier, and he/she says he/she was deliberately making a point. Zeno and Lewis Caroll used gender-neutral pronouns and never specified the sex, just that you walked slower than I could shoot an arrow, but thought a lot faster than I could form logical connections."

"And Hofstadter?" asked the Tortoise.

"And Hofstadter wrote you as male, but later regretted it and was very pleased to see that in some translations you were written as female. So as far as I remember, you've been the same gender all along, but in some stories, I remember you as always being male, and in others as always being female. And some stories, it could be either, but the reader doesn't know unless they just assume you were male, or female -- the former is much more common, alas."

"So, what's the point?"

"Well, all of those personality traits I described earlier -- they're sort of important for the stories, although authors do vary them a bit for the sake a point. But obviously your gender doesn't matter much, or it wouldn't be different in different stories."

"You're talking about the literary-me, the conflation of all common fictional-mes?"

"Well, yes, but I think even as a person, it doesn't matter than much to you. Would you care if you were male?"

"No, not really! There aren't any doctors in the hypothetical land at the moment, so there's no medical situation where it's likely to matter much, and there aren't any really, really nice restaurants with roses round the door or other tortoises, so there's unlikely to be any romantic potential. And even if there were, I'd feel much the same as either gender."

"Oh, great! I totally support whichever you prefer!"

"Now hold on again! Thank you again, but you just got through telling me about personality types and how I could be a little bit AB and somewhat A and physically B. Do I have to pick one gender or the other?"

"Oh! No, of course not! I support you, whichever COMBINATION of genders you prefer, or if you'd rather leave it ambiguous or be none at all, or be only the bits and pieces you think actually suit you."

And then Achilles paused and squinted into the distance. "Is that a really, really nice restaurants with roses round the door?"

"Oh yes! I forgot, I hypothesised it. And there it is, in hypothetical land! Let's go there."

"This isn't a date, is it?"

"Of course not. But why do you ask?"

"Aren't you straight? Or gay? Or bisexual, or, well, whatever the word is for 'romantically interested in Tortoises, not greek warriors, however manly?'"

"Well, it's the same question as before, all over again. If there were a large dating pool, it might be helpful to establish in advance that I prefer well-read tortoises of either gender. But that's just a useful heuristic for predicting who I will be romantically interested in. If I'm interested or not interested in someone, I should update my heuristic, not say that there's something wrong with me, or with them!"

"Even if you're prone to switch gender between stories?"

"Of course. Maybe my heuristic is 'attracted to males always', maybe it's 'attracted to males if I'm female, and females if I'm male', maybe it's 'attracted to male tortoises in the summer, and minotaurs in the winter.' Just because the middle one has a word for it, doesn't mean it's more likely to be true, just easier to talk about!"

You should also read http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/ even if you don't like Elizier Yudkowsky in general. You may think "duh", but even when I know in theory that just because having a word for something doesn't make it a well-defined or important concept, I find it very helpful to have it helpfully spelled out for me until I stop making that fallacy!

Comments

[ptc24]

I read the series that came from a while back, it's a good series... I think. There was some reservation I had about it, not just it being from LW. Oh, and about one of your points:

"Of course. Maybe my heuristic is 'attracted to males always', maybe it's 'attracted to males if I'm female, and females if I'm male', maybe it's 'attracted to male tortoises in the summer, and minotaurs in the winter.' Just because the middle one has a word for it, doesn't mean it's more likely to be true, just easier to talk about!"

I'm going to dispute this. I take it you mean a Bayesian sense of "more likely to be true", well... in the case of fictional characters, then if there's a word for something, then it's a sign that it might be easier for authors to imagine something, and have their characters be that thing. But most of the time words aren't causal in quite the same way.

That a word exists suggests something about the concept that it signifies; it suggests that the concept is fairly simple (and thus Occam-compliant) and/or has been encountered by other people (and thus might correspond to something, hopefully in reality). Think of all the possible concepts that there aren't words for; set a generous size limit if you want this set to be finite. Now think about how P(good_concept|there's_a_word_for_it) varies from P(good_concept|no_word_for_it).

[jack]

Oh yes, sorry! "More likely to be true" is the wrong description, it IS more LIKELY to be true, but it doesn't HAVE to be true. Thanks.

[jack]

There was some reservation I had about it, not just it being from LW.

Can you remember any more? I wouldn't be at all surprised that there was something problematic that didn't matter to me at the time, but I found the grube/blegg dialogue very helpful.

[ptc24]

There are various things I could pick at if so motivated. The reservations I had that motivated my comment were concerning categorizations of people; and beliefs about people in general.

While reading I had a memory of one of liv's posts about people being expected to be calm during discussions whether certain sorts of people are human or not. I may well be paraphrasing; I think the word "humanity" came up; that's a polysemous word if ever there was one. When I was reading that, I thought, that's odd, I wonder what she's referring to - I was surprised that there was such a discussion to be discussed in such a way.

And... see this one and the comments to this one. There was a - possibly misguided - pang of recognition. Now the lack of huge flamewar and oh-you're-being-oversensitive suggests that either this wasn't the triggering incident (which seems most likely from here), or the flamewar was elsewhere. Anyway, it gave me a bit of an uneasy feeling about the whole thing and that feeling stopped me rushing out and recommending the series despite it having a whole load of good stuff in it.

So that's the chain of events that led to me going Umm... about it.

There are various thoughts I have about why beliefs about people and types of people might be a bit of a special case; however, one upshot of these is that the topic becomes a bit of a minefield, and perhaps it's best not to blunder through it aimlessly. Maybe in some place other than this already-long comment.