saw this posted by @sailor_sega_saturn at https://awful.systems/comment/3871697
op has a simple question:
Why are trans women so intellectually successful? They seem to be overrepresented 5-100x in eg cybersecurity twitter, mathy AI alignment, non-scam crypto twitter, math PhD programs, etc.
and a skull shaped answer:
My theory is that too much testosterone makes you dumber, particularly during adolescence. You need a little for your cells & organs to work, but past a certain point it does more harm than good (for intelligence specifically — motivation & happiness etc aside). Apparently this is not a new theory and people have posited a U-shaped curve for how testosterone affects IQ. The key (sad) claim is that the vast majority of men are on the too-much-T side of the curve. Maybe trans women get the best of both worlds intellectually — a male skull with female chemistry.
our researcher sets about fending off possible objections:
Why didn’t evolution give females big heads if it would make them all geniuses? Another anecdote. My sister has a big head. She was valedictorian in high school I think. She hit her head one day in middle school during gym class by running into a wall. She also fell off a bike and hit her head in high school. I have never hit my head and I think the main reason is that my arms are strong enough to catch myself. So maybe the big headed women would-be-ancestors fell and hit their heads.
cites chatgpt for this:
Do trans men get the worst of both worlds intellectually — female skulls and male chemistry? Yes.
demonstrates the exceptional explanatory power of his hypothesis:
Why are really good tech founders so rare? You have to have very high power-seeking/initiative (T) and very high IQ. This is an incredibly rare combination because the testosterone murders your IQ. You have to be a genius before puberty hits. Helps if your brain/head is giant. Look at eg Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos.
describes the potential impact of his research:
I suspect that some simple electrical stimulation in the womb could make infant females’ skulls bigger and result in lots of genius women. If they don’t fall off their bikes and hit their heads.
all time great footnotes:
Thought of some more potential evidence. The smartest cis women I’ve known almost all had lack of butt (women’s most visible muscle – so low testosterone?)
Later that day: i asked my sister. She said all her smart friends (men and women) lack butts too! She and I both have the butt, so we are speaking against our own kind here.
a commenter has an epistemically rigorous counterpoint:
I don’t understand why you need to invoke testosterone. Transgender brain is special, for example, transgender women have immunity to visual illusions.
another commenter objects to that, based on a deep dive into the literature:
Can you source this claim? I’ve never heard it and GPT-4 says it has no scientific basis.
“well admittedly I made it up, but it seems plausible”
Whoops, it’s really looks like I imagined this claim to be backed more than by one SSC post. In my defense I say that this poll covered really existing thing like abnormal illusions processing in schizophrenics (see “Systematic review of visual illusions schizophrenia” Costa et al., 2023) and I think it’s overall plausible.
i started to read and just about choked when i got here
Why did evolution give most males so much testosterone instead of making low-T nerds? Obviously testosterone makes you horny and buff. But I think there is a second reason: you might kill yourself without it. Trans women have high suicide rates.
congrats on the most baffling, condescending explanation for the epidemic of suicidality among trans women. silly transes, it’s not the persistent and systemic transphobia that makes you want to kill yourself, it’s actually the fact that you have lower testosterone now. it’s just science! wait what? “trans men have high rates of suicide too”? nah probably not
Anecdotally, my smartest oldest brother had low sex-drive and small muscles and killed himself. Eliezer’s brother killed himself [citation needed] and if he was like Eliezer then he probably had low-T. My low-T nerd friends seemed kinda suicidal sometimes.
it was gross enough to watch this person try to prop up dead trans people to prove their point but even more bizarre to watch them do the same for their own older brother. not gonna even comment on the retroactive diagnoses based on “had small muscles” and “seemed suicidal to me”
and later in the footnotes
Nobody in the comments has presented any first-hand counter-evidence.
“nobody proved me wrong yet” is peak crank
my new light novel: that time I biohacked myself to become smarter by taking testosterone suppressants and woke up the next day as a doomed villainess
This is all highly speculative. I know near-zero about biology, chemistry, or physiology.
epistemic status: my ass
