Switch genders to have a better life

[Aylen]

Subscribing to the general principle that man(kind) perceives the grass as greener on the other side - i'd probably leave fate to his workings and mine to me.

I was thinking of this too. I remember something about thought experiments on people with different physical and/or mental health maladies who were asked if they would trade their's for someone else's. Most people would keep their own no matter how bad they thought they had it when given the choice to switch with someone else they thought the other person had it worse.

I guess an example would be would you trade places with someone who was blinded as an adult if you were paralyzed from the neck down as an adult or vice versa. Most people choose their own maladies in the end so the grass isn't really that much greener when you are hypothetically given a choice to switch places. The reality is most people are much more comfortable with the devil they know.

[para]

I was thinking of this too. I remember something about thought experiments on people with different physical and/or mental health maladies who were asked if they would trade their's for someone else's. Most people would keep their own no matter how bad they thought they had it when given the choice to switch with someone else they thought the other person had it worse.

I guess an example would be would you trade places with someone who was blinded as an adult if you were paralyzed from the neck down as an adult or vice versa. Most people choose their own maladies in the end so the grass isn't really that much greener when you are hypothetically given a choice to switch places. The reality is most people are much more comfortable with the devil they know.

I think one could make the argument that there are distinctions between comparisons and positive/negative value of those comparisons, but with relation to disability i can easily imagine that there is a very concrete benefit to keeping your ''devil'', as you know how to operate within its grasp. I would see the situation of qualitatively different profit differently, however, imagining that to experience the profit of another thing is worth lacking the profit that one currently owns.

[Aylen]

I think one could make the argument that there are distinctions between comparisons and positive/negative value of those comparisons, but with relation to disability i can easily imagine that there is a very concrete benefit to keeping your ''devil'', as you know how to operate within its grasp. I would see the situation of qualitatively different profit differently, however, imagining that to experience the profit of another thing is worth lacking the profit that one currently owns.

I understand what you are saying. I still do not see advantages for me personally to change my gender. I can see more disadvantage for reasons I have mentioned, size, personality, etc. I say this as someone who has not had a particularly easy life (many might say it was horrible in some ways I won't go into but I don't think that). I feel I have been fortunate. I wouldn't trade all my experiences (painful cramps and sore breasts once a month included) as a woman even for the promise of financial or other material gains that I might or might not even get to experience as a man. Not all men or women are created equally and that diversity is what has made us more cooperative not only with other genders but within our own gender groups. At least that is how I see it today.

[para]

I understand what you are saying. I still do not see advantages for me personally to change my gender. I can see more disadvantage for reasons I have mentioned, size, personality, etc. I say this as someone who has not had a particularly easy life (many might say it was horrible in some ways I won't go into but I don't think that). I feel I have been fortunate. I wouldn't trade all my experiences (painful cramps and sore breasts once a month included) as a woman even for the promise of financial or other material gains that I might or might not even get to experience as a man. Not all men or women are created equally and that diversity is what has made us more cooperative not only with other genders but within our own gender groups. At least that is how I see it today.

I agree - on a basis close to yours. I am already sceptical of ideas of intervention in something we have constructed as cosmic ''order'', an instinctual affinity for the natural. It is, and it could not be any other way because of this is-ness.