Some Thoughts on Categorization

Against Sandwich Memeing

One of the most important tools for thinking clearly is using categories well.¹

Often, people have a question shaped like “is X a member of group Y?”:

• Is there such a thing as a bi lesbian?²

• Am I a virgin?

• Is Moby Dick a cosmic horror novel?

Sometimes, questions turn out to be category membership questions in disguise: for example, “do I care about shrimp wellbeing?” often hinges on “are shrimp conscious?” And it isn’t uncommon for broader and more complex questions to involve “is X a member of group Y?” as a subquestion: for example, “how do I improve my life?” often involves the subquestion “am I depressed?”

One bad way to answer this class of question is Sandwich Meme Discourse:

Sandwich meme discourse involves coming up with a concrete definition of the term in question, and then ruling individual cases in and out. Sometimes, terms have preexisting definitions and the debate is about whether the definition of the word applies:

• “A lesbian is a woman who is exclusively attracted to women, so if you’ve ever been attracted to a man, you’re not a lesbian.” vs. “I’ve never been attracted to a nonfictional man, I just like boys’ love!”

• “A virgin is someone who hasn’t had PIV, so if you haven’t had PIV, you’re a virgin.” vs. “I am a gay man who has sucked over a thousand cocks and I’m a virgin?”

• “Depressed people meet DSM-V criteria for major depressive disorder, so unless you meet them you’re not depressed.” vs. “My sadness and anhedonia are big problems even if I don’t have any of the other symptoms of depression.”

Other times, the definition of the word itself is under debate:

• “Wikipedia says that cosmic horror emphasizes fear of the unknown more than gore, and Moby Dick is about the fear of the unknown depths of the sea.” vs. “Wikipedia says that cosmic horror is a synonym of Lovecraftian horror, but Moby Dick was published forty years before Lovecraft was born.”

• “I define consciousness as meaning that a being is aware of being aware of itself, so shrimp aren’t conscious.” vs. “I define consciousness as meaning that a being senses the world, so shrimp are conscious.”

Pulling out a dictionary is a sure sign that the conversation is in Sandwich Meme Discourse territory. As Eliezer Yudkowsky put it:

[It is a mistake to] pull out a dictionary in the middle of any argument ever. Seriously, what the heck makes you think that dictionary editors are an authority on whether "atheism" is a "religion" or whatever?  If you have any substantive issue whatsoever at stake, do you really think dictionary editors have access to ultimate wisdom that settles the argument?

However, aware that Sandwich Meme Discourse is stupid, many people make the equal and opposite error:

• “Who cares what the definition of lesbianism is? A lesbian is any person who identifies as a lesbian.”

• “You’re a virgin if you feel like a virgin, regardless of what you have or haven’t done.”

• “It doesn’t matter whether Moby Dick is or isn’t a cosmic horror novel, just read whatever you like.”

• “‘Consciousness’ is such a complicated concept, I don’t know that we can really say anything about it.”

• “As a therapist, I don’t diagnose my patients, I just try to get to know the individual person.”

But categories actually matter. One way we make predictions about the world is to say “this thing is similar to that other thing, so probably the same thing that happened last time will happen this time.” I decide that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I made is similar to the vegan BLT sandwich I made last week; therefore, they are both “sandwiches”; therefore, I predict that they’ll share traits like “tasty” and “relatively easy to eat while at a computer” and “durable if put in a backpack.” If I decide an ice cream taco is by definition a sandwich and then put it in my backpack for lunch, I will have a serious mess on my hands.

Two reasons people categorize things are that (a) they are trying to understand the world better by thinking about how things are similar or different or (b) they are trying to make some particular useful prediction about the world.³

First, understanding. If I’m thinking about whether Moby Dick is a cosmic horror novel, I’m actually thinking about ways that Moby Dick is similar to and different from Lovecraft and other central examples of the cosmic horror genre. Both Call of Cthulhu and Moby Dick symbolize the uncaring cosmos as a guy (Cthulhu and Moby Dick, respectively); does that mean the uncaring cosmos is genuinely incomprehensible such thar we have to make up a more understandable entity to even talk about it? Why did both authors use the ocean so heavily in their works? How is madness viewed differently in Lovecraft as opposed to in Moby Dick? How is Melville engaging with the cutting-edge science of his day? How did authors like Melville explore the theme of the alien universe before widespread awareness of the possibility of, well, aliens?

Similarly, if I’m thinking about whether shrimp are conscious, I’m thinking about how shrimp are similar to and different from creatures we normally think of as ‘conscious’, and what these differences indicate about whether there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp. If I’m thinking about the definition of ‘depression’, I’m thinking about which distressing mental health symptoms empirically seem to be clustered together, and what that implies about the underlying causality. “What is the definition of this term?” is a quick handle to refer to a wide range of very interesting questions.

Second, usefulness. This one ends up throwing people a lot, because different definitions are useful for different purposes:

• Are you trying to tell people not to set you up on blind dates with men or not to be surprised when you refer to your male ex?

• Are you trying to figure out whether your friend is at risk of contracting STIs or whether your friend is a reasonable person to ask for sex advice?

• Are you trying to decide whether to recommend Moby Dick to your Lovecraft-loving friend, or where to shelve Moby Dick in your bookstore so people can find it?

• Are you trying to figure out if vitamin D will treat your friend’s low mood and fatigue, or if you should doubt her belief that her seemingly devoted girlfriend will leave her at any minute?

It can seem unprincipled and suspicious that someone is a lesbian for the purpose of blind dates and not for the purpose of predicting the gender of her exes, or a virgin for the purpose of HIV risk and not a virgin for the purpose of cunnilingus advice, or depressed for the purpose of cognitive distortions but nondepressed for the purpose of whether vitamin D will magically fix everything.

But this is completely normal. If someone or something is an unusual member of a category, sometimes one of their traits will matter and sometimes another trait will matter. Hot dogs are sandwiches for the purpose of eating at your desk, but not for the purpose of using up the last two slices of sandwich bread. That doesn’t mean that sandwich is a completely meaningless term, anything can be a sandwich if it feels like it, and we should try to understand BLTs and PBJs individually without assigning them a label like ‘sandwich.’

Like I said in my first footnote, none of this is novel. But in my experience it’s incredibly hard to remember and apply. I find myself pulling out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy trying to figure out what the Official (TM) definition of some disputed word is. Or I find myself giving up on conversations because “who cares whether X is really a Y?”, only to realize later that I had a lot of interesting questions I had dismissed as sandwich meme bullshit. So I have written it up to remind myself.

1. None of this post is new if you’ve been hanging around various How To Think Good communities for a few years, but I think we’re all due for a review now and then.

2. I am including a low-stakes discourse question to make everyone pay attention. Culture war for good!

3. I’m making categories!