No, you shouldn't "also discount every other symmetrical pair", for exactly the same reason as there's a 1/36 chance of rolling double 6, but 2/36 chance of rolling a six and a one. It's all to do with labellings, and it's the most common source of error[1] in statistics.
[1] By "error" I mean calculations that then don't agree with the experimental results.
Doesn't this mean that the more information we gain about the boy, the less likely it makes it that his sibling is a brother?
More likely, but only if that information being true was a precondition for knowing about the boy in the first place. Take the following scenarios, assuming Alice knows Bob has exactly two children.
Alice: Do you have a son?
Bob: Yes
Alice: Pick one of your sons, and tell me the day of the week he was born
Bob: Sunday
Here the day of week provides no additional information because Bob will always have an answer (like in Monty Hall, where Monty will always reveal a losing door), so the probability that Bob has two boys is 1/3.
Alice: Do you have a son who was born on a Sunday?
Bob: Yes
Here having a son isn't enough; he also has to satisfy a condition that occurs with only 1/7 probability. Bob is more likely to be able to answer yes if he has two sons and thus two chances to satisfy that condition.
[1] By "error" I mean calculations that then don't agree with the experimental results.