-Scott Alexander chose Feelings, but I can't really hold that against him, because Scott is very explicit about only acting in the capacity of some guy with a blog. You can tell that he never wanted to be a religious leader; it just happened to him on accident because he writes faster than everyone else. I like Scott. Scott is great. I feel bad that such a large fraction of my interactions with him over the years have taken such an adversarial tone.
+The battle that matters—and I've been _very_ explicit about this, for years—is over this proposition eloquently stated by Scott Alexander (redacting the irrelevant object-level example):
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+> I ought to accept an unexpected [X] or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered [Y] if it'll save someone's life. There's no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn't, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.
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+This is a battle between Feelings and Truth, between Politics and Truth.
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+In order to take the side of Truth, you need to be able to tell Joshua Norton that he's not actually Emperor of the United States (even if it hurts him). You need to be able to tell a prideful autodidact that the fact that he's failing quizzes in community college differential equations class, is evidence that his study methods aren't doing what he thought they were (even if it hurts him). And you need to be able to say that trans women are male and trans men are female _with respect to_ a female/male "sex" concept that encompasses the many traits that aren't affected by contemporary surgical and hormonal interventions (even if it offends someone's not liking to be tossed into a Male Bucket or a Female Bucket, as it would be assigned by their birth certificate, and—yes—even if it probabilistically contributes to someone's suicide).
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+If you don't want to say those things because hurting people is wrong, then you have chosen Feelings.
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+Scott Alexander chose Feelings, but I can't really hold that against him, because Scott is very explicit about only acting in the capacity of some guy with a blog. You can tell from his writings that he never wanted to be a religious leader; it just happened to him on accident because he writes faster than everyone else. I like Scott. Scott is great. I feel bad that such a large fraction of my interactions with him over the years have taken such an adversarial tone.