+It would actually be _less_ embarassing for Yudkowsky if he were outright lying about having tried to think of counterarguments. The original post isn't _that_ bad if you assume that Yudkowsky was writing off the cuff, that he clearly just _didn't put any effort whatsoever_ into thinking about why someone might disagree. If he _did_ put in the effort—enough that he felt comfortable bragging about his ability to see the other side of the argument—and _still_ ended up proclaiming his "simplest and best protocol" without even so much as mentioning any of its incredibly obvious costs (like expecting a rape victim to testify about what her rapist did to her with "her" penis) ... that's just _pathetic_. If Yudkowsky's ability to explore the space of arguments is _that_ bad, why would you trust his opinion about _anything_?
+
+But perhaps it's premature to judge Yudkowsky without appreciating what tight constraints he labors under. The disclaimer comment mentions "speakable and unspeakable arguments"—but what, exactly, is the boundary of the "speakable"? In response to a commenter mentioning the cost of having to remember pronouns as a potential counterargument, Yudkowsky [offers us another clue](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421833274228&reply_comment_id=10159421871809228):
+
+> People might be able to speak that. A clearer example of a forbidden counterargument would be something like e.g. imagine if there was a pair of experimental studies somehow proving that (a) everybody claiming to experience gender dysphoria was lying, and that (b) they then got more favorable treatment from the rest of society. We wouldn't be able to talk about that. No such study exists to the best of my own knowledge, and in this case we might well hear about it from the other side to whom this is the exact opposite of unspeakable; but that would be an example.
+
+Well, I think (a) and (b) _as stated_ are clearly false, so "we" (who?) fortunately aren't losing much by allegedly not being able to speak them. But what about some _similar_ hypotheses, that might be similarly unspeakable for similar reasons? Consider the claims that (a') self-reports about gender dysphoria are substantially distorted by [socially-desirable responding tendencies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-desirability_bias)—as a notable example, heterosexual males with sexual fantasies about being female often falsely deny or minimize the erotic dimension of their desire to change sex; and that (b') transitioning is socially rewarded within particular _subcultures_, although not Society as a whole.
+
+I claim that (a') and (b') are _overwhelmingly likely_ to be true.
+
+(And I can offer experimental studies in support; for example, Blanchard, Clemmensen, and Steiner 1985, ["Social Desirability Response Set and Systematic Distortion in the Seif-Report Adult Male Gender Patients"](/papers/blanchard-clemmensen-steiner-social_desirability_response_set_and_systematic_distortion.pdf) found that [TODO: very brief paper summary].)
+
+Can "we" talk about _that_? Are (a') and (b') "speakable", or not? We're unlikely to get clarification from Yudkowsky, but based on my experiences over the past five years, I'm going to _guess_ that the answer is: No; no, we can't talk about that.
+
+Telling the Whole Dumb Story of those five years is something that I've been meaning to lay out in _another_ multi-thousand word blog post. (Not because it's an interesting story, but because I'll never be able to move on with my life until I write it down and get it all out of my system.)
+
+But it's
+
+
+
+
+[TODO: again, [Yudkowsky's pathological fixation on avoiding "lying"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MN4NRkMw7ggt9587K/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly) is a distraction from anything that anyone actually cares about. Certainly, I don't believe (a) as stated. But something substantively _similar_ to (a), (a') that self-reports are biased by social desirability and we can't take "gender identity" literally seems _overwhelmingly_ likely to be true, and I have a study to support it— /papers/blanchard-clemmensen-steiner-social_desirability_response_set_and_systematic_distortion.pdf . This should not seem implausible to someone who co-blogged with Robin Hanson for three years! As for (b), I don't think they get more favorable treatment from the rest of Society uniformly, I absolutely believe (b') that there's a _subculture_ that encourages transition for ideological reasons among people who wouldn't think of themselves as "trans" if they lived in a different subculture.
+
+Can we talk about _that_ in your Caliphate, my (a') and (b')? (Which is the stuff I actually care about, not pronouns.) Based on my experiences trying to, my read of the situation is, No, we can't talk about that. But if so, this puts one of Yudkowsky's comments elsewhere in the thread in a different light https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421986539228&reply_comment_id=10159424960909228 —]
+
+> now that we have a truth-bearing sentence, we can admit of the possibility of using our human superpower of language to _debate_ whether this sentence is indeed true or false [...] Trying to pack all of that into the pronouns you'd have to use in step 1 is the wrong place to pack it.
+
+It's a disingenuous derailing tactic to say "Don't use your native language's pronouns; let's use _nouns_ to talk about the real issues", when you _motherfuckers_ have _no intention whatsoever_ of actually talking about the real issues! A lot of TERF-aligned folk would be a _lot_ more willing to compromise on the trivial pronoun issue, if they didn't (correctly) suspect the pronouns were being used as a wedge/typographical-attack to prevent them from talking about biological sex
+
+Again, if it helps think of the formality distinction—advocating for collapsing the tu/usted distinction is one thing; but if you demand that someone calls you usted _and_ refuse to let them talk with nouns about whether they respect you, that would be psychologically abusive]
+
+4 levels of intellectual conversation https://rationalconspiracy.com/2017/01/03/four-layers-of-intellectual-conversation/
+
+If we can't talk about that, then your rationality community is a _fraud_. If there's anything at all to your rationality stuff https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LqjKP255fPRY7aMzw/practical-advice-backed-by-deep-theories it should be _useful_ high-stakes pratical decisions that your community members need to make, like _whether or not to cut my dick off_. If we can't talk about the information I need to make an informed decision about that, then your rationalists are worse than useless. (Worse, because false claims to authority are more misleading than dead air.) You _motherfuckers_ need to rebrand, or disband, or be destroyed
+
+I know none of this matters (If any professional alignment researchers wasting time reading this instead of figuring out how to save the world, get back to work!!), but one would have thought that the _general_ skills of correct argument would matter for saving the world.
+
+a rationality community that can't think about _practical_ issues that affect our day to day lives, but can get existential risk stuff right, is like asking for self-driving car software that can drive red cars but not blue cars
+
+It's a _problem_ if public intellectuals in the current year need to pretend to be dumber than seven-year-olds in 2016
+
+If you don't actually believe in the [common interest of many causes](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4PPE6D635iBcGPGRy/rationality-common-interest-of-many-causes) anymore, you could _say_ that—rebrand your thing as a more narrowly-scoped existential-risk-reduction cult, rather than falsely claiming to be about modeling-and-optimizing the world
+
+"We might well hear about it from the other side" is an interesting phrasing—almost admitting that you're a wholly owned subsidary of the Blue Tribe]