+[...]
+
+**(I typically eschew the use of boldface in prose, but will be bolding key phrases and sentences in this post as a strategic concession to people's lack of reading comprehension.)**
+
+
+That's what I'm _trying_ to do. It would be nice to have some help!
+
+[^concepts]: And indeed, whether "gender" and "gender dysphoria" are exactly the right concepts.
+
+Men who wish they were women do not particularly resemble actual women! We just—don't? This seems kind of obvious, really? Telling the difference between fantasy and reality is kind of an important life skill?
+
+Okay, I understand that in Berkeley 2020, that probably sounds like some kind of reactionary political statement, probably intended to provoke. But try interpreting it _literally_, as a _factual claim_ about the world. Adult human males who _fantasize about_ being adult human females, are still neverless drawn from the _male_ multivariate trait distribution, not the female distribution.
+
+It seems useful to be able to _express this claim in natural language_. I can phrase the claim in more or fewer words, using a greater or lesser amount of caveats, qualifications, or polysyllabic obfuscations, depending on my audience's sensibilities and what aspects of my model I want to call attention to. But I need to be able to talk about the model _somehow_, and talking about the model becomes _more expensive_ if I'm not occasionally allowed to use the phrase "actual woman" in a context where [_you know goddamned well_ what I mean by it](/2018/Apr/reply-to-the-unit-of-caring-on-adult-human-females/).
+
+I mean it just as I might say "actual meat" to distinguish such from [plant-based imitations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue), or "actual wood" to distinguish such from [composite materials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-plastic_composite), without anyone raising an eyebrow. The general concept here is that of _mimickry_. The point is not to denigrate the mimic—one might have any number of reasons to _prefer_ meat substitutes or composite wood to the real thing. (Nonhuman animal welfare! Termite-proof-ness!) One might have any number of reasons to _prefer_ trans women to the real thing. (Though I still feel uncomfortable trying to think of any in particular.) The _point_ is that I need language that _asymmetrically_ distinguishes the _original_ thing, from the artificial thing that's trying to mimic its form while not being exactly the same thing, either by design or due to technological limitations.
+
+
+I can be polite in most circumstances, as the price of keeping the peace in Society. But it is a price, a cost—and it's a _cognitive_ cost, the cost of _destroying information_ that would make people uncomfortable. Systematically correct reasoners needn't _mention_ the cost in most circumstances (that would not be polite), but we should at least be able to refrain from indulging in clever [not-technically-lying](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PrXR66hQcaJXsgWsa/not-technically-lying) sophistry that tries to _make it look like there's no cost_.
+
+ The fact that people keep inventing these clever category-gerrymandering mind games and refuse to engage when one of their peers or students spends thousands of words explaining why this is not how we do philosophy, is an indication that _something has gone very wrong_.[^motherfuckers]
+
+[^motherfuckers]: We had an entire Sequence about this! You lying motherfuckers!
+
+[^two-words]: For the unfamiliar: the [doctrine here](https://medium.com/@cassiebrighter/please-write-trans-women-as-two-words-487f153444fb) is that "transwoman" is cissexist, because "trans" is properly an adjective indicating a type of woman.
+
+
+**If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and you can model it as a duck without making any grevious prediction errors, then it makes sense to call it a "duck" in the range of circumstances that your model continues to be useful**, even if a pedant might point out that it's really ("really") an [Anatid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatidae)-[oid](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-oid#Suffix) robot, or that that species is technically a goose.
+
+_Literally_ all I'm asking for is for the branded systematically-correct-reasoning community to be able to perform _modus ponens_—
+
+ (1) For all nouns _N_, you can't define _N_ any way you want without cognitive consequences [(for at least 37 reasons)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong).
+ (2) "Woman" is a noun.
+ (3) _Therefore_, you can't define "woman" any way you want without cognitive consequences.
+
+Note, **(3) is _entirely compatible_ with trans women being women**. The point is that if you want to claim that trans women are women, you need some sort of _argument_ for why that categorization makes sense in the context you want to use the word—why that map usefully reflects some relevant aspect of the territory. **If you want to _argue_ that trans women are women** _because_ hormone replacement therapy constitutes an effective sex change, or that trans is a brain-intersex condition and the brain is the true referent of "gender", or that [coordination constraints on _shared_ categories](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests) [support the self-identification criterion](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/), that's fine, because **those are _arguments_ that someone who initially disagreed with your choice of categorization could _engage with on the merits_.** In contrast, **"I can define a word any way I want" can't be engaged with in the same way because it's a denial of the possibility of merits.**
+
+[...]
+
+An aside: being famous must _suck_. I haven't experienced this myself, but I'm sure it's true.
+
+Oh, sure, it's nice to see your work get read and appreciated by people—I've experienced that much. (Shout-out to my loyal fans—all four of you![^fans]) But when you're _famous_, everybody wants a piece of you. The fact that your work influences _so many_ people, makes you a _target_ for anyone who wants to indirectly wield your power for their own ends. Every new author wants you to review their book; every ideologue wants you on their side ...
+
+And when a crazy person in your robot cult thinks you've made a philosophy mistake that impinges on their interests, they might spend an _unreasonable_ amount of effort obsessively trying to argue with you about it.
+
+[^fans]: I'm specifically thinking of W.E., R.S., S.V., and [Sophia](http://unremediatedgender.space/author/sophia/).
+
+[section: email campaign that we spent a ridiculous amount of effort on]
+
+[...]
+
+Some readers who aren't part of my robot cult—and maybe some who are but didn't drink as many cups of the Kool-Aid as I did—might be puzzled at why I've been _so freaked out_ for _an entire year_ (!?!) by people being wrong about philosophy. And for almost anyone else in the world, I would just shrug, [set the bozo bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit#Dismissing_a_person_as_not_worth_listening_to), and move on with my day. But when the _universally-acknowledged leading thinkers of my robot cult_ do it ...
+
+Even people who aren't religious still have the same [species-typical psychological mechanisms](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cyj6wQLW6SeF6aGLy/the-psychological-unity-of-humankind) that make religions work. The systematically-correct-reasoning community had come to fill [a similar niche in my psychology](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PMr6f7ZocEWFtCYXj/is-humanism-a-religion-substitute) [as a religion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/p5DmraxDmhvMoZx8J/church-vs-taskforce). I knew this, but the _hope_ was that this wouldn't come with the pathologies of a religion, because _our_ pseudo-religion was _about_ the rules of systematically correct reasoning. The system is _supposed_ to be self-correcting: if people are obviously, _demonstratably_ wrong, all you have to do is show them the argument that they're wrong, and then they'll understand the obvious argument and change their minds.
+
+So to get a sense of the emotional impact here, imagine being a devout Catholic hearing their local priest deliver a sermon that _blatantly_ contradicts something said in the Bible—or at least, will predictably be interpreted by the typical parishioner as contradicting the obvious meaning of the Bible, even if the sermon also admits some contrived interpretation that's _technically_ compatible with the Bible. Suppose it's an ever-so-slightly-alternate-history 2014, and the sermon suggests that Christians who oppose same-sex marriage have no theological ground to stand on.
+
+You _know_ this is wrong. Okay, maybe there's _some_ way that same-sex marriage could be compatible with the Church's teachings. But you would have to _argue_ for that; you _can't_ just say there's no arguments _against_ it and call that the end of the discussion! [1 Corinthians 6:9–10](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+6%3A9-10&version=NKJV): "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators [...] nor homosexuals, nor sodomites [...] will inherit the kingdom of God." It's _right there_. There's [a bunch of passages like that](https://www.livingout.org/the-bible-and-ssa). You _can't possibly_ not see it.
+
+As a man of faith and loyal parishioner, you would _expect_ to be able to resolve the matter by bringing your concern to the priest, who would then see how the sermon had been accidentally misleading, and issue a clarification at next week's sermon, so that the people would not be led astray from the path of God.
+
+The priest doesn't agree; he insists on the contrived technically-not-heresy interpretation. This would be a shock, but it wouldn't, yet, shatter your trust in the Church as an institution. Even the priest is still a flawed mortal man.
+
+Then the Pope misinterets the Bible in the same way in his next encyclical. With the help of some connections, you appeal your case all the way to the Vatican—and the Pope himself comes back with the same _bullshit_ technically-not-heresy.
+
+You realize that you _cannot take the Pope's words literally_.
+
+That would be _pretty upsetting_, right? To lose faith in, not your religion itself—_obviously_ the son of God still died for our sins—but the _institution_ that claims to faithfully implement your religion, but is actually doing something else. You can understand why recovering from that might take a year or so.
+
+(Alternate-alternate title for this post: "[37](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong) Theses".)
+
+Or maybe imagine an idealistic young lawyer working for the prosecution in the [Selective Draft Law Cases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Draft_Law_Cases) challenging the World War I draft. Since 1865, the Constitution _says_, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." If the words "involuntary servitude not as a punishment for a crime" _mean anything_, they surely include the draft. So the draft is unconstitutional. Right?
+
+[...]
+
+A friend—call her ["Erin Burr"](https://genius.com/7888863)—tells me that I'm delusional to expect so much from "the community", that the original vision _never_ included tackling politically sensitive subjects. (I remember Erin recommending Paul Graham's ["What You Can't Say"](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) back in 'aught-nine, with the suggestion to take Graham's advice to figure out what you can't say, and then _don't say it_.)
+
+A lot of people seem to be doing it nowadays, and a lot of them seem pretty happy! But in order to _decide_ whether to join them, I need _accurate information_. **I need an _honest_ accounting of the costs and benefits of transition, so that I can cut my dick off in the possible worlds where that's a good idea, and not cut my dick off in the possible worlds where it's not a good idea.**
+
+And if the community whose marketing literature says they're all about systematically correct reasoning, is not only not going to be helpful at producing accurate information, but is furthermore going _actively manufacture fake rationality lessons_ that have been optimized to _confuse me into cutting my dick off_ independently of the empirical facts that determine whether or not we live in one of the possible worlds where cutting my dick off is a good idea, then that community is _fraudulent_. It needs to either _rebrand_—or failing that, _disband_—or failing that, _be destroyed_.
+
+
+That's a reference to a post by Robert Stadler about how people [(especially nonconformist nerds like us)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-kind-can-t-cooperate) tend to impose far too many demands before being willing to contribute their efforts to a collective endeavor. That post [concludes](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining)—
+
+> If the issue isn't worth your personally fixing by however much effort it takes, and it doesn't arise from outright bad faith, it's not worth refusing to contribute your efforts to a cause you deem worthwhile.
+
+I think I've _more than_ met this standard. I _tried_ personally fixing the issue no matter how much effort it took! Also, the issue _does_, in fact, arise from outright bad faith. (We had [an entire Sequence](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SGB7Y5WERh4skwtnb) about this! You lying motherfuckers!)
+
+That ended up being quite a lot of effort!—but at this point I've _exhausted every possible avenue of appeal_. Arguing [publicly on the object level](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) didn't work. Arguing [publicly on the meta level](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) didn't work. Arguing privately didn't work. There is _nothing left for me to do_ but lick my wounds, wait for my broken heart to heal, and hope that getting molecularly disassembled and turned into paperclips doesn't hurt too much.
+
+[section: and _I_ get accused of playing politics?!— everyone else shot first — 2+2]
+
+Here's what I think is going on. _After it's been pointed out_, all the actually-smart people can see that "Useful categories need to 'carve reality at the joints', and there's no reason for gender to magically be an exception to this _general_ law of cognition" is a better argument than "I can define the word 'woman' any way I want." No one is going to newly voice the Stupid Argument now that it's _known_ that I'm hanging around ready to pounce on it.
+
+But the people who have _already_ voiced the Stupid Argument can't afford to reverse themselves, even if they're the sort of _unusually_ epistemically virtuous person who publicly changes their mind on other topics. It's too politically expensive to say, "Oops, that _specific argument_ for why I support transgender people was wrong for trivial technical reasons, but I still support transgender people because ..." because political costs are imposed by a mob that isn't smart enough to understand the concept of "bad argument for a conclusion that could still be true for other reasons." So I can't be allowed to win the debate in public.
+
+The game theorist Thomas Schelling once wrote about the use of clever excuses to help one's negotiating counterparty release themselves from a prior commitment: "One must seek [...] a rationalization by which to deny oneself too great a reward from the opponent's concession, otherwise the concession will not be made."[^schelling]
+
+[^schelling]: _Strategy of Conflict_, Ch. 2, "An Essay on Bargaining"
+
+This is sort of what I was trying to do when soliciting—begging for—engagement-or-endorsement of "Where to Draw the Boundaries?" I thought that it ought to be politically feasible to _just_ get public consensus from Very Important People on the _general_ philosophy-of-language issue, stripped of the politicized context that inspired my interest in it, and complete with math and examples about dolphins and job titles. That _should_ be completely safe. If some would-be troublemaker says, "Hey, doesn't this contradict what you said about trans people earlier?", stonewall them. (Stonewall _them_ and not _me_!) Thus, the public record about philosophy is corrected without the VIPs having to suffer a social-justice scandal. Everyone wins, right?
+
+But I guess that's not how politics works. Somehow, the mob-punishment mechanisms that aren't smart enough to understand the concept of "bad argument for a true conclusion", _are_ smart enough to connect the dots between my broader agenda and my (correct) abstract philosophy argument, such that VIPs don't think they can endorse my _correct_ philosophy argument, without it being _construed as_ an endorsement of me and my detailed heresies, even though (a) that's _retarded_ because **it's possible to agree with someone about a particular philosophy argument, while disagreeing with them about how the philosophy argument applies to the empirical facts of a particular object-level case**, and (b) **I would have _hoped_ that explaining the abstract philosophy problem in the context of dolphins would provide enough plausible deniability to defend against _retarded people_ who want to make everything about politics.**
+
+The situation I'm describing is already pretty fucked, but it would be just barely tolerable if the actually-smart people were good enough at coordinating to _privately_ settle philosophy arguments. If someone says to me, "You're right, but I can't admit this in public because it would be too politically expensive for me. Sorry," I can't say I'm not _disappointed_, but I can respect that they labor under different constraints from me.
+
+But we can't even have that, because saying "You're right, but I can't admit this in public" requires _trust_.
+
+[people can't trust me to stably keep secrets]
+
+The Stupid Argument isn't just a philosophy mistake—it's a _socially load-bearing_ philosophy mistake.