Or consider how previous generations of public intellectuals considered this exact problem. In 1983, Douglas R. Hofstadter also expressed disapproval of _she_ and _he_ as a matter of language design, and to illustrate the point about how alien and unnecessary gendered language would seem if you weren't already used to it, wrote a satirical piece, ["A Person Paper on Purity in Language"](https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html), in the persona of a conservative author in a society with race-based (!) language conventions, including the pronouns whe/wis for whites and ble/bler for blacks. In neither the piece itself (during which Hofstadter's alter-ego brings up and rejects a couple of reform suggestions from the liberals of whis Society, including singular _they_), nor the Post-Scriptum in its subsequent [anthologization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamagical_Themas), does Hofstadter entertain the idea of redefining _he_ and _she_ (or _whe_ and _ble_) to refer to the subject's pronoun preference.
-It's worth asking: why not? The statement of the objective language-design flaw (pronouns shouldn't denote sex, that's dumb; why would you define a language that way) was _the same_ in 1983 as it is in 2021. If it's so clear to Yudkowsky in 2021 that self-identification is just the "simplest and best protocol" to repair the objective flaw in English's design, why didn't that simplest and best solution occur to Hofstadter in 1983? Could it, perhaps, be the case that public intellectuals in the current year might have some _other_ motivation to conclude that "_he_ refers to the set of people who have asked us to use _he_", that was not present for their analogues in 1983? But if so, they'd be transparent and _tell_ us that ... right?
+It's worth asking: why not? The statement of the objective language-design flaw (pronouns shouldn't denote sex, that's dumb; why would you define a language that way) was _the same_ in 1983 as it is in 2021. If it's so clear to Yudkowsky in 2021 that self-identification is just the "simplest and best protocol" to repair the objective flaw in English's design, why didn't that simplest and best solution occur to Hofstadter in 1983?
+
+Could it, perhaps, be the case that public intellectuals in the current year might have some _other_ motivation to conclude that "_he_ refers to the set of people who have asked us to use _he_", that was not present for their analogues in 1983? But if so, they'd be transparent and _tell_ us that ... right?
Really, the circular definition shouldn't satisfy _anyone_: people who want someone to call them _usted_ (or _tú_), do so _because_ of the difference in meaning and implied familiarity/respect, in the _existing_ (pre-reform) language. (Where else could such a preference possibly come from?) From an AI design standpoint, the circular redefinition can be seen as a form of ["wireheading"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aMXhaj6zZBgbTrfqA/a-definition-of-wireheading). You want people to respect you as a superior, and if they respected you as a superior, they'd call you _usted_. That could make a policy of coercing people into calling you _usted_ seem superficially appealing. But the appeal solely rests on confusing the pre-reform meaning (under which the choice of _usted_ implies respect and is therefore desirable) and the post-reform meaning (under which the choice implies nothing). Whether or not the proponent of the change consciously _notices_ the problem, the redefinition is _functionally_ "hypocritical": it's only desirable insofar as people aren't _actually_ using it internally.
Anyway, given these reasons why the _existing_ meanings of _she_ and _he_ are relevant to the question of pronoun reform, what is Yudkowsky's response?
-Apparently, to play dumb. In the comments of the Facebook post, Yudkowsky claims:
+Apparently, to play dumb. In the comments of the Facebook post, Yudkowsky mentions encountering exotic pronouns on [LambdaMOO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO) at age 13 and no one thinking anything of them, and [goes on to claim](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421986539228&reply_comment_id=10159423713134228):
> I do not know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than "doesn't look like an Oliver" is attached to something in your head.
And the thing is, Eliezer Yudkowsky is a native English speaker born in 1979. As a native English speaker born in 1987, I have a _pretty good_ mental model of how native English speakers born in the late 20th century use language. And one of the things native English speakers born in the late 20th century are _very good_ at doing, is noticing what sex people are and using the corresponding pronouns without consciously thinking about it, because the pronouns are attached to the concept of sex in their heads more firmly than proper names are attached to something in their heads.
-I would bet at very generous odds at some point in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ on the basis of perceived sex to refer to someone whose name he didn't know. Because _all native English speakers do this_. Moreover, we can say something about the [cognitive algorithm](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcCpvYLoSFP4iAqSz/rationality-appreciating-cognitive-algorithms) underlying _how_ they do this: [people can recognize sex from facial photos _alone_ (hair covered, males clean-shaven) at 96% accuracy](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf). In naturalistic settings where we can see and hear more [secondary sex characteristics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_sex_characteristic#In_humans) than just someone's face (voice, build, height, breasts, [gait](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/all-the-wrong-moves/), _&c_.), accuracy would be even greater. It's not a mystery why people can get sex-based pronouns "right" the vast majority of the time without having to be told or remember specific people's pronouns.
+I would bet at very generous odds at some point in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ on the basis of perceived sex to refer to someone whose name he didn't know. Because _all native English speakers do this_. Moreover, we can say something about the [cognitive algorithm](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcCpvYLoSFP4iAqSz/rationality-appreciating-cognitive-algorithms) underlying _how_ they do this: [people can recognize sex from facial photos _alone_ (hair covered, males clean-shaven) at 96% accuracy](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf). In naturalistic settings where we can see and hear more [secondary sex characteristics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_sex_characteristic#In_humans) than just someone's face (build, height, breasts, [voice](/papers/puts_et_al-masculine_voices_signal_mens_threat_potential.pdf), [gait](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/all-the-wrong-moves/), _&c_.), accuracy would be even greater. It's not a mystery why people can get sex-based pronouns "right" the vast majority of the time without having to be told or remember specific people's pronouns.
Conversely, I would also bet at very generous odds that in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has very rarely if ever assumed what someone's name is on the basis of their appearance without being told. Because _no native English speakers do this_ (seriously, rather than as a joke or a troll). If you doubt this, try to explain what algorithm you would use to infer that someone's name is "Oliver" based on how they look. What are the "secondary Oliver characteristics", specifically? People for whom it was _actually true_ that names map to appearances the way pronouns map to sex, should not have trouble answering this question!
Posed that way, one would imagine not—but if Yudkowsky _does_ get the joke, then I don't think he can simultaneously _honestly_ claim to "not know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than 'doesn't look like an Oliver' is attached to something in your head." In order to get the joke in real time, your brain has to quickly make a multi-step logical inference that depends on the idea that pronouns imply sex. (The turtle is a "her" [iff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_and_only_if) female, not-female implies not-pregnant, so if the turtle is pregnant, it must be a "her".) This would seem, pretty straightforwardly, to be a sense in which "a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than 'doesn't look like an Oliver' is attached to something in your head." I'm really not sure how else I'm supposed to interpret those words!
-Perhaps it's not justified to question Yudkowsky's "I do not know what it feels like [...]" self-report based on generalizations about English speakers in general? Maybe his mind works differently, but dint of unusual neurodiversity or training in LambdaMOO? But if so, one would perhaps expect some evidence of this in his publicly observable writing? But some potential _counter_-evidence appears in Yudkowsky's 2001 _Creating Friendly AI: The Analysis and Design of Benevolent Goal Architectures_, where the text "If a human really hates someone, she" is followed by [footnote 16](https://web.archive.org/web/20070615130139/http://singinst.org/upload/CFAI.html#foot-15): "I flip a coin to determine whether a given human is male or female." Note, "_is_ male or female", not "which pronoun to use." The text would seem to reflect the common understanding that _she_ and _he_ do imply sex specifically (and not some other thing, like being named Oliver), even if flipping a coin (and drawing attention to having done so) reflects annoyance that English requires a choice.
+Perhaps it's not justified to question Yudkowsky's "I do not know what it feels like [...]" self-report based on generalizations about English speakers in general? Maybe his mind works differently, but dint of unusual neurodiversity or training in LambdaMOO? But if so, one would perhaps expect some evidence of this in his publicly observable writing? And yet some potential _counter_-evidence appears in Yudkowsky's 2001 _Creating Friendly AI: The Analysis and Design of Benevolent Goal Architectures_, where the text "If a human really hates someone, she" is followed by [footnote 16](https://web.archive.org/web/20070615130139/http://singinst.org/upload/CFAI.html#foot-15): "I flip a coin to determine whether a given human is male or female." Note, "_is_ male or female", not "which pronoun to use." The text would seem to reflect the common understanding that _she_ and _he_ do imply sex specifically (and not some other thing, like being named Oliver), even if flipping a coin (and drawing attention to having done so) reflects annoyance that English requires a choice.
In the Facebook comments, Yudkowsky continues:
But if that's the play you want to make, you forfeit the right to _honestly_ claim that your stance is that "feelings don't get to control everybody's language protocol". If you piously proclaim that the "important thing" is trans people's feelings of "not lik[ing] to be tossed into a Male Bucket or Female Bucket, as it would be assigned by their birth certificate", that would seem, pretty straightforwardly, to be participating in an attempt to let someone's feelings control everybody's language protocol! Again, I'm really not sure how else I'm supposed to interpret those words!
-There's nothing _inconsistent_ about believing that trans people's feelings matter, and that the feelings of people who resent the Stroop-like effect of having to speak in a way that contradicts their own sex-category perceptions, don't matter. (Or don't matter _as much_, quantitatively, under the utilitarian calculus.) But if that were your position, the intellectually honest thing to do would be to tell people like Barra Kerr, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes that trans people's feelings are more important than yours with respect to this policy question; sucks to be you" rather than haughtily implying that people like Kerr are making an elementary philosophy mistake that they are _clearly not making_ if you _actually read what they write_.
+There's nothing _inconsistent_ about believing that trans people's feelings matter, and that the feelings of people who resent the Stroop-like effect of having to speak in a way that contradicts their own sex-category perceptions, don't matter. (Or don't matter _as much_, quantitatively, under the utilitarian calculus.) But if that were your position, the intellectually honest thing to tell people like Barra Kerr is, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes that trans people's feelings are more important than yours with respect to this policy question; sucks to be you", rather than haughtily implying that people like Kerr are making an elementary philosophy mistake that they are _clearly not making_ if you _actually read what they write_.
(In general, an honest "sucks to be you" from someone whose political incentives lead them to oppose your goals, is _much_ less cruel than the opponent distorting your position to make you look bad to their followers.)
As it happens, I think this _is_ an important consideration in favor of self-identity pronouns! [When different parties disagree about what category something should belong to, but want to coordinate to use the _same_ category, they tend to find some mutually-salient Schelling point to settle the matter.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests) In the case of disagreements about a person's social sex category ("gender"), in the absence of a trusted central authority to break the symmetry among third parties' judgements (like a priest or rabbi in a tight-knit religious community, or a medical bureaucracy with the social power to diagnose who is "legitimately" transsexual), the most obvious Schelling point is to defer to the person themselves. I wrote about this argument in a previous post, ["Self-Identity Is a Schelling Point"](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/).
-But crucially, the fact that the self-identity convention is a Schelling point, _doesn't_ mean we have a one-sided policy debate where it's in everyone's interests to support this "simplest and best protocol", with no downsides or trade-offs for anyone. The thing where _she_ and _he_ (which we don't know how to coordinate a jump away from) imply sex category inferences to English-speaking brains is still true! The Schelling point argument just means that the setup of the social-choice problem that we face happens to grant a structural advantage to those who favor the self-identity convention.
+But crucially, the fact that the self-identity convention is a Schelling point, _doesn't_ mean we have a one-sided policy debate where it's in everyone's interests to support this "simplest and best protocol", with no downsides or trade-offs for anyone. The thing where _she_ and _he_ (which we don't know how to coordinate a jump away from) imply sex category inferences to actually-existing English speakers is still true! The Schelling point argument just means that the setup of the social-choice problem that we face happens to grant a structural advantage to those who favor the self-identity convention.
+
+Although they're not the only ones with an structural advantage: a social order whose gender convention was "Biological sex only; transsexualism isn't a thing; sucks to be you if you want people to believe that you're the sex that you aren't" would _also_ be a Schelling point. (Trans people's [developmental sex](http://unremediatedgender.space/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/) is not really in dispute.) It's the _moderates_ who want to be nice to trans people _without_ destroying the public concept of sex who are in trouble!
+
+Still, I think most people reading this post _are_ "moderates" in this sense. Schelling points are powerful. If we're _not_ culturally-genocidal extremists who want to exclude transsexuals from Society (and therefore reject the "pronouns = sex, no exceptions" Schelling point), isn't it reasonable that we end up at the self-identity Schelling point—at least as far as the trivial courtesy of pronouns is concerned, even if some of the moderates want to bargain for the right to use natal-sex categories in some contexts?
+
+Sure. Yes. And indeed, I don't misgender people! (In public. Only rarely in private.) I'm not arguing that Yudkowsky should misgender people! The purpose of this post is not to argue with Yudkowsky's pronoun usage, but rather to argue with the offered usage _rationale_ that "the simplest and best protocol is, '"He" refers to the set of people who have asked us to use "he", with a default for those-who-haven't-asked that goes by gamete size' and to say that this just _is_ the normative definition."
+
+As I have explained at length, this _rationale_ doesn't work and isn't true (even if better rationales, like the Schelling point argument, can end up recommending the same behavior). _No one_ actually believes (as contrasted to [believing that they believe](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief)) that _she_ and _he_ aren't attached to gender in people's heads, despite Yudkowsky's sneering claim in the comments that he ["would not know how to write a different viewpoint as a sympathetic character."](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421986539228&reply_comment_id=10159423713134228)
+
+Again, without attributing to Yudkowsky any _conscious, deliberative_ intent to deceive (because of the human tendency to unconsciously introduce distortions in the heat of a rapid argument), the _pants-on-fire audacity_ of this _ludicrous_ claim to ignorance just beggars belief. As the author of [one of the world's most popular _Harry Potter_ fanfictions](http://www.hpmor.com/), Yudkowsky clearly knows something about about how to simulate alternative perspectives (includes ones he disagrees with) and portray them sympathetically. And he claims not to be able to do this for ... the idea that pronouns imply sex, and that using the pronouns that imply someone is the sex that they are not feels analogous to lying? Really?!
+
+Well, I'm not a world-acclaimed fiction author with thousands of fans, but if Yudkowsky claims not to be up to this writing challenge, I'm happy to give him a hand and show him how it might be done—
+
+> A cis woman is testifying in court about a brutal rape that horrifically traumatized her. The rapist has since transitioned.
+>
+> "And then—" says the victim, reliving those awful moments, "and then, he took his erect penis—"
+>
+> "Objection!" says the defense lawyer. "The witness misgendering my client is prejudicial."
+>
+> "Sustained," says the judge. Then, to the victim: "_Her_ erect penis."
+>
+> "Wh—what?" says the victim.
+>
+> "You will refer to the defendant with the correct pronoun, or I'll hold you in contempt of court."
+>
+> "Oh. O–okay. And then she took her—" The victim breaks down crying. "I'm sorry, Your Honor; I can't do it. I'm under oath; I have to tell the story the way it happened to me. In my memories, the person who did those things to me was a man. A—"
+>
+> She hesistates, sobs a few more times. In this moment, almost more painful than the memories of the assault, she is very conscious of having never been to college. The judge and the defense lawyer are smarter and more educated than her, and they believe her rapist is now a woman. It had never made any sense to her—but how could she explain to an authority who she had no hope of out-arguing?
+>
+> "And by 'man', I mean—a male. The way I was raised, men—males—get called _he_ and _him_. If I say _she_, it doesn't feel true to the memory in my head. It feels like lying, Your Honor."
+>
+> The judge scoffs. "You are _ontologically_ confused," he sneers. "At age 13 I was programming on LambdaMOO where people had their choice of exotic pronouns and nobody thought anything of it," says the judge. "Denied."
+>
+> "O-okay," says the victim. She doesn't know what _ontologically_ means, or what a LambdaMOO is. "So then—then sh-she took her erect penis and she—" The witness breaks down crying again. "Your Honor, I can't! I can't do it! It's not true! I mean—" She senses that the judge will imply she's stupid for saying it's not true. She gropes for some way of explaining. "I mean—the Court allows people to testify in Spanish or Chinese with the help of a translator, right? Can't you treat my testimony like that? Let me say what happened to me in the words that seems true to me, even if the court does its business using words in a different way?"
+>
+> "You're in contempt," says the judge. "Baliff! Take her away!"
+
+Not a sympathetic character? Not even a little bit?
+
+I suspect some readers will have an intuition that my choice of scenario is unfair or unrealistic.
-Although they're not the only ones with an structural advantage: a social order whose gender convention was "Biological sex only; transsexualism isn't a thing; sucks to be you if you want people to believe that you're the sex that you aren't" would _also_ be a Schelling point. (Trans people's [developmental sex](http://unremediatedgender.space/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/) is not in dispute.) It's the _moderates_ who want to be nice to trans people _without_ destroying the public concept of sex who are in trouble!
+But what, specifically, is unrealistic about it?
-Still, I think most people reading this post _are_ "moderates" in this sense. Schelling points are powerful. If we're _not_ extremists who want to ban transsexuals from Society (and therefore reject the "pronouns = sex, no exceptions" Schelling point), isn't it reasonable that we end up at the self-identity Schelling point?
+Is it the idea that a trans woman could have raped someone before transitioning? [TODO: /o/ThisNeverHappens]
-[...]
+
+-----
+
+
+[TODO: quote Yudkowsky: not the woke position]
+
+Right. It's an _incoherent_ position that's optimized to concede to the woke the policy that they want for a _different stated reason_ in order to make the concession appear politically neutral. But in order to _actually_ be politically neutral, you need to _acknowledge_ the costs and benefits of a policy to different parties, even if all policies impose costs on _someone_ and there's no solution that everyone is happy with.
+
+Policy debates should not appear one-sided. Exerting social pressure on a native-English-speaking rape victim to refer to her male rapist with _she_/_her_ pronouns is a _cost_ to her. And, simultaneously, _not_ exerting that pressure is a _cost_ to many trans people, by making recognition of their social gender _conditional_ on some standard of good behavior, rather than an unconditional social fact.
+
+You might think the cost of making the victim say _she_ is worth it, because you want to make it easy for gender-dysphoric people to socially transition, and because you think it's dumb that pronouns imply sex in the actually-existing English language and you see the self-identity convention as a step towards degendering the language.
+
+Fine. That's a perfectly coherent position. But if that's your position and you care about being intellectually honest, you need to _acknowledge_ that your position exerts costs on some actually-existing English speakers who have a use-case for using pronouns to imply sex. You need to be able to look that rape victim in the eye and say, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes that trans people's feelings are more important than yours with respect to this policy question; sucks to be you."
+
+And of course—it _should_ be needless to say—this applies symmetrically. If you think speakers _should_ be able to misgender according to their judgement and you care about being intellectually honest, you need to be able to look a trans person in the eye and say, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes the freedom of speech of speakers is more important than your gender being recognized; sucks to be you."
+
+Or if you have more important things to worry about and don't want to take a position on controversial social issues, fine: use whatever pronoun convention happens to be dominant in your local social environment, and, if questioned, say, "I'm using the pronoun convention that happens to be dominant in my local social environment." You don't have to invent _absurd lies_ to make it look like the convention that happens to be dominant in your local social environment has no costs.
+
+Really, "I do not know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than 'doesn't look like an Oliver'"? Any seven-year-old in 2016 could tell you that that's just _factually not true_; if you grew up speaking English, you _goddamned well do_ know what it feels like. Did the elephant in Yudkowsky's brain really expect to get away with that? How dumb does he think we are?!
+
+----
I guess for me, the issue is that this is a question where _I need the correct answer in order to decide whether or not to cut my dick off_. Let me explain.
-[TODO: people have an incentive to fight over pronouns insofar as it's a "wedge" for more substantive issues]
+As a good cis ally, you're told that trans people know who they are and you need to respect that [on pain of being responsible for someone's suicide](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/). The question of _how_ trans people know who they are is usually left unspecified.
+
+
+
+
-[TODO: "Can't imagine a sympathetic protagonist"—lies, imagine a rape victim]
-[TODO: I need the correct answer]
+
+
+-----
[TODO:
* "If there were unspeakable arguments against, we couldn't talk about them"—okay, then you and your rationalists are frauds
Fit in somewhere—
- * work in the LambdaMOO anecdote where appropriate
* singular they for named individuals undermined indefinite singular 'they'
- • not the woke position—it's an incoherent position
-
+ * parenthetical about where "Oliver" came from
* some people have complained that my writing is too long, but when your interlocutors will go to the absurd length of _denying that the association of "she" with females_
+ * people have an incentive to fight over pronouns insofar as it's a "wedge" for more substantive issues
+ * 4 levels of intellectual conversation
+
+-----
appeal to inner privacy conversation-halter https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wqmmv6NraYv4Xoeyj/conversation-halters
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff