X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=blobdiff_plain;f=notes%2Fi-tell-myself-sections.md;h=431a86c0ff091c559f8fc4eba13a50f54f24a70d;hb=6d0292475b02dc1d523ac893eacd9aabfe46bb41;hp=2bb4ccca8cb2a733492afea51e087b4116250be8;hpb=51a2a43eb08f9bdaf7a967af1328f19156d4781c;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git diff --git a/notes/i-tell-myself-sections.md b/notes/i-tell-myself-sections.md index 2bb4ccc..431a86c 100644 --- a/notes/i-tell-myself-sections.md +++ b/notes/i-tell-myself-sections.md @@ -1,11 +1,9 @@ -The short story ["Failed Utopia #4-2"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTKbmm6uRgC/failed-utopia-4-2) portrays an almost-aligned superintelligence constructing a happiness-maximizing utopia for humans—except that because [evolution didn't design women and men to be optimal partners for each other](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Py3uGnncqXuEfPtQp/interpersonal-entanglement), and the AI is prohibited from editing people's minds, the happiness-maximizing solution ends up splitting up the human species by sex and giving women and men their own _separate_ utopias, complete with artificially-synthesized romantic partners. - -At the time, [I expressed horror](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTKbmm6uRgC/failed-utopia-4-2/comment/PhiGnX7qKzzgn2aKb) at the idea in the comments section, because my quasi-religious psychological-sex-differences denialism required that I be horrified. But looking back eleven years later (my deconversion from my teenage religion being pretty thorough at this point, I think), the _argument makes sense_ (though you need an additional [handwave](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HandWave) to explain why the AI doesn't give every _individual_ their separate utopia—if existing women and men aren't optimal partners for each other, so too are individual men not optimal same-sex friends for each other). - -On my reading of the text, it is _significant_ that the AI-synthesized complements for men are given their own name, the _verthandi_, rather than just being referred to as women. The _verthandi_ may _look like_ women, they may be _approximately_ psychologically human, but the _detailed_ psychology of "superintelligently-engineered optimal romantic partner for a human male" is not going to come out of the distribution of actual human females, and judicious exercise of the [tenth virtue of precision](http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/) demands that a _different word_ be coined for this hypothetical science-fictional type of person. Calling the _verthandi_ "women" would be _worse writing_; it would _fail to communicate_ what, in the story, has been lost. ["Changing Emotions"] +http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-September/008924.html +[it's hard to overstate the impact this one post had on me (I've already linked it 8 times on this blog)] + ----- Men who wish they were women do not particularly resemble actual women! We just—don't? This seems kind of obvious, really? @@ -22,7 +20,7 @@ An aside: being famous must _suck_. I haven't experienced this myself, but I'm s 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 three 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 someone 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. +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., and [Sophia](http://unremediatedgender.space/author/sophia/). @@ -34,4 +32,4 @@ And when someone in your robot cult thinks you've made a philosophy mistake that [if I agree that pronouns aren't lies, why was I so freaked out] -[pronouns do have truth conditions, cruelty to ordinary people] +[pronouns do have truth conditions, Weak Men recenter category boundaries, cruelty to ordinary people]