ax the "blame for misunderstanding" footnote

It's too passive-aggressive, and not adding a lot of value, besides

diff --git a/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md b/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md
index 30d4a63..d0fa350 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md
+++ b/content/drafts/i-mean-yes-i-agree-that-man-should-allocate-some-more-categories-but.md
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ I would like to note that my post does anticipate the "by that argument, lesbian
 >
 > What makes this difficult is that—_conditional_ on the two-types hypothesis and specifically gender dysphoria in non-exclusively-androphilic biological males being mostly not an intersex condition—most trans women aren't just not part of the female cluster in configuration space; they're specifically part of _male_ cluster along most dimensions, which people _already_ have a concept for. [...] [T]he concepts of _women_-as-defined-by-biological-sex, _women_-as-defined-by-self-identity, and _women_-as-defined-by-passing are picking out different (though of course mostly overlapping) regions of the configuration space, which has inescapable logical [consequences](http://lesswrong.com/lw/nx/categorizing_has_consequences/) on the kinds of inferences that can be made using each concept.
 
-If that wasn't sufficiently clear, perhaps I have _failed as a writer_, and I can only beg that Ozy and our joint readership permit me the chance to try again.[ref]Some bloggers, when faced with a ludicrous straw misinterpretation of their position, would be inclined to blame the interlocutor for poor reading comprehension. But [the function of the category of "blame" is to create incentives](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/895quRDaK6gR2rM82/diseased-thinking-dissolving-questions-about-disease): we don't blame cancer patients for being sick because we can predict that that won't make them get better, whereas we predict that blaming and punishing theives _will_ result in fewer thefts. If I think I might be able to shame myself into writing more clearly, but I'm pretty sure yelling at others to read more carefully won't work, then I'm better off modeling all miscommunications as my "fault."[/ref]
+If that wasn't sufficiently clear, perhaps I have _failed as a writer_, and I can only beg that Ozy and our joint readership permit me the chance to try again.
 
 I don't want to _define_ gender based on psychology.[ref]Also, on a personal note, can I remark on how _weird_ and _uncomfortable_ it is that defending sex differences has now apparently become my thing? I'm an individualist/egalitarian androgyny fan, not a [complementarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarianism); I [_don't want_](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/) women and men to have incommensurable souls. But faced with an intellectual climate where brilliant, kind, otherwise-sane people seem to feel morally obligated to _destroy our collective ability to reason about sex using natural language_, I feel morally obligated to not let them get away with it. Not for love of the territory in its current state, but for the love of that property of maps that _reflect_ the territory.[/ref] ([Definitions are overrated](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cFzC996D7Jjds3vS9/arguing-by-definition), anyway.) I do think that biological sex is almost[ref]The [chemical elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements) would be an example of an even more robustly natural category. Atoms with more protons than nitrogen but fewer than oxygen _do not exist_, and thus there is no analogue in chemistry to the "Well, what about intersex conditions?" [challenge](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Derailment) to the concept of sex or the "Well, what about [ring species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)?" challenge to the concept of species.[/ref] as close as you can get to being a _natural category_ in something like the following sense. If we imagine a distribution of artificial intelligences studying life on Earth and humans in particular, but lacking any preconceived concept of _sex_,[ref]It would be more traditional to put aliens rather than AIs in the observer role of this genre of thought experiment, but evolved aliens probably _would_ already know about sex![/ref] different AIs would each invent [different concepts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XeHYXXTGRuDrhk5XL/unnatural-categories) in order to model the aspects of reality relevant to their own individual values, but most of them would be forced to reinvent the category of _sex_ sooner or later, because sex category membership makes predictions about [_many_ different dimensions of observation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans), at least _some_ of which are likely to be relevant to the interests of any particular AI that's paying any attention to animal life at _all_.