In contrast, I think asking everyone in my life to use she/her pronouns for me would be an _obviously incredibly bad decision_. Because—notwithstanding my clean-shavenness and beautiful–beautiful ponytail and slight gynecomastia from that HRT experiment five years ago—anyone who looks at me can see at a glance that I'm male (as a _fact_ about the real world, however I feel about it). People would comply because they felt obligated to (and apologize profusely when they slipped up), but it wouldn't come naturally, and strangers would always get it wrong without being told—_in accordance with_ the "default for those-who-haven't-asked that goes by gamete size" clause of Yudkowsky's reform proposal, but really because pronouns are firmly attached to sex in their heads. The costs (this tremendous awkwardness and fakeness suffusing _all future social interactions involving me_) would exceed the benefits (I actually do feel happier about the word _she_).
-I used to trust Yudkowsky as an intellectual authority; his [Sequences](https://www.readthesequences.com/) from the late 'aughts were so life-alteringly great that I built up a trust that if Eliezer Yudkowsky said something, that thing was probably so, even if I didn't immediately understand why. But these days, Yudkowsky is telling me that 'she' normatively refers to the set of people who have asked us to use 'she', and that those who disagree are engaging in logically rude Shenanigans. However, as I have just explained at length, this is bullshit. (Declaring a "normative" meaning on your Facebook wall doesn't rewrite the _actual_ meaning encoded in the brains of 370 million English speakers.) If I were _dumb enough to believe him_, I might ask people for new pronouns, which would obviously be an incredibly bad decision. (It might be a _less_ bad decision if done in conjunction with a serious gender transition effort, but Yudkowsky's pronoun reform proposal doesn't _say_ "she" is the pronoun for fully-transitioned trans women; it just says you have to ask.) Yudkowsky is harming a reference class of people that includes more naïve versions of me by giving them bad information; I'm better off because I don't trust Eliezer Yudkowsky to tell the truth in this domain.
+I used to trust Yudkowsky as an intellectual authority; his [Sequences](https://www.readthesequences.com/) from the late 'aughts were so life-alteringly great that I built up a trust that if Eliezer Yudkowsky said something, that thing was probably so, even if I didn't immediately understand why. But these days, Yudkowsky is telling me that 'she' normatively refers to the set of people who have asked us to use 'she', and that those who disagree are engaging in logically rude Shenanigans. However, as I have just explained at length, this is bullshit. (Declaring a "normative" meaning on your Facebook wall doesn't rewrite the _actual_ meaning encoded in the brains of 370 million English speakers.) If I were _dumb enough to believe him_, I might ask people for new pronouns, which would obviously be an incredibly bad decision. (It might be a _less_ bad decision if done in conjunction with a serious gender transition effort, but Yudkowsky's pronoun reform proposal doesn't _say_ "she" is the pronoun for fully-transitioned trans women; it just says you have to ask.) Yudkowsky is harming a reference class of people that includes more naïve versions of me by giving them bad information; I'm better off because I don't trust Eliezer Yudkowsky to tell the truth.
(I guess I [can't say I wasn't warned](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wustx45CPL5rZenuo/no-safe-defense-not-even-science).)
Really, self-respecting trans people who care about logical consistency should abhor Scott and Eliezer's opinions—you should want people to use the right pronouns _because_ of your gender soul or _because_ your transition actually worked, not because categories are flexible and pronouns shouldn't imply gender
-[Tweet said "I've never persuaded anyone to go trans" in light of his track record; is like thinking it's personally prudent and not community-harmful to bash Democrats and praise Republicans. If any possible good thing about Democrats is something you mention that "the other side" would say. Even if you can truthfully say "I've never _told_ anyone to _vote_ Republican", you shouldn't be surprised if people regard you as a Republican shill ; the "30% of the ones with penises" proclamation sort of was encouraging it, really!]
+> If you think you can win a battle about 2 + 3 = 5, then it can feel like victory or self-justification to write a huge long article hammering on that; but it doesn't feel as good to engage with how the Other does not think they are arguing 2 + 3 = 6, they're talking about 2 * 3.
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1435618825198731270
+
+But I think Eliezer and I _agree_ on what he's doing; he just doesn't see it's bad
+
+Speaking of narcissism and perspective-taking, "deception" isn't about whether you personally "lied" according to your own re-definitions; it's about whether you predictably made others update in the wrong direction
+
+[
+> I have never in my own life tried to persuade anyone to go trans (or not go trans) - I don't imagine myself to understand others that much.
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1404697716689489921
+
+Tweet said "I've never persuaded anyone to go trans" in light of his track record; is like thinking it's personally prudent and not community-harmful to bash Democrats and praise Republicans. If any possible good thing about Democrats is something you mention that "the other side" would say. Even if you can truthfully say "I've never _told_ anyone to _vote_ Republican", you shouldn't be surprised if people regard you as a Republican shill ; the "30% of the ones with penises" proclamation sort of was encouraging it, really!
+
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1404821285276774403
+> It is not trans-specific. When people tell me I helped them, I mostly believe them and am happy.
+
+I really appreciated Anatoly Vorobey's comments:
+
+> to provide context how it may (justifiably?) seem like over the last 7-8 years the rat. community largely fell *hard* for a particular gender philosophy
+
+> ... fell for it in ways that seemed so spectacularly uncritical, compared to other beliefs carefully examined and dissected, and more so, even justified with a veneer of "rationality" (as in Scott's Categories post) that beautifully coincided with the tumblr dogma of the time...
+
+> ...(then twitter dogma of the time, and now almost the blue tribe dogma of our time)... that I can understand how someone like Zack, embedded in the rat culture physically and struggling with this reigning ideology, could feel it as gaslighting.
+
+]
https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154110278349228
> Just checked my filtered messages on Facebook and saw, "Your post last night was kind of the final thing I needed to realize that I'm a girl."
2022 significant posts—
_ Challenges to Yudkowsky's Pronoun Reform Proposal
+_ A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning
+
+_ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia
_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America
_ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data
-_ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia
-_ A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning
+
+
Queue—
_ "On Transitions, Freedom of Form, [...]" linkpost
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff