+(I normally eschew the use of boldface in prose, but as a strategic concession to people's lack of reading comprehension, I'll be bolding key sentences that I fear people would otherwise fail to process and misunderstand my position as a result.)
+
+----
+
As an illustration of how [the hope for radical human enhancement is fraught with](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EQkELCGiGQwvrrp3L/growing-up-is-hard) technical difficulties, ["Changing Emotions"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions) sketches a picture of just how difficult an actual male-to-female sex change would be.
It would be hard to overstate how much of an impact this post had on me. I've previously linked it on this blog eight times. In June 2008, half a year before it was published, I encountered the [2004 mailing list post](http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-September/008924.html) that was its predecessor. (The fact that I was trawling through old mailing list archives searching for content by the Great Teacher that I hadn't already read, tells you something about what a fanboy I am.) I immediately wrote to a friend: "[...] I cannot adequately talk about my feelings. Am I shocked, liberated, relieved, scared, angry, amused?"
-The argument goes: it might be easy to _imagine_ changing sex and refer to the idea in a short English sentence, but the real physical world has implementation details, and the implementation details aren't filled in by the short English sentence. The human body, including the brain, is an enormously complex integrated organism; there's no [plug-and-play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_play) architecture by which you can just swap your brain into a new body and have everything work without re-mapping the connections in your motor cortex.
+The argument goes: it might be easy to _imagine_ changing sex and refer to the idea in a short English sentence, but the real physical world has implementation details, and the implementation details aren't filled in by the short English sentence. The human body, including the brain, is an enormously complex integrated organism; there's no [plug-and-play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_play) architecture by which you can just swap your brain into a new body and have everything work without re-mapping the connections in your motor cortex. And even that's not _really_ a sex change, as far as the whole integrated system is concerned—
+> Remapping the connections from the remapped somatic areas to the pleasure center will ... give you a vagina-shaped penis, more or less. That doesn't make you a woman. You'd still be attracted to girls, and no, that would not make you a lesbian; it would make you a normal, masculine man wearing a female body like a suit of clothing.
+But from the standpoint of my secret erotic fantasy, this is actually a _great_ outcome.
+
+[...]
+
+> If I fell asleep and woke up as a true woman—not in body, but in brain—I don't think I'd call her "me". The change is too sharp, if it happens all at once.
In the comments, [I wrote](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions/comment/4pttT7gQYLpfqCsNd)—
To which I now realize the correct answer is: _Yes_, it's cheating! The map is not the territory!
-
-----
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. Men (adult human males) who _fantasize about_ being women (adult human females), are still neverless drawn from the _male_ multivariate trait distribution, not the female distribution.
+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.
The fact that I can't _talk about the world I see_ in the simple language that comes naturally to me without it inevitably being construed as a reactionary political statement is a _problem_. And it's a _rationality_ problem insofar as the world I see is potentially a more accurate model of the real world, than the world I'm allowed to talk about.
+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 clever not-technically-lying sophistries engineered to _make it look like there's no cost_.
-----
+-----
+
+If we _actually had_ the magical sex change technology described in "Changing Emotions", no one would even be _tempted_ to invent these category-gerrymandering mind games.
+
+If it cost $200K, I would just take out a bank loan and _do it_.
+
+-----
+
+I definitely don't want to call my friend Irene a man. That would be crazy! Because **her transition _actually worked_.** Because it actually worked _on the merits_. _Not_ because I'm _redefining concepts in order to be nice to her_. When I look at her, whatever algorithm my brain uses to sort people into "woman"/"man"/"not sure" buckets, returns "woman."
+
+-----
An aside: being famous must _suck_. I haven't experienced this myself, but I'm sure it's true.
[^fans]: I'm specifically thinking of W.E., R.S., and [Sophia](http://unremediatedgender.space/author/sophia/).
----
+----
[document (with archive links) what EY said]
> More important, if you convert a culture from thinking in the first type of way to thinking in the second type of way, then religious people will be unpopular and anyone trying to make a religious argument will have to spend the first five minutes of their speech explaining how they're not Fred Phelps, honest, and no, they don't picket any funerals. After all that time spent apologizing and defending themselves and distancing themselves from other religious people, they're not likely to be able to make a very rousing argument for religion.
-
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-[Pope who is also Jesus, Selective Draft Law cases]
-
Some readers who aren't part of my robot cult—and some who are—might be puzzled at why I was so emotionally disturbed by people being wrong about philosophy. And for almost anyone else in the world, I would just shrug and [set the bozo bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit#Dismissing_a_person_as_not_worth_listening_to).
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 as a religious community](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.
----
-[univariate fallacy; I'm a weird guy; I would like to believe there could be a cis woman like me. Not obvious that I acutally know any. My sister is a natural experiment; hands vs. finger; "felt sense"]
+Humans are _pretty good_ at noticing each other's sex. In one study, subjects were able to descriminate between photographs of female and male faces (hair covered, males clean-shaven) with 96% accuracy.[^face] This even though there's no _single_ facial feature that cleanly distinguishes females and males
-https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KmghfjH6RgXvoKruJ/hand-vs-fingers
+[^face]: Vicki Bruce, A. Mike Burton, _et al._, "Sex discrimination: how do we tell the difference between male and female faces?"
----
But the _reason_ it seemed _at all_ remotely plausible that our little robot cult could be pivotal in creating Utopia forever was _not_ "[Because we're us](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending/), the world-saving good guys", but rather _because_ we were going to discover and refine the methods of _systematically correct reasoning_.
-If the people _marketing themselves_ as the good guys who are going to save the world using systematically-correct-reasoning are _not actually interested in doing systematically correct reasoning_ (because systematically correct reasoning leads to conclusions that are politically "impossible" to state clearly in public, and no one has the guts to [_not_ shut up and do the politically impossible](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nCvvhFBaayaXyuBiD/shut-up-and-do-the-impossible))
+If the people _marketing themselves_ as the good guys who are going to save the world using systematically correct reasoning are _not actually interested in doing systematically correct reasoning_ (because systematically correct reasoning leads to two or three conclusions that are politically "impossible" to state clearly in public, and no one has the guts to [_not_ shut up and thereby do the politically impossible](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nCvvhFBaayaXyuBiD/shut-up-and-do-the-impossible)), that's arguably _worse_ than the situation where
-----
-Sidebar: I'm avoiding naming anyone in this post even when linking to their public writings, in order to try to keep the _rhetorical emphasis_ on "true tale of personal heartbreak, coupled with sober analysis of the sociopolitical factors leading thereto" even while I'm ... expressing disappointment with people's performance. This isn't supposed to be character/reputational attack on my friends and (former??) heroes—at least, not more than it needs to be. I just _need to tell the story_.
+I'm avoiding naming anyone in this post even when linking to their public writings, in order to try to keep the _rhetorical emphasis_ on "true tale of personal heartbreak, coupled with sober analysis of the sociopolitical factors leading thereto" even while I'm ... expressing disappointment with people's performance. This isn't supposed to be character/reputational attack on my friends and (former??) heroes—at least, not more than it needs to be. I just _need to tell the story_.
-I'd almost rather we all pretend this narrative was written in a ["nearby" Everett branch](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9cgBF6BQ2TRB3Hy4E/and-the-winner-is-many-worlds) whose history diverged from ours maybe forty-five years ago—a world almost exactly like our own as far as the macro-scale institutional and ideological forces at play, but with different individual people filling out the relevant birth cohorts. _My_ specific identity doesn't matter; the specific identities of any individuals I mention while telling my story don't matter.
-
-What matters is the _structure_: I'm just a sample from the _distribution_ of what happens when an American upper-middle-class high-Openness high-Neuroticism late-1980s-birth-cohort IQ-130 78%-Ashkenazi obligate-autogynephilic boy falls in with this kind of robot cult in this kind of world. End sidebar.
+I'd almost rather we all pretend this narrative was written in a ["nearby" Everett branch](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9cgBF6BQ2TRB3Hy4E/and-the-winner-is-many-worlds) whose history diverged from ours maybe forty-five years ago—a world almost exactly like our own as far as the macro-scale institutional and ideological forces at play, but with different individual people filling out the relevant birth cohorts. _My_ specific identity doesn't matter; the specific identities of any individuals I mention while telling my story don't matter. What matters is the _structure_: I'm just a sample from the _distribution_ of what happens when an American upper-middle-class high-Openness high-Neuroticism late-1980s-birth-cohort IQ-130 78%-Ashkenazi obligate-autogynephilic boy falls in with this kind of robot cult in this kind of world.
----
(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**. (I normally eschew the use of boldface in prose, but I'll make this concession to people's inability to read a post of this length.) 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 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 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.
+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 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 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.
------
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. 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.
+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 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?
+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 agenda and the 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_ (it's possible to agree with someone about a particular philosophy argument, while disagreeing with them about how the philosophy argument applies to 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.
+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_ (it's possible to agree with someone about a particular philosophy argument, while disagreeing with them about how the philosophy argument applies to 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," I can respect that.
+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," I can't say I'm not _disappointed_, but I can respect that.
[people can't trust me to stably keep secrets]
And _that_ is intolerable. Once you have a single socially load-bearing philosophy mistake, you don't have a systematically-correct-reasoning community anymore. What you have is a _cult_. If you _notice_ that your alleged systematically-correct-reasoning community has a load-bearing philosophy mistake, and you _go on_ acting as if it were a systematically-correct-reasoning community, then you are committing _fraud_. (Morally speaking. I don't mean a sense of the word "fraud" that could be upheld in a court of law.)
+----
+
+[trade arrangments: if that's the world we live in, fine]
------
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/
-"People started threatening to use my bad reputation to discredit the communities I was in and the causes I cared about most."
-
+The Popular Author
+"People started threatening to use my bad reputation to discredit the communities I was in and the causes I cared about most."
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff