"Sexual Dimorphism": the Blue and the Gray

diff --git a/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md b/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md
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@@ -670,24 +670,35 @@ I'm not optimistic about the problem being fixable, either. Our robot cult _alre
 
 Because of the particular historical moment in which we live, we end up facing pressure from progressives, because—whatever our _object-level_ beliefs about (say) [sex, race, and class differences](/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/)—and however much many of us would prefer not to talk about them—on the _meta_ level, our creed requires us to admit _it's an empirical question_, not a moral one—and that [empirical questions have no privileged reason to admit convenient answers](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god).
 
-I view this conflict as entirely incidental, nothing to do with American politics or "the left" in particular. In a Christian theocracy, our analogues would get in trouble for beliefs about evolution; in the old Soviet Union, our analogues would get in trouble for [thinking about market economics](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/) (as a positive technical discipline, adjacent to game theory, not yoked to a particular normative agenda).
+I view this conflict as entirely incidental, something that [would happen in some form in any place and time](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cKrgy7hLdszkse2pq/archimedes-s-chronophone), rather than having to do with American politics or "the left" in particular. In a Christian theocracy, our analogues would get in trouble for beliefs about evolution; in the old Soviet Union, our analogues would get in trouble for [thinking about market economics](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/) (as a positive technical discipline, adjacent to game theory, not yoked to a particular normative agenda).
 
-https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376
-https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/
+Incidental or not, the conflict is real, and everyone smart knows it—even if it's not easy to _prove_ that everyone smart knows it, because everyone smart is very careful what they say in public. Scott Aaronson wrote of [the Kolmogorov Option](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376) (which Scott Alexander aptly renamed [Kolmorogov complicity](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/): serve the cause of Truth by cultivating a bubble that focuses on truths that won't get you in trouble with the local political authorities. This after the Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov, who _knew better than to pick fights he couldn't win_.
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+Becuase of the conflict, and because we happen to have to a _wildly_ disproportionate number of _people like me_ around, I think being "pro-trans" ended up being part of the community's "shield" against external political pressure, of the sort that perked up after [the February 2021 _New York Times_ hit piece about Alexander's blog](https://archive.is/0Ghdl). (The _magnitude_ of heat brought on by the recent _Times_ piece and its aftermath was new, but the underlying dynamics had been present for years.)
+
+Jacob Falkovich notes, ["The two demographics most over-represented in the SlateStarCodex readership according to the surveys are transgender people and Ph.D. holders."](https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1275524303430262790) Aaronson notes (in commentary on the _Times_ article) "the rationalist community's legendary openness to alternative gender identities and sexualities" as something that would have "complicated the picture" of our portrayal as anti-feminist.
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+Even the hater–critics grudgingly concede that "... Not Man for the Categories" is to Alexander's credit: 
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+I _should_ be sympathetic to the argument, which makes a lot of sense.
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+https://otherlife.co/respectability-is-not-worth-it-reply-to-slatestarcodex/
 
 [Leeroy Jenkins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins) Option.
 
 People use trans as political cover;
 
+(Look at all the damage the _other_ Harry Potter author did to her mainstream legacy.)
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+nothing left to lose
+
 [It would have been harder to recruit me]
 
-https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1275524303430262790
-> "Who cares about a blog for male nerd know-it-alls?" 
-> The two demographics most over-represented in the SlateStarCodex readership according to the surveys are transgender people and Ph.D. holders.
 
 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310
 
-> Another thing that would've complicated the picture: the rationalist community’s legendary openness to alternative gender identities and sexualities]
 
 
 Someone asked me: "If we randomized half the people at [OpenAI](https://openai.com/) to use trans pronouns one way, and the other half to use it the other way, do you think they would end up with significantly different productivity?"

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+the Blue Tribe/Gray Tribe color schema is really unfortunate given how enthusiastic the Blues are about Civil War analogies
+
 Funny coincidence to come across @SeriesTangled lyrics extensively referenced in a cognitive-science-of-gender blog post (looks like a really cool paper about language and color perception from [...], too)
 
 Free-speech conditions in the country as a whole have gotten worse, but conditions in my immediate social graph have gotten better, as people who previously wanted to stay on the good side of Blue Egregore hit the "I can't live like this" breaking point that I hit in October 2016