--- /dev/null
+Title: A Generic Ontological Finickiness
+Date: 2025-09-15 11:00
+Category: commentary
+Tags: Eliezer Yudkowsky
+Status: draft
+
+On Twitter, [Eliezer Yudkowsky wonders](https://lightbrd.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1961782023573709003) why male-to-female transsexualism triggers more reactionary public opprobrium than female-to-male.
+
+Yudkowsky proposes four potential explanatory factors, not mutually exclusive: (1) that modern liberal Society doesn't care about gatekeeping male roles the way its forbearers did, (2) that MtF triggers intuitions in men for the repression of specifically male homosexuality, (3) that FtM transitions are more effective on the merits of passability with extant technology, and (4) that MtF threatens sex-segregation conventions whose purpose is to protect females from males (as of, _e.g._, bathrooms and chess tournaments).
+
+I agree that to the extent that MtF faces more or different opposition than FtM, all four explanatory factors seem broadly plausible. I probably disagree with Yudkowsky on the relative importance of the four factors, but that disagreement is sufficiently minor and uninteresting that the details are probably better relegated to a footnote.[^four-factors]
+
+[^four-factors]: In [footnote 7 to "The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions) (February 2018), I mentioned that "trans men tend to pass better, and because insofar as the intended purpose of many sex-segregated social contexts is to protect females from males, biologically-female trans men aren't perceived as a threat: cis men are assumed to be able to take care of their own interests"—precisely anticipating Yudkowsky's theories #3 and #4.
+
+ Yudkowsky seems to put much less weight on theory #4 than I do, saying he mentions it "for completeness" and that he finds it "dubious as a complete account, because of how FtM used to produce more outrage back when men were higher-status". I am cautiously skeptical of Yudkowsky's read of history, which would greatly benefit from specific examples.
+
+The occasion of the present post is that Yudkowsky goes on to say:
+
+> One thing that all of these theories have in common: They do not appeal to the generic hardness of ontological categories producing alarm about generic boundary violations. They do not appeal to a deep generic horror of things being described as other than what they are.
+>
+> I could only dream of a world where human beings always, inherently, consistently cared that much about exact descriptive accuracy. They would insist on FDA labels actually describing things.
+>
+> An older era's indignation about a black trying to pass as white, a newer era's indignation about a white trying to pass as black, is tied to each era's notion of what specifically is being stolen—not to generic ontological finickiness. Hence the outrage being asymmetrical.
+>
+> A theory #0 that people are outraged by things being classified into the wrong intrinsic category—as opposed to people reaching for that afterward as a rationalization—does not predict in advance any asymmetry of indignation about MtF versus FtM.
+>
+> *mike drop*
+
+With the important exception of the "as opposed to people reaching for that afterward as a rationalization" clause (as I'll explain momentarily), I agree with each of the sentences here, but I find it puzzling that Yudkowsky thinks this is a ["mic drop"](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mic%20drop) moment. Who exactly is being criticized here? _Is_ there anyone who thinks that anti-trans public sentiment is solely explained by a deep generic horror of things being described as other than what they are? To establish that he's not beating up on a strawman, Yudkowsky [would do better](https://x.com/TheDavidSJ/status/1858097225743663267) to quote some specific representative author actually making the claim that he's refuting.
+
+As someone who [_has_ expressed a deep generic horror of things being described as other than what they are and criticized gender identity ideology on those specific grounds](/2024/Mar/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles/#it-matters-whether-peoples-beliefs-about-themselves-are-actually-true), perhaps I should clarify why I don't think Yudkowsky's rationalization accusation holds weight.
+
+At one level, there's a simple answer: different people have different beliefs and motivations, even if they end up expressing roughly or superficially similar opinions on some particular issue; and also, the same person can harbor multiple motivations which all contribute to their opinion on some particular issue.
+
+When gender-critical feminists like [Meghan Murphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan_Murphy#Opposition_to_transgender_activism) or [Kellie-Jay Keen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellie-Jay_Keen-Minshull#Biography_and_views) decry the destruction of women's single-sex spaces, they're standing up for what they see as women's interests, as feminists do. (This is Yudkowsky's theory #4.)
+
+When conservatives like [Michael Knowles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Knowles_(political_commentator)) decry transgenderism as continuous with a broader leftist project to alienate humanity from our embodied nature which was ordained by God, they're opposing radical social change, as conservatives do.
+
+When philosophers like the present writer or [Alex Byrne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Byrne_(philosopher)#Writing) criticize gender identity theories as describing things as other than what they are, they're expressing a devotion to the truth, as philosophers do. (Given his [earlier work on human rationality](https://www.readthesequences.com/), one might have expected Yudkowsky to sympathize more with this motivation, but I guess [those days are over](/2024/Mar/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles/#the-battle-that-matters).)
+
+These things can all be true of these different people at the same time. The same person can belong to multiple groups. ([Kathleen Stock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock#Views_on_gender_self-identification), for example, is both a philosopher and a gender-critical feminist.) The same person can belong to one group but not others. (I am not a fan of Michael Knowles, and it seems safe to say that Meghan Murphy isn't, either.) There's no contradiction here to explain.
+
+It might seem like there's a contradiction to explain if you project everyone's views down to a one-dimensional "pro-trans"/"anti-trans" subspace, divide the subspace into two buckets, and expect people in one bucket to answer for the views of everyone else in the same bucket. But that's an artifact of how much information you're throwing away by collapsing everyone into two buckets. Eliezer Yudkowsky and Timnit Gebru are both "anti-AI", but it would not make sense to reject a theory that some people are outraged about swiftly impending human extinction on the grounds that that theory predicts indifference to longer-term effects of global warming, which is not what we observe in anti-AI advocates. (Mic drop!)
+
+Yudkowsky acknowledges that his theories #1–4 aren't mutually exclusive. (Theory #2, for example, only tries to explain anti-MtF sentiment in men.) But _the same is true of theory #0_. Yudkowsky is correct to point out that theory #0 can't be the whole story of public anti-trans sentiment, because that would imply equal amounts of anti-MtF and anti-FtM sentiment, which isn't what we observe. But that only means that the philosophers are outnumbered by more political actors (like the gender-criticals and conservatives), which I don't think anyone would doubt—least of all the philosophers.
+
+The problem here is not only that no one said theory #0 was the whole story. Theory #0 _wouldn't_ be the whole story even if the people described by theory #0 were objectively correct in their views, because it's possible for humans to arrive at correct beliefs for bad reasons. (The correctness of the theory of evolution isn't the whole story for why people believe it: some people express pro-evolution sentiments to express resentment of their repressive religious upbringing. But evolution still actually happened.)
+
+It's not clear why Yudkowsky would argue against the position that theory #0 by itself explains most public anti-trans sentiment (without pointing to any examples of anyone who thinks that!), unless his goal were to minimize the gender-political relevance of the of the philosophy of language—to tar anyone expressing alarm about inaccurate descriptions as rationalizing bigotries held for less high-minded reasons.
+
+But the philosophy of language clearly _is_ relevant to what humans are doing when they argue about gender politics. [The cognitive function of categorization is to group decision-relevantly similar things into the same category in order to make similar decisions about them.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) As a matter of AI theory, that's what human brains are doing when we use words, whether or not anyone knows it. (In the time of Aristotle, people didn't know it.)
+
+In deriding the "generic hardness of ontological categories producing alarm about generic boundary violations" as something that "people reach[ ] for [...] afterward as a rationalization", Yudkowsky seems to portray philosophical arguments about accuracy of representations as somehow opposed to culture-specific sensitivities to specific misrepresentations—as if objecting to some lies more than others implies that it's hypocritical to have a philosophical account of lying.
+
+But a generic theory of deception is compatible with a policy that doesn't punish all deceptions equally: indeed, it's commonplace for punishments of deception to depend on who was misled about what. If you try to sell [pyrite (a.k.a. "fool's gold")](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite) as gold, people will get angry at the attempted fraud. If you try to sell gold as pyrite, people will be confused but not angry.
+
+Nevertheless, pyrite is not gold.
+
+People who point out that pyrite is not gold are telling the truth.
+
+People who point out that pyrite is not gold are still telling the truth even if their motivation for speaking up is that they think gold is valuable and pyrite is not, rather than a "generic ontological finickiness."
+
+People who claim that pyrite is gold because they define _gold_ as whatever sellers identify as gold, are lying or confused.
+
+If someone develops a new chemical treatment that alters pyrite to have some but not all of the properties of gold, and they trademark the altered substance as "trans gold" (two words), then someone could validly make a case on the empirical merits that there should be a sense of the word _gold_ such that trans gold is gold: "Make it yellower, increase the density, decrease the Mohs hardness, and I think most metallurgists would shrug and say 'good enough.'"
+
+Fine. But it has to _actually_ be good enough. The shrug has to be genuine, not coerced: a shrug of "I can't be bothered to pay attention to this", rather than of accepting a social convention that it's none of your business.[^privacy]
+
+[^privacy]: Note that social conventions about privacy exist precisely to conceal information that people _do_ care about. If it were something that no one cared about, like having an attached or detached earlobe, there would be no reason to insist that it's no one else's business.
+
+I write what I do because when I look at the world I see and compare it to how I'm expected to describe it in polite Society, _I am not shrugging_. If you, the reader, genuinely can't tell and don't care about the difference between males and females-on-testosterone, or between females and males-on-estrogen, then it makes sense for _you_ to shrug. But I can often tell. (No, not always, and yes, I know about the obvious selection effect.)
+
+And I care. I care! I care without knowing the full reasons, not in order to make any legible policy distinction solely on that basis—I have no public accomodations to police, no diversity scholarships to dole out—but because I care about modeling the world in all its little details. I think I would have to lobotomize myself to not care.
+
+The other week I was in Seattle for [RustConf](https://rustconf.com/), which, to my eye, had [a trans-woman-to-cis-woman ratio](/2017/Aug/interlude-vii/) higher than [Less Online](https://less.online/). At one point, I was sitting at a table with nine people, five or six of whom were trans women. After the conference, I stopped in Portland to spend some time with three internet friends, all of whom were trans women.
+
+_Why?_ The joint gender and assigned-sex-at-birth composition of that table, and of my friends, can't possibly be a concidence. Am I supposed to pretend not to notice?
+
+In the comments on Twitter, [a user proposed a theory #5](https://lightbrd.com/pelvis_man/status/1961786999515545677) to Yudkowsky's puzzle, that FtMs are "indistinguishable from guys in the personality and mood and thought process and demeanor department. not so with mtf, they are more like a third different gender". [Yudkowsky replied](https://lightbrd.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1961797535938535858), "That's #3." (That "[m]odern medtech makes it easier to go FtM, and the lack of FtM panic in modern times compared to earlier times is because in modern times the aspiring FtM can use T to actually grow a beard [...] That is: The uncanny valley does not need to be symmetrical or fair with respect to perceptual cues or current medical technology. Maybe if you grow a beard, cut the hair, and remove the breasts, that just works to cross the valley.")
+
+But if the medtech got much better, if perfect physical passing as an MtF were cheap and easy, I would probably transition—and then that table at RustConf would have six or seven trans women. Even if there were no overt uncanny-valley effect, even if nothing _looked_ visibly out of ordinary to the naked eye, The joint gender and assigned-sex-at-birth composition of that table would still _not be a coincidence_. Again, why?
+
+It still feels ugly to say even now—it's not something I _want_ to be true—but if I'm being honest, I have to put a decent chunk of probability on the hypothesis that
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[TODO: ... bridge]
+
+Yudkowsky writes that he could only dream of a world where human beings cared that much about exact descriptive accuracy.
+
+But why only dream? Maybe sometime in the last sixteen years, Yudkowsky has abandoned his sense that more is possible.
+
+But I haven't. Maybe human beings don't always, inherently, consistently care—but rationalists _should_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[TODO: but it is an empirical case, and ontological finickiness is _correct_; I write more about MtF, because I care more]
+
+[TODO—
+A deeper level for why I don't take the rationalization charge seriously: it's _because_ there's a real difference, _that_ people have objections that aren't about high-minded truth; people object to lies not just because of the sanctity of their map, but because they need a map that reflects the territory to make decisions
+
+"Generic hardness" isn't actually the real argument; the "blood is thicker than water" argument is empirical
+
+Aella on lying
+
+> Therefore, I care tons about MtFs in women's bathrooms or chess matches, and nevery say anything about FtMs one way or another
+
+Joan of Arc in history footnote?
+
+https://www.readthesequences.com/Reversed-Stupidity-Is-Not-Intelligence
+
+explain why the rationalization clause is wrong
+]
+++ /dev/null
-Title: Comment on Yudkowsky on Asymmetric Trans Panic
-Date: 2025-09-15 11:00
-Category: commentary
-Tags: Eliezer Yudkowsky
-Status: draft
-
-On Twitter, [Eliezer Yudkowsky wonders](https://lightbrd.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1961782023573709003) why male-to-female transsexualism triggers more reactionary public opprobrium than female-to-male.
-
-Yudkowsky proposes four potential explanatory factors, not mutually exclusive: (1) that modern liberal Society doesn't care about gatekeeping male roles the way its forbearers did, (2) that MtF triggers intuitions in men for the repression of specifically male homosexuality, (3) that FtM transitions are more effective on the merits of passability with extant technology, and (4) that MtF threatens sex-segregation conventions whose purpose is to protect females from males (as of, _e.g._, bathrooms and chess tournaments).
-
-I agree that to the extent that MtF faces more opposition than FtM, all four explanatory factors seem broadly plausible. I probably disagree with Yudkowsky on the relative importance of the four factors, but that disagreement is sufficiently minor and uninteresting that the details are probably better relegated to a footnote.
-
-
-[TODO: footnote acknowledge that later in the thread acknowledges that the observation is not entirely true; especially re: youth and detransition]
-[TODO: footnote discussing factor disagreement; footnote 7 of /2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions anticipates (3) and (4)
-All four theories have some plausibility, but the historical FtM panic claim is questionable
-https://claude.ai/chat/ec48fc50-3346-4b48-8f85-103f9b522119
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley_Parkhurst
-and I put much more weight than Yudkowsky on #4 (downstream of me doubting his history)
-]
-
-The occasion of the present post is that Yudkowsky goes on to say:
-
-> One thing that all of these theories have in common: They do not appeal to the generic hardness of ontological categories producing alarm about generic boundary violations. They do not appeal to a deep generic horror of things being described as other than what they are.
->
-> I could only dream of a world where human beings always, inherently, consistently cared that much about exact descriptive accuracy. They would insist on FDA labels actually describing things.
->
-> An older era's indignation about a black trying to pass as white, a newer era's indignation about a white trying to pass as black, is tied to each era's notion of what specifically is being stolen—not to generic ontological finickiness. Hence the outrage being asymmetrical.
->
-> A theory #0 that people are outraged by things being classified into the wrong intrinsic category—as opposed to people reaching for that afterward as a rationalization—does not predict in advance any asymmetry of indignation about MtF versus FtM.
->
-> *mike drop*
-
-With the important exception of the "as opposed to people reaching for that afterward as a rationalization" clause (as I'll explain momentarily), I agree with each of the sentences here, but I find it puzzling that Yudkowsky thinks this is a ["mic drop"](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mic%20drop) moment. Who exactly is being criticized here? _Is_ there anyone who thinks that anti-trans public sentiment is solely explained by a deep generic horror of things being described as other than what they are? To establish that he's not beating up on a strawman, Yudkowsky [would do better](https://x.com/TheDavidSJ/status/1858097225743663267) to quote some specific representative author actually making the claim that he's refuting.
-
-As someone who [_has_ expressed a deep generic horror of things being described as other than what they are and criticized gender identity ideology on those specific grounds](/2024/Mar/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles/#it-matters-whether-peoples-beliefs-about-themselves-are-actually-true), perhaps I should clarify why I don't think Yudkowsky's rationalization accusation holds weight.
-
-The answer is simple: different people have different beliefs and motivations, even if they end up expressing roughly or superficially similar opinions on some particular issue; and also, the same person can harbor multiple motivations which all contribute to their opinion on some particular issue.
-
-When gender-critical feminists like [Meghan Murphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan_Murphy#Opposition_to_transgender_activism) or [Kellie-Jay Keen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellie-Jay_Keen-Minshull#Biography_and_views) decry the destruction of women's single-sex spaces, they're standing up for what they see as women's interests, as feminists do. (This is Yudkowsky's theory #4.)
-
-When conservatives like [Michael Knowles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Knowles_(political_commentator)) decry transgenderism as continuous with a broader leftist project to alienate humanity from our embodied nature as ordained by God, they're opposing radical social change, as conservatives do.
-
-When philosophers like the present writer or [Alex Byrne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Byrne_(philosopher)#Writing) criticize gender identity theories as describing things as other than what they are, they're expressing a devotion to the truth, as philosophers do. (Given his [earlier work on human rationality](https://www.readthesequences.com/), one might have expected Yudkowsky to sympathize with this motivation, but I guess [those days are over](/2024/Mar/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles/#the-battle-that-matters).)
-
-These things can all be true of these different people at the same time! The same person can belong to multiple groups. ([Kathleen Stock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock#Views_on_gender_self-identification), for example, is both a philosopher and a gender-critical feminist.) The same person can belong to one group but not others. (I am not a fan of Michael Knowles, and it seems safe to say that Meghan Murphy isn't, either.) There's no contradiction here to explain.
-
-Yudkowsky acknowledges that his theories #1–4 aren't mutually exclusive. (Theory #2, for example, only tries to explain anti-MtF sentiment in men.) But _the same is true of theory #0_. Yudkowsky is correct to point out that theory #0 can't be the whole story of public anti-trans sentiment, because that would imply equal amounts of anti-MtF and anti-FtM sentiment, which isn't what we observe.
-
-But no one _said_ theory #0 was the whole story! Theory #0 _wouldn't_ be the whole story even if the people described by theory #0 were objectively correct in their views, because it's possible for humans to arrive at correct beliefs for bad reasons. (The correctness of the theory of evolution isn't the whole story for why people believe it. Some people express pro-evolution sentiments to express resentment for their repressive religious upbringing. But evolution still actually happened.) It's not clear why Yudkowsky would imply that someone thought theory #0 explained all public anti-trans sentiment (without pointing to any examples!), unless his goal were to deny the gender-political relevance of the of the philosophy of language—to tar anyone expressing alarm about inaccurate descriptions as rationalizing bigotries held for less high-minded reasons.
-
-But the philosophy of language _is_ clearly relevant to what humans are doing when they argue about gender politics. [The cognitive function of categorization is to group decision-relevantly similar things into the same category in order to make similar decisions about them.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) As a matter of AI theory, that's what human brains are doing when we use words, whether or not anyone knows it. (In the time of Aristotle, people _didn't_ know it.)
-
-In deriding the "generic hardness of ontological categories producing alarm about generic boundary violations" as something that "people reach[ ] for [...] afterward as a rationalization", Yudkowsky seems to portray philosophical arguments about accuracy of representations as somehow opposed to culture-specific sensitivities to specific misrepresentations, as if objecting to some lies more than others implies that it's hypocritical to want a philosophical account of lying.
-
-But a generic theory of deception is compatible with a policy that doesn't punish all deceptions equally! It's pretty common for punishments of deception to depend on who was misled about what. If you try to sell [pyrite ("fool's gold")](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite) as gold, people who notice will get angry at the attempted fraud. If you try to sell gold as fool's gold, people will be confused but not angry.
-
-Nevertheless, pyrite is not gold.
-
-
-
-[TODO—
-
-It's normal for the punishment of a lie to depend on consequences (rather than punishing all lies equally out of love of Truth); "afterwards as a rationalization" is a weird frame
-
-I agree that asymmetry implies that it can't be a pure epistemology issue, because the epistemology problem treats FtM and MtF symmetrically.
-
-Sure, insofar as sex-segregated public accomodations are to protect females from males, then MtF threatens that in a way that FtM doesn't
-
-#0 is still a good reason, even if it's not driving the asymmetrical public outrage
-
-"Generic hardness" isn't actually the real argument; the "blood is thicker than water" argument is empirical
-
-People care about consequential lies rather than lying-in-general, but lies are still lies!!
-
-Aella on lying
-
-> Therefore, I care tons about MtFs in women's bathrooms or chess matches, and nevery say anything about FtMs one way or another
-
-]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff