--- /dev/null
+Title: draft Twitter thread
+Status: Hidden
+
+I'm not sure what game Yudkowsky thinks he's playing by double–triple–quadrupling down on misrepresenting the arguments against gender identity. Is it vice signaling—showing contempt for "Earthlings" (i.e., everyone but himself), that he thinks he can get away with it? https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1843650274940031006 1/
+
+I had naïvely hoped this stupid conflict would have ended in March 2024 after I published pt. 4 of my memoir explaining his history of intellectual dishonesty on the topic, but he keeps doing it, as I explain in this thread. Why keep digging?! 2/
+
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/recap-1.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/recap-1.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/recap-2.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/recap-2.png" alt="Recap 2" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+During a Oct. 2024 discussion, the closest he got to substantively engaging was this bizarre reading comprehension failure in which he restates the article's point (it's not fixed if pronouns indicate sex or gender ID) as if it were a disagreement. 3/ https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1843752722186809444
+
+But precisely because it's ambiguous whether pronoun choice refers to sex or gender identity, you can't just arbitrarily declare that the gender ID convention is the correct one, and only mean & confused people could prefer the sex convention. You just agreed it's ambiguous! 4/
+
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/cluster_shenanigans.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/cluster_shenanigans.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+Contesting a dishonest accounting of the costs and benefits of a policy isn't the same thing as advocating for the opposite policy. I would have hoped that the Yudkowsky of the current year was still sane enough to understand that, but I guess not. 5/ https://x.com/davidxu90/status/1843758339634921965
+
+Policy debates should not appear one-sided. Given a conflict between people who prefer gender-ID pronouns and people who prefer sex pronouns, one could choose to support one side or the other, depending on one's values—but you shouldn't lie about your opponents' motivations! 6/
+
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/sucks_to_be_you-a.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/sucks_to_be_you-a.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+Policy debates should not appear one-sided. Given a conflict between freedom of speech of speakers and freedom of subjects to decide how they're to be referred to, one could support one side or the other, but you shouldn't lie about what's at stake! 7/
+
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/sucks_to_be_you-b.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/sucks_to_be_you-b.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/two_freedoms.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/two_freedoms.png" alt="Recap 2" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+It's not coherent to advocate for self-ID pronouns on the grounds pronouns don't imply gender category inferences, because, obviously, the entire reason trans people want self-ID pronouns is specifically because of the gender category implications. 7/
+
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/category_information.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/category_information.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/stroop.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/stroop.png" alt="Recap 2" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+If "speaker choice" of pronouns holding any decision-weight whatsoever against the utilitarian case for "subject choice" seems entirely unsympathetic to you—something only an ignorant person would want—consider reading @Aella_Girl's 2019 account of how the speech norms feel? 8/
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/aella-side_effects.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/aella-side_effects.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+Analogy: in languages with a 2nd-person formality distinction, people might resist demands to use formal pronouns for someone they don't actually respect. It's dishonest to mischaracterize that as them confusedly thinking the sentence with formal pronouns would be a "lie". 9/
+
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/tu_vs_usted-1.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/tu_vs_usted-1.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/tu_vs_usted-2.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/tu_vs_usted-2.png" alt="Recap 2" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+Analogy: in a Muslim Society, it might be OK to enforce a norm to say "peace be unto him" after the name of prophets, but to argue that the norm is just politeness with no ideological content would be an absurd lie. The dishonest argument is vastly worse than the norm itself! 10/
+
+<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; flex-wrap: wrap;">
+ <a href="/images/twitter_strike/peace_be_unto_him.png" target="_blank">
+ <img src="/images/twitter_strike/peace_be_unto_him.png" alt="Recap 1" style="width: 350px; height: auto; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-radius: 4px;">
+ </a>
+</div>
+
+
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+
+
+Thread idea for after the semester:
+ * Yudkowsky on "wokeness ending"; say I think he's prevaricating, I think if that were true, we would be able to say things he said in 2009
+ * Quoting Hanania on TWAW
+ * The stepparents analogy has merit, but it's dumb to conclude that TWAW, rather than words having multiple senses, and needing to disambiguate, as it was written in "A Human's Guide to Words"
+ * You do need to consider the empirical merits of the use-case—eigenrobot got this right
+ * Reply to last pronoun
+ * This is part of an exetensively documented history of him being manipulative on this topic
+ * This matters because if he's this dishonest on things this easy to check, how can you trust his word against e.g. Christiano
+ * This matters because if rat/EA is a subisdary of the dems, JD Vance can't tell that our concerns about LLM-like AI aren't just a smokescreen for censorship
+ * "we only hire valid arguments" is a dirty lie
+Or rather—
+ *
+I thought publishing pt. 4 would be the end of it, but he keeps doing it, most recently in May 2025 and October 2024
+ * (start with October 2024, because it's weightier and)
+
+
+ * some people will complain that I'm damaging the x-risk cause, but _I didn't say_ that x-risk is low!!
+
+["vice signaling" doesn't quite work because it requires someone else to signal to?]
+
+* mention that Somni gets it!
+
+Mostlly try to stick to the object-level first, and then the dishonesty accusation; don't throw the entire meta political kitchen sink in—but do mention my Tweet about Maximillian Snyder and dysfunctional hero-worship
+
+Honesty-as-not-lying just makes his intelligence more dangerous (nearest unbound strategy)
+
+Eigenrobot
+
+
+Correct ideas don't need to censor criticism!!
+
+
+https://x.com/intellectronica/status/1927087447277506669
+> I will read it with an open mind just because it's dishonest to criticise without engaging with the argument in good faith. But unless there's something new in there that I haven't heard in the many years since he started making these arguments, I don't expect much.
+
+Emotional blackmail, terrorists
+
+
+The dynamic of "Our trans people are good and innocent, and the only possible criticism of their ideology is political craziness" is itself a form of political craziness
+
+
+> Still think this was a perfectly fine tweet btw. Some people afaict were doing the literal ontologically confused thing; seemed like a simple thing to make progress on. Some people wanted to read it as a coded statement despite all my attempts to narrow it, but what can you do.
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1356535300986523648
+
+If you were actually HONESTLY tring to narrow it, you would have said, "By the way, this is just about pronouns, I'm not taking a position on whether trans women are women"
+
+
+I have never known a male with a true female side!!!
+If he actually believes that, he has a duty to warn people against transitions that might not work out
+If he doesn't actually believe that, he should be able to explain why his opinion changed
+He can't do either, because he's a phony political hack
+
+
+ https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1159162479110324225" ("I'm not demanding agreement. I'm setting a test of being able to repeat back what the other person claims their argument is. In a very real sense, politically motivated incomprehension makes people dumber than cassette tape recorders.")
+
+
+
+https://x.com/davidxu90/status/1843758339634921965
+> Note also that asking for this kind of analysis isn't the same as suggesting that preferred pronouns should not be respected, any more than a metaethicist asking "what makes killing people wrong?" is a suggestion that killing people is *not* wrong.
+
+
+
+https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1917309673218400570
+
+https://benthams.substack.com/p/why-i-think-trans-women-are-women
+
+> Personally, I'm used to operating without the cognitive support of a civilization in controversial domains, and have some confidence in my own ability to independently invent everything important that would be on the other side of the filter and check it myself before speaking. So you know, from having read this, that I checked all the speakable and unspeakable arguments I had thought of, and concluded that this speakable argument would be good on net to publish, as would not be the case if I knew of a stronger but unspeakable counterargument in favor of Gendered Pronouns For Everyone and Asking To Leave The System Is Lying.
+>
+> But the existence of a wide social filter like that should be kept in mind; to whatever quantitative extent you don't trust your ability plus my ability to think of valid counterarguments that might exist, as a Bayesian you should proportionally update in the direction of the unknown arguments you speculate might have been filtered out.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff
