If this "rationality" stuff is useful for _anything at all_, you would _expect_ it to be useful for _practical life decisions_ like _whether or not I should cut my dick off_.
-In order to get the _right answer_ to that policy question (whatever the answer turns out to be), you need to _at minimum_ be able to get the _right answer_ on related fact-questions like "Is late-onset gender dysphoria in males an intersex condition?" (answer: no) and related philosophy-questions like "Can we arbitrarily redefine words such as 'woman' without adverse effects on our cognition?" (answer: no).
+In order to get the _right answer_ to that policy question (whatever the right answer turns out to be), you need to _at minimum_ be able to get the _right answer_ on related fact-questions like "Is late-onset gender dysphoria in males an intersex condition?" (answer: no) and related philosophy-questions like "Can we arbitrarily redefine words such as 'woman' without adverse effects on our cognition?" (answer: no).
At the cost of _wasting three years of my life_, we _did_ manage to get the philosophy question right! Again, that's nice. But compared to the Sequences-era dreams of changing the world with a Second Scientific Revolution, it's too little, too slow, too late. If our public discourse is going to be this aggressively optimized for _tricking me into cutting my dick off_ (independently of the empirical cost–benefit trade-off determining whether or not I should cut my dick off), that kills the whole project for me. I don't think I'm setting [my price for joining](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining) particularly high here?
- Amy Wax linkpost
+This is the same mechanism as "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception"!!
+> journalism is usually trustworthy because trustworthiness is the carrier vehicle. It's occasionally corrupt, because corruption is the payload.
+https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/lje3nu/statement_on_new_york_times_article/gnfrprx/?context=3
optimized to confuse and intimidate people trying to use language to reason about the concept of biological sex, even if your conscious verbal narrative never says 'and now I will confuse and intimidate people who want to use language to reason about the concept of biological sex'!"